Our Daily Articles: Complete Index 2008–2019

If you sell online, you have a thank-you page which is only seen by customers. Tag this, and you have an ad campaign for those people alone.

If your adverts are aimed at getting prospects to call you now and talk to an expert, you may be wasting your money if your company is closed.

If you’re still not using Slack or Teams at work, and indeed not using it anywhere, I’d recommend giving it a try.

The potential of independent industry publications and websites may be even more valuable to manufacturers than it was in the past.

So many websites get this wrong because what the designers fail to do is to put themselves in the shoes of the visitor.

The traditional search box still sits top and centre, but it’s now followed by a string of articles in panels.

I like to use emojis to add emphasis to a message, but I think it’s dangerous to make the meaning of the message dependent on them.

I often discourage people from ‘gating’ content, but when you do, it’s important to ensure the content actually arrives.

Google’s WordPress plugin is an excellent time-saver, which brings Search Console, Analytics and PageSpeed Insights to your Dashboard.

It’s not a good idea to embed videos in emails, because many email apps won’t support them, and some services will classify them as spam.

People visit sites to find out things. They are becoming less patient. We need to understand this, like Amazon does.

If you’re a typical small B2B company, you probably put little or no resources into this, because it’s hard. That’s a mistake.

Repetition in advertising works, particularly when purchases are by necessity and only occasional

Using ‘alt’ text to describe images is as important today as ever, and not just because of SEO. It’s a simple thing, but often forgotten.

After writing something, we read it back. Get someone else to read it out loud though; almost every PC or phone has the ability to do this.

A content hub is a top level index of resources around a particular topic, which could, for example, be a product category or an application.

We think that by providing a great product or service, we’re the only ones doing the helping. But it’s a two-way thing.

The “People Also Ask” list can have different numbers of questions and may appear in different positions on the page.

We’re being offered the chance to have a pop-up form generated directly by the advert, where the prospect can enter basic contact details.

There are many reasons why an email might only be read on a second attempt, such as initially receiving it at an inconvenient time of day.

I’ve noticed a lot of individual page performance changes recently. This wouldn’t be apparent just by looking at overall site traffic totals.

I’ve shot loads of really good videos in the last year. Once you’ve done a few practice ones, it really becomes second nature.

People accept that there’s a quid-pro-quo, but your website visitors came hoping to get a question answered, not to get on your database.

I have seen anecdotes of sites removing half or more of their content, stretching back many years, and seeing a substantial SEO benefit from doing so.

Although ‘affinity audiences’ are hobby- or general-interest-based, they still present some possibilities for technical business marketing

You’ll soon be able to register the “.new” top-level domain for shortcuts to online services. Details are – predictably – at whats.new

There are loads of tools for analysing the SEO strength of domains, but a new one from SEO tool provider Moz.com looks straightforward

A live webinar needs to be right first time – you can’t edit out the mistakes or start again. But I don’t think an audience expects perfection

This tool is a bit trivial, but it doesn’t hurt to give it a try if you’re writing an article about something and don’t know where to begin.

Instead of slick production values, a successful video is all about the content. A lower budget approach can do the job perfectly.

This is sometimes known as an ‘HTML sitemap’ and can be useful for visitors who like to use the ‘search’ facility in their browser!

Many web hosts nowadays offer a managed site transfer service, so for a small business, a new web host needn’t be a daunting prospect.

With more people getting involved in the buying decision, a consistent overarching marketing message is more important than ever.

Because PPC search advertising works well, many companies just gradually improve what they do, rather than make strategic changes.

There’s nothing wrong with having pages which list your alternatives to competitors’ product range names or even part numbers.

If the top-ranking page is a non-commercial site, offering to buy your way on to that page with a one-off advert ought to be a no-brainer.

Don’t just look to upgrade your page to something similar: see if you can spot weaknesses in competitor pages and gain a real advantage

Smart marketers have pop-ups that don’t appear on first arriving; they wait until the visitor is more likely to be receptive to an offer.

Take a look at a page on your website where the call to action is to contact you. Are you forcing mobile users to fill in a form?

Faster loading websites are something we should all be looking to provide, but next generation image formats may not be a good strategy

Some new methods allow “more fine-grained configuration of the preview content shown for your pages… through two types of new settings”.

Most businesses are doing very little. Your company will have to make up its own mind as to the risk it’s prepared to take.

Try to minimise the number of websites you run, with just one, if possible, being the easiest, cheapest and most effective of all

If BMON had been set up as an SEO consultancy, we’d probably have ended up as a PR agency – if we’d survived the intervening period

This is a big advert which will autoplay on the YouTube home screen on TVs – and can be purchased on a cost-per-thousand (CPM) basis.

With respect to SEO, I’ve not heard anyone show that it provides a ranking advantage, so there’s certainly no panic

You might notice in the Google results that the green URL under each result has now changed from the actual URL to a ‘breadcrumb’ link.