How to advertise to vertical market sectors
We suggest letting the prospects point to their industry once they've got to the site.
Our Daily Articles: Complete Index 2008–2019
Point your customers to leave a review
A Google Business listing means prompting satisfied customers to add their review, and here's how
June’s Google update more significant than usual
It might be worth seeing if your traffic has been affected in the past week or so.
Three genuinely useful guides to business marketing
Here are some nice freebies for you: my former colleague Andrew Leon Walker has written three genuinely useful guides
Google reduces duplicate site listings
It's previously been possible for a single site to grab three or four of the spots in the search results.
Breaking up articles into bite-sized pieces
If you have the facility to do so, at least ensure you have a sub-heading every two to three paragraphs.
Tips on writing good title tags
How long should the title tag be? The consensus among SEO experts though is that 50 to 60 characters is just fine.
Why writing really good title tags for our web pages is essential
An easy trap to fall into is to just let a content management system take the page headline and dump it into the title tag field.
Getting new pages into Google quickly
How do we get in the natural, free results as quickly as possible?
Three minutes spent very usefully
SEO Analyzer will spend three minutes and then present you with an action plan.
Learning from the best favicons
Take a look at any search results on a mobile device and you'll see that some sites' favicons look much better than others.
How to give your sales document a lift
Instead of this piece just fading away, I could end it by posing a question, and then a call-to-action.
If you’re not advertising, you’re not in the game
What does Google understand the intent to be, in the face of a search for 'blue widgets'?
An excellent guide to website form design
Examine the forms on your website on different devices, and ask the question: "Is this easy to complete?"
Special characters in description meta data tags
I'm sure that from time to time you've noticed Google results featuring odd characters such as ticks, stars and even smiley faces.
The need to cover every ranking factor in search
Fail on one factor and it could make everything else irrelevant.
Tips for promoting a customer event
What are some of the ways in which we can maximise the number of people who turn up?
What’s the purpose of the page?
Your page may be 'about' blue widgets, but what's the purpose of the page?
ICYMI – All the blog posts from May 2019
Our monthly listing of everything which has been in the blog in the last month...
How many alternative domain names do I need to hold?
In general, I'd say don't bother investing in any variations on your main domain name.
Last chance to get your .uk domain
I'd have thought it natural then to redirect requests for the .uk domain to the .co.uk version
Favicons catapulted to front and centre in Google
Google has been rolling out a slightly new look to its mobile search results; the green URL line is being moved up above the headline, and alongside it you'll see the site's 'favicon'.
How many types of marketing are there?
The Hubspot blog has found no fewer than 40 different types of marketing that it claims are all around today.
Don’t be anxious about conversion rates: improve them
If you're going to follow up their catalogue request with some sales emails, be honest about it
Beyond Reach
The challenge is to find the pages on the search engines viewed by the most people who might want to buy our stuff.
No.1 and 10 in Google aren’t what they used to be
The 'number one in Google' ranking doesn't have anything like the prominence it used to have
What should go in a call-to-action link?
Think how your call-to-action exhortation might be misinterpreted.
Is ‘Live Chat’ turning out to be a good thing?
It's the best of both worlds for a section of the potential customer base
The Value Proposition: the reason people should buy your product
It's a critical element which is so often missing
Useful tools to test the speed of your website
A comprehensive list, and I'd recommend making a note of it
New ideas for searches to target in plain sight
Google's giving you massive clues as to what people are looking for
Why we’re giving ‘responsive search ads’ a miss
Google has shown a total inability to understand the requirements of professional businesses
Are your Favicons a little unloved?
They may have been set up years ago and might look a little stale
Not everyone’s one of the good guys
Be careful if you're approached with some hard sell for a service that you didn't know you needed
Videos: just get on with it
Some studies suggest that business videos should be about 2 minutes long
ICYMI – All the blog posts from April 2019
Our monthly listing of everything which has been in the blog in the last month...
Google’s Disavow Tool: only use when necessary
If you're not an SEO geek, this may not be the most exciting two minutes of your working life.
The hed, the dek, the lede and the nut graf
An understanding of these traditional terms can still help everyone's writing
Creating Google Analytics reports the way you like them
There's so much available, and a whole world of data to explore.
“Questions & Answers” – yet more stuff to monitor on Google
Anyone can answer, so you'll want to be first to do so
What if Google’s sending people to your home page?
Take a look at your home page as a first-time visitor would
Mobile traffic: not as important for us …yet
In all these examples the traffic is still dominated by desktop users
Four different types of blog content
It's good discipline to check that you're covering all of these
