SEO is all about getting virtual ‘bums on seats’ or, in politer language, visits to your website. But did you know that good SEO – SEO that really works – is actually a side-effect of good engagement? That might sound a bit cryptic but it’s really quite simple. 

 

Your goal as a business owner isn’t to get every Tom, Dick and Harry to visit your website. An aggressive approach to SEO might make it happen. But this kind of approach invariably results in a sky-high bounce rate and minuscule dwell time – followed by a nose-dive down the Google rankings. 

If you’re creating a new website for your business, or even if you already have a website, you’ll need to give some thought to keyword research. For your site to perform well in Google searches, it's important to find out what people are searching for on Google, and use these keywords in your content, and SEO, which in turn will help drive traffic to your website and engage with your target audience. 

Dependable Security were on a very tight deadline for the launch of their new website ready for the New Year. 

Recently, Google announced that it would be marking all sites not encrypted with HTTPS as ‘not secure’ in Chrome. 

 

Given that Chrome is the most popular web browser these days, accounting for around 60%* of UK traffic, you might want to consider switching your platform from HTTP to HTTPS if you haven’t already. 

Responsive web design simply means that the appearance of your website will adapt to whatever device is being used to view it. So people using desktop PCs, laptops, tablets and smart phones will each view your website in a different way, with the information being resized and reframed to make it easier to read and navigate. 

When it comes to content marketing, it’s all too easy to wax lyrical about the nuts and bolts of your business. Take a cabinet-making company that makes beautiful kitchens. Imagine you’re looking for a new kitchen with a real ‘wow’ factor and you visit their website – only to find that product descriptions are all based around bare facts or technical specifications. Corian worktops, 1,000mm Rangemaster cookers, handmade kitchen islands and so on… 

A hyperlocal search is one where the customer is looking for a product or service in a more precise area. For example, a business traveller visiting Boots plc from Cornwall might search for ‘hotel Beeston Rylands’ (the area of Nottingham where Boots is located) rather than simply searching for ‘hotel Nottingham’. 

Google have added a "Posts" feature to My Business, it's now available to UK Businesses, but what does it mean? 

The key to great marketing content is simple: put yourself in your customer’s shoes and tell them what they want to hear. Or at least it sounds simple, doesn’t it? In truth, it can actually be pretty hard to step outside your own business and focus on your customers’ needs, wants and desires. And that’s why so much content, whether printed or online, just doesn’t work. 

Lisa Newport owns and runs the My Ruby Slippers Style Academy, a part online and part face-to-face Style Consultancy based in Nottingham. Correspondingly she has a really strong sense of style, brand identity, design communication and the use of colour. The website is now live, and the result is fabulous.