Nobody reads it.

Search engines, and Google in particular, are a great way of bringing more traffic, readers, and potential customers to your website, but with Google known to change their algorithm roughly 500 times a year, knowing how to beat it so that your content ranks on the first page is no easy task.

So, what can you do to try and make sure your content ranks well?

Find Your Niche

With so much content out there, it’s important that you know exactly what it is you want to write about. Finding a particular topic that you have specialist knowledge on is essential if you want your content to compete for that first-page Google ranking.

To start off, have a browse online and see if you can notice any gaps in what’s already out there. Writing blog posts on topics that aren’t widely covered on the web will help yours to not only stand out from the crowd but rank at the top of the pile too.

Make sure you avoid duplicating content as well. Copying content word for word from another website, even if it was written by you, can have a massive impact on the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) of not just that webpage but your website as a whole. Keep your content fresh and relevant to give it the best chance of ranking well.

Do Your Research

If you want your content to rank highly, then keyword research should be your first and most essential step before starting your article. Keyword research is the best way to get inside your readers’ heads and find out what terms and words they’re searching for the most. It’s also a great way to know what your competitors are doing and ranking for; knowledge is power, after all!

There are a number of tools you can use to help with your keyword research, and once you’ve whittled down your list of top words and phrases you want to rank for, you can start to incorporate them as much as possible into your content (try not to overdo it; your content should still feel natural and easy to read!).

Some of the best tools for your keyword research are Google Adwords Keyword Planner and Moz.

Meta Tags

Optimizing your meta tags is one of the most important parts of SEO. If you forget this, then you may as well forget that your content has any chance of ranking on the first page of Google. Meta tags are the tags you can add to a page to tell Google what your content is about; they won’t appear on the page but are instead in the ‘back end’ of your site, allowing Google to read them.

Once upon a time, when search engines were first invented, meta tags really were the be-all and end-all of SEO. Nowadays, there’s some debate as to how important they are, but there’s some that you definitely can’t avoid.

• Meta keyword tags: this is where you can add all of the keywords you want your content to rank for. Make sure you keep them relevant and don’t go overboard; too many keyword meta tags is known as ‘keyword stuffing’ and can end up having the opposite effect.
• Title tag: you can give your web page a title tag that is visible to the user at the top of the page to ensure your users instantly know what the page they’re on is about. Meta titles are also handy for SEO, as they simplify all of the SEO information into one key phrase.
• Meta description: this is the small paragraph of text that appears under your page title in search results. For the best rankings, you need to ensure it’s keyword-dense, concise (no more than 150 words), and clearly tells the reader what the page is about.

Think About the User’s Experience

Thinking about how the user will experience and absorb your content and website are key elements that are often overlooked when optimising content. Think about how long it takes the page to load, how easy it is to follow the content, and how much copy appears on the screen.

You should be aiming to make the user’s experience as pleasurable as possible so that they stay on your site for longer. The longer a user stays on your website, the better effect it will have on your SEO.

Google takes into account click-throughs (how many people click on the content) and bounce rates (how quickly they click away), so try to keep your audience online for as long as possible.

Adding high-quality images to your content will not only improve the user’s experience and break the content up; it can also help your page rank better.

You can optimize your images by changing the file name, meta tag, and meta description to all feature the keywords and phrases that you want to rank for. Don’t forget that Google Image searches are a great way of bringing people to your website. Just make sure the file size of your images isn’t too big, as this can impact your page loading speed and response time.

Use Sub-Headings 

Another way to ensure your readers engage with the content is to use sub-headings. These aren’t just great for breaking up the text; they’re also an easy way to get your keywords in. Ensure your headers include the keywords or phrases that you want to rank for, and you can quickly increase the volume of keywords in your content.

Don’t Forget Links 

Including both internal and external links in your content is a key way to optimise what you’re writing, giving it a better chance of ranking on the first page of Google. By linking out to relevant sites, you can help improve the SEO of your content. You just need to ensure that the sites you’re linking to are well-respected and have a good domain authority.

It’s important that you keep an eye on any pieces of content you upload that have external links in them to ensure there are no broken links (this can happen if the URL of the page you’re linking to changes or if the page is removed). Broken links can have a negative effect on your SEO, so make sure you add this to your checklist of tasks to complete regularly.

Linking to content on your own site is also a good way of helping content rank. Link to other relevant blog posts, or if you’re talking about a specific product or service that you sell, link to its product page on your site.

The more links that direct to your site, the better it is for your SEO and ranking position. Internal links are also a great way of keeping readers on your site for longer, so consider adding a couple to each blog post you write.

Unfortunately, there’s no black-and-white answer for making your content rank on the first page of Google, and the search engine is always making changes to its algorithm and how it ranks content.

The best thing you can do is follow the tips above and make sure your content is informative. One thing we do know is that Google loves content that gives the reader the information they’re after quickly and concisely!

Sam Crawford

I’m Sam Crawford, Squarespace expert and founder of by Crawford, a multi award-winning Squarespace web design studio.

I have built over 400 Squarespace websites for clients across every industry all around the world. I am also an official Squarespace partner, approved Squarespace expert, Squarespace educator and Squarespace Enterprise member, meaning you get an unrivalled experience – and a flawless website.

The post How to get your Content to Rank on the 1st page of Google appeared first on iNet Ventures.

Think about new platforms

Once upon a time there was a holy trifecta of advertising; TV, print and radio. Not anymore. Nowadays people are absorbing content via everything from social media to podcasts and even streaming services such as Spotify and Netflix. The vast array of platforms available also opens up more opportunity for advertising. Do some market research into the platforms that your target market use the most and consider placing your ads here. For instance, if you discover your markets key platforms are podcasts and Instagram then set aside some of your budget to run ads on these.

It is of course likely that you’ll discover your audience very much still absorb content and marketing via the traditional methods, especially if they’re of an older generation. It’s likely though that no matter what age your target market, social media will be in there somewhere.

As we head into the next decade we do so with various social media platforms coming with us but there’s one that clearly stands out from the rest. Instagram. The photo sharing platform has gone from strength to strength since its launch in 2010 and there are now 1 billion people with Instagram accounts with more than 500 million using them every day.

With numbers like that it’s clear that Instagram is king amongst social media and if you want your brand to stand the test of time in the digital age, then Instagram ads and campaigns should be an essential part of your 2020 marketing plan.

Don’t forget about search

With so many fancy new marketing tactics it can be easy to forget about the staples. If you think you’ve got your SEO strategy down and you’re ranking well for your key terms, it’s important that you don’t get tempted to take your foot off the gas. Google constantly changes its algorithms so it’s important to keep one eye on what’s going on so you can adapt your SEO plans accordingly.

Google is constantly improving how it ranks results making it even more user friendly. 2020 is also likely to see voice search take even more of a front seat. With more and more people using their smartphones to search over desktops and the majority of these fitted with technology allowing them to say their search rather than type it out, marketers need to make sure their pages are optimised to appear in more ‘colloquial’ searches as well.

Consider creating video (with subtitles!)

People are busy and they don’t necessarily have time to sit and read pages on pages of reviews or click through to various different links. Short videos are therefore a great way to hook people in and pique their interest. Video content continues to be some of the most engaged with on social media and short and snappy videos that take the audience on a journey are the most worthwhile.

If you do utilise video in your marketing strategies then make sure you use subtitles. Research has shown that many people choose to watch videos without the sound (probably because they’ve forgotten their headphones and don’t want to blast it round the bus!) so adding subtitles to videos will reduce the likelihood of people scrolling past or giving up on the video half way through.

Say hello to influencers

If you haven’t already been using influencers in your marketing plans then 2020 is the year to do it. With engaged niche audiences and quick, easy to absorb content, influencers can be a marketers dream. There are various ways you can utilise their skills and audiences from social media campaigns, gifted reviews and back links to your website on their blogs.

It’s important to figure out exactly what you want to achieve from your work with influencers to help you decide the best way to work with them. For instance, if your main goal is to improve the SEO of your website then a link building campaign would be best but if you’re more interested in growing brand awareness and trust then working with them on a gifting basis in return for reviews would suit you both.

No matter what techniques you incorporate into your 2020 marketing plans, you need to make sure that your product or service follows through with its promises. It’s no use blowing your budget on an all singing all dancing ad campaign if the product ends up being a disappointment.

Sam Crawford

I’m Sam Crawford, Squarespace expert and founder of by Crawford, a multi award-winning Squarespace web design studio.

I have built over 400 Squarespace websites for clients across every industry all around the world. I am also an official Squarespace partner, approved Squarespace expert, Squarespace educator and Squarespace Enterprise member, meaning you get an unrivalled experience – and a flawless website.

The post The Best ways of Advertising in 2020 appeared first on iNet Ventures.

What is BERT? 

Google’s updates never have normal names and this one is no different. BERT stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers…we think we’ll stick to calling it BERT!

BERT is the latest algorithm change that Google has made (or the latest one they’re talking about publicly anyway!) and people are already claiming it to be the biggest change in the past 5 years.

To put it simply, BERT will help Google to better understand the intent of users search queries in order to ensure that they receive the most relevant results. For the first time, Google will read each of the words in a search query in the context that they fit with the other words used.

For instance, if a user was to Google ‘visa for US travellers to Brazil’  before BERT the results would have brought up details on visas for people both travelling to Brazil from the US and for those travelling to the US from Brazil. Now, thanks to BERT, the search engine will read and understand the context of the ‘to’ in the sentence, bringing up the most relevant results first.

It’s thought that BERT will affect around 10% of search queries which is a pretty hefty chunk. As peoples computer literacy skills develop and using technology becomes second nature, search queries are beginning to sound more and more like everyday speech. Therefore it’s important that the search engine can understand exactly what the context of the words used is.

When did Google roll out BERT? 

People started to notice BERT was rolling out across the system during the week of October 21st 2019 but that was just for English-language queries, including featured snippets.

It won’t be long though until other countries start to be impacted by BERT. Although there’s no set timeline, Google CEO Danny Sullivan has confirmed that the algorithm will expand to all languages. A BERT model is currently being used across two dozen countries to help improve featured snippets and search results.

What does BERT mean for me? 

Whenever Google rolls out a new update one of the first things you need to do is take a look at your SEO strategy, especially with one as important as BERT. Even if you haven’t noticed a drop in traffic or search rankings yet, that doesn’t mean you’ve escaped without being impacted by BERT.

With every search you make on Google the algorithm will get better and better suggesting that you need to take action now to make sure your website is ready. At the moment, Google has been focused more on short tail keywords and phrases but as we become more and more aware of BERT, it’s likely that this will change.

As BERT begins to understand the context of queries more, that’s where long tail keywords will come into play. People will start to use longer phrases and sentences if they notice that Google can understand exactly what it is they want to find out. Ensuring your websites long tail keyword tags are up to date and relevant is just the first step though.

As BERT focuses on long tail keywords and the users intent, your website should focus on content. Yet again, this update has shown that content is king and by focusing on niche and relevant high quality content, you can help your website to stand a better chance of coming up top in the results. Google will be even more focused on content that is relevant to the search query so by making sure your content is niche and answers the search terms you want to rank for, you may see an increase in your ranking results.

BERT should also have a positive impact on the overall SEO of your website. With Google focusing on bringing up results that are relevant to the user, this should in turn help to reduce bounce rates.

As BERT begins its roll out, now is the time to focus on relevant and informative content. Ensure your content and website is user friendly and focus on long tail keywords to help improve your traffic. Although you might not have noticed any sort of impact from BERT yet, by making some tweaks to your SEO strategy now, you should reap the benefits in the future.

Sam Crawford

I’m Sam Crawford, Squarespace expert and founder of by Crawford, a multi award-winning Squarespace web design studio.

I have built over 400 Squarespace websites for clients across every industry all around the world. I am also an official Squarespace partner, approved Squarespace expert, Squarespace educator and Squarespace Enterprise member, meaning you get an unrivalled experience – and a flawless website.

The post Everything you need to know about BERT, Google’s latest update appeared first on iNet Ventures.

Often with a large and engaged audience, influencers are the latest marketing strategy that brands worldwide are utilizing to get their products in front of as many eyes as possible. In the digital age, 2019 has seen many brands step away from traditional advertising models, and instead of blowing their budget on ads in glossy magazines, they’re spending their money on online superstars instead.

A recent study found that influencer marketing can produce up to 11 times the ROI than traditional marketing and with 94% of marketers finding the strategy effective. If you haven’t already added it to your marketing plan then maybe it’s time.

If you’re thinking about dipping your toe into the world of blogger outreach and influencer marketing then there are various ways that you can do it depending on what results it is you’re after.

If your main concern is improving the SEO of your website and upping your Google rankings, then a link-building campaign would be best. This is where you work with bloggers who have a website with strong domain authority to produce a relevant blog post that features a follow link to your website. After all, the first lesson in SEO school is the importance of link building!

If it’s brand awareness you’re after and you simply want as many people as possible to see your products in the hopes of upping sales, then gifting campaigns and collaborations are the option for you. This is where a company will work with a blogger, often allowing them to try out their product in return for exposure on their channels. This is a great way to get your brand in front of potential customers without coming across as a ‘hard sell’.

One of the main things that bloggers have going for them is the fact that they’ve built up a large, engaged audience that, most importantly, trusts what they say. Much like the friend that you turn to for fashion advice or the pal whose opinion on the best local restaurants is the only one you’ll listen to, influencers have become the first port of call for many consumers when they need advice or recommendations. It’s no surprise, then, that brands are keen to utilize the unique relationship that bloggers have nurtured with their audiences.

From beauty and fashion bloggers to those who document food reviews, family life or even the latest motors on the road; you’re likely to find a blogger who fits your brand narrative perfectly. For example, if they’re talking about craft beer, then their audience will likely be interested in craft beer too. After all; you’re unlikely to follow someone if you aren’t interested in their content.

This level of carved-out niche-ness and engaged audiences is exactly what makes blogger outreach and influencer marketing such a successful strategy.

But finding the right bloggers for your campaign can be tricky.

If you’re looking to grow trust in your brand then a micro influencer campaign may be better. These are bloggers and influencers who have a slightly smaller following (although their follower count is by no means low!) whose audience truly trust every word they say.

A macro influencer campaign however is the best option if you just want your brand and products to be seen by as many people as possible. Think celebrities and reality TV stars who’ve built up millions of followers; their audience may not necessarily trust their opinion as they would a friends but you can be assured that your products will be seen by the masses.

If you’re still not convinced that influencer marketing and blogger outreach is the best option for you then there are some epic success stories that should help to convince you. Luxury watch retailer Daniel Wellington were going a little under the radar before they decided to put all of their marketing budget on influencer outreach, completely avoiding all other, more traditional advertising options.

By selecting a group of influencers to receive some of their watches and then post about them, the brand relied on the age-old ‘word of mouth’ technique, albeit with a social media edge. And it worked. The bloggers produced their sponsored content alongside a discount code for their followers that allowed them to feel like they, too, were in on a new luxury secret. Over the course of the campaign, users uploaded photos of their own Daniel Wellington purchases, with the hashtag #DanielWellington featured on over 1.5 million Instagram images. In case you were wondering just how much awareness of the brand grew throughout the campaign, they gained 3.2 million followers from start to finish.

Meanwhile camera brand Nikon took a slightly different approach when they worked with a group of bloggers in conjunction with the Warner Sound Festival. Instead of getting bloggers to rave about their cameras, they sent them one to use themselves at the festival. This meant that when they uploaded their festival images their followers were desperate to know how they’d created such great imagery and how they too could emulate this on their own feeds.

In terms of influencer marketing this was a pretty epic team up as not only did it get music fans interested in the Nikon cameras, it allowed bloggers to promote the Warner Sounds Festival to a whole new audience. This approach highlights how seeing something in action, whether that be a camera, lipstick or even a car; can really help to push consumer interest.

With the internet and social media only set to grow, now’s the time to make use of the vast array of bloggers and influencers available to you and your brand.

The online world is ever-changing. With that comes a whole new way to connect with your target market. Bloggers and online platforms continue to grow, while traditional print publications face a noticeable decline in sales. Blogger outreach should be a high priority within your marketing strategy, no matter what your goals are.

Sam Crawford

I’m Sam Crawford, Squarespace expert and founder of by Crawford, a multi award-winning Squarespace web design studio.

I have built over 400 Squarespace websites for clients across every industry all around the world. I am also an official Squarespace partner, approved Squarespace expert, Squarespace educator and Squarespace Enterprise member, meaning you get an unrivalled experience – and a flawless website.

The post Utilising Blogger Outreach to Grow your Brand tenfold appeared first on iNet Ventures.

What is brand identity?

Brand identity is all about how your brand portrays itself to its audience. Every brand should have a way of defining and identifying itself, making it instantly recognisable to its customer base. A brand identity covers everything from a name and tagline, logo, colours, tone of voice and personality.

If you think about some of your favourite brands and household names, they are often instantly recognisable just from a logo, colours, specific fonts and famous taglines. By creating a strong brand identity, these brands have been able to infiltrate the consciousness of the consumer allowing them to stand out from the crowd of their competitors.

A brand identity is just like a personal one. We all have a personal style when it comes to fashion, our likes and dislikes, our personality, mannerisms and how we engage with people. A brand identity is no different. A brand identity is how you communicate with your audience on a daily basis and it should evolve as your company evolves.

Why do you need a strong brand identity? 

If you want people to instantly recognise your brand and be able to pick it out as their top choice from potentially hundreds of competitors then a brand identity is essential. For many people when they’re choosing their preferred washing up liquid or favourite bottle of wine for a Friday night they know instantly which one to pick off the shelf just from the colour, logo and even the shape of the bottle.

Imagine walking into the shop to buy your favourite chocolate bar but when you get to the shelf you can’t find it anywhere. You look again and suddenly realise that it is there, it’s just in a brand new wrapper- it’s changed from blue to red, the logo has changed and the whole thing looks completely different. Whilst the chocolate inside will still taste the same, chances are you’ll feel like you’re eating a whole new bar and it will take some time before you get used to picking up the red chocolate bar from the shelf. A strong brand identity allows your consumers to recognise your brand and products instantly and avoids confusion.

A brand identity will also form the basis of all of your marketing. Your chosen fonts and colours, tone of voice and key messages will run through every aspect from a website to adverts, social media and printed documents. Whether you do your marketing in-house yourself or if you employ an agency to do it for you, your brand identity should be decided on and clear before you begin any other marketing.

How to create a brand identity 

Before you create your brand identity you need to make sure you’ve got a clear brand strategy in place. You need to understand exactly where it is that you want your brand to go in the future, what your goals are and what steps you intend to intend to take to get there. Your brand identity will be with you every step of the way.

The next step is to do your research. Take a look at what your competitors are doing and get an idea of how they are presenting themselves to the world. You’ll often find that similar brands have similar styles and identities so it’s up to you to decide if you want to follow the crowd or do something completely different, making yourself stand out. No guesses which option you would rather…

Another step to help you achieve the perfect identity for your brand is to create audience personas. Think about the type of people who make up your target audience. Are they young, old, male, female? Take some time to research exactly what it is that your audience likes and dislikes, if your brand is already up and running then a great way to do this is via surveys. By discovering exactly what your target audience looks for in a brand, you can ensure that these are key features of your brand identity.

Once you’ve done your research into exactly how you want your brand to look and feel all that’s left to do is create the various elements. From a logo to brand colours, photography and image style, tone of voice and key messages, there’s a lot to think about and tick off the list. What you’re likely to find however is that each element influences the next. So choose your colours first, stick to 2-4 and be specific. Don’t just say ‘pink’ but instead pick an exact pantone colour…you’ll be surprised by just how many pinks there are!

Once you’ve chosen your colors, it will be ten times easier to start designing your logo, which will, in turn, help you decide if you’ll use photography or illustrations across your marketing and the style they’ll be in.

Creating a brand identity is trial and error, you’re unlikely to go with the very first logo you design in fact, chances are, your end product will be a million miles away from the one you decide on, but taking the time to research and create an identity that’s right for your brand will prove invaluable.

Sam Crawford

I’m Sam Crawford, Squarespace expert and founder of by Crawford, a multi award-winning Squarespace web design studio.

I have built over 400 Squarespace websites for clients across every industry all around the world. I am also an official Squarespace partner, approved Squarespace expert, Squarespace educator and Squarespace Enterprise member, meaning you get an unrivalled experience – and a flawless website.

The post Why Brand identity is key for Building Loyal Customers appeared first on iNet Ventures.

Blogger outreach is a great way to utilise the popularity of influencers to help your brand grow and there are various different ways that a brand can work with bloggers that’s beneficial to all. From gifting them products in return for a review to gaining backlinks in their posts back to your site and full blown advertising campaigns, whatever your budget you can find a way to incorporate blogger outreach into your marketing strategy.

Why should you spend some of your marketing and advertising budget on blogger outreach though? It’s all very well seeing someone has a high number of followers but will working with them really do anything for you? Here’s a few things your business could gain…

Improves brand visibility

Working with bloggers who have a large following will help to get your brand in front of more eyes. Imagine how much you’d pay for an advert in a magazine whose readership was 700,000 people. Convert that into 700,000 engaged Instagram followers and you can see why influencer marketing and blogger outreach can be a big money game.

Many bloggers and influencers have built up an engaged and niche audience who are interested in similar things to them. Therefore if you can find a blogger who fits well with your brand and target demographic then the likelihood is their audience will too. Increased brand visibility in your target market can only help with boosting sales.

Gain customer trust 

Fancy marketing tactics and big budget ad campaigns are all well and good but one of the most important things to help your brand grow is gaining customer trust. You need people to trust in your products and services and a fancy TV advert isn’t always going to help with that.

People trust personal recommendations from friends and family or at least from people who have first hand experience with the product. How many times do you read reviews of a hotel before you book it? Of course the hotel will say it’s the best in the area and use the nicest pictures but the only honest feedback you can trust is from people who have already stayed there.

If people are engaged with a blogger they follow then it’s likely that they trust their opinions and reviews, so if you can secure positive feedback on your products and services on a bloggers platform, their audience are also likely to have a positive impression of your brand meaning they are much more likely to turn to you over a competitor.

Improve your website’s SEO

Gaining backlinks to your website from a site with a strong domain authority is a great way to improve the SEO of your website. The more high quality links you have pointing to your site the more Google will view your site as one with relevance and authority, helping to boost you up the search results.

One way of working with bloggers is on a link building basis where they write a post based around your product or market area that includes at least one follow link to your website. This allows the links placed to look natural and won’t throw up any red flags to Google but will also help to not only boost your SEO but to direct traffic to your website and, if you’ve chosen bloggers whose audience will be interested in your brand, should help to reduce bounce rate and improve sales.

Boost your sales

At the end of the day, if you’re running any kind of marketing or advertising campaign then your end goal is more than likely to boost sales. It’s no good investing in your marketing if you can’t see any ROI. A positive of using bloggers is not only the fact that they have a ready made engaged audience for you to tap into but because everything is online, they are able to track precisely what sort of impact their posts are having. This means you will easily be able to find out how many people are clicking through to your site or how many sales are being made off the back of their link referrals. Handy, huh?

Bloggers are also a sign of the times. As the digital world continues to grow, traditional mediums such as print and radio are facing a decline with less people likely to pick up a glossy magazine and from those that do, even fewer are likely to actually engage with adverts in there. Meanwhile social media and bloggers are becoming more ingrained in our lives with people choosing a morning scroll of Instagram over a morning read of the paper.

A good marketing strategy will look at how their target audience absorbs information and if for you that’s online and via influencers, then setting aside time and budget in your marketing plan is almost certain to improve your brand visibility and convert into sales.

Sam Crawford

I’m Sam Crawford, Squarespace expert and founder of by Crawford, a multi award-winning Squarespace web design studio.

I have built over 400 Squarespace websites for clients across every industry all around the world. I am also an official Squarespace partner, approved Squarespace expert, Squarespace educator and Squarespace Enterprise member, meaning you get an unrivalled experience – and a flawless website.

The post What sort of Return will you see from a Blogger Outreach Campaign? appeared first on iNet Ventures.