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What SEO agencies should offer London firms

04/01/202002/17/2020 by scmarketing

For many professional services firms in London, having a marketing strategy in place will be key to growth. But, what’s one of the core digital marketing tactics that’s vital to stand out in this crowded marketplace?

Three simple letters – SEO! That’s Search Engine Optimisation. SEO is about implementing certain processes that make it better for a website to be found through search engines so that you rank higher in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

So, if you’re looking to grow your business then partnering with an SEO agency could be the answer. But what are some of the main points to consider when choosing your agency? Here’s some of key things that an SEO agency should be offering.

Optimise your content with keywords

Know who your website is targeted at: Before you start optimising, you need to understand your target audience. Your content should be tailored so that you are answering questions for that stereotypical client. The SEO agency should help you develop an online persona which incorporates goals and challenges of your target audience.

Create pillar pages: An important starting point for optimising your website is understanding what your pillar pages are. Know what your keywords are (usually phrases or longtail keywords, not just one word!), then ensure that you have relevant pages on your website. What we’ve found working with clients existing websites is that with small tweaks to the heading you already have the start of a pillar page. However, what’s key is that the URL is also the same as the heading so this may mean you have to change that which may lead to broken links. So, watch out for that.

Create a blog page: If you haven’t got a blog already then create one. Most people expect to see a blog on a website these days for interesting industry insight. For each blog post it is important to perform keyword research to ensure your accountant business is recognised in SEO. This is especially important for professional services such as an accounting firm as there’s always plenty of new updates to be shared with changes from HMRC for example. The reason it’s so good for optimisation is that by posting regularly each month you’re providing fresh content, which includes keywords, and this helps the search engine find you.

Don’t stuff it: But don’t cram your blog full of keywords. Search engines are very sophisticated and can decipher synonyms and longtail phrases. Ultimately the content needs to be quality, insightful and relevant to the reader.

Internal links: Adding relevant links within pages or blogs to other relevant pages on your website really helps navigation and engagement with visitors. Basically, you’re giving visitors tips on useful resources and similar topics.

Technical know how

A key part of optimising your accountant website is ensuring that you’ve completed as much as you can on the backend. This also has an impact on how search engines find you. Here’s some of our top pointers to implement that can really help kick start your technical SEO campaign:

Meta descriptions: This is the short paragraph that sits beneath the company name when you conduct a search online. By completing the meta description when you upload a post or page, you can create a short descriptive paragraph which includes keywords to help search engines and potential visitors. Meta descriptions are a website’s way of telling Google and other search engines exactly what each of your pages are about, what to display and how to display it in the results.

Alt tags: Complete the description of your image in the ‘Alt Tag’ box when you upload it to your website. You can be descriptive about what’s in the image but also relate back to a relevant keyword if you can.

Headings: Keywords should be incorporated into your pillar pages which talk about your services. But, can you add keywords to your blog title? If you can, then absolutely add keywords to your headings and subheadings. The h1 tag should contain information about the content of the page. Search engines check the keyword consistency between the header tag and the content on the rest of the page.

Is your website mobile friendly? Your website should already be built on CMS (Content Managed System), but that doesn’t mean it’s automatically mobile friendly. You may need to make some tweaks which an SEO agency should be able to action for you by installing plugins.

Site speed: This is another key area because people are likely to leave a website within 3-5 seconds if they can’t find what they’re looking for. Or, if the page doesn’t load fast enough. Again, an SEO agency can help you with this.

Link building

What you’re doing with your website design is building your domain authority by gaining trust and being a thought leader. As part of the ranking process, search engines consider the quality of links, awarding scores based on relevance. Less links will have an impact upon where you return in a search result for a given term.

Links can be from social media posts, or articles linking back to your website. Having information on a third-party directory with a link back to your website can also really boost your SEO campaign – think Yell, Bing, 192.com or Yelp.

But perhaps the finest example of a directory is Google My Business. So, if an agency has just created your website or you’re looking to improve your SEO on your current website, ask your SEO agency about creating this for you.

Populate Google My Business: This is a free tool to use and well worth the time and effort to complete. Google is one of the most popular search engines, so fill out as much about your company as you can. The very basics to complete are your website URL, opening times, address, contact number and email as well as a short paragraph about your company.

Google analytics: Setting up Google analytics will allow you to understand the demographics of visitors to your site and how long they stay. You can set this up yourself or work with an SEO digital marketing agency to help you.

Looking to grow your business?

Optimising your website will help create stand out and help you be found for your services. We are looking to improve SEO for accountants in London and provide SEO services for companies in Croydon. If you feel you need some support in getting your website Search Engine Optimised, then get in touch with us today and book a free consultation.

Digital marketing resources:

Why website optimisation is key to business growth

Using social media for inbound marketing

8 social media tips to drive inbound sales

04/01/202002/13/2020 by scmarketing

With an estimated 2.65 billion people using social media around the world (source: Statista), it makes sense to be part of the conversation when marketing your business.

Now, one size does not fit all. So, we’ve gathered a few top tips on what to consider when embarking on improving your social media presence for your inbound marketing strategy.

What social media platforms should you use? There’s no clear answer to this but what’s certain is that one size does not fit all. Review what social networks are right for your business, brand and the client base you want to reach out to. Don’t waste your time speaking to everyone. So, if you’re an accounting firm for small businesses or business owners of local businesses then using social media channels such as LinkedIn and Twitter are ideal for lead generation. But don’t dismiss Facebook. While you may think that it’s all about what you’re eating or doing at the weekend, having presence on this social media channel provides a link to help domain authority but also people use Facebook as a search engine so it means your business will be found.
Who do you want to speak to? It’s important to be targeted. You need to know and understand your audience. Define your audience and create a persona for them, read more about setting this up. This will help you build trust with your audience as they come to understand that you understand their challenges and you are helping them to overcome them.
Content is king: Once you’ve uploaded a blog to your website, share it on social media with a link back to your website. But, don’t just post without thought of what you’re writing. Tailor posts to the social platform, its users and your target audience. Regularly follow industry specific contacts and thought leaders, engage and share posts relevant to your audience. When you share another article, add comments to the post to move the story on or show your appreciation of what an article was about.
Imagery: Content is also about imagery. With people watching nearly 2 billion videos on Twitter per day, it makes sense to include pictures or video to help standout.
Be a thought leader: Provide your product services in the form of tips, advice and comments that your target audience will be interested to hear about and would want to share themselves. But all the time, be genuine and engaging while remaining respectful.
Be chatty yet professional: Get the right tone for the social platform you are using and make sure it’s right for building your brand awareness, your target audience and potential clients.
Remember it’s social: With social media marketing don’t lose sight that this is meant to be a social environment and people are generally not there to be sold to.
Part of the inbound sales marketing strategy: When it comes to Return on Investment, it may be one of the lowest returns in an inbound digital marketing strategy, but that by no means implies ignore it. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, therefore incorporating social media into your digital marketing plan means you have added another touch point to reach your audience, engage with them and learn about your offering. This is a vital part of your overall inbound marketing strategy to help build awareness and trust.

Free marketing consultation

If you need help, from a social media agency, with setting up your social media channels or your entire inbound marketing strategy, contact us today for a free consultation. We also work with on social media for accountancy marketing.

Digital marketing resources:

8 tips for PPC campaigns

06/21/202102/11/2020 by scmarketing

With 63% of people saying that they would click on a Google Ad, Bing Ads etc. (Search Engine Land, 2019 via Hubspot), incorporating Pay Per Click advertising as part of your inbound marketing strategy could be the key to growth for your business.

Give your website a boost in search: Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns create adverts online so when your business is not being viewed in the natural results you can give it a little nudge with a paid campaign. PPC is a great way to be seen on the first page of search to help give your website a boost. People don’t really go beyond the first search engine results page so Google Adwords will give you the chance to be seen amongst your competition on the first page of Google.
Reach your target audience: You can set up a number of Ad Groups within a campaign so you can focus on really targeting your messaging. You can then ‘throttle up’ or ‘down’ individual ads depending on how they are preforming.
What are your goals? Before you embark on your Pay per Click campaign, to get the best return on investment you need to know what your goals are. Whether that’s increasing brand awareness or gaining more downloads of a new industry report, design your campaign with the end goal in mind. This will affect how and where you place your ads.
Control your budget to the minute: With PPC, its costs per click so you can keep tabs on spend up to the minute.
Target geographic areas: Be specific with your keywords and the geographic area you’re targeting. With targeted messaging you can reach the audience you’re looking for.
Be specific: Most PPC campaigns have quite a limited amount of text in ads you can use, so be clear and get to the point and use keywords for a quality score. Campaigns that are very specific to the product and price are much more successful than general ads around the products. A PPC ad for ‘TEFAL Ultraglide FV4043 Steam Iron at £39.99’ will convert much better than ‘low price irons for sale’ – you get the picture.
AvB testing: To find out which advert works perform AvB testing. Sometimes the same advert has different results in different geographic areas, so keep testing and refining the ads until you get the best results. Keep on monitoring those results so you can work out which ones work and which don’t.
Landing pages: Strategic landing pages are used by 68% of B2B businesses to acquire leads (Marketo, 2018 via Hubspot). Placing thought into the page where you are inviting people to look is essential to avoid people leaving the page quickly. Make sure the wording is specific to the ad and your target audience. It’s worth creating a specific landing page for campaigns.

PPC Consultant Croydon

For more tips on PPC marketing in London get in touch with Smart Cow and book a Free Consultation to improve your search marketing.

Digital marketing resources:

9 tips for optimising your website

02/26/202002/05/2020 by scmarketing

When businesses come to us to embark on an inbound marketing strategy, it’s usually about getting a business seen and getting leads. By optimising your website, you’re improving visibility of your services to your target audience which means a better rate of enquiries.

Website optimisation involves looking at how your website is built. This means the keywords within content as well as understanding your target audience and their search behaviour.

Armed with this background knowledge, you can build a strategy to improve your rankings in the organic (non-ads based, natural) search results.

Top tips for SEO

Here, we look at tips for optimising your website for inbound marketing.

Review your website: Is the content relevant to the audience you want to target? Note what amendments you may need to make to your website content or call to action buttons to help make it engaging to this audience. Conducting this initial research will stand you in good stead for website optimisation. Read on for more of our top tips for optimising your site.
Technical SEO: SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation, is not just about what visitors will read on the website, it’s also about being aware of the backend. Make sure simple actions are completed on each page of your website. This includes META tag description, ALT tags and H1 and H2 headings completed.
Keywords and phrases: What do you want to be found for? Work up a list to help get key phrases agreed. Review your competitors to see how they are performing and what marketing activity they are producing. All this will help you start to formulate a plan and strategy.
Time to set up a blog page: If there’s one change you make, we highly recommend that you add a blog or news page to your website. This helps keep content fresh which is something that search engines look for. But, make sure that what you post is relevant to your target audience. This not only positions you as a thought leader, but also will entice visitors to read the whole article, stay longer on the website and be a prospect to nurture with future communication.
Links: Internal links can ease navigation around the website. While incoming links to your website provide an indication of how useful your content is to others, less links will have an impact upon where you return in a search result for a given term.
What do you want your website visitors to do? Make sure your ‘Call to Actions’ are visible, look good and help ease of navigation.
White space: What does your website look like? Too cluttered and your visitors will not stay long. Why not try adding white space around text with smaller paragraphs and imagery – images are a must.
Images: A picture says a thousand words! You can also add the Alt tag on the backend which helps SEO. But it’s not just about pictures, incorporate video into your content marketing plan. Placed at the top of a page it can provide engaging content for your website. But also, more than 500 million hours of videos are watched on YouTube each day (Buffer via Wordstream)
Marketing automation: Is it time to consider looking at tools to make your business more efficient? Considering a chatbot on your website provides a friendly, warm welcome to your page, helps visitors navigate and pre-set answers can help free up your time.

Quick SEO tip

One of the first things to do when your website is live and to help it be seen in search is to fill out as much as you can on about your company on Google My Business. It’s FREE to set this up! Our blog on completing a Google My Business page gives you the lowdown on what to do.

If you need help with your inbound marketing strategy get in touch today.