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Link building for improved website optimisation

04/09/2020 by scmarketing

One of the most important steps in an efficient search engine optimisation (SEO) campaign is link building. You can boost your presence in Google and maximise your Bing results or beyond with a marketing strategy that encompasses link building.

Online results are all about lead generation and therefore traffic to your website. Links on other websites help to drive traffic back to your website.

You may be thinking that your social media posts also have links so is that not enough? While it’s a good start as social media channels provide quality links back to your blog page or service information, having more quality links back from other reliable and trustworthy websites helps add further to your domain authority.

As a business owner, this is something you can start to make headway on during this time of change as we adjust to our different working environments.

Benefits of a quality link building strategy

Here’s an overview of the main reasons you want to implement a link building campaign within your SEO marketing strategy.

Getting lots of useful and relevant links for your website will help search engines position your website in a higher level in the search engine results;
Traffic on your website increases due to the presence of high quality links that point and refer to your website;
Generate more leads if your website is targeted to your audience
Prospects search for your services helping business growth, quality leads and improved customer retention.

Tips to start link building for website optimisation

To create a successful link building campaign to drive traffic to your website you need to take a considered and coordinated approach. It’s not about placing content anywhere. Key link building techniques to consider include:

Create quality content

Quality content is essential to attract your target audience. You need to solve their challenges and provide value. Achieve this through engaging content. Include noteworthy statistics (reference your source where you do), advice, tips that will help their business. It’s about quality over quantity. Make sure the website’s you target are relevant to your target audience and sector.

Be targeted

With content being key to your link building, knowing your target audience is essential. This way you can provide the quality content that they will want to read. Find out about creating an online persona for your business which will help you create engaging content for your target customer.

Be relevant

This is important for search engines. Their goal is to deliver the most relevant results for an enquiry. So, make sure your links point to the most pertinent information on your website. If visitors – your prospective customers – need to click more than once when they reach your web page you’re likely to lose them. Make sure you evaluate the landing page that you will use as the link to your site so that it has relevant information and easy website navigation to help reduce bounce rate.

Quotes and resource lists

Often websites create lists of resources at an end of an article, blog or for key topics. If you have a relevant comment that you think could add to the story or perhaps an article with top tips that you think would be a beneficial resource for the authour’s article then you can contact the authour to ask about being included in the article or offer a guest post. It’s of mutual benefit for both parties if it is relevant information for their audience as long as it’s not salesy.

Guest blogs

Keep an eye on relevant articles and blogs written by people in your industry. Can you add comments to support the story and show your appreciation? This can then lead to you asking if they are interested in a guest blog from you. Research who the key influencers are in your industry to make sure you follow on social media to keep an eye on what they are writing about.

SEO to action now

Link building is a long-term SEO strategy. If you’re embarking on optimising your website now that we are all working more closely with the virtual world, here’s a few resources at the end of the article with some top tips that you can implement now before setting out on the longer link building strategy.

Initially check the internal links you have on your website already. You may find you need to add more links to keywords – words and phrases that you want to be found for. Make sure that these links lead to your core ‘pillar’ pages. Think of it this way, if you visit a website you want seamless navigation so by placing relevant links throughout the page will help you find things quickly.

Also, ensure you have completed as much detail as you can on your Google My Business page. Continue to add images and blog content to it moving forward.

What you’ll find by actioning things like reviewing the content on your website, creating an online persona and completing any missing technical SEO on the backend such as meta descriptions, you will have set yourself up exceedingly well to get link building further.

Search Engine Optimisation resources:

Blog as part of content marketing strategy

Why blog?

07/19/202104/07/2020 by scmarketing

We work with a wide range of clients including those within the accounting sector. Often when we meet to discuss initial marketing proposals, a blog is far from the agenda. People are under the misconception that blogging is for… ‘bloggers’. There’s this misconception that a blog is about polished lifestyles and food! In this blog we aim to set the record straight and give small business owners more insight into the purpose behind a blog.

Whilst your content is essential to attract your target audience, blogs are essentially about your blog fitting into your marketing strategy in particular, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

Now is a good time to review your business website. If you don’t already have a blog page, then these points will help you to understand the purpose of the page and its importance in helping your website rise in search rankings. If you already have a blog, then there’s some tips for content that could help your overall digital marketing plan.

A blog forms part of your content marketing

A blog is an important page on your website to provide tips, advice, guides, and offers. All your content is aimed at supporting your target audience as well as positioning you as a thought leader in your sector.

But that’s not all. Content that you post on your blog helps to keep your website fresh, frequently. The strategic inclusion of keywords – phrases that you want to be found for in search – will help search engines find you. And, because you are posting content regularly it helps search engines see that you are ab authority in your field.

Red more about optimising your content with keywords in our blog; What SEO agencies should offer London firms.

See, there’s a little more to it than fancy coffee pics!

Content marketing plan

Create a content marketing plan to help you schedule when you will write a blog and on what topic.

To help your creativity, initially think of key dates in the year that you can use as a hook. If you’re an accounting firm, then list out key dates for tax return deadlines within the year; the Budget and so forth. Also include exhibitions you may be attending or charitable events you are involved with so that your audience gets an all-round look at your firm. This will help you schedule timely reminder blogs for your audience.

Use news articles as a hook – often referred to as a news jack. Or if there’s some research just published of relevance to your target audience you could write a comment piece on it and why your prospective customers or existing clients should take note. A word of warning on this though, always make sure to reference any source in full and add backlinks to the original article or report.

Internal and external website links

Backlinks are all about helping your website increase its domain authority and appearance in search. Blogs are a great way to add backlinks to your website. You can add links back to key ‘pillar’ pages within your website as well as adding links to external websites. Not only that, the aim is to have backlinks reciprocated.

The more you write, the more thought leadership authority you accrue with search engines, this will help you be sought for backlinks too. Now this is a long-term SEO strategy as it takes time to build up a catalogue of good quality content and a lot of work to seek out opportunities that you could provide comment on with external sites.

So, your quick wins are that once you’ve checked your own website has relevant links to other pages on your website is to check any websites that you already have a mention on and whether they have a backlink to you. For example, are you a member of an industry association, speaker or exhibitor at an event or formed a partnership with a supplier? Do these sites have the correct website mentions in place and importantly a hyperlink back to your accountancy website?

Google My Business

Always make sure you have completed your Google My Business page. Continue to update it with your latest blogs. This also adds another backlink to your website. Plus, it tells this dominant search engine first-hand all about your business which helps you be found by prospects as well as provide ongoing support to your current client base.

Read more on the benefits of completing your Google My Business page in our blog – have you told search engines you exist?

Titles and keywords

And now for the website backend tech SEO. Make sure you always complete the H1 / H2 header tags as well as meta title and alt tags when you upload your blog.

If you partner with a website designer and developer, then they will be able to guide you on this. If you’ve not updated your website in a long time and have a Content Managed System (CMS) such as WordPress, you should be able to look at the backend and complete these yourself.

Equally if you wanted a Free Website Review, which will highlight areas that can be updated such as missing header tags or meta titles, then get in touch with us and we can run this report for you.

Our blog 9 tips for optimising your website has some further tips on SEO for inbound marketing.

Smart Cow Marketing is a digital marketing agency providing services for a range of clients including marketing for accountants.

Why websites are essential for your firm?

12/22/202403/10/2020 by scmarketing

We may have become a little complacent in how we view websites these days, as they’ve just become part of life. However, we wanted to take a little step back just to remind you why websites are an essential part of your business and how they can generate quality leads and how Smart Cow can design and build you a strong online presence.

Website is your shop front

Your website is your sales pitch to potential clients, it must be appealing to the audience you’re looking to attract, providing visitors with the confidence that you will provide a good service or have a great product.

Just like a bricks and mortar shop front for your business, a website is just the same in the online world. Ultimately, it’s your shop. So, along with your shop name – or domain name in the online world – it’s worth remembering that this is something you own.

Like so many businesses today running their company on a Facebook page or Instagram account, this is a reminder that you don’t own those social channels! That’s why it’s always an idea to invest in your own website design to direct traffic to.

Website design and development

If you’re embarking on a new website or looking to refresh it, make sure you work with your website developer to design a site that will attract, engage and convert potential clients.

Make sure you have a good mix of images and video alongside your content. But also ensure that your site map is clear and call to actions are bold. You want to reduce bounce rate and encourage visitors to move around your website with ease.

We always talk about content being king. It tells the world who you are and what you do. But make sure what you write is succinct and to the point. Search engines will be looking for those key phrases you use to understand what each page on your website is about. It is important to also have links to all your social media platforms.

At Smart Cow we will work closely with you, from start to finish, and understand your needs, client base, and company goals in order to develop a bespoke website tailored to your needs.

Be seen online

Having a website is like your shopfront. And, like any shopfront, you have to get your shopfront seen to encourage footfall. In the online world there’s a few tactics that can help give you a little boost, if you’ve not already explored them.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO): From backend tech to ensure that your images are the right size and completing Alt Tags, Meta descriptions and Titles, right down to the H1 and H2 headings. These can all help your website be seen by search engines as it helps to guide search engines about what the page is about.
Pay Per Click (PPC): A PPC ad campaign can give your website a nudge in the search pages as you pay for an ad that will appear on the front page of Google. However, a word of note, make sure that the landing page you pick for your ad is what people expect to see when they click on the ad. If you’ve sent a visitor to a page with incomplete or outdated information, you’re likely to lose the lead very quickly.
Google My Business: Complete your listing on this directory – it’s free after all. It gives you options to add updates such as blogs, events and imagery. As well as the basic information about your company’s services and contact details.
Blog: Add a blog or news page to your website in the main menu. It helps keep content fresh and is a great way to position you as a thought leader in your field.
In web development make sure you factor in the smaller screens; think about creating a mobile friendly website too!

Websites for accountants

Smart cow is a web design company in Croydon, creating and designing websites for accountants and local businesses. If you think it’s time you took your website to the next level as a lead generation magnet, get in touch with us to chat through your requirements and what professional web design services you are after.

What is an inbound marketing agency?

12/27/202403/05/2020 by scmarketing

An inbound marketing agency is focused on lead generation to attract quality clients from qualified leads interested in your products and services.

Ultimately you want this traffic to lead to sales. However, as you probably already know the sales journey is rarely a smooth one stop shop as there will be many touch points required to help build brand awareness and trust.

So, thinking about how you can add context to your marketing activity that’s relevant to your audience is key to success.

Creating your inbound strategy

The sales landscape today is all about supporting the buyers’ journey in making the right purchase. They don’t want their time wasted, as much as you.

We recommend that you take time to understand who you are selling to. Think of your target audience and create an imaginary persona of your ideal customer.

Then, hone your messaging in line with answering the challenges that your target audience is facing. Empathise with their requirements and personalise your content.

It’s all about appealing to your relevant prospects to reach those quality leads interested in your services.

Armed with this knowledge and research into your target audience, your tone of voice should be consistent.

Download The Beginner’s Guide to Inbound Marketing to help you create your marketing strategy.

What does inbound marketing include?

There’s a number of inbound marketing tactics that an agency will draw on to create a strategy to generate traffic for your business. Here’s an overview digital marketing tools what can be covered.

Start your inbound marketing strategy

Your website is at the core of your business, it’s your shop window. So, a review of your current site and applying marketing methodology would be the first step to take.

Take us up on our FREE website review offer to give you insight into any possible updates you may need to make to help with Search Engine Optimisation.

Have you completed your Google My Business page? It’s free to do and is the ultimate directory to be on providing quality links back to your website.

Content marketing is also key as you need to be positioned as a thought leader in your field. So, think of adding a blog to your website or more up to date posts as this provides great new content for a website. This is another tactic to help search engines find you.

As a digital marketing agency we would look at your business, understand your objectives to then tailor an inbound marketing campaign for your firm encompassing the tactics that are right for your goals.

Why not contact us for a FREE consultation? Talk us through your current position, where you would like to be, your target audience and objectives and we can work on a proposal for you.

Ebook resources

Download The Beginner’s Guide to Inbound Marketing