No one could have possibly predicted the current situation that is the global pandemic result stemming from COVID-19. Back in December 2019, something happened that has changed the way that the population of the planet lives, works and communicate. Never before has this generation seen the internet prove to be so vital and integral to communication with friends, relatives, colleagues or clients; and now as we enter May 2020 it seems that plenty of businesses are gearing up to relaunch or reopen their businesses (to whatever extent that they are allowed). As we look to the horizon and see the huge cogs of our economy start to turn we still do not know which businesses will reopen, which will go into administration and which will change. Lockdowns have shown the business world that that meeting in the board room is not required and that international travel could be replaced with a Skype call or a Zoom meeting. Fitness fanatics have just experienced online personal training or tried Peleton and found that they like it. Which is a good thing because when those big warehouse sized gyms reopen, I’m not so sure that people will want to be in the same building as a few hundred others. Navigating the online ether and aligning your SEO to help your business to prosper is fundamental to ensure that you have the best chance of winning market share and helping your business to thrive. Now is the time to evaluate your SEO strategy and make updates. Right now, Google is changing its listing to help the world share vital knowledge about coronavirus. Any business that is involved in health, medical research, pharmaceuticals or the like would be remiss if they did not write content and articles about the coronavirus pandemic and contribute whatever they can. Businesses that are not directly linked with the pandemic should avoid writing about it to keep SERPs (search engine results pages) clear and unclogged from the more scholarly contributors. (Searchmetrics Podcast). That said, I have been approached by more businesses now then ever before in my career in digital marketing asking for help with their SEO. Several weeks ago, I read an article which cited an industry guru saying that businesses would be cutting back on their marketing budget and not spending. Well, maybe some have but, in my situation, this could not be further from the truth. I am currently working on website and SEO projects from the UK, Germany, America and Dubai. With schools mainly closed and children being educated at home, education facilities have called upon SEO experts to help place their websites and resources in front of parents who have suddenly had to add ‘teacher’ to their list of jobs; and Zoom has reported crashing under the sheer weight of new users running online fitness and martial arts classes. There is most certainly a market which needs good SEO to thrive as a result of coronavirus whose services are specific Brands who advertise at events could look to sponsor radio or podcasts to circumnavigate the time gap between now and when larger gatherings will take place. Social media platforms like Facebook have become a thriving hub for the business community (and why not?) When I worked with newspaper advertising about a decade ago I was promoting the benefits of social media and digital marketing over print advertising. It was obvious even back then that a locally based business could reach a much larger local population at a fraction of the cost of print or offline advertising. However – I wish to extend a cautionary word of advice to those who are looking for assistance with their social media marketing. There is a ‘Facebook expert’ or a ‘social media guru’ on every virtual street corner who will claim to be able to catapult your website traffic into the stratosphere and x10 your client base overnight. My Facebook newsfeed is inundated with sponsored posts from them (sometimes I read the comments. They can be pretty amusing!) Take the time (let’s face it, we all have a lot more time on our hands right now) to use that little white box called Google. Do some research. Find out how to do ‘Facebook marketing’ or ‘social media marketing’. You would be amazed at what you can do without needing to pay anyone! Here is a no-brainer for you – heads over to the shop on this website and get my e-book. I’m giving it away free of charge to everyone to help businesses to survive through this pandemic and come out of the other side with a fighting chance of keeping their business going for a lot longer than they may currently think. If you do download my book the next step is, of course, to use some of your newfound free time to read through it and implement some of your learning. When Boris announced that the UK was going into lockdown and that most businesses had to shut up shop, I lost literally all my income in one day. Like a row of dominoes, I received confirmation via text or messenger that I would not be needed until we all went back to work. It is an action that is completely understandable but to me, not always the best course of action. This is also evident in a recession. Over the years of sales and marketing training I was always taught that when times are tough, tighten your bootstraps, get your head down and plough through. Many businesses will be making the decision to stop advertising and why not? If they cannot open and their staff cannot work, why would they advertise themselves? My answer would be ‘because everyone else is likely to do the same!’ While they are losing all the momentum that they may have gained from their blogs, articles, social media posts and on page SEO, the ones who maintain their presence will be the ones at the top of the lists when this is all over. Those who shut their doors to online promotion will find it a steeper climb back up to where they were once they start to invest in their online portfolios but like I said, the perceived normal course of action would be to stop spending on anything deemed unnecessary. Spending on marketing when you cannot trade seems so counterproductive. That said, there is a wealth of options available to the small business owner who has more time to invest in their own online marketing now. They simply may not be aware of it! Here is a list of options that you can try to help maintain your online presence without worrying about spending money on marketing: MY BLOG PAGE – I have been putting together my FCWD Learning Hub for a while now. You can find it HERE. It’s packed with articles about websites, marketing and SEO tips and techniques. Take some time to read a few articles and try to put into practice what you learn. If you need to ask anything then just send me an email – I’m happy to help. YOUR BLOG PAGE – If you’re not blogging then you’re falling behind. Blogging is a great way to add quality content to your website that search engines like Google can index. If you have some time, why not start writing those blog articles that didn’t have time for before? Keep your articles relevant to your business and informative to your audience. SOMEONE ELSES BLOG – Everyone has competitors. You can go to their website, social media pages or blog and see what are doing. Seeing what others are doing might give you ideas on how you can improve your online presence. QUORA – Quora is a place where people ask questions about anything and people in the know can answer. You can start becoming known as an expert in your industry by answering questions. You will be helping someone out, getting known and building links to your website and business in a way that you might not have thought possible before. BUILD LINKS – See above (Quora). Building links that feed back to your website is one of the best ways to rank highly in Google. Answering questions on sites like Reddit or Quora, listing in directories like Yell or Trust-a-Trader or even submitting an article to a leading online authority will provide valuable links that cite your website (and therefore you) as ‘the place to be’ and Google will give you a boost accordingly. WEBINAR – If you need to communicate with people then there are a host of programmes out there that you could use to set up a webinar (online seminar), a meeting (Skype or Google Hangout) or even a class (Zoom or YouTube for live streaming). Now may be time to think outside of the box and try new things to reach an audience that you might not have previously considered. MEETINGS – As mentioned above there are plenty of options of platforms to use to communicate with people. To add to above, I have also used Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp to speak with people from all over the glob as well as the good old phone. I mean, how many face to face meetings are really necessary? We live in a digital world! Using the internet for meetings are convenient, cheap, save time, save fuel, lower costs and allow us to reach a wider market in less time. UPDATE YOUR ONLINE PORTFOLIO – You now have more time. This could be because you have lost work through lockdown or social distancing, you’re furloughed, or you have been laid off completely. However, this situation has come about, why not take this time to improve you online presence? There is no negative side to investing your time in your business website, online CV or social media pages. It will keep you in people’s minds for when you can re-establish your business or look for other work. PRODUCT OR SERVICE DIVERSIFICATION – This may or may not be possible but try to consider if you can offer a different product or service if you can not offer your regular one. For example, in my spare time I teach martial arts. I know plenty of fellow instructors who have taken to the internet and are running classes from their own lounges or gardens in a similar way to how Joe Wicks is ‘the nations PE instructor’ whilst we are all safe in our houses IN CONCLUSION – it is hard to stay positive sometimes when faced with such a huge yet faceless adversary. I understand that. I’ve lost count of the number of times I have felt like throwing in the towel and getting a job; but for every times I’ve considered folding my business (and I have come very, very close to doing it) I have found the strength to carry through the tough times, come out of the other side and learned a valuable lesson on the way. I can’t see anything that would make me feel that way again now. I know that there are positive steps to take right now. I know that there are ways to improve online visibility, engagement and therefore customer numbers. It’s just a question of knowing how to do it and having the time to implement findings. Well, a lot of us have a bit more time now; for the rest, I hope this article has planted a few seeds of thought. Get in touch if you would like to discuss anything or want to ask any advice. Good luck and stay safe.

I'm so happy to have worked with Julia and her web design. Julia Sinclair-Brown is a multi-talented woman who has been there and done it. Evolvida is part of her portfolio of services that offers coaching, training and support to people and businesses on the sensitive subject of bereavement. I started working with Julia over a yer ago and I would certainly consider her a friend and a colleague now. I can advocate her services and ability to listen and interpret feelings and thoughts first hand. I feel that a part of me was integral in this website design and it means a lot to me. The Evolvida website was a design enigma in that it needed to be appealing without being a 'sales' site. Julia's services and products are most certainly relevant and speak for themselves. The website serves to frame what she does using subtle and calming shades and combining a professional yet personable approach. There is a lot more to come from Julia and her business - and I mean a lot! I am working with her on various other parts of this project and I look forward to seeing a wonderful soul success in providing an amazing service to those who need it. You can check out Julia's online portfolio at: W: www.evolvida.co.uk FB: https://www.facebook.com/groups/KinshipInGrief/ LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julia-sinclair-brown-b8996123/ #evolvida #bereavement #grief #copingwithloss #lifeafterloss #webdesign #websitedesign #digitalmarketing #marketing #online #website #FCWD

I don't usually do blog posts for website launches but I felt the need this time! Eric & Jensen are two young guys from Huntingdon who have an amazingly natural talent for country & western music. When I visited the family home a while back I could immediately see the affinity and love of all things American but honestly, I was still blown away by their music. These guys have immersed themselves in the American way. The American lifestyle. To me they even portray a subtle country swagger in their online videos as well as amazing vocals that compliment this genre of music. It was fun working on this website. It gave me the ability to join on their journey (and I really do think they are going somewhere) and I really hope you like the site too. www.ericandjensen.com has a classic, timeless look that displays Eric & Jensen's style and brand without frills, fancy design or over the top imagery. It is a portal to their world and a connection for their social media channels (which are growing literally by the minute!). Make sure you follow them and check out their music. I've added a video for you below. I warn you though - it is addictive and your toe will start tapping... FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/ericandjensen INSTAGRAM: https://www.facebook.com/ericandjensen YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqRoryWAJRt44zFWeY6R9DQ

Website design and digital marketing is what we do. A lot of other companies also do this. Plenty of us do it very well too. That being the case, what can we offer to compel you to trust us with your online business portfolio? Two main things stand out immediately: Industry standards Creativity When it comes to industry standards, FCWD like to think we are up there with the best. Online trends and marketing strategies evolves quickly. This is the nature of the online world. With this in mind we maintain a policy of ongoing training to ensure that we keep up with trends, fashions, strategies and techniques. Whilst it is not imperative to be monitored by a governing body, FCWD also operate a transparent policy when it comes to 'why our clients choose us'. Last year FCWD founder Adam Gold was in communications with the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) and was offered the official graded membership of 'Associate Member'. The CIM is the world's leading professional marketing body with over 30,000 members worldwide, including over 3,000 chartered marketers. They have 130 study centres in 36 countries and their members are obliged to maintain a standard that is indicative of their Royal Charter Status. FCWD continue to learn through ongoing training and development which is now consolidated under the banner of the CIM. As far as standards go, we believe that our chartered status reflects our high standards of qualifications and ability which is combined with over a decade of experience in the industry. As for creativity - just as one person prefers Picasso whilst another favours Constable, perception of design is in the eye of the beholder and we confidently pass that responsibility over to our clients. We know that we are good at what we do; what is more important is that our clients know this too.

HOW TO SUPERCHARGE YOUR KEYWORD IDEAS FOR FREE! Google Keyword Planner is a free tool that is used by many businesses to check which words and phrases are being typed into Google in order to find which businesses are offering goods and services. It is generally used by those who are considering an Ad Words campaign but is a viable tool for anyone with a website. If we know which words are being used for searches, then we can use those words on our websites to get our website seen on the right search pages. Simple process, right? Well not as simple as it used to be. GOOGLE KEYWORD PLANNER – A USEFUL KEYWORD TOOL You see, once upon a time, you could put a subject, product or a website into the keyword planner tool and you would be given lists of keywords and phrases relevant to your search criteria along with how many people per month are using those search terms in a certain geographical area. Useful stuff. From the data given we could use a selection of these keywords and search terms to include broad spectrum words to attract a larger volume of traffic to websites along with more niche phrases and long tailed keywords for specificity and relevance in order to cater for the intent of the viewer. However, researching on Google Keyword Planner nowadays does not yield that same level of information as before. KEYWORD RESEARCH – GOOGLE KEYWORD PLANNER & SEARCHVOLUME.IO The example below shows some of the results for the search term ‘web design’ using Google Keyword Planner. Whilst the data is useful in that it shows not just the specific keyword but also similar keywords in the ‘keyword ideas’ section, you will see that the Avg. monthly searches column gives an estimate which is broad at best. This data did used to be included once upon a time and it would be hugely beneficial to be able to get this data back again. Good news – it is possible to regain this data for up to 800 keywords (at the time of writing which is 17th March 2020) using a website called searchvolume.io Although the Pro account is a paid for product, the free tool is quite adequate to gain data for your own website. The way to do this is quite simple: 1. When you have conducted a search on a specific keyword, industry or website, click DOWNLOAD KEYWORD IDEAS in the top right corner of the screen. 2. This will download your data as an Excel spreadsheet. Open this and highlight all of the keywords in column A 3. Go to searchvolume.io and paste your keywords directly into the search box. DON’T FORGET to ensure that you amend the location box to your home country. 4. If you scroll down, you will now see all of the keywords with their respective monthly searches. These can be downloaded as a CSV file to save or you can look at them on the site itself. You now have a comprehensive list of words of keywords and phrases that you know are being used for Google searches in your location every month. You will now be able to place these keywords within the content of your website, page titles and meta details. Something to note from a previous article that I have written: the average number of words that people put into the Google search bar is 5. So do include those longer keywords and phrases as this is more likely what Google will latch onto when it comes to considering a searchers’ intent when they are searching. In conclusion, Google Keyword Planner is a great tool to help you find good keywords and phrases to include in your website content and when used with searchvolume.io becomes even more fit for purpose. For more information about keywords and how to add to your website you can read my article SEO Strategy – a guide to your free online resources. The best thing about this process, of course, is that it is free!

Are you struggling to find new customers? Does your business need to stand out online? Not sure of how to improve your visibility online? Then book a place on this workshop where you will benefit from information and advice on marketing, business strategy and more. Spaces are limited so please book now to ensure you have a seat. Email your name, business name and what you hope to achieve fr om this workshop to Adam at info@fullcirclewebsitedesign.co.uk DATE: Thursday 5th March 2020 TIME: 9.30am to 12.30pm VENUE: Kings Arms House, Ampthill Road, Bedford Refreshments can be bought on site in their cafe PLEASE BRING: 1) pen and paper to write notes 2) your business cards 3) any promotion material for networking 4) a special offer or discount for the other attendees

SEO – what is it? In a nutshell, SEO is how you attract people to your website via search engines. There is a lot more to the term than this one sentence of course but it is important to realise that just building an amazing looking website will not mean that you will be found online. You need to have a solid SEO strategy behind your website for search engines to find you. By search engines, I mean Google. Google own the entire world so we might as well focus on them. That said, there are plenty of ways to get your business noticed online without the need for a website and this is something that I will cover here and in other articles. The thought of ‘SEO’ and even doing things online might scare some people. It may evoke thoughts of technical nerdery and an over-abundance of jargon but actually there are some pretty nifty tools out there that can help you to navigate this crucial part of online marketing that won’t cost you a one penny. All you need to dedicate is a bit of time. I use Wix quite a lot. Wix is a website building platform that is incredibly user friendly and although I do not use any of their templates, I do use what they offer in their back-office management area quite a bit. If you want an easy to use platform to manage your website, I will strongly recommend Wix accordingly. I think you will find it very easy to use when it comes to enhancing your website SEO. ON PAGE SEO On page SEO refers to those things which can be done on your website to improve how it ranks in search engine results pages (SERPs). These include the written content on your site, how images are labelled, the type of text that is used as well as how pages are labelled behind the scenes(and other things too). OFF PAGE SEO Off page SEO refers to those things which can be done on the internet to improve the visibility of your website but without actually changing or adding anything to your website. Examples could be social media, directory listings, forum contributions, back links etc. HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR ON PAGE SEO You want to ensure that every part of your website is focused on your business, what you do, what is topical and relevant in your industry and what you believe your customers want to hear about. Let’s take a look at each area in turn: IMAGES – you can get images for free to add to your website from Pixabay, Pexels or Unsplash. Do not be tempted to simply use what you find on Google as images may be subject to copyright and you do not want to infringe copyright. You will end up with regular emails from the owning company demanding money for usage rights and they can be relentless. ALT TEXT – This refers to how images are labelled. Remember, Google Images is also a search engine and we want to be listed here too. So when you upload an image to site, give it a name that is relevant to what people will look for. The words you use here should be related to the keywords that you are using for your site. More about keywords shortly. WRITTEN CONTENT – The written content of your site is highly important to how it will be shown through google. Google cannot easily see images or videos. It likes to have words and codes to help in the task of ordering all those billions of web pages that exist. You see, what Google are striving for is to place high quality, written content in front of people who want to see it and they are very clever at how they do this too. Google work very hard on improving and refining their algorithms to ensure that they are the best search engine in the world. There are some basic rules to which you should adhere to make sure that Google know that you are legitimate and that you are providing high quality and readable content. We will go ver these shortly but first let’s cover keywords. KEYWORDS AND SEO Keywords are those words that people put into Google in order to find websites on a certain topic. I group these into three types: PRIMARY KEYWORDS – single words that form the root of a page or section. For example, website. SECONDARY KEYWORDS – a group of two keywords (one of which is the primary keyword) for example, website designer TERTIARY KEYWORDS – known as long-tailed keywords. These are a group of 3 or more keywords involving the primary keyword and further requirements. For example, website designer in Bedford It is imperative that we consider the viewer’s intent when we look at keywords. If someone puts website into Google, we do not know what they want. It could be how to build a website, or it could be to ask how many websites exists. The same for the example above for secondary keywords. Searching for website designer may mean the person wants a website designer to help them to design a website for their business or it could mean they want to know how to become a website designer. The tertiary keyword in the example above give the best information to understand the viewer’s intention when they are searching. It is for this reason that we should consider tertiary and long-tailed keywords when we are undertaking keyword research as well as the others: Primary keywords – high search volume per month for more traffic Tertiary keywords – lower search volume per month but more targeted and relevant to our website HOW TO RESEARCH KEYWORDS There are some free tools and techniques that are available that you can use to help you find popular keywords: SEARCHVOLUME.IO – this website will allow you to search up to 800 keywords to find out how many people are using them per month in any country. 800 keywords are plenty for your website. You will need to find keywords in which to check of course. Some ways in which you can find keywords: GOOGLE – Have you noticed that if you start typing something into Google it will automatically try to finish your sentence? Google is trying to predict what you want based on the information that it already has from previous searches. GOOGLE KEYWORD PLANNER – this is not what it used to be as Google now omits a lot of the useful stuff but if you set up a Google Ads account you will be able to use their keyword planner tool. This tool is great for looking up competitor websites and seeing what keywords they might use and then putting those keywords into your searchvolume.io site to get more information on search volumes. INSTAGRAM – yes, Instagram! If you are into a bit of Insta-reality, then head over to your Instagram account and start hashtagging. Just like Google pre-populate, Instagram will try to predict your words based on what people are searching for on their platform. Let’s face it, Instagram is pretty popular, so we are taking data from a huge pool of people here. You can then check your keywords that you find in your Searchvolume.io site again. GOOGLE TRENDS – Google trends is a great free tool that tells you what is hot and what is not right now. Search topics related to your business here, get ideas for keywords and then head over to Searchvolume.io for that finial check to validate popularity. So assuming that you have done the above and found a list of relevant keywords you can now use them in all areas of your website. You should pay particular attention to the following: Keep content fresh and up to date. Pay attention to: META TITLE – I think the image below sums this up nicely! The met title is what shows up in the blue line in a google SERP. Keep this to the point and relevant. META DESCRIPTION – the smaller text that shows up beneath the blue text. Place your keyword for this page as close to the front as possible. SLUG – the slug is the bit of text that goes after your website domain name that is the name of the actual page. For example. www.[yourwebsitename].co.uk/SLUG-GOES-HERE. Make this short, relevant and contain your main keyword. PAGE WORD COUNT – for those pages which contain paragraphs of text, you should try to make sure they have at least 250 words. This may not be possible on pages like CONTACT or HOME but will be on others. KEYWORD PLACEMENT – try to place your main keyword in the first and last paragraph of the page content. Related keywords can be placed within the body of the content. KEYWORD DENSITY – although there is no definitive keyword density, most theories stick to between 1-3%. So your keyword should be written at least once for every 100 words that you write. Do not be tempted to put your keywords in too often. In this instance, more does not mean better. KEYWORDS AND INTENT – as mentioned above, ensure that you include related and long tailed keywords in your written content. Always consider the readers’ intent and write your text to answer their questions. RELATED KEYWORDS – related keywords are those keywords which can back up and substantiate the main keywords. Google is very good at picking up on these and will give websites more credibility for using them. For example, the keyword website designer has related keywords like web designer (59% relevant), website design (55% relevant) website design companies near me (44% relevant). You get the idea? Good. READABILITY – this is where stuffing your written content full of keywords will not help you. Ultimately your articles must be easy to read and not obviously stuffed full of keywords in order to get your page ranked in Google. Google isn’t stupid. It knows what you are doing. Don’t try to scam Google. BLOG – a blog is an article that gives useful information to the reader. You should consider blogging regularly so that your website is continually updated with fresh content. You can include your keywords in your blogs using the techniques as outlined above and Google will index it for you accordingly. If you read back through this article you will see exactly how I have done this using keywords based on SEO and websites! SCHEMA – a business schema is a piece of code that you can place behind your website that gives Google search bots (those little creepy crawlies that trawl the internet looking for information) more info about your website and help them to give it clarity and structure. Technical SEO has several tools that you can use including a schema mark-up generator for this purpose. You can use it to input details about your business and then test it using Google’s Structured Data testing Tool (accessible form the same website) for any errors. SITE MAP – A site map is another tool to help Googles search bots to rank your site. Wix websites automatically generate site maps but Technical SEO has a tool to generate a site map for other types of websites. INTERNAL LINKS – Create buttons on your web pages that link to other pages on your website. These are internal links and should guide your viewer on a journey to ultimately get them to call you or send an email to you. Internal links are good for SEO as they give your site further structure. SSL This stands for Secure Sockets Layer. Some call it a site’s ‘security certificate’. Without one your site will have ‘http’ at the front. Adding the SSL puts ‘https’ at the front of your site and gives it more credibility. An SSL adds security to details entered by people on your site. If someone sends an email to you or makes a payment through your site, having an SSL says that their details are encrypted once they leave your site until they get to the destination. Wix websites automatically have SSL certificates applies. You can purchase an SSL through your domain name provider if required. CONCLUSION Your SEO strategy and how you research SEO and keywords is crucial to getting your website seen online and on search engines like Google. It is worth taking some time to go over the techniques and tools above to help your website and therefore your business to find new customers. All of the links and examples above are free to use and for that reason alone are worth exploring. Don’t worry if you cannot do all the SEO strategy tips above. Each step that you take will help. Good luck!

How do you do SEO for a website? Is a popular question that is typed into the Google search bar by many a website owner who wants to control and progress their online portfolio presence. Indeed, this particular question is a ‘featured snippet’ which in itself is a good indication of being a popular question! More about that later. What is SEO? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. This is the process of ensuring that your website appears highly in search engines and employs a variety of skills and strategies to get this done. An analogy could be that if your website is your virtual shop then your SEO is all the roads and signage that lead to it. Most businesses now have a website (or some online presence) in order to reach out to new clients and to give people information about their products or services. It is therefore sensible to assume that if your business has a website to find new customers then your competitors will also have websites for the same purpose. You will all be trying to get seen by your audience and get to the top of those search engine lists to be the best, most credible business. So how can you maximise your chances of being seen above your competitors? SEO recommendations Let’s get one thing clear before we go any further: SEO is best done by a professional who knows their stuff. You can certainly make progress doing SEO yourself, but it is an ongoing process that requires time and attention. So, do what you can but if you do have a budget to invest in this field then contact us for advice and assistance. Here are some fundamental areas of SEO on which you should concentrate to give your website the best chance of being found on search engines: LINK BUILDING – this is your most important factor of being found online. Link building involves being cited by other websites who put a link to your site on their own website. The more credible the linking site, the more points your website get for SEO. Take the time to reach out to other website owners for links. If you write blogs or articles, then cite other websites as references then tell that website what you have done. You never know- they might want to link back to your article giving you that all important link SITE SPEED- Google place a lot of importance on how quickly your site loads. So do your viewers. Crazyegg.comreport that a 1 second delay in your site loading speed could equate to · 11% fewer page views · 16% decrease in customer satisfaction · 7 % loss in conversions You can check this using the free Pingdom site speed checker. You can help to ensure your site loads quickly by · minimising the size of images on your website · Do not host videos on your website. Put them on Vimeo or YouTube and embed them on your site. · Make sure the important info loads first (before the viewer has to scroll down) · Try not to use too many plug ins on your site. They all take time to function · If you have ever changed your website structure or domain name you will likely have used 301 redirects to push those old broken page links to the new ones. Too many of these can harm your site speed. · Monitor your site speed over time to ensure that whatever improvements you make are working. · Monitor your mobile website speed. Use Think With Google to test your website load speed on mobile devices. Not only will this free tool check you site speed, but it will also give you recommendations on how to improve it on a report compared to industry leaders or your competitors. Here’s an interesting thing: I conducted a site speed test for my own mobile site, and it could have been better. I will be working on this accordingly. However, I then ran tests on some of my key competitors too and their sites were even slower! A fast-mobile site should load on 4G in about 2.5 seconds. Some of my competitors were taking over 7 seconds to load. Great news for me! So make sure your website loads fast in comparison to your competitors. The lesson here: check out what your competitor sites are doing too! KEYWORDS This is something that I have covered before; I could probably write a book on this subject! Keywords are important to your overall website SEO strategy but link building and site speed. I have covered how to find website keywords in another article so won’t go into detail on this here. Head over to that blog if you would like to find out more. STUFF WHICH YOU PROBABLY CAN’T DO Some things which can be done which you might need a professional for would be minifying and combining files, asynchronous loading, deferring javascript, reduce server response time… shall I go on..? I didn’t think so… Don’t feel disheartened though – there is plenty that you can do as outlined above and if you focus on link building and site speed you will surely benefit. I will be writing another article soon on the subject of ‘off page SEO’. This will look into driving traffic to your site using social media and directories. If you would like any advice or further information about SEO then get in touch with us on info@fullcirclewebsitedesign.co.uk So now you know a bit about how to do SEO for a website. Good luck and stick at it!

If you have a live website for your company, you may have heard about the benefit of having good quality back links and directory listings. This is true- directory listings and back links provide proverbial signage pointing at your website and roads leading to it. A back link is when another website links back to your website. This could be through a couple of methods: Maybe you have written a blog or an article on a topic and sent it to the owner of another website for consideration of publishing on their own site as a relevant and useful article. If they do this and then credit the article back to your website then you have a good quality back link (assuming that their website is respectable). This method takes a bit of time and networking but is greatly beneficial to getting your business seen online. You can create a back link by adding your business to a social media platform or directory. For example: creating a Facebook business page which allows you to add your business website domain name Adding your site to a directory like Yell or Thompson Adding a business listing to an industry directory site Creating an account on a forum site like Quora or Reddit where you can interact with people by answering questions and linking things back to your business website. I want to cover an area that requires some investigation when you decide to get your name out there online through directory listings. You will find a lot of directory sites will allow you to add your business listing for free. this is simply because a directory site wants to provide some one with a comprehensive list of products and services for when they are looking. So if someone needs a plumber and is searching on a directory site, then that directory site would much rather give that person a choice of 50 plumbers rather than just 5. It gives the viewer more choice and often means more back links to the directory site if all those listing include a reciprocal link on their website. Once you add your free listing, the directory site staff may need to 'authorise' your business listing. This could mean that they just want to check that you are a real and legitimate business but it is likely that you need to be entered into their sales system for contact in order to sell you an enhanced or premium listing. Premium listing can come with a whole host of benefits that are not included in a free listing like images, logo, being shown at the top of subject lists, back links, SEO assistance, social media exposure and more. You will benefit from having free listings which point back to your website as they are reputable links back to your website but you should also be prepared for a few emails and phone calls offering to get you to the top of Google and guaranteeing more traffic to your website. Choose with whom you spend your budget wisely. DUE DILIGENCE As you know, I work with many businesses giving marketing advice and assistance.One of my clients approached me today asking if I thought that an offer of an enhanced listing was worth it. They forwarded me the sales email accordingly and I said I would look into it. I'm pretty sceptical of directories for several reasons but would always recommend something if I think it is a good opportunity. Here is what I did to vet this directory site and exercisxe due diligence. GOOGLE INDEX- I wanted to know if they had a good reputation with a search engine like google. I use a free checker called SEOQuake which installs a toolbar along the top of my browser showing certain scores that a website earns. By downloading this and also setting up a free account with SEMRush I get access to a few more metrics which can give me a good idea of what thew reputation of a website really is. TRUST PILOT- ironically, this directory site was listed on Trustpilot which is also a directory site! So I looked at some reviews of them on their Trustpilot listing. Out of 158 reviews, 99% of them were either good or outstanding. Only 2 reviews were negative and the company has directly responded to both. CLIENT FEEDBACK- This one surprised the directory rep when I spoke with him. I actually contacted a few of their premium listing customer who had been with them for a range of years. I would ask for the marketing person who dealt with it, explained who I was and asked their opinion on whether they believed that their investment with this directory was worth the return. I got outstanding recommendations from all that I contacted with in depth explanations of why they were happy (because I asked them to explain in more detail!) CONFIRMED KEY DETAILS- I still had some questions that I wanted answering so I spoke with the rep who worked for the directory to ask. These included the length of the contract, statistical reporting frequency and scope of assistance. All was acceptable. As a result of the above I recommended the premium listing to my client and explained what I had done to come up with this recommendation. In order to make a positive ROI (Return On Investment) my client would only have to gain one customer in the year. Although there is never any way to guarantee an ROI from any form of advertising (anyone who tells you different is lying) this is most certainly a premium listing that is worth a go. CONCLUSION Be wary because for every decent opportunity online there are a hundred companies waiting to scam you and provide an inferior or useless service for your 'investment' (if you want me to check any out for you then just get in touch). But sometimes it is worth investing if the background checks add up. Just make sure you exercise due diligence and speak with real people. I'll finish by saying that I also registered on this directory site and will be snapping up a premium listing for my company. Much as I advocate free stuff (#freenius) I am not averse to trying new things and experimenting to see what the outcome might be! In case you are wondering: that directory site is www.businessmagnet.co.uk

'How can I advertise on social media for free?' This has to be one of the most common questions that I hear on a day to day basis and not just when I am working with a client either! If I am out at a social event and the conversation turns to what each person does for a living, once a business owner finds out what I do it isn't usually long before they are asking for my thoughts on Google Adwords, Facebook advertising or how to advertise online for free. It stands to reason really: Businesses need customers New customers are achieved through advertising Advertising comes at a price (even if that price is time) How can a business lower their advertising cost whilst gaining new customers Note: don't forget about your existing customers of course. Budget is a key factor here- not everyone has a nice big pot of funds put aside to promote their business. Indeed a lot of people don't have any money to invest in advertising. Times are tough and the mere perceived risk of outlaying liquid funds to advertise with no guarantee of a return is enough to put a lot of business owners off of advertising. So this leads to these business owners thinking, 'what if I could advertise for free...?' or more specifically, 'what if I could advertise online for free...?' I say online because this is where the audience is located in most cases. I'm not about to go into the pros and cons of different advertising platforms. That would a whole new article. Suffice to say that most people are online, using social media and susceptible to finding products and services using search engines and social media. A brief description of the above two platforms when considering advertising: Search engines- an example would be Google. Nothing happens until the viewer types something into the search box. They are proactively looking for something. You have three choices of being found on a search engine: Pay to be soon i.e. Google Adwords Get to the top of the organic listings by having an awesome online presence Get a 'pin in the map' above the organic listings and below the adverts by having a Google Business page. DO THIS! It is free. This is an example of PULL advertising. You are promoting your business to those who are looking and are pulling them to you. Social media- an example would be Facebook. People spend most of their time here having conversations about interesting topics with friends and colleagues. They are not necessarily looking for anything in particular. An exception to this would be a local 'recommendations' page. Your presence on that page at the time of a potential customer posting is fundamental to replying to that client (unless someone tags you in to that post). This is an example of PUSH advertising. You are pushing your business in front of people who may or may not be looking for you at the time of pushing. PAID ADS OR FREE ADS I want to make one thing clear here: I am not against paying for advertising online. It works and I know it works. I have managed many campaigns for my own clients successfully. One thing that I do know, however, is that it is not a requirement for your business to pay for advertising. This is important. Let me repeat and expand on this: It is not a requirement for your business to pay for advertising. Your business can still be successful. What gives me the right to say this? Two reasons: I work with several businesses as a digital marketing consultant. These companies range from entrepreneurs up to companies who turn over 7 digit figures. these businesses pay for me to manage and arrange their digital marketing to increase their client base. However, I do not require any marketing budget from them in order to improve their online visibility and engagement. Everything I do focuses on using what is already available online for free. I firmly believe that free methods of advertising online have been largely overlooked by many businesses because they hire marketing agencies who tell them they need to spend on adwords or PPC (pay per click) in order to get a decent response. These agencies then charge companies to manage these campaigns. I run a few businesses. I've tried every form of paid advertising that I can think of over the years of being in business: google Adwords, Facebook Ads, newspapers, magazines, leaflets, local directories and websites; you name it, I've done it. I've paid thousands of pounds and monitored the responses and I can safely say that I have never made a significant return on my paid investment when compared with advertising for free online. Never. even as a standalone investment I cannot think of one campaign that really benefited my businesses in a memorable way. (This is what lead me to my focus on being a #Freenius). I now earn more than twice as much as my highest paid employed job and my business is still growing. So I give myself the right to give this advice based on all of the above. WHICH SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM SHOULD I USE? This is somewhat subjective. I don't know what your business offers so I don't know your industry. What works for one might not work for another. There are plenty of options available to you. Some of the more popular ones are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn but there are plenty more. What I will say is that you do not necessarily need to throw your business all over every platform out there. this will take time to maintain and will probably not give you a significant return on your time when compared with concentrating on less platforms. Pick one platform and focus on getting it right. Facebook would generally be my 'go to' platform for a lot of the smaller businesses that I work with as it has the largest following with some easy ways to reach new customers. HOW DO I ADVERTISE FOR FREE? This is what it is all about. You will, of course, need to set up your own Facebook page and ideally a Facebook Business page too. These are very easy things to set up and you can obtain a step by step guide on how to do this using Google, Youtube or Facebook. It isn't difficult. Once your page is set up you will need to brand it. Add your logo, a cover image, some information, your contact number, address, website link etc. Now you may not be a graphic designer when adding a cover image but again, there are free tools out there which can help. Canva is a graphic design website which has a free version and this is perfectly acceptable to use. Setting up an account is easy. You will find that Canva even has preset templates for everything from cover images to adverts for every platform that you will need. You will be able to use this software to brand your page and also to create adverts. It just takes a little bit of time to play with it and find out what it can do. Again, if you are unsure you can easily find advise online about how to use Canva. Once you have designed a couple of adverts you can use them to passively post to local pages. If you type the name of the town where you live into the search bar at the top of Facebook and hit return you will find it offers you options of the local business pages which you can join. Belonging to local groups means that you can often post your advert to those pages. It is always worth making sure that adverts are allowed and not to overdo the posts. You don't want to annoy people by appearing 'spammy'. I recommend not posting to any more than 5 local groups per day. Facebook do want you to spend money with them by choosing their advertising campaign options so they will get a bit narked if you choose this free way. Over posting to groups can earn you a Facebook ban for a day, a week or longer. So be sensible. You can also join 'recommend a business' pages and keep an eye on these in case anyone is looking for your service or product. WHAT IS YOUR INVESTMENT? In a nutshell, you are investing time. No capital. No funds. Just time. Initially it might take you a little while to get yourself familiar with Facebook and/ or Canva but once you can use these and have designed a couple of simple adverts then all you really need is the time to post your advert, along with a paragraph of text about your business, a link to your website and contact details to a few groups or pages each day. This is a 10 minute job (or less). Plenty of businesses pay professional digital marketing agencies to do this for them (albeit usually part of a bigger management package) but this really is not a difficult thing to do! I'd recommend asking whether you need to pay anyone to do this kind of advertising when: you would be paying someone to do something that is, essentially, free! you can do this yourself, as outlined above you could save funds by doing this yourself to invest in other areas of your business Designing an advert for social media could cost anywhere between £20-100 depending on the content and designer. Canva is free. Actually posting to social media takes moments. If you cannot invest 5-10 minutes each day to do this yourself I would be asking why not? CONCLUSION Regardless of how much money I have spent on advertising I can comfortably say that it has not been a requirement of my business success (and I am successful) and is not a part of my core strategy for the businesses that I work with. I believe that there will come a day when paid advertising may help some of my business ventures get to 'the next level' (which depends on the product, business model and industry into which I venture) but right now I have a waiting list for website design and am in more demand for digital marketing than I have time for. I have built my business largely using Facebook for free and from there have engineered ways in which clients can find me for free. I am nothing special. You can do this too. So do it. If you need any help or further advice then please get in touch!

Taken from my book on digital marketing, here is a piece on the fundamentals of link building for your business: Link building is the process of having other websites linking back to your own. It is certainly accepted that links feature highly in a website’s ability to climb the ranks in a search engine like Google and always has been. There are two types of links: inbound and outbound. IBL & OBL Inbound links (IBL) are links that are on another website and lead back to your website. Experts would argue that IBLs are the most important thing for good SEO. Outbound links (OBL) are when you link from your website to another site. This is more likely to help the external site than your own. LINK TRUST Link trust is as important as the type of links that lead to your website. Think of your website as a new shop that has just been built. It looks lovely and has loads of useful products on sale for great prices but there are no roads leading to the shop yet. Those back links that lead to your website/ shop could be considered the roads and pathways that will be built. If the road is high quality, it will be used. If it is badly built with potholes and uneven it will not benefit your shop. Good quality links are those high-quality roads. When another website owner advocates your site and places a link to it on their site the link trust is how much their viewers trust that the link will taker them through to a useful website with plenty of information in it. There is no point having a link that no one will click on! Try to focus on getting links from known and reputable sites rather than unknown or potentially spammy sites. So, as a formula for success you are looking for IBL with high link trust. LEVERAGING LINK BUILDING It is extremely useful to have reputable sites link to yours and there are many ways that you can influence this. WRITE COMPELLING CONTENT. If you have a blog page, make sure it is full of useful articles and information. You want people to share what you have to offer organically. HEADLINE AND IMAGE. The first thing a person is likely to see is an image. You then need a compelling title. Make sure that your image and title focus on your target reader and give them a good reason to read your article/ blog/ content. SHARE YOUR NEWS. If you have some good information to share, then send it to those who might repost it to their websites and link back to yours. If you have a great recipe for a cupcake then send it to the publishing desk of the ‘UK Cupcake Society’ telling them they are free to publish your recipe if they post a link to your website. MAKE YOUR PAGES LINK FRIENDLY. If an external website points to your website then your website must look clean, fresh, visibly engaging and an all-round good viewing experience. BUILD YOUR OWN LINKS. There is no harm in linking back to your own website from other websites. A few considerations: SOCIAL MEDIA POSTS. If you write a blog on your website, you can post the URL of that blog page to your Facebook or Twitter page (or any other form of social media). Be aware, however, that some social media platforms (like Facebook) render all external links as ‘no follow’ links. This means that Google do not pick up on them as a back link to your site for SEO purposes. However, it is still worth doing to feed traffic back to your site. Social media can yield likes, shares, follows and comments which all help. REVIEW SITES. You can benefit from review sites like Trip Advisor, Trust-a-Trader, Amazon, Yell, Google my Business or other sites like these by creating free profiles and adding your website domain to them. These are links from reputable external sites and will help to push traffic to your site and improve your visibility in search engines KEEP LINKED PAGES UP TO DATE. If you have your business listed on various sites and you change your phone number or address, then you need to update every site accordingly. Keep a record of what links you have built in case this is needed. BECOME A CONTENT WRITER. If you like writing, then you could approach an industry leader through their website and offer to write some articles for them. In return you would just ask for your work to be credited to you at your website. This gives you an instant way to use your industry knowledge to not only create high quality back links but also to become known as an expert in your field. Your website is likely to be the hub of your online portfolio. Keep working on building good, quality links to it from reputable sources and you will be making solid progress into this crucial part of your online SEO strategy and getting your website seen by the right people. Feel free to contact us if you would like any further information or advice.

So, you start a business, offer or sell a product and set up a website to get some publicity: good start! I firmly believe that if a business owner does not place their business online then they are dead in the water. It’s too easy to get left behind online as everyone is fighting for the top spots on search engines. That said, there are plenty of ways that we can ‘fine tune’ a website to help attract the right sort of customer. I mean, having a beautiful looking website is great but without some flashing lights and signposts posting at it, it is unlikely to get noticed much. One way to build online roads that lead to your site is to make sure that you have conducted some research into keywords and content that should be on your site. Moz defines keywords as ‘ideas and topics that define what your content is about’. So it may not be one single word that is classes as a keyword but rather several words grouped together (long tailed keywords). Think of a keyword as something subjective that someone will put into the Google search bar to find something out. For example, if someone has a leaking tap, lives in Edgware, London and is searching for a Plumber, it would not necessarily be very beneficial to consider ‘plumber’ as a keyword. ‘plumber in London’ adds another dimension to the keyword. This could then be broken down even more by location or service by considering ‘plumber in Edgware’ or ‘fix my tap’. We can see, then, how keywords should cover a variety of subjective search terms to appeal to the right market. Therefore, it is not just the simple inclusion of the right words in the web page content that are important but rather what the website or article is hoping to solve for the viewer. If we go back to our example: if someone puts the word plumber into Google and hits the search bar, we do not know whether they need a plumber to fix a leaking tap, want to find out how to study to become a plumber or whether they are just looking up a definition for the word plumber. We don’t know the viewers’ intent. When we write content for the page of a website or for an article, we need to make sure that we give the right viewer the right answer. One way to check how search engines use a specific keyword is to type into Google and hit search. You will then be shown the type of websites that Google thinks are the best fit and also some example ‘People also ask’ questions that relate to the keyword just underneath the Google Business map and Top Stories. FINDING THE RIGHT KEYWORDS Let’s look at a simple process to find relevant keywords to add to your website. The first thing I want you to do is grab an old-fashioned pen and paper and write down 5 broad topics that your online viewers will search for. For me, as the owner of Full Circle Website Design, I might choose: 1. Digital Marketing 2. Social Media Marketing 3. SEO 4. Website Design 5. Email Marketing This list can be longer but let’s start with 5 to get used to the process. It is valuable to know how popular these search terms are. I used a website called searchvolume.io to find out how many monthly searches are conducted on Google (because let’s face it, Google own the internet) using those respective words in the UK. These are shown below in red: 1. Digital Marketing 6,600 2. Social Media Marketing 4,400 3. SEO 33,100 4. Website Design 4,400 5. Email Marketing 14,800 We can see from the above that SEO is by far the most popular search term out of the list and would therefore be seen by more people. It would make sense to write some content based around SEO for my website. Remember though- we need to know the intention of the viewer: do they want a definition of SEO? Do they want to find an SEO expert? Do they want to learn about how to do their own SEO? ADDING A SECOND LEVEL TO OUR TOPICS So now I would take this topic of SEO and drill down further into why people might search for SEO. One way that I could do this is to simply type SEO into the Google search bar and see what comes up: We can see here that, with reference to SEO, people are searching for services the most, then the meaning of the term and then tools. This helps us to consider what to include in our content to reach the right market and use the most popular search terms. We could also then consider some areas of our topic to find out their monthly searches. For SEO I might consider: · Writing content for websites · Writing blog articles · How to optimise images for your website · Link Building You will now be starting to build a list of topics to work on that focus your attention on more specific topics. You can also get insights into what keywords already bring traffic to your website using tools like Google Analytics or by using a paid service like SE Ranking, Serpstat or SEMRush. You will then be able to capitalise on what is already popular from your established website. This process of finding out about what topics your customers are searching for should be a constant process. It is beneficial to ask all customer’s not just how they found you but (if they found you online) what did they type into the search bar to find you- that’s useful and powerful free data! RESEARCHING TOPICS Now that I have a list of topics that I know are being searched for I can research related topics and further information online so that I can cover all relevant search terms and keywords that might be used. There is a very simple way to do this for free which simply involves scrolling to the bottom of a Google search page. From my example above, I type in writing blog articles into Google, hit search and scroll to the bottom to find this: There are 8 long tailed keywords right there that Google are giving me. I know that they are viable, subjective search terms because Google supplied them. I know they are relevant to my own search for the same reason and therefore will be beneficial to me on an SEO level. So I will use them. COMBINING SHORT AND LONG TAILED KEYWORDS Let’s say you are going to use the data from this article and write a post about ‘how to write a blog and make money’ (from the related searches given above). It is good practice to ensure that you consider both short tailed and long tailed keywords. An example short tailed keyword would be blogging. The long-tailed keyword could be how to write a blog. It is wise to consider a cross selection of both long and short keywords as the shorter ones are hard to rank in but are good for long term benefits in SERPs (search engine results pages) and the longer ones are easier to rank in and good for shorter term benefits in SERPs. That said, the person using the search term of how to write a blog is going to be a more targeted viewer than the one who simply types blogging into Google. We are not simply looking for a large volume of traffic. We want a relevant audience who is interested in the topics on your website or blog. FIND OUT HOW YOUR COMPETITORS ARE DOING FOR CERTAIN KEYWORDS It’s a cut-throat word online… There’s nothing wrong with spying on the competition. Indeed, it is a standard practice for me. When a company hires me to help them with their digital marketing, I always investigate their competition and find out how they rank against my client LINK BUILDING I want to mention about link building in this article as it is relevant to the content or articles that we create for our online platforms. Link building is the process of attracting other websites to link back to your website citing your work. Why blow your own trumpet when you can get others to do it for you?! These are called backlinks and are a powerful tool in getting ranking points from search engines. Some ways that you can get backlinks: 1. Create a blog site on WordPress and use it to write articles. You can then link this back to your own website through these articles accordingly. 2. Think about approaching other businesses who you know (or would like to collaborate with) who would work with you to share backlinks. 3. Share your own blog posts from your website to social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter or Google My Business. The more chance you have of being noticed the better. Others can share these for you and become powerful advocates for your brand. 4. Keep an eye on current events and trends and write blogs about them. This gives you a chance of being cited by an industry leader or influencer. 5. Use free tools like Google Trends to keep an eye on what topics are trending right now so that you can write about them. It is worth mentioning that you will also benefit by linking to other websites through your articles so feel free to do that too. ANALYSE AND TWEAK Once you have fine tuned the content on your website pages and formulated a blog writing strategy, don’t stop there! Make sure you are keeping constant tabs on your online portfolio and making changes where necessary. If Google Analytics and Search Console are telling you that some keywords are outperforming others, then concentrate on those that are helping to drive traffic your way and leave the low performing ones out. Try adding some new keywords instead and seeing if they help. As your website grows with more articles and blogs, remember to maintain a high standard of quality with your keywords, topics and what information you are giving to the viewer. A well-written, long article that solves a viewer’s pain point is well worth the time taken to research and complete. I run Full Circle Website Design to prove digital marketing solutions to a variety of sizes of business. If you would like to speak with me about helping your company to improve its online marketing strategy, then get in touch. I can visit your business for a single day to provide digital marketing workshops or I may even be able to work with you directly on an ongoing basis. Contact me on 07825559642 or email info@fullcirclewebsitedesign.co.uk