How to integrate social media into your online strategy to support SEO

Today we’re going to focus on Social Media and how to best integrate it into your online strategy to support your search engine optimisation (SEO).

The Platforms

Many people ask us, “Which Social Media platforms should I be using?” The answer is that it depends on what you do and what you want to achieve. In this section we will briefly discuss the 6 most widely used social platforms.

LinkedIn: A Social Media tool created to facilitate networking and communication between business people. This is the most popular platform used by B2B marketers.

Facebook: A stable, consistent, conversational platform that invites people to chat, share and become involved in your company and its opinions. It’s a ‘calm’ platform, offering more long term conversations. If you are a B2C company, this is a platform you should be utilising, and it is especially important for retail business to have a presence on Facebook. In fact 90% of B2C companies actively use Facebook.

Twitter: An immediately responsive platform used for short, concise, relevant and powerful messages. This is a fabulous platform where you can reach your customer base, constantly grow your audience, chat back and forth and be accessible. It is a great platform to utilise if your aim is to engage new prospects as this platform is responsible for 82% of B2B Social Media leads.

YouTube: The leading online video platform, owned by Google. 65% of B2C Marketers use video to promote their business. The advantage of good video is that it is a very engaging medium, meaning that it is highly shareable.

Google+: Google’s own version of Facebook, with the purpose of connecting people and making online content easily shareable. This platform is used on average by 40% of businesses, making it the least popular of the platforms we are discussing in this blog post, however, if one of your Social Media goals is to support your SEO then you cannot ignore Google+.

Which platforms are used by B2B marketers?

Now that we know what each of these platforms 'does' we are going to look at how other marketers, in B2B use them . This chart shows the percentage of B2B marketers who use the above social platforms.

The proportions of B2B marketers using each social platform, and the proportion of leads generated from that platform.

Note that the sum of the percentages is well over three hundred percent, this indicates that many are using more than one platform to market their business.

Unsurprisingly LinkedIn is the most used Social Media platform used by marketers but Twitter seems to be the most effective platform for B2B lead generation.

Which platforms are used by B2C marketers?

Now it’s time to turn our attention to B2C Social Media use. 84% of B2C marketers use Social Media as a marketing strategy to engage new customers, increase website traffic raise brand awareness or increase sales.

The proportions of B2C Marketers using each social platform, and the proportion of leads generated from that platform.

Facebook is unarguably the most widely used platform when it comes to B2C companies and it also seems to generate the largest proportion of leads.

How should you use Social Media

1. To promote your content - If you work hard to create fantastic, high quality content such as blog posts, guest articles and videos then you need to get that content in front the largest possible relevant audience. Social Media provides you with the ability to do this.

2. To support your SEO - An active social presence is vital to your search engine rankings. In particular, having (and updating!) a Google+ profile and Google+ business page will aid your SEO because Google favours its own platform.

3. To establish yourself as an expert in your field - Build a relevant following and get involved in discussions.

4. To say interesting things - Back to content again! Everything you say should be interesting and valuable to your audience, otherwise its just more noise in an already very noisy world!

The case for Social Media

Social Media, when used well can create an on-brand ‘buzz’ that will further build your brand and work towards achieving your distinct business objectives.

Legitimate interactions between businesses and customers are hard to fake using Social Media. For this reason Google is placing more focus on Social Media and social sharing to determine how highly and how quickly a website should rank in Google search results.

Google gives more weight (and therefore higher rankings in search results) to SEO-type activities that are harder to create. For example, 30 seconds spent creating a tweet on Twitter is not great in Google’s eyes. However, a news article on a website that is shared 100 times between visitors, that’s also posted to Twitter and Facebook and which is re-tweeted by your followers is excellent.

These results highlight the growing expectation, in the eyes of customers and Google, of businesses to have an active social presence.

Sources:
Social Media Today

eMarketer 

MarketingLand 

Happy New Year!

Here's wishing everyone a Happy and Prosperous New Year from the team at angelfysh!

angelfysh Christmas opening hours

angelfysh are taking a few days off in the upcoming weeks:

• Monday 23rd December: we'll be open 8am - 6pm.
• Tuesday 24th December: we'll be open 8am - 4pm.
• Wednesday 25th December - Wednesday January 1st: the office will be closed.
• Thursday 2nd January: we'll return to our normal opening times of 8am - 6pm. 

From all of the team here at angelfysh, we hope you have a lovely Christmas and a Happy New Year!

A guide to Google Search Result Pages (SERPs)

Each time you enter a search on Google you are provided with Search Engine Results Pages, also known as SERPs. 

In Google’s quest to provide searchers with the best results, SERPs have evolved to be much more than a list of links. Alongside AdWords ads and organic results you will now often see local listings, maps, images, videos and shopping products.

In this blog post we want to guide you through Google SERPs. Let’s begin by searching ‘buy shoes in Newcastle’, these are the SERPs that I was given:

You can see that there are several ‘types’ of result that come up, we will explain them here.

AdWords Ads / Sponsored Ads

These are websites that are running Google AdWords campaigns. The website owner has selected keywords that they want their website to appear in search results for and they pay Google every time someone clicks on their website ad. This is why AdWords is also known as Pay Per Click (PPC). 

Interestingly more women than men click on PPC results but only 6% of searchers in total click on paid ads. On the one hand AdWords can be set-up quickly but on the other it can be expensive.

Local Listings

Google recognises that often local results are most useful to searchers... especially in this case, 'buy shoes in Newcastle', as I was likely looking for a shop which I would need to get to... so Google will often provide a map showing the location of several results. These results often appear above organic results.

Moz recently did an eye tracking survey where they monitored which parts of the results page were most looked at. It showed that local results can attract more attention than the top three organic search results.

There are a few things you can do to make sure your business appears in local search results, the first being to register with Google Places for Businesses.

Organic Search Results

Organic search results are the ‘normal’ search results. In general, SEO primarily focuses on improving a websites position in organic search results. These results often come below Google AdWords results, and normally there are 10 organic search results per page. 

In comparison between paid (AdWords) results and organic results, 94% of searchers click on organic results and just 6% on paid results. We all know from our own searching behaviour that the top organic results are most likely to be clicked on, but what proportion of people click the first result?

Google SERPs click through rate, Google Page 1, positions 1 to 10.

Shopping Results

As part of Google’s never ending mission to be the most effective and helpful search engine out there, they have introduced a shopping section. If you search for a particular item or product Google will sometimes provide you with images and product information in the SERPs.

These results do catch the eye of searchers but according to SEO Moz’s eye tracking experiment organic results attract more attention than shopping results. 

Google Image Results

If Google thinks you are searching for an image it will likely bring up images in the SERPs. You can improve the likely hood of your images appearing in SERPs by naming them with descriptive file names and alt tags.

Video Results

In my above example of a SERP there are no video results, because videos aren’t particularly relevant to 'buy shoes in Newcastle' because Google guessed that my intention was to find a product or shop. However, if I had searched ‘how to pick the right shoes’ lots of videos would have come up because my intention was different. Google is quite clever really!

News Results

If there is a recent news article relevant to your search query then this could also appear in the SERPs.

Rich Snippets

A rich snippet contains additional information about a listing such as a review. They provide searchers with more information about the website, with the aim increasing the number of people who click through that website.

There are many types of rich snippets including events, recipes, ratings and products.

 

Google Knowledge Graph

Another feature in Google’s SERPs is the knowledge graph. Think of it as a spider’s web of connected info relating to the search terms. Google’s aim with the knowledge graph is to provide information to searchers on the SERP without them even needing to click through to a website. Google knowledge graph aggregates a variety of information and displays it directly on the SERP page.

Authorship

The last feature of Google we’re going to talk about is Authorship. This a feature aimed at helping individuals build their online following, through Google+ (what does Google not do?). To make use of this feature you should set up a Google+ profile and start producing quality, interesting and relevant content!

The main reason for this feature is it provides another way for Google to index the internet, by identifying the authoritative figures who are producing quality content. One of the best content producers in the UK is Richard Branson - here is a second SERP example searching for 'Richard Branson'.

SERPs will continue to change as Google continues in its quest to provide the searchers with the best ‘answers’ to the 'intentions' behind their queries. We hope we’ve helped you understand what you see on a results page a bit better and given you a few tips along the way.

8 tips to help you climb the Google rankings in 2014

2013 has been a significant year with regards to SEO trends, and updates from Google in particular. Encrypted searching is taking off, and this change from keyword data has left some wondering whether the tactics used by Google to defend against spam will make a major difference in getting your website out there and recognisable. While your approach has to change slightly, the need for an online presence is just as strong, with the competition growing all the time.

1. Focus on content

One important method to ensure success in climbing the Google rankings in 2014 is to anticipate what will happen over time so that you can be better prepared. Websites that use tricks to get to the highest rankings or offer nothing of value to visitors have been targeted to protect quality of both links and content. As a result, you should pay attention to the makeup of your incoming links and perform audits periodically to find and try to trim inbound links that are not put together naturally. As usual, high-quality content will remain important.

2. Increase supporting marketing efforts

Content marketing, previously buzzword focused, will move to a mature marketing method in 2014, and Google will be most interested in companies that have good supporting marketing efforts. This will show them that they are the kind of business worth supporting. To have good content, the information must be relevant to your audience, posted regularly, exude a sign that the website is active and still building, and be backed up by a presentation that shows authority and knowledge about the content being presented.

3. Google+ is important

Google's updates are going to rely on social signals more and more, and a Google+ presence will be necessary. A strong SEO ranking is one that establishes Google Authorship of the content, and ties it to a Google+ account. +1's are becoming a big factor in the "social signals" component of Google's algorithm.

4. Social Media interaction will affect search ranking

Social media has become a primary force in digital marketing over the past few years, and now, it is necessary to be on multiple networks. Strong profiles on websites that matter to customers and search engines, good information, and ease of sharing of that content, as well as being active on social networks that are relevant to your area of specialty, are all critical.

5. Increase content for mobile

Companies looking to rise up the rankings should also pay attention to the role that mobile marketing plays. As the use of smartphones and tablets rises, websites that you're trying to rank must be designed for mobile from the get-go. Semantic search will increase in importance, and this is going to be massive as voice search becomes important. This is a critical area to focus on, with regard to how content is structured and what kind of content you publish.

6. Longer (and shorter) content length

Google values expertise, and as a result, the length of content you should be looking for has grown from roughly 500 words to over 1000 words. But on the other hand, keep in mind that mobile devices will cause people to want shorter content when browsing on an iPhone, and thus creating the challenge of mobile-oriented content that will be much shorter.

7. Catch trends on the way up

Strategies for climbing the Google rankings in 2014 may seem difficult, but it is easy to determine the ways in which trends are going. Continuing the tried-and-true methods and paying attention to the new critical areas that are currently changing will allow you to improve search visibility. The rules will be constantly changing, and being on top of that change will be favorable to you.

8. Diversify your marketing

A few more ways to increase your Google ranking include taking advantage of guest blogging, which is one of the most effective ways of building inbound links, traffic, and brand exposure, locate references to your website that are without links, setting up speaking engagements to promote your website, and simply targeting the right keywords.

Need help?

If all of this seems too much like hard work then angelfysh can help your business in all areas of online marketing and search engine optimisation including blogging, content marketing, guest blogging, social media and Google AdWords.

Get in touch with us to find out how we can help you.

SEO and PR - 5 reasons why they should be supporting each other in 2014

Even up to 2013, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) was popular as a standalone technique adopted by internet marketers to promote online sales of products or services. But with Google making significant changes to their search engine ranking and result listing algorithm throughout 2013, the SEO marketplace has undergone a significant shift from link building strategies towards a more comprehensive methodology that also affords equal importance to the quality of content. Amongst other things, Google rates the quality of content based on the number of users who have shared the particular content in the online and social media space.

1. Modified SEO ranking methodology to be adopted by search engines in 2014

With the changes to the SEO ranking methodology adopted by Google, SEO and PR have moved closer than ever to each other.  Going forward from January 2014, SEO and PR agencies feel that both the functions will be required to support each other. They must complement each other’s actions in order to get good search results.

2. Creating and optimising the content

In the 'old days' when creating content, SEO professionals used to focus mainly on keywords when writing content. These days it's all about providing answers to questions. More and more people are using Google to find answers to their questions... "how to I..." and "where do I find..." etc. Content must be engaging and be of real value to readers. Of course it's still important to have relevant keywords within the copy in addition to LSI keywords (Latent Semantic Indexing).

And any decent PR agency will be singing from a similar hymn sheet... give your readers something of value, something they can share socially with their own followers, word of mouth from a trusted source is one of the best forms of marketing. And done well it's relatively low cost.

3. Social engagement and SEO

With the rapid proliferation of social networking sites, it has become imperative for SEO specialists to make their structured content socially engaging (as mentioned in the paragraph above). This is where the role of an experienced PR professional would come in handy. A PR specialist is able to understand the different types of structured content available for marketing including blog posts, case studies and white papers, brand information, website content, product reviews, and company profile videos. In order to make it socially engaging, the PR professional works on the language and style needed for a blog post to have the maximum impact. This means that content can be used from both an SEO and PR perspective.

4. Monitoring and measuring Search Engine Results

Both PR and SEO professionals use processes that require the effective monitoring of search results. SEO specialists use tools for monitoring the effectiveness of search campaigns, and PR specialists perform similar analysis on PR campaigns and social media. Looking merely at a campaign from an SEO perspective alone could make a successful campaign look like a failure without taking in account the PR perspective, and vice-versa.

SEO specialists traditionally collect data relating to the number of visits and the conversion rate to measure the effectiveness of search engine marketing campaigns. PR specialists can include metrics at the engagement level including bounce rate, the time on site, and the page views per visit. PR professionals have a better idea about the company’s goal and objectives and can come up with additional search engine metrics that can relate to the overall business objectives of the company.

5. Reducing cost

In essence, when a company is able work with an SEO agency and a PR consultant, the CPA is often much reduced as each visitor is more 'primed to buy' from your brand as opposed to your competitors. It now makes perfect sense to run PR and SEO together as closely knitted as possible.

How can we help?

For more information on how angelfysh can help your business be successful in Google, please get in touch with lisa@angelfysh.com.

And to talk to the North East's leading PR consultant +Sarah Hall about how to build your profile and your profits contact Sarah here.

20 top brands taking advantage of Social Media

In today’s highly competitive online market, most big brands are turning to social media to help boost not just their image, but ultimately their profits. Over the past couple of years, social media has become one of the most important places for consumers making purchasing decisions to turn to. With so many individuals using social media on a daily basis, businesses are learning that by supplementing their search engine optimization (SEO) strategy with this avenue for their marketing approach, they are reaching far more individuals.

SEO vs. Social Media 

With 2014 nearly upon us, businesses need to turn more to social media when marketing their brands. While SEO is still an important part of online marketing, social media is slowly catching it up in its usefulness. The popularity of social media can even be seen with search engines such as Bing, who take an individuals search and not only gives them the best search results but also compares their results with those of their Facebook friends. With Bing becoming nearly as popular as Google, it is obvious that the influence social media has on people’s everyday habits is substantial. It’s simply not possible to think as the two wings of the marketing machine as completely separate and distinct.

Businesses using Social Media


Many businesses have already realized this. In fact, in 2013 alone Facebook saw more businesses turn to the social media giant to advertise their Black Friday sales then any year before. As an example of just how important social media has become, here are ten big brands that have already supplemented their SEO with social media outreach, and have learned that it pays off in big numbers.

 1.   Argos - Social media has played big part in the evolution of the UK’s leading digital retailer (as the company now describes itself). One of the social principles of the brand is to be an active listener, responding quickly to customers queries on Twitter and Facebook. Also feedback received on the Argos Aliens ads via social media platforms led to the launch of the Alien children as collectable toys.

2.   Red Bull - No introduction needed to who or what Red Bull is. The company keeps their Facebook page upbeat, fun and exciting for their 32 million followers. Red Bull posts ‘full of energy’ photos of athletes, dancers and regular people enjoying life on their Facebook page. They also have more than 1 million Twitter followers.

3.   Starbucks has been known for a while as being one the best brands out there when it comes to social media use. They have it all, from Instagram to Twitter and Facebook. By promoting specials and new drinks, Starbucks has reached millions through their social media strategy.

4.   L'Oreal India decided to market their new hair color product known as Casting Creme Gloss, through their Facebook page. They created a Facebook app in which consumers who bought the hair product could enter a code found on the back of the product. From there the consumer could upload a video of themselves and a friend using the product to get a chance to star in an upcoming commercial. By offering this unique campaign, L'Oreal India saw a 45% increase in their sales.

5.   Shoppers Stop ran an exclusive offer on their Facebook page once they hit the 1 million fan mark by offering fans a special coupon deal. Within two days, the online retailer saw over 10,000 Facebook fans make purchases.

6.   Amazon may be one of the largest online retailers around, but they still use social media on a daily basis to promote their sales. In fact, they recently just ran a promotion in which Facebook users could share their wish list on Facebook in order to earn money off their next purchase.

7.   Carrabba’s, the Italian restaurant has seen a substantial growth in their sales since joining Facebook. By keeping their content always up-to-date, they have done an amazing job of keeping hungry eaters engaged with their page.

8.   Threadless was one of the early adapters to use Instagram for their marketing strategies. By sharing photos of new t-shirts on the popular social networking site, they have seen their products quickly become more popular around the world.

9.   H&M being one of the top 25 brands it’s no wonder that H&M are doing something right with regards to their social media. H&M has over 14 million fans on Facebook and updates its Facebook page several times a day. Competitions on Instagram included a chance for customers to win clothes from the H&M Brick Lane Bikes collection by posting photos of their best bike style image using the hashtag #HMBikeStyle. They also take advantage of Twitter and Google+ (with more than 2.5 million fans on G+) You can read about their social media strategy here.

10.   Hestia Tobacco - With tobacco slowly fading in popularity, Hestia Tobacco has used its Facebook profile to try and gain support. Through its social media approach, this small tobacco company earned itself a write-up from a giant business publishing group for its marketing approach.

11.   John Lewis had an excellent start to 2013, announcing a 44% increase in online sales over Christmas 2012. John Lewis doesn’t publish its own social media guidelines online however we know that content is key with a tailored approach for each social media channel. John Lewis keeps Facebook well updated and does a good job of interacting with fans. They use Twitter, Pinterest and Google+.

12.   JCPenney is one company that listened to their social media fans. During Black Friday last year many shoppers of the popular retail store were extremely disappointed and upset with their decision to discontinue the popular Disney Snow Globes. Through social media, consumers engaged with the retailer and were able to bring back the Snow Globes for the 2013 Holiday Season. By doing so, the declining retail giant saw an uptake in their sales this Black Friday.

13.   Seamless - an online service that features over 12,000 restaurant menus and discounts, has become popular through its social media marketing approaching reaching over 72,611 followers on Twitter and over 388,000 followers on Facebook.

The other seven

Click here to read detailed social media case studies of another 7 brands from 2013.

As you can see, social media is a great way to promote products and services online. With more and more people using social media as one of their trusted forms for gathering online information, businesses need to embrace this profitable marketing technique.

As a supplement for SEO, social media may even gain businesses more followers. In the year 2014, it’s no longer going to be just about where businesses’ websites falls in Google’s top 10, but how many Google+, Facebook and Twitter followers a company has.

To find out how angelfysh can help your business with SEO and Social Media get in touch today.