Creating content isn’t all planning and punctuation.

There’s a lot more to a sound content marketing plan than simply thinking up an idea and hoping it works in your favour – if you want something to do well you need to create a cohesive plan that will take into account what content currently performs the best.

If you’re creating content that’s only vaguely related to your business in hopes that you’ll get more traffic to your site you might want to rethink your current methods.

Engagement metrics are a huge part of coming up with a content marketing plan that works. Here’s just how – used in the right way – they can help you improve your content marketing.

What is engagement?

Briefly put, engagement is exactly what you might think it is. When someone interacts with content on your website you’re able to see this and define from this what works well and what doesn’t.

Content engagement metrics, unlike views or visitors, can tell you whether your content is actually creating an impact on the people reading it. This in depth overview allows you to work out what kind of content garners the best response and what you should continue to create (and what you shouldn’t).

How it’s tracked

Engagement is measured through a variety of means, which means you’re able to determine exactly how it’s performing and see which method of pushing it is working best.

Google Analytics

The main way you’ll be able to view the performance and engagement of any given metric is via Google Analytics.

Through this you can see specific data relating to a piece of content, such as time on page, average session duration, bounce rate and any comments which have been left.

The time on page determines how long an individual stayed on the content for. This is usually quite a telling metric – especially when coupled with the average session duration metric.

With these two metrics you can see which content encourages people to stay on for longer. You can then determine what types of content going forward will gain the same reaction, although it’s worth noting that timing and circumstance can often have an input, so it may take multiple posts at various times to determine what really does work.

The bounce rate determines how many users click off the content right after they have arrived on the page. You might do this if you’ve been taken to the wrong page or if there was a click-bait headline that doesn’t reflect the content within the article.

Finally, comments. These are the most insightful pieces of data you can gather, as they’ll show you exactly how a person responded to the content. Often people choose to comment on a piece because they’re passionate about the cause it represents – or because it evokes another strong emotion (such as anger).

Whatever the reason is it will become apparent in the comments left. Comments are an important metric because a lot of commitment has to come from a user; first they have to read the whole post so they can comment on its entirety, then they have to form an opinion of what they want to say themselves and then potentially log in in order to comment.

Social media

Another way to measure the engagement of your content is to see how well it performs when pushed on social channels. Other factors could influence its performance here, so it’s important that you look at all the metrics as a whole, rather than just in isolation.

On social media your likes, mentions, shares, comments and follower growth all act as an indicator as to whether your content is working or not.

While likes, comments and shares will determine the success of a specific piece of content, measuring your follower growth will help you see if your content as a collective is interesting enough for you to gain followers from.

Email

As well as through Google Analytics and social media, you can also monitor engagement metrics via email.

As with any channel you push through, how you push will be a big determining factor on whether the content performs well.

Another factor to consider when you’re sharing content is how it’s branded and what images you’re using to depict the content. High quality photos directly related to the subject will usually perform well – however unless you hire a photographer or are willing to run the risk of a fine for use of a copyrighted image you’ll need to think up something different.

There are plenty of creative commons images and low cost stock site images that can be used to help you boost your post and give it the branding it deserves.

Are you in a tizz over engagement metrics? Or do you have your content strategy perfectly planned with metrics in mind? Leave your comments in the section below or get in touch over on Twitter by tweeting @MyDigitalWirral.

The post What Engagement Metrics Mean for Your Content Marketing appeared first on My Digital Wirral.

However sometimes productivity can wane – especially if you (and your team) are suffering from burnout. This might be down to nothing other than working too hard, or it could be because you’re not taking the right steps to ensure you’re being as productive as possible.

If this sounds familiar, here are some tips you should take note of to ensure your marketing strategy is operating like a well-oiled machine all year round.

1. Set attainable daily goals

The first thing you should do to streamline your marketing strategy and up your productivity is set daily goals.

These should be task-specific and attainable within the time you have given– there’s no point pushing yourself as this will only result in the burnout that you experienced in the first place!

If you’re struggling to think of your first goal, try simply working on shortening the amount of time it takes you to reply to your emails. Or maybe try completing your given task before lunch – and allow yourself time to check it’s all correct afterwards.

2. Break up the work

Key to being able to meet these goals is working in the right way. Rather than powering through in order to rush to meet your deadline, you’ll produce better work (and help your own health) if you break up your workload.

Make sure you set yourself regular breaks throughout the day. Some find it more productive to set these after a certain amount of time spent on a task, for example with the use of the Pomodoro Timer.

This is a method of working by which you work solidly for 25 minutes and then allow yourself 5 minute breaks. After 4 ‘Pomodoros’ you then take a longer break – preferably getting out of the environment to hit reset and get some air. If you have a thought mid-Pomodoro you can simply jot it down on a post-it note and come back to it later.

3. Don’t let your inbox rule your time

It’s a little known fact that one of the biggest uses of time when you’re at work is emails. You might not think this when you’re replying to them – just one quick response and it’s back to the task at hand – but coming away from your task repeatedly to reply to people is detrimental to your overall productivity.

Rather than flitting through emails throughout the day and hindering your progress on tasks, you should instead set aside time specifically allocated for sorting and replying to messages. You can choose a time of day that works for you and allow yourself the indulgence of not instantly replying, instead focusing on the task at hand.

4. Automate where possible

One of the beauties of 21^st century technology is that it’s constantly improving and helping us become more productive in the workplace.

They might not seem like huge technological advances, but they’re certainly worth making use of in order to help you get your marketing productivity on point.

While every workplace can automate the administrative tasks, as a marketing team you can go one step further and automate marketing processes such as social media posts. Using a scheduling tool can save you a ton of time and help you overlook how certain posts are performing – so you can tighten up your social platforms and create more of the posts you know people engage with.

5. Think up ideas as a team

Acting like a lone wolf in marketing will only get you so far. As the African proverb goes ‘If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.’ This can be applied to a myriad of scenarios, but for marketers it’s especially true.

Working on your marketing strategy should be a team effort. With the help of others you can avoid burnout thanks to the contribution of multiple skillsets – so you don’t need to work through the night to get that campaign on the go,

An important step of working as part of a marketing team is to think up new ideas for future projects. To do this effectively you should set an allocated time each week for coming up with new ideas. This will increase your productivity as you’ll be able to prepare ideas for the same time each week.

7. Create a process

Processes are important for your whole team’s productivity – not just yours.

That means you shouldn’t be focused on just streamlining your own processes for greater productivity, this is something the whole team can jump on board with.

Marketing any business works more effectively when you have a tried and tested method that everyone’s familiar with and that covers all the bases.

While you may have set aside time where everyone can think up ideas (see above) this isn’t where it should stop. Creating a weekly meeting that catches everyone up on the progress of what you’re working on and keep everyone in the loop.

This way you can share ideas and potentially solve an issue that you’d been stuck on for a while.

Within this you should include in an update on how social channels, SEO and your content is performing, alongside updates on any other campaigns you’re running.

What steps do you take to ensure you keep your marketing productivity at the top of its game? Drop a comment below or get in touch with us over on twitter at @MyDigitalWirral.

The post 7 Fool-Proof Steps to Improve Your Marketing Productivity appeared first on My Digital Wirral.

It’s a huge aspect of organic SEO, especially if you’re hoping to grow your business and increase the amount of traffic coming through – that hopefully convert to leads!

However, it seems like search engines are forever changing the rules, and things that used to be important yesterday aren’t today.

If you’re unsure about the relevance of content marketing in 2018, here are some points that could sway you.

Become a resource

Writing content that’s fact-based and insightful to your target audience is a sure fire way to get them coming back to your site for more advice.

We’ve all seen the websites that offer poor content. There’s little solution, minimal accurate grammar and keywords galore. Instead of trying to trick your way to the top of Google as these websites do, you’d be much better off by actually helping out your clients and offering them some much-needed advice in the form of resources.

Gain authority

While you’re working on becoming a resource for your clients and readers, you’ll also be gaining authority as an industry brand.

Other ways that you can build your authority in the industry is to create niche content that won’t apply to as many of your customers but will have a higher chance of being read by those who it does apply to. Keeping up to date on industry news and incorporating this into your blog is also a sure fire way to keep your website on the good side of Google (and your readers).

By becoming an authority you’re also gaining the trust of customers, and this trust is what both sales and customer loyalty are built on.

Guest blogging

By guest blogging, you’re not only helping to increase your own website’s ranking, you’re working on building relationships with other sources and networking – which in turn increases your brand awareness.

This is a reliable type of marketing because so long as you choose the right sites to guest blog on, you’ll be creating connections that will prove that your website is genuine and a highly-regarded resource.

The process of reaching out and finding a blog that replies to you and is happy for a placement can be quite arduous, but once it’s gained it’s certainly worthwhile.

Keep your website active

Content helps to prove that your website is active and adding value on a regular basis, which is all good in Google’s view.

This doesn’t mean you have to write a new post every 4 hours though. Updating your website’s blog once or twice a month is plenty to keep it busy, although you may choose to post more if you have more to say!

Regular posting also encourages engagement from your followers, which means you’re more likely to get shares on social and comments on your website.

How does your business use content marketing? Do you have your own blog on your website? Maybe you write guides that your customers can use as resources? Join the conversation below.

The post Why Content is a Reliable Marketing Technique in 2018 appeared first on My Digital Wirral.

You might want to increase your number of followers, encourage engagement or to grow the number of people heading through to the website – or most likely you want to do all three!

It can be difficult to take it one step at a time and focus on just one of the above, so the best thing to do is look at which one will have the most impact overall.

The answer? Undoubtedly your Twitter engagement.

An increase in engagement allows for even more interaction from other users, which subsequently means more people coming through to your profile and potentially clicking through to your website.

Twitter engagement is also important for raising your brand awareness as you’re then able to appear in more people’s timelines in general.

With all this in mind, you may want to take on board some of the following points about how you can increase your Twitter engagement and give your brand a nudge in the right direction.

1. Engage with other content

On social, you need to take the mentality of ‘scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’.

Twitter is a community and like in any other community, you should always treat those how you want to be treated.

That means engaging with others when they post about something you find interesting, or about something that you think you can add value to.

It could be a like, retweet or a comment – either way you’ll be helping someone out, which will work out in your favour when it comes to sharing your own content.

2. Avoid rambling tweets

Twitter’s maximum tweet limit might have increased to 280 characters, but that doesn’t you have to fill it all of the time.

While you can post longer tweets if necessary, one of the things users like about Twitter is the brevity of content – and shorter, easier to digest tweets are always preferable as a result.

Try to say what you need to in a minimum of characters, rather than adding on words simply because you now can.

3. Always respond to people

If someone tweets at you, you should reply. This is an effective way of putting across your brand and increasing awareness as well as showing you have time for those who have questions.

Failing to respond to someone who speaks to you can mean you come across as ignorant or simply unresponsive, which won’t win you any favours in terms of customer service.

4. Seek out your stats

There are some questions you should automatically ask when you’re managing a Twitter account.

When are your peak hours? What retweets have garnered the best response in the past? Is there are format that’s most popular with your followers?

Finding out the answers to these questions can put you on the path for Twitter engagement success, especially if you use the data to your advantage.

Make use of Twitter analytics to see where you’re going wrong and where you can improve. Then use this information to your advantage!

5. Try out ads

Once you’ve experimented with organic posts and have a firm footing on knowing what posts will garner a good amount of engagement, you can go one step further and try out Twitter Ads.

These obviously cost you more than working organically but can help give you that much-needed boost when required.

6. Add value

One of the most important points to take away from this list is that whatever you’re posting, you need to ensure you’re adding value to the platform.

This is true of any social media strategy, but when you’re looking to increase engagement it’s especially important.

Do thorough research of what other companies post and what gets good engagement. Usually they have their own original personality and way of responding, which is often more colloquial than you would expect.

7. Don’t inundate your followers

When you’re on Twitter it can be tempting to schedule as many posts as possible so that you’re reaching as many people as you can.

While posting at regular intervals is certainly recommended to keep your page visible, posting incessantly is not.

This can simply irritate your followers – they don’t want to follow you exclusively, they simply want to hear when you have something of interest to say.

8. Use Twitter’s features

Don’t use Twitter simply for the sake of it. Other users will soon see through this and drop off quickly.

Instead, make use of everything they offer, including the features you might not have considered before.

Social platforms often introduce new features in efforts to bring people to their platform, which can be a great way to encourage engagement. For instance, using the poll feature can help you hear the thoughts of your followers as they don’t have to go to the trouble of writing a reply.

9. Make use of hashtags

Hashtags are an integral part of Twitter. They define the platform and have really made it what it is today. That’s why you should include them in every tweet you write.

By doing this you’re able to gain a wider audience for your tweet. As long as you use a relevant hashtag these will be people who are looking for content similar to that which you’re posting.

10. Share videos and photos

A huge point of engagement on any social platform is videos and photos.

Video content is without doubt the future of news and media and the same goes for businesses looking to share posts.

Not only is a video more likely to be watched than other content, but they’re also more likely to be reacted to. Something this visual encourages people to respond and interact as it’s often more emotive.

What tricks do you use to increase your Twitter engagement? Drop us a comment in the section below.

The post 10 Ways to Increase Your Business’ Twitter Engagement appeared first on My Digital Wirral.

However, you shouldn’t let major firms come between your business and its success, and in the age of technology that success comes hand in hand with a good digital marketing strategy.

While you’ll do well to keep an eye on your social media and content marketing, the most important aspect of your digital marketing is the SEO.

Lucky for you, there are a few areas of SEO that work more in favour for the small business than for big brands. To help you make a start of your SEO strategy, here are some of the areas that small businesses can boss.

1. Niche

Small businesses are more likely to be targeting a specific need of their customers, compared to larger businesses who are able to cater for a variety of needs.

While this may sound like a negative, it’s actually helpful in terms of SEO. Because of their niche market, small businesses are able to tailor their SEO strategy at long-tail keyword optimisation.

These longer terms are more specific to a certain need and because of this, it’s more likely that smaller businesses will rank well for them.

2. Room for manoeuvre

As a small business, you’re able to easily chop and change and have a quick turnaround. While this may seem like a by-product of inexperience, it’s actually a good thing when it comes to managing your SEO strategy.

This flexibility means easy management, compared to large businesses who require lots of notice and many hands on deck to make a change in proceedings run smoothly.

This agility means you have more potential for growth, perfect for a business finding their feet in the world of SEO.

3. Local SEO

Small businesses often have the advantage of operating locally. This can seem like a restriction at first, but in terms of SEO it’s a blessing.

Where large businesses battle for the simple keywords that cover a variety of locations, small businesses are able to nip into the search on their area thanks to it being a less competitive space.

Even if you operate online, as a small business you can benefit from local SEO, simply because you will be based within a certain area and as a result can appeal to those people first and foremost.

4. Personal brand

Large firms might have a big marketing team on board, but here’s the hitch; their customers know that.

Their big budget means customers won’t identify with them as well as they will with the small business who’s able to build their own personal brand.

Your personal interaction with customers and personality can be conveyed on social media and through your content, which in turn will mean active social media channels and a well-respected blog, both of which are vital when it comes to managing your SEO rankings.

5. Creativity

Letting your imagination run wild is one of the most exciting parts of owning your own business and thanks to your independence, you don’t have anything to stop you getting as creative as you want.

Whereas a big company will manage their social media with a keen eye to ensure they align with their brand tone and the level of professionalism that’s expected of a business of their size, small businesses have a freedom to try out something new on whim.

This carefree attitude means you’re more likely to resonate with individuals, particularly if focus your efforts an emotion that will drive your followers and readers. Often the more original the idea, the further it will go and the more attention it will garner, so don’t be afraid to step outside that box.

6. Focus

One of the downsides of operating as a small business is usually the budget. It’s often a case of ‘If I could buy this software’ or ‘When I can pay for that equipment’ that rules your SEO strategy.

However, there is an upside to having a keen eye on your finances – that you know where it’s best spent.

Because you’re working on a tight budget you know not to squander your spends on something that doesn’t have a high chance of helping your website get in search, which is why you’re more likely to do your research than say yes to anything. As a result, you know just where to focus your efforts, which means you have a tight handle on where your site is and what needs to happen next.

7. Authentic underdog

Being a small business you’re much more authentic than the big name brands. This works in your favour. Guaranteed, it’s with a smaller audience, but that’s all you need for now.

You can use your personal brand (see above) to help you get your audience on side by connecting with them in a genuine way. This might include by sharing your own story on your website, or by updating your social media with snippets from your everyday routine.

8. Authority

Bigger brands might have the advantage of money and a team, but as you’re working in a much more niche area you’re able to focus on becoming an authority in a very specific way that will benefit your customers.

There may be more trust in small businesses with good reviews compared to brands with good reviews – while reviews are good signs it’s clear that there’s a big team behind managing their online presence. For you if you have multiple good reviews it’s clearly because you’re doing what you do best, well.

Are you making the most of your SEO strategy? Leave your thoughts in the comment section below!

The post 8 Ways Small Business SEO Trumps Big Firms’ appeared first on My Digital Wirral.

Fast forward to today and voice activation is rapidly on route to being an everyday occurrence.

Over the Christmas period 2017, Amazon sold ‘tens of millions’ of Alexa devices in a gadget-buying craze that doesn’t look like it will be slowing down anytime soon.

However, unlike other crazes (think fidget spinners and pocket drones) this is one that will only become bigger and more incorporated into our everyday lives.

Research by Capgemini Digital Transformation Institute revealed that 51% of consumers already use the voice assistant on their smartphone, citing convenience and an ability to multitask as the main reasons.

If you want to keep up-to-date with your customers’ needs, you’ll need to embrace voice search and all the SEO practices that come with it.

Keep on top of your digital strategy

The first way you can get up to speed with voice search is to update your digital marketing strategy. Despite what you might think, this doesn’t involve getting everything specifically ready for voice search.

Instead you should focus on your overall digital marketing strategy by taking a look at your website. Is the content accurate, easy to read and effective? Are there enough website pages for everything your customers need? Is your site mobile-friendly?

Get everything that needs it up to speed before you jump in and try to get ready for voice search, otherwise you’re simply setting yourself up to fail.

Improve your local strategy

Once your website is up to speed and mobile-friendly, you should turn your attentions to localising your SEO strategy.

Often those using voice search will be looking for things in the area, such as a Thai restaurant with availability, or somewhere to buy a computer lead.

In light of this, you should aim to localise your SEO so those in your local area know you’re there. The best way to start this is by ensuring your Google My Business listing is accurate and up-to-date. By doing this, your business will appear in ‘near me’ searches.

Once this is in order, you should update your website’s blog with localised content. While it shouldn’t be keyword heavy, it should add value to local searches and answer questions that people in your area may be asking.

Check out your reviews

For customers the most reliable source of information for any product or service is the reviews. While you can include testimonials and customer reviews in a section on your website, the reviews that people leave on third party websites are out of your hands.

While you may not be able to delete any negative reviews, you can reply to them calmly and respectfully, ensuring you address the key issues they bring up.

Alternatively you may wish to contact them directly if you’re aware of the issue already and attempt to address it and then ask them to remove the review.

Optimise conversational keywords

When using voice search, people are less likely to use the same words they would enter when typing into a search engine bar.

For example, rather than searching ‘Electrical shop in Leeds’ they might say ‘Where can I find a HMDI cable near me?’.

In this example you would also need to rank for the term HDMI cable in your local search, which you should consider when updating your website’s blog.

Step into their shoes

Often the only way you can truly understand something is if you try it out yourself. You can read all the articles and prepare as much as you want, but until you’ve given it a go you really don’t know what your customers are experiencing.

Get your hands on the gadgets so you can see what using it is like for yourself. This will help you understand the consumer’s mind-set and become better prepared for any customers looking for your business through voice search.

What steps is your business taking to get ready for voice search? Join the conversation in the comment section below!

The post How to Make the Most of Voice Search in Your Small Business appeared first on My Digital Wirral.

Despite the other issues juggling for your attention, you should still focus on creating a Twitter presence. This will help you in the long run even if there doesn’t seem to be an immediate pay-off.

Here are some step-by-step tips to help you get your Twitter strategy off to a great start.

1. Kickstart your profile

If you haven’t already, you’ll need to optimise your Twitter profile. This will give your profile authority and make it friendlier to search engines, so people are easily able to come across your profile.

To do this you should first upload a good quality profile picture, preferably of your company logo if you have one as this will help people recognise your brand. You should optimise your Twitter bio with keywords that explain concisely the mission of your business – you can include hashtags here too.

You should also make use of your cover photo and pinned tweet. There are fewer hard and fast rules surrounding these, and you may want to update them regularly with any relevant dates or activities or any causes you’re promoting.

2. Be active

After you’ve kitted out your profile with the essentials, you should make the most of your Twitter profile right away. While you don’t want to inundate your followers with tweets, you should keep your profile active with regular posts.

These don’t have to declare your latest sales all the time. You can share content you find online that’s relevant to your business and put your own opinion on it, or ask your followers for theirs.

You can also tweet out your own content that’s uploaded to your website blog. Rather than just sharing the link you should intro it in an interesting way that will make your followers want to read on. DO this on a regular basis to encourage engagement and increase the likelihood of your tweets being seen.

3. Follow relevant people

Of course, there’s no point in tweeting if you’ve got no one following you! To get yourself on the radar of people and businesses, begin by following people in your industry.

After you’ve made some initial follows you should begin to see an increase in other people following you. While this may not seem like a significant amount, it’s a start to growing your audience.

Some people make an effort to follow everyone who follows them, which may seem like a friendly thing to do. In reality your Twitter feed will become inundated with tweets that aren’t interesting or relevant.

Keep it in order by just following those who will add value to your timeline. This will help you avoid falling out of love with Twitter later down the line.

4. Use hashtags

Hashtags, used in the right way, can be the key to increasing your tweet reach, engaging users and increasing your followers – all in one go.

However, it’s easy to fall into bad hashtag habits. Rather than posting a hashtag as every other word, you should restrict just how many you use. You should also avoid using hashtags within a tweet. Instead aim to tag them onto the end, after you’ve got the point across. For example:

‘Struggling to get your Twitter strategy up to speed? Here we explain 5 simple steps to success #digitalstrategy #socialmedia’

Rather than:

‘Struggling to get your #Twitter #strategy up to speed? Here we explain 5 simple steps to #success’

This allows you to target more specifically and makes your tweet easier to read.

5. Never miss an opportunity

The last step in improving your Twitter strategy is to make the most of it. Twitter runs on reactions to the latest news as well as people’s thoughts and opinions, which is why you should have your finger on the pulse and keep up to date with the latest industry news.

This way you’ll easily be able to jump in on the conversation – having your Twitter notifications enabled on your phone can also help here.

You can use this in conjunction with your normal tweets and save yourself time by scheduling the ones you want to post anyway – this way you’re not compromising your content.

What tips and tricks do you use to help engage your Twitter followers? Share them in the comment section below!

The post 5 Effortless Steps to Improving Your Twitter Strategy appeared first on My Digital Wirral.

While everyone who likes one of your tweets won’t always head straight to your site and purchase your product or services, it doesn’t mean you should give up on your business’ social media.

There is, after all, a lot more to it than simply appealing to potential customers.

A large chunk of customer experience now takes place on social media and how you portray your brand can have a massive effect on its success.

To make sure you’re approaching your social strategy in the right way here are some tips on how you can get the most out of social analytics.

1. Get the right kit

While you might monitor how many likes, shares and comments your posts have by checking your notifications, it’s not enough to base a comprehensive social media strategy on.

Instead you’ll need to take a look at some social media analytics tools which will be able to give you a more rounded and accurate overview of your social activity.

If you’re looking to get a taste of what analytics entail, you’ll want to take a look at the platform’s analytics tools. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Linkedin all have their own analytics tools which you can view. These monitor the success of your posts by letting you know how many people they’ve reached and how much engagement they’ve received.

From this you can then learn about the best performing content, what posting times are popular in your industry and what types of post garner the best reaction.

To see these analytics on Facebook head to Insights. From here you can view actions on your page, page previews, page views, page likes and post engagements, as well as many other analytics.

Likewise on Twitter, simply head to Profile and settings (top right) and choose Analytics.

While these platform analytics can be useful for a snapshot of how your posts are performing on that specific channel, for those looking for a more in depth overview a different option might suit you better. Social media management tools import data from all of your social media channels and provide you with one report and all the information you need.

Here are just some of the social media management tools you could find useful:

• Hootsuite
• Buffer
• IFTTT
• Sprout Social

Bear in mind that this isn’t an extensive list – there are plenty of others out there to try, so don’t be afraid to have a sniff round for the best solution for you.

2. Know your terminology

While you might want to see the numbers go up every month, there’s a lot more work to it than that – and that work involves knowing exactly what you’re talking about.

There are several social media related terms that will help you better understand how you can continue to grow your social media platforms. The majority of these terms are all the metrics that measure the success of your content, which is why they’re worth knowing.

Conversions: This is a rather loose term as you can bend it to be relevant to any call of action you’re seeking. Essentially, a conversion is when a user takes a desired action on one of your social media profiles. This might be commenting on a Facebook post or retweeting a tweet – it’s defined by whatever you want it to mean. It could even be heading to your site and buying a product, it’s completely flexible.

Reach: As mentioned previously, the reach of a post is how many people have viewed it (usually organically). This can be monitored per post, although the overall reach is the size of audience you’re able to communicate with in general.

Engagement: Engagement is simply the number of interactions you have on your posts, such as likes, shares, comments or retweets. The higher the engagement, the higher your reach is likely to be.

Referral traffic: When looking at your website’s Google Analytics, you will be able to view referral traffic. Under this section you can see how many people have clicked through to your website from various social channels. This comes in very handy when you’re looking to tailor your social strategy to boost one platform in particular.

3. Work on one strategy at a time

It can be tempting to immediately sign up to all the social media platforms and hope to boost them all in one go to give your website the best possible start it can have. However, while this might sound like the ideal solution, it’s not a realistic one.

Instead you should focus your marketing efforts on one social media platform at a time. That doesn’t mean you should only post on one platform at a time, but you should focus your extra energy on getting one platform to the best it can be.

It’s also important to only sign up to the social sites that you think are particularly relevant to your company. How many dog groomers should have a LinkedIn account? And how many IT specialists need an Instagram? Only create a social profile if you’re bringing something to the platform, rather than for the sake of it.

4. Focus on organic first

It can be tempting on set up to throw some money into your social strategy to get the ball rolling. However, in order to make the most of your social media analytics, allow some time to get used to the organic side of things.

Working organically will help you get an oversight of how to best read the analytics and get everything you can from them.

Once you’ve got to grips with this there’s no reason you shouldn’t inject a bit of cash into your Facebook posts and sponsor the important ones. With all that extra analytics knowledge, you’ll be able to spend it wisely, after all.

5. Learn from your mistakes

Analytics is all about finding the best balance of posts and learning what works. To figure this out, however, you also need to learn what doesn’t work. This means taking a bad post on the chin and making a note that it’s not right for that platform, at that time.

It’s worth testing this out on a different platform or at varying times to make sure it’s the type of post and not the content itself that fails to encourage engagement.

However, once you’ve done this don’t be afraid to simply let it go. Instead you need to focus on what is working and question why. Comparing posts with good engagement and reach against those with bad engagement and reach will be invaluable when you’re forming your social media strategy in the future.

Do you make the most from your social analytics? What strategies do you find useful? Leave a comment in the section below or get in touch over on Twitter.

The post 5 Tips on Using Social Analytics: How to Get the Most from Your Data appeared first on My Digital Wirral.

However, there’s much more to running a successful website than these first impressions, which is why you should get your SEO up to scratch. Without it, you run the risk of wallowing at the bottom of Google, limiting the amount of traffic your website will receive and as a result, the number of sales your business will make.

To get you started, here’s a comprehensive starter pack of everything you need to kick start the SEO of your website.

Get speedy

The performance speed of your website is a very important factor in how Google views and ranks. This will mean that any plugins slowing down your website should promptly be discarded to make room for speedier loading times.

This is particularly appropriate if you’re looking to speed up your mobile loading times, which you can read more about below.

Another way to speed up your website’s overall loading time is to optimise the images on there. Images can take up a lot of space and subsequently, time to load.

A couple of things to remember when optimising images is that you don’t want them to be so small so they’re pixelated. Consider different image formats for different types of images, for example PNGs work well for images with few colours, while PEGs are ideal for photos.

Be mobile ready

With over half of transactions now taking place on mobile, it’s important for any business (big and small) to have their mobile game on form.

When managing your website’s SEO, make sure you check you’re ready for mobile traffic by optimising your site for mobile. You can do this by not placing images or text in a fixed position and by choosing a theme that’s mobile-friendly.

To see how well you website performs on mobile, you can check your loading speed on Google’s own tool.

Answer relevant questions

One of the main ways your website can gain authority in its field and as a result climb the Google ranks is by answering questions that are relevant. These may be very specific questions that have complex answers or more generic questions that require a step-by-step guide.

By creating a blog post or page with the answer to a specific question, you’re more likely to appear as a result when someone enters that question into Google. While there may be fewer people searching for that question compared to a more generic term, there will be more likelihood of your result being clicked on.

Use natural language

One of the problems people have when attempting to make their website SEO-friendly is mistaking black hat SEO and white hat SEO.

While some practices will get you short term results, they won’t last and could even result in penalties. This includes the overuse of keywords on your website.

This may have been something you could get away with a few years ago, but the same is not true for today.

Instead, you should use language that represents your brand on your website, and you should do this without shoehorning in words that may or may not work in your favour.

The best way to manage this balance is to write blog posts centred on specific keywords or questions regularly asked in Google relating to your industry. This will allow you to rank for these phrases whilst also offering an authoritative take on the subject, a win-win for you, those searching and Google.

Manage your local SEO

Getting your local SEO sorted is important for appearing in the ‘near me’ searches. This will help people in your area looking for a local business.

You can optimise your local SEO by managing your Google My Business page, for which you’ll need to provide the following:

• An in depth description of your business
• Correct categories relating to your business
• Information of opening times
• Images
• Regular updates
• A local number and business address

Another helpful factor to include here is customer reviews.

Check your quality

Touched on previously is the quality of your website, which Google will determine from the content, images and pages it has. From this Google will decide how relevant you are to any query or term, with the higher quality answers more likely to appear near the top of page.

That’s why you should aim to produce quality content for your website, rather than use shortcuts that will only promise short-lived results.

Some steps you can take to improve quality is to source images either by hiring a photographer or signing up to a stock photo site that can provide access to good quality photos on a monthly rolling contract.

You should also proofread any written content multiple times to ensure there are no typos or spelling errors.

Another way to improve the quality of your website overall is to produce and upload videos. These can portray the message of your website in a much quicker than text would, and will also keep you one step ahead of competitors.

What steps do you take to keep your SEO practices in the green? Drop us a comment below or join the chat on Twitter!

The post The SEO Starter Pack: Everything You Need to Get to the Top of Google Search appeared first on My Digital Wirral.

The internet giant first unveiled its plans to change the operation of its search index in 2016.

In December 2017 Google had begun to switch a small number of sites to mobile-first indexing but did not specify which sites.

The introduction of mobile-first indexing marks the beginning of algorithms being shifted to use the mobile version of a website’s content to index pages, and to understand structured data and show site snippets in search results.

What is mobile-first indexing?

The use of mobile-first indexing means the mobile version of a web page is used “for indexing and ranking, to better help our – primarily mobile – users find what they’re looking for,” the company wrote in a blog post.

The majority of people today search Google on their mobile device, and have done since 2015.

However, despite this increase Google claims that for those times when a non-mobile friendly page is relevant, if it has the best information available it will still appear higher in search than mobile friendly pages.

Recently Google added a signal using page speed to help determine a page’s mobile search ranking. From July this year, content that’s slow to load will be down ranked.

Google said the new mobile-friendly indexing won’t directly impact how your content is ranked, however mobile-friendly content will “perform better” in mobile search results.

Google has not said when the rollout of the mobile-first indexing will be complete.

How to make your site mobile-friendly

While there may not be that much you can do about Google’s roll out of mobile-first indexing, there are steps you can take to make sure your website is as mobile-friendly as possible.

The first is to use a mobile friendly preferred width. This means that a mobile viewer visiting your site won’t need to zoom in or out to see the site – the extra space to the left and right that would usually appear is removed.

To do this, simply load your website in your desktop browser and resize the window to the narrowest available width where the text can still be read. Look up the size of that window and use it as your site’s preferred viewport width. Do this by adding this meta tag to the page’s head:

<meta name=viewport content=’width=700′>

Another way to help make your website mobile friendly is to set image widths to 100%. Once you’ve sorted your preferred width, it’s time to take a look at those images. Some images will now be too wide as you’ve changed the width so to manage this you must give your images a maximum width of 100%. This will automatically resize images if they become too large for mobile viewing.

To set image widths to 100%, add this code to your website’s CSS stylesheet:

img {

max-width: 100%

}

Another problem regularly encountered when viewing a website from a mobile device is fixed positioning obscuring the site when zooming in and out. If your website has a fixed header or sidebar, this is something you’ll want to sort immediately.

The best way to go about this is to disable the fixed positioning by using this:

<style>

/* regular css */

#header {

position: fixed

}

@media screen and (max-width: 500px) {

/* applies only if the screen is narrower than 500px */

#header {

position: static

}

}

</style>

The final tip to help you get your website mobile friendly is to use standard fonts. While custom fonts can give your website a professional look, they can slow down the loading of a site, and show a blank screen for some seconds before the text appears.

Sticking to standard faults will remove this problem and make text appear instantaneously for mobile users.

What do you think of Google’s mobile-first indexing? Have you optimised your website for mobile in preparation? Drop us  a comment in the section below with your thoughts.  

The post How to Get Mobile Friendly as Google Rolls Out Mobile-First Indexing appeared first on My Digital Wirral.