Introduction

 

You may well have heard your web designers mention “duplicate content” and why it should be avoided, they may have stated something along the lines “you may wish to hire our copywriters, they will write the content marketing, it will be original, so that you avoid duplication issues”- yet what does this even mean?

 

In this article we will look at:

 

-What is duplicated content marketing

-Why should businesses avoid having duplicated content marketing

-How duplicated content marketing could adversely affect a business’s SEO.

-What is the Google Panda update?

-Does Google’s algorithm punish businesses that use duplicated text?

-Why all text should be high-quality

-Why all content marketing should adhere to “white hat” methods, why it should follow Google’s WebMaster Guidelines

-Why your chosen SEO agency should understand Google’s WebMaster Guidelines, also what E-A-T stands for, plus also why you should only invest in white hat SEO

-How we help many companies here in Cardiff, South Wales, by implementing quality organic SEO

 

 

If you are implementing organic SEO yourself, or you have hired a SEO agency to do this work for you, then you should understand what “duplicated content marketing” is and how it could potentially damage your businesses SCO.

 

For example, it doesn’t matter if you are a sole trader, and you run a local plumbing business, or you are a solicitor and you own a solicitor’s practice that employs over 1000 different solicitors, the principles are still the same, that is you should not have “duplicated content marketing” on your company website.

 

We are now going to explain within this article, what duplicated content marketing is, and how it could potentially damage your businesses organic SEO.

 

In a nutshell, the algorithms will be able to detect if you have on the your company website duplicated content marketing, or that you have used duplicated content marketing across multiple pages.

 

So, for example, an example of duplicated content marketing could be that you have copy and pasted an article from another website, or quite simply put you might use the same text twice on different pages on your company website, both of these could potentially damage your businesses organic SEO.

 

So when you talk to any good SEO agencies, that’s the say agency that uses white hat methods they will tell you that you should not use duplicated content marketing on your website as this could potentially damage your businesses SEO.

 

Might be thinking well, that means I have to write all of the product descriptions, all of the evergreen content marketing all of the blog posts ourselves or hire a copywriter which might be very expensive, but this has to be done, the work has to be unique and has to be high quality and it has to be written in a white hat way.

 

The work must be high quality, and it must be unique and it must be white hat if it is not any algorithm will detect that the work is low quality or duplicated or not white hat and this could mean that your business incurs a algorithmic or a manual penalty.

 

So, for example, you might hire the wrong SEO company, that’s to say that company might copy and paste articles from another company’s website, if they do this, then this could mean that your business incurs an “algorithmic”, or a “manual penalty”, this is why you must make sure that you are only ever investing in high-quality SEO.

 

What is duplicate content?

 

So, what is duplicated content marketing?

 

Well quite simply put it can be text which is being copy and pasted from another website onto your company website, or it could be that you are to pages the same in terms of written text on your website, neither are good for improving your businesses organic SEO.

 

So, what does this mean exactly, well if you have duplicated content marketing on your website then this can potentially damage your businesses organic SEO.

 

So for example let’s say that you sell electric bikes, and you have copy and pasted the product descriptions about the electric bikes from the manufacturers website onto your website this is obviously copying the work so this could potentially damage your businesses SEO.

 

So what’s the solution?

 

What is the solution?

 

The solution is simple, the content marketing on your website should be high-quality it should be original, so this means that you should write the work.

 

So what this basically means is this, any written text on your website whether you be the evergreen content marketing, the blog post or any other written text which appears on your company website it should be original to your website that the say you should have written it or a copywriter that is employed by say an SCO company should write the work, the work should be white hat, it should be high quality and it should be original to your company website.

 

Why your businesses content marketing should be high quality

 

So you might be thinking well to write 1000 words say every week for my company website is Going to take a huge amount of my time, or my staff’s time, plus you are also saying that the work should be white hat and high quality so this is gonna take longer, so why should a business invest this time into their SEO.

 

What quite simply put if the work is not high quality it could potentially damage your businesses organic SEO.

 

So quite simply put let’s return to our example of a bike shop, let’s say that the bike shop owner simply has not got the time to be writing blog posts and they can’t not afford to hire a local SCO companies, so quite simply put let’s say that he quickly write 400 words each week, will this improve the businesses SEO, well simple answer to this is no it’s not likely to improve the businesses SEO because it is been quickly written it is likely to be low quality it’s not be useful to anybody that wants to purchase products from a company, it’s also likely to be rushed so it’s not be that interesting.

 

So the businesses is serious about improving its SEO, it needs to invest time and money into producing top-quality content marketing which is original to that business.

 

The algorithm will detect duplicated content

 

Here’s the thing some business owners do not understand how the algorithm works, that’s the say they may think well writing 1000 word blog post is gonna take many hours of work, so some business owners and even some SEO companies look for shortcuts, however there are no shortcuts when it comes to SEO, that’s the say if the work is not high quality then the business will most likely incur an algorithmic or a manual penalty if it does not use high-quality white hat SEO.

 

We have seen so many businesses that have had duplicated content marketing added to their company website, and that’s because they, have copy and pasted text from another company’s website.

 

For example let’s say that you retail electrical goods, that’s the say you retail fridge freezers microwaves, coffee machines, fridge freezers, washing machines, dishwashers, and for all of these electrical goods you have copy and pasted the product descriptions directly from the manufacturers website, some business owners might think that this helps the say time, but it does not it could potentially damage your businesses SEO.

 

For example it could mean that your business has a lot of duplicated product descriptions and this can damage the SEO.

 

Why you should hire a high-quality copywriter

 

We think it’s a good idea to hire a high quality copywriter, that’s the say a copywriter who can add the content marketing to your company’s website so that it is white hat, so that it is unique and so that it is high quality, now when you are having a company website designed it might take many days just to write all of the text, for example let’s say that you are a plumber, and you want to offer the services of installing central heating systems, changing tax, general plumbing work, you want pages added to describe the various central heating boilers that you offer, and you also want blog posts added to improve the businesses SEO now obviously this is going to take a huge amount of time, that’s the say they might be 10,000 words the need to be written in total, and obviously to write 10,000 words might take a business owner a very long period of time, that’s the say it might take the business owner over a week.

 

This is why we think it’s sometimes better to hire SCO companies that employ copywriters that can write the text so that is high quality and so that it is unique and so that it is white hat and then they can give this to the web designers so that they web designers can add this to your company website.

 

Therefore copywriters can sometimes offer high quality content marketing

 

 

 

Why duplicated content marketing could damage your businesses SEO

 

The answer to this is rather simple, let’s say for example that you are doing a DIY task in your house, let’s say that you are changing the taps  your bathroom sink for example.

 

Now obviously you want to find an article which is really easy view to understand, with which will explain how to change the bathroom taps easily.

 

Now, obviously if you were to see on the first page article number one about installing taps, being written exactly the same as article number two, then you might not find this useful.

 

Instead, what somebody wants, who is looking to change their taps is for the two articles to be different, for example they might go to article, and that article that doesn’t answer their question, so they go to article 2, and then they noticed that that article explains exactly the information that they need in order to change the taps that they have, so this is why the search engines, do not have articles which are identically written, and this is why your business should use duplicated content marketing. It could damage your companies seo, instead the work should be unique and high-quality, otherwise it wont appear in the SERP’s and also it could damage your companies seo.

 

That’s because if the articles are identical, then you are likely to have your businesses SEO damaged.

 

Why the work must always be white hat

 

The work must always be white hat, that’s to say whichever copywriter you hire or whether you hire a very large SEO agency or you hire a small SEO company the work must be “white hat”, if the work is not white hat, then this means that the algorithm may place an algorithmic penalty onto your website, it is also possible that the business might incur a manual penalty if the website has a lot of duplicated content marketing and low quality SCO

 

Could “duplicated content marketing” harm my businesses organic SEO?

 

Most definitely-  if your business has a lot of duplicated content marketing, for example you might have an e-commerce website, where you have duplicated all of the product descriptions, then this could potentially damage your businesses organic SEO, that’s because the work is duplicated and therefore the SEO is not be as effective as opposed to if the work is high quality and white hat.

 

Many SEO agencies, and our seo company only recommend that the seo work is white hat and the content marketing must be white hat and unique.

 

What are the different types of duplicate content?

 

duplicated content

 

Product descriptions

 

Evergreen content marketing

 

Content marketing

 

Why it’s never a good idea to use copying pasting text

 

Why the work should be original

 

Why the work should be high quality

 

Some web designers use duplicated content but it should not be used

 

Make sure that you spend the time to write your businesses product descriptions

 

Make sure that your company website is high quality

 

Showcase your knowledge

When we think about penalties, some of us may think of a car parking fine, and that may be a low figure in order to settle the fine.

Which is a bit of inconvenience- but not worth loosing sleep over that’s for sure.

However, what if your business was to incur a different type of penalty, that’s to say a “Google penalty”? That’s to say you run a business, say its in Cardiff Bay, and one moment your company is on the first page of Google, yet then it incurs a Google penalty, and its not on Google anymore.

Well, this is what can happen when an SEO company implements low-quality SEO, or a business implements low-quality SEO, for example the business could incur a Google Penguin penalty, and that’s because the business has low-quality backlinks.

So, what’s our best advice?

Well, we would say that whichever SEO business you go with, they must offer high-quality work, that is white hat, which follows Google’s WebMaster Guidelines. That’s to say every aspect of the SEO work must be white hat.

And this doesnt matter if you a sole-trader, let’s say a builder or you run a law practice which has over 1000 employee’s, the work must be white hat, otherwise your business could incur a penalty. So only hire a top quality SEO business, like Top Space.

Top Space is based in Cardiff, we work with businesses all over Cardiff, from Cardiff Bay, right through to Roath, we can offer the following services:

• Organic and local SEO
• Web design
• WordPress web design
• White hat

What would happen if my business was to incur a Google Penalty?

If a business was to incur say a Google Penguin penalty, well this doesn’t just mean that the business moves down a place or two normally in the SERP’s, nope, it means the business could be removed from Google altogether sometimes!

And, your thinking, well- I would just put a call into my SEO company here in Cardiff, and in the blink of eye the problem can be fixed- right?

Wrong, it can often take a long time, sometimes a very long time to recover from a penalty. Sometimes it can take months, yet we have even read it can take some company’s years to recover from a Google Penalty. So for example, the organic visitor numbers might be high one moment, that’s to say a lot of shoppers finding your business via Google.

Then because the marketing agency you have employed has used low-quality SEO methods, this means that the organic visitor numbers may fall off a cliff-edge! So this means that instead of say ranking 3rd in the SERP’s your company website may rank now say 82nd in the SERP’s, or worse, your website may not appear anywhere on Google.

This is when another SEO agency may well be needed, that’s to start fixing the problems that the marketing agency has caused, which will be more than likely costly!

And this obviously means that your business may suffer a loss of business if it once ranked on the first page, then it moved to say page 10, or got removed altogether!

So many businesses in Cardiff opt for the cheapest organic SEO quote, however if the work is low-quality then this can mean that the business will incur a penalty. So our best advice is hire a freelancer, or say an agency that only offers top quality work. This is exactly what Top Space offers, we are an established agency, which has copywriters, link builders, and SEO consultant’s which can improve your company’s onsite SEO, such as adding meta titles, meta descriptions, anchor text.

This means that Google’s algorithm will spot if the SEO work is low-quality, and it could mean that your business moves down the ranks if the SEO work is low-qualit, or it could mean that your business is totally removed.

This is why we only recommend investing in high-quality SEO.

Therefore, the following work must be high quality

Why your SEO company must follow Google’s Webmaster Guidelines

So whether your implementing SEO inhouse, or your employing a large SEO company, the work must be “white hat” and it must follow Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

This means that every single aspect of the organic SEO work must be top quality, the backlinks must be built in the right way (white hat), the content marketing written correctly, the onsite seo, everything must be done right.

High-quality search results

And why does Google remove businesses from it’s index?

Well, that’s a really easy one to answer, so let’s say that your looking to solve a DIY problem, do you want an answer to that question that you find very helpful, or do you just want 10 different businesses, which are banging on about a brand of power tool that you should purchase now, and you walk-away none the wiser of how to fix your DIY problem after reading say 1000 words? That be annoying right?

Exactly, you want to fix your shelf, or shower, or that leaking tap that’s been keeping you wide awake at night! You dont want to know about why an electric drill is so good, and to keep reading an article which keeping mentioning “electric drill”, over and over again, as that doesnt answer your DIY question.

So, you want a quality answer to your DIY problem, and that’s why you use Google, because it supplies quality answers to a question.

So, to ensure the quality of the answers are kept high, Google will remove businesses which do not adhere to its guidelines.

So if you were to build low-quality backlinks, your business could be removed, or as we SEO consultants call it “de-indexed”.

If you were to use “spun content”, which is a blog post, like this, and then spin in to make hundreds of blog posts with the wording jumbled up, well, your likely to be de-indexed. So, if an SEO agency think’s it’s being clever by cutting corners, well its not! It will mean that your company could incur a penalty, such as a Google Penguin or a Google Panda penalty.

And these are just some examples of many in terms of how a SEO business could be removed from Google.

Make your work useful

So, here’s the thing, the SEO work that you add to your company’s website, in terms of blog posts and SEO work, must be useful to your customers.

If your SEO company states that they should just concentrate on improving your SEO, and not focusing on the customer they are “wrong”.

Here’s the thing, you should offer top-quality advice, and as a result of this your customers will find this useful, if they find the work useful your business may obtain “quality backlinks”, plus your businesses bounce rate is also likely to decrease, so this will indirectly give you stronger SEO.

What are the different types of Google penalties?

There are many different types of Google penalties, some of the most well-known are the Google Penguin and Panda penalties.

However, broadly speaking, penalties fall into one of two categories they are manual and algorithmic penalties.

Manual action

A manual penalty is applied by Google, it is thought that someone working at Google who has manually reviewed a website, and found it to be flouting one, or sometimes many of Google’s rules, will incur a manual action.

Algorithmic penalties

Algorithmic penalties can be much harder to spot, that’s to say the algorithm will issue a penalty onto a website, and the business, or the seo agency will not receive sometimes a notification through Webmaster Tools, which is now called Search Console.

So, for example, if your websites organic visitors numbers drops, so that’s to say in Google Analytics you spot that the websites organic visitor numbers drop, then this can sometimes be an indication that the website may have incurred a penalty.

Roll-out of a new algorithm update

Let’s say Google is rolling out a new update, such as updating it’s Google Penguin update, then potentially millions of businesses could be impacted by such a roll-out- this is why on SEO websites, there is often much conversation when a new roll-out of an “algorithm update” occurs, because so many businesses could be impacted, that’s if they have low-quality SEO.

GoogleBot

However, its important to know that it’s not just when a new algorithm update is rolled out, Googlebot is used by Google to crawl and index a website, it may do this as often as a few times every day, so when Googlebot does spot that the business has low-quality seo, then the business could incur a penalty.

So, for example, let’s say that Google spots that a new SEO agency that you have just hired is adding duplicated text, let’s say that each article has a lot of paragraphs which have been copied from another business, Googlebot will spot this, and the business could incur a penalty.

So, which businesses get hit by a penalty?

Any business could be hit by a penalty, if the work applied is deemed as low-quality seo.

Poor link building

One of the most common reasons that a business can incur a penalty is simply because the backlinks that the company or the seo agency has built are low-quality.

This can mean that the business will incur a Google Penguin penalty.

Automatically generated content

Another common reason is if the content marketing is low-quality, for example, spun content or duplicated text.

Hidden text (cloaking) & Scraped content

What are the effects of a business being hit by a penalty?

The effects could be large, for example the business could be deindexed, this means it could be removed from Google.

Need help to improve your businesses SEO?

If you would like a quote for quality seo, then why not call us?

 

 

Introduction

In a nutshell, yes is the answer, positive business reviews can help to improve a business’s SEO.

However, with that said, many businesses can get this area of SEO wrong, that’s to say the business may write fake reviews, which will damage the businesses SEO.

So, if you’re looking for advice on whether positive business reviews can improve your company’s SEO, then this is the article for you.

Google My Business

Does your business have a Google My Business account? Well, this means that your customers can leave a review about your business on there.

This is really useful, as let’s say your looking to buy a pizza, and your business appears in the local business list, which some Cardiff SEO companies call the “map listings”- then your business may appear with your businesses star rating.

Now, if your pizza business has say 140 positive business reviews, well obviously this is going to get people to choose your business.

But if the reviews are from real customers, well this might be the main reason why your business has appeared in the local business listings.

Now its worth remembering that when someone is looking for say a local pizza take-away business within Cardiff, that there are normally only 3 businesses that will appear within the Google My Business results, so this means that your business reviews are often a key differentiator as to whether your pizza business is shown or not.

Why it’s simply not worth writing fake reviews

Our SEO agency never recommends writing fake business reviews, its likely to get your Google My Business listing removed.

So, our SEO company always recommends not write fake business reviews.

Why you should ask customers to leave reviews on your Google My Business account

So, let’s you run a plumbing business, and your business is located here in Cardiff, and you specialise in installing new boilers.

And one of your customers states that you’ve done a good job installing their new boiler, and asks where should they write a customer review to?

Well, we would always recommend that your customers write a review on your Google My Business account.

The reason for this is, one it could help to improve your company’s local SEO, but also the positive review is likely to be read more.

Why do we say that the review is more likely to be read, well, when someone is looking for say “plumbers”- your business may appear in the local business results, and sometimes your business reviews can be read here easily?

How our SEO agency can help:

If you run a company within Cardiff, and your company needs help to improve its organic SEO, then why not call us?

Here’s what our SEO agency can offer:

·        Local SEO

·        Organic SEO

·        Link Building

·        Business citations

·        WordPress websites

If your business would like a quote, they why not call us? We work with businesses that are based within Cardiff. All SEO work will be white hat, which means that the SEO work will be of high-quality.

Introduction

Many businesses want to rank on the first page of Google, however in order to get your business ranks within your organic results, your business will first have to beat the companies that currently rank their.

So for example, let’s say that your business specialises in selling washing machines online, for your business to be ranked on the first page for “washing machines”your company must beat all the other businesses that are currently ranked on the first page of Google.

And how does Google’s algorithm work out whether your business should be ranked on the first page?

Well, the algorithms will calculate if your business has stronger ranking factors than your direct competitors.

This is where a lot of business owners falsely believe that there are only a few ranking factors which the algorithm takes into account.

In matter-of-fact, there are 4 to be in excess of 200 different ranking factors which the algorithm takes into account.

This means that in order for your business to beat the competition that is currently on the first page of Google, your business has to have stronger ranking factors.

Now when you imagine that some of your competitors might have been investing in high-quality white hat SEO for a very long time, your business might have a lot of catching up to do.

Therefore your agency should have a marketing strategy, yet a marketing strategy can often not be formed until the agency has carried out an SEO competitor analysis.

In essence this is to weigh up how strong your competitors SEO is, for example if your competitors have very strong organic SEO, then it is likely that it will take a long time for your business to overtake these competitors.

Why do we say this? Because as earlier mentioned there are over 200 ranking factors which Google’s algorithm takes into account. So for example, Google’s algorithm will take into account the following:

·        Backlinks

·        Content marketing

·        Onsite SEO

·        Offsite SEO

·        Local SEO- Such as whether your business has a Google My Business account?

·        NAP signals

·        Business citations

Then Google’s algorithm will calculate which businesses have the strongest SEO, and rank these on the first page. So for example, you might be looking for “SEO Agency Cardiff”- now the businesses that have the strongest onsite and offsite seo, will rank on the first pages organic business results (just do check that they have achieved this doing white hat SEO).

Now, if you can imagine that your competitors, have been improving their organic SEO for say the last eight years solid, then there ranking factors are likely to be quite strong.

For example, you might be against competitors here in Cardiff that have thousands of good-quality, do follow backlinks.

You might be up against competitors that have very strong content marketing which is written by a very respected marketing agency.

You might also be up against competitors that have very strong on-site SEO which has been implemented by a white hat agency.

So the point we are trying to make here is that some business owners think that organic SEO can be improved overnight, when in matter-of-fact often it takes many months, if not years to get a business onto the first page of Google.

So if you are looking for a form of advertising that generates quick results, then we would not recommend investing in organic SEO as it is a long-term process, that requires a long-term investment.

Before any SEO work is undertaken, we would recommend that a competitor analysis is carried out

this doesn’t matter if you run a wedding cake business, or you run a large insurance business, the principles are still the same, you need to calculate how strong your competitors are then form a marketing strategy.

For example the marketing strategy should be that, and here are some of the points that the marketing strategy should cover

·        How strong are your competitors backlinks?

·        Your competitors on-site SEO

·        how strong is your competitors content marketing?

·        You should evaluate how good your competitor’s website design is

·        Are your competitors using social media?

·        How long have your competitors been investing in organic SEO for?

·        How many hours approximately is needed by your SEO agency every month

 

Why undertake an SEO competitor analysis?

Some agencies here in Cardiff, might offer a very low fee for improving your businesses organic SEO.

However because the agency offers such a low fee, you should ask whether they have the time to carry out and competitor analysis which is needed.

Now why do we say that an SEO competitor analysis is so important?

Well here’s the reason, for you to rank on the first page of Google, you have to beat your direct competitors.

That’s the say there’s no point in paying an agency a few hundred pounds per month, and the only building one or two backlinks a month and adding a bit of content marketing, if your direct competitors have hundreds of good-quality backlinks and have been investing in high-quality white hat SCO for a very long time.

Why do we say this, because the investment is likely to be a drop in the ocean, and will not be enough to go up against your direct competitors.

This is why it is far better to pick an SEO company Cardiff which carefully evaluates your direct competitors SEO, and which then set’s more realistic marketing budget of how much is needed to be spent in order to go up against your direct competitors, for example £500 a month investment might not cut the mustard, in reality, your business may need to  be spending 10k a month.

The fee might be 20 times the amount, yet realistically this is what might be needed to go up against your competitors, then this might be a more realistic figure that is needed to implement white hat high-quality SEO.

Also, it’s worth remembering that there are many different types of online marketing, for example your business, here in Cardiff, should allocate marketing spend for say:

·        PPC (Pay Per Click)

·        Social media advertising

·        Organic SEO

·        Local SEO.

The risk is, if you pay a cheap amount, or choose the wrong SEO agency, they may cut corners, if they cut corners then your business may incur an “algorithmic” or a “manual” penalty.

Why it’s so important that your agency carries out an in-depth competitor analysis

There are some digital marketing agency here in Cardiff that will start work on improving the businesses organic SEO without undertaking a competitor analysis.

We would strongly recommend that any marketing agency carries out an SEO competitor analysis, and then uses this information to create a marketing strategy.

What can occur is that if the business does not create a marketing plan after they had carried out a competitor analysis is that they will not know how much work is needed in order to overtake the competition.

For example, there’s no point in an SEO company taking a relatively small fee each month from a company in Wales, if the business needs hundreds of good-quality backlinks in order to rank on the first page of Google. That’s because to earn hundreds of white hat, high-quality backlinks will often need hundreds of hours of SEO work, so a small marketing budget, lets say less than 1k a month, well that’s unlikely to cut the mustard.

What’s needed instead is a Cardiff digital marketing agency, like Top Space that can offer top quality SEO, but set a more realistic price. As there’s no point in paying an SEO company unless they can deliver enough work to get your business onto the first page of Google.

The reason for that is because it will often take a great deal of time to build high-quality, white hat backlinks, so therefore a relatively small marketing budget is likely to be a drop in the ocean in terms of what is needed.

There will always be some agencies that simply say that it is possible in order to obtain a payment from the company, however it’s better to partner with an honest SEO company that will evaluate how strong your competitors are and therefore setting realistic marketing budget of how much is needed.

Is all of the work is white hat?

It’s really important that your business invests in white hat SEO, if your business here in Cardiff does not invest in white hat SEO and the business could incur a penalty

How long does it look like the business has been implementing SEO?

This is one of the fundamental questions that your agency should get an answer to that is, how long have your competitors are roughly been investing in organic SEO.

For example, if your main competitors here in Cardiff have been building strong backlinks, writing content marketing on improving the businesses on-site SEO for say the last nine years, then your business will have a lot of catching up to do.

Therefore because your business has a lot of catching up to do, the marketing agency should be realistic in terms of how long in terms of timescales it will take to get your business onto the first page of Google

Therefore there’s absolutely no point in an agency staying that it will only take a few months to get your business onto the first page of Google, when in matter-of-fact it’s likely to take many months or even sometimes possibly even years.

And why do we say this?

We say this because your company website, is compared directly to your competitors, for example competitors have much stronger SEO than they will rank on the first page of Google

they will therefore set the standard that other companies need to beat.

Therefore your agency should spend time carrying out a competitor analysis, where they should analyse the strength of these businesses

·        Backlinks

·        Content marketing

·        On-site SEO

·        Meta titles

·        Meta descriptions

·        Alt text

·        Anchor text

·        Blog post

·        Social media

·        Evergreen content marketing

·        Do follow backlinks

·        No follow backlinks

·        Business citations

·        NAP information

·        The design of the website

·        Homepage design

·        The businesses bounce rate

·        Number of good-quality backlinks

·        Whether the work is white hat

·        How often the business is adding content marketing

·        Internal links

·        How many words are written per article

·        How long the business appears to have invested in SCO

·        If there are conflicting business citations

 

Therefore your marketing agency should undertake a competitor analysis, and work out how strong your main competitors SEO is.

This information is then often used in order to work out how much time the SEO company will need every single month in order to improve your businesses SEO.

Obviously if you are up against competitors here in Cardiff that have been investing organic SEO for a great deal of time and obviously you will need your agency to spend more time improving your company’s organic SEO.

can help you to create a marketing strategy

if you were to ask any agency what is one of the most important part of the SEO process, they are bound to say content marketing.

That’s because content marketing is needed in order to improve your businesses on-site SEO, so that the agency can add meta titles, meta descriptions, internal links, alt text, anchor text for example.

It also needs to be high quality, white hat so that other businesses will want to link to your website.

A website that has no content marketing is unlikely to be linked to, so your business is unlikely to obtain any do follow, or no follow backlinks.

As any agency in Cardiff will tell you it’s important to have good quality backlinks and to also add white hat content marketing to your website

can help better focus your marketing efforts

having a competitor analysis will allow you to focus your marketing efforts, that’s because you will know roughly how strong your competitors SEO is.

For example if you are up against competitors that have thousands of good-quality backlinks, you will know that a great deal of time will need to be spent earning backlinks in a white hat way.

Equally if you know you are up against competitors in Cardiff that have really good content marketing, and those businesses appear to have been paying an agency for a long time to write content marketing, you will know that your business will need to also invest in high-quality content marketing.

Not only that the agency should aim to write better quality content marketing than your competitors, so that your business stands a higher chance of ranking higher.

Therefore your competitors set the standard that your business must beat, for example if they have been investing heavily in organic SCO, then your business should do the same.

However we always recommend investing in high-quality white hat SEO.

That’s the say or backlinks should be built in a white hat way.

How to carry out an SEO competitor analysis

Next we will look at how our agency carries out an SEO competitor analysis

our SEO consultants will therefore look at the following when carrying out an SCO competitor analysis

Design

We will consider the design of your competitors websites.

For example it may become apparent that your competitors have website which are better designed.

For example, let’s say that you run a construction business in the city of Cardiff.

You want your business to rank for conservatories, property extensions and loft conversions.

We spot that your direct competitors have pages dedicated for each service, plus also the evergreen content marketing has been well written.

We will therefore propose to our clients that the evergreen content marketing needs to be written to a high standard.

We may also advise that we should work with the company’s web designers in order to create new pages.

Of course, this does depend on the company’s website, so the same advice can’t be offered to all companies.

Instead our SEO consultants here in Cardiff will need to evaluate your website, and then propose design changes for each different website that our agency works on.

often however a web designer will be needed, to improve the design of the website, for example we may spot that the main menu is difficult to use on the mobile version of the website.

Therefore a PHP web developer might be needed, that’s to improve how the main menu works.

They might be thinking while how on earth does this improve the businesses SEO?

Well, the answer to that question is if we as the marketing agency managed to reduce the businesses bounce rate, then this can improve the businesses overall SEO.

Therefore sometimes by making design improvements to a company’s website, such as improving the main menu, we are sometimes able to reduce a business’s bounce rate for example.

Quality

Our SEO consultants will also need to evaluate how well your competitors have implemented SEO.

For example, if the businesses in Cardiff have used “white hat SEO methods, then these are the SEO methods that should always be used, that’s to say you should only invest in “white hat” seo.

However, if the business has not been using “white hat” methods, then we would never recommend to any of our customers that we, or they use that business as part of their SEO competitor analysis.

That’s because we would only ever recommend using “white hat” methods.

And why would we say this?

That’s because, unless “white hat” methods are used by your SEO company, the business could incur an algorithmic or a manual penalty, we therefore only recommend that white hat methods are used.

Making it easy for your customers

A good marketing agency should also look for ways where they can improve the design of the website in order to make it easier for your customers to find or purchase products.

For example during a competitor audit, the marketing agency may spot that your competitors allow for products to be sorted more easily.

For example, let’s say that you sell running trainers, and the competitors allow their customers to sort products by brand, whether they are in stock, size of shoe, and also by the customers budget.

Now in comparison if your website only allows customers to sort products by brand, you are therefore not allowing your customers to easily find the products that they want.

Therefore, a good digital marketing agency may recommend that you allow your customers to have more options in order to sort products, this may reduce the businesses “bounce rate”.

Evergreen content marketing

A good agency will evaluate your competitors evergreen content marketing.

Now you might be wondering what does “evergreen content marketing mean?  

well simply put, it is the written text that is added to the main pages of your website.

Now as you can imagine because the written text is added to the main pages of your website, this is often the text that is read the most.

Now, if your competitors have written a lot of “evergreen content marketing”, and for example this might include having an FAQ page, it might mean having main pages which have anchor text which leads to further pages which helps the customer to understand more about the company for example, your marketing agency might want to use a similar marketing strategy

for example, let’s say that your business sells electrical goods online, and your business specialises in selling televisions, which freezers and also washing machines.

A lot of technical information will be used to describe say a washing machine, your competitors may for example allow the customer to click on let’s say “4K televisions”which is uses the anchor text, and then this may lead to a page which describes what the benefits are of owning a 4K television.

Therefore this helps the customer as they can understand more about what the product can offer, and by doing this the business has also created more evergreen content marketing.

By creating more “evergreen content marketing”, if this is done in a white hat way, and work is high-quality then this can help to improve the businesses organic SEO.

Therefore within the competitor analysis, the SEO agency should evaluate your competitors “evergreen content marketing”.

For example, this is an opportunity to make your businesses evergreen content marketing better?

Internal links

have your competitors used internal links, for example have a used anchor text within the company’s blog posts to lead to the businesses evergreen content marketing, if so does your business wish to do the same?

On-site SEO

how has your competitors improve their on-site SCO, for example which titles are using each page, what page h1 tags have a use on the businesses main pages.

What are the meta titles and meta descriptions for each main page.

Which anchor text that they used?

How long is the evergreen content marketing?

All of these questions should be asked by your SEO consultant or agency

blog posts

If you were to ask any good SEO agency, what is one of the most important part of the “organic SEO” process, they are bound to say adding content marketing to the company’s website is important.

Therefore you should look at how often your competitors are adding high-quality content marketing to the company website.

Quality of the content marketing

Your agency should evaluate the quality of your competitors content marketing.

For example, let’s say that you run a solicitor’s practice, you will be competing with many  solicitors within your city

those solicitors might be adding high-quality content marketing, this might be written guides which offer advice, the advice might be a couple of thousand words per article.

Some solicitors might be adding these  a few times a month, therefore your agency should evaluate how often your business should be adding content marketing

Word count

your agency should evaluate the word count of your competitors blog posts, for example if your competitors are adding blog post which are a few thousand words, then your business should also be writing the work to the same length or a greater word count.

Of course word count does not equal quality, that’s the say just because of business rights 14,000 words, doesn’t mean that that is quality work.

However what should occur is that there should be a high word count but also the work should be high quality.

 

Research

For example, let’s say that you run a business sells electric bikes, you may add a piece of content marketing which evaluates the “10 bestselling electric bikes here in the UK”.

Therefore your article should include references to where you obtained the statistics from, for example where did you obtain the 10 bestselling electric bike statistics from? You may wish to include this in the terms of anchor text and also a backlink.

Backlinks

Your SEO agency might be building white hat high quality backlinks.

However before your agency starts to build backlinks in a white hat way, you should start to evaluate the competition.

For example, your competitors here in Cardiff, you may wish to look at how many backlinks they have

For example, do they have hundreds, or thousands of good-quality backlinks?

The backlinks good-quality?

If your competitors here in Cardiff have thousands of good-quality backlinks (do-follow and also no-follow backlinks), that’s to say they have a mixture of do-follow and also no-follow backlinks, and they have thousands of these, then this will be an indication to your marketing agency that your business will need to do a lot of work.

in order to obtain high-quality backlinks, your business should add high-quality content marketing that other businesses or websites will want to link to

For example, let’s say that your company sells power tools, such as electric cordless drills, you may wish to write an article which includes a YouTube video which explains why your power tools are superior in some ways, and some of the features that your power tools can offer your customers, such as perhaps longer battery life?

therefore let’s say a website which talks about property renovation, or which gives DIY tips, may mention your power tools because they have features which they believe that their readers will be interested in, therefore you may obtain a high-quality do follow backlink.

Do follow backlinks

as most agencies would agree, you need a mixture of do follow and no follow backlinks

No follow backlinks

some marketing agencies just build do follow backlinks, however it’s also important to have no follow backlinks as well

Quality of the backlinks

It’s really important that you obtain high-quality backlinks, the backlinks must also be built in a white hat way

if you want your business to be ranked on the first page, and often it will need high quality backlinks.

Number of backlinks

Also the number of high quality backlinks that your business will need, will depend on your competitors, for example if your direct competitors have hundreds of good-quality backlinks in your business will need more good-quality backlinks.

Yet you should notice that we mentioned good-quality backlinks, because if the backlinks are not high quality and your business could incur a penalty.

Many businesses here in Cardiff have incurred a “link penalty”, that’s because they have low quality backlinks. If your business was to incur a link penalty, then this means that the business could drop-down the ranks.

Social media

Your digital marketing agency should look at which social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instrgram that your competitors are using.

for example are they concentrating on advertising on Facebook?

You therefore may wish to have a conversation with your client to see which social media platforms that they wish to use.

Our Cardiff SEO company often uses Facebook and Twitter in order to promote our clients businesses

Facebook

A lot of companies use Facebook in order to promote their business

Twitter

a lot of businesses use Twitter to promote their business

Instagram

a lot of businesses in Cardiff use into the ground to promote their business.

White hat?

Within this article we have mentioned how our agency may carry out an SEO competitor analysis

For example, they may evaluate your competitors backlinks stop

they may also evaluate your competitors content marketing.

They may also evaluate your competitors on-site SCO.

However, after the SEO competitor analysis has been carried out by your marketing agency, it’s important that all work must always be “white hat”.

If the work is not white hat then your business could incur a manual or an algorithmic penalty stop

the work must always be white hat, this is why so many businesses in Cardiff use top space SCO.

Here at Top Space SEO we can offer the following services

·        WordPress web design

·        Content marketing

·        Link building

·        Organic SCO

·        Local SCO

·        White hat SCO

We are a Cardiff SEO agency, if your business need high quality SEO then why not give our company a ring.

We offer affordable prices for white hat SEO.

 

 

Introduction

You may currently be asking many SEO agencies for a quote, often then the business will ask for a breakdown of what is included within that quotes.

A lot of businesses will then quickly spot that a lot of their marketing budget will be spent on something that is called “content marketing”.

That’s the say when you ask for a quote, around 50% of the quote might be spent on content marketing.

Therefore, as the business owner, you will want to know what content marketing is why such a large percentage of your marketing budget is being spent on this area.

A digital marketing agency we employ copywriters which write our content marketing, content marketing is a very important part of the organic and also local SEO process.

Without content marketing it is very difficult to optimise a website very hard to obtain good-quality backlinks.

This is why when we get provided with a marketing budget, we often spend a great deal of that marketing budget on writing content marketing.

Some of the content marketing might also include YouTube channels, which can be embedded into the content marketing to further help your customers.

We are now going to explain why this is such an important part of the SEO process, and why all SEO work should be undertaken in a white hat way.

What is “Content Marketing”?

Okay, first things first what exactly is content marketing?

Well whether you are looking for a local builder, or you are looking for a local solicitor, you will often spot that a great deal of effort will have been placed on writing what is called the evergreen content marketing.

The evergreen content marketing is simply on-site SEO that is placed on the each main page on the businesses website.

You may also see SEO articles that have been written to help the customer, for example the business might be frequently get asked the same questions by its customer, therefore to help the customer the business may write an SEO article which answers such questions.

Therefore, these articles will help the customer answer questions that they might have, and a lot of business owners quickly think well why is our business giving away free advice?

Obviously if you run a solicitor’s practice, you do not want to be giving away free advice. However by giving away free advice via the blog section of your website all through the evergreen content marketing you will be helping your customers, therefore this may reduce your businesses bounce rate, it might also help your business to obtain high quality backlinks which will help to improve your businesses organic SEO.

Now if your organic SEO is greatly improved, and your business ranks on the first page of, then you are likely to obtain more customers.

Therefore by giving away this free advice you are helping to improve your businesses organic SCO and this might mean that you obtain more customers.

What are keywords?

So, some SEO agency can sometimes make the mistake of focusing too much on optimising a website for keywords.

For example, a business that sells a brand of car, may write “brand of car + the name of the city where the car dealership is based, this could mean that the content marketing is deemed as low-quality” if this is mentioned too much.

What will happen if the work is deemed as low-quality?

Well, Google may drop that company’s website down the ranks, that’s because the content marketing and SEO is not high-quality, and is not white hat.

So, what are keywords?

Keywords are words and phrases which are important to your business, that you want your business to rank highly for on Google.

So for example, a Joiner may want to rank high for “bespoke kitchens + name of city” and “in-built wardrobes + name of city” and also “bespoke furniture” for example, these are all keywords which the business will want to rank high for.

However, if the Cardiff SEO company does not follow Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, that’s to say, doesn’t use white hat SEO methods, then the business could be placed lower down Google’s ranks, and may even incur a penalty.

So for example, if you run a car dealership, and you specialise in stocking a certain brand of car, then obviously you will want to come up on the first page for that brand of car plus the name of the city in which your car dealership is based.

Yet so many digital marketing agencies make the mistake of over optimising a website, that’s to say they sometimes mention the keywords too much, which can sometimes trigger an algorithmic or a manual penalty.

Why you should focus on creating content marketing which is useful to your customers

Instead you should focus on writing content marketing which helps your customers.

So, what are we mean by this, well let’s return to our example of a car dealership, often a car dealer will be asked similar questions.

Therefore they may wish to write content marketing for each vehicle that they sell, which quickly explains what the mpg of each car is, the features that your car can offer and also the hire purchase costs to own a car.

This is likely to be a lot more useful to the customer, then if a SEO agency was to just try and optimise that page for the brand of the car and also the city which your car dealership is based.

Therefore, the content marketing should always be centred around helping the customer.

Using internal links

Most businesses partner with an SEO company to improve the businesses SEO every single month, that’s simply because if the business was to stop investing then it is entirely possible that the company’s direct competitors quickly start to overtake that business.

This is why you hear SEO agencies quote a monthly fee in order to improve the businesses organic SEO.

This often means that the SEO agency will be writing a lot of content marketing, for example a solicitor’s practice might have four pieces of content marketing added to their website each month.

This means over the course of a year a lot of content marketing is being added to the website, and often the things that are being written about will overlap.

What do we mean by overlap, well for example let’s say that you are talking about questions that relate to the divorce process, often there will be questions which interlink, such as what will happen to couples house, or what will happen to the couple’s finances.

Therefore, instead of repeating what you have already written about, you may simply wish to use an internal link within the website.

Therefore, your SEO agency should help you to create internal links, and to write the anchor text in a white hat way.

This way you could help to reduce your businesses bounce rate, you will also be helping your customers because if they are interested say in reading about what could happen to the family home after a divorce, they are also likely to be interested in reading an article about what will happen to the couples finances after a divorce.

Therefore this is why a lot of SEO agencies, including hours, uses internal links and also anchor text.

However, internal links and also anchor text should be used in a white hat way.

Link to relevant sources

If you are to write a long piece of content marketing, let’s say for example a piece of content marketing which is over 2000 words, then you might wish to use backlinks to other sources which you have read.

So, for example, let’s say that you run a car dealership, and you are about to stock a new brand of car, and that model car has received many positive reviews from car journalists.

You may therefore wish to link to the website where a positive review of that model car has been left.

Therefore, your marketing agency may use outbound backlinks combined with anchor text to show where your business has obtained it’s references from.

For example, you might wish to say that a car journalist has given that model of car five stars, therefore you may wish to use an outbound link to link to that article, that you have read.

This is not going to massively improve the businesses organic SEO, however we think that if this is done in the right way, that is in a white hat way then this can help your readers.

Something to think about is not to use an outbound link right in the first paragraph, or within the first few hundred words of the content marketing which you are writing.

We say that because obviously you don’t want a customer to be on your website to click on the link and then go straight onto another website, this would mean that they will have left your company website in a matter of a few mere seconds, obviously you would like them to read the article quite a bit otherwise your company’s website bounce rate might increase.

How can it be used to improve a business’s organic and local SEO?

One of the most in essential part of the organic SEO process is the right good-quality content marketing, without it it’s unlikely that other businesses will link to your website.

And as any good marketing agency will tell you it’s important to have high quality backlinks leading to your website in order to improve your company’s organic SEO.

Therefore, when you ask an SEO agency for a quote in Cardiff, they may quote that a large amount of the marketing budget is going to be spent on creating content marketing.

Our agency employs copywriters, so that we can write our content marketing ourselves

What does evergreen content marketing mean?

Evergreen content marketing is simply the text that is placed on the main pages of your website.

This text might not change that often, that’s the say your agency might write the content marketing on these pages and it may not change for a very long time.

Also the content marketing that is added to your main pages is often the content marketing which is read the most, this is why it needs to be high quality and it needs to be written by a high quality marketing agency.

There’s no point in the agency just writing one or two lines of text, instead the work must be high quality and often it will need a good word count.

Also, the content marketing will need meta titles, meta descriptions, alt text, titles, internal links, anchor text so white hat on-site SEO will often be needed as well.

Sometimes when a business presents their company website to an SEO agency, the evergreen content marketing might only have a few lines of text per page.

This is where the marketing agency may recommend that they rewrite the content marketing and ad high-quality white hat content marketing to the main pages of the website.

What’s our blog posts?

You may hear your agency state that they are going to add content marketing to the blog section of your website.

For example, let’s say that you are looking to find a local company that can fit a new  UPVC door, you may spot that they have a blog section on their website and that they have been adding blog posts for say the last 10 years.

 

This will help to also improve the businesses organic and local SEO if the work is implemented correctly.

Some businesses here in Cardiff make the mistake of thinking that quantity is better than quality, however our marketing agency would only recommend that you add high quality content marketing to your website.

For this to happen you should write articles which answer questions that your customers frequently ask you, they should have a high word count and offer information to your customers they will find useful.

So, for example, let’s say that you run a double-glazing business, you may wish to write an article explaining all the different styles of double glazing that you sell.

For example, you may mention the benefits of owning triple glazing rather than double glazing, you may also wish to advertise which types of double glazing have a greater energy efficiency.

You may also wish to write an article about different UPVC doors and different security features that these doors have, therefore somebody who is looking for a high quality door that has a lot of security features might therefore read this article and phone your company.

 

Why must the work be high quality?

The work must be high quality, if it is not high-quality and written in a white hat way and the business could incur an algorithmic or a manual penalty.

Some agencies will offer a very low price to implement SEO every single month, however if agencies only writing articles that have a few hundred words, and the articles do not offer any useful information to your customers, then this might negatively affect your businesses SCO rather than proving your businesses SEO.

Why must the work be white hat?

The work must always be white hat, otherwise the business could incur an algorithmic or a manual penalty

Why must the work follow Webmaster guidelines?

All SEO work should follow Webmaster guidelines

What are H1 through to H6 titles?

Once your agency has written content marketing, it might then be handed to another person within the marketing agency the start adding on-site SEO such as meta titles and meta descriptions, internal links anchor text for example.

Also, the marketing agency may then start promoting this piece of work on Facebook or Twitter so that more people can read the content marketing that the marketing agency has just written.

What does anchor text mean?

You may have already read within this article, that we have mentioned anchor text quite a few times, that’s because often a lot of marketing agencies will add anchor text to each article that the right.

So for example let’s say that your company sells luxury candles online, and within the blog post you mention beeswax candles, and you remember that you have already written a blog post about beeswax candles so you want a link to that article.

Therefore, you could use the anchor text beeswax candles, and then the link to that article.

The SEO benefit from doing this is that you may keep a customer on your company website for longer.

For example they might be reading about one article that explains that you make candles from a hundred percent natural ingredients, they may then want to read about your beeswax candles that you sell, so they may click on the anchor text, read the article about beeswax candles and they may even make a purchase from your company.

So therefore, your marketing agency may use anchor text within your evergreen content marketing and also on your blog posts as well

What are internal links?

We would recommend using internal links in a white hat way, as these can help your customers to easily find products that your business sells.

For example let’s say that you run a business that sells running trainers, you may review 10 pairs of the latest running trainers, then because you also sell these items, you might use an internal link and anchor text to then the link to the page that sells that product.

Therefore, you are helping your customers to easily find that product and to make a purchase if they want to.

Therefore somebody might read about a pair of trainers that you have reviewed, they may read the review and see that you are selling high-quality running trainers, therefore they may click the anchor text then follow the link to that page and then purchase that pair of running trainers directly from your business.

What are meta titles and meta descriptions?

Your agency should add meta titles and meta descriptions to every piece of evergreen content marketing and also to your blog posts.

Adding meta titles and meta descriptions should only take a few minutes to do but it is worth doing because this will explain to the customer what that page is about.

So, let’s say for example that page sells a certain brand of car, and that you specialise in selling used cars.

Therefore, in the meta title you may wish to write the brand of car and also the model of cars that you sell in the meta title.

Then in the meta description you may wish to add some more detail about that page such as that you offer 0% hire purchase for example

How long should the articles be?

This does depend on what you are writing about, however we would recommend that each article is over 2000 words and that it is well written and written also in a white hat way.

We say that the work should be well written, because it is not well written then your website could obtain a high bounce rate stop

we say that because let’s say that your business sells Power Tools such as electric cordless drills, and somebody is looking to learn about the different features that cordless drills can have, such as how long it will take to charge drill, whether you offer additional batteries and also what the manufacturer’s warranty is on each drill.

If the customer can find answers to these questions, then they may purchase from your website.

However if the content marketing has not been written in a white hat way, and the marketing agency has just concentrated on writing “cordless electric drills” too many times then this is likely to be deemed a low-quality piece of work and could damage your businesses SCO

Why our agency recommends that you don’t just focus on improving your SEO?

Too many digital marketing agencies, and SO company’s focus too much on just improving the businesses SEO, that’s the say you might now be thinking well surely that’s what they are getting paid to do?

However the really good marketing agency’s know that if they offer really high quality advice to your customers, they will be helping your customers to find the product or service that they want, and this will help to also improve the businesses SEO.

So what do we mean by this?

Let’s say for example that your business sells televisions, and there are now so many different types of television, therefore if you explain what the different product features mean and somebody is more likely to purchase from you because they understand now the benefits of owning say a 4K television

for example you could explain how the picture quality is better, and you can also explain the other benefits of owning such a TV

however on the other hand, if your SCO company just focuses purely on trying to optimise the website for 4K televisions without writing any good quality evergreen content marketing then this is unlikely to improve your businesses SCO.

That’s to say the really good SEO agency’s focus on helping your customers by supplying high-quality and useful information, and this will therefore help the businesses SEO as well

Analytics

Your business should also use analytics to see how well your content marketing is doing.

 

This is not the right approach

Instead what a good SEO agency will do is write a piece of content marketing, then see if this piece of content marketing has a low bounce rate, is obtaining good quality backlinks, and also how long a customer is spending reading the content marketing.

Therefore the marketing agency may then further improve the article, they may make changes so that they can further improve the work so that they can either improve with that piece of work ranks, or to improve the bounce rate by lowering it for example.

Therefore an agency will often have a piece of content marketing and then continually improve it

bounce rate

You may have heard us talk about bounce rate quite a few times within this article

That’s because if your article has a very high bounce rate, this simply means that people are landing on your content marketing and then leaving more or less straightaway without visiting another page on your website.

So for example let’s return to our example of selling running trainers, you will obviously want to write an article and to possibly promote that article that you have written about running trainers on Facebook and Twitter.

You may then notice that the piece of content marketing that your SEO company has written has a very high bounce rate, this simply means the people are looking at the article and then leaving your company website.

Therefore this should be an indicator to your agency the start improving the article, so that people land on the article and then this is another page and hopefully purchase a product directly from you.

 

So for example the marketing agency might improve how the text is written, they may also add more information they may also add a special offer such as offering a discount code for example.

This might make people start to browse the running trainers that you sell and this may help to increase your company’s sales

High-quality

All of the work should be high quality, all of the content marketing that your business rights, or your SEO company writes for you must be white hat.

That’s to say whichever SEO agency that you choose in Cardiff that writes the content marketing for your business must use white hat methods

research

As you can imagine, an SEO agency will serve many different clients, for example one agency in Cardiff might work for a hundred different businesses.

Often those businesses will differ greatly, for example one might be a construction business and the other business might be a dental practice

Therefore you should make sure that the SEO agency has a good understanding of your business sector, so when they write the content marketing it is clear that they understand what they are writing about.

If you have instead 500 words written which do not offer any useful information at all your customers and this is likely to increase your website’s bounce rate.

However on the other hand, let’s say that you run a fencing business, and you explain all the different types of fencing that you offer, and that the writer of the work clearly understands the different types of fencing, then this is likely to help somebody is looking for a garden fencing company.

As they might not know whether they require a feather edge fence, a hardwood fence or a hit and miss fence.

Therefore they may find this piece of content marketing very useful.

However if you have another marketing agency which does not do its research, and just keeps writing about garden fencing without offering any useful information then the reader is likely to leave that article and it is likely to mean that the website has a high bounce rate

why you may wish to pick an agency which understands your business

When you pick an SEO company, that business might work for hundreds or sometimes thousands of different clients.

 

For example sometimes you will have a marketing agency that just work for dentists or solicitors or sometimes for estate agents for example.

The benefits of choosing such a business is that they are more likely to understand your business sector, whereby an SCO agency might work with such a broad range of different companies that they might not have the knowledge about your business to write the content marketing

must not just be a few hundred words

Some marketing agencies write content marketing which is just a few hundred words long

However we would strongly recommend that the content marketing is made longer, often right content marketing that is over 2000 words.

However irrespective of the length of the text, it should be high quality hand written white hat way.

Must offer useful information

The information must be useful to your customers, a lot of marketing agencies just concentrate on writing content marketing so that it reaches a certain word count.

Therefore copywriters might be tasked with writing blog posts which are 500 words, so they just write to hit that word count.

However irrespective of how high the word count is, the work should be high quality and useful to your customers.

Often takes a great deal of time to create, this is why we often believe that cheap SEO is often a total false economy.

In order to write high quality content marketing, often this takes many hours and sometimes many days.

For example, let’s say that your company specialises in selling electric cars, and you want to review the 10 best selling electric cars here in the UK.

Obviously to write such an article is going to take a great deal of time, this is why if a company offers you a very low quote in order to improve your SCO you should be sceptical.

That’s because a lot of time needs to be spent creating high quality content marketing so often it cannot be done cheaply

are you implementing local SCO here in Cardiff, or are you implementing national SEO?

Another important factor is to consider whether you are implementing a local SEO, so you are improving your website here locally for Cardiff.

Or are you rather improving your website so that you can implement national SEO?

Don’t focus on quantity

A common mistake that a lot of businesses make here in Cardiff, is to look at a direct competitor’s website, and the spot that that business has written say 80 blog posts.

The marketing agency or the business then sometimes thinks that they also have to write 80 blog posts if they are to get their business to rank on the first page.

However as any good SEO company will know, it’s not about quantity it’s about quality.

That’s the say it’s far better to have 40 really well written pieces of content marketing than it is to have 80 pieces of content marketing which are not well written.

Also if the algorithm spot that the work is low quality then this could mean that your business incurs a penalty.

 

Must aim to make the content marketing better than your direct competitors

You should aim to make the content marketing better than your direct competitors, that’s the say you should not just focus on quantity you must focus on quality.

So for example if a competitor has written a blog post that answers a question that your customers frequently ask your business, then you should aim to write a better quality article

For example, let’s say that you are a divorce solicitor, and you spot that a local competitor has written a long blog post explaining what can happen to the family home after a divorce.

Your business may then aim to write a better piece of content marketing, for example you might offer better advice and you might embed a YouTube video that has one if your solicitors answering the question

We recommend a high word count

We recommend that you write your articles to a high word count, however it’s not just about making your blog posts long in terms of the word count.

The work must also be high quality as well.

For example some blog posts that we have written are in excess of 6000 words, however we also ensure that the information is high quality as well.

Is an essential part of organic SEO and also local SEO

Content marketing is an essential part of improving a businesses organic or local SEO, therefore there it is like the cement that holds the wall together.

Therefore most marketing agencies will recommend that a large proportion of the SEO budget is spent on writing high quality content marketing

Whichever agency, freelancer or company you choose they must follow white hat methods

It’s really important that whichever Cardiff SEO company that you choose, that they use only white hat methods.

Penalties

If the business does not use white hat methods, then it’s entirely possible the business in Cardiff or whenever the business is based could incur an algorithmic penalty.

For example, a lot of businesses have incurred a Penguin penalty, because they have built backlinks in the wrong way.

Panda penalty

If your business was to write low-quality content marketing then your business could possibly incur a Panda penalty.

Algorithmic penalties

Many businesses throughout Cardiff have incurred algorithmic penalties simply because the SEO has been implemented in the wrong way.

For example let’s say that you run an Italian restaurant, your SEO consultant might have mentioned Italian restaurant plus name of the city too much throughout your website, they might have done this to try and improve your businesses local SEO however is might have had the reverse effect.

That is why we recommend that you pick a respected white hat agency.

Manual penalty

It is also possible that the business incurs a manual penalty, that is a manual penalty is applied to the business because the company has used low quality SCO.

Write the title so that it helps your customers

If you do not know what to use as the title for your article, we would recommend thinking about using a title which describes a question that your company gets frequently asked

For example let’s say that you build bespoke kitchens, you might write an article which has the title, how long will it take you to construct a bespoke kitchen.

Obviously every kitchen will be different, but you can offer rough timescales that will allow the customer to know roughly how long it will take you to build a high quality kitchen.

Therefore, somebody who is thinking about getting a bespoke kitchen built, might read this article so that they can gain an understanding of how long it will take you to build a bespoke kitchen.

Write the anchor text so that it helps your customers.

We would recommend using anchor text with in your content marketing.

for example, as we earlier mentioned within this article, often the lot of the blog post that you write will overlap, for example let’s say that you are a carpenter and you were talking one week about built-in wardrobes, then the following week you were talking about work that you have recently undertaken in the Cardiff area, you may mention that you have recently build a set of built-in wardrobes, therefore you might use anchor text to direct your customers to your built in wardrobe page.

Include useful backlinks

We would recommend that you use backlinks within your written work in a white hat way

Good-quality content marketing can mean that you attract high-quality backlinks

This is a really important point, that’s the say often an SEO agency does not just write content marketing to try and improve the businesses on-site SEO, it can also help to improve the businesses off-site SEO as well.

That’s because if you write a really good piece of content marketing, another website may choose to link to your website

for example, let’s say that you review the 10 best selling electric cars here in the UK, and that article is really good and it receives thousands of readers every single week.

Another website might link to your work, for example a car during a list might read your article say that it is really good at reviewing the 10 best selling electric cars and decide to also link to your work.

Do follow backlinks

it’s important that your business has a number of high quality do follow backlinks that are built in a white hat way.

No follow backlinks

It’s really important that your business also has high quality no follow backlinks that are also built in a white hat way

Can help to improve your businesses overall SEO

Our SEO company can help to improve your businesses organic or local SEO

How our agency can help your business in Cardiff

Our agency is based in Cardiff, our SEO company can help to improve your businesses content marketing, link building, on-site SEO, off-site SEO.

We offer very reasonable prices, in order to obtain a quote why not give our company a ring today.

We work with businesses that are based in the city of Cardiff.

 

 

 

 

 

Introduction

Ask most business owners what they think of SEO in general and they are bound to describe the whole process as being rather technical.

So when just one strand of SEO is being described as being “technical” well this may cause some confusion, as people may just start wondering well what does technical seo even mean?

Business owners may start to think backlinks are technical, aren’t they? And content marketing, that’s technical right?

Well these are parts of the SEO process for sure, yet technical seo is something different it relates to how your website functions, i.e are the foundations in place for an SEO strategy to be built from this.

So for example can Googlebot even read your website, or to be more precise and accurately describe this process in SEO language, can Google “crawl and index” your website.

So normally you can find someone or a group of people at a digital marketing agency that have the title “technical seo consultant”- so we thought it would be a mighty good idea to explain some of the tasks that technical seo consultants do for their clients.

Implement Schema

Your company website may well be full to the brim of interesting information, such as introducing each team member and explaining how the business blossomed into this large corporate business that it is today.

And this is all well and good, as us SEO’s would refer to this as “content marketing”- it explains what your business is about and what your business can offer.

Yet within all that text will be some really crucial bits of information that your SEO agency will need to know to improve your organic or local seo, such as your businesses NAP information.

So you guessed it, instead of having Googlebot search for this information, instead Schema is kind of like sticking big neon lights which say hey! The information you are looking for is here.

So if you know a thing or two about local seo, well you will know that an important part of the local seo process is have your businesses NAP details on your website, but with that said if you mark-up this information using Schema, well you are making the information standout, so Googlebot can find it easier.

Can your website be indexed?

Its all well and good having a website that looks impressive, but if the website can not be indexed, well its about as much use as a chocolate tea-pot.

So, do make sure that your website can be indexed, for example the website designers may have simply switched on the “no-index” tab, which means that your website can’t now be indexed, so work with your website developers plus your seo agency to make sure that your website can be crawled and indexed.

Reduce 404 errors and don’t kill off pages that have SEO value

You may have spent thousands of pounds on SEO over the years, and your seo agency may have been busy building high-quality backlinks to certain pages on your website.

So, if you then suddenly delete those pages, perhaps because you have a new range of products, or possibly because the website is getting redesigned, well you may lose the seo value that your seo company has been working on.

So let’s say for example you sell electric bikes online, and there’s a brand of bike that sells particularly well.

Yet, that manufacturer has brought out a new range of bikes, so you decide to delete the old page that sells electric bikes, and replace it with a new one, that has a new url.

Hmm, this wouldn’t be a good idea, as all the backlinks that were once directed at that page would be lost.

So if your thinking of deleting pages, well we would say contact your seo agency first.

Also, another think is 404 errors are annoying for visitors to your website, for example they may wish to have a look at an electric bike, but there now looking at a 404 error instead, so it’s a good idea to work with your seo agency to reduce your businesses 404 errors.

Thin content and also duplicated content

Here’s another top tip, if your website has pages that could be deemed as having thin content or duplicated content then you will need to change this in order to improve your businesses seo.

So what’s thin content we hear you ask.

Well, thin content is simply a page that doesn’t have much to say, so for example let’s say you sell electric toothbrushes online.

The page may simply read “Brand of toothbrush + model number + price”.

Hmm this isn’t going to cut it, instead you need a product description that offers more detail about that tooth brush.

Also, your customers are bound to have questions about the product that they do not have an answer to.

Such as does the business sell replacement brush heads?

So if your business does not want to have pages on your website that have a sky-high bounce rate, then we would highly recommend that you replace content thin pages, with pages that offer more detail on the product or service that your business offers.

Also your website shouldn’t have any duplicated work, for example if the product description was taken directly from the toothbrush manufactures website, then is likely to damage that websites seo that has copied it.

So here’s the thing, do not copy text from another businesses website as this can damage your businesses seo, for example a Google Panda penalty could be triggered.

If your business requires help with its seo then why not give us a call?