The SEO industry is one that is constantly evolving – thanks, mostly, to Google’s sporadic algorithm updates – but despite its changes, in both practice and reputation, it’s still an essential part of any digital strategy. Research shows that the first result in Google will receive 36.4% of all the clicks, so if you reach the number one spot, you will capture over a third of the potential audience automatically.

However, reaching that coveted position is not always an easy task. The days of excessive backlinks and keyword stuffing are long gone, and have been replaced by a requirement for genuinely helpful, high quality content. Most companies are already using blogging, email marketing, social media, and many other text and image based mediums to provide this – but what many do not realise is that video can help with SEO too.

YouTube is now the second biggest search engine in the world; it has more than 1 billion unique users each month and in 2011, had around 140 views for every person on earth. Google has even started including ‘rich snippets’ – information about videos that are available on particular pages – in their organic search results – and embedding video into your company homepage is therefore, unsurprisingly, a great idea for SEO. In fact, used properly, video can increase your chances of achieving a front-page Google result by a staggering 53x.

If your business is looking for SEO assistance and hasn’t yet considered video, now is a very good time to start!

SEO link building is becoming more and more controversial, as Google continually updates its algorithm to weed out anybody that’s not playing the rules. Nowadays, stuffing random links in to websites and articles could get you into a lot of trouble – instead, you have to make the effort to build links in a genuine way that will add value for your users. If you need to boost your site ranking, but want to stay in Google’s good books, here are useful three ways to build your link profile without veering into black hat SEO territory.

Write a guest blog

Inbound links are a great source of SEO assistance, but they have to be created carefully in order to avoid any implications of spam. Writing guest blogs is a legitimate, helpful way of providing useful information for external readers and giving your own site a little boost – plus, it allows you to show off your expertise to a whole new audience and be seen as a thought leader in your industry.

Share on social media

If you write a blog, an article or other piece of genuinely useful content, try sharing a link to it on your social media sites. ‘Social signals’, as Google calls them, are becoming increasingly important for any business that wants to rank well, so sharing your work keeps your profile active and adds a helpful link to your portfolio at the same time.

Create an infographic

Infographics are all the rage nowadays – they’re a great way of imparting a lot of key stats in a fun, engaging way. You can use your own research or culminate interesting stats from other sources (giving full credit to the original creator, of course). Not only are infographics a useful point of contact for your user, they also tend to get pretty good press – and if another company covers your work, you’ll gain links (and hopefully new fans and followers too!)

As a familiar household name and a company that’s been trading for more than 90 years, Interflora is probably one of the last companies you’d expect to be breaching Google’s rules in the hopes of improving their SEO. However, news broke last week that Interflora has been using links from a significant number of ‘advertorials’ to boost their standing in the SERPS, without using a ‘no follow’ tag – which is a strict no-no in the SEO world.

“In January, Interflora, in order to get ready for Valentine’s Day, paid newspapers to run stories which were only there to get links to improve their Google ranking,” David Naylor, head of SEO at Bronco, explained in an interview with Computer Weekly. “In SEO terms, advertorials are like gold dust, but have to be taken with care. Interflora went and did as many as humanly possible, and they really went too far.”

Although the punishment of Interflora is likely to be temporary, it still teaches other businesses an important lesson about the importance of conducting their SEO campaigns in a responsible manner. To keep your SEO campaign in Google’s good books, make sure that you:

• Approach advertorials with caution
  Google is bound to be keeping an eye on them, so keep advertorials to a minimum and don’t be tempted to pay for the removal of the ‘no follow’ on your back-link. 
• Keep link building above board
• Focus on building links from genuine, credible sources – for instance, by writing a guest blog for a site in your industry. 
• Prioritise quality content 
• As the saying goes, ‘content is king’ when it comes to the Google search results, so creating high quality, user friendly content that people naturally want to link to, is the key to SEO success. 

In the end, Google ended up not only penalising Interflora, but also the newspaper that ran the advertorials, demonstrating just how seriously they take such breaches of SEO best practice.

A new poll of US marketers has shown that digital marketing now vastly outstrips traditional marketing methods. The study, which was carried out by Inavero for staffing firm Aquent and the American Marketing Association, was intended to uncover marketing trends for the next twelve months, and ultimately revealed one of the strongest correlations in results in recent years.

The key statistics showed the percentage of marketers which expected these previously popular methods to decrease in 2013:

• Direct marketing (9%)
• TV (21%)
• Radio (24%)
• Consumer magazines (28%)
• Newspapers (32%)

However, these percentages of marketers believe the following strategies will increase over the next twelve months:

• Email campaigns (56%)
• Blogging (63%)
• SEO (68%)
• Social media (76%)
• Mobile media (82%)

So what does this mean for your business? Well, whilst these are stats from the USA, the trends are reflected in current marketing strategies around the world, and although traditional marketing methods shouldn’t necessarily be forgotten completely, this is yet another survey that proves that the future of marketing is digital.

As we have discussed time and time again on the NS Design blog, mobile marketing looks to be the strongest trend of all, so first and foremost it’s essential to get your website optimised for mobile users. Then it’s time to focus on your social and SEO strategies, ensuring that everything from keyword selection to demographic research is up to date.
What do you think – will you be changing your marketing focus as a result of Inavero’s research?

In light of contemporary disciplines like social media marketing and search engine optimisation, email marketing is often seen as a somewhat outdated marketing method. However, what many businesses don’t realise is that it’s not the medium that’s outdated, but their approach towards it – too many companies are still using the same stale email tactics that have been circulating for years. If you’re stuck in a rut and want to modernise your email approach, follow these three simple steps:

1. Optimise for mobile

According to a study by Knotice, more than a quarter of all emails are now opened on a mobile device. If your email isn’t optimised to be viewed on tablets and smartphones, you could be missing out on more than 25% of your prospective audience. Make sure your emails look just as good on mobiles as they do on desktops to ensure maximum read rates and engagement.

2. Personalise

These days, sending out a mass message with the same content for every consumer just isn’t going to cut it – modern emails have to be personalised in order to remain competitive. In fact, the Adestra July 2012 report revealed that emails with personalised subject lines are 22.2% more likely to be opened, showing that simply including your recipients’ names increases your chances of your emails being read.

3. Keep it short and sweet

Contemporary consumers may always be switched on, thanks to their portable mobile devices, but they’re also busier than ever, and don’t have time to read a lengthy, time consuming message. The same Adestra survey showed that subject lines with 30 or fewer characters performed above average in open rate, click rates and click to opens. Tailor your text to this straightforward approach and you’ll start to see results.

New research from Econsultancy and Responsys Marketing Budgets 2013 Report has shown that almost 3 out of 4 businesses intend to increase their digital marketing budgets this year – whilst only 20% intend to increase funding for their offline marketing pursuits.

The survey, which took into account opinions from more than 800 professional marketers, also highlighted particular digital areas where the increased funding would be pinpointed. The top five results were:

• Content marketing (70%)
• Search engine optimisation (65%)
• Email marketing (65%)
• Social media investment (62%)
• Mobile marketing (61%)

It is unsurprisingly that content marketing has come out on top, particularly when a previous Econsultancy survey showed that 90% of professionals predicted that the area would become increasingly important throughout 2013. However, with more than half of all respondents planning to increase their funding to all five of these disciplines, it is fair to say that digital marketers should be focusing on all of these important aspects as part of their strategies.

However, whilst digital marketing budgets are set to increase, and marketers seem to have a good idea of the areas they will turn their attentions to, they are still finding it difficult to measure the return on their investment. Only 50% of Econsultancy’s respondents claimed that they had a ‘very good’ understanding of their digital ROI, and 18% went as far as to say that their understanding was ‘very poor’.

Digital marketing is a valuable resource for any modern company, but it’s essential that marketers try to get a grasp on the results that it produces. Do you know how to measure your company’s digital ROI?

Choosing responsive web design is, for many companies, a no brainer. In a world where more than half of UK consumers own a smartphone, and almost 20% own a tablet, optimising your website so that it provides a consistent viewing experience across a variety of platforms just seems to make sense. However, there are a number of companies out there who still aren’t convinced of the benefits. If you’re one of them, maybe a look at our three top reasons for choosing responsive web design will change your mind.

• You’ll only need to build one site

  Yes, you can create apps for mobile devices, or multiple versions of your site, but why bother? Using responsive web design streamlines your entire web development process, so that you can focus on creating one well structured, easy to use version – whilst saving time, money and additional hassle in the process.

• You’ll be one step ahead of the competition

  Responsive web design is still a relatively new concept, and many businesses are talking about it without actually doing it. If you bite the bullet and implement responsive web design first, you’ll be offering your users a much more satisfactory experience than the underdeveloped websites of your competitors – making them more likely to use (and recommend!) your services.

• It can boost your SEO efforts

  Kristina Kledik of SEOmoz.org says that responsive web design can also work wonders for your SEO campaign. She puts this down to three essential reasons – its excellent usability, reduction of duplicate content, and ability to build links (“with responsive web design, a link to your main site is a link to your mobile site as well”). In fact, in June last year, Google was asked about responsive web design, and confirmed “this is Google’s recommended configuration,” – so if it’s endorsed by the world’s number one search engine, why would you not use it for your business?

To most people, Google is the definitive search engine. It’s even become ingrained in our day to day vocabulary – most of us barely go a day without using it as a verb (“I’ll just google it!”) and it’s even listed as such in the Oxford English Dictionary.

However, new figures from Experian Hitwise indicate that Google could be losing its iron clad grip on the search engine market, as its market share dropped below 90% for the second month in a row. Google’s share of the search market is now 88%, and whilst this means that it is still dominating a significant percentage of searches, this is its lowest point for five years.

The news comes just days after social media platform Facebook announced the launch of its very own search engine, a “graph” system based on natural searches of information shared between users. Although Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was quick to explain that their new offering isn’t intended to challenge Google – “We’re not indexing the web…We’re indexing our map of the graph” – it will almost certainly make a difference to the way consumers search for information.

It seems that the shape of search is changing; whilst Google is still top dog at the moment, Experian Hitwise’s statistics suggest other sites like Microsoft and Yahoo! are beginning to claw their way back. It will be interesting to see what impact this has on SEO – particularly if social sites continue to enter the search market too.

Digital marketing strategy these days is often centred on social media and SEO, in a frantic competition to get as many likes, shares, and retweets possible and climb to the top of the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Whilst these modern methods are essential to an overall online marketing approach, it’s important that companies do not forget about an old faithful technique in the madness. Email marketing may have lost its sheen thanks to the real time buzz of Twitter and Facebook, but statistics from the last twelve months tell us not to discount it from your strategies for 2013.

Econsultancy’s Content Marketing Survey Report from October 2012 showed that 50% of marketers still champion email as one of their most effective types of content – an no other kind of content came out with a higher percentage. Plus, according to a 2012 survey from Silverpop, click through rates for email are still higher than online advertising.

A StrongMail survey carried out in December showed that 56% of marketers plan to increase their email marketing budget for 2013, and revealed that they plan to incorporate it into their social strategy rather than seeing social media as a replacement. 65% of those surveyed planned to integrate email marketing with social media, showing that although it’s an older marketing method, email can still work in harmony with the new.

These figures tell us that email marketing still a major player in the digital marketing sphere. After all, it’s is an easy, economical and effective method of reaching a wide audience simultaneously, so make sure you don’t ignore it!

Research leaders Forrester have predicted that digital marketing will undergo a name change over the next twelve months, and begin to become known only as ‘marketing’. The loss of the prefix will come as “all marketers’ output will become inherently digital,” Marketing Week reports. With the ever increasing uptake of mobile devices, the all-consuming phenomenon of social media, and the busiest ever e-commerce period in history at the end of last year, it’s safe to say that digital marketing will continue to grow throughout 2013 – but is it enough to override all other marketing methods?

In the “Trends for the B2C CMO to watch in 2013” report, compiled by Forrester’s CMO and market leadership professionals analyst Corinne Munchbach, the prefix prediction is justified with a staggering estimate of budget. Munchbach’s forecasts go as far as to suggest that digital will account for 20% of marketing budgets in 2013 – that’s some $50bn dollars worldwide.

Whether you think that digital marketing needs to be specifically designated as such or not, it’s safe to say that you’ve probably done some sort of digital marketing throughout 2012, and will continue to do so over the coming year. Whether your company has invested in SEO, Pay Per Click advertising, email marketing or social media campaigns, digital marketing is an inherent part of every modern marketing strategy – so it’s a medium that’s not be ignored, even if you don’t think it should be abbreviated just yet.

What is your take on Forrester’s prediction – will you be dropping the digital?