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Google Search Engine Optimisation

Google search engine optimisation involves tasks which should be completed on any website. We breakdown the Google SEO work into tasks based on different areas of your website.

With Google continuing to dominate the top position in the battle of the search engines it makes sense to consider how to optimise your site for Google, before considering Bing SEO, Yahoo SEO or any other contenders for your time.

Skip down the page for a printable page of things to keep in mind. Complete them all and you'll have a solid website on your hands.

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Google have the most user data from which to infer which search results are more relevant to your query. The more data they have the more relevant their results. The more relevant their results the more likely you are to use them when searching again. 

As a side note on how incredibly intelligent the Google algorithms are these days, consider that their AI engines have been used to find planets in a way never before possible.

All of this means that you should take what Google wants from your website very seriously.

An example of a 3B client where a 33% increase in organic search traffic is attributable to the Google specific SEO work carried out over the past 12 months.

An example of a 3B client where a 33% increase in organic search traffic is attributable to the Google specific SEO work carried out over the past 12 months.

A 33% increase in traffic can, if conversions are optimised, result in a substantial growth of inbound business enquiries.

You might not be doing anything inherently wrong but even so it is likely that making small changes to your site could have a noticeable impact on your incoming web traffic over time.

See another example for a much larger website below:

Though the annual increase here was 16.5% only, this resulted in an annual increase of nearly 1 million page views over the year.

Though the annual increase here was 16.5% only, this resulted in an annual increase of nearly 1 million page views over the year.

So what can you do to see Google SEO results like this for your website?

Many of these topics are likely familiar - but they are essential, and you may not be making the most out of them.

Search engine optimisations tasks for any website

  1. Use unique page titles which describe the content of the page

  2. Use heading tags appropriately 

  3. Use heading 1, 2 and 3 tags to outline the structure of your content, not for styling purposes alone.

  4. Publish content that is well written and easy to follow

  5. Don’t rehash or copy existing content as this doesn't add value

  6. Improve the structure of your URLs using /category/article rather than just /article for example.

  7. Custom 404 page (allow for the possibility that a user removes part of a url)

  8. Use descriptive and intriguing meta description tags

  9. Make your site easier to navigate on any device, use responsive websites and breadcrumbs rather than excessive dropdown menus

  10. Offer quality content and services

  11. Write better link/anchor text (i.e. look at our Drupal SEO guide)

  12. Optimise your use of images (compress them, do not put much text in them)

  13. Make use of free webmaster tools

  14. Make effective use of Robots.txt by 'noindexing' admin areas of the site, or unpublished or draft articles, while indexing every single piece of content you'd like to be found in search results for.

  15. Be aware of rel=“nofollow” for links. If you do not want to endorse a website but you want to link to it, then use nofollow.

  16. Guide mobile users accurately

  17. Promote your website in the right ways

  18. Do not make spelling or grammatical mistakes

  19. Do not try to 'game' the system.

Google search engine optimisation broken down by task

Page Title tag

  • Unique, Accurate Page Titles

  • Title should be in the tag

  • Unique title for each page on your site.

  • Can list website name, business or other bits of information

  • Titles should accurately communicate the topic of the pages content.

  • Do not - use vague titles or words unrelated to the content

  • Avoid keyword stuffing, or using lengthy titles which are unhelpful.

 

Description Meta Tag

  • Description should be in the tag.

  • Words in the description snippet on search results pages are bolded when they appear in the user’s query.

  • Description tags should both inform and interest users if they saw it on an SERP.

  • Avoid unrelated, generic, keyword-stuffed descriptions.

  • Use unique descriptions. You can automatically generate them for large sites.

 

Site Structure

  • Improve the structure of your URLs

  • Descriptive categories and filenames for documents on your site leads to you being more organised and sites crawling your documents better. It also creates easier friendlier URL’s for people who want to link to your content.

  • Use words in URLs.

  • Avoid lengthy URLs with parameters and session IDs, generic names like Page1, excessive keywords.

  • Name directories so they do not go to deep and remain understandable.

  • Avoid capitalising in URLs

  • Avoid multiple URLs showing the same content - set up a 301 redirect or canonical if you cannot redirect.

 

Make your site easier to navigate

  • Use breadcrumbs lists to allow users to quickly navigate back to a previous section or the root page. 

  • Allow for the possibility that a user removes part of a url e.g /news/2010/baseball to try and see either all news, or all news from 2010. Will they get a 404?

 

Prepare two sitemaps

  • One for users who are having trouble finding pages on your site - group these links by subject and avoid broken links! (HTML Sitemap)

  • one for search engines (XML Sitemap).

 

General Navigation

  • Try to avoid a navigation based entirely on dropdown menus, images or animations. A user should be able to reach all pages on a site via normal text links.

 

404 page

  • Have a custom 404 page that kindly gives users a way back to a working page on your site. 

 

Optimising Content

  • Offer quality content and services

  • Users know good content when they see it. Organic or word-of-mouth buzz is what helps build a site's reputation with both users and google and it rarely comes without quality content.

  • Anticipate differences in users’ understanding of your topic and offer unique, exclusive content.

  • Users enjoy content that is well written and easy to follow.

  • Do not make spelling and grammatical mistakes

  • Do not embed lots of text in images. Users may want to copy and paste the text and search engines can’t read it. (i.e. if you provide an infographic - then have the text on that page too.)

  • Stay organised around the topic. Breaking content up into logical chunks or devisions helps users find the content they want faster. I.E. Use paragraphs, sub headings and layout separation.

  • Don’t rehash or copy existing content as this brings little value to users.

  • Avoid having duplicate or near-duplicate versions of your content across your site.

  • Do not keyword-stuff, have blocks of text like ‘frequent misspellings used to reach this page’, or hide some text from users so that only search engines can find it.

 

note: New content will not only keep your existing visitor base coming back, but also bring in new visitors.
 

Write better anchor text

  • Links on your page, internal or external, should consistently link the same text to the same pages, so that users and google know what the page you are linking to is about.

  • Avoid ‘click here’, anything generic, using the page’s URL (unless you are promoting a new website address).

  • Make it easy for users to distinguish between regular text and the anchor text of your links. Content becomes less useful if users miss the links or accidentally click them. Avoid using CSS or text styling that makes links look like regular text.

  • Only user internal anchor links when they help with user site navigation, and do not fill the anchor text with keywords.

 

Optimise your use of images

  • All images should make optimal use of a filename and alt attribute for those using a screen reader. Another reason is that if using an image as a link, the text for that image will be treated similarly to the anchor text of a text link. Don’t use too many images for links when text could serve the same purpose.

  • Put all images in one folder to simplify the path to your images. Have the extension of your filename match the filetype and use JPEG, GIF, PNG and BMP image formats whenever possible. 

  • Use brief descriptive filenames and alt text.

  • An Image Sitemap file can provide googlebot with more information about the images found on your site. It’s structure is similar to an XML sitemap file for your web pages.

 

Use heading tags appropriately

  • Use heading tags to emphasise important text. There are six sizes from h1 to h6, 1 being the most important and 6 just more important than normal text. Heading tags are usually visual cues to a user that this text is important and could help them understand something about they type of content underneath the heading text.

  • Multiple heading sizes are used to create a hierarchical structure for your content - making it easier for users to navigate through your document.

  • imagine you’re writing an essay outline

  • Put some thought into what the main points and sub points of the content on the page will be and decide where to use heading tags appropriately. Avoid placing text in heading tags that wouldn’t be helpful in defining the structure of the page.

  • avoid use headline tags where other tags may be more appropriate.

  • avoid erratically moving from one heading tag size to another.

  • Use headings sparingly across the page

  • Too many heading tags on a page can make it hard for users to scan the content and determine where on topic ends and another begins. Don’t use them excessively, throughout the page or put lots of text in heading tags. Do not use heading tags for styling and not presenting structure.

 

Dealing with Crawlers

 

Be aware of rel=“nofollow” for links

  • Use nofollow for comment spam links, comment columns and message boards. Also use it to warn people

 

SEO for Mobile

  • Run your website through Google's mobile friendliness tools

  • Prioritise legible content rather than imagery as the page loads

  • Guide mobile users accurately with responsive menus and hierarchy

 

Promotions & Analysis

 

Maintaining your website

Consider hiring web developers in order to keep your website safe and secure today, and into the foreseeable future.

We can help you directly, or point you in the direction of decent help. Please contact us if you'd like to hear more.

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Email Marketing

Even with the advent of Social Media and its core engagement possibilities Email Marketing remains a key weapon in our clients' direct marketing strategy.

We at 3B have years of experience in producing impactful and effective email campaigns that track and report on user engagement.

Even with the advent of Social Media and its core engagement possibilities Email Marketing remains a key weapon in our clients' direct marketing strategy.

We have years of experience in producing impactful and effective email campaigns that track and report on user engagement.

From deep data cleansing to design through delivery and click-thru analysis we are able to handle the entire campaign process, and ensure that tracking codes, key landing pages and conversion goals come together to deliver clear and quantifiable Return on Investment.

We have extensive experience in delivering campaigns using Mailchimp, ConvertKit and Silverpop and are always happy to embrace new delivery platforms!

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Local SEO Services

We provide well informed Local SEO Services which boosts your local business ranking so you show up for relevant searches in your industry. Read this and you'll know what the quick wins for your Local business SEO are.

Your Google My Business page 

Want to show up for location specific searches in your industry? Read on and you'll know what the quick wins for Local SEO are. Following them will boost the chance your business gets in front of people searching for businesses like yours in your area.

#1 REGULAR REVIEWS ON YOUR GOOGLE MY BUSINESS PAGE

If you want to rank high on your Google My Business page, you'll need a consistent flow of reviews coming in. If you can make this happen weekly, great! If weekly is a push, then aim to get 1 new review Monthly at the very least.

If your reviewers mention the keywords you want to show in searches for, and the city you are in, then that's even better for your Local SEO.

If you don't have the time to chase your customers manually each time, talk to us about automating this process.

If you want to rank in local packs (the snippets on a search page), you absolutely need to invest in a review program. 

#2 PHOTOS ON YOUR GOOGLE MY BUSINESS PAGE

Our data suggests that regular keyword-rich reviews on your Google My Business page will get you ranking higher than simply adding new photos to it would. This is true even if you are adding high quality photos on a regular basis to your Google My Business page!

Photos do make a difference though, so don't think this let's you off the hook from taking photos relevant to your industry and posting them on your page!

Just take a look at the below: 

example_of_photos_on_google_my_business_page_for_Local_SEO_advice.png

Will you click on the paid ad or the shops with both photos and reviews? The Sushi Cafe and Tsunami look the most appetising to me. I was also tempted to click Japanese buffet restaurants just to see more photos of sushi.

Get your customers and staff posting regular high quality photos as often as possible.

#3 TRADITIONAL SEO ON YOUR WEBSITE

Traditional SEO factors still play a big part in Local SEO. If your website ranks well for search terms, then your Google My Business page will likely rank highly for the location-orientated versions of those pages. In other words:

if a sushi restaurant in London has a website which ranks well for the key word 'sushi restaurant', then the Google My Business page will likely rank well for 'sushi restaurant London' too.

It sounds obvious, and that's because it is. A lot of SEO is just common sense applied online, despite what people might have you believe.

Our data is that other than reviews and photos, the next best thing to invest in to get higher in Local search results is to ensure that your website is ranking well organically.

Talk to us about formulating a regular SEO strategy today.

#4 ENSURE YOU'VE COVERED THE BASICS ON YOUR GOOGLE MY BUSINESS PAGE

Claim your Google My business page.

Add a local phone number, add your business address (the one that’s on your website and local directories)

Add opening times

Get real reviews (don't fake them!)

Local reviews take time to acquire. Get reviews on Google first, then others like Yelp (used on Apple maps) and trust pilot.

Create a page on your website that gives instructions to customers on exactly how they can review your business.

If you need help with any of the above, feel free to contact us for a bit of help.

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Marketing Tools

It seems like every month a new must have marketing tool comes onto the market. Rather than dwelling on today’s new flashy thing, we advise sticking to tools which have stood the test of time.

It seems like every month a new must have marketing tool comes onto the market. Rather than dwelling on new flashy things, we advise sticking to tools which have stood the test of time.

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The goal of marketing is communicating your value to your potential customers, clients, partners, and society at large.

Tools help you to fulfil some purpose or goal.

What marketing tools do you need?

Every single one which offers you a return on your effort! A website is a marketing tool, so is a Facebook page.

The better question to ask yourself is 'who am I trying to reach, and why?'. If you can answer that question well, and you understand your customers, then finding the tools will be simple.

If you'd like help nailing down the specifics for your business, just contact us.

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International SEO

International SEO is paramount when business competition gets global. We manage the SEO for multilingual and multinational websites all around the world. Managing a family of websites in different languages means perfecting your hreflang tags, your country targeting and your content translations.

If you offer content in more than one language then you have a multilingual website. 
An example of this would be the DVLA in California offering instructions in both English and Spanish.

If you offer content which specifically targets users in different countries then you have a multi-regional website.
An example would be a North American Airline offering flights to Americans (English & Spanish) and Canadians (English and French).

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International SEO is important to understand if you manage a website for a company offering services which wants to be found by a multinational or multilingual audience.

Multiple versions of your website take longer to test and require a more complex infrastructure.

Basic international SEO strategies

  1. Signal the language of a page within the URL (.fr or /fr/ for example).

  2. Do not target a website with a country specific top level domain (.co.uk for example) at an audience outside of that country.

  3. If using a generic top level domain (.com or .org for example), despite wanting to target a specific country, set a country target in Search Console.

  4. Use hreflang tags to show Google where content was translated from, and who each translation is aimed at.

Comprehensive international SEO checklist

We outlined the most common problems that large, multinational companies might face and suggested solutions to deal with them.

Most of the SEO issues listed below can be found in the Google Search Console under a relevant tab. If you’d like us to save you some time, we can perform an international SEO audit for you. Read on to find out what that might include.

note: If you are doing international SEO on a shoestring, we can tell you the most affordable international SEO tactics to start off with.

1. Fixing Manual actions recorded on the site

A common and dangerous problem for your company is receiving a ‘manual action’ flag from Google. Hackers can find ways to display spammy links or content. If this is the case, the site has to be immediately cleaned. Google identifies manual action on the site as a violation of its quality guidelines.

Solution: send a reconsideration request to Google. By sending a request you are telling Google that you have removed any spam activity on your site and you have put measures in place to ensure that it won’t happen again.

Reconsideration requests are NOT processed by bots, Google employees dealing with them manually, meaning that you have to do it right first time, or you could suffer further ranking drops while the issue is pushed back to you by Google.

A successful reconsideration request should include the following things:

  • Clear explanation of the issues identified on your site

  • Description of how you fixed the issue

  • Documents to corroborate any actions you say you have taken

2. Fixing Mobile usability issues

Another important aspect of international SEO is to make sure that your webpages are mobile friendly. Google crawls your website using a mobile device these days, so getting this right is key. There are a number of problems that may have an effect on how Googlebot views your site.

Common mobile friendliness issues are:

  • the viewport not being configured as responsive AND/OR content being wider than the screen

  • illegible font sizes,

  • clickable elements being too close together

  • heavy webpages (i.e. larger than 2MB)

Solution: there is a free tool provided by Google that allows you to see if your site has any mobile usability problems. However, those issues can be complicated to deal with and might require a specialist developer.

Once issues have been identified and fixed, your international SEO ranking will increase, and you won’t be penalised by Google. If you feel like you need help fixing any mobile usability issues, contact our dev team.

3. Fixing crawl errors

If Googlebot can’t crawl your site, then it likely won’t index you favourably.

Solution: This problem probably has to investigated by a developer.

Google sometimes crawls websites with a battered and bruised 2007 smartphone, or old desktop and tablet devices. It is worth having a developer to look at the problem in detail for you, so you can understand why Google is flagging your content with crawl errors. Once you know the problem - you can get back in Google’s good books.

4. FIX Blocked resources Issues

To understand more about how a human would view the page, Googlebot renders pages fully when crawling them. You should therefore check that none of the resources across your sites are blocked from Googlebot, so it can build a truer picture of your site.

If Googlebot is indeed blocked from accessing components of your webpage, there could be myriad technical reasons.

Solution: You could check the robots.txt first. The issue might be broader than that, however. Your pages should be accessible to old and strange mobile devices - not only the obvious ones. Once the issues have been unblocked, you can request a reindexing of your sitemap.

5. Fixing href=lang tag errors

If you’re not technically-minded, you might need an explanation of what those errors are. ‘href=lang’ is a tag used to cross-reference pages with identical content but targeted at a different audience. Google may still find different versions of the pages on your site, but it is advised to use correct indication for language or region specific page. There are 3 ways to indicate those kind of pages:

  • HTTP headers. Add a language code to the URL using href=lang tag.

  • HTML tags. Href=lang tag with a language code should be added to the header of a language/region specific page.  

  • Sitemaps. Add elements to your sitemap to specify what language and region you want pages with different languages to target.

This is a cornerstone of getting international SEO right. The most common errors that occur when using this tag are:

  • use of wrong country / language codes

  • application of the tags that do not cross-reference (ask us about this!)

Solution: if you have any href=lang errors, they will be flagged in Google search console. You can easily find them in the “href=lang errors” tab. In order to deal with those and prevent errors from appearing in future, it is essential to identify whether those errors appear due to housekeeping issues (issues appearing due to the content creator error) or a broader system issue (problems occurring on a web-development or database level).

6. fixing 404 errors

Multinational companies that have individual websites for each country are very likely to experience problems with an extensive number of 404 errors. You can find all pages that display as a 404 error under the tab “404 errors” in Google search console.

Solution: Some international SEO agencies will recommend that 404 errors are redirected to the most relevant page, or the homepage. We follow Google’s guidelines on this:

  • if the content has moved elsewhere and old links 404, then the broken link should redirect to the correct place

  • if the content no longer exists, then a 404 is the correct response

  • If the 404 link is on a popular page, then the content should be updated to point to live content, instead of continuing to promote a dead link

Doing anything else is misleading to search engines (and is a confusing user experience!) Multinational Drupal sites concerned with SEO should refer to our Drupal SEO checklist which mentions the linkchecker module as a fix here. Linkchecker is a tool that scans your website for any broken/non-working links. Once identified, you should try and fix them immediately.

Different CMS’s like Joomla or Wordpress will have their own version of this module. Ask us if you’d like help finding the right tool for your site.

7. fixing Soft 404 errors

A number of pages might be flagged by Google as a soft 404. If the page is blank but indexed by Google, it will display a soft 404 as Googlebot only crawls the menu and footer. An example of a pages like that is an event page that has no events listed, tag pages with no tags, or any published content that has been saved as a draft. You can find if your site has any soft 404’s by looking at the tab - “soft 404 errors” in Google search console.

Solution: We'd recommend updating the page to present the 404 status code, or redirecting them to the page with similar content.

8. fixing Pages with broken links

Linking pages to high-quality content is one of the things widely used to improve SEO ranking. However you should always make sure that pages you link to are not displayed as 404 errors. In this case there are 2 types of 404’s - internal and external. Internal 404 is displayed if you link to any content on your own site that no longer exist or have been moved. External 404 appears if you’re linking to any other sites and the page you’re linking to has been deleted or moved.

Solution: as mentioned before, linking to high-quality content is one of the Google ranking factors. Linking to pages that no longer exist will drop you down in Google search. Once pages with broken links have been identified, you should remove or replace any broken links.

9. Fixing 500 errors

A 500 error means that server is experiencing problems but they can’t be specified. A full list of those errors can be viewed on the “500 errors” tab. International SEO Services will often involve the installation of a content delivery network a.k.a. CDN, which can cause 500 errors if improperly configured. If you’d like us to investigate if your CDN is properly configured, just let us know.

Solution: 500 errors should be investigated if they’re occurring regularly. If you can identify patterns in server errors, then you might be able to focus in on suspect scripts which run on a similar pattern. If the 500 errors are sporadic, then they may need to be investigated on an individual basis.

10. Fixing Errors or warnings flagged with sitemaps

All sitemaps should be submitted to Google Search Console to encourage Google to crawl each page regularly.

Solutions: remove any URLs which 404 from your sitemap. If there’s no content there, why are you asking Google to crawl it?

Remove any URLs marked ‘noindex’ from your sitemap. If you’re blocking robots from accessing the page, then why put it in the sitemap?

There are 32 sitemap errors in total which Google might flag to you might experience. Contact us and we will help you identify any errors flagged for your site in less than 15 minutes and propose the most suitable solutions to resolve them!

11. Add properties all variations of your site’s domain in Google Search Console

The four properties to submit are: www + non-www, and if you’re using HTTPS add both http and https. Those are identified as four different websites by Googlebot. It is especially important to add each of these and indicate the primary one if you just transferred your site from ‘http’ to ‘https’ or if you’re migrating to a new platform, keeping the same URL. Doing that you’d want backlinks from your old site to influence your SEO.

Solution: make sure to submit all four versions of your website and tell Google what your preferred domain is by ticking the relevant box in the Search Console. If you don’t set a preferred domain, Googlebot may identify different versions of your site as separate properties, making your backlinks less powerful.

12. Improving Page load speed

Page speed is not a direct ranking factor. However it influences bounce rate which has a direct influence on your Google ranking. Having a high bounce rate will drop you down within the Google search as pages will be identified as poor quality content. You can read more about page speed optimisation here.

Solution: there is a free tool provided by Google that allows you to check if your website is optimised for desktop and mobile view. The tool even gives you suggestions on how to improve, but most of the improvements require a developer help. Let us know if you’d like an SEO savvy web developer to look at the issues your website is experiencing today.

We are an International SEO Agency!

If you would like help implementing any of the above steps on your website, please contact us for some friendly advice.

We don't mind if your site is Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal or another CMS, we've done it all before!

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Organic SEO

The theory to great Organic SEO is to establish where you can improve upon what's already offered on the internet. If you can provide something better, faster or cheaper, then Organic SEO will mean your website can rise to the top of search rankings.

Organic SEO is the type of SEO which Warren Buffet, the renowned value investor, would be a fan of.

Organic SEO in Theory

The theory to great Organic SEO is to establish where you can improve upon what's already offered on the internet. If you can provide something better, faster or cheaper, then Organic SEO will slowly see your website rise to the top of search rankings.

Then, as you get more traffic through to your website, you can learn more about your visitors, and you can optimise your site to that traffic even more.

organic-seo.jpg

Sit back and relax

This keeps you at the top, and brings in 'Organic Search Traffic' to your website. If you do everything right, you can sit back and relax as people come to you!

If you'd like help establishing some Organic SEO Landing Pages on your website, please contact us and speak to an SEO expert today!

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The Importance Of Search Keywords

Search keywords with 4+ words (known as “long tail”) make up 70% of the search traffic around the world, and are where it’s easiest to make ranking gains (and to convert those gains into more leads)!

Designing your site around visitors’ needs while making sure it is easily accessible to search engines usually produces increasingly positive results over the long-term.

Many firms in your sector have probably not yet optimised parts of their site for search engines which leaves the opportunity open to you to do so.

On the other hand, many of your competitors are probably ranking above you despite your company being the more established! 

We can flip this balance around over time with a considered plan of attack, establishing you as the dominant provider.

search-keywords.jpg

Websites which rank in the top 3 spots for a search keyword see a 10-37% click through rate from search engine results pages.

This then quickly falls off to 1-2% by the bottom of page 2 (position 20).

To put this in perspective, for Coffee there are at least 246,000 monthly searches in the USA each month.

If we could raise the ranking of your website for that term to just the bottom of page 2, you could expect to see 5,000 extra monthly visitors on that term alone.

Of course, the people who search “Coffee” are less likely to buy from you compared to someone searching “Whole Beans Dark Jamaican Coffee” (if that is EXACTLY what you sell).

Search keywords like these with 4+ words (known as “long tail”) make up 70% of the search traffic around the world, and are where it’s easiest to make ranking gains, and to convert them into warm leads.

Optimising your site for a handful of popular search keywords, alongside as many 4+ word search keywords as possible should raise your incoming web traffic by a significant multiple over the next few years.

Once you’re up there on page 1 & 2, we will be able to give you the advice to keep the content super relevant, so we can keep you there!

In order to do this, we need to work with you to determine the ‘search keywords’ you want to rank well for.

We have a few suggestions for starting this process below:

Finding High Volume Search Keywords

Find 5 high volume keyword (use a tool like Search Keyword Volume Checker)

  • High volume Keyword 1

  • High volume Keyword 2

  • High volume Keyword 3

  • High volume Keyword 4

  • High volume Keyword 5

Long Tail Search Keywords

Now imagine how we could expand these search keywords into some “long tail” SEO landing pages in order to aim for page 1. We could do that by combining your high volume keywords with a sector or location.

As long as you don't create these in a spammy manner, and you provide valuable content to someone searching for the below terms, you'll benefit from your Search Keywords Research! 

  • High volume Keyword 1 + Location

  • High volume Keyword 2 + Location

  • High volume Keyword 3 + Location

  • High volume Keyword 4 + Location

  • High volume Keyword 5 + Location

  • High volume Keyword 1 + Sector

  • High volume Keyword 2 + Sector

  • High volume Keyword 3 + Sector

  • High volume Keyword 4 + Sector

  • High volume Keyword 5 + Sector


And so on...

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Your SEO Agency

We are often employed to develop and implement the technical SEO tips from a specialist SEO Agency because SEO agencies often don't have in house developers. We do it all in-house and have done since 1998.

3B are a tight team of London based tech geeks and web nerds. We design and build web apps from scratch, while offering an ongoing SEO support package alongside our technical support package. 

Already have an SEO Agency?

Several of our clients have a specialist SEO agency already on the books.

In such circumstances we are often employed to implement the Technical SEO recommendations which some SEO agencies don't have the ability to implement.

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We would advise any firm interested in procuring SEO services to find a firm which has both the soft SEO (content, meta tags) and technical SEO chops in their skill set.

Without both, they may be unable to optimise some of the core elements of your site's optimal SEO strategy.  

Most SEO agencies will begin by doing a full site audit, then creating and implementing industry specific meta tags with popular relevant keywords.

We understand that and can get behind that sort of work, so long as the meta tags still fundamentally represent the content the user will see.

If the content isn't good enough to retain the user after they've clicked through from a search results page, then meta-tag optimisation work is as good as pouring water into a leaky bucket.

For some watertight SEO advice, please send us through your brief today.

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Searching SEO Consultant London? Send Us A Brief!

Hiring us is cheaper than the cost of hiring a full-time SEO Consultant in London, yet we come with the fully rounded experience of a full-service digital agency.

We help businesses like yours to get in front of more of your potential customers.

We can come into your office and teach your writers how to publish for search engines.

We put together comprehensive SEO audits which allow us to deliver agile SEO for our clients. Agile SEO is similar to our agile development methodology.

We deliver site improvements on a monthly basis, in order of the impact it is likely to have on your inbound traffic.

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Reasons to appoint us as your SEO Consultant

We are cheaper than the cost of hiring a full-time SEO Consultant, yet come with the fully rounded experience of a full-service digital agency.

We have in house web developers and graphic designers which allows us to automate some of the more painful manual tasks associated with SEO.

To the man with a hammer everything is a nail.

We don't see websites as things to be improved from an SEO angle only, we see it from all angles. This means we avoid the common pitfalls which come from hiring someone with a large amount of niche experience.

We see the bigger picture, have a greater skill set, and want to maximise output for every ounce of effort put in.

We don't see SEO as the hammer to hit every nail. It's just one of the options available to us (and to you!) in our digital toolbox.

SEO services from a London SEO firm.

We implement a variety of SEO approaches from technical SEO to the design of product-market-fit which establishes your brand and creates repeat visits to your site.

We can offer your firm specialist and informed Pros and Cons to services such as Google AMP and Facebook Instant Articles. If you can only begin using one this year which one should you use?

Tracking and Optimisation based seo

We manage pay per click campaigns in tandem with on-page optimisation testing to ensure you get the biggest bang for your buck.

We keep track of your organic keyword rankings, ensuring that each query has an optimised landing page in order to grow your organic inbound traffic.

We understand the online advertising marketplace, particularly with regards to publishing, and which platforms and demographics could bring in the best margins.

We use sites such as Optimizely to inform design decisions in order to maximise your bottom line.

Being based in London, we also invite all our clients to meet with us on a regular basis to update them on their figures, and to ensure we're all working from the same long-term plan.

We see your website as a business tool to be sharpened and honed over time, with you at the helm and us in the engine room.

London-based case studies as an SEO Consultant

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Online Advertising

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Our Online Advertising Services

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Paid Advertising

Pay per click advertising is one of the simplest (and most expensive) ways to get traffic to your website.

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Our Paid Advertising Services 

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Internet Marketing Strategies

Deciding on the right internet marketing strategy for your company can be challenging given all the information out there on the subject. We have been answering this very question since we started building websites in 1998, as a result - we hope this page helps you.

Deciding on the right internet marketing strategy for your company can be challenging given all the information out there on the subject. Google returns 3.1m results for such a search.

Given this paradox of choice, how do you go about determining the right strategy for you? We have been answering this very question since we started building websites in 1998, as a result - we hope the below helps you.

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The internet is just a platform -> marketing is for people

The individual is the person who sees your brand, reads your content, forms a relationship with and ultimately buys from you. Listen to anything by UK Advertising Legend Dave Trott and enjoy a refreshing take on how marketing must not lose sight of the individual, and your product.

Forget the widgets and the platforms for a moment, they are simply a means to an end. The 'end' in this case being a potential customer learning about you and your product.

Questions to answer when formulating an internet marketing strategy

Write down answers to the following questions:

  1. When someone first interacts with your company, what will they see?

  2. Will this explain your product, your service, and your uniqueness?

  3. Have you tested to see if this explanation can be improved upon?
    Try using a tool like usertesting.com to get rapid answers to this!

  4. Do you understand your potential customer?
    If not - do some market research! The long interview process outlined in chapter 2 of the New Business Road Test can help here. The chapter is entitled "How to learn what you don’t know you don’t know"

  5. Do you understand your current customers?
    Do you know where they spend their time? Facebook? Twitter? Snapchat? Linkedin? Pinterest? Their email inbox? Whatsapp? And so on... If you can't answer this question, you need to do some research. Phone your most valuable customers and ask them how they spend their time.

Putting together an agile internet marketing strategy

An agile marketing strategy lasts for 3 to 6 months, and is revisited and tweaked as new information is gathered on the performance of each element.

We typically include the following elements in an 3-month internet marketing strategy:

  • Review of website content and value proposition

  • Page speed optimisation on your website

  • General site audit (following best practice guidelines)

  • Review of conversion optimisation opportunities

  • SEO Audit and scope for improvements (i.e. what content is performing well, and what are the next best steps?)

  • Social strategy for web backlinks, audience building and direct engagement

  • Paid advertising once conversion optimisation has been carried out

Send us a brief and we can help you to interweave the above elements into a coherent marketing strategy.

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Useful Online Marketing Tools

Though this online marketing tool list is by no means extensive, we have provided a list of some of our favourite tools here. All are useful in terms of tracking your online presence, building your social following, providing you with marketing/user insights, or driving traffic to your website.

Though this list is by no means extensive, we have provided a list of useful online marketing tools below. They could be useful in terms of tracking your online presence, building your social following, providing you with marketing/user insights, or driving traffic to your website.

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A list of some of our favourite Online Marketing Tools

  • Convertkit

  • Drupal SEO modules

  • Everliker

  • Facebook Ads

  • Facebook Pages

  • Google Adwords

  • Google Analytics

  • Google My Business

  • Google Sheets and the Add-Ons and Power Tools which come with it which allow us to do web scraping, and some free SEO analysis

  • Google Webmaster Tools\

  • Hootsuite

  • Hubspot

  • Instagram

  • LinkedIn

  • Mailchimp

  • Mailgun

  • MetaSEOInspector Google Chrome Extension

  • Niche online communities

  • Optimizely

  • Pinterest

  • Reddit

  • SEO News websites we subscribe to

  • Screaming frog

  • Scrutiny

  • Sendgrid

  • The Squarespace Blog and Analytics apps for iPhone and Android

  • Twitter

  • Visitorqueue

  • Zendesk's help centre

The real win is getting the above tools to talk to one another in order to provide maximum value to us and to our clients.

If you'd like to discuss integrating some online marketing tools with your sales pipeline, please contact us!

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Project Management

From research to planning, design, development, training, deployment, launch and support, we have the project management processes in place to robustly handle a project of any size.

We are a technology-led digital agency specialising in deploying Open Source web solutions, delivered in an agile project management environment. We adopt 'Scrum' methodology as a means of ensuring total project transparency between all departments. This allows for faster and more collaborative design and development internally and with the client.

We are heavily immersed in cloud-based management tools – this ensures complete transparency with the client with respect to hours spent, feature prioritisation & communication.

We work with the client initially in a consultative or business development capacity, to best understand their business model, company goals and processes. This allows us to establish key aims for the project with the client, against which the success of the project can be measured.

The web is a changing environment and our ideal customer relationship will most-often begin with a project, but continues long-term and evolves as their needs and business grow. We have a number of very happy clients we have served for many years.

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Our Project Management Process

Research & analysis

  • in-depth meeting with client

  • establish business objectives

  • segment audience into user groups

  • obtain assets

Planning

  • specify deliverables, stakeholders, timeline, expectations

  • project scope document for signoff by client

  • establish metrics by which to measure success of project against business objectives

  • quality assurance

  • produce information architecture

Design

  • iterative process of wireframing, HTML prototypes

  • establish design rules, brand guidelines, typography

  • assess user interface and user experience aims

  • obtain feedback from client

Development

  • agile process encourages change and flow

  • constant client feedback through iterations with regular deliverables

  • documentation of code

  • testing: unit testing, user experience testing, acceptance testing

Change Management

  • problem reports which identify bugs which must be fixed

  • system enhancement requests "now I'm seeing this I'd like to suggest that we add this feature too".

Training

  • access to 3B's online knowledgebase

  • custom guides for each client - text, images, screencast videos as appropriate

  • face-to-face training

Deployment

  • best practice

  • 50+ "pre flight checks" prior to launch (security, SEO, speed optimisation etc)

  • SEO submissions to search engines (automated sitemaps etc)

Launch

  • assist client with press releases

  • case study for open source community

  • universal praise!

Maintenance & support

  • ongoing access to knowledgebase and support portal - online, email, phone support

  • security updates to web software

  • managing changes in underlying structures and or standards (e.g. a new operating system, platform or regulation such as GDPR)

Please note that we do not and will not outsource any of the effort involved in any design or development project.

When you use our support portal, or call the office here in London, you will be dealing with the designers, developers and project managers directly involved with your project.

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Drupal Developers

Getting Drupal developers involved in your Drupal build would be wise. As a strong contender for an long term and enterprise-grade content management system, it continues to scoop high profile builds one after another.

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Drupal is a strong contender as an investment in an enterprise-grade content management system. It continues to scoop one high profile build after another.

An excellent example of a Drupal website is BBC Good Food, a social cooking platform.

Drupal developers rapidly build sites which are flexible, dependable and scalable.

Drupal websites benefit from an increasingly powerful array of feature-filled modules available to plug in directly to your website.

With front-end editing and admin skins, the interface is very user friendly.

It's a more intelligent version of the widely-used Wordpress CMS, favoured by grown-up companies wanting to build and scale their own custom features with ease.

Drupal requires custom development help in order to best utilise the powerful database, to 'featurise' custom modules, and to tweak the complex system underlying a Drupal build. This shouldn't put you off, however. It is this very factor which makes Drupal such a clever choice for an enterprise-grade website.

Drupal is the platform which doesn't shy away from mad ideas, and it doesn't break the bank either! 

There are situations in which a Drupal site can be built without a developer on hand, but these are few and far between.

A word of warning: Drupal site builds can be attempted by someone with a reasonable understanding of the web (think html, css, javascript and php). In such cases the site is often built without regard for ‘best practice’ and something as simple as a database error can crash the whole site and render it irrecoverable.

It's for this reason that site back-ups come as standard with any 3B Drupal projects!

Drupal development services we offer

We follow industry-tested best practice processes regarding Drupal builds at 3B which means we can offer the following Drupal development services to you:

  • Custom features/modules

  • Custom search with Algolia

  • 3rd party image hosting with Cloudinary

  • Custom and fully responsive template

  • Installation and configuration of best practice Drupal modules

  • Honest advice on whether Drupal 7 or Drupal 8 is right for you

  • Wordpress to Drupal migration

  • Joomla to Drupal migration

  • Drupal to Drupal migration from 6 to 7 or 7 to 8

  • Magento to Drupal migration

  • Umbraco to Drupal migration

  • Search optimised websites

  • Multi lingual websites

  • Membership based and social network style websites

Learn more about what Drupal is!

Our Drupal work

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Joomla Developers

We are Joomla Developers. Since Joomla! was released back in 2005, the web developers here at 3B have been in among the founders helping to suggest tweaks and improvements to the benefit of our clients.

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Since Joomla! was released back in 2005, the geeks here at 3B have been in amongst the founders helping to suggest tweaks and improvements to the benefit of our clients.

Joomla 1 now seems like an age ago, and even though we still have some fond Joomla 2 memories, we are absolutely on board with Joomla 3.

The two are reasonably representative examples of the sort of organisations for which Joomla is appropriate. Squarespace is simpler, and Drupal is more powerful, yet Joomla sits somewhere in between as an ideal CMS for schools, member sites, and associations.

Learn more about what Joomla is!

Our Joomla websites:

Do you need a Joomla Developer?

If you'd like to discuss whether Joomla is the right CMS for you, please don't hesitate to send us a brief, or just give us a bell.

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Search Engine News - What To Read And What Not To Read

SEO News happens so fast that you can't rely on one resource. We would therefore recommend subscribing to the following sources of SEO news sources.

We love books here at 3B on business, design and marketing strategy. However, books on SEO are often outdated by the time they're published! 

SEO News happens so fast that you can't rely on one resource.

We would therefore recommend subscribing to the following sources of SEO news sources.

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Data security & gdpr regulations

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) - written about, debated, chewed over and overtly panicked about - is an exciting opportunity to manage your data properly once and for all.

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The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) - written about, debated, chewed over and overly panicked about - is an exciting opportunity to manage your data properly once and for all.

The new GDPR regulation is the most radical change to data privacy and security legislation in the last 22 years. If you’re running a business that involves keeping data on EU residents, it’s worth making sure you’re compliant with the new regulation to avoid the fine of up to 4% of worldwide turnover.

The deadline to be compliant with the new GDPR regulation was 25th May 2018, if you missed this - don’t panic - read our advice articles below.

The GDPR directive was updated to reflect the reality of our present digital era. The internet and wide use of social media for leisure (and increasingly business) has transformed how people live and work. Free services are offered to you in exchange for heaps of your personal data. Tricking you into accepting baffling terms and conditions used to be enough to collect and store personal data but from now on companies can’t do that without consequences. 

Reasons for the new rules are the increased number and magnitude of data breaches over the past few years. GDPR regulations aim to make types of data collected and its purpose transparent for consumers like you and me. Consent has to be easy to understand and access (hence no more “do not tick this if you want to NOT receive emails from us”). Withdrawal of permission to process any personal data must be made easy.

Data Protection Fines and Sanctions

The fine for not being compliant with certain GDPR articles could go up to €20M or to 4% of your annual revenue depending on which is greater. The potential fine is huge to emphasise the importance of securing any data you hold from breaches and cyber-attacks. 

Storing your data securely must be a priority for a business of any size. You must make sure that the data you hold can only be accessed by authorised personnel. Any unnecessary data should be deleted straight away, likely in accordance with a data retention policy.

The conditions for deleting data could be twofold:

  1. The data is not relevant anymore given the original purpose of collection

  2. Consent has been withdrawn by the individual concerned

A person has a right to access data stored on them including how their data was collected, the purpose of collection, ways of processing, and storage duration.

GDPR regulation involves businesses of any size

Security and encryption can be affordable and simple for small or medium-sized businesses given the many helpful tools available. 

Your next step would be to determine how GDPR applies to you exactly, and to identify which changes are required to become GDPR compliant asap. A security breach may happen for a number of reasons. Computer viruses, system failures or cyber attacks, to name a few. Once your device is online, anywhere at all, you should be considering how your data is at risk.  

3B Digital can ensure that you are compliant both at the point at which your customers’ data is recorded and ongoing. Rest assured that if you are well aware of your data management obligations, with us watching your back, you're in safe hands.

Our Data Security Team

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NOTE that 3B Digital Ltd is a technical delivery house; we are not lawyers and our advice and guidance - especially in matters relating to data security and the like should be subject to legal review and approval.

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Corporate ID & Branding

Our offering includes logo IDs, brandbooks & guides and style sheets applicable to both print and digital platforms.

Very often we get to work with clients on their core branding and ID - they might be a startup enterprise in the very early days of their existence or a well established corporate brand with a need to simply refresh for the digital age.

Either way we can bring our broad and deep brand experience to bear when brainstorming and presenting our ideas.

Our offering includes logo IDs, brandbooks & guides and style sheets applicable to both print and digital platforms.

The following is a brief but representative snapshot of the sort of work that we do in this area.

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Live Streaming Video and Audio & 4K Productions

We help clients with every aspect of online video and audio, providing camera crews, film editors, composers and directors, through to hosting these highly shareable "Social Objects" and displaying them live in the site and across Social Media profiles.

We help clients with every aspect of online video and audio, providing camera crews, film editors, composers and directors, through to hosting these highly shareable "Social Objects" and displaying them live in the site and across Social Media profiles.

Our portfolio features video from many sources, including live webcam feeds, customised YouTube TV Channels as part of a strategic marketing campaign and even live high definition professional videos.

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