Everything you need to know about external links and SEO

Inbound links from reputable websites help your site achieve higher rankings in Google and the other search engines.

It is very difficult to achieve a decent search engine ranking for a web page without having incoming links from other websites. The search engines need to know that your page is relevant to others and incoming links prove that. In a way, it's like a popularity contest, however, with search engines it's not just the number ofincoming links that matter, it's the quality of those links and quality is about relevance and authority. Links from poor quality or questionable websites will actually damage your rankings. In this article we'll look into links in more detail and see how to acquire valuable ones that help build your search presence.

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SEO or PPC? Which is better for your business?

Pros and cons of SEO and digital advertising (PPC). Make an informed decision about which is best for your business

If you want your business to get noticed in the search engines, there are 2 main approaches. Firstly, SEO (search engine optimisation) which aims to improve the position that pages from your site achieve within the 'organic' or free listings. The other approach is to use a form of digital advertising (called PPC or Pay Per Click) to place ads for your site at the top of the search engine listings. As the name implies, you pay for each click on your ad. Both of these approaches have pros and cons and which one you use will depend on your circumstances (or you may chose to use a combination of both). This article goes into some more detail about the advantages and disadvantages of each approach so you can make an informed decision about which to use.

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How to write better content for your website

The 3 factors that influence the quality rating of your website content

Google wants to make sure that the pages that it places in the search results answer searchers queries in ways that show experience, expertise, authority and trustworthiness. It certainly doesn't want to serve up content that is weak, dubious or possibly fraudulent. In this post, we go into some more detail about these three quality factors (known as E-E-A-T) and show how you can write content that meets these quality criteria in a more effective way.

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Ecosia - a search engine that plants trees

Ecosia is a search engine that invests its profits into planting trees.

There is something simple that you can do to help counteract the climate emergency that we are experiencing - change the search engine you use. Ecosia is an easy-to-use and effective search engine that uses the money it makes to plant trees all over the world. All search engines make money from adverts placed on the search results pages and Ecosia is no exception. What makes them different is how they use that money. Find out more about Ecosia and how to make the switch (it's simple). You can feel good about every search you make, knowing that trees are being planted because of that simple action.

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7 great reasons to get a new website in 2022

The New Year is an ideal time to review your business website and see whether it is still fit for purpose or whether it needs replacing.

The start of a new year is a good time to review the effectiveness of your website. Is it still fit for purpose? Does it bring new leads? Are you making enough sales through the website? Does it still look good and make a positive impression on potential clients? Is it secure and mobile-friendly? As we all know, the internet world changes rapidly and what worked well last year may well not work so well this year. With all that in mind, this article gives you 7 solid reasons why you might want a get a new website or make some changes to your existing site.

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Google changes coming in May 2021

Google are making change to their search algorithm. Page experience will play a larger part with the introduction of 3 new factors, referred to as Core Web Vitals.

Starting in June 2021 (originally scheduled for May), Google are introducing some changes to how they rank page in the search results. Page experience will play a larger part and there are 3 new metrics, collectively referred to as Core Web Vitals, which will impact how page experience in measured. Pages that offer a better experience to users will, all other factors being equal, rank higher that those which don't. This post explains what these factors are, how to measure them and how to improve your scores.

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Tips to get more interested visitors to your website

Use keyword research to improve the positioning of your web pages in Google etc.

Keyword research is an important first step in helping to get your web pages found in the search engines. Find out how to use keywords in your content and also learn about the anatomy of a search engine result and how you can encourage people to click.

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Mobile Usage - Actions to Take

More and more people use their mobile smartphones to access the internet

This article looks at the growing usage of mobile devices to access the internet and proposes a series of actions to be taken by businesses to improve the effectiveness of their website for these devices. This includes ways of checking if your site is mobile friendly, thoughts about page load speed, AMP pages and search engine optimisation.

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Implementing a New Website

The importance of preserving the value in your website

It’s rare these days that we implement a new website for an organisation that has no existing web presence so, when putting the new site live, suitable consideration needs to be given to the old site. It is essential that we preserve the value that has been accumulated in the old site as far as possible. We also want to be able to monitor the benefits that the client gains from the new site. These are some of the activities that we undertake when putting a new website live.

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