FAQs

What is Online Marketing?

Online marketing, also referred to as digital marketing, is a culmination of various channels aimed to improve your business’ online visibility. The main three channels of online marketing are:

• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
• Social Media
• Pay Per Click (PPC)

Depending on the needs and goals of your business, you may or may not need to invest in all forms of online marketing straight away. If your goal is to appear on page one of Google, then SEO is for you. If you want to engage with your customers, social media is your answer. Should you want to target customers for quick conversions, then a PPC campaign is for you.

 

What’s the Best Website Platform?

We recommend WordPress as the best website platform to use for your business because it’s free to use, easy to get started with, well-supported, well-documented and is one of the world’s most popular content management systems (CMS). It’s a fully scalable platform that supports everyone from local family-owned stores to huge global names such as Disney, PlayStation and the BBC.
 
Whether you are selling physical products, digital downloads, want to promote your services or need a platform for booking appointments and events, WordPress can handle all that and more and can easily be expanded on with a huge library of versatile, specially built, dedicated plugins. 
 
Want to learn more about what makes WordPress the best? Follow the link to read more.

How Much Content Do I Need On My Site?

There is no right or wrong answer to how much content your website should have, but there should be enough to ensure that your customers’ questions are answered. Each piece of content should serve a purpose and cover all key points that the user will be looking for. While word count can be an indicator when compared with other ranking pages, your focus should always be on the quality and value of the content offered.

Text is not the only form of content that will benefit your website, with images and videos also serving a purpose and, thus, improving your website’s chances of ranking higher up the search results.

How Can I Get My Website On The First Page of Google?

There are numerous ranking factors that Google uses to determine what websites appear on the first page. Some of the basic ranking factors include:

• The type of page you are trying to rank
• The website’s value to the audience
• User experience
• Backlinks

Google releases new updates on a near-daily basis and, thus, ranking factors are evolving all the time, which is why many businesses opt for a dedicated digital marketing team to lead a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategy.

How Do I Find The Right Keywords to Use?

Through using tools such as Google’s Keyword Planner, you can identify keywords with high search volume and low competition. The higher the competition, the less likely it will be to appear on the first page of Google. Local businesses utilise localised keywords, so instead of targeting generic keywords such as ‘table and chairs’, they will optimise for ‘table and chairs in Newcastle’.

Finding the right keywords is equally as important when it comes to Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, if not more so, as keywords with a higher competition will cost more to show. By targeting specific keywords with a good amount of search volume, your adverts will display for an audience that is more likely to convert at a fraction of the cost of a generic term.

What’s Causing My Slow Site Speed?

Slow site speed can happen for a number of reasons but commonly resources are a big contributor to slow page load speeds. A good, fast-loading site has optimised images with compressed file sizes, little to no excess code (CSS and JavaScript) and is on a good size server that handles a reasonable number of file requests per second. 
 
Users can help keep the speed of their site within three seconds by properly optimising images by either using image optimiser tools and plugins (on WordPress websites) and reducing the number of file requests from individual pages. It’s also important to keep the number of installed WordPress plugins to a minimum where possible and keep installed plugins in use and up-to-date. 
 
Learn more about the causes of slow site speeds and what you can do to prevent frustrating page-load times here. 

Will PPC Help My SEO?

PPC will not directly affect your website’s SEO, neither positively nor negatively, as search engine’s such as Google does not consider any links curated as part of a PPC campaign as a ranking factor. PPC is best used when a short-term gain is the goal, such as if your business is pushing a seasonal offer.

Although PPC adverts will not help your website to climb the search results, there is the possibility of benefitting indirectly, as users become more exposed to your brand the chances of your listing being clicked improves. This means that the more often a user sees your PPC advert, they will be more inclined to open your website as and when it appears in the organic search results, improving your website’s click-through rate.

What Are The Best Free Tools for Marketing My Business Online?

There are numerous free online tools available that can offer value to your online marketing campaign. Some of our favourites include:

• Google Analytics
• Google Webmaster Tools
• Link Explorer/MozBar
• SEMRush
• Grammarly

You can view our complete list of favourite free tools for marketing your business online here and why you should implement them into your digital strategy.

What Should I Post on Social Media?

You should not be overly promotional on social media. Keep posts that exist for the sole intention of advertising your business to less than 20% of your total strategy, as per the widely used 4-1-1 rule. This can be broken down as:

• Four parts relevant content designed to entertain and/or inform your follower base
• One part re-shared content that you did not create
• One part promotional posts to advertise your business

While the 4-1-1 rule should be regarded as a guideline, as opposed to a rigid rule to form your social media strategy, it does provide a good place from which to start from.

Which is the Best Social Media Platform for My Business?

Picking the best social media platform for your business is dependent on what your company has to offer and the audience to which it is trying to attract. Whatever that may be, we would always recommend having a presence on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter as the big three social media platforms with over 44 million, 24 million and 17 million users respectively in the United Kingdom.


Other platforms that you should also consider using as part of your online marketing strategy include YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit, Snapchat and Tik Tok.