Welcome to the not-so-mysterious world of search engine optimisation, where your site’s visibility determines whether it is the needle or the haystack in the huge online landscape. To make sense of it all, small business owners and inexperienced webmasters may feel as though they must possess the skills of an enigma codebreaker. But do not worry! I’m here to guide you through the confusing world of SEO audits and make sense of the technical SEO language.
Determining how well your website is optimised for search engines is the essence of an SEO audit. Think of it like a MOT for your car: it checks a variety of components to make sure everything is in working order and maximises the likelihood that Google and its friends will find your website.
Technical SEO: This refers to the specific backend aspects of SEO, such as website security, mobile friendliness, and speed (HTTPS is your friend in this situation).
On-page SEO: Content reigns supreme here. To make sure the material is as appetising as a Sunday roast for the Google crawlers, we’re talking about keywords, meta tags, and appropriate header usage.
Off-page SEO: Although they are less visible, off-page elements like social media signals and backlinks can offer your website the credibility it needs to be among the cool kids in search engine rankings.
By doing this assessment, you can get a detailed breakdown of what you’re doing well and what needs some extra work. The final objective? To improve the SEO score of your website and move up the search results page.
Your website’s credit rating for search engines is comparable to your SEO score. It’s a ranking that indicates how optimised your website is out of 100. The better your site is optimised and the more probable it is that you will appear on Google’s first page—the promised land—the higher your score.
It’s important to keep in mind that this score is merely a general indication offered by SEO tools to help you with your optimisation efforts; it is not an official Google grade. Better visibility and a respectable score go hand in hand, so what is our recommendation? Consider your score and adjust as necessary!
Are you prepared for a basic introduction to SEO success? Let’s get started. The SEO audit is the first thing to do. You may find a lot of tools to help you with this, ranging from more in-depth solutions that can get to the specifics of your website’s SEO health to freemium options like Google’s own Search Console.
After receiving your audit, it’s time to put those suggestions into practice. Make sure your website loads quickly, fix any broken links, and make sure it looks great on mobile devices. Not sure where to begin? BrisTechTonic can help in situations when a little expert elbow grease might be exactly what’s needed.
Now, armed with an SEO audit, let’s discuss essential tips for improving your SEO score. Focus on the following:
Keywords: Use appropriate terms to draw in the right kind of traffic. Not a word that would baffle your grandmother!
High-quality content: Provide content that responds to the inquiries of your users. Visitors are encouraged to stay longer on websites with helpful and engaging content, which lowers the dreaded bounce rate.
Meta descriptions: These brief summaries have the power to entice visitors to visit your website. Consider them the chat-up lines for your website; make them succinct and pertinent.
Backlinks: The foundation of off-page SEO are backlinks. Search engines will view your website as more reliable and trustworthy the more respectable websites that link to it.
Each of these elements forms part of a holistic strategy to start climbing search engine rankings today. Remember, it’s a marathon, not a sprint – SEO benefits build up over time.
I hope that this has been a lovely, relaxing kayak in the shallow end of SEO for those of you who are just starting started. But I can guide you through the depths of this ocean that exists out there. Let’s schedule a discovery call to discuss how SEO may help you realise the full potential of your website. Together, we’ll make sure your website is running smoothly and prepared to win the race for visibility. With BrisTechTonic by your side at every turn, the road to SEO mastery begins here. Thus, why do you delay?
We are excited to share the news that Aimee Talbot will be taking on the newly created role at Varn, Head of Innovation.
As we start to see AI technologies transforming how we all live and work, it’s vital to acknowledge that the landscape of search and SEO will be impacted and will constantly be evolving. We wanted to ensure that Varn remains at the forefront of what’s ahead for our industry and for our clients. This new in-house role is designed to help us and our clients to stay ahead of the AI & innovation curve.
We asked Aimee a few questions, so that we can share what her new role will focus on, and to explore how this will help Varn to shape the future success of our clients. From understanding what’s next, as well as the need to adopt new tools, techniques & processes in order to have visibility online, Aimee shares her thoughts as Varn’s new Head of Innovation…
Absolutely! I’m so excited by my new role, which came about as a result of the many recent developments in search. I’ve been working at Varn heading up the Technical SEO team for over a decade now, during which time SEO has evolved considerably. Some of the more significant transformations in SEO have taken place over the past three or four years, necessitating extensive research and ongoing training in order to stay abreast of industry developments. With the emergence of Google SGE, and an increasing focus being placed on AI, a role dedicated to this innovation in search became imperative. With almost 15 years of experience in Technical SEO and a passion for all things Varn, I was thrilled to be offered this new responsibility.
The role of Head of Innovation at Varn aligns with a fundamental objective outlined in the Varn Vision Statement, emphasising our commitment to spearheading advancements in search technology and leading search innovation. Alongside the introduction of this pivotal role and ongoing efforts to build an internal team dedicated to innovation, we are strategically directing our resources towards four key pillars within this workspace, steadfastly maintaining our focus on these aspects throughout 2024. These main pillars of innovation include the following:
1. Search Innovation: The face of search is ever-developing and has been for many years – but with AI becoming a key driver behind search algorithms and generative search results starting to appear, we’re expecting to see many more changes throughout Search Engine Results Pages in the coming months. Our commitment lies in staying ahead of these forthcoming changes to SERPs. By gaining a profound understanding of these developments, we can strategically assess their potential impact on Google search results and, consequently, on our clients. This proactive approach enables us to align client websites with the latest search advancements and critical ranking factors, ensuring their compliance and optimising their performance in the evolving digital landscape.
2. Technical SEO Innovation: A vital part of our innovation initiative involves the enhancement of our Technical SEO service offerings, internal tools, and the ongoing development of our incredibly talented Tech SEO team. For instance, our commitment to excellence is exemplified through our tailored SEO audits. These audits are meticulously crafted to form a comprehensive search strategy for each of our clients. In alignment with the latest trends in SEO, we consistently refine and expand these audits, allowing us to remain abreast of the latest developments, and promptly adapt to any changes in the dynamic landscape of search engine optimisation – for instance, we have recently added sections to these audits for AI, web accessibility, and more.
3. Market Innovation: Another key focus for the innovation team lies within the wider digital marketing landscape. As an example, we are currently researching and developing new PPC scripts to help our Paid Search team surface additional data from PMAX campaigns. We are also researching and training in new market developments pertaining to automation, AI, machine learning(ML), natural language processing, LLMs and generative AI, to name just a few areas.
4. Ways of Working Innovation: We are continuing to develop our own Python scripts and GPTs here at Varn, in order to streamline and automate internal processes – and not just for small sites that are relatively easy to crawl, we also work with clients whose websites contain 100,000+ pages. This strategic automation empowers our team to allocate more time to SEO tasks demanding a nuanced, manual approach. Simultaneously, we are crafting a suite of internal tools that conduct automated reviews of key SEO elements. These tools are meticulously designed upon a bespoke knowledge base, granting us full control over their analytical processes and scoring mechanisms. Leveraging our extensive expertise, we can evaluate critical SEO factors, expediting data collection without compromising on the quality and depth of insights. This dual approach ensures efficiency without impacting the integrity and inherent value of our insights and experiences.
Remaining at the forefront of industry trends and embracing state-of-the-art technologies is imperative in the world of SEO, particularly in light of recent advancements. With global internet access reaching unprecedented levels, it is prudent to capitalise on this expansive audience potential by leveraging the opportunities presented through search. According to DemandSage, there are currently over 5.3 billion internet users throughout the world (more than 65% of the world’s population) – this number is expected to reach 6.54 billion by 2025. Therefore, expanding your outreach to encompass online users presents a significant opportunity for substantial growth in your potential audience. Remaining at the forefront of search innovation is crucial in unlocking access to this audience, as it plays a pivotal role in sustaining and optimising online rankings and visibility, and is a key part of outperforming your competition.
At Varn, we are passionate about the work that we do, and about delivering results for our clients. By consistently staying ahead of the curve and staying abreast of evolving search trends and patterns, we can expertly craft customised SEO strategies for our clients, ensuring successful and measurable outcomes.
One of the main updates our innovation team are currently focusing on is the development of Google SGE. We have been researching and testing SGE since mid-2023, in order to understand how it works, and how it might impact search results. SGE has been in beta testing since May 2023 and has been live in the U.S. since last August. It isn’t yet live in the UK, although it is expected to be launched here at some point in 2024. This is something we’re really going to be spending a lot of time looking into, and a development that we recommend all clients monitor, as this will undoubtedly change the face of search.
SGE is poised not only to significantly influence the visual landscape of SERPs but also to revolutionise the approach to content creation and optimisation for SEO. The emergence of AI-generated results seems to be pushing traditional organic rankings down these results pages, occupying more prominent space and thereby impacting organic impressions and click-through rates. Acknowledging the transformative impact of SGE, we are investing significant time and effort to fully understand its implications for both current and future clients. Our primary objective is to tailor and adjust our SEO strategies, ensuring clients can optimise their visibility within the dynamic and evolving SGE landscape.
There are a number of key SEO areas related to SGE that I would recommend placing focus on this year, in order to help you stay ahead of the curve. Here’s a sneak peak into the areas I would suggest prioritising over the coming months:
Aside from SGE, AI in general is another key area we all need to monitor throughout 2024. I posted a blog back in November about AI and the future of search, which is worth a read. We are also expecting to see key developments this year in Sustainability, and even more demand on GPTs – Not only out of the box GPTs such as Bard and Chat GPT, but also custom GPTs built on a bespoke knowledge base.
As part of our innovation goals and research efforts, we plan to keep clients and followers in the loop in regards to our latest discoveries. You can keep up to date with our latest innovation developments and find out more about what we’re working on by checking out the Varn Insights and by signing up to our monthly newsletter.
If you have any questions or concerns about innovation developments, or have a topic you think we should dive into as part of our innovation efforts, we would love to hear from you.
Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) transforms users’ search experience through generative AI. SGE enables users to ask more detailed questions in search, receive concise summaries of their queries, and have the option to engage in conversational follow-up queries. Currently, SGE is still in Beta and is being rolled out in multiple countries through Google Search Labs.
This article will look at how SGE is trained, focusing mainly on Google’s “Generative Summaries for Search Results” patent. This patent appears to describe the underpinning of SGE and provides insights into how it works.
Google’s SGE is trained on several large language models (LLMs) and has also been specifically trained for search-related tasks. For instance, identifying high-quality web results with associated sources that confirm the information provided in the output. These models work alongside Google’s core ranking systems to deliver helpful and reliable results that are relevant to search-user queries.
LLMs are machine learning (ML) models that excel at understanding and generating human language. LLMs are something that people have now become accustomed to interacting with on a day-to-day basis. Key examples include Chat GPT and Google’s Bard, which are underpinned by powerful LLMs.
LLMs are a form of Generative AI, meaning the AI model can generate something new. They can perform numerous tasks, including summarising, translating, and rendering text.
An LLM is made up of three key components: data, architecture (a neural network transformer) and training. The transformer architecture allows the model to handle data sequences, for example, lines of code or text sentences. Training is where the model learns to predict the next word in a sentence. The model will keep iterating and improving its predictions until it is reliable for generating sentences. Fine-tuning an LLM allows the model to excel at a specific task.
LLMs learn about patterns and language from the extensive data sets they are trained on. They can then create outputs for inputs. For instance, if we give it a string of text “can’t judge a book by its”, it will predict the next word and likely output “cover”.
SGE utilises a number of LLMs, including an advanced version of Multitask Unified Model (MUM), PaLM2, LaMDA and more. All of the LLMs are trained on vast amounts of data. Google uses multiple LLMs in SGE as it enables them to fine-tune the models to users’ unique needs, enhancing the search experience.
Google’s Multitask Unified Model (MUM) has been trained across 75 languages and has already been deployed on Google Search to improve the search experience. For instance, this model has been used to identify related topics in video content even when the topics aren’t directly mentioned.
PaLM 2 is a language model that excels in multilingualism, reasoning and coding. This is because it is trained heavily on multilingual text, large numbers of scientific pages containing mathematical expressions, and many publicly available source code datasets. Like all the others, this model is not limited to use in SGE. Google has also employed this LLM in Bard to enhance its language capabilities.
SGE is also employing Gemini to make it faster for users. Gemini was announced at the end of 2023 and is natively multimodal. Multimodal AI means it can understand and generate data across various modalities, including text, imagery and audio. Google noted they achieved a 40% reduction in latency for users in SGE.
The patent filed by Google in March 2023, named “Generative summaries for search results” was approved on the 26th of September 2023. It appears to be the patent underpinning Google’s SGE. This patent details an approach to using large language models (LLMs) to generate a natural language (NL) summary in response to a query. Meaning that the summaries are created in a way that is easy for a user to understand. The processes outlined in the patent are key to SGE. It covers not only how LLMs are utilised, but also where information could be pulled from to generate these NL summaries.
The patent also outlines how additional context will be considered for each query. This means there will be variability depending on the specific way a query is submitted or the context in which it’s asked. This explains why so many people researching and collecting data on SGE are finding so much variability in what shows up for them on different days or locations.
Additional information stated in the patent that could be utilised:
Google has stated that SGE may have knowledge gaps in certain areas and has, therefore, been designed only sometimes to produce a result if it concludes that it needs more knowledge to answer the query confidently.
Additionally, the patent describes a system where the generated summaries will be evaluated based on the probability that they are both reliable and accurate. Confidence measures will be used to assess the natural language summaries to determine whether or not to produce a summary for a specific query. For instance, Figure 2 from the patent outlines the method and illustrates how confidence measures are implemented.
Furthermore, it is essential to recognise bias when it comes to generative AI. Google has acknowledged that SGE could produce biassed results. Google have stated the following:
“The data that SGE is trained on is based on high-quality web extracted data that can exhibit narrow representations of people or potentially negative contextual associations.” – Google
Google has implemented multiple measures to try to mitigate biased results. For instance, they use adversarial testing in SGE. Adversarial testing “involves proactively trying to “break” an application by providing it with data most likely to elicit problematic output.” (Google). This aims to identify bias and safety concerns in the model and use this information to improve the model.
The SGE Google experiment is an exciting time for generative AI and SEO. At Varn we are constantly monitoring and testing the updates to SGE to ensure our clients can appear within AI generated results. We have recently looked at the overlap between SGE and organic search results and we are continuing to collect and analyse data as SGE evolves.
If you have any questions about SGE, how it works and how it appears to be impacting SEO, please get in touch with the SEO Experts at Varn. We would love to hear from you.
South West-based brand and communications specialist AgencyUK has announced record growth as evolutions in the company’s culture continue to drive unprecedented levels of performance, despite an economically turbulent period for many.
AgencyUK (AUK) achieved record numbers in their 2023 financial results, following two years of cultural alignment and investment in their new Senior Management Team led by founding members Sammy Mansourpour and Amy Stobie. The business has delivered 220% annual growth in revenue for each financial period since January 2020, putting them on track to becoming one of the UK’s largest independently owned agencies.
“Celebrating 16 years is a seminal moment for the whole agency. It really feels like a transition into adulthood. As an established agency business with a team rich in experience, it is in no small part down to our team embracing creativity and new technology. AI and data analytics have made a meaningful difference to our work, by fuelling our creativity and building in new features around advertising campaign performance. This has been instrumental for our clients, particularly those in the B2B space, where we have a particular foothold in the healthcare sector. And we’ve seen the agency grow exponentially because of it,” says Sammy Mansourpour, Managing Director.
In 2021, the Senior Management Team focused on expanding the agency’s client portfolio in the health, life science and pharmaceutical sectors, leading to a record signing of three top-tier new drug development organisations, as well as launching Our Future Health, a nationwide health research programme in partnership with the NHS, which now has over 1.2 million participants across the UK.
The agency now boasts a stronger B2B portfolio making up 50% of its revenue. The remaining 50% houses well-known food, drink, health and wellbeing brands, including beloved sweet brand Chewits, currently enjoying a renaissance since our amplified brand campaigns and award-winning work across social media.
In response, the agency has expanded its in-house teams by growing its creative department and assembling a new senior management team, recruited from its in-house fast track careers programme. Overall staff numbers have increased by 50% with a further 30% expected to be in place by January 2025.
“We are of course delighted with the performance of the business over the past five years, and we have no doubt that our long-term investment in developing the agency’s culture and staff careers plays a significant part in our success on the bottom line. We welcome turning 16 with open arms,” says Amy Stobie, Director.
The AUK leadership team has embarked on a comprehensive programme of cultural development, sustainability and community outreach. Framed around people, planet and community, these initiatives also form the bedrock of the agency’s commitment to being a certified B Corp since their accreditation in 2021, as well as an award-winning staff development and well-being programme.
Do you know if your SEO activity is working? SEO strategies can be complex to create and implement – and even more difficult to monitor and measure. If you are spending time, resources and money on improving your website for organic search, you need to understand the impact of your activity. Rather than focusing on a single performance indicator, we recommend a weighted approach which considers multiple metrics to give you a broader understanding of whether you are seeing SEO success.
For a clear idea of your SEO performance, consider these seven key metrics side-by-side: domain authority, number of ranking keywords, keyword ranking position, SERP impressions, organic search traffic, engagement rate and conversion rate. Below we explain each in more detail to help you develop a strategic understanding of your organic search performance. But first, it is helpful to have an overview of the process you would expect to go through when improving your website for search engines…
As you make optimisations (whether technical, onsite or offsite) your content will be more likely to be discovered and indexed by Google and other search engines. Indexed content can then begin to rank in Search Engine Results Pages for relevant keywords. If your website is considered by the search engines to be of good quality – for example, having a strong Domain Authority – you will see both the number of keywords being ranked increase as well as those ranking keywords move upwards to higher ranking positions. The quantity of SERP impressions will naturally also increase, as more people begin to see your content within the Search Engine Results Pages. This in turn will lead to higher numbers of clicks through to your website, directly providing higher volumes of organic search traffic. Providing this is high-quality and relevant traffic, you can expect to see the visitors here engage with your website and ultimately go on to complete your chosen conversions, such as making a purchase.
From this overview, you can see why it can take months for optimisations to translate to business KPIs like increased revenue. But once you reach that point, you can expect to receive high-quality and useful traffic. And that is why it is important to track progress indicators throughout the whole process. Now let’s look at our top SEO metrics and key performance indicators in more detail:
Domain Authority is a metric developed by MOZ which gives an insight into the quality of a website, and is helpful for understanding whether your content is likely to rank well for relevant keywords. But it is not the only option; other SEO software’s provide similar metrics which will also give you a sense of how trustworthy your site is considered by Google. For example, “Trust Flow” and “Citation Flow” from Majestic or “Domain Rating” from Ahrefs. Use one or all of these metrics to understand whether your site is considered to be authoritative and good-quality, especially in comparison to your SEO competitors. If you are lagging behind other competitors, improving your Domain Authority should be a key focus to help facilitate further SEO wins. To do this, work on making sure your content fits Google’s EEAT guidelines, and create an offsite content and outreach strategy to attract links from other quality websites.
This is a very useful early leading indicator for SEO activity. As with many of these indicative metrics, the number of ranking keywords does not give you the full picture when viewed alone. Afterall, some keywords may not relate to your most relevant site visitors. Or the rankings for each keyword could be languishing far below the all-important top 10 SERP positions. However, if you are working on a programme of content optimisations on your site and targeting a strategically mapped keyword landscape, an increase in the number of keywords you are ranking for will be one of the very first indicators that your efforts are having a positive impact, as your content begins to be considered by Google for a wider range of relevant topics and terms.
Once your online content is ranking for a good selection of relevant search terms, you can then focus on helping your landing pages to climb through the SERPs to reach higher places. The top spot in Google’s organic search listings will most often receive the highest share of clicks, with positions 2 and 3 also performing well. Remember that exact positions will fluctuate even for individual keywords – however, keeping an eye on the performance of your most important terms and watching these rise through the rankings will help give you a sense of your SEO success. This is also a useful metric to alert you to site issues – if you suddenly see some of your established top ranking positions drop, you will know to start investigating.
Use Google Search Console to check how the number of impressions your content receives changes over time. As your pages climb the rankings for a wider range of terms, you can expect to see more SERP impressions. That is to say, your listings are being seen within Search Engine Results Pages more frequently. This is an important step towards more people clicking through to your content, especially when combined with metadata optimisations to increase CTRs. We recommend looking at impressions from both a site-wide perspective and for specific important landing pages and search queries.
For many people, traffic is the only metric used to analyse the success of a specific digital marketing channel. And that’s because it is important! Use Google Analytics 4 to track the organic search traffic to your website (or to specific key landing pages) to get quick and easy top-level insights into SEO performance. However, it is worth remembering that SEO is a longer-term marketing strategy which can take a while to begin to send traffic to a website, which is why we recommend looking at metrics around keywords and SERP performance as useful lead-indicators when you first embark on search engine optimisation work. Finally, bear in mind that not all traffic is equal – if visitors are landing on your site before immediately bouncing away, or are unable to find the content they are looking for, there is further work to be done!
A useful metric to understand the quality of traffic that is being sent to your website, Engagement Rate in GA4 will tell you the percentage of visitors who arrive on your site and then actually interact with it. This could mean looking at additional pages, triggering a ‘conversion’ event, or spending a significant amount of time looking at content. Engagement Rate is therefore an extremely helpful metric to help you understand whether the visitors you are attracting via organic search are high-quality. This can help you to identify instances where there are mismatches between a visitor’s search intent and the content you are providing. It can also give an indication of the kinds of SEO content that perform best and should therefore be a focus in the future.
Similar to Engagement Rate, looking at Conversion Rate will provide useful information about the quality of the SEO traffic you are achieving. Within GA4, you can choose to allocate specific events as ‘conversions’. Depending on your business priorities, conversions are likely to be purchases, sign-ups or enquiries. Consider Conversion Rate in tandem with Engagement Rate to ensure that your SEO performance is driving high-quality visitors to your website who go on to take the actions which are most important to you.
Having trouble effectively understanding the impact of your SEO strategy? Not seeing the improvements you had hoped for in your organic search metrics? The expert team at Varn can help. Please get in touch to find out what we can do to support your ongoing organic search strategy. We would love to hear from you!
Having just wrapped up my exit from the agency I founded 12 years ago and moved into the consulting world, I’ve had a little time for reflection recently.
As I was recalling some of the clients I’ve worked with over the 25 odd years since I set up my first agency, and how marketing has changed so dramatically in so many ways, and yet in others, nothing’s really changed at all.
There was no such thing as digital marketing – no SEO, PPC, social media etc. – so you could be forgiven for thinking that everything is now totally and utterly different. And in some ways, of course, you’d be right. The Internet, social media and a million different marketing technology solutions have revolutionised the way we do things.
But in other ways – i.e. the fundamental principles of marketing – things really never change. And I think that, as marketers in a digital age, we sometimes need reminding of the basics. We’re very quick to jump on new and shiny things but, occasionally, we’re just as quick to forget the fundamentals.
Ignoring my pet subject of ‘content marketing’ and when it was invented – I’m pretty sure people have been doing it for a very long time before digital came along – here are a few quick examples to get you thinking…
It’s not rocket science… break down your audience into segments or personas and understand what makes them tick. Identify the right messages for each target group, and present it to that audience via a channel they actually use at the best time.
Back in the days before digital, how did we put together a marketing strategy? Well here’s what we didn’t do… start with a list of popular magazines, newspapers, radio and TV stations, throw in some outdoor advertising close to busy roads, and scatter the budget evenly between them (please tell me that’s not how you did it!).
But essentially that’s exactly what some companies do with the digital channels that are available today. Just because we have more ‘cool stuff’ available to us, doesn’t mean we have to use it all!
The advancement of technology is relentless. But, again, just because they’ve built it, doesn’t mean you have to find a way to use it! Over the years I’ve witnessed a repeating theme of companies embracing new technology because they saw something cool, got over excited and didn’t properly evaluate their actual requirements, and what benefit they would derive from the tech.
I’ve met several companies recently who have signed up to one of the all-singing, all-dancing inbound marketing software solutions or social media planning/scheduling tools at substantial cost to their business, only to realise that the platform relies on content to feed the entire process – something they’d overlooked completely – so they find themselves grinding to a halt.
One of my first clients owned a massive multi-storey department store in a pretty dodgy part of town which sold everything under the sun, from furniture to clothes and any other random job lots he’d picked up from the back of a lorry, I suspect.
At a time when authenticity (especially in the context of social and influencer marketing) is on everyone’s lips, it’s never been more important to understand your brand, and what it actually is, rather than what you’d like it to be, and carefully match your communications to your audience. You’ve worked so hard to get them to interact in some way with you – don’t let them down.
Recommendations and reviews weren’t invented for the Internet. Testimonials have always been powerful in marketing. Before the Internet, if you needed a plumber, or the roof fixing, what did you do? You may have used a directory like Yellow Pages, but you’d probably also ask around. Has a neighbour, friend or family member used someone that they can recommend?
Building in testimonials and proactively driving recommendations and referrals has always been one of the first things I’ve tried to introduce into my clients’ marketing material.
Back in 1994 we engaged a well-known cricketer to be a brand ambassador for a client. He turned up at events, and we produced a range of marketing material which featured him and the client’s product in ways that felt less like an advert and more educational. We leveraged his large fan base and trusted position to introduce our client’s product to a wider audience and make it instantly credible by association. Sound familiar?
Another buzzword hijacked by digital/content marketing in recent years is ‘storytelling’. I read an article last week in a reputable marketing publication, which started with this sentence: ‘Brand storytelling is gaining momentum in the marketing world, and with good reason.’
The same article then went on to define brand storytelling as: “Using a narrative to connect your brand to customers, with a focus on linking what you stand for to the values you share with your customers.”
Um… correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure that marketing principle isn’t just starting to ‘gain momentum’ in 2018!
Independent human-centred design consultancy Six, has kicked off 2024 in style by promoting Sally Gillo to Partner for Client Experience – making her the sixth member of the Board. Sally will be joining CEO John Argent, Partner for Growth Ruth Clarke, Partner Julian Barclay, Creative Partner Dickon Langdon, and Finance Director Alison Evans.
Over the last seven years, Sally has played a pivotal role in mentoring and leading the client experience team at Six. Her ability to build strong relationships by consistently delivering exceptional experiences has led to growing and leading the agency’s key accounts, including S&P Global, Lloyds Banking Group and bp.
As Six enters its 30th year, Sally’s promotion also reflects the agency’s increasingly strategy-first positioning. Central to Six’s growth plans, Sally will help drive the agency’s vision forward: to help every transformative strategy land with impact.
John Argent, CEO of Six, said, “Sally’s promotion is so well-deserved. Not only is she hugely talented, armed with great vision, energy and pragmatism, she has proved to be an exceptional leader and inspirational mentor within Six. Her drive and fresh perspective perfectly complement the blend of strengths in our Board – and will only help accelerate our progress in pursuit of helping solve our clients’ complex transformation challenges.”
Understanding agency salaries is pivotal for job seekers and employers alike. In this comprehensive guide, we delve into the average salaries for agency roles in the South West, shedding light on crucial factors influencing pay scales and considerations beyond just the numbers.
At ADLIB, we’re always keeping close to market trends and how things can fluctuate between organisations. Here, we aim to provide an overall range of salaries based on the spectrum of roles within the South West agency world. Factors that can influence one’s salary: the size of business and team, their location, the size and number of accounts you may be working on, management responsibilities, the industry sector, and specific marketing skills, will all have an impact.
While salary is a key factor, it’s not the only consideration. To attract the best talent, employers should also focus on:
This guide provides salary bandings for various Agency sector roles and their respective job titles, including:
By considering not only salary but also the holistic work environment, employers can attract and retain top-tier talent. Use this guide as a resource to navigate the intricacies of agency salaries in the dynamic South West market.
Explore current job opportunities or get in touch with one of our expert Marketing & Agency consultants.
Have you ever had the impression that you’re pursuing your online rivals’ triumphs like you’re playing a virtual game of cat and mouse? It’s time to give up chasing and take charge of the group. Knowing how your competitors operate in the complex world of SEO can help you propel your company to the top. Together, we can simplify rival keyword research and set you up for success.
In a nutshell, competition keyword analysis is SEO done like Sherlock Holmes. It’s the skill of figuring out the keywords your rivals rank for and how they use them to drive traffic. Putting on your detective cap, you may utilise expert SEO strategy to uncover your competitors’ secrets and utilise the information to guide and improve your own SEO efforts.
Imagine having complete awareness of your adversaries’ whereabouts and their forthcoming moves. That would be powerful knowledge, right? In terms of SEO, having this knowledge enables you to:
You must first ascertain your opponent’s identity before you can assess. Consider your digital adversaries as well; they may not even be on your radar now. Think beyond traditional competitors. Look for companies that are listed for the terms you are interested in on the search engine results page (SERP).
Many SEO tools are available that take care of the research for you. Use them to find the top search engines for your keywords and examine their profiles.
An easy Google search will yield a wealth of information. Look up your main keywords and take notice of who comes up most often. These are your principal opponents.
The real game is about to start. It’s time to examine your rivals’ keyword strategies in detail. Recall that knowing the context in which keywords are being used is just as important as just locating them. Here’s how to do it:
Take note of the kind of content that your rivals create. Do they use product pages, blogs, or case studies to focus on particular keywords? How does the quality compare? What’s more, how can you improve upon it?
Examine the headers, meta descriptions, and title tags. They contain a wealth of keyword data. Take note of the prominence, frequency, and seamless integration of keywords on their website.
To determine the relative value of a certain keyword, it is essential to run a backlink analysis and find out which keywords are generating the most links.
With newfound insights, it’s time to inject some zest into your SEO strategy.
Equipped with a keyword list, create content that outperforms those of your rivals in terms of engagement, insight, and overall quality. Make Google think you’re better than your competitors.
Through competition keyword analysis, you can elevate your online presence by finding keyword chances that your rivals have overlooked. Make original content for these keywords to take the lead in the market.
Create a strong backlink strategy by focusing on the same superior websites that link to your competitors, or discover new ones to increase your reach.
SEO requires ongoing care, unlike a slow cooker that can be “set and forget”d. Maintain a close watch on the actions of your rivals and often analyse their strategies, adjusting your own as necessary.
Success in SEO doesn’t come overnight. It’s a continual process of improvement and adaptation. Use Master the Art of Competitor Analysis for Superior SEO Strategy to ensure you’re always one step ahead.
SEO can seem like an insurmountable mountain to climb, but with savvy competitor keyword analysis, you’ve got the best gear to reach the peak. Remember, your objective is not just to match your rivals – it’s to surpass them.
Don’t let complexity deter you; when done correctly, rival keyword research may be a very useful tool in your SEO toolbox. Are You Prepared to Change Your SEO Approach with Competitor Keyword Mastery and Get an Advantage in SEO with Insights into Competitor Keyword Strategies? It’s time to take action!
Even though I’ve provided you with the treasure map, occasionally you still need an experienced guide to show you the route. Fear not—I’m here to help you through the SEO jungle if you find it intimidating to navigate on your own. How about scheduling a discovery call at https://www.bristechtonic.co.uk/discovery-call? Together, we can begin mapping out your path to SEO dominance.
In the ever evolving world of technology, Google stands as a towering titan, shaping the way we navigate the digital universe. Synonymous with search, information and connectivity, there is a reason Google reigns supreme – beneath the surface of its user-friendly interface and instantaneous results lies a complex web of algorithms and artificial intelligence that drives the heart of the technological giant. In this blog, we will take a closer look at how Google is utilising AI to improve upon these algorithms – and the implications such advancements hold for the future landscape of search.
Google has been incorporating elements of AI into its products and services for quite some time. Back in 2014 Google notably acquired DeepMind Technologies, a British Artificial Intelligence company. Doing so brought an array of advanced machine learning capabilities to the search engine giant, who have since infused AI into a wide range of applications, including search algorithms, language processing, image recognition, and more. The company continues to leverage AI to enhance user experiences, improve efficiency, and explore new frontiers in technology. As such, the relationship between Google and AI is one that we expect to see continue and develop for many years to come.
During Google I/O 2023, Google announced that they are striving to make AI “even more helpful for people, for businesses, for communities, for everyone”. Whilst they have been focusing on being an AI-first company for the past 7+ years, 2023 signalled a turning point of sorts in the relationship between Google and Artificial Intelligence. All thanks to the introduction of generative AI.
An example of this is the introduction of “Help me write” in Gmail. Smart Reply (launched in 2017) offered users a range of short responses that you could select with just one click – this was followed by Smart Compose, which offers writing suggestions as you type. In the past year alone, these two tools alone were used over 180 billion times. Now, with a much more powerful generative model of AI, we have Gmail’s “Help me write”. For example, when responding to an email, simply submit a prompt related to the desired email content, and a fully crafted draft will emerge. This sophisticated system adeptly references pertinent details from the initial email where relevant, and provides a comprehensive foundation for your response. This not only constitutes a significant time-saving resource for any professional setting but also underscores the continuous refinement inherent in generative AI. The capacity for improvement over time positions this tool as an invaluable asset in enhancing productivity and communication efficiency within the workplace.
“Help me write” was rolled out in 2023 as part of Google’s Workspace updates – as were a number of other AI driven tools, including a new immersive view for routes in maps, and a new magic editor experience in Google Photos (as well as much more). You can read more about these updates within the Google Workspace Product Announcements.
2023 has also seen one of the biggest visual updates to Google SERPs that we’ve seen in some time – with Google’s Generative AI-powered Search Experience (SGE). You may be inquisitive about the limited information or absence of firsthand encounters with SGE. This could be attributed to the fact that SGE has not yet been officially launched in the United Kingdom. Google SGE was released in May of 2023, but is currently only available in the US on Google Labs (correct at the time of writing, November 2023). So what exactly is Google SGE, you may ask? SGE is a new feature being developed by Google, which will display information in response to a Google search, at the top of SERPs. Whilst you might naturally think that it sounds similar to Featured Snippets, it is much more advanced. Thanks to generative AI, Google SGE has been built to help make searching easier – so you have to do less of the heavy lifting. As google puts it, SGE allows you to “understand a topic faster, to uncover new viewpoints and insights, and to get things done more easily”. Not only can you use Google for searches containing more variants and information, the result you are provided will also be more informative, more descriptive and will even suggest relevant follow-up questions. You can see an example of this, below:
Search query: “If I am travelling to Woolacombe for a holiday with two children, is it best I stay at Woolacombe Bay or Twitchen House?”
Context will be carried over from question to question, to help you more naturally continue your exploration. You’ll also find helpful jumping-off points to web content and a range of perspectives that you can dig into. Whilst this functionality and these AI generated search results are very different from what we’re used to seeing, we only expect more growth and development within SGE, over the coming months and years.
Aside from the developments within Google SGE, another area of AI being discussed near the end of 2023 and most likely to be a popular topic of discussion in 2024 is cybersecurity. Last month, Google Cloud Security Talks took place, marking the 20th anniversary of Cybersecurity Awareness Month. A key discussion as part of these talks surrounds the Google Cloud Security AI Workbench and Duet AI – two tools with the ability to help address pervasive and fundamental security challenges: the exponential growth in threats, the toil it takes for security teams to achieve desired outcomes, and the chronic shortage of security talent. It is incredibly interesting to see Google increase the use of AI in combating cybersecurity threats, as they have also warned of the potential for cyber criminals to significantly enhance the effectiveness and scale of cyber attacks in 2024, using AI. So whilst AI appears to be part of the solution, according to Google it could also be part of the problem.
In terms of SEO, Google Bard is also likely to see massive developments in 2024. Bard is Google’s own AI language model, created to hold an informative conversation with the end user. Whilst early adopters of these language models appeared to prefer ChatGPT, Bard is becoming increasingly popular in the world of SEO – and planned developments for the coming months such as integration with Google Assistant only add to the buzz and excitement surrounding the AI tool.
In order to stay up to date with the latest developments, and to monitor the impact of Google SGE in 2024, make sure you regularly check out our Varn Insights. In an upcoming post, we will be exploring SGE in more detail, as well as looking at how it impacts Google Shopping, Google Ads and more. We will also take a closer look at the specific data being pulled into SGE SERPs by Google, uncovering the potential of generative AI in search before it reaches the UK (hopefully by some time in 2024). Keep an eye on our blog or sign up to our newsletter today, to stay in the loop.
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