If you manage a website that is extremely large or a site that contains content which is very regularly updated, it’s important to prioritise the pages you want Google to pay attention to. If Googlebot is just left to crawl and index the site as and when it pleases, it’s extremely likely that Google will attempt to crawl far too many pages at once – which can lead to a number of issues such as multiple parallel connections overwhelming your servers, or Google automatically prioritising unimportant pages whilst ignoring pages that are extremely valuable to you as a business.
As a result, pages within your site that could potentially rank really well in organic Google search results may instead be completely disregarded. For example, Google could easily choose to prioritise a standard About page which is purely informational and doesn’t directly drive conversions, in place of a core product page which has the potential to rank well at the top of Google whilst also directly driving multiple sales on a daily basis.
So… how can we control what Google crawls and indexes and how do we prioritise the pages that are important to your business?
‘Crawl Budget’ is the term used to describe the volume of resources and time that Google devotes to crawling an individual site. This crawl budget is determined by two main factors – your crawl capacity limit (the maximum number of simultaneous connections that Google can use to crawl a site AND the duration of the delay between fetches) and the crawl demand (how important Google deem a crawl of the site to be, depending on the size of the site, it’s popularity, how often it is updated and so on).
Your Crawl Capacity can vary depending on a number of factors, including:
Crawl Demand can also vary, depending on the following factors:
Notes: Site wide updates such as domain changes or site moves can also trigger an increase in crawl demand, as Google will detect that all of a site’s URLs have been updated and so will need to be reindexed.
So, now that we know what factors impact your crawl budget, how do we help ensure that we maximise your crawling efficiency, using this information? Luckily, Google has also provided a list of Best Practices for this sort of thing.
There are a number of tools and methods that you can use to tell Google which pages within your site are really important to you – those which you really need to rank within organic Google searches. These include:
So now that you understand more about Googlebot’s Crawl Budget and how best to manage it – as well as Google’s Best Practices – what’s next? Aside from the above, it’s also incredibly important to make sure that your pages load efficiently and that you regularly monitor your site crawling.
If you’re interested in how to best monitor your site’s crawling and indexing as well as the key steps Google recommend during this process, you’re in luck – part 2 of this blog, ‘Googlebot Site Crawling and Indexing – 5 Key Steps You Should Know’ is coming soon, so check back regularly for updates.
If you have any questions regarding this or would like experienced SEO professionals to take a look at your website on your behalf, the Technical SEO team here at Varn would love to hear from you. Simply drop us an email at contact@varn.co.uk
Not everyone that wants a business blog can be expected to come up with ideas for regular content and produce beautifully written posts while successfully running their business. Some business owners enjoy writing but acknowledge they don’t have the skillset, while others hate writing but feel it’s something they should do to promote their wares. Others are great writers but are rushing the posts through because they don’t have the time to dedicate to the process.
Ever considered outsourcing?
If this sounds like you, don’t be afraid to look into outsourcing your blog. A business blog copywriter will ghostwrite your posts, so your blog will still sound like you and your audience will think that you’ve written it. You can have as much or as little input into coming up with themes and topics as you wish, but you will always approve content before it goes live, so you can be sure that all copy remains on message. If you want to dip your toe in the water with a copywriter, you might even be able to split the workload and share your blog with an external writer so that between you, you’re able to produce more content for your website.
Top tips to improve your written content yourself
If outsourcing the work isn’t an option for you, and you feel you have the time and space to create quality content yourself, there are still things you can do to make sure your blog posts do your business justice.
If you’re clear about what you want to say and to who, and you allow time to check and double-check the quality of the content you have produced, you are well on your way to producing quality blog posts that will get read.
Digital is the status quo
We’re all doing our best to meet the ever-growing demand for organisations to ‘go digital’.
Whether we’re trying to reach more customers, more effectively market our products and services, minimise our carbon footprint or deliver more cost-effective business solutions, finding a digital – and in many ways more accessible – solution is pretty much today’s standard course of action.
The opportunities when we meet a new audience in a new space are obvious. But what about the pitfalls?
The potential for being misunderstood, taken out of context, or having your brand diluted across multiple platforms becomes more likely – especially when considering the speed at which online content is delivered.
And it’s for this reason that our brand identity becomes even more important.
What are brand guidelines?
Your brand guidelines are the rules which determine how your brand is presented to the world. It usually contains information about your brand name and how it’s used, your corporate logo, brand colours, fonts, tone of voice etc.
Your brand guidelines should clearly illustrate how your brand identity is portrayed and communicated to consumers, providing a reference point for employees and clients alike.
And we need them, because when your brand remains consistent, it remains recognisable.
Research has shown 86% of consumers say that authenticity is a key factor when deciding what brands they like and support. And when we think about it, it makes complete sense.
Imagine you nip into your local corner shop to buy a bottle of Coca Cola. Only, the label on the bottle looks strange. In fact, it’s not the typical Coca Cola red at all – it’s bright orange.
And, come to think of it, the font looks different too: It’s narrower than you remember. And not as cursive. Plus, the bottle’s neck is slightly longer. But the drink is still claiming to be authentic, traditional Coca Cola – what’s the likelihood this is a fake?
Maybe you risk it. Or maybe you pick the more familiar-looking bottle of Pepsi, instead.
According to PwC’s consumer insights survey, customers selected trust as their number one reason for choosing a retailer. And how can you expect customers to trust your brand if you don’t remain consistent?
The need for maintaining brand consistency across platforms is critical, because it promotes authenticity and trust. In fact, ensuring a consistent representation of your brand can increase revenue by as much as 33%.
With 80% of consumers agreeing that a signature colour increases brand association and recognition, the importance of sticking to your guidelines – is hard to overstate.
What about having a refresh?
There’s nothing wrong with intentionally refreshing your brand. In fact, updating your branding every few years ensures you stay modern, and reflects your company’s ability to evolve with the times.
But with any brand refresh, your guidelines need to be refreshed too.
Many organisations keep their brand guidelines in a PDF or printed format, meaning you’ll need to factor in time-consuming tasks: updating your documents, checking and proofing them, making amends, artworking them and having them signed off – all this on top of your rebranding process.
But there is a better way.
Digitising your brand guidelines allows for quick and resource-light updates to guidelines, that are quick to roll out and distribute to all relevant stakeholders.
Creating digital brand guidelines
A digital brand guideline ‘book’ can be accessed from anywhere, at any time, and on any device – without the trouble of having to locate a physical copy, or share a long-lost PDF that’s buried on your desktop. Simply share the link, and go.
At Proctors, we use Webflow to create and update our clients’ digital brand guidelines. Whether they’re used by your colleagues, your customers, media or external business partners, making your guidelines accessible on Webflow gives everyone clear direction on presenting your brand consistently.
Even better, with Webflow, elements such as your logos, fonts and colours can be downloaded by anyone you share the link with. So in today’s digital first world, your media partners or social media managers can remain responsive when it comes to pushing out branded content.
Plus, with digital-first increasingly the norm, companies who use motion graphics in their brand elements can demonstrate real, live examples in their digital brand guidelines book too – something which isn’t possible in other formats.
Even large organisations with lots of different sub-brands can benefit from Webflow’s flexibility. It’s a quick and efficient process to create and update your guidelines, whether you need to edit just one page or to build and deploy several branding ‘chapters’. Plus, any changes or updates can be highlighted on the landing page, so all employees are made aware of them.
With Webflow’s no-code format, any brand refresh updates can be easily executed by your marketing team, meaning you’ll save masses of time on updates. Not to mention avoiding the need to print – and that’s one big environmental benefit.
Scaling up with Webflow
If you want your brand to remain trusted in the digital era, you need to practice consistency.
With easily accessible guidelines, you’ll be able to ensure you’re presenting an authentic brand. So you can reach more customers, and more effectively market your businesses.
If you’d like to find out more about our digital brand guideline services, or any of the other services we offer, talk to us today at marketing@proctors.co.uk.
One recent study* found that companies who oriented their services and operations around customers, employees, and partners experienced 6.5 times the profit growth compared to those that didn’t.
Despite this evidence for the power of customer centricity, we know that far too many companies are under-investing in customer experience.
That’s because being customer-centric is easy to say, but hard to put into practice, and even harder to know if you’re on the right track!
As a User-Centred Design company, we’re on a mission to help organisations thrive through employing better customer-centric practices.
That’s why we’re inviting companies that run scaled services for customers to join a study that we’re conducting in collaboration with Google, into how companies orient around their customers.
In exchange for contributing to the study, they will receive a benchmark of their customer-centricity score against the rest of the market, plus some unique insights into how to put together a programme of low-cost improvements, free of charge. All we ask is that companies commit to completing a survey by mid-November.
The deadline is the end October, so sign up to become a contributor here https://www.cxpartners.co.uk/customer-centricity-model
We’d love YOU to be part of the study because companies that deploy good user experiences that meet human needs know that improvements in loyalty, revenue and market share follow.
We work every day with organisations to execute programmes that embed User-Centred design into their operations. This takes time and care, but the results are not only impactful in the short term, but set organisations up for sustainable success, and an ability to ride-out storms that may occur in the future.
We’re working with Google to solve this. Through this unique study and campaign that we’ve devised, we’re looking to support organisations in investing in the initiatives that will help them become more customer-centric – and thrive.
By participating in this study as a contributor, you will be joining Europe’s top 200 brands including Farfetch, Europcar, Toolstation, giffgaff and Burberry.
Please sign up here, and we look forward to working with you
https://www.cxpartners.co.uk/customer-centricity-model
*https://www.accenture.com/gb-en/insights/interactive/business-of-experience
Bristol-based digital design and development agency, Unfold celebrated success on 14th October 2021, taking home the title of “Best Digital Design” at The SPARKies 2021. This was awarded for the transformational work they completed for their clients Sherpr.
The SPARKies is one of the year’s most hotly anticipated tech awards ceremonies in the South West. Since Managing Director, Harry Cobbold won ‘FutureSPARK’ back in 2019, Unfold has been nominated for several other categories (including ‘Tech Leader of the Year’ this year). The ceremony was held at The Showroom on Bath Road and was joint hosted by the TechSpark team and comedian Stephen Bailey (who had everyone in stitches).
Sherpr came to Unfold with two problems;
Unfold built a custom web app, admin portal and marketing site for Sherpr in just 10 weeks. This completely transformed their business. As well as automating all of the time-intensive back office tasks, Unfold also created an editable CMS through which the Sherpr team could update and manage their products without constant developer support.
As well as immediate savings in overheads, Sherpr were also able to process far more clients with their new reliable and automated booking system.
Following the work Unfold completed for them, Sherpr achieved their first ever 6-figure month and hit an annual run-rate of £1.2m.
“From beginning to end, the team at Unfold have been great to work with. Communication has been easy and any changes we needed to make during the build process were welcomed and perfectly executed.” – Andy Watson, CEO of Sherpr
Read more in-depth info on exactly how Unfold helped Sherpr achieve this remarkable step-change in their full case study.
If you have a project or digital platform you’d like advice on, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with the Unfold team.
Starting a new job can be a nerve-wracking process, especially when it’s your first opportunity after being at uni. Luckily, I’m here to share my experience of starting at Proctors and gaining my first real industry exposure.
Here are some of the questions I found myself asking, the challenges I faced – and some of the lessons I learnt.
What if I don’t know what I’m doing on my first day?
In any new job, a fear of failure is perfectly normal. Luckily, the Proctors people went out of their way to ensure I felt comfortable in the office, had sufficient training/inductions and the resources to get on with my projects, setting me up for success.
It’s important companies give you ample time to find your feet on your first day. So, if you don’t know what to do next, just ask how you can help. Remember, you were hired – you’ve already made it past the stressful interview part! Treat your first day as a fun celebration. Everyone is excited to meet you!
What’s it like starting in a Tech role?
Joining the Tech team at P+S straight after leaving university showed me the differences between education and real-life industry work really quickly.
In uni, I was constantly shifting my focus to find a speciality. This meant that almost each semester I would be creating a new project with a different focus and practicing a different coding language. However, at P+S I was able to focus on my strengths first, with support from seasoned (and friendly) developers, and begin specialising in the areas that I am most interested in.
Over my first few weeks, as I was introduced to all of the developers around me and all of the teams that I would be interacting with, all of the nervousness of a new role left as I settled in to my first full development role and focused on my workload.
How will I remember all these people?
Meeting everyone on your first day can be overwhelming, sometimes it can feel like you’re crashing a private party. Forming relationships takes time, and a supportive workplace recognises this.
At P+S, I was introduced to all the departments I would be working with, encouraged to reach out to anyone if I had any questions, and met with a multitude of messages from co-workers welcoming me to the company. Wednesday quiz nights and Friday night socials allowed me to meet people in a non-work environment. And as time went on more new employees joined, we all easily bonded over being new to the company.
Don’t forget, you’re not expected to remember everyone you meet immediately, but making the effort to get to know your co-workers over lunches and socials will help you feel at ease in your new job.
What do I do if I’m not busy with work all the time?
Sometimes work may be slow whilst you’re being given time to settle in, and you may feel guilty for not tapping away at the keyboard for all 8 hours of the workday. Just remember, people are giving you time to relax into the job and no one wants you to be overwhelmed. Take your time with tasks, regularly check in with co-workers to make sure you’re doing the right thing and focus on the small wins.
When working in a marketing agency, time management is incredibly important and often we are working to strict deadlines. At P+S, I was given access to a plethora of training resources for when I had a moment of downtime, to develop my industry skills.
Stay positive and believe in yourself
The most important thing to remember is to stay open-minded and treat your first job as a fresh start, a learning opportunity, and a chance to meet cool, like-minded people that can help you build an exciting career.
At P+S, we are always looking for talent to join our team across Creative, Strategy and Technology. Click here to find out more about our current vacancies or send your CV to recrutiment@proctors.co.uk.
The pandemic has seen UK industries split. Some businesses are still struggling to get back on their feet while others are booming beyond their wildest expectations. Those experiencing an upturn may be seeing sales soar because they adapted their business during periods of lockdown and have discovered a better way of doing things. Others may be experiencing higher demand because consumers have had time to take stock and make a change. Whatever the reason for the growth, it can leave busy businesses in a bit of a quandary when it comes to marketing their wares. The thought of bringing new customers on board right now might make you shudder. How will you cope? However, on the flip side, how will you cope when the work you’re busy servicing now runs out if your pipeline is empty?
Filling the pipeline
I’m writing this blog with a little smile on my face because this is a debate that raged for most of my 20 years working in agency life. There were days I didn’t know which way to turn we were so busy, and I admit, I didn’t relish the idea of pitching for new business when things were already so hectic. But there is no denying the importance of filling your business pipeline. You never know what is around the corner, so it is better to be prepared by continuing to market your business, even when times are good.
So how do you find the time to market your wares when you’re up to your eyeballs in servicing the customers you already have? It’s a fair question. One of the best ways to generate new business a bit more softly, is to generate inbound leads. For those of you unfamiliar with this term it means that you don’t have to generate a vast and complex suite of marketing materials, spend thousands of pounds on advertising, or spend hours on the phone calling your top list of prospects to try to drum up more business that you’re not sure you even want! Inbound lead generation focuses on marketing activity that encourages your prospects to pick up the phone to you.
Gently does it
Business blogs are a fantastic way of generating inbound leads. If people find a blog useful, they will revisit it time and time again and are more likely to contact the author of that blog when they need that product or service. Business blogs position you as an authority in your field, a trusted voice in a sea of noise. If readers like what they see, they may contact you immediately for more information about your offering. Or they may save you as a favourite, sign up to your blog, or follow you on social media (where you can regularly promote your blog) so they know where you are if they need you in the future.
Call for back up
I realise that right about now you’ll be shouting at your screen something along the lines, ‘how on earth am I going to find the time to write a blog right now?!’ Yes, I decided to give you the benefit of the doubt and keep it clean! I fully empathise with how much time writing and maintaining a business blog can take, but if you don’t have the capacity in-house, it could well be worth looking into outsourcing this part of your marketing. If you work with an external copywriter, they can spend the time learning about your business, absorbing the topics that are important to you, researching the posts you know you want to write about but don’t have the time, and ultimately populating your blog with fresh and engaging content. Content that will ensure your website is working hard to market your business, while you do what you do best and stay focused on delivering the fantastic product or service you offer your customers.
It’s difficult when business is busy to keep the pedal to the metal when it comes to marketing, but that’s where outsourcing really comes into its own. So, if you’d like to make sure the demand continues, while remaining focused on existing customers, don’t be shy in calling for back up. It might mean you can have your cake and eat it which is a pretty good place to be.
2020 saw a surge of people donning their gardening gloves to try and ‘grow their own’. According to Livingetc Pintrest has seen a 600% increase in searches for the term ‘DIY small garden ideas vegetables’ as the idea of homegrown produce became more and more popular. To grow your own fruit and veg though, is a commitment that requires effort. Effort to monitor seeds as they grow, water plants in the heat, protect them through the cold, prune to encourage growth, and of course collect your harvest when the time comes. It’s not easy but the ongoing nourishment is worthwhile for the end result.
To reach its full potential in today’s digital world, a business needs to be nourished with ongoing content in the same way that a garden needs ongoing food, water and sunshine . And while some companies only dabble every now and again to make sure visitors don’t think their business is out of date, ideally a business blog should be kept up to date on a regular basis. The more often the better too from an SEO perspective.
Generating enough content to help your business thrive though can sometimes feel like a chore. Especially when you have so much going on in the rest of your business. Of course, your priority is going to be meeting customer’s needs and delivering on your promises. But it doesn’t have to be one or the other. Working with a copywriter that is willing to understand your business and work as part of your team to deliver fresh and engaging content on a regular basis can give you peace of mind that you are doing your enterprise justice from a marketing perspective, without compromising your service to your customers.
The bottom line is, the more content you can generate and post online, the better your SEO ranking and the more enquiries you will receive. You could say that blogging to a business is almost as significant as water is to the growth potential of your new vegetable patch!
Having recently binge-watched the Netflix series ‘Drive to Survive’, Formula 1: Drive to Survive (Season 3) | Official Trailer | Netflix – YouTube I can’t help but compare some of the similarities between the industry, and game, that is F1 and the seemingly very different world of SEO.
The competition in F1 is tough, there are no prizes for coming over the finish line last, there are only points if you place in the top 10 and only 3 places on the podium. It’s a zero-sum game with obvious ‘winners’ and ‘losers’.
In our SEO world, I liken your website and Search Marketing to one of those F1 teams.
There are only 10 spaces on page 1 of a Google search and you need to be there if you want to be in the rankings race.
So what should you focus on to make sure you rank no. 1 on Google ahead of your competition?
Here are a four, (and very loose 
) Formula 1 analogies to help explain how to make sure your competition is not pipping you to the finish line:
In Formula 1, the car and it’s engine are key to winning. A superior car like Mercedes is consistently performing ahead of the competition. So, we need to make sure your engine is tip top, and able to compete with the competitor’s engine.
In this instance, your content creation, superior thought leadership, content outreach and backlinks are the ‘engine’ for your business SEO efforts, driving the marketing activity and creating winning engaging content. However, this does take a lot of time and effort and so it is vital to make sure you have a clear plan to optimise what your team spends their time on.
Formula 1 teams spend as much time and money on their aerodynamics as they do their engine. Do you spend as much time on technical SEO as you do content creation? If not, you should. These marginal gains from coding optimisation and competitor analysis to analysing page speed, schema and your analytics can be the difference between ranking at the top of Google or not. However good your content/engine is, if the technical SEO is not constantly improving, you’ll have a crash at the most unexpected moment
The reality is that if Mercedes were racing against a Mini they wouldn’t need to spend as much time and money on their car. It’s the same with SEO and whilst I’m not trying to say don’t do SEO, please make sure you stop and actually research and understand what your competitors are doing online. Your race ahead, may not be as hard as you expect.
F1 teams spend huge efforts trying to understand all the finer points of what the competition is up to. So make sure you spend time to understand why your competitor is ahead of you in a search. What’s giving them the edge? Do you really need a brand new car or will a small smart tweak do the job? Make sure you spend time not just creating the offsite content that you need to, but look at the finer technical details of your site, and tweak and change if needed to get some quick wins.
For me, Lewis Hamilton is an outstanding driver, but arguably, because of the team behind it and the Mercedes car, they would still win a lot of races with one of the ‘less experienced’ drivers from other teams. Equally, a great driver can’t win a race in a slower car.
So as far as Search Marketing is concerned, if your strategy and digital marketing team have a poor sense of technical SEO knowledge and understanding, you may never succeed. Make sure you have the Lewis Hamilton of search marketing managers or seek support and guidance from those that can help. We are increasingly supporting our clients with Search Marketing Mentoring so their team can win. Could your business benefit from SEO Mentoring? (varn.co.uk)
Whatever you do, like a F1 team, you must make sure it is cost effective, constantly evolving and the time/investment spent can actually drive a good return on investment.
It’s very common to rip up the current marketing strategy and start again, but as we have seen with many clients and their websites, maybe you need to keep what you’re already doing and focus on the changes which will make it simply perform better.
If we can help you take your SEO engine apart have a good look under the bonnet of you and your competition’s search marketing, then do get in touch with the team at Varn.
In the digital age the focus is shifting from longer prose in the form of articles and handwritten letters, to short, snappy sentences on social media. That’s if there’s any copy used at all with attention turning increasingly towards images and videos online. While the faster means of communicating via social media has its benefits and is an excellent way to reach more people, more quickly than ever before, it is taking something important away too.
The written word is a wholly powerful thing. Here’s an example to demonstrate its importance. Think about how it feels to receive a text from a friend. As much as you care about the person texting, it probably isn’t much of an event anymore. It’s probably short for starters, and it’s more likely to be about something practical or light-hearted than it is to be about something deep and emotional. Of course, that’s fine for day-to-day interactions, but now think about how you would feel if you received a handwritten letter through the post. Perhaps from a friend or family member telling you how important you are to them, or how grateful they are for something you have done, or how proud they are of what you have achieved. Because we know a letter has taken more time, effort and thought, it means more. It is also something you can hold on to forever.
Prioritise a personal touch
The same thing applies in the business world too. Social media is a fantastic way to promote your wares as a business and reach more people. But used alone, it isn’t very personal. It can’t be when you’re using so few words to talk to so many people. And with the rise of shorter, faster, more convenient ways to communicate, has come an increasing lack of attention to detail. It’s as though speed and quantity are more important than quality. Unfortunately, it probably is in terms of social media or SEO algorithms, but what does it say about you or your business when your written word is full of typos, grammatical errors, and spelling mistakes? Don’t get me wrong, we’re all human, we all make mistakes. A few errors here and there can be forgiven, but a consistently problematic read is jarring and affects our perception of the author, whether we realise it or not.
The power of persuasion
When done well, the written word can harness the powers of persuasion in a way short text and images cannot do. People believe what they read in magazines, newspapers and trusted online sources, so when they read about best practice or advice on particular product options at length, they are likely to believe the content. Many of these pieces are ghost written by a copywriter or PR agency and serve to position businesses in the way they want to be seen, whether market leading, ethical, customer focused, or all of the above!
Future generation of writers
I have been lucky/unlucky enough to be in the mass of home schooling parents during the Covid-19 lockdown periods. This allowed me to see very closely the process of my reception child learning to write his first words, sentences, even stories. The pleasure to see him gradually grasp the different sounds and put them together on the page is immense and we will keep a lot of his writing to show him when he’s older. He may even decide to keep it and show his children one day. But what is the future of this creative outlet for him? Will there still be a requirement for any longer prose when he’s an adult, or will he gradually unlearn these skills and techniques and freedom to express himself, in exchange for quicker, easier ways to communicate?
I hope this isn’t the case because the impact of the written word on someone else whether in your personal life or in the business world, is something special and powerful and future generations should have the opportunity to give and receive this gift. The power of the written word should not be left behind in the digital age.
Pay your audience the attention they deserve
Whether you are talking to prospective customers or new or well-established customers, pay them the attention they deserve by spending more time on your communications. Quick and consistent social media messaging is great, but giving more thought to longer advice blog posts, a thank you note for their custom, or feature length articles in their industry magazines, offer a different level of connection between you and them. Aside from anything else it offers far more potential in terms of word count, to get your message across to them.
If the idea of this sounds appealing to you, but you simply don’t have the time, don’t forget you can delegate (read more about when and how you should delegate here https://blogwrite.co.uk/to-delegate-or-not-to-delegate/) to ensure you don’t miss out.
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