Tag Archives: SEO Ireland

Importance of Google Reviews for SEO

Importance of Google Reviews for SEO Whether it’s from word of mouth or testimonials reviews have always been an integral part of a business’s success. The positive impact of great reviews for a business cannot be underestimated nor can the negative impact of bad reviews. Reviews help potential new customers to decide whether they should choose your business over another, having positive reviews from past clients will instill confidence in them that they will experience the same satisfaction as those before them who left the positive reviews. If your website for instance had no reviews then a customer may feel unsure whether they will receive a good service as they have no past precedent or frame of reference to base their decision off. Having reviews can provide this much needed clarity. While getting reviews from customers has always been an exercise that is beneficial to businesses, the importance of Google Reviews for SEO has never been greater. By having Google reviews you can actively improve the visibility of your business on Google so this means that Google reviews are good for your SEO. The reason Google reviews have become so important for SEO is that when people use the Google search engine Google will aim to generate the most relevant and beneficial results for local web searches as the quality and quantity of reviews on Google is one of the most important ranking factors for local SEO. Google looks to see how many reviews your business has and what your current average rating is and from here they will determine where exactly in the listings of the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) you should appear. Google themselves have even stated in the past that the “highest-rated” businesses near you will be returned when you search with local intent. By having your listing appear high with a great rating and a lot of reviews potential customers will be a lot more likely to click on to your website over your competitors and you will be a lot more likely to get conversions from these people. A great part of any SEO strategy is to ensure that you can regularly get customers to give your business a review. The best way to encourage people to give your business a review is to ensure the following:
  • Great Customer Service
By offering all customers a great customer service they will be happy and happy customers are a lot more susceptible to give you a positive review and share their good experience.
  • Simple Review Process
As well as ensuring that the customer service you offer is great, the second thing you should do to encourage reviews is to make the actual process of leaving you a review simple, straightforward and easy. The easier the process is the more likely people will be to take a second and give you a review. Don’t make the customer work for it! 2Cubed provide award-winning web design and mobile app development services. If you would like to give 2Cubed Web Design a review please click the link below: CLICK HERE TO GIVE REVIEW For advice and information on having a successful website contact 2Cubed today! Please feel free to follow and interact with us on the following profiles. facebook icon twitter icon linkedin icon Instagram icon

How to Improve Your Website Page Speed

Website Page Speed
Category: Tips and Tricks
March 19, 2019
Website page speed is the measurement of exactly how fast the content on your page loads. This means how long it takes to fully display the content of your page. One of the best ways to evaluate your page speed is to use the free tool Google PageSpeed Insights. In one of our most recent posts we went into great depth on how important having good results on Google PageSpeed Insights really is. In that post we made the point that page speed is a very important factor for SEO as it is known that Google uses page speed as one of it’s many signals used by its algorithm when ranking pages. As well as being important to Google, page speed is very important to user experience also which plays a part in how your website ranks. There are many ways to improve your website’s page speed such as: Fully Switching over to https: Ensuring that your website has an SSL Cert not only shows that your website is safe to browse on and to purchase products/services safely with your credit card but it will also help with your SEO as Google looks favorably on websites who have an SSL Cert over those who have none. Where this affects page speed is when the http version of your website is cached and redirects to your https version. By ensuring that your website automatically redirects to the https version you can greatly enhance the page speed. Rectifying Image Related Issues: Images tend to be a common issue that cause an unfavorable page speed. Images can cause issues unnecessarily as they can be a huge size and of too high of an image quality than required or needed. To rectify these two issues it’s recommended to take a look at all your images and to both compress and resize them as necessary. By resizing them to a more appropriate size and by compressing them to a more appropriate image quality you will reduce your page load time which will in turn improve your page speed. Browser Caching: By implementing browser caching on your website you are telling visitors to your website exactly how long their browsers should retain information/memory of your website for. This means that a message would be sent to the users browser that images on the website should be cached (remembered) for three weeks so that when this specific user visits the website again within this three week period your website will load more quickly as the resources to remember the images are being pulled from their device instead of your website. This takes some of the workload away from your website and in turn this will improve your page speed also. Improving your page speed is a never-ending goal and something that should be continuously worked on to improve it as much as possible as it is so important not only to SEO and User experience but the overall success of your website. If you would like to inquire about improving your website’s page speed please contact 2Cubed and get your business the traffic and success it deserves. You can call us on 01-9058114 or 051-440425, email hello@2cubed.ie or else get in touch using the live chat on our website! Please feel free to follow and interact with us on the following profiles. facebook icon twitter icon linkedin icon Instagram icon Google+ icon

Google PageSpeed Insights and why it’s so important!

Google PageSpeed Insights
Category: Tips and Tricks
March 6, 2019
Google PageSpeed Insights is a free tool offered by Google which is designed to report and make an informed determination of the performance of a specific web pages performance on both Desktop and Mobile devices. Google PageSpeed Insights also provide suggestions on how that specific web page can be improved. The report that is provided by Google PageSpeed Insights provides you with information such as field data and lab data about your submitted web page. Lab data is a type of data that can be used to aid with debugging performance issues whereas field data’s main use is that it captures real-time user experience metrics which can be helpful. As mentioned previously since PageSpeed Insights are a free tool offered by Google anyone can simply search “Google PageSpeed Insights” and enter their website URL to get a live up to date results for their PageSpeed on Desktop and Mobile devices. Entering a URL and hitting “Analyze” will quickly get you a detailed report of what’s slowing that web page based on two parameters and this report will also come with recommendations on how to fix it. When you enter your url your website will be analyzed and within a few seconds you will receive a score for both desktop and mobile which will be a percentage out of 100. 0%-49% is considered slow, 50%-89% is average whereas 90%-100% is considered fast by industry standards. The reason these scores are important is because they play a factor alongside general SEO optimisation when it comes to google’s algorithm of ranking websites. Basically the better your Google PageSpeed Insights score is the more likely you will be to rank higher than others provided your general SEO optimisation is done efficiently as well of course. Google recently changed how PageSpeed Insights judge websites and since Google have made this change a lot of websites are finding that their once higher score has now fallen and they are struggling to get it back to it’s once former glory. When your website is analyzed by Google PageSpeed Insights as part of their analysis summary they will provide diagnostics and opportunities for improvement. By following these suggestions you can improve your overall score again. Google PageSpeed Insights true to their name provide a great insight in to the health and strength of your website by giving you accurate reports on it’s page speed. As it’s a free tool there is no excuse to not avail of it and use it’s useful information.

IMPROVE YOUR GOOGLE PAGESPEED INSIGHTS SCORE

To inquire about improving your score on Google PageSpeed Insights please contact 2Cubed and get your business the traffic and success it deserves. You can also call us on 01-9058114 or 051-440425, email hello@2cubed.ie or else get in touch using the live chat on our website! Please feel free to follow and interact with us on the following profiles. facebook icon twitter icon linkedin icon Instagram icon Google+ icon

The Importance of Good Content for SEO Value

Website Content & SEO Value - 2Cubed Web Design
Category: Tips and Tricks
February 25, 2019
Content and SEO are two important elements of a website that when both done well can elevate a website to new levels of success. However when neither are done well or even just one done well then the website will without a doubt suffer. The reason for this and the reason that content and SEO accommodate each other so well is because strong content that is seen by google to have SEO value will rank more highly than others who are deemed not to be of such value so basically when your content has value to search engines the SEO work that you will have done on this page already will cause your page to rank highly on the SERP (Search Engine Results Page). So what is SEO value exactly you may find yourself asking? To explain what SEO value is one should first be clear on how Google as a search engine works. Google uses algorithms when people input a search to generate results which based on Google’s algorithms are what they believe to be the best and most relevant to the term/search query inputted by the user. The results that Google will display to the user are generated from content that is available throughout the web and content which is then ranked in order of its usefulness to the user’s search. So to ensure that your content is shown here in the relevant results you need to ensure it has SEO value and to ensure that it does have SEO value your content simply put needs to be beneficial to searchers, it needs to provide answers or at least information that will aid the user. To ensure that your content provides the right beneficial information and that it has SEO value be sure to ask yourself these questions when creating your content:
  • Does my content provide useful information?
  • Is my content easy and engaging to read and interact with?
  • Does my content have a professional and credible tone?
  • Is my content more beneficial than competitor’s content?
If you can honestly answer yes to these questions then your content has the correct elements in place that are required to achieve the true potential of the SEO value of your content. If your answer to these questions is no then it’s time to go back to the drawing board and rewrite your content to achieve some true SEO value. Please contact 2Cubed and get your business the traffic and success it deserves. You can call us on 01-9058114 or 051-440425, email hello@2cubed.ie or else get in touch using the live chat on our website! Please feel free to follow and interact with us on the following profiles. facebook icon twitter icon linkedin icon Instagram icon Google+ icon

4 ways to successfully integrate social media into your website to increase social media traffic

social media marketing wexford
Category: Tips and Tricks
October 26, 2018
Social media has the power to generate huge amounts of traffic to your website. When social media is integrated correctly your social media traffic can rise significantly if you can establish a strong, steady and consistent flow of traffic from your social media platforms to your website. To achieve this feat is something that is not always simple but your chances to achieve it can be enhanced greatly if you can do the following things: Have Social Media Feeds on your page Having social media feeds on your website is a great way to catch the eye of users when they visit the website as unlike most content on websites which is static such as text and still images, feeds are live and change in real time as they are continuously pulling fresh data and scrolling. Include Sharing Buttons on Your Blog Posts By including sharing buttons on your website you give users the chance to share your blog posts on their profile pages on their social media platform such as Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn etc.. and from these platforms other users can see this and click on the shared post and end up on your website. Have Social Media Button/Links on your website in header or footer It should always be easy and convenient for people to find your social media pages, by including them in your header and/or footer they will be clearly visible and will encourage users to check out your social media pages which will help to increase their following. Engage regularly with your audience through your social media platforms When people actually take the time to message you or post on your social platform make sure that you engage with them. This shows everyone that you’re a business who cares about their customers and takes the time to answer their questions or queries. This will increase the relationship between your business and users and they will be a lot more receptive to future advertising and linking that you may do through social media to your website. Social media is free to use, so you have no excuse not to utilize it to its fullest. If you can do the above things mentioned in this article you should be well on your way to successfully integrating social media with your website to increase your traffic generated from social media. To find out more about excellent tools and strategies to use to improve your website Contact 2Cubed today! You can also contact us on 01 905 8114 or 051-440425, email hello@2cubed.ie Please feel free to follow and interact with us on the following profiles. facebook icon twitter icon linkedin icon Instagram icon Google+ icon

Email Marketing in a Post GDPR World

email marketing services wexford
Category: Tips and Tricks
October 25, 2018
When GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) was announced it struck fear in the hearts of all businesses, it especially struck fear in marketers as they worried about one of their arguably most important marketing tools being compromised or going extinct, that was of course the tool of email marketing. Where they justified in being worried? Well yes if they didn’t adhere to some required compliance’s. Email marketing is the act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group of people, using email. These emails are usually sent with the purpose of to act as an advertisement, request business, or solicit sales or donations. Efficient email marketing at its core is meant to build loyalty, trust and brand awareness. Marketing emails traditionally could be sent to a purchased lead list or a current customer database. When GDPR came into law it greatly affected the rules and regulations regarding email marketing and email marketing campaigns. A recent study found that there are more than 269 billion emails sent every day and over half (53%) of these 269 billion sent emails were emails of a promotional nature. GDPR brought in the need for clear consent to be given by people when they sign up to your newsletter. Even if someone was already on your email list you had to run a re-submission campaign to get people to sign up into your GDPR approved mailing list. Seeking out clear consent and permission and keeping a record of it are the cornerstones of GDPR. Traditionally it was easy for websites to assume that if a user filled out a pop up or a web form that  can could add their email address to a mailing list and start sending them email campaigns. GDPR changed this when it made it clear that users need to clearly give you consent to market to them. This means that the old methods of having a pre-ticked box and concealing your communication policy within your privacy statements. If you want to send emails to a prospect, they must explicitly opt-in to receive newsletters from you. Despite the challenges GDPR has presented, email marketing still remains as the most tried and tested and preferred marketing channel of use for B2B companies. In fact email marketing doesn’t show any signs of becoming an irrelevant use of communication and as such it’s so important that websites get it right when it comes to utilizing effective compliant email marketing campaigns in a post-GDPR world. While being compliant with GDPR may seem complicated and head wrecking it’s important to remember that to be compliant when it comes to email marketing you just need to ensure the following:
  • Email campaigns can only be sent to those who have given consent and opted in
  • Always provide subscribers with the opportunity to opt-out of your email marketing
  • Offer subscribers the option to manage the type of content they receive from you.
If you can ensure these three above requirements then you are well on your way to being GDPR compliant when it comes to email marketing. From there you just need to ensure your content is great and engaging! Email marketing may have been rocked by GDPR but it certainly is not down and out, it’s still relevant and as strong as ever when used effectively. To find out more about excellent tools and strategies to use to improve your website Contact 2Cubed today! You can also contact us on 01 905 8114 or 051-440425, email hello@2cubed.ie Please feel free to follow and interact with us on the following profiles. facebook icon twitter icon linkedin icon Instagram icon Google+ icon

7 Good Reasons Why You Should be Using Google Analytics Right Now!

Using Google Analytics - Digital marketing services wexford
Category: Tips and Tricks
October 11, 2018
Google Analytics is an amazingly powerful tool that everyone has at their disposal. Even more amazing is the fact that this powerful tool comes completely free of charge. When used properly google analytics can be an amazing insight into the heart of your website and of how it’s performing. The metrics that google analytics use when gauged against their compiled data can be great indicators in wish to measure the success or lack thereof of your website in key areas such as number of users, bounce rate, page views, conversion rates etc.. Below are 7 key reasons why you should be using google analytics:
  • Its Free
As mentioned above google analytics is a completely free tool to use. It costs you nothing to use but if you don’t use it at all then it could cost you in terms of making mistakes that you could have corrected had you the knowledge gleaned from google analytics.
  • Automatic Collection of Data
Google Analytics automatically collects, compiles and organizes your data for you. You do not have to perform any action in order to get the data. Google Analytics simply does all the work for you. To get this data all that needs to be done on your end is to initially setup your Google Analytics account by copying a simple piece of code on your website. When applied this code enables Google Analytics to start collecting data from your website automatically and then to generate reports accordingly. The data from these reports will aid you when you decide and plan to implement strategies to increase the performance of your website.
  • Understand Your Bounce Rate
Google Analytics bounce rate is the percentage of traffic that leaves your website quickly after landing on it without looking at any other pages before they leave. Bounce Rate can be a useful barometer in which to gauge how effective or not your SEO is as bounce rate can indicate how accurate the page is targeted towards visitors who are interested in that type of content or indeed in your business and if a page has a high bounce rate it can usually be a signal that something is inherently wrong with that web page whether it’s the content or the design of the page that seems to be frustrating customers so much that they bounce. If your page has a high bounce rate and it’s a key page for you then it’s time for you to reevaluate the SEO on that page and possibly the design also to ensure you are delivering the best user experience possible.
  • Know Your Demographic
Google Analytics provides you with valuable data about your audience which will help you to understand which channels drive most of the traffic to your website. The Audience section provides a lot of information about the people who visit your website like their age, gender, interests, devices used and location.
  • To understand which social platforms to target
Social platforms are a great way to drive a lot of traffic to your website and to engage with potential customers. Google Analytics gives you the access to view what exactly catches the attention of the users and this data will inform you on where to place an ad accordingly. Through google analytics you can not only gauge how successful your social platforms that you use are performing but you can also check exactly how much conversions each social platform is giving you. Based on this data you will be able to dedicate the majority of your time and resources to the best performing social platform.
  • To understand what kind of content you should write
Great written content is a brilliant way to attract new customers to your website and improve the user experience your website provides. This is commonly understood and is the reason why so many businesses have blogs, newsletters etc.. as these pieces of content can drive traffic towards your website and increase conversions. Google Analytics helps you to keep a track of all the content published that receives views and shares. Google Analytics then generates a breakdown of the page views each of your blog posts receive and this data helps you to understand which pieces of content are the best performing for you.
  • To check if you are achieving goals
Google Analytics allows you to set goals which track your website’s success in a certain area such as new users for example. You could set a goal that in the next month you wish to have 1000 new users and by viewing the data you can measure it against your goal to inform you if the current approach you are taking is going to result in you realising this goal or if in fact further strategizing is required. Google analytics is a brilliant tool to use to help you make your website more successful. The data it provides is invaluable and considering it’s free you have no excuse to justify not using it. If you aren’t using it currently you’re missing out! To find out more about google analytics and other strategies to improve your website contact 2Cubed today! You can also contact us on 01 905 8114 or 051-440425, email hello@2cubed.ie Please feel free to follow and interact with us on the following profiles. facebook icon twitter icon linkedin icon Instagram icon Google+ icon

SEO Performance – How to tell if your SEO is working for you or against you

SEO Performance
Category: Tips and Tricks
September 25, 2018
In the aggressive and competitive online market of today, Effective SEO has often proven to be the deciding factor for whether a website becomes successful or not. With so much knowledge nowadays about SEO virtually all websites are employing it in one shape or another as gaining high ranking positions on the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) has become more competitive than ever before. However this being said not all SEO was created equal as many are not utilising it to its full potential either through laziness or simple ignorance of what is required from them to employ effective SEO optimisation throughout their respective websites. So how can someone who is doing SEO for their website know if they are doing it correctly or not you may ask? As for so many cases the proof is in the pudding!  A great way to figure out if your SEO work has been effective or ineffective is to gauge it off metrics which can often be found through channels and tools such as google analytics, Moz etc. Below are four great metrics to measure your SEO success or lack thereof against: Keyword Ranking Keyword Ranking is something you should always be tracking regularly. Keyword rankings let you know how your website is performing on the SERP on google and if its appearing high for key search phrases related to your business. By improving these rankings you will have an increased flow of traffic to your website which will increase your chances of getting more conversions on your website. There is no particular trick to ranking high for keywords as google’s algorithm is ever-evolving and as such this means that there is no exact way to predict how well your website will perform in the rankings. It is a case of constantly checking and amending your strategy as needed. Organic Search Traffic Organic Search Traffic is the amount of natural traffic you get to the website. Effective use of SEO can improve your SEO performance in many ways. Three particular ways to improve your organic traffic are as follows:
  • By improving your ranking position on the SERP, as such you will be viewed more and have more traffic to your website.
  • By improving meta titles and meta descriptions users will now be more likely to click and interact with your content thus increasing your organic traffic.
  • Creating more content means that not only will your website have fresh content being applied to it which shows it’s an active and very alive website but also having new content gives you the opportunity to target new keywords and opportunities to earn visibility.
Online Conversion Rate What’s considered a “healthy” Online Conversion Rate tends to vary wildly depending on the industry. Conversions should always be a measurable event that can be tied to revenue. The actual conversion rate itself is comprised of the percentage of website visitors that complete a conversion. Generally speaking a conversion rate of 1.5%-3% is considered quite good. Effective SEO will help to drive traffic to your website and from there your website should be optimized to be able to convert these visitors into leads and conversions. Effective SEO is half the battle, having an optimized responsive website is the second part. If you can do both of these things effectively you should be able to see the results in your improved conversion rate. Bounce Rate Bounce Rate is the percentage of traffic that leaves your website quickly after landing on it without looking at any other pages before they leave. Bounce Rate can be a useful barometer in which to gauge how effective or not your SEO is as bounce rate can indicate how accurate the page is targeted towards visitors who are interested in that type of content or indeed in your business and if a page has a high bounce rate it can usually be a signal that something is inherently wrong with that web page whether it’s the content or the design of the page that seems to be frustrating customers so much that they bounce. Some pages can actually be expected to have high bounce rates such as pages which act more as a general reference for information such as a calendar or blog post for example. Of course bounce rates for key pages such as a homepage or services page should be lower. A bounce rate of 35%-60% is considered the industry standard average. If your page has a high bounce rate and it’s a key page for you then it’s time for you to reevaluate the SEO on that page and possibly the design also to ensure you are delivering the best user experience possible. By using these four metrics to measure your SEO success you will have a good idea of just how effective your SEO efforts have been and whether they have borne fruit or not. The information gleaned from these metrics will help you to alter your SEO strategy accordingly to meet your goals. SEO is a constant battle, by doing well in these four metrics you will definitely be in a position to win the fight! 2Cubed work with clients on a monthly basis, content writing/management and marketing are two of the many services we offer. To improve SEO ranking through effective marketing and have produced excellent results for many businesses, we help clients to get them to number one for their specific keywords. To help provide the best SEO service, 2Cubed also has an in-house web content writer who will work with you to customize and optimize your content, making it fit your brand identity and corporate voice, as well as maximizing impact on search engines. We will ensure that your content is unique and tailored for search engines so that your website has the best possible chance of reaching and expanding your audience. We provide reports and strategic plans assessing search result performance, working diligently to improve your company’s search engine optimization so that it continues to climb Google rankings on a regular basis. To find out the right move and strategy to take when it comes to effective SEO please contact 2Cubed today! Please feel free to contact us also on 01 905 8114 or 051-440425, email hello@2cubed.ie Please feel free to follow and interact with us on the following profiles. facebook icon twitter icon linkedin icon Instagram icon Google+ icon