If you are thinking of setting up your business in Wales then there is still free help available via Business Wales. It is funded by the Welsh Government.
The help is predominantly available via their website which has plenty of help ranging from Live Chat support to online guides and videos. You can also ring to speak to an Advisor.
Part of the website is called BOSS (Business Online Support Service) which features online videos designed to help new and established businesses with a variety of issues including Starting A Business, Business Planning, Business Finance, Marketing and Ideas and Innovation.
If you need one-to-one marketing assistance or help with writing your business plan then please give us a call on 07964 594065 o
Recently Google has issued an important warning to encourage more transparency. This warning is directed at bloggers who receive freebies and marketing companies who send out freebies to bloggers to generate reviews. This is a huge industry and one that works well for bloggers and the marketing industry. We get asked regularly by bloggers who want to know how to receive free products to review or feature on their social media accounts.
It has been a popular marketing technique for some years. The only disadvantage has been the risk that readers may not realise that a review has been written because the blogger has received the product as a freebie. Inevitably some bloggers will be more positive about the product as they didn’t have to buy it and also if they started to slate products they know the marketing companies will stop sending them freebies. We’ve been concerned that the plethora of positive reviews across the internet for specific products is starting to create untrust with internet-savvy customers who realise that many reviews are not impartial.
But the truth is that marketing and SEO companies (ourselves included) love this method as it generates free coverage of products and it helps to create quality links back to company websites. We all know that paid-for links are a big no-no these days but as genuine links can help a website to achieve higher rankings with Google. So up until now this was regarded as a perfectly acceptable SEO technique.
But Google have focused their attention on this technique and they’ve issued some important instructions to bloggers regarding reviews about freebie products. This will have a massive impact for marketing and SEO companies who will be frustrated that these changes make life even harder for them. And for those of us who have been in the industry for a long time we are left wondering if our clients will be penalised for blog links which were created years ago for their products.
Here are Google’s instructions and our explanations:-
Use NoFollow Links
When you link to the product, company or their social media accounts be sure to use NoFollow links. If you are unfamiliar with Nofollow links, it just means that Google won’t count the link when they crawl your site. In the world of search engine optimisation links are really important and the more links the better so long as they have not been bought. Now Google seems to be saying that links created as a result of a freebie are the pretty much the same as those that have been paid for. We all know that websites which use paid links have been penalised in the past by Google so the technique of asking for freebie links is now deemed risky too. To avoid the risk of the blog and the product company websites being penalised (i.e. drop down the search results or in some cases disappear from the results) you need to set each and every link to NoFollow. Or alternatively don’t create any links, just ask people to Google the product.
How to Add NoFollow
Create a link as usual. Then look at the code version of your link. (In WordPress click the Text view). Your link would normally look like this
<a href=”https://casemarketing.co.uk”>Rachel Case Marketing</a>
Add the following rel=”nofollow” taking care not to delete any brackets or inverted commas.
<a href=”https://casemarketing.co.uk” rel=”nofollow”>Rachel Case Marketing</a>
2. Tell Them It Was A Freebie
Google wanst you to add a statement to your post or webpage to explain that you received the product as a freebie. They suggest that you put the statement at the top as users may not read the entire post. This seems reasonable and its a policy that is already being used across social media using hashtags like #spon for sponsored, #paid for paid or #samp for sample
3. Create Unique Content
This is interesting. They ask that bloggers aim to offer their visitors ‘a compelling reason’ to come back. They also suggest trying to become the ‘go-to source of information’ in your niche or aim to provide ‘exclusive content that only you can create due to your unique expertise or resources’. It sounds like Google are concerned that are there are too many similar blogs out there and a lot of bloggers seem to be copying each other. This may be a warning from Google that they intend to favour unique and compelling blogs even more in the future.
What do you think about this latest SEO change? Will it affect you too?
Google has made a significant change by removing the right hand side bar of adverts which used to appear for search results. If you are paying for these adverts (Adwords) then this will be a huge change for you. It means that Google is only showing their adverts at the top and bottom of the page. They’ve indicated that they may show up to 4 adverts at the top.
So what does this mean for website owners who rely upon their listings in the organic search results? Well it means your listing may now appear further down the actual page. It won’t affect your actual ranking within the search results but it does mean that if Google chooses to display more adverts in your niche then your position will naturally be lower down the page. For those websites which appeared towards the bottom of page 1 the situation is more serious as they are likely to be pushed to wastelands of page 2.
It means that competition for the coveted first page of Google’s organic search results just got tougher. So website owners are going to need to work hard at SEO if they want their websites to appear on this page.
If you need impartial advice and help with SEO then please get in touch. > contact us
If you want to do your own SEO then you need to be sure to learn as much as you can from reliable sources and keep up to date in this fast moving world. We would also advise you to build up your traffic sources from other platforms to avoid over dependence on Google’s traffic.
If you are thinking of buying a domain name here are our 10 top tips to help to ensure you chose the right name and avoid potential pitfalls.
1. If you are buying a .co.uk using Nominet’s WHOIS search facility to see what is available rather than Google.
2. If your chosen name is purchased but not in use (put the url into the address bar to see if it is in use) then the current owner may no longer want it. If their contact details are showing in the WHOIS record then drop them a line to see if they will sell. We have bought and sold domains this way at reasonable costs. If the owner’s contact information is not displayed you can use ‘drop catching’ services (often called back ordering). These services will try to buy the expired domain on your behalf. It is definitely worth trying as the actual time and date of expiration can vary despite what it might say on the WHOIS record. We’ve used Domain Monster many times and been successful each time although there is no guarantee.
3. Your chosen domain name needs to be easy to remember, easy to spell and preferably different to your competitors. You also need a domain name which will continue to be suitable if your business expands in the future.
4. If you are setting up an online shop please purchase the matching .com and .co.uk addresses. International customers are used to seeing .com but are less inclined to shop with a .co.uk address. How do we know? Because we’ve helped so many online shops over the years and run our own that we’ve seen it happen a LOT.
5. Think carefully about any similar domain names. If your new business will be called Fantastic Cupcakes and you are going to buy www.fantasticcupcakes.co.uk we would also recommend that you buy www.fantasticcupcake.co.uk The reason behind this is that it stops any would-be competitors setting up and trying to use a similar name to you. By the way Fantastic Cupcakes is just a made up example. Those domains were purchased a long time ago. These days we often have to think hard to come up with good domain names which brings us to…
6. Struggling to think of a domain name? There are plenty of domain name generators out there which will suggest weird and wonderful names. Here are a few which can help to inspire you.
7. Chosen your name? Great. Now keep it secret! Yes until you have purchased it don’t shout it from the roof tops. Or even discuss it in coffee shops. We’ve lost count of the number of clients who had thought of a fabulous name but had lost it simply because they didn’t register it straight away. One in particular really did discuss her chosen name in Starbucks and drove home to buy it only to discover it had been purchased in the past hour. So register before telling the world.
8. This is a bit like tip 7 but we also want you to register it BEFORE setting up any social media accounts. There are people who watch who is setting up social media accounts with the aim of buying their domains before them and holding them to ransom. Again it’s happened to some of our clients.
9. Once you’ve bought your domain name then we recommend setting up accounts with the same name with all the social media platforms just to reserve the name. Keep a note of your login email of course.
10. When you buy a domain name you will be asked to provide an email account. Please make sure this is a regularly used account. If not set up email forwarding from it to your usual email address. This is because reminders to renew this domain will be sent via the email you gave them. If you don’t use that email address in the future you won’t see the renewals and you won’t renew your domain name. Again this has happened to a few of our clients over the years so please don’t let it happen to you.
We hope these top 10 tips help you. If you have any more tips to help others then please let us know via the comments box below.
If you are thinking of setting up your business in Wales then there is still free help available via Business Wales. It is funded by the Welsh Government.
Recently Google has issued an important warning to encourage more transparency. This warning is directed at bloggers who receive freebies and marketing companies who send out freebies to bloggers to generate reviews. This is a huge industry and one that works well for bloggers and the marketing industry. We get asked regularly by bloggers who want to know how to receive free products to review or feature on their social media accounts.
Google has made a significant change by removing the right hand side bar of adverts which used to appear for search results. If you are paying for these adverts (Adwords) then this will be a huge change for you. It means that Google is only showing their adverts at the top and bottom of the page. They’ve indicated that they may show up to 4 adverts at the top.