SEO

Search Engine Optimisation and writing content

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SEO is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to your website from search engines. Search Engine Optimization increase your rankings, the best to do this is with good content, making visitors more inclined to buy your products or services or read over your pages. We always say “Content is king” Creating interesting and relevant content that your customers want to read is the most important part of performing well on google and other search engines.

SEO content is a powerful tool for converting users. Its primary goal is to help users find relevant webpages, rather than getting distracted by poorly structured content or irrelevant information. Good SEO content and design is critical to your business’s success because it improves usability and accessibility, which can boost traffic and conversion rate and most importantly ranking.

When creating a website or producing great content ensures that your work stands out from the crowd. Write in depth about the topic you specialise in. Google dislikes information duplication. Successful SEO content affects both the visitor and the search engines. The visitor should find what they needed immediately when they land on your page. Keyword research, on-page and off-page optimization, link building and competitor tracking are all part of a successful search engine optimization strategy. By working with moocow we can increase your site traffic and boost your rankings in search engines such as Google. We can increase organic traffic leading to more customers finding you.

Content is important and key to rank higher on Google, This is not only the important SEO factors but is important for effective marketing. Search engine optimization is important because it impacts the performance of your website or blog. However, with over 200+ ranking factors in place (and counting), there are many other areas that should be considered when optimizing for organic web traffic, Moocow’s expert team of SEO developers can help you to grow and make you stand out of the crowd. Please contact us to find out more

 

Our Top 5 Web Design and Marketing Podcasts

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We’ve researched the very best in web design and marketing podcasts to help you expand and develop your knowledge on all things relating to business, branding and design. And what better way to stay up to date on new developments and latest trends than easy to listen to podcasts that you can catch up on whilst travelling from work or from the comfort of your own home.

 

Shop Talk Show

Presented by Web Developers Dave Rupert and Chris Coyier, the Shop Talk podcast deliberates over various aspects of web editing and design, with handy tools and tips and advice on accessibility. Their live recordings have amassed followers of over 12K and are a great guide for those whose knowledge ranges from beginner to those already proficient.

Overtime

Overtime is Dribble’s own creative design podcast with interchanging hosts and topics focusing on branding, design and illustration. You’ll be treated to interviews with leading design directors and entrepreneurs, exploring themes in a fun, relaxed but informative way. Whether it’s general news and trends or more direct, specialist advice, the podcast makes for a great listen.

Let’s Talk Branding

The title here kind of gives this podcast away. Hosted by brand designer and strategist Stef Hamerlinck, the podcast takes an in-depth look at all aspects of branding, with interviews from industry leaders discussing the fundamentals of design strategies and branding for business. The site offers a large archive of expert advice that’s a must have for any business.

Edge of the Web

Aptly named “an SEO podcast for today’s digital marketer”, Edge of the Web is a brilliant podcast debating the ins and outs of digital marketing, SEO, and social media. SEO is often a tricky area for businesses surrounded by plenty of myths in regards to how it actually all works, so it’s at the top of our list for important podcasts to follow.

The Businessology Show

A focused business podcast covering marketing, development and design. Hosted by Jason M. Blumer, the CEO of Thriveal CPA Network, you can get up to scratch on great ideas for project management, business strategies, and advice for working within different markets and adapting to your work to different environments.

 

Using WordPress as a Platform to Generate Leads and Sales

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At Moocow, we pride ourselves on having the most up to date knowledge on the latest web news, tips and trends. With technology and techniques developing daily in the new decade ahead, Moocow are continuously working hard to help find new ways to develop your business.

We believe WordPress ranks above all the rest as a hosting platform. The open-source CMS platform works as an ideal model for creating a wide variety of sites for both small and large businesses, and is ideal for generating new leads and boosting sales. Below are a few ways WordPress can help you network better, get your site up to scratch and allow you to create new business opportunities.

Contact

Make sure your contact information is up to date, you can display your details and a map to your location using the contact form and map widgets. This makes it much easier for potential clients to be able to get in touch with you and see if your location is within reach if travelling.

SEO

WordPress offers a good deal of SEO support, in the form of tools, plug-ins and guides. These can help you optimise your site personally for search engines. Yoast SEO is a particular favourite amongst users, providing excellent content and SEO analysis and helping you track your performance.

Social Icons

Making sure your website uses icons that easily connect to your social media is also a must. Social media is one of the most highly used search tools when discovering a business or service. Social media widgets help create options to directly link you to your Facebook, Twitter and other social network sites.

CTA Buttons (Call To Action)

A ‘call to action’ button is always helpful in giving your clients an extra push to view certain areas of your site, particularly if you want to draw attention to a particular page or sale within your business. These buttons are also useful for adding “Buy Now” or “Search Now” buttons allowing customers to browse and purchase from your site with ease.

Testimonials

Having a testimonials feature on your site is a great way for potential clients to see reviews of your business. WordPress has excellent widget features that can create visually creative ways to present customer reviews instead of having an endless page of lengthy, written testimonials.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is an eCommerce platform specifically designed for WordPress used by entrepreneurs worldwide. The entirely customisable platform is an extremely popular tool for businesses both large and small, making selling online a breeze and allowing you to create online checkout systems for all experience levels.

7 Simple SEO Tips to Help Promote Your Website in Under 30 Mins

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Since opening its doors in 2006, Moocow have been working hard growing and developing our client base & expertise, offering a dynamic blend of creative thinking, experience and technical know-how. Here at Moocow we are dedicated to helping you get the best out of your website. We are proud to have produced amazing websites for our clients that boosted their brand and helped their businesses blossom. With these 7 simple tips we can help you be well on the way to efficiently marketing your website in as quick as 30 minutes.

1. Pick the right domain name
Making sure your website has a relevant URL is the first thing that stands out about your business. When clients go to search for you, they want a domain name that’s easy to understand and quick to search. It’s vital to pick this out before your website goes live, if you’re part of a company or brand it’s best to stick with whatever your company name is or at least a keyword or name that is relevant to your business. This is also the first place Google goes to determine exactly what your site’s about before choosing how to rank it. Make sure not to include any special characters/hashtags and remember to make your domain stand out from the crowd.

2. Create page titles and descriptions that help get you recognised
When creating a website, we will ask you to supply chosen titles for each of your web pages and a brief description of what that page includes. If you’re unsure of the importance of page titles and what exactly it is they do, hover on an open tab in your web browser and it will show you what title that page shows up as in search engines. The same goes for your page description – although you can’t see this personally, Google uses this description to filter down what your page is about. When your site is finalised and is picked up by Google, your page title and description is what viewers will first see when searching for relevant interests, so they will immediately know whether your page is something they are interested in or not – this is why it’s vital to make your page titles and descriptions relevant to your business.

3. Design your website around keywords
Keywords are important to your website as this is how Google directs searchers to your site when looking for similar interests. Picking keywords for your specific industry is helpful in putting you on the map and getting you the right attention. You can use free programs like Google AdWords to help you understand how and why keywords are important to your business. Use their Keyword Planner to access suggestions for keywords related to your business, helping your company reach the customer audience you’re looking for. AdWords also offers other options and extras you can pay for to give your site an extra boost such as graphic display ads, YouTube video ads or in-app mobile ads, so you have plenty of choice in how to reach out to your target audience.

4. Add text to your images
In the same way as mentioned above, picking keywords relating to your site is super handy for when customers want to search for you. This also works with images. Any image that you’re choosing to upload to your site, be sure to add a few words about each image that both describe the picture and are catchy to your search engines. Remember to always pick the right file name for your image and reduce file size for faster loading. Google states that the main reason a searcher leaves a web page before viewing the whole site is due to pages taking too long to load, which is often due to image files being too large to load quickly.

5. Anchor text can be helpful in guiding viewers around your site
A popular tip to get your website more noticed is adding anchor text to a page. Anchor text is where you click on a section of text highlighted in a ‘hyperlink’ or button that takes you directly to another page on your site or link to any other page on the web. It’s useful to use a short phrase or keyword relating to the subject of the page. It’s also helpful to choose words that are popular to your business or industry and are regularly picked up by Google. Despite being a clever trick to boost SEO, some sites go overboard with this however, which is something to avoid. Over use of linking can show up as a red flag on Google.

6. Get advertising through Google
If you want to maximise your chances of getting your business showing up in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) it’s a good idea to promote your brand on Google owned sites such as YouTube and Google Maps. Google pushes far more traffic towards websites that they own, so this will be an advantage for your company. A particular ‘must have’ for your business is setting up a profile on Google My Business. If you’re unsure what this is, this is the selection of info that pops up as a square in the right hand corner of your Google search on the web browser that shows the name of your business, photos, contact details and reviews. If your business has a lot of video related content that you use to promote your products or brand, setting up a YouTube channel can also add a large amount of viewers to both your website and help promote your products.

7. Mobile first sites are always top
Mobile-first responsive web design is now becoming a mandatory requirement for most sites. Over the last couple of years, there’s been a giant leap in what we call ‘internet browsing behaviour’, with thousands of people swapping from desktop to mobile technology. Google now gives preference to mobile friendly sites, prioritising mobile sites over desktops, and by the end of 2018 it’s predicted that 70% per cent of online shopping traffic will be mobile. Google’s Webmaster Blog stated “our algorithms will eventually primarily use the mobile version of a site’s content to rank pages from that site, to understand structured data, and to show snippets from those pages in our results.”

5 of the Best WordPress Themes for Creating a Portfolio

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At Moocow, we pride ourselves on having the most up to date knowledge on the latest web news, tips and trends. With technology and techniques developing daily, Moocow are continuously working hard to help find new ways to develop your business.

Our design team believe WordPress ranks above all the rest as a hosting platform. The open-source CMS works as an ideal model for creating a wide variety of sites for both small and large businesses, and is ideal for showcasing portfolios and products. Having a portfolio that’s professional, visually captivating and clearly showcases your work is vital for your business to achieve success and gain interest from new clients. So below, we’ve hand-picked some of the best WordPress themes for putting together a high end portfolio, that will grab your audience’s attention and gain you new clients and sales.

 

Oshine

Creates beautifully fresh and contemporary portfolios with 12 unique layouts to choose from. Comes with access to over 500 fonts, colour choices, shortcode modules and so much more. Oshine also supports a large variety of plug-ins, including WPML, BuddyPress and Gravity Forms. A great choice if you’re looking for a stylish and modern way to display work visually.

 

 

Adios

A great theme that’s easy to use, extremely fast loading and is ideal for those working within the creative industry. An elegant and artistic approach to portfolio design, you’ll have access to hundreds of fonts, colour choices, layout elements and designs and you’ll be able to use a variety of great options for animation. Adios allows for superb compatibility with all devices and browsers, and will ensure your site is noticed worldwide.

 

 

Art.

Perfect for colourful, chic and customisable design, this theme comes with a coding-free content builder for ease of use. Ideal if you’re looking for an artistic and simplistic portfolio design, it’s packed with beautiful layouts with drag and drop options, fashionable headers and plenty of options for blog posts. You can also create stylish home sliders to showcase large images, and with SEO by Yoast you’re sure to have plenty of great options for getting noticed in search engines.

 

 

Kalium

A sensationally designed theme for those looking for a cool and contemporary twist to showcase their work in style. With numerous options for layout, images and blog posts, this WordPress theme also includes Revolution Slider, allowing users to display work through slideshow. You’ll be able to personalise the slides and create your own unique animations and visual effects too.

 

 

Studio 8

Rated as one of the best WordPress themes on the market, Studio 8 has a superbly sophisticated and stylish design. Beautifully fast and responsive, the theme provides great portfolio options to businesses of all backgrounds. You can upload custom headers and access built in short codes to make editing and designing easier. Known for creating attention-getting websites, this theme will help put your portfolio on the map.

 

 

3 Crucial Ways Your Social Media Impacts Your SEO

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At Moocow, we’re constantly striving to make sure we’re ahead of the game when it comes to having the most up to date knowledge on the latest tech trends and SEO advice. When it comes to SEO, businesses and marketers alike can benefit from knowing the relationship between SEO and social media. Increased web traffic from social sites such as Twitter and Facebook can all have an influence on how well your site appears in search engines. It can also impact how social media profiles stand out in Google. Take a look at our tips to help enhance your social media to help boost your SEO.

Your followers
It’s no secret that the more of a following you have, the larger an audience you can reach, however if you’re starting off small you shouldn’t let it panic you. Building up a genuine following comes with patience, but it always pays off. Organic followers are far better than paying for fake ones. Make sure your thread is packed full of content that’s informative, run and relatable and feel free to throw in a few discounts and offers here and there. This will help to grow your following naturally, and the more info you post leading back to your website, the more of an increase in traffic you’ll find. If you’re willing to fork out, use promotions like Facebook Targeting or Twitter Ads instead of outsider brands claiming they’ll get you 5,000 followers for a fiver (they won’t)

Your content
Make sure you are posting things relevant to your brand and just any old thing that’s trending on Twitter. Your followers follow you for one reason only – they’re interested in your brand. If you start posting off topic, you may find yourself losing out on followers. Keep it topical, you can still use themes that are trending but make sure you relate it back to your brand. Videos, GIFs and memes are all great visual ways to get your audience interested, and they don’t need to be tacky just because it’s a GIF, you can get making your own easily online. Remember not to overdo it with the sales talk too, obviously you want to make sales, but you don’t want to bombard your audience with nothing but ads.

Your link building
Social media is a great way to stay connected with others, you can link others to
your sites, get your content shared, and help boost each others posts. Guest blogs or social media takeovers are a great way to boost your brand to a larger following. You can also join in with group Twitter chats by adding a particular group hashtag to get your posts re-tweeted and talked about. When posting blogs, adverts or any other form of media, always remember to include a link to your site, products or another related external source. Branching out to profiles with a nationwide following can be great, but don’t forget to go local too, supporting and sharing with local companies can attract both attention and new clients if you’re working together within a local area.

 

Take a Closer Look at Your SEO and Avoid These Optimisation Misconceptions

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At Moocow, we pride ourselves on having the most up to date knowledge on the latest web news, tips and trends. With technology and techniques developing daily, Moocow are continuously working hard to help find new ways to develop your business.

Myths in SEO are often formed when people are not up to date with their SEO knowledge, or when businesses create SEO ‘tips’ that are a con to get you to pay out big money for techniques that don’t really matter all that much.

Since the turn of 2018, we have seen rapid changes to the way SEO works across many web design platforms. Below we’ve cleared up a few fibs you might have been told previously in regards to your website’s SEO.

 

Keywords do not matter as much as they used to – TRUE

There is a great deal of focus put on keywords, however they may not be as important as many think. They are useful too have but do not necessarily need to be your primary focus. It’s a case of still having them but not making them the full focus. It’s still important to use keywords in meta descriptions tag lines and titles on your web pages, however there are a ton of other important ways that can get you discovered quicker.

 

You can reach the number one spot for a certain keyword – FALSE, you can’t anymore

It is no longer possible to reach the number one spot for a certain keyword due to the way Google has recently changed the way their rankings work. Unless you’re a big corporation like Apple or Coca-Cola where your search results would automatically lead you to a top spot, you can no longer predict what will be at number one for a particular keyword search. You could type in ‘mobile’ into Google search one day and it come up with a bunch of info on mobile first, but the next day it could just as likely come up with a page on baby toys.

 

Link building is dead – FALSE, it’s more alive than ever

It’s a common misconception that link building is “dead” however this just isn’t so, and has been largely discussed by companies such as Moz and Forbes. If anything, it’s link farms that are dead. According to Moz, using anchor text and links to “topic-specific”sites will still help to attract traffic to your site. The more attention your site receives, the easier it will be for Google to rank it higher in search engine results. Working alongside other companies through social sharing can benefit your company awareness greatly also.

 

SEO companies can guarantee to get you #1 ranking – FALSE, no one can

Despite what many companies would like to brag, no one can guarantee this. And this is the sort of con to watch out for when looking for a company to help with your SEO. A reliable SEO company will be able to work with you to make your site consistently popular on Google and improve its rankings. This will not necessarily mean being able to achieve that number one spot. When it comes to getting help with your SEO, look for honesty over false prophecies. You don’t want to be left out of pocket and without the results you wanted to achieve in the first place.

 

Different pages should have different keywords – FALSE

This really isn’t necessary, as although the importance of keywords are still relevant, it’s still only a minor part of what helps rank your website. It makes sense to have your primary keyword featured across your whole site, as that’s what Google picks up and makes searches relevant to your business. You don’t need to bother creating a ton of background pages each with different keywords, as it’s likely to make your rankings more confusing.

 

 

7 Reasons Why You Should Choose WordPress to Host Your Website

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At Moocow, we pride ourselves on having the most up to date knowledge on the latest web developments and web design trends. Our job is to seek out the best in high quality web hosting, security and SEO awareness. When it comes to choosing a platform for your hosting, WordPress ranks higher than any other hosting service. Below are our 7 reasons why WordPress is top of the leaderboard.

Deciding on a platform to host your website is one of the first points to consider when getting started in creating a new or updated site. The platform we think ranks above all the rest is WordPress. This open-source CMS works as an ideal model for creating a wide variety of sites for both small and large businesses, ranging from e-commerce to blog based designs. Still not convinced? Well here’s our reasons why…

It’s popular

WordPress sites account for over 25% of sites on the web, with 1.1 million new domains being created every 6 months. The incredibly popular platform is even available in 62 different languages, making it accessible to businesses worldwide.

It’s beginner friendly

WordPress is easy to use, even if you haven’t had much experience. It allows you to add pages, blog posts, text and widgets at the click of a button. Even if your site is being professionally designed, it will be easy for you to make additional changes or touch ups yourself.

You’ve got access to tons of Themes and Plug-ins

WordPress guarantees access to a huge variety of themes and plug-ins compared to other sites. No matter what your business or blog, they have themes to suit all. From Jetpack, Yoast, Revslider to Woocommerce and Mailchimp, there are so many options to help improve your site.

It’s highly secure

WordPress core software is highly protected and comes with access to great plug-ins such as Wordfence to give you extra defences alongside firewall and malware scans. WordPress also offer plenty of guides and tips to keep you secure savvy.

It will improves your rankings

WordPress genuinely has the ability to help you rank higher in search engines. “WordPress” is searched 2,740,000 times every month, making it one of the highest searched keywords on Google. And WordPress has plenty of great SEO plug-ins and built-in features to optimize each page on your website.

It’s known for its great support

Need help? WordPress has a great technical support team on hand to help with any customer queries you may have. Their engineers offer first rate customer support and quick fixes to any technical issues, and you can access their support services easily online.

No.1 for media

If you’re wanting a website that can handle a multitude of different media content, WordPress handles images, audio, video and plenty more with ease, making it simple to upload and insert content when writing a post or a page.

SEO Tips and Trends for 2018

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At Moocow, we pride ourselves on having the most up to date knowledge on the hottest tech trends and web design news. With 2017 over, it’s time to take stock on what we’ve learnt over the past year and get ready for what the new year has in store for the world of SEO. Take a look at our advice below and get ahead of the game with essential SEO tips and trends for 2018.

Voice Search

Voice search is becoming increasingly popular with a surge in voice search and smart speaker sales. Both Amazon Echo and Google Home have become household favourites. Marketers feel voice search has a higher ability to analyse what shoppers are looking for specifically when compared with traditional search options.

Keyword Planning

When it comes to keyword planning it can be hard to get accurate advice without paying for help such as through Google Analytics Keyword Planner. Up your game when choosing good keywords by using free tools such as Moz’s Keyword Explorer tool. This can help you to get accurate information that can rank the best keywords to target relevant to your business.

Optimising Titles and Meta Descriptions

You can optimise Titles and Meta Descriptions on your web pages by ensuring things such as correct word length, correct keyword usage and making sure your keywords are featured in your tags and URL. This way they are more likely to rank higher in search engine results.

Keep Up To Date

Be sure to keep social media channels up to date and produce and publish new content weekly. Make sure content is of your best quality, is descriptive but gets the point across easily, and is enjoyable for your audience to read. Be sure to use relevant keywords and use both external and internal links to relevant content.

Link Building

Link building, when used correctly and adheres to a specific budget, can be extremely beneficial to SEO. Networking with other companies can be extremely beneficial to landing you “guest spots” or social media takeovers on as many public and published sites as possible.