Where to start marketing?

Marketing a small business is hard. Seeing it thrive is infinitely harder, but here we are, 16 years later and POSH is still leading the way in developing eye-catching, SEO optimised websites for businesses across the country. 

Over the years, the strategies, tools, and approaches in digital marketing have undergone significant transformations. Social media has changed how we promote ourselves and our clients’ work, developing a new way of talking which simply didn’t exist 10 or 15 years ago.  In this blog post, we’ll delve into the top 3 lessons we have learned about marketing for small businesses and how these insights have shaped the way we approach every new commission today.

1. Embrace Digitalisation

Marketing used to be TV and newspaper led. Not any more. The rise of the digital era has revolutionised marketing for small businesses. It meant we could stand shoulder-to shoulder on the same platforms as the largest businesses like Coke, Apple and Disney. We could place adverts in places we knew our customers would be, and track how successful these ads were. Using Facebook, Instagram and TikTok has been crucial to allow small businesses to be heard above large corporations.

Find out more about our digital marketing services here.

Key lesson: Embrace change. Nothing stays the same for long, and if you aren’t at the forefront of new ways of doing things, you will be left behind playing catchup. 

2. Listen

No matter how big or small businesses are, you are always going to be dealing with a person. Whether that’s on the other end of the phone, over Teams or in person, you need to be able to make a connection. The best way to do this is to listen to what is being said, and ask questions.

Small businesses thrive on word of mouth, and this involves listening to customer feedback. When a customer gets great service, they are often keen to share this with their friends and family. This is the sort of marketing that money can’t buy! By being personable with everyone and listening to their needs, we can help ensure our business is the sort they will recommend.

Key lesson: When we listen, we can begin to see opportunities for marketing and business growth.

3. Content marketing drives results

There was a time when writing an online blog was seen as a hobby, like writing a diary. Today, blogs are a cornerstone of the web, and content marketing is crucial in pushing websites in front of the right set of eyes. 

Content marketing such as blog posts, videos, or social media content, providing valuable and relevant information to a target audience. It sets you up as a position of authority, making potential customers trust you which, in turn, increases the likelihood that they will buy from you. Good content also engages in search engine optimisation, which makes your search results appear high when someone Googles what you do. 

Find out more about our search engine optimisation services here.

Key lesson: Provide accessible, regular and relevant content to encourage new visitors to your site.

This time next year, Rodney…

We’ve learned plenty of lessons growing POSH and how to market a small business. But these three stand head and shoulders above the rest as being the basis for developing a successful enterprise. Embrace change, listen to clients and create worthwhile content. As an online marketing agency, by continuing following those lessons, we look forward to continue our growth for many more years to come. If you’d like to join us and hear more about how we can market your small business, get in touch with Jenny today.

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SERP (Search Engine Results Page)

SERP refers to the page displayed by search engines in response to a user’s query. Understanding SERP features such as featured snippets, knowledge panels, and local packs is crucial for optimising website content. This will help you to appear prominently in search results. By understanding how to get content onto a potential customer’s SERP, you can aim to increase sales. 

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)

SEO is the practice of optimising your website content to rank higher in SERPs (see, you’re already getting the hang of this jargon!). One way to help with this is to use keywords – these are the phrases that people use to search online. By incorporating them in useful content, you can encourage more people to visit your site and attract more organic traffic from search engines like Google.

We’ve spoken at length before at SEO and the basics always remain the same. If you create high-quality copy that is focused on your business – and provide it consistently – then you are over halfway to ensuring you’ll get good search results. If you would like help providing timely content for your website to help with SEO, then just give us at POSH a shout.

PPC (Pay-Per-Click)

PPC is a digital advertising model where advertisers pay a fee each time their ad is clicked. It’s found on Google Ads and Facebook Ads. PPC allows users to create targeted campaigns to promote their content and drive traffic to their websites. By bidding on keywords and demographics, digital marketers can reach their target audience effectively and track the performance of their ads in real-time. It is a good way to advertise as you only pay each time your advert is clicked on, as opposed to every time someone simply views your advert. This means that you only pay for times a potential customer clicks on your advert.

CTA (Call to Action)

A CTA is a prompt that encourages readers to take a specific action. This could be subscribing to a newsletter, downloading a resource, or making a purchase. It’s vital to include clear and compelling CTAs on your website. Content like blog posts can help drive conversions and engage your audience. Whether it’s a clickable button, an image or a text link, CTAs should be strategically placed throughout your blog to guide readers towards desired actions. For example, do you want your web visitors to book a stay at your hotel? Then ensure you have clear “Book Now” buttons on your site, especially at the end of blogs which tell them about your wonderful accommodation. Parliament House Hotel in Edinburgh has excellent CTAs throughout their site.

And if you want blog readers to find out more about you, then direct them to an about us page like this!

ROI (Return on Investment)

ROI measures the effectiveness of your digital marketing efforts. It compares the cost of investment to the resulting benefits or revenue generated. For websites, ROI can be tracked through various metrics such as website traffic, engagement rates, lead generation, and ultimately, conversion rates. By analysing ROI metrics, we can evaluate the success of digital marketing campaigns. This can help direct future strategies. Here at POSH we can do this analysing for you. Our keen eye, educated through hundreds of hours of studying spreadsheets, will be sure to help you get a solid ROI.

Bounce Rate

Bounce rate tells us the percentage of visitors who land on one webpage but then leave without interacting further. A high bounce rate is often a bad thing, especially for those in the hospitality profession. That’s because it means there’s a good chance that the user did not get what they wanted form your site, and so went to another one instead. If you are looking to bring customers to your business, you usually want to attract and keep them on your page until they purchase goods or services. Want to bring your bounce rate down and sales up? Speak to us at POSH and we can help.

In conclusion, understanding these types of phrases is only the beginning. Mastering the art of digital marketing is a long process, so why not let us join you on your journey and we can help your website really shine? Get in touch with Jenny today. 

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Chat GPT

We’ve already spoken at length about Chat GPT and how it can help us with our writing. Whilst we would never use AI to generate blogs to publish, it can help produce a plan or structure to guide writing. All blogs written by us for our clients are written by real people behind the keyboard (hello!) and so everything is researched and written by hand. However AI can help us consider ideas we might not have though of, giving us fresh blogs to write ourselves that are original and relevant to our clients niche.

AI in imagery

Everything needs images now, from websites to social media posts to newsletters. Images are what grabs people’s attention, and keeps them reading. However, finding the right image can be hard – if it even exists at all.

There are many AI tools out there to help you generate your own images, and you can usually use them however you want afterwards. Shutterstock is a paid-for tool which can generate images when you input text. Adobe Photoshop similarly lets you edit and generate unique images, and you can even start by using one of your own. There are also plenty of free image generators to use, including Nightcafe. 

The only limit is your imagination. We’ve been playing with these tools for a while with mixed results that often need time for tweaking. But if what your website needs is an image of a luxury hotel resort where a family are playing happily in the sand and overhead, a large green dragon breathes fire at a distant volcano…well, AI has got you covered:

Alexa, set a reminder…

For many households, Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Nest speakers have become part of daily routines. From setting reminders to controlling the TV to even ordering goods with your voice, they have changed they way we do things.

Such always-listening speakers still worry many about invasion of privacy in their home, but for many the benefits outweigh the potential risks. Many hotels have included smart speakers in rooms, with the option of turning them off. 

Benefits to guests include easily playing music they like, checking the local weather and news and also connecting to the front desk. It’s also possible to check out of a hotel just by using your voice. 

Chatbots

When you have been in the hospitality industry for a long time, especially in one location, you begin to see patterns in things people want to know. For example, are there parking spaces nearby? What time is breakfast? What time is checkout? 

These are just a few of the many questions a chatbot can help answer, allowing hotel staff more time to deal with complicated questions that need personal attention. By allowing website visitors to click an icon, they can open up a chatbot which offers lifelike responses and is able to answer any number of questions, even those specific to your business. For anything it can’t help with, it is able to transfer the customer to a real person to continue their experience. 

Take a look at an example here from Le Canton hotel in Brazil. Do keep in mind that AI is still a burgeoning field, and sometimes things can go a little wrong, like this chap who tried to get himself a brand new Chevy car from a dealership chatbot for $1!

The future of AI

AI is going to become more human, and being able to tell when you are interacting with a human or machine will become more difficult as technology advances. This means that now is a great time to start using AI and keep ahead of the game. If you want to discuss ways to integrate AI into your hospitality industry, then get in touch!

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How to use ChatGPT

In order to do anything with Chat GPT, you will need to actually know how to use AI. Follow these simple steps to start your ChatGPT journey:

• Visit chat.openai.com and log in (or sign up).
• Type your prompt in the message box on the homepage. This will tell ChatGPT what you want it to do.
• Once you receive a response, you can enter a new prompt, regenerate the response, copy it, or like/dislike it.

What can ChatGPT be used for?

You can use ChatGPT for a huge range of things. Plenty of people use Chat GPT on a daily basis, for small, personal tasks as well as larger professional ones. Here are just some of the uses of ChatGPT:

Explaining complicated topics

Sometimes, no matter how many times you re-read something or research it in different ways, things just do not make sense. If you’re struggling to understand a concept or a topic, you can use ChatGPT to get an easier-to-digest explanation.

You can simply give Chat GPT the prompt “explain x to me like I’m 5”, and it will provide you with an explanation much less convoluted than pages like Wikipedia. This can really useful for theoretical concepts, especially if you don’t want to pause reading a text or a brief but are stuck on one word. Rather than spend half an hour researching, simply ChatGPT it.

Solving maths problems with a step-by-step explanation

For people who simply cannot get on with maths equations, ChatGPT can help hugely. Not only will it answer your question, but it can break the answer down into a step-by-step of working out. It allows you to get an answer, but most importantly, it shows you how to do it yourself. This can be really helpful for revising students.

Creating a meal plan

Trying to decide what to eat each and every night can be exhausting. With the help of ChatGPT, however, that is a thing of the past! No more getting to 6 pm and ransacking the fridge to see what you can make – give it prompts about the kind of foods you want it to make.

For example, you could ask ChatGPT:

• “What are some high-protein meals that use red peppers, beans and cottage cheese?”
• “Can you suggest some low-fat dinner ideas that only take 20 minutes?”
• “What can I cook for someone who is gluten-free, vegetarian and lactose intolerant?”

Any of these will give you a handful of meal suggestions, allowing you to get your tasty evening meal without having to do too much thinking.

Suggesting things to do

If you’ve got a group of friends over, ChatGPT can be really helpful in picking something to keep you all busy. You could ask ChatGPT for ideas for card games, or questions to ask to break the ice, you could even try to ask it for a murder mystery game!

Using ChatGPT for business

Chat GPT has uses beyond just personal projects. You can also use it to help with a variety of business tasks. For example, it can help you to plan your time effectively, conduct market research or plan online content and social media posts.

Coming up with hashtags and keywords

Since ChatGPT can scour the internet, it can be really useful in finding social post hashtags for you to use in your marketing. Likewise, ChatGPT can be used to find keywords for you to use in your articles. All you will need is to type in a few of the keywords you already have and it will provide a list of related words.

Creating outlines for articles

Once you’ve got keywords and a title, you can ask ChatGPT to provide you with a list of subtitles and headings for a piece of content. It will keep them as closely related to the keyword that you’ve given as possible, and make sure that the article has as much information as possible.

You can then provide your writers with the outline to shape the content perfectly. Just make sure you give the outline a once over before you send it out, as sometimes it might include headings that don’t fit your content plan.

Creating business strategies and schedules

If you outline your target audience and goals, ChatGPT can help you to create a marketing strategy with content calendars and schedules. It can help you with processes, time management and workflows across many areas of your business, such as HR, sales and payroll. Within your industry, it can identify current trends and gather market research and insights. It can also carry out competitor analysis and suggest improvements. Even if it isn’t perfect, it provides a good base to work off!

When not to use ChatGPT

So if ChatGPT can do all of these things, surely you should use it for everything? It would make life easier – right?

Well, the short answer is no. Using it to create keywords, strategies, and outlines is fine. But beyond that, you run the risk of it harming your performance. Google’s algorithm, as it stands, can identify AI-generated content, and it will penalise pages accordingly. If you use ChatGPT to write content for your pages, you may find that the pages do not do as well as you’d like them to. No matter how many keywords it has or how much you promote the page. You may also find that some of the generated content has inaccuracies or irrelevant information, which can add to the spread of misinformation.

It is also important to consider that while ChatGPT can be used to craft content strategies, others may do the same. If your competitors are also using ChatGPT to create their strategies, you might be using the same strategy. That won’t work well for either of you.

Real humans still needed!

So, in summary, ChatGPT can be really useful for some things. It can reduce the number of hours you need to spend doing some things. Meaning you can get on with other things that you wouldn’t normally have time for. Or spend more time on special projects. And, of course, it is still learning. Future iterations will no doubt give even better solutions to the tasks detailed above.

However, what is clear is that using a real human being is still the way forward for other things! So, if you need help with your website, content creation, blogs, etc., we have real human writers and marketing experts. Get in touch to see what we can help you with.

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Having worked with all sorts of businesses in the hospitality sector, we know what works best for businesses. Whether you run a local bed and breakfast full of charm or a hotel in a bustling city, we’ll be able to adapt our services to best suit your business needs.

What separates us when it comes to hotel websites?

Our team is passionate about their work and will work hard to help your business soar. When you work with POSH, you’re not just hiring a team of hard workers, but a team that knows the hospitality business like the back of its hand.

We have a track record of creating elegant websites that bring customers back time and time again. Our websites are built with both your business and your customers in mind. We want to make sure that your website is easy to crawl and index for SEO purposes. But more than anything, that makes sense to your customers and converts leads into sales. Booking a night or a holiday away will be smooth and easy for your customers.

Our work

If you’re not sure what we mean when we say that what we do stands out from the crowd, browse some of our work. Our clients are more than happy with the results of the work our team has done with them. And we’re excited to continue working with them to improve on those results.

Kingsmills Hotel

Kingsmills Hotel is a luxury 4-star hotel in Inverness, with luxurious rooms, incredible dining options, and spa facilities. When Kingsmills Hotel came to us, their website was not working for them. We worked together to rebuild the website and implemented a highly focused SEO campaign. Since working with us, Kingsmills Hotel’s overall online revenue has increased by 503% annually.

It doesn’t stop there, though. The hospitality industry changes all the time, and as the experts, we continue to work with the folks at Kingsmills Hotel to maintain their website. This allows us to help guide their hotel website and their business in the right direction.

Parliament House Hotel

Our team has been working with Parliament House Hotel for 11 years now. In that time, we have worked together on everything from SEO to PR, constantly adapting our relationship to fulfil the business’s needs. We understand that businesses change over time, and so we’re always happy to work on a range of projects with clients.

Most recently, during COVID, we rebuilt the Parliament House Hotel website. This was a big task after such a long working relationship focused on creating pages with precise SEO targeting! It worked out incredibly, though, with the hotel having since increased its online revenue by 280% per year.

As it stands, POSH is responsible for Parliament House Hotel’s social media, SEO, digital strategy, and newsletters. We hope to continue providing the team at Parliament House with outstanding results.

What makes good hotel booking websites?

Over our 15 years in business, we have learned what it takes to create a really good hotel booking site. Through plenty of user testing, we’ve made lots of discoveries about what works really well, and what doesn’t. We have skilled staff who can help your website and business when it comes to:

SEO management and cracking content

Getting your website to rank on SERPs can be difficult, especially when the algorithm changes all the time. Our team of highly skilled SEO content specialists keep on top of trends and write cracking content. They make sure that the clients we work with are still ranking well on Google so they get more conversions and a higher ROI.

UX web design for smooth, elegant websites

As well as our talented web developers, we have a team of UX web designers who craft beautiful, user-friendly websites. And making sure that the websites serve the business while providing the business’ customers with a great experience. They focus on building a reputation and making sure customers come back time and time again. And you can choose between a bespoke site or a budget one.

PPC advertising and more . . .

Our PPC advertising experts offer the opportunity to increase website traffic using clever campaigns. Improving revenue and keeping business flowing for our clients!

That’s not even half of it, though. To create truly wonderful hotel websites, you need experts in analytics, social media marketing, and a solid digital strategy. And a team who will work their absolute hardest for you in every aspect of digital marketing. But where do you find a team like that?

Here! We are that team. Read more about our web design services and contact us today to see how we can help your business (and website) be the destination to visit.

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All of our feedback is taken and used to shape the way that we continue to work, ensuring that we are consistently providing our clients with the best service possible.

Our services

We offer a large range of services to help businesses maintain their traffic and to generate more ROI and conversions. Whether you’re looking into UX web design, website development, digital strategy, social media marketing, analytics or SEO services, we can help. We become part of your team and support you all the way. We also offer digital marketing packages to suit all budgets.

Just like we did for Apex Hotels, who have said that our ‘guidance and support’ was ‘invaluable’. We helped Apex to strengthen their position, so much so that the company exceeded their revenue expectations in the early months post-launch. Likewise, David Brown of Rugby Plus told us how much he loves ‘the drive and enthusiasm’ our team has shown while helping his business. He recognises that ‘the continual support from POSH’ keeps Rugby Plus achieving highly successful results.

In addition to our enthusiasm, everyone on the team at POSH is highly-skilled and knowledgeable. We will ‘meet every challenge’, as Table Manors found. This leaves our clients ‘delighted with the result’ of the websites we create and work on for them. Those we represent as a PR agency are ‘thrilled to be represented by POSH’, and we have a ‘great blogger and journalist outreach’ to provide you with the best digital strategies and PR.

For more about the services we offer, take a look here and see how we can help you to improve your online presence. And take a look at our client testimonials below.

What have our clients said about us in their testimonials?

So what exactly do our clients have to say? We’ve given you sneak peaks into our clients’ satisfaction, but here are a handful of our clients’ reviews of our stellar services.

Kingsmills Hotel

We worked with Kingsmills Hotel on their website, we manage their social media and we created a digital strategy for them. The sales and marketing manager, Joyce Arbuckle said,

“I have worked with POSH for 10 years now and can highly recommend them. They deliver digital solutions for our hotel with creativity and enthusiasm. Their engagement with our product and market has been outstanding and a huge plus when creating the marketing initiatives on our behalf.”

Islay Cottages and Peatzeria

We built new websites for Islay Cottages and the Peatzeria. And we make sure they have fresh content optimised for SEO to bring in new customers. David and Caroline Thompson said,

“We have used the POSH agency for some years now, they have now created websites for two businesses for us on Islay.  You really feel they are working in partnership with you.  Virtually all of our business is online, and our bookings have increased dramatically.”

And went on to say,

“Our ranking has been consistently high since POSH started to manage our digital marketing for us.  This directly results in much higher levels of business, great company to work with.”

Persabus Farm and Pottery Cafe

We built a fantastic new website for Persabus Farm and Pottery Centre and helped with content for it. The owner, Rosemary Fletcher said that she is really happy with the overall design and layout.

She says that the website is outstanding and surpassed her website dreams! She finished her client testimonial with,

“I really appreciate all of your help, support and encouragement with my written pieces and then for the amazing professional job you have done in processing it all into such a fantastic site.”

Want to read more? Check out our client testimonials here. We hope to add yours to the list soon! Give us a call to see what our team can help you with.

If you want to take a peek at our work, look at our client list and explore their websites!

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There are two main aspects of website design: UI and UX. UI stands for the user interface and refers to the screens, buttons, and toggles. Predominantly visual elements. Whereas UX stands for user experience, and refers to the interaction that visitors have with the website. UI has been the focus of many websites and apps for a long time. But in order to succeed, a website needs to have good UX and UI design. Here at POSH, we know how important user experience design is to websites, and we have a skilled team that works to help companies to perfect their website with excellent UX design.

What exactly is web UX design?

Web UX design considers every single element that will shape a visitor’s experience when visiting a website. It considers how each element will make the visitor feel. It aims to make the website easy to use, efficient, fast, relevant, and pleasant to use. The goal of a good UX designer is to ensure that each visitor leaves the webpage as satisfied as possible.

How does user experience design work?

Using product development, strategy, market research and design knowledge, user experience designers aim for an intelligent, seamless experience for the user. They allow businesses to better meet their online customers’ expectations and needs.

Generally speaking, web UX design is done in five stages. These stages include:

• Research and understanding
• Prototyping and wireframing
• Testing
• Launching
• Iterating

Research

In the first stage, UX designers will do user research, market research and historical analysis. This is done in order to understand the market and what your competitors are doing. The designers will map out the goals, as user personas, and explore previous iterations of the website. All of this research allows designers to set a clear path for the website’s design.

Prototype

The web UX design team will then create a prototype and wireframe. This outlines how the website will work. Much like a building blueprint. Usually, the prototype will be used to get feedback so that the team can hone the UX even further.

Testing

After that, testing can begin. A series of tests will be run to identify any existing or potential issues that may damage the user experience. The goal is for the web UX designers to spot anything that may be confusing, slow, or not worth further development.

Iteration

The new pages can then be launched, although often in stages. Any issues from testing can be fixed, and a soft launch or beta launch can be done for additional feedback if necessary. After the launch, the web UX design team will work on iteration, where they continue testing their work and researching ways to improve it. UX design is never just ‘done’ – it can always be improved!

Can UX design really improve your website?

It makes sense that UI can impact your website’s performance, but can UX really help to improve your website? Is it important?

The answer is yes. Web UX design is really important, and a great way to improve your website’s performance. The long-term effects of good UX are:

Improved reputation

Word-of-mouth marketing can be paramount in achieving more traffic when it comes to running a business. Whether you’re running a hotel website or an e-commerce site, the happier your visitors are when they use your webpage, the more likely they are to recommend it to their friends.

Someone who is kept waiting at loading pages. Or who stumbles across random, ill-thought-out pages when trying to navigate a web page is unlikely to praise the site to their colleagues or friends. When a page loads seamlessly, and navigation is easy and effortless, people are likely to be much happier!

A better reputation directly correlates to better traffic. Reputation is essentially free advertising, so it’s important to make the most of it!

Improved visitor loyalty

When visitors to your page know that they can trust your website to work time and time again, they are likely to return. By improving your web UX design, you can improve customer loyalty, and build a community of customers who visit your web page time and time again.

Obviously, customers prefer a website with good UX design. 66% of people are even willing to pay for a better experience. And 86% of customers would also say that the experience on a web page matters just as much as the services it hosts!

Improved conversions and ROI

Having improved reputation and loyalty, it makes sense that improved ROI conversions would follow. This is perhaps the most important effect of user experience design. So ensuring great UX design is a no-brainer.

In fact, studies have shown that good web UX design can increase conversion rates by as much as 200%. And can help a website to reach a conversion rate as high as 400%! A recent study has shown that every $1 invested into UX earns $100, a 9,900% ROI.

Where to start with UX design?

If this all sounds brilliant, but you don’t know where to begin with your website’s journey into the world of UX design, you’re in luck. At POSH, we have a wonderful team of UX designers who can help you to take your website to the next level. Give us a call to see what we can do for your site and user experience.

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What is SEO?

SEO stands for search engine optimisation, and it is essentially a series of rules that help companies make sure their website pages achieve high rankings in search results. Without SEO, landing pages, articles, and blogs, would just get lost in the ether.

When a webpage follows SEO guidelines, it is much more likely to bring more traffic to the website. People searching for services, answers, or even the news, are unlikely to scroll much further than the first few suggestions on their search engine. In fact, studies have shown that the top search result on Google will receive 31.7% of the clicks, and the top three will share 75.1% of the clicks.

Anything below those top three will still get traffic, of course, but not the most traffic possible. And nobody wants that! By understanding and implementing SEO tactics, businesses, and content creators can ensure that their web pages earn a place in those top few spots.

How does SEO work?

It’s impossible to correctly use SEO on web pages without first understanding how it works. Once you know what it is you’re doing and why you’re doing it, SEO becomes much easier to understand.

The first thing you need to know is that every search engine has crawlers, sometimes called spiders, which spread out across the internet to find new web pages. When they find new web pages, they are added to the search engine’s index. Then, when someone searches for something, the search engine will check its index and provide the most relevant web pages, ordered in accordance with their deemed relevancy. Much like asking a librarian for the index cards for the section that has books on the subject you want.

SEO works by increasing the relevancy of your web page. It targets specific keywords and phrases, links, and alt texts to ensure that crawlers can accurately work out what your web page is about. But that’s not to say that your web pages should just be full of random keywords and hyperlinks left, right, and centre. In fact, SEO works best when you try to understand what your audience is searching for, and then try to satisfy those needs with your page.

The basics of being an SEO content writer

In order to effectively implement SEO tactics as a business or a writer, you will need to do some SEO training. This will help you to really grasp the importance of SEO, as well as learn all of the key skills you need to maintain a good SEO strategy. For now, though, let’s take a look at the basics of SEO management. The key elements for an SEO writer are:

Crawlability

Like we said, Google and other search engines will crawl and index your web page. If the crawlers find your webpage to be difficult to crawl, perhaps because your sitemap is faulty, or there are no internal links, then they will not be able to report all of your web pages to the index.

If you’re not in the index, you are not going to come up on the SERP (search engine result page). This can be a catastrophe regarding traffic, but fortunately, it is often easy to solve.

High quality content

Content is king! Crawlers prefer it when your webpage has a strong standard of content. This means avoiding automatically generated content, or duplicate content, as well as content that has very little substance or is just full of unnecessary key words. And the internal links to the page as mentioned above. After all, if your website doesn’t link to the page you have written, why should the search engine offer it in results? You clearly don’t think it is important enough to link to.

In some cases, pages cannot help but be ‘low-quality’, when they’re doorway pages or pages that exist for a very specific purpose. Generally, though, it is best to use few of these and to focus on high-quality pages and content.

Keyword research and using keywords

When crawling your page, search engines need to be able to determine what it is your web page is talking about. To do so, they need to be able to pick up some keywords. Too many people take this to mean that they should stuff their pages full of keywords – that’s not the case.

The best way to use keywords is to do plenty of research into what your audience is looking for. This is called keyword research. You can then use these keywords to shape your content strategy, using them sparingly in your title, heading, and meta description. And then a spattering throughout the copy. This ensures that crawlers know what your page is all about without thinking it is spam.

Backlinks

Unlike the first two SEO elements, this is not something that you can add to your web page. It is known, for that reason, as an off-page SEO element.

Having backlinks can be greatly beneficial to your website, but they can be hard to build. Backlinks are links from other websites to yours, and they can really help to improve where you rank. Search engines will look at how many backlinks you have and where they are coming from. Backlinks from high-authority websites are worth more than spam or low-authority websites. But beware! There are lots of companies out there promising tons of backlinks for a price. Avoid these. Search engines will be able to differentiate between these and genuine backlinks from relevant sites.

How to make your first step with SEO

The key takeaway from this blog is that if you want to become an SEO writer or specialist, you need to really understand the following:

• SEO
• Keywords
• Backlinking
• SERPs
• SEO strategy
• And more

If you’ve never worked on SEO before, setting up an SEO strategy can be daunting. But don’t panic. There are plenty of ways to slowly introduce yourself to it, like SEO training, or hiring an SEO specialist like us here at POSH. To get you started, here’s our Key to SEO Success.

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But firstly, what is it? In simple terms, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is all about making your website more visible on search engines like Google. The more visible your website is, the more traffic you’ll get, which can lead to more sales or engagement. SEO helps you to make sure that your website is being ‘served up’ to the right people, searching the Internet for what you are offering.

Implementing SEO techniques, and doing the necessary research can make a world of difference. But, what a lot of people don’t think about is conducting an SEO review of their website.

Too often, businesses assume that once the SEO techniques are in place, they can leave it at that. In reality, though, SERPS (search engine results pages) are constantly changing because the algorithms that the search engines use change. An SEO review of your website can help keep your website at the top of the page. And POSH is here to help!

What is an SEO review?

An SEO review, sometimes called an SEO audit, allows you to evaluate how well your website is optimised for search engines. It can be used to identify errors and any issues that may prevent the website from performing and ranking well on SERPs. After all, every business wants its website to be at the top of page one!

What will an SEO review look at?

A comprehensive SEO review will at how your website is structured. And it will look at how easy the pages are to index. It will evaluate any keywords used, competitor benchmarking, the on-page SEO, and your backlink profile.

In essence, an SEO review aims to produce an SEO report that shows you what search engines will see when they look at your website. It’s like doing a mock exam before the real thing, and shows you the areas you need to improve on! Here at POSH, our SEO experts regularly provide SEO reviews for our clients. Give us a call to find out more.

Why is an SEO review important?

If you’re still not convinced as to why you need an SEO review here are 5 things that an SEO report can help with.

Determining which keywords your pages are ranking for

You may be using a huge number of keywords on your pages. But without an SEO report, you won’t know which of them you’re actually ranking for! We can help you figure out which keywords you’re performing well for on SERPs.

This allows proper optimisation of your content. Giving you the opportunity to implement any SEO techniques from those pages elsewhere if possible. At POSH, we can help you through this process, with our SEO experts raring to get your website performing as best it can.

Showing you which keywords are actually bringing in any traffic

You can rank for a keyword without that translating into traffic (or translating into the wrong kind of traffic). An SEO review will show you which of your keywords are bringing in traffic to the site, showing you exactly which pages and articles are doing well, versus what is not.

With this knowledge, we can work on your highly-ranking pages to get them to bring more traffic in. And we can work on those pages that aren’t doing so well to improve them.

Shines a light on any out-of-date SEO practices that you’re using

The nature of the IT world is that everything changes, and pretty quickly. Search engine algorithms are no different. If you want to rank on the SERPs, you need to be able to keep up with the algorithmic changes that occur.

One of the easiest ways to do this is by booking an SEO review or an SEO audit. It will quickly shine a light on any aged techniques that are holding your website back.

Prevents your visitors from running into broken pages

There’s nothing more frustrating than trying to buy something or book somewhere only to then have the Error: 404 message pop up on your screen. Customers will often immediately click away from your page when this happens, and it can ruin the user experience for them.

By booking an SEO review with POSH, you can ensure your visitors do not run into 404 errors and keep your website’s architecture nice and smooth.

Discovers any differences between desktop and mobile sites

Mobile pages need to run just as smoothly as desktop pages. After all, in 2019 53% of traffic came from mobile users. And this can often be where SEO gets forgotten. An SEO review will show you whether there are any discrepancies between how your pages work on both. And will highlight any issues with your mobile website. If the SEO report shows issues with your mobile site, then this is definitely something to put at the top of your SEO task list!

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by it all, or want experts to take a look, contact us today for SEO help.

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Glasgow is a bright, beautiful and booming city. With so many new businesses forming and existing companies growing, it’s a great time to think about how well your website is performing. Our POSH team have local knowledge of the area and our clients love that we can talk to them about how promoting the city can help develop their own business. Posh’s SEO services in Glasgow are one way to do just that.

SEO company in Glasgow

Search engine optimisation or SEO is all about making sure Google can read your website, understand what you do and serve up this information to those searching for it. A well optimised website means Google can trust that the information it offers to its customers is accurate and relevant. Our job is to make sure this happens and that you are at the top of the list. After all, have you ever searched on the second, third or fourth page of Google search results? No, neither have we.

Some companies want to target local people whilst others aim for tourists from across the world. There is so much opportunity in Glasgow that deciding on the best strategy can be difficult. This is where we come in and can help you find focus. By doing so, we can make sure your site targets your potential customers, increasing your online visibility. 

SEO is a long game and takes time to rise in the rankings. By working together in partnership with you, we can ensure we grow your site and enhance your SEO over time. 

Web design Glasgow

We use WordPress to design our websites. This is a creative tool which lets us create original and bespoke websites. Need an online shop? You’ve got it. Want to have a hotel booking system integrated? No problem. Whatever you need, we’ll find a way, and make sure users can navigate around it easily.

Our websites are all responsive and mobile friendly.  From mobiles to tablets to gaming PCs, your website is going to look fantastic on them all. 

SEO in Glasgow

If you’d like to find out a bit more about us, you can read more about our services here. When you are ready, get in touch online or give our friendly POSH team a call on 0141 278 6702

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Based in Scotland, our outpost in Edinburgh means we can feel the pulse of the city. This helps us to connect with the needs of our clients and their customers. By feeding in our local knowledge, we can create bespoke websites which will rank highly on Google search results. This is thanks to our proven SEO digital strategies. Our skills at website design in Edinburgh go hand in hand with our search engine optimisation knowledge. As such, we will create a powerful online marketing tool for your business.

So whether you want to capitalise (sorry) on Edinburgh’s historic architecture, promote the range of tourist attractions like Edinburgh Castle, the Royal Mile or Arthur’s Seat or even develop your site into a thought leader in finance and the economy, we are quite literally here to help in Edinburgh.

Search engine optimisation in Edinburgh

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a way in which we can let Google know what your website is about. This way, it can serve up your pages to its customers who are interested in doing business with you. A website with optimised SEO will regularly appear towards the top or organic search results.

Additionally, we can write engaging blogs for you. Blogs ensure your website is consistently updated with new and relevant content about your business. This way, you can connect with your potential customers a bit more and build trust.

Upgrade your existing site’s SEO with POSH

If you already have a website and are looking for it to be upgraded into one which has been optimised for search engines, then we can help. We will go through your pages and analyse the on-screen text, as well as how the site is coded. This way, we can improve your SEO. This will enhance your position on Google search results. 

WordPress web design Edinburgh

WordPress is a powerful web design tool. This is why here at POSH we use it to create your bespoke site. Throughout the design process, we will work with you as a partner to ensure everything is exactly how you want. Our high standards mean that we ensure every aspect of your website has the user in mind to ensure they can understand your business, and how they can buy from you. So as a result, you know you are going to get an original, built-from-scratch website which is exactly how you imagined it would look.

Our websites are all mobile friendly. They look just as great on an iPhone, iPad and Samsung mobiles as they do on a top of the range PC. Therefore wherever your target audience are, your website will look perfect.

SEO and website design in Edinburgh

If you’d like to find out a bit more about us, then you can read more about our services here. When you are ready, get in touch online. We are a marketing and SEO agency in Edinburgh so you can also give our friendly POSH team a call on 0131 215 1306. 

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Here are 6 our favourites that we’d love to share with you. 

1) KISS at meetings

Woah hold on, no we’re not recommending giving your CEO a smooch. We’re saying Keep It Simple Stupid when it comes to booking meetings. If you have a small meeting space, consider ways that secretaries or interns can book them easily online. With minimal fuss, the booking system can run almost automatically. 

As an added bonus, if you are able to allow meeting participants to change the room temperature, lighting and TV input of the room using an app, they’ll thank you even more for it (and so will your IT team!). 

Putting an online booking system on your website can save time for your staff who maybe should focus on bigger events or activities. Customers can simply book, pay, turn up and leave. Simple, right? If you’d like to chat about having a booking option on your website, just give us a call.

2) Go 3D

Remember when 3D was all about wearing glasses with red and green lenses? We undoubtedly looked super cool, but times have changed and technology has advanced. It’s now easy to scan a room, event space or restaurant to develop a 3D environment. This can give potential customers an idea of what you can offer them. If you can get potential guests to feel like they are in your hotel room, you are one step closer to them booking in for real. 

Similarly, customers who are anxious about stepping out somewhere new and unfamiliar can feel more relaxed about doing so if they have virtually visited your restaurant online. This way they know where the toilets are or how to get to the car park. 

If you would like to know more about getting 3D visualisations on your website, give us a shout!

3) Quit playing games with my heart…

…and start playing games on your website. That’s what the original Backstreet Boys lyrics were supposed to be. And they’d be right, because gamifying is a huge business, and you could be missing out by ignoring it. 

Parents of toddlers will know gamifying already, which is the turning of a task into a game (“who can tidy up this mess the quickest? Go!”) In the business world, games can be used to engage an audience through quizzes, log-in streaks and competitions. A web user who continually comes back to your website could be one that is more likely to make a purchase as they build trust with you. 

If you’d like to know more about gamification, just drop us a line. 

4) Find a course to develop yourself

There are so many courses out there to help you sell more, earn more and do more. It can be overwhelming! One course we recently discovered was by Kelly Mortimer. Her social sales bundle was exceptionally useful in bringing in new wedding business, but it can be incorporated into any event sales. Have a look at Kelly’ website here. 

5) Interactive guidebooks

When guests arrive at a hotel, guest house or B&B, there’s nearly always a big leather folder chock full of local information, leaflets and emergency numbers. But what if they already had all that information before they arrived? And what if it could be updated easily with one press of a button?

Digital guidebooks are a great way of letting people know about where they will be staying and all the things they can do nearby as soon as they confirm a booking. Sent via email or an app, digital guidebooks are always up to date and means guests can plan their visits before they even get to your door. 

If you’d like help developing a digital and interactive guidebook, just get in touch. 

6) Netflix and…relax

When travelling from hotel to hotel, it can get tiresome to have to watch your favourite shows on your iPad or laptop. That’s why Marriott Hotels have started to allow guests to log into their own Netflix accounts to watch on the in-room TV. This makes their rooms feel more homely, and they can use their computers for other tasks like catching up on social media. 

This is one example of finding out what your customers want and then delivering on it. We can’t install Netflix into your hotel room. But we can help with ensuring your websites give your customers what they want. Give us a shout to find out more. 

These are just some of the recent trends, opportunities and hotel innovations we’ve spotted. Stay tuned for more in the future! In the meantime, if you’d like to chat with us about developing your online strategy or upgrading your website, you guessed it – give us a shout! 

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