3 Simple Ways To Improve Your Search Engine Optimsation

Following up from my SEO Tips For Beginners post, I wanted to list a couple more simple and beginner friendly ways to boost your blog/websites SEO. SEO is complicated, I'm just going to throw that out there and make it loud and clear. I've been researching and teaching myself as much about SEO as I can for the last 6 months and some of it still sounds like a completely different language to me!

The good news is you don't have to be an expert to make effective changes to your SEO and start seeing progress. It's always handy (and cheaper) if you can get by with basic SEO knowledge, especially when it come to working on your own website SEO.

Make it super easy to share your content.  If you make it extremely easy to share your post or page on desktop and mobile, people will be a lot more likely to share your lovely content with the world. Sharing your content not only increases your traffic but get's your link out into the big wide open water of the internet.

Seed your content on as many platforms as possible. Another way of getting your link out onto the web. Seeding is when you plant a link to your website or post on sites like Stumble Upon and Reddit. These sites are great at getting people who may never come across your website organically (typing your keywords into a search engine). I've noticed that since I started seeding my links on these websites, Stumble Upon has made its way into my top 10 sources of traffic!

Link to other pages on your site or blog. Internal linking is so easy to do and is great for your SEO. By linking to other pages on your site you are creating your own little web. The spiders I talked about in my SEO beginners post, love a good web to crawl. Creating your own web means that search engines like Google will see those links on your site and check them out, they will then index them if they haven't already, so that your post or page will show up in future organic searches.

The most important thing to remember about SEO is that it takes time and patience to see the results of your hard work. It takes Google a while to index new sites and get all the backlinks and extra stuff sorted, so be patient if you don't see results straight away. 

Have you been sorting out your SEO recently? Or do you leave your SEO to sort itself out?

How To Use Google Analytics: Channels and Traffic Sources

As soon as you step foot in Google Analytics you are bombarded with different tabs and endless possibilities as to what it can do (not going to lie, it still scares me a little). Understanding your analytics can really change your outlook on your blog or website, so it's important to at least have a basic understanding of it. 

In this post, I'll be focusing on the area I use the most, the channels and traffic sources tabs. These help you grasp a better understanding of where your readers and customers are coming from and what areas you need to improve to gain more traffic. 

To find your channels and source/medium tabs, head over to your Google Analytics, scroll down to Acquisition (It's the one with the arrows pointing to the right)

Channels

Channels shows you what kind of places your traffic comes from and it groups them into 4 main areas, in order of the most used:

Most of my traffic comes from referral traffic and my organic search is way down at the bottom (oops). If you've had your domain name/blog or website for a while, you might want to take a look at your SEO to boost your organic search higher up the list. I've recently changed my domain so it's to be expected that my organic is at the bottom, as I've lost all my backlinks. 

Let's take a closer look at what each of these channels actually mean though and what they can tell us. 

Referral - Links from other websites e.g. people featuring your post in their own posts and linking to you. My top 5 referrals are below for Cat Crawford, as you can see, people find my blog through Bloglovin, then from Jenny Purr, as she recently linked to me in a post, and then there are some forums and RSS feeds at the bottom. This just gives you a better idea of where your traffic is coming from and allows you to see what sites are linking to you. 

Direct - This is when someone types in your URL or clicks on a direct link to your site. What I get from this is that my top post from January is my SEO tips for beginners post, a handy thing to know when planning posts in the future, as I now know people really want simplified SEO posts. 

Social - What social media platforms are bringing the most people to your blog or website. My top social media platform is Twitter as I post regular promo tweets. I've also been spending a little more time on my Pinterest, so I can see from this that my efforts are paying off! I've also noticed that people are using the app Pocket to save my posts and people are also finding me on Stumble Upon. This means I should think about focusing a little more on those platforms as there's clearly an audience to be tapped into from those channels. 

Organic Search - Finally there's Organic Search, this is where my SEO comes into practice. Below are the keywords that people have used to find my blog, people are still coming here for beauty posts but people are also using my URL as a search term to find me. Over time this will improve and my keywords will change, but as I've changed my domain name I still have to build my keywords for this domain. This can be very useful if used alongside my tips from Finding Keywords and How To Use Them.

Source/Medium

The source/medium tab is basically a more detailed version of the channel tab. Instead of just telling you what kind of channel your traffic is coming from, it also tells you specifically what URL your traffic has come from. 

It's pretty much a summary of everything from the individual channel tab. The most popular way to get to my site is to click on a direct link or type my blog address into the address bar, then from Bloglovin, most likely the Bloglovin feeds of my followers and then from the link Jen very kindly posted on her blog. 

This just gives you a better overview of where your promotional efforts should be. Google Analytics also shows you graphs to give you a better visual indication of how your traffic is looking. I'm not going to go into reports or any of the stats you'll see on all of these pages just yet, I don't want to overload you with information. As long as you can grasp these basic lists, you can have a much better understanding of how to improve your blog/website. 

Have you ever looked at your blog/websites traffic? What parts of analytics do you wish you knew more about? 

5 Free Tools For Juggling Your Social Media Accounts

If you're like me and have an account on every social media platform existing, it can be a royal pain to try and use them all the best way possible. Social media marketing helps to bring in a very large portion of my blogs traffic, but it can take up a whole lot of time to promote my posts on every single account. To make things run a little smoother, I have a handful of tools that I use on a regular basis to keep me up to speed and scheduled up to my eye balls. 

Tweetdeck - Tweetdeck is really simple to use and I find it extremely responsive when scheduling tweets. You can add different columns to monitor different aspects of your account, you can even monitor certain hashtags so you don't miss any important chats.

Hootsuite - If you want to be able to manage your posts to Facebook and Twitter, then I'd give Hootsuite a try. They also have an amazing app which allows you to keep up to date on the go and you can post to Facebook pages as well as statuses. It's great if you want all your social media posts in one spot.

Buffer - Pretty much a slightly better version of Hootsuite, it's only downfall is you can only schedule 10 posts at a time on the free account. Despite that, it's a really simple interface to use and also gives you the option to post to a Google+ page (but not a Google+ profile) it also has a handy app to use on your smartphone.

Latergram - A tool to schedule your Instagram posts. I looked at some pretty awesome Instagrams in my 3 Minimalist Instagram Accounts With Expert Branding Posts and using a scheduling tool like this is a great way to brand your own Instagram. You can plan all your pictures and upload them in advance to make sure they all fit your brand before sending them out into the world.

Facebook Scheduling - One of the best things Facebook has ever done is to add a 'schedule post' option on your page updates. You can of course use Hootsuite or Buffer to do this and have all your scheduled social media in one place, but I prefer going into Facebook and doing it there. I usually have a look at my insights before posting and it means that I can dedicate that time to really getting my Facebook up to scratch.

What tools do you use to manage your social media accounts? Do you like to juggle a few, or keep to one or two? 

Choosing Your Social Media Platform

If there's one thing I've learnt during my internships, it's that digital marketing is still in its infancy. The 'pro's' are actually just fumbling along trying to figure things out like the rest of us. The Marketing Executives who have been around for the last few decades, are still trying to wrap their heads around this new and amazing digital platform, capable of inviting them into their consumers homes, no questions asked. 

Social media has become a huge part of the digital marketing wave. These days, new platforms pop up like daisies. If you are a new blogger, freelancer or just starting to launch your small business, the plethora of platforms can be a little overwhelming. So which platform will serve you best? Which one will help you rocket your new venture into the stratosphere of the internet? 

Social media can either be extremely visual, or all about the chat. Depending on what service or type of content you provide, some may be more suited than others. 

Facebook

Best for... Ecommerce businesses & Creative Freelancers. If you have an online store or offer freelance services, it can be extremely beneficial to create a Facebook page to build your loyal customers. Facebook gives you a great platform to offer things like special discount codes and offers to loyal followers. If you are a creative freelancer, Facebook can help share your amazing work and if you're lucky, it may go viral. That's how I found the amazing freelance photographer Kirsty Mitchell.

Twitter

Best for... Freelancers & Bloggers. Twitter is more of a conversational tool than Facebook. Its real time style is perfect for networking, making it great for bloggers to interact with each other and the occasional PR company. It allows freelancers to find others in their field as well as people looking for their particular services. *Handy tip* Tweets that include images generally get more 'favourites', clicks and retweets than text heavy tweets, so try and include your blog images in your tweets. Essie Button is by far my favourite blogger on Twitter, she engages with her readers and has just the right amount of tweets every day. 

Pinterest

Best for... Ecommerce, Graphic Designers & Bloggers. Pinterest is really storming up the social media ranks and it is quickly becoming one of my favourite platforms to use. It can help to give your brand a more personal touch, allowing your customers and readers to see what kind of things inspire you, make you laugh and what projects you may be working on. Pinterest is a very visual platform, which makes it great if you are a graphic designer wanting to showcase some of your work. For an excellent example of a graphic designer's Pinterest account, check out cocorrina. 

Instagram

Best for... Photographers, Graphic Designers & Ecommerce. Another visual heavy platform, Instagram is the leader in photo sharing apps. If you are a photographer, you can post some of your recent photographs to gain more attention for your projects. I've also noticed a lot of ecommerce sites utilising Instagram lately, posting images of new stock and offering discounts to their followers. For an example of a great ecommerce Instagram, check out Shop Dixi. 

YouTube

Best for... Filmmakers and Ecommerce. YouTube can be a difficult one to navigate, the trick is to keep videos short and to the point. Small online shops can create small reviews, DIY's or how to's using the products they sell to drum up interest. 

As a film student, I greatly appreciated the free platform that is YouTube when I wanted to showcase my student projects, it meant that I could get an audience for my short films without paying for film festivals or distribution companies. You can even film some short behind the scenes videos to really engage your audience and gain a loyal following. For a great short film YouTube channel, check out my friends over at Flawless Films, an online production company making their own short films and parody's. 

Tumblr

Best for... Photographers, Graphic Designers, Illustrators, Artists and Writers. Tumblr is still a little tricky to understand, it is widely known for being the home of all fandom. The advantage of that is that a lot of the members of those fandoms are very creative people (can you say fanfiction and fanart?). Tumblr is by far the most creative of the social media platforms, it houses some amazing art, poetry and photography and it's a great place to get in touch with like minded creatives. To see an amazing example of an illustrators Tumblr page, check out Sirin Thada. 

Vimeo

Best for... Filmmakers and Videographers. YouTube's more professional counterpart, Vimeo is the home of the pros. You can find some truly stunning videography work on Vimeo and it's a great place to showcase your work if you are a wedding videographer or make HQ short films/documentaries/art films. You do have to pay if you want to get the most out of it, but for independent filmmakers, it's the best platform to be taken seriously. For a truly stunning Vimeo channel, check out Timothy Melville. 

The list above hopefully gives you an idea on the best platforms to start with. Of course, if you have enough knowledge of a platform and a bit of time and creativity, any social media channel can be used effectively, no matter what services you offer. It all comes down to you knowing your brand and in what direction you want to go. 

Which social media platform does your business or blog suit best? Do you feel a little overwhelmed by the massive amount of social media choice? 

Personal Branding & Why It's Important

When you think of branding, what do you think of? Big businesses? Fancy logos? Coca Cola? 

It can be hard when you're a freelancer, blogger or small business to think of yourself as a brand, but you are one. If you offer any kind of service, whether it's informative blog posts or a small Etsy shop, you need to start thinking of yourself as a brand if you want to push your business to the next level. 

Personal branding can take a lot of time and patience, but a lot of it is all about the planning. You might feel eager to get straight into the interesting creative part of branding yourself visually, setting up a website and getting those all important business cards printed. Before you can do any of that, you need to create a brand identity for yourself. So where should you start?

Personality
You first need to understand the personality of your business. I find that the easiest way to do this, is to think of my business as a person and ask a few important questions like:

What would they wear?
How would they talk?
What kind of music do they like?
What's their favourite colour?

That way I can get a clear idea of who this business is and what style it should have, both visually and its tone and approach to clients.

Goals and beliefs
What are your businesses main goals? what do you want to achieve with your venture?

Make sure you know exactly what kind of service you're offering and why you're offering it. Is it because you want to help others like you build a career? Is it because you want to be the best in your field? Once you know the reason behind your actions, you will have a better idea what tone of voice you want your business to have.

Having the right tone of voice is crucial as it determines what kind of clients and readers you attract. For example, if you decide your business should have a very formal and serious tone, then you will most likely attract corporate clients. If you decide you want a more informal and friendly tone of voice, you may attract more laid back creative types.

Visual branding
This is the fun part (well, for me anyway). Getting the visual part of your branding right is extremely important, as it tends to be the way people remember and associate with you. It's also extremely difficult to finalise!

To help you come up with the visual aspects of your branding, take a look back at your personality profile and keep it in mind whilst building a mood board. You can use a few different tools to do this, my favourite being good old Photoshop, but you can also use PicMonkey's collage tool.

Some of the things you want to touch on when making a mood board are:

• Fonts for main body text, headers and logo
• Your colour scheme
• Any design elements you want to include e.g. logo images 
• Any patterns and textures you want to use
• Any images of style inspiration

Once you have that you can use it to design business cards, newsletters, emails, blogs and websites. Or, if that seems a little daunting, you can always look at getting a professional graphic designer to take a look and come up with some awesome ideas.

These are just the foundations of personal branding and you may find that once you get going you come up with a whole notebook of ideas for your brand. These little notes should give you a firm idea of who you are as a brand and hopefully get you noticed by your target audience.

What would your brand look like? Have you sat down and really thought about your personal branding yet? 

SEO Tips For Beginners

The world of SEO has always been a tricky ocean to navigate, the reason being is that it is ever changing. Don't let that put you off learning all about it though, it still plays a massive part in the success of your blog or website. 

Let's start with what SEO actually is and how it works. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation, which refers to where your blog/website ranks in the search engines. If you own a beauty blog and you type 'beauty blog' into Google, are you amongst the 1st page results? Those that are will probably have worked on their SEO to get there. 

Search engines send out tiny 'spiders' to catalogue the gigantic amount of information on the internet, so that they can store it in a massive online warehouse and pull it out when someone is searching for it. These 'spiders' can only read though, they can't look at pretty pictures or watch cat videos on YouTube. This means that you have to make sure you are including relevant text in your posts, in your HTML and in your descriptions, because without it, the 'spiders' won't know how to catalogue your information in the giant internet warehouse.  

There are a few ways you can quickly and easily improve your SEO no matter if you're a blogger using Blogger or Wordpress or if you have an awesome website for your business. Here are a few basic things you can think about to get you started in the world of search engine optimisation. 

Name your images before uploading them. This is so important and easy to do. When you name your images on your computer, be sure to give them relevant names that correspond with your post or web page. You will often find images from blogs and websites on Google Images and they show up when you search because they've been named relevantly to what you're searching for. 

Target your keywords. I wrote a post all about finding your keywords and how to use them, which will help you to make a list of your blog or businesses keywords and phrases. You should use these in all of your posts, page descriptions, social media descriptions and in your image titles. It's also great if you can squeeze one or two into your page/post title. This will make sure the 'spiders' know what your page or post is all about. 

Use Title and ALT attributes in your HTML. You don't have to be a HTML wizard to do this, simply head to your HTML and find any links, tables or any structural elements and give it a title. It will usually look like this: <a class='Link' href='https://URLHERE.com' title='title of link'>

The title tag explains what the element is about, it's great for naming specific pages on websites and you'll see it a lot in the <head> section of your HTML. 

The ALT attribute is used for images, it helps catalogue images for those poor 'spiders' that can only read text. it comes inside the <img> tag before the last > e.g. <img src="http://URLHERE.com" alt="image for post">. You can make sure your blog images have these by going into your blog HTML. If you use blogger, you can do it by creating a new post/edit post and adding your image, switch to the HTML view in the post and add it to the image HTML.

Build your backlinks. Search engines love a good strong backlink and they can be tricky to get your hands on if you're relatively new to the game. The best way to get a few links under your belt as a new blogger or business, is through guest posting. Contact a handful of blogs you really love and feel like you could write a small post for and see if they would like to feature it. 

Another way is to make sure that you're posting amazing and helpful content that people actually want to link back to. This might sound extremely difficult at first but if you have patience it will be more rewarding than anything else you do.

You can of course pay for an ad space on other blogs, the only thing you will have to be wary of is if those links have a 'no-follow' attribute in the code. If the links on your ad space have 'no-follow' in them, then the link won't be counted as a back link. You can do a bit of code research to find this out by using Google Chrome web browser, going to view > Developer > View source and searching for your ad link.

Are you new to SEO? Are you putting some time aside to really focus on optimising your website for search engines?