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What’s a Good Click-Through Rate (CTR) for Facebook Ads?

As you figure out how to measure your Facebook Ads’ performance, you might hear a lot of advice about click-through rates (CTR). This number measures the percentage of an ad’s viewers who clicked on the ad’s primary link.

Nifty, right? While you want plenty of eyes on your ad, you also want the people who see it to act on it — that’s where the money comes from.

But, if you look at Facebook’s help page for CTR, something’s missing. It tells you what a CTR is, but not what a good CTR is.

That’s where we come in. We’ll explain what to expect as a good CTR so you can start setting benchmarks that matter.

What is the Average CTR for a Facebook Ad?

Before we talk about what makes a good CTR for Facebook Ads, let’s find out what an average CTR looks like. After all, if you’re doing better than most advertisers, that’s a great start.

Wordstream estimated an average CTR of 0.90% across industries in their 2017 survey of 256 businesses. Of course, the numbers they got varied by industry. Legal (1.61%) and retail (1.59%) had some of the highest CTRs, while employment/job training (0.47%) and finance/insurance (0.56%) had the lowest results.

What Does a Good Facebook Ad CTR Look Like?

It’s promising to have a higher-than-average CTR for your industry, but just because a CTR is average doesn’t mean that it’s good. So, what makes a good CTR? Let’s see what the experts get from their ads to learn what a professional expects.

Databox asked more than 30 marketing professionals about their average CTR to understand what a good Facebook Ads CTR is. They found that industry experts tend to get at least 2-5% — over half of the respondents said they had a CTR between those percentages.

Average CTR Facebook

You can think of that CTR as a floor, not a ceiling. Almost 15% of the marketers had a CTR of 10% or greater. CTRs can go far beyond the average if you know what you’re doing.

If you have a CTR lower than 2%, look at these results as an opportunity. These professionals can earn high CTRs, so you can, too.

How Do I Get a Good Facebook Ads CTR?

What can you do to improve your CTR? Regardless of your CTR, you can aim for a higher number by looking at your ad’s:

  • Targeting: Do you target people who will actually want to click on your ad?
  • Visuals: Does your ad have an image or video that catches viewers’ attention?
  • Copy: Does your ad copy make a compelling point?

Knowing the right direction to take these ad elements takes two actions — research and testing. Research your customers and market to guide your targeting and creative, then test different components against each other to learn what works best.

20 Apr 2025

Matt Tomkin

How do Digital PR and SEO intertwine?

When John Mueller tweeted about the importance of digital PR in January 2021, #DigitalPR Twitter went wild. Finally, we had gotten a very clear nod from the brains at Google about how important telling your brand’s story is.

John Mueller, from Google, praises Digital PR
This caused a bit of confusion in the community about what digital PR actually is. So, we’re here to explain!

What is Digital PR?

Digital PR means to build your online presence and brand awareness. Essentially, create something worth linking to – whether that’s a study you’ve done about your industry, an interactive map, data sorted by region, fun content, a case study, etc.

These links, in turn, increase your domain authority (moz.com) or domain rating (ahrefs.com) – AKA how authoritative your site is. This is typically rated on a scale from 0-100 by different tools that us marketers use. The theory is, the more authoritative your site is, the better you rank on search engines as they want to show the most trusted voices first in the results. (Yes, it’s a theory – Google would never reveal all its secrets!)

Digital PR and SEO: how are they linked?

Digital PR and SEO are intrinsically linked. As mentioned above, links built to your site will boost your domain authority, meaning your rankings will improve. You could have the most informative pieces of content in the world, but if your domain rating is low, you won’t see the traffic you deserve.

The domain rating of the sites that link to you is also important. Those with high domains tend to only link to other reputable sources, again showing search engines that you’re a thought leader. Think about this in real life situations – if you get a product recommendation from someone you know and trust, you’re more likely to believe it is good quality as it has their seal of approval.

Digital PR can also improve your keyword visibility. For example, if you’re a recruitment agency and you create a campaign about the most popular month for job searches, the sites that use your content will help you to boost your rankings for terms relating to this. Obviously, this is relevant to your industry and will therefore help boost your overall rankings too.

Campaigns have to be relevant to what you do already – journalists will be confused if a pet shop creates a campaign about the rise and fall of mortgage prices! Plus, search engines can potentially penalise you for creating far-fetched and irrelevant content.

What are the benefits of Digital PR?

The biggest benefit you will see from digital PR is an increase in domain rating/authority, but don’t underestimate the additional benefits of brand awareness, traffic to your site and even more business coming your way. For example, an SEO case study we did for Moz about our work with Fleetcover lead to the following:

Referring domains for Fleetcover almost doubled from 74 to 163 within a week, boosting the DR from 13 to 20…

According to Buzzsumo, the piece became the 6th highest trending content WORLDWIDE in the SEO community the day it went live…

And we got various shoutouts from Moz on their social media – our Twitter went a bit crazy after being showcased in front of their half a million followers!

We also had an international enquiry about working with us, so not only did this work wonders for our site and brand recognition, we could potentially be getting work out of it too. Watch this space!

Moz has a domain authority of 91, making them one of the highest-rated sites online. Many marketers would burn money trying to get featured on there, and all we had to do was tell our story – the magic of digital PR.

Digital PR and outreach

Outreach is essentially how you get your digital PR campaigns out there. Once the story/study/graphics are live on your site and ready to go, you then create an outreach list full of journalists you want to email the story to. This can be done using a simple Excel spreadsheet to track details and progress or by using helpful tools such as Buzzstream.

Different experts will tell you different ways of outreaching pieces to achieve optimal open rates and replies, but the truth is, we don’t believe there is a perfect time (unless it’s a Friday afternoon – don’t bother!). Different journalists work to different times, and if your subject line is interesting enough, they’re likely to click through. Plus, if you have already established a relationship with a journalist, you definitely get more leeway in terms of when you can send it as they already know who you are.

What is ‘newsjacking’?

Newsjacking, or ‘reactive PR’, is the most fast-paced form of digital PR and involves providing an expert comment to news or trending topics. For example, we have outreached various comments from business brokers Hilton Smythe in reaction to various Government changes to business rates, the extension of the furlough scheme, news about Boohoo acquiring Debenhams, etc. Essentially, it’s all about providing that expert voice. The exchange works both ways – you provide journalists with an expert voice, and in turn, they *hopefully* link to your site.

The question of how quickly you should do this is something that varies depending on who you ask. Some would say anything over 30 minutes of the news breaking is too late, but we have had success with sending a comment a couple of hours later.

How does data tie into digital PR?

Data heavily ties into digital PR. If you are not releasing a special, limited-edition PR-stunt product or creating an interactive quiz, you’ll likely be using some form of data. In order for the data to be newsworthy, it has to relate to a mass audience, or else news outlets just won’t cover it as it’s too specific.

How can you make your industry-relevant to a mass audience? If you’re an insurance broker, can you look to popular TV shows and films and quote how much it would cost to insure certain items? Or, can you incorporate one of the following emotions into your data?:

  • Funny – will the data make people laugh – is it a bit out there?

  • Shocking – can you reveal something people don’t know about where they live across the country, e.g. crime rates?

  • Gross – this is perfect for cleaning brands (did you know your work desk, where you are sitting right now, contains 400x more bacteria than a toilet seat!?)

  • Scary – can you reveal something rather worrying?

  • Love – can you make people go ‘aww’, or feel a sense of pride or joy?

When sending out a PR campaign, it’s really important to contain notes about your methodology, AKA how you went about getting the data, how you organised it, how you split it up to calculate certain aspects, etc. If you miss this out, journalists will be a little suspicious of your data and can ask questions, or even ignore your outreach if you aren’t transparent from the get-go.

How to improve the success of your digital PR campaigns

There are several factors that can make or break your PR campaigns. After outreach, it’s important to reflect on each of these aspects and see what you can improve:

  • Timing: Yes, we know, we mentioned that timing isn’t as important as some say, but if you’re sending them out all at once on a Friday afternoon, maybe reconsider your methods. Some programmes, such as Buzzstream, allow you to schedule outreach for a certain time, or break it up across a period of time so that you can see when your emails are getting the most opens.

  • The angle: The angle can change everything. If you notice your campaign isn’t really getting picked up, change the angle a bit and see what happens.

  • Make sure your landing page is worth linking to: if a journalist can describe your data without you needing to see it to understand, they will! Make sure it’s something interactive – e.g. type in your postcode to find data for your area, play with the graphics on the site, etc.

  • Don’t waste time: if you’re doing a reactive PR campaign about how much certain things in a trending TV show would cost, make sure you get it out there while the show is still trending. We know, it can sometimes be hard to cut through approvals tape, but the sooner you can get it out there, the better. A few days late and you’re better off waiting until the next season.

  • Think, would I actually share this?: if you wouldn’t click on it and read it, why would anyone else? It has to be interesting. If you’re finding ideation hard, sit on it for a while. Our team finds that PR ideas come up at the most random times.

How is the success of digital PR measured?

There are various ways of measuring the success of your efforts depending on what your goals are. Common ways of measuring success include:

  • The number of links you get: you could have a goal of a certain amount, but it’s important to remember that coverage is NOT guaranteed each time.

  • Online readership: what is the total combined online readership of the sites you got coverage from?

  • Social media shares: how many people have shared your content on social media sites?

  • Average domain authority: what is the average DA/DR of the sites you got coverage on? The higher, the better.

  • Increase in domain authority: this goes hand in hand with the above point – hopefully, you want to see your rating improve over time as a result of coverage.

  • Web traffic: how much traffic came to your site from the coverage? (Referral traffic)

  • Conversions/goal completions: if you’ve made a new PR-stunt product that people can buy, how many people bought it and how much revenue did this bring? Or did people simply sign up for your newsletter?

This will vary from client to client and depends on other factors such as budget, timescale, existing relationships with journalists, etc. The more experience you have with digital PR campaigns, the more realistic your goals will be as you understand what can be achieved on a certain budget or time scale.

Digital PR for startups

Digital PR can be both a costly and time-consuming process. If the industry data doesn’t exist publicly and you need to submit a Freedom of Information request to those who have the data, you can be held up by weeks. Or, if you’re doing a survey, prepare to let go of a couple of thousand pounds in the process.

Analysing data also takes a lot of time, as well as creating infographics or an interactive page on your site. This can put a lot of businesses off investing in digital PR until they have more money. But it’s a bit of a double-edged sword – to get more money through your site, you need to rank better and invest in those authoritative links, AKA digital PR!

The key to having a news-worthy campaign, then, is using your own data. When you’re so involved in a business day to day, you can forget certain aspects or interesting statistics you can get hold of. Again, if you’re an insurer, do you have any funny claims stories you can tell? Or are you starting to see new trends in your industry? This unique content can be a great starting point for a campaign.

If you need help with creating ideas or want to chat more about digital PR, get in touch with us via hello@taodigital.org or call us on 01204 920 096.

How to use Answer the Public to boost your SEO

 

There are absolutely loads of helpful SEO tools out there, but when it comes to helping with content marketing, we do have our favourites.

One such favourite is Answer the Public, which is the holy grail for our content writers. Not only does it make coming up with content ideas so much easier, it shows you what people are searching for in real time. Responding to these searches and providing useful content is a sure way to move yourself up the pages on search engines such as Google.

In this blog, we’re going to explain what Answer the Public is, why it’s useful and how it can help you to boost your online presence.

What is Answer the Public?

Answer the Public is a long-tail keyword tool that shows you questions and autocomplete searches around a certain topic. This can help you to understand what people are searching for so that you can provide content featuring relevant, in-depth answers that people are actually searching for and looking to find answers to.

Is Answer the Public free?

Answer the Public is free, but only for a few searches per day! Otherwise, you’re going to run into this guy…

The downside of this is that it works off your IP address, so if a colleague is also using the tool they can hit the day’s limit for your whole team. Not good news for those needing to churn out content consistently.

If you’re stuck for content ideas and want to improve your SEO, it’s definitely worth investing in the tool, which costs $99 per month, or $79 per month if you pay annually. This lets you have unlimited searches and users, as well as allowing you to compare data over time.

Looking for help with generating more sales leads?

Speak to one of our team today about our SEO services

How does Answer the Public work?

As mentioned above, the site shows you what people are searching for. We’re going to use the example of one of our clients, Complete Koi & Aquatics, here. Through another SEO tool, Ahrefs, we saw that ‘Ghost Koi’ was being searched for around 1,900 times per month with a keyword difficulty of 0 – what a goldmine!

If you don’t have another SEO tool to help with this, simply note down some topics that you think potential customers would be interested in reading about.

We then headed over to Answer the Public, typed this phrase in and had a look at the results. There are two ways which Answer the Public will display results, the first is through a visualisation wheel. Although the tool will never tell you the exact amount of searches for each question, the darker the dots on the wheel, the more they are searched.

Be warned, though – it can also mean that the particular question or phrase is trending at the moment and actually has relatively low search terms in comparison to others. You’ll never get 100% accurate numbers as search engines like to keep this information top secret.

The screenshot above is just the ‘questions’ section. As you scroll down, there are more wheels for prepositions (i.e. ‘ghost koi for sale near me’) comparisons (ghost koi vs goldfish), and finally alphabeticals, which list every searched term from A to Z.

The other way the information is presented is as ‘data’, as below:

This is a bit easier to read than the visualisation wheel, but the downside is that you don’t get hints as to what is searched the most.

This information is really useful, because when you know so much about your niche, you forget the kinds of information newcomers might be looking for. You might be surprised with what people are asking about!

Using Answer the Public for SEO

Using these questions in a piece of content can really help to boost your rankings. It shows search engines that you’re an expert in your field. Generally, the more questions you answer and the more in-depth you go, the better. This is of course dependent on the number of searches and content, as sometimes people are just looking for a small amount of information.

Based on our research, we then created a piece titled ‘Everything you need to know about Ghost Koi’, which answered many of the questions from Answer the Public. This piece was published in July 2020 and naturally it will take a while for search engines to pick up on this content, but at the time of writing (December 2020), Complete Koi are now position #1 on Google for ‘Ghost Koi Carp’ and ‘Butterfly Ghost Koi’, even though their domain rating is 3.7. We expect this to continue increasing!

Similar results can be expected if you follow this process. Ensuring that the questions are formatted as H2s, H3s and H4s will mean the keyword is in the questions too, and that search engines will understand that they are your headings and subheadings.

For an extra boost, add FAQ schema to your content. This means that your questions and answers will appear when people type in related search terms, as below.

This is much more eye catching to users, and they can get their answers without even having to click on a site. Even if you’re not ranking for the term they typed in, you can appear in excerpts on the page as above, which is especially useful if you’re just getting started.

Another way that Answer the Public can help with SEO is the feature that helps you to compare data over time. For example, if we head towards Winter and suddenly spot that people are searching for questions such as ‘Do Ghost Koi hibernate?’, we can add this into the content and keep it up to date.

Also, if a new cool gadget for ponds has been released but there aren’t many searches around this yet, we can get the product page ranking as searches increase and keep an eye out for more questions trickling in as the product gains popularity. This can help us to answer those questions before anyone else does.

Finally, if one of your old pieces of content previously had a lot of traffic but is slipping down in the ranks, it could be that your competitors are answering questions you aren’t. Keep an eye on old content and update it as and when new questions arise.

In conclusion…

Answer the Public is a fantastic tool for any content writers looking for more ideas and to boost their SEO.

If you’re stretched for resources and would like to outsource content research and writing, we’re your people! Get in touch today via hello@taodigital.org or call 01204 282 213 and we’ll see how we can help.

Looking for help with generating more sales leads?

Speak to one of our team today about our SEO services

4 Ways That Email Marketing Can Increase Your Sales Funnel

Email marketing has proved to be one of the most cost-effective ways of communicating with your audience.

For any company that wants to engage and inform their subscribers, setting a proper email marketing strategy is the best way.

More specifically, it can increase your website’s traffic, form stronger relationships, increase the recognition of your brand, and give opportunities for engagement.

One of the most important aspects of email marketing strategy is the way it affects the sales funnel of your company.

Regardless of the stage of the funnel, email marketing can help you maintain and improve your funnel.

So, the first thing you have to do is find an email marketing service that provides all the features and data you need for your company.

This is the fundamental principle, as not every platform offers exactly the same.

1. Generate Subscribers

The first thing you need to have to make your sales funnel successful is a great list of subscribers.

You should make clear why someone should subscribe, what someone has to gain. If there is nothing specific there for your subscribers, then no one will give his email address.

So, your brand awareness should focus on getting your brand identity across and your USP so consumers can differentiate you from the rest of similar brands.

Also, you should make it as simple as possible to enter their email address to decrease the number of click-throughs a person needs to be subscribed.

Share content posts on your social media accounts that lead them to a subscribing page.

Also, you can create QR codes so even if they see a product of yours, they are directed to a mobile-ready, mobile-responsive email subscribing form.

After they get subscribed, you should send a “thank you email” to welcome them.

This will make some feel valued and appreciated, while others will value it as a confirmation for their subscription.

The last thing is that you should pay attention to your email sequence, content, subject lines (which will be more analysed later), in case you see your unsubscribing rates increase.

2. Increase Recognition

Once you have created your subscribers’ list, then you should create a comprehensive, consistent channel of communication with them.

If you want to have an effective email marketing strategy, you should create some recurring email campaigns, based on the type of your company and your products.

One option is to send a weekly email with the company updates, or at least a monthly newsletter with new data, information, and offers.

These email campaigns should highlight your brand identity, colours, and personality. Your logo characteristics should be there in every email; but always consider to make it friendly, while formal.

Then, your emails will be enjoyable and fun for your subscribers, but still, you will pass all the needed information.

You should use any automation features of your email marketing service and through different tests find the best time to send an email to your subscribers.

Then, your opening rates will improve, which will bring extra traffic to your website.

3. Improve Consideration

Once you have your subscribers’ list, you build your recognition, then your subscribers should start considering your company, instead of other companies they already trust.

Consideration marketing campaigns are difficult but can be your key players.

The first crucial thing is to create exclusive limited offers and discounts for your subscribers.

This will create a feeling of urgency, value, and appreciation for your company.

Human beings love to feel that they receive unique personalised gifts and offers.

In these campaigns, you can also promote any private label products you have by including the companies that produce these items.

With that, you gain credibility by the name of the manufacturing company, which will make your subscribers consider you more.

Also, based on the actions they take on your website, you can send personalised emails to educate them about the products they are interested in.

These educational emails can be tips and tricks for how to cleverly use your products or their extra features.

Another automated email campaign you can design is based on the products your website visitors abandon in their carts.

The cart abandonment strategy is highly personalised, time-saving, cost-effective, and forces people to return to your site to complete a purchase.

To ensure that your subscribers receive these emails, you should run an email deliverability test.

This will guarantee that your emails end up in their inbox folder, not their spam folder.

4. Motivate Action

The last stage of the sales funnel process is to motivate your subscribers to take action.

You should pay attention to your email copy and content. Use active words that motivate people to take a specific action.

Make clear that you have on a specific target and centralise it in your emails. This purpose should be your central Call-To-Action in the email, which pops-up from the rest of the email.

Another important aspect is your email subject line and the preview shown.

Your email subject line should be precise, clear, and intrigue people to open their email for one reason.

Write your subject lines as you are a salesman that likes to be more friendly.

As it was stated before, you should provide them with limited offers and discounts. T

his feeling of urgency will make people take immediate action and buy your products.

Final Thoughts

Creating, designing, running an effective email marketing strategy is complicated, but it can be simplified by setting specific goals and objectives.

If you set creative, target-oriented, agile goals, based on the different stages of the sales funnel, you can see your metrics increase and improve.

A great way to make your company grow is by paying attention to every single stage and always use your data analytics to redesign your strategies.

Always use quantitative research to increase your quality, and focus on bringing extra value to your company.

These are the basic things you should know to shape an effective email marketing strategy.

Let me know what you think. Do you have a specific email marketing strategy? What would you change and what have you implemented?

Digital Marketing In The Telecom Sector: How To Do It Effectively

The telecom industry, like many other industries, is constantly evolving and changing. This ranges from technological advances and innovations in the market to consumer behaviour and marketing investments.

Change is the only constant in business and willingness to adapt has never been more important than it has today. The telecom companies that will be the most successful are the ones who listen to the market and aren’t rigid in their old ways – resistant to change.

Digital marketing is a prime example of this. Some companies have adapted to digital and have utilised the digital landscape to improve their bottom line. Others have, however, been left behind due to an unwillingness to adapt and change their strategies.

After working with various telecom companies, we have taken the time to break down some of the fundamentals when it comes to digital marketing in the telecom industry. Read on below and find out exactly how to keep up with everything digital.

Why digital marketing?

If you didn’t already know, digital marketing is an incredible asset to any business – if done correctly. In fact, the term ‘digital marketing’ soon won’t be seen as something separate to ‘marketing’. Currently, businesses need to prioritise digital marketing as a fundamental pillar to their overall marketing strategy. In this day and age, if you are a ‘marketing expert’ but have no understanding of digital, then you are seriously missing out on a major skillset.

From search engine marketing to social media advertising, digital marketing capitalises on the 7.7 billion people that use the internet and allows you to deliver your message to your ideal target audience.

Not only this but with digital marketing you can accurately measure the effectiveness of every campaign. From your ROI to the amount you pay for a click, the measurability of digital marketing is a key reason why it has been more effective than traditional marketing methods in recent time.

Once you can track your online performance, you can then identify what is working, what’s not working and optimise for the best possible return for your business.

It doesn’t matter if you are a telecom company that operates within the B2C market or the B2B market, digital marketing can help you raise brand awareness, generate leads and most importantly increase your sales.

Telecom digital marketing strategies

Every telecoms company is looking to improve their customer experience and increase the numbers of sales they generate.

Having a clear digital marketing strategy that is realistic and measurable is one way to do this.

Based on the report carried out by ‘E-consultancy’, digital marketing is a strategic priority for the telecom sector.

In terms of budget allocation, this report shows that 46% of total marketing budgets in the telecom sector are assigned to digital.

So, hopefully, you now recognise the importance of digital marketing when it comes to generating revenue for your telecoms company.

But now, let’s take a deeper look into the specific strategies that can help your business grow online.

How can telecom companies increase sales?

SEO

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is much more than ‘getting your business to rank on the first page of google’. SEO is a consistent and cost-effective way for you to drive your target customers to your website at each stage of the sales funnel. You could choose to target keywords such as ‘Business missing too many calls’. Targeting this type of phrase would capture people when they are at the awareness stage of the sales funnel. 

They are aware of the problem they have but aren’t exactly sure what the solution is. Your telecom company could choose to write an in-depth article on the best strategies for businesses to avoid missing calls. As well as giving the searcher some valuable information, and building trust with them, you can tie your services into the blog or have a call to action on there to contact you. 

On the other end of the sales funnel, you could target keywords such as ‘telecoms company in Bolton’ or keywords that are more location-based. These keywords would fall into the bottom of the funnel as the searcher is aware of their problem, knows what solution they need and now wants to find the best company to carry it out. 

To put it simply, they are ready to buy. 

Bottom of the funnel keywords are the most valuable keywords that a business can target and the possible revenue that can be generated from them is huge. 

But, how can I find these keywords, I hear you ask? 

This is a common problem a lot of businesses have. They have a very basic understanding of SEO and try to do it themselves. However, success is rarely found here if they do not have a sufficient strategy in place. 

As a business, you need to know: 

  • The search volumes for the keywords in your industry.

  • The domain ratings of your competitors.

  • What a solid content strategy looks like.

  • What your customers are searching for.

  • How easy it will be to rank for your keywords.

Whilst businesses can find the answers out themselves, using a search marketing agency who does this day in and day out, for a range of sectors, is always a good way to go.

PPC

Like SEO, Pay Per Click (PPC) captures the attention of users as they are searching on Google for a product or service that they are in the market for. In PPC, you target keywords in the same way that you would for SEO, however, there is one major difference. 

With SEO, you could choose to target certain keywords and produce content for them but seeing results may take more than 3-6 months. With PPC, you pay to show up at the top of Google meaning that you can have a campaign up and running and have your site at the top of Google in a few hours. 

This is very powerful for telecom companies that have customers consistently searching Google for their services. Telecoms companies are able to quickly capture the attention of these searches, take them to a landing page on their website and then collect information from them – e.g. an email, name and phone number. 

PPC is also a great way to outperform your competitors. You will be able to see who is doing PPC in your industry by just typing in some of your services. Now, you should be able to see who is currently paying to be at the top of Google. 

The great thing about Google ads is that you can instantly outbid your competitor and, providing your ads are good, you can outrank and take their share of traffic and customers! 

Let’s take the keyword  “telecom company uk’ for example. We can see from keyword research tools that over 1000 people search for this keyword every month. That means there are 1000 possible customers that are looking for your services, that you can advertise directly to! 

This is why it’s so important to conduct keyword research for SEO and PPC so you can understand your customers and advertise to them at the moment they are in need.

How can Telecom companies attract customers?

Content Marketing

Another effective strategy that can work well alongside SEO and PPC is content marketing. For the telecoms industry, content marketing can be extremely effective as you can provide useful information for your customers, whilst also advertising products and services within the information. 

For example, you could produce an E-book titled ‘Best business phone systems in 2020’. You could then use this piece of content as a lead magnet on your website and use it to collect email addresses. 

Alternatively, you could post this on your social media profiles to get people engaging with your brand and visiting your website. An effective content marketing strategy can provide your customers with educational content that improves brand positioning and increases your authority and trust in the telecom market.

Summary

As a B2B search marketing agency, we have seen the effects SEO and PPC can have for businesses, first hand. In fact, one of our clients in the B2B sector won the number one spot in the UK for most businesses sold in the first quarter of 2020. You can read more about this client here and find out how we used SEO and PPC to increase their sales. 

With our clients, we usually find that a long-term SEO campaign, accompanied by a results-based PPC campaign is the most effective way to approach the two channels. If you have the resources, a content marketing strategy can also work well, if you can produce engaging content that your customers actually care about. 

If you are a telecoms company and would like to bolster your digital marketing efforts, get in touch with us and we’ll guide you on your path to online success!

Writing better content: Beyond the data

Rory Stobo, Chief Copywriter at ​digital marketing agency Sookio, joins us to share tips on writing content that works for humans as well as the algorithm.

Fun fact: 90% of data that exists online has been created since 2016. The internet’s 4.5 billion users churn out exabytes of information daily… which is a lot.

For you, that means flabbergasting opportunity to build your marketing strategy around observable, provable facts. But even the most developed algorithms have limits. Data gets your product in front of the customer… then what?

Yes, the hardest thing in marketing is to grab attention, good start. You then need to make them desire your product and, critically, act on that impulse to buy.

Do I need copywriting services?

Good content, particularly good copy, is your salesperson to get this done. The best copywriters I know have backgrounds in sales and customer service, the very best are psychologists.

Just like data and analytics, professional-standard copy is now essential. 59% of people wouldn’t trust a company with sloppy grammar and spelling in their marketing. That rises to 82% if they detect non-fluent English.

On the other hand, optimised content nets huge results:

Building on analytics with strong content is the recipe for success. If you’re currently writing your own copy, try applying these industry secrets and see what happens for yourself…

Write for humans

Analytics give you demographic data about who’s interested in your product. Age, location, gender, all useful to know but handier in context.

Use these factoids to create a profile of your ideal customer. One person to whom all your marketing is addressed directly. Name them, give them a job title, decide what newspaper they read.

This gives you several advantages:

  • You can envision the desires and drives of one person more clearly than you can for a blob of analytics
  • Influencing a person is much easier than influencing a business. Go in with this mindset and conversions will increase
  • Feedback is a doddle; find a real person who matches your imagined ideal audience and ask them what they think of your copy

A client once asked me to review a Merc C63, a car I had never so much as sat in. I can’t even drive. But I googled some stats and imagined I was writing for, to, and as Jeremy Clarkson. The client and his customers loved the review, the cars got sold.

Be upfront with your message

Your audience is busy. They’re being bombarded by thousands of marketing messages every day. If you have something to say that’s of value to them, say it right away.

This is true for all copy but especially titles. Analytics will furnish you with juicy stats about who’s using your product which you can use as social proof to attract more like them:

  • 3,000 office managers are serving better coffee
  • 76% of new mums are enjoying a better night’s sleep

Likewise, you’ll know the quantifiable impact your product has from testing:

  • Cut your gas bill by 20% with a smarter smart meter
  • Build 15% more muscle in 90 minutes

This is what people want to know immediately: what’s in it for me? You have the data to give them that answer.

Put your most gripping information right at the top of the page, before the reader even has to scroll. Newspapers call this ‘above the fold,’ high-value real estate where readers engage without lifting a finger.

The NHS website is particularly good at this. Their page on stomach aches gives no preamble, no intro on what a stomach ache is, just what you need to know in the immediate moment: it’s probably just wind.

Choose clearer website copywriting

In a marketplace saturated with data, it can be tempting to throw everything you’ve got at the customer and hope something will stick. Surely if one big stat doesn’t wow them, the next three might?

Maybe. Or maybe a wall of numbers will chase them away, into the waiting arms of the competition who played things a little cooler.

Instead, take one or two key insights per message and ease them naturally into the copy.

When laying it all out, keep paragraphs short, no longer than three or four lines max. Use bullet points to break up long lists. Clarity, both in content and structure, makes sure your message sinks more easily into the reader’s mind.

It’s also vital to stress the importance of plain English over technical jargon. Even in cutting-edge industries, the desire for plain language increases in line with the reader’s level of education and expertise.

Don’t be tempted into using every convoluted industry buzzword you know in an attempt to impress the reader. You’re more likely to bore them.

Recap: write to sell

So there you have three things you can immediately do to improve your content marketing:

  • Defining a clear audience profile
  • Front-loading key information
  • Breaking down your message

Above all else, don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty and test different approaches.

Only trial and error, backed by analytics and intimate knowledge of your industry, can produce marketing that hits the spot every time.

marketing attribution

Marketing Attribution: It’s so important to your business, here’s why!

“You wouldn’t drive a car without a dashboard so why drive your marketing without one?”

Businesses in the UK were estimated to have spent £13.4bn in 2018 advertising through online marketing channels it shows just how important marketing attribution is to the UK economy.

I worked with a business person a number of years ago who used to sell call centre solutions; one of his go-to phrases was “you wouldn’t drive a car without a dashboard, so why drive your business”. I still think about this phrase to this day.

From a digital marketing attribution point of view, so many businesses spend a lot of money to generate awareness, sales leads etc. why would you not want to be able to see each and every touch point they took along the journey to end up in your database?

47% of buyers viewed 3 – 5 pieces of content before engaging with a sales rep (Demand Gen Report 2016), so which piece of your content is the most important for you and your business. Without full attribution it could be very easy to attribute your marketing budget to the wrong areas.

Why is it so often an afterthought?

Marketing Attribution, is sometimes the last thing people think about when starting a marketing campaign.

The problem is, this is like driving a car without a dashboard.

How do you know if the money you’re spending on marketing is actually turning into leads, sales or phone calls?

If you don’t understand what campaign is driving the sales you won’t be able to make the correct decisions down the line when it comes time to start building the next month or years marketing strategy.

How did your content perform towards your goals?

Which keyword or search phrase contributed most to your overall leads pool?

As John Wanamaker once said “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

We now have access to more data than we have ever had, and for some reason some companies are still happy to plough cash into marketing without properly measuring the returns.

Marketing Attribution software

We use a piece of software to help us understand the whole journey.

Ruler Analytics, it’s an analytics platform similar to Google Analytics but will enable you to understand where your form fills are coming from, you can see what the first click was right through to the last click.

Google Analytics is set to default to the last click but think about the journey a prospect now goes on before they make contact.

You want to know where they originally became aware of your website/brand and you can then start to invest more into that particular channel.

Ruler Analytics Dashboard

Along with knowing where the form fill came from, Ruler also allows you to track where your phone calls come from.

Some of our clients get more phone calls due to the nature of the business they work in, this means that normally there would be no way to understand if the call came from a piece of content, and organic search or a paid advert.

Using the Ruler Analytics call tracking we are able to attribute these sales calls to the right channels and reinvest in those.

By the way, using this for one of our clients who sell photocopiers allowed us to prove that the best leads were coming from our SEO services.

Multiple touch points now lead to a conversion

I today’s connected world the number of devices people can find your website from is incredible.

Add to this that most B2B buyers now look at an average of 12 pieces of content before even making contact with a potential supplier now and you can see how different attribution models can give you very different pictures of where that sale came from.

Make sure you’re not throwing money away on your marketing by upping your attribution game! We can help too, just give us a shout and we can help implement Ruler Analytics in your business.

Sources:

https://www.marketingweek.com/online-ad-market-spend-uk-2020/

https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics

https://www.ruleranalytics.com/blog/inbound-marketing/measuring-marketing-performance/

structured data tips

5 Structured Data Tips For Your E-Commerce Site

The latest power-technique in boosting your SEO is now upon us – in the form of schema markup. This is one of the most underused tools in e-commerce right-now.

However, those websites that are using schema markup are benefiting from the royalty of high rankings on search engine result pages (SERPs).

Are you interested in having your e-commerce sat at the top of Google, soaking up all of them paying customers?

Read on as we have 5 juicy tips for how structured data can benefit your website!

By the end of this article, you will have the essential tips that you can implement today on your website.

Let’s look at what’s included in this post for you;

  • Microdata 
  • Review markup
  • Product availability
  • Video
  • Price attribute
  • Final thoughts

1. Using microdata

What on earth is microdata?! 

Don’t worry, by the end of this section, you will be impressing your work colleagues with your knowledge of microdata.

To simply describe it, microdata allows you to add Metadata within the body of a web page (without microdata, metadata must remain in the header of the page) and allows you to give Google more detail into what the content is.

Still a bit unsure how this works?

Okay, so if you have a header on a page <h2>Trainers</h2> this will be displayed on the page. However, the page has no idea what the string means (trainers). This is where microdata is your key-weapon to let Google know exactly what your content is.

Now, your content is a lot richer for results, inevitably allowing Google to display your content in rich snippets!

2. Add review and product markup

Review markup data is a proven technique to increase the click-through rate (CTR).

There is a simple psychology to the benefits of having positive reviews on your e-commerce site. Because the public wants to feel safe when departing with their hard earned cash.

So, by using review markup, you’re not only encouraging a click through to your website, but you’re also making the customer feel safer in buying your product. Inevitably leading to a sale!

Cha-ching!

Use product markup on product category pages

You will have undoubtedly seen a clothing brand’s item sat at the top of Google in the rich snippet. With enticing information about the product being displayed, also in the rich snippet.

How do I get my product showcased at the top of Google?

Easy, well, fingers crossed it should get you under Google’s spotlight and your product showcased to all them paying customers.

Okay, so the secret is, product markup. To put it simply, giving your products efficient schema markup will give them a golden opportunity of being displayed in Google’s rich snippet.

3. Product Availability Schema

Another piece of the puzzle to your e-commerce schema tips – product availability schema. Having this little snippet of information adds a lot of value to your products.

You want to avoid frustrating your potential customers. Therefore, showing them a product is either in-stock or not, is very useful. This allows customers to decide if they want to view your other products, without having to click on the out-of-stock item.

Check out the image below:

Product availability schema

Having this snippet of data allows a user to avoid disappointment of potentially finding an “out of stock” product.

Providing great customer service before a user has even landed in your site.

4. Video Schema

Video is one of the top ways you can entice users to buy your products. According to Emarketer, over 70% of top e-commerce stores use product videos on their pages.

This is having a positive impact on growth of sales.

A study from Singlegrain shows that over 60% of customers will watch a product video before reading text.

Okay, so we now know that video marketing is powerful. The thing we need to do is to get our video displayed on SERPs.

Below is an example how to use J-SON (If you don’t understand this, pass it to a developer) to markup your video:

video schema code

5. Use the price attribute

The pricing attribute is one of the most important schema markups you can use.

Why?

This will allow customers to compare prices without clicking on individual websites. Inevitably, giving a user an easier session when searching for their product.

Massive move for user experience (UX) by Google once again.

The image below shows how the price attribute is utilised:

Use the price attribute - trainers showing price

Using this strategy is essential for gaining more traffic to your e-commerce store.

Another example is the image below:

Use the price attribute - blazers showing price on google

The interesting one on this, is the rating markup used with the price.

Out of the four jackets, which one is a potential customer most likely to view first?

It will most likely be the blazer with a review. The power of just having them stars displayed with your product and price is immense.

Another killer tactic for your e-commerce store can be seen on the image below:Use the price attribute - showing reduced price in excerpt on google

Did you notice the section (Was £45.00 Now £35.00)?

This is a brilliant way for increasing CTR to your ecommerce store.

Everybody likes to save money.

Showing a potential customer that you have a current sale in place, will definitely increase the likelihood of your page or post being clicked.

Final thoughts

There it is, 5 tips for structured data you can add to your e-commerce site today and start soaking up all that juicy traffic.

Once you start implementing these strategies, you should no-doubt see an improvement on CTR to your e-commerce store.

10/07/2019

Matt Tomkin

If you own a business and don’t currently have a website, we aren’t going to judge… but we recommend you get one!

If you're looking for a new website we can help.

Having a website allows you to connect with the millions of people scouring the web and opens up the opportunity for your customers to find you.

Your website acts as a brand touchpoint and ultimately shapes how customers perceive your business. Not only that, it gives you the opportunity to make sales online or gather quotes/leads. You know, the things that actually mean something to business owners.

With all that in mind, how do you want your customers to perceive your brand? What type of website is going to achieve this? What type of website platform should it be built on? And most importantly, how much is it going to cost?

That’s a lot of questions to ask yourself - we understand. But there’s also a lot of answers! There are now hundreds of new websites being built every minute, built on different platforms with different features. Our job, in this article, is to compile information on the most popular types of websites, so you can make an informed decision when coming to buy/build one!

Table Of Contents

1. E-commerce sites
What is an e-commerce site?
What is the best platform for an E-commerce site?
How much do E-commerce sites cost?
2. Brochure Websites
What is a brochure website?
What is the best platform for a brochure website?
How much do brochure sites cost?
3. Portfolio Sites
What is a portfolio site?
What is the best platform to build a portfolio site?
How much does a portfolio site cost?
4. Entertainment Sites
What is an entertainment site?
What is the best platform to build an entertainment site?
How much does an entertainment site cost to build?
5. Personal Site
What is a personal site?
What is the best platform to build a personal site?
How much does a personal site cost to build?
6. Affiliate Marketing Website
What is an Affiliate Marketing site?
What is the best platform to build an Affiliate Marketing site?
How much does an Affiliate Marketing site cost to build?
7. Educational Website
What is an educational site?
What is the best platform to build an educational website?
What is the best platform to build an educational website?
8. B2B Websites
What is the best platform to build an educational website?
What is the best platform to build a B2B website?
How much does a B2B website cost to build?
Final thoughts

1. E-commerce sites

What is an e-commerce site?

So, you think you have what it takes to sell your products/services online? If your willing to venture into the world of online selling, you are going to need an E-commerce website.

An E-commerce site is a website that allows you to sell a product or service through your site itself. This means people can go to your website, choose a product they want, add it to their cart and make a payment.

Imagine you have just started a T-shirt business. Instead of paying for rent for a shop in the high street, you could instead start an e-commerce site and sell your T-shirts to people directly online.

What is the best platform for an E-commerce site?

For pure, unadulterated load SPEED; you can't beat Aero Commerce. Read our review here...

There are many platforms out there that are built solely for e-commerce purposes. If you are planning on having a handful of products in your shop or working with a small budget then Wix, and Squarespace all come with E-commerce functionality.

However, if you have big plans for your shop and you would like something more feature-rich then you should look towards Aero Commerce, Shopify, BigCommerce, EKM and Magento.

These type of platforms will guarantee you bang for your buck along with the stability that comes with platforms built for e-commerce. Also, WordPress is an amazing platform for medium to large E-commerce sites.

How much do E-commerce sites cost?

Now, the part you’re waiting for! How much is an e-commerce site going to set you back?

Well, it really depends on your goal and scope of the business. If your goal is time-based and you want to get a website up as quickly as possible and start selling today then you can use a template on sites like Wix, Shopify, GoDaddy and Squarespace. These sites are based around subscriptions so here are some typical options below.

Shopify Costs

Basic: £22 p/month

Shopify: £62 p/month

Advanced Shopify: £235 p/month

Wix Costs

Business Basic: £13 p/month

Business Unlimited: £16 p/month

Business VIP: £22 p/month

Squarespace Online Store Costs

Basic: £20 p/month

Advanced: £30 p/month

GoDaddy Costs

Online store: £19.99 p/month (when billed annually)

We advise you to weigh up your options, clearly define your goals for the site and then decide whether you want to invest in something for the long term or want to start selling right away!

2. Brochure Websites

What is a brochure website?

A brochure website can be defined as an extension of a businesses sales brochure. Typically, a brochure website will provide information on a business such as who they are, what they do and where they are located.

As opposed to an e-commerce site, a brochure website does not actually sell its products or services on the site. The purpose of the site is to display companies goods and services to influence customer’s decisions.

If you want to buy something on a brochure site, you would have to contact the business themselves.

In order to have a good brochure website, it needs to stand out visually and be engaging to look at. Not only does it need to look good, but it also has to read well.

Hiring a good copywriter can come in handy for this to really showcase your business in the best light and persuasively engage readers.

When it comes to promoting your business, brochure sites can be highly effective, providing that you have some stunning images and quality marketing copy to go alongside it.

If, however, you have a certain sales target you want to hit, an e-commerce site may be more appropriate for you.

What is the best platform for a brochure website?

As brochure sites will normally only have a few pages and do not need to be constantly updated, a website builder such as Wix or Squarespace could be a great option for you.

Typically, small businesses will use a brochure website to establish an online presence - an essential component of any business today!

If you are looking to include a blog on your brochure site, it may be a good idea to get a developer or web design agency to build the site on WordPress.

Wix and Squarespace do, however, include blog functionality, although, from our experience, a developed site on WordPress is your best bet.

When creating a blog for your site, you should look at developing an inbound marketing strategy.

How much do brochure sites cost?

Much like E-commerce sites, the price of brochure sites will vary depending on the complexity and functionality. You may find that some freelancers or web agencies offer to build these types of sites for a few hundred pounds.

Again, from our experience, cheaper doesn’t always mean better. Your website is an investment. A quality website with SEO optimised content, beautiful images and good user experience design is guaranteed to generate a greater return on investment than a quickly thrown together site.

Many aspects go into a good website such as time spent building wireframes, design, developing, testing, optimising and much more.

The more time you can spend efficiently in these areas, the greater return you will see from your website. Our starting rates for standard websites like brochure sites are £2500 and upwards.

Our approach is to value quality over price and never to cut corners.

3. Portfolio Sites

What is a portfolio site?

This is one for all the creatives out there looking to show their work off to the world! Portfolio sites act as, yes you guessed it, a digital portfolio.

For many individuals, portfolio sites are the perfect tool for gaining more business and most importantly, building their personal brand.

Many employers will normally hire creatives based on them demonstrating their level of skill beforehand.

Portfolio sites are essential when it comes to showcasing your talent, whether that’s videography and web design or marketing and SEO.

Communicating your skills/abilities with potential customers/employers is so much easier when you can quickly send them a link to your site and they are met with a library of your previous work.

Portfolio sites are usually laid out in a simple way, by using engaging media such as high-quality images, text and video.

What is the best platform to build a portfolio site?

When it comes to building a portfolio site, there are a few stand out platforms that people usually go to.

The first suggestion is a platform called Behance, an online platform to display creative work, owned by Adobe. Behance is extremely easy to use and is perfect for someone who doesn’t want to spend a long time building out the look of the site.

Simply upload your work to Behance and it will display it within its clean interface.

If you are looking for some more freedom and really hone in on the design of your portfolio, WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy, and Fabrik are all excellent platforms to use.

If you have a keen eye for design, you will love customising your portfolio to your liking with these alternatives.

It is worth noting, Adobe has recently come out with an upgraded version of Behance called “ProSite”. This will cost more but give people the freedom to design their portfolio in any way they choose, similar to Wix.

How much does a portfolio site cost?

In terms of pricing, you can set up a Behance profile for free and upload your work almost instantly.

If you want more customisation and features, the “ProSite” is $11/month or $99/year. Alternatively, if you are already paying for the full Creative Cloud suite, you can get ProSite included in this for free!

For the other platforms, here is a full breakdown of their costs.

Wix Costs

Business Basic: £13 p/month

Business Unlimited: £16 p/month

Business VIP: £22 p/month

Squarespace Costs

Personal: £10 p/month

Business: £15 p/month

GoDaddy Costs

Personal: £4.99 p/month (billed annually.)

Business: £6.99 p/month (billed annually.)

Business Plus: £10.99 p/month (billed annually.)

Fabrik Costs

Personal: £6.25 p/month (billed annually)

Professional: £7.92 p/month (billed annually)

Unlimited: £15 p/month (billed annually)

4. Entertainment Sites

What is an entertainment site?

An entertainment website usually has the goal of driving high amounts of traffic to the site in order to make money from advertisements or affiliates.

These websites tend to always be centred around content, whether that’s video content, text-based content or a combination of them both.

A great example of a video-based entertainment website is Youtube. Youtube’s gains millions of views daily from user-generated content and let’s be honest, it’s very easy to spend hours of your time watching random videos on YouTube.

BuzzFeed is a great example of an entertainment website that is centred around text-based content. Buzzfeed pulls in around 22 million visitors per month and thrives off breaking news, quizzes, celebrity gossip and much more trending content.

If you have dreams of building the next BuzzFeed then you are going to need the right platform to manage and support all the content.

What is the best platform to build an entertainment site?

In order to build your very own version of BuzzFeed, WordPress is definitely the best platform to go to.

For a content-based website, you are going to need a content management system and WordPress is easily the best on the market.

WordPress is a really flexible platform that welcomes beginners but also has the functionality to support technical developers.

Expect to browse from thousands of plugins and themes when using WordPress, making it easy for you to get the “BuzzFeed” look right away.

Not only does WordPress have viral-content themes such as Novapress, Buzzz and Newspaper, it also comes loaded with pre-existing solutions for building quizzes and member registration.

How much does an entertainment site cost to build?

In order to build an entertainment site, it’s going to cost you, but not much. Thanks to the wonderful platform that goes by the name of WordPress, you can install a free theme onto your site which will give you the layout and look of a BuzzFeed style site.

But firstly, you are going to need a domain. Now, domains can vary in price based on how general you go.

Want to buy “apple.com”?

Yeah... good luck with that one.

Want to buy “viralnewsstop.com”?

That’s more like it.

The more niche and specific your domain name, the cheaper it is going to cost you.

If you go for a domain name that is valuable to others then expect to be paying £2000 and above for one.

Our advice… stick to £0.99p domains when you are starting out, there’s still plenty to choose from.

Next, you are going to need a secure web host. Web hosting can cost as little as £0.80p per month, our favourites are Namecheap, Godaddy, Siteground and A2 hosting.

When you have the domain and hosting sorted, you can now look to install a free WordPress theme in the style of your choosing.

Whilst there are many free themes that will do the job, if you are looking for more features from a theme, you can buy the full version for £25 - £100 depending on the quality.

Once you have your theme, get ready to write some viral-worthy content and bring those views in!

5. Personal Site

What is a personal site?

Looking to build a personal brand or get your thoughts into the world? A personal website might be what you are looking for.

A personal website is a website that has the sole purpose of providing information about an individual.

This can be great for future employers to get a feel for what you are like or to become a thought leader in your field of expertise.

For some, a personal website is just an extension of themselves and allows them to build an online diary.

Personal sites will usually engage readers by sharing personal thoughts, interests, opinions, advice and much more.

Personal sites usually will have an integrated blog that allows the owner to constantly update.

What is the best platform to build a personal site?

More often than not, personal websites won’t be hand-coded by the owner of the site (unless they have a flair for HTML and CSS).

Typically, free hosting services such as GoDaddy will include a page-builder that allows users to get a website up and running with no coding required.

The typical website builders, as mentioned above, would be perfect with someone who has little technical skills.

WordPress also has some really great themes for personal websites such as Jevelin, Soledad and Kalium.

How much does a personal site cost to build?

Because of the nature of a personal site, getting one up and running isn’t going to set you back too much.

If you want a site that is fast, simple and easy to set up we strongly recommend you use a page-builder such as Wix, GoDaddy or Squarespace.

Wix Costs

Business Basic: £13 p/month

Business Unlimited: £16 p/month

Business VIP: £22 p/month

Squarespace Costs

Personal: £10 p/month

Business: £15 p/month

GoDaddy Costs

Personal: £4.99 p/month (billed annually.)

Business: £6.99 p/month (billed annually.)

Business Plus: £10.99 p/month (billed annually.)

If you would like something a little more professional, we recommend you use a WordPress theme, as mentioned above, that normally start around £45.

If you aren’t familiar with WordPress, it might be best to go to a web design or marketing agency.

As long as your personal site doesn’t demand all the latest bells and whistles, paying someone to build one for you should be relatively cost-effective.

6. Affiliate Marketing Website

What is an Affiliate Marketing site?

Everybody who owns a website would like to make money from it, right? If you have strong desires to earn some income on the side of your day job, or even want to do this full-time, affiliate marketing may be what you are in search for.

An affiliate marketing site is a website that recommends products and services through content leading to a commission from the sale of those products/services.

Usually, there are four main parties involved with affiliate marketing: the affiliate website, the affiliate network, advertisers and finally, the buyer.

For example, let’s say you want to start up a photography blog to advertise affiliate products (cameras and equipment).

You, the website owner, would act as an affiliate and create content with product links to cameras.

Your advertiser could be Amazon or other retailers, whilst the affiliate network would track the sale so that when someone clicks the product link on your site, the advertiser knows the sale has come from you.

So, the next time someone is searching for camera equipment on google, your SEO optimised blog will, hopefully, be seen by a searcher.

If they trust your recommendations of the product and choose to purchase it through your link, then ker-ching, you’ve just made money online.

With affiliate marketing, your aim is to generate traffic to your website. In order to do this, you are going to need to look at Search Engine Optimisation.

What is the best platform to build an Affiliate Marketing site?

If you’ve bought into the idea of affiliate marketing, you are going to need the right platform to build it on.

While we could list probably about 50 different website builders, we have chosen four main builders that we think will provide you with the best functionality.

The first option is an obvious one: WordPress.

WordPress is a great platform for an affiliate site as it comes loaded with plugins and templates specifically for affiliate marketing such as “AffiliateWP”.

Wix and Squarespace is also an option for affiliate marketers, in particular for those who are restricted by budget. Squarespace and Wix are popular affiliate marketing site builders, helping users who aren’t technically gifted build beautiful websites.

How much does an Affiliate Marketing site cost to build?

Before you go ahead and choose your platform of choice, it’s important to compare which site builder is the best value for your money.

So, let’s start off with WordPress. WordPress is the most popular website builder on the market currently and there isn’t too much debate about this.

WordPress excels when it comes to affiliate marketing, boasting over 50 templates designed for affiliate sites.

Before you go ahead and build your WordPress affiliate site, be aware that the affiliate theme on WordPress usually cost around £40 to access all the features.

If you have a slightly smaller budget, Wix may be a good option for you. Wix comes with some really great tools for SEO, Social Media and Email Marketing. Each template on Wix is optimised for mobile so you never have to worry about the responsiveness of your sites!

You can find the Wix costs below.

Wix Costs

Business Basic: £13 p/month

Business Unlimited: £16 p/month

Business VIP: £22 p/month

Squarespace is a website builder that comes with a plethora of customization options and really stunning site designs. Squarespace has 24/7 customer support along with an easy way to upload and format your images. You can find the Squarespace costs below.

Squarespace Costs

Personal: £10 p/month

Business: £15 p/month

7. Educational Website

What is an educational site?

Who doesn’t love learning online? If you’ve ever visited Udemy, Lynda or Coursera, you have interacted with an educational website. With the vast amount of information on the internet, educational sites can act as a hub to absorb information and learn new skills.

Educational websites are sites that allow users to learn new information wherever they are in the world. This could be through blog posts, videos or even interactive elements on a website.

What is the best platform to build an educational website?

If you were looking to create a website that teaches people how to learn facebook ads, for example, you may have a blog or a series of videos on your site. For these types of educational sites, that are quite simple in nature, WordPress would be an ideal platform to build this on.

However, if you are planning something big, you may want to look beyond WordPress.

If you need a website where people can login, make payments, view their chosen courses and view them in a smooth and efficient manner, it may be best to have a custom site built.

While you can still achieve most of the above features on a WordPress site, if you plan on having thousands, or even millions, of users each month, a custom built site would be the way to go.

What is the best platform to build an educational website?

As mentioned above, the complexity of your site will always factor into the cost. If you want a website where users can learn information through blog posts and videos, you could be looking to spend £1000 to £3000 on a professional website.

This website would work well out of the box but may not have some of the features i.e online payment, like a more complex website would have.

If you don’t plan on taking over the e-learning space and just want to help as many people online as you can, we would suggest building the site on WordPress.

On the other hand, if you are in fact looking to take over the e-learning space and have your sights on competing with Udemy, we would suggest getting a custom built website.

A custom built website that will store lots of video, online payments, user portals etc, could cost from between £4000 to £20,000+.

8. B2B Websites

What is the best platform to build an educational website?

Are you looking to reach other businesses online? Or, maybe you are looking to generate a high volume of leads every month. If you are a B2B (business to business) company, then it’s a no brainer that you build a website that can generate leads and drive sales.

A B2B website is a site that is built specifically for business looking to attract other businesses to their services/products. What does a B2B website look like, we hear you ask. Well, a B2B website needs to make their sales process as quick and easy as possible.

This may consist of having clear call to actions for phone numbers or contact forms presented clearly on the page. While Brochure websites are all about the aesthetics, B2B websites are about capturing user information and eventually closing a deal.

What is the best platform to build a B2B website?

With our experience building B2B websites for a range of different industries, we have found WordPress to be the most cost-effective and efficient platform to build on.

Not only is it easy for the business to update content in the backend but WordPress websites are generally more cost-effective than custom built sites.

When it comes to adding forms to your website and collecting user information, WordPress is really effective and has a host of plugins that you can utilise, a lot of them for free!

How much does a B2B website cost to build?

A typical B2B website may cost anywhere between £3000 to £10,000, depending on how complex a site you require.

If you are looking to build a website that is much more than a brochure site, one that will bring you leads and sales, then you need to invest appropriately.

At Tao Digital, we are a B2B digital marketing agency, so we have invested in our website to ensure that it is optimised for conversions.

This is commonly known as conversion rate optimisation. If you work with a professional digital marketing agency, they should build your B2B website with conversion rate optimisation in mind.

This means friction will be removed between the user and their ability to send their details to you. The purpose of this is to increase the volume of sales coming through the site and, ultimately, increase your bottom line.

Final thoughts

Hopefully, we have provided you with some insights into the most popular types of websites in 2019. If you are looking to make money online, we definitely recommend building an e-commerce site, entertainment site or an affiliate marketing site.

If you want to build a personal brand or showcase your talent then a personal site or portfolio would be best for you. And finally, if you are looking to establish an online presence for your business, a brochure site is the way to go!

If you are looking for a website, feel free to check out our Web Design and Development services page.

How to check competitor backlinks [Full Guide]

In this guide we’ll be talking you through the exact steps we take when researching our competitors backlinks and the competitors of our SEO clients.

It’s not massively complicated to do, you just need the right tools and time. We’ll show you how to use these tools and how to evaluate the backlinks you find.

Wh​​​​​​y are backlinks important?

In pretty much every report on SEO you read, backlinks are always one of the most important organic ranking factors.

In all the research conducted that we have seen over the years, backlinks are up there in the top 3 most important factors everytime.

Not all backlinks are created equal though.

Making sure that links you gain or earn are highly relevant and can be trusted is now more imperative than ever.

The type of links are also really important too. Everyone can set-up social media profiles and gain links back from the profile pages. (Please do this if you haven’t yet!)

So you need to make sure you are gaining a real variety of links to your site.

Doing research into your competitors and your wider industry will help you invest in the right areas when looking to gain links.

The type of content sites are linking out to is great for your strategy going forward. If you can replicate that style of content and make a better job of it you should be able to gain links from other sites similar to those linking to your competitors.

How to see a competitors backlinks

There’s a number of tools on the market to help you do this. Our favourite tool ​SEMRush.

Both these SEO tools do a very good job at providing link information and make is really easy to export the information and manipulate it.

They will provide you with all the metrics you’ll need to make an informed decision on whether to add a specific site to your list of outreach targets.

For this article we’ll be focusing on Serpstat backlinks checker and how you use it.

Quick steps for more advanced users are:

  1. Copy the URL of the competitor you want to find backlinks of
  2. Paste the URL into the search bar on the homepage of Serpstat (link here) and click search
  3. Select “Backlink Analysis” from the menu on the left hand side of the screen
  4. Once the dropdown opens, select the “referring domains” option
  5. This will give you a list of all the referring domains your competitor has
  6. Export this list out to Excel and manipulate the data

Below is a more step by step guide to finding competitor backlinks

The first thing you want to do is to find out which competitors rank above your website in the search results for your chosen keyword or search query.

To make sure you do this without any personal cookie settings being used on your web browsers we suggest using the Google Chrome Incognito window to search Google.

Google Incognito window

Firefox also has a function similar to the Incognito window but it is called “private window”.

On Google Chrome you will find the Incognito window by clicking the 3 dots on the far right of the address box, the same place you would change settings, add extensions etc. You can select “New incognito window” from the dropdown menu.

Once your new window opens, enter the Google URL specific to your country, we’re google.co.uk.

Google Search box

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Enter the keyword you are looking to rank for and this will give you a list of all the competitors you want to be checking out the backlinks of.

Once you have a list of competitors URL’s you want to find the backlinks for we can then go to the Serpstat front page.

Serpstat Growth hacking tool for SEO

Enter the competitors URL into the search box and click search. We’re going to use the website www.edp-uk.com for this example as we know they have a good backlink portfolio.

You will land on a page which is a domain overview (great for all types of SEO research and PPC research too!) but for backlinks you want to select the “Backlink Analysis” tab from the menu on the left hand side of the screen.

You have 5 options on the dropdown. Below is a brief overview of what each does:

Backlink Dashboard

This section is an overview page which gives you the top level statistics for each section. Amongst other bits of information this area shows you the Page rank and Trust rank of the URL you entered.

Page Rank and Trust Rank information from Serpstat

In our opinion and many others if you can have a trust rank higher than your page rank its a good sign that your website is moving in the right direction.

Referring Domains

This section will go into details on the top level referring domains that are pointing at the URL you have entered. Some of this information is the most crucial when you analyse competitor backlinks.

You have to be able to look into which links are giving them link power or link equity and which ones are not. Even more importantly, you don’t want to go out building links that are not going to help you rank higher or even worse might get you penalised by Google.

Referring Domains Dashboard free backlink checker

Referring Pages

The referring pages section breaks down the actual pages which contain the backlinks.

This is great when you are researching the type of sites you need to be gaining links from and the type of content which is proving popular for your competitor. It can really help you with your link building strategy.

Tip: click on the link and it will take you to the page

Referring Pages Dashboard

Anchors

Does exactly what it says on the tin really.

This section will give you a breakdown of all the anchor text for the URL in question.

Along with the estimated link flow metrics for you to gauge whether or not you need to be competing on a similar anchor text and the best way to go about it.

Anchor text ratio has never been so important so this information is like gold dust when used in the right way.

Serpstat Anchors Dashboard

Top Pages

Lists all the pages on the website in order of the most amount of backlinks. This will also allow you to export the information into excel where you can manipulate the data to your heart’s content.

A great way to do this is to filter by flow metrics and see which pages are likely to rank higher than others.

Top Page by number of backlinks

How we use this information to check competitor backlinks

Once we have gone through the above and can now use the backlink analysis section. The process is reasonably simple but is a job which is not quick to do. And you need to keep a keen eye on the data.

Sadly, one flaw with Serpstat is that it still doesn’t give you the option to filter the links by the metrics within the software itself.

As a default it shows the referring domains at the top that refer the highest number of pages to the site. This is not the best way of doing it in my mind, just because a site has more links it doesn’t make it the best domain to gain links from.

Instead we export all of the information into excel.

Export competitor backlinks into Excel

From there we will use the filter option on the top row which contains the titles. The information that is exported includes Domain, Number of backlinks, Serpstat Trust Rank, Serpstat Page Rank, the date the link was first found and the Alexa rank for the website.

Excel sheet with backlinks exported from Serpstat

In the image above we have made the titles bold and increased the font size to help read it better.

By filtering the information you can sort the columns by either the Page Rank or Trust Rank. The one we always look at first is the Trust Rank. This is because it gives you a better understanding of the topical relevance of the links.

Select the top ones, we normally look to build a list of websites that have a trust rank or page rank above 30. This does completely depend on the industry too as you may need to build a much stronger backlink profile to compete in your SERP.

Perfect example is the SEO industry. SEO services is probably the hardest to compete in as most people looking to rank for it are normally working in SEO themselves.

Alexa rank is also something to look at. The alexa rank is based on the most popular websites online. A site in the top 1 million should be able to generate you traffic just by them linking to you, whether they are dofollow backlinks or no-follow backlinks.

Why analyse competitor backlinks?

So we have all the of the information on where your competitor backlinks are coming from. Why should we worry about this?

Well one of the main ranking factors to Google, Bing and other search engines is site authority.

What do we mean by site authority?

If you were looking for someone to replace your UPVC windows on your home before the internet existed and possibly still now, the first place you would go is to a friend or a trusted source to recommend a UPVC installation firm to you.

This recommendation would carry more weight if you trusted this person, they were a close friend or a trusted figure in your mind rather than a random bloke who you had never met in the pub who just told you they were great.

If you then hear the same thing from family members, other close friends and trusted people then it gives the recommended company lots more credit and psychologically gives you permission to make a purchase with them or to at least get a quote.

It works in very much the same way with backlinks and your backlink profile. The more backlinks from trusted and relevant sources the more credit Google and other search engines will give you when looking where to rank you against your competitors.

The more relevant, topically trusted backlinks you have to your website, the better the websites authority or domain authority.

If you know you need to build more links and want someone to help then get in touch with us or find out more about our link building services here.