What Is SEO and How Does it Work? SEO (Search Engine Optimization) helps websites rank higher on search engines by optimizing content, keywords, and structure, driving more organic traffic and increasing online visibility. Are you at the start of your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) journey? Maybe you’ve heard that SEO can help drive traffic to your website and get you higher rankings by knowing how search engines work.   We’re here to remove any confusion or complications around SEO – with some insight on how artificial intelligence (AI) in digital marketing fits into the picture. Once you understand the fundamentals, you can learn how to leverage SEO to drive traffic and generate quality leads. 5. Time-bound objectives So, let’s get started to see how SEO works. What you’ll learn in this blog is:  What is SEO?  What are the three pillars of SEO? Paid search vs. organic search – the differences and similarities  How do search engines work? How does Google order and rank search results (and how to optimize for RankBrain)? What is an SEO strategy?  What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? Let’s start by asking an obvious question: what exactly is SEO?  SEO stands for ‘Search Engine Optimization’, which is the process of getting traffic from free, organic, editorial, or natural search results in search engines. It aims to improve your website’s position in search results pages (SERPs). Remember, the higher the website is listed, the more people will see it. There’s a great graphic created by Rand Fiskin, co-founder of Moz, that takes from Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs’ pyramid. Fishkin’s ‘Mozlow’s Hierarchy of SEO Needs’ looks at how people should execute SEO.  Top tip: SEO is no longer confined to search engines like Google or Bing. It’s also important to consider social networks to rank videos on YouTube and leverage TikTok as a search engine as more people turn to them to find information.  What are the three pillars of SEO? As a digital marketer, knowing how to get your brand, website, or company found by searchers is a core skill, and understanding how SEO is evolving will keep you at the top of your game.  While SEO changes frequently in small ways, the concepts of SEO do not. We can break SEO into three core components or pillars that you need to be familiar with – and action regularly: Technical Optimization: Technical Optimization is the process of completing activities on your site that are designed to improve SEO but are not related to content. It often happens behind the scenes. A simple example of technical optimization is submitting your sitemap to Google.  On-Page Optimization: On-Page Optimization is the process of ensuring the content on your site is relevant and provides a great user experience. It includes targeting the right keywords within your content and can be done through a content management system like WordPress, Wix, Drupal, Joomla, Magento, or Shopify. Off-Page Optimization: Off-Page Optimization is the process of enhancing your site’s search engine rankings through activities outside of the site. This is largely driven by high-quality backlinks, which help to build the site’s reputation.  Paid search vs. organic search – the differences and similarities From the outset, it’s important that you understand the differences and similarities between the organic, natural search synonymous with SEO and paid search.  What are the differences between paid and organic search? There are five key differences between paid and organic search. Let’s look at each one of them.  Position The first difference is that paid search results appear at the top of search engine results pages, and organic results appear beneath them. Here’s an example from searching ‘best water bottle’. The paid ads or sponsored posts come up as images while the organic results are below it.  Be aware that the arrival of Google’s AI Overviews is changing display advertising all the time using AI. So it’s important to keep on top of developments for your SEO activities.   Time Another key difference between paid and organic search is time. With paid search, you can get results quickly whereas, with organic search, results take more time – often weeks, months, and even years. So you have to play the medium to long-term game with organic search. Payment As the name suggests, you pay for paid search traffic, with pay-per-click (PPC) marketing on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis.  What that means is, you pay a fee every time a user clicks on your ad. So instead of relying on organic traffic to your website, you buy traffic for your page by paying Google to show your ad when your visitor searches for your keyword.  For organic search, traffic is free, although it does require an investment of both resources and time. ROI In terms of the return on investment (ROI), it’s much easier to measure paid search. That’s partly because Google provides more keyword data that you can capture in Google Analytics (GA4).  However, with paid search, ROI can stagnate or decline over time. With organic search, ROI is a little bit harder to measure, but it often improves over time. Over the long term, organic search can offer a very good return on investment. Share of traffic When it comes to traffic share, research from BrightEdge found that organic search is responsible for 53% of all site traffic compared to paid at 15%. So the lion’s share of clicks are actually on the organic results. It’s not all about differences – there are also similarities between paid and organic search: Keyword research: You use a search engine for both paid and organic search, and both require a user to enter a keyword. So you need to do keyword research for organic search and paid search. Landing pages: Both types of search require you to create great landing pages. For SEO, the landing page needs to be connected to your website. For paid search, it can be the exact same landing page you use for organic, or it can be a completely separate stand-alone page that sits on your website. Traffic: Generating traffic is a major goal of both paid and organic search. Most importantly, both paid and organic

What are SMART Objectives in Digital Marketing? SMART objectives in digital marketing are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound goals that guide campaigns. They help brands stay focused, track progress, and achieve better results with clear direction. No matter what digital marketing career path you’re on, there can be a lot to juggle to keep on top of things.  That’s where clever planning comes in. By setting the right goals you can stay focused and prioritize tasks and projects that meet business objectives.   But choosing the right goals can be tricky. Fortunately, marketers can use the SMART model to define goals or objectives that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. In this blog, you’ll learn about each stage of the SMART model for digital marketing and explore real-world examples from brands using them in their marketing activities. What are SMART objectives? The first thing to understand is that the SMART framework is not just for marketers. It’s used across departments and sectors to give professionals at all levels a clear roadmap for success whether that’s for a huge project or a small scale campaign.   So let’s start at the beginning – what are the 5 SMART objectives?  SMART objectives are: Specific Measurable Achievable Relevant Time-bound The aim of working under these five specific areas is that you have direction and can use them to measure progress.  But before starting work on your goals, it could be useful to discuss business objectives with your team, manager and any relevant stakeholders.  Once you understand how and where objectives are achieved on the business side, then you can plan your digital marketing strategy to align with this and feed back into the business objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs).  Be aware that you can also call on artificial intelligence (AI) to help with developing your SMART objectives by using ChatGPT prompts at each stage of the process. Just download our ChatGPT Prompt Guide for your Digital Marketing Plan to find out how.  So let’s look at each of the SMART objectives so you understand what each of them means and what’s involved.  1. Specific objectives First and foremost your objective should be specific. This means you need a well-defined and clear goal stating exactly what you aim to achieve. Think about the 5 W’s when doing this (i.e. Who, What, Why, When, Where?) to cover all bases.  This means that anyone who reads your objective, even outside the marketing department, should understand what you are trying to achieve. Here are some tips to get your objectives specific: Think simple, sensible, and significant When defining goals, think about the following questions: What do I want to accomplish? Why is it important? Who is involved? Where is it located? What resources or limits are involved? Write down a summary of your goal and reshape it to be as specific and clear as possible The goal should describe an action that involves the customer A single unique objective is clearer and more realistic than too many objectives that will dilute your impact and focus. Specific goal example Suppose you begin with an objective: ‘Sell more products’. That objective doesn’t really meet the SMART criteria, does it? Let’s look at how to improve it. It needs to be more specific, such as : ‘Sell more of our new product range to an 18–30-year-old audience through Instagram Ads’. 2. Measurable objectives Once you’ve specified the aim of your objective, the second step is to make the objective measurable.  When you’re creating measurable objectives, they should include metrics, milestones, results, and budget, so that the objective is quantifiable. You can identify the quantitative aspect of your objective from the following questions: What are the current KPIs for the business? What digital data can you leverage (e.g. website visitor numbers, cost per click (CPC), leads generated, revenue, conversion rates, social media engagement, email open rates etc.) What’s the current situation for your objective and what progress do you expect? Can this be measured with milestones or metric changes? How will you know when the objective has been accomplished? What does success look like? At the end of the campaign, you should be able to look back and quantify the impact in relation to your business target.  For instance, if your goal was to generate a certain number of new leads, how much revenue did each lead bring and how does this translate into profit for the business? Measurable Smart goal example Remember the objective above – ‘Sell more of our new product range to an 18–30-year-old audience through Instagram Ads’. To make it more measurable, let’s change it to: ‘Sell 12% more of our new product range than we did last quarter to an 18–30-year-old audience through Instagram Ads’ This means you now have a target of 12% more sales to measure performance against.  3. Achievable objectives SMART objectives need to be achievable. If you have unrealistic expectations, you’re setting yourself and your team up for failure and disappointment. For your objective to be achievable, you must have the appropriate skills and resources available, and be able to work within any other constraints such as budget, time, and tools. At this stage, you need to think about the execution of this objective. Is it too ambitious? Do you have the resources necessary to achieve this goal? Consider it a reality check. The important thing to consider is to set stakeholders’ expectations as you will have insight into what can be achieved within the given constraints. To define the achievability of your objective, think about the following points: How can I accomplish this goal? How realistic is the goal, based on other constraints, such as financial factors? What is the allocated budget that I currently have for this? Check this blog out if you need some help planning a digital marketing budget.   How many hours a week can the team work on this? Who will be the point of contact responsible for achieving the goal? What things may prevent the team from reaching their goals? Achievable Smart goal example Let’s return to our

How to use the 7Ps Marketing Mix The 7Ps marketing mix—product, price, place, promotion, people, process, and physical evidence—helps businesses plan, analyze, and optimize strategies to meet customer needs and achieve growth. With so many tasks to juggle as a marketer, a cohesive marketing strategy can help provide focus to successfully promote a product or service to your target audience.  But while you may be familiar with the ‘4P Marketing Mix’, the ‘7Ps of Marketing’ is an expansion of that and includes Product, Price, Promotion, Place, People, Process, and Physical Evidence.  So how can you use the 7Ps framework to create an effective marketing strategy that serves target markets and delivers on business goals (plus get some great brand examples to guide you)? Let’s find out! What is the 7Ps marketing mix? The 4Ps of marketing (later known as the 7Ps of marketing) was established in 1948 by Professor of Marketing at Harvard University, James Culliton. It consisted of Product, Price, Placement, and Promotion and was made up of the strategies and practices a company should use to drive a business and promote products.  In the 1980s this framework was expanded to become the 7Ps (People, Process, and Physical Evidence) to include unique aspects of service delivery, such as the importance of the workforce, procedures involved in service, and the environment in which the service is provided. The benefit of the 7Ps marketing mix is that you can use them to execute your marketing plan and help in your day-to-day decision making through your marketing campaign and strategy.  Think of business objectives, planning, market positioning, customer segmentation, etc as the backend of your marketing strategy. The 7Ps then become the front end, what the customer actually sees and how you reach that customer.   Let’s look at each of the 7Ps so you know what each one encompasses. 1) Product This is the actual commodity being sold and is at the forefront of the marketing mix. The product or service is what your customer cares about so it’s worth putting time and resources into making it the best it can be! By taking a product-led approach, you can focus on: Features Design Packaging Market position Quality So how can you leverage a product-led approach to augment your offering as part of the 7Ps marketing mix? Understand the needs of your customers by creating detailed buyer personas so that you target the right people at the right time on the right channel. Know what’s important to customers (e.g. sustainability, authenticity, corporate social responsibility, etc)? Let the product speak for itself. You can do this by letting customers try before they buy, through free trials, freemium plans, or offering demos. This not only shows that you believe in your product, but you can also get people into the marketing funnel early to engage and nurture.  Shout about your product by sharing testimonials and promoting user-generated content.   Ask for opinions by seeking out feedback on social media channels, through email or market research so you can make your product better.     Brand example – Apple doesn’t just sell phones — it sells an ecosystem by integrating hardware (iPhone), software (iOS), and services (iCloud, Apple Music) to make the product more than a device and appealing to a customer.a 2) Price Price is an integral part of the mix and is the only element that directly generates revenue. All the other elements drive cost.  In addition, pricing has a large strategic value to marketers as it guides the customer’s perception of the product. As a result pricing, is a sophisticated science involving psychological pricing, value-based pricing, dynamic pricing, and subscription models. When developing your pricing strategy as part of the 7ps, you need to consider:  How your pricing compares to your competitors Will you offer discounts or sales promotions? Will you use different pricing dependent on quality or bundles?  What is the perception of your brand (high-end or value?) Can you sacrifice profit for long-term growth?   Brand example – Spotify uses tiered pricing such as free with ads, premium individual, family, and student plans. This dynamic pricing model helps to maximize market penetration and user retention. 3) Place The Place element is more than a physical place, it’s about being in the right place at the right time to meet the target customers.  This could be the location of a physical store, or ecommerce store, but it’s also about market coverage and being able to sell products online or offline.  What do you need to consider for the place element of the 7Ps marketing mix? Where do people look for your products (e.g. social media, search engines, etc.)? Do they require a tactile experience (i.e. to touch or feel it)? Is there a benefit to working with a third-party like Shopify or a well-known store?   Brand example – Nike has transformed distribution by offering its products though flagship stores, ecommerce, and mobile apps and leveraging consumer data to optimize inventory and customer experience. 4) Promotion This element involves promoting a product and brand to the target audience and covers all the ways you communicate with and persuade your target audience to purchase.  But it’s more than just advertising, it should include various key objectives like boosting brand awareness, engaging customers, influencing attitudes and perceptions, and rewarding behaviors through initiatives like customer loyalty programs.  Consider adopting an omnichannel marketing approach to be visible on several channels and provide a seamless customer experience.  “[Omnichannel marketing] is a marketing tactic that is cohesive, first and foremost, between traditional marketing tactics and digital marketing tactics that creates synergy between all of them,” said Matt Santos, VP of Products & Strategy at Neil Patel Accel in a DMI podcast.  Effective ways for you to use the element of ‘Promotion’ successfully are to:  Drive personalization through content marketing and email Segment your audiences based on demographics or behavior to tailor messaging Use A/B testing to see what resonates with your audience  Experiment with new channels to see performance (e.g. Bluesky or WhatsApp) Ensure consistency across channels with a brand style template and content marketing guidelines   Brand example: Dove’s ‘Real Beauty’ campaign is a

How to Do a Competitive Analysis in Digital Marketing Competitive analysis in digital marketing involves studying competitors’ strategies, content, and audience engagement to identify strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities, helping you refine campaigns and gain an edge. Staying ahead of the competition is a highly effective way to grow your business. It involves knowing the ins and outs of your competitors to identify ways you can outperform them to engage and influence customers.  A digital competitive analysis is a key part of your digital marketing strategy. It helps you understand the digital strategies of your competitors so you can leverage your strengths and minimize your weaknesses to build and grow. Plus, you don’t need expensive third parties to help you do it. Everything can be done in-house if you know how. And with the ever-developing world of tools for AI in digital marketing, you can make the process even more efficient than before.  So let’s look at how you can analyze a competitor so that you can use the USPs of your business to gain that all-important edge. In this blog, we will cover: What is a Competitive Analysis in Digital Marketing Why you should do a Competitive Analysis What does a Competitive Analysis include The Different Types of Competitive Analysis Competitor Analysis Tools What is a competitive analysis in digital marketing? Competitive analysis in digital marketing is a process that researches competitors to identify strengths and weaknesses. It examines the strategies companies use for marketing, pricing, product development, and distribution to gain insights. It will help you to keep on top of trends in your sector and identify digital strategies that will drive brand awareness, customer engagement, and, most importantly, revenue. Why you should do a competitive analysis in digital marketing? What is the purpose of competitive analysis? Well, the scope of your competitive analysis can vary depending on what you want to discover. What you analyze can be as broad or as focused as you like.  For example, you may want to focus on optimizing your website. For this, you would look at competitors’ websites to look at their content, UX, and lead-generation strategies. What you learn can then help you to apply new CRO strategies.  There are many benefits to conducting an analysis which include: Identify barriers and opportunities in a market Identify your value proposition and how it differs from competitors Highlight where competitors are not delivering or have weaknesses  Target the most effective digital strategies in your marketplace Identify new customers and territories Uncover market trends See the potential for a new product or service Establish a benchmark to measure your performance against   What does a competitive analysis include? A competitive analysis in digital marketing means that you analyze the different platforms of each of your competitors and see how they contribute to growth. Ultimately, it’s about benchmarking against your competitors.  Determine competitor types Not all competitors should be treated the same. Split them into categories based on their level of competitiveness.  Primary: These are your direct competitors that sell a similar product or service to your audience e.g. Asos and Boohoo.    Secondary: These companies offer a similar version of your product or service (low or high-end) to a different audience e.g. Target and Gucci. Tertiary: These brands are related to you but don’t compete with your product/service or audience e.g. Red Bull and Patagonia. Segmenting your competitors like this will help you see how they relate to your business. Profile your competitors’ target customers Understanding the audience of your competitors will tell you a lot about a business. It will help you to understand who they target and the digital channels they use effectively to do that.  The best way to find out about their customers is to see who the brand is appealing to. You could find this out by looking at: Their mission statement or ‘About Us’ section Social media messaging and interaction through social listening Monitoring interactions across digital channels using audience listening Blogs and free downloadable assets  Webinars or podcasts Customer reviews or user-generated content   By reviewing the goals, content, and interactions of your competitors, you’ll learn more about their audience. This will help you develop tactics that differentiate you from the pack.  Apply the 7Ps of marketing The full 7Ps marketing mix is crucial to any digital marketing strategy. It will help you to analyze your competitor’s marketing tactics to gain insights into your activities. Product: What are they selling? What do customers like about their product or service? What makes it a successful product or service? What features or product(s) does their product have over mine? Price: What price model do they use? Is it a one-off payment or subscription-based? What makes the price point attractive?  Promotion: How do they promote their brand and offerings? What digital channels are they most active in promoting? What tactics do they use to promote?  Place: Where do they sell? Are they active online or do they have brick-and-mortar stores or branches?    People: Who is involved in a business that comes into contact directly and indirectly with customers? Process: What systems and workflows deliver the product or service to the customer? Physical evidence: How can you help focus on helping the customer ‘see’ what they are buying?   You can gain a lot of information from this process, so you should focus on the areas you want to know about. Include any quantitative data to refer back to, along with qualitative.

7 Steps to Building Your Personal Brand on Social Media These 7 easy steps to build a good personal brand on social media will help you expand the level of trust, visibility and influence. Sharing content online allows you to craft an online persona that reflects your own personal values and professional skills.   Even if you only use social media occasionally, what you create, react to, or share feeds into this public narrative. How you conduct yourself online is now just as important as your behavior offline, especially when it comes to your digital marketing career. According to ‘Using Social Media in the Recruitment Process’ research, 50% of employers are prepared to research job seeker candidates using personal social media profiles. 64% of hiring managers have viewed a candidate’s social network profile (such as LinkedIn) at some point for this purpose. Building your personal brand on social media takes some work. But done right, it can help advance your career, make valuable connections, become a thought leader, demonstrate self-expression and build a legacy. In this blog, we will explore 10 key steps to help you build a presence on social media which include: Update Your Social Media Accounts Identify Your Area of Expertise Leverage Social Media AI Tools for Reach and Engagement Regularly Share Content Import Your Contacts Be Positive, Engaging & Authentic Find & Join Social Groups   We’ll also look at which social media platform is the best for personal branding? 1. Update Your Social Media Accounts There are estimated to be over 5 billion social media users globally and the average person uses 6.7 different social networks every month, according to Datareportal. Those figures demonstrate the adoption of social platforms across age groups and locations. But not every account will help build your presence online and with so many networks to keep on top of, how useful is each one to social greatness? So, conduct an audit and decide which social media channels to focus on. Then delete any old accounts that you no longer use or are serving you no purpose.  For the networks you will use, make sure all your information is accurate and complete. This will help you direct and grow traffic to the networks that will showcase you and your work.  2. Identify Your Area of Expertise Everyone’s an expert at something – whether it’s how to create and distribute great content or having an encyclopedic knowledge of your favorite TV show.  In the digital marketing area just think of the experts that people and articles always refer to – plus they have awesome LinkedIn profiles. There’s Rand Fishkin who specializes in audience listening, Neil Patel who is the go-to for search marketing and Steve Bartlett, author, Dragon’s Den participant and podcast host.  Is it time for you to experiment a bit more? Think about what type of content you’ve created that your followers have responded to most. Can you replicate this with similar content or repurpose something that has performed well to re-engage?  The more unique and engaging content you create on your chosen topic of expertise, the more your followers will start to think of you as a thought leader in your chosen field. 3. Leverage Social Media AI Tools for Reach & Engagement Building a personal brand has gotten even easier with the advancement of artificial intelligence. By using AI tools, you can create an identity that reflects your values, expertise and aspirations.   You can use it for a variety of tasks such as: Content creation – Use writing tools like Perplexity and ChatGPT to perform research and help get ideas to create content for platforms. And tools like Feedly or Pocket use AI to suggest relevant articles and news that align with your brand so you can share valuable content with your audience.   Social media management – Platforms like Sprout, Buffer, and Hootsuite all leverage AI to schedule posts and automate tasks. While AI can help analyze metrics such as engagement to help you understand what content matters to your audience.  SEO – Tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush use AI to identify trending keywords and phrases along with analyzing content for readability and keyword density so you can optimize content for search engines. Plus with TikTok becoming a search engine it’s worth being strategic with your keywords and phrases when posting to the platform.  Market research – You can use AI to conduct a competitive analysis and get insights into market trends and customer behavior. Tools that can do this are Ahrefs, Similarweb, and Brand24.    Email marketing – Personalization is key to driving click-through in your email marketing so use AI to analyze subscriber data and optimize and test key elements such as subject lines, CTAs, and content.   Visuals – There are loads of great tools you can use for creating visuals such as Canva AI or Midjourney. Adobe Spark and Lumen5 use AI to create professional images and videos .  Landing page optimization – WordPress, Godaddy, and Wix offer AI-driven optimizations for site design, content and layout which can help with user engagement and SEO.  Top tip: Here’s a great webinar on ‘How to Use AI for Your Copywriting’ hosted by AI educator and copywriter, Kerry Harrison.  4. Regularly Share Content In the early days of social media, the more you posted, the more engagement you could drum up. Today, however, over-posting leads to fatigue and annoyance.  You want to keep the lines of communication open with your audience, but you also don’t want to overshare so much that you look desperate. While there is guidance on the optimum number of social posts for large businesses such as 3-5 posts a week on Instagram, 1 to 2 posts a day on LinkedIn and 3 to 5 posts a day on TikTok (see more in the graphic below from Hootsuite), it’s not as clear-cut for small companies or personal branding. The optimal number of social media posts depends on your industry, audience, number of followers, and your resources.  Aim for a sustainable number of posts in your social media strategy across the networks that work for you — a number you can accommodate without putting