But do you know what each of them means?

How do they compare?

Is one more important than the other?

We’ve written this blog post to provide you with an understanding as to what each of these amounts to, so you could become the go-to website (or resource) for your customers.

What Is Domain Authority?

Domain Authority is a ranking factor that tells Google how authoritative a particular domain is.

It is a score that combines the strength of backlinks to other parameters related to your website like the age of the domain, trustworthiness, social signals, etc.

While the term “Domain Authority” is usually associated with the Moz metric by the same name, it should not be confused with ‘domain authority’ as a ranking factor.

The parameters used by Moz to give a DA score to each domain do not always correlate with the authority that Google places on each of the domains they crawl.

How To Improve Domain Authority

While we do not exactly know all the parameters that go into determining the authority of a particular domain, here are some factors that have a strong influence on how much authority Google places on a particular website.

• Domain age — Older domains have more authority than newer ones because they have established themselves (relatively) as a trusted brand.
• Backlink profile – A domain that is linked from powerful websites of high authority is, in turn, seen as one with high authority
• The number of pages indexed by Google — More pages indexed could mean higher authority for your site; although this may not always be true
• Branded searches on Google – Popular brands that enjoy a large volume of branded searches also enjoy high domain authority for their industry
• Branded anchors – Domains that receive a significant number of organic branded anchors enjoy higher domain authority.

There is no shortcut to improving your domain authority.

It’s a long arduous process that involves building organic backlinks, and adding top-quality content to your website consistently over many months, or even years.

Invest in all the right SEO best practices – both technical and offline SEO – to see your domain authority grow.

This includes investing in the right link-building techniques, producing the right kind of content, fixing redirection and broken link errors in your website, and so on.

In a way, SEO and domain authority feed off each other.

The right SEO techniques help improve domain authority of your website.

In turn, a good domain authority helps with your SEO and makes it easier to rank for your chosen keywords over time.

What Is Topical Authority?

Topical Authority is a measure of how authoritative a website is with respect to a very specific topic.

For instance, if you have a pet website where you talk about everything related to dogs — the breeds, what food to feed, what games to play, how to groom dogs, etc. — then while you may have top-quality articles on each subject, you do not demonstrate your expertise in any of these various topics.

Instead, if you focus on a particular sub-niche within the topic of pets (say pet insurance), and have articles on every conceivable topic related to pet insurance, then it is likely that Google views your domain as an expert when it specifically comes to ‘pet insurance’, even though you may not enjoy other metrics that qualify your domain as authoritative.

It is however important to note that topical authority trumps domain authority only in certain cases.

If you cover a YMYL topic (‘Your Money, Your Life’ – topics that relate to the health or finances of your reader), then chances are that Google would err on the side of caution and rank a domain with higher authority even though your smaller domain is a topical expert.

How To Improve Topical Authority?

It can take a website months, or even years, to gain high domain authority.

However, it is relatively easier to secure good topical authority. This can be achieved with the help of well-planned topic clusters.

The best way to go about this is to identify a subtopic within your niche that has not been exhaustively covered by competitors in your industry.

Once you make sure that this does not fall in any of the YMYL topics, you may go about producing an exhaustive list of top-quality content.

The final step in this process is to interlink between these different articles for Google to effectively navigate and interpret the context of each of these articles.

Once you have effectively covered a subtopic, you may rinse and repeat with other similar clusters within the broader niche.

It takes websites a relatively shorter time (several weeks to months) to attain topical expertise when compared to gaining domain authority.

Which Is Important For Your Website?

Both are important.

When you are starting a new website, then it can be several months or even years before you gain top domain authority.

So start with topical authority. Pick a small sub-niche within your industry and be the ultimate expert on this topic. These are called ‘topic clusters’.

Once you have exhaustively covered it, expand the horizon a bit and cover another topical cluster — and over time you will gain topical authority in several sub-niches within the main industry.

Also, when you attain topical authority, you are likely to rank high for keywords even if you do not have sufficient authority yet.

This helps you attain organic backlinks which helps you build your domain authority over time.

Final Word

Both domain authority and technical authority play a vital role in determining the success of your SEO efforts.

The scores that Google assigns to websites are intended as a gauge of authority. It determines more than just how many links point to a domain.

Google also analyses the content quality of that website, how users engage with them, whether they are helpful and answer the question, and so on.

As such, neither domain authority nor topical authority is more important than the other.

They work in tandem with each other to help you rank well in search engine results pages.

However, for businesses that are actively building their presence online and have not yet built up a significant following, topical authority is an important first step to building a content strategy.

But, if a business has an established website with an excellent amount of content relevant to their industry or niche, domain authority is going to be more important.

When this is the case, quality backlinks can help improve your website’s overall topical authority, thus putting you in a better position on highly competitive search terms.

The post Domain Authority vs Topical Authority appeared first on MintTwist.

But aren’t videos much harder and time-consuming to create? How does a video camera work, and who’s going to add in all those special effects? The truth is that you don’t need to worry too much about quality. The simpler and more personal a video, the better.

Just like consumers don’t want every article to read the same, they don’t want every video to look like it was created by a professional production house. Don’t be afraid to pick up the camera yourself, start filming and, with some basic editing skills, create something that truly comes from the heart of your company. But first…

What does video marketing entail?

Companies adopting a video marketing strategy use videos to promote their product or services. These will then be used on social media, websites and external platforms to increase engagement levels and educate potential consumers.

One of the most exciting elements of video marketing is that it allows you to tell a relatively complex story in a creative, compelling and persuasive way, ultimately making it much easier for your audience to understand what you’re about.

Not convinced yet? Then let’s take a look at some of the most exciting benefits of video marketing:

Benefits of video marketing

Say more in less time

While they say social copy should be short and snappy, videos for social use can be up to 15 seconds long without losing the user’s attention. In those 15 seconds, a combination of visuals and text can tell a much more impactful story than a caption ever could.

The same goes for many other content types, such as case studies. While they’re often a lengthy read, a 5-minute video could offer a very comprehensive insight into how your company managed to solve a certain problem. Not to mention that, according to this study, viewers retain up to 95% of the information they learn about in a video, compared to a tiny 10% when reading the same content in text form.

Higher engagement

This 2016 research claims that social videos generated 1200% more shares than text and images combined, and posting a video on a landing page can increase conversions by no less than 80%!

Therefore, using video is an organic way of building trust amongst your target audience. The more they see your brand being shared by people in their network, the more likely it is that they will start engaging with your brand.

This video content will also put a face to your brand and 90% of consumers have admitted to being heavily influenced by video when making a buying decision. No surprise it is, then, that marketers using video content grow their revenue 49% faster than those who don’t.

Attract a larger audience

Where in the past, brands might have mostly created video content to grow their YouTube channel, video content is now the most popular format across all social media platforms. It’s simply how users prefer to consume information.

A study by Wyzowl showed that 68% of consumers preferred to learn about new products or services through video, while only 15% would rather see it in an article. A solid video marketing strategy also makes it easier and more organic for a brand to work with influencers, as it is how most of them communicate with their fans.

It’s easy to measure

The way in which your audience engages with your video content can be tracked and measured in great detail. Depending on what host you’re using, metrics include watch time, impressions, unique views, view-through rate, view date, country, and even entire heat maps to help you make sense of collected data. These insights can then be used to identify what content is most effective for your specific audience and will eventually save you time, energy and money.

It’s versatile

The opportunities for creating original video content are endless. Do you want to help your customers make better use of your products? Launch a how-to series. Is there a campaign you’re particularly proud of? Tell the world about it in a visual case study.

Bringing a new product on the market? How about a demo! Whatever the aim of your story, there will be a video format out there that’s perfect for the job.

So, yes, we’re pretty big fans of video marketing. It’s fun, engaging and, above all, incredibly effective in driving sales. Want to learn more? Have any questions you’d like to ask the experts? Why not attend our Video Marketing Workshop on the 13th November? 

Is your company already invested in it? Then why not have a look at this article on promoting your videos, or these 5 tips to increase retention on your YouTube channel? Good luck!

The post Everything you need to know about video marketing appeared first on MintTwist.

From Google Ad Grants to YouTube’s Non-profit programme: there’s a host of initiatives out there that help charities market their services without paying the full price. We’ll take a look at each of these, and give you some advice of our own.

Have a strategy in place

Growing digital capacity within any organisation starts with outlining clear goals. What do you want to achieve with improving your website, who do you want to reach with your social media channels and how will your digital activities fit in with your overall marketing strategy? Answering these questions may seem straightforward (it all comes down to raising awareness and funds, right?), but answering them comprehensively is essential to your developing an effective and coherent strategy. Digital marketing comprises many different elements, and knowing how each of these will individually contribute to achieving your overarching goal is paramount.

For an integrated and holistic approach, it’s important that what you do online translates to your offline marketing activities. Rather than being two separate elements of your campaign, they should extend and complement each other as much as possible. This means using the same colour palette, fonts, graphics and tone of voice across all your communications – both online and offline. Great advice on branding, internal communications, storytelling and other digital strategies can be found in the brilliant CharityComms Knowledge Hub.

Choose wisely

As your capacity for digital management is likely to be small, we recommend you think carefully about what services can really help you achieve your goal. Think about which social channels will support your mission best: while Instagram is great for subjects that are visually appealing, campaigns centred on current affairs are much more suitable for Twitter. Focus on a select number of platforms, and run them really well. For further advice on smashing specific digital platforms, have a look at any of our guides below:

• 7 ways to take pictures for Instagram
• An idiot’s guide to SEO
• 5 tips to increase retention on your YouTube channel
• 6 steps to effective email marketing for event marketers

Make the most of what’s on offer

Most tech giants offer some sort of pro bono support to charities and non-profit organisations, allowing you to utilise digital services without it eating away your budget. If your organisation hasn’t already, applying for the below programmes will significantly help you increase your digital impact:

1. Google Ad Grants

 This programme provides charities with $10,000 USD a year to spend on Google’s online advertising tool called Google Ads. Applicants must be in possession of a Google for Nonprofits account, a high-quality website that’s in line with Ad Grants policies and get approved through the pre-qualification process, but as soon as that’s all done you can start reaping the rewards. Getting started is easy with Google’s free training documents, which can be found here.

2. YouTube Non-profit

 Video is one of the most effective content formats and essential if storytelling is at the heart of your charity. The channel’s Non-profit programme allows you to connect with supporters, volunteers and donors through a range of special features including access to production resources, dedicated technical support and expert advice on content optimisation. Again, this online starter course will help you get the ball rolling. 

3. Facebook Social Good

Facebook Social Good is an online hub where charities can go for resources, marketing advice and guidance on how to set up a successful company page. Facebook also offers a number of features that help charities to easily raise money through their page at no extra cost and holds a crisis response policy that connects organisations with those in need in times of crisis.

Are you a charity or non-profit organisation looking to increase your digital impact? Then this article should be able to help you on your way. Let us know how you get on – or get in touch with tips and advice that we haven’t covered. We’d love to hear from you!

The post Digital for good: Digital marketing tips for the non-profit sector appeared first on MintTwist.

So how does forum marketing work, and how do you go about building a presence? This article will take you through all the essentials.

How it works

First, let’s take a look at some of the key reasons forum marketing is worthwhile. If you think any of these could benefit your brand, you better jump on the bandwagon:

1.It’s a traffic driver.

The World Wide Web is competitive, and driving people to your website can be a tough challenge. Building a presence on popular internet forums will allow you to speak to an audience that you know is likely to be interested in your services and by actively engaging with them, linking to your website is bound to drive some good traffic. In addition, your answers, comments and replies to questions are likely to appear in organic search engine results, which will significantly contribute to your long-term SEO.

Caption: Ashton Kutcher, actor + investor & advisor to start-ups, has built a huge Quora presence over the years. Here he answers a widely praised answer to the question “How do you decide on a name when you want to start a company?”

2. It’s a great way of building thought leadership.

Engaging with online forums will allow you to share your expert knowledge, ultimately leading to a stronger online reputation through which people will start really valuing your insights – and with that, your company’s services.

3. It will help you raise brand awareness.

One of the hardest things to do when launching a new brand or product is making people know about it. Naturally interacting with forum users will – once you’ve established solid relationships – allow you to talk about your brand and services amongst an audience that’s already listening.

Caption: Quora users talking about the skin care products they like the most.

4. It will let you join the conversation (and learn about your audience).

Think market research, but without knowing – and thus more naturally behaving – participants. Joining conversations on whatever topic relevant to your company will provide you with valuable insights into what your target audience likes and doesn’t like.

 5. It’s a customer service channel.

As users often talk about the services that they use, forums are also great for keeping track of and respond to positive and negative feedback on your products and services.

https://www.semrush.com/blog/10-reasons-why-marketers-should-use-quora/

Where to start

Now that you know why you should be on online forums, it’s time to start looking into which platforms suit your company best. The options are endless, but regardless of the industry you’re working in, Quora and Reddit are great places to start. They both have a global and very active user base, offering a wealth of interesting discussions to join and thousands of users to build a meaningful relationship with. Now let’s take a look at some of the basic rules of each of these online communities.

Reddit:

Calling itself the ‘the front page of the Internet’, Reddit is an incredibly popular social news aggregation and discussion website. Reaching a status of fame here is not easy, and, close-knit as they are, Redditors are particularly critical to newbies. However, if you play by the following rules, they will eventually welcome you with open arms:

• Be honest, modest, transparent, and avoid shouting your brand name too loudly. Redditors have a real nose for marketers and once they find out you’re only there for the purpose of promoting your services, you’re done for.
• Don’t just post for the sake of posting, but interact, respond, upvote, and answer questions to show that you’re willing to give to the community. Users that only submit links to their own websites and don’t do much else are seen as spam and can on that basis be banned by moderators.

In addition to obeying these rules, what should you be doing to turn your reddit engagement into a proper success? First of all, you want to be joining and targeting specific subreddits (categories) to reach niche audiences. Then, actively participating will teach you about the type of content that works and doesn’t work. Lastly, it’s important to give yourself some time. Building a presence in a community this tight isn’t something that happens overnight, but trust us, it will pay off eventually!

Quora

Quora is a question-and-answer website attaching great value to the quality of content. It’s where people go to share their own knowledge while also learning from others, and unsurprisingly, it’s become quite the platform for thought leaders, business owners and celebrities. How can this benefit your business?

• First off, answering questions relevant to your business will immediately give you a degree of expertise and help you become a thought leader in your industry. Keeping this up will ultimately make people ask you questions directly and the more answers you provide, the more valuable your profile will become. It’s an excellent way of building up a good reputation and authority.
• The Quora community is widespread and full of dedicated users who trust it as a reliable source of information. This means that your audience is already listening to you, and it also offers you the opportunity to engage with your audience in a natural way.
• As Quora holds a real name policy – meaning that users have to be real and not made up or speaking for an organisation – it’s a great opportunity to show people the person behind your company. In addition to making your brand more personal, this will allow you to show the expertise and knowledge going into your business.

Creating quality content: answers on Quora are thought through and well written, and sticking to that standard will help users appreciate you more. First of all, it’s important that you tell a story that engages – no matter what the subject. Second, it really helps to use imagery as this will make your answer much more readable and visually enticing. Thirdly, it’s a good idea to not give everything away at once. If you’re on Quora to drive traffic to your website, make sure that your answer leaves users craving for more. And lastly, always try to create as much value as you possibly can. Quorans are obsessed with quality, and only answers that are seen as truly helpful will ever receive an upvote.

And there you have it: our (not so) quick guide to forum marketing. What do you think? Are you ready to make the jump? All we can say is do it now, before you have the whole world to compete with!

The post A quick guide to forum marketing appeared first on MintTwist.

So, what are these micro-conversions? How will you recognize the users who are on your page to make a purchase while giving space to those who still need a little more time? Here are some of the most common e-commerce micro-conversions.

Information Download

If a user downloads a spec sheet, tutorial, comparison document or other information from your website, you can be fairly sure they’re interested in the products you offer. They’re on a fact-finding mission, and it’s up to you to provide those facts. What can you do with this kind of open invitation from potential customers? Send more info, of course.

Join Your Newsletter List

If a website visitor signs up to receive information about special discounts and other news from your e-commerce company, you can relatively sure they’re interested in making a purchase. Maybe they’re waiting for the right moment, the right discount, or the right product, but they like what you’re doing. Check out the products they’re searching, and you’ll get a pretty clear idea of what they want special prices on.

Product Comparisons

If you offer the ability to compare products on your website, then you also give yourself insight into one more micro-conversion. When a buyer has a serious purchase in mind, they want to know how one product stacks up against another. Not only do you know the buyer is pretty close to making a purchase, but you also know what they want to buy and what might be stopping them. Take the opportunity to give them what they need.

Addition to Wish List

E-commerce sites with a Wish List function have a built-in superpower. No other function on a website can give you the insight you need into a customer’s wants and needs. Users often don’t hold back when adding to a wish list or clicking a “favorite” button. You, the seller, get a wealth of information from the favorites list, including sizing information, favorite colors, obvious needs, pricing considerations, and more.

Abandoned Cart

We’ve talked at length about how to recover a sale from an abandoned cart. Most see it as a failure that must be rectified, but you can also see it as a victory. Even if the buyer doesn’t complete the purchase this time, they’ve given you something to work with. You know what they’re looking for, and you may even know why they didn’t make the purchase. How can you turn that micro-conversion into a full conversion?

The more you know about your buyers’ every move on your website, the better you can make their experiences. Track these and use the information to better segment your buyers. Those who are seeking more information should receive that information. Those who’ve indicated they like red dresses by adding several to their wish lists should receive a notification every time a red dress is added to your inventory. Those who abandoned their shopping cart when they saw how expensive shipping would be should get information about how to make shipping cheaper.

See how these things work? Start paying more attention to those micro-conversions. And feel free to let us know some of the micro-conversions you watch on your own e-commerce site. We love sharing information!

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About the author

Charlie Keegan

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charleskkeegan/

Charlie is an Enterprise Account Executive at InVisionApp Inc. and a Boston College graduate native to Jackson WY. He believes in the value of hard work, authenticity, and getting things done.

If you’re looking for best in-class marketing services from our ecommerce seo London offices, get in-touch with our team of experts.

The post Mastering the art of the ecommerce micro conversion appeared first on MintTwist.

WordPress powers over 33% of sites on the internet, meaning that whenever the WordPress team publish an update, a lot of websites change.

This week marks release of the latest version of WordPress; 5.0. Each version of WordPress has a title, and due to the core development teams love of jazz music, the title is always the name of a famous jazz musician, going back to version 1.0: “Miles Davis”, to the new version 5.0: “Bebo Valdés”.

Every WordPress website design begins life as a copy of the core, open-source framework. Open-source means that there are thousands of developers, all around the world, constantly contributing code and adding improvements to WordPress.

The contributions of all these developers becomes what is known as the core of WordPress, and will form the basis. There is a structure to help support this and moderate what gets added, and there are ways that WordPress makes money, but the central code that forms the basis can be added to by anyone.

What we at MintTwist then do is to build around and extend that base framework to make each site bespoke and unique. We as WordPress users and developers get all the advantages of advanced security, an intuitive admin interface and a structured framework on which to develop websites, with the freedom to build and create on top of.

There are updates to WordPress and its plugins every other day, but this update is different as it is a MAJOR update.

This is version 5.0.0, which (according to Semantic Versioning) shows that the 5 is the MAJOR version (this means big new features), the first 0 is the MINOR version (this gets updated every few months and adds in a few smaller new features) and the last 0 is the PATCH version (updated every week or two, containing small bug and security fixes).

Thursdays update from 4.9.8 to 5.0.0 marks the latest MAJOR release since version 4.0.0 back in 2014.

What’s new?

This latest version of WordPress brings with it many changes and new features, primarily Gutenberg; a brand new block based way to edit content in the admin area.

Gutenberg makes adding and editing content easier and more intuitive and makes it much simpler to continually update site content without the need for redevelopment. For everyone who is happy with WordPress as it was, it’s entirely possible to keep the good old current page editor (or ‘classic editor’ as is now known).

This release also brings with it the new, annual WordPress base theme called 2019. There are a host of minor changes, security upgrades and smaller new features that make WordPress development easier and allows us to build and do more than ever with the platform.

Risks and the next steps

The good thing about WordPress is that it can continually be upgraded without the need for complete redevelopment like some other CMS platforms would require. However with any major update, there comes a certain amount of risk.

When updating, some things can break, some plugins can become incompatible as they take a little while to catch up to the core update and some things will still work fine and might just look a little different.

For this reason, we are deliberately choosing not to immediately update the majority of the sites that we work with to 5.0. We are also advising you to hold off on updating yourselves for now (even if WordPress prompts you to do so via a notice in the admin area or via email).

This is so that we can allow for any early bugs to be discovered and resolved before we commit. It’s good to be an early adopter, but we know how important your site is, and there’s nothing in this update that is so essential that it’s worth risking site stability and functionality for.

Controlled roll out

Realistically, most sites are going to be just fine if updated right away, but we still advise taking it slowly in order to minimise risk.

Over the coming weeks we will begin updating sites to version 5.0, on staging versions of your site first where there is no risk, so that we can test everything before we roll the update out to your live site.

This allows us to look at what plugins and functionality each site is using, and take note of anything that we know isn’t 100% ready for WordPress 5.0 just yet. We will run the update as soon as we know that there are no risks, and have found suitable replacements for any plugins that aren’t going to work well with 5.0.

If you’d like to update your site anyway then you are free to do so, and you can always speak to us about it too.

What does this mean for you?

The team have spent time getting ready for this release, primarily by looking at the beta versions of 5.0 and the pre-release candidate builds.

However there is not a lot that else that could be done in advance, as until the final release version was published, any testing or planning we do would need to be carried out again on the latest version.

Some sites will see this update soon, and for some it will take a short while before your site is ready. Each site is unique and presents its own set of risks, but there is nothing that the team here are not prepared for.

Some of the features in Gutenberg and the updated way of editing content will not be available to all, as the themes that we develop are very heavily customised, bespoke builds that would lose functionality, were we to use the new editor.

Although I have very much highlighted the risks here, we are intentionally being overly cautious. WordPress’s advantage continues to be its ceaseless updates; with new features and security improvements being released for free every few weeks.

Open source contributors work year round to update and modernise the platform and to keep WordPress as the most utilised CMS platform in the world.

The result is a free, one-click automatic update that would take hundreds of hours, costs thousands and require massive redevelopment on another platform.

Get in touch

The release of WordPress 5.0 makes it a great time to work with WordPress and expand on your site.

If you are looking for a fresh look, some new pages or features or a complete upgrade, now is the best time to get in touch and speak to us today.

The post WordPress 5.0 released appeared first on MintTwist.

From never-ending backstage insta stories to endless streams of live tweets from any of the 54 (!) shows, the social content produced, shared and consumed during LFW ’18 was overwhelming to say the least, so how did brands manage to stand out?

At a time where everyone is on top of their game, no fashion brand will get away with leaving their social strategy unchanged.

A bit of extra care is needed during the ultimate fashion season, and in a world where people increasingly live through their digital devices, designing a killer collection is no longer enough.

That’s why we’ve tried to identify what other actions were taken by brands to ensure attention. Let’s take a look.

Politics

This year’s LFW was a particularly interesting one as, after The British Fashion Council conducted a survey amongst all designers involved, it was the first ever fashion week that was completely fur-free.

But that was not the only political statement made: both French designer Roland Mouret and British shoe designer Nicholas Kirkwood paid tribute to the #MeToo discussion.

Mouret had all his models wear eye-catching ‘Woman Up’ badges, brooches or necklaces and further focused on gender equality by collaborating with feminist artists Judy Chicago and Mehrnoosh Khadiv. Instagram galore guaranteed.

Kirkwood took it up another level by titling his entire show ‘Hacking and Activism’, explained by his controversial guest models including actress and #MeToo initiator Rose McGowan and 18-year old hacker CyFi.

Where the latter choice connected to the collection’s focus on new technologies, McGowan’s appearance seemed to be Kirkwood’s way of protesting against female suppression in the global fashion industry.

While this merging of #LFW and #MeToo may not have been done solely with social media in mind, it sure did help both designers stand out.

Perhaps most importantly, it also allowed them to join one of today’s most pressing debates, which in return, helped them smoothly entering the competitive and momentary twitter-sphere.

Collabs

In addition to being politically charged, the above examples also show that there are plenty of key figures suitable for successful fashion collaborations.

While designers will always be obsessed with having the best models on their side, artists, actresses and even hackers can also turn out to be the perfect complement to a show. Not to mention that they can significantly increase a brand’s social coverage.

Opportunities

Other brands that really managed to put their stamp on the social sphere this year were Burberry and Victoria Beckham. Beckham had a good year as celebrating both her 10-year anniversary as a fashion designer and LFW debut automatically put her in the centre of attention.

An opportunity she then capitalised on by treating the world with a spontaneous Spice Girls performance. In an Instagram video posted by Mrs Beckham herself, we can see her dancing to Spice Up Your Life at a LFW party, and, seeing as the Spice Girls are probably every millennial’s favourite thing, it went completely viral. Well played, Victoria.

And then there is Burberry, who proudly celebrated its quintessentially British image this year. Considering that it was Riccardo Tisci’s debut, the show was surprisingly traditional, and that’s exactly what people seemed to love about it.

Interestingly, Tisci did not want any A-listers on his front row; instead saying it should be all about the clothes. That is not to say that his catwalk was free of big names, however, with Kardashian member Kendall Jenner creating lots of hype in particular.

Making her long-awaited comeback after months of absence due to anxiety, the reality star and model added to the already existing hype around the much-anticipated Burberry show. Needless to stay, the two together caused social media to explode.

Final thoughts 

And those were the social media highlights of London Fashion Week September 2018. As it turns out, causing fashion hype on social media has not so much to do with creating social content as it is about providing people with reasons to do it for you – whether that is through taking opportunities, working with the right people or tapping in on political debates.

What do you think? Have we missed something? Have you spotted any other brands that rocked their social coverage this year? Let our social media management London team know!

The post London Fashion Week: a very social affair appeared first on MintTwist.

Using a digital agency is often necessary to access skills and expertise that are not always available in-house. Sometimes it can be difficult to use this expertise well and there can be a multitude of reasons why; from internal politics to a lack of knowledge or awareness.

All digital agencies strive to achieve success for their clients, but it can be challenging if you are not on the same page. Here are five ways to ensure your digital agency delivers value and great service.

• Share your business ambitions

When building a relationship between your business and an agency it is important to share your business objectives. Talking to your agency not just about your short-term goals but sharing the big picture business goals helps them understand your business at a deeper level and how to get you to where you need to be. Do you have a specific target audience in mind that you want to target? What drives your digital needs? Information like this allows the agency to tailor solutions to your company, recommending appropriate short-term targets and placing your wants and needs into the wider business context. Agencies are experts with an abundance of ideas that are enhanced by your knowledge. It can be helpful to keep in mind, “give more, get more”.

• Establish a project road map

It is important you make the most of your agency’s skills and time to get real value from your digital marketing. Agree on deliverables by a determined time frame. Make sure both parties agree on the value of the project before its started to ensure it stays on track and on time for the long run. Establish dates and times for tasks to be completed so you can review the work and give relevant feedback. Factor in regular meetings to keep communication open and ensure both parties stay on track.

The MintTwist account management team will often outline the key phases to a project in something like the visual below. We then provide timelines on exactly when we expect each phase to start and end to ensure everyone is aligned and things are continually moving forward.

• Work with your point of contact

The agency is your ally, and your account manager is your five-star general. Sending requests from multiple people to the agency can not only cause confusion and ambiguity but ultimately wastes time and money. Ensure there is always a designated point of contact on each side to establish clear contact and help goals stay on track.  Account Managers know the agency backwards and forwards, so if you develop a close working relationship with them, they’ll be your internal ambassador. Don’t be afraid to pick up the phone if something needs immediate attention or a thorough discussion. In a digital world email upon email can become tiresome, slow and repetitive. Often a chat on the phone shows the agency you care and value the work they are doing.

• Give genuine feedback

Agencies run a vast array of projects on a daily basis and therefore have a unique combination of expertise, but it’s crucial that if you don’t like something let them know. It is easier to flag issues and fill information gaps with knowledge than to be dissatisfied. Take an interest in what the agency is doing and make sure it’s right for your business. It is always easier to address issues at the beginning with positive constructive feedback than to let problems go unresolved. It can also be helpful to note where repeat requests are coming from and determine if you need to revaluate your needs.

• Be nice

You’re a human and so are we. Everyone has emotions, and things don’t always go as planned. Whether things are going well or not, don’t forget that a few nice words go a long way and a thank you is always appreciated after a job well done.

If you’re interested in finding out more about how our digital agency works and meeting the amazing team at MintTwist, get in touch today!

The post 5 ways to get the most from your digital agency appeared first on MintTwist.

What is ecommerce SEO?

Ecommerce Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of optimising ecommerce websites to make them rank higher in search engine results – increasing the number of visitors via organic traffic (when a user clicks on a naturally occurring link in the search, rather than an ad or paid search link).

It can be difficult to attract online traffic if your site is on the second or third page of the search engine results page (SERP). According to research by Chitika, page one of Google gets 92% of all search traffic.

If you are struggling to rank highly for generic keywords, you can focus on lower search volume and long tail keywords. This can be done by conducting keyword research and identifying phrases with fewer search volumes and competition, making it easier for your website to rank higher for those terms.

What is the best ecommerce platform for SEO?

While all ecommerce platforms are designed to sell your products they all possess different strengths and weaknesses. The strength of an e-commerce platform depends on many factors including;

• Independent Page Titles
• Independent Navigation Links
• Independent Page URLs
• Independent Meta Descriptions
• Independent Image ALT Tags
• Independent H1 Headings
• Canonical URLs
• Integrated Blogging Platform
• Social Sharing buttons
• Auto XML Sitemap
• Use of own Domain Name
• Your Own IP address
• 301 redirects
• Robots Noindex Capabilities

According to Ecommerce Platforms, these factors each hold weight in your ability to modify site content to allow for SEO. Considering the previous factors, the following sites are the most SEO-friendly platforms for ecommerce web design:

• Magento
• WooCommerce
• Shopify
• BigCommerce
• Squarespace

It is worth the time to choose an e-commerce platform that allows a multitude of features such as an easy-to-use checkout and reporting tools – which can support your business as it grows. While it is tempting to pick the cheapest and easiest solution, it’s important to take some time and research the best solution before investing your time and money.

If you already have an e-commerce shop, here is a checklist to determine the current technical SEO of your site.

Technical SEO checklist for online shops

Technical SEO is a very important part of your ecommerce SEO strategy. As an SEO agency, we consider the best practice is to regularly perform an in-depth technical SEO audit on your website to make sure that search engines can crawl and index your pages without a hitch.

You need to make sure your website can be crawlable, indexable and performing well without any errors. A website with broken and/or out of date links not only looks bad to search engines, but it also harms your user experience.

1. Make sure your online shop is user-friendly on mobile devices

With increasing mobile usage, online shops must be user-friendly on all mobile devices. Last year, over half of UK shoppers that are purchasing online are shopping via mobile.

2. Ensure your online shop is reachable via voice search

As applications such as Siri and Cortana are becoming more prevalent, voice searches are over-taking typing. Voice searches are much easier and faster than traditional typing.

3. Invest in user-generated content

Creating a community that consumers can actively participate in will help promote your brand (such as a social media page).

4. Create live chatbots

Chatbots will help improve customer experience. By introducing live chatbots, consumers will have constant virtual assistant and customer service.

5. Analyse speed of website

Fast-loading websites are crucial for online shops since many users will exit a site immediately due to its slow speed. From July 2018, websites that load quickly will show up higher on mobile search.

6. Have high-quality content

Online stores must be informative and distinctive in order to grab the attention of the consumer and stand out from competitors.

7. Review your content so that it is clear and concise

Online stores should be grammatically correct and easy to navigate for the consumer.

8. Fix all your technical issues

Your store must be free from errors such as duplicated content, toxic backlinks, broken links, missing meta data, orphan pages and cannibalisation errors.

On-site optimisation tips for online shops

Simple changes to your site content and wording can lead to big changes.

1. Keyword Research

Start with some keyword research, an easy way to do this is to list out all the pages on your site. Then, map out keywords that lead to each page. Optimise the most important pages first, which you can determine by page traffic. This information can be extracted from your Google Analytics accounts.

When optimising a page start with a main keyword. This is the primary word you want to optimise the page for. Then, move to long-tailed variations of the keyword.

Sometimes using the keywords, you already rank the highest for can be an efficient way to find a head keyword. Using this head keyword, search for long-tailed variations and semantically related words.

It is important when conducting keyword research that you select the right country to target, as the results may differ which could affect your ability to reach the right audience.

2. Optimising Meta Titles, Tags and H1’s

Next, take your research and apply it to your on-page SEO. This means optimising your Heading tags (especially H1, H2 and H3).

You should include well-optimised tags for your most important pages and leave the rest to atomisation. However, if your site doesn’t list hundreds of products, it might be worth your time to optimise each tag.

You can also try A/B testing your tags to see which gains a higher click through rate (CTR).

3. Choose Unique Product Categories and Descriptions

Having a defined product category and well-written description is helpful for Google and the consumer. When writing descriptions include the main keyword and long tail keywords. Include useful product information, but not too much.

The description should still be short and easy to read. Consider using bullet points to make your description easier to scan through.

4. Optimise your URLs

You want URLs to your site to be clean and easy to read. Keep the structure basic. See the photo below for a dissected URL that is SEO friendly. Via MOZ.

5. Canonical Tags

Canonical tags are very helpful if your ecommerce store has many different product categories and/or colours. Rather than having a different landing page for each type of product, you can signal to Google that there is one preferred version of your product that should be the focus, or “go-to”.

If you’re selling cupcakes of different sizes and colours, you can make a suggestion to Google that the main URL to reference is the original cupcake URL, as shown below:

Utilising this method will help ensure that Google won’t penalise you for duplicate content from having different landing pages for the same type of product.

Also, it helps to fix keyword cannibalisation – which is when you have multiple landing pages competing for the same keywords.

Final Thoughts

In addition to the strategies listed above, there are tons of ways to optimise your e-commerce store. From minor changes to large overhauls, SEO optimisation can make a huge difference in organic traffic.

Have you found success in SEO for e-commerce? Got questions? Let us know!

Contact us to find out how we can help you with SEO and more.

The post How to increase organic search to your online shop appeared first on MintTwist.

The hashtags appear in a blue text above the video title, and users can click on the hashtags to search for other YouTube videos that contain the same hashtag.

This feature is visible on web browsers and on the YouTube Android app. There are currently no hashtags on the iOS app.

Users can search for a hashtag onto the YouTube search bar to manually find videos with the specified topic.

Content creators on YouTube can add hashtags by including them in the video description. However, there are guidelines for the new hashtag feature. One of the guidelines relates to the hashtags themselves, and stresses that hashtags must not contain any hate speech, promote harassment or direct users to misleading content.

Other policies include avoid over-tagging, with 15 or more hashtags in a single video being considered spam.

The first three hashtags that are placed in the description will appear above the video title.

YouTube will punish channels who violate these hashtag policies, with consequences ranging from hashtags being ignored to entire videos being taken down.

The effect hashtags have on SEO

With other social media platforms being known for their hashtags (Twitter and Instagram), it is about time that the second largest search engine in the world utilises the feature. Twitter and Instagram became very successful due to the ease-of-use that hashtags provide, allowing for specific searches which simplify the process of finding content.

Search-engine optimisation is crucial for establishing higher rankings on search engines, and the introduction of hashtags on YouTube will allow content creators to filter their videos more effectively to their target audiences.

If you need help utilising this new feature to improve your YouTube channel’s performance, we can help you implement successful tactics through YouTube SEO.

The post YouTube introduces hashtags for video search appeared first on MintTwist.