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But the real juice in Digital Marketing is still content. It’s been that way for years and won’t change any time soon. Content – written words, photographs and video – is the beating heart of everything in Digital Marketing: it fuels your Social Media, Email Marketing, PPC advertising... And content is absolutely fundamental to SEO.

Why is content still king?

Because it’s content that tells people what you’re about. And it’s content that tells Google what you’re about. Without talking about what you do, how do you expect to Google to understand what you’re about– and then rank you accordingly?

Our job as business owners and digital marketers is to answer as many relevant questions as we can, online.

Google loves a website that publishes fresh, relevant and original content.

It’s not enough to have a page for each product or service you offer. You need to publish case studies, industry commentary or special promotions on the regular. This will reinforce to Google that you can answer the questions that people are typing into Google’s search box.

Eureka!

And that’s really it in a nutshell: it’s about answering the questions that people are asking Google. Real people and their typical search patterns are what drives Google. Their main motivation is to be able to give people accurate solutions as fast as possible.

We know that people are less inclined to ask Google broad questions, and more likely to ask specific questions. For example, people don’t ask Google about apples. The ask when are royal gala apples in season.

Our job as business owners and digital marketers is to answer as many relevant questions as we can, online. And the vehicle for delivering this is a Digital Marketing Plan. In this way, we are able to connect qualified leads with your product or service. And ensure that these people are truly engaged with you before they enter your sales funnel.

Meeting your business needs

Digital Marketing Plans from Hart Design can be customised to meet your budget and your needs. Social Media is a great tool for B2C businesses, but not so important for B2B. And not everyone wants to use Google Ads or Email Marketing. Let's build a plan that works for you.

Our plans also provide you with a proactive website caretaker. We handle security updates and general maintenance that is essential for minimising the risk of malicious attacks on your website.

So, you want better rankings and more enquiries?

We can get you there with a Digital Marketing Plan. Follow the link to learn more about the nuts and bolts of our plans, or contact us to get the conversation started.

Creative Agency East Auckland

Land of the long work hours

As well as being the land of the long white cloud, New Zealand is the land of the small business. The government ministry for business, MBIE, defines an SME as a company that has less than 20 employees. According to MBIE, SMEs provide 40% of New Zealand’s economic output.

We’re one. Are you? When it comes to kiwi enterprise we’re kind of a big deal!

Working long hours is par for the course for small-medium business owners and many of their dedicated staff. From our perspective as web designers in Auckland, it’s a crying shame when all of this hard work goes unheralded in the digital landscape.

We’re firm believers that if you operate a company with a great story to tell, then shout it from the rooftops with stunning website design. Your website should match your business ethos. You believe in your company and what it brings to your industry. We believe in telling your story online with creative flair, craft and precision.

You don’t have to be a large corporate to achieve this.

What value should you place on a website?

The Value of Design

Like it or not, first impressions matter. Visitors to your website will form an impression of your company based on what they see. And oftentimes what they see first will be your website.

Better make it a good first impression.

At Hart Design we value design skill and attention to detail highly. It is important to us that we build contemporary websites that accurately depict our client’s own attitude to business, their spirit and their culture.

The Value of SEO

If you’re thinking that your website must attract people first, before it can make an impression, you’re right! And we hear ya. That’s why we build in key SEO fundamentals into every website that we build:

Mobile-friendly layout

Clear navigation

Secured by SSL Certificate

Hosted on a high-performance webserver

You get these SEO fundamentals as standard when you build your website with Hart Design. And for those willing to invest a little extra, there is more to be done in the SEO space. Talk to us about how we can help improve your search engine rankings.

Consider The Cost of Doing It Badly

Take a look at your current website with a critical eye. If your website does anything less than represent who you are, your quality of service or product, then you’re missing out.

Want to know how your website stacks up in terms of SEO? And how to take it forward? Talk to Hart Design to learn how we can get your website to where it needs to be.

So how much does web design cost?

If you’ve read this far you’re probably asking the question everyone wants answering: How much?

If you share our thoughts on the value of website design, you won’t view web design through the prism of cost. You will view it through the prism of value. You’ll appreciate your website as an asset, not an expense.

While we’re NOT the $999 website merchants that flood the market, the answer may be less than you think.

Because we're an SME too, we understand where you're coming from. We're ideally placed to craft a stunning website that perfectly reflects who you are as a company.

It costs you nothing to ask, so talk to us today and find out more about the true value of a well-designed website for your small-to-medium business.

Creative Agency East Auckland

Both teams have to speak the same lingo

As is most commonly the case, these two teams usually speak very different languages and I think it's fair to say they almost never really get along. A bit like the English and the French, when the French pretends not to know a single word of English when you're trying to order lunch in a Paris cafe. Here are a few terms that both teams need to agree on from the get-go.

For instance, in what column do you place someone that has signed up to your email marketing campaigns? What category do you put somebody in that has visited your web design more than once? How about somebody that has downloaded one of your eBooks? Jot down all the terms that both teams are currently using and align them all so now they mean something to all involved in both your sales and marketing endeavours.

Who's the boss?

Somebody has to be in charge. At some point in the buyer's journey, a prospect steps away from marketing and into the sales funnel. This transition has to be at a specific point in the journey, a point that both parties agree upon. A good example of this here at Hart Design is when a visitor downloads one of our eBooks. At that point, marketing takes on the responsibly to take them on a journey, to answer their questions, to educate and move them through the buyers journey. All going well, the prospect will be passed onto sales.

What is an ideal client?

You hear it all the time, "sales, never close the deals we send them? Or “most of the leads marketing send us aren't a good fit". It's important that both teams understand what the ideal client actually is. Marketing needs to be creating a marketing strategy and inbound marketing content directed at their ideal buyer personas. This is going to go a long way in sending the right leads to your sales reps. Using qualified lead generation in your sales process is going to give sales a higher chance of closing the deal.

Communication is King.

Having both your marketing and sales teams catch up every week may sound daunting, but in the long run, this is going to pay dividends and serve the common goal. It's important for both teams to know that goals are being met, or not as the case may be. Weekly would be the way to go, you don't want to catch up quarterly only to find there is a huge misalignment and three months unproductive time has gone by.

A dashboard keeps everything transparent. By having all your open communication visible and on hand between both teams keeps everybody honest. Create one hub where everybody gets a birds-eye view of what is going on at any given moment, again, this keeps everything on track. You're then able to make adjustments quickly, and that's huge, given we live in an instant gratification world. You want to know that your new smarketing team is working well together. It's important that all information between the two parties is updated on a regular basis.

So, where does this leave you now?

Well, you have two teams that are actually talking to each other now, on a regular basis too I hope. Service level agreements are in place, goals are being met by both teams. The right content marketing is being generated to attract your ideal prospects and sales have a funnel of prospects that are primed for conversion.

Creative Agency East Auckland

Email Marketing is Right for Jetshare

Jetshare is ready to conquer the outdoor recreation market in Auckland. As a start-up business with many pieces of his marketing puzzle in place, business owner Aarron Hanson is now entrenched in a networking and brand awareness phase.

Our latest contribution was to design an email marketing campaign to promote Jetshare’s most recent hooks: an online booking system and a 0% finance offer.

Background

Jetshare offers Aucklanders the most fun they’ll have all season with a unique jetski timeshare business. With Jetshare, you get all the fun of owning a jet ski without the hassle of storage, maintenance and breakdown repairs.

Jetshare came to Hart Design with an established brand and an e-commerce website. With a number of sales under his belt, Aarron wanted to reinvest in his online marketing. Our first task for Aarron was to put a little polish on the website.

Recognising the importance of mobile-friendly website design, Aarron’s main goal was to improve the website’s mobile display. The value of this work cannot be overstated given the data recorded in Jetshare’s Google Analytics account. We can see that 60% of Jetshare’s website traffic is viewing the website on a mobile device.

Other web design tasks included general page layout improvements, adding a photo gallery and a little creative work to push the finance deal available to Jetshare subscribers.

Going Beyond Web Design

More recently our team has bedded in a feature-rich booking system provided by European software SimplyBook.me.

The system allows Aarron to easily keep track of who has booked his jet skis and when. And for his clients, they can check how many bookings they have remaining and manage future bookings all with a few easy clicks.

Email notifications and calendar syncing are part of the package.

Getting Back to the Present: Email Marketing

So the website is now looking more attractive, the booking system is in place and an enticing offer is ready to promote. It’s time to give Jetshare another push to those leads that Aarron has built up since launching.

Hart Design recommended our email marketing system as a fantastic tool to push these messages to Jetshare followers.

Why? Because it’s visually punchy, mobile friendly and most importantly it’s trackable.

The reports generated in the system allows you to identify who’s keen and who’s not. This means Aarron can strike while the iron is hot with those leads who are progressing further down the sales funnel.

The Proof is in the Payoff

Spring has sprung and summer is on the horizon: the perfect time to ramp up Jetshare’s marketing efforts. The email marketing campaign was scheduled to send on Sunday morning and by the end of the weekend, Aaron had secured a sale to the value $2.5k.

Greenlane resident Jared has purchased a 14 Day Half Share and has already booked up seven day’s fun on the Hauraki Gulf this January.

Through our email marketing system, Aarron could see that Jared has opened the email campaign a number of times and clicked on a link to learn more about the offering. And there are more hot leads just like Jared identified in the system for Aarron to pursue over the coming days.

In case anyone needs reminding that contemporary digital design should be mobile-first, then here’s this nugget of statistical gold: Jared was one of the 60+ per cent who was looking at this email campaign on a mobile device.

Email Marketing ROI

This campaign was the first email marketing effort for Jetshare. As such there were, of course, some set up costs as our design team built the HTML template and designed the initial campaign.

Even with that outlay factored in, the ROI on this campaign is still in excess of 380% with that one sale to Jetshare’snewest summer thrill seeker.

Looking ahead, Aarron can be self-sufficient in sending email marketing campaigns and therefore trim the cost right back to bare bones. To send this email campaign to 122 leads was less than $30.

For those who haven’t done the math, the ROI for Jetshare’s next email marketing campaign – should Aarron secure one more sale of their mid-range 14 Day Half Share – would be in excess of 8000%!

I’ll tell you one thing for free: Aarron is not asking “Is email marketing still relevant?”

Creative Agency East Auckland

Content: The SEO Strategy That Defies The Laws Of Physics

SEO is an ongoing effort. For anyone who’s hoping they can “set and forget” their website and set the SEO world on fire, this may shatter your illusions.

While it's absolutely important to get your on-page SEO fundamentals right, it doesn’t end there. For real SEO cut-through, you need to generate regular posts that support your core products and services in order to give weight to your most important subject matter.

To explain that “laws of physics” reference: it’s this weight that helps raise your website to the top of search engine rankings.

Your SEO House

Let’s imagine that SEO is like building a house. Picture this:

Your website provides the foundation of your SEO house

Your Product and Service pages are the pillars – the main structures that tell the world what you’re about

Then you have your blog posts. This is the fine-grain detail that connects to and strengthens your pillars

The roof represents your customers. But that’s a story for another post!

Internet marketing giant Hubspot has termed this strategy “pillar and post”.

Posts could be:

A spotlight on a particular feature of your product

A deep-dive into one core benefit of your service

A case study that shows your product and service in action for a client

Like building a house, building your SEO with content does take time. But it works.

The Real World SEO Example

We promised to demonstrate how it works in the real world. Enter Carr Group: a New Zealand company playing and winning in the global market. Carr Group has forged a strong reputation for its wholesale supply of market-leading products and materials across a range of industry sectors.

Carr Group first approached Hart Design to reinvigorate their brand and their website.

The website provides a strong SEO foundation. It features sound pillar pages that present their products to the market. These pages have had our standard SEO treatment applied.

And with that foundation established, our attention has turned to those fine-grained posts.

Talk About It

If you don’t talk about it, how does anyone know you do it? That’s human visitors and Googlebot we’re talking about.

Among many other things, Carr Group supply premium print media consumables to Australasian digital printers. One of their offerings is a PVC mesh product that is used for digitally printed advertising around construction site fencing and scaffolding.

While the website did showcase their PVC Mesh product, nowhere did it mention that the product is available in a fire-resistant option. This is an important feature that has come under the spotlight recently following a number of construction site fires in Sydney’s CBD.

And because they didn’t mention it, unsurprisingly they didn’t rank anywhere for searches related to “fire retardant pvcmesh”.

For Carr Group this was a perfect test case to see how content could affect their SEO.

For Hart Design, it was a perfect test case where we could showcase our talent for SEO content writing.

“We’re salespeople, not marketers,” they said

No problem, that’s where we step in. Carr Group supplied us with a brief press release that their sales guys had written. It mentioned that PVC mesh had been in the spotlight recently with regards to its fire retardancy, and detailed their solution to the problem.

This 200-word press release and a quick chat with Tim from Carr Group is all we needed. From there we were able to whip this up into a unique 900-word, keyword-rich post all about the subject.

From Nowhere to No. 1

We’ve been able to prove the point: a solid foundation alone – i.e. the “set it and forget it” method – is not enough.

The proof is in the numbers. Following the launch of this new post, you can now find carrgroup.co.nz on page one of Google search results for all targeted keywords for this subject.

More excitingly, the pillar page has also shot up the page rankings for the broader term of “print media wholesale”. You’ll now find their website ranked number 1 on page 1 for this search phrase. Prior to this post going live, the pillar page was languishing on page 4 for the same keyword.

More Weight

The task now is to continue the momentum.

We’ve plugged an SEO hole with this one exposè of Carr Print Media’s fire retardant properties. The exciting thing is that there are so many more product features, benefits to promote and client success stories to talk about.

Have you got your SEO house in order? We can help with that.

Creative Agency East Auckland

Let’s Take A Look At The Work We’re Doing

As a small business, Diamond Air is at the smaller end of our Digital Marketing scale yet we manage to pump out a meaningful body of work each month.

Our efforts that directly influence their Google rankings and ultimately their bottom line.

Over the past two years, organic traffic – that is, people coming via web searches, and excluding Google Ad clicks – makes up 68% of all traffic visiting diamondair.co.nz.

For Diamond Air, it’s a collaborative effort comprised of:

Regularly changing special offers

Offers are promoted on their website and Facebook page

Google Ad campaign

General website updates and maintenance

Regular blog posts that showcase the work that Diamond Air is doing

The SEO Juice Is In The Regular Content Updates

Take a look at Diamond Air’s Showcase page to see how a little bit of content goes a long way. Without doing this work, their rankings would not be so rosy. Truth.

Google loves regular, unique content. It helps Googlebot to understand what you’re about. The better you explain yourself, the better equipped Googlebot is to rank you higher.

It really is that simple.

Minimal Input, Maximum Output

With Diamond Air’s smaller Digital Marketing plan, we’re reliant on Rory to provide us with a few details each month. Their input is minimal but critical. Rory will tell us:

Which heat pump units are to be promoted and for how much

A very short brief and a few snaps of heat pump installations or repairs they’ve carried out recently

With this our team will:

Generate visuals to be used on the website and in social media

Take Rory’s notes and rewrite them into keyword rich articles to be loaded as search engine optimised Showcase articles

We also:

Maintain a small Google Ads campaign

Provide a sounding board for general SEO and marketing ideas

Action any other website updates as required

Have provided graphic design and print services to promote their Home Ventilation offering

A Little Goes A Long Way

The takeaway from this Digital Marketing story is that a little action goes a long way. Doing something is certainly better than doing nothing.

The secret in the sauce is that the action happens regularly, and keeps on happening. We do a little bit each month, and it adds up to online marketing success.

By maintaining this regular and recurring digital marketing programme, Diamond Air has seen their website traffic for June 2018 almost double that of the same month in the previous year. The increase in traffic across the past 12 months is also hovering around the +80% mark.

We know that to do nothing is to gain nothing. So be like Diamond Air and start your Digital Marketing journey small. Our service can grow as you do. Are you ready to get started?

Creative Agency East Auckland

In effect, RankBrain is essentially a tool for refining queries. However, Google indicated that RankBrain is also an important ranking signal.

Implications of how to undertake content marketing strategies for RankBrain

Google uses more than 200 different ranking factors which constitute ranking algorithm. RankBrain being the third most significant factor transforms the way it understands unknown and more complex search queries. Therefore, more engagement by users, as they will find relevant topics irrespective of whether they typed in a long query or used natural language.

So, how do we as content marketers keep abreast? We need to evaluate how Google’s current search engine algorithm operates in 2016 and stay informed of Google’s present state.

Should we care about Google’s Newest Algorithm?

Statistics indicate that Google leads the search share volume worldwide, hovering around 63% of the desktop share overtaken by 94% of mobile share in July 2016.

We have heard of Google’s numerous algorithm updates over the years, names like Pirate, Pigeon, Penguin, Panda come to mind. Which one is of importance now?

Google announced its new Hummingbird algorithm update, and it is estimated to affect 90% of search queries, according to Link-Assitant.Com.  However, Google’s revolutionary machine-learning AI confirmed October 2015 brought about changes and will continue to evolve, altering the world of SEO, and is the one we need to keep updated on.

How RankBrain affects Content Marketing

SEO is important and determines how effective our inbound marketing is, therefore, relying on strategic content marketing, for a start. Distributing content established on our site’s ranking signals for Google, namely;

New content

Keywords

Linkbacks

UX metrics

Click through rates

The signals mentioned above have verifiably been crucial to ramping up rankings.  However, RankBrain is a game changer.

Most SEO is reliant on high-quality, in-depth content that has the users in mind.

Optimising for Google Presently and in the Future

Let’s explore the ranking factors mentioned above and how to adapt your content marketing strategies accordingly.

Keywords

Aim to use natural language and content that targets a broad range of audiences. Use keywords to give you an idea of the topic. More importantly, you need to understand and identify what the users are looking for and provide content that is relevant to their search.

Keywords are still useful, and when you need to use them, perform a semantic keyword search. Search Engines have become more advanced and evolved over time, placing more emphasis on the meaning of words and their intent.

Inbound Links

Link building has evolved but is still crucial to SEO.  To earn valuable linkbacks ensure that you create high-quality content that is helpful.

Also, consider other link building strategies, like ‘natural link building’, by reaching out to bloggers, directories and other reliable sources for links to your content. Firstly, create content that is niche-focused specifically with your targeted audience in mind.  Once you have created, the content, identify outlets that could reap the benefits of sharing your content. There are numerous strategies for determining these outlets by networking and building relationships and so forth.

User Experience (UX)

Good user experience is crucial not only for conversion but ranking and SEO. Ensure that your title tag and meta description attracts the attention of the user and piques their interest.

Your website must be easy to navigate and be of benefit to your targeted audience. Be mindful of using links that are natural for the reader, so that it is beneficial to both SEO and the user.

Crawl Users

Marketers can ensure that Google crawls its web page or site correctly by putting some things in place. Be sure to use the proper status codes on your site. For instance use, 301 redirects as opposed to 302 redirects and they don’t command search engine crawlers that a page has moved.

Google has developed crawl error reports which assist you in identifying why Google was prevented from crawling properly.

You can take it a step further and block particular pages from being crawled by using robot txt. Every site has a crawl budget, for example, a login page does not need to rank. Hence, allows leeway in your budget for more important pages.

RankBrain will continue to evolve and gives content marketers the impetus to understand and get to know their target audience and refine their content and adapt accordingly.

Due to the new breakthrough development in AI, augmenting business strategies and important decision-making are limitless.

Never underestimate the intelligence of Google’s search robots “spiders”. You can no longer fool Google by simply using keywords and key phrases alone to get good search engine rankings. The introduction of Google’s new search algorithm diminished the value of simply using keywords in preference of more sophisticated ways of determining a website’s ratings.

This was to eradicate the high level of “keyword spam” that was infiltrating the web by sites filling their pages with (often) inappropriate keywords in order to push them up the rankings.

Google’s modern powerful anti-spam methods counteracted this by establishing a system that recognises not only keywords but also the quality of the content that is written on your website, ensuring that only high-quality, original content ranks well.

Therefore, in today’s climate, SEO no longer means filling your web page with keywords and keyphrases. They still have their place but they are no longer the high-value element in determining your website’s ranking. Well written, original content with engaging, valuable information is fundamental to your online marketing success.

For businesses to rank well in Google they need to offer content that is current and regularly updated, well-researched and newsworthy.

This has given rise to a new generation of credible Search Engine Optimisation companies – it is no longer the domain of “smoke and mirror” SEO operators. In New Zealand, Hart Design is leading the way with their top quality web design Auckland – built using correct website architecture, and providing the ongoing marketing support that is essential to climbing the Google ladder.

There’s no silver bullet to great SEO, that’s why Hart Design has developed our online marketing packages, where we will work in with you to provide frequent, quality copywriting to a professional standard, written to engage both your reader and Google’s search robots. Quality content will not only boost traffic to your website but connect with visitors in such a way that they will keep returning.

Ask us for our latest search engine ranking success stories.