ImagesMagUK_May_2021

www.images-magazine.com MAY 2021 images 29 BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT order to rank on page one?’; instead, ask yourself, ‘How long does this need to be in order to satisfy my audience?’. The answer will depend on what you’re writing about. In some cases, a long read genuinely is the best way to go – for example, if you’re trying to give people an in-depth understanding of a complex issue, or if you want to tell an engaging story. But if you’re just trying to answer a simple question or point consumers towards a new product, it’s good to be succinct. Too many words will get in the way of your goal, and humans and search engines alike will look elsewhere. Good SEO is more than just mindlessly ticking off all the boxes that you think Google wants ticked. You should never do something because it’s what the search engine wants – do it because it’s what the user wants. Aim to make your users happy, because ultimately, that’s what Google and its competitors are aiming to do as well. A common concern among SEO copywriters is that the piece of content they’ve just drafted, while informative and well-written, simply isn’t long enough to trouble the first page of Google results. Let’s say you’re writing a blog post titled ‘What’s the Difference Between Printed and Embroidered Clothing?’ Now, that’s a reasonably straightforward question – one that can easily be answered within a paragraph or two – but is a short answer enough? Can a quick read achieve high search rankings, or does the Google algorithm ignore anything that isn’t padded out to essay length? Many SEO experts will tell you that there’s a direct correlation between word count and Google rankings and, to be fair, this claim isn’t entirely baseless. Google’s Panda update (first released in 2011) penalised sites with a lot of ‘thin’ pages, ie those with very little content. And many publishers have managed to boost their organic search traffic by fleshing out their web pages: adding more information, going into greater detail and, yes, bumping up that total word count. This can indeed be a good way to turn an underperforming blog post into a serious contender for Google’s top spots. But there’s a difference between ensuring that your page has some meat on its bones and burying a simple, helpful answer in a 1,000 words of fluff because your SEO consultant told you that a four-figure word count is a prerequisite for high rankings. Next time you’re drafting a new page for your website, don’t ask yourself, ‘How long does this need to be in How long does a page need to be to rank on Google? Joel Dear is from ETrader, one of the industry’s leading suppliers of websites to garment decorators across the UK. www.etraderwebsites.co.uk S ometimes, my friends ask me, “What is the trick to growing a social media following?” I think they expect me to say that posting at 4.40pm on a Friday is all they need to do. The truth is, I often change my view on this because the world is changing so fast. Clubhouse and TikTok weren’t even around a few years ago. We can be a part of the content creation, or just consumers. At Squeegee & Ink, we have worked hard to make a life cycle for our content. It starts with an innovation – for example, a new ink, a better printing method, or a piece of kit we’re excited to tell our customers about. Then, we record a video about it. That whole video is then edited and pushed into our YouTube template. The YouTube version is pretty much transcribed into a blog post. A new blog post, including the video, is sent out to our email list. Snippets of the video are used for TikTok videos and an Instagram story tells people about the new YouTube video. I then tell my Clubhouse room about the new video I have made and encourage them sign up for my mailing list to be the first to hear about the next one. I know you are probably tired just reading that, but once the system, the templates and the structure are in place, it gets more efficient. It doesn’t matter whether I am making a video about ink or the new Stanley/Stella range; they can all go through the media machine and be The content eco-system made into assets. YouTube is, for our customers, a popular way to learn something new, so for us it is a top priority. I believe in leaving behind a piece of high-quality content every week and that allows me to feel like I am not merely reacting to the orders and requests of my customers, but also building my value through consistent growth. Our momentum is building and we can’t be more excited about it. Chessie Rosier-Parker is director and studio manager of Squeegee & Ink, a screen printing and embroidery studio that also provides pre-exposed screens and film to printers along with tutorial videos and resources. www.squeegeeandink.co.uk/ learn-to-screen-print