Images Magazine Digital Edition July 2018

www.images-magazine.com JULY 2018 images 21 BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT Rich search results How to get the most from rich snippets Building and optimising your site around keyword snippets will increase your organic ranking, increase your website’s traffic and decrease your website’s bounce rate. To get your business going with rich searches, here are a few basic tips: • Provide partial answers and encourage click through Ranking for a rich result is one thing, but making sure it does not display everything is another. Ensure it displays just enough to encourage users to visit your website. • Make sure users get an awesome user experience (UX) Ensure your website is optimised, has up-to-date information and details, and provides customers with a user-friendly experience. • Embrace organic practices To rank well and for rich results a website first and foremost must follow Google’s SEO guidelines and best practices. • Write in a natural style Snippets rely on quality, well-written content, not content that is focused purely on ranking. Write in a conversational style, as if you are talking to a customer. Once this is done, keep on top of it and freshen it up every fewmonths. • Work with a credible company Web design companies often promise the world – do your research and work with the right company for your business. Outline why you want your site built in such a way to get found for rich snippets. Andrew Langridge is from ETrader, one of the industry’s leading suppliers of websites to garment decorators across the UK. www.etraderwebsites.co.uk I n this age of social media, do you still go to networking events? I have always been a fan of meeting people and potential customers face-to-face and my enthusiasm for networking has not dimmed despite the rapid growth of Twitter, Facebook and other channels. With the restrictions of GDPR and emailing prospects that haven’t opted in, now is a perfect time to revisit networking as part of your sales and marketing prospects. The first thing you can do is determine what groups you want to join. Here are some that I recommend: • British Chambers of Commerce –a well-established worldwide group of different businesses. www.britishchambers.org.uk • The Business Network Holds regular events for senior decision-makers across the country. www.business-network.co.uk • BNI, aka Business Network International A worldwide network breakfast meeting group that works on referrals. www.bni.co.uk • 4 Networking Another referral organisation. www.4networking.biz • FSB The National Federation of Self Employed & Small Businesses runs a number of local and national events. www.fsb.org.uk If you have any questions or topics for Gordon to address, please email editorial@images-magazine.com with BPMA in the subject line. BPMA: BUSINESS NETWORKING – DO YOU STILL DO IT? Always go with the objective of trying to help someone. I love the motto of BNI: Givers Gain. In other words, give help and/or referrals without demanding something in return – trust me, it will come. Another great advantage of networking is sharing your business challenges and listening to others’ advice and experiences. Networking can also help boost your confidence: you might be asked to give a talk or a one-minute pitch. It can give you a platform on which to test out new ideas. Shared learning is another advantage. Often groups will put on speakers so you can learn together. I have gained clients at events where we both think a particular speaker was amazing, and it’s that which we initially talk about, before realising we can work together. Go meet new people, have fun and boost your business. R ich search results are those Google results that give more than just the title, page description and URL. They include images, ratings, reviews etc, giving you an instant answer to your queries. There are two types – snippets and cards – both of which highlight key information and help your website stand out from your competitors. Pretty much anything can be tagged to appear as a rich search result, from blogs and news articles to events, business details and product information. Everything that has been tagged will help search engines gain an understanding of the page and its purpose – it does, however, require an astute developer to tag everything correctly. So why consider this? It may need a lot of technical expertise behind the scenes, but the results are huge. Rich searches appear right at the top of a search engine result page (SERP), in the coveted ‘zero’ position above organic results. Even if you are not ranking organically, it gives you a fighting chance to get seen on Google. The answers are detailed, displayed in a box and are often more eye-catching than a traditional search result, which means they often have a higher click-through rate. Voice command searches Another benefit of rich results is that the results work seamlessly with devices such as Google Home and Siri, so if a consumer is searching on the move and asks relevant questions searching for goods, rich snippets are played rather than a whole page of results. With the growing increase in use of voice search, this can only be an advantage for businesses. And how they can help your business