There are many benefits to social media monitoring and if optimised correctly it can provide businesses with valuable information to make strategic business decisions.

The main benefits of social media listening are:

Through the implementation of social media monitoring, it is possible to track the levels of engagement that your social posts have gained. This includes the amount of likes, shares, comments, clicks etc on your content. This data is extremely valuable as it allows you to monitor the performance levels of the various posts.

As a business, you can take the data that social media listening tools generate and create future social media posts that you know are likely to capture the attention of your audience. If a certain type of content is not working on social media and isn't performing as well as other posts, thanks to social media listening tools you can identify this and strategically work to increase the engagement on these posts.

Listen for brand mentions, keywords and hashtags

Depending on the social media tool that you use and the complexity of the software, you will be able to set up queries to search for certain mentions, keywords or hashtags that are occurring in online conversations. You might want to track certain keywords of a particular product to see where it appears in the conversations or to track where a specific hashtag is being used. The possibilities with social listening are endless!

One of the most important factors of social media listening is keeping track of any negative or brand damaging comments. Social media platforms move very fast and without using a listening tool you may miss a negative comment being made. It is crucial to catch any damaging comments early before the conversation spirals out of control. Using a listening tool, it is possible to categorize mentions as positive, neutral or negative and track the sentiment of your content.

Through various social media listening tools that are out there in the market, you can compare the performance of your company against its competitors. This allows you to keep on top of your industry, monitor your share of voice amongst your competitors, and compare how your brand is performing in comparison to the other key players in your market.

You may be unsure what tools are out there and which one is the best to use to meet the needs of your business? Or you may have certain social media KPIs that you have to meet and want to use social listening to track these but dont have the time or resource. If you are unsure where to start with social listening, please get in touch and talk with us today.

Social media listening should be an essential part of any organisation’s digital marketing strategy.

Here we’ll give you some tips on how to build up an audience and connect with your followers. Although much of this relates to Twitter, a lot of this information and advice can still be applied to other social platforms. 

Before getting into the technical stuff like algorithms and strategy, we should mention the more creative side of user engagement first. Ask yourself: “Does my brand have a voice and is it consistent?” If your answer is ‘yes’ and ‘yes’ then carry on. 

If not, then it would be useful to decide how you want your brand to come across. What’s the message you want to send? Are you professional above all else? Are you relatable and amiable? Are you more jovial and offbeat in your approach?

The good news is that you can be anything you want. It’s exciting when you think about it. 

Getting back to consistency however, this voice needs to come across each and every time someone on your team posts or responds or creates just about anything to put out to the public. No matter what member of your team has logged into your Twitter profile today, they need to come across in the exact same way you or anyone else on your team might. 

If that’s all a given then let’s carry on to the more technical stuff!

So, Twitter’s algorithm has a few conditions for you to follow in order for you to increase your reach.

If a tweet is doing well in your network then you are sure to end up seeing it and that’s why you want to create content that people are more likely to engage with. Not only that, if people engage quite quickly after it's posted then it will be visible for a longer time (depending on the level of engagement it could last for days). 

The more people you talk to, the more reach you have. Though, you don’t always have to talk to people for engagement to take effect, just having people read your posts counts too.

Remember, if there are people in your network that you have engaged with before then they will appear at the top of your feed. 

Also, don’t forget, analytics are your friend. Utilising them properly, you’re able to see all the information you’ll need to inform when to post and who your posts appeal to. This information can be invaluable when it comes to making plans for posting in the future and scheduling them accordingly. 

It’s always a good idea to keep an eye on who is responding to you. If someone replies to you, engage with them and reply back. If you can reply promptly, even better still. Being proactive is important. 


Becoming (and remaining) engaged with your audience is a tricky endeavour, but it’s one of the most important things to be aware of when it comes to your social media activity. 

If you’re unsure how you can connect and engage with your audience then we’d like to share a little of what we know with you. 

Would like to explore how personalised reports can assist in the effective handling of your branding and engagement on social media?

In May 2018, the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into force, meaning that there are a lot of new compliances around consent and personal data that companies need to consider. Under GDPR compliance, each person has to give their explicit instruction of whether they give consent for their personal data to be used. As the internet has grown, there is now more data than we know what to do with, therefore new data protection regulations are needed to control this data.

YES! GDPR applies to anyone who deals with EU personal data. It isn't just the large companies that ar affected by GDPR, SMEs are also impacted and there are multiple things you can start doing now.

A good starting point is the process of Data Mapping. You can start by outlining what data you have, why you have it, where it is stored and who has access to it? Also, you need to distinguish if you have explicit consent to be storing this data? 

Accountability and transparency are the two most important things to consider when thinking about GDPR and personal data. As an SME you are accountable for the data that you store, and must be transparent about what data you have, and why and how you have it. Something that SMEs should consider is Cloud Vendors. If you store your data in the cloud, you will want to draw up a data processing agreement and a security policy to ensure that the data remains secure.

Employee data should already be treated in a sensitive and secure manner, but this data is also included under GDPR. Employee data comes in many forms and can be stored in multiple ways, such as electronic data, printed contracts, background checks, health insurance policies, bank details, paper documents etc.

It is important to have a data retention policy in place to detail how and where personal data is being stored. As the amount and type of data that you store changes, it is crucial to assess this policy each year and make the necessary amendments. Don't forget, accountability and transparency is key!

What about the data you have already gathered?

If you went to an event three years ago and gathered some data but don’t have evidence of explicit consent given, you will have to regain explicit consent if you want to store and use this data under the new GDPR ruling. There are a couple of ways you can reconnect with these people and gain their consent for the data to be used, examples include;

Reach out with a newsletter containing company updates.

Offer something to the people you are trying to reconnect with, a discount on a product/service.

At the end of the communication you can include a tick box for the individual to choose to give their explicit consent for the data to be gathered. You can be creative when reconnecting and gaining consent for old data gathered, plus it’s a great way to know that your business is marketing to the correct people. Your KPI’s will be more accurate and you will know that the people receiving your communications want to know about your company and will appreciate your transparency.

Do your data mapping! Know where your data is stored and what your plan is going forward. This will allow you to clearly see what steps you need to take next.

Know whose data you have, and distinguish how much of that data has explicit consent supplied for it and what doesn't.

Draw up a data retention policy for your internal employee data.

Set out a training plan for people within your business who will be handling personal data, ensure that they know about the requirements of GDPR.

It is not only large, global businesses that are affected by GDPR, SMEs need to take note too!

Still a little unclear as to how GDPR could affect your business? Get in touch and we'd be happy to provide more specific insights.

With GDPR there are a lot of new compliances that companies will need to consider. One of the major factors of GDPR is how consent is given by a customer for a company to process and use that personal data.

Personal data is anything that can be traced back and attached to a single person. These things include;

A lot of current marketing databases are made up of data that is attached to implied consent. Under GDPR , each person has to give explicit instruction of whether they give their consent for their personal data to be used.

Customers now must have the option to tick a box if they wish to give their consent, forcing them to take a step back and really think and be sure if they want their data to be used in the future. Every person will therefore have the ability to know what they gave consent to, along with how and when they allowed it. This means the elimination of pre-ticked boxes!

When companies are creating the content for the consent tick boxes, the wording must be written in a clear format which clearly indicates the purpose that the data is being gathered for, allowing the individual to fully understand what they are giving their explicit consent for.

You may be wondering if this is safe to do anymore under GDPR? If you are a company that purchases large amounts of data for marketing purposes, it may be very difficult to trace if, how, and when consent was given by each individual. We would recommend not using bought data for marketing activities under the GDPR ruling, and to use organic data where you can be sure that explicit consent has been given.

Using personal data without given consent to do so will result in breaching GDPR, and could result in companies being fined, ranging up to 20 million euros or 4% of global turnover, whichever is the greater. No-one wants to be on the receiving end of that, so you need to be careful what data you use and be mindful of where it has come from.

How do I go about gaining consent over the phone?

Gaining consent for the use of personal data via a phone call will also require some process changes. Telephone operators will need to create scripted content to ensure they obtained the explicit consent of the customer over the phone, as there will be no physical tickbox to click!

The content of the scripted phone call may change from “your call may be recorded for training and monitoring purposes”, to “please note that this phone call will be recorded for our records”, ensuring that the organisation has proof that verbal consent such as, “yes, I give my consent for my data to be used” is given.

The most important thing to remember is that all consent must be auditable!

It is reported that 70% of marketers are worried about the changes that GDPR is bringing. Marketing activities such as email marketing campaigns, direct mail and social media marketing will fundamentally change as a result of GDPR.

To ensure you're on the right side of GDPR;

Only obtain data where you have explicit consent from the individual.

Cleanse your current data. It may seem like a big job but once you start it the process will appear easier.

Be more creative with the messages you are putting out to the world, make it so your customers want to engage with you.

Use GDPR as an opportunity to build upon the trust between customers and your brand. Through being transparent in your marketing messages, people are more likely to want to hear more from your company and give their explicit consent in the future.

All previous data protection regulations were written before the postmodern marketing theme of social media was established. The individual social platform will embed their own ways of adopting the new GDPR process into their channel to avoid breaching any part of the regulation.

On LinkedIn for example, direct messaging one of your connections would not breach the GDPR clauses, as long as you don't do anything further with that information. Each third party platform will be responsible and have their own processes in place to protect themselves from any penalties. It is each person's own responsibility as to who they allow to connect with on social networks such as Linkedin, which is why the use of direct messaging on that platform is allowed. However, if a company was to take the personal data such as the email address, or phone number of that person and add it to their marketing database without receiving explicit consent to do so, then they are failing to comply with the rules of GDPR.

Speak to every department in your business.

Ensure you have a thorough and watertight process in place.

Consider recruiting a data protection officer.

Follow us on social media and keep a close eye on our blog for the next installment in our series of articles on GDPR and how it can affect your business and its data gathering.

If you would like more specific advice around how GDPR could affect your unique business, please get in touch.

How this affects you and the way you gather your data.

The nature of consent is changing with GDPR and we are here to guide you through what this could mean for your business.

We, as a full service digital agency with a variety of clients, know that different clients like to have different levels of control around the social media content that appears on their channels - which we totally understand!

In a busy business environment, it can be very easy to feel as though there are not enough hours in the day. Social media marketing can be extremely effective for businesses and through scheduling tools that are available, it can be completed in a very time effective way. When scheduling your content in advance, you are able to have a full overview of your day/week/month ahead and easily view the variety of messages that you have scheduled to go live. It may take a block of a couple of hours (depending on how many messages you want to be sent), but then you can relax knowing your content will be automatically sent whilst you carry on with your day to day tasks. It’s especially useful for posting content that is typically outside of your business hours, such as evenings and weekends.

To accommodate the needs of our various clients, we have been trialing and testing different social media scheduling tools to see what works best for us (and for them). There are multiple tools on offer, but we were looking for one that would allow us to publish across multiple platforms for multiple clients and have a customisable approval process. The tool that we found to be the most effective and that allows us the most flexibility with the range of clients we work with, is Gain.

Gain works as a social media traffic manager, notifying the designated users of drafted content, gathers feedback from clients and moves the social posting process along until everything is approved and everyone involved is happy with the social media post.

Using the Gain app, we as an agency can liaise with our clients and customise the approval workflow to suit their individual needs. For example, we can create the social content, the client can approve it and be the ones to press the button for the post to be scheduled, or they can add a comment to the post and send it back to us to modify.

Another feature of the Gain app that we love is the calendar format which allows you to see all of the upcoming social content that is scheduled in a monthly format. This overview is great for seeing what days have what messages planned and the labels feature within the calendar allows you to add colour coded notes (we ♥ this) to each desired day. The visual effect of the calendar is great in allowing you to see at a quick glance at what is drafted, approved and what posts are live.

Whichever of the many social media scheduling tools you choose to use, having a platform that allows you to plan, approve and schedule social media content in advance is extremely useful and effective. Having one platform that can facilitate the needs of multiple clients and having all of the information stored in one place is great for everyone involved in social media marketing.

How we work in partnership with our clients to schedule their social media content.

If you are for help with your socials and want to talk more about working in partnership with a digital agency to get the most out of your channels, reach out to us today.

Do you feel comfortable your company is GDPR compliant? And if you don't, did you know how a breach could end up costing your business its financial security? According to a study, around 73% of their respondents, although aware of GDPR, were unclear as to potential fines with around a quarter claiming a fine wouldn’t bother them.

In the blog post we’ll look to set out the facts of GDPR and more specifically how it could affect you as a business.

What is General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)?

In May 2018, the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into force, meaning that there are a lot of new compliances that companies need to consider. GDPR is looking to replace the 1995 EU Data Protection Directive, which reinforces for individuals in Europe the rights they have over their data, ultimately aiming to standardise the data protection law across Europe.

GDPR, as EU regulation, forms how organisations will need to handle and protect personal data and report on any data breaches within 72 hours to its regulator and the customers involved.

GDPR means that consumers have to give their consent for companies to use their data. They also have the ability to withdraw that consent should they wish, or ask to see what data that companies are holding on them within one month of requesting so.

If companies do not comply with with the EU’s GDPR, it could leave them facing huge fines. Companies will be fined either 4% of global turnover, or 20 million euros, whichever is the greater, if they breach the regulation.

These fines could be catastrophic to an organisation, therefore it is vital that the whole scope of GDPR is understood and procedures are put in place prior to ensure that all data is protected and valid.

Things that we and our clients need to consider

Processing data correctly for email marketing campaigns

The way that customer data is harvested via websites

Ensuring the collection of data is relevant for the reason of use

Consent of data, organisations will have to follow to a clear set of rules, detailed here form the GDPR:

"Consent' of the data subject means any freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the data subject's wishes by which he or she, by a statement or by a clear affirmative action, signifies agreement to the processing of personal data relating to him or her" (the General Data Protection Regulation).

All marketing databases will have to be cleansed, reviewed and monitored to be certain that each company has the ability to prove that consent was lawfully and fairly given for the use of the personal data.

When do you need to start thinking about it?

With the hefty fines attached to the GDPR ruling, companies must have accurate systems and setups in place to avoid, what could potentially be business-ending, financial penalties.

If you are concerned as to how GDPR affects you, you can contact us today. You can also keep up to date with all of our posts by following our social channels.

Look out for our second blog post in this series as we take a closer look at how GDPR can be applied to more specific data gathering.

What is GDPR and what do you need to know?

As a busy digital marketing agency, we are often focused on delivering the very best we can for our clients, but it is also important that we give ourselves a spot of TLC.

As our content team grows, we now have even more resource to drive our own digital marketing strategy and broaden our social media presence. We decided to look at the pros and cons for creating an Instagram account and evaluate its effectiveness as a marketing tool.

Enjoy our 7 reasons to answer your question, ‘Why Instagram?’.....

Instagram allows you to talk about everything that your brand offers through the use of imagery. Having a creative Instagram profile will give your business that competitive edge and showcase your creative talents. After all, they do say a picture speaks a thousand words!

2. Take a peek ‘behind the scenes’ of your business

Instagram is a great platform to show off the more informal side of your business. Whether that be staff social events, sporting activities or even scenic pictures from your office window, Instagram is the platform to upload these creative shots to allow users (or clients) to get to know you a bit better. People do business with people, so showing a more human side is always a plus.

3. Use hashtags to further your social reach

By adding hashtags to the caption of your Instagram post you allow the social reach to be extended. Users of Instagram can search to bring up all posts that contain certain hashtags. Using relevant hashtags can be extremely effective for getting your posts noticed.

4. Use the platform to tease what products/news you have coming

If you have an interesting case study coming up, new product launch that you're excited about or new developments to your website, Instagram can be used as the platform to tease this information. By using graphics such as “coming soon…” or “watch this space” it creates excitement with your followers and allows the anticipation and interest to grow around what you will be revealing.

In the Instagram photos that you post, you are able to tag other users in the post or mention them in the caption. By doing this, it not only shows collaboration with others, but increases the chance of engagement on posts as your image will appear under the “tagged” section of the user’s page that you have interacted with.

Instagram stories offer all the features of direct competitor Snapchat but allows you to have this feature under one platform. Instagram stories can be photos or videos, that appear on the top section of the Instagram homepage and are visible for 24 hours. The feature allows you to draw, add text, filters or fun stickers over the top of your content, allowing the Instagram user to get creative with content!

In addition to Instagram Stories, users can now go live! Unlike the feature that Facebook offers, Instagram Live videos instantly disappear as soon as the live video has ended, it really is like being at an event live! However, if you do want to upload a video to your account that will appear permanently, this can be done through the normal posting procedure.

If you are looking for some assistance in making the most of your social media channels and delivering a wide range of content, talk to us today and let’s get digital working for you.

7 reasons to use Instagram as part of your business' digital marketing strategy.

In today’s fast-paced business environment, having a social media presence is now an essential part of an organisation’s marketing strategy. Social media enables a company to achieve business growth, increase customer engagement while developing and strengthening relationships.

Marketing has evolved dramatically from the modern 1960’s 4 P’s theory (Price, Product, Promotion and Place) to the post-modern digital marketing era. As internet speed continuously increases, the number of internet users increases in alignment. It is estimated that the majority of world’s population will be participating in any one of the social networks by 2025!

It is reported that 87% of marketers believe that the goal of social media is to increase brand awareness with 56% of executives stating that digital engagement with customers is at least a top ten company priority. Social media platform Twitter has over 313 million monthly active users, and over 500 million tweets are sent each day. Therefore, for businesses, the use of social media as a marketing tool has undeniable potential.

Twitter offers countless opportunities for businesses to reach a global audience of current and potential customers. Twitter is one of the most extensively used social media platforms in business and is used so much that approximately 73% of these businesses use the social media platform to communicate with their followers.

Twitter can be regarded as primarily a consumption channel, where 86 percent of users use it for business activities and reading other’s tweets. 58 percent of Twitter users have retweeted what they have read, 55 percent of users have posted a tweet, 54 percent have responded to a tweet, and 42 percent have sought support for a product. A user of Twitter follows other users therefore subscribing to the messages that they share.

Through the use of hashtags, social users can declare their interests and participate in topical discussions. As individuals and companies become influential on social media, they can use Twitter to share their message and have their message shared to a vast number of people. Each member of an online, social network has the ability to exchange information with other social users, ask questions and provide solutions to and from different locations across the world instantaneously. As individuals become more influential and the speed of exchanging messages increases on social media, it is important to consider the corporate image and reputation of a company in this digital age.

Corporate reputation can be seen as multi-faced as things can be perceived in different ways at different times by different people, thus there is a need to look at reputation drivers to consider the issues concerning stakeholders and to assign them to the relevant group. Should a stakeholder be dissatisfied by one or more of the reputation drivers, they may take to Twitter to express their feelings thus damaging the reputation of a company.

Social media tracking and the various monitoring tools available allows for an organisation to respond to accusations or misinterpreted communication via a twenty-four seven media platform. It is argued that social media messages should always be responded to and, when possible, within the hour. Therefore, controlling social media messages allows for successful symmetrical communication between the company and the stakeholder and for a successful corporate image and reputation management.

If you are looking for some help in making the most of your social media channels, get in touch with us today and let’s get digital working for you.

Twitter is a great business tool but there can be some risks.

In today’s fast-paced business environment, having a social media presence is now an essential part of an organisation’s marketing strategy.

How can Twitter impact the corporate image and reputation of a company?

If a tree falls in a forest does it make a sound?

Well I’m going to argue that in this particular instance, yes it does.

Now I must say ‘in this particular instance’ does relate to something very specific so I won’t quite be claiming any credit for solving metaphysical puzzles just yet. What I really mean by this answer is that just by ignoring something or being completely unaware of an event, it doesn’t protect you from it.

In our field this certainly relates to websites, their development and how they’re managed. The truth is that a lot of time and effort is expended in the design and development of a new website but when it is launched it is often thought by the client ‘job done’. The thing about digital, and it’s one of the reasons we love it so much, is that it is constantly evolving. Processes and techniques become out of date very quickly (looking at you reader in the year 2043, no judgements on how we used to do things please) and this should be both expected and anticipated.

The trouble is business owners rarely know much about how their site is performing. In our role here managing digital marketing campaigns, I couldn’t tell you the amount of times we’ve gained a client and in looking to gain a sense of their position in the search landscape, find that although we know there is a Google Analytics account setup for the site, no-one knows the login details. It seems to be an aspect of a site build judged as initially necessary as purchasing an SSL certificate and with the same attitude of once it’s there, it’s done.

But that truly isn’t the case and in knowing your way around Google Analytics, finding and monitoring just a few key metrics will really help you make the most of your site and the money which has been invested in it.

So you log into your account and what you’re presented with is something like this…

“So where do we start? Hmmm…”. I can image your internal monologue is something like this. 

I do appreciate that it can seem overwhelming at first glance but with a few tips you’ll actually find it’s pretty intuitive.

If you literally have a minute to spare and want to get a top line view of how your site is performing, the Overview section of the Audience tab is your destination. Here it will tell you how many sessions and users were recorded over a customisable time period while also giving you a snapshot of user engagement metrics (how visitors are actually behaving when on your site).

These engagement metrics are sadly undervalued in comparison to visit numbers which is often wrongly seen as the KPI. So for example you may receive an increase in traffic to your site which on the surface you see as a big win, but in reality with an additional rise in bounce rate (those visitors landing on your site and immediately leaving without engaging with your site at all), these new visitors are largely irrelevant.

In addition to these metrics you will also see various other bits of fun stuff included under the Audience tab. By switching on Demographic tracking, you can gain so much knowledge about the type of users your site is attracting e.g. age, gender, location, interests. By knowing this stuff you can understand what type of content your users are going to like and shape your site accordingly.

You can also monitor how many people are accessing your site via a mobile device under the Mobile section. This can help inform large site decisions you may want to make e.g. making your site responsive after finding that over 50% of your visitors come from mobile/tablet devices and are at the present time viewing a broken version of your site.

The Acquisition tab is very useful in determining how your users actually got to your site. Under the All Traffic section, traffic will be separated into silos such as:

Direct - those entering your site address straight into the URL bar or any traffic they cannot attribute a source for

Organic - those who arrived via a search engine

Referral - those who clicked onto a link to your site from another website

Paid Search - those who arrived via a form of online advertising e.g. Google Ads

Social - those who arrived via a social media channel

Email - those who arrived through an email marketing campaign

Each of these channels has its own data associated to it, allowing you to easily analyse performance of any campaigns you have running or prompt campaigns to be set up. For example, if you find that you have a very low percentage of visits coming from referrals, it may encourage you to start an outreach/link building campaign. This will hopefully help build a diverse visitor audience profile and reduce reliance on a single traffic stream.

The Behaviour tab is the place to go if you want to find out about the granular detail of site performance. This includes the popularity of site content and, perhaps more importantly, landing page content. Landing pages are vital as they are the gateways to the site for your visitors. So if you find that a good percentage of users are landing on a certain page of the website and you know it has a poor user experience (e.g. lack of content, weak navigation to key pages) you can adjust that page accordingly.

This section can also tell you about some of the more technical aspects of the site such as site speed. Sites that are slow to load, besides being incredibly frustrating for users, are unlikely to do well with Google in their rankings and so can have a real effect on organic traffic. This section can provide you with actual data to present to your web developers to get those site speed times as low as possible.

Of course, there is far more to Google Analytics than simply what is mentioned above but this will certainly go a long way in helping you gain a grasp of your site and how it performs.

It will hopefully provoke questions in your own mind and encourage a dialogue between yourself and your dev/digital marketing team in a bid to make sure your site is performing at its very best. 

So in short, make sure that tree falling in the forest is heard!

We’re going to start this post by answering a philosophical question which has been argued and debated across generations and has eluded some of the sharpest minds ever to have existed. What an intro ey?

For more advanced reporting features, please get in touch and we'd be happy to help find solutions.

The talk will be hosted by the designer Chris Bagot (Founder, Softroom) and Gavin Smith (Operations Director, Wahaca) and will be attended by the region's top architects, designers and restaurant / bar operators. It is one in a series of events which have been held around the world, with the aim to foster a shared communication of industry ideas and inspirations and is a must for those with a true passion for design.

Our role at CORE is as sponsors of the event while we're also Digital Partner to the annual Restaurant & Bar Design Awards, which celebrates the very best in global design. In fact this event's setting, Wahaca, Cardiff was this year's winner of best Multiple Restaurant at the most recent awards ceremony in October.

CORE have been involved in supporting the Restaurant and Bar Design Awards since its inception in 2008 and is something we're proud to see develop into the fantastic event it is today.

It has been our responsibility to oversee all aspects of digital for the awards; including the brand and identity work / design, build and ongoing support for the Awards website, the online application system and online discussion and adjudication process.

Over recent years, taking advantage of our growth into a rounded digital agency, we have also been charged with handling the digital marketing for the awards ceremony, including social media management on the night.

The talk is open to architects, designers and operators involved in the hospitality industry and is strictly RSVP with limited numbers - if you're interested in attending please email the names, roles and email addresses of all attendees to:rbdtalk@wearecore.co.uk

We are delighted to announce that CORE are sponsoring a free to attend 'Restaurant & Bar Design Talk' being held at Wahaca, Cardiff on Wednesday the 2nd December 2015 at 6:30pm

We are delighted to announce that CORE are sponsoring a free to attend 'Restaurant & Bar Design Talk' being held at Wahaca, Cardiff on Wednesday the 2nd December at 6:30pm

In our field it relates to good quality link building, that is gaining links from reputable sources pointing to your site, and it is the cornerstone of building a website’s reputation and its standing with search engines. However, in classic search double edge sword manner, poor link building is also very likely to hurt your reputation and rankings. i.e. when using the example of our friend Euripides, you're going to be judged by the crowd you associate yourself with.

Google has often attempted to warn sites off looking for quick fixes through such ‘spammy’ methods as content farms, with the lingering fear of manual actions and penalties always lurking in the background.

So it certainly pays to perform a link audit on your site once in a while to keep an eye on any potential opportunities/difficulties.

As the saying goes, there is more than one way to crack a nut and in cracking this particular nut there are many tools at your disposable.

One of the first items on the agenda when it comes to an all-inclusive link audit is a proper, in depth crawl of your site. Tools such as Screaming Frog’s SEO spider is a particular favourite of ours (free for the first 500 URIs and £149 a year above that), while there are others out there which do much the same job.

This will help you to immediately uncover any strange goings on with your site including odd and unnatural error codes.

Another tool which should be within the first port of call for any investigation into links is through Google Search Console. In your account you will find a ‘Manual Actions’ page which will warn you of any penalties inflicted by Google due to unnatural links and what you need to remove them. However, this post comes from the angle that you are just performing some good SEO housekeeping rather than reacting to a horrendous drop off in rankings/traffic. Indeed, hopefully, if you make a good link audit part of your practice, you should never need to react to a manual action!

Digging deeper could require the use of tools such as Moz's Linx Explorer and Ahrefs, with our personal preference heading for the former. However, the main crux of these tools are to find a list of URLs linking to you, their anchor text and their domain authority (Moz also has a 'spam score' functionality which is particularly helpful in this regard).

So now that you have got yourself a list of links, what actually constitutes a bad one? Well although you will probably find many links out there which seem spammy (e.g. random links from irrelevant sites), this is largely 'cruft' and Google claims they are pretty good at determining this as such (i.e. not your fault or malicious). What we are really looking for are links which obviously are a part of a wider campaign to farm links e.g. hidden text links, paid for links - take a look at Google's Webmaster Guidelines for more info. These types of links are the ones which may get you in trouble.

If you do find something that you know is out of place (not simply cruft), make sure you act on it. The problem will not just go away and unfortunately for you Google does not take ignorance as an excuse and you run the risk of being slapped with a manual action.

The first, and most mild, action you can take is to contact the site owner and ask for your link to be removed from the site. Obviously this is dependant on the site owner taking action and not simply ignoring you, which often can be the case. A more extreme step is to use Google’s Disavow tool which will ask you to upload a list of links you no longer want pointing to your site and Google itself will remove them. However, it is noted that you should use this tool with caution and only after you are sure that this is a link you definitely don’t want associated with your site.

As mentioned earlier, a good link audit will help prevent potential disasters in the future and keep you in Google’s good books. It will also allow you to keep track with how any link building campaigns are progressing and how your site in general is evolving.

Simply put, a thorough link audit is good SEO practice and something which is vital in maintaining and improving site health.

"Every man is like the company he wont to keep" - Euripides 438BC. Now you may be forgiven in thinking that good SEO in the 21st century and the words of a Greek playwright writing two and a half thousand years ago may not have had a lot in common...

Now you may be forgiven in thinking that good SEO in the 21st century and the words of a Greek playwright writing two and a half thousand years ago may not have had a lot in common. Indeed you would be right..

Unsure whether something you've found is 'cruft' or malicious? Get in touch with us and we'd be happy to help.

On 26th February 2015, Google made the announcement on its official Webmaster blog that it would be “expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal”. It also made the very unusual move to announce when this algorithm change would begin taking place; April 21st.

In terms of its direct implications, from what we can tell Google will be rewarding websites which have optimized for mobile usage, be that responsive or 'm.'. Now to anyone who's been listening to Google or recent features they have been pushing lately (including it’s mobile-friendly labels which have appeared on mobile Google SERPs), this will not have been a surprise.

From a Google POV, user experience is key and those sites which don’t cater for their mobile visitors don’t deserve the best rankings. In short, those which don’t have a site optimised for mobile usage may well see their organic mobile rankings drop.

In terms of what Google deems ‘mobile’, that may be a little harder to determine. Tablets may exist in the grey area of this update, but from recent trends it may be safer to presume tablets will be included as mobile in this update.

That really depends on the nature of your business. At a recent conference, a key trends analyst from Google stated that this update will be bigger than the much-feared Panda and Penguin updates. Although, he also importantly noted that the algorithm change will only affect your mobile rankings and not your desktop terms.

‘So if I don’t rely on mobile visitors to my site for conversions, I’m alright then?’ 

Well maybe in the very short term, but in the long term you're probably sticking your head in the sand. If you’re not providing for your mobile visitors then you're not providing a good user experience in general and if metrics like bounce rate and other user engagement signals take a plunge, this will affect your desktop rankings.

In the long term, there must be an ambition to optimize your site for mobile. This becomes a greater priority if you know from Google Analytics that you rely on your mobile visitors for sales or conversions.

If you want to check to see if your site is optimised for mobile in Google’s eyes, they have launched this easy-to-use Mobile Friendliness tool. Simply type in a URL from your site and Google will give you a binary response of yes or no (and an Americanised ‘Awesome’ to make you really feel good!)

In general, this update is a solidifying of Google’s increasing emphasis on mobile, but really you should be thinking of your visitors’ user experience anyway. Take the time to flick through your website on a mobile device and really think, would I use this website?

The SEO community has been all abuzz as of late, which usually means one thing; algorithm drama. This time it’s the turn of mobile which has the spotlight shining bright. So what’s really going on?

With Google’s mobile algorithm update on the horizon, we take a look at its real implications for you as a business.

If you're concerned as to how a mobile view of your site might be letting the side down, get in touch and we'd be happy to chat through your options.

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