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.

We see some very beautiful, well laid out visuals: very detailed, grid based designs with precise typographic layout.

We often think of these ‘flat’ layouts as being the ‘breadth’. They are fully immersive snapshots - and are representative of how the website will look on a two dimensional plane. Often they are detailed and engaging. However, these designs, while often submitted as the finished article, are only the initial visual interface of the website; the projection of the identity and the brand values as visual design intended to create an emotional resonance with its audience in a matter of seconds.

Our issue with this is that graphic designers are mostly trained to achieve engaging results in two dimensional visual media. When working on a website layout, therefore, they often treat it the same way as designing a poster. Striving to achieve a fine balance with elements of interface design: moving the elements of the design two pixels to the right, two pixels to the left and, perhaps, back again. All carefully and thoughtfully crafted to achieve the best impact and balance possible.

Our clients and partners work hard on this aspect of a project and, once completed, the end client is usually fully on board and happy to sign it off. Then it’s over to us, and the fun begins.

As a front-end web designer I strongly feel that this is only one half of the (visual) puzzle. Although there has undoubtedly been a great deal of consideration given to the visual impact and emotional resonance of the flat design up to this point, they can often fail when marrying the user interface (UI) with the user experience (UX). A graphic designer is rarely asked to consider the whole user experience on a functional level and across different devices, and this is something that we, as web designers and developers, excel at.

Where experienced web teams can add value is in considering the ‘depth’ of a website. Web developers, as an intrinsic part of their role, have to consider how a user is going to follow a path through the website.

At Core we find that in situations where we are able to work in tandem with graphic designers at the visual design stage of a project, then a better solution can be presented to the client. If this can be done before they buy into a visual design that is not as practical or workable then it’s a better situation for all stakeholders in the project.

We have over 20 years experience in marrying the breadth and depth of a successful web design. We are always happy to discuss any potential issues with our design partners and offer reasonable and practical solutions throughout the process - often before the end client is involved. Presenting a design for sign-off with little or no assessment of the function of a website could result in lengthy re-design processes, failing to meet deadlines, and worst of all undermining the client’s confidence in the successful delivery of the project.

We can help to avoid these pitfalls - we champion breadth and depth in web design, as well as the true spirit of collaboration and working in partnership to deliver outstanding results.

Building a great website that performs well is a multi-faceted task. Graphic designers and developers working together as a team should be a rewarding and successful process, and will mean nothing is left out of the brief.

In this post, we give you an insight into how we go about designing our websites and the thought processes behind our decisions.

Businesses who can tap into this constant flow of conversation that Twitter brings will find that their brand exposure can increase massively in a relatively short amount of time. But what are the dos and do not dos of using Twitter effectively?

First things first, if you are using Twitter and your Bio isn’t up to scratch you’re not going to get anywhere. Keep the text short, to the point and make sure there are links to your website or anything else you wish to promote. In terms of the image, if you are still the simple shadow silhouette you are screaming out not to be followed! So always change the image to one which you feels represents your company at its best e.g. your logo.

Obviously Twitter at its heart is a communication tool, please use it to expand your network of business contacts. Following big names in your field or smaller, more local companies relevant to you is going to increase your brand awareness and make you more authoritative. This is especially true if you have interesting or insightful things to tweet of course!

Now to the tweets! In this regard variety is the key. Tweeting obvious sales pitches with a link on the end will not get you as far as if you include a mix of photos and videos as well as text. Remember you are not writing for robots, you are writing for people, so act like one yourself! Make yourself human by engaging with your followers and answering their queries, it is a great way to build an audience.

Now you may be aware of ‘hashtags’ without actually knowing what they are intended for. Initially hashtags were introduced as a way to tag and link conversations that were going on beyond your network of Twitter followers. However, you will find a lot of people these days will tweet their own unique hashtag which serves no purpose apart from being a bit of a laugh. To use an example close to home, nobody is going to use the #davidenglishlovesit to search and indeed, nobody did. So, in your business, remember to put a hashtag relevant to your work on your tweet as a way to encourage conversation, perhaps from an unlikely source. You can discover relevant hashtags through tools such as RiteTag.

Make sure your Twitter profile is seen! On your site you should have links to your Twitter page which are clearly seen and easily accessible. You can also use the content within your site to gain attention from industry colleagues. If you have used a particular product or are reviewing them, send them a quick tweet with a link and this may get retweeted and again shared to a wider network.

Obviously these tips provide the basics in using Twitter effectively, although it is also true to say that there are a lot of brands out there that don’t know the basics. Getting your Twitter campaign off on a strong footing can give you a boost ahead of your competitors who aren’t aware or do not understand its potential. Then, once your Twitter following has grown enough, you can more closely engage with your followers to ask what they want and engage in the best form of market research.

Twitter’s sheer size and popularity can be a little intimidating to those businesses looking to get involved. However, these handy tips will give you a solid base for you to start your Twitter experience in the right fashion and begin building networks.

Make sure you as a business are as effective on Twitter as you possibly can be with this five point guide to starting an account.

Baffled by Twitter? We’re here to help. The sheer size and variety of Twitter may mean you struggle to know where to begin as a brand until you know how it works - and how it can work for you and your business.

Active engagement in social media can be vital for small businesses to build brand and tap into online consumer conversations. But how do you get started?

Looking for a more detailed social media plan? Get in touch and we'd be happy to continue the conversation.

In an age where the number of websites, and blogs in particular, has gone through the roof, Google has had to quickly adapt to suit these greater demands. Google is trusted by users to deliver them the website they need, while wading through the vast amount of information they don’t need. In keeping up with this service, the search engine giant has had to tweak its algorithms to ward off the bad actors among us.

Over the past decade or so, Google has been refining its search to allow positive SEO practices (‘white hat’) to prosper over negative tactics (‘black hat’). These measures can only be a good thing in the long term for respectable SEO practitioners, although it has undeniably caused some collateral damage to some small businesses.

Perhaps where the algorithm changes have seen the biggest impact is with smaller companies who have seen their search referrals tail off massively. With no training in the web or SEO, they might have been unaware that buying links, keyword stuffing or simply having links inbounded from sites of poor quality would be considered as ‘black hat’.

The key thing to realise here is that although they may not have understood it at the time, ignorance is now no longer a valid excuse. It is now their duty to stay up to date with how Google searches work if they are reliant on the online aspect of their business. You might also well argue that this is not their responsibility or area of expertise as business owners but if this is the case then the appointing of a digital marketing manager or external agency is paramount.

What Google has made abundantly clear from these recent updates is that it wants to reward websites that are creative, interesting and, most importantly, are designed for humans to view them and not algorithms. This should inspire you to create innovative content for your visitors rather than trying to lure them to your site under false pretenses.

This is said to exemplify Google’s growing appreciation of content marketing over more 'old school' SEO techniques, although these certainly can work in conjunction with one another. Practices such as guest posting will provide a diversity to your website and make it more appealing while keywords will still be needed to drive solid SEO. Good use of social media will also be of advantage to you, as a means of pushing this new content and a way of linking back to your site. In a simplistic sense though, Google is crediting those who pay close attention to their website and give the user what they need and punishing those who are lazy - a good message you would suggest!

Like all aspects of online marketing, you need to be willing and able to accept change if you’re to succeed. If you feel you are in need of any help with a change, please get in touch.

As the blogging business booms, Google are always looking to evolve their algorithms to stay up to date. So how can you look to grow your online presence without falling foul of the search engine's dreaded penalties?

Content marketing is at the forefront of modern thinking in digital marketing and in this post we take a look at its potential possibilities and pitfalls.

In terms of creating a successful digital marketing plan for any company, audience engagement is key.

Being able to interact with customers and to get them to feel an association or bond with your brand will build a strong relationship and lead to great business. However, in order to foster such a relationship, providing interesting and entertaining content is vital. Getting creative as a company is a great (and fun!) way to create good content and will hopefully get your audience talking. Short videos are currently a very popular way to get your message across, and in this post we look at the movers and shakers in this niche.

The mobile app Vine has had 13 million downloads since its launch in January of this year (2013), and was last month made available for Android users having previously been solely compatible on iPhones and the iPod touch.

Its beauty is surely in its simplicity as, although its range of functions is limited as we shall explore, it is ridiculously easy to pick up. A quick registration sets you up with a profile and you’re on your way. In recording your video, simply use your thumb or finger on the screen to start filming. Releasing your thumb/finger will pause the video and allow you to create various stop motion-like film clips which last six seconds.

Although Vine has been used to create some beautiful and imaginative clips from the unlikeliest of sectors, it certainly has its limitations. For example, there is very little capacity in terms of editing as all you can really do is delete the vid and start again. You can’t delete frames and there is no ‘post production’ as it were.

There are also a few features, or lack thereof, which can get slightly irritating, including the fact that you are not able to switch between accounts on the mobile app. You must decide between a work profile or a personal profile, where one of which will surely cause problems for the other.

The initial success of Twitter-owned Vine saw Instagram, run by fellow social media juggernaut Facebook, attempt to up its game with the arrival of a video function. It sought to build upon Vine’s basic features and become more ‘production crew’ than app.

Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom heralded the move by stating that “we need to do to videos what we did to photos”. That they surely have done. The video service has a distinctly Instagram-like feel to it, using its classic filters and frames to help give your clip a different ambience. Additionally the Instagram ‘clips’ are over double the length of Vine vids, fifteen seconds to be precise, and they also feature the much-coveted ability to edit frames of your recording without having to delete the whole thing.

So what does this mean for the future of video sharing? Instagram video’s arrival has seen many predict the end for Vine or most certainly the end in terms of controlling a significant market share. The stats would seem to back this up with Instagram currently far out-sharing Vine on social networks, although it would seem that it has a natural advantage given that there are around ten times more Instagram users than Vine. This ability to ‘piggy back’ on the success of an already popular brand may muddy the waters and of course there is always an initial obsession with the new kids on the block.

But why can’t we have both? They do say variety is the spice of life and all that. Both products cater to different needs, for example a looping six second clip is much more suited to a funny vid while a clip using light filters and better editing is more in keeping with clips looking to maintain an artistic quality.

What really matters to you is what job it can do for your business and, in this regard, the greater the competition the better because it will result in the highest quality service.

UPDATE (October 2016: Vine announced that Twitter would be discontinuing the Vine app. It appears that indeed the emergence of Instagram Video might have precipitated its demise)

If content is king, what tools should I be looking at to get the most out of what I have as a brand? Video sharing has had a massive boom over the past six months and here we examine its two main players, Vine and Instagram video.

Social media marketing is big business right now, so how can you as a business tap into these online conversations?

We at CORE understand the ever-changing nature of content production and can help you use your social media channels to create the best business strategy for you.

A study undertaken by the Nielsen Norman group emphasised the vital importance of first impressions, with the first ten seconds a user spends on a site deemed critical in how they proceed. It’s a stark figure for those affording big budgets on online advertising and expecting big returns.

On a more basic level, those numbers mean the design of your site has to be right. It has to be visually impressive, user-efficient and contain clear calls to action which makes the user’s task that much more easier. Although perhaps on a more complex level it also means you should concentrate on creating an impact with your advertisements, an idea which can seem more of a risk. This is where the rise of certain online tools will help.

In a previous blog post, we talked of the importance of Vine and Instagram video but it is the emergence of Snapchat as a legitimate source of advertising which has taken some by surprise. Snapchat has been around since 2011 and had taken its active daily users to over five million in two years. The tool allows users to take photos, record videos and send doodles to friends before the image is destroyed after a maximum of ten seconds. A lot has been made of its less scrupulous uses, but brands have now caught on to the craze and used it to boost awareness.

In the US, Taco Bell have been a keen embracer of the tool and have used it to post exclusive ‘sneak preview’ images of their products. While here in the UK, the Co-op have used it to send out a promotional code before it then disappears, rewarding the quick minded with £30 off laptops.

In early October of this year (2013), Snapchat also announced the launch of their ‘Stories’ feature. This allows users to piece together clips for viewing over a twenty four hour period, allowing you to create a narrative of the day. This brand new feature is sure to pique the interest of brands who’ve got a story to tell.

The use of these tools allows marketers to do what they do best, be creative. Although Snapchat, like any other form of social media, should only be used if appropriate to your brand. The tool has a huge teenage market and is best used when a brand has something impactful to say. Its bold nature can seem intimidating but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be considered if you feel you have the right content.

In an age where the average attention span of an online user is dwindling while they themselves become ever demanding, we examine the term 'fast and furious marketing' and discover what it could mean for your brand.

With the emergence of channels like Snapchat as a marketing tool, we look at how we have to evolve to keep up with ever-demanding nature of our consumers.

Get in touch with CORE and let's find the best combination of social media channels to achieve digital success for your brand.

The Search and Social team at CORE has recently been involved in the digital marketing of the Restaurant and Bar Design Awards and we've written a case study to briefly set out the processes, tasks and successes of CORE’s role in promoting the Awards using social media and other digital communications.

Core has been the Restaurant and Bar Design Awards’ digital partner since 2008 and five years in to our journey together we took on the challenge of building interest in the Awards night through a targeted digital marketing campaign. Improving engagement with fans and followers all over the world, as well as those present on the night, was a major objective.

The Restaurant and Bar Design Awards are a truly international phenomenon, which attract a significant number of entries to the competition from the four corners of the globe, and many of these shortlisted design teams travel to the UK especially for the Awards.

The opportunities and rewards of social media engagement are self-evident with a project such as this - a unique, visually exciting and internationally important event in the design calendar. Get in touch with us and we’d be delighted to show you how we did it.

Promoting an event live on social media feeds for a large brand may seem like a daunting prospect, so how do you go about planning it?

Planning and delivering a social media campaign for a leading event may sound daunting. Here’s how we approached the task and what we learnt along the way.

Google Tag Manager can help you streamline and monitor your campaigns with efficiency.

So what is this Google Tag Manager thing anyway?

With different people performing various activities it is often the case that the right hand isn’t entirely sure what the left hand is doing, or how the left hand is tracking its own activities.

We may also be talking about a lot of hands (organisations) and even more fingers (human agents). To stretch the analogy even further, fingers may be in any of the following pies:

Facebook and other social network advertising

Split testing and other conversion rate optimisation

Eeek. Pie all over the place. Tag manager aims to provide a simple - or at least, simpler - solution for keeping track of all the bits and pieces. Simple pageviews, eCommerce, video viewing, attribution: the plan is to be able to track more or less everything under one harmonious system.

You’ve almost certainly got various tags active right now - Google Ads conversion tracking tags and Google Analytics tags are extremely common.

GTM tags only fire under certain circumstances. The rules can be as simple or as complex as you like.

That sounds complicated. Can’t we just concentrate on our own pies and let the IT team and the web analysts worry about pulling all the data together?

Google Tag Manager is intended to be simple enough for traditional marketers and other non-technical types to use. Code does need to be added to your HTML in the setup phase, but after that, setting up new tags is a fairly straightforward activity. The idea is that you won’t have to wait till a developer can make changes for you.

The user is walked through the tag creation process pretty gently, with integration of Google Analytics, AdWords (including remarketing), and DoubleClick Floodlight all more or less built in.

Ok, so I can manage DoubleClick, Google Ads and Google Analytics tags from one place. What if some of my pies are not Google-flavoured?

You can set up tags for Yahoo/Bing ads through Tag Manager, and while there are currently few easy-start templates available for those using some services outside the Googlesphere, it’s not unforgivably complicated. The ‘Custom HTML’ tool will let you add in conversion code generated by other platforms.

Unsurprisingly, the official documentation stresses how easy and simple everything is. Sometimes it isn’t. If you want to know more about the nuts and bolts of setting up GTM for non-Google properties, a good place to start is this guide by Snowplow. It concerns integration with their own system but is generally helpful and demonstrates the right kind of systematic approach.

Why didn’t someone think of this before?

The short answer is that they did. You might already be using something like OpenTag, Bright Tag, or Tag Commander. Should you migrate? Depends how happy you are with the current solution.

I like the scent of this new, tidy and harmonious pie. Can you set this up for me and help me get started?

Yes. Whether we built your site or not, CORE offers a range of SEO, online advertising and wider digital marketing services. We can either set you up and get you started, or manage complete campaigns for you. Talk to us. We’re very friendly and pretty darn good at what we do.

Pulling all the various strands of a digital marketing campaign together can seem daunting without the right tools.

With the number of digital marketing activities soaring, we analyse Google Tag Manager as a tool which looks to streamline your work processes.

Strategy insights

Mobilegeddon?

Making Better Websites

Grow your Twitter network

Content is king

Vine & Instagram video

Fast and Furious Marketing

Restaurant & Bar Design Awards

Google Tag Manager