Digital Marketing
Home » About » Digital Marketing Consultant

Digital Marketing Consultant

I am a digital marketing consultant based in Brentwood in Essex. My services are focussed on helping local businesses to find more customers, clients or patients online. The services, when combined, are targeted at increasing the business’s online presence.

The desired outcome is to have the business show up in the search results when a potential customer searches for the product or service that is provided by the local business.

Digital Marketing for Local Businesses

As a digital marketing consultant for local businesses I employ a number of services to achieve the desired outcome. Local search engine optimisation (SEO) includes both on-website and off-website strategies to help a business to show in the local search results.

Those strategies are outlined below. They don’t all need to be implemented at once; that could lead to complete overwhelm. During our initial consultation I will review every aspect of your business, discover what’s already in place and what needs to be done. I will follow up with a recommendation on which outstanding element, if any, to tackle first.

Note: I can’t work with everyone. I have two rules that I work by. 1) I will only work with one business type per location on an ongoing basis. As an example, if I am working with an optician in Upminster, I won’t take on another optician in Upminster as a client. 2) I will only work with you if I truly believe that I can help you. For these reasons I ask prospective clients to complete a simple application form so that I can learn a little more about their business.

horiz rule

Website Design

responsive website design

An essential element for any business is a website. Far too often we see businesses where their only online presence is on a third party platform such as Facebook, a platform over which the business has zero control.

Find out why this is a bad idea and why your business needs a website here.

 

horiz rule

Google My Business Optimisation

google my business optimisationGoogle My Business, Google business listing, the local 3-pack all refer to the same thing: when you search on Google for a local business the first page of the search results shows a map with three local businesses listed underneath.

It’s important that a local business gives itself the best chance of featuring in the 3-pack and that starts with claiming and optimising their Google business listing.

It’s something that a business owner can do for themselves but it’s something that we offer as a ‘done for you’ service for business owners that find themselves short of time.

horiz rule

SEO Audits and Analysis

seo auditHow well is your website optimised? Are you using the ‘heading’ structure in the most effective way? Are your images optimised with relevant alt tags? How quickly does your site load? Is it mobile friendly?

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the starting point when looking to improve where a website ranks in the search engine results page. Some factors are visible to the human eye others are located behind the scenes.

It is imperative that all of these rank affecting factors are optimised to provide you with the best chance of your website appearing high up on the search results page.

We can provide an audit of your website. The audit will look at all of those elements that will affect a local business’s ranking within the search engines. Our analysis will highlight those areas that are in need of improvement.

horiz rule

On-site Optimisation

on site seoA website should be structured in such a way that it is easily readable by both humans (website visitors) and search engines alike.

There are certain things that help the search engine’s crawlers to understand the contents of a web page such as the correct use of headings and the use of alt tags in images

An SEO audit will highlight any issues that are likely to affect a websites ability to rank well within a search engine’s results page.

Our on-site SEO optimisation service is designed to find and rectify any issues found.

horiz rule

Competitor Research

assess competitionA key strategy when attempting to rank a business higher on a search engine results page is to study the business’s competition for a particular keyword or phrase. For those businesses that are ranking higher what are the some of the potential factors that are contributing to the ranking position.

Once those factors are understood it is then possible to improve those factors as they relate to your own website such that your website has an increased chance of ranking higher and ultimately to rank higher than your competition.

Using industry standard tools we will provide you with information on the gaps that exist between your website and your competition’s website and then work with you to address and close those gaps and improve your ranking.

 

horiz rule

Content Creation and Optimisation

blog content creationWhen it comes to ranking a website well content is a key factor. Google’s aim is to provide the person using the search engine with the most relevant content based on the search term or keywords that the person has entered into the search box.

In order to have your website rank well it is important to continually create new and engaging content that is structured around the keywords or phrases that are relevant to your business.

It is not enough to just create a website and then forget about it. View it as one of your primary customer or client acquisition tools. Keep it up to date with fresh content around the subjects that you want to be found for.

Planning for new content should start with some keyword research. We’ll work with you to decide which keywords or phrases you want to target. Some keywords or phrases will be much easier to rank for than others so recommend that we focus your content around these.

We will provide you with written content that is optimised around the chosen keywords or phrases.

horiz rule

Reputation Management

5 star reviewA referral from a friend or family member is generally seen as the best recommendation for a business but failing that many will turn to review sites to determine where to place their business.

Few of us will want to be first so we’ll look to others who have been before us and to judge their experience before we’re comfortable enough to place our trust in a business.

It is important therefore to monitor our reviews across the various platforms to make sure that we’re getting the level of feedback that we’re expecting.

If a past customer has had a negative experience and communicated this in an online review then it is important that we address this to the best of our abilities. This should be both with the customer in person and through a carefully prepared response on the online review platform.

When a customer leaves a positive review without being prompted it’s something that should fill us with a sense of pride. Don’t just leave review responses to the negative reviews; we should be responding to all reviews.

It’s time consuming to track and manage our businesses reviews across all of the review platforms. We therefore offer a reputation management service where we will track the various platforms and provide responses to all reviews that are posted.

We also offer a review outreach service. If you collect the customers email address at some point during the sales process we can reach out to those customers at the completion of the sale and request a review on your behalf.

horiz rule

Citation Management (including clean-up)

local business directories​If you’re of a certain age you will remember paper business directories. Over time these have disappereared; they have been superceeded by online directories.

When Google becomes aware of a local business it will search for trust signals that will indicate that it is a legitimate business.  One of the signals that Google uses is the inclusion of the business in online business directories such as Yell and Thomson.

It will look to match the business name, address and phone number (NAP) listed on the business website with the details held by the online directories. It is essential therefore to ensure that this NAP information is consistent across the web.

Aim to get a minimum of 50 consistent citations across the various online directories. This should signal to Google that the business is trusted and improve the chance of the business being listed in search results.

Requesting new citations and managing any existing ones to ensure consistency is a time consuming process. We therefore offer a citation building service where we manage the process on your behalf.

horiz rule

Schema Markup

schema markup exampleSchema markup is an open standard that helps search engines to understand more about a website.

The schema provides for the inclusion of details that are specific to local businesses such as contact details, location and opening times.

Schema markup isn’t necessarily something that would be implemented by many website creators but we believe it to be essential when trying to rank a local business in local search results.

We include schema markup in every website we build.

horiz rule

Google Posts

google my business postGetting their business to appear in the local 3-pack of Google’s search results should be the aim of every local business owner. One strategy that seems to be working currently is to post regularly on the business’s Google Business Listing.

Posts can include business updates, events, limited time offers or product specific offers.

Post regularly (business updates only last for seven days) and provide additional value where you can.

We can manage your Google business listing for you. Our Google Business Listing service provides a post update every seven days.

horiz rule

Reporting and Analytics

local business report and analyticsMeasuring a local business’s online performance over time is essential in understanding how the results of the marketing strategies being employed are playing out.

Reporting and analytics provides an instant indication of the strength of the business’s online presence and highlights any areas that could benefit from improvement.

Our reports track the following metrics:

Website Domain Authority – This is a measure of how well a website should rank. It looks at over 150 search engine optimisation (SEO) signals. The higher the domain authority score, the higher the website should rank.

Citation Flow Score – The importance of citations is discussed below. This is a score that is calculated from the volume of inbound links that a website has from online directory websites. The more links, the higher the score.

Website Link Count – Backlinks from other high authority websites is one of the key factors that determines how well a website ranks in the search results. This metric provides a count of the number of external links that point back to the website.

Google Rankings – This report tracks the performance of up to 50 keywords or phrases across Google, Bing and Yahoo. It tracks the keyword’s position across organic search results, local business listings and any ads that may be running for a particular keyword or phrase. It also shows the keyword’s performance over time.

Reputation Manager – Tracks the business’s customer reviews across a number of platforms. Easily see all reviews left for a business via a single combined dashboard.

Citations Report – This report tracks the business’s active listings across a number of online directories and highlights any discrepancies in the most important data, the business’s name, address and phone number.

The report also shows the directories that the business’s top five competitors are listed in. These should be analysed and the business should be added to these directories if appropriate.

Google My Business – This report displays a number of metrics associated with the business’s listing on Google’s business listing. It tracks customer actions such as website visits, direction requests and telephone calls made to the business directly from the GMB listing.

The following two reports are optional. They allow a business to bring the metrics from some external platforms into a consolidated dashboard view.

Google Analytics – The Google Analytics platform and interface can be overwhelming. This report pulls some of the key metrics that are applicable to a local business from Google Analytics and displays them in a format that is easy to understand.

Social Media – This report pulls in the data from social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter and presents that data in an easily digestible form. View engagement metrics and ‘post’ performance metrics.

horiz rule

Email Marketing

email marketingEmail remains one of the most cost effective forms of marketing. We encourage our clients to build their email lists and to maintain contact with their lists on a regular basis.

We all want to sell our products or services and it can be quite tempting to just email our lists with offers but a better, more productive approach is to email valuable content. Include information that our email subscribers may find useful. Then occasionally include an offer.

We specialise in the MailChimp email platform. Our websites can interface directly to the MailChimp platform such that new subscribers are automatically added to the email list.

We can set up email campaigns whereby a new subscriber is sent a series of emails at regular intervals in order to introduce that new subscriber to the business.

Digital Marketing Consultant

I am a digital marketing consultant based in Brentwood in Essex. My services are focussed on helping local businesses to find more customers, clients or patients online. The services, when combined, are targeted at increasing the business’s online presence.

The desired outcome is to have the business show up in the search results when a potential customer searches for the product or service that is provided by the local business.

Digital Marketing for Local Businesses

As a digital marketing consultant for local businesses I employ a number of services to achieve the desired outcome. Local search engine optimisation (SEO) includes both on-website and off-website strategies to help a business to show in the local search results.

Those strategies are outlined below. They don’t all need to be implemented at once; that could lead to complete overwhelm. During our initial consultation I will review every aspect of your business, discover what’s already in place and what needs to be done. I will follow up with a recommendation on which outstanding element, if any, to tackle first.

Note: I can’t work with everyone. I have two rules that I work by. 1) I will only work with one business type per location on an ongoing basis. As an example, if I am working with an optician in Upminster, I won’t take on another optician in Upminster as a client. 2) I will only work with you if I truly believe that I can help you. For these reasons I ask prospective clients to complete a simple application form so that I can learn a little more about their business.

horiz rule

Website Design

responsive website design

An essential element for any business is a website. Far too often we see businesses where their only online presence is on a third party platform such as Facebook, a platform over which the business has zero control.

Imagine if that platform disappeared tomorrow – the business no longer has a business. Whilst this scenario seems unlikely history points to the precarious nature of relying on a third party. There was uproar a few years ago as Facebook transitioned to a pay-to-play platform where post reach was reduced to the point where only around 2% of a business’s followers got to see a new post (assume 1000 followers – only 20 people will see the post in their news feed).

Failing to create a website for a business on a perceived notion that it is too expensive is a false economy. Here are five good reasons why every local business needs a website.

  1. It’s close to being a prerequisite for local search engine optimisation – while it’s still possible to get a business listed in the Google 3-pack without a website it is far more difficult.
  2. Consumers expect it – a couple of stats to bear this out: (i) 63% of consumers used the website to find the local business or interact with it and (ii) 8% of consumers never look at websites when choosing a business.
  3. Website content improves relevance and links – this ties in to the content creation service that we provide. When a potential customer in on their phone or computer searching for a local product or service a business with optimised, high quality content is far more likely to get in front of that person.
  4. A website is essential for brand building – Imaging how difficult it is to build a brand inside of Facebook; the business simply gets lost inside of Facebook’s brand. A website gives the business the space to develop their brand, establish their authority and share their values and culture; the very things that will attract their ideal customers, clients or patients (depending on the nature of the business).
  5. A website is a great tool for customer service – it is becoming increasingly common for customers or potential customers to reach out via social media for help or to ask questions. Limitations within these social media platforms mean that it can be difficult to respond with in-depth answers. A better solution is to create an area within the website that is focussed on providing answers to those questions and simply pointing the person to the website by sharing a link to the answer.

A website should be viewed as an asset that has the potential to attract new customers and generate additional revenue.

About our websites

Our websites are based on a tried and tested formula. They are not simply brochure sites, they are designed to be a key element within a business’s sales process.

Sometimes referred to as ‘direct response websites’ our websites are designed to encourage the website visitor to take an action. This could be scheduling an appointment, requesting a free quotation or requesting something of value such as an information product, in exchange for an email address.

Every website is optimised for local search.

Our websites are competitively priced, starting at just £499 +VAT for a website consisting of up to five pages.

horiz rule

Google My Business Optimisation

google my business optimisationGoogle My Business, Google business listing, the local 3-pack all refer to the same thing: when you search on Google for a local business the first page of the search results shows a map with three local businesses listed underneath.

It’s important that a local business gives itself the best chance of featuring in the 3-pack and that starts with claiming and optimising their Google business listing.

It’s something that a business owner can do for themselves but it’s something that we offer as a ‘done for you’ service for business owners that find themselves short of time.

horiz rule

SEO Audits and Analysis

seo auditHow well is your website optimised? Are you using the ‘heading’ structure in the most effective way? Are your images optimised with relevant alt tags? How quickly does your site load? Is it mobile friendly?

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the starting point when looking to improve where a website ranks in the search engine results page. Some factors are visible to the human eye others are located behind the scenes.

It is imperative that all of these rank affecting factors are optimised to provide you with the best chance of your website appearing high up on the search results page.

We can provide an audit of your website. The audit will look at all of those elements that will affect a local business’s ranking within the search engines. Our analysis will highlight those areas that are in need of improvement.

horiz rule

On-site Optimisation

on site seoA website should be structured in such a way that it is easily readable by both humans (website visitors) and search engines alike.

There are certain things that help the search engine’s crawlers to understand the contents of a web page such as the correct use of headings and the use of alt tags in images

An SEO audit will highlight any issues that are likely to affect a websites ability to rank well within a search engine’s results page.

Our on-site SEO optimisation service is designed to find and rectify any issues found.

horiz rule

Competitor Research

assess competitionA key strategy when attempting to rank a business higher on a search engine results page is to study the business’s competition for a particular keyword or phrase. For those businesses that are ranking higher what are the some of the potential factors that are contributing to the ranking position.

Once those factors are understood it is then possible to improve those factors as they relate to your own website such that your website has an increased chance of ranking higher and ultimately to rank higher than your competition.

Using industry standard tools we will provide you with information on the gaps that exist between your website and your competition’s website and then work with you to address and close those gaps and improve your ranking.

 

horiz rule

Content Creation and Optimisation

blog content creationWhen it comes to ranking a website well content is a key factor. Google’s aim is to provide the person using the search engine with the most relevant content based on the search term or keywords that the person has entered into the search box.

In order to have your website rank well it is important to continually create new and engaging content that is structured around the keywords or phrases that are relevant to your business.

It is not enough to just create a website and then forget about it. View it as one of your primary customer or client acquisition tools. Keep it up to date with fresh content around the subjects that you want to be found for.

Planning for new content should start with some keyword research. We’ll work with you to decide which keywords or phrases you want to target. Some keywords or phrases will be much easier to rank for than others so recommend that we focus your content around these.

We will provide you with written content that is optimised around the chosen keywords or phrases.

horiz rule

Reputation Management

5 star reviewA referral from a friend or family member is generally seen as the best recommendation for a business but failing that many will turn to review sites to determine where to place their business.

Few of us will want to be first so we’ll look to others who have been before us and to judge their experience before we’re comfortable enough to place our trust in a business.

It is important therefore to monitor our reviews across the various platforms to make sure that we’re getting the level of feedback that we’re expecting.

If a past customer has had a negative experience and communicated this in an online review then it is important that we address this to the best of our abilities. This should be both with the customer in person and through a carefully prepared response on the online review platform.

When a customer leaves a positive review without being prompted it’s something that should fill us with a sense of pride. Don’t just leave review responses to the negative reviews; we should be responding to all reviews.

It’s time consuming to track and manage our businesses reviews across all of the review platforms. We therefore offer a reputation management service where we will track the various platforms and provide responses to all reviews that are posted.

We also offer a review outreach service. If you collect the customers email address at some point during the sales process we can reach out to those customers at the completion of the sale and request a review on your behalf.

horiz rule

Citation Management (including clean-up)

local business directories​If you’re of a certain age you will remember paper business directories. Over time these have disappereared; they have been superceeded by online directories.

When Google becomes aware of a local business it will search for trust signals that will indicate that it is a legitimate business.  One of the signals that Google uses is the inclusion of the business in online business directories such as Yell and Thomson.

It will look to match the business name, address and phone number (NAP) listed on the business website with the details held by the online directories. It is essential therefore to ensure that this NAP information is consistent across the web.

Aim to get a minimum of 50 consistent citations across the various online directories. This should signal to Google that the business is trusted and improve the chance of the business being listed in search results.

Requesting new citations and managing any existing ones to ensure consistency is a time consuming process. We therefore offer a citation building service where we manage the process on your behalf.

horiz rule

Schema Markup

schema markup exampleSchema markup is an open standard that helps search engines to understand more about a website.

The schema provides for the inclusion of details that are specific to local businesses such as contact details, location and opening times.

Schema markup isn’t necessarily something that would be implemented by many website creators but we believe it to be essential when trying to rank a local business in local search results.

We include schema markup in every website we build.

horiz rule

Google Posts

google my business postGetting their business to appear in the local 3-pack of Google’s search results should be the aim of every local business owner. One strategy that seems to be working currently is to post regularly on the business’s Google Business Listing.

Posts can include business updates, events, limited time offers or product specific offers.

Post regularly (business updates only last for seven days) and provide additional value where you can.

We can manage your Google business listing for you. Our Google Business Listing service provides a post update every seven days.

horiz rule

Reporting and Analytics

local business report and analyticsMeasuring a local business’s online performance over time is essential in understanding how the results of the marketing strategies being employed are playing out.

Reporting and analytics provides an instant indication of the strength of the business’s online presence and highlights any areas that could benefit from improvement.

Our reports track the following metrics:

Website Domain Authority – This is a measure of how well a website should rank. It looks at over 150 search engine optimisation (SEO) signals. The higher the domain authority score, the higher the website should rank.

Citation Flow Score – The importance of citations is discussed below. This is a score that is calculated from the volume of inbound links that a website has from online directory websites. The more links, the higher the score.

Website Link Count – Backlinks from other high authority websites is one of the key factors that determines how well a website ranks in the search results. This metric provides a count of the number of external links that point back to the website.

Google Rankings – This report tracks the performance of up to 50 keywords or phrases across Google, Bing and Yahoo. It tracks the keyword’s position across organic search results, local business listings and any ads that may be running for a particular keyword or phrase. It also shows the keyword’s performance over time.

Reputation Manager – Tracks the business’s customer reviews across a number of platforms. Easily see all reviews left for a business via a single combined dashboard.

Citations Report – This report tracks the business’s active listings across a number of online directories and highlights any discrepancies in the most important data, the business’s name, address and phone number.

The report also shows the directories that the business’s top five competitors are listed in. These should be analysed and the business should be added to these directories if appropriate.

Google My Business – This report displays a number of metrics associated with the business’s listing on Google’s business listing. It tracks customer actions such as website visits, direction requests and telephone calls made to the business directly from the GMB listing.

The following two reports are optional. They allow a business to bring the metrics from some external platforms into a consolidated dashboard view.

Google Analytics – The Google Analytics platform and interface can be overwhelming. This report pulls some of the key metrics that are applicable to a local business from Google Analytics and displays them in a format that is easy to understand.

Social Media – This report pulls in the data from social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter and presents that data in an easily digestible form. View engagement metrics and ‘post’ performance metrics.

horiz rule

Email Marketing

email marketingEmail remains one of the most cost effective forms of marketing. We encourage our clients to build their email lists and to maintain contact with their lists on a regular basis.

We all want to sell our products or services and it can be quite tempting to just email our lists with offers but a better, more productive approach is to email valuable content. Include information that our email subscribers may find useful. Then occasionally include an offer.

We specialise in the MailChimp email platform. Our websites can interface directly to the MailChimp platform such that new subscribers are automatically added to the email list.

We can set up email campaigns whereby a new subscriber is sent a series of emails at regular intervals in order to introduce that new subscriber to the business.