The Zelst Digital Marketing Blog: the latest industry insights from a passionate bunch of specialists who live and breathe digital.
Sharing our knowledge, exploring the latest digital trends and celebrating the work and people behind the screens.
2020 Organic and Paid Search Growth Highlights at Zelst
Discover more about our Search Marketing Performance and Results Achieved for Zelst Clients in our 2020 Organic and Paid Search Growth Highlights.
12 SEO Trends for 2021
As a digital marketing agency, we've sat in the front row watching evolving SEO trends for the last 15 years. Following the rollercoaster year of 2020, complete with three Google core updates, the importance of technical optimisation and the creation of relevant,...
The Google Core Update December 2020
The Google core update December 2020 was announced via Twitter on December 3rd 2020 with just a few hours to go before roll-out, causing quite the stir in the SEO community. Following two other updates in January and May, this update’s timing was unusual, right before...
Republishing Content: Breathe New Life Into Your Copy
Whether it's fashion or content, trends are something we all follow. Keeping up-to-date with a subject matter which is constantly changing and developing is crucial for staying relevant to your audience. Republishing content is a great way to breathe new life into...
4 Simple Steps to Creating a Pillar Content Strategy
You may have heard the term pillar content thrown around a lot during content strategy meetings. Although it's a term that most content marketers are familiar with, the method for creating a successful pillar content strategy is much more unfamiliar which is why we...
The SEO Migration Guide
From our extensive experience of migrating websites, we have compiled this SEO Migration Guide Checklist, covering the main issues to consider before starting to, or even thinking about, moving a website.
How to Create Relevant Content in 10 Steps
If you ask any SEO worth their salt to describe quality content in two words, chances are their response will be ‘relevant content’ or ‘authoritative content’. When you think about it, this makes perfect sense. Google exists to provide users with the most relevant...
How to Optimise for Featured Snippets
A featured snippet, previously known as position zero on Google, is a piece of information that usually appears at the top of the search engine results page (SERP). The purpose of a featured snippet, and other SERP features, is to provide short, relevant answers to a...
What are the Best PPC Platforms for Your Business?
Not all digital advertising platforms are equal. Knowing how to utilise different PPC ad platforms to fulfil your marketing objectives will help you maximise the effectiveness of your digital marketing budget. Whether your objective is lead generation, sales or brand...
Why are Backlinks Important in SEO?
Backlinks are created when one website links to another. Backlinks are important in SEO because they allow your content and technical SEO efforts to be found, and pushed even further up the SERP rankings than they already sit. Good backlinks are important to SEO...
What Can I Do to Get Fake Online Reviews Removed?
Getting fake online reviews for your business can be extremely stressful and frustrating, particularly when you know that the reviewer has never been a client of yours or has never even approached your company. The good news is that each platform has its own policy...
Black Friday: Eight Things to Think About
Although originally an American tradition, Black Friday was introduced to Britain by Amazon in 2010. This sales extravaganza soon took the UK by storm, and having realised the enormous potential of this day, the majority of UK businesses now partake in the Black...
How Much Should You Spend on Google Ads this Christmas?
What We’re Advising Ecommerce Clients to Do This November and December Even before this Saturday’s announcement about the 4-week lockdown starting from Thursday 5th November, we’ve been expecting November ecommerce sales to break all records. The closure of...
How to Compete with Big Companies using SEO
How do small companies compete with bigger rivals? It’s a commonly asked question by smaller businesses who are trying to remain competitive in an ever changing market. We discuss how you can use SEO to help level the playing field with your larger, deeper-pocketed...
10 Tips on Using Email Marketing to Generate Leads
Email marketing and lead generation can go hand in hand, and when done properly, can make a significant difference to the organic traffic going to your website. Not only will you get more traffic to your website, but those users will also be people you know are...
4 Ways to Use Artificial Intelligence in SEO
Artificial intelligence in SEO is at the forefront in the evolution of the digital marketing industry and has increasingly caught people’s attention worldwide. In this article, we’ll explain what artificial intelligence is and take a look at what’s in store for...
Using User Generated Content: How to Turn Your Customers into Your Promoters
Using user generated content is the best way to turn your customers into your promoters. The 21st-century consumer has come to expect recent reviews and high-quality customer product photos at each stage of the buyer’s journey. Therefore, working user generated...
The Importance of Context in Content Marketing
Content marketing and optimisation are often misunderstood as simply, ‘good writing’. However, a successful content strategy understands the importance of context with every content campaign. Context is key to understand Google’s latest algorithms, the thought process...
Understanding Common HTTP Errors
Understanding common HTTP errors is important for a happy and healthy website. Websites are made up of URLs, so it's important to ensure that all of your URLs are working properly for optimum website health. In this post, we're going to walk you through the most...
What is Google Discover and Why Do You Need It?
For the past few months, we’ve seen a significant increase in traffic from Discover for a number of our clients. In this article, we are taking a closer look at what Google Discover is, why it’s different from Search, why it needs to be treated differently, and why it should form an important part of your search and content strategy.
How to Write SEO Friendly Content
Content must be written not only for the reader but also for search engines. The content you write should be relevant and informative to the reader but also easily digestible and appealing to search engines. Striking a balance can sometimes feel hard when you are...
7 Free Digital Marketing Tools We Use Every Day
Digital marketing covers such a broad spectrum of activity that it’s very difficult to stay on top without the help of tools and apps. Time is money and marketing software helps to get the job done much more quickly than if you tried to do it manually. Thankfully,...
What is On-Page SEO and Why is it Important?
On-page SEO is an important part of your SEO and content strategy. Regularly reviewing your website page and blog rankings will help you identify where to focus your on-page optimisation efforts. However, knowing what changes to make to these pages...
5 Tips for Watertight Proofreading
Proofreading your own writing is a vital skill for any writer. It’s the final stage of the writing process and consists of fixing spelling mistakes, grammatical errors and formatting issues. And, although tempting, you shouldn’t solely rely on your online spellchecker...
Zelst Clients’ PPC Performance During the Covid-19 Pandemic
Successful Online Strategies During Covid-19 During the unprecedented times of Covid-19, economic and business uncertainty has peaked at its highest point since the 2008 recession, both in B2B and B2C. One certainty that has become clear is that an online strategy,...
Why You Should be Using Pinterest for Business
If you’re not using Pinterest for business you could be missing out on a valuable marketing opportunity. But isn’t Pinterest just for interior design and wardrobe inspiration? My target audience isn’t on there! We can see why you might think so, but we invite you to...
How to Disavow Bad Backlinks by Creating a Disavow File
Backlinks are often referred to as one of the most important factors of SEO. Having authoritative links from relevant websites is crucial for good SEO performance. However, not all links are good links, in fact, some links are bad and can actually seriously...
Green Shoots of Recovery in the Spring of Coronavirus
The Covid-19 pandemic has affected all sorts of businesses and affected them significantly. Here at Zelst we saw massive declines in search volumes and search traffic across virtually all of our clients in March, as the world’s attention was focused on other matters....
Why You Should Be Repurposing Content
When it comes to creating quality content, you don’t always have to brainstorm brand new ideas. Oftentimes, you already have some superb pieces of content published that can be refreshed and repackaged for different platforms or audiences. This is called repurposing...
The Truth About Guest Blogging and SEO
Guest blogging for SEO value has been much debated since Matt Cutts pronounced it dead in his article The decay and fall of guest blogging for SEO, back in 2014. However, guest blogging remains a common SEO strategy for many businesses, generating...
8 Ways Web Design and Content Affect Website Bounce Rate
Website Bounce Rate Explained You may be familiar with the term, ‘bounce rate’, but if you’re unsure of the website bounce rate meaning, let’s break it down. Visualise someone visiting your site and end up bouncing away from your webpage (via the X in the corner or...
Free Google Shopping Ads – How You can Benefit
Google Announced that they are launching Free Google Shopping Ads in the US from the end of April. We suspect that they will shortly be available in the UK. Find out how you could benefit from Free Google Shopping Ads.
7 SEO Best Practices that are Fundamental in 2020
As an SEO in 2020 it is crucial to be up to date with what is going on in the search industry, what is still relevant and what is not so, what things you must do and what tricks you should avoid. This informative guide examines the 7 SEO best practices that are...
How to Create a Blog Content Plan in 7 Steps
Blogs are a powerful digital marketing tool: they provide useful content for your audience, build brand awareness, establish your business as authoritative and boost your online visibility. By establishing a thorough and effective blog content strategy, you will be...
What does SERP mean and what exactly are SERP Features?
What Does SERP mean? Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) are the results pages that show up in search engines after a user enters an online query. The architecture of a SERP can be varied based on the searchers choice of terminology, phrasing and intention. However, in...
How We Can Help You Through the Coronavirus Crisis
Right now, it’s now more important than ever to be seen and get found by the people that matter most to you. Find out how Zelst is helping its clients through the Covid-19 Crisis.