# LLMs.txt - Sitemap for AI content discovery # Found > --- ## Pages - [AI SEO](https://www.found.co.uk/services/seo/ai-seo/): Unlock AI-powered search potential with Found. We optimise your site using Luminr and advanced strategies to boost visibility and relevance across AI platforms. - [META ADVERTISING](https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/paid-social/meta-advertising/): Found, a leading Meta Ads agency, delivers highly targeted, innovative campaigns using its unique Everysearch™ approach to drive measurable growth. - [MASTER SERVICES TERMS & CONDITIONS 2025](https://www.found.co.uk/master/): 1. 1 These Terms and Conditions (“Master Services Terms and Conditions”) shall apply to the provision of Services by Found... - [SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION](https://www.found.co.uk/search-engine-optimisation/): SEO is a cost-effective way to drive quality traffic. But what is it, how does it work, and how can expert SEO services unlock real, measurable growth? - [INTERNATIONAL DIGITAL MARKETING AGENCY](https://www.found.co.uk/international-digital-marketing-agency/): Found is a multi-award-winning international digital marketing agency. Masters of global search performance across all digital marketing platforms. - [DIGITAL EXPERIENCE](https://www.found.co.uk/services/digital-experience/): We’re a London-based digital experience agency that prioritises your customers' needs and business goals, crafting optimised experiences to drive results and revenue. - [DIGITAL MARKETING AGENCY,  NEW YORK](https://www.found.co.uk/digital-marketing-agency-new-york/): Found is a multi-award-winning Digital Marketing Agency in New York, US. A master of search performance across all digital marketing platforms. Get Found! - [Sitemap](https://www.found.co.uk/sitemap/): Find your way around Found easily using our sitemap. - [GOOGLE ADS](https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/ppc/google-ads/): Found is a Google Ads management agency based in London. As a Premier Google Partner, our expert team will accelerate your growth online. - [YOUTUBE VIDEO ADVERTISING](https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/paid-social/youtube-video-advertising/): Found is an expert YouTube video advertising agency. Our team of YouTube video ads management experts will supercharge your growth online. Get in touch. - [FACEBOOK ADVERTISING](https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/paid-social/facebook-advertising/): At a London-based Facebook advertising agency Found, we create bespoke campaigns to drive engagement and action to position you as an industry leader. - [REMARKETING](https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/remarketing/): Found is a remarketing agency based in London. Our remarketing services team will accelerate your performance online. Find out more today! - [INSTAGRAM ADVERTISING](https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/paid-social/instagram-advertising/): At a London-based Instagram advertising agency Found, we create bespoke campaigns to drive engagement and action to position you as an industry leader. - [AMAZON ADVERTISING](https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/amazon-advertising/): Found is an expert Amazon PPC agency based in London. Our team of Amazon advertising specialists will supercharge your growth online. Get in touch today. - [TIKTOK ADVERTISING](https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/paid-social/tiktok-advertising/): Found is an expert TikTok advertising agency. Our team of TikTok ads management experts will supercharge your growth online. Get in touch today. - [PINTEREST ADVERTISING](https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/paid-social/pinterest-advertising/): Found is an expert Pinterest advertising agency. Our team of Pinterest ads management specialists will supercharge your growth online. Get in touch! - [DISPLAY](https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/display/): Found is a display advertising agency based in London. Our display marketing campaigns are data-driven & highly targeted - guaranteed to deliver a return. - [PPC AUTOMATION](https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/ppc/ppc-automation/): Multi-award-winning PPC agency Found can help you achieve a better performance online with PPC automation and scripts. Find out more here. - [FEED OPTIMISATION](https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/ppc/feed-optimisation/): Digital growth agency Found can help you achieve a better ROI across product shopping campaigns with feed optimisation. Find out more here. - [PPC CONSULTANCY](https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/ppc/ppc-consultancy/): Found is a multi-award-winning PPC consultancy agency that harnesses the efficiencies of data and technology to help clients drive growth. Get in touch. - [X/TWITTER ADVERTISING](https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/paid-social/x-advertising/): Found is an expert Twitter advertising agency. Our team of Twitter ads management specialists will supercharge your growth online. Get in touch today. - [TERMS AND CONDITIONS (PRIOR TO MAY 2021)](https://www.found.co.uk/old-terms-and-conditions-2/): Master Services Terms & Conditions 1. 1 These Terms and Conditions (“Master Services Terms and Conditions”) shall apply to the... - [TERMS AND CONDITIONS (PRIOR TO JULY 2017)](https://www.found.co.uk/old-terms-and-conditions/): 1. APPLICATION 1. 1 These Terms and Conditions (“Master Services Terms and Conditions”) shall apply to the provision of Services by... - [FOUND COOKIE POLICY](https://www.found.co.uk/cookie-policy/): - [PPC Keyword Tool](https://www.found.co.uk/ppc-keyword-tool/): Found's Ultimate keyword tool concatenates large lists of PPC keywords. All keyword match types supported. Speed up your paid search setup today! - [LINKEDIN ADVERTISING](https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/paid-social/linkedin-advertising/): Found is an expert LinkedIn advertising agency based in London. Our team of LinkedIn ads management specialists will supercharge your growth online. - [REPUTATION MANAGEMENT](https://www.found.co.uk/services/digital-pr/reputation-management/): At Found, Reputation Management Agency, we improve your online brand reputation and support your business goals with bespoke consultancy services. - [MICROSOFT ADS](https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/ppc/microsoft-ads/): Found is a Microsoft Advertising agency based in London. Our Microsoft Ads management team will accelerate your growth online. Find out more today. - [ADOBE COMMERCE](https://www.found.co.uk/services/seo/adobe-commerce/): Found is an experienced Adobe Commerce SEO agency that can accelerate your ecommerce sales. We will take your site to the next level! - [SHOPIFY SEO](https://www.found.co.uk/services/seo/shopify-seo/): Found is an experienced Shopify SEO agency that can accelerate your ecommerce sales. We understand Shopify SEO challenges and will take your site to the next level. - [WORDPRESS SEO](https://www.found.co.uk/services/seo/wordpress-seo/): Found is an experienced WordPress SEO agency that can accelerate your online visibility. We understand WordPress SEO challenges and will take your site to the next level. - [A/B TESTING](https://www.found.co.uk/services/cro/ab-testing/): Turn website clicks into revenue with Found's results-driven A/B testing strategies and services that maximise ROI. - [WOOCOMMERCE SEO](https://www.found.co.uk/services/seo/woocommerce-seo/): Found is a multi-award-winning SEO agency based in London that specialises in Woocommerce SEO. Get in touch with one of our Woocommerce experts! - [YOUTUBE SEO](https://www.found.co.uk/services/seo/youtube-seo/): Found is a multi-award-winning SEO agency based in London that specialises in YouTube SEO. Get in touch with one of our YouTube experts today. - [VOICE SEARCH](https://www.found.co.uk/services/seo/voice-search/): Found is a multi-award-winning SEO agency based in London that specialises in voice search SEO. Get in touch with one of our voice search specialists today. - [SEO MIGRATION](https://www.found.co.uk/services/seo/website-migrations/): London-based SEO agency Found offers expert SEO website migration services that will supercharge your organic performance online. Get in touch today. - [SEO AUDIT](https://www.found.co.uk/services/seo/seo-auditing/): London-based SEO agency Found offers SEO auditing services that will supercharge your organic growth online. Get in touch today. - [APP STORE OPTIMISATION](https://www.found.co.uk/services/seo/app-store-optimisation/): Drive quality app downloads with our app store optimisation service. Get in touch today to find out how we can supercharge your app store performance. - [SEO TRAINING](https://www.found.co.uk/services/seo/seo-training/): Found is a multi-award-winning SEO training agency based in London that harnesses the efficiencies of technology and human brilliance to drive growth. - [MOBILE SEO](https://www.found.co.uk/services/seo/mobile-seo/): London-based SEO agency Found offers expert mobile SEO consultancy services that will supercharge your organic mobile growth online. Get in touch today. - [Everysearch](https://www.found.co.uk/everysearch/): ​​Everysearch™ recognises the diverse world of search beyond traditional engines. Visit us to learn more about Found’s Everysearch™ approach and opportunities. - [DIGITAL PR TRAINING](https://www.found.co.uk/services/digital-pr/training/): Get your brand the attention it deserves with our Digital PR training. Unleash your team's inner creativity! - [CONSUMER PR](https://www.found.co.uk/services/digital-pr/consumer-pr/): At a London-based Consumer PR agency Found, we create bespoke campaigns to drive engagement and action to position you as an industry leader. - [Google Premier Partner](https://www.found.co.uk/google-premier-partner/): - [SEO CONSULTANCY](https://www.found.co.uk/services/seo/seo-consultancy/): Found is a multi-award-winning SEO consultancy agency based in London that harnesses the efficiencies of technology and human brilliance to drive growth. - [LOCAL SEO](https://www.found.co.uk/services/seo/local-seo/): London-based SEO agency Found offers expert local SEO consultancy services that will supercharge your organic local growth online. Get in touch today. - [MEDIA PLANNING](https://www.found.co.uk/services/digital-strategy/media-planning/): Maximise cross-channel ROI with Found. We expertly plan, execute, and optimise across all relevant media platforms, ensuring no opportunity is missed. - [VIDEO](https://www.found.co.uk/services/video/): Whether launching your first video or ready to dominate the digital landscape with a comprehensive video strategy, partner with Found. - [MARKET RESEARCH](https://www.found.co.uk/services/digital-strategy/market-research/): Shatter your growth ceiling and redefine success for tomorrow with Found, your London-based market research agency. - [AUDIT & CONSULTANCY](https://www.found.co.uk/services/digital-strategy/digital-marketing-audit/): Leverage industry experts to help you get started on the road to digital success with our audit and consultancy services. - [TAG MANAGEMENT](https://www.found.co.uk/services/data/tag-management/): Maximise your advertising impact with our Tag Management services. We streamline tag management, enabling seamless tracking across channels. - [LUMINR](https://www.found.co.uk/luminr/): Luminr delivers AI-powered competitor intelligence and comprehensive market insights, enabling you to outsmart competitors and boost brand visibility. - [AI & AUTOMATION](https://www.found.co.uk/services/data/ai-automation/): Our AI and automation agency turns complex digital marketing data into dynamic growth opportunities for your business. - [ANALYTICS](https://www.found.co.uk/services/data/analytics/): Unlock your data's potential with a leading data analytics agency. We transform your data into a strategic asset to power your business growth. - [DATA SCIENCE](https://www.found.co.uk/services/data/data-science/): By working with a London-based data science agency Found, you’ll be able to spot trends in your customers' behaviour and transform them into business growth. - [GOOGLE SHOPPING](https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/ppc/google-shopping/): Found is a Google Shopping management agency based in London. As a Premier Google Partner, our expert team will deliver the highest ROAS. Get in touch. - [CONTENT MARKETING](https://www.found.co.uk/services/content-marketing/): Content matters. Ignite engagement, captivate audiences, and drive brand loyalty with innovative content marketing. - [INFLUENCER](https://www.found.co.uk/services/influencer-marketing/): At a London-based influencer marketing agency Found, we create bespoke campaigns with credible, authentic, social creators and influencers. - [PAID SOCIAL](https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/paid-social/): Found, a London-based Paid Social Agency, delivers data-driven, highly targeted campaigns using a unique Everysearch™ approach to ensure measurable returns. - [TECHNICAL SEO](https://www.found.co.uk/services/seo/technical-seo/): London-based SEO agency Found offers expert technical SEO consultancy services that will supercharge your organic growth online. Get in touch today. - [CREATIVE](https://www.found.co.uk/services/creative/): Found has been delivering creative services for over a decade. We specialise in providing imaginative creative agency solutions to elevate your brand. - [PPC](https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/ppc/): Found is a multi-award-winning PPC agency based in London that harnesses the efficiencies of data and technology to help clients drive growth. - [PROGRAMMATIC](https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/programmatic/): Found is a programmatic advertising agency based in London. Our programmatic advertising services team will accelerate your growth online. Find out more. - [DIGITAL PR](https://www.found.co.uk/services/digital-pr/): At Found Digital PR Agency London, we improve your online brand visibility and support your business goals with bespoke digital PR services. - [INTERNATIONAL SEO](https://www.found.co.uk/services/seo/international-seo/): Found is a multi-award-winning international SEO agency based in London that specialises in global SEO. Get in touch with one of our experts today. - [ECOMMERCE SEO](https://www.found.co.uk/services/seo/ecommerce-seo/): Found is a multi-award-winning SEO agency based in London that specialises in ecommerce SEO. Get in touch with one of our ecommerce specialists today. - [IN-HOUSING](https://www.found.co.uk/services/digital-strategy/inhouse-support/): Adopt cutting-edge strategies, data solutions, automations, and best practices from an agency at the forefront of digital innovation. - [STRATEGY](https://www.found.co.uk/services/digital-strategy/): At Found, we have a relentless pursuit for excellence with every digital move. We excel in crafting, connecting, and capitalising on digital opportunities. - [DATA & AI](https://www.found.co.uk/services/data/): Found is a multi award-winning data consulting agency based in London that will convert data into your company’s growth currency. - [PAID MEDIA](https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/): Found is a multi-award-winning paid media agency based in London. Our team of digital pioneers will reshape your entire paid media game. Get in touch. - [Diversity & Inclusion](https://www.found.co.uk/about-us/diversity-and-inclusion/): At Found, we’re laser-focused on nurturing diversity and fostering a culture where inclusivity isn’t just a buzzword; it’s our reality. - [Contact](https://www.found.co.uk/contact/): Oh hey! It's time to get Found. We'd love to hear from you and we're looking forward to receiving your brief. - [Growth for Good](https://www.found.co.uk/about-us/growth-for-good/): At Found, we're dedicated to fostering community growth and engaging in driving positive change, guided by our five core values and ethical standards. - [Careers](https://www.found.co.uk/about-us/careers/): Whether you're embarking on your digital marketing career or have a tonne of experience to bring to the table, we'd love to hear from you. - [About us](https://www.found.co.uk/about-us/): We’re Found, the Everysearch™ agency driving unparalleled performance across every searchable platform. Make every search count. Get Found! - [Awards](https://www.found.co.uk/about-us/awards/): Found have won quite a few Digital Marketing awards over the years — we’re proud of all our awards & accreditations. - [Case Studies](https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/): At Found, we don’t just ‘do’ digital marketing, PPC & SEO - we live and breathe it. We love a challenge. And we love to write thrilling success stories. - [Meet the Team](https://www.found.co.uk/meet-the-team/): We're a crew of creative and smart thinkers committed to fuelling our clients’ growth and smashing goals. Committed to making an impact. - [Resources](https://www.found.co.uk/resources/): Find our growing list of tools, white papers, case studies and more, all available for download. - [Sectors](https://www.found.co.uk/sectors/): Sector capabilities that deliver: expertly crafted digital marketing campaigns tailored for specific sectors. - [CONVERSION RATE OPTIMISATION](https://www.found.co.uk/services/cro/): Turn clicks into revenue with Found's results-driven conversion rate optimisation (CRO) strategies that maximise ROI. - [SEO](https://www.found.co.uk/services/seo/): Are you excited by your current SEO activity? Our SEO Agency based in London offers fresh-thinking ideas that will take your brand to the next level. - [SERVICES](https://www.found.co.uk/services/): As a fully integrated digital marketing agency, we excel in delivering robust business outcomes, blending expertise with creativity for standout results. - [Blog](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/): The latest digital marketing news & opinion. SEO, PPC & Digital Marketing tips & analysis from our experts. Subscribe to the Found blog today! - [Digital Marketing Agency London | Digital Agency UK](https://www.found.co.uk/): Found is a multi-award-winning Digital Marketing Agency in London, a master of search performance across all digital marketing platforms. Get Found! - [PRIVACY POLICY](https://www.found.co.uk/privacy-policy/): Introduction Welcome to the Found Group Limited (“Found”) privacy policy. Found is part of the Tomorrow Group. Found respects your privacy... ## Sectors - [HOSPITALITY](https://www.found.co.uk/sectors/hospitality-marketing-agency/): Discover Found, the Hospitality Digital Marketing agency revolutionising the industry with Everysearch™. Contact us to elevate your hotel marketing today! - [TRAVEL](https://www.found.co.uk/sectors/travel-marketing-agency/): Discover Found, the Travel Digital Marketing agency revolutionising the industry with Everysearch™. Contact us to elevate your travel marketing today! - [FINTECH](https://www.found.co.uk/sectors/fintech-marketing-agency/): Found is a multi-award-winning Fintech Digital Marketing Agency leveraging Everysearch™ to help fintech brands attract, engage & convert customers. - [ECOMMERCE](https://www.found.co.uk/sectors/ecommerce-marketing-agency/): Discover Found, the Ecommerce Digital Marketing agency revolutionising the industry with Everysearch™. Contact us to elevate your ecommerce company today! - [SAAS](https://www.found.co.uk/sectors/saas-marketing-agency/): Found is a SaaS Digital Marketing Agency leveraging Everysearch™ to help software brands attract, engage, and convert customers. Contact us today! - [FINANCIAL & PROFESSIONAL](https://www.found.co.uk/sectors/financial-services-marketing-agency/): Found is a leading Financial Services Digital Marketing Agency leveraging Everysearch™ to help financial brands attract, engage, and convert customers. - [B2B](https://www.found.co.uk/sectors/b2b-marketing-agency/): Found is a multi-award-winning B2B Digital Marketing Agency leveraging Everysearch™ to help B2B brands attract, engage, and convert customers. - [HOSPITALITY & TRAVEL](https://www.found.co.uk/sectors/hospitality-travel/): Learn more about Found's expertise in the hospitality and travel sectors and our unique Everysearch™ approach that revolutionises the industry. ## Case Studies - [1ST CENTRAL](https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/1st-central/): How Found helped 1st Central drive a 36% reduction in CPA YoY and stay ahead of the curve through innovative Paid Search strategies. - [TOOLSTATION](https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/toolstation/): How Found helped Toolstation drive a 40% uplift YoY and stay ahead of the curve through innovative Paid Search strategies. - [EDF ENERGY](https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/edf-energy/): How Found helped EDF drive a 95% lead increase through Paid Search auditing and consultancy. - [CHAMPNEYS](https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/champneys/): How Found helped Champneys drive a 35% revenue uplift through targeted PPC strategy. - [THE CLERMONT HOTEL](https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/the-clermont-hotel/): How Found drove 56% more blog traffic for The Clermont Hotel through SEO content activity. - [HOXTON](https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/hoxton/): How Found helped the Hoxton drive a 60% revenue uplift YoY on Meta whilst maintaining an efficient use of spend across international campaigns. - [BLACKHAWK NETWORK](https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/black-hawk-network/): How Found helped One4All drive a 194% revenue uplift through Meta Advertising campaigns. - [VITA STUDENT](https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/vita-student/): How Found gained 15.3M impressions and 90K social clicks for Vita Student by a creative influencer and paid social campaign on Meta, TikTok & Snapchat. - [TRUST PAYMENTS](https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/trust-payments/): How Found drove 51% more blog traffic for Trust Payments through SEO content optimisation activity. - [ONE4ALL](https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/one-4-all/): How Found helped One4All drive a 116% conversion uplift through targeted PPC campaign activity. - [SECRET SALES](https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/secret-sales/): How Found helped Secret Sales unlock more than a £1m in incremental profit through an AI-driven paid search strategy. - [CLERMONT HOTEL GROUP](https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/clermont-hotel-data-ai/): How Found helped Clermont Hotel Group bridge the gap between data & hospitality to drive a remarkable guest experience through data. - [RANDSTAD](https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/randstad-video/): How Found launches a unique Women in Work campaign to coincide with International Women's Day. The results were brilliant with national press coverage. - [ALLCLEAR](https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/all-clear/): How Found increased visibility of non-branded terms by 292% by optimising the site for keyword opportunities and improving its technical navigation. - [FENDER](https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/fender-dont-fret/): How Found gained 8.9m impressions on YouTube for Fender by a clever Paid Media ad YouTube campaign which was a fine-tuned approach to audience targeting. - [QUESTBACK](https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/questback/): How Found increased organic traffic by 134% YoY following a full SEO strategy, including supporting Questback's team across a full site migration. - [YOUTH HOSTELS ASSOCIATION (YHA)](https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/yha/): How Found produced outstanding video content marketing for the YHA leading to an ROI of 532%, 1.3m impressions and links from travel publications. - [RANDSTAD](https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/randstad-wiw/): How Found launched a unique Women in Work campaign to coincide with International Women's Day. The results were brilliant with national press coverage. - [FUNKY PIGEON](https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/funky-pigeon/): How Found helped Funky Pigeon drive a 224% YoY paid uplift and 1644% ROI during Father's Day. Read the low-down on it and other great paid search results. - [CLARKS ORIGINALS](https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/clarks-originals-wallabees/): How Found gained 69k likes and comments for Clarks with creative influencer marketing campaigns, ensuring genuine followers and an authentic brand fit. - [BONMARCHÉ](https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/bonmarche/): How Found increased Bonmarche's Paid ROI by 194% YoY with an efficiently executed paid campaign, social support and re-engagement & remarketing. - [CLERMONT HOTEL GROUP](https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/clermont-hotel-group/): How Found made CRO improvements to the booking bar across hotel pages helping to drive a significant increase in conversion rate. - [BONMARCHÉ](https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/bonmarche-cro/): How Found drove an additional £777,951 in revenue from the Bonmarche site through CRO A/B testing activity. - [BONMARCHÉ](https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/bonmarche-pinterest/): - [TAYLOR & FRANCIS](https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/taylor-francis/): How Found gave clear next steps on how to drive digital marketing value across multiple channels using the Luminr platform insights. - [THE CLERMONT HOTEL](https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/the-clermont-hotel-seo/): How Found assisted The Clermont Hotel brand in migrating their websites to a new domain as part of a re-brand. - [ROOMEX](https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/roomex/): How Found drove high-quality leads for Roomex through tailored PPC strategy to effectively target and capture desired audiences. - [HOUSE OF MARLEY](https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/house-of-marley/): How Found helped House of Marley to reach a 22.3m target audience through a diverse influencer and paid social campaign. ## Posts - [2025 B2B Marketing Trends](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/2025-b2b-marketing-trends/): Explore the top 2025 B2B marketing trends, including AI, content, and data-driven strategies to drive growth and stay ahead in the competitive landscape. - [2025 Ecommerce Marketing Trends](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/2025-ecommerce-marketing-trends/): Discover the top 2025 ecommerce marketing trends & statistics. Stay ahead with insights on growth, consumer behaviour, and digital strategies for success. - [Hotel PPC Ads: The Complete Guide to Hotel Advertising](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/hotel-ppc-ads-the-complete-guide-to-hotel-advertising/): Master Hotel PPC Ads with this complete guide. Optimise your hotel advertising strategy for better visibility and more bookings. - [The CRO process: How to optimise your website ](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-cro-process-how-to-optimise-your-website/): Discover how to optimise your website with a proven CRO process. Learn to identify friction points, develop actionable test ideas, and refine user journeys to boost conversions and enhance user experience. - [Social media as a search engine ](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/social-media-as-a-search-engine/): 40% of Gen Z now use social media as search engines. Learn how social media platforms like TikTok are transforming how we discover and consume information. - [Why Isn’t My Brand Appearing In AI Search Tools?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/why-isnt-my-brand-appearing-in-ai-search-tools/): Why Isn’t My Brand Appearing in AI Search Tools? - [Mastering SEO for Travel Websites: Tips and Strategies](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/seo-for-travel-websites-tips-and-strategies/): Discover proven strategies to boost traffic and conversions on your travel website with this comprehensive guide to travel SEO tips. - [2025 SEO landscape and Google Algorithm updates](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/2025-seo-landscape-and-google-algorithm-updates/): A comprehensive guide explaining all the major Google algorithm updates in 2025. Learn about the SEO landscape today. - [How to Succeed with Reddit Ads: A Beginner’s Guide](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/how-to-succeed-with-reddit-ads-a-beginners-guide/): Learn to succeed with Reddit Ads. This beginner's guide covers advantages, ad types and best practices for your brand to succeed. - [Best AI Marketing Tools for Success in 2025](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/best-ai-marketing-tools-for-success-in-2025/): Accelerate growth in 2025 with top AI marketing tools that enhance efficiency by automating campaigns and activities, driving scalability like never before. - [Paid Social Trends For 2025](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/paid-social-trends-for-2025/): Found Paid Social team have provided their expert insights and knowledge into the biggest Paid Social trends for 2025. Take a look… - [Agency In The Spotlight Webinar](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/a-round-up-from-our-recent-exclusive-agency-in-the-spotlight-webinar-with-producthero/): Last week, our Director of Growth, Harry Calvin Williams, and Senior PPC Account Manager, Ella-Rose Hatchwell took to the screens across the globe in an exclusive Webinar series, Agency In The Spotlight.  - [2025 Travel Trends You Need to Know](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/here-are-10-of-the-key-travel-trends-that-uk-businesses-and-marketers-need-to-know-to-stay-ahead-of-the-curve-and-competitors/): Here are 10 of the key travel trends that UK businesses and marketers need to know to stay ahead of the curve and competitors.  - [Reddit's AI Search Tool: What you need to know and how it could transform your digital strategy](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/reddits-ai-search-tool-what-you-need-to-know/): Reddit has made waves with its revamped AI-powered search tool, signalling a new era for how users and brands interact with the platform. - [Introducing FoundLabs](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/introducing-foundlabs/): We’re excited to announce the launch of FoundLabs, our dedicated innovation hub designed to revolutionise how we work across the Tomorrow Group.  - [The Ultimate Guide to the B2B Buyer's Journey with Everysearch™](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-ultimate-guide-to-the-b2b-buyers-journey-with-everysearch/): The B2B buyer's journey has changed. Learn how to apply the unique Everysearch™ approach to help your B2B business navigate the digital landscape successfully. - [Navigating Google’s AI Overviews](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/navigating-googles-ai-overviews/): Optimise your site for AI-driven search results like Google’s AI Overviews with actionable tips to boost visibility and adapt to evolving SEO trends. - [2025 Hospitality Marketing Trends: Going Beyond Traditional Search Engines](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/2025-hospitality-marketing-trends-going-beyond-traditional-search-engines/): Discover the latest hospitality marketing trends to supercharge your digital marketing strategy in 2025. Read our guide today. - [Driving Industry-Leading Success: Found Wins at the UK Search Awards](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-wins-at-the-uk-search-awards/): We’re thrilled to announce that Found has been honoured with the Best Use of Search – B2C for large agencies award at the prestigious UK Search Awards. - [JavaScript SEO Best Practices](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/javascript-seo-best-practices/): Learn how JavaScript impacts SEO and how Google handles JS sites. Explore best practices to optimise your site for improved visibility and performance. - [Reputation Management: How to Manage Your Business Reputation Online](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/reputation-management-how-to-manage-your-business-reputation-online/): Explore strategies for managing your business reputation online to enhance trust & increase visibility. Read our comprehensive guide to Reputation Management. - [How to Craft Effective SEO Meta Descriptions for Your Ecommerce Website](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/meta-descriptions-for-ecommerce/): Learn to craft effective SEO meta descriptions for your ecommerce site. Boost click-through rates with our expert tips and strategies. - [Navigating Privacy Changes: PPC strategies in a Cookieless world](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/navigating-privacy-changes-ppc-strategies-in-a-cookieless-world/): Google’s much anticipated ‘Cookieless Future’ is finally upon us. Here is what you need to know about it all. - [Blue Sky: Exploring New Horizons in Social Media Platforms](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/exploring-new-horizons-in-social-media-platforms/): Jamie Klingler explores new social media platform Blue Sky and shares her thoughts on this new horizon in social media. - [Everything is Influenced](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/everything-is-influenced/): Stevie Johnson, MD of Disrupt (Found’s sister company), delves into the ever evolving landscape of influencer marketing at Web Summit.  - [Black Friday 2024 in the UK: Trends and Tips for Businesses](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/black-friday-2024-in-the-uk-trends-and-tips-for-businesses/): Here are key insights into what UK businesses can expect this Black Friday and how they can capitalise on emerging trends. - [Optimising Google Shopping Ads for Black Friday](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/optimising-google-shopping-ads-for-black-friday/): This guide outlines effective strategies to ensure your Google Shopping Ads campaigns are prepared to capture the surge in online shopping activity across the Black Friday season. - [The Benefits of Partnering with a PPC Agency](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-benefits-of-partnering-with-a-ppc-agency/): Looking to accelerate your paid search performance? Learn about the benefits of working with a reputable PPC agency. Read our guide. - [Found. & Edyn: Global Partnership](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-x-edyn-global-partnership/): Leading digital marketing agency, Found, The Everysearch™ Agency, has been appointed by hospitality powerhouse Edyn, to spearhead its digital organic presence. - [6 Steps to a Successful PPC Brand Bidding Strategy](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/6-steps-to-a-successful-ppc-brand-bidding-strategy/): Learn how to implement effective strategies and techniques to help you successfully optimise PPC brand bidding campaigns. Read our guide. - [Pinterest Insights for 2024](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/pinterest-insights-for-2024/): As we prepare for the festive season, Pinterest appears to be a space where a new breed of “High-Action Festive Shoppers” is emerging. - [Best SEO Agencies in the UK](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/best-seo-agencies/): Explore the Top 10 SEO agencies with reviews and pricing details. Compare expert services to find the best fit for your business and boost your online presence! - [Watch "Navigating audience complexities: A CMO's blueprint for sustainable growth"](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/watch-navigating-audience-complexities-a-cmos-blueprint-for-sustainable-growth/): We were delighted to attend, and deliver a keynote speech at, the 2024 GDS Summit in Ireland and now have a full recording of our session, “Navigating audience complexities: A CMO's blueprint for sustainable growth” available for you to watch upon request. - [2024 SEO Landscape: Key Google Search Algorithm Updates](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/2024-seo-landscape-key-google-search-algorithm-updates/): A comprehensive guide explaining all the major Google algorithm updates in 2024. Learn about the SEO landscape today. - [EVERYSEARCH™ x TRAVEL: The year of the Friendcation ](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/everysearch-x-travel-the-year-of-the-friendcation/): With travel having largely recovered from the pandemic challenges, we’re starting to see a key evolution in group audience behaviour. - [What is the AIDA Model? Examples & Uses](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/what-is-the-aida-model-examples-uses/): What is the AIDA Model? Learn about the AIDA Model and how to use it in marketing to win customers. Read our guide today. - [THE FUTURE OF PPC: KEY TRENDS TO WATCH OUT FOR IN THE REMAINDER OF 2024](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-future-of-ppc/): 2024's PPC landscape has been thrilling with AI and machine learning leading the charge. As H1 ends, here are our insights on what to expect for the rest of the year in Search. - [VIDEO ADS IN PPC: BEST PRACTICES FOR 2024](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/video-ads-in-ppc-best-practices-for-2024/): Video ad investment is growing rapidly, outpacing overall digital advertising growth. Here we explore how this shift has come about. - [AI in Marketing: How Found Utilises AI to Transform Digital Marketing Campaigns](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/ai-in-marketing-how-found-utilises-ai-to-transform-digital-marketing-campaigns/): Want to use AI in your marketing? Learn about AI and how Found utilises it to transform digital marketing campaigns. - [The Impact of Social Media on PPC: Trends & Tactics](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-impact-of-social-media-on-ppc-trends-tactics/): The biggest change in search behaviour over the last few years hasn't been happening on ‘Search’ at all. Instead, the masses have been turning to Social platforms to perform searches. - [How to Plan a Website Redesign in 7 Steps: The Ultimate Guide](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/how-to-plan-a-website-redesign-in-7-steps-the-ultimate-guide/): Discover the ultimate guide to planning a website redesign in 7 easy steps. Our guide walks you through essential steps for a successful transformation. - [Harnessing the Power of AI in PPC Campaigns](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/harnessing-the-power-of-ai-in-ppc/): When it comes to PPC, the latest AI advancements should be treated as opportunities for evolution. Here's why. - [Found win 'Best use of Google Media' at the Independent Agency Awards 2024](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-win-best-use-of-google-media-at-the-independent-agency-awards-2024/): We’re delighted to share the news that Found has won 'Best use of Google Media' at this year’s Independent Agency Awards. - [10 Best SaaS Digital Marketing Strategies for 2024](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/10-best-saas-digital-marketing-strategies-for-2024/): Learn how to implement effective strategies and techniques to help your SaaS business navigate the digital landscape successfully in 2024. Read our guide. - [The Future of Search Marketing: Introducing Everysearch™ Approach](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-future-of-search-marketing-introducing-everysearch-approach/): The search landscape has undergone a significant shift, extending way beyond traditional search engines in recent years. Here is the future of search marketing. - [We're a 2024 Great Place to Work for Development](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/were-a-2024-great-place-to-work-for-development/): We've made it onto the prestigious Great Place to Work for Development list in the Medium Category. This is a brand-new category for 2024, - [Found Invest in Everysearch™](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-invest-in-everysearch/): Found invests £1 million to create UK-first audience insight technology. - [Everysearch™: A Transformative Digital Marketing Strategy](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/everysearch-a-transformative-digital-marketing-strategy/): A good digital marketing strategy is fundamentally a good business strategy. Today, every customer and client operates in a digital... - [SEOmonitor: AI Overviews Integration](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/seomonitor-sge-insights-integration/): The integration of AI Overviews into SEOmonitor’s platform is poised to be a game-changer for SEO professionals. Here’s how this... - [Google's Third-Party Cookie Update](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/googles-third-party-cookie-update/): Google calls off third-party cookie updates again. Our Head of SEO and resident Google expert, Dan Fernandez, explains everything you need to know about the latest updates.  - [Highlights from Google Marketing Live 2024](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/highlights-from-google-marketing-live-2024/): Last week, Google Marketing Live 2024 offered an exciting glimpse into the future of advertising, showcasing how artificial intelligence (AI)... - [Search in the Gemini era](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/search-in-the-gemini-era/): Following the Google I/O 2024 announcements, Google have released a teaser video of how generative AI in Search is going to be evolving with the power of their new custom Gemini model - [Embracing AI for Enhanced Strategies](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/embracing-ai-for-enhanced-strategies/): As we continue to navigate the changes that come from the fusion of AI with traditional SEO practises, staying updated and adaptable is more crucial than ever. - [The Best Google Optimize Alternatives for Experimentation](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-best-google-optimize-alternatives-for-experimentation/): In case you haven’t caught wind of the news, Google has made it official: Optimize will bid farewell by the... - [Career Progression in Paid Media](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/career-progression-in-paid-media/): Progressing through the levels as a Paid Media professional is hard. So, we've broken down the key skills for each level: Account Exec, Account Manager and Account Director. - [Found shortlisted for 7 UK Search Awards](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-shortlisted-for-7-uk-search-awards/): We're delighted to share the news that Found have been shortlisted in SEVEN categories at this year's UK Search Awards! - [BEST PPC AGENCIES IN THE UK](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/top-10-ppc-agencies/): Choosing the right PPC agency to trust can be a thrilling yet challenging endeavour. We’ve crafted a list of the top PPC agencies to help you on your way. - [Embracing uncertainty & getting comfortable with optimising the grey](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/embracing-uncertainty-getting-comfortable-with-optimising-the-grey/): If you’re still trying to be ‘granular’, ‘maximise control’ or ‘join every dot’ with your digital advertising then t’s time to let go and embrace a new way of working. - [Found become ISO 27001:2013 Certified](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-become-iso-270012013-certified/): We’re absolutely delighted to become ISO 27001 certified, a globally recognised standard for information security management systems. This achievement is a testament to our unwavering commitment to protecting our client and employee data and maintaining the highest standards of information security and we couldn’t be prouder. - [A Day in the Life: Harrison Wright](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/harrison-wright/): Harrison Wright (an Client Experience Manager here at Found) discusses his role and what his day-to-day looks like at our, London-based, digital marketing agency. - [How to use Reverse Image Search](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/how-to-use-reverse-image-search/): Reverse Image Search is a powerful tool that enables you to search the internet using images instead of words. It allows you to find similar images, discover where your images are being used, and gauge their popularity. - [A Day in the Life: Will Harman](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/will-harman/): Will Harman (an SEO Account Director here at Found) discusses his role and what his day-to-day looks like at our, London-based, digital marketing agency. - [The 10 phases of planning a website](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-10-phases-of-planning-a-website/): Planning a website properly is no easy feat. So, our experts have put together a list of the 10 phases you should work your way through as part of your website design planning process. - [Found Table Ep.2 | Google Analytics 4 (2/2)](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-table-ep-2-google-analytics-4-2-2/): Today, we’re going to share the second half of our latest Found Table session with you; diving into the key benefits of transitioning over to GA4 and discussing the benefits of using GA4… - [Found Table Ep.1 | Google Analytics 4 (1/2)](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-table-ep-2-google-analytics-4-1-2/): Come the first of July, Universal Analytics is going to stop processing all data so it is imperative that brands take this super seriously and transition over to GA4 as soon as possible. So, in this article we discuss the points amde in our recent Found Table session all about GA4. - [Setting up reporting in GA4](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/reporting-in-ga4/): We're going to talk through the process of setting up GA4 and explain some of its key reporting features. - [The main differences between GA4 & UA](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-main-differences-between-ga4-ua/): With the switch from Universal Analytics (UA) to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) happening on the 1st of July 2023, we're keen to explore the main differences between GA4 and UA. - [UA vs GA4: WHAT YOU RISK FROM NOT SWITCHING](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/what-you-risk-from-not-switching-to-google-analytics-4-ga4/): Understand the impact of not switching to Google Analytics 4 this July and see how it compares to Universal Analytics. Read more at Found. - [What is Google Analytics 4?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/what-is-google-analytics-4/): Google Analytics 4 is the next generation of Google Analytics, replacing Google's Universal Analytics tool, which is sunsetting on 1st July 2023. - [Google Marketing Live 2023: 6 Top Announcements](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-marketing-live-2023-6-top-announcements/): There were lots of announcements made at this year's Google Live event and we know that (sometimes) it can be overwhelming to hear all of the news in one go. So, we've had our Paid Performance experts through all of their notes and highlight the 6 most important announcements, so that we could discuss them with you all here. - [5 SEO tips for blog content in 2024](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/5-seo-tips-for-blog-content-in-2023/): We share our highlights of what you should look to do to make the most of your blog content in 2024. - [Google Search Generative Experience: The Future of Search](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-search-generative-experience-the-future-of-search/): Last week, Google held its annual developer conference, Google I/O, and we got a glimpse into the newest plans for an ever-evolving Search landscape with the introduction of Search Generative AI. So, let's discuss it... - [GOOGLE'S THE MESSY MIDDLE MARKETING MODEL](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-messy-middle-marketing-model/): In this article, Harry Calvin Williams (Business Director | Found.) talks through the complex entanglement of advertising and consumer purchase decision making, and how this resulted in him choosing just one product out of the many thousands of options available online. - [The Client-Agency Relations Essentials: Trust & Transparency](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/trust-transparency-the-client-agency-relations-essentials/): In this article, we'll look at why a positive relationship with your marketing agency is critical for brand success. - [2025 Best Practices for Domain Migration](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/2023-best-practices-for-domain-migration/): Migrating a website to a new domain or changing its structure can be a daunting task. It requires caution and attention to detail to avoid any negative consequences, such as lost traffic and lower rankings. So here are some best practice guidelines to follow as you gear up for your next site migration… - [Reading Recommendations from World Book Day 2023](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/reading-recommendations-from-world-book-day-2023/): For World Book Day last week, our staff went on social media to recommend books to their online networks. We thought it’d be a good idea to collate their personal recommendations here, in a single blog post, for you. - [TikTok is becoming the 'New Google' for Gen-Z](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/tiktok-is-becoming-the-new-google-for-gen-z/): 40% of Gen-Z prefer using TikTok and Instagram over Google to search. What does this mean for digital marketers and how can brands ensure they aren’t left behind? - [Joining the Flexa100 for 2023](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/joining-the-flexa100-for-2023/): We've come 11th in this year's Flexa100 - an independently verified listing of the Top 100 most flexible companies to work for! - [Google Optimize Sunsetting](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-optimize-sunsetting/): It’s recently been announced that Google is sunsetting its A/B testing platform Google Optimize on September 23rd 2023. So, let’s talk about what that means for your business and what you’re going to need to do before September rolls around. - [A Beginners Guide to ChatGPT in SEO](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/a-beginners-guide-to-chatgpt-in-seo/): We’ve taken a look into ChatGPT and some of the best ways we can utilise it to make us more productive.  - [Our Organic Search Team's 2022 Highlights](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/our-organic-search-teams-2022-highlights/): We asked our Organic Search experts; What have they actually learnt from 2022? What have they seen this year that's got them really excited? And (when they reflect on 2022) what do they consider to be a real SEO highlight or development? - [Google E-E-A-T: What It Is & How It Affects SEO](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/whats-the-new-e-in-e-e-a-t/): E-A-T has been with us for a while, so let’s do a refresh of what that means. - [Intentional Communication - Future of Work Skill](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/future-of-work-skill-intentional-communication/): Learn why intentional communication is crucial for the future of work. Discover how it can enhance collaboration and success in the workplace. - [A COLOSSAL F*CUP: The reception of BrewDog’s Anti-Sponsorship campaign across social media](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/a-colossal-fcup-the-reception-of-brewdogs-anti-sponsorship-campaign-across-social-media/): Experts discuss BrewDog's World Cup sponsorship, social media reactions, and the firm's response to the criticism it received. - [Content response: Are Gen Z less resilient?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/content-response-are-gen-z-less-resilient/): 'I have a fear that Gen Z are the least resilient generation that I've ever seen.' - Steven Bartlett. Let's discuss. - [Performance Max: A new age of paid search marketing](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/performance-max-a-new-age-of-search/): Google has recently launched its newest campaign type; Performance Max (PMax). - [The future of link building: Trends and Strategies for 2025](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-changing-world-of-link-building/): Explore link building trends and strategies for 2025. Learn how to adapt your tactics to create high-quality links and enhance your SEO performance. - [Are Marketers more interested in Elon Musk than the looming impact of a cookieless future?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/are-marketers-more-interested-in-elon-musk-than-the-looming-impact-of-a-cookieless-future/): Analysis from Found's sister company (Braidr) has shown that most CMOs fail to grasp the importance of addressing the inevitable consequences of a future without cookies. - [TikTok SEO: How to Optimise TikToks for Google](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/five-ways-to-to-optimise-tiktok-content-for-google/): Discover how to optimise TikTok Content for Google with our handy guide. Read our top 5 TikTok SEO techniques to help grow your brand. - [Found thoughts: Google’s ‘Reimagining Search - Any Way, Anywhere’ talk](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-thoughts-googles-reimagining-search-any-way-anywhere-talk/): Every day, people look to Google for the answers to billions of questions: some simple, many increasingly complex, and others that can’t always be put into words. - [TOTAL SEARCH: THE HOLISTIC FUTURE OF DIGITAL MARKETING](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/total-search-the-holistic-future-of-digital-marketing/): The term 'Total Search' may be one that you're already familiar with. If not, the concept is probably something you'll have already seen but didn't know you had.  - [Google Shopping features for Ecommerce advertisers](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/what-are-the-latest-google-shopping-features-for-e-commerce-advertisers/): Discover the latest Google Shopping features to enhance targeting, boost visibility, and drive sales. Learn how to optimise ecommerce campaigns effectively. - [SEO for Reputation Management](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/seo-for-reputation-management/): As well as the ability to increase brand awareness, generate leads and sales SEO can also play a key part in demonstrating and controlling your brand reputation. - [Found recognised as a Great Place to Work](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-recognised-as-a-great-place-to-work/): It’s been another fantastic year for Found, and for the first year, as Tomorrow Group submitting in the Great Places... - [Google Analytics 4. What does the future of Analytics mean for you?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-analytics-4-what-does-the-future-of-analytics-mean-for-you/): What does the future of analytics hold for you? Explore our guide on Google Analytics 4 and stay ahead today. - [Digital PR Explained](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/digital-pr-explained/): Digital PR is often confused with other online activity, from spammy link building to fluffy content creation but here we explain what it is and how, when it’s done right, can deliver strong and tangible results for a business or brand. - [What is the Ideal Bounce Rate for a website?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/what-is-the-ideal-bounce-rate-for-a-website/): Bounce rate will differ by page, by search term and by search intent.  There is no universal “good” or “bad” number. - [15 Top PPC Tips For Black Friday Success](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/15-top-ppc-tips-for-black-friday-success/): Black Friday weekend is one of the biggest events for retailers, and it is a great event to manage within PPC. - [New London agency group launches to deliver the future of digital experience](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/tomorrow-launch/): We are delighted to announce the launch of a new group collective, Tomorrow. Made up of Found, Disrupt – our social and influencer agency – and Braidr - our newly-created data technology company. - [Faster Keyword Research for Google Ads with Super Keyword Planner](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/super-keyword-planner/): Super Keyword Planner gets keyword ideas & metrics for planning Google Ads campaigns more quickly, supercharging the research we do for client growth. - [Google I/O 2021: Key advancements in Search & Shopping](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-i-o-2021-key-advancements-in-search/): Earlier this month Google I/O came to our screens with a huge amount of content, news, updates, and advancements discussed over the event. - [First-party data: What, why and how?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/first-party-data-what-why-and-how/): First-party data isn’t new, but more and more companies are looking at how they can use it as the marketing... - [4 Things To Consider Before Hiring A Digital Marketing Agency](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/4-things-to-consider-when-appointing-a-digital-marketing-agency/): Searching for an agency partner can feel like an overwhelming process, especially if you’re not familiar with the services you’re enquiring about. - [How to explain complex ideas simply](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/seo-is-like-x-factor-how-to-explain-complex-ideas/): Learn how using relatable analogies can simplify complex SEO ideas, helping clients better understand the steps and strategies for improving rankings. - [Great Place To Work 2021 Awards: Team culture in a pandemic](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/great-place-to-work-2021-awards-team-culture-in-a-pandemic/): We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve been awarded 10th place in this year’s Great Place to Work Awards 2021 (medium category)... - [How To Optimise PDFs For SEO](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/dealing-with-pdfs-an-seos-guide/): There might be instances in which Google encounters non-HTML files such as PDF documents and determines they deserve to rank higher than HTML pages.  This behaviour may not always be desirable. - [How to find growth opportunities in a complex digital landscape](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/how-to-find-effective-growth-opportunities-in-a-complex-digital-landscape/): There are many routes to achieving digital growth, however finding those which are most effective from a cost, time, and longevity perspective is where a challenge presents itself. - [Road to Data Scientist: What the role is and how you get there](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/road-to-data-scientist-what-the-role-is-and-how-you-get-there/): “What is a data scientist?” – this is a question I've asked myself since I first heard about the role. - [LUMINR](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/luminr/): Google Search is always changing, meaning complete visibility over the SERP is a necessity. - [Google's Product Reviews update - what does it mean for Search?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/googles-product-reviews-update-what-does-it-mean-for-search/): On Thursday 8th April 2021, Google announced the rollout of a new Product Reviews update which only involves English language... - [Technical SEO Audit: 5 Key Issues to Cover](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/5-things-to-look-for-in-a-technical-audit/): When it comes to technical audits, a lot of people just rely on the outputs of tools to inform where the focus should be. - [Death of a metric (Bye Bounce Rate)](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/death-of-a-metric-bye-bounce-rate/): RIP bounce rate. The bounce wasn’t long for this world, finally saying goodbye last year. As you may have heard,... - [What are the Google News & Google Discover Manual Action penalties?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/what-are-the-google-news-google-discover-manual-action-penalties/): In February 2021, 12 new types of manual action penalties were released for violations in Google News and Google Discover,... - [Mining Social Media Data for Marketing Projects](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/mining-social-media-data-for-marketing-projects/): Mining is a use of data science techniques to unearth hidden patterns buried in text; expounding the findings into something useful is where mined ore might be chiselled into a masterpiece of insight.  - [Local SEO Guide – Tips for Getting your Business Noticed](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/local-seo-business-noticed/): The landscape of local SEO has been rapidly changing. So we’re giving you four invaluable tips for getting your business noticed. - [International Women's Day: A dive into our stats](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/international-womens-day-2021-a-dive-into-our-stats/): International Women's Day is an incredibly important event in the strive for equality around the world, celebrating the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women globally. - [We're a top 25 UK digital agency!](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/were-a-top-25-uk-digital-agency/): Towards the end of 2020, The Drum conducted a peer poll survey of over 320 agencies to discover which of... - [The 4 Fundamentals to a Modern Google Search Ads Account Structure](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-4-fundamentals-to-a-modern-google-search-account-structure/): Over the last few years search advertising has changed. Learn about the 4 Fundamentals of a Modern Google Search Ads Account Structure here. - [THE CURSE OF KNOWLEDGE IN DIGITAL MARKETING](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-curse-of-knowledge-in-digital-marketing/): The curse of knowledge not only impacts how we communicate daily, but also effects how digital marketers deliver their work and approach their clients. - [What does Apple's new iOS 14 update mean for paid social?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/what-does-apples-new-ios-14-update-mean-for-paid-social/): Last year, Apple announced that the new iOS14 would give users more power to opt in and out of sharing... - [6 Reasons to Hire a Paid Media Agency](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/do-you-need-a-paid-media-agency/): Do you really need an Agency for my PPC, Paid Social or Display Activity? Let's help you figure that out! - [SEO TRENDS 2021](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/seo-trends-2021/): The last 12 months have seen a significant change in consumer behaviour due to Covid-19. Online retailers have experienced unprecedented revenue growth and demand for goods delivered to the door has exceeded capacity. - [How to use SEO to meet audience intent](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/how-to-use-seo-to-meet-audience-intent/): Audience intent should be at the heart of your digital strategies, so in this post we look at how to use SEO to meet the needs of your audience. - [3 trends we're sceptical about in 2021](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/3-trends-were-sceptical-about-in-2021/): It’s that time of year again, when everyone likes to make predictions. Coming out of 2020 we’re thinking more cynically.... - [5 trends we're optimistic about in 2021](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/5-trends-were-optimistic-about-in-2021/): Now that we've left 2020 behind, we're looking forward to the trends we think will be big news in 2021. - [Search London's 10th Birthday](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/search-londons-10th-birthday/): Search London is always a hit with the SEO and Digital communities, and this month the event is turning 10... - [20 Great Excel Shortcuts (You might not know about)](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/20-great-excel-shortcuts-you-might-not-know-about/): James Wolman explains and demonstrates some great Excel shortcuts for you to use in your everyday working lives - [Why sea shanties on TikTok were inevitable](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/sea-shanties-tiktok/): You may have seen articles recently talking about the latest TikTok trend to blow up – sea shanties. Puzzling lots... - [Found Recognised with Excellence In Wellbeing award by GPTW](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-recognised-with-excellence-in-wellbeing-award-by-gptw/): 8 months on from ranking 6th in the Great Place to Work Awards 2020, Found have been recognised for another... - [The changing face of SEO](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/changing-face-of-seo/): We’ve heard the saying “SEO is dead”, and from the stories I could tell, it'd be easy to believe it is. SEO isn’t what it once was, but that isn’t a bad thing. - [Reddit Roundtable: Data Science In Digital Marketing](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/reddit-roundtable-data-science-in-digital-marketing/): In a nutshell, data science gives answers to the things we don’t know that we don’t know. (Whereas data analytics tends to solve problems for questions we know we don’t have the answers to). - [5 ways to make digital more accessible](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/5-ways-to-make-digital-more-accessible/): Accessibility online can be taken for granted by abled people. What does this mean and what can we do about... - [Beyond Google: Diversifying Your Marketing Strategy for Success](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/are-marketing-strategies-too-reliant-on-google/): Is your marketing too reliant on Google? Discover the benefits of diversifying your strategy to reach new audiences and reduce platform dependence. - [Local Search 2020](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/local-search-2020/): This post acts as a summary of the talk and assumes some level of knowledge of local search ranking factors and experience using Google My Business. - [The Influencer Pay Gap - What is a "fair" price?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/putting-a-price-on-influence-what-is-fair/): Standardising fees for influencers may be unattainable but certain principles should become the norm: respect, equality, and fair negotiation. - [Long Term SEO Strategy: Do we ever finish optimising a site?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/long-term-seo-strategy-do-we-ever-finish-optimising-a-site/): As we approach the end of a tumultuous year it’s likely that, after reviewing performance, attention will turn to where marketing budgets should be allocated for 2021 or the 2021/22 financial year. - [2021 Planning: What Should Your Digital Marketing Strategy Look Like](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/2021-planning-what-should-your-digital-marketing-strategy-look-like/): This year has been exceptional due to the pandemic – advertising budgets have been squeezed and consumer behaviours have changed dramatically. The size of the economic fallout is still being gauged but it is likely to be the most significant event in most of our lifetimes. - [Saving Time with Keyword Research Automation](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/keyword-harvester/): Automating keyword research using a Google Colabs notebook built to harness the semRush API is a frictionless method that saves time and effort. - [Tracking the Shopping SERPs Part II: Analysis](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/tracking-the-shopping-serps-part-ii-analysis/): In October we released an article teasing an analysis of the shopping SERPs being rolled out to the UK. - [Design Thinking: How to evaluate ideas](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/design-thinking-how-to-evaluate-ideas/): If you’ve just come out of a mega ideation session, and you’re not sure whether the ideas you came up with are good or trash. This blog is here to help. - [How to Expand Internationally with PPC](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/how-to-target-foreign-markets-with-adwords/): Read our top tips and areas to consider when beginning to build a successful international PPC campaign using adwords. - [4 Data-Led Tips to Drive Performance Through COVID](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/4-data-led-tips-to-drive-performance-through-covid/): The tips in this guide focus on understanding user behaviour across your site, many businesses have seen a complete shift in their audience and conversion behaviours. - [5 Handy Tips for Preparing your Forecasts in Excel](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/5-handy-tips-for-preparing-your-forecasts-in-excel/): As an accountant by trade I can sometimes feel like a duck out of water in the world of digital... - [Black Friday and Cyber Monday Checklist 2024](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/black-friday-and-cyber-monday-checklist/): Dominate Black Friday & Cyber Monday with our ultimate checklist. From bold deals to powerful tactics, set your brand up for success this holiday season! - [Black Friday SEO: Tips to Boost Product Sales](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/products-on-page-copy-targeting-nailing-black-friday-seo/): Nail for Black Friday SEO Strategy with our top tips on optimising your products, nailing your on-page experience and targeting the right audience. - [A Guide to Virtual Meetings](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/a-guide-to-virtual-meetings/): Lockdown brought many things into our lives from banana bread to virtual quizzes. Whilst some things have been left behind... - [Tracking the Shopping SERPs](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/tracking-the-shopping-serps/): Now Google has begun rolling out the Organic listings for Google Shopping in the UK, we wanted to know how... - [Happy Birthday Found! 10 years and counting...](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/happy-birthday-found-10-years-and-counting/): They say time flies when you’re having fun but I didn’t think that applied to a whole decade... as October... - [Found wins at The UK Digital Growth Awards 2020](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-wins-at-the-uk-digital-growth-awards-2020/): Now you might’ve seen a blog post from us a few weeks ago, talking about how we’d been shortlisted in... - [6 Simple tips to help optimise your e-commerce site](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/6-simple-tips-to-help-optimise-your-e-commerce-site/): Some of the most common drivers of organic success across e-commerce sites are simple to implement and can see quick... - [What's New with Google Tag Manager: Partial Exports and Bulk Actions](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/whats-new-with-google-tag-manager-partial-exports-and-bulk-actions/): The analytics team here at Found have been enjoying the small but impactful releases Google had been rolling out this... - [3 New Enhanced Google Features announced - Search On 2020](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/new-enhanced-google-features-search-on/): We know that search has evolved beyond the simple text to answer retrieval method - we can search through traditional means or newer ones like voice and now even our smartphone cameras.  - [New Advancements in Search - Search On 2020](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/new-advancements-in-search-search-on-2020/): “Search will never be a solved problem; we will never stop on the quest to perfect search. ” At Search... - [Delivering a Higher Standard of Google Search - Search On 2020](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/delivering-a-higher-standard-of-google-search-search-on-2020/): This evening Google hosted Search On, their online summit to introduce the latest in AI developments being added to search.... - [5 Stats that show digital landscape is changing and adapting during the pandemic](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/5-stats-that-show-digital-landscape-is-changing-and-adapting-during-the-pandemic/): This piece looks at 5 ways digital landscape has adapted to thrive during these extraordinary times. This piece looks at 5 ways digital landscape has adapted to thrive during these extraordinary times.  - [Design Thinking: The Ultimate Guide to Ideation](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/design-thinking-the-ultimate-guide-to-ideation/): Explore the ultimate guide to ideation with design thinking. Learn creative techniques to solve problems, spark innovation, and drive meaningful results. - [Why it's ok for your team to not feel ok right now](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/why-its-ok-for-your-team-to-not-feel-ok-right-now/): Since the pandemic took hold in March this year, we were thrown into a situation we’ve never been in before.... - [Free Google Shopping listings come to the UK](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/free-google-shopping-listings-come-to-the-uk/): If you work in ecommerce, you probably remember the news from April this year about Google opening up Shopping to offer free listings for merchants in the US - [10 tips for a successful site build and migration](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/10-tips-for-a-successful-site-build-and-migration/): Site migrations can make or break a website. For many the choice to migrate is driven by a need for freedom to drive growth across your site. - [Found Shortlisted For The UK Digital Growth Awards 2020](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-shortlisted-for-the-uk-digital-growth-awards-2020/): More excitement for everyone here at Found as we’ve been shortlisted for two awards at The UK Digital Growth Awards.... - [How to use data to inform your SEO strategies](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/using-data-to-inform-seo-strategies/): Every strategy should be designed to meet an objective, and the more information you have to hand before you begin the easier it is going to be to align activity to the end goal. - [The Good, the Bad, and the Oatly: A brand retrospective](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/oatly-brand-retrospective/): Oatly, the brand who made oat milk the monolith of milk alternatives has had a fascinating history with some bold marketing choices. - [A Practical Guide to Data Science in Digital Marketing](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/a-practical-guide-to-data-science-in-digital-marketing/): This article describes a handful of approaches that use data science to huge effect in various digital marketing streams. - [How to do an SEO competitor analysis](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/how-to-do-an-seo-competitor-analysis/): There is no better way than getting the best results from your SEO than by exploring what it is your competitors are doing well, and here’s how to do it. - [Active Listening: The Key Skill for the Future of Work](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/future-of-work-skill-listening/): Discover why active listening is key to the future of work. Learn how mastering this skill enhances communication, collaboration, and leadership. - [Telling LGBTQIA+ stories: Creative Training with the Diversity Standards Collective](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/telling-lgbtqia-stories-creative-training-with-the-diversity-standards-collective/): I recently attended an online webinar from the Diversity Standards Collective on LGBTQIA+ Creative, which I thought warranted sharing in... - [A guide to Google entity recognition](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/a-guide-to-entity-recognition/): It's time to include entity recognition as part of your SEO strategy and here's how. - [Hubspot Automation: Workflows Explained](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/hubspot-automation-workflows-explained/): Learn how HubSpot automation workflows streamline marketing, boost efficiency, and drive results. Create and optimise workflows with ease. - [Most effective SEO tactics and how to apply them](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/underrated-seo-tactics-and-how-to-apply-them/): Apply most effective SEO techniques to improve rankings and drive organic growth. Discover practical tips for technical, on-page, and off-page SEO enhancements you can start today. - [Found Webinar Replay: Demystifying SEO: The Future of SEO ranking factors.](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-webinar-replay-demystifying-seo-the-future-of-seo-ranking-factors/): Last week we hosted another very special webinar all about Search Engine Optimisation and the changing ranking factors. Now if... - [Measuring what matters in digital marketing](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/is-it-all-about-revenue/): When it comes to measuring what matters, is it really all about revenue or are there other metrics you can look at to understand what you’re getting in return for your efforts? - [5D Content: Dimensions to make your content go further](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/make-your-content-go-further/): What is 5D content? A new buzzword? Well, it’s 5 different ways of thinking about content, to make your content go to infinity and beyond.  - [Social shopping is the new normal.](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/social-shopping-is-the-new-normal/): Since the start of the COVID-19 crisis, it’s been clear to brands that they will need to quickly adapt to... - [Found Webinar Replay: Filling Up the Funnel: Strategies for Creating Demand and Thinking Beyond Conversion](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-webinar-replay-filling-up-the-funnel-strategies-for-creating-demand-and-thinking-beyond-conversion/): If you missed our webinar on Thursday 16th July or just want to watch again, then we’ve got you covered.... - [5 Ways To Drive Efficiency in Biddable Campaigns](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/5-ways-to-drive-efficiency-in-biddable-campaigns/): At Found we’re always striving to drive efficiency with everything we do so that we can get more back for... - [Guide to Low Search Volume Keywords](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/looking-beyond-high-volume-keywords/): Discover how low-volume keywords can enhance your SEO strategy. Learn to leverage these often-overlooked terms to drive traffic and boost conversions. - [Agency and Client Partnerships: What does it really mean?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/agency-and-client-partnerships-what-does-it-really-mean/): Every agency says they want to be your partner, working together - but what does this really mean? Lucy explores a true client and agency partnership. - [Strategic Laziness - Automation in Covid-19.](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/strategic-laziness-automation-in-covid-19/): Lockdown has been tiring. If you're feeling drained, it might be decision fatigue so it's time to automate and make the most of your workday instead. - [Good to Grow: Prepping your marketing for the future](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/marketing-for-the-future/): Prepare for the future and its uncertainty through these 4 steps to put you in the best position for growing online. - [An Introduction to SEO for YouTube](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/an-introduction-to-seo-for-youtube/): Every month, over 2 billion people visit YouTube - that’s almost one third of all people on the internet. Every day, people watch more than 1 billion hours of video on YouTube. - [Snapchat is upping its game](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/snapchat-is-upping-its-game/): Interested in adding snapchat to your marketing mix? The social platform has upped its game recently adding new features and some seriously cool tech. - [Found Webinar Replay: Audience Insights: Making Data-Fuelled Decisions.](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-webinar-replay-audience-insights-making-data-fuelled-decisions/): On Thursday 25th June, we hosted another webinar as a continuation of Found’s series. We looked at how, as a... - [The art of asking better questions for digital marketers](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/are-people-being-more-helpful-or-are-we-asking-better-questions/): Are we getting better answers by asking smarter questions? Discover how question quality can impact the value of the answers we receive. - [Most Significant Recent SEO changes in 2020.](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/significant-seo-changes-in-2020/): Search engine algorithms and features change on a near daily basis, indeed Google announced that they made more than 3,200 to their “search systems” in a recent year. - [How to find your perfect long-term influencer](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/long-term-influencer/): Building long-term influencer relationships is key, but harder to justify when quick, campaign-based approaches seem faster and more cost-effective. - [Re-opening your retail stores with online messaging.](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/re-opening-your-retail-stores-with-online-messaging/): With non-essential businesses reopening on June 15th, brands are ensuring readiness through safety measures and effective messaging for customers and staff. - [Black Lives Matter.](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/black-lives-matter/): At Found, we stand against racism. We stand for equality. We have a firm belief that everyone should have an... - [Marketing Through a Recession](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/marketing-through-a-recession/): COVID-19 has disrupted much of our day to day lives; from our work surroundings to putting a pause on seeing our loved ones. We’re all trying to navigate through the ‘new normal’. - [CREATIVES IN CONFINEMENT: UNLOCKING CREATIVITY AND THRIVING](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/creatives-in-confinement/): Discover how creativity thrived during confinement as creatives adapted, innovated, and found new opportunities despite restrictions. - [Dangers of Bad Data](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/dangers-of-bad-data/): The COVID-19 situation has revealed a striking concern in the data community: analysis in a vacuum. - [Found Webinar Slideshare: How to Nail Your Messaging](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-webinar-slideshare-how-to-nail-your-messaging/): Found’s webinar series kicked off on Thursday 28th May with a deep dive into brand messaging. Leena Keshishian, who is... - [The Perks of Remote Working](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-perks-of-remote-working/): Office life could now be a thing of the past. So, in this work from home experiment; here are my... - [Multi-Channel Marketing: Why "Digital" Means All Channels](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/when-digital-means-all-channels/): Discover how a multi-channel digital marketing approach can enhance customer engagement and improve results by integrating all marketing channels effectively. - [Uncommon sense: Messaging in a crisis](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/messaging-crisis-uncommon-sense/): It’s safe to say that there is no such thing as common sense in a pandemic. What was ‘common sense’ for brands feels like has gone out of the window and nobody knows for sure what's coming next. - [The Future is Automation (With Human Brilliance)](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-future-is-automation-with-human-brilliance/): Thinking about automating your PPC? We explore the advantages of automation and why human brilliance is still the cherry on top of an automated strategy. - [New Digital Features Launched During Covid-19](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/digital-features-during-covid/): A list of all platform-specific new features launched to help businesses during covid-19 with their online presence. - [Pre-emptive Marketing Decisions](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/preemptive-marketing-decisions/): Preemptively planning your decisions will not only set you up for success, but will make sure that when you are inevitably faced with a challenge, you know how to tackle it and how to move past it. - [Found Wins at The Drum Search Awards](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-wins-drum-search-awards/): Looking for award winning digital marketing? Found is delighted to have won Best Integrated Campaign at The Drum Awards with our client, Hoppy. - [Green marketing is growing](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/green-marketing/): Now, more than ever, customers are buying values first. In this time of uncertainty, people are looking to spend money with brands they can trust to do the right thing. - [Found Rank 6th in 2020 Great Place to Work Awards](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-2020-gptw-awards/): We’re delighted to announce that we’ve been awarded 6th place in the 2020 Great Place to Work Awards. Hip hip, hooray! - [Found Webinar Replay: What's Next For Digital Marketing? The Impact of COVID-19](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/covid-marketing-webinar/): Watch our webinar, What's next for Digital Marketing: The Impact of COVID-19. We share advice for CMOs from Google and our analysis of search interest across 200 industries and 14 countries. - [Crisis Marketing Strategies: How to Adapt and Thrive](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/strategic-crisis-marketing/): It's highly unlikely that business will just return to normal once the pandemic is over. So, when it comes to a crisis, what marketing considerations should be feeding into your strategies? - [Crisis Diversions: Video, The Ultimate Digital Comfort Food](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/video-digital-comfort-food/): Video, in the context of cinema entertainment has suffered a big hit, but online and on our screens at home, it's thriving. - [SEO as art: Reimagining search engine optimisation as an artform](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/seo-as-art/): We interview artist Gretchen Andrew, who uses SEO alongside her paints to explore themes of power, systems, desire, and the malleable nature of reality. - [Core Web Vitals - A Guide for SEOs](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/core-web-vitals-a-guide/): Google has updated their timelines for the rollout of the Core Web Vitals forming part of the Search algorithm. Instead of May 2021, the rollout will now begin from mid-June. - [Brands Doing Their Bit For Social Good](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/brands-doing-their-bit-social-good/): We’re living in unprecedented times, and with Covid-19 continuing to wreak havoc on the world, businesses, and systems as we... - [Retail Shifting to Digital: How to temporarily close your retail stores.](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/retail-shifting-to-digital/): With the recent announcement of all non-essential businesses closing within the UK, brands with a high street presence are rushing to comply by closing their retail stores and moving to online-only operations. - [8 things that have cheered us up in uncertain times.](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/8-things-that-cheered-us-up/): With the c-word dominating the news and our minds, I wanted to mention another c-word I’ve been thinking about: community.... - [Women in Tech SEO - Event Recap](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/women-in-tech-seo/): On Friday, 6th March 2020, I had the pleasure of attending the first ever Women in Tech SEO conference and... - [How to measure the causal impact of your marketing through 'incrementality'](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/how-to-measure-incrementality/): How do you know if your ads are really impacting customers’ behaviour? - [Our Work Wonder Women](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/our-work-wonder-women/): It’s International Women’s Day this Sunday, March 8th. At Found we’re taking this opportunity to recognise and thank the Wonder... - [5 Growing tech trends to watch out for in marketing for 2020](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/5-growing-tech-trends-to-watch-out-for-in-marketing-for-2020/): In the words of Jon Bon Jovi: “The more things change the more they stay the same” and it's the same for marketing - the goals always stay the same but the tools marketers use evolve. - [5 Books to get you into a Growth Mindset](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/5-books-growth-mindset/): With growth being such an important mindset for us, I’ve been doing some reading around the concept and listed my top 5 growth mindset book recommendations. - [OscarBot's AI predictions beat the film buff and the bookies!](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/oscarbots-ai-predictions-beat-the-film-buff-and-the-bookies/): Our Oscar predicting AI, dubbed ‘OscarBot’, outperformed both the bookies and our in-house movie buff with it’s predictions for the 92nd Academy Awards. - [Great Expectations? Our AI Predicts Oscar Wins](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/great-expectations-our-ai-predicts-oscar-wins/): For the Oscars we've put our resident data science wizards to the test, challenging them to build an OscarBot and make predictions based on available data. - [Found awarded for excellence in wellbeing.](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-awarded-for-excellence-in-wellbeing/): Last week, we were delighted to receive the news that we have been awarded Excellence in Wellbeing by Great Places... - [Local SEO Growth: Strategies to Boost Your Business](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/why-you-need-to-start-thinking-locally-to-organically-grow-your-business/): With the SERPs becoming more competitive, owning organic space is becoming harder and clicks are decreasing. - [12 easy things you can do to make Google like your website](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/12-easy-things-you-can-do-to-make-google-like-your-website/): Sometimes it’s the small things that make a big difference, and with SEO that’s often true. Here's 12 easy things you can do to get in Google's good books. - [Growth Mindset - Mastering new creative skills.](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/mastering-new-creative-skills-the-importance-of-adopting-a-growth-mindset/): Have you ever found yourself entranced, glued to Youtube, watching someone do something very ordinary or seemingly mundane to a very high standard? - [SEO for Black Friday (and the Holiday Season)](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/seo-for-black-friday-and-the-holiday-season/): Learn how to implement effective strategies and techniques to improve your SEO for Black Friday (and the Holiday Season). Read our guide. - [Rich Results: Google’s SERP is Changing](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/rich-results-googles-serp-is-changing/): Time to understand what that means for your brand and what you can do about it. Cast your mind back... - [Chang3 Win Digital Disruptors 2019](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/chang3-win-digital-disruptors-2019/): Last week saw the final of the 2019 Digital Disruptors programme. Our mission has been to offer young individuals a... - [How To Auto-Type Anything You Want By Pressing a Key](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/how-to-auto-type-anything/): With AutoHotkey, any key on your keyboard can be programmed to type any text desired. Follow this step by step guide to get yourself setup. - [Christmas Is Coming - Start Planning Your Social Now](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/christmas-is-coming/): With Christmas upon us, it's vital to get your social strategy nailed. Our Social Account Manager Ruth O'Brien has all the top tips to get you ready. - [Digital Disruptors 2019 Gets Underway](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/digital-disruptors-2019-underway/): The mission of Digital Disruptors is to encourage young people to immerse themselves in the dynamic, challenging and fascinating world of digital. - [Optimise Your Site: Strategies for Resolving SEO Performance Issues](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/resolving-website-performance-issues/): When something goes wrong with website performance, trace back your steps and find all of the possible blockers to getting that performance issue fixed. - [Found's Data Toolshed](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/founds-data-toolshed/): Found’s in-house tools are always built with integration front of mind. No tool is exclusive to one team or for a single purpose. - [A Simple Guide to Web Browser Automation](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/web-browser-automation/): Anything you can do on web pages in the browser can be programmed to happen in a sequence you choose or based on triggers. Here's how to set up automation. - [Are we heading towards sponsorless football shirts?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/sponsorless-football-shirts/): Paddy Power recently caught our eye with their genius marketing prank involving Huddersfield Town FC and their football shirts. - [Found Wins At 2019 Digital Growth Awards](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-wins-at-2019-digital-growth-awards/): We’re delighted to announce that we’ve been recognised once again for our digital marketing expertise with an award at the 2019 UK Digital Growth Awards. - [How many people actually click on the Google Map packs?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/how-many-people-click-google-map-packs/): Recently, we decided it would be useful to know what percentage of people who see Google map packs at the top of the SERPs, actually click on them. - [How to Make Your Market Analysis Look Like It's From Star Trek](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/make-market-analysis-look-like-star-trek/): Edu-tain your audience and they'll be grateful that you made their working day a bit more fun. Here's how you can make a stunning market map visualisation. - [From zero to hero: The rise of the featured snippet](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/rise-of-the-featured-snippet/): We now live in the era of the featured snippet. These are becoming increasingly varied and are having a major impact on users search behaviour. - [GPTW® Awards Found 3rd In UK's Best Workplaces™ for Women 2019](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-best-workplaces-for-women-2019/): We have been awarded 3rd place in the UK’s Best Workplaces for Women: Medium Category 2019, the top placed agency in the list. - [Found Return from the AI & Big Data Expo](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/ai-big-data-expo/): Last week, Found attended the European AI & Big Data Expo, in Amsterdam. The conference is a showcase of next-generation... - [Facebook's new crypto currency - what does it mean?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/facebooks-new-crypto-currency-what-does-it-mean/): Facebook have finally confirmed plans for their new digital currency, which is expected to launch next year. - [Darwinism in Search - The future of SERPs](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/darwinism-in-search-serps/): As I take a look at what’s changed and what’s likely to change in Google’s Search Engine Result Pages I’m... - [Social Is Not Just An Online Platform](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/social-is-not-just-an-online-platform/): Brands should factor in real-life experiences when planning their digital and social media approach, in order to maximise the effectiveness of a campaign. - [Women's World Cup and Social Media - An Interview With Aileen Larkin](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/womens-world-cup-and-social-media/): Tomorrow marks the beginning of the 2019 Fifa Women’s World Cup, with hosts France kicking things off in Paris with their opening match against South Korea. - [The Future of Search Event](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-future-of-search-event/): On Thursday the 23rd May, Found hosted the Future of Search event here at Found Studios. Throughout the evening the speakers and panel explored various themes around what the Future of Search looks like. - [10 Questions With Ruth O'Brien](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/10-questions-with-ruth-obrien/): In this interview I caught up with Found’s amazing Social Account Manager, Ruth O’Brien. Hailing from Glasgow, Ruth has had... - [Found Roundup: Meet the Searchies - Google meets CEO Tina Judic](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-meets-tina-judic/): At the end of last year, our award-winning CEO, Tina Judic, was interviewed by Google as part of their Search History series to mark 20 years of Search. - [Found ranked 10th in Great Place to Work Awards - The No.1 Digital Agency in our category](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-ranked-10th-in-great-place-to-work-awards-the-no-1-digital-agency-in-our-category/): We’re delighted to announce that we’ve been awarded 10th place in this year’s Great Place to Work Awards (medium category)... - [A beginners guide to keyword research part II](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/a-beginners-guide-to-keyword-research-part-ii/): You’ve done it. You’ve collected every potential keyword under the sun on your chosen research topic. You’ve used AdWords, you’ve... - [All the Facebook F8 announcements you need to care about](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/facebook-f8-announcements/): From Messenger to Instagram, find out the top takeaways for marketers and brands from the Facebook F8 conference. - [You can learn to code](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/you-can-learn-to-code/): “Learning to write programs stretches your mind, and helps you think better, creates a way of thinking about things that... - [TikTok - Why It Should Be On Your Radar](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/tik-tok-on-your-radar/): TikTok (formally Musical. ly) has been grabbing a lot of headlines over the past few months due to its rapid... - [Found Wins At The Drum Search Awards 2019](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-wins-at-the-drum-search-awards-2019/): Another awards ceremony and ANOTHER win for Found. The end of 2018 saw a flurry of award wins for the... - [SEO in the age of automation](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/seo-in-age-of-automation/): Automation is a word that generally invokes fear, which is understandable as most people fear change, but what does this mean for SEO? How can we use it? - [PR Gifting: The importance of PR gifts for e-commerce brands](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/importance-gifts-ecommerce-brands/): PR gifting is more visible than it ever has been. The CMA has released guidelines ensuring more transparency. This is a must-read for anyone in the space. - [How can Search address the challenges facing retail in 2019?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/can-search-address-challenges-retail-sector-2019/): Our Head of Technology Dora Moldovan looks at the use of Search in retail and the role it should play in addressing the challenges in 2019 and beyond. - [Keyword Research for Beginners Guide](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/beginners-guide-keyword-research/): ​Learn effective keyword research strategies with our beginner's guide, featuring top tools and techniques to enhance your website's SEO performance. - [When it comes to Excel are you Destiny's Child?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/excel-destinys-child/): It recently came to light that Kelly Rowland doesn’t even know what Excel is. Easy for her, she obviously doesn’t... - [Found and Great Place To Work® Event](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-great-place-work/): In this event we focussed on exploring how organisations can benefit from making a quantifiable difference to equality in their workplaces. - [The results: Machine vs humans - predicting the Oscars with AI.](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/results-machine-vs-humans-predicting-oscars-ai/): The ballots have been counted, the results have been verified and despite our best efforts... the bookies won. In the... - [Is this the Most Powerful Excel Formula in Digital Marketing?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/most-powerful-excel-formula-digital-marketing/): Discover the most powerful Excel formulas for digital marketing. Streamline data analysis, automate tasks, and make smarter marketing decisions. - [How Domain Authority is changing](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/how-domain-authority-changing/): Moz has recently announced that they are about to release a new & improved Domain Authority. But what is Domain Authority? How do you use it? Let us explain - [Machine vs humans - predicting the Oscars with AI.](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/machine-vs-human-predicting-oscars-ai/): We set a challenge to our data science team here at Found, to use Social Media and publicly available data to train an AI to predict this years Oscars. - [The darker side of ‘Sponcon’ and how brands can avoid being caught out](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/darker-side-sponcon/): Read our article about sponcon and learn more about how brands can avoid being caught out. - [Social Media stats to shape your 2019 Social strategy](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/social-media-stats-shape-2019-social-strategy/): Here's our top 12 social media stats to keep these in mind when considering where your brand is best placed to succeed in the social spectrum in 2019. - [Why (AI) Artificial Intelligence is the future of SEO](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/ai-future-of-seo/): ​Explore how artificial intelligence is revolutionising SEO by enhancing strategies and tools to navigate the evolving digital landscape effectively. - [Found 2019 Attention Showreel](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-content-showreel/): Our bespoke, outside of the box approach creates thumb-stopping content that is sure to capture your audiences attention and stop them in their tracks. - [Social Media and Influencer News - January Roundup](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/january-news-roundup/): Although the first month of 2019 brought no further clarity on Brexit, there was a lot happening in the world of social media and influencers. - [Why Instagram should be your MVP this year](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/why-instagram-should-be-your-mvp-this-year/): Whilst best known for selfies, pet accounts and general showboating, Instagram can be a powerful marketing tool for brands when implemented correctly. - [How Google interprets search intent](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/how-google-interprets-search-intent/): What is search intent and how does Google interpret what users want to best serve them content? - [From Search to Discovery - Google uncovers Google Discover](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-uncovers-discover/): This is the second part in our ‘From Search to Discovery’ series. You can find the first part here. Google... - [Found wins at the UK Search Awards](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-wins-at-uk-search-awards/): Well, the awards keep rolling in, at the UK Search Awards 2108 on Thursday, we won both the Best PPC Campaign and the Best use of Search (Retail). - [The Drum awards Tina Judic, CEO of Found, Marketing Agency Leader of the Year 2018](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/tina-judic-drum-marketing-agency-leader-award-2018/): At The Drum Agency Business Awards 2018 (formerly the Drum Network Awards) our very own CEO Tina Judic received the... - [PPC & SEO EXCEL FORMULAS](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/excel-cheat-sheet-keyword-marketers/): Here's a list of some of the less well known Excel formulas, ideal for anyone who works with large spreadsheets containing keywords and associated data. - [A Practical Guide to Keyword Clusters & Search Behaviour](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/practical-guide-keyword-clusters/): Users are changing their search behaviour, so it makes sense for search engines like Google to alter their algorithm to favour topic-based content. - [Creativity In A Data Driven Era](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/creativity-data-driven-era/): Great marketing is a blend of both creativity and data, so much so that we say that creativity starts with data. Find out how we use data to drive creative. - [From Search to Discovery - The Changing Face of Search Engines](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/search-discovery-changing-face-search-engines/): Explore how search engines are evolving from search to discovery, driven by AI and personalisation. Learn strategies to adapt in this changing SEO landscape. - [The Rise of Amazon Advertising](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/rise-amazon-advertising/): With a $2. 5 billion net sales reported at the end of 2018, Amazon is set to join the online... - [Facebook Ads Research Tool: Test and Learn](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/facebook-test-and-learn/): It’s important to know what works well in your campaigns, so that you can optimise future ones for maximum effectiveness.... - [Digital Disruptors take to the stage at PI Live](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/digital-disruptors-pi-live/): Found has been in the thick of a new industry initiative to nurture and support the next generation of digital... - [BrightonSEO: SEO without Traffic](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/brightonseo-seo-without-traffic/): At this year’s BrightonSEO, Hannah Thorpe – Head of SEO Strategy here at Found, spoke about ‘SEO without traffic’. See... - [Learning from Attribution’s Past to Decide Your Attribution Future](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/attributions-past-decide-attribution-future/): At Found, we’re long-standing believers in attribution, and how it can be used to unlock benefits for our clients. With the advent of Google Attribution.. - [Is the landscape about to change with Visual Search?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/visual-search-changes/): If a picture is worth a thousand words, then which do you type into a search engine? Here’s what’s happening with visual search — and how to get ready. - [Getting smart with data in digital marketing](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/smart-data-digital-marketing/): Complementing marketing with the latest data science techniques isn’t just vital to online success, it can also hugely amplify offline activity too. - [Found acquires White.net as part of our mission to build an agency for the future, now](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-acquires-white-net/): We are delighted to announce that Found has acquired digital marketing specialists White.net as part of our strategy to build an agency for the future, now. - [Automatic? Yes. Supersonic? Sometimes. How AI can be used to drive PPC automation](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/automatic-yes-supersonic-sometimes-ai-can-used-drive-ppc-automation/): In the beginning (or in the mid-1970s), there was the personal computer. Then came the internet, and today, we’re on... - [When Content Met Voice Search](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/content-met-voice-search/): Tech enthusiasts and the digitally illiterate alike are no longer afraid to raise their voices: voice-enabled services are officially a... - [How to Group Keywords for SEO](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/how-to-group-keywords-for-seo/): There's no way around it. You have to group your client's keywords & you haven't got much time. Don't try to wing it - here's an approach that works. - [Found awarded 2nd place in the UK's Best Workplaces for Women](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-awarded-2nd-best-workplaces-for-women/): Step into Found HQ this week and you’ll really feel the girl power – probably because we’ve been awarded 2nd place in... - [Financial services SEO: accelerating online performance](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/financial-services-seo/): Whether you’re a global company or a brick-and-mortar firm, SEO matters. But designing a financial services SEO strategy can be complex. - [The smart alec everyone wants on their team: Google’s automated display campaign](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/smart-alec-google-automated-display/): If you haven’t been using Google’s Smart display campaigns in your marketing efforts, you’ve been missing out. - [Model Marketer: how to choose the right attribution model for you](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/model-marketer-choose-right-attribution-model/): There’s no point beating about the bush – nowadays, we live in touch-point central. Gone is the era of last... - [SOLVING COMPLEX SEO ISSUES](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/solving-complex-seo-issues/): This article was written based on an SMX London 2018 presentation given by Hannah Thorpe, you can view the full... - [Facebook News Feed Changes: Friend or Foe?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/friend-foe-facebooks-news-feed-changes/): Changes to Facebook’s newsfeed were announced in early 2018. The update placed a new emphasis on status updates from friends and family - [The Mountaineer's Guide to Maximising SEO Campaign ROI](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/a-narrow-ai-approach-to-finding-your-seo-campaigns-kilimanjaros/): What areas should you prioritise? Getting the answer right could see you attaining the summit of ROI. Getting it wrong could send you on an expedition up a mountain that isn't worth climbing. - [We've been recognised as a great place to work...again!](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/weve-recognised-great-place-work/): We've scooped 12th place in the Great Places to Work 2018 ranking and we’ve moved up a category too – from small to medium in size! - [Adding it all up: how has the ad blocking debate affected the online ecosystem?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/adding-up-ad-blocking-debate/): The ad blocking debate has reached fever pitch over the last year. It’s a discussion that has been intensifying for some time - [What is audience-first and how does it work in Paid Media?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/audience-first-work-paid-media/): What is “audience-first”? And what does it mean for digital marketing? Well, audiences’ needs and demands are changing towards a more personalised approach. - [GDPR: The impact on Marketing and the Financial Services Industry](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/gdpr-financial-services-industry/): Learn how GDPR impacts the financial services industry, from compliance challenges to best practices for safeguarding customer data and staying compliant. - [AI vs Humans : 3 major reasons why Paid Media still needs supervision](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/ai-vs-humans-3-major-reasons-why-paid-media-still-needs-supervision/): In many ways, then, it seems Paid Media campaigns have the capacity to run themselves. So where does the human digital marketer – sit in all this? - [Is last-click finally on its last legs?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/last-click-on-its-last-legs/): Last-click getting on your last nerve? Google's taking care of it with a new attribution model to rule them all - all hail the reigning search engine. - [Dynamic Creative just made Facebook advertising a whole lot easier](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/facebook-dynamic-creative/): It’s no secret the FB ‘ad optimisation’ process can be a frustrating one. Facebook’s new ‘Dynamic Creative’ might be the solution you’ve been praying for. - [Google My Business 2017 - Updates You May Have Missed](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-my-business-2017-updates/): Change was afoot for Google My Business in 2017 – are you up to date with the updates? If it’s been a while since you updated it’s time to see what's new - [The state of attribution in 2018](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/state-of-attribution-2018/): While we eagerly await Google's attribution product, we look at the current state of attribution in 2018 and reasons to get onboard the data-driven train. - [Case Study: BrightonSEO](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/case-study-brightonseo/): For the last few years, we’ve supported BrightonSEO with social media strategy and management for their must-attend bi-annual conference. - [Advanced targeting using custom audience lists in Google Analytics](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/advanced-targeting-using-custom-audience-lists-in-google-analytics/): Targeting the right audience is key to meeting your business and marketing objectives. To find out more about advanced targeting at Found. - [CREATING A CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGY](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/creating-content-marketing-strategy/): Originally posted on white. net Content marketing; creating and distributing engaging content to your core target audience. But how does... - [How smart targeting takes your SEO recommendations further, faster](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/smart-targeting-takes-recommendations-further/): Find out all about smart targeting and how simple changes to your landing pages and content pieces can bring huge results acting towards your KPIs. - [SCALING SEO SERVICES](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/scaling_seo_services/): This article was written based on Ungagged 2017 presentation given by Hannah Thorpe, you can view the full slides here.... - [Digital PR Case Study: Miele](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/casestudy-miele/): As part of our SEO campaign brief to help increase organic traffic to Miele’s UK e-commerce website, one of our goals was to increase brand awareness - [SOLVING THIN CONTENT](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/solving-thin-content/): Thin content can be a considerable problem for SEO; limiting the organic performance of many websites. This presentation talks through internal near duplicates and using canonicals as a solution to solve them. - [6 ways to improve your agency-client relationship](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/6-ways-get-agency-relationship/): Discover six practical ways to strengthen your agency relationship, from clear expectations to collaboration, ensuring a partnership that drives success. - [Found set to Disrupt the digital marketing landscape](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-set-disrupt-digital-marketing/): We are very proud to announce that Found has acquired youth marketing agency Disrupt. - [Advertisers bite into Apple over new ad-blockers in Safari 11](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/ad-blockers-safari/): Major digital advertising and marketing organisations have condemned Apple’s plan to introduce cookie-blocking technology into the new version of Safari 11, saying it’ll “hurt the user experience and sabotage the economic model of the internet.” - [Blank Canvas: Facebook’s in-app advertising innovation](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/facebook-canvas-ads/): Learn how to create engaging Facebook Canvas ads with best practices and strategies to boost your brand's reach and performance on the platform. - [Founders Favourite BrightonSEO Presentations September 2017](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/best-brightonseo-presentations-september-2017/): The Found SEO team headed down to Brighton for the UK's largest search marketing conference. Here our are favourite talks and takeaways from BrightonSEO. - [Found - Google Premier Partner award winners 2017!](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-premier-partner-award-winners-2017/): Found announced as the winner at the 2017 Google Premier Partner Awards in the Video Innovation category in the EMENA region for our work with Fender! - [Could this be The One: does every business need a chatbot in its life?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/business-chatbots/): If you’re not familiar with chatbots already, the clue’s in the name. Chatbots, or conversational agents (or even dialog systems),... - [Ad blockers: the forgivable or the damned?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/ad-blockers-forgivable-or-damned/): As websites became increasingly dependent on ad revenue, and online advertising became more popular, the rise of the ad blockers wasn’t hard to predict. - [Digital marketing lessons from Vogue's offline marketing strategy](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/digital-marketing-lessons-from-vogues-offline-strategy/): Digital marketing is a rapidly growing industry, crucial to any campaign. Read how Vogue goes against this grain and the importance and power of a brand. - [AI and its future uses in digital content creation](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/ai-future-content-creation/): Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems are beginning to replace the human faces in a number of industries, is the realm of content creation the next in line? - [Google to stop reading your emails for Gmail ads – but will this make Gmail ads less effective?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-stop-reading-gmails/): Google recently announced, that it’s going to withdraw from one of its more controversial practices, the scanning of emails in... - [Using IF statements in AdWords](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/if-statements-adwords/): Google says that “IF functions allow you to insert a specific message in your text ad when a condition has been met”. Pretty useful right? - [Listen to your website activity: it’s talking to you](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/listen-website-activity-talking/): Website activity is notoriously difficult to measure – there are various definitions and it doesn’t present a single behaviour that... - [Get rich or die listening - Google brings rich snippets to podcast listings](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/rich-snippets-podcast/): Last month, Google played a familiar trick and quietly went behind the scenes to add a new rich results mark up – this time to podcasts. - [Get a handle on the do's and dont's: master the elusive art of the Pay Per Click campaign](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/dos-and-donts-ppc-campaign/): Google Adword’s PPC campaigns can be a nifty way to drive targeted traffic to your site but there are pitfalls aplenty, and none are clearly marked. - [Slicing the social media cake: how and why you should put your budget behind audience segmentation](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/social-media-audience-segmentation/): It’s a well-known issue that digital marketers sometimes struggle to demonstrate the value of social media to the budget-holders at their business. - [5 Steps to Creating SEO Optimised Content](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/brilliant-seo-content/): The notion of ‘high quality content’ is at the core of successful SEO practices, but all too often it’s bandied around without understanding what it means. - [Using Emojis in Adwords to Boost CTR](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/emojing-markets/): New evidence suggests that emojis in AdWord titles may be here to stay and most agree that it all started with a little red car. - [Found recognised as a Great Place to Work!](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-recognised-great-place-work/): If you had come into Found HQ last Thursday, you may have been wondering why we were doing a conga... - [D&AD Festival 2017: 4 big takeaways for brands and marketers](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/dad-festival-2017/): Last week we attended the prestigious D&AD Festival 2017, which is where we saw a whole host of industry-leading speakers. Here's our takeaways. - [Online ‘filter bubbles’: what’s all the fuss?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/filter-bubbles-whats-the-fuss/): Anyone who finds themselves scrolling through Facebook or searching Google will, at one time or another, have been floating at the centre of a filter bubble. - [5 Critical Video Considerations for a Successful Campaign](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/5-critical-video-considerations-for-brands/): Our in-house video production team have rounded up five pre-production factors you’ll need to consider when planning your next video campaign. - [Data Studio Hacks for Analysts on their Coffee Break](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/data-studio-hacks/): We've prepared some useful micro-guides to help you master Google Data Studio, which can do much more for you than revamp your stale GA dashboards. - [Technical SEO Beyond the Initial Audit](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/technical-seo-beyond-initial-audit/): Technical SEO Beyond the Audit – Brighton SEO April 2017 – Philip Gamble from Philip Gamble Technical SEO is more... - [YouTube SEO deep dive: How to rank your videos to the surface](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/youtube-seo-how-to-rank-videos/): How to rank your YouTube videos: All the YouTube SEO tips you need to get more video views, from YouTube analytics to video optimisation techniques. - [Brand safety on Google: Our position](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/brand-safety-google/): Recently, a number of large agencies, have pulled spend from Google due to fears around brand safety and their ads being served alongside extremist content. - [The Rise of Mobile Search](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/rise-mobile-search/): Are you interested in the mobile search? Find out what we have to say about the rise of mobile search. Visit Found to read the full article today. - [The Changing Local Search Landscape](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/changing-local-search-landscape/): 93% of searches with local intent show the 3 pack. Read for advice on Google Business Profile local search ranking factors & tracking conversions from local. - [Why human oversight will always be important in machine learning](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/human-oversight-machine-learning/): Machine learning is still in its infancy and has plenty of scope for further development. However, human oversight will always be important. Read why. - [Do intelligent robot assistants present a threat to search?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/intelligent-robot-assistants-search/): Answered inside: What are robot assistants? Will keyboard searches die out soon? What does the future hold for SEM and these voice-activated robots? - [Found wins Best PPC Campaign at UK Search Awards 2016](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/best-ppc-campaign-uk-search/): Hosted by the always funny Jason Manford, a fitting circus theme was the order of the evening and our Best PPC Campaign award the highlight. - [HOW STRATEGIC IS YOUR STRATEGY?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/how-strategic-is-strategy/): This article was written based on a Digital Olympus presentation given by Hannah Thorpe, you can view the full slides here.... - [An actionable paid media guide](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/paid-media-guide-2017/): Paid media doesn't need to be complicated, but digital marketers need to know the options and how they can work best together. Read more inside. - [Google shows more desktop shopping ads this season](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-desktop-shopping-ads/): Peak season for shopping is here and now Google is expanding shopping ads' real estate in the SERPs. Get tips to maximise your returns this season. - [Google on mobile interstitials: what sizes and types are acceptable?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-mobile-interstitials/): 10th of January 2017: Google will start penalising mobile sites using intrusive interstitials in pages accessible from search. Use our formats to guide you. - [6 tools to help dodge keyword planner volume limits](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/dodge-keyword-planner-limits/): Struggling to prioritise your keyword targeting without accurate search volume data? Use these 6 paid and free alternatives to keyword planner. - [How to avoid 3 common search journalism errors](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/errors-in-search-journalism/): Incorrect interpretations of Google Trends, Autocomplete and personalised search often make headlines - for the wrong reasons. Read on for how to avoid. - [6 actionable tips for Google quality updates (2016)](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/6-tips-quality-updates/): We cover three areas penalised by Google quality updates on e-commerce sites. Free tip: Update site navigation consistently when adding product categories. - [What's all the Fuss? Programmatic TV](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/paid-search-strategies-programmatic-tv/): What is Programmatic TV and what are the benefits? Our paid search team talk best practice, future changes and the 3 types of Programmatic TV in the UK. - [Penguin 4.0 released](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/penguin-4-released/): The long awaited algorithm update, Penguin 4.0, has been released and is now part of the core algorithm. Read on for 5 steps to manage risks to your site. - [5 skills we look for in a Client Lead](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/5-skills-look-client-lead/): Discover the 5 essential skills every Client Lead needs. Learn the key qualities that drive success in client management and leadership roles at the agency. - [USING PR TO FUEL YOUR DIGITAL STRATEGY](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/using-pr-fuel-digital-strategy/): This article was written based on a Digital Olympus presentation given by Aisha Kellaway, you can view the full slides here. Originally... - [7 Great Data Science Blogs to Follow](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/7-great-data-science-blogs-to-follow/): Whether data drives your marketing strategies or your climate simulation models, extracting actionable insights from the data is the name of the game. - [Why you should treasure good user experience as a ranking signal](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/good-user-experience-ranking-signal/): You might say “Well, user experience is not confirmed as a direct ranking factor”. I’d say you’re technically right, for now. - [Gmail ads - should you be using them?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/gmail-advertising/): Gmail advertising is a form of native advertising and was formerly known as Gmail Sponsored Promotions until the service was rebranded in early 2015 - [Avoid these 5 common UX mistakes](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/avoid-these-5-common-ux-mistakes/): Brands and their web designers often learn the hard way that the Wow-factor needs to be aligned with an effective User Experience (UX). - [Seismic shifts in the paid search landscape](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/seismic-shifts-in-the-paid-search-landscape/): On Tuesday Google announced the rollout of Expanded Text Ads, with immediately noticeable changes across all devices. - [Programmatic - Real-time vs Direct what's the difference?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/paid-search-programmatic-display/): Programmatic Display is best defined as the automated purchase of ad space, or impressions, on a web page either through a bidding process, or buying direct - [The rise of the Chatbots](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-rise-of-the-chatbots/): Now if you’ve shopped online or messaged a customer service representative about a minor issue, then the chances are you’ve been speaking with a chatbot. - [HOW TO GSD!](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/how-to-gsd/): This article was written based on a Customer Experience Think Tank 2017 presentation given by Hannah Thorpe, you can view... - [What you need to know about Native Advertising](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/paid-search-native-advertising/): A subset of content marketing, native advertising can take many forms but it is most commonly associated with sponsored content such as editorials or video. - [How important are Backlinks as a ranking factor?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/backlinks-ranking-factor/): In a series of posts, we look at some of the key factors that Google and the other search engines take into consideration. This time, it’s backlinks. - [How is your Paid, Owned & Earned media mix?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/paid-owned-earned-media-mix/): What different types of media exist and why you need to be thinking about how these channels can work together to form part of your overall marketing mix. - [How to build a first-class company culture](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/build-company-culture/): Many people, especially in the digital sector, have come to expect a distinctive company culture. So what are the key factors to consider when building one? - [12 Slack Hacks and tips you should know](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/12-slack-hacks-you-should-know/): There are any number of technologies that businesses use to communicate both internally, between employees and teams, and externally, with... - [Technical SEO elements that will help your site rank](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/technical-elements-ranking-factor/): A firm grasp of the technical elements of SEO, and the principles behind them, form the basis of any successful organic campaign. - [3 big things happening right now with Google Analytics](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/3-big-things-google-analytics/): Unless you watched the final ten minutes of yesterday's Google Performance Summit, you missed it, here’s what we’re excited for in Google Analytics. - [Are you at the top of your game with Google Analytics?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/top-your-game-google-analytics/): Use this guide to check you can trust the data Google Analytics is displaying so you can start making informed business decisions with it. - [The importance of SEO content as a ranking factor](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/content-ranking-factor/): Content is the most important of all on-page SEO ranking factors. How you speak to the user determines how search engines will then view you. - [ADVANCED TECHNICAL SEO](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/advanced-technical-seo/): This article was written based on an SMX London 2016 presentation given by Hannah Thorpe, you can view the full slides... - [Resolving hreflang issues for international SEO targeting](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/resolving-issues-international-targeting/): When targeting internationally the detrimental effects of having the wrong content presented to users in organic listings cannot be underestimated. - [Intelligent search results: 5 things you should know about Google RankBrain in 2016](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/intelligent-search-results-rankbrain-2016/): The algorithm that Google uses for search results is shrouded in secrecy, but we know it is influenced by several hundred signals one of which is RankBrain. - [Facebook Advertising: Staying Connected to your Customers](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/facebook-ads-connected-customers/): With facebook ads it is important to remember the key difference between paid search and paid social. With paid search you are capitalising on strong user.. - [Making the leap: Should you Kermit to HTTPS?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/making-the-leap-should-you-kermit-to-https/): HTTPS is about security. About safety. It's not exciting or explosive like say, "mobilegeddon" - at least not at first glance. - [Found nominated for 6 more Drum awards](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/drum-digital-trading-awards/): It's that time of year again when all the award nomination and shortlist announcements are made. This week, it's the turn of the Drum Digital Trading Awards - [Adblock wars - the publishers strike back](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/adblock-wars-the-publishers-strike-back/): The rise of the more savvy surfer has lead to an increase in the number using Adblock plugins specifically designed to filter out advertisements - [WHY SEO NEEDS EDITORS](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/seo-needs-editors/): This article was written based on a Search London presentation given by Charlie Williams, you can view the full slides here.... - [5 RULES FOR EFFECTIVE SEO CAMPAIGN COMMUNICATION](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/5-rules-effective-digital-marketing/): Learn the 5 essential rules for effective SEO, including alignment with clients, measurable processes, and continuous strategy improvement. - [Twitter’s War and Peace: could 9,860 characters end the micro-blog?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/twitters-war-peace-9860-characters-end-micro-blog/): #Twitter10k is the latest announcement keeping us on our toes. With 10,000 characters more to play with, we consider the impact to content marketers - [Phantom 3 update targets poor user experience](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/phantom-3-update-targets-poor-user-experience/): Phantom 3 strikes! But what and where does the update target? Read our guide on how you can reverse the effects. - [New Adwords update - DFSAs : making every click matter](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/adwords-update-dfsas-making-every-click-matter/): The most recent Adwords update comes in the form of another acronym: DFSAs - we explain how to use this new tool effectively and make every click matter! - [Found win at the 2015 UK Search Awards!](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-win-at-the-2015-uk-search-awards/): UK Search Awards. Shortlisted for 3 awards, the team were full of excitement and crossing their fingers for their categories. - [Video advertising: watch & learn](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/video-advertising-watch-learn/): Learn how to make the most out of video advertising by delivering the right message to the right people during their right micro-moment on the web. - [Found shortlisted for six awards at the 2015 Drum Network Awards](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-shortlisted-for-six-awards-at-the-2015-drum-network-awards/): We're so proud to have been recognised again by The Drum Network Awards! - [Don't go cold turkey on your PPC campaigns](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/dont-go-cold-turkey-on-your-ppc-campaigns/): What should you be doing to your PPC campaign in the run up to Christmas? Read our top tips on how to stay ahead of the game! - [9 top tips to successfully manage large PPC accounts](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/9-top-tips-to-successfully-manage-large-ppc-accounts/): Lauren Dodds, PPC Guru here at Found takes us through 9 of her top tips when managing large PPC accounts. Don't miss it! - [The 10 commandments of keyword optimisation](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/keyword-optimisation-the-10-commandments/): Keyword optimisation is fast becoming a dirty word in the SEO community. Like the link wheel and adding meta keywords, it's viewed as something old fashioned - [Log File Analysis for SEO to Optimise Crawl Budget](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/using-log-file-analysis-to-make-the-most-of-your-crawl-budget/): Read our handy tips on how to increase crawl budget and what can be achieved with log file analysis. - [Found shortlisted again at the UK Search Awards](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-shortlisted-uk-search-awards/): Award season continues and we’re delighted to announce Found has been recognised as a leading digital agency with 3 nominations at the 2015 UK Search Awards - [Florence Bundy makes the Drum's Top 50 under 30](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/top-50-under-30-florence-bundy/): Florence Bundy, has been singled out as one of The Drum’s high-achieving women in digital for 2015, making their annual 50 under 30 list. - [Gmail Ads: the what, the why, the how](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/gmail-ads-the-what-the-why-the-how/): Gmail ads should be a valuable addition to any PPC campaign, read on for our top tips on how best to implement! - [What is it like being a PPC intern at Found?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/what-is-it-like-being-a-ppc-intern-at-found/): Fancy a glimpse into life as a PPC analyst? Read on for an insight into one of our ppc internship placements and see if you think you could fit the bill! - [Found jumps four places to take second spot in The Drum Elite](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-jumps-four-places-to-take-second-spot-in-the-drum-elite/): We’re delighted to announce that, once again, Found has made it into The Drum’s Digital Elite! - [AdWords Vs Analytics Remarketing](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/adwords-vs-analytics-remarketing/): Remarketing is one of the most crucial tactics of any performance marketing strategy,but how do you ensure this is done effectively? Read our top tips here! - [Google Shopping – The Tools of the Trade](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-shopping-tools-trade/): Google released some new updates and features to their Google Shopping channel. Find out what this means for you. - [PPC considerations for a site migration](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/ppc-considerations-for-a-site-migration/): We've highlighted 7 key ppc considerations to think of before and after performing a site migration...we hope you find it useful! - [4 brainstorming hacks for content marketers](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/4-go-to-brainstorming-hacks-for-content-marketers-in-need-of-inspiration/): Read our 4 top tips for content marketers to help get those creative juices flowing! - [Top 10 Paid SEO Tools](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/10-of-my-top-paid-seo-tools-part-1/): Read on for some useful advice on 10 SEO tools being used in the industry. - [Learning to love dynamic search ads](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/learning-love-dynamic-search-ads/): An insight on the inner workings of dynamic search ads and how they can help transform your PPC campaign. - [The formula for a winning digital team](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-formula-for-a-winning-digital-team/): Here at Found, the welfare of the team is a number one priority, but what makes up the formula for our award winning digital team? Read on to find out! - [A short video of our inaugural Top ‘n’ Tail event](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/topntail-video/): We have created a short promotional video that we think sums up our Top ‘n’ Tail event rather perfectly, watch it now! - [Ad copy testing: start it, test it, measure it!](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/ad-copy-testing/): Whether you're new to PPC or class yourself as a bit of an expert, ad copy testing is vital to any successful PPC strategy. We explain why here! - [It’s more than just ABC as Google restructures](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/alphabet-google-restructure/): So Google is restructuring which will see the business operate under a parent company, Alphabet. Confusing? Unnecessary? Or a great move? - [10 questions your keyword research should be able to answer](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/10-questions-keyword-research-able-answer/): Can your Keyword Research answer these 10 questions for your client? Put yours to the test! - [6 quick wins for link earning](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/6-quick-wins-link-building/): Read on for six quick and effective ways to aquire a good quality link earning strategy. - [How can brands beat Facebook's news feed update?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/can-brands-beat-facebooks-news-feed-update/): We are now a few weeks into Facebook's news feed update, so we have devised some helpful tips to help your brand beat the update and stay on top! - [Facebook and the evolving 'cost per click'](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/facebook-evolving-cost-per-click/): What does the new Facebook update mean for paid search advertising? - [What impact has Google’s mobile algorithm update had on paid search?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/googles-mobile-algorithm-update-paid-impact/): We take a look the impact Google's mobile algorithm update has had on paid search. Read on for tips to ensure you're not missing valuable conversions! - [5 ways running blogger events will create stronger link building campaigns](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/strong-link-building-campaigns/): We’re always looking for new and exciting ways to produce stronger link building campaigns to ultimatly deliver the best results. Read our top tips here! - [8 helpful tips to follow when building a Content Marketing team](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/8-helpful-content-marketing-tips/): Content marketing is the buzzword in Digital Marketing today. Read on for some of my helpful tips to ensure you hire the BEST content marketing team. - [Google Shopping Ad Extensions](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-shopping-ad-extensions/): Read on for a handy insight into how Google Shopping Ad Extensions can benifit you by inticing new customers to your site and more! - [Information is Beautiful: Creating Data Visualisations](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/data-visualisation/): Creating data visualisations can sometimes be a long and tricky task, read on for some helpful tips! - [TOOLS, KEYWORDS & THE FUTURE OF SEO](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/tools-keywords-future-seo/): SEO can be a hard craft. It can feel a slippery, fickle topic; the downside to the industry’s fantastic agility, adaptive streak - [Another award win for Found at the Drum Search Awards](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-shines-drum-search-awards-spotlight/): Found has once more been officially recognised as one of the UK search industry’s top agencies after taking home two accolades at the Drum Search Awards. - [A H'app'y Campaign with Mobile App Installs](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/campaigns-with-mobile-app-installs/): Mobile App Campaigns focus on reaching people who are currently using your app. Read on to find out more. - [Five Parts To Consider When Writing an Agency RFP](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/five-tips-writing-rfp/): Read on for our five helpful tips to writing a comprehensive RFP document without spending a disproportionate amount of time on it... - [Google’s Ever-Expanding Knowledge Graph](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/googles-knowledge-graph/): The Knowledge Graph can be seen and used as Google's own answer to a specific search. One of lovely SEO consultants breaks it down here.. - [Google's Structured Data Tool and Rich Snippets Overview](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/googles-structured-data-tool-rich-snippets/): Rich Snippets; you will have come across them many times when searching the web, but do you know how to best optimise them? Read on for some helpful tips! - [It’s ‘T’ Time with RLSAs - Remarketing Lists for Search Ads](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/remarketing-lists-for-search-ads/): Are you loosing a large percentage of returning visitors to your competitors? We have a handy approach to remarketing lists for search ads that could help! - [Google to release update for Mobile-Friendly Search](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/mobile-friendly-search-update/): As of April 21st Google will be rolling out their first announced update of 2015 for mobile-friendly search. Read on to find how to be prepared. - [European Search Awards: Found Amongst the European Search Elite](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/european-search-awards-found-amongst-the-european-search-elite/): Found has once again been shortlisted for the European Search Awards 2015 for our nifty multi-channel work in the travel sector. - [How Conversation Mapping Can Boost Your Outreach Success Rate!](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/conversation-mapping-outreach-success/): Outreach is one of the toughest and time consuming aspect of a content marketers job. Our guide to conversation mapping will boost your outreach success! - [Found Shortlisted for the 2015 Performance Marketing Awards](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-shortlisted-2015-performance-marketing-awards/): Found has once again been recognised as one of the best digital agencies in the business after being shortlisted for... - [Found is one of the top companies to work for 2015!](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-one-top-places-work-uk-2015/): Here at Found we’ve, once again, demonstrated our reputation for being one of the top employers in the UK. At... - [Amazon Advertising & Pay Per Click – It’s A Recipe for Success](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/amazon-advertising-pay-per-click-recipe-success/): PPC enthusiasts are beginning to reap the benefits of a pay-for performance marketplace – a booming one at that! With Amazon advertising prospects on... - [Found’s 2015 Digital Predictions](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/2015-digital-predictions/): Check out our FREE ebook for insight into some of the biggest trends we believe are set to hit digital marketing in 2015. - [Found Collaborates with Randstad to Create the Ultimate Sales Tool Kit](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-collaborates-randstad-create-ultimate-sales-tool-kit/): Revolutionise the way you communicate your ideas and deliver game-changing consultancy with the help of the Randstad Sales Tool Kit. - [Moz webinar ‘Earning Links Through Audience Segmentation’](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/moz-webinar-earning-links-audience-segmentation/): SEO is evolving and the past few years have seen significant change in how we have to become an authority in Google’s eyes. - [Tina Judic recognised by both The Drum and The Digitals](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/tina-judic-recognised-drum-digitals/): We love being able to showcase our hard work and have it recognised within the industry via various award shortlists/wins.... - [Google Shopping; Top Tips & Performance Pitfalls](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-shopping-top-tips-performance-pitfalls/): Check out Found's top tips for a super effective Google Shopping campaign and also what dangers and pitfulls to watch out for! - [Google Announces HTTPS as a Ranking Factor](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-announces-https-ranking-factor/): On August 6th, Google publicly announced HTTPS as a ranking signal, providing webmasters with a real incentive to ensure greater security. Find out more. - [SEO Experts React To Google Pigeon Algorithm Update](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/seo-experts-react-to-google-pigeon/): Click here to see what the experts have to say about the latest Google Pigeon Algorithm update. Also download your FREE algorithm timeline PDF. - [Found Shortlisted for Dadi Awards 2014](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-shortlisted-dadi-awards-2014/): We are excited to announce that Found have been shortlisted not once, not twice, but four times at the Dadi Awards 2014 - [10 Point Inbound Marketing Campaign Checklist](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/inbound-marketing-campaign-checklist/): Essential 10 step checklist of factors to consider when conducting an inbound marketing campaign. Click through to find out more! - [Google authorship photos removed from SERPs](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-authorship-photos-removed-from-serps/): As Google cleans up their search result design to better suit mobile devices, Google Authorship gets a face lift - literally. - [PerformanceIN - INside the Boardroom: MD at Found, Tina Judic](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/performancein-inside-boardroom-md-found-tina-judic/): Our industry’s shift towards greater marketing integration sees many of us reflecting on, and refining, the systems, structure and service we are providing - [The Google Algorithm Timeline for the SEO professional](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-algorithm-timeline-seo-professional/): If you have ever wanted a quick reference for major historical changes to Google’s algorithm updates, then this is the only timeline you will ever need. - [Should companies be bidding on their brand terms?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/bidding-brand-terms/): Bidding on your own brand name is a savvy strategy regardless of your position in the organic results. Find out the secrets behind this strategy. - [Google Panda 4.0 update – How to avoid Panda-geddon](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-panda-4-0-update-avoid-panda-geddon/): Google's Panda 4.0 has finally hit the SERPs, causing waves of discontent in some quarters, and signs of recovery for others. Find out all you need to know... - [Introducing new Founders Caroline, Victoria & Tom](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/introducing-new-founders-caroline-victoria-tom/): The Found office has been buzzing with energy the past few weeks. There has been lots going on, including welcoming some very lovely new Founders... - [2 clever guys at Google share the future of Adwords](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-future-of-adwords/): Google has just revealed their future plans for AdWords in a video livestream. Some of these changes are big, meaning they are also (probably) important. - [8 FREE GOOGLE SEO TOOLS TO BOOST YOUR RANKINGS IN 2025](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/10-free-google-seo-tools-everyone-use/): Discover 8 free Google SEO tools to boost your website’s performance. Learn to use these essential tools for improved rankings, insights, and growth. - [Finance Monthly - The Importance of Mobile Marketing](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/finance-monthly-the-importance-of-mobile-marketing/): Find out what Sales Director, Stephen Dart, had to say about the scope, importance and efficacy of mobile marketing for businesses within the finance sector - [Top 7 SEO errors you should fix today](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/top-7-seo-errors-fix-today/): Is your webpage missing a Sitemap? Does it load too slowly? Use and download our Free SEO-Tool to identify SEO errors and to learn how to fix them... - [Found collaborates with Life Works for Eating Disorders Awareness Week](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-collaborates-with-life-works-for-eating-disorders-awareness-week/): Did you know eating disorders affect 1.6m people in the UK? Find out more about social media's influence and the push for safe spacers in our infographic - [Found on the 2014 European Search Awards shortlist](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-shortlisted-for-2014-european-search-awards/): Found makes short list for 2014 European Search Awards for Best Low Budget Campaign for Found & HCL - ROI Health Kick for UK Nursing Recruiter. - [An infographic to celebrate RBS 6 Nations Championship](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/rbs-6-nations-infographic/): Check out the 2014 RBS 6 Nations championship infographic which is stacked with stats and facts about the six European teams competing in the tournament - [What the London tube strike taught me about omni-channel marketing](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/london-tube-omni-channel-marketing/): Consumers are now more educated and better connected. Find out how this affects digital marketing and the role omni-channel plays in this changing landscape. - [Why you should be using Google Authorship](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/why-google-authorship/): How do you reinforce your authority as an author or a brand? The answer is simple: Google Authorship. Read our blog for authorship benefits and set up tips - [22 takeaways from the Digital Marketing Show](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/digital-marketing-show-2013/): Check out these 22 takeaways from the four different tracks of day 1 of the Digital Marketing Show at ExCel London. Last week our three awesome interns - [5 lessons I’ve learned during 5 years at Found](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/5-lessons-5-years-found/): Want to know the secrets of running an award-winning performance marketing agency? Read our MD Tina Judic's 5 things she has learned in 5 years at Found - [Found makes pizza!](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-makes-pizza/): Check out our super fun, delicious and awesome comic of all the Founders making some pizza as part of our quarterly review. Each quarter, representatives... - [Top picks from the Content Marketing Show](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/content-marketing-show-november-2013/): Here are some of our favourite talks, takeaways, quotes and recommended tools and reads from the Content Marketing Show - a must-go event! - [Found tackles PPC advertising in 50 Shades of Digital Marketing - ebook](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/50-shades-digital-marketing/): Take a read through 50 Shades of Digital Marketing to hear from our Managing Director Tina Judic on PPC advertising. The article appears on page 58 of the - [Hummingbird - Google announces new algorithm](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/hummingbird-google-algorithm/): Last week Google announced a major algorithm re-write to coincide with the 15th anniversary of the search engine’s inception: Hummingbird. The search engine - [Found featured in Web Designer Magazine](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-featured-in-web-designer-magazine-2/): This month’s Web Designer Magazine (Issue 214) asked the question: SEO vs content: who is number 1? Found’s Product Director Luke Townsend had... - [What's all the buzz? - BuzzFeed](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/whats-the-buzz-about-buzzfeed/): Take a look at this awesome list of things you may not know about BuzzFeed and the factors Charlotte Bella think are behind their major success... - [Found's round-up of BrightonSEO Sept 2013](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-brightonseo-sept-2013/): Despite the fog and rain, members from the Found team headed to BrightonSEO last week for the September 2013 conference. With three different rooms and doze - [Google wants your feedback](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/send-google-your-feedback/): Philip Gamble weighs in on Google's new suggestion form which asks you for feedback on how the search engine can provide a better experience for users.... - [Web Development Glossary: Essential Terms You Need to Know](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/web-development-terms/): Take a read through the final instalment of our terminology series where we delve into the world of web development. With many of us used to being on the... - [Website Design and Build Terms](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/website-design-and-build-terms/): Find out all about website design and build terms in part 3 of the Found Terminology Series. From HTML and CMS to responsive design, we explain it all... - [SEO Glossary: SEO Terms & Definitions](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/seo-terms/): Find out all about SEO terms in part 2 of the Found Terminology Series. We tackle everything from Spam, Robots.txt to Panda and Penguin... - [PPC Terms: A Complete Paid Search Glossary](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/ppc-terms/): Check out the first part of the Found Terminology Series: PPC. Whether you are starting out in PPC, working alongside experts or just interested in PPC.. - [Daily Mail joins the Affiliate Marketing game](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/daily-mail-joins-the-affiliate-marketing-game/): How does the Mail Online's move into the affiliate marketing game mean for consumers and the industry as a whole? - [A sneak peek into the future of the music industry](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/a-sneak-peek-into-the-future-of-the-music-industry/): Hear from a man who has a bold but clear intention: to fix the current state of the music industry. Speakers Corners' Alex Hunter talks about Rushmore.fm... - [The force behind SEO: a content marketing presentation](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-force-behind-seo-a-content-marketing-presentation/): Take a look at the Content Marketing and SEO slideshare created by Found to learn about why great content is a prerequisite for your SEO strategy... - [Sweet words from the Content Marketing Show](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/sweet-words-from-the-content-marketing-show/): A cameo by Ryan Gosling and a look at seven major themes of The Content Marketing Show 2013... - [Top 5 iPhone Apps That Simplify Life](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/5-secrets-to-an-appy-life/): Looking to simplify your life and iPhone? Here are 5 iOS apps to help get you the information you need in the easiest way possible. - [Penguin 2.0 cheat sheet](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/penguin-2-0/): This cheat sheet was designed to help you understand the basics of Google's latest algorithm update: Penguin 2.0. - [Stats & Facts: Content Marketing](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/stats-facts-content-marketing/): What is your next content marketing move? From what to post and where to post it. We compiled some stats & facts to help guide your decision... - [Location, location, location!](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/location-location-location/): Read to find out how location plays a key role in the new era of digital marketing. One of the most important issues in business is location... - [Social search hits Google](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/social-search-hits-google/): Check out the new social search features added to Google. What does this addition of drop-down options mean? Two Founders take a look... - [5 awesome browser extensions for digital marketers](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/5-awesome-browser-extensions/): Looking for some hacks and cheats to help get you through your day? I checked out what the Founders touted as their favourite browser extensions... - [BrightonSEO - Roundup 2013](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/brightonseo-roundup-2013-2/): Found's roundup of the BrightonSEO conference in April 2013. We take a look at the talks, the lessons learnt and give you some of the best snippets and... - [Found featured in The Drum's search supplement](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/drum-looking-glass/): In The Drum’s search supplement, Found's MD Tina Judic talks about "how developments at Google, social search and the growth of mobile are all impacting - [UK Digital Women - 100 Years of International Women's Day](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/uk-women-in-digital-iwd-2013/): Today is the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day (IWD) - [Use the latest web techniques to produce exceptional content](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/use-latest-techniques-produce-exceptional-content/): how can you make your content burst forth from the screen and wow visitors? The kind of content that creates an instant buzz?  - [Enhanced Campaigns or Enhanced Google Grief?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-enhanced-campaigns/): Enhanced Campaigns for AdWords which has brought about some significant changes to how advertisers will analyse, build &target their paid search campaigns. - [Travel - Facts about Mobile Search [Infographic]](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/travel-facts-about-mobile-search-infographic/): As experts in both travel & mobile, we’ve been able to compile an infographic highlighting some of the more important (and fun) findings to date. Enjoy! - [Vine, the next branch in the evolution of social](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/vine-the-next-branch-in-the-evolution-of-social/): Co-founder & GM of Vine, Dom Hofmann recently coined the phrase ‘micro-vlogging’ with feigned embarrassment, but that’s exactly what Vine provides. - [Have we now evolved beyond the Digital Age?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/evolved-beyond-digital-age/): Digital Marketing - The year has kicked off with an interesting debate into the very moniker to which we give our existence and service. - [Facebook Graph Search – The Death Knell of Google?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/facebook-graph-search-death-knell-google/): Graph Search is, in some corners, being cited as Facebook’s answer to Google Search whereas others are wondering what all the fuss is about. - [4G Destined To Hit Full Speed In 2013](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/4g-destined-to-hit-full-speed-in-2013/): 2013 is surely the year 4G connectivity will have a big impact on mobile marketing. Read on for views on mobile search, mobile advertising and more. - [Top 5 Web Design Predictions](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/web-design-predictions-2013/): 2012 was an exciting time for web design, performing a key role in successful digital marketing campaigns. But was does 2013 hold in store? - [An Early Present from Found: SEO iPhone App](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/seo-iphone-app/): Audit your site with Found's SEO iPhone app. Download for free now for iPad and iPhone from the iOS AppStore! - [Is the Marketing Department fit for purpose in the brave new world of SEO?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/marketing-department-fit-brave-new-world-seo/): It’s time for a rethink of organisational structures that enables a tightly integrated content strategy to develop. - [6 things I hate to see in my Twitter feed... and how you can avoid them](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/6-things-hate-twitter-feed/): There are lots of common mistakes made on Twitter that can make people unfollow or not follow a feed in the first place. here is a list of my pet peeves. - [8 Mobile SEO Tools Provided for Free by Google](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-mobile-seo-tools/): Google provide excellent mobile seo tools that can help you analyse and ultimately improve performance through this channel. - [The Found Five - October](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-found-five-october/): The cold is finally here and it’s almost time for mulled wine and mince pies, but what happened in October? - [12 Fundamental Landing Page Optimisation Tips](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/12-fundamental-landing-page-optimisation-tips/): Before creating landing pages for your next marketing campaign, learn these 12 Fundamental Landing Page Optimisation Tips for boosting your conversion rate. - [What We Found at Google Engage](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-engage/): The Google Engage event for agencies covers lots of areas such as Google Tag Manager, Merchant Centre, Display Remarketing and the Ad Builder Tool. - [Google Algo Changes - The Autumn Fantastic Four](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-autumn-fantastic-four/): With a high amount of turbulence and stormy weather to contend with after many Google Changes, 2012 has been a period of intense activity for many SEOs, - [Find us at the a4u expo 2012](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/a4u-expo-2012/): The A4UExpo is about innovation and Found's search scientists will explain how our innovative approach can help your business. - [Found to optimise HCL's online profile](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-to-optimise-hcls-online-profile/): HCL, the largest provider of temporary healthcare professionals to the NHS has appointed Found, the award winning digital marketing agency specialising in - [Oversharing or misunderstood: Automatic sharing in social.](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/oversharing-or-misunderstood-automatic-sharing-in-social/): Last week, Found entered the brightly lit white loft apartment of London’s ‘Official Facebook Hub’ to take part in a automatic sharing conference. - [The Found Five –September](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-found-five-september/): So to cheer you up as you settle into winter mode – here’s our September round-up reminding you of all the fab things around the web last month: - [Google Web Lab](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-web-lab/): Google's Web Lab is made of 5 Chrome experiment installations that bring the extraordinary workings of the internet to life - [Found Donate to Help Lions](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-donate-to-help-lions/): This summer we discovered a young football team who needed a little help with funding, to get their 2012/2013 campaign underway. - [7 Top Tools and Takeaways from BrightonSEO](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/7-top-tools-and-takeaways-from-brightonseo/): Here is a roundup of tools and services mentioned by the speakers at the free BightonSEO search marketing event. - [Pandas and Penguins Spotted in Brighton](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/pandas-penguins-spotted-brighton-seo/): What's new in SEO? Complete list of advanced SEO tips from the Brighton SEO conference September 2012. - [The Anatomy of Landing Page Testing Using AdWords](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-anatomy-of-landing-page-testing/): How do you find a landing page with a high conversion rate from a website that you don’t have access to? Use AdWords Campaign Experiments. - [Effective Digital Content Marketing – And the wonders it can do to your ROI](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/effective-digital-content-marketing-roi-wonders/): Many business are deliberating on whether or not to get on the digital content marketing bandwagon. I say, get on board and enjoy! - [Why the UK SEO Industry Wins Gold for Team GB](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/uk-seo-wins-gold-for-team-gb/): As the opening ceremony of the Olympics on Friday night proved - as a nation we know how to put on a show & get results. - [Is Facebook Advertising Right For Your Business?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/is-facebook-advertising-right-for-your-business/): A debate over Facebook advertising raged recently after a BBC writer suggested that many companies were wasting their marketing budgets. - [How the temperamental British weather affects Online Sales](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/how-weather-affects-online-sales/): The weather is central to British life. We curse it, we praise it, but to what degree does it affect our spending habits online? - [Ad Text Olympics - How to Win Gold with AdWords](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/ad-text-olympics-win-gold-adwords/): This week sees the start of the London 2012 Olympics, so took a closer look at what the Olympics can teach us about ad text writing. - [Tracking Social Media Conversions Using Google Analytics](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/social-media-tracking-google-analytics/): Monitoring your social traffic conversions is essential if you maintain any sort of content and social media strategy. - [Official Google Analytics App for Android Reviewed](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/official-google-analytics-app-reviewed/): Google had recently released an App for Google Analytics for Android devices. I downloaded the app recently and put it through it's paces. - [The Found Newsletter is GO!](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-newsletter/): As part of the new branding process here at Found HQ, we have launched our first newsletter! Subscribe today to receive the latest news. - [5 Great Uses of the IF Formula in Excel (you may not know about)](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/5-great-uses-if-formula-excel/): Getting acquainted with IF statements will open up a whole range of opportunities for you when you’re looking to analyse & manipulate data. - [Time to Get Creative as One Word Search Queries Increase by 19%](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/one-word-search-queries-increase/): Hitwise have released the latest stats on the search share of Google and Bing in the UK and US - and the results throw up a few surprises. - [Whose Search Data is it Anyway? – Firefox to encrypt referring search strings](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/firefox-encrypt-referring-search-strings-whose-search-referral-data-anyway/): One of the key reporting metrics returned by website analytics programs is referral data. Is this data under threat? - [Found launches Ultimate PPC Keyword Concatenation Tool](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-launches-ppc-keyword-tool/): Leading digital marketing agency Found has unveiled a free Keyword Tool, which will assist advertisers in creating stronger keyword lists for their PPC - [You can Now ‘Disavow' Links in Bing – But is it worth it?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/bing-disavow-links-pointless/): There has been a clamour for a way to be able to devalue potentially harmful links, and Bing have beaten Google to producing a Disavow tool. - [Beat the Keyword Blues with Found’s Ultimate Keyword Concatenation Tool](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-ppc-keyword-tool/): The Ultimate PPC Keyword Concatenation tool helps you to construct large lists of paid search keywords with ease. - [Found Welcomes: Raluca Costin to the SEO Team](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/raluca-costin-joins-seo-team/): Raluca Costin, has joined Found as a Senior SEO Executive. As a keen SEO-or she aspires to become Matt Cutt's best friend. - [The Way the Cookie Crumbled – No Need for Site Owners to Grumble?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-way-cookie-crumbled-no-need-site-owners-grumble/): On a weekend when most of the UK was scorching hot without a cloud in the sky, the EU cookie law deadline came and passed. - [Are you a data-hater or an infographic freak?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/are-you-a-data-hater-or-an-infrographic-freak/): Some have been suffering from infographic overload recently, but I am no data-hater, I am an infograph-freak. Resources, ideas and examples. - [Found Welcomes: Nikhil Sharma to the SEO Team](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-welcomes-nikhil-sharma-to-seo-team/): This week, Nikhil Sharma has joined Found's SEO team as an SEO Intern. Nikhil runs his own underground hip-hop blog. - [CSS3 3D Transforms – The future of User experience?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/css3-3d-transforms-the-future-of-user-experience/): It is possible to display and transform web elements three-dimensionally using an extension called CSS 3D Transforms. - [Wordpress and Magento contact forms just got clever thanks to FoundLabs](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/wordpress-magento-contact-forms-just-got-clever/): Contact Form Analytics is a simple wordpress plugin that collects information from your Google Analytics cookies & adds it to the emails. - [Found Welcomes: Giovanni Di Cosmo](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-welcomes-giovanni-di-cosmo/): Gio has a wealth of PPC knowledge under his belt and has joined the Found account management team as Account Executive. - [Found wins three at this years Performance Marketing Awards](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-wins-three-at-this-years-performance-marketing-awards/): We scooped 3 awards for our work with Flybe and the Post Office, along with Pete Newman taking home the Hotshot Rising Star award. - [The Relentless March of Google's Penguin](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/relentless-march-of-googles-penguin-and-panda-updates/): April was a busy month for SEO’s as Google continued with its relentless pace of change in 2012 with the release of the 'Penguin’ algorithm update. - [Jay-Z's Got (Social) Game!](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/jay-z-got-social-game/): The rapper, businessman and entrepreneur, Jay-Z, has set conquering Social Games as his next business goal with the launch of Empire. - [Google - Helping teachers to flip their classrooms](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-helping-teachers-to-flip-their-classrooms/): On Wednesday April 4th and Thursday 5th April 2012, Google held their second UK Google Teacher Academy in London. - [Savvy search marketers win (and lose) from more Google match type changes](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/savvy-search-marketers-win-and-lose-from-more-google-match-type-changes/): Whenever Google make a change to their PPC platform there is always talk within the industry that their intention is to increase ad clicks. - [Why We Need an Over-Monopolisation Penalty for Google](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/why-we-need-an-over-monopolisation-penalty-for-google/): I want to point out that the so called over-optimisation is not the main problem we face as Google users today. It's just a smokescreen. - [Should Your Business be on Pinterest?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/should-your-business-be-on-pinterest/): Whether they know what it is or not, almost everybody has heard about Pinterest — The social network with real visual appeal! - [New Google+ interface apes Facebook and Twitter (Again)](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/new-google-interface-apes-facebook-and-twitter/): This week, Google released a new interface for Google+, and it seems to borrow heavily from existing social platforms. - [Olympic preparation for your PPC campaign](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/olympic-preparation-for-your-ppc-campaign/): To produce a winning performance in a paid search campaign, you need the same determination and Meticulous planning of an Olympic athlete. - [5 Great Time-Saving Excel Tips (you may not know about)](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/5-great-time-saving-excel-tips-you-may-not-know-about/): Microsoft Excel. Love it or hate it, but chances are if you’re in this industry of ours, it plays an integral part in your daily routine. - [Discover Problems with your Site with our FREE Online SEO Audit Tool](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/free-online-seo-audit-tool/): Free online SEO Audit Tool - Check technical site Implementation including canonicalisation, Meta data & also view inbound link Information. - [Responsive Design to deliver resounding ROI](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/responsive-design-to-deliver-resounding-roi/): Responsive design is a relatively new concept in website creation and it was an approach I thought would be perfect for our new microsite. - [Digital Marketing Opportunities in Australia](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/digital-marketing-opportunities-in-australia/): For this dual Aussie/Brit, it’s very satisfying to see the Australian market becoming increasingly fertile for a number of our UK clients. - [The History Of Social Media (1978-2012)](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-history-of-social-media-1978-2012/): An infographic of the History of social media, from 1978 and the formation of the bulletin board system all the way to 2012. - [Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance Workshop](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/yahoo-and-microsoft-search-alliance-workshop/): I had a chance to learn more about the experience of the search alliance in the US, best practices for the transition & to ask questions. - [Found Welcomes - Kristina Grineva](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-welcomes-kristina-grineva/): This week Found welcomes to the team Kristina Grineva, who joins us as our fantastic new Account Manager. - [Google ignores EU warning and implements privacy policy](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-ignores-eu-warning-and-implements-privacy-policy/): Despite warnings that the change may violate European laws, Google has today implemented its new cross-service privacy policy. - [Are You Keeping Up with Search? Google Announce 40 Algorithm updates in February Alone](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/keeping-up-with-search-algorithm-updates/): It probably is not surprising how many algorithm changes Google make to search each month - I take a look at some recent changes. - [Rich Snippet Star Ratings – What is Acceptable?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/rich-snippet-star-ratings-what-is-acceptable/): Rich snippets have been becoming more prevalent in Google search results in the last year, but what should be deemed acceptable? - [PPC Day-Parting Takes Campaigns Further](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/ppc-dayparting-to-take-campaigns-further-through-adwords/): I have various strategies for setting keyword or ad group bids at the right level to maximise our clients’ revenue, and one is day-parting. - [AVALANCHE DANGER! Modified Broad Match](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/avalanche-danger-modified-broad-match/): Google’s been under pressure lately. Q4 results missing forecast, Facebook filing their IPO; it’s getting hotter in the kitchen. - [The Daily Mail Embraces SEO](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-daily-mail-embraces-seo/): Internet marketing research firm, comScore, has reported that the Daily Mail has become the most visited newspaper website in the world. - [The Real Reason Behind the Return of MySpace's Users](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/reason-behind-return-of-myspaces-users/): The once fledgling social network, MySpace, has added 1m users in the last 30 days. So what caused this dramatic turnaround in fortune? - [Negative Lists - A Better Method of Creation](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/negative-lists-a-better-method-of-creation/): A key strategy with PPC is the creation of negative lists. You must have a tight list of terms you do not want your ads to show for. - [Step Aside Usain Bolt - Social Media is the Fastest Force on the Planet](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/step-aside-usain-bolt-social-media-is-the-fastest-force-on-the-planet/): Social Media helps games developer to raise the funds to build a proposed video game in less than a day on kickstarter. - [Notes on an A/B test](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/notes-on-an-ab-test/): We often run A/B or multi-variant tests on pages to see if we can maximise our click through rates. - [Top 5 Tips to Keep Your Account Management Partnership Running Smoothly](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/top-5-tips-to-keep-your-account-management-partnership-running-smoothly/): We want our business partnerships to work together like bacon & eggs, but it can feel like you’re trying to play golf with a tennis racquet. - [Twitter Brand Pages Hit The UK](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/twitter-brand-pages-hit-the-uk/): Today is another milestone in the evolution of Twitter as UK brand pages arrive on the computers of British users this morning. - [The EU Cookie Directive Saga](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-eu-cookie-directive-saga/): The owners of every web property aimed at consumers in the UK are frantically developing solutions to the EU Cookie Directive. Or are they? - [Google: All Your Searches Belong to Plus](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-all-your-searches-belong-to-plus/): Google Search Plus Your World - Does it threaten Google's core search product? Are Google being evil and forcing our other social networks? - [Are Businesses lacking Strategies for Paid Search?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/businesses-lacking-paid-search-strategies/): If advertisers do not have a firm paid search plan in place then they should consider the impact this could have on their business. - [SOPA & PIPA - The digital blackout](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/sopa-pipa-the-digital-blackout/): The question is, should YOU get involved in the intervention of the passing of SOPA and PIPA? - [Google Exposes 'Your World' to Social Search](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-exposes-world-social-search/): Google launched Search Plus Your World, which caused quite a stir among the SEO and Social Media world, as it integrates social into search. - [5 tips for maximising ROI with PPC](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/5-tips-for-maximising-roi-with-ppc/): I have here put together five of my own simple tips for getting more out of your PPC campaigns. - [Higher Positions Don't Necessarily Mean Higher ROI](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/higher-positions-dont-necessarily-mean-higher-roi/): One of the services that Google offers to agencies is a dedicated account manager to provide assistance, advice, analysis for specific accounts. - [Facebook Memology - What topics did we engage most this year?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/facebook-memology-what-topics-did-we-engage-most-this-year/): What do Facebook know about us that we don’t? Well pretty much everything. The average user spends 7:01:41 hours per month on Facebook. - [Analysing the New Google Analytics Features for PPC and SEO](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/analysing-the-new-google-analytics-features-for-ppc-and-seo/): Google are introducing new features to analytics every few weeks, which are all being placed into the new-look Analytics platform. - [Found Takes the Double at Dadi Awards](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-takes-the-double-at-dadi-awards/): Found scooped the double at the DADI awards, winning Best use of Paid Search and Affiliate Marketing for our work across Google and Facebook. - [Found Wins Best Mobile Campaign at UK Search Awards](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-wins-best-mobile-campaign-at-uk-search-awards/): Found is delighted to announce that we have won Best Mobile Campaign at the inaugural UK Search Awards. - [Found shortlisted again!](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-shortlisted-again/): It seems November is going to be a very busy month for Found! We have both the Dadi Awards and the UK Search Awards coming up. - [Landing Page Quality Gains More Weighting](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/landing-page-quality-gains-more-weighting/): Google have announced a global roll out of a new algorithm change which will affect Adwords Google Quality Scores from today going forward. - [Casino night comes to BIG Studios](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/casino-night-comes-to-big-studios/): Last Friday saw the Found office turned, for one night only, into a swanky Casino, courtesy of Big Ideas Group generosity. - [Found Wins Another Award at this Years A4U Awards](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-wins-another-award-at-this-years-a4u-awards/): Our work as a leading search innovator has been recognised, by winning the Best Lead Generation Campaign award at this year’s a4uAwards. - [Why our Head of SEO & Social Media joined Found.](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/why-our-head-of-seo-social-media-joined-found/): Find out why our Head of SEO & Social Media joined Found, what his main responsibilities are and what he feels is an exciting challenge. - [Think Visibility - a cracking Search & Affiliate conference](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/think-visbility-a-cracking-search-affiliate-conference/): I’ve just returned from Think Visibility 5, a cracking conference on Search and Affiliate Marketing. - [Google acquires BeatThatQuote](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-acquires-beatthatquote/): Beatthatquote was acquired by Google for a deal worth £37.7 million. The comparison site compares deals across financial products. - [FREE PPC & SEO Audit](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/free-ppc-and-seo-audit/): We have an SEO Audit Tool to run technical checks on your domain, which is Free for you to use. - [Happy Birthday Found - 6 Years Old Today!](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/happy-birthday-found-6-years-old-today/): We've been celebrating a very special occasion in the office today, as Found turned six years old! - [Team Smithfield and SuperGames Infamy](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/team-smithfield-and-supergames-infamy/): ‘Team Smithfield’, descended upon T47 at London Bridge yesterday for their shot at Affiliate SuperGames 2011 glory. - [Found Search Predictions For 2011](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-search-predictions-2011/): 2011 will be the year when search and social media converge (although some might say collide). - [Found at NMA Live](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-at-nma-live/): Found provided nspiration for marketers at the NMA Live event, with the theme of 'Making the Latest Developments in Search Work for You'. - [Affiliates: Building Traffic with PPC](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/affiliates-building-traffic-with-ppc/): With the right strategy and the right objectives and goals, paid search activity can deliver very important incremental sales. - [Found Party Gets A Big Thumbs Up!!](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-party-gets-a-big-thumbs-up/): Last night saw the official launch of Found, the Performance Marketing Agency at the Music Room in West London. - [Voucher code sites are Google Instant's winners](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/voucher-code-sites-are-google-instants-winners/): Google Instant has certainly had an impact on the search space. But is this for the better? - [Prezzybox Appoints Found. As Its Paid Search Agency](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/prezzybox-appoints-found/): Prezzybox has appointed Found as its exclusive Paid Search agency. - [TradeDoubler Star Defects To Digital Performance Specialist FOUND.](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/tradedoubler-star-defects-to-found/): TradeDoubler stalwart Wulfric Light-Wilkinson has moved agency-side to become Business Development Director . - [Is affiliate marketing ready to embrace a post impression model?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/is-affiliate-marketing-ready-to-embrace-a-post-impression-model/): Affiliate marketing, since inception, has focused on a last click model. Is it ready to work on a post impression model? - [lastminute.com appoints Found as Search Agency](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/lastminute-com-appoints-found-as-search-agency/): lastminute.com has appointed Found as its search agency for its lastminute.com Ireland and Travelocity brands. - [Affiliate Report: Feature 2: EXPLOSION marketing!!](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/affiliate-report-feature-2-explosion-marketing/): Affiliate marketing has clawed its way up the agenda with a healthy line up of advertisers now including it on their media plan. - [Search Marketing – outsource or not to outsource?](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/search-marketing-outsource-or-not-to-outsource/): Search marketing has, and continues to be, one of the key elements of any digital strategy. - [Protecting your Brand](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/protecting-your-brand/): It’s two years since Google changed the brand rights rules and allowed advertisers to freely bid on each other’s brand terms. - [Premier Inn Achieve Record Incremental Sales](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/premier-innrecord-incremental-sales/): Premier Inn has revealed it achieved record incremental sales towards the end of last year, following a focused search strategy. - [Digital relationship marketing is vital when purse strings need to be tightened](https://www.found.co.uk/blog/digital-relationship-marketing-is-vital-when-purse-strings-need-to-be-tightened/): The beauty of digital relationship marketing is that an agency helps pick the best tools according to budget. ## Recources - [INTEGRATED DIGITAL MARKETING GUIDE](https://www.found.co.uk/resources/white-paper/integrated-digital-marketing-guide/): Integrated digital marketing strategy guide: using cross-channel data to build intelligent growth strategies. - [B2C DIGITAL MARKETING GUIDE](https://www.found.co.uk/resources/white-paper/b2c-digital-marketing-guide/): In this guide, we dive deeply into SEO, Paid Media, Data, and Content trends for B2C companies. - [B2B Digital Marketing Guide](https://www.found.co.uk/resources/white-paper/b2b-digital-marketing-guide/): In this guide, we dive deeply into SEO, Paid Media, Data, and Content trends for B2B companies. - [Digital Marketing GUIDE & TRENDS](https://www.found.co.uk/resources/white-paper/digital-marketing-guide-trends/): In this guide, we dive deeply into Digital Marketing - SEO, Paid Media, Data and Content - trends. - [GUIDE TO INCREMENTALITY](https://www.found.co.uk/resources/white-paper/guide-to-incrementality/): How to prove your digital marketing strategy works? This is the last guide to incrementality that you will ever need. - [PREDICTING BLACK FRIDAY](https://www.found.co.uk/resources/white-paper/predicting-black-friday/): This report will give you the insight required to prepare for changes in user and shopping behaviour in advance of the biggest shopping period of the year. - [12 of the digital youth trends you need to know this year.](https://www.found.co.uk/resources/white-paper/12-digital-youth-trends-you-need-to-know/): Here are our 12 future youth marketing digital trends you should know about, so that you can stay ahead of the game. - [SEO RANKING FACTORS GUIDE](https://www.found.co.uk/resources/white-paper/seo-ranking-factors-guide/): We discuss the influenceable factors involved in a search engine’s assessment of a website, regarding where it chooses to rank it for a given search term. - [ESSENTIAL PAID MEDIA GUIDE](https://www.found.co.uk/resources/white-paper/essential-paid-media-guide/): Practical guidance and insights on the future of paid media channels and how they need to work together to provide an integrated marketing strategy. --- # # Detailed Content ## Pages ### AI SEO > Unlock AI-powered search potential with Found. We optimise your site using Luminr and advanced strategies to boost visibility and relevance across AI platforms. - Published: 2025-04-24 - Modified: 2025-04-24 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/seo/ai-seo/ What is AI-powered search? AI-powered search doesn’t just scan for keywords - it understands what people actually mean. Using natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML), it interprets context, deciphers intent, and serves up results that are more accurate, relevant, and personal. It’s a step up from traditional search. Smarter systems, sharper answers - and a user experience built around what people are really looking for, not just what they type. What is Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO)? GEO is SEO, reimagined for the AI era. It's about making your content the kind that large language models want to pull into answers. Not just optimised for humans or search engines, but for the algorithms shaping how people access information today. Search visibility is evolving. GEO helps ensure your brand is present in AI-generated responses - think ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude or Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE). If an LLM’s building an answer, you want it referencing you. That means crafting content that's clear, credible, and technically structured to stand out in a crowded, algorithm-fed ecosystem. Search is changing. GEO makes sure you're not just visible — you're part of the answer. What Is Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO)? Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) is all about making sure your content gets picked up by AI platforms like Google SGE, Bing Copilot, and ChatGPT. Instead of chasing rankings, AEO helps your content surface as the answer. For brands, it’s a smart way to boost visibility, build trust, and show up right when your audience needs you. How does Found agency use AI to optimise SEO campaign efficiencies? At Found, we use AI to work smarter, not just faster. Through FoundLabs, our dedicated innovation hub, we’re building tools that streamline workflows, surface smarter insights, and unlock opportunities traditional processes miss. We’ve developed game-changing tech like our Super Keyword Planner for lightning-fast research, a Review Analyser that transforms customer feedback into creative direction, and Bulk GPT to scale content ideation at pace. It’s all about reducing manual effort and maximising impact. Alongside this, we’re investing in Luminr — our in-house AI-powered technology — and have a dedicated AI team focused on turning disconnected data into decision-making intelligence, redefining how businesses perform and compete in today’s AI-driven world. The result? More efficient campaigns, sharper strategies, and more time spent where it counts — on creativity, performance, and delivering real results. How to appear in AI search results? Improving your brand’s visibility in AI search:Ensure Consistent Information - keep your brand details accurate and up to date across platforms like Google, Bing, Wikipedia, and key directories. Strengthen Keyword Alignment - optimise metadata and on-site content to reinforce associations with relevant search terms. Increase Authoritative Mentions - secure quality coverage through digital PR and publish thought leadership to boost credibility. Monitor AI Search Performance - use tools like Luminr to track your brand’s visibility across AI-driven results such as SearchGPT and Google AI Overviews. Engage with AI Platforms - where possible, submit updates or corrections to ensure... --- ### META ADVERTISING > Found, a leading Meta Ads agency, delivers highly targeted, innovative campaigns using its unique Everysearch™ approach to drive measurable growth. - Published: 2025-04-23 - Modified: 2025-04-24 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/paid-social/meta-advertising/ What are Meta Ads? Meta Ads are paid advertising placements across Meta’s suite of platforms—including Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and the Audience Network. They’re designed to help businesses showcase their products or services through visually engaging, interactive formats. Whether you're launching something new or nurturing customer loyalty, Meta Ads offer an effective way to connect with the right people, in the right places, at the right time—using powerful targeting and creative toolsHow do Meta Ads work? Meta Ads use Meta’s sophisticated ad platform to deliver personalised content to highly specific audience segments. By leveraging data on user demographics, interests, online behaviour and more, you can reach people most likely to take action. Choose from a range of formats—like Stories, Reels, carousels, or videos—and set campaign objectives that align with your goals, from brand awareness to sales. The platform’s AI-driven optimisation ensures your ads keep getting better results over time. What are the benefits of Meta Advertising? Meta advertising offers brands the ability to scale efficiently, reach vast audiences, and drive meaningful results across the entire customer journey. Its granular targeting capabilities mean you can speak directly to your ideal customer—whether they’re discovering your brand for the first time or ready to convert. With robust analytics, A/B testing, and real-time performance data, you can continuously optimise for better ROI, turning insights into impact. Why partner with a Meta Ads agency? Working with a dedicated Meta Ads agency like Found means putting your campaigns in expert hands. Our Paid Social team combines strategic thinking with creative flair and analytical rigour to deliver ads that don’t just look great—they perform. From concept to conversion, we manage every detail, fine-tune performance, and adapt to shifts in audience behaviour. It’s all about unlocking growth while giving you more time to focus on running your business. --- ### MASTER SERVICES TERMS & CONDITIONS 2025 - Published: 2025-04-14 - Modified: 2025-04-14 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/master/ APPLICATION 1. 1 These Terms and Conditions (“Master Services Terms and Conditions”) shall apply to the provision of Services by Found to the Client. 1. 2 If there is any conflict or ambiguity between these Master Services Terms and Conditions and the Insertion Order, the Insertion Order shall take precedence. DEFINITIONS AND INTERPRETATION 2. 1 In these Master Services Terms and Conditions, unless the context otherwise requires, the following expressions have the following meanings: “Affiliate” means in relation to a party, any entity that directly or indirectly controls, is controlled by, or is under common control with that party from time to time. “Affiliate Marketing” means Affiliate Marketing services including, but not limited to, strategy, reporting, insights, analysis, tracking and recommendations; “Analytics” means Analytics services including, but not limited to, strategy, reporting, insights, analysis, tracking and recommendations; “Agreement” means any agreement between the Parties which shall incorporate, and be subject to, an Insertion Order and the Master Services Terms and Conditions; “Business Day” means a day (excluding Saturdays) on which banks in London are open for the transaction of normal banking business (other than solely for trading and settlement in Euros); “Campaign” means a campaign as set out in an applicable Insertion Order; “Client” means any individual, firm or corporate body (which expression shall, where the context so admits, include its successors and assigns) which purchases services from Found and whose details appear on an Insertion Order; “Client Materials” means materials, content, information in any form created or generated by Client and supplied to Found or Influencer by Client or on Client’s behalf including as described on the Insertion Order; “Confidential Information” means any and all information acquired by either party about the other party’s business and/or given by one party to the other party and/or generated by either party from the other party’s Confidential Information in the course of fulfilling their obligations under this Agreement. Found’s Confidential Information includes any confidential information of Third-Party Suppliers and Influencers (if applicable); “Content” means content for online or offline purposes including, but not limited to, content strategy and planning, research, briefing and copywriting, optimisation and reporting; “CPA” means cost per action, where Found generates a fee for every defined action; “Creative” means work delivered by the studio team including, but not limited to, website design and build, creative content creation, infographics, email templates and collateral creation; “Credit Limit” means the monetary sum specified as such on the Insertion Order; “CRO” means conversion rate optimisation and/or personalisation, which is the task of improving the conversion of traffic to an agreed on-site action for specific pages and/or personalise experiences for individual customers or customer clusters; “Data and Analytics” means data aggregation, manipulation, analysis and architecture within the marketing space. Services can include (but are not limited to) digital analytics implementation, maintenance and tag management, data analysis, business intelligence, machine learning, attribution modelling, UX and conversion rate optimisation. “Data Protection Legislation” means (i) UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), and (ii) The Data Protection... --- ### SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION > SEO is a cost-effective way to drive quality traffic. But what is it, how does it work, and how can expert SEO services unlock real, measurable growth? - Published: 2025-03-06 - Modified: 2025-03-06 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/search-engine-optimisation/ https://www. youtube. com/watch? v=9CriJMcqmQc --- ### INTERNATIONAL DIGITAL MARKETING AGENCY > Found is a multi-award-winning international digital marketing agency. Masters of global search performance across all digital marketing platforms. - Published: 2024-09-23 - Modified: 2024-10-31 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/international-digital-marketing-agency/ What is international digital marketing? International digital marketing involves promoting products or services beyond a brand’s domestic market through channels like SEO, paid media, content, and influencer marketing. By expanding into new regions and countries, brands can enhance visibility, build a global audience, and drive business growth. However, international digital marketing is inherently complex, as it requires reaching customers across borders. Success demands a thorough understanding of local languages, cultural nuances, and regulations to ensure effective communication and meaningful engagement with diverse global audiences. How to develop an international digital marketing strategy? A global marketing strategy goes beyond selecting marketing channels and translating content. It requires a deep understanding of the target demographic. This means creating digital campaigns that align with local languages, values, and regulations while maintaining global brand consistency and ensuring localised relevance. Here are five steps to executing an effective international digital marketing strategy:1. Conduct thorough market and audience research. 2. Define your objectives and set an appropriate budget. 3. Choose suitable strategies by selecting from channels such as SEO, paid media, digital PR, and email marketing. 4. Localise your content with native language speakers. 5. Track and analyse your results. Why partner with an international digital marketing agency? Partnering with an international digital marketing agency like Found provides companies with unparalleled local market expertise, cutting-edge tools, and cost-effective solutions to drive business success. With over 15 years of experience, our unique Everysearch™ approach, and the full breadth of Found's capabilities, we deliver sustained and profitable growth for your brand on a global scale. --- ### DIGITAL EXPERIENCE > We’re a London-based digital experience agency that prioritises your customers' needs and business goals, crafting optimised experiences to drive results and revenue. - Published: 2024-09-04 - Modified: 2025-02-12 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/digital-experience/ What is digital experience (DX)? Digital experience is a vital element of digital marketing, encompassing every interaction between a business and its customers across digital channels. It integrates user experience, website design, user interface, and content to create a cohesive and seamless journey. By unifying all digital touchpoints - including mobile apps, social media, emails, and digital ads - the goal is to leverage these resources to enhance user satisfaction and drive meaningful results. Why choose Found as your digital experience agency? Partnering with a digital experience agency provides brands with specialised expertise in data science, user research and cutting-edge tools, to craft engaging and conversion-driven user experiences. With over 15 years of experience in digital marketing and a track record of excellence in digital experience, we drive revenue and foster profitable growth. --- ### DIGITAL MARKETING AGENCY,  NEW YORK > Found is a multi-award-winning Digital Marketing Agency in New York, US. A master of search performance across all digital marketing platforms. Get Found! - Published: 2024-07-31 - Modified: 2025-04-03 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/digital-marketing-agency-new-york/ Found New York68 Greene Street, 3rd FloorNew York, NY 10012USATalk to us: 1 (212) 796-6926 --- ### Sitemap > Find your way around Found easily using our sitemap. - Published: 2024-05-13 - Modified: 2024-05-15 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/sitemap/ --- ### GOOGLE ADS > Found is a Google Ads management agency based in London. As a Premier Google Partner, our expert team will accelerate your growth online. - Published: 2024-03-28 - Modified: 2024-06-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/ppc/google-ads/ --- ### YOUTUBE VIDEO ADVERTISING > Found is an expert YouTube video advertising agency. Our team of YouTube video ads management experts will supercharge your growth online. Get in touch. - Published: 2024-03-28 - Modified: 2024-06-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/paid-social/youtube-video-advertising/ What is YouTube Video Advertising and how does it work? YouTube advertising is a way to promote your business on the popular video-sharing platform. With YouTube ads, you can reach a targeted audience with your message through video ads that can appear before, during, or after videos. You can also display banner ads on the YouTube homepage or in search results. YouTube ads work on a cost-per-view (CPV) basis, meaning you only pay when a viewer watches your ad for at least 30 seconds or interacts with it in some way. With Found's expertise in YouTube advertising, we can help you create effective ads and reach your target audience on this powerful platform. What are the key benefits of YouTube Video Advertising? YouTube video advertising offers brands several key benefits, including increased brand awareness, improved engagement with audiences, and the ability to reach a large and diverse audience. Video ads on YouTube can help drive traffic to your website, increase conversions, and improve ROI. Additionally, YouTube's targeting options allow you to reach specific demographics and interests, making it a powerful tool for targeted advertising. With YouTube's vast reach and engaging content, your business can build a strong online presence and grow your customer base through effective video advertising. Why partner with a YouTube Video advertising agency? Partnering with a YouTube ads management agency can provide expert knowledge and experience to create and execute effective advertising campaigns. With extensive experience in audience targeting, ad formats, and bidding strategies, agencies can optimise campaigns for maximum ROI. This can save businesses valuable time and resources, while also producing better results than an in-house team could achieve. Additionally, YouTube ads management agencies stay up-to-date with the latest trends and updates to ensure that campaigns are always at the forefront of industry best practices. --- ### FACEBOOK ADVERTISING > At a London-based Facebook advertising agency Found, we create bespoke campaigns to drive engagement and action to position you as an industry leader. - Published: 2024-03-28 - Modified: 2024-06-05 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/paid-social/facebook-advertising/ How does Facebook Advertising work? In Facebook ads manager, our specialists create Facebook ads which once launched enter an auction system. The ads are delivered across the Facebook placements, with transparent reporting you can measure results from your ads as soon as they serve on the platform. How much does it cost to advertise on Facebook? Advertising on Facebook is not only cost-effective but also highly customisable. You can start running ads for as little as £5 a day, and your budget or spending limit is entirely up to you. How effective are Facebook Ads? Facebook ads can have a large impact by enabling you to reach users beyond your organic targeting scope. Every Facebook objective presents an opportunity to assist you in achieving your marketing goals. When executed correctly, Facebook ads can prove to be incredibly effective in driving awareness, traffic, and sales. Why partner with a Facebook Advertising agency? Collaborating with a Facebook ads agency provides you with the assurance of having a strategic plan and testing roadmap tailored to achieve your objectives. At Found, we offer weekly calls with performance insights and recommendations to help you understand our progress and goal attainment. --- ### REMARKETING > Found is a remarketing agency based in London. Our remarketing services team will accelerate your performance online. Find out more today! - Published: 2024-03-28 - Modified: 2024-05-21 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/remarketing/ What is Remarketing? Remarketing refers to targeting audiences with ads who have already interacted with your brand on your website, to encourage them to take a desired conversion action. Remarketing is a powerful tool that enables businesses to maintain engagement with potential customers, increase brand awareness, and enhance conversion rates by re-engaging individuals who have already shown interest. Why partner with a Remarketing agency? Partnering with a London-based remarketing agency like Found brings significant advantages. With our team of highly experienced remarketing experts, you’ll have access to the knowledge and industry know-how to maximise results. We use data-led insights to gain a deep understanding of your ideal audience and to help drive bespoke and highly-targeting remarketing campaigns. --- ### INSTAGRAM ADVERTISING > At a London-based Instagram advertising agency Found, we create bespoke campaigns to drive engagement and action to position you as an industry leader. - Published: 2024-03-28 - Modified: 2024-05-21 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/paid-social/instagram-advertising/ What is Instagram Advertising? Instagram ads allow brands to advertise their marketing messages across Instagram placements, including Instagram feed, stories, and explore page. Reach new users, generate website traffic and sales in a transparent and cost-effective way. What are the key benefits of Instagram Advertising? Instagram offers numerous benefits, ranging from a variety of marketing objectives to the flexibility of turning ads on and off as needed. With its vast reach and potential audience, the possibilities are endless, especially when coupled with a long-term growth strategy. Why partner with an Instagram Ads management agency? Partnering with an Instagram ads agency like Found enables you to fully leverage the benefits and opportunities offered by the platform. We ensure that technical aspects such as the Meta pixel and conversion tracking are properly implemented, while also offering exceptional industry strategy and creative recommendations. --- ### AMAZON ADVERTISING > Found is an expert Amazon PPC agency based in London. Our team of Amazon advertising specialists will supercharge your growth online. Get in touch today. - Published: 2024-03-28 - Modified: 2024-05-29 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/amazon-advertising/ --- ### TIKTOK ADVERTISING > Found is an expert TikTok advertising agency. Our team of TikTok ads management experts will supercharge your growth online. Get in touch today. - Published: 2024-03-27 - Modified: 2025-02-24 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/paid-social/tiktok-advertising/ What is TikTok Advertising? TikTok advertising is a form of social media marketing that leverages the popular short-form video platform, TikTok, to promote brands, products, and services to its massive user base. As one of the fastest-growing social media platforms, TikTok offers various ad formats, including in-feed ads, branded effects, and sponsored hashtag challenges. With its young and engaged audience, TikTok advertising provides businesses with an opportunity to showcase their creativity, engage with users through compelling video content, and reach a generation of digital-savvy consumers in a fun and innovative way. How do I advertise my business on TikTok? To advertise on TikTok, you need to:-Create a TikTok Ads account and select your campaign objective, such as brand awareness, traffic, or conversions. -Define your target audience based on demographics, interests, and behaviours to ensure your ads reach the right users. -Choose the ad format that aligns with your campaign goals, such as in-feed ads, branded effects, or sponsored hashtag challenges. -Set your budget and bidding strategy to control your ad spend. -Design and upload your creative content, keeping it engaging and aligned with TikTok's vibrant and creative community. -Launch your campaign and monitor its performance through the TikTok Ads Manager, making optimisations as needed to maximise results. Why TikTok is good for business? TikTok is a powerful platform for businesses for several reasons. Firstly, it reaches a younger audience, primarily Gen Z and Millennials. Its algorithm promotes content virality, giving businesses the potential for widespread exposure. The short-form video format encourages creativity and storytelling, helping brands engage users effectively. TikTok's authentic and playful nature enables businesses to showcase their personality and build a deeper connection with users. Additionally, the platform offers various advertising options, such as in-feed ads, branded effects, and sponsored hashtag challenges, allowing businesses to tailor campaigns to their specific goals. Partnering with TikTok influencers can further amplify brand exposure and credibility. Furthermore, TikTok's ecommerce features facilitate direct product sales within the app, simplifying the path from discovery to purchase. Overall, TikTok's growing popularity, creative environment, and diverse advertising options make it an excellent choice for businesses seeking to connect with younger audiences and boost brand awareness and growth. --- ### PINTEREST ADVERTISING > Found is an expert Pinterest advertising agency. Our team of Pinterest ads management specialists will supercharge your growth online. Get in touch! - Published: 2024-03-27 - Modified: 2024-05-28 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/paid-social/pinterest-advertising/ What is Pinterest Advertising? Pinterest advertising is a form of paid marketing on the Pinterest platform. It allows businesses to create and promote visually appealing pins to reach their target audience and drive engagement, website traffic, and conversions.  Advertisers can use various ad formats, such as standard pins, carousel ads, and promoted video pins, to showcase their products or services to millions of active Pinterest users.  By leveraging Pinterest's unique visual discovery platform, businesses can increase brand awareness, reach new customers, and inspire users to take action, making it a powerful tool for driving results and growing their online presence. How do I promote my business on Pinterest? To promote your business on Pinterest, you need to: Create a Business Account: Convert your personal account into a business account to access analytics and advertising features. Optimise Your Profile: Craft a compelling bio, use relevant keywords, and include a link to your website. Create Eye-Catching Pins: Design visually appealing pins that showcase your products or services. Pin Regularly: Stay active on Pinterest by pinning regularly to engage your audience. Utilise Rich Pins: Use rich pins to add more context and information to your pins. Join Group Boards: Participate in group boards to expand your reach. Consider Promoted Pins: Use Pinterest's advertising platform to boost your pins' visibility to a larger audience. Analyse and Optimise: Track your performance using Pinterest analytics and adjust your strategy based on insights to maximise your impact. How do I get noticed on Pinterest? To get noticed on Pinterest, you need to:Create High-Quality Pins: Design visually appealing and informative pins that stand out. Use Keywords: Include relevant keywords in your pin descriptions and titles for better discoverability. Pin Regularly: Stay active and consistent with pinning to keep your profile engaging. Join Group Boards: Participate in group boards to increase your exposure to a wider audience. Utilise Rich Pins: Use rich pins to provide more context and information about your content. Engage with Others: Interact with other users by liking, commenting, and repinning their content. Analyse Your Performance: Use Pinterest analytics to understand what content resonates with your audience and adjust your strategy accordingly. Why partner with a Pinterest Advertising agency? Partnering with a Pinterest advertising agency brings invaluable benefits to businesses aiming for success on the platform. Agencies possess specialised expertise and deep understanding of Pinterest's advertising capabilities, enabling them to develop highly targeted and impactful campaigns. They adeptly navigate Pinterest's ad platform intricacies, optimise budgets, and ensure optimal ROI. Pinterest advertising agencies excel in crafting compelling ad content, designing visually appealing graphics, and utilising audience insights to engage the right audience segments. Employing a data-driven approach and leveraging extensive experience, these agencies execute strategic campaigns, streamline processes, and empower businesses to achieve their marketing objectives on Pinterest. --- ### DISPLAY > Found is a display advertising agency based in London. Our display marketing campaigns are data-driven & highly targeted - guaranteed to deliver a return. - Published: 2024-03-27 - Modified: 2024-05-21 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/display/ What is Display Advertising? Display advertising is a targeted marketing method that uses visual ads, such as banners and images, to reach and engage specific audiences across websites, social media, and apps. These eye-catching ads can be tailored to fit users' interests and behaviours, making them relevant and effective. With Found's display advertising services, you can strategically showcase your brand, products, or services to the right people at the right time, driving brand awareness and traffic to your website. Let our experienced team maximise the impact of your display campaigns and achieve exceptional results for your business. What are the key benefits of Display Advertising? Display advertising offers a range of valuable benefits for businesses. Firstly, it enables precise targeting, reaching the right audience at the right time. With eye-catching visuals, display ads boost brand awareness and engagement. Additionally, display advertising drives relevant traffic to your website, increasing the potential for conversions. The data-driven approach ensures campaigns are optimised for maximum ROI. By partnering with Found, a leading display advertising agency, you gain access to experts who can create compelling ads that resonate with your audience, boosting your overall online presence and delivering exceptional results for your business. How much do digital Display ads cost? The cost of digital display ads can vary based on several factors, including the platform, ad format, targeting options, and competition. Display advertising typically operates on a cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-impression (CPM) basis, where you pay for each click or per thousand impressions. The actual cost will depend on the ad platform's bidding system and your chosen budget. At a London-based agency Found, we work closely with clients to tailor display advertising strategies that fit their objectives and budget, ensuring efficient spending and optimal results for their campaigns. Why partner with a Display Advertising agency? Partnering with a display advertising agency like Found can significantly benefit your business. Our team of experts brings extensive knowledge and experience in creating compelling display campaigns that drive results. We'll help you navigate the complex landscape of display advertising, ensuring your ads reach the right audience at the right time. From creative design to data-driven targeting, we'll optimise your campaigns for maximum ROI. With Found as your partner, you'll have access to cutting-edge tools and insights, allowing you to stay ahead of the competition and achieve your marketing goals with confidence. --- ### PPC AUTOMATION > Multi-award-winning PPC agency Found can help you achieve a better performance online with PPC automation and scripts. Find out more here. - Published: 2024-03-27 - Modified: 2024-05-21 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/ppc/ppc-automation/ What is PPC Automation? PPC automation uses software to streamline and enhance the management of your PPC campaigns through automated optimisations. The tools fine-tune PPC ad campaign settings such as ad spend, keyword targeting, and ad positioning based on predictive analysis and real-time data. Utilising PPC automation can help you achieve campaign goals more cost-effectively and efficiently. PPC automation benefits range from enhanced performance to error mitigation and increased scalability. What are PPC scripts? Google Ads scripts are automated tools used in pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns to streamline and optimise various tasks. These scripts are snippets of code written in languages like JavaScript that run on PPC platforms like Google Ads. They help automate repetitive processes, monitor performance metrics, and make data-driven decisions. Adwords scripts can perform various tasks such as adjusting bids based on performance, pausing or enabling ads, generating keyword lists, and detecting anomalies in campaign data. By leveraging Google Adwords scripts, advertisers can save themselves time, improve efficiency, and enhance the overall performance of their PPC campaigns. For the best Google Ads scripts possible, you want to work alongside PPC experts to devise and deliver a comprehensive Google Ads script strategy. --- ### FEED OPTIMISATION > Digital growth agency Found can help you achieve a better ROI across product shopping campaigns with feed optimisation. Find out more here. - Published: 2024-03-27 - Modified: 2025-03-25 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/ppc/feed-optimisation/ Why is Product Feed Management important? Your product feed is the engine behind high-performing shopping ads. Get it right, and your products land in front of the right people, with the right details, at the right time. Get it wrong, and you’re burning budget on missed opportunities. A clean, optimised feed boosts visibility, improves relevance, and drives conversions across Google Shopping, Meta, and Amazon. It keeps pricing, stock, and product data accurate—so you stay competitive. Smarter feed management means lower CPAs, higher ROAS, and better results. Simply put: if your feed isn’t working, your ads won’t either. Nail it, and watch performance take off. How to optimise a Product Feed? Titles & DescriptionsYour product titles and descriptions need the right keywords—strategically placed to match user intent and drive relevant traffic. No keyword stuffing, just smart, impactful optimisation that improves visibility without compromising readability. ImagesSharp, professional images make all the difference. Clean, high-res visuals boost engagement and conversions, while correctly formatted file names and sizes ensure seamless display across platforms. CategoriesProducts need to be mapped to the correct taxonomy for each platform. Get it wrong, and your listings won’t surface in the right searches. Pricing & StockNothing kills trust (or sales) faster than incorrect pricing or out-of-stock items still being advertised. Real-time updates keep your feed accurate, preventing wasted ad spend and customer frustration. Feed FormattingErrors, duplicates, or formatting issues? They’ll block your ads from running. Regular checks ensure your product feed is clean, compliant, and ready to perform. Why partner with Found for Product Feed Optimisation services? We don’t just manage your product feed—we make it perform. Found optimises every detail, from keyword-rich titles to real-time updates, ensuring your products reach the right audience. Working across Google Shopping, Meta, Amazon, and more, we fix errors, enhance data, and maximise visibility to drive conversions. No wasted spend, no missed opportunities—just a smarter, high-performing feed. Want better ROAS and lower CPAs? Let’s make your feed work harder. --- ### PPC CONSULTANCY > Found is a multi-award-winning PPC consultancy agency that harnesses the efficiencies of data and technology to help clients drive growth. Get in touch. - Published: 2024-03-27 - Modified: 2024-05-29 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/ppc/ppc-consultancy/ --- ### X/TWITTER ADVERTISING > Found is an expert Twitter advertising agency. Our team of Twitter ads management specialists will supercharge your growth online. Get in touch today. - Published: 2024-03-26 - Modified: 2024-05-29 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/paid-social/x-advertising/ --- ### TERMS AND CONDITIONS (PRIOR TO MAY 2021) - Published: 2024-03-26 - Modified: 2024-03-26 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/old-terms-and-conditions-2/ Master Services Terms & Conditions APPLICATION 1. 1 These Terms and Conditions (“Master Services Terms and Conditions”) shall apply to the provision of Services by Found to the Client. 1. 2 If there is any conflict or ambiguity between these Master Services Terms and Conditions and the Insertion Order, the Insertion Order shall take precedence. DEFINITIONS AND INTERPRETATION 2. 1 In these Master Services Terms and Conditions, unless the context otherwise requires, the following expressions have the following meanings: “Analytics” means services including, but not limited to, strategy, reporting, insights, analysis, tracking and recommendations; “Agreement” means any agreement between the Parties which shall incorporate, and be subject to, an Insertion Order and the Master Services Terms and Conditions; “Business Day” means a day (excluding Saturdays) on which banks in London are open for the transaction of normal banking business (other than solely for trading and settlement in Euros); “Campaign” means a campaign as set out in an applicable Insertion Order; “Client” means any individual, firm or corporate body (which expression shall, where the context so admits, include its successors and assigns) which purchases services from Found and whose details appear on an Insertion Order; “Client Materials” means materials, content, information in any form created or generated by Client and supplied to Found or Influencer by Client or on Client’s behalf including as described on the Insertion Order; “Confidential Information” means any and all information acquired by either party about the other party’s business and/or given by one party to the other party and/or generated by either party from the other party’s Confidential Information in the course of fulfilling their obligations under this Agreement. Found’s Confidential Information includes any confidential information of Third Party Suppliers and Influencers (if applicable); “Content” means content for online or offline purposes including, but not limited to, content strategy and planning, research, briefing and copywriting, optimisation and reporting; “CPA” means cost per action, where Found generates a fee for every defined action; “Creative” means work delivered by the studio team including, but not limited to, website design and build, creative content creation, infographics, email templates, video production and collateral creation; “Credit Limit” means the monetary sum specified as such on the Insertion Order; “CRO” means conversion rate optimisation and/or personalisation, which is the task of improving the conversion of traffic to an agreed on-site action for specific pages and/or personalise experiences for individual customers or customer clusters; “Data and Analytics” means data aggregation, manipulation, analysis and architecture within the marketing space. Services can include (but are not limited to) digital analytics implementation, maintenance and tag management, data analysis, business intelligence, machine learning, attribution modelling, UX and conversion rate optimisation. “Data Protection Legislation” means all applicable data protection and privacy legislation in force from time to time in the UK including the General Data Protection Regulation ((EU) 2016/679); the Data Protection Act 2018; the Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive 2002/58/EC (as updated by Directive 2009/136/EC) and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 (SI 2003/2426) as amended.... --- ### TERMS AND CONDITIONS (PRIOR TO JULY 2017) - Published: 2024-03-26 - Modified: 2024-03-26 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/old-terms-and-conditions/ 1. APPLICATION 1. 1 These Terms and Conditions (“Master Services Terms and Conditions”) shall apply to the provision of Services by Found to the Client. 1. 2 If there is any conflict or ambiguity between these Master Services Terms and Conditions and the Insertion Order, the Insertion Order shall take precedence. 2. DEFINITIONS AND INTERPRETATION 2. 1 In these Master Services Terms and Conditions, unless the context otherwise requires, the following expressions have the following meanings: “Agreement”means any agreement between the Parties which shall incorporate, and be subject to, an Insertion Order and the Master Services Master Services Terms and Conditions;“Business Day”means a day (excluding Saturdays) on which banks in London are open for the transaction of normal banking business (other than solely for trading and settlement in Euros);“Client”means any individual, firm or corporate body (which expression shall, where the context so admits, include its successors and assigns) which purchases services from Found and whose details appear on an Insertion Order;“Confidential Information”means any and all information acquired by either party about the other party’s business and/or given by one party to the other party and/or generated by either party from the other party’s Confidential Information in the course of fulfilling their obligations under this Agreement. Found’s Confidential Information includes any confidential information of Third Party Suppliers“Cookie Period”means the period set out on the Insertion Order;“CPA”means cost per action, where Found generates a fee for every defined action;“Credit Limit”means the monetary sum specified as such on the Insertion Order;“Deposit”means any deposit set out on the Insertion Order“Downtime”means any and all time when the Website is not fully operational;“EPC”means earnings per click, an industry metric;“Execution Date”means the date of the Agreement as set out on the Insertion Order;“Fees”means the fees and charges payable by the Client under Clause 5 & 6 in accordance with the Terms of Payment;“Field of Use”as defined on the Insertion Order. “Found”means Artemis Eight LLP, 1 East Poultry Avenue, London EC1A 9PT, Registered Company Number OC311651, trading as “Found”; and“Group”means, in relation to a company, that company, any subsidiary or holding company from time to time of that company, and any subsidiary from time to time of a holding company of that company. “holding company and subsidiary”mean a “holding company” and “subsidiary” as defined in section 1159 of the Companies Act 2006 and a company shall be treated, for the purposes only of the membership requirement contained in subsections 1159(1)(b) and (c), as a member of another company even if its shares in that other company are registered in the name of (a) another person (or its nominee), whether by way of security or in connection with the taking of security, or (b) its nominee. In the case of a limited liability partnership which is a subsidiary of a company or another limited liability partnership, section 1159 of the Companies Act 2006 shall be amended so that: (a) references in sub sections 1159(1)(a) and (c) to voting rights are to the members’ rights to vote on all or substantially all matters... --- ### FOUND COOKIE POLICY - Published: 2024-03-26 - Modified: 2024-11-11 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/cookie-policy/ --- ### PPC Keyword Tool > Found's Ultimate keyword tool concatenates large lists of PPC keywords. All keyword match types supported. Speed up your paid search setup today! - Published: 2024-03-26 - Modified: 2025-04-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/ppc-keyword-tool/ Get in touch --- ### LINKEDIN ADVERTISING > Found is an expert LinkedIn advertising agency based in London. Our team of LinkedIn ads management specialists will supercharge your growth online. - Published: 2024-03-26 - Modified: 2025-03-12 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/paid-social/linkedin-advertising/ What is LinkedIn Advertising? LinkedIn advertising is a powerful digital marketing strategy that enables businesses to promote their products, services, and brand to a vast audience of business professionals on the LinkedIn platform. Through targeted ads, businesses can reach specific demographics, industries, job titles, and more, making it an ideal platform for B2B marketing and lead generation. LinkedIn offers various ad formats, including sponsored content, sponsored InMail, display ads, and dynamic ads, allowing advertisers to tailor their campaigns to their objectives. With its extensive reach in the professional world, LinkedIn advertising is a valuable tool for businesses looking to expand their presence and connect with a relevant audience. Why choose LinkedIn Ads? Choosing LinkedIn Ads offers several compelling advantages for businesses. Firstly, it provides access to the world's largest audience of business professionals, allowing precise targeting to reach the right decision-makers and influencers. Secondly, its platform facilitates B2B marketing, making it highly effective for lead generation and driving relevant traffic. Additionally, LinkedIn's robust analytics and reporting tools enable businesses to measure campaign performance and optimise strategies for better results. With various ad formats, including sponsored content, InMail, and display ads, LinkedIn Ads offers flexibility in tailoring campaigns to specific marketing objectives. Overall, LinkedIn Ads present an excellent opportunity for businesses seeking to expand their professional network and achieve tangible outcomes. Why partner with a LinkedIn Advertising agency? Partnering with a LinkedIn advertising agency offers numerous advantages for businesses seeking success on the platform. Agencies have specialised expertise and in-depth knowledge of LinkedIn's advertising features, allowing them to create highly targeted and effective campaigns. They can navigate the intricacies of LinkedIn's ad platform, optimise budgets, and ensure maximum return on investment. LinkedIn advertising agencies can craft compelling ad copy, design eye-catching visuals, and leverage audience insights to reach the right professionals. Through a data-driven approach and experience, paid media agencies can deliver strategic campaigns, save time and resources, and ultimately help businesses achieve their marketing goals on LinkedIn. --- ### REPUTATION MANAGEMENT > At Found, Reputation Management Agency, we improve your online brand reputation and support your business goals with bespoke consultancy services. - Published: 2024-03-26 - Modified: 2024-05-29 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/digital-pr/reputation-management/ --- ### MICROSOFT ADS > Found is a Microsoft Advertising agency based in London. Our Microsoft Ads management team will accelerate your growth online. Find out more today. - Published: 2024-03-25 - Modified: 2024-05-21 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/ppc/microsoft-ads/ --- ### ADOBE COMMERCE > Found is an experienced Adobe Commerce SEO agency that can accelerate your ecommerce sales. We will take your site to the next level! - Published: 2024-03-25 - Modified: 2025-03-25 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/seo/adobe-commerce/ What is Adobe Commerce? Adobe Commerce (formerly Magento) is a game-changing ecommerce platform designed for businesses looking to scale and thrive. With its flexibility, robust features, and smooth integrations, it’s built to deliver exceptional online experiences. Whether you're just starting out or already a market leader, Adobe Commerce gives you the tools to stay ahead and drive serious growth. Why does SEO matter for your Adobe Commerce site? Without SEO, your store’s potential is limited—if search engines can’t find you, neither can your customers. It’s what gets your products in front of the right people, at the right time, driving visibility and sales across all searchable platforms. Partnering with an Adobe Commerce SEO agency gives you specialist expertise, advanced tools, and >SEO & ecommerce consultants tailor every strategy to your business needs, ensuring your site stands out and performs. With our approach, you stay ahead of the competition and grow sustainably. --- ### SHOPIFY SEO > Found is an experienced Shopify SEO agency that can accelerate your ecommerce sales. We understand Shopify SEO challenges and will take your site to the next level. - Published: 2024-03-25 - Modified: 2025-03-25 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/seo/shopify-seo/ What is Shopify? Shopify is a powerful ecommerce platform built for businesses that want to grow. It streamlines everything—from custom storefronts to secure payments and inventory management—so you can focus on selling. Whether you're launching or scaling, Shopify provides the tools to optimise performance, drive conversions, and keep your online store running seamlessly. What is a Shopify SEO agency? A Shopify SEO agency helps ecommerce brands boost search visibility, drive organic traffic, and increase sales. Through technical optimisation, content strategy, and authority building, they ensure Shopify stores rank higher and convert better. Found specialises in Shopify SEO, using data and AI-driven strategies to maximise performance and turn search traffic into real revenue. Why choose Found as your Shopify SEO agency? At Found, a Shopify SEO agency, we specialise in enhancing Shopify stores. Our approach goes beyond standard site enhancements; we focus on strategic areas such as refining product descriptions to boost conversions and fine-tuning on-page elements to improve rankings. Central to our methodology is Everysearch™ marketing, ensuring your brand achieves prominence across all digital platforms. Our SEO and ecommerce consultants tailor strategies to your business needs, ensuring your Shopify site stands out and performs optimally. With our approach, you stay ahead of the competition and achieve sustainable growth. --- ### WORDPRESS SEO > Found is an experienced WordPress SEO agency that can accelerate your online visibility. We understand WordPress SEO challenges and will take your site to the next level. - Published: 2024-03-25 - Modified: 2025-03-27 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/seo/wordpress-seo/ What is Wordpress SEO? WordPress SEO is all about optimising your WordPress site to boost its visibility and rankings in search engine results. It’s a mix of technical know-how, on-page improvements, and off-page strategies designed to help your site get found by both search engines and users. From keyword research and optimisation to on-site tweaks, quality backlinks, and improving site speed, mobile-friendliness, and user experience—every element works together to get you noticed. Why is SEO important for a WordPress website? SEO is crucial for WordPress sites because it boosts visibility and rankings across all searchable platforms—from Google to TikTok. A well-optimised site doesn’t just rank higher; it attracts more organic traffic, drives engagement, and turns visitors into loyal customers. Partnering with a leading WordPress SEO agency gives you access to expert knowledge, cutting-edge tools, and data-driven strategies that optimise performance and keep you ahead of the competition. Why partner with a WordPress SEO agency? Partnering with a WordPress SEO agency is more than just improving rankings—it’s about building a site that performs. At Found, we take a strategic, results-driven approach, refining your site structure for better crawling, optimising content to drive engagement, and fine-tuning on-page elements to boost visibility. Every strategy is tailored to your WordPress business goals, ensuring long-term growth. While we handle the SEO, you can focus on what you do best—running your business. --- ### A/B TESTING > Turn website clicks into revenue with Found's results-driven A/B testing strategies and services that maximise ROI. - Published: 2024-03-22 - Modified: 2024-05-22 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/cro/ab-testing/ What is A/B testing? A/B testing, alternatively referred to as split testing, compares two versions (A and B) of a webpage directly against each other. Its primary objective is to determine which version performs better in achieving a specific goal. What are the benefits of A/B testing? A/B testing is useful for optimising user experience and improving conversions by comparing different variations to identify the most effective elements. It can also reduce bounce rates and improve content engagement. Ultimately, A/B testing helps to keep visitors on your site and convert more website visitors into buyers. What can I test with A/B testing? In A/B testing, you can experiment with various elements like headlines, images, button colors, or layouts to determine the most impactful design or content. A common example is testing two different web page headlines to see which one attracts more clicks and leads to better user engagement. --- ### WOOCOMMERCE SEO > Found is a multi-award-winning SEO agency based in London that specialises in Woocommerce SEO. Get in touch with one of our Woocommerce experts! - Published: 2024-03-22 - Modified: 2025-03-30 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/seo/woocommerce-seo/ What is WooCommerce SEO? WooCommerce is a free WordPress plugin that enables businesses to create an online store and sell products or services directly to their customers. It’s highly customisable, scalable, and provides a range of features to manage and run an ecommerce store, including inventory management, payment gateway integration, and shipping options. It's a popular platform for businesses of all sizes looking to establish an online presence and drive sales through their website. How does WooCommerce SEO work? WooCommerce SEO involves optimising your online store's pages, including products and category pages, to improve their visibility in search engine results. This process requires thorough keyword research, technical optimisation, and content creation to improve your site's relevance and authority. Additionally, building high-quality backlinks, optimising your site's speed, and improving user experience are also important factors for success in WooCommerce SEO. A comprehensive strategy that takes into account all of these factors is necessary for achieving long-term success and increasing organic traffic to your WooCommerce store. Why partner with a WooCommerce SEO agency? Partnering with a London-based WooCommerce SEO agency, such as Found, can give you a competitive edge in the ecommerce landscape. SEO agencies have the expertise, resources, and tools needed to design custom strategies that align with your business goals. By leveraging knowledge of the latest SEO techniques, they can optimise your website and boost your online visibility. Additionally, partnering with a WooCommerce SEO agency allows you to focus on other important aspects of your business while leaving SEO to the experts. --- ### YOUTUBE SEO > Found is a multi-award-winning SEO agency based in London that specialises in YouTube SEO. Get in touch with one of our YouTube experts today. - Published: 2024-03-22 - Modified: 2024-05-29 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/seo/youtube-seo/ What is YouTube SEO? YouTube SEO is the process of optimising your video content and channel to rank higher in YouTube search results and related videos. It involves keyword research, video and channel optimisation and audience engagement tactics. YouTube SEO helps increase your visibility on the platform, drive more views and ultimately grow your audience. It's an essential part of any video marketing strategy. Why is YouTube SEO important? SEO is important because it can help your videos rank higher in YouTube and search engine result pages (SERPs), resulting in increased visibility, traffic, and engagement. By optimising your YouTube content, you can also improve the relevance and quality of your videos, making them more likely to be recommended to viewers. This can ultimately help you build your band and achieve your business goals. Does video help with general SEO? Yes, video can help with general SEO. Embedding videos on your website can increase dwell time and reduce bounce rate, which are both positive signals to search engines. As video content connects with your audience at a deeper level, it also helps to drive social shares and backlinks which can favourably impact your SEO. Additionally, videos can appear in search engine result pages (SERPs), giving you another opportunity to rank for target keywords and reach a wider audience. --- ### VOICE SEARCH > Found is a multi-award-winning SEO agency based in London that specialises in voice search SEO. Get in touch with one of our voice search specialists today. - Published: 2024-03-21 - Modified: 2024-05-21 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/seo/voice-search/ What is Voice Search? Voice search refers to the use of spoken language to interact with a search engine or virtual assistant, rather than typing queries into a search bar. This technology allows users to search for information hands-free, and it's becoming increasingly popular thanks to the growth of smart home devices and mobile assistants. Optimising for voice search is important for businesses looking to improve their online visibility and stay ahead of the competition. How does Voice Search work? Voice search works by using natural language processing (NLP) technology to understand spoken queries and provide relevant results. When a user speaks a query into a voice-enabled device, the device records the audio and sends it to a server, where it is processed and matched against a database of indexed content. The device then provides the user with the most relevant result based on the query and available information. Why is Voice Search SEO important? Voice search SEO is important because it allows businesses to optimise their content for the way people naturally speak, enabling them to capture more traffic and generate more revenue. With the growing popularity of virtual assistants, voice search is becoming an increasingly important component of the broader organic search channel. By optimising for voice, businesses can improve the perception of their brand as a leading provider of information in their sector, and stay ahead of the competition. --- ### SEO MIGRATION > London-based SEO agency Found offers expert SEO website migration services that will supercharge your organic performance online. Get in touch today. - Published: 2024-03-21 - Modified: 2025-03-12 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/seo/website-migrations/ What is website migration? Website migration is the process of making significant changes to a website that can impact its structure, visibility, and performance. The most common forms of website migration are moving from one domain to another, a change in CMS provider, and a website redesign. SEO website migration services help mitigate the risks and set up a site for the best chance of success. What are the key benefits of partnering with a website migration agency? Website migrations are a complex task with a lot of moving parts. Poor execution can hurt a site’s performance, traffic, and other SEO metrics that can be difficult to restore. At Found, we can own the whole migration process from start to finish. We offer bespoke website migrations with every tech and SEO base covered. With a proven track record of delivering successful migrations for B2C and B2B companies - from ambitious start-ups to global enterprises - we’re the leading choice. --- ### SEO AUDIT > London-based SEO agency Found offers SEO auditing services that will supercharge your organic growth online. Get in touch today. - Published: 2024-03-21 - Modified: 2024-05-21 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/seo/seo-auditing/ --- ### APP STORE OPTIMISATION > Drive quality app downloads with our app store optimisation service. Get in touch today to find out how we can supercharge your app store performance. - Published: 2024-03-21 - Modified: 2024-05-29 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/seo/app-store-optimisation/ What is App Store Optimsation? App Store Optimisation (ASO) involves improving the visibility and appeal of an app within app stores to drive more downloads and conversions. In addition to securing desirable rankings in the app store search results, ASO also focuses on click-through rate optimisation to capture more targeted users. The most popular app stores are App Store for iOS apps and Google Play Store for Android apps. Why partner with an ASO Services agency? At Found, we can support across every element of your app. Whether you are launching a new app or want to make improvements to existing app stores, we can provide you with a tailored ASO strategy to improve your visibility and increase conversions. With a proven track record of delivering tangible growth, we provide a comprehensive approach to app SEO services that generates genuine, sustainable results. --- ### SEO TRAINING > Found is a multi-award-winning SEO training agency based in London that harnesses the efficiencies of technology and human brilliance to drive growth. - Published: 2024-03-21 - Modified: 2024-06-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/seo/seo-training/ --- ### MOBILE SEO > London-based SEO agency Found offers expert mobile SEO consultancy services that will supercharge your organic mobile growth online. Get in touch today. - Published: 2024-03-19 - Modified: 2024-05-28 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/seo/mobile-seo/ What is Mobile SEO? Mobile SEO is the optimisation of websites for mobile devices to improve user experience and search engine rankings. As more searches are carried out on mobile than on desktop, it is crucial for businesses to ensure their websites are mobile-friendly and perform well on all devices. Mobile SEO involves activities like optimising website design, improving website speed, and creating mobile-friendly content to help websites rank higher in search results. What are the key benefits of Mobile SEO? Mobile SEO has multiple benefits for businesses, including improved user experience, increased website traffic, higher search engine rankings, and more conversions. A mobile-friendly website that loads quickly, is easy to navigate, and provides relevant information is more likely to attract and retain visitors. By implementing effective mobile SEO strategies, businesses can reach a wider audience and stay competitive in their industry. Why partner with a Mobile SEO services agency? Partnering with a mobile SEO agency ensures your website is optimised for mobile search, providing a better user experience and increasing the likelihood of ranking higher in SERPs. With over 15 years of expertise in digital marketing and proven expertise in mobile-first indexing strategies, we can provide valuable insights and latest techniques to improve your mobile presence and ultimately drive more traffic and conversions. Working with a mobile SEO agency like Found can give you a competitive advantage in a constantly evolving digital landscape. --- ### Everysearch > ​​Everysearch™ recognises the diverse world of search beyond traditional engines. Visit us to learn more about Found’s Everysearch™ approach and opportunities. - Published: 2024-03-19 - Modified: 2025-04-24 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/everysearch/ --- ### DIGITAL PR TRAINING > Get your brand the attention it deserves with our Digital PR training. Unleash your team's inner creativity! - Published: 2024-03-18 - Modified: 2024-05-29 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/digital-pr/training/ --- ### CONSUMER PR > At a London-based Consumer PR agency Found, we create bespoke campaigns to drive engagement and action to position you as an industry leader. - Published: 2024-03-18 - Modified: 2024-05-29 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/digital-pr/consumer-pr/ --- ### Google Premier Partner - Published: 2024-03-15 - Modified: 2024-03-19 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/google-premier-partner/ --- ### SEO CONSULTANCY > Found is a multi-award-winning SEO consultancy agency based in London that harnesses the efficiencies of technology and human brilliance to drive growth. - Published: 2024-03-14 - Modified: 2024-05-21 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/seo/seo-consultancy/ What is an SEO Consultant? An SEO consultant provides guidance and advice on improving websites’ visibility in SERPS (search engine results pages). They analyse search landscape and site performance, identify areas for improvement, and recommend strategies to increase organic traffic and revenue. Specialist SEO consultants stay up-to-date with search engine algorithm updates and industry trends to offer the latest and most effective organic search solutions. What are the key benefits of SEO Consultancy work? Working with an SEO consultancy agency can offer a vast range of benefits, including access to expert knowledge and skills, a fresh perspective on your SEO strategy, and a tailored approach that's specific to your business goals. A good SEO consultancy will work closely with you to understand your business and your audience and develop a bespoke SEO strategy that helps you achieve your objectives. Additionally, an SEO consultancy agency like Found can provide ongoing support and guidance to ensure your SEO efforts remain effective and up-to-date with the latest industry trends and best practices. Why partner with a SEO Consultancy services agency? Partnering with an SEO consultancy services agency can bring a wealth of expertise to your business, ensuring that your online presence is fully optimised and delivering tangible results. As an SEO consultancy agency, Found can provide you with valuable insights into your market and competitors, as well as help you identify new opportunities for growth. Working with an agency can also save you time and resources, allowing you to focus on other important aspects of your business. At Found, we pride ourselves on delivering bespoke solutions that are tailored to your specific needs and are guaranteed to drive growth. --- ### LOCAL SEO > London-based SEO agency Found offers expert local SEO consultancy services that will supercharge your organic local growth online. Get in touch today. - Published: 2024-03-14 - Modified: 2024-05-21 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/seo/local-seo/ What is Local SEO? Local SEO is the practice of optimising your website and online presence to improve visibility in local search results. This involves creating business profiles, building local citations, and optimising your website to make it clear to search engines that your business is relevant and trustworthy for searchers. At Found, we have a team of local SEO experts who can help you boost your online presence and attract more customers from your target area. What are the key benefits of Local SEO work? The key benefits of local SEO include improving your search visibility, attracting more customers to your business, and building a strong online reputation. It can also help you stand out against local competitors and provide valuable insights into customer behaviour and preferences. By optimising your website and map profiles (like Business Profile, formerly Google My Business) for local search, you increase your chances of being found by customers who are actively looking for businesses like yours in your area. Why partner with a Local SEO services agency? Partnering with a local SEO agency can help you leverage their expertise in local search optimisation to improve your business’s visibility in your target location. An agency can provide you with tailored strategies to reach your desired audience, ensure your online listings are accurate and up-to-date, and help you build a strong online reputation. Working with a London-based local SEO company like ours, that is officially recognised as a Google Premier Partner, will ultimately drive more qualified traffic to your website and increase your chances of converting them into loyal customers. --- ### MEDIA PLANNING > Maximise cross-channel ROI with Found. We expertly plan, execute, and optimise across all relevant media platforms, ensuring no opportunity is missed. - Published: 2024-03-14 - Modified: 2024-05-29 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/digital-strategy/media-planning/ What is Media Planning? Media planning is the process of selecting the optimal mix of media platforms to advertise a product, service, or brand. The goal is to determine the best combination of media to achieve the marketing campaign's objectives, such as reaching the target audience effectively, maximising exposure, and increasing return on investment (ROI). This involves research, analysis, and allocation of the advertising budget across various channels like television, radio, print, online, and social media, ensuring the message reaches the right people at the right time and place. How do you determine the target audience for a media plan? Determining the target audience for a media plan involves conducting market research to understand potential customer demographics, psychographics, and behaviours. Analysing current customer data and understanding competitors’ strategies can also provide insights. From this information, you can segment the market into more specific groups, ensuring your media plan targets individuals most likely to respond to your advertising, based on their preferences, habits, and media consumption patterns. How do you decide which media channels to use for advertising? Deciding on advertising media channels requires analysing your target audience's habits and matching them to suitable platforms. Consider your product's nature, message clarity, and each channel's cost-effectiveness. Mix testing and past performance analysis to refine choices, ensuring your budget aligns with marketing goals for optimal reach and ROI. Why partner with a Media Planning agency? Partnering with a media planning agency offers expert insights, access to diverse channels, and data-driven strategies, ensuring your ads reach the right audience efficiently and cost-effectively, optimising your advertising ROI. --- ### VIDEO > Whether launching your first video or ready to dominate the digital landscape with a comprehensive video strategy, partner with Found. - Published: 2024-03-13 - Modified: 2024-06-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/video/ What are Video Production services? Video production services are the creation of high-quality and engaging video content used for different purposes like promoting, informing or entertaining. Video production agencies specialise in idea generation, scripting, filming, and editing. This includes online videos, commercials, explainers, documentaries, and more. How much does it cost to produce a video in the UK? The average cost of video production in 2024 is between £1,500 and £15,000 depending on length, complexity, equipment used, and other deliverables. What is included in Video Production? Video production covers everything from idea generation to video distribution however deliverables can vary between video production agencies. Pre-production includes scriptwriting, casting, and location scouting. Production involves shooting the video content and post-production covers voiceovers and editing. How do I hire a Video Production agency? Choosing the right video production company can be a thrilling yet challenging endeavour. So how do you discover the one video production agency that truly resonates with your vision? You can do that easily by selecting the right set of qualities. 1. Video portfolio. Firstly and most importantly research their latest video work to see if they are capable of producing high-quality content. 2. Proven testimonials. You should request testimonials from the agencies that you’re considering that showcase their past successes. 3. Pricing. Choosing a budget-friendly agency might save a few pounds, but it often comes at the expense of quality. The top video production agencies in the UK command higher rates for a reason. --- ### MARKET RESEARCH > Shatter your growth ceiling and redefine success for tomorrow with Found, your London-based market research agency. - Published: 2024-03-13 - Modified: 2024-05-28 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/digital-strategy/market-research/ What is Market Research Market research is a strategy-led approach to collecting, analysing and interpreting information about target markets including existing and potential customers as well as competitors. Its main aim is to use various methodologies like surveys, interviews, focus groups and data analysis to provide businesses with valuable insights about category trends, competitive landscapes and customer behaviour that cannot be found elsewhere. What are the benefits of Market Research? Market research is a prerequisite for any business aiming to be strategic and competitive with its marketing. It serves as a flexible tool that facilitates informed and confident decision-making by allowing businesses to explore the ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions behind people’s buying actions. The knowledge gained through market research reveals effective channels, messages and themes in the marketplace, enabling us to identify growth opportunities, understand customer needs, and mitigate risks associated with business decisions. What platforms and tools do you use for Market Research? We leverage a wide range of platforms and partners within our research methodologies including SEMrush, Sistrix, Moz, Ahrefs, AWR, Site Bulb and our very own proprietary global search intelligence platform, Luminr. And when we can’t find a solution in the marketplace we can partner with, our team of next gen data scientists and analysts is always on hand to build custom tools to navigate any sticky challenges that come our way. --- ### AUDIT & CONSULTANCY > Leverage industry experts to help you get started on the road to digital success with our audit and consultancy services. - Published: 2024-03-13 - Modified: 2024-05-21 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/digital-strategy/digital-marketing-audit/ --- ### TAG MANAGEMENT > Maximise your advertising impact with our Tag Management services. We streamline tag management, enabling seamless tracking across channels. - Published: 2024-03-13 - Modified: 2024-05-28 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/data/tag-management/ What is Tag Management and how does it work? Tag management is organising and deploying various tracking codes and snippets through systems like Google Tag Manager, which centralises tag control on a website, simplifying tag management without extensive coding. How to choose the best Tag Management system? When it comes to choosing the best Tag Management system, choose a system that aligns with your needs, offering ease of use, scalability, and seamless integration with existing tools. Google Tag Manager leads the market due to easy integration with other Google services. Can Found provide support and training on Tag Management? Yes, Found offers comprehensive training and ongoing tag management support, tailored to your tag management solution, ensuring your team is equipped to efficiently handle and optimise tags. What are the benefits of hiring a Tag Management agency? Tag management agencies like Found bring expertise in efficient tag deployment, and tailored strategies for optimal campaign performance. --- ### LUMINR > Luminr delivers AI-powered competitor intelligence and comprehensive market insights, enabling you to outsmart competitors and boost brand visibility. - Published: 2024-03-12 - Modified: 2024-05-30 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/luminr/ What is Luminr? Luminr is an advanced market intelligence tool that leverages AI and machine learning to provide comprehensive insights into search performance across various platforms. It aggregates data from search engines, social media, and online marketplaces, offering businesses a panoramic view of their digital presence and competitive landscape. What are the benefits of using Luminr? Using Luminr offers multiple advantages: it enables real-time competitor analysis, unique search insights, and content optimisation strategies based on data-driven intelligence. Luminr streamlines the process of monitoring and analysing vast quantities of digital data, providing actionable insights to improve market positioning, optimise content, and enhance overall search visibility. Why should I partner with an agency with Luminr as a technology? Partnering with an agency that uses Luminr technology ensures access to unparalleled search analytics and market insights, allowing for more informed, strategic decision-making. An agency equipped with Luminr can offer personalised, effective strategies tailored to your specific market needs and objectives, ensuring your brand remains competitive and visible in an ever-evolving digital landscape. --- ### AI & AUTOMATION > Our AI and automation agency turns complex digital marketing data into dynamic growth opportunities for your business. - Published: 2024-03-12 - Modified: 2025-04-07 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/data/ai-automation/ What is Artificial Intelligence (AI)? Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a branch of technology that allows machines to think and learn like humans. It's a blend of computer science and robust datasets that create intelligent programmes able to learn, reason and act autonomously. AI is behind services and goods we use every day – from apps that recommend TV shows to chatbots that provide customer support in real-time. How is AI used in marketing? The marketing landscape is significantly evolving as a result of AI, impacting several key areas: Social Media Listening: AI algorithms analyse social media data through aspect-clustering, providing marketers with essential insights into audience sentiments and behaviours, crucial for strategy development. Content Generation: AI creates content that resonates with target audiences, identifying key triggers and keywords, thus enhancing brand engagement and market share. Audience Segmentation: AI enables effective omnichannel strategies and programmatic advertising, focusing on segmented markets and personalised approaches to increase brand loyalty and awareness. Customer Insights: AI and machine learning provide deep insights into audience sentiments and customer care performance, vital for strategic decision-making and budget allocation. What does Automation mean in marketing? Automation in marketing refers to the use of technology to streamline and optimise various marketing processes. It involves automating repetitive, labour-intensive tasks to enhance efficiency and accuracy. This not only accelerates time-consuming activities but also allows marketing professionals to focus on more strategic and creative tasks. By reducing human error in mundane tasks, marketing automation significantly increases organisational efficiency, making operations smoother and more effective. Do you offer Artificial Intelligence (AI) training? Yes, we offer comprehensive training in Artificial Intelligence (AI). We can help you brainstorm AI applications, foster innovation in AI, and understand the most effective ways to use various AI tools. Plus, we can provide insights on achieving AI scalability using cloud providers, ensuring you are well-equipped to leverage this technology. Why should I partner with Found AI & Automation marketing agency? We are a multi award-winning London digital marketing and AI agency, all underpinned by smart data and a growth experience that delivers results, fast. With over 7 years of experience in AI, we've been pioneers in the field, embracing AI solutions even before they became mainstream. Our expertise includes leveraging AI to solve complex marketing challenges, ranging from predicting competitors' ranking movements to providing tailored recommendations for paid media strategies. --- ### ANALYTICS > Unlock your data's potential with a leading data analytics agency. We transform your data into a strategic asset to power your business growth. - Published: 2024-03-12 - Modified: 2024-05-22 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/data/analytics/ What do companies use Data Analytics for? Companies use Data Analytics primarily to unlock insights hidden within their data. By analysing customer behaviour and trends, they can tailor marketing strategies, enhance products, and improve services to meet customer needs more effectively. Additionally, Data Analytics aids in optimising operational efficiency and forecasting future market trends, enabling businesses to make informed decisions, reduce risks, and, ultimately, drive growth and innovation. Does it matter which Analytics platform I currently use? Not at all! We have years of experience supporting clients across various tools - from Google Analytics 4 (GA4) to Adobe solutions and beyond. Our team provides analytics consultancy, evaluating your martech stack, highlighting its strengths and weaknesses, and offering support, regardless of your current solution. You can rely on us for recommendations to get the most out of your analytics platforms. What does an Analytics agency do? An analytics agency plays a pivotal role in transforming your data into actionable insights. They’ll delve deep into your web, app, and business data, providing a clear understanding of performance metrics. Their approach helps in identifying areas of improvement and opportunities for your business’s growth. Their expertise of an analytics consultancy ensures your data is not just numbers, but a valuable tool for making smarter, >SEO and marketing analytics, while Mixpanel offers detailed user interaction data. Consider your specific needs, whether it's user behaviour, SEO, or overall site performance, to select the most fitting tool. --- ### DATA SCIENCE > By working with a London-based data science agency Found, you’ll be able to spot trends in your customers' behaviour and transform them into business growth. - Published: 2024-03-12 - Modified: 2025-03-12 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/data/data-science/ What is Data Science? Data Science is the study of large volumes of data, which involves extracting meaningful insights from raw, structured, and unstructured data to predict the future, explain the present, and unlock a universe of possibilities. It's a blend of detective work and storytelling, where data scientists use statistical tools and algorithms as their compass to navigate through complex data sets. In a nutshell, Data Science gives answers to the things we don’t know that we don’t know. It straddles the business and tech worlds to spot trends and patterns that can help a brand’s bottom line. How can you use Data Science in Marketing? Data Science for digital marketing involves using analytics and algorithms to understand and predict consumer behaviours online. It plays a vital role in marketing by enabling businesses to make >AI marketing agency, all underpinned by smart data experience that delivers results, fast. Our specialists are the solution to brands’ discoverability issues, using tech automation, smart data, and human brilliance to help B2C and B2B brands grow online. We’ve worked with numerous clients, providing best-in-class experience in Data Science and machine learning. In the dynamic world of data and technology, Found's quick pace and focused approach ensure you're always one step ahead of your competitors. --- ### GOOGLE SHOPPING > Found is a Google Shopping management agency based in London. As a Premier Google Partner, our expert team will deliver the highest ROAS. Get in touch. - Published: 2024-03-12 - Modified: 2025-03-12 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/ppc/google-shopping/ What is Google Shopping? Google Shopping is a powerful ad format that allows shoppers to compare and discover products directly in the search results. By showcasing product information such as prices, images, and key attributes, customers can compare products from a range of brands before they go to a brand’s website. Advertisers and retailers use Google Shopping ads to promote their products, ensuring greater visibility and reach among potential customers. When users search for specific products, Google displays relevant Shopping ads, enabling businesses to connect with interested shoppers and drive traffic to their websites, ultimately increasing sales and revenue. How does Google Shopping work? Google Shopping showcases relevant products to a user’s search query at the top of the search results. This can be a search for a specific product from a specific brand or a broader search where the user has a general idea of what they’re looking for but is looking for inspiration of specific products to purchase. Rather than targeting keywords, Google Shopping matches products to searches based on the product information provided by the retailer in a feed uploaded to Google Merchant Center. This data includes the price, brand, product category, and other attributes that help Google understand each product in detail and therefore helps match them to the most relevant search queries. What are the benefits of Google Shopping? Google Shopping offers direct visibility at the top of search results, placing products front and centre where active shoppers are searching. It allows for highly visual, immediate comparisons of products and prices, leading to higher click-through rates and qualified leads. Users can see key details before clicking, improving the shopping experience and conversion rates. Additionally, Google Shopping integrates seamlessly with other Google services, enhancing overall advertising effectiveness and providing detailed analytics for optimisation. Why partner with a Google Shopping agency? Partnering with a Google Shopping management agency leverages expert knowledge and experience to maximise your campaign's potential. Agencies provide strategic planning, ongoing optimisation, and sophisticated targeting techniques to improve visibility and sales while reducing costs. They handle complex aspects of feed management and performance tracking, allowing businesses to focus on other areas. Moreover, agencies stay updated with Google's latest features and best practices, ensuring campaigns remain competitive and effective in driving ecommerce success. Why partner with Found for Google Shopping services? Partnering with Found for Google Shopping services means aligning with a team that not only understands the intricacies of Google Shopping but also knows how to harness its full potential for your brand. Our >e-commerce, driving qualified traffic and increasing sales effectively. --- ### CONTENT MARKETING > Content matters. Ignite engagement, captivate audiences, and drive brand loyalty with innovative content marketing. - Published: 2024-03-11 - Modified: 2025-02-12 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/content-marketing/ What is Content Marketing? Content marketing is a marketing strategy deployed to attract and engage audiences by creating and sharing relevant materials online such as articles, videos, emails, podcasts, infographics, and other media. Content marketing provides customers with valuable content and engages them throughout the user journey driving revenue for your business. What does a Content Marketing agency do? A content marketing agency develops content strategies, produces and distributes content to provide value to a target audience with the ultimate goal of attracting a company’s customers and increasing business revenue. Deliverables can vary between content marketing agencies, especially when it comes to content production. Some content marketing agencies will craft content ideas for your in-house team to implement whilst others will own the whole process from start to finish. Why choose Found to be your Content Marketing agency? Partnering with the London-based content marketing agency Found offers brands access to specialised expertise, advanced tools, and cost-effective solutions, enabling them to produce original and authentic content that drives performance. Backed by 15+ years of experience, leveraging wider Found capabilities, we ensure sustained and profitable growth. --- ### INFLUENCER > At a London-based influencer marketing agency Found, we create bespoke campaigns with credible, authentic, social creators and influencers. - Published: 2024-03-11 - Modified: 2025-02-12 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/influencer-marketing/ What is Influencer Marketing? Influencer Marketing is a form of social media marketing, where brands collaborate with online creators to market their product or service. They harness the influence and reach of individuals online in order to connect with their target audience, or a new audience, in an authentic and engaging way, in order to drive brand awareness or drive sales. Does marketing through influencers work? Crafting meaningful, authentic narratives in brand engagement has never been more important. Influencer marketing is the most impactful way to produce such storytelling. As the industry has developed, influencer marketing is peer to peer recommendation at scale and, when executed with precision, won’t just work, but drive your marketing activity to new heights. Why partner with an Influencer Marketing agency? Partnering with our influencer marketing agency ensures culturally relevant storytelling that captivates and delivers ROI. Utilising data-driven insights, we establish meaningful connections with ideal creators for your brand, turning attention into measurable action and revenue. Our expertise and strategic know-how elevate your campaigns, optimising success efficiently. --- ### PAID SOCIAL > Found, a London-based Paid Social Agency, delivers data-driven, highly targeted campaigns using a unique Everysearch™ approach to ensure measurable returns. - Published: 2024-03-11 - Modified: 2025-04-14 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/paid-social/ What is Paid Social? Paid Social involves strategic ad placement across social media platforms, targeting specific demographics and interests to boost online presence. It encompasses various platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and more, serving a wide range of objectives, from brand awareness to lead generation and conversions. At Found, a London-based Paid Social agency, we specialise in creating impactful, >B2B marketing, and Pinterest targets early-stage shoppers. Meta offers broad targeting across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, while X caters to rapid engagement. For global reach, consider Weibo, WeChat, or VK. Found employs a data-centric strategy to pinpoint the optimal channels for your goals. Why partner with a Paid Social agency? Partnering with a London-based Paid Social agency like Found provides access to seasoned experts crafting impactful multi-channel campaigns. Our data-first approach tailors strategies to fit your unique objectives and target audience. With comprehensive services from strategy to analytics and additional benefits like influencer collaborations and UX enhancements, partnering with Found ensures cutting-edge campaign execution. Our strong platform relationships and Meta Partner status keep your campaigns ahead of the curve, delivering exceptional results for your brand. --- ### TECHNICAL SEO > London-based SEO agency Found offers expert technical SEO consultancy services that will supercharge your organic growth online. Get in touch today. - Published: 2024-03-11 - Modified: 2024-05-29 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/seo/technical-seo/ What is Technical SEO? Technical SEO is the process of optimising a website that helps search engines find, crawl and understand your site pages. It can also include activities to improve user experience - improving a website’s speed or creating an SEO-friendly site structure. The goal of technical SEO is to improve the technical aspects of a site to increase organic visibility. What is a Technical SEO audit? A technical SEO audit is an overview of a site’s technical health to identify issues that may be negatively impacting its search engine visibility. A technical SEO audit usually involves examining factors like website loading speed, assessing site’s structure, and uncovering duplicate content or canonical issues. They are intended to help technical SEO experts identify areas of improvement to boost a website's search engine rankings and overall user experience. What are the key benefits of Technical SEO work? The key benefits of technical SEO work are - improved search engine visibility, increased organic traffic, better user experience, and higher conversion rates. By optimising technical aspects of a website, technical SEO specialists make a site easier to crawl and index by search engines. This leads to improved visibility in search results and more traffic. Additionally, technically optimised websites tend to provide users with a better onsite experience, which leads to higher engagement and conversion rates. Why partner with a Technical SEO agency? Partnering with a technical SEO agency gives you access to expert knowledge, experience, and resources. A technical SEO company like Found can help identify and address technical issues that may be impacting your website's search engine visibility and user experience that you may not be aware of or capable of addressing yourself. This is because technical SEO experts like a London-based agency Found have years of experience and access to specialised tools and technologies that help diagnose and fix issues quickly and effectively. Partnering with a technical SEO agency also allows businesses to focus on their core competencies because technical SEO work is being carried out externally by technical SEO experts. --- ### CREATIVE > Found has been delivering creative services for over a decade. We specialise in providing imaginative creative agency solutions to elevate your brand. - Published: 2024-03-08 - Modified: 2025-02-12 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/creative/ What does a Creative Agency do? A creative agency transforms ideas into reality, creating compelling visual and strategic stories that resonate with your brand's target audience. Through innovative design, branding, and digital solutions, creative agencies elevate brand identity, to drive engagement and create memorable experiences online and offline. A creative agency should be at the centre of your digital strategy as they hold the keys to ensuring you stand out from the crowd. What is the difference between a Digital Agency and a Creative Agency? A creative agency specialises in creating the right visual assets for a brand's identity, covering both digital and traditional mediums. As a digital agency, Found also focuses on technology-driven solutions, emphasising online channels such as PPC, SEO, Paid Social, Programmatic and CRO. Why choose Found to be your Creative Agency? We supercharge our clients’ performance through innovative digital marketing campaigns overlaid with future-thinking creative to give our clients the search advantage. Our team of experts are creative, curious, and brilliantly talented and, when diverse minds get together, interesting things always happen, and that’s what you’ll get at Found. We act as an extension of your internal team, adopting a ‘whatever it takes’ mindset to achieve big things together. --- ### PPC > Found is a multi-award-winning PPC agency based in London that harnesses the efficiencies of data and technology to help clients drive growth. - Published: 2024-03-08 - Modified: 2025-02-12 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/ppc/ What is PPC and how does it work? PPC (pay-per-click) is a key part of digital marketing that allows businesses to pay to advertise to customers on Google, Microsoft and beyond searching for keywords related to your business. Whilst PPC once focused primarily on keywords, this has evolved over time to now incorporate products, audiences, landing pages and many more signals now used to find the most relevant customers looking for your products, services or business. What are the key benefits of PPC advertising? PPC is an effective and highly-targeted form of digital marketing. You have control over your budget and can measure results and impact in almost real-time, enabling PPC agency specialists to gain insight into campaign performance and inform optimisations to drive results. PPC is also agile, allowing you to rapidly adjust paid search campaigns to adapt to market trends or consumer behaviour when you spot an opportunity. Why partner with a PPC agency? Partnering with a London-based PPC agency like Found brings significant advantages. Our qualified team of experts possess in-depth knowledge of PPC strategies and can use this knowledge to make sure we’re implementing tactics that align with your specific business objectives. We stay up-to-date with industry trends, platform changes and new releases, ensuring your campaigns are always cutting-edge. With our experience, Found PPC agency London can save you time and money, while our data-driven approach helps deliver you results, whether it's increasing brand visibility, driving website traffic, or boosting conversions. --- ### PROGRAMMATIC > Found is a programmatic advertising agency based in London. Our programmatic advertising services team will accelerate your growth online. Find out more. - Published: 2024-03-07 - Modified: 2025-02-12 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/programmatic/ What is Programmatic Advertising? In today's digital advertising landscape, programmatic marketing plays a crucial role. This automated strategy, driven by algorithms and data analytics, allows real-time optimisation of ad purchases. Using specialised software, advertisers can precisely target demographics, place ads, and efficiently manage campaigns across diverse channels. The combination of automation and data enhances operational efficiency, enabling advertisers to create personalised content tailored to their audience's preferences. Data-driven precision not only boosts advertising effectiveness but also maximises return on investment. How does Programmatic Advertising work? Programmatic advertising works through automated technology and algorithms that efficiently buy and sell digital ad space in real-time auctions. When a user visits a website or app, data is instantly collected and analysed to determine the best ad to display based on their behaviour, interests, and demographics. Advertisers bid for the ad space, and the winning ad is then instantly displayed to the user. This process happens in milliseconds, allowing for personalised and targeted ads to be delivered to the right audience at the right moment. Found's programmatic advertising experts utilise this cutting-edge approach to create successful and data-driven campaigns for our clients. What are the key benefits of Programmatic Advertising? Programmatic advertising offers targeted precision, leveraging automated algorithms and data analytics for real-time ad buying. This results in efficient audience targeting, optimal use of ad inventory, and personalised content delivery. The process enhances overall campaign effectiveness, maximises return on investment, and provides insightful analytics for continuous improvement. Additionally, programmatic advertising allows for scalability, transparency, and cost-effectiveness, making it a powerful tool in the dynamic landscape of digital marketing. Why partner with a Programmatic agency? Partnering with Found, a London-based programmatic agency, ensures a tailored and strategic approach to automated advertising. With a focus on data-driven precision, Found optimises campaign management through advanced algorithms and real-time bidding expertise. The agency's commitment to transparency, industry insights, and adaptability empowers brands to navigate the dynamic digital landscape effectively. Found’s specialised tools and strategic guidance enhance targeting and overall return on investment, making us a trusted ally for those seeking impactful and results-driven programmatic advertising solutions. --- ### DIGITAL PR > At Found Digital PR Agency London, we improve your online brand visibility and support your business goals with bespoke digital PR services. - Published: 2024-03-06 - Modified: 2025-02-12 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/digital-pr/ What is Digital PR? Digital PR boosts a brand's online presence through various tactics like content creation, social media, and influencer outreach, enhancing visibility and brand recognition. How does Digital PR help with SEO? Digital PR strengthens SEO by securing quality backlinks, increasing web traffic, and improving keyword rankings, thereby boosting search engine visibility. What does a Digital PR agency do? A digital PR agency aligns creative strategies with your business goals, leveraging insights and media relationships to enhance your brand’s online profile. How do you measure ROI in Digital PR? ROI in Digital PR is measured against specific campaign goals, whether it’s media coverage, web traffic, leads, product interest, and sales, ensuring relevance to your business objectives. Why partner with a Digital PR agency? Partnering with a digital PR agency provides expertise, media contacts, and creative strategies to effectively amplify your brand’s digital narrative and drive results. --- ### INTERNATIONAL SEO > Found is a multi-award-winning international SEO agency based in London that specialises in global SEO. Get in touch with one of our experts today. - Published: 2024-03-06 - Modified: 2024-05-22 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/seo/international-seo/ What is International SEO? International SEO involves expanding your website's organic visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs) across various languages and countries. This process includes optimising your website’s content, refining technical elements, and establishing authority through localised digital PR. By investing in international SEO, businesses can effectively reach international audiences, driving organic traffic from a diverse range of global markets. What are the key benefits of International SEO work? International SEO, when executed strategically, offers numerous advantages. Key among these is the opportunity to break into new markets, significantly enhancing your brand's visibility and reach. By optimising your website for target search engines, you can attract new audiences, leading to increased traffic, sales, and revenue. Additionally, a strong presence in international search results elevates your brand awareness and reputation across different regions. Furthermore, adept technical implementation of international SEO enhances the user experience, fostering greater customer satisfaction and building long-term loyalty. Why partner with an International SEO agency? At international SEO agency Found, we take the time to understand each client's unique target audience, goals, and international ambitions, enabling us to craft bespoke global strategies, designed to deliver maximum impact. Our approach begins with thorough research into your target markets, followed by expert advice on site structure requirements and the creation of content that truly resonates with your audience. Our international SEO team is made up of digital specialists, each possessing deep knowledge in SEO and local market expertise. --- ### ECOMMERCE SEO > Found is a multi-award-winning SEO agency based in London that specialises in ecommerce SEO. Get in touch with one of our ecommerce specialists today. - Published: 2024-03-06 - Modified: 2025-03-24 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/seo/ecommerce-seo/ What is Ecommerce SEO? Ecommerce SEO is the practice of optimising an online store's website and content to improve its visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs). It involves using various strategies to drive more organic traffic to the site - keyword research, technical SEO, product optimisation, content creation, and digital PR. As an ecommerce SEO agency, we know that just driving traffic isn't enough. We work closely with other departments to ensure integration and drive effective results that deliver ROI. What are the key benefits of Ecommerce SEO? Investing in ecommerce SEO services boosts sites’ visibility in search engine results pages, increases stores’ organic traffic, improves user experience, and ultimately drives more conversions and revenue for businesses. Optimising an ecommerce store for search engines, allows businesses to reach their target audience and makes it easier for prospective customers to find and purchase products. Additionally, ecommerce SEO can help companies stay ahead of their competition and build a stronger brand reputation online. Why partner with an Ecommerce SEO agency? Partnering with an ecommerce SEO company ensures that your business stays ahead of the competition by optimising your website for search engines and driving organic traffic to your site. Our team of London-based ecommerce SEO consultants stay up-to-date on the latest algorithm updates and industry trends, so can provide you with a tailored strategy to improve your search rankings and increase conversions. With a proven track record of delivering tangible growth for ecommerce businesses of all sizes, we provide a comprehensive approach to ecommerce SEO services that generates genuine, sustainable results. --- ### IN-HOUSING > Adopt cutting-edge strategies, data solutions, automations, and best practices from an agency at the forefront of digital innovation. - Published: 2024-03-06 - Modified: 2024-05-22 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/digital-strategy/inhouse-support/ --- ### STRATEGY > At Found, we have a relentless pursuit for excellence with every digital move. We excel in crafting, connecting, and capitalising on digital opportunities. - Published: 2024-03-06 - Modified: 2025-02-12 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/digital-strategy/ What is a Digital Marketing strategy? A digital marketing strategy is a comprehensive plan outlining how brands can leverage online channels to achieve specific objectives, such as brand awareness, engagement, lead generation, or sales. It involves utilising digital platforms, data-driven insights, and targeted tactics to effectively connect with and engage a target audience in the online space. Found, as a digital strategy agency, redefines rules, employs industry expertise, and employs a comprehensive approach—from understanding and planning to deployment, measurement, and refinement. Why is a Digital Marketing strategy important? A digital marketing strategy is crucial as it provides a roadmap for brands to navigate the online landscape, ensuring a purposeful approach to achieve specific goals such as brand awareness, engagement, and sales. In the complex digital environment, a well-crafted strategy not only leverages industry expertise but also adapts to the changing landscape, enabling brands to stand out, connect effectively, and continually refine their approach for sustained success. Why partner with a Digital Marketing agency? We strive to be nothing less than brilliant - because we know you do too. With an immense team of growth partners, analysts, data scientists, digital strategists and performance marketers, we take pride in not just attracting but retaining exceptional talent, earning us consecutive recognition as a Great Place to Work. It's the fusion of human brilliance with the potent blend of data, technology, and creativity that provides our clients with strategy advantage to drive remarkable growth - we call this the Found Growth Experience. Taking this ethos and marrying it to a deep understanding of business and customer goals to unlock real growth potential. We believe our clients deserve more than mediocrity. Average is over. Bold is better. --- ### DATA & AI > Found is a multi award-winning data consulting agency based in London that will convert data into your company’s growth currency. - Published: 2024-03-05 - Modified: 2024-06-24 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/data/ What does a Data Consulting company do? A data consulting agency specialises in providing expert guidance and services related to data analysis, interpretation, and management to help businesses make informed decisions and optimise their operations. How do you use data for insights? Leveraging data for insights involves a systematic process of collecting, analysing, and interpreting data to gain valuable information that can inform decision-making and drive improvements. Why partner with a data consulting agency? Partnering with a data consulting agency offers brands access to specialised expertise, advanced tools, and cost-effective solutions, enabling them to make data-driven decisions efficiently. We provide customised strategies, unbiased perspectives, and the scalability needed for growth. --- ### PAID MEDIA > Found is a multi-award-winning paid media agency based in London. Our team of digital pioneers will reshape your entire paid media game. Get in touch. - Published: 2024-03-05 - Modified: 2025-03-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/paid-media/ What is Paid Media? Paid media, a key facet of digital advertising, involves businesses investing to showcase ads across diverse platforms such as Google, Microsoft, Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, and more. This strategic approach allows businesses to target specific audiences based on demographic, geographic, or behavioural criteria. By leveraging search engines, social media, display networks, and video platforms, businesses ensure that their content reaches the right audience, maximising the impact of their advertising efforts. Why Paid Media? Paid media stands out for its unparalleled advantage in delivering swift and measurable results. Offering businesses control over ad placements, targeting parameters, and budgets, it becomes a strategic lever for optimising campaigns with maximum impact. Beyond this, paid media provides advanced targeting options, retargeting capabilities, and robust analytics tools, providing valuable insights into campaign performance and audience behaviour. What does Everysearch™ mean for Paid Media? Everysearch™ is our innovative approach to paid media that goes beyond the confines of traditional search engines. It's a comprehensive strategy that acknowledges the diverse avenues of search across platforms such as social media, e-commerce, video-sharing, and music-streaming. It represents a commitment to delivering connected campaigns across all relevant platforms, regardless of industry, budget, targeting, or integration requirements. With Everysearch™, we navigate the digital landscape with agility and precision, ensuring transformative results for our clients. Why partner with a Paid Media agency? Expertise and Experience: Paid media agencies specialise in managing and optimising ad campaigns across various platforms, including product feed management. Time and Resource Efficiency: Managing paid media campaigns can be time-consuming and requires expertise in platforms, analytics, and optimisation techniques. Advanced Tools and Technology: Paid media agencies have access to cutting-edge tools, technology, and industry insights that can enhance campaign performance. Performance Monitoring and Optimisation: A paid media agency closely monitors campaign performance, analysing data, and making data-driven optimisations. Scalability and Flexibility: Agencies provide scalability options, allowing businesses to adjust their advertising efforts based on their goals and budgets. Accountability and Results: Working with a paid media agency provides businesses with transparency, accountability, and measurable results. Why your business needs Paid Media agency services? At Found, we take the time to understand each client's unique goals and audience to develop tailored paid media strategies that are guaranteed to generate maximum impact. Our team of skilled paid media professionals utilise advanced targeting techniques, ensuring that your ads reach the right people at the right time. We also leverage cutting-edge technology and data-driven insights to optimise campaign performance continuously. Through meticulous monitoring, testing, and analysis, we continuously optimise paid media campaigns to improve effectiveness and drive superior results. Our commitment to staying ahead of industry trends and developments ensures that every client benefits from the latest innovations in paid media. --- ### Diversity & Inclusion > At Found, we’re laser-focused on nurturing diversity and fostering a culture where inclusivity isn’t just a buzzword; it’s our reality. - Published: 2024-02-25 - Modified: 2024-05-29 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/about-us/diversity-and-inclusion/ --- ### Contact > Oh hey! It's time to get Found. We'd love to hear from you and we're looking forward to receiving your brief. - Published: 2024-02-19 - Modified: 2024-03-21 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/contact/ --- ### Growth for Good > At Found, we're dedicated to fostering community growth and engaging in driving positive change, guided by our five core values and ethical standards. - Published: 2024-02-19 - Modified: 2024-05-29 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/about-us/growth-for-good/ --- ### Careers > Whether you're embarking on your digital marketing career or have a tonne of experience to bring to the table, we'd love to hear from you. - Published: 2024-02-19 - Modified: 2024-05-09 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/about-us/careers/ --- ### About us > We’re Found, the Everysearch™ agency driving unparalleled performance across every searchable platform. Make every search count. Get Found! - Published: 2024-02-18 - Modified: 2024-09-10 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/about-us/ --- ### Awards > Found have won quite a few Digital Marketing awards over the years — we’re proud of all our awards & accreditations. - Published: 2024-02-17 - Modified: 2024-03-18 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/about-us/awards/ --- ### Case Studies > At Found, we don’t just ‘do’ digital marketing, PPC & SEO - we live and breathe it. We love a challenge. And we love to write thrilling success stories. - Published: 2024-02-11 - Modified: 2024-04-19 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/ --- ### Meet the Team > We're a crew of creative and smart thinkers committed to fuelling our clients’ growth and smashing goals. Committed to making an impact. - Published: 2024-01-28 - Modified: 2025-01-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/meet-the-team/ --- ### Resources > Find our growing list of tools, white papers, case studies and more, all available for download. - Published: 2024-01-28 - Modified: 2024-03-18 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/resources/ --- ### Sectors > Sector capabilities that deliver: expertly crafted digital marketing campaigns tailored for specific sectors. - Published: 2024-01-28 - Modified: 2024-05-28 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/sectors/ --- ### CONVERSION RATE OPTIMISATION > Turn clicks into revenue with Found's results-driven conversion rate optimisation (CRO) strategies that maximise ROI. - Published: 2024-01-18 - Modified: 2024-05-29 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/cro/ What is Conversion Rate Optimisation? Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) is the process of increasing the percentage of users on a site to perform the who complete the desired action. This can be buying a product, filling out a form, contacting your business or clicking on a link. What are the benefits of Conversion Rate Optimisation? Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) offers a number of benefits for businesses seeking to enhance their online performance, including improved user experience and increased revenue. It plays a critical role in maximising the effectiveness of digital marketing efforts, driving higher conversions, and ultimately contributing to long-term business success. How can Conversion Rate Optimsation help increase revenue? Enhancing your Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) efforts allows you to pinpoint and address conversion barriers across your website, leading to an improved user experience and ultimately boosting revenue. Furthermore, partnering with a CRO agency offers you access to specialised expertise, advanced tools, and cost-effective solutions, enabling you to make >SEO rankings, thereby improving search engine visibility. How do you measure Conversion Rate? To calculate conversion rate, divide the total conversions by the number of visitors, then multiply by 100 for a percentage. This formula helps assess the impact of changes by comparing potential missed conversions against past traffic data. --- ### SEO > Are you excited by your current SEO activity? Our SEO Agency based in London offers fresh-thinking ideas that will take your brand to the next level. - Published: 2024-01-15 - Modified: 2025-04-21 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/seo/ What is SEO and how does it work? SEO, or search engine optimisation, is all about driving quality traffic to your website by boosting rankings and organic visibility on search engines. As an SEO agency, we know it’s not just about clicks; it’s about reaching the right audience. SEO involves fine-tuning your site’s technical setup, optimising content relevance, and building backlink authority to ensure your pages rank higher in search results for keywords that matter to your business. Think of it as enhancing your site’s discoverability and credibility so the right audience finds you, fast. You can learn more about SEO in our Search Engine Optimisation Guide. Why is SEO important? SEO isn’t just a marketing strategy - it’s your digital growth engine. A solid SEO strategy boosts your website’s visibility and gets you ranking for the keywords that matter most to your business. Better rankings = more traffic, more customers, and more revenue. Through the Everysearch™ approach and integration with other channels, SEO becomes a high-impact, cost-effective powerhouse that delivers exceptional value. Partner with a top-tier London-based SEO agency to level up your game, drive results, and dominate your competition at scale. How much does an SEO agency cost? SEO agency costs vary depending on your business objectives and the strategy needed to achieve your goals. At Found, we don’t offer one-size-fits-all solutions. Instead, we craft a tailored SEO strategy that aligns with your goals and delivers measurable results within a budget that suits your business. Transparent pricing, no surprises - just a clear commitment to driving growth. Reach out, and let’s discuss how we can create an SEO plan that accelerates your success. Can you guarantee SEO results? At Found, we don’t promise specific rankings. No one can guarantee particular rankings, no matter what some agencies claim. Organic rankings are influenced by a wide range of factors - too many to make any solid guarantees. With search engines constantly updating their algorithms, fluctuations in rankings are part of the natural landscape. But here’s the thing: rankings aren’t the only metric that matters. We focus on the metrics that truly drive your business: organic leads, conversions, and revenue. With our expertise and winning Everysearch™ framework, we’re committed to delivering measurable improvements aligned with your business goals. Our focus is on real-world results that actually move your business forward. To support this, we’ll set ambitious yet achievable forecasts, whether based on historical traffic data or ranking position insights. We help establish clear targets for future performance, providing a strategic roadmap that’s based on solid data and keeps your business progressing. With an SEO agency like ours, you get a strategy built on insights that ensure long-term growth. How does Found report on SEO results? At Found, we provide more than just basic SEO reporting - we deliver tailored, >SEO Agency Guide cuts through the noise to spotlight top performers—helping you find the right partner for long-term digital growth. How do you integrate SEO with other marketing channels? We don't look... --- ### SERVICES > As a fully integrated digital marketing agency, we excel in delivering robust business outcomes, blending expertise with creativity for standout results. - Published: 2024-01-12 - Modified: 2024-05-29 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/services/ --- ### Blog > The latest digital marketing news & opinion. SEO, PPC & Digital Marketing tips & analysis from our experts. Subscribe to the Found blog today! - Published: 2024-01-09 - Modified: 2024-04-08 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/ --- ### Digital Marketing Agency London | Digital Agency UK > Found is a multi-award-winning Digital Marketing Agency in London, a master of search performance across all digital marketing platforms. Get Found! - Published: 2023-11-22 - Modified: 2024-05-01 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/ --- ### PRIVACY POLICY - Published: 2023-11-20 - Modified: 2024-04-29 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/privacy-policy/ Introduction Welcome to the Found Group Limited (“Found”) privacy policy. Found is part of the Tomorrow Group. Found respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy policy will inform you as to how we look after your personal data when you visit our website (regardless of where you visit it from) and tell you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you. This privacy policy is provided in a layered format so you can click through to the specific areas set out below. Please also use the Glossary to understand the meaning of some of the terms used in this privacy policy. 1.  IMPORTANT INFORMATION AND WHO WE ARE 2.  THE DATA WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU 3.  HOW IS YOUR PERSONAL DATA COLLECTED? 4.  HOW WE USE YOUR PERSONAL DATA 5.  DISCLOSURES OF YOUR PERSONAL DATA 6.  INTERNATIONAL TRANSFERS 7.  DATA SECURITY 8.  DATA RETENTION 9.  YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS 10.  GLOSSARY 1.              Important information Purpose of this privacy policy Found understands that your privacy is important to you and that you care about how your personal data is used. This privacy policy aims to give you information on how we collect and process your personal data through your use of this website, including any data you may provide through this website. We will only collect and use personal data in ways that are described here, and in a way that is consistent with our obligations and your rights under the law. This website is not intended for children and we do not knowingly collect data relating to children. It is important that you read this privacy policy together with any other privacy policy or fair processing policy we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal data about you so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data. This privacy policy supplements other notices and privacy policies and is not intended to override them. Controller Found is the controller and responsible for your personal data (collectively referred to as "Found", "we", "us" or "our" in this privacy policy). The Tomorrow Group is made up of different legal entities, details of which can be found here: . This privacy policy is issued on behalf of the Tomorrow Group so when we mention "Found", "we", "us" or "our" in this privacy policy, we are referring to the relevant company in the Tomorrow Group responsible for processing your data. We will let you know which entity will be the controller for your data when you purchase a product or service with us. Found is the controller and responsible for this website. We have appointed a data privacy manager who is responsible for overseeing questions in relation to this privacy policy. If you have any questions about this privacy policy, including any requests to exercise your legal rights, please contact the data privacy manager using the details set out below. Contact details If you... --- ## Sectors ### HOSPITALITY > Discover Found, the Hospitality Digital Marketing agency revolutionising the industry with Everysearch™. Contact us to elevate your hotel marketing today! - Published: 2025-02-26 - Modified: 2025-04-10 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/sectors/hospitality-marketing-agency/ https://www. youtube. com/watch? v=9CriJMcqmQcWhat is hospitality digital marketing? Hospitality digital marketing is all about using the right mix of strategies - like paid ads, SEO, digital PR, and content marketing - to attract the right traffic, showcase your offering, and build lasting customer relationships. Tailored for businesses like hotels and other hospitality providers, it’s about understanding consumer behaviour and using targeted tactics to boost visibility, engage your audience, and create experiences that drive conversions. In short, it’s about making your brand stand out and connect with the people who matter mostWhat are the digital marketing trends for hospitality in 2025? Google Business Profile: A must for boosting visibility on Google Search and Maps, helping hotels connect with travellers, share updates, and build loyalty. Influencer Marketing: Partnering with genuine influencers allows hotels and hospitality brands to tap into new audiences through trusted recommendations, turning interest into bookings. Video Content: Essential for capturing attention and influencing decisions, video content on platforms like TikTok and Instagram helps hotels expand their reach in a cost-effective way. Discover more hospitality digital marketing trends here. Why partner with a hospitality marketing agency? Partnering with a hospitality digital marketing agency gives your business access to tailored strategies, expert insights, and the scalability needed for growth. These agencies bring specialised knowledge, advanced tools, and innovative solutions, driving results that resonate with your target audience. With a deep understanding of market trends and consumer behaviour, they can help your brand stand out in a competitive landscape, maximising online visibility and fostering lasting connections. Why choose Found as your hospitality digital marketing agency? At Found, the London-based hotel and hospitality marketing agency, we’re here to help you take back control. Stop handing over 15-25% of your hard-earned revenue to OTAs like Booking. com and Expedia just to sell your own rooms. We’re the Everysearch™ Agency that makes direct bookings happen - cutting out the middleman and bringing guests straight to your website. With over 15 years of experience and deep hospitality expertise, we focus on long-term, profitable growth. Our Everysearch™ approach leverages real-time data to uncover new opportunities and audiences, driving your revenue upwards. Our team of channel and platform specialists tailors your strategy to the most effective platforms and innovative solutions, ensuring your brand stands out in the competitive travel and hospitality landscape. You don’t need OTAs; you just need the right strategy to make your direct bookings soar. Let’s make your brand shine. --- ### TRAVEL > Discover Found, the Travel Digital Marketing agency revolutionising the industry with Everysearch™. Contact us to elevate your travel marketing today! - Published: 2025-02-26 - Modified: 2025-03-03 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/sectors/travel-marketing-agency/ https://www. youtube. com/shorts/Rb6DbkF5DDcWhat is travel digital marketing? It’s about using the right blend of digital strategies - paid ads, SEO, content marketing, and digital PR - to connect with the right travellers and bring them straight to your brand. For businesses like tour operators and travel agencies, it’s about understanding what motivates your audience and delivering the right message on the right platforms. The goal? To boost visibility, create memorable experiences, and turn engagement into bookings. Simply put, it’s how you make your brand impossible to ignore and build lasting connections with the audiences who matter most. What are the travel trends for 2025? Micro-influencers: 80% of travellers consult social media before booking. As the focus shifts to micro-influencers, UK brands can drive impactful results by partnering with these authentic, niche voices for deeper connections. Experience-driven travel: Modern travellers seek transformative experiences over traditional holidays. Businesses should create campaigns highlighting meaningful, memorable journeys to tap into the growing demand for experiential tourism. Understated luxury: Travellers are choosing boutique hotels over big chains, drawn to the personalised touches and exclusivity of quiet luxury. Marketers should focus on storytelling to highlight the unique character of their properties. Discover more travel trends here. Why partner with a travel marketing agency? Working with a travel marketing agency unlocks tailored strategies, expert insights, and the scalability to fuel your brand’s growth. These agencies bring specialised knowledge and cutting-edge tools to deliver results that truly connect. With a deep understanding of market trends and traveller behaviour, they ensure your brand rises above the competition, boosting visibility and building lasting relationships with the right audienceWhy choose Found as your travel digital marketing agency? At Found, the London-based travel digital marketing agency, we help your brand thrive across every digital channel with precision and expertise. With 15+ years in the industry, we focus on sustainable, profitable growth. Our Everysearch™ approach uses real-time data to uncover new opportunities and reach fresh audiences, keeping your revenue on the rise. Our team of specialists ensures your strategy aligns with the best platforms and the most innovative tactics, delivering creative solutions that set your brand apart in the competitive travel landscape. --- ### FINTECH > Found is a multi-award-winning Fintech Digital Marketing Agency leveraging Everysearch™ to help fintech brands attract, engage & convert customers. - Published: 2024-03-13 - Modified: 2025-02-28 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/sectors/fintech-marketing-agency/ https://www. youtube. com/watch? v=9CriJMcqmQcWhat is Fintech marketing? Fintech marketing is a strategic approach to promoting financial technology companies through marketing tactics such as paid advertising, SEO, content marketing, and digital PR. In a fast-moving digital landscape, it’s about cutting through the noise, building trust, and positioning brands as industry leaders. Success isn’t just about generating leads - it’s about attracting the right customers, fostering long-term relationships, and driving sustainable growth in an increasingly competitive market. Why partner with a Fintech marketing agency? Partnering with a Fintech marketing agency gives your business access to tailored strategies, fresh perspectives, and the scalability needed to thrive. These agencies bring specialised expertise and cutting-edge tools that enable your brand to stay ahead in the fast-evolving world of financial technology. Beyond just marketing tactics, a Fintech agency ensures your business is equipped with data-driven insights and innovative solutions that drive real growth. Whether it’s increasing brand visibility, improving customer acquisition and retention, or positioning your company as an industry leader, the right agency delivers cost-effective strategies that fuel long-term success. Why choose Found as your Fintech digital marketing agency? As a leading London-based Fintech digital marketing agency, we leverage our unique Everysearch™ approach to drive impactful results. This multi-channel strategy ensures your brand excels across all searchable platforms - search, social, video, and more. Powered by Luminr, our AI platform provides deep insights into search performance, helping you stay ahead of the competition. With over 15 years of experience, we create tailored solutions that boost visibility, attract the right customers, and drive sustained growth, positioning your Fintech brand as an industry leader. --- ### ECOMMERCE > Discover Found, the Ecommerce Digital Marketing agency revolutionising the industry with Everysearch™. Contact us to elevate your ecommerce company today! - Published: 2024-03-13 - Modified: 2025-03-24 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/sectors/ecommerce-marketing-agency/ https://www. youtube. com/watch? v=9CriJMcqmQcWhat is ecommerce? Ecommerce is the digital revolution of buying and selling, allowing businesses to operate 24/7, reaching customers worldwide with exceptional convenience. By bridging geographic gaps and streamlining operations through digital transactions, ecommerce empowers brands to expand their audience, drive sales, and create seamless shopping experiences that align with modern consumer demands. Why partner with an ecommerce digital marketing agency? A successful ecommerce store is driven by many moving parts, with marketing at the core. To stay ahead in the competitive online space, your business needs a consistent stream of in-market customers visiting your store, with strategic targeting of the right users at the right time greatly improving conversion opportunities. Collaborating with an ecommerce marketing agency provides brands with specialised expertise, advanced tools, and cost-effective solutions to make more efficient decisions. Working with an agency like ours can deliver tailored strategies, objective insights, and scalable approaches that drive growth and keep your brand ahead in the competitive online landscape. Why choose Found as your ecommerce digital marketing agency? At Found, the London-based ecommerce marketing agency, we can support your business across every digital marketing channel. With over 15 years of experience in digital marketing and proven expertise in retail, we ensure sustained and profitable growth.   Our expert teams collaborate to craft a tailored approach, guiding your customers towards purchases on your site while fostering long-term brand loyalty. Leveraging our Everysearch™ approach, we use real-time data to identify new opportunities and audiences, keeping your sales on an upward trajectory. With channel and platform experts across the digital landscape, we ensure your approach is aligned with top-tier platforms, innovative strategies, and creative solutions to maximise your success. --- ### SAAS > Found is a SaaS Digital Marketing Agency leveraging Everysearch™ to help software brands attract, engage, and convert customers. Contact us today! - Published: 2024-03-13 - Modified: 2025-02-10 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/sectors/saas-marketing-agency/ https://www. youtube. com/watch? v=9CriJMcqmQcWhat is SaaS marketing? SaaS marketing refers to the specialised marketing strategies deployed by Software as a Service (SaaS) companies to effectively promote and sell their software solutions to both businesses and consumers. This type of marketing focuses on showcasing the unique features, benefits, and value propositions of SaaS products to attract and retain customers in a competitive market landscape. This approach blends digital marketing techniques - SEO, content marketing, social media, and paid media- to generate quality leads, drive user engagement, and boost conversion rates. It’s not just about selling software; it’s about demonstrating real value and building lasting relationships that fuel long-term growth. Why partner with a SaaS marketing agency? SaaS marketing agencies deliver tailored strategies, fresh perspectives, and the agility needed for scalable growth. Partnering with a SaaS marketing agency gives businesses access to specialist expertise, cutting-edge tools, and data-driven solutions that drive sustainable success. In a competitive, fast-moving market, the right agency ensures your brand stands out, attracts the right customers, and maximises long-term retention. Why choose Found as your SaaS digital marketing agency? As a leading London-based SaaS marketing agency, Found helps businesses scale across every digital channel. With over 15 years of experience and deep expertise in SaaS, we drive sustained, profitable growth in an ever-evolving market. Our unique Everysearch™ approach goes beyond traditional marketing, integrating data, technology, AI, and human insight to connect you with the right audiences at the right time across all searchable channels. By optimising every touchpoint across search, social, and paid media, we give your brand the competitive edge needed to thrive. --- ### FINANCIAL & PROFESSIONAL > Found is a leading Financial Services Digital Marketing Agency leveraging Everysearch™ to help financial brands attract, engage, and convert customers. - Published: 2024-03-13 - Modified: 2025-02-28 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/sectors/financial-services-marketing-agency/ https://www. youtube. com/watch? v=9CriJMcqmQcWhat is Financial Services marketing? Financial services marketing refers to the strategic activities undertaken by financial institutions, such as banks, insurance companies, investment firms, and fintech companies, to promote their products and services to target audiences. Marketing activities often focus on communicating the value proposition of financial products and services, building trust and credibility with customers, educating consumers about complex financial concepts, and complying with regulatory requirements. Financial services marketing plays a crucial role in helping financial institutions effectively reach and engage with their target audiences and ultimately achieve their business objectives in a rapidly evolving landscape. Why choose Found as your Financial Services digital marketing agency? London-based financial digital marketing agency Found helps financial institutions navigate the complexities of the digital landscape. With 15+ years of experience in financial services, we design bespoke marketing strategies that deliver measurable results. Our Everysearch™ methodology optimises your online presence, ensuring your brand stands out across all digital channels. We focus on building credibility, engaging the right audience, and positioning your financial business as an industry leader in a rapidly evolving market. --- ### B2B > Found is a multi-award-winning B2B Digital Marketing Agency leveraging Everysearch™ to help B2B brands attract, engage, and convert customers. - Published: 2024-03-13 - Modified: 2025-03-20 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/sectors/b2b-marketing-agency/ https://www. youtube. com/watch? v=9CriJMcqmQc&t=4sWhat is B2B marketing? B2B marketing refers to marketing tactics such as paid advertising, SEO, digital PR, and content marketing designed specifically for B2B (business-to-business) companies to engage the right businesses, in the right places, at the right time.  Success in B2B marketing goes beyond lead generation. It’s about reaching decision-makers across multiple digital touchpoints, guiding them through complex buying journeys, and delivering real commercial impact. In an increasingly competitive landscape, businesses need more than just discoverability - they need a strategy that drives meaningful engagement, strengthens brand authority, and fuels sustainable growth. What does a B2B marketing agency do? B2B marketing agencies offer tailored strategies, fresh perspectives, and the scalability businesses need to grow. Partnering with the right agency gives you access to specialised expertise, cutting-edge tools, and cost-effective solutions that drive real success. With a deep understanding of market trends and buyer behaviour, they can help your brand stand out, maximise online visibility, and build lasting connections that fuel growth in a competitive B2B landscapeWhat are the digital marketing trends for B2B marketing in 2025? Video Content: As consumers increasingly turn to online channels for inspiration, information, how-to, and advice, the power of video content is capturing the attention and shaping the decisions of B2B audiences. Combining video efforts with an effective distribution strategy across high-performing B2B channels such as LinkedIn and YouTube expands your target audience and traffic potential. Influencer Marketing: In 2024, Influencer Marketing matures into a B2B marketing channel. Companies can greatly benefit by collaborating with B2B industry influencers - respected voices who already command the attention and trust of target audiences. This approach allows a more effective engagement, vital for reaching key decision-makers. Analytics and ROI: B2B businesses are capturing unprecedented and exponential quantities of customer data across all systems. It's a big opportunity to measure ROI and refine marketing strategies. To have a true impact, brands need to prioritise understanding the motivations, desires, and behaviours underlying this data, offering a more nuanced understanding of their target audience. Why choose Found as your B2B digital marketing agency? At Found, a London-based B2B digital marketing agency, we’re here to support your business across every digital channel. With over 15 years of experience and a proven track record in B2B, we drive sustained, profitable growth. Our unique Everysearch™ approach ensures your business not only navigates the complexities of digital marketing but thrives in a fast-paced, competitive landscape full of opportunities. Let’s make your brand stand out where it matters most. --- ### HOSPITALITY & TRAVEL > Learn more about Found's expertise in the hospitality and travel sectors and our unique Everysearch™ approach that revolutionises the industry. - Published: 2024-01-29 - Modified: 2025-02-18 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/sectors/hospitality-travel/ https://www. youtube. com/shorts/Rb6DbkF5DDcWhat is hospitality and travel digital marketing? Hospitality and travel digital marketing encompasses a range of strategies like paid advertising, SEO, digital PR, and content marketing aimed at attracting relevant traffic, promoting services, and nurturing customer relationships. This approach is tailored for businesses such as hotels, travel agencies, and other service providers in the industry. By understanding consumer behaviour and leveraging targeted tactics, hospitality digital marketing helps brands engage their audience effectively, boost online visibility, and create customer experiences that convert. What are the digital marketing trends for travel for 2025? Google Business Profile: Essential for enhancing visibility on Google Search and Maps, enabling hotels and agencies to connect with travellers, share updates, and foster loyalty. Influencer Marketing: A growing trend where collaborating with authentic influencers helps travel brands reach new audiences through trusted peer recommendations, transforming views into actions. Video Content: Increasingly crucial, video content captivates and informs travellers. Leveraging platforms like TikTok and Instagram, it extends your reach and impacts travel decisions affordably. Discover more travel digital marketing trends here. Why partner with a travel and hospitality marketing agency? Partnering with a travel and hospitality digital marketing agency gives your business access to tailored strategies, expert insights, and the scalability needed for growth. These agencies bring specialised knowledge, advanced tools, and innovative solutions, driving results that resonate with your target audience. With a deep understanding of market trends and consumer behaviour, they can help your brand stand out in a competitive landscape, maximising online visibility and fostering lasting connections. Why choose Found as your digital marketing agency? At Found, the London-based travel and hospitality marketing agency, we empower your business across every digital channel with precision and insight. With over 15 years of experience and proven hospitality expertise, we prioritise sustained, profitable growth. Our Everysearch™ approach leverages real-time data to uncover new opportunities and audiences, keeping your revenue moving upward. Our team of channel and platform specialists ensures your marketing strategy aligns with leading platforms, cutting-edge approaches, and creative solutions, all tailored to maximise your success and make your brand shine in the competitive travel and hospitality landscape. --- ## Case Studies ### 1ST CENTRAL > How Found helped 1st Central drive a 36% reduction in CPA YoY and stay ahead of the curve through innovative Paid Search strategies. - Published: 2024-12-16 - Modified: 2025-01-06 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/1st-central/ - Case Study Sectors: B2C - Case Study Specialism: AI, PPC --- ### TOOLSTATION > How Found helped Toolstation drive a 40% uplift YoY and stay ahead of the curve through innovative Paid Search strategies. - Published: 2024-05-20 - Modified: 2024-05-21 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/toolstation/ - Case Study Sectors: Ecommerce - Case Study Specialism: PPC --- ### EDF ENERGY > How Found helped EDF drive a 95% lead increase through Paid Search auditing and consultancy. - Published: 2024-05-19 - Modified: 2024-05-21 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/edf-energy/ - Case Study Sectors: B2C - Case Study Specialism: PPC --- ### CHAMPNEYS > How Found helped Champneys drive a 35% revenue uplift through targeted PPC strategy. - Published: 2024-05-18 - Modified: 2025-03-21 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/champneys/ - Case Study Sectors: Hospitality - Case Study Specialism: PPC --- ### THE CLERMONT HOTEL > How Found drove 56% more blog traffic for The Clermont Hotel through SEO content activity. - Published: 2024-05-17 - Modified: 2025-03-21 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/the-clermont-hotel/ - Case Study Sectors: Hospitality - Case Study Specialism: Content, SEO --- ### HOXTON > How Found helped the Hoxton drive a 60% revenue uplift YoY on Meta whilst maintaining an efficient use of spend across international campaigns. - Published: 2024-05-17 - Modified: 2025-03-21 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/hoxton/ - Case Study Sectors: Hospitality - Case Study Specialism: Paid Social --- ### BLACKHAWK NETWORK > How Found helped One4All drive a 194% revenue uplift through Meta Advertising campaigns. - Published: 2024-05-16 - Modified: 2024-05-21 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/black-hawk-network/ - Case Study Sectors: Ecommerce - Case Study Specialism: Paid Social --- ### VITA STUDENT > How Found gained 15.3M impressions and 90K social clicks for Vita Student by a creative influencer and paid social campaign on Meta, TikTok & Snapchat. - Published: 2024-05-15 - Modified: 2024-07-10 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/vita-student/ - Case Study Sectors: B2C - Case Study Specialism: Influencer, Paid Social --- ### TRUST PAYMENTS > How Found drove 51% more blog traffic for Trust Payments through SEO content optimisation activity. - Published: 2024-05-14 - Modified: 2024-05-21 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/trust-payments/ - Case Study Sectors: B2B, Fintech, Saas - Case Study Specialism: SEO --- ### ONE4ALL > How Found helped One4All drive a 116% conversion uplift through targeted PPC campaign activity. - Published: 2024-05-13 - Modified: 2024-05-21 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/one-4-all/ - Case Study Sectors: Ecommerce - Case Study Specialism: PPC --- ### SECRET SALES > How Found helped Secret Sales unlock more than a £1m in incremental profit through an AI-driven paid search strategy. - Published: 2024-04-29 - Modified: 2024-05-21 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/secret-sales/ - Case Study Sectors: Ecommerce - Case Study Specialism: AI, Data --- ### CLERMONT HOTEL GROUP > How Found helped Clermont Hotel Group bridge the gap between data & hospitality to drive a remarkable guest experience through data. - Published: 2024-04-29 - Modified: 2025-03-21 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/clermont-hotel-data-ai/ - Case Study Sectors: Hospitality - Case Study Specialism: AI, Data --- ### RANDSTAD > How Found launches a unique Women in Work campaign to coincide with International Women's Day. The results were brilliant with national press coverage. - Published: 2024-04-26 - Modified: 2024-06-05 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/randstad-video/ - Case Study Sectors: B2C, Financial & Professional - Case Study Specialism: Content --- ### ALLCLEAR > How Found increased visibility of non-branded terms by 292% by optimising the site for keyword opportunities and improving its technical navigation. - Published: 2024-04-19 - Modified: 2024-05-23 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/all-clear/ - Case Study Sectors: Financial & Professional - Case Study Specialism: SEO --- ### FENDER > How Found gained 8.9m impressions on YouTube for Fender by a clever Paid Media ad YouTube campaign which was a fine-tuned approach to audience targeting. - Published: 2024-04-19 - Modified: 2024-05-20 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/fender-dont-fret/ - Case Study Sectors: B2C, Ecommerce - Case Study Specialism: Paid Media, Paid Social, PPC --- ### QUESTBACK > How Found increased organic traffic by 134% YoY following a full SEO strategy, including supporting Questback's team across a full site migration. - Published: 2024-04-19 - Modified: 2024-05-20 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/questback/ - Case Study Sectors: B2B, Financial & Professional - Case Study Specialism: SEO --- ### YOUTH HOSTELS ASSOCIATION (YHA) > How Found produced outstanding video content marketing for the YHA leading to an ROI of 532%, 1.3m impressions and links from travel publications. - Published: 2024-04-19 - Modified: 2025-03-21 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/yha/ - Case Study Sectors: Hospitality - Case Study Specialism: Content, Influencer --- ### RANDSTAD > How Found launched a unique Women in Work campaign to coincide with International Women's Day. The results were brilliant with national press coverage. - Published: 2024-04-19 - Modified: 2024-05-20 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/randstad-wiw/ - Case Study Sectors: B2B, Financial & Professional - Case Study Specialism: Digital PR --- ### FUNKY PIGEON > How Found helped Funky Pigeon drive a 224% YoY paid uplift and 1644% ROI during Father's Day. Read the low-down on it and other great paid search results. - Published: 2024-04-19 - Modified: 2024-12-16 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/funky-pigeon/ - Case Study Sectors: B2C, Ecommerce - Case Study Specialism: PPC --- ### CLARKS ORIGINALS > How Found gained 69k likes and comments for Clarks with creative influencer marketing campaigns, ensuring genuine followers and an authentic brand fit. - Published: 2024-04-19 - Modified: 2024-05-08 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/clarks-originals-wallabees/ - Case Study Sectors: B2C, Ecommerce - Case Study Specialism: Influencer --- ### BONMARCHÉ > How Found increased Bonmarche's Paid ROI by 194% YoY with an efficiently executed paid campaign, social support and re-engagement & remarketing. - Published: 2024-04-19 - Modified: 2024-05-20 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/bonmarche/ - Case Study Sectors: B2C, Ecommerce - Case Study Specialism: Data, Paid Media --- ### CLERMONT HOTEL GROUP > How Found made CRO improvements to the booking bar across hotel pages helping to drive a significant increase in conversion rate. - Published: 2024-04-19 - Modified: 2025-03-21 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/clermont-hotel-group/ - Case Study Sectors: Hospitality - Case Study Specialism: CRO --- ### BONMARCHÉ > How Found drove an additional £777,951 in revenue from the Bonmarche site through CRO A/B testing activity. - Published: 2024-04-19 - Modified: 2024-05-22 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/bonmarche-cro/ - Case Study Sectors: Ecommerce, Financial & Professional - Case Study Specialism: CRO --- ### BONMARCHÉ - Published: 2024-04-19 - Modified: 2024-05-20 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/bonmarche-pinterest/ - Case Study Sectors: Ecommerce - Case Study Specialism: Paid Social --- ### TAYLOR & FRANCIS > How Found gave clear next steps on how to drive digital marketing value across multiple channels using the Luminr platform insights. - Published: 2024-04-19 - Modified: 2024-05-27 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/taylor-francis/ - Case Study Sectors: Financial & Professional - Case Study Specialism: Data, Digital Strategy --- ### THE CLERMONT HOTEL > How Found assisted The Clermont Hotel brand in migrating their websites to a new domain as part of a re-brand. - Published: 2024-04-19 - Modified: 2025-03-21 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/the-clermont-hotel-seo/ - Case Study Sectors: Hospitality - Case Study Specialism: Migration, SEO --- ### ROOMEX > How Found drove high-quality leads for Roomex through tailored PPC strategy to effectively target and capture desired audiences. - Published: 2024-04-19 - Modified: 2024-05-20 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/roomex/ - Case Study Sectors: B2B, Saas - Case Study Specialism: PPC --- ### HOUSE OF MARLEY > How Found helped House of Marley to reach a 22.3m target audience through a diverse influencer and paid social campaign. - Published: 2024-02-14 - Modified: 2024-05-20 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/case-studies/house-of-marley/ - Case Study Sectors: Ecommerce - Case Study Specialism: Influencer, Paid Social --- ## Posts ### 2025 B2B Marketing Trends > Explore the top 2025 B2B marketing trends, including AI, content, and data-driven strategies to drive growth and stay ahead in the competitive landscape. - Published: 2025-04-24 - Modified: 2025-04-24 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/2025-b2b-marketing-trends/ - Categories: B2B, Digital Marketing, Trends As we move further into 2025, the B2B marketing landscape is evolving faster than ever. From rapid advancements in AI to changing buyer expectations and a growing demand for personalised, value-led content — staying ahead now calls for a more agile, insight-driven approach. At the same time, the lines between channels continue to blur. With fresh opportunities emerging across the modern search landscapespace and data playing a more central role in decision-making, businesses must be ready to test, adapt, and evolve. Those who do will not only keep pace but lead the way. In this article, we explore the key B2B marketing trends set to shape the year ahead — from smarter content strategies to new tech-led efficiencies — and share practical insights from how we use our  Everysearch™ approach to future-proof marketing plans. Let’s dive in. 1. Hyper-personalisation through AI One of the ways we are realising this for a B2B brand we work with is by developing a customer strategy, splitting their audience into distinct behavioural segments based on the sequence or combination of products they view on the site. In collaboration with an audience insights partner, we are using AI to identify similar patterns with previous users in order to ‘predict’ which products they are most likely to buy next. We can then pull out these audience segments and activate them in paid media platforms, with those products isolated in the feed. This improves the likelihood of the ‘next purchase’, increasing the average annualised customer lifetime value. 2. Content strategy focused on thought leadership In an increasingly competitive market, B2B brands are prioritising thought leadership to differentiate themselves. High-value, insightful content that addresses industry challenges, trends, and solutions helps establish authority and build trust. According to Edelman’s B2B Thought Leadership Impact Study, 64% of buyers say that thought leadership content is a key factor in awarding business. As competition grows, consistent delivery of impactful content will remain vital. Thought leadership in the B2B space is continuing to evolve - it isn’t just in blog or article form in 2025, B2B influencers are also on the rise and one to watch.   3. AI-Driven chatbots and conversational marketing Chatbots powered by AI are revolutionising B2B lead generation and customer support. By offering real-time assistance and personalised responses, chatbots enhance the customer journey while capturing valuable data. Drift’s research shows that businesses using conversational marketing generate 20% more leads. In 2025, AI chatbots will become even more sophisticated, improving conversion rates and reducing response times. 4. Increased investment in video content Video content continues to dominate B2B marketing strategies. From explainer videos and webinars to live demos, video is an engaging format that simplifies complex ideas and increases audience retention. Wyzowl reports that 91% of businesses now use video as a marketing tool, with 88% reporting positive ROI. In 2025, video content will play a bigger role in lead nurturing and brand storytelling. 5. Rise of interactive and immersive content Interactive content such as quizzes, surveys, and calculators is... --- ### 2025 Ecommerce Marketing Trends > Discover the top 2025 ecommerce marketing trends & statistics. Stay ahead with insights on growth, consumer behaviour, and digital strategies for success. - Published: 2025-04-08 - Modified: 2025-04-08 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/2025-ecommerce-marketing-trends/ - Categories: Ecommerce, Trends Retail industry overview The ecommerce industry is set to experience another year of significant growth in 2025, driven by evolving consumer behaviours, technological innovations, and increasing competition among brands. The UK’s online retail sector remains a critical player in the global market, with ecommerce accounting for 26. 5% of all UK retail sales in 2024 (ONS). As consumers demand more seamless, personalised, and convenient shopping experiences, brands must stay ahead by embracing emerging trends in ecommerce and adapting their digital strategies to meet these expectations. Ecommerce industry stats Understanding key ecommerce industry statistics can help brands identify growth opportunities and also refine their marketing efforts to improve performance or streamline spend. Here are some essential ecommerce stats and figures that are worth knowing.   Global ecommerce sales to hit £5. 4 trillion by 2025 – According to Statista, global ecommerce revenue is expected to grow steadily, driven by increasing internet penetration and mobile commerce adoption. Over 60% of UK consumers prefer mobile shopping – A report by eMarketer highlights that mobile purchases dominate the UK’s online retail industry, emphasising the importance of optimising mobile experiences. Personalisation boosts conversion rates by 10-15% – Research from McKinsey shows that ecommerce brands that personalise their customer journeys see significant increases in conversions and average order values. Social commerce is set to grow by 28% in 2025 – As platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest expand their ecommerce capabilities, social commerce is becoming a key driver of online sales. AI-powered recommendations influence 35% of ecommerce revenue – AI and machine learning are reshaping the ecommerce landscape by offering personalised product recommendations that boost sales and customer satisfaction. 2025 Ecommerce marketing trends The search landscape has transformed significantly in recent years, moving beyond traditional search engines to include social media, AI-driven platforms, and voice search. To stay competitive online, brands must optimise their presence across multiple touchpoints, ensuring they meet consumers where they are researching, discovering, and purchasing. Here are the top ecommerce marketing trends that we believe are shaping 2025: 1. AI-Powered search and personalisation AI is redefining the future of ecommerce by enhancing search functionalities and delivering hyper-personalised recommendations. AI-powered search engines, such as ChatGPT, now interpret natural language queries and provide highly relevant results, making it easier for consumers to find what they’re looking for. According to Gartner, 75% of ecommerce brands will leverage AI-driven personalisation by 2025 to improve customer experience and increase conversions. 2. Social commerce continues to thrive Social media platforms are evolving into powerful ecommerce channels themselves. Platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook are constantly evolving and integrating advanced shopping features, enabling users to make purchases directly through their feeds. In the UK, social commerce is expected to account for 10% of ecommerce revenue by 2025 (Insider Intelligence) which illustrates the opportunities that are available through these channels. Brands that invest in engaging social content and seamless shopping experiences will no doubt capitalise on this growing trend. 3. Voice commerce gains momentum With the growing adoption of smart... --- ### Hotel PPC Ads: The Complete Guide to Hotel Advertising > Master Hotel PPC Ads with this complete guide. Optimise your hotel advertising strategy for better visibility and more bookings. - Published: 2025-03-28 - Modified: 2025-04-14 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/hotel-ppc-ads-the-complete-guide-to-hotel-advertising/ - Categories: How to, Paid Search (PPC), Travel PPC ad campaigns are an essential tool for increasing visibility and driving direct bookings for any hotel brand. By strategically placing ads in search results, hotels can effectively compete with Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) and enhance their digital marketing strategies. This guide explores how hotel-specific Google advertising works, its benefits, costs, and best practices to help you maximise your return on investment. What is the difference between Google Ads and Google Hotel Ads? While Google ads cover a broad range of industries, including retail and services, Google Hotel Ads are specifically designed for the hospitality industry. The key difference lies in the information displayed: while Google PPC ads might show just an ad or product, Hotel Ads feature real-time pricing and availability of hotel rooms, allowing users to directly compare different hotels in a location. Additionally, Google Hotel ads enable hotels to showcase their offers alongside OTAs, giving them the opportunity to secure bookings directly from their website. How do hotel specific PPC ads work? Hotel specific PPC ads operate like all PPC ads, by pulling real-time pricing and availability data directly from a hotel’s booking engine or a third-party integration provider. When a user conducts a hotel search, Google displays a price comparison widget that lists different booking options, including the hotel’s direct website. Hotels bid on ad placements through a cost-per-click (CPC) model, ensuring they stay competitive in the search results. This allows hotels to appear prominently for relevant searches while optimising their ad spend. How much does Google PPC hotel ads cost? The cost of hotel specific ads varies depending on several factors, including your chosen pricing model and competition within a your specific market. Google offers two main pricing models for hotel-specific PPC ads: Cost-per-click (CPC): With this model, you pay each time someone clicks on your ad. The amount you pay is determined by your bid, which reflects how much you're willing to pay for a click on your ad. Target ROAS (tROAS): Optimise your bid and maximise conversion value based on real-time data. Both models offer flexibility in terms of budget, allowing hotels to adjust bids based on their goals. The benefits of Google PPC ads for hotels  Utilising Google ads for your hotel brand offers a range of different benefits that can transform your digital marketing campaigns, including: Increased Visibility: Google ads display at the top of search results, ensuring your hotel is front and centre for potential customers. Direct Bookings: By showing prices and availability, Google ads encourage users to book directly through your website, reducing commission fees to OTAs. Targeted Marketing: You can target specific geographic locations, times of the year, and customer demographics, making your ads more effective and cost-efficient. Increased ROI: With the ability to control bids and pricing models, you can optimise your hotel ad campaigns to maximise return on investment. Improved Competitiveness: Competing directly with OTAs on Google’s platform enables you to stand out in a crowded market and capture more bookings. Hotel focused  PPC ads management... --- ### The CRO process: How to optimise your website  > Discover how to optimise your website with a proven CRO process. Learn to identify friction points, develop actionable test ideas, and refine user journeys to boost conversions and enhance user experience. - Published: 2025-03-26 - Modified: 2025-04-14 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-cro-process-how-to-optimise-your-website/ - Categories: CRO, How to We’re all users, visitors, and customers — and we all have expectations when engaging with websites and digital services. But let’s be honest: things often go wrong. Whether it’s struggling to locate a button, encountering unclear information, or dealing with a clunky user experience, these issues highlight gaps that demand attention. This is where Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) excels. By identifying and testing potential improvements, CRO uncovers friction points, helping to refine and optimise digital experiences. Over the past decade, our team have refined a proven methodology that not only pinpoints where to make improvements but also identifies the right questions to ask. Here’s an in-depth look at that process. 1. Define Business Type and Goals The first step is to define the website’s primary goal. Understanding whether a business operates in a B2B or B2C environment shapes how we assess user behaviour and define success: B2B Goals: Typically revolve around lead generation, often through contact forms, whitepaper downloads, or demo requests. B2C Goals: Focus on driving purchases or subscriptions, with user actions aimed at completing transactions or adding items to the basket. 2. Analyse Structure, Funnels, and User Flow Once the goal is clear, the next step is to map out the user journey and identify points of friction: User Flow Mapping: For B2B, this might involve understanding the steps leading to a form submission. For B2C, it’s about tracking the path to purchase and identifying potential drop-off points. Conversion Funnels: Analysing traffic sources and key drop-off areas helps prioritise which areas require the most attention. Device Split Analysis: Users behave differently depending on the device. Research shows that 58% of website visits now come from mobile devices (Statista), making mobile optimisation essential. Top Pages and Bounce Rates: Understanding which pages attract the most traffic — and where visitors leave — helps uncover usability gaps. 3. Conduct a Comprehensive UX Review This stage involves a deep dive into the website experience, factoring in user expectations, device types, and visual differences. The goal is to assess how seamlessly users can complete their intended actions. Key questions include:-  Is the desired information easy to locate? -  Are CTAs (calls to action) clear and engaging? -  Are there unnecessary blockers slowing the journey? Our experts use FigJam (similar to Miro) to visualise the journey, adding colour-coded post-it notes that highlight what works well, where issues arise, and what could be tested. 4. Develop Actionable Test Ideas Once problem areas are identified, the next step is to break down these insights into actionable test ideas. This phase involves: Identifying test opportunities based on user pain points. Mapping out the areas where tests will be conducted. Defining key success metrics beyond revenue alone. CRO isn’t just about driving revenue — it’s about enhancing the overall user experience. Improving site usability boosts customer perception, loyalty, and trust, even if conversion happens later or through another channel. 5. Create Mockups, Develop, and Set Up Tracking To visualise potential changes, I often create mockups to compare the... --- ### Social media as a search engine  > 40% of Gen Z now use social media as search engines. Learn how social media platforms like TikTok are transforming how we discover and consume information. - Published: 2025-03-17 - Modified: 2025-04-14 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/social-media-as-a-search-engine/ - Categories: AI & Machine Learning, Paid Social, Social Media Gen Z's buying behaviours have been reshaping the digital landscape for a while, with 40% of users now turning to social media for online searches. Platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Pinterest are where they go to find everything from fashion inspiration and dining recommendations to holiday ideas, home improvement tips, and even financial advice. Gen Z are no longer just relying on Google or brand messaging—they are avid researchers, seeking trusted, peer-driven sources when making purchasing decisions. What is social media search?   Social media search refers to using the built-in search functions on social platforms rather than traditional search engines like Google. Instead of relying on SEO results, users now turn to platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube for more engaging, authentic, and timely content that reflects the latest trends. Short-form video content, in particular, offers quicker, more digestible insights compared to long-form blog posts from top-ranking brands. Gen Z craves insider knowledge and real-world experiences over traditional, often generic, search results. Social media platforms are becoming key sources of inspiration and decision-making. Examples of social media search  What’s increasingly clear is that social media search isn’t limited to the inspiration phase. Users are leveraging it across the entire customer journey—whether they're researching products, comparing features, or making quick, impulsive purchases. Platforms like TikTok, with its seamless shopping experience and Apple Pay integration, make it incredibly easy to purchase directly from video recommendations. TikTok’s evolving search functionality, now with results similar to Google’s, provides users with multiple content options such as videos, images, users, and even shop tabs, catering to different preferences. Gen Z and social media Gen Z are seasoned digital natives, and their habits shape how brands approach social commerce. TikTok, with an average use of 58 minutes per day, is the most popular platform for this demographic in the UK, followed by YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat. Far from being impulse buyers, Gen Z are research-driven consumers. They turn to social media to find authentic reviews and real-life experiences, often seeking "dupes" of high-end products on TikTok shop or Amazon. Price sensitivity is also a key factor in their buying decisions. In fact, 70% of Gen Z and 69% of millennials only trust a brand after conducting their own research. Influencers, particularly micro-influencers, play a pivotal role—thanks to their high engagement rates, their content often ranks highly in search results. With TikTok shop’s smooth purchasing experience, influencers can inspire immediate purchases directly from their videos. Social media has become Gen Z's primary source of recommendations, from holiday ideas to product reviews. They trust social media more than traditional search engines and rely on peers rather than paid ads for advice. Gen Z values transparency, making the research phase a crucial element in establishing brand trust. Introducing Everysearch™ approach  At Found, we understand that the search landscape is evolving. Users are increasingly shifting away from traditional search engines. To address this, we’ve introduced the Everysearch™ approach, recognising the importance of gaining visibility across all searchable platforms.... --- ### Why Isn’t My Brand Appearing In AI Search Tools? > Why Isn’t My Brand Appearing in AI Search Tools? - Published: 2025-03-11 - Modified: 2025-03-11 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/why-isnt-my-brand-appearing-in-ai-search-tools/ - Categories: AI & Machine Learning, General News, SEO In an era where AI-powered search tools like ChatGPT are shaping how consumers discover and engage with brands, ensuring accurate information about your business is visible in these searches is more critical than ever. But if your brand isn’t appearing in AI-generated responses, what’s causing this—and more importantly, how can you fix it? Our expert has explained more...   Understanding AI-Powered Search Unlike traditional search engines that crawl the web for indexed pages, AI-driven search tools operate differently. They rely on vast datasets, structured information, and live web sources to generate responses. Instead of ranking links, they synthesise information to provide direct, conversational answers. This fundamental difference means the usual SEO strategies may not be enough to ensure visibility. Why your brand might be invisible in AI searches Several factors can impact whether your brand appears in AI-powered search results: AI Models May Not Be Fully Up-to-DateChatGPT and similar tools are not performing live searches but instead their models are trained on data with cutoff dates and then augmented with web search capabilities. This means they may not have the latest updates about your brand, potentially relying on outdated training data. Search Algorithm Bias & Data SourcesAI models such as ChatGPT use Bing in combination with various unnamed technology partners. If the algorithm favours certain types of brands or accommodations over others, your business might not be prioritised in search results. Weak Brand Associations in AI Knowledge BasesIf AI models do not strongly associate your brand with key industry terms they may not surface your business in relevant queries. Conflicting or Outdated InformationAI models may pull from older or conflicting data sources, leading to inaccuracies such as your brand being incorrectly displayed as "closed. " Without a consistent and authoritative data presence, these errors can persist. Limited High-Quality Content & Online VisibilityAI tools prioritise sources with high credibility. If your brand isn’t producing authoritative content—such as blogs, research papers, or press coverage—it may struggle to surface in AI-driven responses. Additionally, if your brand isn’t appearing in traditional search results, AI models may rely on training data rather than fresh web queries. How to Improve Your Brand’s AI Search Presence So, if your brand isn’t performing well in AI searches, here’s some tips on how to improve performance:  Ensure Up-to-Date Information Is Widely AvailableAI systems rely on publicly available data. Ensuring your brand’s details are accurate and up-to-date across platforms like Google, Bing, Wikipedia, and industry directories will improve visibility. Enhance Brand-Keyword AssociationsStrengthen the link between your brand and key search terms by creating high-quality content, optimising your website’s metadata, and increasing brand mentions across the web. Boost Digital PR Efforts & Media CoverageSecuring press mentions and authoritative third-party references can elevate your brand’s presence in AI-referenced sources. Regularly publishing thought leadership pieces and securing coverage in industry publications will help. Regularly Test & Monitor AI Search ResultsGiven how AI search is evolving, consistent monitoring is key. Platforms like Luminr are developing tools to track brand visibility in AI search environments,... --- ### Mastering SEO for Travel Websites: Tips and Strategies > Discover proven strategies to boost traffic and conversions on your travel website with this comprehensive guide to travel SEO tips. - Published: 2025-03-05 - Modified: 2025-03-05 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/seo-for-travel-websites-tips-and-strategies/ - Categories: How to, SEO, Travel Who doesn’t love a holiday?   With weather in the UK starting to lose its winter chill, and the “what I eat in a day at an all-inclusive resort” TikToks filling our FYP pages, booking your next holiday has become more of a focus than ever. And that’s why it’s even more important for travel websites to invest in a strong SEO strategy to ensure that they are right at the forefront of that booking decision. Join me as I break down the why and how of setting your website apart in the highly competitive travel landscape. Why is Travel SEO Important? In a nutshell, Travel SEO is important as it enables businesses to stand out in a crowded market, by appearing higher in search results, across multiple features and expanding their reach in the where users often plan their trips .   Whether it’s finding the best travel agency, uncovering a hidden gem, or discovering local tips, travellers rely heavily on search engines to guide them through the vast expanse of information available online.   With the introduction of AI Overviews and ever-expanding SERP features, there’s now multiple ways in which a travel company can make themselves visible to prospecting holiday-makers.   Travel-related searches have become more and more saturated with new ways of presenting information to users, beyond Google Hotel & Flights features for transactional keywords.   Appearing for as many of these key touchpoints as possible, through a finetuned SEO approach, is imperative for brand building, getting eyes-on-site and, ultimately, conversion.   SEO Strategy Tips for Travel Websites 1. Conduct Comprehensive and Considered Keyword ResearchKeyword research is the foundation of any effective SEO strategy, and in the travel sector, it’s critical to understand the intent behind search terms.   For example, someone searching for “holidays in Venice” will be looking for different information than the user searching for “things to do in Venice “ and even “ Venice”.   By considering intent and mapping your keywords against every stage of the customer journey, you will have a full funnel SEO approach - versus only targeting those that are already willing to convert. 2. Utilise content to target every stage of the travel customer journey Travel decisions aren’t made in a single search or click. Today’s travellers move through a complex decision-making process, often spanning weeks or even months. After the uncertainty of last-minute cancellations and difficult refunds post-pandemic, trust has become a critical factor in their choice of providers. To capture and nurture potential customers, travel brands must create content that aligns with every stage of the customer journey funnel: Awareness Stage (Inspiration & Discovery) – Users begin with broad searches like “best summer destinations in Europe” or “family-friendly holiday ideas. ” Informative, engaging content—such as travel guides, listicles, and interactive quizzes—can help attract these top-of-funnel visitors. Consideration Stage (Research & Planning) – As travelers narrow their choices, they look for details on accommodations, transport options, and itineraries. Content like detailed comparison guides, expert reviews, and insider... --- ### 2025 SEO landscape and Google Algorithm updates > A comprehensive guide explaining all the major Google algorithm updates in 2025. Learn about the SEO landscape today. - Published: 2025-02-25 - Modified: 2025-03-28 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/2025-seo-landscape-and-google-algorithm-updates/ - Categories: Analytics, General News, SEO The digital landscape is rapidly evolving, and SEO is no exception. As search behaviour evolves, being proactive with your organic SEO strategy is more important to maintain a competitive edge. With Google owning approximately 89% of the global market share for search engines, its continuous release of new algorithm updates significantly impacts SEO practices to enhance user experience. These updates can heavily impact search engine results, affecting many businesses that rely on organic traffic as a revenue source. Staying up to date with the latest SEO developments is crucial to maintaining and improving your online presence. This live blog will cover algorithm updates as they are confirmed, so be sure to keep an eye on it over the year to keep up to date. What are Google Algorithm Updates? Google rolls out hundreds of updates to their search engine every year, some are minor, while others, known as core algorithm updates, have large impacts on search rankings. The purpose of these updates is to improve and refine the quality of search results, making sure that only the most relevant information is shown for your query. The idea of these updates is to ensure the engine is a more accessible and trustworthy space. The main areas the core algorithm updates focus on are: Prioritising high-quality content Combating spam Understanding and interpreting user intent December 2024 - January 2025 | Confirmed Algorithm & Spam Update While there were no confirmed algorithm or spam updates at the beginning of the year, we noted continuing ranking fluctuations throughout early January. These movements can be attributed to the lasting effects of late December's significant algorithm and spam updates, which caused widespread volatility across many industries and sectors. A lot of websites saw large peaks and troughs in their rankings, as the update's impact carried over into the New Year, reflecting Google’s adjustments. The December updates focused on improving search quality by targeting low-quality content, addressing manipulative link-building practices, and refining how Google identifies helpful content. Websites that relied on thin content, AI-generated copy, or aggressive link-building were particularly affected, with some experiencing ranking declines. On the other hand, websites that prioritised original, user-focused content and adhered to Google's E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) guidelines often saw improved performance. Industries such as e-commerce, travel, and health were among the most impacted, likely due to their competitive nature and reliance on search visibility. E-commerce websites, in particular, experienced volatility during the crucial post-holiday period, prompting many site owners to reassess their content quality and user experience. In line with these updates, Google also issued a warning in December about the excessive use of JavaScript, emphasising its potential to hinder search engine crawlers—especially with the rise of AI-driven search tools. With AI crawlers making up approximately 28% of Googlebot’s traffic, reliance on JavaScript can affect content accessibility. This shift is significant as AI search tools often struggle with rendering JavaScript-heavy websites, prioritising server-side rendering and HTML content instead. To mitigate potential visibility issues in both traditional and... --- ### How to Succeed with Reddit Ads: A Beginner’s Guide > Learn to succeed with Reddit Ads. This beginner's guide covers advantages, ad types and best practices for your brand to succeed. - Published: 2025-02-18 - Modified: 2025-02-25 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/how-to-succeed-with-reddit-ads-a-beginners-guide/ - Categories: Paid Social Reddit, a thriving online community with over 57 million daily active users, offers a unique platform for advertisers aiming to reach engaged and niche audiences. Known for its passionate communities, or “subreddits,” Reddit provides the perfect environment to foster authentic brand interactions. For marketers, platforms like Reddit complement traditional channels, diversifying ad strategies and unlocking untapped potential audiences. In this guide, we'll walk you through how to run successful Reddit ads, covering the advantages, ad types, and best practices. Whether you're curious about Reddit ads pricing or looking for Reddit ads examples, this guide has everything you need. Understanding Reddit's User Demographics Knowing the key demographics that use the platform is important to understand if its a valuable channel for your audience and your brand. Reddit's audience is predominantly younger, with 63% of users aged 18-34. They are highly engaged, tech-savvy, and often spend time in niche communities where their interests lie. Understanding the platform's community-first ethos is essential—users value authenticity and transparency above all else. The Advantages of Reddit Ads Reddit offers several unique benefits that make it stand out, this includes: Niche Targeting: Subreddits allow hyper-targeting based on user interests. Cost-Effective Ads: Reddit's ads are affordable and are similar in cost to Meta. Your campaign type, audience targeting, creative and marketing message will impact the costs. High Engagement: Users are more likely to engage with posts that align with their community interests. Customisable Formats: Reddit’s ad platform offers versatile formats, such as video ads, image ads, carousels, conversation ads, their new product ads are currently in Beta. Self-Serve Platform: Easy-to-use tools for creating and launching campaigns. The Disadvantages of Reddit Ads It's also important to know that there are also disadvantages to the platform too, including: Community Moderation: Ads can be flagged or receive negative feedback if perceived as overly promotional. Steep Learning Curve: Reddit requires in-depth knowledge of community norms to avoid backlash. Limited Tracking Tools: Compared to other platforms, Reddit's analytics and tracking options are less robust. Reddit Ad Types To advertise with Reddit, it’s crucial to understand the different ad formats available you. The ad format that is best for your brand depends on a lot of factors including your messaging, assets and creatives and objectives. Free-form Ads: This format allows you to get creative and create a unique ad which can include text, image, video and GIFs all in one ad. Image Ads: These are incredibly visual and great if you’re looking for an initial test. Video Ads: High-performing Reddit video ads are ideal for storytelling and visual engagement. Carousel Ads: Similar to Meta’s carousel ads, you can showcase multiple images within one ad which users can swipe through. Conversation Ads: This is where your ad is within a conversation thread. Tip: Add compelling CTAs to maximise conversions in Reddit paid ads. Reddit Ads Best Practices To ensure your ad campaigns succeed, follow these 4 key best practices: Respect the Community: Research any subreddits where you plan to advertise. Join conversations to understand the... --- ### Best AI Marketing Tools for Success in 2025 > Accelerate growth in 2025 with top AI marketing tools that enhance efficiency by automating campaigns and activities, driving scalability like never before. - Published: 2025-02-13 - Modified: 2025-03-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/best-ai-marketing-tools-for-success-in-2025/ - Categories: AI & Machine Learning, Content Marketing, Digital Marketing, Trends Staying ahead in today’s competitive digital landscape calls for innovative tools that boost marketing performance, and AI is fast becoming an indispensable ally for marketers seeking to elevate their efficiency and drive better results.   In 2025, marketing success is about working smarter with the right AI tools. In this overview of the best AI marketing tools for 2025, we’ll explore how the latest generation of artificial intelligence is redefining efficiency, driving scalability, and empowering marketers to deliver impactful campaigns with more personalisation and agility than ever before. What are the benefits of using AI marketing tools? AI is transforming marketing through powerful automation, rapid data insights, and sophisticated personalisation. It can save time and money across an expanding range of creative and technical activities, enabling skilled marketers to achieve more, and helping generalists tackle tasks once out of reach. This efficiency frees up time for human-focused areas such as strategy and relationship-building, whilst tools can standardise outputs from major chatbots like ChatGPT. According to Markets and Markets, a leading global market research firm, the global artificial intelligence market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 35. 7% from 2024 to 2030 — from $214. 6 billion to $1. 34 trillion — reflecting the enormous potential of AI to: Drive efficiency Boost productivity Save time Improve personalisation Enhance customer care Reduce costs Enable scalability Enhance audience targeting Provide real-time insights Generate and optimise content Ultimately, these AI marketing tools empower organisations to make better decisions, work smarter, and increase the value they deliver. Best AI Marketing Tools Commonly Available Today Below, we highlight some of the best AI-driven digital marketing tools for supporting your 2025 marketing strategy. Each tool drives efficiency in unique ways, from AI competitor analysis and AI market research tools to AI marketing automation and beyond. 1. Surfer SEO Marketing Area: SEO & Content Optimisation Surfer SEO is among the best AI marketing tools for streamlining your on-page content optimisation. Its intelligence engine provides real-time recommendations on ideal keyword density, content length, heading structure, and more. As you draft or update copy, Surfer SEO’s interactive score rises or falls based on how well your content aligns with the top-ranking pages. This AI tool for digital marketing also integrates with Google Docs and WordPress for seamless workflows, allowing you to produce search-optimised, high-quality articles faster. By harnessing AI-driven data, Surfer SEO saves time, reduces guesswork, and helps you scale your organic visibility. It’s a valuable assistant for both novice and seasoned SEO practitioners seeking a structured, >Brand24 Marketing Area: Social Listening & Sentiment Analysis Brand24 is a marketing AI tool that crawls social media platforms, forums, blogs, and news outlets to find every mention of your brand or key topics you wish to track. By applying AI-powered sentiment analysis, Brand24 highlights whether public perception skews positive, neutral, or negative in real time. Marketers can then respond quickly to crises, amplify praise, or fine-tune messaging. This platform’s user-friendly dashboard centralises data, making it easier to save time on... --- ### Paid Social Trends For 2025 > Found Paid Social team have provided their expert insights and knowledge into the biggest Paid Social trends for 2025. Take a look… - Published: 2025-02-06 - Modified: 2025-03-12 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/paid-social-trends-for-2025/ - Categories: AI & Machine Learning, B2B, Paid Social, Social Media Social media ads continue to be a large revenue driver for many businesses, and with digital marketers cementing their digital marketing goals and plans for the year, our Paid Social team have provided their expert insight and knowledge into the biggest Paid Social trends for 2025. From social ecommerce, the creator economy, to the use of AI, here are our top predictions.   Social Search Gen Z are no longer ‘Googling it’ with 40% of Gen Z  now relying on social media for search, a shift away from traditional search engines. Younger audiences are turning to TikTok, Instagram and YouTube throughout their buying journey. This is not only true when they are researching products, but planning their holidays, decorating their home and making bigger life decisions.   Social search has many benefits, firstly, short form video is much easier to digest and far more engaging than a hefty blog article. Secondly, Gen Z are craving authenticity. Gen Z don’t part with their cash easily, which is why finding authentic reviews and the real experiences of others plays a large role in their customer journey.   How can brands authentically ensure that their content is optimised for social search? Ensure that captions, descriptions and hashtags are all added. We would also recommend reviewing the content that appears for your phrase or keywords in the social search results when creating your content to see how you can gain competitive advantage with better content, and answer the questions that others are asking in the comments of other videos.   Short Form Video (UGC) Short-form videos on platforms like TikTok and Instagram are taking over social media, and for good reason. These quick, bite-sized videos are effective at capturing attention in ways that long-form content often can't, making them perfect for reaching potential customers. The key is to stop the endless scroll and earn that precious moment of engagement. How can you make the most of short-form video in 2025?  To make the most of short-form video, aim to keep your videos under 15 seconds. This length ensures your message is delivered quickly, catering to the declining attention span of modern audiences. Begin with a strong hook—a compelling opening that encourages users to stop scrolling and pay attention. Once you have their attention, deliver your key message clearly and effectively, avoiding any unnecessary details. User-generated content is another powerful tool to increase engagement. It helps make the brand feel more authentic and relatable, which can bridge the gap between the brand and the audience. UGC style content shows real people interacting with your product, making it more trustworthy and appealing. Using captions and text overlays in videos is crucial for viewers watching on the go, ensuring your message is still understood even without sound. Incorporating these strategies into your short-form video content can help boost engagement, attract new audiences, and ultimately, enhance your brand presence on social platforms. Rise Of EGC Creators From behind-the-scenes glimpses to inspiring success stories, businesses across industries are tapping... --- ### Agency In The Spotlight Webinar > Last week, our Director of Growth, Harry Calvin Williams, and Senior PPC Account Manager, Ella-Rose Hatchwell took to the screens across the globe in an exclusive Webinar series, Agency In The Spotlight.  - Published: 2025-02-04 - Modified: 2025-02-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/a-round-up-from-our-recent-exclusive-agency-in-the-spotlight-webinar-with-producthero/ - Categories: AI & Machine Learning, Consumer Behaviour, Ecommerce, How to, Paid Search (PPC) A round-up from our recent Agency In The Spotlight Webinar with ProductHero. Last week, our Director of Growth, Harry Calvin Williams, and Senior PPC Account Manager, Ella-Rose Hatchwell took to the screens across the globe in an exclusive Webinar series, Agency In The Spotlight.   The first in the new webinar series, brought to you in collaboration with ProductHero, shared the strategies behind our team's award-winning campaign—the one that earned them the 2024 UK Search Award for Best Use of Search – B2C (PPC) with our client 1st Central. The webinar, which was watched by people all over the globe, explored behind-the-scenes insights from the award winning campaign.   Behind the Award-Winning Campaign The session offered a comprehensive analysis of the campaign's success, emphasising the pivotal role of first-party data in crafting personalised and effective marketing strategies. By leveraging this data, the team enhanced customer segmentation and delivered tailored experiences across paid search and social platforms, resulting in a 33% increase in direct sales and a 50% rise in direct quotes for 1st Central. Embracing AI in Digital Strategy A significant portion of the discussion centred on the transformative impact of artificial intelligence in digital marketing. The team highlighted how the use of AI to analyse the client’s rich customer dataset expedited the process of extracting usable customer segments, shortening the timeline to achieve performance efficiencies. This integration of AI not only optimises performance but also positions businesses to stay ahead in the competitive landscape. The Power of Everysearch™ The webinar also delved into the application of Everysearch™, our industry-leading audience-first approach. By focusing on audience intent and behaviour, this methodology has been instrumental in shaping campaigns that exceed targets and drive substantial growth. At its core, Everysearch™ uses an understanding of who the customer is and how they search, in order to be more precise in the choice of digital channels, creative messaging and content types are necessary to achieve strategy objectives. Key Takeaways:  For business and marketing professionals aiming to elevate their strategies, the webinar underscored several actionable insights: > Braidr, the global data and AI consulting company to get best results here. AI Integration: Incorporating AI into digital strategies can enhance efficiency, provide deeper insights, and improve campaign outcomes. Audience-First Approach: Prioritising audience intent and behaviour through approaches like Everysearch™ can result in campaigns that not only meet but surpass objectives. For those who missed the live session, the webinar is available on-demand here, offering valuable perspectives to refine and enhance your marketing strategies. By embracing these insights, businesses can navigate the evolving digital landscape more effectively, ensuring sustained growth and success in their marketing endeavours. To read more about our award-winning campaign visit 1st Central Case Study. If you’d like to get in touch to discuss any of the points raised in the webinar in more detail get in touch with our team. --- ### 2025 Travel Trends You Need to Know > Here are 10 of the key travel trends that UK businesses and marketers need to know to stay ahead of the curve and competitors.  - Published: 2025-01-29 - Modified: 2025-03-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/here-are-10-of-the-key-travel-trends-that-uk-businesses-and-marketers-need-to-know-to-stay-ahead-of-the-curve-and-competitors/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, Travel, Trends Here are 10 of the key travel trends that UK businesses and marketers need to know to stay ahead of the curve and competitors. As the travel industry gears up for another exciting year, 2025 promises to bring shifts in consumer behaviour, preferences, and emerging opportunities for businesses across the digital marketing landscape. Here are 10 of the key travel trends that UK businesses and marketers need to know to stay ahead of the curve and competitors in the travel and hospitality industry. https://www. youtube. com/shorts/Rb6DbkF5DDc 1. Pets are a priority Travelers are prioritising their furry companions when making booking decisions, even at premium establishments. Pet-friendly policies are no longer a nice-to-have—they’re a powerful way to attract and retain guests. Hotels should spotlight their pet-friendly amenities in marketing campaigns to secure this growing demographic. Younger generations are driving this trend as recent research by Morgan Stanley revealed that 38% of 18-34 year olds often travel with pets.   2. Traveling for experiences The demand for travel tied to live events—be it concerts, sports, or festivals—is surging. For instance, international fans are finding value in traveling to Europe to catch their favourite artists while exploring new destinations. UK marketers should craft packages that pair event access with bespoke travel services to capture this market. 3. The rise of guest-centric hospitality Hyper-personalisation is no longer a luxury but an expectation. From curated in-room amenities to flexible check-ins, guests want experiences that feel custom-built. Direct marketing efforts should emphasise these bespoke offerings to stand out from OTAs like Booking. com. 4. Weathering change: Climate’s impact on travel Google Trends data shows a staggering 300% increase in searches for “cooler holidays” compared to this time last year. Climate change is shifting tourism patterns, with traditional summer destinations like Spain and Italy seeing declining interest during peak months due to extreme heat. Cooler alternatives or off-season travel are becoming more attractive. Businesses should adjust their messaging to highlight these emerging opportunities. 5. The allure of understated luxury A growing preference for "quiet luxury" has travellers opting for boutique hotels over large luxury chains. These smaller, independent properties offer personalised touches and exclusivity that resonate with discerning guests. Marketers should focus on storytelling and emphasising the unique character of their establishments. 6. Adapting to regulatory shifts As governments implement tighter restrictions in high-traffic destinations, such as limiting short-term rentals or addressing overtourism, the landscape is shifting. Businesses that position themselves as reliable, regulation-compliant options will have an edge. Stay informed and ready to adapt your strategies. 7. Evolving luxury in air travel While traditional first-class flights are declining, airlines are redefining business class as the pinnacle of in-flight luxury. Others are doubling down on ultra-high-end first-class options. UK brands targeting affluent travellers can benefit from partnerships with airlines to offer seamless, premium travel experiences. 8. Cultural renaissance in the Middle East The Middle East continues to attract attention with its evolving approach to tourism, easing restrictions on activities like gambling and alcohol. The region’s transformation offers UK marketers opportunities to align campaigns with these cultural shifts, creating compelling collaborations. 9. The power of micro-influencers According to Expedia CEO Ariane Gorin,... --- ### Reddit's AI Search Tool: What you need to know and how it could transform your digital strategy > Reddit has made waves with its revamped AI-powered search tool, signalling a new era for how users and brands interact with the platform. - Published: 2025-01-16 - Modified: 2025-01-16 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/reddits-ai-search-tool-what-you-need-to-know/ - Categories: AI & Machine Learning, Content Marketing, Digital Marketing, SEO Reddit has made waves with its revamped AI-powered search tool, signaling a new era for how users and brands interact with the platform. For years, Reddit’s on-site search feature has been a source of frustration for users, notorious for its clunky interface and inability to surface relevant results efficiently. This led to a workaround that became second nature: users turning to Google with “Reddit” appended to their search queries. Phrases like “best time to go to Mexico Reddit” or “Intermezzo review Reddit” became standard methods for uncovering Reddit’s invaluable user-generated insights buried beneath its subpar search functionality. However, a major shift occurred in February 2024, when Reddit entered a publishing partnership with Google. This collaboration aims to boost Google’s AI tools with Reddit’s rich data while simultaneously enhancing Reddit’s visibility in organic search results. In this context, Reddit’s decision to revamp its on-site search capabilities represents a bold, strategic move that could reshape the platform's future. What’s new? From initial previews, Reddit’s upgraded search feature promises a much more robust experience for users, potentially outperforming Google’s search results for specific queries. Powered by AI, the new tool is designed to surface more accurate and relevant posts, helping users find valuable content with greater ease. However, as with any emerging AI-driven search technology, questions about data accuracy, consistency, and reliability remain. Just as platforms like ChatGPT experienced growing pains early on, Reddit will need to focus on content evaluation to ensure its AI-driven search provides trustworthy results over time. For brands, this shift presents a new opportunity to rethink how they engage with Reddit’s communities. Unlike other social platforms, Reddit demands a more nuanced, authentic approach to interaction. With its new AI search tool, Reddit is positioning itself as a more powerful platform for brands looking to connect with highly engaged users. The ability to tap into specific, niche communities can open new doors for brands seeking direct engagement, whether for customer support, brand awareness, or targeted content marketing. What’s at stake? The true test of Reddit’s AI search tool will be its long-term impact on user behaviour. Will it eliminate the need for users to append “Reddit” to their Google searches? If successful, Reddit Answers could become a compelling reason for users to perform searches directly on Reddit, rather than relying on Google to surface Reddit content. This shift would make Reddit an even more integral part of users’ digital routines, further establishing the platform as a key player in the online search ecosystem. This development underscores how quickly the digital search landscape is evolving. With new technologies emerging, platforms like Reddit are redefining how users find information and interact with brands. As digital marketers, staying ahead of these trends requires a deep understanding of audience behaviour, the ability to leverage alt="" /> What you need to do For brands, the message is clear: stay alert to Reddit’s growing role as both a community hub and a search platform. Its new AI-powered search tool could significantly alter how you engage with audiences and deliver your message. With its unique combination of authenticity, community-driven content, and now enhanced search capabilities, Reddit presents an exciting... --- ### Introducing FoundLabs > We’re excited to announce the launch of FoundLabs, our dedicated innovation hub designed to revolutionise how we work across the Tomorrow Group.  - Published: 2025-01-16 - Modified: 2025-01-16 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/introducing-foundlabs/ - Categories: AI & Machine Learning, Culture, General News, Trends At Found, we know that innovation drives success. That’s why we’re committed to developing cutting-edge solutions and adopting smarter ways of working where technology can make a difference. .   We’re excited to announce the launch of FoundLabs, our dedicated innovation hub designed to revolutionise how we work across the Tomorrow Group.   What is FoundLabs? FoundLabs is the hub of our technological innovation, focused on creating tools that streamline our work, help maintain a competitive edge, and unlock new insights & opportunities. By leveraging advanced technology, we aim to free up time for what truly matters: crafting powerful strategies and driving creative excellence for our clients across the agency.   Led by our Head of Paid Operations, Becky James, and Martech Specialist, Richard Lewis, FoundLabs embodies our culture of continuous improvement and collaboration. A culture of innovation and collaboration At Found, we firmly believe that the best ideas come from within. Every innovation we’ve introduced is born from the expertise and ingenuity of our talented team. This philosophy resonates across the Tomorrow Group, underscoring our commitment to putting innovation at the heart of everything we do. Our approach has led to transformative solutions that empower us to work smarter—not harder—while delivering exceptional results for our clients. Game-changing innovations Here are just a few examples of the pioneering technologies developed through FoundLabs: Super Keyword Planner: Enables quick and comprehensive keyword research for high-impact campaigns. Review Analyser: Automatically scrapes and analysis Trustpilot reviews to inspire creative & messaging. Multi-Market Scanner: Checks search volume for keywords across multiple markets at once to find which markets have the highest demand. Bulk GPT: Streamlines bulk requests to ChatGPT, enhancing efficiency The team behind the innovation Becky James, Head of Paid Operations“It’s an incredibly exciting time at Found as we continue to develop tools that help our teams to work more efficiently as well as enabling them to find innovative solutions that drive impact and deliver exceptional results for our clients. Innovation is embedded in our culture, and it’s inspiring to see all of our teams contributing ideas that shape our approach to digital marketing. I’m proud to lead such an important initiative within the Tomorrow Group. ” Richard Lewis, Martech Specialist“As a team, we thrive on turning ideas into actionable solutions. The pace of change in our industry is exhilarating, and the growing potential of technology presents endless opportunities. Knowing that the tools we create make a tangible difference to our teams and the industry-leading work they produce is incredibly rewarding. ” Let’s innovate together FoundLabs is just one of the many ways we’re driving progress and redefining what’s possible in digital marketing.   Want to learn more about our industry-leading suite of tools and how they can help your business succeed? Get in touch with our team today! --- ### The Ultimate Guide to the B2B Buyer's Journey with Everysearch™ > The B2B buyer's journey has changed. Learn how to apply the unique Everysearch™ approach to help your B2B business navigate the digital landscape successfully. - Published: 2025-01-09 - Modified: 2025-01-09 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-ultimate-guide-to-the-b2b-buyers-journey-with-everysearch/ - Categories: B2B, Consumer Behaviour, Digital Marketing, How to In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, understanding and optimising the B2B buyer's journey is crucial for business success. This comprehensive guide explores the modern B2B buyer's journey and introduces Everysearch™, Found's revolutionary approach to navigating the complex decision-making process in the B2B space. The Shifting Search Landscape Before delving into the B2B buyer's journey, it's essential to understand the seismic shift in the search landscape. Traditional search rules no longer apply: 77% of B2B customers report that they research thoroughly before making a purchase. An increasing number of queries are generated in-browser. Search extends far beyond conventional search engines, encompassing social media, e-commerce, video-sharing, and even music-streaming platforms. This transformation demands a new approach to search marketing - one that captures visibility, commands attention, and maximises performance across every searchable platform. What is the B2B Buyer's Journey? The B2B buyer's journey is the process that business customers go through when making purchasing decisions. It encompasses various stages, from identifying a problem or need to evaluating solutions and ultimately making a purchase. This journey is typically more complex and longer than consumer buying processes, involving multiple stakeholders and extensive research across diverse digital channels. How the B2B Buyer's Journey Has Changed in Recent Years The B2B buyer's journey has undergone significant transformations, primarily driven by digital advancements. According to Gartner, B2B buyers now spend only 17% of their time meeting with potential suppliers when considering a purchase. Instead, they dedicate 27% of their time researching independently online which means your digital presence is crucial. Their research also shows that on average, the B2B purchase journey involves between 11 and 20 stakeholders  from internal influencers to procurement teams. This is a lot of people to engage and win over. This shift highlights the critical importance of digital presence and engagement throughout the buyer's journey, especially given the evolving search landscape. Introducing Everysearch™: A Revolutionary Approach Enter Everysearch™ - Found's ground-breaking approach that aligns perfectly with these evolving buyer behaviours. Everysearch™ recognises that modern B2B decision-making isn't linear but rather a complex web of digital interactions across various platforms and touchpoints. Everysearch™ addresses the seismic shift in the search landscape, reshaping how companies navigate digital marketing to thrive in a competitive, fast-paced environment brimming with opportunities. It acknowledges that search marketing goes much further than conventional search engine success. A key challenge in the B2B space is keeping up with the shifting demands in consumer behaviour. The digital space has never been more complex, but to remain competitive, companies must truly understand how their audiences are searching online and how this behaviour has adapted over time. Luminr: The AI Lens of Everysearch™ At the heart of the Everysearch™ approach is Luminr, Found's proprietary platform. Luminr serves as an AI lens to the entire searchable web, seamlessly consolidating a diverse array of search results into one cohesive interface. It offers unparalleled insights, delving deep into every aspect of search performance – from the attention you're capturing to the influence you're having, and the strategic... --- ### Navigating Google’s AI Overviews > Optimise your site for AI-driven search results like Google’s AI Overviews with actionable tips to boost visibility and adapt to evolving SEO trends. - Published: 2025-01-06 - Modified: 2025-01-06 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/navigating-googles-ai-overviews/ - Categories: AI & Machine Learning, Google Algorithm Updates Search is changing, and Google’s AI Overviews are transforming how we find and interact with information online. Instead of just listing links, these overviews provide detailed, AI-generated responses directly on the search engine results page (SERP). For brands, this means adapting SEO strategies isn’t optional—it’s essential to staying relevant. What Are AI Overviews? AI Overviews are part of Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE), launched in May 2024. Unlike featured snippets that quote text from websites, these summaries are created using Google’s large language model, Gemini. Key Features of AI Overviews Quick Summaries at a Glance: AI Overviews, in their collapsed state, sit right at the top of the search results, giving you a bite-sized, AI-generated summary. In-Depth Explanations: With just a click, the overview expands into a detailed, multi-paragraph response. It’s like having a full article right there on the search page—ideal for when you’re looking for more in-depth information. Source Citations for Transparency: AI Overviews don’t stop at answers—they also include links to their sources, adding credibility and allowing for further research if you want to.   Impact of AI Overviews on SEO Metrics AI Overviews dominate a significant portion of screen space on search engine results pages (SERPs), with studies revealing they can take up as much as 48% of the page on mobile and 42% on desktop. This crowding pushes organic rankings further down the page, creating new challenges for traditional performance metrics like click-through rates (CTR). In other words, even being in the coveted top three positions on Google might not have the same impact it once did. Key Observations Co-occurrence with Featured Snippets: According to a study by Botify and DemandSphere, AI Overviews appear alongside featured snippets around 60% of the time. This powerful combination can take up as much as 76% of the SERP on mobile. This leaves less room for organic results to shine CTR Challenges: It’s becoming increasingly common for websites in positions 1–3 to see Click Through Rates that resemble those that are in positions 4–6, as their visibility is squeezed thanks to this feature Shift in Consumer Behaviour: More people are getting their answers straight from the search results page, thanks to zero-click searches. This means fewer clicks to individual websites, which can affect traffic and engagement For brands, it’s a clear sign to adapt to this new 'normal. ' The goal isn’t just to rank but to make sure your content stays relevant and stands out in an increasingly competitive search results landscape. Actionable Insights for Brands To thrive in this search landscape, businesses should combine traditional SEO strategies and those tailored to AI-driven search. 1. Maintain SEO Fundamentals Basic SEO practices remain critical. Since 75% of AI citations come from the top 12 positions, this is still the aim. Enhance technical SEO, improve page speed, and use structured data to optimise visibility. 2. Optimise Content for AI Overviews Create content that aligns with intent and adheres to AI algorithms. Tools like cosine similarity analysis can help evaluate how... --- ### 2025 Hospitality Marketing Trends: Going Beyond Traditional Search Engines > Discover the latest hospitality marketing trends to supercharge your digital marketing strategy in 2025. Read our guide today. - Published: 2025-01-06 - Modified: 2025-03-05 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/2025-hospitality-marketing-trends-going-beyond-traditional-search-engines/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, SEO, Travel Stepping into 2025, hospitality marketing is being transformed by technology, changing guest expectations, and a growing emphasis on personalization and sustainability. These trends highlight the importance of adapting to new channels, including platforms beyond traditional search engines, to capture guests' attention in a digital world. Here’s a guide to the top hospitality marketing trends that are reshaping the industry. What is hospitality marketing? Hospitality marketing involves strategies to promote hotels, restaurants, resorts, and other services within the travel sector. This type of marketing aims to enhance brand visibility, attract new guests, and build loyalty by creating meaningful connections through both digital and in-person experiences. Why is marketing important in hospitality? Marketing is essential in hospitality for several reasons: Engaging Diverse Guest Preferences: From leisure travellers to business visitors, effective marketing helps tailor offerings to meet various guest needs. Building Long-Term Relationships: By engaging guests and providing personalised experiences, hospitality brands can foster loyalty and encourage repeat bookings. Driving Growth Through Technology: Innovative marketing uses tools like AI and data analytics to streamline processes, reduce costs, and offer more relevant experiences. 2025 hospitality marketing trends With a shift away from conventional search engines, hospitality marketing is embracing more dynamic, guest-centric channels. Below are the emerging trends and tools brands can leverage to stay ahead. Omnichannel Discoverability Beyond Search EnginesToday’s travellers often bypass traditional search engines, turning instead to social platforms, review sites, and travel apps. For hospitality brands, being present on these channels—where potential guests actively seek travel recommendations—has become crucial. Utilising metasearch engines like Google Hotel Ads or TripAdvisor, along with social platforms like Instagram and TikTok, enhances discoverability and connects hotels with audiences earlier in their planning stages. By strategically placing their brands on these channels, hospitality businesses can capture the attention of travellers researching destinations, accommodations, and experiences across various platforms​. . Personalised Guest Experiences with AI and Data InsightsAI and data analytics allow hotels to anticipate guest preferences and provide customised experiences, from tailored room amenities to personalised dining options. For instance, AI can help hotels create personalised recommendations for guests based on past stays or preferences, providing everything from activity suggestions to curated wellness options. This trend aligns with the growing expectation of “hyper-personalization,” where guests expect tailored services that feel unique to their needs​. . Sustainability and Green PracticesAs travellers become increasingly eco-conscious, hospitality brands are adopting sustainable practices to meet these preferences. From eliminating single-use plastics to sourcing local ingredients, sustainability is not only a way to appeal to guests but also a long-term investment in brand integrity. Hotels embracing green practices—such as energy-efficient lighting and water conservation measures—stand out to environmentally conscious travellers. This emphasis on sustainability can enhance brand image, attract eco-minded guests, and reduce operational costs​. . Health and Wellness ExperiencesThe demand for wellness amenities is growing, as travellers prioritise physical and mental well-being during their stays. Hotels are expanding their wellness offerings beyond spas to include fitness programs, mental health retreats, and rooms with wellness-focused amenities like air purifiers and... --- ### Driving Industry-Leading Success: Found Wins at the UK Search Awards > We’re thrilled to announce that Found has been honoured with the Best Use of Search – B2C for large agencies award at the prestigious UK Search Awards. - Published: 2024-12-17 - Modified: 2024-12-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-wins-at-the-uk-search-awards/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, General News We’re thrilled to announce that Found has been honoured with the Best Use of Search – B2C for large agencies award at the prestigious UK Search Awards. This accolade recognises the transformative multi-channel campaign we delivered for leading UK direct-to-consumer car insurer, 1st Central. Tasked with the bold challenge of revolutionising their customer acquisition strategy, we harnessed the power of our proprietary Everysearch™  framework to drive exceptional results. The UK Search Awards celebrate the very best in search marketing across England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, positioning themselves as the premier recognition for excellence in the industry. To be acknowledged by such a highly regarded organisation is a true honour. A massive congratulations to our talented team whose forward-thinking, innovative, and dedicated approach crafted an industry-leading campaign. Not only did this campaign exceed sales targets and deliver remarkable results, but it also continues to drive success for our valued client. Florence Bundy, COO of Found, said: “We’re hugely proud of this award win. Consistently delivering impactful campaigns that go above and beyond for our clients is what inspires us every day. Our teams work incredibly hard to create innovative, results-driven strategies, and this recognition is a testament to their passion and expertise. A huge well done to everyone involved in this campaign! ” Our trademarked Everysearch™ framework is at the heart of our success. By diving deep into audience behaviour and decoding their journey, we create precise, impactful campaigns that deliver measurable results where they matter most. Discover more about our industry-first proprietary technology here. Read more about our award winning campaign here.   Explore More Award-Winning Campaigns Curious about our approach? Take a closer look at our award-winning campaigns here. --- ### JavaScript SEO Best Practices > Learn how JavaScript impacts SEO and how Google handles JS sites. Explore best practices to optimise your site for improved visibility and performance. - Published: 2024-12-16 - Modified: 2025-02-27 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/javascript-seo-best-practices/ - Categories: How to, SEO JavaScript is an integral part of most websites. Our detailed JavaScript SEO guide will cover the essential elements of JS, including how Google interacts with JavaScript based sites and the best practices for optimising your site for better visibility and performance.   WHAT IS JAVASCRIPT? JavaScript is a programming language - a fundamental tool in modern web development, powering dynamic and interactive website features. Known for its speed, it enhances website performance, making it an essential choice for creating seamless user experiences. Developers value its ease of maintenance, efficient debugging capabilities, and compatibility with other programming languages, making it a versatile option for front-end development. Along with hypertext markup language (HTML) and cascading style sheets (CSS) it’s one of the most widely used programming languages.   JavaScript is powerful and creates websites that users love - dynamic, interactive, and memorable. However, from an SEO standpoint, JavaScript brings a range of complexities. This is where the real challenge begins. HOW DOES JAVASCRIPT AFFECT SEO? User experience and site speed - Too much JavaScript can slow your site down. If your site doesn’t load fast enough, users will bounce straight to your competitors. Bad news for your business, and even worse for your search rankings, where user experience and speed are make-or-break factors.   Internal linking - JavaScript can dynamically generate links, which might seem great for user experience, but search engines often struggle to crawl them. This can compromise your site’s internal linking structure, making key pages harder to find. However, it's possible to use internal links with JavaScript, but they must include the href attribute within an tag. Images - Lazy loading images is a technique to boost performance by only loading images when they’re needed, instead of all at once. It’s great for speeding up page load times, but if done wrong, search engines might miss indexing those images altogether, costing you valuable visibility in image search. Metadata - Some sites rely on JavaScript to load crucial metadata like titles and meta descriptions. The problem? If it doesn’t render properly, search engines might miss it entirely leaving your page poorly represented in the SERPs. Content accessibility - Content accessibility is key for both users and search engines. To make sure your content is clear and indexable, it needs to load properly, have a crawlable URL, and follow the same SEO best practices you’d apply to HTML sites. Make sure your URLs are unique, descriptive and easy for search engines to understand. Rendering - JavaScript can have a big impact on how a webpage loads and renders. If critical content isn’t included in the initial HTML, it might stay unindexed for some time. Render-blocking JavaScript can also slow down your page’s load time, holding back its full performance potential. Google advises removing or deferring any JavaScript that delays the loading of above-the-fold content to ensure a faster, smoother user experience and better indexing. HOW DOES GOOGLE CRAWL AND INDEX JAVASCRIPT? Google processes JavaScript websites in three main phases: Crawling Rendering... --- ### Reputation Management: How to Manage Your Business Reputation Online > Explore strategies for managing your business reputation online to enhance trust & increase visibility. Read our comprehensive guide to Reputation Management. - Published: 2024-12-12 - Modified: 2024-12-12 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/reputation-management-how-to-manage-your-business-reputation-online/ - Categories: Digital PR, SEO Managing your brand's online reputation is a big task and not one to be underestimated. Your online reputation can make or break your business. As our digital world continues to expand, channels increase, audiences grow, and consumers are more empowered to share their views online than ever before, the job of online reputation management can be daunting. But when done well, it can have a massive impact on your business. Building and implementing a brand reputation strategy is essential in today’s digital world to ensure your business is proactive and reactive in protecting your brand's image. In this article, we’ll discuss what online reputation management is, its benefits, and some practical advice and tactics you can incorporate into your business to ensure you cover the main areas—including SEO and social media reputation management. What is reputation management? Reputation management is the process of managing the public's perception of your brand. Managing your reputation has become increasingly complex as the channels through which consumers view and talk about your brand grow, and discussing brands online has become much more the norm. There are several key channels you can utilise across marketing to manage your brand's reputation, including Social Media, Digital PR and SEO. Your reputation has a huge impact on your business success. A positive reputation builds brand loyalty, promotes word of mouth, recommendations, and ultimately drives engagement with your brand. It’s essential that you manage the elements you can control to minimise negativity and reduce the impact it can have on your brand. Why is reputation management important for a business? Trust is at the heart of every purchasing decision, and your brand’s reputation is a key driver of that trust. Here’s why managing your reputation is crucial: Increasing brand visibilityPositive buzz online can amplify your brand’s presence, whether it’s social media content that goes viral or positive PR and media coverage in targeted outlets to reach your audience—it all builds up your brand awareness. Building trustMore important than ever before, consumers rely heavily on reviews, with 76% regularly reading them before making decisions. Positive reviews boost trust, as online feedback is often as influential as personal recommendations. Managing your reputation ensures your brand is seen as trustworthy and credible. Understanding your customersMonitoring conversations around your brand helps you understand what customers like and dislike. This feedback provides you with valuable insights, helping you address pain points, refine your products or services, and tailor your marketing channels and message more effectively to meet their needs. Dispelling misinformation or negative reviewsWe don’t need to tell you that misinformation spreads quickly online, but tools like AI can help you track and respond to false claims in real time. Prompt responses can prevent small issues from escalating into major problems. Increasing overall revenueA strong reputation allows you to command better and more competitive pricing, as customers prioritise service and quality over cost. By maintaining a stellar reputation, you can drive revenue growth through customer trust. Positioning you as thought leadersYour reputation is also... --- ### How to Craft Effective SEO Meta Descriptions for Your Ecommerce Website > Learn to craft effective SEO meta descriptions for your ecommerce site. Boost click-through rates with our expert tips and strategies. - Published: 2024-12-03 - Modified: 2025-02-27 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/meta-descriptions-for-ecommerce/ - Categories: Ecommerce, SEO Are meta descriptions still important for SEO in 2025? Yes.   In today’s crowded digital landscape, standing out is everything. Sure, ranking high on Google is crucial for ecommerce businesses of all sizes, but here’s the catch - if no one’s clicking through to your site, what’s the point? Meta descriptions are essential for driving traffic to your online store. They might not directly boost your rankings, but they help search engines understand your page and, more importantly, secure the clicks that matter. Want stronger CTRs for your ecommerce website? This guide will show you how. WHAT IS A META DESCRIPTION? Meta descriptions are the summaries that appear on search engine results pages (SERPs), giving users a snapshot of your content and helping them decide if it’s what they’re looking for. As the first thing users see, getting them right is essential. The most effective meta descriptions are clear, compelling, and highlight the key benefits of your products. Meta description example: HOW TO WRITE META DESCRIPTIONS FOR ECOMMERCE? 1. Use your target keyword. Keywords in the meta description that match a user’s query will appear bolded on the search results page. Google highlights these keywords to help users scan the page quickly, so it’s important to get them right. For those browsing visually, this makes your result stand out. Additionally, use related synonyms to attract a broader audience. Most importantly, keep it sounding natural, focused on the customer and their needs. At Found, we use our proprietary technology, Luminr, to gain unrivalled insights into search performance, including the keywords customers use. This enables us to quickly analyse competitors’ strategies for attracting visitors across the entire searchable web and identify key opportunities to improve keyword targeting and click-through rates. 2. Make your meta descriptions unique.   Each meta description should be unique to its page. While templated descriptions may save time, they can significantly hurt your click-through rate. Each meta description needs to be tailored, offering a clear snapshot of the specific product or category. Even if your products appear very similar - such as “black mini dresses” - highlight unique features like fit, design, material, occasion, or price to differentiate them. 3. Keep it at length. Google is particular about meta description length. Ideally, your meta description length needs to be between 130-160 characters. If it's too long, it will be cut off. If it’s too short, Google may disregard it and select text from the page instead. To make the most of your meta description, place the most important information at the beginning, such as action-driven phrases or key details about your product or brand.   4. Brand tone and competing messaging. Your meta description should reflect your brand’s personality and answer the 'Why us? ' question, even in under 160 characters. Like all good copywriting, it’s an opportunity to deliver a compelling message and convince potential customers to click on your website instead of a competitor’s. 5. Add unique selling points (USPs), discounts, offers, urgency and scarcity. Some... --- ### Navigating Privacy Changes: PPC strategies in a Cookieless world > Google’s much anticipated ‘Cookieless Future’ is finally upon us. Here is what you need to know about it all. - Published: 2024-11-19 - Modified: 2024-11-22 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/navigating-privacy-changes-ppc-strategies-in-a-cookieless-world/ - Categories: Data, Digital Marketing, Paid Search (PPC) Google’s much anticipated ‘Cookieless Future’ is finally upon us. This titanic change has been talked about for nearly 4 years and has seen multiple deadline extensions during this period. Here is what you need to know about it all. What's actually happening and who does it impact? In response to an ever increasing demand from consumers to protect online privacy (and pressure from regulators) Google announced that 3rd Party Cookies will be phased out of their Chrome browser. This was a massive blow to the ad space as although the importance of privacy is undeniable, the reality is that the digital ad ecosystem has relied on 3rd Party Cookies for everything from tracking through to targeting and as a result their removal genuinely jeopardises the running and measurement status quo. What are 3rd party cookies, how are they collected, and who uses them? A 3rd Party Cookie is a Cookie that is placed on a user’s device by a domain that is not the domain of the site that user is visiting. The purpose of this is to collect data for the 3rd Party, which typically then either gets directly used by that 3rd Party or sold on to an AdTech company (or both) for them to use.   Advertisers and Social Media platforms have historically relied heavily on this data to inform targeting strategies as it gives them the ability to tailor ads (or offer tailored targeting) to the personal data provided and this has unsurprisingly proved to be highly effective when it comes to digital campaigns. With the industry being so heavily reliant on 3PC then this change represented a massive risk to the performance of existing campaigns. As a result, the entire industry has had to pivot in order to find new ways to achieve the same outcomes without infringing on new privacy regulations. The importance of first party data The number one solution to this problem is for advertisers to try and maximise the quantity and quality of their owned data. This 1st Party Data will become the foundation of all customer centric targeting moving forwards so it needs to be as good and plentiful as it can possibly be. 1st Party Data can be collected from website, apps, social media platforms, advertising analytics and any other properties that are owned by the advertiser. The importance of this data cannot be understated and as a result we recommend making a conscious effort (and investment... ) to build out these lists. How to get hold of first party data Nearly all of the major ad platforms offer campaign types that allow you to prioritise building out your CRM and although some industries will already be very familiar with these (e. g. B2B), for others it will have never been a priority. Lead Gen campaigns are perfect for driving these sign ups directly. LinkedIn may have built its reputation on these campaign types, but the rise in popularity across Facebook and Google shows how the mentality of the... --- ### Blue Sky: Exploring New Horizons in Social Media Platforms > Jamie Klingler explores new social media platform Blue Sky and shares her thoughts on this new horizon in social media. - Published: 2024-11-19 - Modified: 2025-02-27 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/exploring-new-horizons-in-social-media-platforms/ - Categories: Culture, Digital Marketing, Social Media As the political and social media landscapes continue to evolve, we find ourselves reflecting on a time when we could rely on certain platforms to stay informed and perform our roles effectively. Whether it was through a carefully curated RSS feed or an active presence in a specialized tech listserv, many of us built our professional knowledge and networks based on the information we consumed daily. For the past 16 years, Twitter has been a central hub for news, entertainment, and professional networking. However, with recent changes to the platform—especially following its acquisition by Elon Musk and subsequent transformation into X—the reliability and functionality that once made Twitter indispensable has been significantly altered. As familiar features such as verification and the block function were removed, and as X began to shift its focus, the search for a viable replacement platform became more urgent. Alternatives like Spoutible, Mastodon, Threads, and Blue Sky were explored, but none seemed to fully replicate the utility and engagement of the old Twitter—until recently. After giving Blue Sky another try over the past weekend, I can confidently say that the platform has emerged as a strong contender, particularly for those of us in communications, political circles, and industry-focused discussions. With major outlets like The Guardian pulling back from X, and users increasingly leaving the platform, Blue Sky has gained momentum, particularly in the UK, where it is now seeing higher engagement than both X and Threads. For those of us who are accustomed to a more curated and manageable feed, Blue Sky offers a refreshing sense of control and organization. Key Takeaways from My Experience on Blue Sky: No Link Suppression – Unlike many platforms, Blue Sky allows links to be shared without restriction, making it an ideal space for distributing content from your Substack, company updates, and other valuable resources. No Algorithmic Curation – Blue Sky offers a chronological feed based on the people you follow, ensuring that the content you see is directly aligned with your network and interests. Chronological Feed – Content appears in real-time, allowing for a transparent and unfiltered flow of information. Unlinked Quoted Posts – Blue Sky allows users to quote posts without automatically linking back to the original post, providing more flexibility in content sharing. Mass Block Functionality – Users can block accounts based on keywords or terms found in their usernames or descriptions, enhancing your ability to maintain a focused network. Ad-Free Experience – Currently, Blue Sky operates without ads and remains free to use, with a team of only 20 employees managing the platform. No Edit Button – Blue Sky maintains a commitment to unedited, real-time content—there is no option to edit posts once shared. Video Support – Videos of up to 59 seconds are supported, enabling users to share brief multimedia content. Starter Packs – These are akin to Twitter lists and are created by individuals to help users follow a curated group of accounts. You can bulk-follow a collection of accounts based on your professional or personal interests. For those who have yet to fully transition... --- ### Everything is Influenced > Stevie Johnson, MD of Disrupt (Found’s sister company), delves into the ever evolving landscape of influencer marketing at Web Summit.  - Published: 2024-11-15 - Modified: 2024-12-05 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/everything-is-influenced/ - Categories: Ecommerce, Influencer Marketing, Travel In a world where “Everything is Influenced” is your brand capitalising on the creator economy?   Stevie Johnson, MD of Disrupt (Found’s sister company), delves into the ever evolving landscape of influencer marketing at Web Summit.   In an age where authenticity, community, and cultural relevance drive consumer behaviour, Stevie showcased how the creator economy has become the backbone of digital marketing. His keynote emphasised the vital need for brands to adopt a creator-first approach to reach today’s savvy, ad-resistant audiences. As Stevie shared, “If your brand isn’t in the creator economy, it’s not just missing out on conversation—it’s being written out of history. ” The shift from Influence to Authenticity In reflecting on how we got here, Stevie brought attention to the evolution from traditional influencer marketing to what it is today. He called out early influencer content—self-described as “dreadful,” having had first-hand experience in delivering branded messaging simply pasted onto his social channels, “There was no creative in the creator economy,”. Back then, influencer marketing was merely transactional, prioritising brand reach over genuine customer connection and authenticity. Today, things look vastly different. Brands that truly want to connect must rely on creators as creative directors rather than simple messengers. This shift isn’t just refreshing; it’s effective. In fact, recent data shows that creator-led content can perform 5x better than traditional branded assets across various digital channels. As Stevie explained, “Creators craft content that speaks louder than any ad—authenticity drives results. ” Where does your brand fall on the spectrum of investment in influencer marketing?   Have you dabbled but not found the sweet spot.   Is it a secondary budget that a head of marketing uses at their discretion?   More than ever, Influencer Marketing needs to be a key pillar if your intention is to grow community and sales.   That’s where the dynamic duo of Found and Disrupt come into play to supercharge your brand’s reach and impact. In today’s digital age, “belonging” has transcended its traditional definition. For younger audiences, it’s not just about finding an affinity with a brand—it’s about connecting deeply with communities that resonate with them. Gen-Z audiences often lack loyalty to brands themselves; their loyalty lies with creators. These creators, as Stevie put it, “aren’t just the next evolution of media; they’re the gatekeepers to culture and community. ” This is crucial for brands to recognise if they want to make a meaningful impact. By embedding themselves authentically into these communities and fostering trust, brands can create loyal relationships within creator-driven spaces. Disrupt builds these community transformative connections. They leverage sentiment analysis tools and social listening to go beyond surface metrics and delve into genuine audience responses. This approach has helped shift brands’ reputations, transforming their influencer strategies into a genuine bridge with their target audience. Navigating the “Messy Middle” of the consumer journey Unlike the linear buying paths of the past, today’s journey is an ever-evolving cycle where consumers move fluidly between discovery, consideration, review, and purchase. In Stevie’s words,... --- ### Black Friday 2024 in the UK: Trends and Tips for Businesses > Here are key insights into what UK businesses can expect this Black Friday and how they can capitalise on emerging trends. - Published: 2024-11-14 - Modified: 2024-12-03 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/black-friday-2024-in-the-uk-trends-and-tips-for-businesses/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, Ecommerce As Black Friday 2024 approaches, businesses in the UK are gearing up for one of the year's most competitive shopping events. With changing consumer expectations, mobile-first trends, and an extended holiday shopping period, marketers will need to adapt their strategies to maximise reach and conversion. Here are key insights into what UK businesses can expect this Black Friday and how they can capitalise on emerging trends. 1. The Extended Shopping Period Black Friday has evolved beyond a one-day event into an extended sales period. With many UK retailers already adopting longer sale durations in 2023, expect 2024 to follow suit, with some campaigns potentially beginning as early as late October. This shift allows brands to spread out demand, attract different shopper segments, and reduce the logistical pressure of a single shopping day. By launching promotions earlier, businesses can capture early-bird shoppers who prioritise convenience and seek to avoid holiday season crowds. However, with extended campaigns comes the challenge of maintaining consumer interest over time. Retailers can avoid “deal fatigue” by spacing out promotions and creating “limited-time offers” throughout November. This approach keeps the excitement alive and helps retailers maintain momentum up to the actual Black Friday weekend. 2. Making Mobile Shopping a Priority Mobile shopping continues to grow, with over 50% of Black Friday purchases in 2023 happening on smartphones. For Black Friday 2024, businesses should anticipate an even greater shift towards mobile-first shopping. To succeed, they need to ensure that their websites are fully optimised for mobile with fast load times, smooth navigation, and secure payment options. Creating mobile-first landing pages and personalised mobile ads will further enhance the shopping experience and drive higher engagement. Shoppers expect an easy, intuitive mobile experience, so consider implementing features like app-only discounts, push notifications, and mobile-responsive ad designs. This focus will allow brands to reach on-the-go shoppers and meet rising mobile shopping demands effectively. 3. The Top Product Categories In 2024, electronics, clothing, and toys are predicted to lead Black Friday sales once again, with health and beauty products also expected to gain traction. For example, 2023 saw high demand for electronics, particularly TVs and home gadgets, as well as significant interest in clothing, where 82% of shoppers preferred trying items in-store to examine fit and color. Retailers should leverage these trends by highlighting popular products in their ads and offering exclusive discounts or bundles to attract price-sensitive shoppers. Moreover, as consumer priorities shift, brands may want to include wellness products and eco-friendly items in their Black Friday deals to align with growing consumer awareness of health and sustainability. 4. Optimising Omnichannel Experience and Personalisation While digital sales dominate Black Friday, a seamless blend of online and offline channels is critical to the modern shopping experience. Many consumers start their research online but prefer to shop in-store for items like clothing and beauty products. By aligning in-store and digital experiences, businesses can accommodate the “research online, buy offline” trend that continues to grow in popularity. A successful omnichannel strategy for Black Friday... --- ### Optimising Google Shopping Ads for Black Friday > This guide outlines effective strategies to ensure your Google Shopping Ads campaigns are prepared to capture the surge in online shopping activity across the Black Friday season. - Published: 2024-11-11 - Modified: 2024-12-03 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/optimising-google-shopping-ads-for-black-friday/ - Categories: Ecommerce, How to, Paid Search (PPC) Black Friday is one of the biggest sales events of the year and is now much more than a single day or weekend with many businesses now running sales throughout November. It’s also one of the most competitive periods of the year on Google Ads with so many advertisers vying for a consumer’s attention and Google Shopping ads are key to getting your products in front of potential customers. This guide outlines effective strategies to ensure your campaigns are prepared to capture the surge in online shopping activity during this peak season. Understanding Google Shopping Google Shopping ads are now run through Performance Max campaigns and they allow businesses to showcase products at the top of Google search results as well as dynamically targeting people across other Google platforms and the Google Display Network. To optimise these campaigns for Black Friday, it's crucial to ensure you are providing Google with accurate product data, clear images of your products and competitive pricing. Managing Google Shopping Costs During Black Friday   Google Shopping ads work on a cost-per-click (CPC) model, where advertisers pay each time someone clicks on their ad. During Black Friday, competition intensifies, often leading to higher average CPCs. However, the increased demand and CVR is also significant and often justifies the increased investment during this time. Budgeting effectively and monitoring bid strategy performance closely can help manage costs while maximising visibility and sales during this key period. How to Optimise Your Google Shopping Campaigns for Black Friday   1. Ensure Product Feed Data is Accurate The product feed is the backbone of your Google Shopping campaign. Ensure core product attributes (e. g. price, title, description, availability, delivery details) are accurate and up-to-date. Errors or mismatches between the feed and site can cause disapprovals, preventing your products from showing ads. Clear, high-quality images are vital and can increase click-through rates and traffic to your products. Populate any missing or incorrect GTINs and ensure the Google Product Category is using the most relevant value possible to allow Google to better classify your products. Regular checks on your product feed are essential, especially during the high-volume Black Friday period, to ensure all products are displaying the correct information and compliant with Google’s policies. 2. Enhance Product Data Attributes To maximise exposure of your products across Google shopping, additional details can be added to the feed attributes to enhance the targeting and improve Google’s understanding of each product. There are a number of different ways to enhance the feed data, including: Populating additional product attributes in the feed data - This can include attributes such as colour, material, product highlights, product details & more. The more information you provide Google about each product the better. Including relevant keywords in the feed data - This is most commonly added into either the title, product type or product description and helps Google to better match your products to relevant search queries.   Use custom labels to label key products & create campaign segments - This can be... --- ### The Benefits of Partnering with a PPC Agency > Looking to accelerate your paid search performance? Learn about the benefits of working with a reputable PPC agency. Read our guide. - Published: 2024-11-05 - Modified: 2024-11-05 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-benefits-of-partnering-with-a-ppc-agency/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) Struggling to maximise your online advertising results? A PPC (Pay-Per-Click) agency can be a game-changer, helping businesses enhance their paid search strategies and achieve superior ROI. This article delves into how partnering with PPC experts can optimise your campaigns and boost your digital marketing performance. What does a PPC agency do? A PPC agency manages all aspects of paid search advertising, including keyword research, ad creation, campaign builds, bid strategy management, and campaign analysis. They craft strategies tailored to your business goals, ensuring your ads reach the right audience at the right time. By monitoring campaign performance, they make alt="" /> What do agencies charge for PPC? PPC agency pricing can vary widely. Some agencies charge a flat monthly retainer or a percentage of your ad spend, while others might bill per project or campaign. Costs are influenced by factors such as campaign complexity, the level of service required, and the scope of work. For example, smaller businesses might find basic management services on a low fee threshold, while enterprises requiring more advanced strategies and extensive support might invest significantly more. What are the benefits of a PPC agency? 1. Expertise and PrecisionPPC agencies possess a deep understanding of the digital advertising ecosystem, which ensures your campaigns are executed with precision. Their expertise in targeting, bidding, and ad optimisation helps in crafting ads that resonate with your audience and yield better conversion rates. Agencies stay updated with algorithm changes and best practices  and ensure campaigns remain competitive. 2. Time and Resource EfficiencyRunning a successful PPC campaign demands time and continuous management. By outsourcing to an agency, businesses can concentrate on core operations, leaving the complexities of ad management to the specialists. Agencies provide detailed performance reports, allowing businesses to track performance and progress on various initiatives across digital. 3. Access to Cutting-Edge ToolsProfessional PPC agencies use advanced tools for analytics, A/B testing, and competitor benchmarking. These tools provide insights that are critical for refining strategies and improving ad performance. They can play a crucial role in effective campaigns and capitalising on opportunities that drive growth in line with their client’s KPIs. 4. Scalability and AdaptabilityAs your business grows, so do your marketing needs. PPC agencies are well-equipped to scale your campaigns and adapt strategies to new market trends or business objectives. This scalability ensures that your digital advertising efforts align with your evolving business goals. 5. Cost Management and ROI MaximizationEffective PPC management also involves spending wisely. Agencies can optimise your budget allocation, reducing wastage and improving ROI. By continuously analysing performance data, they fine-tune your campaigns to get the best possible results from every pound spent. Partnering with a PPC agency offers significant advantages, including expert management, time savings, and better resource utilisation. By leveraging professional expertise, businesses can enhance their digital presence, achieve higher ROI, and stay ahead in a competitive market. Ready to elevate your paid search strategy? Collaborate with a trusted PPC agency (like Found. ) today. --- ### Found. & Edyn: Global Partnership > Leading digital marketing agency, Found, The Everysearch™ Agency, has been appointed by hospitality powerhouse Edyn, to spearhead its digital organic presence. - Published: 2024-10-31 - Modified: 2024-12-10 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-x-edyn-global-partnership/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, General News, Travel We are delighted to share that we've been appointed by hospitality powerhouse Edyn, to spearhead its digital organic presence. Specialising in the travel and hospitality sector, we will focus our efforts on Edyn’s design-led aparthotel brand, Locke, to drive incremental growth across a range of digital channels for the brand. Edyn, known for its future-facing, hybrid approach to hospitality, is continuing to expand its portfolio of Locke Aparthotels in vibrant European cities, most recently opening Locke de Santa Joana in Lisbon this summer, with Paris on the horizon for early 2025. The new partnership, worth six-figures, will see us deliver bespoke SEO and PR strategies to enhance Locke’s visibility, boost opportunities and brand performance in the highly competitive travel industry on a UK and global scale. "Bringing Edyn into our portfolio of leading hospitality clients is an exciting opportunity for our team. Our approach of combining creativity with deep data insights to build truly impactful, personalised campaigns sets us apart, all underpinned by our team's extensive industry knowledge and experience. We are eager to unlock the full potential of Edyn and contribute to their rapid growth in such a dynamic market. " Florence Bundy, COO of Found "This is an important period for Edyn as we continue to grow our Locke brand presence. Found’s expertise and innovative approach are exactly what we need to build our audience and maintain our competitive edge. Their deep understanding of our market and audience gives us full confidence in their ability to drive impactful results. " Hinson Li, Head of Digital Acquisition at Edyn About Edyn Edyn, recognised for its future-facing, hybrid approach to hospitality that enriches neighbourhoods while meeting the needs of today’s traveller, combining the design and lifestyle sensibilities of boutique hotels with the freedom and flexibility of serviced apartments in a trailblazing ‘aparthotel’ concept. Locke aparthotels are design-led lifestyle accommodations in vibrant city locations. Locke isn’t like other hotels because it isn’t a hotel. More space than a hotel. More style than a serviced apartment. Where you can eat, sleep and unwind in your own, beautifully designed space. With all the stuff you actually need to continue your everyday, even when you’re away from home. Made to be lived in, not just slept in. Locke is a place you can connect with yourself, and the community. Beautiful but comfortable. Subtle but assertive. Hip but inclusive. Your new way to stay. --- ### 6 Steps to a Successful PPC Brand Bidding Strategy > Learn how to implement effective strategies and techniques to help you successfully optimise PPC brand bidding campaigns. Read our guide. - Published: 2024-10-29 - Modified: 2025-03-05 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/6-steps-to-a-successful-ppc-brand-bidding-strategy/ - Categories: How to, Paid Search (PPC) When it comes to Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns, brand bidding is a vital strategy for many companies. Brand bidding protects your brand identity and captures traffic from those actively searching for your business. With the right approach, this technique can drive high returns and prevent competitors from leveraging your brand name. So, let’s explore the steps necessary for an effective PPC brand bidding strategy to ensure you get the best results. What is PPC brand bidding?   PPC brand bidding refers to targeting keywords associated with your brand name and related variations. This can include misspelt brand terms, brand + product keywords, and brand + service keywords. By bidding on these keywords, your ads occupy prime real estate on the search results page, directing high-intent traffic to your site and maintaining your brand’s visibility. What are the benefits of brand bidding? One of the primary benefits of brand bidding is that it ensures you’re capturing users who are directly searching for your brand. This tactic can effectively protect your brand against competitors who might otherwise capture that traffic. Especially in industries where competition is high (like eCommerce or hospitality) competitors often bid on each other’s brand terms to increase visibility. Additionally, brand bidding reinforces brand authority and control over messaging. Unlike organic search results, which pulls in content from multiple  sources, PPC brand bidding allows you to highlight key selling points and position your brand in the best light. What are the disadvantages of brand bidding? While brand bidding has many advantages, there are some potential downsides. One common concern is that it may cannibalise organic traffic, as users who would have clicked on an organic result may instead click on a paid ad, incurring a cost. Testing can help determine if cannibalisation is a significant issue in a particular campaign. Additionally, if competitors aren’t bidding on your brand terms, the investment in brand bidding might be better allocated to other parts of the PPC funnel. 6 effective brand bidding strategy tips Now, let’s dive into the six steps to set up a brand bidding strategy that works. 1. Define Brand Bidding Objectives Before diving into brand bidding, clarify what you hope to achieve. Is the goal to increase brand visibility, protect brand integrity, or generate revenue? Understanding these objectives will help shape your strategy and determine how much budget to allocate. For instance, a primary goal of brand protection will require a different approach than a purely revenue-driven strategy. 2. Conduct SERP Analysis A competitive analysis is essential to understand the landscape for your brand keywords. Use tools like SEMRush to check if competitors are bidding on your terms. It’s also helpful to perform manual searches for your brand, as some competitors may not appear in automated tools due to limited visibility. SERP analysis should cover both search and shopping auction insights (for eCommerce). Identifying patterns in competitors’ bidding behaviours, like timing their bids around sales or major campaigns, allows you to adjust your strategy accordingly. 3. Identify the Value... --- ### Pinterest Insights for 2024 > As we prepare for the festive season, Pinterest appears to be a space where a new breed of “High-Action Festive Shoppers” is emerging. - Published: 2024-10-07 - Modified: 2025-02-25 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/pinterest-insights-for-2024/ - Categories: Consumer Behaviour, Digital Marketing, Paid Social, Social Media As we prepare for the festive season, marketers are ramping up their efforts to capture the attention of holiday shoppers. One platform standing out as a hub for consumer inspiration and purchasing decisions is Pinterest, where a new breed of “High-Action Festive Shoppers” is emerging. Here's a bit of a breakdown of the key insights for the 2024 holiday season that should guide your campaign strategy and maximise your return on investment this year. Please Note: Data included in this article has been taken from the Pinterest Festive Season 2024 and Remix of Festive Season Vertical Insights 2024 reports. The Rise of the High-Action Festive Shopper Pinterest users are not your average holiday shoppers. Dubbed "High-Action Festive Shoppers," this audience segment is young, ambitious, and keen to take their celebrations to new heights. Data reveals that 70% of festive season searches on Pinterest are from Gen Z and Millennials, with Gen Z alone making up 42% of Pinterest’s global monthly active users. These shoppers are unique because they aren’t just browsing—they’re personalising their holiday experiences, and they’re ready to spend. Compared to other platforms, Pinterest users spent 63% more during the festive season in 2023. Whether it’s festive tableware or holiday outfits, their baskets are filled with carefully curated items that add the aesthetic wow factor to their celebrations. Personalisation Meets Purchase Power Personalisation is at the heart of holiday shopping on Pinterest. 50% of users look for unique ways to personalise their festive experiences, whether through custom decorations, handmade gifts, or festive attire​. This desire for personalisation doesn’t stop at décor—fashion, beauty, and even tech products see a major surge during the festive period. For fashion enthusiasts, Pinterest is where 76% of users purchased holiday outfits, with top subcategories like party outfits and Christmas attire seeing search spikes of up to 120%​. Similarly, in the beauty category, 63% of Pinterest users shop for festive makeup, hair products, and accessories, while food & drink enthusiasts are pinning recipes at a higher rate, with searches for festive dishes like gingerbread increasing by 165%​. Festive Season Spending Trends The shift in shopping behaviours reveals that Pinterest users start planning early and are more likely to spend across multiple verticals, including fashion, home décor, and even technology. By the time Black Friday hits, Pinterest users are ready to convert, showing 110% higher Black Friday tech purchases compared to non-Pinners. Beyond that, luxury shopping also sees a boost. Gen Z and Millennials are leading the charge in this space, turning to Pinterest as their primary source of festive luxury inspiration. In fact, 3 out of 4 luxury buyers use Pinterest for product discovery, with male users especially likely to gift high-end items. Capitalising on High Action For brands looking to leverage this holiday momentum, Pinterest offers a treasure trove of opportunities. The platform is a strategic powerhouse for holiday campaigns, with users more inclined to save, plan, and purchase. 44% of users added items to their basket after seeing them on Pinterest, highlighting the... --- ### Best SEO Agencies in the UK > Explore the Top 10 SEO agencies with reviews and pricing details. Compare expert services to find the best fit for your business and boost your online presence! - Published: 2024-10-04 - Modified: 2025-03-18 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/best-seo-agencies/ - Categories: SEO Choosing the right SEO agency is a big decision - and rightly so. Your online presence is on the line, so you need an agency that doesn’t just talk the talk but delivers real, measurable results. In the competitive world of SEO, where every agency claims to be the best, finding the right partner to match your goals can be a challenge. Whether you’re an ambitious start-up or a well-established enterprise, you deserve an SEO agency that gets your vision and has the expertise to bring it to life. The answer? Knowing how to spot the agencies that truly stand out from the crowd. To make your search easier, we’ve curated a list of the best SEO agencies in the UK to help you cut through the noise and find your perfect fit. From improving search rankings to driving organic traffic, these agencies are proven experts who don’t just talk a good game - they deliver results you can trust. With our guide in hand, you’ll be ready to kickstart your SEO journey in 2025 and achieve long-term success. TOP 10 SEO AGENCIES 1. FOUND Found is a multi-award-winning SEO agency with offices in London and New York, turning organic search into a powerful, dynamic force across every searchable platform. In a world where SEO has evolved dramatically, getting it right has never been more crucial - no matter the platform. From Google to TikTok, Amazon to Instagram, and even AI-driven search, the way we search is constantly expanding. At the heart of Found’s success is their trademarked Everysearch™ approach - a game-changing method that tackles this seismic shift in search. By redefining how brands navigate the ever-changing organic search landscape, Found empowers businesses to thrive in a fast-paced, competitive world brimming with opportunity. https://www. youtube. com/watch? v=9CriJMcqmQc Found’s strong partnerships with leading companies like Google and Microsoft give them exclusive early access to the latest innovations and insights. This means their clients stay ahead of the curve, with strategies and campaigns that lead the way in an ever-evolving industry. Clients: Puma, Peacocks, Toolstation, ManyPets, DigitalRealty, TrustPayments. Prices*: From $1,000+ minimum project size. Reviews: 4. 8 Google  2. CEEK CEEK is an SEO agency based in London, Brighton and Manchester giving clients the edge they need to cut through the noise in today’s competitive digital landscape. Their passionate search team drives results with a forward-thinking approach, delivering outstanding results for a global client base. SEO is at the heart of everything they do, with deep expertise in Google and other major search engines. Always ahead of the curve, CEEK adapts to the ever-changing world of search algorithms, ensuring consistent results. With a unique blend of in-house digital PR, technical SEO, and content marketing specialists, every campaign is designed not just to boost rankings but to generate real revenue and strengthen your brand’s authority. Clients: Deliciously Ella, Mogu Mogu, Lavazza, The MAINE Ibiza, Disney. Prices: From $1,000+ minimum project size. Reviews: 4. 8 Google  3. Propeller Propeller helps ambitious brands in... --- ### Watch "Navigating audience complexities: A CMO's blueprint for sustainable growth" > We were delighted to attend, and deliver a keynote speech at, the 2024 GDS Summit in Ireland and now have a full recording of our session, “Navigating audience complexities: A CMO's blueprint for sustainable growth” available for you to watch upon request. - Published: 2024-09-23 - Modified: 2024-09-23 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/watch-navigating-audience-complexities-a-cmos-blueprint-for-sustainable-growth/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, General News We were delighted to attend, and deliver a keynote speech at, the 2024 GDS Summit in Ireland and now have a full recording of our session, “Navigating audience complexities: A CMO's blueprint for sustainable growth” available for you to watch upon request. REQUEST ACCESS At this GDS Summit in Dublin, Harry Williams (our agency’s Head of Growth), unveiled a comprehensive blueprint for navigating the complexities of an ever-evolving digital landscape.   Using real-life case studies from our agency, Harry’s keynote explored the transformation of the digital landscape, gave advice to CMOs on how to understand and influence their brand’s audience and their online behaviours, and shared strategies for achieving sustainable and profitable growth in today’s competitive environment. Alongside delivering a keynote presentation, we spent time with CMOs at the summit discussing their current business needs and advising them on the benefits of employing a comprehensive Everysearch™ approach. “It was fascinating to hear about the variety of complex challenges being faced by today's CMOs and to have the opportunity to deliver my keynote on how we're tackling audience challenges at Found. using our Everysearch™ framework. ” - Harry Calvin Williams During his talk Harry actually discusses a few pieces of our work that aren’t available for you to view as case studies here on our website but we’d be happy to discuss all of the work we’ve done with you directly (on request). Why we took part in GDS The two-day summit over in Dublin provided us with plenty of opportunities to: Engage with senior leaders around a curated agenda that focused on tackling business critical challenges and driving the industry forward. Be a part of exclusive shared learning, horizon scanning and actionable insights sessions that enable organisations to deliver transformative strategies. Build meaningful relationships with brands as a solution provider and help businesses accelerate their existing projects and deliver on their objectives. We really enjoyed attending the summit and contributing to the event’s agenda. Now, we’re delighted to make Harry’s keynote presentation available for you all to watch upon request. If you watch the session and have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out and contact us. --- ### 2024 SEO Landscape: Key Google Search Algorithm Updates > A comprehensive guide explaining all the major Google algorithm updates in 2024. Learn about the SEO landscape today. - Published: 2024-09-17 - Modified: 2025-02-25 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/2024-seo-landscape-key-google-search-algorithm-updates/ - Categories: Google Algorithm Updates, SEO The digital landscape is constantly evolving and SEO is no exception to this, making it increasingly important to be proactive with your organic strategy to stay ahead of the curve.   Google owns approximately 91% of the SEO landscape and is constantly releasing new algorithm iterations to provide a better end product to users, alongside creating a more efficient business model.   These algorithm updates can have a significant impact to the search results page and in some cases to the businesses who rely on this as a source of revenue, making it vital for companies to stay up to date with the latest SEO news.   What are Google Algorithm Updates? The creators of Google wanted to make the internet a more accessible place, however this mission wasn’t going to be achieved overnight, it’s thought that Google makes hundreds of updates every year often consisting of more large officially known algorithm updates.   The key purpose of these Google declared core updates is to focus on creating a search results page that will provide the most relevant and valuable information to users. However by doing that, websites often experience fluctuations in their organic rankings and traffic during these algorithm roll outs.   Google’s core algorithm updates aim to improve the overall search experience by: Prioritising high-quality content: by serving users with trustworthy, informative and valuable content. Combating spam: by actively identifying and removing spammy or low-quality websites from search results. Understanding user intent: by understanding the keyword within the user's search query to  provide the most relevant information. What are the latest Google Algorithm Updates in 2024? Staying informed about the latest Google algorithm updates enables you to monitor performance during these volatile periods. Here are five key updates that have shaped the SEO landscape so far in 2024: 1. March 2024 Core & Spam Update:  The release of these two algorithm updates were a turning point for SEO due to a large number of high performing websites being negatively impacted during the 45 day roll out.   This major core update worked in conjunction with the March 2024 Spam Update focusing on tackling low-quality content and spam. And for the first time Google shared how their algorithm updates would no longer rely on a single signal or system to show more helpful search results.   The goal of Google algorithm updates was to remove AI generated spam from being served on the search results page by 45% by using Google's SpamBrain AI-powered spam detection system, as a result of this a greater emphasis was placed on Google’s helpful content system.   2. May 2024 Site Reputation Abuse: Back in March during the core algorithm update and spam update Google amended their spam policies so it’s no surprise an update was released two months after focusing on this.   On the 5th May Google’s Site Reputation Abuse Policy went into play, this was designed to target websites using manipulating tactics which often focused on the quantity of content instead... --- ### EVERYSEARCH™ x TRAVEL: The year of the Friendcation  > With travel having largely recovered from the pandemic challenges, we’re starting to see a key evolution in group audience behaviour. - Published: 2024-09-05 - Modified: 2025-03-05 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/everysearch-x-travel-the-year-of-the-friendcation/ - Categories: Consumer Behaviour, Travel, Trends Destination Inspiration for Friendcations: For when plans finally make it out of the group chat. Couple and family travel occasions are the typical, knee-jerk, go-to activations when brands market for groups in the travel and hospitality landscape. With travel having largely recovered from the grip of the pandemic challenges, we’re starting to see a key evolution in group audience behaviour—one that remains relatively untapped. In the last year, for travellers across all ages, it's more the merrier when it comes to travel companions. It's official, friendcations are on the rise.   Friendcations have gone from a trend among younger audiences to a mainstay occasion among travellers across all generations - whether they are Gen Z or Baby Boomers. Everysearch™: Social media influence isn’t just for the kids It is no surprise that the digitally native Gen Z are more likely than the average traveller to be influenced by social media. They’re by far the most likely generation to have social media ads or posts influence their vacation destination. What’s changed recently, though, is the number of older consumers who are adopting social media. Even though baby boomers are the least likely to leverage these options for travel influences, there’s clearly a growing market here. For those travelling in groups, the three most distinct factors which are important in picking a destination are nightlife, culture and activities. Which means visual, entertainment rich platforms are key to capturing their imagination.   While their favourite platform is Facebook, the number of baby boomer travellers who use Instagram has increased 13% year-on-year. We’ve seen an overall 32% increase in this generation tapping into social media for travel inspiration. By leveraging the right creative and platforms, and by emphasising entertainment alongside ease and accessibility, brands can effectively inspire and attract older generations and their companions in their travel journey. Tailoring your ‘deal’ to the type of group travel your audiences are searching for Those who travel with friends are 31% more likely than the average traveller to use Airbnb. This is because flexibility and personalised experience matters more to the group, as opposed to getting a pre-packaged deal.   Recommendation: Tailor your brand ‘deals’ to the type of group travel your audiences want to take.   Go from being the logistics provider to becoming the destination  Value for money is a key factor for travellers. Being able to prompt this anticipation of value is key throughout the customer journey from inspiration to research and planning across multiple platforms will help your brand gain cut-through.   Recommendation: Expand your venue-based content from aesthetic facility setup to show group experiences that your audience will visualise themselves in. Tap into trends like ‘plans making it out of the group chat’ to show people experiential group journeys that your brand can bring to life for them.   50 is the new 50 - show your audience that you see them as they are Ageist stereotypes are rampant in the marketing world while generations old and older alike are redefining... --- ### What is the AIDA Model? Examples & Uses > What is the AIDA Model? Learn about the AIDA Model and how to use it in marketing to win customers. Read our guide today. - Published: 2024-08-30 - Modified: 2024-09-10 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/what-is-the-aida-model-examples-uses/ - Categories: Digital Marketing The AIDA model is a classic marketing framework that guides potential customers through their buying journey. Developed in 1898 by St. Elmo Lewis, it originally described the process a salesperson must follow to lead a prospect to a successful sale. WHAT IS THE AIDA MODEL? The AIDA model describes a series of steps that customers follow when making purchase decisions. The stages consist of Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action.   This framework typically aligns with the customer or marketing funnel and serves as a blueprint for developing effective marketing strategies that drive conversions and sales. WHAT DOES AIDA STAND FOR?   The AIDA approach, over 125 years old, is perhaps the oldest acronym in marketing. Multiple versions of this framework exist today, all falling under the broad umbrella of "Hierarchy of Effects Models," which aim to understand potential customer behaviour to persuade them to take action on a brand, product, or service.   AIDA stands for Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action. Awareness: People become aware of a brand, product, or service. This awareness typically stems from advertising, which captures attention by creating a buzz. Interest: As people become familiar with the brand and learn more about the product or service's benefits and how it fits their lifestyle, their interest grows. Desire: People develop a connection with the product, thus transitioning from mere interest to a more emotional inclination of wanting or "needing" it. Action: Finally, people decide to interact with the product or service by taking action. This could include signing up for a trial, subscribing to an email, making a booking or completing a purchase.   HOW TO APPLY AIDA TO DIGITAL MARKETING Digital advertisers and marketers often find it challenging to focus on the strategic big picture when most of their time is spent navigating through an abundance of intricate and overwhelming details. However, having a view of the broader perspective is crucial, especially because digital marketing today demands alignment between strategy, creative, and performance to achieve impact. The AIDA model provides a structured approach to help marketers guide potential customers through the buying journey. Awareness The first step in the AIDA model is to raise awareness and capture the attention of potential customers. This involves making them aware of your brand, product, or service through content forms with mass reach, such as advertisements, videos, podcasts, and social media. However, with people exposed to thousands of ads daily, being able to cut through the noise is essential. The goal is to be disruptive enough to capture attention without being annoying. Thumb-stopping content, especially when unexpected, can be particularly effective in paid media campaigns. On the SEO front, brands should focus on informational content at this stage. This is because someone getting to know your brand at the awareness stage will want to read something vastly different from someone who is ready to purchase or comparing products. Creating content hubs or "content clusters" can help structure content for various stages of the funnel. For example, if your target audience... --- ### THE FUTURE OF PPC: KEY TRENDS TO WATCH OUT FOR IN THE REMAINDER OF 2024 > 2024's PPC landscape has been thrilling with AI and machine learning leading the charge. As H1 ends, here are our insights on what to expect for the rest of the year in Search. - Published: 2024-08-01 - Modified: 2024-07-31 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-future-of-ppc/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) 2024 has been a very exciting year already in the world of PPC with AI and machine learning advancements at the forefront of everything. ACTIVATION SGE, ‘AI Overviews’ & Incorporating Ads The AI Overviews (formerly SGE ‘Search Generative Experience’) has brought a huge amount of excitement. Using AI to deliver an immersive searching experience is one of the biggest developments we have ever seen and could genuinely change the way that people use Search Engines. However, amongst all of this eager anticipation is the lingering uncertainty over exactly where ads will fit in and a nagging fear that Google Ads accounts across the world could have their results turned upside down. Fortunately, our belief is that this won’t be the case. Primarily because it isn’t in Google’s interest to harm their biggest income source(! ), but also because Ads can, should and will be at the heart of this new and improved search experience. The setup may have to be different in order to accommodate the entirely new way of searching, but the reality is that if your ad is relevant then it will be front and centre. The aim is always to try and help people to take action faster and easier and with the extra context provided then customers will be qualified more effectively and the path to purchase ultimately reduced. Visual Search Entering The Game ‘Immersive’ is a key concept of everything coming out of Google at the moment. Inspiration can come from anywhere and the belief is that the more seamless the integration of your phone to the engine the more seamless your purchase journey will be. Enter visual search. Utilising AI from image searches is not brand new (as anyone who uses Pinterest regularly will know), however joining the dots between something you see in the real world and want to buy has always been a little clunky.   The introduction of Google Lens (and others) has made the visual searching process both easier and more tailored to the individual and the incorporation of shopping ads into visual search is set to change the ad game as a result. See it, photograph it, buy it. This can only be a good thing for online retailers. Interactive AI Ad Experiences Say goodbye to the days of hundreds of ads being built out just to highlight sales.   “What performs better X% off or save £Y? ” - Real answer: It depends. Static experiences are fine tuned to the mass average, but tailored to no individual and this means that (through no fault of your own) you are leaving sales on the table.   AI powered recommendations will give new depth to ads and provide a personal experience that is tailored to the individual rather than the masses. Yes, some people will still only be interested in offers and there will be no loss there, but for everyone else wondering how the product works, what its features are, where it can be used or why it is the right choice will now have their answers. These tailored recommendations will connect with customers throughout their purchase journey and deliver increases in volume... --- ### VIDEO ADS IN PPC: BEST PRACTICES FOR 2024 > Video ad investment is growing rapidly, outpacing overall digital advertising growth. Here we explore how this shift has come about. - Published: 2024-07-30 - Modified: 2024-07-23 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/video-ads-in-ppc-best-practices-for-2024/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, Paid Social Video ad investment is growing rapidly, outpacing overall digital advertising growth. Here we explore how this shift has come about. You may or may not have noticed, but there has been a seismic shift in video ad investment over the last year. Digital continues to grow, but reports suggest that video ad investment is rising at a rate that is nearly double that of overall digital advertising investment. This is particularly interesting as for many Google Ads purists then video campaigns have often been viewed as an afterthought. The challenges around attributing value have always been a huge hindrance and having the video campaigns sat next to the hyper efficient and super trackable Search and Pmax campaigns only made matters worse. So why the change? How has video gone from being the black sheep in a ‘performance’ focused platform to such a hotbed for extra investment? Well, in our opinion, the answer is in the timing.   Over the last year tracking across the board has been thrown up in the air. The promised but now abandoned loss of 3rd Party Cookies, greater focus on personal data privacy and the introduction of GA4 have all completely transformed how we attribute performance. Modelled results and utilising AI to fill the gaps has become an accepted norm and the byproduct of this is a lot of change in how the ‘success’ of campaigns is perceived. A lot of the typical ‘high performers’ have taken a hit (unlike Video), which has undoubtedly helped, but more significantly it has generated a greater level of uncertainty in measurement overall that has paved the way for increased willingness to embrace the imperfect measurement that video has always offered. Secondly, the rise in TikTok has forced businesses to embrace video. The need to not be left behind has pushed advertisers to invest in video assets which has not only normalised video, but it has also enabled an improvement in potential returns-per-video investment - something that has been a stumbling block for clients for many years. So, with all of this in mind, let’s dive into how you can make the most out of video for the remainder of 2024. DELIVERING EFFECTIVE VIDEO ADS  Creative First: Truly Commit To The Video Asset This should perhaps go without saying, but for video to thrive then the video itself needs to be as strong as possible. As anyone who has experienced the ‘joy’ of having auto-generated Pmax videos knows, not all video is good video... so it’s worth pushing it to be the best that you can create. Typically, In this arena, you have four options:  Glossy, big brand style videos Rough and ready low-fi video User Generated Content (UGC) AI generated video Considering the glossy, high end videos normally come with big brand costs then this may be prohibitive, but low-fi and UGC are not only realistic options, but have also proven to be incredibly effective. UGC in particular typically generates the highest level of engagement across all digital platforms (which is an added benefit from a versatility perspective) and doesn’t need to break the bank. Finally, AI generated... --- ### AI in Marketing: How Found Utilises AI to Transform Digital Marketing Campaigns > Want to use AI in your marketing? Learn about AI and how Found utilises it to transform digital marketing campaigns. - Published: 2024-07-24 - Modified: 2024-07-23 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/ai-in-marketing-how-found-utilises-ai-to-transform-digital-marketing-campaigns/ - Categories: AI & Machine Learning, Digital Marketing What is AI marketing? AI marketing is the use of artificial intelligence technologies like machine learning, natural language processing, and data analytics to enhance, accelerate and scale marketing activity. When deployed effectively, it can enable marketers to gain deeper customer insights, personalise content, predict customer behaviour, and deliver targeted messaging at scale across channels, to name just a few of the benefits. The premise of AI marketing is that by adopting and integrating AI into marketing activities effectively, marketers can improve campaign performance, customer engagement, and marketing ROI while at the same time reducing their costs. How can AI be used in marketing? The central uses of AI in marketing at present are: Personalisation - Tailoring content, product recommendations, and experiences to individual customers based on their data and behaviour. Predictive analytics - Analysing data to forecast customer actions, market trends, and campaign outcomes. Content creation - Generating and optimising marketing copy, images, and videos. Chatbots and virtual assistants - Providing instant, personalised customer service and support. Ad targeting - Delivering ads to the right audience at the right time to maximise relevance and conversions. Social listening - Monitoring online conversations to understand customer sentiment, interests, and needs. Marketing automation - Streamlining and scaling repetitive tasks like email campaigns, social media posting, and lead nurturing. When applied effectively, AI can enable more efficient, insightful, and impactful marketing across the customer journey. What are the advantages and disadvantages of using AI for marketing? Advantages of using AI in marketing: Enhancement of marketing tasks - AI enables new capabilities previously unavailable or prohibitively expensive. For instance, LLMs can accurately analyse social media text at scale, avoiding the choice between limited accuracy of older AI or high costs of human labour. Acceleration and scaling - AI allows skilled marketers to produce more high-quality work in less time. This could mean creating well-researched content briefs quickly, freeing up time for more authentic writing or producing additional high-quality briefs. Integration - AI for digital marketing can be seamlessly incorporated into client work through technically proficient team members using technologies like Python and Google Cloud infrastructure. These advantages lead to increased ROI on marketing campaigns and more impactful data insights. Disadvantages of using AI in marketing: Reliance on high-quality data - AI solutions follow the GIGO principle (garbage in, garbage out). Results are only as good as the foundational data, necessitating effort to ensure data accuracy and quality. Human expertise required - Controlling AI outputs has a learning curve. LLMs can appear more intelligent than they are, potentially leading to poor outcomes if users lack experience. They're best conceptualised as cognitive tools requiring experience and expertise to handle correctly for desired marketing outcomes. At Found, our marketing professionals are seasoned in effective use of the latest AI marketing advancements, ensuring you're in safe and experienced hands. Some examples of how we utilise AI to transform digital marketing campaigns: 1. Next-level search intelligence insights with Luminr At Found, our flagship AI innovation partnership is with Luminr, a... --- ### The Impact of Social Media on PPC: Trends & Tactics > The biggest change in search behaviour over the last few years hasn't been happening on ‘Search’ at all. Instead, the masses have been turning to Social platforms to perform searches. - Published: 2024-07-16 - Modified: 2024-07-18 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-impact-of-social-media-on-ppc-trends-tactics/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC), Paid Social The biggest change in search behaviour over the last few years has, interestingly, not actually been happening on ‘Search’ at all. Instead, the masses have been turning to Social platforms to perform searches with both overall and proportional volumes seeing significant rises. The Drum, via Hubspot, shared that 1 in 3 people now use a Social platform to find answers to questions with 1 in 6 preferring the process to conventional Search altogether. Additionally, the biggest change to ‘the norm’ has come from Millennials and Gen Z with nearly two thirds preferring Social apps such as Reddit to Search Engines. Considering that the demographic profiles of the biggest promoters of Social search are the two youngest then this ‘trend’ looks like it is not just here to stay, but will actually get even more pronounced over time. One of the biggest causes of this is the meteoric rise of TikTok. According to sources there are 23 million TikTok users in the UK alone and they are rapidly catching up to the 35m Instagram users and 45m Facebook users. Not only is TikTok growing at twice the rate of either of these, it also has a 50% higher monthly time spent than Facebook and 300% higher time spent than Instagram. This level of movement on one side of the market has created both concern and excitement in equal portion for most digital advertisers and the need for imminent adaptation is clear. However, although everyone agrees that there is a clear need to adapt to this new world, working out how exactly you should do that is another matter altogether... Conventional search - Where do we stand now? With all of the above pointing to a significant change in the status quo then it does beg the question: what does the future look like for Search Engines? Having had things nearly all their own way for well over 10 years, the change in behaviours of Millennials and Gen Z has really turned things on their heads. The main trigger for this has undoubtedly been the rise of smartphones (specifically the convenience and familiarity of apps that they bring) and with that only set to bed in further with the next generations then a pivot to ensure continued relevance is absolutely necessary. The biggest and most obvious move to address this looming imbalance is Google’s decision to forge a partnership with TikTok. The numbers outlined in the first few paragraphs showcase the sense behind a move and the real world output of this has been TikTok videos showing in Google Searches and vice versa. Specifically, on the Google side, TikTok videos are already present for any relevant searches, but more importantly they are (reportedly) set to play a big role in Google’s AI Overview  (Search Generative Experience). Google have put all of their eggs in the AI basket and bet that making the Search experience as immersive as possible is going to be what keeps them ahead. Incorporating high quality, relevant Social results not... --- ### How to Plan a Website Redesign in 7 Steps: The Ultimate Guide > Discover the ultimate guide to planning a website redesign in 7 easy steps. Our guide walks you through essential steps for a successful transformation. - Published: 2024-07-11 - Modified: 2024-12-10 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/how-to-plan-a-website-redesign-in-7-steps-the-ultimate-guide/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, How to, SEO Website Redesign Planning: The Ultimate Guide Embarking on the journey of redesigning your website may seem complex, but we’ve curated a comprehensive guide to streamline the process and ensure your website becomes a powerful asset for your business. Our guide walks you through essential steps from audience research to information architecture and helpful tools. Let's begin. 1. Benchmark your current performance Before planning your website redesign, it's crucial to document your current performance metrics. This will provide a clear understanding of your website's current status and highlight areas for improvement during the redesign process. The significance of each metric may vary based on your redesign goals, but reviewing these areas can be beneficial before starting the process: Sessions, users, new users Engagement rates Conversion rates Top-performing pages in terms of conversions/leads/revenue Top-performing keywords Number of inbound linking domains 2. Conduct thorough research Research is critical for a business or service to succeed. The key areas are – audience, competitor and search landscape research. This will give you a solid understanding into your competitive landscape, identify your target customers, and help you devise strategic approaches to capture their attention and engagement. i) Audience Audience research revolves around understanding customer expectations, behaviours, needs, and motivations. The better your understanding of your customers, the more confidently you can design user experiences and fine-tune content on your website. Whether it's visual aesthetics, messaging, or product/ service offering, you can customise every detail to your target audience's preferences and motivations. ii) Competitor Competitor analysis presents an inspiring opportunity to observe other businesses within your industry while also aiding in pinpointing potential market gaps. When conducting research, don't just focus on your primary competitors; also consider your search and digital competitors. Document their strengths, areas for improvement and any other valuable insights you can gather. Visualise the user journey from the perspective of your target customer evaluating the accessibility of the content and identifying any areas that cause frustration. iii) Search Landscape One of the most critical steps when planning a website redesign is to understand digital search space - analyse your market, your brand’s performance within it, and determine keywords your prospective customers are using to discover your products or services. Here at Found, we use Luminr, our proprietary technology which consolidates the full spectrum of search results into a unified interface. It provides unrivalled insights into every search performance - the attention you are capturing, the influence you are having, and the moves your customers and competitors are making. There are many other tools out there you can use, like Google's Keyword Planner or Semrush, the choice is yours. Once you've compiled all your actionable insights, you can utilise them to inform your site’s AI or integrate them strategically across your website copy to drive search visibility and SEO performance.   3. Perform a content inventory audit When you are rebuilding an existing website, it is highly beneficial to conduct a content inventory early in the planning process. A website content inventory audit provides... --- ### Harnessing the Power of AI in PPC Campaigns > When it comes to PPC, the latest AI advancements should be treated as opportunities for evolution. Here's why. - Published: 2024-07-10 - Modified: 2024-07-10 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/harnessing-the-power-of-ai-in-ppc/ - Categories: AI & Machine Learning, Digital Marketing, Paid Search (PPC) The buzz around AI over the last year has been intense with many areas of advertising (and most of the planet. . ! ) feeling like a whole new world of opportunity has been opened up. However, when it comes to PPC, the reality is that AI has been a part of everything we’ve done for years and that the latest advancements should be treated as opportunities for evolution rather than a need for absolute revolution. Nearly a decade ago PPC was built on manual optimisations. The focus was always on maximising control - adjust every single bid using manual CPC, focus on Exact keyword only, avoid Broad, use single keyword ad groups (SKAG), make hundreds of unique ad copy, create unique landing pages for keywords, single product shopping grouping - the list goes on, but the rule of thumb was that the more granular your account was the better your results would be.   However, although this level of granularity gave you control, and was undoubtedly the best way to deliver results at the time, the approach had four major weaknesses: 1. It took an ungodly amount of time to update the entire account (... and where Google Ads Editor would break more often than not) 2. The setup wasn’t able to react to real world changes  3. The scale ended up being very difficult to effectively manage 4. Human error / mistakes were easy and could sit unnoticed for a long time These four problem areas can be summed up as: slow, rigid, difficult and unreliable. Those were considered unavoidable ways of life when it came to optimising an account and this is exactly why AI began to wriggle its way in. Every action that has been taken by companies in the PPC space over the last 10 years has been to improve or remedy these four areas. They know that if the Google Ads experience is fast, responsive, easy and reliable then more people will spend more time spending more money. This sounds like it should be a bad thing, but the reality is that with these improvements then people are happy to spend more because the platform is capable of delivering increased results in line with the increased investment. It’s a win-win. Fast forward to today and almost all aspects of this granular approach have now gone. Manual bidding, static ads, single keyword ad groups and standard shopping have (in the most part... ) been consigned to the history books and in their place has come Smart Bidding, Broad, RSA, Demand Gen, PMax and many, many more.   All of these ‘new’ features have been introduced over the last few years and have gradually phased out their manual predecessors one by one. This has meant that our familiarity and comfort with the machine has subconsciously been built up to the extent that our trust in AI and attitude towards working with it to maximise results is now second nature.   Photo by Igor Omilaev on Unsplash... --- ### Found win 'Best use of Google Media' at the Independent Agency Awards 2024 > We’re delighted to share the news that Found has won 'Best use of Google Media' at this year’s Independent Agency Awards. - Published: 2024-07-03 - Modified: 2024-07-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-win-best-use-of-google-media-at-the-independent-agency-awards-2024/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, General News, Paid Search (PPC) We’re delighted to share the news that Found has won 'Best use of Google Media' at this year’s Independent Agency Awards for our work with Peacocks. The awards ceremony took place last night and members of our team were thrilled to go up onstage to accept the award. The Award This particular category is sponsored by Google is designed as an opportunity for independent agencies (like us) to showcase and celebrate the best and most innovative use of Google products such as Google Ads and Youtube. It's specifically for campaigns that boost brand awareness, increase leads, online sales and conversion rates whilst showcasing detailed targeting techniques and contextual creative to deliver great results and stellar performance. The Work Found have be working alongside Peacocks since 2022. They are a fashion retail chain based in the UK and sit within the wider Edinburgh Woollen Mill group, with both online and in-store paths to purchase. They sit in a highly contested landscape, where market demand has been led by sale promotion periods and dominated by large brands. The results of this particular piece of work we did with them were very impressive. By focusing on elevating brand awareness, prioritising click quality, and driving substantial revenue growth, our dedicated team of experts achieved exceptional results. This work really demonstrated the power of a strategic approach – one that recognises the value of customer acquisition and brand building alongside cost optimisation. By working with Peacocks to invest in targeted marketing initiatives, we were able to break through the growth barrier and achieve substantial success. The Feedback https://www. youtube. com/watch? v=dhjj9oNaojo Congratulations to the team at Found! This was a superb example of innovation, strategy, a challenger mindset, meticulous use of data, but most of all really great creative thinking. It drove impeccable results for Peacocks and breathed new life into the brand. Well done! Sarah Byrne, Google Our Thoughts This was a collaborative effort involving strategic planning, compelling creatives, and full leverage of Google's offerings - culminating in a 55% sales increase and a 13% year-over-year revenue growth for Peacocks, who we love working with. This monumental success is a direct reflection of the extraordinary work ethic and talent of my team—Ella-Rose Hatchwell, Lauren Guzewich, and Joanne Jackson. Their tireless dedication is the driving force behind our achievements and I’m so proud!   Juliette Fletcher (Account Director | Found. ) --- ### 10 Best SaaS Digital Marketing Strategies for 2024 > Learn how to implement effective strategies and techniques to help your SaaS business navigate the digital landscape successfully in 2024. Read our guide. - Published: 2024-06-28 - Modified: 2025-02-25 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/10-best-saas-digital-marketing-strategies-for-2024/ - Categories: B2B, Paid Search (PPC), Paid Social, SEO The world of SaaS is ever-expanding. According to Statistica, revenue in the SaaS industry will hit $344 billion by 2027, and innovations in AI will only see this number continue to grow exponentially over the coming decade. With the explosion of start-up tech and established industry heavy-weights continuing to evolve and introduce innovations that transform the way we work, yesterday's announcement quickly falls into tomorrow's history books, and getting seen becomes harder and harder. Navigating the evolving landscape of SaaS Digital Marketing Value creation doesn’t happen overnight and establishing a strong digital footprint is integral to the long-term success of any business, and deploying the right digital marketing strategies in the SaaS world means you’ll get seen by your target audiences no matter where they’re searching. That’s where Everysearch™ comes into play.   Everysearch™ is the framework we apply to identifying your target audiences, making sure your brand is being seen at any given opportunity. Thanks to our proprietary technology, Luminr, we’re able to spot gaps and assess your competitor's tactics to establish the strategy that is going to drive the most value and point more customers towards your sales team. By being able to showcase what optimal coverage looks like within your sector, we can tell you which channels and what platforms you need to appear on throughout as users journey, from discovery triggers right through to conversion. No tactic should be seen in isolation, and instead, the following pointers will help steer you in the right direction to be wherever your audiences are. 1. Establishing your brand world You want to show up wherever your audience is, and there’s nothing like consistency to make sure people remember who you are. Having a clear brand identity that offers flexibility depending on the platform will go a long way in opening up opportunities for you to utilise within your digital marketing strategy. Think of 3-5 different scenarios in which your audience may see you and think about what you want to say to them in each and make sure you have brand guidelines to reflect each of them. 2. What is your value manifesto? Once you’ve got the above, you’ve got an asset that is vital to the next technique, which is showcasing the value you can add to your potential customers. You need to have a clear manifesto to your audience that you can be trusted, and that your SaaS technology is the answer to them. That’s where the content on your site comes in. It’s your manifesto to prospective customers that you can offer a valuable asset that will improve their working lives. 3. Be part of a digital community Forums have been around for decades but their position within digital marketing is only now being explored and utilised for value. Reddit is coming up to 20 years old and only now is Google seeing it as a reputable source of information to serve in search results pages. This is where communities of users gather to query, educate... --- ### The Future of Search Marketing: Introducing Everysearch™ Approach > The search landscape has undergone a significant shift, extending way beyond traditional search engines in recent years. Here is the future of search marketing. - Published: 2024-06-20 - Modified: 2025-02-27 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-future-of-search-marketing-introducing-everysearch-approach/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, General News The future of search and SEO has fundamentally changed. It’s no longer just about conventional search engine success. Search is so much more than that. If you consider your own user behaviour and search habits, you’ll notice this shift. Search is everywhere. Search now spans across social media platforms, video-streaming networks, marketplaces, travel portals - the list goes on. The future of search relies on getting a solid understanding of where your audiences are, where they are browsing online, and how you can grab their attention to ultimately get their attention and get ahead of your competitors.   https://www. youtube. com/watch? v=9CriJMcqmQc Search engine dominance & the need to adapt Digital marketing strategies have traditionally relied on search engines such as Google and Microsoft as a fundamental backbone. While this remains true, major players like Google have recognised the need to evolve with consumer demands and changing search behaviours. At GML 2024, Google introduced the headline ‘Search in new ways,’ powered by their new custom Gemini model. Key advancements include: Quick answers with AI overviews: Already tested in Search Labs with over a billion uses, AI overviews are now being rolled out to everyone in the U. S. , with more countries to follow. I’ve already seen lots of examples of these showing in the UK for more long-tail informational keywords.   Simplified language and detailed breakdowns: AI overviews will offer options to simplify language or break down information for more detailed understanding. Handling complex questions: Instead of breaking queries into multiple searches, users can ask in-depth, detailed questions in one go. Planning ahead: Search will assist with planning tasks such as meal preparation, gym routines, and party planning, with the ability to export plans into Google Docs or Gmail. As Google adapts to these changes, digital marketing specialists must also evolve to capture audiences across diverse platforms. Embracing these advancements ensures we reach users when it matters most, regardless of where they are browsing. Everysearch™: The future of search marketing  The digital landscape has changed dramatically, especially over the last five years. The way consumers discover new products has evolved. While search engines strive to be the perfect solution for discovery, they simply can't match the effectiveness of social media. Social media excels at discoverability, and to win at search in 2024 and beyond, your brand must be discoverable online. A new report from WARC underscores the dominance of social media as the leading media channel globally in terms of ad spend. Social media has become an integral part of the customer purchasing journey. Although traditional 'performance' metrics may not fully capture its value, brands are increasingly investing in social platforms due to the evolving user journey. While Google and other search engines excel in converting and driving last-click ROAS, social media plays a vital role in building brand awareness.   Multi-channel marketing is a familiar concept but, in search marketing, it’s a whole new ballgame. Everysearch™ - a term we coined to encompass this seismic shift in the... --- ### We're a 2024 Great Place to Work for Development > We've made it onto the prestigious Great Place to Work for Development list in the Medium Category. This is a brand-new category for 2024, - Published: 2024-06-10 - Modified: 2024-06-19 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/were-a-2024-great-place-to-work-for-development/ - Categories: Culture, General News Last week, we were thrilled to learn that we made it onto the prestigious Great Place to Work for Development list in the Medium Category. This is a brand-new category for 2024, and what a way to make our debut — at number 16! For the past eight years, we have consistently ranked in the Great Place to Work list, an accolade that honours organisations fostering thriving workplace cultures. These cultures not only enable their people to flourish but also drive business success. A crucial element of this success is providing opportunities for learning and development, and it highlights the companies that offer exceptional experiences for growth at work. This recognition holds particular significance for us at Found, as the development and progression of our team is a cornerstone of our people-first approach. We firmly believe that career progression is a deeply personal journey, unique to each individual. Our mission is to ensure that development opportunities are both meaningful and impactful for every team member. We take immense pride in our internal mobility rate of 58. 8% in 2023, a testament to our commitment to nurturing talent from within. What Makes This Recognition Special To be eligible for recognition in any GPTW list, companies must first meet the Great Place to Work Certified™ standard. This involves rigorous assessments against the Development Index, which includes ten statements from the core Trust Index™ survey, identified as having the most impact on employees’ development experiences. These are all grouped into four key essentials: Development, Management Behaviour, Empowerment, and Recognition. Our Approach At Found, we understand that the path to development varies greatly among individuals. Here’s how we approach the four key areas identified by Great Place to Work: Empowerment Essentials Freedom is one values; we thrive on autonomy and empowerment and the confidence to make a difference everyday.   We trust our people to learn through experience and be empowered to own their role. This autonomy is fundamental in allowing our team to develop their skills and confidence, preparing them for future possibilities at Found. Recognition Essentials Recognising our employees' efforts is crucial to fostering a growth-oriented culture. We have multiple reward and recognition initiatives to ensure that good work is shouted about, helping to identify where individuals excel and where they can continue to grow. By valuing everyone’s contributions, we create an inclusive environment where our team feel appreciated and valued. Management Behaviour Essentials Inspiring managers and leaders is a core focus of our people strategy as we know strong management goes hand in hand with development. We invest in leadership and management training to ensure our managers are supported to lead with care, clarity and coaching, untapping the potential of our team.   Development Essentials With quarterly growth conversations, we ensure the conversation is ongoing around development and not a once a year thing. We empower our team to own their growth, focussing on possibilities and opportunities through experience, exposure and training. Each one of our team members has a personalised... --- ### Found Invest in Everysearch™ > Found invests £1 million to create UK-first audience insight technology. - Published: 2024-06-07 - Modified: 2024-12-03 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-invest-in-everysearch/ - Categories: AI & Machine Learning, General News Found’s proprietary technology, created by our in-house team of engineers and AI experts to provide cutting-edge audience insight data from multiple networks, platforms and marketplaces, is a first of its kind market development. It provides detailed insights into audience habits, helping to establish market positions and determine how best to spend marketing budget wherever the customer is, whatever platform they are on, and whoever drives their motivation. https://vimeo. com/943690710/dd25ed3038 Why Everysearch™? The Found team have spent two years developing the revolutionary technology and framework after recognising how the industry was rapidly evolving and search marketing no longer being just about conventional search engines. Search now spans social platforms, marketplaces, travel portals, video sharing, and entertainment platforms. Search is everywhere. And the audience data required for marketing activity must change and adapt to reflect this change in audience behaviour. “We are embracing change and ensuring our team and our clients are ahead of the curve with the development of Everysearch™. Google handles over 3. 5 billion searches per day however, with Facebook averaging over 2 billion and 83% of Instagram users saying the platform helps them discover new products and services, it’s time to embrace the search revolution and recognise that search is everywhere. The audience-first approach is the way forward and our technology, data insights and expert team of creatives will change the industry and businesses. As an ambitious and dynamic agency, we strive to achieve unparalleled performance across every searchable platform. ”  Natalie Patel (Managing Director at Found, the Everysearch™ agency) https://vimeo. com/962111672 It’s simple - with 40% of Gen Z relying on social media platforms, including TikTok and Instagram, for their searches, a brand's search visibility has never been more paramount on every relevant searchable platform. Brands need to be ahead of the curve to ensure they stay competitive. The Everysearch™ technology will consolidate the full spectrum of search results into a unified interface, providing an Everysearch™ score and insights to help maximise performance. Want to find out how Everysearch™ could take your business to the next level? Contact our team of search experts here. --- ### Everysearch™: A Transformative Digital Marketing Strategy - Published: 2024-06-05 - Modified: 2024-06-05 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/everysearch-a-transformative-digital-marketing-strategy/ - Categories: Opinion, Trends A good digital marketing strategy is fundamentally a good business strategy. Today, every customer and client operates in a digital environment and so, by extension, every business needs to have an effective digital strategy. Powered by data, digital marketing has the advantage of being able to test, learn and develop at both speed and scale meaning that businesses who get their strategy right, are able to achieve exceptional growth. WHAT IS A DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGY? In its simplest form, a digital marketing strategy is a plan that connects a business with its customers. The key to a good strategy is the coherence and coordination of specific actions behind that plan with a specific objective in mind. Contemporary strategies which are resilient in the fast-evolving digital marketing landscape and can outpace a competitive market focus on these key things in order to drive tangible business results: Coherence: a detailed understanding of both your market, your products/services and, most importantly, your customer - who they are, and how they engage with brands online. Coordination of specific actions: this really is the core of your strategy, having a comprehensive understanding of how you will engage with specific customer types, on which channels and what creative will perform best.   Specific objectives: typically the objectives will reflect KPIs for core business performance: revenue growth, increased profitability, reduced customer acquisition cost. Sophisticated strategies determine specific targets and ensure the accurate and validate measurement of progress towards these goals. "A future-proofed digital strategy merges clarity with impact, turning complex challenges into growth opportunities. Beyond today’s KPIs, it must commit to crafting sustainable growth models that enhance your brand’s future equity, ensuring every move counts. ” INTRODUCING EVERYSEARCH™ The digital marketing landscape has always been defined by rapid evolution. In fact, it’s this ever-changing nature that has always attracted disruptive businesses as it creates the opportunity for more agile brands to acquire new customers and market share from slower-moving competitors. However, the last few years in particular have seen a real shift in the way people incorporate multiple digital touchpoints, channels and content formats when looking to discover new ideas, brands and products. We used to conventionally think about Search as being exclusively the preserve of the search engines and, conversely, social platforms being simply where people consumed content. However, as the platforms have evolved and people’s online behaviours have changed we need to completely redefine the notion of Search as being about capturing visibility, commanding attention, and maximising performance across every searchable platform.   Where we might have talked about upper- and lower-funnel activity, we must adopt a more contemporary approach to digital strategy such as the messy middle marketing model where people bounce between exploration and evaluation - incorporating a variety of channels, media and purchase influencers - before ultimately arriving at a decision. The Everysearch™ framework is the key to success in this diverse landscape as it provides both the insight on how and where your customer personas are searching online as well as... --- ### SEOmonitor: AI Overviews Integration - Published: 2024-05-28 - Modified: 2024-06-03 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/seomonitor-sge-insights-integration/ - Categories: AI & Machine Learning, SEO The integration of AI Overviews into SEOmonitor’s platform is poised to be a game-changer for SEO professionals. Here’s how this new feature will impact the way you optimize for search engines: Advanced Keyword Insights One of the most significant benefits of AI Overviews is the ability to dive deeper into keyword data. SEO professionals will gain a richer understanding of how users interact with search results, revealing the nuances of search intent that are often missed by traditional keyword tools. This depth of insight allows for more precise targeting and optimization, ensuring that your content is aligned with what users are truly searching for. Enhanced Content Strategy Crafting relevant and engaging content is at the heart of effective SEO, and AI Overviews will take your content strategy to the next level. By leveraging detailed information about user queries and expectations, you can create content that not only ranks well but also resonates with your audience. This means more engaging articles, blog posts, and landing pages that meet the specific needs and interests of your target market. Performance Metrics Staying ahead of the competition requires real-time data and insights, and this is where AI Overviews truly shine. The integration will allow you to monitor trends and adapt your strategies quickly based on up-to-the-minute performance metrics. Whether it’s tracking the success of your latest campaign or identifying emerging trends, you’ll have the tools you need to stay agile and responsive in a fast-paced digital landscape. Why This Matters In the ever-evolving world of digital marketing, staying ahead of the curve is essential. SEOmonitor’s integration of AI Overviews empowers marketers to make alt="" /> SEOmonitor’s integration of AI Overviews marks a significant advancement in the field of search engine optimization. By providing advanced keyword insights, enhancing content strategy, and offering real-time performance metrics, this new feature empowers SEO professionals to make more informed, strategic decisions. In an industry where staying ahead of the curve is crucial, SEOmonitor is providing the tools necessary to lead the way. As we approach the launch date on June 3rd, the anticipation is building for this revolutionary update, which promises to transform the way we approach SEO and deliver unparalleled results for clients. --- ### Google's Third-Party Cookie Update > Google calls off third-party cookie updates again. Our Head of SEO and resident Google expert, Dan Fernandez, explains everything you need to know about the latest updates.  - Published: 2024-05-27 - Modified: 2024-12-03 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/googles-third-party-cookie-update/ - Categories: Google Algorithm Updates, SEO Google has recently announced that it has, once again, delayed its plans to phase out third-party cookies in Chrome. The initiative to remove third party cookies was first introduced in 2019 and has been delayed multiple times since then, so it comes as no surprise that the search giant announced another delay in a recent update. It’s currently looking like the phase out will now happen in early 2025.   So what does it all mean? Let’s get into it...   What is the third-party cookie depreciation?   Back in 2019 Google launched an initiative called Google's Privacy Sandbox, which aims to improve privacy across the web, while still allowing businesses to gather relevant data for advertising purposes. Third-party cookies have historically been implemented by advertisers and website owners, meaning they can track users without clear consent and therefore create profiling that is invasive. Not only that, this type of cross-site tracking can be exploited by cyber criminals to steal data or spread harmful malware. Quite rightly, this activity sparked concerns with regulatory bodies as well as consumers so Google announced this programme as a way of phasing them out. The original aim was to have the cookies phased out on Chrome by 2020, which has been pushed back and back and now pushed back again to 2025.   Why has it been delayed? Well, that’s a good question and one a lot of people are asking, after so many delays. The short answer is; it’s getting complicated! There are multiple different stakeholders involved and it’s taking longer than expected to get all parties on the same page.   In the most recent update from Google, which can be read here, the reasons are twofold.   Firstly, there are some challenges collating feedback from the industry regulators and developers and it needs to work closely with all related parties to get it right and roll out the initiative and seemingly need more time to do so.   “We recognize that there are ongoing challenges related to reconciling divergent feedback from the industry, regulators and developers, and will continue to engage closely with the entire ecosystem” Secondly, Google is working closely with the UK’s Competition and Market Authority (CMA) and they have requested more time to review results for industry tests from participants who have a deadline for the end of June. With that deadline in place, it’s clear they need more time after June to review and analyse the results.   "It's also critical that the (UK’s Competition and Markets Authority) has sufficient time to review all evidence including results from industry tests, which the CMA has asked market participants to provide by the end of June. Given both of these significant considerations, we will not complete third-party cookie deprecation during the second half of Q4. " What does it mean?   It means that the third-party cookies will continue to be live across Chrome until early next year, at the earliest. But it’s safe to say, no one is... --- ### Highlights from Google Marketing Live 2024 - Published: 2024-05-24 - Modified: 2024-05-29 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/highlights-from-google-marketing-live-2024/ - Categories: AI & Machine Learning, General News, Google Algorithm Updates, Paid Search (PPC) Last week, Google Marketing Live 2024 offered an exciting glimpse into the future of advertising, showcasing how artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming media, creative processes, and measurement methodologies. As a proud Google Premier Partner agency, we had the privilege of attending the event in person, and we are thrilled to share our top takeaways. These advancements herald a new era of advertising, marked by unprecedented efficiency, creativity, and precision. So, here are our main takeaways: 1) Gross Profit Optimisation is Coming This feature promises to revolutionise campaign strategies by enabling advertisers to target profit directly. According to Google, campaigns optimised for gross profit can achieve up to 15% better performance. This will allow for seamless transitions between Max Value/TROAS and Profit targets without disrupting campaign performance - providing advertisers with unparalleled flexibility and control. 2) Lower Audience List Thresholds to Just 100 Plenty of small and medium-sized businesses have been struggling to meet the current (higher) audience size requirements, limiting their ability to leverage first-party data effectively. With this change, running Demand Generation campaigns are going to become more accessible, enabling advertisers to use their valuable data to enhance ad performance. This democratisation of access means that even more businesses can benefit from the sophisticated targeting and personalisation strategies available, levelling the playing field. 3) Performance Max Asset-Level Reporting We're going to able to see detailed metrics for each asset, including placement and exclusion details for YouTube. By offering granular insights into how individual assets perform, advertisers will be able to fine-tune their strategies with greater precision. This level of detail will support better optimisation decisions and help marketers to better understand which creative elements resonate most with their audiences and where improvements can be made. The ability to drill down into asset performance will undoubtedly lead to more effective campaigns and higher returns on investment for brands. 4) AI-Powered Search Ads Users will be able to upload pictures to help tailor their searches and discover how retailers can meet their needs through Generative AI responses. The demand for (and usage of) image-enhanced search will only set to increase as users become more aware of this new search method and AI-generated recommendations are set to become a natural part of users' search experiences (and , thus, a part of paid search advertising). 5) Enhanced Brand Creative Controls for Performance Max & Demand Generation In a world where brand consistency is paramount, Google's enhanced brand creative controls for Performance Max and Demand Generation campaigns are a welcome addition. Advertisers can upload reference images to guide Google's AI in customising and tailoring suggested assets to align with brand guidelines. This includes matching brand colours and fonts, ensuring that all creative elements reflect the brand's identity accurately. These controls provide a balance between automation and personalization, allowing brands to maintain their unique voice and aesthetic while benefiting from AI-driven efficiencies. Google Marketing Live 2024 has demonstrated that the future of advertising lies at the intersection of AI and creativity. The innovations unveiled at... --- ### Search in the Gemini era > Following the Google I/O 2024 announcements, Google have released a teaser video of how generative AI in Search is going to be evolving with the power of their new custom Gemini model - Published: 2024-05-15 - Modified: 2024-05-29 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/search-in-the-gemini-era/ - Categories: AI & Machine Learning, Google Algorithm Updates In the wake of Google I/O 2024, excitement is buzzing around the latest advancements in search technology. Google has released a teaser video showcasing how generative AI, powered by their new custom Gemini model, is set to transform the search landscape. https://youtu. be/s4InWsd-J6g These innovations promise to enhance user experience by delivering more precise, intuitive, and comprehensive search results. Let's dive into the key advancements that Google is bringing to the table and explore how they will impact the world of search: Quick Answers with AI Overviews One of the standout features is the introduction of AI-generated overviews. This capability has already been tested in Search Labs, where it has amassed over a billion uses. AI overviews provide quick, concise answers to user queries, streamlining the search process and making it more efficient. This feature is being rolled out to all users in the U. S. , with plans to expand to other countries soon. AI overviews aim to simplify the search experience, allowing users to get the information they need at a glance. Whether you're looking for a brief summary or an in-depth explanation, these overviews will cater to your needs, saving you time and effort. Enhanced Understanding with AI Overviews In addition to providing quick answers, AI overviews will offer options to simplify language or break down complex information into more manageable parts. This is particularly beneficial for users who may find certain topics challenging to understand. By presenting information in a more accessible way, Google is making knowledge more inclusive and easier to digest. Imagine searching for a detailed scientific concept or a complex legal term; the AI overview can present the information in simpler language or dissect it into detailed, understandable chunks. This flexibility ensures that users of all backgrounds can benefit from Google's search capabilities. Tackling Super Complex Questions Gone are the days of breaking down complex queries into multiple searches. With the new generative AI capabilities, users can ask detailed, multifaceted questions in one go and receive comprehensive answers. This feature allows for a more natural and conversational search experience, mimicking how one might ask a human expert for advice. For instance, instead of conducting separate searches for different aspects of a travel plan, you can ask a single, complex question about your itinerary, accommodation options, and sightseeing suggestions. Google's AI will parse through the details and provide a thorough, cohesive response. Planning Ahead with AI Google's generative AI is also set to revolutionize how we plan our daily activities. Whether you're meal planning, setting up a gym routine, or organizing a party, search will now be able to assist you in planning and exporting your plans directly into Google Docs or Gmail. This integration enhances productivity and makes it easier to manage and share your plans. This feature is a game-changer for those who rely heavily on digital tools for organization. By centralizing planning tasks within the search function, users can seamlessly transition from idea to execution without needing multiple apps or services.... --- ### Embracing AI for Enhanced Strategies > As we continue to navigate the changes that come from the fusion of AI with traditional SEO practises, staying updated and adaptable is more crucial than ever. - Published: 2024-05-14 - Modified: 2024-05-29 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/embracing-ai-for-enhanced-strategies/ - Categories: AI & Machine Learning, SEO As professionals in the digital marketing sphere, we find ourselves on the brink of a transformative era. The increasing integration of AI and machine learning in SEO strategies is not just reshaping our approach to search engine optimisation but is setting new benchmarks for effectiveness and efficiency. Let's delve into the key advancements that are driving this evolution and explore how they are revolutionising the SEO landscape... AI-Driven Keyword Research One of the most significant impacts of AI in SEO is in keyword research. AI-powered tools are now capable of predicting keyword success with unprecedented accuracy. By analysing vast amounts of data, these tools can identify trends and patterns that were previously undetectable. This allows SEO specialists to craft more targeted strategies that align closely with user intent. For instance, AI can help identify long-tail keywords that are not only relevant but also less competitive, giving businesses a better chance to rank higher in search results. This shift from traditional keyword research to AI-driven insights ensures that SEO efforts are more focused and effective, leading to better search engine rankings and increased organic traffic. Content Optimisation AI is also revolutionising content creation and optimisation. By providing deep insights into user preferences and engagement metrics, AI tools help marketers create highly optimised content tailored for both search engines and real readers. These insights include understanding the types of content that resonate most with audiences, the optimal length for blog posts, and the best times to publish. Moreover, AI can assist in generating content ideas, suggesting topics that are likely to perform well based on current trends and user interests. This ensures that content remains relevant and engaging, ultimately driving more traffic and boosting search engine rankings. The integration of AI in content strategy helps marketers stay ahead of the curve and meet the ever-evolving demands of their audience. Technical SEO The complexity of technical SEO has long been a challenge for SEO professionals. However, machine learning algorithms are simplifying this aspect by automating tasks such as crawl analysis, error detection, and site performance monitoring. These algorithms can quickly identify issues that might hinder a site's performance, such as broken links, duplicate content, and slow page load times. By automating these routine tasks, SEO specialists can focus more on strategic planning and innovation. The ability to swiftly address technical issues ensures that websites remain optimised for search engines, leading to better visibility and higher rankings. This automation also enhances the overall efficiency of SEO campaigns, allowing for more comprehensive site audits and faster implementation of improvements. User Experience (UX) User experience (UX) has become a critical factor in SEO success, and AI is playing a pivotal role in optimising UX. AI-enhanced UX optimisation directly contributes to better search engine rankings by improving site navigation, content relevance, and overall user satisfaction. For example, AI can analyse user behaviour on a website and suggest changes to the layout, design, and content to make it more user-friendly. Improved UX leads to longer site visits, lower... --- ### The Best Google Optimize Alternatives for Experimentation - Published: 2023-12-13 - Modified: 2024-04-20 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-best-google-optimize-alternatives-for-experimentation/ - Categories: Trends In case you haven’t caught wind of the news, Google has made it official: FigPii Developed by a CRO agency, this tool has impressive features. It is well suited for businesses hoping to engage in robust A/B testing and experimentation programmes but won’t need features beyond that. If their dashboard is correct, they boast the lightest page load for A/B testing tools. Features: Heat mapping and screen recording features Multi-armed bandit testing capabilities Ability to analyze screen recordings or heat maps that were part of a specific test. Website poll capabilities FigPii has the largest free offering, with 75,000 monthly users in an A/B test. However, the free plan doesn’t include any of the additional, non-testing features, which come at an additional monthly cost. Note: A/B Tasty, VWO, and Optimizely are the vendors that will initially receive the integration. However, it is highly probable that other vendors will gain access to the API shortly after its release. These vendors have existing integrations with GA4, and the API has the potential to improve the data flow between GA4 and the testing tool. Tip: Ensure that you future proof your experimentation stack To future-proof your experimentation stack, we encourage you to base this on the right fit for your MarTech stack and which tool supports the growth of an experimentation culture rather than how they integrate with one platform. As we embark on the journey of bidding adieu to Google Optimize and embracing a new era of experimentation, CRO, and personalization, it’s essential to future-proof our strategies. Remember, it’s not just about the integration with a single platform, but about finding the right fit for your MarTech stack and nurturing an experimentation culture. So, wave goodbye to the sunset of Google Optimize and welcome the dawn of innovation. Connect with our team if you need guidance in selecting the perfect tool for your needs. --- ### Career Progression in Paid Media > Progressing through the levels as a Paid Media professional is hard. So, we've broken down the key skills for each level: Account Exec, Account Manager and Account Director. - Published: 2023-10-31 - Modified: 2024-07-26 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/career-progression-in-paid-media/ - Categories: Culture, Opinion, Paid Search (PPC), Paid Social This week's message: Progressing through the levels as a Paid Media professional is hard. This is something that I’ve been reflecting on recently as although the route seems beautifully simple and logical on paper (AE > SAE > AM > SAM > AD), the reality is that it’s not. The requirements to step up to Manager and also to Director are such a sharp change to your day to day that it is actually very easy to get stuck. This can be particularly maddening when you feel like you are performing very well and getting positive feedback at the level you’re at. So, I thought I’d break down the key skills as I see them at each level: Account Exec, Account Manager and Account Director. Senior isn’t included in these sub groups as it is better viewed as an indication of excelling in the core areas required of that level. Paid Media Career Levels:Account Executive - Platform excellence, consistency, reliability The focus here is on learning and executing the fundamentals. Essentially, making sure nothing goes wrong. In order to do this you need to know your platform (E. g. Google, Meta etc. ) inside out and be able to complete all set tasks without issue and on time. Account Manager - Account progression, client relationship, person management The switch here is to being the guiding force of the account. Having the ability to use your developed Exec skills to proactively take your accounts forward is key. On top of that, being trusted by your point of contact is a must (service industry... ) and beginning to work with and develop your own exec. Account Director - Account transformation, prioritisation, delegation This is another big shift as you have to let go and begin to trust more people whilst also having the biggest impact possible across multiple accounts. All of the skills that you developed at Exec and Manager level are still needed, but you have to develop an understanding of when to use them for maximum impact and when to let someone else do the work. The client must also see (and trust! ) you as someone who can solve all problems and really advance their fortunes. To summarise, if you do find yourself stuck then start asking some questions, find out where your weaknesses are in relation to the above and ask for opportunities to improve / showcase them. It’s far better to promote internally than hire externally so this should be something that is encouraged. This should also answer the question of why some people progress quicker than others. Although these people are normally excellent with the platform, the real reason is that they excel in the soft skills required from Manager and above. Anyone that is trusted by all of their clients and drives account improvement is worth their weight in gold. If you want to accelerate your ascent of the greasy ladder of progression then those are the areas you need to focus on. --- ### Found shortlisted for 7 UK Search Awards > We're delighted to share the news that Found have been shortlisted in SEVEN categories at this year's UK Search Awards! - Published: 2023-10-24 - Modified: 2025-03-12 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-shortlisted-for-7-uk-search-awards/ - Categories: B2B, General News, Paid Search (PPC), Paid Social 'It's been an unprecedented year for all of the wrong reasons for a lot of businesses so to be able to showcase so many positive results across such an array of verticals is testament to the standard of work that is being produced by the team. ' - James Rigby (Head of Paid Performance | Found. ) We're delighted to share the news that Found have been shortlisted in SEVEN categories at this year's UK Search Awards! The UK Search Awards celebrate the very best in Search across England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales are and the ultimate award for UK Search agencies and teams. They're regarded as the premiere celebration of UK search in the industry so we are delighted to receive recognition from such an impressive body. Campaigns that our PPC experts have delivered for our client teams at Toolstation, Champneys Health Resorts, Blackhawk Network, Vita Student, and others have been acknowledged by the judges. We are shortlisted for the following: ✨ Best use of Search - Retail/Ecommerce PPC (Large)✨ Best use of Search - Travel/Leisure PPC (Large)✨ Best use of Search - B2B PPC (Large)✨ Best use of search - B2C PPC (Large)✨ Best Local Campaign PPC (Large)✨ Best use of social media in a search campaign (Large)✨ And... Best Large PPC Agency! ! ! We'd like to share heartfelt 'congratulations' to every single member of our team that's been involved in delivering this work, the time and effort that that've put into these pieces of work hasn't gone unnoticed or unappreciated. We're incredibly proud of the campaigns we've delivered for our clients this year and it's amazing to have our belief that the work is outstanding validated like this. We're now really looking forward to seeing our fellow nominees at the UK Search Awards ceremony in November! ! ! As our Head of Paid Performance has put it:'The UK Search Awards is one of the most prestigious award bodies in our industry so to have 7 submissions shortlisted is nothing short of incredible. It's been an unprecedented year for all of the wrong reasons for a lot of businesses so to be able to showcase so many positive results across such an array of verticals is testament to the standard of work that is being produced by the team. Thank you to everyone that has put the time in at Found (you've been amazing) and to our clients for continuing to trust us to deliver during these challenging times. Best of luck to all of our fellow agencies too - we look forward to seeing you on the 30th! ' --- ### BEST PPC AGENCIES IN THE UK > Choosing the right PPC agency to trust can be a thrilling yet challenging endeavour. We’ve crafted a list of the top PPC agencies to help you on your way. - Published: 2023-10-12 - Modified: 2025-02-26 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/top-10-ppc-agencies/ - Categories: Opinion, Paid Search (PPC) In a crowded field of PPC agencies, each showcasing their own strengths, how do you pinpoint the one that aligns perfectly with your goals? It’s not just about finding a good fit; it’s about choosing a partner who will amplify your vision and drive measurable success. Finding the right PPC agency to partner with is a pivotal decision. Your brand deserves an agency that doesn’t just promise results but delivers them - consistently and transparently. Whether you're a budding startup or an established enterprise with a vast team, navigating the UK’s competitive PPC landscape can feel overwhelming. Every agency seems to craft a compelling pitch, and as marketing professionals, they’re adept at selling themselves. So how do you discern who will truly walk the talk? Selecting the ideal PPC agency partner often feels like finding a needle in a haystack The stakes are high - your business's performance marketing success hangs in the balance. But with the right guidance, you can cut through the noise, identify a trustworthy ally, and unlock the full potential of your campaigns. TOP 10 PPC AGENCIES IN THE UK 1. FOUND Found is the Everysearch™ agency based in London, mastering search performance across all digital search marketing platforms. Utilising paid search, paid social, and creative content, they harness the power of data and AI to craft and execute winning digital marketing strategies that drive impactful results for the searches that matter. From Google to TikTok, Amazon to Instagram, search is everywhere. They are a multi award-winning PPC agency and their Everysearch™ approach is revolutionising paid media by turning it into a powerful force across all searchable platforms. They meticulously analyse search behaviour to pinpoint exactly where customers are looking. With years of experience spanning various industries across the UK and globally, from Ecommerce and B2B to Travel and Hospitality, their innovative PPC strategies are crafted with precision, fuelled by data-driven insights and a spark of creative genius. https://www. youtube. com/watch? v=hPsRqjB0rjk Found’s dedicated PPC management team works as an extension of brands’ internal marketing functions and loves to think outside of the box to find the best way to use the varied PPC services they offer to get brands the results they’re looking for. Their specialist PPC division is made up of qualified professionals that guarantee top-tier expertise that you can rely on. They're proud of their impressive campaign results, and encourage prospective clients to check out their track record and even speak directly with existing clients. Transparency is one of the agency’s core values. Whilst always maintaining a core of PPC fundamentals in their campaigns, Found continually tests new approaches and tactics to get the best understanding of what works for specific businesses in order to establish the optimal paid search strategies to achieve their clients’ goals. Their close relationship with ad platforms such as Google and Microsoft means that they get access to the latest betas and developments (as well as industry insights) that they use to understand market trends and keep their... --- ### Embracing uncertainty & getting comfortable with optimising the grey > If you’re still trying to be ‘granular’, ‘maximise control’ or ‘join every dot’ with your digital advertising then t’s time to let go and embrace a new way of working. - Published: 2023-10-06 - Modified: 2024-04-23 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/embracing-uncertainty-getting-comfortable-with-optimising-the-grey/ - Categories: Opinion, Trends This week's message:If you’re still trying to be ‘granular’, ‘maximise control’ or ‘join every dot’ with your digital advertising then all you are actually doing is inadvertently putting a cap on your potential growth. It’s time to let go.   I know it’s hard, I started PPC in a world where Exact meant Exact, Broad was the devil’s work and every touchpoint attribution was the holy grail, but those days are sadly gone. In order to achieve something transformational you need to embrace uncertainty across the board and get comfortable optimising the grey. The announcement last year that Google’s search share was under threat from TikTok (40% with gen Z) felt uncomfortable. The disruption almost felt like ‘they’ must just be ‘searching wrong’. But, with overall Google impressions down in numerous categories this year (in particular high Gen Z indexing areas) then this uncomfortable reality is something we are very quickly having to get comfortable with. Google’s actions over the last week have seen them introduce X to their Display network and work with TikTok to show Google results in their search feature. This is off the back of Instagram and TikTok videos being introduced to the SERP last year (or was it the year before? I lose track... ). They have also abandoned their attribution tool, spoken at length about the ‘messy middle’ and introduced the Demand Gen campaign type to Google Ads, which focuses on producing ads in spaces for those that buy on social platforms. All of Google’s moves in recent times have been to expand reach, to integrate in diverse and vibrant ways, let go of ‘exact’ tracking and embrace ‘holistic’ approaches. All of this done with AI based bidding frantically optimising in the background to achieve an advertisers goal. If you aren’t thinking, planning, creating and measuring with all of this front of mind then you will very quickly find yourself trapped bidding only on Brand, chasing a ROAS in Ads and wondering why your market share is dwindling and “where the hell did it all go wrong? ”. Embrace the change. Marketing was never meant to be an exact science - it’s a vibrant new world that, if approached correctly, could actually be your greatest opportunity in years. --- ### Found become ISO 27001:2013 Certified > We’re absolutely delighted to become ISO 27001 certified, a globally recognised standard for information security management systems. This achievement is a testament to our unwavering commitment to protecting our client and employee data and maintaining the highest standards of information security and we couldn’t be prouder. - Published: 2023-08-11 - Modified: 2024-07-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-become-iso-270012013-certified/ - Categories: Data, General News We’re absolutely delighted to become ISO 27001 certified, a globally recognised standard for information security management systems. This achievement is a testament to our unwavering commitment to protecting our client and employee data and maintaining the highest standards of information security and we couldn’t be prouder!   What does this mean for our clients? Operational excellence - our ISO certification demonstrates our ability to drive and maintain robust operational processes and showcases the culture we have instilled to embed, review, and evolve our businesses. Best in class - The ISO27001 certification is the most prestigious standard for information security management. Trust & Accountability - we prioritise trust and accountability in everything we do. Our certification offers the assurance that your valuable data is in secure hands. We take full responsibility for safeguarding your information and maintaining the highest level of confidentiality. Peace of mind - Our proactive approach to risk management ensures that our business operations run smoothly, protected from security incidents and potential disruptions. Giving our clients, team and partners peace of mind that their data is safe with us. Understanding ISO 27001:2013ISO 27001:2013 is a benchmark for creating and maintaining a solid Information Security Management System (ISMS). This framework gives us guidelines to establish, implement, and continually improve our information security controls and risk management practices.   Achieving ISO 27001:2013 certification was no small feat. It required meticulous planning, a comprehensive understanding of our information security risks, and the dedication of our entire team. The process began with a thorough internal audit to identify potential vulnerabilities and gaps in our security measures and following this assessment, we devised a comprehensive plan to address these weaknesses and implement best practices for data protection. The final stage was a rigorous external audit conducted by an accredited certification body. This audit scrutinised our ISMS to ensure its adherence to the ISO 27001:2013 standard. The auditors examined our policies, procedures, and practices to ascertain their effectiveness in safeguarding data and information assets alongside leadership and team interviews to prove that we were invested at every level. With immense pride, we successfully passed the audit, and Tomorrow Group was granted the prestigious ISO 27001:2013 certification. The Benefits of ISO 27001:2013 CertificationThere are many benefits to ISO 27001:2013 from structure and accountability through to future proofing our businesses. The key benefits include: Heightened Data Security: With the ISO 27001:2013 certification, our clients can be confident that their sensitive information is safeguarded with the highest level of security protocols.   Risk Mitigation: The ISO 27001:2013 standard emphasises a proactive approach to risk management. By identifying and addressing potential threats, we significantly reduce the likelihood of security incidents and data breaches. Regulatory Compliance: Many industries and regions have stringent data protection regulations. Achieving ISO 27001:2013 certification ensures that our company complies with relevant data protection laws, providing clients with added peace of mind. Business Continuity: ISO 27001:2013 encourages business continuity planning, ensuring that we can effectively respond to and recover from any security incidents, minimising potential... --- ### A Day in the Life: Harrison Wright > Harrison Wright (an Client Experience Manager here at Found) discusses his role and what his day-to-day looks like at our, London-based, digital marketing agency. - Published: 2023-07-31 - Modified: 2024-07-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/harrison-wright/ - Categories: Culture 1. My day starts with... The gym or a run... sometimes not (more often not as I’m more of a night owl than an early bird). Breakfast and a cup of coffee is important to help me through morning admin – checking emails, my calendar and writing out my to do list – this helps me get nicely set up for the day ahead. 2. In my team I... Don’t specialise in a specific channel, I get to work across all areas of the business which is fantastic for my own personal development. It’s also a very social team as we work with so many different people day-to-day, cross-team collaboration is a big part of what makes Found so special. 3. My role involves... Supporting with client retention, project management support, market research and data insights – mostly through our fantastic proprietary search tool, Luminr, made by our in-house data team. I’m very solutions focused in my approach to tasks, which is why I love my current role and how it isn’t bound to a specific service. This gives me and the rest of the team complete freedom when it comes to supporting our clients' needs and helping them grow. 4. I got into digital... . Because I did some broad work experience when I was 15 at the holiday company TUI for a week, where one of the days I sat in with their digital marketing team. I learnt about the basics of SEO and PPC which really sparked an interest in digital as a whole. Although talking about sunny holiday destinations constantly was enough for a week, not sure I could put up with that consistently working in gloomy British weather. Fast forward to early 2020 when I started at Found as an SEO Intern. I was part of the Sales and Marketing team until March 2021, when I went on to join the Growth team and I've now moved again to join our Client Experience Team. 5. My usual routine is... . Constant calls, whether that’s weekly catch-ups, exciting opportunity discussions or ideation sessions - there’s plenty more! BAU tasks as well such as assessing progress on various accounts, updating roadmaps or providing insight reports. These are good to crack on with when you’ve got a few hours call free. 6. Since the pandemic... I’ve really come to value the flexible working lifestyle. Don’t get me wrong, I prefer working in an office more often than not – having people to bounce ideas off and get quick support from is so useful. Having only worked as an intern for 2 weeks at the office before having to work from home during the pandemic, I really appreciate these sorts of perks that come with office life. 7. I can't get through the day without... A bit of music. The office is great as we have something on in the background all day whether that’s the radio or a playlist, usually a good mix too so there is something... --- ### How to use Reverse Image Search > Reverse Image Search is a powerful tool that enables you to search the internet using images instead of words. It allows you to find similar images, discover where your images are being used, and gauge their popularity. - Published: 2023-07-18 - Modified: 2024-04-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/how-to-use-reverse-image-search/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, SEO Reverse Image Search is a powerful tool that enables you to search the internet using images instead of words. It allows you to find similar images, discover where your images are being used, and gauge their popularity. It can be used to find specific images on the internet that are associated with an image that you already possess or to discover how frequently certain images are being used (or how popular they are). For example, you can use reverse image search to find multiple types of the same shirt but on different websites to see how popular it is among multiple retailers. The images that you use on your website (or social media accounts) could also be being used by other people without your permission. So, you can use a tool like reverse image search to see how and where your own images are being used on other digital platforms. How to Perform a Reverse Image SearchReverse image search can be done on various browsers like Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari, and Firefox. Here's how you can use it: Using a Desktop Browser Open images. google. com on your preferred browser. Click on the camera icon and select the "upload an image" tab. Choose the image file you want to search. OR... Drag and drop the image directly into the Google image search box. OR... Right-click an image on the internet and select "Search Google for this image. " Using a Mobile Phone (Chrome App) Open the Chrome app on your iPhone, iPad, or Android device. Tap and hold the image you want to search with until a box appears. Click on the option that says "search Google for this image. " Benefits and Limitations of Google Reverse Image SearchGoogle reverse image search offers several advantages for digital marketing purposes. It allows you to monitor the usage and impact of your images, identify linking opportunities, protect your intellectual property, maintain a distinct visual identity, and gain insights into contextual nuances. However, it's important to note that reverse image search has limitations. While it can show results from websites like Linkedin and Pinterest, it may not find images from platforms like Twitter or Instagram. By leveraging the capabilities of reverse image search, you can enhance your content marketing strategy, protect your work, and differentiate your website in a competitive landscape. It's a valuable tool for maintaining authenticity and finding higher-resolution versions of images to enhance your online presence. Found is a London-based multi-award-winning digital growth, SEO, PPC, Social and Digital PR agency that harnesses the efficiencies of data and technology and future-thinking to help clients grow their businesses online. If you have any questions or concerns about performing an action like a reverse image search, then the Found team is ready to help. Feel free to contact our team today. --- ### A Day in the Life: Will Harman > Will Harman (an SEO Account Director here at Found) discusses his role and what his day-to-day looks like at our, London-based, digital marketing agency. - Published: 2023-07-13 - Modified: 2024-07-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/will-harman/ - Categories: Culture 1. My day starts with... Putting together my to-do list, prioritising it and checking what I need to do for the day. I’m quite detail-focused so this really helps me get ready each morning. Granted this list almost doubles by about 11am but that’s what I enjoy about Found and being at an agency, constantly being on your toes. I should really invest in a pair of pointe shoes. 2. In my team I... Organise and work with a great team of executives to ensure the work we’re delivering is going to be top-notch and push them up Google’s rankings. Part of my role is helping to teach them and improve their SEO skills. I love it when they deliver amazing work and see their progression. 3. My role involves... Strategically planning clients SEO activity so that they'll meet their organic goals. I also head up CRO at Found so working on how they can improve their conversion rate. Lots of my job involves communicating with clients and making sure we’re driving them growth in the right areas of their business and helping them with wider digital marketing decisions. 4. I got into digital... . Because I studied marketing at Southampton university and honestly all of the ‘classic’ marketing lectures seemed a bit dated. It was the digital marketing lectures that really seemed cutting edge with new ideas and technology coming out all of the time. When it came to my work placement year I sat next to a colleague who was ‘The SEO Guy’ . I spent a few months pestering him and asking him loads of questions. That’s what got me into SEO. 5. My usual routine is... . Wake up at 6 and go to the gym, coffee and breakfast, to do list, attempt to complete my to do list in between thousands of client calls. Nonstop and I love it! 6. Since the pandemic... I’ve really missed the team and when I’m in the office and there are a few of us in, I absolutely love the buzz and how well we collaborate. 7. I can't get through the day without... My cracking team, the SEO team at Found has so many years of really great experience and is always there to help out. Oh and my to do list and several coffees. 8. What are your best memories at Found? We’ve had some excellent socials over the years I’ve been at Found, I really loved the summer social we did last summer. This was the first time we’d met up in person since the pandemic and so many people had joined who I’d only ever met over Zoom. I also vividly remember my first quarterly business review that I presented in, I won’t deny I was a tad nervous... 9. The thing I love most about my job... . Easy! Presenting the excellent work the team have been doing, and the results that follow, to clients during monthly meetings and quarterly business reviews. The sense... --- ### The 10 phases of planning a website > Planning a website properly is no easy feat. So, our experts have put together a list of the 10 phases you should work your way through as part of your website design planning process. - Published: 2023-07-11 - Modified: 2024-04-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-10-phases-of-planning-a-website/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, SEO The old adage ‘fail to prepare, prepare to fail’ has never been more applicable than during the process of building a website. If you don’t plan your website properly, then building it is going to be a messy process and your site may not be as efficient or effective as it could be. Planning a website properly is no easy feat. So, our experts have put together a list of the 10 phases you should work your way through as part of your website design planning process. 1. Understanding Your Audience To create a successful website, it's incredibly important to appeal to your audience by understanding their interests. Conduct thorough customer research, including methods like questionnaires, email surveys, and interviews, to gain insights into customer behaviour, requirements, and desires. Use this data to ensure that your website's design and functions cater to the user, ultimately increasing engagement and interest. If budget allows, consider monitoring how customers navigate the website and gather their feedback to identify areas for improvement. 2. Researching Your Competition Studying your competitors can provide valuable inspiration and help identify market gaps. Visit your main competitors' websites, analysing their strengths and weaknesses. Take note of their effective strategies and areas that need improvement but make sure to prioritise creating your own user-friendly design over a flashy upgrade of your competitors’. Striking a balance between aesthetic appeal and usability is crucial. 3. Developing an Effective SEO Strategy Incorporate a well-planned Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategy early in the website planning process. Conduct comprehensive keyword research, with assistance from an SEO agency, to identify relevant keywords and phrases for your industry. Use this research to create a targeted sitemap and develop content aligned with user search intent. Ensure your website brief includes SEO guidelines for search engine-friendly development. By implementing SEO best practices from the start, you can maximise your website's visibility and attract organic traffic. 4. Performing a Content Inventory If you're rebuilding an existing website, conduct a content inventory early in the planning process. Audit all current content to assess relevance, determine what needs rewriting or removal, and identify content gaps. Evaluate content from the user's perspective and consider factors such as purpose, target audience, last update date, author/owner, and quality rating. Then, categorise content as requiring no change, updates, or removal. 5. Resource Allocation and Coordination Ensure you have the necessary resources allocated for your website project. Properly assign people and dedicate sufficient time to meet deadlines. Consider key stakeholder availability during User Acceptance Testing (UAT) to prevent delays. Planning and coordinating resources in advance will ensure a smooth and timely execution of your website project. 6. Conducting Card Sorting Sessions Utilise card sorting sessions to determine the ideal information architecture of your website. Gather diverse participants, such as existing customers, staff members, or friends and family, to assist in this process. Participants organise your website's content into logical groups based on their understanding and preferences. Conduct both open and closed card sorting sessions for thorough analysis.... --- ### Found Table Ep.2 | Google Analytics 4 (2/2) > Today, we’re going to share the second half of our latest Found Table session with you; diving into the key benefits of transitioning over to GA4 and discussing the benefits of using GA4… - Published: 2023-06-28 - Modified: 2024-04-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-table-ep-2-google-analytics-4-2-2/ - Categories: Analytics, Google Algorithm Updates GA4 is coming our way as Universal Analytics will be sunsetting at the end of June. So, come the first of July, Universal Analytics is going to stop processing all data and it is imperative that brands are taking this super seriously and transition over to GA4 as soon as possible to ensure that they have accurate data to make judgments for their own internal marketing campaigns. So, today, we’re going to share the second half of our latest Found Table session with you; diving into the key benefits of transitioning over to GA4 and discussing the benefits of using GA4... How has putting GA4 on the agenda gone? Making sure that CMOs and key stakeholders take GA4 super seriously is a major priority for us at Found. Most big clients have seen the monster coming over the hill for years but a lot of people we’ve been speaking to have been pushing off fully adopting GA4. This is because so many businesses use Universal Analytics as their single point of truth across marketing and digital activity. So many other elements are plugged into that tool, the idea of switching over to a completely different platform (and amending the way that your business measures things) has felt so daunting that people have sort of kicked the can down the road. We’re quite fortunate, July of last year was the deadline for most of our clients to transition over to GA4, so we’ve been discussing the shift away from Universal Analytics with clients since well before then. We’re actually in a place where we can facilitate year-on-year comparisons for some of our clients (within GA4) already but we know that there are plenty of businesses out there that still haven't started to transition over from Universal Analytics yet. The reality is that the later you leave moving across, the more problems you're going to have. The earlier you migrate across to GA4, the easier your life will be;  For those that have already successfully transitioned over, we're seeing a lot of people (at all levels of business) use GA4 as their primary reporting dashboard. We’re hearing a lot of functionality questions from them, like: Where do I find this report? How do I see this?   Does this report (that I use to access frequently in UA) still exist in GA4? So it's just been a case of showing people what the new data presentation looks and how to best use it for their unique business focusses. The reality for everyone else is, as we've already said, come July you don't have a choice. You do have to adopt the tool as soon as you can. Fortunately, a lot of our clients are forward thinking and already there. It's just a case of helping them understand the full range of implications for (come July) when we can't use certain data, how they want to proceed. So, it's really been about making sure that we understand, amongst our clients’ teams, who needs... --- ### Found Table Ep.1 | Google Analytics 4 (1/2) > Come the first of July, Universal Analytics is going to stop processing all data so it is imperative that brands take this super seriously and transition over to GA4 as soon as possible. So, in this article we discuss the points amde in our recent Found Table session all about GA4. - Published: 2023-06-27 - Modified: 2024-04-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-table-ep-2-google-analytics-4-1-2/ - Categories: Analytics, Google Algorithm Updates GA4 is coming our way as Universal Analytics will be sunsetting at the end of June. So, come the first of July, Universal Analytics is going to stop processing all data and it is imperative that brands are taking this super seriously and transition over to GA4 as soon as possible to ensure that they have accurate data to make judgments for their own internal marketing campaigns. So, for this conversation today, we’re going to dive into the key benefits of transitioning over to GA4 and discuss the benefits of using GA4... What are the key takeaways from (and key benefits of) the platform in itself? So, Google Analytics 4 is the next generation measurement solution from Google. It's a lot more integrated in the Google systems and it brings together the two screens of measurement that we've never been able to accurately track together - the web and the app. So, for anyone that has real estate on both app and web, Google Analytics 4 is the first solution in its class, at enterprise level, that will unify those two streams of data. Another benefit that Google Analytics 4 brings is its predictive capabilities. We know that, with the gaps in the events that are introduced by the privacy controls, we have some work to do in finding missing sessions and the missing users. So, Google Analytics 4's predictive capabilities help us to just start filling those gaps. Another benefit is the fact that Google Analytics 4 has a new infrastructure that probably will not interest a lot of the users of the platform but (just to let you know) Google Analytics 3, which we all refer to as UA/Universal Analytics, was built on an infrastructure that was probably 20 years old and wasn't fit for purpose anymore. So, Google Analytics 4 comes with a big overhaul of everything that is just behind the scenes. What are the key challenges when it comes to migrating over from UA to GA4? Google Analytics 4 introduces different concepts and different ways of looking at measurements. Before it was all about sessions and users and loads of types of hits, that no one really understood, right now it's all about the user and it's all about the events that those users do on the website. So, everything is an event. There are a lot more things to track, more opportunities to track every single interaction that the user makes with the website or the app and we have everything centred on the user. Which makes it much easier to unify user journeys at user level throughout individual user sessions and throughout their interactions. With these events in GA4, it's much easier to organise the tracking for a website based on every single interaction with its elements. Some people will not call the full overhaul of the tools a benefit in and of itself because of the way it looks at the moment (it's still a nascent product) but Google are still working... --- ### Setting up reporting in GA4 > We're going to talk through the process of setting up GA4 and explain some of its key reporting features. - Published: 2023-06-16 - Modified: 2024-05-09 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/reporting-in-ga4/ - Categories: Analytics, Data, Google Algorithm Updates What is GA4? GA4 is the next generation of Google Analytics that is replacing Universal Analytics (which is sunsetting on 1st July 2023). Built on new technology, GA4 aims to provide holistic measurements and predictive insights that are built for a privacy-centric future. Perhaps most importantly, Google Analytics 4 is going to be able to help your business make more informed digital optimisation decisions by providing your team with >Setting Up GA4 The first step in setting up GA4 is to create a new property using Google's GA4 Setup Assistant. This process is similar to Universal Analytics, and the Setup Assistant will guide you through the process of creating a new property. It may take up to 30 minutes for data to appear. To see if the property is set up correctly, visit your website and check the Real-Time report to see if there is any activity. Reporting options in GA4 Once you have set up GA4, you can start using its powerful reporting capabilities. GA4 offers a range of reporting options, including; A Reports Snapshot A Real-Time report Life Cycle reports User Explorer reports Just to name a few! Main types of report The Reports Snapshot is excellent for quickly glancing over important metrics and answering questions such as where new users are coming from and how many there are. The Real-Time report is great for viewing activity on your website that is happening right now and seeing where users are coming from in terms of source and location. By default, all GA4 properties will start with the Life Cycle and User Explorer reports. The Life Cycle report focuses on understanding the user journey, from acquisition to retention, including engagement and monetization. The User Explorer report helps you understand your customers/users in more depth, including demographics and devices. HOW TO move over TO GOOGLE ANALYTICS 4 Making the switch to GA4 may not be a straightforward process. You should start by reading Google’s resource for guidance but (for a smoother transition) we highly recommend seeking assistance from an expert. Found is a London-based multi-award-winning digital growth, SEO, PPC, Social and Digital PR agency that harnesses the efficiencies of data and technology and future-thinking to help clients grow their businesses online. If you have any questions or concerns about moving to GA4, the Found team is ready to help. Feel free to contact our team today. --- ### The main differences between GA4 & UA > With the switch from Universal Analytics (UA) to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) happening on the 1st of July 2023, we're keen to explore the main differences between GA4 and UA. - Published: 2023-06-14 - Modified: 2024-04-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-main-differences-between-ga4-ua/ - Categories: Analytics, Data, Google Algorithm Updates Google Analytics has been the go-to tool for website owners to track and analyse website traffic, user behaviour, and other key metrics for over a decade. However, with the switch from Universal Analytics (UA) to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) on the 1st of July 2023, many website owners are wondering about the differences between the two, and which one is better. In this blog post, we're going t explore the main difference between GA4 and UA... The most significant difference between GA4 & UAUniversal Analytics uses a single tracking code to collect data on website traffic and user behaviour. This data is organized into dimensions (such as pageviews, sessions, and bounce rate) and metrics (such as the number of unique visitors, page views per session, and average session duration). These dimensions and metrics are used to generate reports on user behaviour and website performance. In contrast, GA4 uses an event-driven model to collect data on user behaviour. An event is any action a user takes on your website, such as clicking a button or submitting a form. These events are organized into categories, actions, and labels, providing a more granular view of user behaviour. GA4 also includes machine learning models that can analyse user behaviour patterns to generate insights into the customer journey. Other differences between GA4 & UAGA4 allows for greater data privacy A significant difference between GA4 and UA is in the way they handle data privacy. GA4 is designed to be a more privacy-focused set of tools, with an emphasis on giving users more control over their data. For example, GA4 allows users to opt out of tracking and delete their data. UA, on the other hand, does not offer these privacy features, which may be a concern for some users. GA4 has its ability to track users across multiple devices and platforms. GA4 allows you to track user behaviour across your website, mobile app, and other connected devices, giving you a more comprehensive view of user behaviour. This feature is especially useful for businesses that have a strong mobile presence or that use multiple platforms to engage with customers. GA4 has machine-learning capabilities. GA4 includes an AI-powered insights feature that uses machine learning to identify trends and patterns in your data. This feature can help you quickly identify areas where you can improve your website or app to provide a better user experience. What GA4 currently lacks One of the main disadvantages of GA4 is the lack of support for some features that are readily available within Universal Analytics. For example, GA4 does not support custom dimensions and metrics, which allow you to track specific user actions or events on your website. This means you may need to modify your tracking strategy if you rely on custom dimensions and metrics to analyse user behaviour. Another disadvantage of GA4 is the lack of support for some third-party integrations. For example, some marketing automation tools and tag management systems may not be fully compatible with GA4. This means... --- ### UA vs GA4: WHAT YOU RISK FROM NOT SWITCHING > Understand the impact of not switching to Google Analytics 4 this July and see how it compares to Universal Analytics. Read more at Found. - Published: 2023-06-07 - Modified: 2024-05-02 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/what-you-risk-from-not-switching-to-google-analytics-4-ga4/ - Categories: Analytics, Data, Google Algorithm Updates Analytics plays a critical role in driving success for modern businesses. And for years, Universal Analytics has been a trusted tool that helped organisations make >Google Analytics 4.  Why is Google Analytics Changing? In its official announcement, posted last year, Google stated: Source: https://support. google. com/analytics/answer/11583528? hl=en But what could be the reason behind this decision?   Universal Analytics has been around for over 10 years and it was built for a different time - when brand experiences relied exclusively on a single platform and the collection and sharing of people’s data wasn’t regulated as strictly as today. Now regulatory changes, browser privacy controls and users’ focus on privacy and data control are shifting the paradigm in which data is being consumed, shared and measured. All of these actions are introducing gaps in the way web analytics work. To overcome this, Google created this brand new analytics platform (well, not so new now) which uses predictive metrics to give us a better understanding of the data we collect.  What Will Happen If You Don't Switch? What you should know is that all standard Universal Analytics properties will stop processing new hits on 1st July, 2023. From that point, Universal Analytics users will be able to access previously processed data for 6 months, until October 1st, 2023. But after that, it will be inaccessible. If you don’t make the switch in time, you’ll have to deal (without any doubts) with:  1. Data Loss And if you’re still wondering what data you will lose, the answer is simple - ALL OF IT. And by all data, we mean all data, including: Conversion data Website traffic data Website engagement data Marketing attribution data 2. Missing Your Year-Over-Year Data Your historical data will not automatically show up in GA4 when you turn it on.   If you didn’t make the switch yet, you will lose the critical ability to compare performance year-over-year. The sooner you start implementing the new platform, the more data you will have to compare. 3. Platform Familiarity GA4’s reporting interface is different, so it will take time to familiarise yourself with it. Switching to GA4 too late can leave you behind, while everyone else will have the advantage of already understanding GA4  and how to actually use it. The sooner you implement it, the sooner your teams can get used to the new platform before they really HAVE TO get used to it. So make sure to act on time. How Do The Two Platforms Differ? Google Analytics has been the go-to tool for website owners to track and analyse website traffic, user behaviour, and other key metrics for over a decade. However, with the switch from UA to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) on the 1st of July 2023, many website owners are wondering about the differences between the two, and which one is better. In this blog post, we'll explore the differences between GA4 and UA, as well as their advantages and disadvantages. While both versions offer powerful analytics... --- ### What is Google Analytics 4? > Google Analytics 4 is the next generation of Google Analytics, replacing Google's Universal Analytics tool, which is sunsetting on 1st July 2023. - Published: 2023-05-31 - Modified: 2024-07-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/what-is-google-analytics-4/ - Categories: Analytics, Data, Google Algorithm Updates Google Analytics 4 (commonly referred to as 'GA4') is the next generation of Google Analytics, replacing Google's Universal Analytics tool, which is sunsetting on 1st July 2023. Built on new technology, GA4 aims to provide holistic measurements and predictive insights that are built for a privacy-centric future. Perhaps most importantly, Google Analytics 4 will help your business make more informed decisions by providing you with >what the future of Analytics might look like, and now the time has come. The suite of Universal Analytics tools, that we’re all used to using now, is going to stop processing new data on the 1st of July 2023. So it is vital that your business is prepared for this switch. WHY YOU SHOULD CARE ABOUT GA4 So, why should you be working to prepare our business for GA4? 1. Universal Analytics will no longer exist Perhaps the most important reason you should care about GA4, is that the old analytics will no longer be available or pull in fresh data. GA4 takes over on the 1st of July 2023, so setting it up before then is crucial. Universal Analytics customers will be granted an additional three months, to October 1, 2023. From that point, properties will become read-only meaning that users will still be able to access UA properties for historical data analysis for another 6 months. After this period the data in UA will be deleted. 2. It offers you a greater understanding of customer behaviour GA4 provides more accurate and detailed customer behaviour data through advanced machine learning algorithms. GA4 tracks event-based actions, such as users clicking on a button and video plays, regardless of whether they happen on web or in applications. The new analytics alert you of relevant trends in data, allowing you to predict changes and adapt accordingly.   3. You'll get insights about your clients and site in a faster timescale GA4 can identify trends and patterns in customer behaviour, providing more actionable insights to improve campaign performance and drive better results. 4. You're going to have more control over your reporting GA4 encourages custom reports to be created rather than premade ones. This helps to keep the dashboard neat and tidy, making it easier to navigate and present to clients. HOW TO START USING & REPORTING WITH GA4 It's essential to understand how to use this powerful tool to track and analyse website traffic, user behaviour, and other key metrics that can help you improve your online presence and get found. Getting started is simple, and follows a similar procedure to Universal Analytics. Google’s GA4 Setup Assistant will show you exactly how and where to create a new property. Once this has been done, it can take up to 30 minutes for data to appear. To see if the property is set up correctly, visit your website and look for activity in the Real-Time report. Now, speaking of reporting, GA4 offers a range of options to enable holistic and insightful tracking. It is different from Universal... --- ### Google Marketing Live 2023: 6 Top Announcements > There were lots of announcements made at this year's Google Live event and we know that (sometimes) it can be overwhelming to hear all of the news in one go. So, we've had our Paid Performance experts through all of their notes and highlight the 6 most important announcements, so that we could discuss them with you all here. - Published: 2023-05-26 - Modified: 2024-04-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-marketing-live-2023-6-top-announcements/ - Categories: General News, Google Algorithm Updates There were lots of announcements made at this year's Google Live event and we know that (sometimes) it can be overwhelming to hear all of the news in one go. So, we've had our Paid Performance experts through all of their notes and highlight the 6 most important announcements, so that we could discuss them with you all here. 1. Improved InsightsUntil now the insights tab has been limited in how deep we can dig into the data and how much we can learn from it, with only 2 set date ranges of last 7 or 28 days. With the updated insights tool, Google is changing this with the ability to choose custom date ranges, download the data and explore historical insights. On top of the updated PMax insights tab, Google are also bringing us improved product and asset insights. All of these updates will allow us to better understand what’s driving performance and use that information to understand what customers are looking for, how they’re engaging with our ads and what we can do to keep improving performance. 2. AI-Powered Campaign WorkflowsGoogle Ads is bringing AI to our campaign workflows to help create more engaging assets, ads and campaigns that are relevant to what consumers are searching for. Soon, we’ll be able to ask Google for suggestions directly in the Google Ads platform when building new ads or campaigns. From conversational inputs, Google will use AI to suggest keywords and assets including headlines, descriptions and images. These can then be reviewed and edited by our PPC specialists before being published to the campaign, allowing AI to help us but we still get that final input to make sure everything aligns with our client’s tone of voice and message and is relevant to what we’re advertising. AI isn’t just coming to campaign builds, asset creation in PMax is also integrating AI. Based on a few inputs about the business and product(s) being advertised, Google will provide us with suggested assets pulled from the site and existing assets from previous campaigns. On top of this, we’ll also be able to describe the creative we want and using AI, generate new assets. Creative can be expensive and time consuming for businesses to create at scale so these tools could potentially help us alleviate some of this workload both for us and our clients. 3. Brand restrictions for broad matchBroad match keywords have become more and more a part of our accounts over recent years but brand campaigns have been one area where we can’t use broad match to its full potential where we want to make sure we’re only showing ads to customers searching for our client’s brand names and not on generic or competitor terms. This update will allow us to use broad match keywords for brand campaigns, adding brand lists to restrict the search terms the broad match keywords will be eligible to show ads for to only the brands we choose. 4. Updated Customer Acquisition & Retention GoalsNew customer... --- ### 5 SEO tips for blog content in 2024 > We share our highlights of what you should look to do to make the most of your blog content in 2024. - Published: 2023-05-25 - Modified: 2024-07-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/5-seo-tips-for-blog-content-in-2023/ - Categories: Content Marketing, Digital PR, SEO With a flurry of updates, opinions and information flooding the SEO world at the moment, it can be difficult to understand what it all means. One thing for certain is the increasing importance of a fully fledged blog content strategy. Our SEO Executive (Jana Kukebal) gives her highlights below of what you should look to do to make the most of your blog content in 2024. 1. Put Search Intent in Focus Creating articles based on high-search volume terms is ok, but what if that's not what your readers are actually looking for? Quality over quantity. Always! It's better to reach one reader and help them rather than reaching ten readers with zero outcome. ✅ Explore and understand your audience ✅ Conduct industry research, not just keywords research ✅ Identify your readers' pain points and provide them with practical solutions2. Organise Information Plain block of text or a few well-titled paragraphs with bulleted lists? Surely, you'd chose the latter option. It's much easier for readers to grasp information when it is well-organised. Unfortunately, many people still overlook this crucial aspect, but let's not be those people! ✅ Add structured data             ✅ Ensure your titles are relevant and descriptive ✅ Use bulleted or numbered lists3. Create Concise Content When faced with a problem, especially one that requires an urgent solution, most people prefer a quick one-sentence answer rather than a 15-minute-long video or a lengthy article. So why would you burden your readers with long, irrelevant content? ✅ Keep it short and sweet ✅ Place the most important information at the beginning of the article ✅ Highlight the main idea and key points4. Consult Experts Instead of pretending to be an expert in every subject, reach out to actual experts who can provide unique and genuinely helpful content. It may be challenging and require some investment, but both -readers and Google - will appreciate it! ✅ Expand your network and connect with various experts ✅ Seek an expert's opinion on relevant topics (people LOVE sharing their opinions) ✅ Make sure you credit the expert5. Use Artificial Intelligence We have amazing opportunities opened up with AI tools, so why not to use them? ! AI can accelerate processes and help with research, ideas and proofreading. But there are a few rules to follow: ✅ Always fact-check. AI can fool you. ✅ Review AI-generated content carefully and edit it. Avoid blind copy and paste. ✅ Add a personal touch. AI is great but the reader wants to hear from you, not a robot. If you want to discuss optimising your business' blog with our SEO experts, then please reach out to start a conversation with us today. --- ### Google Search Generative Experience: The Future of Search > Last week, Google held its annual developer conference, Google I/O, and we got a glimpse into the newest plans for an ever-evolving Search landscape with the introduction of Search Generative AI. So, let's discuss it... - Published: 2023-05-17 - Modified: 2024-07-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-search-generative-experience-the-future-of-search/ - Categories: Google Algorithm Updates, SEO Google’s Search Generative Experience Announcement Last week, Google held its annual developer conference, Google I/O, and we got a glimpse into the newest plans for an ever-evolving Search landscape with the introduction of Search Generative AI.   Google’s been using AI technology behind the scenes in search for years, e. g, RankBrain, Natural Language Processing models such as BERT and MUM, Image/Video/Voice Search, to name a few. Now, we’re being introduced to an updated large language model called PaLM 2, new ways to find useful content and generative AI being featured at the forefront of the SERPs.   Google’s constant mission over the years has been to find ways to improve user experience, which we can see reflected in the countless algorithm updates tailored towards UX, so it would make sense that the SERP gets an experience-inspired revamp! Main changes we can expectAI Integrations: Screenshot from: Google I/O, May 2023 First up, we have AI-powered snapshots powered by LLMs including PaLM 2 and  advanced MUM. These panels will be shown at the top of the SERP, only for relevant queries, and Google has described them as a “jumping off-point”, so that users can then interact conversationally with the result and explore the topic further. The AI snapshot was shown to include an overview, pros and cons as well as additional information/links to respective organic sources. In Cathy Edward’s IO talk, she gives the example of searching for a new bike using the query, “good bike for a 5 mile commute with hills”. The AI powered snapshot intuitively returns important considerations to make when buying a new bike, followed by products alongside their description, reviews, current price, images and USP which is informed by the Google Shopping Graph over Search. Just this example alone shows how important it will be to provide as much useful, up to date and relevant information as possible, especially in a competitive eCommerce market. Business owners should look to shift their focus beyond the traditional 10 blue links in the SERP, as CTR would naturally be impacted by this change e. g category pages could see a decrease in CTR, but product pages could see a rise if hosted in the AI panel.   These snapshots will also mean a new aspect is added to local search, as options and context will be provided and comparisons can take place between results. Perspectives:Another new feature will be the Perspectives filter. These will be focusing on pulling multimedia results such as videos and images which have been posted in places such as Q&A boards or social media, which means a lot more visibility opportunity for content creators. The introduction of this filter just goes to show how visually centred search is becoming! We’ve already discussed how TikTok became a search engine rival and how Instagram is showing personalised content to users to keep up, so it’s natural that Google would be jumping on the same bandwagon to diversify search results. A lot more weight is being placed on... --- ### GOOGLE'S THE MESSY MIDDLE MARKETING MODEL > In this article, Harry Calvin Williams (Business Director | Found.) talks through the complex entanglement of advertising and consumer purchase decision making, and how this resulted in him choosing just one product out of the many thousands of options available online. - Published: 2023-04-13 - Modified: 2024-07-03 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-messy-middle-marketing-model/ - Categories: Consumer Behaviour, Digital Marketing, Opinion I BOUGHT SOME LUGGAGE I recently bought some new luggage. Some very nice luggage actually. For the last eight years, I’ve used a Canterbury gym holdall as my weekend / carry-on bag which was finally starting to show its age and so it was time to replace it. I knew I wanted a hard shell suitcase which would satisfy most budget-airlines strict cabin bag criteria, and I had also been sold on the concept of a built-in USB battery pack that I’d seen on some Instagram ads previously. Beyond that, I had no real preference or brand affiliation in mind. A few weeks later and I am walking out of the AWAY store in Covent Garden with a matte black Carry-On, featuring the optional battery pack.  As a marketing professional, I wanted to retrace my consumer footsteps and try to better understand how I got to this point. Luggage really hasn’t changed much since the rise of affordable air travel, and brands in the space are very competitive. So why is it that I ended up purchasing from AWAY? We would all like to think that we thoroughly research our ‘considered purchases’ and that this results in us choosing the best possible product for our needs and budget. This is rarely the case. In this article, I will talk through the complex entanglement of advertising and consumer purchase decision making, and how this resulted in me choosing just one product out of the many thousands of options out there. THE MESSY MIDDLE Throughout the history of the sector, people have tried to understand and model how marketing affects consumers but I particularly like the recent work carried out by Google’s consumer insights team. The team wanted to understand contemporary shopping behaviour from the perspective of the consumer and so observed several hundred hours of shopping tasks, covering 310 individual journeys. Shoppers were tasked with researching a product for which they were currently in-market. These journeys were captured using screen capture video, and the shoppers narrated their actions. After behavioural scientists had analysed all these journeys and the qualitative data, they made an attempt at describing what they’d seen. Drawing on a Post-It Note, they put a purchase trigger at the top, and the purchase itself at the bottom and illustrated a typical consumer journey in the middle. What they’d found was that there are no ‘typical’ journeys. Instead, there’s a confusing web of touchpoints which they named ‘The Messy Middle’. Consumers navigated backwards and forwards between different brand websites, search engine result pages, videos, social media and so on. Similarly, previous data from Google highlighted over 900 digital touchpoints over a three-month period in one consumer’s car buying experience. TURNING IT INTO A MARKETING MODEL Interesting, but not particularly useful.   Fortunately, the Google team didn’t stop there. Despite the apparent uniqueness of each consumer’s journey, and the huge variety of different digital touchpoints and channels used, there was some pattern in what they observed. Adding some structure, they developed... --- ### The Client-Agency Relations Essentials: Trust & Transparency > In this article, we'll look at why a positive relationship with your marketing agency is critical for brand success. - Published: 2023-03-24 - Modified: 2024-12-16 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/trust-transparency-the-client-agency-relations-essentials/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, How to, Opinion The role of a marketing agency in business success is undeniable. Marketing agencies provide their clients with the knowledge, resources, and strategies required to increase their brand awareness, revenue, and hit KPI’s. However, simply hiring a marketing agency is not enough. Businesses must cultivate a positive connection with their agency in order to maximise the value of the partnership. In this article, we'll look at why a positive relationship with your marketing agency is critical for brand success. The Benefits of a Good Relationship with Your Marketing AgencyA strong client–agency relationship can bring a number of benefits to your business. Some of the key advantages of a strong partnership include: 1. Improved Collaboration A positive working relationship with your marketing agency creates an environment in which you and your agency work as a team. When you view your agency as a strategic partner rather than a service provider, you are more likely to improve communication by sharing information, insights, and feedback that will assist your agency in creating better campaigns. In turn, your agency can provide you with valuable feedback and insights to help you make informed marketing decisions. 2. Better Communication Another key outcome of a good working relationship with your marketing agency is improved communication. This is an important benefit to consider because a marketing agency can only deliver results if they understand your company's goals, target audience, and marketing objectives. When communication is efficient and effective, your agency can deliver campaigns that are more likely to produce positive results and are aligned with your business goals. 3. Greater Creativity Good communication and collaboration improve teamwork, and teamwork improves creativity. Working with your agency to brainstorm ideas, test new concepts, and push the limits of what is possible, you can create campaigns that stand out from the crowd and capture the attention of your target audience by combining your industry knowledge with the creativity of your agency. 4. Increased ROI The ultimate goal of any marketing campaign is to produce a positive return on investment (ROI). A good working relationship with your marketing agency can help you achieve this goal by ensuring that your campaigns are tailored to your company's needs and designed to produce the best results possible. When your agency has a thorough understanding of your company and its target audience, they can create campaigns that are more likely to elicit positive responses from customers, generate leads, and drive sales. Building a Strong Relationship with Your Marketing AgencyNow that we've established the importance of having a good relationship with your marketing agency, let's look at some strategies for developing a strong partnership. 1. Define Your Expectations Before hiring a marketing agency, you should have a firm grasp on your company's goals, target audience, and marketing objectives. This will allow you to clearly define your expectations and communicate them to your agency. When your agency understands your goals, they can tailor their services to meet your specific requirements and deliver campaigns that are in line with your... --- ### 2025 Best Practices for Domain Migration > Migrating a website to a new domain or changing its structure can be a daunting task. It requires caution and attention to detail to avoid any negative consequences, such as lost traffic and lower rankings. So here are some best practice guidelines to follow as you gear up for your next site migration… - Published: 2023-03-13 - Modified: 2025-02-27 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/2023-best-practices-for-domain-migration/ - Categories: SEO Migrating a website to a new domain or changing its structure can be a daunting task. It requires caution and attention to detail to avoid any negative consequences, such as lost traffic and lower rankings. Today, we want to discuss the best practices for site moves, including separating domain changes from other modifications, being mindful of misconfigurations, creating a backup and a detailed plan, and monitoring the site's performance. So here are some best practice guidelines to follow as you gear up for your next site migration... 1. Create a Backup and a Detailed Plan Before making any changes to your website, you need to ensure that you have a complete backup of the whole site and its content stored somewhere. This backup can be useful in case of any unforeseen issues during the move. You need to create a thorough and detailed plan of your proposed site move; including a comprehensive timeline of the changes and the necessary steps to be taken. Your migration plan should include a checklist of all the necessary tasks to be completed before, during, and after the move. Don't forget: communicating your migration plan with all stakeholders involved in the site move is essential. 2. Separate Domain Changes from Other Modifications One of the main issues with combining a domain change with other modifications is that it can create confusion for both search engines and users. For example: Search engines use the URL structure to understand the hierarchy of a website and the relationships between different pages. Changing the URL structure and domain simultaneously can cause search engines to take longer to understand the new structure, leading to traffic loss and lower rankings. To minimize the risks associated with site moves, Google's Gary Illyes recommends breaking them into smaller pieces. Instead of making all the changes at once, he suggests separating domain changes from other modifications as much as possible. For example: If a website is moving from "example. ch" and "example. fr" to "example. com," Illyes recommends moving "example. fr" first and waiting before moving "example. ch. "3. Communicate the Site Move to Users and Stakeholders Communicating the site move to users and stakeholders is crucial in managing expectations and minimizing any potential negative impact on the site's traffic and rankings. Inform others of the changes being made and the expected downtime, if any. Make sure to provide updates during the site move to keep everyone informed of the progress. 4. Identify and Debug Misconfigurations Promptly Another crucial factor to consider during a site move is the presence of misconfigurations such as incorrect redirects. These errors are common during domain changes and can cause traffic loss if not corrected promptly. Google's John Mueller highlights the importance of identifying any errors and debugging changes promptly to minimize the recovery time. There is no guaranteed timeframe for a full recovery if you lose rankings and traffic during a domain change. Recovery time can vary depending on the complexity of the changes and the severity of... --- ### Reading Recommendations from World Book Day 2023 > For World Book Day last week, our staff went on social media to recommend books to their online networks. We thought it’d be a good idea to collate their personal recommendations here, in a single blog post, for you. - Published: 2023-03-07 - Modified: 2024-04-03 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/reading-recommendations-from-world-book-day-2023/ - Categories: Culture, Digital Marketing, General News, Opinion, Trends For World Book Day last week, our staff went on social media to recommend books to their online networks. We thought it’d be a good idea to collate their personal recommendations here, in a single blog post, for you. So, here are all the books that our digital marketing experts recommend reading this year (and snippets from their individual LinkedIn posts explaining why). "I recently read David Aaker's 'The Future of Purpose-Driven Branding' and found it a really useful read... my friend (Sara) was kind enough to send me a copy of the book and I couldn't put it down - it's a must read for any brand marketers out there! " You can grab a copy of the book here. "Two stand out books for me, that have inspired my passion for career development at Tomorrow (Found. Braidr & Disrupt Marketing), helping people to own their career, and making it accessible to everyone, are the brilliant ‘The Squiggly Career’ and ‘You Coach You’ by Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis. Full of practical tools and ideas for action, they’re a must for anyone wanting to explore their career and skill sets. " You can grab a copy of ‘The Squiggly Career’ here and a copy of ‘You Coach You’ here. "Every colleague or client I get into a geeky sales discussion with receives a whole pitch on why they need to purchase this book now. It teaches you not to get into buckets with crabs, animals are the best prospectors and how to follow a bank robbers advice to find money! " You can grab a copy of the book here. "I am completely obsessed with anything around marginal gains and it's something that got me into CRO and I use the theories and examples for client work. The case studies in this book are brilliant and really delve into what it takes to achieve high performance. Matthew Syed is basically my hero. " You can grab a copy of the book here. "This book does well at breaking down the complex task of branding into consumable chunks. It guides you from planning right to deliverables in an honest and engaging way. " You can grab a copy of the book here. "Radical Candor by Kim Scott analyses how to be a good boss. Scott's argument is that we need to be completely honest with our colleagues without offending them. The book lays out what should have been obvious to me but I just happened to miss the mark completely. I have to admit, without realising it I was practising manipulative insincerity. Scott's work really has transformed the way I interact with my colleagues and I recommend this to anyone: people with direct reports and people looking to move to a management position. " You can grab a copy of the book here. "Imposter syndrome is something that is prevalent in the corporate world and often stops people trying new things and taking risks so I wanted to share 'Osho... --- ### TikTok is becoming the 'New Google' for Gen-Z > 40% of Gen-Z prefer using TikTok and Instagram over Google to search. What does this mean for digital marketers and how can brands ensure they aren’t left behind? - Published: 2023-02-07 - Modified: 2025-02-25 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/tiktok-is-becoming-the-new-google-for-gen-z/ - Categories: SEO, Social Media 40% of Gen-Z prefer using TikTok and Instagram over Google to search. What does this mean for digital marketers and how can brands ensure they aren’t left behind? 'Social search' is the term coined to describe using social media platforms to search for things, in place of search engines. Recently, we have seen a growing trend of consumers using TikTok and Instagram to search for recommendations, learn about current events and much more. Recent trends show that 'social search' is on the rise Some of the main reasons for using social media are to find content and research what to buy, especially amongst Gen-Z. Short videos and bulleted infographics are the new way to share knowledge, and it’s both quick to create and digestible to read or watch. Young people have grown up consuming content on what to wear, how to create a routine and where to eat without having to search for any of these things it is no wonder that we have collectively realised almost anything could be found on social media. Research shows that 50% of 16-24 years olds use social media to research brands instead of search engines, and each month more people visit social media networks than they do search engines. How can brands adapt to social search in 2025? As new ways of using social media become established, brands need to stay on top of it. Luckily, social search is of the simple trends to implement. 57% of social media users are more likely to claim they have learnt practical life skills from social media than from university, Brands need to use this opportunity to help position themselves in front of their target audience. As people are increasingly using social media as a search tool or creating searchable content, that solves a relevant problem on channels such as TikTok it is more critical than ever for brands looking to increase their awareness and followers in 2025. Over 1 in 5 accounts followed are companies and brands that users are considering buying from, and this metric can increase if brands utilise social search strategically. A few ways to optimise for social search include using alt text on creative assets, geotagging posts and creating a descriptive caption.  Social search is here to stay From my perspective, as a Gen-Z digital marketer, I can see social search becoming more prominent, and it could be one of the top trends of 2025 as a whole. The most impactful way social search can be utilised is when it is paired with influencer content to help maximise clicks and engagement. This would also make it easier for brands to direct what they want their influencers to cover, so the content can be discovered easily when searching for relevant keywords, so the content can get in front of the target audience. This also makes it easier for social media users to find exactly what they are looking for and get direct links to the products or services they need much more... --- ### Joining the Flexa100 for 2023 > We've come 11th in this year's Flexa100 - an independently verified listing of the Top 100 most flexible companies to work for! - Published: 2023-01-26 - Modified: 2024-04-03 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/joining-the-flexa100-for-2023/ - Categories: Culture It’s been a great start to 2023 for Found – not only is it our first year as a ‘flexified’ business (as part of the Tomorrow Group), but we've come 11th in this year's Flexa100 - an independently verified listing of the Top 100 most flexible companies to work for! We are absolutely delighted to be recognised in the Flexa100 as it validates that the way we work is truly flexible and reflective of the way that our team want to work. We believe in creating a working environment where our team can thrive and can do their best work – no matter where they are, as well as having flexible hours, allowing our team to get that work/life balance that is so fundamental to our wellbeing. Our people are at the heart of everything we do, and that mindset, alongside our values, really allows us to create a unique working environment for our people. We can’t wait to continue our flexible journey and are already looking at what else we can do! Congratulations to the entire team! Special thanks for Flexa for hosting us last night for the Flexa100 awards. It was inspiring to be in a room with so many flexible working champions! --- ### Google Optimize Sunsetting > It’s recently been announced that Google is sunsetting its A/B testing platform Google Optimize on September 23rd 2023. So, let’s talk about what that means for your business and what you’re going to need to do before September rolls around. - Published: 2023-01-23 - Modified: 2024-07-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-optimize-sunsetting/ - Categories: Analytics, CRO, Data, Google Algorithm Updates It’s recently been announced that Google is sunsetting its A/B testing platform Google Optimize on September 23rd 2023. So, let’s talk about what that means for your business and what you’re going to need to do before September rolls around. Now, Google is sunsetting Google Optimize this year because it’s merging the functionality into Google Analytics when the transition from Google Analytics 3 (Universal Analytics) to Google Analytics 4 (GA4) happens this summer. If you don’t know much about the imminent shift to GA4, then we strongly recommend you read our article outlining the change here.  In it’s official announcement, posted Friday 20th January, Google stated that: Source: https://support. google. com/optimize/answer/12979939 Now, integrating Optimize into GA4 is a totally logical thing for Google to do. It’ll allow users to have a singular view of their website's performance and bring their data and optimisation tools into the same place.   Whilst we may not know the full ins and outs of this newly announced change just yet, there’s plenty to be optimistic about regarding this improvement to Google’s GA4 offering. Potential benefits of Google Optimize sunsetting:1. It should improve the user experience of GA4 By merging Optimize into GA4, Google will be giving Analytics users a more comprehensive view of their website's performance and will be enabling them to access Google’s optimisation tools more easily than they can right now. 2. It will simplify existing workflows Because users of both Universal Analytics and Optimize will no longer have to switch between multiple platforms to access different optimisation tools (once the integration of the two tools into GA4 is complete) their optimisation processes should become more efficient. 3. It should result in better data integration By integrating Optimize into Google Analytics, Google is making it easier for users to track and analyse behaviour throughout the customer journey (along the conversion funnel). This is going to provide GA4 users with greater insights into how users interact with their websites, and where they drop off. But, the benefits of integrating Optimize features into GA4 doesn’t diminish the fact that we are definitely losing Google Optimize this year. So, whilst we’re keen to be optimistic about the change we also want to provide you with advice on how to move forward this year, knowing that you won’t have Google Optimize come October. To prepare for this sunsetting, you should:1. Create segments for your on-going tests over inside Google Analytics Your Optimize experiment data is available over in Google Analytics, you just need to follow the step-by-step instructions in this guide to find your experiment data in Analytics and discover what you can do with it.   2. Download your historic test performance data You need to make sure that you have a record of all the work that you’ve done to optimise your site to date. The last thing you want is to lose all of the incremental insights you’ve gained over the years when Google Optimize is no longer accessible to you. 3. Examine... --- ### A Beginners Guide to ChatGPT in SEO > We’ve taken a look into ChatGPT and some of the best ways we can utilise it to make us more productive.  - Published: 2023-01-19 - Modified: 2024-04-23 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/a-beginners-guide-to-chatgpt-in-seo/ - Categories: AI & Machine Learning, SEO ChatGPT is a hot topic right now. With artificial intelligence (AI) continuing to enter our lives more and more, as well as our workplace, it is crucial to understand what it is, what it is capable of and how best to utilise it. We’ve taken a look into ChatGPT and some of the best ways we can utilise it to make us more productive.   What is it?   ChatGPT is short for Chat-based Generative Pre-Trained Transformer. It is a type of AI called a natural language processing (NLP) model that has been developed by the team at OpenAI. This form of AI has been built to understand written and spoken language and generate responses based on what the user inputs into it. Having been trained on a mammoth amount of text data it is able to understand the content and meaning of the words and phrases inputted and generate extensive, highly relevant responses.   Here’s how ChatGPT explains itself:  Source here. What can it do?   ChatGPT is the upgrade of it’s little brother InstructGPT. This AI was previously trained to, you guessed it, take instructions and directions from people and deliver answers to questions.   ChatGPT incorporates this technology into itself which allows it to take instructions from humans and create outputs based on those instructions.   It can write essays, code, generate ideas for content and keywords and much more provided you input clear instructions.   How can it be used for SEO?   There are a lot of potential SEO uses for ChatGPT that can help speed processes, generate ideas and improve output, here are some we found particularly useful.   1. Keyword Generation and Mapping  While we still rely on our usual SEO tools for keyword research, utilising ChatGPT can be a quick way to get a list of starting points and suggestions to then research in more detail. It can even group them together to make them easier to analyse, for example by grouping them based on semantic relevance. Source here. 2. Content Briefs and Outlines for Copywriters Content briefs can be a lengthy process and so using ChatGPT to generate your outline based on content topic and desired keywords can speed up the process. Once it has created an outline you can go through and populate it with the nitty gritty details to then send off to be written. ChatGPT is also a great place when looking for some initial blog ideas. 3. FAQs Another use of ChatGPT to save you some time is by getting it to generate a list of FAQs based on a certain topic. Once you have a list you can cross reference them with search volumes and intent to ensure they are relevant to your product/service page before building them out.   Source here. 4. Scheme Mark-up, nofollow & Canonical Tags Yes, ChatGPT can even write code for you to save you time. Providing it with the instruction to generate a nofollow or canonical tag for a certain... --- ### Our Organic Search Team's 2022 Highlights > We asked our Organic Search experts; What have they actually learnt from 2022? What have they seen this year that's got them really excited? And (when they reflect on 2022) what do they consider to be a real SEO highlight or development? - Published: 2022-12-21 - Modified: 2024-04-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/our-organic-search-teams-2022-highlights/ - Categories: SEO As 2022 draws to a close, it's natural for each and every one of us to look back and reflect on the year that's just passed us by. But when 2022 is far behind us (in our rear-view mirror), what are the actual learnings that we want to take with us and draw value from in the future? What moments or insights do we really want to hold on to as we move forward into (a hopefully prosperous) 2023? Well, we asked our Organic Search experts just that question. So, what have they actually learnt from 2022? What have they seen this year that's got them really excited? And, when they reflect on 2022 what do they consider to be a real SEO highlight or development? Starting at Found! Jokes aside, I think it has been the so many Google updates that we have had this year. However, by far the most exciting thing coming from Google is MuM. Although it was announced last year, so not necessarily 2022, it is coming to live this year with all Google new updates and ever changes in the SERPs. MuM makes the tasks of many SEOs way more difficult but also more exciting. Multisearch and Multilingual, what is there not to be excited about? Everybody talks about ChatGTP as something that will kill SEO, only that Google has been investing in Natural Language Processing for years now, so I can’t wait for people to discover that ChatGTP is nothing compared to what Google has!  It’s not a secret that “Content is King”, but the further we go, the more we see how important it is to write high-quality content for people and not for search engines. It is indeed hard to balance between SEO writing and writing for people, but this is one of the characteristics that defines a professional SEO team. This year has shown me that if your content doesn’t have enough Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (Hello to Google’s E-A-T algorithm! ), stuffing the content with keywords won’t help to rank higher. If I had to choose between no keywords in H1 but really valuable content or lots of keywords but not much sense – I think you know what I’d go for! Having been watching the rise of AI (well, technically it’s machine learning, but that’s way less catchy) copywriting with some mild concern for my job, what I’m taking away from this year is that Google has my back, for now.   With the roll-out of the helpful content update, and their continuing support of ‘people first’ language, we can rest assured that skynet won’t be taking over quite yet. That is to say, instead of creating content with a keyword only focus, Google wants to see valuable content created that will resonate with your intended audience. While they might be using machine learning to police the content, copywriting for SEO will remain, mostly, human.  October was my second venture to BrightonSEO and although there were plenty of... --- ### Google E-E-A-T: What It Is & How It Affects SEO > E-A-T has been with us for a while, so let’s do a refresh of what that means. - Published: 2022-12-16 - Modified: 2024-12-16 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/whats-the-new-e-in-e-e-a-t/ - Categories: Google Algorithm Updates, SEO It is very appropriate of Google to significantly update their Content Rater Guidelines when everybody is losing their minds about AI content creation and speculating again how content is dead. Although the timing does seem convenient, this update is quite clearly linked to the rest of the updates that Google has been rolling out during the year. Product review updates, Helpful Content Updates... they've all been related to content. However, while all of these seem new, E-A-T has been with us for a while, so let’s do a refresh of what that means. What’s E-A-T? Anybody who has spent long enough in SEO will remember when E-A-T was first introduced (back in 2014), but it was only in 2018 when everyone started taking it seriously because it was confirmed that it had become part of Google Core Algorithm. As laid out by Google Content Rater Guidelines, E-A-T is translated into a website content by using: EXPERTISE: To demonstrate Expertise, your content must be written by a person with in depth knowledge of the subject. Your website must represent professional experience on the topic. "A verified beauty chemist writing about best hyaluronic acid serums. "AUTHORITY: It is not enough to just write the content in a professional way, but you need to demonstrate your (the author) Authority in the topic. "Showing the author credentials, job title, bio and relevant experience. "TRUST: However, in the era of anybody who can write anything, or copy anything from the web or even use AI to create your content, you need to convince your user to Trust your word.   "Adding links to linkedin bios, having visible content info, or even making sure your writers engage in forums or social media will reassure your users. " What’s E-E-A-T? Something we have noticed quite a lot in the last waves of Google updates (product review, helpful content etc) is the rise of personal experience content. Videos in TikTok and YouTube or direct feedback about restaurants and companies have become the king of content. And it is not strange that users prefer to read first experience reviews of products or services. Users constantly feel that whatever information is found on the internet has been written by companies to trick them into buying something, into hiring them and more and more often content is written for “SEO purposes”, not to help users. The solution is to make sure that within the algorithm real content is prioritised, always considering content that has Experience, Expertise, written with Authoritativeness and (overall) that users can consider Trustworthy. Image taken from pag. 26 from Google Search Evaluators Guidelines. Google says Trust is the most important characteristic of your content and it says: “The type and amount of Trust needed depends on the page, for example:  ● Online stores need secure online payment systems and reliable customer service.   ● Product reviews should be honest and written to help others make informed purchasing decisions (rather than solely to sell the product).  ● Informational pages on... --- ### Intentional Communication - Future of Work Skill > Learn why intentional communication is crucial for the future of work. Discover how it can enhance collaboration and success in the workplace. - Published: 2022-11-27 - Modified: 2024-11-06 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/future-of-work-skill-intentional-communication/ - Categories: Culture In the second part of my future skills series we are going to be talking about intentional communication. As many of us have realized the way that we used to work is unlikely to go back to what we used to know, with 72% of companies believing that they offer a hybrid working style post pandemic. With this, we need to have much more intentional communication with people in different places, at different times to make sure the right message is delivered at the right time, which is a skill that needs to be developed. Firstly lets take a look at how communication has changed during the pandemic. We have changed from newsletters and town hall meetings to more distributed and personalized communication. Leaders have realized the need to adapt their communication at a time there is great anxiety and uncertainty. We have had to increase our wellbeing check ins and daily team check ins to feel connected to one another. Without seeing people and being able to sense a change in their behavior or energy, we have had to harness our emotional intelligence for better communication and relationships. We’ve had to change our team building and onboarding of new team members to be virtual and make more of a conscious effort to check in and be available. We’ve had to communicate more regularly with changing business decisions whether that is continuing to work from home, furlough, redundancy, changing business focus, business performance to name a few – things have changed frequently and we’ve had to be agile with our response and how we communicate that quickly and confidently. So now what? How is our communication going to change for the future? The Social Leadership 76% of people said their trust in leadership increased during the pandemic because of more frequent communications around business updates, check ins and more, so team members are going to expect this going forward. No longer will employees accept just newsletters signed off by the CEO, they will expect their leaders to be more social and personal in their communication, and they will expect more regular sharing of information. No longer will just positional authority be enough but authority and leadership will underpinned on what is created and shared. Mindset, skills and behaviour will be key for leadership positions to create engagement and collaboration across businesses. Emotional Intelligent Communication Credit: https://unsplash. com/@quinoal We’ve had to be extra sensitive with our communication during the pandemic with heightened compassion to how our team members are feeling and how a message will be received. Leaders will need to continue to strengthen their emotional intelligence especially with their communication; they need to be more intentional with the format of a message, the time, the right platform; whether that is how you deliver feedback to you team member, how you capture different audiences, how you communicate important business updates, emotional intelligence will need to be applied. Even from a diversity and inclusion standpoint which has become a huge focus for... --- ### A COLOSSAL F*CUP: The reception of BrewDog’s Anti-Sponsorship campaign across social media > Experts discuss BrewDog's World Cup sponsorship, social media reactions, and the firm's response to the criticism it received. - Published: 2022-11-10 - Modified: 2024-11-06 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/a-colossal-fcup-the-reception-of-brewdogs-anti-sponsorship-campaign-across-social-media/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, General News, Opinion, Social Media In case you’ve managed to miss it, BrewDog’s sponsorship of the Football World Cup in Qatar (and discussion about the ads that they’ve launched surrounding it) is a massive focus of social media chatter this week. The Scottish brewer recently launched its OOH ads (stating ‘First Russia, then Qatar. Can’t wait for North Korea’) in an ‘Anti-Sponsorship’ capacity but has been urged by social media users to get its own house in order before taking aim at others. BrewDog has, admittedly, pledged to share all of the profits from the sale of its ‘Lost Lager’ during the tournament with organisations fighting human rights abuse but the firm still plans to show World Cup matches at its branded pubs and bars. BrewDog is even going to be selling its products in Qatar whilst the games are on. Backlash to the firm’s blatant hypocrisy has been widespread across socials but BrewDog founder James Watt’s response, to the valid criticism shared online (referring to people’s comments as the “usual Twitter hate”), has sparked even more discussion about the campaign online. So, we’ve asked some of our experts to share what they think of all this (BrewDog’s sponsorship of the World Cup in Qatar, the reaction to the campaign across social media, and the firm's response to the criticism that they've received) with you. Like almost all alcohol-bev brands, BrewDog’s primary target demographic is 18-25 years old (‘new drinkers’ who haven’t yet determined their favourite beer) and this campaign shows a blatant lack of understanding of what Gen-Z consumers care about. On the surface, the message appears great - it takes a principled and moral stance that would normally resonate with the brand’s consumers. The way that this has shown BrewDog to be a company that talks the talk but doesn’t bother walking the walk when it comes to morality will irrevocably dissuade young people from ever engaging with the Brewer’s products again. A lot of the impetus behind this campaign is good old fashioned ‘any publicity is good publicity’ thinking but nowadays, social media won’t accept that - the justified reactions to this campaign have restored my faith in modern consumers (slightly). Christie Clark (Marketing Manager | Found. )The concept of the anti-world cup campaign is nice, but the problem is the execution. They cannot position themselves as an ‘anti-sponsor’ while still promoting the cup games in their bars.   Brewdog has a lot of brand reputation work to do after their multitude of scandals, and speaking out on human rights sits a bit strangely given the reports on how they have historically treated their own staff.   Overall the response on social media has been that people are finding the campaign quite opportunist and shallow. If they had truly committed and linked up their communications strategy with their ground strategy for bars, then it may have hit better. I feel they missed a trick by failing to create ‘World Cup Safe Spaces’ in their bars, showing alternative entertainment on the TVs or... --- ### Content response: Are Gen Z less resilient? > 'I have a fear that Gen Z are the least resilient generation that I've ever seen.' - Steven Bartlett. Let's discuss. - Published: 2022-10-04 - Modified: 2025-04-07 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/content-response-are-gen-z-less-resilient/ - Categories: Culture, Opinion Episode 176 of Steven Bartlett’s ‘The Diary Of A CEO’ podcast is currently doing the rounds as a hot topic of discussion because of comments made during the session about Gen Z. Here, we’re going to have one of our team member discuss their thoughts on Steven Bartlett’s comments with you all. Episode 176 of Steven Bartlett’s ‘The Diary Of A CEO’ podcast is currently doing the rounds as a hot topic of discussion because of comments made during the session about Gen Z.   In the episode, titled ‘Simon Sinek: The Advice Young People NEED To Hear’, Steven Bartlett (British entrepreneur and founder of Social Chain) states: 'I have a fear that Gen Z are the least resilient generation that I've ever seen. ' The internet is now full of people either agreeing with the sentiments that Steven shared during the session or critiquing his stance and generalisations about a social group he himself has no part in. We’ve talked about the content internally and some of our specialists feel really passionately about the topic so today we’re going to have one of our team member discuss their thoughts on Steven Bartlett’s comments with you all. Generation Z (or Gen Z) is anyone who was born from 1997-2012 according to Wikipedia. Before I begin my argument against the devilishly handsome and successful Steven Bartlett, I’ll disclose that I am not technically a fully paid member of Gen Z I am actually a Millennial (born in 1995). I do however feel a duty to jump to the defence of my younger sibling and Gen-Zers around the world. So, I want to pull out a few quotes from the interview with Simon Sinek and challenge them directly. 1. 'TikTok is telling people what work is like'This is an interesting one, I actually think that Gen Z probably believe the opposite, I’d argue that they understand the difference between social media and realty much better than their older counterparts do. Why? Because they see it every day, surely, they can decipher a fake or staged video from the real thing? Surely, they know that the corporate world isn’t all about “muffins” and “pottery classes”. Though, that does sound quite idyllic, I must say... 2. 'Look at the storms my father went through'Now, I don’t know what his father did for work, I’m going to guess that he wasn’t in digital marketing, but we get our fair share of storms and stresses to deal with in a Marketing agency. Angry clients, not hitting forecasts, short deadlines etc but I think younger generations can contextualise these things better. Senior staff know what’s achievable within a certain timeframe and know when it’s time to push back. I think it’s simply the case that nowadays companies are better at dealing with storms when they come now and that younger members of the team are getting guidance and help that they might not have had in years gone by. Is that a bad thing? Absolutely not. 3. 'They can hoist a main sail in a storm'As a lover of Russell Crowe’s Master and Commander, I'm a fan of this nautical expression (used by Simon in the interview). I do, however, feel the urge to push back on this comment in defence of Gen Z. How do you know that... --- ### Performance Max: A new age of paid search marketing > Google has recently launched its newest campaign type; Performance Max (PMax). - Published: 2022-09-12 - Modified: 2024-12-16 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/performance-max-a-new-age-of-search/ - Categories: Google Algorithm Updates, Paid Search (PPC) Performance Max now allows users to create one campaign that's tied to multiple key business goals by using machine learning to continuously improve performance across a variety of Google channels such as Discover, Display, Gmail, YouTube and more. Did you know that 59% of consumers find their favourite brands whilst performing totally mundane tasks online (like watching videos on their mobiles, catching up on their interests, or reading through their emails)? It's with this insight that Google has recently launched its newest campaign type; Performance Max (PMax). What is Performance Max? Performance Max now allows users to create one campaign that's tied to multiple key business goals by using machine learning to continuously improve performance across a variety of Google channels such as Discover, Display, Gmail, YouTube and more. What are the main advantages of using Performance Max campaigns? On average, when you upgrade a Smart Shopping campaign to PMax, users can see a 12% increase in conversion value at the same or better return-on-ad-spend. PMax allows marketers to provide clients with more in-depth insights into their audiences, creatives, and other conversion drivers (including consumer insights and trends that might be impacting campaign performance). PMax makes marketers more aware of the customers' full path to purchase because, with current campaigns there’s a usually an attribution gap that leaves teams not always aware of the customers' full journey to conversion. What are the disadvantages that can arise from using PMax? Machine learning (like that employed by PMax) is only as good as the information that you provide it with, so continual testing of a variety of texts, images and audience signal combinations are essential to ensure optimal campaign performance. Some downtime can come after launching a performance campaign - this is where advertisers really need to speed up their potential learning period by making sure adding in audience signals. So, even though Performance Max has massive potential to make managing campaigns (across a variety of channels) significantly easier, specialist teams like ours really need to have time and space to think about how best all of the assets that get employed are optimised - with a big onus on testing new creatives and keyword-types. This means that, when afforded the opportunity to fully map out a comprehensive and strategic testing approach, we (as PMax enthusiasts) are now able to benefit from having a much better understanding of customers' full paths to purchase and provide our clients with more in-depth analyses of industry trends and consumers behaviour. PMax now makes it easier for experienced teams like ours to run campaigns across multiple channels so we need to be thinking about how we can best utilise the new data we have to hand in order to drive performance and help our clients stand out from competitors. Interested in trialling out Performance Max at your business? Get in touch with our Paid Search experts now! --- ### The future of link building: Trends and Strategies for 2025 > Explore link building trends and strategies for 2025. Learn how to adapt your tactics to create high-quality links and enhance your SEO performance. - Published: 2022-08-31 - Modified: 2024-11-06 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-changing-world-of-link-building/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, Digital PR Link building is an important part of both Digital PR and SEO strategies. Securing relevant and authoritative links back to site to improve rankings in search engine results pages and drive brand awareness and traffic is something brands regularly come to us for support with.    As with anything in the digital space, the way in which links are secured, how they are measured and the results they drive has changed an awful lot over the past decade and will continue to do so over the next 10 years. Our team believe now more than ever, it’s important to create a sustainable organic link building strategy that will deliver results now and in the future.   Many years ago, link building tactics used to focus on things such as directory submissions, chasing broken back links and guest blogging... manually placing each link. This, not surprisingly, was not sustainable or delivering best results, so something needed to change! In addition, the changes to how Google handled links in the 2012 Penguin update helped propel the rise in content marketing and digital PR in more recent years and brings us more towards where we are today.    Over the years, link building has evolved into Digital PR where we use tactics that will earn us valuable links, activity such as news jacking, news stories, thought leadership, and useful evergreen content such as guides and reports. There is a whole host of factors that inform which tactics we carry out for clients, such as the news agenda, Google updates, the target media as well as competitor activity.   What does this mean?  So, there’s good and bad news. I’ll start with the bad, securing good quality organic coverage with links is getting harder for many reasons; - competition, savvy media outlets and paid opportunities to name a few. The good news is that there are things we can do as PR and SEO experts to adapt to maximise results and ensure we are delivering the best for the brands we work with.    We believe we need to future proof our digital PR and link building strategies, so they last a lifetime and are able to sustain the elements that are constantly changing.   So, how do we make link building a sustainable success for our brands?   We focus on 4 key areas:   Relevancy   Creating genuinely interesting and useful content that makes us indispensable   Tactics that will deliver results   Metrics that matter   By concentrating our strategies around these points, we ensure we create and carry out link building strategies that have staying power and deliver results.   Let’s look at the points in a bit more detail...   Be and stay relevant - ensuring you have content that is relevant to your audience as well as your target media is more important than ever. Google won’t reward content or campaigns that it doesn’t see as relevant, so what’s the point!    Create content with a purpose – media outlets are savvy and know the power their... --- ### Are Marketers more interested in Elon Musk than the looming impact of a cookieless future? > Analysis from Found's sister company (Braidr) has shown that most CMOs fail to grasp the importance of addressing the inevitable consequences of a future without cookies. - Published: 2022-08-09 - Modified: 2024-04-03 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/are-marketers-more-interested-in-elon-musk-than-the-looming-impact-of-a-cookieless-future/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, General News, Social Media Analysis from Found's sister company (Braidr) has shown that most CMOs fail to grasp the importance of addressing the inevitable consequences of a future without cookies. Braidr has been analysing the Twitter profiles of more than 15,000 CMOs (and similar professional roles across the UK and US) over the past 12 weeks and the data that they've collected shows that --- ### TikTok SEO: How to Optimise TikToks for Google > Discover how to optimise TikTok Content for Google with our handy guide. Read our top 5 TikTok SEO techniques to help grow your brand. - Published: 2022-07-25 - Modified: 2024-12-16 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/five-ways-to-to-optimise-tiktok-content-for-google/ - Categories: SEO Discover how to optimise TikTok Content for Google in this short blog. Read our top 5 TikTok SEO techniques to help grow your brand. TikTok has undoubtably cemented itself as a dominant force in the social media world over the last few years. Currently maintaining over one billion daily users, it saw a significant growth in popularity during the pandemic and shows no signs of slowing down. As well as being a platform that allows users to express themselves creatively, it has also given companies the chance to promote their products or services in a new way, which when used correctly can be a great tool for boosting brand awareness and exposure. These growth opportunities have recently been increased by the fact that Google is now indexing TikTok’s video content, allowing users to search videos with ease. Whilst TikTok does provide an exciting platform for brands to use to grow, it is vital that the content produced on the platform is sufficiently optimised for Google in order to produce significant results. In this article, we will explore five ways in which TikTok can be used as effectively as possible when it comes to digital marketing and SEO. How to optimise TikTok content for Google using these top 5 TikTok SEO techniques. 1. Don’t Underestimate Hashtags The importance of keywords is well-known when it comes to SEO. Essentially, the strategy of using relevant keywords in your website metadata and on-page copy increases brand discoverability. The same techniques can be applied to hashtags when it comes to TikTok. Although hashtags can sometimes be seen as something to just add on to fill out the description of content, a well-considered hashtag strategy is vital for optimising TikTok content for Google. Use hashtags that are relevant to the audience you are trying to attract, but not so popular that it will be difficult to stand out amongst the competition. Finding and targeting a niche is the best way to do this, and you can do this by using a keyword rank checker. It is a good idea to target long-tail keywords, as these are likely to have less competition when it comes to search volume and will therefore be easier to rank for. 2. Make use of TikTok SEO Analytics TikTok analytics tools, such as TikTok Pixel, provide detailed information your audience demographics and general behaviour, as well as which content of yours gets the most interaction. Paying attention to these statistics and tailoring your content to fit them accordingly will allow you to develop a more effective strategy for optimising your TikTok content, so it is essential to make use of them. 3. Identify Trends Spending time on TikTok as a user is a great way to understand the trends that are gaining the most traction. Once you have identified the trends, in terms of the style of videos being made and the audio being used, you can begin to take advantage of them for your own content optimisation. An easy way to do this is the ‘For You’ section will show the popular videos in a given category, which you can analyse depending on what your... --- ### Found thoughts: Google’s ‘Reimagining Search - Any Way, Anywhere’ talk > Every day, people look to Google for the answers to billions of questions: some simple, many increasingly complex, and others that can’t always be put into words. - Published: 2022-07-12 - Modified: 2024-12-16 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-thoughts-googles-reimagining-search-any-way-anywhere-talk/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC), SEO ‘Help people get the information they need; no matter what they’re looking for, no matter how they ask’ Pandu Nayak, Google Fellow (speaking at the Cannes Lions Festival 2022) Every day, people look to Google for the answers to billions of questions: some simple, many increasingly complex, and others that can’t always be put into words. Google’s mission to organise the world’s information is timeless, but expectations for what a search engine can do have never been higher, and how Google responsibly deliver on that mission keeps on advancing and evolving. This year, on the Cannes Lions Lumiere stage, Pandu Nayak (Google Fellow and one of the foremost leaders in search) talked to attendees about the history of search and the latest AI innovations that are enabling entirely new ways for users to explore information. He discussed and displayed Google’s new ‘multi-search feature’ which allows users to combine text and image searches (so a user could photograph a bottle of wine and use that, along with the work ‘sparkling’ to see if the brand carried a sparkling version of that particular product). As digital performance experts who help brands get found online, multi-search is something that our team are having a serious think about. With Google working to make it possible for users to search any way, anywhere what do we need to be working on to ensure that brands get found when prospective clients look to find them? As multi-search is already being tested in the US (and is soon to be rolled-out worldwide), some of our experts took the time to sit and review Pandu’s talk recording and share their thoughts on what multi-search is going to mean for our business, our clients, and the world of search. We’re in another phase of search evolving, where Google is taking more steps towards becoming a one-stop-shop online portal rather than a search engine alone; providing us with an extensive range of data, info, services, and resources which should (in theory) better our every day – from booking a cab to restocking fridges without any direction. With search advancing at the rate it is, we’ll soon enough enter a world where we can get things done without having to visit a website at all. E-comm/retail wise, Google will align themselves a lot more to Amazon. As a result of this transition, it feels obvious that brands need to start investing in the why, nailing their brand narrative & diversifying themselves from an already saturated market & truly understanding their key audiences/needs. Chantelle Duff (Biddable Account Director, Found. ) With 15% of searches being entirely new everyday, the ever-changing search environment means that we all need to be keeping our eyes out for new visible trends and adapting our SEO strategies accordingly. The future of search might include searching by voice, camera or other new technologies. We don’t know which ones Google will prioritise and deem most valuable and how that will that impact SEO strategies, so this ever-changing search landscape... --- ### TOTAL SEARCH: THE HOLISTIC FUTURE OF DIGITAL MARKETING > The term 'Total Search' may be one that you're already familiar with. If not, the concept is probably something you'll have already seen but didn't know you had.  - Published: 2022-06-09 - Modified: 2025-01-27 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/total-search-the-holistic-future-of-digital-marketing/ - Categories: SEO The term 'Total Search' may be one that you're already familiar with. If not, the concept is probably something you'll have already seen but didn't know you had.   What is Total Search? Put simply; it's the combination of multiple performance marketing channels into one entity. When SEO and PPC are used as growth tactics they can become siloed and sometimes even compete to drive the most value. The way that value is measured can also differ with channels reporting on different metrics, such as paid sessions and organic sessions or CPC and organic clicks.   But now, with a alt="" /> A graph showing the combined search volume of several terms relating to 'total search' from Google Keyword Planner. It's hard to pinpoint when the concept of Total Search began, but it's been around for several years now. And our proprietary search tool, Lumnir, was built on this very idea; a total search view of a Search Engine Results Page, or SERP, landscape. How Luminr is being used to achieve Total Search. Found's biggest contribution to the idea of Total Search is our very own SERP tool. It was imagined by the brilliant Head of Data Science, James Wolman, and brought to life by our data team. Luminr crawls the page 1 SERP results of a specific set of keywords based on the relevance to the brand. When crawled, every part of the page is assessed: Organic results Top-of-page and bottom-of-page ads Any other in-SERP features e. g. featured snippets, people also ask, knowledge panel, map pack, shopping etc. Which order do these results appear in? An example of a page 1 results page, with multiple in-SERP features. A click-through rate is assigned to each result based on which feature it appears and how far down the page it sits. We also use a unique total search metric called SERP Real Estate, which is calculated using the CTR and the keyword's search volume. This data is then aggregated to spot the best opportunities for ranking based on SERP features. It can also look at how well certain sites or even pages are performing and how they increase or decrease in visibility over time. The tool gives you insights into the entire state of the SERPs, not just organic or paid results. That's why it's great for the total search concept; you can measure your whole digital performance in the same place rather than looking at organic visibility on one tool and ads impression share on another. While the idea of a Total Search future seems inevitable, it's still a work in progress. We will continue to strive towards this seamless integration with our growth tactics, the in-house collaboration of our performance teams and the continued development of Luminr. If you're keen to learn more about how Luminr can help you achieve total search dominance, please get in touch today. --- ### Google Shopping features for Ecommerce advertisers > Discover the latest Google Shopping features to enhance targeting, boost visibility, and drive sales. Learn how to optimise ecommerce campaigns effectively. - Published: 2022-05-20 - Modified: 2025-02-25 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/what-are-the-latest-google-shopping-features-for-e-commerce-advertisers/ - Categories: Ecommerce, Paid Search (PPC) To win back valuable market share from Amazon, Google has rolled out a series of shopping-related initiatives and updates over the last two years, starting with announcing that the Google shopping tab would open up to free listings. Their efforts appear to be paying off, with new data from Morgan Stanley discovering that 61% of consumers now start their shopping searches on Google, up from 54% in May 21, leading to an increase in Google shopping transactions. With Google Marketing Live just around the corner, we'll soon have more insight into how shopping will continue to evolve, but several new features have already been revealed that retailers can take advantage of. Trusted Store Badge Google recently announced the Trusted Store Badge, a blue checkmark displayed alongside ratings & reviews to assure consumers they're shopping with a reputable business. This presents a big opportunity for smaller retailers and challenger brands to grow, with initial tests showing that the badge delivers increased traffic to online stores. The trusted store badge is earned based on delivery speed, delivery & return costs and return windows. Retailers should take advantage of this and focus on delivering a superior online shopping experience to gain a competitive advantage in search results and customer satisfaction and retention. Photo by Rupixen from unsplash Retail Search for E-Commerce  Google has developed "Retail Search", a new product that integrates Google's advanced search technology with a retailer's on-site search function. This will enable brands to leverage Google's understanding of search query context and user intent to improve on-site customer experience. It also includes Google's image search capabilities, which would need significant investment for a brand to develop itself. Retail Search could prove a more efficient way for medium-sized retailers or those with large inventories to provide a more straightforward shopping experience and ultimately win more sales. Visual SERPs, Visual Search & Multi-search Google confirmed last month that it had increased visual results on mobile search. Displaying larger product images in a grid format and larger images within text results. The same change is being tested on desktops, as are full-width video results. But, rollouts of either are not confirmed as of yet.   This update is solely within organic search at the moment. But with the push towards performance max campaigns, we'll likely see a similar evolution within the ad space.   Additionally, although still a very small percentage of total Google queries, Google Lens searches have tripled in the last year and are expected to continue to grow. This could be accelerated with the rollout of "multi-search" in the coming months, allowing users to add text queries to their image searches through Google Lens to narrow down their results.   In the future, it's clear that retailers & brands won't be able to rely solely on traditional text & shopping formats. To remain competitive, they will also need effective visual assets. In the fast-paced ecommerce world, ordinary strategies won’t keep you ahead. Found's Everysearch™ approach revolutionises digital marketing with innovative tactics... --- ### SEO for Reputation Management > As well as the ability to increase brand awareness, generate leads and sales SEO can also play a key part in demonstrating and controlling your brand reputation. - Published: 2022-05-12 - Modified: 2024-04-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/seo-for-reputation-management/ - Categories: SEO As well as the ability to increase brand awareness, generate leads and sales SEO can also play a key part in demonstrating and controlling your brand reputation. For most businesses branded search queries are likely to make up a significant portion of searches used to find your site and consumers new to your brand may be searching for additional information about your company when making a purchasing decision. In addition to ranking first for your own brand name there are other elements on branded Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS) that can influence consumer perception.   If the other listings showing on your brand SERPs convey a negative view of your business this can have a significant impact on trust and user behaviour particularly for those unfamiliar with your brand.   This article examines the steps you can take to help optimise your branded SERPs and improve your online reputation. Identify queries of concern At the start of any reputation management campaign it is important to understand the current lay of the land.   The first step in this process is to identify specific search queries of concern.   These are likely to be queries where unfavourable websites are ranking in prominent positions. Search queries of concern will typically be: Brand e. g. “yourcompanyname” Brand + generic e. g. “yourcompanyname reviews”, “yourcompanyname scam”, “yourcompanyname + ” There are several data sources which can help you to identify potential result pages to evaluate: Google Ads query report Google Search Console performance report The search terms present in Google’s auto-suggest feature Third-party keyword research Extract and classify ranking URLs Once you’ve identified search queries of potential concern it’s time to fetch more data to benchmark the current situation. You’ll want to benchmark the ranking of your own website on the results page for each query as well as take note of the other URLs which show and their present position. For each URL you’ll then want to undertake: Sentiment analysis - is the result positive, neutral or negative to your brand?   This can be taken further by expanding the scale to more touch points to highlight the most toxic results. Ownership analysis - is the result owned (controlled), earned or uncontrollable. This will give you an overview of the most prominent URLs in your brand space and ownership and sentiment classification can be used to inform priority URLs and search queries for action. Except in extreme cases you’ll typically find that there are just a small number of prominent detractor or offending URLs which appear repeatedly across a range of branded and brand + generic search queries. Build out your content to target branded search queries Ensure that your own website targets all common queries related to your brand.   Don’t allow others to capture position 1 rankings for any term that includes your brand name. The process to follow is: Identify top branded queries Benchmark your current ranking performance Undertake a gap analysis to identify where you do and don’t have... --- ### Found recognised as a Great Place to Work - Published: 2022-04-29 - Modified: 2024-05-10 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-recognised-as-a-great-place-to-work/ - Categories: Culture It’s been another fantastic year for Found, and for the first year, as Tomorrow Group submitting in the Great Places to Work certification. We are thrilled to announce that not only did we place 22nd in the Great Places for Wellbeing 2022, but we have also ranked 6th in the overall Great Places to Work 2022 for medium sized businesses. That’s 4 places up from last year and a real coup for the whole team at Found that continually work so hard to create an inclusive, fun and adaptable working environment. The last two years have been challenging for multiple reasons, but what we love is how much we have learned and changed for the better as a business. Not only having to move towards hybrid and remote working, but considering how we continue to offer the best support for our employees regarding their mental & physical health, motivation, and engagement with the business. Throughout Tomorrow we have so many fantastic initiatives for togetherness, team work and promoting inclusive and dynamic working, that we really feel this recognition is thoroughly deserved, and truly reflects the hard work that every single one of our people commits consistently. We continue to offer regular check-ins, flexible working hours and social events (when possible! ), to keep everyone happy, healthy and motivated. We pride ourselves on our strength and resilience, and promoting our culture of trust with our people. Team work and collaboration are truly at the heart of everything we do, and we are so proud to be recognised as one of the top businesses in the UK to work with. "I’m beyond delighted that we have ranked 6th place in the Great Places to Work UK Best Workplaces 2022! It’s been another phenomenal year at Found and Disrupt, not to mention the recent launch of our new data and technology business, Braidr. People are the heart and soul of our business, so it makes me incredibly proud that this recognition is because of our team; who they are, what they do, how they feel, and what we can – and do - achieve together. Absolutely pleased as punch for everyone. "Tina Judic Here's to the rest of 2022, and continuing to climb up those rankings in 2023! --- ### Google Analytics 4. What does the future of Analytics mean for you? > What does the future of analytics hold for you? Explore our guide on Google Analytics 4 and stay ahead today. - Published: 2022-04-27 - Modified: 2024-09-18 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-analytics-4-what-does-the-future-of-analytics-mean-for-you/ - Categories: Analytics We are witnessing a new exciting, yet challenging, step into the future of analytics. Google is sunsetting Universal Analytics on July 1, 2023 to make way for Google Analytics 4 (GA4) – the newest technology, improving every day, but changing a lot of analytics paradigms and practices. Universal Analytics customers will be granted an additional three months, to October 1, 2023.   From that point, properties will become read-only meaning that users will still be able to access UA properties for historical data analysis for another 6 months. After this period the data in UA will be deleted. This is a major shift in how data is collected, stored and filtered so you’ll need to accommodate, learn the new interface and understand the new concepts. Just make sure this learning process starts TODAY. If you’re still wondering what will happen to your data and how you can mitigate its loss, this article might be just for you.   What Is Google Analytics 4? Industry & regulatory landscapes are constantly changing, impacting how data can be collected & used. With more and more businesses investing in Analytics to navigate the changing ecosystem, reliable measurement has never been more critical and more of a challenge. That’s the background story of the sunset of Universal Analytics and the rise of GA4 – the next generation of Google Analytics. Having more features and capability than its predecessor, GA4 has been built on new technology and it aims to serve the measurement needs of a privacy-centric, less reliant on cookies future. It’s been designed in such a way that can help you retain more customers by predicting churn rates and deliver a better understanding of who makes your ideal customer.   What Is New in Google Analytics 4? 1. Machine Learning There’s no doubt that Machine Learning is the future of analytics. GA4 it’s also part of the future, using ML to provide valuable insights so you can understand your customers better and improve your ROI. The new analytics alerts you of relevant trends in data, allowing you to predict changes and adapt accordingly.   2. New Tracking Paradigm GA4 is changing the tracking paradigm. It is events based, and so, KPIs and measurement plans need to be planned and maintained more closely. The session dimension is being redefined and session counting differs radically from Universal Analytics. 3. Privacy-Focused GA4 is designed to work in a cookieless future. It uses machine learning and AI to fill in the gaps in data due to cookie restrictions. It’s a way to future-proof your business and ensure that you will continue to have access to essential visitor data.       4. Cross-Platform Design GA4 is conceived to reduce fragmentation and offers marketers and analysts a holistic view across all digital real estate (Web + App) their brand is operating on. What Does This Mean For Your Business?   Google’s announcement stirred up the analytics world and many organisations started weighing-up the technical as well as regulatory impacts of shutting down Universal Analytics. With... --- ### Digital PR Explained > Digital PR is often confused with other online activity, from spammy link building to fluffy content creation but here we explain what it is and how, when it’s done right, can deliver strong and tangible results for a business or brand. - Published: 2022-04-06 - Modified: 2024-04-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/digital-pr-explained/ - Categories: SEO Digital PR is often confused with other online activity, from spammy link building to fluffy content creation but here we explain what it is and how, when it’s done right, can deliver strong and tangible results for a business or brand. What is digital PR? In its simplest form, it’s a series of tactics to increase a brand or business’ online presence, predominantly via the media. It focuses on creating newsworthy, engaging and creative content that will secure coverage in the media to help your businesses or brands, reach their current, or new, target audience. There are other channels that digital PR can target including blogs, forums and review sites to support wider media activity. The aim of digital PR is to get your brand, business or product in front of your target audience to drive awareness, traffic to your website or a specific action such as an enquiry or booking. As mentioned, PR is sometimes confused with link building in the SEO world, but it’s very different. Link building is purely focused on securing links back to site. It can be on any site, anyhow and with no consideration of relevance, a brands reputation, or the audience it’s reaching. More often than not, link building becomes a paid for opportunity, resulting in links of questionable quality and provenance being secured in pursuit of third-party authority metrics. On the other hand, Digital PR is focused on creating content that will naturally get talked about to secure links and results in an organic way that doesn’t involve a fee. A way that truly represents a brand, positions them as reputable and is much more likely to engage your audience to inspire action. Which let’s be honest, is the aim of the game! PR activity can sometimes be forgotten about when considering wider SEO activity and digital growth but for a lot of consumer and B2B businesses, PR can be pivotal in delivering results on its own or as part of a wider scope of activity. With so many brands competing for space in the media, creativity in PR has become more important than ever before. Bringing your news to life in engaging and media friendly way is vital to the success of activity. Knowing your audience, creative ideas and media relationships are all key to PR success and this is something that Found has truckloads of! So, how does digital PR help a business or brand? Digital PR can support your brand or business in many ways. It can work as a sole tactic or as part of a wider SEO or digital growth strategy. Via online media, Digital PR will: Drive awareness via brand/ product mentions  Secure links to your website to drive traffic Educate your audience regarding a new offering / product Instil trust in your target audience Build a positive reputation Position you as thought leaders in your given industry Depending on the overall objectives, campaign activity can be tailored to deliver the results you want and the... --- ### What is the Ideal Bounce Rate for a website? > Bounce rate will differ by page, by search term and by search intent.  There is no universal “good” or “bad” number. - Published: 2022-03-24 - Modified: 2024-04-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/what-is-the-ideal-bounce-rate-for-a-website/ - Categories: SEO Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels I’ve been asked this question a few times in my career and it always confuses me. It’s a bit like “how long is a piece of string? ”. Bounce rate will differ by page, by search term and by search intent.   There is no universal “good” or “bad” number. That’s not to say bounce rate is a useless metric and you can’t benchmark between, for example, different product or service pages to identify areas for potential improvement. What really is a bounce? To confirm we are on the right page (before you bounce! ) let’s look at what the true definition of bounce rate is.   I will focus on Google Analytics in this article as this tracking solution is used by the majority of businesses we work with. “the percentage of all sessions on your site in which users viewed only a single page and triggered only a single request to the Analytics server. ” https://support. google. com/analytics/answer/1009409? hl=en Assuming your tracking is working correctly a user who bounces may do so for one of two reasons: They successfully found the content they were looking for and have now moved on to some other activity. The landing page did not offer what the user expected and they were not enticed to explore your site further. A user who visits any additional page on your site has not “bounced” but has not necessarily found what they were looking for or had a good experience. Consider these two scenarios: Scenario 1: A user searches for a factual query such as “iphone 13 price” They click through to the product page on the Apple website. The webpage provides the answer the searcher needed and the user closes the browser tab. The data says: This is a bounce yet the specific user need has been satisfactorily met. Scenario 2: A user searches for “size 12 red dress” They land on a product page from Retailer A. The webpage shows the product as being out of stock. “Related products” links appear on the product page and the user clicks through to one of these viewing a second product. The 2nd product is not available in the searchers size. The user is disappointed and decides to try another retailer.   They navigate back to the Google results page and click through to a competitor, retailer B. The data says: This is not a bounce as the user viewed multiple pages during their session, yet the user need was not satisfactorily met. In short -  a high bounce rate does not mean your content is poor. Google wants to kill factual searches with high bounce rates For user intents such as those outlined in Scenario 1 above Google tries to provide answers in-SERP without the need for a user to click through to a third-party website.   It does this by scraping information from publisher websites and presenting this information itself in an answer box or featured snippet or... --- ### 15 Top PPC Tips For Black Friday Success > Black Friday weekend is one of the biggest events for retailers, and it is a great event to manage within PPC. - Published: 2021-11-17 - Modified: 2024-11-07 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/15-top-ppc-tips-for-black-friday-success/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, Ecommerce, Paid Search (PPC) Black Friday weekend is one of the biggest events for retailers, and it is a great event to manage within PPC. If you get it right! Black Friday is a day – or a long weekend – that commands planning, focus and agility.   This is the time when you are going to spend a high percentage of your annual marketing budget and you need to get it right. So, as a Black Friday veteran, here is a few tips to help ensure that you are Black Friday ready. Black Friday Budgets & Admin Credit: https://unsplash. com/@kmuza 1. Review last year’s performance. Data holds immense value, and reviewing past years’ performance is crucial to preparing for this year. Analysing data from 2023, along with recent performance metrics, can provide a solid foundation for your Black Friday plan. What worked well? What didn’t? What lessons did last year’s results reveal? Did certain ad types outperform others? Which bidding strategies proved most effective? How was spending managed? Did you invest aggressively at the start of the day or weekend? At what point did you reach peak conversions? 2. Pre-plan your budget pacing for the month. Bidding and budgets go hand-in-hand. The Black Friday period will see such a considerable hike in spend that it is integral you are on top of budget pacing for the entire month. The key period to be aware of here is the period after Black Friday, especially if you are on automated bidding. The last thing you want is to continue on the spend trajectory after the event, when the conversions have dropped, and the offers have gone. 3. Ensure you know the promotions you will be running, and when. It’s so essential to not only be aware of the promotions but to plan the ad copy for them, and the timing of them, to understand what the offers will be and, importantly, what stock availability there is to service the demand. 4. Create your people plan of attack for ‘in case of’ moments. It’s important to ensure that everything is aligned and everyone knows who to speak to ‘in case of... ’. Who is providing stock checking updates (if it’s not fully automated)? What is the action plan when we run out of stock? What if we’re flying and could exceed budget – who is on hand to make the call to slow down or drive on? Plan for all eventualities as Black Friday can be stressful enough without a curveball coming at you that you haven’t considered. Ads & Extensions Credit: https://unsplash. com/@katetrysh 5. Prepare and upload Black Friday ads well in advance. I’m sure we’ve all experienced what seem to be perfectly reasonable ads being disapproved. Imagine that happening on the morning of Black Friday? I bet you don’t want to imagine it, right? Make sure your ads are prepared and uploaded so you don’t have any surprises. 6. Use an automatic rule to pause and activate ads. Just as I said you must... --- ### New London agency group launches to deliver the future of digital experience > We are delighted to announce the launch of a new group collective, Tomorrow. Made up of Found, Disrupt – our social and influencer agency – and Braidr - our newly-created data technology company. - Published: 2021-09-13 - Modified: 2025-03-25 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/tomorrow-launch/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, General News We are delighted to announce the launch of a new group collective, Tomorrow. Made up of Found, Disrupt – our social and influencer agency – and Braidr - our newly-created data technology company - Tomorrow’s focus is to create the best digital experiences for our clients. We operate in a highly dynamic and innovative space, where keeping one step ahead of the market and competition makes all the difference. And, with a vision to be a company of the future, now, we relish being a leader in our market. As a company, we will never stop looking to the future, never stop learning, and we will always challenge ourselves to be the best we can be for our clients. As ever, Found will continue to harness the efficiencies of technology and the future-thinking of a smart team to deliver exceptional results through paid media, SEO, content, digital PR, CRO, and growth experience.   Disrupt, as a fully-fledged, >Braidr; a company created to help CMOs create elevated brand experiences by bridging the data gap between business and marketing to create new structures, more valuable than the sum of their parts. Why Tomorrow? Tina Judic, Tomorrow Chairman Co-founder and Chairman of Tomorrow, Tina Judic, commented:  “There’s been a revolution in the world; data, technology and creator-led content has never been more significant, yet brands are still not fully benefiting from how they can intertwine all elements to deliver exceptional digital experiences. And, with Tomorrow, that’s what we intend to do. ”  Shaping the future of digital experience, today. In a world where digital transformation is accelerating, your brand and data are your biggest assets. We firmly believe that the future of value creation is where data meets brand and storytelling. And, in an accelerating digital world, it’s never been more exciting, nor has it ever presented more opportunities for growth. “The market is shifting, and companies are demanding more from their agencies, their partners, and their own businesses. They’re demanding data; they’re demanding technology; they’re demanding growth. And we know how to deliver all of this in the best possible way, a way that we believe will shape their future, and I’m excited to be stepping into the role of MD of Found to help deliver it. ”  Natalie Patel, Managing Director of Found. We’re delighted with this exciting development and the commercial benefit that this will bring to each of our valued clients. If you want to learn more about Tomorrow, or any of the brands,  give us a call 0207 653 6709 or contact us here. A little bit about the businesses. About Tomorrow Tomorrow is a group of companies that build tools and services that help brands achieve excellence in digital marketing, through data, technology, and human brilliance. Made up of some of the smartest businesses, Tomorrow is shaping the future of digital experience, today. www. tomorrowgroup. co About Found Found is the Everysearch™ agency, a master of search performance across all digital marketing platforms. Employing PPC, SEO, paid... --- ### Faster Keyword Research for Google Ads with Super Keyword Planner > Super Keyword Planner gets keyword ideas & metrics for planning Google Ads campaigns more quickly, supercharging the research we do for client growth. - Published: 2021-06-01 - Modified: 2024-09-23 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/super-keyword-planner/ - Categories: SEO Keyword research tells us how people are searching online. It starts with a seed - e. g. 'flights to italy' - and branches out into related keyword ideas like 'flights to sorrento', and metrics for those ideas - e. g. 720 searches in UK with Google last June. Information like this is key to discovering the best new Google Ads campaign opportunities to supercharge our clients' business growth, and the faster it can be accessed, the better. Super Keyword Planner is a campaign research tool developed in-house to provide our team with faster and more fluid access to the highly useful & relevant keyword ideas most commonly sourced from the Google Ads Keyword Planner interface. The super keyword planner app In this post, after a quick run-through of the features, I will cover what prompted me to start developing Super Keyword Planner, and take you through how it can be used to obtain search demand insights even more quickly when exploring new ad campaign ideas. CONTENTS The Super Keyword Planner app in a nutshell Why it was created Core features Refinement features Speed improvements The bottom line Super Keyword Planner in a nutshell Super Keyword Planner gets keyword ideas & metrics for planning Google Ads campaigns quickly & easily. Unique features: Built just for campaign keyword research Bulk retrieval of keyword ideas Multiple markets at once Minimal design Streamlined user journey Simplified spreadsheet export Mobile friendly Benefits: Easier ad-hoc research Save time on campaign planning What it really means: Keep your train of thought Say 'yes' to more research requests Get more done Put your feet up Why Super Keyword Planner was created Spreadsheet amnesia. It happens to the best of us. You're staring at a keyword research spreadsheet you just downloaded from Keyword Planner. It's got keywords. Search Volume. CPC. It's really great. But why did you download it? You can't remember why. You know there was a good reason. It'll come back to you, maybe in a few seconds, maybe a few minutes. Point is, you were knocked off your train of thought. Why? Because you had to travel through the Google Ads interface to get to Keyword Planner. Spreadsheet amnesia can dampen your inspiration In a bid to stop this happening any more, I developed Super Keyword Planner. It's a web app - a light and nimble Keyword Planner overlay built to make keyword research faster and easier: 5x faster for small jobs and 30x for bigger ones. This lets you keep your train of thought while getting keyword data, and makes keyword research available to those who normally wouldn't have the time. The basic functionality of Super Keyword Planner - previewing keyword ideas for 'holidays in spain' and getting a download with search volume, CPC & competition, taking about 10 seconds. This is in contrast to using Keyword Planner, for which the same action takes about 1 minute and requires more clicks. 3 issues with using keyword planner for quick research The process of getting keyword... --- ### Google I/O 2021: Key advancements in Search & Shopping > Earlier this month Google I/O came to our screens with a huge amount of content, news, updates, and advancements discussed over the event. - Published: 2021-05-27 - Modified: 2024-05-08 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-i-o-2021-key-advancements-in-search/ - Categories: Google Algorithm Updates, Paid Search (PPC), SEO Earlier this month Google I/O 2021 came to our screens with a huge amount of content, news, updates, and advancements discussed over the event. Here, we take a look at some of the most significant updates across Shopping and Search and what they mean for digital strategies. 1. Shopping. Late last year, Google Shopping launched the unpaid listings in the UK so we were expecting to see further developments in the Shopping space, especially as tracking the performance of shopping results becomes crucial to all ecommerce strategies, not just Paid Media. Expanding the inventory. This year, Google explained how their Shopping Graph is used to show users the most relevant shopping information through a "comprehensive, real-time dataset about products, inventory and merchants". As part of this, Google announced they are expanding their partnership with Shopify to allow Shopify's 1. 7 million merchants to easily feature their products across Google. Previously a hassle for Shopify merchants, this could be huge for ecommerce sites that run on the platform, with their products now able to be discovered across Search, Shopping, YouTube, Images and more much more easily. Shopping through screenshots. In one of the more advanced developments, Google announced the capability for users to now shop through the screenshots they take. Recognising that screenshots are one of the most popular, and easiest, ways for people to save something for later, Google will now let you save these screenshots to Google Photos. Whenever those photos are then viewed, users will be prompted to search the photo with Lens, allowing them to see different search results which help them find the products or related in the photo. This is huge for online shopping and could signify a shift in how people are searching and shopping for products. The best way to make this work? Optimise your images with alt tags and schema to give Google as much information as possible about what is being displayed. This is crucial for product photos, where the information you provide about them including price, image location, stock availability, reviews and so on can be used by Google to display the information directly in Search, Images, and Shopping. Shop until you (don't) drop. Along with other modules being released, Google will be introducing a new feature in Chrome that allows you to see your open carts when you open a new tab. Think of it like a to-do list browser extension, but instead of all your tasks for the day, you see all of your baskets. Regardless of whether you go to another site, or get distracted by other things, when you open a new tab you'll be able to pick up exactly from where you left off. How big is this? Time will tell. I personally wouldn't want reminding of how many open carts I have dotted around my favourite websites, but it could be big for encouraging conversions. Whether this will impact things like basket abandonment email campaigns, retargeting activity, or even how these conversions are then... --- ### First-party data: What, why and how? - Published: 2021-05-27 - Modified: 2024-05-10 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/first-party-data-what-why-and-how/ - Categories: Data First-party data isn't new, but more and more companies are looking at how they can use it as the marketing world moves towards a cookie-less future. Here, we look at what it is, why you should be using it, and how you can incorporate it into your marketing strategies. What is first party data? Put simply, first-party data is information a company collects from their own sources. This could come from both online and offline sources, including: Your website and appsSocial media platformsYour CRM dataPoints of saleCall centresSubscription dataSurveys Because first-party data comes directly from your audience and their behaviours and interactions with your company it is an invaluable source of information, not least because nobody else has access to it. But many businesses don't know how to utilise it effectively in their marketing activity to help attract more like-minded customers, or why they should be using it at all. Why should you use first-party data? Put simply, because it's your upper hand on your competitors. It gives you first-hand insight into what your customers need from you, what they want to see more or less of, and what they see as your strengths and weaknesses. If you can scale that feedback and apply the learnings, not only do you get a more satisfied existing customer base, but also higher potential for them to then refer you to similar prospective customers, act as your advocates, and help you connect with similar audiences. As well as giving you the upper hand from a business and engagement perspective, you can use the information you gain from this kind of data to identify areas of your business you can push harder and those you need to invest more attention in, giving you both marketing and business application from one set. How to collect first-party data. Before we can start using first party data in marketing activity, we need to be able to collect it at scale and the easiest way to do that is to make sure you've got pixels on your website and social media profiles. These will collect information about the behaviours and actions of those who engage with you and then record it in your CRM or CDP. The most common way to collect first-party data is through Google Analytics, but you can also have different pixels for platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn to gather data about your social media audiences. How to use first-party data. 1. Gain audience insight. First-party data can be used for a variety of applications, but the one of the most valuable is gaining insights about your audience and one of the biggest parts of this is building out a full audience profile. With the data you can gain from your website visitors, surveys, and customer feedback you can begin to build a picture of who your audience actually is, rather than who you think it is. Once you have that you'll have a better understanding of things like: What they do on your website,... --- ### 4 Things To Consider Before Hiring A Digital Marketing Agency > Searching for an agency partner can feel like an overwhelming process, especially if you’re not familiar with the services you’re enquiring about. - Published: 2021-05-27 - Modified: 2025-01-27 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/4-things-to-consider-when-appointing-a-digital-marketing-agency/ - Categories: Digital Marketing Searching for an agency partner can feel like an overwhelming process, especially if you’re not familiar with the services you’re enquiring about. The digital landscape is vast and it can be difficult to know exactly what kind of support you need or want. During my time working on the sales team at Found for the past year I’ve frequently been involved in these conversations, albeit from an agency perspective. Whilst it was important for myself to learn as much as possible about the prospects' business, objectives and marketing history; it’s just as important for prospects to understand the partner that they’ll be working so closely with.   You want to make sure that you are prepared for that first chat, as you may miss a trick or two that could be crucial to your final selection. To get the best and most relevant information for your business, here are some things to consider when appointing a digital marketing agency. Before You Start Firstly you need to have a think about what you actually want. By this I mean you need to be clear on your business objectives and the main reasons you’re looking to onboard an agency partner. This will help you figure out the things that are most paramount to your business which will in turn shed light onto those questions that will really help you make an informed decision.   1. Integrated Services and Growth Opportunities As I mentioned earlier, the digital marketing world can feel intimidating when you’re new to it all. You may go into these conversations not too clued up on the specifics of SEO, PPC, CRO and so on. That’s absolutely fine as the agencies are the experts and can guide you as to what they think would best suit your business and objectives. This can, for example, be as simple as a teenage clothing brand wanting to grow their awareness being best suited to Social Media channels. This is obviously quite a top level example and it’s normally a much more layered, complex process when deciding which services to focus on within the digital strategy. But, the point is, the agencies are there to help you achieve the best results possible so be sure to take their ideas on board.   There are many different routes you can take when starting your digital marketing journey, but you want to make sure that you’ve got the option to go faster or slower and even change direction. Having an agency that has many different services is great; but having an agency that can seamlessly integrate these services and offer opportunities for growth to achieve your business goals is even better.   2. Operations, Processes and Client Service When considering the operations and processes of a prospective agency, it can come down to more of a personal preference decision. Chemistry is a key factor which is why a lot of businesses will ask the agency team to visit their offices to pitch or just to have... --- ### How to explain complex ideas simply > Learn how using relatable analogies can simplify complex SEO ideas, helping clients better understand the steps and strategies for improving rankings. - Published: 2021-05-18 - Modified: 2024-10-28 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/seo-is-like-x-factor-how-to-explain-complex-ideas/ - Categories: SEO We all know that complex issues can be hard to grasp - trying to get our head around them can sometimes cause a real headache, especially when we get lost in the realm of jargon, acronyms, and expertise. It can be frustrating and discouraging, as much for the listener as it is for the speaker. When we don’t understand, we feel stupid. And when we feel stupid, we are most likely to give up and disengage. One thing I have learned over the years is that your expertise is worth very little if your audience: can’t understand you, and can’t make use of what you are trying to communicate. Ideas that are misinterpreted or misunderstood can lead to a loss of opportunity, trust or money. Not to mention the confused, bored, or frustrated listeners. A well-communicated concept or idea, on the other hand, can persuade, inspire and motivate. When we share the same language, we can inspire action and understanding of what is needed to succeed. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is not a new concept in digital marketing but often is hard to grasp for people who do not specialise in online marketing. It’s a complex set of processes and requirements that is constantly evolving. Very often, our clients have different levels of understanding of SEO. This only adds to this complexity. So how do you get your clients on the same page? Using analogies to explain complex problems. My experience taught me that thoughtfully and deliberately using analogies can be the most efficient way of explaining something complex simply and clearly. Analogies can help people step back, look at the concept from a more familiar angle and see possibilities that were obscured before. You can use metaphors and similes to create an analogy. They both compare the familiar with the unfamiliar, making it immediately easy for audiences to grasp what you are trying to communicate. While a simile is saying something is like something else, a metaphor is often poetically saying something is something else. As such, they are a must-have item in your leadership storytelling kit. Similes and metaphors are everywhere, just a quick google search for “SEO is like... ” shows us how helpful (and insightful) analogies can be: SEO is like a river, it keeps on flowing. PPC is like a faucet: once you turn it off, it stops providing you leads. A website without SEO is like a car with no gas. “Content is soul. Technical SEO is the backbone. ” These examples evoke vivid images and allow us to "see" things from a new perspective. We “get it” instantly. In my work as an Account Director, I often have to explain SEO to clients who are new to inbound marketing. Many people struggle to immediately grasp concepts like crawlability, on-page, E-A-T, off-page, authority, etc. I don’t blame them - it is lots of jargon that makes little sense to someone who has never done it before. I remember how, many years ago, I joined... --- ### Great Place To Work 2021 Awards: Team culture in a pandemic - Published: 2021-05-13 - Modified: 2024-05-10 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/great-place-to-work-2021-awards-team-culture-in-a-pandemic/ - Categories: Culture We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve been awarded 10th place in this year’s Great Place to Work Awards 2021 (medium category) for companies of 51-250 employees. We’ve been extremely proud to rank in the prestigious Great Place to Work Awards for the past five years, but this year is extra special for us. This year’s culture audit submission was based on our response to the COVID-19 pandemic. There is no denying that the pandemic affected everyone in the world. For us, the impact was felt across both our team and our clients. The first, and possibly most significant, way the pandemic impacted us, was that we went from being entirely office-based to working remotely, in a world that was full of uncertainty. We ensured the team were aware of our decisions, our focus, our hopes, and our concerns during this time of uncertainty. It became a true ‘in it together’ moment that, whilst we would all prefer to see each other face-to-face each day, really has brought us together in ways we never thought possible. This was really demonstrated in our culture audit and survey sent to the team, and completing our submission reinforced how incredibly proud of our team we are. Thank you to all of our Founders that contribute to making Found the great place it is – hip hip, hooray! We’re looking for more fantastic Founders to join our team, check out our roles here. --- ### How To Optimise PDFs For SEO > There might be instances in which Google encounters non-HTML files such as PDF documents and determines they deserve to rank higher than HTML pages.  This behaviour may not always be desirable. - Published: 2021-05-13 - Modified: 2024-11-06 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/dealing-with-pdfs-an-seos-guide/ - Categories: SEO There might be instances in which Google encounters non-HTML files such as PDF documents and determines they deserve to rank higher than HTML pages.   This behaviour may not always be desirable. Why do PDFs rank higher than HTML pages? The text within PDFs is readable by search engines.   Often content presented in PDF format is particularly in-depth spanning multiple pages and with keyword rich content. HTML pages may lack depth and keyword relevance.   Some report style content will be cited externally resulting in inbound links pointing to PDF files.   This can result in PDFs being seen as a better result to return to users, and therefore PDFs outranking HTML webpages. Why would you not want a PDF to rank? Due to associated problems with PDF files, it is often preferable to rank an HTML page in their place because PDFs: Provide visitors with a poor user experience, particularly on mobile. Lack site navigation, taking users away from the website and do not allow visitors to easily discover new or relevant pages which could potentially assist with increased overall traffic and conversions. Are difficult to maintain and update, and therefore visitors might get access to outdated or unreliable content. Do not allow for implementation of structured markup.   PDFs do not work the same way as HTML and prevents structured markup from being applied to the content. Tracking Issues.   The data acquired from Google Analytics on how people are using PDFs are limited such as getting data on what links users followed to PDFs. Approaches Used to Handle PDF Documents. Various approaches can be taken when dealing with PDF documents in favour of HTML pages. These might include: Adding a “X-Robots: noindex” tag in the HTTP header used to serve the document. Inserting a canonical link in the PDF’s HTTP header referencing the HTML page. Creating an HTML version of the published PDF Linking to HTML pages containing PDF content instead of the PDF themselves Adding the PDF to the robots. txt file, however this does not prevent it from being indexed in the search results. Pros and Cons of different SEO approaches to deal with PDFs. We’ve compiled this table outlining the pros and cons associated with different approaches to deal with the occurrence of PDFs in search results. ApproachPDF ActionLanding Page ActionProsCons1noindex applied to file x-robots HTTP headerNo actionThis will prevent the PDF file appearing in search results once it is recrawledAll value obtained from any links to the pdf is lost. There is no guarantee that your HTML landing page will perform as well as the PDF file2Insert a canonical link in the HTTP header referencing the HTML landing pageNo actionIf canonical is respected the PDF will stop ranking and most of the value will be transferred to your HTML landing page boosting its ranking potentialIt is unlikely that the canonical reference will be respected if the landing page and PDF serve content which significantly differs 3Insert a canonical link in the HTTP... --- ### How to find growth opportunities in a complex digital landscape > There are many routes to achieving digital growth, however finding those which are most effective from a cost, time, and longevity perspective is where a challenge presents itself. - Published: 2021-05-04 - Modified: 2025-01-27 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/how-to-find-effective-growth-opportunities-in-a-complex-digital-landscape/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, How to There are many routes to achieving digital growth, however finding those which are most effective from a cost, time, and longevity perspective is where a challenge presents itself. Within this article we’ve pieced together a simplified approach that seeks to help businesses understand how to find the most effective opportunities, saving time and budget, but most importantly ensuring the outcome of achieving performance targets, and that starts with a simple checklist: Setting objectives, KPIs and goals Understanding your data Targeting the right audience/competitors Spotting strengths and weaknesses of the competition Defining your challenges Uncovering growth opportunities Measurement and improvement 1. Setting objectives, KPIs and goals Clear objectives are crucial, and are the where all your research, activity, and decisions should point back towards. You should always start with a clear business objective e. g. Achieve £10M in revenue in 2025. Understand how you want all your channels to contribute to this overall objective. For example, "Digital sales to account for 60% of revenue". It’s good to have a starting point to understand what you want each channel to aim for but be ready to flex. Your digital agency may turn around and tell you that they can achieve more than this, then you’ll need to be ready to assess the ROI across your various channels. For objectives to work, they need to be clear, concise, and have a measurement attached to them - what are the key results you need to drive to hit that objective. 2. Understanding your data This is a simple but important point; if your tracking is inaccurate, you’re going to limit your growth potential. Work with your internal teams and client side/internal data teams to ensure attribution is nailed, and you have a clear view from click to purchase. Setting this up correctly will allow you to assess the impact and ROI of each channel and start to spot where there is potential for growth. 3. Targeting the right audience/customers Who are your audience, how do they search and what’s the opportunity across each platform? Answering these questions will allow you to determine which platforms/channels will be most profitable. You can use a combination of third party tools, like Google Analytics, Global Web Index, SEMrush, Facebook Analytics etc. , to learn more about your audience's behaviour. Then, combine this with more qualitative data from industry studies, and use data science tactics like social media mining, to understand how your audience are communicating and behaving online. 4. Spot strengths and weaknesses of the competition Knowing what tactics your competitors are using to grow is essential, especially if you’re not in the lead position. You can have a better product or service, but if you’re not targeting your audience smarter than the rest you’re not going to achieve your true potential. For this you really need the help of data and tools. We utilise Luminr, our proprietary search intelligence platform that analyses the full digital landscape across all markets and SERP focussed channels. If you’re not using... --- ### Road to Data Scientist: What the role is and how you get there > “What is a data scientist?” – this is a question I've asked myself since I first heard about the role. - Published: 2021-04-15 - Modified: 2024-04-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/road-to-data-scientist-what-the-role-is-and-how-you-get-there/ - Categories: Data “What is a data scientist? ” – this is a question I've asked myself since I first heard about the role. I always wanted to become a person who solves complex problems because I was attracted to things that I did not understand at first glance. Data science is an endless loop; there will always be a query that needs to be solved or a problem that needs to be investigated, and that's what attracted me to the position. What does it take to be a data scientist? I have been at Found for 6 months and here, I had my first taste of data science. So far, I’ve noticed that being a data scientist requires knowledge in three main fields: Computer science Mathematics Business Broadly speaking, a data scientist's responsibility is to use alt="" />Source: https://medium. com/@rabah. ayari/start-your- alt="" />Source: https://datareportal. com/global-digital-overview Challenge & variation Being a developer is fun and it gives you satisfaction when you see the results of what you’ve built, but it requires the writing of loads of source code files to solve your problems. A data scientist, on the other hand, is able to solve a task in a few lines of code. The attractive and challenging requirement of the data science is the need for more brain work rather than repetitive work - it engages different parts of your mind to be able to solve the problems at hand. Tool development The opportunity to build tools using machine learning is a field that I believe is the future of technology. For my bachelor's degree final project, I personally made an Optical Character Recognition system and that was my first touch with artificial intelligence. Some of the machine learning projects the Data Science & Analytics team at Found have worked on before include sentiment analysis, predictive decision making and anomaly detection tools. There are some examples below created by James Wolman, the Senior Data Scientist who inspired me and is helping me fulfil my goals in this field: OscarBot - using AI to predict the winners of the Oscars, and beating the bookies and the film buffs in the process. Being a computer science graduate helped a lot, because I had the chance to experience many fields regarding technology and mathematics. It also helped develop structured thinking, making it easier to understand new concepts as I encounter them in my career. As a software developer, I learned a lot about how online apps work by building and maintaining them - crucial knowledge to have in order to understand where the data comes from and how it was collected. From a background in software development, data scientists will have a better understanding of a client's request regarding data from the application. As a data engineer, I moved a step closer to the data scientist role without even knowing. During my data engineering role, I learned how to build and maintain systems that provide the data to the data scientists. I was working as the "middle... --- ### LUMINR > Google Search is always changing, meaning complete visibility over the SERP is a necessity. - Published: 2021-04-14 - Modified: 2024-12-05 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/luminr/ - Categories: B2B, Data Google Search is always changing, meaning complete visibility over the SERP is a necessity. As an SEO specialist (or perhaps you are their natural enemy: the PPC specialist) you probably feel good going home for the day comfortable in the knowledge that your client is ranking #1 in organic listings (or paid search) across every single one of your target keywords. And the landing page experience is wonderful because it matches the intent of the search query and is optimized to the nines. Look at you. We are all well aware that there is a lot more happening in the SERP. You can rank number one organically but still be obfuscated below the fold, especially on mobile devices. Despite the array of SEM tools at our fingertips (or wallets), a downward-tipping organic traffic trend despite your climbs in organic visibility over the last six months might often leave you scratching your head . We felt this blind spot in explaining disjointed channel performance and decided to do something about it. We call it Luminr. The idea being to develop a more holistic picture of how much of the SERP brands actually ‘own’ and attribute this to changes in online performance.   What is Luminr? As a proprietary search intelligence tool, Luminr is a measure of total search ownership across every pixel of page one on Google Search. This means every listing, every feature type, and every ranking URL across the keywords you are focusing on is captured and monitored. More than that, snapshots are taken so you have a visual comparison of the SERPs for specified dates - want to know what they looked like when you first started tracking keywords vs. what they are now? That's no problem, and is a goldmine for identifying shifts in intent and opportunities available. Luminr also monitors your competitors, so instead of just seeing how you're performing across different elements of the SERP, you can see how your competitors compare as well. That gives you huge insight into what their strategies are, what they are focusing on, and where the gaps are for you to capitalise on. After going through rigorous internal testing, we've rolled the tool out to our clients to help them understand performance and opportunities on a holistic scale. This way, we're all working from the same data and the same information, and then having conversations about how we can work together in an integrated fashion to capitalise on where the opportunities are. Whether that means SEO need to focus on capturing additional SERP features, or PPC needs to upweight bidding on particular terms, or we need to drill into competitor content to understand where they are focusing their attentions - Luminr is at the heart of it all. What can you use Luminr for? Monitor actual performance across a set of keywords Analyse competitor performance Identify new Search competitors and how they differ across different SERP features and channels Draw performance benchmarks on estimated click through and total Search... --- ### Google's Product Reviews update - what does it mean for Search? - Published: 2021-04-09 - Modified: 2024-12-05 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/googles-product-reviews-update-what-does-it-mean-for-search/ - Categories: B2B, Ecommerce, SEO On Thursday 8th April 2021, Google announced the rollout of a new Product Reviews update which only involves English language reviews currently. Danny Sullivan, Google's public search liaison, has confirmed it will mostly be complete in rollout within two weeks: Twitter Previously, we looked at the impact product reviews had on the unpaid shopping listings following the rollout in November and found a strong correlation between product reviews and the unpaid ranking position. And with Google continuously striving for better quality content across the web, it shouldn't be a surprise that product reviews are getting more of a focus. A lot of product reviews are thin - they don't provide expert opinion, in-depth knowledge, or research - and just summarise a product or selection of products. This is exactly what Google is hoping to target as part of this update, looking to reward better content (i. e. better quality reviews) in an effort to help those producing rich content in the product reviews area. What can we expect to see? With a focus on improving the quality of reviews, and rewarding those that offer the most valuable information, we're hoping to see a lot more detail come through about products both on the pages and in the search results. But, with consumers 21% more likely to leave a review after a negative experience than a positive one, this could prove to be quite troublesome for businesses, especially if they aren't on top of their responses. Negative reviews tend to include more information about the issues and what the problems were, with positive reviews often being shorter and not as descriptive. So, if Google is placing an emphasis on the information being included in a review then the likelihood is negative reviews will feature more information and could end up being rewarded as richer content. On the flip side, we'd also expect to see more verified reviews appearing - those where the reviewer is a proven consumer - to reduce the level of fake reviews reaching the results. Google is on a mission to provide the best quality content, from experts and trusted sources - for this, that means reviews should need to be verified as well. Even with a negative review, if it is verified it is more useful to other consumers because it adds an element of trust. We'd expect to see an increase in brands pushing for reviews from their customers to support this, rather than ad hoc review management. Finally, we'd also expect to see a lot more review-style content coming through. Product reviews and unboxings are huge for influencers and social, but with the rollout of this update we'd anticipate that will also roll into Search. Things like comparison articles, "top X" roundups with more detailed information, richer product description content on pages, reviews pulling through to product pages rather than a centralised third party website, and written specified product review articles from trusted sources. Where else could it go? According to Danny Sullivan, it could... --- ### Technical SEO Audit: 5 Key Issues to Cover > When it comes to technical audits, a lot of people just rely on the outputs of tools to inform where the focus should be. - Published: 2021-04-08 - Modified: 2024-10-29 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/5-things-to-look-for-in-a-technical-audit/ - Categories: SEO When it comes to technical audits, a lot of people just rely on the outputs of tools to inform where the focus should be. While tools are fantastic and some of the crawling configurations will give you everything you need as a starting point, they are just that - a starting point. Technical SEO audit checklist Technical SEO isn't just "can my site be crawled and indexed", it's "can my site be crawled and indexed effectively". You need to look beyond indexation levels and into what is actually driving them, and then identify anything that could be limiting your performance against your objectives, and that means things like: Site structure Internal linking Canonical tag setup Faceted navigations Asset optimisation 1. Site structure. A lot of people shy away from site structure, opting to just accept what they are working with and look at ways to build on it rather than weighing up the benefits changing a structure might have. A lot of newer websites don't tend to run into issues with site structure - they follow logical folder structures, URLs make sense, and navigations reflect the core pages you want to display. But some still fall victim to poor planning or ad hoc additions. Things to look out for here include: Page depth levels - use Screaming Frog or your preferred crawling tool to see where pages on the website actually sit; are there unnecessary levels between pages, are there pages that should be closer to the homepage/further away? Orphan pages - where do these come up on the site, why are they appearing, where should they sit? Folder structure - do all of your sub-pages sit in the correct folders, is there any duplication of subcategories across different category levels? Navigation - are all of your key pages in your main navigation, are any duplicated in the footer, how many people are using the links in the navigation to get around your website? Site search - if you have a search functionality on the website, how are people using that, is there a reason they're using that instead of following your folder structures? Cleaning up site structures will not only help crawlers navigate your website more easily, but also help them understand where the important pages actually are on your site and why they should be seen as such. In turn, you'll also be improving the experience for your users - a win-win. 2. Internal linking. Internal linking is possibly the most overlooked part of technical SEO. It is a map of your website, allowing crawlers and users to locate and access different pages where they are related to the page they are on to begin with. This gets broken down into two streams: Hierarchical linking Contextual linking Hierarchical linking covers things like the navigation, footers, and sitemaps - setting out a clear structure of importance across the website. This acts as a structural map of your website. Contextual linking happens in the actual content on the pages, linking... --- ### Death of a metric (Bye Bounce Rate) - Published: 2021-03-17 - Modified: 2024-05-10 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/death-of-a-metric-bye-bounce-rate/ - Categories: Digital Marketing RIP bounce rate. The bounce wasn't long for this world, finally saying goodbye last year. Image source: www. tombstonebuilder. comAs you may have heard, Google has put down this beloved metric of many a client with GA4 carrying on as if it never existed. Who or what was bounce rate? A bounce on a webpage was counted when a user would land on a page and do nothing. Well, at least on the web page, they could be making tea for all the analytics server knows. And it doesn’t. A bounce session duration is counted as if the person was on site for 0 seconds. This is because of a lack of a second data point - nothing triggered, nothing found. Were they even there? The rate comes into play when you take the number of these ghostly web visits and divide them by all sessions, giving a percentage. All the single pages, all the single pagesImage source: zeebee @ imgurA high bounce rate is only 'bad' if you want users to visit more than one page. Which is often the case. What is a good bounce rate? You could try this free tool, once an essential, now a relic left to age on the internet until the domain name runs out. Logan Mastrianna, of datadrivenu. com fame, shares in his informative post that bounce rate can often not mean very much. It doesn’t tell you what the user was really doing or why:  A bounce happening isn’t necessarily bad. Maybe the user already got all the information they needed. A non-bounce isn’t necessarily good. Maybe the user was frustrated by having to click on several pages to find what they were looking for. Bounce rate was also entirely dependent on the type of page. For example, a high bounce rate of 75% on a blog post would actually mean that your blog post is engaging enough that 25% went to a different page afterwards. That's what I like to call a soft conversion. Or again it could mean that someone landed on a blog page when they were expecting something completely different (and left). Or it could mean that they read the page for a solid fifteen minutes... The good news is that you won’t have to worry about bounce rate anymore on GA4. It’s gone, dead, done, dusted. A new bouncing baby metric is born No more single sessions, only engaged sessions from now on. Not quite the inverse of bounce rate, this metric has three different ways of validating an engaged user. Engaged SessionLasted 10 seconds or longerHad 1 or more conversion events2 or more page views This is way more lenient than bounce rate, as a user could be idle on a webpage for over 10 seconds and still count as an engaged user. A user could even accidentally click on a page twice... maybe not as likely. Seems like engaged sessions could be the dawn of a slightly more informative age now that bounce rate... --- ### What are the Google News & Google Discover Manual Action penalties? - Published: 2021-03-16 - Modified: 2024-05-02 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/what-are-the-google-news-google-discover-manual-action-penalties/ - Categories: SEO In February 2021, 12 new types of manual action penalties were released for violations in Google News and Google Discover, where previously manual actions only applied to Google Search violations. What does this mean? Well for most content publishers hopefully not much because everyone should be following the guidelines to make sure they don't violate them, but in broader terms it does mean that content in Google News and Google Discover is now subject to the same level of manual review as Google Search. A note on manual action penalties. Manual action penalties occur when a human reviewer at Google has determined that pages on your website are not compliant with Google's webmaster quality guidelines. These differ from algorithm updates and are flagged in Google Search Console if they are issued. Most of these manual actions are issued for attempts to manipulate the search index, with pages reported in Google Search Console resulting in pages or sites being ranked lower or omitted from results. These previously only applied to Google Search, but will now also be present for Google News and Google Discover results. Google News & Google Discover manual penalties. With 12 new manual action penalty types now in play, it's important to understand what they are and how they apply to Google News and Google Discover. Some types will only apply to one or the other, whereas others will be applicable for both. Google News penalty types. There is only one new penalty type that is applicable to purely Google News listings, and this is a Transparency violation. This policy is all about making sure the content being served is trustworthy, and relies on things like author and publication information as well as article information like dates, and sources to understand whether the content being served can be trusted. What does this mean? You need to make sure your content is correctly marked up with structured data as well as making it clear to users and search engines where your information is coming from. If you operate in a YMYL sector, this should be second nature, but we're expecting to see more of this come into play over the next few months. Google Discover penalty types. There are two new policy violations that apply specifically to Google Discover: Adult-themed content Misleading content 1. Adult-themed content Adult-themed content violations are in place for websites or pages which contain nudity, sex acts, sexually suggestive activities or sexually explicit materials. It's important to note that because this is a specific violation for Google Discover, it is unlikely to impact Google Search but pages that do not require this content (e. g. are not adult websites) should still make sure it is not included as standard. What does this mean? Although Google explicitly state in their guidelines that "medical or scientific terms related to human or sex education are generally permitted", if you do operate in a medical space it is worth keeping a close eye on your content and it's performance.... --- ### Mining Social Media Data for Marketing Projects > Mining is a use of data science techniques to unearth hidden patterns buried in text; expounding the findings into something useful is where mined ore might be chiselled into a masterpiece of insight.  - Published: 2021-03-11 - Modified: 2024-09-23 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/mining-social-media-data-for-marketing-projects/ - Categories: AI & Machine Learning, Data, Social Media The Life and Times of a Social Media Mining Project Social media mining (SMM) is the hallowed art of trawling through an abundance of openly accessible online conversations with the goal of building a deeper insight into your audience. And that’s exactly what it comes down to - an art. Mining is a use of data science techniques to unearth hidden patterns buried in text; expounding the findings into something useful is where mined ore might be chiselled into a masterpiece of insight.   SMM sits at the intersection of statistics, machine learning and human language. It is a powerful tool for learning more about your target audience, like surveys but less expensive and with greater scale. There are many intro articles online stepping through a sentiment analysis of Tweets in relation to US elections but it’s not a likely client brief scenario. Besides, social data is so much richer than that: Twitter has 187 million daily active users, Reddit 52 million and YouTube has 2. 74 billion monthly active users, all with generous publicly available APIs ripe for pickin’s. That’s not forgetting the existence of many specialised discussion forums that can be parsed with web scraping tools. The practice is typically divided into two waves: (1) data collection and (2) data analysis. Both are way more complex than they might appear at first impression. The collection requires a ton of careful forethought and trial-and-error. Analysis is arguably even tougher but there layeth the fruit of possibility. This is a working guide for data scientists collaborating with teams who want audience insight, in-house or client-facing. The data scientist might be inclined to challenge themselves by amassing as much data as their systems allow but the client is looking for quality. Ultimately, it’s about striking a balance between a trustworthy sample size and juicy insights. Define the Approach Objectives Solidify the project objective. This is imperative for not only the usefulness of the result but your own mental wellbeing. An unfocussed analysis is going to leave you taking wild swings in the dark with unpredictable outcomes that are unlikely to hit the mark. Be clear on the goal, be it a generalist fact finding mission or a much more specific request into how a target audience feels in reaction to a particular event. Some decent questions to base a SMM project around might be: Which topics have UK CTOs been talking about the most during the COVID pandemic? What are the most common phrases used when talking about video streaming? Which combination of hashtags will drive the highest level of engagement for fashion-themed video content? How do emotions differ between the UK and European users on the topic of Brexit? Why do people get frustrated with and stop using my product? Which locations are people in the UK most looking forward to travelling to? How does our business’ brand awareness fare against our competitors? Furthermore, why are you undertaking this work? Is it to inform a content strategy? To give insight... --- ### Local SEO Guide – Tips for Getting your Business Noticed > The landscape of local SEO has been rapidly changing. So we’re giving you four invaluable tips for getting your business noticed. - Published: 2021-03-10 - Modified: 2025-04-07 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/local-seo-business-noticed/ - Categories: SEO In this local SEO guide, we’ll walk you through some of the most effective ways to improve your business’s visibility in local search results. As search behaviour continues to evolve, so does the landscape of local search engine optimisation—and staying ahead matters. While local SEO is important for businesses of all sizes, it’s absolutely vital for smaller businesses looking to attract and convert customers in their area. From getting found on Google Maps to appearing in “near me” searches, local SEO helps ensure you're showing up at the right time, in the right place, for the right people. 1. Create Google Business Profile Credit: https://unsplash. com/@hjkp The first tip on how to improve local SEO rankings is the simplest. If you haven’t already, you’ll need to set up your Google Business Profile account—you can find the instructions here. A Google Business Profile allows local businesses to appear in search results when users are looking for them online. The best part? It’s currently free, making it an accessible marketing tool for businesses of all sizes. 2. Optimise your Google My Business account Once you’ve created your Google Business Profile listing, it’s time to optimise it for maximum impact in your local area. To get the most out of your profile, make sure to include the following: A detailed, unique business description that's properly formatted and includes relevant links. Accurate business categories that reflect your services. Plenty of photos, including a high-resolution profile image and cover photo. A local phone number. A business address that matches exactly with the one on your website and across local directories. Your opening hours and days (if applicable). Real customer reviews (we’ll cover this more in a bit). 3. Consistency is key: NAP The third tip on our local SEO checklist is to ensure that your business has full NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number)one every page of your site. Google is cracking down on local businesses whose information is inconsistent or difficult to verify, and rewarding local businesses with clear, concise, and easily-accessible information. Review your site’s pages and ensure that all your business information is consistent throughout the site. It’s a good idea to use Schema. org markup on your NAP to give the search engines all they need to display your company information correctly. Here’s the code that you can adapt to your own website. COMPANY NAME ADDRESS LINE 1 CITY, REGION POSTCODE/ZIP --- ### International Women's Day: A dive into our stats > International Women's Day is an incredibly important event in the strive for equality around the world, celebrating the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women globally. - Published: 2021-03-08 - Modified: 2024-07-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/international-womens-day-2021-a-dive-into-our-stats/ - Categories: Culture International Women's Day is an incredibly important event in the strive for equality around the world, celebrating the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women globally. There is still so much to do globally to ensure equality is not only possible, but achieved, and we all need to do our part to make sure that happens; for us, that starts with our team, and in 2020 we were recognised as 2nd in the Great Place to Work for Women, Medium Category. At Found, being an equal opportunities employer is baked into our foundations and we do everything possible to make sure that we celebrate and reward every one of our team regardless of their gender, status, or background, and that's clear to see when we dive into our stats: Our CEO is female; according to Statista just 7% of CEOs in FTSE 100 companies are female 67% of our board members are female Our pay gap between male and female employees is just 1%, in favour of women 50/50 split between men and women in leadership roles A near 50/50 split of male (54%) and female (46%) employees in the workforce 60% of promotions went to women last year We are delighted to have such a talented team of women leading our business forwards alongside a fantastic group of supportive men helping to make it all possible. We will continue to strive for equality, and equal opportunities, in all of our activity, and here are just some of the ways we celebrate our teams to make sure their achievements are always heard and recognised across the business: Quarterly Awards: Based on our values of Ambition, Impact, Truth, and Unity, the team vote for people who have demonstrated significant contributions over the last quarter Monthly Shout Outs: A company-wide newsletter celebrating the results, achievements, and contributions of the team On-the-spot Rewards: For team members who have gone above and beyond as a thank you for all of their work Friday Meetings: Company-wide catch up every Friday where the team talk about their wins of the week, passing shout outs to all those who have contributed to the wins or supported in other ways throughout the week And today, on International Women's Day, we shared company-wide recognition of the women in our team provided by everyone in the agency, to showcase the fantastic ways they are contributing to our success as an agency and how they are seen and respected across the company. We will continue to #ChooseToChallenge, and invite everyone to join us as we celebrate International Women's Day and the strive for equality across the globe. Found is a London-based multi-award-winning digital growth, SEO, PPC, Social and Digital PR agency that harnesses the efficiencies of data and technology and future-thinking to help clients grow their businesses online. --- ### We're a top 25 UK digital agency! - Published: 2021-03-04 - Modified: 2024-05-10 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/were-a-top-25-uk-digital-agency/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, General News Towards the end of 2020, The Drum conducted a peer poll survey of over 320 agencies to discover which of the UK's digital agencies were the most respected in the industry. After 2,099 votes were recorded, we are delighted to say we've been ranked 24th out of all agencies included! Ranking in the top 25 agencies across the UK is a true testament to our team, culture, and digital skills. We are absolutely are thrilled to see this recognised by our agency peers and to have taken the time to complete the survey ourselves and appreciate our agency peers who are doing some amazing work in a time that has been so tough for so many. Our mission is to always look for ways we can improve what we do and how we can support and develop our team so that they can continue to be brilliant in their roles. We love working closely with our clients and understanding how we can go above and beyond the day to day activity, but sometimes, it's nice to sit back and just reflect on the amazing things our team is already doing for our clients and that's exactly what we're doing this week, celebrating the successes, big and small. Finally, a huge well done and thank you to the team here at Found, a thank you to all of our agency peers for your votes, and congratulations to all of the agencies who placed - we're all looking forward to what the next year brings and to finally being together again later this year! --- ### The 4 Fundamentals to a Modern Google Search Ads Account Structure > Over the last few years search advertising has changed. Learn about the 4 Fundamentals of a Modern Google Search Ads Account Structure here. - Published: 2021-03-04 - Modified: 2025-02-25 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-4-fundamentals-to-a-modern-google-search-account-structure/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) Over the last few years search advertising has changed, in part due to the progress of Artificial Intelligence. From historical data collected, machines can predict trends and make automated decisions without any human intervention. Google has incorporated more and more machine learning into its products and has made huge progress in terms of automated bidding and recommendations. Smart Bidding uses a combination of signals to set the best bids for each auction. We are moving away from manual management for many campaigns, and instead towards a more automated and simplified structure. Google continuously pushes marketers to rethink the paid search account structures for more efficiency and to prepare for the future. It reduced the campaign management time, and the margin for errors. These are the latest Google best practices; 4 co-dependent principles to follow for success. 1. From granular structure to consolidated. There are an infinite number of ways to segment campaigns including keywords, audience, device, intent, etc. However, this segmentation is no longer necessary.   Google recommends having simplified account structures for better performance through machine learning. A consolidated structure contains less campaigns with fewer, but ultimately larger ad groups. Each campaign is based on one specific objective, and leads to a specific URL (both relative to the ad group). All the ad groups should have at least 5,000 impressions per month.   In the example below, a company sells home entertainment systems and electrical goods. There are 4 generic paid search campaigns, grouped by type of product. Campaign 1Campaign 2Campaign 3Campaign 4ComputersWashing MachinesRefrigeratorsTelevisions Computers are the most significant products as they drive most of the sales with a high profit margin. The new recommended structure could result in having only 2 campaigns: Campaign 1 contains only computer terms, and all other products are in Campaign 2. The number of ad groups varies, depending on different factors.   Campaign 1 – ROAS = 700Campaign 2 – ROAS = 900ComputersWashing Machines RefrigeratorsTelevisions  2. Fewer and smarter keywords. When using the old method of manual bidding, keywords under different match types were used. Each of them could have for example; a specific bid, landing page or ad copy, and perform differently. With Smart Bidding, there is no reason to spread out data across different keyword matches but rather to maximise the volume of data by expanding to broader match types. A big advantage of this is that it is much less time-consuming, allowing analysts to focus on the insight and planning rather than manual management, and it can cover new queries. Source: Google 3. Empower your campaigns with DSA. Dynamic Search Ads is a great automated tool to capture incremental traffic, especially from long tail or low volume search queries. Google generates personalised ads based on the landing page for the search queries which it believes are relevant. Google has previously mentioned that each campaign should have an additional ad group for DSA which would work better alongside the standard ones, rather than a separate campaign on its own. The DSA... --- ### THE CURSE OF KNOWLEDGE IN DIGITAL MARKETING > The curse of knowledge not only impacts how we communicate daily, but also effects how digital marketers deliver their work and approach their clients. - Published: 2021-03-03 - Modified: 2024-10-28 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-curse-of-knowledge-in-digital-marketing/ - Categories: Content Marketing The curse of knowledge not only impacts how we communicate daily, but also effects how digital marketers deliver their work and approach their clients. It is a concept that is rarely spoken about, but is it something we should be more aware of? In this article, we will delve into the origins of the idea, real-life situations it impacts, and how we can adapt our communication skills for the better. WHAT IS THE CURSE OF KNOWLEDGE? A concept dabbled with for many years, but it was Chip and Dan Heath’s explanation of the idea in Made to Stick which resonated with me. The book explained the concept that we all have insider information or knowledge about things that others do not, but we tend to assume they do. Essentially, when we are delivering information on any given topic, either in written text or verbally, we instinctively believe the person receiving the information already has knowledge of this topic. Often, they do not have any knowledge at all. This creates confusion for both parties and the critical information we are trying to get across is entirely not received. WHY TAPPING OUT A SONG SOUNDS LIKE NONSENSE TO OTHERS The best example of the ‘curse of knowledge’ is the tappers and listeners exercise. We have all tried to tap out our new favourite song using just our fingers but shockingly, the people hearing this very rarely pick up the tune. This is because that when we are tapping, we have the song playing in our head but, of course, the person in front of us does not. The same thing happens when we are communicating our skills to someone without our skill set. If we assume they are on the same wavelength from the off, we’ll be met with blank looks every time. HOW THE CURSE AFFECTS COMMUNICATING WITH CUSTOMERS Credit: https://unsplash. com/@christiannkoepke BLOG CONTENT FOR CUSTOMERS If you work in an agency, it is more than likely that in the initial stages you have very little knowledge of your clients’ target audiences. So, if you are producing content for them, you may well be the ideal person for the job as you have no previous knowledge. All your views are impartial, and your mind is a blank canvas. For instance, forex trading was never high on my list of skills, let alone having any basic knowledge of it. However, as a content writer this was great for content marketing campaigns for their products and services. I wrote a series of blog posts that targeted a broad audience, high up in the purchase funnel that essentially just wanted to know how forex trading worked. Had I had ten years of forex trading experience, my written content may have explicitly targeted to the seasoned spread betters, and in turn, narrowing my target audience. KEYWORD RESEARCH FOR CUSTOMER’S AND CLIENT’S BENEFIT One of the most satisfying parts of my job is finding a relevant, targeted set of keywords for any of my clients –... --- ### What does Apple's new iOS 14 update mean for paid social? - Published: 2021-02-24 - Modified: 2024-05-10 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/what-does-apples-new-ios-14-update-mean-for-paid-social/ - Categories: Social Media Last year, Apple announced that the new iOS14 would give users more power to opt in and out of sharing their data, such as their browsing history and location. Essentially, it will be like the cookies opt-in pop-ups on websites, but within all apps that use personal data (such as Facebook). Until now, users opt into sharing their data when agreeing to the app's T&Cs when first installed (you know, those 10,000-word essays you always read before clicking the checkbox). Understandably, many app developers and mobile platforms are concerned as they rely on ad revenue. The most vocal opposition has been from Facebook, who obviously has quite a vested interest in being able to both collect data and serve targeted ads. Facebook's ad platform relies on the ability to attribute conversions with user IDs through cookies. Facebook also tracks user activity on other apps and browsers to build powerful >arguing that small businesses will be hit hard. Apple CEO Tim Cook however continues to defend the update as it is a more transparent experience: https://twitter. com/tim_cook/status/1339720611313065984 What this means for advertisers The biggest impact will be felt by those who rely on Facebook's Audience Network placements or campaigns with an app install objective targeting iOS users. The key concern for most advertisers will be the limited ability to retarget and accurately measure performance on campaigns that include iOS users (which will be likely, quite a lot). Although the potential impact is still very much uncertain, there are some steps marketers can put in place to prepare and minimise risk: Update to Facebook's SDK for iOS 14 version 8. 1 if you measure events within your business' app. This will help to continue to personalise ads delivered to iOS 14 users and receive app conversion events reporting. Create customer-centric audiences. Segmenting your first-party data will assist more granular targeting and create cost efficiencies to help combat losses from broader prospecting audiences. Invest in new customer acquisition. Capturing 1st party data is becoming increasingly essential. Building your CRM lists will help future-proof your targeting. Lead-gen ads can be a particularly effective way to capture data from social audiences on Facebook and Instagram. Consider incrementality studies to measure impact of campaigns. Reporting limitations include delayed attribution, estimated results and limits on breakdowns for results by demographics, region and placement. Verify your website's domain, particularly if your pixel is used by multiple businesses. The pixel will soon only optimise for a maximum of eight conversion events for each domain. A verified domain will be required in order to configure pixel events when Facebook implements new limits. If you run DPAs (dynamic product ads) Ensure you only have one pixel per catalogue and domain. More than one pixel could impact the accuracy and abilities to optimise for conversion events. Using app install campaigns? You may need to create a new ad account. A separate new ad account will be required due to reporting limitations. Apps can only be associated with a single ad account and... --- ### 6 Reasons to Hire a Paid Media Agency > Do you really need an Agency for my PPC, Paid Social or Display Activity? Let's help you figure that out! - Published: 2021-02-23 - Modified: 2025-01-27 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/do-you-need-a-paid-media-agency/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) Do I really need an Agency for my PPC, Paid Social or Programmatic Advertising activity? In the world of paid media, everything comes at a price and it often feels like a pretty steep one. Paying out to Google, Microsoft, Facebook and any number of Programmatic partners every month adds up fast, and with CPCs and CPMs continuing to rise then costs can feel like they’re spiraling out of control. With all of this going on then it’s entirely logical to ask the question: “Do I really need an agency, or is it just an extra cost that I could do without? ”. Why Paid Media Agencies Exist Agencies exist to provide incremental value to the businesses they service. This seems fairly simple, but with the need for every pound to have directly attributable revenue and the lack of sales journeys that link to the agency fee, then it can be perceived as an unnecessary cost. The solution to this though is to understand what exactly that ‘value’ is so that you can establish the true impact that the agency is having on your business. Establishing Paid Media Agency Value Understanding ‘true’ value is important at every level, whether that be traffic, keywords, platforms or channels and it is the same for the agency itself. This is no simple process, but establishing it leads to smarter investment and, ultimately, better overall returns. In the case of an agency there are a few areas that can be examined in order to assess overall value. 1. Deliver Incremental Profit This is first on this list as it is the primary goal for 99% of businesses. The agency should be able to spend your budget in a way that delivers more profit (inclusive of fee) than would’ve been achieved without them. If this isn’t the case then something has definitely gone wrong... 2. Saves Hiring Costs & Time Outside of the simple monetary exchange, there is also a cost saved via equivalent in-house salaries. Even if there wouldn’t be a dedicated digital employee, it still takes time for someone to manage activity and that is time taken away from other business tasks. On top of that there is also the challenge of recruitment (time + fees + risk), which can be a minefield at best. 3. The Best of Digital Agencies are set up to be at the very forefront of Digital with biddable experts constantly sharing ideas, cross-team integration with the likes of SEO and Data and ongoing platform partner interactions. This set up ensures that no opportunities are missed and that the latest and greatest insights and ways of running activity are applied instantly. For most non-agencies this just isn’t possible, which results in an outdated approach and gradually deteriorating results. 4. Strategic Direction The day-to-day is around activation, but a good agency should be able to provide you with strategic input that helps you to achieve your goals. A true partnership that combines a client’s business knowledge with the agency’s... --- ### SEO TRENDS 2021 > The last 12 months have seen a significant change in consumer behaviour due to Covid-19. Online retailers have experienced unprecedented revenue growth and demand for goods delivered to the door has exceeded capacity. - Published: 2021-02-18 - Modified: 2024-04-23 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/seo-trends-2021/ - Categories: SEO, Trends The last 12 months have seen a significant change in consumer behaviour due to Covid-19. Online retailers have experienced unprecedented revenue growth and demand for goods delivered to the door has exceeded capacity. During these times, many businesses have had to evolve a greater online presence or die. Investing in digital marketing is more important than ever to safeguard future interests. With most sales growth predicted from online, SEO is critical for driving business expansion. So what SEO strategies and tactics will help you dominate in the SERPs and earn more revenue in 2021? User experience & Core Web Vitals Credit: https://unsplash. com/@uxindo Last year Google confirmed that Core Web Vitals will become a ranking signal this year in May. The new page experience signals will combine existing UX related signals including HTTPS-security, mobile-friendliness, page load times, and interstitial guidelines with Core Web Vitals. It’s key to prepare now for when page experience becomes a ranking factor for two reasons; to safeguard and expand your brand’s visibility in search whilst also boosting engagement on-site via enhanced user experience. The Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console is an excellent resource to identify areas for improvement. If you aren’t sure where to start, Found put together a comprehensive blog post ‘Core Web Vitals Guide’ to walk you through the process. SERP understanding and optimisation In 2021 search engines are highly sophisticated and have a greater understanding than ever of queries beyond keywords – they can find and deliver the exact information that users are looking for. It’s more critical than ever to concentrate on learning what a user is looking for and how Google answers those specific queries. Luminr tracks the proportion of page one SERP real estate your brand owns and monitors the make-up of the page (ads/maps/google products/related searches/organic results). SERP Real Estate helps to proactively identify SERP feature opportunities whilst additionally pinpointing where competitors are targeting their efforts. It also gives a breakdown of the domains and SERP features appearing on the first page, along with the keywords triggering them to provide insight into who is owning what features and where the opportunity sits. This can be used to help optimise and improve existing content, identify new opportunities for search as well as determine paid media budgets. Local SEO Credit: https://unsplash. com/@hjkp The Covid-19 pandemic dominated the events of 2020. During the crisis period public mobility has been much reduced and there has been an increased demand for local commerce. This is exactly why local SEO and marketing strategies should be introduced – consumers want to learn about local business and for brands there is a great opportunity to grow their customer base. Google My Business is the perfect tool to achieve this. To make the most of your GMB listing your business information must be current and accurate, and your customers need to be up to date with changes in opening times, schedules, delivery options, etc. And don’t forget to leverage promotional deals to help drive... --- ### How to use SEO to meet audience intent > Audience intent should be at the heart of your digital strategies, so in this post we look at how to use SEO to meet the needs of your audience. - Published: 2021-02-11 - Modified: 2024-10-29 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/how-to-use-seo-to-meet-audience-intent/ - Categories: SEO Audience intent is a crucial part of SEO strategies , and something that everyone should be looking at to truly understand what your audience is searching for and how you can meet their expectations. On the 4th February 2021, I joined Majestic's Old Guard vs. New Blood webinar series alongside Dixon Jones, Jenny Halasz, and Natalie Mott to talk through exactly what audience intent is and what that then means for SEO. You can watch the recording below or head over to their website for the transcript. https://www. youtube. com/watch? v=tSKvZ2PfdNc&feature=emb_title Utilising keyword research to identify intent. One of the biggest things about keyword research is knowing who your audience is. If you don't know who they are, you can't focus on the keywords they may be using to find you, making it much harder to be there (or rank) when they are searching for things related to what you offer. At the very start of this webinar, Natalie rightly said that "there is no substitute for getting your hands dirty with keyword research" when it comes to using SEO to serve audience intent. To really get to grips with what information you should be providing, you need to know what people are searching for and what kind of information is already being displayed. Think of it like a sale; to make that transaction you need to know what you are selling and who is going to buy it, otherwise you're just sitting there waiting for people to give you money. That then means you should be thinking of Search as a click transaction - you need to earn the click, and you need to make sure that click provides something for the audience in return. If you aren't providing that value, your audience won't hang around and likely won't return to you if you appear for another query, because another site is serving their needs better. Have that happen consistently (along with a multitude of other factors) and you end up seeing decreases in rankings because your website is not being seen as relevant to the searches. So you need to be looking at keyword research from two angles: What Why What are people searching for? What is appearing already? What isn't appearing? What kind of results are showing? What's the split of known vs. unknown competitors? Why are people searching for that? Why are the websites showing that are? Why isn't content around a related topic showing? Why are there no additional SERP features on this query, but there are on that one? Then there is the fact that search is constantly evolving, and 15% of queries every single day are brand new, so there are always new keywords and new opportunities to go after. You just need to know how to find them (more on that over here), and then understand if they are relevant to your audience before you start looking at building them into your plans. Too often keyword research is conducted by just looking... --- ### 3 trends we're sceptical about in 2021 - Published: 2021-02-08 - Modified: 2024-12-05 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/3-trends-were-sceptical-about-in-2021/ - Categories: B2B, Trends It’s that time of year again, when everyone likes to make predictions. Coming out of 2020 we’re thinking more cynically. We’ve compiled three digital marketing trends we feel are misunderstood or won’t live up to the hype in 2021. Of course, we’re not fortune tellers so we’ll be waiting to be proved wrong, and if you disagree we’d like to hear your thoughts on why.   Antitrust In terms of wider industry developments in 2021, we don’t think the antitrust lawsuits raised against Google and Facebook in the US will have any impact on digital marketing. In the case of a generation, the US government has taken steps to investigate whether these tech giants have unfairly dominated the online space. It will likely focus on the difference between users simply preferring Google's service or whether Google turned us away from other viable alternatives. Christian Kroll, CEO of Ecosia (the search engine that plants trees) thinks that ethical alternatives are playing against 'one of the most dominant players in today's economy' and without legislation, have been abusing their position of power.   It could take years for the case to be argued in court, and who knows what the search landscape will look like by that time. I guess what we're saying is, it's unlikely to be a 2021 problem, maybe a 2023 problem? In the meantime, if you'd like action paid search on Ecosia, you can do so on Bing Ads to reach an environmentally conscious audience. With data visibility consistently reducing, maybe targeting people's choice of search engines could be a new way to reach specific audience demographics. Data Fatigue Credit: https://unsplash. com/@priscilladupreez Everybody and their Grandma have been making a Covid data visualisation and we are not exempt. People are hungry for what we call “dataisbeautiful fame” but it can be dangerous when people are making beautiful charts that lack context that cause people to start paying attention. Covid sort of revealed a concern in the data community – analysis in a vacuum, in which lots of data analysts were weighing in on the pandemic without the necessary domain or insider knowledge. A nice chart can add legitimacy to underlying bad data. We’re hoping that people won't be too fatigued by data. Delivery specialists working in Biddable Media or SEO might become too occupied with BAU and returning to “normal” to allow time to think outside the box, with less time to engage with new technologies and ideas. Especially in smaller teams. We’re also wary of the gatekeeping of publicly accessible data sources and APIs. Projects and scopes will get smaller as more companies want to hold their first party data prisoner. The age old question: In-house vs Agency Credit: https://unsplash. com/@punttim With automation only growing, it seems as if old school granular Biddable Media account management is being phased out. This has been a major driver for companies moving Biddable Media activity in-house. As a completely biased opinion, we think manual optimisation was never where true agency... --- ### 5 trends we're optimistic about in 2021 > Now that we've left 2020 behind, we're looking forward to the trends we think will be big news in 2021. - Published: 2021-02-04 - Modified: 2024-12-05 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/5-trends-were-optimistic-about-in-2021/ - Categories: B2B, Trends Now that we've left 2020 behind, we're looking forward to the trends we think will be big news in 2021. Some of these trends you may already be familiar with, some emerged last year and some have just been there the whole time and are getting their moment in the spotlight.    Intent and semantics The importance of intent and semantics both in search queries and on page content has been bubbling quietly but this year is the year. Last year we saw plenty of advancements in how Google interprets, understands, and ranks content on the web. Not just indexing web pages, but being able to index passages, as well as providing features like Topic Cards more frequently. With BERT now present for nearly every query, a huge focus going forward will be placed on entity recognition and building up the understanding of why your content deserves to rank over another site - think contextual relevance, hubs of content, and proving you are an expert on a topic rather than optimising for specific keywords just because they have a high search volume. Fact checking Credit: https://unsplash. com/@sigmund Leading on from intent, the theme of quality content for humans rather than search engines has been growing as algorithms get more sophisticated at disseminating meaning. A key marker of quality is accuracy and we've seen social platforms step up their fact checking with features that flag potentially misleading information. Google also announced Pinpoint last year, likely an extension of their investment into The Trust Project, also speaking to their ongoing mission to provide the best quality information in search results - making sure journalists are able to trust the facts they are quoting. While this tool is just for journalists, it does also speak to the need for SEOs and digital marketers to ensure their content is up to the fact-check challenge. This year we will likely see a focus on quality like never before, making sure content is in line with what the users need, the intent of the queries that lead to it, and that it is factually correct at every check.   UX Connecting all the dots is User Experience (UX), a major trend we think will impact digital across the board. Page experience signals are already part of the ranking algorithm, incorporating things like mobile friendliness, safe browsing, https, and ensuring there are no intrusive interstitials, but this is now expanding to include the Core Web Vitals as of May 2021 (a mere 4 months away). As mentioned earlier, this is all part of Google’s drive to provide high quality information, quickly, for everyone. With it, we expect to see vast improvements to the quality of sites appearing in the top results, and UX will be a driving force. SEO-led UX enhancements should be a pivotal part of strategies this year, if you haven’t already been focusing on them. Automation & AI Automation and AI, the two buzzwords that just won't go away. They're here for a good... --- ### Search London's 10th Birthday - Published: 2021-02-03 - Modified: 2024-05-10 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/search-londons-10th-birthday/ - Categories: SEO Search London is always a hit with the SEO and Digital communities, and this month the event is turning 10 and we are thrilled to be one of the sponsors, with the event taking place on the 23rd February from 5pm to 8pm GMT. The event will be hosted on Remo and you can sign up to secure a spot here, with the platform offering the chance for attendees to network with each other as well as the speakers in between talks, just as you would at a physical event! The line-up is taking shape, with talks from our very own Head of SEO Operations, Tom Brand, Liam Patterson, the CEO of Bidnamic, and SEO Jo Blogs, organiser of Search London. Tom will be talking through how you can achieve migration greatness, covering off the key elements you need to take into account when working on a migration - from the technical right the way through to communication skills and project management - to help ensure a successful migration. Liam will be talking through the pros and cons of using Smart Shopping for Google Shopping campaigns, giving some actionable advice to help run accounts more effectively and diving into why Smart Shopping is more suited to smaller retailers. SEO Jo will then be talking through 5 ways to build your confidence in 2021, giving us all a much needed pep-talk, as well as sharing photos of the last 10 years at Search London. Then finally, as if the talks weren't enough to get you excited, SEO Jo will be hosting a competition in the run up to the event with the winners being announced on the night! As it is the 10th birthday, the competition will be following a "10 years theme" with details of how to get involved below: Every attendee to share on Twitter or LinkedIn either: Photo(s) of yourself when you were tenFun fact from 2011 - (eg Adele had 2 number 1 hits)Photo of what you loved when you were 10 (if you still have it) The person with the most likes/comments on Twitter or LinkedIn wins a prize and there will be up to 3 winners. There are limited places available so make sure you sign up to secure your spot here and make sure you follow Search London on Twitter for all the latest information: @SearchLDN --- ### 20 Great Excel Shortcuts (You might not know about) > James Wolman explains and demonstrates some great Excel shortcuts for you to use in your everyday working lives - Published: 2021-01-21 - Modified: 2024-06-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/20-great-excel-shortcuts-you-might-not-know-about/ - Categories: Data Hello and welcome to another Excel blog post - third in this series, where I attempt to explain and demonstrate some great Excel shortcuts for you to use in your everyday working lives (or just for fun). If you’re not already familiar with them, you may want to check out my previous posts: 5 Great Time-Saving Excel Tips and 5 Great Uses of the IF Formula. For the slightly more advanced users, there's also our latest Excel Cheat Sheet. It's packed with formulas and macros aimed at keyword marketers but useful for anyone who wants to sharpen up their skills and knowledge. As of January 2021, we've refreshed this list with an additional 10 shortcuts that will knock your socks off with their sheer usefulness! 1. ALT + = (autosum a column) I first read this tip elsewhere about 3 months ago and scoffed at it openly. “How much time can this possibly save me? ” scoffed I. Well, apparently quite a lot, as I’ve used this shortcut all the time since, every day. Simply use this shortcut at the bottom of a big list of numbers and it’ll do an immediate sum of them for you. If you find yourself doing this kind of thing regularly then it’s definitely worth remembering. 2. Ctrl + Tilde Key (shows formulas in cells) If you’re not sure what the tilde key is, it’s the one at the top left of your keyboard next to the number 1. That is, the tilde key was traditionally always there (~) but now probably has something like the following (¬) instead. Regardless, that is the key. The one next to the number 1 look (If you’re a mac owner then you’re probably beyond all help, sorry). Anyway this shortcut can be used to toggle showing the formulas on the page. It can be especially good if you’re analysing and comparing formulas next to each other. 3. F2, or double click (show formulas and references) This tip was added after watching several colleagues struggle to keep tabs on what cells were being referenced in some of their formulas. Stupidly easy – rather than running your eyes/finger up and down the page to find the cell reference, just double click on the cell (or press F2 on it) and it will go back into edit mode and show all the referenced cells in nice colourful boxes. 4. F3 (brings up list of named ranges used in sheet) If you don’t make use of named ranges in your worksheets, then this tip might not make sense – but that should really give you more impetus to start using them, so you can come right back here and learn how to find them again! As it turns out, it’s incredibly easy – simply press F3! 5. F4, whilst writing formula (locks cells with $ symbols) In my previous post I talk about the importance of using $ symbols to lock formulas in place. This can be a pain if you’re... --- ### Why sea shanties on TikTok were inevitable - Published: 2021-01-19 - Modified: 2024-05-10 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/sea-shanties-tiktok/ - Categories: Trends You may have seen articles recently talking about the latest TikTok trend to blow up - sea shanties. Puzzling lots of people and bringing joy to many others, these hearty tunes are the latest twist in the wild ride that is the twenties. However, I don’t count myself among the surprised and confused because as I sit in my hindsight heavy eyes, I can smugly say I saw this coming. In this blog post I show you my working, how I worked backwards to arrive at the realisation - sea shanties on TikTok were inevitable.   Thanks Unsplash! We start our journey with some classic Google Trends data, the bedrock of any pseudo-scientific endeavour. Here I looked at the term ‘sea shanty’ globally to see if there were any trigger events that started this whole saga. I had a hunch that the two naval themed Assassin’s Creed games were to blame and I think the timings line up (try and spot the two peaks in 2013 and 2014, potentially corresponding to the game releases). Let me explain. Back in 2013, Ubisoft released their latest installment of the Assassin’s Creed series of games - Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag. Some background on the game: You play as a recruit of a shadowy group that works to dismantle an ancient order bent on controlling the world. Each game has a historical setting, with lots of research into the time and the traditions. It’s where I get most of my history education. This instalment of the game was set among islands of Jamaica, Cuba and the Bahamas and featured the ‘Golden Age of Piracy’ from the early 18th century. A feature in the game allowed your ship crew to sing sea shanties, and the gaming community lapped it up. People posted lyrics on Genius, and their favourite compilations on YouTube garnering over 6M views. Kotaku even featured an article professing their love for these songs three years later. Another instalment of the game was also released in 2014 with more sea shanties further fuelling the fire.  Genius LyricsAll went quiet for a few years, until the call of the sea beckoned once more. In 2019, the company A24, who produced movie buff favourites like Midsommar, Uncut Gems, Moonlight and more released a film called The Lighthouse. Centred around two lighthouse keepers, the film doesn’t actually feature a single ship or shanty anywhere. However, the film had a cult following online, almost a niche subculture of its own where reddit users would share memes and copypastas. Salty air and hallucinated mermaids did nothing but fuel the fire of what I’m dubbing ‘seame’ (sea + meme) culture. Reddit u/-ShowMeYourKittiesThe final and third leg of my three legged stool argument that proves why sea shanties on TikTok were inevitable is the scientifically researched fact that singing with other people boosts your mood and improves your health. With the world turning upside down last year, people flocked to TikTok so that they could revel in and share their... --- ### Found Recognised with Excellence In Wellbeing award by GPTW - Published: 2021-01-18 - Modified: 2024-05-10 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-recognised-with-excellence-in-wellbeing-award-by-gptw/ - Categories: Culture, General News 8 months on from ranking 6th in the Great Place to Work Awards 2020, Found have been recognised for another award from Great Places to Work. For the second year in a row, we've been awarded the Excellence in Wellbeing recognition. We are absolutely delighted with this news and hope to continue looking after our employees to the best of our ability. Rewind to a year ago, January 2020, we couldn't have imagined the year to turn out how it did. Coronavirus not only threatened our physical health, but also our mental health as we were confined to our homes for months. This presented a new challenge for employers to help support their employees wellbeing in uncertain times, and completely remotely. It was, and still remains, more important than ever for us to support our team through this time and we did so through regular check-ins, mental health talks, creating a wellbeing channel on Slack to share tips and resources, sending out mental health packs from Mind in the post to encouraging movement challenges, introducing even more flexible working hours and more to support our team with the ups and downs that the pandemic as thrown at us. That's why being recognised for the this award following last year feels all the more significant, and we're extremely proud of everyone at Found for adapting quickly and looking after themselves, as well as each other. Onwards and upwards in 2021! --- ### The changing face of SEO > We’ve heard the saying “SEO is dead”, and from the stories I could tell, it'd be easy to believe it is. SEO isn’t what it once was, but that isn’t a bad thing. - Published: 2021-01-14 - Modified: 2024-04-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/changing-face-of-seo/ - Categories: SEO, Trends We’ve all heard the saying that “SEO is dead”, and, from the stories I could tell, it might be easy to believe it is. SEO isn’t what it once was (it’s barely what it was 6 months ago) but that isn’t a bad thing. The industry’s lost a lot of terrible habits – from content spinners to link farms – but it’s gained a lot of good ones too. For some time now, the industry has needed to change how it does things, and that finally started happening last year. Throughout 2020, we saw more and more businesses turn to SEO for support in meeting their objectives, but also to help ensure business survival. Retail stores were closed for large parts of the year and previously their websites had played second fiddle. Companies in the B2B industry suddenly couldn't go to the large events and conferences to showcase their products or services and had to find ways to connect with these audiences through different means. Suddenly everyone was online, everyone had to be able to serve customers as they would in person, and everyone needed to reach their audience and allow them to find and purchase products and services they previously would have done offline. What happened to SEO 2020? Because there was suddenly a much larger focus on website performance, and digital performance as a whole, SEO really came to the forefront of marketing departments. Budgets were being cut to avoid unnecessary spend, and sometimes whole channels were being turned off because the return couldn't be justified. But with that, SEO had to outperform every previous expectation. It went from making sure a website functions, to making sure the previously offline audience came to the website and converted. It went from making sure a page was indexed, to making sure various pages were appearing in various elements for various searches to capture as much of the audience as possible. It finally turned away from just what would help search engines and into what the audience needed. Audience needs have always been important to SEO - the intent behind searches, semantic understanding of the relationship between keyword and content and action, the need for different types of search feature and different forms of content - and through 2020 a lot of companies and agencies who previously neglected this element were forced to adapt. However, you are never going to be able to learn everything about your audience, or how you need to serve them, through a single channel or by operating under a single channel mindset. So for SEO, that means we still need to make changes to how we work with other channels and teams to really drive the best performance possible. Where does SEO go in 2021? Moving away from single channel mindsets. As an industry, we are so used to talking about SEO as the be all and end all for all of your website problems, but there’s an issue with this. Every problem you encounter is... --- ### Reddit Roundtable: Data Science In Digital Marketing > In a nutshell, data science gives answers to the things we don’t know that we don’t know. (Whereas data analytics tends to solve problems for questions we know we don’t have the answers to). - Published: 2021-01-06 - Modified: 2024-04-23 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/reddit-roundtable-data-science-in-digital-marketing/ - Categories: Data In a nutshell, data science gives answers to the things we don’t know that we don’t know. (Whereas data analytics tends to solve problems for questions we know we don’t have the answers to). It straddles the business and IT worlds to spot trends and patterns that can help a business’ bottom line. Data scientists are experts at wrangling gold mines of unstructured information and Big Data but no two are exactly alike. They emerge from incredibly diverse backgrounds - computer science graduates, statisticians, business analysts, scientists, psychologists to name a few - which speaks to the wide array of skills in a data scientists’ bag of tricks. Marketing is made more effective by data science, so we stitched together a roundtable discussing the role of data science in marketing from the perspectives of Reddit users. PRACTICAL USES OF DATA SCIENCE IN MARKETING A few months ago --- ### 5 ways to make digital more accessible - Published: 2020-12-15 - Modified: 2024-05-10 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/5-ways-to-make-digital-more-accessible/ - Categories: CRO, Digital Marketing Accessibility online can be taken for granted by abled people. What does this mean and what can we do about it? There are little adjustments we can all put into practice to make websites and social media easier to use for everybody. You might be surprised at how easy it is to make your posts online more accessible - read on to see 5 tips you can implement today! Tip 1: Subtitle your videos If you’re publishing video anywhere on the internet, subtitles are a very welcome addition. Users on TikTok have found creative ways to add subtitles, even when the platform doesn’t support it natively, by adding text boxes to subtitles. There are even free tools like Kapwing that help automate the process. It can also be helpful to add a contrasting colour as the background to your subtitles to make them easier to read. Screenshot via @ElianaGhen and 3playmediaTip 2: Add image descriptions Images can’t be read by screen readers, so adding some text to describe images posted are very useful in sharing online. A lot of platforms offer this functionality already, WordPress and now Instagram offer the option to fill out ‘alt text’. Don’t worry about describing everything visible, you just need to cover the main details in a sentence or two. A lot of Instagram users are now adding short descriptions to captions as well as in the alt text, just like the example from Eliza below:Screenshot via @Disabled_ElizaTip 3: Avoid ‘fancy’ fonts You may have seen the young people on social media using what looks like funky fonts in their captions and tweets - but it’s not all as it seems. It’s a tricksy workaround to change the appearance of text where you wouldn’t normally be able to customise it. However these ‘fonts’ are taken from mathematical symbols and can make it really difficult to interpret with a screen reader. See the example from @KenCDodds below to see what that means: https://twitter. com/kentcdodds/status/1083073242330361856Tweet from @KenCDodds Tip 4: Use CamelCase with hashtags CamelCase is when you capitalise each word in a hashtag. This really helps the legibility of hashtags especially when they are made up of several words strung together. You may remember an example of how hashtags can get confused with the infamous release of Susan Boyle’s album - easily avoided with CamelCase.   Image via the BBCTip 5: Emojis for dramatic effect Everybody loves a good emoji, and you might be surprised to find out how well screen readers can include them in their text-to-speech tech. When using emojis, try to keep all the important information before the emoji so that the message doesn’t get lost and avoid posting multiples of the same emoji for dramatic effect. If you’re curious about what multiple emojis sound like, Easterseals blog post shares some examples of emoji descriptions so that this: 😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬 would actually sound like this: Grinning face with clenched teeth Grinning face with clenched teeth Grinning face with clenched teeth Grinning face with clenched teeth Grinning... --- ### Beyond Google: Diversifying Your Marketing Strategy for Success > Is your marketing too reliant on Google? Discover the benefits of diversifying your strategy to reach new audiences and reduce platform dependence. - Published: 2020-12-15 - Modified: 2025-03-12 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/are-marketing-strategies-too-reliant-on-google/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, Opinion Google went down, globally, on 14th December 2020 and immediately the marketing world went into panic stations. Nobody could access their documents (G Suite went down), their marketing platforms (Google Ads and YouTube went down), their conference calls or email (Gmail and Hangouts went down), or their reporting dashboards (Google Analytics, Google Search Console and DataStudio went down). While the downtime was short-lived, it did pose the question of whether we have become too reliant on Google as the force behind our activity. So here, the team look at some of the other platforms you can incorporate into your marketing activity in the unlikely, but not impossible, event this happens again to start diversifying your approaches and covering your bases. SEO: A world beyond Google Google is the most dominant search engine, there’s no doubt about it, but other search engines have their own benefits. In the UK, Bing is the next-closest search engine to Google when it comes to usage, followed by Yahoo, DuckDuckGo and Ecosia as the other key players in the space. When it comes to Bing, a lot of similarities can be seen in the overall Search experience when compared to Google, including the layout and additional organic features to incorporate into strategies. Whenever we work with clients with a physical presence, either as an office headquarters or a chain of retail stores, we recommend they also set up listings on Bing Places – Bing’s answer to Google Business Profile – to take advantage of the features available there as well. Yahoo also offers a similar platform in Localworks or you can submit listings through Yext. Bing is largely underrepresented in digital strategies because of the dominance of Google, but there are definitely features to take advantage of as part of your SEO campaigns and while the ranking algorithms are different there is a lot of crossover in terms of general usability and relevance to the search query – if it works for Google, it’ll likely work for Bing (and other major search engines in the UK) as well! Determine which search engines are driving traffic and conversions on your site and make sure you’re looking into new features and opportunities across them to tie into your overall approaches. Ben Wheatley, Senior SEO Account Manager Paid Media: Social reigns supreme Similar to SEO, Microsoft Ads (aka Bing) allows for an additional layer to Search activity and brings with it some great opportunities. For Search, a lot of it comes down to who your audience demographic is – if your audience is older then Bing is a fantastic platform to reach them on as they tend to favour it over Google. For the budget-conscious, Microsoft Ads also tends to provide cheaper CPAs so if you’re struggling for budget diversification this is a great option to explore. Search engines such as Yahoo and Ecosia are also partners of Microsoft Ads so you get the additional reach of those platforms as well. And if that isn’t enough, they also... --- ### Local Search 2020 > This post acts as a summary of the talk and assumes some level of knowledge of local search ranking factors and experience using Google My Business. - Published: 2020-12-09 - Modified: 2024-04-23 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/local-search-2020/ - Categories: SEO As part of our team’s internal training, I recently hosted a session on the changing local search landscape. This post acts as a summary of the talk and assumes some level of knowledge of local search ranking factors and experience using Google My Business. WHY SHOULD I CARE ABOUT LOCAL SEARCH? For certain businesses, a presence in Google’s local map pack is critical to gain search exposure.  The local search pack is usually located directly below paid search listings and ahead of the standard “10 blue links” and its presence is not just limited to queries containing a location. In competitive industries such as travel, which are increasingly dominated by Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) such as Booking. com, presence in local packs is a SERP opportunity not currently available, in the traditional sense at least, to aggregators. Property owners can gain control of their location listings and reduce leakage to aggregators. Google 3-pack local results appear for 93% of Google searches with local intent, so the potential is strong.  As you would expect, the search engine has increasingly begun to monetise this lucrative space with the addition of paid local-pack ads and in the travel sector expanding the roll-out of Google Hotel Ads which tend to see brands compete against 2 or 3 OTAs. However, Google doesn’t only show local results for keywords that contain a specific location. They will also show it to you if the algorithm believes it needs some local results: The key thing to consider, is that you’ll still want to optimise for your keyword+location, but be aware that occasionally a keyword without a location might be better. CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR CHANGES As well as changes to the SERPs, consumer habits are also changing.  The growth of mobile has resulted in a much higher proportion of location dependent searches and more Google searches take place on mobile devices than on desktop machines in 10 countries. Google Trends: Searches containing “near me” With the exception of lockdown due to the 2020 pandemic which saw a significant change in behaviour, the growth in searches containing ‘near me’ has been almost exponential. TRACKING SMARTPHONE USERS According to Google’s research, 75% of smartphone users expect to get immediate information while using their smartphone, and 60% of smartphone users have contacted a business directly using search options like ‘click to call’. Mobile searches for terms such as ‘best place to buy X’ have grown almost 70% over the last two years. This underscores the need to be optimising for your local terms.   If you haven’t disabled location sharing, Google handily shows you a map of everywhere it has tracked you at https://www. google. com/maps/timeline.  This information can be used to present information such as graphs of how busy a location is expected to be at any given time – these now show in real-time. LOCAL SEARCH RANKING FACTORS Local SEO Guide has a good guide to local search ranking factors but in brief there are some areas which effect ranking, some of which you can effect.... --- ### The Influencer Pay Gap - What is a "fair" price? > Standardising fees for influencers may be unattainable but certain principles should become the norm: respect, equality, and fair negotiation. - Published: 2020-12-04 - Modified: 2024-09-18 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/putting-a-price-on-influence-what-is-fair/ - Categories: Influencer Marketing The Instagram account The Influencer Pay Gap is well worth a follow if you are interested in seeing “behind the curtain” of influencer negotiations. Influencers anonymously submit the fees they have been offered, as well as indicating their follower size and also their ethnicity. Brands are very occasionally even named and shamed. Disparities in fees between white influencers and influencers of colour are also at times made painfully clear. The purpose behind the account was to bring fees to light, because there is no standardised fee structure for pricing influencer activity. One influencer with over 500K followers may work for a few hundred pounds, while another may not except less than a few thousand. Both are potentially justified; influence is about more than followers or even engagement. Take for example Beyoncé’s campaign with Peloton. If you were to only value the partnership based on engagement with the content, the few thousands of likes Peloton’s announcement got would make the partnership seem like a bad investment. But if you were to look at the big picture, the value is obvious. Peloton’s shares rose as much as 8. 6 percent following the announcement. So how do you put a price on an influencer’s content? With infleuncer becoming more talkative on outlets such as The Influencer Pay Gap it has never been more important to pitch a collaboration at the right level. Have KPIs in mind Credit: https://unsplash. com/@goumbik As the Beyonce and Peloton example shows, to understand the potential value of a partnership you need to have the big picture in mind. If the target is impressions for example, a fee can be recommended based on estimating the influencer’s impressions per post and mapping this against a target CPM based on the size of the influencer and their vertical. Similar estimates can be made based on goals of engagements and conversions if you have the right data. But it is important to remember this is not a simple media buy – qualitative metrics, which are harder to put a value on should also be considered. How do you value a positive comment for example? To truly answer this question a brand uplift study is required, but a lot can be gleaned from a brand’s previous campaigns and vertical trends. Drive value – but respectfully Getting a piece of content from an influencer for peanuts can be done – but should it? While it is important to drive as much value as possible for brands, the reputational risk of having a brand become associated with not treating their collaborators fairly also needs to be considered. The best influencer campaigns are partnerships, where the influencer is excited to be partnering up with the brand, leading to more considered and more creative content. When to show your hand “What’s your rate” asks the marketer; “What’s your budget? ” asks the influencer. And a Mexican stand-off begins that can be frustrating to both, with each party worrying that showing their hand first could see them pitching... --- ### Long Term SEO Strategy: Do we ever finish optimising a site? > As we approach the end of a tumultuous year it’s likely that, after reviewing performance, attention will turn to where marketing budgets should be allocated for 2021 or the 2021/22 financial year. - Published: 2020-11-30 - Modified: 2024-06-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/long-term-seo-strategy-do-we-ever-finish-optimising-a-site/ - Categories: SEO As we approach the end of a tumultuous year it’s likely that, after reviewing performance, attention will turn to where marketing budgets should be allocated for 2021 or the 2021/22 financial year. For many businesses the ongoing situation has resulted in financial performance diverging significantly from forecast at the start of the year. It’s therefore likely that decision making this time round may be more drastic than usual with the need to either reduce costs or the opportunity to build upon previously unanticipated rapid growth. One of the channels which may come under review is that of organic search - influenced through practices which may be grouped under the banned of “SEO”. For many sites organic represents their largest source of traffic and revenue and, if rankings are currently strong and budgets tight, it may be tempting to see this as “free” traffic which will be there forever and does not require any ongoing investment. Sure, unlike biddable, with earned channels such as organic search performance is unlikely to drop off a cliff the moment you divert attention but without conscious efforts to maintain standards sessions will stagnate and then slowly decay over time as sites which are actively optimising in the space pull ahead. In this article we look to answer - do we ever finish optimising a website?  And, what happens if I stop focusing on SEO? Measuring SEO Performance Credit: https://unsplash. com/@sernarial What would represent a “fully optimised site”? True SEO performance can only be measured in terms of the tangible results it drives for a business. Everything else is vanity.  Primarily this will be through e-commerce transaction metrics and goal completions which successfully make their way through your conversion funnel.  Whilst your exact products, pricing and go to market approach may change the fundamental bottom line of how success will be measured will not. Many SEO tools will spit out scores reporting on aspects of your optimisation efforts.  Does a 10/10 score for my article’s keyword optimisation represent the perfect content and guarantee my web page will rank for target searches?  Of course not.  Even with the smartest of tools these are arbitrary metrics regardless of whether “target scores” are predefined limits or generated from an analysis of successful websites in a space. Holistic SEO Considering individual elements of SEO in isolation from others and even your site’s overall performance across other channels may lead to the “completion” of certain tactics but not of SEO. A checkbox mindset focusing on individual tactics as opposed to an SEO strategy tends to lead to naive optimisation choices, unnecessary work and short-term decision making by chasing the latest trend rather than considering the experience your site and brand actually offer your targeted audiences. Whilst each tactic undertaken as part of an SEO campaign should have a goal, with measurable KPIs wherever possible, it is not possible to ever complete a strategy.  Sure you can reach 0 broken links, have perfect hreflang attributes and have optimised all your title tags... --- ### 2021 Planning: What Should Your Digital Marketing Strategy Look Like > This year has been exceptional due to the pandemic – advertising budgets have been squeezed and consumer behaviours have changed dramatically. The size of the economic fallout is still being gauged but it is likely to be the most significant event in most of our lifetimes. - Published: 2020-11-25 - Modified: 2024-05-10 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/2021-planning-what-should-your-digital-marketing-strategy-look-like/ - Categories: Digital Marketing This year has been exceptional due to the pandemic – advertising budgets have been squeezed and consumer behaviours have changed dramatically. The size of the economic fallout is still being gauged but it is likely to be the most significant event in most of our lifetimes. During these unprecedented times, it’s imperative to invest in the areas which will deliver the most return on your investment to safeguard the future interests in what is likely to be a turbulent start to 2021. With most of the growth predicted from online, let’s take a closer look at the core components of next year's strategy.   Invest in site experience Credit: https://unsplash. com/@f7photo In May Google announced that page experience signals, which measure how users perceive the experience of interacting with a web page, would be included in Google Search ranking.   This month Google announced that the page experience signals in ranking will be introduced in May 2021. The new page experience signals combine Core Web Vitals with the existing search signals including page load times, mobile-friendliness, safe-browsing, HTTPS-security, and intrusive interstitial guidelines. It’s vital to begin preparations for when user experience becomes a ranking factor, not only to protect and grow your brand’s visibility in search but also to boost engagement on-site through improved user experience.   You can start preparing the groundwork now for when user experience becomes a ranking factor. The Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console is a great resource to start and  ‘Core Web Vitals Guide’ blog post has all the detail you need to guide you through the process.   Map your consumer journey Credit: https://unsplash. com/@delfidelarua7 COVID has pushed many brands to move online, meaning that the online market place is becoming more competitive, in turn pushing advertising spend up. Consumer habits have also changed. Global Web Index reports that search engines (52%), social media (43%) and customer reviews (37%) are the most used touchpoints when it comes to product or service research. However, the purchase journeys are becoming increasingly fragmented and every target persona requires a different approach at each stage. Mapping provides digital marketers with a deeper understanding of people's motivations, recognising which stage each buyer is at, and what they need to progress to a conversion. This information helps to guide your marketing team, and likewise the digital specialists can utilise this data to ensure the messaging is targeted and delivered to the right person, at the critical time. Keeping your audience at the heart of your marketing strategy will create experiences that will build consumer confidence, seize the market's attention, and lead your customer towards the ultimate goal of conversion and subsequently repeat business. Be agile and have a fluid strategy in place  Credit: https://unsplash. com/@stay_in_touch The pandemic initiated rapid consumer behaviour changes and brands must stay relevant in an already fierce marketplace. Deloitte’s report shows that consumers will seek to conduct more business with brands who quickly pivot their offerings and adapt the changing landscape. To execute... --- ### Saving Time with Keyword Research Automation > Automating keyword research using a Google Colabs notebook built to harness the semRush API is a frictionless method that saves time and effort. - Published: 2020-11-23 - Modified: 2024-05-02 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/keyword-harvester/ - Categories: Analytics, SEO If you do a quick search for 'automated keyword research', there are plenty of blog posts talking about it. What most of them don't talk about, however, is automating good quality keyword research, that can be used right off the bat, without any complicated process to follow. That's what this post is about. Introducing Keyword Harvester Keyword harvester is a tool that automates keyword research by working through a list of seed keywords, getting closely related keywords and search volumes for each of these - or in other words, automatically building out good quality keyword groups for them. This means there is no need to pull the keywords manually. The keyword inputs and outputs are handled directly within the fast and responsive Google Sheets interface. Keyword Harvester automatically building out keyword groups It saves time and effort when doing keyword research: No need to manage . csv exports and imports No more waiting for SEO tool interfaces to load Freedom from two factor authentication delays Keyword Harvester runs from a Google Colab notebook built to automate keyword research by harnessing the SemRush API with the Python-Semrush python module. Efficient keyword harvesting Back in the 1100s, farmers using the heavy plough could expect to harvest 250 kilos of grain from an acre of land. With its ability to turn over the fertile clay laden soils of northern europe at unprecedented speed by leveraging the automated power of the ox, the medieval heavy plough was praised as a high technology of its time. Alexander Nequam, Abbot of Cirencester Abbey, called it 'a divine piece of work, whose utility transcends the power of writing to express'. 12th century English plough team with oxen. Thanks to the heavy plough, efficiency was on the increase, but few could dream of what would one day become possible. Today, a farmer working the same land can expect to harvest 3,500 kilos of wheat per acre - that's 14 times as much. We've got brand new combine harvesters Keywords are the staple grain of search, so harvesting keywords is a pretty important and commonplace daily activity for the team at Found. Up until now, it's been necessary to find keywords by ploughing through the web interfaces of the major keyword research tools such as Google Ads Keyword Planner, SemRush and Ahrefs, for which 2-factor authentication, slow web page loads, and the management of . csv exports are part and parcel. Switch-tasking and delays such as these not only take time but disrupt focus and flow. The web interfaces of the major SEO tools are amazing development achievements. But they have to serve all possible needs at once, which makes them slow. Conversion focused keyword research Keyword Harvester is first designed to speed up conversion focused keyword research, which is the most common form of keyword research we do for our clients. By this, I mean research where I only want keywords searched by people who are definitely interested in a specific topic. So for the topic 'christmas dinner... --- ### Tracking the Shopping SERPs Part II: Analysis > In October we released an article teasing an analysis of the shopping SERPs being rolled out to the UK. - Published: 2020-11-23 - Modified: 2024-12-03 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/tracking-the-shopping-serps-part-ii-analysis/ - Categories: Ecommerce, Paid Search (PPC), SEO If you have only five minutes then read this. In October we released an article teasing an analysis of the shopping SERPs being rolled out to the UK. Since then we have amassed and analysed more than 25K search results by around 3K keywords. This is that prophesied analysis, chock-full of insight: Paid and unpaid shopping listings appear together 100% of the time. You heard me. The same site rarely appears across both paid and unpaid listings in a single search. Positive product ratings are strongly correlated with strong organic ranking positions - correlation coefficient of 0. 40 i. e. “moderate correlation” (Source). There is a substantial disparity between big ecommerce sites with some relying entirely on organic coverage (e. g. Zalando) while others throw their money at ads (e. g. Amazon). In general though, it is a mixed bag. Unpaid listings have opened up the Shopping floodgates to companies who can compete without ads  as we have observed many companies appearing across unpaid listings without ever ranking for a single visible ad. The number of distinct domains competing across the first 50 unpaid shopping results has been experiencing a slow incline although it may be too early to tell if this will continue, or if this means anything at all. Around 70% of unpaid shopping results lead to a product comparison page with the remainder clicking straight through to the external website unobstructed by competitor websites selling the same product. A competitive Google Shopping strategy must incorporate both paid and organic functions. Recommendations from our Search Strategists Make sure you are tracking the performance of both paid and unpaid listings - by default this isn’t split out in Google Analytics so while you can see some information in Merchant Center you won’t be able to see how much unpaid listings are contributing to your overall performance. Pay particular attention to your product markup - reviews and product ratings are showing as a significant factor in the ranking of unpaid listings so the more information you can provide about your product through structured data and on-page content, the better your chances are of appearing. Keep track of the products that are appearing and the listing features they trigger - do they show a standard unpaid listing or do they include a link to go through to a product comparison view? Understanding what kind of competition you’re competing with at a product level can help inform other tactics, e. g. if your products are triggering links to comparison pages, you should look at informational content users are searching for around the products, buying guides, or even style guides and inspiration-style content.   How frequently do combination listings appear? This one’s simple: 100% of the time. And virtually every time, the top row will be filled with ads. The number of ads in the top row depends on the size of your screen but will typically be somewhere between three and six. How frequently do sites appear in both paid and unpaid... --- ### Design Thinking: How to evaluate ideas > If you’ve just come out of a mega ideation session, and you’re not sure whether the ideas you came up with are good or trash. This blog is here to help. - Published: 2020-11-20 - Modified: 2025-01-27 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/design-thinking-how-to-evaluate-ideas/ - Categories: Content Marketing, Creative POV: You’ve just come out of a mega ideation session, and you’re not sure whether the ideas you came up with are good or trash. This blog is here to help. If you’re confused and wondering what’s going on, check out the last design thinking blog post, where you’ll find the ultimate guide to ideation, check it out here. In the ideation phase of design thinking, the goal is to generate as many ideas as possible. The next step is whittling it all back down again, really distilling the best ideas. Source: Nima Torabi on Medium The great thing about the techniques below is that not only will you be able to sniff great ideas like a truffle pig, but you’ll also have a framework that lays out why the idea is good. Handy if part of your job is selling ideas.   Below is a list of techniques that can help you evaluate your ideas with a mini how-to of each one. The Democratic Method: This is when you get a group of people in a room or a virtual call to vote on which idea they like best. The highest vote wins. This technique is useful when evaluating ideas that have a big audience or require mass appeal as part of the brief. The Four Categories Method: This method asks you to categorise your ideas in four categories. It’s a bit like nominating them for yearbook awards? The categories are: Most Delightful Most Rational Darling Long Shot Give The People What They Want: This is a variation on the four category method with 6 categories. Each idea is evaluated on how the end user feels when they interact with the idea: Certainty - this idea will help me find information or confirm information giving me certainty. Uncertainty - this idea will help me explore information and find new things. Connection - this idea will help to connect to people or their experiences. Significance - this idea will help put me in the spotlight and share my experiences. Growth - this idea will help me to grow or learn. Contribute - this idea will help me help other people. Six Thinking Hats: This technique is from the book, Six Thinking Hats by Dr Edward de Bono. It’s a way of thinking in a group, giving each person a hat and a thinking methodology to combat groupthink. Below is a diagram that gives an overview of each hat and how to think whilst metaphorically wearing each hat. Use each hat to judge your ideas, you can even categorise each hat’s favourite ideas to understand the appeal to different personalities and use cases. Image Source: https://sites. google. com/site/yr10visualarts/six-thinking-hats Now Wow How Matrix: This is another method best employed in a group.   Each idea is categorised into 3 segments and plotted on a chart. Now - Ideas that can be implemented now How? - Ideas that are great but impossible to implement  Wow! - Ideas that are great and can be... --- ### How to Expand Internationally with PPC > Read our top tips and areas to consider when beginning to build a successful international PPC campaign using adwords. - Published: 2020-11-18 - Modified: 2025-02-25 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/how-to-target-foreign-markets-with-adwords/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) Sometimes it feels like the world is getting smaller by the day. Retail giants such as Amazon and eBay have broken down the barriers for B2C businesses working across multiple territories, and now it’s the norm for consumers to be shopping online from anywhere in the world. The trend of increasing globalisation of our markets is here to stay, with fulfillment logistics becoming even easier and consumers becoming more confident with buying from abroad. So if you’re operating in just a single territory right now, how do you look to expand your digital presence to new markets?   PPC may be the answer.   PPC enables your business to be almost-instantly visible in any market that you choose through appearing in that country’s version of Google. However, the amount that you appear and how well that resonates with customers to drive sales will depend upon how well your campaigns are set up. We’ve kept things simple here with our 3 steps to launching into new markets.   1: Research, Research and Research some more Know your Search Engines Before starting any form of research, you need to be aware of what the prevalent search engine is in that country. Google Ads is the number one paid ad platform for most countries, and on the whole this is pretty simple. However, there are some notable exceptions, including: Russia (Yandex) China (Baidu) Japan (Yahoo) Korea (Naver) Taiwan (Bing Ads/Yahoo) In most of these countries, Google Ads does have a presence, but in countries such as Russia and China, local search engines really are a must if you want to make any kind of impact. In China, Baidu boasts 76% market share, while in Russia, Yandex sees about 52%. These ad platforms have different targeting options, sophistication and reach, so it’s important to fully understand them before beginning. More than just Language - Intent and Localisation  Apart from target country market research, identify whether there is a demand for the products/services you offer in that country:  Search for variations of keywords in the SERPs Use a variety of keyword research tools Note your competitors (they almost certainly won’t be the same as your current market) Gauge differences in price points, discounts and the way competitors in the prospective territory market their products or services Check the messaging used - are websites pushing USPs over prices Both ad copy and keyword translations will form the backbone of your new activity. It’s easy for messages to get confused during the translation stage so it goes without saying you can’t do this through an online translator. Ensure you use an expert who is a native speaker for that market, as well as that language. We use idioms when we speak and create copy more often than we think, which means that our good intentions can be lost when the copy is word-for-word translated to a new language. Users can tell the difference between someone who knows the market and speaks like a local to someone who... --- ### 4 Data-Led Tips to Drive Performance Through COVID > The tips in this guide focus on understanding user behaviour across your site, many businesses have seen a complete shift in their audience and conversion behaviours. - Published: 2020-11-16 - Modified: 2024-04-23 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/4-data-led-tips-to-drive-performance-through-covid/ - Categories: Data Throughout 2020 market landscapes have been changing, audience behaviour has shifted greatly, and as a business there’s a lot of information out there that can help you understand this behaviour to drive more leads, sales, sign-ups etc. The tips in this guide focus on understanding user behaviour across your site, many businesses have seen a complete shift in their audience and conversion behaviours. Without a firm grasp on the data many businesses are missing out on large opportunities to drive revenue and prepare for growth post-lockdown. 1. Understand demand shifts Credit: https://unsplash. com/@markuswinkler Lockdowns across the world have changed demand across almost every industry. To understand the demand of your own products a really easy method is to utilise Google Trends. Within this tool you can compare the popularity of products you sell, services you’re thinking of offering, or informational searches users are making. The data points go back 5 years, and can give insight into whether you’re offering users what they are currently interested in. 2. Changing demographics The change in demand for products has also led to a shift in demographics for many businesses. The first step to understanding this shift can be found in Google Analytics within the demographics report. Compare your audience age or gender year on year/pre vs. post lockdown to work out how your audience is changing. You may learn that you have a new converting user base, and decisions can be made on how to best target them. 3. Post-lockdown offers & testing If you have brick and mortar stores that you’re not able to operate during lockdown, use this time to understand what drives user conversions across your site with testing. Develop post-lockdown offers then A/B test these in paid ad messaging, on-site through the use of Google Optimise or other CRO platforms, or in organic meta data. Use the data previously gathered on your audience from the demand and demographic shift sections to make assumptions or hypothesis based on data, then come to a alt="" />Credit: https://unsplash. com/@lukechesser Everything can change within a day; this unpredictability means we must be more vigilant across our data set. Simple dashboards tracking sessions, conversion rates, user behaviour metrics, demographics, and other KPIs can be set up in Google Data Studio. This will provide your business with a daily view of performance that can help to make decisions to keep the flow of revenue as stable as possible in turbulent times. The data to help your business succeed in challenging times is available across analytics platforms. Understanding where to start can be difficult, hopefully the tips in this guide can help you make the first step. If you have questions around how you can leverage the data available to you to increase performance across your digital channels, get in touch with Found. --- ### 5 Handy Tips for Preparing your Forecasts in Excel - Published: 2020-11-13 - Modified: 2024-05-10 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/5-handy-tips-for-preparing-your-forecasts-in-excel/ - Categories: Data As an accountant by trade I can sometimes feel like a duck out of water in the world of digital marketing, but luckily for me, we can all appreciate some handy tips when it comes to preparing forecasts and models in Excel. Now this isn’t all about fancy formulas and shortcuts (although I’ve thrown some in for good measure) but rather a few tips that will help improve the useability and functionality of your forecast while helping you get the job done faster. Tip 1 – Include a dedicated section or sheet in your document that lists out all the relevant inputs and assumptions that will drive your forecast. This small detail can make life a lot easier in a few ways: Anyone who needs to review or use the model can quickly see the key assumptions applied in the forecast all in one go and without having to go through multiple sheets. All formulas utilising the same inputs can be driven from a single source. This ensures consistency across the model and reduces the risk of errors or miscalculations. It makes for a more dynamic forecast as inputs and assumptions can easily be updated across the workbook by changing the number in one place only. This allows you to quickly and easily test varying assumptions in your forecast... no updating individual sheets or formulas going on here. Tip 2 – Use formatting strategically to help others (and yourself) read and use the forecast. Now you can tackle this in a number of ways and everyone has their own preferences, but two pieces of formatting I would consider in any model are: a. The use colour formatting to distinguish between ‘actual’ numbers as opposed to ‘forecast’ numbers. For example:This can be done simply by using Excel’s conditional formatting functionality:You should note that in the command I have locked the row (‘$4’) but not the column (‘b’) this allows you to copy the formatting across cells and be sure that the format is based on the correct cell. b. Use formatting to distinguish between cells that contain hardcoded data compared to those containing a formula. Generally, in a forecast we want to minimise the use of hardcoded data as this can be inefficient to update and lead to errors. However, this is sometimes unavoidable so having a way to quickly identify these cells can save a lot of time and make it easier for others to follow. For example:Again, we can utilise conditional formatting to highlight these cells using the ‘=ISFORMULA’ function. Note: to apply the formatting to the full range you need to select all the relevant cells before navigating to the ‘Conditional Formatting’ command. When entering the ISFORMULA formula you need to refer to the active cell (in this case B6). Tip 3 – You can group, but you can’t hide Hidden cells can be a nightmare in any document, particularly if they include data that is being utilised in your forecast. If you have a need to reduce... --- ### Black Friday and Cyber Monday Checklist 2024 > Dominate Black Friday & Cyber Monday with our ultimate checklist. From bold deals to powerful tactics, set your brand up for success this holiday season! - Published: 2020-11-11 - Modified: 2024-12-05 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/black-friday-and-cyber-monday-checklist/ - Categories: B2B, Ecommerce, Paid Search (PPC), SEO Every year, Black Friday returns, and marketers kick into high gear months in advance. The UK remains one of the world’s ecommerce giants, yet 2024 has been anything but predictable. For brands straddling multiple categories, the message is clear: keep a pulse on these industry shifts and double down where the momentum is building. WHAT IS BLACK FRIDAY MARKETING? Black Friday isn’t just a shopping event - it’s a battlefield for brands to dominate the market and capture consumer attention. This is when your marketing strategy needs to go bold, with tactics designed to break through the noise and deliver unbeatable deals. Black Friday is about giving customers offers they can’t resist, driving sales to new heights. While it’s a time for aggressive pricing, it’s also a unique opportunity to build customer loyalty and engagement that lasts well beyond the holiday rush. This is the time to go all in and turn casual browsers into devoted fans. A QUICK LOOKBACK. Before we discuss the BFCM checklist for 2024, I thought it would be useful to take a quick look back at 2023. 1. Black Friday online sales grew 8% year-over-year (YoY) to $70. 9 billion globally in 2023. 2. Black Friday started much earlier and finished later with a lot of brands extending discounts online. No change this year with Amazon kicking off their Black Friday deals in October! 3. Last year, customers were more likely to search directly for brands and deals compared to the year previously. 4. Shoppers researched more across platforms (mobile, Shopping, YouTube) than any previous year - a trend likely to grow this year.   HOW TO PREPARE FOR BLACK FRIDAY CYBER MONDAY? We’re expecting that retailers and brands will lead with a digital first strategy this year - making sure they are present during the different touchpoints of the consumer journey, from awareness right the way through to driving action on site.   Struggling with where to start? ! Fear not - the team at Found have pulled together a whitepaper which contains all the information you need! We've brought some of our best minds together to predict the trends that we’re expecting to see over the next few months in retail and consumer behaviour - using data modelling of previous years and applying what we know about 2020 so far to help you build your plans.   You can download the whitepaper here which already contains all of the handy checklists we’re going to go through below. 2024 BLACK FRIDAY CHECKLISTS GENERAL PREPARATIONYour go-to list before any Black Friday: B2C BLACK FRIDAY CHECKLISTSpecific checklist developed for B2C companies, focusing in on preparation and activation across different channels: B2B BLACK FIRDAY CHECKLISTSpecific checklist developed for B2B companies, focusing in on preparation and activation across different channels: BIDDABLE MEDIA BLACK FIRDAY CHECKLISTA checklist which details the must-do actions across all Biddable channels including: Search, Social, Local, YouTube and Shopping: GOOGLE SHOPPING BLACK FRIDAY CHECKLISTA huge proportion of overall revenue is tracked through Google Shopping campaigns,... --- ### Black Friday SEO: Tips to Boost Product Sales > Nail for Black Friday SEO Strategy with our top tips on optimising your products, nailing your on-page experience and targeting the right audience. - Published: 2020-11-06 - Modified: 2025-03-12 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/products-on-page-copy-targeting-nailing-black-friday-seo/ - Categories: Ecommerce, SEO Black Friday is fast approaching, and while everyone is focusing on updating ads, planning in new campaigns, and drilling through data to find new audiences, it can be easy to forget that SEO has a huge part to play as well. So, we take a look at the fundamentals of Black Friday SEO to help your ecommerce brand to prepare. Products. This is what people come to your site to buy, so should be your first review point. If the product information isn’t accurate, or they aren’t displaying properly, you need to get that fixed asap, and definitely ahead of your development code freeze. Top things to check include: Accessibility & Indexation - can they be easily found (by crawlers and people), are they being indexed properly, are any showing up as crawl errors?   Is there a separate “hub” for products on offer, or is it a sitewide discount? - this changes your targeting approach, so get this nailed at the start for minimal last-minute panic. Is the information correct? Think stock counts, pricing, descriptions, reviews - is it all pulling through properly? Are the images appropriate? Are they high quality? - Images are a huge part of product purchases, the ability to zoom in, click through galleries, and even have 360 images to manipulate angles is a great plus to any product page Then, you need to get into the nitty-gritty of product optimisation: Is the schema accurate, pulling through and validating properly, and matching the feed information for the product? - Do not forget the stock in the schema and make sure it is updated with Offer markup ahead of the day!   Are the images optimised? Think file size, file name, alt text. Does the description include target keywords?   Does the product name need optimising? Does the page effectively call out the offers in the text as well as image overlays?   Then once you’re done with all of your checks, benchmark them then check them again in the week before your code freeze, and then again in the days leading up to your offers starting. Most sites put a code freeze in place the week (or sometimes two) before Black Friday but (and developers will hate me for this) for any urgent changes you can normally still get them pushed through in the days leading up to launch. Just make sure it is actually urgent and will impact plans and performance if not resolved, and say this to them!   On-Page Copy. This one is a bit of a grey area as it depends on how you are running your offers. So, we’ve split it into the two kinds of offers you can run: Sitewide. If you are running sitewide discounts, whereby everything on the website is part of the offer (even to varying degrees) then you will need to: Make sure the correct discounts are being applied to the right categories/sections - e. g. if T-shirts are 20% off but Jumpers are 15%... --- ### A Guide to Virtual Meetings - Published: 2020-10-28 - Modified: 2024-05-10 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/a-guide-to-virtual-meetings/ - Categories: Culture, Digital Marketing, How to Lockdown brought many things into our lives from banana bread to virtual quizzes. Whilst some things have been left behind in March, virtual calls are certainly here to stay. Whether you’re using Zoom, Google Hangouts or Microsoft Teams, we have some tips and tricks we’ve picked up along the way to help your virtual meetings run smoothly. 1. Make sure you have a comfortable set up It is worth investing in a good office chair that will provide you with back support, as well as arranging your desk and laptop set up in a way that is kind to your posture. 2. Take care when using two screens Credit: https://unsplash. com/@leecampbell When considering your desk set up, also think about which screen you are going to use for video calls vs which screen your camera is on. You want to make sure you are engaging with the call participants as well as being able to see them. 3. Think about your lighting Particularly with the winter months, the natural light isn’t there for much of the day, having some extra lighting will make sure participants can see you clearly. 4. Switch off your notifications When sharing your screen, you want to make sure your notifications aren’t pinging up as a distraction for both you and the other participants. Even if not hosting, you’re best to switch them off to avoid distractions. 5. Check your tech Make sure your tech is working properly ahead of the meeting, including audio, camera, access. You don’t want to waste time at the start of the meeting trying to workout why you can’t hear anyone. 6. Have a clear agenda Credit: https://unsplash. com/@hope_house_press_leather_diary_studio As with face to face meetings an agenda is key to ensure the efficient running of a meeting. Particularly when having meetings virtually, the flow may not be quite as smooth as it would be in person, but having an agenda in place helps with this. 7. Schedule breaks As you would in a F2F meeting, we need breaks tea, fresh air, or even just a lap of your living room to stretch your legs. Breaks might not come as naturally when doing a meeting virtually, so slot them in amongst your agenda points. 8. Be engaging It can be hard to keep all participants engaged during a virtual meeting and without some of the cues we are able to give face to face, it can be tricky to interrupt. Make sure you are regularly asking your participants if they have any questions or want to add anything. 9. "You're on mute" Credit: https://unsplash. com/@mbaumi After months of working from home, this is a phrase we’ve all come to know and we’re all guilty of forgetting to unmute ourselves, but do try to remember to unmute before contributing, or on zoom, hit the space bar to temporarily enable your microphone. Virtual calls aren’t going anywhere in a hurry and as with many of the new challenges that working from home has brought... --- ### Tracking the Shopping SERPs - Published: 2020-10-26 - Modified: 2024-12-03 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/tracking-the-shopping-serps/ - Categories: Ecommerce, Paid Search (PPC), SEO Now Google has begun rolling out the Organic listings for Google Shopping in the UK, we wanted to know how much of an impact this really has on the SERPs, and how much it will impact both Paid and Organic channels.   Why do we care about this? This is a huge introduction to Organic search for retail websites - no longer is the coveted Shopping performance purely for Paid channels! But that doesn't mean Organic is just going to start flying, and as with anything Organic, there has to be some way the products are being ranked. It isn’t a free-for-all; there is a system. And that is a system we wan’t to monitor.   First step? Track the landscape. What are we tracking? Google has already said the PLAs at the top of the main results page will remain as paid-only listings, which means the changes are happening on the Shopping tab itself. So, unlike our previous analysis on aspects like the map pack, we needed to extend our Luminr to assess the Shopping tab specifically instead of the main page.    Because of that, we’re tracking the presence of Paid and Organic shopping listings, on the Shopping tab, to identify things like: How frequently combination listings appear - Paid + Organic How frequently a site appears in both types of listing How frequently the same products appear in both types of listing  Which websites dominate the results? How does estimated CTR vary depending on if you appear in Paid or Organic listings? How are the listings changing over time? Are we seeing different sites in the Paid listings vs. the Organic? All of this information then allows us to: Identify changes in real time and react accordingly Identify trends in listing performance and appearance, to factor into our performance forecasts and reporting Identify new competitors appearing across both Paid and Organic - just because their websites aren’t ranking on the first page of the main results, doesn’t mean they aren’t appearing at product level in the Shopping tab Spot trends in product performance and how that differs on the Shopping tab compared to other Paid listings, and how it compares to other Organic listings So, how are we doing it? In our admittedly preachy introductory post to SRE, we mentioned flexibility and integration being driving philosophies for its development. We’ve executed and analysed a further 260K searches since then. In this instance however we’re leaning towards flexibility, building out a specialised function to monitor the introduction of organic listings in Google Shopping. And from there, who knows where we might take it. . In the humble words of the immortal Michael Bolton: Incredible thoughts, incredible mindsToo many great ideas insideIt's a miracle my head can contain themMy spectacular brainFor all humankindChanging how we think about space and timeNow it's time to share them with the people, my brain is a genius - Incredible Thoughts, The Lonely Island To achieve this we curated a list of the most... --- ### Happy Birthday Found! 10 years and counting... - Published: 2020-10-25 - Modified: 2024-07-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/happy-birthday-found-10-years-and-counting/ - Categories: Culture They say time flies when you’re having fun but I didn’t think that applied to a whole decade... as October 2020 marks the 10 year birthday of our agency. It’s crazy to think that this time 10 years ago we were a small affiliate business, looking to test the waters in search and becoming a digital agency. Time to Celebrate! After a year of the unexpected, it’s easy to feel like there’s not much worth celebrating anymore but we thought it’s important to take some time to appreciate how far we’ve come and everyone that’s been part of it – plus an excuse to break out the cake and bubbles. This year we celebrate turning 10 with a virtual afternoon tea, packed to perfection by our very own Head of People & Culture, Chelsea Hall. Back to the Beginning Found has evolved a lot over the last 10 years, something I have been fortunate enough to be a part of, having joined a year before the launch back when we were Artemis8. In those days, Google wasn’t the giant of the search world we see today and we were making our way as a successful affiliate company. However, after spotting an opportunity to start expanding our services, I saw Found transform from affiliate to an integrated search agency, through to a performance marketing agency and now to full service, growth agency. We’ve acquired businesses and expanded our offering into the exciting world of influencer marketing, spoken at numerous events and even hosted a few of our own.   We’ve become Google & Facebook Partners and ranked 6th in the medium category of Great Places to Work and 3rd in Great Places for Women.   Building a Culture In theory growing an agency is as simple as increasing the revenue it generates, but in practice there’s so much more to it. Over the years, Found has prided itself on the culture that we’ve purposefully built with our team and our clients, creating a place we all love to be. I thought it would be worth sharing some of our core values that have enabled us to grow in this way, and what it really means to the team. Truth – This sits at the core of everything we do and is something that for the past 10 years I’ve seen in abundance. Being honest with one another, with our clients, our partners and overall striving for transparency in everything we do is so important. Impact – Quite simply, I don’t think we’d still be an agency if we hadn’t had so much of an impact on the clients we work with. At Found I’ve seen us take on big challenges and get big results, finding those gamechanging actions both internally and with clients to drive change is what excites us the most. This in itself has fuelled our growth mindset making us grow and grow. Unity – Now more than ever, unity is something I see day in, day out at... --- ### Found wins at The UK Digital Growth Awards 2020 - Published: 2020-10-21 - Modified: 2024-05-10 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-wins-at-the-uk-digital-growth-awards-2020/ - Categories: Analytics, Digital Marketing, General News Now you might've seen a blog post from us a few weeks ago, talking about how we'd been shortlisted in not one, but two categories at The UK Digital Growth Awards 2020... Well we can proudly announce that we have won both awards! Integrated Search Campaign of the Year - Found and Hoppy. "This was a really well-founded campaign that achieved challenging growth targets through the smart application of data. Well done! " https://twitter. com/dontpanicevents/status/1318901170270855170 Best Use of Data - Found and Nettitude. "This entry demonstrated great use of applied data science to content development and performance tracking. The team recognised that the traditional methods of measurement wouldn't work so devised a proprietary framework themselves. A truly unique and innovative approach to solving the problem of ensuring optimal landing pages to improve SERPs ranking. " https://twitter. com/dontpanicevents/status/1318903646797574144 We're so proud of the team, especially those who worked with Hoppy and Nettitude throughout the past year. If you’re interested in how we could support the growth of your business through digital channels, then get in touch today to speak to a member of the team. --- ### 6 Simple tips to help optimise your e-commerce site - Published: 2020-10-19 - Modified: 2024-05-10 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/6-simple-tips-to-help-optimise-your-e-commerce-site/ - Categories: SEO Some of the most common drivers of organic success across e-commerce sites are simple to implement and can see quick turnaround on results. This guide covers off the 6 quick tips we have for e-commerce site owners to start seeing revenue growth across your domain. 1. Improve your sub-category internal linking. Credit: https://unsplash. com/@jjying Linking out to sub-category pages from the top of a category page provides Google with a lot of relevancy information. Links can be text or image based, should normally occur beneath the introductory copy, and should avoid pushing products below the fold. Identify a hierarchy for your products and categories and reflect this by linking out to relevant categories throughout the site. This is particularly helpful when launching a new product line as the new internal links assist with the page’s indexation and ranking performance. 2. Utilise your homepage to improve product and category performance. The homepage of your site most likely contains the largest number of backlinks of any other page across the domain. It’s the most authoritative page and the links that point out from that page pass the most value through to other areas of the site. Choose to link to your top priority category pages and products from the homepage, and rotate links to seasonal pages to drive increased performance for these pages during seasonal peaks. 3. Create a seasonal demand calendar and content plan. Christmas and Black Friday are the two most important periods of the year for many e-commerce sites. Most site owners will be optimising their content to target the uplift in demand around these two seasonal events. The levels of competition around these terms therefore is exceptionally high. Often an area where smaller e-commerce sites can gain traction is in targeting more niche seasonal terms. By mapping out the seasons, holidays and events taking place throughout the year, and conducting a little research using Google’s keyword planner, businesses can identify demand they didn’t know previously existed. Reviewing user search volumes throughout the year can also identify when seasonal peaks and uplift occurs, helping you to make decisions around when to launch specific product lines. 4. Write unique product descriptions. Credit: https://unsplash. com/@glenncarstenspeters This one can be difficult to implement where there are thousands of products and limited time available to create copy. A simple solution is to prioritise pages based on the organic traffic/revenue they’ve driven over a year and optimise in batches prioritising the top performing pages first. If you have keyword research available you can also prioritise pages with the greatest potential to drive traffic in the future, based on search volumes (you should also base this on how relevant you believe the rest of your site is to the particular product, e. g. if you sell mainly fitness equipment you’re much more likely to rank for a new brand of treadmill vs. a pair of running shoes). 5. Refresh your keyword research at least once a year. Credit: https://unsplash. com/@youxventures User search behaviour changes over... --- ### What's New with Google Tag Manager: Partial Exports and Bulk Actions - Published: 2020-10-16 - Modified: 2024-05-10 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/whats-new-with-google-tag-manager-partial-exports-and-bulk-actions/ - Categories: Analytics, Google Algorithm Updates The analytics team here at Found have been enjoying the small but impactful releases Google had been rolling out this autumn. Aside from the big announcement of 2020 - server-side tagging - the things that have got us excited and literally made our lives easier have been the partial exports (hurrah for reusability) and bulk actions (amazing for time-saving). Partial exports. Previously used as a back-up or a way to distribute useful repositories, the export function has all of a sudden become so much more useful! Going from an all-or-nothing paradigm to export any subset has made a huge difference in the ways this feature can be used. For example, here at Found we use a set of helper tags to allow for easy addition of GA events and with this feature, we don’t have to recreate them in every container or do complicated JSON pruning for an entire container export to extract them. How they work: In the usual place for the export functionality : Admin -> Container -> Export container you now get a picklist of all tags after selecting the container version/workspace you want to download. In our case, should we simply want to download some helper Javascript tags, this becomes super easy like so: One super useful feature is the dependency warning - if you choose to export tags without their associated variables or triggers, you automatically get a warning, so you can ensure you are considering all elements of the export and you don’t end up with a job half done. Pretty neat. Bulk actions. Every GTM light or pro user has at some point suffered from the pain of having to review a container, find upwards of 20 tags/variables/triggers that were obsolete and had to make a cup of coffee, resign to the task ahead, then proceed to delete all of them one by one - waiting for the page to refresh every time, clicking confirmation buttons and frankly wasting a good chunk of time unnecessarily. Such was life before bulk actions - small release, but what an impact this is having! The magic of adding check-boxes against the lists is a serious time-saver: You can now select the tags you need (tags are pictured in this example but the interface is the same for variables or triggers, clients, zones, templates) and then choose to perform bulk actions.   Bulk actions available: Tags: Delete, Pause/Unpause, Move to FolderTriggers: Delete, Move to FolderVariables: Delete, Move to FolderClients: Delete, Move to Folder Zones: DeleteTemplates: Delete Trying to delete items that have references will result in a warning, just as in the individual deletion process.   In summary - the team has got back a big chunk of their time, which they are now using to write blog-posts, so watch this space! Jokes aside, we’re thrilled to see such a popular tool that is crucial in deploying tracking solutions for our clients get incrementally better and help us get even more efficient in our roles. We’re definitely... --- ### 3 New Enhanced Google Features announced - Search On 2020 > We know that search has evolved beyond the simple text to answer retrieval method - we can search through traditional means or newer ones like voice and now even our smartphone cameras.  - Published: 2020-10-15 - Modified: 2024-04-23 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/new-enhanced-google-features-search-on/ - Categories: SEO We know that search has evolved beyond the simple text to answer retrieval method - we can search through traditional means or newer ones like voice and now even our smartphone cameras.   As part of Search On, Aparna Chennapragada took us through three core areas that looked at how they’ve been enhancing existing Google features and how we can expect to see them develop further over the coming months. 1. Learning. Outside of more generic queries, you can now use various search methods for knowledge acquisition; especially for hard to search things like equations, or foreign languages. Google has been working on developing AI to help them understand the question, the problem, and then provide you with the tools and resources you need to answer your query.   Through developments to Google Lens, you can now take a photo of what you need and Google can interpret that to provide you with the answers. So, if you’re in a foreign country and don’t understand the language on a menu or a sign, you can take a picture of it and Google Lens now has the functionality to translate and read it out loud.   With a huge amount of home learning at the moment, Google Lens has also been developed to understand homework questions like equations, translate them into queries, and then provide the answer and step by step guides and videos on how to solve the equation. The latest development of this is one step further, incorporating AR to help searchers understand and explore, helping to bring learning to life and offer a much more in-depth search experience. The final part of their Learning enhancements comes from the DataCommons database. While this has been available for a couple of years, they are now exposing DataCommons as a new layer of the Knowledge Graph. With this, you can ask Google questions and say “tell me the crime level in Chicago” and then Google aggregates a huge amount of data to present information back to the searchers in easily digestible, visual formats to help answer the query as effectively and succinctly as possible. 2. Shopping. Improvements to shopping have been well documented throughout 2020, but as part of these the release of free listings will be fundamental for many merchants throughout the rest of the year. We recently wrote a blog post on the free Google shopping listings coming to the UK and what that means, along with what you need to do to have them show. However, there are also changes to how people can shop. Going back to Google Lens, from next month you’ll be able to long press on images on Google to search the image itself. With that, the way we shop is poised to change forever; their ‘style engine’ technology will allow you to search the image for the exact or similar items as well as suggesting ways to style it. Think the Clueless wardrobe at a monumental scale, where you’ve taken the largest products... --- ### New Advancements in Search - Search On 2020 - Published: 2020-10-15 - Modified: 2024-05-10 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/new-advancements-in-search-search-on-2020/ - Categories: SEO “Search will never be a solved problem; we will never stop on the quest to perfect search. ” At Search On, Cathy Edwards outlined there are four incoming updates to how Google’s information retrieval systems work, which will directly impact how search happens and the results which are served. All of which are expecting enhancements and updates to how they are powered within the next month.   1. Did You Mean. ‘Did you mean’ is the technology that understands typos and common errors in search and is thereby able to work out what the user really meant, and serve a result correct to that query. This is technology which has been built upon detecting mistakes; that means tracking what a user types the first time, when they then refine it and mapping the differences within their queries.   Whilst no specifics were detailed, Cathy outlined that this is an area that has been heavily invested in and they’ve made breakthroughs in improving, showing examples where the original query barely matched what the user really meant and the mistyping was based on key proximity rather than phonetic spelling. Currently 1 in 10 queries involve some form of misspelling so improving the way Google processes this will have a huge impact upon how search works.   2. Specific Searches. Often a user searches for a very niche question or they’re looking for an exact answer to a problem they’re facing. Cathy outlined a breakthrough in how Google is indexing the answers to these which will impact 7% of queries from next month. At present, Google indexes web pages which can provide answers to this type of query, but they’re shifting to also index the individual passages - so the specific answer as well as the context around it. We’d expect it’ll impact ‘utility’ searches where there is a useful, simple answer.   Traditional search where full web pages are returned involve information retrieval where Google looks down into its index and sources the most valuable answer. Whilst this is still a quick result, it involves heavy-lifting in terms of how Google processes it and involves the consideration of hundreds of ranking factors to order the content. However, by using block-level indexing, Google can look up into its categorised Knowledge Graph to immediately return the content that helps answer the user question.   It’s also worth noting the time and support Google has provided to open-source technology such as AMP and supporting Gutenberg frameworks, as this is block-level creation of content that will integrate well with this form of indexation. 3. Broad Searches. After covering specific searches, Cathy moved on to talk about the advancements when it comes to broad searches. It was implied that whilst users may type a broad query that they often are actually looking for a more specific answer or that their next query will include some more specific refinements for the answer they need. For example if searching to renovate a bathroom, after the broad query they may... --- ### Delivering a Higher Standard of Google Search - Search On 2020 - Published: 2020-10-15 - Modified: 2024-05-10 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/delivering-a-higher-standard-of-google-search-search-on-2020/ - Categories: SEO This evening Google hosted Search On, their online summit to introduce the latest in AI developments being added to search. The event opened with Prabhakar Raghavan giving a summary of the 4 core principles that Google is focused on for improving and providing a higher standard of search. It’s important to remember these and keep them front of mind when you’re considering why Google has updated in a certain way, or what will perform best in search.   Traditional ranking factors are becoming increasingly diluted through the way that Google layers different ‘baby algorithms’ on to one another, which means simply optimising for a set of metrics isn’t possible anymore - instead, one of the keys to SEO success is understanding the why behind Google’s changes to then adapt your site. In this instance, Google is focusing on providing the best answers to searchers through having knowledge of all of the world’s information, knowing which is the correct/high quality information, and then providing users with secure and open access to that.   To look at the 4 principles in depth:  Understand the World's Information. Google has always focused on building the most comprehensive index of websites to rank search results and provide searchers with answers to their queries. The issue is, 15% of queries every single day are ones that have never been seen before. Think about that for a moment, if there are say, 3. 5 billion searches happening every day, then that’s 525,000,000 searches every single day that have never been done before. That is a monumental amount of searches to find relevant, accurate information for with no prior knowledge of the query itself. That’s where Prabhakar moved on to explain the advances they’ve made to the Knowledge Graph, showing how it had taken a step up from just looking at websites, to helping people know about the information and the world around them. The improvements made to the Knowledge Graph drill into related queries, so as well as providing an answer for the direct query, there are now answers for related queries right there in the search results waiting for you. Part of expanding the Knowledge Graph was also enhancing the data available on places, and locations, and the latest updates here allow people to see things like how busy certain places are directly in Google Maps. While this feature has been around for local businesses for some time now, this latest update has seen it expanded to include new areas like parks and beaches - places outside of a physical location - showing how busy an area is both in real-time and throughout the day, so you can plan your visits more safely with COVID-19. The next phase of this is showing the busyness information directly in Google Maps - so you won’t even have to search for a business to see if it is quiet, you’ll be able to see it directly in the interface. COVID-19 has been a fundamental driver for some of these... --- ### 5 Stats that show digital landscape is changing and adapting during the pandemic > This piece looks at 5 ways digital landscape has adapted to thrive during these extraordinary times. This piece looks at 5 ways digital landscape has adapted to thrive during these extraordinary times.  - Published: 2020-10-14 - Modified: 2024-04-23 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/5-stats-that-show-digital-landscape-is-changing-and-adapting-during-the-pandemic/ - Categories: Analytics, Digital Marketing, General News, Opinion Digital advertising has evolved significantly since its inception in the 1990’s and now encompasses multiple channels including social media, video content, paid advertising and SEO. Coronavirus has forced many brands to pivot the direction of their marketing and advertising strategies as consumer habits have changed rapidly. Coupled with brands tightening their belts to weather the pandemic means marketing budgets have come under pressure in 2020. Despite the general gloom surrounding the current situation, seismic change brings with it great opportunities as companies scramble to capitalise on emerging trends. Looking towards Q4 2020 and 2021, there are a number of surging trends which offer a great opportunity for brands in the new business environment. This piece looks at 5 ways digital landscape has adapted to thrive during these extraordinary times.   More older people than ever are using the internet. One group that has felt left behind by the digital revolution is the older generation. As technology use has simplified, those aged 65 to 74 have increased their internet use; with a Bridging the Digital Divide study showing growth from 52% in 2011 to 83% in 2019. With this group also being more likely to require shielding from the virus, online grocery shopping has surged as people seek to reduce their exposure in supermarkets. Also, the NHS track and trace app may be the first app many of this demographic have downloaded. With internet use surging amongst 65+ group, there has never been a better time to engage these new online users by designing the websites and apps that are intuitive and simple to use and optimising them for easy discoverability.   Digital video is on the rise. Credit: https://unsplash. com/@glenncarstenspeters The 2020 spring lockdowns resulted in governments around the world telling their citizens to stay at home. By April approximately half the world's population was living under some kind of restriction, meaning 3. 9 billion people had a lot of spare time on their hands. Audiences flocked to digital video services such as Netflix who saw a surge of subscriptions. Programs such as the Tiger King saw 64 millions views in its first month of release, with many analysts contributing its runaway success to the lockdown audience. eMarketer has predicted that in 2020 47 million people in the UK (69. 9% of the population) will stream content at least once a month, which is a 2. 9% increase from 2019. Social media video content such as YouTube and Instagram has seen strong performance too. With further growth expected and the rise of new social media channels such as TikTok offering a great way to target generation Z in particular, now is the perfect time to engage with viewers with quality video content.   Podcasting is becoming more popular.   With production relatively unaffected by social distancing requirements, audio content has seen a boom during the Covid period. The pandemic coincided with a rekindling of interest in all things audio, with podcasts now at the forefront of growth in this media. Deloitte... --- ### Design Thinking: The Ultimate Guide to Ideation > Explore the ultimate guide to ideation with design thinking. Learn creative techniques to solve problems, spark innovation, and drive meaningful results. - Published: 2020-10-13 - Modified: 2025-01-27 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/design-thinking-the-ultimate-guide-to-ideation/ - Categories: Content Marketing Design thinking has exploded in popularity recently as a new way of approaching problems, and coming up with new ways of doing things. Usually applied in fields such as design and UX, it’s influence has seeped into companies like Apple, Google and GE making it a veritable buzzword for marketing and beyond. Design thinking has a process with defined steps but tends to be a bit squiggly (technical term) as some steps help to define the one before and vice versa. Author/Copyright holder: Teo Yu Siang and Interaction Design Foundation. Copyright terms and licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3. 0 In this blog post we’ll be looking at the third step - ideation, in more detail. As a creative strategist, ideation is a discipline I like to keep sharp and in my back pocket (sounds like a disaster waiting to happen right? Remind me to not mix metaphors again).   What is ideation? I like to think of it as an algorithm to generate ideas. It gives some structure to a ‘vanilla’ brainstorm, is great for reviving flagging brains and is a fun way to strategise in a group. The aim of ideation is purely idea generation, which means to say quantity over quality. No matter what an idea is, it gets noted without analysis or judgement. This is a purely numbers game. Why do you need ideation? So ideation is great and all, but why waste time brainstorming when we could all go and do some proper work? Well, ideation is a great way to innovate with new ideas. A lesser known benefit is how well it can let you frame and redefine what you may see as ‘problems’ into solutions.   “One man’s problem is another’s solution. ” - Me, just now There is no pressure to find the ultimate solution in an ideation session, instead stupid questions are encouraged. Questions that question the status quo are powerful, and are the first step in challenging long held assumptions about how things are done or have been done in the past. Another great advantage of using ideation is the sheer volume of ideas generated means that you’re statistically more likely to end up with a better solution. In design thinking, ideation is the stage when you stretch divergent thinking muscles, spreading laterally to look beyond obvious answers and broaden possibilities. Source: Nima Torabi on Medium How to ideate  So how would one go about running an ideation session? Structure is absolutely critical here, as you want to set everyone involved up for success. Mindset is everything. Ideally you’d have a defined problem or question that you want to address. The next step is assembling a group of different thinkers from different disciplines and a moderator (this will probably be you). A session works best when there are clear rules.   Rule 1: Set times to think about each prompt, and set times for discussion. Short sprints of timed discussion, and alone time work well - a bit like HIIT training. Rule... --- ### Why it's ok for your team to not feel ok right now - Published: 2020-10-09 - Modified: 2024-05-10 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/why-its-ok-for-your-team-to-not-feel-ok-right-now/ - Categories: Culture Since the pandemic took hold in March this year, we were thrown into a situation we’ve never been in before. Whether you were a parent expected to juggle full-time work with home schooling or someone in a flat share alternating working from your bed to working from the dining table with your housemates. We all had to embrace change (not a natural thing for many people) and adjust our ways of living. From strict lockdown to the government’s confusing messaging once they relaxed the rules, it’s been really tough for everyone, particularly when it comes to mental health. It’s been 6 months and we’re still navigating and living through an unprecedented situation. It’s only natural that we’re feeling anxious, tired and more depressed than usual. Each and every person is dealing with their own unique situation in the context of a global one, the fear of the virus itself plus the knock-on effect: socially, economically & psychologically. Is it any wonder, we’re not feeling okay? No, it’s completely normal! In figures released by the ONS (Office of National Statistics) it stated that “over four in five of people surveyed – 84 per cent – said they were worried about the effect the virus is having on their life, while 53 per cent said it was affecting their well-being” due to the Coronavirus pandemic. This doesn’t come as a surprise, as it’s reflected in the conversations I’m having with friends, family and team members on a daily basis. So what can we do to ensure we are supporting our team whilst the world is turned on its head? Here are a few tips: Listen Credit: https://www. freepik. com/kues1 Yes it is that simple but I don’t just mean listen to what your team members are saying, pay attention to any changes in behaviour, mood, output and habits.   Any changes to the norm can often be a sign of mental health struggles. Listen to what they are saying and remember that individuals are often the best people to determine what support they need or the adjustments they need to make so ask them how you can support them and listen to what they say. Can vs Can’t A large contributor to how we’re feeling is down to having the control taken away. There is so much out there that is uncertain at the moment and this naturally puts people on edge and makes them feel anxious. Try to adjust their focus to things they can do, instead of things they can’t control. Work with them to create simple action plans and support them through activity, communicating more often than you usually would. Offer Flexibility  We’re in a constantly changing situation so expect that your team’s needs and your own needs will continue to change. Tackle stressors together on an individual basis as something that causes issues one week may not be the same the following week. Make sure you are checking in regularly and modelling positive mental health practices such as... --- ### Free Google Shopping listings come to the UK > If you work in ecommerce, you probably remember the news from April this year about Google opening up Shopping to offer free listings for merchants in the US - Published: 2020-10-08 - Modified: 2024-04-23 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/free-google-shopping-listings-come-to-the-uk/ - Categories: Google Algorithm Updates, Paid Search (PPC) If you work in ecommerce, you probably remember the news from April this year about Google opening up Shopping to offer free listings for merchants in the US – a move that took many by surprise because it is such a fundamental part of any retail PPC campaign these days, but one that was spurred on by the COVID-19 pandemic and a way to help retailers gain free exposure through the crisis. Now, those listings are coming to the UK (as well as Europe, Asia, and Latin America) from mid-October, giving you a couple of weeks to get your listings set up and ready to take advantage of the “new” feature. Credit: https://unsplash. com/@rupixen What do you need to do? Upload your product feeds to Google MerchantCenter – if you’re already running Paid Shopping campaigns, this should alreadybe set up! Opt-in to “Surfaces across Google” – either whenyou sign up, or by navigating to the Growth tab in your Merchant Center accountand heading to “Manage programs” Monitor your feed health (either through a feedprovider, or manual checks) to make sure your products are eligible to show Monitor your performance – there is a new reportcoming to Merchant Center soon where you’ll be able to see unpaid clicks! And that’s it! The biggest part of this is going to be the same as with Paid Shopping campaigns – making sure your feed is eligible and in good health to get the maximum performance out of it. Why do we care about free Google Shopping listings? This is another step towards Google blurring the lines between paid-for advertising and organic listings – it’s the same feature, but it will be reported on differently. That means, for SEO teams, you’ll need to up your reporting and make sure you have visibility on how user behaviour is changing: Have users started clicking on shopping listingsmore – paid or organic – because there is more choice/the feature is moreprominent? Have you seen fewer organic clicks through tocategory pages because users can more easily be served a variety of relatedproducts, see the images, prices etc. without clicking through to a landingpage? But as integrated teams, you’ll also need to work much closer together to understand how product information needs to be structured, both in the feeds and on the pages, and then go a step further and understand which products or product types are driving the best performance to focus in on your individual strategies and adapt as necessary. You’ll also (or at least should) find yourselves working much closer with Product and Merchandising teams – training them on the information that’s needed when new products get uploaded to the site, when new ranges are brought in, and when sales run or products go out of stock. These things were primarily associated with the Paid Search and Business teams, but now they span into SEO as well. Then you need to think about how this changes the setup of the results page. Currently in the US,... --- ### 10 tips for a successful site build and migration > Site migrations can make or break a website. For many the choice to migrate is driven by a need for freedom to drive growth across your site. - Published: 2020-10-06 - Modified: 2025-01-27 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/10-tips-for-a-successful-site-build-and-migration/ - Categories: SEO Site migrations can make or break a website. For many the choice to migrate is driven by a need for freedom to drive growth across your site. Maybe you’re stuck with an old CMS platform, that doesn’t allow you the freedom to optimise your content, create new pages and effectively drive leads or conversions through your site. So, you make the decision to move to a new platform, create a new site and migrate the old one across to retain the value. The decisions you make for your site from here on out will impact site performance in ways that many have failed to appreciate. We’re writing this guide to help site owners make the right decisions in the build up to and post-migration and ensure you can drive the growth you want to see for your site or business. 1. Create a united team with a shared goal Across migrations you’ll often be working with multiple teams; a development agency, a digital agency, a design agency and in-house teams will often be collaborating to deliver a site build and migration. It’s imperative to create goals that everyone is working towards, set up ways of working from the off, ensure everyone has clear responsibilities and create a combined plan/roadmap to keep track of everyone’s activity. 2. Prioritise organic search A common mistake seen across many migrations is to take SEO advice too lightly. It can seem like an area that can be addressed later or something that takes a backseat when it comes to branding or UX, but getting your SEO right will prevent drop offs seen by many other brands. 3. Start with the right platform Before choosing a platform, speak to your digital agency. They have your long-term performance interests in mind and understand that platform can be the difference between a successful site launch, followed by years of growth, compared to a loss in performance and a struggle to get back to baseline. Your SEO experts should be working directly with your development agency, leading on what functionality your site requires to dominate the organic SERPs. 4. Build a structure that enables growth Your site’s structure, from the sitemap of all content, to linking between blog posts and services/solutions/products should be planned before moving into design phase. Your digital agency should be working directly with you to identify what services/solutions/products your business needs to drive growth and planning these out into a sitemap. You can then work on this collaboratively to determine what your final site structure should be. Nailing site structure will lead to improved traffic and revenue performance post-launch and enable you to build the site out effectively in the future without having to awkwardly force in new pages to the site structure. 5. Consider international targeting If you already do business in international markets but don’t have a site setup to offer pages in the relevant languages of those locations, now is the time to build this out! You can see big increases in... --- ### Found Shortlisted For The UK Digital Growth Awards 2020 - Published: 2020-10-01 - Modified: 2024-05-10 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-shortlisted-for-the-uk-digital-growth-awards-2020/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, General News More excitement for everyone here at Found as we've been shortlisted for two awards at The UK Digital Growth Awards. "Which awards? ! " we hear you scream. Well, the first is for Integrated Search Campaign of The Year for Hoppy. This might sound familiar, as we won an award in the same category for Hoppy at The Drum Search Awards back in May - hopefully we make it two out of two! The second award is for the Best Use of Data for Nettitude. If you know us well, you know how important our in-house data team is for everything we do. They are fantastic, and continue to surprise us with their innovative ideas, so being shortlisted for this award really is testament to the work they put in. Winners will be announced via social channels on Wednesday 21st October from 1pm. The team will be anxiously looking forward to that, but until then, I guess we'll have to celebrate making the shortlist anyway - right? If you're interested in how we could support the growth of your business through digital channels, then get in touch today to speak to a member of the team. --- ### How to use data to inform your SEO strategies > Every strategy should be designed to meet an objective, and the more information you have to hand before you begin the easier it is going to be to align activity to the end goal. - Published: 2020-09-16 - Modified: 2024-11-05 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/using-data-to-inform-seo-strategies/ - Categories: SEO Every strategy should be designed to meet an objective, and the more information you have to hand before you begin the easier it is going to be to align activity to the end goal. That said, a strategy is only as good as the data used to create it – if you’re working from an incomplete or inaccurate dataset then the tactics you deploy won’t necessarily be the ones you need. What types of data are most important for SEO? Generally, there are two types of data you can use to form a strategy: Internal External Wherever possible, a mixture of both should be used so you can approach the strategy from different standpoints. Using internal data Internal data is a goldmine and should be the first thing you look at when forming a strategy, but many people confuse internal data with platform data like you would get from Google Analytics and similar platforms. When we reference internal data, it is information specifically from the company, including: Financial data (sales, refunds/cancellations,upsell rates) Marketing data (plans, promotions, positioning) Audience data (demographics, interests,geographies) Promotional data (platforms, technologies, website) Clients know their business, and they know it better than you. But they can also reach out to other people in the company to get information much easier than you could, you just need to remember to ask them for it. Use cases Financial data If you know the general conversion rate of salesto upsells (e. g. at-basket addons, in-platform feature upsells), you can workout how many conversions you’d need to generate to increase the averagecustomer value, resulting in a higher lifetime value for each customer and thushigher revenue If you know the rate of refunds (and averagerefund value) that occur, you can bake them into your forecasts and make surethat you’re goals are set on driving X% more revenue to cover the cost of therefunds If you’re working on a lead basis, you can askyour client for information on the value of leads being driven by differentconversion points (and channels) so you can focus your Organic efforts on thepages, or sections, of the site which result in the highest value leads forthem Marketing data Any information around a client’s own plans tomarket the company, product, or service should always be baked into your ownplans for new landing pages, on-page optimisation, and new content Positioning data is what sets your client apartfrom their competitors – use this to inform landing page optimisation, newcontent, and general tone of voice across the website Audience data Target vs. actual audiences often differslightly, and platform data only gives you estimations, so the more you knowabout their audience the more you can tailor content on the site to capture andengage them Any kind of terminology that is specific totheir audience should be used in keyword research and page creation Platform data Ever had a client spring a migration on you? The more information you know about their platforms and technologies, the easier it is to prepare for last minute... --- ### The Good, the Bad, and the Oatly: A brand retrospective > Oatly, the brand who made oat milk the monolith of milk alternatives has had a fascinating history with some bold marketing choices. - Published: 2020-09-14 - Modified: 2025-01-27 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/oatly-brand-retrospective/ - Categories: Content Marketing Oatly, the brand who made oat milk the monolith of milk alternatives has had a fascinating history with some bold marketing choices. Recently the brand has come under fire for selling a stake of their company, linking them to Blackstone - a private equity firm with alleged shady connections to both Trump supporters and deforestation companies in Brazil.   Is this a case of a disruptor brand becoming a behemoth business participating in the very system they were railing against? Let’s discuss! The Post Milk Generation Milk has not had a good time, with a new alternative popping up seemingly every day. Instead of using Gen Y, Gen Z and all the Gens in between, the Vox have suggested using milk preferences instead. It checks out. Milk was king, then came the 70s and the soy milk generation. Soy was dropped like a stone when almond milk came along and now it’s oat time. So if you ever want to find out how old someone is or how they interact with social media, sniff their tea?   Source: Oatly USA Oatly got started when a team of Swedish scientists discovered the nutritious alt-milk phenomenon made from oats, water, and enzymes. Their marketing has had a storied history, at the beginning they had almost no media budget which is why they decided to use their packaging as a media channel. Less is not more with meandering quirky copy on every available surface.   Source: Oatly / Fortune To get the word out, they talked to baristas in coffee shops, the (influencers of the offline world) to spread the good oat word. As their popularity grew, so did their opposition. Then came the milk wars. The Milk Wars Angered at the idea that people were shunning milk, The Big Swedish Dairy Lobby* (*not their real name) decided to enter into a bitter advertising feud. They shouted ‘Milk is Milk! ’ and even went as far as to make up silly names for their competition in parody attack ads on TV. In a genius marketing move, Oatly went and trademarked the silly names, and started using them on their packaging. When their anti-milk slogans got slapped with lawsuits, they printed the details on their packaging.   Championing the spirit of disruption, the brand has always given the appearance of radical self awareness. Even their latest sustainability report has a big sticker that shouts about their poor performance compared to last year. Their latest creative foray has seen them temporarily suspend oat milk selling activity to create an Oatly Department of Distraction Services (ODDS for short). Here they have frankly outdone themselves with online entertainment. Bored at home in 2020? Why not watch a video on Olympian level porridge making, make your own t-shirt,or get your wacky dreams illustrated by their own resident art director?     Source: Lisa from Oatly Milk Gone Bad The recent news about Blackstone hasn’t been the first time the brand has landed in hot water. With such strong convictions,... --- ### A Practical Guide to Data Science in Digital Marketing > This article describes a handful of approaches that use data science to huge effect in various digital marketing streams. - Published: 2020-09-11 - Modified: 2025-03-12 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/a-practical-guide-to-data-science-in-digital-marketing/ - Categories: B2B, Data, Digital Marketing The Modern Day Data Economy We might one day “become less valuable than the data we produce,” the opening scene from Watchdogs 2. Giving away our freedom to tech companies without even knowing it is a scary prospect. In simple terms it would mean being rejected from a mortgage before you’ve even applied based on the huge amounts of data being siphoned from you. We haven’t arrived at that scary future yet, pray we never will. Nevertheless, the already staggering amount of information available to marketers is a gold mine for data scientists. Traditional advertisers  have been driven by gut feelings. Data scientists’ gut feelings are hypotheses: hunches about untapped veins in mountains of messy data. A good marketing data scientist should be an adept engineer capable of cracking the vault of online data through APIs and large-scale scrapes and be able to persist that data in a robust way. They also need to be able to tell a story through data by playing the curious investigator, knowing which tools to apply and how to string together a narrative of actionable insight. Commercial awareness is everything - context is the difference between a party factoid and a relevant, applicable insight to drive forward a marketing strategy.   Research, experiment, influence, attribute and optimise. This article describes a handful of approaches that use data science to huge effect in various digital marketing streams. Trust Issues with Attribution Yes, yes attribution. The only way to know the full truth behind the performance of marketing strategies yet paradoxically not for everybody. Partly to do with data scientists’ inability to reverse engineer conclusions about attributed revenue figures. We as data scientists know exactly the process raw data is churned through to output the report numbers but building confidence in this insight requires explainability. Clients shouldn’t be expected to take the data scientist’s word on why channel X is more effective than channel Y; data scientists should be accountable for their results. Faith cannot be a component of any alt="" /> A team of social miners at Amazon were recently exposed for their internal web tool designed to spy on their Amazon Flex drivers. Honestly, the organisation of it was highly impressive but overall tremendously unethical. The ne’er-do-wells receive real-time updates and analysis on their drivers’ social media posts across closed Facebook groups, Subreddits, Twitter pages and other websites with the intention of predicting and escalating strike action and other behaviours that might disrupt their regime, adding a splash of realism to the prospect of applications being rejected before even being written. The automated tool is not restricted to internal operations either. These drivers are not Amazon employees. They are independent contractors with their own vehicles and no company benefits. With the PSA out of the way, social media listening is a powerful tool for surfacing insights about your target audience. The practice is generally executed in two waves: (1) data collection and (2) data analysis. Neither are straightforward procedures. Data collection requires a lot... --- ### How to do an SEO competitor analysis > There is no better way than getting the best results from your SEO than by exploring what it is your competitors are doing well, and here’s how to do it. - Published: 2020-09-09 - Modified: 2024-10-29 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/how-to-do-an-seo-competitor-analysis/ - Categories: SEO No matter what you do in anything, be it marketing, sport, baking, if your competitors are beating you, then there is a method behind their achievements. While being beaten is sometimes about superior intellect or creativity, with SEO it is all about cunning and looking at what others are doing, and working out the best combination of various factors so that you can do it better. It is very rare for a website to get position #1 simply by mistake. SEO takes months of hard work and research to nail the best strategy and make sure that you are secure in your rankings, and the best way to get ahead and stay ahead is by conducting a regular competitor analysis. So, while it may be tempting to conduct a huge competitor audit in one sitting, the likelihood is that once you’ve gone through everything and been able to apply all your findings, they could be out of date and your competitors have found the next idea. So the best thing for you to do is select a section of your site which has historically struggled to gain momentum organically, where you know there is considerable search volume and competitors are dominating. SEO Competitor Analysis Checklist Identify Competitors Keyword Analysis Content Analysis Technical Identify Competitors Now, this may sound simple, but you need to select your competitors. When doing this, you should only think about your competitors who rank in top positions only. While you may have selected competitors as a business in general, you only want to be analysing competitors who you want to beat in the rankings. H&M wouldn’t be conducting an SEO competitor analysis on Primark, as an example. What you need to do is conduct a simple Google search for products or services on offer, and see who is appearing on page 1. Don’t just limit yourself to this list either, use different keyword combinations or conduct different searches using different words, and write down each competitor on page 1. After you’ve done this a few times, take a look at your list and see who is showing up the most. Hopefully, you have a list of 3-5 websites which keep cropping up. These are the sites you should start to be analysing and are the direct competitors you need to be working on. Keyword Analysis The next step here involves using specialised tools. The best and most recommended of these tools can be pricey, but they are well worth it. By using tools such as SEMRush or AHRefs, you’re able to simply insert your competitor’s websites and find out every keyword they are ranking for, where they are ranking, how many searches these keywords get, and what URL ranks for those keywords. This is where your original list of keywords blows up into a mixture of variants and new keywords which you maybe didn’t consider before. It also allows you to see how popular the keywords are as well, and maybe change your views on what... --- ### Active Listening: The Key Skill for the Future of Work > Discover why active listening is key to the future of work. Learn how mastering this skill enhances communication, collaboration, and leadership. - Published: 2020-09-04 - Modified: 2024-11-06 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/future-of-work-skill-listening/ - Categories: Culture Welcome to the key skills series Since March we have been forced to adapt our ways of working, and it’s no secret that people don’t want to simply go back to the old way of working and with that, we need to nurture and develop a new set of skills that are needed for the future of work. In the next four weeks I will be sharing my thoughts on the top skills needed for the future of work and some tips on how to develop and implement these skills. FUTURE SKILLNUMBER ONE: ACTIVE LISTENING Listening has always been a fundamental skill but one I think more now than ever is so important. We’re hearing more and more than companies like Atlassian, Google and Twitter, will allow their teams to work remotely indefinitely, with many companies following suit and developing a distributed workforce. This presents an opportunity to really develop skills that will be needed for this future way of working. Without being in person and not everyone being in the same room, we really need to make a conscious effort to listen to what is being said and what is not being said as without that in person connection, it is hard to pick up on some of those body language cues that identify people’s reactions and how people are feeling. TOP TIPS FOR DEVELOPING ACTIVE LISTENING SKILLS NUMBER 1 – Ask yourself why is someone telling me this? If we took a moment and asked ourselves this question, we can start to understand the person’s mindset and motivation. We’ve been told in the past that by repeating back what someone has said to you, it shows you have been listening. However, what this doesn’t show is your understanding of why you are being told this and what it means to the person telling you. Instead of paraphrasing what the person has said, a top tip is to try responding with ‘What I’m hearing is... ’ or ‘It sounds to me like... ’ to ensure you have understood correctly. This allows the speaker to confirm you have understood why they are telling you this. If you’re not entirely sure on something, probe a bit deeper and ask ‘What do you mean when you say... ’ or ‘Is this what you mean... ’. Sometimes people aren’t entirely sure themselves of why they are telling you something but by listening and asking why, you can help each other to uncover the real meaning and issue to find better solutions and better connectivity by allowing the person to feel listened to and understood. NUMBER 2 - Avoid assuming you know how the conversation is going to go Thinking you already know how a conversation will go stifles the possibilities that can come out of conversations. Trying to control the conversation and grabbing the narrative makes for one-sided conversations and kills collaboration, mutual understanding and appreciation, so it is best to go into a conversation with genuine curiosity about what the person is... --- ### Telling LGBTQIA+ stories: Creative Training with the Diversity Standards Collective - Published: 2020-09-03 - Modified: 2024-05-10 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/telling-lgbtqia-stories-creative-training-with-the-diversity-standards-collective/ - Categories: Culture I recently attended an online webinar from the Diversity Standards Collective on LGBTQIA+ Creative, which I thought warranted sharing in a blog post. What inspired this webinar was some hard hitting research, describing a fall in confidence from the LGBTQIA+ community and how brands tell these stories.   The damning results of research from the joint efforts of Gay Times, Karmarama & YouGov show that 82% feel that LGBTQ+ representation is tokenistic - up 1% from last year. But what is tokenism? Here is a definition from the Dictionary of Google™:Pictured: A screenshot with the definition of tokenism: "The practice of making only a perfunctory or symbolic effort to do a particular thing, especially by recruiting a small number of people from under-represented groups in order to give the appearance of sexual or racial equality within a workforce. "So what does this mean in the context of this research? Brands are more concerned with looking woke than actually changing how they operate. Challenging the narrative requires an understanding of the two current iterations of creative that features LGBTQIA+: 1. Representation - Visibility, simply showing off the existence of LGBTQIA+ people in daily life. An ad (that I have lost the name of and link to) was shared with us in the webinar showing a female couple expecting a baby together. Interestly, when surveyed a lot of viewers of the ad just assumed that the women were only friends. This erasure happens all the time, even as way back as Ancient Greece with Sappho the poet. This has even inspired it’s own subreddit: r/SapphoAndHerFriend, sharing eye opening examples of this erasure with a humorous twist.   Below is an example of “blink and you’ll miss it” representation, showing a couple kissing on the bridge in an ad for Amstel beer. In case you missed it, it’s from 00:04-00:05.   2. Telling stories - Moving away from stereotypes and telling authentic stories that resonate with the community. Representation is growing globally, but the problem lies in point 2, telling authentic stories. Representation can lend itself to tokenism, especially if there’s not much from the brand before and after an ad to back it up.   Telling stories can be difficult too, and brands often get it wrong. But why is this? Some people’s only knowledge of LGBTQIA+ experience are born from stereotypes. Shared with us in the webinar was an example of a brand getting it very wrong, Gosh! Food.   It’s not a phase. Don’t let who you are keep you up at night. Do the right thing and get it off your chest. Because like our food, it’s all perfectly natural. https://t. co/BecXRaoTiN pic. twitter. com/eXevFVzjfw— Gosh! Food (@Gosh_Food) January 13, 2020 They chose to tell the story of a young person coming out as a 'flexitarian' (a dietary choice where you eat both vegetarian food and meat, i. e. food) to their parents. In the ad, the parents have a very bad reaction - just like the (justified) reaction... --- ### A guide to Google entity recognition > It's time to include entity recognition as part of your SEO strategy and here's how. - Published: 2020-08-28 - Modified: 2024-10-28 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/a-guide-to-entity-recognition/ - Categories: SEO You know those sites that seem to just do well in search even though they've missed the fundamentals? The fact that Google knows that when you search '2008 Britney' you want to see her smashing car windows, not the other 364 days of the year? The way that if you're searching for information about an event and then look for a hotel, the two seem to be right next to each other? How does any of that actually work? It could be that Google has really honed in on its mind-reading skills, or there's something bigger going on. Well, Derren Brown can rest easy as Google is not after his show. In fact, all of these insights and connections that Google can make in milliseconds is driven by its understanding of Entities. Before we dive into this and explore how Google's library of entities and their connections fuels so many of the rich answers we see in search, there are three things we need to define: What is an “entity”? What is entity recognition? What is entity salience? What is a Google entity? According to Google’s patent (Question answering using entity references in unstructured data), an entity is a thing or concept that is singular, unique, well-defined and distinguishable. That “singular” thing or concept could be a person, a place, or an item among other things and could be identified in relation to wider “categories” like locations, movies, animals etc. The reason entities are different to a 'thing' is because they are universally understood and accepted as being synonymous with their sub-entities. Confusing right? Let's talk through an example. To circle back to one of my initial examples, we're going to spend a minute talking about Britney. Notice, you instantly knew that I'm referring to Britney Spears here. That shows that it is widely accepted that the brand 'Britney' is synonymous with Britney Spears, as are her biggest hits, her own website, the show in Vegas, her social media and even her Wikipedia page. All of these smaller elements that make up the Britney brand are the sub-entities that contribute towards creating this much larger, recognised entity. via GIPHYWhat is entity recognition? Entity recognition is how Google determines what an entity truly is, and accepts it into its list of 'approved entities'. Then each time Google undertakes its information retrieval process, you should imagine it cross-referencing that list of entities with those which appear on the site. This helps Google to understand two things: 1. Is the content talking about relevant, reliable sources (entities) in relation to the topic? 2. Is an entity being spoken about frequently in a context which is unexpected/not relevant to the current definition? Through Natural Language Processing (NLP) search engines are able to determine core concepts and related themes within an article, match them to entities and therefore determine how relevant/useful to the user the content is. So if you're thinking about growing your Expertise-Authority-Trust or even just looking to improve your overall organic positioning,... --- ### Hubspot Automation: Workflows Explained > Learn how HubSpot automation workflows streamline marketing, boost efficiency, and drive results. Create and optimise workflows with ease. - Published: 2020-08-24 - Modified: 2025-01-27 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/hubspot-automation-workflows-explained/ - Categories: Digital Marketing As marketers, Hubspot and other similar CRM tools are something we use frequently. In short, they make our lives easier. The ability to keep a catalogue of contacts and to then email them as a group, but for them to receive the emails individually as well as personally, is invaluable. There’s also the analysis aspect of Hubspot which makes it all the more worthwhile. The insights you gain into the performance of your marketing techniques can continuously improve your results.   All of this then comes together into an automated experience through workflows, the cherry on top. There’s a number of different ways you can take advantage of workflows, but the best way for you to find out what works for you is to test and learn from your own methods. However, if you want to know some places to start, I’ve got you covered.   Enrollment Triggers It’s worth noting that when you are creating a workflow, you can choose different ways for a workflow to start. You can either turn it on yourself and it will start as soon as you do, or you can center it around a date. This is good for setting it up in advance and you can leave it to start on it’s own, for the date and time that you set. Another option is to center it on a date linked to one of your contacts, like the day they signed up for something or their birthday. This can be useful for B2C companies that are looking to improve customer relations and maybe even provide special promotions. Once you’re on a workflow, the first thing you need to sort out is the enrollment trigger. There are many options on how to filter contacts into a workflow, but there’s a few that I find the most useful that you should be aware of. List memberships is the path I usually choose to enroll contacts; I’ll already have contacts on Hubspot that are in named lists so I can simply add them into the workflow. If you haven’t managed to get your contacts into a list yet but still imported your contacts together, then you can also enroll by the import. Another useful enrollment trigger is the form submission option. This is perfect for sending follow up thank you emails to customers for filling in forms on your landing pages. As well as this, it’s great for adding contacts straight into a mailing list workflow as soon as they’ve filled out the form.   Then there’s page views, which can be super useful in following up on customers' intrigue. If you were to send out a marketing email with a link to a landing page, then you can use this enrollment trigger to send another email when they view the page. This can be a great way to get that first conversation started as they’ve shown some sort of interest in what you have to offer as a business.   Time Delays Quite a... --- ### Most effective SEO tactics and how to apply them > Apply most effective SEO techniques to improve rankings and drive organic growth. Discover practical tips for technical, on-page, and off-page SEO enhancements you can start today. - Published: 2020-08-21 - Modified: 2024-12-05 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/underrated-seo-tactics-and-how-to-apply-them/ - Categories: B2B, Ecommerce, SEO With constant changes to keep up with, evolving strategies, and refocusing of budgets, the value of the work you can provide has likely never been under as much scrutiny. So how do you make sure the work you’re doing is driving the right value, without breaking the bank or taking months to complete? Throughout this post I’m going to talk through some of the core underrated SEO tactics that help drive valuable performance without compromising on all of the other work you’re planning over the next quarter. Instead, these are fast and actionable activities you can start implementing today alongside everything else you’re doing; and if you can’t fit it in or don’t have the right resource, you can always talk to us about it. SEO generally breaks down into three core strains – technical, on-page, and off-page – and although they have evolved over the past few years the fundamentals remain the same: Technical focuses on the crawlability and indexationof a site On-page focuses on the content, targeting, andexperience of a site Off-page focuses on external sources and in-SERP optimisation So it makes sense that each of the tactics I’ll run through also break down into those areas. Technical SEO tactics Navigation refresh Your navigation is present on every page, it is normally one of the most interacted with elements of a page, and more often than not is how users find other pages they’re interested in. If you don’t have a solid navigation setup you’re already cutting down the potential. But how do you work out what goes in the navigation, and what can be left out? Work from GA Utilise heatmaps Assess keyword & marketopportunity First, you’ll need to look in GA to figure out which pages are driving the most performance – getting the most traffic/engagement/recording the most conversions etc. – this should act as the anchor for every decision. If the pages in the navigation aren’t getting the engagement, but deeper pages are, you’ve got an argument to swap the ordering around. Heatmaps, keyword and market opportunity all kind of speak for themselves – you want to make sure the pages in the navigation are the ones your users are most likely to engage with, but you also don’t want to compromise your keyword or market positioning for the sake of a little more engagement. Heatmaps will let you know where people are clicking on the navigation, giving you data on what could change and what they want to see for definite, whereas keyword and market opportunity assessments rely heavily on understanding what brings those people to your site in the first place. Poorly updated navigations can be detrimental to SEO performance, especially if you’re removing core pages that rank for a lot of keywords, so you need to be extra careful here. Updating the navigation to make sure all links are correct, it reflects the user behaviour on the site, and includes the core (and well-optimised) focus pages will act as the starting point... --- ### Found Webinar Replay: Demystifying SEO: The Future of SEO ranking factors. - Published: 2020-08-07 - Modified: 2024-05-10 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-webinar-replay-demystifying-seo-the-future-of-seo-ranking-factors/ - Categories: SEO Last week we hosted another very special webinar all about Search Engine Optimisation and the changing ranking factors. Now if you missed the webinar or just want a recap, you're in the right place. The Head of SEO Operations at Found, Tom Brand; kicks the webinar off by introducing the agenda with the first speaker being Hannah Thorpe. She used her section to speak about SEO in 2020 and how it has evolved over time; what are the most important things to optimise and how do they help you rank? Jono Alderson from Yoast was our guest speaker of the day and his section was all about speed. I'm not just talking about how fast he talks, but he wanted to highlight the importance of site speed in modern SEO. Users will not wait around for your site, so you need to ensure that you're constantly optimising everything you can. As Jono describes, there is no shortcut to this and the key is optimising every small element to the max because if you look after the milliseconds, the seconds will take care of themselves. You can watch Hannah's and Jono's talks below, we hope you find it insightful and enjoyable! Demystifying SEO: The Future of SEO ranking. https://vimeo. com/444501121/5b732796fa Agenda: 00:00-00:30 - Intro & Welcome - Tom Brand, Found00:30-24:31 - What even is SEO nowadays? The new ranking factors - Hannah Thorpe, Found24:31-28:32 - Q&A with Hannah Thorpe, Found28:32-49:17 - Gone in a second: Speed up or lose your customers - Jono Alderson, Yoast49:17-55:37 - Q&A with Jono Alderson, Yoast55:37-56:07 - Outro & Goodbye - Tom Brand, Found If you'd like to chat to one of the team at Found about this webinar or anything else, then please get in touch today. If you're new to our webinars and want to attend the next one, then please sign up here. --- ### Measuring what matters in digital marketing > When it comes to measuring what matters, is it really all about revenue or are there other metrics you can look at to understand what you’re getting in return for your efforts? - Published: 2020-08-03 - Modified: 2024-10-28 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/is-it-all-about-revenue/ - Categories: SEO What do you measure in digital marketing? Is it all about revenue? For every business, revenue is the bottom line. There are no two ways around it. To survive as a business, you need to make money. How that money is generated differs from business to business, whether it comes through advertising, selling products or services, or generating leads, the final question at the end of it all is “how much money did it make? ” Does this mean that every single thing you do as a business has to generate revenue? Probably not, right? You measure so many different things as a business: from what comes in to what goes out, even what comes in as a result of what goes out. So when it comes to measuring what matters, is it really all about revenue or are there other metrics you can look at to understand what you’re getting in return for your efforts? Measuring what matters. I wrote a post recently on what it really means when digital is responsible for the vast majority, if not all of your business efforts and how we should be measuring digital performance. That got me thinking about whether or not what is being measured is actually valuable and whether businesses are really focusing on the right things. If you look back at most of the proposals you’ve sent out or pitched for, you’re probably going to find a couple of core performance measures in the mix that break down into: Traffic (visits to site) Return (leads, transactions, revenue) But what about all of the other things people could do on your website? Where are those metrics? What could they add that these two don’t cover? And, most importantly, which matter? In this post we’ll run through three things: Hard metrics Soft metrics Metrics that matter For the hard metrics, I’ll discuss what you really need to be looking at, why they matter, and how you can use them to inform your marketing decisions. For the soft metrics, I’ll explain what they are and how you can derive insight from them. For the metrics that matter, I’ll run through how you can figure out what you need to be measuring. But, first things first, you need to lock down a consistency for reporting so you’re not only looking at the same data all the time to spot the trends and changes, but you’re confident that data is accurate as well. To do that, ask yourself the following: Reports: Are you looking at the same report in GA/GSC/GoogleAds etc. all the time? Are you reportingdaily/weekly/monthly/quarterly/bi-annually/annually? Are you annotating platforms as changes aremade? (GA, Rank trackers etc. ) Are you monitoring SERP feature changes? Triggerchanges? Measurement changes in platforms? Accuracy: Are the channel groups/segments set up properly? Are goals tracking correctly? Are you using content groups to split the data? Are you tying up data in reporting platforms toback end systems/live data? Traffic Type: Is it all going to informational sections of thesite?... --- ### 5D Content: Dimensions to make your content go further > What is 5D content? A new buzzword? Well, it’s 5 different ways of thinking about content, to make your content go to infinity and beyond.  - Published: 2020-07-29 - Modified: 2024-04-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/make-your-content-go-further/ - Categories: Content Marketing You’ve seen 2D cartoons, lived in a 3D world, and maybe experienced the joy of 4D cinema. So you might be thinking, what is 5D content? A new buzzword? Well, it’s 5 different ways of thinking about content, to make your content go to infinity and beyond.   There are a lot of content strategies and frameworks out there and it’s more than likely that you’ll need to pick and mix what’ll work for you. We’ve detailed 5 dimensions below to consider, kind of like an interstellar themed ride through content marketing, without the tears.   Dimension 1: Dr Who? Typically most content considerations start with thinking about who you are targeting. Some strategies call these audiences ‘personas’ which is a fancy way of saying people. Taking the time to get to know these people is never time wasted. The tactic here is to make your content go further by giving people what they want or don’t know they need, instead of what is convenient for you to make. Dimension 2: Magnetic Wormholes (or as they’re more commonly known, Marketing Funnels) This dimension is all about using the three stages of a classic marketing funnel as a shopping list for your content. Source: Wikimedia Commons Shopping list: Awareness Consideration Purchase Using the funnel this way means you’ll have content that caters to people finding out about you for the first time, as well as to people who are ready to take the next step. You can categorise the content you already have into each stage of your purchase funnel, so you can be sure that you haven’t missed out on any coverage. For a basic setup, you’d ideally have one piece for each stage and then expand from there. There are no hard and fast rules about which content works best where, so experiment to find what works for you.   Funnel cake to doughnut?   Instead of only looking at just the traditional marketing funnel, you can also consider expanding your content to cover what happens after a purchase. Some newer age funnels include this as an extra stage in the purchase journey. Content that ‘delights’ after a purchase, turns customers into advocates. Which in turn means it's less of a funnel but more of a cycle, a self sustaining circle. Let the content do the work for you. Dimension 3: For all intents and purposes People use a search box as a confessional for questions you wouldn’t ideally ask another human being, like how to spell ‘definitely’ and sometimes, ‘is a bird a mammal’. Eggs? Reptile? Warm blood? So how do you make your content go further if you know that a search engine is the most likely way of reaching your target audience? And how do you account for intent? If thinking about the marketing funnel wasn’t enough then you’ll love this dimension.   The people over at The Colouring In Department have come up with a framework that takes into account all the different stages plus emotions... --- ### Social shopping is the new normal. - Published: 2020-07-27 - Modified: 2024-05-10 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/social-shopping-is-the-new-normal/ - Categories: Social Media Since the start of the COVID-19 crisis, it's been clear to brands that they will need to quickly adapt to survive. The lockdown has been devastating on the high street, but trends towards online shopping and a push to support local businesses has been profitable to those who have been able to adapt quickly. It's no surprise that since the start of lockdown, social media usage has gone through the roof. At the end of April, Facebook reported record-breaking numbers on usage, including users soaring from 2. 6 billion to 3 billion worldwide. With people stuck at home they are turning more to social channels to share news, stay in touch and most importantly - shop. During one of Facebook's recent insights sessions, the speaker noted that people are spending more time on brand pages, fulfilling their need for browsing that they can't currently get on the high street. It's not just Facebook observing this trend, with Pinterest reporting a 55% surge in searches within the UK year on year. A stat that's a bit more interesting to brands is that Pinterest has also seen a 63% increase in checkouts for retail brands on the platform. What's clear from this is that the public are increasingly moving to social media channels for discovery and are increasingly comfortable with purchasing directly within the platforms. The big players have all made some major moves to embrace and encourage shopping activity in recent months. Facebook announced Shops, a new feature intended for small businesses to easily set up an online store attached to their Facebook and Instagram profiles. A shopping tab will also be added for users to browse and discover new products and brands. In direct response to the lockdown, Instagram also launched a Support Small Business sticker to encourage users to follow and share their favourite small business pages via Stories. At Snap's recent Summit, SnapChat expanded the Snap Map to include Places, which displays key information for local businesses and even options for delivery in the US. At the start of the month, Snapchat also expanded its Dynamic Ads option to more countries (including the UK! ). This is great news for e-commerce brands, as it means they can now easily serve inventory-connected ads with real-time information such as pricing. Pinterest's new Shop tab within the Lens camera is another example of how much the social giants are pushing users towards the checkout. The tab uses image search and pops up to display matching products in-stock when the user takes a photo of an item. Although the end of lockdown might be round the corner, the public's sense of safety has been dented. People may never return to the highstreet in the same numbers they did before. With Q4 quickly approaching, now is the perfect time for consumer-facing brands to ensure their products are visible on social media, profiles are optimised for discover and new ad options are explored to maximise conversion rate. If you're needing any guidance on improving... --- ### Found Webinar Replay: Filling Up the Funnel: Strategies for Creating Demand and Thinking Beyond Conversion - Published: 2020-07-23 - Modified: 2024-05-10 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-webinar-replay-filling-up-the-funnel-strategies-for-creating-demand-and-thinking-beyond-conversion/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, How to If you missed our webinar on Thursday 16th July or just want to watch again, then we've got you covered. The main focus was on strategies to create demand online and how to think beyond just conversion. Our Director of Growth Strategy, Hannah Thorpe, introduced the running order and the speakers with the first being Jon de Weijer from Google. Unfortunately we are unable to show Jon's talk as it was an exclusive for the live webinar, but if you want read up more on understanding and harnessing the path to purchase then check out this article from Google which includes a PDF of all the research done. Lauren Nickel, also from Google, then spoke about discovery ads which are new display ads that appear in multiple Google feed environments. The other half of her talk was about YouTube advertising, more specifically TrueView for action which focuses on prominent CTAs to help drive leads and conversions. Following Lauren was Dora Moldovan, who is the Director of Data and Analytics here at Found. As a second part of the deep dive into Google display and YouTube advertising; Dora speaks about how we've driven results for clients like Fender, My 1st Years and Vashi with advertising through Google. You can watch Lauren and Dora's talks below, we hope you find it insightful and enjoyable! Filling Up the Funnel: Strategies for Creating Demand and Thinking Beyond Conversion https://vimeo. com/439233111/c0e7099fd1 Agenda: 00:00-00:57 - Intro & Welcome - Hannah Thorpe, Found00:57-14:16 - A Deep-Dive into Discovery Ads and Trueview for Action - Lauren Nickel, Google14:16-23:18 - Case Studies & Power of Integration - Dora Moldovan, Found23:18-25:44 - Q&A with Lauren and Dora25:44-27:02 - Outro & Goodbye - Hannah Thorpe, Found If you'd like to chat to one of the team at Found about this webinar or anything else, then please get in touch today. If you want to attend future webinars, including an SEO focused one on Thursday 30th July, then please sign up here. --- ### 5 Ways To Drive Efficiency in Biddable Campaigns - Published: 2020-07-23 - Modified: 2024-05-10 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/5-ways-to-drive-efficiency-in-biddable-campaigns/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) At Found we’re always striving to drive efficiency with everything we do so that we can get more back for our investment whether that’s in time or in media spend. With lockdown starting to be eased and as shops and hospitality start to re-open, we’re starting to see the movement towards a ‘new normal’. There’s no doubt that the pandemic has impacted businesses across all industries in one way or another and as we start to understand the longer term impact the pandemic has had, we can be sure that a lot of businesses are going to be focusing on making their investment work harder to drive a greater return. In the biddable team at Found, we’re always focused on efficiency, trying to drive the lowest CPA or highest ROAS we can for our clients. Five of the ways we approach this are below Step 1: Quality Score optimisation Quality score is measured for each keyword on a scale of 1 - 10 and put simply, the closer to 10 we can get a keyword’s quality score, the less we need to pay to appear in the search results. The three components of quality score are expected click-through rate, ad relevance and landing page experience and each keyword is given a rank of below average, average or above average for each. By understanding which keywords have a lower quality score, we can identify areas of improvement and optimise the ads and landing pages to be as relevant as possible to the keywords, increasing quality score and improving the average CPC. Step 2: Use exact match as much as possible This goes hand in hand with quality score optimisation, the more traffic we send through exact match keywords instead of BMM (broad match modified) or phrase match keywords, the easier it is for us to tailor the ad copy and landing pages to the keywords. Key to this is using cross-negatives to direct traffic to the precise exact match keyword when there are multiple keywords that could trigger a specific search term. For this, we use Squared. io which has an automation to solve this, automatically applying exact match negatives when keywords are coming through the wrong keyword or match type. As well as this, it’s also important to carry out regular search query reports, harvesting new keyword opportunities from search queries against existing non-exact keywords or shopping campaigns. Step 3: Bid Strategies Bid strategies help us to be more efficient not just with our media spend but also with our time. By implementing bid strategies on our campaigns, we allow the engine’s algorithms to adjust our bids to show ads to the right people at the right stage in their research or purchase journey with the aim of getting the best possible return from the ad spend. Not only does implementing these strategies allow us to drive efficient performance, it also frees up time our team would have previously spent manually optimising bids to focus on more strategic tasks, allowing... --- ### Guide to Low Search Volume Keywords > Discover how low-volume keywords can enhance your SEO strategy. Learn to leverage these often-overlooked terms to drive traffic and boost conversions. - Published: 2020-07-22 - Modified: 2025-03-12 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/looking-beyond-high-volume-keywords/ - Categories: B2B, SEO When you are selling online, you need to make sure you are targeting your audience. What are people searching for? Who else sells what I’m selling? How do I get to the top of Google?   With SEO and PPC, keywords are the most vital part of any strategy. Every search starts with a word, or collection of words, which are used to find what a user is looking for. With these keywords, you want to be making sure that you have the relevant page to target them with. Research what keywords will work best for you As part of any strategy, keyword research is essential so that you can evaluate the space in which you want to start targeting. This will start with some basic keywords based on what you are offering, whether that be furniture or clothing, and other relatable terms that stem from overarching groups, until you end up with a structure like this: In this research, you discover your current rankings, what the competition is like, and how many searches on average each query gets. A mistake many make is going after those search terms which have the highest search volume. While these high search volume queries are attractive, they are not the only route you should be focusing on.   High search volume keywords are usually umbrella terms, and more than often have a lower level of user intent which acts as the commercial grouping for a set of products.   One example sector which falls into this category is cybersecurity. As an industry, there are multiple names which represent a very expansive product base. Cybersecurity can branch from a simple home computer cybersecurity software to a full-blown corporate cybersecurity software program. Both very different audiences, but a term that can apply to both areas of the market.   One set of keywords that works for one company will not be the best fit for another, so by researching the entire landscape, you are able to narrow down your keyword list so that you can start to action your strategy. Think about the bigger picture, by thinking smaller This is where you would need to start looking at the commercial aspect of what your business offers, and what the core products or services are that you are offering and want to be found for. Big search volumes are attractive and sometimes a great thing to be ranking for, but if you offer a specific service within an umbrella or a bespoke service, then going smaller is likely to be your route for getting valuable customers and leads. Commercial keywords have a more defined intent and offer a clearer signal to what a user is looking for and are often supported by words such as ‘buy’, ‘book’ and ‘enquire’. In the context of cybersecurity, one example of a commercial keyword which contains more intent is ‘managed security services’. This search query has a much lower search volume but has a much clearer user intent as they... --- ### Agency and Client Partnerships: What does it really mean? > Every agency says they want to be your partner, working together - but what does this really mean? Lucy explores a true client and agency partnership. - Published: 2020-07-20 - Modified: 2024-05-02 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/agency-and-client-partnerships-what-does-it-really-mean/ - Categories: Digital Marketing “We’ll become your trusted partner” “We act as an extension of your team” “We share your challenges and successes” These are all promises that agencies, including Found, make to their clients. They’re an attempt to demonstrate the closeness in relationship and experience that you’ll get working alongside them. But what does all of that mean?   I’ve worked at Found for over 3 years and during this time I have sat within a few of the different teams within the agency. This has given me a unique perspective on what a client-agency partnership means in practice across multiple disciplines and both in delivery teams and client experience. I have since found my calling and now work within the Found Growth Experience team, which has allowed me more time to think about what partnership truly means. In its simplest form, a partnership is two parties which are engaged together in the same activity. I think the very nature of agency services means by default the agency and the client are in partnership. So what is it that we’re trying to say when we tell clients that we build partnerships?   We’re trying to express that we absorb the values of our clients and combine them in with ours to find the best way of working that makes both businesses comfortable and achieves our respective goals. In effect, not just a partnership but a relationship that is a catalyst for success.   “A catalyst for success” sounds like a marketing spiel, I know. So let me break it down into the 5-steps we use for actually making this happen.   Step 1: Value-Alignment  The key to a strong partnership is matching each other in terms of values.   At Found our values are so fundamental to us that they’re literally written on the wall. They’re something that the team are awarded for each quarter and we continually celebrate the successes of individuals who meet those values in the team. They are: Ambition Truth Impact  Unity  For us, working alongside a client who meant we compromised those values just simply wouldn’t work.   Step 2: A Shared Mission At Found, we are all about growth. Success for us is not simply hitting those target CPAs and reaching position 1 on the SERPs, but seeing our client’s businesses thrive and hit their growth targets. From day one, we become invested in the success of our clients’ businesses and want to do all that we can for them. Throughout our partnerships, we work to understand the business goals of our clients, beyond their marketing objectives, to ensure all of our activity is aligned with the ultimate goal. We want our clients to feel that they are wholly supported by their Found team and that we share their vision. As part of this, we aim to work as an extension of our clients’ teams. This provides us with clear visibility on their deliverables, allowing us to identify where we can provide support, beyond our core activity.... --- ### Strategic Laziness - Automation in Covid-19. > Lockdown has been tiring. If you're feeling drained, it might be decision fatigue so it's time to automate and make the most of your workday instead. - Published: 2020-07-17 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/strategic-laziness-automation-in-covid-19/ - Categories: Opinion Not another COVID blog! Well, that is definitely not the subject of this post, but it’s pretty hard to ignore the effects it has had on everyone’s lives. So at some point in March, all of a sudden our homes got transformed into make-shift offices and our well-rehearsed commuting routine was gone. A few months in, we’ve read countless studies of the impact of not being in an office, too much screen time, creativity blockers, effects on mental health,  etc.  And while we’re all thinking about festival season, Zoomfest seems to be the only one we’ll be attending this year. What I really want to talk about is the one thing we got in abundance with the working from home situation – autonomy – freedom to organize our working lives without the framework of a commute+office, freedom to choose our working hours, freedom to choose when to take a break, etc. This may all seem great, and while some enjoy it fully, some found themselves struggling with the lack of structure. The underlining idea being that with autonomy and lack of structure comes increased decision making, and this alone can overwhelm us.   Making an increased number of decisions every day can lead to decision fatigue. There have been a lot of studies – almost legends circulating about tech leaders wearing the same clothes every day  (Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg being the most prominent) – strategies to avoid decision fatigue. Now, not only are you stuck at home having to decide every aspect of your working life ( including when to take a break or what to do in that break), you’re probably doing some repetitive tasks due to the requirements of your job. We all have them – those tasks where you turn on a good podcast and just go through it because you have to. You have done it a number of times before, you know it inside-out, you just go through the motions. And while a few iterations in it made you feel like an expert, this task now just makes you feel like a keyboard monkey – time to act: Automate it! Be lazy! Automation: Choose to outsource your repetitive tasks to robots. Due to the nature of our jobs – digital media is pretty tech savvy (some roles more than the others) -  we’ve all heard of automation and are probably daily users.   If you’re too lazy to do something repeatedly, then automation is for you.   How to approach automation? Solve simple tasks: Contactless technologies, self service tills, subscription services, they all aim to automate one aspect or another of our lives. Most of the times they don’t solve complex problems, they solve repetitive, thankless tasks by making our lives easier. This is the angle you should look at when aiming to put some automation in your life.  That report that you’re compiling every week looking at the same data sources – try to automate it. Start small: You don’t need to tackle the biggest problem head... --- ### Good to Grow: Prepping your marketing for the future > Prepare for the future and its uncertainty through these 4 steps to put you in the best position for growing online. - Published: 2020-07-15 - Modified: 2024-12-05 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/marketing-for-the-future/ - Categories: B2B, Opinion As we’re slowly returning back to normality it is important to take a step back to really figure out what marketing strategy you’re going to deploy to ensure you're putting your best foot forward in, for what many companies, will be their peak period - Q4.   COVID-19 has pathed the way for a new way of life, a new mind-set and with that becomes new behaviours. With these new behaviours comes new opportunities and brands need to ensure they’re making consumers lives as easy as possible. The following quote really resonated with me:  “In such an uncertain market, value and convenience were the clear winners” Nick Carroll, Associate Director, Mintel It’s no longer enough to just be customer centric, brands need to become customer obsessed and really understand what message they should be shown, at what time, to ensure they have the best possible experience of your digital storefront. I’ve compiled key points for preparing your marketing for the future.   1. A seamless user experience should be priority  According to a recent study by eMarketer, in 2020 UK retail growth is forecast to come from digital and mobile. Now is the time to spend time and investment on your UX, particularly for mobile. CRO is a great starting point to really figure out what small changes to key traffic driving landing pages can be improved by minor tweaks from CTA button placements to form optimisations. Consumers are more and more likely to spend time researching products online ahead of going into the store. In a recent study undertaken by GWI, 51% of adults planned to spend less time in stores or visit stores less frequently because of COVID-19. Your digital storefront needs to be your focus to ensure you’re providing your customers with the best shopping experience, payment options and security. Page speed is also a priority for UX, not only is it a ranking factor, but it can harm your bounce rate significantly if pages don’t load in under 2 seconds. Google states: “2 seconds is the threshold for e-commerce website acceptability. At Google, we aim for under a half-second. ” You can check your page speed with Google’s page speed insights tool here for reference. 2. Understanding your audience & planning accordingly. Consumer behaviour is changing and brands need to stay abreast on where their audience are spending their time. Do you research, look at competitors, create a customer persona and make sure you keep an eye on comments and engagements to see how your audience may have changed over time. It’s important that your audience feels like you’ve supported them during challenging times. Customer segmentation is vital across all channels to ensure you’re communicating the right message to the right user at the right time. Spend time ensuring that your CRM lists are all up to date and segmented properly. Planning is key and full-funnel audience solutions can identify shoppers with high purchase intent during peak periods. Google has recently pulled together ‘the ultimate seasonal... --- ### An Introduction to SEO for YouTube > Every month, over 2 billion people visit YouTube - that’s almost one third of all people on the internet. Every day, people watch more than 1 billion hours of video on YouTube. - Published: 2020-07-13 - Modified: 2024-04-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/an-introduction-to-seo-for-youtube/ - Categories: SEO, Social Media Every month, over 2 billion people visit YouTube - that’s almost one third of all people on the internet. Every day, people watch more than 1 billion hours of video on YouTube. There are local versions of YouTube in more than 100 countries, and you can navigate YouTube in more than 80 languages.   All of this to say that if you’re not doing SEO for YouTube, you’re losing out on a massive, massive opportunity. Keywords The first place to start, as always, is your keywords. You probably have some SEO keyword research performed before this, and that will help, but after you have figured out what your video is going to be about, you can refine your keywords by using YouTube’s search function. Just pop your keywords into the search bar, and out will pop some suggestions. Use this to build an idea of the kinds of keywords you should be putting in your titles, descriptions, video tags etc. Titles Look, this is the very basics of SEO and it doesn’t change just because it’s YouTube. Exact keywords aren’t need - you can keep the clickbait in your title if you want - but you should include keywords that broadly match what you’re looking to rank for. Short, snappy titles that focus on your core topic work best  https://www. youtube. com/watch? v=AI4ynXzkSQo James Hoffman shows you the perfect way to do it here. Descriptions Unlike a website, descriptions aren’t quite as important - so you can continue to shill your patreon, detox tea with your 10% signup code, and your squarespace links to your hearts content - but there is still some value in writing out a nice, broad description of what the video is about. You should typically include: A broad description of what the video is about - feel free to include a couple of keywords but don’t be stuffing them in A CTA to a relevant video in your library A CTA to subscribe A brief biography of you/the channel and links to your social media accounts Keyword tags Tags are words and phrases that help give YouTube better context for the content of your video and influences the ‘Suggested Videos’ part of YouTube. For best practice and performance, single words are fine but make sure you’re adding 2-3 word phrases into your tags too. Tags can also be added to your channel but this should be used sparingly - be ultra focused on what your channel is about and don’t try to keyword stuff as this can negatively affect your channel in search. Video length Another key part of SEO for YouTube is video length. Much like written content on a website, there is some correlation between length of a piece of content and higher rankings. Length of a video is a single indicator of quality (and there are others), but generally you find that the longer a video, the higher it will rank. Of course, there’s a balance to be struck, so don’t try... --- ### Snapchat is upping its game > Interested in adding snapchat to your marketing mix? The social platform has upped its game recently adding new features and some seriously cool tech. - Published: 2020-07-10 - Modified: 2024-04-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/snapchat-is-upping-its-game/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, Social Media Last month Snap held a virtual 2020 Snap Partner Summit where various announcements were made for the future of the platform. An interesting development is their focus on discovery - aiming to become a one stop shop for finding, and trying, new brands and products. Here's a list of the new and upcoming features that brands should take note of: Places Visible on the Snap Map, the new Places Profile feature offers additional information on nearby businesses such as reviews, opening hours and options to order. It will be interesting to see how this feature expands, 'optimising brand SnapMap page' may become a regular task for social media managers in the near future. Local Lenses Snap previewed a new AR feature call Local Lenses, which creates shared AR experiences at a local level. Soon, users will be able to enter virtual spaces together and collaborate on AR art projects. Retail brands could embrace this at a local level, inviting store visitors to add to their virtual guest book. Scan Snappers have long been able to scan Snapcodes using the camera to unlock Lenses, but now you can scan... things! Scan will now act as a visual search function and identify 90% of all known plants and trees and nearly 400 dog breeds. Later this year, a nutritional look-up option will be added. This all seems quite novelty right now, but it's possible in the future that this will expand out into clothing and branded items. Imagine a future where you don't have to ask that stranger on the street where they got their shoes. Instead you could (subtly) use Scan to find out - and maybe even be directly linked to the store to buy them. Lens Voice Scan Without going into too much detail, Snap also previewed a voice-search element to the Scan feature. The example was the speaker asking Snapchat to turn her hair pink, with it automatically applying the Lens. SnapMinis An interesting announcement at the developer conference, Snap Minis are apps that can be built within Snapchat so that friends can interact with shared experiences. One of the first will be with Headspace, where Snapchat users will be able to send encouraging messages to friends and do quick meditations. Other Minis included cinema booking apps and festival line-up planners. It appears that Snapchat is moving to become more like Weibo - a one-stop social app where users can book a taxi or order food in the same space. A whole host of other new developer and content features were also announced, if you want to check them out, Snap has them listed here. If you're interested in adding Snapchat into your social strategy, our team of specialists can help. Get intouch. --- ### Found Webinar Replay: Audience Insights: Making Data-Fuelled Decisions. - Published: 2020-07-02 - Modified: 2024-05-10 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-webinar-replay-audience-insights-making-data-fuelled-decisions/ - Categories: Analytics, Data On Thursday 25th June, we hosted another webinar as a continuation of Found's series. We looked at how, as a business, you can make smart decisions through the use of data. Following an initial welcome and introduction from Hannah Thorpe, our Director of Growth Strategy; guest speakers Katie Gilsenan and Viktoriya Trifonova from Global Web Index (GWI) talk all about the impact Coronavirus has had on consumers. This research is just one example of the extraordinary work that is going on over at GWI, so be sure to visit their website or check out all of the research they've done on the current pandemic. James Wolman, a Data Scientist at Found, then took to the floor to talk about how you can conduct your own informal audience research. He describes it as informal because you don't need create the data yourself but find the right data that is already out there, in this case through social media mining. Audience Insights: Making >00:00-00:56 - Intro & Welcome - Hannah Thorpe, Found00:56-15:28 - Coronavirus: The Transition to a "New Normal" - Katie Gilsenan; Viktoriya Trifonova, Global Web Index15:28-22:00 - Q&A with Katie Gilsenan and Viktoriya Trifonova, Global Web Index22:00-42:36 - Audience Research: Informal Insights - James Wolman, Found42:36-46:53 - Q&A with James Wolman, Found46:53-47:36 - Outro - Hannah Thorpe, Found We hope that you enjoy and it proves to be a useful resource for you! If you'd like to chat to one of the team at Found about the webinar or any other queries, then please get in touch today. If you'd like to attend future webinars to learn what's new, what's changing and what works in digital marketing; then please sign up here. --- ### The art of asking better questions for digital marketers > Are we getting better answers by asking smarter questions? Discover how question quality can impact the value of the answers we receive. - Published: 2020-07-02 - Modified: 2025-02-25 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/are-people-being-more-helpful-or-are-we-asking-better-questions/ - Categories: Opinion The key really for agencies is knowing your clients, and for clients is knowing your agency. The more agencies know about the pressures their clients are under, who their contacts report into, and what the focuses are from both the contact team and the wider business, the more they will be able to support. And similarly, the more clients know about the agency, what services they offer, which teams do what and to what extent, and how the different services relate to each other, the more they will be able to lean on you for support. Asking the right questions about the right things to the right people will open whole new avenues for strategic direction and pre-emptively forming decisions around potential tactics to deploy and goals to achieve. So as an agency, where do you start? Understanding industries. If you work in an agency environment, you tend to work across a variety of clients in a range of industries, which is both great and pressuring. You need to know what’s happening in your clients’ industries almost day-by-day to be able to inform your marketing activity and make sure your strategies are still effective. Great, but... how? I myself work across ecommerce, entertainment, data security, and property-based industries, each with sub-sectors and sub-sub-audiences; do I need to be an expert in all of them? No. Do I need to know what changes in those industries are important to my clients? Yes. But that isn’t following every single development in every single strand of every single publication, that is knowing enough to have meaningful conversations with my clients, and to do that I need to know: What the leading publications are in theindustry (these tend to give the fullest datasets) What the niche publications are in the industry(these tend to provide more of an argument/opinion on developments) What the client’s focus is in the industry –commercial growth, disruption, service expansion? What will impact the client’s performance –competitors (new and existing, business and channel), market/economy changes,the weather? Every business has different focuses and operates in a different market position, even if they’re in the same industry. So knowing about the industry is great, but you also need to be able to apply a nuanced view that takes into consideration their business, sector and direct competitors. Understanding sectors. You need to dig into the specific sectors your clients operate in, and that largely starts with audience and market positioning. One of my clients is a well-known ticket provider who have multiple brands under the same company. Each brand has its own audience, even though they’re all the same company, and each has its own focuses. And that’s true of almost every service-based business, too. If you’re looking at data security, you’ll have some services that apply to CTOs and some that apply to wider teams. If you’re looking at property is it investment, commercial, or domestic? More so with service-based businesses, you’ll find different teams in the company have different goals and different... --- ### Most Significant Recent SEO changes in 2020. > Search engine algorithms and features change on a near daily basis, indeed Google announced that they made more than 3,200 to their “search systems” in a recent year. - Published: 2020-07-01 - Modified: 2024-04-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/significant-seo-changes-in-2020/ - Categories: SEO Search engine algorithms and features change on a near daily basis, indeed Google announced that they made more than 3,200 to their “search systems” in a recent year.   The vast majority of these Google updates won’t have any significant measurable impact on a sites’ organic search performance, however since 2019 we have seen more significant “Core algorithm updates” roll out approximately quarterly, the most recent being at the start of last month. As Google tries to get better at answering search needs be this by returning a list of websites or surfacing an answer directly on the results page. Despite these changes the fundamentals of SEO remain constant: Ensure an efficiently accessible site, offer a good user experience through the provision of  informative value-adding content and demonstrate your authority and credibility in the space. In such a fast-moving environment it can be difficult to keep track of the changes which a site can practically take advantage of and have the ability to move the performance needle.   In this article I’ve taken a look at recent changes in the SEO landscape which may affect your approach or prioritisation to optimisation. Crawling Evolution of the “Nofollow” link attribute Last September Google announced that they were introducing two additional HTML link attribute values to complement the existing widely supported rel=”nofollow”.    Much of the focus at the time was on the introduction of two newly introduced value which could be used to provide additional link context: rel=”ugc”, used to denote that a link exists within a publicly editable field such as a forum post or blog comment; rel=”sponsored”, used to denote a paid link from within a sponsored post. However the main implication is that whilst rel=”nofollow” originally acted as a “catch all” to prevent search engines following a particular link or associating the source and destination pages, since March 2020 this has no longer been the case.   Google may follow and evaluate nofollow links and use them as ranking signals. “All the link attributes -- sponsored, UGC and nofollow -- are treated as hints about which links to consider or exclude within Search. ” - https://webmasters. googleblog. com/2019/09/evolving-nofollow-new-ways-to-identify. html This means that sites with higher quality inbound links containing the nofollow attribute may now receive ranking benefits from such links.    What to do? If you were previously focusing your off-site efforts purely on sites which offered ‘followed’ links you may wish to reevaluate your approach as “nofollow” links may now pass value.   This may particularly affect targeting of major newspaper websites many which use a blanket “nofollow” rule on all external link Unsupported Robots. txt Directives In September 2019 Google removed support for unofficial directives within robots. txt files.   This meant that some directives which formerly controlled crawling and indexation behaviour would no longer be respected. At the time we had a small number of clients making use of the unofficial “Noindex:” directive to prevent pages appearing in search results.   Alternative methods such as meta... --- ### How to find your perfect long-term influencer > Building long-term influencer relationships is key, but harder to justify when quick, campaign-based approaches seem faster and more cost-effective. - Published: 2020-06-24 - Modified: 2025-04-07 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/long-term-influencer/ - Categories: Influencer Marketing Influencer marketing has become a mainstay in brand strategies, showing no signs of slowing down.  In 2024, the industry was valued at $24 billion and is projected to reach nearly $33 billion by 2025.   This growth reflects the increasing reliance on influencers to connect with audiences authentically. ​ Cutting through the noise is getting harder  Authenticity, now essential but difficult to showcase The long and short of it Building longer term relationships with influencers is a big part of the solution. Cultivating and nurturing long term partnerships is a no-brainer, but it’s harder to justify the investment (both time and money) when the alternative is a simpler campaign based approach.   Research has shown that the more often an influencer posts about the same brand, the more their audience trusts the endorsement. Questioning the authenticity of a brand partnership becomes a lot harder when there’s a clear history of collaboration with the same brands. An influencer can be a valuable source of insight, and working together as partners over a longer period of time can prove to have results beyond an improved ROI. They have a direct connection to their audience and can even pass along valuable feedback on the reception of previous campaigns to feed into the development of new ones. Relationship marketing At its core, influencer marketing is monetising digital word of mouth. It pays to treat working with influencers as a longer term relationship to nurture and grow rather than a transaction. Just like the balance between performance driven activities and longer term brand love uplift campaigns, a nuanced approach that includes both is needed to realise the full potential of influencer marketing.   Transactional approach vs Relationship marketing Short termvsLong termFocus on a single outcomevsFocus on brand affinityLittle emphasis on audience experiencevsMore emphasis on audience experienceLow audience commitmentvsHigher audience commitmentQuality is the brand’s concernvsQuality is of concern to all stakeholders The influencer collective Another key trend that is highlighting the need for building longer-term relationships with influencers is the growth of the influencer collective. Building squads (or teams) of influencers is an integral part of maintaining an always on advocate strategy. A community of influencers, all with their own unique spin, coming together to showcase how a brand aligns with their values - covering a wider range of audiences. Think of them like the Avengers, and when they collaborate on a post together, it’s like the crossover event their audiences didn’t know they needed. Here at Found we helped build Team Marley, a group of 33 influential musicians and artists on social media. Over the course of our campaign we worked with them on content creation, brought them together IRL for Boardmasters and ended up expanding audiences significantly. Investing the time in building those relationships meant that we could go bigger and bolder every time, go team spirit! The influencer investor  Some brands are past embracing influencers, offering them investment opportunities with a seat on the table, giving rise to the influencer-investor. If an influencer... --- ### Re-opening your retail stores with online messaging. > With non-essential businesses reopening on June 15th, brands are ensuring readiness through safety measures and effective messaging for customers and staff. - Published: 2020-06-15 - Modified: 2025-02-25 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/re-opening-your-retail-stores-with-online-messaging/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, Ecommerce With the announcement that non-essential businesses are able to reopen their stores from 15th June, brands are taking every measure to make sure they are ready to do so, from both a customer and staff safety perspective and a messaging rollout. It’s crucial during this that the safety of all involved remains at the forefront of activity, and aligning your online messaging to that is a big step to reassuring customers that you’ve taken every precaution possible to encourage a safe shopping experience. Website Actions Update your COVID-19 landing page – this needsto be a hub of information for your customers and updated accordingly in linewith government advice and updates. Update your announcement banner – this is agreat, sitewide way to ensure customers know your stores are back open. Update your FAQs – specifically to cover any newstore policies, opening hours, appointment slots, delivery, and safetymeasures, helping give customers all the information they need about returningto your stores as well as giving your customer service teams a location to sendusers for more information. Update on-page text and metadata for store pages– make it clear that your stores are back open, but that you are operating inaccordance with the latest safety measures to reassure customers. If you’re offering “click and collect” or“collect in store” services again, update the appropriate product pages andsite metadata accordingly to help users see that, if they don’t want to shop inthe store, they can still come in and collect their items instead of waitingfor delivery. Local Listings Once your website is updated with all of the new information, you should start looking to make that consistent across your local listings to ensure it is accurately displayed in maps and local searches. Google My Business & Bing – update storeopening hours and ensure listings are not set to "Closed" or"Temporarily closed so users know you’re back open; this is especiallyimportant if opening hours have changed from what they were previously. Google My Business Posts – utilise Posts toprovide more information about in-store safety and booking appointments to comein, depending on your store’s policy. Apple Maps – you can update your listing in https://mapsconnect. apple. com/ andtell users on Apple Maps that you are now back open. Waze – update your opening hours to indicateyou’re back open. PPC Actions To help spread the message further, make sure PPC is ready to be switched back on if you paused or reduced spend while stores were closed. Reactivate local extensions for stores that havereopened. Check whether call extensions should be directedinto the stores or a central customer services team for the initial relaunch. Mention stores have reopened in ad messaging. Reactivate local inventory ads. Reactivate store location keywords and updateads with messaging in line with new store policies. Update your callout extensions for reopenedstores. Set-up local campaigns to target users acrossGoogle channels. Social Actions Pin post to top of Facebook and Twitter with informationon store openings, hours, and safety measures where relevant, and add as ahighlighted story to Instagram. Update... --- ### Black Lives Matter. - Published: 2020-06-11 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/black-lives-matter/ - Categories: Culture At Found, we stand against racism. We stand for equality. We have a firm belief that everyone should have an equal opportunity in life; to live a life that is free from discrimination, free from persecution; and free from judgement because of the colour of their skin. We have worked hard to learn, to understand and to try and make a difference. And we have introduced policies and measures that ensure we adhere to our pledges. We’ve engaged closely with partners like The Hebe Foundation and Great Places to Work, to get actively involved and to steer the conversation for inclusivity and fairness. Through our Digital Disruptors partnership, we’ve listened to stories from young people about the experiences they have in society and offered them an opportunity to learn about digital marketing. It’s been a privilege to work with these young minds and to give them a platform to showcase their talents, but also to illustrate that digital can present a great career path, no matter what your skin colour, your religion, your gender or sexual identity. We don’t purport to know everything but, as a business, we can listen, we can learn, we can have a voice and we can take action. And we are already in a position to make a difference because, as a team at Found, our culture evolves around trust and unity. It is who we are. I want to be very careful that Found does not simply jump onto any bandwagons, to tick the ‘right boxes’. I want to be sure that we are building on the work we’ve done already, what we represent already, and what we can learn and apply in the future. We have signed an open letter pledging solidarity with the black community, promising to take action on inequality and “maintain inclusive cultures that are sensitive to the enduring injustice and pain of racism”. This is just one step of many things we can do. We recently launched Found Allyship, made up of a team of people within the agency whose focus is to not just champion diversity and inclusion, but to help us all to make a difference. We may not always get things right, but we will always seek to do the right thing. By seeking to understand, I hope we can all become better allies and advocates as well as instigators of change. The 'Justice for George Floyd' petition is linked below as well as a link to the Black Lives Matter website where you can educate yourself and donate to the cause. Stay safe everyone.   Justice for George Floyd PetitionBlack Lives Matter Website --- ### Marketing Through a Recession > COVID-19 has disrupted much of our day to day lives; from our work surroundings to putting a pause on seeing our loved ones. We’re all trying to navigate through the ‘new normal’. - Published: 2020-06-08 - Modified: 2024-04-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/marketing-through-a-recession/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, Opinion COVID-19 has disrupted much of our day to day lives; from our work surroundings to putting a pause on seeing our loved ones. We’re all trying to navigate through the ‘new normal’. Marketing has been no exception to these changes and we’re having to adapt a new way of working with our clients. Over the last 9 weeks we’ve been working with our clients to determine the best strategy to adopt, given the unprecedented changes we’re experiencing to customer behaviour. At the start of COVID-19, many of our clients reduced their marketing spend whilst they focused on cash flow in the business. A fair proportion of these clients are now transitioning towards an ‘assessing’ & ‘pivoting’ mindset as they focus on what life is going to look like for their business post COVID-19.   No one knows what the future is going to hold, but one thing’s for sure, COVID-19 has accelerated the need for digital transformation & marketers should be preparing a plan for marketing in a recession, and what can be done now to ensure we’re set up to succeed in the best possible way.   I’ve compiled a list of key questions our clients have been asking over the last couple of weeks.   It’s almost certain that we’re heading for a recession, so how should we react?   For a lot of companies and brands, this won’t be the first recession they’re experiencing and it’s key to take the learnings from 2008 & 2009. Of course these were driven by an economic event, rather than a pandemic. However consumer confidence hit an all-time low which led to a series of different marketing responses; from decreased marketing spend for some and increased digital marketing budgets for others; similar trends can be expected post COVID-19. As we see news reports on some significant drops in the UK GDP and work our way into a new recession, it's key that we look to learnings from previous downturns to plan for the future. Graph from recent BBC article on the downturn of the UK economy. The trends from previous recessions show that reducing marketing budgets during difficult times doesn’t necessarily work medium to long term. Brands that maintain their investment were set up to succeed for future growth against those who reduced budgets. The main reason for this is due to taking competitor market share. If key competitors come off the space, this is your chance to gain a higher share of voice on the SERPs. Get your brand out there to build consumer confidence and become front of mind when your target audience is looking to convert. The majority of our clients are going to be deploying a different strategy depending on their financial position. We’re advising our clients to secure digital marketing budget (if possible) during difficult times as it poses a huge amount of opportunity to build brand awareness to ensure when we come out the other side, we’re set up to succeed. This will also be... --- ### CREATIVES IN CONFINEMENT: UNLOCKING CREATIVITY AND THRIVING > Discover how creativity thrived during confinement as creatives adapted, innovated, and found new opportunities despite restrictions. - Published: 2020-06-05 - Modified: 2024-12-16 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/creatives-in-confinement/ - Categories: Opinion A lot has to be said about being a creative, and with it comes a lot of the classic clichés. Always being classed as the Maverick of the group, the one who runs away with their ideas and knows what’s right (even if the majority say it’s wrong), the disruptor who is always seeking to zig when everyone else zags, and of course the biggest of them all – the one who thinks outside the box. Skip forward 12 weeks and yes, pretty much all of them are still correct. However, my grounding force when I am running away with my ideas is now in the form of a 10 year old girl obsessed with unicorns, my zigging only stretches as far as the opposing wall in my makeshift office (said 10 year old’s bedroom) and the box in which I am trying to break through has been my own personal solace for over 2 months, one that I used to call ‘home’.   DISTRACTION Working across multiple projects, all with individual creative needs and direction needs focus. Of course, the office environment offers so much. The opportunity to directly shout across the room to your BD, a quick trip to the designer for a little amend, and a team in close proximity to advise that the idea ‘needs a little more work’. Although having those benefits in sight, what you also have for a huge proportion of the day is – distraction.    A diary stacked with quick meets, and even longer actions or the ding of the slack channel that can’t be ignored from the sender 2 metres away.   Little distractions that when all combined can hinder your overall output. This has not changed. What has is the mindset in which they are being approached. WFH means that we can now own our time. Letting loose of the yes man mentality and taking a step back to prioritise and focus on elements that you have actively chosen to deliver and fit within your personal ‘new normal’. Tasks are still being met, and delivery still on time, however having the ownership of when, where, and how you respond means that certain third party distractions that at times could have hindered, are now fully in your control, inevitably providing you less distraction and more focus on productivity. There are benefits of gaining new skills with less distraction too. I have progressed from a Creative Director by adding new skills in primary and secondary education as a teacher for my kids, and the go to lunchtime dinner lady, all of which will be reapplied when returning to the fold. CONNECTED THROUGH DISCONNECTION One of the immediate fears, when we went into lockdown, was communication. Personally, I very much feed off of human interaction, and the thought of only engaging on a physical level with the family, a cat and chihuahua was rather daunting.    How can I keep communicating through a screen daily? Can I really get the human engagement... --- ### Dangers of Bad Data > The COVID-19 situation has revealed a striking concern in the data community: analysis in a vacuum. - Published: 2020-06-03 - Modified: 2024-05-02 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/dangers-of-bad-data/ - Categories: Data The COVID-19 situation has revealed a striking concern in the data community: analysis in a vacuum. Many data analysts are weighing in on the pandemic in their free time, be it for the endeavour of mastering a new machine learning framework or mining Reddit /r/dataisbeautiful karma. Without domain knowledge, insider knowledge and, for lack of a better word, experience in industry, analysis is blind. This fosters a danger of false positives and inaccurate conclusions. The even more dangerous thing is that a powerful chart or a sophisticated analysis has the power to add legitimate backing to bad analysis. In aid of this crisis and for the purpose of restoring integrity to the data community here are five lessons I’ve learned from COVID-19. Lesson 1: Blind leading the blind. BBC NewsOne of the strongest examples of how lack of industry knowledge is a bad recipe for height="315" src="https://www. youtube. com/embed/-63ztcUdUqk" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen=""> Above is a video of a recent government press conference centred almost exclusively around data. Remember when “content is king” was a thing? A mere royal servant in comparison to data now. There are now entire press conferences dedicated to talking about data. This was not the norm before. Peoples’ and the media’s focus are shifting. Data is becoming the bedrock of policy making in government. alt="COVID-19 misinformation is so prevalent that it has its own Wikipedia page. " />WikipediaNow that data is king, that makes numbers a lot more dangerous. Yes, there are conspiracy theories that the current pandemic is an antisemitic bioengineered Chinese spy operation but what I’m actually referring to is manipulation of numbers. There is a lot of false information out there. This is by no means exclusive to COVID-19 but given the recent public focus on data, the crisis certainly highlights this fact.   Ethics pending, we can pretty much make numbers tell any story we want. And because of this, obscuring and being purposely selective with data in the name of a cool statistic is dangerously easy. However, we are now heading into a world where people will want to see that data and dig out the truth from underneath it.   To illustrate this I have a few examples of how data and insight has been obscured in the news to back up an agenda rather than disseminate unbiased information. Firstly, logarithmic scales. They have their place, and it’s not morning news channels. Yet the mass media consistently portray COVID-19 insight through logarithmic graphs. Logarithmic scales are used all the time but you probably don’t even notice it. That’s intentional. Log scales are really useful for illustrating trends but they sorely misrepresent the magnitude of a situation. Have a look at the difference between these two charts showing exactly the same data. Financial TimesFinancial TimesSecondly, let’s talk about projections. Predictions about the future made by machine learning algorithms should always acknowledge their uncertainty, which they rarely ever do in the media. Statistical models can do a good... --- ### Found Webinar Slideshare: How to Nail Your Messaging - Published: 2020-06-01 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-webinar-slideshare-how-to-nail-your-messaging/ - Categories: Digital Marketing Found's webinar series kicked off on Thursday 28th May with a deep dive into brand messaging. Leena Keshishian, who is a creative strategist at Found, spoke about uncommon sense and how brands have handled their messaging throughout this pandemic. James Sandrini, our guest speaker from 48. 1, then took us through tearing up the rulebook when preparing for a post-COVID world. You can find the slides used by Leena and James below as well as some of the things they discussed. If you want to signup for future webinars, please click here. https://www. slideshare. net/HarrisonWright8/uncommon-sense-messaging-in-a-crisis/HarrisonWright8/uncommon-sense-messaging-in-a-crisisLEENA KESHSHIAN - UNCOMMON SENSE: MESSAGING IN A CRISIS Most brands have been coming up with similar key messages throughout the COVID-19 pandemic that include: "we're all in this together""unprecedented times""now more than ever""even though we're apart""in these challenging times""new normal" This is the sort of messaging that as a brand, you don't want to follow. It's cliché, repetitive and boring for most consumers. In Leena's own words: 'Messages like the above repeated start to lose their heart (if they had any to begin with) because as a brand, it's a lot harder to make it seem like you genuinely care, than to just be useful. ' The only way for brands to win with their messaging is to forge their own path; to recognise the circumstances without that being the message. You can check out Leena's blog post on her webinar topic, which outlines her thoughts on the topic in more detail. https://www. slideshare. net/HarrisonWright8/tear-up-the-rulebook/HarrisonWright8/tear-up-the-rulebookJAMES SANDRINI - TEAR UP THE RULEBOOK: HOW TO PREPARE FOR A POST-COVID WORLD This is a crisis that is different to anything else we've ever experienced in our lives. This is why we have to throw away the rule book, we're all in this together facing these strange circumstances for the first time. Our needs and world views have drastically changed during this time. We're all facing a sense of loss. We're all suffering through stress and discomfort. We're all being forced to balance our risk quotient. We're all inundated with acts of civic activism. We're all discovering new ways to live our lives. This is now a reality for everyone, so we're all in the same boat. Some of the trends that have come from this pandemic aren't showing any signs of going back to normal anytime soon. Flight volume in Europe, unemployment rates and the Zoom share price are some of the most drastic changes we've seen. With a conservative government paying over £100bn of wages to millions of people across the UK, you can see why these are unprecedented times. —  48. 1Opening minds, not closing doors Based in Shoreditch, 48. 1 are a multidisciplinary creative agency made up of strategists, designers and filmmakers, centred around the belief that different opinions, collaborative thinking and the spirit of discovery serve as catalysts for great work. Covering all things brand, digital, motion, packaging and campaigns, 48. 1 work on transformational projects for brands including LEON, Gozney, GLH Hotels, Gymbox and Franco Manca.... --- ### The Perks of Remote Working - Published: 2020-06-01 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-perks-of-remote-working/ - Categories: Culture Office life could now be a thing of the past. So, in this work from home experiment; here are my brightsides. With it now being over two months since lockdown was first introduced, working from home has started to become a normality for many of us. Differentiating your work life from your personal life can be particularly challenging, especially if you’re stuck using your bedroom as your office. However, no matter where your temporary workstation is situated or who you find yourself surrounded by, if anyone, we all have things we like and dislike about this jumbled lifestyle.   We thought we'd look to the brightside and focus on some of the perks we've seen from this new remote working lifestyle. So Close, Yet so Far. Communication during Remote Working In any workforce, communication is important. In an agency, it’s imperative. There needs to be transparency between teams and clients, but also when discussing complex issues sometimes it's just easier to be in one room and hash it out. Thankfully, there are many different platforms to utilise during these disconnected times.   The 'Quick Coffee' Replacement Walking through our open plan office, frequently you grab a colleague and head to the kitchen together to make your next cup of coffee and run through an issue you're having. With this not possible, the replacement we've been using is Slack. Slack is the perfect channel to speak to your colleagues quickly. Whether you have a question, need something reviewed or just want some office chit chat, this instant messaging service is there for you. It’s not just instant messaging either; Slack has video calling capabilities. I’ve used this feature a good amount, but it can be temperamental. I will, however, forever praise the convenience of Slack -  it’s an ideal, less formal alternative to email and something that I have been using a lot during this work from home period.  Slack uses the marketing slogan 'where the work happens' and we'd say this is pretty true for Found, it's where quick decisions are made and instant messaging reigns supreme. The 'Let's Jump in a Meeting Room' Although Slack is perfectly suitable for a number of different situations, being able to actually speak to a person can be much more efficient. In particular when you compare an email conversation to a quick chat in person, the amount of time saved is huge. If it's more than a 2-minute chat that needs your full attention, in our office we'd normally be jumping into a meeting room to nail down the solution. Video calling is therefore a valuable communication method to replace that and something we're encouraging for when you'd ordinarily sit down one-on-one. For a simple call with either a client or colleague, for us it's always Google Meet just due to the simplicity in setting up a call, being able to use your own Meet link again and again and the fact no extra downloads are required. It’s also worth noting the benefits... --- ### Multi-Channel Marketing: Why "Digital" Means All Channels > Discover how a multi-channel digital marketing approach can enhance customer engagement and improve results by integrating all marketing channels effectively. - Published: 2020-05-28 - Modified: 2024-10-29 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/when-digital-means-all-channels/ - Categories: Opinion When we look at the performance of “digital” activity, what are we really looking at? How much traffic gets driven to the website? How many top-tier conversions are recorded in a week, a month? How well the website converts? How many followers you’ve gained on social media? How much engagement your videos are driving? Or are we looking at everything combined? Measuring digital performance. The impulsive reaction is likely to be we’re looking at everything combined; but we can’t be. Especially if we’re not taking into account human behaviour changes, external factors, or our market position. Even more so when you’re only tasked with one element of digital performance like driving conversions through a specific channel. No, at best we’re looking at the total sum of individual activities; at worst we’re looking at the performance of one metric in isolation applied to the wider goals, and neither will tell us what the combined impact is of running the activity on the business. For example, if you’re measuring digital performance based on top-tier conversions, are you basing success on: The number of conversions generated The value of conversions generated The average conversion value How this month compares to last month, or lastyear Any one of those is fine as your success measures are unique to your position, but even if you combined all of those metrics you still wouldn’t have the overall picture because you’re not looking at anything outside of what you are directly responsible for. Measuring digital performance isn’t just about how well your test performed, or how many conversions you drove in a month, or how many new subscribers you’ve had sign up to your newsletter. It is about understanding how all of that looks in a wider view. Say the economy is going through some major changes; physical stores are closing, buyer behaviour is changing, and audience needs have adjusted. If you had a good month for conversions online, is that solely because your online activity has worked better than previous months? If you had a bad month online, is that solely because offline factors played more of an impact than previous months? We all fall into the easiness trap – looking at top-level performance indicators in a hurry and assuming if it’s up, it’s good – and while it generally serves the purpose, we also know that we can’t base future decisions of assumption alone. We need to look at digital performance in relation to, not in isolation of, wider business performance. We need to be looking at “digital” as “all channel” performance – which aspects of what tactics from which channels are providing the most value? Assessing the channel mix. When you’re looking at performance its easy to just look at what you’re responsible for because that’s all you’re going to be measured against. But without an understanding of how other channels are contributing to performance you’re not looking at where new opportunities might be or the overall importance of particular pages or assets. So... --- ### Uncommon sense: Messaging in a crisis > It’s safe to say that there is no such thing as common sense in a pandemic. What was ‘common sense’ for brands feels like has gone out of the window and nobody knows for sure what's coming next. - Published: 2020-05-27 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/messaging-crisis-uncommon-sense/ - Categories: Opinion Let's talk about common sense. I’m sure everyone has seen the news, so I’ll skip over the preamble. On a fateful Monday in early May 2020, Dominic Raab told the nation on BBC Breakfast to use common sense to see loved ones outdoors. Many marketers have been watching recent government comms and many of them have ridiculed the lack of clarity. Messaging has never been so important. It is literally a matter of life and death.   I want to talk some more about common sense and what it means in our current context. Common sense as a concept is a strange one if you look closer. The wild assumption that there is a base level of knowledge shared universally is both impossible and unrealistic. The most common usage of common sense is to proclaim the lack of it - a meme for at least a century or three. Terræ-filius by Nicholas Amhurst in 1726Given that no one in recent memory has been through a worldwide lockdown, I think it’s safe to say that there is no such thing as common sense in a pandemic. What was ‘common sense’ for brands feels like has gone out of the window and nobody knows for sure what's coming next.   Going back to messaging right now, let me paint another picture. This time it’s a Wednesday in mid-March. It’s safe to say everybody was feeling a bit weird. Not to fear, a group of celebrities have come out to release a cover of Imagine to let us know that everything will be okay. Ridiculed and slated all over the internet, NY Times writer Jon Caramanica said it better than I ever could: “In times of crisis, some think it’s enough to throw something slapdash together, serve it to the world and hope it heals some people. But that’s just not how things work. ” Jon Caramanica, NY Times So what have brands been doing since then? A lot of them have gone down the same route. The key messages have included (but not limited to): “we’re all in this together”“unprecedented times” “now more than ever” “even though we’re apart” “in these challenging times” “new normal” Now, I’m not happy or proud to admit this but I know the Microsoft Teams advert off by heart. This isn’t a good thing. (If you are after a chuckle, read the comments on YouTube. ) Messages like the above repeated start to lose their heart (if they had any to begin with) because as a brand, it’s a lot harder to make it seem like you genuinely care, than to just be useful. Another quote I couldn’t put more succinctly: “The ‘we can get through this’ brands are not the brands who are going to get us through Covid-19”Ant White, CHE Proximity Many brands have hit a dilemma. Some aren’t allowed to mention anything by name and instead use thinly veiled innuendos about our times, and others are going down the ‘safe route’ with the pick and mix sympathy phrases above.... --- ### The Future is Automation (With Human Brilliance) > Thinking about automating your PPC? We explore the advantages of automation and why human brilliance is still the cherry on top of an automated strategy. - Published: 2020-05-22 - Modified: 2024-06-03 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-future-is-automation-with-human-brilliance/ - Categories: Data, Digital Marketing The robots have almost defeated us at PPC and that’s actually a really good thing. The world of PPC is often fraught with inadequacies, thanks largely in part to the fact that we are human. The volume of data that a computer can process in a short space of time is much larger than any human could realistically analyse. The amount of data now available to us for a single keyword, let alone a campaign or even an account of thousands of keywords, is vast; with device, location and audience signals, we haven’t just been looking at a keyword bid in isolation for a long time and with every addition of new user signals, the puzzle just gets more complicated.   Automation for some is a taboo subject, with many believing that it simply doesn’t do as good a job as us. A standard day for a PPC’er would be made up of bid optimisation, adjusting ad copy and completing tasks that, in the past, computers haven’t been all that great at. It’s these past experiences that can make it hard to trust and hand over control to algorithms with new methods of automation appearing all the time. Ad-copy is still widely seen as a human job, but now AI assistance is becoming more common thanks to smarter thinking and a better understanding of user queries and a company's brand. What is Automation? There are countless mundane tasks which take up a considerable amount of time for PPC specialists day-to-day, taking time away from developing effective strategies and ensuring your business is getting the best possible ROAS (return-on-ad-spend) or CPA (cost-per-acquisition).   PPC automation can help a business lower their CPC (cost-per-click), increase CTR (click-through-rate), improve quality scores and manage keyword bidding as well. In search, Google reigns supreme with 88% of search market share if you also include YouTube and Google Images results. The rest of the space is taken up by the likes of Bing, Yahoo, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, Pinterest and DuckDuckGo. While the Google algorithms aren’t yet able to know every nuance of an account, there are ways you can build varying strategies that can benefit your business objectives, whether that be revenue or prospective client enquiries.   What are the Main Benefits of PPC Automation The key benefit of automation is, of course, time saving. In a world where we’re constantly time-poor and having  to make trade-off decisions on the value of our time, anything that can help speed up delivery is great. By taking away mundane, repetitive tasks, you could be allowing a PPC specialist the headspace to think strategically and test new innovations.   Beyond just time saving, automation can also enable more complex bidding. The automation provided by Google Ads enables targeting across a more detailed range of criteria, based on signals of searcher behaviour, rather than a static set of demographics programmed by the account owner. The automated bidding then will adapt to change bids at a quicker rate and will continually... --- ### New Digital Features Launched During Covid-19 > A list of all platform-specific new features launched to help businesses during covid-19 with their online presence. - Published: 2020-05-20 - Modified: 2024-04-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/digital-features-during-covid/ - Categories: Digital Marketing With COVID-19 bringing uncertainty to many businesses, we are constantly seeking insights that can provide us with a better understanding of the market under the current circumstances. In light of this, platforms including Google and Facebook have launched new features to help with your marketing and provide consumers with key information. These features are not in support of businesses alone; many included in the list below (particularly those of social platforms) are for the benefit of individuals - helping us come together when navigating life in lockdown. We have pulled together an overview of all the new features you can make the most of. Google: Free Google Shopping - For the first time since 2012, when Google Shopping became a paid advertising only channel, Google is allowing retailers to feature on Google Shopping Tab for free - helping merchants better connect with customers. Google Ads Credits - Google dedicated $340m in ad credits to small and medium businesses, to be used in 2020, to help them stay in contact with customers during these unprecedented times. GMB Bulk Edit - With many brands being unable to operate during this time, consumers are seeking information highlighting whether brands are operational at present. The Google My Business API allows business owners to upload information across locations in bulk, helping businesses display relevant, correct information. --- ### Pre-emptive Marketing Decisions > Preemptively planning your decisions will not only set you up for success, but will make sure that when you are inevitably faced with a challenge, you know how to tackle it and how to move past it. - Published: 2020-05-18 - Modified: 2024-10-28 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/preemptive-marketing-decisions/ - Categories: Digital Marketing How many times as marketers have we turned around and said, “I wish I knew it was going to play out like that”? How many times have we looked back at a campaign and said “Yeah, that’s great, but if we’d done this it could have been faster/simpler/more effective”? Sometimes all you can do is look back and learn for the next time, but that learning phase is key. Pre-emptive decision making is founded on learning from past experiences and applying that knowledge to future scenarios. This is different to predictive decision making, but applies a similar principle. Think of it more as contingency planning, if you like, applying an “if this happens, what do we do next? ” thought process. What is pre-emptive decision making? Say you’re preparing a proposal for a new content piece with an existing client, do you: Send it and talk them through your thinking? Ask in advance what they want to be covered? Cover all angles in the pitch, even if some won’t be needed in full? Send a draft through and then finalise after feedback? Look back at previous proposals and work from that as a template? The thing is, there is no right answer to that straight away. You need to drill down into what you know about the client and how they like to work; who is the proposal going to? Who signs off on the proposal? What information do you need to include to get it signed off? How much detail do you need to go into on different factors (reasoning, creative, execution, distribution, measurement)? Pre-emptive decision making is a core process of nailing a campaign, whatever that campaign may be, but for it to be effective you need to rely on what you already know. In the above example, if you know your client doesn’t like reading lengthy documents, option 1 might be your best bet. If you know they need to get it signed off by someone else, options 2 and 4 might be your best approach. If you know a previous a proposal has been signed off, option 5. If you need to prove that all angles have been considered, then go with option 3. If you can guess what the hurdle might be, you can plan how to avoid it. You can preemptively account for blockers and overcome them. Putting it to use. The first thing you need to do is understand what blockers you might face, whether that is getting sign off from a client, implementation resource not being available, creative assets not being the right sizes, or delays in sign off. One thing we won’t be able to fully account for is external factors, but we can preempt the challenges that could come with them through strategic campaign planning. The more you know about what could stop you progressing in a campaign, the more you’ll be able to affect the outcomes. Once you know what the blockers might be, or what challenges you might... --- ### Found Wins at The Drum Search Awards > Looking for award winning digital marketing? Found is delighted to have won Best Integrated Campaign at The Drum Awards with our client, Hoppy. - Published: 2020-05-13 - Modified: 2024-04-23 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-wins-drum-search-awards/ - Categories: General News, SEO We might not be able to attend award ceremonies but that won’t stop us from celebrating our latest win! Of course, there will be less alcohol consumed and no noisy tables being asked to be quiet by the compere, but we are still immensely pleased to have been awarded the Best Integrated Campaign (PPC & SEO) at The Drum Search Awards for our work with Hoppy. Born in Blue Lab, EDF Energy’s innovation accelerator, Hoppy is a new home management site, providing access to the widest range of utility, broadband/TV and mobile deals as well as the option to book a tradesperson for any job around the home. Found was tasked with defining a coordinated multi-channel, >Display and CRO smashed Hoppy’s CPA and CR targets and propelled them to their next phase of growth. A huge congratulations to the team who works with Hoppy – and to the team at Hoppy who made this win possible with their hunger, openness and collaborative approach. Read more about our work here. --- ### Green marketing is growing > Now, more than ever, customers are buying values first. In this time of uncertainty, people are looking to spend money with brands they can trust to do the right thing. - Published: 2020-05-04 - Modified: 2025-04-07 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/green-marketing/ - Categories: Trends Now, more than ever, customers are buying values first. People are choosing to spend their money with brands they trust to do the right thing—whether it's using sustainable materials or ensuring ethical business practices. Environmental awareness remains a key priority for consumers, with many expecting brands to actively think and act green. A new level of brand advocacy has emerged—especially for local businesses. People are going the extra mile to support them, whether through pre-purchasing vouchers or pledging support via crowdfunding. So how can brands ensure they’re building a loyal and sustainable supporter base? The United Nations is calling the 2020’s the ‘Decade of Action’. A period of time in which governments, civil society and businesses are being called upon to walk the walk, not just talk the talk. To affect change, to follow through on their promises, to make things happen.   It is time, the UN declares, to accelerate “sustainable solutions to all the world’s biggest challenges”. And it is everybody’s responsibility to get involved. That ‘everybody’ includes brands new and old, who are navigating their own set of pressures from an increasingly militant consumer audience. One that’s beginning to not only view environmental action as a nice to have among their favourite brands, but a downright necessity.   In fact, one recent survey showed that a huge 72% of respondents were actively buying more environmentally friendly products than they did just five years ago.   Green marketing matters, doesn’t it? One effect of this collective consciousness raising – admirably encouraged by the Greta Thunbergs of the world – can be seen in the rapid uptake of green initiatives by brands on mass. So much so, that this kind of activity has been assigned its very own name – ‘Green Marketing’ – which refers to the promotion of products or services using their sustainable characteristics as a key selling point.   Take Timberland, for example, who uses the sustainability narrative to market itself while doing its bit for the planet at the same time. The brand’s Nature Needs Heroes campaign was designed to create a conversation around its long-term sustainability strategy while also strengthening views about Timberland as just that: sustainable to the core. On top of this, they’ve pledged to use 100% organic and renewable material in their products by 2020 and have committed to planting 50 million trees by 2025, making them one of the brands who is, it’s safe to say, walking that walk. And they’re not alone. Other household names who have got their eco-activity down to a fine art include Starbucks, IKEA, Coca-Cola and The Body Shop, who’ve all undertaken notable initiatives to help give back to the planet. View this post on Instagram Find 6 hidden actions we all could be doing to help Mother Earth – and if we do them together, the impact could be revolutionary! 🙏 Here are some hints: 1. Don’t throw it away, _____! 2. Cycle or ____ instead of driving. 3. Take a shorter shower to... --- ### Found Rank 6th in 2020 Great Place to Work Awards > We’re delighted to announce that we’ve been awarded 6th place in the 2020 Great Place to Work Awards. Hip hip, hooray! - Published: 2020-05-01 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-2020-gptw-awards/ - Categories: Culture, General News We’re delighted to announce that we’ve been awarded 6th place in this year’s Great Place to Work Awards (medium category) for companies of 51-250 employees (up 4 places from last year! ) This is a fantastic achievement and one that we are very proud of. Since we first took part in the awards four years ago, we have continued to climb in the rankings, including being recognised for Great Places to Work for Women and Excellence in Wellbeing. This is a great indication of how we are always striving to evolve and develop to ensure Found continues to be a Great Place to Work. Being recognised by Great Places to Work is fantastic recognition for all the hard work that we’ve done to create a culture that allows our people and our performance to flourish, and we’re delighted to be identified as an employer of choice that puts culture at the centre of what we do. Thank you to all of our Founders that contribute to making Found the great place it is – hip hip, hooray! --- ### Found Webinar Replay: What's Next For Digital Marketing? The Impact of COVID-19 > Watch our webinar, What's next for Digital Marketing: The Impact of COVID-19. We share advice for CMOs from Google and our analysis of search interest across 200 industries and 14 countries. - Published: 2020-05-01 - Modified: 2024-04-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/covid-marketing-webinar/ - Categories: Digital Marketing On Tuesday 28th April, we hosted our very own webinar for clients and colleagues alike. In these unprecedented times, it can be hard to look forward and understand how the upcoming weeks, months and years are going to look from a marketing perspective. So, we wanted to provide a learning resource that discusses the effects of COVID-19 on the digital marketing world, and what that could mean for brands in the future along with actionable business insights.   Kicking off with an initial welcome from Tina Judic, our CEO; our guest speaker Jon de Weijer from Google took us through helping CMOs in today's uncertain market. Following Jon was our very own data scientist, James Wolman, to talk through how he and his team have been using data science to analyse the impact COVID-19 has had on the search landscape. His research 'lifted the filter' on the expectation of 2020 versus the reality across 200 industries and 14 countries. There is a lot of great information for you to digest so I’ll leave you with the link to the recorded webinar, enjoy! What's Next For Digital Marketing? The Impact of COVID-19 https://vimeo. com/413686403/d02d156b1c Agenda: 00:00-01:52 - Welcome – Tina Judic, CEO, Found 01:52-23:36 - Helping CMOs in Today’s Uncertain Market – Jon de Weijer, Google 23:36-32:41 - Q&A with Jon de Weijer, Google 32:41-51:44 - Expectation vs. Reality: Using Data Science to Lift the Filter on Search Demand – James Wolman, Found 51:44-56-15 - Q&A with James Wolman, Found We hope you enjoy and find it useful, whether you're a brand or an in-house team. If you would like to chat to one of the team at Found about our research or any insights we discussed above, then get in touch today. --- ### Crisis Marketing Strategies: How to Adapt and Thrive > It's highly unlikely that business will just return to normal once the pandemic is over. So, when it comes to a crisis, what marketing considerations should be feeding into your strategies? - Published: 2020-04-28 - Modified: 2024-10-29 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/strategic-crisis-marketing/ - Categories: Digital Marketing 2020 has quite frankly got off to a terrible start, with travel, retail, and hospitality industries feeling the brunt of it so far. From the floods in February causing a near 8% decline in the number of people visiting high street stores, through to the current pandemic which has had monumental impacts on across various industries. Its highly unlikely that business will just return to normal once the pandemic is over. Many businesses will be having to adopt strategies left, right, and centre right now to make it through the next couple of months, but even more will be considering their longer-term strategies – think over the next 2+ years. For industries so reliant on trade and free movement (read “all industries”), it would be not only naïve for businesses to think only about the short term, but potentially even detrimental to their survival. So, when it comes to a crisis, what marketing considerations should be feeding into your strategies? From an agency perspective If you are an agency, working with multiple clients across a variety of channels in a mixture of industries, you are in one of the best positions to learn from the data and what you are seeing. Whether you are servicing SEO, PPC, CRO, Email, or providing consultancy on Data & Analytics; as an agency you are exposed to a huge amount of information, which is both overwhelming and invaluable. And because of that, you will need to break the considerations into different points: Are services / products changing? What from/to and for how long initially? Is delivery paused/available/partially available? Is there leftover stock that needs to be cleared? Where are the opportunities if we cannot sell as normal? Are goals changing? How are forecasts changing? Has the quantity vs. quality balance changed? Do we need to do more to attract and nurture in preparation for future conversions? Is budget changing? How is media spend affected? Are there areas that perform well that should be pushed further? Are there areas that do not perform but we are there for coverage that can be sacrificed? Are the marketing channels being used the right ones for meeting the goals? Are there services at risk of being paused or deferred? Are there changes that could be made to the services to continue driving performance? Is resource changing? Client-side, what is their team setup looking like? Which resources are likely to be stripped back to handle the current issues? Are those changes going to impact anything we need to get implemented or created? Are those changes going to impact the work we can do to drive performance? Is the market affected? Are there similarities between client changes and what is happening in the market? Are we seeing competitors decrease spend or change Biddable tactics? Are we seeing a change in user behaviour? Are there changes in what and how people are searching? Is website use being affected? Are new users at the same intent level as returning users? How is... --- ### Crisis Diversions: Video, The Ultimate Digital Comfort Food > Video, in the context of cinema entertainment has suffered a big hit, but online and on our screens at home, it's thriving. - Published: 2020-04-27 - Modified: 2024-04-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/video-digital-comfort-food/ - Categories: Content Marketing According to a study by Econsultancy, only 14% of UK marketing campaigns are continuing ‘as planned', which I'm sure doesn't come as any surprise. The rest have been either put on hold, cancelled or adapted to ensure that any content produced is sensitive to our new surreal circumstances. Video in the context of cinema entertainment has suffered a big hit, but online and on our screens at home, it's thriving. People are at home, and most of us are glued to our screens, primed to engage with video content.   Options for video production seem limited right now, but many companies are finding new and interesting ways to create content to connect with customers in these weird times. Surprisingly, ads on TV have embraced the production hurdles of this situation with mobile and laptop webcam quality video making their way to our screens.   Smart uses of stock imagery are being leveraged too, by choosing footage that accidentally-on-purpose promotes social distancing, demonstrated in a study where 27. 4% fewer images and videos ads display models kissing, hugging, holding hands, shaking hands, or touching. We’ve collected some interesting video trends that are emerging below. 5 post-Covid-19 Video Trends 1. Interactions with technology are at the forefront This Co-op video uses a video call as a creative format to showcase how technology is bringing us together. https://www. youtube. com/watch? v=lIZ7AEi465o 2. Social distancing is the new normal Directly addressing the elephant in the room, Tourism Australia talks about the benefits of social distancing. https://www. youtube. com/watch? v=cIazHOYR_cw 3. A focus on hand washing and hygiene McDonald's have made an 'unskippable' pre-roll YouTube ad telling us to wash our hands. https://www. youtube. com/watch? v=W1OitbooblI&feature=emb_title 4. Fitness is more important now than ever Nike champions those who are working hard at home. https://www. youtube. com/watch? v=9UTf5EItRC0 5. Less aspirational, more simple pleasures Tesco focuses on what's important to us in the here and now, family and the simple pleasure of a home cooked meal.   https://www. youtube. com/watch? v=zkjkVqEhEDA So we’ve seen that video has changed, but what hasn't changed? Video is still a key way of creating engaging content that sparks conversations online. Below, we discuss how video is playing a critical role in marketing, even now. Remember when, some time around 2012, it became cool to declare that you didn’t even own a TV anymore? You know, roughly the same period where most conversations would, by default, turn into a two-hour rant about the unparalleled artistic beauty of Breaking Bad? It was a strange time, one where people had been so blown away by the power of online video that they were literally turning their backs on the most treasured of all British household staples since the 1950s.    The TV-ditching thing is largely over now (no small thanks to smart teles), but the power of the digital video reigns like never before. Especially in the world of marketing. Yet, despite the fact we’re watching well over an hour of video every... --- ### SEO as art: Reimagining search engine optimisation as an artform > We interview artist Gretchen Andrew, who uses SEO alongside her paints to explore themes of power, systems, desire, and the malleable nature of reality. - Published: 2020-04-24 - Modified: 2024-12-16 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/seo-as-art/ - Categories: Culture, Opinion, SEO Gretchen Andrew uses SEO to remake the internet in her own image. Making Search Engine Art (or SEO Art as we at Found are now calling it) is about identifying the internet’s system of freedoms and constraints and working within them. It’s not unlike a sculptor molding clay; dealing with its inherent physical properties and considering the impact of gravity and time. Search Engine Artist Gretchen Andrew looks at the internet as a creative medium. Just like clay, and oil on canvas, she makes art within its strictures.   Here at Found we’re continually manipulating the content and code of our clients’ websites to improve their visibility in the search engines, we identify with the programs and opportunities afforded by the internet and it’s structure and use them to our clients advantage. So what happens when you put these tools in the hands of an artist who has a different remit? One of self promotion yes, but also one who seeks to challenge the moral and ethical shortcomings of the internet and the algorithms that govern what we see. We interviewed Gretchen Andrews to find out. Gretchen, who famously SEO’ed her way into the Frieze Los Angeles Art Fair in 2019, uses the internet’s inability to parse desire to turn her own hopes into a reality (hint: Google “cover of artforum” and select images).   Her latest studio work, referred to as “vision boards,” appear as top search results through her unique process of ‘gaming’ the failures of the internet to make her own dreams come true.   The feminine and trivialized materials of Gretchen’s vision boards challenge the inherent bias of the male-dominated worlds of AI, programming, and political control in the digital age.   In discussing the internet’s creative potential Gretchen shared, “A sculptor does not select clay and then bemoan its inability to float in the atmosphere. I see the internet’s failings and limitations in the same light, they are inherent properties that can be used to convey framings of and answers to the perennial questions of art.   My work’s medium is the internet, the search engine, but it is about power, systems, rules, desire, and the malleable nature of reality. ” We caught up with Gretchen to discuss her work and what we and our clients can learn from her approach.    You call your work Internet Imperialism. What do you mean by this? Internet Imperialism is a term I invented to describe my art practice of manipulating search results with my vision boards in a way humans can understand but technology cannot. It employs the same SEO techniques that businesses use to propel their sites to the top of Google searches while also revealing the holes in how the internet works.   The term implies that I personally imperialize the internet experience with my artwork but also that the technical internet system, the parts users don’t see, is also being controlled by me.   The Next American President, Gretchen Andrew You studied/worked in tech,... --- ### Core Web Vitals - A Guide for SEOs > Google has updated their timelines for the rollout of the Core Web Vitals forming part of the Search algorithm. Instead of May 2021, the rollout will now begin from mid-June. - Published: 2020-04-20 - Modified: 2024-10-29 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/core-web-vitals-a-guide/ - Categories: SEO Google has updated their timelines for the rollout of the Core Web Vitals forming part of the Search algorithm. Instead of May 2021, the rollout will now begin from mid-June. In this update, they have also announced the rollout will be gradual and that page experience won't play its full role as part of the ranking systems until the end of August. What is confirmed for the rollout? According to Google, when the rollout begins, "the page experience update will consider several page experience signals" which includes: Core Web Vitals (LCP, FID, CLS, and Chrome's recent fix to CLS) Top Stories carousel on Google Search will include all news content providing it meets the Google News policies - AMP format is no longer required Similar updates to the Google News app - expanding usage of non-AMP content No longer show the AMP badge icon to identify AMP content Back in December, we could see early signs of a test which would provide a visual indicator to highlight pages with a great experience in the search results. This hasn't been mentioned in the latest announcement, so it is unclear whether this will be rolled out but during testing it looked like this: Screenshot by Peyman Khalili, referenced by Search Engine Roundtable It was said if the test was successful it would be incorporated into the rollout. Although the rollout timeline has moved, the inclusions of the rollout haven't changed drastically. With that in mind, we take a look at what the Core Web Vitals specifically mean for SEO and the activity you need to be focusing on right now, including: An overview of the Core Web Vitals How to review Tools you can use Use cases Getting ahead An Overview of the Core Web Vitals The Core Web Vitals consist of three metrics: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – measuringloading performance First Input Delay (FID) – measuringinteractivity Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) – measuring visualstability These are all metrics which have previously been available through other tools such as PageSpeed Insights and are powered by the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX), but having them directly accessible in GSC opens up a few new opportunities. Alongside these three Core metrics, there are other “supplemental metrics” which capture a larger part of the experience and are used to help diagnose issues with the Core Web Vitals: Time to First Byte (TTFB) & First ContentfulPaint (FCP) – diagnose issues with LCP Total Blocking Time (TBT) and Time toInteractive (TTI) – diagnose issues with interactivity The other point to note is that although these metrics are all available now, they still have room to grow and develop as more and more data becomes available. This is key for understanding whether the benchmark will move in the future and, right now, it doesn’t look like it will. Benchmarks across each metric can be seen in the image below for what constitutes a “Good”, “Needs Improvement” and “Poor” URL: Source The aim at the moment is to have your... --- ### Brands Doing Their Bit For Social Good - Published: 2020-03-27 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/brands-doing-their-bit-social-good/ - Categories: Digital Marketing We're living in unprecedented times, and with Covid-19 continuing to wreak havoc on the world, businesses, and systems as we knew them before, brands everywhere have a tough decision to make – continue under the guise of normalcy, shut down operations, or use their abilities for good. Many chose the latter, channelling efforts into helping the strained health services, entertaining home-bound people, and generally trying to do good in a time of need. Below is Found's round-up of how businesses and institutions are working all over the world to help.   The directive to wash our hands constantly and use sanitiser while out has led to an unfortunate shortage of hand sanitiser as some consumers purchased it in bulk, leaving others, but especially medical facilities, without. In the UK, BrewDog, better known for their beers and breweries, began manufacturing 'Brewgel Punk Sanitiser', an alcohol-based sanitising gel which the company is giving away and donating to those in need.    https://twitter. com/BrewDog/status/1240208876408123393? s=20 Across the pond, the owner of LMVH Bernard Arnault greenlighted the French factories' efforts to produce hand sanitiser for doctors and nurses instead of the usual Christian Dior perfumes. LMVH is on track to donate 12 tonnes of the brand-new gel to 39 hospitals, roping in L'oreal and Givenchy factories to help with production too. It's not a one-off either – Arnault promised to keep producing hand sanitiser for as long as it is needed.   Hand sanitiser manufactured in a Dior bottle. Image Source: LVMH / Financial TimesFace mask supplies have similarly started to dwindle, which some fashion designers chose to see as a challenge to tackle – not a reality to accept. Prada is well-known for its elegant handbags and beautiful garments though this season's look will be much simpler and more in demand. The company has pledged to produce 110,000 masks by April 6th, while Gucci and Balenciaga have also promised to help with the supply of masks. LVMH, which owns beauty and fashion giants like Fendi Louis Vuitton, and Dior, will likewise supply 40 million masks to where they're needed.   Highstreet retailers are rolling up their sleeves too and shifting production to alleviate shortages. Zara is donating over 400,000 masks while the H&M Group is rearranging its supply chain to start providing protective wear for hospital staff and other healthcare workers.   Jack Ma, the billionaire owner of China-based retailer Alibaba, joined the charitable efforts on March 19th. He announced that the Jack Ma Foundation and the Alibaba Foundation are donating 2 million masks, 150,000 test kits, and 20,000 face shields to countries across Southeast Asia. This was soon followed by another announcement that more donations (1. 8 million masks, 210,000 test kits, and 36,000 pieces of protective clothing, plus ventilators and thermometers) were making their way to other countries across the continent.  Image Source: AlizilaJob losses are a predictable yet deeply unfortunate consequence of the chaotic times. With so many finding themselves out of work during a difficult time, Co-op is offering numerous temporary and permanent positions in their... --- ### Retail Shifting to Digital: How to temporarily close your retail stores. > With the recent announcement of all non-essential businesses closing within the UK, brands with a high street presence are rushing to comply by closing their retail stores and moving to online-only operations. - Published: 2020-03-27 - Modified: 2024-07-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/retail-shifting-to-digital/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, Ecommerce With the recent announcement of all non-essential businesses closing within the UK, brands with a high street presence are rushing to comply by closing their retail stores and moving to online-only operations. It’s crucial in these times that businesses provide accurate and useful information for their consumers, maintaining as much business-as-usual service as possible.   Website Actions  Your website should be the first point of call as it is now your virtual (and only) storefront. There’s a few quick steps you need to take to get it up to date and help users on their shopping journey.   Create a specific landing page that you keep updated – this page needs to become the hub of all information around Covid-19 and your business, reviewed in line with any major updates to government advice.   Add an announcement banner visible on every page – this will help users to navigate to the information they need and understand how your business is still trading. Add FAQs specific to Covid-19 – we’d recommend speaking to your customer service team on the common questions they’re getting and publishing these on site; this will help alleviate some of the pressures on your team as consumers can find answers for themselves.   Update on-page text and metadata for store pages across your site - If you have landing pages for each store, update the meta descriptions to let people know they’re temporarily closed and if they can still purchase online. Also update the copy on the page itself to include this information for people who visit it looking for more information.   Update site metadata – if your sitewide meta descriptions include CTAs like ‘click and collect’ or ‘visit the store’ make sure these are removed.   Update all product pages – update your availability on product pages to show things can only be bought online, new delivery times and help users trust they can still buy from you. Local Listings  Once your website is updated, you can move on to looking at your presence in maps and in local searches on Google. This may be time consuming as there are multiple platforms but it will help to ensure that you are capturing any potential footfall to the store back to the website.   Use ‘Special Hours’ to update your Google My Business opening hours – this feature means you can set special opening hours and show the closure is only temporary.   Use the ‘Temporarily Closed’ feature in Bing Places – it’s important to remember to set a reminder to go back and revisit this as you must schedule an end time to being temporarily closed.   Apple Maps – you can update your listing in https://mapsconnect. apple. com and tell those using Apple Maps that you are now closed.    Waze – often forgotten but for major city locations, update your store opening hours in Waze to indicate a temporary closure.   PPC Actions It’ll be important to take key PPC actions too as... --- ### 8 things that have cheered us up in uncertain times. - Published: 2020-03-27 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/8-things-that-cheered-us-up/ - Categories: Culture With the c-word dominating the news and our minds, I wanted to mention another c-word I’ve been thinking about: community. There has been an influx of positive news and support online, especially on social media.   I’ve put together a list of some things we’ve seen at Found that have cheered us up in uncertain times.   Let's kick off this list of feel-good with maybe the best news I’ve seen since... well, in a while.   A 95 year old Italian grandmother has become the oldest person in Italy to recover from Covid-19 – without the help of antiviral medication. My favourite takeaway from this story is the victory picture: hospital staff standing proud and a slightly confused grandma with a thumbs up. Even with their masks covering their mouths, you can see the genuine smiles.   Image source: Telegraph. co. uk As I write this, I came across another story closer to home – Jack Bowden, a great-grandfather is also the oldest UK Coronavirus survivor at 98 years young. What’s even more incredible is that he went into hospital on the Monday and was back in his own bed in the same week.   Going back to Italy for a second, one of the most surprising effects of a country-wide lockdown has been the transformation of the waters of Venice. You might have seen stories of exotic sea life returning to the canals, but alas this appears to be fake news. Clearer waters can never be a bad thing, even if it comes without dolphins. Image source: Andrea Pattaro/AFP via Getty Images One great thing that has come out of these uncertain times is the community spirit it’s brought back to social media. Someone championing participation online is kooky character Noel Fielding. You might know him from the Channel 4 Bake Off, but he is also a lover of the arts, setting up an interactive club on twitter.    https://twitter. com/noelfielding11/status/1239134238986907650 Art Club (aptly named) is a free-for-all but great for kids stuck at home to get involved in. If you’re ever after an afternoon pick-me-up, scroll through the wacky entries on #artclub and enter a surreal world of decorative lunch meat. https://twitter. com/aligno/status/1239224532768100352 If you’re after something even more social, well I’m pleased to inform you that you can still go to the pub. A pub quiz that is. Bars and pubs across the country have taken their offering online, leveraging the power of social media for organised fun! The Pembury Tavern used the Q&A feature on instagram Stories to collect answers (example below) and I also spotted some other establishments using tools like Google Hangouts and Zoom for even more social interaction.   Here at Found, we also hosted our first internal Friday night quiz and we plan on making it a weekly occasion. With some persuasion we could be encouraged to release a handy Google sheet quiz scorecard template if you fancy having a go at home. Questions not included. If there’s a word for... --- ### Women in Tech SEO - Event Recap - Published: 2020-03-13 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/women-in-tech-seo/ - Categories: SEO On Friday, 6th March 2020, I had the pleasure of attending the first ever Women in Tech SEO conference and the day certainly lived up to my expectations. From tackling Google Sheets and Python to exploring the SEO practices to avoid, the day was filled with a variety of insightful talks. Below are some quick notes from the talks of the wonderful women at Tech SEO I had the pleasure of listening to. Roxana Stingu @RoxanaStingu The first speaker was Alamy’s Roxana Stingu who spoke on the challenges of optimising your site when it is full of high-quality images that you don’t want to compress.   The answer? Optimise everything else! Stingu provided useful details on optimising page speed and time-to-first-byte (TTFB), with actionable tips like investigating CDNs, checking GZIP, redirects, DNS Lookups, TLS 1. 3 for SSL, database optimisation, and considering static caching for pages that don’t change much. Izzi Smith @izzionfire Izzi Smith delivered a fascinating talk on entities. Entity optimisation helps machines to deliver better and more relatable responses to human queries. Smith argued for ensuring that your brand entity is well represented in search; she also went through the key things that matter including authority, relatedness, and priority. Emily Potter Emily Potter from Distilled showed us that a lot of SEO ‘best practices’ actually harm traffic to your site, including that “91% of meta description changes have no detectable impact, particularly for large sites. ” This was evidenced by one brand removing meta descriptions from their website pages to find that Google’s auto generated ones had more impact. Another example Potter used was that through fixing breadcrumbs schema, she’d seen this have a negative impact when the SERPs changed. It was highlighted that the current page initially having valid schema received a loss in clicks. Hence, we need to accept that users are hard to predict and consider swapping best practice for user experience – be user-centric! Ruth Everett Deepcrawl’s Ruth Everett talked about using Python, learning new things and trying them out as a fun part of SEO. She introduced how Python can help technical SEOs by automating, extracting and analysing data. Encouraging us all to have a think of what can possibly be automated and look for an existing script, or learning to write your own! Moreover, through using Python she explained how SEOs are able to make better decisions, allowing more time to spend on important tasks. One example that was particularly interesting was an alt text generator for image optimisation. Python is also now being used to power machine learning. Aleyda Solis @aleyda Aleyda Solis from Orainti presented on the technical SEO challenges with marketplace sites. Key points were: It’s not about indexing more pages, but rather it’s about indexing the right pages It is not about traffic but about money-growth-profit. It is also important to create best practice guidelines and processes for venders Don’t allow products to be listed twice by the same vender Each product should not be listed in... --- ### How to measure the causal impact of your marketing through 'incrementality' > How do you know if your ads are really impacting customers’ behaviour? - Published: 2020-03-09 - Modified: 2025-01-27 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/how-to-measure-incrementality/ - Categories: Data, Digital Marketing If you are not measuring incrementality then you have an incomplete picture on whether your marketing is really making you money. The question is, how do you know if your ads are really impacting customers’ behaviour? You might be measuring last click performance, but that's not enough to give you the whole picture, and if you base your decisions on incomplete data, well, enough said... “Measurement is fabulous. Unless you’re busy measuring what’s easy to measure as opposed to what’s important. ”Seth Godin, author and famously wise chap. How do you know that the revenue you see in Google Analytics next to ‘Paid Search’ is solely due to the adverts that you’re paying to display, and wouldn’t have been captured anyway by, say, strong organic listings? How can you be certain that your media spend is genuinely making you money?   Incrementality is definitely a made-up word but come on, it’s marketing so that doesn’t really matter. Anyway, 4. 5K searches per month on Google, increasing by 180 searches every month in the UK is the only definition we need to justify our use of the term. KPI-based marketing is obviously great for measuring the as-is value pouring through various marketing funnels but it’s uninformative when it comes to the real value added. Even multi-touch attribution modelling or Google’s latest and most complex marketing attribution product cannot impart the insight necessary to measure incrementality. The real value of digital marketing is in the incremental sales; the sales that would not have happened without your marketing genius. Running an incrementality experiment is the only way to truly get to the bottom of this. Measuring incremental impact is more than simply suspending your paid media activity for a week and looking at the difference. Running these kinds of tests is tricky business so the point of our whitepaper is to show you how to calculate incremental value in a fair and accurate way. WHAT DOES 'INCREMENTALITY' REALLY MEAN? In plain English, incrementality is the lift that advertising provides above the native demand. Native demand here refers to the sales that occur without any marketing influence. The difference between native demand and ad-driven sales represents incremental lift – the increase in sales that is truly attributable to paid media. It is the north star of marketing measurement. By doing it effectively you can begin to quantify the impact of ads on your business and honestly claim responsibility for the results of your work. HOW TO MEASURE INCREMENTALITY Don’t worry, you won’t need to slash your profits in half while you run a test. Our incrementality whitepaper explains how to select small subsets of your total audience to compare against each other, and then apply these findings across the board. WHAT IS AN INCREMENTAL LIFT TEST? Experiments relying on treatment and control groups are the scientific gold standard in determining what works and what should play an important role in an advertiser’s attribution strategy. Your incrementality experiment should have two main features: - A... --- ### Our Work Wonder Women - Published: 2020-03-06 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/our-work-wonder-women/ - Categories: Culture It’s International Women’s Day this Sunday, March 8th. At Found we’re taking this opportunity to recognise and thank the Wonder Women we work with everyday. International Women’s Day is an important tradition that’s been happening every year since 1911. The main purpose of the day is to celebrate the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women - but even more importantly, a global activation to action equality for women all around the world. Although progress is still being made to equalise the rights for women across the world, the progress is still very slow. This year’s theme is  "I am Generation Equality: Realizing Women's Rights" and is seeking to draw attention to the fact that equality is essential for successful economies and communities. Our CEO, Tina, has always been a passionate advocate for equality in the workplace: “I’m so proud that Found has such an abundance of female talent in the business – smart, intelligent, passionate, and always striving for excellence. Straight-talking, talent-nurturing and, quite frankly, industry leaders, I couldn’t be more inspired than by the women (and men) who I work alongside, day in, day out. ” Tina Judic, CEO Every year we undertake analysis to ensure that we are operating in a fair and equal way for all employees at Found. Below are this year’s stats that we are really proud of: 51% of our team are female70% of our leadership team is femaleWe have a 1. 5% pay gap in favour of women52% of promotions were awarded to women in the last 12 months We asked everyone in the office to submit an anonymous quote praising a female they work with for their skills and brilliance, and the results definitely made us feel grateful to work somewhere with so many diverse talents. You can see a selection of quotes in the gallery below, with our full list of Wonder Women just a little further down. OUR FOUND WONDER WOMEN: FROM A TO Z. Senior Biddable ManagerSenior Paid Media ExecutiveHead of People & CultureOperations DirectorHead of SEOAssistant AccountantSEO Account DirectorCreative StrategistData AnalystBusiness Manager & Growth PartnerBusiness Director & Growth PartnerSocial Account ManagerSEO ExecutiveContent Specialist We’re really fortunate at Found that we don’t have to make too much effort to ensure women have the same opportunities. We have such a natural open and inclusive culture, which is something I’m really proud of. From equal opportunities for everyone and an equal pay gap, to supporting parents at work and women in leadership; these are some of the reasons we have been recognised as one of the UK's Best Workplaces for Women. We’ve got such an amazing, talented group of individuals that all contribute to making Found a great place to work for everyone, regardless of gender. Becky James Senior Biddable Media Manager"Not only is Becky talented, but her drive and tenacity inspires people to make change everyday. "Bridget Flynn Producer"Bridget is a true inspiration to work with, she manages to combine creative brilliance with some serious project management skills... --- ### 5 Growing tech trends to watch out for in marketing for 2020 > In the words of Jon Bon Jovi: “The more things change the more they stay the same” and it's the same for marketing - the goals always stay the same but the tools marketers use evolve. - Published: 2020-02-28 - Modified: 2024-04-23 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/5-growing-tech-trends-to-watch-out-for-in-marketing-for-2020/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, Trends In the words of Jon Bon Jovi: “The more things change the more they stay the same” and it's the same for marketing - the goals always stay the same but the tools marketers use evolve. Just think that ten years ago it would have been unimaginable to consider a reality in which there are 18 billion videos watched on Snapchat per day, but in 2020 those are the viewing figures being reported. Marketing moves quickly and those of us in the profession have to be proactive enough to know what the latest trends are, work out what’s going to be worth investing time and money into (and what’s going to be a flash in the pan) and then get to work harnessing those channels and tools. To reference the Bon Jovi song again: “I guess it's time to roll up our sleeves... ” As we enter a new decade, let’s take a forward look at the tools that may find a role in the toolkits of discerning marketers everywhere. From drones to voice search, and 5G and beyond, here are five key growing tech trends in marketing that we think should be on your radar. 1. Automation of Advertising It’s arguably been a long-time coming, but the days of human-managed pay-per-click (PPC) advertising might be numbered. The acceleration of AI and responsive advertising means that now more than ever, your audience is going to be served relevant advertising in their search listings, which ultimately means more conversions for you. A great example is Google’s Responsive Search Ads, which allow the advertiser to input five headings, which Google will then mix and match with different creative to produce optimal results. The advantage is that your campaigns are maximally optimised but the disadvantage is that you have slightly less control over your creative. That said, by applying the following straightforward three-step process, you can go from zero to fully automated campaigns in no time at all: 1.     Assemble your tech stack: work out what tools you need. 2.     Teach the machine: feed your campaigns data, and let the algorithm iterate to become more effective. 3.     Monitor the machine: automation works quickly, so be prepared to keep checking in to see your results, and to tweak your campaigns where necessary. We’ve been thinking about automation a lot here at Found, and we’ll be releasing some more in depth thoughts (coming to the blog soon) on what this means for our PPC team and how we work in the future.   2. The 5G Network There’s a lot of room for hyperbole when it comes to 5G, but we think that widespread implementation of the new 5G network around the world is going to have a big impact on marketing for 2020 and beyond. How could it not? With significantly faster speeds, consumers are in for a range of added benefits that marketers can take advantage of: Content-rich media including films will take seconds, rather than half... --- ### 5 Books to get you into a Growth Mindset > With growth being such an important mindset for us, I’ve been doing some reading around the concept and listed my top 5 growth mindset book recommendations. - Published: 2020-02-20 - Modified: 2024-11-06 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/5-books-growth-mindset/ - Categories: Opinion Here at Found, we’re always looking for ways to learn something new. With growth being such an important mindset for us, I’ve listed my top 5 recommendations to help develop a growth mindset. This is not an exhaustive list, but all are books I’ve found particularly helpful in applying growth mindset concepts to my day to day.   What are the best books on growth mindset? 1. Mindset by Dr Carol Dweck The original growth mindset book. It takes you through what a growth mindset is and how your mindset is the key to everything – e. g. if you think you can or if you think you can’t, you’re right. There are also some great tips on how you can train your mind to become more growth focused.   A great intro to the concept. 2. The Squiggly Career by Helen Tupper & Sarah Ellis A brand new book but a game changer in how we think about career development and growth (a big passion of mine! ) It’s helped me understand that growth in our careers isn’t always linear but actually comes in many different shapes and paths, each with something new to offer and learn from. It’s a fantastic way to start thinking about defining these possibilities and being open to them. 3. The Outward Mindset by The Arbinger Institute  This book helps you change the way you think about yourself, how you think of other people and the way you work with people, helping you change the outcome of your life experiences. It really takes growth mindset and leadership to a new level. It is enlightening, thought provoking and helps you think about how you interact with others to get the best outcome. 4. The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier  Coaching for me is key to helping your team develop a growth mindset, and is one of the most powerful tools you can have as a manager. This is a fantastic book on how to develop a coaching habit to ask more powerful questions, overcome obstacles and empower your teams. One I would recommend to any manager/leader/HR professional. 5. How to Fail by Elizabeth Day I’ve kept the best for last, my all-time favourite book for growth - I’m a big fan of the podcast too. Although this goes through a lot of personal stories, I feel there is a lot to learn from these. By reframing failure as an opportunity to learn or guide us in a different direction, it really helps us to develop a growth mindset. Instead of seeing failure as a negative, it’s an opportunity to grow and learn, and in turn, build resilience.   *Book links are Amazon ‘Smile’ links where Amazon will donate 0. 5% of the net purchase price (excluding VAT, returns and shipping fees) of eligible purchases to a charity of your choice. Overall, I think all of these books are a good start in helping to develop a growth mindset - each with something unique to... --- ### OscarBot's AI predictions beat the film buff and the bookies! > Our Oscar predicting AI, dubbed ‘OscarBot’, outperformed both the bookies and our in-house movie buff with it’s predictions for the 92nd Academy Awards. - Published: 2020-02-11 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/oscarbots-ai-predictions-beat-the-film-buff-and-the-bookies/ - Categories: AI & Machine Learning After the glitz and glamour of the weekend’s celebrations (for the Academy’s lot at least) our data science team are feeling quite smug, and deservedly so. Our Oscar predicting AI, dubbed ‘OscarBot’, outperformed both the bookies and our in-house movie buff with its predictions for the 92nd Academy Awards Ceremony, which took place on February 10th. For those not in the loop, our data team trained the OscarBot with a carefully curated blend of social signals, IMDB features, and historic awards data. From this, the OscarBot’s model learned to accurately predict Oscar winners from the set of nominees. Well, that’s the idea anyway – last year predictions didn't go so well for the OscarBot, but we decided to make some improvements and have another go this year. Here’s what was predicted: With all three making similar predictions it came down to the results in just two categories, Director and Best Picture. Whilst none of them predicted that Parasite’s director Bong Joon Ho would pick-up up the Director award, OscarBot however did think that Parasite would win best picture, which it did! This has come as quite a pleasant surprise to everyone at the office as there was a bit of a consensus that the OscarBot had got it wrong.   James Wolman, our resident data scientist, had this to say on OscarBot’s victory: “It's a testament to what we can learn from listening to social media data. It was the social data that really sharpened up OscarBot's predictive power and gave it the edge it needed to capture this year's surprise win. But it was more than that, the important part was how we trained it to interpret that data - which tweets to listen to and how to understand them in terms of the hype and emotion. I'm so proud of my OscarBot! -weep- I can't believe you all doubted it -sob-"  With one loss and one well-deserved and odds-defying win, the OscarBot is a great example of what strategic AI application and machine learning can do. It also reinterprets what we think about as data; it’s certainly not all about numbers – social signals and data were the elements that gave the OscarBot its competitive edge. The art of data and its application lies beyond the obvious.   We’re going to leave you with a Bong Joon Ho’s inspiring words: “Once you overcome the 1-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films. ” Let’s make 2020 all about taking risks and overcoming metaphorical barriers that prevent us from seeing and doing more. Parasite opened in UK cinemas on February 7th.   --- ### Great Expectations? Our AI Predicts Oscar Wins > For the Oscars we've put our resident data science wizards to the test, challenging them to build an OscarBot and make predictions based on available data. - Published: 2020-02-05 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/great-expectations-our-ai-predicts-oscar-wins/ - Categories: AI & Machine Learning, Trends There’s only a short time to go until the 92nd Academy Awards and until we find out who will win the coveted Oscar trophies. For the Oscars last year we put our resident data science wizards to the test, challenging them to build an OscarBot and make predictions based on available data. The OscarBot was pitted against our resident film buff, Lily, and the bookies to see who could predict the results most accurately. You can see how the bot fared last year (let’s just say it *was* the OscarBot’s first rodeo and it lost big) but with 2020 in full swing, we thought to give the OscarBot some improved algorithms and another chance. Pitting the OscarBot against Lily’s passionate, hand-selected, knowledge and experience based predictions isn’t quite enough for us. We needed another control group and the bookies’ forecast is ideal to compare our OscarBot skills against. The following information is correct as of February 3rd, 2020, taken from oddschecker. com. First, let’s recap how our OscarBot does its thing. Here at Found, we know that AI isn't far enough along yet to go the distance alone, which is why we love stirring human brilliance into tech innovation. Our Data Scientist James trains the model with a carefully curated blend of social signals, IMDB features and historic awards data. From this, it learns to accurately predict an Oscar winner from a set of nominees. Then all we have to do is wait patiently for the results to roll in. The OscarBot has given us an unexpected choice this year in the best picture category. Many want to see Parasite walk away with the award as it’s highly unusual for a foreign-language film to scoop it. So unusual, in fact, that it would be a first in the Oscar’s history. Parasite has some stiff competition from Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood and 1917; both films have the broad thematic appeal typically favoured by the academy members. A bold choice for OscarBot but not an unpopular one, could this an inspired choice that gives it the edge? However a subject that Academy members generally seems to favour is war, and 1917 delivers with the kind of poetic realism that usually wins big. Best Picture is undoubtedly the category to watch with our OscarBot going squarely against the opinions of the bookies and film buff. The academy has also been known to award ‘retroactively’, like in the case of Jennifer Lawrence who received an Actress in a Leading Role Oscar for Silver Linings Playbook when it was widely understood that she should have won for Winter’s Bone; similarly, Colin Firth’s performance in the King’s Speech won him the Actor in a Leading Role Oscar - though he received boundless praise for the subtlety of his performance in previous year’s A Single Man. There are some murmurs online that it’s Quentin Tarantino’s ‘time’ to get a gong for directing, an accolade he’s not received to date (he’s won two for best original... --- ### Found awarded for excellence in wellbeing. - Published: 2020-01-31 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-awarded-for-excellence-in-wellbeing/ - Categories: Culture, General News Last week, we were delighted to receive the news that we have been awarded Excellence in Wellbeing by Great Places to Work. With team wellbeing a top priority for the agency, it is great to be officially recognised for this. This is the first year that GPTW has awarded companies for this category and having already been ranked in the top 10 for GPTW (medium category) and top 3 for GPTW for Women, this is further recognition for the efforts we put into staff happiness and nurturing a positive workplace culture here at Found. Everything from fulfilment at work, work environment and financial security right through to mental health and interpersonal relationships is assessed, based on the team’s responses to a series of questions sent to them in a survey. With our culture firmly orientated around supporting our team, we take the wellbeing of our people seriously. This is why we have invested in our ‘Foundfullness’ programme which features a whole series of in-house training and development activities to help develop our Founders from a career, physical, mental and emotional standpoint. Most importantly we have a culture of openness, nurturing and care that has put our people at the heart of what we do and every decision we make. To be recognised for these efforts, makes us extremely proud. --- ### Local SEO Growth: Strategies to Boost Your Business > With the SERPs becoming more competitive, owning organic space is becoming harder and clicks are decreasing. - Published: 2020-01-30 - Modified: 2024-10-29 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/why-you-need-to-start-thinking-locally-to-organically-grow-your-business/ - Categories: SEO With the SERPs becoming more competitive, owning organic space is becoming harder and clicks are decreasing. So how can businesses continue to grow organically when organic clicks are harder to come by? The key could be in optimising for local search. And with the possibility of user-specific knowledge graphs in process, local SEO has never been more important for businesses. Optimising for local search. There are a number of ways to optimise for local search, including: Location-specific keywords Google Business Profile, and other map options e. g. Bing Places, Apple Maps Local citations and reviews And each tactic has their own applications with the main aim being to help improve a businesses’ presence for more specific queries. Optimising for location-specific keywords. Optimising for “near me” keywords is great in principle, but is never going to work for a website. Everyone is in different places, so you need to be logical about what you’re doing. Instead, you need to be looking at queries such as “ in ” or “ in ” so that: You can have static landing pages for location-based queries, e. g. store pages detailing all of the information about our store in a specific location You can appropriately target the locations you care about, and their immediate surroundings – if you operate in Farringdon, for example, you can add information to your landing page about nearby areas (e. g. Angel) to build up a radius. The inclusion of nearby areas helps subliminally target “near X” queries. But this doesn’t just apply to businesses with brick and mortar stores. This is a great tactic to implement for any business, with location-specific keywords often being incorporated into B2B searches or for areas covered by businesses, for example “plumbing services in London”. Optimising for Google Business Profile (and other map options). Google Business Profile (GBP) is a fantastic source of organic traffic for businesses, with many having under-optimised listing or under-utilising the features available to them. For any business with a storefront, or any that "make in-person contact" with customers, GPB is a must have for your marketing strategy. The features are always expanding, allowing businesses to add up-to-date information about their locations, pictures, videos, posts for content and offers, products, enquiry forms, and more to drive engagement with the map listings. Bing Places is also great for businesses without a physical store location, for example service-based businesses carrying out jobs at the customer's location. Apple Maps is also a huge opportunity for businesses, with many companies not fully utilising it. If you take a moment to think about Apple's market position compared to other devices and operating systems, a large portion of your audience could very well be coming from iOS devices. Why would you not try and capture their queries as well? For any business strategy, Map Packs offer a great deal of opportunity to be captured. And, not only do they help find and engage with your listing, they take up space in the SERPs. More than... --- ### 12 easy things you can do to make Google like your website > Sometimes it’s the small things that make a big difference, and with SEO that’s often true. Here's 12 easy things you can do to get in Google's good books. - Published: 2020-01-22 - Modified: 2024-04-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/12-easy-things-you-can-do-to-make-google-like-your-website/ - Categories: SEO Sometimes it’s the small things that make a big difference, and with SEO that’s often true. If you’re responsible for the performance of a site and are looking for some quick wins you’re in the right place. Below are 12 easy things you can do to make Google happy. Listen to what Google is telling you. Search console is a freely available tool that lets you know of any errors across your site. Login to it weekly, and check for any errors. Fix the ones you can and seek advice for the ones you can’t. Use a good copywriter. Google has spent a lot of resources creating an algorithm that helps users find the best content on the topic they’re searching for. It used to be about keyword stuffing, then keyword density was a more refined version, now Google is so much better at understanding synonyms and the relationships between words, meaning well written copy should be paramount to your approach. Title tags. For those who aren’t familiar, title tags are what users see in the search results when they search for a keyword, the text in the blue links that send users through to a site. These are important for two reasons, firstly it’s the first thing a user sees, so make them enticing. Secondly they’re a really important ranking factor, if the main keyword your page is trying to target isn’t in your title tag, you’re going to struggle to rank effectively. Find out which keywords you want to target and write user friendly, keyword targeted title tags. If you’re struggling for inspiration check out what your competitors are doing. H1 tags. H1 tags aren’t as important as title tags, but they are a relevancy signal for Google. Have one H1 tag per page, and try to include your main keyword in the H1. Answering a question in 150 words or less. This is a great way to get into the ‘people also ask’ and position 0 answer boxes. For any piece that’s answering a user’s query, try to answer the question within 150 words at the start of the article, before going into more depth. As the SERPs diversify it’s important to capture results pages space in any way possible. Don’t let your old products go to waste. If you’re a small e-commerce site and you’re removing products from your inventory infrequently, redirect these defunct product pages to other related products. It’s a good way of transferring any value an old page has built up to another, preventing loss of performance. Only do this for products you’re not going to sell again, out of stock products can have a friendly message letting users know the product will be back soon. (If you’re a large e-commerce site with products no longer being sold every week, or more frequently, 410 your old products, to let Google know it’s gone and never coming back. ) Keep it unique. This is an easy way of avoiding duplication issues, which can cause... --- ### Growth Mindset - Mastering new creative skills. > Have you ever found yourself entranced, glued to Youtube, watching someone do something very ordinary or seemingly mundane to a very high standard? - Published: 2020-01-17 - Modified: 2024-12-16 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/mastering-new-creative-skills-the-importance-of-adopting-a-growth-mindset/ - Categories: Opinion Have you ever found yourself entranced, glued to Youtube, watching someone do something very ordinary or seemingly mundane to a very high standard? Take this guy cleaning a carpet. There can be something deeply satisfying about seeing people be everyday badasses, showing off a mastery of skills that elevate regular jobs or everyday activities into some sort of art form - it can be captivating, even hypnotic, and makes for compelling viewing. I've heard this be called ‘Competence Porn’, and I can see why. It brings a certain deep sense of satisfaction through seeing people being extremely competent at stuff. Much of it we discover through our own desire to learn a new skill, a search to find out ‘how to’ do something, but learning from it is often not the reason that we keep on watching it.   Take drain unblocking, surely this is one profession that really can’t be elevated to an art-form? You’d be wrong, this Australian team ‘Drain Addict’ are nailing it, with some of their 400 or so drain unblocking videos racking up millions of views (see blocked drain 308) - trust me that moment when the blockage finally becomes clear is strangely satisfying. Watch this chap from Baumgartner fine art restoration meticulously restoring this ancient relic. Or this bloke skilfully trimming a hedge. Most of us readily admit that we’d like to attain mastery of new skills, whether it’s skateboarding tricks, cake making, stand-up comedy or oil painting, and these days we have a huge, instantly accessible resource bank of (often self-proclaimed) experts and so-called influencers to access to help us get there - think Youtube, Twitch and even Quora. The key thing here to actually making it happen and getting good at something new, is in approaching this learning with the right kind of positive mindset - what some call a ‘growth mindset’. That’s because these amazing online resources and these so-called experts can, rather than enable, be what prevents you from mastering a new skill. Confused? Let me explain. When we want to learn a new skill, often our first stop now is Youtube, and that’s ok if you want to pick something up that can be taught in 5 mins. Like ‘how to tie a bow tie’ or ‘how to bleed a radiator valve’, but when it comes to the more creative skills, often we are looking for shortcuts that don’t really exist and certainly aren’t a substitute for experience and hard work. “We get into creative work because we have good taste. ”  Ira Glass The trouble is that we can’t satisfy our own discerning appreciation for good work very quickly when we attempt to learn a new skill. Take learning the guitar for example, in order to get any good at it you have to spend a lot of time listening to yourself sound very, very bad. Offending our ears and our own innate sense of taste in the process. I know this from personal experience, and the inevitable... --- ### SEO for Black Friday (and the Holiday Season) > Learn how to implement effective strategies and techniques to improve your SEO for Black Friday (and the Holiday Season). Read our guide. - Published: 2019-11-28 - Modified: 2025-02-25 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/seo-for-black-friday-and-the-holiday-season/ - Categories: SEO Black Friday, a US import we resisted for a little while, is almost as big a thing here in the UK (and Europe) as it is over the pond. The concept of Black Friday was introduced to UK shoppers back in 2010 by Amazon and almost a decade later, it’s been widely embraced by retailers and shoppers alike. The appetite for deals and savings is ever present for shoppers and a survey has revealed that people are planning to spend an average of around £250 over the Black Friday weekend, which is inclusive of Cyber Monday. Research by PwC found that 8% of shoppers are planning to avoid the shopping weekend entirely – an easy to believe number considering that we’re just four weekends away from Christmas. The visions of shoppers queueing for their deals is a thing of the past as online shopping is the go-to method for securing a deal. In the UK, 77% of Black Friday transactions now take place online and the retailers who can anticipate and cater to this growing demand are the ones to reap the rewards. Preparing your brand’s website for the Black Friday weekend and the festive season is essential to maximise sales and improve search visibility. Unsure where to begin? Our detailed strategy is laid out below. Technical foundations  Product Schema Site speed  GMB & Bing Places Ensure optimisations are live in time Emphasise seasonal USPs Research search behaviour Repurpose your sale page Use tag manager to update page titles Steal from competitors 6 Months Before Technical Foundations Getting the technical foundations for SEO right should be a priority for any site, especially if you are looking to capitalise on an increase in seasonal searches. However it can also be an extremely daunting task so we’ve highlighted three of the most important things to look out for. Internal links from category pages Internal links are important in creating a crawlable structure for a search engine to discover and crawl all the pages and content on your website. A basic rule to follow is that an ideal site architecture has the lowest number of clicks between between the homepage and any given page. This should be managed by having a clear category and subcategory structure to the site where every page has its place in the hierarchy. More info on this can be found here. Resolve 404s The common 404 page not found error is the bane of many a webmaster and consumer. Links to these incorrect URLs may, over time, hurt your SEO rankings, as search engine crawlers waste resource attempting to access nonexistent pages and link equity is lost not to mention the bad user experience provided.   A scan of your site with a tool such as Screaming Frog SEO Spider will highlight all the broken links that need fixing. Prioritising this task over other technical fixes will set you in good stead as broken links lead to bad user experience and we know Google (and other search engines)... --- ### Rich Results: Google’s SERP is Changing - Published: 2019-11-14 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/rich-results-googles-serp-is-changing/ - Categories: SEO Time to understand what that means for your brand and what you can do about it. Cast your mind back to when Google was just starting out, back when we were loading up search results on a Motorola Razr (in between games of snake), and the results we saw were drastically different to the experience we have online today. Previously Google was based around just 10 blue links with no advertising or enhanced results for users. By 2007, Google had developed to its more advanced format of Universal Search; which included elements such as maps, news, videos, shopping and images, creating a much richer search landscape for users. This was the start of Google providing users more detail on what they want and improving the user experience on search results pages. The SERP today Today the SERP is becoming an increasingly popular place for users to spend their time, with over 34% of all searches not resulting in a click to any of the results. Users expect to get the information they need in the case of short answers or fact checks within the results themselves, rather than spending time browsing a website. The Topic Layer and Knowledge Graph Google has a central store of information and understanding of how facts relate to one another, which is called the Knowledge graph. Roughy one-third of Google's one hundred billion monthly searches (May 2016) are answered by information in the Knowledge graph. If you see an infobox next to your search results, then that is an example of information from Knowledge graph's 70 Billion (Oct 2016) known facts. More recently Google has added what they call the Topic Layer which groups related facts and subtopics from the Knowledge Graph to a given search term, and then displays them in an easy to explore manner. Allowing users to easily "explore information from the web, all with a single search. " Increased volume of Rich Results Rich results highlight key information and assist search engines in understanding a page’s purpose. They are made up of rich snippets and cards, offering more space for images and carousel featurettes on SERPs. These are only set to increase, so it’s important to make sure you’re optimised to take advantage of the evolving landscape. Google Discover Beyond traditional search, Google has also invested in upgrading the Google Feed and rebranding it to be Google Discover. This feature pushes information and stories to users before they even begin searching; with over 800 million people using this a month it’s a huge area of growth for Google and for businesses included within the feed. The most interesting thing about Google Discover is how it changes a user’s behaviour from pulling information from the search and a single query journey, to having information pushed to them and a journey based purely on clicks. This browsing style of search replicates the way we scroll through social media news feeds and content sites, as opposed to the traditional search engine model. The ever-changing... --- ### Chang3 Win Digital Disruptors 2019 - Published: 2019-11-01 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/chang3-win-digital-disruptors-2019/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, General News Last week saw the final of the 2019 Digital Disruptors programme. Our mission has been to offer young individuals a better understanding of all things digital, first hand from industry experts. This year, our participants went on an exciting journey through the world of digital marketing, partaking in multiple workshops across London. We then organised them into teams and challenged them to come up with a social/video channel that serves a specific purpose and cause. This year, I have been lucky enough to be directly involved with the programme as a team mentor. It has been a true inspiration to witness first-hand the desire, motivation and belief that these youngsters, who have an average age of 16, possess. It's a certainty that they all have very bright futures ahead of them. Shortly before the finalists took to the stage at the Old Billingsgate, during the PI Live Conference, this below video was played to the audience. It gives a great insight into the journey our Disruptors took, leading right up to the final. The time had come for our finalists to present their ideas to the four judges, in a 'Dragons Den' style setup. The atmosphere was scintillating and the stage was set. Even for a seasoned professional public speaker, the setting was a daunting one to say the least. Live, in front of a crowd of several hundred (who were there in attendance of the PI Live Event), the Digital Disruptor finalists took to the stage. What happened next completely blew me, my colleagues and all of the judges away. Every single team took to the stage and wholeheartedly smashed it. They delivered thoughtful, compelling and emotive presentations that captivated the room and demanded attention. Here's a wrap up video of the final: Whilst every team deserved to win in their own right, there could only be one in the end. This year's trophy went to Cairo Whittingham, Djenne Black, Mabinta Kendah and Excellent Longange. Together, they came up with the concept of Chang3, a YouTube Docu-series that would focus on Knife Crime in its first series. The presentation began by using the powerful images of victims of knife crime which instantly captivated the audience and judges. They then set out a cohesive business plan that communicated clearly how they would fund the series, utilising merchandise revenue to invest back into communities affected by knife crime, as well as charities that are able to help. Chang3 L to R: Djenne Black, Mabinta Kendeh, Cairo Whittingham, Excellent Longange. Keep your eyes peeled - next week we will be releasing a full interview with this year's winners. If you would like to get involved with the Digital Disruptors programme, please visit our website tofind out more. --- ### How To Auto-Type Anything You Want By Pressing a Key > With AutoHotkey, any key on your keyboard can be programmed to type any text desired. Follow this step by step guide to get yourself setup. - Published: 2019-10-14 - Modified: 2025-01-27 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/how-to-auto-type-anything/ - Categories: AI & Machine Learning Your email address has to be typed exactly right. There is no room for error. The computer won't get what you mean in the same way as if you were reading 'he ate the homburger'. If you mis-spell your email address, that confirmation email to sign you up to HM Government's tax account isn't going to arrive, which means you may never get that tasty tax rebate. That's why you need to concentrate hard on writing your email address. Concentrating hard can be fun if what you are concentrating on is interesting. But how interesting is your email address? That depends if you made the list of funniest email addresses. If you didn't make the list, you'll want to know how to make email address writing stop. Auto typing your email address What if I told you that for the past year, instead of writing out my email address, I have been pressing 'F7' on my keyboard? Here's a slightly maniacal gif example of this in action. Every time, I'm grateful not to have to put down what I'm thinking about in order to make sure it's exactly right. You, too, can have a quickfire email address like this. Read on. . AutoHotkey is the program that makes this possible. Screenshot of the AutoHotkey website With AutoHotkey, any key on your keyboard can be programmed to type any text you desire. You have little programs (called scripts) running in your taskbar which change what a key-press on the keyboard does. They run silently in the background and get your keyboard working for you for a change. How to Automate typing your email address Download AutoHotkeyInstall itFind out where the program looks for your scripts. For me, it was a folder in my username directory which appeared there after the install: C:UsersRichard. LewisAutoHotkeyMake a new notepad file in that folder you just found. In the first line of the file, write the key you want to use to type your email address, like this: KEY::, so that would be F1:: or ¬::On the next line, put SendInput {Raw} and then immediately after, the text you want to type whenever the key is pressed, whether it's your email address or anything else, so that would be SendInput {Raw}your@email. co. ukOn the next line, put returnClose the file, saving it as whatever you want to call it, something like 'typeemail. ahk'. It's the . ahk at the end that's important, this stands for AutoHotkey and is how the program recognises it. Here's the whole thing for you to copy and paste: F7::Send {Raw}your@email. comreturn A script for AutoHotkey is just a notepad file that it can read, helping to put you in charge of your keyboard. You've made your script, nice work. Now, to turn it on. Activate your script by going to your start menu, find AutoHotkey and execute your script by clicking on it. When it's running, it will appear in the taskbar as a green icon. Bonus: A spicy window... --- ### Christmas Is Coming - Start Planning Your Social Now > With Christmas upon us, it's vital to get your social strategy nailed. Our Social Account Manager Ruth O'Brien has all the top tips to get you ready. - Published: 2019-10-11 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/christmas-is-coming/ - Categories: Social Media With the high street already struggling against the power of e-commerce, and the Brexit-shaped elephant in the room that has now become a "will they, won't they? " situational comedy mixed with an absolute bonfire - social media is going to be vital for many brands to help bridge consumer confidence and sell product during the peak period. Time spent on social channels is increasing, as is the e-commerce functions available for brands to play with, indicating that social might shine this festive season. Santa has officially gone social - is your brand ready? Organic social is your front window What do people do on social? They browse. Your content deserves as much care and attention as the fancy window displays at Selfridges. The basics are ensuring your images are high-res and formatted correctly. Too many brands think that uploading any old image will do. Users scroll through hundreds of posts every day, so you need to make sure your content stands out! It's not all about wall posts either - offer viewers mini catalogues they can browse. Create snackable "gifts for... " albums on Facebook and Story Highlights on Instagram. Turn your profiles into a social hub of gifting inspiration. If you have physical stores, then make sure to update your opening hours with seasonal times too. If you have special shopping nights, create Facebook events that people can use to set up a reminder. Take a step back and think about what customers might want to find on your page, rather than just think about what content you want to push. Also, speaking about catalogues... Source: Facebook Facebook and Instagram are all about social shopping If you are a retail brand and haven't already started using the shopping functions, you're definitely missing a trick. It takes very little time to set up and the ability to tag products in photos is game changing. Plus Instagram is testing shopping posts as ads, allowing brands to reach even more people with tagged up content. There's more - Facebook is also testing out a new Dynamic Ad function that allows shoppers to purchase directly on the platform, rather than clicking through to a brand's website. Facebook is continuing to move towards a fully on-platform e-commerce solution for advertisers, which is excellent news for small businesses with limited web-dev budgets. Source: Pinterest The power of Pinterest Pinterest can be considered more of a planning tool or visual search platform than a social network. With a strong female userbase, it can be the ideal way to catch shoppers’ eyes during the peak gifting season. The platform has steadily increased its ad inventory over the past 12 months, including introducing Shopping Ads. Recently, Pinterest has also started testing "shop the look" ads and the ability to upload entire catalogues to create promotable pins that feature multiple products in a native way. Let’s talk TikTok TikTok has gone from strength to strength in 2019, now boasting over 500 million monthly active users around the world.... --- ### Digital Disruptors 2019 Gets Underway > The mission of Digital Disruptors is to encourage young people to immerse themselves in the dynamic, challenging and fascinating world of digital. - Published: 2019-08-30 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/digital-disruptors-2019-underway/ - Categories: General News Last week saw the start of the 2019 Digital Disruptors programme and it definitely kicked off with a bang. Over the course of the week I had the pleasure joining the groups and photographing their experiences during an action-packed schedule. It was incredibly inspirational to see first-hand their enthusiasm and passion for all things digital. Founded in 2018, Digital Disruptors was set up in the memory of Nicky McShane. Up until her untimely death in 2017, Nicky was one of the digital industry’s most progressive and exuberant figures. Found's very own Tina Judic (CEO) and Julie York (PR Lead), alongside Nicky’s daughter Naomi, set up Digital Disruptors to honour the memory of Nicky. Their mission is to encourage young people to immerse themselves in the dynamic, challenging and fascinating world of digital. If you’d like to find out more about the Digital Disruptors story, you can read about it here. In partnership with the Hebe Foundation (a charity that has supported over 1500 in the last 10 years), Found helps to deliver a programme that provides fantastic opportunities for the next generation of upcoming experts who are just starting out on their journey into the world of digital. The overall structure of this programme see’s the participants go on a journey where they initially partake in workshops which provide them with insight into the many aspects of digital. We held a workshop at our own offices this week, hosted by Found's Creative Director Paul Coldham. Paul showed participants the power of video content in digital, as well as showcasing several of the cameras our in-house production team use. Beyond our own offices, the participants enjoyed workshops across offices at Universal McCann, Reverse Media Group, Facebook, Snap and Awin. Here’s some of our favourite photos from the week: Once they’ve gone through the educational phase of the programme, our participants are splits up into groups and tasked with a challenge. This year, they have to create a content series which will be distributed on any variety of digital platforms, which helps to which serves a purpose or specific message. They then have to pitch to our own team members, in a Dragons Den styles knock-out tournament, up until the grand final which is being held at the Old Billingsgate in October. Here at Found, we are really excited to see what the Disruptors come up with over the upcoming weeks. Check out our social channels or keep up with the journey with us via our website blog. If you would like to get involved with Digital Disruptors, either a sponsor or a participant – get in touch with us. --- ### Optimise Your Site: Strategies for Resolving SEO Performance Issues > When something goes wrong with website performance, trace back your steps and find all of the possible blockers to getting that performance issue fixed. - Published: 2019-08-20 - Modified: 2024-10-29 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/resolving-website-performance-issues/ - Categories: SEO As someone who has worked for a performance agency for the last five years, I have learned that almost everything we do needs to be based on data, knowledge, and past experiences. But only almost because sometimes we get faced with things we’ve never seen before. It’s rare, but occasionally we have to act on impulse and instinct. Sometimes, when working on SEO, you need to rely on impulse and instinct... That is a scary place for marketers. What happens if we’re wrong, if we make a bad decision, or we don’t see the results we expect? A lot of us go into some kind of internal meltdown, blaming ourselves for not doing what we should have done even though we didn’t know what it was that we should have done in the first place. As much as we hate to admit it, there are always going to be situations where we don’t know the answers to everything, so the next best thing we can do is try and minimise the time we spend in those scenarios and get through them as quickly and effectively as possible. So how do you do that? Work through your issues. Say you need to order a pizza; before you do you need to decide what kind of pizza you want, how you want to order it, whether you want any sides, what size you want, do you want a drink, do you even want pizza? Trick question, everyone wants pizza. But what happens when it is something more serious than pizza? Another trick question, nothing is more serious than pizza. For argument’s sake, let’s say there’s an issue issue with a client’s website where performance just isn’t where you expected it to be. The client is questioning it and what you’re going to do about it, but you aren’t sure what it is or what to do to fix it, and you know you’ll probably need to do a bit more than usual because the client’s developers have a massive backlog to work through. What do you do? You work backwards. You find all of the possible blockers to getting this performance fixed, and then you figure out which aspects of those blockers are in play and what you do next: Find all thepotential blockers Identifyaspects of blockers causing issues Determineimpact scope of identified aspects Determinerequirements for fixing 1. Find all the potential blockers. What potential blockers could you encounter in this scenario? Developer backlog Indexing/crawlability Duplicate content Incorrect tracking Keyword targeting UX Conversion rate Landing pages Demand Industrychanges There are probably more, I just like round numbers. Now, which of these can you influence? Indexing/crawlability Duplicate content Incorrect tracking Keyword targeting UX Conversion rate Landing pages Hardcore marketers might argue that you can influence demand, but that is a whole other post. Now you’ve got a list of things that a) might be causing issues on your website, and b) you can do something about. 2. Identify aspects of blockers causing issues.... --- ### Found's Data Toolshed > Found’s in-house tools are always built with integration front of mind. No tool is exclusive to one team or for a single purpose. - Published: 2019-08-06 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/founds-data-toolshed/ - Categories: Data Our Data Science & Analytics team strive to innovate new tools and techniques to enhance the performance of Found’s teams. If our delivery teams are athletes, then the data team’s output is 100% pure muscle-building whey isolate. With just a touch of sweetener for taste. (We like stracciatella). Found’s in-house tools are always built with integration front of mind. No tool is exclusive to one team or for a single purpose. Our tools to bring our teams together. I’m conscious that might sound a bit airy-fairy, so let’s cut the intro short and dive straight into the details around some of the tools we’ve developed in-house.   Don’t have time to read the whole post? I’ve summarized it into a table for you lazybones: TOOL NAME PURPOSEUSED BY1Keyword Clustering ToolOrders massive keyword lists into hierarchically structured keyword groups of similar themes and intentionsSEO, Paid Media2Outreach Prediction Engine (IN:Reach)Uses machine learning to estimate the likelihood of prospects converting into a backlinkSEO, Content3Anomaly DetectiveAlerts via Slack when our clients’ website performance begins to show unusual performanceSEO, Paid Media, Data, Management4Automated ForecastingRapidly generate performance forecasts for clientsSEO, Paid Media, Data, Business Development5Influencer DiscoveryUncover tens of thousands of potential influencers across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and InstagramInfluencer6Traffic EstimatorDownload keyword search volume data at scale, beyond the limits of Google’s Keyword Planner, and with greater accuracySEO, Paid Media7Ad Copy Performance AnalyzerEasily assess the performance of CTAs and common phrases across Google Ads ad copyPaid Media, SEO 1. KEYWORD CLUSTERING TOOL We built our hierarchical clustering engine in response to spotting a gap in the market. There are plenty of tools that group keywords into categories or clusters, but that doesn’t reduce the complexity of creating a reliable website taxonomy and mapping search volume demand. To solve this problem, we created a tool that allows for scale when mapping huge volumes of keywords to a website’s structure while defining the taxonomy itself – by means of hierarchical clusters.   What it does: This tool uncovers the hidden structure from an unorganised list of keywords. Put more explicitly, it groups extremely large lists of keywords into clusters of similar theme and intent. Why that is clever: The complexity of creating a reliable website taxonomy from huge lists of keywords is a long and arduous task. Why? Most websites do not have a flat structure. Amazon for example has a homepage, departments within the homepage, categories within each department, subcategories in each category etc. In other words, it’s hierarchical. The tool is clever because it doesn’t just organise keywords into a list of n groups, it creates a 3-level structure, arranging keyword groups into child, parent and grandparent groups. Who uses it? : Our SEO team use it to accelerate keyword targeting strategies, and our Paid Media team use it to build out ad campaign structures. Uses & Benefits: The tool takes a very time consuming task and smashes through it in seconds. Also gives the user additional information to cross reference, assisting the decision making process around site... --- ### A Simple Guide to Web Browser Automation > Anything you can do on web pages in the browser can be programmed to happen in a sequence you choose or based on triggers. Here's how to set up automation. - Published: 2019-07-31 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/web-browser-automation/ - Categories: SEO There are 4 stages I go through when I'm condemned to do a repetitive task, like filling in and submitting hundreds of online forms. Stage 1 is hope, that it won't be all that tedious. After all, isn't life what you make it? After the first few are done, hope is crushed and I move into phase 2 - the despair phase. Doing those first few sucked and I just projected that out into the future, multiplied by 200. But my fate is sealed so I push on. Now I've done 15 and I'm starting to perversely enjoy it. This is the simple joy phase, in which my world shrinks and my mission as a human being becomes solely to add these manager emails to the correct local listings profile. No more bills to pay, no nothing - some might call it a peak meditative state. But it couldn't last. Sharply I arrive at stage 4 - searing hand pain. I'm at #42. It doesn't have to be this way. In an alternate universe, other me is doing something more interesting while his computer is doing the boring task of updating site manager emails, all on its own. Click here to see it in action. In one of these universes, your computer is doing your work for you. Chrome Can Be Your Robot Slave Did you know that Google Chrome can be automated? Anything you can do on web pages in the browser can also be programmed to happen in a sequence you choose or based on triggers. There is a special version of Chrome designed for this, which can be most powerfully controlled by scripts in languages such as Python, but that's not the only way to do it. There is a tool you can download for free which opens this up to the non-coder. If you are halfway good at setting up newly purchased consumer electronic equipment, you should be fine with this tool. So what is it? SeeShell is a free browser that you download. It takes your instructions and robotically carries them out on any list of URLs that you provide. Or, it can record any repetitive browser task you do and attempt to replicate it. The learning curve is far lower than for coding, but the results are similar in power. Here's the working example encase you missed it. SeeShell Automated Browser Overview This is what the browser you download looks like On the left you've got a normal looking browser display. On the right, there's a list of pre-recorded automation sequences to show you examples of what the browser can do and how to try to replicate this for your own needs. What you will eventually do is make your own automation sequence. This is what an automation sequence looks like If I click on one of those Demos, I see the above - a list of sequenced steps detailing actions and the conditions for those actions. To run through the first few steps... --- ### Are we heading towards sponsorless football shirts? > Paddy Power recently caught our eye with their genius marketing prank involving Huddersfield Town FC and their football shirts. - Published: 2019-07-24 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/sponsorless-football-shirts/ - Categories: Opinion, Trends Here at Found we’re always on the lookout for industry developments, eye catching news and brilliant content. One brand that recently caught our eye is Paddy Power. You might think the answer to the title is somewhat confusing... In order to make sense of it, we need to go back to 1976.   In 1976 Kettering Town FC were the first English club to wear a jersey with a front of shirt sponsor. They chose local business ‘Kettering Tyres’ as their partner for a humble ‘four figure sum’. But the FA were unamused by this and threatened them with a £1,000 fine and, funnily enough, they failed to attract another sponsor the year after. Enviously looking on, Liverpool were the first top flight team to place a brand on their shirt. ‘Hitatchi’ came on board in 1977 (the year Liverpool won the European Cup) and then the whole of Europe soon followed suit.   You can bet that the Ketting Tyres deal was a drop in the ocean compared to Manchester United’s current £47m per year deal with Chevrolet. At the start of the 2017/2018 Premier League season we were introduced to sleeve sponsors for the first time. This was a huge change and everyone wanted to cash in. Brands ranging from Western Union (Liverpool), Nexen Tyres (Man City), Angry Birds (Everton), JD Sports (Cardiff and Brighton), Virgin Media (Southampton) and many more got involved. But the regular football fans felt as if this was too much and just another way for brands to advertise to an already money hungry industry.   Fast forward to now, in the 2019/2020 season. We’re expecting even more brands to take advantage of shirt sponsorship. Man City, for example, already have Puma, (shirt manufacturer), Etihad (front of shirt sponsor), Nexen tyres (sleeve sponsor) as visible partners but are taking it a step further this year by trailing a back of shirt sponsor (above the players’ name) with their global tablet partner, ‘Tecno’.   Is this too much? Or is it just simply the world we’re living in now? A company who is campaigning to abolish the madness is Paddy Power. Known for their outrageous stunts, they ‘trolled’ the industry by photoshopping a huge ‘PADDY POWER’ hen-do like sash across the new Huddersfield Town shirt. Former Crystal Palace chairman Simon Jordan claimed it was ‘a genius piece of marketing’. The FA got in touch to raise their concerns only to be told it was a prank all along. The betting shop engineered the stunt as part of its ‘Save Our Shirt’ campaign, where it is calling on brands to stop sponsoring “sacred” football shirts – including competitors from their own industry (Half of Premier League teams are now sponsored by gambling firms). As a result, Paddy Power will “unsponsor” the team and relinquish its space on the front of the Huddersfield Town shirt, and is encouraging others to do the same. The actual Huddersfield kit, was revealed last week and features no sponsorship at all... --- ### Found Wins At 2019 Digital Growth Awards > We’re delighted to announce that we’ve been recognised once again for our digital marketing expertise with an award at the 2019 UK Digital Growth Awards. - Published: 2019-07-22 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-wins-at-2019-digital-growth-awards/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, General News We’re delighted to announce that we’ve been recognised once again for our digital marketing expertise. This time we have won an award at the 2019 UK Digital Growth Awards. Our campaign, which we delivered for our client Hoppy, won the Best Integrated Search Campaign on the night. Over the last 12 months, we’re proud to have run an integrated Paid Search, SEO and CRO campaign for Hoppy. And to great effect! We absolutely smashed our KPI targets, helping them get a foothold in the very competitive and saturated price-comparison market space. Congratulations to all the other winners and shortlists on the night. We had a great time and look forward to many more nights like it in the future. If you'd like to have a chat with us about our award winning digital marketing expertise, get in touch! --- ### How many people actually click on the Google Map packs? > Recently, we decided it would be useful to know what percentage of people who see Google map packs at the top of the SERPs, actually click on them. - Published: 2019-07-19 - Modified: 2025-01-27 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/how-many-people-click-google-map-packs/ - Categories: Ecommerce, SEO, Travel We recently decided it would be very useful to know what percentage of people who see Google map packs, frequently found at the top of the SERPs, actually click on them. However, upon investigating this, it did not seem possible to find research on this topic anywhere online, so we decided to do it ourselves. The first thing we needed to do was find some data to use. We found that the accounts that had data on this tended to be ones where a physical location was particularly relevant, such as retail sites with physical stores, or the hospitality industry. This suggests there is a potential bias here. Putting that aside, however, we ended up discovering that we could easily find a fair number of accounts with search terms, impressions and clicks that we could use to estimate the click through rate. By the time we finished,  these accounts totalled over 3. 6 million impressions in the last 12 months. Search terms, impressions and clicks were downloaded for each company across mobile and desktop, which were then divided into brand and non-brand search terms. By finding all the variations of the client’s name, including a quite frankly impressive number and array of misspellings, it was relatively easy to classify any term containing these phrases as brand terms. The click through rates for each client were calculated and averaged, allowing us to find the average click through rates for each category. Here are the results of our experiment: So what does this mean? Firstly, when it comes to map packs, the click through rate is dramatically higher on mobile than it is on desktop. This makes sense as people may be more likely to look for a location while on the go, and thus not near their desktop. Additionally, when searching for a location term on my phone, the map pack is the first item to appear on the search results page... However, when attempting the same search on my desktop, the map pack appears under the main site - so it may be possible that users are simply looking for the quickest way to access the site. Another interesting thing to note is that while on desktop brand terms have a higher click through rate, the opposite is true of mobile. In the case of desktop, brand terms may be more relevant as a person could be using this to find a specific location where they need to go before leaving their current location, which would likely favour a brand term with a specific location in mind. Comparatively, mobile users may be making more impulsive decisions without a specific location in mind. The thought process here is as follows; if a person is already moving around and decides to search for something, this is less likely to be something they have been actively planning for a long time or they might have planned in advance and thus potentially have not thought far enough ahead to have a specific brand in... --- ### How to Make Your Market Analysis Look Like It's From Star Trek > Edu-tain your audience and they'll be grateful that you made their working day a bit more fun. Here's how you can make a stunning market map visualisation. - Published: 2019-07-17 - Modified: 2025-02-25 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/make-market-analysis-look-like-star-trek/ - Categories: SEO One thing I always loved about Star Trek was the maps of the galaxy they had on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, showing and labeling the stars and planets of different alien civilizations. I loved the rich backdrop these maps put behind the show, making its futuristic premise of an explored galaxy of technologically advanced civilizations seem real. This map of the Star Trek galaxy from Star Trek online has all my old favourites - the Federation stars & planets in blue (that's us), the Klingon Empire in red, and even the ultimate bad guys - the Borg - in Purple on the right. My current vocation of SEO hasn't yet taken me to navigating the galaxy on a starship, but it has taken me deep into keyword market analysis - and that's something that can be made to (sort of) look like it's from Mr Data's computer terminal on the Enterprise bridge. In SEO, keyword market analysis answers this question: What are people searching for online in relation to what you sell, and how often are they searching for those things? If you are running a website without this knowledge, it will be difficult to know which new pages to make or which existing ones to improve to achieve your growth goals in organic search. In this post, it is assumed you have already done this analysis in a spreadsheet, and having put your keywords into groups are now looking to present the findings about what the market looks like to your client visually. This post is about the market visualisation I like to use and how it's made. If you haven't got your keywords grouped yet, I recommend taking a look at the predecessor post to this one, how to easily group all your keywords. Market Map A Market Map is an image of a market. It's like taking a shareable photo of what the market really looks like, as revealed by the keyword analysis you have done. This is what I mean by keyword analysis - a spreadsheet with keywords put into groups, and their search volumes. A market map turns a spreadsheet into a galaxy. In the image below: The lines show how the keyword groups are structured. The circles shows how popular these keyword groups are relative to each other by their size (also shown by label size) The colours represent the taxonomies and are customisable. The colours show the 2 main galactic empires in the venue space - 'corporate' & 'non-corporate'. The circles show the relative search volume for corporate keywords e. g. 'team building venue' and non-corporate keywords e. g. 'party venues bristol', split into sub-groups that show market structure. Here's a full size version that's big enough to navigate like a galaxy (you may need to scroll around). Here's a different industry twist on the same theme, this time for big tech - here's the full size galaxy version. We can see who the big and small fry are at a... --- ### From zero to hero: The rise of the featured snippet > We now live in the era of the featured snippet. These are becoming increasingly varied and are having a major impact on users search behaviour. - Published: 2019-07-10 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/rise-of-the-featured-snippet/ - Categories: SEO We are addicted to content. Whether it’s reading the news, a blog, listening to a podcast, reading your favourite book on your Kindle or watching something on YouTube, it seems that we are hard-wired to consume, enjoy and share content. This is isn't new, but the rise of the featured snippet and the battle for position zero is. Ever since Gutenburg invented the printing press, it seems we just can’t get enough. Before the digital age, the newspaper, the book and the radio were the dominant form of mass media. Television was a game changer, but that will pale to insignificance compared to what the modern smartphone is already doing. Source: MCNY Before televisions entered our homes, the front page of the newspaper had the greatest influence, then prime time on radio and television was, and still is, the top spot for advertisers. However, since Google became the dominant search engine, the number one position as been become the most sought-after digital presence. But the top spot in Google has changed. We are now in the era of position zero, which is the term used to describe the featured snippet block at the top of the Google search results page. These are becoming increasingly varied and are having a major impact on users search behaviour. Source: Google In fact, Rand Fishkin at Brighton SEO last year said there is an ever-decreasing number of available clicks to organic listings for both branded and non-branded queries. The biggest decreases apply to mobile searches where more than 50% of queries now result in no click at all. The data he presented showed a 20% decrease in on organic mobile CTR and a 20% increase in mobile no-click searches. Furthermore, the rate at which keywords are generating a featured snippet has been consistently growing over the last few years. As a result, the number of searches that generate no click, because the information is already there for the user, is also increasing. Commercial or transactional keywords are of course the priority for many businesses, as they should be. However, with the growth of featured snippets, the category of informational keywords, particularly question-based ones, are increasingly relevant. Question based keywords also present us an opportunity to add structured data to our content, which is a vital tactic to ensure Google properly understands your content as easily as possible and gives a site the best chance to compete in voice search, which is only growing. The battle for position zero is a relatively new one but it is perhaps the most important one we face today. Organic search is only getting harder, so adapting to the world of position zero and building strategies to compete and win are more important than ever. The process Competing for position queries initially requires a considerable amount of keyword research, competitor analysis, content analysis and planning. Initially you will want to cast a wide net and gather as many long tail keywords which can be done through tools such as... --- ### GPTW® Awards Found 3rd In UK's Best Workplaces™ for Women 2019 > We have been awarded 3rd place in the UK’s Best Workplaces for Women: Medium Category 2019, the top placed agency in the list. - Published: 2019-07-08 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-best-workplaces-for-women-2019/ - Categories: General News We were delighted to find out last week that we have been awarded 3rd place in the UK’s Best Workplaces for Women: Medium Category 2019, the top placed agency in the list! Here at Found, we have made an environment that’s fair and inclusive for all, regardless of gender, and to be recognised for this is an achievement we are extremely proud of. In an industry that has always been very male-dominated, we knew we wanted to create an workplace where women can truly excel. Fairness at Found is not just women-specific, we create an environment and culture that is inclusive for all. This means that women at Found will always have equal opportunities to be recognised, trusted and supported at all times. This is evident in the fact that we have a balanced gender split, with the team made up of 55% female and 45% male. We have worked hard to build a talented team that focuses on supporting, nurturing and celebrating people’s strengths, experiences and skills, irrespective of background, race or gender. From an interview structure based on culture-match, competency, and future thinking, we know if someone is right for a role from day one. And we’re very serious about salary too. With a lot of noise in the media around equal pay, we run pay audits twice a year to ensure pay is a reflection of role responsibility and performance. Our most recent analysis actually came out 1% in favour of women – which we did unconsciously – demonstrating it’s truly in our culture to create a fair work environment for all. For us at Found, though, it’s not just about equal pay. It’s about understanding that the team have a life outside of work – especially those with families – so from enhanced maternity pay to flexible working for both our Found mums and dads, we’ve created a workplace that acknowledges and understands these pressures and strive to support them. We’re delighted to have been recognised for our efforts in this way and will endeavour to continue to make this a fair and equal workplace for all our staff. If you’re interested in finding out more about a career at Found, check out our careers page here. --- ### Found Return from the AI & Big Data Expo - Published: 2019-06-27 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/ai-big-data-expo/ - Categories: Trends Last week, Found attended the European AI & Big Data Expo, in Amsterdam. The conference is a showcase of next-generation technologies and strategies from the world of Artificial Intelligence & Big Data, Cyber Security, Internet of Things and Blockchain. With our Gold-level badges proudly swinging from our necks we explored the practical implementation of AI & Big Data in driving the world forward in 2019 and beyond. Most of all, it was amazing to see how AI is being applied around the world to solve all kinds of problems. Top of our list was Airbus’ application of AI to monitor the Earth from space and detect signs of natural disasters. A slide from the presentation by Airbus illustrating how they can use AI from space to predict earthquakes. If that sounds a bit too “Age of Ultron”, hot on the agenda was emphasis around Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs. How will AI change our world over the next decade? Will the augmentation of our Earth be a force for good, driving our society forward? Or will the benefits be realised only by those who have the wealth to wield these technologies? The 17 sustainable development goals. Concern about the societal implications of artificial intelligence and automation is nothing new. AI can either help achieve these SDGs or keep them out of reach. Alongside the AI & Big Data Expo were a number of other co-located conferences, including Internet of Things (IoT), which holds special relevance for the future of digital marketing. We’re becoming a sensor-driven world that holds the promise of efficiency in a range of day-to-day activities. On the other hand, the gathering and storage of data from social media profiles through to kitchen appliances raises concerns about privacy - something we should be considerate of in digital marketing. My personal take away from the conference is that as more of our data becomes available to advertisers there is a responsibility to use it carefully. Marketing is ultimately about helping businesses succeed and all types of business can use AI to impact the SDGs in different ways. How we use digital marketing has a direct line to our future. --- ### Facebook's new crypto currency - what does it mean? > Facebook have finally confirmed plans for their new digital currency, which is expected to launch next year. - Published: 2019-06-18 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/facebooks-new-crypto-currency-what-does-it-mean/ - Categories: Social Media Facebook have finally confirmed plans for their new digital currency, which is expected to launch next year. The currency will be called Libra and will be managed via a digital wallet named Calibra. But why are Facebook getting into currency and blockchain technology? And what will this mean from a marketing perspective? Let’s take a look... The digital wallet will be available in Facebook's Messenger and WhatsApp products, as well as a standalone app. Functions will include transferring funds to friends, paying bills and even using your phone to pay instore, such as for coffee - much like Apple Pay. Facebook are positioning the move as a solution for users who don't have easy access to basic financial services, particularly in developing countries. This sounds lovely from a PR perspective, but we all know what Facebook's end game is here. Source: Facebook At the F8 developer conference a few years ago, Mark Zuckerberg shared his vision as the Facebook suite of apps allowing users to share, shop and bank from one source and even suggested that brands will no longer have the need to have a website. By launching a Facebook-controlled currency, it feels like major moves are being made to reach that goal. The idea of social commerce isn't exactly new to Facebook's suite of apps, with Instagram shopping having launched earlier this year. However, it's safe to expect new and more exciting shopping features to roll out across all the platforms to encourage user and brand adoption of Libra. It should be noted that Facebook has claimed that Libra payment data will not be used for targeted advertising, but presumably by encouraging more in-app shopping behaviour, there should be further options available for ad placements and targeting. This isn't actually the first time that Facebook has entered the payment network game, with the Messenger Payments feature launching then not really catching on. However, what makes Libra different is that it is backed by the Libra Association, a Swiss non-profit which has some huge names behind it including Mastercard, Visa, PayPal, Spotify, eBay and more. With so many big-name partners onboard and Facebook's 2. 38 billion monthly active users, Libra certainly looks set to change the way the world spends money online.   Source: Libra Association When it comes to safety, Libra is a stablecoin, which means it remains fairly stable compared to real-world assets such as the Pound or Euro. Its value should never go up and down on a daily basis as sometimes happens with cryptocoins such as Bitcoin. However, there are still some questions about the move given Facebook's fairly recent scandals surrounding data and security. Will people will trust Facebook enough to adopt the new wallet system? Probably. Given the positioning as a free and more accessible payments solution, I won't be surprised if it is more widely adopted in regions such as India before it gets big in the UK and US. Apparently, the name Libra is inspired by the Roman measurement for coins. As... --- ### Darwinism in Search - The future of SERPs - Published: 2019-06-17 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/darwinism-in-search-serps/ - Categories: SEO As I take a look at what’s changed and what’s likely to change in Google’s Search Engine Result Pages I’m reminded of how far they’ve come and how many different types of results are now being served. Videos, Reviews, Shopping Results, News Boxes, Knowledge Cards, Related Questions, to name just a few. There are so many now, they all serve a purpose, and each has its own part to play in improving the user’s search experience. It’s added to the number of factors an SEO needs to consider when crafting a campaign, especially when it comes to understanding how the space is likely to evolve around any given search term. So it’s only natural that how Google decides which of its many SERP features to show has been a hot topic in the SEO world, and one interesting theory (with some evidence from Google to back it up) is Darwinism in search. According to Jason Barnard, it’s survival of the fittest for Google’s search features. When it comes to how SERP features like featured snippets and image packs are changing for different search queries, the most recent information from Google suggests that Darwinism in the search results is behind this. The theory is that all SERP features such as featured snippets and image packs are individually ranked for each query based on scores known as ‘bids’ for a chance to display on the first page for each query. These features can and have been for quite some time squeezing out the standard blue links, sometimes to a dramatic extent. It’s suggested that this process is Darwinian in nature – the SERPs evolve as the scoring algorithms evolve, and SERP features really do compete with each other in a similar way to animal species’. So in the future, we’ll probably see the fluctuations in the types of SERP features settling down a bit as the algorithms start to get really close to understanding user intent i. e. the environment, excepting of course the new SERP features which are added to facilitate new devices. This post from Jason Barnard on SEJ goes into the theory in more detail and is well worth a read. From Search to Discovery It’s long been obvious that the better that Google can satisfy your query on the SERP itself the less you need to click through to the website. This provides many revenue opportunities for Google as they seek to grab a bigger share of the pie in different sectors, just look at how they’ve revamped Google Shopping and introduced the universal shopping cart in the retail sector, as well as making strides into the lucrative airline market with Google Flights too. Google is increasingly moving away from returning results listings in favour of answers. This is only going to continue as not only does it sometimes provide a revenue opportunity for Google but more importantly, for most users this offers a quicker and easier experience than trawling third party websites to extract the information they... --- ### Social Is Not Just An Online Platform > Brands should factor in real-life experiences when planning their digital and social media approach, in order to maximise the effectiveness of a campaign. - Published: 2019-06-13 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/social-is-not-just-an-online-platform/ - Categories: Social Media When it comes to planning a social media strategy, it can be easy to fall into the trap of coming at it exclusively from a digital perspective. On the other side of the coin, live activations can also often be planned and implemented with the social media element shoe-horned in as an afterthought (please stop with the giant Instagram frame cut outs, no one actually wants to share them). The real problem here is treating marketing activities in silos, as well as not going back to the basics of considering how the audience actually behaves and why they would feel compelled to share or recommend something. People trust people but, more importantly, they trust their friends. The most powerful ambassadors at any brand's fingertips are their own customers. The eternal problem is getting those customers to engage and share in an authentic way. Tactics like competitions can be an easy way to boost numbers, but increased engagement and followers does not necessarily equate to real tangible value. The majority of sharing also now takes place on "dark social" apps such as Messenger and WhatsApp, presenting another challenge for brands, with consumers preferring to share content privately rather than on public forums. So how do you cut through in a space you can't see? The simple solution is factoring in real-life experiences when planning your digital and social media approach. Whether it be something simple like a permanent in-store "Instagrammable" moment, or a fully integrated experiential activation, some of the most impactful branded moments and campaigns have been from taking a social-first approach that also seamlessly blends online and offline. Anyone who has studied marketing learns about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and how it applies to consumer behaviour. If it was updated for 2019, right next to WIFI we'd have "cool pics for my socials". Cool pics for the Insta is almost as important as WIFI these days. An excellent example is Now TV's giant Jeff Goldblum statue. Celebrating the 25th anniversary of Jurassic Park, giant Jeff could be seen all over social media last summer alongside Now TV branded deck chairs, as well as attracting plenty of media coverage (and its own Wiki page). Source: Now TV Blended real-life activations are also an excellent way for heavily regulated brands, such as beer and spirits, to connect with consumers while minimising the risk of falling fowl of the regulators. Promoting alcohol can be tricky on non "age-gated" spaces such as Instagram but creating highly 'grammable experiential moments (where people are presumably ID-ed at the bar) is an effective way of ensuring your brand stays visible on consumer timelines at peak moments. Asking customers to share photos of their drinks can be a risky business but creating a cool experience that's essentially designed to look cool on Instagram, such as Aperol's Spritz Social events, and you've got guaranteed social buzz. Source: Aperol Spritz Yes, actually creating real life things can be a lot more expensive than a digital-only campaign. However, in today's... --- ### Women's World Cup and Social Media - An Interview With Aileen Larkin > Tomorrow marks the beginning of the 2019 Fifa Women’s World Cup, with hosts France kicking things off in Paris with their opening match against South Korea. - Published: 2019-06-06 - Modified: 2024-04-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/womens-world-cup-and-social-media/ - Categories: General News, Social Media Tomorrow marks the beginning of the 2019 Fifa Women’s World Cup, with hosts France kicking things off in Paris with their opening match against South Korea. The popularity of Women's Football has been on the rise in recent years, with the 2015 final between the USA and Japan becoming the most watched football game ever in the USA. This momentum looks set to be continued and this tournament could mark the watershed moment for women's football, with experts predicting a record one billion viewers will be reached worldwide. The USA are looking to repeat their triumph during the 2015 tournament. Credit: @usscoccer As we head towards what looks to be a record-breaking year for Women's Football, it’s interesting to consider the factors that are helping give this sporting competition the attention that is much deserved and long overdue. Brands are definitely stepping up and playing their part; it’s been reported that Visa has pledged to match their marketing spend this year with their sponsorship of last years Mens World Cup on this tournament. Separate to the World Cup and closer to home, Barclays are also banking on Women's Football as last year they broke the record for Women's Football sponsorship deals. As well as big brand sponsorship deals playing its part, it’s also crucial to understand the role social media has in helping to take women's football into the mainstream. In order to understand more about the role digital and social is playing in offering exposure to the Womens beautiful game, I caught up with Aileen Larkin, Official Team Reporter for Scotland’s Women’s World Cup Squad. On the ground in France over the next four weeks, Aileen will be following the Scottish team and keeping the public in-the-loop with play by play updates, all made possible by social media. We caught up and discussed what she feels is going to help this years tournament get the coverage it deserves. How did you end up as a reporter for the FIFA Women's World Cup? Normally I work at the FIFA Museum as the Social Media Editor, and when the FIFA Digital Team were looking for a team reporter for Scotland they asked if I would be interested. For a Scottish football-lover working in digital, it was an absolute dream opportunity – so of course I was only too delighted to take on the role! Pictured: Aileen Larkin, Official Team Reporter for Scotland's Women's World Cup Squad. Experts are predicting that this year’s FIFA Women’s World Cup can expect around 1 Billion viewers globally - is this the watershed moment in taking women’s football mainstream? I think this is going to be a huge stepping stone for women’s football. Nations are really getting behind their teams and young girls are growing up idolising female footballers – which is a relatively new development for many countries – including Scotland. The coverage at this year’s FIFA Women’s World Cup will give players a global platform to showcase their skill, engage new fans and promote... --- ### The Future of Search Event > On Thursday the 23rd May, Found hosted the Future of Search event here at Found Studios. Throughout the evening the speakers and panel explored various themes around what the Future of Search looks like. - Published: 2019-05-28 - Modified: 2024-04-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-future-of-search-event/ - Categories: General News On Thursday the 23rd May, Found hosted the Future of Search event here at Found Studios. Throughout the evening the speakers and panel explored various themes around what the Future of Search looks like. First up was Hannah Thorpe (Business Director at at Found) and Gerry White ( Technical SEO Lead at Just Eat). Examining the future of SEO, they took a dive into the trends, changes and ever-evolving landscape of search. With Google increasingly supplementing its traditional search role and, in many ways, becoming a 'Discovery Engine', they took a look at how brands can harness the potential of a search engine that suggests things we want to see before we search for them. They also discussed position zero in the search results, what this actually means and how brands can get there. Next up we had Jonathan de Weijer (Agency Development Manager at Google) who talked about machine learning, just how powerful that is, and how it's powering Google's Search Advertising tools to give ever more precision, intelligence and relevance to Google Search and Shopping campaigns. Last of the talks was Amy McMullan-Finnegan-Dehn (Paid Media Director at Found) who focused on how to deliver search strategy that will beat the challenges facing retail. Taking a customer first perspective, Amy discussed how consumers are discovering, how we can support them on their journey to purchase and how we can measure the effectiveness of our campaigns and activity. The evening was then rounded off with a fantastic panel that saw Dora Moldoven (Director of Data Science and Analytics at Found), Bhavek Rughani (Head of Marketing at AllClear Insurance) and Google's Jonathan go head to head on all things search. It was fascinating to see where they agreed and disagreed on what's next for search. Inevitably, the discussion turned to voice search and the differences that it is currently making and will eventually make to users and businesses across search. To round the evening off afterwards, guests were able to continue the debate over a glass of prosecco and some canapés, rounding off a brilliant evening discussing all thing search. If you would like to attend our next event, email info@found. co. uk and we'll make sure you get kept up to date. --- ### 10 Questions With Ruth O'Brien - Published: 2019-05-28 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/10-questions-with-ruth-obrien/ - Categories: Social Media In this interview I caught up with Found's amazing Social Account Manager, Ruth O'Brien. Hailing from Glasgow, Ruth has had a fascinating journey so far. Absolutely crazy about all things social, she has a keen eye on the latest developments across the industry at the moment... What was your first job?  My first ever job was a weekend job at Somerfield when I was still at school. I worked on the checkouts and somehow ended up being promoted to supervisor fairly quickly. I was studying computer science & programming at Uni but wasn't really enjoying it, so one of the assistant managers recommended I switch to business instead so I could get into management. Pictured: Ruth O'Brien After Uni I worked at a parenting website start-up which helped me get stuck in with all things digital marketing, including social media & influencers. Why did you get into marketing? When I switched to studying business at University, I found I enjoyed the marketing classes the most. One of the creative directors from Leith Agency came in and gave a guest lecture about what it was like to work at an agency and I pretty much decided that's what I wanted to do. I ended up switching my degree to a joint honours in business and marketing. What was the first social network you used? I forget what came first, but I was heavy into MSN Messenger, Myspace, Bebo and LiveJournal when I was in high school. If you could work with any brand in the industry at the moment, who would it be and why? Vans - I love how they focus and engage with different subcultures in a way that still feels authentic. They way that they connect social with in-store and live activations really works too. Credit: @VansWhat is the most interesting thing about your job? It's bit of a cliché but I like that no day is ever really the same. The nature of social means being reactive and trying out new things. Platforms are also constantly releasing new features and I enjoy thinking about new cool things our clients could do with them. Which social network do you feel offers the most value for a brand? There's no "one size fits all" social channel, it really depends on the brand and where their audience lives. When it comes to paid social, I do find that Facebook's targeting capabilities and variety of creative formats can mean that Facebook and Instagram often deliver the best results. But again it will depend on the brand, as well as the KPIs. When it comes to preferred platforms, Ruth is a big fan of Facebook's targeting capabilities. Credit: Tim BennettWhich brands have got your attention in the social space at the moment? I'm really liking Carlsberg’s current campaign where they have been promoting negative tweets to highlight their new recipe. The first time I saw one of the ads on Twitter I shared it with my friends as it was so... --- ### Found Roundup: Meet the Searchies - Google meets CEO Tina Judic > At the end of last year, our award-winning CEO, Tina Judic, was interviewed by Google as part of their Search History series to mark 20 years of Search. - Published: 2019-05-21 - Modified: 2024-04-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-meets-tina-judic/ - Categories: General News At the end of last year, our award-winning CEO, Tina Judic, was interviewed by Google as part of their Search History series to mark 20 years of Search. This series highlights leading figures in Search Marketing, delving deep into their personal and professional relationships with the Search industry, exploring the evolution of Search over the past two decades, as well as predicting what the future holds for the industry. Here are the highlights: On how the way Search has changed for her, professionally and personally Tina’s first memory of searching for something on the internet is asking the search engine questions very politely, however, the results weren’t always what she was looking for. “I recall being very polite with my Ask Jeeves questions, along the lines of: “Dear Jeeves, please can you tell me how tall Everest is? ” However, in the 20 years since those halcyon days, she is pleasantly surprised to not only find that Google has become a verb, but that it has become a part of our everyday lives. “To think, before search engines, we had to ask people or head to the local library to look up answers to questions. The biggest thing that has changed for me, personally, is the pace at which data is available. It’s made me even more inquisitive but also, perhaps, a little lazy. ” On a professional level, the changing Search landscape has allowed Found to flourish, growing the business from that of a PPC affiliate, into a full digital performance agency. She underlines how Google Search remains at the very core of the business. “Google Search, however, is still very much at the core – the data available, the audience insights, the targeting ability and the platform options means that Found has been able to evolve at the pace of digital change and serve our clients well. ” The biggest changes in Search At conception, she viewed Search as a novelty, something of a quirky, if useful platform. It hadn’t yet started to dominate every part of our lives, an all-encompassing part of our lives – whether we are searching for directions to a restaurant or trying to figure out how to change a lightbulb on a car, we are constantly engaging with search engines. “It’s always on. It is now an all-encompassing encyclopaedia, reviewer, locator, provider. Looking at this more broadly, the biggest change is to society itself. It’s unlocked answers, brought people closer together, changed how we think about information and how we access it. ” What’s different from last year? Tina notes the increasing focus on video – By now we are all aware of how huge video already is, but now that it has matured it is starting to really prove its value. “We’ve seen video take much bigger strides to proving its worth in the Search space, with video carousels now featuring directly in the SERPs for many queries and engaging users with excellent content more directly - I fully expect this to... --- ### Found ranked 10th in Great Place to Work Awards - The No.1 Digital Agency in our category - Published: 2019-05-09 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-ranked-10th-in-great-place-to-work-awards-the-no-1-digital-agency-in-our-category/ - Categories: Culture, General News We’re delighted to announce that we’ve been awarded 10th place in this year’s Great Place to Work Awards (medium category) for companies of 51-250 employees. This is a tremendous achievement and one that we are very proud of. Being recognised in this way is fantastic validation for all the hard work that we've done to create a culture that allows our people and our performance to flourish. Ranking 10th makes us the highest ranked digital agency in our size category, and we’re delighted to be heralded as an employer of choice and one that flies the flag for inclusion and diversity in the workplace. We’re always looking for passionate and talented people to join our team. If you’re interested in a role at Found or would like more information on what makes Found such a great place to work then check out our careers page. --- ### A beginners guide to keyword research part II - Published: 2019-05-03 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/a-beginners-guide-to-keyword-research-part-ii/ - Categories: SEO You’ve done it. You’ve collected every potential keyword under the sun on your chosen research topic. You’ve used AdWords, you’ve looked at competitors and you’ve been checking out industry forums. Hopefully, you would have used my previous blog as a guide to finding as many keywords as humanly possible. Depending on what you’re researching and how specific you were with your initial keyword research you might be left with lots of irrelevant keywords, this is because the tools we use aren’t perfect, and they don’t know your company or your clients as well as you do. This means it’s time to remove all the unnecessary codswallop from your list. Now this is the real challenge, that can often be rather time-consuming and manual but in order to get a good understanding of the search volume surrounding the product/service you want to target it’s a necessary step.   So, buckle up and let us dive into phase two headfirst.   Step 1: General admin Paste all of your keywords that you’ve collected into a spreadsheet. Keep all the data that comes with the keywords that AdWords spits out, as this might come in handy with future analysis, however, for the moment we’ll just be focusing on the search volume and the keywords. Create a filter on the top row, this will be used to search through the dataset throughout. Delete any keywords with a search volume of 0. Step 2: Remove duplicates This is an obvious step but can often be overlooked which leads to rather disastrous implications. Imagine leaving two of the same keywords with large search volumes in a search landscape document could drastically impact your future strategies. Yikes! In Excel it’s dead easy. Highlight your dataset, Data > Data Tools > Remove Duplicates Done.   Step 3: Remove irrelevant branded keywords First of all, you need to remove the branded keywords from the dataset. Often when using AdWords, you may find the keywords it spits out is full of brands and other company names. These are phrases that more often than not you won’t rank for and so you’ll want to avoid targeting. Quickly skim through your dataset making a mental note of any other brand you see. Search for these brands in the search bar and remove all of these from your list.   Step 4: Remove irrelevant locations Quite often a few of the usual tools you might use for keyword analysis include locations that are irrelevant. The same scenario as the branded keywords skim through and remove any you won’t be looking to target. *Handy Tip*  Sorting your keywords by a-z can help you stop a large chunk of irrelevant keywords in one go, helping to speed up the process. Step 5: Remove irrelevant years There’s no use in ranking for top iPhone X deals 2016 this year. It’s 2019, get with the programme sister. Step 6: Arrange by character length Keywords that are just 1 word tend to be very generic and can often be... --- ### All the Facebook F8 announcements you need to care about > From Messenger to Instagram, find out the top takeaways for marketers and brands from the Facebook F8 conference. - Published: 2019-05-03 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/facebook-f8-announcements/ - Categories: Social Media Every year, Facebook hosts the F8 conference to update developers and creators on new features and the future of the platform. Given the headlines that have dominated in the last year or so, it wasn't surprising that this year's keynote from Mark Zuckerberg had a heavy emphasis on the issues of privacy. The overall trend of the conference appeared to be shifting the platform into a more community-led environment. But what does this mean for marketers? Here are the key takeaways that brands should note of: Instagram shopping rolls out to influencers. Source: Instagram Measuring ROI from influencer activity is about to become a lot easier. Having tested the new in-app shopping function with selected brands, influencers and publishers are now going to get in on the action. This will allow influencers to tag products in posts that followers can tap and instantly buy. The feature is still in beta in the US so likely won't be widely available worldwide for at least a few months, but it does show promise that proving ROI from influencer and Instagram activity is about to become a whole lot easier.   Paid may be more important than ever due to the shift away from newsfeed. Facebook had previously said that it intended to move away from the newsfeed format. A new structure has already begun to roll-out, named "FB5", a cleaner feed with prominent spaces for groups and events. More content from Groups will also start to appear in the newsfeed, suggesting another algorithm change that could have negative impact on organic reach for brand pages.   Make sure to optimise social for discovery. Source: Facebook Facebook's new Events tab is designed to make it easier for users to find out what's happening in their local area and get recommendations. This offers plenty of opportunities for brands and small businesses to connect with users at a local level. Ensuring that page and location information is up to date and creating event pages for launches or activities will be an even more important part of social media management.   Opportunities in messaging platforms. Source: Facebook Messenger will be getting a desktop version that includes features from the app such as audio and video calls. By encouraging desktop use, I wouldn't be surprised to see some new ad units and formats available for advertisers either. On the subject of new ad formats, Ads Manager will be getting new lead generation templates designed to drive users into a simple Q&A or book an appointment with businesses on Messenger.   WhatsApp should also be on the radar for brands, with a new Business Catalogue function that allows users to browse products from within the app.   Vanity metrics could be on the out. Instagram chief Adam Mosseri spoke about the popularity of Stories and what could be learned from it. He announced that the platform will be reducing the focus on follower counts and testing hiding the number of likes that content receives.   Although both are essentially vanity... --- ### You can learn to code - Published: 2019-04-29 - Modified: 2024-05-14 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/you-can-learn-to-code/ - Categories: Trends “Learning to write programs stretches your mind, and helps you think better, creates a way of thinking about things that I think is helpful in all domains. ” Bill Gates, Co-chairman, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Co-founder, Microsoft This is a call to every digital marketing analyst; from every intern learning the ropes of Google Ads Editor to a veteran SEO director manually grouping keywords, to all content creatives who are simply out of ideas. You shouldn't be manually mapping redirect pages - it's not scalable. If you're downloading the same data, every month for your monthly reports, well there’s a better way. The way you are writing ad copy is manual when you could be doing it automatically. You have great ideas. What if you could also access the whole of Reddit in just a few lines of code, map a million redirects in less than an hour or change thousands of lines of ad copy before your next tea break? Learning to code is learning to talk to machines. When you go to another country and speak their language you get a warmer experience. When you converse with your computer in its native tongue, it will extend to you a transformative range of capability. I’ll just say this. There's a reason top companies like Stripe teach newcomers to code. Stop searching for other people’s ad scripts and write your own. You have good ideas too and you should be able to see them through. As Found’s data scientist, I believe that you can. “Learning to code is useful no matter what your career ambitions are. ” Arianna Huffington, Founder, The Huffington Post Okay so now you're thinking *but I* could never learn to code. But I'm telling you that if you try, you can do it . The Internet is awash with online training material and all popular programming languages typically have big, supportive online communities. If I have convinced you to believe in yourself then read on, otherwise thanks for reading as much as you did. Where do you start? Online courses are a great place to learn the basics but you learn a lot more effectively by coming up with a project. I think the most important thing you can do is to *complete* some personal projects. You'll learn way more working on projects you're interested in than crushing courses online. For me learning is much more permanent when you go through the struggle of trying to solve a problem. Your project can be anything you want. Personally, I'm working on a side project for our after-work football club at Found that will split the active players into evenly balanced teams based on how they rate each other against a set of skills. I will face challenges and frustration along the way, as it goes with learning anything new (albeit my first challenge is not knowing and not wanting to know a thing about football). I’ve never really understood the offside rule but I know it’s... --- ### TikTok - Why It Should Be On Your Radar - Published: 2019-04-26 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/tik-tok-on-your-radar/ - Categories: Social Media TikTok (formally Musical. ly) has been grabbing a lot of headlines over the past few months due to its rapid growth and safety fears. With over 500 million monthly active users worldwide, it's certainly starting to capture the attention of brands looking to reach social audiences in new and engaging ways. But should you be including it in your social strategy? 2018 - the year TikTok blew up TikTok has risen to staggering heights very quickly, with the app now having been downloaded over 1 billion times. According to Business Insider, over 664 million of those downloads came in 2018, resulting in it beating Instagram for yearly downloads in the on-going race for dominance in the social platform arena. As far as non-game app downloads go for 2018, only WhatsApp, Facebook and Facebook Messenger were able to beat TikTok - which came in at an impressive 4th place. It's also worth noting that customers on TikTok spent over $50m on App purchases, highlighting the potential that is there for brands capable of influencing consumer intent while using the App. Getting down with the youth TikTok's short-form video format is a huge hit with younger audiences, with the majority of engaged users aged 24 and under. While the likes of Facebook and Instagram have wide reaching and established audiences, TikTok's appeal to the younger demographics offers unique opportunities for brands to connect with the typically harder to reach youth market. One brand that was quick to adopt the platform was Guess, who launched the #InMyDenim hashtag challenge. The campaign featured a branded Guess video on the app for 24 hours, inviting all users to participate in the challenge and engage with the brand. Results were incredibly positive, attracting over 25 million impressions, 5,550 challenge responses and a click through rate of 16. 5%. Aside from branded content campaigns, there is also a huge opportunity to tap into the new social influencers emerging from the platform. Many popular creators can boast over 1 million subscribers and with the platform still being in relative early days, fees are significantly lower compared to working with YouTube or Instagram personalities. Paid social opportunities At the start of 2019, TikTok began talking to agencies about plans for a self-managed ads platform. The pitch deck (published on Digiday) included options for brand takeovers, in-feed videos, hashtag challenges and custom lenses. Source: Tik Tok At the moment, TikTok's ads offering appears to still be in Beta but it is clear that they intend to roll out some sort of service this year. However, until issues with verifying users' ages have been addressed, options will likely be limited for brands. If you're keen to explore options on TikTok and youth marketing for your brand, get in touch and our team will be happy to help. --- ### Found Wins At The Drum Search Awards 2019 - Published: 2019-04-10 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-wins-at-the-drum-search-awards-2019/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, General News Another awards ceremony and ANOTHER win for Found. The end of 2018 saw a flurry of award wins for the Found Team, with us winning the Best PPC Campaign and the Best Use of Search (Retail) for our work with client Bonmarché, at the 2018 UK Search Awards. Also, our very own CEO, Tina Judic, was awarded Marketing Agency Leader of the Year at The Drum Agency Business Awards. Last week it was time for The Drum Search Awards 2019. Not wanting to buck the trend, we are delighted to announce we've been awarded the trophy for Best B2C Campaign - SEO, for our work with AllClear. A fantastic achievement and one that we're all extremely proud of here at Found. Credit: Dom Martin If you’d like to have a chat about how we can assist you with your digital marketing campaigns, reach out andconnect with us today. --- ### SEO in the age of automation > Automation is a word that generally invokes fear, which is understandable as most people fear change, but what does this mean for SEO? How can we use it? - Published: 2019-04-05 - Modified: 2024-04-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/seo-in-age-of-automation/ - Categories: SEO, Trends Automation is a word that generally invokes fear, which is understandable as most people fear for their jobs - interpreting automation to mean that some robots will replace them in the workplace. And I wouldn’t blame anyone for coming to that conclusion. In fact, Andrew Yang, an entrepreneur who has entered the 2020 US presidential race, has argued that the 4 million manufacturing jobs lost to automation in key political swing states like Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania prior to the 2016 election is what got Donald Trump elected. Increasing automation In the 21st Century the impact of automation is clear and obvious. Look at any car manufacturing plant or an Amazon distribution centre and you will see how robots and automation combine to create incredibly efficient workplaces, which we, as consumers, benefit from. When cars first entered the market, they were strictly for the Elite. It wasn’t until Henry Ford introduced mechanical assembly that everyone had access to them, and in 2019 we can automation (with a little help from machines and robots) for this. At a glance one might think that the machines and robots found in car plants and Amazon warehouses have ‘stolen’ jobs that once belonged to people, but if you think about, those robots were designed, built, fitted on the assembly line, tested and serviced – all of which requires highly trained humans. What this means for SEO When it comes to SEO, thankfully it’s not something that can be fully automated. However, for some strategies and tactics, automation is vital to implementing an efficient and effective service. For example, monitoring keyword ranking performance is an automated process. First, we perform initial keyword research using a combination of software, tools, and human effort, and we then monitor using software that automates the task for us. It’s the same idea when we audit a website to identify any issues – we use tools like Screaming Frog or Deep Crawl because performing an audit manually would take forever and cost a fortune. In effect, automation helps us get tasks that would prover either too boring or too impossible for humans done quickly. Automation is something that we lean on so as to better serve our clients. Due to the complexity of SEO and the scope of a website, gathering data for analysis can often turn into a goliath task which is why we use automation. But automation can also affect other areas of SEO such as content, traffic, links, SERP tracking and on-page analysis, amongst others. From visualisation to optimisation, identifying and assessing, these are all reasons that we use automation to make us more efficient and allow us to offer a better service. Therefore, it is vital that we use market leading tools to give us the best possible insights, so we can be sure that we are making the right decisions. We also need to extract as much as possible from each tool which requires training and practice. The more efficient we can be with our... --- ### PR Gifting: The importance of PR gifts for e-commerce brands > PR gifting is more visible than it ever has been. The CMA has released guidelines ensuring more transparency. This is a must-read for anyone in the space. - Published: 2019-04-05 - Modified: 2025-02-25 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/importance-gifts-ecommerce-brands/ - Categories: Content Marketing, Digital PR PR gifts have always been an important part of any brand relationships. Historically these gifts have been given to celebrities and, more importantly, magazine editors. Thanks to the rise of influencer marketing, there has been a huge shift to PR gifts being sent to influential content creators across a multitude of platforms. Quickly becoming an integral part of influencer marketing and wider PR campaigns. Why are we now talking about something that has been present for years? PR gifting is more visible across social channels to the consumer than it ever has been within the magazine world. The Competition & Markets Authority (CMA) has released new guidelines ensuring content creators are more transparent about any PR gifting they have received. This article by the CMA should be a must-read for anyone working or thinking about working within the space. I wanted to look at why PR gifts are still so important for e-commerce brands and how they work. In recent weeks there has been a lot of social buzz around whether the term PR gift is the correct way of declaring a PR exchange. A PR gift is a product and or service given to a person in the hope they may share the experience with their audience/followers. There has been no payment exchanged and there is no contract to ensure the influencer talks/posts about the product and/or service. PR gifting is often done blindly in the hope of gaining free promotion, but can this strategy ever be described as blind? Brands have become savvy at utilising their relationships with content creators and collaborators and when done correctly, this can be mutually beneficial. The updated CMA guidelines have helped shed light on a grey area of influencer marketing providing clarity for both creators and brands. Who do PR gifts really benefit? The benefits of PR gifts for brands Although PR gifts do not guarantee exposure, the benefits to brands (especially e-commerce brands) can still be huge. Brands need to be confident that the influencer or content creator they have selected will enjoy or utilise the product or service enough to provide free publicity. There is not a large cost involved with sending out PR gifts, this is a far cheaper option than paying for general advertising or promotion. By generating more ‘organic’ content and promotion (remember the content creator is under no agreement to share) the brand is likely to be exposed to the eyes of a large audience they may not otherwise reach, generating new customers and sales. If the research is done correctly, PR gifting ensures e-commerce brands are being placed in front of a targeted audience, which is harder to achieve with traditional marketing. • Increases awareness of products and services• Valuable backlinks from influencers/bloggers• Various SEO benefits (including improved search rankings from brand mentions and backlinks)• Increased social presence on the brand’s behalf Benefits for the content creator PR gifting is normally labelled as a perk of the job, but it does help content creators create... --- ### How can Search address the challenges facing retail in 2019? > Our Head of Technology Dora Moldovan looks at the use of Search in retail and the role it should play in addressing the challenges in 2019 and beyond. - Published: 2019-03-20 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/can-search-address-challenges-retail-sector-2019/ - Categories: Opinion, SEO In this post our Director of Data Science and Analytics, Dora Moldovan takes a look at the use of Search in the retail sector and examines what role it should play in addressing the challenges faced in 2019 and beyond. CHALLENGES IN THE RETAIL ENVIRONMENT. Consumer confidence has slumped to a five-year low due to external pressures impacting purchase decisions. This is creating a less buoyant retail market, particularly online, with retailers having to work harder and invest heavily to retain market share. Extreme discounting and promotions are ubiquitous, encouraging the race to the bottom pricing. Although the clothing portion of the market is in a period of growth, the challenges are significant due to the tactics of pure play retailers, aggressive with both spend and promotions. We’re seeing digital becoming the bulk source of growth in retail with omnichannel businesses reducing bricks-and-mortar operations, while most pure-play retailers are expected to open retail experience shops on the high-street by 2023. To capitalise on less competition but more-aggressive auction prices, Found believes retailers should make full use of >Office for National Statistics or Google market information will enable them to spot opportunities for growth quickly. The example below is the home market trend with data pulled from ONS to demonstrate retail demand for the home sector: Food and Non-Food will have very different market positions throughout the year and any search performance will need to be tailored towards these changing markets. Supporting this is the BRC report for retail showing that, in December, like-for-like retail sales were down - 0. 7%, but the three-month average for Non-Food showed a +7. 0% growth. Footfall was down - 2. 6% in the same period, with retailers struggling to convert customers to store. The result is an increased propensity for retailers to invest more online. Leveraging audience data and the increased localisation of Search will be the main areas of focus in 2019. Retailers who successfully optimise towards offline metrics are set to win in 2019/2020. With customer search journeys taking longer, there is an inherent need to understand and optimise throughout the journey. This, combined with 67% of clothing searches coming from mobile, demonstrates the need to continue with mobile first strategies. The landscape is changing not just in the context of competition, but also in the way the retailers are leveraging technology. Amazon’s move to acquire Whole Foods and the completely frictionless checkouts via Amazon Go stores, have granted access not just to new audiences but also to a wealth of data on in-store behaviour to integrate into their strategies. In many cases where Amazon Prime Now is active, this has broken down the buying objections of shopping online by providing almost-instant delivery services at low cost. With the ongoing Brexit negotiations, we note the letter of warning from the British Retail Consortium to Parliament signed by several of the major food retailers, regarding the impossibility of stockpiling fresh food, empty shelves and higher prices. It’s becoming ever-clear that the UK is very reliant... --- ### Keyword Research for Beginners Guide > ​Learn effective keyword research strategies with our beginner's guide, featuring top tools and techniques to enhance your website's SEO performance. - Published: 2019-03-15 - Modified: 2025-04-07 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/beginners-guide-keyword-research/ - Categories: How to, SEO When I first joined Found and was performing some basic keyword research, I simply threw a few keywords into AdWords and, hey presto, out popped 800 keywords. As a beginner in the SEO world, I thought that this would suffice. Gosh, how naïve I was! Ten months later, I am pleased to say that my technique for keyword research has improved dramatically. I use a range of tools and my process is far more efficient. Here, I’ve collated a load of great tools, as well as some outside of the box techniques, to help you find some keyword diamonds in the rough. Why carry out keyword research? Keyword research allows a brand to better understand what people are searching for in their niche, as well as how to optimise their website to better deliver results relevant to those keywords. Conducting keyword research allows you to optimise a website which attracts more visitors, as well as conveying better understanding and more relevancy to search engines. It also helps you improve the user experience and understand your target audience to better serve them relevant content. Keyword research can also help you find new business opportunities, by discovering terms and phrases that may not be an exact match but are somewhat related to the services or goods you offer. You can also find out where your site lies in relation to your competitors, and understand where a competitor is strong, as well as where there are opportunities to own a keyword. Approach to keyword research Whenever carrying out keyword research I always find it useful to take a step back and to look at why you are doing it. Are you looking for informational or commercial keywords? What and who are you trying to target with the research? What is the end goal you want to achieve with your research? Are you trying to increase sales? Build awareness? By taking just 5 minutes to really understand the task ahead you can save hours in the long run. Have a rough idea of what you want to achieve, and then use this guide to help your research. Keyword Research Tools – Order of usefulness 1. Google This probably seems so incredibly obvious but it’s a stage lots of us forget about. Simply give your research topic a bit of a Google. This gives you some top-level ideas of where to begin your brainstorming and what Google recommends as relevant searches. This straight away gives me some potential avenues for research - ‘raw honey’, ‘honey for sale’ etc. Again, depending on the purpose of the research, I would make a note of a few useful topics for more in-depth research later. By Googling the keyword, you can also check in the SERP whether the top performing pages are commercial or informational. This proves useful when choosing what keywords to target on specific pages. Have a look at some of the top sites for these keywords. Make a note of the sites that seem to reoccur... --- ### When it comes to Excel are you Destiny's Child? - Published: 2019-03-04 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/excel-destinys-child/ - Categories: Trends It recently came to light that Kelly Rowland doesn’t even know what Excel is. Easy for her, she obviously doesn’t have to pay her telephone bills (bills, bills). But for the millions of us out there who use Excel every day for work, we like to think that we become a bit of an expert after a while. But do we really know Excel as well as we’d like to think? Are you really out of your element? Do you have bad habits? Or can you handle this (Excel, I mean)? Take our quiz and find out which member of Destiny’s Child you are. Are you acting kinda shady like Kelly and not have a clue what you are doing, are you simply surviving like Beyonce, or are you an excel expert and independent woman like Michelle? Click on to find out your destiny. So, did you find yourself in a Dilemma during that quiz? Where you looking at those questions thinking to yourself ‘uhuh yeah okay’? Well, if our quiz left you jumpin’, don’t stop, don’t give up, you can make it, keep on surviving with our resident wizard Richard’s excellent Excel guides. --- ### Found and Great Place To Work® Event > In this event we focussed on exploring how organisations can benefit from making a quantifiable difference to equality in their workplaces. - Published: 2019-03-04 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-great-place-work/ - Categories: General News On the 28th of February, Found co hosted 'It's Not Just About The Gender Pay Gap' at our offices with Great Place To Work®.  The event focussed on exploring how organisations can benefit from making a quantifiable difference to equality in their workplaces. The attendees enjoyed tips and advice from four individuals representing businesses that were ranked highly in last year’s Best Workplaces for Women List. Speakers included our very own Tina Judic, as well Kari Johannsen (Workplace Consultant and Great Place To Work®), Kate McCarthy-Booth (Founder and Managing Director of McCarthy Recruitment) and Siobhan McMullan-Finnegan-Dehn (Digital Trading and Planning Controller at Sainsbury's Argos). In their talks, they explored issues around fairness and equality in the workplace through the context of their own experiences in the businesses they represent. Rounded off with a wonderful panel Q&A, the evening provided a fantastic opportunity for a spirited discussion into some of the hottest issues facing businesses at the moment, offering insight into how companies can easily make changes to ensure all staff feel valued, trusted and, above all, able to contribute to business growth. Have a look at some photos of the evening here: If you'd like to have a look in a bit more detail at what was discussed, you can access the slides used by our speakers here. This will be the first of many collaborations with Great Place To Work® and we hope to see you at the next event! --- ### The results: Machine vs humans - predicting the Oscars with AI. - Published: 2019-03-01 - Modified: 2024-07-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/results-machine-vs-humans-predicting-oscars-ai/ - Categories: AI & Machine Learning, Trends The ballots have been counted, the results have been verified and despite our best efforts... the bookies won. In the end our OscarBot correctly predicted 9 out of 24 wins, compared to Lily's 13 and the bookies getting 16. No-one predicted the two big shocks of the night - Olivia Coleman winning Best Actress and Green Book winning Best Picture. Our film buff Lily had this to say about the surprise Best Film winner: "In many ways, the Oscar preference voting system for Best Picture means that the films that no one really hates tend to win out over divisive but, in my opinion, superior films. " Our Data Scientist James had this to say about OscarBot's performance: "I would say the bot did pretty well with very limited access to any good data, especially twitter data. Given that, it's still pretty amazing it got 9 right, and it was very on par with a lot of other similar predictive models that had a lot more training. " Sadly, OscarBot was not available for comment. Perhaps the lesson here is that without the right data then AI will never win. Or maybe something so political and subjective as The Oscars is just simply impossible for anyone to get 100% right. The final results are as follows: CATEGORY Oscarbot LILY BOOKIES ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE Rami Malek Rami Malek Rami Malek ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE Mahershala Ali Mahershala Ali Mahershala Ali ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE Glenn Close Glenn Close Glenn Close ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE Emma Stone Regina King Regina King ANIMATED FEATURE FILM Isle of Dogs Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse CINEMATOGRAPHY A Star Is Born Roma Roma COSTUME DESIGN The Favourite The Favourite Black Panther DIRECTING Roma Roma Roma DOCUMENTARY (Feature) Free Solo Free Solo Free Solo DOCUMENTARY (Short Subject) Period. End of Sentence. Period. End of Sentence. Black Sheep FILM EDITING The Favourite Vice Bohemian Rhapsody FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM Roma Roma Roma MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING Vice Vice Vice MUSIC (Original Score) If Beale Street Could Talk If Beale Street Could Talk If Beale Street Could Talk MUSIC (Original Song) A Star Is Born A Star Is Born A Star Is Born BEST PICTURE Roma Roma Roma PRODUCTION DESIGN The Favourite The Favourite Black Panther SHORT FILM (Animated) One Small Step Bao Bao SHORT FILM (Live Action) Fauve Marguerite Detainment SOUND EDITING Black Panther First Man A quiet Place SOUND MIXING A Star Is Born A Star Is Born Bohemian Rhapsody VISUAL EFFECTS First Man Avengers: Infinity War Christopher Robin WRITING (Adapted Screenplay) Can You Ever Forgive Me? BlacKkKlansman BlacKkKlansman WRITING (Original Screenplay) Roma The Favourite The Favourite Total 9 13 16 --- ### Is this the Most Powerful Excel Formula in Digital Marketing? > Discover the most powerful Excel formulas for digital marketing. Streamline data analysis, automate tasks, and make smarter marketing decisions. - Published: 2019-02-27 - Modified: 2025-02-25 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/most-powerful-excel-formula-digital-marketing/ - Categories: Analytics, Digital Marketing, How to The formulas & functions in Excel give you the power to get mountains of work done in minimal time. The most powerful formulas of all can do the work of many people at once and save days of campaign time. When it comes to these formulas in my experience of digital marketing, the heavyweight champion is the keyword grouping formula: =LOOKUP(2^15,SEARCH(C2:C4,A2),D2:D4) =LOOKUP(2^15,SEARCH(text to look for in your keyword, your keyword), what to return if the text was found) It puts all your millions of keywords into groups based on the words they contain: Bulk categorisation of hair related keywords by colour and hair type groups. Diagram of what the formula does, with colours representing individual words that could be found within a keyword phrase. But before we unpack it further, let's dive into an SEO example of why this little monster packs such a punch in the realm of getting stuff done. SEO is too much work At the start of a typical SEO campaign we make a Search Landscape document. It's like a bible for how many people are searching in a vertical (e. g. fashion) and what search terms they are using. Knowing this, we can recommend a site design to our clients which can capture these searches, with landing pages created and / or promoted for each topical area of the vertical where there is sufficient search volume to go to the trouble of making a high quality page e. g.  blue shirts. Sounds like a good plan.  Trouble is: 1. We need to know where to draw the line on the pages to be created because we can't make a page for everything based on limited budgets and the technical problems that come with having too many pages. 2. To know where to draw that line, we need to know how much search volume there is for each topic which could be a potential landing page or new priority. 3. To know that, we need to actually divide the keywords into these topics which could potentially be the focus of a new landing page or priority action. We need something like this: Search Landscape spreadsheet; keywords on the left, and the groups they belong to on the right, hierarchically organised. This is the first  page of many thousands of rows. That's not that exciting, but what it really gives us is the ability to do this: Keyword universe diagram; the bigger nodes are the hierarchical groups where the most search volume is. I'll write another post explaining how to make these visualisations - they require logical and hierarchical keyword grouping, but they let you see the priorities at a glance and you and the client can sit down in a room, point to things on it and treat it like a battle plan. So to do SEO properly we need to divide keywords into topics, maybe thousands and thousands of them. And it is a complete and utter b*@! ache. Why? 1. Language is messy, synonyms are used all over the place, so there's... --- ### How Domain Authority is changing > Moz has recently announced that they are about to release a new & improved Domain Authority. But what is Domain Authority? How do you use it? Let us explain - Published: 2019-02-22 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/how-domain-authority-changing/ - Categories: General News, SEO, Trends If you’ve spoken to any SEO for long enough, you’ve definitely heard them reference something called ‘Domain Authority’, but you may not have quite understood what it meant. Well, Domain Authority is an industry standard metric created by Moz, and it predicts how well a website ranks on a search engine result page. Domain Authority scores are based on factors from a domain’s inbound links and it is scored between 1 and 100. A higher score indicates a greater ability to rank highly on a results page – for instance, the BBC website has a Domain Authority of 95, while bakery chain Greggs has a Domain Authority of 54. It is scored on a logarithmic scale, so it is much easier to go from having a DA of 10 to 20 than it is to grow from a DA of 70 to 80. Essentially, a website’s Domain Authority gives a rough representation of how highly Google thinks of your website. If you have a high-quality website, with quality, engaging content, and plenty of links, you are more likely to have a higher Domain Authority. It's worth underlining the importance of understanding that this metric was created by Moz, and it is not a Google metric or ranking factor. A new Domain Authority is coming! Moz has recently announced that a brand new Domain Authority is about to be released. Launching on the 5th March 2019, the upgraded Domain Authority is based on a machine-learning model that incorporates technical changes designed to help it better deliver a more trustworthy metric than ever before. The new Domain Authority will use metrics such as Spam Score and link quality pattern and will keep pace with Google’s algorithmic updates. You can read more about what the new Domain Authority does here. The importance of a relative metric It’s important to understand that when you use Domain Authority, you use it as a relative metric. DA is utterly meaningless when you don’t use it in comparison to other websites – so, it doesn’t matter if your website drops or increases, it’s whether it drops or increases relative to your competitor websites. When the new Domain Authority is released, there will definitely be fluctuations in scores, so don’t panic until you check your competitor websites scores too. What other metrics can you use alongside Domain Authority If, for example, you are working on a link building campaign, there is little point in contacting an irrelevant domain that has a high DA score – relevance, as well as authority, are what you should be looking to evaluate. Site traffic and rankings are important metrics to consider when using DA as a factor. These can help you explain why peaks and dips occur. Essentially, a huge DA increase is meaningless if it doesn’t equate to more visits and conversions, likewise, a drop in DA isn’t anything to worry about if everything else remains stable. Other metrics you should consider Domain Authority alongside are Citation Flow and Trust Flow.... --- ### Machine vs humans - predicting the Oscars with AI. > We set a challenge to our data science team here at Found, to use Social Media and publicly available data to train an AI to predict this years Oscars. - Published: 2019-02-21 - Modified: 2024-07-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/machine-vs-human-predicting-oscars-ai/ - Categories: AI & Machine Learning, SEO With the Oscar race heating up ahead of the awards on Sunday, there's been plenty of debate in the office on who will take home the trophies. As big fans of all things data, we naturally wanted to see if we could use AI to predict the results of Hollywood's hottest awards night. So, we set a challenge to our data science team here at Found, to use Social Media and publicly available data sources to train an AI to predict this year's Oscars. Pretty neat, right? The machines aren't quite at the point of achieving full sentience and destroying us all Terminator style, but they can now open doors in a chilling Black Mirror-like manner. So why not find out if an AI can predict the Oscars better than our in-house movie expert Lily and the pros at the bookies? Our Machine #Oscarbot the AI To train the data model, our Data Scientist James gathered data from a combination of buzz and sentiment on Twitter, ratings on IMDB, previous wins from Datahub. io and wins from other 2019 awards. The deep learning model, when tested on 'unseen' data (a subset of the historical Oscar data not seen by the machine during training), was able to correctly predict the winners with a 93% accuracy. Here are the AI Oscarbot's choices for the top categories: Best picture - Roma Actor in a leading role - Rami Malek Actress in a leading role - Glenn Close Actor in a supporting role - Mahershala Ali Actress in a supporting role - Emma Stone Writing (adapted screenplay) - Can You Ever Forgive Me? Writing (original screenplay) - Roma Best director - Alfonso Cuaron Animated feature film - Isle of Dogs So a few unusual choices there from #Oscarbot - notably Emma Stone for 'Actress in a supporting role' who the bookies (and our film buff) see as a rank outsider at 18/1 - is this an indication that it's gone a bit Johnny 5 and going to get short circuited by the competition, or is it a sign that it's seen something in the data that the others haven't? Scroll down for Oscarbot's full list of predictions. Our Expert - the agency film buff Lily Data Analyst Lily is a self-proclaimed film nerd who jumped at the chance to beat the machine with her predictions. Here's Lily's take on predicting the results: "While the Golden Globes are voted on by critics, the Oscars are voted on by a group of industry peers. You have to have won an Oscar or been sponsored by two members to join and must have been active in the industry in the last 10 years or be a lifetime member (been active for 30 years or won an Oscar) in order to vote. 72% of the Academy are male, 87% are white, and actors make up the largest proportion of the voting block. This means that winning films have a very specific demographic to appeal to and actor-centric movies have a huge advantage. However, due... --- ### The darker side of ‘Sponcon’ and how brands can avoid being caught out > Read our article about sponcon and learn more about how brands can avoid being caught out. - Published: 2019-02-15 - Modified: 2024-09-18 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/darker-side-sponcon/ - Categories: Social Media ‘How to become an influencer’ is now searched for over 6. 5k times a month in the UK. I suspect 2/3 of this traffic comes from young adults (predominantly women, since they make up the majority of Instagram’s users) looking to make a name for themselves on a social platform and 1/3 of this traffic comes from people like you and I. Taking to Google after having a tough day at work and wondering why we aren’t paid to tan ourselves in the Maldives whilst sipping a cocktail or two. What is sponcon? If you’re a self-confessed Instagram obsessive like myself then you’ll know about the term ‘sponcon’. If, however you’ve been living under a rock for the last five years, this is short for sponsored content, or ads in regular parlance. When done correctly, sponcon is mutually beneficial to the reader, the brand, and the influencer. With the added transparency of how much influencers can make (take a look at Zoe Sugg’s net worth, if you want to make yourself feel really bad! ) it’s no wonder teenagers and young adults are intrigued by what they can do with their own social platforms. Transitioning from your everyday Instagram or YouTube user to someone who is making money from their social media platform is hard. Thanks to the rise of the micro influencer, someone with more than 10,000, the reality of making money from a hobby seems within grasp to more people. But how do you land your first brand partnership when companies want to see examples of your past campaign work and your promotional ability? A recent trend has seen wannabee influencers faking sponsored content in the hope of appearing more attractive to brands, therefore opening doors to real collaborations and projects in the future. Can you really fake it until you make it? Instagram users are openly admitting to faking sponsored posts. Palak Joshi, a lifestyle influencer with 45,000 Instagram followers, recently posted what appeared to be a sponsored post on her Instagram story promoting OnePlus. The post showed a shiny logoed white box shot from above, tagging the OnePlus official Instagram handle and featured the branded hashtag associated with the phone’s launch. The post however wasn’t an ad and Joshi had no partnership with the brand. When questioned by The Atlantic, she said ‘it looked sponsored but it’s not, they just assume everything is sponsored when it really isn’t’. As a consumer, how can we spot the distinction? Many users tag the brands they are wearing or using in photos, regardless of whether an item has been gifted or paid for. Taking the idea of fake ‘sponcon’ even further, Taylor Evans faked an entire press trip to Miami when she was on holiday, paying for everything out of her own pocket. She wrote Instagram captions thanking local restaurants for their hospitality, assuming her following would interpret a brand partnership was in place. Apart from being deceitful, what is the true impact of this dark trend? Real influencers... --- ### Social Media stats to shape your 2019 Social strategy > Here's our top 12 social media stats to keep these in mind when considering where your brand is best placed to succeed in the social spectrum in 2019. - Published: 2019-02-14 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/social-media-stats-shape-2019-social-strategy/ - Categories: Social Media You may think that for Found it’s only about the glitz and glamour of the Social and Influencer industry... the long lunches with LA stars, the award nights, rubbing shoulders with Stormzy, filming in Shoreditch... the list goes on. Whilst this is all true, we don't just do the cool stuff, we back it all up with hard, cold facts. Like Jay - Z once said, ‘men lie, women lie, numbers don't. ’I wanted to share the top 12 social media stats with you for 2019. Keep these in mind when considering where your brand is best placed to succeed in the social spectrum as we enter another year that will no doubt be rife with new and exciting developments in the world of social media. FACEBOOK Facebook continues to be the most popular social networking site in terms of the number of active users. As of October 2018, it has a little over2 billion active users. Over 1/5th of the world's’ population. Facebook usage among teens is dropping gradually according to the latest social media statistics. While 71% of teens claimed to use the platform in a 2015, the number hasnow dropped to 51%. Facebook is the second favourite platform for consuming videos after YouTube. 40% of consumerssaid that they watch the most videos on Facebook. Brands see amedian engagement rateof 0. 16% per Facebook post. Facebook remains the most popular Social Media Platform in the world. Credit: Con Karempelas. What we can learn:Even though brands are mainly flocking to Instagram over recent times, Facebook still packs a punch. Whilst teens are more likely to engage with a brand on Instagram now, Facebook is still the second biggest platform for video content behind the Daddy of video, YouTube. Keep in mind, though, that it still can’t boast a better median engagement rate for brands than Instagram, which is something to remember when engaging in social content strategies. INSTAGRAM Instagram continues to attract a younger audience with72% of teenssaying that they use the platform. This is an impressive increase from 2015 when 52% of teens said that they used the platform. In terms of engagement, Instagram is ahead of Facebook with a median engagement rate of 1. 73% per post for brands. The ad spending on Instagram is now 23% higher than on Facebookaccording to an internal analysis by Merkle. Videos get 21. 2% more interactions compared to images, and 18. 6% more interactions compared to carousels. Looking to engage Teenagers? Insta is the one for you. Credit: MentatdgtWhat we can learn:If your target market is teens, USE INSTAGRAM! It tops Facebook for engagement for brands and is the fastest growing platform for teens since 2015. It tops Facebook for median brand engagement and is also the best place to run your ads, in particular video ads that get more engagement than images and carousels, so dust off the Canon and get creative with your ad budget!  LinkedIn According toHubSpot,LinkedInis 277% more effective atlead generationthan Facebook and Twitter. The reason for this because more... --- ### Why (AI) Artificial Intelligence is the future of SEO > ​Explore how artificial intelligence is revolutionising SEO by enhancing strategies and tools to navigate the evolving digital landscape effectively. - Published: 2019-02-11 - Modified: 2025-04-07 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/ai-future-of-seo/ - Categories: AI & Machine Learning, Trends Artificial intelligence is a fascinating subject to me. Not only will it change the future of the world, it is already here affecting modern life. Problem is, we just don’t know if it will be a curse or a blessing. However, once humanity reaches the singularity – that is, the moment when we reach runaway technological growth - and we go from AI to ASI (Artificial Super Intelligence), and which is expected to occur around 2050, we will find out. I think ASI could be our salvation because it will empower what’s left of humanity to progress beyond what Darwin described as our ‘lowly origin' into a species which can heal a planet and spread beyond the earthly limits, into space and deep into the Milky Way. How cool would that be? The developing SEO landscape So, why am I talking a load of nonsense? Well, when I think about how SEO has changed over the last decade, I think that is has become harder and harder to perform well. And this isn’t just my opinion. Rand Fishkin, an industry heavyweight also believes this is the case, and as per usual, spoke about it at Brighton SEO brilliantly. One of the key ways in which SEO is getting harder, as identified by Rand, is the 20% decrease in organic mobile CTR, and the 20% increase in mobile no-click searches. In other words, there is an ever-decreasing number of available clicks to organic listings for both branded and non-branded queries. There are several factors contributing to this shift such as the rise of featured snippets and the new Google functionality for things like flights and jobs. Suddenly, the Google landscape looks very different compared to just two or three years ago. Consider the complexity of Google’s search algorithm, the sheer scale and size of the whole thing at a global level. The amount of data being processed, and the amount of computing power being used every single second is truly awesome. And what do we get? All of mankind’s knowledge on a screen at your leisure. But anyway, I’m getting carried away. My point is that AI isn’t a choice. It’s a requirement. We wouldn’t be where we are today without it, and like many of the world’s best inventions, it was made by Brit. During World War II, Alan Turing cracked the Nazis enigma code with the help of his famous Bombe machines and later went on to develop the basics of computing that we use today. This was followed by the creation of the Turing test, which was designed to test a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. A true hero and visionary. But I’m getting carried away... Blending SEO and Artificial Intelligence We already know that one of the biggest pillars of SEO are keywords. Unsurprisingly, our language is at the heart of the way we search, but language is a complex thing, and considering the huge amount of... --- ### Found 2019 Attention Showreel > Our bespoke, outside of the box approach creates thumb-stopping content that is sure to capture your audiences attention and stop them in their tracks. - Published: 2019-02-05 - Modified: 2024-09-10 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-content-showreel/ - Categories: Content Marketing, Influencer Marketing, Social Media In late 2017, Found joined forces with Disrupt and it's been an amazing journey since. Known for their tenacious ability to deliver serious impact across the Social, Content and Influencer marketing scene, Disrupt had established themselves as an industry leading force. Since acquisition, the Disrupt family have fitted right into the Found team and brought their truly fresh and unique specialisms to our offering of fully integrated digital marketing services. Put simply, the content we produce makes the right noise, in the right place and at the right time. Our bespoke, outside of the box approach creates thumb-stopping content that is sure to capture your audiences attention and stop them in their tracks. As we continue from strength to strength, we can't wait to see what the future holds in store. To get an idea of what we've been up to, check out our latest showreel: Looking to take your brand to the next level in 2019? Then get in touch and get Found! --- ### Social Media and Influencer News - January Roundup > Although the first month of 2019 brought no further clarity on Brexit, there was a lot happening in the world of social media and influencers. - Published: 2019-01-30 - Modified: 2024-06-03 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/january-news-roundup/ - Categories: Influencer Marketing Although the first month of 2019 brought no further clarity on Brexit, there was a lot happening in the world of social media and influencers. Read below for our highlights... Social Media News: Zuckerberg plans to integrate WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger Facebook have made the unpopular decision to integrate the messaging services of its three major social platforms. Soon all those Tinder matches you have on your WhatsApp will be hitting up your Insta DMs, consider yourself warned. Credit: Sara Kurfeß Facebook is secretly building LOL, a cringey teen meme hub In an attempt to get down with the kids, Facebook is attempting to create a new video-hub for funny vids and GIFs. Presumably all stolen from Reddit. TikTok is quietly testing ads It was only a matter of time before TikTok (formerly Musical. ly) joined the ads party. The short-form video app boasts a young and engaged audience, offering a lot of opportunities for advertisers. Influencer News: Instagram is responsible for anxiety in influencers With Blue Monday being a popular topic in January, influencers spoke out about how their use of social media can impact their mental health due to a modern-day "keeping up with the Joneses" type pressure. Credit: Verne Ho The UK ad watchdog has warned 'hundreds' of influencers over opaque brand deals Following the release of ASA and CAP's influencer guidelines last year, the advertising watchdog has been cautioning those who are still skirting round disclosing their paid-for posts. Social media stars agree to declare when they post ads Continuing the theme of transparency, multiple social media stars including Zoella and Alexa Chung agreed to be clearer when they have been paid or gifted products that they are endorsing. Campaigns we liked: Aperol Spritz delivering some happiness in a glass on Blue Monday Aperol hit the streets of London with a door-to-door spritz service to cheer up Aperol-lovers on Blue Monday. A fun activation with a timely sentiment. Credit: Kate Townsend Greggs wins Veganuary with sausage roll The launch of Greggs' vegan sausage roll was a masterclass in great marketing. There was a hilarious iPhone parody video, cool sample kits sent to journalists, sassy Twitter responses and a very public feud with Piers Morgan. Everything you could ever want really. --- ### Why Instagram should be your MVP this year > Whilst best known for selfies, pet accounts and general showboating, Instagram can be a powerful marketing tool for brands when implemented correctly. - Published: 2019-01-28 - Modified: 2024-06-05 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/why-instagram-should-be-your-mvp-this-year/ - Categories: Social Media Whilst best known for selfies, pet accounts and general showboating, Instagram can be a powerful marketing tool for brands when implemented correctly. In 2018 the platform went from strength to strength with the launch of shopping and the continued dominance of Stories. In 2019 we can expect Instagram to invest further in long-form content with IGTV and interactive elements such as stickers and filters on stories. With Instagram's new and improved business services, we can expect to have more advanced analytics and measurement tools on the way too. Aside from the fun things, Instagram is making some major moves to position itself as a valuable tool for driving business. When it comes to the impact the platform can have, one study claims that Instagram can influence almost 75% of user purchase decisions, particularly when it comes to fashion, beauty or style-related products. Influencers and celebrities like Holly Willoughby simply post an "outfit of the day" shot and suddenly whatever she has chosen to wear will be sold out within 24 hours. If your brand isn't actively using Instagram already in some shape or form, it probably should be. Credit: @hollywilloughby The beauty of Instagram is that it tends to be the place that consumers will follow both brands and influencers on, giving companies multiple touch points to reach what is generally a younger, more affluent audience than other popular social channels. We've driven great results for many of our clients with Instagram-focused campaigns, one of our recent case studies is for the Clarks Originals x Wallabees campaign. But it's not just fashion and beauty that shine, Instagram also offers a lot of opportunities for travel brands thanks to the rise of millennials choosing "Instagrammable" destinations when it comes to booking holidays. Lately this phenomenon has been attracting negative attention, with Instagram being accused of 'ruining' photogenic locations such as Trolltunga in Norway and the 'Fairy Pools' on the Isle of Skye, the latter of which is struggling to cope with the influx of photo hungry tourists. From a marketing point of view, stories like this demonstrate the true influence that Instagram is having on consumer behaviour and modern life in general. Credit: Benjamin Davies The visual and story-telling nature of Instagram allows travel brands to easily connect with wanderlust-types in an authentic way. Sharing stunning imagery of destinations is an easy win with minimal effort. Clever brands also make use of dynamic ads and video to stand out on the feed. As always, although it's important to be present where your audience is, quality of content matters too. If you are going to invest time in an effective Instagram strategy, you should be investing in your content output to ensure you are capturing your audience's attention. It's a busy world out there on the 'gram, and it's only going to get busier! If you need a helping hand with cracking Instagram and creating some killer content, pop over a note and we'll be in touch. --- ### How Google interprets search intent > What is search intent and how does Google interpret what users want to best serve them content? - Published: 2019-01-16 - Modified: 2024-11-06 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/how-google-interprets-search-intent/ - Categories: SEO In the early days of Google, the algorithm relied heavily upon things like keyword density, backlinks and metadata to establish website hierarchy and rankings. Nowadays, the Google search engine is a sophisticated product, designed to find and promote content and results that meet the searchers’ needs. Traditionally, SEO has been a numbers game. Given businesses want to see their sites ranking higher, organic traffic increasing and sales improving, SEO professionals build their strategies and reports around hard metrics that can be easily measured. These hard metrics mean that user intent is often overlooked as it can be a little tricky to define. Behind every search in Google, there is an intention, people are looking for something in particular when searching - information on services or a product, the answer to a question, or something else. Since Google recognises user intent, SEO professionals should recognise it too but first, they have to understand it. What is user intent and how does it function? A studyfrom The University of Hong Kong found that search intent can be split into two segments: that a user is looking for general information about a topic, or that a user is looking to find answers to a specific question containing the keywords they have used. It’s also arguable that these two categories split again into users who are specific about their search (i. e. have a narrow search intent and don’t diverge from this) and exhaustive (i. e. have a wider scope of interest around a certain subject or subjects). How do search engines satisfy user intent? Google understands that if a user in London searches for the address of Adidas, they’re most likely looking for the shop nearest to them, not the brand’s headquarters in Manchester. Using this understanding, Google measures how well they satisfy a user’s search intent against their ‘Google Search Quality Rating Guidelines’, which helps the engine understand and apply the intention. Words and phrases have multiple meanings, so when a user searches, Google lists the most popular definitions first to maximise the chances of meeting the user’s needs. Google doesn’t respond well to words that have unclear or ambiguous meanings, so the algorithm looks for clues regarding user intent and the query words they used. There are a number of other ways in which the algorithm determines intent and fine-tunes specific results, which normally involves interpreting the queries according to a series of categories: Common interpretations – if a query has a number of interpretations all of which are equally common or popular, Google will cover all bases by providing a range of results that cover all the interpretations. Dominant interpretations – these are queries in which most users mean the same thing so that the interpretation should be clear from the beginning. Minor interpretations – searches like these have less common or recognisable interpretations, but Google can often eventually interpret them accurately using location data. Do, Know, Go – a series of concepts that helps Google understand what the user is trying... --- ### From Search to Discovery - Google uncovers Google Discover - Published: 2019-01-09 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-uncovers-discover/ - Categories: Content Marketing, SEO This is the second part in our 'From Search to Discovery' series. You can find the first part here. Google has been heavily tinkering with the search results page over the past few years, announcing an overhaul of the feed in late 2016 which was designed to better anticipate and serve what is most interesting to its users. The new feed now served cards highlighting the news, sports results, engaging videos and stories that it determined were important to you, while also taking into account what was trending in your local area and around the world. More recently, Google announced a major update to the search experience, renaming and relaunching the feed as ‘Discover’. The update introduced a fresh design (for example, you may have noticed that the query bar is now round), and enables users to better explore their interests by predicting what they are interested in but the level of experience they have in that same interest. Discover also provides you with evergreen content that is relevant to whatever you are searching for; for example, if you’re planning a trip somewhere in Europe, Discover might show you an article showing the best pubs or restaurants in the area. Google has also recently announced Topic Layer, which analyses content for a specific topic and builds subtopics around it, to help better serve more relevant content to its users. With their mobile-first approach, Discover may already be on your mobile homepage but if it isn’t, you should expect it to see the overhauled experience in the next few weeks. Discover includes new topic headers that explain to users why they’re being presented with certain topic cards and delivers a range of easy access points for content that expands and reaches further into related subject areas with each scroll and click. The Discover icon will begin to appear next to more and more topics, giving the user the opportunity to register their interest in content themes. Search and social mix and mingleIn this sense, Google Discover is fuelling the already-noticeable collision of search engines and social media platforms. Although both channels help users to uncover content, the search process involved questions asked and responses delivered, where social lays out a range of content for users to peruse at their leisure until alighting on something of interest for them. Discover admittedly remains distinct from social in that it is of course not a platform from which users can broadcast opinion or show enthusiasm for certain content (by upvoting or retweeting, for example), but it does give its users further reaching and more diverse feed access, functioning as a kind of curated content feed without the commentary and clamour that you find on social media. What does the future hold for content creation? Any SEO expert worth their mustard will have already acknowledged that Google Discover presents both challenges and opportunities in terms of content generation. Over the last few years, Google has incrementally upped its game with regards to high quality content,... --- ### Found wins at the UK Search Awards > Well, the awards keep rolling in, at the UK Search Awards 2108 on Thursday, we won both the Best PPC Campaign and the Best use of Search (Retail). - Published: 2018-12-03 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-wins-at-uk-search-awards/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, General News The wins just keep coming for Found! Just last week we added 3 more trophies to the cabinet. After a staggeringly good year, the agency has seen plenty of growth and excellent results for our clients, exemplified by our Best SEO Professional Services Campaign from The Drum Search Awards and winner of the Best Use of Search from the European Search Awards, amongst a host of others. Well, the awards kept rolling in and at the UK Search Awards on Thursday, we won both the Best PPC Campaign and the Best use of Search (Retail) alongside our client Bonmarché. This good news followed an award from earlier in the week, as we learned that our favourite leader and CEO, Tina Judic, was awarded the Marketing Agency Leader of the Year award from The Drum Agency Business Awards. We weren’t surprised, her enthusiasm for all thing’s digital shines through in her work every day. Christmas has come early here at Found, and with 2019 just around the corner we are looking forward to hitting the ground running in the new year! If you’d like to chat to use about how we can assist your paid media campaigns, connect with us today. --- ### The Drum awards Tina Judic, CEO of Found, Marketing Agency Leader of the Year 2018 - Published: 2018-11-28 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/tina-judic-drum-marketing-agency-leader-award-2018/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, General News AtThe Drum Agency Business Awards 2018(formerly the Drum Network Awards) our very own CEO Tina Judic received the Marketing Agency Leader of the Year award for agencies of up to 100 staff. Tina’s enthusiasm for all things digital and for the very people who make things happen has driven this agency to where we are today. She feels passionate about clients needing the expertise and experience to command attention in a space where consumers are now the super powers, where online success isn’t just about brands breaking through all the noise but, critically, having the ability to speak to their audiences in an effective and successful manner. It’s been a stellar year for Found as we’ve seen strong growth, achieved some fantastic results for our clients, acquired White. net andwon awardsincluding the Best SEO Professional Services Campaign at The Drum Search Awards and 12th place in the Great Places to Work 2018 rankings (2nd Best Workplace for Women! ). There are many reasons why Tina deserves this accolade but, perhaps most significantly, this year, together with her colleague Julie Yorkand Found, she’s spearheaded,an industry-wide initiative to support and nurture our next generation of digital pioneers which I would like to take this opportunity to highlight. TheDigital Disruptorsprogramme aims to inspire young pioneers to be disruptive and give them a platform they otherwise wouldn't have had, to seek out the next big thing in digital. Through a series ofworkshops, mentorships, work placementsand a Dragons’ Den-type pitch competition, it encourages young people to investigate digital properly for the first time. In its first year, the final of Digital Disruptors took to the stage atPI Live. Four (slightly terrified) teams of young people went through to a final, pitching their ideas to a mass audience on the main stage at the big industry event. Leading digital businesses includingSnap,VouchercloudandAWIN, were involved in judging the final and interest for next year’s programme is already looking extremely healthy. So here's to Tina, her amazing achievements, and to her vision for building an agency of the future, now, and for it to be one that will help Found’s clients transform and transcend in the digital space. If you’re interested in how Found could supercharge your digital performance across SEO, PPC, Social and Digital PR, then get in touch today to speak to a member of the team. --- ### PPC & SEO EXCEL FORMULAS > Here's a list of some of the less well known Excel formulas, ideal for anyone who works with large spreadsheets containing keywords and associated data. - Published: 2018-11-27 - Modified: 2025-02-25 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/excel-cheat-sheet-keyword-marketers/ - Categories: Data, How to Here's a list of some of the less well known Excel formulas and macros that regularly come in handy for keyword marketers. That could be SEOs, PPCs or anyone who works with large spreadsheets containing keywords and associated data like search volume, CPC & categories. Think of it as an excel cheat sheet designed for keyword marketers, but useful for anyone wanting to grow their Excel bag of tricks. Enjoy! FORMULAS Get domain from URL Get subdomain from URL Remove first x characters from cell Remove last x characters from a cell Group keyword phrases automatically based on words they contain Word count Find out if a value exists in a range of other values Get true or false if a word or string is in a cell Remove first word from cell (all before & including 1st space) Replace the first word in a cell with another word Super trim – more reliable trimming of spaces from cells Perform text-to-columns using a formula Extract the final folder path from a URL Extract the first folder path from a URL Remove all text after the xth instance of a specific character Create an alphabetical list of column letters for use in other formulas Count instances of a character in a cell Count the number of times a specific word appears in a cell Return true if there are no numbers in a cell Get the current column letter for use in other formulas Put your keywords into numbered batches for pulling seasonal search volume data Word order flipper Find the maximum numerical value in a row range, and return the column header Find position of nth occurrence of character in a cell Get all characters after the last instance of a string Get all characters after the first instance of a string Get URL path from URL in Google Analytics format Get the next x characters after a string Identify cells containing non-alphanumeric characters Capitalise only the first letter in a cell VBA Convert all non-clickable URLs in your spreadsheet to clickable hyperlinks Conditional formatting by row value Remove duplicates individually by column Merge adjacent cells in a range based on identical value Remove all instances of any text between and including 2 characters Highlight mis-spelled words Lock all slicers in position Split delimited values in a cell into multiple rows with key column retained Make multiple copies of a worksheet at once Add a specific number of new rows based on cell value Column stacker Superfast find and replace for huge datasets Paste all cells as values in a worksheet in the active range Format all cells to any format without having to select them Formula activation – insert equals at the beginning for a range of cells Consolidate all worksheets from multiple workbooks into one workbook Fast deletion of named columns Find and replace based on a table Unhide all sheets in a workbook Change pivot table data source for all pivot tables on a worksheet Convert all 'numbers stored as text' to general     Get... --- ### A Practical Guide to Keyword Clusters & Search Behaviour > Users are changing their search behaviour, so it makes sense for search engines like Google to alter their algorithm to favour topic-based content. - Published: 2018-11-21 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/practical-guide-keyword-clusters/ - Categories: SEO There’s a new gang on the SEO block – or, to put it more accurately, a new cluster. The term ‘keyword cluster’ is self-explanatory: take related keywords and position them in groups to match the distinct aspects of the topics they are aimed at. Think about it like this:“what is X’,‘how to find X’, ‘how to find cheap X’,‘compare X quotes’,‘best X’,‘best X europe’ etc - not forgetting the core topic of straight-up‘X’ itself. Search Is ChangingUsers are changing their search behaviour, so it makes sense for search engines like Google to alter their algorithm to favour topic-based content. Gone are the days of consumers awkwardly patching together relevant terms for their search. Most users are now comfortable with the notion of intelligent machines, and so treat them as such, posing complex questions in the same way that they might with a human interlocutor – “how old is Barack Obama? ” rather than “Barack Obama age”. And since algorithms are now developed enough to understand search intent to a greater degree than ever before, it makes sense to arrange content in interlinked themed groups. Ringing the keyword changes (even if they’re all the rage) can be a relatively lengthy process, so is it worth it? A number of studies have found that the more thoroughly interlinked content was, the better that site ranked in search engine results pages (SERPs). And it’s understandable that a closely knitted selection of good quality content builds authority and influence in the eyes of the search engine and its users – intensifying the depth of your content helps to establish expertise. You’ll also find that performance for the pages that make up the cluster begin to align with their counterparts, pulling each other up the rankings chart and owning multiple SERP positions for a single keyword. So, although they do mean overhauling the structure of your approach, keyword clusters present a chance to boost your reach and develop your content strategy. Structuring Your Keyword ClusterThe most effective and straightforward way to go about structuring your keyword cluster is to identify a common word, and identify all the relevant phrases that incorporate that word using an Excel spreadsheet. This formula is particularly handy:=IFERROR(LOOKUP(2^15,SEARCH($K$6:$K$200,B7),$L$6:$L$200),"undefined")Where the value in column K is the text string in the keyword to search for, and the value in column L is the label to apply in the cell containing this formula when the text string is found. Remember to arrange your text strings with the most common strings at the top of the list e. g. insurance, and the more topically distinct ones at the bottom e. g. commercial owners, so the keyword ‘commercial owners insurance’ would be tagged with ‘commercial owners’ rather than ‘insurance’. From there, you’re likely to find associated groups, and so on. If you started with the phrase “exercise routines for women”, for example, you’d string together phrases such as:  “Exercise routines for women”, “Women’s home exercise routine”, and “30-day exercise challenge for women” - to name a... --- ### Creativity In A Data Driven Era > Great marketing is a blend of both creativity and data, so much so that we say that creativity starts with data. Find out how we use data to drive creative. - Published: 2018-11-21 - Modified: 2024-04-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/creativity-data-driven-era/ - Categories: Content Marketing, Data When people think about content and advertising campaigns they think of creative. In reality, great marketing is a blend of both creativity and data, so much so that we say that creativity starts with data. It helps frame your thinking on a problem and find out whether your content is going to connect with your audience, as well as how data can guide the content creation process. Data gives you context but it can also be the core of creative. Data really isn’t just about the numbers. While many creatives are a little wary — or downright skeptical — about data, it’s crucial for a business to encourage its marketing team and creatives to explore how data can provide inspiration, rather than limitations. When a business starts to understand its audience, all marketing efforts start to come together – it just involves a little thinking outside the box, but in the end, it’s worth it. The best way to engage and entertain an audience is through the age-old method of storytelling. Data helps to write that story - it unfolds the plot and builds a fact-based worldview with the potential to persuade your audience of anything. The relationship between data and creativity is an area that brands should always nurture – here’s how. The Way We Use Creativity Is Constantly EvolvingIn so many businesses, creativity is often shifted to one side. Creativity is what the creatives do — and they do it overthere. But creativity now has a leading role in many business processes. It’s about speaking to customers in new and innovative ways — so marketing and data need to be treated like two equally important sides of the same coin. Data listens, and creativity speaks. McKinsey & Company have spent a lot of time and money studying the impact of creativity in the workplace — and for good reason too. They created anAward Creativity Score(ACS) to look at how different companies with different levels of creative thinking fared. Their findings were fascinating, but boiled down this: more creative companies have better results, more value, and much more growth. They found that including room for creativity in every step of the business process and engaging in more interdisciplinary and cross-department work can make a huge difference. In fact, in a huge survey of companies, they saw that in more creative companies, 67% hadabove-average organic revenue growthand 70% had an above-average total return to shareholders. How did they do it? Well, McKinsey found that it all starts with the right mindset. Inject creativity into the ethos of your company and watch the benefits roll in. This isn’t just some nebulous idea, it's about how to spend resources in the right way – we’re talking timeandmoney. Giving employees the time to brainstorm is one thing, but if you look at what the top firms are doing, you’ll see that theyspend 2. 5 timesmore on their marketing than their industry peers. So, putting your resources into the creative processes really pays off,... --- ### From Search to Discovery - The Changing Face of Search Engines > Explore how search engines are evolving from search to discovery, driven by AI and personalisation. Learn strategies to adapt in this changing SEO landscape. - Published: 2018-11-15 - Modified: 2024-10-28 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/search-discovery-changing-face-search-engines/ - Categories: SEO Have you noticed that SEO is becoming more difficult? There’s an increasing belief that Google is a black box that none of us truly understand. The fundamentals of search optimisation are widely accepted but, as many websites successfully tick these boxes, do we truly understand what it is that pushes certain sites to perform above others? I have a theory that we are optimising for a behaviour that is becoming less and less frequent. Search, as we understand it, is becoming less common. The way users interact with Google is moving away from purelysearching, and more intodiscovery,as Google pushes information to users, rather than waiting for them topullit. If this is the case, then we need to increase our understanding of discovery, how it applies to Google, and adapt our SEO tactics to look toDiscovery Engine Optimisationinstead. If you would prefer to watch me talk about this rather than read about it then you can see a video of me talking about this very subject at SearchStars 2018, here: What is ‘Discovery’? Discoveryandsearchmay appear to be the same thing at first glance since both involve finding new information and the answer to questions you may have. However, search is an active method whilst discovery ismuch more passive. Search refers to the act of a user having a specific query (or set of queries) which they use to get single answers for each question they have. This means they typically either find their answer in the search results or click through to a domain, their search is then complete. Meanwhile, discovery involves more of a journey as it is not based on isolated queries. Instead, discovery may start with a single search, but it can also start with a prompt directly from Google (or other systems), and lead to finding more information and journeying through to related details too. Google as a Discovery EngineGoogle is traditionally known as a Search Engine, and its primary use matches the definition. However, over the years it’s been called many other things like a personal assistant, answer engine and even just a directory. So why are we all so confused about what Google does? Google is changing frequently, updating the way users find information within it and as SEOs, we try to name these and understand them each time there is a big shift. Here are the main reasons I believe that Google is becoming a Discovery Engine: Neural Matching The Google Feed The Topic Layer Activity Cards An emphasis on entities Neural MatchingOne of the first announcements for Google’s 20th anniversary was their adoption of neural matching into the algorithm. Neural Matching is currently used in around 30% of queries, which is only increasing through the use of artificial intelligence to grow its understanding. Neural Matching is Google’s way of knowing what it is that searchers really mean when they can’t find the words, it’s a step further in Google’s mission to understand the intent of searchers. Danny Sullivan’s example of searching ‘why does... --- ### The Rise of Amazon Advertising - Published: 2018-11-08 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/rise-amazon-advertising/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) With a $2. 5 billion net sales reported at the end of 2018, Amazon is set to join the online advertising giants, Google and Facebook, in a quest to rival new prospects. Although the growth acceleration of Jeff Bezos’s empire in the third quarter fell short of investors’ expectations, causing the stock to plunge, its performance in margin business units such as cloud and advertising, holds a much more positive outlook. The company reported a 122% increase year on year, and booked $301 million more in “other” sales, suggesting a departure from the “Walmart of the web” business model, which has been its modus operandi for a long while now. Considering the disruptive potential of the platform, reaching far beyond the retail sector, and its one-of-a-kind ability to target customers further down the funnel, Amazon’s growing position in digital advertising comes as no surprise. The high net sales records correspond with the predictions of  marketing and advertising experts; in the most recent State of Digital Advertising report for Marin Software, 85% of respondents pointed to Amazon as the company that will have a significant impact on their business. The Q3 report is therefore equally crucial for investors, who will need to decide if the slight deceleration in Amazon’s primary business units can be offset with profits from the apparent acceleration in sales and advertising. For the Facebook and Google duopoly, they will likely need to acknowledge the competitor sooner than expected, if to avoid sharing the profits of ads publishing. AMAZON, DIGITAL ADVERTISING AND THE IMPACT ON BUSINESSES Following the money is not only a clue for big tech giants who compete in the marketplace, but also for advertisers and marketers who are in favour of making informed decisions when slicing the budget pie. The current state of affairs are such that paid search and social combined constitute over 50% of the standard budget allocation in advertising, with Google Network Display and Facebook being the most popular channels. However, a lack of originality and over-reliance on tired methods hardly ever yield different, not to mention positive, results. The truthfulness of that caveat is most notably tested within the retail advertising sectors as both often need to promote unique shopping and customer experiences over actual products. The challenge to meet and exceed shoppers’ expectations, as well as the need for novelty, has already swayed some advertisers to move 50 to 60% of the budgets they would usually spend on paid search, to Amazon. The company, for years, has dutifully managed to balance steady growth with considerable investments in logistical necessities, which with a few exceptions (e. g. the drone delivery programme) would translate to quick and measurable profits. Delaying using ads as a stream of revenue, and instead focusing on developing a proprietary customer review system in the first place, has resulted in a trusted community of shoppers who now flock to the website with predictable, often ready to convert, incentives. This decision was vital in creating a powerful commercial website... --- ### Facebook Ads Research Tool: Test and Learn - Published: 2018-10-23 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/facebook-test-and-learn/ - Categories: Social Media It's important to know what works well in your campaigns, so that you can optimise future ones for maximum effectiveness. But determining which factors drive results can be challenging. There are lots of tools out there to help you find these results, but many are hard to set up and navigate. That’s why earlier this year Facebook introduced a tool called Test and Learn for Facebook advertisers. Generally speaking, Test and Learn allows you to run tests on your advertising campaigns to identify what strategies are delivering the best results. According to Facebook, “Test and Learn takes the guesswork out of measurement, so you can experiment with different marketing strategies and find the one that achieves your business goals most effectively”. The question is... As a starting point, ask a question that you want to answer, such as "Which campaign causes the lowest cost conversions to occur? " and the tool will determine which test you should run to answer your query. There are two types of test: Campaign Comparison Test Account Test Campaign Comparison Tests allow you to compare two campaigns to determine which results in the lowest cost conversions, while Account Tests help uncover how much your ad accounts lift sales for your business. Campaign Comparison This test won’t just create ad reports that compare Cost Per Conversion, which we all know would be useless. The tool does something very different through Facebook’s Conversion Lift measurement. Here’s how it works: Test Group 1: Random sampling of people who saw ads from the first campaign during the test period. Test Group 2: Random sampling of people who saw ads from the second campaign during the test period. Control Group 1: Random sampling of people in the target audience who were held back from seeing ads in the first campaign during the test. Control Group 2: Random sampling of people in the target audience who were held back from seeing ads in the second campaign during the test. Facebook compares the reaction of the test groups to the respective controlled groups. Unlike when viewing your results in Ads Manager, this test does not rely on an attribution window, in which a conversion is by default reported when someone views an ad and converts within either a day or 28 days. This test is different in that Facebook only cares who saw the ad, who didn’t, and how many conversions resulted from the people who saw or didn’t see the ad. That’s what’s involved in the conversion lift. Ad reports don’t account for the possibility that some of the people in your target audience may have converted anyway — especially if they are part of a warm audience, or that maybe someone saw an ad and converted more than a day later. Facebook’s new test aims to account for this. Ad Account Test This test works similarly to the Campaign Comparison Test, except that it looks at the impact of the entire ad account. It runs as follows: Test Group 1: Random sampling of people who... --- ### Digital Disruptors take to the stage at PI Live - Published: 2018-10-17 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/digital-disruptors-pi-live/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, General News Found has been in the thick of a new industry initiative to nurture and support the next generation of digital pioneers, culminating in a Dragons’ Den style final at this year’s PI Live event. The new Digital Disruptors programme was devised by two senior Founders to encourage more young people to investigate digital, the options it provides as a career choice and, most importantly, to empower them to think dynamically about the opportunities its brings to our everyday lives. CEO Tina Judic and Marketing & PR Lead Julie York have spent the last six months bringing together support from a raft of leading digital businesses including Snap, Vouchercloud, AWIN, and Found to enable 40 South London based teenagers to experience a structured series of in-house workshops and mentoring opportunities with some of our industry’s smartest digital thinkers. At this week’s final, which marked the end of the 2018 programme, the apprentices then got the chance to showcase their own creativity and innovative thinking with responses to the challenge of ‘how they would use digital to bring together your community’. Four teams went through to a final, pitching their ideas to a mass audience on the main stage at the big industry event. 2018 Winners, Team Look Out, made up of Katie Nyarko and Zion Simpson, amazed the judges with their ingenious touchscreen app which allows users to flag any geographical areas of danger to their friends list as well cleverly send instant alerts to their favourites list if they are in urgent need of police help. Katie said: “We devised Look Out in direct response to the rising crime levels in London, high harassment levels for young women and increasing police shortages. “Our aim was to use digital to connect people in our community, promote selflessness and community spirit and help to keep areas safer. ” Other ideas pitched were a programme to raise much needed awareness of the high levels of suicide within the LGBTQ+ community, ethnic minorities and young males, a digital platform and event for empowering, encouraging and elevating more young women who face period poverty and an online musical youth club initiative. The winners won the inaugural McShane Young Digital Disruptor Award, named after one of our industry’s most exuberant and progressive digital marketers Nicky McShane, who sadly passed away late last year and who is the inspiration behind the whole Digital Disruptors programme.     --- ### BrightonSEO: SEO without Traffic - Published: 2018-09-28 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/brightonseo-seo-without-traffic/ - Categories: SEO At this year’s BrightonSEO, Hannah Thorpe - Head of SEO Strategy here at Found, spoke about 'SEO without traffic'. See the slideshow at the base of this post. With an ever-changing digital landscape, there’s been a clear shift in how SEO is best implemented. Google’s shifting algorithm, the introduction of machine learning and focus on brand search mean that standard SEO practices need to adapt to the change. It’s not simply a case of thinking outside the box, you need to steer clear of the more obvious SEO tactics and instead become more user-centric. In this talk, Hannah covers the most important aspects of SEO you need to consider when trying to convert high rankings into high traffic. Think higher up the funnel The first thing to remember is that you need to think higher up the funnel. When creating content for your brand, it’s about appealing to a broader audience group; especially at the awareness stage of the purchasing journey. It’s good to write content using terms with high search volumes, but how accurate are these measurements? If you take a snapshot of search volumes in one area, there doesn’t seem to be much variation. Google Adwords has the same search volumes for a variety of similar terms, so while this is a good gauge of what people are searching for, in reality it’s a case of understanding the consumer’s journey and what part of the funnel they are at instead. Rather than focusing on high search volumes terms, instead ask yourself; ‘What are your customers doing? ’ and ‘what type of information do they need? ’. Create content based on their intentions, not merely on the keyword volume says. Simplify your content and using structured data Start by simplifying your content – user attention span is getting smaller with every search, meaning that you need to produce concise, user-focused content. All written content can follow a simple three-step process. First you need to introduce the main point of the content, next expand the point by providing examples, and then finally, give an opinion and analysis of these examples. Your simplified content can also take other forms, including tables and lists. This type of structured data is a standardised format of providing information about a page and classifying page content. Content can be formatted in a more digestible manner by letting the search engine know how you want your content structured. Tables are a good way of consolidating loads of information in a small, consumable format, while you can use numbers or bullet points to create lists. This type of structured content is more likely to appear in search results – perfect for high CTRs. If there are products with images and prices, then this information should be structured so it can be displayed in the search engine results. Similarly, structuring small snippets of information in tables or lists will give clarity to articles. But what about when there are zero search results? Even if there are low search... --- ### Learning from Attribution’s Past to Decide Your Attribution Future > At Found, we’re long-standing believers in attribution, and how it can be used to unlock benefits for our clients. With the advent of Google Attribution.. - Published: 2018-09-27 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/attributions-past-decide-attribution-future/ - Categories: Analytics, Data, How to At Found, we're long-standing believers in attribution, and how it can be used to unlock benefits for our clients. With the advent of Google Attribution and the possibilities that it brings, we are definitely living in exciting times that allow us to seamlessly measure how online channels are performing across the entire user journey. However, there is a lot of merit in looking at attribution’s past, as it can help explain: How the digital marketing industry is currently using attribution How to use attribution for maximum results The history of attribution can been deconstructed using a series of statements: "The attribution space is fragmented. " In 2013, Google did not have an attribution offering. There were industry leaders such as DC Storm, Visual IQ and Convertro who purely focused on attribution with their own standalone solutions. These companies also offered specialised servicing and consultancy that made even the most sophisticated, powerful attribution solutions accessible and usable for most businesses. Fast forward to 2018: all three of these examples have been acquired, and in the case of DC Storm and Convertro, they have been taken off the market entirely. For businesses who have used a dedicated attribution solution previously, and who received the technology and consultancy to achieve this, a big obstacle has been created that to this day is still prevalent in the industry. However, the good news is that Google Attribution will make significant headway in creating a single solution that, even in its free guise, will be well integrated enough to give you insights that are reliably informed, and that you can easily convert into actions. "Attribution is being constantly re-defined. " Never has attribution been spoken about so much before - there is a huge buzz at the moment. But is this a good or a bad thing? Agencies, affiliate publishers, martech and an array of companies, are coming out with their own new attribution solutions. There have since been small, independent attribution start-ups that hope to pick up where previous independents had left off. But the main issue is that there are currently too many versions of what attribution actually is. And because there are no standardised principles of attribution, and not many ‘thought leaders’ in the digital marketing space, there seems to be a whole lot of confusion. The risk that this poses, is that the concept of attribution is being used solely to re-enforce a positive outcome, or positive performance point – not to give a ‘best view’ of your marketing performance. This flies in the face of what attribution is truly for! "The full potential of attribution is still not understood across the industry. " As previously stated, there are too many versions of what attribution is, which makes it hard enough for businesses to get a full understanding of what it can do for them. Often attribution sits alongside endless projects, day-to-day tasks and business efficiencies that need implementation, and as a result it doesn’t have its own voice. When this is... --- ### Is the landscape about to change with Visual Search? > If a picture is worth a thousand words, then which do you type into a search engine? Here’s what’s happening with visual search — and how to get ready. - Published: 2018-09-27 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/visual-search-changes/ - Categories: Social Media, Trends The way people consume information is changing rapidly, and brands are fast on the heels of these changes - or at least they should be. It’s crucial to look for new ways to get products and services in front of potential customers - and it’s become apparent that things like social media feeds and live streams are what offer inspiration for millenials and gen Z’s. Just look at whatSnapchatand Instagram have been doing. Imagine this scenario: a potential customer finds your product, but it’s in an Instagram photo or featured in a catalogue. The reality is that they don’t know the product name, your brand’s name, or where it can be purchased. Just because your product is out there, it doesn’t mean your customers will be able to find your brand — or the product itself. And if a picture is worth a thousand words, then which of those words do you type into a search engine? It’s no surprise that74% of consumersfind that traditional keyword searches just won’t cut it anymore when it comes to finding products that they’re looking for online. That’s where visual search comes in. Visual search is a type of search that uses a visual image, rather than text — or any typing at all. The key part of visual search — and what’s driving businesses — is that it’snotjust about looking at a photograph or an image. Visual search involves the search engine being able to identify all of the objects in an image — a pair shoes, a couch that you’re looking at in a store, a pair of sunglasses on a model — and search the web to find similar items. The possibilities are endless, so here’s what’s happening with visual search — and how to get yourself ready. The Customers Want It — And It’s Already HereVisual search might sound like something out of a sci-fi film, but it’s very much a reality. Where visual search stands right now is simple: customers want it — and it’s coming at them full throttle. One survey found that69% of young consumerswere interested in making purchases based on visual searches, without ever having to go through the traditional search process. If you want to buy a shirt that looks like your friend’s, you don’t want to type in “red” and “logo” and just trawl through search results — you want to just snap and go. And platforms like Pinterest know this — which is why they have been investing incomputer vision technology since 2014, when they acquired an image-recognition startup. In fact, both Pinterest and Instagram are already monetising withshoppable social media posts. Visual search is starting to make a splash and, for your business to keep up, you’re going to need to be ready. Be Ahead Of The Curve With Camera-Based Search It should be no surprise that the future of visual search lies in your mobile phone camera. More and more companies are now understanding the power of camera-based search. Pinterest is... --- ### Getting smart with data in digital marketing > Complementing marketing with the latest data science techniques isn’t just vital to online success, it can also hugely amplify offline activity too. - Published: 2018-09-21 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/smart-data-digital-marketing/ - Categories: Data, Digital Marketing, How to In a world where the user is at the centre of everything, performance is directly correlated to how well brands are able to empathise with their audience. This is why it’s important to employ data science - not just as a post-campaign reporting and analysis tool, but also to inform the overall strategy. Complementing marketing with the latest data science techniques and machine learning algorithms isn’t just vital to online success, it can also hugely amplify offline activity too. And the good news is that we’re all now able to access a wealth of data that has the capability of empowering strategy, campaign implementation and optimisation. From who your customers are, to how you should reach them and what products they want, the data you already have is not only a potential goldmine, it’s acompass. When you use data correctly, you shouldn’t feel controlled by it, you should feel empowered by it. Here’s why you should always look to the data if you’re in need of a better sense of direction. Data Can Help You Reach The Right AudienceWith the growth of online, the great part about social media and digital marketing is that it makes your customers accessible — the slightly bad news is that it makeseverycustomer accessible. And your brand can’t be all things to all people. Rather than throwing your valuable resources against the wall and seeing what sticks —ultimately wasting time and money — your data can actually tell you so much more. Who is responding to you? What products are getting the most interaction? Perhaps you’ll find that your customers love the fact that you’re ethical — maybe they respond well to your personalisation. By looking at the data, you can see where your company actually sits and who it resonates with — you can see how it can thrive. Data Can Help You Demystify Your Customer BaseDemographics used to be drawn in broad strokes — you knew that you appealed to women aged 20-30 or the over 50s. But now, data can take your knowledge to the most granular level. You can see how you’re resonating with men in their 20s who work in technology and ride a bike, or women in their 40s who live in the north and have more than two children. Whilst this approach is useful it can be difficult to get very practical with the data, especially if you have a smaller data set. A potentially more useful way to analyse your customer base is to look at the Customer Lifecycle. AtFound, we segment a client’s customer base into different lifecycle phases by mapping their CRM data against its recency and frequency - the segments are then enriched with multi-channel funnel data from Google Analytics and put into a ‘Lifecycle Grid’. By monitoring ‘bulges’ across lifecycle phases over time, our data science team are able to inform the search and biddable media channels about the quality of customers that they are producing, enabling them to adjust their bids for... --- ### Found acquires White.net as part of our mission to build an agency for the future, now > We are delighted to announce that Found has acquired digital marketing specialists White.net as part of our strategy to build an agency for the future, now. - Published: 2018-09-05 - Modified: 2024-04-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-acquires-white-net/ - Categories: General News We are delighted to announce that Found has acquired digital marketing specialists White. net as part of our strategy to build an agency for the future, now. Tina Judic, CEO of Found, says: “Digital marketing is never static and nor is Found. We’re on a mission to ensure our business and services continue to respond to client and consumer need. We’re building an agency which provides an integrated, >paid media, SEO, data, content and social marketing” Offering a mix of search, paid media and content marketing expertise for such consumer brands as And So To Bed, Christie, Cambridge University and Brissi, the White. net team will become part of Found later this month. --- ### Automatic? Yes. Supersonic? Sometimes. How AI can be used to drive PPC automation - Published: 2018-08-22 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/automatic-yes-supersonic-sometimes-ai-can-used-drive-ppc-automation/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) In the beginning (or in the mid-1970s), there was the personal computer. Then came the internet, and today, we’re on to the next big technical innovation. It comes in the form of artificial intelligence (AI). As technology develops apace, pay-per-click (PPC) marketing has become eligible for an automation transformation of its own. AI is revolutionising the way in which digital marketers allocate time and energy, freeing them from the banal and repetitive, and handing those tasks to our faster friends, the computers. There are plenty of methods for achieving automation.  It’s true that you could – if you had the time, energy and temperament – manually program AI by writing lots of code made up of “if-then” statements, for instance. In the PPC world, that would be equivalent to using Automated Rules to fully codify how your account manager optimises an account (i. e. not very efficiently). Machine learning is a better example of how we might make the best use of AI, and is the statistical approach that has proved so useful with AdWords – it helps predict which ads are most likely to attract clicks. Auto-horror: the dark side of automationWhen AI is managed badly, it can pose serious problems for PPC campaign management. These errors are entirely possible, so keep your eyes peeled for the kind of mismanagement that might lead you down automated holes.  An automated search query, for example, might select new keywords without checking that they’re contractually viable – in other words, they’re prone to the kind of errors humans are less likely to make. Similarly, if you’re using systems like Google’s Flexible Bid Strategies to achieve a satisfying return on advertising spend (ROAS) for AdWord campaigns, say, it’s possible that you won’t collect enough data at the right time in the right place. You might find that keywords are bid down to lower pages, but the change won’t be flagged in time to correct the misstep before conversion levels drop. We set up automated systems to increase efficiency, but we also need to know how closely to monitor the automation in order to keep them on the right track. How can automation safely drive PPC? Of course, if you run a small campaign across limited keywords, or if you’re time rich and don’t mind taking things slow, you’re welcome to go it alone - take the manual route, and settle down with our old friend 'The Spreadsheet'. If you don’t want your paid media campaigns to make your life an extended living hell, though, most would recommend you take a step up to the first stage of automation and get acquainted with tools like Google’s Anomaly Detector, which flags up deviations from expected performance on an hourly basis. The next stage would be automating a selection of individual management tasks, but crucially without connecting them. These kinds of automations can run for 24 hours and are there to pause any keywords whose Quality Scores drop below parameters set by the user. A more... --- ### When Content Met Voice Search - Published: 2018-08-15 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/content-met-voice-search/ - Categories: SEO Tech enthusiasts and the digitally illiterate alike are no longer afraid to raise their voices: voice-enabled services are officially a thing. According to Google in 2016, 20% of all mobile queries were voice searches. In 2018, that figure is nearing 35%. And although there’s residual reluctance in some consumers to speak to their devices, that hesitancy has been fading fast over the last five years. The number of virtual assistants in households is steadily climbing, and with many services surpassing an accuracy rate of 98%, it’s no wonder that tens of millions of voice-enabled home devices are believed to be in use across the US alone. In fact, the popularity of home-based products is a useful chapter in a crucial and developing narrative: voice, as a primary interface is a solidly established reality well beyond mobile phones. Inevitably, changing trends of this kind present a challenge for digital marketers, who find themselves needing to develop their strategies in order to take advantage of (or at least accommodate) the mounting enthusiasm for voice search technology. The road to voice engine glory can seem like a long and winding road for SEO professionals, not least because most voice-enabled devices are pulling information from a range of sources: Google, Bing, Amazon and so on. Plus, although the market currently appears to be dominated by the usual suspects (Google Home, Cortana by Microsoft, Amazon’s Alexa, Siri by Apple), things are heating up in China, and it’s likely we’ll see a host of new smart speaker devices on the scene by next year, pushing up prices and adoption. So what does this mean for content and its reign over the SEO kingdom? The fundamental shift acknowledged by most marketers is from content to context. When it comes to voice search, understanding intent becomes all the more important. Conversational search is rising: consumers are accustomed to structuring their questions to devices in a more human way, and voice search is the most natural environment for posing those sorts of queries, so popularity is climbing accordingly. The questions are “who”, “what”, “when”, “where” and “why” based. As such, content should be structured and written so as to provide traditional SEO value and ensure that a voice engine recognises and understands the content’s context and meaning. If anything, then, content retains its supreme significance: in order to prioritise context, you need a solid and comprehensive foundation of high-quality content. But what kind of tricks can we pull out of the SEO hat to get better results in this brave new world of voice search? Use Schema to mark up your content where appropriate Make sure your content is all-encompassing and in-depth – you want to provide detailed answers for all possible questions related to your product or service, even the questions that seem to be rarely asked Optimise your site for mobiles (which sort of goes without saying these days) Take a long tail/conversational phrase approach to deciding what sub-topics to produce content around Ensure crawlers can find... --- ### How to Group Keywords for SEO > There's no way around it. You have to group your client's keywords & you haven't got much time. Don't try to wing it - here's an approach that works. - Published: 2018-07-11 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/how-to-group-keywords-for-seo/ - Categories: SEO As an SEO who is often concerned with large keyword research projects, I frequently find that keyword grouping is the most labour intensive of all of the tasks that I do. It's labour intensive because it requires solid understanding of a business offering to determine its significant constituent parts well enough to support a healthy SEO campaign.  You can't properly chop up what you don't yet understand. I'm reminded of The Simpsons episode where Homer visits a sushi restaurant and eats hastily & improperly prepared fugu, a fish which must be chopped expertly before serving to avoid the poisonous sections. Chopping your keywords up incorrectly can have dire consequences for your SEO campaign - and your life. It's easy to see the challenge when it comes to setting up campaigns for complex B2B clients selling all manner of exotic services such as recruitment process outsourcing, HR analytics and - my favourite - single customer view. Surprisingly, I found that things were a little different when it came to ostensibly simple verticals such as fashion. I won't list in detail the number of items of basic women's clothing I did not know well enough to properly place in a keyword group, but suffice to say it was plenty. It would be bad enough if all that was needed was to place keywords in their correct topical groups. But as is quickly becoming industry standard, keyword grouping has become hierarchical keyword clustering. Doing this hierarchical clustering is essential for proper actionable insight into landing page recommendations and structure but it adds a layer of complexity to the grouping process itself. Now, not only do, say, obscure financial software products need to be placed in the topically correct bucket, they also need to be placed under the correct parent and linked hierarchically with their correct child attributes. Depending on the product, doing this properly may deserve a product immersion session and full explainer from the client, and this is something which can't always happen. So what's a keyword-grouping SEO to do? First, get your search term classification approach in order. There's no way around it. You have to understand the product, and you haven't got much time.  Don't just try to wing it. If you don't plan the approach out, you reach a point where you are trying to stuff two quite different things into the same group just to make them fit somewhere and you already have too many groups. You think "that didn't quite fit but just leaving that one in there won't hurt". But soon the integrity of your groups has begun to break down and value of your keyword research document as a guide to a successful SEO campaign is beginning to degrade. So you need a classification approach to make sure that doesn't happen. The classification approach I use is based on clear predefined taxonomies using these 4 levels of analysis which structure and streamline the process of understanding the product, its context and how to chop it up. How to use Taxonomies to Classify your Search Terms This approach... --- ### Found awarded 2nd place in the UK's Best Workplaces for Women - Published: 2018-07-06 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-awarded-2nd-best-workplaces-for-women/ - Categories: Culture, General News Step into Found HQ this week and you’ll really feel the girl power - probably because we’ve been awarded 2nd place in the UK's Best Workplaces for Women: Medium category 2018. The only media agency to make the list! Here at Found we have made an effort to create an environment that’s fair, a place where women can truly excel. And even though fairness is definitely not women-specific, having fairness as a company value means that women at Found will always feel recognised, trusted and supported at all times. It’s no secret that this industry has always been very male-dominant, but we also know we're not the average digital agency. Found has a balanced gender split, with the team made up of 55% female and 45% male - this is something we are extremely proud of. We’ve worked hard to build a talented team, one that is focused on the desire to achieve only the best results – irrespective of background, race or gender. From an interview structure based on culture-match, competency, and future thinking, we know if someone is right for a role from day one. And we’re very serious about salary too. A lot of importance is placed on monitoring our activity around gender split, role compensation and potential pay gaps. In fact, one of our key check points is diversity; diversity within the team, in role types and, of course, gender gap analysis. A lot of energy and focus is also placed on recruiting AND retaining team members. We’ve never tried to retain staff through the best salaries alone (we pay very fairly) but emphasis has always been on training, development, transparency and inclusion. And we know the value of giving people the opportunity to be mentored by others outside of the business too - from Assemblies and Academies to Lunch & Learns, everyone in the team can share and expand their knowledge. We're delighted to have been recognised for our efforts in this way and will endeavour to continue to make this a fair and equal workplace for all our staff. If you're interesting in finding out more about a career at Found then check out our careers page here. --- ### Financial services SEO: accelerating online performance > Whether you’re a global company or a brick-and-mortar firm, SEO matters. But designing a financial services SEO strategy can be complex. - Published: 2018-06-20 - Modified: 2025-03-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/financial-services-seo/ - Categories: SEO There’s no doubt that you’re familiar with the basic premise of SEO — search engine optimisation is everywhere. But optimising a financial services SEO strategy is about more than search terms. If you want to maximise your customer acquisition and defend your corner of the market, it’s time to get serious about your financial services marketing. Because customers, especially younger customers, are searching for you. 55% of millennials use search engines for research, 15% of 18–34 year-olds use them for financial advice and after a local search, 53% of searchers users visit a business within 48 hours. The Bottom Line? You Can’t Afford To Ignore SEO. Whether you’re a global company or a brick-and-mortar firm, SEO matters. But designing a financial services SEO strategy can be complex. As a financial services firm, you’ll have a good sense of core words and phrases that your customers might be looking for. But what’s harder to know — and crucial to get right — is how to make sure you’re using the right keywords in the right way. Using the right combination of your financial services knowledge — and combining it with SEO, content and social to create an integrated digital strategy — requires expertise. It’s important to understand how these channels fit together. It’s tricker than you might think — as not all keywords are created equal. For example, while search terms like “financial advisor” tend to lead searchers to financial firms, the search term “financial consultant” tends to come up with job postings. It’s an anomaly, but an important one — there are limitless quirks and irregularities when it comes to using SEO effectively, and a well versed digital marketing agency can help you use them to gain a competitive advantage. Global Versus Local, What’s The Difference? Different strands of SEO can be confusing, but it’s important to remember that financial services global SEO and local SEO have the same end goals. Both are aimed at customer acquisition, market positioning, and brand awareness. But, because of the way that SEO has evolved, global and local SEO can seem like totally different entities. The basic difference is simple — and the clue is in the title — global SEO attracts users from all over the world, while local SEO triggers results within a specific geographic location. The better an agency understands your specific business and your needs, the better they will know how and where you can benefit most. Here’s what you need to consider: How Local SEO Can Work For You When dealing with local SEO, web pages and their search listings will be optimised to target a specific local region — and that can be very powerful. 72% of of consumers who performed a search locally ended up visiting a store within a 5 mile radius. It’s the difference between someone searching for “financial advisor” or “financial advisor Oxford”. If you’re a brick-and-mortar operation, local SEO is a real opportunity to shine, because online-only operators won’t have as much of... --- ### The smart alec everyone wants on their team: Google’s automated display campaign > If you haven’t been using Google’s Smart display campaigns in your marketing efforts, you’ve been missing out. - Published: 2018-05-30 - Modified: 2024-06-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/smart-alec-google-automated-display/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) If you haven’t been using Google’s Smart display campaigns in your marketing efforts, you’ve been missing out. The Google Display Network links popular news websites, gaming apps and every other platform under the sun with advertisers so that vendors can target the spaces online where prospective customers might be playing, reading, watching and eventually buying. And with the introduction of machine learning, and Google’s Smart display campaigns, it’s been a game changer ever since. This new world order put machine learning to work on display campaigns by finding relevant audiences, helping with the creative content and setting the right bids to meet your performance guides. All on its own. This kind of automation is unique to Google and claims to deliver “richer experiences to consumers” and “better results for your brand”. Google claims that advertisers who use Smart display campaigns see on average a 20% increase in conversions at the same Cost Per Action compared with other display campaigns that they use. Hotel search platform trivago’s use of the technology is cited as a case study. The brand used the programme for creative assets, putting together headlines, descriptions, images of desirable locations with its logo. Adwords did the rest of the work, and the combined efforts led to trivago driving 36% more conversions at the same CPA. It’s now in use for campaigns in trivago’s European, Asian and North American markets. Essentially we’re talking across-the-board automation for display campaigns: handling bidding, targeting, and creatives so that you don’t have to draw up extensive audience lists or tweak, re-size and re-format your creative content for each display. The targeting is driven by a combination of display keywords, remarketing, placements,  topics, in-market audiences and similar audiences. The algorithm examines unique data signals in order to shift bids on your behalf, depending on how well each targeting type is performing. And you’ll also still receive the kind of reports you’ve come to expect, ranking your creative assets based on the conversions they drive compared to each other. Bear in mind that some may take a little time to ‘learn’ where to position themselves for decent ratings. So we’re sorted, right? Machine learning has taken over and we can kick back, watch as Smart display handles business and possibly book some time off? Not quite... Although Smart display campaigns will help save time, money and energy, we’ll still need our old friend ‘regular’. It remains possible that you’ll want to manually control elements of your campaign, so in these instances don’t be afraid to stand down the robot and do it yourself. Closer control of creatives It’s all very well having Google handle things for you, but it’s entirely possible that you want to tweak and finesse layouts, colours and fonts yourself. Regular display campaigns give you that agency. The turn of the seasons If there are stretches of time (holidays, for example, or ‘summer sales’ and so on) where you want to alter your budget quickly, manual bidding is the one for you.... --- ### Model Marketer: how to choose the right attribution model for you - Published: 2018-05-24 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/model-marketer-choose-right-attribution-model/ - Categories: Analytics, Data, Digital Marketing, How to There’s no point beating about the bush – nowadays, we live in touch-point central. Gone is the era of last click attribution. The customer journey has, over the years, become more and more complicated, and Salesforce now reckons it takes six to eight touches to establish a fertile sales lead. Furthermore, 60% of the sales cycle is believed to be over before a buyer talks to your salesperson. Plus, as the customer journey extends in one direction, it’s also spreading itself across multiple platforms. Most digital marketers are deploying a range of content, running several campaigns and targeting potential buyers from numerous angles. So measuring the ROI on your various channels becomes a bigger and trickier task. How much of a contribution are your SEO efforts making? What kind of impact did your Twitter ad click have? What about your AdWords retargeting campaign? And if more conversions are coming from PPC, should you bin your social media efforts altogether? It can feel like a scary (and apparently never-ending) set of questions, but luckily for all of us, there are answers out there. The answers aren’t too hard to find, either, but if you want access you’ll have to embrace the multi-touch attribution marketing model – it’s this approach that allows you to manage, optimise and scale your campaign performance. Allocating accurate value to each of your marketing touchpoints is crucial for monitoring and adjusting your ROI on each channel, giving you the chance to make your spending as efficient as possible. If you’re reluctant to trust blindly in models which might incorrectly attribute credit and consequently encourage you to wind down channels which are in actual fact high performing, your concerns are fair. There are plenty of models out there, and the pitfalls could potentially be numerous. The most frequently used models are as follows: First/Last Click, which assigns 100% of the credit to the touchpoint in action just before conversion. It’s conveniently simple, but not necessarily accurate. Linear, which splits attribution evenly between all the touchpoints that play a role in conversion. Time Decay, which credits touchpoints according to how close in time they are to conversion. Position Based, which gives 40% of the credit to the first and last touchpoints involved in conversion, and then distributes attribution between the touchpoints that were active in between. There’s also a new, more sophisticated > See the big picture The model you choose should provide a satisfactory answer to the executive question: if you reign in spending or stop it all together, will revenue suffer and will individual components of the operation experience a drop in performance, too? Look at your leads Work out the rates at which leads become paying customers and/or active users. What’s your goal? It’s critical that while choosing a model, you’re led by your fundamental objective. Be it branding, limited-time promotion or anything else, different kinds of campaigns can suit different models, so don’t forget your overarching aim. Review and revise Unfortunately, the model selection process... --- ### SOLVING COMPLEX SEO ISSUES - Published: 2018-05-23 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/solving-complex-seo-issues/ - Categories: SEO This article was written based on an SMX London 2018 presentation given by Hannah Thorpe, you can view the full slides here. Originally posted on white. netFollowing a simple SEO checklist is great for most sites, but what happens when it doesn’t work? This talk from SMX London covers off when to reaudit and when brand might be your best solution to gain that all-important traffic. How do I rank? How does a site rank? Sometimes it feels overwhelming to try and explain to someone outside the SEO profession how to get a web page ranking. One way is to give someone a checklist of SEO best practices: Having crawlable URLs whose content is easily indexed Keyword research with appropriate keywords, both primary and secondary. Investigate what SERP says is ranking for relevant search queries (competitors) Utilise your writing skills to bets create content fitting the core audience group Craft a compelling title/description to appear in the rich snippet in SERP Intelligently employ the keywords to the on-page copy Use rich snippets and schema to enhance search visibility Optimise the page to load fast on every device and make it secure (HTTPS) Use the internet to help promote your content to the right audience groups BUT, this is not everything, at all. Analyse performance, reaudit and look at brandLook at useful metrics like visibility, seen in Search Metrics, which focuses on the estimated number of clicks gained in SERP. If you’ve done a technical audit, do another one. If your first audit was implemented sporadically and now your ecosystem is constantly changing without a change control process and lots of different people working in it. So, is that everyone then? The project has become inefficient and disjointed. Audit betterYou need to audit better. Whenever you’re doing something, think about being actionable, understand the individuals involved in the processes, prioritise time versus impact, and make sure you quantify everything. Essentially, be resource and time efficient, before, during and after a project. Being ActionableBe actionable from the off. Does the site have GTM? What’s been able to be actioned previously? What CMS is the site on? Who has FTP access? Are they in-house? How many people have to sign off your change? What percentage of pages are you trying to change? How long do all your suggested changes take to make? Where’s the resource? What other integrations are on site? All these questions can and should be answered. IndividualsThe people involved in the audits need to be assessed before anything is agreed – the stakeholders’ report card. You need to ask: what’s their job role? What are their accountabilities? What are their KPIs? Do they have internal supporters? Do they have internal conflicts? What is their work history? How much time is available to them? What is their knowledge of SEO? Any extra details – hobbies, family, etc? All this information allows you to form a true understanding of how they will slot into the project. PrioritiseEach task in the project needs... --- ### Facebook News Feed Changes: Friend or Foe? > Changes to Facebook’s newsfeed were announced in early 2018. The update placed a new emphasis on status updates from friends and family - Published: 2018-05-16 - Modified: 2024-04-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/friend-foe-facebooks-news-feed-changes/ - Categories: Social Media Changes to Facebook’s news feed were announced in early 2018. The update placed a new emphasis on status updates from friends and family, with a view to fostering a focus on personal networks, and reducing news feed dominance from articles and branded content. Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, referred to the initiative as aiming to cultivate “meaningful interaction” – an effort to make Facebook more of a force for good. A ‘friends and family’ feel has characterised the new feed in a bid to ensure Facebook’s services “aren’t just fun to use, but also good for people’s well being”. The changes have already affected all two billion Facebook users’ feeds and public content from businesses; brands and media have been featuring less prominently ever since. The announcement was featured in a blog post from Adam Mosseri (who heads the company’s News Feed) entitled “Bringing People Closer Together”. It’s hardly surprising that Facebook has been working hard at projecting a benign image following a difficult year at the centre of fake news debates and links with Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election - but what has it meant for brands who build digital marketing campaigns around Facebook’s news feed? Well, for starters, major adjustments like this had been in the pipeline for quite a while. And if you’re a marketer who depends on Facebook for advertising and brand promotion, you probably know that big changes like these mean focusing on a fresh approach to your strategy. Mosseri’s blog was fairly blunt about the effects these changes have had on public pages, saying that they may have seen their “reach, video watch time and referral traffic decrease”. Apparently, the impact has “varied from page to page, driven by factors including the type of content produced and how people interact with it. Pages that had been creating posts that people generally don’t react to or comment on could have seen the biggest decreases in distribution. ” It seems that these changes have also started costing people their jobs, 100 jobs to be exact. At least that was the case for lifestyle site Little Things, where after the changes to Facebook's news feed algorithms, their business was "decimated". In fact, Joe Spieser, the website’s CEO, claimed that 75% of Little Things' organic traffic had been wiped out, resulting in a massive hit to its income. Understandably, pages whose posts prompt conversations between friends will have been less readily penalised, which is perhaps an indicator that marketers should consider devising conversation-driving strategies. It certainly presents an opportunity to look back through Mosseri and Zuckerbergs’ statements for clues as to the kind of methods that will help maintain businesses’ reach and engagement moving forward. So, what can you do to keep up with the changes so far down the line since they launched? Keep your followers in the know - If you haven’t done it already, you should consider reaching out to the people who follow your page and explain what’s going on. Encourage them... --- ### The Mountaineer's Guide to Maximising SEO Campaign ROI > What areas should you prioritise? Getting the answer right could see you attaining the summit of ROI. Getting it wrong could send you on an expedition up a mountain that isn't worth climbing. - Published: 2018-05-11 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/a-narrow-ai-approach-to-finding-your-seo-campaigns-kilimanjaros/ - Categories: SEO SEO campaigns have multiple options of keyword focus. Whether you provide insurance policies or greetings cards, you need to make important campaign choices. For example, should you focus more on commercial owners insurance keywords or professional indemnity keywords? Birthday cards for Mum or birthday cards for Dad?  Which of these keyword clusters should you prioritise in your campaign and which should you put on the backburner or even ignore entirely?  Getting the answer right could see you attaining the summit of ROI. Getting it wrong could send you on an expedition up a mountain that isn't worth climbing. In this post, we explore why it can seem difficult to know which mountain to climb, and outline a spreadsheet-based method to help you find your campaign's Kilimanjaros - the mountains of keyword intent which represent the best ROI for your campaign. Why SEO Campaign prioritisation comes first When the aim of the campaign is to maximise performance within a given budget, each option of focus naturally needs to be ranked by net potential gain to determine which ones matter more in relation to the aim and which ones matter less or not at all. Areas which won’t yield a net KPI gain in response to the application of campaign budget are irrelevant to the ultimate campaign aim thus defined and should be removed from consideration in relation to that aim, freeing up more focus to put to better use in approaching it. But it’s not immediately obvious where the biggest net gains in response to SEO campaign activity will come from, because the rules of the system in which pages compete for prominence in organic search are manifold & complex. SEO campaign targeting is the process by which the hierarchy of the areas of greatest net gain can be made evident despite this complexity. The product of this pruning process is a list of ranked survivors, the areas most relevant to the achievement of the aim - those that will yield the biggest KPI improvements per unit of budget. The assignment of campaign budget & strategic focus in accordance with this prioritisation is the foundation of a maximally successful SEO campaign. Search is Mountainous The campaign targeting process begins with the act of seeing the search landscape. It can’t be seen directly because it’s made up of abstractions, but its features can be discerned indirectly through the use of tools. Like a real landscape, it has mountains, only they’re made of intent-clustered amalgams of keyword SERPs rather than gneiss & granite. The higher the mountain, the greater the commercial reward of nearing its summit. Some are little more than hills. Others are majestic peaks. The Tibetan plateau, seen from altitude. A representational model is constructed to record what matters about the landscape in relation to the campaign aim - the search landscape document. Like a map of a mountain range, it’s a representation of the features of landscape which may be relevant and it's something which can be returned to conveniently throughout the campaign. A map depicting the... --- ### We've been recognised as a great place to work...again! > We've scooped 12th place in the Great Places to Work 2018 ranking and we’ve moved up a category too – from small to medium in size! - Published: 2018-05-02 - Modified: 2024-04-07 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/weve-recognised-great-place-work/ - Categories: Culture, General News Everyone at Found HQ has been buzzing since last week when we heard the news about scooping up 12th place in the Great Places to Work 2018 rankings. And it’s not just the award that’s making us smile, we’ve moved up a category too – from small to medium in size! This achievement is going down in our books as one of our most noteworthy awards, especially because voting was done by our much-loved staff. But, the submission process wasn’t as simple as it sounds. The first part included an anonymous survey that was circulated amongst the team. It asked questions about client work, managers and colleagues, the office working environment, and much more. The results were astounding and ample proof that our Founders genuinely enjoy working here. Then came the second part, the bit where things got slightly harder. After weeks of writing, collating and proofreading, we finally submitted our 60 -page proposal – the result of A LOT of hard work. So, it shouldn't come as a surprise that this award means so much to us, we've definitely earned it! Looking back to when we first started out as a small agency, it has always been a mission of ours to be known as an agency that’s renowned for exceptional performance, and there’s no doubt that we could have never succeeded in this without our brilliant team. We’re over the moon that Found has become an employer of choice, and through learning & development, has resulted in offering a good work/life balance, and a team that gets fulfillment from their professional life – for us, this will always be a priority. And we can't forget our valued clients, who are the pinnacle of all our efforts, giving us reason to always be one step ahead of the competition. Here’s to another smashing year at Found, bring on 2019! --- ### Adding it all up: how has the ad blocking debate affected the online ecosystem? > The ad blocking debate has reached fever pitch over the last year. It’s a discussion that has been intensifying for some time - Published: 2018-04-24 - Modified: 2024-06-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/adding-up-ad-blocking-debate/ - Categories: General News The ad blocking debate has reached fever pitch over the last year. It’s a discussion that has been intensifying for some time: consumers are increasingly challenging the necessity of ads – or at least how far they should be expected to tolerate them – and the rise of ad blockers seems to be inexorable. But online advertising has by no mean shrunk correspondingly. The market has continued to expand its already vast reaches, and for the eighth year in a row, ad spend in the UK was up in 2017, hitting a high of £22. 1 billion. The ads themselves present an interesting challenge: some users find them intrusive, but many adverts are carefully developed, creatively finessed, entertaining and informative. Some formats delay access to the content you originally searched for though, and for some it’s where and when the ads appear, rather than their presence per se. The head-shakingly high incidence of YouTube’s pre-roll ads, for example, are often blamed for popularising ad blockers. And popular they are. The practice seems to have grown by 82% in the UK and had reached 12 million active users in June 2015, according to study from PageFair (one of a number of platforms that works on providing ways for publishers to push back).  eMarketer predicted that one in every three internet users will have ad blockers by 2017, which is double the 15% they estimated in 2014. For some users, it’s security concerns that compel them to use ad blockers. Third party advertisements distributed by publishers are difficult to quality-check, and the disconnect between quality and security encourages lots of those in the know to resort to ad blockers in an understandable bid to protect their systems from malware. And ad blocking is, of course, a real problem for publishers. Although ad block users would argue that they won’t be changing the natural course of click through rates because they wouldn’t have normally clicked on those adverts anyway, publishers argue back that their revenue comes from the number of views, which is incontrovertibly compromised by ad blocking.  Adobe estimates that ad blockers have globally cost advertisers in the region of $22 billion in revenue during 2015 alone. So great is the magnitude and severity of the problem that nowadays many publishers refuse to comment at all. ‘Ad blocking’ has become a kind of publishing curse word, and few dare utter it. And publishers responses to the rise of ad blocking has been varied. Forbes and Business Insider, for example, have taken a fairly aggressive approach by blocking those using blocking software (tit for tat, you could say), whereas publications like the Guardian have attempted to appeal to their readers’ logic. ‘Acceptable Ads’ provide a diplomatic solution – they’re a kind of advertisement which certain ad blockers allow through based on criteria they set themselves (normally to do with the advert being less intrusive), and the publishers responsible become part of a ‘whitelist’ of passable adverts. The controversial Adblock Plus, for example, features controls that allow whitelist ads... --- ### What is audience-first and how does it work in Paid Media? > What is “audience-first”? And what does it mean for digital marketing? Well, audiences’ needs and demands are changing towards a more personalised approach. - Published: 2018-03-29 - Modified: 2024-05-02 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/audience-first-work-paid-media/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) There’s no denying the power of a nuanced advertising approach in the paid social sphere. Premium native ads can deliver 400% higher click-through-rates than regular display ads on mobile devices. So how can you take that potential from premium native social advertising and expand it? The key is an audience-first marketing model. What is “audience-first”? And what does it mean for digital marketing? Well, audiences’ needs and demands are changing. They want a more personalised approach, a more intelligent approach — and audience-first marketing is all about meeting those needs and demands. And it gets results. Understanding your audience and using an effective audience-first model is crucial to engaging them, getting click-throughs, and, ultimately, running an effective campaign. It requires a deeper, broader understanding of your target audience — not just who they are, but exactly how they work. What do they want? What makes them click-through? What’s stopped them from becoming a customer already? And it all starts with data. >20% of all Google traffic is audience addressable — and that number is growing. That means we know who’s searching and we can tailor results accordingly. With Google Search Network you have an incredible flexibility to bid up to 300% more than you would normally spend or reduce your bids by up to minus 100% of what you normally spend, using criteria like location, time, or device. You can also weigh your bids by age and gender, meaning that your ads are reaching the right audience. From a PPC perspective, you can use Google AdWords to take more control over paid media like videos, banners, and even text ads. You can target by placement and keywords, making sure your ads are reaching relevant audiences who will actually convert. Paid social, of course, is a perfect arena for audience-first marketing — and though it's still relatively embryonic, it’s continues to grow in exciting ways. Affinity And In-Market Audiences Present Even More Potential If you want to move beyond age, gender, and location demographics, your marketing strategy can now delve even deeper. Using custom Affinity Audiences in Google Adwords and in-market audiences, digital marketing experts can curate a truly individual experience for the audiences most likely to convert to consumers. Affinity Audiences lets you create an audience based off of more specific, intelligent criteria — while in-market audiences are already shopping and purchasing in your industry. The future is audience data powering paid media. And the best part is, you know know that they’re already interested in what you’re doing, so your budget is only going where it counts. Overlay For A More Powerful Tool The real power of an audience-first approach comes when you’re overlap and overlay different information, rather than wasting money in inefficient tunnels that lead to nowhere. A digital marketing strategy that overlays Google search data and income data or Facebook information and search interests can ensure audiences with the most potential. As data sharing becomes more transparent thanks to measure like GDPR, it will also become more thorough and fruitful.... --- ### GDPR: The impact on Marketing and the Financial Services Industry > Learn how GDPR impacts the financial services industry, from compliance challenges to best practices for safeguarding customer data and staying compliant. - Published: 2018-03-28 - Modified: 2024-12-16 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/gdpr-financial-services-industry/ - Categories: Data, Digital Marketing One of the biggest changes to hit the financial and professional services industry is the introduction of the much anticipated GDPR. Although GDPR will have an effect on the entire industry, it’s particularly important from a financial services marketing standpoint. But while GDPR may require an overhaul of your marketing strategy and data storage, it also provides an opportunity to synthesise and understand your customer information. Ultimately, it can help you create a stronger, more focused customer relationship. What is GDPR? GDPR is the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation. It will come into effect on 25 May 2018 and, in short, it means big changes for the financial services industry. In fact, it’s the biggest shift in security and privacy regulation in over 20 years. In some ways, it’s actually long overdue. Technology and data have been constantly evolving over the past two decades, so regulations are finally catching up. It’s designed to give individuals more control over their data, enshrining rights to access and the right to be forgotten, among others. For financial services, this presents new challenges, but also some great opportunities. Does It Apply To You? GDPR will apply to anyone handling EU citizen data or “personal data”, whether employees or customers. If you access or hold any personal data, you will almost certainly be affected. What Does It Mean For Marketers? For financial services marketing, GDPR means an overhaul in data collection and storage. Though previously some companies thought that the vagueness around GDPR enforcement meant that they could pass on liability, the recent Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal shows that data issues will not be taken lightly. And under GDPR the potential repercussions are huge — fines can be levied up to £20 million or 4 percent of global revenue, whichever is higher. Financial and professional series marketers are on the front line, so they need to be vigilant. But though it may sound overwhelming, there are clear steps that you can take to ensure that you’re GDPR compliant. You should familiarize yourself with the regulation itself, but these are the key areas financial services marketers need to be aware of. Data Permissions Changes One big change for your financial services marketing will be to your opt-ins for resources like email lists. For a person to be contacted by you with promotional materials, they will have to expressed this in a way that is “freely given, specific, informed, and unambiguous” and paired with a “clear affirmative action”. What does that mean? Your customer needs to take a clear step to receive information from you. This obviously means no more buying and scrapping lists of leads and, from a financial services marketing perspective, it’s more straightforward than it sounds. Rather than a pre-checked box or automatic enrollment in a program that individuals can opt-out of, it needs to be something they’re choosing to opt-in to. It’s a slight difference to design, but an important one. Also, if you have an automated marketing system, make sure... --- ### AI vs Humans : 3 major reasons why Paid Media still needs supervision > In many ways, then, it seems Paid Media campaigns have the capacity to run themselves. So where does the human digital marketer – sit in all this? - Published: 2018-03-08 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/ai-vs-humans-3-major-reasons-why-paid-media-still-needs-supervision/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) It’s estimated that by 2030, 30% of UK jobs could be taken over by robots or AI. This is admittedly not great news for any of us, but spare a thought for those whose key role is to monitor Paid Media – might their roles be first for the chopping block? Automation gives us the opportunity to do many of the things we need to do quickly and accurately: we can test, optimise and deliver adverts designed to robustly engage our target audiences, and we can pull in new customers using the algorithms that tell us when a user is in the market for something we’re selling. We’re even able to make our purchase recommendation at the potential buyer’s likely point of peak interest. Plus, we can do it cheaply, and at the click of a button. The developments are rapid and seemingly endless. Keyword bidding processes are automated by platforms such as DoubleClick Search, for example. Google’s Universal App Campaign does away with the need for keywords altogether, and instead uses machine learning to find users for your app from across multiple platforms – at a price of your choosing, of course. In many ways, then, it seems Paid Media campaigns have the capacity to run themselves. So where does the digital marketer – the human digital marketer – sit in all this? At this stage, it’s important to remember that robots, algorithms and automation are there to relieve marketers of robotic tasks, and free up time and money for concentration on the emotional, creative and relationship building aspects they are undertaking – i. e. to be extra human. Consider some other proposals for the significance of the human role in Paid Media... Human intelligence Programmes and technology won’t be able to design and maintain a business’s objective on their own. You need a human brain (or perhaps more accurately the love and attention of strategic thinkers and data scientists) to understand why a business is pouring resources into marketing in the first place. A company’s marketing strategy should always be led by its mission and its overall goals: not even the most sophisticated algorithm can cover all those bases. We’re nothing without each other Automation might be changing things fast and for the better in Paid Media, but if we want consumer experiences to be smooth and well connected, we need our range of systems to be properly connected. It takes a person – and a smart one at that – to consider how and why to integrate the worlds of Paid and Owned Media, and how to reap the benefits efficiently. Robots aren’t top of the pile... yet It’s true that for Paid Media campaigns to flourish, they need to make use of automated technology. But rather than replacing human input, automation has created an industry demand for those who can operate the machines to their fullest capacity, building a new kind of foundation on which to base business models.  The automation elements currently tend to focus on the... --- ### Is last-click finally on its last legs? > Last-click getting on your last nerve? Google's taking care of it with a new attribution model to rule them all - all hail the reigning search engine. - Published: 2018-03-02 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/last-click-on-its-last-legs/ - Categories: Analytics, Data, Digital Marketing, Opinion Google’s closing the book on last-click with a new attribution model to rule them all. In May 2017, Google announced to its partners that the last-click attribution model was officially over and now 2018 looks to be the year that it makes good on its promise. It’s tough news for a model that’s been marketers’ go-to for years, and many still agree that last-click offers a satisfying picture of where your conversions are coming from. Be it a digital ad, an email campaign or a piece of SEO content, buyers will have been in contact with at least one of a brand’s outputs before they make a purchase, so it’s useful to have credit allocated to that touchpoint – it paints a clear portrait of which channel is performing best. It might not be the most sophisticated or accurate way of assigning credit, but it’s simple, easy to use and works well with most kinds of campaigns. Other rules-based models are available too, including Linear, Time Decay and Position-based, which improve on the sophistication to varying degrees, and are varyingly popular. And although many of them incorporate multi-touchpoints, none of them really stand up next to the rather more glamorous Google Attribution. We all know that the average transaction these days has multiple touchpoints – possibly as many as 30. Buyers customarily enter multiple searches, visit several to a dozen websites and browse reviews and feedback before making a purchase. That means ever increasing numbers of touchpoints before the conversion. This being the case, the data last-click can provide is just not detailed enough for marketers to reliably analyse their ROI and re-allocate resources to the best performing channels. If it seems wasteful to be spending on a campaign with a poor ROI ratio, you need to know which campaign it would be prudent to invest in as an alternative. This is where machine learning arrives on the scene. Google’s product uses machine learning to assign a weighted value to every to every single touchpoint along a consumer’s path to buying. Senior Director of Product Management for Analytics Management at Google explained how it works and why it’s such a game changer: “It creates a prediction model that learns by weighting a set of touchpoints on how likely a user is to purchase something. The presence and absence of marketing touchpoints across channels and across campaigns will either decrease or increase the likelihood of a conversion. ” The model considers: Ad creative Number of ad interactions Order of exposure Other variables to determine which clicks and keywords are the most effective at delivering results. Pretty thorough, then. Crucially, Google Attribution doesn’t just assign attribution accurately to all the touchpoints in play. It also identifies patterns for marketers, comparing the click paths of customers who convert to the click paths of customers who don’t, and in so doing examining a wide array of search behaviour. It’s meant to provide a much faster service than existing models and, enticingly, it’s also free in... --- ### Dynamic Creative just made Facebook advertising a whole lot easier > It’s no secret the FB ‘ad optimisation’ process can be a frustrating one. Facebook’s new ‘Dynamic Creative’ might be the solution you’ve been praying for. - Published: 2018-02-19 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/facebook-dynamic-creative/ - Categories: Social Media When it comes to putting together Facebook ads, we’re not struggling for options. Seductive images, seemingly perfect headlines, CTA buttons galore – there are ideas aplenty, but it can be a time-consuming (and expensive) business finding out which combinations will have the desired impact with the right audiences. And it’s no secret that the ‘ad optimisation’ process can be a frustrating one: test-running multiple ads in various iterations drains your resources while simultaneously watering down the results. But if it does what is says on the tin, Facebook’s new ‘Dynamic Creative’ might be the solution you’ve been praying for. What is Dynamic Creative? Introduced towards the end of 2017, Dynamic Creative essentially zips up your optimisation process by condensing many test streams to one content handover, and giving you the chance to try a decent range of options in one timely pop. Advertisers can submit up to 30 creative assets to Dynamic Creative, which are then mixed and matched by Facebook to see which combinations perform best. You can’t go completely wild, sadly. the overall limit of 30, you’re confined to the following restrictions: Five CTA button options Five descriptions Five headlines Ten images OR ten videos (you can’t include videos alongside images in the creative variations you submit – it’s got to be one or the other) Five text options. From these, up to 100 variations may be created, which far outstrips the realistic scope of manual A/B testing and gives you a far more comprehensive sense of what kind of creative content works best, and with whom. Dynamic Creative requires you to choose one broad audience with which to test your ads. Crucially, you need to be using the Quick Creation workflow to access Dynamic Creative (Guided Creation is not an option), and your campaign will need to be aiming for one of three objectives: App Installs Conversions Traffic Users thus far emphasise the need for patience – it’s key that you let the trial run its course, and don’t shut it down in the first two days. It may well take up to three days to complete, but it’s definitely worth the wait. How do I use Dynamic Creative? Set up your campaign using Quick Creation and save it as a draft. When you go back in to edit the ad set, the new Dynamic Creative option should present itself, and it’ll guide you through the process from there, allowing you to choose a daily budget and upload your creative variations. It’s worth remembering that Facebook can run a considerably more sophisticated trial than we could manually, because its algorithms learn statistical data at super-human speeds, and so can predict responses to content at an impressive rate. This being the case, probability for leads and conversions is maximised at each level, while your cost per click (or lead or conversion) is gratifyingly reduced. Reports thus far have shown Dynamic Creative to have a very encouraging impact indeed, with some users claiming results have been up to three... --- ### Google My Business 2017 - Updates You May Have Missed > Change was afoot for Google My Business in 2017 – are you up to date with the updates? If it’s been a while since you updated it’s time to see what's new - Published: 2018-01-19 - Modified: 2024-04-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-my-business-2017-updates/ - Categories: Google Algorithm Updates, Mobile, SEO Change was afoot for Google My Business in 2017 – are you up to date with all the developments? Google devotees will be familiar with the relentless cycle of updates and changes to the search engine’s services, and Google My Business was no different. New developments were announced almost every month in 2017, and although a number of the updates were relatively small scale, they’re all worth knowing about. If it's been a few months, or perhaps longer since you looked at your listing, it's time to get up to speed with what has changed. JANUARY GMB got friendlier for businesses with multiple locations. Location insights via the new Google My Business API. Version 3. 2 of the API added support for insights on the locations in your account. The first update of the year meant developers can now build applications that better manage other branches and third parties, making it easier to handle large or complicated Google My Business accounts. The API gives users the opportunity to manage locations at scale by editing location information, reading and responding to customer reviews and creating or updating posts, (including photographs). MARCH GMB brought more detail about your businesses accessibility. Enter accessibility attributes for your business. This update collects information about your business’s accessibility, and then shares that information with customers. You’re asked to respond yes or no (in fairly specific terms) to questions regarding the availability of features like wheelchair-accessible entrances, seating or parking, and those details are then displayed for your customers’ reference. APRIL Brought more insights about how customers find your business. This was a big month for My Google Business, and saw a number of changes to the API function, insights feature and attribute options. Add full menus to your locations via the new Google My Business API. A minor development of the API feature that means users can update menu details such as descriptions and prices. Download bulk insights for your listings. Insights are crucial clues as to how customers access your listing. For the most part, customers find sites via Google Search and Maps, and insights give you access to that information. But this new feature means you can download insights for multiple listings, which should create a picture of how the online presences of different chain locations are performing on the platforms through which customers most regularly find them. Enter URL attributes for your business to add links to more kinds of information, such as a restaurant's menu. This update does what it says on the tin: as of April, Google My Business users could add URLs for locations or menus by entering the relevant URL in the corresponding attribute column. JUNE Major update gave users better communication of their offers and events & free mobile friendly websites. Post timely updates on new products, special offers and upcoming events. Stay engaged with your customers by sharing news directly from your listing. Posting through Google My Business means you can share services, products and events on heavily used platforms like Google... --- ### The state of attribution in 2018 > While we eagerly await Google's attribution product, we look at the current state of attribution in 2018 and reasons to get onboard the data-driven train. - Published: 2018-01-16 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/state-of-attribution-2018/ - Categories: Analytics, Digital Marketing, Opinion The world of marketing data science is eagerly awaiting the Attribution product from Google, due to launch in Q1 of 2018. This is probably one of the most highly anticipated launches from Google, as it excites not only the data buffs, but the whole community. While we wait for the news from Google, we take a look at the state of attribution and reasons why everyone should get onboard the alt="" width="1024" height="135" /> The current state of play: Measurement unit : Hit -> Session -> User Attribution : Largely last-click As Google Analytics has developed, matured and become an enterprise level product, there have been a few shifts in the unit of measurement paradigm. Firstly, measurement and tracking have moved from the simplistic 'hit' approach to the more sophisticated 'session' metric. The need to understand user-behaviour beyond the 'page-view' made this decision an obvious one. With the shift in behaviour caused by mobile, the internet has become user-centric, and in a world where experience is now key, the 'session' metric is somewhat lacking – hence we’re seeing a second shift in measurement paradigms, towards the 'user' metric. As we’ve become so much more sophisticated in our advertising, with audience consideration, at introducing channels that are brand-building or contributing to the user-experience outside the “in-market” pool, why are we still stuck on measuring conversions on the last click model? Well, last-click attribution is roundly understood, it's easy to grasp and widely spread. Everyone in the industry understands it and is able to operate within it’s parameters. Alongside these “advantages” it is also easy to reverse engineer, meaning that tracking mishaps or creative tagging can easily be remedied. This forgiving nature of it means that clarity in data is not a stringent requirement. Does all of this make it “wrong”? Definitely not, it's just a little tired, fairly unsophisticated and somewhat short-sighted when it comes to measuring the more sophisticated channels. While some other static attribution models have been available in GA for quite a while, and the multi-channel funnel reports on assisted metrics have been pretty useful to shift the mindset from the last click method, they've lacked the dynamic ability to measure an ever changing landscape. Introducing >available here. Why is this a better approach? Simply because it democratises attribution, it’s able to dynamically change the rules with every new channel combination that results in a conversion, and it takes every single touchpoint into account. It also shifts the focus from attribution for the sake of adoption, to attribution as a true and accurate means of optimisation. No surprise that Google has already rolled it out into their Double Click and AdWords products already. While this all sounds like the perfect solution, there are some things to keep in mind: It is not possible to easily reverse engineer the model, meaning that tagging mistakes are costly and may render the results unusable. Sending data into the wrong channel will change the weighting of it and may cause unexpected results. Get in touch with Found for a tracking/ GA audit. Years... --- ### Case Study: BrightonSEO > For the last few years, we’ve supported BrightonSEO with social media strategy and management for their must-attend bi-annual conference. - Published: 2018-01-09 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/case-study-brightonseo/ - Categories: General News Originally posted on white. net BrightonSEOFor the last few years, we’ve supported BrightonSEO with social media strategy and management for their must-attend bi-annual conference. To date, we’ve boosted BrightonSEO’s social following, increased promotional activity, helped instigate more conversations with their fans, and helped build anticipation for future conferences; All while simultaneously increasing their engagement. More importantly, we’ve established a long-term and successful partnership. We’re delighted to be a part of such an incredible event that truly helps the digital community grow and do their jobs a little better. Client BrightonSEOYear: 2018The Challenge. As one of the biggest digital marketing conferences in Europe, BrightonSEO sees a surge in social engagement throughout the course of the event. The challenges they face include maintaining engagement in the run-up to, and following the event, as well as ensuring that the messages they send are noticed in such a saturated social feed. With plans to double in size in September 2016, BrightonSEO wanted us to develop a social media strategy and management plan that built anticipation in the run-up to the event, improved the community feel for attendees throughout the event itself, and developed a fear of missing out for those back in the office to support future ticket sales. Our Solution. We created a range of recognisable #brightonSEO branded graphics to promote individual speakers in the run up to the event, countdown tweets to build anticipation, and key takeaway tweets to highlight the quality of the day itself. These assets not only looked professional but were useful for delegates planning their day. They were also designed to be easy for speakers and delegates to share and to stand out in their/our audience’s crowded social feeds. The consistent use of the hashtag also encouraged delegates to do the same. We combined scheduling with real-time social media management. This enabled us to balance the promotion of prepared messages with spontaneous interaction with BrightonSEO’s community as they commented on the event, seeding BrightonSEO’s messages into the wider conversation. The Results. 96% increase in hashtag use in April 2016 464 more Twitter messages than April 2015 760 new followers gained and sustained in Septemeber 2015 New followers gained and sustained in April 2016 Despite achieving significant increases in activity and engagement in September 2015, we managed to maintain and build upon this growth in April 2016. In April we achieved a record 5,721 uses of the #brightonSEO hashtag in original tweets (not including retweets) on the day of the conference itself; total usage was 96% more than what we achieved in the entire month of September 2015. This resulted in the event trending on Twitter for 7. 5 hours, at one stage trending higher than Obama’s visit to the UK. Total mentions increased to 1435 in April 2016. This built upon the 1174 mentions we achieved in September 2015; itself almost doubling the 734 mentions earned in April 2015. Engagement rates of tweets also saw a considerable increase, and in April 2016 the number of clicks through to the BrightonSEO... --- ### Advanced targeting using custom audience lists in Google Analytics > Targeting the right audience is key to meeting your business and marketing objectives. To find out more about advanced targeting at Found. - Published: 2017-12-08 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/advanced-targeting-using-custom-audience-lists-in-google-analytics/ - Categories: Analytics, Google Algorithm Updates, How to Targeting the right audience is key to meeting your business and marketing objectives. Thorough audience research and analysis will help you both market to existing customers and reach new ones. Herein lies the value of using ‘custom audience’ lists on Google analytics, where you can either use preconfigured audiences or develop your own from scratch, discovered through analytical investigation. This is where data & analytics come together with paid search specialists to change the world. 1. Google pre-packaged audiences Ease yourself into advanced targeting by using the audiences that Google has already managed for you. Choose from options such as: New Users, Returning Users, Users who visited a specific section of my site/app Users who completed a goal conversion, Users who completed a transaction (this is already configured to include any user with more than zero transactions). For Google’s full instructions, click here. 2. Creating your own custom audience The first step to creating an audience for your marketing purposes is to collect and collate data around them. This is most effectively done by combining the best functions of Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager. Google AdWords is the more simplified, original way to collect and utilise users’ behaviour analytics. AdWords tag audience options are very simple (E. g. Users who have visited URL “/xyz”). It works in a pinch, but the downside is that it’s limited in terms of the data it can collect and is therefore considered outdated. Roll on Google Tag Manager Once you install Google Tag on your company’s websites, your audience potential explodes. The standard Google Analytics Page view tag includes the option to enable the collection of data for remarketing audiences in AdWords or DoubleClick. Don’t have tag manager yet? Not to worry. Simply enable remarketing in your Google Analytics Property Settings, as demonstrated below:     3. A juicy audience segment It doesn’t get any better than this (in 2017). Create a ‘segmented audience’, based on isolated subjects of your data that can be as specific and narrow as you wish. This is ideal for marketing and testing. For example, you could identify those ‘ghost shoppers’ who have serially place items in their shopping baskets but don’t follow through with their purchase. Those users are a perfect audience for a remarketing campaign as you can show them ads for discounts on the items in their basket or ads for free shipping, testing to what extent it prompts them to make their purchase. How to create an audience segment: getting you started Open the view in your analytics account, that includes the segment you want to use Open Reports – you can start with any Click + Add Segment Audience Overview report, + Add Segment highlighted ... open the segments list. Segments list 4.  Find the segment you want as the basis for your audience (in this example, Sessions with Transactions). Segments list, Sessions with Transactions segment highlighted   For a full break-down of instructions, go to Google’s instructions on how to segment your... --- ### CREATING A CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGY - Published: 2017-11-27 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/creating-content-marketing-strategy/ - Categories: Content Marketing Originally posted on white. netContent marketing; creating and distributing engaging content to your core target audience. But how does it work? What are the processes and best practices? What do we need to consider before, during and after strategising our content? In this blog, we reveal all. If you want to skip the blog, you can see all the slides here. Why do you need a content marketing strategy? First of all, why can we not just write any old content for our websites? The answer is because we need to create a loyal brand that resonates with our customers. In The Human Brand written by Chris Malone and Susan Fiske, there are two key principles when it comes to brand loyalty; Warmth – Connecting with humans and having the right values – and Competency – Being able to deliver the service to a high standard. For example, as digital marketers, we need values in our business that show passion for what we do.  We need to show warmth through the eagerness to explain and educate clients, friendly participation at events and sharing knowledge, as well as talking to clients/industry people about digital – beyond our day-to-day SEO and PPC roles. But at the same time, we need to show competency through knowledge of the latest changes in digital marketing, attending thought‐leadership events, and expanding knowledge beyond our immediate deliverable work. Personal connections are keyUltimately, personal connections with our audiences are key. The more we connect with our audience, the more we will improve rankings, drive traffic and increase awareness. This is especially in today’s digital market as traditional ranking signals are becoming less significant. Google’s algorithms are becoming so complex through machine learning that’s understanding more about what the user wants to find when browsing – not so many websites specifically optimised for keywords etc. The best metrics to measure how engaged the audience is with our content is Bounce Rate vs. Organic Position Average Time on Site vs. Organic Position Engagement. This shows that Google is recognising that the more time a user spends on your site, the better the rankings you’ll have. The core ranking factors like high-quality backlinks and keyword targetting are now just not enough to get by. It’s all about suiting your content to your users to gain a personal connection so they’re more engaged with your brand. Step 1: Define Your Commander’s IntentSo, step 1 of what to consider when launching a content marketing strategy is defining your commander’s intent. What do we mean by this, well General George S. Patton once said: “Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity”. Essentially, if you lay out a step by step process of how someone should reach a goal then when there are complications, that person gets stuck because the original plan is then obsolete. If, however, you tell someone what the end goal is then their natural ingenuity will help them get to... --- ### How smart targeting takes your SEO recommendations further, faster > Find out all about smart targeting and how simple changes to your landing pages and content pieces can bring huge results acting towards your KPIs. - Published: 2017-11-16 - Modified: 2025-03-12 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/smart-targeting-takes-recommendations-further/ - Categories: SEO At the end of October, I was lucky enough to be able to speak at the first ManyMinds Give It A Go conference alongside some of the sharpest minds in the digital industry. I spoke to the 70-strong audience about the benefits that smart targeting can bring to your landing pages, content campaigns, and overall KPI performance. But what exactly is smart targeting? It is not content. One of the ongoing issues we face when talking to clients, partners, and even digital experts is explaining the difference between targeting and content. A lot of people see them as one and the same, with each serving the same purpose and just being part of the overall page. But that isn’t the case, and we need to understand that before we can start looking to improve it. Targeting is what we as SEOs and marketers use to tell search engines what our content is about. Content is then what answers the user’s query when they arrive at a result. But it isn’t one or the other. Without targeting, search engines will find it difficult to understand your content, and without the right content, it won’t answer user queries. We know that Google is putting more emphasis on user interactions, user experiences, and the relevance of your content to a query (thanks to those pesky algorithm updates... ). So, we need to identify what our audience needs, how Google then interprets this need, and then formulate a plan to fill the need. I know what you’re thinking, how do we do all of that every month and still deliver the same amount of work as before? Well, firstly, it’s no good delivering work in quantity instead of quality. The more time you spend on it, the better quality it is likely to be. But that’s beside the point, instead of compromising either, we follow this process and so can you: Whenever a new client comes on board, we spend the first month really getting to know their business, goals, and audience. In that first month we gain as much information from them as possible to begin our targeting approach. The first step is the keyword research where we use a number of tools and work with the client to determine core portfolios, expansion plans, and potential interest areas. Once we have that, we can go into more detail, or more niche/longer tail searches, to begin to get an understanding of what and where they are ranking for currently. This leads us to the benchmarking stage. During the benchmarking stage, we gather all performance data for the website and all current ranking data for each of the keywords. This then shows us where there are instantly potential areas for improvement, but that can’t be guaranteed until a gap analysis and competitor review are carried out. The gap analysis looks at the pages across the client website – what they currently have in terms of service pages/product pages/blog posts/resources etc. The competitor analysis then looks... --- ### SCALING SEO SERVICES - Published: 2017-11-13 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/scaling_seo_services/ - Categories: SEO This article was written based on Ungagged 2017 presentation given by Hannah Thorpe, you can view the full slides here. Originally posted on white. net Today’s digital market is continually changing so it’s imperative to adapt the day-to-day running of your business accordingly for optimum efficiency. For example, machine learning. Google’s algorithms use data and statistics to learn on their own to understand exactly what users want when browsing the web. Similarly, personalisation is a key part of creating businesses which engage with their core target audiences. On top of this, businesses have to enter the world of automation as manually intensive tasks take a back seat. Why manually send out ten tweets a day when you can do so in a fraction of the time with automated social media posts across multiple platforms? Some may say this is an information overload and that is where SEO expertise comes in. When should you invest more in SEO? There is always a time to invest more in SEO practices. Whether you’re seeing a stagnant performance, rapid growth or a steady decline, each stage can he helped through good SEO. But at the same time, depending on the business goals, how much should you invest and when? For example, you may want to invest in stagnant performance because you would like the opportunity to fast-track to rapid growth, but at this stage, you have lower revenue and cash flow. It’s about being smart with your money and investing a feasible amount during a time it will be most effective. The timescale of SEO’s impact is unpredictableSEO takes time to see results so in many cases it is seen as a gamble. But you may well have insights which can speed up the process. Have you had time working on the site? Do you have competitor knowledge? Experience in SEO? Historic data? The people investing in SEO often have more actionable skills than they may have initially realised. So, we’re not exactly sure when the SEO will have its impact but we still need a maximum return for minimum effort. It’s at this stage, investors need to be savvy and think very hard about investing money effectively, having the team to do the job and finding those time savers. Invest money effectivelyThe 3X Rule is an ideal way to have a template of how much to invest and where. As a rule of thumb, employees should be delivering three times more deliverable work than their salary. The best way to measure this is monthly salary versus how many hours and the price of billable work. So, first off, invest in technology. You have your team of humans, now let the technology do its bit too. Before investing, ask yourself some questions. Does the technology save you time across multiple clients? Are there multiple uses? Does it provide better or more accurate data than you already have? Does it free up your team’s headspace for other tasks? Stop doing the tasks you hateMost of... --- ### Digital PR Case Study: Miele > As part of our SEO campaign brief to help increase organic traffic to Miele’s UK e-commerce website, one of our goals was to increase brand awareness - Published: 2017-11-09 - Modified: 2025-04-07 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/casestudy-miele/ - Categories: Ecommerce, General News We used one of Miele’s offline assets, cooking classes run at their Oxfordshire and London showrooms, as the basis for a successful outreach campaign with bloggers and local press. The positive response evolved into a small series of blogger events. Connecting Miele with influencers increased brand and product awareness – both of the classes and Miele’s appliances – earning coverage across domains with a relevant audience. The Challenge. As part of our wider SEO campaign brief to help establish and increase organic traffic to Miele’s UK e-commerce website, one of our goals was to increase brand awareness of Miele’s appliances. Additionally, we need to boost the company’s online authority by generating links and brand mentions on thematically relevant sites. Due to the prohibitive cost of Miele’s products, we had to find alternative ways to connect those with influence amongst Miele’s audience with the brand. We also had to work with a limited budget and without original research to the website, making it difficult to stand out amongst an increasingly crowded market. Our Solution. The existing cooking classes held at Miele’s showrooms are perfect, an affordable avenue to introduce food bloggers to the brand. With the cost of courses ranging from £30 to £125, they are also budget friendly. Our digital PR team worked with the internal PR team at Miele – who conduct larger scale press events – by instead targeting influential and up-and-coming bloggers. We started by researching and segmenting bloggers by interest & location. Then we used X to engage with the food blogger community through hosting a #fdbloggers chat. We dealt with special requests, directions, public transport schedules, follow-up recipes and more. As more bloggers wrote about their experiences, we had others approaching us to take part. We reached a point where we could hold invitee-only blogger classes with bespoke agendas. The Results. 30 new linking domains 510% increase in page traffic 84% response rate from bloggers The campaign led to 30 different blogs and websites with an audience interested in food and kitchen equipment linking through to Miele’s UK website, alongside brand mentions in others. This offered a boost to the site’s authority within the wider SEO campaign, plus a 510% increase in traffic to the cooking course homepage. Thanks to our highly-targeted and innovative offer, we achieved a tremendous 84% response rate from those that we contacted. Opportunities included those writing on a gluten-free lifestyle, local press coverage and a blogger who had enrolled on a patisserie course at a local college only to have it cancelled. Importantly, the campaign also engaged writers for our target audience with the Miele brand, potentially leading to future mentions. It also gave wider exposure to the cooking classes themselves and delivered social media attention that had been hard to earn previously. "I only accept invites to events which I would've gone to anyway, and ones that I think my readers will be interested in. One event that really stands out for me though is the dinner I went... --- ### SOLVING THIN CONTENT > Thin content can be a considerable problem for SEO; limiting the organic performance of many websites. This presentation talks through internal near duplicates and using canonicals as a solution to solve them. - Published: 2017-11-08 - Modified: 2024-04-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/solving-thin-content/ - Categories: Content Marketing This article was written based on a Pubcon presentation given by Hannah Thorpe, you can view the full slides here. Originally posted on white. netThin content can be a considerable problem for SEO; limiting the organic performance of many websites. This presentation talks through internal near duplicates and using canonicals as a solution to solve them. What is thin content? So, what is thin content? There are multiple forms of thin content. Internal True Duplicates (when the copy across two pages on a site is identical), Cross-site True Duplicates (when the copy across two pages on two separate sites is identical), Internal Near Duplicates (when the generic parts of a page are duplicated), Cross-site Near Duplicates (when generic parts of a site are duplicated across multiple sites), low Unique Ratio (a small percentage of a site’s content is unique), and High Ad Ratio (a high percentage of a site’s content is ad-focused). Avoid doorway pagesIt’s important to avoid doorway pages. Doorways are sites or pages created to rank highly for specific search queries. They are bad for users because they can lead to multiple similar pages in user search results, where each result ends up taking the user to essentially the same destination. They can also lead users to intermediate pages that are not as useful as the find destination. It’s so obvious to Google the intent of a doorway page. Great content is all about uniqueness and giving the user helpful information – doorway pages are neither. You’re not going to make deliberately thin content, but what if your products are all similar? Well, they are similar but they’re not exactly the same. Identifying thin content and finding a solutionYou may have a product with a single variation. For example, the same book may have a paperback and hardback version. Yes, they’re the same book but users may well be searching for a paperback or hardback version. Tools like PI Datametrics help you track the position changes of these two keywords to understand if your site is differentiating these two products. So, how do we differentiate the content and get high rankings for similar products? The solution is to first identify which keywords people use, then understand what the audience want on the landing page, then using canonicals to consolidate the equity, and finally, monitoring the impact closely. Identify the keyword people actually useFirst up, identify the keyword people use. So if you have a product ‘Circular Label 203 (76)(51) mm Diameter’, people are likely to be searching for ‘Circular Labels on A4 Sheets’ or simply ‘Circular Labels’. By doing a quick keyword research for all these product categories, you’ll have a list of the most relevant keywords and, in turn, you’ll know which content the users want. Consolidate link equity with canonical tagsThen one of the most important aspects of thin content, especially for a site with a broad product range, is to consolidate the equity. You may have a selection of A4 circular labels with unique parameters from... --- ### 6 ways to improve your agency-client relationship > Discover six practical ways to strengthen your agency relationship, from clear expectations to collaboration, ensuring a partnership that drives success. - Published: 2017-10-27 - Modified: 2024-12-16 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/6-ways-get-agency-relationship/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, How to We all want to be able to find ‘the one’ – that special one with whom we can have an enduring relationship, who appreciates us, keeps their promises and rarely disappoints. You guessed it, I’m talking about the client-agency relationship. In practice, any relationship can be difficult to sustain, but when a client finds the right agency and vice-versa, they’re in it for the long haul. So, what is it that makes some professional relationships healthier than others? Check out the 6 key factors below to help you get the most from the relationship with your agency:   1. Objectives. Agreeing on simple and measurable tasks and a longer-term objective will build a lasting foundation to your relationship. So work together to build key performance indicators that are clear but also measurable.   2. Communication. A reliable agency will make it easy for their clients to ask questions and express concerns. In the early stages of a relationship, clients are often hesitant to complain but if discontentment is left to simmer, it’ll end up boiling over. To avoid this, express any concerns you may have with your agency at any time. Here are some tips:- Express any and every worry before it becomes too big to manage. - Ensure your agency contact implements processes to aid communication, such as a weekly call, providing regular opportunity for review and feedback.   3. Adaptability. If you can evolve, you can survive. The ability of an organisation to adapt has been called the competitive advantage. Someone who is adaptable is open to new ideas, and doesn't need to do things just because "that's how they've always been done. " They're able to anticipate changes and don't panic when things don't go according to plan. Whilst your agency should always work to the plan you’ve agreed, staying adaptable when things out of your agency’s control change will hold you in good stead.   4. Overcome the obstacles. Every relationship needs work and compromise to flourish. It’s normal for there to be friction and some disagreements, but it’s not challenges that define your relationship it’s how you overcome them. Keep an open mind to new ideas. 5. Get to know each other. Don’t be afraid to see your agency team face to face, spend time with them, understand what they have to do to deliver for you and help them understand what your business expects from them and from you. A good working relationship can be as fun as it is effective.   6. Be yourself. While I hope the above guidance is helpful to you, the points are by no means the formula for a successful professional relationship. Each connection is unique and should be treated as such. Often the best tactic is to just be yourself and not overthink things.   Looking to build a stronger partnership with your agency? At Found, we specialise in creating seamless collaborations that drive award-winning and measurable success. Let’s work together to achieve your business goals - contact... --- ### Found set to Disrupt the digital marketing landscape > We are very proud to announce that Found has acquired youth marketing agency Disrupt. - Published: 2017-10-19 - Modified: 2024-04-11 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-set-disrupt-digital-marketing/ - Categories: General News We are very proud to announce that Found has acquired youth marketing agency Disrupt, and are mashing together our two award-winning agencies’ proven expertise in data, analytics, social content, influencer and performance marketing to bring a distinctive new approach to our digital offering. Tina Judic, CEO of Found, says:“From the moment I met the Disrupt team, I was hooked. We’re now faced with an exciting new digital world led by the most connected generation of digital users. Disrupt operates in the thick of these users’ lifestyles, creating experiences and content that connects, entertains and enriches their lives. It is a company that has earned itself an enviable reputation for making brands famous at the cutting edge of culture. ” A pioneering creative content and influencer marketing team, Disrupt was started by entrepreneurs Matt Thorne and Phil Kemish who met whilst working together with publishers and brands to create native content for culture-savvy audiences. The agency is fuelled by a passion to positively impact youth culture and its team has an instinctive ability to find the right audiences, create the right content and deliver it in the right moment. It has been instrumental in pioneering branded stories in the UK urban scene for such brands as AG BARR, Absolut, Thomas Cook’s Club 18-30, and House of Marley. “Bringing together Disrupt’s brilliant understanding of how to successfully manipulate the social space with Found’s own passion for remastering ROI represents a major change in how we can now elevate the way brands connect with their customers. It provides the industry with an exciting proposition for expanding the way businesses successfully market to these influential digital users and think more disruptively. ” The Disrupt team have relocated to Found’s Smithfield headquarters and we’re all super excited to work together to, as Disrupt would put it, ‘make more brands famous’. Phil Kemish, co-Founder of Disrupt, says:“We are really excited to join forces with Found. From the moment we met Tina and the team we could see that they were our type of people: creative, passionate, focused and, above all, we have a shared vision to create a digital agency for the future. By joining our entrepreneurial spirit, experience and talented people together, we believe we will be able to take what we've developed and super-charge it at scale to help our clients innovate and succeed in the rapidly changing, disruptive digital era. ”Matt Thorne, co-Founder of Disrupt, says:“We believe the future of marketing lies in the ability to understand and measure content and engagement. We strive to go deeper and beyond the vanity metrics to really create brand fame. Together with Found, we have a real opportunity to solidify this approach and break the barriers of ROI for our clients, enabling us to offer truly exciting and measureable content on digital channels that has real impact and authenticity to the audiences. ” Tina adds:“Found’s ability to analyse and break the digital world down into a Web of Moments means brands can now successfully accompany their... --- ### Advertisers bite into Apple over new ad-blockers in Safari 11 > Major digital advertising and marketing organisations have condemned Apple’s plan to introduce cookie-blocking technology into the new version of Safari 11, saying it’ll “hurt the user experience and sabotage the economic model of the internet.” - Published: 2017-10-16 - Modified: 2024-04-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/ad-blockers-safari/ - Categories: General News Major digital advertising and marketing organisations have condemned Apple’s plan to introduce cookie-blocking technology into the new version of Safari 11, saying it’ll “hurt the user experience and sabotage the economic model of the internet. ” What’s all the fuss about Apple’s update? Here’s the short of it; cookies operate on users' Safari browsers as they always have, but a new feature, called “Intelligent Tracking Prevention” (ITP) limits how advertisers and websites can track users across the internet by placing a 24-hour limit on ad retargeting. This marks a big leap from previous conditions, under which marketers and ad-tech companies could access cookies' data for 30 days. Google has also made a move on the adblocking market, testing a built-in adblocker for its Chrome browser, which is used by 54. 9% of all internet users according to StatCounter. The feature blocks what the company calls “intrusive ads” like auto-playing video and audio, popups which block content and more. Six trade groups—the Interactive Advertising Bureau, American Advertising Federation, the Association of National Advertisers, the 4A’s and others are “deeply concerned” with Apple’s plans. In an letter, published by AdWeek, the six disgruntled groups write that Apple’s update as “unilateral and heavy-handed approach is bad for consumer choice and bad for the ad-supported online content and services consumers love. ” They also warn that the changes could affect the “infrastructure of the modern internet,” which largely relies on consistent standards across websites. ITP will likely lead to consumers seeing fewer ads for goods they've already purchased, which doesn’t sound too bad does it? But, naturally, marketers are far from happy as it’s likely to create chaos for them in trying to determine the results of their mobile advertising ads. As the six groups write, “blocking cookies in this manner will drive a wedge between brands and their customers, and it will make advertising more generic and less timely and useful. ” Apple’s defense When it first announced in June, Apple said the changes are meant to improve trust with consumers, explaining that “users feel that trust is broken when they are being tracked and privacy-sensitive data about their web activity is acquired for purposes that they never agreed to. ” Apple has since defended the new ad tracking prevention as part of its commitment to user privacy. In a statement given to The Verge, Apple said: “Safari was the first browser to block third-party cookies by default and ITP is a more advanced method for protecting user privacy. The new ITP feature detects and eliminates cookies and other data used for this cross-site tracking, which means it helps keep a person's browsing private. The feature does not block ads or interfere with legitimate tracking on the sites that people actually click on and visit. Cookies for sites that you interact with function as designed, and ads placed by web publishers will appear normally. Ad tracking technology has become so pervasive that it is possible for ad tracking companies to recreate the majority of a person's... --- ### Blank Canvas: Facebook’s in-app advertising innovation > Learn how to create engaging Facebook Canvas ads with best practices and strategies to boost your brand's reach and performance on the platform. - Published: 2017-09-28 - Modified: 2024-11-06 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/facebook-canvas-ads/ - Categories: Social Media Launched earlier this year, Facebook’s Canvas adverts (essentially alternatives to the instant articles fad) run full screen rich media pages... drum roll please... in-app. Canvas uses the same technology employed on the Facebook app to display photos and videos quickly, claiming to load as much as 10 times faster than the standard mobile web. It’s mobile optimised of course – that’s the whole point – and are accessible from news feed ads on Ad Android and iOS; soon to be available on other apps and platforms like Instagram. The key is that these ads are bright and immersive, but don’t require users to leave the social media platform. Instead the ad loads almost instantly, drawing you into its full screen wonder world at the touch of a button and saving you the five to ten second wait time that mobile websites customarily require since tripling in size in the years following 2011. And once you’ve made the jump, Canvas adopters will be free from the shackles of low-power platforms, delving instead into the potentially lucrative world of interactive features, including video, tilt-to-view images, animations and a whole load of other content, without the perils of overcrowding or confusions. Plus it’s pretty easy to get involved, and it won’t break the bank either: businesses will pay the same as they always do for news feed adverts, they just get to guide the user to better quality artwork. The only difference is that Canvas ads bear a small arrow which indicate that a full-screen experience is about to envelope you in all its technicolour glory. They’re a self-service business, too. No coding needed, no messing around with new software – just a bit of clicking here, some dragging there. Drop in a GIF, add some clickable buttons, play with your headers and then you’re off: set the attributes, target who you want and start treating your audience to a whole new advertising confection. But do they work? The numbers say yes. The key figures according to Facebook are as follows: 53% of users that open a Canvas ad view at least half of it The average view time is 31 seconds The crème de la crème of Canvas ads can win themselves more than 70 seconds of view time per user. But even in this new and improved medium, competition is stiff. Variation in content and format keeps the users scrolling – pages of text won’t cut the mustard – so what are the insider scoops on how to up your Canvas game? Tell a story. Create a narrative and walk the user through with engaging images. This will create a memorable process and hold attention for longer. Choose your first page carefully. Canvases aren’t like Carousel ads – your users will only be able to see one slide at a time. Make sure the initial presentation is compelling and inviting. Include a Call To Action (CTA) button. You can have these buttons on as many slides as you like, so wherever... --- ### Founders Favourite BrightonSEO Presentations September 2017 > The Found SEO team headed down to Brighton for the UK's largest search marketing conference. Here our are favourite talks and takeaways from BrightonSEO. - Published: 2017-09-22 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/best-brightonseo-presentations-september-2017/ - Categories: SEO Last Friday several members of the Found SEO team headed down to Brighton for the UK's largest search marketing conference BrightonSEO. We split up throughout the day to attend different sessions and reconvened on the seafront at the end of the day to share our favourite talks and takeaways from the day over some well-earned doughnuts. Raymond Olaibi - Junior Technical SEO Executive The talk by Dominic Woodman about matching consumer intent to pages and templates was the best talk I attended during the day. Even if this talk was more targeted towards on-site optimisation and perhaps not for what I do on a day to day basis (Tech SEO) – I believe the practicality of the session was what made it my stand out talk of the day. Being my first time at BrightonSEO I felt like there was perhaps a lack of practical sessions, I was looking for something that not only gave me some good insights but also gave me a series of steps that I could have taken away, reviewed, and implement into my work or add into my arsenal of tools in case the need to use it ever arose. Dominic did exactly that, and he perfectly highlighted how SEO is not only about links; but is important for webmaster to have a well-defined information architecture to fully understand customers, know what the competitors are doing and have a clear view of what people search for and what is currently being provided. Once a clear information architecture is created, webmaster will be able to effectively target consumers to the right pages; by fully understanding what their intent is and providing a page which matches that intent. I won’t go into the nitty gritty of the steps he shared but I strongly recommended for those people looking to improve their on-site optimisation and increase their organic traffic to go through Dominic’s BrightonSEO slide deck. Ellie Hubble - Copywriter Other than being viciously mauled by a seagull (but the less said about that the better), BrightonSEO did not disappoint. The talk which I got the most from this year was definitely Rebecca Brown’s session called “Why you Should Scrap your ‘Content’ Budget Line”. One of the hardest things about working in content is actually justifying its worth and proving its efficacy. Rebecca’s first two big points were that there’s “too much theory around measurement” and “not enough tangible advice on how exactly to forecast content spend”. It’s impossible to pitch content to a client if the ROI is hazy at best. Rebecca’s solution to this industry dilemma? To use content to service a channel. “Budget should only be allocated for content when your forecasting and strategy proves there is a need within one of these channels”. The content can then be tied directly to the performance metrics of the channel it sits in. I’m not a religious person but I’ve never wanted to yell “preach! ” so much in a crowd of strangers. Content itself isn’t the... --- ### Found - Google Premier Partner award winners 2017! > Found announced as the winner at the 2017 Google Premier Partner Awards in the Video Innovation category in the EMENA region for our work with Fender! - Published: 2017-09-11 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-premier-partner-award-winners-2017/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, General News On Thursday 7th September, Found was announced as the winner at the 2017 Google Premier Partner Awards in the Video Innovation category for our work with Fender! Recognised for our work in two categories, we were very excited to join the top 3% of agencies and rub shoulders with the elite of digital marketing talent from all over Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. Shortlisted in the Search Innovation category for Funky Pigeon and the Video Innovation category for Fender, we knew we had two strong submissions. To win one and to be recognised by Google in this way makes everyone here at Found extremely proud, especially given the competition and that this was not just the UK but for the whole of the EMENA region. Both were fiercely contended categories with 40 agencies shortlisted in the Search Innovation category. Winning the award in the Video Innovation category with our submission ‘Fender - Don’t fret about it’ has really put the cherry on top of a cake that has already been iced with our other award wins this year. We can now add a Google Premier Partner trophy to what has been a very good haul of awards in 2017 so far; it will certainly take pride of place here at Found Studios for some time to come. If you are interested in hearing about the work we have been doing with Fender you can read more about it here. We’d like to thank our hosts Google and all the other shortlisted agencies in attendance for what was an excellent night. --- ### Could this be The One: does every business need a chatbot in its life? - Published: 2017-09-07 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/business-chatbots/ - Categories: AI & Machine Learning, Opinion If you’re not familiar with chatbots already, the clue’s in the name. Chatbots, or conversational agents (or even dialog systems), are programs that mimic human interaction, encouraging visitors to a site to hold online conversations with them over a messenger service. They are fast becoming a crucial cog in businesses’ online marketing and customer service machines. In fact, following the industrial revolution’s disruption of manufacturing, the advent of consumer internet and then the dawn of social media and mobile phones, many hail conversational robots as the next obviously revolutionary tool to have a serious impact on business practices. Hence why big tech companies like Microsoft Google, and Facebook are making huge bets on chatbots. Chances are, then, that you’ve had a brush with a chatbot yourself. If you’ve bought anything online or submitted a minor customer service complaint, it’s highly likely that a chatbot was on the other end of the interaction. Chatbots are partly valuable for their standardised tone – sulky customer service representatives with poor language skills and a tendency to audibly lose their temper no longer need to enrage consumers, because chatbots are on hand to deal out consistently charming platitudes. That’s not to say there isn’t room for improvement – glitches in the technology can often lead to misunderstandings, nonsensical answers, and a failure to execute the task in hand. But the chatbot appeal comes largely from the fact that, as we become increasingly accustomed to using messaging apps for communicating with everyone about anything, the chatbot presents an opportunity to engage in dialogue (without waiting) with a ‘representative’ of the business. The implication is that our questions will be answered sooner and our problems will be solved faster. To the businesses’ great benefit, chatbots can be programmed to hold conversations simultaneously with numerous (and sometimes limitless) members or customers. Once the initial investment is done, the maintenance costs on chatbots are far thriftier than the restrictive activity of an expensive and potentially unreliable human-only support team. Chatbots also match the quirks of a new generation – the “millennials” for lack of a better term – and their deep-seated fear of making or receiving calls. An instant messaging-based conversation with a robot is a far more pleasing idea than a phone call with a stranger when 90% of your social interactions have been guided by a thumb swiping across a keyboard. In addition, chatbots enable the seamless use of multiple apps from one location. In these instances, there’s no need to close the text or voice conversation to follow a process like this: Pull up a map to a restaurant > look at the menu > make a reservation. The entire series of steps can be carried out from a single interface, making the experience quick and efficient as well as keeping the user engaged – unnecessary breaks in the experience or distracting changeovers are likely to increase drop off rate. Current productivity uses for chatbots can see them put to work as internal AI assistants,... --- ### Ad blockers: the forgivable or the damned? > As websites became increasingly dependent on ad revenue, and online advertising became more popular, the rise of the ad blockers wasn’t hard to predict. - Published: 2017-08-21 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/ad-blockers-forgivable-or-damned/ - Categories: Trends Over the last few years, online advertising has continued to expand its already vast reaches. 2014 saw the UK digital ad spend climb as high as an estimated £7. 2 billion, which was a £6. 3 billion jump from 2013. As websites became increasingly dependent on ad revenue to fund their pages, and as the kind of pages and programs that screen online advertising became more and more popular, the rise of the ad blocker wasn’t hard to predict. If you’re not familiar with the technique, it works like this: you can use a number of browser plug-ins that remove advertising from the web. The system looks for advertising content (like the kind that interrupts a streamed TV show, or pops up the top; bottom and side of a news site, say) and shuts it down, excluding it from the page and making it disappear. How many people are involved with using ad blockers? Lots. Publishers, industry bodies and networks seem to think the number is snowballing, and fast. The practice seems to have grown by 82% in the UK to reach 12 million active users in June 2015, according to study from PageFair (one of a number of platforms that works on providing ways for publishers to push back). These figures are hardly shocking in light of the general consensus that ads are frustrating, intrusive and disruptive. They interrupt users as they’re enjoying content they’ve sought, they distract the eye from text and pictures in the centre of the page and they delay your access to content you’ve selected, as in the case of autoplay adverts that come before video content. The irritatingly high incidence of YouTube’s pre-roll ads, for example, are often blamed for popularising ad blockers. Pop-up ads in particular are especially loathed – it’s no wonder Google banned them (although you’re still liable to run into rogue pop-ups that have slipped through the net. A heavy ad presence can also affect a page’s load time, meaning many of us will abandon a site if the wait is too long. Third party advertisements distributed by ad publishers also present security concerns, because they’re difficult to quality-check. The disconnect between quality and security encourages lots of those in the know to resort to ad blockers in an understandable bid to protect their systems from malware and other security breaches. And ad blocking is, of course, a real problem for publishers. Although ad block users would argue that they won’t be changing the natural course of click through rates because they wouldn’t have normally clicked on those adverts as it is, publishers argue back that their revenue comes from the number of views, which is definitely compromised by ad blocking. Mobiles prevented a momentary source of hope, but with September 2015’s introduction of an Apple operating system which facilitated Safari content blocking apps, things were looking bad for publishers all over again. This summer, Google declared that it would establish an ad blocker – or “filter” – for the... --- ### Digital marketing lessons from Vogue's offline marketing strategy > Digital marketing is a rapidly growing industry, crucial to any campaign. Read how Vogue goes against this grain and the importance and power of a brand. - Published: 2017-08-19 - Modified: 2024-11-06 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/digital-marketing-lessons-from-vogues-offline-strategy/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, Opinion, Trends Digital marketing is an industry that is becoming more and more demanding and competitive across the web. Today we have access to almost everything online, and at just a click of a button. In just over 20 years we have seen mobile phone devices change from needing an aerial the size of the handset to a slimline touch screen smart phone, with Siri navigating and answering our every need. It’s certainly evident that brands and services are becoming more reliant and involved online. Potential customers can now access, search and purchase on a whole range of devices, either on the go or in the comfort of their living room. It's this recognition of the online buyer that has shifted digital marketing to the forefront of any successful marketing and outreach strategy. After all, what use is your product or service if no one can easily find it? ! For the companies who market their products and services online where you rank on a Google SERP is crucial. In theory, the higher you rank, the higher the percentage of traffic that is likely to visit your site. Marketing strategies vary from brand to brand, company to company, all depending on what you want to achieve. Unconsciously, we tend to trust the first result we see (the highest ranked) as Google's aim is to provide and show us the best result for that particular search. It's a basic formula but one that is extremely difficult to achieve without professional advice and support. So what if you’re a brand and you don’t rank highly for key terms? Is this a problem? Should you be worried? Well, going against the grain for one such brand, this isn't a worry at all... It seems to date, the most iconic and globally accepted fashion magazine Vogue hasn't needed to follow the same rule. When searching Google for the generic term ‘fashion magazine’ (a term we would all expect to see Vogue ranking number one for), the result actually shows a number of much smaller and less authoritative competitors in higher positions, including Stylist and Elle magazine. Image taken from Google  When searching the term ‘fashion bible’, as Vogue is often referred to, you’ll see that Vogue doesn’t even appear within the SERP, and as the most powerful fashion influencing publication you’d think it would be high up there no matter what! Despite how the rest of the world have become reliant on developments online, it seems Vogue have maintained a large reliance on their presence offline and within print. Looking at stats, Vogue boast an impressive 12. 7 million print audience and a whopping 5 billion press impressions each month! So how have Vogue performed so well in print when technology advancement is taking over? Well, over the past 123 years, they have worked hard to become a brand as opposed to just a magazine. The Vogue brand mission has remained true and unaltered since the first issue back in December of 1892, where following their success on newsstands in New York USA, they brought it to... --- ### AI and its future uses in digital content creation > Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems are beginning to replace the human faces in a number of industries, is the realm of content creation the next in line? - Published: 2017-08-08 - Modified: 2024-09-23 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/ai-future-content-creation/ - Categories: Content Marketing, Trends Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems are beginning to replace the human faces in a number of industries and work forces, from media to healthcare. Last year, it was even heralded the ‘fourth industrial revolution’ at the World Economics Forum. With self-driven cars and dexterous robots on the rise, it’s hard to deny that we’re on the cusp of a new technological era. Digital content creation is no exclusion. In an industry that feeds off human qualities like creativity, empathy and humour – robots surely couldn’t rival human wit? Wrong. Did you know the content you’re reading was generated by a robot? Okay, it wasn’t actually – but soon it very well could be. Where will the AI revolution take us? In 2013, AI was in its infancy in digital content creation, now in 2017, it’s making waves in the commercial and public sectors. Businesses are rapidly dropping out of traditional marketing systems and opting for AI for its formidable ability to gather, analyse and forecast consumerist interests. AI can penetrate the jungle of data on the internet and help digital marketers create more suitable, and ultimately more profitable, advertisements for the right audiences, based on demographics (age, gender, interests, education, profession etc). A robot’s personal touch  AI has, ironically, paved the way for an ultra-personalisation in digital content-creation. As Ryanair’s head of digital experience, Dara Brady, explained, personalisation is “about being more relevant, more contextual, and putting the right things in front of people at the right time. It’s about having a relationship at a much deeper level. ” And this personalisation is now necessary for survival in the commercial arena. The AI in enterprise level personalisation tools provide a way to draw insight from insanely large amounts of data enabling marketers to leave the decisions in the tailoring and personalising of their web properties in the relatively safe automated hands of the machines. How many times have you logged onto Facebook to find an advertisement for a suede bag bizarrely similar to the one you recently looked at? Don’t tell me you just thought it was a coincidence... well that is just simple retargeting, the arrival of AI has the potential to make this space really very spooky indeed. Reducing manual effort and cashing in You, human, will never be as efficient as AI and maybe not as articulate either. By using certain tools and programmes, AI can convert raw data into well-written content in different formats, from blogs and product descriptions, all at a modest rate of 2000 articles per second. It’s no wonder that, according to Gartner, by next year machines will create an estimated 20% of business content! International companies like Yahoo, Samsung are already using automated content creation systems by AI. So AI is not just changing the face of digital creation, it might be removing the ‘face’ altogether. Coca cola recently ditched its blood and flesh creatives for software algorithms in a Frankenstein-like experiment to see whether AI can outdo their human creators. Mariano Bosaz, Coca-Cola’s global... --- ### Google to stop reading your emails for Gmail ads – but will this make Gmail ads less effective? - Published: 2017-08-03 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-stop-reading-gmails/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, Google Algorithm Updates Google recently announced, that it’s going to withdraw from one of its more controversial practices, the scanning of emails in gmail accounts, for targeted advertising. The long-running practice whereby Google’s purportedly blind algorithms, sift through users’ accounts to create personalised ads, is said to end later this year. With this change, Gmail will be based only on the user’s Google account settings, in line with the practice of ad-settings in other Google products such as Search ads, which a user will be able to control.  Quite simply, when a user opts out of ad personalisation in their Google account, it will now also apply to the ads they see in Gmail. This change in advertising practice, comes after years of mounting pressure from privacy advocates, who’ve long complained that the scanning of email contents amounts to unwarranted 'eavesdropping' on users. In 2014, in response to a lawsuit, Google agreed to stop scanning email content in the student Gmail accounts for advertising purposes. Again in December 2016, in response to legal measures, Google said it would scan emails in standard Gmail accounts until after the messages arrive to the user’s inbox. That said, the criticism has hardly hindered Google’s successful trajectory of reaching 1. 2 billion users, not to mention it’s soaring ad revenue; it’s parent company Alphabet makes more money from digital ads than any company on the planet — it’s expected to make $56 billion dollars in net digital ad sales in 2017. What will change? Currently for Gmail ads, Google scans the body and subject of the last few hundred non-spam emails, including deleted and archived messages, for keyword, domain and topics targeting. It then combines that information with everything else it knows about its users to build its advertising profiles for them. The change simply means that advertisers will rely on other indicators of what ads will appeal to its Gmail users; they’ll still be able to scan all e-mails for search indexing, filtering, spam and virus detection, and the new smart reply feature (which creates three automated responses based on incoming email that users can select with a click), just not for ads. Google will still utilise broad match keywords and topics, but instead of matching against email content, these keywords and topics will be matched to relevant interests that Google identifies based on browsing history. In addition, other signals will be monitored it accounts for when building audiences of signed-in users, who are opted into ad personalisation. As long as you’re signed into your Gmail account, Google can still root though search histories, YouTube browsing, and other Chrome activity. But of course, the change doesn’t mean Google will stop showing ads in Gmail. Gmail ads are predicted to have a minimal impact on advertisers. So, it shouldn’t be seen as a dramatic move, but rather as part of a wider shift to audience targeting driven by an increasing reliance on logged-in user data — demographics, search and browsing behaviour, and more — that Google utilised for personalised... --- ### Using IF statements in AdWords > Google says that “IF functions allow you to insert a specific message in your text ad when a condition has been met”. Pretty useful right? - Published: 2017-07-24 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/if-statements-adwords/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) What’s an IF? Google says that “IF functions allow you to insert a specific message in your text ad when a condition has been met”.   Basically, the IF function allows advertisers to cater specific copy to a certain audience or device without having to create two separate ads, according to  Samantha Drane, Sr. Retail Search Manager at CPC Strategy said. Isn’t that just an Ad Customiser? No! Unlike the Ad Customiser, the IF function is condition-based and operates independently of a feed,  working solely within your defined remits. Essentially, an IF function is an Ad Customiser on too many red bulls. IF I may explain. .   The only thing you need to know in order master IF functions are IF functions themselves. Not everyone has access to the IF function in their AdWords account. To find out if you or your client has access just edit one of your ads and by adding a {. A drop-down should appear. If you see the option IF function appear then you’ll know it’s enabled. Now check it out. If IF is enabled, you can use custom messaging to target your ad copy based on your defined conditions. Keep in mind that not all variables are accessible to IF enthusiasts – currently the only campaign options available are device and audience. The delightful Google had created a table outlining the differences between the two IF functions through examples: Perplexed? Let’s break it down. A dummies guide to IF syntax: Start with “{=IF” Add an open “(” after IF Follow with the targeting of “device=mobile” or “audience IN” If you’re using audience targeting, put the list you want to target inside parentheses. If you are targeting multiple audience lists, separate them with a comma. Put a comma after the targeting. Add the text to insert when targeting criteria is met. Close “)” Follow with a colon “:” After the colon, add the default text that will be used when the targeting criteria is not met. End with the closing curly bracket “}” When put together it looks like this: {=IF(device=mobile or audience IN(audiencelist1,audiencelist2), Custom Text): Default Text} Just remember: the biggest difference between the device and audience function is the inclusion of the “IN” field, which tells AdWords which audience lists you’re referencing. Now let’s get into the nitty and gritty of the two functions. Device-centered approach In the above example the IF function was set up to offer mobile users “Free Shipping On Mobile Orders” while the same ad shown to desktop users simply gives the classic “Buy Now”. Mobile-centered ads can be especially fruitful for businesses that derive high value from phone calls or location information. For example, marketers can now easily target mobile users looking for business hours, reviews or even directions while they’re out and about. Targeting an audience To make use of the IF function for audiences, marketers first have to have audience groups or lists defined. Audience groups completely depend on the individual needs and characteristics of... --- ### Listen to your website activity: it’s talking to you - Published: 2017-07-12 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/listen-website-activity-talking/ - Categories: Analytics, CRO, Data, Digital Marketing Website activity is notoriously difficult to measure – there are various definitions and it doesn’t present a single behaviour that can be assigned a single metric. But there’s plenty to learn from how users are interacting with your site, and how you can target your audiences more effectively based on analysis of various types of activity. Two areas that will give you immediate insight regarding your room for growth is your bounce rate, and the conversion rate from ‘add to cart’ and the checkout page. Monitor activity closely and you’ll find areas where improvement and development will provide satisfying returns from the consumers you want to engage. Bounce rate Bounce rate refers to the percentage of visitors who come to your website and leave without viewing any other pages. A high bounce rate means you’re not retaining many visitors – users who end up on your page, don’t find what they’re looking for and get the sense that they’d be better off looking somewhere else entirely, or users who find exactly what they want and aren’t persuaded to explore your offerings further. There is a third scenario. Users land on your page but everything they need and everything you want them to consume is on that page - a single-page site for example. This being the case, it’s not always clear whether a high bounce rate is definitely a bad thing, particularly if the call to action on your page is to re-direct a visitor to your eBay shop, for example, or encouraging users to call a number. To figure out what is and isn’t working according to plan, you’ll need a Google Analytics profile for your site. This will enable you to access valuable information like the bounce rate for each individual page, the best traffic sources, demographics data and your most effective keywords. In case of a single-page site or something similar, Google Tag Manager is your friend. By configuring event tracking correctly and setting “non-interaction” to FALSE, users who do interact with your page will no longer count as a bounce, giving you a much truer picture of your bounce rate. Once you have this material, renovations can begin: you’ll be better informed and therefore able to target audiences with greater precision. Work on your content. If a high bounce rate correlates with a low average time on the site, it may be that the audiences you’re bringing to your page are not finding what they want. Review your content and see if there are opportunities to add relevant information, or keep audiences on the page longer with videos and pictures. Sprinkle your sidebar with links to internal content that your users might like. They’ll scroll through the options for longer, and may well end up finding areas of the website that are less immediately accessible but that match their interests. Develop your product pages to present a wider range of information in a broader selection of formats. Reviews, manuals, case studies and plenty of photographs are... --- ### Get rich or die listening - Google brings rich snippets to podcast listings > Last month, Google played a familiar trick and quietly went behind the scenes to add a new rich results mark up – this time to podcasts. - Published: 2017-07-03 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/rich-snippets-podcast/ - Categories: SEO Last month, Google played a familiar trick and quietly went behind the scenes to add a new rich results mark up – this time to podcasts. The update was swiftly spotted and posted on Google+ with the observation that “a new data type has appeared in the Google reference library of structured data types: podcasts. ” It’s true that thus far, this kind of structured data is only supported in the Google App (version 6. 5 or higher) for Android devices and Google Home, but the development is certainly paving the way for podcast support markups on Chrome and Android. This is great news for podcasts, which despite climbing the ranks quickly as a hugely popular content format for material of every shape and size (comedy, politics, history, science – you name it) have remained video’s neglected younger cousin when it comes to structured data. And as an increasingly well-trodden platform, podcasts will now provide a structured data pedestal from which to seriously boost crucial elements like click-through rates and SERP presence. Rich snippets also help out at the other end, providing search engines with useful guidance when they crawl your content. With Google Authorship narrowing your options considerably, rich snippets are one of the few remaining ways to distinguish your results from the competition. Perhaps now that Google is bringing the party to podcasts, we can expect to pay attention to transcripts and other related podcast metadata too. For your guide to indexing podcasts, and to find the list of tags that the podcast’s RSS feed will require, visit the --- ### Get a handle on the do's and dont's: master the elusive art of the Pay Per Click campaign > Google Adword’s PPC campaigns can be a nifty way to drive targeted traffic to your site but there are pitfalls aplenty, and none are clearly marked. - Published: 2017-06-20 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/dos-and-donts-ppc-campaign/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) Google Adword’s Pay Per Click campaigns can be a nifty way to drive highly targeted traffic to your site, and it makes much swifter work of bringing in conversions than many other digital marketing strategies. But there are pitfalls aplenty, and none of them are clearly marked. Here’s our guide to navigating the stormy PPC seas. • DO put in the work on keyword research before planning your ads. Google’s Adwords Keyword Planner will do this for free, and will considerably increase your chances of bringing in the right results for your brand. • DO map out a series of targeted audiences and assign relevant keywords to each group. The closer you are to providing what users are searching for, the higher your CTR (click-through rates) will be, which will mean better quality scores and more bang for your buck. • DO prep the basics in advance. It goes without saying that you’d make your ad spend worth it by producing high quality copy for the advert itself, but it’s a good idea to ensure your website and landing page are in good nick before you send queues of users rushing to take a look. It’s professionalism and engaging content that will deliver encouraging conversion rates. • DO monitor and measure how your campaign fares once it’s up and running. You can use Conversion Tracking to ensure you receive conversion feedback to you Adwords, which will show you what works with who, and paint a more accurate picture of your ROI (return on investment). • DO re-optimise and retarget your ads to secure interest from visitors who have paid cursory attention on previous occasions, and so who might be persuaded to stay longer on your page. Conversions from users of this kind have a higher than average chance of translating into sales. • DO target based on location, which will help with accuracy and relevance. • DO familiarise yourself with the technical side of the CPC (cost per click) per targeted keyword, what your competitors are spending on their corresponding campaigns (and how your budget compares). And here’s what to avoid... • DON’T waste money on generic keywords. Users these days are experienced enough to search for exactly what they want, so don’t try a one size fits (and catches) all approach. It could take you down an expensive road to nowhere. • DON’T select keywords just because they reflect sizeable monthly search volumes. You’ll find yourself in a bigger pool contending with a wider range of competitors, and often your wares will be on display to lots of people, none of whom care enough to make your ad spend worth it. The same applies to attracting as many website visitors as possible. Targeted campaigns to engage specific audiences who are more likely to be interested in your brand or product is a more effective way to cash in your chips. • DON’T be negative – about negative key words. They may not be obviously connected with the promotion in... --- ### Slicing the social media cake: how and why you should put your budget behind audience segmentation > It’s a well-known issue that digital marketers sometimes struggle to demonstrate the value of social media to the budget-holders at their business. - Published: 2017-06-14 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/social-media-audience-segmentation/ - Categories: Social Media Social media is all about sharing, right? Tastes, ideas, activities, facts, networks – we want ours to be known, and we want to know others’. This willing exchange of information means we have the richest of data sources right at our fingertips, 24 hours a day. Accompanying every 140 character tweet, for example, are 150 additional fields of metadata, and that’s before we’ve even checked who sent the tweet itself... . It’s a well-known issue that digital marketers sometimes struggle to demonstrate the value of social media to the budget-holders at their business. Efforts to find more leads from social media too often result in an endless cycle of rotating tactics – enlisting experts to speak from their platforms, hosting live chats, changing content, publishing more frequently or attempting to drum up interest around an event. But this isn’t so much a nut for the cracking as an orange for the peeling: pull back the skin to reveal plenty of juicy segments. Terrible metaphors aside, audience segmentation is an enormously effective and excruciatingly underused trick of the trade. And it’s hardly the new kid on the block. It’s true that social media strategists have begun only recently to follow the example set by the big dogs at pioneering marketing companies, but we’ve been using audience segmentation in basic business practices for years: sending mail shots, creating price models – tracking and understanding the behaviours of loyal customers. So if you’re a new dog on the social media audience segmentation scene, it’s time to learn some old tricks. Marketing on a shoestring leaves you with the organic targeting option (which allows users to tailor their content to specific audiences without paying to promote a post – it works well for Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+), but if you have a couple of gold coins in your budget, there are very smart ways to spend them. Paid audience segmentation will put your business in front of social media fans who are already active users, and so are more likely to engage with your content, meaning your campaign or offer will work that little bit harder for you. It’ll mean greater reach, bigger audiences and meaningful conversions. So how do you get started? Paid campaigns allow you to segment your audiences into targeted users, based on criteria that you select. It could be any of the following: Occupation or industry Location Age Interests, hobbies, likes and behaviours Friends and connections That’s a huge range of demographics, user types and interest levels. These sorts of campaigns also allow you to see what content resonates with which personas, to jump on leads as soon as they arise and to measure the impact of your programmes. Considering the potentially problematic fact that everyone these days – businesses, agencies, brands and even consumers themselves – is publishing their own content at a rate which far outstrips our ability to read, digest and understand that material, it’s up to you to stand out in a noisy feed, and hold... --- ### 5 Steps to Creating SEO Optimised Content > The notion of ‘high quality content’ is at the core of successful SEO practices, but all too often it’s bandied around without understanding what it means. - Published: 2017-06-02 - Modified: 2024-09-18 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/brilliant-seo-content/ - Categories: SEO The notion of ‘high quality content’ is right at the core of successful SEO practices, but all too often it’s an idea that’s bandied around without a real understanding of what it means. The principles themselves are relatively simple – it’s fulfilling them properly that poses the challenge. Content that works well for SEO tends to depend on two main factors: the relevance and quality of your material (is it well written by respected authors? Is it interesting, engaging and comprehensive? ), and your site’s authority, which is determined by the number of links that redirect users to your site, and how reliable those links are. Delivering on these fronts requires a careful combination of key factors, and demands a tricky balance of imagination, creativity, focus, relevance and authority. Here’s the recipe. Target practice It’s the obvious place to start, but too many businesses begin SEO campaigns without establishing what they’re aiming for, or why. Before anything is produced, make sure your content has a clearly defined purpose: are you looking to reinforce relevancy, perhaps? Or earn links?   You want the road ahead to be easy, and clearly marked. If you’re to competently cover basics like implementing Schema, structuring your site, indexing and URL management, it’s crucial that you collaborate with a technical expert. Powerful copywriting is important, but it’ll lose a lot of its impact if it’s not paired with a technician’s skills right from the beginning. Plug into the Matrix Decent SEO content that comes from reputable sources and provides useful, entertaining information will attract links and coverage from equally reputable and high quality online outlets. In this respect, it makes sense to combine your PR/Outreach and SEO strategies: working to develop content that itself breaks news stories or engages with current affairs will mean your site earns links from the kind of pages that boost rankings considerably. Unique angles on global events, insightful and original treatments of hot topics, comments from experts and exclusive statistics or research figures may be well within your reach, and will gain you the right kind of attention from sites with high domain authority. Formulate new ideas Shake up your formatting. Your content should be available in a varied range of media to keep readers entertained and engaged. A healthy mix of formats such as blog posts, interactive tools, visual galleries and long-form articles will inspire a creative approach to the content itself and meet the full spectrum of your audience’s needs. List formats of the kind that feature on Buzzfeed are noticeably popular at the moment – keep an eye on what’s trending for certain topics and ensure that the formats you select suit and enhance the subject of the content. Stay on topic It’s critical that your content is explicitly relevant to the subject in hand. If you have a page about giraffes, it won’t matter how many links you have – you’ll never rank for queries related to antique furniture. The role of relevancy in SEO content limits... --- ### Using Emojis in Adwords to Boost CTR > New evidence suggests that emojis in AdWord titles may be here to stay and most agree that it all started with a little red car. - Published: 2017-05-19 - Modified: 2024-12-16 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/emojing-markets/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) We’re all fighting the good fight (the AdWord fight, that is) on a very cramped battlefield. 25 characters for the headline. 70 characters of ad copy. 35 characters for the Display URL. And that’s pretty much it. Like Twitter, the AdWord title presents the ultimate communication challenge: squeeze your winning and carefully developed marketing strategy into a measly 25 characters. There are plenty of tricks to the trade: start with what the customer wants, create a pared down narrative to personalise the ad, specify prices and percentage guarantees, include ASCII characters and calls to action – the list goes on. So what if there was someone who could do it for you? A grinning little man, perhaps, with hearts for eyes and a flexible range of complexions... If you’re looking to say it with a smile, emojis do seem to offer an efficient and eye-catching character economy. These icons have risen to ubiquity in public as well as private digital communication, and are now indispensable features of tweets, Facebook posts, Instagram captions, emails and texts. The SEO community has been spotting emojis in Adwords here and there for some time now, but in most instances the small images (particularly the lightning bolt emoji) had slipped through loop holes in Google’s character checks. Most of the time, emojis in AdWords were disabled by Google, and it was unlikely that anyone who managed to get their foot in the door was going to have it there for long. But new evidence suggests that emojis in AdWord titles may be here to stay. Most agree that it all started with a little red car. It was a cheery scarlet vehicle that set eyeballs swivelling when it cropped up on Google. de for the query “autohauz mainz”. There’s a possibility that these sightings are the consequence of further loopholes opening up, but the spree of monkeys, stars and tiny body parts that followed in quick succession are more likely to suggest a noteworthy change in Google’s stance on AdWord character content, particularly in light of their recent decision to allow emojis in organic search listings again. How far will emojis eMove things along? Let’s say for the moment that Google’s new policy on emojis will be rolled out beyond small-scale test cases: the new world order will see advertisers copying and pasting emojis into to the ad text creation field with unprecedented ease. Being a relatively new phenomenon, the AdWord/emoji opportunity presents unchartered territory for most advertisers. But whether you feel personally fond of the animated cow pat (let’s say) or not, it’s no secret that emojis deliver instant CTR improvement, and there are some considerable prizes for the taking. Widely acknowledged to serve as a light-hearted, universal language, emojis engage and connect with audiences across the globe, nimbly clearing language barriers wherever your target demographic lies. One advertiser found that AdWords featuring emojis received four times the number of clicks as its non-emoji counterparts. It’d be a wise move to wait for official... --- ### Found recognised as a Great Place to Work! - Published: 2017-05-11 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-recognised-great-place-work/ - Categories: General News If you had come into Found HQ last Thursday, you may have been wondering why we were doing a conga line around the office with bubbles and cakes in hand (true story). The answer is simple: we were celebrating. Last week we discovered that we came in at number six in the Great Places to Work 2017 rankings. It's a phenomenal achievement to be recognised as one of the best places to work in the country, especially as voting was done by our very own lovely Founders. As a result of an anonymous survey circulated amongst our team, asking questions about the work we do, our managers and colleagues, working environment, workloads and much more, it’s amazing to know that our Founders genuinely enjoy working at Found. Our mission is to be an agency that is renowned for exceptional performance, and there’s no doubt that we could not achieve this without our brilliant and happy Founders, who are motivated and passionate about what they do. We’re delighted that the effort we put into making Found an employer of choice through learning and development, providing a good work/life balance and team satisfaction and happiness – has paid dividends. It’s truly amazing that we not only made it into the rankings, but were voted as sixth best place to work in the small companies category! Here’s to another great year at Found and let’s see what we can achieve in 2018! --- ### D&AD Festival 2017: 4 big takeaways for brands and marketers > Last week we attended the prestigious D&AD Festival 2017, which is where we saw a whole host of industry-leading speakers. Here's our takeaways. - Published: 2017-05-02 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/dad-festival-2017/ - Categories: Content Marketing “With great reach comes great responsibility... ” That’s us quoting Anna Higgs, Creative Director at innovative media powerhouse, NOWNESS. And that’s her paraphrasing Uncle Ben from Spiderman in her thought-provoking talk on content and her discontent with that word. Touché on making a Spiderman reference in a talk about digital media in front of the creative types that would appreciate nothing more than just that. Even bigger touché on calling out the word ‘content’ for being one very un-sexy way to label a potentially limitless array of creative excellence. More on that later. Last week we attended the prestigious D&AD Festival 2017, which is where we saw Higgs’ talk, as well as a whole host of others from industry-leading speakers. With people from the likes of VICE Media, Innovation Group, NME and Google talking on everything from creative block to women’s interests, it’s safe to say we were blown away with the quality of the event’s ‘content’ (sorry). Anyway, as the adage goes, with greatpowerreach comes great responsibility, so without further ado, here’s us being responsible and sharing our findings with you: 1 - Content is kind of a lame word See above. In her talk, (Dis)content: Creative direction in the audience age, Anna Higgs reminded us all that the word content is being overused. It’s a blanket term, used to refer to anything from inspirational videos to blog articles, virtual reality to actual reality (billboards, leaflets, magazines). Her point was that we’re too quick to want to create ‘content’ without really thinking about what it is we want to say. In a chicken and egg kind of scenario, we’ve somehow ended up putting the need to produce something first, instead of starting with something we just have to produce. Sure, content is king, but it should be that way because of the awesome ideas we have, not just ‘because’. 2 - Feminism should be at the forefront of every brand’s mind The world has changed and brands need to make sure they are not getting left behind. That was one of the key takeaways from Innovation Group’s Lucie Greene’s talk, The future of women’s interest. In a world where women are shopping for the next family car, and men are shopping for groceries and cleaning products, the marketing efforts of many brands are becoming outdated and irrelevant. Whether it’s garishly pink women’s razors, or male-centric car advertising, it’s no secret that thousands of brands are not only guilty of gender stereotyping, but thrive off it. But it’s an unavoidable truth that brands are being pushed to reposition themselves, and that those that push back do so at their own peril. It’s not enough to simply sit back and ‘be on board with feminism’ either. Brands need to pave the way, and set examples with campaigns that make people stop and think. This is exactly what we aimed to do with our project, Women in Work for Randstad Recruitment. The report we produced addressed the gender pay gap and women’s... --- ### Online ‘filter bubbles’: what’s all the fuss? > Anyone who finds themselves scrolling through Facebook or searching Google will, at one time or another, have been floating at the centre of a filter bubble. - Published: 2017-04-26 - Modified: 2024-07-03 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/filter-bubbles-whats-the-fuss/ - Categories: General News The ‘filter bubble’, a phrase coined by Eli Pariser (CEO of Upworthy), presents an intriguing online phenomenon that many hold accountable for any number of significant real-world events, from the result of the British referendum on EU membership to Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential elections. Anyone who finds themselves scrolling through Facebook on a regular basis, mining Google or Yahoo for information or perusing the headlines on outlets like the Huffington Post will, at one time or another, have been floating at the centre of a filter bubble. What is a filter bubble? Those of us who depend on the World Wide Web for the fulfilment of daily tasks and routines are being carefully watched: the platforms we use are quietly monitoring our preferences, feeding them through algorithms and treating us to more content of a similar kind. This “personalised search” function and the associated algorithms are considered by many to mark an invaluable breakthrough – and certainly from a marketing and advertising point of view you can see that it’s a tempting system. But many commentators suggest that a cycle in which consumers are consistently and repeatedly provided with the same side of an argument creates a dangerous echo chamber effect. Further jeopardy lies in the invisible nature of the bubbles – they’re not an environment one enters knowingly, nor can one choose to leave. Individuals and groups with opposing political opinions gradually disappear from your Facebook timeline, or Google and Yahoo deliver a carefully selected collection of news angles that chime with your ideological stance. Over time, you find that your sources of information have you locked in an entirely homogenous digital environment. How do online filter bubbles affect us?  As you’d expect, spending time surrounded by opinions that reflect your existing views leaves little room for persuasive or meaningful debate. Sympathy for opposing positions becomes harder to summon, and you learn less and less about the full spectrum of experience and belief. What’s the big deal? They certainly don’t sound ideal, but are filter bubbles really that dangerous? They are, after all, merely digital constructs. But the growing chorus denouncing filter bubbles counts some seriously authoritative voices in its number. Bill Gates, for example, has condemned filter bubbles, arguing that they limit people’s intellectual development and isolate groups, rather than bringing them together. Ironically, filter bubbles also seem to contradict the fundamental principles behind the internet, which works to disseminate free information and connect disparate groups of people. When filter bubbles team up with their digital cousin, fake news, some might suggest they risk fuelling extremist activities. A user who regularly accesses information about far-right extremism, for example, might quickly find themselves in a personal online world populated with articles endorsing Holocaust denial. Facebook and Google are increasingly treated as news outlets, but unlike traditional publications, these platforms are not bound by a code of ethics, and there is little or no human monitoring of the algorithms’ selected output. How do filter bubbles influence search... --- ### 5 Critical Video Considerations for a Successful Campaign > Our in-house video production team have rounded up five pre-production factors you’ll need to consider when planning your next video campaign. - Published: 2017-04-20 - Modified: 2024-11-05 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/5-critical-video-considerations-for-brands/ - Categories: Creative Did you know that 93% of internet users are watching videos online each month? This makes video one of the most powerful mediums around, especially when it comes to a company’s marketing efforts. It can be used for promotion, storytelling, thought leadership and brand building. A video can be powerful, emotive, educative, inspirational – and can put your brand in front of people in real, human terms. It’s also one of the most relevant ways to connect with an audience in today’s digital climate. But not all video campaigns are successful. Those that lack goals and have no clear objectives can fall flat – a costly mistake for any brand or marketing agency. Our in-house video production team have rounded up five pre-production factors you’ll need to consider before you plan your next video campaign.   5 Essential Video Considerations Every Brand Should Know 1. The hook You only have to scroll down Facebook’s news feed to see video after video auto-playing everything from toe-curling pranks to stunning branded content. That means there’s a lot of noise out there to compete with, leaving you with around ten precious seconds to capture the attention of your viewers. Think of your hook as an irresistible gem, glistening with aesthetic appeal in the midst of the video-saturated internet. Create a visual story that instantly attracts the attention of viewers – for it to be eye-catching is a must, especially considering that most people will be viewing without sound for the first few seconds. 2. The Content As a rule of thumb online digital content should be around the three minute-mark and no more, so it’s important to make sure you get your message across clearly within that time. If you’re producing something simple like a talking head video, be sure to include lots of visual interest like graphics and nicely shot b-roll to heighten the experience. 3. The Audio Audio often gets overlooked, which is one of the biggest mistakes to be made in video production because it’s technically 50% of the end product. Make sure your audience can hear everything clearly. Background noise is a massive turnoff and will almost definitely lead to your audience exiting the video. Any music used should reflect the tone of your brand and fit well with the narrative of the video. There are banks of stock music to choose from, or you can have something produced specifically, depending on your needs and budget. If you’re going to use a voiceover, it’s important to invest the time and money into getting right, otherwise you run the risk of the video losing credibility. 4. The Structure Be sure to make content with a considered narrative structure. Your overarching message, how it’s being delivered and, perhaps most importantly, your call to action are all key pre-production considerations. Think carefully about what you want viewers to do after watching the video, and when the best time to prompt them to do this is. Like all good stories, your video should... --- ### Data Studio Hacks for Analysts on their Coffee Break > We've prepared some useful micro-guides to help you master Google Data Studio, which can do much more for you than revamp your stale GA dashboards. - Published: 2017-04-07 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/data-studio-hacks/ - Categories: Analytics, Data, How to We are excited to announce that Found is Google Data Studio certified! To mark this prestigious event we've prepared some useful micro-guides to help you master Google Data Studio. Data Studio can do more for you than simply revamp stale GA dashboards. This is not an introduction to Data Studio. While documentation is still a little light and most DS guides are introductory this is for the analysts who want to combine their skills and curiosity with Google’s latest free and unlimited tool. For fellow R-obsessed cultists, I leave some useful code here and there but this article will be useful even if you don’t code. This is an article full of micro-guides for doing cool shit in Data Studio. Micro-guides are even smaller and even more digestible that mini-guides. If you thought nifty filter controls were enough to impress your boss, think again – that’s middle-of-the-road stuff. Let’s blow some freakin’ minds. Google Analytics is only a starting point “The average Internet user spends a staggering 81. 31% of their time online scrolling through social media news feeds. ” Wow. I made that up. But I reckon it’s true. In any case, Facebook provide a wealth of information on the performance of your page(s) -- a brilliant way to flesh out social metrics when you find insights are thin in GA. Take the Facebook Graph API for example, which lets you download insights. Explore, see if you’re not tempted. If you plan to write a programme or automate these insights, then you’ll need to swap your two-hour access token for a long-lived version. The official documentation tells you just how you can do that. Alternatively, for the useRs (i. e. if you use the ”R” programming language), grab a temporary access token from the Graph Explorer and run it through the snippet below. There’s also a package called “RFacebook”, which has several helpful functions for extracting insights data from the Facebook API. extend_fb_access_token --- ### Technical SEO Beyond the Initial Audit - Published: 2017-04-07 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/technical-seo-beyond-initial-audit/ - Categories: SEO Technical SEO Beyond the Audit - Brighton SEO April 2017 - Philip Gamble from Philip GambleTechnical SEO is more than just an audit. Monitoring of technical performance is critical to catch any emerging issues early on. This session will cover practical examples of how to approach technical monitoring, what to look for and examples of real world implementations which have maintained and improved performance. --- ### YouTube SEO deep dive: How to rank your videos to the surface > How to rank your YouTube videos: All the YouTube SEO tips you need to get more video views, from YouTube analytics to video optimisation techniques. - Published: 2017-03-29 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/youtube-seo-how-to-rank-videos/ - Categories: SEO The Coral Triangle is the global centre of marine life. Encompassing the shallow seas around Indonesia and Northern Australia, its sunlit waters teem with the kind of sealife to make Charles Darwin have to sit down for a moment. It's home to 6 of the world's 7 marine turtle species, including the leatherback marine turtle - the king of turtles. The mighty blue whale drops by regularly, not to mention sperm whales, dolphins and whale sharks. This is YouTube's page 1 and all the popular favourites are here. Psy soars through the surface waters with an air of nonchalance, his dominance unchallenged with 2. 6 billion views to date for Gangnam Style. Star Wars kid majestically dances through the waves. Swarms of Zoellafish splash playfully across this aquatic Eden. Where is your video? Is it here? If it is, congratulations. Feel free to treat this post as a pleasant nautical refresher and carry on with being an accomplished YouTube marketer. If not, fear not. Your video may be submerged deep in the hadal zone but it can be surfaced with YouTube SEO. Rank your YouTube video by asking yourself these (at times frank) questions: Is your video rubbish? The ocean floor is littered with debris from the surface world such as twigs and rusted cargo containers. These are the videos that time forgot. Lacking in production values, coherent structure and adequate length, these videos scored low on quality, excitement and originality and disappeared into obscurity soon after they were uploaded. Why is quality the first consideration for a YouTube video? Because it is rewarded, all other elements being in order. Your video viewers' behaviour is seen by Google. This data is used to estimate the quality of the video. This process is generally sound because the indicators of video quality are clear in most cases. The key indicators are: Instant subscribers - Is your video good enough to make your viewers want more? Audience retention - How much of your video are people watching? The standard is different in each topical space - it may be normal for your audience to watch only half of your video if they get what they need in the first half. Comments - Does your video get people talking? Shares - Does telling other people about your video make people look cool? Favourites - Do viewers want to watch your video again and again? Thumbs up / down - What is Caligula's verdict on your video? Wouldn't it be great if there was something like Google Analytics which could provide in depth insights into these indicators for your videos? Like some kind of YouTube Analytics? YouTube Analytics is buried deep in your account - first, you need to find the tiny settings button in the account dropdown (not the other ones that look identical). Then, in the settings window, you need to click the barely visible "show additional features" link and then it reluctantly appears on the left hand menu. YouTube Analytics menu Despite... --- ### Brand safety on Google: Our position > Recently, a number of large agencies, have pulled spend from Google due to fears around brand safety and their ads being served alongside extremist content. - Published: 2017-03-23 - Modified: 2024-12-16 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/brand-safety-google/ - Categories: General News Brand safety is one of the hot topics in digital right now, and rightly so. Display spend and investment into video continues to rise, as advertisers and agencies continue to reap the benefits of programmatic. While the focus has been audience led, and about harnessing the potential of audience segmentation and predictive analysis, it’s still key to assess the context of ad serving, and ensuring brands have a safe environment in which to advertise, and users have a positive experience with those brands. This week, a number of large companies, including Havas (advertising agency) and M&S have pulled their display advertising spend from Google due to fears around brand safety and their ads being served alongside extremist content on the GDN and on YouTube. Found share these concerns and, whilst we haven't pulled any activity, we take our responsibility in this area very seriously. While the rise of new inventory is obviously a wonderful thing, it raises the risk that unwanted inventory will make its way through the safety net. At Found, we work hard every day to combat this, training our analyst team and working with our platform partners to minimise the brand risks for our clients. What measures are put in place? 1. Digital Content Labels Google classifies all online content into 5 broad labels. These are: General PG Teen and Older Mature Not yet labelled The type of label selected will vary slightly from client to client, but at Found the majority of our campaigns will only target General, PG and Mature. Teen is often not relevant to our advertising campaigns and Not Yet Labelled is never used. Indeed, Not Yet Labelled is always blocked from our campaigns. Google classification can take time, and given the volume of new sites, video and other content being uploaded each minute, there is a significant risk to utilising this label. Blocking ensures our clients’ brands aren’t exposed to the risk of appearing next to suspect content. 2. Category Exclusions – Sensitive Content Google breaks online content down into further categories for advertisers to target or exclude. The biggest of these is sensitive content, which essentially covers any type of site that may be considered questionable, or could potentially cause offense. These include: Crime, police and emergency Death and tragedy Military and international conflict Juvenile, gross and bizarre Profanity and rough language Sexually suggestive Best practise at Found is to block all of these to minimise risky exposure for our clients. 3. Category Exclusions – Placements There are additional targeting layers that could be used/blocked to ensure another layer of brand safety. Most of these cover placement types and include error pages, parked domains, gambling, in-game etc. As a best practise, we always exclude these too. 4. Negative Keywords We create account-level sets of negative keywords to ensure there is no suspect contextual matching occurring. This prevents our ads from serving next to risky content based on site content, video titles, descriptions etc. These negatives cover the obvious categories, i. e.... --- ### The Rise of Mobile Search > Are you interested in the mobile search? Find out what we have to say about the rise of mobile search. Visit Found to read the full article today. - Published: 2017-02-28 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/rise-mobile-search/ - Categories: Mobile, Opinion, SEO In recent years, smartphones have taken the world by storm. There are now more mobile devices in the world than there are humans. Not only are there more devices than ever before, but their usage is also increasing with 27% of people only using a smartphone to browse the internet. The rapid rise of smartphones and their usage has meant that some marketers are struggling to keep up with both the new technologies and the new ways of interacting with their audience. But marketers and business owners must start paying attention to the rise of mobile in order to retain and increase their audience. Recent statistics highlight just how much consumers use their smartphones: 80% of people use a smartphone On average people spend 3 hours a day on their smartphone For 15 hours a day more searches happen on mobile than on desktop or tablet Over 50% of smartphone users grab their mobile immediately after waking up. However, it is not just the amount of time that people spend on their phone since the rise of mobile, it is also the way people use their devices that has changed. Consumers now flit effortlessly between phones, tablets, desktops and even other devices such as smart TVs. They expect a flawless experience between devices with Google stating that 61% of users will not return to a mobile site that they had trouble viewing. Although marketers understand the importance of a mobile strategy, justifying the resources that are required for a successful mobile strategy can present a challenge. Digital marketers are used to following a visitor in fine detail, knowing where they came from, what they looked at on the site and if they eventually made a purchase. Unfortunately, the customer journey is now much harder to track. A customer may start their research on mobile in the evening, while watching their TV, continue further on the train on the way to work and make the final purchase at their desktop at lunch time. Mobile searches overtake desktop The rise in mobile search has come about over the past five years. Back in late 2011, early 2012, Google first started to differentiate between desktop and mobile searches. The idea that if someone is searching for something on a mobile they may be looking to purchase it close by, rather than find out more about it on a desktop was brought into the algorithms. Throughout 2012 Google experimented with the mobile algorithm and search marketers began to notice that local search results were more common on mobile than on desktop. At this point only 10% of searches were on mobile. By 2013, it was obvious that local search was going to be big on for mobile and the mobile market was going to grow rapidly. Then in 2014, mobile overtook desktop for overall internet usage. In May 2015 Google announced that mobile searches had overtaken desktop searches and Google started to push its mobile-first strategy much harder. In May 2015 Google also announced... --- ### The Changing Local Search Landscape > 93% of searches with local intent show the 3 pack. Read for advice on Google Business Profile local search ranking factors & tracking conversions from local. - Published: 2017-01-19 - Modified: 2025-02-25 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/changing-local-search-landscape/ - Categories: SEO As part of our team’s internal training, I recently hosted a session on the changing local search landscape. This post acts as a summary of the talk and assumes some level of knowledge of local search ranking factors and experience using Google My Business. Why should I care about local search? For certain businesses, a presence in Google’s local map pack is critical to gain search exposure.  The local search pack is usually located directly below paid search listings and ahead of the standard “10 blue links” and its presence is not just limited to queries containing a location. In competitive industries such as travel, which are increasingly dominated by Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) such as Booking. com, presence in local packs is a SERP opportunity not currently available, in the traditional sense at least, to aggregators. Property owners can gain control of their location listings and reduce leakage to aggregators. Google 3-pack local results appear for 93% of Google searches with local intent, so the potential is strong.  As you would expect, the search engine has increasingly begun to monetise this lucrative space with the addition of paid local-pack ads and in the travel sector expanding the roll-out of Google Hotel Ads which tend to see brands compete against 2 or 3 OTAs. Consumer Behaviour Changes As well as changes to the SERPs, consumer habits are also changing.  The growth of mobile has resulted in a much higher proportion of location dependent searches and more Google searches take place on mobile devices than on desktop machines in 10 countries. Google Trends: Searches containing "near me" Tracking Smartphone Users for Attribution A recent infographic by Google claims that 54% of smartphone users search for business opening hours, 50% search for a local shop address and 53% search for directions to a local shop.  Google obviously wants to be able to connect the loop between online research and physical presence so more value is attributed back to the search engine and particularly AdWords.  A recent Adwords white paper Bridging the Customer Journey shows how Google’s tracking of smartphone users can now be used to report back to advertisers on whether a viewed ad later results in a physical store visit. If you haven’t disabled location sharing, Google handily shows you a map of everywhere it has tracked you at https://www. google. com/maps/timeline.  This information can be used to present information such as graphs of how busy a location is expected to be at any given time - these now show in real-time. Local Search Ranking Factors Local SEO Guide has a good guide to local search ranking factors but in brief there remain 4 main areas which can be manipulated. Google My Business - Google’s platform for managing local search listings potentially offers quick wins.  If this hasn’t been reviewed for a while and locations or information are incorrect or have been omitted this is where you should start.  Google My Business evolves fairly quickly with new features being added so... --- ### Why human oversight will always be important in machine learning > Machine learning is still in its infancy and has plenty of scope for further development. However, human oversight will always be important. Read why. - Published: 2017-01-04 - Modified: 2024-09-23 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/human-oversight-machine-learning/ - Categories: Trends Although much of the news coverage on machine learning and artificial intelligence focuses on whether or not future technologies will destroy humankind, back in the real world machine learning is already in use, and is becoming common in online recommendation engines and news and content production. The technology is still in its infancy and has plenty of scope for further development. However, one certainty that has arisen is that human oversight will always be important in machine learning. Ideally machine learning would be a fully automated process, but recent examples have proven that input data for machine learning is too flawed and unpredictable for successful machine learning, as humans are the input data. Tay, the racist Tweetbot No case better highlights the need for human oversight in machine learning than Tay, Microsoft’s disgracefully racist Tweetbot that caused international horror and amusement. In March 2016 Microsoft launched a chat bot on Twitter with the aim of engaging 18 – 24 year olds with machine learning. The chat bot was programmed to learn how to interact on Twitter like a real human, through reading and processing real tweets. Within hours Tay had transformed from an innocent bot into an offensive, loud mouthed racist. Some Twitter users learned to play the system by telling Tay to “repeat after me... ” which explains some of the most offensive remarks. However, a lot of Tay’s questionable opinions were unprompted and data driven, such as the response to the question “Is Ricky Gervais an atheist? ” “Ricky Gervais learned totalitarianism from Adolf Hitler, the inventor of atheism. ” Tay demonstrates that although chat bots have the capabilities of learning to communicate like humans, their lack of moral compass is a real problem that can only be corrected with human oversight. Facebook News Algorithms Social media plays a huge part in how people consume news. While people being able to spread news of issues they are concerned with amongst their network is a positive, verifying these news sources is becoming increasingly more difficult. Many people are not able to discern fake from real news and when fake news spreads and is taken as truth, it can have real world consequences. Facebook has come under fire for its possible influence over the result of the US election, as algorithms pushed fake news. In August 2016, Facebook sacked the human moderators for trending topics, after accusations of political bias. Soon after this, a fake news story about Fox News anchor, Megan Kelly, was trending on Facebook, with no human moderators to remove it. Facebook algorithms are based around engagement and in politically charged times, fake political news is particularly engaging. It is up to Facebook users to highlight any fake news, the algorithms themselves are unable to discern real from fake, but unfortunately many users do not click the links and verify the sources, instead they just share the emotive headline. Fake news is profitable business and without any human oversight to the machine learning algorithms, it is likely to... --- ### Do intelligent robot assistants present a threat to search? > Answered inside: What are robot assistants? Will keyboard searches die out soon? What does the future hold for SEM and these voice-activated robots? - Published: 2016-12-19 - Modified: 2024-05-14 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/intelligent-robot-assistants-search/ - Categories: AI & Machine Learning, Opinion, Trends Not long ago intelligent robot assistants were the stuff of science fiction. However, thanks to Siri, Cortana, and Google Home, intelligent robot assistants are now commonplace. They are on all major smartphones and in many homes as well. Amazon’s Echo (integrated with its assistant Alexa) has also recently been rolled out in the UK. Two years after launch in the US, Amazon Echo launched in the UK in September 2016 in at least 1000 homes after spending some time understanding British accents. As with any new technology, business owners and marketers need to know how it will affect them and how they can take advantage of it - or mitigate any disasters that it might bring. As with the rise and dominance of mobile searches and traffic, could voice search queries transferred through intelligent robot assistants encroach on keyboard searches? Could it lead to reductions in clicks to our sites, particularly for knowledge-based queries? Is voice search technology going to change search marketing as we know it, or will it just add something else to the mix? Read on for our predictions. What is an intelligent robot assistant? An intelligent personal assistant is an algorithmic system held on a smartphone or piece of IoT (Internet of Things) hardware. It assists users by understanding voice queries and can output tasks such as finding information from the internet, or organisational tasks such as adding items to a calendar. It is particularly useful in hands-free environments, useful for setting timers when cooking or calling a friend on the go. When a user asks a pub-quiz type question, the intelligent personal assistant will search the internet for the answer and reply. Common intelligent robot assistants that perform this function are Amazon Echo/Alexa, Cortana, Siri and Google Now. In addition to this, Amazon Echo can now connect to other enabled devices in your home and perform tasks for you, from switching on lights to setting your cooker timer, all through voice commands. But Amazon Echo does not just work for you in the home, it also connects to certain services outside the home including Just Eat and Uber. Amazon Echo uses artificial intelligence to continually improve the user experience, so the more you use it, the more it can do for you. How should search marketers adapt to voice search? Search marketers have had to adapt to many different advances in technology and voice search is no different. For most businesses, voice search will be another option in the mix of marketing channels available, but for others it could have a negative effect. As voice search tends to rely on common knowledge answers, such as capital cities, weather, train times or even cooking, websites that rely on this content to drive traffic may see a downward trend in their site visitors. Sites like Wikipedia. These sites, particularly ones that rely on impressions and click revenue, will need to continue adapting their strategy to drive traffic where Google’s Knowledge Graph is taking the lions share. The... --- ### Found wins Best PPC Campaign at UK Search Awards 2016 > Hosted by the always funny Jason Manford, a fitting circus theme was the order of the evening and our Best PPC Campaign award the highlight. - Published: 2016-12-06 - Modified: 2024-05-14 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/best-ppc-campaign-uk-search/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) On Wednesday the 30th of November 2016, five of the Found team were selected to attend the UK Search Awards at the Bloomsbury Big Top in London. Hosted by the always funny Jason Manford, and accompanied by the dulcet Geordie tones of the ‘voice of god’ Marcus Bentley of Big Brother fame, a fantastic time was had by all. A fitting circus theme was the order of the evening, with the aerialists providing ample spectacle to accompany the lavish dining experience, of which the sticky toffee pudding was (apparently) really something to behold. However, the true highlight of the night for us was our success in the Best PPC Campaign category. Celebrated for our work with Funky Pigeon, Found were awarded with the winners’ trophy and the knowledge that our campaigns are at the cutting edge of digital and able to come out on top alongside the very best in the industry. A huge thank you to the organisers, UK Search, for all the hard work that must have gone in to the event and to the sponsors without whom it would no doubt have not happened. Also, congratulations to all the other winners; we hope you had as much fun as we did on the night. We can take no credit for these amazing photos that were taken by the brilliant official photographer Andrew Wake  you can see his official photos from the night here. (Andrew if you would like any or all of these images removed from this post please contact us through the site and we will remove immediately) We're looking forward to doing it all again next year!   FREE DOWNLOAD ALERT If you haven't already please check out our 'hot off the press' free Essential Guide to Paid Media 2017 here. --- ### HOW STRATEGIC IS YOUR STRATEGY? - Published: 2016-12-05 - Modified: 2024-05-14 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/how-strategic-is-strategy/ - Categories: SEO This article was written based on a Digital Olympus presentation given by Hannah Thorpe, you can view the full slides here. Originally posted on white. net  There’s a big difference between strategy and tactics. If you find yourself always changing your planned activities and find your marketing has become reactive, rather than proactive, then it’s likely you’re too focused on the granular tactics. This presentation covers how to determine a quality strategy, empower your team/agency to make smart decisions and follow the overall direction of your marketing mission. Creating more effective, impactful SEO strategies. Real words, not just buzzwordsGAP analysis, innovation, marketing objectives, roadmapping and various other marketing strategies are important, but the end result for all of them needs to be understood. There’s a whole world of tactics we could talk about, but instead, it’s about how we explain them and the end result we are working towards. We want brands to be ‘human’, yet we don’t communicate like we are working with people. If we don’t speak the same language as our target audience then it’s really just noise. It’s fine having the expertise but not being able to voice these skills makes them almost redundant. The starting point: Define what we doFirst of all, we need to understand exactly what we do as a business. What are the things we’re trying to achieve? Who are we trying to speak to? It’s at this point, we define or: Strategy – a plan of action designed to achieve a long-term or overall aim. Tactics – the tools you use to pursue a chosen strategy. Goals – the broad outcomes which you are trying to achieve with your strategy. Objectives – The measurable steps required in order to achieve the strategy Time to test your ‘strategicness’To work out what your strategy should be for your business, it’s about understanding what your vision is. Do you have a grasp of what success looks like? What are your bigger objectives? How does this tie-in to everything else you do? What are your competitors doing and why? And it’s important to keep your overall goal simple to empower individuals. If there’s one clear overall goal, the team will work together to achieve this using their natural ingenuity and knowledge.   Are you alt="" width="520" height="293" /> Is your strategy connected? Once you’ve done the research, looked at the numbers and understood your goals, now it’s time to understand how you will deliver this content. So, ask yourself more questions. Do you have the right expertise to write the content? Do you really understand the audience and what they want? How does this relate to the other content in your space? Use tools like YouGov Profiles Lite to understand exactly the type of person you’re targeting. What are their favourite dishes? Which are their hobbies? Do you know their favourite sports? Any other general interests they may have? Niche interests? Creating this virtual persona will give you a real-life person to target with your content.... --- ### An actionable paid media guide > Paid media doesn't need to be complicated, but digital marketers need to know the options and how they can work best together. Read more inside. - Published: 2016-11-22 - Modified: 2024-06-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/paid-media-guide-2017/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) Paid Media doesn't need to be complicated. However, the challenge for digital campaign planners can be as simple as considering what, when and how to employ the available channels, let alone sell-in their effectiveness. Our essential guide for Paid Media will take you back to basics, providing you with actionable tips to take forward with your marketing strategy. Covered in the guide are: Gmail Ads Native Advertising Google Shopping Paid Social App Promotion Digital TV (Sky AdSmart) TrueView Video Promotion Programmatic Display Retargeting Paid Search Why is 2017 a key time to utilise all channels? The rise of mobile Rapid growth of other platforms Integration is now required, not a could-do Read it now. --- ### Google shows more desktop shopping ads this season > Peak season for shopping is here and now Google is expanding shopping ads' real estate in the SERPs. Get tips to maximise your returns this season. - Published: 2016-11-18 - Modified: 2024-05-14 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-desktop-shopping-ads/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) Christmas 2016 is coming and Google is getting festive by dramatically increasing the number of Google Shopping ads (previously PLAs or product listing ads) it shows for shopping-based queries. Whether you are an advertiser, or doing your Christmas gift search online, you will soon notice this change. Some queries are showing up to 15 Google Shopping ads on mobiles and tablets and up to 18 Google Shopping ads on desktop. This is a dramatic increase from the previous format of 6. PLAs have been moved into the right-hand rail on desktop searches, replacing text ads. The format of the ads has also been changed, with Google Shopping ads appearing in card format, making it easy for the user to browse through and see the relevant information at a glance. Consumers are becoming more and more savvy when it comes to browsing the internet for the best deals and highest quality products, so this change will be welcomed by many who like to see a series of options from different suppliers before purchasing. What is Google Shopping? Google Shopping, previously Google Product Search, has been around since 2002 and developed into the paid format we are now familiar with in 2012. Advertisers can bid for search shopping ads to be shown on the search results page, triggered by shopping queries. The service is profitable for many e-commerce stores as it cuts out the need to compete in the organic search rankings for all the products that they sell. Google shopping ads show users the name and an image of a product, along with the price and the website and when clicked a user will go straight to the product on the site. From the user perspective, it is a frictionless way to shop online. How are Google Shopping Ads being delivered? As with all Google products, Google has been continually testing and updating Google Shopping. During November 2016 Google added a scrolling slider that can show up to 15 options. This appears at the top of the page, completely replacing text ads that previously appeared alongside PLAs. Below the slider, there is also a ‘More on Google’ link that takes users through to the shopping search. When text ads are still being shown at the top of the page for a shopping query, Google has packed the right-hand rail with Google shopping ads. The ads are shown in the same card format as they are on the slider, keeping with the continuity of the new-look ads. About a year ago Google made Google Shopping ads larger on mobile and the size of the desktop Google Shopping ads has also been increased in the recent update, maintaining Google’s push for a consistent experience across all platforms. How to manage your Google Shopping campaigns Advertisers may need to up their game in order to compete with the increase in Google Shopping ads on search pages. The increase in exposure will lead to greater competition as users take advantage of the opportunity to browse... --- ### Google on mobile interstitials: what sizes and types are acceptable? > 10th of January 2017: Google will start penalising mobile sites using intrusive interstitials in pages accessible from search. Use our formats to guide you. - Published: 2016-11-11 - Modified: 2024-05-14 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-mobile-interstitials/ - Categories: SEO On the 10th of January 2017 Google will introduce a change to the mobile search results, this news is bad news for websites that use intrusive interstitials. Those websites with intrusive interstitials blocking access to content will lose visibility in mobile search results. The first thing to note about this change is that not all interstitials count as ‘intrusive. ’ There are three types which are still allowed: Legal interstitials for cookies and age verification etc. Logins for content that isn’t publicly indexable Unobtrusive banners that can be easily dismissed and don’t take up too much space, such as app install banners on Safari and Chrome. Bad interstitial examples: Good interstitial examples: Exit interstitials Exit interstitials are not included in the new algorithm update either. These interstitials show once a user tries to leave a web page. However, exit interstitials won’t be a feasible option for many marketers, as they are strongly associated with spam and malware and not allowing users to leave your page doesn’t do your brand reputation much good. The type of interstitials that are going to fall foul of the new rules are ones that cover most, or all of the content before the user can read it. Common uses for this type of interstitial are for mobile advertising, data collection and market research. Google hasn’t announced details of the penalties it will be using, whether it will be an outright ban from the search engine for content with interstitials, or if the content will be shunted down the results page in favour of similar content without them. We will, of course, be monitoring this as the change comes in. The only change we know for certain is the removal of the "Mobile friendly" status on mobile websites that intrusively ask you to download their mobile app. Many websites, big and small and in all sectors, use interstitials that may fall foul of this update, such as Vice, Forbes, and The Daily Mash. Although Google hasn’t confirmed exactly how large ‘intrusive’ is, try to stick to less than 15% of the above the fold content. What are interstitials? Interstitials are pop-ups that block the content of the page, until they are either dismissed or another action takes place, such as signing up for a newsletter. Digital marketers were first attracted to pop-ups as a way of monetising their websites. For some time, pop-ups have been an effective method of encouraging website users to take an action and for online advertising. Interstitials have developed and evolved to become more intrusive, as advertisers demand more exposure and website owners look to drive up conversions. How are mobile interstitial ads used? Interstitial ads have a wide variety of uses. They are often used as mobile advertising through systems such as Mopub. Otherwise, mobile interstitial ads can be used for data capture or market research. Although they look impressive, they are very easy to set up, with plugins such as Modal being developed for Joomla sites. Why doesn’t Google like... --- ### 6 tools to help dodge keyword planner volume limits > Struggling to prioritise your keyword targeting without accurate search volume data? Use these 6 paid and free alternatives to keyword planner. - Published: 2016-11-01 - Modified: 2024-05-14 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/dodge-keyword-planner-limits/ - Categories: AI & Machine Learning, Analytics, Data, How to, SEO Keyword research is vital if you want to develop effective content strategies, optimise websites for search, or select targeting for PPC campaigns. Historically, the Google search tool, Keyword Planner, has been very popular with digital professionals, but controversial recent changes have seen access to accurate data restricted to those with active AdWords accounts that have a certain amount of spend. It’s frustrating, of course, but if we look at the Keyword Planner limit from Google’s point of view, it will have been costing the company a small fortune to host, compute and offer up the data. Simultaneously, bots sent by other companies running search volume tools were exploiting Google’s free volume data to use in their own paid tools. If you are thinking of saying goodbye to Google, we’ve curated a list of several paid (and free) alternatives that can help you find keywords that work for you. Paid Keyword Planner Alternatives Ahrefs Keyword Explorer A powerful keyword tool that gives you plenty of search volume and keyword suggestions which you can filter by monthly search volume, CPC and other metrics. Interestingly, Ahrefs’ difficulty score metric when analysing keywords for SEO purposes is reckoned to be one of the most accurate out there. You can sign up for a 7-day free trial, and then if you decide to go ahead with a full package, you can also get lots of other key applications such as backlink reporting. SEMrush SEMrush takes a search term, “Derby accountancy services” for example, then goes through domains that rank in the top 100 for Bing and Google, to build a list of keywords that those sites have in common. It delivers bundles of handy information from both organic and paid search, from search volume data to CPC distribution to related terms. But crucially, it also shows you which of your big competitors are using which keywords, and what their most popular landing pages are. Signing up to SEMrush without committing to a deal gives you a limited number of keyword searches so you can figure out if it’s right for you. Moz Keyword Explorer Launched earlier this year, Moz’s offering incorporates various innovations from unique and modifiable metrics, to superb export functionality. What’s more, you also get access to their entire suite of SEO tools, which is renowned in the industry - all-in-all a pretty sweet deal. Moz estimates that its search volume has 95% accuracy. Even if that’s a little out it’s still very impressive. This tool represents good value but it doesn’t come cheap, so luckily you get two free searches a day so that you can assess how much it might help you. A free 30-day trial is also available. Free Keyword Planner Alternatives Ubersuggest This free tool can turn up new keywords that might not appear in Google Keyword Planner, so it’s a good one to keep in mind for your SEO, PPC or content marketing campaigns. Note there is also a free extension for Chrome and Firefox that gives you... --- ### How to avoid 3 common search journalism errors > Incorrect interpretations of Google Trends, Autocomplete and personalised search often make headlines - for the wrong reasons. Read on for how to avoid. - Published: 2016-10-25 - Modified: 2024-05-14 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/errors-in-search-journalism/ - Categories: How to, SEO In a world where we are always checking the news for the latest stories, publications are under a lot of pressure to create new articles that will bring readers in every day. Unfortunately, this pressure to produce can lead to misunderstandings or flawed reasoning when taking information from search results in many articles. Writers can draw invalid conclusions from extrapolated data which doesn’t actually show what they think it does. Basically, writing about search can go wrong if you don't do your research. The frenzied media coverage over the U. S. election and the “Brexit” vote has thrown up several instances of how publications get search wrong. Below we look at a few of them, including the infamous SourceFed video that mistakenly claimed Google was manipulating search results for Hillary Clinton, and the googling Brexit non-story that whipped up controversy when there was nothing to substantiate it. We also look at how publications can hopefully avoid making these errors again because guys, seriously, there’s enough nonsense on the web as it is without serious writers contributing to it.   The Brexit fiasco Or... misunderstanding how Google Trends works Following the UK’s vote to leave the EU on June 23rd 2016, several American news organisations erroneously reported that there had been a spike in searches for “What is the EU” made in the UK, after the referendum. This then implied that many people had cast their votes without knowing what they were actually voting for or against, causing further controversy around the issue. The data that the journalists based their story on was sourced from Google Trends, but the mistake they made was in assuming that the search volume for a certain term is a definite indicator of popularity. Instead, Trends provides search numbers that are relative within a set date range and in context of other terms. It does not show exactly how many people have actually searched for something, so making assumptions on this data is pretty silly. You need to validate the numbers yourself, check other sources, and make sure you know what you are looking into. Trends analyses a percentage of searches on Google, showing how many searches were done for a particular term over a set time period. That data is then adjusted to make comparisons easier. So you might have two different regions, the United States and the United Kingdom for example, and on Google Trends they might show the same number of searches for “What is the EU” but that doesn’t translate into them having the same search volume. --- ### 6 actionable tips for Google quality updates (2016) > We cover three areas penalised by Google quality updates on e-commerce sites. Free tip: Update site navigation consistently when adding product categories. - Published: 2016-10-20 - Modified: 2024-05-14 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/6-tips-quality-updates/ - Categories: SEO In late 2015 when I covered Google's Phantom update in this post, the name of the quality targeted update was coined by Glenn Gabe due to its unannounced nature. Phantom updates focus on user experience elements, penalising sites for failing to meet the algorithm's standards and as such, the updates are also referred to as site quality updates. My previous article focussed on uncovering updates of this kind and how you might go about reversing any negative effects. This article is the proactive follow-up to that post, detailing actions to prevent negative impacts in the future. Why? Based on the trend in quality updates we saw in 2015, I expected to see further quality updates in 2016. As the final quarter of 2016 approaches, we've seen three large updates to the Google algorithm throughout the year, two of which have been focussed on site quality. E-commerce sites beware It’s safe to say that updates of this nature have been and will continue to be a big focus for Google. Having worked on and analysed mid-sized and large e-commerce sites which have been impacted both negatively and positively whilst these updates rolled out, I've pulled together three high priority actions you can take to prevent further negative impact from updates, and hopefully recover value if your site has lost rankings already. Navigation structure Sites impacted by the update have often implemented confusing site navigations which provide a bad user experience. In my previous post on Phantom updates I mentioned site navigation structure and ensuring that there is a clear category structure. A further issue uncovered in this area was an inconsistency in how category pages are linked to from the top level navigation. When optimising site navigation, aim for consistency and symmetry when linking out to landing pages. I found a number of sites which were impacted by linked out inconsistently from the navigation; some links opened a drop down menu, others took the user through to a category selector page, whilst others linked through to category pages. Also, ensure that navigation design is similar across different product areas. The overarching message is simple but it can sometimes be forgotten by those who come into contact with a site on a daily basis, when it comes to navigation ensure users are easily able to find any category or product area they're seeking. An easy way to test user friendliness is to create a product list and task people who've never seen the site before to find these products and add them to a basket. A fresh pair of eyes is always helpful in spotting issues which have been missed. Action: Keep your category linking consistent in your site navigation Homepage linking structure Homepage links are a great way to pass value through to internal pages, and boost rankings across high priority category pages. With that in mind, sites with considerable amounts of homepage links or repeatedly linking out to the same page suffered when Phantom IV was rolled out in early... --- ### What's all the Fuss? Programmatic TV > What is Programmatic TV and what are the benefits? Our paid search team talk best practice, future changes and the 3 types of Programmatic TV in the UK. - Published: 2016-10-03 - Modified: 2024-05-14 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/paid-search-strategies-programmatic-tv/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) Paid Media Strategies series #4: Programmatic TV For no. 4 in the paid media series, we take a look at Programmatic TV. We explain what it is and why you should be considering it for your future marketing campaigns. It’s over 60 years since the first TV ad, for toothpaste, was broadcast in the UK. Today the market for television advertising is worth billions - for instance, during the 2014 World Cup it cost an estimated £60,000 for every second of ITV ad time. Over the years advertisers have played around with the form, whether it be developing long-running serials for BT and Gold Blend, high-concept ads like the Cadbury’s gorilla and the Budweiser frogs, or adverts aimed specifically at cats, but the ways that advertisers bid for ad space and the way that TV ads are shown to viewers, have changed remarkably little. Now, though, Programmatic TV and automated advertising have the potential to revolutionise the market, to make it bigger, smarter and more efficient. It’s an initiative that is certainly still in its infancy, but with people watching an average of 3 hours+ of television every day, there is immense potential. While not all broadcasters have the technological infrastructure in place as yet, companies such as Sky (AdSmart) and Virgin Media are currently trialling versions of programmatic TV. Of course TV is only one part of the digital equation as marketers chase their audiences across a variety of channels, and there are still concerns, particularly that programmatic TV will devalue advertising inventories. But exciting developments are confidently predicted by the industry within the next few years - if experts are to be believed, then programmatic technology will soon completely upend traditional TV advertising methods. So... What is Programmatic TV? alt="Programmatic TV" width="1024" height="184" /> Benefits of Programmatic TV Beyond the obvious - richer, more relevant advertising so that viewers will be less likely to mute it or go and make a cup of tea, there are substantial benefits offered by growth in Programmatic TV. Distributors and programmers can better monetise their ad inventories, while advertisers can put their own data insights to use, and brands stand to get better ROI. There will be less waste and risk involved in ad production and distribution. For smaller, niche or location-specific brands, the playing field is now much more level. They can harness the proven power of TV advertising for much less ad spend and enjoy far better targeting - they can virtually cherry-pick their audience, restricting it to region, city or even post code, based on that audience’s known interests. Best Practises for Programmatic TV Advertising This is a nascent industry, with guidelines for platforms and advertisers still in the formulation phase, yet some best practises can be identified. Early adopters could gain the most. At the moment uptake is low, but Programmatic TV is likely to advance significantly over the next few years, and now is the time to be making small experimental campaigns to get a good understanding of the... --- ### Penguin 4.0 released > The long awaited algorithm update, Penguin 4.0, has been released and is now part of the core algorithm. Read on for 5 steps to manage risks to your site. - Published: 2016-09-23 - Modified: 2024-05-14 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/penguin-4-released/ - Categories: General News, SEO (September 23d 2016) The long awaited Penguin 4. 0 update has finally been released and integrated into the core algorithm according to an official post released on Google's webmaster central blog today. What is Penguin? As of today, it’s the portion of Google’s core algorithm which identifies backlink compliance, using this information to help determine overall rankings. After countless false alarms and forum chatter bordering on conspiracy theory, it seems remarkable to finally have official confirmation of the final release of Penguin 4. 0. The amount of time and false starts in the story of this final iteration of the Penguin algorithm has left many webmasters and SEO professionals exasperated. The update is different from previous penguin updates in two important respects. 1. It's "real-time". Whether it is actually as fast as true real-time is debatable, but it looks as though we can expect the Penguin algorithm to recalculate its effect on rankings relatively quickly - perhaps within a few days or less. The only way to know how fast it really is will be to wait and see. The major implication of this is that websites losing visibility from Penguin may be able to reclaim some of the lost visibility in a matter of days by making their referring domains compliant with Google's Webmaster Guidelines. This is a stark contrast to the situation which has existed in the period since the last penguin update, which has seen webmasters hit by Penguin waiting in the sin bin and missing out on organic revenue, waiting for this update in the hope that their efforts to bring their backlink profile up to code has been worthwhile. In the coming days they will find out. 2. It's "more granular". Unlike the point above, this one is less clear. What it seems to be saying is that Penguin previously worked on a domain basis. It doesn't specifically say this is no longer the case, or what the new basis is, short of basing the recalculated rankings on "spam signals". Might this mean that Penguin will now be working on more of a page-by-page basis? Unfortunately, we cannot confirm this until either Google clarifies their wording or we begin to see how this change is really affecting webpage rankings in the wild. Update: A Google spokesperson has since expanded slightly on this, stating that the algorithm being more granular does not mean that it only affects pages – it means that it affects finer granularity than sites as a whole. However, this adds little clarification and does not rule out that Penguin is being applied at a page level as-well as at the domain level. Penguin 4. 0 in context Google sets the Penguin 4. 0 algorithm in context at the end of its post, reminding webmasters that it is now just one of over 200 signals used to determine rankings. While it is indeed important to remember this, it's likely that Penguin accounts for considerably more than 1/200th of the equation. The post rounds... --- ### 5 skills we look for in a Client Lead > Discover the 5 essential skills every Client Lead needs. Learn the key qualities that drive success in client management and leadership roles at the agency. - Published: 2016-09-23 - Modified: 2024-11-06 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/5-skills-look-client-lead/ - Categories: Culture, Digital Marketing What is the role of a Client Lead? Our client leads may be the face of our agency and the main contact for our clients, but no longer is, what’s traditional titled, account management, simply about building successful relationships with clients; it is also about taking a consultative approach, having a head for numbers, leading the strategic vision for multi-channel accounts and growing those relationships. But despite the changing nature of client servicing, one thing remains true - our client leads have the client front of mind at all times. A constant, high-quality of service is our main focus, which is reflected in the long-term relationships we’ve established with many of our clients, and is why we take such care when it comes to recruiting. If you’re interested in working for an award-winning, high-performance digital agency then we’re always happy to receive new applications, even when we’re not hiring for a specific position. To give you a little help in getting yourself noticed, we’ve put together a few key skills that we look out when recruiting for our client leadership team. What skills are needed in a Client Lead? Communication In any business, good communication is important, but at Found we consider it paramount. As one of our client leads, you’ll need to brief your team on projects, as well as reporting to both senior management and the client on a regular basis. That could be face-to-face, over the phone or by email. Communication isn’t just about getting your message across clearly and directly though. It requires close attention to what others are saying, or not saying. We take client feedback very seriously as it helps us improve our services in real-time, but good communication between team members also ensures we know early on if a Founder is struggling, so we can pitch in to support them. Relationship-Building In short, our idea of the perfect Found client lead is a people person. Someone who makes the effort not just to put on a friendly voice whenever a client calls in, but also makes the effort to get to know them on a personal level. Strong relationships are key to long-term business, so we’re looking for friendly and warm personalities, and people who are certainly interested in getting to know their clients and colleagues, and understand what motivates them. Numbers Numbers are key and it’s how we measure our success so you’ll need to have a good head for figures, or at the very least know your way around an Excel spreadsheet. Monitoring and reporting on the performance of a project, understanding the profitability of a campaign and noticing opportunities to upsell a service where it can benefit the client, means that being something of a numbers-Ninja will get you far. Diplomacy We value honesty and transparency in our dealings with clients. At times you’ll need to manage expectations or to explain why a campaign is not getting as much traction as was hoped. But the ability to push back a... --- ### USING PR TO FUEL YOUR DIGITAL STRATEGY - Published: 2016-09-02 - Modified: 2024-05-14 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/using-pr-fuel-digital-strategy/ - Categories: Content Marketing This article was written based on a Digital Olympus presentation given by Aisha Kellaway, you can view the full slides here. Originally posted on white. net This presentation is not about links, but it is about PR. I think it’s brilliant that PR has become a lot more prominent in the digital industry in the last few years, and it’s great that, in line with that, our approach to links has shifted – from an approach of building them to one of earning them, through creating truly remarkable content, and conducting effective, and targeted outreach to the right influencers and publications. But the issue that I do have is this is really the only context in which we hear about digital PR. And that’s a real shame because PR spans so much more than that, and an understanding of the fundamental principles of PR can really help boost your entire digital strategy, especially when it comes to online communication and reputation online. So we’re going beyond links today. I’m the digital PR specialist at White. net, a full-service digital marketing agency in Oxford and London. Before joining White I worked for a travel PR agency, with a focus on media outreach and relations. And way before that I worked in house for BrightonSEO and the 5 other conferences we were running at the time – working on the community management and all online communications – focusing on the events reputations and relationships with delegates, speakers and sponsors through our online platforms. This presentation shares principles and processes that I’ve learnt through these three roles, that I think is relevant and applicable regardless of what industry or sector you’re in. Okay – so to get started I thought I’d go back to basics, to what PR actually is. And the best person to define this is a chap called Edward Bernays, who was Sigmund Freud’s nephew. Bernays was responsible for using Freud’s psycho-analysis theory in propaganda campaigns of the first and second world wars. Following the second world war, Bernays built upon propaganda theory to develop the practice of PR. In 1950 he actually published a book called “Public Relations” which, despite being published over 60 years ago, is still THE most pertinent book on PR that I’ve ever read. In it, he defines PR as “Information given to the public to persuade and modify attitudes and actions”, but he doesn’t stop there. He adds that PR is also “The efforts to INTEGRATE the attitudes and actions of an institution, with its publics, and of publics with that institution. ” And it’s the second part of the definition that I care about, and unfortunately, it’s the second part of the definition that usually gets overlooked. When you look at just the first part of the definition, it’s very reminiscent of propaganda – it’s a one-way communication system – it’s broadcasting and publicity. In a digital context, it’s where we find media outreach and relations. but when you bring the second part of the... --- ### 7 Great Data Science Blogs to Follow > Whether data drives your marketing strategies or your climate simulation models, extracting actionable insights from the data is the name of the game. - Published: 2016-08-19 - Modified: 2024-05-14 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/7-great-data-science-blogs-to-follow/ - Categories: Data Whether data drives your marketing strategies or your climate simulation models, discovering and extracting actionable insights from the data is the name of the game. As the demand for data science expertise races ahead of supply, now is an important time stay relevant in this fast-growing discipline. So here are some essential places on the web to keep you at pique analytical fitness. Coursera https://www. coursera. org/ There are plenty of free, online and excellent learning resources including FutureLearn, Standford Online, iversity and edX. One that I have found particularly useful at getting a handle on a number of statistical and analytical areas is Coursera. They have a wide variety of data science specialism courses, most of which you can take completely free, coursework and peer assessment included.   MIT OpenCourseWare on YouTube https://www. youtube. com/channel/UCEBb1b_L6zDS3xTUrIALZOw This YT channel is an excellent resource for learning the more tech-heavy computer science concepts for anybody from entry level analysts to seasoned miners looking to refresh their knowledge of search algorithms. A virtual seat in full-length lectures of one most prestigious technology educators. A number of other institutions also provide similar resources so explore!   Reddit The r/datascience, r/MachineLearning and r/bigdata Subreddits are also some useful corners of the web to keep an eye on for current developments, learning resources, recommendations and discussion threads. Sometimes responses may be relatively thin on the ground compared to, say, posts speculating the next death on The Walking Dead but gems aren’t so rare. There’s also a ML @ Reddit (@mxlearn) Twitter account, which posts research, news and discussions pretty regularly. --- ### Why you should treasure good user experience as a ranking signal > You might say “Well, user experience is not confirmed as a direct ranking factor”. I’d say you’re technically right, for now. - Published: 2016-08-12 - Modified: 2024-05-14 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/good-user-experience-ranking-signal/ - Categories: SEO SEO Ranking Factors Series #4: User Experience. In a series of posts, we look at some of the key factors that Google and the other search engines take into consideration when deciding on where to place a site in the organic results for a given search query.   If user engagement and ranking together in the title made you wince, you might not be the only reader with that response. You might say “Well, user experience is not confirmed as a direct ranking factor”. I’d say you’re technically right, for now. Hear me out. Engagement was voted last year as one of the top ten most influential ranking factors. Yet it isn’t a confirmed ranking factor, in fact Google’s own analyst John Mueller said in a sweeping statement that it isn’t a ranking signal in August 2015. From Google themselves come the contradictions, which leaves some of us in confusion and misery. But it shouldn’t! Just because it isn’t an official signal now doesn’t mean it won’t be confirmed as one in the future. We know that understanding user data is important to Google, even if they are vague on its impact to Search Engine Results Pages. I mean they even have a patent to use your phone’s camera to understand your feeling towards a particular search result (please smile if you are reading this on mobile). Note: Google does have a lot of patents and not all of them are for actual working mechanics. It’s simple common sense that your website's user engagement it’s important, but why so for SEO? Why user engagement is important for SEO Optimising a website for search engines necessitates optimising it for visitors. Without good user experience, SEO efforts will be frustrated, with disappointing levels of conversions, social shares and backlinks, whereas good UX benefits the entire website, as well as other aspects of your marketing. We know that Google is trying to understand how users interact not just with content, but also with website structure in general. Content and structure must find a balance between what works well for SEO purposes and what benefits UX to avoid conflict between the two. I think we can agree that the best user experiences are those that: Engage and attract users Offer consistent, positive brand-positioning Boost sales and conversions Reduce operational and resource costs Those goals are aligned with the end goals of good SEO. So we’re working with the same metrics, why not combine the approach to achieving those goals. Start planning for good UX in three steps: Get over the curse of knowledge You’re too close to your site. There is nothing more valuable than a fresh set of eyes and a great free tool for that is peek – try it out here. Get to know your user engagement data Read on below. Avoid common UX mistakes Read this great post about user experience mistakes by our Head of Design at Found. Learn the data and metrics of UX Click-through Rate It’s thought... --- ### Gmail ads - should you be using them? > Gmail advertising is a form of native advertising and was formerly known as Gmail Sponsored Promotions until the service was rebranded in early 2015 - Published: 2016-08-08 - Modified: 2024-05-14 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/gmail-advertising/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) Paid Media Strategies series #3: Gmail Advertising. For no. 3 in the paid media series, we take a look at Gmail Advertising, we explain what it is and why you should be considering it for your next digital marketing campaign. Over one-third of the world’s population, or 2. 9 billion people, will use email by the end of 2019. We don’t use it just to stay in touch with friends and family, but also to communicate with brands we like and to be alerted to offers, sales and new products that are of relevance to us. Naturally, Google wants to serve users with the ads that best represent their interests. One way it does this, besides methods such as harvesting search-and-click data, is by automatically scanning the content of emails sent through its Gmail platform for keywords and topics that can be of use to brands which can then advertise directly to individual users through the Gmail ads platform. That’s a vast opportunity by the way - as of 2014 there were some 500 million Gmail users around the world - one-sixth of the current market. Gmail Ads Explained Gmail ads are a form of native advertising and were formerly known as Gmail Sponsored Promotions until the service was rebranded in early 2015, then relaunched the following September as Gmail Ads. Previously a Beta product, it is now available to all AdWords clients on a Cost Per Click basis, which gives a sense of familiarity to Search Engine Marketers (SEMs) when targeting audiences, executing campaigns and reporting. Campaign functionality has been enhanced since the earlier version, such as allowing SEMs to schedule ads and optimise campaigns. The ads appear to Gmail users at the top of the Promotions tab in their Priority inbox, separate from marketing emails that have been sent from brands to which the user has subscribed and clearly marked as ads. Formatting and Targeting Google’s research into user preferences has resulted in there being several different customisable formats for Gmail ads that aim to integrate seamlessly with the ‘inbox experience. ’ These range from single promotion ads that feature one image and some descriptive text to multi-product promotion templates, and custom HTML uploads that allow advertisers to embed videos, forms and multiple links, and introduce functionalities such as click-to-call. Display targeting, to narrow an audience down and assist with campaign scalability, is done through standard AdWords options such as type of device, demographics, keyword/contextual, topic and affinity. So a car brand using Gmail ads can easily target men in their 30s to 50s with an interest in sports cars with messages tailored to their smartphones. Benefits of Gmail Ads The ads themselves take the form of a Collapsed Ad, or teaser, which replicates the look of regular emails. Clicking into them takes users through to an Expanded Unit which visually resembles a landing page. Any further clicks, either from the ad through a CTA or to forward it on to a friend, for instance, cost the advertiser nothing. Gmail... --- ### Avoid these 5 common UX mistakes > Brands and their web designers often learn the hard way that the Wow-factor needs to be aligned with an effective User Experience (UX). - Published: 2016-08-02 - Modified: 2024-05-14 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/avoid-these-5-common-ux-mistakes/ - Categories: Consumer Behaviour, Digital Marketing, How to “Ugly but useful trumps pretty but pointless” - Kate Rutter Brands and their web designers often learn the hard way that the Wow-factor needs to be aligned with an effective User Experience (UX). Whether it be a slider that serves no real purpose, an elegant font that’s next-to unreadable on mobile devices, or an oh-so funky animation that amuses for a couple of seconds while causing slow loading times and adding precious little useful information, many websites and apps are so laughably overloaded with clutter someone could make a daytime TV show about them. Joking aside, poor UX design can cripple the success of a website or app, with the effect of high bounce rates and reduced conversion rates. A core principle of good web design is that an attractive website or an app that is stacked with value, is nothing if the UX isn’t right. Here are six common mistakes that should be avoided. 1. Poor Forms Poorly conceived online forms are one of the main frustrations for web users, often leading to abandonment before completion. Many parents agree that the greatest pain one can ever experience is stepping on a piece of lego barefoot, but in fact that ranks second to the suffering caused by spending ages filling out a long and complex form, only to accidentally miss a unobvious or unnecessary field and find that you have to fill the whole thing out again from scratch. Another common problem is forms that try to capture as much data as possible in one go - who wants to spend 20 minutes creating an account for a one-off transaction? Keep the data captured to an absolute minimum, and if you do need a lot, then consider breaking the form up over several steps or pages. Both Facebook and LinkedIn obviously like getting as much data about their users as possible, but they use what’s known as progressive profiling, which is not a liberal approach to airline security, but in fact taking just the bare minimum information to create an account and then regularly nudging users to add more over time. Expedia actually provided an interesting example of how modifying --- ### Seismic shifts in the paid search landscape > On Tuesday Google announced the rollout of Expanded Text Ads, with immediately noticeable changes across all devices. - Published: 2016-07-29 - Modified: 2024-05-15 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/seismic-shifts-in-the-paid-search-landscape/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) Google rolls out Expanded Texts Ads, device bidding and responsive display ads. On Tuesday Google announced the rollout of Expanded Text Ads, with immediate noticeable changes across all devices. The new-style longer ads with double headlines are already appearing alongside standard text ads. But this is just the first seismic shift of the week: as announced in May at the Google Performance Summit, the availability of device bidding and responsive display ads is also now rolling out, about to further transform the paid search landscape. Expanded Text Ads: why, when and what if? All of these latest changes reflect and are driven by the increasing importance of mobile. At the recent summit for AdWords and Google Analytics customers, Google gave us their first official update since 2012 on the total number of searches handled annually. The figure has risen from 1. 2 trillion to over 2 trillion – and over half of these searches happen on mobile. With their new double headline, Expanded Text Ads (ETAs) offer advertisers up to 2 x 30 characters to best flag up their business, along with a description of up to 80 characters. According to Google, this improvement was introduced in order to give mobile users more hard information, and early test feedback suggests an average click-through boost of around 20 per cent – potentially good news for advertisers, who could see a consequential rise in ROI. At least for now, standard ads will continue to appear alongside ETAs, with October 26 set as the cut-off when single-header text ads will no longer be accepted from advertisers. At least for now, standard ads will continue to appear alongside ETAs, with October 26 set as the cut-off when single-header text ads will no longer be accepted from advertisers. Separate device bidding The second important change is designed to give advertisers greater control over AdWords campaigns by enabling different base bid adjustments to be set for targeting ads on mobile, desktop and tablet devices. Previously, under the Enhanced Campaigns regime introduced in 2013, desktop and tablet bids have been rather awkwardly tethered, and advertisers have lacked the freedom to focus campaigns on mobile. Also in response to advertiser demand, a wider bid range has now been introduced, up to +900%. Although the device bidding rollout has begun, Google are stressing that ‘not all accounts will have the option enabled right away. The full rollout will occur over the next few months'. Responsive native display ads Finally, Google have also begun to roll out responsive display ads which will serve across the Google Display Network (GDN) on all devices – though, once again, most importantly on mobile. The ads will auto-generate, resizing and adjusting in style as they access publishers’ native ad inventory. All advertisers need to supply is dual 25-character and 90-character headlines, a description up to 90 characters, an image and a landing page URL. Google will do the rest – and will doubtless turn the screw in display ad competition with Facebook as a... --- ### Programmatic - Real-time vs Direct what's the difference? > Programmatic Display is best defined as the automated purchase of ad space, or impressions, on a web page either through a bidding process, or buying direct - Published: 2016-07-21 - Modified: 2024-05-15 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/paid-search-programmatic-display/ - Categories: Opinion, Paid Search (PPC) Paid Media Strategies series #2: Programmatic Display.  In the second in this paid media series, we take a look at Programmatic Display, explain what it is and why you should be considering it for your next digital marketing campaign. Programmatic Display is best defined as the automated purchase of ad space, or impressions, on a web page, either through a bidding process, or buying direct. To some extent, it has revolutionised the relationships between advertisers and purchasers. From the outset, programmatic display has the potential to dramatically reduce the amount of time and resources needed in successfully marketing to web users. But beyond that, the process delivers a vast array of benefits to all parties: Helping brands establish stronger, more relevant connections with their audiences, increasing the CTR Capable of real-time responsiveness, ensuring every impression counts and improving campaign performance Optimising the use of video advertising, the biggest trend in content Allowing for greater audience insights and more targeted marketing Helping brands take advantage of an extremely complex purchase funnel that can encompass multiple devices and stages There are two types of programmatic display, Programmatic Real-Time Bidding (RTB) and Programmatic Direct, both of which we’ll run through below. Programmatic RTB How it works: Assuming that a web page has ad space available on it for purchase, advertisers can bid for it in the moments before it loads for the user. An ad exchange platform transmits information to the advertiser about the page content and the user, accessed from a supply-side platform (SSP), and the ad space, or ‘impression’, goes to the highest bidder. It’s important to remember that if the SSP takes what’s known as a ‘Round Robin’ approach to offering the website’s request for ads, then prospective advertisers need to be working with a well-ranked ad exchange to have the best chance of bidding, otherwise they may find themselves at the back of the queue and missing out on the best impressions. Alternatively, the SSP may send the request to every exchange simultaneously, making the process a lot more equitable. Demand-side platforms automate the bidding process to save advertisers time and human resource, and effectively make it easier to target relevant ads to people over a period of time. They use complex algorithms to determine if the ad they want to place will be relevant to this individual user. If they consider it will be, then they issue a bid, the price of which has been pre-agreed. Now, if the bid wins, the publisher retrieves the ad data, and up it goes onto the page. And remember that this entire process takes just fractions of a second. In fact, thousands of RTB auctions have been completed in the time it took you to read this very sentence. Benefits of RTB Removes the need for purchasing ad space on a web page for a set time period, which is akin to having a virtual billboard - costly and not necessarily guaranteed to boost traffic. Far more efficient than the traditional... --- ### The rise of the Chatbots > Now if you’ve shopped online or messaged a customer service representative about a minor issue, then the chances are you’ve been speaking with a chatbot. - Published: 2016-07-20 - Modified: 2024-05-15 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-rise-of-the-chatbots/ - Categories: AI & Machine Learning, Data, Opinion, Trends Chatbots, computer programs that are designed to engage in online conversations with people, use artificial intelligence to mimic human speech patterns. While the concept may still be unfamiliar to some, they have in fact been with us for some time already. The Stanford NLP (natural language parser) has been around since 1990, so actually some of the technology is practically ancient. But chatbots are becoming increasingly used by businesses. Now if you’ve shopped online or messaged a customer service representative about a minor issue, then the chances are you’ve been speaking with a chatbot.  A number of major tech companies are now investing heavily in chatbots as they are offering substantial value due to their useful, interactive nature, giving what feels like a personal experience to the customer. Poor customer service, whether it be down to an inarticulate complaint or a grumpy representative on the other end of the phone, has long been a niggling issue between businesses and their customers. Here, chatbots represent a potential solution that can have a significant positive effect on marketing and brand-building. Or so they say. This is the dream we're being sold. Brands however need to be careful that the sub-standard experience that most of these chatbots currently offer will far more likely damage their reputation than enhance it.  no umbrella needed, really? - Poncho's weather chatbot At the moment that is. As they improve and evolve, this will inevitably change for the better. Here, we explore some of the many ways that chatbots are already being put to work, what positives and negatives they bring with them and what the future may hold. Putting Chatbots to work There is immense scope for the potential uses of chatbots across a wide range of industries, but for the time being it is mainly in the area of customer services where their impact is most being felt. Legal advice dispensed by the chatbot DoNotPay has helped drivers successfully overturn 160,000 unfair parking fines in London and New York in less than two years. The usually formulaic nature of the appeals process is well-suited to AI. In e-commerce, chatbots can be used for automated support and guidance in everything from providing product-specific details, to returning an unwanted pair of shoes or changing a delivery time. Facebook is broadening its offering to e-commerce providers, and now chatbots will allow businesses to interact with their customers efficiently and cost-effectively through the incredibly popular Messenger app. Naturally there is also an opportunity to build long-term relationships if customers make this their preferred communication channel. Banks are beginning to use chatbots to deal with queries that can range from lost or stolen credit cards to forgotten passwords. Then there is Assist, which aggregates a wide range of different apps so that if you want to send someone flowers, order a taxi, or book a hotel, you can do so depending on your preferences for timing or cost. Many prominent tech companies are developing Virtual Assistants, which are more evolved, intelligent... --- ### HOW TO GSD! - Published: 2016-07-07 - Modified: 2024-05-15 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/how-to-gsd/ - Categories: SEO This article was written based on a Customer Experience Think Tank 2017 presentation given by Hannah Thorpe, you can view the full slides here. Originally posted on white. net.  In this presentation, we’ll show you how to GSD, from recommendation to implementation. Why do we do audits? First of all, why do we do audits? Well, that’s simple. It’s to improve the performance of a website. Those are the absolute fundamentals. So if this is the case, it’s essential that your audits don’t end up in the ‘technical audit graveyard’. What do we mean by this? A technical audit is an actionable document, a technical audit without actions is useless. Sometimes thinking big isn’t enoughIt’s great to have a think tank – a team of bright minds coming up with ideas to improve a business. But occasionally blue sky thinking just isn’t enough for reaching business goals. the biggest and best ideas may seem inspirational, but if they can’t get implemented, the value they add is very limited. So instead, let’s get practical. Who actually wants to read an audit? A technical audit isn’t exactly a best-selling novel. It’s simply a document to show how a website/business can improve the health of their site with actionable recommendations. Clients or business owners want to see results otherwise why would they invest in SEO? This, by definition, means they need actions. Why aren’t we implementing? We all have excuses for not implementing. There’s no time; there are limited consequences, there is a limited resource, no motivation, there are conflicting views, a lack of understanding and an unexpected volume of work. But this is a rubbish excuse. Stick to the audit rulebookInstead, abide by the audit rulebook. Define the why Quantify everything Prioritise your tasks Show relationships Understand your stakeholders JFDI Step 1: Define the whyFor every task, implementation and action from the audit, we need to explain why it’s being done – not just what will be happening. For example, say that you’re going to amend all broken links either by removing the link or replacing with a link to the relevant page, but also explain that this will improve the UX on site, and the way authority flows around the entire site. Then the second layer of ‘why’ is because this will then mean better ranking ability to generate organic traffic and more likelihood to convert users who have a good experience on site. Step 2: Quantify everythingIf long lists of tasks seem intimidating and difficult to relate to on a day-to-day basis then make sure to quantify everything. Creating a task sheet with an estimated timeframe for each task and their individual complexities will help the stakeholders understand the realistic estimation for the audit to be implemented. Step 3: Prioritise tasksOne of the key aspects of planning audit implementations is prioritising the importance of each task. Just because there are some that’ll be easy to implement, this doesn’t mean they should be done first. If the longest task is the most important,... --- ### What you need to know about Native Advertising > A subset of content marketing, native advertising can take many forms but it is most commonly associated with sponsored content such as editorials or video. - Published: 2016-07-05 - Modified: 2024-05-15 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/paid-search-native-advertising/ - Categories: Consumer Behaviour, Digital Marketing, How to, Opinion Paid Media Strategies series #1: Native Advertising. In the first in this paid media series, we take a look at Native Advertising, explain what it is and why you should be considering it for your next digital marketing campaign. Age is no barrier to innovation. The Associated Press, founded in 1846 and the largest news-gathering organisation in the world, is to begin rolling out high-value native advertising on demand for clients such as Hearst Publishing. Web users are losing their appetite for traditional forms of display advertising. While many consider advertising as a ‘necessary evil’ in order to access free content such as journalism, still around 40% of UK users are now actively taking steps to avoid encountering what they view as obtrusive marketing online. The proliferation of ad-blocking software is causing consternation among publishers and marketers alike, and banner ads are seeing ever-lower rates of clickthrough. But it is pop-ups and autoplay video that draw the most ire, advertising that can easily distract from the content that the visitor is looking for, and can often delay loading speeds. Sites which make substantial use of this type of advertising tend to see high bounce rates. Consequently, many marketing teams are searching for alternative means of communicating and forging connections with consumers, and native advertising has evolved as one potential solution. Yet there remains considerable confusion among both sides about what actually constitutes native advertising, how to identify it, and how best to practise it. Native Advertising, explained While there are various definitions available, native advertising can be neatly summed-up as content that simultaneously meets the editorial standards of the publisher and user expectations, while also featuring an actionable goal for the advertiser. Essentially, it integrates so cohesively with the rest of the website’s content that it could potentially not be recognised as an advert at all. For the most part, this is content that has been paid for, though other forms of mutually-beneficial arrangements are not unknown. A subset of content marketing, native advertising can take many forms from sponsored posts on Facebook to paid ads that appear alongside organic listing on search engines, but it is most commonly associated with sponsored, or branded content such as editorials or video. A natural follow-on to product placement, the product is no longer embedded within the content, it is now actually merged with the content. Designed to closely emulate the other content on the website on which it is being published in both tone of voice and format, this native advertising typically sees high levels of engagement, is viewed for longer, and is more shareable. It will often aim for virality, but can also be controversial, as demonstrated by the Scientology debacle at The Atlantic Benefits of Native Advertising As mentioned above, native advertising fosters greater levels and depth of engagement and is particularly useful when reaching out to younger web users who are more familiar with encountering brand activity online. One publisher that attracts a young audience with its lighthearted approach to... --- ### How important are Backlinks as a ranking factor? > In a series of posts, we look at some of the key factors that Google and the other search engines take into consideration. This time, it’s backlinks. - Published: 2016-06-30 - Modified: 2024-05-15 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/backlinks-ranking-factor/ - Categories: SEO SEO Ranking Factors Series #3: Backlinks. In a series of posts, we look at some of the key factors that Google and the other search engines take into consideration when deciding on where to place a site in the organic results for a given search query. This time, it’s backlinks and whether they are the be all and end all for success. Without backlinks will your site rank at all? The external links directed back to your own website, known as backlinks, are one of the principal aspects of SEO. The volume and quality of these backlinks help search engines to determine the authority of your site which is a major determinant of where it will be placed in the SERPS for keyword queries. Ranking without their presence isnext to impossible. In the past backlinks have been the focus of “blackhat” techniques, such as link-buying or creating artificially constructed link networks called link farms – practices that Google has clamped down on. What you should be aiming for is a healthy link profile, where you have an mix ofnatural backlink types from websites of varying levels of authority. Your profile should be built up over a period of time to help the natural flow and ideally contain no links from spammy websites in order to stay respectable in the eyes of Google. Fresh links should be developed as part of an ongoing process, as if the number of backlinks tails off, it may signals to search engine spiders that a website is no longer of interest. This guide outlines the fundamental requirements and techniques of good backlink practice. Number of backlinksA high volume of backlinks may seem optimum, but quality will always take first place over quantity. Search engines use sophisticated analytical methods to establish which links should be taken seriously and which can be ignored due to their forced intentions to help rankings, or worse... penalised for! The speed at which a website attains its backlinks is also monitored by search engines. If they are observed to be building them aggressively, this can be perceived as suspicious and could see the target website penalised. Referring domainsThe content of the domains referring back to your site should be as relevant as possible to your own content, in order for search engines to give the links natural acceptance. These domains must also be reputable, and ideally have good levels of authority and trust, because if they are blacklisted at some point then it could taint your own site with reduced visibility. Links from news sitesAuthoritative and globally popular news sites that are known for the high editorial quality of their content, such as the BBC, score highly for trustworthiness, and will provide increased link equity, because trusted, high authority sites tend to link to other trusted, high authority sites. The difficulty of course lies in getting those backlinks in the first place, but there are several tactics which can help. If you have something you consider newsworthy, such as the results of... --- ### How is your Paid, Owned & Earned media mix? > What different types of media exist and why you need to be thinking about how these channels can work together to form part of your overall marketing mix. - Published: 2016-06-29 - Modified: 2025-03-12 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/paid-owned-earned-media-mix/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, Opinion Before we go into the reasons why integrating paid and owned media is so important, let’s have a look at exactly what different types of media exist and why you need to be thinking about how these channels can work together to form part of your overall marketing mix. What is Owned media? These consist of all your owned assets that you have 100% control over, such as: Desktop site Mobile site Content Social channels Mobile app Newsletter Owned media is there for building long-term relationships with existing customers, generating earned media and magnifying your brand building efforts. Your blog and social media channels are extensions of your brand and need to have the same look and feel. Your marketing communications and brand image should therefore remain consistent when users are interacting with them across multiple owned touch-points. What is Earned media? Earned media is essentially free publicity that you have managed to earn through doing something useful such as providing a fantastic customer experience or creating a compelling and insightful piece of content. Here are a few examples of what earned media can be: Reviews Backlinks Likes Comments Word of mouth What is Paid media? Paid media is quite simply any form of media that you pay for, such as: Paid Search TV Print Display Paid social When people think about paid media, the first thing that most probably pops into their head is a combination of paid search and display advertising. Paid media can be a great way to either promote content to drive earned media or direct highly targeted and ready to convert traffic to your owned assets. Seeding content on paid channels is an important way to increase reach and exposure, and will allow you to get the ball rolling when new content is released. What is Converged media? Converged media is when two or more channels from owned and paid are working in conjunction with each other. A quality converged media strategy will result in the end user wanting to consume and partake in what a brand has to offer without the brand needing to advertise in an obtrusive way. One of the most successful converged media strategies I have seen is a hybrid media strategy of LinkedIn sponsored promotions (Paid), retargeting (Paid), whitepapers (Owned) and Hubspot landing pages (Owned). This is something we will look at in more detail shortly... Creating valuable, engaging and compelling content plays an important role in your branding efforts and overall SEO strategy. The type of content I’m talking about is not made in a day and it's most certainly not free. Big budget content pieces such as whitepapers, videos, infographics etc. can cost thousands of pounds and need to be seen by the right audience at scale in order to make the production worthwhile. You might have the perfect piece of content, but if you have no mechanism for driving targeted traffic to these assets, then there is no point in having them made in the first place.... --- ### How to build a first-class company culture > Many people, especially in the digital sector, have come to expect a distinctive company culture. So what are the key factors to consider when building one? - Published: 2016-06-20 - Modified: 2025-01-27 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/build-company-culture/ - Categories: Culture, How to In the world of digital, whether you’re Facebook or a cool East London start-up, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to set yourself apart. Everything you do - your services, your benefits, your company structure - will at some point be copied by another agency. In fact nowadays there is only one part of your company’s identity that can’t be copied, and that’s your culture. When meeting someone for the first time, we usually know within minutes if they are a ‘Founder’. Chances are, if we don’t get that feeling, then they probably won’t be feeling it either. I would never be so presumptive as to say we have the perfect company culture, but certainly there is something about Found that keeps people here. The reason your company culture is so important is that it’s key for both employee satisfaction and productivity. Unpleasant working environments drag down motivation, encourage your best people to leave and generally create a culture of negativity. A good culture, however, ensures that everyone can work to the best of their abilities, low on stress and will also attract talent. Many people, especially in the digital sector, have come to expect a distinctive company culture. So what are the key factors to consider when building one? Individuality Don’t try to imitate what you think is an ideal company culture, because there’s no guarantee it will transfer. Think instead about the individual values you want your company to focus on - such as ambition, supportiveness, incredible customer service - and the direction that you want it to take. Can you encapsulate that in a single motto, like Google’s “Don’t be evil”, or a short mission statement? If this is a process you’re just starting, then you can ask staff to contribute their own ideas. Once you know what kind of culture you want to achieve, you can look at the type of people and resources you need to get there. Employee “Buy-In” If your people are passionate about the company mission, then they will do what they can to accomplish it. To get that, there must be integrity and conviction behind the plan. Employees at all levels should see themselves as a team or even a family, rather than disparate units so that everyone is pulling in the same direction. Allowing for investment in the company’s success can help with this. John Lewis and Waitrose famously split their profits with staff, which is a huge motivational factor, while some public companies offer shares to their staff at discounted prices. A Listening Approach When people feel that they are being listened to, given a say in how their company operates, it’s a big motivator. Too often when companies hit a wall for inspiration, they look externally for solutions when in all likelihood the answer could come from within. Neither do the best ideas always come from the top down. By making it easy for people at every level to give suggestions on how they can improve a product or the... --- ### 12 Slack Hacks and tips you should know - Published: 2016-06-15 - Modified: 2024-05-15 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/12-slack-hacks-you-should-know/ - Categories: How to There are any number of technologies that businesses use to communicate both internally, between employees and teams, and externally, with clients, suppliers and other stakeholders. Much of it, particularly email, can be a drain on productivity. Enter Slack. This rapidly growing communication platform (over 2 million current users) brings your business communications all into one place. With it's browser-based software and it's real-time messaging app developed for both iOS and Android, Slack is transforming the way that businesses... do business. Found have been using Slack a little while now and we'd thought we'd share a few tips to help you get the most out of the way you use it. Here are 12 hacks to help you become a Slack Jedi... Organise your channels Just ask Hannibal Smith - one of the great joys in life is when a plan comes together. With Slack, it’s easy to join multiple channels but then you have the difficulty of staying on top of what’s new or important. Star the channels that you use most regularly to ensure they stick to your side menu, and for others, go to Preferences - Advanced Options - Channel List and hide those which have no unread messages. It keeps your panel looking tidy and aids productivity. Use advanced channel searches Channels can move quickly, especially if you have a large team or a fast-moving project. Using search functions such as: 'in:', 'from:' and 'to:' This will help you track down specific messages you’re looking for anywhere in Slack. Similarly, to find messages sent within certain time frames, use: 'before:', 'after:' and 'on:' Update your status If you’re going into a meeting or grabbing some lunch, use the /away command to let coworkers know. Set up notifications for keywords If you’re tracking a specific topic and want to be alerted whenever it’s mentioned, first select your name in the top-left corner of Slack and then click Preferences. In the menu that drops down, select Notification Settings, followed by Highlight Words. You’ll see a free-text box where you can add the keywords or phrases that you want to be notified of any time they appear in one of your channels. To add multiple keywords, separate them with commas. Jumpstart your social abilities By integrating the Notify app, every time your brand gets a mention on a social platform such as Twitter, Instagram or Tumblr, you get a notification. You can track not only mention of your brand names, but also keywords you’re interested in so that you can easily monitor what’s being said about you online. Automate responses to common questions with Slackbot If your organisation is anything like Found you probably find yourself answering the same question more than once on a Slack channel. This is where the very clever Slackbot can come in extremely useful. You can 'train' Slackbot to respond with an automated message every time a keyword or phrase is typed into a channel. No longer does anyone have to respond to 'Whats the office phone number?... --- ### Technical SEO elements that will help your site rank > A firm grasp of the technical elements of SEO, and the principles behind them, form the basis of any successful organic campaign. - Published: 2016-06-02 - Modified: 2025-04-07 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/technical-elements-ranking-factor/ - Categories: SEO SEO Ranking Factors Series #2: Technical Optimisation. In a series of posts, we look at some of the key factors that Google and the other search engines take into consideration when deciding on where to place a site in the organic results for a given search query. This time, it's technical factors and the difference they can make. The importance of technical elements A firm grasp of the technical elements of SEO, and the principles behind them, forms the basis of any successful organic campaign. If these elements are not implemented effectively, then other key factors in SEO such as content and outreach naturally cannot perform to their full potential. Googlebot will be unable to give full credit for the relevance and authority of your web-pages for given keyword searches if your domain is not technically compliant. Given the complexity of search engine algorithms, and that they are continually subject to change, it’s essential for webmasters to maintain a clear understanding of those features that are known to affect positioning on SERPS, and also those which while not thought to directly impact rankings can also help with SEO. Multiple studies of high-ranking sites indicate that the best performers will always have certain technical aspects in common. Below we discuss the crucial elements that should be borne in mind, and current best practices when implementing them...   Architecture and crawlability If we think of the internet as a gigantic book, then for a website to feature in the web index, and thereby appear in the rankings, ‘spiders’ such as Googlebot and Bingbot need to be able to crawl it and determine its relevance for particular queries. If they can’t find their way around easily, the site won’t rank - it’s as simple as that, so ensuring that your website has a crawlable architecture is very important for boosting search rankings. Submitting a sitemap, the correct use of canonicalization, 301 redirects and building an effective internal link structure can all help boost crawlability. Note that if a site uses Flash or Javascript, these can impede spiders from making their way around by making any links or HTML embedded within them unparseable. While Googlebot’s ability to crawl Javascript content has improved in 2016, it’s still better to be safe than sorry.   The internal linking structure As discussed above, a website’s visitors aren’t always human, and an effective internal link structure, as well as making it easy for someone to navigate a website and easily find the information they need, also helps search engine spiders to know what you consider to be of importance and where it is located. By making it easy for the spiders to index your pages and assess the content of each, you help your rankings, spreading domain authority and ranking power across your website. Aim to link deep into the website in natural directions, to valuable content that you want people to discover, rather than to your Home or Contact pages. Utilise follow links and anchor text, embedding... --- ### 3 big things happening right now with Google Analytics > Unless you watched the final ten minutes of yesterday's Google Performance Summit, you missed it, here’s what we’re excited for in Google Analytics. - Published: 2016-05-26 - Modified: 2024-05-15 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/3-big-things-google-analytics/ - Categories: Analytics, Google Algorithm Updates, Opinion Back in March, Google announced their Google Analytics 360 Suite, featuring ten fully integrated products to understand your customer journey in a multi-screen world. If you made it to the final ten minutes of the Google Performance Summit, you will have previewed some pretty awesome products, promising integration, collaboration and intelligence. If you missed it, here’s a rundown of what we’re excited for in Google Analytics. Integration Site personalisation is really starting to take off. One-size-fits-all marketing is becoming less relevant. Now, your execution needs to be cleverly tailored to specific demographics. Google Optimize 360 aims to make it easy for you to test changes to your site and measure the impact on customer behaviour. It’s deep integration with Analytics means you can extract insights from your Audience and Goals to inform your experiments. Not to mention, with the scale that Google can provide, big data could open up a world of extremely personalised marketing opportunities.  They claim to have amazing results from their Beta already, reducing their customer’s time to deploy site experiments from 3 days to 10 minutes. Collaboration How can you easily share your data and insights with people working across different functions in your organisation?  Forget emailing attachments (and embarrassing attachment-less emails), now we have Google Data Studio 360. This is the one we’re most excited for! Data Studio supports multiple connectors to pull data from a number of sources, including third-party data sources. And Google promise to expand this list even further throughout the year. The ability to combine information from different sources into something meaningful could improve the value of your data business decisions smarter.  The product will enable users to build beautiful, dynamic reports in minutes and instantly share with anybody in your organisation. The enterprise version is now in paid beta. However, Google have also launched a free version, which allows users to create up to five reports. Currently, it’s only available in the US but they are rolling it out to other countries throughout the year. Built-in Intelligence So you’re getting tons of data from a variety of sources quickly, which makes it harder to put it to good use.  Google Assistant has enabled users to interact naturally with Google for help with their daily tasks. Now, Google want to use the same machine learning and artificial intelligence kit for Google Analytics to get answers to important business questions.  They call it “Q&A Conversational Search” and is built into the Analytics 360 suite. Using natural language processing algorithms, it understands your intent and runs it over your analytics data. For example, you could ask it what your best selling products in a month were and it will return a list of relevant information.  These products aren’t previews, they’re happening right now. Google are already starting to roll out the 360 Suite to all Google Analytics Premium customers. --- ### Are you at the top of your game with Google Analytics? > Use this guide to check you can trust the data Google Analytics is displaying so you can start making informed business decisions with it. - Published: 2016-05-23 - Modified: 2024-05-15 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/top-your-game-google-analytics/ - Categories: Analytics, Google Algorithm Updates, Opinion Google Analytics can sometimes show results that leave you scratching your head. Use this guide to check you can trust the data it is displaying, so that you can be confident about the business decisions you are making with it. So you have a website, a GA code was dropped on it a while ago and now you’re finally thinking about getting serious with the data you collect. Perhaps you inherited some issues with the account from its previous caretaker. A poorly configured account could mean missing out on important data or working with misleading information. So if you don’t want your campaigns (SEO, email, link-building, PPC, display etc. ) to be pointless and want your decisions to be truly > The first place to dive into is the referrals report, under All Traffic in the Acquisition section. Filter the sources by searching for your website. If you’re seeing a large number of self-referrals, then you’re most likely missing tracking code somewhere or there’s a configuration problem. Leaving this unchecked will skew a lot of data in GA, from conversions to behaviour. It will compromise your data integrity and lead to bad business decisions. To fix this, you’ll need to identify which pages are missing tracking code and then add the code! If this doesn’t fix the issue, then cross domain tracking might be set up incorrectly. In either case it needs fixing. And do not just add your domain to the referral exclusions list. 2. Tracking code   Check whether the tracking code being used on the website matches the tracking code in your account’s property settings. If they’re different then you could be losing valuable data. You can check by viewing the source code of your website. But don’t draw any conclusions yet. Ctrl + F unfortunately won’t return much insight from the source code if the site’s tracking was implemented with Google Tag Manager. Luckily a Chrome extension called Tag Assistant (by Google) will be able to tell you. And most importantly tell you whether you’re using the Universal Analytics code or the older tracking code (Hint: you should be using the first one. Click here to see why). 3. AdWords linking   If you’re doing any paid activity through AdWords, it’s important to check whether your AdWords account has been linked to your Analytics account correctly. There may be some small data discrepancies for a number of reasons but you need to ensure this is not the result of incorrect linking between the two accounts. 4. Channels   There are lots of things you can analyse when sifting through the Channels report – too many for this blog post. So here are two important ones. In some cases, organic traffic might come through to your account as direct traffic. To check, head to Content under Real Time. Now, Google your site and find an organic link. Right, are you watching the Real Time report? Two screens would be very handy right about now. Click through to your... --- ### The importance of SEO content as a ranking factor > Content is the most important of all on-page SEO ranking factors. How you speak to the user determines how search engines will then view you. - Published: 2016-05-20 - Modified: 2025-02-25 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/content-ranking-factor/ - Categories: SEO SEO Ranking Factors Series #1: Content. In a series of posts, we look at some of the key factors that Google and the other search engines take into consideration when deciding on where to place a site for a given search query. First up is a look at content and the part that it plays. Content as a Ranking Factor Content is the most important of all on-page SEO ranking factors. How you speak to the user determines how search engines will then view you. What is great content? From a search engine's perspective, it has to meet a need, answer the search query and it must be linkable. It also has to conform to the technical aspects that search engine ‘spiders’ such as Googlebot are looking for. As Google and other search engines evolve, the most successful websites take a holistic attitude to their content. They incorporate the correct elements such as keywords and internal links, but never at the expense of producing content that is of serious value to the reader, to answer the query, encourage a click-through and keep people on the page. The key elements of great on-site content are as follows... 'Proof terms' in the content “You shall know a word by the company it keeps” J. R. Firth, 1957 Strongly linked to the primary keyword on the page, 'proof terms'are those thematic words that you would expect to find in most or all articles on a given topic. So if you’re writing about the environment and your keyword is “climate change”, then the 'proof terms' one would expect to find in the article might be “global warming” or “climate science”. The great thing about 'proof terms' is that they tend to appear completely naturally whenever you’re producing in-depth content on a topic, so it’s often not necessary to think too hard about them. N. B.  it’s best to avoid discussing two or more topics on the same web page as this will confuse search engines, a situation known as topic dilution. 'Relevant terms' in the content In Searchmetrics, it was noticed that half of all highly ranked websites utilised 'relevant terms'. These are words not as closely correlated with the keyword as 'proof terms' but still contextually linked. So if your keyword is “exercise”, then “sweat” or “weight loss” might be 'relevant terms', whereas cupboard would not. By looking at a list of 'relevant terms' for a specific keyword, we should be able to make an accurate guess as to what the keyword itself is. Let’s say you’re creating a landing page for a hotel. Your primary keyword may be “Mayfair hotel”, but you might have a range of 'relevant terms' within the content such as “Mayfair rooms”, “inexpensive lodgings in London”, “breakfast included”. Again, these terms tend to appear naturally as you write about a topic and help convince search engines that your page contains relevant content for the query. The rise in importance of 'relevant terms' coincides with a decline in the importance of keywords. What... --- ### ADVANCED TECHNICAL SEO - Published: 2016-05-16 - Modified: 2024-05-15 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/advanced-technical-seo/ - Categories: SEO This article was written based on an SMX London 2016 presentation given by Hannah Thorpe, you can view the full slides here. Originally posted on white. netIn this presentation, we’ll talk through the advanced side of technical SEO. What is (advanced) technical SEO? It’s the process of increasing visibility of a website in organic search. For the visibility aspect of it, it could also be visits by improving click-through rate. This could be for any website, whatever the industry or service they provide. The search part of the equation means searches relevant to the audience while still ensuring the site has a good UX. Advanced is subjectiveThe term ‘advanced’ is subjective, based on circumstances and complexities of the on-site experience.  Technical SEO is the broad term that can apply to all websites; the advanced part comes in when we’re looking at the intricacies of improving the on-site and browsing experience. When it comes to advanced technical SEO, the power is in your hands... sort of. Before we get started, here’s a tech SEO checklist of the ‘basics’Make sure the fundamentals are in place and to a high standard. On-page elements like page titles, headings, internal linking, robots. txt, meta descriptions, crawling, pagination and backlinks. For any website, there will always be the tech aspects to consider first – the foundations of your site. How is our technical SEO world changing? A change is proposed or made on a website based on perceived UX improvement. A range of implications are seen, or expected, as a result of this change. The technical SEO team must resolve these problems and react to make it work for SEO. When the technical SEO issues come your way, be proactive. Here are the most common technical SEO problems in more complex situations. Faceted navigationFaceted navigation is a way users can refine search more so they don’t have to click through pages of results they are not interested in. This could mean wasted crawl budget on multiple similar pages, over indexation with lots of content or risk of duplicate content diluting ranking ability. Not only are all these issues poor for organic visibility, but they’re also not good for the user experience. Determine what is valuable and canoniseWe may say, ‘something broke – quick, just undo the changes and go back to what we’ve always had’. But what about the users? The solution is to determine what is valuable and what is a not a facet and to canonise to the closest alternative of value. When to index? Aggregating all the similar products will help Google understand the most important pages/categories on your site. So, when to index? Make sure you understand whether or not the category is a natural extension to your current categories? Is there a high demand around this grouping? Does this page add new product choices, or just reorder the page? JavaScriptBut sometimes Googlebot doesn’t understand the site, i. e. JavaScript. JS allows more interactive sites greater flexibility in the functionality, but Google’s crawling of... --- ### Resolving hreflang issues for international SEO targeting > When targeting internationally the detrimental effects of having the wrong content presented to users in organic listings cannot be underestimated. - Published: 2016-04-26 - Modified: 2024-09-23 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/resolving-issues-international-targeting/ - Categories: SEO As more and more businesses take advantage of the incredible opportunities offered by the World Wide Web to expand into global markets, it’s more critical than ever that sites are correctly optimised for international search. The detrimental effects of having the wrong content presented to users in organic listings cannot be underestimated. If your French content ranks in the Spanish SERPs, you will see decreased click-through rates, increased bounce rates and ultimately, your conversion rates will suffer along with the user experience of your visitors! Google uses several pieces of information to ascertain the best target audience for your content, such as hreflang tags geo-targeting settings in Google Search Console ccTLDs (country-code top-level domain names), for example . es, . fr, . co. uk IP address of the site’s web server location and currency information on the page Hreflang tags are little snippets of HTML code that allow webmasters to signal to search engines which language(s) and region(s) their site is targeting. They also indicate alternative versions of the content that may be more appropriate for the search engine to serve. Hreflang tags are also useful to eradicate issues of duplicate content which can potentially arise when you have very similar content in the same language which is targeted to different locations. For example, you could have separate, but very similar, content targeting English speakers in the UK and English speakers in the US. These tags have a strong influence on Google’s decision as to what content should be served up to international users. How do we know this? Well, there is abundant evidence that the incorrect, or complete absence of, implementation of these little snippets of code can result in the wrong content being displayed in the international SERPs. Given that incorrect implementation of hreflang tags can cause havoc for your international targeting, it’s crucial that you get it right. How to identify if you have an international hreflang targeting problem The first step, of course, is to ascertain whether or not there actually is a problem with your site. If your Google Analytics dashboard is showing poor traffic or user engagement metrics, then this could be a first indication that something’s up. For a more in-depth analysis, you could look at what countries your visitors are from when analysing the traffic to your geographically targeted content. In order to confirm whether or not your site’s hreflang implementation (or lack of) is the culprit, it’s definitely worth checking in Google Search Console to see if any issues have been flagged. If Google have detected a problem, you are likely to receive the following error message: While this is useful to make you aware of any issues, it is certainly not advisable to rely on this exclusively – the list of errors that Google provide here will by no means be exhaustive. It really is up to you to do the digging to identify the full extent of the problem (more on how to do this below). Finally, in order... --- ### Intelligent search results: 5 things you should know about Google RankBrain in 2016 > The algorithm that Google uses for search results is shrouded in secrecy, but we know it is influenced by several hundred signals one of which is RankBrain. - Published: 2016-04-20 - Modified: 2024-05-15 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/intelligent-search-results-rankbrain-2016/ - Categories: SEO Back in March, Microsoft’s AI-based bot, Tay, had a bad day on Twitter when it was hidden from the public after breaking and becoming racist. That episode is in stark contrast to the success beyond expectations currently being experienced by Google’s new machine-learning tool, RankBrain. According to Google itself, the Machine Learning program is now being used in a significant fraction of the billions of search queries it receives every day. If RankBrain, or its importance to SEO, are new to you, here’s what you need to know... What actually is RankBrain and how does it work? The algorithm that Google uses for its search results has always been shrouded in secrecy, but we know that it is influenced by several hundred signals one of which is RankBrain. What makes RankBrain different is that whereas other signals used in the algorithm such as page-loading speed have been discovered and input by Google’s own designers and researchers, RankBrain has the ability to learn for itself. It recognises patterns that allow it to make vague search terms specific, establishing the intent behind verbose or indistinct queries that could trip up the search engine. RankBrain heralds the rise of machine learning in search - a program that can be used to process complex long tail keyword combinations, ambiguous terminology, colloquialisms or conversational speech. Over time, RankBrain will learn from user behaviours, making it even more accurate and effective. Key to understanding how RankBrain works is the concept of using word vectors to understand context or mapping the mathematical relationships between words. This Google article explains how a system (possibly RankBrain going by an earlier name) was able to learn the relationships between countries and their capital cities by being fed news articles. Why is it necessary? The ways in which we interact with search are changing - many of us now speak directly to our phone or tablet, and those queries could be made up of complex, difficult-to-understand phrases. RankBrain is vital in narrowing down what people are really looking for. By Google’s own estimates, some 15% of search queries it receives daily are completely new to it. RankBrain will make accurate guesses based on the knowledge that is continually improving upon. Google has said that much work is done offline, possibly by feeding text to the program so that it can analyse the semantic relationships between words and phrases. RankBrain is already being used worldwide. Alongside links and content, it is now one of the three most-important signals the search giant uses among several hundred to make up its algorithm, Hummingbird. It’s not totally revolutionary RankBrain may be the biggest step Google has taken to date into machine learning, but previous algorithms such as Panda have also employed it to some extent. Microsoft’s little-spoken-of RankNet, meanwhile, uses the concept of neural nets and is not totally dissimilar to RankBrain. The big leap some are predicting, however, is that RankBrain will at some point evolve into what’s termed Deep Learning, when it no... --- ### Facebook Advertising: Staying Connected to your Customers > With facebook ads it is important to remember the key difference between paid search and paid social. With paid search you are capitalising on strong user.. - Published: 2016-04-13 - Modified: 2024-05-02 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/facebook-ads-connected-customers/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC), Social Media With 936 million people logging in to Facebook every day, revealing more and more about themselves, it’s no wonder it has now become such a key component in advertiser toolkits. It’s one we’ve had great results with at Found, however, if you’re also thinking of testing this platform, then there are some key considerations and best practices you need to be aware of. How is Facebook different from paid search? Often advertisers looking to begin their online marketing efforts start with paid search. This makes sense – it focuses on the bottom of the conversion funnel, so it inevitably sees strong conversion rates and results can be delivered quickly. It’s when additional reach is required that Facebook often starts to creep into the picture. It is important to remember the key difference between paid search and paid social. With paid search you are capitalising on strong user intent, targeting users towards the bottom of the conversion funnel. Your potential customers are in at least the research phase, if not ready to actually buy. But with Facebook you need to grab a user’s attention while they are busy looking at photos, liking friends' posts and finding out which Disney character they should be. As such, click through rates and conversion rates are a lot lower than search, but it does provide an opportunity to get more traffic and often at significantly lower CPCs. Compared to other social networks Facebook is also relatively cost effectively, particularly when compared to Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. Often the goal for Facebook activity will be to purely raise awareness of the brand in the aim of driving a conversion at a later date, perhaps from another channel. This difference must be considered right at the beginning of a campaign when setting expectations and targets, especially when communicating expected results with clients. How do I assess Facebook performance? Facebook is often used as a brand awareness tool, and as such, impressions and clicks are useful metrics. Engagements are also a good measure of success in this area – likes, shares, follows. Although these people might not necessarily click through to your site, they can be retargeted and even contacted organically at a later date. This is where it is important to consider the lifetime value of these users as users who simply engage with a brand initially can be developed into high spend acquisitions later down the line. However, it is also key to understand what is happening after these interactions to be able to invest in areas that are working and improve the performance of your campaigns. Ensure your Facebook activity is tracked either through Facebook’s own conversion tracking pixel or UTM tagged for tracking through Google Analytics - ideally both. The biggest mistake advertisers make when assessing Facebook performance is looking solely at last-click sales/conversions. It’s crucial to look beyond this and assess the assisted impact of your paid activity and how the activity is helping drive performance across other channels. While Facebook works particularly... --- ### Making the leap: Should you Kermit to HTTPS? > HTTPS is about security. About safety. It's not exciting or explosive like say, "mobilegeddon" - at least not at first glance. - Published: 2016-04-06 - Modified: 2024-05-15 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/making-the-leap-should-you-kermit-to-https/ - Categories: SEO HTTPS looks risky from some angles. Is the danger real or might it be more dangerous not to make the jump? While searching for the location of the soul, 19th century German physiologist Friedrich Goltz observed that frogs did not attempt to escape hot water if it was heated slowly enough. The same results were produced by his contemporary WT Sedgwick, who noted that "the temperature was raised at a rate of 0. 002°C per second, and the frog was found dead at the end of 2½ hours without having moved".  They claimed that the poor frog had not responded to the changes in its environment because they were so gradual. To make matters worse, the location of the soul remained a mystery. Google's mobile update back in April 2015 flash-boiled the pot and caused a lot of webmasters to jump out of the water and sort out their websites pronto. "Mobilegeddon" is about as far as it's possible to get from the more subtle warming we're seeing with Google's approach to HTTPS. "Why would I need to change my website? Everything's fine" (image) What is HTTPS for? HTTPS is about security. About safety. It's not exciting or explosive like, say, "mobilegeddon" - at least not at first glance. It's a communication protocol (a system of rules for communication between computers) which is encrypted using TLS (transport layer security) or its predecessor SSL. Ribbiting. Jargon aside, it's what stops the bad guys from seeing the information passing between your computer and a website you're visiting. The benefits: Authentication - "Am I talking to who they claim to be? " Data Integrity - "Has anyone tampered with the data? " Encryption - "Can anyone see my conversation? " With ye olde unencrypted HTTP, hard drinking desperados in balaclavas could do a man in the middle attack in which they eavesdrop on the details of your purchase of slippers for your gran. After this either (a) your bank phones up to check if you really did buy a plane ticket to Khabarovsk or (b) the rent doesn't get paid and you get evicted. This is not funny and the people with influence over how the internet works don't think so either. "Maybe I'll just stay here on this leaf" (image) If you were the in-house SEO for an ecommerce website, would you want to go hopping over to the C suite with a recommendation for going secure if you knew the risks and potential drawbacks? You'd need a powerful list of longer term benefits to the business as-well as the security reasons we've already covered. Slowly, gradually, imperceptibly, these benefits are getting easier to find. Ranking signal HTTPS is a ranking signal. Google stated this directly on the Webmaster Central Blog way back in August 2014: “we're starting to use HTTPS as a ranking signal.  For now it's only a very lightweight signal — affecting fewer than 1% of global queries, and carrying less weight than other signals such as high-quality content— while we give webmasters time to switch to HTTPS. But over time, we may decide... --- ### Found nominated for 6 more Drum awards > It's that time of year again when all the award nomination and shortlist announcements are made. This week, it's the turn of the Drum Digital Trading Awards - Published: 2016-03-31 - Modified: 2024-05-15 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/drum-digital-trading-awards/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, General News It's that time of year again when all the award nomination and shortlist announcements are made. This week, it's the turn of the Drum Digital Trading Awards. We're happy to announce that this year Found have been nominated for 6 awards in 4 different categories. These are: Best Video Campaign - 'Top Tips for Travellers' for YHA Best Paid Search Campaign - 'A Multichannel Marriage' for Hand Picked Hotels Best Paid Search Campaign - 'Focused on Exposure' for Vitec Best Paid Search Campaign - 'Matching the Message to the Moment' for Red Letter Days Best Mobile Campaign - 'Squaring up to mobile' for Square Meal Most Effective Media Agency - Found We're immensely proud to be recognised alongside some of our peers for the work we do every day here at Found. You can watch the video for the YHA nomination here You can view the Drum Digital Trading Awards 2016 full nomination list here We're really looking forward to attending the award ceremony and hopefully bringing home a few awards. --- ### Adblock wars - the publishers strike back > The rise of the more savvy surfer has lead to an increase in the number using Adblock plugins specifically designed to filter out advertisements - Published: 2016-03-29 - Modified: 2024-05-15 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/adblock-wars-the-publishers-strike-back/ - Categories: Opinion, Paid Search (PPC) UK digital ad spend reached an estimated £7. 2bn in 2014 according to the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) up from £6. 3bn in the previous year. Yet despite years of inflation-beating growth the industry faces a threat - one that many may say is a result of the sector's own complacency and disregard for consumers. It’s been the topic of an increasing number of industry discussions and roundtable events held in recent months. The threat? Users blocking ads. The rise of the more savvy surfer has led to an increase in the number of web users opting to avoid advertisements online through the use browser plugins specifically designed to filter out advertisements from consumed content. How widespread is the use of Adblockers? Figures for the proportion of consumers utilising ad blocking solutions vary, but publishers, networks and industry bodies all appear to agree that usage is increasing - and rapidly. In the UK the IAB’s latest research from February 2016 shows that 22% of British adults currently use an ad-blocking solution, up from 18% just four months earlier. UK ad blocking grew 82% to reach 12 million active users in the year to June 2015 according to PageFair, one of a growing number of platforms that provide a way for publishers to fight back. The ad network, strapline "we help websites survive the rise of Adblock", offers to replace blocked ads on partners websites with “non-intrusive” ads and enables publishers to recapture revenue lost to blocking. The proliferation of ad blockers amongst internet users varies considerably by sector. With Quartz reporting that usage figures range from 30%-90% of visitors blocking ads to a selection of individual sites. Mobile Hope? Significant ad blocking has now made the jump over to mobile in a big way. With mobile now accounting for greater than 50% of sessions, any publisher hopes of this continuing shift offering a way to recoup revenue from users with desktop blockers are now evaporating. In September last year Apple released iOS 9 which for the first time enabled Safari content blocking apps to enter their App Store. In less than day ad blocking apps had shot up the app charts and penetration rates are approaching those on desktop. Things could be about to get worse. Citing concerns over consumer experience, privacy and increased data charges, the mobile network Three is planning to roll out a solution which can block 95% of banner and pop-up ads served to its 8. 8 million subscribers. Here to stay? Perhaps even more alarming for those relying on an ad-funded model are that the figures suggest rates of adblocking are greatest amongst the young and those in emerging markets, growing a whole new generation of internet users who expect the web to be ad free. The number one browser in most Asian markets is UC Browser which is owned by the e-commerce giant Alibaba. With a 51% market share in India, ads are blocked as standard. Remember Popup blockers? Blocking ads is nothing new.... --- ### WHY SEO NEEDS EDITORS - Published: 2016-03-21 - Modified: 2024-05-15 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/seo-needs-editors/ - Categories: Content Marketing, SEO This article was written based on a Search London presentation given by Charlie Williams, you can view the full slides here. Originally posted on white. net “So, who edits your content? ”This simple question, asked innocently enough by a client, brings up the missing ingredient in many SEO campaigns. Editorial perspective. This was the subject of a talk I gave at Search London recently. And it’s one of the most intriguing questions in SEO. Do we need SEO editors to make publication-worthy content? On reflection, this question from our client was a fair one. They liked what we proposed for content to expand their relevancy within their niche. They agreed that new content to earn attention and links was needed. They were asking who would bring all the disparate needs of the project together. Who considered SEO, but also the quality of the content, audience needs and demographics? Who recognised their brand voice and the technical limitations of their platform? With other marketing disciplines, such as advertising or our above-the-line marketing counterparts, the client had an editorial figure. Someone who could speak to all the departments involved, commission tasks and bring a publishing perspective. This made me realise we don’t explicitly recognise or covet editorial skills in SEO. We don’t see articles on using editorial techniques for SEO, the same way we do for say UX or copywriting. An argument for SEO editorsI’ve worked in online marketing for a few years, and seen many things done in the name of SEO. Good and bad. Much of that of course revolves around content. More now than ever. Frankly, much of what our industry produces is distinctly average. It ticks boxes. Yet more of it is awful. A waste of pixels, time and, most importantly, client budget. This was predicted in a talk done by Doug Kessler of Velocity Partners.  This stated (back in 2013) there would be a wave of poor content marketing. Content that looks the same as the good stuff at first, but is actually a poor experience, raising our audiences’ barriers. And it’s all-too true in SEO. Last Summer Buzzsumo and Moz did a study into the correlation of social shares and links. What came out about content is important. In a sample, 75% of content had no external links. 85% of content examined had less than 1,000 words. This tells us a couple of things. Most of our content doesn’t work, and we lack the will or ability to produce long-form content. Even though we know it performs. I think of SEO as a craft. You have the hard data side, that we use to inform the creative side. It’s one of the most enjoyable aspects of the job. But while we’ve begun to master data through analytics and research, our creative content is... well... hit and miss. But when you consider where many of us have come from to find ourselves in SEO, perhaps it’s not a surprise. As SEO has evolved at a dizzying pace, many of us now specialise within a facet, such as outreach,... --- ### 5 RULES FOR EFFECTIVE SEO CAMPAIGN COMMUNICATION > Learn the 5 essential rules for effective SEO, including alignment with clients, measurable processes, and continuous strategy improvement. - Published: 2016-02-22 - Modified: 2025-04-07 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/5-rules-effective-digital-marketing/ - Categories: How to, SEO It can take years to master the digital marketing industry’s many nuances. Having a solid technical and marketing background isn’t enough to make you an industry expert. As well as acquiring deep digital marketing expertise and knowledge, you need to know how to tailor your business position and communications to be perceived as a professional by potential clients. You must not only be sure of your capabilities yourself, but you must also be able to convince your clients, colleagues and bosses that you are capable. In this article, I want to share 5 rules you should master to sell your SEO ideas. Rule #1: Be on the same page as your clientIf you want to build a lasting relationship with your client, you have to reach a mutual understanding. This means you have to speak their language. So our first rule starts with bearing in mind that your and your clients’ perspectives will not typically coincide. That is normal, as long as you can maintain a balance between performance and results. While it is essential for your professional growth to focus on processes, you need to remember that your clients are more interested in seeing results. There are two types of metrics – performance metrics and result metrics. As long as you focus on your own process and constantly move forward, you will be able to select the appropriate metrics to monitor your progress. But your clients and managers are interested in results, so you should include metrics that highlight the benefits of that progress in your reports for them. As usual, your clients focus on the bottom line;. include KPIs, conversion rates, and other metrics that clients understand. Unless your clients ask about other results, don’t everyone’s time with performance metrics they might not be aware of, nor use obscure SEO terminology. You don’t want to make them feel uncomfortable by highlighting their lack of knowledge. Again, you should speak their language; express success using details they care about.  Below you can see a schema for common performance and business metrics. Some clients want every detail shared, others just the top line of major developments and results. Your aim should always be precision and reassuring clients that they are not wasting their money, which takes us to my next rule. Rule #2: Your processes must be measurable and transparent for all involved partiesAlways be open with your clients.  Although it is true that your results speak for themselves, it is your job to elucidate them. They should be measurable and transparent, so you need to find the right tools and techniques to best depict your progress. Let’s take a look at the following matrix, usually applied to agency-client relationships. It explains the correlation between the transparency of a company’s inner processes and the level of trust this company receives from its clients. SourceYour relationship with your client begins at point A. They are not aware of what is going on inside your company or how you will deliver the services they pay for. Your aim is to be... --- ### Twitter’s War and Peace: could 9,860 characters end the micro-blog? > #Twitter10k is the latest announcement keeping us on our toes. With 10,000 characters more to play with, we consider the impact to content marketers - Published: 2016-01-08 - Modified: 2024-05-15 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/twitters-war-peace-9860-characters-end-micro-blog/ - Categories: Social Media #Twitter10k is the latest announcement keeping us on our toes, meaning my tweets could be much longer rather than being cut off right here. Just imagine the hashtag possibilities with 10,000 characters. If Tweet limits increase to 10,000 characters, I can already visualise the glory of paragraph-long hashtags. Each campaign hashtag would mention in minute detail each and every nuance as it is broadcast to Twitter. The KISS principle of Keep it Simple Stupid need not apply anymore! I’m relieved, are you? That is, if it doesn’t completely change the way we market and promote content on Twitter. In all seriousness, #Twitter10k is a matter that requires attention, as a dip in Twitter stock connected with the news is no small matter. What are people saying about how it will affect us content marketers? What are they trying to do? I wonder what Matthew Barby, Global Head of Growth & SEO at HubSpot, would have said if he had space for 9,960 characters more in his tweet above? Would he spend the characters expanding on his comment? Perhaps. In the 140 character past, the logical place for such an analysis would only have room on-site in a blog post, just like this one written here. Is it the end of micro-blogging? Twitter has been described as a micro-blogging platform since the early days of Web 2. 0. With this new character limit, it has the potential to become another article blogging platform. Twitter’s unique value is in the brevity of its written content and, with the additional characters, that concise writing will never again hold the same importance on the platform. It’s another off-site location that wants our long-form content. If we are forced to compete with content in Twitter’s feed against sharing links to articles, it might harm our marketed website’s performance. It is a change that could make us re-consider the integration between our content and promotion strategy, or even force us to innovate more on-site. Reports are that we won’t see the full response past 140 characters unless we, as users, show we want to see it with a click. So, conversations for user-to-user interactions will likely still begin and end in the short-hand format that has characterised the platform. However, for user-to-brand considerations, the capability for a longer response to a question or talking point is there. Why the conversation is still at the core Twitter’s strength is in its ability to start and continue allow easy conversations, real-time responses written in a punchy fashion. Sometimes, complicated conversations need longer responses. The current character makes you keep it simple stupid but is an artificial restraint I’ve hit more than once. One part of the argument for change is that Twitter likely has user data to show that people like me are hitting that limit and it’s been detrimental enough to stop engagement. There have been notable responses cited by this WSJ article that have taken image format to circumvent the limit. It’s not an ideal restraint... --- ### Phantom 3 update targets poor user experience > Phantom 3 strikes! But what and where does the update target? Read our guide on how you can reverse the effects. - Published: 2015-12-09 - Modified: 2024-07-22 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/phantom-3-update-targets-poor-user-experience/ - Categories: General News, SEO Recently, large fluctuations in organic visibility have been impacting sites' traffic across multiple industries. With no announced updates from Google, SEOs have been hard at work finding the cause of these movements. In May 2015, digital marketing veteran Glenn Gabe noticed that a large number of sites were seeing fluctuations, yet webmasters and digital marketers were given no official announcement from Google. Given that these changes were so mysterious, what with Google denying the assumptions that this was a Panda or Penguin update, Gabe gave the update the label of Phantom 2, after its namesake Phantom which was released in early 2013. Due to the similar nature of areas targeted by this update and the fact we are yet to receive an announcement around this update, it has been labelled Phantom 3 by the SEO community. The update rolled out around the 19th of November and appears to have targeted sites with poor user experience. Identifying the issue and what to expect A look into Searchmetrics will reveal whether or not your site has been hit by the update. Firstly, look for significant changes in visibility around the 19th of November. Sites which have been hit have seen around a 10% increases or decrease in visibility and some are seeing fluctuations of up to 20%. It’s important to follow this up in Google Analytics with further analysis into how this has affected your site’s traffic and revenue - have particular categories or landing pages seen greater impact? And how has this impacted on conversions and revenue? Like most updates, there will likely be tremors within visibility graphs and organic traffic as the update continues to roll out in the weeks following its release. Site owners and webmasters should expect recovery to take some time. This is because firstly we may need to see another update to fully recover, and secondly the nature of the areas targeted means that implementing changes as a result of this update will require ample analysis and development time. What and where does the update target? And how to reverse the effects? As previously mentioned, the update targets poor user experience. Below is a list of common elements which were found to be underperforming across negatively impacted sites. Annoying/clunky site navigation: If Google is struggling to crawl your site efficiently, it’s likely that users are having a hard time navigating it too. Time should be spent identifying any issues users may have with the navigation and then optimising this both for bots and users. Key areas to focus on are ensuring that important category/landing pages are easily accessible, that the navigation isn’t cluttered with links, and that there is a clear category structure. Thin/low-quality content: This one’s a no-brainer. Ensure all content on the site is relevant to the user and to the search term they used to get there. In addition, analysis of any supplementary content on the blog will reveal if articles aren’t getting the point across, or perhaps they’re just irrelevant to the rest of... --- ### New Adwords update - DFSAs : making every click matter > The most recent Adwords update comes in the form of another acronym: DFSAs - we explain how to use this new tool effectively and make every click matter! - Published: 2015-12-01 - Modified: 2024-05-15 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/adwords-update-dfsas-making-every-click-matter/ - Categories: Analytics, Paid Search (PPC) With over 200 Adwords updates in 2014, Google shows no sign of slowing down. The most recent and arguably the most exciting update comes in the form of another acronym: DFSAs (Demographics For Search Ads) - not to be confused with DSAs (Dynamic Search Ads). This new feature is compatible with both new and returning visitors and allows you to reach high value demographics based on the performance of certain ages and genders. What makes this feature so powerful is the ability to target top converting audience segments with a custom bidding and creative strategy. You can also exclude certain demographics which may be deemed irrelevant to those campaigns – this in turn will help eliminate unqualified traffic and reduce wasted spend, resulting in increased ROI and reduced CPA (your clients will love you! ). Let’s take a look at how to set up and approach your DFSAs to ‘make every click matter’... Which campaigns will benefit? DFSAs work best with keywords that are outside of premium positions. Campaigns with an average position of 2. 0 are going to be your ideal candidates as the opportunity is far greater to gain incremental clicks from an improved positional advantage. Campaigns with an average position in the 1. 0 and 1. 9 range could also benefit from DFSAs (so don’t disregard these! ). How to analyse historic performance Reporting for all managed demographics will appear in the ‘audiences’ tab. This can be found at the AdGroup-Demographic level with a total row for all managed demographics. This is also the section where you will be able to apply bid adjustments to both gender and age. Take a strategic approach to DFSAsExisting keywordsIt’s important to up-weight your bids when your target audience searches for your existing keywords. There might be certain instances where some of your brand-generic keywords have too low of an ROI to be in premium positions. Go through to the audiences tab and up-weight bids for your highest converting demographics. Layer upStandard RLSAs have been a real game changer for bidding on generic keywords that have historically converted at very low rates. Now, with DFSAs layered on top of RLSAs, marketers are able to supercharge their keyword strategy by entering auctions and paying for clicks from users with the highest purchase intent. Look inside your existing RLSA campaigns and find out exactly which demographics have the highest conversion rates. Once you have this information, duplicate your campaign so that you are exclusively  targeting these demographics and up-weighting bids based on performance. Go beyond direct response with tailored adsPaid search marketers can now go far beyond the classic ‘buy, buy, buy' approach. We can now really start to hone in on individual characteristics of the buyer to deliver personalised messaging. If you are a little apprehensive about the ‘right’ way to deliver your creative strategy, then a persona document is a great place to start. This will not only guide your creative testing with DFSAs but will also help drive other parts... --- ### Found win at the 2015 UK Search Awards! > UK Search Awards. Shortlisted for 3 awards, the team were full of excitement and crossing their fingers for their categories. - Published: 2015-11-30 - Modified: 2024-05-15 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-win-at-the-2015-uk-search-awards/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC)   On Thursday 10 of our lovely Founders got dressed up and headed down to the Southbank for the 2015 UK Search Awards. Shortlisted for 3 awards, the team were full of excitement and crossing their fingers for their categories. Always a fun night, this year hosted again by TV’s Andy Crane, the team enjoyed a slap-up dinner and a few drinks before the awards ceremony began. We’re always thrilled to be shortlisted for our work at these events, however, nothing quite compares when the team takes home an award. We are super proud to have won Best Low Budget Campaign for our paid search activity with Randstad Finance and Professional.   Randstad approached us with a small budget to run a paid campaign that would increase job applications and cv submissions whilst reducing their CPA.   Having worked with the team at Randstad since 2013, we were able to use our knowledge of their business and our paid search expertise to synchronise optimisation with real-time job availability driving conversion rate and returning visitors whilst reducing their CPA by over 48%. Congratulations to everyone who took an award home and to everyone shortlisted. We hope you had as much fun celebrating as we did! --- ### Video advertising: watch & learn > Learn how to make the most out of video advertising by delivering the right message to the right people during their right micro-moment on the web. - Published: 2015-11-24 - Modified: 2024-05-15 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/video-advertising-watch-learn/ - Categories: Creative, Paid Search (PPC), Paid Social, Social Media With over one billion active YouTube users, and more than five billion videos being watched every day on YouTube, we now eat, sleep and breathe video! Today, more than half of all YouTube views occur on mobile and we watch on average 39 minutes of video on our phones every day. So, how can advertisers use video to deliver the right message to the right people during their right micro-moment on the web? We no longer think of video advertising as a channel solely for increasing engagements (i. e. video views) - it is much more powerful than this. If you can a. ) create demand for your brand b. ) reach the right people and c. ) combine this with purchase intent, then video becomes a channel which adds value to many other areas of your business. Let’s take a look at how to ensure your video campaigns are adding “True” value to your brand by first taking a look at the above elements in more detail. a. ) Creating demand Engaging brand content is a fantastic way to create demand, but how can you differentiate yourself from other brands competing in the video space? Users will be actively in the market to watch videos, and often with the intention to buy too, but they may not be aware of your brand, or have ever thought about the types of products or services that you offer. Using video in this way will help add valuable traffic across multiple channels. Google highlighted that 35% of users are more likely to search for your brand after seeing a video ad, so if you're not already visible in the video space, then you're missing a trick! b. ) Reach the right people (with the right ad format) So, you've thought about creating demand through video, but how can you ensure that you are reaching the right people? If your target audience does not watch videos, then a video campaign will not be suitable for your purposes. However, with video predicted to account for 69% of all online data traffic in 2017, it would be hard to believe that a video campaign wouldn't leverage your other online activity. TrueView offers two types of video ads; in-stream and in-display. The type of ad format you adopt will largely depend on your marketing objectives. Do you want to increase brand awareness or is your goal to deliver incremental sales? YouTube users will be oh too familiar with the ‘Skip Ad’ button – this is in-stream. It is obligatory for the user to watch the first five seconds, after which they have the option to skip the rest of the ad. Give them a reason to watch more! Grab their attention: hook, line and sinker. After all, your video campaign is only as good as the video itself. You can also add a companion banner alongside in-stream ads. This will appear on the right-hand side of your video. This will help to increase engagement rates of users, as they are more... --- ### Found shortlisted for six awards at the 2015 Drum Network Awards > We're so proud to have been recognised again by The Drum Network Awards! - Published: 2015-11-13 - Modified: 2024-04-02 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-shortlisted-for-six-awards-at-the-2015-drum-network-awards/ - Categories: General News With the end of the year looming, 2015 award season is nearing an end, but not without some more nominations for team Found. We’re delighted to announce that we have been shortlisted six times for this years Drum Network Awards recognising the innovation and hard work that we put into clients’ campaigns. This years’ shortlisted awards include Retail Campaign/Strategy of the Year for Red Letter Days, B2C Marketing Campaign/Strategy of the Year for Red Letter Days, Leisure & Tourism Campaign/Strategy of the Year for Hand Picked Hotels, Professional Services Campaign for our work with Randstad & Williams F1TM, Digital Marketing Agency of the Year and London Marketing Business of the Year. The Drum Network Awards will be held at the Emirates Stadium on Thursday 3rd December and we look forward to spending the evening amongst the industries finest and hopefully leaving with an award or two! FUTURE-PROOFING YOUR ECOMMERCE STRATEGY. --- ### Don't go cold turkey on your PPC campaigns > What should you be doing to your PPC campaign in the run up to Christmas? Read our top tips on how to stay ahead of the game! - Published: 2015-11-12 - Modified: 2024-05-15 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/dont-go-cold-turkey-on-your-ppc-campaigns/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) The clocks going back can only mean one thing, Christmas is nearly upon us! ... and it seems to be catching up with us marketers, and shoppers alike, faster than ever before. You’d better get your skates on if you work in PPC management, as searches for Christmas gifts started as early as September this year. (Source: Google Internal Data). The focus should no longer just be optimising your PPC campaigns for desktop users. The way people shop online is ever-evolving, so it is vital to capture users across multiple devices and platforms at every minute of the day. After all, if your brand is not visible when a user is searching for Christmas gifts on the commute home from work, then it is very unlikely they will revisit your site when they are ready to buy their present. They will visit a competitor, which is not what you want! So, if you are one of those people who has bought all of their Christmas presents already, wrapped them in colour co-ordinated paper and ribbon and is ready to put them under the tree, then I expect your paid search campaigns are as equally organised. Or perhaps you prefer to leave your Christmas shopping until the last minute? Then listen up, because there is no time like the present to get your campaigns in shape for the festive period. We discuss top tips for getting your PPC campaigns in shape, as well as new(er) initiatives for capturing shoppers' attention on their Christmas shopping journeys. Let’s get crack(l) ing! 2014 performance Before you rush into launching any new activity, take some time to look into your eCommerce data in Google Analytics. Ask yourself which products sold well in 2014 and what role mobile played in these campaigns. Did performance peak on Black Friday and Cyber Monday? –I expect so! Use this wealth of knowledge to guide your 2015 Christmas strategy. Key dates : Knowing key dates for purchases online will mean you can set your clients' expectations and plan for seasonal spikes effectively. Black Friday – Black Friday 2014 was the biggest eCommerce shopping day on record. UK Black Friday queries grew by 273% YoY and Sales were up 74% YoY. This really is a game-changer – so brace yourselves! Cyber Monday - Searches on Cyber Monday grew by 39% YoY too – so another one to be prepared for. Boxing Day - 20+% YoY growth to retail sites. Last Order Days – Equally pay attention to your retailer’s last order dates. Nobody wants to receive a Christmas present on Boxing Day – so make this clear in your messaging. Christmas keywords So you know your historic data like the back of your hand, it’s time to get festive with your keywords. You will notice in search terms reports that Christmas related keywords started coming through earlier this year than they did in 2014. Harness those new searches and build out your Christmas keyword lists accordingly. House these either in individual... --- ### 9 top tips to successfully manage large PPC accounts > Lauren Dodds, PPC Guru here at Found takes us through 9 of her top tips when managing large PPC accounts. Don't miss it! - Published: 2015-11-04 - Modified: 2024-09-23 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/9-top-tips-to-successfully-manage-large-ppc-accounts/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) The great thing about PPC is that it can be used by businesses of all shapes and sizes, from a local florist to a large international company, to drive relevant traffic to a site. Whilst there are fundamental skills and strategies that can be used across a range of campaigns, there are also a number of important points to remember when specifically managing large accounts with higher volumes of campaigns or keywords. 1) Structure and naming A crucial factor when managing large accounts is getting the structure and naming of campaigns, as well as the ad groups, correct. This level of organisation not only makes it easier to navigate around the account yourself but also allows anyone else looking at the account, be it your client or an external user, to know exactly what is going on. It is especially important when you have similar campaigns targeting different locations and languages, or if you are using a variety of features such as Google shopping, display or RLSAs. Develop a naming convention across all accounts that is clear and logical. For example, a search campaign targeting generic dress keywords to returning visitors in the UK might be labelled: Generic_UK_Dresses_RLSA.  Any user looking at that campaign will then know exactly what to expect. It is also important to separate brand and generic activity. They perform very differently and should be assigned budgets accordingly and managed separately. Negatives can help ensure brand terms are not picked up in generic campaigns. It is helpful to use the site structure as a basis for your campaigns. For example, a clothing site might have campaigns for dresses, coats etc. Keep ad groups tightly targeted with keywords around a certain theme. With very large accounts it helps if bids can be managed at ad group level rather than keyword level. Any high traffic keywords (e. g. brand terms) can then be pulled out into their own ad groups for more granular management. A good naming structure can also help with reporting, making it easy to quickly add keywords and ads to multiple campaigns. 2) Labelling Labels are a great way to group similar campaigns, ad groups, keywords and ads in order to identify trends. For example, you can compare how one specific offer or call-to-action performs against another across multiple ads. It can also be helpful to label any new activity so you can monitor performance and roll out changes to other campaigns. 3) Prioritise It is easy to get overwhelmed by a large campaign, especially if you’ve never handled an account of that size before. Focus on areas that will have the most impact. Start by looking at the campaigns with the highest traffic and spend. A CTR increase of 1% on a keyword that receives 1000 impressions a day is going to have more of an impact than on one that receives 10. 4) Make use of tools Use AdWords Editor (or the appropriate tool for the search engine you are using) to quickly and easily make bulk changes. You can... --- ### The 10 commandments of keyword optimisation > Keyword optimisation is fast becoming a dirty word in the SEO community. Like the link wheel and adding meta keywords, it's viewed as something old fashioned - Published: 2015-10-23 - Modified: 2024-05-15 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/keyword-optimisation-the-10-commandments/ - Categories: How to, Opinion, SEO Keyword optimisation is fast becoming a dirty word in the SEO community. Like the link wheel and adding meta keywords, it's viewed as something old fashioned which worked back in the times before Google got skynet-smart. Mountain view, California Yet, clunky as keyword optimisation sounds today, we still need it. While topics and entities supposedly reign supreme, we haven't reached the promised land yet. Googlebot still can't pass the turing test. AI has not arrived. We still need to do keyword optimisation. We just need to do it differently. Enter keyword topic optimisation - an approach which blends classic keyword optimisation with Google's latest advancements. Why do we do keyword topic optimisation? It boosts a web-page's relevancy score for our target topics. A high relevancy score helps pages rank higher for searches around a topic. It's a crucial part of the holy SEO trinity alongside authority and technical compliance. We want our page to rank higher. Where should we start? With keyword research. If you've done it, you know the most popular phrases relating to the client’s business. If you've grouped your client's keywords into portfolio groups, you're even further ahead of the game - the logical organisation will make it a lot easier to identify the topics which your keywords naturally belong to. But this next step is where the real winners take over. Not only do they lay off the salty foods and do a little exercise now and then, they also consider topics before keywords. The 10 commandments of keyword optimisation: 1) Each topic needs one page What's the page about? Not so long ago (let's face it - it's happening right now), SEOs used to make pages targeting specific individual keywords. Page (A) would target "action movies" and page (B) would target "action films" even though they are the same thing. The hope would be to rank for both terms and double your money. These days however, you're more likely to double your topic cannibalisation - that is, Googlebot being confused about which page from your site is the most appropriate to rank for a topic - and choosing to rank either the wrong page or neither page. Action films - all the greats Action movies - The results are the same. The carousel results are in a different order though. 2. Each page needs one topic How much is the page about what it's about? When writing about your topic, keep the main thing the main thing. Topic relevancy is a signal which Googlebot picks up on - the more concentrated this relevancy, the better. Wandering off topic and introducing tangentially related or unrelated content into a page leads into the pathless hills of topic dilution. Shiver. Don't get lost with your topic 3. Use a rich vocabulary Are you for real? When real people write great content, they use a lot of synonyms. Googlebot knows this. It has a rudimentary understanding of which terms are likely to be found near other terms and this helps it to determine... --- ### Log File Analysis for SEO to Optimise Crawl Budget > Read our handy tips on how to increase crawl budget and what can be achieved with log file analysis. - Published: 2015-10-22 - Modified: 2025-02-25 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/using-log-file-analysis-to-make-the-most-of-your-crawl-budget/ - Categories: Analytics, Data Crawl budget & log file analysis Google is constantly crawling the web to index new content and any changes made to existing content. The perfect scenario once Google has crawled your site, is that every crawl results in all SERP (search engine results page) worthy pages being crawled and indexed. Unfortunately for SEOs and webmasters worldwide, this is not the case. Google actually limits the number of pages it will visit, this is known as crawl budget.  So, you might be wondering two things at this point. 1) How is crawl budget assigned? And 2) How do I increase my crawl budget? Crawl budget Crawl budget is assigned based on a site’s authority. The formula is simple; the higher your site authority, the more URLs Google will crawl. Due to their high authority these sites are referenced multiple times across the web, therefore it can be presumed they will contain relevant and engaging content valuable to it's users. For this reason, it's in Google's interest to ensure the results pages are constantly updated with any new pages added to a high authority site and any changes made to existing content. So, to increase a site’s crawl budget you’ll need to increase site authority. SEO link earning practices seek to do this by gaining relevant links from other authoritative sites. However this is a timely process so whilst site authority is being built there are quicker wins to be had. Outside of increasing your crawl budget you can optimise the way your site is crawled. The best way to do this is to analyse your log files and arrange actions off the back of this. Log files Log files are recorded on a site’s server and allow those with access to see how users and bots are interacting with the URLs on the site. In its raw form, the data can look a little daunting... However, an understanding of the data segments within the file and a quick filter on the columns feature in your spreadsheet turns the data into a valuable resource for analysing your site’s crawl ability. The information shown above has been split into the following sections: Server IP – The IP address of the bot or user accessing a file on your site The date the URL was accessed The time the URL was accessed The URL requested by the agent Server response – The HTTP response status code of the requested document User-agent – The declared name of the browser or spider accessing the URL e. g. Firefox, Googlebot etc. Log file analysis Implementations off the back of log file analysis have the opportunity for massive impact. Whilst crawl inefficiencies may not have a direct negative impact on rankings, improving the number of important URLs crawled means your content will be indexed and updated more frequently. Both of which are factors in earning and retaining strong rankings. Once the data has been segmented correctly you can begin to analyse where crawl budget is being wasted. Firstly, look... --- ### Found shortlisted again at the UK Search Awards > Award season continues and we’re delighted to announce Found has been recognised as a leading digital agency with 3 nominations at the 2015 UK Search Awards - Published: 2015-10-20 - Modified: 2024-05-15 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-shortlisted-uk-search-awards/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, General News Award season continues and we’re delighted to announce Found has once again been recognised as one of the leading digital agencies in the UK. Competing with some of the finest companies the industry has to offer, Found have been shortlisted no less than three times at the prestigious UK Search Awards. Categories include Best Use of Search (Travel & Leisure) for Handpicked Hotels, Best PPC Campaign for Red Letter Days and Best Low Budget Campaign for our work on Randstad Finance and Professionals. Being shortlisted three times is a fantastic achievement, especially across such a diverse range of verticals and budgets. The team and our clients are rightly thrilled and it’s a real testament to our paid strategy and innovation, as well as the hard work we put into our campaigns each and every day! Having already won with Red Letter Days at the inaugural Drum Search Awards earlier in the year this is certainly an exciting time for Found. The winners are set to be announced on Thursday 26th November amid glitz and glamour at The Ballroom on London’s South Bank, so fingers crossed we can go one step further and bring back a few more trophies to Found HQ! --- ### Florence Bundy makes the Drum's Top 50 under 30 > Florence Bundy, has been singled out as one of The Drum’s high-achieving women in digital for 2015, making their annual 50 under 30 list. - Published: 2015-10-16 - Modified: 2024-05-15 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/top-50-under-30-florence-bundy/ - Categories: General News Following the success of securing second place in the Drum’s Digital Elite rankings, I’m delighted to announce that our very own Operations Director, Florence Bundy, has been singled out as one of The Drum’s high-achieving women, making their annual 50 under 30 list. In an industry where women are still considerably outnumbered, The Drum felt it pertinent to champion the women who are blazing a trail in our space. With judges including Matt Bush (Director of Performance, Google,), Stephanie Marks (Deputy Managing Director, Maxus) and Hamish Nicklin (Managing Director, AOL UK), to be judged and listed as one to watch is a wonderful, and well-deserved, achievement for Florence. Chelsea Hall, Found’s Talent and Culture Manager, caught up with Florence to ask a few probing questions about inspiration, what her average day looks like and what she might be doing if she wasn’t in digital. What’s been your biggest career highlight so far? Since joining Found, it has been my mission to bring operational excellence to our business strategy. For any agency, this fundamental focus can be a major lever towards building brilliant teams, supporting client acquisition and driving revenue growth. My biggest career highlight has, undoubtedly, been the invitation to join the Found Board in 2014. This represented a significant milestone for me personally, as I became the youngest board member amongst a team of highly experienced digital and business pioneers. Tell us about your average day: No day is the same! I can be coaching my team, interviewing potential new Founders, marketing Found, leading process changes or rolling up my sleeves to help teams bring their planning alive. It’s my role to ensure that Found's wheels keep turning, regardless of what the day brings, so flexibility and the ability to multi-task are key. How would your colleagues describe you? It will definitely depend on who you ask! I do have a reputation for being solutions-orientated, determined and unwavering in focus – must-haves in operations roles. However, alongside this, I’m often told I have a nurturing streak and embrace and enable the people I work with, which is something I take great pride in and is key when building a team. Who inspires you? I've been exceptionally lucky working closely alongside Tina Judic, our MD, since I joined Found. As one of our industry's digital elite, I've been exposed to her unrivalled online experience, glistening strategy delivery and tireless business acumen. She continues to impress and inspire me every day with her dedication, passion and enthusiasm So, if you weren’t in digital, what would you be doing? Honestly with the speed at which digital evolves, it’s hard to consider doing anything else! But, if digital didn't exist, then my next best passion is culinary so I'd be very happy being a food critic (maybe helping the divine Jason Atherton and co with their kitchen processes too! ). --- ### Gmail Ads: the what, the why, the how > Gmail ads should be a valuable addition to any PPC campaign, read on for our top tips on how best to implement! - Published: 2015-10-09 - Modified: 2024-05-15 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/gmail-ads-the-what-the-why-the-how/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) Gmail Ads (formally known as Gmail Sponsored Promotions) are a form of high impact display advertising that offers both awareness and direct response functionality via the email channel. As Google puts it, they are “part email marketing, part display campaign extension”. Although Gmail Ads have been around as a Google Beta for the last two years, the platform has seen many improvements during this period and is now open to all advertisers though Google AdWords. As with pure display, social and other upper funnel advertising, Gmail Ads are aimed at users who are not explicitly looking for what you offer. This is paradoxical to search whereby users outline their intent very clearly via search queries. As such, it is important to align targeting and creative carefully to ensure your ads are only shown to those users most likely to be interested in your product/service. Ad Formats Ad formats are unique and will only show in personal Gmail boxes via the promotions tab. Ads are comprised of two components: a collapsed, teaser ad and an expandable ad format. The collapsed ad has a 25 character limit for the headline and a 100 character limit for the main body of text. Images need to be 50x50. Ad copy needs to act as a hook to encourage users to click and learn more. It’s essential to be clear, highlighting USPs, pricing and any special offers. Gmail Ads work on a CPC pricing format but advertisers will only pay when a user clicks on the teaser ad. Even if the ad is opened into the expandable format and a user clicks again and navigates through to the site, there are no additional costs. Expanded ads have a maximum 600x1000 ad format and can contain ad copy, images, form fields, videos and phone numbers. Top Tip – Avoid using the expandable format as simply a larger version of the teaser ad. Instead, consider this to be a mini landing page. Use the space to really highlight your offer/proposition so the user (who has already incurred a CPC for the advertiser) is encouraged to click through to the site. As with social advertising, Gmail Ads suffer from ad fatigue, so ensure the creative is refreshed at least once a month. Use the reporting suite to ascertain which elements of previous ads have worked well and build on that for the next creative idea. Why should you be using Gmail Ads? On average Gmail Ads have open rates of up to 2. 5%, with the majority of advertisers reporting campaign performance greater than prospecting display through the Google Display Network. The great thing about Gmail Ads is that they can be utilised across all stages of the buying funnel and can achieve a variety of different marketing objectives such as: Build awareness - classic brand awareness, helping your customers recognise and remember your brand and product range. Influence consideration - customised audience messaging allows you to capture interest from users in the middle of the funnel moving... --- ### What is it like being a PPC intern at Found? > Fancy a glimpse into life as a PPC analyst? Read on for an insight into one of our ppc internship placements and see if you think you could fit the bill! - Published: 2015-09-25 - Modified: 2024-05-15 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/what-is-it-like-being-a-ppc-intern-at-found/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) I'm five weeks into my internship here at Found. It’s not my first internship but it’s definitely my favourite. A little about me - I graduated from UCL a couple of years ago with a master’s degree in human genetics before spending a year-and-a-half on a grad scheme at a London investment bank. After realising that the suited and ruthless world of banking wasn’t exactly for me, I spent some time writing in the science section of an online news magazine which gave me time to ask myself 'what might be a better fit for my personality and ambitions? ' I guess you could say that career-wise I was lost but now I am... ... ... ... . somewhere much better. (Puns come later). Image credit : 23/09/15 at www. findmemes. com This “scientist-turned-banker-turned-journalist-turned-future-PPC-guru” progression might seem a bit random on the surface but there’s a solid theme running through the heart of it all – data and analysis. When I eventually set my sights on digital marketing, I knew I wanted to pursue an area that challenged me intellectually, and where I could use my analytical and numerical strengths to make a tangible difference. From what I have discovered so far, if you like numbers and you like seeing direct results quickly, PPC is the place to be and the internship opportunity looked to me a solid footing to start a trendy new career. The working culture is relaxed but driven. 90’s classics cheering us on from the office Spotify playlist as Founders cleverly tinker with online advertising strategies on AdWords, Facebook, Bing, you name it. The environment has been an entirely new yet welcomed experience for me compared to where I’ve worked previously. Everyone is very generous with his or her time, even if snowed under, and the more senior Founders are only an arm’s length away and always up for a chat. From day one, I have received expert and dedicated mentoring from the team. Each day I work with my mentor learning new tasks and I’ll often help the other account managers in the team for some extra practice. The amount I have learned in just five weeks has been incredible. For those reading this blog who have just stumbled onto PPC or are more like “pee-pee-what? ”, there is a whole lot that goes on behind those ads you might have noticed at the top of Google search results. As Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson put it in The Internship to the humble pizzeria owner: “Everybody’s searching for something.   They are searching for you.   Just let us help them find you” Image credit : 23/09/15 at www. theatlantic. com Essentially, PPC is a form of online advertising that helps people find the products and services they are looking for. Companies pay money for users to click on their adverts and Found is an agency that specialises in digital advertising for their clients. The internet knows all. I have created ads that are aimed... --- ### Found jumps four places to take second spot in The Drum Elite > We’re delighted to announce that, once again, Found has made it into The Drum’s Digital Elite! - Published: 2015-09-17 - Modified: 2024-05-15 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-jumps-four-places-to-take-second-spot-in-the-drum-elite/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, General News We’re delighted to announce that, once again, Found has made it into The Drum’s Digital Elite, following their latest Digital Census. Found secured second place, a leap of four, in the 26-50 staff category. Agencies are judged on two core aspects: financial performance (made up of revenue, revenue growth and revenue per head) and client satisfaction (client ratings attained through the Recommended Agency Register – RAR - covering a number of areas, including service, effectiveness, strategic thinking, value and creativity). We are also delighted to be the only agency within our category to achieve top 10 scores in both the financial and client polls. This is a hugely proud and exciting achievement for Found. As a digital performance agency, performance excellence is at the heart of everything we do so to be recognised by our clients is a wonderful honour. A very big thank you to all of our clients – we couldn’t do this without you! --- ### AdWords Vs Analytics Remarketing > Remarketing is one of the most crucial tactics of any performance marketing strategy,but how do you ensure this is done effectively? Read our top tips here! - Published: 2015-09-11 - Modified: 2024-05-15 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/adwords-vs-analytics-remarketing/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) In the world of PPC, remarketing is undeniably one of the most crucial tactics that form part of your overall performance marketing strategy. Remarketing is a type of behavioral targeting that allows advertisers to target display adverts to audiences who have previously visited a website, regardless of their original traffic source. It works by placing cookies on a user's browser. This allows the advertiser to trace that audience member across the other websites they visit and serve them display ads across those websites. It’s one of the best ways in marketing to match the right people with the right message. Knowing that a user has interacted in some way or another with your site, means that they are far more likely to convert, which puts the performance of remarketing on a similar level when compared to paid search. So, with all that said, where should one start when it comes to remarketing? The answer is remarketing lists. These are lists of cookies that represent a set of users who are chosen based on your targeting criteria. There are two common options for approaching remarketing – AdWords and/or Google Analytics. Google AdWords AdWords remarketing templates One of the first steps in creating remarketing lists is to determine which users to target and which to exclude, using the AdWords outline of “Visitors of a page”. Your choices are: These are the most basic forms of remarketing lists but a great place to start when setting up remarketing campaigns for the first time. These choices will allow you to include those who’ve visited your site, exclude those who have already completed a specific goal and build lists around users showing specific behaviour. This could be someone who has added an item to their shopping basket yet failed to complete the order. You could remarket to these users with an ad that offers them a discount code or maybe free delivery to entice them back. Visitors of a page This is the most common template and is set as the default option when you create remarketing lists. You can use it to create lists of people who have visited a certain page or group of pages. Visitors to a page who did not visit another page Use this if you’d like to reach people who have visited a certain page of your site but have not visited another. This could be used for creating a list for shopping basket abandons; people who have added items to their basket but for some reason did not check out. Here you would be able to serve them ads with a discount code or free delivery, increasing the chances of them completing their purchase. Visitor to a page during specific dates This is used for creating lists of visitors who came to your site before, after or in-between specific dates. This can be great during the Christmas period when e-commerce sites normally see a big increase in traffic. The users that visit the site over this period can... --- ### Google Shopping – The Tools of the Trade > Google released some new updates and features to their Google Shopping channel. Find out what this means for you. - Published: 2015-09-09 - Modified: 2024-05-15 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-shopping-tools-trade/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) As often as we have hot dinners, Google changes their shopping offerings. Well, maybe not quite that often... but it was only a month or so ago we were discussing Google’s host of new Ad Extensions, and just like that, they delight us Google Shopping enthusiasts with some new and exciting features! So what are these new revelations, and how can they help make our Google Shopping advertising easier? The new updates have been brought about to make feed management much easier. After all, who wants to spend long and arduous hours behind text or tab delimited files or XMLs managing their shopping feeds. Not me! The first, and certainly not the last update is Google Sheets add-ons. The add-on works by highlighting any issues in the feed before you upload it to the Google Merchant Centre. So if you have inputted an item which is restricted, or perhaps you have submitted a destination url which doesn’t match up with the url from your site, the add-on will alert you. The alert will pop up as an ‘item error’, with a red warning sign. So stop! Review the cell which is causing the issue and make the necessary changes. The add-on details exactly what is wrong, so you don’t need to trawl the internet reading blogs and guides about how to fix it. I would say that managing a product feed is no walk in the park especially if you are starting it from scratch. There is A LOT to learn; from GTINs to MPNs, and from UPCs to EANs – the numbers and abbreviations can send you into a mind-boggling quarry. So, use Google’s Product Feed Specification Guide to help you, as it has everything you need in there to help you along your way. Or if you are even keener to learn the ropes, then take the Google Shopping Exam. This will put your knowledge to the test! Getting back to the add-ons in question, the main benefit to your feed management is time. No developer wants to upload the feed, see errors and then have to go back through the feed all over again, make the changes and then re-upload the feed again. It’s a never-ending cycle. Follow this link to add, validate and submit your sheet before you post it live. Feed, validated. So what is the next exciting update? Submitting your feed – that’s what! Until just a few weeks or so ago, the only way you could submit your feed was through a full product feed, but now the world is your oyster! Because you can now use an ‘online product inventory feed’ to update the following attributes: • ID • Price • Availability • Sale Price • Sale Price effective date So if you are updating just a small selection of products which have gone on sale or maybe a new product has gone from being in stock to out of stock in a matter of minutes, then you can use Google’s online... --- ### PPC considerations for a site migration > We've highlighted 7 key ppc considerations to think of before and after performing a site migration...we hope you find it useful! - Published: 2015-09-04 - Modified: 2024-05-15 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/ppc-considerations-for-a-site-migration/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) When it comes to a site migration, companies are often very careful to consider SEO factors to ensure their organic traffic is not negatively impacted by any changes (and rightly so). However, few consider the affects on PPC or how PPC can help them through any changes. Whether you are migrating to a new domain or redesigning and restructuring a site, there are a number of important questions to ask both before and after you make any changes: Before the switch: 1) Do you know all the URLs that are being used for PPC? Preparation is key here. Make sure you are aware of all the URLs that you are using in your PPC campaigns. Ensure redirects are set up or links changed within your campaigns to avoid sending users to broken links or having your keywords disapproved. Remember, in Adwords you can’t redirect to a different domain in the final URL. The final URLs must match your display URLs, so make sure to update any ads if necessary. If you are switching to a new domain, and so creating new ads, it is a good idea to pause all but the top performing ad in each ad group so any effects on quality score are minimised. 2 ) Has all tracking code been transferred over? It's crucial to make sure all tracking codes are transferred over to your new site, this will ensure a smooth transition in reporting. It is advisable to carry out test transactions to ensure everything has been implemented correctly before sending traffic to the site. Additionally, if you're doing any sort of remarketing activity make sure the code for this is also in place on the new site. 3) Have you got a benchmark of organic rankings? Creating a benchmark for your results is something you will probably already be doing as you monitor your organic traffic. It is also useful as it allows you to identify any areas where you see keyword rankings drop off after the switch that you might need to fill in with PPC. After the switch: 4) Has conversion rate changed? Has there been a major drop off in conversion rate (or even no sales at all) or a surprisingly large uplift since switching sites? Are you seeing different figures when you compare different reports, for example, Google Analytics and your third party tracking? Make sure you rule out any tracking issues before thinking about optimising to a new conversion rate. It is likely that you will see some change in conversion rate with the switch and you will need to re-optimise your campaign to the new levels. Hopefully with the changes made to the site your conversion rate will increase and there will be the opportunity to push on or expand to new areas. 5) What is mobile performance like? Again this is a good time to reassess and re-optimise activity. If your site wasn’t responsive before and is now performing well you would expect to see an increase in... --- ### 4 brainstorming hacks for content marketers > Read our 4 top tips for content marketers to help get those creative juices flowing! - Published: 2015-09-03 - Modified: 2024-12-16 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/4-go-to-brainstorming-hacks-for-content-marketers-in-need-of-inspiration/ - Categories: Content Marketing, Creative, How to Let’s face it, there will always come a time in every content marketer’s week when the proverbial ‘brick wall’ is hit and creativity begins to wear thin. To make matters worse, search algorithm changes have emphasised the need for quality content that values detail, high levels of user engagement and originality. So, with standards for both onsite and offsite content continuing to rise, brainstorming or ‘ideation’  (to use the correct marketing buzzword) can often seem like a rather daunting prospect. However, for those who are dissatisfied with lackluster content ideas or are simply staring vacantly at the cursor on an empty word document, there are a number of methods and processes worth experimenting with before you give up or ask for help. Here are a few of my go-to brainstorming hacks for the uninspired, the exhausted and the sometimes desperate. Image credit : Jacob Bøtter, Brainsotmr 1) Utilise your keyword research Content ideation should always begin by assessing the keyword landscape for your company or client. Providing your keyword research is complete and up to date, it’s worth singling out five or six high volume search terms which the company have a realistic chance of improving their rankings for in the SERPs. Once you have selected your keywords, it’s important to identify the different variations of these terms and the popular questions or queries associated with them, as these can often lead to new content ideas or help you narrow down the focus on suitable new topics. Google’s ‘Keyword Planner’ is easily the best tool for generating new keyword ideas and opportunities and can lead you to interesting new directions when it comes to planning new content. For example, quite recently I performed a basic search in Keyword Planner using terms associated with family/group holidays in the UK. After a bit of rummaging through the planner’s suggested ad groups, I eventually came across a number of noteworthy new high volume keyword opportunities such as ‘rural retreats’, ‘dog friendly holidays’ and ‘beach cottages in Cornwall’. These new keyword ideas not only helped narrow down my subject matter but also introduced me to several new potential content concepts for my client. You can also use platforms such as Keyword Tool and SerpStat to generate quick keyword suggestions for your chosen industry or sector. Both tools also allow you to filter the results by ‘question’ which can sometimes give you quick insights into the kind of queries being asked for your chosen subject or topic. 2) Learn from your competitors When devising a content strategy it is vital to analyse the competitive landscape and conduct some thorough research into the performance of content produced by competitors. Firstly, it's useful to identify companies who are also ranking for your key terms within the SERPs as they are likely to provide you with some valuable inspiration (even if you simply take a quick gloss over the topics they’ve written about on their blogs). Once you have put together a shortlist of suitable competitors, try running some... --- ### Top 10 Paid SEO Tools > Read on for some useful advice on 10 SEO tools being used in the industry. - Published: 2015-08-28 - Modified: 2025-02-24 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/10-of-my-top-paid-seo-tools-part-1/ - Categories: SEO There are so many tools available for SEO that it can be seen as bit of a minefield. It can be difficult to understand which tool, or more correctly, which tools (there is always more than one needed! ) needed to help improve a website’s ranking in Google. The first thing to understand is that there is no one tool that will provide all the information needed. Part of any SEO’s job is to use a variety of these tools to interpret what is best for the website in question. Investing in the right tool/s is a big financial and time commitment for a small company or entrepreneur. It should go without saying that the tools an SEO uses are critical to the success of any campaign. Having access to the right SEO tools is very important and can make or break an SEO campaign.   Of course, having access to the tools is only the first step – understanding how to effectively and efficiently to use them and shape your campaign is another thing entirely. The following information is the first part of a guide aimed to help you choose the best paid SEO tools for your situation. Whether you are an agency or a small business, there should be a tool to fit your SEO requirements below. 1) MAJESTIC  Screenshot via majestic. com Key uses: Site analysis: identifying site strengths and weaknesses Backlink analysis:  what content attracts the most links, how has the backlink profile grown, are backlinks spammy or natural? Tracking new and lost links Anchor text analysis Summary Majestic is one of the most essential tools for many SEOs out there. Majestic is able to provide insight on Linkbuilding, competitor analysis, anchor text and much more.  Majestic also excels at helping you to understand the link profiles of your websites and your competitors’ websites. Majestic say they crawl the web and view around a billion URLs per day.   They then use their “Flow Metrics” algorithm to analyse the value of these websites. One of the key metrics Majestic provides is Trust Flow.  In a Post-Penguin world, this is more important than ever to detect unnatural links. 2) AHREFS Screenshot via Ahrefs. com Key Uses : Site explorer:  Identifying site strengths and weaknesses Keywords Explorer: Provides you with keyword ideas and search traffic estimation Backlink analysis Tracking new and lost links Anchor text analysis Content Explorer: Helps you to see what is trending and being shared in any niche. Summary Ahrefs continues to be most of the most innovative SEO tools on the market.   Describing itself as a “turnkey marketing laboratory”, the super clean and organised interface does actually give it that laboratory scientific feel. Ahrefs is also an excellent backlink analysis tool.   One of the advantages of Ahrefs is that you can find links before they are on Majestic, as it has its own index which reloads every 30 minutes.   This is very useful for identifying natural links for macro content pieces. 3)... --- ### Learning to love dynamic search ads > An insight on the inner workings of dynamic search ads and how they can help transform your PPC campaign. - Published: 2015-08-24 - Modified: 2024-05-15 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/learning-love-dynamic-search-ads/ - Categories: Opinion, Paid Search (PPC) Here on the PPC team we are the first to admit that we can sometimes come across as control freaks. We love nothing more than getting stuck into an account - building out granular keyword lists, refining our ad copy and optimising our bids (well, maybe apart from tea). So, whilst we are always open to testing new features and improving our campaigns, at first we viewed dynamic search ads (DSAs) with a hint of skepticism. Hand over control to Google to pick our keywords and ads for us - surely not! However, determined to remain open-minded, we gave them a go and we learnt that far from being a simple solution with no personal input they can, in fact, be part of a sophisticated strategy that leads to great results. With Google announcing even more changes to this feature we thought we'd review some of our thoughts, experiences and recommendations for DSAs. First of all though it's important to understand what exactly are DSAs? and why would you use them? What are dynamic search ads? Unlike the standard search campaigns most advertisers use, DSAs don’t use keywords to target queries. Instead, Google determines which queries to show ads for based on the content of your website. It then generates a headline for the ad using the search query and selects the most relevant URL from your website. This is combined with your own description lines and display URLs to create the final ad. Why use dynamic search ads? You might wonder why though, after you’ve spent years refining your keyword research techniques and ad copy writing skills, you’d need Google to start doing it for you... Well, of the billion searches made on Google every day, 15% of them have never been seen before (Internal Google Data). It’s unlikely that these are just keywords in your account waiting to be used. You might argue that this is what broad match and phrase match is for, but there are still relevant terms that even these won’t cover. So, why not give Google the chance to show a highly targeted ad for these terms. This shift away from focusing on keywords echo what we are seeing with Google Shopping, whereby what is shown on an ad is determined by a feed rather than keywords. DSAs are particularly useful when you have a large number of products and services on offer eg. an e-commerce or travel site. It would take a long time to cover these products individually through traditional keyword campaigns. DSAs mean you can quickly cover a large number of product and not waste vital time you could be using elsewhere. They might be less effective, however, if you have rapidly changing content on your site (eg. daily deals) or a poorly optimised website where it may be difficult for Google to determine the right page for each query. How to set it up dynamic search ads Google have built a very useful step-by step guide to make implementing DSAs as easy as possible,... --- ### The formula for a winning digital team > Here at Found, the welfare of the team is a number one priority, but what makes up the formula for our award winning digital team? Read on to find out! - Published: 2015-08-21 - Modified: 2024-11-06 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-formula-for-a-winning-digital-team/ - Categories: Culture, Digital Marketing, How to, Opinion Here at Found, the happiness and welfare of the team is my number one priority. After all, having a happy, engaged, passionate team translates into the work that we do for our clients and the relationships we have with them. Alongside our fantastic managers, I am always making sure that we are an agency that provides an environment for the team to flourish whilst delivering amazing work, and all the while having fun! So what is it that makes up the formula for our award winning digital team? A culture to be proud of Is it the endless supply of waist-expanding treats, usually in the form of Krispy Kremes, the ice cold beers on a Friday or the power boating trips down the Thames that make Found the agency we are? Well of course these things help and definitely bring a smile to the team, but ask the team what they love most about Found and 99% of them will say the people. With a careful recruitment process to guarantee we have ticked the talent box and that we have also found the right fit for the team, we are able to continue to foster a real family-feel within the agency, helping to nurture our high performing team. Working in a collaborative, supportive and fun environment means that the team are able to work as a tight unit, not just in their immediate teams but across the business as a whole. Working with a like-minded, dynamic group of individuals means that there is the opportunity to share new ideas for innovative client campaigns. From day one whether someone is an intern or a director, we offer our team the freedom and responsibility to run with their accounts and try new things to get the best results. Every agency will say that they want to stay 'ahead of the curve' and of course we do too, but it’s the continuous drive to improve and evolve that sets us apart. From lunch and learns, SEO assemblies and PPC academies to external training and personalised development plans, we ensure our team are at the top of their game and can continue to learn and grow -  because at the end of the day, being left behind in such a fast-paced industry is not an option. One of the things that I love the most about working at Found is the sounds around the office. There’s not a day that goes by where you won’t hear lots of laughter, random chat or some cracking tunes (usually in the form of 90’s classics! ) These things to me indicate a happy and vibrant team, which is exactly what we aim for! And it’s not just inside the office - down the pub, at a Founder’s wedding and even over the weekend you can find us hanging out. It’s incredible to be part of a team that genuinely enjoy spending time with each other inside and outside of working hours, and it makes those challenging days... --- ### A short video of our inaugural Top ‘n’ Tail event > We have created a short promotional video that we think sums up our Top ‘n’ Tail event rather perfectly, watch it now! - Published: 2015-08-13 - Modified: 2024-05-15 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/topntail-video/ - Categories: General News It’s just over a month since we hosted our first Top ‘n’ Tail event, and what a month it’s been! If I can take you back to that somewhat crazy day (thanks to the tube strike! ) of discussion, debate and cocktails, you’ll remember that this month saw the launch of our personalisation offering. We welcomed Alex Henry, Director of Client solutions at partner company Monetate, to explain why personalisation is a crucial factor for any company wanting to secure the future of their ecommerce business. Peter Janes, Founder of Shopa, then talked us through how consumers’ purchase decisions are now more reliant on personal recommendations and discovery more than ever before. We finished the event off with a crash course lesson in how to make seasonal (and strong! ) cocktails... . . the perfect way to spend a Thursday afternoon. But why take my word for it?   This month also saw the launch of our video department so, leading by example, we’ve created a short promotional video that we think sums up the afternoon rather perfectly! We have maintained throughout our Top ‘n’ Tail journey that our goal is to create a relaxed environment, where debate and discussion is encouraged. With demand for our next event already in full swing, make sure you get in quick to secure a place! Thanks again to all those who braved the tube strike and attended - we look forward to seeing your friendly faces again next time. --- ### Ad copy testing: start it, test it, measure it! > Whether you're new to PPC or class yourself as a bit of an expert, ad copy testing is vital to any successful PPC strategy. We explain why here! - Published: 2015-08-13 - Modified: 2024-05-15 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/ad-copy-testing/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) Ad copy testing is a vital aspect of any PPC strategy. Whether you're new to PPC or have been doing it for decades, ads should be tried and tested on a regular basis for optimum performance and maximum click-through rates (CTRs)! Every PPC guru wants to encourage more traffic to either their own or their client’s site, but may not always have the financial backing for inflated cost per clicks (CPCs) to get there. This is where testing, testing and more testing comes into play. In a nutshell, the higher your CTRs, the more relevant Google deems your ads to be. In turn that will give your site higher quality scores, more clicks on your ads and lower CPCs - a PPC dream come true! CTR is the key metric which determines Quality Score (QS), and Quality Score is a direct multiplier which determines cost per click. So carrying out even a small amount of ad testing will positively influence all of these key metrics – making your paid activity much more cost effective. A couple of musts... Before we jump into the best way of testing new ads, let’s first take a look at a couple of pointers behind the ‘what’ and the ‘why’... 1. What do you want to achieve? “More clicks to your site? ” or “More conversions with a lower cost per action? ” Decide what you want and start tailoring your ads with your target goals in mind. 2. What is your target language? As well as making your ads look eye catching in terms of grammar and punctuation, it is really important that you understand your target market. If you are selling travel insurance to the "over 70s” you will need to use language that is appropriate and well suited to that market, probably very different to language targeting teenagers for example. Google Analytics is a great way of understanding your target market; age demographic etc. Ensure your creative sits well in the market you are competing in. 3. What campaign settings to use? When you are testing three entirely new ads, change your ad delivery setting to “rotate evenly”. This will allow your ads to be served evenly rather than showing one ad the majority of the time and enabling you to identify your best performing ads. Not sure where to find this? Go to: Campaign Settings>Advanced Settings>Ad Delivery (see screenshot below) Image from Google Adwords, July 2015 4.  The big spenders... Using high volume ad groups for your ad testing will allow you to analyse performance more effectively. There’s no benefit in starting your ad testing in an ad group which gets only five impressions a month. Believe me, you'll be waiting a long time to see any results! Let's delve a little deeper Ad testing is all about minimal effort for maximum reward. You can change just the smallest snippet of text in your ads, and this can make the world of difference to your campaign performance. And this is where we recommend... --- ### It’s more than just ABC as Google restructures > So Google is restructuring which will see the business operate under a parent company, Alphabet. Confusing? Unnecessary? Or a great move? - Published: 2015-08-12 - Modified: 2024-05-15 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/alphabet-google-restructure/ - Categories: General News, Google Algorithm Updates, Opinion So Google is restructuring which will see the business operate under a parent company, Alphabet. Confusing? Unnecessary? Or a great move? Personally, I believe this is a great move for Google – so often known as the search company or, even worse, the search company that dabbles in other stuff as well – as it truly separates their core business from their further goals; to discover, experiment and explore. It’s a bold move but it’s the right move for Google – a company I look up to in so many ways. Google, the search company, along with YouTube and their Android operating system will remain under the Google brand, with the main change being the person in charge. Step up Sundar Pichai who, after serving as Google’s Senior Vice President of Products, is the new CEO. So, why do this now? Google has effectively grown up. It’s a phenomenally successful global business that has delivered on a vast scale, however it’s a business that doesn’t want to, “get comfortable doing the same thing”, accordingly to Alphabet CEO, Larry Page. Technology is moving at a fast pace and this streamlined approach not only gives the founders the ability to spread their wings, it’s also a ringing endorsement to the existing Google business that its future is in safe hands. So, what does this mean for the founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin? “Sergey and I are seriously in the business of starting new things," explained Page. This is Page and Brin’s opportunity to focus on the future - the group’s (even) bigger picture - whether that future is self-driving cars or extending human life span. These are two individuals that have got more to give to the world than search. Personally, I’m excited by this move. Alphabet is meant to be a cleaner, more accountable holding company - for those interested, Alphabet was chosen as the company name because it represents the core of how they index with Google search. However, it’s not simply the streamlining of the various Alphabet businesses but the potential of what Brin and Page are going to introduce to the world in the coming years that truly excites me. From Nest and Fiber to the ever-mysterious Google X, this is Brin and Page’s opportunity to take on / create world changing technologies and businesses. And I, for one, want to see more of what these two have to offer. --- ### 10 questions your keyword research should be able to answer > Can your Keyword Research answer these 10 questions for your client? Put yours to the test! - Published: 2015-07-31 - Modified: 2025-01-27 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/10-questions-keyword-research-able-answer/ - Categories: SEO It’s Friday – late afternoon. You’ve finished your keyword research document for your shiny new client. You click save for the last time and close the barely responsive spreadsheet. Relief washes over your weary soul. The weekend’s siren song is almost audible. It sounds like Chris de Burgh. There’s just enough time left in the working day to check the Found blog – what better time to catch up on the latest insights in the field? And here you are. Of all the posts on all the web, you chose to click onto this one. Believe us when we say your client will be dazzled by all the new insights you’ll be weaving into your improved keyword research document after learning these ten handy tips, so sit back and and enjoy ‘til closing time. 1. Which products and services does the client actually offer? Most SEO keyword researchers rely on Keyword Planner for their data. This is understandable as it is the most reliable source around – most of the other keyword search volume tools get their data primarily from here. When you placed your client’s primary keyword into Keyword Planner, it came back with a series of suggested Ad Groups – sub groupings of keywords which it thinks are related to your primary keyword. But are they all related to your client’s business? Portfolio groups These are based on Ad Groups but they’re better. They give structure to your keyword research and allow it to be digested at the topic level rather than at the keyword level - useful for a broader view. First, read your data and get rid of those Ad groups which are just plain silly. Sometimes Keyword Planner gets it wrong and it’s often easy to miss rogue groups which look related to your client’s business but are in fact about something else entirely. For example, the group “boots uk” is actually about Boots the Chemist and not wearable boots – but you’d have to actually read the keywords in the goup in order to determine that. Which brings us on to the naming of the Ad Groups. The Ad Groups are rarely named well. Sometimes it gets it right but most often, a group containing keywords about theatre tickets in Manchester will be called something like “Tickets Manchester”. So dive into the CSV, say goodbye to bogus Ad Groups and give them nice new names as Portfolio Groups. Your client will thank you. Depending on the number of groups, rainbow colours are an option here to help us identify the portfolio groups more easily and enjoyably. 2. How many people are interested in these products / services throughout the year? Ok it’s pretty unlikely that you have missed search volume, seeing as it’s the most basic component of Keyword Analysis. But how about seasonality? Search volume and seasonality Google’s “Average Monthly Searches” data is averaged over 12 months. It’s worth bearing in mind that this averaging can be misleading if your client’s product is seasonal. Wooly hats may have a... --- ### 6 quick wins for link earning > Read on for six quick and effective ways to aquire a good quality link earning strategy. - Published: 2015-07-29 - Modified: 2024-05-15 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/6-quick-wins-link-building/ - Categories: SEO It's a well known fact that the days of quick link acquisition tactics, such as making directory submissions and posting comments are gone. These methods are now not only ineffective but they can also harm your site's potential to rank. SEO has been disrupted by the advent of content marketing; creating high quality and engaging content is considered the main legitimate way of earning links to a site. I think I can speak on behalf of all SEO and content marketers when I say that producing linkable content is often quite resource intensive and requires significant time, and sometimes financial commitments. So, what is left for SMEs that have very limited content budgets and need to gain search visibility as quickly as possible to drive conversions? What is a good link? Let's first demystify our understanding of quality links, as this is something we get asked to clarify on a regular basis. As Casey Meraz says on the Moz blog, a good link should meet the following criteria: -          It should drive direct referral traffic. -          It should build visibility with the target audience for your brand. -          It should build your reputation. The six link acquisition methods outlined in this post will put you in good stead to acquire links that are in line with these requirements. Now that we have established what kind of links we should be trying to earn, let's take a look at six quick and effective ways of getting them. Digital PR is one of the most effective tactics to implement to drive relevant, meaningful links and build your brand awareness in your target audience. 1. Leveraging your business network Most organisations have a number of external stakeholders (suppliers, customers, clients or other types of business partners) that have websites and could potentially link to your site - so contact them! The exact placement of the link will depend on the nature of yours and your partner's businesses, but it could be added to a testimonial or an 'about us' page, for example. 2. Competitor link building If there are websites that link to two or more of your direct competitors, there is a good chance that they'll be willing to link to you as well. Tools such as Majestic's Clique Hunter and Open Site Explorer's Link Intersect come in particularly handy for this quick win link earning tactic. 3.  Unlinked brand mentions This link acquisition method is usually extremely powerful when it comes to strong brands, but it can also work well for less known names. Search for your brand name using the advanced search operator and you might find many instances of websites that mention your brand but don't link to your site. A quick email to the website owner asking for a link within an existing post often yields fantastic results. Once you've checked and chased most mentions that you can find in the search results, you can automate this link acquisition process by setting up alerts for your brand name using... --- ### How can brands beat Facebook's news feed update? > We are now a few weeks into Facebook's news feed update, so we have devised some helpful tips to help your brand beat the update and stay on top! - Published: 2015-07-23 - Modified: 2024-05-15 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/can-brands-beat-facebooks-news-feed-update/ - Categories: SEO, Social Media With social media constantly evolving, we have grown to accept that changes can and do happen overnight. However, not many changes have been as significant as Facebook’s most recent update, and it's important people know how to use it to its full potential. We are now a few weeks into the the latest Facebook update and if you didn't already know, it is affecting the all important 'news feed' application. An update triggered by users' feedback requesting to see more posts from the people they are closest to.  To give the users what they asked for, Facebook implemented an algorithm change which would allow users to select people and brands which they wanted to see updates from so they would appear first in their news feeds. Great news for everyone who wants to filter out the noise, having the power to now see exactly what they want to see from the people they want to keep in touch with. However this update can't be viewed in such a positive light for brand pages. Not only does this update let people select who they want to see news from, it also allows them to unfollow people and brands quickly and easily so that their posts won’t appear in the newsfeed at all! If that wasn’t enough, the update also shows users new pages that they may like to follow! So for a quick roundup, this is what the news feed update is all about : See posts from those closest to you first in your news feed Unfollow and re-follow people and brands quickly Discover new pages that might be of interest to you The issue is, that whilst all of these slick new features will greatly enhance the user experience, it could be detrimental to brands and business pages; so I've put together a few top tips to help brands beat the update. A short while ago brands started to see a decline in the reach of their organic posts with the likes of Beyoncé and Coca-Cola averaging an organic reach of 1% of their followers. This could be the reason why we're seeing more sponsored and paid media posts on our Facebook news feeds than we did last year. Whilst it is true that Facebook have recently been trying to remove advert-like organic posts from the news feed, that does not mean that you should go straight to paid options. The posts need to remain of genuine interest to the viewer to encourage engagement and minimize the action of being unfollowed, not selected for a top-of-the-news-feed spot or worst of all losing out to competition through recommendations. That’s hit all three outcomes of the latest update, so as a brand you need to take a look at exactly what your audiences want. Whilst it's crucial to use Facebook to every advantage you can, you also need to remember that your audience is made up of people just like you! So ask yourself, what annoys you on Facebook? Do you see too many adverts? Or do you want to see more specific... --- ### Facebook and the evolving 'cost per click' > What does the new Facebook update mean for paid search advertising? - Published: 2015-07-15 - Modified: 2024-04-02 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/facebook-evolving-cost-per-click/ - Categories: General News, Paid Search (PPC) Facebook, loved and used by over 1. 44 billion users (2015) and with 936 million people actively logging on every day, it was inevitable that the brains behind the brawn would find a way to better capitalise on paid search advertising. And just like that – the update was announced! Today, Facebook released the brand new Ads Application Programming Interface. AAPI, can we call it that? Let’s! So what does this mean for us savvy social media advertising gurus? Well, a cost per click through Facebook currently covers liking an ad, commenting on it, sharing it and clicking on it, but do these actions all add the same value to the business? Advertisers can now breathe a sigh of relief, because the new update will mean that CPCs are only counted on a ‘Link Click’ basis. So, a click cost will be clicks to visit the site, clicks to install an app and call to action clicks. But why are Facebook changing their current cost per click pricing model, and is this update going to help or hinder social network advertisers? One thing is clear, the benefits of the update come in abundance! Return on Investment We can all appreciate how hard it can be to demonstrate the return on our paid advertising efforts through Facebook. After all, is someone ‘liking’ an advert really as valuable as a user who clicks on the advert and then goes on to purchase a product through their website? By Facebook splitting out these engagement metrics, it will mean that advertisers are only paying when a user takes a valued action – being a click through to the site. This is not to say that likes, shares and comments are not valuable. An engagement is an engagement after all, and these will always be a crucial component to any brand awareness campaign. Moving forward we will only be paying when a click is adding considerable value to the business; traffic to the site, and the end goal – a purchase. Rising CPCs Now, there must be some kind of adverse affect of the Facebook update, right? Undoubtedly CPCs will rise because advertisers are no longer paying for likes and comments. But this rise in CPCs is only proportional to the added return that the investment will bring. Advertisers are paying for quality clicks and in turn should reap the revenue rewards. Lower Click Through Rates In line with the rise in CPCs, CTR will also decrease, as likes, comments and other engagement metrics will no longer form part of the CTR calculation and bolster click stats. But don’t be put off by this as CTR will now become a more useful measure of performance. The clicks you will be receiving will be much more valuable and will allow bid optimisation to become more accurate to reflect this. Just be wary of comparing performance against previous Facebook campaigns as you will no longer be comparing apples to apples, and on the face of it, performance will appear... --- ### What impact has Google’s mobile algorithm update had on paid search? > We take a look the impact Google's mobile algorithm update has had on paid search. Read on for tips to ensure you're not missing valuable conversions! - Published: 2015-07-02 - Modified: 2024-05-15 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/googles-mobile-algorithm-update-paid-impact/ - Categories: Opinion, Paid Search (PPC) It’s certainly clear that Google has strong intentions to move users towards a mobile friendly web, seeking to make the best possible experience for their users. After all, search queries on mobile have now surpassed desktop searches, so these updates come as no surprise. On April 21st Google rolled out the mobile friendly update. Prior to this, mobile rankings for a website were usually tied to the ranking strength of the desktop site. Ranking well on desktop SERPs usually meant that you would also rank well on mobile SERPs. Since the update in April agencies have seen a boost in rankings, especially where competition has not adapted to a mobile-friendly site. Certain companies have seen as much as an 88% drop in mobile traffic due to their sites not being mobile friendly, which clearly shows you how severe the impact can be. We take a look at some of the main impacts Google's mobile algorithm update has had to paid search campaigns and provide some helpful tips to ensure you don't get left behind and lose valuable customers. How has the update impacted paid search CPCs? When Panda and Penguin first launched, many companies' organic rankings were negatively affected which obviously made a big impact on revenue figures. To make up for this loss, companies had to invest more of their marketing budgets into PPC to fill the void. The mobile friendly update has been no different, with mobile CPCs increasing in certain accounts where their competition has had no mobile-friendly site. This trend is probably set to continue until companies have adapted their sites, recovering both rankings and traffic. What does this mean for your mobile paid search strategy? As the paid mobile space becomes more competitive, it’s imperative that a mobile specific strategy is in place for all paid search advertisers. Increased CPCs now mean that ad text, quality scores and conversion rates are more important than ever. Here are five strategies you need to be thinking about for your Adwords campaigns: 1) Mobile preferred ads A good place to start is making sure you’re speaking to your mobile audience and desktop audience differently. This can be done by implementing mobile-preferred ads, which can only be seen by users searching from their mobile phone. It's best practice to keep your communications short and sweet and make sure that the desired action is possible on mobile ie: don’t ask them to download whitepapers... instead, direct them to call, email or visit a nearby store. Image taken from Google 2 July 2) Mobile bid adjustments As with all digital marketing techniques, mobile bid adjustments aren’t something you should ‘set and forget’. Mobile CPCs have increased 150% since 2012 and as we know, show absolutely no signs of slowing down. Make sure you constantly monitor the number of impressions, clicks, conversions and CPA on mobile as opposed to desktop, and make appropriate bid adjustments based on performance. If you notice that click volume is high, but your conversions are lacking, then it... --- ### 5 ways running blogger events will create stronger link building campaigns > We’re always looking for new and exciting ways to produce stronger link building campaigns to ultimatly deliver the best results. Read our top tips here! - Published: 2015-06-26 - Modified: 2024-05-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/strong-link-building-campaigns/ - Categories: Content Marketing Here at Found we’re always looking for new and exciting ways to produce stronger link building campaigns and deliver the best results for our clients. The rise of the blogging community has paved the way for a fresh perspective on link building. Long gone are the days of directory link building! Bloggers are now becoming increasingly savvy and learning to monetise their blogs, and the SEO community needs to develop alongside them. Blogger events are a relatively new phenomenon in the SEO world, previously thought to be a PR method. As the two practises are becoming more entwined, we’ve discovered ways that running blogger events can strengthen your link building efforts. 1. Experiential marketing is cool Not many bloggers will want to talk to you about boosting your brand’s SEO. At best, they want advice on their own site. At worst, they’re scared it will impact their site negatively. If you email them with an exclusive invite to an industry event, you’ll probably find them more responsive. Experiential marketing isn’t just for the likes of Red Bull. Find your brand’s angle and utilise it. People like to be treated to a nice day out, especially if there are freebies involved. The only difference between a standard experiential event and one geared to link building is your audience. They can still be public, if that works for you, but to ensure you gain good links always prioritise the sites which would prove most beneficial to your link building campaign. 2. Humanising your brand Even in the digital world, word of mouth marketing is still important. Most bloggers with a decent online following have a good social reach, so utilise this. Create a hashtag, provide them with the details of your brand’s social pages before the event begins, and engage with them socially in the lead up to, and following, their review. Your brand isn’t just ‘your company’. Prove to the bloggers that you’re living the brand - it’s your job to make them as passionate about it as you are. Give the attending bloggers the feeling of authority and insights they can share with their own audience. You aren’t just building links here, you’re building a company persona. 3. Content is (still) King SEO is an ever changing medium in the shifting world of the internet. However content continues to be a hugely important factor. Instead of creating advertorial style guest posts, blogger events are a fantastic way to provide your targeted outreach market with great content, with genuine interest. We ran a recent in-store event with a client of ours, introducing new stock alongside outlining the history of the family-run company. We also offered money off in-store purchases (while entertaining their energetic kids). We tapped into the mummy blogger community and received some really great links for client reviewing and not just the intended products, but the company as a whole too. One of the bloggers’ sons filmed the event and posted a video alongside their review. Where else would you... --- ### 8 helpful tips to follow when building a Content Marketing team > Content marketing is the buzzword in Digital Marketing today. Read on for some of my helpful tips to ensure you hire the BEST content marketing team. - Published: 2015-06-25 - Modified: 2024-05-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/8-helpful-content-marketing-tips/ - Categories: Content Marketing, SEO Content Marketing is the buzzword in digital marketing today. How many of you have heard the following phrases come up in conversation... : “Content is King”, “a good content strategy”, “we need a content department”, “we need to hire a Content Marketer”. With the addition of Hummingbird, a search algorithum used by Google, there is now a big focus on content in search. The introduction of Hummingbird added strength to long-tailed keywords — catering to the optimisation of content rather than just keywords.  In reality though do people actually understand what content marketing is? And more importantly why and how they should be doing it? Since I started out in SEO, many moons ago now, content marketing went under a very different guise. At a very basic level it was known as 'link building'. Although speeding ahead to 2015, we now know that link building (in its old form) is very bad - gaining unrelated and authoritative links will only hinder the credits of a site - we have penguin to prove it! I have outlined below eight fun, quick and simple tips and traits that I consider, as an SEO content Manager, when building a solid and effective content marketing team. A solid understanding of technical SEO Before creating innovative content, it is imperative to have a solid grasp of the SEO basics. A team that understands how a website is crawled and viewed by search engines is crucial and is the only way to ensure that a site has a solid foundation to begin work. There is no point in creating content and attracting traffic to a site that can’t cope technically or has a very bad user experience!  A different outlook Some of the most inspirational people I have worked with have come with all sorts of educational backgrounds, from Philosophy, Law, Music, Sports and more! But I think this is what makes them GREAT! They see things from a different angle and identify opportunities that could be overlooked. So, whilst a good solid foundation of SEO knowledge is essential, don't be put off if you find out your SEO consultant has a past degree in Dance! The good old saying of 'stepping outside the box' should be encouraged in content marketing! Hustlers! Once  good content has been produced it isn’t just about “if you build it they will come” - time, effort and some element of 'hustling' needs be implemented to make it shine. I look for a team that shows savvy networking skills, colleagues who actually speak to the targeted outreach market and a team who don't rely solely on online interaction. They go that extra mile and 'hustle' to get results. Encourage a bit of competition Be that with a colleague, rival agency or yourself, a little competition has never hurt anyone. Make sure your team are inspired by those working around them but will show a bit of a gumption to inspire others back! A team player Following on from my above point about competitiveness, I don’t want a team of cut... --- ### Google Shopping Ad Extensions > Read on for a handy insight into how Google Shopping Ad Extensions can benifit you by inticing new customers to your site and more! - Published: 2015-06-23 - Modified: 2024-05-02 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-shopping-ad-extensions/ - Categories: Google Algorithm Updates ‘Buy One Get One Free’, ‘2 For 1’, ‘Half Price’, ‘Special Offer’, ‘25% Off’... ... bargain hunting Brits are always searching for the very best deals; both on and offline. So, back in November 2014 Google released a new Google Shopping ad extension to satisfy its shopper’s demands and they have been reveling in the benefits ever since! But this was just the very beginning... . Since the switch over from Product Listing Ads (PLAs) to the new campaign update Google Shopping back in July 2014, Google has released four new and major shopping extensions that change the face of the Google Shopping real estate. These four changes are 1) Merchant Promotions 2) Google Price Drop 3) Local Inventory Ads 4) Product Ratings, and the most recent Google gossip is the ‘Buy Now’ button which is rumoured to be added to Google Shopping ads very soon. With the Google Shopping real-estate becoming more competitive than ever before, implementing shopping extensions should be an absolute must if you are striving to deliver the very best results for you and your clients. It used to be about ensuring maximum exposure of products to shoppers, but now there is a much greater focus on ensuring there is a competitive edge in the space. So how can you clinch that click over one of your rivals? Trust & incentives – that’s how! Merchant Promotions One of the most prevalent updates for Google Shopping was Merchant Promotions. Similar to standard text ads, merchant promotions give advertisers the opportunity to highlight a special offer alongside their ads in a mini pop up. The offer is revealed when a shopper clicks on the ‘Special Offer’ text below the ad. Enticing? Absolutely! Incentivising shoppers with a promo code or ‘free delivery’ results in a more qualified click as users can see the offer associated with the product before clicking on the ad. Image taken from Google 22 June With higher click through rates and increased conversion rates, it is no wonder this has been a fast adopted strategy by Google Shopping enthusiasts! So, how can you jump on the merchant promotion bandwagon? Well, there is no additional cost to implementing this extension, and set up is very simple too! All you need to do is fill out a Merchant Promotions Interest Form. Once your application has been successfully approved, you will see a ‘Promotions’ tab in the left hand side of your Google Merchant Centre (GMC). It is important to note that Merchant Promotions are only applicable in conjunction with a promo code – so unless you have a promo code, you cannot create a promotion in your GMC. Percentage Price Drop Promotions, promotions, promotions. We are beginning to see more and more ‘price drop’ annotations showing in Google Shopping ads - and shoppers are loving them. At present, Google show these annotations automatically based on any merchant feed price changes over the previous 90 days. As this is automated, advertisers are beginning to dig deeper into ways... --- ### Information is Beautiful: Creating Data Visualisations > Creating data visualisations can sometimes be a long and tricky task, read on for some helpful tips! - Published: 2015-06-18 - Modified: 2024-12-16 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/data-visualisation/ - Categories: Data Creating data visualisations can sometimes be tricky, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you have a good idea and all the elements you need to make it, only to be a bit underwhelmed by the end result. To find that something doesn’t quite sit right in the final version and that you have to start over or re-work the idea can be frustrating. To hone our skills and get a wider understanding of how some of our favourite data visualisations were made, we decided to head along to David McCandless' ‘Workshops are Beautiful’ event at the Soho Hotel in London. David’s book ‘Information is Beautiful‘ is a big favourite on the bookshelf here at Found, and with David being one of the leading figures in the field, who better is there for us to pick up some tips from? What did we learn? One of the key early takeaways for me was the emphasis David stressed on how important the data analysis and research part of every visualisation is; with 80% of his time and resource going into that for each graphic. It might sound quite obvious but when you’re actually making one it’s easy to over prioritise the design and creation elements. Another very important element is brilliantly outlined with the below Venn diagram: --- ### TOOLS, KEYWORDS & THE FUTURE OF SEO > SEO can be a hard craft. It can feel a slippery, fickle topic; the downside to the industry’s fantastic agility, adaptive streak - Published: 2015-06-16 - Modified: 2024-05-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/tools-keywords-future-seo/ - Categories: SEO, Trends TOOLS, KEYWORDS & THE FUTURE OF SEO with Matt BentleySEO can be a hard craft. It can feel a slippery, fickle topic; the downside to the industry’s fantastic agility, adaptive streak and drive for constant improvement is a need to continually adopt new techniques, knowledge and tools. That does, however, give us the perfect excuse to always be trying out new software and tools, and who doesn’t like to kick the tyres on some new toys? It was while checking out one of the new keyword tools on the block, CanIRank, that I got chatting to Matt Bentley, the tool’s founder. Matt kindly agreed to turn our banter into a full interview. We discussed how the tool fits into an increasingly crowded market, why he wanted to build it, and how he’d like to see the industry develop. During our conversation, Matt showed he’s not only very passionate about SEO and building a tool that helps marketers, but is also one of the industry’s most articulate and forward-looking thinkers. CW: Hi Matt, thanks for taking the time to speak with us; can you tell us a little about CanIRank – who is it for, and what can users achieve with it? MB: We call CanIRank an SEO Intelligence tool: it’s part keyword research, part competitive analysis, and part artificial intelligence. The purpose of SEO intelligence tools is to improve your productivity by giving you a better understanding of why each site ranks where it does, which factors are holding you back, and what your biggest opportunities are. In short, we let computers do what they do best — compile and analyze data — to free up more time for marketers to focus on what they do best — coming up with creative ways to attract and engage potential customers. In the past 5 years, SEO has become almost exponentially more complex. To really understand why a site ranks where it does you need to consider a huge list of factors (keyword usage, anchor text, topical relevancy, website authority, trust, speed, mobile friendliness, https, user behaviour, etc... ). It’s no longer possible for humans to keep all of that in their head and really understand how sites compare in these hundreds of factors, and which ones might be making the difference. In the past 5 years, SEO has become almost exponentially more complexBut computers can make sense of it all. CanIRank collects 4,000 data points from 11 different sources for every single keyword analyzed. Our software can take 40 randomized URLs, collect data on them, and re-rank them in the same order as Google to a 60% correlation. I don’t think the best human SEOs in the world could do that, even if you gave them a week. And honestly, SEO is just a whole lot more fun when you can focus on the creative aspects, the problem solving and relationship building, rather than spending all day poring over data in Excel. CW: I think for many folks it really is (though some of... --- ### Another award win for Found at the Drum Search Awards > Found has once more been officially recognised as one of the UK search industry’s top agencies after taking home two accolades at the Drum Search Awards. - Published: 2015-06-10 - Modified: 2024-05-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-shines-drum-search-awards-spotlight/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) We’re delighted to have been officially recognised as one of the search industry’s top agencies after taking home two accolades at the inaugural Drum Search Awards last night. Jostling amongst the industry’s great and good at the glitzy black tie event in Grosvenor Square, we won Best B2C Campaign for our work with Red Letter Days as well as being commended for our strategic retail focus and delivery for the long term client in the Best Retail/Ecommerce Campaign category. Our very own brilliant PPC Analyst Emily Cole and Campaign Manager Lauren Dodds were there to receive the awards and then got their own moment in the spotlight with very Oscar-esque performances in their recorded acceptance speech! Having our work recognised twice at such a prestigious ceremony is fantastic and, more importantly, is a real testament to the Found team’s absolute focus on crafting hard-working campaigns which not only deliver but also outshine the rest of the market. We’re delighted as a team for all of their hard work with Red Letter Days and delighted for our client too, whom we thoroughly enjoy working hand in hand with! The campaign success hinged on our clever segmentation to target new customers and search retargeting to reach existing customers. We were able to not only secure a massive 51% increase in revenue over the previous year’s activity, but also maintain costs whilst driving a significant 67% increase in ROI year-on-year. In terms of brand awareness, our strategy equally generated over 20% more clicks. Topping this all off, Gerry O’Brien, Ecommerce Director at Red Letter Days, adds: “Found’s ability to immerse themselves into the Red Letter Days’ brand, interpreting data and insight, enabled them to mastermind a clever paid search campaign that has delivered fantastic returns. Not only have we reached greater revenue numbers than we expected, but we’ve achieved this through a considerable reduction in ROI and a huge increase in generic keyword performance. Working closely together in an agile manner, we’ve been able to share knowledge and skills which, together, has definitely helped us to achieve these great results. ” --- ### A H'app'y Campaign with Mobile App Installs > Mobile App Campaigns focus on reaching people who are currently using your app. Read on to find out more. - Published: 2015-06-10 - Modified: 2024-05-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/campaigns-with-mobile-app-installs/ - Categories: Mobile With hundreds of new apps making their way onto the App Store every day, it can be very difficult to get noticed in such a competitive space – especially if you're new to the market and seeking instant visibility. By understanding and using paid search wisely within the App Store, it can help give you instant results and that immediate presence you're striving for. Google Adwords offers an easy to set up and simple to manage solution that entices users to download your app straight away. Tailored ads – yes, relevant placements – yes. So for all those display lovers out there – is it the dream! ? ? But, let’s not run before we can walk here... . . Google offers multiple campaign types and settings for apps, including Mobile App Installs, Mobile App Engagement, Ads in Mobile, Apps in Display, App Installs and App Extensions in Search... . confused yet? !  Don't worry, we seek to explain and simplify so read on! Campaign Types Mobile App Engagement Focuses on getting users who have already installed your app to try it again. These work by showing ads within other apps. Currently app engagement campaigns on the Search Network are only available for Android app, not iOS. Mobile App Installs Focuses on getting users to download your app by showing ads within other apps/categories in the App Store. Currently app engagement campaigns on the Search Network are only available for Android app, not iOS. Ads in Mobile Apps Campaigns Focuses on reaching out to people who are currently using your app. Google give a great breakdown of the different campaign types to help you choose the right strategy for your business. AdWords Help Atricle - Driving mobile app downloads > App Extensions This allows you to link your mobile or tablet apps from your texts. Here we discuss Mobile App Installs for the Display Network as this is the only compatible network type available for iOS apps. However, word on the street is that Google plan to release this campaign type on the Search Network too. So watch this space! GETTING STARTED Before you dive into setting up the campaign it's crucial to do your research first - You wouldn't book a holiday without doing your research so just apply the same principles to setting up a new App Install Campaign. The Display Planner will become your best friend throughout your research, launch and optimisation phases – so you are going to have to learn to love it! The DP (Display Planner) gives you a wealth of information about suitable placements for what apps you want your ad to show on, to whom and on what devices. In the campaign targeting at the top left hand corner of the DP – “Campaign Targeting” you can narrow down your targeting to iOS devices and apps. If your App has been built to be compatible with Android Devices, then you should choose this option too. Use a separate campaign for this as... --- ### Five Parts To Consider When Writing an Agency RFP > Read on for our five helpful tips to writing a comprehensive RFP document without spending a disproportionate amount of time on it... - Published: 2015-05-29 - Modified: 2024-09-18 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/five-tips-writing-rfp/ - Categories: How to Writing a comprehensive RFP document without spending a disproportionate amount of time on it can be a challenge, even for the most experienced marketers.   As a business, Found is lucky enough to receive its fair share of RFP documents; some are good and some don’t quite hit the mark.   From a procurement point of view the RFP document is one of the most important parts of the process.   At its best it can give a bidding agency all the information required to build a strategy and commercial proposition; at its worst it can confuse and misguide agencies, leading to poor proposals that don’t meet the requirements of the seller. At Found we feel privileged to be considered as a potential partner for so many new businesses.   Our desire is to deliver the best proposition to each and every one, with this in mind we have built 5 top tips that should be considered when building your RFP. What are the Five Parts on an RFP? Tip 1 – Open communication Always look to open up a conversation stream with your shortlisted agencies. The Q&A stage will enable the agencies to fill in any gaps that they might have internally. It also enables a dialogue to be set up allowing the client a snapshot view into what it would be like working with an agency (speed of reply, intelligence of questions etc).  Setting up a halfway call/meeting allows the agency to divulge their initial thoughts and is critical to ensure that neither party will be wasting their time come the pitch.  Ultimately you will be looking to work closely with your chosen agency; make sure that you get to know them during this time. From an agency point of view the more we know and understand, the better our solution will be. Tip 2 – Current internal challenges/Issues Be sure to document any particular issues that the business is facing (resource, internal communications, training etc. ).   It is important not to give the whole story away but guide the agencies in areas that you feel are most important; after all you’re not looking to send an agency out on a treasure hunt hoping that they stumble across the very thing you are looking for. Instead you are trying to find the most appropriate party that match your requirements the best.  In terms of identifying external issues, again it is important to guide but it is also important to challenge the agencies to identify what they believe to be areas of concern or opportunity. Tip 3 – Quantitative and Qualitative targets Where possible it is important to detail how an agency will be judged; core KPIs if you will. Be open and honest when dealing with simple revenue/sales targets.   As an agency we would much rather know from an early stage if expectations are going to be achievable or not, we can then manage accordingly. Identifying other areas that will be judged such as reporting, client... --- ### Google’s Ever-Expanding Knowledge Graph > The Knowledge Graph can be seen and used as Google's own answer to a specific search. One of lovely SEO consultants breaks it down here.. - Published: 2015-05-29 - Modified: 2024-05-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/googles-knowledge-graph/ - Categories: Google Algorithm Updates, Opinion To explain and discuss Google's Knowledge Graph, I start here with a fundamental mission statement, taken straight from Google's mouth, and that is:  'to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful' - Google. I think Google's Knowledge Graph may be the most visible expression of this aim - used as Google’s own attempt at answering a search query. From it's network of > Image taken from Google on 26/05/15 In this case, the information is taken directly from Wikipedia and a link is provided. The Knowledge Graph has been around since May 2012 so it is certainly not a new thing, but 2015 has seen some key developments which I have listed a few below : More Knowledge Graph Queries – A quarter of all search queries now display Knowledge Graph boxes. Bigger Knowledge Graph Boxes – Some Knowledge Graph components are now so large that they push organic results below-fold. More Knowledge Graph Types – Increasingly customised and content-rich. The implications of these changes are: Organic search results can be seen as less prominent and receive fewer clicks than they otherwise might. Traffic and revenue may be affected on many types of key phrases as a result. Some very advanced experimental Knowledge Graph features have emerged over the past several months. Medical queries have recently begun to show much more detailed information, as in the example below: Image taken from Google on 26/05/15 So, how does the Knowledge Graph source its answers I hear you ask? Well, potentially from another  website – or, much more likely, from Wikipedia or a similar super-authoritive site. It needs to be noted here that the Knowledge Graph is more than just a scraper and congrgater of information, it works first by identifying entities and then analyses the relationships between those entities. The identification of entities is a semantic technique which has long rendered keyword density defunct as a method for determining relevance of information. Using entities and entity relationships allows pieces of data to be viewed in wider context. For example, a long document (I'll call it document A) about football might contain many references to European football but only mentions UEFA once. Through knowledge of the entity relationship between the references to European football on doc A and other documents that mention UEFA more frequently and prominently, Google can dipict that the term UEFA is important in document A – despite it only appearing once... . phew, impressive stuff! Such an understanding of the semantic links between entities allows Google to provide suggested answers to many user queries with a very high success rate. Knowledge Graph Boxes The knowledge graph takes four main forms on the search results pages. Each affects the search results pages in different ways in terms of user behaviour. The Knowledge Graph sidebar is the most easily recognisable and contains the largest amount of information, example below: Image taken from Google on 25/05/15 While it can answer a user’s query without them necessarily having to visit a search result, it... --- ### Google's Structured Data Tool and Rich Snippets Overview > Rich Snippets; you will have come across them many times when searching the web, but do you know how to best optimise them? Read on for some helpful tips! - Published: 2015-05-19 - Modified: 2024-09-18 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/googles-structured-data-tool-rich-snippets/ - Categories: Google Algorithm Updates, Opinion Rich Snippets, you will have all come across them many times when searching the web, but the question is, have you noticed them? Whether you’re searching for the nearest fast food restaurant or the best place to take your partner at the weekend, Rich Snippets essentially do one thing – provide your search with the best visual and most relevant results. Rich Snippets were first introduced by Google in May 2009 which then led to other search engines following soon after. What are Rich Snippets? Search engines, such as Google, pull data into the SERPs through the use of structured data markup.  This is a process that would need to be implemented by you on your own site, but is well worth the trouble. Although not directly affecting rankings within the SERPs, this data can be used to enhance the way your site is displayed within the search results, thus making it stand out from competitors. Below is an example of a Rich Snippet for us here at Found: In recent years the variety of different types of Rich Snippets has hugely evolved. We have moved on from the days where Google were only supporting data for reviews. There are now many different types of Rich Snippets being displayed by Google which you almost certainly will have come across when entering a search query. Product availability, prices and reviews about a person or organisation are just some of the many Rich Snippets that are displayed by search engines today. We have shown an example of this below with the film search 'Avengers : Age of Ultron' - you will see here that the results have pulled together times and cinema website links, with reference to our personal location - and it's Rich Snippets that have enabled this personalised data to show in the results. Screenshot from www. google. co. uk How to find out if Structured Data Markup is present on your website If you’ve had the development of your website outsourced, then you’re most likely to be unaware if structured data markup has been implemented. In January this year, Google announced the update of their new Structured Data testing tool, making it easier to identify how Google interprets a web page’s structured data markup. By copying and pasting the URL in the “Fetch URL” text box, this will display any valid structured data code used on the page. How to decide which Structured Data Markup to use on the site For this process, the first thing to do is to identify which type of data would be valid.  There are many ways to manage this; one option is to take a look at a collection of schemas provided at schema. org . Schemas are often used by webmasters to markup HTML pages and is a form of structured data. By manually looking at the available types of schema (e. g. Organisation, Person, Place and Review) you are able to identify which schema types could potentially be used. Google also offers a Structured Data Markup Helper tool, however, this tool does not... --- ### It’s ‘T’ Time with RLSAs - Remarketing Lists for Search Ads > Are you loosing a large percentage of returning visitors to your competitors? We have a handy approach to remarketing lists for search ads that could help! - Published: 2015-04-24 - Modified: 2024-05-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/remarketing-lists-for-search-ads/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) Remarketing Lists for Search Ads are now more prevalent than ever. Just over a year on from their release, and paid search enthusiasts are fast understanding the complexity of this multidimensional strategy. Long gone are the days when targeting ‘All Site Visitors’ was our sole focus. With an increasing awareness of the why, what and how, marketers are getting closer and closer to closing that gap of opportunity lost through paid search. Returning visitors have already actively engaged with your site and products, so why are we still losing a large percentage of them to competitors? Nobody wants to pay for a click from a returning visitor to then lose the visitor to your arch rival. But how can we prevent returning visitors from leaving your site and searching elsewhere? How are we able to gain greater dominance on the space? And how is it possible to tap into broader, more generic search areas that we would never have dreamed of bidding on before? Before we get started, let’s not run before we can walk. It is imperative that you understand the core elements of Remarketing in all its glory before you can even begin brushing the surface of Remarketing Lists for Search Ads. Once you are confident with Remarketing, then you are more than ready to start getting your hands dirty! To ensure that we are not missing opportunity, we approach Remarketing Lists with a little combo which we like to call the 4 Ts. These are; Testing new keywords, Tailored Ad Copy, Targeted Audience and well, Time. Team this with a little tenacity –and you are on to a winner with your strategy. Let’s get started! Testing New Keywords Previous Poor Performers Take the opportunity to bid on keywords that may have performed poorly through standard search. Maybe the conversion rate of those keywords was historically too low to sustain your ROI targets? Or was there too much competition on the space forcing you to pay too much to achieve premium positions? These poor performing keywords will be much more cost effective when you add an RLSA layer on top, as visitors have already actively engaged with these sorts of searches. If they click on your ad then they are ultra-engaged and much more likely to convert, if they don’t click on your ad, then it would suggest that the product / offering is not suited to the user's search query, but don’t worry, you will have saved the cost of a click! Broader Match Types So what is all this talk of bidding on broader, more generic keywords? Have no fear, with RLSAs layered on top it can be and is possible to tap into these new areas. With control over your audiences, you can bid on keywords that were much too risky to bid on before. But why? Well, you will only be showing these searches to people who have visited your site, and so your audience breadth is much smaller than the entire Google audience.... --- ### Google to release update for Mobile-Friendly Search > As of April 21st Google will be rolling out their first announced update of 2015 for mobile-friendly search. Read on to find how to be prepared. - Published: 2015-04-10 - Modified: 2024-04-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/mobile-friendly-search-update/ - Categories: Mobile, SEO, Trends As of April 21st Google will be rolling out their first announced update of 2015 for mobile-friendly search. The update only affects mobile results and is expected to affect more websites than Panda or Penguin have previously, which is understandable due to the massive growth mobile search has seen. Zineb Ait Banajji, of Google’s Webmaster Trends team, let attendees of SMX know the update will impact more sites than either Panda or Penguin did. She also assured attendees at the talk that any negative impacts from the mobile update would have no effect on desktop results/traffic. Will you be affected by the update? Some webmasters are concerned that they will be affected negatively if they’re receiving negative mobile usability reports in Webmaster Tools. However, Google has let site owners know that as long as the mobile testing tool gives you the all clear or if your site contains the mobile-friendly tag in the SERPS you’ll most likely benefit from the update. One thing to keep in mind is that sites are assessed on a page by page basis, so even though a homepage may be perfectly optimised, internal product pages or other content may not be and could see negative outcomes from the update. How will mobile sub-domains be affected? This applies to all sites serving m. sub-domains to mobile users. After the release of the mobile-friendly SERPs label in late 2014 a lot of m. site sub-domains were seen ranking quite highly, suggesting Google was taking this as an indicator that a site was mobile-friendly. There is currently however no evidence that Google will be treating mobile sub-domains any differently to other implementations of mobile sites. Although as a top tip, Google does suggest using responsive design over either a mobile sub-domain or dynamic serving. Do you need an app to be mobile-friendly? Whilst apps can be a great way to provide a service outside of that which you offer on your mobile site, in most cases they are not a ranking factor. There is however an exception to the rule, and this affects Android apps. At the moment you can get your companies app indexed in Google, but this is limited to Android apps. Google recently announced that they are going to begin using “information from indexed apps as a factor in ranking for signed-in users who have the app installed. As a result, we may now surface content from indexed apps more prominently in search. ” So if you’re thinking of creating an app, it won’t have any effect on the upcoming update. But watch this space as apps may become more of a ranking factor in the future!  What can you do? So you’ve checked your site in the SERPs and in the Google mobile-friendly test and the results aren't good. Here are 3 points we think you need to prioritise before the update: There are a number of reasons why your site might not be mobile-friendly – running a mobile site audit will help you and... --- ### European Search Awards: Found Amongst the European Search Elite > Found has once again been shortlisted for the European Search Awards 2015 for our nifty multi-channel work in the travel sector. - Published: 2015-04-01 - Modified: 2024-05-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/european-search-awards-found-amongst-the-european-search-elite/ - Categories: General News Hot on the heels of the news that we’ve been shortlisted for two Performance Marketing Awards this year already, Found is once more in the shortlist spotlight, but this time on the European search scene for our nifty multi-channel work for Hand Picked Hotels. The European Search Awards are held annually to showcase the very best search campaigns across all European markets and all key business sectors. Each year some 50 companies are shortlisted for their innovative delivery and impressive results and it’s a huge accolade for both the Found and Hand Picked Hotels teams to see their work showcased at such a prestigious event. The awards ceremony takes place in Berlin in April so we’ll find out then if we've also outshone the rest of our shortlist colleagues to take the crown in the Best Use of Social in a Search Campaign category. --- ### How Conversation Mapping Can Boost Your Outreach Success Rate! > Outreach is one of the toughest and time consuming aspect of a content marketers job. Our guide to conversation mapping will boost your outreach success! - Published: 2015-03-27 - Modified: 2024-10-28 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/conversation-mapping-outreach-success/ - Categories: Content Marketing, SEO Working in content marketing many of us know that one of the toughest and most time consuming areas of our job is digital PR outreach. This is, however, one of the most important. We all have our own methods to ensure that we get as many responses as possible. However, if you want to ensure you not only increase the likelihood of a response but make it a positive one, then you need to read on! What is Conversation Mapping? Conversation mapping is the simple process of planning out an email stream or a phone call before your initial connection, and can be done in four simple steps. It takes one standard diagram, and all of your emails and phone calls can follow the same method. Why is Conversion Mapping So Important For Outreach Strategy? Planning the possibilities for your chosen method of communication will allow you to prepare for all possible outcomes. This preparation can help you plan responses to the outcomes that are negative. It will help you learn from mistakes and build out a framework for that particular vertical, which you can then use in future for other clients. This saves time, effort, and in reality, will make for a more streamlined process of connecting with influencers and marketing your content. This conversation mapping technique can be the difference between marketing content and praying you get a few positive responses to actually increasing the number of positive responses and not having to pray anymore! Yes, it takes time to tailor your initial contact to perfectly suit the person you are trying to reach, but this needn’t put you off following this technique. Just think, if you don’t do this now, that carefully created and curated prospecting list will be in turn worthless and you will need to start prospecting from scratch. Getting in the Right Frame of Mind Think of marketing your content as a big sales pitch, and follow these four simple steps to ensure a successful deal clincher of a pitch: Research and analysis of who you are pitching to (including their company) You have to plan your pitch Making them believe in what it is you are selling Closing the deal At the end of all that hard work, you will come out with the best result – you have sold your product and earned a commission. With content in mind, a successful end result will be that you have managed to secure a fantastic publisher whose authority in your vertical is powerful and has the reach to capture your target audience. Now for the Important Part – The Method Below is an example of a standard conversation mapping technique, which consists of four parts, each of these are explained underneath the diagram. Introduction Email This is where you first make contact. Having done some research around the person or company you are contacting, you should find yourself in a position where this part is quite natural. Praise a piece of their work which... --- ### Found Shortlisted for the 2015 Performance Marketing Awards - Published: 2015-03-03 - Modified: 2024-05-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-shortlisted-2015-performance-marketing-awards/ - Categories: General News Found has once again been recognised as one of the best digital agencies in the business after being shortlisted for our innovative delivery and approach in this year’s prestigious Performance Marketing Awards. Shortlisted for Best Use of Customer Insight for Dr Martens as well as Best Use of Performance Marketing as part of a Multi-channel Campaign for Hand Picked Hotels, this puts us amongst an elite group of agencies, networks and affiliate partners who continue to drive revenue and business opportunity through the performance channel. With the 2015 awards season just around the corner, the Performance Marketing Awards are the first to announce their shortlist line-up, and we’re expecting more good news from the Drum Marketing Awards, European Search Awards and new kid on the block Drum Search Awards over the coming weeks. --- ### Found is one of the top companies to work for 2015! - Published: 2015-02-26 - Modified: 2024-05-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-one-top-places-work-uk-2015/ - Categories: General News Here at Found we’ve, once again, demonstrated our reputation for being one of the top employers in the UK. At last night’s prestigious Sunday Times Best Companies to Work For 2015 awards ceremony, Found (as part of our parent company, BIG Ideas Group) was honoured with a top 100 place in the 100 Best Small Companies to Work For. As a top 100 performer for the past 5 years, Found is delighted that the investment we make into work enjoyment and team satisfaction continues to pay dividends – as the voting is all done by the team. As a result of an anonymous survey circulated amongst all staff, asking detailed questions about their motivation, their workload, their managers, their environment and much more, it’s always great to know that the team within Found is happy. Of course, we continually strive to be an exceptional digital performance agency however it is very difficult to be brilliant without a happy, engaged and driven group of people who are all focusing on the same goals and are motivated day in, day out. From flexible working to training, from quarterly team outings to beers on a Friday, we strive to create the right level of work/life balance. Let’s see what we can achieve this year as a team and next year at the 2016 awards! --- ### Amazon Advertising & Pay Per Click – It’s A Recipe for Success > PPC enthusiasts are beginning to reap the benefits of a pay-for performance marketplace – a booming one at that! With Amazon advertising prospects on... - Published: 2015-02-24 - Modified: 2024-05-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/amazon-advertising-pay-per-click-recipe-success/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) Founded in 1994, as an online bookstore, Amazon now covers everything from TVs to your kitchen sink (literally). Fast forward two decades and PPC enthusiasts are beginning to reap the benefits of a pay-for performance marketplace – a booming one at that! With advertising prospects on both mobile and desktop devices, Amazon is the perfect platform for paid advertisers keen to broaden their shopping horizons. So if you have exhausted your current Google Shopping efforts and fancy a hand at something new, then Amazon’s Advertising Platform is the place to go! And here’s how it all works... There are three core ways to promote your products on Amazon; these being: Amazon Product ads Amazon Sponsored ads Amazon Display & E-commerce ads 1. )     Amazon Product Ads Amazon Product Ads are aimed to provide customers with access to products available on external websites. This means Amazon allows sellers to promote their products on a cost per click basis. Advertising with Amazon using Product Ads is really simple; sellers list the products they wish to promote and set their daily budget and cost per click bids (just like a Google Shopping Campaign). Product categories can then either be built manually, in bulk or via a FTP server to upload to Amazon. Ad formats When building your product ads, you must ensure competitive product titles – mostly consisting of keywords that have high search volume, descriptive content and a 500x500 pixel image. Amazon will display these ads to customers when they search for these (or related) products and will send customers to a seller’s website once they have clicked on the ad. Customers who are interested in purchasing the seller’s products will then complete the transaction directly on the seller’s website. It is important to note that cost per click bids and conversion rates will differ depending on the product categories listed on Amazon. But in general, you can expect to see CPCs ranging anywhere from £0. 10 up to £1. 35 per click. Despite this Amazon revolution, Amazon Product Ads are currently only available on Amazon. co. uk, Amazon. de, Amazon. fr and Amazon. com. How it works 1. )     Sellers upload their Product Feed to Amazon (Amazon provides a template spreadsheet) 2. )     Sellers set their daily budget and cost per click bids (the same as a standard search campaign) 3. )     Consumers see the product ads on Amazon – these can appear on the detail pages, search results and even in the ‘buy box’ 4. )     Customers click on the ad and they go through to the product page on the seller’s website 5. )     The seller pays based on the cost-per-click model 6. )     Customers purchase products from the seller’s website 2. )     Amazon Sponsored Ads Amazon Sponsored Ads allow sellers to promote products they have listed on Amazon. co. uk – giving far more control and visibility than previously available through standard product listing. This works in much the same way as Google AdWords in that targeting is... --- ### Found’s 2015 Digital Predictions > Check out our FREE ebook for insight into some of the biggest trends we believe are set to hit digital marketing in 2015. - Published: 2015-01-07 - Modified: 2024-05-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/2015-digital-predictions/ - Categories: General News, Trends Another year and another huge step forward has been taken in the world of digital. A year where Google gave us Pigeon, Facebook made Messenger mandatory, Quantcast acquired Struq, Google acquired Skybox Imaging and Apple acquired Beats Electronics, it’s been a busy one. And it’s not set to slow down in 2015. Whereas 2014 was the year when big data truly began powering performance, when content curation became embedded into the heart of strategies and where mobile truly stood up as a channel in its own right, 2015 will introduce true predictive search to the world, mobile marketing will hit acceleration mode and personalisation is set to explode! At Found, we have compiled a list of digital marketing trends that we think will hit the ground running in 2015. Click here to download our FREE Digital Predictions 2015 ebook. Contents     Single channel strategists will fade out – Luke Townsend, Creative Director     Brand experience will lead the way - Luke Townsend, Creative Director     Mobile advertising will hit acceleration mode - Tina Judic, Managing Director     Predictive search will read your mind - Kirsty Hulse, Head of SEO    Advertisers will fight for control - Greg Burgess, Director of Digital Advertising    The rise of persona targeting - Guy Thornton, Head of Paid Search    True personalisation is set to explode - Ross Boyd, Product & Strategy Director    Smart data will be the new big data - Tina Judic, Managing Director    Closing the loop will become a reality - Guy Thornton, Head of Paid Search --- ### Found Collaborates with Randstad to Create the Ultimate Sales Tool Kit > Revolutionise the way you communicate your ideas and deliver game-changing consultancy with the help of the Randstad Sales Tool Kit. - Published: 2014-11-24 - Modified: 2024-05-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-collaborates-randstad-create-ultimate-sales-tool-kit/ - Categories: Content Marketing Found recently had the opportunity to collaborate with Randstad, one of the world’s largest specialist recruiters, to create the ultimate sales tool kit. The piece is jam-packed with inspiring content to help sales people – and those aspiring to work in sales roles – get motivated, learn new techniques and become more efficient. To explore the tool kit simply hover over a box of your choice within the grid and click to expand the content. There are 10 different sections, including: Randstad’s UK Sales Salary Survey 2014 Inspiring Sales Articles & Blog Posts The Most Influential Salespeople Influential Sales Speakers and Video Clips Top 10 Free Sales Apps Top 10 Sales Tools The Most Influential Sales Movies The Best Books for Sales Professionals Motivational Sales Quotes Sales Candidate Guide Want to revolutionise the way you communicate your ideas and deliver game-changing consultancy? Check out the interactive content below: --- ### Moz webinar ‘Earning Links Through Audience Segmentation’ > SEO is evolving and the past few years have seen significant change in how we have to become an authority in Google’s eyes. - Published: 2014-10-30 - Modified: 2024-05-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/moz-webinar-earning-links-audience-segmentation/ - Categories: SEO Join Kirsty for her latest Mozinar! On November the 4th, Found’s Head of SEO, Kirsty Hulse, is going to be teaming up with industry heavyweights Moz to deliver the webinar ‘Earning Links Through Audience Segmentation’. Here’s a brief description of what to expect. SEO is evolving and the past few years have seen significant change in how we have to become an authority in Google’s eyes. In order to succeed with our SEO efforts, long term, we need to start creating engaging, user centric content to naturally earn our links and rankings. Essentially, we just need to be better brands and do better things. However this is no easy feat; content driven SEO can be difficult to quantify, is resource heavy and may not always yield the results we were hoping to achieve. Understanding who your audiences are, recognising how they behave online and tapping in to the core of your user behaviour enables us to create content that your users are likely to like. Kirsty Hulse will discuss a way in which to understand this in a Mozinar on Tues 4th November. So if you want to brush up on your content driven SEO skills, join Kirsty via this link here   --- ### Tina Judic recognised by both The Drum and The Digitals - Published: 2014-10-16 - Modified: 2024-05-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/tina-judic-recognised-drum-digitals/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, General News We love being able to showcase our hard work and have it recognised within the industry via various award shortlists/wins. It is even more enjoyable to shout when one of our own is individually recognised for their contribution not only to Found but the industry itself. With that said, it is great news to announce that our very own MD Tina Judic has this week, been named twice as one of the UK digital industry’s leading professionals.   Firstly, Tina is included in The Drum’s annual list of influential individuals, Drum Digerati.   The Digerati, now in its second year, recognises the contribution made by 100 key players in the digital space. Along with this, Tina has also been shortlisted for the Senior Digital Leader category at this years Digital Awards organised by Econsultancy, celebrating the entire digital landscape. Tina says: “I live and breathe digital and being recognised by these two heavyweight institutions is very special. Together with my brilliant team at Found, our aim is to shine and be known for our focus on creativity, performance and delivery. It’s great to receive an industry thumbs-up to this focus. ” The Digitals will be hosted on 12th November at Tobacco Dock. --- ### Google Shopping; Top Tips & Performance Pitfalls > Check out Found's top tips for a super effective Google Shopping campaign and also what dangers and pitfulls to watch out for! - Published: 2014-09-05 - Modified: 2024-05-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-shopping-top-tips-performance-pitfalls/ - Categories: Ecommerce, Google Algorithm Updates PPC would long be a thing of the past if it wasn’t for Google’s ever-changing Adwords’ features. Fast forward from a special announcement in May 2013 to today, and yes, you’ve guessed it, the Google Shopping transition is well-and-truly underway. This hot-topic switchover between Product Listing Ads to Google Shopping has resulted in PPC experts and marketers alike revelling in the bundles of benefits that the new campaign default offers. Google wants to display your products and services as if they were a storefront, and the focus? ... Products, Performers, and Competition. But albeit the host of advantages that this new shopping model brings, it is very easy to slip up. Let’s discuss... PLAs vs. Google Shopping Campaigns First let us understand the key differences between PLAs and Google Shopping Campaigns before we dive into the real nitty gritty about how to use these enhanced features in all their glories. Old PLA Campaigns New Google Shopping Campaigns Merchant Feed Centre Advanced Product Inventory Access the feed where you can only search by product name. Browse through your merchant feed based on brand name, item ID, product type, and many more to create product groups at a highly granular level. Competitive Metrics Competitive Metrics View Impression share data only. View benchmark CTR and CPC data to provide insight for making own account bid changes. Ad Groups Product Groups A more basic targeting which matches a user’s search term with the product in the merchant feed. More sophisticated product targeting allowing you to assign specific attributes to a product group. They also allow you to exclude products that you don’t want to show in Google search. Tips For a Happy Shopper Now we have established our basic differences (is it safe to say we could write a list as long as our arm), now let’s focus on some Found top tips for a successful Google Shopping campaign. Tip 1: Up-to-date, high quality product data Nobody likes things which are “so last year! ” You should apply the same cliché to your product data. Your ad performance parallels the data which is in your merchant centre feed. So to create a seamless shopping experience, ensure that the user sees the same information in your ads to what is available on your website. There is no good in advertising products which were last season’s stock, that are now out of stock. This will result in wasted clicks, and wasted spend. Be accurate with your feed, and ensure you are making updates every time product lines are being updated, added to or removed. And ‘quality over quantity’ is arguable. The volume of products in your merchant feed is unlimited, so ensure that the products’ information are of as high quality as possible. Tip 2: Promote your very best products It has all become very sophisticated. More product targets do mean more decisions to make, so break out these targets to focus on your top performers. I am not suggesting throwing all your eggs into one... --- ### Google Announces HTTPS as a Ranking Factor > On August 6th, Google publicly announced HTTPS as a ranking signal, providing webmasters with a real incentive to ensure greater security. Find out more. - Published: 2014-08-19 - Modified: 2024-04-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-announces-https-ranking-factor/ - Categories: General News, SEO On the 6th of August Google publicly announced the introduction of HTTPS as a ranking signal, providing webmasters with a real incentive to ensure greater security for their users. Despite Google’s Matt Cutts identifying website encryption as an important trend for 2014, this update still came as a surprise to many within the SEM industry. Not in the least part because Google explicitly referenced something as a ranking signal – a relatively rare occurrence. Although the announcement of HTTPS as a ranking signal was relatively out of the blue, Google has long expressed a commitment to making the web a safer place for its users. In recent years it has made great strides in encrypting the majority of its own services, including gmail, Google drive and even the search results themselves – leading to the emergence and rise of the dreaded keyword data “not provided”. What is HTTPS? In simple terms HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) provides a layer of encryption between a user’s device and a website, preventing private data from being accessible to third parties. This distinguishes it from a regular HTTP connection, where data can be read by every server that it flows through. The benefits of this are twofold: Authority – The presence of HTTPS can help reassure users that they are accessing the correct website. Security – Greater user security through the encryption of private data. What is SSL? SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) refers to the type of security technology that creates an encrypted link between two machines – typically the web server and a browser. This link safeguards the information and data passed between the web server and browsers ensuring that it remains private. How does the algorithm work? In the week following the announcement of HTTPS, a number of questions have already been posed to Google by individuals keen to better understand how this algorithm works. Google’s John Mueller provided some more information in a recent webmaster hangout, revealing several important details: The algorithm works at a URL level – Rather than viewing a site in its entirety, this update works at a URL level, meaning that websites using SSL checkouts will not see ranking benefits without changing to site wide implementation. The update runs independently & in real time – Unlike updates like Panda which refreshes on a monthly basis and Penguin which is manually processed, this algorithm runs in real time and completely independently. This will be well received by many businesses who have been waiting almost 10 months for a Penguin refresh and may have feared that they would have to endure lengthy waiting periods to see any benefit from investing in HTTPS. Should All Websites Go HTTPS? In its official announcement, Google made the point of describing HTTPS as a “lightweight signal”, emphasising the greater importance of other factors like high quality content. As such webmasters shouldn’t feel that they have to make this change immediately and should weigh up the potential benefits on a site by site basis.... --- ### SEO Experts React To Google Pigeon Algorithm Update > Click here to see what the experts have to say about the latest Google Pigeon Algorithm update. Also download your FREE algorithm timeline PDF. - Published: 2014-08-07 - Modified: 2024-04-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/seo-experts-react-to-google-pigeon/ - Categories: Google Algorithm Updates, Mobile, SEO I have to give it to them, Google are pretty dedicated when it comes to naming their major algorithmic updates after animals starting with the letter P. First we had the introduction of Panda back in February 2011, followed by the Penguin in April 2012 and now we have Pigeon. However, has this latest name been created by Google themselves or by online publisher Search Engine Land? It is in fact the latter. The following quote from veteran Barry Schwartz on the 25th July verifies this "Last night, Google released a pretty significant local search algorithm update. Google told us there was no internal name for the update, but now that we see that it was fairly significant, we decided to give it a name: Pigeon. " What is Pigeon? All Google have shared to date is that the new local search algorithm ties deeper into the online search capabilities, which covers numerous ranking signals not to mention features such as synonyms, spelling correction, Knowledge Graph,  and more. Furthermore, Google have said that algorithm enhancements have been made in relation to their location and distance ranking parameters. One of the things that has been noted so far is that the rankings of local directories have improved as they are more likely to appear on the first page. This may in part have been a response to businesses like Yelp complaining that they were being unfairly pushed out of the results. Click to view Google's street map view of humans with pigeon masks on. If anything, this update just reiterates the importance of submitting a website that utilises local search to local/business directories for the NAP (name, address phone) citations they give you. These citations have an impact on local search rankings in a similar fashion to links on the regular listings. With the local map packs being reduced, things are going to get more competitive, meaning that this is more of an advantage than before. Google haven't yet shared any details about if and when the update would roll out more widely in other countries and languages. What we do know is that Pigeon, as we're calling it for now is only impacting US English results at present. Industry view on Pigeon MiShop. local are specialists in local listing optimisation, so we recently asked them for their feedback on this update. Here is what Dave Whatley, their Managing Director had to say about it at all. "The results seem to vary depending on search terms and between sectors. Local search results would typically have been displayed with two or three organic results appearing above the ‘7 pack’ and with a mixture of local listing sites and local business websites underneath. Since Pigeon, early indications are that good local listing sites and local social sites are appearing above local businesses results and the ‘7 pack’ has less prominence or is diminished in size. Local listing and local social sites with strong local SEO signals and authority may appear at the top... --- ### Found Shortlisted for Dadi Awards 2014 > We are excited to announce that Found have been shortlisted not once, not twice, but four times at the Dadi Awards 2014 - Published: 2014-07-18 - Modified: 2024-05-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-shortlisted-dadi-awards-2014/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, General News We are excited to announce that Found have been shortlisted not once, not twice, but four times at this year's Dadi Awards.  The Dadis bring together the best of the digital industry to recognise and celebrate their achievements and will be hosted later this year at the Park Plaza in Westminster. Our work with Canterbury of New Zealand and Randstad is shortlisted for Best Digital Media Strategy, Anglian Home Improvements for Best Use of Affiliate Marketing and Randstad for Best Recruitment Website, App or Campaign. We are proud to be recognised for this work alongside some of the leading agencies in the industry and look forward to the event later this year, which is guaranteed to be a fun evening for all involved. --- ### 10 Point Inbound Marketing Campaign Checklist > Essential 10 step checklist of factors to consider when conducting an inbound marketing campaign. Click through to find out more! - Published: 2014-07-14 - Modified: 2024-05-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/inbound-marketing-campaign-checklist/ - Categories: Content Marketing, SEO, Social Media A well-executed inbound marketing campaign has the ability to bring in new customers who were originally hard to reach and unaware of your company and products. Inbound marketing is also a cost effective way of reaching a large number of people without having to spend a fortune on advertising or sales forces. Below are ten check points to guide you along the process of setting up an inbound marketing campaign to boost your customer base and most hopefully drive revenue. 1. Identify your campaign audience The first place to start is to get a clear idea of who your campaigns audience is. Having a clear view of your audience will allow you to tailor your message directly to them and increase your chances of them converting into a customer. Your audience will have an impact on what your offer is, your branding, copywriting and design. It is important to note that your audience isn’t always your end user. If you are promoting children’s clothes for example, then your audience is parents and not the child, if you are promoting an elderly home, your audience might be the children of the person requiring a home. Additionally, this is crucial to take into consideration for websites that offer products or services that might be purchased as gifts. Recent research on one of our ecommerce clients highlighted that much of their traffic came from females for a male focused site. Not only were these figures surprising but the conversion rate for females in contrast to males was much higher as well. 2. Create your offer and landing pages Creating your offer is all about providing something of value to your target audience. The value has to be greater than the cost to your potential customer if you want a fair chance of converting them. If your aim is to generate leads then you will need to come up with an incentive for someone to opt-in, this might be a free whitepaper, e-book or template. If you are selling a product then you need to consider benefits, features and pricing. A large factor of whether your offer will be accepted by the customer is due to your landing page. It should instantly capture your viewers’ attention and use compelling copy and images to engage and sell the viewer on your offer. The most effective way of creating high converting landing pages is to A/B test them against each other and consistently try to come up with a higher converting page. 3. Set your goals and benchmarks Every successful campaign needs to have goals or benchmarks that you aim to achieve. Not knowing what you want to achieve makes it impossible to know if the campaign was a success or not and therefore if it was a worthwhile use of time and money. A popular format for goal setting is to use the SMART formula in which your goals should be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely. SMART goals may include getting 1000 email opt-ins... --- ### Google authorship photos removed from SERPs > As Google cleans up their search result design to better suit mobile devices, Google Authorship gets a face lift - literally. - Published: 2014-06-27 - Modified: 2024-04-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-authorship-photos-removed-from-serps/ - Categories: General News, SEO, Trends As Google cleans up their search result design to better suit mobile devices, Google Authorship gets a face lift - literally. For the most part, search results on Google will no longer include an author's profile image and circle count. This change will affect Google News slightly differently, with small author head shots appearing beside a larger news photo snippet. This change was just announced on Wednesday. However, as Moz Senior Content Astronaut Cyrus Shepard discovered, as of yesterday, traditional authorship snippets had already declined by 10%. This new layout does not mean Authorship is no longer an important move for bloggers and publishers. In fact, the value of linking your content to your verified profile is apparently still there. As Google's John Mueller explains, "Our experiments indicate that click-through behavior on this new less-cluttered design is similar to the previous one. " As Shepard points out, even though visually results lack the head shot, there are still many valid reasons for verifying: Authorship still exists The names of authors still appear in the SERPs Rankings aren't influenced by these changes Enhanced snippets still require Google+ verification For more information, read Shepard's full article "Google Announces the End of Author Photos in Search: What You Should Know". --- ### PerformanceIN - INside the Boardroom: MD at Found, Tina Judic > Our industry’s shift towards greater marketing integration sees many of us reflecting on, and refining, the systems, structure and service we are providing - Published: 2014-06-23 - Modified: 2024-05-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/performancein-inside-boardroom-md-found-tina-judic/ - Categories: General News In the latest of PerformanceIN's INside the Boardroom, Found MD Tina Judic looks at the digital industry's shift towards greater marketing integration, evaluating marketing automation and questions whether it's really what it is cracked out to be: Our industry’s shift towards greater marketing integration sees many of us reflecting on, and refining, the systems, structure and service we are providing our merchant clients. As our world becomes even more connected and the multi-screen revolution brings even greater cross-device, cross-channel, any time, any place buying journeys, we’re equally compelled to ensure our marketing approach is not only hard working but entirely relevant and inspiring to generate valuable sales and leads.   Continue reading... --- ### The Google Algorithm Timeline for the SEO professional > If you have ever wanted a quick reference for major historical changes to Google’s algorithm updates, then this is the only timeline you will ever need. - Published: 2014-06-20 - Modified: 2024-05-02 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-algorithm-timeline-seo-professional/ - Categories: SEO, Trends Have you ever needed a quick reference for major historical changes to Google algorithm updates? Maybe you’re investigating a massive drop off in SEO visibility way back in 2011? Or you've got a sneaky suspicion that the website was hit by a Panda or Penguin update? Yes there are other timelines out there, some of them very detailed. But what if you wanted something simple. Maybe something that you could print out (yes physical things exist in the digital world) and stick above your desk so that whenever you needed to check for a potential algorithmic penalty, there it was. Well if this sounds like something that you may need... read on. This Google algorithm timeline will make your life easier (unless it tells you that Penguin got you bad)... If you’re interested in how Found could supercharge your digital performance across SEO, PPC, Social and Digital PR, then get in touch today to speak to a member of the team. --- ### Should companies be bidding on their brand terms? > Bidding on your own brand name is a savvy strategy regardless of your position in the organic results. Find out the secrets behind this strategy. - Published: 2014-06-12 - Modified: 2024-05-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/bidding-brand-terms/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) PPC is a precise science. Getting the best from your campaigns comes down to fine margins – and sometimes it’s the tiny tweaks that help you steal an advantage in the SERPs turf war. But PPC needn’t always be so fiddly. Bidding on your own brand name is a savvy strategy regardless of your position in the organic results. It is also quite easy to implement and promises compelling benefits.  Rewards include more click-throughs, higher-quality leads and increased sales conversion. Brand name ads can even lift the performance of unrelated campaigns across your account. Give us five minutes to explain. What do we mean by bidding on your brand name? Simple. Running a PPC campaign with your brand name as the keyword. At first the strategy may seem odd, particularly if you’re ranking well in the organic listings. Detractors often say that it’s a waste of money. Or that it will damage your organic traffic. Or that it’s an exercise in narcissism. Yet the benefits of bidding on your own brand name have been proven many times over. 6 reasons for bidding on brand terms Your brand is the real deal. Prove it to your searchers. If you already rank number one in the organic listings for your brand name, it may seem counterintuitive to run a paid campaign for the same term. But paid ads are a great way to enhance brand exposure, reassure searchers of your brand identity and encourage click-throughs to your website. Two listings at the top of the SERPs are better than one. Most people interact with search results above the fold – rarely scrolling down the page. As such the top of the SERPs is prime real estate and you should own as much of it as possible. Paid ads will also push any negative information about your brand – such as poor customer reviews – down the page, making it less likely to be discovered by your target audience. Stop competitors muscling in It’s becoming common for wily brands to bid on their competitors’ brand terms to hijack their traffic. Failure to secure a paid ad on your brand name could lead to a situation where your plain old organic listing is preceded by a competitor’s eye-catching ad. It’s like inviting your rivals to pitch their products and services outside your flagship store or head office. So do you sit back as your competitors try to divert people away from engaging with your brand? Or do you fetch a hulking great pitchfork and force them off your turf? Exactly. Bidding on your brand name reinstates you at the top of the pile, where you belong. Your quality score will see that you soon outrank your competitors on your brand name. Organic listings limit your flexibility to express yourself in the SERPs. There is – after all – only so much you can do with meta tags. Paid ads give you a lot more control, allowing you to create specific messaging to grab user... --- ### Google Panda 4.0 update – How to avoid Panda-geddon > Google's Panda 4.0 has finally hit the SERPs, causing waves of discontent in some quarters, and signs of recovery for others. Find out all you need to know... - Published: 2014-05-23 - Modified: 2024-07-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-panda-4-0-update-avoid-panda-geddon/ - Categories: SEO After a lot of speculation in the SEO world, it seems that Panda 4. 0 has finally hit the SERPs causing waves of discontent in some quarters, and signs of recovery for others. Google’s head of web spam, Matt Cutts, announced the update on Twitter on the 20th May 2014 stating that: “Google is rolling out our Panda 4. 0 update starting today. ” The update follows Cutts' previous announcement that he and his team were working on ‘softening’ the Google algorithm to help smaller businesses with quality content compete against larger sites. Google is rolling out our Panda 4. 0 update starting today. — Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) May 20, 2014 What is Google Panda? Panda is a search engine filter that is designed to stop low quality ‘spammy’ websites from ranking as well in the SERPs. The Panda algorithm, named after Google Software engineer Navneet Panda, first came on the scene in February 2011. It caused Panda-monium in the SEO world. (There we go, I said it). The latest update is a major release for Google, meaning that it is likely to be a data refresh as well as an algorithmic update. Panda Patent Google released a Google Panda patent (patent 8,682,892) on 28th September 2012. It was granted this year on the 25th March, 2014. The patent is a fairly wordy explanation of the algorithm that states that if a website fails to meet a certain quality threshold, then a modification factor will be applied and the site and it will subsequently be ranked lower in the SERPs. Ranking search results Invented by Navneet Panda and Vladimir Ofitserov Abstract Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for ranking search results. One of the methods includes: Determining, for each of a plurality of groups of resources, a respective count of independent incoming links to resources in the group; Determining, for each of the plurality of groups of resources, a respective count of reference queries; Determining, for each of the plurality of groups of resources, a respective group-specific modification factor, wherein the group-specific modification factor for each group is based on the count of independent links and the count of reference queries for the group; and Associating, with each of the plurality of groups of resources, the respective group-specific modification factor for the group, wherein the respective group-specific modification for the group modifies initial scores generated for resources in the group in response to received search queries. How languages differ Google Panda 4. 0 affects different languages by different percentage. Google told Search Engine Land that the new Panda affects different languages to different degrees, impacting roughly 7. 5% of queries in English. Panda 4. 0: not black and white With the Panda 4. 0 update announced at roughly at the same time as the Payday Loans 2. 0 update, it is difficult to ascertain its effects yet. Google have almost certainly done this on purpose, making it harder for SEOs to reverse engineer the specifics... --- ### Introducing new Founders Caroline, Victoria & Tom > The Found office has been buzzing with energy the past few weeks. There has been lots going on, including welcoming some very lovely new Founders... - Published: 2014-05-22 - Modified: 2024-07-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/introducing-new-founders-caroline-victoria-tom/ - Categories: Culture The Found office has been buzzing with energy the past few weeks. There has been lots going on, including welcoming some very lovely new recruits. Read on to find out more about the newest Founders to join our team: Caroline Jagger-Higginson Senior Account Manager Caroline is the newest style queen to join the Found team. She brings along a wealth of Account Management experience,as well as a warm smile and great sense of humour. Find out more about this tennis fan: Hometown Marlow - where they do all the rowing! We heard you once worked on ChuckleVision, was that a lot of fun? The secret is out, I worked on ChuckleVision!   What most people don’t know, is I actually starred in one of the episodes as a giant raven that had to steal the crown jewels in the Tower of London! You are always looking very stylish in the office – where is your favourite place to shop? I do love shopping and have an unhealthy retail relationship with Zara. If you could travel anywhere, where would you go? If I could go anywhere in the world, I would love to go across California on a Harley Davis. As a lover of sport, what is your favourite sport? My favourite sports have to be tennis, golf and rowing – I’m very competitive! Twitter or Facebook? I’m a FB girl to the core. Paper, Kindle or iPad? I use an iPad mini – Zara has a great app ; )Victoria Chernobrivets Junior Search Analyst After completing a masters in London, Russian born Victoria took the Found PPC internship by storm and joined Found as a Junior Search Analyst. Read below to find out more about our Moscow-born analyst: Tell us about Moscow. I absolutely love the city for its amazing restaurants, cheap gypsy cabs and crazy night life, where leaving the party before 6 am is almost rude. You once did a 60 meter bungee jump.  Weren't you scared? It was one of the most exciting and scariest experiences of my life, especially since I’m afraid of heights. But I like to challenge myself in different ways and I get great satisfaction from overcoming my fears. As a self-proclaimed ultimate tourist of London, what is your favourite place in London? I have too many favourite places to pick only one, but one of my recent discoveries is Richmond park. I was amazed at how different it is from everything I have seen in London before. It's a perfect place to escape from the noise of a big city, enjoy a nice picnic and watch the world (and the deer) go by. If you could travel anywhere, where would you go? My dream is to visit Antarctica. From what I've heard, it is supposed to be the most beautiful place on earth, with its unique scenery and wildlife. The cruise from Argentina to Antarctica through the Atlantic Ocean must be an amazing adventure in itself. Twitter or Facebook? Definitely Facebook. For me,... --- ### 2 clever guys at Google share the future of Adwords > Google has just revealed their future plans for AdWords in a video livestream. Some of these changes are big, meaning they are also (probably) important. - Published: 2014-04-30 - Modified: 2024-05-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-future-of-adwords/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) Google has just revealed their future plans for AdWords in a video livestream. Some of these changes are big, meaning they are also (probably) important. To save you some time and help you understand what Jerry Dischler, Vice President of Product Management, AdWords, was going on about, I watched the Step inside the future of AdWords livestream for you and distilled the pertinent facts. Before we go on though, I must ask you a crucial question: what does Google think is the key to getting your advert out to your consumers in 2014? I know... you are thinking Mobile? Well, if you said mobile, you have four options: Hang your head in shame Get a donkey Ride to Ipswich or someplace Work in SEO If you said, ‘It’s about connecting people to content with whatever device they’re using right now to the content they want now,’ take the rest of the day off. You’re allowed, I have already cleared it with your boss. The new buzzword on the market is connecting. Say that at parties and everyone will think you know more than you do. People will probably even buy you free drinks. Please remember to drink responsibly - You. Are. Gonna. Get. Hammered. Oh ya, here are the 3 main things that Google will be rolling out in AdWords over the next few months: 1. App Specific ads Google calls this ‘Innovative Ads’ but really they just want to help app promoters advertise their apps because that’s where loads of dosh is at the moment. The sequence for app advertisers is: Awareness > Install > Engagement > Conversions ie. monetisation 60% of apps are never installed and 80% of apps are only fiddled about with once. Look at your phone. Are you one of the 80%? If you are, buy some pink and green socks tomorrow so you can be unique again. Google wants to help app advertisers increase installations and engagement.  They’re going to do this by having: a) App keyword suggestions – there will now be ‘app ads’ which recommend a relevant app based on what you’re searching for. Google thinks hotel apps are a particularly relevant example. b) Ads inside apps - based on what apps you have already downloaded /what you have been searching for/what you had for supper last Tuesday. c) Ads that deep link inside an app. Eg. ‘Doner kebab sellers near me’ in a HungryHouse app. 2. Insightful Reporting Google has very helpfully carried out some case studies which tell us that ‘yes, online desktop purchases have originated from mobile’ and ‘yes, people who originate from a mobile advert spend more in an online store or even a physical store’. Thanks guys! That means we can see the effect that our mobile ads are having on end conversions and bid MORE so our ‘effective’ ads are showing more often. In summary, Google is trying to close the loop from online to offline and make another $23,834,091 billion in the process. 3. Intelligent Tools There are... --- ### 8 FREE GOOGLE SEO TOOLS TO BOOST YOUR RANKINGS IN 2025 > Discover 8 free Google SEO tools to boost your website’s performance. Learn to use these essential tools for improved rankings, insights, and growth. - Published: 2014-03-18 - Modified: 2024-11-06 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/10-free-google-seo-tools-everyone-use/ - Categories: SEO, Trends Whether you define yourself as an online marketer, a purveyor of SEO services or a content marketer, our industry often has a love/hate relationship with Google. However, no matter how you personally regard the big G, there are a selection of free tools they provide with potentially helpful data. Using these can really help pump-up your digital marketing efforts. Google offers a suite of free tools, tests, and reports designed to help site owners and SEO professionals analyse and enhance website search performance. In this guide, we explore the top 8 Google SEO tools, detailing their functions, uses, and benefits. 1. Google Search ConsoleIf you only make use of one tool from this list, Google Search Console (formally known as Webmaster Tools) is the plum choice. Just as the logo demonstrates it’s intent with a spanner, using Search Console is akin to giving your site a regular service; use it to keep everything running smoothly, and spot bigger issues quickly. Find out if your site has a manual penalty, identify crawling issues and broken links, see how many pages are indexed, download links, test your robots. txt file or structured data, and plenty more, all for free. It’s a peek into how Google regards elements of your site. Oh, and while you’re at it, check out Bing Webmaster Tools; there’s lots to be gained from this free tool as well! 2. Google AnalyticsOk, we all know about the frustration of (not provided) keyword data, taking away some of our most helpful analysis. But, there’s still a HUGE advantage is having analytics data for your site in order to analyse content, user experience, the success of campaigns and more. In fact, if you’re not using analytics in your digital marketing, you’re behind the competition, no matter what. Google Analytics remains a popular, and constantly evolving tool, though there is increasing competition from alternatives such as Clicky, Open Web Analytics, WebTrends, Omniture and more.  3. Google Adwords Keyword PlannerAnother tool that’s been through significant, and often much-lamented, change in the last year, the Adwords Keyword Planner remains the de-facto source for many when it comes to ascertaining keyword volumes (though don’t rely on it for exact numbers), even if other tools are used for generating seed lists. It feels that the new Planner is much more PPC focussed than the Keyword Tool it superseded, and the suggested keywords are often so broad as to be useless initially. However, there are ways to still use the Keyword Planner to get excellent data – this article by Dan Shure is a superb place to start. 4. Google TrendsAnd whilst we are on the topic of keywords and topics for your website, Google Trends is still a great tool for comparing traffic for different search terms, including historic, geographic and related terms (in Google’s mind) data. Understanding if a term is a rising or falling element of your topic’s vocabulary is highly valuable for creating enticing content, and available for free! Also worth checking out is theHot Trends list, to see the most popular searches right... --- ### Finance Monthly - The Importance of Mobile Marketing > Find out what Sales Director, Stephen Dart, had to say about the scope, importance and efficacy of mobile marketing for businesses within the finance sector - Published: 2014-03-17 - Modified: 2024-04-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/finance-monthly-the-importance-of-mobile-marketing/ - Categories: General News, Mobile As part the March 2014 edition of Finance Monthly, Found Sales Director, Stephen Dart, commented on the scope, importance and efficacy of mobile marketing for businesses, especially those within the finance sector. “The importance of Mobile as a vehicle for sales and brand awareness is now beyond compare and it’s imperative that all advertisers take notice of the opportunity that’s before them. The fact that Google Mobile searches have increased tenfold in two years is proof enough, whilst a recent study by Google itself found that 67% of consumers were more likely to buy from a Mobile-friendly website. Worryingly though, it also found that even if a customer liked a company, half would use it less often if their website wasn't Mobile-friendly. ” The whole article is available to read and download here. If you are interested in learning more about mobile marketing and how it can help your business, get in touch or have a look at our mobile services. --- ### Top 7 SEO errors you should fix today > Is your webpage missing a Sitemap? Does it load too slowly? Use and download our Free SEO-Tool to identify SEO errors and to learn how to fix them... - Published: 2014-02-28 - Modified: 2024-06-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/top-7-seo-errors-fix-today/ - Categories: SEO For any SEO strategy to flourish, it’s essential to have a website that is technically equipped to meet the expectations of search engines’ complex algorithms and the spiders that will frequently crawl your site, assuming they have sufficient access. Technical weaknesses on a website can hinder its chances of ranking highly in the SERPs. Everything from missing title tags to slow load time can have an impact on the overall success of your SEO campaign. The Found SEO-Tool was created to identify these types of issues and to provide a high-level audit of any webpage instantly. Not only is the tool free, but users are able to run unlimited home or/and internal page URL checks. A recent study by Randstad Technologies illustrates the shortage of IT and digital professionals that currently exist in the UK, so this tool should come in handy to website owners who don't want to incur fees from skilled freelance professionals or agencies. Below we cover 7 common SEO errors websites tend to make and how to resolve them. SEO errors and how to fix them 1. Sitemap - not found A Sitemap is a way for a webmaster to feed data to search engines and pass on details about your most important pages, in order of priority. According to sitemaps. org, whose Protocol 0. 9 is adopted by Google, Bing and Yahoo, "a Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL - when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site. This allows search engines to more intelligently crawl the site. Using a Sitemap can't guarantee your webpages will appear in the SERPs, but it is best practice to have one. For more detail on what should be included or how to set one up, Google's Webmaster Tools offers detailed explanations on creating Sitemaps. A missing Sitemap can be easily overlooked, but is relatively easy to fix and once you do be sure to submit or resubmit your site to search engines. Both Google and Bing make it relatively straightforward to submit a new sitemap, allowing them to do a fresh crawl of your site. Submit a sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools Submit your site to Bing 2. Canonical domain check failed If you fail a canonical domain check, it means that your homepage is accessible via more than one URL, without having the correct technical instructions in place. Examples of homepage variations: www. found. co. uk, found. co. uk, www. found. co. uk/index. html or Found. co. uk/home. asp The SEO-Tool carries out canonical checks on individual pages and will help you identify some of the common duplications which can occur. With multiple functioning URLs that display identical content, the effectiveness of inbound link equity can be split, reducing your site’s SEO potential. If your website has multiple home pages with different URLs, you need to make sure that the correct canonical tags have been implemented or... --- ### Found collaborates with Life Works for Eating Disorders Awareness Week > Did you know eating disorders affect 1.6m people in the UK? Find out more about social media's influence and the push for safe spacers in our infographic - Published: 2014-02-25 - Modified: 2024-06-05 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-collaborates-with-life-works-for-eating-disorders-awareness-week/ - Categories: Social Media Over the last few weeks, members from our team here at Found have been working closely with consultants at Life Works, a leading specialist in the treatment of addictions and behavioural health disorders, to create an infographic about eating disorders (ED). The project was to coincide with Eating Disorders Awareness Week 2014 (24 February - 2 March), a week-long campaign whose aim is to raise awareness about eating disorders and to teach the wider community that EDs are treatable and that a full recovery is possible. Given the sensitive nature of the topic, it quickly became clear that this would be a difficult project for the team to tackle. Despite the tough subject matter, we were able to create something educational, engaging and shareable by collaborating with the Life Works team at every step. The research phase of this project was another important element, as we ended up educating ourselves along the way, which led us to be acutely aware of the importance of displaying both sides of the online ED environment. The ED landscape Even though eating disorders affect 1. 6 million people in the UK, awareness about these illnesses and their causes remains relatively low. On top of this lack of awareness, EDs are prone to unfair stereotypes and stigmas. It is all too often that they can be written off as a phase young girls go through. In reality, EDs are serious mental illnesses that claim more lives than any other mental illness. An important part of this education process is learning about how in the last decade, social media has grown into a dangerous place for people suffering from EDs. Websites, forums and social media sites act as a place where those suffering meet and encourage each other’s ED tendencies by competing to lose weight, eat the fewest calories and to consume the smallest portions of food. Creating ED sensitive content We knew going into this project that it was a very sensitive subject to handle and as such getting this message across appropriately, but accessibly was a key driver for all. As we begun the research phase, we were introduced into an online world plagued with pro-eating disorder content that most of us never knew existed. Upon initial research, it seemed a common question from the team was why were sites with this type of content allowed? The unfortunate truth is that each time a site, chat forum or social media group is closed down, it will just eventually reappear with a new name on a new site. Social media sites like Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram made moves to ban damaging hashtags such #thinspiration and #thinspo but the effectiveness of these bans can’t really be monitored as variations like #thynspiration continued in use. Not too long after #thinspiration appeared on Instagram’s ban list, the hashtag was re-allowed, with search results being accompanied by a content advisory warning and selecting Learn More links users to the National Eating Disorders Association website. #Anorexia gets the same treatment but #Anorexiatips gets off warning-free, evidence... --- ### Found on the 2014 European Search Awards shortlist > Found makes short list for 2014 European Search Awards for Best Low Budget Campaign for Found & HCL - ROI Health Kick for UK Nursing Recruiter. - Published: 2014-02-18 - Modified: 2024-05-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-shortlisted-for-2014-european-search-awards/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, General News Now in its third year, the European Search Awards sets out to recognise the best in Europe for Search, Digital and Content Marketing. Found is thrilled to be on the 2014 shortlist with a chance to take home an award at the ceremony in Reykjavik, Iceland at the end of March. Making the shortlist "Found & HCL - ROI Health Kick for UK Nursing Recruiter" was shortlisted in the category Best Low Budget Campaign. HCL Nursing had a limited monthly budget but Found was able to achieve measurable and outstanding SEO results. This includes successfully driving brand awareness, increasing organic traffic, improving registrations and applications, as well as providing a strong and cost effective ROI. Over the period of the campaign, Found constantly monitored and refined the work we were doing. The results of the campaign showcase our cost-effective tactics and our efficient approach to using a limited budget in a competitive marketplace. The team’s work paid off not only by achieving massive increases in traffic and applications, but also in its ability to deliver a strong return on investment from such a low budget. Another achievement was the positive relationship Found developed with HCL Workforce Solutions. "Our partnership with Found has, from the beginning, been invaluable. Medical recruitment is an extremely specialised sector and Found has made it their business to fundamentally understand our organisation and its objectives, bending over backwards to deliver, add value and advise. Work is turned around quickly and innovatively, and in regards to our web traffic – well, the numbers speak for themselves. " Laura Ackland, HCL Workforce Solutions A big thanks to the esteemed panel of judges and Don't Panic Events for recognising Found in this manner.  The 2014 European Search Awards will take place at the Grand Hotel Reykjavik on Friday 28 March 2014   --- ### An infographic to celebrate RBS 6 Nations Championship > Check out the 2014 RBS 6 Nations championship infographic which is stacked with stats and facts about the six European teams competing in the tournament - Published: 2014-02-13 - Modified: 2024-05-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/rbs-6-nations-infographic/ - Categories: Analytics, Data, Trends To showcase the 2014 Six Nations Championship Found, in collaboration with the world’s original rugby brand Canterbury, has produced an infographic stacked with stats and facts about the six European teams facing-off in the competition. The annual rugby tournament is played by England, France, Ireland, Italy, Scotland and Wales. Succeeding the Five Nations Championship, RBS 6 Nations was born in 2000 with the addition of Italy. Using historical data, the Canterbury infographic compares Championship wins, Grand Slam titles, match and Championship points and squad stats. Want to know how much the average forward weighs or who posed nude for the 2014 Dieux Du Stade calendar?  Check out the infographic below to find out. --- ### What the London tube strike taught me about omni-channel marketing > Consumers are now more educated and better connected. Find out how this affects digital marketing and the role omni-channel plays in this changing landscape. - Published: 2014-02-06 - Modified: 2024-05-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/london-tube-omni-channel-marketing/ - Categories: Mobile, Trends The tube strike has only been going on a couple of days but so far it has taught me two very important lessons. The first is that I should own a bicycle and the second is that omni-channel retailing will dominate in the coming year. Let me explain. As I stood crammed onto a bus with what felt like all 4 million people said to be affected by the strike, I was envious of all the bicycles zooming past. Knowing there were more strike days planned, I pulled out my mobile and searched for bicycle shops in London. I clicked around a few sites until it was (finally! ) time to get off the bus. Omni-channel's role in digital marketing Shoppers are now highly knowledgeable, better informed and well-connected at all times through multiple devices.  This is where omni-channel retailing comes in. My mobile search didn't convert into a sale in that moment, but I did continue researching bicycles later in the day, drawing my attention to the fact that consumers and the consumer purchasing cycle has drastically changed. What is omni-channel retailing? Omni-channel retailing is about providing shoppers with a strong consumer experience throughout multiple channels. There must be consistent and effortless message across all sales platforms: mobile, desktop, tablet, in-store, mobile in-store and call centre. Born from multi-channel retailing, omni-channel is more about looking at the bigger picture when fulfilling a satisfying consumer experience. Retailers need to be aware of an alternative conversion pattern, where you will not necessarily witness traffic from one platform converting on the same medium. The brave new world of consumer engagement Let’s revisit my search for a bicycle. I first searched on my mobile but later on in the day I used my desktop to check the site and seek out the specifications of the bicycle that caught my eye. I also noticed that the prices online were very competitive. While I was tempted to buy the bike at that exact moment, I couldn’t commit without a test ride. Is a lack of conversion at this desktop stage a sign of failure?  Not at all. Being able to find that exact model easily from my desktop was important for my journey as a consumer, as was seeing competitive prices.  I may not have purchased a bicycle as of yet, but I remember the name of the shop that was offering the model I liked, at the price I loved. The brick-and-mortar store should not be overlooked. According to the A. T. Kearney study Recasting the Retail Store in Today's Omnichannel World, digital channels are most important for the research stage of the buying process but  "phsyical stores dominate later stages, including product trial and testing and after-sales service and support. While stores can and should play some role in all shopping stages, they needn't play a central role in each to generate sales across channels. " This is because when retailers are visible across a variety of mediums, consumers can utilise all technologies available to make... --- ### Why you should be using Google Authorship > How do you reinforce your authority as an author or a brand? The answer is simple: Google Authorship. Read our blog for authorship benefits and set up tips - Published: 2014-02-03 - Modified: 2024-05-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/why-google-authorship/ - Categories: Google Algorithm Updates, Opinion Content is central to online marketing activity. This is not news. All modern online marketers know that content is the way ahead for effective consumer engagement and for your site's visibility in search results. Plus, it is shareable across multiple channels from social to email. Think about it - consumers want the most relevant answer to their search query. They want it quickly and they want the answer to be one they can trust. This is even important to Google in their espoused drive to deliver the most effective and relevant results to users of their search engine (and so, take over the universe). For brands producing content that provides these trustworthy answers is a necessity. Writing a strong post is only half of it though, reinforcing your authority is as important. So how do you do this? Google Authorship. What is Google Authorship? Simply put, it is when an article or blog in a search result features a photo and byline - rich snippets of information that lists the author's full name, Google+ head shot and their number of Google+ circles. More than that though, Authorship is Google's way of verifying the authority of those creating content by connecting it with the author's Google+ profile. A verified profile not only looks nice but it tells Google you are human and therefore, that your content is credible. Why Google Authorship is valuable for allAuthorship can't be connected to a brand specifically, but companies of all size should make sure the authors of their blogs have verified Google Authorship accounts. Doing so has many positive effects such as helping the article stand out among the results, asserting your brand's authority, and providing your article with higher click-through-rates. A win-win Everyone benefits from authorised profiles and the rich-snippets that accompany them. Writers get credit for their work, Google gets to provide searchers with high quality results from real people and brands are able to assert their authority as experts in the field, which in turn, hopefully benefits them in conversion and ROI. Results in organic search As an agency that specialises in organic search, one of our goals as a team is to increase our client's ranking in the search results. The thought process being that the higher the ranking the more likely our clients are to get clicks, and clicks equal conversion. What is very interesting about Google Authorship, is that it changes things a bit.  According to an eye tracking study from LookTracker, more time and attention is given to results that have Authorship snippets. Search Engine Journal covered this study in an in-depth article by LookTracker analyst Matthew Campion, which drew attention to the fact that ""authorship snippets still performed better than many of their organic counterparts. " One of the study's scenarios looked at the query "tablet reviews", which offered searchers a variety of visual results. Take a look at these two identical screenshots. The first is the results without tracking and the one on the right has the eye... --- ### 22 takeaways from the Digital Marketing Show > Check out these 22 takeaways from the four different tracks of day 1 of the Digital Marketing Show at ExCel London. Last week our three awesome interns - Published: 2013-12-05 - Modified: 2024-05-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/digital-marketing-show-2013/ - Categories: Content Marketing, Mobile We are always encouraging learning at Found, which is why we find it very important to allow all members of our team time out of the office to attend conferences or workshops. Last week our three awesome interns Tom, Victoria and Helen attended Day 1 of the Digital Marketing Show at ExCel London. Here are their takeaways from the four different tracks of the conference:Mobile TheatreCreating a Future-proof Mobile SEO Strategy – Patrick Altoft, Branded3 1. Optimise your mobile site Many corporations are only now just catching on to the power mobile optimisation can bring. Mobile browsing is increasing rapidly, and as customers who have had their fingers burnt once are unlikely to return, you can’t afford to let this slide. 2. However tempting, don’t pester users to download your mobile app Interrupting mobile browsing to force your app on to users is almost certainly a bad tactic, and may even end up on I Don't Want Your F****** App. Content TheatreMaximise Digital ROI: Clicks, Content & Conversions – Liza Jackson & Julia Payne 3. Sales and Marketing teams must work closer together to have shared, mutual goals Thanks to search engines, people are entering the sales funnel later. The top sections of the funnel (e. g. awareness, interest and evaluation) are being fulfilled thanks to the marketing team. Julia suggests integrating sales and marketing teams to achieve better results and waste less time and resources. Buyers are entering the purchasing process later than ever before, it is vital that sales and marketing work together to realise the point at which sales staff can take over from marketing. 4. Personalisation is at the core of modern digital marketing Make each consumer feel unique and they’ll appreciate it. Instead of attempting to group users, understand their behaviour, how they have come to visit your site, and what they are doing when they are there. Engaging Your Audience: Learn From the News Industry – Paul Shanley, Associated Press 5. “The line between brands and publishers blurs. ” Nowadays quality content is as important for companies as it is for news providers. It is vital to use content partnerships to create high-end content. Digital marketers can learn from publishers how to be agile. In years of crisis they had to create better content with less money! Being flexible and adopting to changes is a key to success. 6. Don’t try to do everything yourself Use external help to achieve better results. 7. Video is a major influence 72% of 16-24 year olds say video is an important factor when choosing their news site. SEO is Changing: Keep Up – Hugh Jackson, MediaCo 8. Over optimisation is as bad as lack of optimisation. Know when to stop optimising. 9. The Google Venice update can get you Although the Venice update from Google in February 2012 did not make as many waves as Panda, or Penguin, it’s still very relevant to many online businesses, and tips were offered on how to make the update work to your advantage.... --- ### 5 lessons I’ve learned during 5 years at Found > Want to know the secrets of running an award-winning performance marketing agency? Read our MD Tina Judic's 5 things she has learned in 5 years at Found - Published: 2013-11-28 - Modified: 2024-05-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/5-lessons-5-years-found/ - Categories: Culture, Opinion As I celebrate my 5th anniversary here at Found, I thought I would share 5 lessons I've learned along the way: 1. People are the heartbeat of a successful business. Let them be brilliant. If there’s one thing I can look back on over the past 5 years, it is the brilliant people I've worked with. I'm utterly inspired - and couldn’t be happier - when I see my team develop and truly flourish. From new starters in their first jobs, to those with experience galore – both are able to bring ideas, insights and delivery to the team. If you give people the right role, the right support, fill them with confidence – and then truly nurture the talent - then something very brilliant will most certainly happen. 2. Don’t just follow the rules of expectancy. Praise & promote when it feels right to do so. Empowerment can be a great thing. Age and experience shouldn't take precedent over ability, passion and drive if it feels right. Some of the best people in my team at Found are young, hugely talented and have a real fire in their belly – they are in senior roles and performing brilliantly. In other businesses, they may not have had this chance to take ownership or responsibility so quickly but I firmly believe that promotion should never be solely linked to age and experience, but in response to drive, determination and sheer ability to deliver great things. 3. We live in a digital bubble. Give a little and you’ll get a lot back. Despite the vast growth of digital media, we still very much operate in our own digital hub where contacts play a fundamental part in business success; from colleague and client to associate and community recommendations. Over the years we've been fortunate that much of our new business has come on the back of recommendations and, as big community players, through the launch of a variety of tools housed in our Foundry sharing centre, we have offered many new technology developments to the broader community for free. It’s been amazing to see how much you can get back from simply being willing to share. 4. Define your business goals. And stick to them. In digital, it is so easy to want to jump on the back of each and every opportunity that presents itself and, in some circumstances, part of your business plan may be to ensure flexibility and agility to adapt to new opportunities. And this is not a bad business plan, as long as you’re not shooting for a multitude of new stars each and every month. It’s highly likely that your time is best spent on your core offering, so make sure you get the balance right between building on your existing product or service offering and focusing on non-core innovation. 5. Happiness isn't a destination, it’s a way of life. I have a picture on my wall at home with these words on it and I couldn't... --- ### Found makes pizza! > Check out our super fun, delicious and awesome comic of all the Founders making some pizza as part of our quarterly review. Each quarter, representatives... - Published: 2013-11-19 - Modified: 2024-05-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-makes-pizza/ - Categories: Culture Earlier this month all the Founders got together for our company quarterly review. Each quarter, representatives from each team give a mini presentation on everything that has happened throughout the previous quarter and what is to come in the future months. After the meeting, the team always heads out to do a group activity... this quarter we made delicious pizza at the Caldesi Cucina Italiana: Overall it was a really great experience. All the staff were not only very welcoming, they were also patient and helpful. The pizza kept flowing all night long, topped with everything from mushrooms and pancetta to capers and anchovies. Lucky for us, chef Giancarlo Caldesi sent us home with the recipe for his beer pizza dough: 10g fresh yeast or 5g dried yeast 220ml Birra Moretti at room temperature 125ml tepid water 500g strong bread flour 2 teaspoons salt Semolina for sliding the pizza Mix the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. If using fresh yeast stir this into the water until completely dissolved. Add the liquid to the dry ingredients in the bowl and using a dough scraper or your hand blend the ingredients together well. For more detailed instructions, check out the full recipe and directions. --- ### Top picks from the Content Marketing Show > Here are some of our favourite talks, takeaways, quotes and recommended tools and reads from the Content Marketing Show - a must-go event! - Published: 2013-11-13 - Modified: 2024-07-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/content-marketing-show-november-2013/ - Categories: Content Marketing The November  Content Marketing Show brought together some of the UK’s greatest content creators and marketing minds together for one day. With copious amounts of caffeine, ‘sweets for tweets’ and even a free beer or glass or wine on offer, this was a must-go event for anyone interested in content creation and marketing. Several members from the Found team had the opportunity to attend, here are some of our favourite talks, takeaways, quotes and recommended tools and reads from the event: Noteworthy talks: Throwing Shit Against the Wall & Analysing What Sticks... This was one of the most memorable talks for me and was given by Hannah Smith. This no nonsense approach to content marketing was quite refreshing to hear. The presentation was fast paced, entertaining and informative. Hannah’s approach to content was to look at it from the consumer’s point of view. She advised us to try not to alienate potential customers with hard-line marketing messages, or as she put it: “Self-serving messaging can alienate the people you seek to engage. ” Tom Brand, an SEO intern at Found had his own takeaways from Hannah's talk. Tom: Content should be goal driven.  Using The Content Marketing Matrix created by Smart Insights, Hannah discussed how it is necessary to set out specific goals for content, outlining the best media to use to achieve these goals. This piece of advice as a pretty good starting point to work from when forming a content strategy. Using the wrong channels to try and achieve your goal can end up wasting time and money. As Hannah put it, "advertising isn't shared unless it also entertains / educates" and "content to 'persuade' isn't shared unless it also entertains / educates. "  The solution put forth by Hannah was to create marketing people will love - this is likely easier said than done. However, she offered up one strong piece of advice: your content doesn't have to be *just* about what you sell". What came next was the dreaded (due to their unachievable nature) Red Bull content examples... However, Hannah wasn't telling the audience to invest in a jump from the stratosphere, instead she was highlighting the way Red Bull don’t focus their content on the energy drink it produces, rather on extreme sports - the kind of stuff their target audience loves and will share. This is a great tip in my opinion.  I've often found myself getting bogged down in brand when creating content ideas. Thinking outside the box can really help to create content that doesn't seem like a product advertisement. Inbound Marketing – The Art of Not Sucking Kieran Flanagan also provided us with a great presentation. Thoughtfully pacing up and down the stage in a style not to dissimilar from the late Steve Jobs, he said that if you spend 10 hours developing a piece of content you should spend at least 10 hours promoting it. I think in an ideal world, many people would agree with this statement. In reality, it’s often... --- ### Found tackles PPC advertising in 50 Shades of Digital Marketing - ebook > Take a read through 50 Shades of Digital Marketing to hear from our Managing Director Tina Judic on PPC advertising. The article appears on page 58 of the - Published: 2013-10-17 - Modified: 2024-05-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/50-shades-digital-marketing/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, General News, How to, Paid Search (PPC) Take a read through 50 Shades of Digital Marketing to hear from our Managing Director Tina Judic on PPC advertising. Tina's article is featured on page 58 of the ebook which has been put together by the producers of the Digital Marketing Show. Download the ebook here.   --- ### Hummingbird - Google announces new algorithm > Last week Google announced a major algorithm re-write to coincide with the 15th anniversary of the search engine’s inception: Hummingbird. The search engine - Published: 2013-10-02 - Modified: 2024-05-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/hummingbird-google-algorithm/ - Categories: SEO Last week Google announced a major algorithm re-write to coincide with the 15th anniversary of the search engine's inception. The search engine celebrated the milestone in style with a super addictive piñata doodle, an Easter egg sending us back to Google circa 1998 and a birthday party and press conference hosted in the garage of the house where Google got its start - 232 Santa Margarita, Menlo Park. At the well-publicised press conference, Google’s Senior Vice President for Search Amit Singhal announced that there had been a major change and that Google now ran on a new algorithm. The change was called Hummingbird and according to Singhal, it had already been in place for a month! What is Hummingbird and why didn't anyone notice? Hummingbird is not an update - it is a complete redo of the algorithm. The intention is to offer searchers quicker and more accurate query results, but it appears to go a fair bit deeper than that. It seems that the Google algorithm is now better tuned to understand the more conversational style queries and the context of these queries. This is surely a significant step in Google's evolution, moving away from results that hinge purely on one or two keywords in the search query, and getting closer to understanding the exact intention of the searcher. Google - How Search Works With this news, search practitioners around the world dived into their analyses trying to understand what had changed but the general consensus was simple: Google’s core natural research-based algorithm had not changed (beyond normal fluctuations) in a way that was visible in the metrics. The overall page layout and design has evolved to incorporate Google’s Knowledge Graph based results, providing more information for the searcher. Google Search is constantly evolving. It has already been quite some time since we began to see smarter results. When you type in London weather, you get the weather in London. A mathematics equation typed into the search bar prompts a calculator with the response. The goal of Hummingbird is to take Search one step further and make it so that Google understands the intent of the queries by identifying relationships between items, people and places. Charlotte Bella, an Account Manager at Found, described Hummingbird well - “It is a more intelligent search algorithm that is trying to be more human and efficient in the way it interprets queries. ” How are the answers smarter? If you are curious about the nutrient difference between chocolate cake and brownies, Google can help with that: Hummingbird is also set to be a positive step for anyone using Voice Search as verbalised queries tend to be different than typed searches. As Denis Pinsky wrote in an article on Forbes “Many people learned that the best way to formulate search phrases to get what we want involves finding the minimum number of words in the search query. ” Where users would have once would search "David Beckham age" to find out how old the footballer... --- ### Found featured in Web Designer Magazine - Published: 2013-09-20 - Modified: 2024-05-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-featured-in-web-designer-magazine-2/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, General News This month's Web Designer Magazine (Issue 214) asked the question: SEO vs content: who is number 1? Found's Product Director Luke Townsend had this to say: “Getting your website to rank organically can be difficult, especially if you are in a competitive area or industry. My advice would be to focus on the slightly more niche keywords and provide searchers with useful information around those, rather than targeting the popular and broad search terms where the competition is rife. Once you have identified the search terms you will target, landing pages should be created and tailored specifically towards these keywords. Trying to target lots of different keywords with one page will be much less effective than a page focused around a small group of similar keywords. Ensure that you are including the subject keyword in the title tag, url, image alt text and in the text content of the page and take steps to make sure your page loads quickly. If you create a page with compelling and unique content then people should link to it, but you will need to kick start this by reaching out to your network and asking them for a link from any relevant pages they have. " --- ### What's all the buzz? - BuzzFeed > Take a look at this awesome list of things you may not know about BuzzFeed and the factors Charlotte Bella think are behind their major success... - Published: 2013-09-20 - Modified: 2024-09-23 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/whats-the-buzz-about-buzzfeed/ - Categories: Content Marketing, Trends The article usually starts with a number, then some pop culture reference you thought was long forgotten and inevitably makes you feel old but at the same time nostalgic. It is seemingly a simple formula, but what is it about BuzzFeed that has catapulted it beyond cat memes? Earlier this month, CEO and Founder Jonah Peretti published an internal memo he sent out to his employees. He spoke about how BuzzFeed has reached new milestones, a major one was reaching record traffic of 85 million unique visitors in August. Peretti also mentioned a record profit for August, explaining that the site has "gone from zero revenue four years ago to a profitable company with over 300 employees. " In the memo, Peretti attributes their major success to nine key points: news, formats, video, mobile, international, business, advertising, team and focus. Below I have made my own listicle of things you may not know about BuzzFeed and the factors I think are behind their major success. Why BuzzFeed rocks 1. They break news... before CNN BuzzFeed exclusive: McCain to endorse Romney tomorrow http://t. co/kGR369qy — Ben Smith (@BuzzFeedBen) January 4, 2012 In 2012, BuzzFeed delved in to the realms of business and politics. BuzzFeed's editor-in-chief; political reporter Ben Smith – previously of Politico – helped put them on the map. More famously he tweeted that 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain had endorsed Mitt Romney in the recent elections. Smith's tweet was shared over 200 times. Originally CNN reported it as an original story. However, the news outlet eventually properly attributed BuzzFeed in the closing line of the article: "News of the endorsement was first reported by BuzzFeed Politics. " Perhaps this scoop is what led the way for the two to team up, because in May this year, BuzzFeed joined with CNN and now produce CNNBuzzFeed, a news channel on YouTube aimed at bringing breaking news to younger viewers in bite-sized chunks. 2. They don’t constrain themselves to the rules of digital advertising They’re bringing advertorial content to the web and are doing it in a way that engages people. Not wanting to bombard their readers with banners and pop-ups, BuzzFeed engages readers with unique content promoting the likes of Coca-Cola, MTV and Nike. Their post for the Toyota Prius The 20 Coolest Hybrid Animals was shared much in the same way as their non-sponsored lists but it was promoting a car – who else does that? ! According to Digiday, advertising on BuzzFeed costs brands some $100,000. This gets them four to five posts andthat’s not including any potential earnings they may pull from the sales attributed to these clicks. 3. They can read my thoughts Recently I discussed with a colleague what  happened to Jonathan Taylor Thomas (JTT)? If you’re not a woman aged between 22-32 you may not realise who this is. He was the teenage heartthrob in Home Improvements, a TV sitcom aired in the 90’s. The day after BuzzFeed posted this exact article, answering all my questions. Thanks BuzzFeed. No really, thanks. 4. They are... --- ### Found's round-up of BrightonSEO Sept 2013 > Despite the fog and rain, members from the Found team headed to BrightonSEO last week for the September 2013 conference. With three different rooms and doze - Published: 2013-09-17 - Modified: 2024-05-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-brightonseo-sept-2013/ - Categories: Content Marketing, SEO Despite the fog and rain, members from the Found team headed to BrightonSEO last week for the September 2013 conference. With three different rooms and dozens of speakers, we were able to learn quite a bit from those who went on stage to share their knowledge. Of course, not every speaker was as well received, but it wouldn't be a real SEO conference without a few critiques. Here are our thoughts on #BrightonSEO: Philip Gamble - SEO Executive Mobile: It’s important to remember that an increasing proportion of site visitors will be accessing your site from these devices. Last month I reviewed the share of mobile and tablet traffic across our client sites and was surprised just how fast it had grown over the last year. Tony Samios of Caliber recommended a useful tool called Placeit, which enables the easy generation of realistic real-world website or product screenshots. The proportion of mobile visits varies considerably depending on site type and sector. We are starting to see e-commerce sites with desktop visitors accounting for the minority of traffic in some instances - highlighting the importance of responsive design and mobile user experience. In his Lightning Session talk, "How We Plan Editorial at BBC Sport," Paul Blunkett, the assistant editor at BBC Sport interactive, said that the BBC Sport website passed this tipping point too earlier this month - with 52% of traffic in the first week of the month being from a mobile or tablet device. Surprisingly little talk about link building... I didn't attend the Links session in the Corn Exchange, but even so given this was an SEO conference there was very little mention of link-building - far more about so-called “great content” #yawn. Paul Madden described himself as a “carbon neutral link builder,” these days removing as many links as he builds in link-building that seemed like a good idea at the time. Most SEOs are finding themselves spending increasing amounts of time removing lower quality links built pre-2012 which used to pass value but now, instead of being ignored by Google, result in penalties. The key point - don’t be stupid. As Tim Grice said “stop building links you don’t deserve”. Build and promote link-worthy content and stop worrying about anchor text or target pages. SEO for Ecommerce - Selling Doesn't Make You Link Worthy by Tim Grice But I absolutely do not agree with Lisa Myers’ sentiment of not asking for links. She said you probably don't deserve a link if you have to ask for it. However, in her slides she said it a bit differently, encouraging us to attract rather than sell. "Create content that deserves links and market that content. " Elle Stewart - Client Services Executive Overall, Brighton SEO left me with new views to consider, ideas to debate and software to test.  The stand out presentation came from Keith White, Head of Marketing – Eventa Group with ‘Make your PR idea a National SEO success’. By utilising the strong foundations of a PR campaign and creating naturally... --- ### Google wants your feedback > Philip Gamble weighs in on Google's new suggestion form which asks you for feedback on how the search engine can provide a better experience for users.... - Published: 2013-08-29 - Modified: 2024-07-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/send-google-your-feedback/ - Categories: General News Google has launched a suggestion form and is asking for feedback on how the search engine can provide a better experience for users.  The form is different from the existing “send feedback” feature found in the footer of results pages and solicits broader suggestions by asking for ideas on how Google can improve “search policies and processes”. The post on the Inside Search blog by Search Policy Specialist Patrick Thomas states that all submissions will be reviewed and that Google will contact some of the best contributors to discuss their ideas. Thoughts on Patrick's suggested feedback areas Should we alert users if we suspect that there's not much information on the web about their query? Does this really happen that often in 2013?  When you look at the figures for the amount of content added to the Internet it is hard to believe that there are many queries which don’t return valid information to match the user request, even if Google doesn't manage to surface the best bits to the top. Besides, surely it is up for the user to judge the sufficiency of the results returned and not Google. Currently if nothing can be found that matches your query exactly, Google may slightly adjust or expand the search in order to pull in results and informs the searcher that this has been done. Perhaps by doing so Google are attempting to reduce the spread of misinformation or encourage content creation in under-represented areas, but this seems outside the remit of a search provider. How should Google surface information that might affect a website's ranking? I am sure Google’s Webspam team would argue that any additional transparency in this area would aide spammers by providing them with additional data on the spam detection capabilities they are up against when trying to rank their sites. Google have only recently added a feature in Webmaster Tools which informs site owners if their sites are subject to manual action, such as a penalty for low quality content or link building. Given this, I don’t think we will be seeing much more from Google in the future.  Especially since in many cases the current information given by Google doesn't exactly provide any insights. Thanks for that Google, very useful! Realistically I don’t know how much more information webmasters should reasonably expect but if manual action is taken the site should be made aware - preferably by email! How should we deal with businesses that we believe may be hacked? Rather apt given that Google recently decided that one of my websites “may” have been infected with Malware and decided to inform searchers of this and prevent click-throughs with a scary looking warning page. The effect on organic search traffic traffic was, as you would expect, dramatic.  But Google didn’t think to send me an email to inform me of this instead a vague malware warning appeared in Webmaster Tools with no details as to what was found or on which page.   If Google... --- ### Web Development Glossary: Essential Terms You Need to Know > Take a read through the final instalment of our terminology series where we delve into the world of web development. With many of us used to being on the... - Published: 2013-08-15 - Modified: 2024-09-18 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/web-development-terms/ - Categories: SEO In the final instalment of our terminology guide, we delve into the world of web development. With many of us used to being on the end-user side of web development, some of these words can seem like they are a different language all together. To prevent information overload, we compiled a list that just scratches the surface of what is involved in developing a website. The web development dictionary: Programming Language As with spoken languages, a programming language is designed to help humans and machines communicate. Each language has its strengths and is used for a particular type of software development – some are better for desktop applications while others are more suitable for web sites. API The acronym of Application Programming Interface. APIs allow programs to talk to each other, regardless of the programming language they were created in. For example, a mobile's camera application might use the phone’s hardware API to request the current location and then use Facebook’s API to upload the photo and tag it with the location. AJAX Asynchronous JavaScript and XML is a technique that allows browsers to communicate with web servers in the background, without the need to reload the web page. It has led to the development of more sophisticated websites and web applications. For example Google’s suggestions feature auto-completes your search as you type. Application Architecture This describes the structure of the code within an application. Good applications have a well-defined structure divided into different layers. For example, web applications typically have presentation, logic and data storage layers. Application Stack This refers to the combination of operating system, programming language, server software and database used to create a web application. While there are hundreds of possible combinations, there are several common stacks that work well. Examples of web server setup includes a Microsoft stack of Windows, IIS, . Net and MSSQL and an open source stack consisting of Linux, Apache, PHP and MySQL (referred to as LAMP). Framework A reusable platform or skeleton used to develop applications. Frameworks provide programmers with tools to accomplish common tasks like accessing databases or displaying graphics, so they don’t have to write everything from scratch. IDE The abbreviation of Integrated Development Environment – it’s the software used by programmers to create applications. The right choice can save a lot of time. Database A structured collection of data stored on disks. Typically, a database consists of a collection of linked tables, similar to sheets in a spreadsheet. It also includes an interface to query the data, which retrieves a particular set of data from the database. Web Server This is where websites live.  A web server is simply software that is used to host web applications and deliver content to web browsers. Around two-thirds of all websites run on an open source web server called Apache. Virtual Server Way back in the old days (10 years ago), a server would typically be a powerful computer running a server operating system. These days, virtualisation means that the physical hardware is separated... --- ### Website Design and Build Terms > Find out all about website design and build terms in part 3 of the Found Terminology Series. From HTML and CMS to responsive design, we explain it all... - Published: 2013-08-01 - Modified: 2024-09-18 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/website-design-and-build-terms/ - Categories: SEO Years ago, the epically progressive world of design began taking steps in a new direction and began gracing the World Wide Web with its talents. Gradually it brought us visually styled webpages far superior to the default Times New Roman black on white look, leaving the feeling of oil on canvas a distant memory. Even though that was years ago, some avid surfers still struggle with web standard acronyms and need help understanding of the mechanics beyond the pixels. So in the third part of our series, we explore and define the terminology surrounding website design and build: Website Design and Build Terms: Landing page A landing page is, yes you got it, a page designed to land traffic on. Usually crafted for a specific channel like PPC or email, they are often created to encourage a specific reaction from the user after they have landed on the page, like calling a number or filling out a form. CTA Call to action. This is commonly a button i. e 'Click Here'. Generally, it is the first action you want a user to make when viewing your website. Often, the design will be orientated around this main focus point in order to funnel the users focus, thus bringing about an action - the much wanted click. A/B Testing Comparing two or more versions of the same webpage (with slight differences). It is done in a competitive manner in order to see which design converts the most traffic. E. g. Changing the headline of the page, altering the colour of a CTA from red to green, or even changing the CTA copy from 'Buy Now' to 'Add to Basket'. Colour types: These colour models can be used on your computer screen and for print work. RGB Red Green Blue is for colours displayed on a computer device using an additive colour model. CMYK Cyan Magenta Yellow Black are the four colour inks that make up the printing process for common and industrial printers. When producing a design for print, you would set up your document for CMYK. Print can't always reproduce colours in the RGB spectrum. HEX Hexadecimal colour codes are basically HTML colours. They are the notations for the combination of Red, Green and Blue (RGB) values. Image file types: Find out the difference between a JPG, PNG, GIF and SVG image format and when to use them. JPEG/JPG Joint Photographic Experts Group image format is the most commonly used method of lossy compression. Often used for photographs, made up of hundreds of colours. PNG Portable Network Graphics is a raster graphics file format that supports lossless data compression. This is a great file type for graphics that need transparent backgrounds. Helpful Tip: When posting graphic images to Facebook use PNG as it appears much clearer than JPG. GIF Graphics Interchange Format is a bitmap image format that uses a lossless data compression technique. If you want a small image for your website with only a few colours in it, then the GIF format is perfect.... --- ### SEO Glossary: SEO Terms & Definitions > Find out all about SEO terms in part 2 of the Found Terminology Series. We tackle everything from Spam, Robots.txt to Panda and Penguin... - Published: 2013-07-25 - Modified: 2025-01-09 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/seo-terms/ - Categories: SEO The land of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) can look and sound like a scary place from the outside. In the second part of our series, we explore SEO terms. SEO is defined as the strategies and actions used to influence the rankings and visibility of a website within search engines resulting in increased traffic to the site. Here is a list of terms to help you navigate backlinks, Panda and Penguins and canonical tags. The SEO directory Alt Attributes Search engines can't read images because they are not text based. As a result, Alt Attributes /Alt Tags  have been created to describe images within HTML or XHTML documents allowing search engines to add relevance to an image. Anchor text Anchor text describes the clickable characters of a hyperlink. They often looklike thisand when clicked, take you through to the linked webpage. The benefit of hyperlinking words is that it helps search engines to pass relevance to the site linked, helping to improve the ranking of the linked webpage. Backlinks A link from one website to another. Each backlink is seen by search engines as a vote of confidence and legitimacy for the linked site but each link can transfer a different amount of value.  As well as authority, backlinks can also pass information about the theme or relevance of a webpage. Canonical Tags A canonical tag tells search engines which URL is the ‘original page' or preferred page when there are multiple pages with similar content. Canonical tags allow the SEO value to be passed on to the original or preferred page, helping it to rank. An example of this would be when a store website has identical content accessible on multiple pages so that users can search by price or alphabetically. Page and Domain Authority Each page that is indexed by search engines retains a page value and authority ranking. Page Authority is influenced by the number and quality of links back to the individual page. Domain Authority is the overall strength of a domain. HTTP Response Status Code You probably already know what a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) responsive status code is. Remember the last time you clicked on a link and suddenly your online world temporarily crashed with an ‘ERROR 404’ message? This my friend, is what we are talking about. So what do these status codes actually mean? 404 – page does not exist. 200 - page is functioning as it should. 301 redirects – the page has been permanently moved.  Users will be redirected to the current location of this original page, the advantage in that 301s pass on majority of the SEO value from the old location to the landing page of the redirect. 302 redirects – a temporary redirect that works similarly to the 301 redirect. However, SEO value is not passed on via the redirect (or is it? ). Keyword Cannibalisation Keyword Cannibalisation is when certain keywords and phrases are optimised on multiple pages across a website. This can create confusion within the search engine... --- ### PPC Terms: A Complete Paid Search Glossary > Check out the first part of the Found Terminology Series: PPC. Whether you are starting out in PPC, working alongside experts or just interested in PPC.. - Published: 2013-07-18 - Modified: 2024-09-18 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/ppc-terms/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) Working in the world of Pay per Click (PPC) it can be easy to forget that some of the PPC terms we use every day may not be clear to everyone around us. For starters, PPC is a form of search engine marketing where advertisers pay a publisher for each click on their ads. These ads can appear both on websites or on search engine results pages. Whether you are just starting out in paid search yourself, working alongside PPC experts or just interested in what it’s all about, here is a list of paid search terms in the first part of our  terminology guide: The top need-to-know PPC terms: Search term / Search Query The word or phrase searched for in a search engine. Keyword The word or phrase chosen by an advertiser that is used to determine whether an ad will show for a particular search term. Match Type A property of the keyword that determines which search terms a keyword is eligible to show for. There are several match types: Exact - search term must match the keyword exactly Phrase - search term contains keyword in that precise order Broad - search terms contains keyword, misspells, similar terms and synonyms in any order Modified broad - search terms contains keyword, misspells, similar terms but not synonyms in any order You can also specify negative keywords which prevent an ad from showing if the search term contains that word or phrase. Impressions The number of times an ad is shown. Click Through Rate (CTR) The number of clicks your ad receives divided by the number of impressions. A high CTR is a good sign that your ad is relevant and stands out from competitors and it can lead to increases in quality score, lower CPCs and higher average positions. However, a lower CTR is not always necessarily a bad thing, for example, including a price in your ad might reduce the number of people clicking on it but those that do might be more likely to convert. Additionally, ads in higher positions often see the highest CTR and search partners and the display network usually see lower CTRs than search. Cost-per-click (CPC) Actual CPC is the amount you pay for each click on your ad. Your actual CPC will not be higher than the Max CPC you assign a particular keyword but it is often lower depending on your quality score and the ad rank of competitors. Quality Score Google assigns keywords a Quality Score which is represented through the interface by a number from 1 to 10 (10 being highest) based on their relevance. This takes into account factors such as CTR, landing page quality and relevance, and relevance of the keyword to the search term and ad. A high quality score can lead to higher positions and lower CPCs. Ad Rank A measure that takes into account your Quality Score and bid to determine the position on the page your ad will show. Conversion Rate (CR) The number of... --- ### Daily Mail joins the Affiliate Marketing game > How does the Mail Online's move into the affiliate marketing game mean for consumers and the industry as a whole? - Published: 2013-07-05 - Modified: 2025-02-25 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/daily-mail-joins-the-affiliate-marketing-game/ - Categories: General News The Mail Online has decided to get into the affiliate marketing game, linking editorial content to online vendors.  Those reading celebrity articles will be able to click through to vendors selling the fashion items appearing on the site. What this might mean for consumers and the industry as a whole? The whole concept of shopping for associated celebrity products isn’t new at all of course. Magazines, TV shows and radio programmes have been doing it for years, advising consumers on how to ‘get the look. ’ Traditional affiliate publishers also target these products in similar ways. However,  the latest move by the Mail is fairly significant in that they have a huge audience of nearly 6 million daily average browsers. I’m sure merchants will be looking at this with very keen eyes, hoping to catch a percentage of this traffic and direct them through to their site to shift huge amounts of stock. With such a big audience share comes the power and influence to demand higher commission rates from these merchants, so it’s not surprising to see the Mail demanding rates of between 10-14%. Ultimately merchants will need to decide if this rate works with their business model, whilst the Mail themselves will need to question how they can maintain journalistic integrity and not alienate their readership whilst pushing out products. If more merchants find that this affiliate marketing model works for them, and we see it build out successfully, then it could have several knock-on effects to the industry as a whole. Potential knock-on effects Pure speculation of course, but if advertising budgets are being placed into these kind of channels, then will this take budget away from other traditional channels? What if newspapers like the Mail decide to strike up deals whereby they offer discounts or offers for their readership? Would traditional voucher code affiliates see any impact on the back of this? Let’s say we do see an increase in this type of shopping behaviour online, how can traditional affiliates capitalise on this? Well, as industry technology, tracking and user behaviour becomes more and more sophisticated, I think we could see some interesting developments specifically around real-time bidding and responsive video ads, but also with the growing popularity of second screen advertising. Is there money to be made? At the end of the day we need to work everything back to a positive ROI in performance marketing, so this kind of advertising (while very interesting) might not make us any money right now. But in the next six months, year, two years and beyond. . ? This associated products advertising could come to the fore across all types of verticals. So, savvy advertisers will be there ready to pounce when the gross margin opportunities start to arise. You can bet that we’ll be there right with them. --- ### A sneak peek into the future of the music industry > Hear from a man who has a bold but clear intention: to fix the current state of the music industry. Speakers Corners' Alex Hunter talks about Rushmore.fm... - Published: 2013-07-03 - Modified: 2024-05-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/a-sneak-peek-into-the-future-of-the-music-industry/ - Categories: Trends It is always fun to get out of the office and meet with one of our clients. This time the opportunity was even more enticing. We were connected with a man who has a bold but clear intention: to fix the current state of the music industry. A trip inside Speakers Corner Philip and I were invited by Speakers Corner to hear from Alex Hunter, CEO of Rushmore. fm, a new start-up venture being described as a revolutionary new “music ecosystem. ” Alex is also the former Head of Online for Virgin Group Global, so when he speaks music it's definitely worth putting that phone on silent and listening up! Connecting artists and fans Rushmore. fm is a London-based website that intends to connect fans with their favourite artists. Alex spoke about the site’s broader aim, which is to make it easier for emerging artists to make a living from their music. It’s comparable to Wikipedia, in the sense that members are encouraged to contribute and follow content. Launched in May of this year, membership is currently by invitation only. The current state of the music industry With the advent of new platforms over the last decade, many artists are seeing even less money for their 'popular' hits than in years past. Companies like Rushmore. fm are hoping to reverse that trend. On their purpose section, Rushmore. fm writes, "In many cases, they simply aren’t making good money and this means there’s a risk they’ll stop making music. Not good. ” According to thecynicalmusician. com, “It takes at least 4,000,000 Spotify plays per month just to provide a band with a minimum wage. ” That makes for pretty dire reading. With so few rewards for emerging artists, the depth and breadth of new music talent may well find themselves crunching numbers at the local bank, rather than getting out on stage where they belong. In response, Rushmore. fm are championing us to get behind their long term goal where “it’s possible to make a good living as an artist. ” What does the future hold? As Alex put it, “We don’t think the music industry is dying, it’s just getting started!  We think the answer to these problems will come if we can connect music fans directly and effortlessly with the artists and labels they love. ” Rushmore has already had 200,000 contributions from music fans around the world. So, they seem to be more than up for taking on the challenge. Of course, Alex readily acknowledged on hypebot. com that the music industry is one "tough nut to crack. " That won’t stop them getting out 'Thor's Hammer’, if you like! Alex Hunter Building a brand Alex then went on to tell  inside stories from his time at Virgin and gave further  insights into what he believes are the key things in building a successful brand. ‘Who do you love? ’ he asked, as he prompted us to think of our favourite brands.  Apple and Diet Coke seemed a popular choice from... --- ### The force behind SEO: a content marketing presentation > Take a look at the Content Marketing and SEO slideshare created by Found to learn about why great content is a prerequisite for your SEO strategy... - Published: 2013-07-02 - Modified: 2024-05-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-force-behind-seo-a-content-marketing-presentation/ - Categories: Content Marketing, SEO Last week, we were given the opportunity to deliver a presentation on content marketing for one of our clients. Content marketing has enjoyed a dramatic resurgence over the last couple of years, as SEO's across the land hold up it's noble virtues against Penguin and Panda, Google's very own Bebop and Rocksteady on a crusade of devastation at the will of master Shredder. However, much like every year since 2008 being the 'year of mobile', content marketing is nothing new. Indeed, many search marketers have considered great content a prerequisite for SEO for many years. The following slides from our presentation give some recent examples of brands producing compelling, shareable content in various forms. Brief notes can also be seen below. Awesome Stormtrooper image courtesy of bfishadow on Flickr! Presentation notes: All aboard the content marketing bandwagon! 2013 has been dubbed the year of content marketing, but this not a new concept Content marketing strategies that businesses used long before the Web existed include: Conferences Lectures, seminars and workshops Articles in industry magazines or papers Industry reports Customer newspapers Special magazines, guides and publications for clients No content, no SEO! Quantity ≠ Quality More content From more sources From inexperienced creators and low end SEO agencies = a lot of crap This is bad for brands because people become blind to it. The problem is worsened when on the face of it content looks good - helpful subject matter, snappy titles etc, but no value. This makes consumers less trusting and less willing to invest time in your content The bandwagon is already passing. There is only one way to get past this – creating something useful Forget about: Converting customers from your content Acquiring leads and making sales directly Instead: Build familiarity Likeability Trust Review which type of content your audience have interacted best with in the past. Look at analytics, look at competitors via MajecticSEO and other link analysis tools, use social tools to determine the best content for your audience. Plan and Brainstorm – lots of ideas. Bring people in from other teams. Get niche Ubersuggest - semantics Marketing plan – key dates, seasons, launches – link to PR. Use your unique expertise – white papers, inforgraphics Learn from your mistakes - continual refinement is key References:Econsultancy content marketing survey American Express Open Forum Pepsi Max #LiveForNow KISSmetrics ASOS Best Night Ever Hubspot Huggies: Dad's pregnant too Around the World in 80 Jobs --- ### Sweet words from the Content Marketing Show > A cameo by Ryan Gosling and a look at seven major themes of The Content Marketing Show 2013... - Published: 2013-06-13 - Modified: 2024-05-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/sweet-words-from-the-content-marketing-show/ - Categories: Content Marketing The last day in May was an exciting one for London content makers. We had the opportunity to move away from our desks and attend a free conference on digital marketing’s favourite buzzword: content marketing. The Content Marketing Show, hosted by the same guys who do BrightonSEO, set out to explore “the junction between social media, online PR, SEO & content strategy. ” Many of the speakers at the show shared similar opinions and experiences - one even shared  the above  fun slide with Canadian heartthrob Ryan Gosling (swoon). Here are my main takeaways from the conference: 7 major lessons from the Content Marketing Show 1. Content is a team sport The conference opened with a talk by Danny Denhard, Senior SEO Manager Europe at VoucherCodes. He compared the building of a content team to the building of a football team. Every player on the pitch has a job and each has specific strengths which make them a valuable asset on the team. From the goalkeeper who is there to protect your project, to the selfish striker who will work independently but get your team the results needed. To succeed and keep creativity coming, you must have a mix player types, know when to make substitutions and learn how to nurture your team. The Sir Alex Ferguson's Guide To Building The Best (Content) Team - by Danny Denhard Dan Fielder the Managing Editor at Sticky Content addressed this too. He explained that pulling ideas and content from all departments of your team is crucial in acquiring the knowledge and passion to communicate with your customers. One of the tips provided by Sarah Howard, Head of Content at Red Rocket Media, was to make content a company-wide exercise. By using your entire team, you can create the best content possible. Plus, having multiple personas on your site builds up its authority.   What is the right mix of content for your brand? Find out in 5 simple steps by Red Rocket Media ... and sometimes people need incentives to get involved While some of us content marketers would like to dream and hope that our teammates are motivated to contribute to the company blog, often this is not the reality. This can be because they lack the writing capabilities or just simply the time. Sarah offered the suggestion of making content a competition between teams. With posts receiving the highest reach earning bragging rights or a free lunch! 2. Planning and preparation is key A strong content strategy requires proper planning and preparation. You need to have a content calendar. This was touched-upon by nearly every speaker at the Content Marketing Show. Planning also involves creating a budget that is relevant to the content you are trying to deliver, a point iterated by Laura Edwards founder of social media agency Nitter Natter. For Dan Fielder the planning stage involves being very realistic. He spoke about underestimating what you can achieve and beginning by tackling the things which require the least amount of sign-offs or... --- ### Top 5 iPhone Apps That Simplify Life > Looking to simplify your life and iPhone? Here are 5 iOS apps to help get you the information you need in the easiest way possible. - Published: 2013-05-31 - Modified: 2024-09-18 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/5-secrets-to-an-appy-life/ - Categories: Mobile Today’s fast moving world can often provide you with an information overload when, if you’re like me, you just want to keep it simple. Here are the top 5 iOS apps that simplify my life: 5. Cleanup Have you ever wanted to remove a load of contacts from your iPhone only to find you have to do this one at a time by painstakingly clicking to edit each individual? Maybe you have changed jobs and want to take out some client numbers or accidentally restored numbers from an old backup (yes this did happen to me). Install Cleanup and all you have to do is select each contact to remove, click the dustbin icon and they are gone. Just like that. 4. BBC iPlayer Radio  This one has been a long time coming, for ages there were all sorts of apps out there claiming to provide you with digital radio stations on your 3G network. I tried a couple that claimed to have all the stations but often these were recordings from the previous day and not live. 6Music is my preferred station of choice, I listen to the ramblings of Shaun Keaveny from 7am and I am gutted when, at 8. 15am, I have to turn them off. Now I don’t have to. Granted that as a BBC app it only has BBC stations, but seriously, if you’re listening to anything other than 6Music I will have to question your music tastes. 3. Google Search The app is new to iOS but has been available on Android for a while for the obvious reason that it is owned by Google. It provides you with a wealth of information at your fingertips, in one place you can find; Google Maps, YouTube, Gmail, Google Drive, Chrome, Google + and your Google calendar to name a few. Great if you love Google. Another excellent feature is the Goggles button. Click this and aim it at (almost) anything and it will instantly serve you with information on the object you are aiming the camera at. This app may be a bit of a cheat as it is many apps in one, but it is efficient nonetheless. 2. JumiDesktop+ Remote I have a confession, I am super lazy. However, I can contest that this was initially downloaded when I was recovering from an operation, which meant I had to be bed bound for a few days. The app is downloaded to your iPhone and also to your computer/laptop, the rest is magic. OK maybe it’s a bit more complex than that, but who cares when you can control your laptop from your iPhone whilst only moving your fingertips? 1. Citymapper As Rihanna once sang, “where have you been all my life? ” Seriously, this is the app I have been waiting for. *London-centric reference klaxon* I’ve been living in London for 8 years now, I have had an iPhone for 3 of those years, but not once has any travel app come close to this... --- ### Penguin 2.0 cheat sheet > This cheat sheet was designed to help you understand the basics of Google's latest algorithm update: Penguin 2.0. - Published: 2013-05-30 - Modified: 2024-05-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/penguin-2-0/ - Categories: SEO After a lot of hype, Google rolled out Penguin 2. 0 last week. Since then, the web has been inundated with expert opinions on the topic. Some of the commentary has been helpful, some has been dramatic and some has spread misinformation on the subject. Found has created a Penguin 2. 0 cheat sheet to help you understand the basics: What is Penguin 2. 0? Penguin 2. 0 is the latest Google algorithm change. Wait, what do you mean by algorithm? In its most basic form, an algorithm is a procedure for solving a mathematical problem. Google takes the words and phrases you type into its search bar as a problem that needs solving. Their algorithms are in the form of computer programs, which use processes and formulas to provide you, the user, with the answer to your search question. By relying on more than 200 unique clues and signals, such as the terms on websites, the freshness of content and backlinks, as well as personalised factors such as your search history, location and device, Google provides its “best guess” set of websites for your search query. What is the update designed to do? The main purpose of Penguin 2. 0 is to target spam on the web and decrease the rankings of websites that the algorithms suspect violate Google’s existing quality guidelines. The update moves past targeting only the top level pages and begins to target lower level pages of a site. For the normal guy, the removal of webspam enables Google to more effectively help searchers find the sites, and answers they are looking for and results in a strong user experience. What about webmasters? The intention is to have high-quality sites rewarded. When Google announced the update, they said that their advice for webmasters is “to focus on creating high-quality sites that create a good user experience and employ white hat SEO methods instead of engaging in aggressive webspam tactics. ” Of course, this is intended to lower the rankings of sites Google believes are engaging in improper optimisation methods. White hat vs. black hat White hat refers to SEO techniques that effectively and properly improve a site’s usability. This can be through strong content, faster load times and natural linking to your site. These factors provide users with an enjoyable and effective experience. Black hat is the opposite of this. It refers to the improper techniques that are used to increase rankings or traffic in a way Google dislikes. This can be things like keyword stuffing, hacking websites, using hidden content and link schemes which increase traffic and rankings, but do not benefit the user. Is Penguin a penalty? A penalty assumes you did something wrong and now are being punished. Penguin 2. 0 is an algorithm update, which means that if your rankings have slipped it is likely that links which may have been helping you previously, are no longer effective. So if my rankings are falling, it means I have been Penguined? Maybe, maybe not. Not all fallen... --- ### Stats & Facts: Content Marketing > What is your next content marketing move? From what to post and where to post it. We compiled some stats & facts to help guide your decision... - Published: 2013-05-09 - Modified: 2024-05-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/stats-facts-content-marketing/ - Categories: Content Marketing, Trends Let the insights below help you decide on the format of your next content marketing move: Whether you are a big company or a small one, planning your next piece of branded content is an important affair. We compiled some facts to help guide you on what to post and where to post it. Inbound vs outbound marketing Generating a lead through inbound marketing costs an average of £92, less than half of the average £240 that outbound marketing costs. (Source) Original content One area where there is no debate - all content must be original. According to Google's Webmaster tools one crucial step in improving your site's ranking is "to ensure that it contains plenty of rich information that includes relevant keywords, used appropriately, that indicate the subject matter of your content. " (Source) Blog posts Blogs give websites 434% more indexed pages and 97% more indexed links. (Source) Blogs on company sites result in 55% more visitors. (Source) The frequency of blog posts has a large impact on customer acquisition. Of the companies who blogged multiple times a day, 92% acquired a customer via their blog. (Source) Images & infographics Articles accompanied by compelling visuals receive nearly 95% more total views than articles without relevant images. (Source) Publishers who use infographics grow in traffic 12% more than those who don’t. (Source) Videos posts The value of one minute of video is 1. 8 million words.  That’s the equivalent of 3,600 typical web pages. (Source) 80% of users remember a video ad they watched on a website in the past 30 days with 46% of them taking some action after viewing the ad. (Source) Email marketing 64% of people say they open an email because of the subject line. (Source) The most clicked lead nurturing subject line word is secrets (Source) Including a video in an introductory email increased the click-through rate by 96%. (Source) Tweets The price for promoted trends on Twitter have reached the $200,000 a day mark in the United States. (Source) Companies that use Twitter generate 2x more leads than companies who don’t. (Source) More than 1/3 of all links shared on Twitter point to an image. (Source) Nearly 93% of all retweets happen within the first hour of the original tweet being published. (Source) A tweet's retweet rate increases 12X when brands use a RT or retweet call to action. (Source) Facebook People ages 25-34 use Facebook the most. (Source)  Facebook posts that include ‘should,’ ‘would’ and ‘who’ get more comments. ( --- ### Location, location, location! > Read to find out how location plays a key role in the new era of digital marketing. One of the most important issues in business is location... - Published: 2013-04-30 - Modified: 2024-05-02 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/location-location-location/ - Categories: Opinion One of the most important issues in business is location. Many experts have developed theories about how to determine the most optimal location for its companies, plants and products. Now, within the new era of digital marketing, location definition and strategies have changed. Here are some recommendations for getting Found online. Location in business Location has always been a key factor for different departments within a company. First of all, location was thought in terms of operations and logistics. The first important theory about location was developed by Johann Heinrich von Thünen. Considering variations of rent, transportation costs, land uses and intensities from one territory to another, he developed a model to calculate the best place to set company's plants. One of the key persons in highlighting location for retailing was J. Freeman Pyle, who in 1926 wrote about it in the Harvard Business Review. In 1940, Kenneth D. Hutchinson developed a technique to determine the location considering traffic. Many others have formulated theories and carried out studies about consumer behaviour within stores, raising the importance of product location. In the realm of property, Harold Samuel coined the phrase "location, location, location" as the three things that matter in property. Years later, new theories about determining property value appeared. Now, in the era of digital marketing, store and product location is a bit different. Why is location important for businesses? Location - both branch and product location - is the best way to increase visibility. By setting your store in a highly busy street, or your product at the level of the customer's eyes, you gain exposure and awareness. Therefore, you have a great chance of people entering into your store or buying your product. The alternative of a good location is earning awareness with advertising or word of mouth. The first one will cost you a lot of money, and the second one, a lot of time. Both require you to offer consumers something they really value because it will cost them time and money to go to your store. A store based at a busy location is more convenient to customers than one that is not on their route when shopping, going to work or heading back home. What are consumers doing online? To understand what location is in digital terms, we first have to know what consumers do online. Most of the non-work-related online activities can be grouped into one of these 3 areas: Entertainment and relationships: activities with the purpose of recreation. Examples: watching videos and movies, visiting social networks, searching products that they never will buy like fashion designers clothes, etc. Purchasing: all the activities related to purchasing. From getting information about products or services to post-purchase services such as how to use or repair a product. Knowledge acquisition: any activity that increases knowledge. This can be reading newspapers or watching an interview related to a specific topic. It includes "how to" articles and videos within categories like cooking, DIY and repairing. What is location in digital... --- ### Social search hits Google > Check out the new social search features added to Google. What does this addition of drop-down options mean? Two Founders take a look... - Published: 2013-04-25 - Modified: 2024-05-20 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/social-search-hits-google/ - Categories: General News, SEO Social search: Founders weigh in Daniel Locke - Search Account Manager Today, Thursday 25th April 2013 seems to have seen new functionality in Google search results pages with the addition of drop-down options next to results. I’m not sure if he saw it first, but I’m crediting @paddymoogan for the spot - tweeting this screenshot first thing this morning: The new options allow users to view cached pages, similar results to a particular URL as well as a share button (if you are logged in to a Google account). What does this mean? Not much at this stage, and there has been no word from Google as to confirm or announce this change. It's also not clear if this is just Google experimenting and tinkering with SERPs, or a permanent change. The new share option does makes it easier for users to share a website on Google but it’s a pretty safe guess your average searcher, at least at the time of writing, will a) not pay much attention to the arrow and b) not be bothered about sharing a URL on Google+. Something to keep an eye on. Still, it's yet more data for Google to play with and if nothing else, it’s another reason for any latecomers to get on board with their social platform. Insight to similar search: The inclusion of an option to view similar results is puzzling. Only on Tuesday Google removed the related option from its search tools menu, citing lack of use. Perhaps moving it front and center is a last throw of the dice? Changes like these are why it’s so important, (and challenging! ) for agencies and search marketers to keep up-to-date and on the ball. Jaume Polo Torné - SEO Intern: Will these new options change search results? Share button: This button is another attempt from Google to beat out Facebook and to bring users to G+. Social signals are becoming increasingly important as a ranking metric. If a page is shared straight from search results via this new share option, it can only be positive for the particular site because the page will increase positions, only if you are logged into your account. Similar button: This button may or may not have negative effects for the page, I am not yet 100% sure. On the one hand, it could be hypothezised that if you choose to look a similar pages, it’s because the result returned did not satisfy your search. However, it could also be true that a user thought a result was good, and as such wanted want to view more similar pages. It would be interesting to know what analysis Google engineers will take, if any, from use of this button. To sum up, we can say that the social search is here. These new options are aimed at bringing better results with social data from searchers.  So, tasks have increased for SEO professionals. SEO is becoming less SEO and is now more like traditional marketing --- ### 5 awesome browser extensions for digital marketers > Looking for some hacks and cheats to help get you through your day? I checked out what the Founders touted as their favourite browser extensions... - Published: 2013-04-24 - Modified: 2024-09-18 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/5-awesome-browser-extensions/ - Categories: Trends Found is immersed in the fast-paced, hectic world of digital. Deep down we are geeks who use little hacks and cheats to help us get through our day. I thought I would check out what the Founders touted as their favourite browser add-ons. Pocket Chrome, Firefox, Safari I installed this lovely little extension earlier this month. Pocket (formerly Read It Later) lets you save articles, videos, web pages and even tweets to your Pocket dashboard so you can read or view the content later. The biggest draw for me is that I have the extension at work and at home. This way I can save content and access it from both locations. I no longer have to email relevant content I find during my evenings to work, or vice versa for that NSFW stuff. Quick tip: Each piece of content has four useful buttons: share, mark as read, delete and star. There is also a bulk edit feature where you can make mass actions or add/remove tags. Clear Cache Chrome This extension makes it quick and easy to clear cache and browsing data (hard refresh). Users are able to customise how much and which of their data they want to clear on the options page. This includes app cache, cookies, downloads, passwords, etc. . For Web Designer Dean McDonagh this extension is particularly useful. When you update images on a website but don’t change the name, the images have been cached in the browser. This means you will see the old images rather than the new ones. For developers this is very ineffective especially since Chrome does not make it easy to clear cache, so when creating websites Clear Cache is Dean’s go-to tool. Quick tips: Be mindful when choosing which features to clear as saved passwords will be deleted and automatic logins may no longer function. Set up a keyboard shortcut through chrome extensions and make the process even quicker! Web Developer Chrome, Firefox This tool is a favourite of Andrea Downey, our Lead Designer. This nifty extension adds web developer tools right onto your browser. From being able to view image information and a clear cache option to displaying ruler and disabling CSS styles, Web Developer is a one-stop shop. There is even a re-size window for responsive testing. For Product Director Luke Townsend the tool is more about using it to learn. Web Developer gives you the ability to see how something was achieved on another website or what broke on something our team is are working on. It can also be used to look at what cookies a site dropped or what tags the designers and developers have set. SEOmoz Mozbar Chrome Mozbar is a must for our PPC and SEO teams. While it may seem strange that an SEO software makes itself at home on the browser of the PPC team, there are few good reasons. Search Analyst Guy Thornton uses the tool daily because it gives instant results. Users can type in a search... --- ### BrightonSEO - Roundup 2013 > Found's roundup of the BrightonSEO conference in April 2013. We take a look at the talks, the lessons learnt and give you some of the best snippets and... - Published: 2013-04-18 - Modified: 2024-04-11 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/brightonseo-roundup-2013-2/ - Categories: SEO, Social Media Last week on a mildly sunny day, the Found SEO team visited The Brighton Dome for #BrightonSEO. The day was jam-packed with thought-provoking talks and lessons from our fellow SEO’ers. Here’s a reflection on our day at the conference: Top 5 takeaways 1. Write about what people care about With the shift in SEO strategies, the importance of content was always going to be a major focus at this seasons conference. Almost every person that took to the stage talked content, and the significance of producing solid pieces of content which engages audiences. Lexi Mill’s talk “7 Secret weapons of successful content & outreach” gave a few pointers on how to successfully create content and do outreach for it. Mill suggested visiting a client’s Facebook page when looking for ideas for topics that will bring traffic. The reason being that here you can see what the client’s fans are already talking about and which topics they engaged with most. Expand on topics already generating discussion. According to Mill, the kind of content people tend to engage best with are interviews, quotes and graphics. 2. Old-school SEO is dying With the changes that Google is enforcing, the skill sets new SEO’ers need are different to those of the past. A major point of this conference was that we must build the skills to fully leverage the guys in social media and PR. It is using these two other groups that content and events can be created and hosted. Kevin Gibbons said “Tear down the silos. ” 3. Forget about exact anchors The “Ask the Ex-Googlers Anything Panel” was the talking point of the day. Three former employees spoke out about their experiences at Google. They answered questions from the specialist crowd, who took their opportunity to grill the experts.  This seminar answered one of the questions that is burning on the minds of all SEOs: What links can we build? The answer wasn’t as straightforward as the question but my initial thoughts were confirmed; if you want to be seen authoritative in a specific niche, you need to prove you are an expert and aim to solve real problems! Additionally, the ex-Googlers said that links should be built more and more with branded or generic/natural anchor terms. This immediately raised another question. Raluca - “How can I then rank for a specific keyword with an internal page if the majority of the links I build have to be branded or generic, how can we relate to a keyword forecast? ” My thoughts are that Google is pretty good at determining what a page is about, so pointing backlinks with exact anchors is just a signal of unnatural linking. Aim for a mixture of branded, generic and synonym anchors and you should be on the right path. Ask yourself “What would I link with if this were my own blog? ” Try to forget you are an SEO for a minute. " 4. Watch out for Google+ It's becoming common place to hear how links on... --- ### Found featured in The Drum's search supplement > In The Drum’s search supplement, Found's MD Tina Judic talks about "how developments at Google, social search and the growth of mobile are all impacting - Published: 2013-03-15 - Modified: 2024-04-07 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/drum-looking-glass/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, General News In The Drum’s first search supplement,Through the Looking Glass - Search Under Scrutiny, MD Tina Judic answers questions about "how developments at Google, social search and the growth of mobile are all impacting on search marketing. " How do you see the role of the search marketer (PPC and SEO) changing in 2013? 2013 is going to be an interesting year for search marketers, from both an external and internal perspective, as the sector broadens in terms of opportunity, deliverability and skill. Specifically, demographic-based data sets will transform search marketing ROI this year. These will become integral to paid search campaign planning and even with privacy red tape, companies which target specific demographic groups will become the best converters pushing up costs per click. Likewise, the continuing growing focus on Social will see SEO teams deepening their relationship with social platforms to tap into the valuable content aggregators they represent. Underlying it all though will be a greater focus on the long term, with companies specifically learning to adjust KPIs to Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) – not just working to an acquisition-focussed CPA but a cost per CLV. However, mirroring all of these developments will be an internal shift for SEOs themselves, with their roles continuing to evolve to mirror the expanded, content-focussed role that search now plays. Could this be the year of decreased reliance on Google? Google always has and always will be a dominating force for the environment in which we operate. Although recent developments including the launch of Facebook’s Search Graph have led many to begin to question its role going forwards, I really don’t think there will be a fundamental decrease in wholesale reliance on this hugely influential industry partner. What's the biggest challenge of search marketing in a multi-platform, multi-device environment? That’s simple: cross device tracking and insight. Ultimately, the ability to join up data from different user sessions, sites and devices and crunch it with the vast amount of data generated by social platforms is a solution everyone is vying for. The companies who are investing in buying or building software to provide them with an integrated view of all marketing channels will be handing their analysts with the most useful and actionable insight to gain a competitive advantage. How can marketers ensure optimum results from their paid and organic search? Product marketing is going to be big this year and therefore commitment and focus must be channelled into this area. For retailers, Product Listing Ads is going to be key, now that Google has opened up Google Shopping as a paid channel. Product feeds and integration of feeds into the engines will be key to future PPC success. Google’s launch of Enhanced Campaigns has brought about some significant changes as to how advertisers will analyse, build and target their paid search campaigns. It will no longer be necessary to build individual Adwords campaigns to target different locations and devices – such as desktop, mobile, tablet – however advertisers will need to readdress their approach to campaign... --- ### UK Digital Women - 100 Years of International Women's Day > Today is the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day (IWD) - Published: 2013-03-08 - Modified: 2013-03-08 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/uk-women-in-digital-iwd-2013/ - Categories: General News Today is the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day (IWD). Along with the rest of the world, Found is celebrating the achievements of women, especially as we have a strong female leader of our own in Tina Judic. The International Women’s Day website stresses how important it is for women to advance in the economy, business and society.   This year we decided to look at eight women in London making an impact in technology and digital because gender equality is essential in every field. According to the UK Skills Council for Business and Information Technology women make up just 19% of ITC managers and only 14% of IT strategy and planning professionals. This figure is one I hope will grow in the coming years and one I expect will as we see women begin to make their impact in IT known. Based on their exceptional contributions to digital and tech, we are highlighting these women in no particular order:Joanna Shields Current positions: CEO and Chair of Tech City Investment Organization (TCIO) British Ambassador for the Digital Industries. “Working in the UK for the past decade has proven to me that this country has the potential to become a major force in digital innovation,” said Shields in the TCIO press release that announced her new role. "With the right boost now, there is no reason why we can’t make London the number one location for tech in the world. ” Previous positions: Facebook’s vice-president and managing director of Europe, Middle East and Africa. Senior executive positions at Google, AOL and Bebo. Milestones: The American native has many accolades to her name. Just this past September, MediaGuardian ranked her as the 6th most influential person in global media. In 2011, WIRED magazine named her the Most Influential Person in European Technology. Shields also appears on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour February’s 100 most powerful women in the United Kingdom. While at Facebook, she oversaw the Explore London 2012 page. Launched for the Olympics, users were able to interact with athletes and teams. Shields is also a member of the Government's Women's Business Council and a Trustee of Save the Children UK. Jude Ower Follow @playinthecloud Current: Founder and CEO of PlayMob, a platform connecting games to social good. Games judge at The British Academy of Film and Television Arts. PlayMob was created with the intention of creating “world changing, meaningful games across sectors, to show the potential and power of games for change. ” Previous: Developed educational based games for corporate, education and government bodies Managing Director of Digital 2. 0, a consultancy specialising in Serious Games and Serious Virtual Worlds. Milestones: Her dedication to showing how games and platforms can be used to make the world a better place has come with much deserved recognition. She was voted top 100 women in Tech in Europe in 2012 and in the same year was listed on the 2012 Growing Business Young Guns awards which recognises Britain's brightest entrepreneurs aged 35 and under. Playmob won Best Start... --- ### Use the latest web techniques to produce exceptional content > how can you make your content burst forth from the screen and wow visitors? The kind of content that creates an instant buzz?  - Published: 2013-02-26 - Modified: 2024-05-20 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/use-latest-techniques-produce-exceptional-content/ - Categories: SEO, Social Media With more content than ever being produced, it can be difficult to stand out. Users may just see it as ‘noise’ and not pay the slightest bit of attention to it. If that happens, they are unlikely to share it, read it, link to it or return for more in the future. So how can you make your content burst forth from the screen and wow visitors? The kind of content that creates an instant buzz?   You know the type. It is the kind of the content that is emailed round the office, even by those who would not usually be interested in the subject matter. It is shared on various platforms because it’s informative, on-topic, on-trend or just plain funny. Interactivity & creative video Often this content can take the form of video or other interactive items. One impressive example is the Old Spice Muscle Music interactive video, in which you could control Terry’s (The Old Spice Man) muscles to create music. It's very creative and any content featuring a flame sax is a winner in my book. Have a go for yourself. Of course this example had an immense budget and it took a highly skilled team some time to create. But once you've got a process in place for producing regular content, it's good to have at least a couple of major content projects in the pipeline at any one time.  Maybe employ freelancers for one-off projects, to help you.   You might not get there straight away, but projects that take longer, require more effort and are visually impressive, can have a much greater impact online. Where should content be placed, and by whom? One factor that does affect the content reach and impact is site authority.   A great piece of writing by a good author on a poorly visited website is a bit like Lionel Messi playing for Accrington Stanley.   If he did play for Accrington Stanley, then it would generate exposure in the real world for the club. You could see Google Authorship in the same way. Content authored by a notable industry leader, on a smaller blog, will generate much more interest than usual. Don’t scrimp on design - Another ingredient that has a huge influence on whether a piece of content is going to be a hit or a miss is design. Having content which is clear and easy to read is what both people and search engines value. Content with cluttered designs and too much advertising can be penalised by Google. But how can you take content design to the next level? Two of the tools available that are being increasingly employed are HTML5 and CSS3D. Content marketing with HTML5 and CSS3D opens up a range of possibilities for businesses. It will enable you to create more interactive and shareable content that users will not only remember, but will keep them coming back. Using HTML5 to make interactive & slick infographics The internet and the way web pages are built and used... --- ### Enhanced Campaigns or Enhanced Google Grief? > Enhanced Campaigns for AdWords which has brought about some significant changes to how advertisers will analyse, build &target their paid search campaigns. - Published: 2013-02-08 - Modified: 2024-06-03 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-enhanced-campaigns/ - Categories: General News, Mobile, Paid Search (PPC) Are enhanced campaigns actually enhancing Adwords? Well, we knew something was coming; it was simply a case of what. This week Google announced a major change to Google Adwords, the launch of Enhanced Campaigns. In a world where everyone is forever on the move, this shift is a significant statement from Google that the multi-screen world demands multi-screen, highly targeted, localised search. Shocked, annoyed and somewhat frustrated was how I first felt when Google dropped this announcement on us, with no previous hints or suggestions that such a change was coming. My initial reaction was that it was another, yet more radical, change that will simplify the targeting for agencies and advertisers alike. But, the truth of the matter is, it isn’t. Whilst this is absolutely a move in the right direction, the fundamental changes to campaigns could result in campaign management becoming more complex and time-consuming. So what are Enhanced Campaigns? Enhanced Campaigns has brought about some significant changes to how advertisers will analyse, build and target their paid search campaigns. There are a number of changes but, to sum it up, you no longer have to build individual Adwords campaigns to target different locations and devices – such as desktop, mobile, tablet - signifying less time, effort & know-how to achieve almost identical optimisation results.   However, you need to be savvy with budgeting as these changes will also bring about the potential to over or underspend your previous budget, with the former being the most likely. Bing got there first Google is not the first to change its campaign targeting in this kind of manner; Bing already has a similar ‘enhanced campaigns’ functionality within its interface, an option that’s been around for quite some time, although it is largely underutilised.   This is predominantly because it’s not been widely promoted and it’s not a compulsory enhancement.  I remember loving this concept when it first came out and wishing that Google would adopt a similar approach. Will this make mobile advertising easier? No clarity has been given yet as to whether mobile targeting will become an ‘opt-out’; whether, if you leave your desktop targeted campaign, it will automatically be turned into a universal device campaign, including mobile. This may lead to less targeted ads on mobile as well as the addition of more advertisers on the platform space, abolishing the cheap CPCs that used to exist there.   In short, rather than users enabling a campaign across devices, this will happen automatically. The upside is coverage, clicks and conversions in areas a campaign has not necessarily targeted before, but advertisers must watch their clicks and CPCs as increased coverage can quickly turn into increased expenditure. Third party optimisation platforms Third party optimisation platforms will have to rebuild themselves to bring in this new data from the API changes in time for June (Enhanced Campaigns will be an option for advertisers until June, when all non-Enhanced Campaigns will be migrated) so it doesn’t give the platforms much time to... --- ### Travel - Facts about Mobile Search [Infographic] > As experts in both travel & mobile, we’ve been able to compile an infographic highlighting some of the more important (and fun) findings to date. Enjoy! - Published: 2013-02-04 - Modified: 2024-12-05 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/travel-facts-about-mobile-search-infographic/ - Categories: Mobile, Travel As we all know, mobile is here. Mobile is the here and now, and it’s getting bigger and bigger all the time. Having worked at the forefront of mobile advertising for many years here at Found, we’ve been able to gather and analyse real data, and we can leverage it in new and exciting ways as a result. For clients of ours, that means greater reach and more granular targeting, all tied into a performance metric. One of our most successful undertakings in mobile is within the travel sector. We work across many big brands internationally, utilising mobile optimised sites to generate leads, bookings and travel insurance policies. As experts in both travel and mobile, we’ve been able to compile the following infographic highlighting some of the more important (and fun) findings to date. Enjoy! Embed this mobile search infographic on Your Site: Copy and Paste the Code BelowTravel - Facts about mobile Search - An infographic by the team at Found We provide a range of Paid Media services, to help you get the most out of this channel. Do you have an opportunity in the mobile arena, or are you looking to expand into it? Contact us today! --- ### Vine, the next branch in the evolution of social > Co-founder & GM of Vine, Dom Hofmann recently coined the phrase ‘micro-vlogging’ with feigned embarrassment, but that’s exactly what Vine provides. - Published: 2013-02-01 - Modified: 2024-05-20 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/vine-the-next-branch-in-the-evolution-of-social/ - Categories: General News, Social Media, Trends Every once in a while there comes along an app, it doesn’t get introduced with fanfare and pushy content marketing, in fact in the case of this one you only got to hear about it through a blog post link you saw on Twitter via the “Director of Twitter in the UK” (@brucedaisley). For someone so closely tied to Twitter he doesn’t really have an awful lot of followers – no slight on him, I follow him & find him incredibly engaging - so the reach of this blog post dwindles somewhat. I don’t know how people heard about it elsewhere on this social media hungry planet, but his post last Thursday was the first I had heard of Vine and, upon doing a date range search on Google, it seems that the 24th January 2013 was the first most people had heard of it. I’m a sucker for an app where you can show off your artistic ‘skills’, the kind of person a professional photographer dislikes, because I go around thinking that by taking a picture of a railing and sticking a filter on it counts as ‘art’. I started out with Hipstamatic, then Snapseed and 12 months ago; Instagram (I won’t mention the Laser Cats or Mr Chiizu aps I have). Vine goes one step further, create a 6 second (or less) video of the world around you, it can be continuous or you can film something different in every frame – brilliant for stop motion style filming. Found vine. co/v/b1WbPjT5XF5 — BellaBalls (@CharlotteBella) January 31, 2013  Co-founder & GM of Vine, Dom Hofmann (@dhof), recently coined the phrase ‘micro-vlogging’ with feigned embarrassment, but that’s exactly what it is. You can pause and record as many times as is physically possible in a 6 second loop, meaning you can document a whole day, or more, in less time than it takes to write a Tweet. It is little wonder that Vine has taken off, simple to use and full integration with Twitter (they bought out Vine for an undisclosed sum) means it’s easy to set up. There’s no news on initial sign up figures but with Twitter’s 200m+ active users it won’t be long before they dominate the social sphere, although I’m puzzled as to why the main demographic of users that have started following me seem to be Russian males in the 20-29 age bracket... It seems that businesses have taken to Vine a lot quicker than other social platforms such as Pinterest, with the app being launched perfectly in time for the upcoming A/W 13 Fashion Weeks. Brands such as Malibu, Gap and ASOS adopted it from the outset and have taken full advantage of the free video advertising opportunity that the software provides. If brands get their videos right, these ‘mini films’ have the potential to go viral in minutes. However, the possibility of getting it wrong and failing to post engaging content is high, and may need more than just the usual social media... --- ### Have we now evolved beyond the Digital Age? > Digital Marketing - The year has kicked off with an interesting debate into the very moniker to which we give our existence and service. - Published: 2013-01-18 - Modified: 2024-05-20 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/evolved-beyond-digital-age/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, Opinion The start of a new year always brings a flurry of opinion regarding the likely development and direction for the future of our industry. This year has been no exception; however alongside the usual projections on possible growth opportunities and technological advancements, the year has kicked off with a rather more interesting debate into the very moniker to which we give our existence and service. The culprit is a new report from Forrester which riskily suggests that 2013 may be the year that Digital Marketing loses its prefix of ‘Digital’ due to marketers’ inherent reliance on digital channels as part of their marketing mix. It specifically predicts that digital will continue to influence all verticals and channels in 2013; from Retail feeling the pressures of Social Media recommendations through to broadcasters feeling threatened by online channels such as YouTube and the growing mass of home-based ‘experts’. In response, it proposes that over the coming months, marketers must expand the utility and value of the experience their brands deliver and embrace digital to an extent that it is their ‘Marketing’. The reaction has, of course, been mixed with traditionalists rising to the “absurdity that we dare blend traditional with Digital”, whilst the more online savvy can’t see what all the fuss is about as they feel this natural evolution began way back in 2003 anyway when Google and Yahoo started to get a foothold. Blog space and comment columns have therefore been busily growing day-by-day with many of the industry’s leaders muscling in to give their two pennies’ worth on the grounds behind the global intelligence specialists belief that ‘Marketing’ will indeed suffice as Digital continues to represent more of the marketing investment and planning pie. Both sides of the argument actually have a point though. However, what is missing here is the fact that although our industry continues to grow, to expand and to develop, surely we are simply just responding to consumer need? Here at Found, we’ve been in the thick of the evolution of Digital Marketing, driving greater acceptance and usage of one of its most robust facets – Performance Marketing. We’ve championed the discipline of payment on results across PPC, SEO, Social and Mobile becoming a solid and useful business model across all areas of online marketing behaviour and, more recently, seeping into offline activity too. The concept of greater digital acceptance is therefore an opportunity and not a threat for us. With so many facets of Marketing becoming Digital it really is no surprise that we are not just gearing ourselves up to deliver this year’s Digital Marketing strategy but to deliver a 2013 Marketing strategy for a Digital world. --- ### Facebook Graph Search – The Death Knell of Google? > Graph Search is, in some corners, being cited as Facebook’s answer to Google Search whereas others are wondering what all the fuss is about. - Published: 2013-01-16 - Modified: 2024-05-20 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/facebook-graph-search-death-knell-google/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC), SEO, Social Media So, Facebook is ready to take on Google (Trip Advisor, Amazon, and Ebay... ), or is it?   Launched with much hype as the ‘third pillar of Facebook’ (the other two being News Feed and Timeline) Graph Search is, in some corners, being cited as Facebook’s answer to Google Search whereas others are wondering what all the fuss is about. So what does it do? In the simplest form, Graph Search allows users to ask for recommendations, for example, a pizza outlet in Manchester or best shows in Covent Garden. After scouring public data within Facebook, the product then serves the most relevant results. This new product relies on publicly available data – photos, posts, likes, shares - information posted on Timelines and News Feeds that users have not set as private.   In turn, it relies very much on people’s understanding (or non-understanding) of their access levels within Facebook.   Facebook says that users can opt out of the search results, but to what extent and how is not yet understood.   The poor tech-savvy Facebook user is far more likely to unwittingly have publicly-available information whereas the more tech-savvy user will have considered the availability of their data on the web.   Facebook will need to continually educate and innovate if they are to extend their visibility and use of data within their network. What does Graph Search mean for the potential of advertising? The results presented aren’t ads and, currently, there isn’t the ability to sponsor the results like Google AdWords, but surely it’s only a matter of time?   Many users are already expressing an annoyance with ads within their New Feed, although at Found we’ve experienced great success for our clients with Facebook advertising, so Facebook is likely to initially watch, learn and discover before releasing this service as a paid platform for advertisers. And until a separate Facebook paid platform arrives for SEM marketers to capitalise on - Facebook is currently serving Bing results with its internal results - Search Graph is not a lightning bolt to capitalise on with PPC budgets.   At this stage Facebook cannot be targeted separately in Bing’s adCentre and differences in data between the engines will be merged and unobservable to marketers. Facebook’s current display advertising platform has caused many marketers serious frustration over the last three years, leaving 3rd parties open to capitalise on the API with separate platforms. I imagine these developers will have their eyes all over the paid platform demand Facebook could bring with this launch. What does Graph Search mean for SEO? Search Graph could become very powerful for local businesses, especially those where recommendations and word of mouth counts for a lot.   Restaurants, hotels, shops, music tickets - all will benefit.  The data that Facebook has on check-ins and ‘likes’ means that Graph Search becomes more powerful as a recommendation engine than Google+.  It’s too early to say how this will impact SEO but it goes without saying that by structuring... --- ### 4G Destined To Hit Full Speed In 2013 > 2013 is surely the year 4G connectivity will have a big impact on mobile marketing. Read on for views on mobile search, mobile advertising and more. - Published: 2013-01-15 - Modified: 2024-05-21 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/4g-destined-to-hit-full-speed-in-2013/ - Categories: Mobile, SEO Much hype has been centred on the arrival of the 4G network into the UK in recent years. Yet, since its arrival the potential of this super-fast network has not yet been fulfilled in the eyes of many. The real big hitters in the market (Vodafone and O2), have been restricted to sit back and watch their competitors soak up the limelight. EE are currently the only operator in the UK that provides the service. This has been well documented in the media (with those silly Kevin Bacon adverts).  To their credit, they have merged operational giants Orange and T-Mobile under this umbrella. It was a clever move to tie in the re-brand with technological advancements. In one fell swoop they have made established brands seem like old men trying to be trendy. However, poor signal coverage, over-priced tariffs, limited data coverage and inadequate customer service have seen them receive a bombardment of negative press. There may not be a wealth of 4G customers in the UK at the moment but the numbers look likely to soar.  Vodafone, o2, Three and BT are all set to join the party this year, so EE will have some serious competition of their hands. 4G - So, why all the fuss anyway? The connection is known be faster than many home Wi-Fi connections. Applications that take up to 58 seconds on a standard 3G device can be obtained within just 4 seconds on a 4G (LTE) smartphone. There has been a huge rise in the use of smartphones, which demand high data speeds An increasing amount of people work on the move - many with tablets & notebooks which can use SIM cards. Where is mobile right now? It has been the buzzword for a few years but will this finally be the year it takes off properly? Well, all the evidence seems to point in that direction with mobile traffic reaching an all-time high in Christmas 2012. It is rumoured that mobile search traffic will surge ahead of traditional desktop computers and laptops by 2014. Smartphone sales continue to boom with models such as the Galaxy S3, iPhone 5, HTC One X, and Nokia Lumia all boasting larger screens with better resolutions. These devices now contain the power to offer a far greater user-experience, not to mention new form-factor tablet devices which are on many people's shopping lists. Data from Strategy Analytics suggests that 4G accounted for over 90 million mobile connections globally in 2012, led by the US, Japan and South Korea. However, that figure will rise to an approximate 275 million by the end of this year and possibly up to a billion by the year 2017. Furthermore, 60% of operators globally will be supporting 4G services come the end of the year. What does all this data mean for companies with a mobile presence? Mobile Search - Increasingly, consumers will be turning to their smartphones on the move. With this thought in mind it has never been more imperative to... --- ### Top 5 Web Design Predictions > 2012 was an exciting time for web design, performing a key role in successful digital marketing campaigns. But was does 2013 hold in store? - Published: 2013-01-04 - Modified: 2024-06-03 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/web-design-predictions-2013/ - Categories: Creative, Opinion What happened in 2012? 2012 brought us an array of  cool and wonderful new ideas and developments across the web.  With mobile browsing contributing to over 10% of online traffic (source: NetMarketShare), there was an explosion of Responsive Design – an approach to web design that tailors the experience for the device the site is being viewed upon.  Everything on the web has got bigger with the use of large headers and photography backgrounds that expand with your browser window. Typography made a big impression, with the use of more standard fonts such as Arial, Times New Roman, Georgia and Verdana reducing and new fonts emerging. --- ### An Early Present from Found: SEO iPhone App > Audit your site with Found's SEO iPhone app. Download for free now for iPad and iPhone from the iOS AppStore! - Published: 2012-12-06 - Modified: 2024-05-21 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/seo-iphone-app/ - Categories: SEO Our development studio elves have been hard at work in their workshop and have produced an SEO iPhone app - just in time for Christmas! I am proud to announce that the result of recent long winter evenings is the SEO Audit Tool App for iOS. The tool is available free,  in the spirit of spreading goodwill & festive cheer to digital marketers who use iOS devices. The app is another development from our Foundlabs initiative, and joins many other excellent additions to our internal processes recently by the team. The studio team certainly deserve to enjoy the Christmas party! The data returned through the tool can act as a great starting point and will quickly alert you to some key issues that may need to be addressed. The Tool has 3 Main Parts: • Technical issues, such as domain canonicalisation & XML sitemaps • Content issues, such as keywords found on the page and within meta data The tool is very easy to use - simply enter a URL (domain or a page) and tap the start button. The tool will then run and start to display the headline issues which have been found. Through the use of a ‘traffic light’ system the tool will indicate whether the task is successful, whether there is an error or whether there are any warning signs that could be addressed. Full list of SEO App Features • HTTP header check • Domain canonicalisation – checks for duplicates of the homepage. This checks www and non-www versions and for multiple index files. This is probably one of my favourite features • Robots. txt check – checks existence and sitemap location • Sitemap check – checks for existence • On-page links analysis – summary, internal links and external links within HTML • Header check – checks H1 tags • Image analysis – checks for missing alt tags • Keywords analysis – checks density of keywords found • Metadata analysis – looks at title tags, description tags and keywords tag Please download and test it out, it would be great to receive feedback. Web Version Update As well as producing the mobile app, our online audit tool, which was released back in March 2012 has been given an update. --- ### Is the Marketing Department fit for purpose in the brave new world of SEO? > It’s time for a rethink of organisational structures that enables a tightly integrated content strategy to develop. - Published: 2012-11-29 - Modified: 2024-05-21 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/marketing-department-fit-brave-new-world-seo/ - Categories: SEO In the post-Panda, post-Penguin world (as an Aussie, I’m hoping the next Google update will be Platypus), anyone remotely interested in search engine optimisation will have twigged that SEO success is all about quality content, building a focused brand and maintaining a consistent voice across all marketing channels, including online. To my mind, this is easier said than done given that the majority of companies are still lumbering along with a division of marketing responsibilities that makes this consistency extremely difficult, if not nigh on impossible. With the PR department often still releasing unoptimised press releases down traditional channels, the ATL marketing department managing media purchasing, the eCommerce or online marketing team managing search and email, and potentially a branding team looking at customer engagement via social channels, it’s no wonder that disparate messaging and a confused content strategy can often result. The key to really gaining the most traction from any content marketing is amplification – taking a piece of content, adapting it for each audience and channel, and then ensuring it obtains the widest reach possible via an integrated approach to distribution. But with disparate marketing and PR divisions all fighting for budget and the right to claim success via allocation of a sale or action to their activities (rather than a multichannel view which truly understands the multiple touchpoints that led to the sale), marketing divisions are under the gun to defend their turf rather than taking a cohesive approach. It’s time for a rethink of organisational structures that enables a tightly integrated content strategy to develop. In my mind, there’s no such thing as ‘nonline’ marketing any more where the call to action across all channels is invariably a website address or social media presence. In the brave new world of SEO every facet of the marketing team needs to be contributing towards online brand building in some way. How ready is your team? --- ### 6 things I hate to see in my Twitter feed... and how you can avoid them > There are lots of common mistakes made on Twitter that can make people unfollow or not follow a feed in the first place. here is a list of my pet peeves. - Published: 2012-11-23 - Modified: 2024-05-21 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/6-things-hate-twitter-feed/ - Categories: Mobile, Social Media Twitter can be a powerful medium for businesses to communicate with existing and potential customers. Despite many brands and potential consumers having used the social networking website for a number of years, tweets are still made which frustrate followers by cluttering feeds, interrupting the flow of information and offering a poor user experience. Here are six types of tweet which get on my nerves – and what you can do to help prevent these issues annoying your followers. 1. A personal tweet Software such as TweetDeck and Hootsuite make it easy to manage multiple Twitter accounts from a dashboard on a single screen wherever you are.  Unfortunately the ease of this cross-account communication also increases the likelihood of an employee accidentally sending a rogue tweet out to the wrong account. Whilst the majority of personal tweets are totally harmless and would perhaps only briefly warrant some confusion among brand followers, the risk of something political, rude or offensive making it out is very real.  An increasing number of brands are finding themselves in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons after an employee's personal tweet has inadvertently been broadcast on the brand account. We recommend using different social media management tools for your personal and business accounts to help avoid making this potentially embarrassing mistake in future. 2. Spam If a company’s security is so lapse that they allow their Twitter account to become compromised and start broadcasting spam tweets, @mentions and direct messages under the name of their brand what does it suggest about the quality of controls they place upon the data they hold about you? Your brand is exceptionally valuable - protect it by using a secure and unique password.  Courtesy of XKCD here’s some food for thought when next trying to choose a memorable but secure passphrase.  Be aware of phishing attempts, a large proportion of spam originates from people unwittingly entering their login details at a rogue site after following a link to a login page - if in doubt don’t click the link. Be aware of your Twitter data sharing permissions - check to see what tools and websites have you given permission to broadcast to your followers under your brand name.  Revoke access from any services you no longer use and be careful when granting any services write privileges - with these you are effectively handing over control of your brands online profile. 3. Non-mobile friendly content (unless you warn me) 60% of active Twitter users access the social networking platform through their phones.  With the growing affordability and proliferation of smartphones and the availability and speed of mobile Internet worldwide increasing this number is almost certain to grow. So when someone on the move wants to check out a link you’ve tweeted try to have the content available in a mobile friendly format.   For instance some content from SlideShare isn’t accessible on mobile. This one’s really the responsibility of the sites you tweet links to, but do check to see how... --- ### 8 Mobile SEO Tools Provided for Free by Google > Google provide excellent mobile seo tools that can help you analyse and ultimately improve performance through this channel. - Published: 2012-11-22 - Modified: 2024-04-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-mobile-seo-tools/ - Categories: Mobile, SEO 2012 was predicted to be a year of continued mobile search growth, and it certainly did not disappoint. With tablet devices hitting the mainstream and smartphones now the norm, catering for these devices has now become standard practise for success online. Understanding how visitors are using these devices on your site is important, and also how your site is performing in relation to desktop search. You can then look into putting in place a mobile marketing strategy to improve performance. Luckily, Google provide a whole host of tools that can help you analyse and understand mobile device usage on your website, and ultimately improve performance through this channel. 1 - Our Mobile Planet This tool allows you to view data about mobile users that Google has gathered. Select your key demographic and other potential customers, and view key differences between 2011 and 2012. This data can form part of your research for your clients. Especially if management buy-in is needed to confirm budgets on a mobile site implementation. This data could also be used in blog posts or infographics. 2. Mobile Meter There are many tools out there for testing your site, and Google's mobile meter gives an overview of how your site looks and performs on a mobile. The mobile meter is part of Google's excellent 'Mobilize Your Site' resource, which has lots of other information on developing mobile sites.  The mobile site case studies are certainly worth a read. 3. PageSpeed Insights The PageSpeed insight tool can test speed from both a desktop and mobile perspective. Very useful to see where the easiest performance improvements can be gained in terms of download speed. As site speed is considered part of Google's algorithm, fixing issues could result in a real impact on mobile search positions. 4. Google AdWords Keyword Tool The Google keyword tool gives a guideline on the monthly volume in searches. As well as looking at desktop searches, the tool can also show data for searches on mobile devices. Simply select 'advanced options' > 'show ideas and statistics for' > and select 'mobile'. Local search trends can be added to see seasonal fluctuations or if keyword searches are increasing in volume. Select columns and 'local search trends'. This will show a simple bar graph, but if you download the data it will give some figures over time. It is worth checking your target keywords and investigating potential local search term variations.  Monitor accuracy of this data by comparing it against your visits from search terms in high positions. 5. Google Webmaster Tools Webmaster tools has several useful features if you are investigating your mobile site. If you have mobile specific content, then test to see if different mobile GoogleBots can fetch your pages ok. This is useful for checking your mobile site setup and investigating any performance issues or poor search results. Additionally, if you redirect mobile users to specific mobile versions of your URLs, then Mobile Sitemaps can be added in Google Webmaster Tools. 6. Google Sites... --- ### The Found Five - October > The cold is finally here and it’s almost time for mulled wine and mince pies, but what happened in October? - Published: 2012-11-09 - Modified: 2024-05-21 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-found-five-october/ - Categories: General News, Trends So the cold is finally here and it’s almost time for mulled wine and mince pies, but don't panic you've still got plenty of time for Christmas shopping... . But first, here's what cool stuff has been going on in October: The election is finally over and it’s “four more years” of Mr Obama. Along with the build-up to Election Day, there have been a large number of infographics out there for all to see. Here’s my favourite with a Halloween twist  ‘Election Search & Media: The Spooky Truth’ October saw the return of the fantastic a4uexpo London in which we were there with our usual unique Found twist on search marketing. This event just keeps getting better and better and there was lots of say before, during and after the conference! Do you sometimes feel like your life is lacking a little drama? The launch of a new TV channel in Belgium back in March saw a big red ‘Push to add drama’ button on a small Flemish town square. We rediscovered it last month and it's still brilliant! Following the madness of London Cocktail Week in October, this awesome classic cocktails recipes tea towel is a great addition to those of you trying to perfect the Long Island Iced Tea in the comfort of your own home. Burger AND Lobster? ?   The newest restaurant to be added to the already large selection of great Farringdon eateries is Burger and Lobster... . . a winning combination if you ask me! --- ### 12 Fundamental Landing Page Optimisation Tips > Before creating landing pages for your next marketing campaign, learn these 12 Fundamental Landing Page Optimisation Tips for boosting your conversion rate. - Published: 2012-10-22 - Modified: 2024-05-21 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/12-fundamental-landing-page-optimisation-tips/ - Categories: How to, Opinion, SEO When it comes to your marketing strategy priorities, the design of quality landing pages for your marketing campaigns should be at the top of your list of things to do. Your awesome new branding and website design may grab the visitors attention initially, but a strong landing page will engage them long enough to deliver your marketing message along with a call to action and sufficient information for the user to decide whether or not to take action. To bring some of you up to speed, a landing page is the internet marketing equivalent of a landing strip for potential customers. Wikipedia defines a landing page as: a landing page, sometimes known as a "lead capture page" or a "lander", is a single web page that appears in response to clicking on an advertisement. The landing page will usually display directed sales copy that is a logical extension of the advertisement or link. Although Wikipedia's definition does a great job of summing it up, there's definitely a lot more to a quality landing page which converts well than relevant and keyword rich content. What the definition neglects to mention is that the single underlying purpose of a landing page is to get users to take specific actions, whether it be buying a product, subscribing to a mailing list, sharing information or requesting further information about your product or service. To learn more about what I consider to be the most critical factors that you should be considering when planning how to optimize your landing pages for higher conversion rates, read on after the jump: Landing Page Optimisation: Top Tips for Conversion-tastic Landing Pages 1. Make Your Landing Page Content Relevant The content of a landing page should be directly related and relevant to your organic search results, PPC campaigns, anchor texts used in inbound links and any other targeted traffic advertising which is responsible for delivering users to that page. If you don't deliver the right content and provide visitors with what they expect, there's no compelling reason for them to stay on the page. 2. Give Users a Reason to Stay on Your Landing Page Avoid sending your website visitors to other pages on your site unless you absolutely have to. Eliminate, or at the very least minimize on the clutter and distractions such as unnecessary internal navigation, advertising and banners which direct users away from the page they are currently viewing. The more distractions and non-essential navigation options you can eliminate and the better your chance of retaining your visitors. I often refer to this as the "No-Bleed" rule. 3. Strive for Simplicity When Creating Landing Pages Make it easy for your visitors to take the actions which you want them to. Reduce confusion and decision making for your visitor and watch how conversions improve for your landing page. Avoid offering multiple choices and throwing-in too many optional extras. Focus on making the offer the page was created for as compelling as possible. As a rule, the lower... --- ### What We Found at Google Engage > The Google Engage event for agencies covers lots of areas such as Google Tag Manager, Merchant Centre, Display Remarketing and the Ad Builder Tool. - Published: 2012-10-19 - Modified: 2024-05-21 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-engage/ - Categories: General News, Google Algorithm Updates, Opinion Yesterday some of the Found Account Management team were fortunate enough to attend the Google Engage event for agencies at their swanky Central St Giles offices in London. Google are focusing heavily on their mobile and display products, with Brian Brady from their Dublin office giving an excellent (but rather quick), in-depth overview of the market, product features and strategies that could be applied to our clients digital marketing. Improving their display remarketing offering has clearly been a key focus.   Linking up to Google Merchant Centre and using dynamic ads built from Google’s Ad Builder tool are great features to improve the click through and conversion rates generated from display advertising.   These are also great tools to improve management, optimisation and set-up times. Although late to the market (some of the more savvy Digital Marketers were doing this via ad servers in 2005) this is a great development from Google and a sure way of improving effectiveness.   Back in 2005, setting up the ad server with all the possible product images based on an action was definitely a big headache and one that the link to Merchant Centre resolves. Viewpoints on price transparency, highlighting the massive increase in price comparison searches in-store via mobile devices, provided food for thought for anyone in retail.   It’s more important than ever to offer competitive pricing, but also to build brand affinity via qualities such as customer service and convenience. Another interesting point was measuring mobile conversions.   Looking beyond a direct sale from a mobile ad made on a mobile site and extending the attribution model to include in-store visits and sales, desktop and application purchases and calls.   It’s amazing how attractive ROI can be if you are willing consider all of these touch points, which a sound mobile strategy inevitably impacts. Loads of food for thought.   Thank you Google. --- ### Google Algo Changes - The Autumn Fantastic Four > With a high amount of turbulence and stormy weather to contend with after many Google Changes, 2012 has been a period of intense activity for many SEOs, - Published: 2012-10-16 - Modified: 2024-05-29 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-autumn-fantastic-four/ - Categories: SEO Stormy weather Any SEO will remember the period of April – May 2012. For most search engine marketers it was a period of intense activity, mainly due to three important Google updates being released which caused a high ‘turbulence’ in search engine rankings. Turbulence is such a great analogy, that SEOmoz produced MozCast, a simple weather report which shows how much rankings have changed on that day. A few months later, we thought we could see another hurricane on the horizon as four Google updates are rolled out. Google’s Panda is certainly not shy So, starting with the oldest one that was announced on 27 September 2012, a new update to the post Panda algorithm was released and was said to impact 2. 4 of English queries and 0. 5% of non-English ones. This would make the 20th update we’ve seen so far for the Panda change since February 2011. It looks like Pandas take a lot of looking after. Google launches WMD’s on EMD’s About the same time of releasing the new Panda update, another change was announced. This time it was to do with something new that Google has apparently been looking at for the past couple of years: exact match domains ranking well. This update is likely to hit 0. 6 of English-US queries. When I first heard and read about this update I decided I did not like it. Could it mean that affiliates selling products on keyphrase exact matched domains were now doomed? After a bit more research I realised that once again Google wasn’t being that mean. This update is likely to impact exact match domain websites with poor content and of a general low quality so if your website is ranking well exclusively on the exact match domain premise and it doesn’t offer any quality unique information, you may now have to change your strategy. Penguins migrating to warmer climes? Following the chain of updates, a few days ago, there was a third update to the fierce Penguin spam-fighting algorithm which is said to impact a further 0. 3% of English language queries. This update is now likely to affect queries in other languages too such as Spanish – 0. 4%, Italian – 0. 3% and French – 0. 4%. I think it was high time searches in other languages were filtered a bit too. Having worked in the international arena of online marketing for a while, I have seen a large number of poor quality foreign language websites ranking above websites which I, as a user, would have deemed more relevant and useful websites. Sites top heavy with ads revisited And finally, on October 9th, Google announced the “Page Layout” update which, according to Matt Cutts, will impact only 0. 7 of English language queries. This is the second update in this series, with the first one having been released in January 2012 which impacted around 1% of queries. Similar to the first one, this second update relates to the layout of... --- ### Find us at the a4u expo 2012 > The A4UExpo is about innovation and Found's search scientists will explain how our innovative approach can help your business. - Published: 2012-10-15 - Modified: 2024-04-11 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/a4u-expo-2012/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, General News It’s that time of year again, time for A4U London! The office has been abuzz with preparation for this year’s expo for the last few weeks and tomorrow it finally arrives. As you will remember from past years, Found always does something a little bit different (from Routemaster bus conductors to purple waistcoat wearing cocktail waiters) and this year is no exception! This year’s concept is all about innovation so do look out for our search scientists on day one in the expo hall and find out how our innovative approach can help your business and whilst you are there you’ll be in for a ‘cool’ treat and could also be in with a chance of winning a tasting sensation for 2!   Social’s Big Performance Battle 13:30–14:15, on Wednesday 17th October Look out for Tina and Pete who will both be leading  panels on day two. Tina will be moderating ‘Social’s Big Performance Battle’ (#A4UB11 ) where you can witness a head to head debate on whether Performance Marketing can develop across Social Media or whether it can only ever remain as a Branding and Customer Service channel. Who’s in Premier Position in the Digital Marketing League and who’s Fighting Relegation? 16:00–17:00, in Balmoral, on Wednesday 17th October Pete will be leading ‘Who’s in Premier Position in the Digital Marketing League and who’s Fighting Relegation? ’ (#A4UB12) a session which will see advocates from the different channels discussing their performance focus and tactics in the ever-evolving digital space. We look forward to seeing you there! #searchscience --- ### Found to optimise HCL's online profile > HCL, the largest provider of temporary healthcare professionals to the NHS has appointed Found, the award winning digital marketing agency specialising in - Published: 2012-10-09 - Modified: 2024-04-07 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-to-optimise-hcls-online-profile/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, General News FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE HCL appoints digital marketers Found to support SEO campaign HCL, the largest provider of temporary healthcare professionals to the NHS has appointed Found, the award winning digital marketing agency specialising in search engine optimisation (SEO), pay per click (PPC), social and mobile marketing to optimise its online profile. HCL was formed in 2003 as a staffing agency, and today supplies over 2,000 temporary and permanent doctors, nurses, allied health professionals, qualified social workers and administration and clerical staff to public and private sectors every week. To align with the changing needs of the NHS, HCL has recently restructured, creating an opportunity to increase its presence online. Found is one of the UK’s most innovative digital marketing agencies. Headquartered in London, its results-obsessed team have championed the wider use of the performance model across key digital channels including Search, Social and Mobile. Passionate about delivery, Found is well known for its innovative thinking and focus on achieving results for all its clients. Claire Billenness, Director of Sales and Marketing at HCL, comments: “As the leading provider of healthcare workforce solutions, it is vital that HCL works with a digital marketing agency to optimise its online presence. Found’s track record in delivering SEO campaigns put it head and shoulders above the competition. ” Tina Judic, Managing Director of Found, says: “As a respected partner in the healthcare recruitment field, HCL is well known in its market and we’re delighted they have chosen to work with us in helping them increase this awareness still further. Found is a passionate team, passionate about performance, and our role will focus on driving greater leads and enquiries to the HCL sites to help their business continue to grow and develop. ” Please see www. hclplc. com for further information about HCL plc. To find out more information about Found please visit www. found. co. uk Notes to Editor For further press information about HCL plc please contact: Thomas Carlin - The Scott Partnership, 1 Whiteside, Station Road, Holmes Chapel, Cheshire, CW4 8AA, United Kingdom. Tel: + 44 1477 539 539 Fax: +44 1477 539 540. E-mail HCLPLC@Scottpr. com For further information about Found, please contact: Julie York, FYA Ltd, Tel: +44 1208 851982/+44 7774 207870, E-mail: julie@fyassoc. co. uk About HCL plc HCL plc, headquartered in London, was formed in 2003 and is a leading provider of staffing solutions in the health and social care sectors. HCL supplies over 2,000 temporary and permanent doctors, nurses, allied health professionals, qualified social workers and administration & clerical staff to public and private sectors every week. We are an international company with offices in the UK and Australia and recruitment drives in Europe. For more information please visit our website at www. hclplc. com, view our Facebook page or follow us on Twitter. About Found Found has led a new chapter for the Online Marketing industry, championing the wider integration of Performance Marketing to drive significant results across all growing digital channels. Focused on masterminding highly... --- ### Oversharing or misunderstood: Automatic sharing in social. > Last week, Found entered the brightly lit white loft apartment of London’s ‘Official Facebook Hub’ to take part in a automatic sharing conference. - Published: 2012-10-05 - Modified: 2012-10-05 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/oversharing-or-misunderstood-automatic-sharing-in-social/ - Categories: Social Media Thursday 27th September 2012, 9-11am. Official Facebook Hub. We’ve all done it. Sitting at the top of your news feed, you notice a post that says your friend has recently read an article. It looks interesting, so you click on it and begin to read. Once finished, the app presents another article to read, and before you know it you’ve entered the wardrobe out of Facebook and teleported to their website. Upon your return, you notice that the app has completely taken over your newsfeed with their articles – Aren’t you lucky? Welcome to the world of automatic sharing. Last week, Found entered the brightly lit white loft apartment of London’s ‘Official Facebook Hub’ to take part in a Social Media Week automatic sharing conference. Betapond’s Marketing Director Richard Delevan, kicked off the conference as host by stating that 84% of people found something of interest within shared posts. Aaron Rajan – Director of Digital Marketing of Unilever Unilever’s Director of Digital Marketing, Aaron Rajan, gave an interesting introduction on their new development, Waterworks. Being the first Facebook app to allow donations in the form of Facebook payments, it heavily relies on automatic sharing to gain new customers. The app will post frequently to update your friends on your donation progress and how much clean water has been raised. Rob Proctor – CEO of Audio Boo Next up was Rob Proctor on behalf of Audio Boo, (who kept apologising for forgetting his slides! ) who introduced the audience to the positives of automatic sharing: “Facebook produces no content of its own, as the content is all from its customers. Automatic sharing allows users to experience new causes, events and music that they might not have found before. Sharing self-curates what is going out and others base views on what you have shared. ” Unilever’s Waterworks campaign is a prime example of this. Chris Lawson – Content Sales & Marketing of The Guardian As Chris Lawson explained how The Guardian website successfully receives more traffic using Facebook’s automated sharing than from Google, I was feeling that the conference was a bit one sided – what about the negative aspect of sharing? Spam invites? Game requests? Daily horoscopes? The list is endless... By now, I (and the rest of the audience! ) was itching, yet patiently waiting until it was time to ask questions. Suddenly, Rob Practor piped up: “You wouldn’t spam your friends with 40 emails a day, so why is it acceptable on Facebook? ” This was an interesting ‘spanner in the works’ for Chris Lawson, but his answer was that automatic sharing and spamisacceptable; if you don’t like it you have the option to simply turn it off. Which is all very well if it’s your own account, but there’s nothing you can do if you are receiving the automated sharing from your friends (unless deleting them and that wouldn’t be very nice, would it? ). If all automatic sharing was switched off, would we lose something? The answer... --- ### The Found Five –September > So to cheer you up as you settle into winter mode – here’s our September round-up reminding you of all the fab things around the web last month: - Published: 2012-10-03 - Modified: 2012-10-03 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-found-five-september/ - Categories: General News September ended up being surprisingly sunny but it seems as October steams ahead, the cold has set in and is here to stay. So to cheer you up as you settle into winter mode – here’s our September round-up reminding you of all the fab things around the web last month: Google latest marvel, an interactive infographic entitled ‘The Story of Send’ presents with precision the journey of an email, displayed with simple but eye-catching visuals accompanied by concise explanations at each stage of the journey. Google uses the infographic to explain step by step the rigorous process of an action we as consumers see as a simple click of a button! With Social Media Week landing in the last week of September, there were some incredible talks and events going on around London which really got me thinking about ‘The Social Network Mind-set’  Our team love to travel and September saw quite a few trips! Two of our boys visited the Big Apple and one of our lovely AMs soaked up the magic of Paris. This video compliments perfectly, the tale of two cities and those things we love about each. Which team are you on? Paris Je t’aime or New York, I love you? Longing for the Olympics again? Wishing for another Jubilee weekend? It was a fantastic feeling uniting with the rest of Great Britain this summer. Are you still feeling the London love? We love the fact that the newest branch of Polpo opened up right here in Smithfield. Great food, cool venue and a delicious wine list to boot! Lunch? Yes please! --- ### Google Web Lab > Google's Web Lab is made of 5 Chrome experiment installations that bring the extraordinary workings of the internet to life - Published: 2012-09-27 - Modified: 2024-07-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-web-lab/ - Categories: Google Algorithm Updates Over the weekend I went and checked out Google's Web Lab experiments at the Science Museum. Google's Web Lab is made of 5 Chrome experiment installations that bring the extraordinary workings of the internet to life and aims to inspire the world to the possibilities of the web.  In this interactive exhibition worldwide visitors both at the museum and online are able to collaborate to make music with people across the world; launch digital images into cyberspace and see where they are on the web; travel instantly to far away places all over the world and watch their portrait being processed, translated, and then drawn in sand by a robot, all in real time. Lab Tag Explorer Each visitor is given a clever 'Lab Tag' to represent them in the virtual space online and the physical space at the Science Museum. This 'Lab Tag' is your ID for everything you create in the Google Web Lab and with some clever QR code technology you can then use it to retrieve your creations. This is all done via the 'Lab Tag Explorer', a website where you can explore the global community and browse visitors' creations. Sketchbot The Sketchbot takes a photo of your face using a webcam via HTML5's canvas and processes this into a line drawing. This data is then sent to the robot arm and it starts to sketch your face into the sand.  Check out the video below of the Sketchbot drawing my face in the sand. This by far was my favourite expriment at the Web Lab. Teleporter Next up were the Teleporter experiments, where you get transported to another part of the planet, you can explore a panoramic 360° scene in real-time and take photos. The 3 locations you can be transported to are the Two Oceans Aquarium in Cape Town, the Miniature Wunderland in Hamburg and Amelie's Bakery in North Carolina. Sadly apart from seeing a few fish swimming about in the aquarium this was a bit of a disappointing experience. Universal Orchestra In the Universal Orchestra experiment, you can play some funky musical instruments set up in the Science Museum, over the internet, with people from all over the world whenever you want and in real-time. You control each instrument via a touch screen, where you can control the notes being played and the timing. People accessing the instruments from the internet have same screen but use their mouse to control them. Check out my musical talent with people from Russia and Spain in the video below. Data Tracer With the Data Tracer you track routes across the internet's vast networks and discover where images are stored. The Data Tracer combines the information from Traceroute with a 3D virtual world map to show you where the information comes from and how fast it is pinged across the planet. The experiments at Google's Web Lab push the limits of what it's possible to do in a web browser. The main technologies used to make these experiments work, include WebGL for... --- ### Found Donate to Help Lions > This summer we discovered a young football team who needed a little help with funding, to get their 2012/2013 campaign underway. - Published: 2012-09-21 - Modified: 2024-04-07 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-donate-to-help-lions/ - Categories: Culture Here at Found we always get excited when we can get involved with the community and this summer we discovered a young football team who needed a little help with funding, to get their 2012/2013 campaign underway.  And so began Found’s sponsorship of Linford Wanderers.  Our love of football and the chance to help out a great young team was too much to let pass and we decided we desperately wanted to get involved.   I’m therefore delighted to introduce you to The Linford Wanderers Lions, sporting their brand new 2012 kit – and don’t they look great?   We are thrilled to be able to help and will be keeping up with the lads’ progress throughout the year. First game of the season... Lions v Tigers This weekend, the Tigers found themselves in the Lion’s den in what was an eagerly anticipated game for all local football fans. In a game filled with goals, the Lions went in at half time with 2 goals and a penalty save over their opponents. The penalty was saved by Joshua, and the lead secured by two great goals from open play by Samuel and Riley. Sadly, the second half saw a number of decisions go against the Lions, letting the Tigers claw their way back into the game, despite their 2-goal lead.  2 early goals for the Tigers gave the boys the momentum to push on and the floodgates opened. The Tigers added another 2 goals that would seem to have put the fixture out of the reach of the Lions. However, the Lions gave it one last roar and were able to score what would only turn out to be a conciliation goal at the end of the game. Sadly, the Lions didn’t win this weekend but they put up a good fight to end the game 4-3 to the Tigers.   When quizzed after the game, a close source said, “Had it not been for two poor refereeing decisions, this would have been a winning start to the season for the team. But the lads did great, we were happy with the performance and, most of all, the character and determination showed by the players, even in the face of adversity towards the end, to claim what could be an important goal at the end of the season. ” The Man of the Match award this week went to the goal-keeping skills of Joshua; for his fantastic acrobatic save to deny the Tigers a first half penalty. You can keep up with them too!  Just click here for all the stats from the FA. --- ### 7 Top Tools and Takeaways from BrightonSEO > Here is a roundup of tools and services mentioned by the speakers at the free BightonSEO search marketing event. - Published: 2012-09-20 - Modified: 2012-09-20 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/7-top-tools-and-takeaways-from-brightonseo/ - Categories: SEO Three Founders had an early start last Friday as we headed to the south coast for BrightonSEO, the largest free search marketing event in Europe. Following on from Raluca’s post about BrightonSEO, I’ve decided to pull together some of the tools and services mentioned by the speakers. New version of SocialCrawlytics (by @ysekand) SocialCrawlytics enables you to quickly and easily identify the URLs on a domain which have been shared the most socially.  This is a great way to identify your competitor’s most popular content which you can take inspiration from when devising a content marketing plan. Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Digg, Delicious and StumbleUpon are the 6 social networking or sharing sites queried as SocialCrawlytics navigates your content. After a quick Twitter oAuth registration, enter a starting URL and maximum crawl depth before either scheduling a regular scan or skipping ahead in order to run a one-off live scan.  Free accounts currently come with 500 credits which are replenished at the start of each week. The produced reports contain both tabular and visual representations of the socially hot content on a website - here’s a look at a crawl of eConsultancy. Google Analytics Dashboards and Custom Report Templates (by @Koozai_Anna) Custom dashboards in Google Analytics have been around for more than a year now, enabling a relevant overview of recent traffic performance to be visible with a glance at a single page. Anna Lewis from Koozai shared 11 custom reports and dashboards which are useful for keeping an eye on online marketing activity, be it SEO, PPC, Email, Affiliate or Social.  The great thing about this free takeaway is that the dashboards can be applied to your chosen Google Analytics profile. This can be achieved in just a few clicks, so you can be up and running in less than a minute. There are some customisations which will first need to be made to the provided templates in-order to get the most out of them.  For example, branded terms must be defined by modifying the provided filters but thankfully instances where changes are necessary are clearly highlighted on the dashboard itself. If you’re still using the default “My Dashboard” in Google Analytics the provided SEO Dashboard offers a quick and pain-free improvement. Google Smartphone Website Recommendations (via @aleyda) This post from Google’s Webmaster Central blog introduces the search giant’s recommendations for webmasters who want their content to be suitable for use by both desktop and mobile users. In her slides Aleyda included an accompanying flow chart which can help establish what the best approach to creating a mobile website is for your particular situation - a separate mobile website, dynamic detection of mobile visitors or responsive design. Change Detection (via @berianreed) and Robotto (by Tony King/Semetrical) Change Detection is a free website monitoring tool I’ve been using for a while now.  The premise is as effective as it is simple.  You sign up, input a list of URLs you want the tool to watch over and then you get sent... --- ### Pandas and Penguins Spotted in Brighton > What's new in SEO? Complete list of advanced SEO tips from the Brighton SEO conference September 2012. - Published: 2012-09-19 - Modified: 2012-09-19 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/pandas-penguins-spotted-brighton-seo/ - Categories: SEO Found were some of the lucky ones to secure some places at the BrightonSEO conference that reunited SEO and Media experts all traveling from all over the UK and even overseas (the furthest being someone who came all the way from Texas! ). The conference kicked off with an amusing dance of a smirking Panda bear and a slim Penguin.  All that was missing was for Harry Hill to show up, and shout 'FIIIIGHT! ' But what were the main things to take away? Below is a list of the talks and hopefully some useful tips: First to talk was Dave Trott who gave us an insight into “Predatory Thinking”. How is this applicable to SEO? Well, in SEO just as in many other industries, you need to constantly win new business. And in order to win new business, as Dave taught us, you need to speak your client’s language. Make them understand you are a true expert in your niche but explain your processes in terms that your clients can understand and win their trust. Dave gave an excellent example of this: together with his colleague they were going to Morrison’s to pitch for an advertising project. During the pitch, his colleague made the following statement: “in order to increase your profit, you need to optimise your own stock margins” and the client said that was the exact problem. They then walked out with the account. Dave initially did not know what that meant and his colleague explained to him in the car on the way back to the office that it basically meant that Morrisons should make products cheaper so that people buy more and that he obviously did not want to put it that way as the client would not have been impressed. The lesson learnt from this is that we need to show the clients we understand what the problem is and why they need us but persuade them in their language. Following on from Dave’s insights, Stephanie Troeth next explained to us that “speaking your user’s language” is also essential because a website needs to reflect the company’s ethics, business values and needs to easily deliver within few clicks the desired goals and actions. This is highly applicable for website design but, of course,  we all know that. Never more so than now, there is an extremely strong connection between SEO, website architecture and website design. Next on the list we had Rebecca Weeks who presented us with a case study of quick versus quality SEO. The conclusions were that in a post Panda and Penguin search world, SEO strategies need to be changed. So, if you have been focusing on your quantity of links (forum commenting, publishing of identical content on multiple target sites, guest posts, over-optimisation of anchor texts and/or page titles) rather than quality ones, then you need to quickly change your strategies and focus on less, more natural looking, links. Quality is more important than ever! Oh, and, of course, verification... --- ### The Anatomy of Landing Page Testing Using AdWords > How do you find a landing page with a high conversion rate from a website that you don’t have access to? Use AdWords Campaign Experiments. - Published: 2012-09-13 - Modified: 2012-09-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-anatomy-of-landing-page-testing/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) Landing Page Testing from a PPC Perspective (We previously covered A/B or multi-variant testing using website optimiser here) Imagine you want to find the landing page with the highest conversion rates or EPCs (earnings per click)  from a website that you don’t have access to edit yourself. One option is to use AdWords Campaign Experiments (ACE). AdWords Experiments seems to have been in “Beta” ever since it was launched over 2 years ago, however that doesn’t mean it isn’t useful. Firstly the Don’ts: The Don’ts: Don’t pick two different keywords and give each one a different landing page URLs, then compare conversion or revenue data sometime later. You should not do this because different keywords have different conversion rates. How do you know whether the difference in conversion rate is because of the different landing page, or because of the different keyword? Don’t split test landing pages over different periods of time. You should not do this because conversion rates and EPCs also vary over time depending on a multitude of known and unknown factors. My Solution is as follows: Pick an Adgroup you want to use for the experiment. You’ll then need to make a complete copy of the Adgroup that you want to use, with the same ads and bids except with different destination URLs changed prospectively to the two landing pages you want to test. (You now have a Control Landing Page on the original Adgroup, and the Experiment one on the copy). Give the experiment Adgroup some traffic for one or two days so that all ads are approved and the quality scores are the same as the original ones, then set up the Adwords Campaign Experiment. To set up the Experiment you’ll have to go into the Setting tab and expand the Experiment section under ‘Advanced Settings’ right at the bottom. Click on ‘Specific Experiment Settings’, and give the Experiment any name you want. On the Control/Experiment Split ideally you would use 50%/50%, however if the test landing page is very experimental and you don’t want a risk a drop off in conversion you could make the experiment percentage smaller. As for the period of time, it doesn’t matter as long as you have statistical significant data, set it to 30 days and extend or end depending on whether you have enough information. Once the Experiment is activated you’ll have to set the Control Adgroup to “Control” and the test Adgroup to ’Experiment’. You can do this by going to the Adgroup tab and selecting “Control” or “Experiment” under the menu that you usually use to Enabled, Pause or Delete Adgroups. Now all searches should be split between the Adgroups depending on your Control / Experiment split choice during set up. Note that all other Adgroups in the campaign should be set to “Control and Experiment”. From there it’s up to you how and when you decide you have enough data to say one is better than the other. You can do it with a little help from... --- ### Effective Digital Content Marketing – And the wonders it can do to your ROI > Many business are deliberating on whether or not to get on the digital content marketing bandwagon. I say, get on board and enjoy! - Published: 2012-08-31 - Modified: 2024-06-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/effective-digital-content-marketing-roi-wonders/ - Categories: SEO We’ve all heard about it, most businesses have engaged in some form of it whilst others are deliberating on whether or not to get on the content marketing bandwagon. Content marketing, as we at Found know it, is the life and soul of any SEO and Social Media marketing campaign. As an Account Manager, I am constantly asked by clients about what they could do to get that higher rank, that extra click, that extra sale without being too pushy and in-your-face asking customers to buy, buy, buy! After all, today’s consumer is knowledgeable, well-informed and has a wide range of tools that they can use to make the best purchasing decisions and this is where content marketing comes in. Through articles, blog posts, videos, tweets, Facebook updates, infographics, press releases and various other mediums, content marketing is becoming a crucial player in influencing the customer purchase cycle. But with the wealth of data out there, how does a business ensure that only the relevant information is shared with the customer? 1. Develop a Content Plan/ Strategy Planning content in advance is a key element of any digital marketing strategy. Both internal brand messaging and external customer insights play an important role in putting this plan together. a)    Content should be helpful and relevant to customers and must add value. Customers don’t want to read about how amazing a brand is, but they do want to know how that brand could potentially solve their problem. b)    Whilst planning a strategy, it is also essential that the plan remains reactionary to particular news or events in the business’ field.  This would further help boost rankings and reach by capitalising on trending content that attracts a higher search volume. c)    Use Databases and Analytics effectively. Often business forget to use their own databases other than for newsletters and updates. A ‘spring clean’ of the database could easily determine what information is no longer required and what could be used more effectively. For example, looking at what content is clicked the most when a newsletter is sent out will give you a good idea of what content your subscribers are interested in. 2. Create an Operational Process Once you’ve planned your content strategy, now it’s time for execution. A clear process should be created to avoid any delays, cross hurdles and ensure on-time delivery. For example: Content Brief Discussed-> Idea Brainstorm -> Write Content -> Send Content for Approval a)     If approved -> Content distributed -> Effectiveness measured b)     If not approved -> Content Re-written -> Content distributed -> Effectiveness measured 3.      Constantly Innovate Someone once said “Innovation is anything but business as usual” And this rings true for any content marketer or business. As part of the overall strategy, marketers can optimise their digital campaign by keeping up to speed with the latest tools and technologies, including mobile applications and software. These days there are so many social media platforms to launch marketing campaigns across and it’s important to note which ones would be best... --- ### Why the UK SEO Industry Wins Gold for Team GB > As the opening ceremony of the Olympics on Friday night proved - as a nation we know how to put on a show & get results. - Published: 2012-08-03 - Modified: 2012-08-03 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/uk-seo-wins-gold-for-team-gb/ - Categories: SEO The Olympics started in London last week; the best sports people from around the world are now in the Capital, all competing to win gold medals at their respective sports. This is an exciting time for the country and as the opening ceremony on Friday night proved - as a nation we know how to put on a show and get results. Danny Boyle (or should that be Sir Danny Boyle? ), put on a great event that was truly spectacular to watch. Central to the latter stages of the event was the emphasis on the digital age and how the UK and the rest of the world is now switched on and interconnected like never before – the number of smartphones recording the ceremony shows just how quickly footage of the event will flood the internet; Facebook and Twitter feeds only covered one event on Friday night. Perhaps it is not surprising to learn then that the UK has one of the most switched on digital populations in the world: according to Ofcom, the average household now has three internet-enabled gadgets; 15% of homes have more than six. This digital emphasis of the opening ceremony and the fact that the world’s best are in London has many parallels, in my opinion, with ‘team GB’s’ burgeoning search industry. The UK continually delivers exceptional results for businesses and brands in a highly competitive market. Thanks to the well publicised Google Panda and Penguin updates over the last 12 months SEO has become far less technically focused and more reliant on traditional marketing discipline techniques, with great online content at its core. This switch from a technical focus towards a stronger more content led approach is great news for the UK SEO industry as a whole. Here’s why: Off-shore companies find it difficult to compete Anyone with a website and an email address will know about SEO companies based off-shore, many in India, where English is commonly spoken. In the past these companies could get results; they were cheap and worked primarily by adding a sheer weight of numbers approach when it came to generating back-links, comments and directory submissions. In short, they technically knew how to play the search engines to get the desired results. But with a greater emphasis on content and quality content at that, with Google coming down hard on anything that looks too unnatural, the successes these companies can generate, for British and Western websites in particular will be limited. Yes they write in English, but do they write like native Brits and about timely topics that will generate the desired links and likes? Probably not. Britain does creativity best In the future SEO as a medium will have to become more creative, and creative, as the opening ceremony shows, is what we do best in Britain. According to the latest stats from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (December 2011), 1. 5 million people are employed in the creative industries or in creative roles in... --- ### Is Facebook Advertising Right For Your Business? > A debate over Facebook advertising raged recently after a BBC writer suggested that many companies were wasting their marketing budgets. - Published: 2012-08-02 - Modified: 2012-08-02 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/is-facebook-advertising-right-for-your-business/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC), Social Media A debate over the effectiveness of Facebook advertising raged recently after an investigation by the BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones, which suggested that many companies were wasting their marketing budgets on adverts to gain ‘likes’ from members of the social media giant. Miranda Miller, of Search Engine Watch, was quick to fire back - pointing out a number of flaws in the investigation – and, after running a number of Facebook campaigns here at Found, we decided to share some of our insights and give any businesses that are unsure about the channel some food for thought.  Cold Hard Facts Facebook’s IPO reported that 2011 advertising revenues increased by 69 percent on the previous year, while Google was only valued at a quarter of Facebook’s valuation when it first went public. With a reported 955 million active users as of June 2012, averaging 10. 5 billion total minutes per day spent on the site from desktop use alone, the possibilities of exposing any business to the right type of customer must surely be there – the main question is how to engage these prospective customers? Which Type of Ad? With the recent release of promoted posts, Facebook has given brand page owners the opportunity to pay for their content to be shown to a wider audience. Not every fan of a page will regularly engage with the brand and receive updates in their news feed. Promoted posts give the page owner the chance to show a recent offer in the news feed of these less engaged fans and also to their friends when they interact with the post. A sponsored story allows the page owner to promote an ad about social interactions people have had with their brand or organisation. When someone likes your page their friends may see this in their news feed as a story which you can pay to sponsor, making the post more visible and appealing to users to interact with your business. Web ads are a way of promoting a business outside of Facebook - for example, a restaurant owner may wish to target an ad for their website to everyone that lives in the town they operate in. A social ad encourages people to engage with any Facebook objects you may have such as a Page, App, Event or Place. Short or long-term strategy? Many digital marketers agree that to get any success you have to test, test and test some more and this applies to Facebook perhaps more than any other online channel. Ads will fatigue and Facebook recommends changing them every 12 days, testing multiple ads each time. We recently had a travel client approach us to try and help them with bookings for an upcoming Mushroom Foraging Weekend they were running at one of their Hotels. With the advanced targeting options available we were able to run a short campaign targeted to people who sighted mushroom foraging as an interest and included other associated topics. The ads generated a high click-through rate and... --- ### How the temperamental British weather affects Online Sales > The weather is central to British life. We curse it, we praise it, but to what degree does it affect our spending habits online? - Published: 2012-07-26 - Modified: 2024-05-07 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/how-weather-affects-online-sales/ - Categories: SEO The weather is central to British life. We curse it, we praise it, and we do both in equal measure when the snow hits us. Rain and Sunshine affect the mood of the nation and grabs headlines of the red tops. It causes traffic chaos, droughts, floods, and poor clothing choices on a weekly basis. Being a heavy focus of endless debates in offices and other such places of small talk up and down the country, it is inevitable it will have some impact on the shopping habits of us Brits. Bloody weather The recent record breaking run of wet weather had people in a mad depressive haze and was 'almost apocalyptic' for wildlife. Not absorbing much Vitamin D for 2 months, there was even a submission to FoundLabs to move the office to Ibiza. I'm still waiting to hear back on that one. The wet weather has now been followed by this mini heatwave, which has preceded the start of the Olympics here in London this week. The city is back to its jubilant best, and soggy feet seems a distant memory for Londoners. But what does this waxing and waning of the British psyche mean for digital marketers? Forget the Google dance, it's all about the rain dance It has been known for some PPC analysts to to pray for rain, almost doing an Indian rain dance around the end of November to bring on the downpours. This kind of undesirable weather usually lowers footfall to high street stores and increases online sales. This holds true in many cases, and is seen on many retail campaigns. Huge shopping centres somewhat dispel some of that myth, but anyone who has been to Oxford Street or other old style high streets on a regular basis would rather avoid getting wet. One such case of exploiting variable weather was capitalising on the huge surge of breakdown cover applications during the early December snowstorms in 2010. The heavy snowfall brought many motorists to a halt, whilst breakdown campaigns soared. However,  the snow actually hit pre-Christmas online sales hard, as many were worried about snow delays affecting their online deliveries.  A more recent example is how the recent unprecedented rainstorms affected the amount of holidays booked in sunnier climes to a degree of 20%. Online stores are now the main shopping resource for many and trusted for use by a greater number of customers each year. So the affect the weather has will have a lesser impact overall. For the current wet weather, this ended up being poor overall for online marketers, as the public's mood turned to an almost zombie-like depression. (Any PPC Analysts doing a rain-dance now will perhaps incur the wrath of their peers! ). Dramatic weather conditions can be a boon for paid search analysts. Here are some ways a PPC campaign could be changed: Focus on fast-moving trending products: A paid search analyst can take advantage of fast moving trends by simply trying new keywords. Reports from on-site searches, and data from... --- ### Ad Text Olympics - How to Win Gold with AdWords > This week sees the start of the London 2012 Olympics, so took a closer look at what the Olympics can teach us about ad text writing. - Published: 2012-07-25 - Modified: 2012-07-25 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/ad-text-olympics-win-gold-adwords/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) It’s finally here! This week sees the start of the London 2012 Olympics. Following Rob’s post “Olympic Preparation for your PPC campaign”, I thought I’d take a closer look at what the Olympics can teach us about ad text writing. Competition – Above all the Olympics is a competition. Every athlete wants to win the gold medal and competition is also important with your ad text. Learn from sports such as tennis and fencing and set up a knockout tournament between your ads. Write two identical ads but change just one thing, perhaps the headline or call to action. Pit them against each other and once you’ve gathered enough data, decide a winner. The winner then moves onto the next round to face a new opponent – perhaps the same ad but with keyword insertion or a price. Soon enough you’ll find your gold medal-winning ad. Teamwork – Here at Found we are a close team and like to help each other out and that applies when it comes to writing ad text. You can often get stuck in a rut using the same phrases and calls to action but sometimes it is good to see things with a fresh pair of eyes and share what’s been working best. We often pair up to look at each other’s campaigns and see if we can come up with ideas to beat the current top performing ad text. Multiculturalism – Athletes, officials and guests from all over the world will be coming together in London for the Olympics and there are events across London celebrating the many cultures that are taking part. Here at Found we find ourselves writing ads targeted to many different countries and in an increasing number of languages. It is important to not just rely on a direct translation of your English ads when preparing a campaign in another language (or even in English, targeted to another country), but to get a native speaker or translator to read your ad text and write their own version, as there will be certain spellings, calls to action and other idiosyncrasies unique to that language that can make all the difference to CTR. Team selection – In the Olympics you want your best athletes participating in events but so often people fail to give their best ads the chance to perform. I have seen many campaigns that are missing out on clicks and conversions because a poorly performing ad is being shown as frequently as the best ad. The rotate setting can be great for testing ads but make sure you use the ‘optimize for clicks and conversions’ settings to allow your top performers to shine. So now you should have all the preparation you need to go out and write a winning ad and take home that PPC gold-medal! --- ### Tracking Social Media Conversions Using Google Analytics > Monitoring your social traffic conversions is essential if you maintain any sort of content and social media strategy. - Published: 2012-07-20 - Modified: 2012-07-20 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/social-media-tracking-google-analytics/ - Categories: Social Media Monitoring your social traffic conversions is essential if you maintain any sort of content and social media strategy. It can take time to build your online presence to a level that brings in revenue, but there are certainly cases where great returns are made. Social Media data is now fully integrated into Google Analytics so you can track the ROI of each action and social media traffic source on your content and the traffic from your social properties themselves. Tracking Social Actions Analytics can track items like file downloads, movie plays, and anything else you can think of. To do this you would set up a custom event. Social Media tracking works in a similar manner, but in this case an event is considered a 'social action'. What do you class as a social action? A social action can be shares, votes, posts, reshares, comments and bookmarks, for example. So, a Social action is a special kind of event. To find these statistics in Google Analytics, navigate to Traffic Sources > Social > Social Plugins.  Normal events are located in Content > Events. Data Hub Providers Google allows social network developers to integrate their activity streams into Social Analytics reports via their social data hub. Current data hub partners are reddit, Google+, Delicious, Digg and are indicated in Analytics by a symbol (shown below). This means that Google +1's and their ilk can be tracked easily out of the box, but other social network such as Facebook and Twitter require some additional code to be implemented. --- ### Official Google Analytics App for Android Reviewed > Google had recently released an App for Google Analytics for Android devices. I downloaded the app recently and put it through it's paces. - Published: 2012-07-12 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/official-google-analytics-app-reviewed/ - Categories: Mobile I have been a bit of an Android fan since the early days, having owned the second Android phone on the market, so was pleased to find out that Google had released of an official  Dashboards The dashboards give you a graphical representation of data for the site, and are completely customizable. Simply tap on the graph you wish to edit, and the graph can then be deleted or the settings adjusted. What would you see if you selected 'non-paid traffic' and kept the metric on 'clicks'? Answers on a postcard or in the comments below! Automatic Alerts Google will cleverly detect any unusual patterns in your data and present them to you here. Some of these traffic spikes can be quite interesting. Tap on anything of interest and you will get a larger representation like the following graph: Setup Custom Alerts of what you want to see The standard reporting could certainly be of use for digital marketers, but even more insight can be gained by using Custom Alerts of the key metrics you are monitoring. Setting up custom alerts can easily fill an entire post, but if you would like to know more then read this great guide on setting up custom alerts for your site. If you don't do this, you will get an empty screen here.  You might want to setup alerts for traffic increases on certain traffic sources, such as reddit. com for example. So, what's missing? Although the app can give some useful data, I am one of those who always wants more. I think the app could benefit from some more features based on standard Analytics reports, such as: Some juicy keyword reports will be nice.  Keywords driving traffic, via both PPC and SEO. Brand /Generic splits, PPC/SEO splits. A simple top referrers report. A focus on the social side, without setting up custom Google Alerts. Easy navigation to the same reports as in the web interface. The Google Analytics app can be downloaded from Google Play (Formerly Android Market! ). Google is focussing on mobile devices, in a big way Google have certainly been busy focussing  on mobile specific applications recently, as on the same day that the Analytics App was released, they also announced Mobile App Analytics. This will enable developers to track all sorts of useful data from within their Android Apps such as the following: crashes, traffic sources, app versions, overview of devices, user behaviour,  goals and in-app purchases. It should also show how many Android users are still using Gingerbread. This section of Google Analytics is currently in Beta, and you can apply via a lengthy signup form. With the increasing popularity of Android Tablets amongst professionals and the launch of the Google Nexus 7 tablet, we can expect Google to produce many more apps and improve mobile device tracking while they are at it. --- ### The Found Newsletter is GO! > As part of the new branding process here at Found HQ, we have launched our first newsletter! Subscribe today to receive the latest news. - Published: 2012-07-11 - Modified: 2024-07-02 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-newsletter/ - Categories: General News As part of the new branding process and profile building strategy here at Found HQ, we have just launched our first newsletter! After careful thought, considerable planning and clocking up some serious design hours, by the time we got to yesterday, we finally had something we were happy to “press the big red button on” (well, we clicked send... ) The format isn’t something to which we gave little thought; it was designed to have a specific demographic appeal and this is evident in our final design where we find the content interesting, informative and easy on the eye. Good planning and design ensured cross-demographic appeal was achieved and gave us the platform to display content that applies to a whole host of active users – all those that work across the digital industry, web and interface design enthusiasts looking to stay on the edge and also to all those marketers out there looking to stay informed and keep up to date with the most current tips, tricks and advice about SEO, PPC and Paid Social. Our format not only gives the reader an overview of the digital world from the previous 4-6 weeks, but also gives the reader an insight into Found as an outfit, not only as experts in paid search and digital marketing, but also as a fantastic place to work. --- ### 5 Great Uses of the IF Formula in Excel (you may not know about) > Getting acquainted with IF statements will open up a whole range of opportunities for you when you’re looking to analyse & manipulate data. - Published: 2012-07-06 - Modified: 2025-02-25 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/5-great-uses-if-formula-excel/ - Categories: Analytics, Data, How to Hello, and welcome to my second post in this series, where I dare to stand up against some of the most common Excel challenges we face within this industry, and defeat them head-on with cold, hard, uncompromising logic. You may be well versed in Excel and know much of the below already, but have a look through as I’ll be touching on a number of additional hints and tips along the way as well. . I’ve also attached a worksheet to this post for you to see and work with the examples themselves. In my previous post I looked at some top tips to save you time in Excel, ranging from data manipulation, to cell formatting and general navigation. In this post I look to tackle the most common uses of the IF statement. By the way, if you're a more advanced Excel user and want to explore beyond the IF formula, you may enjoy Found's latest list of advanced Excel formulas and macros. They will be especially useful if you work in web marketing and regularly handle keyword and URL data, but there's plenty there for other fields too. Anyway, back to the IFs. . What IF... ? Getting acquainted with the many IF statements will start to open up a whole range of new opportunities for you when you’re looking to analyse and manipulate data. It can be used to quickly fetch results based around given criteria, to sort and catalogue data, or be used in conjunction with other formulas for some very inventive and powerful operations. The main essence of the statement is to return a result when meeting certain criteria. So for example. . -          Return the sum of all clicks IF the month is March -          Return the phrase “Out of Stock” IF the stock level field = 0 -          Lookup an associated cost IF a cell contains the word “forecast” Excel will tell you that the basic IF statement follows this format: Below I’ve applied this to some very simple statements: =IF(A1=”March”,1,0) If the value in cell A1 is equal to “March”, then return a 1, and if it isn’t then return a 0. =IF(A1>10000,”high spend”,”low spend”) If the number in cell A1 is greater than £10,000, return “high spend”, and if it isn’t then return “low spend” Of course you can return more sophisticated results than a simple number or text string if the criteria is met, but we’ll  get into those later. Different numerical operators can also be used well in these types of statement. Equal to, Greater than, less than, greater than or equal to etc. can all be used to good effect. So now the formula is laid down, let’s get into some of these great uses... ! 1. Using SumIF, CountIF, and AverageIF Some of the most common Excel IF formulas allow you to sum, count and average data based on set criteria. To demonstrate these I’ve put together a simple affiliate commission report below: With these particular formulas you first... --- ### Time to Get Creative as One Word Search Queries Increase by 19% > Hitwise have released the latest stats on the search share of Google and Bing in the UK and US - and the results throw up a few surprises. - Published: 2012-07-06 - Modified: 2024-05-07 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/one-word-search-queries-increase/ - Categories: Opinion, Paid Search (PPC), SEO Hitwise have released the latest stats on search share in the UK and US - and the results throw up a few surprises.  In the UK, Google continued to hold over 90% of the market with a small but steady increase since March 2012.  In the US, a different story, as Bing continue to make inroads into the share of the all-powerful Google, increasing by 7% since the same time in 2011. Bing-powered search as a whole was up 5%. Is this simply a reflection of the American market succumbing to Bing’s flashy advertising? After so many years in the consumer wilderness, is Microsoft cool again? Or are there other forces at play? Further US figures outlined by Hitwise could provide the answer.  An analysis of clicks by keyword shows shorter search queries (1 to 4 words) comprise over 80% of all searches, and that 1 word search queries alone account for nearly 30%, a 19% year-on-year increase.  This may reflect developments from the search engines in launching automated search features, such as Google Instant and Bing Autosuggest. I think it means that the search engines have made progress towards their goal: to assist searchers with finding what they need, faster. What does this mean for search marketing? The focus must shift to how consumers start their searches – that first keyword is more important than ever.  This will naturally support bigger brands over those trying to break into the space, and new entries will have to work harder to find their niche. It means that those high volume golden keywords are more competitive than ever, and the latest Google Penguin update means that you cannot simply build links with exact match anchor text repeatedly. The long-tail may be down but it isn’t out and it is an area that new brands can exploit.  Smart content-led strategies are essential to tap into keywords within shorter searches and search marketers will need to draw upon experience and creativity to make the most of the changing landscape. If you are working in digital marketing in the US, and have ignored Bing and its smaller cousins in recent years, you may wish to rethink your plans.  As for the UK market, will recent Bing updates provide the catalyst that will kickstart their quest to be king? I quite like Don Drapers' recently aired attitude to dominance in the market, which he almost shouted to a potential client. Certainly words that will strike a chord with many business owners: “I won’t settle for 50 percent of anything, You don’t want most of it, you want all of it, and I won’t stop until you get all of it. ” Will adopting Don Drapers' Mantra help Bing to succeed? Only time will tell. --- ### Whose Search Data is it Anyway? – Firefox to encrypt referring search strings > One of the key reporting metrics returned by website analytics programs is referral data. Is this data under threat? - Published: 2012-07-03 - Modified: 2012-07-03 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/firefox-encrypt-referring-search-strings-whose-search-referral-data-anyway/ - Categories: SEO One of the key reporting metrics returned by website analytics programs such as Google Analytics and Comscore is referral data. What is Referral Data? Referral data enables website owners and marketers to determine how traffic found their site. Combined with goal or ecommerce tracking this data can be used to report upon the success of particular marketing campaigns. Most websites will have 3 main visitor sources – search, referral and direct traffic. Search traffic encompasses all clicks from the results pages of a search engine, be the click on an organic or paid search listing. Referral traffic is a click from another website, for example a blog or social media platform, whilst direct traffic accounts for visitors who have typed your URL directly into their address bar. The exact proportions of traffic from each source will differ on a site-by-site basis but a healthy strategy should see visitors, and conversions, coming from across these different segments. Most websites will see a mix of traffic sources. The site above gets most of its traffic from searches. Analytics packages can drill down into this data to provide more details about how people found particular pages on your site. For search traffic the most important piece of data is the search query or “keyword” which was entered into a search engine before your listing was clicked. This data is presented in an aggregated format and on its own is not personally identifiable in most cases. Webmasters can use this data to help establish the kind of content people are looking for and the questions visitors have relating to their site or products which can be used to help improve site content. Who else has referral data? It isn’t just the websites you click through to that get to discover how you, and the rest of the Internet, came to access them. Numerous other organisations can see the websites you visit and how you found them. Search Engines The large search engines monitor every search you make and result you click in  order to use this data to help improve their rankings and customise the results and advertisements you see. Who could forget the embarrassing release of AOL search data! If you quickly return to a Google results page after clicking a listing Google will ask you if you want to block that site from showing in your search results. Browsers The web browser you are using to read this very blog post may very well be passing information on to its creator about how you found this article. For many this was brought to attention when Google accused Microsoft’s Bing of copying its search results following a honeypot operation.   Users had granted permission for Microsoft to use their clickstream data by ticking a box which they were told would “help Microsoft improve your online experience”. Indeed it isn’t just search activity that browsers are able to access.   2% of all text entered into Chrome’s Omnibox is logged by Google if you have set the engine as... --- ### Found launches Ultimate PPC Keyword Concatenation Tool > Leading digital marketing agency Found has unveiled a free Keyword Tool, which will assist advertisers in creating stronger keyword lists for their PPC - Published: 2012-06-30 - Modified: 2024-05-02 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-launches-ppc-keyword-tool/ - Categories: General News, Paid Search (PPC) Found launches free, user-friendly keyword tool to drive greater ppc results Leading digital marketing agency Found has unveiled a free Keyword Tool, which will assist advertisers in creating stronger keyword lists for their PPC campaigns in a quicker and more intuitive manner. Efficiencies which should see in turn, significantly improved results from their PPC management. The Ultimate PPC Keyword Concatenation Tool, which can be found on the Search, Social and Mobile specialist’s site www. found. co. uk, is available for everyone and aimed at those who are responsible for building keyword lists for Google Adwords or other bid management systems. It will enable them to build out their existing campaigns by using every permutation of their chosen keywords whilst allowing them to automatically add the different match types available in Google Adwords. It also makes it easy to remove special characters from pasted keyword lists or add a prefix or a suffix to lists of keywords. Tina Judic, Managing Director of Found, says: “The Ultimate Keyword Tool has been built by experts, for experts. It has been developed out of pure frustration by our own highly-experienced analyst team who were fed up with using a variety of different industry tools which were either badly-designed or partially working. Their key aim is to build robust and expansive keyword lists which deliver results quickly for our clients, and this tool gives them both the speed and reach they need to achieve this. ” Found’s Keyword Tool is the latest invention borne out of its internal Found Labs initiative. Found Labs gives all ‘Founders’ the platform to share their hottest, craziest ideas for new sites, campaigns or technologies for possible development and integration into Found’s infrastructure and services. All ideas are discussed and already Found Labs has sprung a number of other new website initiatives including a free SEO Audit Tool which provides a link and canonicalisation checker, plus a variety of internal tools such as a PPC Accreditation scheme, a Mobile App and a PPC out of position ad spotter, AdVista. Tina adds: “We’re already seeing results from the integration of the Keyword Tool in our analysts’ delivery, and therefore decided to share our innovation and make it available to the wider market too as I’m sure there are many others sharing the same pain out there. This is an invaluable companion tool for anyone who’s looking to really drive significant revenue through PPC activity, so enjoy! ” This press release was originally published on Econsultancy on 27th June 2012. To find out more about Found tools and technology, check out The Foundry.   --- ### You can Now ‘Disavow' Links in Bing – But is it worth it? > There has been a clamour for a way to be able to devalue potentially harmful links, and Bing have beaten Google to producing a Disavow tool. - Published: 2012-06-29 - Modified: 2012-06-29 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/bing-disavow-links-pointless/ - Categories: SEO Since the Google Penguin update a lot has been written about negative SEO, with some high profile cases of sites being penalised due to an influx of links from questionable sources with overly-optimised anchor text. Google alerted any webmasters affected by the Penguin update via a webmaster tools notification. There has been a clamour for a way to be able to devalue potentially harmful links, due to the fact that you cannot really control who links to you. What can be done to combat Negative SEO? Google has mentioned that the link profile could be cleaned up, with poor quality links being removed. There is an issue here that a company could produce poor quality links to harm a competitor. This has meant that many webmasters wanted to be able to ‘Disavow Links’ that could have been built by a negative SEO team. Of course the best method to combat negative SEO is to build a trustworthy online brand that can ride the storm of any such links having as major effect. Not always easy for many small businesses in competitive niches that rely on Google rankings, and an SEO may need to act fast for a client. Using Bing’s Disavow Tool This week, Bing released a ‘Disavow Links’ tool within Bing webmaster tools. With this tool you can submit URL's that look like they are from spam or low quality sites. By disavowing the links, Bing should then ignore any penalties but be aware, improper use could also disable links that pass link equity. This list of removed links can also be exported and is unlimited in size. Here is a screenshot of where this new tool is featured. Unfortunately, I cannot see this feature in my account yet. Can negative SEO affect rankings in Bing? Bing do not outline penalisation for harmful links in the same way as Google, but reserve the right to penalise in certain cases. Bing's terms and conditions are investigated fully on ‘searchengineland’. One thing they will get is some useful data. If a domain keeps getting disavowed then it could certainly make them aware of the fact that the site is not a trusted source. I am not sure if it is worth spending too much time disavowing links on Bing, not unless your high volume number 1 positions have been hit hard! There may be a case where you can use Bing as a Disavow test before trying to do so in Google, when they release a similar tool. Matt Cutt's has stated before that they will be working on a tool that provides the same functionality. What is a Poor Quality Link? Poor quality links are those that violate Google’s webmaster terms and conditions. If Google have an issue with a site's links they can take action against it, such as decreasing rankings or removing the site from its index altogether. These are paid links, link schemes and links from poor quality auto-generated content. There might be a case of people who are not... --- ### Beat the Keyword Blues with Found’s Ultimate Keyword Concatenation Tool > The Ultimate PPC Keyword Concatenation tool helps you to construct large lists of paid search keywords with ease. - Published: 2012-06-27 - Modified: 2024-06-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-ppc-keyword-tool/ - Categories: General News, Paid Search (PPC) The Ultimate PPC Keyword Concatenation Tool is the latest time-saving tool to find its way out of Found Labs, helping you to construct large lists of keywords with ease. While there is a tendency for larger agencies to make use of fully-automated solutions when generating keywords, we here at Found find that keyword quality suffers when people are left out of the loop, and as such we generate a large proportion of our keywords manually based on experience and intuition. Having said all that, keywording still happens to be a time-consuming and often tedious business, so we’re not above using the odd tool to help us knock out those lists. Over the years we have worked with various free tools found lurking in dark corners of the internet, and although many of them were useful none of them were perfect. With that in mind we decided to develop a tool of our own, and after much labouring and head-scratching by our boffin's we can now present to you the Ultimate Keyword Concatenation Tool. How does the PPC Keyword Tool work? Let’s assume that you are looking to construct a list of brand-specific generic keywords for cameras. You have a list of camera brands, a list of camera types, and a list of adjectives. By entering each list into a column of the tool you are able to create keywords based on all the various ways these keywords can be linked together, and output them in every match-type you may be interested in. In addition to this, the tool offers the following functionality: Create Exact, Phrase, Broad, Modified Broad, and Negative match-types from a single list of keywords Capitalise all first letters in a list of keywords for use in Keyword Insertion ad types Work with up to four lists of keywords, adjectives, or other descriptive phrases, allowing you to create large lists of relevant long-tail keywords from a base set of generic keywords Fully control the order and extent of the output permutations Quickly obtain every possible permutation and match-type with a “Super Concatenate” button Clean up messy keyword lists by automatically removing duplicates, blank line or special characters Bulk-edit your keyword lists with either a prefix or suffix Output your final list of keywords in two different formats, allowing you to instantly paste them into a number of other tools such as Adwords Editor Remove any keywords over 25 characters in length, allowing you to create lists where every keyword will be eligible to show in a Keyword Insertion ad type What benefit will this tool have on my campaigns? This tool will allow you to construct large numbers of keywords to cover a wide range of products or services on your client’s site in a very short amount of time, freeing you up to spend more time with the more important aspects of PPC management. Furthermore it offers a versatility of control that enables it to work in different ways for different circumstances, which should give you full... --- ### Found Welcomes: Raluca Costin to the SEO Team > Raluca Costin, has joined Found as a Senior SEO Executive. As a keen SEO-or she aspires to become Matt Cutt's best friend. - Published: 2012-06-18 - Modified: 2024-04-23 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/raluca-costin-joins-seo-team/ - Categories: General News, SEO This week we welcome another addition to the Found ranks,  Raluca Costin. Raluca has just moved from Nottingham to join Found in the role of Senior SEO Executive. As a passionate SEO'er she tells us she naturally aspires to become Matt Cutt's best friend. Raluca has a natural flair for foreign languages and proven SEO skills. Raluca has most recently worked for an international Internet marketing company where she was head of the search engine optimization department, implementing strategies in a multitude of foreign languages. The Found Grill What’s your background? I was initially a foreign languages graduate and worked as a certified translator and interpreter until I discovered the world of SEO and completely fell in love with it! I then returned to university to study for a Master's Degree in IT and international management, during that time I also taught myself SEO. Who was to know that a couple of years later I would be heading the SEO department of an international online marketing agency! What would you name the next Google update?   Koala - not a scary update, but will turn things 'upside-down'. What will you bring to the team? I'm a good team player with huge ambition and passion for SEO and PPC. Favourite Quote? "Wasting all my time with stupid things that only get me down" - Pulp What makes you laugh? Normally a good joke :) High Five or Handshake? Handshake. Subway or Salad? Salad. Pint or Prosecco? Definitely Prosecco. What’s your karaoke song? I can't sing a note so karaoke is something I have to avoid. Music classes in school brings back horrible memories! Cadburys or Galaxy? Lindt! Where would you go if you had a time machine? Garden of Eden. Describe your ideal Sunday. Coffee and lunch on a sunny terrace... in France! What are you looking forward to the most at Found? Working on some fabulous client accounts, learning from experts and a massage session! :) --- ### The Way the Cookie Crumbled – No Need for Site Owners to Grumble? > On a weekend when most of the UK was scorching hot without a cloud in the sky, the EU cookie law deadline came and passed. - Published: 2012-06-15 - Modified: 2024-04-07 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-way-cookie-crumbled-no-need-site-owners-grumble/ - Categories: Analytics, Data, Opinion The Way the Cookie Crumbles On a weekend when most of the UK was scorching hot without a cloud in the sky, the EU cookie law deadline came and passed. The BBC reported it on the radio in the morning and for many the park picnic had to wait. I found myself surfing around different publisher websites reading pretty much the same sentence over and over again in many different shape and size boxes. On the eve of the regulation coming in to force a dramatic late twist left most web site owners able to sleep easy. With not quite as much drama as a Champions League final penalty shoot-out, but as far as EU cookie law goes pretty exciting stuff, the ICO made a late amendment to its guidelines. Implied consent was now in the ICO's own words ‘certainly a valid form of consent’ which definitely came as a relief to many. Some of the big website owners had shown their hand already, BT. com being a good example, and many people had hoped that this style of implied consent solution would be enough. Our own testing of an implied consent solution found it to be far less damaging to analytics and tracking than the prior consent solutions we also tested. The problems with 'prior consent' cookie solutions The above graphs show three different prior consent solutions being tested. The green showing the number of consents, the red the number of those not wanting cookies, and the orange is those that did not get drawn into a decision at all. We trialled three styles, each with the same messaging, a pop up style, a header drop down style and a footer drop up style, the bottom graph showing the total actions across all three styles. As you can see orange (no decision) dominates the above pie charts. The left hand pie refers to the pop-up style notification, which greyed the site behind whilst it was shown and had no obvious way to dismiss it. Almost forcing a yes or no on allowing cookies. With this style we obtained a better rate of engagement but even here users found a way to by-pass making a decision (in this case clicking outside the window). Different messaging didn't make a very noticeable difference, certainly not a big enough one to give us a prior consent solution we could realistically run with. Don't make me make a decision The bottom line seemed to be that website users, regardless of how you presented the information to them, overwhelmingly chose to avoid making any choice on cookies. They instead preferred to carry on regardless, closing the box or where that wasn't possible continuing, despite their experience being impaired by a cookie information panel. This lack of interaction from the user really surprised me. We could see from analytics that these same group of users were clearly capable of operating sophisticated filter panels when shopping, or able to navigate to the least accessible parts of a... --- ### Are you a data-hater or an infographic freak? > Some have been suffering from infographic overload recently, but I am no data-hater, I am an infograph-freak. Resources, ideas and examples. - Published: 2012-06-06 - Modified: 2024-06-05 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/are-you-a-data-hater-or-an-infrographic-freak/ - Categories: SEO I don't know about you, but I've had a recent budding obsession with all things 'Infographic'. It floats my boat that even some of the more mundane facts and topics can become Infographic-tastic. If this phenomenon has passed you by and you are wondering, “What is this Infographic thing she is talking about? ”- Here is a definition you will find on Wikipedia: Information graphics or infographics are graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge. These graphics present complex information quickly and clearly, such as in signs, maps, journalism, technical writing, and education. With an information graphic, computer scientists, mathematicians, and statisticians develop and communicate concepts using a single symbol to process information. You see... you did probably already know as they've been around for a while.   They are the things that the news, newspapers and magazines do so well, with teams of data scientists working through reams of data.   You could say that an Infographic in a primitive form is what you would draw on a back of a napkin to explain to someone numbers, technical titbits and to make comparisons. Here is an ‘Infographic of Infographics’ (try saying this fast - 5 times in a row... ! ) which looks at some visual devices, elements and trends in today’s infographics: The Guardian has been leading the way with their ‘DATABLOG’, which takes things further by making Inforgraphics interactive. One example that updated in real-time was the Greek election results map, which was being updated as more results were coming in by the minute. You can also download the data used in their Infographic – nifty! With recent developments in User Experience like CSS 3D, which transforms web elements into cool, 3D graphics, the possibilities for the future are exciting. It’s a win-win for businesses and customers and makes the web much more interesting and interactive than a text-only experience can provide. Being straight to the point, detailed, and insightful means that it is easier to grasp what the statistics really mean. You can’t deny that web users with their diminishing attention spans will be drawn to these visually pleasing, cleanly presented, factually interesting, relevant and well displayed information nuggets. All of this also has the added benefit that people love to share these data visualisations using social media. Businesses can keep things topical on their websites, in social media or on their blog, by producing well-timed infographics that are far more likely to be shared and means more people visiting the site, sharing important information, as well as more new visitors! I hope this has whet your appetite and, of course, in celebration of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee last weekend let me leave you with a lovely Infographic created for Dartington Crystal. Infographic Resources: If you want to have a go yourself here are a couple of sites that will keep you entertained for hours and some other useful resources: https://www. infogr. am/ https://www. tiki-toki. com/ Google public data – lets you easily take public data... --- ### Found Welcomes: Nikhil Sharma to the SEO Team > This week, Nikhil Sharma has joined Found's SEO team as an SEO Intern. Nikhil runs his own underground hip-hop blog. - Published: 2012-05-31 - Modified: 2024-04-23 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-welcomes-nikhil-sharma-to-seo-team/ - Categories: General News We are pleased to announce that Nikhil Sharma has joined the team this week as an SEO & Social Intern. He will be with us for 3 months and will learn the ins and outs of SEO & Social media by doing some hands-on work. Nikhil has Just finished studying a Computing and Information systems degree, and is a keen blogger and writer. We have asked Nikhil some questions below to get to know him better: What Interests You Most About SEO? How it can be done and how to keep up with Google updating algorithms. What will you bring to the team? Hopefully a hard-working team member and some knowledge about Underground Hip-Hop, as well as any random facts I come up with. Red Sauce, Brown Sauce or no Sauce at all? Red Sauce What is your favourite sport to watch or play? Basketball Friday Burger or Friday Gym? Friday Gym. Claim to Fame? I was featured on a BBC World Service podcast – for Chinese students learning English. Also been able to Interview some Hip-Hop heavyweights for my blog. Where would you go if you had a time machine? Back to my first year of Uni. Describe Your Ideal Sunday. Going to a venue and hearing some undiscovered music. Do you have a trademark party trick? Unfortunately no Favourite Tipple? Kopparberg Pear Cider Favourite Karaoke Song? “She’s Fresh” – Kool and the Gang. What is Your Hidden Talent? I'm a good writer. Nikhil also had this to say, "What excites about working with Found is to work with a motivated and enthusiastic team with the chance to enhance and expand my SEO skills. " --- ### CSS3 3D Transforms – The future of User experience? > It is possible to display and transform web elements three-dimensionally using an extension called CSS 3D Transforms. - Published: 2012-05-30 - Modified: 2024-05-02 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/css3-3d-transforms-the-future-of-user-experience/ - Categories: Consumer Behaviour, CRO, Opinion Back in 2009 an extension to CSS was pushed forward from the WebKit development team. Using CSS it became possible to display and transform web elements three-dimensionally. This extension was appropriately called 3D Transforms. At the time of its release, browser compatibility for this technology was very limited, but great advancements have been made since. Starting with compatibility in only Safari for Mac and iOS, support followed for Chrome in August 2010 and from early this year compatibility in Firefox 10, which was released in January 2012. Like with a number of their other technologies Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is slightly behind, being the last of the most popular browsers to incorporate CSS3 3D Transforms. Don’t be fooled by how shiny and contemporary IE9 is portrayed in its recent TV ads, it still isn’t CSS3 3D Transforms compatible. This being said IE10 aims to be compatible and can be tested by downloading preview releases here. Note: To view the examples below you will need to have a web browser which supports CSS 3D Transforms. That is currently Safari, Chrome, Firefox 10 and IE10 Platform Preview. User Experience If you look about the web you can find many examples of 3D transforms. Many of these trigger into action as a result of user input, usually a click or mouse over. For example, below is a familiar Call-to-action button similar to those found on millions of websites. However, in this example I've made the button has the ability to transform three-dimensionally, but will only initiate this function once a user’s mouse hovers over it. This introduction of an animation can be used as an added way of drawing attention to a button and its function as the user passes over it whilst scanning the page. In my opinion for the best results this feature could work alongside the common use of bright colourful buttons with large text to draw the user’s eye and should not be seen as a replacement for these standard buttons. In the case that the trigger for these to function is hovering over the CTA, what does this mean for smart phone and tablet users? As we know, touch screen users do not have the ability to hover like a mouse user can. First thoughts are that this experience would be missed. However, due to the way this example has been written, users on a tablet such as an iPad can touch the button, see the animation and then touch again to be taken through to the URL destination. This is one way of handling the missing hover function on a tablet; you can find other examples on the web. 3D Transform – Future implementation Aside from using CSS 3D Transform to improve your click through rate, it can be used to aid animated design. In recent years we have seen a great rise in the number of info-graphics due to their ability to offload and breakdown data in a neat and visually pleasing way. As an extension to... --- ### Wordpress and Magento contact forms just got clever thanks to FoundLabs > Contact Form Analytics is a simple wordpress plugin that collects information from your Google Analytics cookies & adds it to the emails. - Published: 2012-05-24 - Modified: 2024-04-23 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/wordpress-magento-contact-forms-just-got-clever/ - Categories: General News Ok so you’ve launched your website, the next step is to make your presence known on the web.    Sometimes this means paying to be seen, so it's only natural you would like to find out what works and how people land on your site.   At Found, as part of our FoundLabs project, we have created a Contact Form Analytics plugin so you will never have to wonder how people have found you again! What is it? Contact Form Analytics is a simple but clever piece of software that collects information from your Google Analytics’ cookies and adds it to the emails sent after forms are filled on your site. This provides insight into what brought visitors to your website, such as a PPC or mobile marketing campaign.  As a pre-requisite, you need to have Google Analytics code installed on your website in order for the plugin to run. Why use it? If you’re using Google Analytics goal tracking to record contact form submissions, you can simply see how many leads each source generates. However, since Google doesn't collect identifiable information about users, you can't tell which leads came from which source. With this plugin, you can get a much better picture of where your most valuable leads are coming from, and therefore optimise your online marketing channels more effectively.   We've developed plugins for two content management systems popular with our clients, WordPress and Magento. WP version - Contact Form 7 Analytics Plugin for WordPress As the title suggests, this plugin is an addition to the popular Wordpress plugin  Contact Form 7 . How the plugin works I love the flexibility of the CF7 plugin and the fact that it comes with an API.   This made it possible to implement an elegant solution for our Analytics addition in the form of a  shortcode to your contact form builder (by using the hooks made available by CF7). By using the shortcode, key information from Google Analytics will be included in the email that the form submission generates.   The implementation is seamless - users used to using CF7 shortcodes to generate their form fields will find the shortcode familiar and easy to use. How to  install it Download and extract Contact Form 7 Analytics from Found zip file to the plugins folder. Verify that you see the contact-form-7-found folder inside the plugins folder. Activate it through the plugin management screen. A new shortcode will be available in the Contact Form 7 builder interface. Add the shortcode to your form and to the emails you set up for your site. The Magento Extension - Contact Form Analytics for Magneto Recognising that traffic source and PPC insight are very valuable to merchants, a version of the plugin for the most popular ecommerce platform seemed like the next logical step.   The Magento extension simply extends the contact form functionality and appends the analytics code to the email message. The analytics code is generated by the module's model, which makes it flexible in the... --- ### Found Welcomes: Giovanni Di Cosmo > Gio has a wealth of PPC knowledge under his belt and has joined the Found account management team as Account Executive. - Published: 2012-05-18 - Modified: 2012-05-18 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-welcomes-giovanni-di-cosmo/ - Categories: General News This week Found are pleased to introduce Giovanni Di Cosmo who joins the Account Management team as Account Executive. Gio has a wealth of PPC knowledge under his belt and has moved all the way from Manchester to join the team! The Found Grill What’s your background? English and French lit graduate (though I always struggled to finish reading the books), with experience in Affiliate marketing and running PPC campaigns. First exposed to the world of Online with MyVoucherCodes. co. uk, as their French go-to for CodesPromotion. fr. I don’t have any French in my blood, however, as far as I know. What will you bring to the team? A bad laugh, stories of my mishaps and misadventures from the preceding weekend, and maybe the odd bit of “special dietary needs” baking. What are you looking forward to the most? Working with a load of switched-on and motivated marketers. I’m the first to admit that I do my best work when inspired by those around me. What’s your super power? Staying out from Friday night until Monday morning with only a few strategic Americanos to power me through. Favourite Food? Haribo Maoam Favourite Tipple? I don’t drink, so something along the lines of a Virgin Mojito! Describe your ideal Sunday... Long lie-in followed by a gym sesh and a nice lunch, before joining an afternoon after party. Where would you go if you had a time machine? Wherever I’ll be in 50 years’ time. I want to see how worse for the wear I’ll look! What’s your karaoke song? Flashdance, “What a Feeling”. What is the best thing since sliced bread? Gluten-free sliced bread! --- ### Found wins three at this years Performance Marketing Awards > We scooped 3 awards for our work with Flybe and the Post Office, along with Pete Newman taking home the Hotshot Rising Star award. - Published: 2012-05-16 - Modified: 2012-05-16 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-wins-three-at-this-years-performance-marketing-awards/ - Categories: General News Found had another amazing night at the Performance Marketing Awards, scooping 3 awards for our work with Flybe and the Post Office, along with our very own Pete Newman taking home the Hotshot Rising Star award.   We love attending these awards – they are so much fun, so well organised and so entertaining. The host, Miles Jupp, held the crowd with his deadpan mocking and the food was some of the best we’ve ever eaten at awards ceremonies! We beat a clutch of other high profile contenders to win Best Search Campaign for our ‘Magic Broad Match’ work for Flybe, Best in Finance Publisher for our Post Office partnership and received a high commendation for our work with Handpicked Hotels in the Travel & Leisure Publisher category.   We were delighted to see Pete, who at just 25 was appointed Found’s Partnerships Director late last year, walk away with the highly-prestigious Hotshot Rising Star Award, beating an impressive collection of some of the other brightest and most innovative minds in the industry. As a team that lives and breathes Performance Marketing, the success of last night is a brilliant thumbs-up from the industry to all of the hard work and dedication from the Found team.    We certainly made the most of the evening and had a cracking time, especially when the after show party truly kicked into action with Rockaoke – giving everyone a chance to be a pop star for 5 minutes. Brilliant, brilliant fun.   Bring on next year! --- ### The Relentless March of Google's Penguin > April was a busy month for SEO’s as Google continued with its relentless pace of change in 2012 with the release of the 'Penguin’ algorithm update. - Published: 2012-05-15 - Modified: 2012-05-15 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/relentless-march-of-googles-penguin-and-panda-updates/ - Categories: SEO April was a busy month for SEO’s as Google continued with its relentless pace of change in 2012 with the release of the 'Penguin’ who has terrorised many sites over the last month. This has been on the cards for a while, especially after well-publicised de-indexing of blog Link networks, such as buildmyrank. It has been expected for a long time that sites will be penalised by Google more harshly if they do not comply with their famous webmaster guidelines, especially after many seemed to be getting away with it. Affiliate Niche Sites with Exact Match Domains at Risk? I have spoken to some digital marketers over the last few weeks that have niche affiliate sites that have had issues. They had problems where their site had an exact match domain matched to the target keyword. When I analysed the link profile, they had a high amount of exact match anchor text links pointing to domain. You cannot honestly call 'brown wedge shoes' a brand term, for example. They did have some authentic user interaction and social shares, but not enough to outweigh the spam signals caused by these links. It is now more difficult to get any success with affiliate mini-sites aimed at one product and keyword from now on. Many of these sites have a short lifespan anyway, as often demand tails off as the product reaches the end of its lifecycle. Even some sites that were helped by Panda were hurt by Penguin. The graph below shows a case where traffic for the exact match term for the domain has actually increased over the last few months. This could be a combination of a cleaner link profile or better content system than competitors in this area. The Rise of Negative SEO There has been an increased buzz around negative SEO this year, but even more so in the last month. Rand Fishkin offered a negative SEO challenge on his own personal site and also Dan Thies was targeted, after Matt Cutts responded to his twitter message about link networks. The algorithm is not perfect and I am sure Google will continue to tweak Penguin over the coming year (much as they have done with Panda), but as mentioned in SEObook's excellent post, it’s probably wise not to annoy too many people! Future-Proofing - Can You Become Immune? Even for small businesses it is possible to make your brand stand out and make it stronger. It can be frustrating, especially in the early stages of building a brand. It can take some time to fight against overly spammy competitors, who do not provide any benefit to users – their only reason for existing to make a quick buck by selling links on their site to related businesses. These Google changes are a step in the right direction and will benefit those are prepared to go the distance and believe in their brand and business. Many of the larger, well-known brands I work with have seen a benefit from... --- ### Jay-Z's Got (Social) Game! > The rapper, businessman and entrepreneur, Jay-Z, has set conquering Social Games as his next business goal with the launch of Empire. - Published: 2012-04-30 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/jay-z-got-social-game/ - Categories: Social Media As if being one of the richest rappers in the world boasting a $460 million fortune and coming home to Beyonce every night isn’t enough; the rapper, businessman and entrepreneur, Jay-Z, has set conquering Social Games as his next business goal. This week the beta for his game ‘Empire’ launched. Inspired by the story of his own life and career, Facebook users get the opportunity to take the leap from “hustler, to entrepreneur, to business mogul”, all without leaving Facebook. According to Mashable, “Empire gives you points allowing you to move up life's ladder by visiting your mum, taking part in a rap battle, making a mixtape, or getting a job to pay for new bling. Once you've earned enough points, you can move out of housing projects and into the "hotspots of the rich and famous" in Manhattan.   "Make the right choices and the World belongs to you. ‘LIVE THE DREAM’, reads a prompt early in the game. ” So, why Social Gaming for Jay-Z? Social Gaming is without doubt the biggest buzz online and the newest addition in the world of gaming. The top Social Games on the market boast millions of users but, more notably, millions in monthly revenue. The attraction to Jay-Z will no doubt be the potential of using his status and influence by mass appeal to tap into the millions of dollars of revenue experienced by the other Social Gaming newcomers. The most important point to note, is the most successful players in the Social Games space are either totally new companies like Zynga or casual gaming companies like Popcap games or King. com which stands Jay-Z in good stead. Defining the Social Gaming market Social Games sometimes mean different things to different people. In the era of Social Networking, the term is most commonly associated with games that are played primarily on Social Networking sites or games that can be played with a person’s real world social graph. The primary platform on which these games are played is Facebook, due to its huge user numbers and the smart programming elements that enable programmes to be hosted within the Facebook environment. With over 845 million monthly active users, it is unrivalled in terms of popularity for website usage on the internet. According to ALLFacebook. com, 53% of these users play Facebook games. Because of this highly active userbase and a high percentage of users in “developed” countries, it represents a great opportunity to capture high numbers of monetised users. However, in the last year, the cost of acquiring users on Facebook has risen sharply. Adparlor estimates that purchasing installs can cost anywhere from $. 50 – $3 per install. Thus, launching a game on Facebook often requires heavy marketing investment to gain a large number of users. It can be valuable to take a look at the early life cycle of a Social Game to determine whether or not putting your game on Facebook is likely to be a success on its own merit... --- ### Google - Helping teachers to flip their classrooms > On Wednesday April 4th and Thursday 5th April 2012, Google held their second UK Google Teacher Academy in London. - Published: 2012-04-26 - Modified: 2012-04-26 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-helping-teachers-to-flip-their-classrooms/ - Categories: General News On Wednesday April 4th and Thursday 5th April 2012, Google held their second UK Google Teacher Academy in London, and I was lucky enough to have been selected as one of 50 educators from across the globe to attend. What is the Google Teacher Academy? The Google Teacher Academy is a free professional development experience designed to help primary and secondary educators from around the globe get the most from innovative technologies. Each Academy is an intensive event where participants get hands-on experience with Google's free products and other technologies, learn about innovative instructional strategies, receive resources to share with colleagues, and immerse themselves in an innovative corporate environment. How did you apply? As a secondary ICT Teacher in Dagenham, I constantly strive to improve the teaching and learning opportunities for my students. I consider myself to be a reflective practitioner, always looking at the way in which young people learn, questioning the current classroom techniques and practices and developing innovative ways that perhaps have not been employed before. This personal journey usually leans towards innovation in the classroom and effective use of technology. All our students are digital natives, who have lived in a world where the Internet has always existed. Access to information is instantaneous, and we are beginning to question what is it we are teaching and how we are teaching it. I use twitter to collaborate and share ideas with like minded teachers across the UK and the world, and it was in this forum that I first learnt that Google were accepting applications for this years Academy. There was a lengthy online application form to fill out and every applicant had to make a one minute video about 'Classroom Innovation' or 'Motivation and Learning'. Then it was a case of waiting for a verdict from Google, whilst trying not to watch other applicants entries on youtube. At the end of February I received an email from Google congratulating me on being selected, but I had no idea what I had signed up for. What happens at the Academy? Like Alice in Wonderland I had no idea what I had stumbled across before I attended the academy. Friends and colleagues keep asking me "What does it mean? " "What does it involve? " and I could only shrug my shoulders. On the first day I was introduced to 49 other educators from across the globe. Approximately 25 of us were from the UK, not all teachers, some worked in the education sector as advisors or developers. The other 25 were made up mostly of Americans, who explained to me that being a Google Certified Teacher in the US is an important and recognised professional development for any teacher. We were put into groups and attended sessions on Google Search, Google Docs, Google Sites, Google Calendars, Youtube for schools, Google Scripts, Google Maps, Google+ and Google Apps for Education. These sessions were fast paced all with an educational slant provided by a previous cohort of Google Certified Teachers.... --- ### Savvy search marketers win (and lose) from more Google match type changes > Whenever Google make a change to their PPC platform there is always talk within the industry that their intention is to increase ad clicks. - Published: 2012-04-23 - Modified: 2012-04-23 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/savvy-search-marketers-win-and-lose-from-more-google-match-type-changes/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) Whenever Google make a change to their PPC algorithms there is always talk within the industry that their intention is to ultimately increase the number of ad clicks as we see them climb the ladder to their 2016 $100 Billion revenue target. There will be gains for advertisers, but not all of them and not on every search space. Google announced this week that: “Phrase and exact match keywords will match close variants, including misspellings, singular/plural forms, stemmings, accents and abbreviations. ” In short, these match types will now match to more terms with very similar intent. “Based on our research and testing, we believe these changes will be broadly beneficial for users and advertisers. ” They will be extremely beneficial to some advertisers but not as beneficial to others, hence the use of the word, ‘broadly’. Google are making it easier to match to the terms it knows you are likely to want to show your ads on. Surely this is great news as less effort and expertise is needed for more coverage. Yet advanced Search Marketers will have known about these gaps in coverage for years as they worked around the previous limitations of these match types. Prior to becoming a digital marketing agency, Found operated successfully within the affiliate market. We fronted our own spend on the PPC space and had to work at to extremely tight margins. This led to us accumulating a huge amount of knowledge that is not widely known within the industry, knowledge that still gives us and our clients a great competitive advantage. One of the main strategies it led to was gap-spotting, along with a very granular approach to optimisation. If there were variations of keywords with commercial intent, and no other advertisers were on them, we would find them (and pay very little for it). With these new changes to Google’s matching algorithms, more competing advertisers are now going to appear in these gaps. However, they will still not win across the board. With the new settings allowing your exact and phrase matches to appear on close variants; your paid search campaign will not reflect a true picture of the exact keywords that are working for you, their exact ROI and the exact bid to be allocated. It’s true they are likely to have similar ROIs, but from our experience similar is not good enough, you have to be exact and precise to squeeze every last drop out of your PPC. You have to understand the exact search terms your keywords you are matching on, in order to align the most relevant ad-text. By losing visibility of these terms you lose the capability to be rewarded by Google’s relevancy system and thus lower your CPCs. Here is an easy PPC example, looking at just one part of the match type change to illustrate my point; plural versus singular keywords. Consider the two search terms “stomach ache” and “stomach aches”. If an advertiser only has one of these within their campaign... --- ### Why We Need an Over-Monopolisation Penalty for Google > I want to point out that the so called over-optimisation is not the main problem we face as Google users today. It's just a smokescreen. - Published: 2012-04-20 - Modified: 2024-04-23 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/why-we-need-an-over-monopolisation-penalty-for-google/ - Categories: SEO Lately Google spokesperson Matt Cutts has been scaring website owners and business people all over the world with an so called "over-optimisation" update for too much SEO. I have written about this upcoming update already elsewhere. Here I want to point out that the so called over-optimisation is not the main problem we face as Google users today. It's just a smokescreen to hide the real issue: The Google monopoly. In most countries worldwide Google dominates the search market by an overwhelming margin. As most people use Google to inform themselves about anything and everything Google effectively controls the access the the global information. Only a few countries like China or Russia have been able to sustain a Google competitor. In the UK, France or Germany Google has more than 90 or even 95% of the search market under their control. To be on Google or not to be You don't exist on Google you don't exist on the Web. It's that simple by now for most of us. Not even thousands of Facebook friends can bring you the targeted traffic that search engines offer or used to as now there is basically only one of them. There are other ones but people apparently choose to use Google instead. No problem. Everybody is happy aren't they? No. Google is under heightened anti-trust scrutiny both in the US and the EU for more than a year by now. One of the most often raised concerns by their competitors is that Google favors their own properties in search results. You can test yourself. Indeed I did on Google. com - Many advanced users throughout the world use Google. com in order to get untainted English language results and not just the local sites. Google localises search results so that UK search users get results from Great Britain, Canadians from Canada, Australians from Australia etc. Searching Google to find Google So when testing these search queries you might find different sites than I do especially in case you use a local Google version like Google. co. uk. Nonetheless I'd like to show you what I find when I search Google. com for images - Google Images maps - Google Maps videos - Google Videos news - Google News shopping - Google Product Search blogs - Google Blog Search books - Google Blogs So you see what I find on top of each of those search results: Google's own properties. I also want to stress what I do not find on #1 or sometimes not even in the top 10. When I search for images I'd expect Flickr, the Yahoo owned image community somewhere on top. Flickr is not even in the top 10. Does Google favors search in search results then? Let's see, when I search for blogs I'd expect the Technorati blog search engine somewhere on top then. They are at #5 here. Remember that the number one in Google's search results get approx. 40% of all clicks while number 7 may... --- ### Should Your Business be on Pinterest? > Whether they know what it is or not, almost everybody has heard about Pinterest — The social network with real visual appeal! - Published: 2012-04-18 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/should-your-business-be-on-pinterest/ - Categories: Social Media Whether they know what it is or not, almost everybody has heard about Pinterest — The social network with real visual appeal! It's a pinboard-style social image sharing website that allows users to create and manage theme-based image boards that take the typical form of "interests", "things I love" and more often than I care to think about, boards filled with pictures of cute and fluffy animals. Pinterest is based on users using pinboards for inspiration, be that for wedding planning, re-decorating a room in your house or the next pair of sneakers you're looking to buy. Pinterest literally has it all. Brilliant integration with the two social media powerhouses Facebook and Twitter, ensures that people will be 're-pinning' images for a long time based on the rapid and strong growth of a real community. What makes it so Pinteresting for marketers? •  More than one-fifth of Facebook-connected users are on Pinterest daily (via Mashable) •  In the U. K. , the majority of Pinterest users are male (via Ragan. com) •  Pinterest accounts for 3. 6 percent of referral traffic (via PR Daily) •  Pinterest has 10. 4 million registered users (via AppData) •  Estimated unique visitors to Pinterest. com increased by 429 percent from September to December 2011 (via Monetate) •  The average Pinterest user spends 98 minutes per month on the site, compared to 2. 5 hours on Tumblr, and seven hours on     Facebook. (comScore, via TechCrunch) This new social media hot spot is an attractive proposition for businesses who want to get the word out about their products, but how do you know if Pinterest is right for your business? A fantastic infographic from the guys at Intuit gives a simple decision tree to help you make that decision. --- ### New Google+ interface apes Facebook and Twitter (Again) > This week, Google released a new interface for Google+, and it seems to borrow heavily from existing social platforms. - Published: 2012-04-13 - Modified: 2024-05-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/new-google-interface-apes-facebook-and-twitter/ - Categories: SEO, Social Media This week, Google released a new interface for Google+. It seems to make sense for Google to make such drastic changes early in the products life. Usually, early adopters can adapt better and test features more than the casual users who have been famously absent from the social network. Well, if you can't beat them, copy them! What the hell - I had just got used to the current interface! The main changes are the new side navigation, which is totally customisable. A neat feature, even if it did take several minutes of expletives before I discovered that my pages were hidden under the 'more' part at the bottom of this side menu. I apologise to new desk-pod recruit Kristina for the amount of profanity caused by Google+ this week. Other Changes highlight visual content such as video and images on the timeline, and there is also a dedicated page for hangouts. Other features have been created by coining the terms 'activity drawer' and conversation 'cards', which I doubt will enter the lexicon of any digital marketers anytime soon. An uncanny resemblance to well known Social Networks Now we all know that Google+ has taken inspiration from both Twitter and Facebook (well, apart from the regular users), but several of the latest changes look very familiar. The first and most obvious of these is very similar to the recent Facebook banner headline image. Google+ now allows you to choose between a wide screen image from your uploaded photos or 5 different images to display at the top of your profile. The difference is shown below; and you can clearly see that the profile image is larger than in Facebook, and on the opposite side. To me it looks like Google has copied Facebook, edited a few items, and have ended up with a bizarro world Facebook. OK - So what about Twitter?   To put it simply - Google+ now shows trending topics and hashtags very prominently. An obvious benefit of this is that it is already familiar with twitter users. One thing that is interesting here, is that the way Twitter tries to keep things simple is at odds with the ever evolving G+ method. Pretty much everyone understands how twitter works, even if I do hear some very strange stories about lack of understanding. Whenever Facebook make the slightest change people seem to go crazy, like they expect it to stay the same forever.  For me, it is one of the best and also the most frustrating things about twitter - you usually need to use apps, tools and other things to bolt onto it. As you can see Bieber fever is skewing the results, so there are plenty of wrinkles to iron out, such as banning pop stars from my trending topics. It seems that many people will then comment on the lameness of trending topics, thus making it worse. It is a viscous circle that Google need to make their highest priority. If Content is King, What does that say about... --- ### Olympic preparation for your PPC campaign > To produce a winning performance in a paid search campaign, you need the same determination and Meticulous planning of an Olympic athlete. - Published: 2012-04-12 - Modified: 2024-04-23 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/olympic-preparation-for-your-ppc-campaign/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) An extra special summer of sport is just around the corner with the European football championships followed by the much anticipated London Olympics and Paralympics.   Organisers, coaches and athletes alike are clamouring to be fully prepared to perform at the highest level in what could be their career defining moment. Meticulous planning, state of the art technology and years of knowledge are combined to produce a winning performance and the same kind of preparation is needed to create a PPC campaign. At Found we have years of experience in launching new campaigns, which has given us the opportunity to test and refine new tools, enhance our knowledge in many fields and give our clients that crucial head start for their business.   Here are our top three tips for preparing the winning formula for a paid search campaign. 1. Research – Every campaign requires keyword research, but it doesn’t end there. Competitor research is vital to not only see who you’re up against in the space, but what they have to offer. If a rival company is advertising a product or service at a more expensive rate, there’s your opportunity to prepare ads with the better price in. Or, vice versa, if they have a more competitive price, tailor your ads to focus on the key selling point of your product, for example: free delivery or three nights for the price of two. 2. Structure – The foundation of your campaign comes from its structure and if you get the initial set up right everything else will fall in to place – get it wrong and you could create more work in the long run. Tightly themed campaigns broken down with brand, brand plus generic and generics all separated. Make them as granular as possible with ad groups broken down by match type where possible, and never throw thousands of keywords in to one ad group. Negative matching terms from your exact match ad group in your broad match ad group will enable you to easily mine new keywords from search term reports and also help you secure maximum CTRs. Always use site links and organize your negative keywords in to negative Keyword lists which can be quickly added to new campaigns. Break out devices into separate campaigns; mobile and tablet perform differently to desktop, and even go one further by breaking mobile down by carrier or operating system. 3. Tools – There are many free tools out there to help you create those all-important keyword lists. If you’re not utilizing any of the following the chances are you’re losing valuable time in your pursuit for PPC perfection: Google Keyword Tool Google Insights for search Double Click Ad Planner Google Correlate MSN Excel Intelligence Tool Broad Match Modifier Keyword Combination Generator Keyword Typo Generator So that’s it, you’ve done all the hard work, the blood, sweat and tears have fallen and now you’re at the start line ready to enter the race for gold. --- ### 5 Great Time-Saving Excel Tips (you may not know about) > Microsoft Excel. Love it or hate it, but chances are if you’re in this industry of ours, it plays an integral part in your daily routine. - Published: 2012-04-04 - Modified: 2024-05-07 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/5-great-time-saving-excel-tips-you-may-not-know-about/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) Microsoft Excel. Love it or hate it, but chances are if you’re in this digital marketing industry of ours, it plays an integral part in your daily working routine. Indeed, if you’re anything like me (and I sit firmly in the love category by the way) you spend an enormous % of your day working with it in some capacity or another. With this in mind, I’ve decided to present some small tips and tricks that I’ve picked up over the years that may just save your life! (Well, at least save you a lot of time and effort in the long-run. . ) Before we delve into these life saving tips, I ought to mention that if you're a more advanced user you may enjoy Found's latest Excel cheat sheet with 43 useful formulas and a series of powerful macros thrown in for good measure. It's aimed at digital marketers but there's plenty there for anyone. Now, back to our top tips. . 1. Multiple Insert / Multiple Delete This first point is a classic example of a tiny tip saving a huge amount of time. I won’t name names, but a few months back I stumbled across a colleague who asked me if there was a quick way to insert many rows in his worksheet. He had already populated his worksheet with a lot of data, but found that he wanted to clear a big space in the middle of it (about 100 rows). So his approach was to add in single rows... 100 times over! So the way in which he was doing this was to right click on the numbers down the left-hand side, and then clicking on ‘insert’. One row will appear in-between. Useful, yes, but not for mass amounts of rows. In order to insert multiple rows, you have several options: a)      Highlight (drag your mouse) over many of these numbers, then right click, then ‘insert’. b)      Highlight a range of rows in your table, right click, ‘insert’, then ‘shift cells down’. The first option will add the rows across the whole worksheet, whereas the second option will just do it for that table. Why not try it at home now? Best used: When you want to add or delete lots of data from the middle of a worksheet. 2. Open Excel on two screens at once If you’re a smug media-type like me, you may make use of multiple screens at once – casually checking twitter trends on one screen whilst triumphantly SUMIF’ing on the other. But what if you want to compare two Excel sheets at once, and constantly switching sheets on one monitor is really starting to do your head in? Well fear not, for there is a way! Essentially all you need to do is open Excel again (I know, easy right? ). Chances are if you have multiple Excel sheets open at the same time, they’re all bound to the same instance of the program, so when you switch between them they... --- ### Discover Problems with your Site with our FREE Online SEO Audit Tool > Free online SEO Audit Tool - Check technical site Implementation including canonicalisation, Meta data & also view inbound link Information. - Published: 2012-03-30 - Modified: 2024-06-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/free-online-seo-audit-tool/ - Categories: SEO We are very pleased to announce the beta release of Found's SEO Tool. This free tool will provide you with an initial snapshot of what is, and what isn't, working on your website. This will ensure you are in prime position to make the right decisions to feature ahead of the competition in search listings. The goal of this project was to produce a useful tool that allows you to enter a URL and receive an instant automated SEO audit of your site, with an overall score and advice on how to improve it, without incurring any cost. The data returned can act as a starting point and quickly alert you to some key issues that may need to be looked at.   Whilst this beta version the tool does not complete a full audit, nor can it be expected to replace human checks by a seasoned SEO’er, we believe it is currently at a stage where it provides extremely useful pointers. The Tool has 3 Main Parts: • Technical issues, such as domain canonicalisation & XML sitemaps • Content issues, such as keywords found on the page and in meta data • External link analysis The tool will indicate whether the task is successful, if there is an error or just provides a warning. This ‘traffic light’ warning system is then displayed in the top left of the page. How to use the SEO Tool Step 1. Enter a domain into the box provided Step 2. Click go and wait for the checks to complete! * As the tool completes each task you will be displayed the results, and then it will scroll onto the next task. Full list of Tool Features • HTTP header check • Domain canonicalisation – checks for  duplicates of the homepage. This checks www and non-www versions and for multiple index files. This is probably one of my favourite features • Robots. txt check - checks existence and sitemap location • Sitemap check – checks for existence • On-page links analysis - summary, internal links and external links within HTML • Header check - checks H1 tags • Image analysis - checks for missing alt tags • Keywords analysis - checks density of keywords found • Metadata analysis - looks at title tags, description tags and keywords tag • SEOmoz URL metrics analysis - domain authority and total links • SEOmoz Links Analysis - checks for strongest links by page authority Foundlabs This tool is a direct result of Foundlabs, which is an internal system where staff can submit innovative ideas. All of these ideas are then considered by our Technical Director and his team to see how feasible they are. The idea for this tool was submitted by our Head of SEO & Social, Guy Donnelly, and I then worked with our amazing web development studio to see the tool through to completion. The team has done a fantastic job on this, with David taking on the coding lead and Dean presenting the information in a rather slick manner. A great team effort... --- ### Responsive Design to deliver resounding ROI > Responsive design is a relatively new concept in website creation and it was an approach I thought would be perfect for our new microsite. - Published: 2012-03-29 - Modified: 2024-04-07 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/responsive-design-to-deliver-resounding-roi/ - Categories: Creative, CRO WARNING: This article contains traces of Amazium! Responsive design is a relatively new concept in website creation and it was an approach I thought would be perfect for our new microsite for Warner Leisure Hotels (www. warnerukhotels. co. uk).   Rather than create multiple sites for multiple devices, I wanted to build a site that could easily adapt to the devices upon which it was being viewed.   Responsive Design was the perfect solution. So where to Start? Researching the best ways to make a Responsive website was the first place I started. There were 2 options: either create your own media queries from scratch or use a framework. When looking into Responsive frameworks it became apparent that this was the easiest and quickest way to do this.   I came across quite a few good frameworks such as; Less Framework, 320 and up, Mobile Boilerplate, Frameless Grid and Amazium. I decided that the best Framework for me to use was the Amazium framework, as it used the 960 grid system which I had designed the site in and it looked the easiest to integrate into a ModX website, and amazing it was! Many say that websites should be designed with Mobile in mind (some say 'Mobile First') so it was important that I had already designed the site for both mobiles and tablets, so I knew what the site would look like on these screen sizes. Amazium Framework The Amazium framework is based on the 960grid system with 12 columns. Each column has a unique class to give sections of a site the right width, depending on which device you are looking at it on. It's so easy to use -  so, say you wanted your site to have a left nav of 3 columns and the content area of 9 columns, the class for these would be: 'grid_3' & 'grid_9' and Amazium does the rest for you, as the media queries are already set up. You can change styles in the Amazium framework so it looks exactly how you want it to, but it is as easy as that!  Every element in this framework is adjustable from divs to forms to videos & images.   The media queries included are set up for; all browsers (over 960px), tabletportrait (728px), mobile landscape (420px) & mobile portrait (300px). This is an amazing framework and I will be using this on every project going forward - what a great new addition to any web designer’s toolbox! The Results 'The new Warner Leisure Hotels microsite works perfectly on all devices.   There were a few little issues along the way such as images being quite large in size (so they could be scaled nicely, especially for mobile) so they had to be compressed as much as possible, without looking pixelated. The Amazium styles weren't exactly as needed but a bit of tweaking got the site to look exactly as it should.   All in all, Amazium didn’t take too long to implement, was relatively easy to use and we now have a completely mobile friendly website. Since the launch of the new site with the Responsive layout we have seen a 21. 86% uplift in CTR, which is a great so we can show potential clients that making a site Responsive really is worth it!   --- ### Digital Marketing Opportunities in Australia > For this dual Aussie/Brit, it’s very satisfying to see the Australian market becoming increasingly fertile for a number of our UK clients. - Published: 2012-03-29 - Modified: 2012-03-29 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/digital-marketing-opportunities-in-australia/ - Categories: General News For this dual Aussie/Brit, it’s very satisfying to see the Australian market becoming increasingly fertile for a number of our UK clients. Econsultancy’s recent release of the State of Digital Marketing in Australia report highlighted Oz as a market that is making the UK sit up and take notice, and not without good reason. In the travel arena, Australian visitors have long been a high value market due to the sheer amount of time and monetary investment required for a European holiday. No point boarding that hellish flight for a short trip! And with a much stronger currency at their disposal these days, the Australian visitor is only increasing in importance. An interesting trend we have noted for one of our travel clients is the growing amount of bookings being driven from searches made by Australians via tablet devices. It certainly makes sense that a customer who can afford to consider a European jaunt for their holiday plans could be targeted on gadgets that are likely to be used by the more affluent. With heavy optimisation of this client’s activity towards tablet searches, these higher value customers are much easier to target, and booking revenue from Aussie customers is continuing to play an important and growing part of their overall revenue mix. A key trend we have noted in the retail market is the growing appetite of the Australian consumer for high end brands, particularly those which are difficult to source within Australia or which are more price competitive here in the UK. Again, the buying power of the Australian dollar (which has traded above parity with the US dollar in 2012) clearly has a crucial role to play in this trend, offering real opportunities for retailers who are able to offer luxury goods which may otherwise be in short supply in Australia. Delivery options in particular are crucial to enticing Australian customers to buy from UK retailers. In our experience, search campaigns featuring creative which highlights quick and reasonably priced or even free shipping to Australia are achieving considerably higher clickthrough rates and conversion; again something we could reasonably expect from a market located on the other side of the planet, but surprisingly something that few retailers seem to be taking into consideration when devising their promotional calendars. With one of our clients experiencing up to 30% higher average order values from Australia than the UK, it can be worth considering taking the hit on delivery charges in order to drive these larger basket sizes. As we continue to test and learn, there will no doubt be more stories to tell from our targeting of the land down under, but how about you? What has your experience been with the Oz market? We’d love to hear your feedback.   --- ### The History Of Social Media (1978-2012) > An infographic of the History of social media, from 1978 and the formation of the bulletin board system all the way to 2012. - Published: 2012-03-23 - Modified: 2012-03-23 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-history-of-social-media-1978-2012/ - Categories: Social Media (Source:  http://visual. ly/history-social-media-1978-2012) --- ### Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance Workshop > I had a chance to learn more about the experience of the search alliance in the US, best practices for the transition & to ask questions. - Published: 2012-03-12 - Modified: 2024-04-23 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/yahoo-and-microsoft-search-alliance-workshop/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) Last week I attended the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance Workshop at the fantastic Soho Hotel. This was a chance to learn more about the experience of the Alliance in the US, best practices for the transition and to ask questions from the account managers and Search Alliance team. Thanks to our brilliant Head of Operations here at Found we have the technical aspects of moving accounts and setting up Insertion Orders (IOs) covered. However it was interesting to hear some additional tips for a smooth transition as well as key concerns other advertisers had and I thought I’d share a few here: 1.    Budgets:There was some concern at the workshop over whether the creation of additional IOs would lead to overspending. The solution here is to ensure your budgets are well managed. In order to have the most control possible I would recommend setting daily spend budgets, especially in case of traffic and CPC increases. 2.    Monitor CPCs: Before the alliance took place in North America there were concerns that we would see a dramatic increase in CPCs. We were assured that despite a slight increase in CPCs, improvements in ROI more than made up for this. While this might be the case I would still be wary and monitor CPCs and ROI even more closely than usual following the transition. One space is often busier than there other and often there are certain advertisers that are only on one engine. These will now all be competing on the same space. For example, on the keyword there are nine advertisers on Bing:  On Yahoo! there are four advertisers that don’t appear on Bing:  These advertisers will now all be thrown together and the increased competition will increase CPCs and lower conversion rates. New tactics & re-optimisations will have to occur in order to maintain performance and continue growth on our campaigns. 3.    Keywords:Along with your Yahoo! Account Manager you should be transferring campaigns, ad groups and keywords not already in your AdCenter accounts over from Yahoo! . Now is a good time to review the accounts, expand keywords and think about importing any changes or new campaigns you have in your Google accounts in to AdCenter. As PPC Analysts it is inevitable, considering its dominance of the market, that most of our time is dedicated to managing our Google campaigns. However, with the Alliance we will now be able to spend less time managing two separate campaigns and invest more time optimising the one. While we will lose the granular ability to analyse each search engine separately I feel that the time saved will more than make up for this. On top of this, Microsoft seem to be taking this opportunity to make changes to AdCenter and the Desktop tool such as making it easier to make bulk changes, import from Google and target users meaning the time we do spend on these campaigns is used even more efficiently. Despite Yahoo! and Bing’s combined market share still being well... --- ### Found Welcomes - Kristina Grineva > This week Found welcomes to the team Kristina Grineva, who joins us as our fantastic new Account Manager. - Published: 2012-03-09 - Modified: 2012-03-09 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-welcomes-kristina-grineva/ - Categories: General News This week Found welcomes to the team Kristina Grineva, who joins us as our fantastic new Account Manager. Kristina has already settled in well with the team and is an amazing addition, sure to keep clients well looked after and the rest of us well fed (if the birthday cookies she brought in are anything to go by).   The Found Grill What’s your background? Russian spy... on the side I also have account management experience in  insurance and property development before spending the last 3 year in a web design agency. What will you bring to the team? Hard work, some good chat, happy vibes and my love of food! What are you looking forward to the most? Working with fantastic brands and striving for award winning campaigns while also eating lots of cake and having fun with the other Founders! What’s your super power? I could tell you but then I'd have to kill you... goes with the spy territory naturally. Favourite Food? Savoury muffins and scones. Favourite Tipple? A good g&t with loads of ice and fresh lime Describe your ideal Sunday... Columbia Road flower market (or any other great London Market), followed by proper coffee and antipodean brunch with friends and an afternoon movie on the projector at home. Where would you go if you had a time machine? Cleopatra's Egypt - a woman to rule a  kingdom and have men fall over her! What’s your karaoke song? Embarrassing as those are... 'I wanna dance with somebody' – a good old Whitney power ballad. What is the best thing since sliced bread? It's got to be an iPhone! --- ### Google ignores EU warning and implements privacy policy > Despite warnings that the change may violate European laws, Google has today implemented its new cross-service privacy policy. - Published: 2012-03-01 - Modified: 2012-03-01 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-ignores-eu-warning-and-implements-privacy-policy/ - Categories: SEO Despite warnings that the change may violate European laws over the use of data Google has today implemented its new cross-service privacy policy. For the past month the online advertising powerhouse has been informing service users of the forthcoming change on their sites. In an email message sent to users of gmail they described the change as “getting rid of over 60 different privacy policies across Google and replacing them with one that’s a lot shorter and easier to read”. The new worldwide policy also allows Google to share information the company has collected across its range of services from GMail to YouTube and Android phones. CNIL, the French equivalent of the Information Commissioner’s Office, has objected to the changes because it is “deeply concerned about the combination of personal data across services”. By continuing to use any of Google’s services from today surfers have given Google permission to use their data as outlined in the new policy. CNIL says the document is too complex to be understood even by “trained privacy professionals”. In reality however despite email prompts and popups from Google the proportion of normal service users who read the entire 2,200 word document is likely to be very slim as is the case for all privacy policies and software licence agreements. Whilst merging their privacy policies into a single document may well help both Google and users see exactly how data is used and check up on their compliance with data protection law, another real benefit to Google is that they can now use behavioural data collected in one product to effect another. An example alluded to by Google on their Privacy Policy site is that they would be better able to establish the intended meaning of a search query, so a user who watches Pink videos on YouTube is more likely to have results relating to the singer returned when they search on Google. co. uk. This should improve user experience and also enable Google to better target the advertising they display, increasing their revenue per user. As a user of many Google services, who most certainly hadn't read all their individual privacy policies, I assumed my data was already being used in this way. After all when I am logging into multiple services provided by the same company under a single account why shouldn’t they share information about my behaviour between these services. I currently don’t pay a penny to use any Google services and although advertising on YouTube has become more intrusive recently, viewing increasingly relevant and therefore useful advertising in exchange for receiving a suite of free services is a fair swap in my opinion. (google handcuffs image source: https://www. efytimes. com/admin/useradmin/photo/Google-Privacy-Policy-uppdate. jpg) --- ### Are You Keeping Up with Search? Google Announce 40 Algorithm updates in February Alone > It probably is not surprising how many algorithm changes Google make to search each month - I take a look at some recent changes. - Published: 2012-02-29 - Modified: 2024-04-23 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/keeping-up-with-search-algorithm-updates/ - Categories: SEO SEOs the world over breathed a sigh of relief as Google kicked off 2012 by announcing that they will offer a monthly blog update with details of the latest search algorithm changes. It was good to see Google responding to the feedback and popularity of their past announcements. Previously, Google mostly blogged about the large algorithmic changes, such as Panda and the Freshness updates of last year. All of this extra information is fantastic for search geeks such as myself and those in our Found SEO team. It gives us insight into the cutting edge changes in search and can explain possible performance increases or decreases as different signals affect the SERPs. Many recent algorithmic changes followed on from 2011’s Panda update, which penalised what were considered poor quality content farms. One of the updates in January 2012 focussed on looking at how some sites were far too top-heavy with their advertising, which was obtrusive and distracted from a useful user experience. This update could certainly hit content websites that rely on ads above the fold to generate revenue. This penalty may present an opportunity for brands to gain positions by creating high quality content themselves, as they do not exist purely on advertising revenue. The other major update in January was 'Google Search plus Your World'. I am sure Google's social search will continue to tweaked as Google gathers more data and feedback from users. Many of the 40 adjustments made for February are quite minor, with tweaks in many varied areas of search. As well as additions, Google also disables some query classifiers as they get outdated. Some of the areas highlighted by the recent changes are refinements to freshness rankings, rich snippets, image results, local results, and the usual specific language and country based improvements. I won’t go into details about the better triggering for 'Turkish weather search', but some of the following items caught my eye: • Signals for Spiking Topics This is interesting as this will affect breaking, popular news stories. Google have improved the speed in which these spiking topics are listed in search results. This change, along with the other improvements to freshness, confirms the fact that a new content strategy is essential for future growth of traffic levels. • Improved Local Results Local signals can now affect YouTube results plus there is better detection of a user’s city. • Spam Update and Link Evaluation Google are constantly refining how they evaluate links and what is classed as spam. • Site: Query Update This is always a useful query for SEO and should now show an improved diversity of results. It is essential for online brands to make sure they realise the effect of Google algorithm changes on their web properties, as Google have estimated they will make a whopping 500 adjustments this year alone! One of the jobs of an SEO Agency is to understand these algorithm updates. The next job is to analyse any effect (or future effects) to their clients... --- ### Rich Snippet Star Ratings – What is Acceptable? > Rich snippets have been becoming more prevalent in Google search results in the last year, but what should be deemed acceptable? - Published: 2012-02-28 - Modified: 2024-04-23 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/rich-snippet-star-ratings-what-is-acceptable/ - Categories: SEO Rich snippets, the name given to star ratings and other structured data which can appear on search results pages, have been becoming more prevalent in Google search results since the latter part of last year. The idea behind search engines displaying such data is to provide more in-depth information about the quality of search results to users. For example, recipe sites can use the tag to specify how long it should take to prepare and cook a certain dish, whilst film review sites can give their star rating of the film. A number of different formats of code markup exist which sites can use to present such relevant information about a particular webpage.  Schema. org is perhaps the most useful of these sets of standards since it outlines a set of tags which can be interpreted by many of the top global search engines.   When they were first introduced back in 2009 Google only displayed rich snippets for a very small subset of sites in their index as inclusion was slowly rolled out. Although the presence of supported structured markup tags on a webpage is no guarantee such data will display under a result, the past few months have seen rich snippets appearing more regularly. As Google appears to be more willing to display the data they contain, the adoption of the relevant tags has increased. There have been a host of case studies showing that the display of rich snippets on Search Engine Results Pages increases click-throughs on listings so it is inevitable that the temptation to add, at best, dubious microdata to webpages is too much for some people.   By default Google currently takes on-trust the information you provide on-page, so in theory you could markup all your products as being rated 5 stars and this rating would then be displayed to searchers. The combination of the easy to implement tags, potential big gains and an exceptionally blurry line as to exactly what behaviour with regards to these tags is acceptable has meant that some websites are choosing to ‘game’ the system either covertly or more transparently. A fortnight ago, for instance, the page ranking second in Google. co. uk for the highly competitive term “car insurance” belonged to an affiliate site which is certainly not a well-known brand. Under the site’s title a 5 star rating alongside the phrase “5 votes” appeared. At the time this was the only listing on the first page of results which showed a rich snippet ensuring that this result stood out from the others which, undoubtedly, would have helped the site attracted a greater number of clicks than it otherwise would.   Looking at Hitwise data for the proportion of clicks the site received from “car insurance” results pages it is apparent that a large jump occurred two weeks ago. Although Google states that they don’t “use markup for ranking purposes at this time” this doesn’t necessarily mean the presence of rich snippets will not help rankings at all. Rankings could be influenced... --- ### PPC Day-Parting Takes Campaigns Further > I have various strategies for setting keyword or ad group bids at the right level to maximise our clients’ revenue, and one is day-parting. - Published: 2012-02-22 - Modified: 2012-02-22 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/ppc-dayparting-to-take-campaigns-further-through-adwords/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) As a PPC Analyst at Found, I have various strategies for setting keyword or ad group bids at the right level to maximise our clients’ revenue. One of the more advanced elements of this bid strategy is to adjust bids by day of the week with different weightings. Why adjust PPC bids by day? Well, time and time again we’ve found that conversion rates and EPCs (Earnings Per Click) change by day of the week. These trends are usually repeated week on week. Most the time it’s not a huge variation, only by 10%* or so, however on very high volume campaigns it will be worth investigating these trends, as even a small percentage gain can make a big difference to ROI. Google AdWords allows percentage changes of bids by day of the week at Campaign level via the ad scheduling function found under the settings tab. It’s fairly simple within most paid search systems that extract data such as clicks, sales, revenue and EPC segmented by the day of the week. We suggest that you select a period without anomalies that might distort the conversion rate for any particular day of the week. For example, a last minute rush on the last day of a sale may result in a higher conversion rate for that day than usual. Below are two examples of conversion data segmented by day of the week, and a line graph which corresponds to the data  gathered. Example 1: Online Retailer The above table and graph shows a clear drop in conversion on Saturday. I wouldn’t focus on the dip on Tuesday. The interesting trend found in this data set is the peak on Friday, followed by a large decline on the Saturday. This would seem a realistic trend, with a last minute rush occurring on Friday for various events on the weekend. The lack of delivery on Sunday probably results in a drop conversion rate on Saturday as people are much more likely to opt to use high street shops. Example 2: Travel Sector This example shows a substantial difference in conversion rate from the peak to the trough. If coupled with high traffic, this is likely affect the ROI of an account, with a downward trend throughout the week. How do you take advantage of these swings in conversion rate? Well, first of all you calculate the overall conversion rate. . For the above data this is 2. 05%. Once you have this figure, you calculate the percentage difference each day from this mean conversion rate. Again, once you have worked out the recommended percentage multiplier you can interpret it, and perhaps action campaign changes by optimising budgets or bids for the most important days.   There are other factors to consider though, one of these being where your clicks interact on the conversion funnel. Now a word of warning; although trends may be apparent, it can be random noise. If you are assigning conversions by the last click, you may under estimate... --- ### AVALANCHE DANGER! Modified Broad Match > Google’s been under pressure lately. Q4 results missing forecast, Facebook filing their IPO; it’s getting hotter in the kitchen. - Published: 2012-02-20 - Modified: 2012-02-20 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/avalanche-danger-modified-broad-match/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) Google’s been under pressure lately.  Q4 results missing forecast, Facebook filing their IPO; it’s getting hotter in the kitchen. Maybe that’s why we’re seeing such suspicious search terms in some of our accounts. Every good PPC’er should be using modified broad match to soak up all the relevant clicks you don’t reach with exact and phrase match. Sure, there are situations when broad match is a good idea. But if you want to avoid the mind boggling search queries that often show with barely any relevance, you are better off sticking to modified broad. Or so we thought. Lately we’ve been getting avalanched on some of our modified broad keywords (okay I know I'm over reacting! I just liked that picture and couldn’t think of a catchy title okay! ). It seems Google has been loosening up its algorithm in order to improve its financials, and taking less experienced PPC’ers lunch money in the process. One of the ways Google recommend using modified broad is a kind of mixture of broad and modified broad match. So for example the keyword ‘formal +shoes’ would match to the following: - smart shoes - dress shoe - shoess for work As you can see the ‘+shoes’ will always match to abbreviations, acronyms, synonyms, misspellings and singular/plurals of shoes. However, by not including the + modifier on ‘formal’, this allows Google to use its formidable algorithm to match to synonyms of ‘formal’. This is a great way to gain lots of additional relevant traffic, in theory. The problem is, lately in some of our accounts with higher CPC bids we are seeing search queries that are essentially full broad matches. Here’s an example of the kind of thing we are seeing: The keyword ‘ +green hat’ shows for searches like: - green - gren - greens This means Google is ignoring the word that is on pure broad match and will just implement modified broad match around the modified broad word. I mean how relevant is just the word ‘green’ to ‘green hats’ anyway? You’d have to really love the colour green to be convinced to buy a green hat when you searched for the colour green! This brings us back to the dilemma of thousands of untargeted searches for terms that will never ever convert. So what’s the solution? Well sorry there isn’t really one that doesn’t involve hard work! One option is to just use the ‘+’broad match modifier and keyword more thoroughly rather than relying on Google to find all the keywords you didn’t input. Going back to our example, ensuring you include ‘+smart +shoes’, ‘+dress +shoes’ etc will make sure you capture the vast majority of relevant clicks. The other is to very carefully monitor the search term report in Google and see what your keywords are actually matching to and create long lists of negative keywords from these (you should be doing this anyway). The problem with this is it can take lots of time and you are only able to... --- ### The Daily Mail Embraces SEO > Internet marketing research firm, comScore, has reported that the Daily Mail has become the most visited newspaper website in the world. - Published: 2012-02-17 - Modified: 2012-02-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-daily-mail-embraces-seo/ - Categories: SEO Internet marketing research firm, comScore, has reported that the Daily Mail has become the most visited newspaper website in the world, surpassing the New York Times. Visitor growth in the last year has come mostly from abroad with the site popular in English-speaking countries around the world. Mail Online, as the site is branded, is currently the 80th most visited website in the United States, according to Alexa, and in the top 100 most visited in another 8 countries. The site brought in £19m of online advertising revenue in 2011, up a massive 65% on the previous year. Though, even with this rapid growth, digital advertising revenues won’t be overtaking the £340m a year they earn from print ads anytime soon. The Mail is clearly web-savvy with the BBC citing long keyword rich headlines, the separation of print and web journalism and its mix of news and celebrity gossip as key to its success. Those working within SEO may also recall that a couple of years ago the sites robots. txt file, normally used to ask search engines to exclude certain pages from their index, contained a job advert for an SEO Manager at the paper. All this helped DailyMail. co. uk scoop up 16. 26% of all UK visits to print-based News and Media websites in December 2011, according to Hitwise. Whilst some traditional media like the Mail and Guardian have embraced SEO and social media for driving traffic to their advertising monetised sites, others have rejected this openness in favour of paywalls. The effect of a paywall on traffic levels is predictable, though on revenues less so. As a result of their £2 a week paywall, The Times commands only a 0. 03% greater share of visits to print media websites than the regional Manchester Evening News or mobile version of the Mirror website. Though, with 100,000 subscribers, overall revenues would be more than half that of the Mail. It’s easy to see when the paywall went live With online advertising spend continuing to grow at a rate that outperforms other media channels; in a truly global market that is the Internet, I know which channel I prefer. Photo credit: Newspapers B&W (5) by NS Newsflash (CC BY 2. 0) --- ### The Real Reason Behind the Return of MySpace's Users > The once fledgling social network, MySpace, has added 1m users in the last 30 days. So what caused this dramatic turnaround in fortune? - Published: 2012-02-16 - Modified: 2012-02-16 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/reason-behind-return-of-myspaces-users/ - Categories: Social Media News broke this week that the once fledgling social network, MySpace, has added 1m users in 30 days. Around this time in 2011 it was reported that MySpace was losing 10 million members a month, and that it might even close down within a year. The return of a significant number of users is quite a majestic turnaround for the social network, which was once a bit of a laughing stock. In some places, it was incorrectly reported that this happened as a result of MySpace’s strengthened ties with Twitter and Facebook. I can see where you can now login with Facebook, but you cannot do the same with Twitter. This was the case on the screenshot used by the BBC in this article, back in March 2011. So, if you could have logged in to MySpace using your Facebook details for well over a year, it is hard to say that this is the sole reason for recent sign-ups. Anyway, if it was really joined up with Facebook, shouldn’t it be called MyFace? Has JT Rescued MySpace? There are also a few reports saying ‘Justin Timberlake brings MySpace back from the dead’, but, for me, this is just a catchy headline. Timberlake was apparently one of the key investors who helped Specific Media purchase MySpace from News Corp for $35m last year. It now seems madness that News Corp paid $580m for MySpace back in 2005. It is certainly a wise move to have a well-known music (and now film) figure involved, especially as the site’s focus will be on music. As for what Timberlake actually does, who knows? But the 'trousersnake' is certainly unbeatable for PR. To be honest, MySpace looks the same to me as it did last year. The interface is still clunky, the speed terrible, and not enough has changed that would cause such a dramatic turnaround in fortunes. So why the 1 million users in a month? The real reason that the network is on the up is that it has released a new MySpace music player. It is this player that allows a simple connection to Facebook; with a reported 42 million songs that compares very well with other services such as Spotify or Pandora. When you connect the music player to Facebook, this automatically creates your MySpace profile. This must be the REAL reason there has been a growth in MySpace users. So, really, the growth of MySpace users can be attributed to users of the new music player who have connected to their Facebook account. Funnily enough, I did this just now as a test. Another clever thing about the Facebook/MySpace connection is that it scans your musical likes from Facebook and converts them into friends on MySpace. It could do all of this without you really knowing about it. Listening to music with the MySpace Music Player feeds into the music app on Facebook, alongside Spotify, thus advertising the MySpace music service even further. It remains to be seen whether... --- ### Negative Lists - A Better Method of Creation > A key strategy with PPC is the creation of negative lists. You must have a tight list of terms you do not want your ads to show for. - Published: 2012-02-13 - Modified: 2012-02-13 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/negative-lists-a-better-method-of-creation/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) Everyone knows that a key strategy with PPC is the creation of negative lists. You must have a tight list of terms you don’t want your ads to show for or your ROI will plummet. When you first build out an account part of your keyword research should be pre-empting the negative keywords you will need. However you will always miss many terms that are never going to convert (or through trial show they are not profitable). This is why it is best practice to regularly monitor search term reports in Google Adwords for search queries that you should ‘negative out’. Google makes it very easy to simply tick the box next to each keyword and add it as a negative at an ad group or campaign level. By default it will be an exact match negative. Just as with normal keywords negatives can be broad, phrase or exact match. It can take hours to go through search term reports and you are never shown every single query your keywords will show for. However by negative matching a word or small phrase that appears regularly you can ensure you block considerably more keywords thus improving your CTRs even further and bringing down your cost per click. Here’s an example: Lets say your product is the hot new product: Big Purple Donkey (you’ve heard about these right? everybody’s talking about them! ). Along with lots of well researched exact match keywords you might want to bid on their phrase and broad match equivalents giving you keywords such as: “big purple donkey” +buy +purple +donkey These should soak up lots of search terms you hadn’t thought of or weren’t worth keywording individually. You have done your research and found lots of negatives such as ‘returns’, ‘faulty’ and so on. However after checking the Adwords search term report and you may see a few keywords you were matching for that you don’t like the look of: purple donkey beach ride buy free big purple donkey etc. Now you could just tick the box and have Google negative exact match them out like this: But really there are only 2 words there that are the problem, and they probably appear in lots of other search terms. By negative broad matching 'ride' and 'free' you will exclude lots of other potential search terms you may not have even been aware of such as: ride purple donkey big purple donkey for free However what if it is a combination of words that are always appearing and not just one offending word that always gives away a search term that you know you don't want to match for? Going back to our example, what if the Purple Donkey's full product name is Purple Donkey Toy Ride (I know what a lame name, I have no idea how it became so popular). In this case using negative broad match for 'ride' would prevent lots of relevant search queries from showing. However if we figure out that the phrase... --- ### Step Aside Usain Bolt - Social Media is the Fastest Force on the Planet > Social Media helps games developer to raise the funds to build a proposed video game in less than a day on kickstarter. - Published: 2012-02-10 - Modified: 2025-04-14 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/step-aside-usain-bolt-social-media-is-the-fastest-force-on-the-planet/ - Categories: Social Media Today saw an interesting success story unfold in the gaming industry as Double Fine, a developer of leftfield video games who have recently been exploring the possibilities of Microsoft’s Kinect hardware, put forward an appeal on Kickstarter asking for $400,000 from their fans to develop a new adventure game. That appeal went live less than 24 hours ago with a goal to hit the target within 33 days. At the time of writing eager fans have pledged over $650,000, taking Double Fine way over their target in less than a day. Of course it’s unlikely that many artists or developers will be able to emulate this kind of success. Double Fine are unique in that they possess a number of hugely well known, well respected and influential figures from gaming’s heyday, specifically Ron Gilbert and Tim Schafer. While those names may mean little to a younger generation of gamers, to an old man such as myself whose childhood was lost to games like Monkey Island and Grim Fandango they are icons, legends even. With their pedigree and their body of work as their credentials, these two are perfectly placed to find an audience on Kickstarter where other unknown developers would struggle. But though it may be too early to make assumptions about the validity of the publishing model that Kickstarter presents, one thing that this success story does prove is the power of Social Media. For while there was never any real doubt that Double Fine could raise such a modest sum for the game, the speed with which they hit, and exceeded, their target was incredible. Bare in mind that this particular genre of game was generally considered “dead” by mainstream publishers, with no significant examples having seen release by a major studio in well over a decade. Though an audience for the genre does (evidently) exist, the chances are that they weren’t out there scouring the internet waiting for this kind of announcement; many adventure game fans will have simply stopped waiting and moved on. Yet, despite that, this campaign has not only managed to draw these people to Kickstarter – a site that I imagine few will have previously heard of – but has done so in a matter of hours. Welcome to the power of Social Media, where an idea, an event, a piece of media or anything can spread like wildfire across the internet in a matter of hours. While there was good coverage of this project on various gaming sites and communities, the big drivers of traffic seem to have been the larger web communities like Reddit and Twitter. These groups now wield immense power, not only in the digital world but the real world, thanks to their ability to spread information to millions of people with incredibly rapidity. This power of voice saw Twitter being labelled a key instrument in the Arab Spring of 2011, so much so that various governments – including our own – have considered banning it outright. It should be... --- ### Notes on an A/B test > We often run A/B or multi-variant tests on pages to see if we can maximise our click through rates. - Published: 2012-02-07 - Modified: 2012-02-07 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/notes-on-an-ab-test/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) We often run A/B or multi-variant tests on pages to see if we can maximise our click through rates and banner testing is something we run extensively. Earlier this week one of the hotel merchants we work with was running a 33% off January sale and we decided to push our banner test out to an internal competition to see who could guess which sale banner would perform the best for the client over 2 days.   Now, normally we get a lot of correct answers however this test was a little unusual - if only because everybody got it wrong! Here are the three sale banners we rotated: A)                                          B)                                     C) Each banner was viewed over 500 times, with varying click through rates - the worst performing at 16% and the best at 21. 5%.   Normally a test like this would need to run for at least 1000 impressions to get any really conclusive results, but the short time span on this offer meant that we had to go on the clicks that we had. Everyone that answered sent me the same prediction... C - many of them stating that the ‘Ends 31st’ messaging would create more of a sense of urgency and increase CTR. However the test results said different. In 1st place – B) ’2012 Sale – Book by 31st’ – 21. 5% CTR In 2nd place – A) ’Jan Sale – Book by 31st’ – 18. 9% CTR In 3rd place – C) ’Jan Sale – Ends 31st’ – 16% CTR Now this may have been an anomaly with not enough data to make a sure-fire conclusion but I think that the text in ‘B’ summed up the nature of the offer best: the 33% off Sale was not restricted to bookings in January - the holiday just needed to be booked in January. The 2012 intro to ‘B’ implied that 33% off offers over the whole year would be available.   I have no real explanation about why C was the worst performer - perhaps the use of the words ‘Ends 31st Jan’ rather than ‘Book by Jan 31st’ reinforced a perception this offer was only available for bookings in January. We would normally collate a larger volume of clicks to feel confident about the results.   However, what it really highlighted to me is that just by running the test in the first place we improved the CTR on the banner, as both variations outperformed our 'original', and that the traditional 'proven' messaging that is often assumed to be high converting should be challenged and tested at every chance you get. --- ### Top 5 Tips to Keep Your Account Management Partnership Running Smoothly > We want our business partnerships to work together like bacon & eggs, but it can feel like you’re trying to play golf with a tennis racquet. - Published: 2012-02-03 - Modified: 2012-02-03 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/top-5-tips-to-keep-your-account-management-partnership-running-smoothly/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC), SEO If you work in digital account management, you need to know EVERYTHING. You are involved in all aspects of activity, from signing a deal to rolling out your marketing campaign. We want our business partnerships to work together like bacon and eggs, but sometimes it can feel like you’re trying to play golf with a tennis racquet. So what can we do to make our account management work beautifully for both of us? Here are my top 5 tips to make sure your AM partnership runs like a well oiled engine in a Ferrari 458 Italia. 1) Transparency – We hear this term a lot and understandably so.  You need to know what is happening with your search marketing campaign, so we’ll be as transparent as glass with you. But glass is see through on both sides; we need you to make sure your AM has as much up to date data as you can provide.   This will enable them to plan the best steps forward in your online strategy and have something to benchmark results against.  You will have given us a lot of important information at the start of our partnership. But there will always be more we can use; think about any other marketing activity you are running and any seasonality trends you might have seen. If you think something might be relevant, don’t hesitate to tell us. There is no such thing as too much insight! 2) Share – Every business has a plan for the year, products to focus on, marketing and promotional campaigns; and business KPIs that they will measure success on.   Sharing this information with your agency AM will mean we can ensure our activity runs in line with your company messaging and that we can work together to achieve your marketing goals.   Sharing this in advance allows for a thorough and timely set up and roll out.   Trust me, it works a treat! 3) Active Engagement – Contrary to popular belief, account managers don’t bite. We’re actually quite a friendly bunch and here to help whenever you need us. The best partnerships are the ones where there is a constant flow of communication. Never be afraid to pick up the phone and ask a question and we’ll promise to do the same.   Arranging a regular call will help this, but there should be no reasons to stop either side picking up the phone at any point. Remember though, some questions may need a little time to answer so advance notice for information required to present to your MD will be appreciated.   A happy Account Manager is one that doesn’t have to stay in the office until 9pm prepping for the client’s meeting the following morning! 4) Be Open Minded – We’re always looking for the best ways to maximise activity and will always have suggestions on ways to improve the work we are doing for you.   We understand that in today’s climate, budgets might be tough and we always... --- ### Twitter Brand Pages Hit The UK > Today is another milestone in the evolution of Twitter as UK brand pages arrive on the computers of British users this morning. - Published: 2012-02-02 - Modified: 2012-02-02 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/twitter-brand-pages-hit-the-uk/ - Categories: Social Media Today is another milestone in the evolution of Twitter as UK brand pages arrive on the computers of British users this morning. The original launch which fixated on American super brands included the likes of Coca-Cola, Disney, Nike and McDonald's. With the launch finally reaching the UK, focus on strong UK household brands such as Cadbury, Asda or Sky HD have adopted the new layout which changes the ways in which users interact and consume information on the micro blogs. Twitter began rolling out the new ‘brand pages’ in December of last year, with a focus on rich content, customizable banner advertisements and the ability to “stick” tweets to the top of the page as a prioritised message to followers of the brand. These "brand pages" keep the micro blogging platform in close functionality with the other online social networking giants Facebook, but more notably in line with the recent brand page roll out from Google+. The redesign allows companies more freedom, giving customisation over the look of their pages with extra design space and the much coveted ability to embed multimedia. How do brands get involved? It’s not free, in fact it’s very far from free; suitors were required to pay a fee of almost £16,000 ($25,000) to advertise in the new format on Twitter. The growing popularity with users and marketers alike, investment in twitter is becoming the norm for brands as their key to marketing insight into their consumer’s habits and brand sentiment as well as being the preference for engagement online. Part of the reasons for the roll out includes a format focussing on ad revenue and the ability to support advertisers online. eMarketer reported that Twitter's global ad revenue is projected to reach $139. 5 million in 2011 and approach $399 million in 2013. By creating branded destinations as opposed to just simply aggregating content, advertisers are given a platform whereby they can adopt a more rigid and media driven marketing strategy. The use of embedded media and ‘sticky’ tweets creates the possibility of driving additional engagement with targeted content over longer periods of time and thus creating much needed consistency. Why should a brand embrace the new design and functionality? Customisable Headers enable brands the ability to have consistency of branding across all of the social media channels with the use of a profile image and a customizable header competing as aforementioned with Facebook and Google+. This also contributes to the creation of strong brand identity online. Promoted or ‘sticky’ Tweet gives total control over what the users see on arrival to the new brand page and creates a strong space for the likes of promotion and education without any possibility of targeted tweets being lost in the aggregation of tweets as we have previously found. Embedded Content now goes way beyond simple links to websites and pictures. This functionality opens whole new realms of promotion and education around brands products and services and will give designers and social marketers a platform whereby they can really get creative using the likes of... --- ### The EU Cookie Directive Saga > The owners of every web property aimed at consumers in the UK are frantically developing solutions to the EU Cookie Directive. Or are they? - Published: 2012-01-31 - Modified: 2012-01-31 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/the-eu-cookie-directive-saga/ - Categories: General News As the deadline for compliance with the EU ePrivacy Directive fast approaches, the owners of every web property aimed at consumers here in the UK are frantically developing solutions. Or at least they should be, shouldn’t they? As I write this I have surfed through a few dozen ‘household name’ retailer web sites and have seen no evidence of any of them attempting to get ahead of the game and implement a compliance solution to this regulation early. Maybe I’ve missed all the ones that have, and maybe the ones I haven’t missed have a solution ready to roll out come May. But somehow I doubt it. So what is this directive thing? Just in case you haven’t got a clue what I’m talking about I’ll summarise. Nearly all websites use cookies. If you work in online, or are even a tiny bit digital, you are probably aware of these quite badly named packets of digital information. Cookies sit on your hard disk, placed there by the websites you visit as you shop, read, play, learn, and whatever else you do on the Internet. They are the reason Amazon for example knows what you bought and can suggest other products to you. They enable us to analyse the web sites we manage and see how long people spent on them, how many pages they viewed, and what you typed in to get to the site. They are the reason a website remembers what you put in your shopping basket and they are the tracking that enables a vast amount of digital marketers to prove their worth and earn their money. So the ‘EU Privacy Directive’ or the ‘EU Cookie Directive’ as some are dubbing it, is asking that all websites dropping cookies of the intrusive kind (pretty much all of them) get consent from their visitors before dropping any cookies; meaning that (almost) every single site that drops a cookie will have to obtain consent by asking 'Are you happy for us to drop cookies? ' or face a possible €500,000 fine! This poses all sorts of problems for all sorts of people. What most of these people are scared of is that when presented with the option to turn off cookies, that users will take it. Thus leaving web publishers, online marketers and digital strategists everywhere; flailing their arms about wildly and screaming loudly about not being able to do their jobs. Surely this is mainly an education piece? If people knew that on the whole cookies do good stuff to make their journey across the web more pleasant and their experience of websites better then, they wouldn’t be so fearful of them. So where has the fear come from? I think that part of it harks back to the days of pop up banners, relentless email spam and websites with animated gifs of unicorns. The internet was, and to some degree still is, seen as untrustworthy and predominantly the domain of hackers, scammers, pirates, porn-stars and phishers. However... --- ### Google: All Your Searches Belong to Plus > Google Search Plus Your World - Does it threaten Google's core search product? Are Google being evil and forcing our other social networks? - Published: 2012-01-30 - Modified: 2025-04-14 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-all-your-searches-belong-to-plus/ - Categories: SEO, Social Media Google made an interesting update on their Google+ page this week, listing 50 things that a +1 can mean. Google are really pushing more people to think about +1 rather than other social signals, and if it can mean anything, they are casting a wide net. In this post I will look into Google Search plus Your World results, +1s, reactions and even how to optimise Google+ profiles. The Value of a +1 A +1 does not have the exact same value as other social indicators, and they should not really be treated as the same: One thing that interests me is finding out if +1 on a page is persistent. It is not clear if a more recent +1 makes more of a difference than one made a year ago, but it could be that a +1 by a prominent G+ user has value for the long-term traffic, especially if people would be searching for similar content. An example being that if I am searching for certain SEO content, +1'd content by prominent industry SEOs will have an advantage on position,  as well as being respected.  I have found that I have pressed that +1 button a lot recently and will use it more readily than tweeting something or clicking a Facebook like button, which I may only use in certain circumstances. I may tweet more recent industry articles or a few choice articles I have read, but I will +1 a larger selection, almost using it as a bookmark. Usually, when a new piece of content is shared with a tweet, traffic will spike.  A +1 will unlikely have the same instant impact as a tweet, probably much more likely to have an effect if shared on G+ and amplified by prominent users.  It is unclear if older tweets will be seen as relevant as a share in Google Search plus Your World, and even if this will be supported. This is where G+ could have an advantage, especially if Google does not rate twitter or facebook shares as highly as a +1. Does Search plus Your World Favour Google+? Talking about social shares having an impact on search results leads us onto the brilliant focusontheuser bookmarklet, ‘don’t be evil’ . This bookmarklet raises a valid point, explained by way of using Jamie Oliver’s social profiles as an example. It is argued that, Jamie Oliver's twitter profile should be rated as much more relevant than his G+ profile, due to more recent activity and the large amount of followers compared to his G+ profile. This bookmarklet takes information that Google already has, and bases the order of these social networks on the profile that ranks highest in a normal Google search. Clever stuff. We have seen many instances where Google uses its power to leverage its own products before others, so this is nothing new, but may be a step too far for many. Some Users don’t Want to Socialise Their Search Results A lot of fuss has been... --- ### Are Businesses lacking Strategies for Paid Search? > If advertisers do not have a firm paid search plan in place then they should consider the impact this could have on their business. - Published: 2012-01-18 - Modified: 2025-04-14 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/businesses-lacking-paid-search-strategies/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC), SEO, Social Media I was a little surprised to read the findings of a recent report conducted by the WFA citing that businesses lack strategies for paid search, especially when you acknowledge how advanced we now are in paid search; from the part it has to play in the click path to pure return on investment. I was a little surprised to read the findings of a recent report conducted by the WFA citing that businesses lack strategies for paid search, especially when you acknowledge how advanced we now are in paid search; from the part it has to play in the click path to pure return on investment. Whilst paid search is an established channel, it’s by no means a static channel and if advertisers do not have a firm plan in place then they should consider the impact this could have on their business performance. Paid search is not simply about featuring on a bunch of keywords around a clients’ brand and product offering, it requires a complex strategic approach, highly tailored to the goals of a campaign. It can involve anything from featuring strongly around branded terms due to competition and lack of SEO rankings; an ROI focus on long-tail keywords where the user is closer to purchase; pure branding visibility on generic terms, and much more. Assessing Success on a Paid Search Campaign The report identifies the most common factors used to gauge the success of a PPC campaign were click-through rates and average cost per click, which were assessed by 71% and 65% of respondents respectively. These factors, whilst important, are almost meaningless when used in isolation. This is where this report does perhaps hit home; not so much the lack of strategy but the lack of understanding of paid search in order to implement a clear and concise strategy. We, for example, often find that merchants aren’t quite sure what their core triggers for success are; traffic? ROI? Net profitability? Branding? And, importantly, how each of these triggers impact one another. Paid search strategies require different approaches and it’s important to focus activity on the end goal that’s right for the merchant’s business. Mobile Grows Aggressively in the Paid Search Space Mobile is also growing aggressively in the paid search space. We’re already seeing mobile searches account for up to 20% of paid search clicks and conversion in many sectors. For those who have not considered a mobile search strategy, it’s a huge opportunity missed as the space is only going to keep growing. This, in turn, requires mobile websites or, at least, mobile landing pages to be created in order to aid conversion. A huge positive about mobile is that it can truly represent quick wins at a lower click rate. Paid Search Integration with other Channels Synching paid search with all other marketing channels is a must. From TV and press schedules to the performance of paid search against SEO, it’s imperative to get a handle on when to push and when to pull back. We’ve experienced great uplifts for our clients, thanks to pre-planning and campaign creation ahead of promotional opportunities, resulting in our clients featuring in premium positions, at the right times. With the recent launch of Google’s Search Plus Your World, the search space is taking another step forward, truly personalising search results and including... --- ### SOPA & PIPA - The digital blackout > The question is, should YOU get involved in the intervention of the passing of SOPA and PIPA? - Published: 2012-01-18 - Modified: 2025-04-14 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/sopa-pipa-the-digital-blackout/ - Categories: General News, Social Media If you haven't read about SOPA and PIPA then it’s certainly worth doing so. The question is, should YOU get involved in the intervention of the passing of SOPA and PIPA? The fact that you are reading this post tells me you’re a blog reader. From this I can make the assumption that you’re an avid Facebook user, a user of Twitter and a regular user of YouTube too. If you’re anything like me then you probably have 500+ friends online, organise most of your social and business life on social networks and check your notifications at least 5 times a day either on your laptop, workstation, mobile phone or tablet.  Perhaps you love discovering new music, reading about the latest fashion trends, or simply enjoy browsing round on a journey with no purpose. Sound familiar? If so the passing of this bill will directly affect your daily life. This act to control the internet by the US is the first step in a scheme to regulate, control and censor the freedom of the internet by powers that don't fully understand the internet and its architecture. The passing of these bills will see free use of websites severely limited and potentially completely suffocated under a blanket of law will oppress the freedom to share information and content; the key principle upon which the immeasurable success and power of the information super highway has been built. This bills are portrayed as a must-have measurement to stop fraudsters online and the widespread committing of copyright infringement which is costing the music, game and film industries billions each year. In a public protest, the big hitters of the digital world which include the likes of Google and Wikipedia are part of the digital blackout. Temporary shutting down of websites for a 12 hour period show users a “through the looking glass” at what the worlds internet may look like should these bills be passed. Users attempting to access these sites are forced to see a blacked out version, a clear protest which hits home hard with a strong political statement. Wikipedia makes its statement very clear with the bold "Imagine a world without free knowledge. " The user-generated news site Reddit provides visitors with multiple options to sign petitions and gives its own users a version of the anti-SOPA/PIPA blackout. The blackout is a bold, effective way to get the two bills into the public eye. It is of paramount importance that this news goes mainstream so that people outside the tech industry will be made fully aware of just how much their everyday lives could be affected by these acts. Google, Reddit and Wikipedia aren’t the only companies shutting its digital doors according to SOPAStrike. com. It has a full list of the blackout participants. This is not the full article... I have gone on to raise my own personal concerns and give a breakdown of the two bills on the link below. Please give it a read and spread awareness about SOPA... --- ### Google Exposes 'Your World' to Social Search > Google launched Search Plus Your World, which caused quite a stir among the SEO and Social Media world, as it integrates social into search. - Published: 2012-01-11 - Modified: 2012-01-11 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-exposes-world-social-search/ - Categories: SEO, Social Media Yesterday, Google launched Search plus Your World, which caused quite a stir among the SEO and social world. These features are aimed at improving search by placing your world within the results, which means greater personalisation. I will briefly outline the features as well as looking at some thoughts from the industry. Yesterday, Google launched Search Plus Your World, which caused quite a stir among the SEO and Social Media world. These new features which are aimed at improving search do so by placing 'your world' within the results meaning much greater personalisation, by including your social connections content related to your search.  Below I have briefly outlined the features as well as looking at some thoughts from the industry. Personal Results I won’t go into too much detail with regards to the main features that will be added, but the main addition is the true personalisation of search results. The results will focus on showing relevant Google+ posts from friends within your circles such as photographs, videos and links about any recent goings on from within your social interactions. It doesn't stop here and will also show content from other relevant sources which Google can access. You can search a mix both personal and normal web results, just from within your own world, or the whole web without excluding personal results. Using this looks very intuitive and streamlined even though this feature is very much in its infancy and sure to be refined further. I expect to see additional settings allowing you to only select certain circles that can affect results; this being more useful at certain points of the day you may be interested in different people’s opinion, depending on what you are searching for. Google+ Profiles in Search This feature will allow you to find people’s Google+ profiles easily within Search. Start typing a friend’s name and Google will predict who you mean (Google Instant Technology) and also display information from their Google+ profile. Some prominent people on Google+ can also show up, partly thanks to the Google’s authorship pilot program. This integration enables you to follow interesting users directly from search. Related People and Pages to Search Query Notable Google+ pages and people will show up on related searches, allowing you to connect with whole new communities you may be interested in interacting with. I can see this being evermore important for use with brands in an attempt to get their pages to appear on generic searches above competitors. I can see this as a problematic area and being a real annoyance to the user in some cases, but I will reserve judgement until I have used it properly. What will be interesting to see is how this will affect PPC ads that may appear here. I predict further developments with Adwords being integrated into ‘Your World’ this year too. Additional Search Security, Transparency and Control As previously mentioned, Google have made it simple to distinguish between ‘Search plus Your World’ and no personal results with a button positioned on the top right of the interface. Search has been made much more secure with the incorporation of SSL but it remains to be seen if how this will affect analytics and tracking packages. It will be worth monitoring the growth of Google+ and analysing the percentage of logged in Google... --- ### 5 tips for maximising ROI with PPC > I have here put together five of my own simple tips for getting more out of your PPC campaigns. - Published: 2011-12-21 - Modified: 2024-04-24 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/5-tips-for-maximising-roi-with-ppc/ - Categories: General News Following on from my previous post in which I discussed , I have here put together five of my own simple tips for getting more out of your campaigns. This is by no means a comprehensive look at ROI, but if you bear the below in mind you should start to see a general improvement in your return and have a clearer idea of where more detailed analysis can be carried out. Consider your business goals: If you’re running a campaign on a gap-filling or longtail basis then your goals are clear; you’ll want to have every keyword making you money. However this is not a model that easily transposes to a larger campaign - you may have to bear other considerations in mind. Perhaps the client requires a certain amount of coverage across top-level broad generics, regardless of the return. Perhaps they are looking to invest heavily across various channels to drive brand awareness. Perhaps they are looking to reduce their budget but maintain conversion, lowering their overall cost-per-sale. Ensuring you fully understand the KPIs of a campaign before you begin, and then making those goals your prime focus are the keys to success. Treat each keyword as a single entity: On larger campaigns, if you don’t have access to automated tools that can scour your campaigns at a granular level then you may find yourself making optimisation decisions at ad-group level in an effort to save time. While in some cases this is a valid strategy, you should always try to drill down to keyword level as much as time allows. Perhaps a loss-making ad-group is full of keywords with high ROIs and has been let down by a single broad-match that didn't have sufficient negatives in place. Maybe your killer ad-group had a keyword that lost a lot of money, but was obscured by others in the same group making more. You’ll never get the complete picture until you drill down. Look at the Bigger picture: On campaigns where you run a mixture of keyword types ranging from the broadest generics right up to brand level, you will have the opportunity to study the relationships between each type and how certain searches can prompt customers to return later on different keywords. While it can be difficult to decide how to assign value to the various points in the customer journey, it will give you a far better idea of the worth of your various keywords in the grand scheme of things.  Attribution modelling is a key consideration of modern PPC and any self-respecting agency should be testing and studying a variety of models. It’s not all about the bids: Many agencies base their optimisations solely around bid adjustment, usually according to a pre-defined and automated system. Yet bids alone will only contribute part of the success of a keyword. When aiming for maximum ROI you should also be looking closely at your ad-copy and, by extension, your quality score; two key factors in the success of any keyword. Constantly test new ad... --- ### Higher Positions Don't Necessarily Mean Higher ROI > One of the services that Google offers to agencies is a dedicated account manager to provide assistance, advice, analysis for specific accounts. - Published: 2011-12-14 - Modified: 2024-04-24 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/higher-positions-dont-necessarily-mean-higher-roi/ - Categories: General News One of the services that Google offers to agencies is a dedicated account manager to provide assistance, advice, analysis and other words beginning with ‘a’ for specific accounts, particularly for the larger and more complex ones. While it’s not exactly unwelcome to have a third party keeping an eye on things, it should always be considered in context. After all, in this particular case the advice is coming from Google, the very company with whom the majority of clients will be investing their PPC budgets. If a high-spend keyword wasn’t working out for someone, would Google really be the ones to tell them to stop pumping money into it? We recently received a customised report from Google for one of the larger accounts we manage which included suggestions on how we could make improvements. Basing itself mostly on ad positions and predicted volumes, it began with the headline “Higher Positioned Ads Get More Clicks”. Nothing to disagree with there - this has largely been the case for many years. However the very next slide made the altogether more dubious claim that “Better Positions = Better ROI”. Given that the focus of the report elsewhere was on increasing budgets and positions, I think it's safe to assume that although they say "better" it could certainly be read as "higher", even if they have taken care not to explicitly use that word. Indeed, the following slide goes on to tell us that by appearing predominantly in middling positions we have missed out on hundreds of thousands of clicks. Their meaning here is important because it could prove to be misleading. In this case all sales data for the campaign was processed through our third-party tracking tools, meaning that Adwords had no sales metrics upon which Google could base their recommendations. If they were suggesting that higher positions would yield higher ROI then it's nothing more than an assumption that could prove to be either true or false; without sales data there is simply no way of knowing. If they didn't intend to make that link between "better" and "higher" then what was the purpose of the report, given that a statement like "Better Positions = Better ROI", with no statistics-based insight to demonstrate it, is essentially an empty piece of common knowledge? Ultimately the semantics prevent us from knowing for sure. What we are sure about is that higher positions don’t necessarily mean higher ROI. The higher an ad gets on the Google results page the more highly contested the positions become, and bids can quickly skyrocket, particularly for certain high-traffic generic search terms. In addition to this you may have different ways of measuring the ROI of certain keywords; a costly generic may lose you money when considered in isolation, but when placed in the context of the full customer journey it may be brilliant at seeding interest that turns into a sale further down the line. Finding the right position for a keyword requires complex analysis and is not merely... --- ### Facebook Memology - What topics did we engage most this year? > What do Facebook know about us that we don’t? Well pretty much everything. The average user spends 7:01:41 hours per month on Facebook. - Published: 2011-12-07 - Modified: 2024-04-24 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/facebook-memology-what-topics-did-we-engage-most-this-year/ - Categories: General News What do Facebook know about us that we don’t? Well pretty much everything. The average user spends 7:01:41 hours per month on Facebook and 50% of the 800 Million, yes, 800 million users log into the social network each day.  With this scale of interaction there is obviously a plethora of data gathered that unlocks all the secrets of human interaction and behaviours, giving a completely new and unrivalled insights which have never been possible before. Not only does it show how we share online but how we monitor and interact with the world outside of Facebook. This data is described as Memology:- “Memology takes the pulse of this global community by comparing this year's status updates to last year's, unearthing the most popular topics and cultural trends - or memes - emerging on Facebook. ” - Jonathan Chang , Facebook. On Facebook people are passionate about what they post whether that is with or about their friends or family, or global news of tragedy. By the results posted in the ‘Facebook Memology report of 2011’ it’s hardly surprising to see what topped this years social activity. As you may have predicted, the top global meme was the death of Terrorist Osama bin Laden with almost 10% of all English status’ mentioning this event on May 1st. Death was a hot topic in the realms of Facebook. Peoples passion to engage on such topics pushed the tragic Death of Steve Jobs to Number 5 and the equally sad death of Amy Winehouse to number 7 on the global chart. In the UK there was a huge conversation surrounding the death of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi who was found at number 6 in the UK chart. It wasn't all doom and gloom for social networkers around the globe though; Charlie Sheen and his Tiger Blood antics took centre stage in March with his famous Guinness world record breaking “Fastest Time to Reach 1 Million Followers”. In the meme chart he certainly isn’t “winning”. The marriage of Kate Middleton and Prince William dominated the conversation in April, with mentions of the phrase "Royal Wedding" shooting up nearly 600-fold in the days running up to the day they tied the knot. Their marriage sits at number six on the Global Memology chart for 2011. Online Cultural Phenomena As well as identifying the top ten global topics, Facebook also unveiled the top trending cultural phenomena for the year; Planking. For those that aren’t familiar with the phrase ‘Planking’ this is a game where people lie face down in unusual locations more often than not, taking a picture to share online. As the you can see above, it was more of a fad than a phenomenon making a huge spike in late May when Max Key, the son of New Zealand Prime Minister John Key, posted a Facebook photo of himself planking in the family lounge with his father in the background. After this the social buzz around planking took a nose dive until another sharp spike in July when celebrities such as Tom... --- ### Analysing the New Google Analytics Features for PPC and SEO > Google are introducing new features to analytics every few weeks, which are all being placed into the new-look Analytics platform. - Published: 2011-11-18 - Modified: 2024-04-24 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/analysing-the-new-google-analytics-features-for-ppc-and-seo/ - Categories: General News, SEO Google have made huge strides with their Analytics platform over the last few months, introducing new features every few weeks, which are all being placed into the new-look Analytics platform. If you’re using the old Analytics, you can switch to the new version by clicking on the link in the top right of the interface. In this post I will give a brief overview of each new addition and why this could be important for your online presence. Focus on Real-Time Search – Fresh Content Google have reacted to what it has learned from the time they spent using Twitter’s data pipeline to provide real-time search results. It is clear that, with the rise of social sharing, news and content moves incredibly fast, and Google has had to react to this. They announced real-time analytics in September, which has coincided with a recent update to natural search, referred to as the ‘Freshness’ algorithm update. Although still in Beta, it gives a good indication about where traffic is coming from and what the most popular pages are in real time. As fresh, new content becomes an increasingly larger part of your search strategy, this report will be a good resource for monitoring the performance of new content as it is released. Flow Visualisation Something we always aim to do is set up goals for when a user performs an action. The new, beautiful flow visualisation diagrams makes it much easier to decipher what is working on your site. Multi-Channel Funnels Understandably, attributing online sales to the correct channel is very important and marketing budgets can be based upon this performance in many organisations. This feature in Google Analytics allows you to see the channels contributing to the conversion path of your customers over the last 30 days. This should help in determining how effective your combined strategies are, and identify how they are assisting each other to generate conversions. Monitoring this data then allows Analytics to display some eye-catching Venn diagrams, which give you a very intuitive visual representation of the channel attribution. Multi-channel funnels have made Analytics much more powerful. This has put the feature-set on par with many other pay tools in the marketplace, which offer similar features. Greater Focus on Mobile Reporting Google have been focussing its efforts on improving mobile reporting within their Analytics platform for some time now, and there have been several new additions this month. An interesting one, especially for Adwords advertisers is the fact that you can now seemobile ad performance in Google Analytics. The new settings will allow you to choose between different segments, such as smart phones (iPhone, Android) and Tablets (iPads).  This feature is being rolled out gradually, and the ability to view this depends on your account type. It is very important to understand the shift towards the use of smart phones and tablet devices to use your site and to adapt your marketing strategy to suit. Combined with the correct set up of goals, this new reporting will enable you... --- ### Found Takes the Double at Dadi Awards > Found scooped the double at the DADI awards, winning Best use of Paid Search and Affiliate Marketing for our work across Google and Facebook. - Published: 2011-11-14 - Modified: 2024-04-24 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-takes-the-double-at-dadi-awards/ - Categories: General News On Friday night Found scooped the double at the DADI awards, winning Best use of Paid Search and Best use of Affiliate Marketing for our work across Google and Facebook for leading mattress manufacturer, Tempur.  Hot on the heels of our win at the UK Search Awards last week and high commendation at the Effective Mobile Marketing Awards, the cabinet is starting to fill up nicely! The DADI's are impressive awards to win and, once more, spotlight the innovative and ground-breaking approach we take for all of our clients looking to achieve tactical and measurable results across the key digital channels. The awards were held in Leeds and we had a fantastic evening!   --- ### Found Wins Best Mobile Campaign at UK Search Awards > Found is delighted to announce that we have won Best Mobile Campaign at the inaugural UK Search Awards. - Published: 2011-11-07 - Modified: 2011-11-07 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-wins-best-mobile-campaign-at-uk-search-awards/ - Categories: General News Found is delighted to announce that we have won another award! On Thursday evening, at the Emirates Stadium, Found were awarded Best Mobile Campaign at the inaugural UK Search Awards for our mobile PPC project for Autoglass®.   With our focus firmly set on delivering tactical and accountable performance campaigns across all of the key digital channels, it is especially pleasing to see our success in the rapidly expanding Mobile sector being recognised. We believe this is a key area of growth for our industry and holds exciting opportunities for brands looking to harness its sales opportunity. On the same night, we were also highly commended in the fiercely contested Most Effective Mobile Direct Response Campaign at the annual Effective Mobile Marketing Awards for the same Autoglass® campaign. Next stop is the DADI awards on Friday 11th, where we will be competing for accolades in two categories for our Tempur lead generation and PPC work. --- ### Found shortlisted again! > It seems November is going to be a very busy month for Found! We have both the Dadi Awards and the UK Search Awards coming up. - Published: 2011-10-24 - Modified: 2011-10-24 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-shortlisted-again/ - Categories: General News It seems November is going to be a very busy month for Found! We have both the Dadi Awards and the UK Search Awards coming up, and now, to add to it, we have the 2011 Effective Mobile Marketing Awards. We have been shortlisted for four awards in the following categories: Most Effective Mobile Advertising Campaign, Most Effective Mobile Sales Promotion/Direct Response Campaign, Most Effective Location-based Service/Campaign and Most Effective Mobile Site - and all for our work with Autoglass. It is extremely exciting that even in this difficult economic climate our efforts are being recognised across the board by our industry. Congratulations to everyone involved and long may it continue! --- ### Landing Page Quality Gains More Weighting > Google have announced a global roll out of a new algorithm change which will affect Adwords Google Quality Scores from today going forward. - Published: 2011-10-04 - Modified: 2011-10-04 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/landing-page-quality-gains-more-weighting/ - Categories: General News Google have announced a global roll out of a new algorithm change which will affect Adwords Google Quality Scores from today going forward. Google stated that they have “increased the weight given to relevance and landing page quality in determining Quality Score and how ads are ranked on Google” http://adwords. blogspot. com/2011/10/ads-quality-improvements-rolling-out. html The analysts here at Found will be closely monitoring our campaigns to see by how much this affects us and how we can capitalise on these changes. We have noticed a shift away from Landing Page quality in the quality score algorithm over recent years, with Google showing more of a concern over keyword and ad relevancy at the point of a user’s click. It now seems they are shifting more weighting to what “happens” post click. Google and most advertisers will say that if you align landing page content with the keywords you are bidding on then include these keywords on your landing page, you will attain a good landing page quality score. The Google Adbots (Google spiders) will be able to read this and everyone will be happy. But at Found we don’t think it’s just going to be more weighting applied to what the adbots read. We think they will be adding more weight to what happens after the click and how the users react to your page as this is a key indicator for relevance. So what can Google measure to indicate this - bounce rate. This is a great indicator to how relevant your page is and I would be surprised if it wasn’t already in the quality score algorithm, it just looks like now it’s going to take more control. Google would not openly say the metric is bounce rate due to the potential things you can do to manipulate this, which in time, could actually lead to a worse user experience. So can we monitor how it affects us? We will be monitoring our CPCs and average positions closely over the next week. With Quality score shifts these metrics are the first thing to change. Your adwords quality score shown within the interface is just a general number and is not granular enough to identify fluctuations. It seems Google have only ever included landing page quality as a negative value, but now they are also going to positively use it to increase you adrank. So what’s going to happen if we were going to predict anything? Any large brand especially on pure brand terms should benefit, deeplinking to the most relevant page within a site may gain importance, as will having the landing page reflect your ad text with no cheekily over exaggerated offers. But as always if you try to manipulate quality score it has to closely be tracked against that landing page conversion rate, in order to see if you really are actually making any more profit from your tests. --- ### Casino night comes to BIG Studios > Last Friday saw the Found office turned, for one night only, into a swanky Casino, courtesy of Big Ideas Group generosity. - Published: 2011-09-30 - Modified: 2024-04-24 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/casino-night-comes-to-big-studios/ - Categories: General News Last Friday saw the Found office turned, for one night only, into a swanky Casino, courtesy of Big Ideas Group generosity. Found, Spring Digital and ITlab were treated to a little taste of Las Vegas right in the comfort of our office, BIG Studios. On offer to spend our valuable chips were tables for poker, roulette, blackjack and craps. Ok so the money wasn't real, but there were real prizes up for grabs, so many of Found stuck around to see if lady luck was smiling on them. On a night full of incident our very own Keith 'king high' Horwood snatched a prize for having the second most chips at the end of the night. This doesn't tell the whole story though, as at one stage Andrea was teaching the boys a thing or two on the poker table and Deepa was amassing stacks of chips on the roulette. I myself was in a strong position until I took it upon myself to try to wing it on the craps table and lost a bundle. ITlab's own Justin Samuel, as seen on TVs 'Dating in the Dark', was unavailable to comment the following Monday, amidst allegations of currency tampering involving the colour photocopier. A fantastic night was had by all that attended, with the possible exception of Robbie, who managed to get on the wrong side of one of the croupiers and suffered for it all night. Well done to the winners, and a BIG thanks from everyone at Found to all those involved in organising it! --- ### Found Wins Another Award at this Years A4U Awards > Our work as a leading search innovator has been recognised, by winning the Best Lead Generation Campaign award at this year’s a4uAwards. - Published: 2011-05-23 - Modified: 2024-04-07 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-wins-another-award-at-this-years-a4u-awards/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, General News We’ve gone and done it again! Yes, Found has been recognised for our work as being one of the leading innovators in the search and affiliate space, winning the Best Lead Generation Campaign award at this year’s prestigious a4uAwards. We won the award for our work with bed manufacturer, Tempur; engaging prospective customers online through social marketing channels, including Facebook. Our campaign not only drove incremental sales for the brand but also built a community following for longer term customer acquisition. We were also highly commended for two further awards; Best Search Partnership for our work with RAC and Best Use of Mobile, for our pioneering work for Autoglass® so all in all, it was a very successful night. We had a fantastic evening - 8 Founder’s attended the awards night (hosted by the splendidly funny, Rufus Hound) and, despite the great success, all made it into the office for 9 the next morning with big smiles and clear heads! Photo courtesy of Existem Events --- ### Why our Head of SEO & Social Media joined Found. > Find out why our Head of SEO & Social Media joined Found, what his main responsibilities are and what he feels is an exciting challenge. - Published: 2011-04-14 - Modified: 2024-05-07 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/why-our-head-of-seo-social-media-joined-found/ - Categories: General News Find out why our Head of SEO & Social Media joined Found, what his main responsibilities are and what he feels are the most exciting developments within the industry in this recent interview with NMA. What the article won’t tell you is that Guy hates spiders and heights, his full name is Guy Wayne John Paul Michael Donnelly and his claim to fame is spilling red wine all over Meryl Streep at the film premier of Mamma Mia... Here's a snippet from the article. . "What attracted you to this role? I come from a designer/developer background and very early on, I took an interest in SEO and then social media. My experience has shown me that being able to deliver a clearly defined strategy involves hands-on knowledge of the anatomy and growth of a website and how it maintains a strong presence. You can only create the perfect natural search strategy when you understand each area and how they impact and influence each other. Found’s ability to deliver strategic performance marketing campaigns across a wider mix of digital channels really sets it apart. I want to build on its innovative reputation to deliver even more strategic and ground-breaking campaigns... . . " Read the full story here. . --- ### Think Visibility - a cracking Search & Affiliate conference > I’ve just returned from Think Visibility 5, a cracking conference on Search and Affiliate Marketing. - Published: 2011-03-08 - Modified: 2011-03-08 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/think-visbility-a-cracking-search-affiliate-conference/ - Categories: General News I’ve just returned from Think Visibility 5, a cracking conference on Search and Affiliate Marketing. What makes this conference so much different to the other events in our sector's calendar is not just its quality of speakers, but also their willingness to share so openly their learnings, techniques, hints and tips in an extremely friendly and approachable way - the fact that it's also held on a Saturday also illustrates how special this event is and the following it has. A small conference held in Leeds, organised by the wonderfully entertaining and industry legend Dom Hodgeson, it is very possibly one of the best.   With this level of reputation, I was therefore hugely delighted to be invited to speak at the event and willingly obliged. Given it was a Saturday conference, I decided to go for a mix of information and fun, hosting the session – Performance Marketing, it’s a Piece of Cake. Taking the audience through my personal career journey, spotlighting how the Affiliate sector has evolved (including a few toe-curling reminders of some of the industry's least glamorous moments! ), I talked about how the industry has truly grown up and professionally matured. So much so, that our Performance-model ethos has now led us to operate in a much wider environment, one of cross digital Performance Marketing. Illustrating the key ingredients for successful Performance Marketing campaigns, I explained how to 'mix' the perfect elements of the right Merchant, Landing Pages, SEO and PPC before showing the icing on the cake of blending Search with Social to deliver true Performance insight and delivery. Taking to the stage post-lunch, I decided to bring a little Saturday Kitchen to the proceedings, bringing the mix of ingredients analogy alive and physically making a cake on stage! I must say, I did wonder what had possessed me to do such a thing as I took to the stage, but thanks to a very willing assistant in Ricki Jones, I think I just about pulled it off! Elsewhere, the programme was packed with some impressive speakers. There were some excellent presentations including Paddy Moogan, providing some hints and tips for link-building, Paul Smith and his one-man twitter world trip and Annabel Hodges, providing insights into reporting and communication. Add to all of this, we also had a few surprises in the form of sweets named after all of the speakers , a supersized scalextric track and a thoroughly entertaining lunchtime quiz; Think Visibility really did have the mix of excellent content and fun. Can’t wait for 2012. --- ### Google acquires BeatThatQuote > Beatthatquote was acquired by Google for a deal worth £37.7 million. The comparison site compares deals across financial products. - Published: 2011-03-08 - Modified: 2011-03-08 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/google-acquires-beatthatquote/ - Categories: General News Yesterday beatthatquote.com was acquired by Google for a deal worth £37.7 million. The comparison site compares deals across a variety of financial products including mortgages, insurance and credit cards. Google acquires BeatThatQuote, a UK Finance Comparison Site. Yesterday beatthatquote. com was acquired by Google for a deal worth £37. 7 million. The comparison site compares deals across a variety of financial products including mortgages, insurance and credit cards. The response to this acquisition has provided two different offshoots of conversation. Firstly being the diversification of Google from an internet gateway to a channel player. Secondly, the ramifications for other comparison sites if Google continues to penalise similar companies for actions that they, through BeatThatQuote, are allegedly endorsing. We’ve already seen Google introduce Google Shopping Comparison. More wide-spread in the US, Google is featuring more and more in search results for finance terms in the UK such as this example below on the search term ‘credit cards’.   Not only do they feature in P1 they also have an additional extension parameter within their ad in the form of a drop down (not available to other Adwords advertisers). Upon clicking through this ad, I do question what is so credible about this site when other sites are so heavily penalised. SEOBooks. com takes the angle of penalisation and the consistency, or lack of consistency, when taking action against sites. According to SEOBooks. com, Google has, on multiple occasions, penalised other UK-based finance sites for SEO issues & link buying. However, now that Google owns one of these sites in Beatthatquote, are they now penalizing Peter only to legitimise the same action for Paul?   Time will tell how this one unfolds, however it’s certainly going to be interesting to watch. --- ### FREE PPC & SEO Audit > We have an SEO Audit Tool to run technical checks on your domain, which is Free for you to use. - Published: 2011-02-23 - Modified: 2011-02-23 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/free-ppc-and-seo-audit/ - Categories: General News In Feb & March, we are currently offering any prospective client a FREE Audit of your current PPC and SEO campaigns. We will show you where we can add value, reduce acquisition costs and increase sales. We also have an SEO Audit Tool to run technical checks on your domain. Please email me on pete@found. co. uk or contact me via LinkedIn for further information. --- ### Happy Birthday Found - 6 Years Old Today! > We've been celebrating a very special occasion in the office today, as Found turned six years old! - Published: 2011-02-18 - Modified: 2011-02-18 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/happy-birthday-found-6-years-old-today/ - Categories: General News We've been celebrating a very special occasion in the office today, as Found (formerly Artemis8) turned six years old! But it's not for me to comment too much upon this momentous occasion, so I will hand it over to the man who was there from the very conception. . Found / Artemis8 founder Mr. Leo Harrison Today, our company is 6 years old. A ripe old age in this industry and a timespan that has crossed great changes in performance marketing. It's been a fabulous journey... . Back in the summer of 2004, I was a humble antiquarian book dealer. Dusty old leather tomes, maps, copper etchings, all that stuff. We had a web site which we were looking to monetise through affiliates. I was given 2 lessons in "ppc affiliate marketing" by a wonderful chap called Neil Hutchinson. He'd just struck out on his own as an affiliate, said he was doing "quite well" and the best way to learn the business was to become a publisher myself. Ironically (as it turned out) my first campaign was for uSwitch. com, the energy switching web site. I remember the same sense of wonderment when I saw my first sale appear on the Commission Junction sales report as I did 5 years later when Neil told me he'd bought the uSwitch company! ! While my orbit has not nearly been so stratospheric as Neil's (who's has? ) like him, I quickly realised I needed financial backing to move the business ahead. Step forward some old friends of mine (I've known these guys since 1982) who also happened to be very clever at business and fairly deep in the pocket department - Sebastian and Lucan Gray. They set me up with a pile of cash and a friendly office space in Holborn. Late one night after a few Riojas, we chose the name Artemis Eight for our company. The Eight bit came from the fact that we are all born in August, Artemis was all about hunting and sounded quite posh... Exciting times followed, taking on staff and developing affiliate campaigns that ranged from holidays in Bali to anti-wrinkle creams! However, behind everything was a vision to create a growing company that would sit at the cutting edge of Performance Marketing. I realised the mistake many small "bedroom affiliates" (god, I hate that expression) made was that they didn't get out there and press the flesh. It's a bit of a chicken and egg situation - you don't get noticed unless you make an impact, but it's hard to make an impact without being noticed. So, donning my best (only) suit, I set off to meet everyone I could. I was actually incredibly surprised at how friendly most people were - that's what I still love about our industry, it hasn't gone all nasty and corporate (and let us all join in solemn prayer that it won't). It was fantastic to hear the words: "what can we do to help you? "... --- ### Team Smithfield and SuperGames Infamy > ‘Team Smithfield’, descended upon T47 at London Bridge yesterday for their shot at Affiliate SuperGames 2011 glory. - Published: 2011-02-18 - Modified: 2011-02-18 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/team-smithfield-and-supergames-infamy/ - Categories: General News A valiant crew of Found and Fusepump representatives, otherwise known as ‘Team Smithfield’, descended upon T47 at London Bridge yesterday for their shot at SuperGames 2011 glory. This hard-fought event, brilliantly organised by Affiliate Window and buy. at, brought together diverse teams from across the industry to test their skill at football, netball, ping-pong, archery and dodgeball. Team Smithfield highlights included a breathtaking draw with Quidco in one of the most thrilling football matches of the day – special mentions have to go to Fusepump’s Rob Durkin and Charlie Hawker for their footwork finesse, Jamie Brady for a particularly tasty backwards pass, Pete Newman for his heroic goalie work and Found’s Luke Townsend for fearsome form that did quite literally leave him breathless: Another special mention has to go to Sean McAuley of Fusepump whose innovative approach to shinpads saw him stuffing two copies of ‘Shortlist’ magazine down his socks – surely a sterling example of Team Smithfield’s unrivalled ingenuity. The rules of netball unfortunately remain a mystery to Team Smithfield, and up against netballing demons and first placed team of the day, Neo Ogilvy, our contribution to the game largely consisted of running up and down the court while having the whistle blown on us constantly for various transgressions – however this did appear to be a common theme across many of the matches! Ping-pong saw us up against UKWebMedia who seem to have recruited a team member who has surely studied table tennis with Chinese masters, and an enormous effort on behalf of Fusepump’s Tom Staveley was unfortunately not enough to see Team Smithfield win through. Let us gloss gently over our dodgeball result and focus on the archery, where Sean ‘Bullseye’ McAuley clawed back much needed points for Team Smithfield to bring us to the not-so-respectable result of being the 16th placed team on the day. With our dreams of glory lying in tatters like the discarded sweaty netball bibs on the concrete floor, Team Smithfield took solace in a few well deserved beers and pizza followed by some serious ‘networking’ at the after party. Many thanks to Affiliate Window and buy. at for a fantastic event, and to our Fusepump team mates for their heroic efforts. We’re already in training for next year! --- ### Found Search Predictions For 2011 > 2011 will be the year when search and social media converge (although some might say collide). - Published: 2011-02-03 - Modified: 2024-04-23 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-search-predictions-2011/ - Categories: Opinion, SEO Found features in today’s issue of NMA as part of their Search Expert Predictions for 2011.   Check out the article here: http://tinyurl. com/6adcndr Here’s my predictions for 2011: 2011 will be the year when search and social media converge (although some might say collide). With ad spend on Facebook tipped to double and Google taking PPC into the display arena (moving display pricing beyond traditional CPM to more performance-based models), we’re already seeing the breakdown of the search, social and display silos. Add to this the unification of Yahoo and Bing, which is likely to lead to increases in click costs, and advertisers will need to further consider where and how to invest their marketing budgets intelligently. The appearance of paid search ads will also change significantly, with maps, products and vouchers being integrated into Google results. Localised targeting will equally continue to increase in importance, along with the use of mobile search and location-based apps such as Foursquare and Google Places, opening up greater opportunities for smaller businesses. However, there’s no denying that Facebook is the longer-term future of search, and potentially the future search engine. As it creates and acquires more data and functionality, such as apps, stores and search results, it’s becoming a micro-worldwide web in its own right. That said, winning in search is, to some extent, all about finding the best strategy for, or moulding existing strategies around, the forever-changing landscape. No matter what 2011 brings, any changes will be gradual and there’ll always be areas to capitalise on. However, advertisers must not forget that search, paid search in particular, is a game based on rules, analytics and algorithms; the biggest winners will continue to be those who play by the simple fundamentals best. Search and mobile will form a warm and close relationship in 2011, with Google Places, Facebook Places and Foursquare vying for the role of best friend. This year will also see mobile play a key role in direct response campaigns, with QR codes becoming more integrated into mobile results, offering the ability to synchronise offers with maps and location-based searches. Tina Judic --- ### Found at NMA Live > Found provided nspiration for marketers at the NMA Live event, with the theme of 'Making the Latest Developments in Search Work for You'. - Published: 2011-01-21 - Modified: 2011-01-21 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-at-nma-live/ - Categories: General News Found provided plenty of inspiration for search marketers at the NMA Live event on 21st January, with the theme of 'Making the Latest Developments in Search Work for You'. At the Found-sponsored event, our MD Tina Judic demonstrated the emergence of search as a true performance marketing channel, and the need for greater, more focused integration between search, social media, display advertising and mobile. Business Development Director Wulfric Light-Wilkinson then presented detailed case studies showcasing how we have built effective acquisition funnels for a diverse range of clients. Also featuring speakers from Google, Yahoo! , Microsoft, MediaCom and Decipher exploring the latest developments in search, the event provided a cutting edge view of the opportunities and challenges ahead. Congratulations to the NMA Live team for a top event that we were proud to support. --- ### Affiliates: Building Traffic with PPC > With the right strategy and the right objectives and goals, paid search activity can deliver very important incremental sales. - Published: 2011-01-10 - Modified: 2024-04-07 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/affiliates-building-traffic-with-ppc/ - Categories: Paid Search (PPC) Achieving maximum exposure across the paid search landscape can be an expensive and risky business for some brands, with many unfortunately having first-hand experience of how possible it is to quickly burn through thousands of pounds in click spend on ultimately unprofitable keywords. With significant Google trademark policy changes taking place over the past two years which allow competitors to both bid on branded search terms and display those terms in their ad text, the problem has been further compounded for brands now facing significant sales leakage to competitor paid search activity. However, this is a classic case where potential threat can actually be turned into a positive asset when brands adopt a more clearly defined strategy to build traffic with PPC. And this is where affiliates or search specialists, who are paid on performance, can be extremely valuable in supplementing current strategy, protecting a brand from competitors, and ensuring that long tail keywords and any other gaps are effectively plugged. In fact, if the answer is ‘yes’ to one or more of the following questions, then this would definitely be a valuable option for any brand to consider: • Am I missing out on reaching some of my potential customers through search? • Does my search budget limit me? Does it run out? • Are there key messages I am unable to communicate to my audience? • Are my competitors continually appearing on my brand and taking my customers away? In addition to the specialist guidance and knowledge an affiliate or search specialist then brings to the table, the key benefit of utilising affiliates to build PPC traffic is that it can be undertaken at no financial risk, as the affiliate isn’t paid unless a sale is made; a lead is generated; or the customer takes whatever action the brand has specified the affiliate will be rewarded for. To be fair, some brands may be concerned how this activity can be carried out without impacting their own search campaigns. But with careful preparation and clear guidelines for affiliates, any potential issues can be easily addressed in the planning phase of any brand protection work - key points that need to be considered being: • Agree a capped CPC rate with affiliates for any brand keyword activity, to ensure your own click prices aren’t inflated • Work with either a single partner or a small group of affiliates that you have carefully screened and who you know will be responsive to requests or new opportunities • Give affiliates a specific remit to cover particular products, categories or keyword types so that they won’t be competing against you in any of their activity • Make sure the rules of play are crystal clear – create a black list of any no-go keywords, outline ad copy restrictions, consider whether you want to restrict affiliates to displaying ads at particular times of the day – and clearly communicate these • Be mindful that you do need to give your PPC affiliates some profitable... --- ### Found Party Gets A Big Thumbs Up!! > Last night saw the official launch of Found, the Performance Marketing Agency at the Music Room in West London. - Published: 2010-10-22 - Modified: 2010-10-22 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/found-party-gets-a-big-thumbs-up/ - Categories: General News Massive thanks to Stuart Pringle and the good folk over at the A4U for giving us such a great write up on the Affiliates4u site. But we think it's so good that we are putting the whole thing up here on our blog... Massive thanks to Stuart Pringle and the good folk over at the A4U for giving us such a great write up on the Affiliates4u site. The original piece can be found here: https://www. affiliates4u. com/news/2010/10/lost-come-and-be-found/ But we think it's so good that we are putting the whole thing up here on our blog... "Last night saw the official launch of Found, the Performance Marketing Agency at the Music Room in West London... And if it’s a case of start as you mean to go on then these guys have definitely found the secret to successA top notch evening was had by all, with guests treated to champagne reception, nibbles a plenty, excellent band, fun and games and a no-nonsense free bar. It’s not often you get to see famous ‘lost’ moments of history on the circuit with both Lord Lucan and Shergar working the room. A mention has to go to the very impressive magician who even managed to put your card on an i-phone app. Talk about #zeitgeist. Found was formerly Artemis8 and now pulls together the key Online Marketing services of Search, Mobile, Social, Affiliate Management, Brand Protection and Optimisation under a very clear Performance remit. October has been a landmark month for the agency. After making their mark at a4uexpo last week with the Found buses getting everyoneto the Troxy party, last night wasn't just about celebrating a new identity, but also reinforcing market proposition. Tina Judic, MD at Found, explains: “As an award-winning agency, the Artemis8 team had already gained a significant reputation for finding new ways to build its clients’ businesses online; through maximising search engine dynamics, utilising different ways of adapting technology or simply thinking out of the box. We therefore pride ourselves in always staying ahead of the game and the launch of Found gives us the opportunity to extend our knowledge and expertise in an industry that has evolved dramatically over the past year to an industry with a much heavier reliance on Performance-based activity across a whole range of Online channels including Search, Social and Mobile. ” Cementing the team’s drive and experience even further, Red Letter Days Online Marketing Manager and one of the Performance Marketing industry’s most respected commentators, Angela Greewood, has also joined Found as Director of Account Management. It was a great opportunity to see so many faces and after looking at the tell-tale tweets in the early hours if I were a betting man, I’d put a few quid on there being some sore heads around this morning! Coffee anyone? " Stu --- ### Voucher code sites are Google Instant's winners > Google Instant has certainly had an impact on the search space. But is this for the better? - Published: 2010-10-15 - Modified: 2024-04-07 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/voucher-code-sites-are-google-instants-winners/ - Categories: Google Algorithm Updates, Opinion Google Instant has certainly had an impact on the search space. But is this for the better? Analysis is already illustrating an increased importance on retail keyword terms related to coupons, promotions and vouchers, because these terms are so popular. Regarding Dale Lovell’s letter (nma 30 September 2010), Google Instant has certainly had an impact on the search space. But is this for the better? Analysis is already illustrating an increased importance on retail keyword terms related to coupons, promotions and vouchers, because these terms are so popular. As a result, Google’s search suggestions have become even more powerful. However, discount-related keyword terms are leading the way in recommendations. Google Instant is already squeezing the long tail, which is likely to drive up the competition and, therefore, costs of popular core brand and generic terms. Who are the winners? Voucher code sites. For example, if you type in ’ASOS’, the first recommendation is for the site, the second is ’ASOS discount code’, and three further discount variants feature in the remaining eight suggestions. A user could end up seeing results for ’ASOS discount’ when they weren’t even looking for it. Not only is Google changing the long-tail search space, it’s highly possible it’s changing user intent, impacting consumers, agencies and, significantly, merchants’ margins. And as voucher searches grow, the inclusion of voucher-related terms in Google’s suggestions will grow, increasing search volume exponentially. Voucher code sites are going to have a great Christmas. --- ### Prezzybox Appoints Found. As Its Paid Search Agency > Prezzybox has appointed Found as its exclusive Paid Search agency. - Published: 2010-08-20 - Modified: 2024-04-07 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/prezzybox-appoints-found/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, General News PREZZYBOX appoints paid search agency Found. as it plans multi-channel marketing campaign for its 10th Birthday celebrations next month. Prezzybox has appointed Found. (previously known as Artemis8) as its exclusive Paid Search agency as it gears up for its 10th birthday celebrations next month. As one of the leading online gift retailers in the UK, Prezzybox is also one of the original early adopters of online retailing and has remained a consistent contender in the massive UK gift market which has grown an impressive 26 per cent year-on-year. Founded by Zak Edwards in 2000, the multi award-winning business has more recently carved itself a niche as a trusted and competitive online department store, appealing to a predominately female gift-buying demographic. Zak says: “The online gift marketplace has changed dramatically over the past 10 years. Because of the ease in which users can swap between companies on the web, it has become increasingly imperative to have an easy-to-use website, with a great product range at competitive prices, plus a broad reaching digital marketing strategy, to ensure we communicate with as many customers as possible. ” The tenth birthday is therefore being celebrated with a multi-channel marketing campaign, including a focused push on widening its search base from Digital Performance Specialists, Found, plus wacky birthday campaigns via Facebook and Twitter including the search to find the best giant cup cake bakers. Tina Judic, Managing Director of Found, says: “The gift market is increasingly competitive and, therefore, as performance-based specialists our role is to seek out new ways to ensure we drive increased sales, specifically providing consistent coverage and offering extended reach on generic search terms. ” On the actual birthday of September 14th, Prezzybox will also be offering special discounted prices for its top ten products, the standard delivery charge will be just 10p and any customers purchasing on the day who share the same birthday will receive free gifts and vouchers. With a collection of its original products from 2000 available at 2000 prices, Prezzybox will also be re-releasing some of its top sellers from each of the next ten years including the bagpipes starter kit, life size Dalek, full suit of armour and the infamous toothpick man. --- ### TradeDoubler Star Defects To Digital Performance Specialist FOUND. > TradeDoubler stalwart Wulfric Light-Wilkinson has moved agency-side to become Business Development Director . - Published: 2010-08-18 - Modified: 2010-08-18 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/tradedoubler-star-defects-to-found/ - Categories: General News Wulfric, who was with the affiliate network for over 4 years, more recently as Senior Business Development Manager, will report directly to Found Managing Director, Tina Judic, and be responsible for showcasing the skills and passion for delivery of the award-winning Found team to a broader Advertiser mix. TradeDoubler stalwart Wulfric Light-Wilkinson has moved agency-side to become Business Development Director at Digital Performance specialist, Found (previously known as Artemis8). Wulfric, who was with the affiliate network for over 4 years, more recently as Senior Business Development Manager, will report directly to Found Managing Director, Tina Judic, and be responsible for showcasing the skills and passion for delivery of the award-winning Found team to a broader Advertiser mix. Tina says: “Wulfric has an incredible thirst for making deals. He’s helped build the TradeDoubler client portfolio, bringing a number of big brand advertisers onboard across tdSearch and tdAffiliate, so he has an exceptional understanding of the PPC, SEO and Affiliate sectors, as well as the skills to ensure what’s promised is delivered, and more. I’m delighted he wanted to join us. ” Wulfric says: “Found has a fantastic industry reputation for delivering highly effective and strategic performance marketing campaigns. The team are known for being focused on finding new ways to build their clients’ businesses online, be it through Google updates, different ways of adapting their technology or simply thinking out of the box to achieve powerful results. I want to be part of this fresh thinking and to help Tina and the team show more clients how to maximise their performance marketing activity much, much further. ” --- ### Is affiliate marketing ready to embrace a post impression model? > Affiliate marketing, since inception, has focused on a last click model. Is it ready to work on a post impression model? - Published: 2010-06-30 - Modified: 2010-06-30 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/is-affiliate-marketing-ready-to-embrace-a-post-impression-model/ - Categories: General News There is much talk of late, that post impression advertising should be able to work on the CPA model and, thus, within the affiliate channel. However, as much as we've collectively evolved the sector to where it is today, we simply aren’t geared up to embrace this model. For now, anyway. Post impression attribution relates to a consumer being served an ad, though not necessarily taking any action to click through on the ad. Either way, the ad will log an impression, or a view. An advertiser who works to a post impression model will pay for that impression. Post click attribution reflects direct action by the consumer to click on the advert served. Embracing post impression within affiliate marketing could see impressions overwriting clicks. Affiliate marketing, since inception, has focused on a last click model, resulting in affiliates looking at ways to not just initiate a consumer’s interest in a brand or product, but to ensure they complete the journey, ultimately driving the last click. The fact that the purchase path can be so fragmented is one of the reasons that affiliate marketing shines – affiliates are always looking for new ways to secure that final click or, to use a very topical analogy, to be the one who puts the ball in the back of the net. Not surprisingly, the IAB website therefore clearly defines the channel as being about last click referral: ‘If a consumer visiting the affiliate’s site clicks on an advertisement and goes on to perform a predetermined action (usually a purchase) on the advertiser’s site then the affiliate receives a payment. It is this cost per action model that defines affiliate marketing and sets it apart from other channels. ’ Okay, maybe in the past, the channel has not rewarded affiliates who contributed to the journey – it was, and still is, very much perceived as being about the striker who claims the goal, not the defender who took the free kick, or the midfielder who knocked it into the striker’s path. But to be fair, this in itself is driving even more discussion, with many feeling that the last click model is flawed. However, post impression is a different model entirely. Although I firmly believe that display advertising does help to encourage a consumer along the purchase path, there is still no explicit distinction between high correlation (a consumer viewing an ad and purchasing from that advertiser)and high causation (a consumer viewing and clicking on an ad, and then purchasing from that advertiser). The latter, at least, illustrates intent. And for those who would argue that a click that resulted in a 30 day lag to sale is equally leaning towards correlation rather than causation, programme-dependant, I agree. The former may have contributed in some form, but it equally may never have been noticed. Now if we take a closer look at the post impression model and its growth in Europe – particularly Germany – there is a greater acceptance of post impression... --- ### lastminute.com appoints Found as Search Agency > lastminute.com has appointed Found as its search agency for its lastminute.com Ireland and Travelocity brands. - Published: 2010-04-15 - Modified: 2024-04-07 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/lastminute-com-appoints-found-as-search-agency/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, General News lastminute.com has appointed Found (previously known as Artemis8) as its search agency for its lastminute.com Ireland and Travelocity brands, as well as its sole PPC partner for lastminute.com in the UK. lastminute. com has appointed Found (previously known as Artemis8) as its search agency for its lastminute. com Ireland and Travelocity brands, as well as its sole PPC partner for lastminute. com in the UK. As Europe’s leading independent online travel and leisure group, lastminute. com operates directly in 14 European countries with association partners in several other territories. As part of its aim to become the number one travel and lifestyle website for providing great-value inspiration and solutions, the brand is also now looking to grow its presence in Ireland over the coming year with a dedicated search marketing campaign to assist this growth strategy. lastminute. com is one of the most popular travel and leisure sites in Ireland with around half a million people logging on every week to seek out the best deals. Lina Patel, lastminute. com’s Europe Head of Affiliate and Distributed Partnerships, says: “Found has worked hand-in-hand with our search marketing team for the past year, providing us with a consistently high standard of strategic and innovative search marketing support. Their speed and ability to deliver, especially on the harder generic and long tail categories, has meant they have become a valuable resource to us. They will now be an integral part of our search strategy going forwards, as we look to further expand the success of our Travelocity business, and continue to build the lastminute. com brand in Ireland. ” Travelocity is the leading provider of consumer-direct travel services, offering a large number of sites in 12 languages, for leisure and business travellers. Found has been tasked with further increasing the coverage, awareness and sales generation through the search-marketing channel. Furthermore, Travelocity markets and distributes travel-related products and services directly to individuals through Travelocity and its various brand websites and contact centres. For business travellers, Travelocity BusinessSM provides the integrated online corporate travel technology and full-service offering of their GetThere® product, along with the online expertise of Travelocity. Tina Judic, Managing Director of Found, adds: “We’re delighted that lastminute. com has appointed us to play an integral role in their online marketing strategy. Over the years, we have developed a proven and successful track record, working to a cost per acquisition model, thus ensuring customers, like lastminute,com, have complete transparency of the return on investment we are delivering. The travel search space is particularly crowded so it is imperative that the right strategic approach is taken to not only deliver sales but also maximise brand exposure online. ” --- ### Affiliate Report: Feature 2: EXPLOSION marketing!! > Affiliate marketing has clawed its way up the agenda with a healthy line up of advertisers now including it on their media plan. - Published: 2010-04-07 - Modified: 2024-04-07 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/affiliate-report-feature-2-explosion-marketing/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, Opinion Revolution investigates what the industry is doing to solve its image problem and make affiliate marketing more compelling to brands. Affiliate marketing has clawed its way up the agenda with a healthy line up of advertisers now including it on their media plan. However, affiliate marketing is still a turn off for many big-name brand owners: it's complex, resource intensive and requires significant investment, but mostly, it’s just not sexy enough to grab their attention. Revolution investigates what the industry is doing to solve its image problem and make affiliate marketing more compelling to brands. The perception of affiliate marketing has changed over the years – from bedroom affiliates, to search marketing experts, to large voucher code and price comparison sites, to full blown performance agencies. And it’s not only perception – the revenues driven through the channel are continuing to grow. In 2007 the size of the channel was £3. 13bn. By 2009, it was expecting to break the £4bn mark (econsultancy), with affiliate ad spend growing 38. 2% to £72. 6m last year (IAB). With more affiliates driving greater volumes of revenue to merchants (more than 25% of affiliates are generating over £10k a month for merchants) the channel is demanding attention. Affiliates are companies or individuals who are willing to invest their cold hard cash to deliver results for merchants. They are innovative, always seeking out new opportunities, discovering new platforms, targeting new channels and continuing to evolve. Affiliates are always the first to be trying the new big thing – mobile to facebook, from blogging to mobile apps. The problem with affiliate marketing is that not one channel defines it. Social marketing is hip and cool. Micro-blogging is primary communication channel; mobile apps provide immediate sources of fun and information. Affiliate marketing is a channel in its own right, a channel that is defined by how it is rewarded, not how it drives traffic. Affiliate marketers are all different in their approach, their methodologies and their expertise. However the one thing that unites all affiliates – they are all CPA experts in the online marketing field. And how more sexy and attractive is a strategy that enables merchants to fully manage their ROI through multiple channels? Affiliate marketing has had a tendency to be defined by the latest talking point – from spyware to behavioural targeting tools, from cashback offers to voucher codes. If merchants have a sales budget that they can use to motivate and reward affiliates, then the opportunities for the merchants’ brand are endless. How better to test a new search marketing approach than through a CPA affiliate? To trial a Facebook campaign? To understand how to monetise Twitter? See affiliates as partners and then you will see the allure. More and more affiliates have become far better at promoting themselves, creating great websites, collateral, case studies and presentations, to help back-up their figures. There is more transparency n the space than ever before, meaning merchants are less tentative in their steps to embrace affiliates. The IAB has helped to bring merchanrts, networks, affiliates and agencies together – to work together as one... --- ### Search Marketing – outsource or not to outsource? > Search marketing has, and continues to be, one of the key elements of any digital strategy. - Published: 2010-03-17 - Modified: 2010-03-17 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/search-marketing-outsource-or-not-to-outsource/ - Categories: General News Search marketing has, and continues to be, one of the key elements of any digital strategy. However, there is seemingly a trend of companies looking to tighten their wallets, to seek out cheaper suppliers and to squeeze the commissions of their existing agencies. Companies are looking for value for money and not just results. The debate rages on – as a brand, should you bring your search marketing efforts in-house? Many companies are wrestling with the decision right now, particularly in light of the current economic downturn, which has resulted in them keeping a watchful eye on budgets versus ROI. It’s not all about managing to an endless sales budget but about identifying the best way to manage costs while providing the greatest reach to secure new customers. While many search agencies are mourning the lower commission demands and the loss of business to budget and performance competitors, companies are also thinking about managing search internally. Bringing search in-house is an attractive proposition for many big spending clients. Spend on search advertising is still very heavily weighted towards high management fees or a percentage of spend metric, So, surely, cutting out the middleman and advertising directly with the search engines is the way to go? For many brands, conducting search marketing in-house certainly has its benefits by helping to reduce the account management fees. However, managing search marketing in-house means campaigns have to be set up and structured, on each independent engine, then key-worded, maintained, optimised and grown. This can take up a considerable amount of time and resource, and there is no guarantee you will make the most out of your search budget. Whereas a specialist search agency already has templates, technologies, strategies, relationships and the right people in place to reduce time spent managing the uploading of keywords titles and descriptors, and using the valuable time to optimise performance. Search technology has moved on over the last few years with multiple tools available to help improve workflow and high-volume keyword management. However, these tolls can be terribly expensive, especially if the use of these tools is for the management of one search campaign, whereas specialist agencies are using these tools day in, day out for a number of varying clients, and always seeking out ways to improve processes and procedures to maximise ROI. Dedicated search marketing agencies get paid to manage each account effectively (or lose their reputation). These companies can also recommend advice on alterations to sites, to make them more search-engine friendly or offer solutions to enable clients to get the most from their campaigns, such as combining various ad formats to achieve a broader audience reach. So, what is the correct way to go? Cheaper agency relationships are an option – and not just relationships that focus on reducing the commissions paid to agencies but a change to the whole structure and approach. If your agency is the expert in search marketing, then challenge them to put their money where their mouth is, and work... --- ### Protecting your Brand > It’s two years since Google changed the brand rights rules and allowed advertisers to freely bid on each other’s brand terms. - Published: 2010-02-10 - Modified: 2024-04-07 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/protecting-your-brand/ - Categories: Digital Marketing, How to, Opinion It’s two years since Google changed the brand rights rules and allowed advertisers to freely bid on each other’s brand terms. But, if the user is looking for that brand then surely they want to find that brand, and not alternatives? When is it about choice, and when is it about competition and spend? Today, brands operate in a crowded marketplace, both online and offline, all jostling for number one position. In order to stand out, advertisers must invest in enhancing the customer experience, giving them choice while protecting their brand online. Search marketing is one of the most powerful weapons in the online marketing armoury. However, with the integration of site links and universal search results, the bulk of natural results are finding themselves being pushed further down the page, meaning even greater eye balls on paid search activity. Search marketing facilitates all aspects of the customer user journey, from research to brand engagement, to, ultimately, purchase intent. Despite many brands now engaging more with understanding the broader mix of advertising, and wanting to understand the contributions made along the user journey, last click is still the primary model adopted. Search marketing galvanises customers who have already made a decision to buy a product, many of whom type in the advertiser’s brand term to make the final purchase. But can that user be drawn away? Even at that last minute when they are ready to buy? The answer is yes. Competition exists on the engines throughout the buying process, and advertisers will gladly pick up your prospective customers, given half a chance, So, if you, as the advertiser, are only able to feature your paid search ad once, this means there are up to nine advertisers potentially vying for ‘your’ customer, on your brand term. So how can you overcome this, and minimise leakage to your competitors? We addressed this exact problem with Premier Inn. By tapping into our strong innovative and technical expertise, we developed a strategy that would involve building a site, to complement Premier Inn’s own site. Once built, the hotel locator site – www. premierinn-hotels. com - offered travellers easy access to location and route information for all of the 570 plus hotels across the UK. Working with Premier Inn we set out to simplify the whole selection process, by providing location and journey-planning information based around one simple destination question. The site is divided between a destination search and a route planner. Information is then provided on both areas for each Premier Inn selected, including price of accommodation, address details, directions as well as a booking link through to the main Premier Inn site. By playing to our strengths in the digital performance arena, Found has been able to provide Premier Inn’s prospective customers with a really useful, innovative tool. And, by providing extra value to the consumer, we are also able to invest in search marketing, bidding on brand, and brand variations, to help secure greater eye balls on Premier Inn. There is... --- ### Premier Inn Achieve Record Incremental Sales > Premier Inn has revealed it achieved record incremental sales towards the end of last year, following a focused search strategy. - Published: 2010-01-22 - Modified: 2010-01-22 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/premier-innrecord-incremental-sales/ - Categories: General News Premier Inn has revealed it achieved record incremental sales towards the end of last year, following a focused search strategy being implemented with digital performance marketing specialists Found (previously known as Artemis8). Premier Inn has revealed it achieved record incremental sales towards the end of last year, following a focused search strategy being implemented with digital performance marketing specialists Found (previously known as Artemis8). In November alone, the UK’s largest hotel chain saw £1m in additional bookings generated by the new premierinnhotels. co. uk hotel finder site, which was launched to complement Premier Inn’s own site and give users another option for locating and booking their hotel choice. Martin Smith, e-commerce manager for Premier Inn, says: “We operate in a very competitive, crowded market so the aim was to not only protect the brand online, but also provide visitors with a unique booking experience. Tapping into the innovation and technological delivery of the Found team, the strategy centred around building a site which offered something a little different, answering a specific need for quick and easy information on our hotels, with route information to them. The result has been record incremental sales, but also multi-messaging opportunities for the Premier Inn brand during a key booking period. ” The site was developed by Found, as part of Premier Inn’s ongoing relationship with Starcom MediaVest Group and buy. at. Tina Judic, managing director of Found, adds: “There is always the risk of simply taking sales that would have gone to the brand direct, but the strategy was built to ensure we actually contributed to revenue as well as protected the brand online. With the site now firmly established, we are looking at how we can broaden the strategy to encompass more generic activity. ” Premierinnhotels. co. uk offers travellers easy access to location and route information for all of the 580 plus Premier Inn hotels across the UK. Built around a simple map and route concept, it is aimed at assisting business travellers and those planning a long journey with details about the possible Premier Inn hotels they could use along their journey. Information is then provided for each hotel selected, including price of accommodation, address details, directions as well as a booking link through to the main Premier Inn site. --- ### Digital relationship marketing is vital when purse strings need to be tightened > The beauty of digital relationship marketing is that an agency helps pick the best tools according to budget. - Published: 2009-10-18 - Modified: 2009-10-18 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/blog/digital-relationship-marketing-is-vital-when-purse-strings-need-to-be-tightened/ - Categories: General News New Media Age – Letter to the Editor Digital relationship marketing is vital when purse strings need to be tightened. Winning online is about relationships between clients and their key digital agencies. Digital relationship marketing is vital when purse strings need to be tightened. Winning online is about relationships between clients and their key digital agencies. The beauty of digital relationship marketing is that an agency helps pick the best tools according to budget. We were able to demonstrate this principle with Premier Inn. We approached them with the idea of a hotel locator site, offering travellers easy access to location and route information for all of the 570 plus hotels across the UK. For consumers, location remains a key criteria for selecting a hotel, so our aim was to make this information as easy to access as possible. In the current economic downturn, consumers are spending their money more wisely by prioritising their outgoings. They have also become more savvy in terms of wanting choice and flexibility. Working with Premier Inn we set out to simplify the whole selection process, by providing location and journey planning information based around one simple destination question. We helped to create a website - Premierinnhotels. co. uk - which is divided between a destination search and route planner. Information is then provided on both areas for each Premier Inn selected, including price of accommodation, address details, directions as well as a booking link through to the main Premier Inn site. By playing to our strengths in the digital performance arena, Found has been able to ensure Premier Inn provides consumers with a really useful innovative tool, so they get more of the things that matter to them. By converting visitors into customers, we will help Premier Inn to secure maximum ROI. --- ## Recources ### INTEGRATED DIGITAL MARKETING GUIDE > Integrated digital marketing strategy guide: using cross-channel data to build intelligent growth strategies. - Published: 2021-03-12 - Modified: 2024-05-30 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/resources/white-paper/integrated-digital-marketing-guide/ - Resources Categories: Data, Digital Marketing - Resources Content: Whitepaper INTRODUCTION. All online businesses strive for growth, and most will commonly attempt to attribute sales or conversions to specific digital marketing channels (like organic search or social media) in order to understand and manage budget and performance. But deciding which specific channel to assign a sale to — when users frequently visit from multiple channels (and devices, locations, times, and so on), in a way which provides insight and value, is complex and difficult. How does one measure which channels were most influential in purchase decisions? Was the first or the last touch point more important? What happens if there are offline touch points, too? These are hard questions to answer, and the complexity increases with each channel that is added to the mix. Making the wrong decision means wasting budget, missing out on sales or cannibalising broader efforts - effectively hindering business growth. As a result, digital marketers and analysts turn to different methods and models of multi-channel attribution to attempt to understand the value of each channel in isolation, and how user behaviour and consumer value changes when they interact with each other. They model scenarios that apply different values depending on the ordering, role or behaviour of a specific channel within a user journey; all of which are ‘true’, but none of which agree on the value of any given vertical. Given this complexity, it seems counter-intuitive to build strategies for each channel in isolation. When deploying tactics and activity, and measuring the performance of a specific channel, there is a risk of negatively impacting other channels, and even harming overall performance. What is more, the chances are, you probably do not even know it is happening. When budgets and individual key performance indicators (KPIs) — and, frequently, performance-related bonuses — are allocated by channel, there is a risk of reducing the incentive to collaborate on integrated strategies. It is every person for themselves, in a rat race to prove that their channel performs best — all at the expense of the consumer, and the business’s growth aspirations. In almost all cases, channels could perform better if used efficiently together — and while there may be short-term losses in some areas, as the distribution of traffic and conversions shifts to a smarter equilibrium, there are significant opportunities to be had by working together. Anyone who wants to fulfill their growth ambitions must put the overall business objectives first and worry less about individual channel budgets, performance and bragging rights. This means building integrated growth strategies that span different activities, departments and verticals. To apply this kind of thinking, it is essential to align and integrate all aspects of one’s strategy and tactics, from defining and developing objectives; to changing how to research the markets, audience and competitors; to how to position and market products and services. The more sophisticated the planning at each of these stages and the better quality of data and research applied, the greater the chance of deploying a successful multi-channel strategy. This is... --- ### B2C DIGITAL MARKETING GUIDE > In this guide, we dive deeply into SEO, Paid Media, Data, and Content trends for B2C companies. - Published: 2021-01-21 - Modified: 2025-02-24 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/resources/white-paper/b2c-digital-marketing-guide/ - Resources Categories: Content, Data, Digital Marketing, Paid Media, PPC, SEO - Resources Industries: Retail - Resources Content: Whitepaper B2C businesses faced a slew of disruptions in 2020, which led to accelerated online sales, jumping from a fifth (21. 8%) to almost a third (27. 5%) of all sales in the UK. Businesses that weren’t digital first either pivoted or served content hoping to stay front of mind when everything eventually reopened. In this limbo, channels needed to adapt. We saw SEO advising on Coronavirus messaging for landing pages, Biddable Media supporting PSAs around opening hours, and Data defining customers that had never shopped online before. Integration is essential as circumstances dictate fast turnarounds - a theme that will carry through to 2021. Our teams have shared their dos and don’ts for the coming year, especially for B2C businesses looking to both support their offline offering and grow online. THINGS YOU SHOULD DO. SEO. Prioritise UX. Seriously, almost half of consumers are shopping with new brands and we’ve also seen that users are less brand loyal than ever before. You need to offer value and experience, and UX can help make digital feel more like a service than ever before. This is only going to grow in importance as the arrival of AR shopping comes to different industries - start looking for structured data to support it and make sure your website is ready to capture these kinds of interactions. A lot of that also ties to the broader focus of making sure customers can find your products easily. That means even if stores remain closed, making sure you are using the Products feature on Google My Business, making sure your product markup is accurate and contains all relevant information, and making sure your product images are well optimised for image search. Structured data and image optimisation are likely to play a big part in the AR journey, and we know product ratings have a strong correlation with organic ranking results in Shopping, so a focus on products needs to be at the heart of growth this year. One thing we would strongly recommend is to set up smarter trends analysis dashboards to understand shifts in demand, giving context to changes that are happening in the world. Google’s new search trends insight in Google Ads is a great resource, but you can go further and make your own dashboard tracking search volumes for your products. Businesses that are on top of what’s happening in search will be in with the best chance of capturing organic demand, as well as being able to react quickly to changes in customer needs. As we’ve seen in 2020, audiences are changing as more people rely on online for their essentials. We suggest taking a look at your demographic data to see if anything is different for 2021. If you reached a new audience in 2020, keep them engaged this year by developing content strategies and landing pages to target their needs. It also wouldn’t hurt to refresh your keyword landscape to see if searches match up to previous years, and give you more... --- ### B2B Digital Marketing Guide > In this guide, we dive deeply into SEO, Paid Media, Data, and Content trends for B2B companies. - Published: 2021-01-14 - Modified: 2025-03-12 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/resources/white-paper/b2b-digital-marketing-guide/ - Resources Categories: Content, Data, Digital Marketing, Paid Media, PPC, SEO - Resources Industries: B2B - Resources Content: Whitepaper 2020 was a whirlwind and the B2B industry was no exception. We saw more people go online for answers, and companies were expected to provide them. Going into 2021, the B2B industry is continuing this focus to make sense of what's happening and share the impact on both customers and the wider industry. Data was at the heart of B2B success in 2020 and we fully expect that to continue through 2021, with a focus on providing insights that inform consumer purchasing decisions and conversion paths. However, every channel has a part to play in that journey, so we're sharing some of the dos and don’ts and what to expect in 2021 for B2B marketing. THINGS YOU SHOULD DO. SEO. Brand traffic is huge for B2B, and businesses should be focusing on how they can optimise that journey for audiences. That means a focus on owning your brand results - not just ranking in position 1 for brand terms, but dominating page 1; appearing in local listings, PAAs, featured snippets, image search and the knowledge panel. We strongly expect structured data, local listing features and additional SERP feature optimisation to play a huge part in strategies for B2B companies in 2021. Brand isn’t going anywhere, and with it, SEOs need to be looking at how they dominate the space for both pure-brand terms and brand-generics. A focus on intent is going to be stronger than ever in 2021. Companies need to know exactly what and how to serve content to meet the intent of the queries that led to it. For those businesses with a high lead value, users that are ready to convert (for example, search for brand generic keywords) should be landing on highly relevant landing pages (optimised for UX of course), leading to a better conversion rate. If your landing pages don’t match the intent or needs of the audience then they are not only not going to perform well from a conversion perspective, but also won’t rank well to bring the audience to you in the first place. We’re also expecting B2B companies to start looking internationally in 2021. 2020 broke down the barriers usually faced by B2B industries, and with everyone moving online, location became less of a driving factor for conversions. With more people working remotely than ever before, locations carry less weight in digital, but more weight in targeting. An agency SEO team like ours can help support your in-house teams in understanding which services are priorities in particular regions, helping you expand successfully in new markets. PAID MEDIA. Invest in feeding in more lead data, especially if your business has a long lead cycle. The more information that is fed back into platforms, the more informed optimisations (and results) will be. This is particularly true with the rise of automation allowing for bidding strategies to focus on conversions - if platforms only have the number of conversions on site to go on, not how many of those turned into actual leads and... --- ### Digital Marketing GUIDE & TRENDS > In this guide, we dive deeply into Digital Marketing - SEO, Paid Media, Data and Content - trends. - Published: 2021-01-13 - Modified: 2024-05-30 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/resources/white-paper/digital-marketing-guide-trends/ - Resources Categories: Content, Data, Paid Media, PPC, SEO - Resources Content: Whitepaper What a year 2020 was - unlike any other, featuring a global pandemic along with a US election, and that’s not even including the Australian bushfires, a stock market crash, and Prince Harry and Meghan stepping down as royals. In the chaos, people all over the country were in lockdown, turning to the digital world for solace. Adults in the UK spent over a quarter of their waking day online, with a whopping 1. 6 trillion hours worldwide spent on our phones in the first half of 2020. This shift was apparent in the online shopping boom where almost 50% of consumers tried new brands and local businesses looked for ways to move their offerings online. LEARNINGS FROM 2020. As digital marketers, we weren’t able to rely on performance from previous years to inform forecasts or general seasonality in terms of expected keyword performance; or the usual peaks and troughs in traffic, conversions, and revenue we see throughout a normal year. This meant every channel had to adapt how they worked in real-time, and with the pandemic leading to store closures, decreased in-person contact, and shifts across the digital landscape with new features rolling out to support businesses, we were not only responsible for digital performance, but playing a huge part in business survival as well. As a result, many companies and many of our own clients had to change their focuses overnight, moving from a focus on “how can we drive more revenue” to “what does my audience need at this moment”. With that came changes to strategies, tactics, and immediate and long-term focuses, with each digital channel having their own challenges to overcome. SEO. For SEO in particular, seasonality as we knew it was gone, and using forecasts to inform our strategy was a challenge. Understanding our audience became more important than it already was, as new audience groups emerged with everything shifting online. With these new audience groups, user engagement metrics were also changing, impressing the need to tailor content to these new demographics. Our plan of attack was rooted in research and trend analysis, staying on top of emerging and expected search trends so that we could optimise for terms users were searching for. Identifying these as they emerged was pivotal to providing the support our clients needed throughout the year, being able to adapt focuses in real-time without swaying from the overall business objectives. This also meant we needed to be on the lookout for new features and opportunities asthey were rolling out. With stores closed through large periods of 2020, this meant adapting how we approached local SEO. Google and Bing released new features to their local listing platforms throughout the year, not least announcements, changes to opening hours, and additional attributes to help provide more thorough information to customers. This played a key role in connecting with customers and providing the information they needed. The rollout of Unpaid Shopping listings to the UK in the latter stages of 2020 was another shift we... --- ### GUIDE TO INCREMENTALITY > How to prove your digital marketing strategy works? This is the last guide to incrementality that you will ever need. - Published: 2020-11-09 - Modified: 2024-06-05 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/resources/white-paper/guide-to-incrementality/ - Resources Categories: Data, Digital Marketing, Measurement, Paid Media, PPC - Resources Content: Whitepaper DOES SHOWING ADS IMPACT CUSTOMERS’ BEHAVIOUR? How do you know that the revenue you see in Google Analytics next to ‘Paid Search’ is solely due to the adverts that you’re paying to serve, and wouldn’t have been captured anyway by, say, strong organic listings? Incrementality is a made-up word but, come on, it’s marketing so that doesn’t really matter. 4,400 searches per month on Google – increasing by 180 searches per month in the UK – is the only dictionary definition we need to justify our use of the term. Run-of-the-mill KPI marketing is obviously great for measuring the last-click (last non-direct click) value of various channels, campaigns, keywords etc. but it’s completely uninformative when it comes to real value added. Even using multi-touch attribution modelling or Google’s latest and most complex marketing attribution product cannot impart the insight necessary to measure incrementality. The real value of digital marketing is in the incremental sales; the sales that would not have happened without your genius. This article is going to give you our tried and tested recipe for measuring the incremental value of advertising and help you interpret and communicate the results. WHO SHOULD READ THIS? Marketing managers looking to justify the value of their chosen agency. Analysts tasked with judging the performance of an experiment. An agency trying to prove their worth. A business wanting to check if they’re spending money intelligently. Anyone who wants to understand the real value added by their marketing. WHAT DOES ‘INCREMENTALITY’ REALLY MEAN? In plain English, incrementality is the lift that marketing and advertising provide above the native demand. Native demand here refers to the sales that occur without any advertising influence. The difference between native demand and ad-driven sales represent incremental lift – the increase in sales thatis truly attributable to paid media. It is the gold standard of marketing measurement. By doing it effectively, you can begin to quantify the impact of ads on your business and honestly claim responsibility for the results of your work. YOU MAY HAVE HEARD MANY OTHER SIMILAR TERMS. THEY’RE ALL INTERCHANGEABLE AND IN- CLUDE: Uplift analysis. Incremental uplift analysis. Incremental lift analysis. Lift analysis. Incrementality. Incremental lift. Incremental revenue. Conversion lift. Additional elevatory examination. Now, if you’re not technical, this is the time to Slack the article to your analyst and ask them for some of that lovely incrementality ‘stuff’. HOW TO ACTUALLY MEASURE INCREMENTALITY. WHAT IS AN INCREMENTAL LIFT TEST? Experiments relying on treatment and control groups are the scientific gold standard in determining what works and what should play an important role in an advertiser’s attribution strategy. Your incrementality experiment should have two main features: A well-defined test group that will no longer be served ads. A carefully matched control group with a level of spending consistent with the past three months at least. GHOST ADS. Our methodology is inspired by a Think With Google article about revolutionising the measurement of ad effectiveness. Google describes it as “an ideal solution for ad experiments”, far... --- ### PREDICTING BLACK FRIDAY > This report will give you the insight required to prepare for changes in user and shopping behaviour in advance of the biggest shopping period of the year. - Published: 2019-12-05 - Modified: 2025-03-12 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/resources/white-paper/predicting-black-friday/ - Resources Categories: Black Friday, Data, Digital Marketing, Paid Media, PPC, SEO - Resources Industries: B2B, Retail - Resources Content: Whitepaper INTRODUCTION. The findings in this report will give you the insight required to prepare for changes in user and shopping behaviour in advance of the biggest shopping period of the year, giving your marketing department a leg up in forecasting, budget management, and campaign planning across different scenarios. THE DATA PART. LEARNING FROM THE PAST. To really know how we expect Black Friday to play out this year, and whether we expect to see any significant differences from last year, we first need to know how last year performed across different industries. So, we set out to understand how users behaved in 2019, hour by hour, across a range of sectors. SUMMARY. As ecommerce has seen a massive change, at Found we conducted an analysis of last year's Black Friday and forecasted this year's to gain insight into one of the biggest digital shopping days of the year. For this, we conducted analysis within 4 key areas: 1. Analysed Black Friday data from our clients in 2019, to uncover an hourly play-by-play, showing 4 distinct patterns of user behaviour: GROUP 1: POST WORK PEAK. Highest traffic between 7pm - 9pm Retail websites. GROUP 2: MIDDAY PEAK. Highest traffic between 11am - 3pm Non-typical Black Friday websites like Recruitment & Enterprise tech. GROUP 3: PRE-WORK CLIMB. Highest traffic between 6am - 9am Retail, Software / Tech websites. GROUP 4: PRE-WORK CLIMB WITH AFTERNOON REDUX. Highest traffic between 6AM - 9AM with second peak between 3pm - 5pm B2B sites. 2. Compared retail event day activity segmented by device to show that UK Black Friday shoppers on mobile are the biggest contributor to online retail sales for our clients. 3. Using ONS data, we forecasted online sales (as a proportion of all sales) on Black Friday to be up from last year by 9% (minimum predicted) all the way up to 65% (maximum predicted). 4. Identified three distinct peaks in influencer marketing interest, with the biggest being in summer, and the second biggest at the end of November, which we theorise is businesses preparing for Black Friday and beyond influencer marketing campaigns / gifting. BLACK FRIDAY 2019 PLAY-BY-PLAY. By performing a clustering analysis, we found four distinct patterns of user behaviour on Black Friday 2019 (plus one outlier): An important note: The findings presented here are more anecdotal than scientifically robust. They are trends we’ve noticed across our own clients in different industries. The data we used was hourly user counts on Black Friday 2019 for each account - for organic and direct UK traffic only, to ensure changes in traffic reflect the natural day rather than being influenced by media spend. These four core trends can be summarised as below. In each group below, we’ve illustrated the change in user traffic, with the chart in pink showing the most typical behaviour of the group. GROUP 1: POST WORK PEAK. The companies in this group saw user counts ramping up from around 9 AM, remaining relatively level until the evening (around 7-9pm)... --- ### 12 of the digital youth trends you need to know this year. > Here are our 12 future youth marketing digital trends you should know about, so that you can stay ahead of the game. - Published: 2018-03-12 - Modified: 2024-05-30 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/resources/white-paper/12-digital-youth-trends-you-need-to-know/ - Resources Categories: Digital Marketing - Resources Content: Whitepaper MEET THE CONNECTED GENERATION. This new wave of individuals, born 1980 – 2000, are changing the shape of business faster than ever before. So if you have any interest in owning a stake in the digital realm, you should get to know its future leaders better. In the UK alone there are over 16 million millennials consuming digital media on a daily basis. Unlike any generation before them, they are constantly connected, acting as sponges to innumerable information. This is the Connected Generation - the heir to the throne of the digital kingdom, bringing with them a whole new way of thinking, and doing. To help you make sense of it all, here are our 12 future digital youth trends you should know about, so that you can stay ahead of the game. 1. TRADITIONAL ADVERTISING IS DEAD. Over the last five years we have seen the rise of influencer marketing, helping brands build credible partnerships that are authentic and grow long-term relationships. According to AdWeek, a survey last year “Found that only 6% of millennials believe that online ads are credible. ” They find their heroes on social media platforms. Terms such as ‘Insta-famous’ and the continuous rise of Instagram Stories and Snapchat have added to the value of discovery online. Like no other generation, young people today are well informed about products and consumer goods, and they are less prepared to trust traditional advertising meaning if brands want their disposable income spent with them they need to think outside the box when it comes to targeting this generation. Forget traditional media, plans and advertising. Using influencers and engaging with audiences are the best ways to position in culture authentically. Put the consumers’ interest first and win them over. 2. IT’S ALWAYS THE QUIET ONES. Social media empowers young people who would otherwise be considered introverted in everyday life (Mark Zuckerberg changed the face of this forever). Research shows that the introverted millennials are the big content creators who churn out game-changing digital innovation. Our advice to you? Block out all the noise and bright lights to see where the hidden gems of influence lie. Frankly, the online space is saturated with accounts with big numbers to their names, so it is up to you to sift through them to find the most appropriate one for your brand. But don’t rule out the quiet kid who’s on the come up! If you catch a rising star early enough, you might just bag yourself a bargain and your brand a one-way ticket to marketing stardom. Use influencer tools such as our “Find Your Influencer” page, it will help you get real insight into who to work with and their potential value. 3. BUILD IT AND THEY WILL COME. Video is estimated to account for 91% of global internet traffic by 2024. Delivering consistent valuable video content attracts attention, lots of it. Self-education, particularly in the digital sphere, has become embedded in our daily interactions and often subconsciously too. If we... --- ### SEO RANKING FACTORS GUIDE > We discuss the influenceable factors involved in a search engine’s assessment of a website, regarding where it chooses to rank it for a given search term. - Published: 2018-01-11 - Modified: 2024-05-30 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/resources/white-paper/seo-ranking-factors-guide/ - Resources Categories: Content, SEO - Resources Content: Whitepaper In this short guide we discuss the influenceable factors involved in a search engine’s assessment of a website, regarding where it chooses to rank it for a given search term. The practise of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is by some seen as a dark art, the territory of search ‘magicians’ who using smoke and mirrors can affect change in the search engine result pages (SERPs) without anyone actually understanding their methods. While this is of course untrue, and over recent years SEO has become more transparent and accessible. It doesn’t mean that a greater understanding of what is going on when an SEO’r (or SEO agency) ‘works their magic’ wouldn’t benefit all parties involved. This short guide attempts to fix that as it covers four of the most important factors in SEO and attempts to explain them in an open and accessible way. As search engines evolve, so do the approaches and best practices involved in optimising a website for search. What doesn’t really change is the search engines’ ambition to offer the searcher the ‘best’ possible set of results for the query they have given. Many marketers and website owners would do well to understand that anything done to subvert or circumvent this is doomed to end, at some point, in failure and a penalty from the search engine. 1. CONTENT Content is the most important of all on-page SEO ranking factors. How you speak to the user determines how search engines will view you. What is great content? From a search engine’s perspective, it fundamentally has to provide the information a user is searching for in a succinct and sufficiently detailed fashion. It might sound like creating content that works for search is the same as for a user, and to some extent this is true. It’s certainly a guiding rule. But, search engines still need a bit of help understanding what content is about; as the name suggests, it’s about optimising what’s already there and there are certain ways we do this... ‘PROOF TERMS’ IN THE CONTENT Strongly linked to the primary keyword on the page, ‘proof terms’ are those thematic words that you would expect to find in most or all articles on a given topic. So if you’re writing about the environment and your keyword is “climate change”, then the ‘proof terms’ one would expect to find in the article might be “global warming” or “climate science”. The great thing about ‘proof terms’ is that they tend to appear completely naturally whenever you’re producing in-depth content on a topic, so it’s often not necessary to think too hard about them. N. B. it’s best to avoid discussing two or more topics on the same web page as this will confuse search engines, a situation known as topic dilution. ‘RELEVANT TERMS’ IN THE CONTENT In the same Searchmetrics study mentioned above, it was noticed that half of all highly ranked websites utilised ‘relevant terms’. These are words not as closely correlated with the keyword as ‘proof... --- ### ESSENTIAL PAID MEDIA GUIDE > Practical guidance and insights on the future of paid media channels and how they need to work together to provide an integrated marketing strategy. - Published: 2017-01-30 - Modified: 2024-05-30 - URL: https://www.found.co.uk/resources/white-paper/essential-paid-media-guide/ - Resources Categories: Paid Media, PPC - Resources Content: Whitepaper Welcome to Found’s ‘Essential Guide to Paid Media’, written to provide practical guidance and insights on the future of individual channels and how they need to work together to provide an integrated marketing strategy for an increasingly integrated world. Welcome to the future The digital industry moves fast. Perhaps faster than any other. One minute, you’re cutting-edge. You’re leading the way and producing results your clients’ only dreamed of. Then, all of a sudden, everything changes. Perhaps a new platform is introduced, or a new technology. Something that impacts the whole industry and causes it to pivot. If you want to be successful, you must pivot too. It’s this dynamic nature of paid media that makes it so thrilling. But it can make it perplexing too. With so much changing so quickly and so much at stake, understanding where to focus can be a constant concern. 1. The rise of mobile Mobile devices now outnumber human beings on the planet - and at current rates they are multiplying 5x faster than we are. According to recent statistics the average consumer is now connected through five addressable devices. This breeds opportunities and headaches of equal proportion for marketers wanting to build coherent brand experiences. Today’s proactive marketer not only has to recognise the same consumer across all these devices but also track any actions the consumer takes on each. “UK digital ad spend is forecast to grow 5. 7% annually in 2024”  - IPG, Magna 2. Rapid global growth of other platforms It’s not just mobile, the number of online platforms continues to grow. The introduction of wearable tech and the increased popularity of social media apps like Snapchat and Instagram has created new opportunities and uncharted territory for marketers to target users in new and different ways. Only by taking a bespoke approach to these platforms and creating experiences tailored to make the most of the individual features of each, will we finally move away from the outdated marketing methodologies that are unsuitable for these emerging spaces and put our feet firmly into the future. 3. The need for integration The strategies need to be all-inclusive and driven by learned data. Gone are the days of single channel communication, it is now about targeting prospective customers through multiple channels in ways that are appropriate and effective. But even that’s not enough. For maximum impact online and the most jaw-dropping results, brands need to ensure each channel is interacting with, and enhancing, the others, in a virtuous digital circle. In themselves, the channels are siloed, with limitations. Together, their potential is limitless. Time for action But these are of course just words. Words we’ve heard many times before. How we put them into practice to drive meaningful performance for our clients is what’s important. Introducing the web of moments The purchase funnel as we know it is dead. The path from awareness to conversion is not a straight line. It’s far more convoluted, so much so that, at Found, we don’t focus too... ---