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How to optimise your website for voice search

24/1/2018

Did you know that around 40% of adults use google voice search on their mobile every day (and the younger demographic even more)?

Google also recognises where you are. So, if I do a voice search: "Where can I find a Mexican restaurant?", Google gives me the Mexican restaurants in Queenstown (as this is where I'm based).
Or: "What are the local walks?", Google gives me a list of websites where walks are listed.

Voice search is growing at a fast pace and it's important and easy to optimise your website content for voice search.

Here are a few tips:

Ask yourself: What would my customers ask google to find my business or want to know about my business?
Add a FAQ page (frequently asked questions) to your site with the types of questions your customers would ask
Use a conversational tone in your website content
Longer phrases or questions are common, compared with the shorter searches in text search.
People use voice search mainly for local content and information, so make sure your Google listing is up to date (opening hours too!)
Try out voice search to find similar businesses as yours and see what comes up!

Till next fortnight, Marijke

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Merry Christmas and a fantastic 2018!

19/12/2017

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Your Christmas business checklist

8/12/2017

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…And suddenly it’s only 17 days till Christmas. This is my 24th Christmas in New Zealand, and a summer Christmas still seems a little strange. Not that I mind it; it’s lovely to have warm weather, BBQ’s, paddle-boarding on the lake, walks, long daylight and time with friends and family.

But no matter where you are in the world, it seems to come around quicker every year and there is so much to do. You have all your preparations on the home front, and then there are also a number of things to do at work.

So, to make it easier for you, I have put together a checklist of things to think about on the work-front. Feel free to add more ideas in the comments below, and I’ll add them to the list!

Here we go:

Organise a Christmas party for staff (or New Year’s if pre-Christmas is too busy. Or if you work in the tourism industry and this is your busy season, plan it for the quiet times!)
Christmas gifts for staff - or organise a Secret Santa
Leave some special treats for staff (and yourself) who are working during the holidays
Christmas cards / gifts for clients
Put up Christmas decorations at work – and in anywhere else your customers and staff are (eg transport vans). It cheers people up!
Schedule Christmas blog post, Social Media and Newsletters – an original (funny/cute) Christmas photo or video that relates to your business and includes your staff works well (and is easy). Don’t worry about lengthy newsletters, people don’t have time to read them!
Christmas promotions: send out a promotion ordeal to your customers and/or on social media. Gift vouchers work well too!
Staff cover: you have probably done this by now, but ensure you have staff cover during the holidays
Closing times during the holidays: ensure relevant people/organisations are updated on your Christmas and New Year’s opening/closing times.
Set up an email ‘out of the office message’ if you are away during the holidays.
Finish any projects you intended to finish by the end of the year - you'll feel great doing this!
Download a Christmas ringtone on your phone (if you have nothing better to do, but it does make people laugh!)
If you have international staff that may be a bit lonely at Christmas - invite them to your house for Christmas!
Take a little time out for yourself and try to stay relaxed.

All the best with your Christmas preparations!
Marijke

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2018 Marketing Trend no. 1: Instagram continues to grow faster than Faceook. Here are 64 Instagram tips:

29/11/2017

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As Instagram continues to grow with over 800 million users each month, it's become the go-to channel for brands as customer engagement on Instagram is higher than Facebook.
Did you know that Instagram Stories became more popular than Snapchat just one year after it went live?
Here are 64 tips to help you make the most of Instagram:

NOTE: for the 2017/18 summer, I will be writing fortnightly tips instead of weekly ones. Last summer, I carried out a survey re tip frequency, and many of my readers preferred fortnightly tips in summer as they are busy looking after visitors (in NZ)!

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Liven up your website, social media and online ads with GIFs - and what are they anyway?

14/11/2017

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A GIF (with the file extension, .gif) is basically an image file format that is animated by combining several other images or frames into a single file. This single file is encoded as graphics interchange format (better known as GIF).

GIFs (pronounced Jif) have been around for many years, 30 in fact! Do you remember early websites with annoying scrolling images? Well, these were GIFs too.

GIFs are now hugely popular again and businesses are using them to liven up messages and ads on their websites and social media.

I have recently purchased a new phone (Samsung S8 - love it!) and it has a cool little tool to create GIFs very easily from a video. (See the images on the right). If you use them on your website, ensure you keep the GIFs to only a few seconds to keep the file small, otherwise it will slow down your website too much.

And only use one at a time, otherwise it gets very busy on your page (see the two GIFs I've uploaded, it distracts too much and is a bit annoying.)

Check out https://giphy.com/, a resource website for everything GIF! Lots of downloadable GIFs, how to create them and much more!

Till next week, Marijke

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How to optimise your website for voice search

Merry Christmas and a fantastic 2018!

Your Christmas business checklist

2018 Marketing Trend no. 1: Instagram continues to grow faster than Faceook. Here are 64 Instagram tips:

Liven up your website, social media and online ads with GIFs - and what are they anyway?

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