Aycliffe Today Business | Page 26

Bringing Aycliffe Business Park Together | 27 Thrive Creative Director Johnny Woods. Working in partnership GEM operates and promotes a partnership working philosophy, which means taking responsibility for our clients’ recruitment and manpower challenges in full, not cherry picking the easy-to-fill roles. • Office Support • Sales and Marketing • Finance • HR Newton Aycliffe Office, G29 Evans Business Incubation Centre, Durham Way South, Newton Aycliffe, Co.Durham, DL5 6XP T: 01325 328830 • E: jamie.hayhurst@gempartnership.com www.gempartnership.com Building brands and delivering marketing results that you can measure. +44 (0) 845 838 7517 www.thriveability.co.uk GOOGLE ALGORITHM UPDATES IMPACT MOBILE SEARCHES By Sarah Burns You are probably already aware that, at the end of April, Google started to roll out their latest search algorithm updates, but do you know what that means and how it will impact you? As a content marketing agency, Thrive Marketing Limited is all too aware of how Google can impact online business visibility, which is why they’re keen to spread the knowledge to local businesses. Johnny Woods, Creative Director at Thrive Marketing Limited, said: “A lot of companies think that having a website is enough, or perhaps employing an SEO agency to do some fancy tech stuff to their website is enough. “In truth, it is now about a rounded content strategy and ensuring that your SEO agency, outsourced marketers or internal web team knows all about the modern way of ranking in search results. ” Thrive are very much aware of the latest trends and shifts in marketing, not least the way Google is now ranking searches made through their engine. The Google algorithm updates have been focused on for a number of years, with the research proving that they can have a huge effect on the way companies rank for certain keywords. “The initial roll out of Google’s Penguin algorithm update affected just 4% of global searches on desktop and mobile, later the Panda update impacted nearly 12% of English searches. [Taken from Thrive’s ” marketing blog] Following the recent algorithm updates taking place in April, it’s crucial that your website is responsive, mobile or uses dynamic serving (all of which are explained in Thrive’s helpful blog – please find the link below). The changes will mean that when you’re searching for particular terms from a mobile device, unless websites whose typical page descriptions and so on meet your search criteria AND are built for mobile devices, websites will rank lower than previously. Google is very much focusing a lot of time and resource to ensuring that websites have not only built up a solid content strategy and social presence – a big seismic shift in 2014 – but that the websites these are rolled out on are mobile or responsive. Of course, in 2015, for the ease of your users a website should be mobile friendly, but now that Google has finally had their say on the subject, it is making the need all the more apparent. Johnny says: “If anyone is unsure about the state of their website or Google rankings, we’re happy to have them pop in to our offices for a chat or drop us an email to arrange a get together. ” There is also a free marketing report available via the Thrive website which ranks various sections of your marketing, including your mobile design, SEO, blogging, social media efforts and more, so you’ll know how your website is currently performing. Johnny adds: “It’s very important that business owners ensure that their website is a 24/7 front-of-house for their company and a mobile website has never been more crucial to this. “After all, how many of you click off a website when on your mobile or tablet if you have to pan, zoom and scroll to find the information you want?” Thrive Marketing Limited is based on Aycliffe Business Park and offers content marketing, social media, graphic design, brand development and web services. Read ‘Google Algorithm Changes 2015: What You Can Do To Combat The Effect’ on Thrive Marketing Limited by visiting www.thriveability.co.uk. Visit Thrive at Unit 17, Parsons Court, Welbury Way, Aycliffe Business Park, DL5 6ZE. Call them on 0845 838 7517 or email hello@thriveability.co.uk.