Insights

  The team at Varn have been working hard to create a fun game to play this Christmas. Plus, we are giving three lucky winners the chance to...

Video content has become an important part of our lives over recent years and according to Google, 68% of YouTube users in 2016 watched YouTube...

Which? has recently named Britain’s best and worst online retailers, with Homebase faring the worst out of the big brands. This survey has...

Search Keyword Intent Modelling, or SKIM for short, is a unique methodology devised by the team here at Varn. Its main aim is to analyse a...

Your contact page is one of the most important pages on your site. In fact, when analysing client data, we often find that not only is it one of...

Recent research undertaken by Google (https://ai.google/research/pubs/pub36300) into how children use search engines identified several search...

Google Search Console has long been an important tool for any SEO or site owner, helping users to monitor traffic, rankings and search queries,...

We have all seen Wikipedia at the top of our search results. It appears in the number one organic listing spot for around 56% of search terms –...

One of the common phrases we hear from potential clients is “We want to invest in search engine optimisation, but we want to start off small until...

When chatting with clients, we not only discuss the ways that we can help to optimise their sites with onsite SEO, but we also discuss the importance...

With this kind of exposure, it’s important to ensure your website and the content you’re sharing online is able to be picked up by Google...

When entering a query in to Google Search, Google provides you with a page of results, and for commercial queries appearing at the top of the...

What is Hidden Text? As mentioned above, there are several design features that are used to ‘hide’ text from the user on page load. For example,...

Having a Google Search Console account for your website is imperative. It is your opportunity to communicate directly with Google, where it is...

The general idea of the guidelines is to investigate page quality and assess whether needs are met for site visitors, if a site is considered...

According to Adam Weiss (the General Manager & Sr. vice president of Rakuten Affiliate Network), affiliate marketing is a low-risk, high-value...

There have been quite a few consumer polls recently in the US finding that Amazon has increased its lead as the search engines of choice – for...

The search landscape is rapidly reshaping thanks to the surge in vertical search engines, such as Amazon and the growth of mobile and voice...

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Launching a website for your business is just the beginning of your work, not the end. There are some business owners who would like the website to...

Collaborating with other websites weakens your site's SEO When it comes to online collaborations (authority links, social mentions, guest blog...

Our time spent online today is very much pattern-driven. During the day throughout a working week, we are more likely to be on a computer at work,...

Blogging has become an incredibly effective and cost-efficient tool for businesses over recent years. Having a blog allows you to connect with...

This group primarily consisted of males and females aged between 18 and 34. Around 41.1% of these individuals will avoid clicking on an advert on...

When you first visit the new Google Search Console platform, you’re presented with an overview on Performance, Index Coverage and Enhancements –...

Whilst these results may be surprising, they’re not necessarily a bad thing. Take a look at our blog about how this may actually benefit search: Is...

What Did This Tracking Do? Known as ‘on_sent’ tracking, this snippet would automatically execute a JavaScript code upon the successful...

CTR Doesn't Have an Impact on Ranking There have been many conflicting statements published online in recent years regarding the impact of click...

But is this really a bad thing? As someone who uses search engines a lot (and also works in organic search optimisation!) my first reaction is YES. I...

What Happened? At the beginning of April 2017, the House of Fraser website was moved from HTTP to HTTPS - something that many of us have...

Paying for PPC affects my organic position A common myth within the SEO community is that paid advertising has a direct impact on organic...

Why Facebook users can’t be trusted In 2016 Facebook came under fire in the US because the social network was reporting one core target group at a...

In order to definitively identify where your organic visits came from so that you can better measure your online traffic / conversions by source, you...

By combining your sales and marketing data, Leedfeeder enables you to monitor existing customers as well as discovering new ones- when a lead...

That said, the impact that voice search has on your website and rankings will completely depend on your industry, so there is no need to panic as...

Keyword Targeting is No Longer Relevant Following the release of the Google Hummingbird update in 2013, SEOs started to pay less attention to target...

Essentially websites should be constantly evolving rather than ‘redesigned’ in the traditional sense, i.e. a one off project that sucks time and...

Disavowing Backlinks is a Waste of Time If you’re not familiar with Google’s Disavow Tool (within Google Search Console), then you may not know...

What IKEA taught us about navigation IKEA stores are all huge, and yet they are easy to navigate around. Each section is clearly signposted...

The fourth in a range of original surveys, the survey was based on independent research first carried out in February 2016, when we were surprised to...

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Google is looking to change all that with a store visit conversion tracking service linked to AdWords for 2017. Could this be the information...

‘find me a café near me’. It’s smart, therefore, to ensure you include location information in your AdWords campaigns. (more…)

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In fact, according to Bobatoo, 54.6% of people start before November and this jumps up to 77.3% for those people who start their shopping before, or...

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Here’s a summary of what the new guidelines ask for. (more…)

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55% of people are now unable to tell which of the search results are paid adverts, which is 5% more than in our original survey. (more…)

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Above all, we learned that Google no longer thinks a ‘mobile-first’ world is something which is happening or is due to happen in the future, but...

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Google Adwords has provided an effective pay-per-click marketing engine for companies all over the world. Its success and wide usage has no doubt...

After announcing last year that mobile search has overtaken desktop, Google have now taken further steps to ensure a focus on mobile-friendly sites...

In 2015 Google officially announced that mobile searches had overtaken searches on a desktop, and numerous updates last year and more recently last...

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Here are some tips, predictions and insights for PPC as we accelerate into the future with the latest advances in digital marketing. (more…)

If you have ever printed out website pages you will know that some are better than others when they come out of the printer. Some will have...

Part of our methodology at Varn is to continually analyse, review and monitor what our visitors appreciate and want for services. With this in mind...

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Timing and context is everything in terms of marketing. You need to know when sales are on, when Halloween presents a ‘theme’ opportunity, when...

As Google continues to focus its attention on the ‘user experience’, content is now more important than it ever has been. In fact, just this...

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Why are these keywords so important? (more…)

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What does this mean?This error simply means that Google robots which crawl your website in order to determine where it should rank within their...

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Smart phones have meant that we can be, for all intents and purposes, omniscient in a shopping environment. If we want to know something about a...

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  Whilst there is currently a lot of focus in SEO circles on the importance of website content and mobile optimisation as signals, navigation...

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  As we have stated previously on this blog – if you don’t want your ranking ultimately penalised then it’s now a ‘must’ that you...

  It is no wonder that video is charging ahead as the media that marketing departments and businesses are prioritising. Video instantly...

When someone visits your website you want them to be interested, engaged and motivated to go on a pre-prescribed journey through a process, all the...

The amount of queries that are eight words long has been growing fast in search in the last seven years. (more…)

The tipping point where mobile has overtaken fixed internet access has long been passed and 80% of internet users own a mobile phone (source: Global...

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If you optimise your videos properly, they will show up in Google results as well as in YouTube itself. Try our tips to help boost your video...

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It’s been a year of changes for SEO criteria. In reality the steps needed for achieving best practice SEO have been shifting by degrees...

  A Content Hack day takes a bit of preparation and the right mix of characters to succeed but when the results can mean half a year’s...

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For indexing websites, Google’s web crawlers will now label sites ‘mobile friendly’ and they are also testing this as a ranking signal. So…...

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A representative from Google has confirmed that a much anticipated Penguin 3.0 update was rolled out on Friday 17 October – a year after the last...

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  In the last few years Google has been updating its algorithms a lot and has honed in on semantic search rather than just keyword data –...

  Local listing optimisation is crucial to local SEO. (more…)

  Blogs are good for your website and your brand for a multitude of reasons. (more…)

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As more companies use their marketing spend on social media, there will be an increasing need to quantify results. This is something Twitter has...

  HTTPS stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) and is simply a protocol to ensure communication is secure over a computer...

Thomas monitors and manages our off site SEO, blogs and PPC campaigns for Varn’s many clients with the goal of delivering ROI. Some of you reading...

So what's Google Pigeon all about?As with any Google algorithm, 'Pigeon' has been put in place to ensure accurate results are displayed when...

Marketing and PR, in the form of pitching stories to online press for publicity and helping with a websites link profile, we have talked about in...

  It’s common to think of visiting a website in terms of a journey. Understanding and influencing the customer journey through a website is...

  First of all – you will need a Google account to access this software. The software performs a raft of analytical functions that if acted...

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The Unique Selling Point, or as it is sometimes referred to – a unique value proposition – is the one thing that sets your business apart and...

  Imagine the horror of receiving a bill for over 11.5k for only two days of data usage by your web hosting service, when some days you will...

  Email marketing (also known as E-Marketing) is sending promotional messages about your company via email. It is an effective alternative...

What is an SEO audit? There are many ways to build a website for your business and subsequently there are many ways to make mistakes and miss out...

  Making an improvement that will equate to a 1% difference does not sound like much. You may be astounded then, that Team GB’s Olympic...

It’s widely predicted that searches on mobile devices will shortly outpace their deskbound wireline counterparts – probably by 2015. There is...

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It has transformed the way businesses interact with their customers. Since the rise of social media, brands now have to become closer and more...

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 The appeal for individuals is understandable, whether you are a fan or not. But what about business use? (more…)

As Google put it: “Every business should have the help it needs to succeed on the web. Every day, agencies and web professionals work with...

In this week’s Varn blog we are going to look at traditional PR and how it can improve your website performance, with a case study from – Bistech...

  It only takes a few minutes to set the ‘caption’ and ‘transcript’ services that YouTube launched in 2013 to aid the hard of hearing...

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Here are our top ten most important ‘housekeeping’ items for you to check are in place or update. A little effort up front at the beginning of...

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But recent research by comScore showed that Bing’s market share (not including Yahoo!) had increased to 18% and that their searches had a higher...

An often quoted bit of industry research predicts that internet usage via mobile phones will overtake desktop usage in 2014. We are not far away...

  Google point out that rich snippets won’t affect your page’s ranking in search results but they will stand out and give searchers...

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Whilst AdWords and Analytics are extremely helpful tools, there's no way to automatically measure ROI within non-Google campaigns. However, the...

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Google’s primary concern is, of course, presenting their users with the best selection of webpages for the minimum of user effort. To do this...

Many industry professionals think that external links are the single most important factor influencing ranking as search engine algorithms use...

Search engines work by sending out robots/ crawlers/ spiders that endlessly visit webpages and then index or file bits of content for presenting to...

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 And you won’t find a larger audience anywhere else, as Facebook says;  “Over one billion people like and comment an average of 3.2 billion...

If you are looking to attract visitors from a number of different countries, then you need to make sure that your website is optimised for a range of...

Always give visitors as much information as they need, as quick as possible. Then they don’t have to go looking for it or look elsewhere. ...

  Why are they so important? The URL is the main navigational tool when going from page to page that people recognise. (more…)

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  ROI is a good metric to use as it measures profits made in relation to capital invested and therefore the efficiency of your investment....

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  There are a number of reasons why people choose self-hosted videos, but before you follow suit it's important that you take a look at the...

Whilst it is important to make the most of your video content, you need to make sure that you follow certain guidelines. Most importantly, you need...

However, these features also can have a number of disadvantages: Conversion Optimisation - (more…)

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So ideally you want people to visit your website, and then stay for longer periods of time, browsing different parts of the site and then...

What are Title Tags? (more…)

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[caption id="attachment_1390" align="aligncenter" width="650" caption="Google recommend you follow these 10 tips to improve your conversion...

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  By this stage, you should have uncovered your optimal Value Proposition. Now it’s time to integrate it throughout your website.  ...

10% of the people visiting your site will have some form of eyesight difficulty, colour blindness or similar issue.The following is a checklist...

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How to test your Value Proposition in 5 easy steps: (more…)

What is it? – When choosing where your website ranks within search results, Google takes into account all of your back-links. These are links to...

Your Value Proposition is, in essence, the reason why potential customers should buy from you, instead of your competitors. Many businesses fail to...

There are a lot of blogs out there which focus on all the latest CRM technology, flooding your customers and potential clients with information...

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Principle 1: Avoid Accidental MarketingIt's easy to get caught up in accidental marketing. Many people get easily excited about different...

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  So to help you on your way here are six steps to a successful SEO strategy: 1. Ensure all your business and product goals are aligned and...

Did you know that 63% of consumers and small business owners use the internet to find information about local companies of which 82% use search...

So to make the most out of your LinkedIn ads follow these tried and tested marketing techniques below: 1. Be direct, use punchy headlines and...

As shown by the graphs above (and these are real stats from some of our clients) this prediction look to be correct. (more…)

The old adage that says ‘half of my marketing works, but I just don’t know which half’ is no longer valid for clients of Varn. ...

According to Gartner, in 2008, 30 million smartphones were sold. It’s estimated for 2011 the figure was in excess of 300 million. Moreover, looking...

With the growing use of mobile and the ability to view videos on mobile devices, the impending domination of HTML5 and the global expansion of...

Companies spend a lot of time and money getting people to their website but don't think enough about what the visitor will do when they get there,...

One of Google’s software engineers, Amit Singhal, outlined in his blog post that “different searches have different freshness needs”, this...

Failing to respect your recipients' in boxes and sending poorly thought out e-mail newsletters or campaigns can cause more damage than they’re...

We would suggest that if you want to maximise the revenue generated from your website that your website’s visitors should design your website...