- Social media and fund-raising One thousand points of “like” - The Economist
Social media and fund-raising One thousand points of “like” The Economist THE symmetry is - Comment is free on social media – find us, follow us, talk to us - The Guardian (blog)
The Guardian (blog) Comment is free on social media – find us, follow us, talk to us The Guardian - Small firms plan more social media investment - CorpComms Magazine
CorpComms Magazine Small firms plan more social media investment CorpComms Magazine More than half
- What is a 'call to action'?
A call to action is an advertising and marketing concept. It is a request or instruction to âdo - What is a Competitor Spotlight Survey?
The Competitor Spotlight survey is the first step Momentum take before undertaking any web project. - How do the different Momentum services work together?
A range of SEO services form the Momentum 4-step approach to beating your competitors and increasing
SEO and content management systems
White October is a leading web development agency based in Oxford, specialising in the development of content managed websites and web applications, such as extensive databases that can be accessed online. White October’s impressive content management system, ‘Contented’ is SEO friendly and easy to use, making this agency one of Momentum’s preferred web development partners.
In part two of the interview with Dave Fletcher, we discussed the relationship between search engine optimisation and good content management systems.
Jonathan Fink (Momentum): What are your thoughts on content management systems and SEO?
Dave Fletcher (White October): Our work with Momentum has really sharpened up the way we think about the impact a content management system (CMS) has on SEO, and as a result we’ve realised that you need the CMS to be built with search engine optimisation in mind. Momentum’s advice has fed directly into our development of ‘Contented’, our own content management system.
Basically, if the CMS is coded correctly, a search engine optimisation company shouldn’t have to request further technical development; the system should be set up in the right way in the first place.
Jonathan Fink (Momentum): How does Contented reflect that need to be search engine friendly?
Dave Fletcher (White October): All of the sites built by White October give owners and search engine marketing companies the ability to update major tags and the system creates pages coded with table-free html so there’s no bloated code to confuse the search engines. But the site owners need a good search engine marketing company to provide the strategy, once they have that Contented makes it easy to implement – like putty in their hands.
Jonathan Fink (Momentum): What are the critical components of website design of which the client is often unaware?
Dave Fletcher (White October): It’s mostly the simple fact that it always comes back to the users – good conversion rates always depend on a good understanding of the user and what they need.
One of the most common conversions is signing up to a newsletter, and we always advise clients to think about why the user would do that. Are they offering something valuable as a result of signing up?
Jonathan Fink (Momentum): Do you provide a newsletter system in Contented?
Dave Fletcher (White October): No, we always use third party newsletter systems, there’s no need for us to reinvent the wheel and e-mail delivery is a complicated beast. Third party systems have gone through all the teething problems and as a result they can provide the service cheaply and reliably.
Jonathan Fink (Momentum): Have you worked with any other SEO companies?
Dave Fletcher (White October): No, never. A client of ours a few years ago had some optimisation done on a site we built for them, but we never interacted with the SEO company itself.
Jonathan Fink (Momentum): How do you work with Momentum?
Dave Fletcher (White October): It depends on who is leading the project. For a large enterprise client that we are collaborating on, Momentum has been briefing our mutual design partner, who then passes on the designs for us to implement with Contented. If the referral is going the other way, we can just send the client onto Momentum for the strategy side.
When we pitch for work as a consortium – that’s Momentum, White October and Hutchhouse - Momentum is involved right at the start so their SEO strategy can be built into the site and the content is sure to be structured in the best way for search engines.
Jonathan Fink (Momentum): Can you give any examples of projects that White October and Momentum have collaborated on?
Dave Fletcher (White October): Guides for Brides is a good example, Momentum helped with advice during the site build and then did the optimisation afterwards.
The Collective, a film locations company, benefitted from post build advice on strategy, and they’ve done fantastically well as a result. With the new site they’re getting four times the number of telephone enquiries than they were getting before.
Jonathan Fink (Momentum): Why do you like working with Momentum?
Dave Fletcher (White October): They’re switched on, in fact it’s the same reasons that we like working with Hutchhouse. We’ve taken care to pick partners that are specialists; the “best of breed” as I said before.
If you take the time to pick good partners, you know you can rely on them when you refer them on.
Momentum also understands our CMS and how to make most of it, and in understanding that and what we do, they can spot opportunities for the CMS to be used on sites they’re involved with.
When Hutchhouse, Momentum and White October are working as a consortium, I know we’ve got three major areas covered – not just covered but excelling in each of them. If a client goes to a single agency that claims it can do everything, they are always deficient in at least one area. I like it when we go in together, it feels powerful as an offering as I know we can nail every aspect of the project.
Jonathan Fink (Momentum): How does this working together help a site to be more successful?
Dave Fletcher (White October): There are two aspects that are critical to a site’s success that our collaboration directly improves: visitor numbers and conversion rate.
Good SEO can have a massive impact on the visitor numbers, whereas our user-centred approach and Hutchhouse’s design skills can improve the conversion rates once people actually get onto the site. If you double the visitor numbers and double the conversion rate, you’re effectively quadrupling the number of enquiries. As both aspects are so closely related and our collective work tackles both, our sites do really well.