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Quad Digital is a content marketing agency. We blend creative, SEO, social and PR to build profitable audiences for brands.
Our content strategies drive engagement and nurture clients' customer relationships from prospect to sale, and on to return purchase.

Quad Digital is a content marketing agency. We blend creative, SEO, social and PR to build profitable audiences for brands.Our content strategies drive engagement and nurture clients' customer relationships from prospect to sale, and on to return purchase.

Quad Digital home / Blog / Archives for July 2013
Profile photo of Matt Read

by Matt Read

The Importance of Quality Online Content: Why Keyword Stuffing Doesn’t Work

July 30, 2013 in Content , Content Creation , Content Marketing , Search , SEO

Keyword stuffing used to be an effective tactic used by SEO agencies to improve content ranking. Now, this tactic doesn’t work. The world of SEO has completely changed and only the highest quality content makes it to the top ranking positions in search engines.

Google’s new algorithms, brought into play on 24 April 2012, have demanded that online content ranked in the top Google spots be of the highest, ethical quality. Their filtering systems, Penguin and Panda, weed out the designated ‘immoral’ content from the honest and quality content by penalising sites that use old-fashioned marketing tactics to draw traffic. These tactics include low quality link building, over-optimisation of anchor text, cloaking pages, over-publishing poor quality digital content and of course, keyword stuffing. Any content featuring these faux-marketing strategies will no longer rank at the top of a Google search. And in the future, these filters will become stricter.

Keyword stuffing is essentially packing as many keywords as possible into content with the aim of making it more appealing in search rankings. At some point, we’ve probably all done this. But, you have to acknowledge how tedious this kind of content is to read. Other than rankings, stuffing adds little value to the content and doesn’t help to build a loyal readership.

Who would want to read a clearly sales-driven piece of online content featuring the same phrase repeatedly throughout over a well-written, engaging article incorporating organic links that are relevant to the topic.

While stuffing may have worked on previous audiences, in today’s online realm, readers and search engines both demand high-quality content that delivers an informative and entertaining read.

Online content needs to be promoted using real digital marketing skills, rather than taking shortcuts. This means recognising the audience, catering to their requirements, generating desire, encouraging action, measuring, analysing and improving. Modern SEO practices are much more targeted and direct in their approaches to improving search rankings. And it is this approach which is going to produce long-term and enduring results for your business.

At Quad, we pride ourselves on being a digital content marketing agency that only delivers the best in online content. If you’d like to find out more about how we can help your brand excel in the search rankings then don’t hesitate to get in touch and head down to Quad HQ on the HMS President for a chat.

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Profile photo of Katy Latta

by Katy Latta

Is The Homepage Dead?

July 29, 2013 in Content , Search , SEO , Social

Did you know that less than half of the visits to NYTimes.com start on the homepage? The question is where are they all coming from? The answer: search and social.

Instead of coming in via the front door, more and more people are accessing websites (in particular news sites) through the back gate.

The fundamental reason is that people use the web to gather information differently to any other medium. When you go online you know what you want and you look for it directly through a search engine. Let’s focus on newspaper here.

Rather than going to the virtual front page of a paper and clicking through it from there, you use a search engine to find a particular article and enter the site through that page.

Unlike the traditional print newspaper model, people using digital news sites don’t sit down and read the whole paper. For that reason, the editorial layout of an online newspaper probably has less importance than in a print version. In a broadsheet or tabloid publication, pages are laid out in terms of lead stories and newsworthiness, guiding the reader through the news. This is in complete opposition to how most people access news online – free to search a giant database of information for exactly the story that they want.

But, this doesn’t mean the homepage is altogether unnecessary. For general news consumption, the front (home) page still has meaning. Despite changing habits, audiences continue to enter news sites via the home page to find out breaking news, lead stories and major headlines. Also, there still seems to be a loyalty to publications digitally like there is in print versions of newspapers. Plus, there are sites which specifically attract readers because of the content on their homepage – Mail Online for example.

There’s also another kind of reader to consider. The ones who enter a site through the back door and then click through to the homepage to see what the site is all about, or what else it has to offer. In that sense, the homepage on a news site acts more like a magazine cover than a front page. It gives a teasing glimpse of what’s inside, but nothing more.

So, while the homepage isn’t dead, it has definitely changed in its appearance and purpose. Instead of killing it off completely, you need to look at your homepage with a fresh pair of eyes. How does your audience use your site, what do they go to the homepage for, or what would attract them to the homepage? Perhaps you need to view it as more of a central page than a traditional home page.

Quad Digital are a Digital Content Marketing agency with a wealth of experience. If you think we may be able to help you, then get in touch  and head down to Quad HQ aboard the HMS President for a chat.

 

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Profile photo of Matt Read

by Matt Read

Brands as Publishers: Understanding your audience

July 29, 2013 in Content Creation , Content Marketing , Social

Some of the most successful brands today – think Innocent, ASOS and L’Oreal – recognise that the best way to attract customers is to produce high-quality engaging content and build lasting and valuable online communities.

The shift towards social media and online communities and away from faceless advertising strategies is undeniable. Brands are acknowledging the need to grow organic followers, and what better way to do so than by creating a ‘brand personality’ by utilising the social channels and networks available to them.

This has been proven to be one of the most effective ways of distributing content and gaining engagement – therefore building a community of loyal customers that will return time-and-time-again.

Social media

Food and drink aficionado, Innocent, was last year named the most ‘social’ brand in the Social Brands 100 ranking of consumer brands and their use of social media.

It was measured by different markers, including but not limited to brand post engagement on Facebook, a comment to post ratio on the brand blog, all brand mentions on Twitter and average views per video on YouTube.

Innocent’s desire to engage with their community rather than broadcast marketing messages has shown that by focusing on both community and content – and utilising all social media channels – you can achieve immense success.

Great content

The rise of ASOS, the online clothing shop, is in part down to the great content created around the brand. With a customer glossy print magazine and a Facebook page with over 2.2 million ‘likes’, the brand embraced the publisher role with gusto.

The decision to mail magazines to the homes of ASOS’s customers made the brand an essential part of their lives – and also added much-needed fashion credibility to a relatively new fashion brand.

Collaboration

Over the past two years, L’Oreal’s Garnier Fructis brand has partnered with music magazine Rolling Stone to create content around the discovery of new, emerging musicians.

In 2011 they made history by searching new unsigned artists and asking consumers to vote and decide who would be the first ever unsigned artist to grace the cover of Rolling Stone.

This is another example of great content being produced by brands who are acting also as publishers.

If you’re looking for a  London based digital Content Marketing agency  to help with your marketing needs, then why not  get in touch  with Quad!

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Profile photo of Gus Ferguson

by Gus Ferguson

Webspace – A new paradigm in online marketing

July 22, 2013 in Content Marketing

Successful online marketing is about building a great website, then promoting it through advertising, optimising it for organic traffic and getting some journalists to write about you, right?

Nope. That’s more like what you do if you have an offline shop.

Online marketing is about optimising multiple properties to function as an interrelated digital ecosystem. I call that a webspace.

Up until fairly recently, online strategy has been dictated by the ‘rules’ of marketing of an offline, pre-internet world. But, due to more digitally savvy marketers gaining senior positions and the sheer volume of data available today to measure success, this is changing. Read the rest of this entry →

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by Claire Williams

Vanity Publishing: How to Become an Author

July 22, 2013 in Blogging , Content Creation , eBooks

Self-publishing used to be considered an arrogant, egotistical way of getting yourself published – aka vanity publishing. You didn’t need a publisher to certify your work and get it printed. Instead, you could take out the middle-man and advocate your own work as being worthy of publishing. Rather than having your manuscript sitting in a pile of other dusty pages begging to be picked up, vanity publishing gave the person the power to stand behind their work without a third party backer.

That was then. But, now the stigma has dramatically changed and that’s thanks to the explosion of the digital world. What it’s done is eradicate the term vanity publishing and made self-publishing a celebrated platform open to all.

Read the rest of this entry →

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Profile photo of Matt Read

by Matt Read

How you can profit from Content Marketing

July 17, 2013 in Content , Content Marketing

The point of marketing – any kind – is to inspire action. What that action is depends on your business. But, for most, this usually involves buying your product or service. Effectively, marketing should get people to take notice of you. The content is meant to grab someone’s attention, make them listen and then encourage them to act. Simple, right?

Well, not always. The internet is an entirely different medium from television, radio and print. Thus, the traditional tactics used to market brands on these platforms, don’t always transpire to success online. The web works in a completely different way. Online, content is the most valuable thing.

On the internet, people go in search of interesting and valuable content, and understanding this is the key to drawing profit from Content Marketing. Read the rest of this entry →

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