How to Make an Effective Blog Post

Trying to write an effective blog post? Blogging is one of the best networking tools in order to improve online visibility. It's simple, free, informal and it contain relevant and helpful information, so it's pretty fun! You can write on different topics and publish on your own official or personal blog. There are several blog sites such as Blogger, Wordpress, Tumbler which are free and easy to use. By following a few simple guidelines, you can keep readers' attention and ensure repeat visits to your blog.

• Write your post with a purpose. Writing that is informative, interesting and has a motive beyond getting the rank.
• Before you make to post, understand your target audience. What do they want to know about? What are the latest trends?
• Before you even write anything, pick a topic and title for your blog post. Choose your post title carefully, because a title can make or break your post.
• Include primary keywords in your post that will help readers find your content easily when they make query in search engines.
• You might have great information but to make your post most effective you need to present in a way reader can easily grasp and use.
• Try to keep your post short and to the point. Organise your content in different forms such as sections, lists, tips, whatever most appropriate.
• A blog can reflect your personality and professionalism, so avoid misspelling, use proper grammar and punctuation.
• Make your content easy to read. Break up your post using paragraphs, subtitles and bullets that are easy to read.
• Add some relevant images to your post to make it more eye-catching. Quality images can enhance your content.
• Hyperlinks your primary keywords to only quality sites. It can provide quality back links and also increase blog traffic, do it carefully.
• Call to actions is a primary key to bring in more conversions. So, write your copy, so write strong, compelling call to action as well.

Are you blogging to build or grow your business online? You need each blog post to pull its weight. Providing relevant and helpful information isn’t enough to get your posts noticed online. To get faster success, make your post easy to read and engage. If your posts aren’t getting the enough traffic you might think you’re not doing it in right way. We can help you. Visit on our website – www.fiverivers.net or give us a call on 0203 397 7545.

Finding Time to Market your Business

Online advertising is a necessary evil for many business owners, many of whom are just too busy looking after their day to day operation. Ordering stock, invoicing, posting products, customer contact, dealing with company finances – just when should you find the time to do your marketing as well? Advertising your business online takes time and consideration, and an effective digital marketing campaign needs you to spend time learning about the many facets that can be applied, and the best ways in which to approach it. Failure to do this means that you could be wasting your time.

It’s no surprise therefore, that many businesses owners turn to professional Marketing companies to do this for them. Typically, the equivalent of an hour a day would propel your business up the search rankings, thereby improving your online profile and increasing your visibility. This in turn, will provide more website traffic and, potentially, more customers.

However – it doesn’t just stop there. Marketing only drives visitors to your website. It is then up to the website to act as your senior salesperson. Take a minute to look at your site and ask yourself –

• Is it user friendly?
• Is your key information easily found?
• Are there links within the written content to other pages of the site?
• Is the website mobile friendly? That is to say, does it resize to fit a smartphone or tablet, and allow for a good mobile user experience?

If the answer to any of these is “No”, then you need to be looking into the possibility of redesigning your whole website. The good news is that most Marketing companies also offer Web Design services.

Five Rivers is currently offering a FREE one hour consultation – whether to discuss digital marketing, website development, or mobile app development.

Dial 0203 397 7545 or visit http://www.fiverivers.net/our-solutions.aspx to find out more.

How to increase traffic to your website or blog using YouTube

If images are meant to speak a 1000 words, then imagine the power of videos. Writing great content about your business will generate good traffic to your website, but combining it with a video marketing strategy will boost your visitor engagement further.

One of the main reasons why YouTube is such a powerful medium, is because over 3 billion people watch videos on YouTube every day. This presents a fantastic opportunity, whereby your message has the potential to reach a significant amount of prospective clients.

How to Promote your Content

• Once your video is uploaded to YouTube, ask a web developer to embed it into your website. This is especially useful if the video is a “How To” guide, as it helps to promote you as an authority figure in your industry.
• Promote your video through all other social networks – give your video the best possible opportunity of being viewed, liked, and shared

Engage with other YouTube users

• Build a following - Liking and subscribing to other YouTube accounts will persuade others to follow your account
• Respond to any comments posted, making sure to answer questions in detail to give the impression that you are approachable – they may be willing to engage further, or even employ your services

With the scope that YouTube provides for businesses, it should really form an integral part of any business’ strategy.

Don’t forget to check Google Analytics to review the traffic obtained from this source – you may find the user behaviour is different to other methods of driving web traffic to your site, and you can then evolve your overall strategy accordingly.

If you’re looking to implement this strategy into your online marketing campaign, contact Five Rivers at http://www.fiverivers.net/. We can also create an animated video which can help to increase engagement further.

To discuss your ideas, dial 0203 397 7545 today to find out how we can drive traffic to your website.

Mobile App Development - Bring the World to Your Fingertips

Are you looking to build your own mobile app at an affordable price? We have a qualified team of software developers who are equipped with the latest technologies, enabling them to provide intuitive software solutions.

If you’re planning to hire a mobile app development company for your project, here are a few key pointers to consider before you make an approach;

• Get a clear idea about your app. Why do you need it? For example, do you want to improve web traffic or do you want to enhance your customer experience.
• One you have decided the relevancy of your idea, prepare a blueprint. Understand the application's navigation, flow and features.
• Keep your app clean and easy, so review your entire plan and remove all unnecessary features. Users want their app to be as easy as possible to understand and use.
• Your app should not be dull or uninspiring. It should be simple but engaging. Make it eye-catching with attractive colours and designs, to match the theme and concept.
• Hire a mobile app development company such as http://www.fiverivers.net
• Once your app has been developed, register a developer account in the respective app stores.
• You can track the quantity of downloads, retention, user behaviour and engagement for your mobile app with an analytic tool.
• Gather feedback from app users, because it will inform you about how well your app is being received, and whether there could be improvements to their experience.

Five Rivers is committed to building innovative, feature-rich applications which can help you become a part of the mobile revolution.

For detailed information about our software solutions, visit – http://www.fiverivers.net/software-development.aspx . Alternatively, you can call us on 0203 397 7545.

SEO in 2015: How to Prepare for Google’s Upcoming "Mobilegeddon" Update

Mobilegeddon — another iteration of Google’s algorithm made to make websites more mobile-friendly — will hit on April 21st 2015. On this day, a Google mobile algorithm update will increase the ranking of sites that are mobile-friendly. All websites which fail to perform well on mobile devices will be more difficult to find on those devices in the search results. However, they have stated that it will take a week to be fully rolled out.

How to Prepare for the Update

To prepare, you can use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to check your site’s mobile compatibility. It also provides suggestions on how the site could be further optimised. Google Webmaster Tools also contains a convenient Mobile Usability Report where you get a detailed report of the mobile user experience. If you find any errors or discrepancies in your report, you have roughly two weeks from now to get them fixed.

If your site is already mobile-friendly, you won’t have much to worry about with this upcoming algorithm. However, if you’ve not yet optimised your site, now is the right time to get it done. Some recommended actions to prepare for upcoming algorithm update are;

• Be mobile ready – contact a web developer such as http://www.fiverivers.net to make the site responsive. Also make sure Google’s mobile bots can crawl your website correctly.
• Understand your mobile traffic - use Google Analytics to evaluate mobile traffic volume and quality. It will help to understand the proportion of traffic comes from mobile.
• Review behaviour metrics - analyse how your mobile traffic performs. Understand which pages need improvement using segments in Google Analytics e.g Bounce rate and time spent on the website.

To learn more about how to get your site optimised for upcoming Google's update, read this more in depth report - http://fiveriversdigital.co.uk/2015/04/is-your-website-mobile-ready/ - or contact us at – http://www.fiverivers.net/contact-us

How to Create a User-Friendly Website that will generate Loyal Customers

If you’re looking to hire a web design company to create a website for a new business venture, or are refreshing an existing website, your input into the design is key. A well-planned and well-designed website will ensure its relevancy and longevity in a market where web technologies are constantly pushing new boundaries. A poorly constructed site that doesn’t have the end user at the forefront of its planning will not only drive visitors away – you will have wasted your money from the outset. However, it’s not just about visual styling - site content is of equal importance. If your skills lie away from content writing, it’s worth paying a professional to do it for you. Bad grammar or a mixed message can make your site appear untrustworthy and confusing.

To help your potential customers navigate through your site more easily, here are some guidelines to follow:

• Style - The style of a website plays an important role in conveying the company message. For example, using clear flash animation will help attract users and make it visually engaging. Flash is most often used on the homepage, however, it should be used minimally as to ensure the key message is not lost.
• SEO Friendly - Search Engine Optimisation describes a strategy that helps websites to be found more easily on all search engines. The inclusion of relevant keywords into the text and images of a website, will ensure your site achieves greater visibility when people search for your services.
• Navigation – This is a crucial element of web design. As a rule of thumb, any visitor should be able to find all pages on a website within three clicks from their landing page. Navigation describes how the website content is divided into different sections, and the flow from page to page – this includes the menu and its associated drop-down menus, buttons and hyperlinks. Think about what you would expect when visiting a site, and what page would make sense to link to, based on the information on that page.
• Compatibility – Regardless as to how good the graphics or content of a website, if the web pages are not compatible with the main web browsers, the website will not achieve its true potential. Ensure that it will be fully compatible with Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Safari.

As a leading London website development agency, we design and build websites to reflect your brand and core values. We understand the importance of a friendly UX (user experience), and this is reflected in our work. For more information, visit http://www.fiverivers.net , or to see examples of our work, visit http://www.fiveriversdigital.co.uk/2014/10/web-ui-designs