Supporting you through Covid-19

Category: News

Coronavirus (Covid-19) poses many challenges to us all as a society. We want to assure all of our customers that we are operating as normal during this period of uncertainty. Our ability to support you remains unchanged.

Utilising your website

With footfall likely to drastically decrease over the coming weeks, now is the time to utilise your website to its maximum potential. Sales via traditional channels may be hit hard. Offering customers an online platform to purchase products or services gives you the option to grow your business during this period of uncertainty.

The level of service you receive from us will be as normal. Whether you require urgent updates or development to help your business or if you are just looking to get a message or update out via your website to communicate to your customer base, please contact us and we will do all we can to assist.

Contact us

2Cubed staff are fully equipped to work remotely, if required. The technology and cloud based services in place, allow us to operate normally.

We are here to help support you and your website. Please Contact 2Cubed with any questions you may have. We are on hand to support you.

You can also call us on 01 905 8114 or 051-440425, or email hello@2cubed.ie

The 2Cubed team.

If you or someone you know displays symptoms of Coronavirus, please follow the measures set out on the HSE website – https://www2.hse.ie/conditions/coronavirus/coronavirus.html

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Simplifying SEO – Link Building

Often times, the basics and fundamentals of SEO are overlooked as we focus on the more technical challenges that Search Engine Optimisation presents. Before diving in to the more complex SEO issues, we should focus on two of the absolute basic and key items – content & link building. For this post, we’ll take a look at link building and how to do it correctly.

Image credit to Diggity Marketing.

What is link building?

Link building is the action whereby another website contains a hyperlink back to your website. As simple as that sounds, a high-quality link building strategy requires a great deal of time and patience and is something that one cannot rest on. The value of link building remains hugely important for SEO in 2020 and will remain so for some time.

It’s important to note that – Google do not take any malicious or non-genuine link strategy lightly and your website will suffer drastically as a result. More on Google’s policy regarding link schemes and their guidelines can be found here.

How can I build good quality links?

Google’s Penguin update focused not just on the amount of links to a website but the quality and relevance of the links instead. Some years ago, black-hat techniques would see websites participating in link farming and so on with the sole purpose of increasing visibility and this was unfair to the user doing it the right way! This all changed back in 2011 with the release of Panda which as mentioned, focused on high quality links and reduced the the value of a link from a ‘thin’ website or a website purely in place to participate in black-hat strategies.

Building good links the right way involves effort. Reaching out to relevant partners and building trust and a relationship may present the opportunity to have a link placed on that partners website. This may be a guest blog post, a help guide or just a link on a ‘Partnership’ page as an example. The relevance of the link is also a big factor. Note that link exchanging is not a good practice and can lead to penalties. This is the idea of exchanging a link purely for the sake of doing so without any real relevance or benefit for both parties.

How to measure link building performance?

Many tools allow you to view the total number of backlinks to your website. Some of the Pro or paid tools such as Ahrefs, Moz Pro or SEM Rush will include a detailed ranking on these links and the probable authority of that link. This means you get an overview of these links and can tailor your outreach to similar sites or industries to build even further. Google Search Console is a fantastic tool and will also provide insight on these backlinks. Using the ‘acquisition’ – ‘referral’ option on Google Analytics shows you where exactly the traffic to your site originated.

To summarise, focusing on high quality and relevant link building strategies can have a massive payoff for your website and is something that should be at the forefront of SEO work.

To find out how we can help your SEO strategy, please Contact 2Cubed today!

You can also contact us on 01 905 8114 or 051-440425, email hello@2cubed.ie

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Digital Audit

A Digital Audit can certainly bring many things to mind that you may not have considered. A full and thorough audit of your brands’ online position is certainly worth the effort.

What is a Digital Audit?

In our previous post, we looked at an SEO audit and what this can bring your website in terms of organic positioning – https://2cubed.ie/2018/11/free-seo-audit/

A full digital audit looks into much more. While an SEO review is essential, we take a look at the bigger picture online. Just some of these elements include:

  • SEO Strategy: On-page, off-page and the technical elements involved in ensuring your website performs as expected.
  • Social Media presence: Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram & more.
  • Blogging: An informative and descriptive blog can present many opportunities.
  • Other online platforms: Google Business, Google Maps, Directories, Reviews & many more. 

Competition is greater than ever nowadays. Ensuring your online presence is optimised and efficient may be what makes you stand out from the crowd. 

Measuring performance

Building your online presence is a time consuming task that involves a great deal of effort. Ensuring that you can accurately measure the work carried out is very important. Tools like Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Social Media Metrics and so on are vital to measure performance. Using these correctly will involve some getting used to but are definitely worth the effort. You can use the data from these tools to view elements and KPIs such as goals, traffic acquisition, audience behaviour and so much more. This data is a great way to see progression!

If you’re serious about building your presence online, then a digital audit is something that should be considered as a priority. By discovering faults, issues and areas for improvement, you can develop a long term strategy of key steps to help your business on an upward track moving into the future. Start your Digital Audit today!

To find out more about what we can offer you, please Contact 2Cubed today!

You can also contact us on 01 905 8114 or 051-440425, email hello@2cubed.ie

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Social Media Advertising – is it worth it?

Social media advertising spend was over $100 billion in 2019. This is expected to exceed $200 billion in the next 3 years. The potential to build successful social media campaigns is certainly viable but is it worth the risk?

Any company with a social media strategy in place, will most likely have spent money on ads or is planning to in the short to medium term. As competition grows, companies are looking into ways to actively engage with users, to drive traffic, boost sales and increase brand awareness.

Social media usage is at an all-time high. More than 3 billion people are actively using social media on a regular basis*. This means the potential to target your ideal customer is certainly possible on a daily basis. How you choose to do this is key. *source – https://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/social-media-strategy/new-global-social-media-research/

So, taking this into account, what are the best ways to maximise ROI? And which platforms work best?

Facebook

Facebook is, and will be for some time the number 1 for social media usage and social advertising. With over 2.4 billion active users, this platform is absolutely vital to any planned social spend. Here at 2Cubed, we have found Facebook advertising to be the most efficient, cost-effective strategy when advertising online. The ability to target a preferred audience, in multiple locations is a simple process if you know your target audience. The variety of ad types is also quite good (photos, videos, events, jobs etc). The budget spending flexibility is also a great tool and even for small amounts you are likely to see some decent results on engagement and return on investment.

Instagram

With over 1 billion active users, Instagram is a hugely popular social media channel and continues to grow. The ability to place ads on the platform is also a simple enough process since Facebook integrated both platforms centrally in their Ad Manager. Ads created on Facebook can now display on Instagram and again, the ability to target your preferred audience is relatively straightforward. In fact, you don’t even need an Instagram account for your business in order to advertise on the platform. The downside of Instagram advertising can be the lower engagement rate on ads compared to Facebook. In saying that, according to Facebook ‘over 200 million Instagrammers visit at least one business profile per day’. Instagram advertising is certainly one to consider in the coming year. You can read more on this here.

Twitter

In the past few days, Twitter have announced that revenues in the company have exceeded $1 billion for the first time. Advertising money accounts for a large portion of this. This obviously suggests that more companies are considering Twitter for advertising purposes. Audience targeting is simple and efficient but not quite as effective as Facebook. Twitter’s platform is getting better and while we wouldn’t suggest ploughing money into a campaign just yet, a small budget campaign may be worth doing to gauge how successful it can be.

These were just some of the platforms available when considering advertising online. When combined with a solid SEO plan and Google Ads, social can be a great way to tap into your users first hand whilst controlling your budgets closely.

Linkedin

Linkedin is a tricky one. With over 300 million active users, it can be an excellent platform in general but when it comes to advertising, we’ve found it to be not so good for the most part. The cost-per-click is sometimes outrageous and a small to medium campaign can lead to costs spiralling in a short space of time with varying degrees of success. Linkedin advertising may improve and is possibly quite a good tool for large corporations but for now we would suggest sticking to the more user and budget friendly competitor platforms.

Contact us

If you’re looking for assistance with online marketing, 2Cubed can help. Contact us today by using the form below or you can use our dedicated ‘get a quote’ form here.

SEO Trends 2020

In this post, we will take a look at what to look out for in 2020 from an SEO point of view. Search Engine Optimisation is a huge focus for many online businesses nowadays and is more crucial than ever in order to help drive traffic and ultimately sales.

Image credit to Diggity Marketing.

Content and BERT

Fundamentally, SEO has for a long time been made up of a number of set variables, such as; backlinks, content and keywords. As search engines are constantly developing, we’re now at a point where the bots sent out by search engines to crawl websites are smarter than ever and becoming more human like due to advancements in AI. This leads us to think not just about content simply stuffed with keywords but content that is well written and answers the queries of real users. This was highlighted back in October last year by the introduction of Google’s BERT algorithm (Read Here). As mentioned in the article, each day almost 15% of queries searched for haven’t been searched for before. By analysing your website content in a more human format, allows Google to show users the most relevant websites based on the search term. Content is king as they say!

Technical SEO

Here at 2Cubed, something we’ve taken a particular focus in over the past year has been technical SEO. We had written a post outlining this in detail here. Technical SEO is the focus on the architecture of your site, the speed, the usability of pages and much more. Google Search Console is an excellent tool to examine any warnings or errors and ensuring these are clear will help massively toward SEO performance. Any site focusing on SEO this year should be fully aware of this.

Structured Data

If you’ve ever searched a term on Google, you most likely will have seen some structured data such as featured snippets. Featured snippets are described by Google as ‘Google’s search results sometimes show listings where the snippet describing a page comes before a link to a page, not after as with our standard format. Results displayed this way are called featured snippets.’

By adding structured data to your site allows you the opportunity to compete for space on the results page above the first position. This is a fantastic way to grow traffic and improve click-through rates.

Voice Search

More and more, users are searching queries by asking questions. Use of Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant and others are on the rise and the technology behind these brings us back to BERT. Conversational queries are not text and as such, search engines need to understand what is being asked and which relevant results are to display. By reviewing your content and optimising it with this in mind, you’ll have a much better chance of appearing for a search term and increasing traffic to your site.

This was just some of the trends to look out for in 2020. Applying these to your SEO strategy will most likely lead to positive results! Some others to keep in mind are:

  • Link Building
  • Mobile SEO
  • Local SEO
  • UX

2Cubed can help you grow your online business! Check out a full list of services and our website process here – https://2cubed.ie/services/

You can use our dedicated quotation form below or contact us with any questions you may have here.

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Web Design Trends 2020

Category: News

Now that 2020 is upon us, we’ve been focusing on the web design trends for the coming year to ensure we keep up to date with the latest and greatest in design and technology. It seems that gone are the days of drop shadows and fussy design elements and we look towards a year of more minimalist and simple design with the addition of beautiful and futuristic elements. We’ll take a look at some of the new trends below. web design trends 2020

Dark Mode

A big focus this year lies with dark mode design features. We’ve seen dark mode grow popularity across a wide range of platforms in the past year or so such as Twitter, YouTube, iOS and more. The dark backgrounds enhance the colours and elements on pages and are a great basis to showcase beautiful photography also. See a nice example by clicking here.

Minimalist Design

Having a simple basis again allows the elements on page to become the main feature as these are no longer lost within a wide array of clustered graphics. A minimal design is user friendly, easy on the eyes and straight to the point. Fussy menus and navigation are becoming outdated as they lead to end user frustration. Hidden navigations and desktop burger menus are an option as they maintain the required menu items but are only activated on user interaction. So in 2020, keep an eye out for lots of empty space simplifying website functionality.

Full Screen Forms

Continuing on with the minimalist design features, full screen forms and lead captures are likely to be a common theme across the web design industry in 2020. Big forms with clear and easy to read fields and surrounded with white space are both user friendly and effective building up leads and contact lists. There are a wide range of options and plugins out there to incorporate these onto your website.

Parallax

Parallax has been around for a number of years at this stage but seems to be sticking around more so than other techniques that have come and gone. For the next year, parallax looks to be a key player in terms of building functional yet interactive websites. The illusion of parallax scrolling enhances basic pages and brings them to life. A great example can be seen here.

This is just a brief overview of what you can expect in 2020. Some more trends to look out for are as follows:

  • 3D Elements and Artwork
  • Split screen content
  • Solid frames
  • Combining photography and graphics

2Cubed are on hand to assist with any questions you may have. Check out a full list of services and our website process here – https://2cubed.ie/services/

You can use our dedicated quotation form below or contact us with any questions you may have here.

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SEO for SMEs

Category: News

If you’re a business owner and you’re looking to expand your online presence, having an SEO strategy in place is sure to bring many benefits. SEO is a complex subject and as the graph below shows, there are many elements that make up SEO overall.

SEO for your Business

A large number of SMEs tend to focus on traditional marketing practices and understandably so as these may have brought success over many years. However, SEO should now be a crucial consideration for any business with a website in order to meet targets and set business goals. This is especially true for SMEs looking to build an online presence.

Competition is something we all deal with in business and SEO is no different. However, having a well planned and thought out SEO strategy can have a number of benefits.

Benefits of SEO

  • Increased traction on search engines (getting your site and brand out there)
  • High quality, relevant traffic to your website
  • A higher possibility to convert a website user into a sale or to convert a goal
  • Decreased budgets on other marketing activities
  • The opportunity to sit down and focus on priority keywords and phrases (how would you like your ideal user to find you?)

To summarise, by deciding SEO is a feasible option for your website, you are sure to see some benefits from doing so. As an SME, coming into 2020 this should be high on your list of marketing priorities moving forward.

You can read more on our Digital Marketing service here – https://2cubed.ie/services/search-engine-optimisation/

Our expert team is on hand to assist with any questions you may have. Check out a full list of services and our website process here – https://2cubed.ie/services/

You can use our dedicated quotation form below or contact us with any questions you may have here.

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Custom Web Design

If you’re looking to build an online presence promoting your company or selling products, 2Cubed are on hand to help you along the way. Our team work to bring your ideas to life using the latest design and custom web design processes. We collaborate to develop a wide range of custom-built software for your company based on your requirements.

Website and software development is a constantly evolving industry. Things can change in a heartbeat. Keeping up to date with these processes, helps us to help our customers with the correct information and allows a flexible approach to your project. We have developed many custom and bespoke projects in a number of sectors and industries. Whether it’s an eCommerce payment integration, bespoke API development and more, we have the tools at our disposal to successfully complete your project.

On Brand Development

Keeping your company branding at the forefront of the development process, in most cases may involve a deal of custom development but allows a ‘build on brand’ approach to your online project allowing you to maximise exposure whilst increasing engagement.

You can read more on our web development process here – https://2cubed.ie/services/website-development-at-2cubed/

Our expert team is on hand to assist with any questions you may have. Check out a full list of services and our website process here – https://2cubed.ie/services/

You can use our dedicated quotation form below or contact us with any questions you may have here.

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Which eCommerce Platform Should I Choose?

Category: News

If you run a business and are looking to sell online, there are multiple eCommerce platform options available in today’s market. It’s easier than ever to set up an online store to sell products nowadays but that doesn’t guarantee you will actually be successful.which ecommerce platform should I choose

Which eCommerce Platform is Right For My Business?

Once you have decided to begin the journey of selling your products or services online, you should note the many options to consider. Many platforms have varying degrees of options, functionality and cost. The most popular options may not always perhaps be the best option for your business and that’s why a good deal of thought should be factored into any considerations. Some examples of the more well-known eCommerce platforms are as follows –

A good place to start is by mapping out what you would like to do with your store; multi-site, multi language, discounts & offers, cart abandonments etc etc. There’s a lot to consider so 2Cubed are on hand to assist you in this process. We have many years experience helping businesses in Ireland build a solid online presence in order to sell items successfully.

Our expert team is on hand to assist with any questions you may have. Check out a full list of services and our website process here – https://2cubed.ie/services/

You can use our dedicated quotation form below or contact us with any questions you may have here.

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Change Website Design Company

If you’ve been thinking of changing website design company recently, we have put together a list of requirements in order to make the transition an easy and stress free experience, whether you are looking to change website provider, change hosting company or just looking to have your website maintained.

What will I need?

Depending on the service you require, the list of items will differ. However, it’s always good practice to have, or at least know, where your website is hosted. In addition, where your domain name is registered and hosted, how your business emails are configured and knowing this information will save a huge amount of time when switching companies.

Once the above items have been resolved (we can help with all of this), we will take over and work behind the scenes to enable your new service in a prompt and professional manner. At this point, you can sit back and relax!

2Cubed Web Design & Development offer a wide range of services to help you with your online presence. Some of these services include:

  • Website Hosting
  • Domain Management
  • Website Maintenance
  • Website Monitoring
  • Security Monitoring
  • Fixing website hacks
  • Improving website speed and performance
  • Plugin updates
  • Dedicated support channel between 9am-10:30am every morning (support@2cubed.ie)

Our expert team is on hand to assist with any questions you may have. Check out a full list of services and our website process here – https://2cubed.ie/services/

You can use our dedicated quotation form below or contact us with any questions you may have here.

Please feel free to follow and interact with us on the following profiles.

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