On Brexit day, we take a look at what Brexit might mean for your business and your SEO campaigns.
Relationship with Europe
As hopefully anyone knows, the European Union is comprised of multiple countries most of which have their own language. Linguistic capabilities and multi-language campaigns have been in high demand, especially as companies look to extend their reach to other countries where their research tells them their campaign will generate a good ROI.
Financial fluctuations, trade deals, free movement, visas and general uncertainty about the relationship we will have with Europe has meant that both British and European companies have pulled out of commitments to services, offices spaces and relationships with the UK.
As our political relationship with our neighbours remains tenuous, companies should look to work harder to diversify their customer base through their websites. In many cases this means that we need to develop our sites’ linguistic capabilities to convey the value of our companies through high quality tailored content.
There is a plethora of ways that we can better service markets who speak a different language. In our experience a broad and diverse offering is best to empower and engage with priority markets. We would start by identifying key languages by volume and engagement on Google Analytics, and from that data creating engaging landing pages using geo-targeting Schema tags to serve content to users with devices registered in the relevant language. Once the pages have been collecting data for a while, it is good practice to tailor the CTA option(s) and cross sell opportunities by serving relevant exterior content such as blogs or regional offers to the searcher to broaden and diversify the users experience and increase lead potential.
This is a great opportunity to show you have a deeper understanding of the priorities, difficulties and opportunities that may be perceived by the market and tailor your site to meet their needs more effectively. If, after completing the above you are getting high engagement and traffic from a few markets it may be beneficial and a good commitment to the market to create a translated version of the site. Again, this can be tailored to not include some pages or add regional specific content where appropriate to continue the custom offering given to individual markets.
Trust
With publications left, right, centre and everywhere in between, those in favour of and those against and a whole slew of other opinions firing out all over digital and traditional media it is very hard not to become a little confused with where everyone stands on Brexit. What is certainly true is that trust has become a hot topic, which of course it always is with politicians, but now so more than ever digital trust for all websites is a must.
Trust is an immeasurable entity in the real world: we feel it, or we don’t. There are many compounding factors based on facts, feelings and opinions that lead us to trust or distrust. However, in SEO we have quantifiable data that tells us whether our site is trusted or distrusted which gives greater visibility and makes a lack of trust easier to remedy (thankfully!).
Ensuring that your site is trusted by both users and crawlers is a great step to safeguarding your traffic, engagement and ultimately leads and or sales don’t suffer. Furthermore ‘trust measures’ will increase your appeal above your competitors and ensure that your users are not put off by ‘red flags’ surrounding your site.
Here are a few things to look for if you want to ensure your site is trustworthy:
1) HTTP/SSL – making sure your site is secure, especially if you are E-Commerce business, is vital. Customers need to know that their data is being securely housed and stored. This is a web issue that many anti-fraud and banking establishments will warn their customers about.
2) Good Domain Authority (DA) and Trust Flow (TF) – Whilst most people will probably not know how to search for these or may not even know what they are, good Domain Authority and Trust Flow are essential to proving to Google that your site is trusted in your industry. These metrics refer to the web pages and sites that link to your site, referring you as a credible source. The higher the score of the site referring you the better. The best way to start working towards this is to make some friends. Asking webmasters, publications and directory webmasters the requirements to be featured on their site may surprise you; not everyone is out for cash! Many webmasters know how valuable ‘link juice’ is but they may ask for other things to get it including: writing a piece of content for their site, an industry opinion or gifting a product to a customer. You want to be getting links on sites higher than your own and in your industry if you can!
3) GDPR and Privacy Policy – These are vital documents for any site to have, from a legal standpoint. However, the methodology and style of these documents can go a long way. Clear and concise language, with optimised sub headers whilst avoiding too much jargon, is a good rule to follow for any policies and even for site-wide content.
The economic uncertainty around Brexit has meant that our currency (GBP) has fallen over the last 6 months and been prone to some major fluctuations throughout the votes, delays, negotiations and other processes.
Although more bang for your buck in Europe may seem appealing to holiday makers heading here, this is not a shared enthusiasm with many foreign investors or global/European companies with bases in UK. Many businesses seem to be less willing to invest in services in the UK as the rapid fluctuations are making it increasingly difficult to forecast what will be our economic position in the years ahead.
If British products and services are to sell well in this new economic landscape, we should embrace the fluidity of our new market but also recognise some hard truths. Our economic climate will continue to fluctuate, the pound is not as strong as it was before the Brexit vote and investors will continue to withdraw funds from the UK if they feel that their investment may be at risk.
This means that websites will have to up their game. One trend that seems to be emerging and holding fast are value-based call to actions in metadata, such ‘Next day delivery’ and ‘Price match guarantee’. Whilst it has previously been a frowned upon practice to litter meta description with offers adding a prominent and appealing USP into the metadata, it may be the difference between a sale and not in an increasingly competitive market.
Competition
Regardless of your voting stance, opinion and thoughts on Brexit, one thing than most can agree on is that Brexit represents a turning point for the UK, to buck the status quo and change course.
One of the most important challenges that we will be facing are the changes to how easy it is for us to work, trade and do business with the rest of Europe. Therefore, many companies may be feeling the pinch in one way or another of a smaller market for the time being. This of course means that the competition between companies has increased and intensified.
Whilst there is always a lot to work on for your business’s digital profile, one issue seems to rear its head with devastating effect, often at the most inopportune moments. This is page speed. Page speed is something to keep a close watch on as it will invariably mean happy users choosing you over your competition. There are a number of elements that effect your page speed (especially on mobile devices) but there are a few that seem to appear regularly. Common issues include: checking third party tools usage of the site, formatting images in smaller sizes and converting them to more ‘friendly formats’ (such as WebP), and removing or deferring unused or large segments of code. Any of these issues can cause major disruption to your site and as a result users will be unfulfilled, click off or assume that there is something virus-y or spammy going on.
Site Self-Harm
This is perhaps the most important thing you must be aware of when preparing your SEO for any ramifications of Brexit. Don’t cause your own site harm. This ‘harm’ can take many forms, any of which can have detrimental effects on your site. Perhaps the most common that can go undetected for long periods of time are URL errors including: broken links, mismatched redirects and missing canonical tags. By simply crawling your site semi regularly, identifying URL errors and remedying a few, you will create a far better experience for your users and a substantially better crawl health which, ultimately, is one of the most important elements of your site.
Note: To safeguard against future broken links try adding a custom 404 page that makes your site feel more human, tell your users a joke, a quick story show them an image they might want to see or like. You can do anything just don’t be boring – *Error 404 Return Home is the SEO equivalent of I can’t be bothered.
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Alex Buckingham-Bullock is an SEO Account Manager at POLARIS Agency, a London-based B2B SEO agency.
