Black And White Boy Ltd

We Help Your Business Increase Visibility And Get More of what you want, which is growth and sales opportunities.

Coming from a corporate background, I understand the language of the boardroom, which is more about revenue, sales and profit and less about keywords, rankings and CTA's.

My philosophy about business growth and transformation is quite simple, and can be summed up in this simple formula:

SALES = TRAFFIC X CONVERSION

Most Businesses Have It All Wrong When It Comes To Digital Marketing, The Majority Obsess About How 
their website looks and pretty Pictures And Page Views instead of focusing On LEADS, CONVERSIONS, And SALES.

Black And White Boy are a search and Digital Marketing Consultancy Based In Newcastle Upon Tyne specialising in SEO, Web Design, PR, and Link building  and we use those to achieve your growth goals

We Focus On Your Results, To Us, That Means Revenue With Friends Attached (R.O.I.) Because As A Business Owner, That's What You Want, Right?

Our Vision Is To Help Ambitious Growing Companies Increase Their Sales And Brand Exposure Through SEO  And Wider Digital Marketing, And Objective Is To Generate The Inbound Sales Activity You Need As A Business To Grow And Thrive. 

The Result Is That Your Website Will represent a Tangible Asset That Generates New Enquiries, day in and day out. So Rather Than Being A Cost To Your Business, Its An Asset And A Tangible One At That.

I often find that company websites and other digital platforms are Forgotten About, Or Even Worse, abandoned, as the owners think digital marketing is a mirage and only works for the few, not the many, but that is not true, and it's my objective to proof that to you.

We Work With Ambitious Organisations Towards The Objective Of Moving Their Business To The Next Level To Fulfil Their Goals And Aspirations... 

If you want to know more, let's Have A Chat.

Director

Vocate Training

Paul Is a digital marketing and SEO specialist with +15 years of experience, in this role he helps digital marketers learn, prepare and study for a Level 3 qualification as part of the government apprenticeship scheme to gain a vocational qualification while in employment.

Paul has worked with companies ranging from local SMEs to larger national organisations helping pupils to achieve a Level 3 DM apprenticeship  with an impressive +85% pass rate achieved.

As part of Vocate, Paul has been audited by Ofsted and cleared the advanced DBS check to comply with safer recruitment requirements stipulated by Government and Ofsted.

Topics covered on the Digital Marketing apprenticeship Level 3 Qualification include:

✅  Business basics - how digital marketing can incorporate into a modern business structure.
 
✅. Sales and segmentation: how marketing can assist in driving more visibility, collecting data, and using it to form decisions and make arguments for delivering business growth.

✅  Copywriting: One of the most powerful marketing skills is using words in copy to sell more products and services.

✅. Social Media: Learn the strategy behind social media and develop your company's voice to align with your ethos, culture, and audience.

✅. Pay Per Click: Understand the intricacies of pay per click, how to use it to get the best return on investment for your business, and when you should and shouldn't use it.

✅. SEO: what it is and how to apply it on your website to gain greater visibility in the search engines

✅  Web Design: The fundamentals of web design and the things you should consider as a marketer to include on your website and those to avoid, including accessibility, file types, Wordpress and other CMSs

✅. Web Development: we delve into html, css and a little javascript to understand web dev fundamentals. After taking this module, students know what to look for when directing the development of a website from scratch and even building one themselves.

Digital Marketing Specialist Tutor

Salon Marketing Experts

If you are a salon owner you might feel as if you need to be an expert in every area of your business, including digital marketing. In reality, though, spinning all those plates means that is just taking your focus away from your real expertise and potentially diluting the passion you have for your beauty business.

Steven Covey calls this "the thick of thin things"  and what this means is that you get bogged down in all the nitty-gritty details and you end up spreading yourself far too thinly across your business but not deeply in any one part - as a result, your passion and enjoyment and the reason for starting your business in the first place is significantly suppressed to the point where you become stressed and wished you could just jack it all in and simply become a stylist or therapist again.

But it doesn't have to be like that - as the old business mantra goes, Your time is much better spent working ON your business, not IN your business - that means taking a strategic approach to your beauty enterprise and understanding that to become successful, you should be looking to the support of others to help you in that endeavour, and in so doing, free up your time to look at the future and what the business looks like in one, five and ten years time.

One of the big leaps you can take in this direction is to talk to salon marketing experts, not only are we experts at marketing within your marketplace, but we are experienced marketers who have worked in some of the most competitive markets and proven to get results.

Get in touch for a chat where we can talk through your situation and we'll give you some ideas on how you can use digital marketing as a way to build the business that you dreamt of when you started it.

Owner

Derwentside Business Network (DBN)

In his capacity as Owner of a successful digital agency, Paul contributed to the DBN mentoring programme, where he assisted local business owners with effective strategies and digital solutions to help them succeed online. 

He provided members with one-to-one sessions where they could drill down about their business and discuss in confidence the challenges they are facing. Then develop a personalised digital plan for the business. 

The sessions are packed full of value and revolve around practical steps on how the mentee can improve their online presence and fulfil their business goals and objectives. Paul's advice is both practical and implementable and explained in layman's terms but powerful marketing solutions are often only used by larger corporates and Elite businesses.

Areas of expertise incl: Website development and hosting, technical site optimisation, strategic internet marketing processes, email marketing, all technical aspects of online marketing, running online businesses. Sales Funnel design and implementation

Digital Business Mentor

EFG European Furniture Group

At EFG we have a very simple philosophy which is to exceed our customers’ expectations every time... if it matters to you, it matters to us. 

The people we listen to most are our customers... which together with our core values of integrity, innovation, quality and obsessive customer service has kept us at the forefront of the furniture industry year after year, that is why in a recent survey 98% of our customers said they would recommend us to another company.

Our vision is, with the most inspiring, functional and sustainable solutions, to be the Northern Europe's leading supplier of furniture within office and public environments. We will get there through sustainable resources, effective processes and truly sincere relations.

Founded in 1847, EFG has grown into one of Europe's largest manufacturers of office furniture. With a turnover of more than £150 million, we have become market leaders in both the UK and Scandinavia.

In the UK we supply both public and private sectors nationwide and have built a strong reputation as one of the country's top manufacturers. Our wide range of international clients include such high profile companies as Sainsbury's, Primark, NHS, E.ON, HSBC and Prudential. We have supplied Marks and Spencer for over 20 years - a testament we believe, to our high-quality products and our exceptional levels of customer service.

Specialties:

Agile Office, ABW, Activity Based Working, Modern meeting place solutions, Workstations, task seating, storage, Soft seating, cafe seating, Breakout furniture

Corporate Business Development Manager

TSF Retail Solutions

TSF Retail Solutions Ltd are a leading UK interior fit-out and refurbishment contractor, shop-fitter and joinery manufacturer serving the retail, commercial, education and health sectors. 

Working as either a principle or sub-contractor, TSF can provide full turn-key solutions. They are regarded as industry leaders and  knowledge experts in the fields of construction, shopfitting, product design and joinery manufacturing. 

The directors are principled in their pursuit of business, with an ethical and honourable approach to customer relations which peculate throughout the company at all levels, this results in a passionate team eager to deliver creative, cost-effective projects on time and on budget for their clients.

Operating across the UK, TSF are able to provide the resource and responsiveness required to deliver a high level of service to all customers both on a regional and national basis.

Main Contracting | Sub-Contracting | Retail Shopfitting | Retail Design | Commercial Interiors | Construction | Furniture | Interior Fit Out & Refurbishment

National Sales Manager

GDB International

- National Key Account Management UK
- Responsible for the external sales function
- Management Of External Sales Team
- Day to Day Management of external area managers
- Pro-active management of  field sales team 
- Manage Key accounts UK  Wide 
- New Account identification and acquisition (Local & National)
- Oversee "Special" Export projects: co-ordinate, transport, make import and installation arrangement at destination
- Key member of team responsible for developing the GDB Name in the UK

UK Sales Manager

- Field sales covering Northern England, Scotland & Ireland ( North & South)
- Target and recruit distributors in order to achieve company UK goals
- Develop the GDB Concept in the UK Market & Ireland
- Professional & Organised which contributed to success
- Developed Sales In the Area by +300% 
- Built sales which eventually accounted for more than 30% of UK revenue

Area Sales Manager

Office Clarke

Run & Develop an successful SME carving out a niche with local business community

Pentos PLC

Nobo Visual Aids

Are you tired of your website and marketing efforts not producing enough inbound leads and sales?

In order for it to do that you need two things.

✔ Traffic - You need to show up for 1000's of industry-relevant terms when people search for your service/ product on Google

✔ Conversions - Your website needs visitors to take positive action and to engage with your website.

If your website isn't providing either of these, you will never be successful online and you'll continue to lose out to your competition who rank higher than you, win the best opportunities and benefit from brand exposure, while at the same time, all those potential customers won't even know your brand even exist.

Even if you are already spending money on digital marketing but disappointed with the results you're getting, you need to ask hard questions about why your marketing budget isn't generating the return on investment you expect and why your hard-earned money isn't been used effectively?

How can I grow your business go from 🤦‍♂️ to 🤑?

Deliver tangible returns in the form of leads, sales and ultimately profit growth.🚀


Custom-built websites designed to boost 💪 engagement 🎉brand presence, convert visitors into leads and purchases.💰

Proven SEO strategies will optimise your online presence to make your website into a sales machine and found for thousands of keywords in Google search leading to long-term increased website traffic🚀

Avoid being buried on page 13 🚀

Positions your brand as a trusted industry leader and deliver a predictable and profitable revenue source so your website becomes a valuable long term asset of your business.🚀

Affordable internet digital marketing using evergreen strategies to deliver effective measurable results year after year.🚀 

If you want to generate a predictable source of leads and sales online, then we have what it takes to make that happen for you today! 

Let us create a custom digital strategy tailored to your needs and implement our proven SEO techniques designed specifically around your industry, products/services and to beat your competition (obvs). 

We can help drive traffic to your website and if matched with high converting websites we will help build a predictable sales generation machine for your business.

Take our FREE "Get To The Top Of Google" scorecard to gauge your digital marketing strengths or weaknesses by going to: https://blackandwhiteboy.scoreapp.com/ 🎁 linked to below

Get in  touch with me 
📱DM or message via LinkedIn
📞 +44 (0) 7598 333 957
✉hello@blackandwhiteboy.com

This. is. just. AMAZING!


The context for anyone who doesn't know is that Newcastle United shirt sponsors SELA give over their sponsorship to RNID, the national hearing loss charity, for Saturday's home match vs Spurs.

And, with the help of SELA, they developed replica shirts that included sensors to help those supporters with hearing loss in the stadium share the atmosphere of the crowd, including the team badge that vibrated when Newcastle scored. 💓 

Lovely touch by Dan Burn signing to those with hearing loss who were watching

PAUL CLARKE

SEO is well and truly DEAD

If you continue to...


- Create content without understanding your target customer
- Ignore customer pain points and how you can solve them.
- Not understanding marketing principles such as buyer journey
- Failing to consider search intent
- Blindly publishing raw AI output without editing it for value.
- Believing you can ignore AI in your process
- Be happy with the status quo.
- Ignoring the fundamental success formula SALES = TRAFFIC X CONVERSION
- Keyword Stuff Instead of Intent Targeting
- Neglect Internal linking between pages to create topical relevance
- Publishing generic, unresearched content that lacks depth and originality.
- You don't differentiate from competitors.
- Ignore page structure and site architecture.
- Publish only sales-driven content without building trust first.
- Ignoring a marketer's mindset and Think only in terms of SEO
- Failing to connect SEO efforts to your brand's value proposition and customer needs.
- Not diversify traffic with social media, paid channels, and referral sources.
- Copy competitors' tactics instead of forging your own unique path.
- Not tracking metrics or drawing actionable conclusions from analytics.
- Lack creativity and produce uninspired content that needs to stand out.
- Ignore the power of high-quality quality topically relevant links
- Neglect aspects of your website's health, such as technical SEO issues like slow load times and poor mobile-friendliness.

There's tonnes I've missed, what would you add to the list?

If you're going to the North-East Expo at Newcastle Racecourse on Thursday, I am too.

If you see me, say Hi! and let's have a chat.

Why diversity in SEO matters more than ever.

Following the carnage of the recent Google updates, I might be stating the obvious to some, but others (outside of the world of SEO) may need to hear this.

I’ve been a long-time advocate for SEO, and that hasn’t changed, but I have also encouraged diversity of traffic for some time too.

With recent Google updates, I suppose some are waking up to the fact that having one source of traffic is not a great move; you’re beholden to one traffic source and, by extension, income.

When it works, it really does work, there is no better traffic source, but when it doesn’t, it’s not great.

I found this out the hard way.

Around 2011 when I had a portfolio of sites, I was flying high, my sites were doing very well, thank you very much.

my portfolio of niche affiliate sites were riding high, things couldn’t have been better. I was astounded by how much traffic and cash it was generating.

Things were good until they weren’t.

Introducing "Panda.”

Yes, Google’s first big algorithm. 

Overnight, traffic, sales, and the affiliate commission that came with them disappeared. Poof, just like that.

I was distraught, devastated, depressed and other words that begin with ‘d’

Hourly checking of analytics and affiliate dashboards for several weeks after didn't reveal even the weakest signs of life for those sites.

I made a decision—one that I couldn’t have imagined a month earlier.

I walked away from SEO; for me, it was the end of days. I remember thinking at the time, ‘SEO is dead’.

So, what did I do? I went all in with paid traffic, and then I started with social. I tried CPA, and all sorts of other things.

I was looking for the same excitement I previously had with SEO

That was 2011–2014.

I call them the wilderness years.

Meanwhile, I was still dabbling with sites and SEO, just messing around, if truth be told. 

Then I found by mistake that by focusing on SEO again but supplementing that with paid traffic, social signals, and brand building, I was starting to see more sustainable organic results.

I realised that previously my house was built on sand, and all of a sudden I had developed a skill set that was able to lay a solid foundation and, as a by-product, diversified traffic.

No longer did I feel that I was only reliant on one traffic source but on several, at the same time, I realised this is what brand building looks like. 

This is how real businesses approach online marketing.

I do feel for any site owner who has experienced recently what I had all those years ago, but my advice is to give it time, you’ll figure it out and realise that SEO is still amazing, but rethink your approach and adopt a slightly different attitude, diversification as mitigation.

Just don't do what I did and throw the baby out with the bath water; reflect for sure, but look at how you can adapt, what the direction of travel is, supplement, and come back stronger.

Having spoken with lots of business owners, I have found a lot of them are addicted to 'hopium', which is less of a business strategy but more of a limiting belief.

Let me explain

‘Hopium’ is a term I use for anyone who works in a company who believes that customers are miraculously just going to find them and then want to work with them for no apparent reason.

They consider referrals as their main source of new client acquisition, and they run the business from an operator mindset, which means they have hands-on control over everything and all the knowledge is stored safely in the owner's head.

This just suppresses the ability for business owners to do more meaningful business growth tasks, which in turn often mutes lead generation and sales generation tasks.

If this sounds familiar, it’s hardly surprising, as most small businesses find they are in a similar pattern, surviving day to day, bumping along the bottom, never able to raise their head high enough above the surface to get a breath.

But if you want to get well beyond six-figure revenue and plot a route to seven figures, then you have to change your mindset and put three things into action. 

1. Get your I.P. out of your head, write down processes and get others to carry out the tasks
2. Remove yourself from the day-to-day running of the business, other than perhaps being chief salesperson and cheerleader.
3. Have a system for generating leads and closing sales.

It sounds simple yet it’s not easy. However, simply appreciating and acknowledging that is the first step in the process; the next step is to start and do something about it.

How you do that is the same way you eat an elephant, one bite at a time. Take one giant problem and break it down into small, bite-sized chunks.

So as an example, start thinking about all the things in your business that are done repeatedly, then write out a step-by-step guide on how to do it so anyone can follow it, and then get your staff to carry out the task instead of you. You now have processes in place, which frees up your time to work on sales and lead generation.

As for marketing, that may be as simple as an honest assessment of what you need to do based on your current marketing assets, if you’re smart, you can normally get these for free. 

Lots of businesses provide no-obligation strategy calls to help, but if that is too much of an ask, you can consider something with less commitment, such as our online assessment, which is free and takes less than 5 minutes of your time and will provide some valuable and actionable insights, and you don’t need to talk to anyone either. 

Link in the first comment

My interpretation of SEO has alway's been how to generate ROI for my clients, and in a way, building a brand mirrors personal development and the drive that is hardwired in all of us to be better.

We all stand at a point in our lives—a present self—that’s firmly rooted in the realities of today. Yet, we imagine a future self, a refined avatar of who we might become, brimming with the achievements we've accomplished and living our best lives.

To bridge the gap between the now and the future, we face challenges that require daily commitment and effort to reach the milestones we’ve set for ourselves.

Brands experience a similar narrative. They exist in a current state, but forward-thinking leaders, in my experience, are rarely content with the status quo, often mirroring their own ambition, always striving for more for their brand—its 'future self'.

However, this transformation is not without its hurdles, many of which are surmountable with a robust and integrated SEO strategy.

Why? Because today, I think Google's narrative is for SEO to transcend the basics of just content and backlinks. 

I think it's becoming a more expansive marketing channel that encompasses the company’s story, its place within the broader business ecosystem, and the strategic turning of a website from merely a digital presence into a tangible business asset.

Thoughts?

This week, I learned about the ‘unintended consequences’ of Google's recent updates, which could have left the SERPS wide open to abuse.

Rather than curating a better experience, have they opened it up for more spam?

Credit goes to Lee Witcher and Ted Kubaitis for these insights, In a recent podcast, they revealed that if you carry out any search for popular queries on Google and then scroll right through the pages to the very end and review the whole results, you will see: 👀 

👉 Approximately 50% greater results in the whole SERPS for your keyword
👉 Those spots have largely been filled with Social Media
👉 More video results, especially YouTube content and TikTok
👉 More than two entries per domain per query, especially for high-authority sites
👉 More news/PR stories
👉 Reddit (obvs.)
👉 Forbes (even with local queries) 👀 

This opens up the search results significantly, As shown in one example for the search term ‘Google’, traditionally, one of the hardest keywords to even get indexed for obvious reasons, in this observation, there is a YouTube video published just one week ago that shows up for that very keyword.

What are the implications of this?
🚩 More competition for keywords
🚩 More spots for brands to compete
🚩 Brands/influencers with a heavy Web 2.0 and social presence will see increased traffic
🚩 Press releases will get more coverage
🚩 Greater chance of multiple inclusions for a domain per query
🚩 Video content, especially on YouTube and TikTok, gets more exposure.
🚩 Potentially improved link equity from mid-tier sites.
🚩 Some local searches include Reddit and Forbes, displacing local businesses off page one.

The search engine results page now represents what it looked like 10 years ago, so does that represent progress?

What do you think, Is Google Search a better or worse place than before?

SEO cheat code for our local SEO clients.

I shouldn’t share this, as it's been my go-to strategy for years but hey why not 🤷‍♂️ 

The dilemma we find ourselves in regularly goes something like this...

A prospect contacts us. They want quick results. 

But there is often a problem, their previous SEO efforts haven't worked; they used another agency or have tried to do it themselves with limited or zero results

Naturally, we want to do a good job and provide ROI

But we know it’s going to be challenging to get fast results with the ‘scorched earth.’ SEO we’ve potentially inherited.

Furthermore, even though they want results, they often don’t have the funds or the faith to wait around for SEO to kick in.

So, what to do?

Google Ads!

I know that's not strictly SEO 🙈 

But we want results fast, and ads are often the way to go

So, our process is that we get the client to set up a new ad account, and we ask that at least £400 of the budget go into that, and Google will match that (Bonus).

💸 You now have at least £800 to get some quick wins.

We then go to work optimising ads to gather data, and to get some quick wins.

It’s been so successful that I have been instructed to “switch off the ads” in the first week on more than one occasion because the client has too many enquiries to handle.

Obviously, the numbers have to stack up and we have to be confident in making it work for both parties so we can make informed decisions.

However, this is all part of the longer-term SEO strategy because the by-product of this approach is to ultimately get an ROI for the client over the long term through SEO but it also has the effect of:

👌 The Client's faith in you goes from zero to hero.
👌 No buyers remorse
👌 You know exactly what keywords are converting
👌 What keywords to optimise for in your SEO campaign
👌 Make informed choices based on the data
👌 Ads often have a compound effect to the whole campaign
👌 Everybody wins

Work smarter, not harder.

what little hacks do you use... if you're brave enough to share them 😎

I appreciate all of my fav SEO’s and marketers I respect on my socials, you can learn so much, not just in tactics and strategy but also in mindset and creativity.

Take this ‘Bad SEO vs Good SEO agency” tweet (or ‘x’) from Keval Shah, (linked below) advocating “creativity” and ‘outside the box thinking’ for client keyword research to get better ROI for e-commerce—solid advice as ever from Keval.

https://lnkd.in/eXfRWCvP (Keval's original tweet)

But then Carrie Rose wades in with her tweet not long after, taking it to a whole other level.(Also linked below)

‘Bad SEO Agency Vs Good SEO Agency Vs Great SEO Agency’

https://lnkd.in/euiREjcC (Carrie's Tweet)

She illustrates that by thinking a little bit differently about the topic, you can open a whole new avenue of possibility and revenue opportunities for a client by going deep and wide in approaching keyword research. 

It also demonstrates that having the latest tools is good for the data, but applying your brain is next level and can be the differentiator between a ‘Bad SEO and a Great SEO’

what would you add?

twitter.com

Keval Shah | Ecommerce SEO (@SEOKeval) on X

Pop Quiz ❓ 

All things being equal, which site would rank highest? 🤔 

Site A:  A site using N-grams?
Site B: A site using Entities?

If you've never heard of N-grams, in the most basic of terms, they are a 'sequence of words’ whereas entities are termed ‘proper nouns’ which again, in the most basic terms, are words that can be used to identify people, places, or things. 👀 

So now that you know what they are, can you answer the question any better?

Search engine optimisation is becoming even more nuanced, and many websites use ‘strings’ of words (keywords) for optimisations. 

But while keywords are still important, in reality, Google can’t read them, so it needs a more efficient way to understand your page. This is where Entities come in.

Especially in its most effective form, structured data. 🤖 

The best definition of how entities work is given by the example provided by a very talented SEO called Simon Cornelius. 🤓 

Simon explained (I am paraphrasing) that if you were to take any given passage of text and extract everything from that text except the verbs, you wouldn’t understand what the passage was about. It’s the same if you only tried adjectives.

However, if you tried to read that same passage only using nouns from the text, then you could have a good understanding of the content. 📃 

And that is, in essence, what Google does. It looks for entities within the text and uses its knowledge graph as a reference to make connections and understand relationships around the web.

This is a relatively dated principle from back in 2012, when Google introduced the concept of 'things, not strings’ 📅 

So in answer to the original question, Site B would be the site that would typically rank highest. 😜 

What is clear, though, is that Google is changing, as the most recent updates illustrate. 

And, with AI and machine learning becoming more advanced, the above principle may change over time, but as it stands, including entities on your page is one of the clearest signals you can give to the search engine.

Go Implement. 

What other factors are important to understand?

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