Content

Venue: The Maids Head Hotel, Tombland, Norwich, NR3 1LB

Price: £13.95 per person

Register: https://www.meetup.com/Norfolk-Developers-NorDev/events/245072685/

7.30 am Breakfast

7.50 am How Norfolk Chamber of Commerce can help digital business

8.30 am Finish

<h3 s first online estate agencies, alongside running his own business consultancy practice which has helped organisations of all sizes across the UK.

At the nor(Dev) breakfast, Chris will explain how Norfolk Chamber can help you to raise the profile of your digital business, highlight you as an expert in your sector and increase awareness of your brand. Chris will demonstrate how Norfolk Chamber can ensure your business content, press releases and promotions reach the maximum number of potential readers.

Free parking is available at the Maids Head, but make sure you give your car registration number to reception before you leave so as not to be charged.

Today marks the launch of Tech Nation 2017 from Tech City UK. Tech Nation 2017 shows that the UK digital tech sector is one of the country’s economic success stories, growing twice as fast as the wider economy and creating highly skilled workers and well-paid jobs.   The sector remains at the epicentre of the European tech scene but the new report also reveals some important new data that underlines how significant the sector is to generating economic growth nationwide:   • The UK’s digital tech industry turned over an estimated £170 billion in 2015, and is growing at twice the rate of the rest of the economy and is key to boosting the UK’s wider economy with a contribution of £97 billion in 2015 • The digital tech industry generated a further 85,000 jobs over the past year from 1.56 million in 2014 to 1.64 million in 2015, creating jobs at double the rate of the rest of the economy. • Similarly, since 2012 there has been a 13% increase in the advertised salaries of digital tech posts, compared with only a 4% rise in those of non-digital jobs. • Tech investment in the UK reached £6.8bn in 2016, more than two times higher than any other European country and significantly more than its closest rival, France, which secured £2.4bn. • Tech Nation 2017 shows that the average advertised salary for digital-tech jobs has now reached £50,663 a year, compared with £35,155 for the average non-digital salary, making it 44% higher than than the national average.   With more than 2,700 survey respondents from digital businesses across the country also contributing insights, the latest iteration of Tech Nation showcases the continued growth and evolution of the UK at the forefront of global innovation.With over 1000 data points, 220 community partners, 61 tech startup case studies and 30 UK tech clusters, this iteration of Tech Nation marks the most comprehensive study to date on the UK’s tech ecosystem.   Whilst we have these fabulous statistics from the UK’s wider economy, here in Norwich we share some similarly impressive figures. For more information on the digital economy within Norwich click the link below.   https://technation.techcityuk.com/cluster/norwich/

We are pleased to announce our partnership with Family Money, a new family money magazine in the UK. The site’s approach to lead generation is very clever. Whilst most websites these days consist of clear contact forms and comparison tables, Family Money are taking a similar style to Which.co.uk and MoneySavingExpert. With the site consisting of thousands of editorial content, they focus on answering the key questions of consumer finance products such as loans, currencies, money transfers and insurance.

For highly specific products regulated by the FCA such as excise duties, contemporary insurance and wedding insurance – the average person knows very little about this and needs to do their research. By providing a long, useful guide, the site is able to engage the reader and potentially convert them as a customer through an affiliate link or form. Finding that balance between reading the content and incorporating calls-to-action is key here.

Our Role

As SEO specialists, it is our job to ensure that every article and its content is optimised to its fullest across meta-titles, meta-descriptions, h1 headings, h2 headings, internal links and images (and their alt-text).

We ensure that every article can be well optimised for long-tail key phrases and that a potential piece can rank for dozens of keywords.

In addition, to ensure a smooth indexation of the website, we monitor crawl errors and broken links daily to ensure no downtime for the customer and a clean experience for both the customer and reader. In addition, we aim to maintain a strong site speed of over 70/100 on both mobile and desktop to achieve fast loading of pages and ideally keep users on the site for as long as possible.

We expect Family Money to grow considerably in the next year and eventually become a strong resource for financial products in the UK.

Professional recruitment specialists Pure extended its Suffolk Day celebrations by hosting a special event on Thursday (22 June) to mark the official opening of its new Ipswich office.

Pure invited clients and local people to join them for an evening of canapes and drinks to celebrate its move to new, larger offices at the heart of the town’s regeneration area. The 21-strong Ipswich team are now located on Princes Street in the building which was previously the Co-operative Bank.

Paul Sheldrake, Senior Manager at Pure’s Ipswich office, said: “We’d like to thank everyone who came along to celebrate with us. After months of hard work to completely transform the building, followed by the busy period of moving in, we’ve been waiting for the chance to really show off our fantastic new home. It seemed apt for the event to become an extended celebration of our activities to mark the first ever Suffolk Day, designed to celebrate everything which is fantastic about this county including its local businesses.”

The regional recruitment agency, which also has offices in Cambridge, Norwich and Chelmsford, had previously been situated in Ipswich’s Queen Street for nearly a decade. Having grown significantly over the last ten years, the team needed to move to larger premises but remained committed to staying in the town which is currently undergoing an extensive transformation.

Paul added: “These are exciting times for Ipswich and we are proud to be a part of it. Our office looks fantastic, and it proudly celebrates Pure’s culture and values. More importantly it has provided us with the space and location needed for us to continue supporting businesses to attract and retain high calibre employees and to help more people find their next exciting step on the career ladder. With Ipswich predicted to be among the top five UK places for economic growth this year, we need to be in the best position to fulfil our purpose of contributing to the economic growth of our region and to making a difference to people’s lives.”

Our client, Grakn Labs, is one of the fastest-growing database programmes in the UK. The idea is that developers will use their code and platform in order to build the databases for their clients, which could potentially hold millions of records. The company’s services are a competitor to the likes of Mongodb or Oracle.

In the tech world, intelligent coders and developers do not like to be sold to, creating a real challenge when it comes to SEO. Simply ranking for database sofwares and tools on Google’s search results is not sufficent. Instead, developers want to stumble upon you and realise for themselves that you are the best option to go for.

Smart use of content

Rather than focus on optimising a series of landing pages for SEO, instead, we have focused on a number of blog posts and discussions to rank for long tail keywords. Whilst very technical, we have allows the Grakn staff to write these in the language and terminology that appeals to the audience. We have ensured the maximum optimisation by working on the meta-data, h tags, keyword density in the content, internal links and more. We believe that this will be a strong way to convert users onto the site and to use the platform.

Site clean up

In addition to the use of content, the Grakn website has benefitted from an SEO clean up and health check. This ensures a maximum indexation of the website including the sitemap, removing crawl errors, broken links and response codes so that it ranks as smoothly as possible.

Elsewhere, we have updated the meta-titles, meta-descriptions, removed meta keywords and used h tags effectively to organise the website’s content.

In terms of link building, the site has generated a lot of press already as an alternative to other big data providers. Our role has been to ‘reclaim’ any mentions on other websites and ask politely for a link. Elsewhere, we have carried out outreach to get mentioned specifically on computer and tech websites and build up their domain authority as a tech specialist.

Every employer deals with recruitment at some time or another. In the HR Forum on 6th March we will be looking at the obligations that immigration law places on employers to prevent illegal working, and the effect that these obligations should have on your recruitment practices. The aim of this Forum is to demonstrate that all UK employers, regardless of their industry or sector, should be aware of the requirements they are expected to meet.

We will discuss the responsibilities that the UK Government imposes on all employers, such as ensuring at the point of recruitment that all members of staff have a valid right to live and work in the UK. We will also look into the civil and criminal penalties for failing to comply with the current requirements, and will put these into context by looking at some recent high profile cases involving, amongst others, Tesco and London Metropolitan University. The Forum will also address how illegal working can reduce or remove an employee’s employment rights.

During the Forum we will provide practical, straightforward advice on how to follow up and implement these requirements into your own recruitment policy. By ensuring that the proper checks are carried out on all recruits and employees, you will be typically be able to identify illegal workers at the point of recruitment. Training all staff involved with recruitment to understand the requirements will not only highlight issues at the outset of employment, but will also provide your business with a defence in the event that an employee is later found to be working in the UK illegally.

The consequences of mistakes in this area can be costly. Ensuring you know your obligations and have suitable procedures in place does not require significant time or costs, but will enable you to better protect your business and minimise the risk of employing an illegal worker.

Mobile. It’s here now and you need to be ready.Your customer is on the move, with little patience. They want sites that load, with easy press buttons. They haven’t time to think. They’re distracted and contacting you on their mobile is just one of their pressing activities.

Don’t give them time to think. Make it easy on their challenges. How? Simple.

• Give them a site that loads quickly • Present them with easy to read info • Design great call to action buttons that makes contacting you a no-brainer • Step too far? Not worth it? I don’t think so…

Look at your competitors. Do they have a mobile site? – look at their website on your smartphone.

Don’t waste any more time researching, doing surveys, considering. Every week that you aren’t into mobile your website isn’t doing what it should. It may be slow, hard to read, confusing, requiring pinch and zoom.

Don’t be so precious about your site that you aren’t ready embracing change . Here’s the bottom line. For a relatively small outlay, as part of a mobile marketing plan, your business could be reaching new customers. You may never get back those customers disappointed by a slow load or overwhelming info.

Streamline, sift in, re-write it and condence your stuff. It’s surprising how much you can still say in few words if you choose the right ones.

If you don’t have a mobile optimised site you’re not saying much about your business. But trust me. Potential customers are sharing news like wildfire.

Our in-house Google Adwords training courses allow you to train your team to successfully set up and run your own Google Adwords campaigns. The training course is designed to teach you to set up and manage your own AdWords campaigns.

The half day course includes:

• Why use Google Adwords?
• How to set up and structure Adwords account
• Using the dashboard
• Setting up campaigns and ad groups
• The three building blocks of AdWords – keywords, ads and landing pages
• Managing and measuring your AdWords campaigns

We can train up to 8 people at your offices and courses can be tailor made to your requirements. 

To find out more or book training call 01603 513080 or visit our website   Bigfork 01603 513080 www.bigfork.co.uk [email protected]

There’s some Positive news for the UK economy from the British Chambers of Commerce, with their quarterly business survey suggesting the economy grew by 0.6% in the second quarter of 2013.

The rise in confidence is partly driven by export sales, which hit their highest level since the survey began in 1989. Employment balances also rose following a decline in the previous quarter, with +19% of manufacturing companies creating new jobs. The service employment balance (which incorporates financial and accounting roles) rose nine points, to +15%, the best level since the first quarter of 2008, while the service employment expectations balance rose 11 points, to +22%, the best since the final quarter of 2007.

“The improvement in most key balances in quarter two, building on the upturn recorded in the first quarter, supports our view that the UK economy is slowly strengthening,” said British Chambers of Commerce chief economist, David Kern. “If recent progress can be sustained, there are realistic hopes that growth forecasts will be revised up further.”

And although businesses are feeling positive, that doesn’t seem to be translating to their balance sheets: cash-flow balances in both sectors are weak, increasing by just two points to +4% in manufacturing, and falling by five points to +1% in the services sector.

“We’ve certainly seen a slight increase in confidence in the market, and a steady upturn in Accountancy Vacancies in Norfolk across all levels since the Spring,” said Big Sky Additions’ directorJustin Murray. “As a result, we have welcomed Tina Maguire to our recruitment team to ensure that we can continue to cope with rising demand for our Accountancy Recruitment services and maintain our one to one style of working to deliver exceptional customer service to all of our clients,” he added. “Tina’s extensive local business network cements our position in the Norfolk and Norwich jobs market by ensuring that we continue to be knowledgeable about all movements and developments.”

For further information and support in your financial and accountancy recruitment please call Justin on 01603 516230

Import Duty

The amount of Duty paid is dependent on three things;

What the product is/is made of Classification Where the product is made Origin How much it costs Valuation

• If the goods you purchase originate (are made) outside the EU whether you import them directly or indirectly they will be subjected to import duty.
• Duty is usually charged as a % rate based on the cost of importing the item
• Duty Rates vary dependant on the type of good being imported i.e. the product Classification
• The amount of duty paid can also vary dependant on the origin of the goods. Some Countries have agreements with the EU which give them preferential i.e. reduced or even zero duty rates
• HMRC can go back 3 years to reclaim duty underpayments
• HMRC can charge penalties for errors that are found on a per instance basis

Once goods have been imported into the UK and the customs duty VAT paid those goods are deemed to be ‘in free circulation’. This means that they can move freely throughout the EU member states without incurring any further duty charges. This rules excludes excise goods which are subject to additional in-country excise-tax when entering another member state.

Norwich based company Liquid11 continues investing heavily in the region with the ground work commencing on six new starter units in Oulton Broad, near Lowestoft. The new units are aimed at start-ups and small businesses and will offer a modern and safe place to work or store materials. Sally Harding, Liquid11’s Business Development officer said: ‘despite Brexit fears, we feel the UK is a nation of small businesses that constantly innovate, our units will appeal to new companies and existing small business. With good access to North Lowestoft and the train station, we think it’s an excellent location and are excited to see what new buiness we will meet over the coming months’.

Liquid11 also entered into a partnership with local construction company, Mattoms Builders to build 6 new executive homes in Gt Yarmouth which will represent around 2% of the new homes needed to support plans for the town. Pat Cullumbine the director for Mattoms builders said ‘our region is crying out for new homes and whilst there is a buoyant market in mass build homes by existing large scale developers, there is a gap in the market for traditionally built, high spec homes for management and executives moving to our region, our homes will help to fill this gap.

Local councils and planning authorities are supportive of smaller builders and have been helpful in making this and other smaller developments possible in the town.

The Liquid11 group employs around 50 people in the region and typically a further 15 contractors are employed at any given time. Their total investment  over the last 12 months in new projects has been circa £3,000,000. The technology focused company continues to grow despite the economic uncertainty.

With three new products launched in the last 12 months the outlook for 2018 is positive for the company.