The Key Changes Taking Place in the Paid Media Space

The Key Changes Taking Place in the Paid Media Space

Home > Content Marketing

The Key Changes Taking Place in the Paid Media Space

It’s been a busy couple of months for the Paid media space, and in turn, digital marketers. From Google policy updates to advert automation and new advertising partnerships between search engines and social media platforms, there’s a lot of changes to digest.

But, don’t worry. We’re here to break down the key changes, how they work and what the impacts are for businesses.

If you’re keen to learn more about the changes, keep reading.

Automatically Created Assets

Google has recently released a new feature for responsive search ads called automatically created assets.

But, what are automatically created assets and how do they work? Let’s dive in.

What are automatically created assets?

Automatically created assets are an opt-in, campaign level feature on Google Ads. When a user enables the setting, Google will generate additional assets (headlines and descriptions) to be used in conjunction with the assets the user has inputted for their responsive search ads.

The additional assets are based on the unique content existing in your ads, so the existing ads, landing pages and keywords that you use will all be taken into consideration when Google generates the additional assets.

How can SEO experts support automatically created assets?

It’s important to make sure that the content within your existing ads and landing pages is tight so Google can then generate assets for your campaign that align with your business.

Getting your SEO experts involved can help with this. They can ensure that your landing pages include relevant keywords and descriptive content. Ultimately, there should be no disparity between what your landing page is presenting and what your ads are presenting.

False affiliation with public figures and brands

Do you have an affiliation with or receive endorsements from a public figure or brand? Well, this update may apply to you.

The latest policy from Google Ads says they will suspend and completely ban accounts that are found “enticing users to part with money or information by impersonating or falsely implying affiliation with or endorsement by a public figure, brand, or organisation”.

There are currently no guidelines on how this will impact businesses that do have an affiliation with brands or public figures, but you may find that ads mentioning affiliations or endorsements are flagged automatically and you will have to provide evidence to prove your relationship.

Providing evidence for paid adverts is not a new concept. The likes of Meta require proof of qualification or certification for discussing topics such as the environment. This ensures the advertiser is who they say they are and not spreading misinformation.

As for Google Ads, this is all speculation as the policy only came into effect in March 2024. But, this is what we theorise about the process being going forward.

The Google and Pinterest ad partnership

Pinterest isn’t new to an ad partnership. They have already collaborated with Amazon to bring more brands and relevant products to its platform. Now, they’ve partnered with Google to bring ads from the search engine to the Pinterest platform, allowing users and brands to expand their reach and increase their visibility.

These sorts of partnerships are not out of the ordinary. Microsoft and Netflix began working together in 2022 on an advertising and sales partnership, and many more collaborations are appearing across the board.

Will you need to opt-in to Pinterest when creating your ad on Google?

In theory, you should be able to select Pinterest when you create your ad on Google.

Essentially, businesses and users integrate their ads on Pinterest via their Google Ads Manager account, removing the step of logging into the platform and setting up the advert themselves.

Why should businesses consider advertising on Pinterest?

For brands and businesses that have never advertised on Pinterest before, it can be daunting to experiment with a new platform. However, we recommend testing the waters and figuring out what works best for your business.

The platform works well for e-commerce brands and has the potential to lead to a stronger return on investment (ROI).

There are a lot of benefits to using Pinterest for advertising. The platform is useful for spotting emerging trends in your industry and finding out what content is popular based on searches. The platform also has powerful targeting features that businesses can benefit from.

Need support with your paid strategy?

The last couple of months has seen a lot of updates within the Paid media space. As a business, it can be hard to navigate all of the changes and determine what your next steps are.

That’s where our Paid team can help. Get in touch with our friendly team today to learn more about our PPC and social media advertising services and how we can support your business with your Paid strategy.

Don’t forget to keep up-to-date with the latest digital marketing news by visiting our blog.

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Giant Wednesday

A Guide to Google’s Recent Updates: From AI to Cache Links

A Guide to Google’s Recent Updates: From AI to Cache Links

Home > Content Marketing

A Guide to Google’s Recent Updates: From AI to Cache Links

The start of 2024 was relatively quiet with no core algorithm updates jumping out of the woodwork, but that doesn’t mean Google hasn’t been busy. On the contrary, Google has been making small changes here and there to enhance its tools and products across the board. Or, in one case, completely remove the tool (farewell, cache links).

Not up-to-speed with the latest changes? Keep reading to learn all about the updates to the Core Web Vitals tool, the cache link retiring, and Google’s rebranding of the Bard.

The Core Web Vitals tool update

It’s been known for some time now that Google is going to replace one of its Core Web Vitals metrics with a new one and, finally, we’ve been given the launch date.

If you’re not sure what the new Core Web Vital metric is or why it’s being implemented, keep reading.

What are Core Web Vitals?

According to Google, Core Web Vitals is a set of metrics that measure the user experience of a webpage, including loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability. The Core Web Vitals metrics currently are:

  • Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) which measures loading performance
  • First Input Delay (FID) which measures interactivity
  • Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) which measures visual stability

However, from the 12th of March 2024, Interaction to Next Paint (INP) will replace FID as part of an update to the Core Web Vitals.

carton person explaining a flog chart of an alorithm<br />

Why is Interaction to Next Paint replacing First Input Delay?

Google has been experimenting with INP since May 2022 as a replacement for FID. According to the team, it became clear that FID didn’t have the full capabilities necessary to capture aspects of interactivity on the web. The new metric should be much more reliable and a better measure for optimising your website.

INP has now been promoted to a stable status and is ready to become a Core Web Vital metric in March. This means that FID will be removed permanently from the metric system. You won’t need to change the way you optimise your website going forward – the metric will just be more accurate when assessing your webpage on responsiveness.

Cache link is retired

This might be an update that you’re not too happy about… Don’t worry – we get it!

If you’re not familiar with the cache link feature, it allows users to view a cached version of a webpage directly from Google Search. However, the feature was retired as of February 2024.

What was the purpose of the cache link?

Historically, the cache link was brought in by Google to help preload content that might have been slightly slower to load, during a time when the web, in general, was slower to load.

Fast forward a decade (or more), and web page loading speeds are much quicker than before. Users don’t generally have the same problems with a page not loading, therefore, Google has essentially said it’s no longer a requirement to have.

From an SEO perspective, this may be slightly frustrating as the cache link works well for debugging web pages. That being said, there are a couple of good replacements to be aware of, including Google Search Console and Wayback Machine.

What does the change mean for web developers and website owners?

The change won’t impact web developers and website owners day-to-day, but it certainly reinforces the importance of having a fast-loading website.

The main impact will fall on users as they will no longer be able to access cached versions of web pages, and will need to find alternative options for accessing archived content.

Google’s Bard rebrands to ‘Gemini’

We were never much of a fan of the name “Bard” anyway… But, on a more serious note, this rebranding reinforces the point that Google is continuing to invest in AI technologies and their own AI ecosystem, Gemini.

Google has even gone as far as launching a Gemini mobile app to provide easy access to AI on Android and iOS phones.

Why has Google rebranded Bard?

According to Google, the rebranding of Bard to Gemini reflects the more advanced capabilities of the AI tool. Gemini uses a new Ultra 1.0 model called ‘Gemini Advanced’ which uses Google’s most advanced AI model to handle complex tasks.

Is it a rival to ChatGPT? It would appear so. Gemini Advanced is a paid version which rivals the paid version of ChatGPT, so it’s clear that Google is stepping up its game to be a major player in the AI universe.

How could this impact the SEO landscape?

Will we see search engines disappear and become chatbots? Possibly, but there’s a long way to go before that potentially happens. What we can be fairly certain about is that search engines will develop and transform over the next few months and years, integrating more AI features as they become available.

The key things for SEO professionals to focus on are entities and question-based content. We know that chatbot features are naturally more question-and-answer based but, even before looking at AI features, entity SEO is seeing great results so this should be a primary focus for marketers and business owners.

Need support with your SEO strategy?

That’s it for Google’s recent updates. Nothing too huge or impactful, but hopefully our synopsis gives you a good awareness of what’s happening in the world of Google right now. No doubt, we’ll have a core algorithm update to deep dive into in our next blog.

Need support with your SEO strategy? Our experienced team of SEO professionals are always on hand to guide you through entity SEO, site optimisation and SEO best practices.

Get in touch with our Giants today and, in the meantime, keep up to date with our blog to hear more about the latest SEO updates.

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Giant Wednesday

How To Optimise Images For Websites

How To Optimise Images For Websites

How To Optimise Images For Your Website

Home > Content Marketing

Digital Marketing, technology & business insights, how-to’s and explainer videos, released on a Wednesday. Make sure to subscribe to be notified and sign up for our mailing list! 🎥

See below, the transcript from this episode of Giant Wednesday if videos aren’t your preferred method to consume digital skills.

If you want to know more, get in touch today 😎

Having trouble with your site speed? You know a pretty common cause for this is having images that are waaay too big on your site.

Yes, it’s amazing that you have a 6K photograph slider of your product on your homepage, but if it takes 20 minutes to load, no one will be around to see it.

So what can be done? Well, I’m Alex, and today we’re going to be talking about optimising images for your website in this episode of Giant Wednesday.

So let’s start before you’ve even picked up the camera.

Use the Right Image

Before we even mention file size, format, or anything like that – it’s important for your SEO that your images themselves are the best they can be.

It can have more of an effect on your SEO than you might think!

A good image for your site will be relevant to your page, emphasising your key point and enhancing your user experience.

If you can, try to use your own photos, because I promise you – people can spot Stock Images from a mile away, and they don’t like it!

And that’s not just me saying that in fact, a debt company saw a 35% increase in sign-ups when they replaced a stock image on their homepage with a photo of their founder.

So, if there’s that too good to be a true photo of a team of young beautiful looking people laughing over a spreadsheet on your page, take this as a message to change it to something a bit more authentic.

Okay so now you have the right picture, let’s talk about…

Use the right File Dimensions

Now that you have your photograph, image or even graphic, don’t just go uploading that straight into your site, you’ll need the image to be the right dimensions.

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach (get it) to image dimensions for your site, as it depends on your page design and layout. 

Here are a few tips on the right things to do:

  • Make sure your website design is responsive

If it’s not already – you’ll really want to take care of this quick. This just means that the design of your website changes automatically to fit the user’s screen, be it a mobile phone or tablet, including your images.

If you’re using WordPress, all images that you upload are responsive by default!

  • Don’t Exceed 2560 pixels wide

2560 pixels is the standard resolution width for 27″ and 30″ monitors, so there will never be any real reason to exceed this dimension. 

You can make the image size whatever height works for your site design, but remember that bigger dimensions normally mean they’ll take up more space.

But how do get small file-size images on your site without sacrificing quality and having a pixelated mess? Let’s talk about the next part:

Reduce your File Size

File compression is key to having high-quality images on your site that don’t take up Gigabytes of space.

You can use tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to check out the files and images on your webpage that are the heaviest and then look at reducing these file sizes to improve page speed. 

If you’re using WordPress for your site, there are some awesome plugins such as Resize Image after Upload and Imsanity which automatically resize your large image uploads. Pretty handy right?

But sometimes the prevention is better than the cure, so let’s walk through the steps for compressing your images for the best quality,

There are loads of free tools you can use to resize your images before you upload.

These include TinyPNG, Optimizilla, or the free version of Kraken.

These sites reduce your image’s file size with only a negligible effect on the quality of your images. 

You’ll want to aim to compress your images to around 100 KB, or under 200 KB for full-width images, so have a play around with those tools and find the right balance between quality and size.

Of course, you’ll be able to get away with a few medium-sized images if that is absolutely necessary, but there’s no reason to have a large file sitting on your site and clog up your load time if you can do something about it.

If you’re using Photoshop, you can do this yourself. You can resize your image with Image > Resize, or alternatively, you can create a new document with your required dimensions and drop your image into that.

You’ll then want to click File > Save for Web [Legacy] where you can play around with the compression options, whilst seeing a preview of what the image looks like, and the file size in the bottom left corner.

We’re racing through these so let’s check out our penultimate point

Name your Images

So you’ve found the right file dimensions and size that work for you – now don’t get ahead of yourself and save an image like this as:

employeephoto1.jpg

Instead, use descriptive keywords separated by hyphens, such as man-smiling-with-computer-and-plants.jpg

Another good tip is to optimise your Image Alt Tags.

These help web crawlers figure out what your images are about, and they’re also used by screen readers to describe the image to visually impaired users. 

Describe your images well without overstuffing keywords. A good best practice is to think of how you would describe the image to someone who can’t see it.

Using Correct Image Extensions

If you don’t know your PNGs from your JPEGs, this step could leave you stumped.

When in doubt, you should always choose the JPEG file format for your images. These are light in file size and easy to compress.

If you’re after images with transparent backgrounds, you should use the PNG format.

For logos and icons, use the SVG format. These take up minimal space and can be resized as needed on your site.

You will need Adobe Illustrator to create and save logos into an SVG file format or use an online SVG converter, but be wary that results will vary drastically!

If you want more information on how to make logos, let us know in the comments section, and we’ll see what we can do!

With all of these, just make sure you’re watching the file size, making sure not to exceed the size we outlined in our previous step.

So there you have it – that should be everything you need to give your website a long-overdue diet. So the next time your site steps on the scales, it’ll be the biggest loser (in a good way).

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A Guide To Website & SEO Redirects

A Guide To Website & SEO Redirects

A Guide To Website Redirects

A Guide To Website Redirects

Home > Content Marketing

Digital Marketing, technology & business insights, how to’s and explainer videos, released on a Wednesday. Make sure to subscribe to be notified and sign up to our mailing list! 🎥

See below, the transcript from this episode of Giant Wednesday if videos aren’t your preferred method to consume digital skills. See also the Giant Cheat Sheet from this episode.

If you want to know more, get in touch today 😎

Direction, we all need one in life. And we all need to know what direction we’re pointing people in when it comes to our website. 

And you know what, you’re in luck, because this week we’re breaking down the why, what, how and when of redirects!

 

Whether you’re looking to send users to a whole new page on your site, or create a temporary holding page whilst you work on a redesign, redirects can help you to make sure your users always enjoy the same great experience when they engage with your website.

What is a redirect?

In the SEO world, a redirect is a process of forwarding traffic and users from one URL to another. Simple.

Whether they’ve clicked through from a search engine, a social media post or are a direct user, the redirect sends them to a URL of your choosing instead of the one they intended to land on automatically.

This isn’t in an attempt to trick them, no no no. 

When to use redirects

Well, you could use redirects for a few different reasons! For example;

  • You’ve updated your URL structure
  • You’ve moved or consolidated pages
  • You’ve deleted a page that has backlinks pointing to it
  • You’ve changed your website name and don’t want to lose your SEO value
  • You migrate from HTTP to HTTPS

     

And you might just want to do it temporarily, such as sending users to a ‘holding’ page or a different one whilst you update or fix the other.

Different reasons mean different redirect types.

Using the wrong type of redirect could result in a loss of search engine rankings in rare cases, as can not actually implement any redirects at all. 

It can also affect the user experience if they can’t find the page they were looking for. 

So let’s take a look at…

The types of redirects

There are a few types of redirects you’ll need to know about on a day-to-day basis, and a few that are probably a bit rarer.

301 Permanent Redirects

A 301 redirect is one of the most common types and should be used if you want to permanently redirect either; a deleted page, a page that’s moved or a page that’s permalink structure has changed.

This redirect code tells search engines that the page is;

  • No longer at this location
  • Should no longer be indexed

Because of this, make sure you don’t intend on using that URL again as it will transfer all link value over to the new URL.

If you don’t put this redirect in, and someone clicks a link to your old page, then the user and crawl bots will be presented with a 404 error message.

 

302 Found Redirects

A 302 redirect is a temporary redirect and directs users (and those pesky search engines) to the desired page for a limited amount of time.

These should be used for things such as:

  • A/B testing a webpage for the likes of functionality or design
  • When a webpage is broken but you want to keep up appearances

For clarity, if it’s a permanent change to your website, then a 301 redirect is necessary. If it’s temporary then it’s a 302 redirect. Using the right one is essential so as not to have a negative impact on your SEO.

 

How to implement a redirect

When it comes to chucking about your 301s and 302s, you’ll be happy to know that most modern CMS platforms offer their own solution or plugins to easily deal with these types of redirects.

Take a look at what’s built within your CMS, or have a Google for the best plugins for the likes of WordPress.

 

And that’s probably all you need to know about your day-to-day redirects but do get in touch if we can help!

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What Is Outreach Marketing?

What Is Outreach Marketing?

What Is Outreach Marketing?

What Is Outreach Marketing?

Home > Content Marketing

Digital Marketing, technology & business insights, how to’s and explainer videos, released on a Wednesday. Make sure to subscribe to be notified and sign up to our mailing list! 🎥

See below, the transcript from this episode of Giant Wednesday if videos aren’t your preferred method to consume digital skills. See also the Giant Cheat Sheet from this episode.

If you want to know more, get in touch today 😎

Do you want to boost your brand? 

Do you want to achieve your objectives?

Do you want to get in front of more, but relevant audiences?

Well, teamwork makes the dream work, right?

And for today’s teamwork, we’re talking about outreach marketing. How you can use outreach strategies to do Giant things.

Let’s kick off with what we mean by outreach marketing…

What is Outreach Marketing?

Outreach marketing is quite literally… reaching out to people.

Not just any people, I’m talking about companies, businesses, brands, influencers and individuals that have a shared interest or relevance in what it is you’re offering.

The act of outreach marketing can help you to build awareness and momentum for either a campaign, a product or your brand overall.

For example, if you are marketing a travel company and looking to get the word out about a super awesome deal you’re doing for trips to Spain right now, then you might consider:

  • Reaching out to travel journalists, or travel-based TikTokers to ask if they’d like to go on the trip for free, or a reduced price, and write a review or make content for their platforms
  • Or, write a blog about the top 5 things you can do in Spain and send this out to newspapers, bloggers and more to put on their website – linking to your offer

You see? This way you’re using the extended reach of another related business or organisation to benefit your own.

It’s important though to remember that outreach marketing tends to be tit for tat – people will rarely just promote your business or content for the fun of it.

If they can benefit from it too, then they’re more likely to work with you – and for them, that could be website sessions or a free trip on your aeroplane…

 

Why is Outreach Marketing important?

Growing a business or a brand can be tricky, and that’s ok – the act of outreach marketing, however, gives you the chance to boost the number of relevant people who might see your efforts.

It also gives you great opportunities to work with other brands, extending your professional networks.

Overall though, outreach marketing is important because it helps you to gain more audience, boost your visibility and gain more credibility.

So, what are the benefits of outreach marketing?

The benefits of outreach marketing are things such as;

And you can’t deny, you don’t want to be in on that action…

Ok but,

Where do I begin with outreach marketing?

When it comes to kicking off outreach marketing activity, you first need to identify your ‘influencers’ – and no, this doesn’t have to be the likes of Kim K.

If you were a bakery, for example, then you might look to identify the likes of BBC’s Good Good website or magazine as a publication to reach out to, or local food-based influencers and publications.

When identifying these outlets, look for the likes of:

  • Activity (how active they are across their platforms)
  • Relevancy (do they relate to your business?)
  • Popularity (and remember, big isn’t always best!)
  • Engagement (are they just for show, or have they got an engaged audience?)

Once you’ve identified who your influencers might be, you’ve got to build the relationships necessary to work with them!

The most obvious way to do this is a good ol’ email. In fact, we’ve covered how to write effective emails in an episode before.

There are also methods like Tweets, direct messaging, and, crazily enough… picking up the phone! 

To get their attention, you’ve got to craft a pitch, something that sells your idea or how you want to work with them, being concise and detailing the benefits for the influencer if they choose to work with you.

Remember to stand out, and to offer genuine benefits in return (such as free cookies if you’re a bakery…).

If you’re not sure where to start when looking for businesses to outreach to, then use some of the analytics tools in social media platforms, or Google Analytics to see what your current customers and audience are into. Use this as some inspiration.

So yeah, outreach marketing, it’s as simple as reaching out to other businesses to work with them to reach out to their audience too – cool, right?

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How To Get Featured Snippets On Google

How To Get Featured Snippets On Google

How To Get Featured Snippets On Google

How To Get Featured Snippets On Google

Home > Content Marketing

Digital Marketing, technology & business insights, how to’s and explainer videos, released on a Wednesday. Make sure to subscribe to be notified and sign up to our mailing list! 🎥

See below, the transcript from this episode of Giant Wednesday if videos aren’t your preferred method to consume digital skills. See also the Giant Cheat Sheet from this episode.

If you want to know more, get in touch today 😎

Google knows us. It knows how lazy we are, and how we like to cut corners, and because of this, it’s introduced a much faster and easier way of getting us the answers to our questions.

These delightful little boxes, designed to give you the information you need without ever having to leave the SERPS, are called Featured Snippets.

But wait – us marketers want that website traffic! We need that traffic?!

Fear not. I’m Liz, and if you want the down low on featured snippets on Google Search Results, then stick around.

So first up…

 

What is a featured snippet?

Well, a featured snippet is a brief morsel of information from a webpage that appears at the top of the search engine results page, offering a super quick answer to a searcher’s query.

These are pulled from pages that have been indexed by Google, and most commonly appear in the form of a definition, list, how-to steps, or tables.

As a user, they’re really handy and can help you get around things like slow loading web pages, or having to rifle through a mass of information to find that one bit you need.

But wait…

 

Do featured snippets affect my site’s SEO negatively?

Don’t you worry – you aren’t the only one who’s pondered this question.

If a user is getting the answer they need without visiting the webpage directly, we’re right to worry about a drop in sessions – and therefore, an effect on other metrics.

However, a study by Hubspot actually found it dramatically increased the click-through rate of results ranking within it.

Ultimately, being featured shows you’re already doing the right things with your SEO. Good job,

If you start to appear as the answer in a featured snippet then you might see a slight drop in sessions, but if you’re smart, you might drive even more clicks than normal.

 

What happens when a user clicks a featured snippet?

When someone clicks to read more on a featured snippet, it will take them directly to the part of the page that delivered the answer they needed. 

This gives you a great opportunity to add more context on the topic or to further direct that user through your content and website – knowing that they’re already interested.

Convinced? Well, then the next step is to cover off…

 

How to get a featured snippet

 

1. Provide answers to FAQs

As with many aspects of digital marketing, your job is to provide easy to access answers to peoples questions and desires online.

Quite simply, you want to provide answers to frequently asked questions that relate to what you do.

This bit involves a bit of research – you could think about the FAQs you get from potential customers, or even look at tools like Answer The Public to see what people are searching for relating to your business.

Make a list of these questions and answer them as best you can, finding relevant places on your website to host them – considering that the user might click through to find out more!

 

 

2. Structure your content

 

Now that you’ve got the questions and answers you want to target getting Featured Snippets for, you need to get these on your website.

Clear page structures are important – as with almost all parts of search engine optimisation.

Aim for the search query you’re answering to appear in a header, such as H2, H3 or H4.

Then include your answer, the content you want to appear in the Featured Snippet, in a paragraph below under a <p> tag.

 

 

3. Consider your answer format 


When writing out your answer or definition to the query you’re looking to rank for, consider what format would be best for delivering the information.

As I said before, featured snippets often appear as definitions, tables or step by steps.

If you’re going for a sentence or paragraph style answer, then it’s been found that content that’s between 54-58 words tends to perform best. We don’t recommend going any higher than that.

If you’re looking at step by step and lists, then the page structure is very important here.

Rather than listing out the detail in each step, like I’m doing now, the featured snippet will feature the headings of the 1, 2, 3, 4 etc.

To give your lists a helping hand into the land of featured snippets, make sure the summarised step is an H3 tag.

 

 

It really is as simple as that!

You can use the likes of schema markup to help point search engines in the right direction, but it’s not necessary in order to appear for featured snippets.

What is necessary is providing perfect, optimised solutions to users queries in a succinct way, so that even Google thinks damn – these guys are good. 

Consider the customer journey at all times:

What’s going to make them click through the featured snippet to your site?

What else might they want to see if they do click through?

 

How do you see if you have featured snippets?

There are lots of tools out there that can help you work out if you’ve won yourself a featured snippet.

We recommend SEMRush, which can even help you find opportunities to kick-start your featured snippet journey.

So! That was a look at what featured snippets are, their impact on your SEO, and how you can try to nab one for yourself.

If you have any questions, get in touch.

 

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