A digital marketing firm has been learning secrets from Google after being named one of the search giant's top partners.

Fountain Partnership, based in Norwich, heard that 2017 will be the year of video as experts from Google visited to talk its team through some of its newest tools.

The takeover day was part of Fountain's prize for having won Google's search performance award at its partner awards ceremony last week.

The Palace Street agency has a numbers-driven approach – which co-founders Marcus Hemsley and Rob Morley say stems from time as philosophy undergraduates – and is focused on what a business wants to achieve through its online marketing.

Mr Hemsley, Fountain Partnership creative director, said: 'The way we look at SEO [search engine optimisation] is to put forward a business case for what you want from it.

'A lot of people come from a traditional marketing background and they go for the number of visitors, but we go for conversion rates. If you have 10,000 more hits but only two people buy something then it doesn't help you much.

'For me the next big thing should be conversion rate optimisation.'

And that means businesses must look at not just attracting more people to their websites, but ensuring that visitors can be converted into customers.

Despite ever-changing technology, Mr Hemsley said he believed the principles of search engine optimisation and other digital marketing strategies were the same they had always been - but the field was now more crowded.

He said: 'The same two principles which Google was founded on have stayed the same. Relevance and authority are the two foundations of Google.

'If something is more relevant, it is back linked to by reputable sources, then it will appear higher.

'Google update their system so there are a few little ways you can do things differently but those two principles have stayed the same for 10 years.'

The Fountain Partnership has increased staff numbers to 17 from 11 a year ago, and now turns over £1m.

Video key to digital landscape

Video is becoming more prominent in the world of online marketing with almost half of online buyers look at products through Youtube before they buy them.

Meaghan Rogers, agency development manager for Google, said 42% of online shoppers use videos to pre-research items before buying them, an opportunity not to be missed for advertisers.

She said: 'We are looking at 2017 being the year of video which is a big untapped source we are trying to help agencies become better at.

'What we have seen in recent years is people are using Youtube as a search engine and we are encouraging agencies to tap into that potential.'

Miss Rogers added that the average mobile video session time on Youtube was 40 minutes, while 30 seconds was the amount of time people would view an advert before switching away.

That means, she said, plenty of time for advertisers to show their products without oversaturating customers.