Welcome to the latest round-up of all things digital. This is where we look at the latest updates in the world of PPC, SEO, Paid Social, Content, Digital PR, and International from the last month.
International
Alison Booth : Head of International
Netflix with ads
Insights into the forecasted revenue that could be generated from the release of the Basic With Ads subscription to Netflix.
Netflix is striving to strike a balance between selling brands on advertising without detracting too much from subscription revenues. Nearly half of Netflix users surveyed by Morning Consult expressed interest in an ad-supported tier, but they need to make sure it is competitive to advertisers while keeping ad breaks within time limits viewers will tolerate.
New checks on goods entering Britain
Six pilot schemes the UK government is supporting to bring together distributed ledger and supply chain technologies to reduce requirements for checks on goods entering Britain. The Retail & Asset Solutions, one of the six consortia involved with the scheme explains more about supply chain auditing, checking the integrity of stock, testing it is carrying out on coffee, cut flower and tea shipments from Kenya to the UK, moving checks from the border to the point of destination and how all six schemes will collectively bring trade into the future.
Currently, exports go through multiple checks and balances, which impacts heavily on speed and efficiency, these schemes seek to simplify export processes to incentivise more businesses to export and to ensure existing exporters have greater cost efficiency.
SEO
Scott Skerritt : SEO Specialist
Google's Looker Studio threat
Threat actors have found a way to abuse Google’s Looker Studio to include search results for illegal Torrents for downloadable content.
The listings themselves contain keyword-stuffed text with ‘download X’, ‘free X download’, and similar variations. This use of the black hat technique has meant that thousands of illegal download pages have popped up in the SERPs, although it’s likely these will be taken down shortly.
Wix's new feature
Wix have announced that they have added a new feature which allows you to control 100% of critical settings for SEO within their CMS. Wix already outperforms other popular CMS’ such as WordPress on things like Core Web Vitals, and it looks like they’re continuing to improve the important technical aspects too.
The change will mean complete control over metatags, titles tags, open graph data, and structured data. The change means you’ll be able to see all of their site’s information in one place, as opposed to openly everything individually. For marketers, this means that you can use your time more efficiently and bulk update pages quicker.
“The new Wix SEO Settings tool allows users to review and edit their meta tags for each page, as well as their URL slug, indexability, open graph tags, structured data markup, robots meta tags, and even more – all from one place in the Wix Dashboard.
This update helps users to be more efficient and save time when working on their SEO strategy, especially those dealing with larger sites, by giving them the flexibility to work faster, smarter, and at scale.
Users can use the new SEO Settings for Main pages and Product pages, with more page types to come such as Blog pages, and additional features like bulk editing of the meta tags.”
Content
Beth Massey : Content Executive
PErsonalisation in marketing
Following on from its roll-out in August ’22, we are beginning to see the full extent of the effects of Google’s helpful content update. As a result, the requirement for content to be authentic is now more apparent than ever.
Experts have said ‘marketing aimed at Gen Z students should be “authentic” and not “authoritative”. Gen Z don’t want to be told what to do. They want to be drawn into your content and want to belong to it.”
With Google making such huge changes regarding authenticity and usefulness as signals of relevance when it comes to search, it’s only right (and common sense!) that new content being created does not simply tell a story but immerses the user within the journey.
This links nicely to the 2013 Hummingbird update, which involves moving away from keywords and more toward the understanding of the multiple meanings inherent in search queries.
Essentially, if Google is doing its part to ensure users are receiving the information they’re searching for – then we, as marketers should be doing this too.
Top line – consumers now expect content personalisation as part of their journey. But what does this mean?
It’s more than adding <firstname> to the email headline, and by tailoring content to an individual, you can completely transform the journey.
Adding personalisation creates a more meaningful connection with the person or people you’re trying to reach and can offer a huge ROI for businesses.
Personalising content based on persona is a game-changer for B2B organisations – as your various target audiences will have different challenges they’re trying to overcome. Keep this in mind when creating content and you can tailor it to specific personas.
Digital PR
Hannah Jordan : PR & Outreach Specialist
Increasing your brand awareness online
Report talks about how Digital PR is a strategy used to increase awareness of your brand using online methods.
- Digital PR relies on Internet-based strategies such as search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, influencer marketing, and social media.
- Digital PR is a powerful strategy which can improve a brand’s online presence and visibility.
- Digital PR agencies combine the best of traditional PR with a focus on new trends in content marketing, social media marketing, and more.
- Digital PR aims to build brand value while using digital tools.
- Building a strong brand in the digital age where the sea of competitors is constantly growing can be challenging, but there are a wide variety of methods that can be used to increase visibility and remain competitive.
- Digital PR aims to get the word out about what your brand stands for, what makes it unique, and particularly what is happening at the moment that is new and exciting. It aims more to increase traffic and awareness, while marketing is typically more focused on conversions.
- Content marketing is an important part of a digital PR campaign. The more your content is shared and found, the more your reputation and status as an authority begins to grow.
How Digital PR can benefit your brand
- Boost website traffic – As your brand is mentioned online on a more frequent basis and in many different places, more people will start to visit your website.
- Improve search engine optimization – When your content is published on high authority sites that link to your website, your SEO ranking will improve for your target keywords. As your SEO ranking improves, this will also improve your website traffic and leads or sales.
- Establish yourself as an authority in your niche – Publishing high-quality articles on authority sites will improve your reputation as a credible source of information and improve trust in your brand.
- Generate leads and sales – Using this strategy, your brand is mentioned much more frequently in front of an interested target audience, which will generate leads from some of the people who visit your website, ultimately also leading to more sales.
- Improve your brand image and increase trust – Your target audience will begin to hear more and more good things about your brand and see an increased number of positive reviews.
Digital Paid Media
Kieran McCormack : Digital Paid Media Executive
Shopping in AR on Google
Google are introducing new ways to shop in AR on Google. These new features include a photo library to find your foundation shade, see furniture in your room and even see how shoe’s look in your surroundings. A range of brands have started sharing this option, including Saucony, VANS, and Merrell.
Google have seen that the engagement rate of 3D imaging is 50% higher than that of static imagery, this creates huge opportunities for brands to showcase their products in your home. Although it can never replace actually browsing in a store, browsing online, and seeing the products in your own home can help solidify a sale.
Google have also seen the searches in the make up category rocket, with foundation taking on the most searched beauty item. When you can compare the colour swatches to your skin tone via a camera, it is much easier than standard online shopping and guessing which shade you need, especially when different brands have different hues and tones. 41% of online beauty consumers have had to return an item because it was the wrong shade, and 60% have decided not to buy their beauty items online because they weren't sure which shade they needed. This will help greatly with customer satisfaction and conversions.
Google's Cost per lead increase
New report shows Google cost per lead has increased for 91% of industries. The report was created by information of over 97,000 customer campaigns that ran between October 2021 and September 2021. Arts & Entertainment saw the biggest cost increase of 134%, while Travel and Furniture followed with 69% and 54%, respectively. Some industries did see a decline in cost per lead such as Education & Instruction which saw a 29% decrease and Finance & Insurance which saw a 2% decrease in cost per lead. LocaliQ speculates that the reason for the increase is a mix of competition, inflation and broad keyword matching.
The report also shows that 91% of industries saw a decreased conversion rate of around 14% overall. This is likely due to the use of broad match keywords creating more general, top funnel searches and clicks. Also highlighted in the report was the slight increase of CPC, with around 57% of industries being affected.
To help businesses respond to these shifts, LocaliQ suggests the following best practices.
- Implement a full-funnel, cross-channel strategy to reach warmer audiences.
- Be proactive with negative keywords to combat broad targeting and reduce wasted spend. Since CTR hasn’t changed overall, we can gather that people are still clicking on ads just as much, but since the intent isn’t there, they’re not converting.
- Increase your paid search budget to keep up with the ever-increasing competition in the space – not just in the new year but during the 2022 holiday season. If an increase in budget is not feasible, try to improve your ad relevance and Quality Score, optimizing your keywords, examining your competition, and more.
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Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
