Digital Marketing Update : Are you Google ready?

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 two weeks.

Content -

Beth Massey - Content Executive

How to ensure SEO success with the Google helpful content update

Google began rolling out the ‘helpful content update’ on 25th August. The update aims to filter through websites that contain a high amount of unsatisfying and unhelpful content, where content has primarily been written for search engines, rather than for humans.

Google wants to reward those who want to provide useful content, written for humans with the purpose of helping users by filtering landing pages that do not help but rank well because of how they have been designed.

To ensure SEO success, in a human-targeted manner, here are seven key takeaways from the helpful content update:

1. Ensure you keep intent in mind when writing, and don’t stray too far from the main topic.
2. Demonstrate first-hand experience to show the depth of knowledge.
3. Stick to one topic per page to maintain focus.
4. Provide sufficient answers to the users’ questions.
5. Remember the overall reader experience, for instance, include images or videos where it could support the content.
6. Don’t pretend to have the answers if you don’t have all the information, this not only damages trust but also provides an underwhelming user experience.
7. Ensure you are following guidance for core updates.

Why you should be adding videos to your page

If you’re wanting to capture your reader’s attention quickly and efficiently, you should be considering the use of video within your on-page content. Research has shown that viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video, compared to 10% when reading it in text.

With Google showing a video thumbnail next to a search result around 26% of the time, users are much more likely to click on your listing. Not only are your chances of sitting higher within the SERPs improved with optimised video content but it can be shared across different channels, builds trust with users, and can drive a great ROI.

Digital PR -

Jennie Lindehoff - Head of PR & Outreach

How to keep your PR google ready

Google’s Helpful Content update is part of a broader effort to ensure people see more original, helpful content in search results, which is written for and by people.

When producing PR campaigns, this means we need to continue to make sure that:

• They are relevant. Are our clients qualified to speak on the subject?
• Include expert commentary. Can our clients provide expert quotes on the subject?
• They are original. Is our client adding something new to the conversation?

When looking at websites and publications client’s want backlinks from, continue to make sure that:

• Their website and content is relevant to what you’re linking to
• The link is placed in the right location and context of the content

SEO -

Fiona Artwell - SEO Apprentice

Why Google needs to continue reviewing their updates

Google has announced it will be launching the fifth Product Reviews update in the coming weeks, which would be just a few weeks after Google finished rolling out the last product reviews update, the July 2022 Product Reviews update, on August 2nd. Google has said the goal is to roll out this fifth product reviews update the week of August 29th.

There has been a backlash that the last product reviews update wasn’t the best and there were many problems that needed to be solved. Google did not say this fifth update fixes any of that, but simply this is just another update to add but we will have to see what the outcome is with this new update.

CRO -

Ruby Waplington - Junior Front-End Developer

How user behaviour changes by device

Why are mobile conversion rates lower than desktop? This article is about the differences in conversion rates on Mobile and Desktop, and how users behave differently on different devices. I have noticed this difference in intent in our own results, and nailing conversion rate on mobile is always a big goal for our tests!

What GA4 means for CRO

Google Analytics 4: Everything You Need to Know for CRO. As a department, we’ve recently been discussing how the move to GA4 will affect CRO and A/B testing. In particular, the cookieless features of GA4 are very exciting! We can’t wait to see how this will improve tracking in VWO and Optimize.

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Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash