Elevate: What’s Up in Digital Q1

Posted on February 25, 2021

Our webinars are designed to educate, inspire, and keep you current with everything going on in the digital marketing world. Topics will change each quarter, keeping the conversation interesting and timely. Read below for a full recap of our Q1 webinar.

Search Engine Optimization

What BERT Taught Us

Beyond a character on Sesame Street – it is a major Google Algorithm.

We need to think:

– What are our customers searching for?

– What’s the goal for the customers and is it clear?

We use this to drive our keywords, but remember that keywords alone do not drive results. We typically want to include keywords within quality content (blogs, infographics, videos, whitepapers, eBooks, etc.)

This algorithm really taught us to optimize for the customer. We’re essentially complying and are ready for the new algorithms to come out. They’re usually just trying to make the search experience easier for the customer.

SERP – Adapting from Weblinks to Answers

Is your website optimized for SERP opportunities? Have you used or know of Schema Markup? We use this information provided by Google to help optimize websites. One of the best ways to show up in search is through schema markup. It provides Google with more insight into our FAQ’s, etc.

May 2021: Page Experience Update

– Make sure your website is mobile-responsive. Ensure that you have good site speed across all platforms with mobile being the most active device that people are using.

– Improve page speeds by using Google’s Page Speed Insights – Code removal and much more.

– CTA additions – think of these from a user’s perspective. Where would you be most inclined to click?

– Improve Accessibility – these include things like image alt text and clear functions across the website.

– Content – it’s more than just about blogs – it’s really anything that can increase user engagement.

One thing to remember is that this page experience update will be a ranking factor. Google will be looking at all of these things and take those into account for your ranking. For more information on this, check out Anne’s blog post.

How the 2020 Crisis Affected SEO: Tips for Moving Forward in 2021

– Have a customer-based strategy

– Make sure customers know what your site provides them

– Local business listings are more important than ever before

– Don’t push the customer

PPC and Digital Advertising: What’s New?

Google Search Keyword Match Types

Google has made some changes to broad-match modified types. Basically, it’s telling Google that those exact words must be included in the query itself. It is taking into account the specific word order now, so keep that in mind. Make sure to compare the broad match modified performance over time and if you see some decreased traffic, try adding a few extras.

Apple’s iOS 14 ATT Policy

This is basically another privacy policy. It requests consent when using apps and websites. The expected launch is Spring 2021 so really any time now. It will affect ads because Apple may not be sharing some information. There might be a delay in attribution and it may be filtered by Apple so the details might end up being fuzzy and not exact. There will also only be a 7-day conversion window, which is a big change.

What Can you do?

– Segment your current traffic and conversions to get a better idea of those using the iOS/Safari browser

– Keep an eye out for the update and make a note in your analytics when it happens.

If you’re using a ROAS (return on ads spend) strategy, you may need to test another strategy as a backup.

Filter Link Extensions

This is much like site link extensions but in the featured snippet form and it includes links. Anything that has ad extensions usually sees a higher click-through rate. There are many options and categories that you can choose from to include so you can really customize these.

Account Audit

1. Account structure – look at campaign structure and your ad groups and your ultimate call-to-actions should match the step that your audience is in and it can be identified.

2. Keyword reporting – Search term reports – they’re not as detailed as they use to be but look at quality scores and look for things like where you have high spend but no conversions.

3. Device type and day-parting

4. Bid strategies and conversions – there are many automated bid strategies driven by Google AI. I would encourage you to at least test them, and definitely evaluate your conversions.

For more information on Auditing your Google Account – check out Andrea’s blog.

2021 Design Trends

Power of Movement

It has been proven that marketers who use video on their website have seen a 49% revenue growth. However, videos can affect site speed, so the best practice would be to embed videos from other streaming services such as Youtube or Vimeo. Using teaser videos could be a great way to use video without taking up too much bandwidth (decreasing site speed.)

Micro Interactions and Animations

These are both great ways to jazz up your website. The types of animations are vast and include hover effects on images, icon animations, scrolling animations, parallax. It is important to keep in mind the use of animations and never overwhelm the eye. We want to keep them subtle and appealing – they should make sense to the website and overall content as well.

Speed is King

We are all impatient people whether we want to admit it or not. When it comes to website speed, that is no exception. Some factors that contribute to poor website speed include server types, large images, video or file sizes, and some plugins. There are a lot more but these are the main ones to keep in mind.

A few ways to help with slow site speed are introducing lazy loading and infinite scroll. Browsers will only download the content you see on the screen, so when you’re scrolling and see the “top of the fold” – that’s the content that is downloaded and that’s what you see. As you scroll down, more content is downloaded and that’s essentially how lazy loading works.

For more information on Design Trends to watch for – check out Leeah’s blog.

Integrated Marketing 2021

What is Integrated Marketing?

– The integration of multiple digital channels unified to achieve the same goals/distribution of your message

– In the digital world, this usually includes website design/dev, SEO, PPC, Content development, etc.

The customer journey is not what it use to be as far as how many touchpoints it takes for a customer to go through the buyer journey. Within the last 15 years, the amount of touchpoints has gone from only 2 to up to 6+ touchpoints. It’s not just your website, it’s your social medial channels, your videos, or could even be YouTube. Up to 90% of users expect consistency across all channels.

Another piece that’s really important to cover is the increased need for personalized messaging.

– We are inundated with ads all day, every day

– Users constantly battle filtering out/ignoring content that doesn’t relate to their interests/needs.

– Humanize your brand – transparency, and vulnerability. Social channels we didn’t expect are shifting to broader topics.

User experience will reign supreme

– The quality of your website really does influence how your other channels are going to perform.

– Micro-interactions are still so important

– FID (First input display) – how long after someone takes an interaction does it take for the following item to load/display?

If you have questions on any of the topics discussed in our presentation, please let us know. We’re always happy to help!