New Zealand Government mandates tech giants pay for news

Some people argue that social media sites, such as Facebook and Google, should pay for the news content that they use, as it helps to support journalism and the production of high-quality news. Others believe that such a move could be harmful to the free flow of information on the internet and could lead to less diversity in the news. Ultimately, the decision on whether or not to make social media sites pay for news would need to be made by individual governments based on the specific circumstances and considerations of their own countries.

However The New Zealand government has now announced that it will introduce a law mandating that big online digital companies like Alphabet’s Google and Meta Platforms pay New Zealand media companies for the local news content that appears on their feeds.

https://thenewamerican.com/new-zealand-mulls-over-law-to-make-facebook-and-google-pay-for-news/

Google now using bold to show keywords in organic and Ads

To quote my old pal Jon Gritton "Whoa.... Google's bold text just changed font"

And yes, a quick check in Google UK indeed confirms that both the organic and paid (Ads) text now highlights the search term in bold text.

This is a significant change to the Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) and now almost certainly increases the value of Meta Description tags within each page. So expect the Search Engine Optimisation and Paid Ads community to be excited and full of recommendations to take advantage of this alteration.

Australia makes Facebook & Google pay for news

Australia will force U.S. tech giants Facebook and Google to pay Australian media outlets for news content in a landmark move to protect independent journalism that will be watched around the world.

Mel Silva, Managing Director of Google Australia and New Zealand said about the regulation
"It sends a concerning message to businesses and investors that the Australian government will intervene instead of letting the market work"

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jul/31/google-and-facebook-to-be-forced-to-share-revenue-with-media-in-australia-under-acccs-draft-code

Advice on Video Search Engine Optimisation

The aim of video SEO is simply to make it as easy as possible for both YouTube and Google to understand all video content. And why wouldn’t you? With Google being the largest search engine and YouTube being the second, it is more and more important that companies now factor online video optimisation into their marketing efforts.

Since Google can’t fully understand what your video is about without help (not yet, anyhow) optimising your clip currently means providing as much textual information about it. This is so that search engines can properly index it and then show it in their relevant search results.
My advice here is therefore:
Creating an optimized title is perhaps the most obvious thing to do, yet is probably one of the most overlooked. The clip title should be several words long (we tend to keep to the same 55 – 60 character range we recommend for web page title optimisation) and include the major keyword(s) you want to your video to rank for. Note: There are differing opinions on whether the keywords at the beginning of the title give more of a boost than those added subsequently… but I have found no definitive proof of this.

Description
Insert as much text as you realistically can into the description field of your clip. Add words about the video content, the people or characters, the situation or product it shows, and the usage or benefits being explained. In short… consider this a blog post and use several hundred words if possible. Obviously, any content placed in the description needs to include your targeted keywords from your SEO strategy, plus don’t be afraid to sometimes repeat keywords or derivative terms here
If your clip contains people speaking (e.g. a voice-over or some dialogue) strongly consider obtaining a transcript of the text and inserting this in the description too.
Don’t forget the transcript can also be:

1. Used to correct or improve the closed captions, which you must consider - Sure, YouTube can auto-transcribe your audio content, but not any visual content than you may also want to describe
2. Added as additional content into any web page that embeds this video clip (potentially providing some on-page SEO help too)

Video Tags
There is growing consensus in the SEO community that tags for YouTube clips have minimal optimisation benefits (but they do help with cross-linking between clips with the same tags). So still use them to describe your content in the same way you would a social media or blog post. However, remember to use those tags which highlight the uniqueness of your video (and therefore avoid very generic and therefore very competitive terms).

  

Title information

Remember to provide bespoke information about each different clip uploaded.  Don't upload the same clips with different info title & descriptions.

(Although I have no personal proof that this is "black hat" SEO activity... it does go against the very premise of what Google is trying to do. Plus, if it was suddenly treated as such... it could have a lasting negative effect.)

Comments

Encourage comments, ask for them and respond back when you do get them.

The 7 myths of Search Engine Optimisation - Part 2

Part 2? Have you read Part 1 first?

Here's the second part of my post on the myths of SEO:

SEO can be done once and then stopped (even if you’re top ranked)
I can imagine many people reading this are saying to themselves.. “Hayden, you’re an SEO consultant. Of course, you’re going to tell us that you’re still needed once you’ve done your job”. However (with some poetic license and a very high-level perspective) there are only 4 factors that affect a website’s organic positions:

1. What goes into creating it
2. What other sites link to it
3. What changes the search engines make
4. What your competition (or their SEO agency) does 

Each of these could change on a daily basis. You only have some control over the first item (the content, code and other technical things), a little control over who links to you and then no control over the third and fourth factors.

Or more succinctly put… whatever search engine ranking position you have today (and yes, even if you have managed to get to the top) may not be the one you have tomorrow. And with no effort devoted to maintaining what you have achieved, it is increasingly likely that you will drop in the rankings just as quickly as you rose.


Ranking is the same for all users in all locations
There used to be a time (a long while ago) where you only got one set of global results from a search engine. Then things improved and now, even for the same brand of search engine (Google, Bing, etc.) you get different results if you are:
- In a different country
- In a different town
- Logged in to your Google account
- On a different device – see below
Note: This does make life difficult for SEO people who have to tell clients “I know you think you’re not on the first page, but you are on my device” or vice-versa.


Desktop and Mobile versions of Search Engines rank sites the same
No. They. Don’t!
And now… if you think you’re able to get away with creating a responsive website that shows just the same heavy images in desktop view and in mobile view, but just scaled down using the browser… as of this month, you’re probably going to get a surprise.


SEO is a ‘black art’ practiced by techies
Sure, there is a certain amount of technical optimisation that must now go in to any organic improvement piece of work. But there’s loads you can do as part of your marketing or PR day job for SEO.
1. Write articles you want to read & share, on topics relevant to terms you want to place for in the search engines
2. Structure your content to make it scan-able, readable and understandable.
3. Ask for links back to your website from partners, suppliers, journalists, etc.
4. And finally, stop believing in SEO myths

The 7 myths of Search Engine Optimisation - Part 1

Recently I had to give a presentation on Digital Marketing to a client. One of the key slides we focused was on the topic of “SEO Myths”.

I have therefore decided to write these myths up a post for others to add to and discuss.

Reaching 1st position in Google is the only aim of SEO
This is wrong advice in a couple of key areas:

1. What terms are you actually focusing on? If you’re either striving for a top place ranking on an obscure term or alternatively trying to be top for everything… think again. You should be looking at those terms that meet your KPI’s (e.g. deliver conversions) and have enough search volume to justify the effort of attempting to reach first place
2. Sometimes 2nd (or 3rd, etc.) place is good enough. If you’re targeting a popular search term and have reached the first page in Google, but there are bigger, more reputable and faster sites above you, you might be content with that (especially if it gets you decent & quality traffic)

A single teenager in a bedroom can out-smart Google
You still hear this sort of phrase spoken by people in the marketing industry “I know a genius, they have worked out how to ‘beat’ Google and get my sites to number one”. And each time… I feel myself suppressing a small scream. Why?

1. Just one person (who does not work at Google) who has only amassed knowledge from reading books, blogs and other such material on the subject of SEO knows everything on the subject.
2. Google hires offices full of very (very) clever people… many of whom have PHD’s and such qualifications, to constantly revise their search algorithms and the influence of different ranking factors. And even most of them don’t know everything on the subject.
3. You never ‘beat’ Google. It’s not a fight or a race… SEO is both an art and a science to getting your website legitimately up the rankings of the most popular western search engine.
   (and even if you temporarily manage to boost your rankings via less-than-legitimate means... there's a chance you'll get found out)

You can ignore SEO by just creating good content
OK, yes the creation of well written content helps SEO. But that content must also be:

• Relevant: Or else you’re just producing off-topic copy that serves no optimisation purpose 
• Structured: If you’re not adding layout, headings, bullet points, etc. then you’re not producing content, you’re just typing. 
• Linked: Are you creating lots of ‘orphaned’ pages to drop visitors into from other campaigns such as email PPC, etc.? Please don’t!

Mobile Page Speed, SEO and AMP

You may have heard about it, but Google announced yesterday that:
"starting in July 2018, page speed will be a ranking factor for mobile searches."
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2018/01/using-page-speed-in-mobile-search.html

So how does this affect Mobile Search Engine Optimisation?
Well... Firstly don't panic. Website speed is already a ranking signal for desktop search and following yesterday's announcement this signal will now come into effect for mobile sites in July.
So even though Google is almost certainly tracking page speed already, it will not have an effect in the SERPs until later this year, so you do have 6 months to make changes to your site.

How does this affect AMP?
The Accelerated Mobile Pages Project (AMP) is an open-source initiative to improve the performance of web content on mobile devices. They are useful lightweight versions of your web pages that are hosted elsewhere (not on your own website) for speed, which in-turn improves their changes of being downloaded and read. However there is no direct link (yet) between Google's mobile organic rankings and AMP, plus there is no organic site penalty for not having it.
But even though the two things are separate, they can work together to get more website traffic and therefore conversions. This is because AMP can have their content displayed in a carousel at the top of the Search Engine Results SERPs. And therefore, even without PPC AdWords appearing, both AMP and organic search ranking of pages can push your content to the top of the search results in your mobile browser.
Note: We are also seeing the content/layout and even the appearance of this carousel change in the SERPS over time and location, so its display there should not be guaranteed.

What can I do about it?
Therefore we recommend to all clients and the wider online community that:

• Site owners minimise all page weight wherever possible (e.g. reduce the use of scrips and keep images to the lowest size possible - one client website has a strict policy that no image must be greater than 200k)
• AMP is considered a technology on websites that have content that does not dynamically change all the time (e.g. it is not advisable for eCommerce or fast-moving information sites).
• If you are in doubt... ask your SEO consultant.

Digital Darwinism Doesn't Have A Start Date

Digital Darwinism, the evolution of online services, propositions and systems that will eventually change every industry, is a concept that has been gradually creeping up on most people.

It's the little changes we don't see happening every day that add up to a lot over a short period.

• When did you start relying on Uber (or some other more ethical ride hailing App) to get you home after a late night in the office? 
• When did you start using the term "to Google" rather than just "to search online?"
• When did you start discussing that new Netflix series, as opposed to the regularly scheduled broadcast TV show you used to watch?
• When did you start ordering your household goods on Amazon?
• When did you start playing YouTube videos, rather than play music from your CD collection?

In the end you realise that there's less and less likely that there was a specific date for when you actually started doing these things... it just sort of happened. Or if you are a young person, you don't actually recall a date when many of these things were not the norm.

Evolution isn't a thing that happens to other creatures and people, with digital technologies the best example is happening right now.

Google launching subscription tools for publishers

Google has announced it is making renewed effort to help news publishers drive more subscriptions.

Initially these new changes will involve The New York Times and the Financial Times, but apparently the search giant is talking to dozens of other outlets

Full article on Bloomberg here.

6 Ways To Harm Your Business When Updating Your Website

Updating and redeveloping an organisation’s website is almost an inevitability these days. Whether the aim is to add new content sections, comply with legislation, provide a new ‘look & feel’ or because of business changes (such as merger & acquisitions)… a web presence is likely to go through some form of significant change or two in its lifetime.

But the way in which you upgrade and rebuild your site can have a big effect on your business, and more specifically how your rank organically in the major search engines. Organic traffic for most sites makes up between 30% to 50% of all visits and applying changes that affects this traffic means you get less visits, leads or conversions.

So here are 6 of the biggest ways to harm your online search traffic and therefore your key online business metrics in the process:

1. Change the domain
   Your organisation’s domain is a brand asset and changing it means losing all the search engine reputation it may have built-up over time. On the flip-side, if your domain has been significantly tainted by bad (black hat) SEO practices in the past, it may be best to start from scratch again with a fresh URL. 
2. Change the user experience
   A change in the site design, the navigation, the directory structure you use and many other factors can influence how your site ranks. 
3. Change the content
   Not all online content is created equal. The way your copy is written can have a major influence on how your site is indexed and then ranked online.. from its relevance to the search term(s) to the way the text is structured. However, a new web presence is an opportunity to review all of your content (including your images and the meta content behind the scenes). 
4. Change the hosting platform
   Migrating from one website host to another may seem like a simple task. But where and how you host your website can have an effect on how you rank in Google, Yahoo, etc. especially if the hosting is slow or not located in the country / region where your customers (and target search engines) are. 
5. Ignore web standards
   It takes hard work and determined effort to deliver a new website, especially if you have tight timescales to deliver to. And the area that can get compromised include: the quality of the code, the compliance to accessibility, the use of ‘alt’ tags for image alternatives, etc. In other words, a failure to follow web standards can have a negative impact on your site’s rankings in search engines.
6. Re-launch it incorrectly
   Sites fail to launch properly in all sorts of ways, from failing to cut-over all content correctly through to not getting the new site indexed in Google as quickly as possible… you are never going to get a second chance to make a first impression on the main search engines.

Android & iOS Have 99.6% Of All Smartphone Sales

Figures published this week from Gartner show that in the last quarter of 2016 the two major smartphone operating systems of Apple's iOS and Google's Android made up 99.6% of all global smartphone sales.

Android shipped 352,669.9 units, making that 81.7% of the market
iOS shipped 77,038.9 units, making that 17.9% of the market

Yup, that's correct. The remaining operating systems, which include Windows, Blackberry and others made up just 0.4% of all smartphone sales in the last 3 months of 2016.

What Users Find Most Valuable About Apps

Google have just released a useful report on the adoption and usage of mobile apps.

Named "How people discover, use, and stay engaged with apps" the document is a helpful resource for those who are looking to develop or improve their apps.

There's some good insight included, such as whether price or privacy are most important when deciding whether to install an app. And that the average number of apps that users have installed on their smartphone is 35.

But perhaps the most important finding concerned what users find most valuable about their favourite apps... and the perhaps unsurprising finding is that they rate usability highest. Yup, the fact that they’re easy to use and navigate makes users love apps the most.

Read the full Google report here

Google Mobile Friendly Test Site Revamp

It is good to see that the useful Mobile website friendliness testing tool from Google has had a bit of a face-lift.

I wonder if the functionality, to check just how compatible a website is for mobile compatibility, has also changed....

Try it for yourself:
https://testmysite.withgoogle.com/intl/en-gb/

 

Can Google Continue To Increase Revenues?

You've no doubt heard the phrase "nothing lasts forever", well that line works just as well in business as elsewhere. Yet in recent years Google seems to have bucked the boom & bust trend on other online companies and continues to record record revenues.

As this graph from Statista.com shows, Google posted $74.54 Billion in revenue in 2015.
Google's revenue is mainly made up by advertising, of which Google AdWords is a major factor, which in 2015 accounted for $67.39Billion or over 90%. Currently Google is the Internet company with the highest market capitalization, $373Billion - 5 times its revenue.

But the question for me is.... is this rate of growth sustainable?
Or more realistically I think we need to ask at what point Google's revenue slows down as it finds the optimum way to extract money from advertising customers.

Will One Line Of Code Help Your SEO?

There's been quite a lot of discussion online (and a little offline) about a recent blog article called: How I Sped Up My Site 68.35% With One Line of Code

I think the biggest buzz about this article has been in the SEO community, who suddenly got all excited about a magical way to speed up web pages. Mentioned by Moz (the organic optimisation industry's catnip) you could be fooled into thinking that one person had suddenly found a way to massively boost a site to the top of the results pages.
Note: For those who don't know, the speed a page downloads is cited as one of the numerous factors taken into consideration when search engines such as Google rank (judge) your site... having a much faster page load speed with just one little line of code would be fabulous.
But alas, that's not the case.

You see, I think this article is misleading as it explains how to use an HTML tag called "rel-prerender".

For those who don't know, the rel-prerender tag is used on a website to place into computer memory the next page the site developer expects the users to click on. For example, Google sometimes use it in their search engine results pages (SERPs) to make the experience of clicking on the first result much quicker.

To explain how this works on your own website, let's imagine you are on page 1 and want to automatically call-up page 2 behind the scenes (so that it appears very quickly). You therefore insert the "rel-prerender" tag in page 1 to call up page 2 before it is clicked on.

Where might you use this?
Well you might us it on a login-page (page 1) where the logged-in page (page 2) is usually the next step. You can even use it in an eCommerce site to pre-render the shopping cart I guess.... BTW: DO NOT DO THIS!

But as you would expect, there's a catch. Pre-rendering page 2 is the act of requesting a view of it in advance. So people arriving on page 1 can trigger a page 2 view without ever seeing it and in many cases they won't. This means that in some analytic packages this is recorded as a page impression (not in GA, it's clever like that) and ads on that page may be triggered even when nobody's there to see them. Plus it also adds load onto your servers whenever a page is requested, so don't tell your tech support person you're adding further load onto the system that may never be used.

So does it have an effect on SEO? Well I may be wrong.... but I really can't see how it helps organic site optimisation as you are not speeding up the render of the page you want to appear in the SERPs (Page 1). What you are actually doing is speeding up the potential delivery of the next page (page 2) you expect the user to see.  And that's not SEO, that's a caching strategy.

Disrupt Or Get Disrupted

There's a couple of phases that have been going around in my head for the last week or so.



These are:
- If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem
- Change is the only constant



Both reflect my feelings about the current progress of digital transformation across a range of industries. From taxi services through to financial institutions, new models of working based upon technology and data, have now disrupted existing companies and sometimes entire markets.

So if change is happening all the time....



Who is leading your disruption?
You probably have at least one person in your organisation who is the advocate of digital change. They may be a lonely voice shouting about the need to 'embrace change', 'test and learn', ' fail forward' or 'adapt agile'. Or they may be a senior manager with the drive, staff and responsibility to push digital to the top of the agenda. either way, these people need the support of the exec team and remit (including budget) to trial new things that could mean the difference between your organisation being a Blockbuster or the next Netflix.



When will the change happen?
Most of us are among the disrupted rather than the disruptors - Only 7% of companies surveyed by Gartner in 2014 felt they were truly digital and of the remainder, only 83% felt they would be digital by 2017.

An inability or resistance to transform and adapt in an ever-changing world is a big failure these days. Nothing stays the same for very long in business and This Shit is Gonna Get Faster.



Don't be complacent
Larry Page and Sergey Brin once said "Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one." Does your organisation run on apathy and complacency? If so... change get it or stand a significant chance of disruption!

Do Hearts Not Stars Indicate Twitter's Plans

So today Twitter has traded the star “favorite” icon / button for a heart-shaped "like" one. This change takes it further away from it's origins as a stream of personal updates to being more of a sociable social network.

The heart, the almost global symbol of affection, moves Twitter closer in interactions terms to Facebook (which has had the 'Like' button for ages), Instagram and even Periscope (the app-based personal video streaming service owned by Twitter which uses hearts as an instant method of feedback).

But does this move also signal something else?

It has been well publicised within the tech & online community that Twitter hasn't been without more than its fair share of issues. Culminating this June with the departure of Dick Costolo as CEO and the instatement to the role of co-founder & Chairman Jack Dorsey. 

Could this move be an attempt to be more like bigger competitor Facebook (which since April 2013 also owns Instagram)? This may make Twitter more popular or useful in the Social Media community... which may in-turn make them more attractive to a buyer. 

But which large tech player would consider buying Twitter at this stage? Something to look-up on Google I suppose :-)

The Future of Digital - thoughts Part 3

Further thoughts on the future of Digital, inspired by the Marketing Society's Digital Day 2015.

Q: What steps do you need to take to sustainably capitalise on the potential of digital within your business?

Collect and use data intelligently:
Whatever you do… ensure that you both collect data correctly and then use it in the best way possible to learn more and maximise value. E.g. Amazon, Google and Uber (as well as Scottish Unicorns: FanDuel & Skyscanner) have all built businesses based on interpreting and using data.

Think like a start-up:
With a small and dedicated team with the right combination of skills, experience and effort you can accelerate your digital output. Even the bigger digital-only businesses now buy smaller start-ups because they have the desire combination of product, skills and  intellectual property or just an idea.

Retain the best staff:
Keep the good ones and encourage the average ones to find out what they are good at. The biggest problems are those who have a misplaced sense of entitlement or use their efforts against others rather than as part of a team.

This is the third post on the Future of Digital, the first can be found here , the second can be found here.

News Corp Blames Digital Again

News Corp's CEO Robert Thomson has been out attacking Google, Facebook and Linkedin once more, this time accusing them of "Kleptocracy, Piracy and Zealotry".

Yes, the organisation that: breaks into voicemail, publishes fiction as truth and plays politics with its publications...has claimed that online social networks are spammers that help themselves to content without paying for it.

He also publicly stated that “The words Intellectual Property don’t appear in the Google alphabet."- but far be it for me to tell a journalist that you can make any words from the alphabet.

Thomson went on to further attack the new media sector by saying "None of them actually create content, and they certainly have little intention of paying for it, but they do redistribute the content created by others – they would argue that such redistribution is a natural extension of their role as social networks. I would argue that much of the redistribution is an unnatural act”

All this smacks of hypocrisy... especially given News Corp in 2005 bought MySpace, then a leading social network that in June 2006 surpassed Google as the most visited website in the USA... before watching over its decline and its sale in 2011 for less than 8% of its purchase price.

Also... given that News Corp has only recently decided to change the direction of its WSJ and Dow Jones publishing sector to focus on digital media efforts and that its own Social News Agency Storyful is responsible for finding and redistributes news stories (and apparently hiding Rebekah Brooks in their offices)... methinks they need to keep their insults to themselves.

Full story here:
http://mumbrella.com.au/news-corp-ceo-lashes-google-for-piracy-zealotry-and-kleptocracy-at-lowy-institute-event-312252 

Finding Google Tag Manager a little hard?

I've worked with Google Tag Management System (also called GTM or Google's TMS) on several different client implementations and still admit to being a little confused by some of the more complex functionality. It seems that despite setting up a Google Tag Manager Fundamentals online training course and certification, it is still pretty hard to do anything beyond the basics.

Furthermore, with the recent introduction of GTM Version 2, things have been moved & renamed in the user interface.

Luckily Google seems to have appreciated this too and have got the people behind the product to star in a couple of short videos about it.





Hopefully these short resources will help.