SEARCH MARKETING MAGAZINE BY CLICK CONSULT
TRENDS AND PREDICTIONS What will be the major ranking factors in 2018?
MOBILE FIRST INDEXING Is your business prepared?
SEO & UX A match made in heaven
Building For 2018 Spring 2018
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LET’S BEGIN
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A WORD FROM THE CEO
CONTRIBUTORS
Hello, and welcome to the first issue of Go Viral, a quarterly publication from the team here at Click Consult looking at the search marketing industry and bringing you a mix of news, features and opinions from across the industry.
Features: Dave Karellen John Warner Scott Rumsey Chloie Brandrick
Each year the digital industry seems to double in size, there are a plethora of new tools and techniques and competition can be fierce. With that in mind, and coinciding with this issue coming at the start of the year we thought that we’d launch with copy that focuses on what to expect in 2018 and how to prepare your business accordingly.
Vlog: Jacob Booth Lucy Nixon Stephanie Whalley
We have features and infographics on the big trends ahead as well as predictions and theories on what might make the biggest impact over the coming year. We discuss Mobile First, the interaction between SEO and user experience (UX) and the benefits of visual search on businesses looking to boost their visibility and performance. We also have a packed news section in which we look at the most important developments of the last three months. I hope that you enjoy this issue and that you pick up on a few of the valuable insights our writers have provided. Until next time‌.
Design: Dave Ashworth Chloe Ridgway Published By Click Consult Ltd Address: Unit B1 Willow House Oaklands Office Park Hooton Cheshire, CH66 7NZ Phone: 0845 869 7166 Website: www.click.co.uk
Matt Bullas, CEO & Founder 3
CONTENTS
P 5 - 12
THIS QUARTER IN SEARCH Our quarterly round up of everything search marketing, bringing you the most important updates of the last few months P 13
ON.CLICK VLOG Stephanie and Lucy, two members of our content marketing team, discuss the rise of the online influencer and why it is important for brands to build relationships P 14 - 15
FROM OUR EXPERTS Our Head of Paid Search (PPC), Dave Karellen, discusses attribution and the things you should be looking out for over the next 12 months
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P 16 - 17
P 22 - 25
2018 TRENDS
SEO & UX, A MATCH MADE IN HEAVEN
John Warner reviews a host of predictions from across the industry and presents what he feels the major ranking factors will be in 2018
For too long SEO and UX have been the focus of different teams. Here Scott Rumsey looks at how and why the two can help each other
P 18 - 19
INFOGRAPHIC
P 26 - 30
The 20 points you should be focusing on for a positive 2018
THE VALUE OF VISUAL SEARCH
P 20 - 21
HAVE YOU MOVED TO MOBILE FIRST INDEXING? How to spot if Google has made the change and if not how to ensure you are ready to have your site crawled
Chloie Brandrick looks at the added value you can bring to your site through imagery and infographics
THIS QUARTER IN SEARCH
THIS QUARTER IN SEARCH Keeping up to date with everything that the search marketing world throws up can be difficult, but as you know by now, here at Click Consult we are dedicated to keeping you informed and making the constant updates easily digestible. With that in mind let’s look at what the industry are talking about in this quarter in search…
GOOGLE ADDS MAXIMIZE CONVERSIONS AUTOMATED BID STRATEGY IN ADWORDS The newest addition to AdWords Smart Bidding strategies has been launched and is titled – Maximize Conversions. Smart Bidding strategies in AdWords use machine learning to adjust bids tailored for every auction. The algorithms take a number of factors into account, including, of course, the type of bid strategy. According to a company announcement: “Maximize Conversions will help you get you the most number of sales from your existing budget by factoring signals like remarketing lists, time of day, browser and operating system into bids”.
“Maximize Conversions also takes historical performance into account. Unlike Target ROAS or Target CPA bid strategies, Maximize Conversions is concerned with conversion volume rather than return on investment goals. Maximize Conversions will spend the daily budget in pursuit of more conversions.” Google also revealed that one early adopter has seen a 73% increase in conversions, a 59% increase in conversion rate and a 42% lower CPA in its first test using Maximize Conversions. Maximize Conversions is now listed as a Bid strategy option under campaign settings in Search campaigns.
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THIS QUARTER IN SEARCH GOOGLE BRINGS LOCAL LEAD GENERATION TO GOOGLE ASSISTANT AND GOOGLE HOME Google is bringing new forms of local search to the Google Assistant and Google Home. The company announced it’s working with local home service providers “like HomeAdvisor and Porch”. On any platform where Google Assistant is available, users will be able to ask for contractors (eg, “Ok Google find me a plumber”). That initiates a structured interaction which generates a lead or contact with a local service provider. Users can ask to be connected by phone at the end of the process to a contractor or receive a list of relevant, pre-screened contractors. This is a highly structured local search and lead generation experience that will bypass conventional search results (ie, business listings). In its blog post, Google said the new functionality would be rolling out in the next week or so but didn’t say anything about its own advertisers or how many third-party directories might eventually be involved. There’s also no word on whether Google will collect a share of the lead price or any sort of “toll” otherwise. Currently, if you ask Google Home for a local service provider (eg, ‘I need a house painter’) you’ll get three ‘thin’ listings with address information but little else. The coming experience will supplant that, offering a more personalized result based the specific request and subsequent information provided. AMAZON’S ALEXA HEADS TO THE WORKPLACE The Alexa voice assistant from Amazon has been a huge success in 2017 and as Google and Apple attempt to catch up in the home market, Amazon is pushing into a new market with Alexa for Business. 6
According to an update by the company, office workers will soon be able to use the firm’s Echo smart speakers to set up meetings with colleagues, book conference rooms and other basic tasks. Discussing whether or not the service would be trusted in a business setting Geoff Blaber, analyst at CCS Insight said: “Without a doubt privacy and security is the number one issue, arguably that’s more important than the functionality”. Companies will undoubtedly be cautious about putting Alexa into meeting rooms and offices where sensitive information is being discussed due to their constant listening system. Amazon have assured user that they don’t collect information until activated with the ‘Alexa’ wake word, but there are times when this happens by accident. Mr Blaber said it made sense for Alexa to start with mundane office tasks, such as ordering more printer paper, before anything too adventurous. Presenting at AWS Re:invent, Amazon’s annual cloud computing conference, the firm said it was working with major enterprise software companies, including Concur – which handles a lot of travel and expenses for businesses – and Salesforce. They also suggested that adopters will be able to create their own customised skills such as directions around a building, or to answer questions about the business.
THIS QUARTER IN SEARCH UPDATES TO GOOGLE’S FEATURED SNIPPETS AND KNOWLEDGE PANEL
Google has announced updates to Featured Snippets, Knowledge Panel information and suggestions for related topics. According to a post on Google’s The Keyword blog, a selection of featured snippets will now be longer (now 320 characters), as well as including more images and related search suggestions within the box displaying the featured snippet content.
Google told SERoundtable:
“We recently made a change to provide more descriptive and useful snippets, to help people better understand how pages are relevant to their searches. This resulted in snippets becoming slightly longer, on average.” Meanwhile, Knowledge Panels will begin to show related content directly inside the result. In addition to these confirmed updates, Search Engine Land has reported that Google is testing a new feature that displays a carousel with a list of answers directly within the search results snippet.
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THIS QUARTER IN SEARCH
INFLUENCER MARKETING IN 2018 Other key findings include: Digital influencers represent the largest majority group that brands have worked with for endorsement and commercial opportunities this year. According to The Age of Influence research report from Celebrity Intelligence. Megan Falconer-Taylor, Director of Product at Celebrity Intelligence said:”The findings from this year, compared to our 2016 report, demonstrates the impact digital influencers have had on brand endorsements and the marketing value they have delivered. “Does this mean the end of traditional celebrityled campaigns? Quite the opposite! To have a truly long-term and scaleable digital marketing strategy, marketers need to blend celebrities with digital influencers to offer deeper layers of engagement for consumers. “Only then will we close the gap between the worlds of ‘celebrity’ and social talent and understand the true meaning of influence.” 8
42% of respondents said their budgets would increase moderately or significantly in the next 12 months. Three quarters are continuing to identify influencers and celebrities to work with via manual research across social media platforms and forums, etc. Niche or ‘unconventional’ talent is set to become the new ‘sweet spot’ for marketers in 2018. INSTAGRAM TRIAL PRIVATE MESSAGING PLATFORM ‘DIRECT’ Instagram is testing a standalone app for private messages called Direct, a first step toward possibly toward removing messaging features from the core app. Direct, which opens to the camera in the same way Snapchat does
THIS QUARTER IN SEARCH TWITTER INCREASES CHARACTER LIMIT In its latest blog post and indeed technical update, Twitter has now announced that users will now be able to use 280 characters instead of the original 140. According to those behind September’s test, tweeting has been made easier and the increased limit is part of their plan to attract new users and increase their growth. According to the latest report by Twitter Product Manager, Aliza Rosen: “During the first few days of the test many people tweeted the full 280 limit because it was new and novel, but soon after behavior normalised. “We – and many of you – were concerned that timelines may fill up with 280-character tweets, and people with the new limit would always use up the whole space. But that didn’t happen. “We saw when people needed to use more than 140 characters, they tweeted more easily and more often. But importantly, people tweeted below 140 most of the time and the brevity of Twitter remained.” “We want Instagram to be a place for all of your moments, and private sharing with close friends is an important part of that,” Hemal Shah, an Instagram product manager, told The Verge.
“Direct has grown within Instagram over the past four years, but we can make it even better if it stands on its own. We can push the boundaries to create the fastest and most creative space for private sharing when Direct is a camera-first, standalone app.”
At present there are around 330 million active users on the platform in comparison to 800 million Instagram users and two billion Facebook users. YOUTUBE CRACKS DOWN ON BRAND SAFETY ISSUES YouTube has revealed it has an action plan to tackle brand safety issues caused by videos and comments that violate its policies. In a blog post, YouTube CEO said: “Human reviewers remain essential to both removing content and training machine learning systems because human judgment is critical to making contextualized decisions on content.” YouTube’s brand safety woes began in March when brands including Verizon, Johnson & Johnson and PepsiCo pulled their ads from the platform after an investigation found ads appearing next to extremist videos. 9
THIS QUARTER IN SEARCH GOOGLE FACING $1 BILLION IN POTENTIAL LIABILITY WITH UK CLASS ACTION Google has seen one of their historical cases reopened and face potential charges of up to $1 billion, after a class action lawsuit was opened in the UK. Back in 2012, Google paid $22.5 million to settle an FTC claim that the company “misrepresented to users of Apple Inc.’s Safari Internet browser that it would not place tracking cookies or serve targeted ads to those users . . .” The company bypassed Safari’s cookieblocking settings, it said, to deliver a “signed-in” user experience. Google explained that it “used known Safari functionality to provide features that signedin Google users had enabled,” adding that “advertising cookies do not collect personal information.” This same conduct is now the subject of a class action lawsuit in the UK, which potentially includes 5.4 million people who owned iPhones between June 2011 and February 2012.
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Hypothetically the liability in the matter could exceed $1 billion, an amount much higher than the settlement in the US action. The UK lawsuit is being framed as a privacy case about the “misuse of personal data.” Google says that it believes the suit is meritless and will contest it. According to Search Engine Land the group pursuing the case is called “Google You Owe Us.” On the group’s website it makes the following statements about the case, called a “representative action” in the UK: “We believe that Google took millions of iPhone users’ personal information illegally in 2011 and 2012. Google did this by bypassing default privacy settings on the iPhone’s Safari browser. “We want to ensure that big companies like Google respect our privacy in the future. Our personal information is valuable and it must be used it in a way that is trustworthy and fair.”
THIS QUARTER IN SEARCH
GOOGLE TO PUNISH HIDDEN LINKS Google Chrome is stamping out methods that lead to poor UX while browsing the web. It is tackling unwanted redirects, where a webpage unexpectedly navigates to a completely different page for no clear reason. Google say that 20% of feedback reports it receives from Chrome users on desktop include complaints about encountering unwanted content. To combat this, Google will roll out three updates. The first of these will prevent third party content embedded in webpages from redirecting you to another page. “We’ve found that this redirect often comes from third party content embedded in the page, and the page author didn’t intend the redirect to happen at all,” Chrome Product Manager Ryan Schoen wrote.
“To address this, in Chrome 64 all redirects originating from third party iframes will show an infobar instead of redirecting, unless the user had been interacting with that frame.” Chrome 65, meanwhile, will tackle sites that open the desired destination in a new tab when you click a link, but redirect the main tab to a completely different page. “This is effectively a circumvention of Chrome’s pop-up blocker, one of users’ favourite features,” said Mr Schoen. According to the Independent, Google also plans to give the browser the ability to mute and even block intrusive ads. 11
THIS QUARTER IN SEARCH ADWORDS ROLLS OUT TARGETING BASED ON LIFE EVENTS Life event targeting, released earlier this year, is now available to all AdWords advertisers. This allows advertisers to target users around major life events, specifically graduating college, moving, and getting married. With the targeting, you can pinpoint users before or after the event to maximise efficiency. For example, if you are a wedding venue you can target people as they are planning their wedding or if you are a local furniture company you can target users after they have moved to your area.
BING SHOPPING CAMPAIGNS LAUNCH IN CANADA AND INDIA This means retail advertisers (from the US, the UK, Canada, France, Germany, and Australia) can start creating Bing Shopping Campaigns targeting these two new markets. Over the next few months, Bing says it will continuously improve the platform and plans to add Shopping capability in more international markets. According to Bing’s blog: “We will continuously improve the product ads experience for both shoppers and retailers. With this launch, Bing users in Canada and India will see a more engaging product search experience.”
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Why is it so important for brands to build relationships with bloggers and online influencers? Click Consult’s Lucy and Steph explain in this vlog. An influential social profile can amass hundreds of thousands of followers, and that’s really an audience you can’t afford to be missing out on. Online influencers can come in all shapes and sizes, so it’s important to find the right fit for your brand. “Influencer marketing isn’t actually new”,
explains Lucy, “Celebrities and highprofile people have been used by brands to support causes, products and brands themselves for years; the only difference is that these influencers have a little bit more street cred.” Lucy and Steph from our content marketing team – both, themselves, accomplished bloggers – explain how your brand can harness the power of social media to reach a highly targeted and engaged audience.
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FROM OUR EXPERTS
PAID SEARCH (PPC) IN 2018: WHAT TO EXPECT ABOUT OUR EXPERT - DAVE KARELLEN Dave has been with Click since 2011 and heads up the Paid Search (PPC) team as well as taking responsibility for key PPC accounts.
As self-confessed geeks, there’s nothing the PPC team at Click Consult don’t know about paid search. Like any other aspect of digital marketing, this form of advertising is continually developing and no marketer can afford to stand still if they want to remain successful and competitive Earlier this year, ad customisers expanded out to time of day, device, and audience, in line with my prediction at the end of 2016 that paid search would increasingly move towards true personalisation. As also anticipated, implementing AMP (accelerated mobile pages) has grown in importance and will continue to do so into next year, and this will include AMP for PPC landing pages Here are my other predictions for 2018: GDPR A big focus on adapting to GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and, particularly for PPC, how this will affect remarketing lists. DATA-DRIVEN ATTRIBUTION A move to data-driven attribution, with last click becoming a bit of a dirty phrase. Prepare to allocate more budget to display and video as they become more valued and trackable by data-driven attribution. 14
ACCEPTANCE OF MACHINE LEARNING Machine learning will come into its own rather than simply being a buzzword thrown about. The distinction between automation and machine learning will be thrown into the spotlight with people who’ve always shunned automation conceding that machine learning – true machine learning – is something that at the very least we should all be testing. FURTHER PERSONALISATION I imagine personalisation to continue to be a focus into 2018. The stage is set for it now, but it’s not being embraced by all. There are clear ways in which this can continue – demographic ad customisers and interest ad customisers, using the same interest categories as the Google Display Network. The latter may also finally be brought over as a search bid modifier, to help push Google’s drive on focusing on the audience. CONTENT ADVERTISING The only other point is that last year we predicted an increase in content advertising usage (the process of producing content with the intention of promoting it through paid distribution channels). While this has experienced limited adoption this year, I’d say it’s one we can roll over as a next year’s prediction. I guess we were looking too far ahead last year!
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FROM OUR EXPERTS
2018 IN SEARCH – SOME OF OUR EXPERTS’ PREDICTIONS DIGESTED BY JOHN WARNER
We have our annual predictions infographic live on the site now, but I wanted to go through the forecasts of our experts in a little more detail. USER EXPERIENCE (UX) This will be a regular on predictions across agencies over the next few years, so it’s no wonder our SEO experts have picked this trend to highlight for 2018. Google’s machine learning capacity is progressing in leaps and bounds, with impressive victories in GO having been followed quickly by a foray into extrasolar planetary detection (where Google’s AI was employed to analyse data from the Kepler space telescope).
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It is no stretch to assume that the extreme weather conditions detailed by the daily Mozcast and the various high levels of activity across a range tools (all of which Google have denied are specific updates) are a result of machine learning. There have been Google patents in existence detailing methods of parsing consumer intent from interaction with SERPs since the mid-2000s, so it would almost be surprising if the increasingly regular and
FROM OUR EXPERTS sustained fluctuations in rankings were not somehow related to machine learning. This (possible/probable) use of machine learning seems to be directed at UX – if not exclusively, then to a large extent – as rich results and other user focused elements of SERPs (content quality, for what became known colloquially as the ‘Fred’ update, for example) and will no doubt play a part in improving voice search. As is its raison d’etre, machine learning will only improve at its task, so UX is almost certainly going to play an enormous part in the success of brands in the coming months and years. MOBILE FIRST Dovetailing nicely with user experience, the shift to Mobile First (currently rolling out) is likely to catch a few brands by surprise despite the ample warning that Google has given. This update, which will represent a boost to sites with a good mobile experience and could see rankings drop for sites without, will represent one of the biggest shifts in power to mobile from desktop since mobile search surpassed desktop back in 2016. This, along with updates to the local pack and various tweaks to local search rankings will need to precipitate some thought from brands both large and small as to how they approach a period in search marketing which is likely to be driven increasingly by personalisation, localisation and ease of access. Whether this sees brands throw themselves increasingly in to apps or local organic and paid campaigns (or both) is a question we may have an answer to in 2018.
PERSONALISATION SEO and PPC will have similar concerns in the coming year, though PPC is uniquely positioned to address personalisation with various options – from demographic ad customisers to interest ad customisers and beyond. While SEO is able to produce content and a journey that fits various demographics, PPC is capable of such targeting that articles are now common that deal with the eerie nature of personalised advertising. However, as mobile increasingly becomes the device of choice, personalised, localised PPC is going to become a vital weapon in the armoury of brands with a paid search budget – it will also be interesting to see whether 2018 sees paid search increase its presence and personalisation in the augmented and virtual reality spheres. CONTENT ADVERTISING While it’s been around for a while, we can expect an increase in the practice say our PPC experts – and this seems reasonable, especially as Google has begun to experiment with media in search results, the same can’t be too far off for PPC. Whether or not this happens, however, advertising key or gateway content is a natural progression from content marketing. Expect to see big brands advertising ‘how to’ guides for tricky industry problems and increasing use of relationship building tactics from content marketing as brands roll the dice on a new way to engage an increasingly segmented and fragmented audience.
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FROM OUR EXPERTS
MOBILE FIRST ABOUT OUR EXPERT - JOHN WARNER Father of two, keen sitter in chairs and reader of books; John has a 2:1 degree in Literature and an MA (Distinction) in Creative Writing. John is Hubspot accredited and Google Analytics and AdWords Certified, he joined Click in August of 2015.
HOW TO SPOT IF YOU’VE BEEN MOVED TO MOBILE FIRST INDEXING It’s here at last (mostly), and Google have offered a helping hand for those who want to know if the switch has happened to them – check the log file, but how do you do that and what do you look for?
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WHAT IS YOUR LOG FILE? This will be the first question from many people and, as one of the easier to answer questions in this process, we may as well begin here. The log file for your site is a simple .txt file listing all interactions with your website as a series of coded information on visits, URLs, dates and time which capture all activity and interaction on and with your site.
FROM OUR EXPERTS HOW TO ACCESS YOUR LOG FILE Your log file data is stored on your server, so you’ll need to have access to the server and have it configured to save log files (if someone else manages your server or site, you’ll need to ask them for the log file). If you have access, you will – more often than not – find your log file in your control panel where you’ll see a prompt to download something called ‘raw log files’ or ‘raw log data’ or similar. It will be a .txt extension and, once unzipped, can be imported into Excel (or a database, text editor etc). HOW TO ACCESS YOUR LOG FILE When you open your log file (it may take some time depending on the volume of your site’s daily traffic), you’ll see what initially looks like an enormous block of letters and numbers. At the top of the data, however, the first three lines detail the date the file was generated and describe the server. The fourth line serves as column headers (#Fields) and will vary from server to server and then comes the actual data. While this data can tell you a lot (which we can tackle at some point if requested), for the time being, what you’re looking to see which of the Googlebots are frequenting your site. Ordinarily, the split between the desktop and mobile bots is 80% desktop and 20% mobile; this will be reversed if you’ve been switched to Mobile First indexing.
“That will shift over and most of the crawling will be done with the smartphone Googlebot and less crawling with the desktop Googlebot. So if you really watch out for your log files probably you can notice that fairly obviously.”
John Mueller – Google
There are, therefore, two agent strings you need to look out for: bot names Using the find all function and searching for both of these bots (from the Mozilla to the close of the first brackets will be enough to differentiate the two) will give you the count you need in order to make the call. find all As things stand, for example, Click Consult is currently showing 430 instances between the two Googlebots with a weighting of 84% desktop vs mobile. So we can safely say, while we’re ready for the roll out, we’re not yet being indexed Mobile First. The video below (starting at 3:40) features the relevant announcement.
You would probably recognize it in the log files. If you see, if you look now, probably something like 80% of the crawling is with the Googlebot desktop and maybe 20% is with mobile with the smartphone Googlebot.
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FROM OUR EXPERTS
FOCUS ON SEO AND USER EXPERIENCE (UX) ABOUT OUR EXPERT - SCOTT RUMSEY Scott joined Click in late 2013 but has worked as a journalist and copywriter for the last nine years, editing various publications and working with large brands in the B2B sector. He is an avid reader and diligent researcher.
The days of businesses operating 9 to 5 are long gone and customer habits have evolved to the point where you have to be able to trade 24/7, 365 days of the year or risk losing out to your competitors Today’s consumers are not only savvy but they are time starved and as such, they want what they want instantly; this means that the need to fill this demand is huge. User experience (UX) is one of the areas that businesses are focusing on to ensure that they not only offer the products and services but that their customers stick around or return. The relationship between SEO and UX has never been bigger, largely because it is the ‘end point’ of most consumer journeys. Good SEO, in terms of ranking highly (visibility) and ranking for the correct or relevant keywords (optimisation) means that you have the best chance of being chosen by the user. Once this user becomes a visitor to your site, it is the UX that bridges the gap between a visit and a conversion. 22
If you are offering the product or service that you say you are and it is easy to read more about it/ them, then you are increasingly likely to keep the interest of the visitor. Additional content that answers any questions that they may have or gives them the technical specifications of a product will help your business to sound more authoritative and knowledgeable. This in turn builds trust in the brand and can lead to a purchase or conversion. According to the Digital Marketing Institute: “The ideal online customer journey is a user-friendly website that combines seamless navigation; a clean cut purchasing journey; dynamic and digestible content; top notch customer support and mobile device compatibility. By combining these elements a business can create an online environment that can make a brand.” A survey that followed this definition of a good UX website revealed that 79% of all customers admit to searching for another site if the one that they ended up on didn’t live up to expectations.
BAD PRACTICE + FAKE PROMISES = POOR RESULTS So why is this the case and why do so many visitors look for another website for the same product or service? Well it could be that historically there was a very loose attitude towards SEO by some businesses and websites. Many of these sites would gain poor quality links and would fill the pages of their site with ‘overstuffed’ content, fitting in as many keywords as possible. This led to them ranking higher on the search engine results pages (SERPs) for products or services that they may not even be able to offer. If this was the case then the bounce rate for the site in question or the landing page would be significantly higher and conversions significantly lower. As we all now know Google has rolled out a number of updates to tackle these sites and penalise those with spammy links and poor quality content.
Confirming this was a piece by Search Engine Journal where the following was published: “Early optimisation practices constituted getting the keyword on the page as many times as possible without ruining the visitor’s on-page experience. “The industry at large, have come a long, long way since then. In fact, if there was just one very significant evolution that has happened over the years (and there have been many), it would be the transition of SEOs (aka digital marketers, web marketers, inbound marketers, etc) growing up to be real marketers. “They realised things like search engine rankings were important, but what was even more important was helping businesses do a better job at reaching, attracting, and converting their target audience.” 23
FROM OUR EXPERTS UX & SEO – THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY There are six distinctive stages to the consumer journey when it comes to the link between SEO performance and UX and by following this route you will gain better traction, build brand image and ultimately realise your KPIs. The first step is the user intent phase. This is where the potential customer asks a question of a search engine that they hope will take them to the appropriate results and which will ultimately begin them on the path to fulfilling a need. Next is the ranking stage, this is where the SEOs optimise the content on a site to make sure that it is picked up and that it hits the top of the SERPs – the higher the rank the more positive the correlation between the number of sessions and level of traffic. Up next is the qualifying stage where the SEOs use keywords and other tactics to qualify the traffic that has been received. They learn from this and alter strategies and approaches if there is such a need. Constant testing in the form of CRO with any SEO work is a must and can lead to a more polished, profitable performance. Stage four is the digital interaction stage where both teams (SEO and those tasked with UX) work together to optimise performance and boost conversions. Up next is the work on the website footprint. This is where the SEO team look at the data and give a larger viewpoint of the customer journey. Those working on the UX side of things continue to test. The final stage is the review where teams build upon what they have learnt and update, the navigation of a site or things like meta data. This is also the stage where they refine the strategy for moving forward.
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FROM OUR EXPERTS
TOP TIPS FOR CREATING GREAT UX When it comes to implementing changes in order to boost UX here are some of the things that you should be mindful of: Branding – One of the first things that you should do is to make sure that your branding is attractive and memorable. Although this may be a task for a different team, in terms of SEO it is important that you are mentioning your brand alongside all of the relevant searches and in terms of UX there is a lot to be said for reinforcing the branding message across the site and keep it front of mind. This is especially important when it comes to gaining return visits. Layout and consistency – Keep the navigation the same for your site and make all of the buttons easily recognisable. If you are able to do this people will know where they need to go in order to find the information that they need. It will also help them to navigate to the end of the buyer’s funnel and conversions will therefore increase. You can also add in similar or partner products here to further boost revenue. Functionality – Structure your content to fit the needs of your user and make sure that the design of the site is responsive. Speed is also important here especially in B2C sites,
particularly those in retail, where a customer can be put off if images are slow to load. Always test and tweak your site speed where possible. Mobile responsiveness – Talking of responsiveness, make sure that you are ‘mobile ready’ as an increasing number of transactions and searches are performed on mobile devices. If the appearance, speed or navigation of your site is poor on mobile then you could lose out to a rival. Live chat – One thing that is often overlooked when it comes to UX is a live chat function. More and more websites are now using this in order to add an additional layer of customer support. If someone has a query once they reach you page or need help with the navigation then this can be a good area for them to have access to. Data collection – What is the point in having visitors to your website if you aren’t going to see what they are doing and look at ways in which you can improve. Look at things like heat maps to see where the users are on the site and also monitor things such as where they click and how much time they are spending on your page. A quick exit from the site could be indicative of a poor UX. Make changes and learn from the data that you have. 25
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101 – THE SEO VALUE OF VISUAL SEARCH ABOUT OUR EXPERT - CHLOIE BRANDRICK With 20 years’ experience as a B2B copywriter and journalist, and social media and content marketer, Chloie produces contentfor Click Consult’s audience and manages the brand’s social media presence.
Our brains process visual content such as infographics, video and slideshows more effectively than text alone. In fact it’s estimated that it’s up to 60,000 times faster. Visuals express and spread ideas quickly, which means that this kind of content is popular and highly shareable on social media. There was a time when text dominated online and on email, not least because images took so long to download. But imagery is powerful and at the centre of our culture. It’s estimated that 93% of all human communication is visual and 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual.
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Which is why your brand should be focusing not only on producing and optimising visuals as part of your marketing strategy, but capitalising on the fact that, when you create and distribute good quality images, other websites may wish to share them. The idea: using Google’s reverse image search to get more backlinks.
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WHAT IS GOOGLE IMAGE SEARCH? Quite simply, instead of searching using a word or phrase, you search with an image. HOW REVERSE IMAGE SEARCH WORKS When you search using an image, your search results may include: - Similar images - Sites that include the image - Other sizes of the image you searched for According to Google, search using an image works best when the image is likely to show up in other places on the web. For example, you’ll get more results for famous landmarks than you will for personal images like your latest family photo. You can upload an image to search for, or search using an image URL. On Chrome and Firefox 4+, you can also drag and drop an image 28
into the search box from your computer, or rightclick and choose ‘Search Google for this image’. On phones and tablets, you can search Google to find images that are similar to ones you see in search results using the Chrome app by pressing and holding an image in search results.
101 USING REVERSE IMAGE SEARCH FOR SEO Reverse image search allows you see a list of sites where any image or photo you’ve uploaded to appears. You can then check whether you’ve been credited for that image and been given a link back to the original source on your website. Neil Patel, co-founder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar and KISSmetrics, suggests using it to build backlinks to enhance your Domain Authority (DA) and therefore bump up your search visibility. This is because when trusted and established (ie, those with a high DA) link back to your site, it signals to Google the relevance and importance of a website.
“If you’re putting lots of work into everything you do, you’re probably producing amazing images that other people would definitely want to use. If you’re after backlinks that will help you build authority, this is a fantastic strategy to use.” Neil Patel WHY ARE INBOUND LINKS IMPORTANT? Building legitimate inbound links, or backlinks, is an important strategy for marketing your website for two reasons: - They can drive referral traffic to your site - They can help you rank higher in the search engine results pages.
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101 DID YOU GET A BACKLINK? If the site using your image doesn’t link back to your site, you can send them a polite email and ask that they do. Generally, this is only really worth it when that site has a good DA. You can find out the DA of a website using MozBar – a free Chrome Extension that allows you to see the DA of any site and helps you to research backlinks and find link building opportunities.
HOW WE USED REVERSE IMAGE SEARCH TO CHECK FOR BACKLINKS I searched for one of our popular infographics, the pros and cons of social media, and found the following list of URLS: reverse image search for Click social infographic I checked whether each of these sites had credited Click Consult and contacted those that hadn’t (or had linked to another site where they had found the image) to ask them to link back to us. The majority where happy to do so, helping us earn eight links with DAs between 30 and 42. IMAGE SEARCH IS AN AREA UNDERGOING RAPID DEVELOPMENT Bing unveiled its Visual Search earlier this year, a product which stands out from similar offerings by Google and Pinterest for its ability to come up with related images by actually searching within images. It can then direct users to a retailer’s website to purchase the item. This offers huge opportunities for retailers and marketers. There have been hints that Google is to follow suit with the ability to search within images believed to be in beta.
THE ON.CLICK PODCAST Click Consult brings you the on.click podcast, featuring news, best practice, how to and discussions on the key aspects of search marketing - from paid search, through content marketing, technical SEO and more: on.click wants to be your go to audio for all things digital marketing. You can subscribe to Click Consult’s podcast on Stitcher, or here for Apple users.
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