How e-a-t works and Google patents

Search engine journal article covers few interesting questions focusing on E-A-T and google patents. What does E-A-T stand for? This is definition of E-A-T- “Expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness of the creator of the main content, the main content itself, as well as the website.”. Going back to questions asked and answered in the article:

1. How Does Google Know Who a Site’s Authors Are?
2. Does Google Only Look at On-Page Factors & Links to Identify Authors and Experts?
3. Can Google only recognize entities contained in its Knowledge Graph?
4. How does Google determine if a person or brand is a real expert, or authoritative in their field?
5. How does a website get classified as YMYL?
6. Does Google measure E-A-T on the author, page, domain, or brand level?

Read the article by Search Engine Journal here.

How to do keyword research for Affiliate sites

If you are looking into building an affiliate site prior to Black Friday or any other event, this article can be of great help. SEO of affiliate sites is very god tool that can grow incredibly without much budget.

1. General comparisons
2. Branded comparisons
3. Product reviews
4. T&A keywords

Comparison site ideas is a good starting point and with not much effort you can get great results. Another option are product reviews, which is pretty much self-explanatory approach.  Lastly its important to cover T&A – Build trust with your audience. People are more likely to trust your product recommendations if you can demonstrate expertise in the topic. Build authority through links. People are generally more likely to link to useful, non-commercial content than pages that exist to line your pockets.

Check out original post from Ahrefs here.

Top five takeaways from the Golden Quarter 2020

During Awin’s webinar, the Global Strategy Director Kevin Edwards and panel of experts share insights of what they have learned from this year so far. Discussed various obstacles and opportunities that Q4 offers, and how it can help inform ecommerce strategies for the coming months. You can watch the webinar here. We have listed the five takeaways from Awin below:

• Affiliates are providing an increasing volume of converting traffic to retailers during Q4
• Black Friday’s digital adoption in the UK will influence ecommerce growth this year
• 2020 could be the first time Black Friday overtakes Cyber Monday for online share of sales in the US
• Amazon’s relocation of Prime Day won’t stop shoppers spending big over Q4
• Be nimble, stay informed, and think about how you connect with the mass of new customers coming online for the first time

Read the post from Awin here.

 Awin launches interactive self-help center to better support publishers

Awin launches interactive self-help center with over 150 informative articles. The Partner Success Center offers access to a multitude of knowledge resources at the push of button, empowering  publishers to make the most of affiliate marketing network.

Check Awin help help center here.

The state of Affiliate Marketing in 2020

Affiliate Marketing in 2020 can be very rewarding and risky at the same time. We had to adapt quickly in both professional and personal life. However it was very rewarding year for many retailers and ecommerce businesses even with restrictions circulating around. It’s important to keep up with constantly changing scenery of affiliate marketing.

Rakuten covers few interesting affiliate marketing questions:

1. What Is Happening in the Affiliate Space Right Now?
2. How Can Advertisers and Publishers Leverage Their Relationships?
3. What Does the Way Forward Look Like?

Read more from Rakuten guest post at Toolbox here.

Top 15 acquisition channels that work consistently for getting new users

Entrepreneurs handbook article covers what channels worked for 470 interviewed founders. How did those founders go from zero to users? The channels are sorted by the number of “successful mentions” (meaning, the founder mentioned in the interview that a particular acquisition channel is working for them).

Here are just some examples for the article:

• SEO (after being successful with another acquisition channel).
• Platform-specific marketplaces.
• Reddit posting.
• HackerNews.
• Using your own network/connections.
• Niche Communities/Forums.
• Facebook Groups.

Entrepreneurs handbook article.

Influencer Marketing Show 2020 – Global

Influencer Marketing Show in 2020 is an amazing opportunity to get insights and knowledge nuggets. The tickets are free for limited time so keep an eye while the stock lasts. IMS is a great opportunity to get in touch with attendees whether you are an agency, influencer or a brand. As IMS organiser describe – “With the IMS Global event platform you can easily arrange one-to-one video chats with any attendee based anywhere in the world!”.

IMS Live Access Pass gives you access to sessions as they happen with a 12 hour grace period. However, there are other options like VIP ticket that allows you to watch the show for the next 12 months.

Check the IMS event sign up page here.

The post November Affiliate Marketing and News appeared first on creatosmedia.co.uk.

New Google Analytics announced

Businesses use Google Analytics on every day basis to understand their customers. Its crucial to understand every marketing channel and that every £ is spent well. Google have created more intelligent Google Analytics solution to help you understand how to increase ROI. The new google analytics has machine learning at its core to help with insights. The essential insights introduced are:

1. Smarter insights to improve your marketing decisions and get better ROI
2. A more complete understanding of how customers interact with your business
3. Built for the long term
4. The future of Google Analytics

Here is the link to Google announcement – click here.

Tips to enhance and grow your existing Affiliate program for Q4

 PerformanceIn shares some insightful tips on growing your affiliate program for the most exciting period for any marketer. We really like the tips and some important dates to notes. We would suggest focusing on November and December (mostly gifting pre-Christmas and post-Christmas sale) as those are the strongest periods for most brands. Some important dates to remember in November:

• 11^th November – Singles Day – where unmarried people buy themselves gifts
• 26^th November – Thanksgiving day in US
• 27^th November – Black Friday – many brands begin Black Friday promos few days before
• 30^th November – Cyber Monday

Here is a list of questions worth asking yourself:

• Is your affiliate payout still competitive?
• Is your website optimised and capable of handling increased traffic?
• Are your promos and creatives locked in and completed?
• Have you prepared a gift guide that affiliates can use?
• Have you communicated with top producing affiliates on what can be done to scale for Q4?

Remember to plan ahead your November to make the best out of the peak season. We do not agree completely that Q4 is time to build your affiliate program. Our suggestion would be to communicate with your existing publishers and make sure that they are aware of your plans. Perhaps its time to push for extra exposure to reach the largest number of customers. If you have just opened your program or still planning to, focus on inviting new strong publishers as soon as possible perhaps with increased commission to incentivise them to join you.

Link to the PerformanceIN news post – click here.

How Can You Use Crowd Marketing It in Your SEO in iGaming?

Did you ever think of affiliate marketing and SEO to work together? Affiliate Insiders covers some key areas and shares some insight you might find interesting:

1. What is Crowd Marketing?
2. Boosting Popularity
3. Link Building
4. Social Media
5. Improving Conversions

Link to Affiliate Insider story – click here.

How to Optimize Your Affiliate Program for Growth

CJ Junction one of the larger affiliate networks have shared their thoughts about upcoming Q4. CJ points our the importance of technical readiness, by making sure your feed is correctly implemented and checking the tracking and pixel is correct. Organising publishers is worth looking into, making sure you are sharing right incentives to the right type of publisher. Its worth analysing and reviewing your existing program to push the right levers. CJ have noted it is extra harder to cut through the noise with pandemic and election. Here are some great tips to consider:

• Promote offers earlier than normal.
• Showcase unique offer messaging.
• Mobile usage rises significantly during an election season. Ensure your mobile experience is clean and invest in mobile media opportunities.
• Take advantage of consumer demand immediately post-election.
• Measure initial reactions to holiday campaigns and adjust if needed.
• Don’t assume that your holiday offers are breaking through the noise; reinforce the message before, during, and after the election.

Link to CJ article – click here.

Gaining customer trust in the cookieless era

There are multiple talks about cookies and what it means to brands and any other ecommerce businesses. ClickZ have written a great article covering insights from Deloitte Digital research.

The summary of the article:

• The end of third-party cookies brings an opportunity for brands to build relationships of trust with their customers. Ultimately, cultivating trust comes down to how brands handle customer data, however they come by it.
• Part of adopting a new approach to engaging with data is considering when and how first-party personal information is collected. The “how” is an important foundational detail, as it may set the tone for the marketer’s relationship with the customer, determining whether or not a customer chooses to opt-in to share their information at all.
• Even after consent is obtained, customers and prospects have the right to change their minds. It’s an ongoing conversation between a customer and a brand, and so the ability to grant or revoke consent at multiple points in time is critical.
• Smart data use provides relevancy, and the brands that are positioned to thrive in a world without third-party cookies will likely be those that recognize a simple truth: You earn the right to be personal by first being relevant.
• Ultimately, it’s up to the brand to use it to deliver better content and experiences and grow its customer relationships.

Link to ClickZ article – click here.

Affiliate marketing tips to improve your campaigns in 2020

This year had many twists and turns with pandemic impacting digital world of ecommerce. For many companies existing in online sphere it was actually a great year. We might had to have thrown 2020 January tips away or adjust existing strategy, but it seems that this year Q4 may be stronger than ever before with people been stuck at home and forced to buy mostly online. The article from ShareASale covers some key areas:

1. Building Trust
2. Building Relationships
3. Producing Content
4. Telling stories
5. Utilizing tools
6. Marketing Channels
7. Micro-influencers
8. Payment on influence
9. Social Media
10. User Experience
11. Mobile responsive websites

It is important to push this Q4 to make the best out of this insane year. Ecommerce brands have been very successful this year and it seems it’s only beginning of ongoing and increasing trend.

Link to ShareASale blog – click here.

Why Amazon is not a fashion leader

Amazon may be leader in many market sections but it does not seem fashion is one of them. Ecommerce News noted that Amazon.de is in sixth position in Germany. Amazon’s shop functionality is not designed for inspiration. Some information are missing which are important for online fashionistas.

Read more about Ecommerce News here – click here

Thank you for reading, if you and your business needs expert help in SEO, PPC, Affiliate Marketing, Social, Ecommerce and Digital Marketing please feel free to contact us. Creatos Media team is always here to help!

The post October News and preparation for Q4 with Affiliate Marketing appeared first on creatosmedia.co.uk.

Representing #CreatosMedia Izzy will be speaking in Katowice Poland “virtually” of course. FestiwalSEO Katowice is a great polish SEO event, if you are interested you can register and watch it here on Friday. The event will be in Polish.

FestiwalSEO Katowice was planned for 22^nd of May, due to pandemic it had to be moved not only to different date – 16^th of October – also it has been changed to virtual event. However, it will allow to join event from any place on earth as long you speak polish. This is a 8^th edition of the event and we are proud to be part of it. Apart from this year participation we will be joining next year!

Women in tech SEO – Interviewing Izabela Wisniewska, Creatos Media Co-Founder

Women in Tech SEO is a support network aimed for women in the Technical SEO. Izzy has joined Women in tech SEO this year and already have taken part in mentoring programme as a mentor helping other women. If you are a woman and interested in SEO it would a great place to join. The values of the group are:

• To be kind
• To be helpful
• To be respectful
• To be a safe and judgement-free community

The interview with Izzy covers many topics such as getting to SEO, tools and resources, the ‘Aha’ moments, proudest industry achievement, SEO advice, and what empowers you to be a brilliant woman. To read the interview click on the link here.

Every Youth brand should be on social platforms, but which?

To engage with young customers, it can be difficult to keep up. You can gain crucial advantage on your competitors if you are covering right channels targeting youth sector. So which platforms do you need as a business to be part of Gen Z?

• Instagram – it’s a favourite Gen Z place to discover brands, what Voxburner found out is that they think Instagram ads are the best.
• Twitter – typical teen does not post a lot on twitter but they do check it for news, memes and pop culture for digital natives.
• TikTok – Youth Trends survey discovered that 16% of 16-24s were using TikTok at least once a month. TikTok is a trend setting channel at the moment for Gen Z.
• Houseparty – was acquired by Epic Games, creators of Fortnite. The platform is experimenting with partnerships such as branded backgrounds known as Frames.
• Snapchat – used mostly by 16-24 it seems many brands ignore that channel. Snapchat was chosen by Gen Z’s and ranked as second favourite social media brand, only behind Instagram.

The research by Voxburner and Youth Trends can be found here.

Facebook and Artefact team up for marketing attribution guide

Facebook and Artefact have investigated process of tracking and ranking. Key factor was importance of marketing actions along the customer journey. Crucial finding in the guide was omnichannel shoppers having a 30% higher lifetime value. The guide is looking into how attribution is a critical enabler of efficient marketing as well as personalised experiences. Last topic was covering key steps and top practices to successfully fulfill Facebook Attribution and speed up your measurement journey.

Read more in the post from Digital Marketing Briefing here.

Google: The Context Around Links Is Secondary But Anchor Text Is Primary

We know that there are many uses of anchor text of links around the internet, but do not say much about where it is linking to. What Google has said is very interesting “context and content around the link is secondary”. Whether we agree or not, it would be worth pointing out that it was Google pointing it out.

To read and watch full post from Seroundtable here.

How to Rank in ‘PAA’ Boxes and If You Should by Ahrefs

According to Ahrefs – 43% of search queries now show a People Also Ask box. There are few important steps which Ahrefs points outs:

1. What is the ‘People Also Ask’ box?
2. Four things to know about ‘People Also Ask’ boxes
3. PAA boxes can appear in different SERP positions
4. PAA questions are seemingly infinite
5. PAA answer formats vary
6. PAA questions always trigger the same answer
7. Is it worth trying to rank in ‘People Also Ask’ boxes?
8. How to rank in ‘People Also Ask’ boxes

Read the whole post from Ahrefs here.

Social Media Affiliate Marketing

Social media can be a great channel for Affiliate Marketing with plenty tools available to help you:

• Automatically (via convert-a-link) to turn any direct links to advertisers into affiliate links.
• Using text links built using a link builder, like Awin’s.
• Using feeds to create comparisons between products or prices.
• With banners, content widgets or other types of creative.

Since the raise of social media affiliate marketers have been inventive and capitalised on the new platforms. What Awin has pointed out is that 45% of population uses social media, which is a huge number of people. Think of social media and for each recommendation to your friends you get rewarded commission per each sale.

Read more about social media affiliate marketing by Awin here.

Thank you for reading, if you and your business needs expert help in SEO, PPC, Affiliate Marketing, Social, Ecommerce and Digital Marketing please feel free to contact us. Creatos Media team is always here to help!

The post Izzy at FestiwalSEO Katowice, interview with WTS, Gen Z, Social Affiliate Marketing, Facebook attribution and SEO PAA appeared first on creatosmedia.co.uk.

Facebook Groups Recommendations

There are many business SEO groups on Facebook, but we have made a list of the ones we think are worth your time. The groups below are groups of which some of Creatos Media members are already part of. There are some great insights and knowledge shared in each group. Apart from learning more about SEO, marketing and affiliates you can share your own knowledge and experience with professionals. See our list below:

• Women in Tech SEO – group recommended for women by Izzy our co-founder.
• The Proper SEO Group – SEO methods and techniques.
• Sisters in SEO – another all women group recommended by Izzy, focusing on sharing SEO knowledge.
• Affiliate SEO Mastermind – covers affiliate SEO topics.
• SEO Signals Lab – knowledgeable SEOs.
• Marketing Cheat Guides – group focusing on sharing knowledge in digital marketing to build successful business.
• Niche Affiliate Empires – ideas to build a successful affiliate website.

Facebook Advertising News

Facebook have recently announced removing limitation on use of 20% text on the ads image. However Facebook still suggest to follow the guidelines.

1. If you decide to place text in your ad image, attempt using fewer words. Adjusting font size of your text may be a good starting point. Bear in mind the text needs to be easy to read.
2. Make most of the text that you use is in the body. Instead of taking space on your ads image.
3. Prevent dispersing text all over the picture.
4. Images with less than 20% text perform better.

Read Facebook guidelines here.

Google bot is learning to read HTTP/2

Google has been announcing that from mid November 2020, Googlebot will support crawling over HTTP/2. Google covers few interesting points:

1. What is actually HTTP/2
2. What is the reason for the change
3. How it works
4. How to opt in or out

There are many questions which google have answered.

Check Google webmaster central blog article here.

Ecommerce brands increasing engagement despite COVID-19

The article from IMRG shows us 5 ways of e-commerce businesses growing awareness during quarantine. The list consists of: 

1. Retention and loyalty
2. Cross channel data importance
3. Generate revenue with data
4. Focus on 3 A’s – Agility, Automation, and Alignment
5. Importance of personalisation’s per channel

Read more from IMRG here.

Seo Myths, would you agree with them?

Ahrefs covered some of the most trending SEO myths. What do you think, do you agree with the below?

• SEO is dead
• SEO is a one-time thing
• Google only ranks ‘fresh’ content
• Long-tail keywords are easier to rank for
• Duplicate content will get you penalized
• Social signals help rankings
• PPC can’t help you rank higher
• PageRank doesn’t matter anymore
• SEO is all about rankings
• Keyword research isn’t important

We have our own views about the above points, but please share your thoughts.

For Ahrefs full post click here.

Online purchases involve seven steps taking three hours, do you agree?

The survey for the actual article included 2000 people. There are really interesting insights into each step and the importance of trust and reviews involved in a buying process. Would you agree with all the steps? How long does it take for you to decide and buy?

Here are the seven stages of shopping by Digital Marketing Briefing:

1. Deciding on a need for something – 35 minutes
2. An online search for the product you want including social media sites – 33 minutes
3. Reading online reviews and going through recommendations – 29 minutes
4. Narrowing down between brands by comparing to other similar products for price and quality – 31 minutes
5. Share links with friends and family – 14 minutes
6. Getting something into your online or real-life basket – 19 minutes
7. Actually making the purchase – 24 minutes

Read the full article here.

Thank you for reading, if you and your business needs expert help in SEO, PPC, Affiliate Marketing, Social, Ecommerce and Digital Marketing please feel free to contact us. Creatos Media team is always happy to help!

The post Digital Marketing useful lists – SEO, Affiliates, Facebook and Google announcement appeared first on creatosmedia.co.uk.