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.

7 basic SEO mistakes to avoid 

We live in a digital era, we have mentioned it a couple of times on this website I know, but that’s the truth.

That’s why SEO and all other digital marketing channels are a game changer for many businesses, especially online based. SEO has been around for some time now, personally I have been involved in SEO for nearly seven years. Through this time, the industry has changed a lot. I remember starting guest posting when it has actually been a thing. [L1] Despite these industry changes, I can still see the same SEO mistakes being repeated time and time again, even by people who have worked in the industry for a while, like me. Everyone makes mistakes, you simply can’t know it all (although I have met a couple of people who think they do!). There are some basics we should all know and follow. I have listed the most obvious SEO mistakes that I have seen people repeating, but please do share more.

1. No On-Page Optimisation

This one really bugs me, if we google any SEO guide this is one of the first things we see. I don’t know why people neglect to do it, when it is actually the easiest one.

All it involves is conducting keyword research, writing and optimising content. It is simple as that.

When I started in 2013, it was popular, which is why I can’t believe that seven years later there are still some specialists, and more worrying some agencies, that do not do it. One of the first things you do when you take on a client or when you become an SEO Specialist for a brand is run an audit including on page, run a keyword research and then write optimised content. Despite all the new fancy stuff, which don’t get me wrong are great and work, Googlebot still uses keywords to rank websites. Why would you make this simple SEO mistake and not use keywords?

In 2019 Moz shared a White Board Friday on On -Page Optimisation, se it below:

 

2. Optimising for wrong keywords

There are also many cases where we go a step further. We do have content, but wait… those keywords don’t seem right. While usually people do understand that if they are selling let’s say clothes, they shouldn’t optimise for computers, but what they don’t get is that not all the pages on your website should be optimised for ‘money keywords’. What do I mean by this term? I mean keywords people use to search when they want to buy something. So, let’s say I am looking for ‘red dress size 10’, what I want to see as a buyer are collection pages or product pages showing me red dresses I can buy.

What I don’t want to see is a blog post about ’10 best fashion shows’. Some people believe they should optimise everything for their product and this is not and never has been the case.

Let me tell you what is going to happen if somehow your blog post about ’10 best fashion shows to attend this year’ is going to rank for ‘red dress’, even if I click I will most likely bounce back, your bounce rate [L2] will increase and I may remember your brand negatively, as id didn’t show me the content I wanted to see.You could argue that you may still sell those red dresses and maybe I will try to find them on your website myself.  This is not going to happen, not unless you are a huge, well-known brand, which if you are you have probably have done your SEO right (usually, trust me those huge retailers also make very simple mistakes)

3. Keyword cannibalisation

This one often goes together with the one above, but not always. If we optimise everything for ‘red dresses’ those pages will cannibalize each other. Simple as that – Google won’t know which one to rank and in the end you may end up not ranking at all.

Sometimes there is ‘good cannibalization’ but this one is usually small – let me give you an example, if I look for ‘red dresses’ just in general, I would probably be happy to see these two:

Your product page (or filter page yes!) showing me red dresses

Your blog post about 10 most beautiful red dresses of the season

I still wouldn’t like to see your post about ’10 best fashion shows to attend this year’ – this is not my intention at the moment.

So, if both first examples manage to rank highly for red dresses – in my opinion this is a good thing, because:

a) you will get people at the beginning and middle of a buying circle who may just search in more general way

b) you own more space on the first page (by ranking highly, we are talking about the 5 first positions of page 1)

Ahers came up with a very simple way to find and fix cannibalisation issues, read about it here.

4. Keyword stuffing

Sometimes we see the complete opposite to number one – we get people who want to rank and optimise their content so badly, that they use the same keyword 50 times in a 400 word long piece. This is not the way to go. The general rule of thumb is – if it doesn’t sound natural it is probably keyword stuffing (or poor writing skills).

 

5. Duplicate Content

There are many SEO specialists that do not check for it and do not fix it, next there are many websites with huge duplicate content issues. Again we have a similar story as keyword cannibalization – how does Google know which is the most relevant page? In the end they may not rank you at all.

 

A very common cause of duplicate content, especially in E-commerce websites, are filters, which can also be optimised, or if they don’t bring any value, they can be de-indexed. (but usually they would, so optimised)

Moz created Duplicate Content Guide for 2020, where they explain everything you need to know about duplicate content.

6. Not creating link- worthy content.

Despite rumours  that links will not be important going forward, for now they are important.

Link building is extremely difficult these days and people have started confusing it with Digital PR (they do share a common ground do not get me wrong!). I will be speaking about this common ground in Poland in May if you’d like to find out more, but to the point. It results in people thinking they are doing link building and they are not, or the opposite, they think they are doing digital PR and they are not.

In 2020, we do need link worthy content to get links – especially given the fact that Google does not want us to ‘build links’ they want us to ‘earn links’.

With all of that in mind, brands do not want to spend money on blog content, they do not want to spend time and resources on creating bigger, interactive pieces because they think it’s not worth their time. SEO’s don’t believe you can actually earn links from those pieces, as such, agencies do not invest in resources to promote this content. This is not the way to go. Yes, sometimes your great content won’t get links – but you do need to try to make it valuable and promote it so people find out about it. This is the world we are living in.

7. Lack of mobile optimisation

Yes, this one falls into basics now, and that’s why it is listed as one of top basic SEO mistakes to avoid.

 

I remember  Christmas shopping last year and looking for a book for my mom. I found a really good book shop with many positions but obviously I found this from my phone and a lack of mobile friendliness put me off the site so much, that I went somewhere else. We are very demanding as customers these days – we want things to be made easy for us. The majority of the time we spend online is actually from our phones – so if you want to be up to date – a website optimised for mobile is a must. If you still don’t believe me, here you will find some very interesting mobile stats from Front Burne Marketing.

These are the most common SEO mistakes that I have seen and that come to my mind, but I am sure there are many more. It is important to learn to walk before we run – so before you focus on all the fancy SEO stuff, which I will say that again, are great, make sure you have got your basics covered.

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