Digital Digest: October News Roundup
WithIn our upcoming digital marketing newsletter, we'll explore the newest trends and developments in SEO, Digital PR, Paid Media, Online Marketplaces, and E-commerce. Stay tuned for our monthly newsletter to stay informed about the latest updates in digital marketing, where we'll highlight the importance of digital marketing and its evolving trends. AYKO stands out as a premier agency specialising in E-commerce solutions on Magento and Shopify platforms, providing exceptional marketing strategies to enhance your business.
SEO
How Europe is Challenging Google’s Search Dominance?
The Digital Markets Act (DMA) was created by the EU to promote competition, stop monopolistic behaviour and ensure that digital markets are fairer and more open.?
The new act is especially targeting Google’s dominance by making sure it does not abuse its market power. This includes several critical rules including:
The impact on Google’s search results in Europe have been noticeable, especially in the travel sector, which was heavily dominated by Google’s services before.
How to rank on the first page without actually “ranking”
Ranking on the first page has a significantly higher CTR but ranking 1st isn’t always the be-all-end-all.
Having a featured snippet takes up more real-estate on the SERP than just ranking alone.
However in order to appear in these snippets, the correct structures data must be in place
“How to” and “What is” Queries dominating AI Overviews?
AI Overviews are extremely common for keywords related to “how to” and “what is”.
A sample of 500 keywords were used to determine the percentage that generate an AI overview, of which, AI Overviews appeared in 55% of cases.?
What does this mean for SEO?
It’s potentially advantageous to target “how to” and “What is” queries when creating content e.g. page titles and headings as well as incorporating FAQs sections in popular pages.
Ahrefs vs. SEMRush AI Overview Tracker?
SEMRush and Ahrefs have now released the own AI Overview tracking tools. Here are some of their key differences?
SEMRush:
Ahrefs:
New ‘Shop Nearby’ Rich Result
A “Shop Nearby” rich result has now started appearing for some eCommerce stores in the search results for both desktop and mobile.
When clicking on the “Shop Nearby” text, a panel appears with details of the closest GBP listing for the store.?
What does this mean for SEO?
it will be key to look into your local SEO strategy and ensure you site have the relevant schema in place for google to properly understand your local listings.
Core Web Vitals
Semrush acquires Search Engine Land
SEMRush have recently acquired Search Engine Land, one of the most prominent SEO media properties.
This has come off the back of SEMRush acquiring:
An interesting one to monitor to see if the purchase of Search Engine Land then alters the content strategy moving forwards.
Google adds support for sale pricing and priceType property
Google is adding support for sales pricing in Product schema.?
If you specify a second price with the "priceType" of "ListPrice", Google will automatically make the original "price" your sale price.
Google said this was done to “make it easier for merchants to specify sale pricing through structured data and bring parity with price features in Merchant Center.”
Does your business need a foolproof SEO content strategy? Get in touch with our experts today!
PPC
Google Shopping Is Getting A Big Transformation
Google just announced major updates to Google Shopping, starting in October in the U.S. The Shopping tab is becoming more personalised, with 45 billion listings now paired with Gemini AI. Users will get an AI-generated summary of key factors for their search and products that match their needs.
For example, searching for “Men’s winter jacket for Seattle” provides an AI brief with top considerations, product recommendations, and dynamic filters like size and in-store availability. The virtual try-on feature, powered by AI and AR, is also included.
Google is also launching a personalised shopping feed, allowing users to pick up where they left off. There's a new Deals Page for personalised offers too.
Google Engaged Audiences
Engaged Audiences on Google Ads are automatically created audience segments with users who have previously interacted with your website on Google Search, YouTube, or other Google sites.?
Key Benefits:
Best Practices:
How To Align SEO & PPC With Google Scripts
There’s a new Google ads script which analyses the cross over between Google Ads and keywords you have visibility for in Google Search Console. This generates a Google sheet which:
领英推荐
POAS Optimisation Within Google Ads
For some time advertisers have been able to track profit within Google ads using third party tools such as profit metrics and creating an additional conversion action. Some Google accounts are now seeing the setting for Gross Profit Optimisation within their accounts.?
This will enable advertisers to optimise towards profit instead of revenue. In order to set this up you need to:
Google Tests Video-Enabled Shopping Ads
Overview: Google are testing a new video functionality in shopping ads, which allows users to watch product videos within Google’s search results.?
Key Initiative: Enhance user engagement by showcasing the products visually, which allows potential customers to see them in action and hopefully leads to informed purchasing decisions.?
Expected Benefits:
However…
There are concerns that this feature will reduce traffic to website landing pages as it prioritises in-ad interactions over website visits.
?
Google Adds Page-specific Asset Generation to PMax Campaign Creation
When creating a new PMax asset group, users can use the built-in AI asset creator to quickly generate text and image assets. Usually the feature isn’t specific enough and it takes just as long to correct the suggested assets as creating them yourself.
Users can now specify which pages to target for asset generation, eg: specific product/category pages. This is meant to speed up the process by increasing asset relevance.?
Google Ads API v18 Launches & Introduces Several New Features
Some of the new features added were:
GenerateRecommendations can be used during campaign creation to retrieve optimised budget suggestions for PMax and Search campaigns.
performance_max_placement_view allows users to query performance data for a given placement where PMax ads have served.
New segmentation options for? campaign and ad_group reports, allowing for segmentation based on specific destinations (eg.:city or a country).
AdGroup.exclude_demographic_expansion allows excluding demographics from being expanded when optimized_targeting_enabled is true - previously only supported for Demand Gen.
DataLinkService.CreateDataLink allows users to link their Google Ads accounts to creator videos and enables running partnership ads.
content_criterion_view returns performance metrics of targeted content (keywords, placements and topics) for Display, Demand Gen and Video campaigns.
New metrics related to invalid clicks can be queried with thecampaignreport.
Performance Max Priority Settings
Google has recently announced that they’re updating the priority settings for performance max. Previously a performance max campaign would have a higher priority than a standard shopping campaign.
Google has updated the priority settings so that the campaign with the highest ad rank will serve.
Are you worried about the effectiveness of your PPC campaigns? Get in touch with our PPC experts today and see how we can help!
Social
Meta Introduces New Video AI Features??
Overview: Meta reported that 60% of user time on Facebook and Instagram is spent watching videos. Off the back of this, they have introduced new AI features focusing on video content, aimed at enhancing advertising capabilities for brands and businesses.?
New video tab: A dedicated video tab on Facebook will consolidate reels, longer videos and live content for easier access.
AI-Generated Ad Tools:?
This addresses the issue of resource constraints for smaller businesses / brands!
Meta Advertisers Can Now Differentiate Between All Conversions & First-Time Conversions
Meta has introduced new attribution settings in its Ads platform, this allows advertisers to distinguish between all conversions and first-time conversions.
Advertisers have the option between these two attribution options:
Advertisers have struggled with discrepancies between Meta’s ad data and their own backend numbers. However, this update aims to bridge that gap and provide more accurate insights into ad performance and customer acquisition costs.
One advertiser found that Meta was counting about 25% of non-first purchases towards new customers, significantly inflating reported performance metrics.
Want to make the most out of your Paid Social activity? Speak with our team today!
Marketplaces
Track Buy Box Winner In Google Sheets
Winning the Amazon buy box is key to driving sales on Amazon. It can be time consuming to monitor this for your products. Using the extension Import From Web. With =IMPORTFROMWEB(), you extract the BuyBox winner for a list of products and the following data points:??
AI Shopping Guide
AI-Powered Research: These guides use generative AI to gather and present the most relevant product features, customer insights, and recommendations across over 100 categories.?
Faster, Smarter Shopping: You can reduce the time spent researching and jump straight into browsing products that match your preferences.
?Seamless Experience: You’ll find educational content, refined product picks, and real-time answers from Rufus, all within the app.
These guides are rolling out across the U.S.
Seller Reviews Shown In Search Results
Amazon has started adding seller feedback ratings on organic search results.
Historically, only product reviews have been visible to the shopper, so this marks a major change. It was previously possible to find seller reviews, but it is not something a shopper would usually encounter.
Amazon’s Featured Offer (or Buy Box) has been incorporating a seller’s rating into it’s algorithm (along with price, delivery speed etc) for years, however this is now much more transparent to the shopper.
This now makes retaining a 4.9/5 rating essential - for example, when launching new products with no reviews, shoppers will likely still trust the seller.
Currently being rolled out in the US.
Are you interested in exploring how online marketplaces can help grow your eCommerce business? Get in touch today and see what we can do for your business!
About AYKO
AYKO is an Adobe Gold Partner & certified Adobe Commerce Specialist. Forged from the merger of two other Magento-certified agencies and one digital marketing agency in 2019, AYKO was formed to create one of the largest full-service digital, Magento eCommerce, and Shopify Plus agencies in the UK. Currently, with a team of 56 industry specialists, they specialise in design and development alongside performance marketing to accelerate your website and customer experiences.