Digital Digest: September 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
Optimising Collection Pages
Collection pages on Shopify are crucial for targeting core broader keywords, it is important for capturing users at the start of the conversion funnel.
A recent study has shown that the best approach for a collection page set up, is:
The Use of Subcategory Carousel Images
There has been a lot of debate around carousel images on sub category landing pages.
A research piece showed that every site ranking on the 1st page for the term “women's jeans” has implemented carousel images.
The benefits:
Pro Tip: Product Carousels in Overviews
Product Carousels in AI Overviews are back for Commercial Queries.
The AI Overview generates a browsable listing like snapshot that when opened, showcasing clickable product carousels that trigger product knowledge panels. This drives users directly to PDPs.
Actions to take:
Google AI Overviews Show More to Signed - In Users
Google AI Overviews are triggered 10-20% less for signed out users. The percentage of this also varies heavily by industry.
E-Commerce queries, for example, trigger AI Overviews 90% less often for signed-out users. Other industries with noticeable difference include:
Google AI Overview Findings
Google is moving away from consumer-focused media and blogs and heavily towards specialised, expert and authoritative domains.?
'Google it'
In 2006, "Google" became officially recognised as a verb, marking a milestone for the search engine. However, a recent study reveals that Gen Z (born 1997-2012), the first digitally native generation, is now shifting back to simply "searching" instead of "Googling." This trend reflects the evolving search landscape, where:
Google is no longer the default platform for all searches, as users diversify their search methods across various platforms.
Why You Shouldn't Index Internal Search Pages
For years, Wayfair dominated eCommerce SEO by allowing their internal search pages to be indexed, resulting in over 500K pages and 8M monthly organic sessions at their peak in 2019. However, their visibility has dropped by 75% over the last five years. Key reasons for this decline include:
Google's Helpful Content Updates: These updates likely de-prioritised Wayfair’s auto-generated pages, favouring more relevant and useful content.
Happy International SEO Day!
Why is September 27th Celebrated as SEO Day ??
September 27th is known as the birthday of the Google search engine. Since the Google search engine is the cornerstone of the entire SEO industry, where SEO is carried out most intensively, SEO’s Day is celebrated on September 27th.
Trends
As the weather is getting colder and the seasonal holidays are approaching, more people are searching for comforting drinks and treats such as 'Pumpkin Latte' and ideas for the festivities for 'Christmas.' This shift marks the desire for seasonal flavours and traditions during this time of year. Many look for decorations, recipes and gift ideas for the celebrations.
Track AI Overviews With SEMRush
SEMRush have recently launched the ability to track AI overviews in the organic research tool?
Previously, rank tracking was only possible within tools for queries that you have setup previously and was constrained to the logged in experience - we’ve now progressed greatly beyond this point.
Does your business need a foolproof SEO content strategy? Get in touch with our experts today!
Digital PR
Metrics to Measure Digital PR Success
Social Media Engagement: if users resonate with content, they are more likely to share the content to further increase the reach of the campaign
Curious how our PR team can collaborate with your brand or business to secure links in national publications? Reach out to us today, and let’s explore the potential opportunities and how we can help your business reach millions of readers through targeted and impactful stories. Connect with our PR team today!
Paid Search
Google Brings Negative keyword Exclusions to Performance Max
Google is launching campaign-level negative keywords in PMax by the end of 2024, giving brands more control over ad targeting.?
Advertisers will now have direct control over negative keyword exclusions without needing to rely on forms or our Google account manager. This means better alignment between your ads, brand, and audience preferences.
Campaign-level negative keywords in PMax will allow you to refine ad targeting by excluding specific search terms. This feature begins rolling out before the end of 2024.
4 Google Performance Max Updates: New Insights and Reporting
These updates help advertisers to fine-tune campaigns with greater accuracy, improving performance and maximising ad potential in competitive markets.
Google is Deprecating Enhanced CPC Building
In October the option to use eCPC on newly created Search and Display campaigns will be removed . Google then plans to convert all existing campaigns running on eCPC to Manual CPC.
eCPC is a semi-automated bidding strategy that automatically adjusts manually assigned CPC bids in the likelihood of a conversion. It increases bids for clicks more likely to lead to conversions and lowers them for clicks less likely to convert, while staying within advertisers’ set budget.?
By removing eCPC, Google is further pushing advertisers towards adopting full automation to redirect their optimisation efforts away from bid management. Leaving the option to use a fully manual bidding strategy, however, might be a strategy to make it even less appealing to advertisers to speed up that process.
What’s the best bid strategy?
A recent study by PPC tool Optmyzr analysed the impact of different bid strategies on performance across a range of campaigns. It shows how different bid strategies can achieve very different results. The study also found that all bidding strategies (even manual bidding) did much better when they met the 50+ conversion threshold.
Google Sunsets Auction Insights API?
From September 23rd Google stopped supporting Auction insights data via the API and Looker Studio.
This created challenges for advertisers who use looker studio to monitor competitor aggression.
There are however scripts which can help to extract this data such as the Mike Rhodes Auction Insights Script.
Are you worried about the effectiveness of your PPC campaigns? Get in touch with our PPC experts today and see how we can help!
Paid Social
Reddit Introduces AI-Powered Ad Creation Tools
Overview: Reddit launches new tools designed to improve ad creation for advertisers, particularly small businesses.
Key Features:?
Benefits:
Significance: Strengthens Reddit’s position in the advertising landscape by focusing on innovative solutions
TikTok Launches Search Ads
TikTok has now launched search ads in the US. You can now serve video? and image carousel assets to target users based upon their search behaviour using keyword targeting and negative keyword lists to target users. The feature is currently only available in the US.
The ads currently support traffic and conversion based objectives.
The ‘Goodbye Meta AI' Viral Instagram Hoax
The "Goodbye Meta AI" message, which claims to protect users from having their Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp accounts used for AI training, is showing up more often on timelines. It's been shared by celebrities like James McAvoy, Ashley Tisdale, and Tom Brady, as well as hundreds of thousands of others.
Why are people posting this?
Meta announced it will go ahead with controversial plans to use millions of UK Facebook and Instagram posts to train its artificial intelligence (AI) technology, a practice that falls foul of EU privacy laws. Many users, evidently, are equally unhappy, and appear to be posting the message in the belief it will assert their right to opt out.
Meta has said sharing the story does not count as a valid form of objection.
Want to make the most out of your Paid Social activity? Speak with our team today!
Klaviyo recently announced plans to include VAT within current charges. Klaviyo advertisers need to supply VAT numbers to ensure they are VAT exempt.
Marketplaces
Amazon Launch AI-based selling assistant - Project Amelia
Project Amelia offers sellers a comprehensive, AI-driven selling expert that is consistently accessible to deliver prompt answers, advice, and resources essential for their success. Initially launched in Beta for a select group of sellers in the United States, it is set to gradually expand to other countries later this year.
By simply asking a question to Project Amelia, users receive precise information and guidance, enabling them to manage their business more effectively and efficiently
Capabilities span three key areas:
Shopify ‘Buy With Prime’ Updated
Amazon Testing ‘Prime Air’ 1 Hour Drone Delivery
‘Prime Air’ same day, one-hour drone delivery will start testing later this year in Arizona and Italy.
Amazon plan to roll this out to select locations in the US, UK and Italy by the end of 2024.
The plan is to integrate drones into the Amazon delivery network, so customers will have traditional delivery vans, Flex delivery vehicles, and Prime Air drones leaving from the same building.
This will only be available for items under 2.2kg (5lbs).
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!
Data
Google Introduces A New Data Privacy Measure For Customer Match?
It is called ‘Confidential Matching’. According to Google, it will use “special software, and hardware called a trusted execution environment or TEE”, which keeps uploaded customer match data completely secure and confidential even from Google, unless there is a match.?
Information such as names, email addresses, phone numbers, etc. will remain encrypted and inaccessible by anyone, including Google itself.
This is now the default for any Customer Match data connections, and will be rolled out to Enhanced Conversions in the near future.
Stay ahead of the curve and make sure that your campaigns are compliant while maximising customer engagement. Contact us today to learn how we can help you adapt!
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.