Digital Marketing News - September 2023
In this month's digital marketing newsletter, we will be discussing the latest trends and updates in all things SEO, PPC, Paid Social and Data across the e-commerce space. For the latest updates in all things GA4 conversion to Beta-ing search themes, look out for our monthly newsletter where we will delve into the significance of digital marketing and its latest trends. AYKO is a leading Magneto and Shopify agency, specialising in E-commerce solutions as well as offering outstanding marketing practices to elevate your business.
SEO
Google confirms: quality is the foremost factor in search indexing
According to a recent discussion between John Mueller and Gary Illyes of Google’s Search Relations Team on their 'Search Off the Record ' podcast, quality plays a critical role in every aspect of search.
“Quality affects pretty much everything that the Search systems do,” stated Illeys. They have further suggested that Google will prioritise the pages to crawl by quality.
Users who had worries about their own sites were assured that they could improve their sites' quality, even if they already contained low-quality content. Recommended to remove any low-quality content as this can boost Google’s perception of the site which may influence how Google crawls and indexes the remaining pages.
Google is working to fix delayed search console indexing, enhancements & experience reports
Google has confirmed it is working on fixing the delayed Google Search Console reports. Many are delayed a couple of weeks when normally those reports are updated daily or within a few days of the current date.?
Previously, John Mueller of Google’s Search Relations Team said on X (Twitter) , "Yes, we're aware and working on it (and sometimes things are just a bit slow). I don't have an ETA at the moment though."
Bing Webmaster Tools to remove disavow links tool this October
Microsoft claim that their algorithms and artificial intelligence capabilities have improved to a degree where they no longer need advertisers to disavow bad links, and are able to differentiate between natural and unnatural links themselves.
Interestingly, not only has Microsoft beaten Google to launch the disavow tool initially, but they are also now beating Google in sunsetting the disavow tool.
PPC
Performance Max targeting updates
Google has been busy rolling out updates to its Performance Max campaigns in September.
These new features are:
Search Themes, as a new signal type, is meant to act similar to broad match keywords. Using search themes will help guide the campaign towards targeting customers who are interested in those products or offerings. As noted by Thomas Eccel, if these keywords are not specified by advertisers, Google will try to auto-generate them.
URL rules, which allow advertisers to specify which page feed URLs to use within the Performance Max asset group, similar to DSA ad groups.
New automated "Made for you" Performance Max audience signals
In addition to Beta-ing Search Themes, Google is now automating Performance Max audience signals, basing them on past users' interactions, their interests and habits.
According to Google , these follow best practices and are created to help advertisers reach their optimal audiences. As with other similar automated features, marketers are cautious to use it for anything other than inspiration.
Google is changing your conversion tracking on your behalf - or is it?
Google has been updating users’ Google ads conversion actions. For users who haven’t prepared this could be a shock.
Any advertisers which haven’t switched to GA4 conversion actions and have enabled the relevant settings in GA4 are now seeing Google ads changing their conversion actions to align with the GA4 roadmap.
领英推荐
Conversational experience in Google Ads aims to assist with ad creation
The new AI feature, currently only available in the UK and US on select accounts, allows advertisers to build responsive search ads by giving it prompts. By supplying the landing page URL, advertisers are able to guide the Google AI in a conversational manner to generate headlines, descriptions and even images, and re-iterate and modify suggestions with each new session.
According to Google , "Over the last few months, [they] have been testing the conversational experience with a small group of advertisers and have heard how it has helped them save time and inspire new ideas when creating campaigns".
AI-powered Keyword Planner is now being rolled out in the EU
Google can now automatically suggests which saved keywords could work best per campaign based on your existing account structure. You'll be able to review and accept or change suggestions which will save a lot of time
You can use URLs or keywords and the Keyword Planner auto-organizes those new keyword ideas into your existing account structure by analyzing existing keywords/ad groups/campaigns, match types and themes.
SOCIAL
Meta adds Benchmark Reports to its Ads Reporting tool
As reported by Bram Van der Hallen , Meta has added a new feature that allows advertisers get insights on how their ad sets are performing contextually against those of similar businesses.
Whilst this is based on the selected business category and not any hard data, the report can be useful in gauging the general quality of ad sets compared to competition.
X (fka Twitter) turns to Google Ad Manager to sell programmatic ad space?
X, formerly known as Twitter, is starting to receive programmatic ads from Google in a bid to boost its steep decline in revenue after Elon Musk’s acquisition and running of the social media platform.
X's revenue has seen a decline of 59% in the US alone , following Musk's takeover, which explains the platform's eagerness to work with Google.
According to the source at Google , the only ad inventory that will be available for advertisers on X is its main timeline.
This move may prove risky for Google, however, considering the sharp decline in content moderation practices on X since Musk's takeover.
DATA
Google launches Google Tag in GTM
The GTAG has been available for some time, but over the next few weeks, Google is migrating all GA4 configuration variables to the GTAG and encouraging GTM users to configure the GTAG with a new tag type in GTM called the Google tag.
Google has launched a new GA4 report that helps identify checkout issues
The new 'Checkout Journey' report in GA4 shows the number and percentage of users who have initiated checkout and completed the subsequent actions in the checkout funnel on users site or app.
This report will help users spot any bottlenecks in the checkout process.
In order to take advantage of it, the following ecommerce events must be implemented:
Link Tracking Protection in iOS 17
With the launch of iOS17, Apple has launched a new feature called Link Tracking Protection. With this feature, Apple will strip out link parameters on Apple Mail, Messages and Safari private browsing by default.
Typical Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) parameters such as source, medium, and campaign will not be affected by this update, as UTMs are not personal identifiers, but instead aggregate information on where traffic originates from.
Identifiers used by Google, such as GCLID, or FBCLID for Meta platforms, that are automatically generated are also expected to be stripped.
As we conclude this edition of our newsletter, we hope you've found valuable insights and inspiration for your digital marketing efforts. If you have any queries about any information you have learnt here today please don’t hesitate to get in touch with a member of the team. We welcome your feedback and questions. Don't hesitate to reach out to our team for any assistance or to share your success stories with us. Contact: [email protected]
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.