Greggs makes cheeky advertising decision, Facebook delays its political ads tool, Female voices favoured by under 35s and LinkedIn updating more of its Campaign Manager
As well as numerous Christmas campaigns launching over the last week, there have been changes to social media platforms, more research commissioned that could affect online advertisers and research that could change how you target audiences in videos and via podcasts. A popular sausage roll company also made headlines with a cheeky stunt to make the most of a famous Christmas window.
Here are six news stories from this week that could help you come up with some marketing campaign ideas and inform your future strategies, as well as keep you up-to-date on the digital industry.
UK government looking into online personalized pricing
The UK government is set to look into how personal data…
I've used the sensationalist headline to highlight the importance of tagging on the accuracy of tracking visitor volume and user experience, since this is potentially overlooked by many site owners. If the title was just about tagging methodology maybe you wouldn't be reading this!
This post summarises the implications of tagging method on
1. Monitoring and improving site page download speed (latency).
2. Selecting the correct position in a page to embed campaign tracking and web analytics tags.
The 20% figure for improvement in pageviews is based on new research on page download speeds (latency) by tagging solutions provider Tagman which compared tagging locations for two sites. The research found that moving the Google Analytics tag from the standard position at the bottom of the page to the less common position at the top of the page would increase page views by 20% since fewer people would bale out/bounce because of slow loading pages.
The page…
Google SEO tools
16 free Google Marketing tools - my compilation of the best tools from Google to improve your search engine marketing
Google published SEO Starter guide. Published on 13/11/2008, this is a useful introductory guide for non-SEO specialists such as web designers and marketers. There are no surprises about on-page optimisation; it covers the basics well. Also useful for advice about internal linking and information archicture (IA) but zero on what really matters - link-building.
Google releases SearchWiki. Launched 20th November 2008.
You will only see this if you are logged in with a Google account. Searchers can promote or demote a site for a particular search and can comment.
It caused a minor furore due to speculation that many people would comment negatively and promote sites. In the first month, usage has been limited.
You can see activity for your brand through using the "see all comments link" at the…
The Google Keyword Tool now offers estimates of numbers of searches - this is similar to what Overture used to offer - you can compare number of searches by customers (and marketers) on your brand and competitor brands or general keywords in a country so you know which to prioritise for SEO. It will also generate target keyphrases for your site or competitor sites from the "Website content" tab.
You may also be interested in my tutorial on using the keyword tool or the Official Google announcement
Web site benchmarking with Google Trends
Hitwise and Harvest Digital have an analysis on impact on search traffic of open brand bidding. Essentially it has increased paid search activity by 22% amongst the UK's top 100 brands - apparently they have been defending the threat. Brand hijacking has been limited, but Google will be pleased I imagine.
Pay Per Action Closes…
Main developmens in marketing using Google:
Category 5 Alert for all UK companies using Google Adwords.
Importance of Universal search
New Google Analytics Options
I have also noticed these new keyword analysis tips from Google and which complement my keyword analysis tool tutorial
Google also released their Google User Experience Guidelines principles which will be involved to anyone involved with web design from commissioning to implementation. This applies not only to the search experience but especially to the experience of Google Applications such as Gmail, Docs, etc.
Google market performance
Google also announced new figures as reported in my updated Google case study
The results show that despite discussion of falling paid click volume in the US, revenue has increased substantially mainly thanks to international revenue which for the first time accounts for more than half of Google revenue. It also shows the continued importance of revenue from the content…
Google Analytics - site benchmarking - compare your site to others in your category for volume and engagement.
Google secondary search box - implications for Adwords - a lot of retailers are angry about this - here's why and what you should consider.
Google Quality Score - landing page performance to be included - what you can do to advertise more cost-effectively given this upcoming change
Google Adwords demographic targeting - demographic targeting is available via the content network. You can also read the Adwords help on demographic targeting
…
