News and articles from the CLICKTRUST blog and from around the web that allows us to stay on top of our game. You might want to read them too.
CLICKTRUST Brainfood
2020 – a look back on a challenging year
– Fabian Van De Wiele
“Q1 2020 started with 5 new staff to onboard. We had just reorganised internally by creating three teams & installed a layer of middle management who needed coaching and clear communication. Then came corona sending us all back home. In the 2nd week of the lockdown the phone rang every day. By the end of that week, we had lost more than 50% of our projected revenue for the month of April and beyond and our pipeline was decimated.”
The use of hreflang and canonical tags
– Thomas De Coster
“If you have ever visited a website from the Benelux, Switzerland, or anywhere in Europe for that matter, you have probably been exposed to the use (or lack of use) of hreflang or canonical tags. Both serve to send signals to Google crawlers, but they do not have the same effect. Where one indicates which page is more relevant for your users depending on language and/or location, the other simplifies Google’s job by telling them which page to actually look at.”
Google Analytics 4 vs Universal Analytics: 12 Fundamental questions answered
– Julien Delbauve
“We took 12 real questions we received from clients/colleagues about the new GA4 that we answered with actionable insights.”
General: Data, Privacy & more
Why your content strategy needs both rank-worthy and link-worthy content in the mix
– Search Engine Land
“By focusing on both of these content buckets that complement each other, you can create an inbound marketing strategy that continues to strengthen over time and dramatically improve your organic growth.“
It’s Easy To Forget, But Tracking Does Not Equal Measurement
– AdExchanger
“Cookies are (finally) dying and Apple is single-handedly forcing privacy protocols in the mobile space, hobbling Facebook’s own attribution tools in the process. All of this is happening against a backdrop of privacy regulations and growing consumer awareness of the value of their data as the market urgently seeks alternatives for tracking ads across devices and consumer identities. But there’s one very important point that’s been lost in all of this turmoil: There are still ways to effectively measure marketing performance without relying on ad tracking.“
December 2020 Updates to Paid Media Platforms
– PPC Hero
“In this monthly post, we bring you the latest from all of the major platforms.”
The Top 10 AdExchanger Stories of 2020
– AdExchanger
“Despite a global pandemic, Google still managed to dominate the top three most trafficked AdExchanger stories in 2020.“
PPC 2020 in review: COVID leaves its mark on e-commerce and paid search
– Search Engine Land
“This year was largely defined by platforms introducing, fast-tracking or postponing new policies, features, campaign types and offerings in reaction to how consumers and, by extension, advertisers, were impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. In light of consumers shifting to e-commerce, Google, Facebook, and other major platforms altered course and expedited existing plans to meet businesses’ new needs.“
2020 Was All About Digital Identity – And Expect The Same In 2021
– AdExchanger
“The year started with Google answering the until-then theoretical question of what might happen to third-party cookies at some unknown point in the distant future. In July, Apple made a similar move with the announcement that its proprietary mobile device ID, the IDFA, would soon require an opt-in. Both of these moves triggered tectonic shifts for advertisers, publishers and the ad tech companies that partner with them on monetization, user acquisition, measurement and attribution.“
Profit per Click: What It Is & Why You Should Track It
– Search Engine Journal
“While it’s nice to understand how much revenue a given campaign or keyword is driving for the organization, I’ve worked with plenty of organizations with huge revenue numbers that collapsed faster than Anakin Skywalker in “Revenge of the Sith”. The issue is that even the best of the metrics referenced above (likely Revenue Per Click & Conversion Rate, but arguments can be made for the relative import of all of them) falls well short of what’s required for creating a robust, defensible evaluation of any marketing program or campaign.“
Google: Organic, Ads & Analytics
Google algorithm updates 2020 in review: Core updates, passage indexing and page experience
– Search Engine Land
“From core updates, to machine learning efforts with BERT, passage indexing (or is it passage ranking?), the upcoming Google Page Experience update and many unconfirmed changes — we would not call 2020 as a slow year for Google search algorithms.“
Google accused of colluding with Facebook and abusing monopoly power in new lawsuit
– Search Engine Land
“Extracting fees from publishers, advertisers, and as the middleman. The complaint claims that the fundamental change in Google’s advertising business came in 2007, when it acquired DoubleClick, giving the company access to DoubleClick’s ad management software and its base of web publishers, advertisers and ad agencies.”
RSAs vs ETAs, how, when, and why PPC experts use them
– Search Engine Land
“RSAs are capable of being great ads and they deserve a chance in any account. They’re not a magic wand for ad optimization and still require human optimization. And, to do that well, we are hoping Google will expose more data about RSAs so all of us, a group of motivated PPC pros, can roll up our sleeves and work our own magic on RSAs like we have for years on ETAs.”
Where Google is placing its bets in 2021
– Search Engine Land
“Even though Google reported its first-ever ad revenue drop because of COVID-19, the company’s business has rebounded sharply even as the Justice Department hits the company with a massive anti-trust lawsuit. You can never count out Google. In fact, Google will emerge stronger than ever in 2021 because of its scale, leadership, and ingenuity. Here’s what we can expect Google to do.”
Google Search Console brings back request indexing tool
– Search Engine Land
“Google has reenabled the request indexing tool, within the URL Inspection tool in Google Search Console.“
3 Things You Must Know About SEO in 2021
– Search Engine Journal
“2020 showed that change can happen very quickly, and you need to be agile as an SEO professional to adjust your strategy swiftly to adapt to new search behavior, consumer environments, and potential restrictions.“
Social: Facebook, Instagram & others
How to Use Your Content Marketing to Seed Your Lookalike Audiences
– Search Engine Journal
“Content is a phenomenal tool that can help you in so many unique ways. All you have to do is create the right message and show it to the right people and at the right time. If you do so, you can use your content marketing efforts to seed your Facebook Lookalike Audiences and keep getting new customers.”
Facebook’s Conversion API Could Help Safeguard It Against IDFA And Cookie Fallout
– AdExchanger
“Facebook evolved what used to be called its Server-to-Server API into the Conversion API that lets ad buyers send offline and web events from their server directly to Facebook so they can track what people do across multiple devices after they click on a Facebook ad without having to rely on cookies or browser-based pixels.”
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