Google's BERT update, Twitter's political ad ban, Snapchat's new 'share to Snapchat' button, $65m of influencer campaigns reaching fake accounts, ACCC sues Google over location data, Facebook updates video ad metrics

The last week has been a fairly busy one in the marketing world and there have been plenty of updates to explore. The biggest of these is arguably Google's new BERT update, which is apparently the biggest update of the last five years. On top of this, Twitter is taking the step to ban all political advertising on the platform from November 22nd, despite Facebook deciding not to do the same. A large portion of the money spent on Instagram influencer campaigns is reportedly being wasted as posts continue to reach fake accounts. Google is being sued by an Australian regulator over claims it misled smartphone users over how their location was being used. Finally, Facebook has updated its video ad metrics to make…

If you have used JavaScript for your website, it is important to remember that it can thwart your intentions by preventing your site from getting indexed on Google

Just launched a dynamic website? Kudos to you! It could be your best sales move yet, presenting your best face to online prospects and convincing them to buy into your story. But if you have used JavaScript for your website, it is important to remember that it can thwart your intentions by preventing your site, or at least a part of it, from getting indexed on Google and other search engines, thus stopping it from appearing in the search results. How will your prospects visit your website if it’s nowhere in the search results? That’s why you need to ensure that your use of JavaScript isn’t impeding your SEO. But before you start asking how to do that,…

Creating a solid seasonal SEO strategy is key to leveraging the peak buying period to its full potential.

Seasonality can make or break an online business. Failure to get your business ready for the holiday season may result in lost customers, bad reputation and loss in online visibility. Creating a solid seasonal SEO strategy is key to leveraging the peak buying period to its full potential. [si_guide_block id="35519" title="Download our Individual Member Resource – Managing SEO playbook" description="With this SEO playbook, we have listed all the steps needed for a strategic review of your organic search marketing aimed at defining improvements to results."/] Here's how seasonality works in digital marketing and what you should do to optimize your site for the upcoming holiday season:

What is seasonality and why SEOs should care

Seasonality refers to regular and predictable trends recurring every calendar year. Different industries may be impacted by different seasonal trends but it is hard to…

SEO and UX are both vital to ensuring your site ranks and converts. Despite this, many sites make big mistakes with both SEO and UX that can have negative effects

A website can significantly boost a company’s popularity, bring new clients, and improve its ROI. At the same time, a low-quality website can cause the company to lose out on those aspects. The Plerdy team has prepared an overview of popular SEO and UX mistakes that can repel customers and have a knock-on effect in terms of revenue, as well as rankings.

SEO mistakes

Quality website optimization is one of the most important elements of content-marketing, With its potential to attract new users to the site and eventually level up the business, SEO remains in the spotlight of marketing professionals’ attention. [si_guide_block id="80207" title="Download our Free Resource – 10 business-limiting SEO mistakes" description="Our guide takes you through some of the big SEO mistakes…

Google cares about how visitors interact with the sites. Website safety and security influence user experience (UX) directly so Google cares about these things

Do you still believe that the search engines care only about keyword strategy? Keywords are not the only factor that influences the SEO of a site. You need to consider other facets of user safety and security while assessing the search engine optimization needs of your website. Google cares about how visitors interact with the sites, and website safety and security influence user experience (UX) directly so it makes sense that Google cares about these things. [si_guide_block id="5762" title="Download our Individual Member Resource – SEO gap analysis Excel spreadsheet" description="An SEO gap analysis helps you review your "market share of consumer searches" by comparing the number of searches performed for the keywords you are targeting against the actual number of visitors you get to your…

Semantic search is a data retrieval method where user intent and resources are represented in a semantic model. So what do you need to know about it?

Semantic search is not a new concept in the SEO industry but many digital marketers are still confused about what it is and what to do about it. What is semantic search (also referred to as "semantic SEO") and how can it help improve organic search visibility? Here's what digital marketers should know about semantic search. [si_guide_block id="5750" title="Download our Individual Member Resource – Successful SEO guide" description="If you get it right, SEO can be a fantastic, relatively low-cost way to drive quality visitors who want to do business with you to your site."/]

What is semantic search?

Semantic search is a data retrieval method where user intent and resources are represented in a semantic model, i.e. a hierarchy among concepts as well relationships (connectivity) among concepts and entities…

As a long-term marketing strategy, SEO can help drive organic traffic and steadily boost your site’s ranking in the SERPs

As an internet marketing technique, search engine optimization plays an important role in the growth of your online business. Not only does it help search engine robots to accurately index your web pages, but it also helps enhance user experience. Moreover, as a long-term marketing strategy, SEO can help drive organic traffic and steadily boost your site’s ranking in SERPs. Implementation of SEO, however, can be a challenge for newbie marketers. This is because SEO comprises of a wide range of on-page and off-page SEO factors. If you are unaware of what these are, you are bound to make silly SEO mistakes. This, in turn, can severely affect your site’s ranking as well as traffic and conversion. If you have noticed a sudden drop in your ranking and traffic,…

One of the fundamentals of your SEO strategy should be keyword research, for which you need a keyword tool. Here are seven of the best, plus three to help with YouTube SEO

SEO is a complex job. There are lots of things to do to get it right, including tags to optimize, backlinks to build, and so on. Yet you can make an argument that the most challenging part of the process is keyword research. Keyword research is the foundation of all successful content creation. Think of keywords as the poles upon which you pitch the tent of your content. Once you find the right keywords, you’ll be able to create content that ranks. [si_guide_block id="5762" title="Download our Individual Member Resource – SEO gap analysis Excel spreadsheet" description="An SEO gap analysis helps you review your "market share of consumer searches" by comparing the number of searches performed for the keywords you are targeting…

Integrating technical SEO within the development release cycle

Being a great online marketer also means being an excellent communicator and project manager. And search engines’ increased focus on content, usability and engagement means it’s more important than ever to integrate SEO with development, UX and editorial. This teamwork is never more important than during a development release, when one line of code can mean your search performance (and traffic, and sales) can fall through the floor, but the reality of a release cycle and the ideal are usually very different. Top-level management input, commercial requirements, the dev team’s internal processes/structures and issues that crop up during the work can all mean that budgets are squeezed, priorities are forgotten, timeframes are reduced and projects are side-tracked. [si_guide_block id="138423" title="Download our Individual Member Resource – Digital development brief" description="Creating campaign landing pages or make improvements to your existing campaigns using our dedicated development brief. By…

Global sports sponsorship grows as eyes turn to women's games, Instagram tests shoppable content feature for influencers, American and Aussie most-trusted brands are recognized, Google Keyword Planner updates and a turbulent week for Google shareholders

This week, we take a look at how the global sports sponsorship industry is forecast to grow significantly, with female sports taking a more central, and long overdue, role in this growth. There's also important news regarding Instagram's shoppable content feature, which is being tested for use by influencers for the very first time. Australian and American brands are also under the microscope as the most-trusted brands are recognized by consumers. Last but not least, we'll take a look at two pieces of Google-related news. We've got information regarding updates to the Keyword Planner, then there's the small matter of Google's market value sliding by $80bn.

Women's games contributing to global sports sponsorship growth

Many would argue that it has taken…