seo

Innovation In Google During The Tough Times Of COVID

While most of the brands are struggling to survive during the tough times of pandemic, Google has set its goals right for the whole year. It is innovating itself without any trouble. Every month Google targets to enhance itself, according to the growing demand of the society. Google makes sure, that it fulfills the need of its users by providing them with exactly what they desire.

Recently, Google introduced two new features for its search portals. One of the features is designed, and dedicated to the Black community. The feature will help in the upliftment of the community in society and will aim to end the injustice against them.
Due to the rise of anger in the community against the centuries-long injustice experienced by the community, several brands came forward to show their support towards the community. Google was amongst them.

#BlackLivesMatter!

To fulfill his promise, the CEO at Google, Sundar Pichai recently added a feature to the map and Google search listing.

This feature is launched to empower the Black community. The feature will highlight businesses owned by the Black community helping them grow. However, only those members can avail of the benefit whose business has verified profiles in the US. Also, the business must be owned by a member of the black community.

Those businesses highlighted under this feature will be marked by an image(as shown below). The symbol will signify that the business is owned by a member of the Black community.

It is said that the step was taken to provide a financial boost to the community. It is a foreseen step to finally end the orthodox discrimination towards the community. Google is also partnering with U.S. Black Chambers, inc. To provide better features like Analytics helping the businesses groom and blossom.

In a statement regarding this following statement was issued by Google:

“As part of our $300 million commitment to support under-represented entrepreneurs, we’re integrating the attribute into the digital skills training programs we offer Black business owners through Grow with Google Digital Coaches. And through Google for Startups Accelerator for Black Founders, we’re starting our work with the first cohort of 12 startups.”

Google is keen to develop the feature even more and is seeking ideas internally. According to the management, they have already received more than 500 creative ideas to get this model to develop more brilliantly.

The company is also working on better and much strict “Policies against hate and harassment”

“About this ad”- More power to the user!

With a more transparent approach towards their users, Google has launched a new feature popularly known as “About this ad”.

To implement this feature Google will be launching new tools. It will help the users gain information about the advertisement they are receiving. It will help enhance security and will increase user privacy on the digital platform.

According to Google spokesperson, the vision is designed for a “thriving internet where people around the world can continue to access ad-supported content, while also feeling confident that their data is protected”.

“But in order to get there, we must increase transparency into how digital advertising works, offer users additional controls, and ensure that people’s choices about the use of their data are respected not worked around or ignored.”

Read More: Google Ends All Gossips: Revealed Fee Structure For Advertisement Tools

For a long time now, tech giants like Google are have faced a lot of criticism. Most of those were linked to their explicit behavior when it comes to money and user privacy. After being criticized and called upon several times by different government authorities for blind approach in the business during the usage of advertisers’ money, Google has finally decided to be more transparent with its business policies and proposals.

Therefore, Google shared a list of pricing for its tools used by advertisers for the advertisement. It was a huge step by Google, since before this release, advertisers were kept in the dark about the spent of their share of the money, and the profit earned by Google.

The tools for which Google revealed the prices include, DV360, Google Ads, ad manager, and its publisher tech.

The revealed prices are as follows:

These prices were revealed by Google in a series of articles and blog posts.

The prices are in the ratio of percentage for a $1 amount spent by an advertiser on an advertisement, divided between the publisher and Google.

• Google tech: Publishers – 69%, Google – 31%
• DV360: Publisher – 87%, Google – 13%
• Ad Manager: Publisher – 82%, Google – 18%
• Google Ads: Publisher – 86%, Google – 14%
• Ad sense by Google: 68% share taken by Google of the total spent by the advertiser.

Google has never been so transparent in regards to its prices, the sources say that this new transparent face of Google is due to the ongoing legal hearing conducted by the state attorney general and the Department of Justice.

Read More: Google Updated Its Demand-Side Platform With DV360!

Innovation has always been the motto of the company. To make sure that the advertisers at Google are equipped with the best tools available in the market, it recently launched its new self-service toolkit known as Display & Video 360.

The tool is launched to change the landscape of the advertisement. Display &Video 360 is a gift to its advertisers by Google.

Earlier, advertisers used the tools to make a hypothetical projection while running an online marketing campaign. The most crucial question that bothered the advertisers was the amount of audience that they will reach with the campaign. To make sure it’s no more a hit and try show for the advertisers, Google launched DV360.

With the DV360, the advertisers can now create a new campaign and check its reach to the audience as the tool provides a duplicate view of the campaign. The duplicate view will help the advertisers view the exact or say a more accurate number of audiences that they will reach with the campaign. Hence, no more blind bets!

The tool has better forecasting capabilities, giving the advertisers a glimpse of the future for their campaign. It is also a better solution for the media planners as it provides them with a large proportion of benefits as better access to the tool as they always have a larger role to play.

The most crucial answer answered with the tool is, “how many unique people can I expect to reach with my overall campaign across any open auction display and video inventory as well as YouTube?”

According to Anudeep Pedditi, Programmatic Manager, OMD NZ:

“Once we commit to a reach objective, neither underachieving nor overachieving is an option. Display & Video 360 gives media planners the accuracy they need to effectively plan across all our programmatic campaigns.”

The Tools main aim is to provide the following features to its advertisers:

• • • • Focus

      • Options For Buying

      • Optimization And Reporting

      • Security

      • Conclusion

Read More: How Google’s Page Experience Will Change the Face of SEO in 2021

Google will launch a new algorithm for its page experience and design. The new model will be based on user experience.

The new algorithm will surely affect SEO and web traffic. Therefore, to make sure that the advertisers are not affected by the changes, Google has announced that they will apply the changes in 2021. They have promised to inform upfront, at least six months beforehand.

An early reminder will help advertisers to prepare themselves for the changes.

However, Google made it clear that the new algorithm will be even stricter in ranking the web pages. If the user experience of a web-page is poor, Google will not rank the page on to the top list.

Google has also published a detailed document dedicated to the page experience criteria.

The new algorithm will consist of some core vital features. This feature includes the following:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures the loading performance of your webpage.
• First Input Delay(FID): Measures the user interaction with the page.
• Cumulative layout Shift: Checks the stability factors of your webpage.

The Accelerated Mobile version (AMP) will also play a major role in the ranking of your page, as will be a metrics for the page experience.

Also, good content will always play a lead role in the page ranking.

As per a statement:

“While all of the components of page experience are important, we will prioritize pages with the best information overall, even if some aspects of page experience are subpar.

A good page experience doesn’t override having great, relevant content. However, in cases where there are multiple pages that have similar content, page experience becomes much more important for visibility in Search.”

Hence, entrepreneurs, startups, and businesses should be well prepared for the new changes.

Read More: Every 2020 Google SERP Feature Explained: A Visual Guide

Have you ever imagine the amount of traffic Google experience in a minute, month, or year?

Well, here are some fun facts, every second there is an approximate of 63,000 search queries entered on Google search.

Also, near to 2 trillion searches are conducted every year!

Isn’t it amazing? However, you might ask, why does it matter?

Let us understand!

Google holds an approximate 72% market share of search engines. To make sure that your webpage is listed on the top of the list of Google search results you must have an understanding of Google SERP (Search Engine Result Page).

What is SERP? And, what all it provides to the advertisers on Google?

The Search Engine Result Page of Google has gone through a lot of changes according to the user view. It has become much more dynamic, relevant, personalized, and helpful.

Now the search engine of Google is equipped with several enhancements that use structured data. The search page consists of visual enhancement, better index, and optimization for the website. You must be aware of all these changes if you are planning for a better organic ranking for your website.

Here is the new enhancement for the search page of Google:

• Direct answer Box
• Rich Snippet
• Rich cards
• Knowledge Graphs
• Knowledge Panels
• Local Pack
• People also ask
• Image Pack
• Site Links
• Twitter
• Newsbox

You must be equipped with the knowledge of these for better results in organic ranking.

Read More: Rejoice Small Retailers: Selling Products is Now Free On Google Shopping

MSME’s got adversely affected due to the widespread of COVID-19. Several small and medium scale businesses have lost their source of income due to the sudden breakthrough of this epidemic. 

Therefore to make sure that these businesses sustain the effects of the crisis, Google is allowing small retailers to list their products for free on Google Shopping.

Explaining this decision, Bill Ready, President of Commerce at Google cites the fact that it is difficult for struggling businesses to pay for Google shopping listings at this time.

“And as consumers increasingly shop online, they’re searching not just for essentials but also things like toys, apparel, and home goods.

While this presents an opportunity for struggling businesses to reconnect with consumers, many cannot afford to do so at scale.”

Earlier, Google charged its customers as Pay per click (PPC). It can also be seen as a tactic by Google to compete with Amazon in the market of e-commerce.

Read More: Privacy Sandbox By Google Shows Backdoor To The Third-Party Cookies.

Two years ago, Google announced that it will discontinue the usage of third-party cookies in its browser, which is Google Chrome. Since the announcement, several speculations surfaced, to understand its effects on internet traffic and advertisement. However, Google seems determined about the elimination, and this year Google announced “Privacy Sandbox” a step towards the replacement of third-party cookies.

It is developed to provide a secure browsing experience to its user.

According to a spoke person from Google, “This is an early-stage concept, and we don’t have more details to share right now, We plan to publish updates and progress in GitHub as part of the process.” 

The concept uses a new algorithm designed by performing “Bit Request Signal Experiment”.

Privacy Sandbox was launched in August. The idea was to innovate ad recurrence and behavioral advertising. It aimed to help them work on the web without using third-party cookies. A mega event was organized, 163 giant tech organizations like Apple, Facebook, Axel Springer, The Washington Post, Criteo, The Trade Desk, and even Google participated. All are requested to share their views via. World Wide Web Consortium or GitHub to help the project succeed. 

However, according to the Google developers, it is still in its initial stage and there is a lot of work that is needed to be done in this field.

Read More: Google pledges $800 million to coronavirus relief, including Ad credits

Google CEO Sundar Pichai explained:

“As the coronavirus outbreak continues to worsen around the world, it’s taking a devastating toll on lives and communities. To help address some of these challenges, today we’re announcing a new $800+ million commitment to support small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), health organizations and governments, and health workers on the frontline of this global pandemic.”

The commitment includes:

• WHO and other health organizations will get $250 million for advertisement.
• MSME’s and NGO’s will get $200 million. 
• An additional $15 million in cash will be granted by Google.org to non-profits to bridge the gap between SMB’s.
• Those small businesses that are already active for a year with Google advertisement will get the help of a total of $340 million in Google ad. They will receive the credit in their accounts and can spend it by the end of 2020.
• The academic and research institutions in the field of COVID research will get $20 million.
• Financial support will be provided to the organizations to increase the production capacity for life-saving equipment.

However, not everything went great for Google during this tough time of COVID:

Read More: Google Cuts Marketing Budgets by 50%, Freezes Hiring.

Key Points

• Budget cuts and hiring freezes across marketing and across Google.

• For the second half of 2020, Google is cutting its marketing budget to 50%.

• The cut is due to the reduced expenditure on advertisement by the brands during the time of the crisis.

• The development comes in less than a week from where Google is scheduled to discuss Q1 2020 results on 28th April.

According to a statement released by email: 

“There are budget cuts and hiring freezes happening across marketing and across Google…We, along with the rest of marketing, have been asked to cut our budget by about half for H2.”

A company spokesperson said in an emailed statement to CNBC,

“As we outlined last week, we are re-evaluating the pace of our investment plans for the remainder of 2020 and will focus on a select number of important marketing efforts….We continue to have a robust marketing budget, particularly in digital, in many business areas.”

…we continue to invest, but will be recalibrating the focus and pace of our investments in areas like data centers and machines, and non-business essential marketing and travel.”

Read More: Google Withhold Programmatic Data, Advertisers Pulls Back Ad Spend

As quoted by Digiday, the Head of Display at the U.S based retailer said,

“Google’s ad exchange didn’t make the list primarily because they’re not willing to give us any transparency or data around not only their take rates on our media sped but also anything we could already pull from our demand-side platform.”

“We’re seeing Google’s ad exchange become slightly less of the total pie,” said Jay Friedman, president at programmatic agency Goodway Group to DigiDay.

”I don’t have a percentage but it’s less but not significant.”, he further added.

The advertisers registered their doubts and raised concerns regarding the non-transparent behavior of Google. However, this must have been resolved after the release of the price list for its advertising tools by Google.

Google Is All Prepared To Compete with Amazon In E-commerce Market.

Google is all set to reveal its new initiative to fight the dominant Amazon in the e-commerce business.

After a series of serious attempts made by Google, to end the monopoly of Amazon in prior consecutive years, that is in 2013, 2014, 2017, and 2019. 2020 seems to be severely crucial as more customers are turning towards the online market every day, due to the COVID virus spread across the world.

Google announcement was a clear indication in the direction of its plans to spread its roots in the online market. Google has declared to charge lesser sales commission from the sellers on its platform and will also let third-party sellers like Shopify to use its platform.

Currently, the commission rates of Google’s online sales platform range from 5 percent to 15 percent depending on the category of the product.

Google might dominate the field of knowledge and information when trying to search for information. But, when it comes to searching and buying goods online, Amazon is the first choice of consumers. Due to consumers’ first choice as e-commerce, Amazon is spreading its wings in the advertisement market, which is a clear threat to Google’s core source of earning.

Google has taken several hits during these years while competing with Amazon. In a seven-year-long battle with Amazon, Google introduced several products to compete with Amazon. However, none of them succeeded. One such attempt at Google was Google Shopping Express! The service launched in 2013, offered one-day delivery for groceries. The users can take an annual membership for $95 and can avail of faster service. However, Google ended up shutting down the project.

After its failed attempts with Google Shopping Express, Google decided to convert it into Google online Mall. The Google online Mall included retailers like Best Buy and Target. In 2017, Google partnered with Walmart. This deal was supposed to bring many fortunes to the Google online market, but unfortunately, the partnership ended too soon.

However, never giving up Google, added a buy button to its search engine. The online-button allowed the users to directly purchase the search engine, with the help of their credit and debit cards.

For an effective competition strategy with Amazon, Google brought in Bill Ready. Bill Ready was a former executive at PayPal.

The announcement in April came as a piece of happy news for the retailers. Now, retailers can list their products for free on Google online market listing. However, early the sellers had to buy the ads to get their products listed with Google. By this step, Google is expecting to attract huge audiences!

Mr. Ready, in an interview, described the position of E-commerce across the world. According to him, there is a wide range of audiences who are shopping online for their needs. Although, there is just a handful of platforms entertaining all of them.

“We want to make sure selling online is easy and inexpensive,” said Mr Ready. Follow

According to Google spokesperson, the changes will be visible to the people in the USA. Those who are already listing products on Amazon can use the same listing on Google, that is, without making any changes to the format.

The aim of Google is to take over Amazon, or at least, for the time being, be the biggest competitor. However is a 20 minutes long conference, Mr. Reddy shy out to take the name of their competitor, even for once.

Even when asked the question to name the largest rain forest in South America, Mr. Ready decided to dodge the question.

Although, he stated:

“Consumers benefit from a diverse and thriving ecosystem of sellers.” Adding that, “There is no one player that can serve all the needs of consumers.”

How Google’s Page Experience Will Change the Face of SEO in 2021

Google announced a new ranking algorithm -Page Experience- designed to evaluate web pages based on the user’s experience.

Will this impact my traffic and SEO? Yes.

But the good news is — it will be rolled out in 2021. Google said it will provide six months’ notice beforehand. So, there is ample time to prepare for it.

What is Page Experience?

Page Experience measures aspects of how a user perceives the experience of interacting with a web page. Simply, it means if Google thinks that the user experience is poor on your pages, it may not rank those pages as highly as of now.

Here is an example that Google doesn’t want users to experience.

In the above GIF shared by Google, the user was trying to click on “No, go back “ but because of an install bar pop up, it pushed the whole page down and led the user to click on “Yes, place my order” accidentally.

The purpose of this Google Page Experience update is to ensure that the sites that rank on top are not creating experiences that users hate. This shift is a step to a big change in SEO.

Google has a detailed developer document on the page experience criteria. The new Page Experience update uses the existing Google ranking factors -page speed, mobile-friendly, safe browsing, HTTPS, presence of intrusive ads, and now also layout shifts Google is refining metrics around speed and usability and these refinements are under Core Web Vital.

What are the core web vital? 

They include real-world, user-centered metrics, that give scores on aspects of pages such as load time, interactivity, and the stability of content as it loads.

The core web vitals and existing Google ranking factors make the new Page Experience algorithm.

 

 

These are the core web vitals factors:

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): Measures the Loading performance and should occur within 2.5 seconds of when the page starts loading.

• First Input Delay (FID): Measures the user’s interactivity with the page and pages should have an FID of less than 100 milliseconds.

• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Measures visual stability of a page which means pages don’t have jumping buttons. The page should maintain a CLS of less than 0.1. 

Additionally, a web page should not contain malicious or deceptive content, mobile-friendly, content easily available to users, and should be servers over HTTPS.

Preparation for this update

Google is adapting its algorithm to closely align with its aim of showing the sites first that the user likes. According to Google, changes will not happen before early next year, so no immediate action is needed.

This update will use Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), page experience metrics for scoring purposes if you have an AMP version of your page.

Good content will still be the most important factor despite a poor page experience.

“While all of the components of page experience are important, we will prioritize pages with the best information overall, even if some aspects of page experience are subpar.

A good page experience doesn’t override having great, relevant content. However, in cases where there are multiple pages that have similar content, page experience becomes much more important for visibility in Search.”

The future will say how big will this update be, till then start preparing for it as sites will get better with this update.

Roundtable with Industry experts

Here are the tweets from the roundtable that Google had with industry folks – Glenn Gabe and Aleyda Solis:

First, the update will be page-level like some other algos (https, mobile-friendly, etc.) But if there are many pages that have the same issues, they can all be impacted. Hard to say yet how much impact that would be. Could be lightweight, maybe stronger. But again, page-level. pic.twitter.com/4yiu49vKp7

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) May 28, 2020

The Page Experience update will combine the new core web vitals with previous factors like mobile-friendly, https, mobile-popup algo, etc. I asked if those would be changing strength-wise. They didn't have anything to share about that. My guess is no, but anything is possible. pic.twitter.com/2EG4uXfhDa

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) May 28, 2020

If a new core web vital is added in the future, it should not shock anyone. It won't be out of the blue. The metric will be written about, talked about, documented, etc. pic.twitter.com/GjA9okmmYb

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) May 28, 2020

If a page has an AMP alternate that is shown to the user, then Google will take the AMP page into consideration to assess the page experience signal, since it’s the one that the users see.

…

— Aleyda Solis 🇺🇦 (@aleyda) May 28, 2020

…

* The signals taken into consideration for "page experience" will evolve and be updated yearly.

* And a confirmation: The new Page Experience as ranking signal won't be happening until next year, so there's enough time to improve things if there's the need 🙂

— Aleyda Solis 🇺🇦 (@aleyda) May 28, 2020

Learn More: Every 2020 Google SERP Feature Explained: A Visual Guide

Digital Advertising v/s Digital Marketing: Know the Difference.

In this digital age, marketing is no more a choice but a prerequisite for businesses who are leaving no stone unturned to get their message across to the customers effectively and powerfully.

Then the question arises, in order to put forward the message in the right way to the right people, which one to go for? 

Marketing or Advertising?

Well, aren’t they both the same?  The answer is ‘No’.

There is a thin line of difference between them. This article will help you to understand it and justify the answer to the above question.

Know the basics-

Digital Advertising:

It is also called online advertising, web advertising or internet advertising

Digital advertising is defined as a form of marketing or advertising where businesses leverage internet technologies to deliver their promotional advertisements to customers.

In simple words, if you see an ad on the internet, it is called digital advertising.

There are three types of digital advertising:

1. Pay-per-click (PPC) ads: (Adwords search ads, bing ads, etc)

For example, the ads you see in search results.

2. Display ads : (Banners, video, mobile, pop-ups, etc)

For example, this ad by eBay is promoting its products. eBay is the biggest player in banner advertising and invests a lot of money in display advertising.

3. Social ads: (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc)

For example, A ‘suggested post’ on Facebook is a social ad.

Digital Marketing:

Digital Marketing includes all the marketing efforts using the internet or digital technologies. Businesses leverage digital channels like emails, search engines, websites, social media, blog posts, logos, and everything else that is helpful in online promotion and connect with current and prospective customers.

There are six types of digital marketing:

1. Search engine optimization (SEO)
2. Social Media Marketing (SMM)
3. Content Marketing
4. Email and Mobile Marketing
5. Affiliate Marketing
6. Online advertising

The following infographic explains digital marketing in detail:

Now that we know the key processes in each segment, let’s look at the major differences –

• Digital Advertising is a part of Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing is a broader term whereas digital advertising is a part of it. This raises a question,

Is digital advertising necessary for your business?

Not really. Your business can survive without digital advertising. 

Why and How?

The definitions make it clear that digital advertising is a subset of digital marketing. When you start with a business idea, from that very moment you are involved in marketing and not advertising.

Product creation, Product Pricing, Packaging, Promotion, market segmentation, target audience are all a part of your business strategy and marketing mix.

 

Digital advertising is part of the marketing mix. It comes into play when you use the internet to promote your product or service or to generate traffic. However, you can also choose from other tactics – a search engine, content management, social media, email marketing, etc to generate traffic.

It is not necessary to use digital advertising at the promotion stage to reach your target audience. 

For instance, DemandBase in one of the campaigns used white papers, infographics, Slideshare, and webinars to generate new leads. This helped the company to generate over $1 million in new revenue through content marketing resulting in 1700 new leads and connect with 125 webinar viewers.

You can run your business without digital advertising but not digital marketing. The purpose of all marketing techniques is to generate leads and generate traffic and so you can choose any tactic – SEO or PPC or both whichever helps to grow your business.

• Digital Advertising is an activity while digital marketing is a process: 

Digital marketing helps to build a strategy to market your business in the following way:

• Define your target audience,
• Ways to attract, engage, convert and retain the customers, 
• Evaluate existing and new digital channels like SEO, PPC, content marketing, etc
• Analysis and monitoring

In broader terms, digital marketing is a process that runs your entire business on the internet and it begins from the moment you start with the business idea.

The digital marketing process is continuous. It begins with the research phase and continues until the refining stage and the data from the refining stage is used again for the research to develop a new marketing strategy. It is a perpetual and never-ending process.

Digital advertising is an activity in the digital marketing process. It fits at Step 6: Promote- the purpose is to promote your primary digital identities (blog, website, app, product or anything else) via ads to relevant people in order to generate traffic. To do this, a digital advertiser will need inputs from a digital marketer on what to promote, who to promote, advertising budget, etc. An advertiser will accordingly create an ad to generate traffic.

• Digital advertising is tactics while digital marketing is strategic

A strategy is a long term and complex plan which involves decision-making at various levels while a tactic is a short-term plan or means to achieve the desired result. 

Digital advertising is tactical in nature as the promotion of a particular product or an offer to the target audience is momentary and short term. Subsequently, it can be easily replicated by competitors.

For instance, Facebook ads are short-lived. You might run an ad on Facebook to promote your product or an offer during Easter. Once you achieve the goal from the campaign, you will discontinue it and move on with another ad campaign or platform.

Whereas, digital marketing is strategic in nature that involves long term planning, projections, defined goals and objectives, budgets and resources to achieve the objectives.

For instance, Slack is a collaboration tool that allows teams to share files and communicate easily. They had an amazing rise at the launch with 15000 users in 2014 to over 500,000 in less than a year, and currently holds nearly one and a half millions of which are paid accounts.

Their strategy was clear from day one – focusing on the customer experience. They believe in selling solutions and not products. The company acknowledges to 8000 help desk tickets and up to 10,000 tweets every month.

This is what digital marketing plan does versus a digital advertising campaign that shows results instantly.

A digital ad campaign if fails will not impact the business overall but if digital marketing campaign fails it will affect the running of the business immensely.

• Digital advertising promotes the brand while digital marketing develops the brand image.

Digital Advertising promotes a brand, product or services. A compelling ad engages the customers, generates leads and creates brand awareness.

For instance, Typeform, a survey software company offers a freemium option with a condition that customers should include a thank-you page that includes its logo and message. It is a win-win situation that helps customers get to know the product for free and the brand gets free advertising. 

 

Digital marketing builds a brand and brand image with a strategy in place. You plan the logo, design, taglines for your brand. You will develop a strategy on how your brand will be perceived by the target audience and what message your brand will convey to the target audience. It is a long term planning to build a robust brand image based on values and ethics that remain etched in the minds of the consumers.

• Digital Advertising is sales centred while digital marketing is audience psychology centred.

Digital marketing is not always sales-driven. The ultimate goal is to increase your ROI and sales but along with building a relationship with the target audience.

Let’s say you write a blog and publish it not only to increase traffic and revenue but build a relationship with your readers. This is what digital marketing does, it is based on audience psychology. To understand your target audience, their needs, and wants, it is essential to know audience psychology.

On the contrary, digital advertising focuses on a specific segment of the target audience that can be reached via ads. For instance, if you pay $50 for a $5 CPM slot, you are content as long as you get your 5000 impressions. In digital advertising, you are not much concerned about who sees it as long as the ad is performing and reaches out to the people.

Conclusion-

After reading this article, you may now have a clear idea about digital marketing and digital advertising. They are not the same and has an individual role to play.  Let’s have a short recap to have no doubts in mind.

	Digital Marketing	Digital Advertising
	If you see any form of marketing online, it is digital marketing.	If you see an ad on the internet, it is called digital advertising.
	There are six types of digital marketing: i) Search engine optimization (SEO) ii)) Social Media Marketing (SMM) iii) Content Marketing iv) Email and Mobile Marketing v) Affiliate Marketing vi) Online advertising	There are three types of digital advertising: i)   Pay-per-click (PPC) ads ii)  Display ads iii) Social ads
	Digital Marketing is a broader term and it starts from the moment you share a business idea. The marketing mix comes into place.	Digital Advertising is a subset of Digital Marketing. It is one part of the marketing mix.
	Digital marketing is a process.	Digital Advertising is an activity in the process.
	Digital marketing is strategic in nature.it involves long term plans and decision-making.	Digital Advertising is tactical in nature. Tactics involve a short-term plan and means to achieve the desired goals.
	Digital Marketing builds brand and brand image. A well-defined plan and strategy help to build a brand from a long term point of view.	Digital Advertising creates brand awareness. It generates traffic and promotes a brand or a little push to sales.
	Digital Marketing has a large number of tools and techniques to get their business to customers like blogs, videos, whitepaper, infographic, content management, website and more	Digital Advertising is a tool in the Digital marketing toolbox.
	Digital Marketing is based on audience psychology. It understands the target audience and creates a buyer persona.	Digital Advertising is more sales-driven and focuses on a particular segment of the target audience that can be reached through ads.

 

Do You Really Need To Blog To Get Rank #1 On Search Engines?

 

Many business owners quiver at the idea of blogging. “Do we really need to have a blog?” is the most obvious question. The answer is “YES”. It is the most efficient way to boost your SEO rankings. In this article, I aim to explain to you in detail the importance of blogging for SEO and how it makes your site favorable for Google to rank and increase your organic traffic.

You may have a million reasons to blog, some of them include building trust among the followers, positioning yourself as an experienced expert, and sharing news or know-how with your company’s followers.

Six Reasons Blogging is important for SEO

1. Provides fresh content:
Google tends to favor websites with a lot of ‘high-quality content’. You don’t change the pages on your websites often, hence writing a blog comes in the picture. Google loves fresh content whether you update your blog every day or every week. The highlighting point is the quality of the content which is the most important factor. Quantity of articles with low quality will not help or contribute to rankings. Focus on creating high-quality articles regularly and ensure you are optimizing each article for different keywords. Avoid writing articles with the same keyword as it competes with each other and limits your keyword ranking opportunities. Google doesn’t deliver outdated information to the searchers but regularly updated and fresh content sends signals to them that the site is working. It also gives search engine algorithms reasons to index your website more often. A Hubspot study reveals more often a company writes articles, more organic search traffic it receives.

2. Helps to implement long-tail keywords:
Keywords don’t hold the same weightage that they once did. Many people start SEO wanting to aim for the most relevant keywords for their business. For example, if you are selling ‘camping gadgets’ and show up on page one for the search ‘camping gadgets’.Unless you are the biggest brand for camping gadgets, you will find it difficult landing a top spot for the search. SEO is competitive and the best bet for the brands is to look for longer, specific keywords related to the business and try to rank those. These are called long-tail keywords. Blog posts on the website are an excellent way to use long-tail keywords.

For instance, a local store might be trying to rank the keyword ‘camping gadgets’ but also aiming to rank long-tail keyword ‘Gadgets for car camping’. This gives them a chance to write a blog post on ‘ Types of gadgets needed for car camping’ and link it to their product using the long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are extremely important for SEO strategy and studies suggest that 50 per cent of the searches are four words or longer. From the above example, we understand creating blog articles allows the site to rank many keywords. The traffic opportunity is more from these topics than on page three or four for using more popular terms. 

3. Google is a ‘Topical Match Engine’
Google is no longer looking for a large number of pages but for sites who are a book of knowledge on their topics. They have changed their algorithms and now understand the context of the whole topic, being a topical match engine versus a simple keyword match engine. This shows that having a single page or article with a single keyword around the topic is not sufficient for your site. You need to represent the topic more comprehensively to appear in Google search results.

Blogging provides an outstanding opportunity to demonstrate your thoughts and in-depth knowledge about a topic to your readers. Writing multiple articles covering different aspects of a subject and giving detailed insights about that topic shows Google that your site is worthy to come up in the search results for that topic. This gives a boost to the rankings of competitive content on your site.

4. Opportunities for backlinks:
A link for a link. A prominent way to get those links and increase the authority of your domain is by blogging. Look out for relevant blogs to link to your blog posts and they may provide a link to your website on theirs. These links have a direct effect on your rankings and help generate traffic to your website as well as other company’s site.

However, it is important to note that the process of gaining inbound links should be done naturally. If the website linked to your blogs or site has no relevance with your industry then it will violate Google’s terms of services and can lead to a high penalty situation.

Therefore, produce high-quality content often to earn inbound links organically and build a strong following on social media to share articles each time. Blogging increase chances to earn inbound links from other websites that is highly impactful for SEO.

Research shows that companies who blog get 97 per cent more links to their websites.

5. Increases interlinks:

SEO is so much about links and internal links and easiest to get as you create them for yourself. So, including internal link points users from one page of the site to another. As you add more pages to various but related topics, you can naturally link them to each other.

Every time you use anchor text to tell Google what page you are linking while building up its connection to your target keyword in how the algorithm sees it.

6. Shareable Posts:

When your target audience likes the blog post, they share it on social media. The more social media shares it gets, the more people will click, like and reshare, and explore other pages on your website. When you get a lot of traffic and get repeat visitors that tell Google – people like your website and raise your rankings and authority level in their algorithm.

Wrapping up

Blogging and SEO go hand-in-hand. Blogging consistently helps increase counts of keywords and pages, inbound links, and create comprehensive articles. Target audience loves to hear from you and Google loves your updated and relevant website. Search engines look for blogs that explain the premise of the subject that interest bloggers and you can take advantage of it to up your rankings. So get cranking on the blog posts

12 Digital Marketing Trends Shaping Business In 2020 (with case studies)

The year 2020 is full of technological advancements – Artificial Intelligence, data-driven marketing, and much more. With new tools and technologies emerging every year, marketers can choose from a plethora of options across digital marketing to connect to a new audience and promote their products.

According to Emarketer’s survey, by 2020 digital ad spending will be 50% of total advertising. The statistics prove that there is a shift from the traditional medium of marketing to digital platforms.

In this digital era, it is easier to share information and connect than before with new tools and technologies every year. The digital transformation is affecting every business and marketers and to keep up with the competition, you have to keep up with the trends. 

In this article, we have compiled the 12 most important digital marketing trends in 2020. Most companies are capitalizing on the trends and reaping the benefits with the right strategy and planning.

 

• Chatbots: Hiring an individual to communicate with your visitors can be expensive but chatbots save costs by answering questions quickly in real-time day or night. Here are some key findings:
  • By 2022, chatbots will help businesses save $8 billion annually.
  • By 2020, 85% of customer interactions will be managed by chatbots.
  • Top benefits of chatbots are 24-hour service (64%), instant responses(55%) and answers to simple questions(55%).

Many renowned brands like Whole Foods Market, Staples, Mastercard, Pizza Hut and more are using chatbot technology successfully. 

For example, you will get many makeup tutorials, product reviews on Kik if you chat with Sephora.

 

 

• Use of Private Messaging Apps: Companies are now shifting their focus on the integration of private messaging apps to improve overall customer experience. In 2018, we saw the launch of Apple Business Chat and WhatsApp Business API which provided businesses with tools to deliver customer support. Many companies are planning to monetize messaging apps. For example, Facebook will soon monetize WhatsApp with ads in the ‘Status’ tab followed by Messenger Ads.

 

• Content Marketing rules SEO: Google rolled out some major updates to its search algorithm. Google’s BERT update is designed to understand the natural language people use in their queries. What does BERT mean for you? If your website is poorly written or is unclear, your rankings may decrease. Therefore your content should be well-researched, clear and organized in a logical manner. In fact, statistics prove Content Marketing rakes in conversion rates 6x higher than other methods – Content Marketing Institute. This proves ‘Content is King’.

 

• Personalization: Say Good-Bye to generic ads. If you want to stand out amidst the competition, you need to personalize your marketing – personalized email, content, products and more. It is the future of digital marketing. Here are a few facts:
  • 90 % of online advertisers will start using personalization by 2020 – Gartner
  • 80 % are more likely to do business with a company if they offer personalized experiences 
  • Personalized, triggered emails based on behavior are 3x better than batch-and-blast emails.- Email Monks

 

It is an ultimate tool for increasing conversions and so marketers are leveraging it to improve their marketing efforts. The primary reason for personalized marketing is to reach out to your target audience by collecting their user data from surveys or studies and create more relevant campaigns based on their buying habits and behavior. Let us study the example of Cadbury who created a personalized video campaign based that matches Dairy Milk flavor based on their Facebook profile data. The campaign generated 65% click-through rates and a 33.6% conversion rate.

 

• Voice Search: ‘Hey Alexa, where is the Thai restaurant around me?” Siri and Alexa are now household names and positively responded by consumers. Over time, you will see more people using smartphones with voice assistants. Here’s why:
  • By 2020, 50% of searches will be voice searches 
  • By 2020, 30% of all searches will be without a screen.
  • By 2022, voice shopping is set to jump to $40billion.

• The goal of Voice engine optimization (VEO) is to optimize your content to be on the top results in the user’s query. Therefore, use longer keywords and complete sentences, set a conversational tone and provide structured content. VEO is quickly advancing, so now the choice is up to you whether to join early adopters or be left behind.

 

• Artificial Intelligence in Marketing: By 2020, many are going to adapt to AI. It is the future of the digital industry. As the name suggests, it refers to robots or machines who can work like humans. Chatbots and Voice assistants are examples of AI. For example, Microsoft and Uber use Knightscope K5 robots to ‘patrol parking’, and prevent crime. The robots can read license plates, report activities and collect data to report to their owners.

 

• Social eCommerce: Social media is not only to chat, browse, and share but a complete marketplace with native shoppable features. Instagram takes lead-charge. 80% of young shoppers make impulsive buying decisions online which is why social eCommerce has vast potential. 70% of enthusiasts explore Instagram for trendy items. Brands have experienced success with Instagram’s shopping features and an increase in revenue. Instagram stories are equally popular with consumers with a high level of engagement. Even Pinterest allows a variety of shopping features and Snapchat enables select accounts to open a store within the app. Tik-Tok has added a new feature where it permits its users to add links to e-commerce sites to their profile biography.  If you haven’t started then now it is a good time to start and make a mark for yourself.

• Video Content: A high resolution and quality video can catch eyeballs quickly. Here the numbers are speaking:
  • 87% use video as their marketing tool.
  • 83% of corporations claim that video content has increased their conversions.
  • 65% of users visit the site and 39% call the seller after viewing.

Video content is the most effective tool to engage directly with the customers and attracts attention, increase web traffic, convert into leads and improve customer experience.

Some video marketing trends are:

• Live Video: Popular with a large number of businesses who use it for interviews, personalized stories, product demo or behind the scene glimpses.
• 1:1 Videos: Marketers create more personalized video messages rather than phone calls or emails.
• Video SEO: Youtube videos and other videos appear in the SERPS and so video optimization is becoming important.
• 360-degree video: This interactive marketing trend is on the rise. Take a look at the HongKong Airlines video

 

• Transparency: Research indicates that consumers demand easy to understand and transparent information from brands. 94% of consumers are likely to be loyal to the brand if they offer transparency. The enforcement of GDPR policy in 2018 ensured companies handle data privacy and transparency and if not complied can have a negative impact on the business.

 

• Augmented Reality v/s Virtual Reality: By 2022, 70% will be experimenting with immersive technologies – Gartner. VR gets everyone excited with its sci-fi ideas and noises, AR is much applicable from a marketing point of view.  AR outperforms VR in market share. More companies are adopting technology to increase sales and customer experience.

Let’s understand the example of IKEA. It has its AR app ‘IKEA Place’ which allows you to test IKEA’s furniture virtually by taking a picture of your room on the phone.

 

• Headless Commerce: A new term coined in 2019 and Heads-on Shopping is the face of Headless Commerce. This empowers differently-abled people to make their purchases by simply nodding their heads. Using the latest iPhone X’s neural engine and AR kit, it converts the signals received from the front camera into 3D facing. Select, Add to the cart and Pay. Simple! Technically it involves the separation of front-end and backend of your site for uninterrupted content delivery, personalization, and modifications.

 

• Influencer Marketing: The most popular word of mouth marketing that focuses on influencers like celebrities,  Instagram or YouTube personalities. Influencer Marketing is more relatable than corporate advertising.
  • 63 % of consumers trust influencers’ opinions more than the brand than what the brand says about themselves.
  • 58 % of consumers have bought a product in the past six months on influencer’s recommendations.

AI is affecting Influencer marketing as it is in the process to identify with the right influencer who has better engagement, few fake followers and can give good ROI. it is influencing influencers marketing in the following ways:

Wrapping up

2020, year of technological advancements -AI-powered devices, content revolution, audio, and visual forms. If you are operating a business, you should know the digital marketing trends and embrace the new tools and technologies to get an edge over competitors. Start personalizing your products, use social media to answer questions, implement voice and video search and maintain transparency. Change is an integral part of digital marketing and the only constant.