May Digital Marketing Roundup

Welcome to our May digital marketing roundup. As Coronoavirus carries affecting thousands of businesses across the UK, there does seem to be some light at the end of the tunnel as certain businesses look set to reopen – albeit in a socially distanced capacity. The next few weeks will certainly be crunch time for a lot of businesses and in this uncertain and changed world, digital now sits at the forefront of so many marketing strategies, as well as changed business models and approaches to the workforce.

I’m sure we’ve all read plenty on Covid-19 in the last few weeks (including, I hope, my article on how it is likely to change the way we do business online) so I didn’t want to overdo it on Coronavirus content, but I have ended on a piece about three interesting studies just out about changing shopping habits in the wake of Coronavirus.

May 2020 Core Google Update

Google is reassessing Expertise, Authority and Trustworthiness – the so-called E-A-T model, which are factors Google mentions numerous times in its Search Rater Guidelines. Although not an individual ranking factor or score, they’re more an overarching concept baked into their automated systems. This means they focus on rewarding content that is relevant and helpful and truly demonstrates expertise.

Google is very reticent when it comes to talking about core algo updates and so it falls to the SEO community to test and assess the changes to any announced update. With that in mind, check out this analysis on the Google update on the always insightful Marie Haynes website.

Here’s what Google says about their core updates.

7 Useful Tips for Great Copywriting

The demand for quality content has never been higher and with Google’s algorithms focussed on rewarding expert and helpful content. Knowing what separates great from just ok content is often obvious when you’re reading great content but actually sitting own to write it yourself about your own industry or company, it can feel very daunting very quickly.

Of course you could just ask an established and reputable content marketing agency like Superb Digital to write it for you, but if you’re keen to write content too then it’s worth doing a bit of research on best practice first. There are a lot of guides out there but this one from Hubspot is a quick read and a really good start.

Show Your Products in Free Product Listings

Do you sell products online? Do you use Google Shopping? If the cost of doing so has put you off in the past, fear not. Google has now reintroduced “unpaid results on surfaces across Google”. What does that mean? Well basically these are free product listing ads (does anybody out there remember Froogle?) ‘Surfaces’ include Google Images, the Google Shopping tab, Google Lens, and Google Search. If you’ve already paid for products to show your products in Google Shopping then you don’t have to do anything.

To qualify Google insists that you do need to “follow the policies for surfaces across Google as well as those for Shopping ads. Eligibility is also based on your account status and the quality of the data you provide.”

With 51% Zero Click Searches, Google is Now “Everyone’s Competitor”

Our Content Director, Joe Cox wrote on Google’s colonisation of the SERPs in late 2018 for the Jeff Bullas blog and this trend is continuing unabated with results out in a whitepaper suggesting that 51% of all Google searches do not send the searcher to an external website. This has led SEO expert and founder of Moz, Rand Fishkin, to conclude that Google is now ‘everyone’s competitor’ when it comes to SEO.

The data was revealed in a Whitepaper from US based Longtail UX, founded by an ex Google employee, which also explores tactics for adapting to this new world.

How Covid-19 Is Changing the Way We Shop

Ok, so we couldn’t put together this roundup without at least mentioning a study or article related to Covid-19 (after all it is a dominant factor in pretty much every business decision we are all taking right now).

The studies (from EY, Accenture and Foolproof) have produced some really interesting results. Amongst the most interesting are 42% of shoppers saying they will fundamentally change the way they shop as a result of Covid-19, with a further 26% say they will pay more for local products. In the EY study, suggestions of corporate responsibility dominate with 72% of those surveyed saying they’d be more likely to buy from a business that “cares for staff and takes measures to fight the outbreak while supporting the community”.

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