These days it’s difficult to drive results from organic search. Everyone knows you need good links, quality content, and a sound technical base. However, to see quicker growth, you sometimes must wander slightly off the ‘best practice path’ and test different tactics.

There was a little bit of a debate in the office about redirecting domains and how much benefit it could actually pass and, more importantly, for how long. In short, we decided to invest a little bit of money and give it a go and I’m happy to report that results were good!

We selected the website by scraping the BBC and finding websites that no longer existed or weren’t maintained. We then filtered them to make sure the list we had left was relevant to the website we were eventually going to redirect it to.

$200 later, we had an unmaintained website linked to from every major publishing site in the UK.

You can learn more about finding websites here.

Of course, we did our due diligence thorough link audits and checked websites linked out to from our new domain. We got extremely lucky, with barely anything to clean up.

When it came to the redirect, rather than sending it to the homepage, we redirected it to a category page within the website. It was super relevant and would have given visitors much better information, compared to the old unmaintained website currently in place.

The redirect went in place and a week later we saw this:

Yes, this is just another search metrics chart showing 25% increase in visibility. So, let’s breakdown the important bits:

• Top 3 rankings for 10 most important keywords
• First page rankings for terms that had historically struggled on page 5/6
• 4,000 additional monthly visitors
• 200 more monthly leads

Rankings have continued to grow over the past 3 months, and not just for the category the domain was redirected into. It seems to have lifted authority for the entire website, indicating a domain level spread of the link equity.

I must stress that this isn’t just a niche set of keywords where one link from the BBC makes you king – it was in a highly competitive industry where major budgets are being invested in both organic and paid search.

Finally, the boring caveats:

• We’ve only had 3 months to look at the results, and so it may be that in 6 months the benefit fades.
• The domain you redirect must be relevant: we’ve tried doing this for link equity alone and the results were minimal or non-existent.
• Going overboard with this is likely to get you a manual penalty (we have seen this happen before).

Delivering ‘quick’ organic results is a thing of the past, but I genuinely believe this is a safer way of seeing a positive impact quicker.

What do users check before entering personal details?

That’s a pretty high percentage loss of potential conversions that were affected by changes to Chrome in January that looked like this:

…and will be affected again by upcoming changes to how HTTPS is handled in Chrome that will look like this in October:

Firefox has made similar changes in recent months such as on the form below:

Moving from HTTP to HTTPS might make for a small ranking boost – but could mean a substantial increase in conversion rate.

1 in 5 adults assume that a site’s inclusion in a search engine must mean that the information it contains is factually correct

On the other end of the scale, Ofcom’s research shows that 1 in 5 believe whatever information appears on a website found on a search engine results page.

58% of search engine users knew that some of the websites listed would be accurate or unbiased but 21% did not. Ofcom also notes that newer users of the internet are more likely to blindly trust the accuracy of search results – they were 11% more likely to answer that question incorrectly.

This is why Google has come in for so much criticism in the “fake news” debate – and why the search engine is making algorithm tweaks to demote results that don’t look accurate.

Back in April, Google VP of search Ben Gomes said:

“We’ve adjusted our signals to help surface more authoritative pages and demote low-quality content, so that issues similar to the Holocaust denial results we saw back in December are less likely to appear.”

It’s possible that Google is using “payday loan”-esque algorithm additions to police results it’s likely to come under fire for… but it’s more likely that Google is using some of the same trust signals as respondents to the Ofcom report and dial up the visibility of brands.

Interestingly Ofcom’s research also suggests that users are more likely to trust websites that take PayPal payments.  It all goes to show that the public expects big tech companies are doing the due diligence over the sorts of websites they allow to use their products.

1) How to search in Google Analytics

If you don’t know what report you need you can use the search bar in the top-left that’s easily missed.

It only really helps if you know the name of the report. For example if you wanted to find an “iPhone” report you’re probably not going to find it unless you type “mobile” or “device”. Google Analytics have recently launched “Intelligence” (it’s in Beta) that allows you to search for a phrase or question and it brings back some data relating to your query.

Unfortunately (at present) it doesn’t link through to the relevant report, but it’s one way to find data quickly.

If you want to search or filter within a Google Analytics report (only shows 10 rows of data are shown by default) you can do this by using the search box above the table.

You can ramp up your searching by pressed “advanced” which gives you the following options

• Include or Exclude
• String multiple rules together
• Choose conditions based on the dimensions and metrics you’re viewing
• Using different methods of filter (contains, greater than, matching RegEx, etc.)

Regular Expressions (RegEx) are a really powerful way to quickly search your data in Google Analytics. I have Some resources here to help you if you’re unfamiliar with Regular Expressions.

You can also search for different accounts by using the top-left navigation. By searching the name of the account, you can select the relevant view to quickly change projects.

2) How to see which pages people were on before and after their current page

You could set up event tracking that tracks all internal clicks, but it can be avoided by using the well-hidden Navigation Summary of Google Analytics.

How to find and use Navigation Summary in Google Analytics

Go to Behaviour>Site Content>All Pages. You can then click “Navigation Summary” above the Graph (you are on “Explorer” by default).

On Summary report you can see:

• The percentage of people for whom it was the first page they saw on the website (Entrances)
• The percentage of people for whom it was the last page they saw on the website (Exits)
• The percentage of people who came from a previous page or went onto a next page
• A list of previous pages a user viewed before viewing this page
• A list of next pages a user viewed after viewing this page

By default it shows you information for the homepage of your website; this can be changed by clicking the dropdown next to “current selection”. Search for the page you’re interested in (to search, type and press enter) and select the correct page.

Pro Tip: If you have content groupings (if you don’t here’s why you should use content groupings) you can supercharge your navigation summary by clicking “group pages by” and selecting a content grouping.

You can then see how people progress between types of pages on your website.

3) How to see what links people clicked on

You can use Google’s Page Analytics plugin for Chrome to get a more visual version of the above “next page” data.

Google Analytics In-Page Analytics not working? There used to be a feature in Google Analytics where you could view this visual data within Google Analytics and it was called “In-Page Analytics”. This is no longer support, and it requires the plugin (linked above) to work. You simply go to the page you want to find information about, and activate the plugin.

By itself, it gives the percentage of people who moved from one page to the next, not the number of people who clicked that exact link. To distinguish between clicks on the same page to the same destination, you need to have Enhanced Link Attribution enabled.

How to implement Enhanced Link Attribution for Page Analytics in Google Analytics

In your Google Analytics code you need to add ga(‘require’, ‘linkid’); before ga(‘send’, ‘pageview’);. Full details here. If you’re using Google Tag Manager you need to set “Enable Enhanced Link Attribution” (in the “Advanced Settings” of your Universal Analytics tag) to “True”.

As well as amending the code, there is a setting in the admin section of Google Analytics that needs to be turned on. Go to “Property Settings” and then select “Use enhanced link attribution”.

Enhanced link attribution is only available on Universal Analytics (analytics.js). If you are still using the old version of Google Analytics (ga.js) I’ve written a universal analytics migration checklist here.

4) How to understand goal drop offs

If your websites goals have strict process to progress (e.g. a form spread across 3 pages or a checkout process) you can understand the drop offs by looking in the Conversions>Goals>Funnel Visualisation report. You can choose which goal you want to view more data on from the dropdown at the top.

To see this you need to create a goal funnel within the goal itself (in the admin section of Google Analytics).

Notes: This only works for “Destination” Goals. If you have a series of events that can be considered “steps”, I have instructions on how to do that here. When choosing the match type for the destination page (e.g. RegEx, Exact Match, Contains etc.) it also applies for the steps below.

5) How to understand the pre-conversion path

Before someone decides to make a purchase or to get in touch, what pages were they on?

You can use the Conversion>Goals>Reverse Goal Path report. Like the Funnel Visualisation report you can choose which goal you’d like to see from the report.

This shows the most recent pages that users had been on immediately before making a conversion.

Here we can see that most people converted immediately after visiting the homepage, but the services pages were also core conversion lead pages.

6) How to compare different types of user

To compare two different types of user, you can use Advanced Segments which I have written about before. You can create different segments for different user types (e.g. Desktop vs Tablet vs Mobile user or Converters vs Non-Converters) and compare them across reports.

Advanced segments can be really good for diagnosing problems on a website. The example below shows an unusual increase in conversions for all users, but when comparing “all users” to “all users except Germany” we can see that the “extra” conversions all appeared to come from Germany. If Germany is discounted the number of conversions looks more similar to previous weeks which may indicate a spam issue from German IPs.

To compare two types of traffic quickly, you can use the “plot rows” function which is at the top of any table. Select the rows you want to plot individually on the graph using the checkboxes and press the “plot rows” button.

Once this is done, these lines are plotted on the graph.

7) How to see data about anything you want

If you want to see information that is not initially present in your reporting, you change the dimension of the report to better reflect what you want to see. For example if you go to the Audience>Technology>Browser & OS report, you can see information about “browser” by default but there doesn’t appear to be anything about Operating System. The way to change the dimension in Google Analytics is above the table, near the search bar:

By clicking “Operating System” you can change it. Some reports also have an “Other” dropdown.

If you want to compare two dimensions at once (e.g. you want to see the number of Google Organic visitors who were also on Desktop) you can use the Secondary Dimension dropdown – pictured above. Below shows the kind of data that is returned by using a secondary dimension.

8) How to keep track of your change history

Keeping track of changes to your website or Google Analytics settings are very useful, especially if you share data with other Google Analytics users.

Use annotations to mark changes such as:

• Website migration
• Adding goals
• New paid campaigns running
• A/B testing going live
• Something that someone who doesn’t have the information about this might see in GA and go “huh I wonder why that spiked/tanked”

To add an annotation click the little arrow underneath the graph. This opens a dropdown where you can write your comment. You can change the date to better reflect the change made. Once added it’ll appear as a clickable speech bubble.

When Stephen Kenwright wrote this blog post it got picked up by a lot of other websties and drove a lot of traffic to the Branded3 website which our servers couldn’t handle. Adding the below annotation, anyone who looks back at 2013’s data and sees a massive spike will know why.

If annotations are not used, fear not, you can go to the admin section of Google Analytics and look at “Change History”. While it doesn’t explain that your servers collapsed or you ran a new e-mail marketing campaign, it keeps track of some changes within the Google Analytics console.

9) How to do weekly reports quickly in Google Analytics

Instead of clicking through many pages to get all your data, you can create a custom report. I’ve written a post about how to create custom reports in the past. A custom report allows you to get all the data you want into one place, which can then be easily exported.

Pro Tip: If you’re on most reports you can click “Customise” at the top to automatically generate a custom report in the style of report you’re currently looking at. You can then amend this to your liking.

If you want something to glance at quickly, you can create a dashboard to suit your everyday “screenshot this and send to manager” needs. The Dashboard tool allows you to add small “pods” of information that you can glance at quickly to check the performance of a website.

And, if you don’t even want to log into Google Analytics, you can schedule e-mails of any report or dashboard. The “E-mail” button is next to the “customise” button. You can schedule e-mails to send your reports to you whenever it is important to you.

10) How to show a pie or bar chart in Google Analytics

Most reports show a line graph that represents values over time, as well as a table with the full statistics. If you want to see data in a proportional manner, some reports have display option icons between the graph and the table.

You can use this in some reports to view data in a visual way.

Takeaways

• Use the search bar in the top left to find reports
• Use Google Analytics Intelligence to find stats quickly
• Use the search bar between the graph and the table to filter your table’s data
• Search for accounts using the top-left navigation
• Use Navigation Summary to understand how users moved between pages
• Use Content Groupings to understand how people used different sections of your website
• Use Page Analytics to understand where was clicked on a page
• Use Funnel Visualisation to see where users dropped off the conversion funnel
• Use Reverse Goal Path to see what pages lead users to a goal
• Compare user types using Advanced Segments
• Use the Plot Rows function to see different users types on a line graph
• Change the Primary Dimension to see statistics for any Google Analytics dimension
• Add a Secondary Dimension to see data about sessions that fulfilled two criteria
• Add annotations to keep track of core changes to a website
• View Change History to see changes to the Google Analytics account
• Create Custom Reports to shorten reporting time
• Use Dashboards for day-to-day snapshot reporting
• Schedule E-mails so you don’t even have to log into Google Analytics to get your reports
• You can see your data in a different visual format (such as a pie chart) using the visualisation icons above the tables

One Vodka Red Bull…er, sausage coming right up!

Yes, you read that right. Vodka Red Bull sausages are now a thing thanks to Northern Irish butcher Maguire Meats. The butcher told Belfast Live the boozy sausages were the “the craziest ones we could think of”.

“We gave it a go and it worked out very well and they are very popular,” Keelan Maguire told the paper. “We also added a spicy beef one which is doing well too. It is something different for the BBQ this summer. We have a few other ideas up our sleeve so keep an eye out.”

Although this may seem like a pretty off-the-wall idea, the traction and coverage that this local butcher is gaining from a simple recipe change is pretty outstanding!

Morrisons has launched a GIANT sausage roll

The last campaign leads us nicely onto our next one – with another sausage snack making waves this week. We were going to include a sausage-related pun, but they’re just the wurst, aren’t they? Ha.

Anyway, Morrisons launched a foot-long sausage roll for £1 and people are going crazy for it. Nearly weighing in at half a kilogram, it’s believed to be the largest sausage roll on sale in any UK supermarket.

Why? Well, Morrisons’ pie and pastry expert, Philippa Shaw, said: “We sell one million freshly baked sausage rolls-a-week but customers have asked for one that is even bigger. So we created this foot-long version.

“With the start of the football season approaching, we’re hoping our foot-long sausage roll will be making its way to the top of the snack league table!”

This new product launch really has been the talk of the town this week. It’s gained national coverage and has been widely shared – it’s definitely appeared on our newsfeeds at least five times these past few days.

This has received so much attention because it’s one of those things that seems so completely unbelievable that makes you think surely it must just be a bit of fun. But it’s not, it’s real!

Beer that gives you wings*

From one unusual product release to another. I give you *drum roll please*… fried chicken beer!

Like beer? Like chicken? Do you wish there was a mind-blowing blend of both these flavours? Well, two Virginia-based breweries have come together to create an 8% beverage that contains actual fried chicken.

The Veil Brewing Co. and Evil Twin Brewing have teamed up to create ‘Fried Fried Chicken Chicken’ beer. At this moment in time, it’s only available on draft at Veil’s tap room in Richmond, Virginia. Let’s hope they do a pop-up in the UK for us to give it a try – people seem pretty curious and intrigued by this crazy combo.

*Disclaimer: it won’t actually give you wings

Skywriting 2.0: Boeing’s jet outline stunt over the US

A Boeing jet has drawn an outline of an aeroplane by flying over America with the use of GPS tracking. Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner embarked on a 17-hour, 4,000-mile winding route to complete the shape.

Even though this may just seem like an elaborate PR stunt (which it was), there was also a practical reason. Boeing wanted to test its new engine in terms of performance and endurance. This was an all-round creative and impressive stunt, which it’s clear a lot of thought had gone into.

#SkySportsDay

This week, a particular social campaign caught our eye. Sky Sports invited several social influencers and bloggers to a Sky Sports Day as part of the promotion around its new line-up channels. The teams reported the day on their Instagram stories (tagging #skysportsday) and well-known sportspeople, like Thierry Henry, were the team leaders.

It was a great way to gain coverage on social, and was very relevant to the audience Sky Sports was trying to target with the new channel.

Really enjoyed being one of the hosts for The first ever #SkySportsDay @skysports @socceram The Souness vs Redknapp Darts Challenge was particularly competitive ???? #SkySports #SoccerAM #Football

A post shared by Smithy/FrankyFryer (@smithysocceram) on Aug 8, 2017 at 8:45am PDT

You can read our favourite PR campaigns from last week here.

If you haven’t read it yet I recommend that you do (I’ll wait).

Here’s a refresher: Neil Patel gave some bad advice about SSL certificates (Ahmed Khalifa has written a much more comprehensive post than this one about why Neil’s advice isn’t the best – and some other bad advice he’s given).

Neil says “if you don’t have sensitive information on your site, you’re not selling a product or a service, there is no checkout page, you don’t need a certificate” and Troy points out that come October, Chrome will mark sites without certificates as insecure. In fact, Troy wrote a brilliant article about this too:

Life is about to get harder for *all* websites without HTTPS https://t.co/B0iMDcShYW

Search boxes and all data inputs not secure. pic.twitter.com/igPvtqCVwc

— Stephen Kenwright (@stekenwright) July 12, 2017

Troy also counters Neil’s assessment that HTTPS doesn’t actually increase security:

This is the classic misconception that HTTPS is only about confidentiality and it ignores the value of both integrity and authenticity. I really don’t want any of my traffic being modified by a man in the middle (such as an ISP or airport wifi) or redirected to a malicious site courtesy of dodgy DNS somewhere.

…and to Neil’s point that HTTPS doesn’t matter for blogs, Troy uses Neil’s site as an example:

In fact, even his contact page doesn’t use it but what Neil Patel doesn’t know is that he’s just a couple of months off this being the experience people have on that page:

Perhaps Neil Patel is hoping that people will be too distracted looking at him in his pyjamas to notice the “Not secure” warning at the top of the browser? Because that’s the experience people will start having in October and if I’m honest, I don’t think a dashing pair of PJs will be sufficient to draw attention away from the warning.

I’m also in agreement with Troy that:

• Neil should probably have read (or at least have tested) Google’s advice that HTTPS is a ranking signal
• That Neil redirecting traffic from the HTTPS version of his site back to HTTP is something he should maybe sort out
• That deleting all the comments on his post that disagree with him was kind of a dick move.

What I disagree with

1. Every SEO I know has been working to move their websites/their client’s websites to HTTPS because it’s secure, it’s faster and conversion rates are higher. The SEOs who aren’t confident with the practice of actually implementing this are usually working with developers and people who know more about it.
2. I’d go so far as to say that there’s enough examples of the fact most companies don’t really care about security to assume that traffic-and-conversion-increasing recommendations from SEO agencies and teams is one of the biggest reasons HTTPS adoption is as widespread as it is today.
3. This is akin to reading a (now ex-) Googler’s anti-diversity “manifesto” and writing off all developers’ opinions on equality. I’m not suggesting that the subject matter is the same or equally serious – just that most of us are reasonable people working towards doing right by our customers, peers and everyone else.

I’ve no problem with Troy Hunt calling out Neil Patel and I’m sure he realises that the title of this post is completely tongue in cheek. But a quick Google shows just how suspicious (and confused) we are when it comes to Neil.

For example:

So does it matter if my URLs include a trailing slash?

The short answer: either is fine, as long as its consistent…but if there’s no risky change to URLs involved (e.g. you’re launching a new website for the first time) we’d recommend using a trailing slash because it can impact page load speed.
From Yahoo! Developer Network:

The main thing to remember is that redirects slow down the user experience. Inserting a redirect between the user and the HTML document delays everything in the page since nothing in the page can be rendered and no components can start being downloaded until the HTML document has arrived.
One of the most wasteful redirects happens frequently and web developers are generally not aware of it. It occurs when a trailing slash (/) is missing from a URL that should otherwise have one. For example, going to http://astrology.yahoo.com/astrology results in a 301 response containing a redirect to http://astrology.yahoo.com/astrology/ (notice the added trailing slash). This is fixed in Apache by using Alias or mod_rewrite, or the DirectorySlash directive if you’re using Apache handlers.

Theoretically a URL with a trailing slash implies a directory and a URL without a trailing slash is a file, but this isn’t really important anymore.

Google gave their answer in 2010. It starts like this:

Google treats each URL above separately (and equally) regardless of whether it’s a file or a directory, or it contains a trailing slash or it doesn’t contain a trailing slash.

…and ends like this:

Profit! (just kidding) But you can bask in the sunshine of your efficient server configuration, warmed by the knowledge that your site is better optimized.

So let’s assume it doesn’t really matter that much for SEO outside of the page load speed elements of Google’s ranking algorithm.

Here’s a summary of Google’s advice:

• Implement 301 (permanent) redirects from one version to the other through your .htaccess file.
• If you can’t use permanent redirects, use canonical elements instead – either will reduce the risk of duplicate content
• Be consistent with your choice.

Google also suggests you can just leave the duplicate versions and Google will figure it out. That’s technically true in the sense that only one version will rank – but it also won’t rank as well as it should (and causes lots of other problems) so it’s always worth removing the duplicate.

Should I change URLs with extensions e.g. /product.html?

Whether or not to use a trailing slash becomes a moot point when URLs end with a file extension, such as:

https://www.branded3.com/product.html
https://www.branded3.com/product.aspx

*Not real URLs.

Again, search engines’ understanding of URLs with or without file extensions is the same – so URLs ending with .html aren’t causing problems, for example.

There are advantages in not using file extensions though:

• The ability to change technology (e.g. moving to .php, not that you’d do it) without having to change your URLs
• Direct visits will probably start on a clean URL (no extension) if typed, which will result in a redirect, slowing everything down slightly – the same can be true of links, which means your redirects have to be spot on (301 not 302; no redirect chains)
• Anecdotally URLs without extensions get a better click through rate (CTR) because they “look cleaner” in search results.

The advantages probably don’t outweigh the risks of migrating your URLs to lose file extensions so there aren’t many cases I would recommend doing it – unless you’re already changing your URLs (moving from HTTP to HTTPS, for example).

If you’re launching a brand new site it’s best practice not to include file extensions on your URLs.

In either scenario: you should choose a preferred URL and stick with it – but it’s preferable to use a trailing slash at the end of your URLs because page load times will improve slightly.

After clicking on this ad pack, it opens a list of products for that brand.

It appears these new ads have been rolled out by Google. They’re called Showcase Shopping ads and according to the AdWords help centre:

“Showcase Shopping ads let you group together a selection of related products and present them together to introduce your brand or business.”

These new ads are now available for shopping campaigns in the new AdWords API. When we review Google’s search engine results from a mobile device, the Showcase Shopping ads become more prominent.

However, after clicking on the B&Q Showcase ad on a mobile browser it takes you to a very different result and experience than it does on desktop.

As you can see from the screenshot, the Showcase Shopping ad is almost a landing page for the brand within the Google Search result (the URL is still Google.com). The company’s logo is at the top and the page links back to the corporate website at the top and bottom. As well as the branding, the brand’s products are displayed to users.

Interestingly, there is no mention of sponsorship within the result when you click on the Showcase ad and when I viewed it on my iPhone the ad feels almost organic. However, when I checked the source code it became clear that someone somewhere is paying Google for this space.

This new Google Showcase Shopping ad feels very much like a Facebook mobile Canvas advert. As Facebook is one of Google’s biggest competitors, it’s no surprise they’re trying to rival the social giant’s ad experience.

Image source: http://marketingland.com/

From an SEO point of view, what’s alarming is on a mobile device the organic results are even further down the page, as we can see in the instance of the “kitchens” search query.

Not only does the new ad push organic further down the page, but Google is now rolling out more immersive mobile ad experiences above the fold, rather than just one more search ad.

This is more than likely to impact on ecommerce sites organic click-through rate as this ad type is adopted by more and more companies.

Currently, we’re not seeing Showcase Shopping ads in Google UK for all of our client’s non-branded keywords. However, this might change over the coming months as more ecommerce companies implement Showcase Shopping ads.

From an SEO point of view, we’d recommend the following actions if you’re in ecommerce:

• Monitor the SERPs for non-brand keywords (particular highly competitive keywords)
• Monitor the click-through rate (CTR) of your non-branded keywords if you do see the ads
• Alert your PPC team to this change (if they don’t already know)
• Work with your PPC team to help identify the keywords which begin to show this new ad type.

The last time we spotted Google doing something similar it cost our client 100k organic visits per month, you can read about that here.

Grab your cup of Yorkshire Tea or a Tetley (we don’t judge) and discover some of our favourite stunts of the week.

Yorkshire pudding in space

What’s more Yorkshire than a Yorkshire pudding on Yorkshire Day? Answer: a Yorkshire pudding in outer space!

Heart Yorkshire radio station, obviously very proud of their home county, set up an “out-of-this-world” stunt by sending the first Yorkshire pudding 30 kilometres away from the Earth.

Before take-off, the radio station introduced a competition to their listeners in which the winner would have their picture accompany the pudding’s intergalactic adventure.

Leanne Kitching, the winner, couldn’t be prouder to be the first Yorkshire lass in space.

Yorkshire treats for a good cause

Thomas the Baker, a bakery with roots in North Yorkshire, took advantage of the Yorkshire Day festivities for a good cause: raising money for The Alzheimer’s Society.

The family business made and sold cupcakes decorated with the White Rose (Yorkshire’s emblem) from 1st-3rd of August and donated 50p to the charity for every cupcake sold.

Tax-free tampons

Because sanitary products are still considered as “luxuries” by the government, pads and tampons have a price tag 5% more expensive than what they could be, due to taxes.

Tesco decided it was about time someone did something. The retailer is the first to pay tax on sanitary products for customers, therefore making the products 5% cheaper.

It might not seem like a lot, but it’s about more than the money. The change in mentality is what counts here: a small step for Tesco but big step for females in the UK.

We’re paying the Tampon Tax so you don’t have to. Watch how we let our customers know. #TescoTamponTaxoff pic.twitter.com/0FC6B2V3yE

— Tesco (@Tesco) July 28, 2017

Bras for cancer survivors

With breast cancer being a huge concern for women, a US-based company called Athleta have developed the Empower Bra. Launching next month, it’s specifically designed for women who have had breast surgery, as the material is very soft on the skin.

Athleta is donating 12% of the bra proceedings to a rowing club for breast cancer survivors, Recovery on Water.

Shopping Men-nequin

Who doesn’t love a pop-up? Especially when it comes with a complementary glass of prosecco and single men!

Match.com has made single women’s “men-shopping” experience a lot more interesting this week. Their ‘Model Males’ pop-up in London will feature 3D-printed models of members of the online dating site. Women can browse around and check out the miniature-sized British bachelors, reading the box to find out their name, age, occupation, and best qualities.

Should they wish to take things further, the shoppers just need to follow the link on the model’s packaging.

Despite being received with mixed-feelings, the campaign has had successful coverage and the event could be rolled out across the UK.

If you’re interested in what happened in the world of PR last week you can read our roundup here.

“As part of our continued effort to deliver the best possible Google Play experience, we recently enhanced our search and discovery algorithms to reflect app quality. This results in higher quality apps being surfaced in the Play Store more than similar apps of lower quality (e.g. apps that exhibit more frequent crashes). The change has had a positive impact on engagement – we’ve seen that people go on to use higher quality apps more and uninstall them less.”

So apps that have a tendency to crash or that frequently get poor reviews will show up less often. This was inevitable. Google tweaks all its algorithms to disproportionately reward good behaviour and disproportionately punish bad behaviour.

Several months ago Google claimed that following “an internal analysis of app reviews on Google Play…half of the 1-star reviews mentioned app stability. Conversely, people reward the best performing apps with better ratings and reviews. This leads to better rankings on Google Play, which helps increase installs.”

Its highly likely that Play Store will allow users to filter out apps completely if they don’t meet an expected standard when it comes to star ratings, in the same way that local search results have since late 2016.

You can now filter out results with less than 4* in local search results. pic.twitter.com/cWgkHUF1TK

— Stephen Kenwright (@stekenwright) December 30, 2016

The latest tweaks to the Play Store ranking algorithm should have been expected because they’re reflective of Google’s organic search ranking algorithms:

• Googlebot visits websites that are frequently down less often and these websites tend to rank poorly
• Websites with poor ratings appearing in their search results (low star ratings on their listing or in the knowledge graph, bad press) tend to get lower click through rates and therefore become less visible over time

40% of users’ awareness of apps comes from browsing the app stores according to Think with Google, which means that the latest changes to the ranking algorithms could have a devastating effect on discoverability and cost some businesses thousands.

How to diagnose quality issues with Android apps

At I/O 2017 Google announced the Android vitals dashboard, which collects usage statistics in the Google Play Console – which makes it the ASO equivalent of Search Console.

Google has published an in-depth checklist for app quality here.

For help getting started, you can also check out our app store optimisation checklist.

But instead of going through Spain’s high authority publications or listing off our‘top 10 tips to pitch a story to a Spaniard’, we figured the best way to introduce you to the market is to look at a selection of successful campaigns.

Spain has a lot to offer in terms of culture, food, politics, and sports. PR agencies can take their pick and get creative to target the country’s best features and most talked about topics.

Imagine you’ve just left your little apartment in the centre of Barcelona. You stop for a coffee at a hole-in-the-wall café. You pick up the morning paper…

Keep calm and siesta

Because the Iberic Peninsula can be very hot at times, employees (especially in the south of Spain) have long breaks in the afternoon.

Workers start a bit earlier and finish later than we do in the UK, so employees can make the most of the cooler times of day. (This is also something to keep in mind when reaching out to journalists and clients based in Spain).

To help make these napping experiences the best they could be, Siesta & Go launched their nappong solution in Madrid two months ago. It couldn’t be easier to nap: people can just book a room and relax, with access to the Internet, books, newspapers, phone chargers, and basically anything you could need to get all the siesta benefits.

It’s interesting to see that this campaign gained coverage both nationally and internationally, from publications including El Pais, ABC, El Economista, Cosmopolitan, and Traveller Condenast.

When food, tech, and banter come together

We must apologise – this is an old campaign (dated from 2008) but as it was very successful and very Spanish-culture-focussed, it would have been a shame not to talk about it.

Meet the iJam:

The Spanish creative agency Shackleton launched this campaign to promote themselves as a business, and the least we can say is that they made quite an impact.

Using a very typical Spanish product, jam (ham, in English), and converting it into a new high-tech gadget, iJam (very much surfing on the notoriety of the Apple products at the time), managed to get over 370,000 views on YouTube and 1,200,000 visits on the page they created for the campaign.

The video shows all the product’s features in depth, imitating Apple’s signature style.

Goooooooaaaal!

Football is a huge part of Spanish culture – as Spain is home to some of the best teams in the world.

Santander Bank capitalised on football conversations and created this video, highlighting the skills of freestyle footballers to convey one simple message: Santander makes banking so easy that it won’t interrupt your daily life.

We watch the amazing tricks of the freestylers before the video is replayed in slow motion to show us that, while we were absorbed by the performance, one individual had time to check the online banking app on his phone without disrupting the overall flow.

Fashion, cellulitis, and all

We already talked about the Spanish clothing brand Desigual here, but we just had to mention another of their campaigns.

The brand, now internationally recognized, stands out by making its garments unique. For example, because the textiles mostly consist of exclusive colourful patterns, no two items are identical. It is therefore quite fitting that the brand embraces uniqueness not only in their designs but also with the models they use.

As model Charli Howard says: ”Beauty doesn’t only come in size zero. Diversity is the key to changing that.”

Horns of contention

Brands should be careful when addressing a controversial topic as it can backfire very quickly, but in this case, doing so was a great success.

Earlier this year, FLAC, a French association against bullfighting, took it upon themselves to make a statement in a video which touched a nerve in Spain. When it comes to this tradition, Spaniards are divided: some want to keep it because it is part of the country’s culture and the others say it is nothing but a cruel heritage.

Bullfighting also takes place in France (though to a lesser extent) and despite this campaign being launched by a French agency, it struck a chord in Spain and got incredible coverage in the local newspapers, including elespanol.com, el Pais, EFE, Diario correo, and many more.

The video shows a corrida where the bull has been replaced by a velociraptor. It seems a bit odd until the screen displays one sentence at the end: “Does this practice seem of another era?”

Mobile-first index news

John Mueller, a Webmaster Trend Analyst at Google, discussed how the mobile-first index might be rolled out in a Webmaster hangout on YouTube at the end of June. What he said left many in the SEO community slightly worried.

“When Google rolls out mobile-first indexing, they will look at sites individually and switch over the sites which are ready for mobile-first before sites which are not ready.”

“Google won’t notify sites when they have been switched over to mobile-first indexing, but will consider sending messages via Search Console to help with any issues.”

• Deepcrawl Google Webmaster Hangout notes

The reason why so many SEOs are concerned is because Google could flick a switch and suddenly a competitor within the SERPs is given more of an advantage over others. This is because at the moment Google bases all its rankings off desktop content, even when a user is on a mobile device.

If Google decided to switch a website to the new mobile-first index and base rankings off the mobile content, while competitors have their rankings based off desktop content, it could give the mobile-first indexed website more of an advantage.

While this volatility is happening within the search results due to the switch, Google won’t even tell webmasters what is going on. Which is very frustrating if you’re relying on your website for sales and revenue. It’s also no secret that Google ranking engineers prefer brands over smaller website owners, so it could be that Google gives brands a boost when it’s switching to the mobile-first index.

Of course, Googlers may do a U-turn and alert everyone of the switch to the mobile-first index. They’ve previously given webmasters an update when Penguin 4 became part of the core algorithm and when they rolled out the interstitials penalty in January 2017.

As we mentioned in the June SEO news update, the safest thing to do to get ready for the Google mobile-first index is to go responsive. If your mobile website is still on a m. subdomain then we strongly recommend moving to a responsive website.

If you’re still unsure of how to make a mobile SEO-friendly site, then I’d recommend reading how to make a website mobile friendly by Andrew Parker (Head of SEO at Branded3).

Dictionary cards get a search box

Google has officially rolled out a search box within dictionary cards, as you can see from the screenshots for the keyword “spread betting”.

The search bar also tries to predict a user’s query while they type.

This now means that for any definition keyword, a user can now search within the dictionary card and won’t need to do another search. This feature makes sense from Google’s point of view as it keeps users on their search result pages and helps answer a user’s question. As you can see from the screenshots, the search bar is quite prominent on mobile devices.

From a SEO point of view, this could impact on click-through rate (CTR) from organic results as users don’t have to visit a website to get an answer to a question. Again, if we take the example from the screenshots, the keyword “spread betting” could be a high traffic driving keyword for organic search but many users might just stop at the definition card.

This new dictionary card search feature might also mean a missed opportunity for businesses who rank for “spread betting” and wish to retarget display ads to users who show an interest in spread betting.

For now, the dictionary card is only appearing for keywords which Google thinks you are asking for a definition. However, we strongly recommend monitoring your keywords to identify if Google is displaying a dictionary card and the impact these features have on your organic CTR performance.

New mobile sitelinks design

Google officially rolled out the new sitelinks design carousel on mobile devices. Instead of the traditional desktop design, users can now scroll through sitelinks on a mobile device.

Interestingly this change has not been rolled out for branded keywords. It could be that Google will be testing a new design for branded keyword sitelinks on mobile devices.

Instant Search removed from Google

Google has removed the Instant Search feature from its Search product. For those of you who are not aware of what Instant Search was, it was a feature that autocompleted a user’s search for them within the search bar.

Image source: http://www.independent.co.uk/

This removal was noticed by Dan Shure and Barry Schwartze of Search Engine Land, who got in touch with the search engine giant. A Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land:

“We launched Google Instant back in 2010 with the goal to provide users with the information they need as quickly as possible, even as they typed their searches on desktop devices. Since then, many more of our searches happen on mobile, with very different input and interaction and screen constraints. With this in mind, we have decided to remove Google Instant, so we can focus on ways to make Search even faster and more fluid on all devices.”

– Google Spokesperson

When you type on both desktop and mobile you will only see suggestions related to the search query you type into Google. As the Google spokesperson said this has been done to improve the mobile experience on Google. Now a user must tap and select a suggestion they want rather than have a search be autocompleted for them.

Branded3’s Director of Search talks more about Google Instant Search.

Google.com to add ‘news feed’

Google is adding a Facebook-style news feed to it’s homepage on Google.com, which will provide users with a more personalised experience based on what they have searched for historically.

Image source: BBC

This is an obvious move to compete with Facebook, one of its biggest rivals, as the content and newsfeed is a big threat to users using Google (and displaying ads to users).

The news feature will be rolling out in the US first and users will be able to “follow” a search result to make their news feed more relevant.

Image source: BBC

If you use the Google Search app on a Android or iOS smartphone then you’ll be familiar with the news feed style layout. It seems Google has been using this as a test to how users interact with this style of news feed and wants to bring it to Google.com.

If this personalised newsfeed is rolled out globally, the ability for users to follow topics or keyword sets within Google’s Search product might need to be incorporated into your SEO strategy.

Accelerated Mobile Page news in Q3

Accelerated Mobile Pages or AMP is a bit of a debated topic in the SEO community. No matter what you think of AMP, you can’t deny the hard work that the engineers on the AMP project are putting in to make it work.

The engineers recently announced some of the long-term features coming to AMP pages. These include:

• Client-side sorting, filters and date pickers for e-commerce pages
• A revamped sidebar component that has the ability to change display format based on the width of the viewport for those wanting more responsive AMP
• The ability to embed content in AMP
• Video analytics support
• Better ad targeting.

For further information read their latest blog post on new features and visit the AMP roadmap once in a while.

Google boosts AMP internationally

Rank Ranger recently noticed a spike in the number of AMP pages being displayed in News Cards in Google across multiple international markets.

AMP comes to News Boxes in multiple new markets across the globe https://t.co/5OnkLGWpY2 #AMP #News pic.twitter.com/zJP9FAnP6L

— Rank Ranger (@RankRanger) 24 July 2017

The SEO platform also noticed a spike in the number of AMP results on page 1 of Google for German, Norway and Taiwan markets.

Multinational spike in the percentage of page one mobile #SERPs that contain at least 1 AMP result https://t.co/M5FnNq3sEF #AMP pic.twitter.com/wRwXpIDEgv

— Rank Ranger (@RankRanger) 24 July 2017

Either Google is rolling out AMP across different international markets or webmasters are beginning to adopt AMP in these markets. Whichever it is, it seems AMP is getting more adoption overseas.

Twitter begins to link to Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

Twitter has begun to link to AMP pages within its native Android and iOS apps, which is moving referral traffic away from standard mobile web pages and toward Accelerated Mobile Pages.

Twitter hasn’t made any official announcements about this switch and it is unclear whether the rollout is 100% complete according to Search Engine Land.

Image source: http://searchengineland.com

Above is a graph that shows the increase in traffic from AMP referral traffic from Relay Media. To quote Barb Palser about the graph:

“This graph shows the growth in Twitter traffic to AMP content among the national and local news publishers using Relay Media, Inc.’s AMP converter. (Disclosure: Relay Media is my employer.) Twitter referrals grew from less than 1 percent of AMP sessions in December 2016 to more than 12 percent at the end of June, when Twitter expanded AMP links from its mobile web app to its Android and iOS apps.”

-Barb Palser Head of Product for Relay Media, Inc

What’s really interesting is Twitter do not need permission to link to a publisher’s AMP resources, as they can be accessed by the public. Barb Palser also notes that Twitter is choosing to link to the publisher’s AMP URLs instead of the Google cached version. This might cause a bit of a headache for your digital analytics team.

At SearchLeeds, Jon Myers, the Chief Growth Officer at DeepCrawl, did a talk on the complications of the mobile-first index and different pages for mobile and desktop. So, although Twitter may be improving the mobile experience for users, if the AMP resources are not technically setup correctly to be discovered by Google it could cause a headache for publishers.

In addition, if Twitter and other platforms link to AMP resources it means that in the future Google Search might not be the only source of traffic for AMP resources. If other platforms choose to link to AMP pages as well, to improve the mobile experience of the user, then this means that webmasters who share a lot of content via social media platforms might need to also think about AMP.

If you want to understand what AMP is all about, I’d recommend reading what AMP actually is and the benefits of implementing it by Mat McCorry a Search Strategist at Branded3.

Other interesting news in July

Google pushing further changes to holiday search results – http://searchengineland.com/google-adds-vacation-rentals-filter-hotel-search-results-279576

Study of 4 million Google searches charts the CTR payoff that came from eliminating right-side ads but bad for SEO – http://searchengineland.com/study-impact-google-removing-right-side-ads-2-million-searches-279353

All of Google’s Recent Changes to the Mobile SERP – http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2017/07/27/google-mobile-serp

Google My Business and messaging – http://searchengineland.com/google-begins-rolling-messaging-feature-within-google-business-278790

Reserve with Google – https://www.blog.google/products/maps/reserve-google-summer-bookin-happens-so-fast/

Helping people in a crisis – https://www.blog.google/products/search/helping-people-crisis/

Google Instant was a predictive search feature that started to load the search results page as users were entering their search, effectively showing the top results for the autocompleted search query. The feature was introduced in 2010 under Melissa Mayer’s tenure at Google and was predicted (no pun intended) to shave 2-5 seconds from the time it took each user to search.

A Google spokesperson commented to Search Engine Land:

We launched Google Instant back in 2010 with the goal to provide users with the information they need as quickly as possible, even as they typed their searches on desktop devices. Since then, many more of our searches happen on mobile, with very different input and interaction and screen constraints. With this in mind, we have decided to remove Google Instant, so we can focus on ways to make Search even faster and more fluid on all devices.

Loading and reloading a results page every time a searcher types another letter can be an extremely frustrating experience on a mobile, especially on 3G or 4G. It’s bad enough that Google wants to use your location and reloads the whole page if you let it – and that’s only once.

Goodbye, I’m Feeling Lucky

Instant Search also meant the death of the I’m Feeling Lucky button which, although still found next to the Google Search button on Google’s homepage, lost some of its usefulness in 2010 when Google Instant rolled out. Currently a visitor can click I’m Feeling Lucky and get to the Google Doodles page – but previously the button could be pressed instead of the Google Search button to take the user directly to the first organic result. Since Google Instant, the results page has been loaded as soon as the user started to type, so there’s no way to know whether the button would have ever been clicked.

The Inquirer reported that the button’s functionality had been drastically reduced in September 2016.

According to Nicholas Carson, Google estimated in 2007 that 1% of searches went through the I’m Feeling Lucky button, meaning that ads weren’t shown for 1% of all searches, costing Google around $110m in revenue. Based on current trends I’ve estimated that Google will process 2,380,000,000,000 searches in 2020, up from the low hundreds of millions in 2007. Showing 1% more ads (bearing in mind that more of the results returned are now ads anyway) could pay off Google’s EU fine in a year or two.

Google has enough to worry about trying to get ads in front of the 20% of its mobile audience using voice search – there is absolutely no chance that the I’m Feeling Lucky button will still be there at the end of this year.

When Google introduced Instant, Mayer said Google wanted to keep the button because “it’s possible to become too dry, too corporate, too much about making money.”

Mayer doesn’t work for Google anymore.