The evolution of Google Shopping came as a natural expansion of its paid advertising offering. The inclusion of product images in the SERP’s was a no-brainer and clearly beneficial for retailers. After all, we’re visual creatures. From the early days of PLAs (Product Listing Ads, before being rebranded as Shopping) it was obvious this medium provided huge growth opportunities for advertisers. Paid strategies evolved to account for more effective performance on Shopping over traditional generic text ads.

On one side of the coin, you can argue this is Google’s platform and it is at its own discretion as to the services it offers. Google obviously will favour ads that will generate it revenue, anyone can spot that a mile away. However, Shopping ads do also provide a way for advertisers to promote their products in a more real-time fashion then Organic ads would.

Conversely, there is no knowing of how Google’s algorithm exactly works and ask as you might, you’ll never be told. Maybe it doesn’t even know. But it is possible that Google may not offer as level a playing field on Shopping for potential competitor portals such as Amazon and eBay.

Either way, the more pressing question is what could happen next? Here are some possible scenarios that may occur, assuming this ruling holds and/or Google doesn’t just decide to pay a fine of up to 10% of its annual revenue.

1. Mobile SERP’s Evolve

One key argument is that Shopping ads dominate the space on mobile. And with mobile search volumes now in the majority, this is a key area for Google. Above the fold will be dominated by Shopping and Paid ads, with Organic at least a scroll away.

As a workaround, Google may look to reduce the size of its Shopping images. When PLAs first came out these were much smaller. While they were still at the top of the mobile SERP, they didn’t dominate the entire page. We may see a return to this past format, to allow for Organic results to be more prominent again.

2. The algorithm is updated

If the shopping results are being swayed by who the advertiser is, Google may have to be seen to play ball a little more. So, we may find listings for Amazon, eBay and similar Shopping portals appear more often. That would appease the perception of an equal playing field.

In turn, what impact would that have on regular retailers? They may find their impression share on Shopping drops relative to their current spend levels

3. The impact for advertisers

Any changes made that dilute Shopping’s presence in the SERP’s will have a knock-on effect for advertisers. Retailers in particular should be prepared for a potential reduction in engagement in their Shopping ads relative to the current performance levels they are seeing. In particular, mobile would be hit hardest. So any retailers with a low AOV may find mobile revenue on Shopping drop.

It will be intriguing to see how Google responds to this announcement. An appeal could be imminent before it’s forced into making any changes to its product.

What are your views on what this could mean for the presence of Shopping ads?

Subdomains, subfolders and country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) all have pros and cons which, fortunately, are outlined below – along with the questions you need to ask yourself when you’re making your choice (or recommendation).

What is a ccTLD?

A country code top-level domain (ccTLD) is a country-specific top-level domain – for example .co.uk, which is specific to the United Kingdom.

ccTLDs are country specific – not language specific.

ccTLDs are always two letters long (like .de or .fr) – if your website’s TLD is two letters long (even if it has a .co in front) it’s definitely a ccTLD.

What is a gTLD?

You might have noticed that the .com top-level domain (TLD) is three letters long, not two. It’s not officially the ccTLD for the United States – it’s a generic top-level domain (like .org or .net). The ccTLD for the United States is .us, although it isn’t often used.

You can find a full list of TLDs here – Google will treat any domain not labelled “country code” as a generic top-level domain (gTLD, if you’re not sensing the pattern). This means international targeting will need to be set up in Search Console.

What is a gccTLD?

Other examples of gccTLDs include .tv (originally the ccTLD for Tuvalu) or .io (the ccTLD for the British Indian Ocean Territory and not, in fact, San Francisco). An extensive list of ccTLDs that Google now considers gccTLDs can be found here.

This means, for example, that a website with a .io TLD will not be targeted to the British Indian Ocean Territory by default due to its status as a gccTLD. You’ll need to implement international targeting for a website with a gccTLD just like for a .com website.

gccTLDs are further proof that marketers ruin everything.

Your current TLD should determine your choice

Say for example you’re a UK business and your website sits on a .co.uk ccTLD. Up to now you’ve primarily served UK customers but now you want to expand into other countries.

Migrating your website from its .co.uk ccTLD to a .com gTLD and implementing international targeting presents a risk to your UK business. If you have particular territories in mind for your expansion, the safest option is to register the relevant ccTLDs for those countries – if your UK business wants to sell to expats in Spain, for example, or if you’ve identified that your product potentially has a strong market in Germany.

As a rule you shouldn’t move your primary website unless you have to because:

• The inherent risks to organic traffic when changing URLs
• A lot of planning is necessary to mitigate these risks and transition smoothly – which often means spending money
• All the links you’ve acquired to date will have to pass through a 301 redirect which can dilute their effectiveness to a degree – even if Google denies this
• There will still be a negative impact on Quality Score in your Adwords account and you’ll be paying more for your keywords in the short term

Managing Google Shopping and other feeds is usually easier for businesses with ccTLDs – it’s by no means impossible with a subfolder approach but if you fail to consider feeds in your migration you’ll probably be without them for a few days/weeks/longer until you can fix them.

Why would you move to .com?

Migrating from a ccTLD to a .com gTLD is a good choice for businesses that plan to expand aggressively into multiple countries – especially if there’s no visibility currently on how many countries (or even which). A geotargeted generic top-level domain won’t need to be moved again – even if you end up truly global – so it’s the safe choice.

This is also a good choice if your distribution is good enough to deliver pretty much anywhere and maintain a good experience (I won’t discuss the details around distribution, returns etc. here but I’ll mention a common mistake businesses make is failing to consider the cost of processing returns from other territories, especially when they rely on a click and collect service in their primary region that isn’t available elsewhere).

Migrating from a ccTLD to a .com TLD is also the best option if you have to change your current URL either way e.g. when your UK business is rebranding to reflect a new global proposition there’s little point moving to a new .co.uk website and simultaneously launching new ccTLDs for other countries – move to a .com gTLD and get it over with.

N.B. I was going to give the example of Unilever rebranding its Jif cleaning product as Cif in the UK to reflect its name in the rest of the world but Unilever doesn’t own cif.com or jif.com. I really do feel for SEOs working in FMCG.

Do ccTLDs get a better click through rate?

Anecdotally searchers in certain countries are more likely to click on a website that sits on their ccTLD – the French, for example, are known to prefer clicking on a site with a .fr ccTLD rather than sites with .com gTLDs.

In reality the click through rate (CTR) is more related to the site’s meta data. You might have a reasonable expectation that the content on a website with a France-specific top-level domain is more likely to be written in French – if that’s your native language you might be more willing to click.

As long as your geotargeting is correct and your meta data is optimised (preferably written by a native speaker) this shouldn’t be a consideration. Better meta data and proper markup beats a ccTLD every time.

You can enhance this even further by enabling breadcrumbs: domain.com > FR seems to get a better CTR than domain.com/fr/.

N.B. Interestingly Eli Schwartz conducted a survey finding that users expect a better delivery service – postage  packing, delivery times etc. – from websites using the ccTLD for the country they live in. It’s unclear to what extend this might affect CTR – and since Eli uses well-known brands like Amazon and Target as examples there could be a degree of bias here – but it’s still something to bear in mind.

What if I’m expanding into countries where multiple languages are spoken?

If you plan to translate your content into different languages and more than one language is relevant to visitors from a particular country this can complicate your choice of domain structure. Examples include Switzerland, where French, German and Italian are equally prevalent – or Canada, where English and French are spoken in different regions.

Hreflang attributes allow you to specify which version of a page should be shown to a user depending on their location and language preferences. We’ve already published a guide to implementing hreflang tags so I won’t cover them in detail here.

ccTLDs present multiple options, listed here in order of preference (for what that’s worth – realistically all of these methods are fine):

1. domain.ca/fr/ and www.domain.ca/en/
2. domain.ca and en.domain.ca
3. domain.ca/*page*/?lang=fr and www.domain.ca/*page*/?lang=en

Google uses both options 1 and 2 in an example here and states they’re equally easy to understand.

gTLDs with subfolders also present multiple options, again listed by preference – but when it comes to multiple subfolders usability is a much more poignant question:

1. domain.com/ca-fr/ and www.domain.com/ca-fr/
2. domain.com/ca/fr/ and www.domain.com/ca/fr/
3. domain.com/ca/*page*/?lang=fr and www.domain.com/ca/*page*/?lang=en
4. domain.com/ca/*page*/fr/ and www.domain.com/ca/*page*/en/
5. domain.com/ca/ and en.domain.com/ca/

If you don’t care enough to translate your content then what are you worried about? (Apart from CTR, rankings and conversion rate). Machine translations e.g. Google Translate just aren’t good enough so don’t even think about it.

Subdomains vs. subfolders for international SEO

Subfolders or subdirectories (i.e. domain.com/uk/) are almost always preferable to subdomains (i.e. uk.domain.com). The only exception is when the use of subfolders is impossible for some technical reason, such as a differing product offering per country and an inability to differ the top navigation to reflect this.

I’ve worked with several brands who have experienced an increase in organic traffic when migrating from international subdomains to international subfolders – this usually occurs when there’s a lot of link equity in one or two countries and less-favoured international sites are underperforming (e.g. a UK brand, consistently marketed in the US for a number of years, could expect an improvement in the visibility of its French and German sites when it migrates from international subdomains to international subdirectories). Again bear in mind the risks involved and planning required for any kind of migration.

A further consideration is whether your website currently makes use of subdomains (e.g. for products like many iGaming companies do such as https://sports.ladbrokes.com/) – this effectively rules out international targeting using subdomains. You’ll have to use folders.

Expanding internationally without additional budget

Registering a ccTLD for each country can be costly – especially when coupled with hosting costs and SSL certificates.

Server location has historically been considered a strong signal in geotargeting e.g. a site using a .com TLD and hosting in the US is thought more likely to rank in the US. However:

• This is potentially less significant than previously thought
• Using the appropriate ccTLD is a stronger signal than server location so it becomes a moot point
• Geotargeting in Search Console is comparatively recent so again probably overrides the issue of server locale
• It’s not possible to use local servers for a website using subfolders to target internationally and you’d be hard-pressed to find an SEO who doesn’t think that the improved flow of link equity gained using this method is a stronger ranking factor

…so buying local hosting is less of a consideration when it comes to cost.

Ultimately improving your international SEO when using a ccTLD or a geotargeted subdomain requires more budget than using a gTLD with subdirectories as both are literally separate websites. You won’t get the same benefits from the links pointing to your domain and “flowing down” – so you’re going to have to spend more resource or agency hours building links to be able to compete.

gTLDs with subfolders tend to be the cheapest options overall.

Local link building

At the risk of contradicting myself links from local websites undeniably make a difference to international rankings. You’ll get so far leveraging US links on a .com gTLD with a subfolder in France but links from French websites are the arbitrage opportunity – you need to show your French website is trusted in France if you’re serious about doing business through search engines there. This is true regardless of whether you use a subdomain, subfolder or country code top-level domain.

Does Google have an opinion?

Google’s preference is to use ccTLD to determine country targeting in the same way that Google prefers responsive design to m. websites:

• It’s easier for Google to understand
• You’re less likely to make a mistake that makes Google’s life difficult
• …but it’s not for everyone.

I’d recommend reading the Webmasters article above – it makes a good case for ccTLDs for usability and ease of understanding but make no mention of links (should be a key consideration in any international SEO decision).

Summary

A gross oversimplification of the decision making process is included below, but my key considerations:

• gTLDs with subdomains are very rarely the best options
• ccTLDs are usually the most expensive but often the best for users
• gTLDs with subfolders make the best use of link equity – if you’re not going to be building links specifically for a ccTLD version of your website this is probably the way to go.

I’d love to hear the results of your international expansion in the comments or on Twitter.

The first result: the best family barbecue desserts. I’m not having a BBQ and I’m actually entertaining grandparents so I scroll down.

Although I’m not having a BBQ it is still summer. So why all the Christmas recipes in the results? Of the 15 results on page 1:

• 6 are Christmas specific
• 2 are Winter recipes – gingerbread and toffee apples
• 5 are appropriate for any season (several even include “for all seasons” in the title)
• 2 are arguably summer recipes – the barbecue desserts and a lemon dessert recipe guide.

I don’t feel that BBC Good Food has given me any indication that its search function is close to giving me the answer I’m looking for, so I press back and search google.co.uk for “dessert” instead.

Top of the SERPs? Probably the most comprehensive page I can imagine – and it’s not on BBC Good Food.

Dan Barker hit the nail on the head (as he always does) when it comes to the actions that the BBC could take:

Gosh. In that case I’d probably even manually override to a desserts page… But they don’t seem to have one

— dan barker (@danbarker) June 25, 2017

If messing around with a site’s internal search functionality isn’t an option then its current capabilities should be factored into its content strategy.

It should be relatively easy to create a content hub for “desserts” that will rank first in its own site search because it’s keyword-based (but a site like BBC Good Food – totally seasonal and with a large, digitally savvy organisation behind it – should be able to serve results relevant on the date of the search).

After searching for “dessert” I returned to bbcgoodfood.com and searched for “pudding” to see what happens (for the benefit of our non-British readers – we use the two words pretty much interchangeably.

The intent behind a search for “pudding” should be pretty obvious (think about Google’s related searches feature – Yorkshire puddings are unlikely to be related to a search for desserts and Google would know this).

The BBC is lucky in this situation because if I go back to Google and search for “pudding” the top 2 results are on bbcgoodfood.com – but what’s stopping the site search from showing me these results?

But following the first search – I’d entered the BBC’s ecosystem and they gave me up. How many other businesses do this? How much money could a business lose overloading its search results with clothes that can’t be worn for months?

We love to eat. So it might not surprise you to know the five best PR campaigns and promotions from the past week, in our judgement, all involved food. Don’t mind if we do…

via GIPHY

UberEats now delivers McDonald’s

We’ve dreamt about it, talked about it, hoped for it and it’s finally here: a McDonald’s delivery service via UberEats. It’ll even bring breakfast to your doorstep when you have a huge hangover.

via GIPHY

McDelivery is on UberEats (like Deliveroo but using Uber taxis) in 22 locations in London and 10 others in Nottingham and Leeds. Available from 7am to 2am, deliveries can be made to any address within 1.5 miles of a restaurant. You’ll be able to get your Egg McMuffin without having to change out of your PJs.

It’s a trial but if proven successful it will be rolled out to other locations.

Anything that McDonald’s or Uber does makes it to the national press so this story has spread across the internet landing placements on every national going, including Daily Mail, The Guardian, The Sun and more.

Moonpig launch meat favoured edible cards for Father’s Day

Last weekend it was Father’s Day and we saw many campaigns hit the national press, but Moonpig’s was my favourite. It was simply executed and received links from publications like Daily Mail and Mirror. What was it? Moonpig launched the world’s first edible, meat-flavoured cards to give to your dad on Father’s Day.

Designed and hand-drawn by their in-house card design team, Moonpig created two edible cards in two of every Dad’s favourite flavours: BBQ and Spicy Hot.

The greetings card company said: “The BBQ flavoured cards are smoked with hickory chips to give a full and authentic flavour, whilst the Spicy Hot cards are seasoned with cayenne pepper for a fiery finish. The taste-full, limited-edition cards are made from rice paper and infused with edible scents and ink, they smell and taste just like the real thing!”

However, you couldn’t just go on their site and buy the cards. You had to enter a competition to win them.

Bombay Sapphire’s gin train pop-up

Running from 17 to 23 July, there’s a gin train coming to the UK this summer! Bombay Sapphire is giving you the chance to travel the world while sipping on gin cocktails by launching a pop-up gin train.

Okay, so it doesn’t actually leave London, but its host of lights, sounds and – most importantly – tastes means you’ll get to ‘visit’ the likes of Ghana and Tuscany on a 10-stop tour across the globe. The Laverstoke Express takes you from London to Laverstoke Mill, the home of Bombay Sapphire for just £30.

Read more about the train journey and book tickets on the Bombay Sapphire site.

Although we still have a month to go, the campaign has already achieved several links, and coverage on sites such as Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Metro and more.

Pop-ups like this are popular for brands looking to get quick PR coverage in national press. One of my favourites was Marmite’s love or hate café.

Restaurant opens, hiring waiters with dementia so they forget your order

A pop-up restaurant has opened in Tokyo called The Restaurant of Order Mistakes, and its mission is to hire waiters with dementia as they may forget your order.

Why?

The eatery says if you go in knowing this up front, it changes your perception about those who suffer from brain disease. The experience is intended to make you realise that with a little bit of understanding, dementia patients can be functioning members of society.

Food blogger Mizuho Kudo visited The Restaurant of Order Mistakes and had a blast. She originally ordered a hamburger but ended up having gyoza dumplings instead, but everything turned out to be unexpectedly delicious. Kudo also said the waiters were full of smiles and seemed to be having tons of fun.

This story has gone viral and received placements across international press.

Polluted water popsicles

Although this was a campaign produced by students rather than a brand it was one of our favourites for having a simple execution with a strong message.

At first glance, these ice-lollies might look like the sort of thing you’d expect to appear on your health-freak friend’s Instagram, these won’t do you any good.

Three design students for the Polluted Water Popsicles project gathered 100 different samples of sewage found in polluted waters of Taiwan and turned them into mock frozen ‘treats’ to raise awareness about rising water pollution due to rapid economic growth and urbanisation; 90% of the rubbish found in the water was plastic.

It’s a simple yet effective way of getting us to think about water pollution from a totally different perspective.

Please note this post will contain nerdy stats! Read on if you’re brave enough…

The rankings of keywords always have a natural variability. It’s this variability that you would have to take into consideration when assessing your performance. Your keyword set might have a reasonably large mean ranking increase, but it is possible that the natural variability of your keyword set is large enough that the increase is not significant. The table below shows an average increase in rankings, but it is not a statistically significant ranking increase. We’ll explain why later, as well as showing an example with a statistically significant smaller ranking increase.

To provide some statistical evidence that there has been some significant increase (or decrease), then you can perform a t-test on the rankings. In general, a t-test tests whether there are significant differences between two datasets. In this case of keyword rankings, we would perform a paired t-test. This is so that you would be testing the average differences between the rankings of your keywords, rather than just the overall average ranking. Luckily, this can be done quite easily in Excel. You don’t even have to look at any statistical tables!

So how do we do this?

1. 1. 1. Calculate your ranking differences.
         a) Make sure you calculate the old ranking minus the new ranking so that a ranking increase is positive!

1. 1. • • 2. Plot a histogram to ensure the datasets looks like a bell curve or normal distribution^1,2.
             a) If you’re not familiar with the normal distribution and want to know more, try here.

1. 1. • • 3. Count the number of keywords in your keyword set, using the COUNT function on the Difference column.

1. 1. • • 4. Calculate the mean of the difference in rankings, using the AVERAGE function.

1. 1. • • 5. Calculate the standard deviation of the differences, using the STDEV.S³

1. 1. • • 6. Calculate the standard error⁴, by dividing the standard deviation by the square root of the sample size.

1. 1. • • 7. Calculate your degrees of freedom⁵.
             – If you’re not familiar with degrees of freedom and want to know more, try here.

1. 1. • • 8. Calculate the value of T, by calculating the Mean divided by the Standard Error.

1. 1. • • 9. And finally, calculate your p-value⁶, using the T.DIST.RT function.

And, that’s done. Now for interpretation.

Depending on what you are testing, you will have to interpret your p-value differently. The table below illustrates how you should interpret your p-value.

Figure 1: Final Solution

And that’s all there is to . In the example above, with a p-value less than 0.05, we can clearly see there is a significant increase for the rankings. Below, we reconsider the example with the larger mean. We can see that the p-value is approximately 0.09, so it is not a statistically significant increase despite having a larger mean!

And there you go. With a little bit of statistical rigour, you’ll now be able to say to at least 95% confidence that there is a ranking difference!

TL;DR

1. 1. • • • You can have an average ranking increase but not be statistically significant.
          • It’s not just rankings that matter. The volatility of your rankings matters too.
          • Statistics more useful than you know!

Notes:

1. • 1. If your dataset is not normally distributed, then you’ll have to transform your data to be normally distributed or choose a different test, but this is beyond the scope of this post.
     2. With a large enough sample size, the t-test can be used on non-normal data.
     3. We use the STDEV.S function as we require the sample standard deviation.
     4. Standard Error accounts for a smaller sample size. A larger sample size would result in a smaller standard error.
     5. Degrees of freedom is how many values of a dataset can change without affecting the outcome.
     6. A p-value is the probability that the rankings are not significant increased/decreased.
     7. You could go further and calculate the confidence interval for the true ranking difference, but for testing whether there is a significant increase in rankings, this is probably not necessary.

I’d like to thank @stekenwright for saying I’ve written a blog post on tracking site search via GTM… I guess I need to finish that one.

— Emma Barnes (@ejbarnes89) June 15, 2017

Guess I need to get cracking.

To be fair to him, I have written a few blog posts about this topic…

How to double conversion by using Site Search

How to automatically track events with Google Tag Manager

The time I did an investigation as to why everyone searches for “Stardoll” on the B3 site”

How to extract site search terms from subfolders in Google Analytics

So, he’s not wrong, I’ve sort of done this already. Just not as one piece.

Forget about GTM for a minute, let’s focus on Google Analytics

By default, Google Analytics does not track any internal site search for you, meaning you have to tell it “please can you tell me what keywords people type into my search bar”. This is how to track internal site search in Google Analytics:

• Go to Admin
• Go to View Settings
• Go to Site Search Setting
• Tick Site Search Tracking>On
• Add your query parameter
• Optional: Add categories if your site search uses categories
• Save

PROTIP: Create a Lowercase Filter for Search Term, it means that people searching for “SEO” and “seo” are both tracked under the search term “seo”. Without this, they’re treated as separate keywords.

To view the internal site search report it’s in Behaviour>Site Search.

And you can see all sorts of delights and wonders:

Percentage of people who use site search on your site

Search terms

Tracking “No Results” with Google Tag Manager

By default, you don’t get to see whether the searches returned any results. Tracking searches with “no results” is a really good way to generate ideas for content, among other things.

Every website’s site search is configured differently, so this explanation is for Branded3 – hopefully you can use the same methods for your own website. If you’d like additional  help, please contact us.

Search your website for a query you know will return no results

If you can’t think of a phrase, just mash your keyboard and hit enter.

Take note of the message that displays

In the above, you can see that “No Results found” displays. In Google Analytics, I want to see the amount of pages where this message fires. Inspect the element to find the element ID.

In this case, it’s #search-results, which funnily enough is our motto (or close enough).

Create a Variable in Google Tag Manager to extract the element

In GTM, go to Variables>User-Defined Variables>New to create a new variable.
Create a Dom Element variable with the Selection Method CSS Selector, and input your selector name. I’ve used #search-results in this case.

Create a lookup table variable to sort between “No Results” and “Results”

Create another new variable, this time choosing Lookup Table. Give it the Input Variable that you just created (I called it “Search Result”). Here, I am able to create a rule that says “if the CSS Selector #search-results says “No results found”, call this “No Results”, and if it doesn’t say that, call it “Results””. I do this by giving it one lookup value (match No results found to -> No results) and a default value of “Results”. Save your query

Bonus round – Create a variable to track the keyword used

You don’t have to do this, but it will add value to your report. I created a variable to extract the search query from the URL. You need to create a URL variable with the Query component type. Add your Query Key (which should be the same as the Query Parameter from Google Analytics). Save your query.

Create a trigger to fire on search results pages

Go to Triggers>New to create a new trigger. You need to choose a Page View – Dom Ready trigger. Choose Some DOM Ready Events. Create a rule for “url contains ”. In my case, this is any page including /?s=.

Create an event tag to fire search results as an event to Google Analytics

Go to Tags>New to create a new tag. You need to choose a Universal Analytics tag (if you’ve not migrated to Universal Analytics… please do, I wrote a guide). You need to choose Track Type Event. I’ve given the events the Category: Search Used, the Action: {{Search Value Results}} (this is the lookup table we created earlier) and Label: {{page query}} (the keyword extractor variable). Set Non-Interaction Hit to True and configure your Google Analytics as you normally would.

Set the Trigger to the Search results trigger that we just created and save the tag.

PROTIP: Use the GTM Debugger to see if this works, and amend as required! Every website will be different.

Once tested, push the tag live.

Analyse your results using the event report

To see your new events, go to the Google Analytics report called Behaviour>Events>Top Events and search for the “Search Used” event category (or whatever you named it).
Click it and you can see what searches had results or not:

You can then click into Results or No Results to analyse which keywords came back with or without results.

And there you have it! Please enjoy your new data!

We’re incredibly grateful for all the people – the 40 speakers, all the sponsors, the first direct arena staff (who did a great job handling security and were genuinely helpful) and, last but not least, the 40+ Branded3 team members (and especially our awesome marketing team) – who gave up their time to make SearchLeeds what it was this year: the biggest digital conference in the north of England.

Session 1 – main stage

Branded3 communications director Laura Crimmons – “Let’s get emotional”

Find it on SlideShare here.

Paul Madden – Kerboo

Links as a metric in 2017, are they still relevant and how do we ensure value?

Paddy Moogan – Aira

From SMEs to billion dollar companies – how link building can work for everyone

Session 1 – Search Laboratory stage

Rob McGowan – Response One

Are you seeing the whole elephant? Why you need multiple perspectives on your customers to get the full picture

Anna Lewis – Polka Dot Data

Nailing ecommerce analysis with Google Analytics

Adam Lee and Liam Mordew – Amaze

Exploring data relationships – where quantification ends and contextualisation begins

Session 1 – stage 3

Jon Myers – DeepCrawl

Prepare your website for mobile-first indexing

Rebecca Weeks and Romain Bonnet – MGOMD

Adapting your search strategy for a voice search world

Mathew Court – AutoTrader

Mobile first optimisation for non-responsive websites

Session 2 – main stage

James Carson – The Telegraph

Audience development: how SEO and social work together at a large publisher

Danny Blackburn – Stickyeyes

A content blueprint to drive serious SEO success

Stephen Power – Google

We don’t go online. We live online.

Session 2 – Search Laboratory stage

Pete Whitmarsh – Search Laboratory

PPC: Increasing your odds of winning – how to get an extra 10% from advanced bidding techniques

Christian Scharmüller – Smarter Ecommerce GMbH

Grow your business with Google Shopping

Branded3 paid media director Jon Greenhalgh

The growing impact of artificial intelligence on paid media

Session 2 – stage 3

Vikas Arora – Bing

The psychology of search

Ellie England – Bing

The future of search

Arianne Donoghue – icelolly.com

To rent or mortgage – PPC vs SEO and why you can’t ignore either

Session 3 – main stage

Steve Baker and Neil Astin – Epiphany

Desire, Data and Developers: 3 key facets of improving paid search performance

Sam Noble – Koozai

Futuristic paid media strategies

Matt Kwiecinski and Chris Rowett – Journey Further

5 questions every client should ask their media agency

Session 3 – Search Laboratory stage

Christina Ohanian – River Island

Agile in the real world – it really is all about embedding from the trenches!

Dawn Anderson – Move It Marketing

Too much choice for too little space and crawl budget – SEO and choice theory

Barry Adams – Polemic Digital

Turning SEO audit recommendations into business gains (SEO audit case studies)

Session 3 – Stage 3

Toby Brown – Response One

Is content really still king? And how do you make a king work for you?

Alex Tachalova – Digital Olympus

Why no one cares about my content (including Google)

Chelsea Blacker – BlueGlass

How to get amazing content marketing results (and measure it)

Session 4 – main stage

Will Critchlow – Distilled

Lessons from SEO split-testing

Aleyda Solis – Orainti

Winning conversion-driven ecommerce SEO

Branded3 director of search Stephen Kenwright

How to be Amazon (and beat Google at search)

Session 4 – Search Laboratory stage

Ned Poulter – Pole Star Digital

Facebook ads: the shifting landscape from keywords to audiences

Lydia Hinchliff – Mediacom

Fueling content in the dark

Malcolm Slade – Epiphany

Brand: the only future ranking factor?

Session 4 – stage 3

Martin McGarry – Which Bingo

So how good (or bad) was that pitch? 10 real examples of practices that either won or lost you that contract

Olga Adrienko – SEMrush

SEMrush ranking factors study

You can read through the full SEMrush ranking factors study here.

If you can’t wait until next year to hear from the speakers and exhibitors from SearchLeeds 2017 you can easily follow them all on Twitter here.

See you in 2018!

Get ready to get hungry and thirsty just in time for the weekend, with our top 5 campaigns of the week!

Apple predicts the ‘Appocalypse’

The annual Worldwide Developer’s Conference, organized by Apple, took place in California this week, and Apple stole the show with their introduction video. There have been some mixed reviews…

Don’t joke about the apocalypse right now, Apple. #wwdc17

— Sam Harrelson (@samharrelson) June 5, 2017

But we think it adds a bit of lighthearted humour while raising awareness about how reliant people are on their phones these days.

Calling all gin lovers: Clear your schedule for 10^th June

Saturday 10^th June is World Gin Day, and jasmine gin brand Willem Barentsz have created a gin treasure hunt around London.

‘The Jasmine Trail’ allows gin lovers to visit 4 different cocktail bars in London and sample some of their specials. You can also be entered in a competition, for a chance to travel to your dream destination if you share photos of the hidden treasure map on Instagram or Twitter using the hastag #WBJasmineTrail and #WillemBarentsz.

According to the gin brand, the treasure hunt has been organised to celebrate ‘the pioneering spirit behind 16^th century Dutch explorer Captain Willem Barentsz, who’s passionate quest for adventure struck a chord with modern-day maverick and owner Michael Claessens.’

All the information you need about the gin treasure hunt can be found here – good luck!

Where would you want to explore? You could win the chance to fly to your dream destination with a friend – Link in bio on how to win. #WBJasmineTrail #willembarentsz

A post shared by Willem Barentsz Gin (@willembarentsz) on Jun 7, 2017 at 5:33am PDT

Two words you never thought would go together: ‘Poundland’ and ‘Wedding’

Weddings can be hard to organize when you’re on a strict budget, but Poundland are trying to help. From June 12^th, they will be selling a range of wedding extras including invites, wedding planner books, and even full bouquets.

Poundland will also be offering their customers advice about wedding planning from their very own wedding planner, Sophie Bladon. They know Brits are a nation of savvy shoppers and want to help make the most of the big day.

McDonald’s create a Big Mac fashion line

There are a lot of Big Mac fans across the world, and McDonald’s want to give them a chance to show their appreciation for the burger by wearing Big Mac clothing.

The burger chain has teamed up with Japanese fashion label BEAMS to create a Big Mac-inspired, limited-edition collection, which includes t-shirts, hats, phone cases, and a few more unique items.

Only 300 copies of each item were available (and so they’re probably all gone now!) but you can still explore the range and dream of cheeseburgers.

METRO GRAB – from ecommerce website Rakuten
Credit: Rakuten
McDonald’s Launch A Big Mac-Inspired Merch Collection

BrewDog encourage people to vote with free beer

On Thursday 8^th June, Brewdog gave an incentive to encourage the democratic practice: vote, and we’ll give you free beer.

All you had to do was vote, take a picture of yourself outside the polling station, and head to BrewDog to claim your free beer. The offer continues today, so if you want to celebrate, commiserate, or just enjoy a beer, then go get your free one!

“We don’t claim to be affiliated with any one political persuasion, and to be honest we don’t care who you vote for,” BrewDog explained in a blog post. “But we do believe it is important that everyone exercises their right to vote in the UK’s upcoming General Election.”

Hydrate and commute all at once

Londoners have had the chance to enjoy a free commute on Tuesday this week, thanks to a promotion from Lucozade at the Oxford Circus station. Thousands of commuters were given special bottles of the fizzy beverage, then used the exclusive contactless chip-fitted bottle as an Oyster Card.

This stunt comes under the umbrella campaign “Find Your Flow”, which you might have seen around your city.

A new route for your health

No, we’ve not been doodling cheeky graffiti during working hours… This is, in fact, part of a charity campaign all about men’s health.

Testicular Cancer New Zealand teamed up with FCB New Zealand for a campaign called #GoBallsOut for Testicular Cancer Awareness Month.

The campaign was created to engage with men to go out and cycle, walk, run, or even kayak the outline of their family jewels using a fitness app as their guide. The route was then recorded and could be uploaded to the site dedicated to all the penises’ itineraries: www.goballsout.org.nz

Making Kiwis aware and getting them moving in a funny way, plus receiving great coverage in only a short period of time, it sounds like a successful campaign, bearing in mind the hardest part must have been pitching it!

Spell it out

The U.S. is well known for huge food portions, big cars, and movie stars, as well as (slightly less glamourous) Spelling Bee contests, where children compete by learning the most complicated words in the dictionary by heart.

For the 90th Annual Scripps National Spelling Bee, a map has been released with the most common spelling errors in the different states of America. “Beautiful” has been crowned as the most misspelled word but “banana” seems to be a struggle in New Mexico.

Take a look for yourself, and see how your spelling ability compares…

Prosecco and Pawsecco

No, this is not a prank. Yes, this is “wine” for your cat or your dog

Hear me out: it’s Friday night, you are home alone because you either cancelled your plans or you just don’t have any. Your cat is purring on the sofa by your side and the bottle of wine is looking at you expectantly. No need to feel guilty for pouring yourself a glass of wine as the Woof & Brew Shop have launched a white and rosé pet drink.

Disclaimer: Vets have been involved in the making of the wine so there’s no risk of a drunk or sick pup (just be careful not to mix theirs and yours!).

Nutella bouquets

Don’t get too excited at the mention of everyone’s favourite chocolate spread, because these are only available in Australia… though, maybe if we talk about them enough, someone (please, please, please) will launch them here!

Because sending flowers is so yesterday, the new trend is sending Nutella-filled doughnut bouquets, accompanied by a personalised liquid chocolate syringe.

Dessertboxes understood the Australian need for this and we can only hope they will start to do deliveries in the UK as well.