Learn High Valyrian with duolingo

The first of our Game of Thrones related campaigns comes from duolingo, the free language platform. Instead of using the app to learn French or Spanish, you can now use it to brush up on your High Valyrian skills, the fictional language spoken by the Targaryen family in GOT.

Huffington Post creator David J. Peterson said “You will be able to produce and understand some of the more famous lines like ‘a dragon is not a slave’ and a lot of Daenerys’ titles.”

“Not all of them, but a lot,”

Game of Thrones is a favorite at the Duolingo office, and apparently Duolingo is a favorite on their set, too 🙂 http://t.co/wnr4t59gkq

— Duolingo (@duolingo) July 26, 2013

Tourism Ireland’s Game of Thrones Tapestry

Our second GOT campaign this week comes from Tourism Ireland. With Northern Ireland earning its title as GOT territory, the tourist board have created a giant tapestry which depicts in great detail, every single episode in the series.

The tapestry which has been created over the course of three months is set to grow, reaching 250ft in length by the end of the show as new episodes are added. You can view the tapestry for yourself on their website or visit the real version in the Ulster Museum in Belfast from the 22^nd July.

easyJet’s launches “Flybaries”

As schools finish up for the Summer and families across the UK jet off on holiday, low cost airline easyJet have launch “Flybaries”. An initiative created after recent research suggested that children are reading fewer books on holiday than their parents did.

The campaign involves turning their planes into libraries, by hiding up to 7,000 classic children’s books in the aircrafts seat pockets. Onboard, children can also download further books, including an exclusive title from Dame Jaqueline Wilson.

Reebok’s reactive PR

When is it appropriate to say to someone “you’re in such good shape… beautiful”? Hint: not when you’re meeting the first lady of France in front of the worlds media.

During President Trump’s short visit to France recently, he managed to cause controversy for some inappropriate remarks made to first lady, Brigitte Macron. Spotting an opportunity to step in and correct the US president, Reebok quickly jumped on his controversial comments by creating an infographic about where and when this type of comment is appropriate.

The tweet has already had over 52,000 retweets and 88,000 likes!

In case you were wondering when it IS appropriate to say, “You’re in such good shape…beautiful,”… THIS: pic.twitter.com/Z1cnnRD8Ut

— Reebok (@Reebok) July 14, 2017

EE celebrate their 4GEE community cinema club

In a year where EE are celebrating their 20-year partnership with BAFTA and the fact that their 4G coverage reaches 80% of the UK, the mobile network is bringing outdoor cinema experiences to rural areas. The 4GEE Community Cinema Club film series will be hosted in various locations across the UK this summer proving the reliability of their 4G service.

The first event which took place this week gave climbers from Real Adventure Climbing Group stream movies at 500m above sea level in Cumbria. You can apply to be part of the campaign via the EE website.

A microsite is a website owned by a brand but located on a separate domain to the brand’s homepage, usually on a subdomain or separate URL.

When SEO is a consideration, it’s always better to host new content in a subfolder/subdirectory (e.g. domain.com/content/) than a subdomain (content.domain.com) or separate microsite (content.com).

N.B. When SEO isn’t a consideration ask yourself: should it be? Talk to your team/agency before you launch multiple domains.

Do microsites have any SEO benefits?

Microsites are sometimes created on an exact match domain (EMD).

EMDs are websites registered with a target keyword in the URL (e.g. johnlewisforeigncurrency.com) with the intention of ranking for that keyword.

Does that work? Yes.

Should it work? Only if you’re John Lewis a huge brand.

In 2012 (between the first two Penguin updates) Google released an update creatively named the EMD update with the intention of counteracting the boost gained from having the target keyword in the domain name. It used to be as straightforward as throwing up an exact match domain to target a traffic driving keyword – but now it, like any legit SEO tactic, requires budget and effort… And without a lot of effort it will only ever rank for the one exact keyword.

John Lewis is also discovering the limitations of an exact match domain and is migrating the website onto johnlewisfinance.com with only moderate success so far. If your microsite strategy does work, you may have to manage the risk of moving it onto a more suitable (macro) website.

Microsites can be used to manage a brand’s reputation in branded searches.

As an example, Wonga.com used to own the website openwonga.com, hosting content about the measures the company is taking to become more responsible. The positive for Wonga was an additional positive listing on a branded SERP.

However, listings for Wonga.com, openwonga.com, social profiles etc. vs. a lot of negative reviews and a fresh brand mention in every payday loans horror story (regardless of the actual lender) made this an expensive drop in the ocean. (And I’d argue that if your reputation is really that bad you’d probably want people viewing your products to be able to access this content in the same place).

Branded keywords are one thing… It’s sometimes mentioned that since Google has started to show fewer results from the same domain (very few sites now get multiple listings in the same SERP), microsites are a potential way to dominate a results page and own multiple listings. In principle, this is hard to do and it’s usually a year before a new website ranks for pretty much anything.

Sometimes, something prevents your primary website from ranking.

Extreme technical limitations could be a reason to launch a microsite. For example, if there’s no realistic way to publish content on your brand’s primary website, you might want to launch a separate content site on WordPress or similar.

Penalties probably aren’t a good reason to launch a new website anymore. With nearly two years between Penguin updates (before Penguin 4.0 rolled out in October 2016) Google had been preventing some big brands from ranking, regardless of measures taken, and a separate content site could have fed some much-needed traffic – now the algorithm is real-time recoveries can happen whenever the work is done. In 2017 there should be no penalty so horrifying that it’s cheaper to start again with a new domain than to do the right things for your website.

You don’t want visitors to know who’s behind the campaign.

Fair enough.

Is it easier to build links to an unbranded microsite?

I’ve heard anecdotal evidence that suggests outreach gets a better response when bloggers and journalists are asked to link to an unbranded content site.

This is probably true for highly unpopular brands (Wonga.com) but not usually true for brands in unpopular industries (e.g. payday loans). We rarely experience any resistance when building links for betting sites such as Ladbrokes, forex traders like City Index our alternative credit companies like Provident Personal Credit.

We’re always upfront about the brands we’re working with (from the first email or immediately on a call) and experience suggests bloggers are more likely to work with better known brands – so you’d probably benefit from mentioning which brand owns your site in most cases anyway.

It does seem to be true that bloggers are more likely to ask for money when they’re asked to link to an iGaming site versus a retailer, for example – and back when paying for links was a thing, bloggers would frequently demand more money if asked to link to an iGaming site.

This should absolutely not factor into your thinking now – you should be turning down all requests to pay for backlinks and I’d recommend not working with a blogger at all if there’s a suggestion that they charge anyone in any industry to pay to place a link on their site.

The reasons why microsites are bad for SEO

1. Duplicate content: You shouldn’t be using the same content on more than one website so you’ll have to create new content from scratch (although you can probably get away with videos). If your microsite is so similar to your homepage that slight rewording is enough, do you really need a separate domain at all. If your “microsite” is in fact a subfolder with a different look and feel (e.g. domain.com/content/ rather than content.com) you can utilise the same content and use canonical tags to prevent duplication – the microsite won’t rank but you’ll prevent any damage occurring to your primary domain.
2. No links: It’s easy to forget how much effort went into getting the links your main site has (and how much easier it used to be). Your new website will have no links and won’t rank until you get some, which means cost for you. If you spent the same amount of time creating content for your primary website, which will benefit from the links you already have as well as other potential factors like domain age, you’ll start ranking much more quickly.
3. Marketing it won’t benefit your main domain: Links you build to your microsite won’t benefit your brand’s homepage and products. Visitors to one site won’t easily be able to navigate to the other.
4. Cross-domain tracking is a pain: Every visit that lands on your primary site from your microsite will be listed as a referral in Google Analytics and you won’t know how that visitor found you initially e.g. from search, social, or direct as a result of some campaign you’re running. You can hack something together to better track these referrals but that means spending (effort or money) on analytics.
5. You’ll have to adopt things like HTTPS twice: Soon your websites will have to be HTTPS. All your websites. That means an extra certificate – and a potentially painful and undoubtedly expensive migration from HTTP to HTTPS. Imagine you were using both a primary and a secondary website in early 2015… And neither was mobile friendly – Google makes these changes from time to time and you’ll just have to do them twice.
6. More things in your dev queue: I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have busy developers. One site is always going to be the poor cousin, or you’ll have to hire separate teams/agencies.
7. Link too many microsites together and you start to look like a network: You lose trust and the links become worthless. Plus, penalties.
8. It’s not as simple as redirecting the new site back in for the link authority: It can and does work but you run the risk of Google treating those redirects as soft 404s (Glenn Gabe’s analysis of this is all you need to read).
9. Even with investment it will take a while to rank: 6 months seems a reasonable timeframe to start getting rankings for a brand new website with investment. If you’re not actively trying to build its authority (link acquisition/PR, content) you’ll be waiting a year or more.
10. Even if you’re happy to rely on paid search to drive traffic, your account has no history: It will be more expensive to run PPC for your new site for a few months until you’ve built up your Quality Score (and maybe your primary account already has good Quality Score so you’d be paying less to market a subfolder).
11. The poster boys for cool microsites haven’t got it right: When researching this topic, I found a lot of writers pointing to Coca Cola’s “Beverage Institute” as a really good example of this strategy. Well, they’ve redirected it and it’s vanished off the face of the earth.

A quick business case for dealing with your technical limitations

The most common reason I’ve encountered for launching a separate website is that it’s impossible to upload content to the current site.

Most marketers in most businesses will agree that there’s a need for content (if this doesn’t sound like your organisation: call us, we might be able to help).

Despite what you’ve read on Search Engine Land, good SEO isn’t cheap – and it’s likely going to take a year to get traffic – so try this:

Cost of adding functionality to current website – (cost of brand new website build + domain registration + hosting + SSL certificate + 12x monthly cost of SEO agency)

… And see if it comes out positive.

The first ever blog is claimed to be Links.net, created by American college student Justin Hall, who named it his ‘personal site’ back in 1994.

Since then, blogging has boomed; for many, it has resulted in the transition from a hobby to a career, turning passion in to profit.

In 2003, Google launched AdSense to connect bloggers and advertisers; Vlogging (video blogging) followed in 2006, thanks to the launch of YouTube; and by 2008, a new blog was created every single second of the day.

A study by Universal McCann reports more than three quarters of internet users now read blogs, with 900,000 blog posts going live daily in 81 languages.

Is it any surprise brands are seeking out bloggers to act as ambassadors?

Bloggers are now much more than just entertaining voices for the everyday – taking centre stage as they represent big industry names.

What is a brand ambassador?

A brand ambassador is a person appointed by an organisation to positively represent its identity: raising awareness, increasing sales and driving traffic.

Traditionally, celebrities and high-profile figures were paid to hold the title, but the modern-day brand ambassador is somewhat different.

Brands today want ‘real life people’ – bloggers with passion, who can write engaging copy to showcase their brand, products or services.

They may be paid, offered commission, or given a complimentary product or service in return for a review. These are “influencers” in the purest sense of the word: content creators who can legitimately influence the preferences of their audiences.

Blogging at its best

Teen vlogger Zoe Sugg launched Zoella in 2009: a fashion and beauty blog with a focus on photography. In less than a year, she’d gathered 1,000 followers, encouraging her to launch a sister YouTube channel, Zoella280390 (her birth date).

Seven years on, she has more than 10 million subscribers, with a total view count topping 700 million.

Her blogging success has led to big opportunities.

In 2014, she signed a two-book deal with Penguin Books. Her debut novel, Girl Online, achieved her the title of ‘highest first-week sales for a debut book’, selling 78,109 copies in seven days.

Zoella Beauty – a bath and beauty range – also launched the same year, exclusively stocked in Superdrug stores and online at Feel Unique.

Then in 2014, Zoe became the first digital ambassador for mental health charity Mind, with the goal of helping to stamp out the stigma around mental illness.

Bloggers: How to become brand ambassadors

Find your USP

What makes you stand out from the crowd? Analyse your blog stats and your social media interaction to see what posts are getting people talking. Once you’ve found your unique selling point, build on it.

Put yourself out there

Don’t wait for opportunities to come to you! Contact brands or PR agencies with suggestions for collaborations – what’s the worst that can happen? Be realistic, but have confidence!

Share your stats

Record the influence your brand has on site traffic and social media activity using Google Analytics. Speak to the brand beforehand to find out which stats they want you to share, so you know the expectations in advance.

Be one step ahead

As well as maintaining your established brand relationships, continue to search for upcoming campaign launches and releases to establish new brand partnerships.

Stay true to you

As much as you’ll want to impress the brand you’re blogging about, remember the site should represent your personality – that’s why your readers follow you – so don’t let a brand dictate what you write.

Brands: appointing a blogger to be a brand ambassador

It’s a three-way thing

To be successful, the brand, the blogger and the audience need to gain value. To ensure your brand gets the best possible representation, find a blogger who can create content to influence and engage, who fits your company ethos with a readership aligned to your target audience.

Give direction not dictation

Guide bloggers in the direction you want to lead your brand, but don’t control the content. Let them do their own thing – it’s what they’re good at.

Trusted content

Brand ambassadors have the ability to expose your brand to various social circles. Those who follow a blog already have trust in the author.

People buy from people

A recent survey revealed that bloggers are trusted more than celebrities, journalists, brands and politicians. Thanks to their fair and balanced reviews, they are regarded as the third most trustworthy source of information – behind only friends and family.

Bloggers and brands: Make sure it’s believable

Above all, make sure your posts are authentic and believable!

We are seeing bloggers and influencers quite obviously just promoting product after product, as if they use these items every day when in fact they’ve probably never used it before.

Bloggers: Stay loyal to yourself and only choose brands and products that suit you, or ones that you’re already a fan of and would recommend to your readers. Pretending to like something and encouraging your readers to purchase it can damage your reputation. People can lose trust, and you may lose your following.

A good example of this is Jess Shears, one of the Love Island 2017 contestants. Since leaving the villa, her social following has reached a huge 1 million followers on Instagram, and many brands have offered her opportunities to promote their products. She has quite obviously accepted, and her fans have started to lose trust:

Jess promoted this post on her Instagram page stating: “As always, I start my day with my @convitsuk sachet”. Many didn’t believe this to be true and shared their frustration in the comments. Despite the backlash, she continues to post promoted products on her page daily, causing even more people to see behind the lies. OK magazine even covered her promotional activity in a recent issue.

Brands: It is important not to imitate this marketing tactic as it simply doesn’t work, and it can damage your reputation. People are looking for authenticity when following social influencers, ambassadors, or brands online. This sort of behaviour can only tarnish that.

This week, social media has cleverly made its way into many successful PR campaigns including Tinder’s Hawaii trip giveaway, Macmillan’s hashtag takeover on Twitter and Dirty Bones foodie Instagram kits. All of which have used social to excel their PR campaigns and reach their audience on the platforms they use most.

Dirty Bones Instagram Packs

Starting with Dirty Bones, they have been offering the perfect foodie Instagram pack to help visitors up their #foodporn game. Everyone is guilty of taking that ‘my food is amazing’ picture before tucking in, and Dirty Bones have taken advantage of this and turned it into a social meets PR campaign.

To celebrate the new opening of their Soho London branch, which has been designed with the ‘Instagram Universe’ in mind, Dirty Bones are ensuring all customers get the perfect foodie picture by using their in-house Instagram packs. The items in the pack include a portable LED camera light, a multi-device charger, a clip-on wide angle camera lens and a tripod selfie stick for overhead shots.

The restaurant chain has realised that many people trust Instagram when deciding where to eat and want to make sure that they are competing against the other 128 million Instagram posts around #foodporn to get their customers through the door.

(Dirty Bones Instagram)

#MacTakeover Day

Macmillan Cancer Charity were joined by many companies across London to raise money for people in need on July 13^th. While it wasn’t their intention to trend on Twitter the hashtag was widely followed by users loving all the dress up photos.

If you were around London yesterday you might have bumped into human bananas, people dressed as Mac, and others sporting green wigs. It was all for a good cause and Macmillan were thrilled to be trending on Twitter. What a great example of an offline PR campaign that can be amplified further by social media.

(Image)

Tinder’s 3-year daters

This campaign is a brilliant example of how a brand can latch onto something that is already happening in the media. Tinder users Josh and Michelle matched on the app 3 years ago, and the entire digital world has come to love the couple for their hilarious conversation that has dragged out over the years without them meeting. That is, until now.

Tinder joined in on their Twitter chat, and offered the couple a chance to finally go on a date. Josh and Michelle have taken up the opportunity with Tinder and have agreed to fly to Hawaii to meet each other.

We can imagine that everyone will want to know how their love story ends and Tinder have very cleverly promoted themselves through this campaign.

San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art is on text

While this campaign isn’t directly related to social media, it has made use of the digital world in a way that museums haven’t yet discovered. To add to the experience of visiting San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art, customers can now text the museum’s number with any caption and they will reply to you with a piece of art that relates to your text.

(Image)

The museum is hoping that it will enhance the experience people have, and will help them to explore art in a different and more creative way than before.

This is an interesting way to connect with customers and become more easily accessible to people who might not be able to go to the museum.

Game of Thrones bring a chill to London

Finally, to end the PR round up for this week, we bring you Game of Thrones. It is back on our TV’s on July 17^th, and to get people excited for the new season the White Walkers took to the streets of London and other cities across the UK. The characters looked decidedly chilling, and gave us a sneak peek into what is to come for the new season.

(Image)

Using #WinterIsHere in the new trailer, Game of Thrones have been taking to Twitter to get everyone excited for the new episode next week and users are loving it. They have also created a snapchat filter that fans can use and many have been posting the videos online. It shows that to create a real hype around a campaign you need to use social media to get people excited.

All of the above companies have used social media or digital interaction to help create more of a buzz around their PR campaigns. Brand’s should be looking to incorporate social into all of their PR campaigns, especially because it’s the one platform that almost everyone uses daily. These are all great examples of how you can use it in different ways and we are definitely inspired.

Dominated by some of our personal favourites from a PR point of view, Greggs, Pizza Hut, Netflix, and Oreo are fast becoming regulars in our roundups. Find out what they’ve been up to this week…

Lose weight with Greggs! (Yes, you read that right)

I’m not going to lie, I thought this was a complete joke at first. Greggs (yep, bean and cheese melt connoisseurs) have released a diet plan to help fans get in shape for summer, while still chowing down on their favourite baked goods.

Teaming up with independent dietician Laura Clark, the Minimise Me 30-day plan is comprised completely of Greggs’ products, including salads, sandwiches and even the odd pizza slice and sausage roll! Hats off to them, it’s ideal for their target audience – and the story has been covered virtually everywhere!

Bed N Binge with Netflix

If you’re looking forward to a weekend of #NetflixandChills, Three Mobile and Samsung are about to take you to a new level.

This weekend (7-9 July), Osterley Park in Isleworth is hosting a sleepover of mammoth proportions with fifteen different cabins that will all screen a different Netflix series. The ‘Bed N Binge’ event even lets you order food and drinks inspired by the series straight to your cabin. We wonder what’s on the Stranger Things menu…

Image source: https://i1.wp.com/secretldn.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/BedNBingeEdit_07-e1499257610861.jpg?resize=800%2C551

For a chance to get tickets, sign up here

If you like piña coladas…

…Then you’re in for a treat. To celebrate #PINACOLADADAY, Malibu have teamed up with bars and pubs up and down the country to give away thousands of tropical treats. Simply sign up here, find your closest watering hole, and enjoy your free piña colada at any point over the weekend!

As part of their wider campaign #becausesummer, Malibu have also pimped up a Pina Colada tuk-tuk and are encouraging followers to snap and share a photo of the tropical tuk-tuk for a chance to win a ride.

Yes, we do like pinã coladas. Have you spotted the @maliburumuk tuk-tuk yet? Snap it for a chance to win a ride #pinacoladaday #freeride #becausesummer

A post shared by John Doe (@whatjohndoesays) on Jul 6, 2017 at 7:01am PDT

Pizza flavoured PDA’s for #InternationalKissingDay

Pizza Hut have never been shy of fun and quirky activities to get themselves talked about, and International Kissing Day was no exception. To follow on from last year’s Parfum de Pizza, the kings of the stuffed crust have created a Hawaiian lip balm, with all the tasty hints of your favourite ham and pineapple pizza.

Apparently, customers in participating restaurants who were amongst the first to order a Hawaiian pizza yesterday received a pot of the tropical balm. We can’t find anything on social media yet, so let us know if you got your hands on one!

Roll on the pizza PDA!

Image source: https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/nintchdbpict000336579558-e1499253277448.jpg?strip=all&quality=100&w=960

#MyOreoCreation

It’s not the first time a snack company has asked its followers to create their own flavours. But over the past year, we’ve seen how the #MyOreoCreation contest has kept the simple competition really interesting.

The competition challenges the public to submit a new Oreo-inspired creation, be that a new biscuit flavour or a completely new snack containing Oreo cookies, crackers, or pancake mix. The final winner will win $500k and have their creation in stores across the US, but along the way they have been turning some of the favourites into a reality (including an Oreo cookie lip balm!).

Our favourite activity so far is the little packages that have been personally addressed and delivered to competition entrants all over the country. They receive a small packet containing their own submission, which has included Oreo Kettle Corn, Glazed Donut, and Unicorn cookies. All of these have obviously been shared all over social media…Very smart Oreo!

Still struggling to convince a client that investment into improving the mobile UX of the site is worthwhile? Well Google’s slides began by stating that “mobile pages that load 1s faster see up to +27% CvR”.

And that’s all well and good, but what I was more interested in is what Google see as the ideal load time for mobile. Well, 2.4 seconds is the sweet spot apparently, as they consider this to be a “good” load time, so if you’re hitting this, then you’re winning. That doesn’t mean to stop improving the load time though, echoing the sentiments of Stephen Kenwright’s talk at BrightonSEO “best practice is not enough”.

“53% of all users leave a page, when the loading time is longer than 3 seconds”

If you need help improving your page speed then we’ve done a whole variety of different posts on this you may find useful:

• https://www.branded3.com/blog/use-our-new-tool-to-show-how-your-revenue-is-affected-by-your-sites-speed/
• https://www.branded3.com/blog/whats-important-when-analysing-your-website-speed/
• https://www.branded3.com/blog/simple-plugins-to-speed-up-your-wordpress-site-for-free/

Interestingly, Google rely a lot on a tool we commonly use here at Branded3 called WebPageTest to get site speed within their slides, so it appears that it’s a reliable tool. I sense a big update coming to their Page Speed Insights Tool!

Anyway, in this example they tested on a Nexus 5 but you should look to test on a few mobile traffic devices which are the most traffic driving (Google Analytics -> Mobile -> Devices). Using the Branded3 site as an example, the top traffic driving devices are the iPhone, iPad and Samsung Galaxy S7, so this would be our top priority.

Testing the Samsung Galaxy S7 as an example on the Branded3 site, the time that Google care about is the document complete time and the speed index, which they say should be <5000. And, as you can see by the image below, the Branded3 site is very slow in regard to Document Complete time which is the more important of the two. (mental note to go poke one of our developers).

It gives you a useful breakdown of each of the elements in your results and a grade. If you click the grades, it gives you further information on what you can do to improve them – it appears that we need to improve our TTFB (time to first byte) and our Cache static content.

Tools to use and implement

There are a few interesting things that Google point out to help reduce load time in their slides. One of which is to use something called Base64, which is a tool Amazon run their onsite images through. It’s essentially just an image compression tool, but if Google are recommending it and Amazon are using it, perhaps it’s one of the better tools.

Google have also confirmed something I was a little bit hesitant about, which is Lazy Load. This tool allows loading of images just before the user needs the content so it only loads when the user scrolls, improving initial load times. But, it massively increases “fully load” times obviously and when you fetch and render a lazy load page it doesn’t appear properly, so there was a bit of a hesitation around implementing it. However, Google only say to implement it for mobile and the Scripts they reference are Lazy Sizes.

Mobile experience tips

The presentation goes on to giving some tips around how to best optimise your user experience on mobile devices.

One of the things they mention is to “give your user 5 seconds to look at your site”, they should be able to find three aspects in these 5 seconds:

• There should be a clear CTA
• Value proposition should be clear
• Visuals of your service and what you’re offering

Another thing they reiterate across several slides is to display value propositions at every step of the funnel, and to ensure that you answer the question “why should they choose you?” at every step of the mobile journey.

Engagement features can also be a big win, using things such as site search means more people convert, and it’s something that should be visible throughout the site. Another talk by Stephen Kenwright also highlights the importance of internal site search and how getting it right can improve conversions massively.

A few of the other points Google mention in their slides are to:

• Limit your exit points during checkout
• Give the user clear signals of success

In Summary…

• Document complete time should be under 2.4 seconds on mobile
• 53% of all users leave a page, when the loading time is longer than 3 seconds
• WebPageTest is one of the most reliable tools to use – Google use it!
• Speed Index on WebPageTest should be <5000
• Use Base64 To Optimize Images – Amazon use it and Google suggest it
• Lazyload can really help, Google suggest Lazy Sizes
• Clear CTA’s, value proposition and visuals of service should be seen within 5 seconds of visiting your site
• Limit exit points on checkout and give clear signals of success (reviews).

IKEA’s recipe posters

IKEA’s mission is to make everything simple and easy to understand; as part of this value, the brand has recently released a series of posters which makes cooking look easy.

The Canadian branch of the Swedish furniture tycoon teamed up with Toronto-based marketing company, Leo Burnett, to create Cook This Page, an ingenious set of illustrated recipes which have been unveiled at a recent IKEA Canada kitchen event.

I think this is a great, simple campaign from IKEA that fits well with their brand. It also steps into wider conversations than just furniture, allowing them to be a little bit more creative when talking about the home as a whole.

Tinder – VIP

Tinder is launching a VIP service that lets you instantly see who swipes right on your profile, aptly called Tinder Gold. This is the next level up from the average swiping functionality.

Tinder Gold is essentially a premium service giving all users the same features available through Tinder Plus, along with new feature named Likes You. This feature shows you who’s swiped right on you instantly, so you can get a speedier match. The new upgrade is designed as a time-saver, delivering all your ‘pending matches’ without any faff.

Domino’s Lotta-Chocca Pizza

Domino’s have a new addition to their menu in the shape of the Lotta-Chocca Pizza. As you can imagine it’s super unhealthy… but even more delicious, with mounds of chocolate piled on a soft Italian base. If your taste-buds are tingling, there’s good news! The Lotta-Chocca pizza is available all over the UK, in store and online.

I think that this is a really fun campaign, and a simple and effective way for Domino’s to get some great press coverage. Plus, who doesn’t love chocolate?

Cheese-themed afternoon tea!

Two of Britain’s favourite foods are joining forces: afternoon-tea and cheese! A cheese-themed afternoon tea is coming to the UK courtesy of Pimlico’s Georgian House Hotel, which has created a three-tiered medley of cheeses.

Alongside the tower of cheese will be smaller dishes that include smoked cheddar, Welsh rarebit and cheese, nduja and roasted pepper sandwiches. No afternoon tea is complete without a scone, so rather than the cream and raisins classic, they’ll be offering some delicious, savoury cheese scones.

I personally think this sounds amazing. The only downside is that it’s going to be short-lived, as this experience comes part of a pop-up opening to the public from 22 July to 30 July, at Georgian House in London, 35 – 39 St George’s Drive, London SW1V 4DG.

Honda’s Challenge Lab experience at Goodwood Festival of Speed

Car giant Honda have teamed up with a brand experience agency to create the Challenge Lab Experience at Goodwood Festival of Speed, which opens today, Friday 30^th June. Visitors to the stand are invited to take part in the experiences on offer, which includes climbing a wall inspired by Honda’s new TV advert. The new 2017 Civic model is also on display.

Guests are also given a chance to experience the high speed of the new Civic Type R, using a large wind machine, and try out a new robotic lawnmower to remind them that Honda isn’t only a car brand!

Jumping into this month’s roundup, it includes a $2.7 (£1.9) billion fine for Google and a movie about the industry itself.

Search updates

Google Algorithm update

Over the past few days, Google seems to have been busy updating or tweaking some of its algorithms, which can be seen with Google Algorithm tracking tool, Algoroo.

As usual though, Google doesn’t seem to have confirmed the update, saying the updates are made constantly, which isn’t helpful. People in the industry are still complaining of SERP volatility but nobody has really been able to pinpoint the cause of reason behind the activity.

It’s likely going to fall under quality, as this seems to be Google’s focus of late with every recent update. Google continues to hate on Amazon with another drop after the previous month’s loss of visibility.

In line with Google’s recent updates, we’ve been changing our strategies to focus on quality, which seems to be paying off for some of our clients…

On a mobile subdomain? Go responsive

As we reported last month, the mobile-first index may be quite some time away, but John Mueller hinted that it could be rolled out in stages.

Now Google has given us a bit more information on mobile-first indexing, by saying you’re in the best position if your site is responsive, as when the switch happens, Google will have to fully re-index your m. site, as currently on the desktop index, m. subdomains are just annotated.

The safest thing to do is to go responsive prior to the mobile-first index switch, as this will mean Google doesn’t have to index anything new. Having an m. subdomain probably won’t be the end of the world, but there may be a temporary drop in rankings over the switching period.

Jon Myers gave an interesting talk on this subject at SearchLeeds and highlighted how hard it could be to properly configure m. subdomains when you consider things like canonicalization and hreflang.

You can find his slides here. There was a perfect slide within his deck that summarises the best mobile configuration to be on pretty well…

Google officially stops using DMOZ for SERPs

DMOZ officially shut down on March 17^th – RIP – and Google has finally announced that it will no longer be using the data from the open directory project to display in its search results – something it has been doing for over 10 years.

“With DMOZ now closed, we’ve stopped using its listings for snippeting, so it’s a lot more important that webmasters provide good meta descriptions, if adding more content to the page is not an option.” – Google Webmaster Blog

The reason Google used this data is because the quality of the DMOZ snippets was often of a higher quality than webmasters provided in their descriptions, but now you’ve got to fend for yourselves.

Google news

The usability push continues

Continually over the past few years Google has been developing tools and other ways of telling us how important usability is.

One of the main continuous pushes has been to improve your site’s page load speed, but one of the common struggles is being able to visualise the importance of improving this speed issue for your clients to ensure they invest the time in improving it.

Google has made steps towards making this process easier with the additions to the Test My Site tool.

This will provide you with an industry comparison, although as usual it doesn’t feature digital marketing… yet… but nonetheless, it could be an important thing to slot into your tech audits!

As usual though, we are a bit ahead of the curve with our site speed calculator, which details the estimated revenue loss per second. Some selfless promotion right there, but it’s not long before Google develops something like this, mark my words.

Building ad blockers into Chrome

To continue improving the user experience of websites, Google has now announced they will be building an adblocker into the Chrome browser to tackle intrusive ads, but making the effort to state it will just be those annoying ads that will be targeted.

You may be sitting there thinking, why would Google potentially risk losing revenue? Well that’s simple, they won’t be losing any revenue.

It’s actually quite a smart marketing tool, and they’re hoping that by combating only the intrusive ads, it will allow for a better experience and lead to fewer people installing ad blockers that block all ads on a webpage, as they will be able to win back some of that ad revenue for the 30% of web users that have an ad blocker.

$2.7 Billion anti-trust fine

You’ve likely heard the news that Google has been fined a reported $2.7bn dollars by the EU due to “anti-competitive” practices in relation to Google Shopping.

This is more so going to affect the paid market, so if you’re interested in reading more about this, our Head of PPC Strategy, Ashley Tabatabai, has written a post on what could be in store for Google Shopping in the future.

In other news

SEO: The Movie

So, that’s a thing now. There’s a movie about how the SEO industry came to be what it is now by Ignite Visibility. It features some big names within the industry, such as Rand Fishkin and Danny Sullivan, and brings a feeling of nostalgia to those who have been in the industry for a long time, as it goes through the evolution of search.

Google adds a fidget spinner – http://searchengineland.com/google-adds-fidget-spinner-basket-easter-eggs-277473

JavaScript and SEO: Making your bot experience as good as your user experience – https://moz.com/blog/javascript-seo

Google For Jobs now live in search results – https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-jobs-now-live-search-results/202986/

We’ve had some fun with Data Studio over the last year; it is a great way to quickly visualise data from multiple sources and can be a time saver in analysis. But something was missing: the ability to export data!

This has been rectified in a recent update with the ability to export charts and tables into CSV format. This means you can now set up a dashboard report as you want it to look and take that data down into Excel for additional analysis via the various API connections to Data Studio.

So how does it work? When viewing a dashboard hovering over charts and tables a new menu button appears. Once clicked, it opens the Export to CSV functionality. Clicking one of these items tells Data Studio to fetch the data shown in the chart/table and is then downloaded.

This functionality helps Google Data Studio move from pure data visualisation to data management and in turn helps to make reporting easier, more programmatic, and more transparent. Overall this is another positive step for the tool, with many recent updates moving it forward, such as:

• Search Console connectors were added in February to add to the Analytics and AdWords connectors already available giving marketers more options to link to their data sources and visualise it all in one place.
• TV and letterhead modes were also added to help reports be available for presentation in both soft and hard copy format.

Also, the five-report limit was removed meaning finally we can create as many reports as required. This ultimately makes Data Studio a more versatile and useful tool that can be used in many situations around the workplace to aid data-driven marketing.

Google Data Studio is now available in more than 180 countries and we hope the team continues its support and positive updates to bring together the full Google Analytics 360 Suite. You can try it out at datastudio.google.com.

The evolution of Google Shopping came as a natural expansion of its paid advertising offering. The inclusion of product images in the SERPs 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 SERPs 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 SERPs 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?

Here are 10 things I’d factor into my search strategy when I’m doing SEO for kids’ sites.

1. Primary school children are taught to append “kids” to their queries

Protecting children from terrible things on the internet is hard work for parents.

People who create ‘adult’ videos from kids cartoons and post them on YouTube, these people need a life

— Gerry White ⁉️ (@dergal) June 25, 2017

For their part, most primary school teachers tell children to include the word “kids” at the end of each search – the idea being that only pages specifically relevant to (or suitable for) kids are returned.

Obviously this means that pages and websites that are intended for children need to be optimised specifically to include the keyword “kids” (which seems to be more utilised than “children” according to my straw poll). Title tags and copy should definitely include the keyword but there’s potentially a greater significance on meta data – any opportunity to highlight that the site is for kids is a potential advantage.

This is certainly true when optimising a website children might use in school time – but it isn’t a stretch to assume that kids will want to find the same websites again when they get home or even carry this behaviour with them.

2. Tablets are the most accessed devices at home

More children under 11 have access to tablets than to any other device – they’re easier to use (and harder to break) than laptops and likely safer than giving a mobile phone to a child.

Tablets use – and will continue to use – the same ranking factors as desktop sites in Google’s search results.

3. Tablet growth has slowed

Apple has the largest share of the tablet market with 24.6% in Q1 2017 but shipments declined 13% – its 13^th consecutive quarter of year on year declines – with competitors including Samsung, Amazon and Lenovo also experiencing drops in demand. The same trend is reflected in this demographic with parents less eager to buy tablets for their offspring. Still – 4 out of 5 8-11 year olds have access to a tablet at home (and plenty more at school).

This means that sites that don’t work on tablet-sized screens – overwhelmingly 768×1024 resolution – are not going to rank. You can check what your pages look like on every resolution using Google’s Resizer tool.

4. Mobile phones are the norm from age 8

More than half of 8-11 year olds have use of a mobile phone at home – which has been consistently true since 2011.

For the most part children are given their own smartphones rather than being allowed to play with their parents’ – 57% of 8-11 year olds have access to a smartphone but the majority (43%) are considered the owners of the device.

¾ of those devices are – clearly internet enabled – smartphones.

Only around 5% of children aged 5-7 own their own phone and less than half of those are smartphones.

If you thought Google’s imminent “mobile-first” index wouldn’t affect websites targeted towards children – think again.

5. Voice search is natural for kids

50% of all searches will be voice searches by 2020 according to comScore and a lot of that growth is coming from kids, who think it’s completely normal to talk to Siri, Alexa and Cortana according to such luminaries as Dr. Pete. A quick straw poll among parents in the Branded3 office showed that around half believe their kids use voice search more than text search. Unfortunately this is mostly anecdotal – even if it is a widespread belief among parents (not just in the B3 office). Right now it’s incredibly difficult to track for numerous reasons:

• So many devices (like those listed above, as well as Amazon Echo and Google Home) are shared
• Collecting data on children’s usage is very difficult – in the US, for example, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) requires parental consent to collect data on under 13s (you don’t think Facebook’s strict 13+ age limit was from the goodness of Zuck’s heart did you?)

However…

6. Google is rolling out accounts for kids

Google introduced Family Link to Android in March of this year, which allows parents to link their mobile device to their child’s Android, effectively locking it down and allowing remote control of what the child sees and does on the internet.

The app needs a credit card to set up (proving that a parent is running the show). Family Link allows parents to:

• Restrict what can and can’t be downloaded on the app store – and make sure the child can’t see age-restricted content
• Restrict the amount of time their child spends on their device each day
• Make it impossible for the child to turn off SafeSearch

It’s great peace of mind for parents – it’s also explicit consent to collect data on their children. It’s in beta in the US right now but expect new features in your Adwords account in the not-too-distant future. It also requires an Android device running Nougat (Android 7.0) or higher – no more “dumb phone” purchases for kids.

7. Google is increasingly the trusted source of information

Google and YouTube are consolidating their status as the go-to information sources for kids. Ofcom’s survey of 12-15 year olds shows that children don’t want their social feeds to include much in the way of political commentary (which has more than a little to do with their social platforms of choice) – if they want information on serious things going on in the world, they’ll look for it – on the BBC and, increasingly, Google.

Google absolutely dominates hobbies and games when it comes to trust among children. This is a demographic that is just barely old enough for a Facebook account (and far too young for Twitter, even though they could technically sign up). Google is increasingly chosen to find entertainment – as is its YouTube platform.

When it comes to how-to and guide related content YouTube is king. This is something brands with older demographics should have at the forefront of their minds too – the entire next generation of shoppers is going to find them on YouTube so they’ll need to build their presence now.

8. YouTube is huge

In fact, it’s fair to say that most children use YouTube. That presents its own challenges to brands – getting found on YouTube has different rules. It’s perfectly possible to optimise your videos (whether you want to call it video SEO or not) – but that’s an entire post in itself.

The type of content watched by children of different ages varies:

• Younger children watch more full-length programming
• Older children watch more humour-based content
• Vloggers are a concern of older children so influencer marketing isn’t always the way to go

9. There are search engines just for kids

Google powers (N.B. not owns) several search engines for kids – the most prominent are probably Kiddle and Junior Safe Search, with Kiddle being the most used.

Ranking in Kiddle is complicated (and probably doesn’t have the commercial upside to even try it). The first three results are handpicked by Kiddle’s editors as the best results written for children, with the next 4-7 being sites that are written for adults but with language that isn’t too complicated for kids to understand. The rest is effectively Google SafeSearch.

In Kiddle, if a child searches for a word deemed inappropriate then no results are returned:

Kiddle isn’t without its controversies: it got into trouble last year for censoring words like “menstruation”, “lesbian” and “gay” – obviously children should not be denied access to information about these terms.

Another poignant question: does anyone actually use these search engines? Well, SimilarWeb suggests the site gets more than 750,000 visits every six months, so clearly some children do, although that is globally – and there’s a Michael Gove-shaped spanner in the works (isn’t there always?):

The (previous) government made it part of the curriculum to understand search results before secondary school. So why would kids be taught to use anything other than Google?

Primary school children (aged 9/10) expected to know how search results are ranked. It’s my job and I’m guessing… pic.twitter.com/MrXUlxdtLi

— Stephen Kenwright (@stekenwright) April 7, 2016

10. A few final points

There are plenty of things to factor into your search strategy when your target audience consists of young children. Here are a few more:

• Kids aren’t great at spelling – especially younger kids. You might want to include common misspellings on a page (especially if you’re the sort of brand that might be expected to teach children the right way of spelling a term, like BBC Bitesize for example).
• Kids are known to click the first result more often as they don’t like to scroll and don’t necessarily have the same powers to deduce whether it’s a good result as an adult does.
• Navigation is a problem for children. Don’t expect them to be able to find related content through a top navigation – signpost it clearly and make an effort with your internal linking.

Further reading

Research here made heavy use of Ofcom’s Children and parents: media use and attitudes report which includes a huge amount on changing attitudes to TV etc. – also very interesting.

We like Google papers – here are a couple that helped to form my view of how children might interact with a search box: http://hcil.cs.umd.edu/trs/2009-04/2009-04.pdf and http://dmrussell.net/CHI2010/docs/p413.pdf.

I’m particularly interested to know, though – the fact that you’re reading this site suggests you have a good understanding of how search works. How are you teaching it to your kids?

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.