18th August 2021 - What articles you need to be reading
Here are the articles that are making waves in digital and search that you should be aware of because they are going to be game changers
Learning about SEO?
Google shares what might have caused an organic traffic drop
Back in July 2021 Daniel Waisberg over at Google Search team shared a document that covers some of the common issues on why your traffic might have dropped and offered some guidance on how to review what needs to be fixed. It does however exclude what happens when PPC budgets are increased and your organic traffic is cannibalised.
Beginners guide to technical SEO
Nikki Halliwell kindly produced and shared a great overview of how to get started in technical SEO covering several key topics that you need to understand in order to become a better SEO.
Google posts a reminder that it’s still thinking about link spam
The post published on the 26th July by Duy Nguyen talks about best practices, affiliate links, sponsored and guest posts and how they are trying to improve their systems to fight link spam. The question is if any of the websites the article is focused on saw any impact of the link spam update.
Social Media
Twitter launches “it’s misleading” flag option
OnlyFans launches first app but No Nudity and it’s FREE
The web based service known for fitness instructors, cooking lessons and nudity has over 130 million active users each month but was always blocked from Google Play & Apple App Store partly due to it’s acceptance of nudity. The new app OFTV has over 800 videos including their own original series across the following categories: comedy, advice, music, vlogs, podcasts, cooking, wellness, sports, fitness and unlocked. OFTV will be available for iOS, Android, Roku, AndroidTV, Samsung Smart TV and Apple TV. You can watch the content here
Twitter testing downvote buttons on iOS
Back on the 21st July Twitter announced the test it was doing on iOS devices the down votes will not be shown but will be interesting if it can gain the same levels of adoption that Reddit has. Also how is Twitter manging and filtering out the impacts of bots on hiding comments that highlight the tweet contains misinformation?
Pinterest opens up to Arabic
Pinterest is expanding it’s platform to the 466 million people that speak Arabic as it seeks to grow it’s audience beyond English. According to Pinterest already 57% of Pinners are using languages other than English. The upside for Pinterest is they saw at +48% increase in the number of Pinners selecting Arabic as their language but also they see over 3.5 million searches in Arabic each day.
Quora offers monetisation support for creators
It is probably a few years too late with platforms such as Substack eating Quora’s lunch when it comes to monetisation for creators. The 2 new subscription products are Quora+ which costs $5/month or $50/year to access content behind their paywall. The other product that is basically a clone of Substack is creators can write posts on Spaces and Quora will take 5% of the subscription fee.
Twitter redesign messed up follow button
Most people are usually fairly split when it comes to redesigns no matter how minor but Uygar Kilic hit the nail on the head with his article on how and why they got the redesign wrong. When you see the his suggested change below it makes a lot of sense.
Pinterest to allow creators to make money from their content
The new Idea Pins allow creators to tag products and make their content shoppable, following on from what TikTok are doing and YouTube is still trying to get right. The video first feature shows how Pinterest is pivoting to capture the growth in video content being produced by creators and influencers. You can see how it works on this Olive+Brown pin which is a review of their Glossier Milky Jelly Cleanser with the “Shop it Here” button.
Facebook focuses on formal partnership with religious groups
Elizabeth Dias covers a very interesting topic over at NYTimes on how Facebook has been partnering with large religious groups such as Hillsong to explore how a church would look like on Facebook. It’s concerning that Facebook is moving into the religious space considering it’s useless attempts at countering misinformation and disinformation about the Coronavirus but also how it’s been a platform for spreading hate and violence targeting minority groups and how they are complicity in the violence in Myanmar.
Media + Tech
Amazon’s Ad business grows +87% YoY
In what was seen as a long bet to catch Google Ads appears to be finally paying off as in Q2 this year the revenue for the “other unit” that includes Advertising rose to $7.9 billion. Amazon Ads launched 40+ new features and improved the self-service capabilities over the last quarter that has certainly helped along with expanding their services offered in Europe, Australia, India, Saudi Arabia and Japan. Amazon had around 10% of the US ad market in 2020 and it’s likely to further expand it’s share in 2021.
Square buys Australian fintech Afterpay for US$29 billion
At the start of August 2021 there was a warning shot fired out from Squared to the fintech space that it was serious about improving it’s seller and Cash App ecosystems with the acquisition of Afterpay. Square has always been rumoured to be a takeover target but with this purchase it moves from a niche player into a global contender. Afterpay is promoted as the pioneer of the “buy now, pay later” platform with 16 million customers and 100,000 merchants globally.
Good-Loop helps brands unite programmatic + purpose
The 5 year old UK based startup Good-Loop which is a certified B Corporation allows views of video ads to donate 50% of the media spend to a charity when they watch the ad. They have also continued to innovate with their “green ad” tag that lets advertisers monitor but also offset the carbon cost of their campaigns, but also offers a carbon calculator for agencies and brands work out the likely footprint of their online campaigns. They have 21 staff spread across offices in Edinburgh and London with a roster of brands including Nike, PepsiCo and Nestlé.
50 new features coming to Alexa devices
In July Amazon announced that 900,000 Alexa developers had built over 130,000 Alexa skills and now more than 140,000 smart home devices can be controlled by Alexa. But the big news was the 50+ features being rolled out to the Alexa platform focused on several core areas
Driving engagement and discovery
New monetisation opportunities
Entertaining and immersive experiences
Customers at home & outside the home
Smarter, more secure and manageable
Improving developer productivity
Interoperability of smart home devices via Matter
Omnicom looks to measure consumer attention to ads
SC Johnson is one of the first Omnicom Media Group advertisers to test if their ads are actually been seen by consumers. The attention metric is being measured by Australian media tech company Amplified Intelligence. “For us, using Amplified Intelligence is one way to value one impression over another, reducing waste in budgets and ultimately increasing return on investment,” says Chrissie Hanson, global Chief Strategy Officer.
P&G unveil first paper bottle for Lenor
On a macro level, as part of its ‘2030 Ambition’, P&G aims to reduce its use of virgin plastics by 50% by 2030. Its Fabric Care Europe division has additionally committed to a 30% absolute plastics reduction by 2025 and to design for 100% recyclability by 2022 - it says that it is well on track for both commitments. Meanwhile, the Home Care division is committed to using no virgin plastics by 2025. Paboco’s paper bottle technology is being backed by a group of leading consumer goods companies and industry experts of which P&G is now a part, including The Coca-Cola Company, Carlsberg Group, The Absolut Company, L’Oréal, BillerudKorsnäs, and ALPLA.
Taboola expands with ecom acquisition of Connexity for $800 million
You might not know the name Connexity but prior to it’s rebrand in September 2014 it was known as Shopzilla and had done a number of acquisitions over the years including SkimLinks & PriceGrabber. The Connexity platform has the reach of around 100 million unique shoppers per month which should be massively expanded with the Taboola network.
Cloudflare gives hints to crawlers to reduce energy usage
More than 1 in 6 websites globally use Cloudflare but nearly half of all the traffic on their global network is generated by automated systems. But 5% of these bots are good bots that are indexing the web for useful reasons including search engine crawlers like Googlebot. After studying good crawler behaviour for a year the team recognised a clear area of waste was excessive crawling where the page didn’t change since it was last crawled which is estimated to be around 53% wasted. Cloudflare know that sitemaps can provide a priority score and last modified for each URL but sitemaps don’t always exist and often break so the solution isn’t simple.
Ecommerce
YouTube follows the trend and launches live shopping feeds
Creators and brands have always struggled to drive ecommerce sales via YouTube as it’s often requiring links in the description or using the in-video cards. The experience was clunky compared to platforms like SnapChat or TikTok were doing so before Google lose the market completely they have started rolling out a pilot feature focused on shopping for products directly from YouTube. They have done a few tests over the last few months such as a during International Small Business Week.
How Walmart uses ML for product categorisation
Apurva Sinha a data scientist at Walmart wrote up a great post on medium on how their team is using data to do better classification of products into categories on Walmart.com using Multi-class classification models (CNN-LSTM). This benefits both the consumer experience, product discovery and also SEO in the longer term.
Security, Data + Privacy
Guntrader a UK based firearm sales platform was breached
Gareth Corfield over at The Register covered the news that Guntrader’s CRM database was breached and 111k users were shared online. The CRM powered both their marketplace but also their electronic gun shop registry. The categories of data in the stolen database are:
First name & last name
Police force that issued an RFD's certificate
Phone & Fax numbers
bcrypt-hashed passwords
Postal addresses & postcode
User's IP addresses
Latitude and longitude data
Jobs + Careers
Senior Product Manager (SEO Tech) - Walmart - USA
As a Product Manager of SEO, you will play key role in working across engineering, marketing, retail and other product teams to enable Walmart to become the leader in driving organic search in omni retail. This individual should be able to make decisions that reflect a solid understanding of current SEO strategies and will work cross-functionally with merchant, marketing (SEO), customer experience and technology teams. Apply here directly
SEO Manager - Bugaboo - Amsterdam
Bugaboo is looking for an ambitious SEO Manager to drive the SEO strategy. Reporting into the Performance Director, this newly created role will manage site optimization, working closely with developers and external parties to produce a best in class site experience as well as maximize site visibility within SERP. Apply here directly
Product Marketing Manager Ecom - TikTok - Dubai
TikTok seeks a product marketing professional with a background in media to lead the go-to-market for eCommerce and retail solutions in METAP. Sitting as part of the Performance team in the Product Strategy & Operations organisation, the role involves close collaboration with both in-market sales and headquarter product teams in a high-growth environment. Apply here directly
Digital Manager - AstraZeneca - Singapore
Do you have expertise in, and passion for, Digital Innovation? Would you like to apply your expertise to impact the lives of patients in a company that follows the science and turns ideas into life changing medicines? Apply here directly
Digital Marketing Analytics & Insights - Deloitte - Singapore
This role sits within Deloitte Digital Southeast Asia. We create new growth by elevating the human experience—with connected ideas, technology, and talent, in a way that only Deloitte can. And we do this to shape a better future for every single one of us. As part of Advertisement Marketing and Commerce (AMC), you will work with our team to help clients with define, setup, and operate data-driven marketing analytics capabilities, driving growth for brands through insights. Apply here directly
SEO Lead - WorldRemit - London
We are looking for a SEO Lead to help drive our global SEO efforts across our key remittance countries including the US, UK, Australia, Canada, Spain, Germany and France. You will help shape, build and improve our SEO department to deliver our future growth aspirations. Apply here directly
Technical SEO Specialist - Cazoo - London
Reporting into the Technical Organic Performance manager, you will be helping to grow organic visibility across Cazoo assets within a team of Organic Performance professionals. You will be focused on website analysis, delivering insightful technical SEO commentary and work closely with product and engineering to implement best-in-class technical SEO across our properties. Apply here directly
Marketing - Product & Digital Director - Starbucks - London
Sitting on the UK Leadership Team and reporting to the Vice President and General Manager, the role will be responsible for the conception, execution and evaluation of world-class, integrated marketing and category plans. The successful candidate will also be responsible for local category ranging as well as end-to-end food strategy and innovation/product development. Apply here directly
Head of Marketing Science - Snap - Dubai
We are looking for a seasoned ad efficacy, measurement, analytics, and attribution leader to join us as a Head of Marketing Science, MENA. This is a crucial, highly cross-functional, and high-visibility role in one of Snap’s most exciting regions. As a Head of Marketing Science, MENA, you will be responsible for representing Snap measurement internally to regional leadership and business teams, and externally to our clients and the broader advertising industry. Apply here directly
Regional Search Specialist (SEO) - Canon - Dubai
Analyzes, reviews, and implements change to websites so they are optimized for search engines. This means maximizing the traffic to locally created landing pages by improving page rank within search engines across the Middle East, Africa & Turkey. Have in-depth knowledge of keyword research, understand SEO copywriting, and serve as a liaison between various departments. Apply here directly
JPAC Search Specialist - Apple - Singapore
We are looking for a Search Specialist to track and drive on-page Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and internal search activities and deliverables by partnering closely with the WW search and content teams at Apple, and to improve on the way we gather and utilize insights from search data. This is an excellent opportunity to implement SEO best practices combined with insights to increase the visibility of our customer support and learning environments on search engines. In this role, your ability to identify and share actionable insights across cross functional teams and regional teams, helps ensure execution aligns with strategy. Apply here directly