In this week’s digital news to watch, our Senior Performance Marketing Manager Tom and Senior Performance Marketing Executive Kylie, discuss Google News Optimisation mistakes, backlinking, the new mobile Google Ads experiment, the pitch pledge and a new bill that could break up Google and Facebook ads businesses.
6 common Google News Optimisation mistakes to avoid
Do you want to get the greatest possible visibility out of your Google News optimisation efforts? Then you need to be aware of these common mistakes and how to avoid them. The six common mistakes include; believing you need AMP for Google News, Google News isn’t just for news publishers, thinking Google News is the same as top stories, not following content policies on Google News, not paying enough attention to Google’s Publisher Center, making live changes on Google News Publisher Center. Finally, a top tip for getting the most out of Google News is to submit your site to Google News with Google’s Publisher Center.
Evaluating your competitor’s backlink profile
What can you learn from your competitor’s backlink profile? Links are not the only ranking factor, however, they are arguably one of the most important ranking factors. When doing competitor backlink research you will want to look at competitors on a similar level to yourself. There is no point in comparing your company to the likes of amazon which will always rank highly for example. Once you have chosen 2 to 4 companies to analyse, follow these two easy steps; filter out red flags and learn from their success. When doing competitor backlink analysis look at what your competitors are doing, and adopt a high-level approach to how can you be better.
Favicon in-line with display URL in new mobile Google Ads experiment
Google is continuing to tweak the search page as it tests new wording for ads, including advertisements and sponsored instead of Ads. Google regularly tests new search page features, generally with the goal of increasing the click-through rate for paid ads. Alongside this site, favicons are also being tested with the goal of making it easier for users to identify the brand.
Agency leader takes on the pitch pledge
The Positive Pitch Pledge already has 70 founding signatures but there is the worry that this pledge is simply papering over the cracks rather than fixing the issues. The goal of the pledge is to cut down on the time wastage, human impact and environmental costs of the ever-increasing complexity of pitches. The views are generally in agreement, with some identifying the pitch process as free work, overly stressful and in the end, of little benefit.
Senators push for a new bill that could break up Google and Facebook ads businesses
A new bill was introduced on Thursday that could see US Senators push for a split of Google’s and Facebook’s ad businesses. The idea is to stop monopolies with individual businesses not being able to run in more than one area of the digital marketing ecosystem. Any business that processes for more than $20b a year will be impacted which at the moment puts Google and Facebook in the mix, the ad monopoly has been closely watched by the EU for a while and now it seems the US is also taking steps to break up the big players.
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