Jim Ray

Good article on #GA4 from Evisible; worth a read and reaching out to them if assistance in deployment is needed

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If you use GA4, Floodlight Tags, Facebook Pixels, Google ads tags or any other website tracking you need to read on 👇 As you are (probably) aware - it is illegal for you to track any (yes, any) visitors from the EU, California or UK unless they give permission through a 'cookie consent' popup. In 2024 the Australian Privacy Act is due for an overhaul - and soon Australian Websites will need to roll cookie Consent out for Australian users too. Unfortunately, this is not as simple as ticking a box and installing the popup. My guide will help you understand how Cookie Consent Platforms (CMP's) work, and how to integrate them with your Google Tag manager. CookieYes - https://fas.st/t/gHhPooDF More info at bangdigital.com.au - https://lnkd.in/gmEAsEzy #cookieconsent #privacyawarenessweek #PAW #googleTagManger #cookies #ga4 #bangdigital

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Another House Fresh article doing the rounds and it's a great read. I've been saying this for some time now especially in the VPN search results. Future PLC dominate the VPN search results and if its not them its Ziff Davis. Similar to House Fresh, Comparitech are also now starting to see that decline following the March core update. Read the article below and let me know your thoughts. Which industry do you work in were this is a problem? https://lnkd.in/edKV6bcy

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Experts (SEOs or any other flavour) are great at identifying problems and highlighting what needs fixing. Recommendations are often ignored or left behind due to a huge gap between what’s suggested and how it gets implemented This disconnect between excellent audit recommendations and frustrating reality? This is the SEO implementation gap 

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This site is an extremely interesting case. Brand in the finance sector. Destroyed by the HCU update 2023. Backlinks from digital PR (and paid links), albeit some of the digital PR ones are totally off-topic, and some look like paid DPR placements. The site increased its content by 1000 pages in a year, so I suggest that it might have used AI content to scale. The site is well-designed, with lots of E-E-A-T elements. My gut says this site was hit by multiple factors: a bit of waffly content, some link devaluation, and AI content. It looks like they've deleted over 1000 pages a matter of weeks after being hit, so perhaps they took a chance. An interesting case, might reach out to the owners of this one.

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Twitter is embarking on a huge migration, and is showing different status codes to different user-agents... I've seen several posts worrying about the use of 302s, cloaking, the /migrate subfolder... How valuable is organic traffic to Twitter? How does the domain change affect the fire-hose deal and how Google surfaces the Posts carousel? (All this will have been planned months ago). This could be one of the better-managed migrations we've seen, yet we're worrying about best practice box ticks. Enterprise site migrations are never box tick checklists. Also:

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If you aren't following the drama this week, it's all #Google all day. Michael King dropped an opus on us where he addresses common questions, critiques and concerns following the huge Google Search leak – and how your approach to SEO should change. Huge props to Mike and Rand Fishkin for all they've done this week. Stellar, game-changing effort y'all. Read this and then register (for free) to attend SMX Advanced and join Mike live for a discussion. https://lnkd.in/eVjYYNuq #seo #searchengineoptimization Search Engine Land SMX - Search Marketing Expo

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Vertical Scrolling Carousel with One bit of Code. It couldn't be simpler across WordPress Websites regardless of builder. https://lnkd.in/eXckTR-9 #WordPress #VerticalCarousel

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It looks like the recent leak of Google Search API documentation that Rand Fishkin shared has stirred the SEO community. But for those of us who have been paying close attention, the revelations confirm what we've long suspected or already knew. NavBoost and Click Data: Already unveiled last year, the use of click data and user behaviour metrics like NavBoost to refine search results isn't surprising. We've known for years that Google utilises clickstream data from Chrome to improve its search algorithms, despite public denials. Whitelists in Sensitive Situations: The existence of whitelists during critical events like the COVID-19 pandemic and elections aligns with what we've already observed. Google has been known to prioritise authoritative sources during such times to ensure accurate information dissemination. Quality Raters' Influence: The role of human quality raters in shaping search rankings has always been a key part of Google’s strategy. It’s no secret that quality evaluations from real people are essential in training and refining the search algorithms. Click-Based Link Evaluation: The idea that Google uses click data to assess the quality of links fits perfectly with our understanding of modern SEO practices. The importance of genuine user engagement over mere link quantity has been evident for a while. Brand Importance: The leak confirms the critical role of brand recognition in search rankings. Building a strong, recognisable brand has always been the best strategy for achieving long-term SEO success, particularly when it comes to links. While the leak provides detailed documentation and insider confirmation, it's essentially a formal acknowledgement of what I've been discussing and adapting to for years. For those who have kept a finger on the pulse of SEO trends and Google’s evolving strategies, this leak is more validation than revelation. But for now, it's clear: Friday Agency has been on the right track all along. #SEO #Google #GoogleLeak #SearchEngineOptimisation

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A new category is emerging... Revenue Orchestration Platforms. If you want to know more about them, Salesloft created this great guide 'The Blueprint for Revenue Orchestration.' Worth the read: https://lnkd.in/en7GXynp

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👉 👉 29 CRO lessons checklist and you'll never need an agency 👈 👈 We've spoken to 500+ brands in the last 2 years to come up with this checklist. Breaking this down into 7 key categories - 👩👨 Customers - 1. Track your customer journey from arrival to conversion. Use tools like Hotjar and GA4. Find each drop-off point and be aware of the severity of each. 2. Know your customers: Identify your market segments, directly speak to 1 segment at a time. 3. Actively seek and integrate user feedback into your optimization strategy. 🖥 Website - 4. Prioritize website speed for <2 seconds. 5. Optimize for mobile users first, then for desktop. Don't let mobile be an afterthought. 6. Study your competitors' websites for inspiration and opportunities to differentiate. Stand out. 7. Data is your compass. Regularly analyze user behavior and experiment based on insights/hypotheses. 🎨 Content and Design - 8. Make sure your website educates, inspires, and builds trust. 9. Craft compelling product descriptions that highlight benefits and solve specific customer pain points. More specific = more trust. 10. Invest in good photography. It pays for itself. Don’t let a single shabby picture go on your website. 11. Make your call-to-action buttons clear, compelling, and strategically placed. 12. Leverage reviews, testimonials, and UGC to build trust and credibility. 13. Prepare seasonal campaigns well in advance to capitalize on peak shopping periods. 🎯 Marketing - 14. Optimize your Shopify site for search engines to attract organic traffic. 15. Create valuable content that educates, engages, and persuades potential customers. 16. Develop personalized email campaigns to nurture leads and recover abandoned carts. 17. Integrate social media to leverage UGC and influence buying decisions. 📈 Sales 18. Simplify the checkout process to minimize friction and abandonment. 19. Recommend products during the entire flow to increase AOVs. 20. Use discounts and promotions strategically to boost conversions without devaluing your products. 21. Implement automated strategies to recover abandoned carts with emails and/or retargeting ads. 💸 Budgets - 22. Allocate resources specifically for CRO efforts. It's an investment, not an expense. 23. Treat CRO as an ongoing process, not a one-time fix. 24. Invest in apps that can help you with CRO. Replace single-use-case apps with all-in-one apps for better ROI. Utilize them fully. 👯 Team - 25. Have Conversions as a KRA for someone in your team. 26. Make sure everyone understands CRO principles and collaborates on decision-making 27. Foster a culture where A/B testing and experimentation are constant. 28. Have responsive customer support. It fosters trust and loyalty. 29. Acknowledge and celebrate CRO wins with your team to stay motivated. Optimizing your Shopify site for conversions is a journey, not a sprint. Stay flexible, data-savvy, and customer-centric to achieve sustainable growth! #shopify #cro

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Some really interesting stuff here, especially if it's true and not a weird ploy by Google. The brand stuff in particular (having a recognisable brand outside of SERPs helps your rankings) is vindication for marketers accused of chasing vanity metrics especially... #SEO #DigitalMarketing #Marketing

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Really shocking leak of Google's SEO Algorithm has happened over the last 24/48 hours. A couple of articles to read: - Rand Fishkin, who got the original information https://lnkd.in/esmDSUbF - Mike from ipullrank - has a great rundown https://lnkd.in/ezckvq3e -SearchEngineLand deep dive: https://lnkd.in/e8VSTTGA For those that don't have the time here is what makes this a big deal: Google spokespeople have been contradicted by internal practices. Here are some of the top highlights: *Google claims they don't use a metric like "domain authority" but the documentation reveals a "siteAuthority" attribute, confirming they do measure site-wide importance. *Google insists that clicks are not directly used for rankings, but the leak exposes the "NavBoost" system which specifically relies on click data for ranking adjustments. *Google denies the existence of a "sandbox" for new websites, but the documentation reveals a "hostAge" attribute used to "sandbox fresh spam in serving time." *Google claims they don't use Chrome data in organic search, but the documentation shows Chrome-related attributes being used for page quality scoring and sitelink generation. If anything, this has been a great reminder not always to trust what Google says but to look at the results and seek out your own evidence.

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Happy Friday - or should that be FrAIday! Google has just released a new AI tool, Notebook AI. It takes any content (website, emails, documents) and then provides a complete analysis and summary. And the coolest bit: It can make a 'real' live podcast straight from the material. Here is the podcast made purely from the CovertSwarm website, no editing, no tweaking - this took less than a few minutes. Utterly amazed 🤯 ! Please listen and let me know what you think in the comments below. Thanks, Simon Berg, for spotting this one first! #GenerativeAI #Google #NotebookLM #CovertSwarm

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Building topical clusters instead of chasing random keywords...very demure. Prioritising technical audit findings based on revenue and growth impact...very mindful. Combining #UX principles with #SEO...very considerate. I have been loving the demure, mindful, considerate trend on TikTok 😀 and if you are looking for how to create an SEO strategy that's demure, mindful and considerate and blogging with intention, then consider signing up for this workshop this Friday. https://lnkd.in/eDYnu5Ur This workshop is open to all small and medium-sized businesses and content creators. You do not need to be in the fashion industry to join this workshop. #SEO #Contentmarketing #blogging #SEOwriting

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When #GDPR came in to force, smart ad tech companies did a lot of analysis on what the consent threshold needed to be to allow them to continue to do business. I imagine the threshold was a lot lower than where things ended up (70-90% consented users). However, this came from a base of 100% and the question asked by publishers wasn’t always the binary Accept All / Reject All choice we thought it would be. Soon, Chrome will be giving its users a consent choice for #3PCs but the baseline is NOT 100%. Already many companies have seen cookies drop below a useable threshold in Safari (ie. no 3PCs) and therefore does not do business in that browser - but what will happen when the baseline in Chrome dramatically drops? Mattia Fosci does a great job of analysing the numbers (off the back of Scott Messer analysis of the EMARKETER report) and I wonder how many companies will wait for this to happen before acting (GDPR again?) or will smart tech companies build using alternative solutions such as those in the ID-Less space? Anonymised is built for that ID-Less future so if you want to be a smart ad tech company, get in touch #idless #cookieless #privacy #gdpr #privacy

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If you're accountable for complex multi-site experiences, built leveraging large volumes of content, created by multiple content editors, and reliant on integrations with third-party systems - 👉 This. Post. Is. For. You. 👈 Creating, personalizing, experimenting with and securing high-performing websites shouldn’t be this frustrating. It shouldn’t take months (or years - you KNOW that's happened!). It shouldn’t require a degree in coding. 😥 As stakeholders breathe down our necks to deliver “faster”, generate “more demand” and “be more cost efficient” - we’re spinning our wheels trying to get even the most basic tasks done. Sound familiar? 1️⃣ Got a new landing page to create, need a developer. 2️⃣ Revamping the header layout or adding a new social feed, raise a ticket for dev support. 3️⃣ Personalizing your homepage - don’t even get started without tech help. 🙊 Pssst! The not-so-secret-secret: Our developer friends have MUCH more interesting and impactful things to do with their time than help us on day-to-day operations. So what gives? The tools we’ve had at our disposal were accepted as industry standard, but they weren’t built for us. The lack of self-sufficiency it provides is just outdated. ❌ It’s time to stop the madness. As the alpha users of our own Squiz DXP Product crew to remove unnecessary developer reliance. We demanded to move faster. It's been gruelling but exhilirating 12 months, and we're thrilled with the outcomes! My teams are getting back into going from idea-to-go-live in minutes or days, not weeks or months. We're ensuring our Digital Experience Platform (DXP) helps teams do these five key jobs quickly and independently, without developer reliance. 1. Create pages and campaign landing pages, fast. 2. Manage content creation, reuse, and governance with ease. 3. Use A/B Testing, analytics and SEO insights to improve performance. 4. Personalization of content to the right users at the right time. 5. Making sure sites are accessible for different types of users. It's exciting to see that more complex, enterprise-scale website management is becoming self-sufficient, easier and faster. Best of all, our developer mates are focusing on innovation and customization, not our day-to-day tasks. I hope you're demanding more of your CMS or DXP provider. If the life above doesn't seem possible - it's time to consider your options. Because, life's too short to live in the backlog! Blog link in the comments to dig deeper into what you should expect from your DXP. 👇 👇 #DXP #Websites #Marketing #Squiz

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Its always best to get your ducks in a row before making important announcements, Tom Petty suggested the waiting is hardest part...but here goes: AppsFlyer is now supporting and validating Meta Facebook AEM and combining with AppsFlyer's Single Source of Truth(SSOT) for iOS attribution. Short blog and DM me to learn more... https://lnkd.in/g9mbAHt4

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Another reason to take anything Google says with a grain of salt - Google API document leak has revealed information about Google’s internal processes and methodologies, many of which are contradictory to what they’ve claimed in the past. Rand Fishkin and Michael King both covered different aspects of these documents, including in depth analysis, insights and key points. Definitely worth a read for all marketers, not just SEO. https://lnkd.in/eY8YFEmg https://lnkd.in/eHnPPKkG My key takeaways from their articles: - Brand (and entities) is crucial to how well you perform organically - Links are still very important - documentation shows that links are weighted differently depending on the tier level - Navboost and user intent are important ranking signals - this is highly driven by click data - Page titles are still important for organic (good to know!) #seo #googleleak

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