Natalie Slater

Check out our latest article on how to maximise the usefulness of your existing databases. #b2bdata

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I've worked with 50+ investment companies on lead-gen. 90% struggled with passing ad regulations. Here's 3 tips to ensure that your ads pass: 1. FCA - Google Ads to the UK need an FCA number - If you don't have one, run campaigns overseas to English speakers Want an up-to-date list on which countries you're allowed to target? ↳ Message me 'COUNTRY' and I'll send the top-performers over. 2. Ad content - Ads are not allowed to be misleading - Don't advertise any guarantees that you can't fulfill - Your content must be correct to your services/ products 3. Compliance - If you have a compliance team, have them sign ads off - Train them up on the FCA advertising regulations Following the FCA regulations is so important. Use the tips above to keep yourself out of trouble.

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I was chatting with Lee Waltham yesterday about the changing role of organic search in 2024. Wil Reynolds is a leader in the space and lays it out really well. "Gartner predicted a 25% drop in search traffic by 2026. In reality, my SEO traffic is already down 41% in 2024. But here's the surprising part: my newsletter signups are up 65%, and revenue remains steady." It's an interesting point and aligned with what we're seeing at Brandish | A Creative Agency— losing SEO traffic isn’t the end. There's less correlation between SEO traffic and leads now, with metrics like branded search and homepage visits becoming more relevant. We're talking a lot about this with our clients. It's a big part of why your creative approach is more critical than ever as a marketer. As research shifts to AI-driven search, how do we adapt our KPIs? Time to rethink our SEO strategies. Read Wil's full article here: https://lnkd.in/etJvr8a9 #SEO #GrowthMarketing #BrandedSearch

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Google's March Core Update finished rolling out on the 19th April! Despite search (SERP) volatility still being high to very high for US and and normal to high for the UK Apaz Google's aim was to reduce low value content (inc. AI spam content) by -40% but early reports are showing more like -45%, along with targeting sites that have poor user experience or content created for search engines Search Engine Land wrote about it here - https://lnkd.in/eRKY6kMg Anyway, the basic gist of the update is depicted below: 📣 Users don't want copywriters who write a fluffy articles to try and rank for loads of terms. 📣 Even historic sites that provide information aren't safe in search as some have seen traffic declines of -95% 📣 Users want content they can trust, and ultimately big brands have the budget to buy experience and expertise So now the preferred media from users is UGC, forums and discussion boards as these get to the point and aren't angled to try sell you something or have a hidden agenda. Sites like Reddit have gain trust with users due to the helpful answers or content being bumped by other users liking it allowing the best content to raise to the top based on community voting. So shout out to BigBalls69 and n00bSlayer420 who are now the most relevant result in Google without even trying to rank for it 💪 Anyone else noticed more Reddit results in search since the update? #seo #googleupdate #reddit

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🚨August SEO round-up below for anyone looking to stay in touch with what's going on in the world of search🚨 This month covering: 🌍 AI Overviews Roll Out: Now live in the UK, India, Japan, Indonesia, Mexico, Brazil, along with the US. Improved accuracy, citations, and UX - appearing in 7-13% of searches at present. 🚀 August Core Update: Rolled out on August 15. Smaller publishers are slowly recovering, while spammy tactics continue to face severe penalties. 📈 Reddit’s Rise: Reddit now receives 400% more traffic from Google in the UK than the BBC—a staggering shift in search visibility over the past year. 🖼️ Google Lens in Chrome: Search by screengrab is here, enhancing visual search directly in Chrome. 🏆 Top Stories Dominated: Five media companies control 20% of Google’s ‘Top Stories’ search-space. Top 20 publications listed. Useful to know for those operating in digital PR. 🌐 Web Traffic Trends: Only ~37% of Google searches lead to clicks on the open web, with the rest split between no-click searches and Google-owned properties. Stay informed and stay ahead with Distinctly #SEO #DigitalMarketing #GoogleUpdates #SearchNews #SearchTrends

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Shoutout to Mark Rofe for sharing my Brighton SEO slides with his newsletter. If you aren't subscribed to https://lnkd.in/eA5krQrR then you're missing out. Packed with practical tips and advice.

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Last week Entropy held the UK advertiser trade body ISBA's first ever session focussing on Amazon ads. We took members through a case study showing how our faster, cheaper approach to Marketing Mix Modelling (MMM) can be used to measure and optimise the channel for incremental sales. Amazon spend still dominates retail media spend globally. However, as the discussion with some of the largest advertisers in the UK confirmed the majority don't measure and optimise it optimally for incremental sales. What is the consequence of that? Well, simply put you almost certainly could be making your budget work significantly harder by maximising its effectiveness and efficiency. If you'd like to be taken through the case study for your brand feel free to get in touch. You can also read a short summary of our approach via the link in the comments. #amazon #amazonads #retailmedia #mmm #marketingmixmodelling #econometrics Bobi Carley Mark Willock Stephen Chester Nicholas Louisson

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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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Google Ad Red Flag #1 🚩 I audit so many Google Ad accounts that just tick over. Often when you look at the last 12 months data; - No experiments or A/B tests have been run ❌ - The same 1 ad in each campaign has been running for ages ❌ - The same bidding strategies and settings have been used ❌ - Minimal new campaign testing and structure testing ❌ - Just keyword and bidding tweaks 😅 ❓ So my Google Ad Red Flag #1 is - ‘Not A/B testing’ and look I get it!….. I think people get scared to run tests BUT it’s one of the best ways to keep improving results Sometimes tests don’t work but you still learn from them and when they do work you can keep compounding your wins into better results What tests do you like to run in your paid ad or digital campaigns? #ppc #payperclick #googleads #searchmarketing #googleadvertising #sem

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When Google hints at another algorithm shake-up. Here’s how to prepare: Since 2020, Google has often timed big updates for November and December — right when you’re looking to close the year on a high. Here’s the likely scenario: 🔸We might see one or even two updates by year’s end. What to expect: 🔸 Rankings could be up and down during this period. Best course of action: 🔸 Hold off on major changes until things settle. If you notice fluctuations in your rankings, don’t react impulsively. Most updates stabilise in about 10 days, though major core updates can take up to four weeks. For e-commerce sites, especially when sales feel the impact, it’s natural to want to tweak things right away. However, acting without a clear strategy could actually hurt your rankings once things stabilise. Patience is essential! Here’s what you can do to minimise ranking volatility: ➤ Make sure your website is optimised for speed and technical performance. ➤ Focus on high-quality, well-researched content that serves your audience. ➤ Think about user experience first: ensure content genuinely answers users’ questions rather than being stuffed in for SEO purposes. ➤ Use Google Page Speed Insights to find performance issues, and coordinate fixes with your SEO team (FirstFound). ➤ Regularly audit and clean up your backlink profile—aim to do this every few weeks or monthly to keep things healthy. Take these steps now to stay prepared for what’s likely coming! www.firstfound.co.uk [email protected] 01619093400 #seo #searchengineoptimisation #googleupdates #firstfound

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Brilliant event last night with Storyblok overlooking the Thames River in London, the content was super relevant and informative. Probably more cutting edge than most SEO conferences I’ve been to. 😅 Highlight was Thomas Peham unpacking some ideas on how to index your content for LLMs. Running a Headless CMS that’s SEO friendly is a great way to ensure you’ve got the best chance of appearing inside AI generated resources by optimizing for crawling. He also addressed should you make AI generated content inside your CMS? Whatever you do, remember at the end of the day - “Brand wins” 💡

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I read this response from the UK's Affiliate Performance Marketing Association website recently, about the ICO's call for views on Consent to Pay. It made for an interesting read and is something affiliate marketers really do need to keep abreast of as privacy and consent changes are taking place at different levels around the world. Take a look at the overall response here and let me know what are your thoughts? https://lnkd.in/gi9RR9Pw

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A new Google core update is currently underway, which could help small business websites who have been at the receiving end of previous updates 🤔 At Targeted SEO Ltd. our aim is to always create helpful content for people, rather than try to 'game the system', or fill sites with AI content with sole purpose of manipulating rankings. It will still be interesting to see if this does impact any of the sites we manage (in a positive way!) 📈 What Google said. “Today, we launched our August 2024 core update to Google Search. This update is designed to continue our work to improve the quality of our search results by showing more content that people find genuinely useful and less content that feels like it was made just to perform well on Search,” John Mueller, Search Advocate at Google. "There’s nothing new or special that creators need to do for this update as long as they’ve been making satisfying content meant for people. For those that might not be ranking as well, we strongly encourage reading our creating helpful, reliable, people-first content help page [https://lnkd.in/gZTG99qb]." Read the full article for details ➡ https://lnkd.in/giSWRT33

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Expert View: SEO for Non-Technical CEOs - Part 2 Fiona Bowyer, Marketing Director at The Marketing Centre, is back with the second instalment of her Expert View: SEO series. Many SME CEOs understand the importance of SEO, but navigating its complexities can be daunting. This series empowers leaders to unlock SEO success, even without a technical background. https://bit.ly/3KCSms6 #SEO #digitalmarketing #ceotips #leadership

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Can you clarify what GA4 is referring to when it states ‘unassigned’ and ‘referral’? This was a question a client asked us recently via email, and this was James Smith's reply - this is why I gave some of The Search Mechanics to this guy! He knows his stuff! "A key part of web analytics is knowing where traffic comes from. At the basic level traffic is categorised by its source and its medium. These can be manually set through the use of UTM parameters (e.g. https://lnkd.in/eFYPjbVq), or are sometimes automatically set, such as when a user clicks on a link on another website that sends them to your site.   When a user visits the site with either automatic or manual source/medium data, Google determines which bucket to put this in. Technically speaking everything could get lumped under ‘Referral’, but this wouldn’t be of any use, so instead it categorizes them based on the information available.   The type of site a user has clicked from is very important – if it’s from a search engine, Google knows to categorise this as ‘Organic’ (or ‘Paid Search’ if appropriate UTMs are used). If it’s from a known social media website, e.g. m.facebook.com, Google knows that this should be categorised as ‘Organic Social’ (or ‘Paid Social’ if appropriate UTMs are used).   If it’s from a site that doesn’t fit these buckets, e.g. randomsite.com, then Google will typically place this under ‘Referral’ – it’s a referral from another site but it doesn’t fit into another, more specific category).   Google’s default channel groupings are as follows:   Direct Cross-network Paid Shopping Paid Search Paid Social Paid Video Paid Other Display Organic Shopping Organic Social Organic Video Organic Search Email Affiliates Referral Audio SMS Mobile Push Notifications   Anything that Google can’t bucket into one of those things it classes as ‘Unassigned’, because it doesn’t know where to put it.   You can segment your data by adding a secondary dimension for ‘Session source / medium’, In your case the bulk of your unassigned is from Local_news_south, whatever that is.   To stop this from happening you need to make sure that your marketing activity is correctly tagged with consistent, well-formatted UTMs, that stick to Google’s recommended format wherever possible – see ‘Channels for manual traffic’ at this link here: https://lnkd.in/e_EXyuS6). You can use Google’s UTM builder to help you with this: https://lnkd.in/eKnWjmke."   Their reply to this amazing and well-articulated answer - "Lovely – thanks James." No worries client - we are here to help! #ga4 #analytics #googleanalytics #google

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The Dangers of Half Price Digital PR. Over the last few weeks I'm hearing of more Digital PR agencies who are buying links. There's a reason for this. They've over promised and over sold. To win work they offered a link KPI that was simply not feasible. And they sold at a low price to increase sales. The result, you get some links, you get some digital PR, you don't get the results you want. This is watered down Digital PR. But, this is largely due to the demands of SEOs. They want too many links at almost sky high domains. Digital PR is link earning, not link buying. Brand mentions are the backlinks of the future. Fame is a superpower. PRs know this. SEOs are often convergent thinkers. They look at a problem and arrive at a single solution. "We need authority, so therefore we need links. More links is best". Divergent thinking applied to SEO is more nuanced. "We need authority, therefore we need links but also, we need to tell people we exist and that we are experts in (category)." This requires a more rounded views on KPIs for digital PR. Relevance, links, reach. So, why does this matter? Well, performance. All that's going to happen in the coming months is a lack of results. Paying a premium for paid links is not digital PR. Nor will it get you the results you want.

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Here’s a link to the slide deck from my talk yesterday at brightonSEO on Tactics v Strategy #seo #strategy https://lnkd.in/esd6Yvsm

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It's wild how many content optimisation tools are out there that all do the same thing. They all optimise for SEO. None of them are connected to meaningful outcomes - like audience satisfaction, engagement, pipeline, or revenue. There's a HUGE gap in the market for a tool that goes further. 👀

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