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Brace yourselves for another core algo update
Good morning everyone. This first update is aimed squarely at any SEOs in the house.
14 days into the new year and Google has announced yet another broad core update to their ranking algo.
Like previous other updates, it has been very thoughtfully & creatively named the “January 2020 Core Update”, and it will be rolled out today. This will impact search results on a global scale.
Again, like previous other updates, Google gave us a very clear explanation about this update: It’s not an update that targets something specific webmasters and SEOs can focus on. So yeah, it’s gonna affect your websites but there is nothing you need to know or do about it.
Okay, enough of the sarcasm. We’ll just point you to our favorite explanation from Google that is shared time and time again:
“One way to think of how a core update operates is to imagine you made a list of the top 100 movies in 2015. A few years later in 2019, you refresh the list. It’s going to naturally change.
Some new and wonderful movies that never existed before will now be candidates for inclusion. You might also reassess some films and realize they deserved a higher place on the list than they had before.”
What this means is that if you had to rank your top movies, you may have had Godfather or Schindler’s List at the top slots a few years ago. But then along came Inception or Interstellar, which came out more recently. Maybe they were a bit better, so they took the top spots.
Now, Godfather and Schindler’s List might have dropped in rankings, but that doesn’t mean they are bad movies.
Like always, be ready to expect some widely noticeable effects such as drops or gains in search rankings because of this core update. So, paying attention to your rankings in the days and weeks to come is highly recommended.
Times are strange and times have changed, here they come but they ain’t the same
We are talking about the recent changes to LLAs and Custom Audiences that will be rolled out later this month.
Rob Leathern, Director of Product at FB shared some insights on how it will impact your campaigns.
Rob talks about the improvements added to “Why am I seeing this”, which will be fully rolled out today and will clearly highlight the business names that are advertising their products or services to users, as well as which brokers might have uploaded a list with user info.
Small businesses might be managing their own campaigns, while large businesses could be using one or multiple agencies. FB is aiming to clearly distinguish these relationships and hierarchies to the users on the receiving end of the advertising.
Here’s a mock-up of how the new control screen for the users will look.
- Users can control the use of lists at a business level. They can disallow the use of lists by multiple advertisers at one time, if they are using lists uploaded by the same business account.
- Users will also be able to choose whether an advertiser can include or exclude them from their target audience at a business account level. That means any advertiser using any list from that business will also not be able to include or exclude such users in an audience.
- Finally, users can also make themselves eligible for seeing the ad, even if advertisers are using a list to exclude them. For example, a gym might exclude users from sign up related campaigns if they are already a member.
PS: Users will still have to contact the business if they’re not sure why they are on an advertisers list. FB won’t have any visibility into the makeup of the list, because all the information is hashed before being sent to Facebook.
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If you are an advertiser or media buyer with traffic up and running to your campaigns (Google, FB, pops, push, natives, etc.), you need to hear this: Collect and monetize push subscribers! Why?
After sending 4B+ push messages, MediaDevoted saw less than 1% CVR drop on the frontend… But the backend, with the lifetime value of the subscriber, the ROI was way better! So a push opt-in button is clearly higher ROI for any media buyer. There’s more good news!
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Do you want to get started with rev-share on this? Fill in the form here. Don’t forget they can help with email and SMS too, alongside push (which almost every ad buyer should use)! They can also help you with FB Business Managers, where they currently run a 2020 discount, if you are struggling there.
How to time your cart recovery sequence for maximum impact?
As with most questions, the answer to this is “It depends!” However, you should still have a starting point. You can then adjust from this starting point, tweak your times and copy and start growing, right?
Easier said than done, of course, but we found a pretty good tip from KC Chow in the EPOCH group.
He suggests the following timeline for the recovery sequence:
- 20 minutes
- 4 hours
- 12 hours
- 1 day
- 1 day
- 1 day
So the suggestion is to have at least four emails in the sequence (but probably more). You should start 20 minutes after the card was abandoned, then four hours after the first one, then 12 hours and so on and so forth.
Why? Because there are some stats on conversions from email based on the timing of when you send it. Have a look at the infographic below from GetResponse.
The Crew’s thoughts
It’s clear that sending an email early is good, and you can also play around with the content in each email. For example, don’t dive straight in to offering a coupon – leave that for use as a last resort.
Aside from that, we do want to say that the frequency and timing is something you should test. This template from KC can probably work well for your generic e-commerce store, but if you have a very niche brand your audience could get annoyed at receiving so many emails… Or maybe they need more to remind them to finish what they started.
Oh, and make sure you follow best practices to authenticate your domain, don’t get your emails clipped and don’t use spam words etc. We’ve talked about this before and we will again soon!
ROUNING UP THE STACK
- MICROSOFT ADS: Responsive search ads are now available globally, so you can check out the announcement along with Microsoft’s tips for using them.
- CONTENT MARKETING: A pretty good guide from Backlinko on how to create, structure and promote content on all big platforms this year.
- E-COMMERCE: Are you making any of these mistakes with your brand? Have a read what Monika has to say in the EPOCH FB group.
- FACEBOOK ADS: Jon Loomer broke down how to customize your creatives by placement. In other words, this can be your go-to for aspect ratio and templates so your ads look good everywhere on FB, IG and FAN.
- PRIVACY: Apple’s privacy features have definitely had an impact for media buyers when it comes to location-based ads. Read what advertisers found most challenging and how they deal with it.
BRAIN TEASER
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things affiliates like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
Remote jobs are saving the world
Or at least, that’s what Forbes says.
2020 is expected to be the “year of remote”, and there are so many reasons to celebrate remote work.
Not just because you can get work done while you’re hiking the Himalayas, but also because remote working is beneficial to our society. So, do you work remotely or you run a remote business? Cheers to you fellow reader.
You’re contributing to the following positive changes in the world:
- You are saving the environment: Think about all the CO2 you save by not driving to an office every day.
- You’re contributing to economic development: The mobility of jobs also results in the growth of companies which are now able to better control costs.
- Diversity and inclusion: Virtual workplaces remove all status and geographical barriers.
- Work-life satisfaction: Well, we’re back to getting your work done while scaling the Himalayas or lying on a beach in Thailand.
Who would have ever thought that laptop pics on the beach are so much deeper than they look?
The Crew works from at least two continents and five countries every day, so we can definitely say that we’re in the remote working boat!