After a busy week on the road delivering talks at a couple of industry events it great to be back in the office and celebrating not one, not two – but three wins at last weeks’ European Paid Media & Ecommerce Awards.
We’re delighted to have been recognised alongside some amazing agencies across Europe and are even more delighted to have taken home three awards in some very coveted categories. Unfortunately we couldn’t be there in person to collect the awards due to having previously planned industry events – but we’re excited for the awards to arrive to share the success with the entire team.
The awards that we took home last week were:
European Paid Media Awards:
Retail Campaign Of The Year – Cedarwood Digital & Hayes Garden World
Small Paid Media Agency Of The Year
European Ecommerce Awards:
Small Ecommerce Agency Of The Year
We are absolutely delighted to have taken home all three awards in recognition of our work over the last 12 months and look forward to continued success over the next 12 months.
Last Thursday the team headed down to MissingLink LIVE – a great free event hosted by JBH and Prowly – which brings marketers together with some great guest speakers to discuss the latest industry trends.
It was one of the first face to face events that had been held in Manchester since the lockdown so we were certainly happy to be out and about again and it was great to see such a strong turnout as people were keen to head back into the networking space.
On the night there were a number of topics covered from using Digital PR to drive trust and debunking the myths of personal branding through to understanding the value of SEO.
Our Director, Amanda Walls spoke about the recent Quality Rater Guideline updates for Google and what that means for marketers – she looked specifically at websites that fall into the Your Money Your Life category and how they can improve their websites and the way they present content to adhere to the higher page quality standards.
The night was a great success with lots of pizza eaten and wine drunk, but it was also a great opportunity to gather some key takeaways from a very valuable knowledge sharing evening.
Here are our five key takeaways from the session:
That SEO drives long term value and often people give up before they start to realise what that value actually is – a lot of businesses get impatient if they don’t see results from SEO quickly so they pack it in, but in reality they are only just getting started and could in fact be turning away their most valuable source of revenue before they have even got started
“What is common knowledge to you, is a game changer to someone else” – this was a great quote from Philip Ossai – we often under value our own knowledge because we are constantly surrounded by people in our industry, but as a result of this we forget how valuable it can be to people who don’t do our job day in day out, and how much others can gain just through sharing this knowledge
Reputation matters – whether it’s on-site or off-site, Google and users are looking for information about your reputation as a key trust signal. Sometimes we spend so much time looking only on-site that we forget to look off-site and understand what our potential customers (and Google) are reading about us
Build expertise through your links – look at factors such as relevancy, credentials of the article author and the relevancy of the publication to the topic and client that you’re covering. Rebecca used a great example of placing a healthcare client in Men’s Health Magazine, in the healthcare section by the healthcare editor – the value of quality links such as these is high in that they add those key E-A-T signals that we are often looking for
In person training sessions are BACK! This was probably one of the biggest takeaways and in this industry there is no substitute for in person learning from other industry experts.
Speakers L-R (Rebecca Moss, Amanda Walls, Philip Ossai and Andy Holland)
Image: JBH
We thoroughly enjoyed the evening and look forward to the next one!
If you’ve landed on this blog, chances are that you have heard all about Digital PR. It’s been an industry buzzword for a few years now & has really taken off in this time; even though many agencies, including ourselves, have been doing this for over 5 years!
Digital PR has been used in conjunction with SEO to help grow visibility for websites in a very holistic manner. While these two elements were previously siloed amongst marketing campaigns, more recently, agencies have started combining the two to provided added, targeted benefits for both their SEO and Digital PR campaigns. By combining the two elements, you are able to use the data-research side of SEO with the creative PR side of Digital PR to drive consistent campaigns. This not only drives high quality links into your website and grows brand awareness, but also supports growth in your overall SEO rankings and, therefore, traffic to your website and subsequent sales/conversions.
So What Is Digital PR?
Digital PR is essentially a strategy or plan which takes the principles of traditional PR & applies it in an online environment to online content & placements. Think of it as promoting a product or service but in the digital space and with the added incentive of creating high quality, relevant links for SEO. In turn, you also get the added bonus of the optimisation that comes with that.
Digital PR has been around for as long as PR has, but has only really come to the forefront in recent years. This is mainly due to the value that it can add to SEO campaigns and the real world returns that PR of this style can generate. PR has never been more measurable from an ROI perspective as it is in Digital PR format. This makes it an appealing option for businesses who are looking to grow sales/leads in addition to just growing standard visibility.
When we look over time we can see that “link building” in its raw format has always been a popular option for companies looking to improve their “website authority” or “Domain Rank” for SEO. In the last few years, however, we can see that Digital PR has started to meet link building as an equal. This has mainly been due to the rise in popularity of the term as a buzzword, but also the approach being seen as a more effective, sustainable and achievable method of link acquisition.
We’ve even seen John Mueller, Google Webmaster Trends Analyst, weigh in on it through his Twitter account, offering his view that he loves some of the things that he sees from Digital PR: “It’s just as critical as tech SEO, probably more so in many cases.” Who are we to argue?!
Although we’ve compared Digital PR and Link Building together above to review trends over time, it’s important to note that the two can be very different. Digital PR is a more holistic offering. It’s designed to not only improve SEO value and drive leads to your website, but also to enhance your visibility and start to create buzz around your brand, just as traditional PR does.
What Are Some Common Digital PR Techniques?
Digital PR, like any element of digital marketing, is done in a number of different ways depending on the agency that you work with and the results that you are looking to achieve. For example, Digital PR for an ecommerce company looking to drive sales of a specific product would look very different to a company looking to launch a new product, or a company who is looking to improve their overall awareness and traffic within a specific niche.
That said, there are a couple of techniques that can work across a number of different situations, they just need to be applied in different ways. Some of the most common Digital PR techniques that we use here at Cedarwood include:
Newsjacking
Newsjacking isn’t a new concept to PRs; it’s essentially the process of finding a newsworthy topic and putting your client at the front of the conversation. As Digital PR has continued to grow, so has the popularity of both Proactive and Reactive Newsjacking as a way of landing great quality coverage for a client while also showcasing that client’s expertise.
There are generally two different types of newsjacking: proactive and reactive. Both work in a slightly different way. Traditionally, proactive newsjacking would involve researching events in advance such as the launch of a new product, event or movie, or the launch of a new report, perhaps from NHS Digital or the ONS or a particular themed day or month coming up. This gives time to plan, gain the right comments and angle, and outreach in time to land coverage for clients.
Reactive newsjacking, on the other hand, involves monitoring the media to identify opportunities where we can potentially jump in with expert commentary or advice. To be reactive you need to have a great media monitoring set up and you need to be able to get into the conversation quickly with a fresh angle. You also need to have a quick turnaround on comments. We often recommend speaking to clients or your internal PR team in advance to prep them where tight turnaround might be required. Ideally, try to develop a process for this early on so you don’t miss out on key opportunities. For media monitoring, there are a lot of tools out there but some of the most popular are social media platforms, such as Twitter and TikTok, BBC Breaking News, Hashtags and daily newspapers.
Done effectively, Newsjacking is a quick and effective way to gain your clients coverage and to gain those all-valuable links back to the website.
Data-Led Campaigns
At Cedarwood we’re a fan of always-on link acquisition, in fact in one slide we could summarise our approach to Digital PR as follows:
That’s where data-led campaigns come in. Small, frequent data-driven campaigns are a great way to land links, highlight your client’s expertise and create a stable environment of always-on Digital PR. The days of high risk, high reward campaigns are often behind us, as we find journalists increasingly inundated with the larger style of campaigns. They now seem to prefer a smaller, more expertise-driven approach to Digital PR through data.
The great news when it comes to data-led campaigns is that there’s a tonne of free resources out there that you can utilise. In fact we’re currently pulling together a separate blog on all of the free data sources you can utilise, so watch this space. For now, we’ve listed some of the key ones below:NHS Digital
Once you have your data, undertake analysis to understand the angle. Remember a new, fresh angle backed up by expertise is your best friend when it comes to landing data-led campaigns. It’s therefore always good to have some ideas in mind prior to your data analysis, so you know what you are looking for.
If you aren’t able to gather the data freely then there are a number of paid for options, especially if you have something specific that you are looking for. Google Surveys and other survey providers can offer good options here. In many instances, it might be that you only need to ask just one question, in which case it can often be quite affordable too. Data-led campaigns don’t have to break the bank to be successful.
Here are a couple of examples of recent data-led campaigns that we’ve turned around quickly and outreached to gain some great placements and Digital PR for our clients.
Thought Leadership is a great approach for modern Digital PR as it tends to combine a number of elements which are hugely beneficial for SEO – predominantly expertise and link acquisition all rolled into one!
Thought leadership is also a great way to extoll the virtues and expertise of your brand to a wider market, and really join the conversation on topics which matter to both you and your brand. Thought leadership is one of the elements that underpins a strong always-on Digital PR strategy and something that we love to do to build the expertise of our brands.
Speaking on his Twitter account John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, speaks directly about how one very relevant link can be significantly more important than a whole chunk of links built into a website. It’s very much about quality over quantity. In many cases, Digital PR firms steer away from thought leadership as they see it as a lot of work for maybe just one or two links. Yet, in many cases, these one or two links can be more valuable than an entire creative campaign if they drive the relevancy and expertise that Google is looking for.
“Or there could be one really good link from one website out there that is, for us, a really important sign that we should treat this website as something that is relevant because it has that one link. I don’t know, maybe from like a big news site’s home page, for example. So the total number essentially is completely irrelevant.”
– John Mueller
So while many agencies and in-house teams are set on creating link goals or link targets based on the number of links achieved, to deliver real impact you need to focus on the relevancy and quality of individual links, rather than just trying to build links as a whole to the website.
Is Link Building Dead?
The way in which link building is done has come a long way in the last 10 years. Unfortunately, I still hear stories of agencies paying for links and more often than you would think. This is against Google’s guidelines. While it might work for a short period of time, after a while Google’s algorithm will catch this, and your website could be at risk of either a manual penalty or an algorithmic penalty from the Google Penguin update.
For those of you that are unfamiliar with Google Penguin or what it is, Google Penguin is an update designed to penalise websites that have undertaken dodgy link practices. There was a significant update many years ago now called Penguin 2.0 and it caught out a lot of Webmasters who had been purchasing links. For many of these it took years before they were able to get their websites back onto a good standing.
So link building is definitely not dead, but the industry as a whole is still seeing a lot of paid for link acquisition. It wouldn’t surprise me if there is a new variation of the Penguin update (which now runs in real time) to tackle this.
Digital PR is a great way to drive links into your website for link acquisition purposes, but it also helps to build on key E-A-T signals & drive relevance for your brand. Again, link acquisition definitely isn’t dead, but SEOs are having to adapt the way that they build links to really reach best practice.
Does Digital PR Actually Work?
Absolutely, hands down Digital PR is one of the most important elements of any SEO campaign. It’s also a great way to drive your overall brand relevancy and the visibility of your website. Digital PR is arguably one of the most important elements of any SEO campaign. It helps to build relevancy and expertise across your website, in addition to growing some great visibility for your clients.
Good Digital PR can help to build your traffic & visibility over time & correlates with SEO visibility & performance by helping to improve the overall authority within the website.
Below is an example of a client that we have done Digital PR for, for a number of years:
As you can see, the number of high quality links that we have created correlates closely with organic visibility & performance. When done well, Digital PR can have a direct impact on your SEO performance.
How Do I Find Relevant Topics?
Relevancy is an important element of any Digital PR campaign. Ensuring that your Digital PR campaigns match the relevancy and recency of your clients is very important to ensuring that you get the maximum impact from them.
One of the ways that we look to drive relevancy for our clients is by creating a mind map to really understand the core themes of our client. We can then build out content and topical resources around this.
Here’s an example of one that we did for a client in financial services. It shows how we are able to map everything to central themes to ensure that we keep relevancy at the heart of our campaigns.
It’s not just enough to find relevant topics though. You also have to find topics which are trending and topical, i.e. topics that journalists want to cover. There are a number of tools that you can use for this, from Google Trends through to BuzzSumo. These really help you to identify what is trending and, most importantly, anything that has already been covered to ensure that your content is topical and relevant.
How Can I Make Journalists Love My Content?
One of the main ways that we understand what journalists are looking for is through the concept of “Why Does The Reader Care?” At the end of the day journalists are looking for clicks on their articles, so we need to make sure our content is juicy, relevant and backed up by great data and a clear methodology. Get journalists to love your content by giving them what they want and giving it to them in a format that they can use without having to make too many changes. This can include:
Attaching any imagery that they might require
Clearly stating your methodology or linking to the methodology if required
Ensuring that you have a clear bio of the company or person that has created the article
Including any relevant links internally within the press release
Making sure the press release has a clear hook for the journalist (and readers)
Answering any questions that the journalist has previously asked.
Journalists are busy creatures so ensuring that you include all of the relevant information within your press releases is a great way to ensure that they’re best placed to cover your content. Additionally, make yourself available to them in case they have any quick questions. Don’t be afraid to jump on a quick call and point them in the right direction.
Journalists love content which gets clicks and which really engages the user, mainly human interest pieces. So when you’re creating your mind maps, stories or even brainstorming, creating ideas which have a strong human interest point is a great place to start. Always think about who might be reading the article and what they might want to know. Make sure that you have that great hook, a great angle and, most importantly, that you bring something new to the table.
Looking for more information on how to create a press release? Check out our guide to press releases which will help to point you in the right direction!
How Do I Measure Digital PR?
Measurement is essential to any effective performance marketing channel and Digital PR is no different. Being able to measure and justify the investment in this channel is key to growing clients and proving value and strong ROAS. So, how do we go about measuring how successful our Digital PR campaigns have been and what value this particular channel adds?
Measuring Digital PR can be done in a number of different ways with a range of different tools. Before you start measuring, take the time to work out what you are trying to achieve; it shouldn’t just be just a certain number of links. Think about the business goals and how you can map those down to online goals accordingly. I’ve always thought of it like this:
Business Goals – Online Goals – KPIs
By ensuring that you always have the business goals as the top marker, you know that you are delivering that all-important value and ROAS. Now that you have your business goals where do you start with measurement? Well this can be done in a number of different ways but I’ve listed the two most common metrics that we use below:
Link Scoring
We know that not all links are equal, so setting a simple link target wouldn’t quite cut the mustard when it comes to understanding the value we are delivering for a client. That’s why we use a concept of “Link Scoring” to understand how important and valuable our work can be.
Our link scoring matrix takes the type and relevancy of the link and combines it with key metrics such as Domain Authority and Rank to produce a “link score.” Each month we set a target based on this link score and tie it back to our KPIs. This ensures that any Digital PR work we undertake is focused on our client goals and keeps relevancy, expertise and value at the core at all times.
Visibility Metrics
Key visibility metrics, such as overall traffic value, help us tie our Digital PR service closely to website impact and SEO results. By looking at a metric like traffic value we can combine a keyword’s position with its estimated traffic level to understand how much valuable traffic we are bringing to the website.
By measuring in this way we are ensuring that higher rankings for keywords are actually bringing in traffic. We don’t want to fall into the trap of getting keywords to position one that bring no traffic or value for the client. By tying these metrics back to our Digital PR campaigns we can prove value and ROAS for our client’s investment.
Summary
Digital PR is a hugely effective tool and a big part of the modern digital marketing mix. With experts from Google singing its praises and highlighting how important it is within the marketing mix, we can be sure that effective Digital PR will play an important role in digital strategies for many years to come.
Want to find out more about how Digital PR can help your agency or business? Get in touch.
Display Advertising is, in my opinion, one of the most under-utilised forms of effective advertising offered in performance marketing. The main reason I feel people don’t really use it effectively is because, of all the paid search options available, it is often the hardest to optimise and also the hardest to attribute.
Unlike traditional advertising such as Search or Shopping, Display generally has a much longer path to conversion. It can take many more touchpoints than the standard options which, in many cases, can just take one or two. The second and probably biggest challenge with Display Advertising is that, unlike Shopping or Search, it is an interest-based form of advertising rather than an intent-based format. This means that instead of benefitting from putting your ad in front of someone at the time they are looking for it, you are instead trying to find that audience through a range of targeting options, such as age/demographic, interests and affinity audiences.
With this in mind, you often find that Display doesn’t convert as well as traditional channels. The Conversion Rate tends to be lower and the user much further outside the funnel so, for many advertisers, it falls by the wayside as an effective channel option. This is a shame, as Display can be a great way to reach a broader audience for your product and bring them into your funnel, even if it doesn’t directly convert. It can actually be a powerful tool when used effectively.
Given the broad nature of interest-based targeting, to utilise Display Advertising effectively we need to be as granular as possible and use a strong, data-driven approach in our targeting methods. In addition to having a really good understanding of our audience and where we want the ads to be placed, we also need to understand which ads are working well for us and which placements are leading to conversions. That’s where, when using ValueTrack Parameters effectively, you can really improve the performance of your Display campaigns.
What Are ValueTrack Parameters?
According to Google who created them, ValueTrack Parameters are “a type of URL parameter that you can add to your ads’ landing page URLs. These parameters collect information about the source of your ad clicks.” Essentially, they are parameters which you apply to your ads that allow you to collate data about the click (location, type of ad etc…) and feed that back into your advertising interface to allow you to make more data-driven decisions.
By utilising ValueTrack Parameters you are able to gain more information about your audience and their behaviour than you would traditionally through the advertising interface. This can allow you to make more data-driven decisions and more effectively place your display ads in areas where you are likely to get the best return.
There are a whole range of parameters that you can use across the full range of advertising channels (Display, Search, Shopping, Video). They include parameters to measure devices, placements, positions, user data and location. These have all been designed to give you additional insight and data to really maximise the value of your campaigns.
Are There Specific ValueTrack Parameters I Should Use For Display?
If you’re looking to optimise your Display Campaigns then there are a number of ValueTrack Parameters that we would recommend using. These will help to add additional data and detail to your campaigns, allowing you to really maximise their optimisation:
{PLACEMENT}
The Placement ValueTrack Parameter gives you access to the domain name of the specific website where your ad was published. This can be an incredibly effective way of mapping specific conversions back to specific placements, and allowing you to be more granular with the way that you place your content.
By using the placement parameter it allows you to really understand which placements are delivering you high quality leads and which ones aren’t. Additionally, this then allows you to block out placements which aren’t driving value and increase bids on those which are. The Google Display Network covers around 90% of the web which means a standard display campaign will appear on thousands and thousands of websites. By utilising the placement parameter you can really help to isolate high performance placements and maximise these for a better ROAS.
{DEVICEMODEL}
The Devicemodel parameter allows you to evaluate what make and model of device users are on when they click on your ads and come through to your website. This, again, can give really valuable information around how you target your campaigns and, specifically, how you create your ads.
With this data you can evaluate if a particular user group (i.e. on a particular make or model of device) is interacting poorly with either your ads or your website when they arrive. As a result, it could indicate an issue with the way they are viewing your ads, or even indicate that they are missing specific information from them due to the way the ad displays on their screen or device. This particular parameter can help to cut out a lot of wastage and can also push advertisers to ensure that their ads are suitable for a wide range of devices and models. So, if you are finding a drop off in your ads, or when users come through to the website, this is one method of investigation which can provide very useful data.
{CREATIVE}
The Creative parameter is a great way of identifying which of your specific creatives are driving valuable conversions to your website. When combined with the {placement} parameter it gives you an invaluable insight into which creative on which placement is actually driving your leads. This allows you to really maximise visibility in areas where you know there is a high potential for conversion.
With Display campaigns you will often trial and run a number of different creative options and it’s often hard to discern which of these is generating the best return. By implementing the creative parameter and combining it with others you can get a full data mix to understand what’s really driving ROAS for your business. This is one of the most effective ways to get display campaigns delivering a strong ROAS as opposed to just improving your visibility.
How Do I Set Up ValueTrack Parameters On My Campaigns?
If you like what you’ve read above and this is something you are looking to get involved with, Google offers a handy guide which can help you get started with setting up the parameters on your campaigns. If you’re looking to get started quickly then here’s a snippet from the Google guidelines below which indicates the quick steps to set up the parameters:
The key here is in choosing the right parameters and understanding how you want to digest that data. I’d recommend setting it out in a spreadsheet first, understanding exactly what you want to measure, which campaigns you are going to test it on and how you are going to measure the data. Then apply the parameters to a subset of data to test initially.
Once the test has been undertaken (and it may be valuable to do this within a Google Ads Experiment) you can then roll this out across more campaigns to get a larger pool of data to work with.
Conclusion
If you are looking to take your display campaigns to the next level, or perhaps you’ve stepped away from them because you don’t feel that they are generating the ROAS that you deserve, then it’s worth considering how ValueTrack parameters could help. They could really bring that display campaign back in a very targeted approach and allow you to cut a lot of wastage.
By applying some simple parameters you can better understand your audience and the data available, allowing you to really maximise your campaigns.
Want to find out more about how to maximise your return from display advertising? Get in touch!
We’re absolutely delighted to announce that we have been nominated for two awards at the UK Ecommerce Awards 2022 for:
📍UK Ecommerce Small Agency Of The Year
📍Ecommerce Search Campaign Of The Year (With Hayes Garden World)
After winning Small Ecommerce Agency Of The Year at last year’s awards we are absolutely delighted to have been nominated again, especially for awards which are so well recognised within the UK Ecommerce community.
The last 12 months has been a period of significant growth across the business but particularly within our Ecommerce clients, not only have we grown accounts with our existing clients, but we have brought on a range of new ecommerce clients during the year selling a range of products from vapes to desks to jewellery to furniture.
Additionally we have brought to market some great processes and updates internally that are streamlining a lot of our work across Google Shopping and Display Advertising,
Ecommerce has grown significantly since lockdown and we’ve been working closely with our clients old and new to keep them at the forefront of the user search, through both SEO and PPC, to ensure that they are maximising their visibility and increasing their sales.
We look forward to attending the ceremony in November and you can find a full list of all the agencies nominated here
In August, Google updated its Page Quality Rater Guidelines. This is something it does from time to time to reinforce the key principles it looks for when evaluating the quality of a page. In SEO circles, these Quality Rater Guidelines are somewhat of a bible. Although most SEOs won’t have read them from start to finish (there’s over 300 pages!) many will take excerpts from them as a way of trying to understand what Google is looking for. They can then use this information to determine how they should present their websites to make them more ‘SEO-friendly’.
In recent years, a number of key concepts have come out of the Quality Rater Guidelines, with perhaps the most significant one being the concept of E-A-T or Expertise, Authority and Trust. While the principle of this has been around for years, it’s only in the last few that SEOs have started to look towards it as a way of ‘optimising’ a website and putting it as a key focus for their SEO campaigns. The little known sibling of E-A-T is the acronym Y-M-Y-L, otherwise known as Your Money or Your Life. There is far less conversation about YMYL but, in many cases, it is significantly, if not more, important than the concept of E-A-T. In this blog we are going to look at what YMYL is and how you can apply the principles to your website to benefit your SEO.
What Is Your Money Your Life?
Let’s start with a simple definition and understanding of what YMYL is and how it applies to websites. The concept of Your Money or Your Life was defined by Google to highlight websites which fall into a specific category; that is, websites which impact either your money or your life. As these websites and the topics within them could have a substantial impact on a person, their pages, and the website as a whole, are held to a much higher standard within the Quality Rater Guidelines. If there is an issue with any of the content on a YMYL website, it can have a significant and detrimental impact on an individual.
With the recent update to the guidelines Google has aimed to simplify what it designates as a YMYL website. They have supplied the following guidance and examples, and whilst there are no hard and fast rules, this information helps to demonstrate what might fall into the YMYL category and what might not:
As you can see from the guidance, YMYL really refers to websites which give information that could impact an individual’s money or life. Therefore, if your website or one of your clients’ websites fall into this category, then you need to get to grips with the Quality Rater Guidelines and start understanding what YMYL is really all about.
So How Do I Optimise For YMYL?
Optimising your website for YMYL focuses around creating great quality, trustworthy content. This content should show Google that your website is a trustworthy place for users to come for information, and to convert and potentially engage in your services or buy your product. There are a number of factors that come into play when it comes to optimising for this, and we will go through them in the guide, but one of the best places to start is to look frankly at your website and ask these questions:
Does my website answer or fulfil the user’s purpose?
Do I have well-written authoritative content on my website?
Is it clear who has written my content and what their expertise is?
You can conceptualise these questions into three key areas:
By taking the above approach we can see three key consistent themes across YMYL:
Have we matched User Intent? Are we giving clear information and expertise early on in the piece, and are we also giving reassurance of expertise throughout the content
Does the website have a clearly defined purpose? Can users reach what they need to and is the content up to date?
Who has created the content and what are their credentials? What is their reputation and the reputation of the website as a whole?
With these concepts and ideas in mind you can set about creating a practical SEO strategy with these key themes at the forefront.
Google backs up this approach in section 3.1 of the Google Quality Rater Guidelines. This outlines the most important information that Page Quality Raters should be looking for in this category:
On-Page SEO For YMYL
On-page SEO is a great place to start on your path to YMYL greatness and is also one of the most important areas when it comes to sending the right signals to Google. It is a key area where Google will be looking for you to showcase your expertise and trust, as on-site content is likely where users will start to get an understanding of your brand. Effective on-page SEO is a mix of content with a solid structure that has been created with the user in mind. It is not written for search engines. So, it’s important to remember throughout your on-page optimisation that you are writing to gain the trust of the user and, as a result of this, Google will look to trust your website too.
Matching User Intent
Matching user intent and purpose is a key element of the YMYL concept. While this is also a part of E-A-T, its role in showcasing a website’s trust and being able to answer the users’ questions confidently is very important here. Definitions and FAQs, alongside a clear and concise demonstration of your expertise, will go a long way to matching user intent. To bolster this you should create a website which is easy to navigate and makes it clear how users can contact you should they need more information.
When creating your key pages, such as product or category landing pages, always keep user intent in mind. This can guide how you lay out your content and in which order. It’s worth remembering that users don’t always scroll to the bottom of your page and so Google might not either. Therefore, ensure that you are matching as much user intent and relevancy as you can at the top of the page, to maximise the benefit.
We’ve recently done a project with one of our legal clients on matching user intent. As a client that sits firmly within the YMYL category we know it is important that they demonstrate to Google that their site is a trusted source able to answer user queries. In this case, it was something as simple as identifying that high performing competitors had a clear definition at the start of their content and were, therefore, directly answering the user’s query. We were then able to optimise our content accordingly.
Authoring Your Content
A key concept of YMYL has always been about who has authored your content. In the most recent update, Google has gone even further to highlight how important the concept of authorship is and, additionally, the reputation of the author. This is a clear signal to show how trustworthy a piece of content or a page is
Authoring content became popular in the SEO community after the Medic update, where we saw a good uplift for content which was well authored by experts. Google now stipulates clearly within the Quality Rater Guidelines that it wants to understand not only who the expert is that has written the content, but also their credentials. Google wants to know what makes this person an expert in the field and do they have the level of trust and expertise to be giving out this information?
It’s not enough to just add a ‘Written By’ with the name and photo of your expert, you now need to qualify this expert. This could be with a short snippet or excerpt of information on the page, or a link through to an expert profile with further details and information. This expert profile could include qualifications, industry accreditations or the number of years’ experience. To further qualify this, external links pointing out to trusted websites, such as accreditation boards or websites where they have contributed expert opinion, allows Google to see from trusted third party sources that the person in question is an expert in the field.
By taking the time to build out author profiles, you’re not only showcasing to Google the level of expertise that your business has, you’re also showing it to your potential audience. This can be a significant benefit from a CRO perspective, in addition to boosting your YMYL signals.
Refreshing Your Content Regularly
Up-to-date content and statistics are a great way to showcase your expertise. If you have content on your website which is out of date, even by just a few years, this can cause issues from a YMYL perspective. Worse still is content that contains information that is now incorrect because it is so out of date.
It’s not practical to be consistently updating your content, especially if you have quite a large website. Refreshing key elements of it, including statistics, expert information, relevancy and commentary will go a long way to ensuring that the information on your website is fresh and correct. Auditing your content regularly to ensure that the data is up to date and adding in new external links to data sources (as they become relevant) is a great way to prevent your content from becoming outdated. Additionally, identifying your top 5-10 traffic pages & putting in place a plan to optimise these regularly is well worth it. If they are driving traffic they likely have rankings that you want to maintain. So, prioritising the update and refresh of content on these pages will go a long way to keeping you where you need to be.
Including External Links
Many people are reluctant to include external links across their website as they feel it sends their valuable ‘link equity’ to another website. While links do pass equity the amount is often nominal, and is far offset by the value of having your website point to other reputable websites and information sources. Linking out to external sources can help to back up your expertise and qualify a lot of what you are saying, as you are linking to sources that can verify the point you are making. As a result it can actually enhance the overall expertise and trust level of your website.
If you are externally linking to other websites, the only caveat is that you need to ensure that the content that you are linking out to is relevant, current and that it doesn’t end up as a broken link. A simple crawl which checks your external links is a great way to keep on top of this.
Digital PR For YMYL
Enhancing YMYL signals on the website doesn’t just stop at traditional on-site SEO and content. To give a proper level of authority and trust this should be extolled throughout the whole website and also the inbound link profile. Strong Digital PR should play an important role in amplifying these signals & helping to drive expertise-driven links into your website, while improving your overall website authority.
Although in many instances Digital PR is about driving high quality links, there are cases where agencies will build links for links sake and this doesn’t benefit anyone. It doesn’t benefit the reader as what they are reading about may be unrelated to your website and so there is low user intent. It also doesn’t benefit you, as the links that you are drawing to the website don’t have that all-important element of relevancy.
Digital PR for YMYL websites should look to really drive relevancy and expertise where it can. That means choosing topics which are closely linked to your website’s purpose, product or service. Then ensuring that any coverage or Digital PR, that you are putting out to garner links back to the website, are related to this.
In addition, you should be utilising your Digital PR where you can to extoll the virtues of your expertise. This can be done in a number of ways from thought leadership through to product-led campaigns. Whatever you choose, this strategy can be a very effective way to continue building those all-important off-site trust signals which Google really values.
If you’re looking for inspiration for Digital PR that fits well with YMYL, you’ll find some examples of recent expertise-led coverage that we’ve landed for our clients. These links are great value; not only because they are from trustworthy websites, but also because they showcase our client’s expertise on an external source, thus delivering great overall value to their campaigns.
Check out some of our most recent Thought Leadership campaigns for our client Hayes Garden World here:
Although technical SEO isn’t always seen as effective as on-site content or Digital PR for sending good YMYL signals to Google, it still has a role to play. Good technical SEO means Google can effectively and efficiently crawl your site, and clearly and easily recognise the trust signals. This ensures the reputation of your website remains strong.
Optimising your website technically for YMYL follows a lot of the traditional technical SEO elements, but with an emphasis on ensuring that what Google is seeing on your website reflects a good reputation and authority.
Schema Mark-Up
Schema Mark-Up is a really nice way to tell Google about factors which enhance your reputation, such as on-site FAQs or reviews. This can be a really nice way to help Google easily and concisely interpret your reputation information.
There is a wide range of Schema Mark-Up options that you can use to help Google understand your trust signals, from product and organisation information to reviews and FAQ mark-up. While each of these is valuable, we would recommend undertaking a schema audit to really understand what information you have available and how you can effectively mark-up.
Not sure where to start? If you’re new to Schema Mark-up and haven’t done it before, we’ve included below a couple of ideas to get you started:
FAQ Schema – This is a great way to showcase your expertise which is a key element of YMYL. Whether it’s product or information pages, FAQs are a great way to show that you are matching and answering user intent. Mark these up with some delicious FAQ Schema and show Google that your website knows what its talking about!
Review Schema – Product reviews? Business reviews? Trusted external third party reviews? Whatever you have you should be telling Google about it! External reviews are a really great way to validate the expertise and trust in your business so why not shout about them? If you display reviews on your website you can utilise Review Schema to mark these up and let Google know all about it.
If you’re not sure how to check the schema that is already in place on the website, or you want to audit it, then a great place to start is with Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool. By using the tool you can evaluate your existing Schema implementation, check that it’s all correctly implemented and identify areas where further schema can be placed.
Log File Analysis
Log File Analysis plays a key role in ensuring that your website is YMYL friendly. While traditional crawlers will help you to gather trends around how Google crawls your website, log file analysis will allow you to see how Google is actually crawling your website. This helps you to identify any issues or pain points which might not have been picked up by your regular crawler.
Log Analysis allows you to conduct a deep dive into the way that the Googlebot and other crawlers are moving through your website. This means you are able to analyse which pages are being most heavily crawled and, therefore, which pages Google is potentially looking towards to gain trust signals. It also points you towards any crawl errors, such as broken pages or redirects, which could be impacting crawl efficiency and wasting crawl budget. Crawl errors will send poor quality signals to Google which is, of course, something we are keen to avoid.
We often find during a log analysis that crawl budget is being wasted and if crawl budget spends too much time on pages which don’t add value to your website then it’s likely that Google starts to view your website as this as a whole, so it’s critical that every signal you send Google is a good one and analysing log analysis to see what signals you might be sending is a good place to start.
An effective Log Analysis should allow you to review the crawl across your website and make updates, so that you are left feeling confident about how the reputation of your website is shown to Google. You can even do it with as few as seven days log files. Get asking your server host for those log files and do some digging into that data to analyse how effectively Google is crawling your website!
Summary
YMYL is a key consideration for a lot of websites. Yet there are still people within SEO who focus on the pillars of Technical, Content & Links. They are potentially missing out on clearly defining the underlying principles within their strategy and understanding what Google is really looking for from a trust perspective.
Hopefully you have found the above useful. If you’d like to find out more about how you can utilise YMYL for SEO, or if you website falls into this category and you’d like some help optimising it for SEO, then get in touch!
We were delighted to attend the UK Digital Growth Awards a few weeks back – an awards night designed to celebrate UK agencies who have seen significant growth over the last 12 months – and as we’ve experienced nearly 50% growth over the last year it was a great night to spend celebrating industry growth in a post-COVID climate.
It’s always great to be back at awards ceremonies after such a long period of time doing them remotely from home so it’s great to catch up with old friends and undertake some networking at the same time. We were delighted to share a table with some great companies in the fields of analytics, social media and web design and get to know more about their business and successes over the last 12 months.
On the night we had four nominations in the following categories:
🍒 Best SEO Agency 🍒 Best PPC Agency 🍒 Best Small Integrated Agency 🍒 Best SEO Campaign (with our client Patient Claim Line)
We were delighted to have been nominated after a period of significant growth over the last 12 months, along with other businesses that have seen substantial growth during this time.
On the night we were delighted to take home the award for Best Small Integrated Agency with some amazing feedback from the judges…
We were also delighted to take home the large glass award – although not so delighted to have to carry it back to Manchester all the way on the train from London!
We had a great time on the night and look forward to seeing everyone there next year!
Newsjacking has been a popular option for a close, we thought we’d have a quick look back at five recent quick turnaround newsjacking campaigns which have delivered high-quality, relevant, super expertise driven links to our clients with very little prep or turnaround time.
Knowing how important our E-E-A-T signals are, particularly for some of our clients in Your Money Your Life verticals, building high quality, expertise-driven links is important to our client’s SEO success. Here we’ve rounded five great examples where jumping on the latest trends has helped us to deliver solid links for clients with a quick turnaround time.
Cheapest Roast Dinner
Links: 112 / Average DR: 55
The Cheapest Roast Dinner campaign for our client Cash Lady was one of our favourites – a super simple campaign to carry out with a clearly defined purpose and an outcome which had a great hook for journalists and relevant at a time where the cost of living is increasing and general costs are going up. This campaign involved researching which supermarket offered the cheapest roast dinner, compiling the data together and then presenting it on our client’s website. We created some juicy angles around the data and seeded it out to our media lists.
The campaign was a great success placing well across a range of regional publications, in addition to a number of key dailies including The Daily Record, The Daily Star and Birmingham Live.
New Years’ Resolutions
Links: 23 / Average DR: 82
If you’re like us then the New Year is a great time for change and New Years Resolutions are one way to at least encourage yourself to change or improve something (or just give something up) from the year before – but we all know that these never last – so we looked into search data for one of our ecommerce clients MIST, to find out exactly how long people manage to hang onto those New Year Resolutions before they start slipping back in to their old habits.
The answer? Not very long – after reviewing and analysing search data it turns out that February 19th is usually the key date – less than two months after the resolutions have started! To reach this conclusion we analysed five years’ worth of search data and evaluated when specific keywords spiked that related to an ending of a specific resolution. With most resolutions revolving around health – it was easy to see when a spike in keywords such as “takeaway” rose that people were starting to give up on these habits…
Once we had the data we pulled together some great press release angles and sent it out to our media lists. A super quick piece to turnaround which landed over 23 links across some high tier publications including AOL and Yahoo!
Childhood Hepatitis
Links: 29 / AverageDR: 70
As cases of childhood hepatitis rose towards the start of the year it was something that was trending broadly within the news. We worked closely with our medical negligence client Patient Claim Line to produce expert comments on how parents can help to identify if their child could potentially have meningitis and what to look for – as well as what to do if they find that they have suffered from misdiagnosis or a delayed diagnosis.
The piece was quickly picked up by mainstream media and landed 29 links with an average DR of 70.
Holiday Savings Tips
Links: 42 / AverageDR: 66
Brits love a summer holiday and as summer holiday season started to ramp up we saw that a lot of newspapers and publications were starting to publish savings tips and tricks which would be particularly effective in the current economic climate. With this in mind we teamed up with Instagram Mum Emma Stretton to deliver some great holiday savings tips at a time where everyone was looking to make their money go a little further.
Once we’d spoken to Emma we pulled this together in press release form with some great hooks for journalists and outreached it to our media list. The content landed really well with over 40 links generated on high quality publications including Wales Online, The Sun, MSN and the The Birmingham Mail.
Gardening Hacks
Links: 15 / AverageDR: 74
As we approach summer, gardening has been a hot topic of discussion across a lot of news channels, working with our client Hayes Garden World we have jumped into numerous conversations and added our expertise to news jack and build high quality links into our client’s website. Topics that we have contributed to include: “How to fertilise without chemicals”, “Everything you need to know about planting trees”, “How to prevent weeds growing” and “Making the most of your garden in March”.
Our expert commentary and news jacking has been featured across a range of high profile publications including House Beautiful, Daily Express, The Mirror, Ideal Home and the Yorkshire Post.
Newsjacking is a great way to land solid links by jumping on a trending topic and it’s also a great way to push expertise driven links into your website, adding that all important E-E-A-T value! To find out more about our newsjacking service and Digital PR or how we could help to gain you brand coverage and valuable high quality links enquiry today!
Last Thursday we headed to Barcelona for the European Search Awards. We were delighted to have been nominated for six of the awards & were looking forward to celebrating the best of search across Europe & beyond.
On the night we were over the moon to take home the awards for:
🎇 Best Small Integrated Agency 🎇 Best PPC Campaign – For Our Work With Hayes Garden World
It was great to receive such positive feedback from the judges after a great year of growth & also successful client campaigns. In particular, having worked with Hayes Garden World for over five years we were delighted to see the joint success with our client off the back of a hugely successful 2021.
And of course, we were unable to evade a trip up onto the stage… so here is a lovely photo of us collecting our award on the evening!
We thoroughly enjoyed our trip to Barcelona & look forward to heading off to a new destination next year for the European Search Awards 2023!
PPC, as one of the more measurable ways of digital marketing, provides a great platform for people to understand exactly how much they are going to spend. Within reason, and by utilising data, it gives them an understanding of the type of return they can expect, as well as any growth opportunities. This makes it highly appealing to people who are looking for a directly measurable approach
As someone who studied Specialist Mathematics, I’m not afraid of some number crunching, or longer more complicated equations. However, after ploughing through endless spreadsheets I was convinced there must have been an easier way to do this – enter Google Data Studio. Now don’t get me wrong, there’s still quite a bit of maths involved here, but, the data visualisation beauty of Google Data Studio means that trying to explain it to clients just became a whole lot easier. By combining the equations & letting Google do the working out for you, you can not only leverage the data that’s available, you can also present it in a way which is pleasing to all key stakeholders.
Now I’m aware there are many different ways to do this & there are also a number of tools within the market that do this for you. So, today I will share with you how I approach PPC forecasting when it comes to growth &, also, starting to understand the type of return you can expect on both ad spend and leads when launching campaigns.
I want to caveat that there are two different ways to tackle this & today I will only be looking at growth forecasting – that is forecasting when you have pre-existing data that you can work with. If you are looking to forecast from scratch then that is a whole different ballgame (& a whole different blog)! For the purpose of today we will be focusing on utilising data that you already have to predict growth.
Forecasting – Search Growth
If you have an existing Search Campaign & you’re looking to grow your business & drive new leads, chances are that you will have undertaken some growth forecasting. This can come in a number of different formats, from Google’s own tools, Excel spreadsheets or through in-house technologies. For the example below I’m going to show you how we can do that with Google Data Studio (with the help of Google’s “Opportunity Lost” template).
You can download Google’s “Opportunity Lost” template within the Data Studio templates &, once you have it, you will see that it’s a 13 slide template enabling you to see where the opportunity is within your Google Search & Display campaigns. (Note: I haven’t yet found one for Shopping but I am in the process of looking to create one).
For the purpose of this blog we are going to be focusing on Slide 3 (Search Bid Lost Overview) & Slide 5 (Display Bid Lost Overview). Let’s start with Slide 3 (Search Bid Lost Overview).
When you first load up the presentation it will look something like this:
Now, while this dashboard in itself is incredibly useful & contains a lot of valuable information, when it came to forecasting I wanted to neaten it up to make for a more digestible board, which I could quickly & easily pull out in client presentations. Also, in the example below, as the client didn’t have an Ecommerce arm I removed all reference to Revenue, preferring to focus on the three main areas:
Impressions Lost
Impression Share Lost
Conversions Lost
By focusing on the above I was able to simplify the dashboard & also tailor it so that I could break it down by different dimensions, including “Day Of The Week” & “Device” to help with my optimisations.
So, after a little work I adapted the Data Studio to look like the below (please note I’ve removed the client data hence the white gaps):
The beauty of this style of diagram is that not only does it give us absolute figures (in the middle) where we can understand what that growth looks like, it also allows us to segment by a dimension to help us identify where the real growth comes from. In the example above I segmented the Impression Share column by “Day Of The Week” so I could understand on which days I needed to bid more & in the Impressions & Leads columns I segmented by “Campaign” so I could understand which Campaigns had the biggest room to grow & improve. You can also segment by Device & other dimensions to really understand where your opportunity is & to drive the growth in the most efficient manner.
To do the above you simply need to change the “Dimension” section of the Google Data Studio report to “Day of week” or “Campaign” or “Device” depending on what you are trying to analyse.
Now, in terms of the calculations from Google’s perspective these are already input into the Data Studio, but for an understanding of how we can change these to suit different dimensions I’ve listed them here:
For Impression Share – Search Lost IS (Rank)
For Impressions – Impressions / Search Impr. share * Search Lost IS (rank)
For Leads – ((Impressions / Search Impr. share * Search Lost IS (rank))* CTR) * (Conversions / Clicks)
By using the three equations above we are able to use simple metrics within the account to estimate growth capabilities based on key data such as Conversions etc… As you can see from the top sheet you then have the option to choose between specific campaigns, and drilling down on the details here will get a better analysis of the campaign.
Changing Between Impression Share, Top Impression Share & Abs. Top Impression Share
Now in some situations you may just want to know the Impression Share that is available to you & how much your clients can grow, but in others you may want to know what more is available to you. That’s where editing the equations to incorporate Top Impression Share & Abs comes in. Top Impression Share can really help.
Let’s take a look at the equation for Leads:
If we change: ((Impressions / Search Impr. share * Search Lost IS (rank)) * CTR) * (Conversions / Clicks)
To: ((Impressions / Search Impr. share * Search Lost Top IS (rank)) * CTR) * (Conversions / Clicks)
We are now forecasting the potential if each ad is in the top positions (i.e. above the Organic search rankings), as opposed to if the ad just has the opportunity to show 100% of the time. By doing this we are able to identify not only visibility growth, but also growth patterns for higher ad positions & also top ad positions using Search Abs. Top IS (rank).
By utilising the above approach you can get a good understanding of how your Search campaigns are currently performing & where the potential growth areas might be. This is a great way to plan your upcoming campaigns.
Forecasting – Display Growth
Now that we’ve looked at how to forecast Search growth, we can roll out the same principle to forecast Display growth – although generally with much bigger metrics. I’ve created a similar dashboard here for Display, which you can view below, & focused solely on any campaigns which sit on the Display Network. What’s most interesting to note here is that dimensions such as “Day of the week” & “Device” are more pronounced. This is a much easier way to digest & get that data than trying to source it manually.
The dashboard above works in exactly the same way as the Search dashboard, except that it displays content related only to the Display campaigns. The equations work in a similar manner other than they use Display Lost IS as opposed to the search variation. All in all it’s a great way to see the overall performance of the Display Campaign & identify any areas of opportunity.
Conclusion
If you’re looking for a way to effectively forecast then there are a whole host of tools out there that you can use. However, if you are looking for a quick way to utilise the power of Google Data Studio for PPC forecasting then the ideas above should help you on your journey to find out the PPC potential of your campaigns & your website!
What better way to start our new financial year than by celebrating in style with SIX nominations at the European Search Awards!
After a solid 2021 we are delighted to see that our growth & great results for our clients have been acknowledged among some very fierce competition. We’re also looking forward to a fun trip to sunny Barcelona to celebrate at the awards in late May.
The categories we have been nominated in are:
🎇Best Use Of Search – Retail/Ecommerce (SEO) 🎇Best SEO Campaign 🎇Best PPC Campaign 🎇Best Small PPC Agency 🎇Best Small SEO Agency 🎇Best Small Integrated Search Agency.
We’re really looking forward to the night & hopefully bringing home an award (or two). (We’re also looking forward to the Sangria…)
Last night the entire Cedarwood team took a trip over to Leeds to celebrate our 6th Anniversary at the Northern Digital Awards where we were lucky enough to be up for FOUR nominations!
On the night we were nominated for:
🎇 Best Use Of Ecommerce – Retail (SEO) 🎇 Best SEO Campaign 🎇 Search Agency Of The Year 🎇 Best Small Digital Agency
It was great to get the team together to celebrate the best talent & work that the north has to offer & it’s always lovely to have a team night out – especially one that fell on the same date as our 6th anniversary.
We were absolutely delighted to walk away with the Silver Award for Best Small Digital Agency on the night, especially as we were up against some really strong competition & this has been a great reflection & reward for the team after our best year to date.
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