Gavin Duff

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Digital marketing often traps us within &#8216;echo chambers&#8217;, knowingly or not.
&#8216;Echo chambers&#8217; are spaces where our views are amplified and echoed back to us, creating a loop of similar ideas and opinions.
This phenomenon, quite prevalent in digital marketing in fact, brings forth unique challenges and opportunities.
As a digital agency, we regularly do this ethically and in very effective ways. If someone likes shoes, we will show them ads for shoes. This cannot be avoided, and it is the norm.
But we would normally only apply this tactic in silo when the budget is tight and there is no perceived media spend available for awareness.
‘Awareness’ is sometimes considered to be a dirty word in digital marketing because it’s not attribution’s best friend, in that it can be difficult to tie it directly to conversion. But what I’m about to discuss will highlight why it’s essential.
<h3>The Role of Echo Chambers in Consumer Behaviour</h3>
In digital marketing, algorithms often curate content and show ads that align closely with users’ existing preferences, effectively creating echo chambers.
While this approach ensures efficiency and relevance, it also risks narrowing our exposure to diverse viewpoints and products, potentially limiting the spectrum of consumer choices.
Echo chambers feed into our cognitive biases, particularly confirmation bias – our tendency to favour information that reinforces our existing beliefs.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-14810" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/5c880b1899097.image_.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="359" srcset="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/5c880b1899097.image_.jpg 600w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/5c880b1899097.image_-250x150.jpg 250w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/5c880b1899097.image_-120x72.jpg 120w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" />
In a marketing context, this means consumers might be limited to products and services that resonate with their established interests, which could hinder diversity and innovation in consumer choices.
There is nothing ethically wrong with showing consumers relevant products or services, but we need to understand that algorithms are not infallible. That person I mentioned above who likes shoes? Well, their digital footprint might not even suggest that they do&#8230; only an awareness campaign could capture them.
<h3>Key Challenge</h3>
The key challenge for digital marketers is to navigate these echo chambers without losing audience engagement. How can we introduce new ideas and products while maintaining relevance?
Here&#8217;s where understanding consumer psychology becomes crucial…
By leveraging insights into consumer behaviour, we can strategically diversify the content within these echo chambers, subtly introducing new concepts and products that can expand consumer perspectives while retaining a sense of familiarity.
<h3>Existing Preferences</h3>
Echo chambers occur when individuals are exposed primarily to opinions, information, or products that align with their existing beliefs or preferences.
In digital marketing, this is often facilitated by algorithms that tailor content based on past behaviour, creating a self-reinforcing loop.
While this can enhance the consumer&#8217;s experience by providing relevant content, it also limits exposure to a broader range of ideas, products, or services.
<h3>Implications for Marketing Strategies</h3>
<ul>
<li>Limitation of Personalisation: While personalised marketing is effective for engaging and converting consumers at the middle and bottom of the funnel, it often neglects the broader awareness stage. Echo chambers can keep potential new customers from entering the funnel if they are not already aligned with the brand or product.</li>
<li>Need for Broader Exposure: Echo chambers emphasise the importance of ToFu (top-of-funnel) marketing. In other words, awareness campaigns. ToFu strategies focus on reaching a wider audience to build brand awareness, rather than targeting only those already interested or engaged. By targeting a broader audience, brands can penetrate echo chambers that might otherwise limit their reach.</li>
<li>Brand Awareness: ToFu marketing aims to make more people aware of a brand or product, irrespective of their immediate interest or intent to purchase. This broadens the potential customer base and introduces the brand to diverse audience segments.</li>
<li>Diversifying Marketing Channels: Using a variety of marketing channels (social media, content marketing, SEO, paid ads, PR, etc.) can help brands reach people outside of their existing audience. This is crucial for breaking into echo chambers that might confine a brand’s visibility to its current audience.</li>
<li>Content Marketing: Creating <a href="https://www.friday.ie/expertise/content-marketing/">diverse and informative content</a> can attract a wider audience. This includes leveraging blogs, videos, infographics, and podcasts that cover a range of topics, not just those directly related to the brand’s products or services.</li>
<li>Educational and Informative Approach: ToFu content often focuses on educating the audience about a problem or need they might not know they have. This is particularly effective for engaging consumers who are outside of the brand’s typical echo chamber.</li>
<li>Social Media Strategies: <a href="https://www.friday.ie/expertise/digital-marketing/social-media-advertising/">Social media</a> platforms are known for creating echo chambers, but they can also be used to break them. Strategies like awareness/branding campaigns, partnering with influencers who have diverse followings, or using broad hashtags can expose the brand to a new audience.</li>
<li>SEO and Broad Keywords: Using SEO strategies that incorporate broader, more general keywords can attract traffic from users who are not already familiar with the brand or product.</li>
</ul>
For digital marketers, navigating the ethical landscape of targeted advertising requires a balanced approach. It&#8217;s essential to blend personalised marketing strategies with efforts to expose consumers to a broader range of ideas and products.
This might involve leveraging a mix of targeted and broad-spectrum advertising tactics, ensuring that marketing campaigns do not exclusively reinforce existing consumer preferences but also introduce new concepts and diverse perspectives. It also drives more people into your funnel, so it’s a win-win. We do this all the time.
<h3>The Role of Psychology</h3>
Understanding the psychology behind echo chambers is key. Obviously, people tend to engage with content that aligns with their existing beliefs or interests. ToFu marketing should thus aim to introduce new concepts in a way that is still relatable to these interests, thus gently expanding the consumer’s horizons.
Echo chambers in digital marketing highlight the necessity of ToFu marketing and broader awareness campaigns. By reaching out to a wider audience, brands can effectively break through these chambers, attracting new customers who might otherwise remain outside their marketing reach.
This approach not only diversifies the potential customer base but also contributes to a more informed and engaged audience, ultimately benefiting both consumers and brands. It also brings them into your echo chamber for future targeting.
<h3>Recent Controversies and Ethical Considerations</h3>
In recent years, leading digital platforms like Facebook and Google have come under intense scrutiny for their targeted advertising practices. These platforms, harnessing vast amounts of user data, create highly personalised advertising experiences.
However, this personalisation has sparked controversy, particularly when it inadvertently reinforces echo chambers.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-14808" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/confirmation-bias-social-media-72131222.webp" alt="" width="2400" height="1350" srcset="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/confirmation-bias-social-media-72131222.webp 2400w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/confirmation-bias-social-media-72131222-250x141.webp 250w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/confirmation-bias-social-media-72131222-700x394.webp 700w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/confirmation-bias-social-media-72131222-768x432.webp 768w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/confirmation-bias-social-media-72131222-1536x864.webp 1536w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/confirmation-bias-social-media-72131222-2048x1152.webp 2048w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/confirmation-bias-social-media-72131222-120x68.webp 120w" sizes="(max-width: 2400px) 100vw, 2400px" />
For example, in 2021, Facebook <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/10/12/congress-regulate-facebook-algorithm/">faced backlash</a> for its algorithm promoting divisive and polarising content, illustrating how targeted advertising can sometimes prioritise engagement over the dissemination of diverse perspectives.
These incidents highlight a growing concern: the ethical implications of digital advertising in shaping user experiences and societal norms.
In response to these ethical dilemmas, governments and regulatory bodies have started to step in. The European Union&#8217;s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) represent significant efforts to give users more control over their data. These are a pain to marketers, if I am honest. We are losing sight of data.
My own gripes aside, these regulations aim to curb the extent of targeted advertising, thereby potentially reducing the impact of echo chambers. By limiting the ability of platforms to indiscriminately harvest and utilise user data, these laws seek to establish a more balanced digital advertising landscape.
<h3>Impact on Political and Social Discourse</h3>
The influence of echo chambers, fuelled by targeted advertising, extends beyond consumer behaviour, significantly impacting political and social discourse. The 2016 and 2020 U.S. presidential elections, for example, demonstrated how echo chambers can shape political narratives and polarise public opinion.
Targeted advertising can create isolated information bubbles, where users are exposed only to content that aligns with their existing beliefs, potentially leading to misinformation and heightened societal divisions.
<h4>Consumer Awareness and Education</h4>
A crucial step in mitigating the effects of echo chambers is raising consumer awareness. I do not believe that this is talked about enough, and as a result, digital marketers are demonised and put in the same category as those seeking to swing an election.
Users often remain unaware of how their online behaviour influences the content and advertisements they see. This is mostly harmless, but educating consumers more about data privacy, the mechanics of targeted advertising, and how to use available tools to manage their digital footprints can empower them to make more informed decisions about their online interactions.
This might also allow room for digital marketers to use targeting advertising without being considered ‘evil’ for doing so!
<h4>Future Outlook</h4>
Looking ahead, the future of digital advertising in the era of heightened awareness and regulation presents both challenges and opportunities.
Emerging technologies like AI and machine learning could be pivotal in creating advertising experiences that are both personalised and ethically responsible.
The goal would be to use these technologies to delicately balance personalisation with the need to expose users to a wider array of content, thus breaking through the echo chambers that currently dominate much of the digital advertising landscape.
Perhaps the true art of digital marketing in today&#8217;s world lies in our ability to use algorithms not just to reinforce, but to challenge and broaden consumer horizons.
By presenting a mix of familiar and new ideas, we can enhance consumer experiences, encourage exploration, and drive innovation.
It&#8217;s a delicate balance, but one that holds the potential for transformative impact in the way we approach marketing and consumer engagement.
If your <a href="https://www.friday.ie/expertise/digital-marketing/">digital marketing campaigns</a> are not getting you the reach you deserve, then <a href="https://www.friday.ie/contact/">get in touch</a> with us today.

Echo Chambers: The Argument for Awareness Campaigns

User Experience (UX) is a fundamental component of successful digital marketing strategies. And rightly so.
From e-commerce websites to mobile apps, <a href="https://www.friday.ie/expertise/user-experience/">UX</a> plays a pivotal role in ensuring user satisfaction, influencing purchasing decisions, and ultimately determining whether customers become loyal advocates or turn to the competition.
As an agency, we’re consistently highlighting the essential role of UX in <a href="https://www.friday.ie/expertise/digital-marketing/">digital marketing</a>, including its impact on user-centric marketing, trust and credibility, SEO, and the ability to drive customer loyalty.
We firmly believe (and why wouldn’t we?) that if you&#8217;re spending money to get users to your brand experience then you should give them the best one possible.
I’ll say it more than once in this blog post, but I can’t help myself: it’s a no-brainer.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-14476" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/no-brainer.jpeg" alt="no-brainer" width="624" height="351" srcset="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/no-brainer.jpeg 624w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/no-brainer-250x141.jpeg 250w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/no-brainer-120x68.jpeg 120w" sizes="(max-width: 624px) 100vw, 624px" />
<h3>User-Centric Marketing</h3>
In the modern digital landscape, a shift towards user-centric marketing has become imperative. Gone are the days of a purely product-centric approach.
User-centric marketing is a strategy that prioritises the needs, preferences, and behaviours of the consumer above all else.
Instead of making assumptions about what customers want (often based on complacency or ego), businesses leverage data and insights to gain a deeper understanding of their target audience.
The UX process utilises usability testing, user research, analytics deep dives, UX audits and other core activities to take you out of your own building and into the minds of your customers.
This knowledge allows us to create personalised experiences that resonate on an individual level.
Unfortunately, not enough businesses recognise the importance of focusing on the user and their experience throughout the marketing journey. UX lies at the heart of this approach, aiming to provide users with seamless, efficient, and enjoyable experiences when interacting with digital products or services.
<h3>Every Touchpoint</h3>
When businesses prioritise UX, they simplify the path to conversion and address the user&#8217;s needs at every touchpoint.
By doing so, they create a frictionless experience that makes it easier for potential customers to navigate through their website, understand the product or service, and ultimately make a purchase.
This user-centric approach has been proven to significantly improve conversion rates, resulting in higher business success.
There is no simpler way to put this: If your website converts better then EVERY digital marketing channel converts better.
It is that straightforward. A no-brainer, if you will (sorry!).
To implement user-centric marketing effectively, businesses must understand their customers&#8217; needs, pain points, and motivations.
By developing a comprehensive understanding of their target audience, businesses can create valuable solutions that address specific challenges or desires. Moreover, effective communication of these solutions is key to establishing a meaningful connection with customers.
<h3>Why Listen to Users?</h3>
At its core, UX is all about enhancing the overall experience for customers. By prioritising the needs and wants of customers, businesses improve their satisfaction and engagement levels.
This, in turn, leads to increased conversions, repeat business, and positive word-of-mouth.
Businesses need to cut through the noise and deliver relevant and tailored experiences now. Today&#8217;s consumers are inundated with marketing messages, making it, at best, noisy and annoying. Consumers are tuning out&#8230;
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-14477" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/giphy.gif" alt="" width="480" height="320" />
By leveraging customer data and analytics, businesses can gain insights that enable them to customise interactions, products, and services to match individual preferences. This personalised approach resonates with customers, leading to higher engagement and conversion rates.
UX serves as the bridge that connects businesses with their customers in the digital world. It encompasses every aspect of a user&#8217;s interaction with a digital product or service, ensuring that they find value in what businesses provide.
A good UX design goes way beyond aesthetics; it focuses on creating intuitive and user-friendly interfaces, delivering seamless navigation, and providing relevant content.
From the moment users land on a website to navigating through products or services and reaching the final checkout, the entire customer journey should be smooth and enjoyable.
UX design utilises data-driven decision-making to continually refine and improve the user experience, aligning it with the evolving needs and expectations of customers.
So don’t be a data denier… we have enough of those! Let the data lead the way.
<h3>Building Trust and Credibility</h3>
In the digital (and mostly faceless) world, building trust and credibility is more challenging yet more important than ever.
Establishing trust through UX design is crucial to creating meaningful connections with users.
A user-friendly and intuitive website not only enhances the user experience but also builds confidence in the brand. When users find a website easy to navigate, aesthetically pleasing, and functional, they develop trust in the brand&#8217;s credibility.
Transparency is another critical factor in building trust. In an era of data breaches and online scams, customers are increasingly concerned about their privacy. Businesses must be clear about their privacy policies and how they handle customer data. Making these policies easily accessible and understandable contributes to establishing trust.
Just try not to make your user’s privacy journey too annoying or intrusive. Far too many are doing this and websites are losing revenue there.
A study titled &#8220;The Impact of Privacy Laws on Online User Behaviour&#8221; (<a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3774110">Goethe University</a>, revised 2022) found that the enforcement of privacy laws like the EU&#8217;s General Data Protection Regulation (<a href="https://gdpr-info.eu/">GDPR</a>), which mandates the use of cookie notices, had a negative effect on user quantity and usage intensity on websites.
The study suggests that these effects could translate into revenue losses for websites. Let that sink in.
<h3>Relevant Content</h3>
Providing high-quality and relevant content is another way to build trust and credibility.
Regularly updating a blog, resources, and social media platforms with informative and valuable content not only helps in ranking better on search engines but also establishes the brand as an industry expert.
Customers are more likely to trust a brand that consistently provides helpful and authoritative content. Of course, this also lends itself well to your <a href="https://www.friday.ie/expertise/digital-marketing/search-engine-optimisation/">SEO</a> efforts.
Leveraging social proof is another powerful strategy for building trust and credibility. Customer reviews, testimonials, case studies, and endorsements can significantly influence potential customers&#8217; perceptions of a brand. Positive reviews serve as proof of a brand&#8217;s reliability and trustworthiness, thereby enhancing credibility.
<h3>Consistency</h3>
Consistency is also crucial in building trust and credibility. Consistency across all platforms and touchpoints helps establish a credible brand identity.
Whether it&#8217;s on the website, social media channels, or email campaigns, maintaining consistency in branding, messaging, and tone of voice reassures customers and strengthens the brand&#8217;s identity.
UX can provide a consistent experience while digital marketing uses these same insights for consistency of messaging.
<h3>Influence on SEO</h3>
In recent years, search engines have started giving more weight to user experience in their ranking algorithms.
They understand that websites that offer a good user experience are more likely to provide value to users. As a result, these websites are rewarded with higher rankings in search engine results pages (<a href="https://www.semrush.com/blog/serp/">SERPs</a>).
User engagement metrics play a significant role in determining the quality and relevance of a website. Metrics such as session duration are believed to influence a website&#8217;s search engine ranking.
When users have a positive experience on a website and engage with its content, it sends positive signals to search engines, indicating that the website is valuable and relevant.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-14479" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/make-google-happy.jpg" alt="" width="575" height="320" srcset="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/make-google-happy.jpg 575w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/make-google-happy-250x139.jpg 250w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/make-google-happy-120x67.jpg 120w" sizes="(max-width: 575px) 100vw, 575px" />
<h3>Mobile</h3>
Mobile optimisation is another aspect where UX and SEO intersect. Search engines have prioritised mobile-first indexing.
This means that search engines primarily consider a website&#8217;s mobile version when determining its rankings. Having a mobile-friendly UX is no longer optional but necessary to rank well in search results and provide a positive experience for mobile users.
Website speed is another critical factor that affects both UX and SEO. A slow-loading website not only frustrates users but is also frowned upon by search engines.
Speed is a confirmed ranking factor (for now), and it directly impacts user experience. Users typically leave a website if it takes too long to load, which increases the bounce rate and signals to search engines that the website might not provide a satisfying user experience.
<h3>Navigation</h3>
A clear and logical navigation is crucial for both UX and SEO. A well-structured website with intuitive navigation allows users to find what they&#8217;re looking for quickly and easily.
This positive user experience leads to increased engagement, lower bounce rates, and longer session durations, all of which contribute to better SEO performance. Moreover, search engine bots can crawl and index a website more efficiently when its navigation is clear, leading to improved visibility in search results.
UX and SEO are no longer separate entities but intertwined components of a successful digital marketing strategy.
By aligning UX with SEO best practices, businesses can create a more enjoyable user experience, drive organic traffic to their websites, and ultimately improve their search engine rankings while doing so!
<h3>Driving Customer Loyalty</h3>
A positive user experience can be a significant factor in driving customer loyalty.
When your customers find a website or app easy to use, visually appealing, and pleasant, they are more likely to return and make repeat purchases.
By continually improving and updating the UX, businesses can foster a loyal customer base that not only remains engaged but also becomes brand ambassadors, recommending them to others.
To drive customer loyalty through UX, businesses must focus on creating delightful experiences at every touchpoint.
This includes designing intuitive user interfaces, optimising website performance, and personalising interactions based on individual preferences.
By consistently delivering exceptional user experiences, businesses can build trust, foster loyalty, and establish long-term relationships with their customers.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-14478" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/giphy-1.gif" alt="" width="450" height="253" />
<h3>No-Brainer</h3>
As the digital landscape continues to evolve, the role of UX in digital marketing becomes increasingly crucial.
User-centric marketing, built upon a foundation of exceptional UX design, empowers businesses to prioritise customer needs, enhance satisfaction, and drive revenue. It is a no-brainer. No, really.
By building trust and credibility, influencing SEO, and fostering customer loyalty, businesses can position themselves for success in the digital realm.
Investing in UX is not just an option but a necessity to thrive in today&#8217;s highly competitive digital marketplace.
By prioritising the user and delivering exceptional experiences, businesses can unlock the true potential of their digital marketing efforts and cultivate strong, lasting relationships with their customers.
Of course, you can also generate a sh*tload more revenue along the way.
Reach out to <a href="https://www.friday.ie/contact/">Friday</a> today to see how UX and Digital Marketing can transform your ROI.

The Crucial Role of UX in Digital Marketing

In the ever-evolving world of SEO, AI has already played a pivotal role in transforming various aspects of how we search.
Google in particular have been at the forefront of utilising AI to enhance user experiences, improve search quality, and support the discovery of relevant information.
And now it’s about to reach the next level using, you guessed it, AI advancements again.
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In short: Google are now introducing cutting-edge generative AI technology to enhance the search experience. And I’m liking it!
I will stand up and pay attention to anyone who appears to be taking their time and using a considered approach to AI advancements. Much of it has been far too rushed.
We all know that Google <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/8/23590864/google-ai-chatbot-bard-mistake-error-exoplanet-demo">jumped the gun</a> a bit and were too exposed by factual errors, but I think the lesson has been learned.
Over the years, Google has introduced ground-breaking advancements such as the Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) and the Multitask Unified Model (MUM) to revolutionise search capabilities.
I won’t delve too much into <a href="https://blog.google/products/search/introducing-mum/">BERT or MUM</a> right now, all you need to know is that they paved the way.
Continuing this trajectory, Google is now venturing into a new frontier called Search Generative Experience (SGE), where generative AI takes centre stage.
Generative AI is a type of AI capable of creating new content, such as images, videos, music, or text, that is not directly copied from existing examples.
It’s a fascinating area with so many functionalities, responsible implementation questions being raised, known limitations and more&#8230;
<h3>What is SGE?</h3>
Search Generative Experience represents an early step in transforming the search experience using generative AI.
It presents an AI-generated response above the search results. Google explicitly indicates the answer as being from Generative AI, followed by a response to your query.
The answer is presented in a box and Google provides citations to the websites used for generating the answer. These citations can be clicked to explore further.
Alternatively, you can ask another question or use the toggle button at the top right for more in-depth information.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-14377" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/google-search-generative-ai-experience-look.png.webp" alt="" width="2048" height="1521" srcset="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/google-search-generative-ai-experience-look.png.webp 2048w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/google-search-generative-ai-experience-look.png-250x186.webp 250w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/google-search-generative-ai-experience-look.png-700x520.webp 700w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/google-search-generative-ai-experience-look.png-768x570.webp 768w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/google-search-generative-ai-experience-look.png-1536x1141.webp 1536w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/google-search-generative-ai-experience-look.png-120x89.webp 120w" sizes="(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px" />With SGE, users will notice a revamped search results page that organises familiar web results in a novel manner, enabling you to extract more value from a single search.
It empowers users to ask entirely new types of questions, gain quick overviews of topics with relevant links for further exploration, engage in a natural conversational mode for follow-up queries, and effortlessly accomplish tasks like generating creative ideas or drafting content directly within the search interface.
So far, it looks pretty f*cking cool.
<h3>How SGE Works</h3>
At the core of SGE are AI-powered snapshots that provide users with a synthesised overview of a topic.
These snapshots offer factors to consider and relevant insights, serving as a jumping-off point for users to explore a wide range of content and perspectives on the web.
SGE also incorporates a conversational mode, allowing users to naturally ask follow-up questions and obtain additional links to resources for in-depth exploration.
Leveraging AI, the conversational mode adapts to the context of the user&#8217;s queries, reformulating and refining the search intent over the course of the conversation.
This dynamic approach ensures users have access to the most relevant content as the conversation progresses.
<h3>Vertical Experiences</h3>
SGE extends its benefits to verticals such as shopping and local searches.
In shopping, SGE aids users in making informed purchase decisions by uncovering insights, presenting notable factors to consider, and offering a range of product options with descriptions, reviews, ratings, prices, and images sourced from Google&#8217;s comprehensive Shopping Graph dataset.
Similarly, SGE enhances local search experiences by providing AI-powered insights that facilitate comparisons and exploration of options.
<h3>What About The Ads?</h3>
This is an important one, and make no mistake, search ads will continue to play a vital role within SGE. They will appear in dedicated slots throughout the page.
Advertisers can leverage SGE to reach potential customers at various stages of their search journeys, just as they have done already.
On the ethical front, Google says they remain committed to transparency by ensuring clear differentiation between ads and organic search results, utilising the usual labels. I’m sure the <a href="https://www.friday.ie/blog/deceptive-design-and-how-it-hurts-your-business/">dark patterns</a> will continue here, but let’s see.
<h3>Embracing Creativity</h3>
Generative AI capabilities in SGE unlock new possibilities for users to engage with information creatively. Beyond merely finding information, SGE supports users in utilising that information in innovative ways.
Whether it&#8217;s searching for a new product or brainstorming ideas for social media posts, SGE&#8217;s creative potential offers users an enhanced and immersive search experience.
It&#8217;s important to note that, initially, SGE imposes certain constraints on creative applications to prioritise safety and quality. However, as the system evolves and quality improves, creative capabilities will expand.
<h3>SEO</h3>
Whatever content SGE surfaces will still use citations and will link to content where needed, so this does not necessarily mean that we are facing a world of zero-click searches. There will be more of them, but this is not the death of your SEO traffic.
On the flip side, it will look for content that is trustworthy so all of the same <a href="https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-e-e-a-t-how-to-demonstrate-first-hand-experience/474446/">E-E-A-T</a> principles will apply if you want your content to be surfaced here.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-14384" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Screenshot_2023-05-16_at_10_56_13.jpg" alt="Google E-E-A-T" width="784" height="431" srcset="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Screenshot_2023-05-16_at_10_56_13.jpg 784w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Screenshot_2023-05-16_at_10_56_13-250x137.jpg 250w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Screenshot_2023-05-16_at_10_56_13-700x385.jpg 700w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Screenshot_2023-05-16_at_10_56_13-768x422.jpg 768w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Screenshot_2023-05-16_at_10_56_13-120x66.jpg 120w" sizes="(max-width: 784px) 100vw, 784px" />
<h3>Applying It Responsibly</h3>
As an experimental feature, Google says they are approaching SGE thoughtfully and responsibly, in accordance with its AI Principles.
Many will like to hear this since there is currently an overreaction in which people think this will destroy the world.
<h3>So there you have it&#8230;</h3>
SGE brings cutting-edge generative AI technology to enhance the search experience, and this is certainly welcome.
It offers a distinctive new search experience, distinguishing itself from previous versions while retaining the familiar Google search essence.
Notably, Google has made improvements in linking to publishers, aiming to actually generate website traffic.
It&#8217;s pretty exciting, to be fair.
If you want to know more about what all of this means for your SEO strategy, then <a href="https://www.friday.ie/contact/">get in touch</a> with us today.

A New Way to Search: Google’s Generative AI

If you use ChatGPT to write your blog posts then you&#8217;re turning up to a gunfight with a knife.
So no, you absolutely should not use it for this. I&#8217;ll explain why….
Don&#8217;t get me wrong, AI is incredible and I fully welcome it.
ChatGPT is great for certain things such as text completion, language translation, sentiment analysis, summarising text, and answering questions&#8230; it&#8217;s even a useful tool for a wide range of real-world applications such as chatbots and customer service.
It really is a game changer, but just not for your content strategy.
It&#8217;s no surprise that ChatGPT has garnered a lot of attention in the SEO industry. After all, it&#8217;s a chatbot that utilises natural language processing to answer questions. In fact, it may even be one of the most widely discussed AI tools to date.
When it comes to ChatGPT and SEO, I was keen to wait until the dust settled before forming an opinion.
In a short space of time, it very quickly went from just being an awesome new tool to sudden cries of “SEOs will be out of work now!”.
Which is, of course, total nonsense. In my lifetime I do not expect AI to be able to replicate human emotion or creativity.
It can mainstream some SEO tasks very well, such as keyword and content research, but it should not be used to fuel your content strategy.
<h3>Not capable</h3>
Firstly, it amazes me that so many are jumping the gun in assuming that ChatGPT is the answer to their content drought. And they do so without even asking the very tool that they place so much trust in for no apparent reason.
If you did ask it, it will tell you that it is not capable of creating original content or ideas, not to mention that it recommends you do your own research and not use it as a substitute for a human writer:
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-14359" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/1671532184600.jpeg" alt="Should you use ChatGPT to create your blog posts" width="734" height="407" srcset="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/1671532184600.jpeg 734w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/1671532184600-250x139.jpeg 250w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/1671532184600-700x388.jpeg 700w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/1671532184600-120x67.jpeg 120w" sizes="(max-width: 734px) 100vw, 734px" />
Of course, many attempts have been made to generate content – in bulk or otherwise &#8211; using ChatGPT, but the results have been less than satisfactory in terms of relevance.
While some of the content produced may have driven traffic, it failed to attract the right audience, and it did not typically generate revenue.
For most businesses, creating content in bulk using AI would be a challenge in terms of maintenance and impact, particularly without a substantial marketing team or revenue.
The cost of maintaining such content would eat into the bottom line, with little or no return on investment.
Furthermore, since generic content is often removed from the buyer&#8217;s journey, it becomes increasingly difficult to justify allocating resources towards its improvement.
<h3>Ineffective approach</h3>
Years ago, many people tried publishing thousands of posts using content mills for as low as 2 cents per word, and it proved to be an ineffective approach. This is no different.
The same is true for using ChatGPT or any other automated tool to produce content. It&#8217;s simply old-school SEO, and these strategies do not work in driving business growth.
The key to success lies in understanding what your audience needs and delivering it with authority, rather than spamming content around non-competitive, high-volume keywords.
The business acumen to recognise that AI-generated content is not the solution required to move the needle is missing.
Most businesses require high-level content that communicates expertise and addresses consumer concerns. Unfortunately, AI is not currently capable of generating such content.
<h3>No acumen</h3>
I recently came across this post on Twitter by a copywriter. It’s grim, to say the least. And the business that chose to do this? There is clearly no acumen on display by this particular client:
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-14360" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/1673602990751.jpeg" alt="" width="800" height="443" srcset="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/1673602990751.jpeg 800w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/1673602990751-250x138.jpeg 250w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/1673602990751-700x388.jpeg 700w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/1673602990751-768x425.jpeg 768w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/1673602990751-120x66.jpeg 120w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" />
You could argue that most blog posts should not be for SEO, and this is true. But even those created for trust, optics and usefulness by ChatGPT will fall very short of requirements.
<h3>Content that satisfies</h3>
It is imperative to reiterate (once more) the paramount importance of creating content that aligns with Google&#8217;s expectations.
While not particularly complex, this is a facet of creating content that is frequently overlooked.
Google places a premium on content that satisfies the following criteria:
<ul>
<li>Offers original information, reporting, research, or analysis</li>
<li>Provides an extensive, exhaustive, or complete overview of the subject matter</li>
<li>Offers insightful analysis or intriguing data that goes beyond the surface level</li>
<li>References and cites other sources rather than simply duplicating or rehashing their content, thereby offering additional value and originality. ChatGPT, for instance, is a prime example of this approach.</li>
<li>Is the kind of content that would prompt you to bookmark it, share it with others, or recommend it?</li>
<li>Is similar to the calibre of content that you would find in a reputable publication, such as a magazine, encyclopedia, or book? This is an essential consideration; Google effectively prioritises journalism.</li>
<li>Offers greater value than other search results pages? Trust me, ChatGPT is not expending such extensive effort solely for your benefit.</li>
<li>Is crafted with care and attention to detail, avoiding any hasty or sloppy errors</li>
<li>Is not mass-produced, thereby avoiding neglect and disregard for individual pages or sites.</li>
</ul>
As you can see this is not the work of AI. This is humans. It’s critical thinking, applied knowledge, originality and opinions.
I have not even yet mentioned the trust factors that Google often references. You might know it as <a href="https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/12/google-raters-guidelines-e-e-a-t">E-E-A-T</a>.
<h3>Authority of content</h3>
Google&#8217;s ranking algorithm considers multiple factors when determining the authority of content.
Among these factors are questions related to the author&#8217;s expertise, including whether the content provides clear sourcing, evidence of the author&#8217;s expertise or the website&#8217;s authority, and links to relevant pages such as an author page or an About page.
The algorithm also considers whether the site producing the content is well-trusted or recognised as an authority on the topic. Additionally, the algorithm evaluates whether the content is written by an expert or enthusiast who demonstrates a deep understanding of the topic.
Finally, the algorithm checks for easily verifiable factual errors in the content.
Now, do you really want to trust ChatGPT with any of this???
<h3>Not a solution</h3>
ChatGPT is a tool and NOT a solution. It can be an effective starting point.
If you have writer’s block then by all means ask it for suggestions on sub-topics – but you’d best be prepared to write about these topics in an original, thoughtful, and perhaps opinionated way.
Think about a world filled with AI-generated content. It&#8217;s a world where quality is no longer the deciding factor, where homogeneous content reigns supreme.
After all, why bother with a half-decent writer when you can just rely on ChatGPT to generate something similar? But if everyone is using the same tool, where is the differentiation?
If your competitor generates articles on the same topic using the same AI tool, how do you stand out?
The answer: you don&#8217;t.
You&#8217;re left to compete solely on backlinking and technical SEO, which are smaller pieces of the puzzle compared to content itself.
<h3>Often wrong</h3>
But even if you manage to get your AI-generated content indexed, there&#8217;s another problem: accuracy. ChatGPT may be confident in its writing, but it&#8217;s often wrong.
It&#8217;s like using predictive text on your phone &#8211; it can lead to nonsensical statements. Except with ChatGPT, the mistakes can be subtle and dangerous.
It may use insecure libraries in code snippets, or get facts wrong. And let&#8217;s not forget its inability to count words and characters properly. At the time of writing this, if you ask it for ten headlines with 50 characters or fewer, it&#8217;ll spit out ten headlines of arbitrary length, assuring you that they&#8217;re within your parameters.
<h3>Risky proposition</h3>
So, is relying on ChatGPT for SEO content generation a good idea? In short, no. Not really. The lack of differentiation and the potential for inaccuracies make it a risky proposition.
Sure, it&#8217;s an impressive tool, but it&#8217;s not a substitute for human creativity and expertise.
When ChatGPT exploded on the scene, I became very tired of reading articles only to get to the end and be told “Surprise, this was written by ChatGPT!”
This was not clever, it was obnoxious, and I could usually tell that it was written by AI anyway.
Well, I’ll just finish by saying&#8230;
Surprise, ChatGPT could NOT have possibly written this one.
Because it’s actually original and voices an opinion.
If you want to know more about how Friday can help you with <a href="https://www.friday.ie/expertise/digital-marketing/search-engine-optimisation/">SEO</a> and <a href="https://www.friday.ie/expertise/content-marketing/">content</a>, then <a href="https://www.friday.ie/contact/">get in touch</a> with us now.

Should you use ChatGPT to create your blog posts

Should you use ChatGPT to create your blog posts?

When it comes to the metaverse there is a lot to unpack, so bear with me here&#8230;
Yes the metaverse is intriguing, but it&#8217;s not a new concept.
For a long time, people have been playing VR games and immersing themselves in life simulations like <a href="https://secondlife.com/">Second Life</a>, SIMs, and even fantasy role-playing realms like World of Warcraft.
In October, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the firm will undergo a rebranding that included a new name, logo, and ticker symbol. So this was a significant step, obviously.
The metaverse, according to some detractors, is just another failed effort at something that hasn&#8217;t succeeded before, largely by IT giants that didn&#8217;t provide enough uses for it to be of value to people.
There are many who believe it&#8217;s nothing more than an elaborate plot devised by the “powers that be” to control our lives and force us into the black hole of advertising. That&#8217;s a bit paranoid, really.
<h3>Wearable technology</h3>
Virtual reality gamers will know that the world of Ready Player One took some liberties in its depiction of the medium.
The technology just isn&#8217;t there to support what the characters were doing in the book or movie, and it might never be. Of course, this is science fiction, so it&#8217;s not a big deal.
However many people instantly connected this film to Facebook&#8217;s rebranding as Meta.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-13751 size-full" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/suit-up-suit.gif" alt="" width="498" height="320" />
Well I&#8217;m sorry to let you down, but that’s really not going to be the case.
Wearable technology is still not where it should be, but let&#8217;s hope that it grows in the right direction and provides us with some fun along the way too, because it won’t all be entertainment – monetisation is inevitable.
As part of their journey to make the metaverse more accessible to a wider audience, Meta is also developing it as a data-driven advertising platform.
<h3>Problematic</h3>
I&#8217;m not only referring to Mark Zuckerberg&#8217;s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIxPRwgXFQg">questionable presentation abilities</a> when I say that the metaverse&#8217;s debut was problematic from the start.
The timing was also less than ideal. They already had a bad reputation for privacy, and the promise of a more intimate platform has further exacerbated that.
In any case, let&#8217;s take a look at some of the most critical considerations.
<h3>So what is it?</h3>
To put it in simple terms, the metaverse is a virtual world where people can communicate, game and shop online, see virtual concerts, and meet virtually. This may eventually lead to virtual cinemas, competing in sports, and much more.
Instead of relying on its <a href="https://www.oculus.com/">Oculus</a> VR platform to unleash the metaverse, Facebook claims to be working on wearable body sensors that users will use to interact with the digital environment.
But there are a number of problems that must be answered before this &#8220;groundbreaking&#8221; notion can be considered a success.
Is our privacy at risk as a result of this? In terms of digital marketing, what is its significance?
<h3>Metaverse advertising</h3>
Since early 2021, when <a href="https://www.roblox.com/">Roblox</a> went public and <a href="https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/">Nvidia</a> said that the company&#8217;s next step was to establish a metaverse, the word &#8220;metaverse&#8221; has been increasingly searched on Google.
To put things in perspective, in the spring of 1998, the first studies on VR/internet addiction began to appear. So no, this is nothing new.
While some big corporations are only just now starting to really investigate the metaverse’s possibilities, the notion has been around for quite some time. &#8216;Virtual worlds&#8217; and &#8216;an all-encompassing digital playground&#8217; have been anticipated for the internet for decades now.
This forecast was based not just on speculative fiction, but also on technology that was already in the works.
Platforms and content like Roblox, <a href="https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/home">Fortnite</a>, and <a href="https://decentraland.org/">Decentraland</a> are just a few of the numerous participants already in the metaverse ecosystem. They feature designers, avatar technology, social media, and VR technology, to name a few.
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) issued by brands like Gucci and Coca-Cola are now being sold on metaverse platforms such as Decentraland.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="810" height="524" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-13748" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/supergucci-810x524-1.jpeg" alt="" srcset="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/supergucci-810x524-1.jpeg 810w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/supergucci-810x524-1-250x162.jpeg 250w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/supergucci-810x524-1-700x453.jpeg 700w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/supergucci-810x524-1-768x497.jpeg 768w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/supergucci-810x524-1-120x78.jpeg 120w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/supergucci-810x524-1-80x52.jpeg 80w" sizes="(max-width: 810px) 100vw, 810px" />
Small and big players are helping each other to develop a second world that mimics the actual world in the metaverse ecology, which is already taking shape. Again, this is nothing new.
From the perspective of advertising, it’s important to realise that just as the internet can’t be owned by a single business, the metaverse can’t be owned by a single brand or a small group of tech giants.
Of course Meta, on the other hand, would like you to believe differently right now.
Make no mistake about it, a large part of that re-naming was an attempt to become synonymous with &#8211; and attempt to own &#8211; a metaverse concept that already existed.
Advertising&#8217;s place in the metaverse hasn&#8217;t been thoroughly examined yet, at least not by a third party.
In the actual world, how will it perform? In the metaverse, can previous advertising research results and approaches be applied?
It&#8217;s not simply another new media like the internet; the metaverse has the potential to become a fully realised concept that changes the approach of advertising and marketing in profound ways.
The basic definitions of advertising may need to be revised to include consideration for avatars since the metaverse is interactive and incorporates embodied individuals via their avatars.
Metaverse concert merchandise will become more commonplace (this is already making artists millions!), firms like Meetings Booker may start supporting the platform that facilitates your team&#8217;s meetings… and these are just two examples of sponsorship advertising alternatives that will expand in the future.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="850" height="425" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-13749" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Justin_Bieber_Make_Debut_Metaverse.jpeg" alt="" srcset="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Justin_Bieber_Make_Debut_Metaverse.jpeg 850w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Justin_Bieber_Make_Debut_Metaverse-250x125.jpeg 250w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Justin_Bieber_Make_Debut_Metaverse-700x350.jpeg 700w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Justin_Bieber_Make_Debut_Metaverse-768x384.jpeg 768w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Justin_Bieber_Make_Debut_Metaverse-120x60.jpeg 120w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Justin_Bieber_Make_Debut_Metaverse-80x40.jpeg 80w" sizes="(max-width: 850px) 100vw, 850px" />
We need to test, reproduce, and expand existing advertising ideas in this new universe in order to understand how advertising will operate in the metaverse, but this hasn&#8217;t happened yet.
In order to test and construct theories that can explain and forecast how advertising in the metaverse works, we&#8217;ll need both qualitative observations and empirical data (i.e., data collected by humans and machines).
<h3>Our everyday life</h3>
As with the internet and smartphones, proponents of the metaverse believe it will have a huge influence on our everyday lives.
Many younger people will find it easy to join a console chat and play a game with pals, but not everyone will be able to.
While certain components of the metaverse currently exist, contemporary online worlds are predicted to swiftly evolve, allowing us to not only mirror the real world but also to be and do whatever we choose.
There is a growing consensus that we will soon be wearing glasses comparable to the virtual reality headsets now on the market, but with fewer drawbacks, to access the internet.
Many more types of virtual reality gadgets and equipment, such as cheaper omnidirectional treadmills, will be available in the future to enable people to experience the virtual environment as if they were truly there.
This is the point at which we begin to enter a virtual world that&#8217;s a tiny bit closer to Ready Player One.
Many roadblocks remain in the way of this completely immersive vision being achieved anytime soon, even among those who embrace the metaverse.
Significant technological advancements are required in order for a metaverse to properly imitate the actual world.
Even while cloud computing, 5G, and artificial intelligence (AI) have all been around for some time, they have only lately begun to take off.
Even if the metaverse has all the technology it needs right now, it would still need to become more inexpensive and more widely accessible if it is to reach its full potential.
<h3>Privacy</h3>
In addition to technological issues, the privacy and security of individuals must also be considered. Many people already worry about what digital platforms know about them, even if they don&#8217;t really know what the issue is (my biggest gripe with this!).
Early versions of the metaverse are already in existence, and they are gaining traction. Global AR and VR tech sales are projected to soar now, and not surprisingly, but not without consideration for blocking of personal information.
Technology firms are taking note of how many people, particularly the next generation of users, have already come to terms with a big portion of their future being located outside of the physical world entirely…
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="640" height="640" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-13750" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/this-is-issue-about-trust-and-privacy-stan-marsh.gif" alt="" />
Microsoft has also announced intentions to deliver software and hardware tools relevant to the metaverse in the near future.
For their <a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/hololens/hardware">HoloLens</a> mixed-reality device, they&#8217;ve created a platform called <a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/mesh">Mesh</a> on which other companies can build apps.
A platform for shared virtual environments dubbed Omniverse Enterprise, developed by graphics chipmaker Nvidia again, will also be launched, allowing groups of users to merge parts they have generated elsewhere into a virtual entity they can then work on together.
An avatar must have some of the cognitive abilities of a human in order to be useful. In this, AI technologies like NLP, optical character recognition (OCR), reinforcement learning (RL), and conversational AI will play a key role.
Virtual characters that are more advanced (and will even learn over time) will encourage users to return to a virtual environment, making the experience more enjoyable. Because otherwise, it would be too &#8220;samey&#8221; to stand out.
For the metaverse to succeed, immersion will be as important as website engagement metrics are for user experience and SEO.
In order for the experience to be compelling, it has to be able to do all of these things.
<h3>The healthcare sector</h3>
Psychologists are increasingly using Zoom to communicate with their patients instead of meeting face-to-face, so the sector is no stranger to digital engagement.
Aside from the obvious financial and entertainment advantages of a metaverse, there are also concerns about the mental health of those who use it.
Usage and enjoyment of this new world will bring both issues and rewards.
For example, according to research from the University of Oxford, virtual reality may be beneficial for people with schizophrenia. The results of the research show that virtual reality immersion might be beneficial in regulated settings.
Furthermore, it can be used to alleviate the symptoms of phobias and other mental health issues.
<h3>More accessible</h3>
It&#8217;s reasonable to worry about things like data leaks and malfunctioning technologies, but remember that the advantages often exceed the negatives &#8211; as we&#8217;ve learned from earlier technological advancements such as, well, the internet itself!
For example, we often discuss the necessity of home care and making therapy more accessible to more people. Now that the ‘homes’ of patients will be in the metaverse, the possibilities for outreach and better treatment are endless.
Behavioral healthcare professionals and academics will play a critical role in shaping the metaverse as we advance toward a fully collaborative online environment, both by providing guidance in its creation and by performing impartial research on its impacts.
<h3>Keep an open mind</h3>
As with anything, you&#8217;ll need to keep up with the latest developments in this space – it&#8217;s coming no matter what we do.
So keep an open mind and engage in healthy dialogue with others whose views differ from your own, even if it is unpleasant at times, because it will bring good things with it too.
In general, we&#8217;ve never been known to be early adopters. With the metaverse, we have the chance to change that.
Don’t be scared, let’s have some fun with it.

The Metaverse Advertising Privacy and Everyday Life

Advertising, Privacy and Everyday Life in the Metaverse

We create messages every day in order to influence others, often without even knowing it.
It may be one of the hundreds of emails you send to your coworkers, acquaintances, or clients on a regular basis&#8230;
Alternatively, if you work in a digital agency like I do, you can be developing advertising, content, a web page, metadata, or meeting slides&#8230;
Most of these things require a lot of mental work and even time/money, so have you ever considered how effective all of these efforts are from the viewpoint of people&#8217;s minds?
What kind of attention can you really get? How likely is it that you&#8217;ll be able to rewire pre-existing attitudes and opinions? Can you persuade your targets to make a purchase or persuade them that they require something?
As digital marketers, it&#8217;s neuromarketing that&#8217;s going to get us to that place.
<h3>Digital communication</h3>
Web analytics and data are now so easy to produce in the digital marketing field that marketers frequently use them to identify the real impact of advertising without any further science &#8211; and this is very powerful.
But what we&#8217;re actually seeing here are outcomes, which are great for analysis and have their place, but are not genuine causes.
Google, Facebook, and Twitter have spent millions of dollars trying to persuade us that their algorithms can uncover and anticipate the quality of each digital communication you send. For them, it is a question of life and death. They&#8217;ve gotten pretty damn good at it, too.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-13620 size-medium" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/ig-pilates-250x250.png" alt="" width="250" height="250" srcset="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/ig-pilates-250x250.png 250w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/ig-pilates-700x700.png 700w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/ig-pilates-150x150.png 150w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/ig-pilates-768x768.png 768w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/ig-pilates-120x120.png 120w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/ig-pilates-80x80.png 80w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/ig-pilates.png 1000w" sizes="(max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px" />
Recent events, however, have demonstrated how deceiving analytics may be. Worse, they frequently contain inaccurate definitions, dubious assumptions, and even mathematical mistakes.
They&#8217;re based on behavioral data that provides a skewed picture of how individuals react to messages. They are unconcerned with the unseen &#8216;unconscious&#8217; clicks that occur in people&#8217;s heads.
<h3>Precision targeting</h3>
Procter &amp; Gamble, the world&#8217;s largest marketer, curtailed its Facebook ad spend in 2016, arguing that targeting individual demographics was costly and did not result in a substantial impact.
Facebook (now Meta, of course) and Google both claim to be able to assist advertising in targeting specific audiences. P&amp;G, on the other hand, said that there was no proof that precision targeting was worthwhile.
We continue to see these platforms perform admirably as an agency. But, hey, to each their own.
Meanwhile, Facebook acknowledged in 2016 that it had been overestimating a key video statistic for at least two years. The average time of a video seen was calculated using only video views that lasted more than three seconds. As a result, advertisements&#8217; performance scores were greater than they should have been.
Many advertisers were furious, despite the fact that the social network stated it was a miscalculation of the average time users spent watching videos on its site.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="480" height="355" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-13624" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/giphy.gif" alt="" />
Sure you do, Mark&#8230;
Google and Facebook don&#8217;t let outsiders evaluate their platforms, so they&#8217;re practically grading their own homework.
Without a doubt, Facebook&#8217;s error was an embarrassment. They issued an official apology and stated that the error in their algorithm will be corrected.
So be warned: online analytics are fantastic, but their utility is limited, and they can be inaccurate at times. However, they are frequently all we have.
<h3>Unseen decisions</h3>
In the near future, neuromarketing techniques will show the nature and effect of unseen decisions, making you a better buyer of digital advertising. As a result, the advertising industry&#8217;s big data players may not be as enthusiastic about neuromarketing as you should be.
And you most certainly should be.
Analytics does not provide a comprehensive picture of what happens when purchasers&#8217; minds are first exposed to advertisements; you must continually test headlines, change visuals, and generally adjust your message several times.
This makes it difficult to figure out why so much of your advertising isn&#8217;t paying off.
And, most significantly, you may choose an ad that is actually kind of unsuccessful but just happens to be the best performer in your test!
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="480" height="360" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-13626" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/giphy-3.gif" alt="" />
&nbsp;
<h3>Brain persuasion</h3>
A/B testing is a trap that pays media networks billions without providing deeper knowledge of how ads influence the brain. The search for ideal messages through testing can get you to a better place but can also be inefficient, expensive, and contradicts the rules of brain persuasion.
When utilised to influence digital marketing initiatives, a lot of traditional marketing research falls short of its aims, especially when it comes to assessing the impact of the advertising message.
In their own right, surveys, interviews, and focus groups are powerful tools, but they don&#8217;t explain the neurophysiological mechanisms that underpin consumer behavior.
Nonetheless, our responses to most marketing stimuli are explained by the subconscious and preconscious regions of our brain.
That is why, when compared to traditional research methods, Neuromarketing may offer unique insights, a fact that is now widely recognised by marketing and advertising experts all over the world.
<h3>So what is it?</h3>
Neuromarketing employs a variety of methods, the most common of which being functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). It also utilises eye-tracking technologies, but most commonly in tandem with other technologies that read changes in brain functions.
The idea is to figure out which portion of the brain reacts to certain pictures, phrases, and slogans, and how that part of the brain reacts.
Integration of neuroscientific methodologies with digital advertising, in my opinion, will be one of the most crucial aspects of advertising and measurement of the same as things like the metaverse increase in usage.
It&#8217;s also known as Consumer Neuroscience and is the scientific study of how people&#8217;s brains react to advertising and other brand-related signals through the use of brain waves, eye tracking, and skin reactions.
It can employ brain imaging techniques like fMRI to show how the brain reacts unconsciously to what it perceives. This detects changes associated with blood flow. Basically, when an area of the brain is in use, blood flow to that region also increases.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-13623 size-large" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/DSC_8594-re-700x350.jpeg" alt="" width="700" height="350" srcset="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/DSC_8594-re-700x350.jpeg 700w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/DSC_8594-re-250x125.jpeg 250w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/DSC_8594-re-768x384.jpeg 768w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/DSC_8594-re-120x60.jpeg 120w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/DSC_8594-re-80x40.jpeg 80w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/DSC_8594-re.jpeg 1000w" sizes="(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px" />
<h3>Value and relevance</h3>
It is non-invasive and safe. Although there was some initial skepticism and opposition, the advertising industry has begun to realise the movement&#8217;s value and relevance.
Because neuromarketing technologies track the molecular, physiological, and neurological changes that occur in our brains in reaction to marketing, they go well beyond typical data collecting techniques.
These experimental settings will aid in the analysis of instinctual, emotional, and cognitive reactions without putting the interpretive weight on study participants.
You may not know it, but filling out a survey consumes a significant amount of your brain&#8217;s precious energy. Even getting paid to take surveys does not alleviate this stress.
<h3>Act like zombies</h3>
It is impossible to overestimate the value of cognitive energy. Using brain-based approaches eliminates the need for individuals&#8217; conscious and active engagement. You&#8217;re not asking them to act like zombies; all you&#8217;re asking them to do is relax and allow the messages to work their way into their heads.
There&#8217;s also no requirement for the subjects to say anything. The goal is for the stimulus to have an effect on their neurophysiology. The brain will activate and create its own narrative.
When was the last time you were asked what you thought of a movie you had just seen? It&#8217;s a simple question, but imagine how difficult it would be to respond if you had to use emotional measures to describe how pleased, sad, enthusiastic, anxious, concerned, intrigued, and so on you were.
The same may be said for how we react to digital advertising or even a website. We know these stimuli have an effect on us, but we can&#8217;t be sure how much of an emotional or cognitive influence they have on our brain.
<h3>Difficult to recognise</h3>
According to research, when people are asked to explain their moods on a daily basis, they use an average of three words, implying that emotions are difficult to recognise and express. This clouds user feedback.
There are a few essential research questions that only Neuromarketing can answer.
<ul>
<li>Will my message pique the interest of the brain&#8217;s subconscious?</li>
<li>Will that unintentional influence lead to a purchase or a brand interaction?</li>
<li>Is it possible for individuals to express their true feelings? (We have the ability to fool even ourselves!)</li>
<li>What emotions lead to decisions?</li>
<li>Which of your messages has the most impact on people&#8217;s minds, and why?</li>
<li>Can neuromarketing be used to demonstrate a product&#8217;s or solution&#8217;s unique value?</li>
</ul>
And, perhaps most crucially:
<ul>
<li>Can a brain-based persuasion model lead to improved Return on Investment?</li>
</ul>
fMRI scans have demonstrated that a variety of factors determine how and why customers accept specific brands and buy their items, even if they are more expensive than competitors.
It has little to do with logic or reasonable thought. Humans are sensory creatures that react to the way particular stimuli make them &#8220;feel&#8221;.
<h3>Added value</h3>
Its methodologies can investigate subconscious responses and monitor brain activity in persons as well as their reactions to advertisements that they are unaware of.
Ultimately it can also provide customers with added value.
There have been ethical concerns raised, with some referring to it as &#8220;mind-reading,&#8221; although in fact, it employs volunteer participants in a manner that is not fundamentally different at all from established research methodologies.
Furthermore, discoveries from this field are being utilised to investigate solutions and therapies for, among other things, compulsive online gambling and addictive shopping habits.
<h3>What&#8217;s Next?</h3>
Neuromarketing will become more accessible in time as datasets from earlier studies are utilised to develop tools that do not require the use of a lab or fMRI methodology.
Soon you&#8217;ll be able to submit an image of your ad, a video, product page, or piece of content, etc, and get immediate feedback on how it will affect the subconscious.
This technology has already begun to emerge. We have tested some and we&#8217;ll be first in line when these are more commercially available.

Neuromarketing: The Emotions Behind The Data

It&#8217;s obvious that consumers are now concerned about data privacy.
They are more aware of how their data is gathered, kept, and shared, and they want greater control.
This has somehow been accomplished without actually fully informing consumers about the risks of having their data exposed or exploited, and yet they have mostly decided to accept it. So here we are!
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="400" height="208" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-13573" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/giphy-1.gif" alt="Consumer Rights" />
If you&#8217;re busy or simply decide not to read on then at least know this: you&#8217;re going to need some very compelling reasons for customers to give you their data.
Because data gathering has grown so inextricably linked to the current customer experience, brands now face a unique set of problems.
Would e-commerce have grown at the same rate without tailored ads and targeted promotions? Most likely not, because both customers and brands have grown to rely on customisation to improve the modern buying experience.
Could small and medium-sized enterprises have gained the same degree of awareness among their cohorts as the major spenders do without customised or targeted advertising? No, not really.
We <a href="https://friday.ie/blog/how-to-protect-facebook-marketing-performance-cookie-free-future/">recently discussed</a> how Apple has modified how it will manage customer data by strengthening privacy and safeguards for consumers&#8217; information. With such a global powerhouse embracing the trend towards enhanced data privacy, marketers must keep these developments in mind as they plan future initiatives.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-13570 size-large" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/imore-facebookprivacy_03-700x491.png" alt="Apple Privacy" width="700" height="491" srcset="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/imore-facebookprivacy_03-700x491.png 700w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/imore-facebookprivacy_03-250x175.png 250w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/imore-facebookprivacy_03-768x539.png 768w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/imore-facebookprivacy_03-120x84.png 120w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/imore-facebookprivacy_03-80x56.png 80w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/imore-facebookprivacy_03.png 812w" sizes="(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px" />
Increased data restrictions will unavoidably limit the methods brands and marketers can use to get information about customers, altering how we design marketing campaigns and activities.
These obstacles can only be overcome if brands focus on the consumer&#8217;s unique and personal traits and make attempts to develop a meaningful relationship with them.
In many respects, these difficulties will benefit the marketing profession by encouraging innovation and adaptability.
<h3 class="p1">Personalisation in marketing</h3>
Aside from using the tech giants&#8217; aggregated predictive models to provide us with more detailed targeting like before, brands will need to focus more on personalised marketing, which is already gaining traction and has become a popular topic of discussion with the introduction of relevant and supportive technologies such as data management platforms, geotargeting, and varied forms of targeted e-mails.
Many individuals now feel that it is an unavoidable baseline for the future of marketing strategy and brand performance in competitive marketplaces.
Because the likes of Google and Facebook&#8217;s &#8220;workarounds&#8221; for data loss (due to fewer opt-ins) will be widely available to all companies, it will be your tailored advertising capabilities based on your earned datasets that will set you apart.
<h3 class="p1">Adapt to technological advancements</h3>
Companies will need to adapt to relevant technology if customised marketing is to operate as predicted.
They will need to get acquainted with new and popular forms of social media, data-gathering platforms, and other technology that not all existing employees and enterprises are likely to be familiar with or able to purchase.
AI is bringing predictive personalisation techniques closer than any other tech trend. Things like <a href="https://blog.hunchads.com/dynamic-creative">Dynamic Creative Optimisation</a> are already helping to relegate tasks like split A/B testing to the past.
Many companies that can afford it have already implemented machine learning, big data, and AI to automate customisation.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="480" height="480" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-13572" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/giphy.gif" alt="Data Gathering" />
<h3 class="p1">Current business models are being restructured</h3>
Adopting a new marketing strategy customised to the most relevant technology needs budget, time and resources.
To successfully adopt customised marketing, companies will need to organise their planning and communication a lot better.
Some businesses will have to recognise that their present processes and marketing strategies will have to alter dramatically and often.
They will have to reassess how consumer data and information are distributed within the company and potentially beyond that.
Individuals&#8217; geographic locations, potential customers&#8217; prior purchases, and so on will be flooded into company databases, and there may be restraints in how that information is obtained, distributed internally and publicly, and used to improve revenues.
<h3 class="p1">Legal ramifications</h3>
Privacy is always a concern, and in certain places, it is more so than in others, so businesses must overcome any legal obstacles before implementing tailored marketing. In particular, the EU has established GDPR, and you’ll all have heard of that by now. 
GDPR limits the types of data that brands may gather on their customers and provides a means for them to sue companies for violating their privacy. In the United States, California followed suit and enacted the CCPA in 2018.
Now let&#8217;s discuss some of the first measures marketers and businesses must take in order to discover, contact and convert customers in the age of data security.
<h3 class="p1">Get to know your consumers better</h3>
We&#8217;ve all heard that the cookie is on its way out for quite some time. They have lost their charm as customers become more suspicious and privacy regulations become more stringent.
Consumers, in my opinion, have been far too ready to accept that cookies are evil, and yet here we are.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="480" height="384" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-13574" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/giphy-3.gif" alt="Bad Cookies" />
However, this is beneficial in some respects since it will make some brands less lazy.
Many brands have traditionally depended extensively on background data collecting, which has produced some useful outcomes. With evolving data rules, we will need to get to know our consumers in new and deeper ways. This will have a huge impact on the marketing industry.
Brands and marketers must look beyond conventional third-party data, such as broad demographics or the amount of time visitors spend on a website, to understand their consumers&#8217; unique interests and objectives.
The next generation of marketing will be based on an intentional brand-to-consumer connection in which cooperation &#8211; most likely in the form of data sharing and incentives &#8211; will generate purchasing power.
Consumers want to have relationships with the brands they like, yet many businesses do not prioritise developing this sort of loyalty. Brands may build better consumer connections and loyalty if they strategise and accept these shifts in data privacy.
<h3 class="p1">Restore consumer power via customisation</h3>
Customers demand privacy from companies and advertising, but they also want goods and services that are tailored to their specific requirements. Because of this paradox, as well as new privacy regulations, marketers must understand their clients beyond their clicking and scrolling behaviours.
According to <a href="https://www.accenture.com/_acnmedia/pdf-77/accenture-pulse-survey.pdf">Accenture research</a>, 91% of consumers prefer to buy items from businesses that provide some level of personalisation. Marketers will find it more difficult to reach customers without third-party data than ever before, yet most consumers will still demand the same level of personalised suggestions, discounts, or promotions.
Personalisation is the answer. They will eventually have more power over which marketing activities they see or don&#8217;t see based on how they interact with a company as personalisation increases.
Brands will have to look for new ways to understand their customers, such as first-party or zero-party data collecting. These approaches will provide more focused insights than any third-party data source, but they will necessitate more effort on the side of brands.
<h3 class="p1">Make clever use of data and technology</h3>
Brands can solve data privacy issues if they use data wisely. They must utilise tools to understand and contact their customers as consumer data gets more difficult to access and marketing technology grows more expensive to use.
They will require technology that spans many channels, collects data in real-time, improves the user experience, and generates reliable data reports. More precise data (collected by first- or zero-party techniques) will necessitate a more sophisticated analysis.
Personalisation will be the bedrock of intelligent data utilisation. Segmentation will give way to direct engagement with the consumer, whether through an AI-powered platform or even things like simple quizzes, competitions or surveys.
Interactive material not only encourages increased involvement but also increases the user&#8217;s enjoyment. At the very least, it enhances the amount of time visitors spend engaging with you, which improves your shareability/linkability and possibly even your rankings.
People mostly want to be involved, therefore good interactive content nearly always enhances your user experience.
This move for interactive content will be part of a larger trend toward personalisation anyway; by allowing consumers to respond for themselves or have their opinions heard, they feel a more personal connection to the business.
Don&#8217;t forget that it may also be used to collect data about user preferences, for example, to enhance products or websites.
<h3 class="p1">Segmentation of customers</h3>
The concept is simple: rather than a limited number of major marketing efforts aimed at broad audiences, it is often preferable to have a large number of small marketing initiatives aimed at specialised consumers.
Customer segmentation is categorising your target customer based on specific characteristics or behaviours, such as demographics or purchasing patterns.
This allows you to more precisely tailor your material to their interests, such as having two separate email lists for large spenders and small spenders and sending various newsletters to each with different items.
You may segment your consumers anyway you choose, but the most frequent divisions are demographic, psychographic, geographic, behavioural, and customer journey.
This technique is excellent for customisation and consumer engagement because your followers will receive material that has been hand-picked just for them.
Aside from email lists, consumer segmentation may be applied to customised advertisements on other sites, categories of blog posts, and social media content for numerous different interests and communities.
<h3 class="p1">Start planning now</h3>
So despite the disruption of nasty and annoying cookie consent notifications, consumers increasingly believe that their data is one of their most valuable assets in the contemporary world, and they want to know that it will be handled properly. That’s not going anywhere.
So this barrier needs to be overcome by using personalisation to satisfy their remaining need for tailored advertising &#8211; and brands must start planning now.
Think about your overall content strategy, your e-mail marketing tactics, newsletter audiences, previous purchasers, social media audiences and website users… segment them all to start planning conversations that they will enjoy.

It’s Time to Get Personal

People can be fairly quick to criticise Google.
It usually comes down to concerns about privacy, company culture, or monopolisation… but they continue to use the search engine – almost every day.
Not just that, but people trust the results.
It&#8217;s not only that it provides you with the most relevant results. People value the importance of instant gratification, personalisation, and control.
When it comes to developing trust in the online world, the paradigm has altered. Trust can now be established by meeting the human urge for faster gratification.
And Google does this exceptionally well.
Their algorithms are always changing, using machine learning to understand what others like to engage with and, as a result, providing you with the finest results possible.
This is accomplished through the use of a variety of metrics, the most recent of which are click-through rates and your website&#8217;s dwell times. The longer a person remains on a website after clicking through, the more relevant it is seen to be, and hence the higher it will rank.
As a result, the value of <a href="https://friday.ie/expertise/user-experience/">UX</a> and a positive on-site experience cannot be overstated. But unless you want to <a href="https://friday.ie/contact/">talk about that right now</a>, that&#8217;s a discussion for another day.
<h3>Trustworthiness</h3>
According to a previous study, an established newspaper is trustworthy since it is physical and has a well-known brand. The first Google result, on the other hand, is probably now regarded with the same level of legitimacy and trustworthiness as The Irish Times&#8217; front page.
As a result, there has been a lot of debate regarding Google&#8217;s responsibility to serve not only the most relevant but also trustworthy websites in its rankings. This is why we now get things like <a href="https://searchengineland.com/google-search-notice-warns-searchers-when-results-are-new-and-possibly-unreliable-349906">this</a>. Fake news has a lot to answer for.
With the change to a connected world, people want something digestible and easy to understand, such as a quick video, short article, or infographic &#8211; whatever it takes to scratch the itch. True or not, they&#8217;ll take it.
<h3>Information on human behaviour</h3>
Advertisers and psychologists now have access to a wealth of fresh behavioural data that they can use in personalised discussions and mass marketing campaigns.
Facebook, Apple, and Google, among other social media platforms and data collecting agencies, have been watching and sharing their users&#8217; activity with specifics of data input, text messages, location, camera, actual personal information, and other capabilities in order to understand more about them.
Researchers have discovered patterns in human behaviour using this unprecedented data, shedding light on the human judgment process and trust-building.
Advertising and marketing is the most sophisticated and researched field when it comes to trust-building.
This isn&#8217;t surprising given that academics have access to trillions of data points voluntarily donated by people like you, and the discipline is growing beyond traditional understandings of human psychology and trust-building strategies.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="512" height="340" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-12366" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/unnamed.jpeg" alt="Data Points" srcset="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/unnamed.jpeg 512w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/unnamed-250x166.jpeg 250w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/unnamed-120x80.jpeg 120w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/unnamed-80x53.jpeg 80w" sizes="(max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px" />
Facebook, for example, analyses and tests people in a variety of emotional states in order to provide data about their decision-making.
Facebook has tailored each user&#8217;s experience based on their results and continues to learn about <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788">human behaviour</a>.
<h3>A deep understanding</h3>
This comprehensive knowledge of each user is shared with the advertiser with the aim of establishing a successful and mutually beneficial partnership. And it&#8217;s incredibly effective. It absolutely works for us as an agency.
In order to educate and benefit their product and, in turn, marketers, Mailchimp, and other email marketing platforms deliver consumer data based on millions of emails every day as well as their customers&#8217; behaviour.
Although it took some time, most people and businesses have come to regard the internet as an important part of their daily lives. This is also true with Google.
For quite some time, Google has been providing you with more relevant search results based on arguably personal information such as your location, previous purchases, search history, and interests, for example.
We&#8217;ve invested so much, and this wouldn&#8217;t be possible without trust. And this kind of trust is based on a fantastic, ever-evolving, and individualised product. All of this leads to instant gratification.
Mobile devices now give us instant results, or at the very least the capacity to search on demand.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-12359 size-medium" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/main-qimg-ea63bf2d15cef03052c769c20c05be33-c-250x248.png" alt="In Google You Trust" width="250" height="248" srcset="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/main-qimg-ea63bf2d15cef03052c769c20c05be33-c-250x248.png 250w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/main-qimg-ea63bf2d15cef03052c769c20c05be33-c-700x696.png 700w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/main-qimg-ea63bf2d15cef03052c769c20c05be33-c-150x150.png 150w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/main-qimg-ea63bf2d15cef03052c769c20c05be33-c-768x763.png 768w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/main-qimg-ea63bf2d15cef03052c769c20c05be33-c-120x119.png 120w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/main-qimg-ea63bf2d15cef03052c769c20c05be33-c-80x80.png 80w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/main-qimg-ea63bf2d15cef03052c769c20c05be33-c.png 966w" sizes="(max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px" />
<h3>New possibilities</h3>
This demand for rapid information fulfilment has made it easier to cancel plans and explore other opportunities. Questions are answered and arguments are resolved.
The ordering of search results is critical in online searching: users expect the best results to be displayed at the top of the page, and <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2012/03/09/search-engine-use-2012/">they trust search engines</a> to locate the best results and rank them appropriately.
When a search engine returns a result, there are four parties involved:
<ol>
<li>The search engine, obviously</li>
<li>The source of information</li>
<li>The SEO consultant or firm</li>
<li>The user</li>
</ol>
All of these factors have an impact on a search engine&#8217;s ranking. While it is evident that a search engine has an impact on its own results, these other aspects must also be considered.
Filtering enormous amounts of results can be difficult for search engine users. As a result, users must have faith in the search engine&#8217;s ability to rank results based on their relevancy to the query.
In addition, it is important to consider whether consumers&#8217; high levels of trust in search engines are justified, given the fact that no search engine has complete control over its results and that users have no other way of determining how good a search engine&#8217;s results are other than by looking at the results they find.
<h3>Positioning</h3>
People often believe Google&#8217;s positioning more than their own rational judgments, according to one eye-tracking study. It&#8217;s insane, yet true.
When you look at the data on privacy, you&#8217;ll see a contradiction&#8230;
<ul>
<li>65% of individuals do not want search engines to track their searches.</li>
<li>73% said they would be uneasy with a search engine keeping a tally of their requests and utilising that data to customise subsequent search results since they consider it is a privacy violation.</li>
</ul>
Despite all of this, Google still maintains a market share of 92.47% as of June 2021.
This is due to the fact that people place great value on search engines&#8217; effectiveness. As a result, they continue to trust them and use them.
This performance is largely dependent on your private data. If it wasn&#8217;t, your search results would be much more general and certainly less relevant.
We freely submit our data to social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and many others, but then believe we have the right to complain about confidentiality when these platforms provide us with a more personalised experience.
Your instant gratification comes at a price. It&#8217;s only a matter of deciding how much you&#8217;re willing to pay.

In Google You Trust

There are many cities around the world offering smart city solutions. Did you know that Dublin is one of them?
While driving to work may seem challenging at times, Artificial Intelligence is already making it less difficult with things like smart traffic lights and traffic management systems.
AI is actually improving the quality of life for everyone, often without our knowledge.
Advances in healthcare, research, education and other fields have benefited from it, which ultimately aim to boost economic prosperity and life expectancy. AI is a wonderful thing.
And yet there’s a certain level of fear out there about AI.
For example, a few years ago Facebook shut down two chatbots because they began talking to each other in a strange language that only they understood.
People freaked out about this.
But in fact, they merely malfunctioned and were not serving the purpose of supporting human conversations. That’s all. No panic required.
And then there’s those who think that The Terminator is more plausible than it actually is.
So let’s take a deep breath, a reality check, and look at what we’re actually dealing with here.
The Business Transformation Index 2021 <a href="https://expleogroup.com/bti/">report</a> compiled by Expleo shows that almost two-thirds of businesses in Ireland will be utilising AI or machine learning by the year 2023.
Compared to 22% of companies currently using the technology, this is a considerable increase.
Very strange for something that we’re supposed to be afraid of, right?!
<h3>Reducing costs</h3>
In response to the pandemic, 40% of businesses have managed to automate more processes, one out of five people have claimed that both AI and machine learning are important to ensure the success of their business, while 17% of them believe that automation can help to reduce the Covid-19 backlog.
Technology will have a major impact over the next three years on areas such as enabling employees to focus on their business-critical tasks, accelerating processes, and reducing costs, according to a TechPro survey conducted among 200 businesses and IT professionals on behalf of Expleo.
Digital marketing is one area of integration with AI that cannot be ignored, and it’s already happening.
Many of Google&#8217;s algorithm changes are already based on machine learning. Facebook Ads are already optimised this way.
Forget about that <a href="https://friday.ie/blog/how-to-protect-facebook-marketing-performance-cookie-free-future/">cookieless future</a> &#8211; AI predictors will know your behaviours anyway. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
<h3>Must be utilised</h3>
The concept of AI encompasses the use of computing devices and cloud computing in business processes, systems, and daily life operations, as well as the integration of robotics, computer and digital content production in various business processes, systems, and daily activities.
In order to benefit from future marketing efforts, AI must be utilised. The use of AI software is increasing every day as companies use it to optimise their processes, decrease overheads, and turnaround time, and augment productivity.
We are naturally worried that AI will eventually replace humans, but we must remember that AI systems are not yet capable of dealing with emotion, empathy, or critical thinking. There is a very real possibility that it never will.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="512" height="355" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-12115" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/unnamed.jpg" alt="robots replacing humans" srcset="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/unnamed.jpg 512w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/unnamed-250x173.jpg 250w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/unnamed-120x83.jpg 120w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/unnamed-80x55.jpg 80w" sizes="(max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px" />
Those who become adept at marketing AI software will have a distinct advantage &#8212; technology is evolving at a rate that is unparalleled. One by one, AI is transforming industries. An obvious example is self-driving cars, and then there’s robotics in manufacturing. Very soon, elderly care will use personal assistant robots.
AI can be used to find patterns in data to identify market risks, to measure customer satisfaction by creating virtual assistants, or even to assess thousands of documents across an organization&#8217;s servers to identify compliance.
<h3>Self-learning</h3>
A self-learning system enables Artificial Intelligence to use tools such as pattern recognition, data mining, and natural language processing. Thus, AI has the advantage of being highly scalable in comparison to human intelligence, resulting in tremendous cost savings.
Through the use of browsers and applications, data is collected and manipulated by computer programs that generate and send personalised recommendations based on interests and behavior data recorded by the application. This is machine learning.
Digital marketing and advertising are also becoming increasingly reliant on AI, and this trend is also picking up speed.
Many CRM systems, such as <a href="https://www.salesforce.com/eu/products/platform/solutions/ai-services/">Salesforce</a>, require a high level of human intervention to be accurate and current – but they are AI-driven. A typical CRM system becomes an auto-updating, auto-correcting system when AI is applied to it, which manages your relationships on your behalf.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="770" height="404" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-12116" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Artifical-Intelligence1-770x404-1.jpg" alt="CRM AI" srcset="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Artifical-Intelligence1-770x404-1.jpg 770w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Artifical-Intelligence1-770x404-1-250x131.jpg 250w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Artifical-Intelligence1-770x404-1-700x367.jpg 700w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Artifical-Intelligence1-770x404-1-768x403.jpg 768w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Artifical-Intelligence1-770x404-1-120x63.jpg 120w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Artifical-Intelligence1-770x404-1-80x42.jpg 80w" sizes="(max-width: 770px) 100vw, 770px" />
Due to the enormous amount of information people leave behind intentionally and unintentionally in social media, AI can hold immense potential for the world of digital marketing.
AI is already saving companies money, providing targeted marketing, predictive analytics, and a better customer experience with enhanced ROI.
Marketing is characterised by rapid change. Digital marketing involves changes that happen in real-time.
<h3>Real-time marketing</h3>
With AI-driven data feeds, real-time marketing involves formulating a marketing strategy based on the most recent historical and current events.
AI will feed data to marketers’ real-time efforts as they leverage current trends and customer feedback to connect consumers with products and services they might be interested in.
Because social media provides businesses with real-time information on their target audiences, real-time marketing is becoming increasingly popular.
Marketing professionals have tapped into that data and turned it into messages and products that they believed their customers would enjoy. With real-time marketing, companies can now analyse all types of customer data to gain a better understanding of how customers behave.
With real-time personalisation, you can make your website visitors feel that they are receiving content that is both relevant and timely, and you will be delivering a more personalised experience to them.
When prospects feel valued, they develop brand loyalty more readily than those who feel like just another lead.
AI’s growth in the past has been stunted by limited data sets, data samples that represent real-life data rather than real-time data, and the inability to analyse massive amounts of data rapidly. However, that is no longer the case.
Look at self-driving cars again &#8211; learning from each other’s mistakes in real-time to prevent any future ones.
AI has also been used for sentiment analysis on social media to predict things like box office performance and election successes.
This real-time data is what gives you Netflix recommendations based on your viewing habits, and even those &#8216;because you also bought&#8217; Amazon impulse buys that you just can&#8217;t resist.
<h3>Relevant to marketing</h3>
This technology encompasses a wide range of capabilities, such as voice recognition, image recognition, machine learning, and semantic search – all relevant to marketing.
It is far harder to win and retain a customer today with traditional marketing or outbound marketing campaigns. The use of Artificial Intelligence is essential for marketers as they engage with customers continuously on an individual basis, delivering customised, insight-driven interactions that foster sustainable competitive advantage in an always-connected, real-time world.
AI, when taken seriously, allows brands to scale and take advantage of a competitive advantage that is very hard to replicate. Rather than focusing on technology, AI is about delivering the right content in the right context.
Of course, many consumer and business products today already utilise AI, including Apple&#8217;s Siri. Siri interprets voice commands using natural language processing (<a href="https://skywell.software/blog/how-does-siri-work-technology-and-algorithm/">NLP</a>).
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-12124 size-large" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/100-funny-things-to-say-to-siri-700x568.jpg" alt="Siri NLP" width="700" height="568" srcset="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/100-funny-things-to-say-to-siri-700x568.jpg 700w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/100-funny-things-to-say-to-siri-250x203.jpg 250w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/100-funny-things-to-say-to-siri-768x623.jpg 768w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/100-funny-things-to-say-to-siri-120x97.jpg 120w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/100-funny-things-to-say-to-siri-80x65.jpg 80w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/100-funny-things-to-say-to-siri.jpg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px" />
In the past, marketers were reluctant to use AI in marketing. However, marketers have recently become increasingly confident about its application. As a result, there is a reduction in ambiguity about the results since more and more sectors have already benefited from it.
The topic cannot be ignored any longer.
It is a fact that there is an abundance of data available, which makes process management more difficult if done manually. It creates a human tendency to ignore data and follow intuition instead.
In such scenarios, AI can prove to be a useful tool, since intuition isn&#8217;t always the best guide.
<h3>Create engagement</h3>
Digital marketers are constantly trying to call upon their intuition &#8211; Whom should I contact? Is there anything I should send? What is the best time to schedule my posts? Where will my posts be most effective?
By answering these questions, organisations can create engagement among customers, foster sales, and improve branding. Artificial intelligence can speed up your progress.
With AI, we will be able to do everything we do on a daily basis in a much more efficient, better and faster way. By implementing this, marketers will be able to measure and run campaigns differently from before.
Digital marketing will be shaped by AI now and in the future.
Digital marketing will learn from its own mistakes.
There are numerous platforms that collect and store customer analytics these days as part of analysing customer patterns and profile information to target certain markets and develop automated systems.
As new algorithms become available to analyse behavior and customer profiles, they will be able to design their own outreach strategies, to tailor copy to the needs of specific online customers based on their voice.
<h3>Predictive marketing</h3>
The use of Predictive Marketing will prove useful in this regard.
Marketers can gather more personal information about potential customers by using social media, which helps them to create more targeted campaigns.
New data is generated with every click.
Not only can AI help find your perfect customers by going through multiple piles of data, but it can also predict how hot the prospect is. The marketer can use this time and energy to do other things such as strategising.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-12118 size-large" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Screen-Shot-2018-02-19-at-10_14_41-AM-700x213.jpg" alt="Predictive Marketing" width="700" height="213" srcset="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Screen-Shot-2018-02-19-at-10_14_41-AM-700x213.jpg 700w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Screen-Shot-2018-02-19-at-10_14_41-AM-250x76.jpg 250w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Screen-Shot-2018-02-19-at-10_14_41-AM-768x234.jpg 768w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Screen-Shot-2018-02-19-at-10_14_41-AM-1536x467.jpg 1536w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Screen-Shot-2018-02-19-at-10_14_41-AM-scaled.jpg 2048w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Screen-Shot-2018-02-19-at-10_14_41-AM-120x36.jpg 120w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Screen-Shot-2018-02-19-at-10_14_41-AM-80x24.jpg 80w" sizes="(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px" />
<h3>Chatbots</h3>
An AI-driven chatbot provides real-time interaction with users in a natural language, and it can be a very powerful sales and retention tool.
Marketing professionals are becoming increasingly interested in these programs as social media traffic has moved towards private messaging services such as WhatsApp and Facebook. It&#8217;s hard to ignore an engagement opportunity like that.
Chatbots are tangentially related to marketing, as opposed to direct relations. Many digital marketers view them as ways to offer personalised customer service at scale. A chatbot can also assist users in their journey to purchase.
In the long run, chatbots will never have true empathy, but they can be highly useful in certain circumstances if they are trained to prioritise human interaction over robot interaction.
<h3>Content creation</h3>
Artificial Intelligence is used by many brands to automate content creation. The creation of content is now faster and easier thanks to this technology. <a href="https://business.blogthinkbig.com/coca-colas-use-of-ai-to-stay-at-the-top-of-the-drinks-market/">Coca Cola</a> automates its advertising narratives through AI. Context-based logos and music scripts are automatically generated.
SEO and the place of artificially generated content within it is generating concerns and for good reason. Content in this category is typically non-emotional and can be difficult to relate to. A certain amount of human input is always necessary.
<h3>Campaigns</h3>
Digital ads and their delivery are also refined with AI. PPC campaigns on Google and Facebook dominate over 60% of all campaigns in the United States, according to <a href="https://www.digitalthirdcoast.com/blog/google-ads-statistics">some figures</a>. PPC advertisers can discover new advertising channels by using AI.
AI can give advertisers an advantage because competitors may not use these channels, at least not in this same sophisticated way.
<h3>Email marketing</h3>
Both marketers and their customers benefit from AI&#8217;s use in email marketing. You can use AI to create personalised emails for each member of your list based on how they have previously interacted with the brand.
The content they consume, what&#8217;s on their wish list, what pages they spend the most time on, and so on can be leveraged to fit their preferences.
AI could, for example, send two different emails with the most relevant links to each user if one visits links to product pages, but the other skips the links and goes straight for content. It&#8217;s real-time segmentation of email lists!
<h3>Where do we go from here?</h3>
Your digital agency is likely already using AI in many of its marketing tools in order to run your campaigns, so you are likely already interacting with it without even realising it.
Large media agencies have been using technology like this for a while now for buying purposes, but now smaller agencies and in-house marketers have started to adopt it as well across other channels.
Keep reading about it, because it isn&#8217;t going anywhere.
As always, we will keep you updated.

Artificial Intelligence and Digital Marketing

Artificial Intelligence: Changing digital marketing… and the world

You will know by now that your website needs to load fast.
You just need to Google it to remind yourself as to the many reasons why, so we will not do that again here.
In summary: happier users, better conversions rates and more conversions.
There&#8217;s no need to make it any more complicated because that’s all it is. Why else would you focus on it?
You don’t need another blog post about % of revenue loss for every % of extra second of load time. Zzzzzzzz. You’ve hit the snooze button on that a few times, so just turn off the alarm now.
Let’s look to the near future instead…
<h3>Great user experience</h3>
In May 2021 things will start to get very real when Google begin to label search results that have what they call a &#8220;great user experience&#8221;. They may begin testing this sooner, but that&#8217;s the official rollout date.
By ‘user experience’, we are not talking about UX in a traditional sense. We refer to ‘user experience’ in the way that Google defines it algorithmically – so, how fast and uninterrupted a web page is when loading.
In May, if yours is not up to scratch, then your click-through rates will decrease. There’s no question of that. It was probably already annoying users anyway.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="328" height="268" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-11731" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/giphy-2.gif" alt="" />
This is the Google Page Experience Update.
An article on Search Engine Land <a href="https://searchengineland.com/google-page-experience-update-to-launch-in-may-2021-343581">last year</a> said of this update: “Many SEOs expect it will be relatively minor.”
Well, let me tell you that this will not be ‘minor’. You can be damn sure of that.
The impact on rankings will be direct, since Google themselves have called this an &#8220;upcoming Search ranking change&#8221; and also there&#8217;s the potential indirect ranking loss suffered as a result of your competitors being labelled as a ‘great user experience’ when you are not.
It&#8217;s already there in the code within Google Search Console, if you know where to look:
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="640" height="361" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-11743" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/t-google-search-console-page-experience-appearance-filter-1612963427.jpg" alt="" srcset="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/t-google-search-console-page-experience-appearance-filter-1612963427.jpg 640w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/t-google-search-console-page-experience-appearance-filter-1612963427-250x141.jpg 250w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/t-google-search-console-page-experience-appearance-filter-1612963427-120x68.jpg 120w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/t-google-search-console-page-experience-appearance-filter-1612963427-80x45.jpg 80w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" />
Without investment, this is the beginning of the end for some websites. There are those that will, in a year or two, essentially end up on Google’s scrapheap as a result of this.
<h3>Something tangible</h3>
This very tangible thing, an actual visual signal in Google search results saying that your website is a &#8220;great user experience&#8221;, will be something that’s desired because it’s visual.
In-house marketers will have something tangible to tell their teams or agencies: “That’s what we want.” It will not be achievable in all cases, and if you do not have this label then your click-through rates (CTR) from search results may not suffer massively, but it will definitely be desirable.
What they won&#8217;t tell you is that this still remains slightly relative. If you are in a sector with just a few competitors then it may be okay at first to just have a faster web page than the others &#8211; but your end goal should still be to be fast by comparison to most others.
Before now, this discussion was usually held on the back of PageSpeed Insights scores (which are mostly bullsh*t and unreliable) and Lighthouse tests (a bit more detailed and sometimes useful, but not always accurate).
And then Google clearly stated that it’s the Core Web Vitals scores in Search Console that you need to pay most attention to, but many are still not listening.
<a href="https://web.dev/vitals/">Core Web Vitals</a> are a set of real-world, user-centred metrics that quantify key aspects of the user experience. They measure dimensions of web usability such as load time, interactivity, and the stability of content as it loads. For example, you can probably remember more than one time when your thumb clicked on the wrong thing while a page was loading and aligning. Not great if you&#8217;re anywhere near a one-click purchase.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-11725 size-full" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Search_Page_Experience_Graphic.jpg" alt="Google Page Experience Update" width="960" height="540" srcset="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Search_Page_Experience_Graphic.jpg 960w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Search_Page_Experience_Graphic-250x141.jpg 250w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Search_Page_Experience_Graphic-700x394.jpg 700w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Search_Page_Experience_Graphic-768x432.jpg 768w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Search_Page_Experience_Graphic-120x68.jpg 120w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Search_Page_Experience_Graphic-80x45.jpg 80w" sizes="(max-width: 960px) 100vw, 960px" />
<h3>Actual Google Chrome users</h3>
The fact that these scores are based on actual Google Chrome users who visited your website should be all you need to know. The data comes from the Chrome User Experience Report and reflects actual usage data on your site from users around the world.
Well now, it’s Core Web Vitals that will help you to achieve this new label in search results. So it’s time to listen and stop running Page Speed tests on just your home page and sharing those results internally with a sigh of relief &#8211; they mean nothing now, they are just indicative at best.
Now here’s one of the toughest parts&#8230;
There are websites that use plugins and functionalities which are fundamental to how they have worked up until now. There are those that use page types and layouts that are heavy loading but they are what users have come to expect from that brand&#8230; websites like these may need a lot of work before they can achieve the status of being a ‘great user experience’ in Google’s eyes.
So if you haven’t begun to look at this now then you need to do so immediately. Some time, effort and investment will likely be needed.
<h3>Help your SEO</h3>
It is important to dispel the myth that better Page Speed scores instantly ‘help your SEO’. They can, but not always directly. Google is now looking for the complete user experience – great load times, strong click-through rates from search results, and strong engagement with the page itself.
To give an example: You can have a landing page that loads extremely quickly but if the content is sh*t and the user has no idea what to do next then they will bounce (leave your website) and your rankings will drop.
Google is not just a search engine, it is a suggestion engine. And they want to suggest websites that are not just fast but are also the perfect result for what the user searched for. They hate being wrong.
<h3>Fit for purpose</h3>
Don’t just take this time to focus only on Core Web Vitals and Page Speed. Take a fresh objective look at whether or not your website and core landing pages are even fit for purpose.
“Great page experiences enable people to get more done and engage more deeply,” Google say.
“In contrast, a bad page experience could stand in the way of a person being able to find valuable information on a page.
“By adding page experience to the hundreds of signals that Google considers when ranking search results, we aim to help people more easily access the information and web pages they&#8217;re looking for, and support site owners in providing an experience that users enjoy.”
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="244" height="182" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-11732" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/tenor.gif" alt="" />
None of this should be news to digital marketing professionals. Google has previously had known and established factors influencing its mobile-first index.
Up to now, those have been mobile-friendliness, safe browsing, HTTPS/HSTS, popups, interstitials, and more. Until now, it has been very much a focus on ‘mobile-friendly’ and ‘mobile-first’, but now it’s very much ‘mobile-fast’.
<h3>Next steps</h3>
You must revisit your website&#8217;s performance, security, and mobile-friendliness. These are already important, but they&#8217;ll become even more so.
You should also:
<ul>
<li>Check that your hosting service is fast, reliable and responsive.</li>
<li>Check that your website is not overstuffed with visual content (videos, images) that are going to make your site slow. Use a <a href="https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/learning/cdn/what-is-a-cdn/">Content Delivery Network</a>, if possible.</li>
<li>If your website is not responsive and mobile-friendly by now, then you should be tearing it down to build it again.</li>
<li>Ensure that you have the correct security measures in place. HTTS/HSTS&#8230; Google may even begin to check your site for a firewall.</li>
<li>Avoid pop-up banners where possible. Nobody enjoys them. Cookie notices have already done enough damage.</li>
<li>Run some manual tests for loading, interactivity, and visual stability. So, do your pages load fast and look right?</li>
<li>Monitor Core Web Vitals data regularly.</li>
</ul>
As always, the most important next step is simple…
Get in touch with Friday Agency and let us show you <a href="https://friday.ie/expertise/" data-trid="267">what we can do</a>.

Google’s Page Experience Update is Almost Here

Traditionally, list building was an e-mail marketing thing. It still is to an extent, but there’s so much more that you need to consider now.
Now you can use your customer lists to target subscribed (opted-in) users across multiple platforms including LinkedIn, Google Display Network, Google Search, Facebook and Instagram.
The term ‘list-building’ in itself even implies a list of email addresses that is, at best, sorted alphabetically.
A few years ago, it typically amounted to a ‘Sign Up For Our Newsletter’ field on a website, after which you may – nor may not – get some useful stuff.
Customer lists are a very powerful tool that is under-utilised. It&#8217;s like blindfolded archery &#8211; you don&#8217;t know what you&#8217;re missing! Many of you will know this, but there are VERY few brands doing this right.
We&#8217;ll get to that, but let&#8217;s first take a look at how to get started.
<h3>Target them later</h3>
I’m not concerned about signing up for newsletters and I’ll do so when I’m pretty sure that I might get something of value. Privacy is not usually a concern for me because I’m not &#8220;offended&#8221; when I&#8217;m targeted with relevant ads. Or an irrelevant one, for that matter.
I’m also comfortable enough to unsubscribe when the first e-mail I receive begins with ‘Dear [NAME]’, or if it&#8217;s just plain rubbish.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="525" height="408" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-10925" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Screenshot-2020-07-08-at-09.55.03.png" alt="" srcset="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Screenshot-2020-07-08-at-09.55.03.png 525w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Screenshot-2020-07-08-at-09.55.03-250x194.png 250w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Screenshot-2020-07-08-at-09.55.03-120x93.png 120w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Screenshot-2020-07-08-at-09.55.03-80x62.png 80w" sizes="(max-width: 525px) 100vw, 525px" />
And given that I am happy to take personal responsibility for my own privacy, you can assume that I am not alone. Users are comfortable to sign up. So be good to them, and then you can target them later across multiple platforms with very specific advertising.
I have personally worked with clients who had up to a 5% conversion rate for newsletter signups, so 1 in 20 people were comfortable enough to do so. But beyond this, nothing was being done to segment and target those as they went about their everyday.
These are people who have explicitly said: “Yes, I want to hear more from you.” That&#8217;s the strongest audience that you can get. That’s something valuable for anyone to achieve and it’s also very powerful. Yes, many brands will e-mail them. But most are not nurturing that relationship by taking it out of their Inbox.
Typically, a good basic e-mail strategy will adhere to several simple things:
<ul>
<li>Give a taster of what to expect</li>
<li>Give clear reasons for them to sign up</li>
<li>Be clear about what they will receive</li>
<li>Compose a beautiful personalised welcome e-mail</li>
<li>Do not surprise them by pushing products or services unless expected</li>
<li>Give them some <a href="https://friday.ie/blog/where-has-all-the-good-content-gone/">interesting, original content</a></li>
<li>Always be honest and sincere in all your communications, and you will always make a good impression with customers.</li>
</ul>
What&#8217;s usually missing is that once they have signed up, you will want to segment them based on the information you have about them. There’s e-mail marketing software for doing this but there’s nothing to prevent SMEs from doing this manually and in a way that is GDPR-compliant. And then you can target them with relevant advertising.
You will have a location, gender and any other information that you have asked for at signup, and you should also have their website behaviours. So if you want to show ads on Facebook to female prospects aged 25-35 in Dublin who are interested in buying necklaces but haven&#8217;t done so yet &#8211; you can do it.
It’s important to note here that having a tickbox next to your signup does not make you <a href="https://friday.ie/blog/gdpr-consent-knowledge-is-no-longer-power-it-is-risk/">GDPR compliant</a>. Only good business practices can do that. A tickbox does not get you out of jail for free.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="600" height="400" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-10926" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/56_say_gdpr_one_more_time_v2.jpg" alt="" srcset="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/56_say_gdpr_one_more_time_v2.jpg 600w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/56_say_gdpr_one_more_time_v2-250x167.jpg 250w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/56_say_gdpr_one_more_time_v2-120x80.jpg 120w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/56_say_gdpr_one_more_time_v2-80x53.jpg 80w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" />
That’s enough about e-mail marketing. Those are the basics, the requisites that you should absolutely be doing anyway. If you’re not, then give us a call before continuing on to the next part.
<h3>The next part</h3>
So now you’ve got your list of newsletter subscribers and online purchasers. You’ve got them segmented nicely. Let the fun begin.
Firstly, you can upload these lists to the Facebook/Instagram Ads platform. This will allow you to re-target them based on their interaction with your brand &#8211; recency of purchase, non-purchasers, etc. This can be a very powerful cross-selling tool.
Using these lists you can also create <a href="https://www.facebook.com/business/help/164749007013531?id=401668390442328">Lookalike Audiences</a>. Facebook will find users with similar interests and behaviours to those you have uploaded and you can then target them. For example, you can find people just like those who have recently purchased from you. We’ve done this. A lot. It works very well.
There are other ways in which this can be useful. If you have properly segmented your customer lists then you can also use these to exclude those that you do not wish to target. This can prove to be useful when you know what category of products a user is interested in, so you do not want to show it to those who are not.
LinkedIn has also improved this functionality within their platform. In this case, you can upload your contacts list – in the B2B space, this is commonly a prospects list – and specifically, target them with ads.
Using LinkedIn, you can also upload a list of company names. Which means that you can target every company in your sector while you exclude everyone in your own from seeing those ads.
We are currently using these tactics on LinkedIn for a global client and maintaining a very healthy 7% conversion rate.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="480" height="342" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-10928" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/giphy-1.gif" alt="" />
<h3>Great opportunities</h3>
On Google’s platforms, you can have control over which audiences see your ads across YouTube, Gmail, Google Search, and the Google Display Network through remarketing campaigns – and this includes the e-mail lists that you upload. This presents some great opportunities, including:
<ul>
<li>The ability to bid higher and be front and centre for prospects who have been in touch but did not convert yet.</li>
<li>You can exclude current customers from all targeting if you wish.</li>
<li>Promote your new app to current customers.</li>
<li>Only pay for brand clicks from new customers (note: this one is great)</li>
</ul>
Using these techniques. You can, in short, better tailor your Google campaigns to target more qualified and valuable users who are already aware of you &#8211; and get them over the line.
Your mind may be coming full circle here back to GDPR and privacy because I&#8217;ve covered a lot about targeting individuals. Well, that might be because that’s a topic that has been often misinterpreted.
As I mentioned earlier, your business needs to be GDPR compliant (there, I said it again), not just your website. And furthermore, these platforms use encryption on the information that you upload. In Google’s case, they use something called SHA-256. (designed by the NSA, no less), and your customer is matched using the encrypted data, not the uploaded email or phone number.
To be clear, you can do everything I’ve just talked about and be compliant. So there’s nothing stopping you.
<h3>So, what now?</h3>
Have a clear and enticing call-out on your website for users to subscribe.
Give them reasons to.
Now what you need to do is think about your content and your promotions calendar. Think about lining up 6-12 months of activity so that you can give users a reason to stay engaged.
The next step is simple…
Get in touch with Friday Agency and let us show you <a href="https://friday.ie/expertise/">what we can do</a>.

You Might be Ignoring your Most Powerful Marketing Tool…

<h3>Help us to connect the Goodwill of the people of Ireland with those who need help and support!</h3>
We need your help to spread the word about a website that we&#8217;ve built to aid the COVID-19 response.
<a href="https://www.goodwill.ie/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Goodwill.ie</a> is a website where people and businesses can list their offers of help for emergency workers, the elderly or vulnerable.
<h4>Lend a helping hand</h4>
Whether you&#8217;re someone willing to help a neighbour with their shopping, or a business looking to lend a helping hand to your community or front line workers &#8211; there&#8217;s a place for you here!
Now is your chance to help those in need or find someone to help you!
We&#8217;ve had quite a response from those who have become aware of the initiative and the site has gained a substantial number of offers of help &#8211; but we need more!
<h4>Promote or share</h4>
We&#8217;d appreciate if you could promote or share this so that you too could help get the aid to those that need it. Every little helps in these times.
We&#8217;re also looking for any media outlets who would be willing to give some free advertising space or sponsorship for this initiative &#8211; we&#8217;re sure you&#8217;ll agree it&#8217;s a good one!
Visit <a href="https://www.goodwill.ie/">Goodwill.ie</a>. Get help or give help today.

Help us to spread the Goodwill

It goes without saying that it’s crazy times for digital marketing, but not uncertain times.
Because one thing is certain. If you turn the lights off, nobody will know that you’re still home.
Today I saw a very interesting piece of research by the <a href="https://cxl.com/institute/">CXL Institute</a> in Atlanta, which goes to prove that in the midst of any recession (which this is becoming, without question), those who survive and flourish are the ones who were first out of the gate.
<h2>Past recessions</h2>
Their data looked at past recessions and what separated the survivors from the thrivers &#8211; and it’s very interesting.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="752" height="669" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-10742" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/recession.gif" alt="" />
Some may question if it is a selfish response for digital agencies to recommend that you keep your activity running to some extent. For us, it’s not. It really isn’t.
When the government announces (and they will) that the current social and other restrictions are over, you do not want to be on the back foot while your competitors are ready to hit &#8216;go&#8217;. You just don’t.
Thinking in pure &#8220;recession&#8221; terms could be the worst thing to do right now. As morbid as it is to say, there are opportunities in this.
Business owners should be surrounding themselves with information from positive CEOs that are looking for ways to grow leaner and stronger in these tough times.
Businesses could be priming themselves with topical messaging and offerings on social media currently, and seeking SEO gains. They should be engaging long term thinking to rapidly grow when everything returns to normal.
<h2>Bounce back</h2>
Those who bounce back and thrive are right now:
<ul>
<li class="p1">Maintaining some level of brand presence through display/social/search/SEO/content.</li>
<li class="p1">Keeping customers (including potential ones) informed of what’s happening.</li>
<li class="p1">Currently strategizing their activity for re-entry.</li>
<li class="p1">Watching competitor activity.</li>
<li class="p1">Aligning all channels including paid, creative, content and SEO to be ready to hit ‘go’.</li>
<li class="p1">Ensuring your website’s robust performance for when consumers are transactional again.</li>
</ul>
You don’t need to wait for that Government announcement to rebound. It will be reactionary, just like yours. Your own business data, industry trends, search trends, as well as your digital agency can help to advise when and how this is best to do. Some common sense will apply too.
In short, be ready.
Now is the time to use your digital agency to be prepared for when (not if) this passes.
If you have already switched off your digital marketing activity then that’s understandable too, it really is. But don’t forget that this time can be used to reflect, improve, strategise and be ready.
If you need sound and practical advice in the shadow of COVID-19, we&#8217;re still here. And we always will be.

Practical COVID-19 Advice For Crazy Times

Have you ever worn the same thing as someone else to a party?
What if you went to a party and when you got there, over 100,000 people had the same idea?
That’s what would happen if you write a blog post called “how to optimise my blog post for SEO”.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="786" height="511" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-9696" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/blog-image-1.jpg" alt="" srcset="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/blog-image-1.jpg 786w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/blog-image-1-250x163.jpg 250w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/blog-image-1-768x499.jpg 768w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/blog-image-1-700x455.jpg 700w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/blog-image-1-120x78.jpg 120w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/blog-image-1-80x52.jpg 80w" sizes="(max-width: 786px) 100vw, 786px" />
What’s happening everywhere is that original thought and compelling content is being threatened (or at least drowned out) by those who:
<ol>
<li class="p1">write just to rank</li>
<li class="p1">are too conservative</li>
<li class="p1">have no strategy</li>
<li class="p1">have little to say about their product, service or industry</li>
<li class="p1">have little to say about their company</li>
<li class="p1">are just plain lazy</li>
<li class="p1">fall under all of the above&#8230;</li>
</ol>
Personally, I have a real problem with the overabundance of what’s called “topic cluster content”. This is pushed by the likes of HubSpot, the <a href="https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2018/10/topic-cluster-content/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Content Marketing Institute</a>, and many more. To explain this concept: you simply find your core topic (that people are searching for) and then you write more blog posts about related sub-topics (that people are searching for).
<blockquote>&#8220;The internet is being flooded by content that has absolutely no value. Content for the sake of content. And it must stop.&#8221;</blockquote>
<h3>Kind of Boring</h3>
So for example, if I was to write about how to optimise a blog post for SEO, then I might proceed to write a piece a week later about how to build relevant link to said blog post. Logical, right? Yes, but isn’t it kind of boring?
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="480" height="240" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-9712" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/giphy.gif" alt="" />
Writing for SEO is okay to a point, but far too many brands are picking up on this technique and creating content that has little to no value. And it&#8217;s sort of all the same. At best, it might be slightly useful &#8211; but it’s probably been written over 100,000 times before. And much of it ends up in TL;DR territory.
Let’s get to the point of what is considered to be poor quality content, and then stay where you are so that we can discuss what to do about it&#8230;
According to Google&#8217;s own guidelines, your content is of poor quality if:
<ul class="ul1">
<li>It&#8217;s lacking in purpose</li>
<li>It is harmful or offensive</li>
<li>Presents unsubstantiated conspiracy theories</li>
<li>Promotes hate or violence</li>
<li>The page is just a copy of an idea already present on the internet</li>
<li>There are numerous grammatical errors or misspellings</li>
<li>and many more&#8230;</li>
</ul>
And hidden somewhere within their documentation if you look closely enough, there is also this key piece:
<ul>
<li>Little to no time, effort, expertise, manual curation, or added value for users</li>
</ul>
Now that&#8217;s the real problem right there. They do not like lazy content.
Google has felt the need to create guidelines like <a href="https://www.semrush.com/blog/eat-and-ymyl-new-google-search-guidelines-acronyms-of-quality-content/">E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) </a>because most people simply cannot follow their advice by writing with honesty&#8230; and for the user.
<h3>Getting away with it</h3>
The internet is being flooded and, over time, ruined by those creating content time and again that has absolutely no value. Content for the sake of content. And it must stop.
The mere suggestion that you should have an opinion can be met with, &#8220;Yeah maybe if we were Ryanair or Paddy Power then we could get away with that.&#8221; A knowing guffaw will usually follow. Well, guess what &#8211; those brands are getting away with it and it&#8217;s getting them a lot of exposure. Their content is often original, has a supporting strategy, dares to create debate&#8230; and come on, they&#8217;re having fun.
Brands who create content with honesty don&#8217;t give much of a sh*t about what people are searching for, or what they will write about next week based on, well, what people are searching for again. They will write with authority, they will have an opinion, an original piece of thought, a tone of voice, a strategy&#8230; all of the core elements that are missing from most content.
<h3>Not just Storytelling</h3>
The next time you sit down and strategise content, think about all of this. And very importantly, if you have a topic then Google it before you write so that you can ascertain if it&#8217;s already been done a million times or not. And if it has then you&#8217;d better make it bloody good or else don&#8217;t bother. Good content is not just storytelling, it&#8217;s telling your story well.
And don&#8217;t be afraid to have an opinion. If it doesn&#8217;t work then life will go on (assuming you haven&#8217;t said something completely ignorant or offensive). But you MUST have an opinion or a voice, or your content will not stand out. It just won&#8217;t.
Furthermore, there are so many blogs that are chock full of articles about products or services and you&#8217;ve got to wonder why these are not just given a logical/permanent home on their website. Your blog is your place to have an opinion or a voice, not to shove a product benefit down someone&#8217;s neck&#8230; again. Let your product pages be great at doing that.
Don&#8217;t focus on what everyone else is saying and then try to say it better. Instead, focus on trying to say what nobody has said yet. Now that&#8217;s something of value. That&#8217;s something I&#8217;ll read. And so will many others&#8230;
<h3>Where to Start</h3>
We know that this is not easy&#8230; you do need to research your audiences, engage with them and better understand their needs, you need a direct line to those with the authority to greenlight and/or produce this content and have the opinion, you need the resources to produce something compelling.
So if you&#8217;re wondering where to start with often limited resources, then:
<ul>
<li>Look at your own industry &#8211; there are surely developments that you (or someone in your organisation) can have an opinion on. Everyone between four office walls has an opinion so be bold, back that up and talk about it.</li>
<li>Read a lot &#8211; If you are not keeping pace with your industry then you may have an opinion that is out-dated &#8211; or that someone has already had.</li>
<li>Do NOT immediately look for what users are searching on Google for. Most searches do NOT end in a purchase, remember? Instead, use informed <a href="https://friday.ie/expertise/strategy/research/">research</a> and ask them what they&#8217;d like to see from you.</li>
<li>Is there any industry experts who would be willing to write for you? They will be less afraid of judgment and might even have some credibility to lend.</li>
<li>Weigh up the risks and rewards and maybe just do something cheap but fun. Like that time Friday created TDer, which is still <a href="https://www.tder.ie/">worth a look</a>.</li>
</ul>
With the right amount of effort and willingness, you&#8217;ll not just be creating content that delights your audiences.. but also your audience&#8217;s audiences.
Now go and take risks with your content, because the answer is always no if you&#8217;re never even asked. Don&#8217;t just be like the rest.
Fancy taking a risk with your content? <a href="https://friday.ie/contact/">Get in touch.</a>

Where Has All The Good Content Gone?

If this headline caught your attention and you’ve come here looking for the answer, you’ll be disappointed.
But don’t go anywhere, this is still relevant…
The question you should be asking instead is “How good should my blog posts be?”
<h3>It&#8217;s not about length</h3>
Too often in discussion around content, this question is asked. “How long does it need to be?”. If you’re asking this, your approach is all wrong.
There’s nothing new to say here that we haven’t already been trying to drill home. It’s not about length, it’s about the <a href="https://friday.ie/blog/user-centric-content/">user</a>.
It’s about relevance, originality, quality, and engagement. And if it can be entertaining, informative, controversial or opinionated, then even better &#8211; people might actually share it.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="477" height="158" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-9584" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Screenshot-2019-07-25-at-15.29.57.png" alt="Share my content" srcset="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Screenshot-2019-07-25-at-15.29.57.png 477w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Screenshot-2019-07-25-at-15.29.57-250x83.png 250w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Screenshot-2019-07-25-at-15.29.57-120x40.png 120w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Screenshot-2019-07-25-at-15.29.57-80x26.png 80w" sizes="(max-width: 477px) 100vw, 477px" />
You may have seen studies out there suggesting that the longer your piece of content is the higher it will rank on Google. And yes, this is true in many cases. But not in every case. Let me explain…
I just searched on Google for “how long should a meta description be?” and this page ranked first &#8211; <a href="https://blog.spotibo.com/meta-description-length/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://blog.spotibo.com/meta-description-length/</a>
You know why? It’s rich content, its original, it’s got the length checker tool, there’s a useful image and then appropriate text length. That’s the key here &#8211; “appropriate”. It’s not two thousand words long but it certainly goes a long way towards answering my query.
Now, if my question instead had been “why do I need meta descriptions?” Then there’s an argument for writing more in order to give background, context and actionable value. Now that’s one I could easily write 2,000 words on. Not that length matters&#8230;
<h3>One core question</h3>
There is 1 core question you need to ask yourself at 3 key points while creating a blog post. And that question is: “Why should someone read this content and not someone else’s?”
And you should ask it:
<ol class="ol1">
<li class="li1">Before you create your piece of content</li>
<li class="li1">While you write it</li>
<li class="li1">When you review it for publishing</li>
</ol>
So, at every point.
If you cannot answer that question, then start again.
You should ask yourself the same about your brand, product, service, website… it should be a part of everything that you do. But that’s another day’s discussion, and that could easily be 10,000 words&#8230; or whatever is appropriate.
<h3>Keeping things simple</h3>
There’s a lot to be said for keeping things simple. As I write this, that is exactly what I’m aiming to do. This blog post is not for the purpose of making Friday Agency seem smart &#8211; it’s to show that we can make sense with minimal effort.
On this topic, even some very well-known websites have been getting it wrong from time to time. Take Search Engine Journal for example, which states <a href="https://www.searchenginejournal.com/rank-higher-than-your-competitor/309929/">here</a> that: “Your content has to communicate your company’s unique selling proposition using the words that people who are looking for your goods and services are most likely to type into a search engine.”
Sorry, but this is b*llshit.
You do not need to broadcast your USP in every communication &#8211; this is a trap that far too many brands have fallen into. As a result, their blogs become catalogs, or About pages with added tumbleweed. It also leads to word count for the sake of length comparison.
Here is another <a href="https://searchengineland.com/tf-idf-the-best-content-optimization-tool-seos-arent-using-319122">article</a> on TF-IDF, which would have you believe that if you can analyse who ranks in the top 10 on Google and emulate the keywords/topics that they use then you can do the same &#8211; and, boom! you’ll be there too.
Not true.
But it will help you to maintain a certain level of unoriginality.
Covering related topics is fine, but don&#8217;t solely rely on tools and competitors to suggest these for you. You&#8217;re the expert.
<h3>Rank without copying your competitors</h3>
Your content can rank for what you want it to rank for, even without using the exact keywords. It can rank without copying your competitors. Google’s algorithm is smarter than mere comparison. It doesn’t require that you repeat yourself, state the obvious or be a collection of the thoughts of your competitors.
I stumbled upon another quote recently: “Analysing the top ranking content for LSI keywords, sub-topics they’ve included, who they link out to, what kind of media they use, etc. can be really effective at helping you understand how Google wants to answer the searcher’s query.”
Now, this is fine up to a point. But guess what &#8211; it’s not Google answering the query &#8211; it’s you. For your user. So write for them, and don’t spend the term of your natural life analysing what others are doing. Certainly take a look, but it’s not everything.
Spending all of your research time looking at what competitors are doing is about as useful as a pogo stick in a minefield.
The same goes for your word count. Do not be over-concerned about the length of your competitors’ blog posts. Answer the user’s query with honesty and expertise, and then send it out into the wild. You&#8217;ll know fairly soon if it&#8217;s good enough.
<h3>A final thought</h3>
There are so many factors involved that influence your blog post’s ranking position, and word count is just a very small part of it.
Here’s a final thought &#8211; how about you try to be the brand who are first to use certain engaging keywords and topics within your article? Say things that your competitors are not saying.
Have an opinion. Suddenly, you’re authentic.
Hey, you won&#8217;t find another blog post like this one on this topic!
Even if this very blog post doesn&#8217;t go on to rank no.1 for &#8220;How Long Should My Blog Posts Be?&#8221;, then at least it&#8217;s original.
Struggling with original content? <a href="https://friday.ie/contact/">Get in touch.</a>

How Long Should My Blog Posts Be?

“We’ll go with the website but we can’t afford the SEO right now…”
I still hear this. Often. And realistically, if you can&#8217;t afford to invest in SEO, you can’t afford a website.
This post could have been written ten years ago, but sadly, for some, things haven’t changed so it still needs to be written today.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="320" height="240" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-9037" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/O1Lp.gif" alt="" />
What’s happening far too often is that businesses ultimately have a website that is not a sales tool. And it’s because they think SEO is not important, that it’s optional, or that they can invest modestly and still expect to see results. Hell, some even think it’s a scam. And in a way, you can’t blame them if you <a href="https://friday.ie/blog/seo-if-you-think-best-expensive-wait-hire-bad-one/">look at how</a> some so-called ‘professionals’ behave.
SEO drives visibility amongst those who have potentially not heard about your brand. Without it, your website is mostly getting traffic from those who already have.
Without an ongoing investment in Search Engine Optimisation, you might as well just walk out on to the street and show your new website to strangers on a laptop. Because that’s probably the only way they’ll ever see it. And they might be the only people to see it.
<h3>Your First Website</h3>
So, there are two scenarios here. First is that you’re a new brand, perhaps a start-up. You need your first website. You get a few quotes from a few agencies or developers. And hey, you’re a start-up so you go with the cheapest one. Seems like a reasonable thing to do, right?
Well no, it’s really not. It’s wrong on so many levels.
You need to ensure that this website is being built with SEO in mind. They might tell you that your website will be “SEO friendly”, but actually there’s no such thing because you cannot launch a website and expect it to eventually rank highly on Google unless there has been a strategic approach to SEO and content.
A strategic approach to SEO include: getting to know your business and audiences, keyword research, competitor research, a content gap analysis, backed up by a content strategy and calendar… and it should be informed by research too.
And by research, we&#8217;re not talking about clipboards on Grafton Street (in Dublin) here… this is surveys of your actual audiences, focus groups and so much more.
From this information, you can then better understand what your potential audiences want, certainly content-wise.
And of course, there’s that little important part of finding out who they are and what makes them tick, where they engage online and how. This ALL informs SEO.
So if you are launching your first website, and none of the above has been discussed, then no, it is not “SEO-friendly” at all.
<h3>A New Website</h3>
Many websites will go through a complete overhaul, re-design or re-development. They will change their URLs and structure. If you do not factor in SEO at this stage, then you WILL lose traffic. There is no question of that.
So this is where I come back to SEO not being optional…
If you are requesting quotes from agencies for a new website, and they have returned a quote without a recommended investment for SEO &#8211; then tear it up, or delete the e-mail.
If you are disqualifying agencies or developers because SEO is included but you think it’s too expensive, then stop and think. Don’t do that. It’s essential. Without it, you WILL lose traffic and revenue.
If you are migrating to a new website, then allow us to explain WHY it’s so important. But do remember that this is just top-line stuff. There’s a lot more to it&#8230;
If you are changing your URLs, even slightly, then your previous ones all become broken pages. This also means that any website that previously linked to you, and was likely helping your rankings, now points to a broken page.
Also, If URLs change then your referral traffic that has historically sent leads or revenue will also be pointing to broken pages. That’s revenue lost.
This is the ideal time to revise your core SEO elements, so page titles, descriptions, rich snippets, for example. However, if SEO is not included then do not expect this work to be done.
Furthermore, if it’s not in scope then you might end up with some peculiar-looking search results. As an agency, we would never allow small things like this to happen, but some might&#8230;
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="582" height="422" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-9032" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-22-at-10.11.09.png" alt="no meta data" srcset="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-22-at-10.11.09.png 582w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-22-at-10.11.09-250x181.png 250w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-22-at-10.11.09-120x87.png 120w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-22-at-10.11.09-80x58.png 80w" sizes="(max-width: 582px) 100vw, 582px" />
Website migration is also the ideal time to begin introducing new research-based content. Some of this will come from your overall research initiatives and even <a href="https://friday.ie/expertise/user-experience/usability-testing/">usability testing</a>, but then can also be guided by keyword research specific to the audiences we have identified.
So, this can be done right. And a website migration should be seen as a way to correct those past wrongs, and actually, increase your traffic as opposed to just protect what you had before.
We built a new website for a client at the end of 2017. Look at the increase in SEO Users to the website since then.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="800" height="456" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-9034" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-22-at-10.19.02.png" alt="seo success graph" srcset="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-22-at-10.19.02.png 800w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-22-at-10.19.02-250x143.png 250w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-22-at-10.19.02-768x438.png 768w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-22-at-10.19.02-700x399.png 700w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-22-at-10.19.02-120x68.png 120w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-22-at-10.19.02-80x46.png 80w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" />
It’s not bad, eh?
It’s good to note that the increases above were not just down to SEO. It was a perfect mix of all digital disciplines coming together &#8211; research, content, architecture, design, build… and SEO. It was the result of a brand who know of the importance of SEO as a part of an entirely new website and migration.
So, is SEO optional? No.
Can it ever be? No.
Without it, a brand new website will hardly ever be found. Without it, a new website migration can, and likely will, have catastrophic results.
With it, you should see some great results and that’s all that we’ve seen on our watch.
<a href="https://friday.ie/contact/">Get in touch</a> with Friday if you’re planning a new user experience or if you want to improve your SEO. You&#8217;d be in safe hands.

Enough is Enough: SEO is Not Optional

You may hear some talk this week about Domain Authority, and how it&#8217;s changing.
Domain Authority (DA) is a score out of 100 that is assigned to your website by an SEO tool called Moz. It is created to predict how well a website will rank on search engines. And it&#8217;s mainly based on the links to your website. Yes, it’s that simple. But it&#8217;s a big deal in the SEO community.
Honestly though, it never meant that much&#8230; and in our experience, it rarely correlated very closely with a website ranking highly. But we’re talking about it here because you may hear more about it. And it might be about to become slightly more useful.
<h3>Very fundamental changes</h3>
On March 5th 2019, Moz made some very fundamental changes to how this is calculated. They have more link data, it’s more recent, and their engineers have defined ways to interpret it better.
Previously, spammy domains and useless websites were getting high scores, usually based on the number of links that they have, as well as the criteria behind those linking to them.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="620" height="424" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-8916" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/RESPECT-MY-DOMAIN-AUTHORITY.jpg" alt="" srcset="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/RESPECT-MY-DOMAIN-AUTHORITY.jpg 620w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/RESPECT-MY-DOMAIN-AUTHORITY-250x171.jpg 250w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/RESPECT-MY-DOMAIN-AUTHORITY-120x82.jpg 120w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/RESPECT-MY-DOMAIN-AUTHORITY-80x55.jpg 80w" sizes="(max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px" />
So even those who were up to no good &#8211; buying links, etc &#8211; were in the past being given a high Domain Authority score. It still didn’t mean that they ranked anywhere, but this enabled them to do one thing &#8211; e-mail tonnes of people and try to sell these domains to you based on that score.
In a <a href="https://friday.ie/blog/another-day-another-seo-email/">previous post</a>, we did discuss how you should completely ignore these e-mails.
But from now, you may start to receive less of them &#8211; because Domain Authority will have decreased. If you receive an e-mail offering to sell you domains then you can check <a href="https://analytics.moz.com/pro/link-explorer/home">here</a> to see if the scores are indeed correct. But honestly, just do it for fun. And delete the e-mail anyway.
<h3>What exactly is a good Domain Authority</h3>
We’re often asked the question “What exactly is a good Domain Authority score out of 100?” Well, the answer is that it’s all relative. You need to compare yours to your competitors in your market. It’s really not a case of an Irish company saying ‘Well those guys in the US do the same thing as us so we want the same score as them!’. They’re in the US, so of course they have more links.
If you monitor your site’s Domain Authority, you can expect to notice some changes. For some sites, DA scores may be higher; for others, they may be lower.
If you’ve been a bit naughty in terms of your link building techniques, then I can guarantee you that it will now be lower.
<h3>Increase across the board</h3>
We ran a check on our own clients’ Domain Authority scores and we have seen a 13% increase across the board. And that’s because we do it ethically and effectively.
One client’s website’s Domain Authority, which was only launched at the end of 2017, increased by 50% on the back of the link building we carried out in the right way over the course of that time.
There are some points to note here:
<ul>
<li>If your agency tell you that your Domain Authority has increased, then ask them if this is because Moz simply updated it – don’t be sold this as something they have achieved for you.</li>
<li>If your score has increased then this will not necessarily mean that your rankings suddenly will. This is independent of Google. But it does mean that you can give yourself a pat on the back for not being too spammy with your link building.</li>
<li>DO ask your agency if your Domain Authority has changed since March 5th. If it has dropped then you need to ask them what sort of links they’ve been building for you all this time. In fact, ask to see them.</li>
<li>Never expect to get a Domain Authority score of 100. It’s all relative. To give perspective, the NASA website has a score of 94. It’s unlikely that you’re in that space&#8230; pun intended.</li>
</ul>
So as you hear things about Domain Authority this month, this will hopefully help to demystify some of that.
In short, if your score has decreased then ask some questions about the type of links you have. If it increased then you’ve probably been doing either very little, or lots of the right things.
But it will NOT mean that from March 5th 2019 your rankings will increase if your score increased. As we said, it is nothing to do with Google. But it’s a useful indicative tool for showing where the gaps are vs. your competitors when it comes to link building.
Read more about our SEO services <a href="https://friday.ie/expertise/digital-marketing/search-engine-optimisation/">here</a>. We know link building, and we do it very well.

What The Hell is Domain Authority? And What’s Changed?

I got a phone call recently from a very well-known website. If you work in SEO, you’ll know them. They had a question that can only mean one thing &#8211; it’s that time of year again…
“What are your SEO predictions for 2019?”
And so it begins, a barrage of articles about this very thing.
The contradiction is that these articles are usually written purely to rank highly for queries related to just that, so they are sort of missing the point.
I&#8217;m writing this for our readers, our clients, and anyone who wants something more engaging. And for that reason, this article will be read more than 95% of those junk articles out there &#8211; because, we hope, it&#8217;s a little different.
Lists of SEO predictions usually mention some of the same topics every year. They throw the same shit at the wall and hope that when it sticks they can say &#8216;Aha, we were right!&#8217;.
Most of these lists are about as useful as asking a crystal ball for the winning lottery numbers.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-8385 size-large" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/SEO_Crystal_Ball-750x400-700x373.gif" alt="" width="700" height="373" srcset="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/SEO_Crystal_Ball-750x400-700x373.gif 700w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/SEO_Crystal_Ball-750x400-250x133.gif 250w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/SEO_Crystal_Ball-750x400-120x64.gif 120w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/SEO_Crystal_Ball-750x400-80x43.gif 80w" sizes="(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px" />
Many of these predictions also appear over and over again because people often give Google too much credit. Their <a href="https://twitter.com/FridayAgency/status/1058120268936372226">underdeveloped algorithms</a> can&#8217;t keep up with the needs and wishes of SEO professionals. They just can&#8217;t.
If I was to follow suit and mention the usual generic predictions, then I&#8217;d look at the following&#8230;
Voice search. No, not yet. Perhaps not ever, at least not in the form that it’s been sold to you. It won&#8217;t change the world of SEO in 2019. Don’t believe <a href="https://friday.ie/blog/voice-search-simplified/">what you’ve heard</a>.
Visual search. Yes, it might grow. But it’s niche, so get over it.
VR/AR. I’ve seen this in lists of predictions. It has nothing to do with SEO, only the resulting experience of a search, just like content.
GDPR. This is not relevant, so the conversations about how GDPR impacts on SEO need to end now. If you have been ethical all along then it shouldn&#8217;t impact anything, including link building.
Mobile search / Mobile first. Give me a break… we saw that coming fifteen years ago, and that time has already come.
So that’s a taste of the usual predictions and an admittedly very cynical view on them. But this article results from having already seen a multitude of these articles since early in 2018, all with a view to just ranking on Google.
What’s more important to me is what should and realistically could happen. This is where we become predictive rather than pre-emptive for the sake of ranking, something that other agencies fail to do.
If you’ve stumbled upon this article then congratulations, it may provide more insight than those others.
Those other types of &#8216;listicle&#8217; articles, every year, will include very little that surprises you. It&#8217;s content for the sake of ranking for it… it’s clickbait. As <a href="https://sparktoro.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Rand Fishkin</a> nicely illustrated for us here.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-8375 size-large" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Screen-Shot-2018-11-09-at-11.05.49-700x385.png" alt="" width="700" height="385" srcset="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Screen-Shot-2018-11-09-at-11.05.49-700x385.png 700w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Screen-Shot-2018-11-09-at-11.05.49-250x138.png 250w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Screen-Shot-2018-11-09-at-11.05.49-768x423.png 768w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Screen-Shot-2018-11-09-at-11.05.49-120x66.png 120w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Screen-Shot-2018-11-09-at-11.05.49-80x44.png 80w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Screen-Shot-2018-11-09-at-11.05.49.png 1273w" sizes="(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px" />
Instead, here&#8217;s some realistic advice for the next 12 months&#8230;
Sentiment. This should come as no surprise. Google made the switch some time ago from monitoring keyword repetition and usage to instead looking at synonyms… and then, context… and then, engagement. This year, they will begin to better algorithmically determine your content’s sentiment/intent in as much as that’s possible for an algorithm to do, and you will rank better based on how users interact with it. So it&#8217;s goodbye to content for the sake of content&#8230;
Goodbye Spam. In November 2018, Google spokesperson Danny Sullivan himself reached out to the SEO community to publicly ask for their opinion about what Google can do better in their search results. Responses varied from harsh to <a href="https://twitter.com/FridayAgency/status/1058120268936372226">obvious</a>. But this is definitely a signal that in some shape or form public feedback will begin to matter more. Google knows that their algorithm is not good enough, and robots ain&#8217;t fixing it all.
A Reality Check. SEO professionals will finally realise that Google is all about the user. This has always been the case, they are just getting better at it now. So your bullsh*t spammy techniques will stop working in 2019. Completely. You’ll wonder why. You’ll blame Google. I won’t because I played by the rules all along. Ethical SEO practices should, if Google’s engineers have any sense, finally reap their rewards across all core markets in 2019.
AI. Yes, Artificial Intelligence will change the way in which we conduct keyword research and it will change the way in which Google serve results. So you can expect your rankings to change in the next 12 month. A lot. If you ever wanted to know who decides what content ranks and where, or what gets lost in that sea of generic predictions lists, well that&#8217;s AI.
So there you have it. It&#8217;s not a detailed list of predictions but at least it&#8217;s not generic either.
So don&#8217;t be spammy in 2019, this will catch up on you even more. Be smarter than that. Watch your rankings closely because they will fluctuate a lot more. And create original, compelling content that will engage rather than be skimmed.
If you want to take your <a href="https://friday.ie/expertise/digital-marketing/search-engine-optimisation/">SEO</a> and <a href="https://friday.ie/expertise/strategy/content-strategy/">Content Strategy</a> into 2019 and beyond in the best possible way, then <a href="https://friday.ie/contact/">get in touch</a>. There are no crystal balls, we just stay ahead of the curve, and that keeps you ahead of your competitors&#8230; and that drives revenue.

What Are Your SEO Predictions for 2019?

I got another e-mail today offering SEO services. And yesterday, too. And the day before that.
They usually offer: SEO services, guest blogging, ‘high Domain Authority links’, an SEO ‘Partnership’, Super Ranking Services (yes, I’ve seen this) and a multitude of other things.
You probably know the ones, and I hope that you’ve deleted them. Here’s a recent one. It’s just great:
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="250" height="166" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-6599" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Screen-Shot-2018-08-09-at-09.40.44-250x166.png" alt="" srcset="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Screen-Shot-2018-08-09-at-09.40.44-250x166.png 250w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Screen-Shot-2018-08-09-at-09.40.44-120x80.png 120w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Screen-Shot-2018-08-09-at-09.40.44-80x53.png 80w, https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Screen-Shot-2018-08-09-at-09.40.44.png 553w" sizes="(max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px" />
Please just make it stop!
This sort of activity is useless at best and usually pretty harmful.
But it’s not stopping. And unfortunately, these e-mails are only a part of the problem…
After just a few random Google searches, I’m still seeing it everywhere. I’m seeing the problem with SEO that has been around for quite some time and seems to be going nowhere.
What problem, you might ask?
The fact that most of them don’t have any idea what they’re talking about.
A few minutes of research will uncover bizarre claims even from Ireland-based companies who could otherwise appear as reputable and might even draw you in because, hey, they’re local!
<h4>Statements That Make No Sense</h4>
There are claims that cannot be backed up, statements that make no sense… all designed to make you part with your cash to pay for SEO services that will do NOTHING. And if they do anything, they’ll do damage.
“We are the number one company for link building.”
Em, says who?
“The more websites that link back to your website, the higher your website ranks on search engines.”
You’ve got to be kidding me…
“Pick the best link building packages to expand your business and increase your ROI.”
A package? Really? What year is this??
“Our link building campaign packages start at €1000 per month.”
Great, take my credit card.
Always remember: In the wrong hands, most marketing disciplines are just a wasted investment. In the wrong hands, SEO can be dangerous.
<h4>They’ll Try To Confuse You</h4>
SEO is a discipline that can require a lot of technical knowledge to get it right, and a lot of experience to make it work.
It’s also quite complicated, and that’s why it’s very easy for so-called practitioners to hide behind things that they can talk about, and sound knowledgeable in, but they do not truly understand it or even have the aptitude for it.
They’ll try to confuse you into believing that they’re the experts, and that you need them.
<h4>Let’s Talk Some Sense</h4>
I could go on and on about this, but let’s talk some sense instead. If you missed it, then give my Podcast a listen below. It’s on this very topic and discusses the multitude of SEO b*llshitters out there – and how not to get burned by one.
&nbsp;
<iframe loading="lazy" style="border: none;" src="//html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/episode/id/6286674/height/90/theme/custom/autoplay/no/autonext/no/thumbnail/yes/preload/no/no_addthis/no/direction/backward/render-playlist/no/custom-color/87A93A/" width="100%" height="90" scrolling="no" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
And once you&#8217;re done listening, delete those SEO e-mails. Then consider <a href="https://friday.ie/contact/">getting in touch</a>, and getting it done right.

Another Day, Another SEO Email

Display advertising has come a very long way since it was seen as the online equivalent of a print ad. But not everybody has moved with the times.
In the past few years, I’ve seen many display advertising plans for my clients, and they’re not cheap.
Your brand will be on some very popular and respected websites. That&#8217;s great.
It looks good for your brand to be there. It looks great internally that you’ve secured these placements. Your brand, product or campaign will be out there with one million eyeballs on it.
It&#8217;s sort of like this, except you&#8217;re on a great website:<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-5390" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/billboard-advertisement-1.jpg" alt="" width="494" height="363" />
Everyone knows about you. Job done.
But&#8230;
Then it doesn’t convert.
And you don’t get a report that’s in any way useful or insightful.
So what happened?
The plan was lazy. In fact, it wasn&#8217;t a plan. It was just an outline of who you&#8217;re going to spend your money with and how many times your ad will be shown.
Your agency did what was promised. They managed to “deliver 1 million impressions to all online readership at the lowest CPM possible.” And to be fair, perhaps you hadn&#8217;t asked for more than that.
There was no strategy.
<h2 class="graf graf--h3">Your money has been spent poorly</h2>
When your campaign didn&#8217;t have the desired impact, your response might have been “But who were these readers and what’s a low CPM? Wait, you never even asked me exactly who we were trying to reach!”
But it’s all hindsight. Your money has been spent, and spent poorly.
To put this in perspective, let’s remind ourselves of some facts. Click-through rates for display advertising are relatively low. Most users don’t think they are relevant. Display ads are more ignored than TV, radio and newspaper ads. Many users don’t trust display ads.
So to put it simply, you need: engaging creative, audience relevance, impact, and trust.
<h2 class="graf graf--h3">Knowing your audiences</h2>
A good display advertising plan is not enough, you need a strong display advertising strategy. It&#8217;s about knowing your audiences; where they are, what they are doing, what they’re interested in, at what stage of the cycle they are in, what life events are affecting them, and much more. Through knowing this, you can create relevancy.
By looking at your own business and customer base, you can create profiles. And research helps too.
Then, by knowing who you are targeting you can produce creative that’s engaging. You can show creative that speaks to them.
You will now also know where their playground is. If it’s Facebook, Twitter… then video may be a good choice because short, succinct, relevant and engaging video can be very powerful if targeted to the right people. And on Facebook and Twitter, it’s not hard to find the right people.
Segmenting your audiences is not a far cry from psychographic segmentation, as used for election campaigns.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-5399" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/pyschographic-segmentation.png" alt="" width="698" height="400" />
When you do find the right people, you will need to know your Goals. What, exactly, do you want users to do when they get to your website? It may sound simple, but tracking even the smallest of engagements can be beneficial.
<h2 class="graf graf--h3">Be better equipped to ask the right questions</h2>
Know your website. Is it fit for purpose? Where will they first land, and is the journey to conversion up to scratch? This is hopefully a conversation that you’ve had well before you’ve even considered paying for display advertising.
If you want broad impact, like placements on a major newspaper website for example, then that serves its purpose. But you need to be better equipped to ask the right questions before agreeing your budget, and even your campaign dates:
<ul>
<li class="p1">Who is most likely to be on that website on those dates?</li>
<li class="p1">Within the ABC1 18+ audience, have they done further research into how engaged they are by site section, how more likely they are to be engaged by advertising by site section, therefore affording you more value?</li>
<li class="p1">Is there anything happening offline that may drive more visitors to that website on those dates, so that you might expect extra visibility and value for your investment?</li>
</ul>
<h2 class="graf graf--h3">&#8220;Won&#8217;t that just annoy people?&#8221;</h2>
I’d hate to not give retargeting a mention here. It’s a very powerful support to any campaign.
If you’re spending this money and sending users to your website, then you should be increasing the size of your retargeting audiences and lists with relevant people.
Retargeting is often referred to in negative ways. For example “Oh, it’s those ads that follow me around…” or “Won’t that just annoy people..?”
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-5392" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/retargeting-ads.png" alt="" width="550" height="395" />
But if done right and creatively, this is still a highly effective technique that can provide ancillary revenue, particularly if your creative is consistent with your campaign.
It’s not just a matter of placing a tag on your website and following people around with ads. I’ll admit that if done that way, it could be just plain annoying. There’s a strategy needed here.
Firstly, segment your audiences by how they have interacted with your website, either throughout the year or while in campaign.
<ul class="ul1">
<li class="li1">If someone has only viewed the home page, then serve them ads displaying a rotation of the different products or services that you offer.</li>
<li class="li1">If someone has viewed a specific service or product, then remarket them with ads specific to that.</li>
<li class="li1">If they’ve added a particular product to their cart then show them this product &#8211; and if you can fulfill it, you could even offer a discount on that product if they return to purchase.</li>
</ul>
All of this depends on one core thing &#8211; you need to know when a user has converted. Without this, you’re serving them ads for a service they’ve already engaged with you for.
And very importantly, you may be serving them an ad offering a discount on a product that they’ve already bought!
<h2 class="graf graf--h3">Remarketing and cross-selling go hand-in-hand</h2>
But the journey doesn’t end when someone has purchased.
So, you’re Carphone Warehouse. Consider someone who has purchased the latest mobile phone from you &#8211; perhaps they may also consider complementary add-ons such as wireless charging pads, a cube speaker, headphones… or even broadband. Remarketing and cross-selling go hand-in-hand.
Even at that, your journey is still not over. If you can tie this into a user’s account data and their upgrade eligibility, then you may be able to eventually sell them a new mobile phone.
Another common myth is that you can only retarget users who have clicked on your Google AdWords ads. Not true &#8211; you can remarket anyone who has visited your website.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-5384 size-large" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/retargeting-1024x697.png" alt="" width="1024" height="697" />
Lastly, remember your custom audiences. Create a matrix of those users who have visited one page or site section but NOT another.
For example in the B2B space, you may have website visitors who have read all about what you do, they may have even looked at your pricing. These are keen potential customers. So the next time you have a Webinar, use retargeting to let them know about it!
See? We told you it’s come a long way. So, the next time you see a display advertising plan, read this again. You may notice a few gaps.
<a href="https://friday.ie/contact/">Get in touch</a> if you’d like to see how we can help create an engaging campaign for you.

We Need to Talk About Strategic Display Advertising

You’ve probably heard a lot about Voice Search by now. Percentages, stats and predictions about the rise of voice-enabled devices. Let’s ignore that for a moment and discuss the practicalities&#8230;
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-3830" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/mugatu-voice-search.jpg" alt="" width="574" height="459" />
Firstly, let’s all calm down.
No, Voice Search is not going to change the world as we know it. But yes, it does have an impact.
Voice Search on mobile phones has been around for many years. It&#8217;s voice assistants such as Google Home and Amazon Echo that are now causing more and more people to pay attention.
It’s likely that voice search on assistants will not be saturated by shorter commercial searches like &#8220;Cheapest iPhones&#8221; for some time.
Mobile and desktop will still be used to actually see a product, engage with product photos and video, compare price and satisfy the need to read more.
And also, Voice Search is just not built for that type of query because it must be seen as impartial.
Voice Search on assistants lends itself well to research-driven queries. For that reason, it&#8217;s more likely to receive and satisfy a query like &#8220;Which version of the iPhone can&#8230; do X?&#8221;
<h3>&#8220;What is important&#8221;</h3>
The instant gratification of getting the right answer to a question on these devices will rarely, for now anyway, lead to a direct sale.
What is important though, is positioning yourself as the one who&#8217;s best able to answer these questions, primarily through <a href="https://searchenginewatch.com/2017/09/04/how-to-optimize-featured-snippets-for-voice-search/">Rich Snippets</a>.
Voice Search on assistants, otherwise known as “eyes-free”, is at present most effective for those interacting with apps, making calls, home automation, playing music, solving a problem, just seeking an answer to a general question, and much more.
Hell, some people may even just be using it to settle a bet or just have a bit of <a href="https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/funny-things-to-ask-google-assistant/">fun</a>!
So some of the more popular voice searches are for things such as finding a location, instructional content like “How do I remove my HUAWEI Mate 10 Pro battery?”, basic information like “How do I find the number for…?” and endless random queries like “How old is Liam Neeson?” … and much more.
Just for the record, sometimes Google Home is wrong &#8211; Liam Neeson is immortal.
If it helps, we also recently analysed over 83,000 voice searches on Google to give a steer on this. People seem hesitant to ask Google about the &#8216;Who&#8217;, &#8216;Why&#8217; and &#8216;When&#8217;&#8230;
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-3826" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/voice-searches-1.jpg" alt="Google Voice Search" width="538" height="448" />
<h3>&#8220;There is a &#8216;Needs Met&#8217; Rating&#8221;</h3>
One thing that most articles seem to ignore is that Google themselves have recently published guidelines on this (keep reading for the link), and they’re surprisingly straight-forward. There is a “Needs Met Rating”.
This is similar to how they already factor in dwell-time; in other words, how long a user stays on your website to consume your content as opposed to hitting the back button and returning to the search results.
So, basically: is the user happy with the answer that Google has given them? Has it met their needs?
It’s simple: Google doesn’t want to give shitty voice answers. Unlike traditional search whereby the answer ultimately comes from your website, this is being delivered as if from Google themselves &#8211; they really don’t want to mess this one up.
<h3>&#8220;Consider this when you write content&#8221;</h3>
So what answers do they like to use?
Very importantly, they take into account the length of a worded audio response. If it’s long enough to satisfy a query, then it’s likely you’ll score high. Consider this when you write content with voice search in mind &#8211; or any content, for that matter.
This does not mean that longer is better. Don’t elaborate too much in your response to a short, succinct question and don’t be too concise for a query that needs a more detailed answer.
Grammar is also taken into account. As with any content, this will be seen by Google’s algorithm as lazy and of low quality, and therefore less likely to be chosen as the best response.
<h3>&#8220;Some Initial Steps&#8221;</h3>
If you’re wondering how to dip your toes in the water here, let&#8217;s suggest some initial steps.
<ul>
<li class="p1">First, take a look first at your website’s blog, FAQ and support content. Is the correct markup in place so that it can also be used in response to a voice search?</li>
<li class="p1">Do your product pages contain content that references the solutions you provide to a user’s problem? This is not a new concept. It should address any queries or concerns that users have about what you offer, even about your sector. It could also call out the nice benefits of what you provide &#8211; how will it make their lives easier or better?</li>
<li class="p1">Have you spoken to the frontline of your customer support? Or, those who best understand the queries that people have about your product, service or even broad queries relevant to your sector? This can help you to formulate content that answers these questions.</li>
<li>Keep your content as non-biased and non-commercial as you can. Google Home is unlikely to use your answer if it says &#8220;We are the best because&#8230;&#8221;</li>
<li class="p1">Lastly, and it’s tougher than it sounds, just put yourself in the mindset of someone who has a voice assistant. What would YOU realistically use it for? What kind of answers would YOU be satisfied with?</li>
</ul>
&#8220;Eyes-free” devices will also take into consideration a user’s location, time of day, their own preferences, search history and more. It has much of this in common with mobile and some desktop searches. Location is important because &#8220;near me&#8221; searches are on the rise due to users assuming that their location is a given.
<h3>&#8220;You need to be cautious&#8221;</h3>
Approaches to optimising for voice search will differ depending on your product, sector, offering, and geographic location. But first and foremost, take a read of what Google themselves have to say <a href="https://storage.googleapis.com/guidelines-eyesfree/evaluation_of_search_speech_guidelines_v1.0.pdf">here</a> and really let the examples sink in.
And remember: like search in general, you don’t want to over-do it. Google has stated that you need to be cautious about rushing out to create tonnes of single-page Q&amp;As to try and dominate voice search. Don’t do it, it’ll be too obvious.
So, there you have it.
If you want to know what impact Voice Search may have on your business then <a href="https://friday.ie/contact/">get in touch</a> and we&#8217;d be glad to chat.

Voice Search Simplified

Search Engine Optimisation has gotten a bad name. It’s often called a Black Art, something I’m growing weary of because it’s too big and important to dismiss it as such. SEO professionals or agencies are often answerable to this, and in some cases rightfully so&#8230;
There are some very bad SEO practitioners out there, opportunists who saw it as an easy sell for something non-quantifiable.
How can even the most reputable SEOs convince someone that we’re not like the rest, especially when someone has already been ‘burned’ by one, sometimes more than once? SEO is not regulated or audited, so it’s difficult to find the best. Many will opt for the cheapest because, well, “they’re all the same”. Well, they’re not. Some are actually very, very good.
<blockquote>&#8220;Perhaps You Didn’t Ask The Right Questions&#8221;</blockquote>
A friend recently told me that she was about to engage with the services of a wedding planner and really wanted to work with her, but she was unsure as to how reputable or effective she is. Sure, there was positive word-of-mouth, even some good reviews on her website. But in an industry where excellent results are subjective, it can be easy to convince clients that you will do, and have done, the best job possible.
It’s relatively easy to use emotional or other triggers to convince them that what they got in return for their hard earned, (supposedly) well-invested money was to the best standard available. You take their word for it, after all, what do you have to compare it to?
Most people only get one shot at a wedding, and in the wrong hands, this can lead to a life-long regret. “Of course hiccups happen”, they may say, and then you’ll convince yourself that this is true and move on. Perhaps the problem was that you didn’t ask the right questions to begin with.
<blockquote>&#8220;So-Called SEO Experts Who Don’t Give a Shit&#8221;</blockquote>
Now let’s bring it back to SEO. If you’re thinking of engaging with an SEO professional or agency then there are some pertinent things to ask before doing so.
SEO has a bad name in some circles and if we’re honest with ourselves then it’s down to the bad practice of many so-called SEO experts who don’t give a shit about your business or its performance.
They want your money, plain and simple. They’ve seen the business opportunity that innately comes from offering a service for which results can be subjective and someone else might even be responsible: “But Google changes all the time!”.
Over the past few years, I’ve acquired new clients or pitched SEO services to potential clients who were very unaware of what SEO truly is or what an effective SEO strategy should be. They know they need it, but they don’t truly know what it is.
My job has been to cut through the bullshit, talk specifically about their business goals and what this channel (or channels) can do to increase their bottom line and visibility. I want to know that they&#8217;re comfortable they are seeing a return on their investment, even if it’s not always 100% measurable. Agencies and marketing professionals, in general, have their own reputation to think of, but it’s those who are also truly dedicated to yours that really stand out.
Also over the past few years, I’ve taken on SEO for clients who had engaged in previous services and some of my findings were worrying, to put it politely. Having been given a ballpark figure as to how much was being paid on a monthly basis so that &#8220;SEO is taken care of&#8221;, clearly no attention had been paid to some of what we know to be core ranking factors.
In one client’s case, there were sponsorships, charity initiatives, public speaking events, memberships, partnerships. conferences, and much more in the previous six months that could have very clearly lent themselves to relevant and effective links. None of this was ever even mentioned. The previous reports showed rankings for keywords that were misspelled, irrelevant, unachievable… and those that were relevant had no strategy in place in order to achieve higher ranking for them.
<blockquote>&#8220;In the Wrong Hands SEO is Not Just Done Badly &#8211; It Can Be Dangerous&#8221;</blockquote>
And then there’s the very bad…. clients who have worked with an agency who have built links of no value across multiple countries and platforms, and even links that are potentially damaging to their Google visibility. Let’s make one thing clear: if you are an online-only business then in the wrong hands SEO is not just done badly &#8211; it can be dangerous.
If you are not a well-established domain with some good historical links to counter-act spammy activity, then you can be removed from search results. It might only be temporary, but it means that for a period of time your largest online channel is gone, and that’s Google organic search.
<blockquote>&#8220;If you think it&#8217;s expensive to hire the best, then wait until you&#8217;ve hired a bad one.&#8221;</blockquote>
In some instances, I have contacted previous agencies and specifically asked for my client’s historical link building reports so that I can reverse the damage that was done. This can be rectified, but of course it’s best avoided.
Unlike Google AdWords Partner status, there is seemingly no way to make a complaint about an SEO professional or agency who have taken your money to knowingly employ tactics that have no impact or can seriously damage your businesses’ online visibility and reputation. When I say there’s ‘seemingly’ no way, I refer to the assumption that nobody cares, you’ve just got to move on and fix it.
However, if you look at Google’s own Webmasters content, they are subtly pointing you in the right direction <a href="https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35291?hl=en">here</a>. The suggestion is that you report this wrongdoing to the International Consumer Protection and Enforcement Network. There’s even a specific journey for those who have been sold ad space or directory listings.
<blockquote>&#8220;They Are Knowingly Putting Your Business at Risk&#8221;</blockquote>
I’ve already done this on numerous occasions, in particular, last year with regard to a Dublin-based digital agency (who shall be un-named) who have three different names, three different websites, all at the same address &#8211; who purposely, and perhaps still do, build harmful links.
Unless they have no internet access, they’ll be aware that these tactics are not just dangerous, but have been redundant for at least 10 years. Bottom line: they are knowingly putting your business at risk &#8211; and you’re paying them to do so.
My advice to those who are in doubt is to first speak to someone impartial so, in other words, someone who comes with strong recommendations. If they feel that you have been treated unethically then you should report it. With this, <a href="https://friday.ie/expertise/digital-marketing/search-engine-optimisation/">we can help</a>.
So, it’s about asking the right questions. Not just if you are looking for SEO services, but you should also ask those of your current agency or provider. For example…
<ul>
<li>Can you show me some examples of strong relevant links that you have influenced for other clients?</li>
<li>How will your SEO strategy fit in with our business goals?</li>
<li>What do you report on? Note: If reporting amounts to just monthly rankings and traffic then forget it because finding valuable data can be even easier than hiding it.</li>
<li>How much have you learned about our business?</li>
<li>How will you audit our content and how do you propose coming up with a detailed approach to our content for the next 12 months?</li>
<li>How much will this cost?</li>
</ul>
There are so many more questions, and it’s important to note that it’s highly likely that choosing SEO services based on lowest cost alone will lead to the wrong decision. If you think it&#8217;s expensive to hire the best, then wait until you&#8217;ve hired a bad one.
SEO takes time, effort, creative thought, marketing know-how &#8211; it’s not just about keywords, meta tags, fixing broken links and making new shiny ones.
So if you ever need a wedding planner then feel free to use the cheapest provider. Just be sure that they understand your requirements and wishes, be sure that they won’t send invites to people in other countries who have never heard of you and have no interest in attending, do not let them build you a Wix &#8216;bride and groom&#8217; website and promise you #1 on Google for “best wedding”… or better still, annoy the hell out of your venue owners so that the whole party is called off.
If you want it done right then you may not get the cheapest option, but it may turn out to be the best decision.
Treat it like you&#8217;ll only ever get one shot at it.

SEO: If You Think The Best Are Expensive, Wait ‘Til You Hire a Bad One

It&#8217;s well proven that remarketing can help achieve better ROI. In this post I talk about how you can improve your ROI using Facebook Lookalike Audiences.
Your customers or subscribers are the best audiences you can target because they’ve already shown some interest in your products, your brand, your website, your sales process, delivery and everything else. 
It is easier, safer and cheaper to target them over finding new customers.
<blockquote>
<a href="http://www.wheelhouseadvisors.net/5-reasons-why-customer-retention-is-better-than-customer-acquisition/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The probability of converting an existing customer is 60-70%</a> compared to 5-20% for a new prospect.
</blockquote>
That said Facebook offers something even better by giving you both &#8211; it essentially takes your existing clients and audiences and finds new ones with similar traits and demographics. 
<h2 class="p1" style="text-align: center;"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-2781 size-full" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Facebook-lookalike-audiences.png" alt="Facebook Lookalike Audience &amp; email lists" width="767" height="267" /></h2>
<h3 class="p1" style="text-align: left;">How it works</h3>
If you have an email database, and we are sure you all have at least one or two, what you can do is upload that list into the Facebook and create a custom audience from that list. 
But here&#8217;s where things become interesting: you can take that custom audience and turn it into the lookalike audience. 
What that means is that Facebook will connect your emails with real Facebook profiles and take their interests, demographics, age and other parameters to find new people similar to them. 
And as we all know, Facebook has a lot of data about each one of us and it&#8217;s not hard for Facebook to find people with similar interests. 
You can determine how far are you willing to go when it comes to the similarity. Facebook allows you to choose a sliding scale of similarity from 1% to 10% when building Lookalike audiences. 
However, have in mind that the broader you set your bar the broader results you will get. 
It all depends on your type of business, but we would recommend somewhere between 1-5% to get an accurate result. Everything above 5% will be too broad. Again it depends on your business type and your advertising objective.
Now when your Facebook Lookalike Audience has been created you can start serving your ads to the people who are more likely to engage with them and convert.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-2791 size-full" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/my-advertising-budget.png" alt="my-advertising-budget" width="1228" height="560" />
The possibilities are endless. You can set up several different audiences depending on your customers buying cycle/product, interests/countries etc… if you are selling different products you can have different lists for different types of products and so on.
<h3 style="text-align: left;">Conclusion</h3>
As marketers, we are interested in reaching the right kind of customers, people who are more likely to engage with our ads or convert. What Facebook offers is exactly that. 
From reaching the right kind of users to re-engaging existing customers Facebook&#8217;s advertising services help us stay in front of current and prospective customers while they browse their favourite social network. 
If you need help with Facebook marketing or Social Strategy, <a href="https://friday.ie/contact/">get in touch</a>.

Improving ROI with Facebook Lookalike Audiences

We&#8217;ve done some thinking at Friday, and have come up with our thoughts and predictions for Digital Marketing trends in 2017.
Some trends have stayed popular, however, there are a couple of new ones, and as a digital marketer I am excited to see where we are going and where we could be in 5 years time.
<h3>AMP</h3>
I wrote about the introduction of <a href="https://friday.ie/blog/what-is-amp-and-how-to-get-started/">AMP pages</a> last year. Accelerated mobile pages are mobile pages (websites) that load instantly on your phone. You can sometimes see them as a carousel in Google’s results.
What’s happening is that the content behind the headlines is loading in the background before you read it, and when you open an article it loads up to 85% faster than normal old school websites.
We predict that AMP pages will see a big spike in uptake in 2017 &#8211; stay tuned for more info.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-2544" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Google-AMP-v2-1.jpg" alt="AMP Pages" width="767" height="246" />
<h3>Social Recruitment</h3>
We have found a growing trend in organisations using social channels as a key tool in their recruitment process. It is a powerful way to connect with potential employees and recruit them.
Unsurprisingly, <a href="http://www.linkedin.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">LinkedIn</a> is number one for obvious reasons but, <a href="http://www.facebook.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Facebook</a> is fast becoming a popular platform to drive recruitment.
Audiences can be reached more accurately and closely than any other platform. You can target by demographics, location, age, interests, education, etc.
Here are some stats:
· 86% of people in the first 10 years of their career are likely to use social media in the job search 
· 14.4 million job seekers have used social networks to find a job. 
· 59% of recruiters rated candidates sourced from social networks as “highest quality” 
· 94% of recruiters are active on LinkedIn, but only 36% of candidates are. Job seekers, by a wide margin, prefer Facebook; with 83% reporting they are active there, compared to just 65% of recruiters. 
· 79% of job seekers are likely to use social media in their job search.
Find more stats <a href="http://www.wepow.com/top-10-recruiting-stats-you-should-know-in-2016/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>.
&nbsp;
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-2643" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/1-uCIFmcfeRMHimNM58BjG2Q.jpeg" alt="2017 Digital Marketing Trends" width="800" height="580" />
<h3></h3>
<h3>Mobile wallets</h3>
No more wallets, no more bank cards &#8211; pay with your phone.
Install <a href="https://www.android.com/intl/en_ie/pay/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Android Pay</a> or <a href="http://www.apple.com/apple-pay/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Apple Pay</a> or any <a href="http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/digital-wallets/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">other mobile wallet option</a>, and you’re sorted. However, if you lose your phone, well… that could be a problem!
Other parts of Europe are still waiting for this step to be completed, however in Ireland we are ready. Mobile payments here we come.
<blockquote>· The number of mobile shoppers in UK will reach an estimate of 40.1 million-nearly 89% of the digital shoppers. 
 · Retail mobile sale (m-commerce) will leap to £25.74 billion ($39.34 billion)</blockquote>
Make sure your business is set up to accept mobile payments for your goods and services by having NFC enabled terminals/card readers.
<h3>Quality Content</h3>
<a href="https://friday.ie/blog/content-marketing-and-page-quality/">Content, content, content</a>! It’s long past time when people were writing content for search engines.
You should always think of your users. Have a <a href="https://friday.ie/blog/mixing-a-great-content-marketing-strategy/">Content Strategy</a> &#8211; be relevant, be informative, be educational. Try answering “who”, “what”, “when” and “how” questions, and search engines will reward you.
However, if you’re still doing the same thing you were 5 years ago; writing content for search engines, keyword stuffing and link building campaigns without any strategy… be prepared for a dramatic drop in ranking or manual actions.
There will always be new algorithm updates as Google will continue to perfect their search engine, and with that we have to continue perfecting our <a href="https://friday.ie/blog/seo-so-you-want-to-be-number-1/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">SEO skills</a>.
Always have people in mind when it comes to content or <a href="https://friday.ie/expertise/digital-marketing/search-engine-optimisation/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">SEO</a> and the rest will follow.
One more search and content change that will be hugely popular in 2017 is voice search. This was initially started as a help for the blind, but as always with Google it developed into something greater, they managed to perfect something that was never meant to be so popular. Thank you Google :)
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-2644" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/1-_gdNaejNLJJtIOBAHk5xwA.jpeg" alt="SEO" width="800" height="572" />
<h3>JSON Schema</h3>
You won&#8217;t need to remember this but JSON stands for “JavaScript Object Notation.”
In simple terms, JSON helps showcase parts of your website you&#8217;d like to highlight in search results &#8211; phone numbers, social networks, recipes, reviews, product listings, executives, founders and more.
As I mentioned in our <a href="https://friday.ie/blog/what-is-amp-and-how-to-get-started/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">AMP Pages post</a>, Google is doing everything it can to keep you on their network &#8211; the aim is to provide you with all of the useful info you’re searching for, without having to leave the Google platform.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-2645" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/JSON-Schema.png" alt="JSON 2017 Digital Marketing Trends" width="686" height="1085" />
<h3>Conversion Rate Optimisation</h3>
Conversion rate optimisation is nothing new &#8211; it&#8217;s the method of using analytics and user feedback to improve the performance of your website through testing and iteration.
The end goal is always a conversion, the action you care about the most such as leads, downloading e-book or a good old sale.
If SEO is all about getting traffic to your website, CRO is what converts that traffic into the leads/customers.
CRO as an essential part of the eCommerce process will be more popular in 2017.
There are some powerful CRO tools out there for you to use such as <a href="https://www.optimizely.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Optimizely</a>, <a href="http://unbounce.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Unbounce</a>, or even the free <a href="https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1745152?hl=en" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Google Analytics Content Experiment</a>.
<h5>You can find more <a href="https://klientboost.com/cro/cro-tools/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CRO tools here</a>.</h5>
<h3>UX led design</h3>
UX design is the process of designing products (websites, apps or softwares) that are useful, easy to use, and delightful to interact with.
It’s all about how a user feels when interfacing with a system.
Lately we are seeing more and more companies <a href="https://friday.ie/blog/design-led-companies-winning/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">embracing UX</a> in their journey, and it will only continue to grow. B2B and B2C companies finally realised that having just a website is not enough anymore. It needs to be user friendly.
As a UX agency we couldn’t be happier about that. If you’re ready to take your business to the next level <a href="https://friday.ie/contact/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">drop us a line</a> and we’ll do the rest! If you need some inspiration check out our blog on <a href="https://friday.ie/blog/5-e-commerce-design-trends-2016/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">UX trends.</a>
<h3>Live Video Streaming</h3>
Both YouTube and Facebook introduced 360-degrees videos, and we have live videos on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram.
Video has shown to be the best way to reach your customers, as it is creative and entertaining. It builds trust, you can explain everything in few seconds, and not to mention that Google LOVES videos.
I have something to get you even more excited: <a href="https://www.wyzowl.com/video-marketing-statistics-2016.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">76% of business say that video provides good ROI.</a>
Are you using video in your marketing efforts?
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Video Kiosk: Video Marketing in 2017 - Video Marketing for Businesses 101" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5ZU3vxGkKw4?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
&nbsp;
<h3>Wearable technology &amp; The IoT</h3>
Wearable technologies are slowly taking their turn. It’s all about accessories as a girl might say. ;)
We witnessed the development of smart <a href="http://www.apple.com/ie/watch/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Apple Watches</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Glass" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Google Glass</a>, <a href="http://www.loreal.com/media/press-releases/2017/jan/kerastase-and-withings-unveil-worlds-first-smart-hairbrush-at-ces-2017" target="_blank" rel="noopener">L’Oréal smart hairbrushes</a> and there is much more to come.
I would like to see a wearable technology that can teleport me to work on Monday morning. Soon hopefully.
Check out the video below.
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Innovative Start-ups focused on IoT and Wearable Technologies" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ssGzEmcLA7g?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
&nbsp;
<h3>Snapchat for marketing</h3>
Snapchat is my favourite! I don’t want to be bias, but this is the platform I couldn’t live without.
There are so many opportunities for marketers yet to be found on <a href="https://www.snapchat.com/en-GB" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Snapchat.</a> Geo-targeting, filters and instant communication with their audience are just some of them.
In the future Snapchat could create different branded filters, like the existing filters for cities that show where are you, soon we could see someone posting his/her picture with the Coca-Cola logo to show they were in the Coca-Cola factory.
There are endless possibilities with Snapchat, you just need to be creative and find them.
&nbsp;
So in summary, there are some old trends that are growing in importance and popularity and some interesting new technologies that we expect to see more update in.
If you need help with your digital marketing, let us know, we’re always ready for a new challenge at Friday.

2017 Digital Marketing Trends

You possibly have not yet heard of the AMP pages/project, and that’s ok, as it is a relatively new thing. I want to give you some insight into what AMP is and how you can benefit from it. 
<h3>So what is Google&#8217;s AMP?</h3>
According to the <a href="https://www.ampproject.org/">Accelerated Mobile Pages</a> (AMP) Project, “AMP is an open source initiative that embodies the vision that publishers can create mobile optimised content once and have it load instantly everywhere.” 
You know when you do a Google search on your mobile and you get news related results that appear in a carousel? That content is AMP. What’s happening is that the content behind the headlines is loading in the background before you even read it. 
When you decide to click and open one of the articles all of its content has already loaded so it pops up instantly. AMP content is formatted in optimised highly efficient HTML and javascript. AMP pages are loading 85% faster than standard pages. 
Google spent a huge amount of time over the last several years convincing web developers and publishers to adopt responsive design. So why are they introducing a new play rule now? If you ask me, I would say it’s because Google always looks to give users the best possible experience. With <a href="https://instantarticles.fb.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Facebook Instant Articles</a>, <a href="http://www.apple.com/news/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Apple News</a>, and whatever else is happening I’m wondering how web developers and publishers are going to adopt another new format.
Another reason for AMP is that Google wants to keep the user inside its ecosystem and AMP gives it more control here. Displaying Maps, Reviews, related search content, full answers, recipes etc &#8211; if we get the answer to your query without having to leave Google’s platform, we rely on it even more.
It’s possible that AMP will ultimately be ranked higher than responsive pages; but for now, Google has not taken an official position on this.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-2539 aligncenter" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/AMP7-1.jpg" alt="AMP Pages" width="300" height="533" />
<h3>How to get started with AMP pages?</h3>
If you have a WordPress site, it should be pretty straightforward to implement AMP and a plugin I have used called <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/amp/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">AMP</a> works very well. Some WordPress themes may not be fully compatible so check its compatibility first. 
<a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/glue-for-yoast-seo-amp/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Glue for Yoast SEO &amp; AMP</a> is another plugin that will come in handy with your SEO efforts. This plugin makes sure the default WordPress AMP plugin uses the proper Yoast SEO metadata and allows modification of the AMP page design. 
If you don’t use WordPress, Google created a <a href="https://www.ampproject.org/docs/get_started/create_page.html">tutorial</a> to help you start with AMP’s. 
It takes Google several days to crawl and index your site before it starts showing in Search Results. As always with Google, early adopters will see the best results. 
If you are considering implementing AMP, do it as soon as possible. Google is doing everything to push and promote AMP, they have even implemented mobile tagging of AMP’s through <a href="https://www.google.com/analytics/tag-manager/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tag Manager</a>. 
<h3>How can you benefit from AMP?</h3>
Here are the main advantages of having AMP pages:
<ol class="ol1">
<li class="li1">Faster loading pages for mobile users — AMP pages load 15-85% faster than standard sites, therefore it’s not a surprise that one of the main benefits of AMP is faster mobile loading.</li>
<li class="li1">Improved search engine ranking — Faster load times help mean better rankings.</li>
<li class="li1">Use of Carouses: Google started to display AMP content within carousels that include large images. This naturally draws users attention and improves your click-through rate.</li>
</ol>
There was a lot of talk that AMP pages will see a huge ranking boost, so the SEO community got excited. :) However, the latest research and Google’s announcement showed pages will not receive any ranking boost or be shown in top search results.
However, when there are two versions of a page, Google will prefer and link to the AMP version.
<a href="https://youtu.be/WrpkFROqR0Q">https://youtu.be/WrpkFROqR0Q</a>
Let us know your thoughts and challenges with implementing AMP Pages in the comments below.

What are AMP pages and how to get started?

<h3 class="graf--h3"></h3>
It seems as though everything you hear about digital marketing recently concerns mobile. Even if you have the word mobile in your job title the odds are you are earning more than your peers. A recent <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" href="https://econsultancy.com/reports/career-and-salary-survey-report-2016" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-href="https://econsultancy.com/reports/career-and-salary-survey-report-2016">survey by eConsultancy</a> found that mobile emerges as the top paid specialism among digital marketers. With good reason too, just follow the money!
eMarketer estimates that in 2015, US consumers bought $74.93 billion worth of goods and services via mobile devices, up 32.2% over 2014 spending levels.
So it’s clear mobile purchasing is on an upward trend. In terms of traffic Ireland actually tops Europe as the most active mobile users with nearly half the share of total website visits.
The chart below illustrates our time spent shopping via different mediums.
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<img class="progressiveMedia-image js-progressiveMedia-image" alt="" data-src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*ojrHLTJ2ubOvpNO3QjNQtQ.png" />
<img decoding="async" class="wp-image-1883 size-full" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/always-on.png" alt="shopping time per medium" width="100%" height="auto" /> Source: Shopify, 2015
Having a mobile strategy is essential, especially if you run an eCommerce business. Here are some important trends to look out for the rest of 2016:
<h3 class="graf--h3">Customer Experience is more important than ever</h3>
Obviously smaller screen sizes have a big influence on how your eCommerce website is designed. You need to maximise the value from all real estate available. This all drills down to the experience you provide your customer.
Is the layout familiar? Is the path to purchase simple? Can consumers find products easily?
A recent study by EPiServer (chart below) details what users expect to see on an mCommerce site. If you run an online retail business, it would probably be a good idea to take note of these.
<img decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1892" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/infographic_adam.gif" alt="infographic_adam" width="100%" height="auto" />
Mobile customer experience will extremely important in 2016. Google already have put a big emphasis on mobile user experience and it heavily influences mobile search rankings. Having an effective mobile <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" href="https://friday.ie/expertise/user-experience/ux-design-dublin/" data-href="https://www.api.friday.ie/ux-design-dublin">UX strategy</a> is absolutely critical.
<blockquote>85% of consumers will abandon basket if site too difficult to navigate according to Adobe</blockquote>
<h3 class="graf--h3">Social eCommerce</h3>
An interesting trend which I mentioned in my <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" href="https://friday.ie/blog/7-digital-marketing-trends-for-2016/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">digital marketing trends</a> post last month, is the merging of social media and eCommerce.
Facebook is currently trialing a personal assistant service through their messenger app. Which allows you to purchase goods and services through conversation. For example, you can book an Uber directly through the app.
<img decoding="async" class="wp-image-1884 size-full" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Messenger-Uber-Ride-Updates-1024x768.jpg" alt="Facebook m" width="100%" height="auto" />
The applications of this technology are only limited by imagination. Facebook have highlighted a couple of use cases such as booking restaurants, ordering gifts for friends based on social data and making appointments.
Although only in a development phase, this could be a game changer for direct response marketing.
Social media is also an increasingly effective product discovery platform. Orders grew 202% in 2014.
Facebook dominates in terms of total orders and considering 78% of Facebook ad revenue comes from mobile you can be sure a high percentage of these orders were on mobile.
The average order value does tend to fluctuate depending on the platform, LinkedIn comes in with the highest order value (mainly due to B2B transactions).
<img decoding="async" class="wp-image-1885 size-full" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Screen-Shot-2016-03-03-at-10.55.55.png" alt="social media average order stats" width="100%" height="auto" /> Source: Statista, 2016, <a href="http://www.allmarketresearch.ie/">healthcare market research</a>[/caption]
<h3 class="graf--h3">Mobile Payments</h3>
Although the technology for mobile payments has been around for some time consumer adoption hasn’t been widespread as you might think.
Among others, barriers such as privacy concerns, device capability and infrastructure costs have limited this adoption rate.
However, 2016 should see significant growth in as nearly 1 in 5 smartphone users are expected to use mobile payments this year (210% growth).
A number of factors are influencing this growth rate. Device capability is an obvious one. Most high-end Android phones have had NFC (wireless payment technology) for a couple of new years now but only iOS devices from the iPhone 6 onwards have this technology. The iPhone 6 has been the fastest adopted iPhone of the series, which broadens the mobile payment market.
However, the single most important factor affecting mobile payment adoption is quite a fundamental one. Incentive.
In order for e-wallets such as Apple Pay &amp; Android Pay to be successful, the value proposition needs to be clear.
Effectively your phone is just doing the same job that your credit card already does. And with tap to pay enabled cards what&#8217;s the point on using your phone instead? Similarly, why should retailers upgrade their infrastructure to accommodate such technology?
This is where incentive and loyalty programs come in.
Starbucks in many ways are the pioneers of mobile wallets, their app which launched back in 2009, now has 10 million active monthly users. Providers are realising that customers need to be incentivised.
Android Pay has partnered with Coca-Cola to reward users paying with their smartphones on vending machines while Samsung are developing a push coupon loyalty program for their customers. Expect to more partnerships between the e-wallet providers and big retailers in 2016.
<img decoding="async" class="wp-image-1887 size-full" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/coca-cola-mobile-payment.jpeg" alt="coca cola mobile payment" width="100%" height="auto" /> Source: Coca-Cola, 2016
<h3 class="graf--h3"></h3>
<h3 class="graf--h3">Conversions will stay low vs desktop</h3>
Although worldwide eCommerce traffic on mobile has seen significant growth, conversion rates remain comparatively low vs desktop. The worldwide average conversion rate for smartphones was 1.2% vs 2.8% for desktop in 2015 according to Monetate.
These figures, however, do not paint the full picture. The influence of mobile cannot be underestimated with regards to customer journeys.
A recent <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" href="http://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/us/Documents/consumer-business/us-retail-mobile-influence-factor-062712.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-href="http://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/us/Documents/consumer-business/us-retail-mobile-influence-factor-062712.pdf">Deloitte</a> study looked at the number of in-store transactions that were influenced by research on smartphones. They predict that in 2016 up to 20% of retail purchases will be influenced by mobile.
A similar effect can be observed with desktop &amp; tablet sales, consumers tend to use mobile for product discovery and complete the purchase on desktop.
<blockquote class="graf--blockquote">FACT — Female shoppers research products on their smartphones more than men according to Shopperstates.</blockquote>
Central to this is having an effective multi-channel attribution strategy. This is critical when it comes to allocating your marketing budget and resources. Attribution is grounded in data and analysis, which forms one of our 4 key areas of service.
If you would like to talk to us about mobile, attribution or anything else, don’t hesitate to <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" href="https://friday.ie/contact/" data-href="https://www.api.friday.ie/contact/">get in touch.</a>
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Mobile eCommerce Trends 2016

7 Digital Marketing Trends for 2016

Friday Agency are proud to announce that we&#8217;re now a certified <a href="https://www.google.com/partners/?hl=en-US#a_profile;idtf=8905841539;" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Google Partner.</a>
What does this mean and why should I care? A Certified Partner is an agency that has met Google&#8217;s requirements to be considered “trusted online experts”.
We went through Google&#8217;s rigorous qualifying process, involving employee exams and best practice quality measures. The idea behind the Google Partnership program is to build a network of trusted companies that possess exceptional expertise with Google products and services.
Friday is certified in a number of areas: Google AdWords, Google Analytics and Video Advertising which represent the core of Google&#8217;s offering.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="wp-image-1746 size-full aligncenter" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/GoogleCertification.gif" alt="GoogleCertification" width="528" height="107" />
<pre class="graf--p"></pre>
We are also certified in a range of rich media display and digital advertising disciplines that include features like video, animation, audio, and technology that encourages content interaction, data capture and engagement.
Specifically we have certifications in DoubleClick Studio, HTML5, QA, Dynamic Creative, YouTube Masthead and Google Web Design.
The benefit of the QA certification means that we are trusted to carry out our own QA within DoubleClick thus speeding up the publishing process.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-1700 aligncenter" style="clear: both; display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Screen-Shot-2016-01-25-at-12.18.59.png" alt="DoubleClick certified agency in Dublin" width="507" height="90" />
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<h3 class="graf--h3">Why be a Google Partner?</h3>
So we have all these badges, how does this affect our clients? Well it demonstrates our expertise in using Google&#8217;s products such as AdWords, Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics and DoubleClick.
These products are essential tools for successful digital marketing campaigns and having this expertise provides peace of mind to clients. Specifically you know that the agency is:
<ol class="postList">
<li class="graf--li">Book Smart — Passing the exams requires in depth knowledge of the latest industry best practices as well as keeping on top of the latest technology and services available. You can trust that the agency knows exactly what tools and strategies are right for each project.</li>
<li class="graf--li">Street Smart — Google examines the past performance of an agencies account before granting partner status. This means that a partner has a proven track record of running successful campaigns for their clients.</li>
<li class="graf--li">Google Access — Agency’s maintain a direct relationship with Google and have access to the latest training and product update info. This means that the agency can provide clients with industry specific data that is ahead of the curve.</li>
</ol>
If you would like to discuss how an AdWords or Rich Media campaign (or anything else!) could help your business please <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" href="https://friday.ie/contact/" data-href="https://www.api.friday.ie/contact/">get in touch.</a>

Friday is a Certified Google Partner

<blockquote>
<h4 class="graf--h3">Black Friday 2015 is upon us and the annual post Thanksgiving retail charge is set to stay across the water.</h4>
</blockquote>
So what does Black Friday look like this year and how are retailers reacting to consumer trends?
<h3 class="graf--p">Trends</h3>
Traditionally a one day in-store event, Black Friday has quickly evolved into an online festival. Irish consumers are set to drop up to €100 million today and Irish retailers are expecting a big Christmas this year in terms of sales.
Interestingly 1 in 3 of us plans to buy online on Cyber Monday. This shift to online activity is also reflected in advertising spend. Earlier this year <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" href="http://iabireland.ie/digital-adspend-grows-by-34-in-2014/" data-href="http://iabireland.ie/digital-adspend-grows-by-34-in-2014/">IAB</a> released some figures showing that digital ad spending had increased by 34% over last year and that mobile had jumped 134%.
This is only set to increase and you may have noticed some Black Friday display ads following you around the internet.
Our neighbours in the UK are seeing even more startling numbers. Experian are predicting that the UK will see their first ever £1 billion shopping day. Amazingly E-commerce spend could double over last year with mobile transactions increasing by 12% (which now amounts to 1 in 3 transactions).
RetailMeNot conducted some research into online retailers tactics for this year. More than half of retailers are scrapping time-bound deals this year to discourage the “lurkers” who are refreshing pages to anticipate certain deals.
84% of retailers have dedicated Black Friday pages and 9 out of 10 are promoting click and collect services as well extending delivery day ranges to ease pressure on delivery companies (you can imagine a busy week ahead for them).
<h3 class="graf--p">Taking Part</h3>
So who is taking part this year? Many of the big retailers such as Argos, Arnotts, Debenhams, DID and Harvey Norman are heavily promoting their Black Friday deals many having discounts of over 30%.
Big brands are also recognising the fact that we like to buy online and are running simultaneous promotions on their online stores.
SME’s, however, are slightly behind the curve on this, only 35% of Irish SME’s can process payments online and only 1 in 6 use digital advertising (nearly half don’t advertise at all).
<h3 class="graf--p">Our Clients</h3>
Our clients are certainly getting into the spirit of Black Friday. Here’s a quick look at what some of them are up to.
<a href="http://www.dublintown.ie" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dublin Town</a>: the guys over in Dublin Town have got you sorted if you happen to go a bit mad with the credit card today. They are running a “Shop &amp; Drop” service on Grafton Street and Henry Street where <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" href="http://www.dublinatchristmas.ie/whats-on-events/shop-drop-grafon-street" data-href="http://www.dublinatchristmas.ie/whats-on-events/shop-drop-grafon-street">Dublin city centre shoppers</a> can avail of free bag minding. This is running through the weekend in case you&#8217;re not in town today.
They have also put together this handy infographic to help you plan your attack:
<a href="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/black-friday.png"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-full wp-image-1521 aligncenter" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/black-friday.png" alt="black-friday" width="340" height="1199" /></a>
<a href="http://www.carlscarpa.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Carl Scarpa</a>: Clients like Carl Scarpa are taking a slightly different approach by merging Black Friday and Cyber Monday into a weekend long promotion as opposed to the smash and grab affair of many traditional retailers, particularly electronic goods. They are offering 20% off all their <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" href="http://www.carlscarpa.com/" data-href="http://www.carlscarpa.com/">women’s shoe lines</a> on their online store.
<a href="http://www.marathonsportstravel.ie" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Marathon Travel</a>: Travel is not one you would usually associate with Black Friday but the sports travel specialists have a range of sporting trips on offer for the weekend at <a href="http://www.marathonsportstravel.ie" target="_blank" rel="noopener">www.marathonsportstravel.ie</a>.
<h3 class="graf--p">Black Friday Tips</h3>
It’s easy to get carried away on Black Friday (and Cyber Monday). Everyone loves a bargain &#8211; a steam pressure cooker at half-price looks a great deal even though you will only actually use it once. So here are a couple of tips and questions to ask yourself to avoid the traps:
<ol class="postList">
<li class="graf--li">Is it really half price? — don’t be fooled by these amazing half price (or more) offers, check out the original price and compare it. Is it realistic? Some retailers buy in “expensive’ stock and slash the price just for Black Friday.</li>
<li class="graf--li">Do I need it? Be honest, you don’t need a second tablet.</li>
<li class="graf--li">Let the internet do the work — don’t spend hours searching for deals when you have the internet to do it for you. Sites like <a class="markup--anchor markup--li-anchor" href="http://www.techradar.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Techradar</a> are very good for snooping out the best deals from the depths of the internet and Boards.ie&#8217;s <a href="http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=346" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bargain Alerts</a> forum is good for Irish deals.</li>
<li class="graf--li">Use Google alerts — if you have something very specific you are looking for you can set up a Google alert which will notify you of any new web page related to the keywords you specify.</li>
<li class="graf--li">Email — set up an account and subscribe to your favourite brands or retailers mailing lists. Email is a preferred channel for companies to share their discount codes and offers, plus you’ll be the first to know.</li>
<li class="graf--li">Social: Twitter trends and hashtags can give you info on what is happening right now (good and bad).</li>
</ol>
Finally, check out this video for some Black Friday chaos.
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<iframe loading="lazy" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vjTGmirfaR8" width="854" height="480" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
I hope you found this post interesting. For more digital marketing insights sign up to our Newsletter in the footer.
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Black Friday Tips & Trends

Content is King is a term that gets thrown around quite often, but what exactly does this mean and how does it relate to SEO and content marketing? High quality content has a purpose, meets a user’s intent in a satisfying way and tells search engines how suitable the content is to that user.
Search Engine Land has a nice infographic called the <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" href="http://searchengineland.com/seotable" data-href="http://searchengineland.com/seotable">Periodical table of SEO</a>, in which they consider quality and research to be the most important factors in relation to creating content. In this post I will discuss the elements of page quality and how you can use this information to improve your search presence.
Before I get into page quality it’s important to understand that Google is trying to satisfy users based on a search query. Google is becoming increasingly intelligent and understands that many people are simply people are looking for answers to questions. Just consider what <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" href="http://www.google.com/intl/en_us/insidesearch/howsearchworks/algorithms.html" data-href="http://www.google.com/intl/en_us/insidesearch/howsearchworks/algorithms.html">Google themselves say</a> about the goal of search:
<blockquote class="graf--blockquote graf--startsWithDoubleQuote">“Our goal is to get you to the answer you’re looking for faster, creating a nearly seamless connection between you and the knowledge you seek”</blockquote>
Their knowledge graph is a prime example of this. Understanding how people are searching can give you ideas on how to optimise your content. There are a number of ways you can find just exactly how your audience is searching. A quick and simple test is to look at Google’s autocomplete function. Say for example, imagine you wanted to do a piece about responsive web design:
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-1499 size-full" src="https://www.api.friday.ie/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/responsive-web-design.png" alt="content marketing" width="778" height="182" />
This shows you some top searches and could help direct you as to what people are looking for in relation to responsive web design i.e. Tutorials, templates etc.
Google keyword planner is also another handy tool to get search volume for specific keywords. This will give you a good insight into the potential reach of a content idea. All you need is an AdWords account to access this tool
Google is also assessing your page based on how well it meets the user’s intent. Every page should have purpose and should meet a user’s intent. There are 3 main types of intent that I would like to draw attention to:
<ol class="postList">
<li class="graf--li">Do — complete an action or accomplish a goal e.g. “buy car insurance”</li>
<li class="graf--li">Know — find out information e.g. “how to make chocolate biscuit cake”</li>
<li class="graf--li">Go — navigate to a specific page or website e.g. “brother hubbard cafe”</li>
</ol>
Once you have decided on the purpose of your page you need to write content that meets this purpose to the highest degree possible. No matter what your chosen topic area you must ask the question “What is my audience looking for?” and how does my page meet the intent of their search query?. Incorporating user intent into your content marketing strategy will focus your efforts on exactly what your target market is looking for.
<h3 class="graf--h4">Assessing Your Page Quality and Content Marketing:</h3>
Pretty much every page can be split into 3 areas; main content, supplementary content and advertising. It’s important to look at each element and ask yourself some questions:
<ol class="postList">
<li class="graf--li">Main Content — This is the meat of the page. It is the part that helps the page achieve its purpose. This can include text, images, video, reviews etc. Being thorough is key here. You need to ask yourself does the content look like it took a significant amount of Time, Effort, Expertise or Skill to complete? Essentially there are no easy shortcuts to creating high quality content, you need to do the labour.</li>
<li class="graf--li">Supplementary Content &#8211;This type of content contributes to user experience but is not directly related to the purpose of the page. This could include navigation, related articles, related products etc. The key point here is whether the SC is helpful? If not then why is it there?</li>
<li class="graf--li">Advertising — Quite self explanatory; how much advertising is on your page. Ads can affect user experience so ensure that you don’t overdo it. If you are reliant on advertising as a revenue stream, focus on using industry-approved standards. Check out <a class="markup--anchor markup--li-anchor" href="https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/6002621?hl=en" data-href="https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/6002621?hl=en">Google AdSense </a>and <a class="markup--anchor markup--li-anchor" href="http://iabireland.ie/councils/display-ad-standards/" data-href="http://iabireland.ie/councils/display-ad-standards/">IAB</a> guidelines.</li>
</ol>
So how can you assess whether your content is of high quality? Going back to 2011, Google <a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" href="http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ie/2011/05/more-guidance-on-building-high-quality.html" data-href="http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ie/2011/05/more-guidance-on-building-high-quality.html">posted 23 questions a in blog post</a> looking at what makes a high quality site. These are still highly relevant today and are very similar to their internal page quality guidelines that were ‘leaked’ last year. I won’t list all the questions in the post but here are 6 key ones that I find help me assess content:
<ol class="postList">
<li class="graf--li">Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic?</li>
<li class="graf--li">Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?</li>
<li class="graf--li">Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?</li>
<li class="graf--li">Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?</li>
<li class="graf--li">Is this article written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?</li>
<li class="graf--li">Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?</li>
</ol>
These questions should be applied to all of your content marketing no matter what the format. This will help you to deliver higher quality content that your audience will be more likely to engage with.
<h3 class="graf--h4">Expertise Authoritativeness and Trust.</h3>
E-A-T. These are 3 elements that search engines consider as factors when judging page quality. So how does this manifest in relation to your content? In short, you want to display high degrees of these traits for any given web page. Expertise and authoritativeness relate to who exactly is writing the content and do they know what they’re talking about. For example, health advice should come from individuals with medical expertise (i.e. Doctors)**. So how do you display this? Well this could simply be referring to professional sources, citing academic sources or completing bios which signal expertise.
Trust relates to the website as a whole, examples of how can you show this is ensuring you have an About us, Contact Info, Author Bios and Customer Service page. Other methods include enabling user ratings, security trust marks and of course high quality inbound links.
<figure class="graf--figure">
<div class="aspectRatioPlaceholder"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="graf-image aligncenter" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/0*OwtQ6rIUM_4VxTDd." alt="content marketing" width="531" height="169" data-image-id="0*OwtQ6rIUM_4VxTDd." data-external-src="https://cdn-static-1.medium.com/_/fp/img/media-loading-placeholder.b31hiO4ynbDLRrXWEFF4aQ.png" /></div>
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**Please note Google holds pages that affect “Your Money Your Life” to higher standards than usual websites. So keep this in mind when choosing a topic.**
We at Friday understand the importance of quality particularly when it comes to search and content marketing. If you would like to connect or find out how we can help you improve your SEO, get in touch!

CONTENT MARKETING – HOW TO IMPROVE PAGE QUALITY