Everyone is now aware that the best way to stand out online is through digital marketing. Businesses are looking for the newest search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques as we enter 2023.
The most important SEO components are still in place. Your starting point should still be keywords, SEO backlinks, meta tags, and organic content marketing.
We’ll talk about five SEO trends you should include in your continuing marketing plan. To find out more about them and how they may help your business, keep reading:
Do you know about Google’s EAT? It reflects how Google evaluates the information on your page. The days of creating a website and using unethical SEO methods to rank in search results are long gone.
Google now expects your website content to demonstrate your subject-matter expertise. In blogs and other written and visual content, it searches for authoritative voices. Finally, it wants to make sure you can be trusted to deliver the good or service you promise.
Although EAT is not brand-new, it is evolving into a potent tool for promoting trustworthy websites.
In SEO trends, long-form content is reemerging. People seek out informative and interesting content of high calibre. Provide useful information on your website if you want visitors to stay there longer.
Strong writers that can write about your products, services, and industry news should be part of your business SEO strategy. Make sure the content is simple to share on social media and via email.
The popularity of video is growing. Many entrepreneurs are using the camera to promote their brands today. That is a fantastic business SEO strategy that will develop further.
In several marketing sectors, video advertising is taking the place of television advertising. Also, there are social networking and streaming services with business plans where you can monetise your video output.
Around 3.7 billion people will use smartphones to access the internet by 2025. Websites must be responsive to mobile devices and mobile-friendly. Following SEO trends involves replicating the user experience that users have on desktops and laptops.
To assist businesses in evaluating the effectiveness of their business SEO, Google provides a mobile usability report.
The way we communicate online is changing as a result of artificial intelligence. If you want to enhance interaction with your digital marketing, you’ll need it for business SEO.
Examining the following AI SEO trends will help you achieve better results:
All three contribute to strengthening connections with present and potential clients. Business SEO should employ AI to enhance their outcomes, much like search engines do.
You’ll be well on your way to a successful new year if you implement these SEO trends. Keep in mind that consistency is crucial. Keep your website and social media current by providing new information often.
Do you want to learn more about SEO? Check out the services BrisTechTonic Bristol SEO Company has to offer.
The number of start-ups, consultancies, and platforms that help companies on their ESG journeys has increased dramatically in recent years.
Determining which service is best for you as an SME can be extremely overwhelming if you don’t have a committed team to focus on these challenges. Big issues like environmental issues, governance factors and inclusion and diversity can take up lots of time.
As a PR consultancy, we’ve been trying to work through this landscape for our own activities, as well as aiding our clients through the same process. We want to share what we’ve discovered thus far.
When it comes to ESG and sustainability PR, it’s of paramount importance for your communications around these topics to be founded on genuine data and concrete commitments.
ESG for SMEs
ESG strategies are still in their beginnings for the majority of businesses. Using data from an ESG survey or materiality assessment, or setting up sustainability software can be a challenge without professional help.
It’s key to research the top ESG platforms for SMEs, learn what each one offers and consider what you should think about when making your choice. There isn’t a fix that works for everyone. Engaging a specialist firm to create an ESG roadmap may be the appropriate first step for larger SMEs with a complex supply chain or stakeholder network.
Becoming a sustainable business
Choosing to invest in a platform in your ESG strategy, such as those covered here, can have clear benefits for your company in a number of ways, including data collecting, improving sustainability reporting standards, risk management, sustainability education, staff engagement, and many more.
It is difficult to classify these platforms, as they offer various services. This is a quickly changing and dynamic market, with everything from employee participation to carbon footprint estimates, and product surplus distribution to sustainability issues.
Discover a selection of sustainability software providers and ESG platforms that may benefit your ESG operations below.
A startup situated in Bristol, Spherics, assists SMEs in comprehending their supply chains’ and their own carbon emissions. The application uses what is referred to as a “spend analysis” to establish your carbon impact and interfaces with the accounting software used by businesses.
This procedure is appropriate for smaller companies to follow and complies with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. It might be difficult to manage the necessary data collection without a committed sustainability staff. Therefore, it’s essential to use an automated system like Spherics to construct a footprint and access recommendations for emissions reductions.
Data collection is paramount to be able to have the right conversations about sustainability with your stakeholders.
Ecologi began as a platform dedicated to assisting individuals in making a positive effect on the environment. Ecologi customers may do their part to protect the environment by using carbon reduction strategies and encouraging tree planting.
Since then, the company has developed and is now able to provide both global corporations and small and medium-sized companies with solutions. A Climate Positive Workforce solution, which aims to involve employees in carbon reduction, is an option for businesses.
Ecologi also introduced Ecologi Zero this year, which is designed specifically for small and medium-sized companies. The platform, like Spherics, enables data collecting, interfaces with accounting software used by companies, and helps carbon footprint creation and development. The technology, which is presently under beta testing, will be compliant with industry-leading standards for carbon reporting and target-setting.
Additionally, Ecologi Zero will work to keep expenses down for SMEs by offering a free option.
Giki, which stands for “Get informed, know your impact,” strongly emphasises knowledge in all of its offerings. Displaying your individual carbon emissions and offering advice can help you perform better and achieve your personal and professional ESG goals. The main platform has been created to support change on a smaller scale for customers.
Giki Zero Pro is all about increasing employee engagement for businesses. Additionally, this sustainability software creates statistics that companies may utilise to show their dedication to ethical environmental policies. This website demonstrates that ESG good practices do not have to be dull or reserved for senior management by using behavioural insights from study findings to ensure the sustainability journey for employees is interesting and enjoyable.
With the use of the data platform, Eevery, small businesses can be given the tools they need to enhance their performance in governance, economics, and the environment.
The creators of Eevery recognised that while SMEs are frequently dedicated to enhancing their ESG efficiency, they frequently lack the capacity and ability to comprehend intricate frameworks like the GRI standards or the EU Taxonomy.
Users then enter non-financial information regarding their ESG performance and influence on Eevery. After that, they get templates, advice on where to make improvements, a reporting dashboard, and other things.
The main principle behind Neighbourly is that local transformation leads to global change. Companies can join Neighbourly and offer money, employee time, or surplus items. Then, these resources are directed toward the areas of the neighbourhood that most urgently require them.
The platform enhances transparency and aids ESG reporting in addition to ensuring donations and support get directly to communities in need. The specific results of the involvement, such as the number of meals donated, the amount of CO2 associated with avoided food waste, or the number of volunteer hours provided, are fed into ESG data tools by the Neighbourly web platform. The portal offers public case studies in addition to statistics, allowing businesses to showcase their influence.
Another startup is prioritising local action is YouDoo. Six areas are used to break down sustainable living into manageable steps: voice, food, use less, travel, home, and money.
While the platform is focused on individual actions to progress towards a more sustainable world, there are lots of tips and approaches that can be used in business ESG strategy too. By spotlighting local projects, suppliers and opportunities to get involved, YouDoo also helps keep value and investment in the local community.
The team behind the Couch to Carbon Zero, Every One of Us, wants to empower employees and assist organisations in creating a workforce that is climate-positive rather than serving as a provider of sustainability software or ESG data. Like some of the other platforms on this list, they offer a fund to promote neighbourhood grassroots initiatives.
Getting started with your ESG strategy
ESG data, sustainability research and reporting, and platforms for responsible business operations are much more than just financial data and ESG disclosures. There are several methods for smaller businesses to obtain accessible support for your strategy, whether you’re striving for net zero or seeking to reopen the dialogue about sustainability with coworkers, it’s possible.
Problem
HTML rendering in email clients is widely inconsistent. This is due to various factors including the level of support for different HTML and CSS features, how different email clients handle unsupported features and even how they embed the HTML email message within the email client user interface. In addition to the email-specific factors, there are cross-browser compatibility considerations that must be taken into account. In fact, this goes beyond web browsers because the Outlook Windows and Windows Mail desktop apps still use Microsoft Word as a rendering engine – and not a web browser engine!
Setting the right goals
Consistent HTML rendering across email clients and presenting your brand message in an identical way regardless of the email client used to view it is not a bad thought, but given the factors listed above it is not an attainable goal.
A more achievable and impactful goal is sending emails that are consistently usable, accessible and at minimum presentable and responsive while communicating the same message without sacrificing the brand image. At Flourish we believe this approach is more effective in achieving our clients’ ultimate goals from their CRM communications.
Approach
Ensuring the recipient can access and consume the contents of the email and interact with it (where applicable) whilst ensuring the email remains presentable across all relevant email clients is a big technical challenge.
Accessibility
Building HTML emails that are accessible to as many people (disabled or not) as possible is a major goal for all emails we build. The target audience here is literally everyone. This includes people who need to use assistive technology to access the content and those who use it to make the consumption of content a lot easier. It includes who need to rely on software to translate the content and those who must use alternative input devices to navigate.
With this mindset we write code that heroes the content semantically and visually. We collaboratively work with our designers to ensure a high level of readability, sufficient colour contrast and sensible dark mode choices.
Progressive enhancement
This is why we take a progressive enhancement approach in which we first build the HTML email with the minimum needed to render semi-consistently across email clients and a big focus on keeping the content accessible. Then we progressively enhance that minimum baseline HTML with fancier nice-to-have features. These features are implemented in a way that if not rendered by the email client, they would not break that baseline HTML.
In some cases, we may have multiple levels of progressive enhancements. For example, a coloured gradient can be rendered as a solid colour in some email clients, a static background image in some or from a programmatically generated image with CSS.
The above example revolves around aesthetics only – which can be important to maintain the sender’s brand image. However, there are also cases where multiple levels of progressive enhancements are needed to ensure the email’s contents remain accessible and useful to the recipient. Due to the limited feature detection techniques in email land, this is when we utilise email client targeting techniques to fine-tune rendering with greater care for specific email clients that are relevant to the sender’s audience. Making data-backed decisions here can essentially guide our team to focus on what is important to our clients’ unique audiences.
Optimise for the unhappy path
When viewing a HTML email, there are two distinct states. The first is when the message is displayed with all external resources such as images and web fonts – which is what everyone optimises for. However, we don’t believe it is enough to solely rely on the happy path, so we pay attention to the second state: when a user disables the download of external resources. This can involve styling the alternative text for images appropriately which would typically be hidden and ensuring the content remains as accessible as possible.
Forfeiting control, intelligently
Due to the limited support of many HTML and CSS features in email, it is not always possible to control how things are rendered in all situations. For example, it is not possible to render dark mode styles in some email clients that have auto dark mode conversions such as Gmail. This does not mean we simply forfeit full control. Instead, we make intelligent choices to ensure the email still renders well in dark mode. This may involve collaborating with designers to tweak some colours and use images that render well in both light and dark modes.
Performance
Unlike the web, performance, in relation to rendering and page load time, is not a widely discussed topic in email. On a normal web page when displaying a single image, it is possible to provide the browser with several versions of the same image for different screen sizes and display densities. You can explicitly tell the browser which version to use for which environment, or you can provide it with the information needed for it to pick the appropriate version on its own. This way the user doesn’t download a 4K quality image when they are on a display incapable of displaying the image at that quality.
This is not possible in most major email clients. This is why a balance between performance and quality is needed and may take additional considerations in email. Defaulting to retina quality images (suitable for high density pixel display) is a common practice. It is vital that images are properly compressed and are saved in the most appropriate format for the image type.
When a single high-quality image is used for all environments and screen sizes, image rendering can be slow in some cases. This can potentially cause vertical content layout shifts. We can enhance the image loading experience by telling the browser to maintain the aspect ratio of the image even before it loads. This approach does not break the responsiveness of the email.
About the Author:
Hussein Alhammad is Lead Developer at Flourish and a founding member of the Email Markup Consortium (EMC), a community-led group of industry professionals working to improve the email experience for everyone. For Hussein, developing is not a profession but an art form and he’s passionate about pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved with code.
Need help ensuring your emails are reaching the right audience, with the right message, at the right time? Get in touch with the friendly experts at Flourish Customer Journey Marketing.
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the process of raising a website’s visibility and position in search engine results pages (SERPs). Several factors influence how well a website performs in search engine results, but three main factors—on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO—are viewed as being the most important.
Enhancing a website’s content, title tags, meta descriptions, and header tags for search engines is known as on-page SEO. On-page SEO is to make a website’s content relevant, beneficial, and understandable for both users and search engines. This entails making the website’s content keyword-optimised, user-friendly, and simple to navigate, as well as making sure that it runs swiftly on mobile devices.
Off-page SEO refers to factors such as the quantity and quality of links pointing to a website, its social media presence, and its reputation online that are out of the website’s control. By building links, off-page SEO seeks to increase the website’s visibility and authority in the eyes of search engines. To do this, you need to build reputable backlinks from other websites, market on social media, and build a strong online reputation through user reviews and referrals.
Technical aspects of a website that may affect its visibility and positioning in search engine results pages are referred to as “technical SEO.” This includes topics like website architecture, security, and performance. Technical SEO seeks to make sure that a website is free of any errors or issues that could negatively affect its visibility and ranking as well as that it is easy for search engines to crawl and index. Making the website’s code and structure more effective, making sure it is swift and responsive, and making sure it is secure from viruses or hacking attempts are all examples of this.
In conclusion, the three fundamental types of SEO are technical, on-page, and off-page. Using on-page SEO, the website’s content is enhanced, making it more user- and search engine-friendly. Off-page SEO raises visibility and authority by constructing backlinks and engaging in social media marketing. A website’s technical optimisation helps make it error-free and straightforward for search engines to crawl and index. This is done with the help of technical SEO.
It’s crucial to remember that SEO requires ongoing work and cannot be finished once and then neglected. To maintain and improve a website’s visibility and ranking in search engine results pages, it’s critical to continuously monitor, evaluate, and improve that website’s SEO performance. It’s also essential to keep up with the most recent trends and algorithms if you want to compete in the search engine results pages. Best practises for SEO are constantly evolving.
Any strategy for internet marketing must include SEO. By focusing on the three main SEO areas, website owners can improve their website’s visibility and ranking in search engine results pages as well as draw in more relevant visitors. With the right strategy and persistent effort, SEO could help to increase website traffic, leads, and ultimately money.
Want to learn more about SEO? Check out the services BrisTechTonic, a Bristol SEO Company, has to offer.
Like many businesses, Stuff has been through a lot of changes over the last couple of years. And this has led us to carefully consider the best way forward for the agency.
We’ve seen a shift in the way clients work with creative agencies, with an increased demand for creative support and expertise and a reduced desire for account management.
That’s why we’ve restructured and gone back to our roots as a creatively owned and creatively led studio.
Our clients still get the great service they are used to, but they’ll be dealing directly with the people that ‘do’.
We believe this creates stronger relationships, which leads to better work and ultimately, better value.
Our ethos is simple – We get creative stuff done.
Our friendly team of hard working specialists use our creative and strategic skills to help brands shine brighter and make our clients’ lives easier.
We work across the three core areas behind all successful brand communications – strategy, development and delivery.
Whether we’re creating a new brand from scratch, refreshing an existing one or delivering tactical campaigns and assets, our pragmatic approach provides realistic solutions with minimum fuss.
You can find out more by visiting our new website – https://wearestuff.studio/
Mr B & Friends has created a future-focused new brand and website for digital learning provider, Sponge.
Sponge provides workplace learning for companies across the globe. They had a strong reputation in the industry for highly creative, cutting-edge bespoke learning content but, following a series of acquisitions, they needed a way to combine a broader range of product and service offerings. Sponge were looking for one compelling proposition that would resonate with a diverse audience set whilst retaining their strong brand positioning. Following a series of acquisitions to grow their portfolio of products, the company was poised for growth and needed a strong proposition to take them to the next stage.
Mr B & Friends conducted research with customers and colleagues to understand the true benefit that Sponge delivered. From here, the agency created an Organising Thought of ‘Unforgettable learning’. Combining an understanding of the way that humans absorb information, with data science and excellence in technology delivery, Sponge engages learners in a way that makes the subject stick.
The brand has been brought to life through a new identity that combines the magic of Sponge’s creative solutions with the logic of intelligence and use of learning science to optimise learning. This emerges through the colour palette – warm, earthy tones for logic, fused with vibrant colours for magic and ever-changing shapes that collide for unexpected effect.
Nathan Crosby, Associate Creative Director at Mr B & Friends, says, “The combination of magic with logic were at the crux of our creative approach. Sponge offers more than a learning platform – they use innate understanding of how humans learn with engaging solutions. We wanted to make sure this balance of cleverness and creativity was apparent.”
The website has a straightforward, easy to navigate interface. Key benefits are called out with opportunities to learn more at intervals throughout. Relatable examples from big name brands demonstrate expertise and impact without intimidating.
In addition to providing a dynamic new brand for customers, the transformation has also become a focal point to bring together the global Sponge team, providing them with one purpose and a unified culture.
Gareth Atkinson, Associate Strategy Director at Mr B & Friends says, “From our first contact with the team at Sponge we could see the value in their category leading approach. Combining creative excellence and learning science, with the support of technology innovation, delivers the holy grail of learning. The one thing their clients need; learning that works. Cutting through the noise and jargon of the category with a clear and relatable promise, positioning Sponge for their next phase of growth as a brand-led business. It was a delight to work with such a focused and ambitious team to help them bring their vision to life.”
Olivia Haywood, Chief Marketing Officer at Sponge says, “Throughout this process, we were determined to make a clear statement to the industry that, even as Sponge grows, our core ambition of creating innovative and visionary workplace learning is stronger than ever. From the start, Mr B & Friends were fellow visionaries: we just clicked. They were true strategic partners, guiding our decisions with creative integrity to ensure we never strayed from this path and, ultimately, delivering a great result.”
Crisis management is something that many businesses hope to never have to implement, but it’s incredibly vital to have it prepared. With the rise of influencer marketing in recent years, it’s worth considering whether to integrate this into your pr in crisis management strategies.
Successful influencer marketing can help to restore your brand’s credibility, reputation and trust with the consumer. In fact, 61% of people are likely to trust recommendations from friends, families or influencers, which shows the power of this type of marketing.
You’ll need to have a good grasp of your audience, including who they are most likely to trust. From here, you’ll be able to research who can best represent your brand in your time of need. This all needs to be carefully considered; choosing someone who is potentially linked to any current or upcoming controversy could have serious repercussions for your brand.
Remember, influencer marketing and PR can help the situation, however, if done poorly, it could actually make it worse. It’s also vital to be selective with the opportunities and channels you select to promote these campaigns for the same reason as the wrong decision could blow up in your face.
We tend to think of crisis management as a fire. Imagine that you have a flame in front of you – you can either contain it to stop it from spreading or sit back and hope that it doesn’t get to that point. In the same way, it may not be necessary for them to respond to the controversy, however, your influencers will still need to be briefed.
Once they have been contacted and are on board with your strategy, it’s important to ensure that any connected parties are involved in your plan and so it’s worth crafting an in-depth response document so that they are prepped for any difficult questions or comments. If done correctly, it can be a vehicle to connect with your customers in a brand-new way.
Even once any controversy has passed, there’s still a chance that traces, such as articles, videos and responses, will be visible online. This is particularly inconvenient on social media and in Google’s search results, where results could be there forever. However, working with influencers allows you to populate your channels and search results with positive stories that win your customers back around.
Messaging should be sincere and engaging and considerate of the situation. You should always think about how it may be perceived by audiences before releasing anything. Good content will not only help to build back your reputation, but it could increase sales once more.
With crisis management, there’s no one size fits all approach and it can vary depending on the circumstances you’re working with. Ultimately, influencer marketing should go hand in hand with your PR and marketing strategies to affect how your brand is viewed.
Are you needing to manage your brand’s reputation? We are experts in PR crisis communications and influencer marketing and can help you in your time of need. Get in touch to learn more.
For more reading, check out our 9 steps of pr crisis management and influencer marketing services now.
Independent brand consultancy, Mr B & Friends, is celebrating a strong start to 2023 as the newly appointed marketing and creative agency partner for Persimmon Homes Group.
Persimmon plc was founded in 1972 and is now one of the UK’s largest new home builders,. The Group is made up of 30 regional operating businesses, and includes the Persimmon, Charles Church and Westbury brands. Across these brands, they build homes for a wide demographic of homeowner and are committed to the highest standards of design, construction and service, holding the accolade of being awarded 5 stars by the Home Builders Federation.
Mr B & Friends has been retained as lead creative partner and will work closely with Persimmon’s marketing and customer experience team across brand strategy, identity, customer engagement and acquisition campaigns, CX, physical and digital environments, and social.
Simon Barbato, Founder and CEO of Mr B & Friends, says, “To say that we’re thrilled to have been chosen as Persimmon’s partner agency is a massive understatement. We are absolutely aligned with their ambition, can see the development potential in their brands and are looking forward to learning more about their products, customers, and internal stakeholders. I’m sure this is going to be a very successful collaboration. The appointment marks a positive start to the year for us and we’re looking forward to delivering on our promises to create outstanding marketing activity for the Group.”
Sonia da Costa, Chief Customer Experience Officer at Persimmon added, “We immediately felt at home with Mr B & Friends. From the first meeting it was obvious to us that they had the talent, experience, and ambition to support our brand and marketing vision. We also aligned really well with their no-nonsense culture and early indications suggest that this will be a great partnership. We’re very excited to be getting started.”
Work has already begun on the account with the first major advertising campaign launched at the end of the year.
The appointment marks another significant win for the agency, which has recently welcomed The LEGO Group, Haleon plc, the NHS, Bristol Zoo and British Canoeing into its portfolio. With an eye firmly on growth, Mr B & Friends is also underway with plans to open a satellite office in the US in 2023.
Independent brand agency Mr B & Friends has appointed agency growth expert Gellan Watt to help accelerate the agency’s capability as it gears up for international expansion.
Over the next four years, the agency will be creating 35 new roles as it creates a presence in London, US and Singapore, while also bolstering the team at its Bristol HQ.
Gellan Watt is one of the industry’s leading growth experts. Having founded Thinking Juice in 2003, Watt went on to merge the business with the Emerge Group – a £60m agency group at exit in 2016.
A strategist and creative director at heart, Watt now works with a portfolio of independent agencies as a strategic advisor and NED.
Founder and CEO Simon Barbato says “Gellan and I have known each other for several years, and I’ve always been blown away by his energy, ideas and boldness. Being with him energises me and I’m now looking forward to him sprinkling his magic dust on our Senior Leadership Team and the wider team”.
“Gellan’s primary objective will be to grow the capability in our practice areas: strategy, creative and client service. We have such strength in each of these areas already – so this is about making it world-class. That’s his level, and that’s where we want to be”.
Gellan Watt added: “I’ve long been an admirer of what Simon and the team do at Mr B & Friends. Their work is powerful, provocative and intelligent. They’re first class. I look forward to the adventures ahead.”
The appointment commences in February and Watt will work closely with the Board and SLT to prioritise development programmes.
ChatGPT has gained a lot of coverage in the news over the past month and for good reason. This new language model chatbot developed by OpenAI has the chance to revolutionise SEO and digital marketing.
ChatGPT’s growth has been phenomenal, hitting 1 million users in just 5 days, (according to Greg Brockman, President and Co-Founder of OpenAI). It’s fascinating to compare this adoption rate to other revolutionary technologies (which you can see below), for example Instagram, took 2.5 months to get to the same user level.
We thought it would be useful to share some of the team’s thoughts on the new software and what our approach will be to using it in 2023. We will cover its full impact on search marketing covering Varn’s 4 key service lines for delivering ‘full service SEO’.
Before we get into its impact on search marketing, let’s provide a bit of background on the software and why it is causing such a stir.
ChatGPT has taken the digital marketing world by storm over the last month and many have started to incorporate it into their content development strategy, using it to contribute to articles and other forms of content be it writing video scripts and coming up with blog ideas.
So what is ChatGPT? Well let’s see what the software has to say for itself….
“ChatGPT is a language model developed by OpenAI that uses deep learning to generate human-like text. It is trained on a large dataset of text and can be fine-tuned for specific tasks such as language translation, question answering, and text summarization. ChatGPT can generate text that is similar to that written by a human and is often used in chatbots and other natural language processing applications.”
As far as Technical SEO goes, ChatGPT could potentially help streamline the process of optimising websites.
One important element of Technical SEO is a website’s navigation. It is important that the navigation makes sense to users and has a clear hierarchy. Historically this has always been something that takes a reasonable amount of time to manually review. However, an advanced machine learning algorithm like GPT should be able to think similarly to a human and predict what a user of a website would expect from the site’s navigation. For example, it is possible that GPT would be able to review your site navigation, and suggest which content should be moved to make more sense from a user and hierarchical point of view. The resulting recommendations are still something that should be manually reviewed by an SEO professional, but it could potentially save a reasonable amount of time.
Another much more dubious technique, (one that we would not recommend), is that people could use ChatGPT for Tech SEO in order to create content related to your target keywords. In order to get a page to rank on Google, it helps to have a decent amount of body copy on the page, copy which is focused on the keywords you want to rank for. Using ChatGPT to generate this content could potentially help to get a site ranking more quickly, whilst making content creation easier for your website admin. However, there are a number of problems with this approach. Firstly, AI generated content goes against Google’s guidelines. This means that if Google were to identify your content as AI generated then they could potentially penalise your rankings.
It’s interesting to note that ChatGPT has been working to add a watermark to its generated content so that AI generated copy can be identified more easily. This watermark would be difficult to remove as it is a statistical pattern that is embedded into individual words or even punctuation marks within the generated content. This watermark is another potential way for Google to recognise that the copy hasn’t been manually produced, which again could lead to penalisation. There is also no guarantee that another user will never be presented with the same AI generated content, thus also leading to potential issues with duplicate content.
When it comes to digital PR and content, the software seems to have a lot of potential applications, but for now at least, human insights, input and creativity will be needed to create content that gets cut through online.
Some of the potential applications when it comes to content assistance include:
The above is not an exhaustive list, but it is an exciting time for those in content marketing and digital as we see more sophisticated AI tools come to market which should get better over time.
It’s vital not to forget that from an SEO perspective, Google states on it’s website that when a user enters a query, their machines search the index for matching pages and return the results they believe are the highest quality and most relevant to the user’s query.
The big question is whether Google thinks bot created content is the highest quality, and we would suggest that it probably isn’t yet. Therefore we have a note of caution – be careful of any agency who says they are going to use ChatGPT to get you to the top of Google. They are most likely seeing ChatGPT as a shortcut/cheat to generating content, rather than a legitimate way to create ‘the highest quality content’. This may obviously change in time though.
Under it’s ‘Google Search Essentials’ page, Google states under its ‘Key best practice’:
“While there are many things you can do to improve your site’s SEO, there are a few core practices that can have the most impact on your web content’s ranking and appearance on Google Search.”
The first is ‘Create helpful, reliable, people-first content.’ When expanding on this Google states:
‘Google’s automated ranking systems are designed to present helpful, reliable information that’s primarily created to benefit people, not to gain search engine rankings, in the top Search results.’
Our recommendation if you are involved in Search Marketing, keep up to date with the latest developments and trends emerging with ChatGPT, but importantly spend time making sure you comply with the advice from Google about content which you can find here.
We’ve been here before, haven’t we? Automated Bidding, Smart Shopping, Performance Max. It’s been proven that we can combine a strategic human touch with the power of automation to enhance performance marketing.
Two areas of research needed before running a paid campaign are the keywords you choose to bid on and the messaging you put in your ads. This will determine who sees your ads and the likelihood of them clicking and converting. ChatGPT can be very useful as a starting point for both of these areas. It can offer up fresh ideas in an unbiased way.
Keyword Research
Ad Copy Research
Whilst ChatGPT does provide really high quality content to use for campaigns, it may not be as high quality and personal as a person writing that copy, with a touch of human insight and copywriting flair. As a human, and not an AI, we are able to factor in elements such as USPs, brand knowledge, target demographics and audience that you would want to appeal to in the ad copy. However, ChatGPT is certainly a good starting point for generating ad copy and keyword research.
Data Analytics and Reporting is one of the most important areas of search marketing. If you don’t have adequate reporting setup, you are not able to evaluate how your strategies are performing and which strategies you should push for going forward.
One way a machine learning service like ChatGPT could be useful for Data Analytics is as a provider of information. Not only can you ask GPT questions and get a concise answer, you can also add a correction or modifier to that question after the fact, and GPT is smart enough to understand. For example, here we asked about how to track a certain metric in Looker Studio, and after not being satisfied with the answer, were able to quickly modify our request without retyping the original question.
Varn: How do I track average page views in Looker Studio
GPT: To track average page views in Looker Studio, you will need to use a score card. First, create a blank report from the Looker Studio home screen. Then, use the formula box to type in ‘Views/Sessions’ and save the calculated field. Finally, add the score card to your report. You will then be able to track your average page views.
Varn: No, I meant as a graph
GPT: To create a graph of average page views in Looker Studio, you will need to use a line chart. First, create a blank report from the Looker Studio home screen. Then, use the formula box to type in ‘Views/Sessions’ and save the calculated field. Next, select your metrics and dimensions and add a new chart. Finally, add the line chart to your report. You will then be able to track your average page views in a visual graph format.
This ability for ChatGPT to condense complex information into simple text format allows us to treat the service like a co-pilot when working out tricky problems in analytics software.
Our view is that ChatGPT has the potential to revolutionise the way we approach search marketing, but at the moment it should be seen as a useful place to start to help you to quickly and conveniently curate information. We think it’s critical to remember that whilst ChatGPT is a great tool, (and will only get better), you need to use it as a starting point or springboard for creating content.
The value of excellence in search marketing deliverables, will always come by adding in the human touch.
Having an understanding of your company’s tone of voice, what works with the audience and an in-depth understanding of what you are looking to achieve is essential. This is the human bit that AI and robots simply can’t replicate.
ChatGPT will be unable to grasp the intricacies and nuances of human behaviour and responses. As people we can inherently tap into the very unique asset of our 5 senses, to ensure any AI generated content is then made relevant, engaging and meaningful. Our view is that the human power of creativity, innovative ideas and strategic understanding make content, ads and SEO insights impactful and actionable, and will always trump a ‘cut and paste’ of AI generated content. In addition, we know that for successful long-term SEO strategy, it’s critical to understand your competition and to have a clear strategy. ChatGPT will only be helpful up to a point for this… we liken it to having a football-playing robot. They’ll only be helpful if they are told what team to play on!
Our recommendation is to now let’s carefully watch this space. The search marketing landscape may well evolve and change quickly and with Microsoft reportedly to add ChatGPT to it’s Bing search engine, it’s worth keeping your eyes out for what happens to Bing market share, and Google’s response to this immediate challenge
Finally, if you are interested ChatGPT’s opinion about how it will influence search marketing, this is what it ‘thinks’….
“Its advanced natural language processing capabilities can help businesses to create high-quality, unique content and improve their search engine rankings. Additionally, ChatGPT can also be used to create chatbots that can provide faster and more efficient customer service, helping businesses to improve the user experience and increase customer satisfaction. As the capabilities of ChatGPT continue to evolve, it is likely that we will see even more ways in which it can be used to improve search marketing and other areas of business.”
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