Month: January 2022

SEO Market Updates: December 2021

Posted on by Joshua Carter

Join Fusion’s SEO team as we round up last month’s major industry updates

December 2021 Product Reviews Update

On 1st December Google announced the rollout of a new product reviews update, following on from a previous update released in April 2021.

The news was announced within a new Search Central blogpost, with Google writing that the update was designed to reward “high-quality product reviews” and that webmasters may notice changes in how their reviews are ranked as a result.

According to Google, the decision to release a new update was largely based on new feedback from users on what is viewed as “trustworthy” or “useful” review content. This feedback has formed the basis of two new best practice recommendations, taken into account in the most recent update:

  •  Provide evidence such as visuals, audio, or other links of your own experience with the product, to support your expertise and reinforce the authenticity of your review.
  • Include links to multiple sellers to give the reader the option to purchase from their merchant of choice.

As well as forming a part of the most recent update, the new recommendations have now also been added to Google’s official documentation around product reviews.

As with the previous update, only websites offering product reviews should be impacted by the recent release, with no other content types impacted.

Google Search Console Experiences Widespread Bugs

December was a rocky month for Google Search Console, with the platform experiencing at least two widespread issues impacting the accuracy and accessibility of data.

In mid-December, many webmasters reported a large spike in redirect issues within the platform, often across multiple websites. Following coverage of this, on 13th December Google stated that the spikes reported were false and that this was due to an issue with the platform:

Just a few days later another issue was reported, with some users finding that they were unable to access and essentially locked out of their account. Google again announced this was a bug:

Google has since confirmed that both issues are now resolved, although some within the industry are continuing to report sporadic issues with the platform. No further information has been provided as to the reasons behind the bugs, with Google simply stating that they were “internal issues”.

No Penalty For Failing to No-Follow Affiliate Links

In a recent Q&A session, Google’s John Mueller stated that failing to correctly no-follow affiliate links is unlikely to pose a real issue.

In answer to the question “Would I be penalized if I don’t set the rel sponsored or rel no follow for my affiliate links?”, Mueller stated:

Probably not. […] From our point of view, affiliate links fall into that category of something financial attached to the links, so we really strongly recommend to [add a rel sponsored or rel no-follow tag]. But for the most part if it doesn’t come across as you selling links, then it’s not likely to be the case that [Google] would manually penalize a website for having affiliate links and not marking them up.

As affiliate links indicate some kind of financial relationship between the linking and linked-to website, Google considers it best practice to ensure that they are tagged with a “rel=sponsor” attribute or”rel=nofollow” attribute. Both tags prevent equity from being transferred to the linked-to website, with the sponsor tag also indicating to search engines clearly that a financial agreement is in place between the two websites.

However, Mueller’s answer indicates that failing to use the tag for affiliate links is unlikely to cause any real issue, despite this being contrary to best-practice guidelines.

Watch the question at 31:58 here.

100k URLs Unlikely to Pose Crawl Budget Issue

Google’s John Mueller recently stated that websites sized around 100k URLs shouldn’t encounter issues with crawl budget. In response to a question on Twitter focused on whether to de-index lower-quality content, Mueller tweeted:

https://twitter.com/JohnMu/status/1473268153316691975

Although Google’s official documentation on crawl budget contains brief definitions of what it considers a “Large site” (+1,000,000 URLs) and a “Medium or larger site” (+10,000 URLs), there is no information given on how well Google is able to handle both size brackets.

As such, Mueller’s tweet provides a useful – albeit informal – guideline for webmasters to follow when considering the impact of website size.

If you found this update useful, check out our latest blog posts for the latest news, and if you’re interested in finding out more about what we can do for your brand, get in touch with the team today.

Best Marketing Campaigns of 2021

Posted on by Hira Nasir

2021 has been another interesting year with many ground-breaking brand marketing campaigns, reaching customers through their innovative, meaningful, and quirky ideas.

With so many buzzworthy campaigns, here’s a list of our favourites of 2021! Worth keeping these in mind as a source of inspiration for your next brainstorm.

 

Welcome Back – Guinness

There is no doubt that the general public had missed going to pubs for a pint during lockdown. We surely had!

So, when lockdown restrictions started to ease and pubs were allowed to operate again in May 2021, the beer giant, Guinness, launched a campaign to welcome people back. The video ad included random objects having a resemblance to a pint of Guinness, whether that’s a black bin covered with snow or white pigeons on a black chimney.

The aim of the campaign was to inspire a variety of emotions including a feeling of positivity, nostalgia, and excitement. The idea was also promoted on social media with the #LooksLikeGuiness hashtag encouraging users to share their examples of white and black Guinness lookalikes.

The campaign was a great success and led to Guinness being the number one most talked about beer brand at the time with engagement 3.5 times higher than the industry benchmark.

Cuthbert the Caterpillar – Aldi

We’re sure everyone has heard about the Caterpillar war between Aldi and Marks & Spencer. When Aldi launched its Cuthbert the Caterpillar Swiss roll, M&S launched a legal action against the supermarket claiming the company had infringed the trademark for its Colin the Caterpillar cake.

Aldi’s response to this was brilliant and unexpected. They managed to turn a complex situation into a national debate through a series of funny tweets using the #FreeCuthbert hashtag.

Within hours, the brand was trending on Twitter and the topic became so big that it gained coverage from national news channels such as BBC Breakfast, Good Morning Britain, newspapers such as The Independent and Daily Mail, and creators also generating content through memes and parodies.

This reactive marketing effort gained great results for Aldi as its Twitter following increased by 30%, with a 15% engagement rate on socials. The score for news sentiment also increased by 8.5%, with its purchase consideration increasing by 6.8%.  

Beanz on Bix – Weetabix

Another popular campaign you’ve probably come across either on social media or heard about through friends or colleagues, Beanz on Bix!

The breakfast cereal company wanted to drive brand engagement and demonstrate its versatility by going ahead with a bold and weird idea of having baked beans on their popular wheat biscuits.

The aim of the campaign was to generate conversation on social media, and it did exactly that. When the brand introduced the idea on Twitter, users were so outraged by the weird combination leading to involvement from other brands such as Specsavers, Nando’s, KFC, and more.

The idea became so viral that it was covered by all mainstream media outlets such as Good Morning Britain, The Express and LADbible, to even being discussed in the House of Commons.

Although the campaign received plenty of mockery and conversation, it did achieve its goal of increasing user engagement as brand awareness grew by 40% with sales up by 15%.

Kindness, the greatest gift – Amazon

Let’s conclude with a favourite Christmas campaign – Kindness, the greatest gift! With the past two years being a true challenge for everybody, especially those who have lost their loved ones, Amazon’s holiday ad message looked to promote kindness.

The video campaign consisted of a young woman forming a new friendship with her neighbour while dealing with her recent traumas. To show her support and kindness during this tough time, her neighbour gifted her something of interest from Amazon.

This has truly touched our hearts at Fusion as we all believe in the power of kindness and how a small act can help people feel better during a difficult time.

We hope you’ve enjoyed our round-up of best 2021 marketing campaigns. To find out how you can create a long-lasting impact on your target audience through digital marketing, get in touch with our expert team to create results-driven SEO, PCC and Social Media campaigns.