SEO News

Posted by randfishFrom Google’s interpretation of rel=”canonical” to the specificity of anchor text within a link, there are several areas where we thought Google would make a move and are still waiting for it to happen. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, R…

Ryanair suffers massive drop in search rankings

• Data from Intelligent Positioning shows that Ryanair has suffered a massive drop in Google rankings as a result of a badly implemented URL restructure.
• The airline implemented a URL restructure during March and April, but has failed to correctly redirect the old pages. As a result Google is still picking up old 404 URLs.
• This chart shows how the situation has changed between March 6 and April 6 2014. The columns on the left show the original ranking and the URL for the various search terms, while the columns on the right show the new ranking and URLs as of April 6.

Click on chart to enlarge

How to improve customer lifetime value?

• Almost two-thirds of businesses (64%) rate customer experience as the best tactic for improving CLV, followed by better use of data and personalisation. 
• Just 42% of companies are able to measure CLV, but the majority do agree that the customer experience is key.
• The findings come from the new Econsultancy and Sitecore report entitled Customer Lifetime Value: Building Loyalty and Driving Revenue in the Digital Age.

Marketing budgets on the up

• Marketers are in a bullish mood according to the Q1 2014 IPA Bellwether Report, which recorded the largest single upwards revision to marketing budgets in 14 years of data collection.
• It revealed a net balance of +20.4% of companies registering an increase in budgets during Q1 2014, up sharply from Q4 2013’s +11% and the previous survey record of +12.3% in Q3 2013.
• Companies also remained upbeat regarding their own financial prospects with the net balance of firms that have become more optimistic remaining historically high at +41.7%.

Pizza Hut tops social charts

• Pizza Hut came out top in the Social Brands 100 Youth Ranking published by Headstream this week.
• This ranking identifies which UK brands are best at building and maintaining social relationships with young consumers via Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
• Read Christopher Ratcliff’s post to find out whether the Hut deserved its spot at the top of the pile.

Facebook clamps down on spammers

• Facebook has explicitly revealed what it will be seeking to crack down upon within its latest news feed update.
• Marketers needs to steer clear of like-baiting, overly-shared content and spammy links.
• So if you’ve been using your Facebook page in a manipulative, click-baiting manner, Facebook will be making things a lot harder for you. 

Soon, all email will be personalised

• According to 78% of the respondents who took part in Econsultancy and Adestra’s Email Marketing Industry Census published last month, in the next five years all email communication will be personalised.
• The census also shows that one in three companies are already engaging in content personalisation, a 27% increase from last year, with 37% planning to include this as part of their email marketing activities. 

Trust issues with Bitcoin

• New research from Venda has found that 71% of UK consumers would not like to have the option to pay using Bitcoin.
• The main concern for 43% of consumers was that they did not trust the virtual currency, although the same number also admitted that they don’t fully understand how the currency works, which could explain the distrust.
• In addition, almost a quarter (24%) of those that didn’t want to use Bitcoin reported that they were concerned that the currency is unstable.
• The survey was carried out among a representative sample of 2,052 UK adults online.

Honda creates most viral car ads

• Honda is apparently top dog among car brands when it comes to creating viral ads in the UK.
• Visible Measures compiled a list of the top 10 most viewed UK Car ads since 2010, which shows that Honda ads takes the first two places.
• ‘Hands’ came top with just over 12m views while ‘An Impossible Made Possible’ coming second with 7.m views.
• Chevrolet takes positions three and four with VW rounding out the top five.

Google’s PLAs proving a popular ad format

• More than half (56%) of digital marketers are using Google Product Listing Ads (PLAs) to target mobile users according to new research. 
• And nearly one-third are allocating new incremental budget for PLAs rather than making it a part of their overall search budget while 83% said PLA performance is on a par with, or better than, traditional text based search ads.
• The findings come from a Kenshoo survey of 89 global search marketing professionals.

The Guardian’s record traffic

• The Guardian has broken through the 100m monthly unique browser barrier for the first time, according to the latest ABC digital figures. 
• A record 102,286,881 monthly unique browsers accessed Guardian and Observer content during March – an increase of 12.27% on February’s traffic. 
• This is an increase of 30.65% year-on-year, while page impressions were up more than 40%.
• The increase has been driven by strong increases in international traffic which saw a rise of 12% month-on-month to 69m monthly unique browsers.