Search Changes Affect Organic Traffic

This post was co-authored by Debra Zahay.

It's hard  for digital marketing instructors to keep up with changes in Google's search algorithm and the resulting impacts on search marketing, especially the changes in SEO. Paid search is easier to understand and there are opportunities like the Google Online Marketing Challenge that allow students to gain useful experience in conducting PPC campaigns. There is a chapter devoted to PPC and paid social advertising in edition 4.

Students need to have a basic understanding of both SEO and PPC. Many instructors may choose to leave SEO at the "basic understanding" level, and that's fine. There are many opportunities for marketers to become proficient at SEO, and I wanted to get an idea of how much instruction was the norm. There is, as you might suspect, no such thing as "norm." We looked at one recent list of best SEO training programs and found them offering various aspects of SEO and using  multiple sets of training materials and media. That's appropriate for a complex and ever-changing field. It also means that students can access specialized training like SEO for content creators. Encourage students to try free beginner's courses to decide whether paid courses or certification programs are right for them. It also confirms our own experiences in the classroom.

The free SEO training course from HubSpot is a good place to start, especially if you are already using HubSpot Inbound Marketing or other certifications in your classes. It's difficult to give students a working knowledge of SEO in the time available in most digital marketing courses, but it is possible to give an overview. SEO implementation usually requires months of effort  so it is difficult to create a project where the result of the student's work can be seen over time. In contrast, paid search projects show immediate results and paid search is becoming more important as the search landscape becomes more crowded and competitive. In addition, SEO is becoming prey to the "Alexa effect," where searchers just want one specific answer and not millions of answers. Because of this phenomenon, good content alone is not the most important thing to "rank" in search. Being able to answer specific questions and be selected for a "featured snippet" and having a recognizable brand will often result in higher rankings.

With that in mind let's concentrate on recent changes and how to cover them at a high level without getting bogged down in technical details. First, there are a number of concepts that students need to be clear about. They are:

• Quality content. The importance of content quality in search ranking is not new and is covered in both editions 3 and 4.  Although Google has never provided a precise definition of "quality," experts still regard it as the single most important factor in achieving a high ranking. This recent post has a section on content quality and a good listing of what makes poor quality content.  

• Rank brain. The existence of this machine learning algorithm has been known to search marketers since 2015 and was covered in edition 4.  MOZ has a succinct explanation: "To “teach” the RankBrain algorithm to produce useful search results, Google first “feeds” it data from a variety of sources. The algorithm then takes it from there, calculating and teaching itself over time to match a variety of signals to a variety of results and to order search engine rankings based on these calculations." This post has a section on Understanding Rank Brain that gives a reasonably simple example of trying to understand search intent that could be adapted for classroom use. This typology of search intent is also useful.

• Featured snippets. Also known as "answer boxes,"  these content-first query results boxes have been a growing part of search results for several years. I wrote about them in the context of voice search, pointing out that the article that gets the snippet virtually owns the search result real estate and is the only answer to a voice query. They are also extremely important in mobile search where the SERP space is severely limited. The dominance of the snippet in search results is why it is often referred to as "Position 0." Google is the sole determinant of the content chosen for the featured snippet. Content that answers "how to" and "what is" types of questions is more likely to be chosen for a featured snippet.

         Closely related is the Knowledge Panel, the box of business profile information that shows
         on the right panel when the user searches for a business entity.

• EAT. Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness. In its 2019 Search Quality Evaluation Guidelines, Google states that the first step in ranking the quality of a page is that it has a clear, beneficial purpose and the publication gives detailed examples of website and page objectives. Then the main content (MC) of the page is evaluated according to the expertise of the creator and the authoritativeness and trustworthiness of the "creator of the MC, the MC itself, and the website." (Section 3.2, p. 18).

• YMYL. Your Money or Your Life. According to Google, "Some types of pages could potentially impact the future happiness, health, financial stability or safety of users. We call such pages “Your Money or Your Life” pages, or YMYL." (Section 2.3, p. 9) Google gives  examples of YMYL pages that include shopping and financial transactions pages, financial information pages, medical and legal information pages, and a limited set of news pages that are "important for having an informed citizenry." They give several examples of the news category and point out that not all news articles fall into this category.
  Warning: the Google publication is 166 pages long, and the table of content alone is 4 pages long. That TOC is really the good news; it is so detailed that is is easy to find relevant content. It's a good idea for anyone who teaches search marketing in any detail to keep this publication handy, as it is an excellent reference. 
• Broad core updates. Search Engine Land quotes Google's explanation: "Each day, Google usually releases one or more changes designed to improve our results. [My note: MOZ counted an average of 9 updates per day in 2018.] Some are focused around specific improvements. Some are broad changes. Last week, we released a broad core algorithm update. We do these routinely several times per year." These are the "major updates" recorded in MOZ and SEJ timelines. They often have noticeable impact on search engine rankings and are carefully studied by search marketers.

 Both Moz and SEJ have timelines of major Google updates with explanatory links. These are far too long to use in the classroom in their entirety but you could try capturing 2019 so far or 2018 in several panes to give students an idea of how many without going into detail. Unless, of course, you think that would be de-motivating! If students are not willing to keep learning and keep changing, a search marketing career is just not for them.

Here are major Google algorithm changes in 2018 from Search Engine Week:

1. Any site without HTTPs is considered insecure 
2. Mobile page speed and mobile-first indexing
3. Featured snippets and knowledge panels
4. Display of related products in SERPs
5. Video optimization
6. Image search.

SEW also has an infographic that gives detail on these changes. Instructors could copy it panel-by-panel for a lecture that included major SEM changes in 2018. The infographic reproduced below describes the resulting trends for 2019.

The importance of User Intent has already been mentioned. Another teaching idea is to give the students the MOZ post with the example about the "olympics location" search and assign them to come up with an example of their own and discuss how marketers might understand the intent.

As I discussed in the earlier post, Optimizing for Voice Search continues to be important. Something I've learned on the subject is that asking a query in question form often produces better results than just asking using keywords, thanks to voice search optimization.

In 2018 eMarketer announced that more product searches actually started on Amazon than on Google. That means that Google Search has a competitor besides the other search engines.




The importance of brand as a factor is encapsulated in EAT. A brand must show expertise and authority--must make itself a trusted brand--to rank highly





Google has been rolling out Mobile-First Indexing for several years and its impact has been great. It means that Google looks at a site as a smart phone browser would, not as a desktop browser would. By the end of 2018 mobile indexing was used for more than half of all search results and Google had announced it would be the default for all new sites. This makes user experience on mobile sites a predominant factor in search rankings.


The importance of Featured Snippets has already been highlighted. Essentially, the content that captures the featured snippet will get the lion's share of the traffic for that query. Since many queries are already answered with featured snippets, one strategy is to write "better" content that can replace the current link. The other strategy is to locate relevant queries with no snippet and attempt to optimize for one.

According to Wikipedia, "Latent semantic analysis is a technique in natural language processing, in particular distributional semantics, of analyzing relationships between a set of documents and the terms they contain by producing a set of concepts related to the documents and terms." That may be a field of study that's not familiar to many of us, but it is a technique used in Rank Brain analysis, so LSI keywords could be important. Here's a post from the marketing manager at Alexa that explains in lay marketers' terms.



Technical SEO refers to characteristics of websites that can improve search ranking. Basically, these are the tools Google offers to webmasters. Here is a relatively non-technical description with good additional reference links.






Page Loading Speed has long been an important ranking feature as well as being important to good user experience. Remember that mobile page loading speed is now of special importance.











It's clearly not possible to discuss SEO without technical references. Hopefully this carefully-curated explanation of recent trends will be helpful in the classroom and if you choose to stop at this "overview" level that is great. Students will have a basic idea of how search marketing is changing. The links will provide more detail where you want it.

Note from Mary Lou: Doing the research for this post involved both checking facts that I thought I knew and finding information about issues on which I was pretty clueless--and there were a lot of those! What amazed me through the process was how often I was able to find what I needed by asking the question I wanted to answer and then examining the featured snippets and knowledge boxes that appeared. That alone said something to me about the power and direction of evolving search marketing.

Related Updates:
Recognizing a featured snippets opportunity 

Internet Trends Report 2019

Mary Meeker's annual Internet Trends Report is always a treasure trove of data about digital. This year's just-released report is no exception.



The video may be a bit long for class, but you can find the PPT with all the data on the Kleiner Perkins website.

Related Content
eMarketer comments on some of the important trends highlighted in the report 

Impact of the GDPR After Almost a Year

I wrote about the GDPR just before it went into effect. Almost a year has passed and it’s time to look at the actual impact it is having.

How Important is the GDPR 10 Months In?

The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the most important change in data privacy regulation in 20 years. That statement is from the EU’s own information portal, which goes on to say that, The regulation will fundamentally reshape the way in which data is handled across every sector, from healthcare to banking and beyond. What that statement doesn’t say is that it will also fundamentally reshape the way in which data is handled in countries outside the EU including the US. If you want a quick overview of the sweeping changes mandated by this law see the Key Changes page on this site. An earlier post reviewed the implications of the law from the perspective of US brands.

What Are the Main Issues of GDPR Compliance?

The GDPG mandates a strong set of protections for consumers and their data as shown in a section of the original infographic. Publishers were expected to comply with these requirements by the time the law went into effect.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/342273640423081936/

The GDPR took effect in May 2018 so its impact on marketing organizations is becoming clear. In order to plan their compliance with the GPDR organizations were advised to:

• Conduct a complete audit to find out how much customer data was collected throughout the organization. Most were surprised by how many data items were being collected and how many different groups in the organization were collecting them.
           o This led to the identification of much ROT (redundant, obsolete and trivial) data. By one estimate 70% of data in most organizations is ROT and should be eliminated.
• Appoint a data protection officer. That is a requirement of the law.
• Review and update privacy policies and statements. That includes an assessment of how permission is obtained and managed.
• Review data security policies for compliance with the law. That includes not only keeping customer data safe but also making it accessible to review and correct.
• Have procedures in place to promptly report data breaches.
• Make sure that everyone in the organization who has any contact with data is fully informed about GDPR requirements.

This short list indicates that compliance with GDPR is no small issue. As stated in the earlier post most companies were not prepared and have had to spend the last 10 months scrambling to catch up.

What Happened When the GDPR Was Implemented?

As had been predicted since its passage, relatively few businesses were fully compliant when the law went into effect in May 2018. As shown in the eMarketer chart it may not be surprising that the fewest firms in the US were fully compliant and the most hadn’t even started.










My personal favorite headline: “Facebook and Google Accused of Violating GDPR on First Day of the New European Privacy Law,” from Gizmodo.  Since then:

• France fined Google $50 million for violating requirements for obtaining explicit consent.
• The EU fined Google $5 billion for anti-competitive activities involving the way in which it required manufacturers to install Google apps on Android phones.
• Germany alone has issued 41 smaller fines charging Google with various GDPR violations.
• Facebook was fined $644,000 for leaking data in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
• A data breach that affected the access tokens of more than 50 million Facebook users could result in a fine of $1.63 billion.
• In February 2019 ITPro reported that Facebook was the subject of 10 major GDPR investigations.

The amounts of the potential fines vary by type and location. The largest can be $23.6 million at the time of writing or 4% of the total worldwide annual turnover (sales). That accounts for potential fines in the billions of dollars. Smaller companies obviously will not face fines of this magnitude but they can still be devastating. Perhaps even more important for small firms, they do not have the legal and IT resources the larger businesses can rally to comply with the law and to fight charges of violations.

The effect of GDPR is felt in more ways than fines, and some of those could have major impact on marketing activities. Digiday lists 5 marketing impacts and has charts to support them. They are:

1. The use of third-party cookies has decreased. The study covered only news sites.
2. Marketers are concerned that their martech applications may not be compliant with the requirements.
3. Contextual targeting has increased due to issues of using third-party targeting data.
4. Smaller companies, including techs, are struggling with the requirements.
5. US publishers are still holding back, waiting to assess the impact of the law.

Business applications that depend on AI, from self-driving cars to customer service, may find their efforts frustrated by data issues. Innovation across the board could be inhibited. Digital business models may be invalidated.

Customers may find the opt-in requirements frustrating and may see free services, supported by their data at present, disappear. At the same time, customers are becoming more aware of privacy issues and the value of their data.

The GDPR may stimulate more data protection efforts. California and Vermont have already passed data privacy laws that have broad implications. These efforts may affect consumers and data protection efforts in other states. Tech companies and publishers alike would find it difficult to comply with a patchwork of different laws in different states.

What Does the GDPR Future Hold?

The only thing that seems entirely clear is that there are potential positive impacts of GDPR and potential negative impacts for both business and consumers.

EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager has strong words for consumers: "There is no such thing as a free lunch. You pay with one currency or another—either cents, or you pay with your data, or you pay with the advertisements that you accept. And I think people are becoming more and more aware of the fact that their personal data do have a value."

A European security publication has another great headline that pretty much sums it up in these early days--The Future of GDPR - Dead, Diluted, Detested or Accepted? It could die “a slow, bureaucratic death,” be modified by the regulatory agencies, become the focus of voter ire, or gradually become an accepted part of the regulatory landscape; seen as necessary, perhaps even desirable

So the future is unclear with many battles to be fought on behalf of both businesses and the public. One thing is clear: it would be a great step forward if the discussion of data privacy issues could begin with the best interests of consumers and society as the central focus, but that may be too much to expect.

In this context it might be useful to review earlier posts about the data-related issues faced by the duopoly:
• Facebook
• Google

Related Updates:
Amazon also under scrutiny about use of partner data
Results after a year from Slate
Pros and cons from CNBC
Where GDPR goes from here
Cookie use, email marketing and PECR

We All Need to Be Aware of Phishing Emails

Phishing is a disgusting scam that is discussed in Chapter 17. The FBI's 2017 internet crime report identified over $675 million in losses from this type of cybercrime.

I hope most institutions have beefed up their security against these emails since the days when I used to regularly report emails to IT that my colleagues apparently ignored. My sense also is that my students were not very careful. Perhaps they were even gullible, especially to the "something for nothing" offers.

Whether you approach this subject from a personal perspective or from a business one, it is important. I think the updated information in this new post will be helpful. You could even use the Google test in class as an engagement device.

Cell Phones and Data Protection

We all use our cell phones at all times in all sorts of places. In my experience our students can be extremely careless of their data security in general and their cell phone security in particular.

I've just posted a link to the article with this excellent 2+ minute video on my privacy blog. It's perfect for use in class.

Just beneath it there's a good post (if I do say so myself :) on the major security threats in 2019 which would also provide content for a good class update.

Enjoy--and stay safe!

Great List of Resources for Teaching Digital Marketing

Prof. Jeannine Morber of Stevenson University has put together an extensive and well-curated list of resource sites for Digital and Social Media Marketing instructors.

Debra posted the list on her blog and also posted a Google Doc with the list if that is more convenient for you.

Do check it out!

And thanks to Jeannine for making it available!!!

Digital Disruption in 2019

Happy New Year! I recently found an infographic that provides an interesting summary of continuing digital disruption in 2019. I went a little further and annotated it with some useful posts and reports. Hint: getting this so it was lined up and readable on a blog page was definitely not worth the trouble! And, of course, the links weren't live, so I've put good ones at the end of each section. I think you'll find ideas, data and graphics you can use in your classes in the coming months. The original infographic now seems to be behind a subscription wall, so I'm glad I captured it.

Accenture's 2018 report on disruption

Post on chatbots including customer service applications

New report discusses use of social media in customer service

One outlook on effects of AI on marketing jobs 

Look ahead at mobile in 2019 has good data

IoT outlook in the US
IoT from a global expert with a good graphic
Privacy issues as seen by both consumers and businesses with link to Economist white paper

Updates--2019 predictions from marketers

Infographic with trends and predictions
From Social Media Examiner
From Marketing Land
Ad trends