Kooznews: August 2022

What will you find in August’s edition?

SEO
Ahrefs Study Finds Google Search Console Omits Up To 50% Of Keyword Clicks
Google Resolves Indexation Issue In Google Search Console Report

Paid Media
Meta adds new Instagram feature to boost reels
Meta’s ad revenue is on the decline for the first time

PR & Content Marketing
Google’s ‘helpful content’ algorithm update is rolling out – here’s what you should do
‘No objective way to count links’ for your SEO, says Google

Let’s start with SEO…

Ahrefs Study Finds Google Search Console Omits Up To 50% Of Keyword Clicks

A recent study conducted by Patric Stox of Ahrefs has taken a deeper dive into the keyword reports that Google Search Console provides for users. In their study, just under 150,000 sites were analysed and compared to find any instances of organic keywords and organic clicks which were missed in the Google Search Console report.

Astonishingly, the report found that on average, up to 50% of keywords will be missed in the Google Search Console report. There’s a lot of variation too; a site with 100 million clicks had 90.3% of the keyword data missing, whilst another site with 63 million clicks had just 2.27% of missing terms.

So, why does this happen? Well Google states that it reserves the right to omit any searches that contain personal or sensitive information. However, it’s highly unlikely that 50% of searches meet this criteria. It’s much more likely that these are queries which are searched very infrequently and/or it’s the first time they’ve ever been searched. Because, after all, up to 15% of queries in Google have never been searched before.

If you’re curious to find out how many keywords are omitted within your own Google Search Console you can simply copy the Data Studio report here and select your own Google Search Console as the data source. The discrepancy between the left grand total and the right grand total is how many keywords are missing.

Google Resolves Indexation Issue In Google Search Console Report

In a tweet written on August 17th, Google wrote “Today we fixed a Search Console issue that affected many properties: we were reporting pages that are not indexed as being indexed.”

This is an issue that likely affected most web properties, where the indexation statistics within the Coverage report of Google Search Console showed inaccuracies in the number of pages indexed.

Unfortunately, you may have noticed a false positive increase for your pages being indexed and will now subsequently see the true number being reflected. Whilst a little annoying, it’s worth knowing so that any recent fluctuations in your sitewide indexation can be explained.

For more information on getting your pages indexed, our recent article on fixing ‘discovered not currently indexed’ in Google Search Console should prove useful.

Moving onto Paid Updates…

Meta adds new Instagram feature to boost reels

Meta has added the option to boost reels within the Instagram app to make it easier for people to place budget behind their video posts. As both Facebook and Instagram pivot more towards TikTok-style content, Meta want to make it easier for people to promote their videos to a wider audience.

Meta said: “To be eligible for boosting, your Reels must meet the following criteria:

The video must be less than 60 seconds long
The file must have a 9:16 aspect ratio (vertical full screen)
The Reel cannot use any third-party IP, including copyrighted music, interactive stickers, camera filters, or GIFs.

To boost a Reel, find the Reel you want to boost in your profile grid, and then tap Boost Post. You’ll be able to enter in a few promotion settings and define your budget for the campaign.”

It comes as no surprise that Meta unifying this feature across all content. However, the ease of boosting posts comes with it’s cons. At Koozai, we’ve always recommended to promote posts via Ads Manager as boosted posts can be quite unreliable and it’s an easy way for Meta to promote your post in a way that gives you less control. Promoting your content via Ads Manager offers greater management of your audience, budget, scheduling, bids, and objectives. Though boosting is a great way to get into the advertising side with it’s easy to use features, it’s also an easy way to get sucked into boosting posts with no clear goal.

Meta’s ad revenue is on the decline for the first time

Meta has reported their first ever decline in ad revenue for their social media platforms – a trend that they expect to continue. Meta’s latest earnings report reveals the company’s first-ever year-over-year decline in advertising revenue, signalling a downward trend that it expects to continue.

“The Q2 2022 earnings report from Meta marks the end of its decade-long streak of ad revenue growth.” It is said that the decline started when Apple added new privacy features to their operating systems that gave users the chance to not be tracked on apps. These changes have made it harder for advertisers as people are then shown less relevant ads – leading some advertisers ditch the platform entirely.

When Apple announced that their privacy policies were changing to give users more privacy, it was expected that there was going to be some sort of drop off in terms of impressions, conversions, and revenue. With this comes a decline in advertisers using the platform and the decline in Meta’s ad revenue doesn’t come as a shock. However, what this does do is open the door for cheaper conversions. As more people drop Facebook as an ad platform, it opens the advertising space to target people with less competition involved. Of course, the overall decline in Meta’s ad revenue isn’t particularly great to hear, and the platform could get worse if it continues. However, for the time being, if anyone was waiting to jump into Facebook and Instagram advertising, now may be a good time to start as competition isn’t as high as it used to be.

Digital PR & Content…

Google’s ‘helpful content’ algorithm update is rolling out – here’s what you should do

It’s official – Google has started rolling out its hotly anticipated ‘helpful content’ algorithm update. The new update is designed to reward people-first and genuinely helpful content, rather than articles purely written to rank for keywords in search engines.

So far, some industry players are reporting that the update may not be impacting search results as much as some anticipated, however the update is not yet fully implemented and may take some time to show in the results.

So, what can you do to ensure your content has the best chances of ranking in light of the new update? Here’s a few of our recommendations following this latest update:

Write content that’s relevant to your industry; don’t try to be all things to all people and try not to stray too far off topic. This doesn’t mean scaling back content on related subjects – but it does mean focusing in on those topics most closely associated with your industry.
Demonstrating ‘firsthand experience’ is now more important than ever. Whether it’s a product review, a ‘how to’ guide or a new recipe – clearly demonstrate the author’s firsthand experience of that issue.
Your content needs to fulfil a purpose for your audience. That means answering their question and providing information that fully addresses the search intent of the user.
Structure your content to give the reader a good ‘user experience’. This means you should be doing everything you can to make the page easy to navigate and answers easy to find.
Don’t promise an answer to a question when there is no firm answer. For example, many news outlets will run articles promising the answer for the release date for new movies – only to bury the fact that the new movie doesn’t yet have a release date two thirds of the way down the page. This can be incredibly frustrating for the user and is a tactic that is likely to lose you rankings under this new update.

‘No objective way to count links’ for your SEO, says Google

There is no ‘objective way to count links’ to your website according to Google’s John Mueller in a series of new tweets. It has long been known that backlinks are a one of the most influential ranking factors when it comes to your website’s SEO. This has led many to use tools such as Ahrefs, Moz or Semrush to measure the number of backlinks pointing to their website.

However, John Mueller has recently said “Don’t focus on the number of links any particular tool shows -there is no “correct” way to count links, interpretations vary wildly. Think of links as a way that people can reach your site, not as a metric of its own. The number of links any tool shows is not a ranking factor.”

What this doesn’t mean is that backlinks aren’t a valuable ranking factor; they very much still are. It’s just that Google doesn’t use the number of backlinks to your website as a ranking factor in itself. What Google is saying is that the way many people evaluate backlinks is flawed. It isn’t necessarily the number of links that matters, and many of the third-party tools used to measure the value of links do so differently.

In our view, this doesn’t mean that we should give up on trying to measure backlinks – but it does mean that we should take third party metrics with a pinch of salt. Knowing how many links you have and the potential ‘strength’ of those links is useful, but we should remember that these tools are not Google or an objectively scientific measure. They give us a good indication of the direction of travel and tell us the general trend of your website’s authority. Just don’t read too much into small movements in the metrics, or you’ll risk coming to false conclusions.

New content to get stuck into

We’ve always got some new blog content to cast your eyes over. Our Koozians have been busy putting blog content together, so you have a great source of information for any SEO, Paid, Content or PR queries and questions. We’ve recently published the following:

Getting creative & client wins

We are delighted to report that this summer our lovely digital marketing experts successfully delivered a free, exclusive SEO webinar for construction industry professionals in collaboration with Construction Buzz, the official partner of UK Construction Week. The webinar had over 100 registrants, received fantastic feedback and provided takeaway tips that marketers can implement themselves. It also covered what SEO is, how it works, where to start with keyword research, important technical SEO fundamentals and how to optimise content for search engines. To catch up on the webinar, click here.

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