This is it! 2020 has been one for the history books but it is finally over. 2021 will still be a struggle for many as we recover, but the industry leaders of the digital world have no intention of slowing down. Check out what happened as the year came to an end this December:
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Google Ads Lead Form Extensions Got Updated
We are pretty much all familiar with Google Ads extensions, such as a call or sitelink extension. A year ago, Google added a new type of extension with lead forms. This extension lets people submit their information and make an enquiry about the advertised services directly from the ads they saw, which is really similar to how lead generation forms work on LinkedIn ads.
There are 2 updates being rolled out for lead form extensions – the first one is the ability to add a lot more questions to customise your forms to suit your needs even further, with over 50 available questions you can choose from.
And the other update is that now you can automatically send leads to your CRM system through your lead form extensions, so no more downloading and adding them manually. You can either choose to webhook integration for this or you can use Zapier. These updates will definitely make these extensions more useful and efficient for marketers.
Twitter’s New Audio Spaces Feature
The interest in audio content is currently on the rise and Twitter just joined the party! Twitter has rolled out the feature to send voice recordings as tweets earlier this year but now they’re testing audio spaces, which are technically audio chat rooms.
This feature will let users create meeting rooms that are audio-only and you can either join in and participate or you can choose to be a listener.
The feature is also somewhat like Instagram live, as Twitter will use Fleets to notify people of live broadcasts happening that might be of interest to them.
They’ve said ‘it’s a small experiment focused on the intimacy of human voice’ and we can certainly use a bit more ‘intimacy’ in our lives right now. Will you have a play around with this feature or do you think we have enough chat features available across social media? Let us know.
LinkedIn Reveal New Product Pages
The new “Products” tab on LinkedIn, allows businesses to highlight their products, adding rich media such as video, images, descriptions, and more. The new feature enables organisations to showcase product endorsements, testimonials, and user reviews, along with lead generation through custom call-to-action buttons like demo requests or contact sales forms.
Beginning with over 10,000 pages in the B2B software category, plans are in place to roll out to other industries in the new year.
Google Mobile-First Index
The digital marketing world has been talking about mobile-first indexing since 2016 and now this will be the exclusive way to index one’s sites on Google and to make the various contents climb the SERPs.
So what is mobile-first indexing? Mobile-first indexing means Google predominantly uses the mobile version of the content for indexing and ranking. Historically, the index primarily used the desktop version of a page’s content when evaluating the relevance of a page to a user’s query
From March 2021, the desktop version of a site will no longer be indexed. This is what Google’s Senior Webmaster Trends Analyst said very clearly. John Mueller said, the Google Mobile-First Index will completely eliminate the desktop version, which will no longer be given any importance. Please note: it is not just web pages that will be removed from the Google index, but all the resources connected to them. The web will be indexed exclusively with Googlebot Mobile.
The fear of losing traffic is just around the corner, as is always the case when Google announces a change – What shall we do? Facilitate Googlebot: Googlebot must always be able to scan the website. This means that the instructions in the robots.txt file must always be kept under review and modified if necessary.
It is also necessary that the robots meta tags are identical and that the content matches perfectly in both mobile and desktop versions. Pay attention, therefore, to the headers and meta information, which must be identical to facilitate Googlebot scanning and to allow Google indexing.
What do we suggest?
- Make sure you have, or design, websites that work well on mobile devices (page layout – make changes to the content and link graph. If you have developed an SEO audit and a purely desktop design of the site, it is probably worth reviewing it by assessing the distribution of links with the mobile user agent.)
- Mobile User Experience
It will be essential to work on improving the user experience, especially on smartphones.
- Mobile texts
In this sense, the use of Long Tail Keywords is highly recommended. That is keywords composed of two or more terms, to optimise content for voice search.
- Page Speed
The speed at which your site loads will make all the difference, both in terms of user experience and ranking. Always remember that it is a very important ranking factor
Amazon Posts*
Amazon Posts* (still in beta version) is a new way to increase the consideration and searchability of a brand and products through lifestyle images in a shoppable feed on Amazon.
Posts show a brand’s story to interested buyers/users as they browse its product categories on Amazon. Buyers/users can click on posts to explore the brand’s feed and discover product pages directly from the feed. Simply click on the feed of the chosen brand and the detail pages of the various products can be discovered. Posts* is available on the Amazon shopping app (iOS and Android mobile devices) and on the mobile web.
Posts* is available to sellers registered in the Amazon Brand Registry, vendors, and agencies representing vendors. You do not need to advertise on Amazon to start using Posts*; however, you do need to sell products on Amazon. Amazon DSP customers can also create posts, but they must have an advertising console account in addition to their Amazon DSP account.
