JB’s Digital Update 17th Jan 2023

If you’ve been under a rock, you’ll have missed the hoohah about ChatGTP, AI content and Google. For the first time a large publisher has identified as using AI content, which it has stated is heavily reviewed and humanly edited before publishing. This then caused the inter webs to go into meltdown (kind of), and for clarification to be sought from Google. 

Google’s answer was a classic SEO one, paraphrased “It depends”. And to be honest, it kind of does. Churned content has always been bad, even if human-written, if it is not written for the user, but purely to rank in search. This comes back to the recent helpful content update. But, if the AI content is used to support the writing process, ideation, and the content is genuinely helpful, then there should be no problem. 

Having said that, AI content is usually fairly straight-forward to spot, I’m pretty sure if I can spot it most of the time, so can Google. It has three main problems: it’s bland and formulaic; it’s overly complex, so not easily comprehensible for a lot of readers; and it’s currently based on information pre-2019 (-2021 depending on what source you read), which means it’s often out-dated and inaccurate.

So, if you want to use AI to create content: go for it, but be aware the content has its downsides and still needs proper editing / rewording, which may take as long as it did previously. 

Contact JB to discuss quality content creation for SEO and users.

Dear old Apple Maps has (re-)launched Business Connect, which is its method of getting local business information loaded into maps and like Google and Microsoft versions, enables you to have a business profile with undateable information. This is great for small business, and with API connections into the large data providers, also good for larger multi-outlet businesses.

Generally, this is a good thing, as it means Google Maps isn’t the only place to find local business information, and the information has a chance of being up to date. Everybody has their faves but Apple Maps has made great strides in the last couple of years from the carbuncle it was on launch. Google Maps on the other hand has become a bloated mess which makes it almost unusable.

Follow the information at Apple to get your business properly located on Apple Maps. 

Contact JB to discuss Local SEO and what you can do with Business Profiles.

Colour me shocked, but a tech news source has said that data will matter to marketing in 2023. Well, I never. Mickey-taking aside this does have a fairly good take on changes as we move away from third-party data (cookies) and the like to first party data only, and as Apple moves away from mobile identifiers to identify Apple devices, stopping tracking at the device level as well. 

Basically, you will need to build trust with your users to get them to give you information, use design more effectively and use data. Naturally this comes with a big helping of AI to crunch the numbers, but you are looking at extended analytics tracking on site to build datasets you can use to infer decision making and customer groupings. 

In some ways this is a good thing if it drives a deeper understanding of your customer, especially if you can marry that up contextually with ad networks using similar tactics to uncover their own potential audiences. 

Contact JB to dive into tracking, analytics and performance to understand your users.

It’s always useful to get back to basics and think about some of the fundamentals for the year ahead, and this piece is good for that. 

Marketing budgets are likely to be tighter meaning a bigger emphasis on campaign efficiency. This is a no-brainer for 2023.

Efficiency usually goes hand in hand with automation, and PPC campaigns have been making great strides towards helping users out with automations – good if you’re a newbie, or not the best at PPC or marketing. That said, doing it yourself is often better if you know what you are doing, as the broad brush of automation may not match your DIY scalpel.

Finally, Microsoft is allegedly on the rise again. I’m not entirely sure about that, definitely not in search, but maybe there are opportunities to leverage exposure across the multitude of big name sites they bought in recent years. 

You should definitely be striving for efficiency in campaigns this year as well as using automation wisely. The jury is still out on Microsoft. Throw it some budget and see what happens. 

Contact JB today to discuss building sales through PPC and Paid Social Ads.

At first, I thought this was a sudden announcement of more / different variables to track in GA4 ecommerce, which is still a clusterf*ck, but fortunately it’s not. 

This is more ways of interrogating and reporting on ecommerce data with something like 12 new dimensions as analysis tools and a number of renamed metrics. 

Phew. 

So, pay attention to these new dimensions. We’ll be using them for reporting in about 6 month’s time. Gulp.

Contact JB to talk about migrating your analytics to GA4, or at least setting it up properly.