As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact people and economies around the globe, the world of digital marketing has changed and adapted in kind. Companies like Google and Facebook are offering ways to help struggling small businesses, and digital analytics experts are providing insights into the ways data can move the needle now more than ever. To learn more about these stories and other highlights from this past month, continue reading our April 2020 digital roundup.
SEO stories
Google tests question hub for COVID-related queries in US
After previously appearing in Google India in 2019, Google’s “question hub” feature is now appearing in some U.S. searches for queries related to COVID-19. As reported by Search Engine Land’s Barry Schwartz, the search giant is running this as a “limited
pilot” in the States as a way to understand COVID-related content gaps.
This is particularly important right now as a way to help health organisations and authorities get a better grasp on what people are searching for during the coronavirus pandemic. These institutions could then use that information to publish new content and hopefully close any gaps.
Bing announces new search snippet controls for webmasters
In early April, Bing revealed that webmasters would soon have more control over how their site is previewed in snippet form in search results. To date, search snippets have appeared as text, image, or video form, and webmasters had a bit of control over how they wanted the text snippets to appear.
But with this new implementation, webmasters have more control over their site’s snippets in the SERPs. To do so, you must follow the meta tag guidelines on the Bing blog that allow for specific text length, image size, and video length.
Paid media stories
Google, Facebook offer ad credits to small businesses
As a way to help small businesses stay in touch with their customers in these challenging times, both Google and Facebook are providing access to free advertising credits for qualifying companies. Their offerings do vary a bit, though.
For instance, Google’s offer is available for small and medium-sized businesses worldwide and they have a total pool of $340 million. Facebook, on the other hand, has $100 million for both ad credits and cash grants for small businesses “in or near where Facebook operates.” If you want to see if you qualify, head over to Google and Facebook to learn more.
Facebook provides updates on COVID-19 impact on monetization
With the global pandemic being a constantly changing situation, Facebook is working to stay on top of the impact this is all having on monetization for advertisers. Since late March, the social media giant has regularly provided updates for its Business users, including the reinstatement of in-stream ad monetization in most languages.
While Facebook is working on restoring their review operations, their employees are still working in a limited capacity. What this means is that monetization hasn’t been restored in every available language yet, but they’re working on it. You can stay on top of the updates at the Facebook For Business page.
Digital analytics stories
How to track anchor text from incoming links in Google Tag Manager
After checking out the analytics for his own site recently, Digital Analytics Technical Specialist David Vallejo (creator of GTM/GA Debug plus other tools) had one thing on his mind. He wanted to make it easier to find out the anchor text that sites are using to link to his site.
So David got to work and put together a step-by-step guide for webmasters to track the anchor text of incoming links through Google Tag Manager. It involves some code and has its caveats, but you can learn how to do this for yourself by checking out Vallejo’s guide at Thyngster.
Experts weigh in on the importance of analytics
In an article for Forbes, data strategy consultant Brent Dykes outlined why he believes that “[c]ompanies need to pivot and adapt quickly to the new business environment” presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. And to make his case, he spoke with three leading Digital Analytics experts to gather the top 6 ways to “double down on data.” Get the full rundown at Forbes.
Ayima news
As we continue to move through these challenging times, our teams remain focused on providing the best possible solutions to our client base. We are also continuing to find time to offer advice and guides through our blog content.
Blog posts
- Step-by-step implementation of Google’s advice for health organisations: SEO Associate Roxanne Métivier provides an easy-to-follow guide for health orgs to make sure their sites can be found.
