Today in Digital Marketing - 94: 🦄 Unicorns, I love them. ❤️

Episode Date: February 11, 2020

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It is Tuesday, February 11th, 2020. Happy Lateran Treaty Day, Italy. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital. Today, local drops, people block, Twitter dies, and numbers lie. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. Well, we know the number now. It's 800. 800 words that is the perfect length to use if you want your content to rank highly

in sorry hang on one second hello oh okay thanks thanks uh breaking news 940 that's the new number 940 words for the optimal ranking in Google. Unicorns, I love them. Unicorns, I love them. Hello? Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. 1,200. That's what I'm being told now. Google prefers content that is 1,200 words long. Actually, I don't know the exact number.

Maybe you think you do because you've read blog posts about it. But this week, Google provided the actual answer, and that answer is, it doesn't matter. Quoting Search Engine Journal, many people care about word count. Part of the reason is because of correlation studies that discovered Google ranks web pages that are a certain length. But the problem with all these correlation studies

is that they are correlation studies. Correlation studies have consistently led to disastrous SEO practices. For example, a correlation study from 2012 concluded that 1,500 words is a good target for optimizing for Google. As dumb as that may sound, even today in 2020, there are people who still push the idea of minimum and maximum word counts. That's why some SERP analysis software includes word count features that recommend specific word counts based on what Google is ranking. And yet, Google's John Mueller has debunked the idea that word count matters. Speaking of Google search results, if you routinely check your local search ranking, you may have noticed a couple of weeks ago a change to your position. It's not entirely clear why, but some people in SEO believe that Google updated their local algorithm on January 31st.

Some local SEO pros reporting drops and significant volatility. In one of the many local search forums, someone reported that they had a client that dropped 15 to 20 spots overnight for several prominent keywords in Google Maps. Another person claimed this is normal, that rankings in competitive industries, like legal, are almost always choppy, and the larger the city, the more it will fluctuate. For its part, Google has not confirmed any change to the local algorithm. That doesn't mean much, mind you, considering the big update last November. They didn't admit to that until a month later. So, as always, check your position. Interesting opinion piece this morning on marketing land about browser code blockers

an opinion that mirrors what we're seeing with some of our clients the author of this piece does marketing for a b2b software tool and he did this little experiment every time a lead form on his website was filled out he programmed it to pop up a notification in their Slack. He used Zapier for this, by the way. I love Zapier. I'm wearing a Zapier t-shirt right now, in fact. And then at the end of the month, he checked those numbers against the numbers that Google Analytics reported. And Google Analytics underreported the leads by 22%. That's not trivial. 22% is a big difference. So he did some reading and found out that 24% of people today use some form of ad blocker. As the author Alex Vale wrote, are ad blockers going to break all our analytics some point soon? It's looking like they will,

and we need to start rethinking what's next in how we use our website analytics. A couple of Twitter things for you today. If you are expecting an invoice from them for ads and it hasn't shown up yet, that's because they're apparently wrestling with some kind of bug in their premium subscription billing system this week. This is specific to premium API billing transactions only. And earlier I reported that Twitter was working on a way to block certain groups of people from replying to your tweets. Looks like they've massaged that a little bit.

And the current iteration is down to only three options. Open, so anyone on Twitter can reply. That's how it is today. Community, meaning the only people who can reply are people you follow or mention. Or by invitation, where only people you mention in your tweet can reply. Still no word on when those changes are coming, but I am looking forward to them. We had some unexpected good news for a client here at my agency, and it's a good reminder that you can't always trust the numbers.

This client is in medical practice, and we do regular Facebook ad campaigns for them each month. Their conversion event is filling out an appointment booking form on their website. Well, January's conversions, as reported by the Facebook pixel, were down, and not by a little. So I was prepared for an uncomfortable conversation with the client. I reported the numbers transparently, as we always do, and I asked if those numbers aligned with what they saw at the clinic. And he said, actually, no, January was great. The first week was really slow, but once our ad campaign kicked in, they started getting lots of inquiries. And in the end, they added nine new clients, half of which confirmed they found out about the practice from our ad campaign.

Remember, Facebook only knows what it can see, and that's pretty much just clicks, page views, and form completions. If someone sees your ad, doesn't do anything with it online, but picks up the phone and books that way, Facebook can't see it. I know, I know, you can use call tracking, shut up. Anyway, good lesson for us that sometimes numbers do lie. We had our brand briefing call today with that federal government client that we landed, and it went great. It's going to be a lot of work ahead in the upcoming weeks. So my preemptive caution still applies. Might have to skip an episode or

two in the next week or so. I'll try not to, but well, so you know. And hey, I have resisted the urge to fill this podcast with advertising. If this podcast is something you find value in every day, I'm going to ask you for something, a review. Rating us really does help. And in this episode's description is a link that makes this an easy one-click process. It only takes a second, and I would really appreciate it. Normally here, I would plug our agency, but we're kind of at max capacity right now. So just follow me on social. Links to my channels are in this episode's description. I'm Todd Maffin. See you tomorrow.