Today in Digital Marketing - Everything Counts in Large Amounts

Episode Date: February 5, 2024

What matters when it comes to your search engine ranking? Google will tell you, but won’t. Also: More cuts at Snapchat, LinkedIn is killing its Creator mode, and the bizarre new generative AI trend of non-consentually putting clothes ON people.Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

It is Monday, February 5th. Today, what matters when it comes to your search engine ranking? Google will tell you, but won't. Also, more cuts at Snapchat. LinkedIn is killing its creator mode and the bizarre new generative AI trend of non-consensually putting clothes on people. I'm Todd Maffin. That's ahead today in digital marketing. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack, fire damage, theft, or a lawsuit? No business or profession is risk-free. Without insurance, your assets are at risk from major financial losses, data breaches, and natural disasters. Get customized coverage today starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com.

Be protected. Be Zen. Not to get too nerdy first thing in the week, but we need to talk about cumulative layout shift, largest contentful paint, and first input delay. These are the three components of what Google calls the Core Web Vitals. They're a set of metrics that measure how well your page performs in terms of speed and usability. Here's a quick rundown of them. Cumulative layout shift measures basically how jumpy your page is.

You know, you sometimes land on a web page and you go to tap a button, but then suddenly the page loads something above it, like an ad. The whole thing shifts down and you tap something else? That. First contentful paint is essentially a measure of how fast your web page starts putting content on the page. And first input delay is how soon after the page starts loading, someone can interact with it. When Google rolled these out, it made sense that they use these to determine how high up the search rankings a web page would land. After all, if your page is jumpy or it takes forever to load, that's a bad user experience. And Google wants users to enjoy their clicks from their search engine.

Even as recently as a year ago, Google said that these page experience metrics were a ranking signal, but that's where things get muddy. On Friday, Google's liaison to the SEO community, Danny Sullivan, said on social media, quote, we don't confirm any of these things, page experience or core web vitals is what he's talking about there, as a direct ranking factor. But to reiterate, we look at many things, not one thing, and even the one thing might not be a direct ranking factor. It just meant these weren't ranking systems, but instead signals used by other systems, unquote. I mention it today because anytime Google jumps into the what matters and what doesn't, it tends to make things less clear than more. And maybe that's by design. It's not in Google's interest to share the full details on ranking. But these subtle differences between ranking factors, signals, and systems are confusing.

Maybe the distinction means something to Google, but the industry is largely looking for a yes or no here. Do core web vitals affect ranking, or do they not? As far as anyone can discern, Google's statement just before the weekend seemed to be another way of saying, we use a whole bunch of ranking signals, and core web vitals might inform the ranking engine, but not directly affect it. I think? Either way, the best advice is the simplest. Focus more on making the web experience and content as good as you can, and hope for the best. One side note here, that first input delay metric is actually being replaced next month by one called INP that measures how fast a website reacts when you interact with it.

Perhaps that makes a good timing that Google has streamlined its SEO starter guide, aiming it squarely at beginners. This major overhaul marks a big shift from the more comprehensive versions tailored for seasoned SEO experts. Google has only updated its guide a handful of times since its original release in 2018, with revisions in 2010, 2017, and now the latest edition. The new guide is described as a pocket-sized version, pared down to essentials that newcomers to SEO should focus on. While much of the previous content has been removed or condensed, there is a sprinkle of new material for readers. Snapchat is cutting about 10% of its workforce. That's about 550 people.

There are even some very high-level departures in here, including some VPs. The company, which had roughly 5,300 employees at the beginning of the year, is facing these layoffs after reducing its staff by 20% in 2022 and by another 3% earlier this year. Many analysts say Snap is finding it challenging to broaden its offering beyond its main social networking platform. High-profile projects like augmented reality glasses and a selfie drone have either been shelved or failed to reach a wide audience.

Even within its flagship app, Snapchat, attempts to mimic the TikTok success with Spotlight and to monetize through the Snapchat Plus subscription service have not met expectations. Snap's revenue saw a rise in the third quarter of 2023, following two consecutive quarters of decline. The company will announce its fourth quarter earnings soon. One interesting side quest that social media content managers sometimes play is how their brand's Instagram profile looks. I don't mean the individual posts. I mean the posts as they're seen all grouped together on the profile page. Some people go to great lengths to make this

page look really good with alternating colors or making the images connect in some way. In fact, one of the few things Instagram hasn't smacked with its giant stick of algorithm is the order in which those appear. Certainly they've wanted to, so that the post it thinks people would be most interested in would show up at the top of that profile, but doing that would jumble up what a surprising number of people work on. Now, Instagram is testing a way for you to see how your posts will look on that grid before you publish. This is something that some third-party tools have incorporated into their platforms, but it's definitely interesting that Instagram sees so much use

of this tactic that it's putting it more front and center. It might be easy to miss, though, as it just adds a small preview button in the post workflow. Some people are seeing it already on all post types except Reels. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack, fire damage, theft, or a lawsuit? No business or profession is risk-free. Without insurance, your assets are at risk from major financial losses, data breaches, and natural disasters. Get customized coverage today starting

at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. LinkedIn is phasing out its Creator Mode feature. Introduced in 2021, Creator mode was designed to help users build their presence on the platform with tools like profile hashtags, a featured section for content, and a follow button. LinkedIn says it will drop profile hashtags, but will keep the follow button. It'll also move the about section to the top of user profiles. Basically, they're trying to integrate the most used aspects of creator mode into the general user experience without having to toggle between two different modes. LinkedIn's move away from hashtags follows the general industry trend of deprioritizing them. Now that AI is good enough to understand the topics being discussed, it's not really much use for hashtags in general.

Though losing them does also mean losing very specific searches, like the kind attendees of a specific conference might use. And finally, a bunch of users from the notoriously troublesome 4chan website are using AI to digitally manipulate images of women and change their appearance and clothing. But not the way you might be thinking. No, apparently there is a counter group on the site, which is using generative AI to put modest clothing on women. One post on the site discussing this strange new trend describes the mission this way. With the power of AI, we will clothe the insta-hots. We will purify them of their tattoos. We will liberate them of their piercings. Someone created a Twitter account called DignifAI to show some of these.

Quoting 404 Media, in reply to posts by women who have only fans accounts or accounts on similar platforms. In one example, it posted an image that turns a woman from curvy and lightly draped in fabric while sitting peacefully on a chair into an extremely thin version of herself with digital artifacts having mangled her toes and hands and added several children around her, unquote. It's not just women, for the record. They took a photo of a chubby Elon Musk on a boat, and added several children around her, unquote. It's not just women, for the record. They took a photo of a chubby Elon Musk on a boat,

slimmed him down, and put him in a tuxedo. Don't forget the premium version of this podcast is just like this one, but with no ads, better audio quality, story links in the show notes, audio chapters. It comes with access to more than 20 deep dive interviews with marketing scientists, my course on building a small agency, and a whole bunch more. Tap go premium in the show notes if you want to sign up.

That's it for today. I'm Todd Maffin. Thank you for listening. I will see you tomorrow. I got holes in my life, holes in my road, holes in my heart and my soul. Holes in everything that I know. Holes in my life, holes in my soul. Holes in my life, holes in my soul. It's the season for new styles, and you love to shop for jackets and boots.

So when you do, always make sure you get cash back from Rakuten. And it's not just clothing and shoes. You can get cash back from over 750 stores on electronics, holiday travel, home decor, and more. It's super easy. And before you buy anything, always go to Rakuten first. Join free at rakuten.ca. Start shopping and get your cash back sent to you by check or PayPal. Get the Rakuten app or join at rakuten.ca.

R-A-K-U-T-E-N dot C-A.