Today in Digital Marketing - H1 tags are really important! Naw, just kidding.

Episode Date: September 30, 2019

On today’s show: Ready the cannons! Instagram’s starting to fire its e-commerce weapons. Brand managers who have to sort through thousands of YouTube comments are getting some good news Some nice new additions to the Google Ads back-end And remember last week when I told you AppSumo was the bomb? Well, that bomb may have exploded. And not in a good way. That “Hide Replies” feature on Twitter may be something you DON’T want to use for your brand’s account And Google says “Don’t fret the H1 tags. Turns out, they’re not that important after all.” Today in Digital Marketing is brought to you by engageQ digital. Can we help you with YOUR brand’s digital marketing and social media? Let’s chat. http://www.engageQ.com or call 1-855-863-6233. More about Tod: Twitter @todmaffin • LinkedIn • Facebook • Web Site --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/todayindigital/messageOur Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

It is Monday, September 30th, 2019. I'm Todd Maffin. On today's show, ready the cannons! Instagram is starting to fire its e-commerce arsenal. Brand managers who have to sort through thousands of YouTube comments are getting some good news. Some nice new additions to Google Ads' backend. That hide replies feature on Twitter may be something you don't want to use for your brand's account. And Google says don't fret the

H1 tags. Turns out they're not that important after all. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. First, a trivia question for you to chew on. I am about to list a handful of social channels in a second. Your job, tell me which referring channel is responsible for the most amount of time spent on site. In other words, when people come from these channels and land on your brand's website, which channel is sending people who spend the longest amount of time on your site? Ready? Here are your choices. YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, Pinterest, or Twitter.

The answer at the end of today's show. Some nice changes to Google Ads backend. If you've relied on their keyword recommendations before for your brand's campaigns, apparently they will be more relevant from now on and will only pop up if Google thinks they'll drive more traffic than what you currently have. Also, keyword recommendations can now include broad match, which is new, and there's a new UI for it all, a new table view format, so you'll be able to sort those recommendations by the largest potential impact on your campaign.

And finally, you are now able to approve or reject those recommendations en masse at the manager account level. If your brand has a busy YouTube channel that attracts lots of comments, you will be pleased to know that they are adding some nice features that help you wade through all those comments. Starting soon, you'll be able to filter by which comments have been responded to

and which have not. Or you could filter to only see the comments that contain a question. Or filter by how many subscribers the commenter has and a couple of other smaller filters. Really nice touch there for busy channels for sure. YouTube says it was their top feature request. Instagram is bulking up its e-commerce muscles. Today they announced they're testing a few features which,

if you sell pretty much anything online, you may want to pay attention to. Those features include a new call to action button reading set reminder. What is that reminder exactly? Well, if you're a brand and you set a product launch date and users choose this option, they will get a reminder on their phones just prior to your product launch. There's also a product launch sticker for stories where that set reminder button is front and center. This, of course, is all part of Instagram's continuing march into having e-commerce purchases occur right within their app. Last March, they launched a very limited test run of that with only about 20 brands.

No word on when the full e-commerce platform will get to all brands, but those new product launch reminder functions are obviously a sign that they are getting close. And speaking of Instagram, they continue to try to lure YouTube influencers over. They've started now a dedicated account called At Creators, which has started delivering tips and tricks. Though as SearchEngineJournal.com noted today, quote, Instagram still has yet to introduce any incentive whatsoever for creatives to work harder than they already are. Unlike YouTube, which lets popular creators earn money directly from video views, the only option for Instagram users to earn money is through third-party sponsorships.

In other words, Instagram wants more content, but apparently doesn't want to pay for it. The only thing Instagram is offering is exposure in the form of potentially being featured on the at creators account, unquote. Earlier, I mentioned the new feature that Twitter is rolling out that lets accounts hide certain replies from the stream. Now that I've seen it in action, not so sure you're going to want to use it. For one, at least on Twitter's own mobile app, if you have hidden inappropriate comments, it pops up a giant screen that announces, quote, some replies have been hidden by the tweet author,

and then literally points people to the button that lets them see those replies. I'm going to be honest, and maybe I'm just a drama-loving jerk here, but now that is going to be the first button I tap when I see it. You know what I mean? Anyway, maybe give it a thought before you use that one. Okay, lightning round. Number one, Google is removing snippets from their search results for European media. It's all because of new legislation in France. If you think you might be one of those brands affected, check for a notification in your search console. Number two, Spotify now lets you

add podcast episodes to playlists. Number three, don't freak out if your CPMs are spiking the last couple of days. Remember, we are at the end of a quarter. Those CPMs will come down a bit tomorrow, but we are heading into the holiday shopping season, so your mileage may vary. Number four, I got an actual bell to make this ding sound. No more playing with stupid sound effect files. Number five, Google now says don't worry too much about your H1 tags. Wait, what? Yeah, on a recent Google Webmaster webinar,

someone asked if it's okay to have multiple H1s on a page, or if that was bad for your ranking. Conventional wisdom, of course, has been just use that one time. But Google engineer John Mueller told that person, quote, "'You can use H1 tags as often as you want on a page. There's no limit, neither upper nor lower bound. Adding, quote, your site is going to rank perfectly fine with no H1 tags or with five H1 tags, unquote.

The more you know. And as for that trivia question at the top, the channel that is sending people to your site who stay there the longest? Instagram. That's what e-commerce platform Yotpo found in their recent study. Instagram traffic stays on websites an average of 192 seconds, that's more than three minutes, and is 40% longer than visitors from Twitter, 45% longer than Facebook, and 62% longer than visitors from Pinterest. Yacht Post says, quote,

Outside of social media, the traffic channels that come closest to matching Instagram's engagement rate are email, direct, search, and referral. This is likely because visitors from those channels come with specific intent or a previous relationship with the brand. And that is what you missed today in digital marketing, brought to you by engageq.com. If you're listening to this on the web and haven't yet subscribed, you will find direct one-click links for your podcast app at bit.ly slash today in digital. I'm Todd Maffin.

Follow me on Twitter at toddmaffin.com. And I'll see you tomorrow.