Today in Digital Marketing - Long Titles Are Good For SEO, But Are They Good for Podcast Episodes Too, Like This Unnecessarily Long Episode Title (Apologies If This Breaks Your Podcast App)?

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today, ignore the standard advice, long page titles may actually help your search ranking. Also, TikTok advertising comes to Canada, hackers are breaking into QuickBooks files, agencies get a break on Google's partner program, and some welcome upgrades for merchants who use Square. It's Wednesday, February 24th, 2021. Happy Independence Day, Estonia. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital, and here's what you missed today in digital marketing. And first, a bit of an update about this podcast.

Starting point is 00:00:31 One of the things we're trying to do is be more than just a podcast you listen to. We really want to help support the work that you do. We've got an active Slack community where people are helping others out, posting jobs, getting early access to our weekend editions. That's free to join. We've got a premium email newsletter that goes out daily and a free tier that goes out every Friday. Links to both of those in our episode notes.

Starting point is 00:00:52 And now I'm pleased to let you know about the third, podcast perks. We now have a growing list of offers that you can take advantage of, exclusive discounts on marketing tools, training programs, agencies, video production people. You can find that list at todayindigital.com slash perks. There's a link in this episode's notes for that too. And premium newsletter people check the issue today for your super secret link to your own premium perks page with even deeper discounts than the regular perks. And also, by the way, if you have a tool or service or program or product that you'd like Thank you. there. So again, check out the perks available to you now at todayindigital.com slash perks.

Starting point is 00:01:45 Premium people, look for the link in your issue today. All right, on with the show. One of the downsides to being in Canada is we're rarely first on the list for any cool product rollouts. We watch as people get access to things like the TikTok ad platform and just dream, one day, one day we'll get access. Well, fellow Canucks, our time has come. TikTok's self-service ad platform is now open to all Canadian businesses. I will spare you their announcement on this, blah, blah, meaningful connection, brands and consumers, blah, blah, blah.

Starting point is 00:02:20 But here's what you actually need to know. First, don't go in expecting Facebook levels of options. TikTok only has five optimization paths right now. Reach, traffic, app installs, video views, or conversions. And unless you're using their pixel and generating your own custom audiences off website visits or something, there's really no B2B opportunities here.

Starting point is 00:02:43 I looked for the very broad interest of marketing, and it didn't exist at all. There's one nice feature TikTok has above Facebook, and that's the ability to turn off commenting. You can also prevent people from downloading the ads to their phones. But one big warning. Every other ad self-service tool you use has two budget options, daily budget or a lifetime budget. And while TikTok does have both, it actually defaults to something horrifyingly called no limit. So trust me, uncheck that and you'll get the regular budget options. Regardless of your campaign optimization, you can also optimize for a specific engagement. You do

Starting point is 00:03:23 this actually at the ad set level, and you can ask TikTok to focus on getting you more likes or more comments or shares or full watches. And finally, TikTok is making its Shopify channel available to merchants in Canada, and they're planning to host a virtual summit for Canadian businesses next month. And a couple of things for the folks who are on the marketing agency side of things. First, many of you use QuickBooks as your accounting software. You should be aware there's been a big uptick in the theft of QuickBooks file data. I didn't even know this was a thing, but apparently it is. And hackers are using social engineering to trick people into delivering malware to their QuickBooks data,

Starting point is 00:04:03 malware that is apparently quite hard to detect with traditional antivirus programs. This malware is capable of running inside of an email. Basically, they send decoy documents, and if someone on your team opens it, it goes hunting for your agency's QuickBooks files, and then the hackers upload it to themselves. And yes, those files are encrypted,

Starting point is 00:04:20 but they have figured out a way to read them anyway. What's the end game, you ask? Couple of things. The quick and easy thing they're doing is them anyway. What's the end game, you ask? Couple of things. The quick and easy thing they're doing is just selling the data on the dark web, but they've also been pretending to be the victim agency, reaching out to their clients or partners or suppliers and tricking them into making fraudulent bank transfers.

Starting point is 00:04:39 You can mitigate this somewhat by getting your IT people to make sure the QuickBooks file permissions are not set to the everyone group. A better solution? mitigate this somewhat by getting your IT people to make sure the QuickBooks file permissions are not set to the everyone group. A better solution? Train your people to not open email attachments from people until they're 100% sure who sent them. Second story for agencies, Google has revised its partner program after getting a bunch of negative feedback about it. Google now says, quote, partners have the flexibility to apply or dismiss performance recommendations based on your own assessment in order to meet a minimum optimization score of 70%, unquote.

Starting point is 00:05:18 Originally, you needed to keep that optimization score at or over 70% to qualify for partner status and get that little badge for your website. What's not clear? Everything else. Like, how many recommendations can you dismiss? Is there a maximum? Can you just ignore the criteria entirely? Does this reset every few months or something? I guess we'll wait to see if Google gives us more info,

Starting point is 00:05:39 but at the least, this is a good start. Also, that minimum spend requirement of $10,000 US in 90 days is still there. To be fair, last year they announced it would go up to $20,000, but it looks like they've shelved that since the pandemic affected businesses. You still have lots of time. These new requirements don't go into effect until a year from now. The popular WordPress forms plugin Gravity Forms has added some new functionality for brands that use Square's e-commerce system on their site. You can now use their Square add-on to set up recurring monthly payments from customers. You can also now authorize a payment without actually withdrawing the funds from a customer's account until you approve it.

Starting point is 00:06:20 This could be great for stores that may not want to take a payment until they're ready to ship, or businesses who need to take deposits from their customers. And refunds are now directly into the WordPress plugin dashboard. If you publish content on your website, like blog posts or WordPress pages, you probably know there's a place to put the page title in. Maybe even a separate place just for search engines if you use an SEO tool like Yoast. And one of the recommendations these tools always give you is to keep your title tag under a certain number of characters because after that number,

Starting point is 00:06:53 Google will just truncate it. But is there actually an SEO benefit to having title tags longer than what's displayed in the search? Apparently so. Google search engineer Gary Ilias told a recent SEO hangout that you should keep the title tag precise to the topic of the page, but not worry if it's too long. In fact, unless it's obscenely long, those keywords, even if they're not shown to users, are still being considered for ranking.

Starting point is 00:07:25 Alright, that's it for today. Don't forget, you'll find a link to our new perks program with exclusive discounts on marketing tools, training and services at todayindigital.com slash perks. Premium newsletter members, you have a special perks page with even deeper discounts. You'll find that link in your issue today. And if you'd like to extend an offer to our listeners,

Starting point is 00:07:43 just go to todayindigital.com slash promote. It's free for the time being. Links to all of those, of course, are in our show notes. Talk to you tomorrow.

Today in Digital Marketing - Long Titles Are Good For SEO, But Are They Good for Podcast Episodes Too, Like This Unnecessarily Long Episode Title (Apologies If This Breaks Your Podcast App)?

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