Today in Digital Marketing - SEO is Dead. Long Live TEO.

Episode Date: March 18, 2024

As Google battles AI spam in a fight for its relevancy, will TikTok’s pushes in Search topple the King? Also: Is this the end of "being real"? YouTube adds more disclosure requirements. And LinkedIn decides what is business users really want... is to play cheap mobile games.📰 Get our free daily newsletter📈 Advertising: Reach Thousands of Marketing Decision-Makers🌍 Follow us on social media or contact usLinks to all of today’s stories hereListen to NerdWallet’s Smart Money podcast on your favorite podcast app. “Future You” will thank you. GO PREMIUM!Get these exclusive benefits when you upgrade:✅ Listen ad-free✅ Back catalog of 20+ marketing science interviews✅ Get the show earlier than the free version✅ “Skip to story” audio chapters✅ Member-only monthly livestreams with TodAnd a lot more! Check it out: todayindigital.com/premium✨ Already Premium? Update Credit Card • CancelMORE🆘 Need help with your social media? Check us out: engageQ digital📞 Need marketing advice? Leave us a voicemail and we’ll get an expert to help you free!🤝 Our Slack⭐ Review usUPGRADE YOUR SKILLSInside Google Ads with Jyll Saskin GalesGoogle Ads for Beginners with Jyll Saskin GalesFoxwell Slack Group and CoursesSome links in these show notes may provide affiliate revenue to us.Today in Digital Marketing is hosted by Tod Maffin and produced by engageQ digital on the traditional territories of the Snuneymuxw First Nation on Vancouver Island, Canada.Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

It is Monday, March 18th. Today, as Google battles AI spam in a fight for its relevancy, will TikTok's pushes into search topple the king? Also, is this the end of being real? YouTube adds more disclosure requirements, and LinkedIn decides, you know, what its business users really want is to play cheap mobile games. 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. TikTok continues to try to capture some of Google's glory, positioning itself as a place to search for content. And if you're willing to do a little extra research with its new tool, your brand could get a little extra money for the effort. Quoting The Verge,

quote, creators making money on the platform will now be paid based in part on how well their content meets what other users are searching for. TikTok calls this metric search value, and it's one of four core elements in determining creator payouts. This metric is the TikTok version of search engine optimization. One tactic in SEO is keyword research, where publishers make content that aligns with what searchers, the vast majority of whom are using Google, are looking up. On TikTok, search value is whether a creator is posting content

that is about topics users are searching for in the app, unquote. And to this end, TikTok has added a new search insights tool to let brands and creators track down what people are searching for. This past January, Adobe published a study that found 40% of Americans use TikTok for search and 10% of Gen Z users were more likely to use TikTok than Google. Even Google executives themselves have said they're worried about losing ground to TikTok. TikTok has made some changes to its video shopping ads. First, they say they've made creating a campaign with Shopify data has been made a little easier. And you can launch your first video shopping ad campaign using pre-populated campaign settings directly within Shopify. They've also made those ads discoverable from the search tab rather than hoping people come across them in their For You feed. And you can now run your shop ads product cards in the newly launched shop tab.

This had only in the past been available on the For You page. If tools like SEMrush and similar web can be believed, Google is showing fewer site links within the search results page, perhaps by as much as 20% fewer. Site links are those subpages that Google shows under a main listing. If people search for your store, it would show your store, but also links on your site it thinks are relevant, like return policies and bestsellers and contact us.

SimilarWeb shows that site links went from appearing about 63% of the time to about 41%. SEMrush said its tool saw a drop from 68% to about 58%. This is not a huge deal, to be honest. These site links were automatically placed there by Google, so we didn't really have a ton of control over them anyway. But given that it might not be showing as many, you might see a drop in organic traffic. Be Real, the once popular Instagram clone that promised a more authentic experience, might soon be on its last legs. Business Insider is reporting that the company is running out of funds and investor enthusiasm. The app is said to have about 25 million daily active users.

Quoting Business Insider, While those numbers show some growth since 2022, when the app said it had 20 million daily active users, it is the same size user base BeReal said it had last year. In addition to the app's core features, the company has added new features in a bid to increase user numbers in recent months, like official accounts, groups, messaging, the ability to add video, which has driven up some usage rates. Such features, though, have yet to meaningfully move the growth needle.

B-Real has struggled to attract investor interest for a Series C, two sources familiar with the company said. They cited stagnant user numbers and a wider slowdown in the European growth funding market. Although B-Real has kept its headcount at 60 employees, its burn rate, or the speed at which it spends money, is seen by potential investors as high, namely because of its service costs, unquote. More disclosure requirements coming for those brands that use AI in their content. YouTube today saying you will have to disclose when your videos use AI to make realistic

looking content. They'll be updating their creator studio shortly to make that a little easier to disclose. Quoting TechCrunch, quote, YouTube says the new policy doesn't require creators to disclose content that is clearly unrealistic or animated, like someone riding a unicorn through a fantastical world. It also isn't requiring creators to disclose content that used generative AI for production assistance, like generating scripts or automatic captions. Instead, YouTube is targeting videos that use the likeness of a realistic person. For instance, creators will have to disclose when they have digitally altered content to, quote,

replace the face of real events or places, such as making it seem as though a real building caught on fire. Creators will also have to disclose when they have generated realistic scenes of fictional major events, like a tornado moving toward a real town, unquote. One of my frustrations with technology as a whole is that sites and apps and platforms aren't happy enough to just let good things be good. They're always adding features nobody asked for, which to me seemed more like an exercise in keeping top software engineers on the team

than giving users what they've asked for. Last week, LinkedIn, too, fell into this trap by confirming it now wants to be a gaming platform and that it's working on a handful of dumb little games. Leaked screenshots show four games in testing, one of which looks sort of like Minesweeper, another seems to be a trivia game. A LinkedIn PR person said they believe the games will, quote,

unlock a bit of fun, deepen relationships, and hopefully spark the opportunity for conversations, unquote. Please, stop. As one social media commenter said, quote, the whole point of LinkedIn is that it is free of such distractions. Quoting social media today, quote, it does seem a bit out of place,

a bit random, and really, a fairly blatant attempt to boost time spent in the app, but also, it will probably work, unquote. LinkedIn does have some solid backbench talent to draw on. It's owned by Microsoft, which also runs one of the biggest gaming businesses. Again, from social media today, quote, but does it align with the platform's broader mission

to connect the world's professionals to economic opportunity? I mean, probably not. But as long as those engagement numbers go up, it's all good. Right? 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. And finally, Google says if you are denied by the Google Business Profiles appeals tool, you can now request an additional review to a denied request. This came not in the form of a formal announcement per se, but rather as an update to a help document.

So it's not clear how new a thing this is. Quoting that document, quote, only if your reinstatement request is denied, we may be able to do an additional review to prove your eligibility. You can submit an additional review to a denied request. You can provide additional evidence that wasn't added with your original appeal. Unquote. So, yes, I can tell you now what the 10th anniversary wedding surprise was.

I have been keeping this a secret for a year and a half. I started putting money away for it that long ago. Six months ago, I reached out to our closest family and friends and set up a date for a surprise party, essentially. So I took my wife out to dinner. Actually, the same restaurant where we had our very first date. And then we were going back to the hotel, and I said, oh, I forgot my card in the lounge. We have to go there.

And when we got to the lounge... Oh! I made an anniversary card that kind of riffed on our shared love of the video game world, Fallout. But the only place I could get it printed was at a place that I had to do like a minimum of 10 cards. So yeah, she's getting, there's no more surprises for the next 10 years and she's going to get the same card every year for the next 10 years. But anyway, I'm so thrilled that it came off as well as it did. So a little bit of bragging, a little bit of gloating. There you go.

That's it. Thanks for listening. I'll see you tomorrow.