Today in Digital Marketing - Why Google Search Doesn't Like Large "Hero" Images

Episode Date: May 10, 2021

Why is that beautiful theme you just installed on your web site hurting your Google ranking? We now know how many people are staying opted-out from ad tracking on Apple device... And a simple way to make sure your web site is accessible.  Get the entire show content, with links and images, as a DAILY email newsletter! Subscribe at b.link/pod-newsletter ADVERTISING:- Ads: b.link/pod-ads- Classifieds: b.link/pod-classifieds- Brand Takeovers: b.link/pod-takeover JOIN THE COMMUNITY:- Slack: b.link/pod-slack- Discord: b.link/pod-discord- Podcast Perks: b.link/pod-perks ENJOYING THE SHOW?- Rate and review: b.link/pod-rate- Leave a voicemail: b.link/pod-voicemail FOLLOW TOD:- Twitter: b.link/pod-twitter- LinkedIn: b.link/pod-linkedin- TikTok: b.link/pod-tiktok Today in Digital Marketing is hosted by Tod Maffin (b.link/pod-todsite) and produced by engageQ digital (b.link/pod-engageq). Subscribe at https://TodayInDigital.com or wherever you get your podcasts. (Theme music by Mark Blevis. All other music licensed by Source Audio.)Our Sponsors:* Check out Kinsta: https://kinsta.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Today, why is that beautiful theme you just installed on your website hurting your Google ranking? We now know how many people are staying opted out from ad tracking on Apple devices. And a simple way to make sure your website is accessible. It's Monday, May 10th, 2021. Happy National Journalist Day, Bolivia. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital, and here's what you missed today in digital marketing. And before you start, we start. You may notice my voice. I was quite ill yesterday, showing some COVID symptoms, so I went to get the test.

Thank God it was the gargle test, not the here, shove this stick into your brain test. I am refreshing the Provincial Health Authority site every five minutes to see what my results are, but so far, everyone thinks my symptoms do not meet the criteria. So I'm currently coasting on some cold and flu medication, trying to get today's episode and newsletter out the door for you, so I will be plowing through without my usual editing of my mistakes, like that one, so you'll hear how bad I actually am at these things, and then I'm going back to bed. So today's show is a little unpolished, but let's get started with a fun little quiz to kick off the week.

If you've even spent an hour or two on YouTube, you'll know that creators there have their own kind of vernacular. Things like smashing buttons and dropping likes. And how many of them, and many of them, I should say, start their videos with the same opening words. So, today's quiz. What is the most common way YouTube creators open their videos? Is it by saying Yo, Hey Guys, Good Morning, or What's Up? We actually have data on this, and you'll find out the answer later in the episode.

Whenever you go to a website that's selling a theme for a CMS, like a WordPress theme or a Squarespace template, one of the things they always show off are the really beautiful full-page layouts. You know the kind, one huge hero image on top, and when you scroll down, you actually get the content. And while that certainly makes for a compelling design, does that affect your ranking in Google Search?

We got the answer recently from Google search engineer John Mueller, who said it does affect ranking negatively. Here's Mueller speaking during his recent SEO office hours hangout. We want to see some content above the fold, which means like a part of your page should be visible when a user goes there. So for example, if a user goes to your website and they just see a big holiday photo and they have to scroll down a little bit

to actually get content about a hotel, then that would be problematic for us. But if they go to your home page and they see a holiday photo on top and also a little bit of information about the hotel, for example, for a hotel site, that would be fine. So it's not purely that the content has to be above the fold, but like some of the content has to be.

So if you're using one of those huge full page hero images, might be time to pull them back a little. When Apple first announced it would opt all of its users out of app tracking when they installed iOS 14.5, the big question was, what percentage of consumers would choose to opt back in when the app asked them to? Early last month, Apple started rolling this out to a test group of users, and a company called AppsFlyer at the time found that the test group was opting back in at a rate of 41%, which of course blew everyone's minds.

Most people assumed it would be 1%, maybe 2%. Now that it's been out for a while, we have some more reliable numbers. According to Flurry Analytics, which is a Verizon media company, the percentage of people who have agreed to turn tracking back on, 4%. Flurry is an analytics tool that's in about a million apps so their data pool is from about 2.5 million devices that 4% has apparently been pretty consistent

although that's the US number elsewhere in the world average daily opt-ins are actually around 12% Apple does have a setting where you can keep tracking off from all apps rather than confirming your opt-out with every app that asks the portion of people who've used that 3% the web platform Wix has

launched an accessibility wizard to help sites hosted there become more readable for people with disabilities it's basically like a scanner kind of like you'd use for SEO looking for broken links and stuff and they identify pages pages where you could improve. As you'd expect, it would prompt you for the obvious things like alt text in images, but it'll also point out poor color contrast, page names that aren't meaningful, mismatches between the site language and page language. A warning though, there are some things it won't point out like link text, text in the image, or use of color. And as for today's quiz, what is the most common way YouTube creators open their videos? YouTube actually studied this

and found the most common opening, hey guys. 36% of the videos in the study pool started that way. They've actually had data going back for 10 years now, and there has never been a year when Hey Guys wasn't number one. In second place this year, What's Up?, which was also number two about a decade ago, then dropped back and started getting more popular last year. And number three, excuse me, Good Morning, which YouTube credits to the growing trend of the get ready with me videos.

Subscribers to the premium newsletter can see this broken down by industry vertical. If, you know, you're bored today. So short episode today, it will be longer tomorrow. And since I've been recording this, I got the text message from the government health authority saying I was negative. So turns out the good money was right all along. Thank you. later this afternoon. I think the end is in sight, friends. Still a ways off, but in sight. All right, I'm off to bed. Barring any reaction to my first shot or this cold flu thingy getting worse, I will talk to you tomorrow.

Oh, what do you have to say? You're running circles around your feelings Your story's changing and I'm sick of it I'm over it and I'm out of here Bye.