Pinterest moving towards a shoppable network, with the acquisition of another start-up . In June Pinterest acquired Tote who are experts in influencer shopping, and now Pinterest have acquired Math Camp this month, with the aim of harnessing Math Camp’s apps, designed to connect people with shared tastes.
Math Camps apps include Highlight which informs friends when they are near each other, they also have photo sharing apps.
Steve Davis, lead product manager at Pinterest, said: “The team behind Math Camp are experts in building innovative mobile products to connect people with similar tastes and help them discover day-to-day images and video across platforms.
“We welcome their years of experience across engineering, product and design as we build the world’s catalog of ideas.”
Math Camp’s expertise with image sharing and location-based communications could help bolster Pinterest’s shoppable items beyond 20,000 goods.
Pinterest is also primed to increase its UK advertising – with news that it is courting brands and agencies under the pitch that it is a search engine capable of tracking the entire customer journey.
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The art of link building has long been misunderstood by many agencies and clients alike, we believe. There is a duality of purpose with SEO; everything we do for the purposes of increasing organic visibility, if done well, will have additional benefits, we believe.
For instance; –
· Good on-page SEO is good for usability, the two dovetail.
· Good link building is good for reach i.e. achieving links on sites where you can actually reach your target market.
Link Building is becoming more and more an exacting science. How can we create good quality links now, on sites that will reach your target audience?
The answer is simply by being creative. Target links have to tick 2 boxes – 1) are they relevant i.e. can you reach your audience from the chosen source, directly or indirectly? 2) Does the source have weight?
If we can meet these two criterion, then we have a sound strategy.
As an example, we have two compatible clients at Regroup, one provides upmarket heli ski holidays (www.heliski.co.uk) the other sells high end professional video equipment –(www.prokit.co.uk). We put the two together, Prokit to provide the training and use of equipment, and Heliski to take amazing, unique video footage of powder skiing experiences. The results can be seen below: –
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This material is primed now to take to the skiing fraternity and high end photography/ video production communities online, to a) extend reach to both companies target audiences and b) generate some very high quality, precision targeted links at the same time.
Creativity is key.
Visit our fledgling YouTube channel here. More clips to follow.
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Have you heard of PewDiePie? If not then probably best to ask your kids or your nieces and nephews. He is a Youtuber that has 43 million subscribers! PewDiePie is just one of many names in common parlance amongst millennials regularly watching YouTube, alongside names such as HolaSoyGerman (23 million subscribers), and Smosh (23 million subscribers). These are the names of the powerbrokers of a new generation of YouTube stars.
Is this new generation of broadcasters superseding old fashioned TV as we know it? Amongst millennials the answer is a resounding yes. According to a recent study carried out by Hunter Qualitative Research, younger audiences watch more hours of video on YouTubeand other digital outlets than TV —simply because they find it more enjoyable and relevant to their lives.
The stats are compelling – Consumers aged 13-24 spend 11.3 hours weekly watching free online video compared with 8.3 hours for regularly scheduled TV.
Younger viewers connect more strongly with YouTube and other digital-native content because it feels more real. Big-name YouTubers and other digital stars are more popular among teens than traditional Hollywood and music celebs. A recent survey carried out by Variety showed that the 5 most influential figures among Americans ages 13-18 were all You tubers, led by comedy duo Smosh, The Fine Bros. and PewDiePie, topping affinity scores for the likes of Jennifer Lawrence and Katy Perry.
What does this mean for Advertisers?
Omid Kordestani, Google’s chief business officer, stated last year that “YouTube reaches more 18- to 49-year-olds in the US than any UScable network.”
The number of advertisers on YouTube has increased 40% year on year according to recent estimates.
TV still owns the lion-share of ad spend but for how long? Spend in the US on video ads last year is estimated at $7B (in the US). Estimates suggest spend will top $13B by 2019! This increase has to come from somewhere, and industry pundits suggest it will be at the expense of traditional tv advertising. According to a recent AOL’s survey of nearly 300 agencies, publishers, and brands, approximately half of the buyers who increased their digital video spending this year reported that the additional spend came from their TV budgets. And 39% of buyers said their increased digital spend is coming directly from broadcast TV, which is more than twice as many as the 18% that said this in 2012.
It would be plainly wrong to suggest that tv ad is dying, but there is a shifting of sands that cannot be ignored.
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We are happy to announce that Regroup India is now open for business. Our new office based in central Delhi is headed up by Aditya Khanna a Digital Marketer with 10 years’ experience in developing customer acquisition strategies for household name brands and start-ups in India.
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Regroup India will provide a number of key services for the main Regroup Client-base, namely:
- Provision of best of breed technical build services spanning Magento, WordPress, PHP, and Drupal
- Digital Marketing strategy for Western-clients looking to establish a presence in India
India is a logical step for Regroup, who focus on helping Western-brands develop a digital presence in emerging markets. India is the second largest online market in the World, with an estimated 375 million web users, representing 1/10th of the World’s Internet usage.
Scott Muir, MD of Regroup Media stated ‘It is hugely exciting for us to be opening an office in India, complementing our presence already in China. The Indian market is massive and growing at a pace. It is key for us, as a business dedicated to growth to be wholly engaged with India.’
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SMX (Search Marketing Expo) is coming back to London. SMX is programmed by the search marketing authorities who edit the leading news site, Search Engine Land – Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman, who have decades of experience educating search marketers. Last year 500 people joined SMX London and we are convinced that 2016 will be significantly bigger!
The programme will be finalised in January. To give you an idea what to expect, here is some information about the key features.
A better question is “what isn’t new?” Google and Bing continue to roll out significant algorithm changes. Google made more than 600 changes to its core algorithm last year – that’s almost two changes per day! SMX London panels will explore all the new SEO developments, with speakers who have dug deep and understand not only what the changes are, but how to adapt optimization techniques to the new realities. Some of the key trends you’ll hear about include:
- The Latest In Advanced Technical SEO
- Surviving Algorithm Updates
- Inside Google’s New RankBrain Machine Learning System
- Coping with Link or Content Penalties
- The New Rules of Content Marketing
Paid search advertisers have plenty to keep up with too – new ad formats, extensions, more sophisticated options for remarketing and retargeting, enhanced automation tools… to name just a few. SMX London paid search sessions cover the fundamentals like creating, testing and optimizing paid search ads, and dive deep into advanced topics
like bidding strategies and bid modifiers. We’ll also tackle some thorny SEM issues including:
- Advanced Audience Targeting & Remarketing
- New Trends in Conversion and Attribution
- Getting Creative With Ad Copy & Testing
- How Dynamic Ads Can Supercharge Your SEM Campaigns
- Optimizing The Paid Search Conversion Funnel
- Mastering AdWords Scripts
The internet marketing landscape involves much more than SEO and SEM. Marketers increasingly integrate search with social, local and mobile campaigns. We’ll explore the intersections, and provide insights into maximizing the impact of your efforts, often in creative and fresh ways not considered by your competitors. SMX London will explore these and other topics that are becoming more crucial to successful internet marketing campaigns:
- The Social Ad Landscape
- Marketing on YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest & Instagram
- Integrating Search with Other Marketing Channels
- New opportunities for local businesses
- Mobile Marketing Dos and Don’ts
If you’re new to search marketing, our SMX Boot Camp will get you up to speed. It happens on the first day of the show, Wednesday 17th May. Attend and you’ll learn the fundamentals in these sessions:
- Keyword Research & Copywriting For Search Success
- Link Building Fundamentals
- Paid Search Fundamentals
- Search Engine Friendly Web Design
In creating SMX shows, we begin by asking for input from the community. We distill the best concepts and combine them with our own ideas about the hot topics to create an agenda. Then we ask people to tell us why they should speak.
It’s no exaggeration that every single session will showcase the knowledge and insights of subject matter experts who have pushed the envelope with new approaches (and learned valuable lessons) they’ll share from their own successful search marketing campaigns.
You’ll hear in-depth, TED-style solo sessions during the Spotlight track from hand-selected thought leaders in online marketing. You’ll get perspective on big picture issues to complement the tactics you use daily.
We are happy to announce the launch of The LabGroup, a think tank and incubator for technology enabled business ideas.
The LabGroup is a venture that we have launched with our partners The Creative Lab. Details can be found at http://www.thec-lab.co.uk/The%20Lab%20Group.html
We get asked a lot about whether site owners should go Https versus Http, given Google’s indication that this may be beneficial for SEO going forward.
Firstly HTTP & HTTPS Explained
HTTP is the standard unencrypted internet protocol. This means that any information such as credit card details, passwords, logins, session cookies etc. are inherently less secure under HTTP than would be the case under HTTPS.
HTTPS is designed to protect data between the browser and server through encryption so that data is protected against theft.
Will having an Https site be beneficial for SEO?
From an SEO perspective Google has stated that HTTPS is counted as a positive ranking signal over HTTP. In reality, testing has shown that, at this point in time, HTTPS has perhaps a negligible effect on organic ranking. This could of course change at any time.
Speed
HTTPS can potentially slow down a websites download time which in turn can potentially negatively impact organic rankings. This will be less a factor if the server set-up is high-end, i.e. on a fast, dedicated server for instance, but for sites hosted on a shared server it should be a factor to consider.
Consumer Confidence
There is another factor that should be considered, particularly for smaller brands; that of consumer confidence.
Many consumers will not know the difference between HTTP and HTTPS, however the inclusion of the padlock in the domain prompt will undoubtedly communicate the secure nature of the HTTPS domain to consumers, and as such may help conversion rates due to increased trust.
We have looked at a number of verticals such as Finance, and it would appear that the bigger high street brand names reserve HTTPS status for the pages solely involved in transactions, whilst some lesser brands sometimes have site-wide HTTPS status.
Key output here for smaller brands would be:-
• Smaller brand need to work harder than bigger brands and as such the HTTPS status may help increase organic rankings albeit marginally,
• HTTPS status likewise may help consumer confidence
Considerations if moving over from HTTP to HTTPS
An SSL certificate can be purchased from the web host.
Key considerations include:-
• changing internal links from http:// to https:// where appropriate
• setting up a new version of Search Console/Webmaster Tools
• 301 redirecting http:// pages to the new https:// pages
Additional Reading
The following articles give a good overview of HTTPS, why and when you should use it, and how to implement it properly on your site.
1. The Pros And Cons Of Implementing SSL / HTTPS: https://blog.nexcess.net/2014/09/03/the-pros-and-cons-of-implementing-ssl-https/
2. Web Security: Why You Should Always Use HTTPS: http://mashable.com/2011/05/31/https-web-security/
3. The Big List of SEO Tips and Tricks for Using HTTPS on Your Website: https://moz.com/blog/seo-tips-https-ssl
4. How to Deploy HTTPS Correctly: https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere/deploying-https
As an official blog partner, we are pleased to announce that SMX (Search Marketing Expo) is coming back to London.
SMX is programmed again by the search marketing authorities who edit the leading news blogSearch Engine Land and who have many years of experience educating search marketers.
The programme went live yesterday. Last year roughly 500 people joined SMX London and we hope that this years show will be even bigger!
Click here for more information:- http://searchmarketingexpo.com/london/
We are pleased to announce that we will be working with Windlesham House School on a digital marketing drive this year.
Windlesham is one of the world’s leading IAPS co-educational day and boarding preparatory schools for children aged 4 to 13, and it is with great pleasure that we work together in 2015.
For more details on Windlesham, click here:- http://www.windlesham.com
We are pleased to announce that we will be working with BD London on their Search Marketing drive this year.
BD – http://thisisbd.com/ is an award-winning Marketing agency, based in Shoreditch, London.