Digital Marketing News Round Up (Week 11)

Welcome to Move Ahead Media’s Weekly News Roundup where we will be featuring the latest digital marketing news that you need to know!

This week, we will be talking about the much anticipated Google Core Update, the future of digital connectivity, and the effectiveness of social media channels vs traditional SERPs. Whether you’re a seasoned digital marketing professional or just curious about what’s going on, we’ve got you covered!

Let’s get started with this week’s news:

• Google’s March 2024 Core Update: Changes to Link Signals & Spam Crackdown
• Meta Forecasts the Next Phase of Digital Connectivity
• Social Media vs Search Engines: Do we need to choose?

Google’s March 2024 Core Update: Changes to Link Signals & Spam Crackdown

Google’s March 2024 Core Update is here and it’s a big one. There have been considerable enhancements to the quality of its search results. Which will help give users more relevant data and more useful information. Their helpful content system has been incorporated into its overall core ranking system. To help maintain the integrity of Google’s search ecosystem. Google has also implemented several new spam policies. Which, Google states, will reduce “unhelpful” content by 40%! The rollout of the March 2024 update may take as long as a month.

To complement the core update, Google also announced updates to its spam policies. Which they’re calling the “March 2024 Spam Update”. They also updated their “Spam Explainer”.

Here are the key takeaways:

1. Google updated the “spammy automatically-generated content policy”. Which is now integrated into a bigger policy called “Scaled content abuse spam.  This will target AI-spam content where the only purpose of that content is to manipulate search results.
2. Time’s up for Expired domain abuse, which is the practice of purchasing expired domains and repurposing them for links. Google is cracking down on this tactic in a big way. Google will look at how a domain was previously used to see if it matches up with its recent activity. If it does not match, manual penalties could result.
3. Site reputation abuse (aka Parasite SEO, which is where one party hosts content on a third party’s site to piggyback authority) is now spam too.
4. Links are now lower in importance in ranking terms. They are now not as important for the algorithm in determining relevancy to pages. Whether this is true or not…we will see.
5. Content created for link manipulation is on the chopping block. Google has added “creating low-value content primarily for the purpose of manipulating linking and ranking signals” to its guidelines. Which could be a shot at PBNs.
6. There is also a new signal related to outgoing links. Google says “Any links that are intended to manipulate rankings in Google Search results may be considered link spam. This includes any behaviour that manipulates links to your site or outgoing links from your site.”

Google says it will take about a month to roll out the update. We, your digital marketing partners at Move Ahead Media, will be keeping an eye on this for you.

Source:
https://searchengineland.com/google-released-massive-search-quality-improvements-with-march-2024-core-update-and-multiple-spam-updates-438144
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-march-2024-update-4-changes-to-link-signal/510322/

Meta Forecasts the Next Phase of Digital Connectivity

Meta is expecting the tech landscape to undergo significant changes in 2024. Here are Meta’s top three predictions:

1. Is the Metaverse still alive? The hype might be dead, but it is very much alive! Meta stays committed to its vision with consumer interest being reignited, but they are definitely looking into not just gaming, social media and ecommerce they think the most promising opportunities are in training and education!
2. Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses are a thing now, and they also introduced multimodal features in the Early Access program in which members can ask Meta AI very cool stuff like translate a foreign language sign into English, caption photos, search the web, etc, all hands free! This is the first stage of hybrid models where some tasks are done on our devices and others will be completed by LLMs running on cloud.
3. Businesses connecting with consumers via mobile messaging in more personal ways will be a main factor for people. At Meta Connect 2023, they introduced AI Studio and their Meta AI personal assistant which will eventually give businesses the ability to create AIs that reflect their brand values and improve customer experience.

Source:
https://www.meta.com/en-gb/blog/quest/tech-predictions-2024-metaverse-vr-mr-ai-llms/

Social Media VS Search Engines: Do We Need To Choose?

With 70% of businesses selling products or services directly on their social media pages, and 80% of them advertising on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, it’s clear to see why brands use these channels. But does that mean that social media is now more important than traditional search engines? 82% of Hubspot’s respondents seem to think so.

Julie Lock, Hubspot marketing director UK & Ireland, said: “The future of marketing is no longer about interrupting what people are interested in, it’s about being what people are interested in.” Consumers expect immediate responses via direct messages and these organisations need to understand where their target audience are and adjust strategies accordingly.

So is social media the way to go? It depends on your target audience! You need to be at the right place, at the right time, and at the right price. A “one-size-fits-all” strategy is the last thing you should do.

Source:
https://www.marketingtechnews.net/news/2023/apr/06/bye-bye-search-engines-social-media-is-taking-over/

THINK AHEAD. MOVE AHEAD.

We love to talk about digital marketing! Get in touch with us today and we can help you to generate real ROI gains for your business.

Call us on +66 (0) 2 260 0424 or email us via info@moveaheadmedia.com.