Now That’s What I Call SEO – November 2020

Buckle up, it’s time for another round of Now That’s What I Call SEO!

YouTube, I Tube, We All Tube for….

A new Q&A video from the YouTube team has revealed previously undisclosed details about how its algorithm works. Full details can be found in the video, but check out the highlights below:

• YouTube does not assess a channel as a “whole” based on the performance of a few videos. Rather it cares about how people are responding to a specific video when decided whether or not to recommend it.
  Content creators should not be concerned that the algorithm will demote their channel if a specific video does not do well.
  
• How often you upload content will not impact your ranking. YouTube will recommend videos as long as people continue to watch them. Similarly, you can upload as many videos as you want and this will not affect your rankings from an algorithm perspective – however, your audience will likely get burnout!
  
• Having a lot of inactive subscribers is not a direct ranking factor – creating a new channel and re-uploading videos will not give them a boost.
  Again it all comes back to views, so if your video is getting viewed by active non-subscribers, you’re golden. However, with a lot of inactive subscribers, you may have to work harder to get those views.
  
• External traffic is absolutely is a ranking factor. However, for high rankings, this must be backed up with a positive engagement response from people who click on it.
  
• People viewing your videos on external platforms will lower your click-through rate, as users are likely to continue on whatever platform the video is imbedded on. However, this will not negatively impact your YouTube rankings – they only care about how a user engages with the video itself. 

Why should you care?

YouTube is the UK’s second biggest search engine, so it presents a huge opportunity to increase brand awareness. There’s also the fact that videos are pulled in to many SERPs, so they can help improve more ‘traditional SEO’ metrics.

Too much focus on lower funnel content and promotion can lead to decreasing returns as it can be hard to attract new customers in a highly competitive space, therefore content, SEO and paid strategies can all make use of effective video content to contribute to long-term growth.

What’s in a Name?

Google Webmasters has rebranded as Google Search Central, which comes with a brand new sidekick… Spiderbot.

The change was made to more accurately represent the content published under the “Webmaster Central”, but also those who are using the service, with Google claiming the term “Webmaster” is now outdated and declining in use.

The content will continue to be focused on supporting SEOs and site owners. To support with this, Google is consolidating of their search blogs and help guides to one location: https://developers.google.com/search.

This is to help with maintaining and archiving content. Do not fear if you subscribe to their blog updates, you’ll continue to receive them with the new blog!

And a Dash of Paid Social for Good Measure

Twitter has rolled out new carousel ads that now contain 2 to 6 images or videos in one advertisement. These are styled so that the user can swipe through them horizontally, adding an interactive layer to the ad format.

The carousel ad format includes:

• An edge-to-edge design
• Third party measurement reporting
• Accessibility support
• New reporting features (such as swipes within the Carousel and breakdowns to measure individual Carousel card performance)

Twitter have reported that in beta testing:

“For Website Carousels, we saw on average, a ~15% increase in click-through rate relative to single-asset formats. And for App Carousels, we saw on average, a ~24% increase in installs per impression relative to single-asset formats.”

That’s it for this time! Check out our Blog and Knowledge Base for more news and insight from the world of SEM marketing. Or why not get in touch and see what our specialist team can do to help your business grow online?