You all, I am officially old. I cracked a tooth eating dinner on Wednesday night and after spending 2 hours in the dentist’s chair last night, was informed that the tooth must be pulled, Womp Womp. Putting a damper on what would have otherwise been a lovely week and a fun filled weekend. Another old indicator is that I am a mother to a nearly fifteen year old high school freshman who will be attending her first school dance with her boyfriend this evening. Hold me now.
Thankfully I have this lovely blog to write to keep my focus on the parts of my life that are going swimmingly and don’t make me feel alarmingly old. I whittled my 35+ newsletters and 20+ open tabs down to just 5 articles that bear sharing. I’ve got lots of Google with a side of Apple and a cool trick from a builder.
CLICKITY CLACKITY
Google’s never not making moves. This week they’re taking a different tak with trying to gain traction on the social media front, improving the user experience in search results, and kicking last click attribution to the curb in analytics; all of which can impact how your website performs in organic search.
On the social media front, Google is trying to work out deals with TikTok and Instagram that will allow posts from within the apps to appear right in organic search results. While this has implications for the social networks themselves, I’m more interested in how this might impact home builders. If this comes to fruition, your company’s social media presence will need to be curated with Google search results in mind so that you’re always putting your best foot forward and also placing more emphasis on keywords in your posts.
User experience is being improved by validating a users search results right within Google. Again, on a personal level this is helpful, but what I’m really interested in is how this impacts a builder’s appearance in the results. Currently included in these cards are the following pieces of information: description of the domain, whether the domain is secure, the full URL of the search result, and whether the result is organic or an advertisement. Coming soon to the cards is top news coverage, info from other sources on the topic, and what other people say about the website at hand. It hasn’t fully rolled out, I tested it and didn’t get the new functionality. But immediately, I wondered what could possibly be pulled into this for our clients. I will keep you posted as these changes take effect.
Finally, last click attribution is going to be going away in analytics and will be replaced by data driven attribution. Last click gives all credit to the last click a user makes for all of the data pulled like time on site, page views, and sources for goal completions. Data driven tries to take a more wholistic view and give credit to the source that Google’s AI believes should get credit for these actions. It’s going to shift some numbers around for reporting purposes across the board but will include implications on how organic search clicks are weighted. There’s nothing to do but be aware of how this might impact reporting once the change occurs.
APPLES TO EMAILS
Like dollars to donuts but different. iOs 15 is here and with it is Apple’s newest privacy move that takes away reporting on open rates for emails. Ugh, so annoying. So what does that mean for marketing? It’s not fun, but it means a loss of important data that indicates success rates for email campaigns and could cause marketers to send an increased amount of emails based on what look to be declining open rates. It will be more important than ever to really dive into your results to get a full understanding of how many of your contacts are using iOs 15 to paint a clearer picture of your email performance.
SHOP TIL YOU DROP
Combining my two true loves, shopping and real estate, a company by the name of MINE uses technology to let people shop Pulte model homes for furniture that they can buy for their own new homes. This is brilliant IMO. First of all the partnership betwixt a furniture company and a new home company just makes sense. Second of all, the added value provided to the new home buyer is amazing. I don’t know a single person who has bought a new home and didn’t need to then buy lots of new furniture to fil it. So good! Conversely, the model homes are shoppable from the furniture website, giving Pulte extra brand awareness through the furniture company. Love this outside the box idea.
That’s it for this week. Wish me luck on my tooth and my daughter, or just send wine and false teeth.
