Digital Marketing Week in Review by Four Dots: May 2020, Week 2

Hello and welcome to another edition of Digital Marketing Week in Review by Four Dots – our weekly column where we comb through some of the most relevant news and events that took place within the digital marketing world over the last 7 days or so.

Let’s see what “May 2020: Week 2” edition brings:   

• Google May 2020 Core Update: Here’s What We Know So Far 
• Google Knows About Using Quora for Link Building Practices
• Top 3 Metrics that Google Uses to Evaluate User Experience
• How to Track Down and Fix Security Issues Using Google Search Console
• Google Temporarily Deindexed LinkedIn 
• TikTok Updated Its Rules on Music Usage by Businesses

Alrighty then, let’s dive right in! 

 

Google May 2020 Core Update: Here’s What We Know So Far 

It appears that the Google May 4 2020 core update has been causing some churning across the SERPs, and as the company itself revealed, it may take a couple of weeks for it to settle. Now, according to the folks over at SEJ, that doesn’t necessarily mean it is a bad thing. 

This latest update seems to be a substantial one. Here are just some areas of the Google search that have been affected:

• Local search businesses
• Health-related websites
• Rolling out worldwide
• Multiple languages simultaneously

What many users noticed is that the search results seem to change on a daily, often even hourly basis, making this core update perhaps the biggest one since 2003.

Some marketers aren’t too happy with the new changes, describing it as carnage-like and inconvenient. 

Read SEJ’s full take on what is currently known about the May 4 2020 Google core update. 

 

Google Knows About Using Quora for Link Building Practices 

There has recently been an interesting discussion on Twitter about using the Quora website for building links, and things got more interesting when Google’s John Mueller entered the thread with a comment indicating that Google is well-aware of this linking method. 

As Quora is a Q & A based website, it is a convenient platform for link building purposes, much like forum spamming and profile link spamming are.

The procedure is quite simple:

Someone posts a question about a certain matter; a link builder answers the question (most typically in a partial manner) and adds a link to a website for “more information.”

Naturally, the opinions about this strategy are divided as forum moderators tend to deem this tactic as spam, while many white-hat SEOs see it as a win-win scenario for the sides involved. 

However, as SEJ points out, this link building practice isn’t exactly useful for those seeking traffic from the US or Western Europe as most of the traffic generated via Quora is coming from India and other eastern markets:

(Photo Source: SEJ)

While the US’ interest in Quora is quite low. In fact, it scored 7 out of 100:

(Photo Source: SEJ)

So, What Did Mueller Write About Quora’based Link Building?

Naturally, John Mueller didn’t explicitly say whether or not Google ignores nofollow Quora links, but didn’t exactly sound particularly enthusiastic about this link building method, stating that “Google definitely isn’t missing sites that are link building on Quora.” 

 

Top 3 Metrics that Google Uses to Evaluate User Experience

In an attempt to give synced guidance for quality signals, Google has recently revealed which metrics should be the focus of site owners if they want to better optimize for user experience.

This set of metrics, that has been dubbed Core Web Vitals, is “essential to delivering a great user experience on the web.”

“Optimizing for quality of user experience is key to the long-term success of any site on the web,” Google’s official blog post stated.

“Whether you’re a business owner, marketer, or developer, Web Vitals can help you quantify the experience of your site and identify opportunities to improve.”

Although user experience (especially users’ expectations) is a relative concept and tends to vary depending on the industry, type of site, context, etc; there are certain metrics that remain consistent in terms of evaluating user experience, and these include: 

• Loading time
• Interactivity
• Visual stability

To find out more about these KPIs and how they are measured, go to this SEJ article. 

 

How to Track Down and Fix Security Issues Using Google Search Console 

A recent Google Webmasters video provides site owners with a detailed explanation about using Google Search Console to both find and fix security issues.

The episode is an installment of Google’s Search Console Training video series available on their YouTube channel, and it tackles the following topics:

• Most prominent types of security issues that may affect your website
• How to find these issues using GSC
• What you should once the issues have been fixed 

Find out more about the subject in this SEJ article. 

 

Google Temporarily Deindexed LinkedIn 

A few days ago, LinkedIn was deindexed from Google search results. It is still unclear whether it was due to an error on their part, but the entire domain appeared to be deindexed as you can see from the screenshot below: 

(Photo Source: SEJ)

Though the platform was accessible during the deindexation period – roughly 10 hours in total – the search results for LinkedIn were non-existent, likely resulting in a massive drop in traffic during that day. 

To find out how this may have happened, visit this article. 

 

TikTok Updated Its Rules on Music Usage by Businesses

So far, Businesses that use TikTok for marketing purposes have been able to attach any music to their promotional videos, without infringing any copyright-related laws and do it free of charge. 

This will, however, no longer be the case, which means that brands will now have to change their approach to creating TikTok marketing clips.

Dave Jorgenson, Washington Post’s video producer, recently shared TikTok’s official announcement stating that the rules for using popular music for commercial purposes have changed and that using it is no longer available, but that TikTok users will have access to a new, royalty-free ‘Commercial Music Library’ of sounds they can use for promotional videos. 

An explanation from TikTok available below: 

“We recently rolled out the Commercial Music Library. This new library enables verified businesses or organizations on TikTok to access a pool of royalty-free music for promotional content, and provides the tools and resources to help them further embrace the creativity and authenticity of the TikTok community.”

This Commercial Music Library will feature “high-quality, free-to-use music” that you can use, which will, according to TikTok, “also save you time and investment in sorting out music licensing.” 

For more information, visit this Social Media Today article. 

 

Wrapping Up

That would be all for this installment of Digital Marketing Week in Review by Four Dots. See you next week, until then – feel free to check out our previous edition!