[Ep150] - Should You Rewrite Your Content With ChatGPT?

#TWIMshow - This Week in Marketing

Get up to speed with the Digital Marketing News and Updates from the week of Feb 27-Mar 3, 2023.

1. PSA: US TikTok Ban Moves a Step Closer - More bad news for TikTok, with the US House Foreign Affairs Committee voted to give President Joe Biden the power to ban the Chinese-owned app, if he deems such a move necessary, amid ongoing security discussions around its potential connection to the Chinese Communist Part (CCP).

TikTok responded to the vote by tweeting that “A U.S ban on TikTok is a ban on the export of American culture and values to the billion-plus people who use our service worldwide…”

While Today’s announcement doesn’t give Biden the full green light to ban the app, with the US Senate still required to give sign-off before a ban could be implemented. But it’s another step towards that next stage, which increasingly feels like it will lead to a TikTok ban, or at the least, a significant change in direction for the app.

Remember that TikTok, along with 58 other Chinese-created apps, was banned completely in India by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology on 29 June 2020. So if you are relying on traffic from TikTok then it is high time you diversify your traffic sources.

2. Google Shares How Its Keyword-Matching System For Search Ads Work -
Google has released a 28 page comprehensive guide during Google Search Ads Week 2023, providing a unique behind-the-scenes glimpse into its keyword-matching system for search ads.To achieve better results, advertisers can optimise their campaigns by gaining an understanding of Google Ads keyword-matching process.

Google's guide provides a comprehensive breakdown of the system, which includes how the company utilises machine learning and natural language understanding technologies to determine keyword eligibility, and how the responsive search ads creative system selects the best-performing creative for users.

It is essential to note that grouping keywords is critical to campaign optimisation. By eliminating the need to add the same keyword in multiple match types, advertisers can avoid segmenting and reducing the available data that Smart Bidding can use for optimisation, which can result in fewer conversions and higher costs.

The guide is an invaluable resource for anyone seeking to enhance their Google Ads campaigns. Incorporating the insights and best practices outlined in the guide can boost the chances of success and drive more conversions.

This is why I always tell my listeners to work with a reputable learning and growing agency who is in the know. Afterall, you can not make moves or leverage opportunities if you are not in the know.

3. Google Ads Is Changing Location Targeting Settings In March 2023 - Starting March 2023, “Search Interest” targeting will no longer be available in Google Ads. Campaigns that use “Search Interest” targeting will be migrated to “Presence or Interest” targeting. These changes will be consistent in Search, Display, Performance Max, and Shopping campaigns.

The Presence option lets you show your ads to people who are likely to be located, or regularly located in the locations you've targeted.

The Search Interest option lets you show your ads to anyone searching on Google for your targeted location. If a person doesn’t specify a location in their search, then the system uses the location where a user is likely to be located for targeting. This option is only available for Search campaigns.

So after this change is in effect, a person who lives in Northern VA but often travels to Maryland for shopping or work. While home in VA, the person searches for "plumber near me." Now Google is going to show some Maryland plumbers who are not licensed in VA. Am I the only one who thinks that the real winner of this change is Google!!

4. Google Ads Introduces AI-Powered Search Ads - During the Google’s Search Ads Week, a new customer acquisition goal for Search campaigns has been launched globally. This goal utilizes Smart Bidding and first-party data to optimize campaigns and attract new customers during peak periods. According to Google, by combining the new customer acquisition goal with bidding strategies like Maximize conversion value with a target ROAS, advertisers can prioritize and target high-value customers. The new customer acquisition goal has two modes that help you to reach your campaign goals:

• Value New Customer: Bid higher for new customers than for existing customers
• New Customers Only: Bid for new customers only.

5. Microsoft Bing's Fabrice Canel : SEO Will Never Be "dead" - Fabrice Canel, the Principal Product Manager for Microsoft Bing, gave a keynote presentation at the Pubcon convention in Austin, Texas. His presentation offered valuable information on optimizing websites for the new Bing search experience as well as shared the benefits of using Bing Webmaster Tools to monitor traffic data and make necessary adjustments to improve visibility in search results.

First, Canel suggested to stay with the same SEO playbooks for optimizing content for Bing’s AI experience because it’s still the early days for AI search. Throughout his keynote at Pubcon, Canel stressed the importance of SEO professionals in guiding Bing’s search crawlers to high-quality content.

Then Canel emphasized the importance of setting the lastmod tag to the date a page was last modified, not when the sitemap was generated. Remember lastmod was covered in previous episodes in details.

ICYMI, the lastmod tag is an HTML attribute indicating when a particular webpage or URL received significant changes. This tag is used in sitemaps to help search engines like Bing understand when a page was last updated. Lastmod also helps searchers identify and access the most up-to-date content available. When a lastmod tag is present, Bing will display the updated date in search results. This signals to searchers that the webpage may have new or updated information they haven’t seen yet. According to Canel, 18% of sitemaps have lastmod values not correctly set, typically set to the date and time the sitemap is generated.

Thirdly, Canel recommended website to adopting IndexNow to inform search engines of recent modifications to website content instantly.

FYI: IndexNow was covered in episode# 90 (Jan 10-15, 2022). According to Canel, 20 million websites have already adopted IndexNow, and he expects more top websites, search engines, and content management systems to follow suit. Canel adds that manually crawling a webpage to see if its content has changed wastes resources and energy and creates CO2.

He also suggests having sitemaps to provide search engines with all relevant URLs and corresponding modification dates.

Most importantly, he wanted website owner focus on writing quality content and use semantic markup to convey information about the pages.

Lastly, we learned Bing Webmaster Tools will soon include traffic data from Bing’s AI chat.

6. Google On ‘lastmod’ Tag In XML Sitemap -