What In The GOOGLE World?! - TribeTalk EP 15

Check out this TribeTalk from our Marketing Specialist, Kathryn Betancourt chatting with one of our Growth Specialists, Joe Pennebaker.

Google's E-A-T Algorithm

Google’s E-A-T Algorithm has been out for a while now, first rolled out in August of 2018. E-A-T is an acronym for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Expertise is about providing good knowledge, not gossip. Authoritativeness is content that gives credentials, outside reviews, and testimonials. Trustworthiness is referring to site quality and site security. 

At first, medical and health sites took the biggest hit as they have high-stakes content. But over time most have begun to adapt to the new algorithm. 

So how do you best optimize for E-A-T? 

• Relevance > keyword stuffing
• Optimize your About page!
• Experience
• Awards
• Press
• Testimonials
• Education
• Reach out to publications and try to get some press. However, don’t pay to play; Google is smart enough to pick out what’s earned and what’s bought.
• Enable reviews and keep them high
• Use Google Analytics to see which of your pages have high bounce rates, or low time-on-page. Lots of good content pages don’t have CTA’s, so it might be better to look for low time-on-page’s there.

On September 24th, Google pre-announced another update called the September 2019 Core Update. This seems to be trickling out slowly as many aren’t seeing much of a change. Keep your content quality high, your user experience clean, and you should be fine!

Tracking In-Store Conversions

Google estimates that 95% of retail purchases still happen in brick and mortar stores. Consumers do their research online but make that final conversion offline. 

Google’s store visit conversion tracking can help you get real ROAS. They do this by using GPS and Beacon data to determine which of your campaigns actually drove physical visits. It’s literally stalking your customer every physical move without having to be this creep. 

To use this feature you need “Google My Business”, Location extensions, and multiple stores. You can then track visits as a conversion goal. If you know your visitor conversion rate (you’d have to be tracking visitors with a counter and calculate your AOV, you get an actual ROI number. Just multiply conversions x purchase rate x order value to get your revenue. Divide revenue/cost to get a quick ROAS.

Google Express > Google Shopping

Google’s effectively sunsetting the Google Express brand and rolling it into Google Shopping. Google’s aim with this brand was to compete with Amazon by having a consistent cart. They had strong relationships with Walmart and Target and offered integration to Google wallet for a quick checkout. 

As they roll this into Google Shopping, apparently there will be a “Buy from Google” button available from now on. The world will keep on turning. It’s tough to compete with Amazon as an entire marketplace, even for Google.