Michael Strachan’s Post

We leverage a number of tools to analyze client's sites. The catch is that they all have flaws and you need to know what to look for. Using one of Google's own, it often shows a perfect SEO score. Marketers and devs assume that they've checked all of the boxes, but their SEO traffic is flat or declining. It's a bit misleading to think that the "SEO" check means that you should be firing on all cylinders. Check out the screenshot below from a company that I just audited to see what I mean. 🔍 I'm sure that we all always read the fine print. In the instance of Google's SEO check they disclaim "These checks ensure that your page is following basic search engine optimization advice. There are many additional factors Lighthouse does not score here that may affect your search ranking, including performance on Core Web Vitals." Basically the checks focus on whether or not your structured schema is setup - however, Google shifted to have more emphasis on other factors. 📈 Beyond Structured Schema: If you have structured schema issues you'll have serious problems but it should be assumed that you do. To gain real organic traction you need to look at core web vitals, add in blogs, connect your socials to your site, and most importantly address performance issues. Don’t settle for a high “SEO” score; expand your reach with a robust keyword/content prospecting strategy. You may see that your "SEO" score drops, but now you're reaching a broader market. 📱 Mobile Experience Matters More Than Ever:  If your site fails to load, render, or resize correctly on mobile devices, or mobile has a bad experience you’re in trouble. Google’s new policy will soon index based on mobile experience alone. Neglecting this could lead to a drop in traffic across all devices—or worse, no indexing at all (see my previous post) 🛒 Shopify and Wix Woes - Misery loves company, right? Well, many sites built on platforms like Shopify and Wix face similar challenges and we tend to see the similar scores "SEO" is great, the clients aren't getting any non-brand traffic and their "Performance" score is terrible. It’s time to prioritize performance, mobile optimization, and strategic content. 🔑 Choosing the Right SEO Agency: In the past, I worked with SEO teams that didn't do any dev work or had never built a site themselves. We’d propose updates, but they often went unimplemented due to competing priorities. When it came time to renew the contract, clients would ask to see the results and we'd show a wish list that their devs never put in place. Now, I partner with SEO experts who handle dev work, site design, copywriting, CRO, and more. 🔍🚀 Ready to talk? If you’re interested in improving your site’s performance and unlocking organic traffic, let’s connect! 📩 #seo #google #siteperformance #webdev #corewebvitals #digitalmarketing

“After July 5, 2024, we'll crawl and index these sites with only Googlebot Smartphone.” - Google "Google announced Monday that it will no longer index websites that aren't accessible on mobile devices after July 5." - Inc. Google has not been shy about wanting to be mobile first for years, they're cracking down even further on this now and drawing a line in the sand. I'm always surprised by how little emphasis companies put on this, and have been shocked by how many SEO, web dev, or site design calls calls that I've been on where it is still after thought if it is even discussed. Even when we show clients that Google is giving them a mobile score of a 30/100 and they fall back on the bulk of their sales coming in from desktop so they really don't care. This is not an option moving forward. Even if your sales are coming in from desktop, Google is looking at your mobile site and you might not be listed in the future across all devices if you don't take action. A huge part of the reason that I chose to work with partners that have dev, SEO, Analytics, and site design experience is that to get ahead of issues like this, you need to take a holistic approach. If you want a free snapshot of how your mobile site is performing (as ranked by Google) so that you're ahead of this update, and work with a team that knows how to fix all of this and more, let me know. https://lnkd.in/g2CipFzw #SEO #Mobile #WebDesign #Google #GoogleAnalytics #Tagging #Tracking #Implementation

📊 Exciting News! MediaConfidant's new reporting and insights suite is officially rolling out. Why did we make it? I’ve always faced challenges with reporting in the digital marketing space. Simply put, agency account managers would only open reports on the day of a client meeting, and our agency counterparts rarely found them useful. We'd fight over data all of the time and we'd more lose clients because of it than we did to actual performance. Here are the top reasons: - Lack of Trust in Data: clients were looking at their own numbers, agencies were looking at theirs and it never matched... - Relevance: Reports didn’t show what either party needed. - Insight Deficit: Reports were just numbers on a page and there wasn't a reason to look at them when you could find that information somewhere else. - Setup Hassles: It took 4-8 weeks to set up (if we could ever get to that point). - Data Lockdown: AM's and clients couldn't interact with the reports to find what they needed or what was insightful. 🚀 Enter MediaConfidant’s New Reporting Suite! 🚀 We just rolled out a demo environment showcasing not just the baseline numbers but also the next-gen analytics that gives real insights including: - Forecasting: Predictive insights for smarter decisions. - Propensity to Buy: Understand customer behavior. - Data Source Comparisons: Compare performance across channels. - User Journey by Traffic Source: Trace the path to conversion. - Data accuracy checks: Quickly identify where and why your numbers aren't matching up - Easy to deploy: (turns out that this is the most challenging part in creating a tech product but we created the connectors and interface to do so in days not weeks) . If you want to have real analytics and insights for your marketing campaigns? DM me for a login to preview the new environment! 📈🔍 Also for anyone at the Chase for Business conference in Palos Verdes this week, let’s meet up in person! I'm not signed up for golf on Wednesday but you can change my mind ;-) #reporting #insights #digitalmedia #digitaladvertising #forecasting #customerjourney #Googleanalytics #Googleads #tiktok #meta #SEO

There's nothing better than working with clients who are passionate about having the right data in place with the foundation to analyze it. The extremely talented team at YouFit was a true delight to partner with as MediaConfidant helped to upgrade their analytics & data infrastructure to adapt to the new systems and tools that are in the market. We didn't want to force them to learn new tools, instead, The mission was to provide a clean reporting setup that gave real insights and let their team move out of the weeds to focus on strategy. At a high level we streamlined their setup, created custom reports, tagging, tracking, and measurement plans to help tie systems together. More importantly if you're looking for an amazing and premier gym experience at a cost that doesn't break the budget, check out Youfit.com to see if there's a location next to you. As a parent with too little time to hit my New Years resolution of getting back in shape and eating healthy, I especially love that in addition to awesome facilities and classes, they also offer babysitting & nutrition plans that you can buy at their gyms or make yourself at home. A special thanks to Allison Rand, Aaron Brown, and Gail Alvarez for being such awesome clients to work for and to John Gargiulo for the introduction. #youfit #googleanalytics #tagging #conversionapi #tracking #measurementplan #customreporting #insights #analytics #reporting #strategy https://lnkd.in/gnV_AAkS

Where there have been countless posts about TikTok, I haven’t seen people giving recommendations on what to do about them.  If you don’t know, congress overwhelmingly voted to consider a bill to ban the platform - Biden said that he’d sign it if it’s put on his desk, Trump weighed into doing an executive order to ban the platform in the past, but now is saying that it’d be a form of censorship… I won’t give a personal view of what should/shouldn’t happen, just know that there is support for change on both sides of the aisle and the ripple effect won’t be limited to TikTok or the next iteration of it.  This has been in the works for years and is unsurprising that it’s coming to vote in an election year.  What you should do is: 🔥 Don’t panic - The industry goes through the same trends every couple of years - what separates great marketers is recognizing the pattern and adapting 🔥 Backup your Data and align your naming conventions between channels. Trust me, this will save you countless headaches immediately and in the future 🔥 Setup Conversion API and begin building advanced audiences before it potentially isn’t an option - yes, you can set this up for TikTok 🔥 Ensure that you’re fully compliant with all regulations,  🔥 Expect that consumer privacy legislation is around the corner and with it you may see that data is scrubbed across channels if you don’t start this process today 🔥 Do the same steps for all of your advertising channels and expect that you’ll see proactive updates in all ad platforms that may not be fully announced. Don’t think that it’s a coincidence that it was at the same time that the news about TikTok potentially being banned was when Google put a banner on Google Analytics push people to be more compliant with international regulations 🔥 Recognize that the levers that you can use to reach audiences across platforms have changed, are changing, and they may not all be well publicized 🔥 Begin upskilling today to be holistic marketers instead of silo’d specialists The industry has gone through similar changes in the past and will go through it multiple times in the future.  It’s not scary, it’s what makes the job fun and lets the great marketers rise to the top. https://lnkd.in/gBRufnbS #tiktok #advertising #digitalmarketing #paidsocial #media

I love my clients equally the same way that I love my kids equally. But the same way that there are special moments with each of my kids, there is extra validation when industry thought leaders like M^2 and Insights Association choose to want to work with us for their own sites and accounts. It's humbling having the experts in the space choose MediaConfidant as the expert that that they chose to work with - if they're choosing MediaConfidant, imagine what we can unlock for your own business. https://lnkd.in/gERNRQrd https://msquared.club/ #analytics #googleanalyticss #ga4 #sitetagging #tracking

I’ve held off on posting about this for months - thanks Sequoyah Glenn, MBA for the push to start bragging about my wins a bit more. I’m excited to say that MediaConfidant is part of the Google Startups for Cloud program!  This not only gives us access to the best-in-class technology to expand our current product suite but also build beyond what we dreamed was possible on Google Cloud with developer partners like WALT Labs. To get into the program, I outlined what we already built and how it’s different than anything else in the market, showed the case studies from companies of all sizes including ones that are $1B+ in ARR, and outlined the roadmap for how we’re going to revolutionize reporting for agencies and companies with a focus of tying it back to clean and accurate data. #googleanalytics #google #analytics #data #reporting #googlecloud #looker #bigquery

There's nothing better than getting recognition from an amazing client and person to work with! Thank you Allison Rand, and to anyone looking to make good on their 2024 resolution and work out more, check out YouFit.