Search Leeds 2018 Conference Recap – Part 1

Search Leeds is back and better than ever with an impressive line up of speakers from some top agencies and brands. We’ve got Koozians on the ground letting us know some of the key takeaways from this year’s talks on Content Marketing, Paid Media and SEO.

Here’s everything you need to know:

International site speed: Going for super-speed around the globe

Bastian Grimm @basgr – Peak Ace

It’s so important to have fast loading websites, especially in a mobile-first world, and sites have to work for your end user as user satisfaction is the most important thing for any company. Here, Bastian Grimm goes through web performance optimisation, going further than AMP, to make any and every website really fast!

Key takeaways:

• 47% of users think a site should load in 2 secs!
• Image optimisation – 60% of traffic is image traffic – that is the single biggest component of every website. Use tiny png tiny JPG for all images – loads of new image formats coming though as there is room of improvement. Google’s WebP is a good alternative (only works on Chrome, however). Lots of other formats coming out from other companies such as Microsoft etc. 80% savings can happen very easily with these new formats.
• Customer web fonts – 70% of all sites use a non-standard font. Processing this CSS slows the site through render blocking. Font Style Matcher is a tool that finds your custom font and matches it with a similar regular font to overlap it. This helps stop the slowing of the site and fight the flash of invisible text. It’s just one line of code but it makes a huge difference.
• Better measurement – PageSpeedInsights doesn’t tell us much. Translate experiences into user metrics – Time to First Paint and First Meaningful Paint are better to look at. Chrome Dev Tools can give you these paint timings. Performance Observer is another great tool that also links up with GA

 

The past, the present and the future of mobile

Gerry White @dergal – Just Eat

We all know how important mobile is, with it being the main device used to access the internet for many people. Gerry White takes us through  the history of mobile, but more importantly he will tell us what’s coming next for mobile.

• PWA – Progressive Web Apps – Tinder is a great example of this, as is Instagram and Financial Times! There is a huge checklist on Google to show what is a PWA, but 2 main criteria are that it  must have a manifest JSON LD file and Service Worker (which allows you to access the app without the server). Basically, PWAs allow you to access websites really easily on your phone.
• Voice Search – Alexa has been changing things since 2014, but only 5% of homes actually have an Alexa. It’s great for music, lights etc but quite terrible as a search engine. Google Assistant is getting better – but we need to help by making sure everything is marked up on Schema to ensure that voice searches can actually find your site. Without giving the search engines the information we can’t expect them to find it. This is actually what mobile first is all about – Google isn’t looking for pages anymore but information.
• Augmented Reality – this actually came out in 2009 but it wasn’t that great. It’s now been made much more practical and user friendly.  It will be getting better and better as we go forward and it should be something that devs and marketers get into.
• The future – Companies can get so much data and information on us from sensors, websites etc. And as long as this is consensual, it can be a great thing. Machine learning is happening already to allow Google and Facebook etc to know so much about us and tailor experiences to us all on a super individual basis. Whether this is ‘right’ or how much data they should be allowed access to is a whole other issue!

 

How not to f**k up a migration

Steve Chambers @stickyeyes – Stickyeyes

Migrations need to be treated very seriously as there are several things that can go wrong which lead to a significant loss of organic traffic. Steve Chambers goes through common issues, pitfalls, where things can go wrong – and how to avoid them.

• The goal of migration is to improve the website – not just keep it all static.
• Pre-Migration planning – Responsibilities, Resource, Project Planning and Checklist. These need to be sorted and in place to ensure your migration goes as smoothly as possible. Don’t work in silos – get as many stakeholders involved as early as possible. Consistently track progress and share with all shareholders at all times. And don’t do it on a Friday!
• Image redirects – this can get forgotten about. Pass 301 redirects to these as well.

 

Analytics Tracking: or how I learned to stop worrying and love Google Tag Manager

Emma Barnes @ejbarnes89 – Branded3

This talk discussed the capabilities of Google Tag Manager (GTM), how initially GTM can appear intimidating and complex, but with perseverance and experimentation, it has endless possibilities.

Emma encouraged placing page view tracking on all pages and placed an importance on GDPR in relation to cookies being used as personally identifiable information. The talk explained how to create event tracking tags, tracking clicks on products on e-commerce sites, implementing data layers and benefits of GTM for multinational websites.

Key takeaways:

• Implement event tracking on all pages to track events such as downloading a PDF or clicking on a phone number.
• Ensure you are discussing GDPR in relation to consent/use of cookies on a site.
• Multinational websites – By default GA only tells you information about your time zone. GTM can be set up to see alternative insights for time of day e.g. for multinational sites to track activity. Can create a variable in JavaScript about what time/hour of the day it is on those user’s browsers and can categorise by creating a lookup to analyse the data.
• Ask web developer to help you put info in the data layer on the website – it communicates through your site and GTM about what may or may not be on the page – e.g. the author of a blog post. You can tell GTM to look for an author and add as a content grouping.

Tag Manager – you can inject HTML and JavaScript to implement it:

• Sometimes Google doesn’t read it. Not a futureproof solution. Worth testing/monitoring.
• Paid – in GTM you can select a tag for remarketing/tracking for paid.
• Tag Manager might be scary but embrace it – it is an exciting learning process.

 

Track campaigns like a bloodhound: How to make your marketing work harder

Jill Quick @jillquick – The Coloring In Department

This talk explored GA and its complexities as it was built by developers and not marketeers. The importance of data as “without data you are just another person with an opinion”.  Organic, paid social/social media and email.

Core reporting API – inbound traffic, without being tagged, won’t be placed in the right category, which can lead to inaccurate data. This can be assisted by UTM parameters such as:

• Medium – e.g.: organic, email
• Campaign – e.g.: various campaigns around different channels
• Source – where does the link live – e.g.: database
• URL

All channel > add a secondary dimension > source medium > default channel grouping settings.

Our key takeaways are:

• GA data is gospel/set in stone.
• Medium and source is often labelled up the wrong way.
• If you have an email campaign and it is not tagged properly and set up with a UTM parameter, you run the risk of being placed in the ‘wrong’ traffic bucket (direct or referral).
• If you are not tagging on social (e.g. Facebook) the company will be putting that in referral. Paid social will get thrown in with referral and will be unable to talk about % paid social versus organic social.
• Data is then accessed from its GA acquisition reports.
• Ensure you agree uniform naming convention across campaigns to avoid ruining the data.
• Cost of acquisition per channel.
• System defined checklist supplied by Jill for companies to implement.

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