Have you ever thought about the effects of rushing a job?
In the Web Design and SEO World clients often want things done now! or Yesterday.
They never stop to take time to think that to be great you need time to achieve GREAT.
At Chameleon, we often get asked “How long will it take” for our web design and SEO tasks.
Clients come to us because of referrals, seeing other work we have completed or finding us top of Google but they often do not appreciate the time taken to achieve some of the amazing work we complete.
All businesses not matter whether they are large or small, they will have an obligation to ensure that they are compliant with GDPR law when it comes into effect on May 25th 2018.
Many business owners are hearing GDPR mentioned and wondering what it is. GDPR is the EU General Data Protection Regulation and this new legal framework governing the use of personal data covers all EU markets.
This change is being rolled out to protect users in this new digital age that we live in. The GDPR legislation replaces the current national data protection laws. The existing EU data protection framework was set up in a totally different era when data was handled in a totally different manner.
The new GDPR is being set up in 2018 designed to give consumers the control they need to look after their personal information. This applies to all EU countries and this will not change with the UK Brexit developments with the EU.
The British Government has given a statement that they intend to implement the legislation alongside EU member nations.
The GDPR legislation means that organisations can be fined 4% of annual turnover or up to €20m if the company does not follow the guidelines and breaches the law. SO YES TAKE NOTE…
The core focus of GDPR is Consumers’ personal data. The classification of personal data is broadened under the GDPR which means that data used within the affiliate industry for example and other industries that also rely on personal data that currently do not consider personal data and contribute to many issues around data leakage will now be classified under the GDPR.
Currently, a definitive list of personal identifiers doesn’t exist usage by affiliate marketers but with the GDPR rollout, it will include the capturing of information such as session cookie ID data, customer-unique numbers, IP address information, device ID data and more…
Basically, any information captured that is a unique identifier that can be used by networks and platforms as part of standard tracking will need to be reviewed as to what and how the data is captured and stored.
Publishers using affiliate tracking will, therefore, have an obligation to ensure they are legally compliant with the new regulation.
To process personal data businesses need to look at how they process data. Basically, there will six legal bases available with the two most commonly used in the digital advertising sector being consent and legitimate interest and this is going to change the way many businesses operate their outbound sales.
Legitimate interest is totally different from consent and if a business wants to use this data method as a legitimate interest they have to be confident that they can demonstrate this method compared to consent which is considered necessary in offering individuals a real choice and control. The concept is to provide genuine consent for individuals to in control and as a result, a business will have to build customer trust to enhance the business reputation”.
There is also contract legal basis which is only available if you have specific contract agreements in place between a business and its consumer. This allows personal data to be collected and then processed and used by publishers.
Banners and pop-ups on websites that are seen when viewing websites informing consumers about the use of cookies to track online activity fall under the ePrivacy Directive (Cookie Law).
This directive also applies to promotional email marketing and SMS marketing.
Phone call marketing also needs consent and GDPR does not supersede the ePrivacy Directive instead it will run alongside. This Directive is currently still under review to ensure it aligns with the GDPR.
The publisher should be reviewing the consent mechanisms in place along with ICO guidance and making changes accordingly before May 25th 2018 and all forms of online advertising across the industry will need to look at the general standards and approaches to what is and more importantly, what isn’t allowed.
We have been asked about building consent tools to ensure websites are GDPR and ePrivacy Directive compliant in time for the May deadline which as we develop software can be used for other businesses.
If you would like more information please get in touch.
We often get asked questions about Bing ads being worth testing, and if to use Bing at all.
We thought we would take a random SEO client and look at the statistics. It is clear that Google dominates in this instance with:-
With the data we have it is clear that Googles organic traffic is over 50% of all traffic in this short period. Also Google PPC, with a small budget, is approximately 20% making Google the reason that 70% of this clients visitors land on the website.
Interestingly, Facebook is also key here with Mobile Facebook making up nearly 4% and Desktop Facebook 0.5%, which is more than double that of Bing traffic.
This example shows a client who ranks high in Google, and also high in Bing, making this a like for like comparison. However the client doesn’t use Bing ads.
According to NetMarketShare.com the desktop search engine market share is as follows:-
According to NetMarketShare.com the mobile search engine market share is as follows:-
With search engine market share you have to also consider the browser because this will have an impact. If many new PC’s for example are coming out of the box with Microsoft Edge / Internet Explorer and then Bing.
In the example here the client does not use Bing Ads and this is means there is a potential that extra traffic can be achieved if they were to use the Bing ads service:-
With Bing Ads a lot companies are using them and it is very similar to how Google used to be many years ago with adverts positioned above the organic listing and to the right hand side of the listing.
A Bing search for “Birmingham SEO Services”:-
Another example a Bing search for “Birmingham SEO Company”:-
This is what Google also did for example in 2013:-
Now Google do not have ads on the right hand side and this has been a change they made and have stayed with for a number of years now.
With any form of online advertising, using a professional company to carry out the process will save money for example:-
As a marketing agency, we have to use both Google AdWords and Bing Ads for our clients, as required. Costs with Bing Ads are a lot less due to less high level competition it seems and from our own findings the behaviour of Bing users is also different to that of the Google users which suggests a couple of things:-
This means that despite having a very small search engine market share compared to that of Google, it is worth testing what Bing Ads can achieve.
It is worth noting that you can import from Google Adwords into Bing:-
If you want to test Bing Ads and would like Chameleon to help call 0121 663 0456.
One of clients Breslins Group the Business & Tax Advisers, Chartered Accountants in Birmingham, Coventry and Solihull has seen great business growth since working with us and have used Twitter to thank us for our services.
The tweet comes following the success we have achieved for the company:-
Big shout out & thanks to @chameleonweb as since we have embarked on our digital journey with them, our business growth has flourished! pic.twitter.com/4oCwqrsSkN
— Breslins (@BreslinsGroup) June 13, 2017
