Resources
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When is a Session not a Session?
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Sessions are pretty arbitrarily defined, all too easily inflated, and far more complex than most realise. It’s possible for apparent step-changes in Google Analytics reports to have little real-world relevance, and common for reports to show numerous mysterious and apparently inexplicable landing pages and traffic sources. It is therefore essential for Google Analytics users to understand what they’re actually talking about when they reference a session, and that’s what this post is all about.
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What We Learned in May - The Digital Marketing Month in a Minute
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It can sometimes be hard to wrap your head around just how big a company Google is. Take our first story in this article; Google now handles at least two trillion searches per year. The search engine giant is also busy making changes to some of its most well-known features, including the ubiquitous SERPs and the Search Console. There’s also news from Twitter, Facebook and here at Distilled. Read more
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Feedback: The Most Important Tool for Building Great Teams
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Here at Distilled, we strive to be excellent at giving and receiving feedback. While this is a lofty goal, its existence places value on our team continually sharpening their feedback skills. With this in mind, I want to share the main principles that have served us here at Distilled so well. I will also discuss common roadblocks, which so often derail teams and progress, along with some tips on how to avoid this. Read more
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Split Testing Titles and H1s: Do They Still have an SEO Impact?
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Title tags and H1 tags have always been at the centre of SEO - no good site audit doesn’t mention them. However, it is tempting to wonder if optimising these things makes much of a difference anymore? At Distilled we have seen that on large pages, getting these things right really does seem to make a difference. Yet, it has always been hard to prove. However, we’ve been piloting our SEO split-testing platform and one of the tests we’ve run focussed on exactly this type of change. This post demonstrates how improving title tags and H1s can make an appreciable difference. Read more
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Future Talk and Timely Tactics: Everything You Missed at SearchLove Boston 2016
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Our first conference of 2016 has been and gone, and what a success it was! Over 200 smart marketers joined us in Boston for two full days of sessions and a suite of parties to boot. If you didn’t make it along this year, or if you did and want a refresher on the key takeaways, we’ve compiled all speaker decks and the salient points to remember now you’re back in the office. Read more
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What The Block? An Exploration of the Future of Digital Advertising in an Ad Block Climate
Ad blocking is one of the topics Distilled covered in Searchscape (which showcases our predictions for the future of search) late last year, defining it as one of the most poignant topics in search for 2016. At their simplest, ad blockers are apps, plugins or browser extensions that alter or block ad content on a page. Read more
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What We Learned in April - The Digital Marketing Month in a Minute
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Perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot of April's biggest stories come directly from Google, with the search engine giant trialling a number of new products, along with changes to its Search Quality Rater Guidelines. Other stories come from many of the other tech giants, including a look at their respective financial results (with some seeing better results than others). Read more
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A Close Look at the Five Most Interesting Talks from BrightonSEO 2016
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Last Friday, myself and a number of fellow Distillers made our twice-annual pilgrimage to Brighton for the excellent BrightonSEO. Throughout the day, we took in as many different tracks as possible to get an overall view of what was on offer. We’ve decided to take a deep dive into five of the most interesting talks from the day, and what we learned from them. Read more
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Just Let Go! Why Unsubscribing is Critical to Email Marketing Success
This post will run through some of the negative tactics surrounding email subscriptions. It will also look at how those tactics can have an unseen impact on your marketing success. Finally, we will look into some ways to turn the unsubscribing process into a better experience, even if someone is leaving you for a while. Read more
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Panic Time or False Alarm? A Beginner’s Guide to Traffic Drop Analysis
Have you ever been in a situation when your or your client’s traffic has dropped and you’re not sure what to do? How do you know if it's a real problem or just seasonality? Being able to recognise those true traffic drops, as oppose to red herrings like broken tracking or the aforementioned seasonality, is a critical skill for marketing consultants and in-house marketers. You’ve got to know when to reassure your boss/client, and when to suggest action. This post will walk you through the process of confirming what actually happened and understanding why it happened in the first place. Read more
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The Technical Audit Checklist Made for Human Beings
Technical audits are one of the activities that define SEO—we’ve all done them. But audits are only as valuable as their impact. Whether you’re a practitioner or an agency partner, your job really begins when the audit is finished. With that in mind, we asked “Can we design an audit that helps make real change happen?” The result is an aware technical audit checklist. It considers the underlying problems we’re tackling (or trying to prevent). It makes technical audits faster, more effective, and more impactful. Read more
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What We Learned in March - The Digital Marketing Month in a Minute
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It's been another busy month in the digital marketing world. Google has announced a brand new version of one of its major products, and a proposed redesign for another. Facebook is ramping up Instant Articles, in preparation to take on Google Accelerated Mobile Pages. It's also been a busy month for Distilled too, with a number of noteworthy blog posts to sink your teeth into. Read more