A Quick Guide to Facebook & Instagram Ad Campaign Objectives
A Quick Guide to Facebook & Instagram Ad Campaign Objectives
Gain an understanding of the main Facebook and Instagram ad campaign objectives to deliver more effective social media ads.
by Itzecom Team
On the surface, choosing your ad campaign objective is simple: select a goal based on the action you want people to take when they see your ad on Facebook or Instagram.
For example, if you are looking to generate some hot leads from your ads, you can implement a campaign objective that encourages people to complete a lead form.
There are three main categories (goals) that your campaign objectives will fall under:
- Awareness: A top-of-funnel objective perfect for targeting people who are unaware or problem-aware. Used to generate interest in your product or service—you can help people become more aware of your solutions.
- Consideration: If you’re looking to get people thinking about your business and seeking out more info, this middle-of-the-funnel objective is perfect! This objective is all about targeting people who are problem- or solution-aware, and getting them to take action.
- Conversions: This bottom-of-the-funnel objective is for targeting people who are solution-aware and encourages them to make a purchase.
Awareness Campaign Objectives
These impression-based objectives are designed to have your ad reach as many people in your target audience as possible, while staying within your budget limits.
Given the nature of these campaign types, don’t expect too many clicks or much engagement since these objectives mainly focus on the top stage of the funnel.
Facebook and Instagram currently offer two Awareness objectives:
- Brand Awareness – Increase people’s awareness of your business
- Reach – Show your ad to as many people as you can
Brand Awareness
Brand Awareness should be used when your goal is to have an audience become familiar with your brand.
These ads are shown to people who Facebook deems to be most likely to remember your business.
Reach
The Reach objective should be used if you want to get your ad in front of as many people as possible, and keep it there.
Typically reserved for warm audiences, this can be an effective option when combined with other strategic retargeting campaigns or if you are just looking to deliver your message to an entire audience.
Consideration Campaign Objectives
Encourage people to learn more about your business with these six low-intent, middle-of-the-funnel campaign objectives.
Facebook and Instagram currently offer these Consideration objectives:
- Traffic
- Engagement
- App Installs
- Video Views
- Lead Generation
- Messages
Traffic
The goal here is to get more people to visit your website, without expecting them to do anything else while they’re there.
Your ads will be shown to Facebook users who are most likely to click the link in your ad. However, they may not necessarily complete a conversion or make a purchase.
Traffic campaigns often gather cold, unaware visitors to your website. But, you can use this to your advantage with a layered strategy that retargets these Facebook users in an alternative campaign focused on moving them down the funnel.
Who is this for?
This type of campaign is effective if you want people to read an article or blog post on your site. Additionally, if you derive revenue from ads on your site, this could be a cost-effective way to get more eyes on your content.
Engagement
Engagement campaigns attempt to show your ads to those who Facebook predicts will interact with your content. These are people who are most likely to Like, Comment and Share your ad—which could generate additional organic reach.
There are three options available when setting up this type of campaign:
- Post Engagement: This attempts to gain reactions, comments and shares—a great way to build social proof.
- Page Likes: This option encourages people to Like and Follow your Facebook page.
- Event Responses: Invites users to mark that they are “Going” to attend an event, either online or in-person. This is not the same as driving actual ticket sales.
If you’re looking to grow event sign-ups, or promote your brand’s credibility through social proof, the Engagement Campaign type could work for you.
App Installs
The goal here is pretty straightforward: Facebook will show your ad to those who are most likely to download your mobile app.
For optimal results, you should register your app with Facebook Developers’ site and implement the SDK—which allows you to track event data, like installs or purchases.
Video Views
The Video Views objective is geared toward getting as many people as possible to watch your video within your target audience. So, if you’re looking to rack up some views on your video and don’t expect users to take any additional actions, this could be an objective that works for you.
Since Facebook tracks how long each user watches your video, it’s a great way to build an audience of engaged viewers who watched your video for an extended period of time.
Lead Generation
Lead Generation Campaigns offer a unique way to collect leads for your business right within the Facebook platform. Meaning you don’t need to interrupt someone’s social media experience by taking them off-platform to convert them into a lead. Talk about reducing friction!
Once someone clicks your ad, Facebook will display a form, which is often auto-filled with the available information Facebook has on that user—reducing the amount of typing a user needs to do in order to submit a form.
You will need a way to collect these leads from Facebook, which you can easily do by directly connecting your CRM if you are using one of the Facebook partner integrations or with Zapier to have them automatically populate. If you do not have a CRM, you will need to download these leads from your business page.
Who is this for?
This objective is great for anyone looking for a seamless way to collect leads directly within the Facebook and Instagram platforms. When combined with an enticing offer, Lead Forms work well for those prospects in the consideration stage.
Messages
The goal of a Messages campaign is to encourage users to engage with your business on Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram Direct by starting a conversation.
This is great for warmer traffic prospects that might just need a few questions answered in order to move forward with your business.
Conversion Campaign Objectives
Facebook’s Conversion objectives (Conversions, Catalog Sales and Store Traffic) are focused on high-intent actions that are designed to move your target audience closer to making a purchase or visiting your store in-person.
Facebook and Instagram currently offer three Conversion objectives:
- Conversions
- Catalog Sales
- Store Traffic
Conversions
The goal of the Conversion campaign objective is to have people take specific actions on your website, like completing a form or adding an item to their cart.
Conversion campaigns allow you to optimize your ads around specific actions users would take on your website.
These actions, or conversion events include:
- Add payment info
- Add to cart
- Add to Wishlist
- Complete registration
- Contact
- Donate
- Purchase
- Lead
- Customize product
- Find location
- Initiate checkout
- Schedule
- Search
- Start trial
- Submit application
- Subscribe
- View content
- Custom conversion events
The Conversions objective requires the Facebook, now Meta Pixel, to be installed on every page of your site along with Facebook’s Conversions API and a verified domain.
This type of campaign can work well if you want people to make a purchase or submit a form on your website to become a lead.
Catalog Sales
Catalog Sales campaigns are designed for eCommerce stores that want to push dynamic ads for their entire product line.
Instead of just advertising one product, Facebook can show relevant products from your whole catalog to people who have indicated prior interest.
These ads can be set up via a feed plugin on major eCommerce platforms like WooCommerce or Shopify, or manually set up through a direct upload to Facebook.
You will often see these ads executed as retargeting campaigns, concentrated on individuals who did not complete a purchase on your website (non-buyers). If you have ever viewed a product on a website, only to find that same product show up in your Facebook or Instagram feed later on, you’ve seen the power of a Catalog Sales campaign in action.
Store Traffic
Are you looking to drive more foot traffic to your stores?
The Store Traffic campaign targets prospective customers that are physically near one of your locations. This objective is only for businesses with multiple physical locations who are looking to drive more in-person traffic.
For this campaign to run effectively, you will need to enter all of your physical locations and hours of operation in the Meta Business Manager and on the consumer side, the user must have Location Services enabled for Facebook or Instagram.
If you have a single brick-and-mortar location, consider using a Reach campaign objective instead to connect with your local audience. With Reach, you can target as many people as possible within your ideal audience and still utilize geotargeting to reach those within a set radius of your store.
New Campaign Objectives Are Rolling Out
Facebook is introducing a new set of campaign objectives grouped together based on their expected outcome. Facebook claims the names are changing, but you will still be able to perform the same functions.
Here is how the campaign objectives will align in the future:
| Previous Objective Name | New Campaign Objective |
|---|---|
| Brand Awareness | Awareness |
| Reach | Awareness |
| Traffic | Traffic |
| Engagement | Engagement |
| App Installs | App Promotion |
| Video Views | Awareness & Engagement |
| Lead Generation | Leads |
| Messages | Engagement & Leads |
| Conversions | Engagement, Leads & Sales |
| Catalog Sales | Sales |
Wrapping Up
If you’re looking to reach new audiences or connect with your customers across multiple platforms.
Facebook and Instagram offer some powerful targeting options that can help you engage with your audience. However, these campaign objectives can involve some experimentation to see what will work best for your business to drive the most results.
Google’s Helpful Content Update
Google’s Helpful Content Update
Google dropped the “helpful content update” which puts an emphasis on rewarding people-first content that provides a satisfying user experience.
by Itzecom Team
On August 18th, 2022, Google announced the “helpful content update” in response to a growing concern over the quality and diversity of search results appearing when people search on Google.
This major algorithm update puts an emphasis on rewarding people-first content that provides a rewarding user experience.
This update continues Google’s pursuit to help “people see more original, helpful content written by people, for people, in search results.”
What is Google’s Helpful Content Update?
Google’s helpful content update aims to help users find more valuable content when searching with Google.
The focus of this update should result in a better experience for both searchers and content creators as Google looks to reward high-quality content that was written by humans to help people.
This algorithm update aims to specially target “content that seems to have little value, low-added value or is otherwise not particularly helpful to those doing searches.”
The Key Takeaways Are:
- Focus on people-first content
- Don’t make content for search engines
- Remove unhelpful content from your website
- Continue to follow the guidelines Google has expressed for years
We’ll dive into these major points later in this article in the ‘What Does this Mean for Your Website’ section.
When Did the Algorithm Drop?
The helpful content update began on August 25th, 2022 and will take roughly two weeks to fully roll out, which would set the initial completion date around September 9th, 2022.
Helpful Content is a Sitewide Signal
The helpful content update introduces a new sitewide signal, meaning the update will not be applied to individual pages, but to the entire website.
So, if your site is deemed to have an overall high amount of unhelpful content or does not satisfy users in a way that meets their expectations, your site could be flagged by this update—thus impacting your overall performance in search.
Who Does this Impact?
The update does not specifically target any particular niche; however, Google did say that due to the content that has historically been created, it stands to impact these types of content the most:
- Online educational material
- Arts & entertainment
- Shopping
- Tech-related content
As of this post, Google says this update will initially impact English-language searches globally that utilize Google Search, however they will look to add this to additional languages and products in the near future.
What Does this Mean for Your Website?
Again, the goal here is to be helpful and create useful, unique, original content or resources for your site.
Since the focus of this algorithm update is centered around content creation, Google has provided a series of helpful questions to ask yourself when writing content for your, or your clients, websites.
People-First Content
Focusing on people-first content has been a staple of reputable SEOs, content creators and agencies for some time now. Google’s continued efforts to reward these practitioners is a welcome update for those individuals and companies.
To help guide professionals and make sure they are on the right path, Google offered a list of six questions regarding building people-first content:
- Do you have an existing or intended audience for your business or site that would find the content useful if they came directly to you?
- Does your content clearly demonstrate first-hand expertise and a depth of knowledge (for example, expertise that comes from having actually used a product or service, or visiting a place)?
- Does your site have a primary purpose or focus?
- After reading your content, will someone leave feeling they’ve learned enough about a topic to help achieve their goal?
- Will someone reading your content leave feeling like they’ve had a satisfying experience?
- Are you keeping in mind our guidance for core updates and for product reviews?
Avoid Search-Engine-First Content
SEO is not a bad thing. Skilled SEO strategies continue to provide value to search engines and users on a variety of levels.
However, content that is created for the sole purpose of trying to rank well within the search results page is hardly valuable for anyone. This content is typically not helpful—often stuffed with keywords, location-based phrases, second-hand experiences, poor user experience, the list goes on and on.
Google provided an additional list of questions for content creators and SEOs to help them avoid developing search-engine-first content:
- Is the content primarily to attract people from search engines, rather than made for humans?
- Are you producing lots of content on different topics in hopes that some of it might perform well in search results?
- Are you using extensive automation to produce content on many topics?
- Are you mainly summarizing what others have to say without adding much value?
- Are you writing about things simply because they seem trending and not because you’d write about them otherwise for your existing audience?
- Does your content leave readers feeling like they need to search again to get better information from other sources?
- Are you writing to a particular word count because you’ve heard or read that Google has a preferred word count? (No, we don’t).
- Did you decide to enter some niche topic area without any real expertise, but instead mainly because you thought you’d get search traffic?
- Does your content promise to answer a question that actually has no answer, such as suggesting there’s a release date for a product, movie, or TV show when one isn’t confirmed?
Removing Unhelpful Content
One suggested method of improving your website’s overall performance is removing the unhelpful content. According to Google,
“Any content — not just unhelpful content — on sites determined to have relatively high amounts of unhelpful content overall is less likely to perform well in Search, assuming there is other content elsewhere from the web that’s better to display. For this reason, removing unhelpful content could help the rankings of your other content.”
This suggested pruning of content is not something that should be taken lightly. There are many factors that should be considered when evaluating whether or not to remove content from your site.
Utilizing tools like Google Analytics and Search Console are a step in the right direction when assessing individual page performance compared to your website’s overall performance.
You should look at metrics like traffic, target keywords, rankings, conversions, sessions duration, and bounce rate to name a few.
You’ll also want to consider the number and quality of backlinks pointing to particular pages before adding URLs to the chopping block.
And remember, just because a page doesn’t rank well, or doesn’t generate a lot of organic traffic, doesn’t mean that the page is not useful. A page could still be valuable to your customers on their path to conversion, even though it is not considered rank-worthy by Google’s standards.
The Road to Recovery
Through the use of a machine-learning model, Google regularly evaluates the content on your website and grades it. These grades will not be made available to webmasters or visible through Search Console. So, you will be left to your evaluations to determine which webpages need refinement or removal.
If the automated model deems a site to have unhelpful content and thus loses position in the search results, the path to recovery could be a somewhat lengthy one—possibly months according to Google.
“A natural question some will have is how long will it take for a site to do better, if it removes unhelpful content? Sites identified by this update may find the signal applied to them over a period of months. Our classifier for this update runs continuously, allowing it to monitor newly launched sites and existing ones. As it determines that the unhelpful content has not returned in the long-term, the classification will no longer apply.”
Essentially, a website that has been impacted by this update will need to prove itself to Google by earning back their trust through the commitment of creating people-first content and discontinuing the production of search-engine-first, or SEO content.
After content changes are made, the review process is still automated (not a manual action) so, it will take some time for Google to reevaluate and regain trust for a website’s content going forward.
Approaching Content Going Forward
This algorithm update should help refocus website content and content creators. By approaching content from a people-first perspective, writers should look to narrow their focus on the content they are creating.
Essentially, staying in your area of expertise, knowing your audience, and writing content that matches the “existing or intended audience for your business or site.” The E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) update of 2018 feels like it comes into play here as well. This update focused on helping customers feel safe trusting, believing & interacting with the information on your site. Demonstrating E-A-T should continue to help Google define helpful content.
Additionally, focus on creating satisfying experiences for your audience. This involves anticipating your searcher’s intent and sufficiently delivering the information users are looking for—having visitors “feeling they’ve learned enough about a topic to help achieve their goal.”
Wrapping up
The helpful content update is a welcomed opportunity for websites and content creators to step up and deliver valuable content for their audiences.
The objective of writing for humans and creating useful content is bound to impact many websites across the internet and will certainly change the way some marketing agencies and freelancers approach their content strategies going forward.
When implementing a content or SEO strategy for a website, remember to:
- Write content for people, not search engines
- Focus on your audience
- Deliver satisfying experiences
- Answer your users’ questions
- Remove unhelpful content
This is just the introduction or first phase of the helpful content update. Google said, “we will also continue refining how the classifier detects unhelpful content and launch further efforts to better reward people-first content.”
We’ll keep an eye on how this update impacts search going forward.
How to Maximize The 6 Major Website Traffic Sources
How to Maximize The 6 Major Website Traffic Sources
Get the most out of the 6 major website traffic sources—discover how to optimize and leverage each channel to help you compete for targeted traffic and bring in more qualified leads, sales & customers.
by Itzecom Team
Website traffic is the number of visits a website receives in a given time period. Naturally, any website is looking to get a steady pool of visitors and consistently grow. More than that, businesses are competing for not just any traffic but targeted traffic that can bring them qualified leads and loyal customers.
Understanding where visits come from and how to check website traffic is an integral part of any digital marketing and SEO strategy. In this post, we’ll look at major traffic sources, how they differ from each other, and how to get the most out of each of them.
Six Major Website Traffic Sources
You might want to get clicks from various channels: from search to ads and from social media to personal recommendations. All the sources require separate efforts and you need to understand which of them work for your business and which are the most important to focus on.
Organic Traffic
Organic traffic means getting clicks from search. To attract users looking for answers on Google or another search engine, you’ll have to make it to the top 10 results (the results on the second page get a CTR of less than 1%) and make your page stand out among all others. SEO should be your most consistent investment as it is responsible for more than half of all traffic.
Pros of organic search:
- This source of traffic significantly outperforms all others
- It offers durable results
- Its opportunities are endless: there’s no limit to how many pages and for how many keywords you can get ranked in search
- You can do SEO on a small budget
Cons of organic search:
- It takes time for your SEO efforts to pay off
- There are many aspects to take care of and different specialists to involve (SEOs, developers, content marketers and copywriters, etc.)
How to increase website traffic from organic search:
- You need to start from building an SEO strategy and the number one task here is keyword research. You might need a keyword tool with a huge database to find what queries users type to find your competitors and information relevant to your business. After collecting a website’s keyword list, filter all your queries to have manageable groups divided by search intent, formulation, specification, or any other criterion.
- Analyzing the competition is also a part of SEO basics. Find out what pages of competitive domains are top performing in search for your target keywords and visit them to get the idea of why they are ranking high and how you can do better.
- Helpful and relevant content is the most important ranking factor. Put all the insights from keyword and competitor research into your landing pages, blog posts, and other pieces of content—make sure that your webpages are authoritative and easily readable. Consistency is also important: for instance, websites that publish more than 16 blog posts per month have 3.5X higher chances of getting traffic than those that publish 4 or less.
- Links are another top important factor for earning search engine rankings. Build a solid backlink profile by finding high-quality domains and making them link out to your pages. This is possible when you have a developed brand and exceptional content which other people want to share.
- All of the above falls short if you don’t take care of technical SEO. Secure your site with the latest protocol and encryption, make all your important pages easily accessible for search bots, and optimize page experience factors so that it doesn’t take long for your content to load and become interactive.
Paid Traffic
Paid traffic means visitors that come from advertising like Google Ads or Facebook Ads. Unlike other sources, paid traffic comes at a certain price and the more you pay, the more likely you are to win new customers. Naturally, you also have expenditures while working on other traffic channels, when hiring specialists, purchasing tools, etc. But with paid traffic, you’re paying exactly for publishing your content and getting it seen by your target audience.
Pros of paid traffic:
- You can reap the benefits really fast and can start getting clicks the same day you launch the ads
- It allows for precise targeting: you can set the exact demographics to get your ad shown to and receive highly qualified traffic as a result
Cons of paid traffic:
- Its results are temporary
- It is expensive: a monthly PPC spend can exceed $10,000 even for small and medium-sized businesses
How to maximize paid traffic:
- Decide which advertising platforms work best for your business.
- Create an advertising strategy involving PPC ads, social media ads, and display ads (if these types work for your business). Develop your campaigns with regard to each medium: for example, with PPC, you can target exact search intents, while with Facebook ads, you can target exact demographics.
- Regularly review your keyword list and segment it to create more effective PPC ads based on groups of keywords.
- Use ad extensions to better structure your ads and make them more appealing.
- Make sure your landing pages are relevant to your ads. If they don’t match, you won’t get the desired traffic.
Email Traffic
Email traffic means users were brought to your website from your email marketing efforts. When sending information about your services, news, or promotions to your customers and leads, you need to make sure that they open the emails, read them, and follow the links. To do so, you need to grab attention in the subject line and keep the emails informative, engaging, and personalized.
Pros of email marketing:
- This traffic source has the highest ROI ($38 on every $1 spent on average)
- It helps build trust and loyalty with customers
Cons of email marketing:
- It’s hard at the beginning when you have to collect an email list
- It takes a lot of effort to segment the audience you want to send emails to and experiment with what schedules and tactics work best
How to grow email traffic:
- Consistently grow your email list and make sure that your website offers an opportunity to subscribe whenever it’s relevant. Working on each email, segment your list according to the stages in the sales funnel or another criterion to provide people with the most helpful content.
- Craft personalized messages in the emails and make your CTAs clear (use action words and buttons to make them more attractive).
- Design emails so that they look beautiful and function properly on any device and screen resolution. 41% of emails are opened on mobile devices so you should keep your design mobile-first.
- Experiment with frequency and be consistent in your email communication.
Social Media Traffic
Social media traffic is users from social networks. As an important part of inbound marketing, social media helps gain prospects by engaging with the audience through the content.
Pros of social media:
- It allows for direct communication with the audience and increasing loyalty to your brand and to what you’re offering
- It helps build a website’s authority
Cons of social media:
- Social networks are unpredictable and content may get viral for no justifiable reason
- A lot of social media traffic is left untracked: when users share links to websites using their social accounts, it comes as an undefined source of traffic
How to boost traffic from social media:
- Develop a publishing schedule with regard to each platform’s nature. For example, it’s advisable to tweet 5 times a day and post on LinkedIn 2-5 times a week.
- Make your posts as engaging as possible. Use visuals, ask questions, and make the very beginning of each post intriguing.
- Automate when it makes sense. There are lots of social media automation tools that allow scheduling posts and getting your message seen at the right time across many platforms.
Referral Traffic
Referral traffic means visits from other websites. Getting sources to refer to you and place your links in their content relies on link building practices and PR activities. It can be a paid partnership or earned, free publicity—either way, having links to your website on external sources establishes your credibility and boosts traffic.
Pros of referral marketing:
- It expands your reach for the target audience (when the links are placed relevantly)
- It has lots of free opportunities to grow traffic
- It opens up new connections and facilitates relations with media, influencers, affiliates, etc.
Cons of referral marketing:
- There might be speculative link placements so you have to monitor if low-quality or irrelevant websites refer to you
- You have no control over who sees and follow your links
How to generate referrals:
- Submit your business to relevant listings and directories.
- Research opportunities to get mentioned on review platforms: reach out to websites that review businesses in your niche, encourage your customers to leave feedback on review and rating platforms.
- Contribute to authoritative sources to share expertise and mention your website in a natural way.
- Cooperate with industry experts and influencers for them to get to know about your website and share their opinion through their channels.
Direct Traffic
Direct traffic means those visits when people know a website they need and type its address in their browser. Some other types of visits are also categorized as direct traffic in Google Analytics: clicks from bookmarks; clicks from files, apps, or QR codes; clicks from text or chat messages; clicks from campaigns with an inaccurate tracking code, etc. To earn direct website visits, you have to put consistent efforts into all of the traffic channels: work on SEO, launch ad campaigns, run social media accounts, send emails, and cooperate with referring sources.
Pros of direct traffic:
- It’s an indicator of earned visitors
Cons of direct traffic:
- It creates tracking issues as Google Analytics includes undefined sources of traffic in this category
Important Traffic Metrics
Besides knowing the differences between traffic sources and the methods of benefiting from them, you need to know how to track your website visits. Here’s the list of the metrics you’ll see in Google Analytics:
- Users and new users: the number of all unique visitors and first-time visitors in a given period of time
- Sessions: the number of visits including both new and returning visitors (100 visits of the same person will count as 1 unique visitor but 100 separate sessions)
- Source and medium: where the user comes from, with source indicating a particular traffic channel and medium indicating its general category (for example, Google is the source and CPC the medium)
- Bounce rate: the percentage of visitors who don’t stay on a website but leave it after visiting one page
- Average time on a page and session duration: the first metric shows how much time users spend on each particular page and the second metric shows how much it takes for users to perform a particular action on a website
- Events and goals: events are specific actions other than pageviews and event goals are the desired outcomes that you want to track (downloads, registrations, etc.)
Apart from these metrics, you can monitor lots of parameters regarding your visitors:
- Demographics: age and gender
- Interests: categories and market segments visitors are interested in
- Geo: language version of the website and user locations
- Technology: devices, operating systems, screen resolutions, etc.
Monitoring traffic metrics with regard to your conversion goals and learning more about your visitors will help you improve all promotion-related activities and gain more clicks and interactions. You should always understand what is website traffic from each particular source and how to measure your results across various channels.
Increase Your Website Traffic by Leveraging All Sources
Making your business known and discussed, increasing the number of website visitors and customers are tightly connected. To grow your traffic, you have to work on all potential sources and engage in activities that pay off in both the short and long run. Expand your exposure by optimizing your website for search, creating paid ad campaigns, as well as working with social media, emails, and referrals.
Most importantly, continuously analyze your sources and spikes in traffic to define what approaches are most successful and what potential markets there are to explore. Get a Google Analytics report on traffic emailed to you so that you never miss a thing and stay on track with your traffic strategy.
Content Pruning: How to Audit Content in the Helpful Content Era
Content Pruning: How to Audit Content in the Helpful Content Era
In the advent of recent algorithm updates, we’ll look at how to strategically approach content pruning as part of your SEO and content marketing strategy.
by Itzecom Team
Ahh yes, the ancient art of content pruning is seeing a renaissance in the wake of Google’s Helpful Content update.
Except pruning content isn’t that old of an SEO technique and is one that has been feared (rightly so) by many SEOs. As the power of a successful prune can breathe life back into a website, an ugly hack job can seriously harm your website’s performance.
So, be mindful of who you’re handing those pruning shears to. 💇♀️
In this blog post, we’ll look at what content pruning is exactly, how it impacts your SEO and the best way to go about conducting a successful content pruning strategy.
What is Content Pruning?
Content pruning is the practice of identifying underperforming or non-helpful web pages and removing them from your website to improve your site’s overall SEO health.
This can be done through a number of methods, such as deleting outdated blog posts, removing low-quality pages, merging similar content, or redirecting URLs to more relevant content.
The full pruning process involves auditing and analysis to determine your content’s fate—whether it be reviving, repurposing, or ultimately the removal of low-quality content.
The goal of content pruning is to improve your website’s overall health by removing the dead weight—thus improving user experience and focusing your site’s energy on authoritative content that is helpful for people (and Google).
Why Prune Content?
Content pruning is one of the most underutilized SEO techniques that can deliver results for your website.
The idea behind a good pruning session comes from the technique of caring for bonsai trees, so we’ll approach this Mr. Miyagi style (80s movie reference). By cutting the low-quality, often low-traffic content from your website, you provide more opportunities for your star content to shine.
Now, this isn’t just slashing old pages for the sake of cutting content from your site.
This is a calculated method to improve your website’s overall quality, which can lead to better rankings and more traffic from search engines.
By removing poor performing pages, you can improve the ratio of high-quality indexed pages that exist on your site. The higher the ratio of quality pages compared to the total number of pages on your site can lead to an enhanced performance in the SERPs, as the overall ‘value’ of your site has improved.
Benefits of Content Pruning
With Google’s latest helpful content and core algorithm update launching within the last month or so, now is a perfect time to clear out some lackluster content from your site. This is especially true if it has been a while or you have never audited your content in this fashion.
With a further emphasis on creating better experiences and more helpful content, its become more of a necessity to reevaluate the pages on your website and see if it is helping or hurting your overall site health.
Some of the major benefits of content pruning include:
Higher Quality Content
Elevate your overall quality of content.
When you remove outdated or poor-quality content from your website, you improve your site’s overall quality. This impact is two-fold: (1) you’re able to remove old content that is often unhelpful or outdated for visitors and (2) search engines, like Google, consider the overall quality (and authority) of a website when determining its rank within the search results.
Improve UX
Helping people find the right stuff.
If there’s a lot of low-quality or outdated content on your site, it can be hard for people to find the accurate information they’re looking for.
No one likes to read an article, only to find out the post is from 7 years ago and no longer reflects the modern advice they should be receiving.
This poor user experience can speak to your credibility as a business and website—leaving people feeling frustrated and like you wasted their time. Rough.
Maximize Crawl Budget
Getting the most from Googlebot.
Search engines may not index all the pages on your site if they think they’re low quality. When you prune pages from your site, you’re maximizing your crawl budget by helping Googlebot more easily find your best content—helping you get the most out of each crawl.
Helpful Content Era
For the people…and Google.
As the helpful content update continues to expand its scope, diligence with high-quality content will remain a priority. Continuing to monitor your site’s performance while removing or updating underperforming content periodically can help your site stay current with this next wave of algorithm advances.
Optimized Linking
Pointing to the right places.
A strong link strategy, for both internal and external links, can help your website on a number of levels.
Not only are you directing users to the most helpful content on (or off) your site, but you are also ensuring that you’re passing link authority to the right places on your site—helping elevate your over performance.
How to Prune Your Content
Let’s get into it! How to approach a strategic content pruning session. There are five-main-steps when thinking about a content pruning process for your website:
- Collect Your Content: Get a list of pages on your site.
- Gather Your Data: Grab performance data from available sources.
- Conduct a Content Audit: Evaluate how your content is performing.
- Finalize Your URL’s Fate: You’ve got options.
- Backup, Rollout & Monitor: Execute your plan and track its impact.
Step 1: Collect Your Content
Creating a list of all the pages on your website.
For this step, you can export a list of URLs from your CMS. If you’re unable to export from your CMS, you can grab a list of URLs from Google Analytics or Search Console.
The Analytics option won’t necessarily yield a complete list of URLs, as someone needs to visit a page for Google Analytics to record a visit. However, this can still be a great starting point, you may just be missing some pages that don’t see any traffic.
After you have collected a list of URLs, make sure to remove any duplicates, as this will serve as your master list in the content audit portion of this process.
Step 2: Gather Your Data
Grab page specific performance data from available sources.
You want to look at all the available data you have to help gain as many insights as you can on the URLs in question. The source data you accumulate here will help keep you from making any costly errors, such as mistakenly eliminating the wrong pages.
You can pull in a host of data from various sources including (but not limited to):
Google Analytics:
- All traffic — a breakdown of visits, unique pageviews, bounce rate, exit rate, conversions, page value on a page-by-page basis. In Google Analytics, Behavior > Site Content > All Pages> Export.
- Organic traffic — You can filter the All Traffic report to show only organic traffic by applying an Organic Traffic segment.
You’ll want to pull in data from the last 12 months along with data going back a few years. This can be helpful when determining the fate of your content—by understanding if the page has ever performed well, and not just how it has done in the past year.
Google Search Console:
- External Links — These are links pointing to your domain from another website. You want to consider the number and quality of links pointing to your site. It’s very important to not get rid of any URLs that are receiving quality links from other sources. In Search Console, navigate to Links > External Links > More > Export.
- Internal Links — These are links within your website that are linking to other pages on your own website. In Search Console, Links > Internal Links > More > Export.
- Search Results — This report allows you to export impressions, clicks, click-through-rate (CTR) and average position in the Google search results for each of your URLs. Within Search Console > Search Results > Pages > Export.
Bing Webmaster Tools:
- Backlinks — An alternative method of downloading your site’s backlinks provided by Microsoft. This data can help you understand how many other domains are pointing to your website.
- In Webmaster tools, Backlinks > Backlinks for Your Site > Pages > Download All.
- To get a numerical value of links pointing to each URL, you can quickly run the Excel function =UNIQUE(C:C) this will get you a list of all unique URLs listed in the target URL column.
- Then you can run another Excel function =COUNTIF(C:C, x2). The ‘x’ represents the column where you have your list of unique URLs. So, if you put your list of unique URLs in column ‘D’, the function would be =COUNTIF (C:C, D2). This will get you the number of backlinks pointing to each unique URL.
- Search Performance — This report provides insights into the number of impressions, clicks and average position in the Bing search results each page on your site has achieved.
In Webmaster Tools > Search Performance > By Page > Download All.
Content Management System:
In WordPress, there are several plugins that can help you export this data.
- Publish date — This displays when the post was originally published.
- Last updated — This shows you when the post was last updated.
- Word Count — An export of words per page can help identify thin content. You can also grab this info from site crawling software like Screaming Frog.
Google Search Operators:
- Indexed content — Using the search operator site:example.com. You can gather a list of URLs that google has indexed for your site.
- Dated references & content — using this advanced search operator, site:example.com intext:”2016″ | intext:”2015″ | intext:”2014″ | intext:”2013”. You can search for content on your website that has any of those years listed in the body of the page copy.
Quick note: there are several Chrome extensions that can help you quickly extract a list of the URLs listed on the SERPs when you conduct these searches.
Paid Tools:
There are many tools out there that can provide additional insights into your website’s performance on a page-by-page basis. If you have access to any of these advanced tools, please include this data to help you evaluate the performance of each page on your site.
Step 3: Conduct a Content Audit
Use data and evaluate how your content is performing.
It’s time to compile all that data into a content auditing document. You can use your data tool of choice such as Excel, Google Sheets, R, Power BI, etc.
We’re looking to match each URL up with the corresponding data points from each of our exports.
From there it’s a matter of weighing and evaluating each of these metrics on a page-by-page basis, compared to the overall performance of your website as a whole.
Your content auditing document should help you identify opportunities on what to do with each page of your site.
Using the exported data, the Excel document above correlates each of the data points to the corresponding URL and compares it to the overall performance of the website.
The spreadsheet should help identify any pages that are:
- Not getting any traffic
- Receiving minimal organic traffic
- Not leading to conversions
- Not assisting on the path to conversion (page value)
- Not getting many backlinks
- Featuring (potentially) outdated information
- URLs with a low word count (thin content)
The final column gives a suggested outcome for each page. Please keep in mind each URL should also be subject to a manual review (Step 4). Data can help us, but it can’t paint the full picture here.
Step 4: Finalize Your URL’s Fate
What are you going to do with all that content? You’ve got options.
Ok, so you have your content audit document and you’re now ready to determine the fate of your URLs. If you added a suggested outcome column, you’ll have an idea of where the data is leading and you can begin sorting your content into three groups:
- Keep it: do (basically) nothing. That was easy 😅
- Update it: Improve, update, combine or repurpose
- Remove it: 301, noindex or canonical
Now, each URL is still subject to manual review—just because your content audit suggests an outcome, does not mean it’s final. So here are a few more columns I add to my spreadsheet during a manual review before making any final decisions:
- Target keyword: The focus keyword/ phrase for the page. (Some paid tools can help automate this for you!)
- Ease of updating: Rate how easy the content would be to update (Scale 1-10).
- Notes: Any additional notes or thoughts.
- Final outcome: Note the final decision for each URL.
Whether you address these last few items or decide to skip them, you’ll at least want to make sure you add the ‘Final outcome’ column to your spreadsheet to mark the action you plan to take with each of these URLs after your manual review.
The “Keep It” Group
Do (basically) nothing.
This is the easy group. These are pages that are doing well—they drive traffic, have backlinks, convert users and generally rank well organically.
Additionally, this group will include any pages that should not be removed, like your privacy policy, contact page, terms and conditions and recently published pages that have not had time to properly evaluate.
You’re going to want to note the target keywords for each of these pages and look for any cannibalization that may occur from pages that don’t perform as well. We’ll identify those URLs in the next group and deal with them accordingly.
💡 Keyword cannibalization occurs when two or more URLs are competing for the same (or similar) target keyword.
The “Update It” Group
Improve, update, combine, or repurpose these pages with other content.
You’ve got options in this group. And if it’s been a while since your last pruning, this group could fill your content calendar for months.
These are the underachievers. This group consists of pages that generally bring in mediocre traffic, they may get a few backlinks, minimal conversions and currently rank outside of page one in SERPs.
These pages may have received a lot of traffic in the past, but currently are underperforming—take special note of these, as they can sometimes lead to quick performance boosts with the proper updates.
If you have a lot of pages, you’ll also want to rate the ease of updating each URL. As we know, some pages are more difficult than others and may involve significant updates to bring back to life.
The “Remove It” Group
301, noindex or canonical these pages.
These are the nonperformers. These pages never really received any traffic, don’t have any backlinks, they do not help with conversions and do not rank for their intended keywords.
You’ll need to make some decisions on what to do with these pages. You can:
- 301 Redirect these URLs to similar or updated pages on your site.
- Noindex pages that are beneficial to your users, but not to search engines.
- Canonical URLs to the preferred version of the page, when duplicate content exists covering the same (or similar) topic.
Step 5: Backup, Rollout & Monitor
Execute your plan and track its impact.
After the fate of your content has been decided, it’s time to take action!
Before doing anything, I’d recommend you create a backup of your website and all of your content. If by chance you need to undo the changes you’ve made, it’s nice to have a backup to reference or restore.
For the content you plan to repurpose, you’ll want to prioritize your content marketing efforts by sorting these URLs by ease of updating the material and the potential impact the new content could have on your website’s performance.
For pages you plan to remove, you may want to consider a slower rollout of changes if your website is on the larger side. As an example, you could remove a portion of the pages, then monitor your performance before continuing to eliminate additional pages.
As with any major changes to your website, you’ll want to continue to monitor the impact the changes are having on your site and adjust accordingly.
How Often Should You Prune Content?
The answer depends on the quality of your website’s content and how frequently it is updated. For most websites, it’s a good idea to add regular content pruning into your SEO and content strategy at least once a year. As for sites with content that is regularly updated, a bi-annually or even a quarterly content pruning schedule may be the most helpful.
Wrapping Up
With recent Google algorithm updates and an ever-increasing need to demonstrate and deliver E-A-T content, maintaining the quality of your website’s content has never been more important.
By removing the pages that are holding your website back, you not only can adhere with Google’s latest quality recommendations, but also provide your users with the best experience on your website—hopefully leading to more visibility and conversions.Gather Your Data:
What is SGE: Navigating Google’s AI in Search
What is SGE: Navigating Google’s AI in Search
Welcome to an era where your computer doesn’t just follow commands—it creates, imagines, and even surprises you. This is the time of Generative AI, a groundbreaking technology that arms machines with the ability to generate text, images, and music that feel incredibly human-like, all without explicit instructions. This innovation is revolutionizing numerous fields, including the way we search.
Introducing Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE), a transformative approach to online search. The traditional method of sifting through pages of search results is becoming a thing of the past. With SGE, Google aims to understand your queries on a deeper level, offering precise, conversational responses as if you were discussing your question with a knowledgeable friend.
Let’s delve into the mechanics of this AI-driven technology, uncover the essence ‘what is SGE’, and discover how it’s set to become an indispensable tool in our digital lives.
What is SGE?
Leveraging advanced algorithms, SGE interprets your queries with an unprecedented level of understanding, providing responses that are not only relevant but also rich in context. For example, instead of searching for “black women’s shoes” and having to comb through results, you can search for “trending black women’s shoes for dinner at a fancy restaurant” and get refined, relevant results instantly. This shift from keyword-based searches to conversational interactions marks a significant evolution in how we interact with search engines.
SGE’s intelligence stems from its continuous learning process, which allows it to refine its predictions and offer personalized search experiences. Imagine having a search assistant that knows precisely what you’re looking for, every single time—that’s the promise of SGE.
What the research is telling us about SGE right now:
- SGE answers don’t align with the top 10 organic results 93.8% of the time
- Studies show there’s only a 4.5% overlap in URLs between generative content and traditional organic results at the page level
- There is a large variation in how SGE results are being displayed depending on the search query, related products, map/image/blog results etc
Activating Your Personal AI Search Companion
Embarking on your journey with SGE is straightforward. Simply begin by typing your query into Google’s search bar. Instantly, SGE springs into action, analyzing your input with sophisticated linguistic understanding. Currently in its experimental phase, those eager to experience SGE firsthand can sign up at labs.google.com using a personal Gmail account.
The Pros and Cons of Google’s Search Innovation
Why Google’s AI Search Stands Out:
- Personalized Searches: Google can seem to read your mind, tailoring search results to fit your specific needs.
- Deep Understanding: SGE grasps the nuances of your queries, offering answers that truly understand your intent.
- Efficiency: Say goodbye to endless scrolling. SGE provides concise, accurate answers swiftly.
Areas to Watch:
- Bias Awareness: Like any AI, SGE’s responses may reflect biases from its training data.
- The Balance of Convenience: While AI simplifies searches, there’s a fine line between convenience and overreliance.
- Privacy Considerations: The sophistication of AI raises valid concerns about data privacy and how personal information is used.
Google SGE in the Competitive Landscape
Google SGE distinguishes itself in the AI-powered search arena by offering a uniquely personalized search experience, leveraging Google’s vast data resources. In comparison, platforms like ChatGPT and Bing’s AI search bring their own strengths to the table, but SGE sets a new standard by prioritizing user intent and delivering finely tuned responses.
Google has also released Gemini, an AI assistant using a chat interface that appears to be learning and evolving at a much faster rate than the competitors based on our own testing.
Redefining SEO and PPC Marketing with SGE
The advent of SGE is reshaping the strategies behind SEO and PPC marketing. Success now hinges on understanding and aligning with the nuanced, conversational nature of user queries. This evolution encourages marketers to craft content and ads that speak directly to the audience’s intentions, as recognized by SGE.
What this means for SEO
Due to the experimental nature of SGE we currently don’t have many definites about what will change and how it will affect websites. What we do know comes from research on the experimental version and our own expertise.
- Research into 10 different factors that could affect SGE performance showed that adding citations, quotes and statistics into content can improve SGE search rankings by up to 40%
- A separate study recorded Healthcare (76%) as being the industry most affected by SGE results when compared to traditional search results followed by Ecommerce (49%) and B2B Tech (48%)
Other factors that have come to light during our testing:
- Optimized images and alt text are going to become more important than ever as Google uses visual results in a variety of ways
- Places have become one of the most common SGE result types. Places are similar to traditional local pack results but with more insights and sources for each result.
- Because of the significance of places results, Google reviews are going to take center stage. This is great for businesses with a long-standing track record of 5-star reviews, but also allows results to be manipulated by those paying for non-legitmate ratings.
What this means for PPC
The data on PPC within SGE results is a lot more sparse. Here’s what currently has been confirmed or tested by Google:
- SGE shopping results will feature a ‘sponsored’ product first
- Google has announced SGE results will feature ads ‘above’ and ‘below’ the generated results
- “You May Also Like” product carousels featuring sponsored products
The main idea behind SGE is to increase engagement within the search. What this means is a likely dramatic decrease in CTRs for anything non-transactional as people find the answer without having to leave Google. This is likely going to lead to a shift in what data is seen as being the most relevant for both SEO and SEM reporting.
Looking Ahead: Adapting to the Future of Search
Staying ahead in the SGE-driven landscape requires agility and foresight. Marketers, in particular, must remain attuned to changing search behaviors, optimizing content to meet the sophisticated demands of conversational queries. This is a time of opportunity, inviting us to innovate and forge deeper connections with our audiences.
At ITZECOM we pride ourselves on innovative strategies and continued learning to stay ahead of the many evolutions of the digital marketing landscape.
How to Successfully Market Your Way Through a Recession
How to Successfully Market Your Way Through a Recession
As we head into 2024 there is a lot of economic uncertainty facing businesses here in the US. Many look at the first two quarters of next year and wonder what they should be doing to navigate through these tough times. While the first instinct might be to cut costs and advertising spend to conserve as much capital as possible and just ride out any upcoming storm, history has proven that is not in your business’s best interest. In fact, history has proven you should do the opposite.
Professor Andrew J. Razeghi from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University published an in-depth article titled ‘Innovating Through Recession: When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Innovate‘. In this report he discusses how difficult economic times give businesses unique chances to innovate and thrive along with the research to back up his claims. We have put together a highlight reel of this article, in the hopes that it will give businesses the framework to navigate these difficult waters.
Economic downturns make innovation crucial.
In uncertain times, it has been proven that those who come out ahead adapt. Thankfully the process for innovation is also easier during economic downturns. Noise from the millions of “great ideas” that flood the market on a daily basis suddenly quiets down. This not only makes unmet needs easier to identify, but also easier for you to get your next great idea noticed.
Razeghi uses Fortune magazine in his article as a great example to illustrate his point here. The magazine launched four months after the 1930 stock market crash. In a time when businesses were going bankrupt, banks were failing, Fortune magazine was introduced at the high price of $1 per issue. By the end of the decade, however, the magazine was the required reading of Wall Street. Its success could be attributed to the Great Depression. The stock market crash actually increased interest in business culture. People wanted to know what went on behind the closed doors of corporate America, and Fortune magazine filled that need.
Moral of the story: Innovation is important, but only if it is relevant to the needs of the market.
Double down on your current customers.
In hard times consumer sentiment is at an all time low. They scrutinize and question every purchasing decision. Yet business owners often make cuts to things like quality and customer service in order to cut costs. Do not think your current customers ignore or accept these types of cuts. In fact, they tend to hold a grudge. Take a page out of La-Z-Boy’s book. Rather than cutting service, increase it. La-Z-Boy did just about everything imaginable to keep customers choosing their products during the Great Depression, including extending terms, servicing accounts faster, and even accepting livestock, wheat and coal, as payment. La-Z-Boy proved it was worth investing in your customers. Show that you are there for them no matter what, and in return you will receive fiercely loyal customers.
Communicate more.
As everyone pulls back from their advertising, stay the course or invest more in yours to increase your market share. Just think, in times of economic expansion everyone is investing in advertising, meaning it costs that much more just to maintain your market share. During a recession, however, as competition decreases, investing more in your advertising you will get far more market share, and at a cheaper cost.
In fact, pulling back and “going dark” on your marketing is the worst thing you could do for your business. It not only makes it easy for consumers to forget about your brand, think of the gossip it could bring from customers and employees alike.
Razeghi recalls in his article a company that attended an industry trade show every year. During a bad year, they decided not to attend in order to save some money. This seemed pragmatic in theory, but in reality gossip spread that the business must be in trouble since they always attended the show. This put doubt in their customers, who decided to entertain new vendor proposals out of fear that the business was in trouble.
To back up this anecdote, a study by McGraw-Hill Research discovered that businesses who maintained or increased their advertising expenditures during the 1981-1982 recession averaged higher sales growth during the recession and in the three years following. By 1985, sales of aggressive recession advertisers had risen 256% over those that cut-back on advertising.
If investing more or staying the course with your advertising is not in the cards, do not fret. With today’s communication technologies, you don’t necessarily need to spend a lot to get a lot of attention. Consider sending product to an industry influencer. Leverage social media to stay in contact with customers. Hop on an industry podcast. Host a webinar. Consider crowd-sourcing content. Get creative with your limited marketing budget. The key is to be visible and present.
Offer more value, not lower prices.
Slashing prices and holding huge sales may generate short term profits, but can be devastating to your brand in the long run. Why? Price reductions compromise earnings and your products’ perceived value. If your product or service has a long-standing perceived value, and you slash your prices without changing anything, the perception is the value was never really there to begin with. This situation is almost impossible to come back from. Don’t compromise the integrity of your product or service with lower prices.
Eliminating features, reducing services, or switching to cheaper materials and ingredients is not the way to go either. Instead you should look for ways to improve quality, enhance features, and invest in new opportunities.
Invest in the right costs.
Not all costs are created equal. Make sure you are investing in the right places and trimming back on costs that don’t yield any improvements. History has shown that investing in costs like working capital, manufacturing, and general and administrative expenses can have an adverse impact on your business during a recession. To see a positive return on investment, it is best to invest in innovations such as marketing or customer service instead.
Don’t let fear hold you back.
We all feel the uncertainty of this difficult time. It is those that push past the fear and dare to innovate that will come out ahead. And remember, you are not alone. You have an entire history of entrepreneurs who have paved the road for you.
2024 Social Media Image Size Cheat Sheet
2024 Social Media Image Size Cheat Sheet
A comprehensive, up-to-date collection of social media image dimensions you won’t find anywhere else.
by Itzecom Team
Social media platforms are always being updated, which means they’re frequently changing their profile and cover photo dimensions, layouts, and requirements for uploaded images. It can be tough to keep track of it all. We understand you’re busy; you can’t spend all your time sweeping the Internet for information that’s bound to change again tomorrow.
However, high-quality and creative imagery is imperative to social media marketing success, so it’s important to know the proper dimensions for each network you use.
That’s why we decided to gather the information for you and keep it in one continuously updated place for your convenience. We also sprinkled in some social media image best practices. Pretty handy, huh?
We thought so, too.
Social Networks
For easy access to the information you’re looking for, click on one of the following to jump to that section:
- X (Twitter)
- X Pro (TweetDeck)
- Google Business Profile
- YouTube
- Snapchat
- Tumblr
- Infographic & All Image Templates
Facebook Image Sizes
Featuring high-quality imagery on Facebook shows your audience that your business is legitimate, reputable, and pays attention to the details (no matter how small).
Facebook wants to provide a positive user experience on their platform—that’s why getting your image sizes just right will help your brand stand out and look its best in the Feed.
Facebook Profile and Cover Photo Dimensions
Most businesses use this space for their logo rather than a person’s photo. However, if your business is run by you and only you, using a photo of yourself might not be a bad idea. The best size for your Facebook profile photo is 200 x 200px—and remember, it’ll display as a circle on your page.
As for your cover photo, you’ll want to use this space to expand on your brand messaging or promote a new product, service, or event. What you decide to do with this space is vital to the success of your page because it will be the first thing a visitor sees when clicking through.
Your Facebook cover photo should be 850 x 315px to make the best first impression. And don’t worry—we tested it. This is the exact image size that doesn’t need adjusting after uploading to Facebook, which makes it easier to plan your design!
| Facebook Profile Picture | |||
| Recommended: 200 x 200 | Minimum: 180 x 180 | Aspect Ratio: 1:1 | Desktop Display: 176 x 176 |
DOWNLOAD Free Facebook Profile Picture Template PSD
| Facebook Cover Photo | |||
| Recommended: 850 x 315 | Minimum: 400 x 150 | Aspect Ratio: 170:63 | Desktop Display: 850 x 315 |
DOWNLOAD Free Facebook Cover Photo Template PSD
Facebook Shared Image (Timeline & News Feed) Dimensions
These images appear both on your timeline and in most of your followers’ News Feeds. With the decline of Facebook’s organic reach, try asking your fans to like or share your photos to gain visibility without a significant financial investment. Or consider paying a small fee to boost your posts to ensure that your audience sees it in their Feed.
We found that a Facebook shared image size of 1200 x 630px works best!
| Facebook Shared Image | |||
| Recommended: 1200 x 630 | Minimum: 200 x 200 | Aspect Ratio: 40:21 | Desktop Display: 500 x 261 |
DOWNLOAD Free Facebook Shared Image Template PSD
Facebook Shared Link Photo Dimensions
If you’re sharing a link to your business’ Facebook Page, there are a few more elements to consider and formats to choose from. When you paste a link into your status, depending on the size of the images on the web page, you’ll be prompted to include a carousel of up to 10 images. You also have the option of sharing the link without using the image—which can come in handy if you’d rather upload a new image to share with the link instead.
However, the most effective method to ensure your image is exactly right when sharing a URL, is by using the Open Graph meta-tag.
The recommended size for Facebook shared link images is 1200 x 630px, and that will get you the best display every time!
Pro Tip: Sharing images and links from other sources allows you to post relevant content to your page when you don’t have time to create your own. It’s also a great way to share content contributed by your audience or other businesses and keep promotions to a minimum.
| Facebook Shared Link Thumbnail | |||
| Recommended: 1200 x 630 | Minimum: 600 x 315 | Aspect Ratio: 40:21 | Desktop Display: 500 x 261 |
DOWNLOAD Free Facebook Shared Link Thumbnail Template PSD
Facebook Stories
And right at the top of the newsfeed sits your Facebook Stories. These updates stick around for only 24 hours and won’t be shared to your timeline or the main news feed. You can create your stories on the fly, but wouldn’t it be so much easier if you had the image or video (accurately sized of course) ready to go live? We think so, too.
Over 500 million people regularly use stories, so to make sure yours always looks its best, your photo or video should be 1080 x 1920px.
All Facebook Image Dimensions
| Facebook Image Sizes | |||
| Profile Picture: Recommended: 200 x 200 Minimum: 180 x 180 Aspect Ratio: 1:1 Desktop Display: 176 x 176 |
Cover Photo Recommended: 850 x 315 Minimum: 400 x 150 Aspect Ratio: 170:63 Desktop Display: 850 x 315 |
Shared Image Recommended: 1200 x 630 Minimum: 200 x 200 Aspect Ratio: 40:21 Desktop Display: 500 x 261 |
Shared Link Image: Recommended: 1200 x 630 Minimum: 600 x 315 Aspect Ratio: 40:21 Desktop Display: 500 x 261 |
DOWNLOAD All Facebook image Template PSDs
Instagram Image Sizes
Instagram is all about visuals, which should make the importance of high-quality images blatantly obvious for this social network.
Instagram Profile Photo Size
As with some other platforms, the profile photo is a circle that shows up next to all of your posts and at the top left of your profile page. For businesses, it’s a great idea to use your logo here so all of your photos are associated with your brand.
Instagram stores all profile photos at 320 x 320px, so we highly recommend uploading an image that size or larger!
| Instagram Profile Picture | |||
| Recommended: 320 x 320 | Minimum: 320 x 320 | Aspect Ratio: 1:1 | Mobile Display: 110 x 110 |
DOWNLOAD Free Instagram Profile Picture Template PSD
Now when you go to post on Instagram, you have a few more options available to you than in the past.
The recommended size for your Instagram photo is 1080 x 1080px. This size will ensure your post looks good in the Feed, as well as on your profile grid.
However, square photos are no longer the be-all end-all on this platform (though when you look at the grid view of your profile page, they will show as square). You have the ability to upload portrait- and landscape-oriented photos and videos, as well as a carousel of up to 10 photos per post.
And the platform only continues to become more flexible with its posts; though a 1.91:1 aspect ratio is recommended for landscape photos, Instagram will allow you to go as far as a 16:9 ratio if necessary.
Just remember, to keep images looking sharp across all devices with high-resolution displays, Instagram strives to upload your images at the best quality resolution it can (up to a 1080-pixel width). So, if you upload an image with a resolution lower than 320px, Instagram will enlarge it to 320px. Similarly, if your image has a resolution higher than 1080px, Instagram will size it down to 1080px.
Pro Tip: Instagram is a great place to show your company culture, what happens “behind the scenes” of your business, the process of creating your products, customers using your products, etc.
| Instagram Photo | |||
| Recommended: 1080 x 1080 | Minimum: 320 x 320 | Aspect Ratio: 1:1 | Desktop Display: 600 x 600 |
DOWNLOAD Free Instagram Profile Picture Template PSD
Instagram Stories
Instagram stories are an excellent way to engage with your audience, offering features like polls, interactive countdowns, and Q&As. The ideal image size for an Instagram story is 1080 x 1920px—these dimensions will ensure that your story takes up the whole screen providing a clean, aesthetically pleasing experience for your followers. Keep in mind, Instagram won’t resize story images, so the closest you can get to that size (or an aspect ratio of 16:9), the better.
All Instagram Image Dimensions
| Instagram Image Sizes | |||
| Profile Picture: Recommended: 320 x 320 Minimum: 320 x 320 Aspect Ratio: 1:1 Desktop Display: 110 x 110 |
Square Photo: Recommended: 1080 x 1080 Minimum: 320 x 320 Aspect Ratio: 1:1 Desktop Display: 600 x 600 |
Landscape Photo: Recommended: 1080 x 680 Minimum Width: 320 Aspect Ratio: 1.91:1 Desktop Display: 600 x 337 |
Portrait Photo: Recommended: 1080 x 1080 Minimum Width: 320 Aspect Ratio: 4:5 Desktop Display: 480 x 600 |
DOWNLOAD All Instagram Image Template PSDs
X (Twitter) Image Sizes
Known for its real-time social buzz, X (formerly known as Twitter) is also an extremely popular customer service and experience tool for businesses.
X (Twitter) Profile and Cover Photo Dimensions
Your profile photo will be visible of course on your profile, in your timeline, as well as when your brand name is searched on X. Most businesses use their profile photo as a place for their logo because it is seen practically everywhere: when you Post, when others Repost your Post, when their Repost gets Reposted, and so on.
The recommended dimensions for your X profile photo are 400 x 400px.
| X (Twitter) Profile Photo | |||
| Recommended: 400 x 400 | Minimum: 200 x 200 | Aspect Ratio: 1:1 | Desktop Display: 134 x 134 |
DOWNLOAD Free X Profile Photo Template PSD
Your cover photo, however, is only seen when a user clicks to your profile—but that doesn’t mean it’s not important! It’s a large photo across the top of your profile, so you want it to be high-quality and represent your brand.
It’s recommended that you upload your X cover photo at 1500 x 500 pixels, but because the cover photo is responsive, yours may end up looking larger or smaller depending on the size of your browser or screen.
To be safe, we suggest keeping all important content and design elements of your cover photo within the safe zone. 😊
And when you’re creating your cover photo, don’t forget to account for your profile photo in the bottom left corner!
Pro Tip: Cover photos are a great place to describe what your brand does, display a new product, or use as free advertising space.
| X (Twitter) Header Photo | |||
| Recommended: 1500 x 500 | Minimum: 1263 x 421 | Aspect Ratio: 3:1 | Desktop Display: 598 x 199 |
DOWNLOAD Free X Header Photo Template PSD
X (Twitter) Timeline Photo Size
While X has a limit of 280 characters (for now…), X Premium subscribers can post up to 25,000 characters. But don’t worry, you can always use visuals to assist in representing your brand and enhancing your shared content.
Attaching a photo to your Post used to take away 23 characters (because it needed the URL to link to the photo), but now, links and media attachments (e.g. photos, GIFs, videos, and polls) are no longer counted in the Post character limit.
And it’s a good thing too because Posts with images are over a third more likely to be Reposted than those with only text.
So when you’re uploading a timeline photo, we suggest dimensions of 1600 x 900px for the perfect presentation.
You can include up to four images per post. For multiple images, the aspect ratios are as follows:
- Two images: Images will be stacked side by side with an aspect ratio of 7:8
- Three images: One image will appear larger with a 7:8 ratio, and the other two will have a 4:7 ratio.
- Four images: Images will be arranged in a 2×2 grid, each with a 2:1 aspect ratio
| X (Twitter) Timeline Photo | |||
| Recommended: 1600 x 900 | Minimum: 600 x 335 | Aspect Ratio: 16:9 | Desktop Display: 600 x 335 |
DOWNLOAD Free X Timeline Photo Template PSD
All X (Twitter) Image Dimensions
| X (Twitter) Image Sizes | ||
| Profile Photo: Recommended: 400 x 400 Minimum: 200 x 200 Aspect Ratio: 1:1 Desktop Display: 134 x 134 |
Header Photo Recommended: 1500 x 500 Minimum: 1263 x 421 Aspect Ratio: 3:1 Desktop Display: 598 x 199 |
Timeline Photo Recommended: 1600 x 900 Minimum: 600 x 335 Aspect Ratio: 16:9 Desktop Display: 600 x 335 |
DOWNLOAD All X Image Template PSD
X Pro (TweetDeck) Image Sizes
TweetDeck is now X Pro. To get access to X Pro, users must upgrade to either an X Premium account, which costs $84 annually, or an X Premium+ account, which costs $168 annually.
You still can’t make separate images for X (Twitter) and X Pro since X Pro is not a separate social network, so everything you post on one site will show up on the other (there’s no way around it).
However, you still want to take into consideration the way that your X images appear on X Pro because the dimensions do vary in size a bit.
Pro Tip: Some of your header image design will be covered by your profile photo and bio in X Pro. So if you have important text or imagery that you’d prefer be seen at all times, be careful about centering those elements.
PLEASE NOTE: Any images you upload to X will appear on X Pro, so you cannot have two different image sizes. However, be sure to keep the below dimensions in mind when creating X images to ensure that they render well across both platforms.
| X Pro (TweetDeck) Image Sizes | ||
| Profile Photo: Aspect Ratio: 1:1 Desktop Display: 73 x 73 |
Header Image: Aspect Ratio: 2:1 Desktop Display: 520 x 260 |
Timeline (In-Stream) Photo Narrow: 260 width Medium: 300 width Wide: 340 width |
Google Business Profile Image Sizes
Engage with your customers and keep a fresh presence on Google with eye-catching imagery that will help you stand out in both the search results and on Maps.
Google Business Profile Logo and Cover Photo Dimensions
Consistency is key with Google Business Profile (GBP), formerly Google My Business (GMB)—ensuring that your brand is easily recognizable right from the search results page.
With a strong GBP profile photo that represents your company (most commonly, it will be your logo!) and a cover photo to show some personality, you’ll make a great first impression when your business is searched for.
Google recommends that your GBP profile photo should be 720 x 720px and your GBP cover photo should be 1080 x 608px.
Pro Tip: Your cover photo is shown when a user is searching in Google Maps. Within your GBP account, you can choose what image you would prefer to display here, however keep in mind, it does not guarantee that it’ll be the first image to populate for your business.
Google Business Profile Posts Dimensions
GBP posts allow you to push events, updates, blog posts, offers and company news directly to the Google search results page. Posts offer a unique and visual way to attract the interest of people searching for your brand. These posts only stay active for a week, so be sure to update them frequently.
You can start posting from directly within the Google Business Profile interface. Be sure to use captivating images and attention-grabbing headlines to stand out. Your Google post size should be 1200 x 900px or an aspect ratio of 4:3.
All Google Business Profile Image Dimensions
| GBP Image Sizes | ||
| Profile Photo: Recommended: 720 x 720 Minimum: 250 x 250 Aspect Ratio: 1:1 |
Cover Photo: Recommended: 1080 x 608 Minimum: 480 x 270 |
Google Posts: Recommended: 1200 x 900 Minimum: 400 x 300 Aspect Ratio: 4:3 SERP Display: 230 x 130 Desktop Display: 404 x 303 |
DOWNLOAD All Google Business Profile Image Template PSDs
Pinterest Image Sizes
Pinterest is a valuable search tool in itself; 80% of weekly users have discovered a new business, product or service on the platform, and 83% have made purchases based solely on a brand’s Pinterest content.
Pinterest Profile Photo Size
Your Pinterest profile photo should be 280 x 280px which makes it an easy aspect ratio of 1:1. Remember, your profile photo is uploaded as a square, but will display as a circle at the top of your profile.
For those with Pinterest business accounts, you also have the option of adding a cover photo to your profile! We recommend your Pinterest cover photo size be at least 800 x 450px with a 16:9 aspect ratio.
If you opt not to include a cover photo, that’s okay too! Your profile will look just the same as it always has, no empty spaces or missing images.
| Pinterest Profile Photo | |||
| Recommended: 280 x 280 | Minimum: 165 x 165 | Aspect Ratio: 1:1 | Desktop Display: 188 x 188 |
DOWNLOAD Free Pinterest Profile Photo Template PSD
Pin Image Size
With Pinterest’s layout being more portrait-oriented, vertically designed pins tend to perform better. When deciding on size, create a pin that caters to what you want to visually represent; larger pins do not necessarily mean you’ll attract more attention.
We recommend a size of 1000 x 1500px for your standard Pinterest pins, and 1000 x 2100px for giraffe pins. And if you’re posting a story on Pinterest, the recommended size is 1080 x 1920px.
| Pinterest Standard Pin | |||
| Recommended: 1000 x 1500 | Minimum: 600 wide | Aspect Ratio: 2:3 | Desktop Display: 236 x auto |
DOWNLOAD Free Pinterest Standard Pin Template PSD
| Pinterest Giraffe Pin | |||
| Recommended: 1000 x 2100 | Minimum: 564 x 1148 | Aspect Ratio: 1:2:1 | Desktop Display: 236 x auto |
DOWNLOAD Free Pinterest Giraffe Pin Template PSD
Pinterest Board Display
The first thing you see when you visit someone’s Pinterest profile is their collection of boards. Name your boards appropriately and include a relevant cover photo for each of them. You don’t want empty boards (or no boards at all), but you don’t want a plethora of boards with no purpose, either.
Pro Tip: Ensure that your first two or three boards are directly related to your industry or audience. You don’t want visitors to leave your profile because they don’t understand what your business does or can’t quickly find the information they’re searching for.
Also, infographics tend to do really well on Pinterest.
All Pinterest Image Dimensions
| Pinterest Image Sizes | ||
| Profile Photo: Recommended: 280 x 280 Minimum: 165 x 165 Aspect Ratio: 1:1 Desktop Display: 188 x 188 |
Standard Pin: Recommended: 1000 x 1500 Minimum: 600 width Aspect Ratio: 2:3 Desktop Display: 236 x auto |
Giraffe Pin: Recommended: 1000 x 2100 Minimum: 564 x 1148 Aspect Ratio: 1:2:1 Desktop Display: 236 x auto |
DOWNLOAD All Pinterest Image Template PSDs
LinkedIn Image Sizes
LinkedIn is primarily for networking with other professionals, but it’s also a resource for businesses to connect with other businesses, prospective employees, and industry leaders. You can choose between a personal profile and business page (both with free or paid options).
LinkedIn Personal Profile and Background Photo Size
You should have a respectable, professional photo of yourself for your personal LinkedIn profile. This way, you always know you’re making a good first impression with new connections! Your LinkedIn personal profile photo will look its best at 400 x 400px.
| LinkedIn Personal Profile Photo | |||
| Recommended: 400 x 400 | Minimum: 160 x 160 | Aspect Ratio: 1:1 | Desktop Display: 152 x 152 |
On LinkedIn, the background photo replaces the “cover photo” at the top of your profile page. As an oblong shape, it can be difficult to find imagery that fits the space well—that’s where creating your own visuals comes in handy. The recommended size for your LinkedIn background photo is 1584 x 396px.
| LinkedIn Personal Background Photo | |||
| Recommended: 1584 x 396 | Aspect Ratio: 4:1 | Desktop Display: 792 x 128 | |
LinkedIn Company Logo Size
The standard logo for a business account is a small square at the top of the profile page that is displayed next to your company’s name.
The square logo is what people see when they search for your company on LinkedIn, go to your profile, or see your posts in their news feed. Just like for your personal page, we suggest a LinkedIn company logo size of 400 x 400px.
| LinkedIn Company Logo | |||
| Recommended: 400 x 400 | Minimum: 268 x 268 | Aspect Ratio: 1:1 | Desktop Display: 128 x 128 |
DOWNLOAD Free LinkedIn Company Logo Template PSD
LinkedIn Company Cover Photo Image Size
The cover image on a business page stretches across your profile above your logo and company name. The recommended size for your LInkedIn company cover image is 1128 x 191px.
Pro Tip: Use a photo of your employees or your business’ building as a banner photo—and avoid random stock photos. For background photos, it’s usually best to choose something subtle that doesn’t distract too much from the content on your profile.
| LinkedIn Company Cover Image | |||
| Recommended: 1128 x 191 | Minimum: 1128 x 191 | Aspect Ratio: 47:8 | Desktop Display: 1163 x 197 |
DOWNLOAD Free LinkedIn Company Cover Photo Image Template PSD
All LinkedIn Image Dimensions
| LinkedIn Image Sizes | |||
| Company Logo: Recommended: 400 x 400 Minimum: 268 x 268 Aspect Ratio: 1:1 Desktop Display: 128 x 128 |
Company Cover Image: Recommended: 1128 x 191 Minimum: 1128 x 191 Aspect Ratio: 47:8 Desktop Display: 1163 x 197 |
Shared Image with URL: Recommended: 1200 x 627 Minimum: 200 Width Aspect Ratio: 1.91:1 Desktop Display: 552 x 289 |
Shared Image without URL: Recommended: 1200 x 627 Minimum: 200 Width Aspect Ratio: 1.91:1 Desktop Display: 552 x auto |
DOWNLOAD All LinkedIn Image Template PSDs
YouTube Image Sizes
YouTube is a video-sharing social network that is accessed by users on the largest variety of devices, including tablets, phones, desktops, and televisions, so it’s important to have imagery that displays correctly across devices.
YouTube Channel Icon and Channel Art
A small profile photo overlays the top left corner of your YouTube page. As important as profile and cover photos are to representing your brand, on YouTube, many users will most likely see one of your videos before they view your channel page. This makes having striking images even more important so that users associate the videos with your brand and are familiar with you when they do reach your page.
The recommended size for YouTube channel icons is 800 x 800px, and your channel art should be 2560 x 1440px.
Pro Tip: You only upload one image for your YouTube channel art, but it will display differently across different devices. When you upload an image, you can crop it to fit the desktop layout (see the GIF below for a demonstration) – but make sure the important elements are right in the center to ensure they aren’t cropped out on smaller screens.
All YouTube Image Dimensions
| YouTube Image Sizes | ||
| Channel Icon: Recommended: 800 x 800 Aspect Ratio: 1:1 Desktop Display: 98 x 98 |
Channel Art: Recommended: 2560 x 1440 Minimum: 2560 x 1440 Text Safe Area: 1235 x 338 Aspect Ratio: 16:9 Mobile Display: 1546 x 423 Tablet Display: 1855 x 423 Desktop Display: 2560 x 423 TV Display: 2560 x 1440 |
Video Upload Recommended: 1280 x 720 Minimum: 640 Aspect Ratio: 16:9 |
DOWNLOAD All YouTube Image Template PSDs
Snapchat Image Sizes
With over 406 million daily active users (and the average user opening the app more than 40 times a day), Snapchat provides businesses with a visual way to connect with their audience. Through the use of lenses, filters and ads, Snapchat is a source for engaging, unique content.
If you plan on running ads on Snapchat, keep in mind that the recommended size for Snapchat image and video ads is 1080 x 1920px.
And as of February 2023, Snapchat no longer supports Geofilter ads. Instead, users can create Sponsored Lenses or Story Ads.
Story Ads are a series of 1-10 vertical image or video ads that appear between content, or as a branded icon on Snapchat’s “Discover” section. Image Story Ads have a suggested resolution of 360 x 600px, and video Story Ads have a suggested resolution of 1080 x 1920 px.
Sponsored Lenses, on the other hand, offer an interactive AR (augmented reality) experience. While Lenses don’t have size requirements like Story Ads, they do have a few guidelines to follow. You can find out more about each option, system requirements, and how to get started here.
Below are the updated image sizes required to run successful Snapchat advertising campaigns.
All Snapchat Image Dimensions
| Snapchat Image Sizes | ||
| Snapchat Image Ad: Image Size: 1080 x 1920 Aspect Ratio: 9:16 Maximum File Size: 5 MB File Types: JPG or PNG |
Snapchat Video Ad: Resolution: 1080 x 1920 Aspect Ratio: 9:16 Maximum Ad Length: 180 seconds Maximum File Size: 1 GB File Types: MP4 or MOV & H.264 encoded |
Snapchat Geofilter: Image Size: 1080 x 1920 Aspect Ratio: 6:13 Maximum File Size: 250 KB File Type: Transparent PNG |
Tumblr Image Sizes
Tumblr is a blogging and social platform where users share thoughts, quotes, music, articles, GIFs, videos, images—basically anything. Images are (of course) an important aspect of this social network, but text-based content is associated with Tumblr as well.
Tumblr Avatar (Profile Photo)
Your Tumblr avatar will show up as a small square next to your posts in your followers’ main feeds and is embedded with your username in posts that users come across while perusing Tumblr.
The recommended size for Tumblr profile photos is 128 x 128px.
Tumblr Header Image
For profile headers, your photo should be 2048 x 1152 px. Headers and avatars can appear on both mobile and desktop. Mobile blog appearance will always contain a user’s avatar and header photo and is seen on the Tumblr mobile app, search pages in the app, profile previews, and via the web address www.tumblr.com/YourAccount.
You can customize your blog (including the option to display your header) using a custom theme. Your theme will be seen when people access your blog on a desktop or mobile web browser at YourAccount.tumblr.com. By default, custom themes don’t automatically transfer to mobile display. However, If your theme is responsive, you can turn off the “use default mobile theme” setting to display your custom theme on mobile.
Your avatar may also not be featured on your theme but will show up as your Tumblr’s favicon on browser tabs.
Tumblr Image Post
Now that your avatar is taken care of, it’s time to look to your posts. With eye-catching imagery, your post will have a greater chance of standing out and maybe even get some reblogs!
And it doesn’t just have to be one photo—choose up to 10 images to display per post. Don’t worry, Tumblr made it super easy to create a photoset.
Just remember, the recommended size for shared image posts on Tumblr is 540 x 810px!
Pro Tip: Consider placing your business’ logo directly on the photos you upload to increase brand visibility and recognition.
All Tumblr Image Dimensions
| Tumblr Image Sizes | |
| Avatar: Recommended: 128 x 128 Minimum: 128 x 128 Aspect Ratio: 1:1 Desktop Display: 64 x 64 |
Shared Image Post: Recommended: 540 x 810 Maximum: 2048 x 3072 Aspect Ratio: 2:3 Desktop Display: 540 x 810 |
Website Accessibility Updates Website Owners Need to Know
Website Accessibility Updates Website Owners Need to Know
When creating a website for your business, it is important to consider if it is accessible to all of the individuals who may use it. Some visitors may use a screen reader and/or alternative input devices; this means that they will interact with your website differently than users interact with a traditional mobile device or computer.
In August 2023, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 were released, which aimed to improve accessibility online for users with disabilities. By complying with these guidelines, you can reduce likelihood of lawsuits, improve your SEO, and provide an overall better user experience to any visitors. Below, we will outline the A and AA success criteria outlined in WCAG 2.2 that your website should reflect in order to improve accessibility.
New Success Criteria in WCAG 2.2 Includes:
- Focus Not Obscured: When a pop up, banner, chat window, sticky header, or other element appears on your webpage, it can not obscure an element that is receiving focus. An element receives focus when a user “selects” it using the tab key; generally, this is noted by a faint square appearing around the element. Pop ups, banners, chat windows, and other elements that can hide clickable components must be closed before users are able to move focus to units that would be obscured. This assists visitors who utilize screen readers to have full knowledge of the clickable elements on your website.
- Dragging Movements: Any interface on your website that uses drag and drop movements—such as moving an element, swiping on an image carousel, and more—must be achievable with a single pointer without dragging. This assists users who use a screen reader or have limited mobility use your website.
- Target Size: This criteria ensures that elements on your website are easy to click on, which is not only helpful for individuals using accessibility devices but mobile users as well. The minimum size for any element is now 24 pixels by 24 pixels. This can also include the surrounding space without adjacent targets; for example, a 20 pixel by 20 pixel button with a surrounding space of 2 pixels on all sides meets the criteria, but maintaining a 24 pixel by 24 pixel size, not including surrounding space, is best practice. This requirement includes buttons, dropdowns, and more; anything that can be clicked on your website. Inline text and map pins are not included.
- Consistent Help: Information that is meant to be helpful to users—such as contact information, a chat window, etc.—must be consistent in its location on your website. For example, if the chat window appears in the lower right corner of your website on the home page, it should appear in the same location for other pages as well.
- Redundant Entry: Once a user inputs information, such as an email address, mailing address, credit card information, and more, your website should not require them to input this information again. Instead, your website should auto-populate the information or make it available to select if it is required to be entered again.
- Accessible Authentication: When using authentication methods, such as CAPTCHA or two factor authentication (2FA), websites are not permitted to use cognitive tests, such as puzzles or math questions. These may be difficult or impossible for users to complete, particularly those who have difficulty with memory, reading, numeracy, or perceptual processing. CAPTCHA authentication that requires similar images to be selected are allowed, as well as 2FA methods that allow for copy/paste for emailed codes, QR code scanning, or device notifications.
Ready to Make Your Website Accessible?
At ITZECOM, we know how important it is to have a high-quality and accessible website. Our team of experienced programmers are ready to help build you the website of your dreams. For more information, Contact@itzecom.com or give us a call at 213-260-0747. Please note that we are not lawyers and this is not legal advice.
Upgrading Google Analytics to GA4: What You Need to Know
In October 2020, Google began the rollout of the newest version of their analytics platform.
Known as GA4, this new iteration of Google Analytics was created with the intention of making it easier for business owners and marketers to track both mobile and web properties in one place. It’s also solution that enables cookieless tracking, which is becoming the standard given new privacy regulations in the online data tracking world.
This newest version of Google Analytics offers new features, updates to the user interface, and provides a completely new way to view and analyze data, with a stronger focus being placed on event tracking.
Its rollout has also left business owners and marketing teams wondering exactly how their data, website performance tracking, and strategy development will be impacted – and when.
Here, we’ll go over a few of the key things you need to know about GA4 if you’re looking to stay ahead of the game when it comes to tracking your website’s statistics with Google Analytics.
What is GA4?
GA4, or Google Analytics 4, is the newest iteration of the Google Analytics platform, one of the most widely used website analytics platforms on the web.
If you’ve been paying close attention to Analytics over the past couple of years, you may have noticed that Google released an “App + Web Properties” version of Analytics back in 2019. It turns out this was actually a beta version of the GA4 platform, which officially launched in October 2020.
GA4 is essentially an overhaul of the Analytics platform. It includes new features (including more tracking options than previous versions of Google Analytics), a redesigned interface, and an updated way to view and organize website data. It also enables tracking without the use of cookies, which is becoming the new standard in the world of online data collection given new privacy regulations.
Though it is an iteration on past versions of Google Analytics, GA4 is a big change to the Analytics platform. The interface has changed significantly, and the new version will take some getting used to, even for those most familiar with Analytics.
It’s important to note that while GA4 is now available, it is not yet ready to be a complete replacement for the existing Google Analytics platform. There are still many features being rolled out, and many bugs that need to be addressed before GA4 becomes the Analytics version you rely on.
When Should I Upgrade to GA4?
The short answer to this question is: as soon as possible.
Even though GA4 is not ready to replace Universal Analytics, it’s important to upgrade to the new platform for a few reasons (which we’ll delve into below).
When you upgrade, you’ll want to run GA4 in tandem with your existing Google Analytics (Universal Analytics) account. This will enable you to gather data in both versions, and switch between the two when necessary.
When the time is right, it will be essential to invest in the advanced implementation of GA4. The basic, out-of-the-box implementation does not give us adequate information for actionable strategies and planning.
Why Should I Upgrade to GA4 Now?
Given that GA4 is rolling out but not yet ready to replace the previous version of Google Analytics that most users are familiar with, many people are wondering why they should upgrade to GA4 now.
Upgrading to GA4 as soon as possible is important for a few reasons.
Firstly, GA4 will ultimately become the primary, supported version of Google Analytics. It’s important to be upgraded when that shift does happen, as the previous iterations of Google Analytics will eventually become obsolete.
Secondly, you’ll want to be at least somewhat familiar with the new interface when that transition does take place.
Additionally, you’ll want your website’s information and statistics to have been tracking in GA4 for as long as possible when the official switch happens. Your existing analytics history will not transfer over to GA4, so it’s important to begin tracking soon in order to ensure a smooth transition to the new platform with at least some historical statistics intact.
Again, down the road when the time is right, investing in the more advanced implementation of GA4 will be key as the bare minimum set up won’t be sufficient when it comes to making strategic plans and marketing decisions based on website performance data.
Have Questions About GA4?
Wondering what this switch to GA4 will mean for your business? Hoping to ensure that this transition to a new version of Analytics goes smoothly?
We’ll talk to you about what you need to do to be prepared for the transition to GA4, and let you in on the insight we’ve gained as we’ve been exploring GA4 for ourselves. This platform is new to everyone, but we’d be happy to share what we’ve learned so far.
Interested in learning more about monitoring your site’s performance with Google Analytics?
Check out the following for additional insight about measuring your site’s success.
Find out which statistics you should care about when it comes to monitoring the success of search engine optimization.
Learn about the key signs and statistics that indicate a successful SEO program.
