Granite 5 August Digital Roundup

September 6, 2021

Data protection post Brexit ‘shake-up’ planned

The UK’s new head of data regulator has been tasked with a ‘shake-up’ of the UK data rules post Brexit, including getting rid of cookie pop-ups. In a recent interview, he shed light on this: “There’s an awful lot of needless bureaucracy and box-ticking and actually we should be looking at how we can focus on protecting privacy but in as light touch a way as possible.” We will be keeping a close eye on how this develops and share more details on any changes.

Instagram is removing swipe-up links for stories to be replaced with link stickers

Instagram is making a change to the way that external links are shared within Stories frames, with the current ‘Swipe up’ links to be removed from the process entirely and replaced by its new ‘Link’ sticker option instead.

Currently, the existing link swipe-up option is only available to verified profiles or those with more than 10k followers. This won’t change right now, as the new link sticker won’t be available to all users, however, Instagram has confirmed: “That’s the sort of future system we would like to get to, and that’s what we hope to roll out.” They are just conscious of user safety and will be monitoring how links are used to ensure they aren’t being used to spread misinformation and spam.

Google Title Tag update causing sites to lose search traffic

It seems that the recent title tag update from Google where it replaces the title tag set by the publisher for its own tag, is causing some sites to lose significant traffic. There have been so many complaints from publishers, that Google has started a Webmaster Help Forum discussion where publishers can flag up bad title tags in search results.

Our advice is to stay virulent on your search traffic volumes and investigate any significant losses. If you believe these are because of the title tag update, then make sure you flag these to Google in the help forum discussion linked above. There are details on there of the specific information they need.

LinkedIn adds reviews and ratings for profiles with services listings

LinkedIn’s services listings were first launched back in 2019 to enable freelancers and small businesses to list services that they provide on their LinkedIn profile and be found for these in the search results. This feature is now being extended to include a new review element to the services listings where past clients and customers can leave reviews and they will be displayed within your listing.

Google’s link spam update is complete

One of the recent Google updates was the link spam update. This was aimed at stamping out old black hat spammy link building techniques which completed rolling out on the 24th of August. As part of this update, Google shared a reminder of their linking best practice. If you are a content publisher, ensure that you follow these guidelines to avoid being penalised by the new update and to provide a quality user experience.

TikTok launches ‘Creative Solutions’ guide to building effective TikTok campaigns

If you are new to TikTok as a business, there is a helpful guide that you can access here, that goes through best practices on how to win on TikTok. They also have a helpful creative centre that has lots of examples of current ads, trending content and showcases to provide you with inspiration on how to get started.

YouTube adds video chapter listings in search providing a new SEO opportunity

With the rollout of automated chapter segmentations from YouTube, users will be able to hone their search to specific clips within a video, allowing them to quickly find the exact section of a video they are looking for. Users will also be able to browse the clips within a video to jump to a specific clip.

This will provide a greater user experience, but also an additional SEO opportunity for video creators as you can edit the automatically added segments within the clips or manually enter your own. This allows you to optimise for maximum video discovery.