Client Update – December 2021 | Tribal Core

Here we are at the tail end of 2021, yet another year that has presented so many challenges and opportunities for each of us, both personally and professionally.

Following are some end-of-year thoughts with you, including our rates, how we’ve improved our services and what we have planned for next year.

First, I want to express gratitude. Gratitude for all of our amazing clients who trust us and the work that we do. Gratitude for our remarkable team that shows up every day with a smile and a mission to move the needle for our clients, including Jessica, Christine, Amy, Valicia and Catriana. And my own personal gratitude for the health and happiness of my wife AliSun and friends and family who make life richer.

On to the agenda.

First, a note that we will be raising our rates for new clients, effective January 1. I’m really pleased to share that YOU are grandfathered in. The fact is, we’re not immune to rising costs across the board, including labor and our tools, and we’re also heavily invested in working to improve our services, such that we’re providing ever-increasing value. So yes, our rates are going up, yours are not.

That said, we really want to encourage you to take that money you AREN’T spending with us to UP your investment in your web presence in 2022. This might mean increased Google Ads spend or re-theming your website or creating some videos. Give it some thought and ask us any questions you might have.

Ok, next - how we’ve improved our services in 2021. Well, it starts with a big investment in R&D with every one of us taking on projects that make us better. The tools and platforms and algorithms out there change so fast it requires this investment so that we can help you stay competitive and gain ground.

So we look to improve the process and methodology for what we already do, and try new things that we think can deliver wins to our clients.

Here’s a list of some of the things we did in 2021:

The Core Web Vitals report was the most important SEO deliverable of the year.
We comped a full set of Display Ads for every client
The new Podcast Research we delivered has been a game changer.
YouTube Placement Research is new for our clients
Google Lead Forms are just now rolling out to clients
Remarketing and Audience Building are improved
Our Keyword Research expanded, including questions and queries and negative keywords
Our Roadmaps, Content Strategy, Topic Research and Page Research were all refined
Your Client Dashboard was improved
A series of 12 Explainer PDFs we deliver at key touchpoints, archived in your client portal
Our Onboarding Process is twice as efficient

Heading into 2022, we are rolling out a number of things in the first few months, including:

Performance Max, which is Google’s new omnichannel platform
YouTube Remarketing
Responsive Display Ads
Advanced Analytics for Google Tag Manager users

You can see we’re busy building in value and keeping you at the cutting edge of the Google Ads platform, as well as ever-improving our approach to SEO and Content Strategy.

Next, we want new business. We welcome your referrals, and we have a program in place to pay a nice referral thank you. We work hard to earn your trust and confidence, and if you have someone in your network that would benefit from having a chat to see if we might be a good fit, please put us in touch. Our team is ready to welcome new clients, and we’ll do our very best for them.

Lastly, I invite you to get on my calendar to ask any questions you like and to discuss plans and goals for next year. We’re going to work hard every day for you, and if we can better align with your strategic direction, it’s a win-win for all of us.

So again, on behalf of the team here at Tribal Core, thank you. We value you and we want to see you succeed. I hope you take time to take good care this holiday and do the things that recharge you and nurture your soul. Be safe out there and be well.

~ Tyler

We're really excited to be beta testing a new service for our clients we call Podcast Research. You should have received your research, and we encourage you to review it and send out five quick emails.

Podcast appearances accomplish two goals: (1) it demonstrates your thought leadership to a highly relevant, self-selecting audience and (2) includes a backlink to your site on the episode page. This boosts your domain authority, resulting in better search rankings over time.

Let us know if you have questions!

When one is in a fast-changing industry such as internet marketing, it's imperative that there is a big focus on R&D - researching the latest changes and developing the implementation of those changes to the benefit of clients. And that's precisely what we do, with regular R&D meetings, process development and occasionally using a client as a willing guinea pig for something new and exciting. To be fair, it doesn't look quite like the lab above.

Some of the things we're working on, which you'll see the fruits of in the coming months:

Conversion value rules which allow advertisers to tell Google Ads what factors are most important to them.
Connecting Youtube accounts to Google Analytics accounts to gather more analytics data.
Google's new beta omnichannel program Performance Max to advertise across all Google Platforms.
Dynamic Attributes to enhance remarketing campaigns with dynamic creative content.
Advanced Analytics to better segment and differentiate audiences for channel marketing.

The long and short of it is that we're dedicated to your success, and we see R&D as an essential piece of that puzzle. We work every day to earn your trust and confidence, and staying on top of the latest innovations is just one way that we aspire to deliver value and create happiness.

We run SEO Campaigns for clients on our higher tiers. This is the process of procuring "backlinks" from high-quality, trafficked blogs back to our client's website. The idea here is to increase both domain authority and page authority while maintaining a "natural link profile."

It pairs well with creating good content for your website, including long-form content of 1,500 words or more. The backlinks to your content help that content rank increasingly well for it's target keywords. Google "self storage seo" for example, and you'll see us ranking #1. This is due to a combination of (1) creating great, useful content, (2) keeping that content fresh by updating every couple months and (3) developing backlinks to that content.

Following is organic traffic for one of our clients in the Professional Services vertical. This approach is paying off with 165% more traffic and 200% more leads since March.

Candidly, this is a very time-consuming, low-margin process that requires expertise and resources. And it requires patience, as it takes time for this backlink development to build up the authority to make your site and target posts more competitive. If you'd like to learn more about running SEO Campaigns for your site, schedule some time with Tyler.

By now, you've received your Core Web Vitals report, which outlines performance and next steps for three user experience metrics that Google has incorporated into the algorithm. This is the biggest Google algorithm update we've seen since the mobile-friendly update over six years ago.

Across the web, it appears that 87% of websites are failing one or more of the Core Web Vitals metrics. Anecdotally, we're seeing our clients fall into one of three pretty evenly-sized buckets - modest traffic improvement, modest traffic decline or no change. This tracks quite closely with how well a site is performing in the Core Web Vitals test.

Most recommended Core Web Vitals adjustments will need to be made by a developer. In some cases, you'll just need faster web hosting. We've outlined possible problems and solutions in your report, and we're available for additional questions, anytime. You can schedule time with Tyler here. We're in this with you!

From June to August, Google is rolling out an update that will include new quality signals that are intended to help site owners provide their visitors a better user experience.

We've put together a Core Web Vitals Explainer PDF (opens in new window).

You'll receive a report from us in June on how your website measures up. We'll outline some next steps and who can help improve your scores, be it us, your web developer, hosting provider or someone on your content team.

This is a big update - we've got you covered!

We're always looking for opportunities to improve how we serve our valued clients. The latest improvement is a Dashboard upgrade.

Our clients have come to love and rely on the executive-level view we build. We wanted to improve the insight into Google Ads on this latest upgrade. Most of you will see a new page 4 & 5 in your Dashboard (this may vary if another vendor is running Google Ads for you or if we are simultaneously managing a Google Grant account).

You can always find a link to your Dashboard in your Client Portal. Note you can page through your Dashboard in the upper-left, and there's a Date Range tool you can adjust in the upper-right.

Hope you like it and find it useful! Get in touch with any questions or requests - we're here to serve.

Design for clients is such a particular niche and not easy to execute well. I still carry battle scars from designing websites in the late '90's and early aughts. With everyone on different monitors and clients requesting design changes particular to their view, it was quite challenging to delight clients. I once had a client ask if a site could be "more lilac" and my recollection was that was the last straw.

Fast forward a decade and a half, and a lot has changed, from responsive website design to defined color palettes derived from a client's Brand Profile. So we've begun putting a toe in the water, and as a result, we are pleased to announce a beta test of two new Design Services.

First, we are offering a Display Ads Set, with 8 images of different sizes, based on our client's choice of design directions. These ads are production-ready for Google Display Ads and Remarketing Ads, to extend your audience reach and better engage those who are already familiar with your brand.

Second, we are offering a Blog Post Amplifier. This suite of 8 images is designed to promote a single high-quality blog post. It includes a Blog Post Header Image and two Sub-Headers both with text overlay. There is also a square Pull Quote image, and four more images formatted for social media promotion of that blog post.

Thank you for the trust and confidence you've placed in us!