Joshua Lee, Author at ROAR Digital Marketing

Google Search Experiencing Ongoing Service Disruption October 2025

Joshua Lee — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 09:23:08 +0000

Google Search is currently experiencing an ongoing service disruption affecting visibility and performance for some pages across certain regions. The disruption began on 3 October 2025 around 1:00 PM PT and has been confirmed by Google via its official Search Status Dashboard.

What Google Has Said

Google stated that the issue is linked to a data centre problem and affects “some pages in some locales.” The company has not provided full details on which regions or query types are impacted, but early reports suggest intermittent issues with ranking stability and indexing.

Search Engine Journal first reported the disruption, noting that it is not a full outage and does not appear to be related to a core or spam update. The disruption instead stems from infrastructure issues that are temporarily affecting how results are served.

Google → confirmed → ongoing service disruption.
Disruption → caused by → data centre issue.
Disruption → affects → some pages and locales.

Impact on SEO Performance

For website owners and SEO professionals, the key message is to monitor data without overreacting. Unusual traffic drops in Google Analytics 4 or Search Console between 3–6 October may be linked to this event. These fluctuations are not necessarily caused by algorithmic changes or technical errors within your site.

Site owners → should monitor → traffic anomalies.
SEO teams → should avoid → reactive changes during the disruption.

Recommended Actions

Marketers and webmasters should:

Monitor organic traffic and impressions for sudden drops or spikes.
Check the Google Search Status Dashboard for live updates.
Avoid large-scale SEO or structural changes until stability returns.
Document any anomalies to help interpret future performance reports.

What Happens Next

As of writing this post, Google has stated that engineers are working to identify the root cause and will issue further updates once the issue has stabilised.

Disruption → expected → to be temporary.
Google engineers → are working on → resolution.

Why This Matters

This incident highlights how even the largest search systems remain dependent on global infrastructure. For digital marketers, it serves as a reminder that not all ranking or traffic changes indicate a shift in SEO performance — sometimes, they reflect temporary external factors.

By maintaining visibility, reviewing data calmly, and avoiding unnecessary reactive actions, marketers can ensure stability during short-term search disruptions and preserve long-term SEO integrity.

The post Google Search Experiencing Ongoing Service Disruption October 2025 appeared first on ROAR Digital Marketing.

Why Use Google Search Ads

Joshua Lee — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 08:00:53 +0000

When businesses want to grow their visibility online, one of the first questions they ask is simple: Why use Google Search Ads?

If you’ve been exploring ways to attract more customers, boost website traffic, or generate leads, you’ve likely come across Google Ads as a potential solution. Yet many businesses hesitate, unsure how it fits into their wider marketing strategy, or whether it’s worth the cost.

Google Search Ads are one of the most direct and measurable ways to connect with people actively searching for what you offer. Whether your goal is to increase enquiries, promote products, or build brand awareness, search advertising provides precision targeting and real-time insights unmatched by most other channels.

In this blog, we’ll explore why Google Search Ads are so effective, how they solve key marketing challenges, and how you can use them strategically to reach your business goals. By the end, you’ll have a clearer idea of where your brand stands today, and what you might miss out on if you don’t take action.

How Google Search Ads Help Businesses Grow

When someone types a search query into Google, they’re already expressing intent — they want to know, buy, or solve something. Search ads appear right at that moment of need, placing your brand in front of motivated audiences.

Unlike organic SEO, which can take months to build momentum, Google Ads deliver immediate visibility. They can start generating clicks, leads, and sales as soon as your campaign launches.

Common goals businesses achieve with Google Search Ads include:

Increasing qualified website traffic
Generating more online leads or bookings
Driving ecommerce sales
Testing new products or markets quickly
Gaining insight into real customer search behaviour

Precision Targeting Meets Real-Time Data

You only pay when someone clicks on your ad, making it cost-efficient compared to less targeted channels. You can adjust bids, pause campaigns, or optimise keywords instantly, all based on live performance data.

This real-time feedback loop means your ad budget constantly adapts to what works best, ensuring every pound spent moves you closer to your goals.

The Strategic Advantages of Google Search Ads

It helps new businesses get noticed faster, while giving established brands data to refine messaging and content strategies. Beyond immediate visibility, Google Ads offer insights that can shape your wider marketing activity.

Every keyword, click, and conversion tells a story about how customers find and engage with your business. These insights can feed into your SEO, social, and email strategies, building a holistic growth framework.

Measurable, Scalable, and Data-Driven

Every campaign, ad group, and keyword can be monitored for clicks, cost, and conversions. You can clearly see which ads drive value and which need adjusting. This level of transparency allows businesses to scale confidently.

Even modest ad budgets can produce strong results when properly optimised. Over time, this makes search advertising one of the most efficient and scalable forms of digital marketing.

Our Final Thoughts

Google Search Ads are not just about getting clicks, they’re about connecting your business with the right people at the right time. They solve a key challenge many organisations face: how to reach high-intent audiences efficiently, measure performance accurately, and scale what works.

When used strategically, Google Search Ads become a growth engine. They help small teams compete with larger brands, and they provide real-time insight into how customers interact with your business.

Whether your goal is to generate leads, grow ecommerce sales, or boost brand visibility, the data-driven clarity of search advertising can guide your marketing decisions long after the campaign ends.

Want to see how Google Search Ads could work for your business?

Schedule a Discovery Call with our team, or explore our case studies to see how other brands have achieved measurable success with Google Ads.

The post Why Use Google Search Ads appeared first on ROAR Digital Marketing.

How To Find The Best Digital Marketing Dashboard

Joshua Lee — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 10:33:56 +0000

Most marketing teams know the frustration of juggling data across five different tabs, tools, and spreadsheets. You log into Google Analytics for traffic, check your CRM for leads, then open another dashboard for paid ads, and somehow the numbers still don’t align.

A digital marketing dashboard brings all of your analytics together in one place. It turns fragmented data into a clear, actionable story. But with hundreds of tools promising “the best insights,” how do you actually find the best digital marketing dashboard for your business?

This article will guide you through that process, from understanding what a marketing dashboard should do, to comparing platforms and evaluating which one fits your goals, team size, and reporting needs.

We’ll explore:

The problems dashboards are designed to solve
The key features that separate a good dashboard from a great one
How to choose one that grows with your marketing strategy

By the end, you’ll have a clear sense of what your current reporting setup is missing, what to look for next, and how the right dashboard can help you make faster, smarter marketing decisions.

What Makes a Great Digital Marketing Dashboard?

A digital marketing dashboard isn’t just a reporting tool — it’s your command centre for decision-making.

The best dashboards consolidate performance metrics from multiple sources (Google Analytics, Google Ads, LinkedIn, HubSpot, etc.) into one unified view. This eliminates the guesswork and manual reporting that slow down teams.

They also make it easier to:

Track campaign performance across channels
Align marketing metrics with business goals
Identify underperforming campaigns early
Share clear, visual reports with stakeholders

A strong dashboard bridges the gap between data collection and data understanding.

What Makes a Great Digital Marketing Dashboard?

A digital marketing dashboard isn’t just a reporting tool — it’s your command centre for decision-making.

They also make it easier to:

Track campaign performance across channels
Align marketing metrics with business goals
Identify underperforming campaigns early
Share clear, visual reports with stakeholders

A strong dashboard bridges the gap between data collection and data understanding.

Core Features To Look For

When comparing digital marketing dashboards, prioritise tools that include:

Real-Time Data Syncing — Your dashboard should refresh automatically to show up-to-date performance across all connected platforms.
Customisable KPIs — Look for tools that let you tailor metrics to your goals (e.g. cost per lead, return on ad spend, or conversion rate).
Cross-Channel Integration — A truly useful dashboard connects to every major analytics and ad platform.
Visual Reporting — Interactive graphs and widgets make complex data instantly understandable.
Team Collaboration — Sharing insights easily keeps everyone aligned on goals and results.

For example, Google Data Studio (Looker Studio) is a popular free option, while enterprise platforms like DashThis or Databox offer advanced customisation and automation features.

Curious about data sources? Learn how to link yours effectively in our guide: How To Connect My Website To Google Analytics 4.

How To Choose The Best Dashboard For Your Goals

Every business has different needs. The “best” dashboard depends on your data maturity, marketing mix, and team structure.

If you’re a small team, you might value simplicity and automation. If you manage multiple channels at scale, you’ll need flexibility and deep integrations.

Start by clarifying your goals:

Do you want to improve reporting efficiency?
Do you need to visualise ROI more clearly?
Are you trying to unify fragmented analytics from multiple sources?

Step-By-Step Evaluation Process

Map Your Data Sources: List every platform you use for marketing data — from GA4 to LinkedIn Ads. This will highlight what your dashboard must integrate with.
Audit Current Reporting Gaps: Ask yourself: which insights take the longest to gather, and which metrics are missing entirely? Tools like a GA4 Audit Tool can help identify where your tracking may already be inconsistent.
Compare Features and Pricing: Create a shortlist of tools that fit your needs. Compare their scalability, visual capabilities, and how they align with your business KPIs.
Run a Pilot Test: Before committing, build one or two test dashboards. See how intuitive the interface is, how well it integrates, and whether the visualisations make sense to non-technical users.

Integrating Dashboards With Business Reporting

A digital marketing dashboard is only valuable if it supports your wider business reporting process.

When integrated effectively, your dashboard becomes part of your monthly marketing rhythm — not an afterthought.

You can use it to align metrics across SEO, PPC, content, and email campaigns, ensuring every channel contributes to shared business outcomes.

Bringing Context To Your Data

Data on its own doesn’t drive action; context does. A good dashboard lets you correlate metrics (e.g. ad spend vs. lead quality) to uncover actionable insights.

Our Final Thoughts

Finding the best digital marketing dashboard isn’t about choosing the flashiest interface, it’s about selecting a system that fits your strategy.

The right dashboard will:

Save time by automating reporting
Help you understand campaign performance instantly
Unite your marketing and sales data for clearer decision-making

If you ignore your reporting gaps, you risk wasting budget on channels that look good in isolation but fail in the bigger picture. Taking the time to audit, compare, and select the right dashboard now will pay off in better insights and stronger ROI later.

Want to see how a tailored marketing dashboard could transform your reporting?

Explore our Search Marketing Services or schedule a free Discovery Call with our team to learn how we build custom dashboards that connect GA4, CRM, and paid media data in one unified view.

Your next marketing breakthrough starts with visibility, and the right digital marketing dashboard can give you exactly that.

The post How To Find The Best Digital Marketing Dashboard appeared first on ROAR Digital Marketing.

How to Use a GA4 Audit Tool to Uncover Tracking Errors

Joshua Lee — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 10:10:38 +0000

Your data can only ever be as good as the tracking behind it. If your Google Analytics 4 setup is capturing duplicate data, missing conversions or firing under wrong consent conditions, your reports are lying to you.

A GA4 audit tool helps you uncover these issues, fast.

In this helpful guide, we’ll explain what a GA4 audit tool is, how they usually work and how you can use it to spot tracking errors before they distort your insights.

You’ll learn how to diagnose broken tags, check event accuracy and restore trust in your analytics data.

What is a GA4 Audit Tool?

A GA4 audit tool is typically a piece of software that scans your analytics setup to detect inconsistencies, missing tags, and data anomalies.

In a nutshell, these tools can analyse:

Event tagging and trigger accuracy
Conversion and goals configuration
Data layer variables and GTM setup
Consent Mode and cookie compliance.

You can save time by automating checks that would otherwise take hours to perform manually, audit tools help ensure your data is accurate, privacy-compliant and ready for confident data-informed decision making.

You can learn more about GA4 event structure and how events work directly from Google’s documentation.

Want to dig deeper? Check out our related guide: ‘Understanding Website Analytics: Everything You Need to Know’.

Common GA4 Tracking Errors And How To Fix Them

Even with automation, understanding the most common GA4 tracking issues helps you spot them early.

Duplicate Events

Duplicate events occur when the same trigger fires twice — often due to overlapping GTM tags or hard-coded analytics scripts.

Fix: Use your audit tool to locate duplicate measurement IDs and consolidate them into one tag instance.

Unlinked Conversions

Conversions sometimes fail to register because the event name in GA4 doesn’t match the configured goal.

Fix: Cross-check GA4 and GTM event names. Keep naming conventions consistent (e.g. generate_lead vs lead_submit).

Broken Consent Tags

Without proper consent initialisation, analytics data may be blocked entirely for EU visitors.

Fix: Ensure Consent Mode V2 is active before any event fires. Confirm with your audit tool’s consent validation module.

Our Final Thoughts

Your analytics setup defines the quality of your insights. A GA4 audit tool helps you uncover the silent errors that compromise accuracy — from mis-firing tags to duplicate conversions.

By reviewing your setup regularly, you build a foundation of data trust: every decision becomes clearer, every report more reliable.

Whether you manage analytics in-house or through an agency, adopting a structured audit process ensures your GA4 property evolves with your business and the latest privacy standards.

If you suspect your GA4 tracking isn’t telling the full story, now’s the time to act.

Learn more about GA4 audit tools and tracking best practices on our website and analytics insights.

Accurate data starts with confident measurement, and your next GA4 audit is the first step.

The post How to Use a GA4 Audit Tool to Uncover Tracking Errors appeared first on ROAR Digital Marketing.

International SEO Strategy For Multilingual Sites

Joshua Lee — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 14:38:08 +0000

Expanding into new markets is one of the most effective ways for growing businesses to increase brand awareness, reach new customers, and boost revenue. But without a clear international SEO strategy for multilingual sites, your efforts can be easily undermined by language barriers, misaligned content, and poor visibility in local search results.

Whether you’re a SaaS company targeting the DACH region or an e-commerce brand moving into the US and France, international SEO often starts with a key question: How do we make sure the right people in each market find and trust our content online?

Many businesses exploring this topic are trying to:

Increase organic traffic from target regions
Rank higher for key localised search terms
Avoid duplicate content and technical SEO pitfalls
Make the most of one website to serve multiple languages

If you’re reading this, you’re probably trying to get clarity on how to structure your website, what to prioritise when going multilingual, and where to begin with technical SEO. You’re not alone, and the good news is, this post will guide you through the key areas of multilingual SEO that matter most.

We’ll show you how to evaluate your current setup, what common mistakes to avoid, and introduce the different implementation paths (like subfolders vs subdomains), so you can move from confused and cautious to confident and visible.

Define Your Goals and Understand Your Target Markets

Before you implement anything, align your international SEO strategy with specific business objectives.

What are you hoping to achieve?

Are you looking to drive more leads from Spanish-speaking markets? Are you hoping to grow your e-commerce revenue in Germany? Or is your priority brand visibility in English-speaking regions like the UK, US, and Australia?

Knowing this determines:

The languages you’ll prioritise
The types of content to translate
The structure of your multilingual site
Which search engines to optimise for (Google in most markets, but Yandex in Russia, Baidu in China)

Pro tip: Use tools like Google Analytics and Search Console to assess where you’re already getting international traffic — and where it may be underperforming.

Curious how this compares to the latest global SEO tactics? Dive into our Ultimate Guide to International SEO for 2025 for updated insights and winning strategies.

Choose the Right Site Structure for Multilingual SEO

The way you structure your multilingual content has a huge impact on SEO success.

Common international SEO structures

Subdirectories (e.g. /fr/ or /de/):
Best for keeping SEO authority consolidated under one domain. Easier to maintain, especially for small teams. Recommended by Google.
Subdomains (e.g. fr.example.com):
Treated as separate properties by search engines. More setup needed in Google Search Console. Sometimes used when CMS limitations exist.
Country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs) (e.g. example.fr):
Offers strong local trust signals but costly and resource-heavy. Better suited for large enterprises.

Hreflang tags: the linchpin of multilingual SEO

If you serve multiple languages or regions, hreflang annotations are essential. They help Google serve the correct language version of your page to the right audience, and avoid duplicate content penalties.

Example: If you have content in English for both the UK and the US, hreflang tells Google which one to show to which user.
Mistake to avoid: Incorrect hreflang implementation or forgetting to include a self-referencing tag.

Align Content and Keywords With Local User Intent

International SEO isn’t just about translation, it’s about localisation.

Translate meaning, not just words

Literal translations can tank your search visibility. You need to research local search behaviour, adapt your keywords, and adjust messaging to match cultural norms and buyer expectations.

For example:

In the UK, someone might search for “hire a car”
In the US, it’s “rent a car”

Use keyword research tools like Semrush or Ahrefs, set to the target country, to uncover region-specific search terms.

Checklist for multilingual content optimisation

Translate page titles, meta descriptions, and headings
Localise call-to-actions and user interfaces
Adapt currency, measurements, and date formats
Optimise for locally relevant keywords

Our Final Thoughts

A successful international SEO strategy for multilingual sites takes more than just adding translations. It requires deliberate technical setup, informed structure choices, and cultural adaptation of content to make your website discoverable and relevant in each target market.

By understanding your goals, choosing the right structure, implementing hreflang correctly, and truly localising your content — you’ll give your business the best chance to grow organically across borders.

Ready to Make Multilingual SEO Work for You?

Want to see how an international SEO strategy for multilingual sites could support your expansion plans? Schedule a discovery call today and speak to our team.

The post International SEO Strategy For Multilingual Sites appeared first on ROAR Digital Marketing.

The Ultimate GA4 Audit Checklist to Optimise Your Tracking in 2025

Joshua Lee — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 09:01:38 +0000

If your analytics still rely on last year’s setup, you’re already behind.

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) has evolved fast, and continues to do so. With this evolution comes the expectation of accurate, privacy-first website data tracking.

At ROAR we’ve completed hundreds of GA4 audits and rebuilds across finance, insurance, law, manufacturing and tech. Our audits regularly uncover data blind spots, duplicate events and broken data collection setups that cost businesses like yours, reliable insights.

By refining tracking foundations, our clients have achieved measurable performance improvements from more accurate conversion attribution to cleaner and digital marketing dashboards that show the metrics that matter. Take Boldon Picture Framing as a key example of the power of tracking and analytics.

This checklist is your final step before clear and accurate insights, a practical, proven process to ensure your GA4 tracking setup is fully optimised for 2025.

Step One: Review Your Current Setup

Your GA4 property forms the backbone of your entire analytics ecosystem A single misconfiguration here can distort every performance report downstream.

How to Audit Your Property Settings

Check these first:

Whether data streams are pulling from the right sources (many aren’t).
If the Measurement ID is linked properly with your GTM container.
Whether Enhanced Measurement is logging the right on-site interactions.
How long user-level data is being retained — often shorter than clients realise.
Which reporting identity GA4 is using to merge sessions and users.

By verifying each of these, you ensure that data flows are consistent, reliable and privacy-compliant, the foundation for any advanced reporting.

Want to see how we’ve rebuilt tracking accuracy for brands like RediData and GasanMamo Insurance? Explore our case studies

Step Two: Validate Event Tracking and Conversions

GA4 events help you understand how users interact with your website.

Every interaction from form submissions to CTA clicks must be recorded consistently and named clearly.

How to Check Your Event Taxonomy

A strong event taxonomy ensures clarity, not chaos.

We recommend you review the following in your existing setup:

Event naming conventions should be consistent and logical, not random names that make reporting a nightmare. Clear naming unlocks fast, accurate analytics.
Many setups capture the wrong context (or none at all). Identify which parameters should be collected to make each event genuinely useful.
Check your setup for event duplication, it’s very common for the same action to fire twice. This inflates results and hides your actual conversion rate. We trace and eliminate duplicate events at the source.
Align GA4 conversions with actual business outcomes. Whether that’s leads, conversions or sales, do not focus on vanity clicks or scrolls that distort performance.

Step Three: Review Consent and Compliance Setup

In 2025, Consent Mode V2 and GDPR compliance are non-negotiable.

If your tracking doesn’t adapt to user consent choices, your data could be incomplete or non-compliant.

How to Audit Your Consent Mode Configuration

Your need to confirm that:

Consent signals flow from your website to your Google Tag Manager property correctly.
Analytics storage and ad storage permissions update dynamically based on your user consent settings.
You have set default storage settings to deny to protect your user’s privacy until they have given their consent.
If you have one, check that your server-side Google Tag Manager container receives accurate consent states before sending data to GA4.

Our audits have helped clients recover up to 20% of previously lost analytics data by implementing proper consent integrations.

We also ensure IP anonymisation, regional tagging and auto-blocking of tracking scripts until approval.

Need a Consent Mode V2 review? Speak with a tracking expert today.

Step Four: Check Server-Side Tracking and Quality Data

In 2025, client-side tracking alone isn’t enough.

Users can get around data collection through browser extensions that block IP addresses and VPNs, but server-side tracking ensures event reliability and long-term data accuracy.

How to Check Your Server-Side Setup:

To be honest, those of you who are reading this, may not have a server-side setup. It’s a long process that requires time, resources and training.

Look at your setup and confirm that:

Check that your server container is correctly deployed under your own subdomain.
Ensure events are being passed securely and consistently. Even small mismatches can break attribution or underreport conversions.
Your HTTPS alignment and cookie handling affect how data travels from browser to server. It’s a common area of silent data loss.

At ROAR, we use managed servers to maximise event delivery and privacy compliance.

This gives our clients stronger attribution, fewer missing conversions, and more confidence in the data driving their decisions.

Step Five: Audit Your Reporting and Dashboards

Once your tracking is technically sound, your reports must tell the right story.

An effective Looker Studio dashboard translates clean GA4 data into actionable insight.

Review Your Reporting Accuracy:

Check that:

Your custom metrics match your core business goals (leads, sign-ups, revenue)
Any and all UTM parameters align across all paid and organic campaigns
Data blending combines GA4, Google Ads and CRM data for full channel and funnel insights.
Thresholding does not hide key dimensions or audience segments.

We automate Looker Studio dashboards for all retained SEO and PPC clients, giving them live access to accurate, decision-ready data.

You’ll never wonder what’s driving growth again.

Our final thoughts

At ROAR, we believe that your data should empower you, not confuse you. A well-structured GA4 setup is the biggest difference between guessing and growing.

Our automated reporting and clear communication ensure you’re always in control of your marketing insights, no jargon, no blind spots, just transparent, reliable data.

As 2025 reshapes the analytics landscape, accuracy and compliance are not optional. Our GA4 audits don’t just fix problems, they future-proof your foundations, so every click, conversion and campaign decision is based on truth and not assumptions.

If your tracking setup hasn’t been reviewed since the last GA4 update, now is the time. Every day of inaccurate data costs you clarity, confidence and performance.

Ready to optimise your GA4 tracking for 2025? Book a Free Discovery Call with our analytics team today to review your current setup and uncover hidden data gaps.

The post The Ultimate GA4 Audit Checklist to Optimise Your Tracking in 2025 appeared first on ROAR Digital Marketing.

“Traffic Is Stable” – But Is It Really? A Real SEO Take on Google’s AI Mess

Joshua Lee — Fri, 08 Aug 2025 14:36:10 +0000

By now, you might’ve read the post from SE Ranking that I shared earlier today, the one unpacking Google’s latest round of ‘everything’s fine, nothing to see here’ messaging around AI Overviews, AI Mode and organic traffic. If you haven’t, here’s the gist:

Google says searches are up, traffic is “relatively stable,” and clicks are “higher quality.” Meanwhile, SEOs across the board are waving red flags, sharing GSC charts showing real declines, and asking (loudly): What on earth is actually happening?

Here’s my take, with no fluff, no fence-sitting.

There’s a Definite Disconnect

Google’s PR spin is starting to feel more out of touch to me, rather than reassuring. Sure, maybe aggregate traffic is “stable,” but zoom in, on individual industries, verticals, or even specific query types, that’s where I’m interested, and the story changes fast.

If you’re working in publishing, eCommerce, or affiliate content right now, you don’t need a Google blog post to tell you what your analytics already have: clicks are down. And not just a little.

“Better Quality Clicks” Is a Convenient Deflection

Google’s mention of “higher quality clicks” reads like a tactical distraction. Of course users who do click through are more qualified. AI Overviews are answering everything up top, so only the most motivated searchers are making it through.

To me and a lot of other SEOs volume still matters. Don’t get me wrong, we’re advocates of quality traffic, but what we’re seeing is that even lower quality traffic might soon be obsolete. Quality doesn’t pay the bills if quantity of quality traffic is also tanking. Especially if you’re a site that relies on informational or long-tail traffic, the stuff AI now answers directly.

The SEO Community Isn’t Imagining This

As Glenn Gabe bluntly said on X: “People are not dumb, they have eyes, and can read charts and interpret the data. :)”

Whether it’s screenshots showing AI Overview-related decoupling, or industry voices like Lily Ray and Aleyda Solis calling for more transparency, the pattern is clear: SEOs are seeing the impact. They’re not waiting for Google to admit it anymore. They’re talking about how to adapt.

And honestly, that’s what we should all be doing.

Where This Leaves Us

I don’t think SEO is dying. I don’t even think Google is the villain — not entirely. But we are in a moment of reckoning, and it feels like the communication gap between search engines and the SEO industry has never been wider.

We need:

Better data transparency from Google. Stop treating aggregate data like it explains everything.
Clear attribution for AI Overviews. How many queries are impacted, and how can SEOs measure that?
Real talk from within the industry. Less performative outrage, more shared experiments and honest case studies.

My Advice to Fellow SEOs?

Stop waiting for the official word. Build for users, yes, but build with an awareness that not all traffic will make it past the SERP anymore.

Start stress-testing content strategies. Explore new distribution methods. Think about how your content can earn clicks even if AI is answering the basics. And don’t be afraid to call out the nonsense. We all want to start calling out the bull, so let’s start doing it.

This is the job now. So, let’s be honest about it.

The post “Traffic Is Stable” – But Is It Really? A Real SEO Take on Google’s AI Mess appeared first on ROAR Digital Marketing.

What is a Google Ads Agency?

Joshua Lee — Sat, 02 Aug 2025 08:59:26 +0000

If you’ve ever tried running Google Ads yourself, you’ll know it can feel overwhelming. Bidding, targeting, ad quality scores, keyword match types, it’s a lot to manage.

That’s where a Google Ads agency comes in.

A Google Ads agency helps businesses plan, create, and manage advertising campaigns on Google’s platforms, from Search ads and Display ads to YouTube advertising and Shopping management. The goal is simple: turn ad spend into measurable results, whether that’s leads, sales, or brand awareness.

In this guide, you’ll learn:

What a Google Ads agency actually does
How their work impacts campaign performance
Why partnering with one can improve your ROI

Let’s start with the basics.

Understanding What a Google Ads Agency Does

A Google Ads agency, manages Google advertising campaigns for clients.

The agency’s role is to make sure your ads reach the right audience at the right time, for the right cost.

Core responsibilities

A typical Google Ads agency:

Research keywords to match your target audience’s intent.
Creates ad copy that’s engaging and compliant with Google’s policies.
Optimises bids and budgets to improve performance and efficiency.
Monitors campaign data to track conversions, click-through rates, and costs.
Reports results through dashboards or performance reviews.

Want to learn more about how campaign optimisation works? Check out our Beginners Guide PPC Optimisation Techniques

Why Businesses Partner with a Google Ads Agency

Hiring a Google Ads agency, saves time and budget waste.

Running campaigns in-house often leads to inefficiency, because it requires constant testing and analysis. An agency has both the expertise and the data to make decisions faster.

The benefits of using an agency

Expert strategy: Agencies understand keyword intent, audience segmentation, and bidding automation, helping you avoid costly trial and error.
Continuous optimisation: Google Ads algorithms change constantly. Agencies stay updated and adjust campaigns accordingly.
Clear reporting: An agency provides transparent performance reports showing what’s working and what isn’t.
Scalable growth: Businesses can scale campaigns without hiring internally.
What Makes a Good Google Ads Agency

Not all Google Ads agencies deliver the same results.

A good Google Ads agency, combines technical skill and strategic thinking.

Key qualities to look for

Certification and experience – Look for Google Partner status.
Transparent reporting – Agencies should show metrics like cost-per-lead and conversion rate.
Custom strategy – Campaigns should be tailored to your business, not copy-pasted from templates.
Proactive communication – The agency should act as an extension of your marketing team.
Data-driven approach – Decisions should be based on analytics, not assumptions.

How Google Ads Agencies Measure Success

A Google Ads agency measures campaign success through key performance indicators (KPIs).

Common metrics include

Impressions (how often your ads are shown)
Click-Through Rate (CTR) (how often people click after seeing your ad)
Conversion Rate (CVR) (how many of those clicks turn into leads or sales)
Cost-Per-Click (CPC) (what you pay per click)
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) (the revenue you earn for every £1 spent)

Each metric tells a different part of the story.

Together, they show whether your ads are attracting the right traffic and converting profitably.

Our final thoughts

A Google Ads agency helps businesses grow through expert campaign management, data-led optimisation, and transparent reporting.

Want to understand more about how Google Ads fits within your wider digital strategy?

Explore more insights on our search marketing resources page, and learn how a Google Ads agency can help your business grow sustainably.

The post What is a Google Ads Agency? appeared first on ROAR Digital Marketing.

How AI Mode in Google Search Is Changing Content Strategy

Joshua Lee — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 16:02:36 +0000

With Google’s AI Mode (AI Overviews) now officially rolling out in the UK, content creators, marketers, and SEO professionals are facing a pivotal shift. Traditional rankings alone no longer guarantee visibility. Why? Because Google’s generative AI now provides answers directly in the search results — often without citing or linking to the original content.

If you’re in charge of SEO or content, your goals might include:

Increasing visibility for competitive informational keywords
Making sure your brand appears in authoritative answers
Preserving or growing organic traffic despite reduced click-throughs

But there’s a growing pain point: your content could be ranking but not showing up in AI summaries — effectively making it invisible in this new search landscape.

This blog post will help you evaluate your current content performance, understand how AI Overviews work, and introduce Gemini-based testing as a practical, low-effort solution to stay ahead. We’ll guide you through two easy tests and a scalable method for larger content libraries, so you can assess your content’s readiness, close the gap, and better serve both humans and machines.

Ask yourself:

Is my content clear, structured, and useful enough to be surfaced by Google’s AI?

If the answer is uncertain, or if you’re just starting to explore this, you’re in the right place. Let’s look at how to move from vulnerable to AI-optimised.

What Is AI Mode and Why Does It Matter for Content?

As of today, Google’s AI Mode is now live in the UK and other markets. These summaries appear above organic results, offering concise, AI-generated answers that users can view without ever clicking a link.

That’s a problem if your content:

Isn’t being cited in these overviews
Isn’t structured in a way the AI can summarise
Doesn’t reflect the intent of the user’s query in clear language

Understanding the Shift in Search Intent and Visibility

Before, your focus might’ve been on keyword targeting, meta optimisation, and internal linking. Now, you also need to think like a machine:

Can AI easily interpret what my page is about and why it’s valuable?

If your content isn’t built to be scanned and parsed by AI, it’s at risk — no matter your Domain Authority or link profile.

How to Test Your Content for AI Mode Compatibility

Rather than guess what Google’s AI understands, you can simulate it. Enter: Gemini, Google’s own generative AI model, and a powerful diagnostic tool for forward-thinking marketers.

Here are two tests you can try today:

Test #1: The Summary Check

Open Gemini and prompt it with:

“Summarise this page in simple terms.”

Paste in your blog post, service page, or guide. Now review the result:

Did it mention your product, service, or core offering?
Was the structure reflected clearly in the summary?
Would a reader trust your brand based on what the AI presented?

If the AI misinterprets or misses key points, you’ll want to adjust your content for clarity, structure, and semantic cues.

Test #2: The Competitor Comparison

Now take a competitor’s page on the same topic and ask Gemini:

“Which page is more helpful and why?”

This is a simple but powerful benchmark. It can reveal:

Whether your page is more authoritative or vague
Which site the AI prefers and why
How to rework your copy to match what AI considers helpful

You’re not just writing for users, you’re writing for interpretation.

How to Scale This for Larger Sites

For content-heavy businesses or enterprise teams, this testing approach can be scaled using the Gemini Pro API.

With development support, you can:

Automatically run summaries on hundreds of pages
Identify which content is unclear or unstructured
Build dashboards to track “AI readability” as part of your content QA process

This moves AI testing from one-off experiments to an integrated part of your content operations.

Ideal Use Cases for Scaling

Ecommerce product detail pages
Long-form guides or blog hubs
Multi-service businesses targeting different buyer personas
FAQ-heavy help centres or knowledge bases

Our Final Thoughts

Google’s AI Mode isn’t a future trend, it’s here, live, and reshaping how your audience finds and consumes information. But it’s not all bad news.

By understanding how AI interprets your content, you can make targeted, meaningful improvements that boost both visibility and user trust. Using Gemini as a lens into Google’s AI model is one of the most accessible and actionable strategies available right now.

Whether you’re a small marketing team or an in-house SEO lead, adapting to this shift will protect, and potentially grow your visibility in a changing SERP landscape.

Schedule a Discovery Call or explore our SEO services to see how we help businesses structure content for both users and AI, and stay visible in a post-blue-links world.

The post How AI Mode in Google Search Is Changing Content Strategy appeared first on ROAR Digital Marketing.

How to Set Up GA4: A Marketer’s Clear Path to Smarter Tracking

Joshua Lee — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 08:30:43 +0000

Website analytics do not have to be complicated. If you want to understand your website traffic, you really need Google Analytics 4. But knowing how to set up GA4, properly, can be the difference between clean, actionable insights and messy, useless data

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is the latest version of Google’s free analytics platform. It’s designed to give you better, more flexible reporting across websites and apps. All while being more privacy, data conscious and future proof.

In this short post, we want to help you understand how to set up GA4 from scratch, in just a few straightforward steps. Whether you’ve just started your business, launched a new website or need to implement tracking before you launch your newest marketing campaigns, ROAR has you covered.

What is GA4 and Why Should You Set It Up?

GA4 is Google’s current analytics platform. It tracks user interactions using an event-based model.

Instead of just knowing someone visited your site, GA4 tracks what they did while they were there, like clicking a button, watching a video, downloading a file, scrolling to the bottom of a page, or submitting a form.

Every action is treated as its own “event”, which gives you far more detail and flexibility. You’re no longer limited to just pageviews or goals, you can define success however you want.

This gives you a clearer view of how people behave on your site. That means you can see clicks and scrolls to video views and purchases.

Why Set It Up Now?

It’s free! – And a powerful step into the world of website tracking and analytics.
It’s required – Its predecessor, Universal Analytics no longer processes data.
It’s future proof – Your data is future proof with better tracking and customisation options.

Setting up GA4 is one of the first and most important steps in understanding and growing your digital presence.

Here’s the thing though, while the process is easy and straightforward for someone well versed in technical marketing, one incorrect setting or plugin misfire can quietly break your data behind the scenes. We’ve fixed countless setups where tracking looked okay on the surface, but conversions were missing, and data was completely unreliable.

Let’s walk through the key steps, and highlight how to setup GA4, but also where it’s easy to go wrong. This way you can either get it right yourself or know when to stop and ask for help!

Step One: Creating A GA4 Property

To get started:

Go to analytics.google.com and sign in with your Google account.
In the Admin panel (bottom-left corner), select the account you’d like to use or create a new one.
Under the “Property” column, click Create Property.
Give your property a name (e.g. “YourSite.com”), choose your time zone and currency, then click Next.
Select your business size and goals, then click Create.

Congratulations! You’ve now created a GA4 property — this is where all your website’s data will be collected and analysed.

If you’re feeling like you want to learn more about website analytics, why not check out our post on b2b website analytics metrics to track in GA4.

Step Two: Adding the GA4 Tag to Your Website

Once you have created your property, it’s now time to connect it to your website so it can start collecting data.

Option One – Using Google Tag Manager:

Log into your Google Tag Manager account, or create one if you haven’t already.
Create a new tag and select ‘Google Tag’.
Enter the Measurement ID from your Google Analytics 4 property (found in GA4 under Admin > Data Streams > Web) into the ‘Tag ID’ box.
Set the trigger to ‘Initialization – All Pages’.
Save and publish your container.

Option Two – Adding the Tag Directly to Your Website:

In your GA4 property, go to Admin > Data Streams > Web.
Copy the provided ‘gtag.js snippet’.
Paste it into the section of every page on your website.

Once installed, your site is now connected to GA4 and ready to start collecting data. You can, of course, use a plugin to install GA4, but this can be very overcomplicated and lead to incorrect and inaccurate data.

We’d highly recommend using Google Tag Manager, it’s much easier and opens up a whole new world of possibilities for your marketing and GA4 account.

Common Mistakes and How to Fix Them:

Let’s pause now and reflect on some of the most common mistakes that we encounter and resolve on a weekly basis:

Installing GA4 and Universal Analytics together, leading to double-counting.
Using plugins that inject code incorrectly or only on some page types.
Wrong tag triggers in Tag Manager, GA4 doesn’t fire, or fires too late
Copy/paste errors when manually inserting the script in the wrong place.
Missing consent controls, making your tracking non-compliant with GDPR.

If you’re unsure your setup is right, we offer a quick audit or full GA4 implementation to ensure everything’s tracking exactly as it should. Take a look at our website analytics service.

Step Three: Enable Enhanced Measurement

While GA4 will have this ticked by default for many users, it’s important to ensure that this has been added.

Common website actions are tracked automatically, which makes life a little easier as no extra setup is required for the following:

Page views
Scrolls
Outbound link clicks
Site search
File downloads
Video engagement.

To make sure these are on, go to your Web Data Stream settings and ensure Enhanced Measurement is toggled on. You can also toggle off any events you don’t want tracked. Sometimes Google Analytics 4 can actually be quite helpful…

Step Four: Define Key Events and Conversions

….and sometimes, it can be very unhelpful! Like their decision to rename ‘conversions’ to ‘key events’. Just pointless and confusing. Going forward, just remember that when we discuss key events, we mean website conversions.

As mentioned earlier, the platform automatically tracks general activity in the form of events. But in order for you to measure success, you need to create custom events and define which of them are key events. It’s up to you to define what really matters, for example:

Contact form submissions
Button clicks
Newsletter signups
Purchases

To Create Custom Events:

Go to Admin > Events > Create Event
Use conditions like page view + URL contains “/thank-you” to define the action
Save, then mark it as a key event, if the custom event represents a goal.

This helps you track meaningful engagement, not just visits. Setting up custom events and conversions is much more flexible on Google Tag Manager, it’s something that we carry out for all clients to give full transparency.

Step Five: Test and Customise Your Reports

Once setup is complete, let GA4 collect data for a day or two. Then you can:

Use Real-Time Reports to see if data is flowing, and view live data of real-time website visitors.
Head to Explore > Free Form to build your own custom reports for deeper insights.

You can create custom reports, dashboards, funnels, path analysis and much more. This will give you tailored insights aligned with your goals.

Our final thoughts

Learning how to setup GA4 is the first step to understanding your audience and making smarter decisions with your marketing channels.

With just a few simple actions, you can unlock a deeper view of how users interact with your website and start gathering insights that can grow your business.

Don’t wait to setup GA4. The sooner it’s up and running, the better for you, your business and your bottom line.

Explore more tips on how to setup GA4 and get the most from your analytics account in our blog all about understanding website analytics.

Or, if you’re interested in learning more about search marketing as a whole, our dedicated search engine marketing blog is waiting for you!

The post How to Set Up GA4: A Marketer’s Clear Path to Smarter Tracking appeared first on ROAR Digital Marketing.