The holiday season is rapidly approaching, and if you haven’t started planning your marketing strategy for 2017 now is the perfect time to start. Your digital marketing channel is a critical component of your overall visibility, and as such a quarterly SEO assessment is a smart choice alongside more traditional digital advertising strategy .

According to an Econsultancy survey (which sought responses from 4,000 digital marketers), the two most important trends in 2020 will be customer experience and personalized digital experiences.

It seems that with every change in consumer behavior, Google becomes more sophisticated and discerning to match. This fall, the tech giant is introducing three modifications to its index and analytics algorithm. Understanding them now will allow you to continue to establish yourself as an agency that delivers a cutting-edge, personalized customer experience to your audience.

As Google expands their offerings, here are three things you can expect.

Google Analytics Is Getting Smarter

First, Google Analytics is rolling out Session Quality Scores. This new feature will predict the likelihood of a site visitor converting. Using the session quality score allows marketers to improve the customer experience, decrease bounce rates, and increase conversion rates. It’s also a great remarketing tool, allowing you to remarket only those visitors who are most likely to become customers.

Another tool coming this fall is the Split Index. This is going to be a game changer for digital marketers, as it will allow users to differentiate between mobile and desktop analytics. The switch makes sense given the rise of mobile viewers (about 60 percent of visitors) and the steady decline of desktop viewers (about 40 percent). The new mobile index will act as the “primary” index.

It’s unclear how much the Split Index will change current Google rankings, but it will likely give marketers a more “pure” mobile ranking, as it won’t be diluted with desktop users. It’s also likely that desktop rankings will be “slightly out of date” in comparison to mobile numbers, as the desktop index will take a backseat to mobile.

Google Optimize

Google is also rolling a free version of Google Optimize, formerly only available as part of the Google Analytics 360 suite. The program, which is still in its beta phase, allows marketers to test different versions of their websites and optimize the experience to suit each unique visitor directly from the Optimize platform.

Optimize is deeply integrated with Google Analytics, so you’ll get real time, highly accurate insight about which parts of your site need improvement and which parts convert. Optimize makes it easier than ever to A/B test, as it doesn’t require a team to design and implement the variations. You can make all the changes directly within Optimize.

And because no two visitors have exactly the same needs, the advanced targeting tools let you create a custom experience for each visitor based on user groups. Best of all, Google Optimize is free to use — sign up here.

Google Tag Manager Is Getting An Upgrade

Google Tag Manager already gives marketers a powerful tool to make informed, smart decisions by making data easy to read and track across its own platform as well as third party sites. Rather than manually writing JavaScript to capture visitor data, tags allow you to easily capture the user experience and trigger Analytics events.

With the update, Google Tag Manager will add 20 new tags, including Twitter, Nielsen, and Microsoft Bing. You can see the entire list of supported tags here.

Are You Prepared?

If your practice isn’t already partnered with an agency, now is the time to make your choice.  Start talking about which marketing channels make the most sense for your group, and be sure to include digital in the mix.  If you need help with planning, we highly recommend speaking to one of our account executives to help you form a holistic, fully-fleshed out plan for peak visibility in your niche.  Contact us today! 888-336-1344