#MarketingTitbits – Google, Ryanair messaging, internet fees

1. Does Google use social signals for ranking?Are pieces of content more likely to rank higher on SERPs if they have more social signals (likes, retweets, comments, etc.) than similar content of less social ‘worth’? Econsultancy sheds some light on the topic.

Google is known for ranking content based on its quality, but it appears now that social interaction could possibly be added to the complicated ranking equation. As of this month, Google has begun to roll out an update in the US which shares tweets in real-time in search results.

So, if you have created content and shared it on Twitter with an optimised tweet, chances are that Google may have shared it too. To read more, click here.

2. Quality now drives our messaging, not price, claims Ryanair’s CMO

Ryanair has recently announced that its profits were up 66%, reaching £614 million for the first quarter of the year. Chief executive, Michael O’Leary, has claimed their ‘Always Getting Better’ programme is the key to their growth.

Over the same period, the airline’s marketing spend hit £166m, in an aim to improve brand perception by boosting personalisation features for its customers. Although the brand appears to be winning customers from competitors, be it budget or premium, it still has work to do to push up its index score and rise in the aviation ranks.

To find out more about Ryanair’s success, click here.

3. We’ve hit the peak of ‘free’ on the internet. It’s time to pay up

Over the years, the New York Times has juggled its subscription fees from free to paid and back again a number of times, but what will happen at a point where around 15% of users are paying for a service of some sort?

Free content shows no sign of disappearing, but is likely to be ‘rebalanced’ as online payments become safer and paid content becomes more valuable. But now, as large companies such as YouTube and Apple begin to join in the premium services, will you be persuaded to pay up?

Click here to read more on the ‘peak of free’.