Digital Marketing Updates You Should Know

Digital Marketing Updates 2025

Building Trust & Authority – Google’s Recent Helpful Content Update Took a Holistic Approach

February 2025, Search Engine Optimisation

Google’s Helpful Content Update (HCU) has historically focused on weeding out low-quality content from search results. The most recent update appears to have taken a different approach.

The most recent update appears to have reviewed site-wide content structure and link profile health.

What does this mean?

It’s not just about well-written and informative content now, it’s also about if it’s relevant to your overall website. Google’s goal with this is to make sure that a website is writing about topics they’re authorities on – not just topics that will improve their rankings.

Google is also targeting link farms. Contrary to previous myths that Google ignores bad links, since this recent update we have found that low-quality backlinks are in fact affecting site performance.

Our advice for this update:

• Audit your backlinks – and disavow toxic links
• Build high-quality backlinks rather than going for quick wins (such as purchasing spammy backlinks – no matter the domain rating)
• Clean up your site content structure – prune orphan pages & focus on relevant topics in your content strategy to build site authority.

Social Media platforms aren’t ready for the Australian social media ban for children

February 2025, Social Media

Late last year, the Australian government passed a law to ban children under the age of 16 from using social media platforms including Instagram, X, Snapchat & TikTok. However, recent investigations by the eSafety Commission have found that they aren’t ready for the ban to come into full force later this year.

For the majority of platforms, age verification is currently reliant on truthful self-declaration. However, this leaves kids in a potentially more dangerous position online pretending to be older than they are.

What does this mean for marketers?

For the majority of the world, minimum age to use social media platforms is 16. With age restrictions increasing to 13, reaching a teenage audience through paid advertising will also change – whether they’re using the platforms or not.

Has Elon taken it too far? 

January 2025, Social Media

While Elon Musk isn’t a stranger to the limelight, has he finally taken it too far with X (formerly known as Twitter)?

At the tail end of last year, X updated their terms of service to dictate that all users must agree to their posts being accessed and read by AI. This has led to privacy concerns by users.

While this doesn’t sound like much, it follows hot on the heels of complaints of toxic content surrounding the US election.

Between users leaving the platform as well as Elon Musk’s bad publicity, advertisers are now reconsidering their use of X as a marketing channel. Large companies including Apple, Disney and IBM were among the brands that have paused their advertising spend with X.

Instagram updates its feed after 14 years

January 2025, Social Media

Instagram has officially shifted its default feed post aspect ratio from 1:1 (square) to 4:5 (portrait). This is perhaps the biggest shift in the move towards mobile-first content with the new format taking up more screen real estate.

Not only does this give social media managers more screen real estate to play with, but this change is intended to lead to better engagement rates.
However, for many content creators and social media managers, this change will turn their current feed aesthetic upside down. And Instagram hasn’t given them much choice in updating existing posts.

Currently, you can either ‘fit’ or ‘fill’ images on the grid. And, it has to be done individually for each post by selecting adjust preview in the post options menu.

Our advice for this update:

• Keep an eye out for when this change is rolled out to your account so you can adjust the preview quickly.
• Start creating content for the 4:5 format now, ready for the rollout.
• Capture portrait-first content, if you aren’t already.