10 Quick and Easy Email Marketing Segmentation Strategies to Try Today

Marketers know that segmenting email marketing lists can improve open and clickthrough rates. MailChimp’s latest user data showed that segmented campaigns get 14.64% more opens and 59.99% more clicks than non-segmented campaigns.

That said, figuring out the best way to segment your email marketing lists can be a huge undertaking.

To make it a little less daunting, this post will show you 10 quick and easy segmentation strategies that you can get started on today.

1. Demographics

The first way many marketers begin email marketing segmentation is by demographic data. Information such as age, gender, company position, and income level can tell a lot about a person’s needs and interests.

The more information you can get about your audience in the sign-up process, the more options you’ll have for demographic segmentation. Be careful with this, though, because asking for too much information can scare people off from signing up at all.

Decide which metrics are most essential for your business and include those questions in the signup process.

For example, if you’re a B2B software developer, company position would be an important demographic. If you’re a clothing retailer, then gender would be extremely valuable to know. Add 1-3 of the most relevant demographic factors for your business (or more, depending on the complexity of your segmentation needs).

The easiest way to segment by demographic information is with your website forms. Your email marketing platform will allow you to customize the email sign-up questions, or you can use a plugin (such as Rapidology) to create opt-in boxes.

If you use a tool like Campaign Monitor, demographic segmentation is a part of the email builder. Just select the content you want to segment, and the demographic you want to show it to:

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2. Survey or Quiz Results

Some marketers are minimalists who wouldn’t dare to ask for more than an email address to sign up for their mailing list.

That’s fine – you can still get access to nuanced data about your customers by creating a survey or quiz.

A survey gives you the opportunity to not only get that valuable demographic information, but also insights into individual tastes, preferences, and beliefs.

If you want to send out a survey to your audience and get a lot of responses, you should probably create some kind of incentive for completing it – such as entering them in a drawing to win a prize.

Or, instead of pitching it as a survey, turn it into a quiz that offers results that would interest your audience.

There are a lot of different ways to create custom surveys for your audience. If you’re on WordPress, you can use the Quiz and Survey Master plugin to create your custom survey. It also integrates with MailChimp, so you can export your results.

If you use Aweber, you can create a free survey with Google Documents, Survey Monkey, or SurveyGizmo, and then integrate them into your Aweber emails.

3. Email Engagement

Email engagement is another very basic way to segment your lists, but it can have a huge impact on your overall results.

Open rate and clickthrough rate are the main metrics here, which you keep track of in your email marketing service.

You can segment by engagement by designating active vs inactive users, such as someone who hasn’t opened your emails in three months. You can then create a specialized campaign designed at re-engaging your inactive subscribers.

Or you can focus on subscribers who do engage, and target them more specifically. For example: you send out an email announcing an upcoming sale, and everyone who clicks through the email link can be categorized as “interested.” You can then create a special campaign to further target them as likely buyers from the sale.

If you use Mailchimp, segmenting by engagement is simple. In the “Activity” tab, you have options to see a variety of subscriber behavior:

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You can then create unique segments including any or all of these metrics:

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4. Geographic Area

There are a lot of different ways to use geographic location data, making segmentation by geographic area a valuable tool – especially for businesses where location greatly influences purchasing decisions.

Litmus, for example, used geolocation to send out targeted emails for their Email Design Conference in San Francisco, London, and Boston, including helpful details for each location:

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Their targeted emails got them a 68% open rate, compared to a 22% open rate for the general conference announcement.

Other ways companies can use geographic data include:

• Time-based email messages. Stagger your emails to send out at optimum times for customers in different time zones.
• Advertising regional promotions. Send focused emails for events in certain store locations.
• Live webinar or AMA invitations. Adjust event timing based on audience location.
• Personalized travel directions. Customize directions to a store or event based on the reader’s geolocation.
• Where a customer shops. Send out offers specific to the physical store a buyer frequents.
• Location-specific content. Use a location in your headlines or content to draw attention and offer a personalized experience.

5. Past Purchases

Segmenting by past purchases is another simple way to optimize targeting. The easiest way is to start sending out email recommendations for similar items or accessories that would go well with their previous purchase.

Or, if a customer bought something that requires replacement, refilling, or renewal, you can send out targeted emails based on their potential needs.

For example, if someone purchased a certain hair styling product, you can make an educated guess about when it might run out – and send her an email after a few months suggesting a reorder.

To do this in MailChimp, you’ll need to use either the eCommerce360 plugin or eCommerce360 tracking for purchase activity to appear in your campaign reports.

Then you can segment by product purchased, category of product purchased, or even combined factors.

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6. Amount Spent

If you sell a range of high and low dollar items, amount spent can be a great segmentation strategy. Use customer expense history to determine which customers are likely to buy more expensive items and which are more interested in affordable, low dollar items.

Then you can send out targeted emails featuring products that are actually in each person’s price range.

Intermix, a women’s clothing retailer, used this strategy to decrease the value of discounts they sent out. They segmented customers into three groups:

1. VIPs – Shoppers with high disposable incomes
2. Sales shoppers – People motivated by discounts
3. Brand shoppers – Customers who showed loyalty to a brand, but were price-conscious

VIPs were sent out non-monetary offers (exclusive invites and events), while the other two segments were sent discount offers ranging from 10-30%.

After everything was said and done, the effort got them a 15% increase in annual revenue.

7. Position in the Sales Funnel

Segmenting by where your audience is in the sales funnel is one of the most valuable ways to customize your messaging.

Someone at the top of the funnel should be receiving different targeted emails than those at the bottom. For example, for a group of brand-new subscribers, their emails should be more generalized, giving a range of the products or features you offer – such as a series of welcome emails introducing them to the brand.

If they’ve been signed up for a while and interacted with certain email content (such as clicking through a link), you can use this information to determine what exactly they’re interested in, and send more targeted emails on that product or service.

Cart abandonment is a common indicator that someone’s at the bottom of the funnel. In 2015, the rate of cart abandonment was 68%. They had intention to buy, but something stopped them.

This presents an opportunity – you can send out a follow-up email reminding them that their cart is still available, or a message featuring the products they were about to purchase.

You can easily track cart abandonment in Google Analytics. Here’s a nice example from Fab on how you can follow up:

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8. Website Behavior

Keeping track of website behavior is another simple way to get more information about visitors’ interests. For example, you can send targeted emails based on the specific pages they visited – but that’s far from the only option.

The sheer amount of behavioral data you can gather now is pretty impressive. There are tools, like BeamPulse, that keep track of visitor scrolling behavior, icons clicked, time active on page, menus visited, and more.

With the ‘Goals’ feature in MailChimp, you can also send out targeted emails based on website activity, such as:

• Pages people visited
• Pages they didn’t visit
• People who visited one page but missed another related page
• What videos they watched (and how long they watched them)

Set up Goal Autoresponders with Mailchimp, and you can send out automatic targeted emails based on the content people did or didn’t engage with on your website.

9. Time Since Last Purchase

Time since last purchase can be a valuable segmentation strategy, since it doesn’t make sense to lump a customer who last bought from you months ago in with one who bought something last week.

Instead, you could split them up into two major groups:

1. Frequent Buyers

This group purchases something from you at least monthly. They like your brand and are obviously interested in your products, so you target them by:

• Upselling product or plan upgrades.
• Offering promotional deals.
• Promoting new features or products.

2. One-time Customers

This group bought one of your products six months ago but hasn’t been back since. Or maybe they used to be a frequent buyer but fell off the grid. Your emails should be targeted at drawing them back to your brand, by:

• Offering personalized discounts on former purchases.
• Highlighting the company’s positive attributes.
• Sending reminders to renew/repurchase.

Onward Reserve, an online menswear retailer, used a similar approach, segmenting by best customers (at least three purchases), non-purchasers, and churning customers. They tailored messages to each group:

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Their efforts got them:

• 278% increase in revenue
• 183% increase in CTR
• 41% increase in open rates

10. Personal Interests

This tactic is a little more advanced, but it’s still fairly simple to do with the right tools.

You can get detailed information about subscribers’ personal interests by creating user profiles on your website or using an email subscription center.

Here’s an example from Amazon:

You can ask your audience to indicate their preferences when signing up – and give them plenty of opportunities to update those preferences by including a CTA in your emails.

By asking your subscribers to indicate their preferences, you can easily cut through the noise by targeting your audience based on their real interests.

You can create custom subscriber preferences with email marketing tools like Mailchimp or Campaign Monitor.

Then, just add the preferences tags to every email you send out.

Conclusion

Email marketing segmentation isn’t a tactic reserved only for brands with the most advanced marketing automation software. With a simple email marketing service and a bit of creativity, you can start targeting your audience with these easy segmentation strategies today.

Know of any other easy ways to segment? Let us know in the comments below.

About the Author: Andrew Raso is the founder of Online Marketing Gurus.

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4 Ways Video Makes Your Marketing Automation Better

By now, pretty much every company has figured out that marketing automation platforms are pretty awesome. They’ve become crucial in capturing more leads, but also helping to identify better leads. With features like automated lead nurturing, grooming new business has become a very methodical and exact process.

However, a lot of companies still don’t include video in their marketing automation platforms. Granted, video is a medium that arrived later in most marketers’ strategies. But it’s been here for a while now, and for some reason, marketers still aren’t tracking viewing behavior to help build prospect profiles.

Here’s why you should be using video with your marketing automation platform:

1. Video gives you more accurate lead scores.

If you are already using video and aren’t looking at individual prospects’ viewing metrics, you are missing a big opportunity. Watching a video (or multiple videos) is a big sign of interest and engagement with your brand. The type of video watched should modify the lead score, since a prospect who has watched a full video tour of your product is probably more interested than one who simply watched your latest April Fools’ video.

And it’s also probably safe to say that a prospect watching an autoplaying video on a landing page is a good sign, but not as good a sign as someone watching a 25 minute webinar. Just like written content, videos house a massive amount of data that can be used to influence lead score and ensure that you have the best possible outlook on a lead. You can look at things like the topic of a video, attention span of an individual video, and total minutes of video consumed. Read this post to learn exactly how to strengthen your lead scoring model using video.

2. Your nurturing campaigns will get better.

Follow-up content is a special kind of beast. It’s crucial to keep your leads engaged once they have checked out your website, but choosing what content is always a hassle. In the end, all potential buyers want to feel like you understand them, specifically.

If a user downloaded a piece of content, there’s a fair chance they won’t mind you following up with an email. However, you can adjust nurture tracks on a much finer level with video. For example, if a potential customer stopped watching every video after 2 minutes but watched a lot of them, you might infer they’re interested, but maybe they have a short attention span (don’t we all?!) and likely won’t read — or watch — longer content.

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Similarly, if a prospect is committed to watching a long recording of a conference to completion, you can probably assume that the subject matter is interesting to them, and they’ll enjoy things related to it.

That’s a level of information about your leads that you just can’t get when they simply download a whitepaper. A prospect downloading a whitepaper tells you he’s interested in a subject, or maybe they just liked the cover. Did they actually read the content? Who knows. But when they watch a video, you can gage the level of their interest by seeing how much of the video they watched.

3. The amount of video views is a flawed metric, amount of video watched isn’t.

A view is just that, it means someone clicked on your video. If everyone is dropping off after 30 seconds, maybe you aren’t addressing your subject quickly enough, or maybe the topic isn’t as interesting to your audience as you thought.  If you’re only tracking video views, and a lead clicked play on a video, you might think he’s interested in that subject. But if he stopped watching after 15 seconds, he’s probably not that interested at all!

If you only track video views, you might send him a white paper on the subject and have it fall on deaf ears. You’d have a lot more success sending him extra information only on the subjects for which he watched more than 50% of video content. But really, you should be spending more time with the leads that watched more of your videos, anyway. Those are the highest quality.

The amount of a video watched is an incredibly flexible metric that affects the way you score leads, but also how you follow up with them.

4. Video leads to more conversions.

Emails with videos get 2 to 3 times better click-through rates and landing pages with video drive 80% more conversions. With a video marketing platform, you can even generate leads from right within a video that automatically sync to your marketing automation platform with things like video calls to action and in-video forms. The leads generated this way will inherently be qualified better since you start with all the information generated from them watching a video in the first place.

It’s all there, in the numbers.

You’re catching the drift, video and marketing automation are really the perfect pair

Tracking the way your prospects watch videos gives you a level of information on them that no other type of content can give you. The number of videos, how long they watched them and the type of video watched all gives you insight into a prospect’s digital body language and their interest in you. This means you’ll see more precise lead scores and faster deal-to-conversion.

You’re probably producing video content already, so why not integrate it with your marketing automation platform? Doing so will only increase your return on investment for your videos and help you identify quality leads.

 

The post 4 Ways Video Makes Your Marketing Automation Better appeared first on Vidyard.

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10 Tools to Visualize Numbers and Percentages

Visualization is an important key to properly conveying numbers and percentages online. Human beings are visual creatures. We do better seeing representations than we do hearing or reading stats.

Therefore visualization is the marketing goldmine: Graphs and charts are much more sharable than many other types of images. More importantly, graphs seem to trigger more clicks because people are curious to see the details.

Charts and graphs make great visual tweets, infographic sections, presentation slides and social media updates.

***Once you are done going through the below tools, don’t miss this one: 5 Easy-to-Create Infographics Types That Work for Any Niche

These ten are some of the best available, and you should definitely give them a try.

Piktochart

There is a reason Piktochart is on the top of most data visualization tool lists. Intuitive and thorough, you can make genuinely amazing charts, infographics and data presentations using their features.

They have accounts for both educators and non-profits, but most will be perfectly satisfied with their general pro account, which runs between $15 and $29 per month. Their free account has plenty of useful features if you don’t want to pony up the cash, though comes with limited templates.

ChartsJS

Just want some very basic charts that show off data without any frills? For business meetings, ChartsJS is a great option. It is a bare bones, open source visual generator that gives you six different templates to choose from.

They are fully animated, customizable, and interactive. So you can make the end product as advanced as you like, and show various layers of data within the same chart.

Tableau

At first glance, Tableau looks like a bit of a Pikochart rip off for graphs instead of Infographics. But delving deeper, it is much more. You put in the data, customize, and in minutes you can have full color, breathtaking charts that take a very clean and direct approach to sharing figures.

Their gallery shows you the many ways the tool has been used, and some of the results are extremely creative, without the data getting lost in translation.

FusionCharts

One big complaint about many visualization tools is that they are one sided towards computer screens. Responsive design isn’t just for web design anymore. Presentations need to be more flexible, as well.

FusionCharts has one of the biggest chart databases online, and all aimed at being intuitive for mobile or web viewing. They also have more than 1000 maps. Unfortunately the licensing can be a tad bit steep. But if it is qualifying as a business expense (and so can be written off), it is probably worth it.

Google Charts

Google seems to have a hand in everything these days. But this one is a surprise to many. Google Charts program has a number of commonly used chart templates including pie, graphs, and line. You can quickly and easily transport data and make attractive – if basic – charts for free.

They are cross compatible with Android or Apple mobile operating systems thanks to their use of HTML5/SVG, and can be exported. Of course, you can also quickly share it with people with a quick invite, like any other Google product.

Timeline

Temporal data is some of the hardest to visually express. The best way is almost always considered to be through Timelines, but those can be very complicated and time consuming to make. Timeline widget makes it much easier.

You simple add in the dates and small snippets that compress the data into this interactive format.

The design is a tad bit sloppy, but it is open source and free, and it does the job. Plus it creates bullet introductions that can be clicked on for an expanded description in a popup box.

That is extremely handy if you need a bit more information on each point, without overwhelming the timeline.

Dipity

If you want a more visually appealing and clean looking timeline, and you don’t mind paying for it, you may prefer Dipity. It creates an embeddable timeline with images and a simple bottom scrolling calendar for keeping track of events.

Those images can be clicked on for more information, or to take your viewer to outside links as third party sources. Pro accounts start at $4.95 per month, though you have to get a $99 monthly account if you want to use their timelines with a commercial license.

Visualize Free

This is an interesting tool that will be better for marketers than anyone else. With Visualize Free, you can take your analytics data and create customizable visuals that can be shared with others.

Those results can then be reanalyzed for even more targeted visuals. They have multiple styles of charts to choose from, and their commercial version is free for small businesses of two or less users.

Datawrapper

You know when you look at a news article on a major website and see a live chart featuring something like the current ticker of a collection of stocks?

Chances are that chart was created using this tool. Datawrapper is one of the fastest and easiest ways to create interactive visual data.

Zebra BI

Just need some basic data charts from Excel rendered? All it takes is two clicks with Zebra BI. This is a super basic app, and it doesn’t have a whole lot of applications. But for basic use, it is a peach. It costs $238.80 per year, or $20 per month, with a free trial so you can check it out.

Do you have any tools you think should go on this list? Share your tools for visualizing numbers and percentages below!

The post 10 Tools to Visualize Numbers and Percentages appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.

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How Emotional Targeting Converts More Leads

A study found “that websites with a stronger emotional impact produced a greater intent to buy.”

Appealing to your audience’s emotions creates a connection. Whether you’re designing product descriptions or landing pages, your team must aim to evoke emotion into your messaging.

That’s why storytelling works so well. It’s a powerful way to engage your customers.

Research by Pringle & Field found that “emotional campaigns outperform on almost every metric,” including revenue, profit, and share gain.

Emotional targeting produces authentic content that speaks the consumer’s language. It’s those irresistible stories that touch people’s hearts and propels them to purchase your products.

Ready for a challenge? Learn how to convert more leads with high-impact emotional messages.

1. Psychological Triggers

Emotions determine our everyday decision-making. We buy when we’re sad. We buy when we’re happy.

However, most brands miss the opportunity to develop an emotional link with shoppers. They focus on product features, rather than understanding the feelings behind the purchase.

In 2014, Facebook “revealed that it had manipulated the news feeds of over half a million randomly selected users to change the number of positive and negative posts they saw.”

This controversial psychological study found that people mimic the emotions expressed in online content. So, if people read a positive post, they are more likely to respond positively.

With that in mind, prepare your SaaS to develop digital marketing campaigns ingrained with psychological triggers. For instance, happiness induces people to share.

Serial entrepreneur Neil Patel says, “When your content drives people to a state of happiness or joy, they will automatically respond to your offers, feel obliged to share your content, and will stop at nothing to tell others about you.”

Here’s an example from Moz. Their Whiteboard Friday videos express excitement as experts teach SEO and online marketing skills, and they receive thousands of YouTube views.

Also, A/B test your campaigns based on behavioral and emotional marketing, not tactical elements.

Talia Wolf, the Founder and CEO of Conversioner, states, “Great marketing campaigns look at the entire product as an ecosystem. Rather than just changing the headline, or the colors of individual elements, they approach the product as a whole.”

There is real value in tapping into people’s emotions. Work with your team to develop digital content that connects to your shoppers’ sentiments. It will help maximize your lead conversions.

2. Memorable Experiences

Memories are precious moments in our lives.

We remember graduating from high school, breaking up with our first romantic partner, or even that embarrassing moment when we flopped a presentation. These experiences evoke us to think about how we felt at that particular time.

To harness the power of memorable experiences, associate your brand’s shopping experience with your customer’s life events. For example, transfer the same emotions customers felt when they got married or bought their first home.

For instance, chocolate is usually associated with joy. Hershey’s is keeping that alive with its #HelloHappy campaign.

Stacie Stauffer, senior brand manager at Hershey’s, told AdFreak the following:

“The second you say ‘Hershey,’ the most amazing thing happens. This giant flood of emotions and memories happens—when I made s’mores camping, or stirred up chocolate milk with my mom. That solidified that we should be speaking more as [one] brand, and from a much more emotional place.”

This type of emotional targeting makes consumers feel subconsciously connected to your brand. They are compelled to read more, click on your offer, and even purchase your services.

Chris Dalton recommends offering value without expectations.

He said, “Sometimes, the best sales pitch is no pitch at all. Consumers have become savvy to ignoring direct sales tactics or sleazy methods. If you offer information relating to your products with honesty and transparency, your customers will notice.”

Buffer does an effective job by giving its customers an inside peek at their operations. Check out their BufferOpen blog about their “journey to greater productivity, more transparency and a happier work culture.”

Map out a path to connect your customers’ memories with your brand. And sometimes that means not selling, just providing value.

3. Visual Storytelling

DemandGen Reports noted that video content for B2B marketing increased by 8% to 54%, and infographics jumped 9% to 52% in 2014. It’s becoming a necessity to use visuals as part of your marketing strategy.

A good visual stimulates people’s senses. It can create fear, elicit pity, or showcase friendship. Font styles make a difference, too. People consider clear, readable font as trustworthy.

But you can’t just plop any picture on your website or Instagram account. Freelance writer Dawn Papandrea agrees:

“To make visual storytelling work, however, you can’t simply slap a few stock photos onto your blog or social media posts. Just as headlines and calls to action must be crafted carefully, your visual content deserves more than a second thought.”

From screenshots to actual photographs, think about how to convey emotion to your audience. Do you need a wide-angle shot? Will a big red arrow show more impact for the viewer?

In the above picture, Nike displays the endless possibilities customers can experience with their apparel. It’s all about the adventure and the limitless options the brand offers its consumers.

In addition, be aware of diversity in your visuals. Cultural shifts happen within our society.

Not everyone will be on board with your company’s inclusiveness. But don’t let that stop your eCommerce store’s progression.

General Mills faced negative backlash for featuring an interracial couple in their 2014 Cheerios Super Bowl commercial ad. Despite some disapproval, there was also an overwhelming positive response applauding their diversity efforts.

Use visual storytelling to communicate emotion to your customers. From infographics to videos, give your shoppers a better understanding of your brand’s culture.

4. Social Proof

We’re humans. We want to belong.

Social proof in marketing activates those desires to be affiliated with a specific group of people or worthwhile cause.

Social media strategist Michael Sherman, says, “For many, a proven testimonial or example is the emotional trigger a person needs to say yes on buying your products and using your services.”

Old Navy appeals to shoppers’ sense of belonging. They focus on offering trendy clothes at affordable prices.

In the tweet below, the retailer implies that if you want to get ready for spring and be happy with your friends, purchase from their wide-selection of clothes.

Here comes spring…
Nab thousands of items from $5: https://t.co/nGQ9Pji1pN http://pic.twitter.com/XX7nIsfyXs

— Old Navy Official (@OldNavy) March 5, 2016

For social proof to work well, your brand must truly understand your consumers’ motivations and intentions.

For example, expert social proof may emotionally influence your consumers to take action. This happens when an industry influencer or well-known blogger publicly approves a product. Those endorsements look like a basic quote or a video testimonial.

Rent the Runway experienced a 200% higher conversion rate from mentions by a fashion magazine or blogger than paid search.

Learn what riles up your consumers. Identify experts that appeal to your audience and coincide with your brand’s values. Give people the social proof they need to buy your products.

Target Emotions

Strive to build an emotional connection with your buyers. As a result, customers will feel connected with your brand and purchase more.

Strategize on how to add psychological triggers. Ditch transactional relationships for memorable experiences. And invest in visual storytelling to express your brand better.

Target people’s emotions to convert more leads.

About the Author: Shayla Price lives at the intersection of digital marketing, technology and social responsibility. Connect with her on Twitter @shaylaprice.

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The Healthy Skeptics and the AdWords Redesign: Weekly Forum Update

Skepticism is a healthy thing to have in the SEO world. If there’s one thing I learned from Fathom, it’s that you should always be hunting for the truth with your own hands and eyes.

That’s not to say that you should never listen to anyone else…too much skepticism turns to paranoia. But this week, we’ve got some great threads with a healthy amount of skepticism in them. They’re simply dripping with juicy morsels and a sense of progress.

Let’s take a look!

E.U. Considering a Tax on Google Showing Snippets

Sound ridiculous, right? Well, the war between Google and the E.U. is being fought on many different fronts – some of them are bound to be strange and arcane. According to an article from Ars Technica, the tax

“…would require search engines and possibly others to pay for using short extracts to link to articles on other sites.”

WebmasterWorld user topr8 says that

“I should think it [has] nothing to do with snippets but more working out a way to try and tax Google and other big players.”

Another user, Andy Langton, provides some context:

“This is primarily targeting Google News. Spain already introduced a law, which is why Google closed Google News in Spain.”

Ahh, yes – you may remember that announcement as a blip on the news radar. Traffic to Spanish publishers fell through the floor and Google packed up its toys and went home.

Other WebmasterWorld users suspect the same thing will happen across the E.U. if this tax goes into effect. But big E.U. publishers are still eager to have it passed – perhaps as a way of absolutely crushing their smaller competitors.

Is A Higher Bounce Rate Inherently Bad?

As the admin of a forum myself, this is a topic that I find to be particularly fascinating! There are many blog posts and forum dwellers out there who say that you should strive for a high bounce rate – but the concept has never struck me as being black and white like that. Cre8asiteforums user Robert_Paulson writes,

“My hypothesis is that some sites…have pages that adequately answer a visitor’s question in a single page.”

User Black_Knight says that bounce rate is not always bad. In two specific cases that he outlines, bounce rate can be good. But otherwise, it is very often bad

“…because you are completely in the dark. You have no idea who they were, or what impression they took away.”

The solution is to gather more data – and you can do just that in this fascinating thread! One of the best I’ve read in a long time on the topic..

How SEO Best Practices Become Irrelevant

Remember our theme of healthy skepticism? Here’s a great thread all about it from WebmasterWorld. When you believe that the rules of SEO were set in stone decades ago, you lose your flexibility.

User martinibuster writes that

“SEO is very much like scripture. The original authors and reasons behind SEO Best Practices are buried in time. As one generation… handed down best practices to the next… these practices were accepted because they have always worked, yet without actually knowing how the best practices came about.”

In other words – we work with things that we blindly accept to be true. And in this masterfully written post, martinibuster will tell you why you should never do that.

As an example, there’s the idea that linking out to .gov and .edu sites is a good idea. But linking out to them in excess, and for the sole purpose of improving SEO, makes no sense.

“Link because it makes sense to link. Don’t write an article and drop a handful of links…because that is the definition of rote SEO.”

Due Diligence In Affiliate Promotion

If you’re promoting a product or creating affiliate pages, it stands to reason that you should be diligent. But how, asks Cre8asiteforums user Robert_Paulson, do you do your research?

Do you purchase and use the product yourself? How can that be a sustainable practice? User EGOL speaks about being frugal:

“I don’t spend a lot of money outside of work… I don’t spend much on clothes…But, if you take anything away from what I have written here [it] should be that I don’t hesitate to spend whatever it takes when publishing content.”

Here’s an excellent thread about managing money, producing quality, and being diligent!

Facebook Testing “Anti-Impersonation” Tool

Ever been impersonated on Facebook? If you’re like me, you never dreamed that it could happen. But it can and it does. Facebook is now developing a tool that will alert you when someone steals your name and face on their platform. WebmasterWorld user bill writes

“There’s an entire industry revolving around fake profiles.”

Part of the new tool will be asking users to identify themselves. Bill asks, is it possible that this tool’s structure indicates the scope of Facebook’s problem with fake profiles? What’s your experience?

AdWords is Getting a Redesign

For 15 years, the interface of AdWords has stood like a Sphinx in the sands…ancient and mysterious. Well, Google will be putting the nose back on that sphinx throughout 2016 and 2017.

The entire interface of AdWords is getting a cosmetic overhaul. Google says that all the functions and inner-workings will stay the same, though. It will just be easier to use.

Supposedly, they’ll be taking webmaster feedback into account and claim that the new Adwords “will be focused on marketers’ needs and objectives” instead of Google’s own products and features.

You can check out a discussion of the issue on WebmasterWorld as well, where users are somewhat skeptical of Big G’s intentions. User tangor wonders where additional data will be collected from and what it is.

“Will it impact users (bandwidth/privacy/etc)? This almost sounds like a let’s fix something that ain’t broke kind of thing….”

User shri says that nothing will fix AdWords for them:

“For me, no amount of redesigning will replace the trust I’ve lost in their ‘Quality Score’ and the 1000%+ increase in CPC over the years and precise geo ip targeting.”

Google Finally Reveals Top 3 Ranking Factors; Surprises No One

You’ll never believe what Google considers to be the top three ranking factors! Well, ok, you will. They are, in order,

“Links, Content, RankBrain.”

Hardly a shocker – but perhaps the details in this Threadwatch story will help you prove something to your clients!

Has Traffic Dropped Since The Removal of Sidebar Ads?

SEO Chat user JSTucker says that

“One of my clients has experienced a 24% drop in organic traffic over the last 28 days…[with] no obvious explanations.”

They’re an ecommerce business, so JSTucker wonders if the removal of sidebar ads could be part of the problem. A few days later, they report a sudden boost – wild fluctuations tend to spook us all.

Users in this thread are still investigating whether it’s a sidebar issue or just a normal part of advertising on Google. Have you seen any fluctuations?

Is Something Fishy Happening To Google SERPs?

Stay skeptical – but some users on WebmasterWorld are reporting weird activity in the SERPs lately. Searches seem to be returning extremely non-relevant results.

On March 28, WebmasterWorld admin engine wrote

“I ran some searches today and, wow, the SERPs look awful. So many non-relevant sites appearing. .ru, .com, .fr, appearing and none were what I was looking for.”

User aristotle speculates that it could be RankBrain:

“RankBrain is supposed to improve relevance, but it probably needs some time to self-learn from its mistakes. So the results might have to get worse before they get better.”

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The post The Healthy Skeptics and the AdWords Redesign: Weekly Forum Update appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.

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