Many companies achieve a top ranking in Google by simply being good at what they do and by playing by the rules.  Google has a very clear set of quality guidelines that, if ignored or overlooked, can lead to severe penalties. In fact there are many examples of high profile companies that have tried and failed to gain an unfair advantage in ranking in Google search results by manipulating their way to the top.

Among these examples are companies that just about everyone will recognize, including The Washington Post, WordPress, The BBC, BMW, Mozilla, Genius, eBay, Overstock.com, JCPenny, The Home Depot and even Google themselves has been penalized. Many of these brands are just guilty of not paying attention or not being educated on the Google quality guidelines.  Let’s take a deeper look in to just what each company did to receive a Google manual penalty, followed by an infographic for more information from Digital Third Coast.

The Washington Post

In October 2007, The Washington Post was selling links on their blogroll and didn’t use the Google best practice of using a no follow tag when linking to a site. As a result of their Google penalty, the PageRank of their site dropped from a PR7 to a PR5. It’s hard to say exactly when their PageRank was restored, but it looks to have been within a couple of months.  If that penalty had happened in 2016, the loss of traffic over those two months would equate to 76.4 million users.

WordPress

In 2005, WordPress quietly hosted 168,000 articles about high-cost advertising keywords which were written by a third party in exchange for a fee.  This is called creating doorway pages.  These doorways are sites or pages created to rank highly for specific search queries.  They are created to manipulate Google’s algorithm and increase PageRank for a website.  While PageRank is no longer something Google measures, it had a huge effect on rankings in 2005.  The penalty WordPress received from Google was that the site’s home page didn’t rank for its name, and their PageRank was reduced to zero. If this penalty happened today, the loss of traffic for WordPress would be just over 10 million users.

BBC

The BBC was hit with a manual penalty in March of 2013 for using unnatural links to rank for a single page.  Unnatural links are described by Google as artificial, deceptive, or manipulative outbound links.  They are a product of buying links or participating in link schemes to manipulate a site’s ability to rank.  While the penalty length for this one is unknown, if their site was penalized today for even a single day, the traffic loss would be over 3.52 million users.

BMW

BMW manipulated search results to ensure top rankings when users search for “used car” by redirecting the user to a regular BMW company page when they clicked on search result links. This is called cloaking, which is essentially a type of doorway page.  The user is redirected a different page without their knowledge. The BMW site was removed for the search results completely for three days which would result in a loss of 71,600 users if it had happened today.

Mozilla

In April of 2013, Mozilla was penalized for having a page that had 12MB of Spam from 21,169 different user comments. This is a form of user-generated spam that is commonly found in the forum or comments section of a page.  This page degraded in the rankings, and the penalty length is unknown because the page was removed.

Genius

Genius, formerly knowns as “Rap Genius,” asked bloggers to link to its lyrics content in exchange for tweeting out the posts from said bloggers, resulting in massive traffic for both parties. The objective here is not to make your links appear natural, but the objective is that your links are natural.  Genius was hit with an unnatural link penalty which resulted in them not ranking for their own name, and their PageRank was reduced.  The penalty lasted 10 days, which would equate to a traffic loss of 3.88 million users today.

Overstock.com

Overstock attempted to manipulate the Google Algorithm by offering discounts to schools in exchange for specific links back to Overstock. This is known as a paid link violation.  A paid link is an unnatural placement of a link which is paid for with the intentions of increasing rankings. They were penalized for over two months in which they didn’t rank for their own name, and their PageRank score was reduced.  If that happened today, the loss of traffic over those two months would be over 12.17 million users.

Home Depot

Home Depot asked recommended providers to share a link to one of Home Depot’s pages with recommended anchor text and stated that the link doesn’t need to be visible.  Hiding links can be done several ways, including using white text on a white background, placing text behind an image or using CSS to position text off-screen and setting the font size to zero.  Home Depot had many pages that had hidden links pointing to their site degraded from their first page rank.  The penalty lasted for two months, which would result in a loss of traffic of over 37.13 million users if this happened today.

Google

Believe it or not, even Google has been found guilty of violating their own quality guidelines. Google bought links as part of a campaign to promote its Chrome browser.  Google claims it was more accidental than intentional but, regardless, still penalized themselves. Rankings were lowered for the Google Chrome homepage for two months.

In the end, the lesson learned is, when it comes to SEO strategy and linking, play by Google’s rules.  This will help to ensure that your site avoids manual penalties and a loss of search engine traffic that accompanies it.

The post Lessons to Learn from Companies Who Tried to Cheat Google and Lost [Infographic] appeared first on Relevance.

One way is by using heat map software to analyze your email marketing campaigns. Easy SMTP and computational neuroscience firm, EyeQuant, recently teamed up to use specialized heat map software to evaluate a number of email marketing campaigns. By using the heat map software to analyze these email marketing campaigns, they could have a better idea of how design plays a factor in creating eye-catching emails that people actively engage with. They took the results of their research and made a very visually stunning infographic, seen here.

Each of the email campaigns analyzed was rated on three different scores. They scored on clarity, another on excitingness and another on how well it grabbed the attention of the users. The software also allowed them to anticipate what people either liked or disliked in each campaign.

Each campaign was unique, so it wasn’t just looking at the same type of campaign over and over. They analyzed email marketing from an email advertisement, a trade publication, a B2B email, a financial services email and a product description email. For each email marketing campaign, they analyzed what went wrong and gave pro tips on how they would fix each issue.

[xyz-ihs snippet=”Agency-Link”]

There are many interesting and actionable takeaways presented at the conclusion of the graphic:

• Use white space to help steer user’s eyes towards your intended target. White space is preferred to large blocks of text of information because it signals to the eyes that rest points will be provided as information is consumed.
• By narrowing the options available to users, you can more accurately focus your message. In the example in the infographic, all of the available options seemingly overwhelmed users. The lack of a visible call to action only made the problem worse. By placing navigational bars at the end of emails, you can generate additional clicks from readers who didn’t find anything of interest within the copy itself.
• A simple design with smaller font actually encourages more focused reading.
• When it comes to technical content, choose a clean display. Designers should take into account the “recency effect,” which shows the last thing to be viewed usually stays with people the most.
• Try to be mindful of colors and secondary elements in images. In the example in the graphic, the cluttered background takes the focus away from the main element of the email.

As you can see, you learn a lot of valuable information from analyzing how users interpret emails. This information allows you to change what’s not working and send a more effective email to your intended audience.

[xyz-ihs snippet=”Hubspot-CTA-Leaderboard”]

The post How Simple Design Solutions Can Improve Your Business’s Email Marketing Campaigns [Infographic] appeared first on Relevance.

Ad-blocking software prevents ads from being served. While most internet users are fine with this, many also don’t realize how much of an adverse effect it has on advertisers and publishers.

In response to this, cross-channel marketing technology leaders Signal have put together an infographic and guide that covers the rise of ad blocks and what advertisers and publishers can do about them.

Here are a few highlights and takeaways:

The Rise of Ad Blockers

The main purpose of ad-blocking software is to stop ads from being served. This limits advertiser’s potential views or Cost per Thousand Impressions. Ads are paid for only after they’ve been served. This means that publishers aren’t being paid for visits to their site from any browser that has an ad-blocker installed.

Because of this, U.S. publishers are set to lose nearly 10 percent of total ad revenue due to ad blockers. In some industries with tech-savvy readerships, this number can jump to nearly 50 percent. The total cost of ad blocking is projected to cost publishers nearly 22 billion in 2015. As you can see, this is a serious loss for publishers as a result of ad-blocking software.

Globally, ad blocking has seen growth of nearly 41 percent over the past 12 months with nearly 200 million people now using ad-blocking software. This number is expected to continue to rise with the ad-blocking functionality that was just released on iOS9. Previously, most ad blocking had occurred on desktops; however, that will soon change with the recent iOS9 update.

What Can Advertisers & Publishers Do About Ad Blocking?

Ad blocking software is here to stay and has the potential to negatively impact both advertisers and publishers. But there are a few things that they can do to help rescue their cost per impressions.

Crafting the right message is important. Make sure you truly know your customers. Don’t rely on third-party data, which is often old and unreliable. First-party data is far more accurate for developing and serving relevant ads so that you target the right audience.

Real-time marketing is also important. Consumers are more likely to buy from a brand when they’re in a buying mindset. Be sure to connect all of your channels so that you never miss a chance to reach customers when they are in the market for your product.

Embrace native advertising. Native ads are a great way to reach consumers who have already adopted ad-blocking software. Consumers are also far more likely to share native ads then they are to share banner ads, and they view native ads more frequently than banner ads.

Ad blocking is only going to continue to grow. Most consumers see popups and display advertising as intrusive and are eager to take the steps necessary to block it. By committing to using better data to make better decisions about whom and when you target, you’re doing your part to keep advertising relevant. And by experimenting with native, you’re helping advance the field of marketing communications in a new and radical way—a win-win for everyone.

[xyz-ihs snippet=”Hubspot-CTA-Leaderboard”]

The post Ad Blocking and Its Effects on Advertisers and Publishers appeared first on Relevance.

Consumers are actually more willing than you might imagine to share content they see online. Huffington Post found that nine out of ten consumers want brands to share content online and those same consumers actually trust content from brands nearly as much as they do from established media sources. So how does a brand go about building trust within their content?

Most brands will simply slap their logo or their branding in the corner of their content and expect it to be trusted by their audience. This is wrong. Let’s examine the guidelines that brands should follow in order to build trustworthy content that is also shareable.

Reflect Your Brand

The first step to making shareable and trustworthy content is to make sure the content is an accurate representation of your brand. Not only should you stay true to your brand’s design guidelines, you also need to make sure your content addresses your customers’ interests in an authentic and believable way. Consumers want to do business with companies that share similar values as their own.

Make it Educational

People tend to seek out content that is educational in nature. The more someone can learn and take away from a content piece, the more likely they are to want to share it with their audience. Seventy-four percent of consumers trust editorial content when it comes across as educational and not promotional. This holds true even if it comes from a business.

Originality Counts

With so much content being published and shared on a daily basis, you have to take the extra step to ensure that your content stands out from the crowd. Over 30 percent of content readership will fall off if you try to take shortcuts like using stock photography in your content. Your consumers want to know your opinion on the subject matter as opposed to someone else’s. Original content means an original idea with original visual content. Take the extra step to make something truly unique and you will reap the benefits.

Cite Information Sources

One of the quickest ways for your content to lose trust in the minds of your readers is by not properly showing your sources. In fact, almost half of all consumers believe a brand’s credibility is lost when the information in the content cannot be verified by outside sources. On top of this, most media outlets will not reference content if there is not proper sourcing.

Earn Media Mentions

Content that is shared organically comes across as trusted content. Word-of-mouth recommendations and media mentions go a long way in building trust in both your content and your brand. When unaffiliated, third parties share your content, it comes across as authentic and, as a result, builds trust in your content. Indeed, content marketing comes across as more authentic than ads in the eyes of most consumers.

Make it Easy to Share

Making your content as easy to share as possible via social sharing buttons is an easy start to the conversation over your content. It is worth noting that most people prefer to share good news over bad news. And make sure that your content does not come across as a sales pitch for your product or brand, as brand or service mentions within the content can turn off consumers.

To help ensure that your audience and consumers share your content, it has to be both trustworthy and easily shareable. If you incorporate these various trust signals, you’re on your way to making content that’s both endorsed and shared.

[xyz-ihs snippet=”Hubspot-CTA-Leaderboard”]

The post How to Create Trustworthy Content That Gets Shared appeared first on Relevance.

But when a new customer subscribes to your email newsletter for the first time, you can’t very well show up at their door and thank them for subscribing. Instead, your welcome email acts as your virtual first impression. As Easy SMPT reports, 81 percent of B2C marketers send welcome emails, and for good reason. In addition to just being a nice thing to do, welcome emails yield 320 percent more revenue per email than other promotional emails, plus an 86 percent increase in unique open rate and a 336 percent increase in transaction rate.

However, your welcome email can’t just say “Thanks for subscribing!” if you want to impress your new customers and build customer loyalty (and revenue). Your welcome email needs to be optimized from start to finish, from subject line to email copy. Here’s how to do it.

Subject Line

Often, your customers use the email’s subject line to decide if they even want to open your email. Some words have been proven to increase open rates and click-through rates, such as:

• sale
• news
• bulletin
• video

On the other hand, stay away from the words “save,” “report” and “webinar,” which may hurt your opens and click-throughs.

Time Sent

Customers heavily prefer to have welcome emails sent in real-time; it feels personalized and sincere, compared to a bulk welcome email sent in batches at predetermined times. Another bonus? Real-time welcome emails see ten times the transaction rate of welcome emails sent in batches.

‘From’ Email

Steer clear of generic, ‘noreply’ email addresses, which prevent your new customers from personally engaging with your business. Instead, use email addresses such as [first name]@company.com to build customer engagement and loyalty.

Email Copy

Writing email copy is often trickier than one would think. Walk the line between creating persuasive copy and avoiding spam trigger words that can place your welcome email in a junk folder. Words that you may never have pegged for spam triggers can surprise you. Make sure to avoid the following words:

• prize
• free
• bonus
• buy
• purchase
• order
• And of course, excessive CAPITAL LETTERS and exclamation points!!!!!

Instead, focus on making your copy more persuasive. For example, using the word “because” has been proven to increase compliance with a request (for example, to add your email to their address book) from 60 percent to 94 percent.

The word “you” is a smart way to personalize email copy and encourage the reader to involve themselves in your story. Similarly, the word “imagine” can make readers imagine using a product or service, which then increases their desire to purchase.

Special Offers

You may be tempted to include a special offer in your welcome email, and for good reason: Research shows that incentivizing purchases with discounts and special offers in your welcome email leads to 2.6 times higher transaction rates. However, note that revenue per email is actually slightly lower for emails including offers, so weigh the pros and cons before deciding whether or not to include a special offer in your welcome email.

Final Best Practices

Mind your manners and clearly thank the subscriber for joining your email list. Let them know how often they can expect to hear from you and what value your emails will offer. Ask for any information from the subscriber that will help improve the relevance and frequency of your emails to them so that you’re able to address their personal preferences. Finally, let them know what your privacy policy is and how they can whitelist your domain.

You don’t get a second chance at a first impression. Your welcome email is an important opportunity to show your customers a gesture of goodwill and build the foundation of a long-lasting (and profitable) relationship. Take the time to optimize your welcome emails and your company will reap the benefits.

The post Thank You For Subscribing: How to Optimize Welcome Emails appeared first on Relevance.