Avoid These Five Online Advertising No-No’s

In today’s world, you don’t have to go to Hollywood to be a star. All you need is a YouTube account, and of course, something interesting to share.

You don’t need to be a director to make a movie. You don’t need to be a newscaster to deliver news. And you don’t need to be a stock broker to trade on the stock market.

With today’s technology, anyone can do anything, and that includes online advertising. What used to be the exclusive purview of advertising companies can now be done by anyone. You simply decide what platform you want to use, and then sign up. More and more businesses are going it alone in what seems to be an under-the-radar trend.

But the tools making the world more accessible are also making it more dangerous. If you play the stock market without knowing what you’re doing, you could end up broke. Online advertising is definitely something you don’t want to do on a whim.

Here are five simple mistakes that can cause big problems:

1. Not Understanding or Noticing Location Options

If you have ever seen an ad on Google that had nothing to do with your location, it was probably a result of the campaign manager not using targeted location.

When setting location in AdWords, there is a small + tab that opens up the advanced options settings. The default setting is “People in, or who show interest in my targeted location.” This means that if you place ads for a pizzeria, and a searcher is looking for “American Pizza,” they will see your ads even if they are located in Africa. To avoid this, always choose “People in my targeted location.”

2. Placing Ads on Your Own Selling Websites

Ad placement such as AdSense is an easy way for websites to fill their ad inventory and make some extra money. This is usually a great fix for large news websites, blogs, and other sites that don’t sell online.

However, often, you can find these ads on sites belonging to SMB’s that don’t understand the ads do more harm than good. For example, you won’t see AdSense on the Kissmetrics site because it degrades the user experience and takes attention away from the messaging.

Having ads on a selling site usually does not generate a lot of revenue, and worse still, it takes customers off your site. Additionally, it opens an option for competitors to promote their products on your site.

3. Being an Advertising Yes-Man

Many advertising platforms, such as AdWords, highlight certain features that sound great but don’t always work to your benefit. For example, when choosing your bid strategy on AdWords, you are offered an option to use “Enhanced CPC”. What this actually does (if you look at the fine print) is allow AdWords to raise your bids by 30% in order to get you better placement.

While it may do just that, if you set a certain budget and forget about this setting, then every time you raise the budget, you will essentially be increasing the 30% allowance.

4. Not Understanding the Platform’s Algorithms

You don’t need to be an engineer, but you should have a general grasp of how the platform you choose to advertise on works. It can make a huge difference. For example, AdWords Search is highly based on relevance (Quality Score). The more relevant your keywords, ads, and landing page, the higher your quality score and the less you will pay per click.

On Facebook, each user has an actual value based on how active they are on the site. A user who spends money on Facebook has a higher value than one who doesn’t. Why is that important? Well, if you have an audience of 100k users and the suggested bid is $2, but you decide to place a bid of $0.50, you are in fact telling the algorithm that you want to show only for users who have a value of $0.50.

If $0.50-value users make up 10% of your total audience, your true audience in this case would be 10k users, not 100k. Your budget, set to reach 100k, will show the ads only to the 10k $0.50-value users in your audience over and over again. Eventually, your frequency will get too high, and you will be spamming that audience, which will in turn make your cost higher. And the worst part is that you will never even reach the value audience you really wanted to reach in the first place.

5. Being Your Own Competition

When it comes to bidding, it’s easy to get carried away with your bids. And most platforms make it easy for you to overspend by suggesting what you should pay in order to beat your competition.

If you underpay, your ads might not appear as often. However, this doesn’t mean you should overpay.

You should bid according to your ROI, not your ego. Overpaying puts all your competitors into overdrive and raises bids for everyone. On most major platforms, there are enough impressions to go around.

On AdWords, some advertisers even overbid on their own brand keywords. This makes no sense at all since usually you are the only one buying your brand keywords. Essentially, raising bids on branded keywords simply lets the algorithm know you are willing to pay more, and so you will.

There are cases where your competition might be buying your keywords. Remember, you should always have a higher quality score than they do, and you can beat them that way.

So, should you tackle online advertising on your own?

At the end of the day, it depends on the scope of your business, the results you expect to gain from your campaigns, the budget you plan to spend, and your willingness to learn a new trade. There are many plusses to running your own campaigns, such as full transparency and the ability to monitor your spending and branding. After all, no one knows your business as well as you do.

It is possible to do your own online marketing, but be aware that the endeavor will require the same amount of preparation as doing your own taxes, representing yourself in court, or flying your own plane. You will need to do some homework, understand the inner workings of the platform, and choose settings carefully. If you don’t know what something means, look it up. That’s what Google is for.

Everyone makes mistakes, even the pro’s. Learning to spot the mistakes is key. If something seems off, if you aren’t getting the results you believe you should be, then investigate, go over your settings, and make sure you’re not committing any major advertising no-no’s.

About the Author: Daniel Rosenfeld is a Digital Marketing Professional, always looking for the smallest details which have the largest impact.

from The Kissmetrics Marketing Blog http://ift.tt/1KnV6qz
via IFTTT

WEBINAR: Target Marketing: How To Hit Your Bullseye

Nobody likes feeling like they're being marketing to. That's why delivering relevant content to your audience is so essential. The best way to accomplish that is with targeting. We've teamed up with our friends at Insightpool to deliver a webinar focused on exactly that. It's calledRelated Articles

1. April 22 Webinar on List Segmentation: Listen to Your Subscribers
2. New API Methods
3. 5 Tips to Lower Your Unsubscribe Rates

from Benchmarkemail Blog http://ift.tt/1MY9gxh
via IFTTT

How to Utilize The Psychology of Persuasion to Increase Conversion Rates

Why do customers buy your product and not your competitor’s?

Well-known consultant and author Jack Trout once said:

“Marketing isn’t a battle of products, it’s a battle of perceptions”.

This is probably my favorite quote because it truly explains the essence of marketing (and conversion optimization): what matters to customers isn’t your pricing or features, it’s not even how good your product is. What matters to customers is how you make them feel and what’s in it for them. This is what determines whether customers choose you or your competitor.

One of our most studied and applied subjects at my company (Conversioner) is the psychology of persuasion. To increase revenue we have to get to know our customers better, understand their emotional triggers, and most importantly their decision making process. Once we understand our customers better we can run meaningful AB tests, build better user journeys and increase revenues across the board.

One of the most influential books on this topic is called Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. Published In 1984 by Dr. Cialdini, it is a massively important book for every marketer. After three decades its value and lessons are considered fundamental to any marketing strategy. The main focus of the book is Cialdini’s six principles of how to influence people and address their emotional needs. In this article we’ll take look at these principles and how we can leverage them to turn visitors into customers.

The Six Principles of Persuasion

1. Reciprocity

Our natural human behavior dictates that if someone gives something to us, we feel obligated to repay that debt. This principle highlights the fact that if someone does something nice for us we generally feel the need to repay the favor or the debt.

The mutually beneficial exchange between humans comes natural to us and has become even more common online. Examples of this include signing up for a newsletter to get a free eBook, spending X amount of money and receiving a gift, or simply getting a discount on a product in exchange for sharing, commenting or reviewing it.

How to use this principle:
First you must determine what action you would like your customer to perform. This can be something like registering or downloading a product, sharing the product with their friends, or simply signing up to a newsletter. Once you’ve identified what you need, identify what you can give your customer in return (reciprocate) for this action (an e-book, a discount, cash back).

The emotional targeting methodology also emphasizes that reciprocity doesn’t have to be an actual commodity, a simple promise of a better life, feeling safe or accepted by our peers will convince us to give something in return.

For instance, at Conversioner we use an exit pop up that offers people exclusive content on emotional targeting in exchange for signing up.

CopyHackers uses an exit intent pop up to offer a free personal guide in exchange for signing up for their newsletter.

In both cases, customers are willing to reciprocate by signing up and leaving their details for exclusive content we’re willing to give away.

2. Commitment and Consistency

As humans we like to maintain a consistent self-image about who we are and what we believe. As consistent beings, when we make an internal or public commitment about something we tend to follow through with it to preserve our self image.

One of most popular methods of using this principle is while buying a home. Once you’ve viewed a house and seen it, you’re asked by the estate agent to write down details of the house and propose a figure. Even though this number isn’t a real commitment, having it written down has made it more realistic and you’re now more prone to buy that house (not necessarily for that price). Getting a customer’s commitment early on increases the chances and makes it more likely that the customer will follow through with it.

An online example would be getting customers to commit for a one month trial or asking your customers which plan they prefer on a pricing page before sending them to a payment page. Once they’ve chosen a plan they feel compelled to take you up on the bigger action.

The example below is from a B2B company that asks people to first leave their details for a demo and then fill in more information about their business. Once they had already agreed to getting a call back from our client’s representative, they felt more committed and compelled to answer our follow up questions.

Step 1:

Step 2:

3. Social Proof

People like to do things they see other people doing. For instance, if a restaurant looks busy you’re more likely to eat there than if it were empty. There’s also more chance you’ll put money in a tip jar if there’s already money in there. In the online world, social proof is extremely important.

People want to feel they are not the only ones to use a product or service, that others have taken the risk before you and they are satisfied customers. This is why you see testimonials on landing pages, reviews for E-commerce stores and well-known logos on landing pages, these logos inflict trust and show people that the best of the best are using a certain product and it can be trusted.

Piktochart is one of many companies using social proof on their homepage:

This principle is also called Wisdom of the Crowd. It’s why people read reviews, buy bestsellers or browse most popular items before buying. We want security in numbers and most of us want to fit in and be a part of a community, not trend setters. Other ways to increase social proof include social media sharing and publishing case studies on your website to prove that other people are using your service and finding it successful.

In this landing page shows the amount of people using the service as social proof:

Amazon uses reviews, showing visitors the satisfaction rate of customers from a specific product rather than the entire site:

4. Liking

People are more likely to buy products or services from people they like and trust which is why likeability is a huge influencing factor. A common example of this principle is known as the “pyramid” business. This is when people are invited by their friends to an event and feel obligated to purchase tupperware/protein shakes and other products regardless to their actual feelings towards the product. This happens because of their personal relationship with the salesperson and the commitment principle. They’ve already taken one step in the process of coming over and now feel obligated to buy.

How to use this principle:
The best way to utilize this principle is by building trust and a good relationship with your visitors. This takes time – trust and likeability isn’t built overnight. To get there, you can increase likeability in a few ways:

1. Similarity – We like people who are similar to us. Based on your product and your customers you know what type of persona your customers will like and feel close to. Mirroring your customer in your strategy (using images, content and the right social proof) will increase likability and trust.
2. People – Using pictures of people on your website and adding a personal voice increases likability.
3. Association – Many brands associate themselves with current trends and celebrities. By associating your product and brand to something people like and can identify with, you increase your likability.

Wix does an incredible job of mirroring their customers in their landing page by using photos of people in their work space and adding their name and occupation. Though these are clearly professional photos, by giving them names they’ve made them accessible and real, thus increase likability.

Another one:

5. Scarcity

People like the idea of buying things that are rare or hard to come by. If something is marketed as a “limited time offer” people will rush to buy it as they will feel a sense of urgency and fear of loss. Scarcity all boils down to- “get something before you lose it forever”.

This is happens because of a well known cognitive bias called “Loss Aversion” which states that people would prefer avoiding losses to acquiring gains. Losing something hurts us more than the pleasure of gaining something. Which is why scarcity works.

Another part of scarcity is status. This is very important to a lot of people – they want to be admired by their peers. Labeling your product or offering as a one-of-a kind and giving it a time cap (“only 5 spots left”) will increase its desirability and as a result increase conversions tremendously. If will value a product much more if it’s a once in a lifetime type of product than if it’s a commodity.

Popular examples include 24 hour sales, a countdown clock and limited time offers. AliExpress uses all these techniques plus makes it exclusive by applying the sale to app users only:

6. Authority

People trust and respect those in authority. Authority can be instilled through uniforms, titles like Dr. or Professor, or an endorsement from someone in a position of authority like a CEO or celebrity.

One of the most famous studies on this subject was held in 1974 when researchers were studying the influence of negative reinforcement. Participants were told they could give electric shocks to other participants (sitting in a different room) if they answered questions incorrectly. At first participants didn’t feel comfortable administering these electric shocks, but once a person came in with a white cloak and told them it was ok, researchers saw participants increase the voltage and commit. Though the people (actors) in the other room screamed everytime they got an “electric shock”, while the men in cloak stood and noded to the participants, they continued.

How to use this principle:
To increase authority for your brand, you can translate this principle to the web by having testimonials from experts, referencing important research and studies conducted to backup your product or service and using an authority figure.

Note how Tanning Truth uses an image of an unrelated doctor wearing an “official” cloak and a quote to increase authority and trust.

This also works by getting awards and/or recommendations from respected organizations

Over to You

Cialdini’s principles have been used for many years by marketers to reach out to their customers and appeal to them on an emotional level. Though not all principles may be achieved with every campaign you run, you should review each landing page you create and see what you can add or remove in order to tap into those psychological principles and translate Cialdini’s principles to increase conversions.

What is your favorite principle, and how do you use it?

About the Author: Talia Wolf is the CEO and Founder of Conversioner. Talia helps businesses build their conversion optimization strategies and execute them to increase their revenues, grow their sales, leads and engagement using quantitative data, consumer psychology & emotional conversion optimization. Talia specializes in Ecommerce optimization, landing page optimization, mobile optimization and consumer psychology. Tweet her at @taliagw.

from The Kissmetrics Marketing Blog http://ift.tt/1fRri7v
via IFTTT

Working with Influencers: More than Just a Leap of Faith

The following is a guest blog post from Dani Finkelstein, co-founder of BlogsRelease and one of the key sponsors of the 2015 ASCEND Digital Marketing Summit in Philadelphia, October 18-20.

And any good digital innovator knows that influencer marketing is becoming more and more popular. And why wouldn’t it? After all, there are over 100 million active blogs on the web and 77% of all internet users read them.

Some marketers are reluctant to work with bloggers simply because they don’t know where to start. Of course, just finding a list of blogs, sending some emails, and choosing the first bloggers who respond is unlikely to yield the quality results you seek. This is why working with influencers isn’t about taking a leap of faith; it’s about building a business partnership.

Approach selecting influencers like selecting business partners and have a solid plan of what you want to accomplish with your blogger campaign. Here are four tips to start you off:

Determine your target market

All great campaigns start with research. Learn to listen and observe prior to engaging. What this means practically is to regularly check what your audience is saying, with whom they are talking, and how they are doing it. Is your audience very active on Twitter? Facebook? Pinterest?

What about the bloggers you’re considering? Let’s say you’re a brand that is interested in marketing a new line of affordable women’s shoes and you come across a couture fashion blogger with many followers on Twitter.

Even if the blogger agrees to review your shoes, don’t let the numbers blind you – people in your target market may be more interested in reading a review by, for example, a popular thriftshop blogger. Their following may be smaller, but it is likely to translate into more sales.

Perfect your pitch


Let’s say you check Twitter and see that people often tweet about how uncomfortable heels are. Surely then your pitch to bloggers should be all about how comfortable your shoes are, right?

Well, hold on. What if you determined that your target audience overwhelmingly prefers to hang out on Instagram and people there are more interested in how trendy the shoes are?

Your target audience is more likely to be interested in your product so, although you shouldn’t be too specific, you need to write your pitch first and foremost with them in mind.

Find the right tools


Don’t waste time trying to find bloggers manually when there are countless tools and platforms available for that very purpose. BlogsRelease is one example, as it’s a great PR marketplace for brands to connect with influencers by posting blogger review campaigns for products, events and news.

Promote, promote, promote


Don’t expect bloggers to do all your work for you. First, you must be very clear about what you expect from them. Tell them which hashtags you want them to use, how many photographs they need to feature, and what you want them to include in the post.

It’s up to the blogger to deliver the quality post and promote it on their own social media channels as per your agreement. However, don’t hesitate to use your own social channels as well.

Analyze

Now it’s time to measure your ROI, SEO and all that fun stuff to see if you reached your goals. Keep in mind that influencer marketing isn’t always an exact science. People may discover a particular blog post weeks after your campaign has ended and cause a huge surge in visits to your site.

Don’t expect instant results. That said, once you’re ready to measure the impact, take a detail-oriented approach. What can you learn for future campaigns? It could be that having more photos increases the likelihood of clicks. Maybe a share on Tumblr unexpectedly received many likes. Note which posts worked better and which didn’t see any traffic increase.

The more you analyze, the more factors you’ll be able to control and predict for future campaigns. If you follow these steps you’ll be on your way to success with influencer marketing in no time.


How have you engaged influencers to help your business grow? Tell us in the comments below!

The post Working with Influencers: More than Just a Leap of Faith appeared first on Email Marketing Tips.

from Email Marketing Tips http://ift.tt/1O3zPQq
via IFTTT

Track And Learn From Your Competitor's Content

It's this simple: If you don't keep track of your competitors, you're going to lose market share to them. It's important that you monitor what other businesses in your industry are doing in order to successfully build a brand online. […]

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Track And Learn From Your Competitor's Content

--
Written by Adrienne Erin, Design Roast

The post Track And Learn From Your Competitor's Content appeared first on Search Engine People Blog.

from Search Engine People Blog http://ift.tt/1hrx2Wp
via IFTTT

WordStream’s Best of the Month: August

Love it or hate it, summer is finally drawing to a close. Various pumpkin-flavored products have already found their way onto shelves everywhere (to the dismay of many), the temperature is (finally) starting to drop, and pretty soon we’ll all be walking through the park sporting stylish scarf and sweater combos.

 

Of course, the end of the month means a best-of post on the WordStream blog. If you missed some of our posts while you were savoring every last moment of sunshine (or counting the minutes until the leaves turn, as I was), here’s what struck a chord with our readers this month.

1. How to Increase Conversion Rates Without Touching a Landing Page

WordStream’s Larry Kim knows a thing or two about conversion rates. In our most popular post from August, Larry shows you how to – you guessed it – increase your conversion rates without touching your landing pages. Think it can’t be done? Read on and prepare to be amazed.

2. 3 Stupid-Easy Ways to Increase Your Ad CTR

In our second most popular post of the month, Margot shows you three ways to increase the CTR of your ads effortlessly. Who doesn’t like learning stupid-easy ways to do stuff?

3. 99 Online Marketing Tools You Won’t Be Able to Live Without

In this post, yours truly runs down 99 of the most essential online marketing tools available, for PPC, SEO, content marketing, and conversion rate optimization. How many of these are you currently using?

4. 288 Killer PPC Ad Templates with Crazy High CTRs

In this great post, Erin gives you 288(!) free ad templates for your PPC campaigns. It’s okay, we think writing unique, irresistible ads from scratch is a pain too, which is probably why so many of you loved Erin’s post.

5. How to Make a High-Quality AdWords Report in 15 Minutes [Free Template]

Free stuff seemed to be a theme for us in August, and our next post proved a hit with you guys. In this post, Mike Griffith explains how to create a detailed, customizable AdWords report from scratch in just 15 minutes, and there’s even a free template you can download if you’re too busy to follow along.

6. 18 Signs You Are a Digital Marketer

Hopefully you know definitively whether you’re a digital marketer or not, but in case you’re not quite sure, here are 18 signs you might be.

7. Creating Effective Facebook Ads for Lead Gen: The Complete Guide

Facebook can be a powerhouse for lead generation businesses, and you don’t need to spend the GDP of a small country to see huge results. In this comprehensive guide, Brett McHale lays out everything you need to know about how to use Facebook for lead gen.

8. The 5 Elements of a Strong Inbound Marketing Strategy

“Inbound” marketing is still one of the hottest topics of conversation in marketing circles, and yet there’s still just as much confusion about how to actually, you know, do inbound as there was several years ago. If you’re still not sure precisely what goes into a solid inbound strategy, let Margot fill you in.

9. 7 Super-Smart PPC Tips for Higher Education Marketing

Every industry vertical poses challenges to PPC marketers, but the higher education field is perhaps one of the most unique. In this fascinating post, Margot examines the most troublesome issues facing higher education marketers, and offers seven tips on how to leverage the power of PPC in academia.

10. 5 Real-Life Landing Page Split Test Ideas

Landing pages are among the most fertile breeding grounds for innovation in a PPC campaign, and split testing is essential to securing those huge conversion gains Larry is always talking about. In our final post of this month’s round-up, guest author Bradley Nickel of Adbeat shows you five real-life tests you can conduct on your own landing pages. 

 

from Internet Marketing Blog by WordStream http://ift.tt/1fR62Pe
via IFTTT

Google Display Network Now Auto-Converts Text Ads into ‘Richer Text’ Image Ads

I’m constantly on the lookout for new tools, tips and tricks to make Google AdWords perform better for marketers. Recently, I learned that Google has added an awesome new feature to the Google Display Network – it will now automatically convert text ads to image ads!

Earlier this week, we discovered this strange new ad format in a client account – I mean, the format itself wasn’t strange, but suddenly they had visual ads where only text ads had been running for that particular display campaign.

After much head scratching and cruising the web looking for an announcement or news coverage, we found only one little mention of this new format, “Richer Text Ads,” on the Google AdSense blog. I reached out to a friend at Google to see if we could learn more.

GDN Converts Text Ads to ‘Richer Text’ Image Ads as of July 2015

Our source at Google was able to confirm that YES! Google Display Network is converting text ads to what they’re calling “Richer Text” image ads and that this began last month.

So what is it? Google explains: “Richer Text is the most brand-safe ad type within our text ads family. This ad type runs on text + image and image only inventory. A logo (from Google+) is paired with this ad layout to add further brand and aesthetic value. Please contact your account manager if you wish to provide an alternate image. Unlike Simple Text, publishers do not have control over the color of this ad type. Instead the color is derived from the primary and secondary colors of the logo used by the advertisers.”

(Note: Our source at Google says manual controls are coming soon.)

Here’s an example of an auto-created Richer Text ad, from one of our client accounts:

But how does the platform decide which ones to automatically convert to image ads?

According to our source, the following factors are part of the decision to convert a text ad to image:

• CTR
• Conversions per dollar
• Deep conversion rate
• Landing page dwell time 

Further, our source at Google says, “We only use the 'richer text' (image) ad type in text+image and image-only slots and only when our predicted CTR model proves that for that advertiser and publisher the CTR increases when using that ad type.”

So, what’s in it for Google? I mean, you have to ask yourself that every time there’s a new feature like this and often, what’s good for Google is good for advertisers, too. In this case, Google is seeing a 3% increase in conversion volume due to the launch of these new richer text ads.

You can expect to see the same CPA, but your conversion volume should increase.

How It Works: What You Need to Know About Richer Text Ads

Across the Google Display Network and AdMob, text ads are optimized across three primary ad types: simple text, richer text, and native text. Google wants to choose how your ads render to optimize performance, because better performance for you = more revenue for Google.

Another example of Richer Text Ads

Wondering just how Google is converting the ads? We were, too. Here’s what we found out:

• For richer text image ads, Google pulls the logo from a verified G+ account. If no verified G+ account is available, they will not run a richer text ad.
• For native, they first look at the G+ account and if that is not available, they use a third-party image repository to contextually pair a relevant image.
• Colors for the richer text ads are pulled from the primary and secondary colors of the logo. In the future, Google will allow customers to define their own colors.
• Google is also testing a new text creation process internally that will allow customers to upload their own image.
• Richer text ads are reported as rich media in the Ad types report.

If you don’t like the idea, you can opt out of Richer Text ads by disabling them through the “Enhanced display ads” option in the “Allow & block ads” tab in your account.

All in all, I think this new format is awesome – it retrieves your branding for you without any extra work! Of course, it’s best to use your own custom ad images if you have the budget and skills to do so, but we know many marketers don’t.

When you consider the potential effect on your Quality Scores within the GDN, this actually has the potential to save you money. Higher CTR = Lower CPC!

Have you seen Richer Text ads popping up in your account? Let us know what you think!

 

from Internet Marketing Blog by WordStream http://ift.tt/1hrob7o
via IFTTT

Traffic and Engagement Metrics and Their Correlation to Google Rankings

Posted by Royh

When Moz undertook this year’s Ranking Correlation Study (Ranking Factors), there was a desire to include data points never before studied. Fortunately, SimilarWeb had exactly what was needed. For the first time, Moz was able to measure ranking correlations with both traffic and engagement metrics.

Using Moz’s ranking data on over 200,000 domains, combined with multiple SimilarWeb data points—including traffic, page views, bounce rate, time on site, and rank—the Search Ranking Factors study was able to measure how these metrics corresponded to higher rankings.

These metrics differ from the traditional SEO parameters Moz has measured in the past in that they are primarily user-based metrics. This means that they vary based on how users interact with the individual websites, as opposed to static features such as title tag length. We'll find these user-based metrics important as we learn how search engines may use them to rank webpages, as illustrated in this excellent post by Dan Petrovic.

Every marketer and SEO professional wants to know if there is a correlation between web search ranking results and the website’s actual traffic. Here, we’ll examine the relationship between website rankings and traffic engagement to see which metrics have the biggest correlation to rankings.

You can view the results below:

Traffic correlated to higher rankings

For the study, we examined both direct and organic search visits over a three-month period. SimilarWeb’s traffic results show that there is a generally a high correlation between website visits and Google’s search rankings.

Put simply, the more traffic a site received, the higher it tended to rank. Practically speaking, this means that you would expect to see sites like Amazon and Wikipedia higher up in the results, while smaller sites tended to rank slightly worse.

This doesn't mean that Google uses traffic and user engagement metrics as an actual ranking factor in its search algorithm, but it does show that a relationship exists. Hypothetically, we can think of many reasons why this might be the case:

• A "brand" bias, meaning that Google may wish to treat trusted, popular, and established brands more favorably.
• Possible user-based ranking signals (described by Dan here) where uses are more inclined to choose recognizable brands in search results, which in theory could push their rankings higher.
• Which came first—the chicken or the egg? Alternatively, it could simply be the case that high-ranking websites become popular simply because they are ranking highly.

Regardless of the exact cause, it seems logical that the more you improve your website’s visibility, trust, and recognition, the better you may perform in search results.

Engagement: Time on site, bounce rate, and page views

While not as large as the traffic correlations, we also found a positive correlation between a website’s user engagement and its rank in Google search results. For the study, we examined three different engagement metrics from SimilarWeb.

• Time on site: 0.12 is not considered a strong correlation by any means within this study, but it does suggest there may be a slight relationship between how long a visitor spends on a particular site and its ranking in Google.
• Page views: Similar to time on site, the study found a small correlation of 0.10 between the number of pages a visitor views and higher rankings.
• Bounce rate: At first glance, with a correlation of -0.08, the correlation between bounce rate and rankings may seem out-of-whack, but this is not the case. Keep in mind that lower bounce rate is often a good indication of user engagement. Therefore, we find as bounce rates rise (something we often try to avoid), rankings tend to drop, and vice-versa.

This means that sites with lower bounce rates, longer time-on-site metrics, and more page views—some of the data points that SimilarWeb measures—tend to rank higher in Google search results.

While these individual correlations aren’t large, collectively they do lend credence to the idea that user engagement metrics can matter to rankings.

To be clear, this doesn’t mean to imply that Google or other search engines use metrics like bounce rate or click-through rate directly in their algorithm. Instead, a better way to think of this is that Google uses a number of user inputs to measure relevance, user satisfaction, and quality of results.

This is exactly the same argument the SEO community is currently debating over click-through rate and its possible use by Google as a ranking signal. For an excellent, well-balanced view of the debate, we highly recommend reading AJ Kohn’s thoughts and analysis.

It could be that Google is using Panda-like engagement signals. If a site’s correlated bounce rate is negative, that means that the website should have a lower bounce rate because the site is healthy. Similarly, if the time that users spend on-site and the page views are higher, the website should also tend to produce higher Google SERPs.

Global Rank correlations

SimilarWeb’s Global Rank is calculated by data aggregation, and is based on a combination of website traffic from six different sources and user engagement levels. We include engagement metrics to make sure that we’re portraying an accurate picture of the market.

If the website has a lower Global Rank on SimilarWeb, then the website will generally have more visitors and good user engagement.

As Global Rank is a combination of traffic and engagement metrics, it’s no surprise that it was one of the highest correlated features of the study. Again, even though the correlation is negative at -0.24, a low Global Rank is actually a good thing. A website with a Global Rank of 1 would be the highest-rated site on the web. This means that the lower the Global Rank, the better the relationship with higher rankings.

As a side note, SimilarWeb’s Website Ranking provides insights for estimating any website’s value and benchmarking your site against it. You can use its tables to find out who’s leading per industry category and/or country.

Methodology

The Moz Search Engine Ranking Factors study examined the relationship between web search results and links, social media signals, visitor traffic and usage signals, and on-page factors. The study compiled datasets and conducted search result queries in English with Google’s search engine, focusing exclusively on US search results.

The dataset included a list of 16,521 queries taken from 22 top-level Google Adwords categories. Keywords were taken from head, middle, and tail queries. The searches ranged from infrequent (less than 1,000 queries per month), to frequent (more than 20,000 per month), to enormously frequent with keywords being searched more than one million times per month!

The top 50 US search results for each query were pulled from the datasets in a manner that did not account for location or personalization in a location- and personalization-agnostic manner.

SimilarWeb checked the traffic and engagement stats of more than 200,000 websites, and we have analytics on more than 90% of them. After we pulled the traffic data, we checked for a correlation using keywords from the Google AdWords tool to see what effect metrics like search traffic, time on site, page views, and bounce rates—especially with organic searches—have upon Google’s rankings.

Conclusion

We found a positive correlation between websites that showed highly engaging user traffic metrics on SimilarWeb’s digital measurement platform, and higher placement on Google search engine results pages. SimilarWeb also found that a brand’s popularity correlates to higher placement results in Google searches.

With all the recent talk of user engagement metrics and rankings, we’d love to hear your take. Have you observed any relationship, improvement, or drop in rankings based on engagement? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

from Moz Blog http://ift.tt/1Kn9gZ8
via IFTTT

How To Make Money With Videos - Youtube Traffic

How To Make Money Online With Youtube Videos

How To Get More Views On YouTube - Students - Moms - Dads

How To Earn Money From Home - For Beginners

Easy Ways To Make Money From Home - Money Saving Ideas

Easy Way To Make Money Online - Profitable Business Ideas

Easy Way To Make Money Online - Profitable Business Ideas

Easy Way To Make Money Online - Profitable Business Ideas

Easy Way To Make Money Online - Profitable Business Ideas

Earn Extra Money From Home - Entrepreneurship Ideas

Affiliate Marketing For Dummies - Web Advertising

Successful Business Ideas - Internet Money

Work From Home Customer Service - My Advertising Pays - Work From Home

Stay At Home Mom Jobs - My Advertising Pays - Work From Home

Real Work From Home Jobs - My Advertising Pays - Work From Home

SociVids Review For List Building - Increase Conversions On FB - My Vide...

Make Money Online From Home - My Advertising Pays - Work From Home

Legitimate Work At Home Jobs - My Advertising Pays - Work From Home

Legit Work From Home Jobs - My Advertising Pays - Work From Home

How To Work From Home - My Advertising Pays - Work From Home

How To Earn Extra Money - My Advertising Pays - Work From Home

[Speed Blogging Review] Chris Record Review & Bonus Software

Earn Extra Money From Home - My Advertising Pays - Work From Home

Data Entry Work From Home - My Advertising Pays - Work From Home

Data Entry Jobs From Home - My Advertising Pays - Work From Home

Best Work From Home Jobs - My Advertising Pays - Work From Home

Make Money Online Data Entry - How To Make Money Online Youtube Traffic

Make Money Online Daily - How To Make Money Online Youtube Traffic

Make Money Online Doing Nothing - How To Make Money Online Youtube Traffic

Make Money Online Doing Surveys - How To Make Money Online Youtube Traffic

Make Money Online Coaching - How To Make Money Online Youtube Traffic

Make Money Online Course - How To Make Money Online Youtube Traffic

Make Money Online Clicking Ads - How To Make Money Online Youtube Traffic

Make Money Online Email Marketing - How To Make Money Online Youtube Tra...

Make Money Online Beginners - How To Make Money Online Youtube Traffic

Make Money Online Affiliate - How To Make Money Online Youtube Traffic

Make Money Online As A Student - How To Make Money Online Youtube Traffic

Make Money Online As Teenager - How To Make Money Online Youtube Traffic

Make Money Online Advertising - How To Make Money Online Youtube Traffic

Make Money Online From Home - How To Make Money Online Youtube Traffic

Work From Home Full Time Jobs - How To Make Money Online Youtube Traffic

Work From Home Finance Jobs - How To Make Money Online Youtube Traffic

Work From Home Editing Jobs - How To Make Money Online Youtube Traffic

Work From Home Entry Level Jobs - How To Make Money Online Youtube Traffic

Work From Home Education Jobs - How To Make Money Online Youtube Traffic

Work From Home Business Analyst - How To Make Money Online Youtube Traffic

Work From Home Business Opportunities - How To Make Money Online Youtube...

Work From Home Blogs - How To Make Money Online Youtube Traffic

A Work At Home Opportunity - How To Make Money Online Youtube Traffic

Looking For A Work From Home - How To Make Money Online Youtube Traffic

Work From Home Opportunities - How To Make Money Online Youtube Traffic

Work From Home Jobs - How To Make Money Online Youtube Traffic

ClickFunnels Review ListHacking With RAMS Membership

Make Money Online Easy Legit - How To Make Money Online Youtube Traffic

My Advertising Pays Sign In - How To Make Money Online Youtube Traffic

My Advertising Pays Scam - How To Make Money Online Youtube Traffic

My Advertising Pays - How To Make Money Online Youtube Traffic

How To Earn Money From Home - Make Money Today - Video Marketing

Data Entry Work From Home - Make Money Today - Video Marketing

Data Entry Jobs At Home - Make Money Today - Video Marketing

Customer Service Jobs From Home - Make Money Today - Video Marketing

12x16 shed plans - Over 12,000 Plans - Build Your DIY Shed Today

At Home Jobs For Moms - My Advertising Pays - Work From Home

How To Earn Extra Money Working From Home - Youtube Traffic

Earn Extra Money From Home - With My Free Youtube Traffic

Data Entry Work From Home - Jobs - YouTube Style

Work From Home Jobs Legitimate Online Jobs 2015 - $700 - Work From Home ...

Work From Home Jobs Legitimate Online Jobs 2015 - $700 - Work From Home Nz

Work From Home Jobs Legitimate Online Jobs 2015 - $700 - Mca Work From H...

Work From Home Jobs Legitimate Online Jobs 2015 - $700 - Jessica Marshal...

Work From Home Jobs Legitimate Online Jobs 2015 - $700 - Mca Work From Home

Work From Home Jobs Legitimate Online Jobs 2015 - $700 - Work From Home ...

Work From Home Jobs Legitimate Online Jobs 2015 - $700 - Work From Home ...

Work From Home Jobs Legitimate Online Jobs 2015 - $700 - Work From Home ...

Work From Home Jobs Legitimate Online Jobs 2015 - $700 - Work From Home ...

Work From Home Jobs Legitimate Online Jobs 2015 - $700 - Legit Work From...

Work From Home Jobs Legitimate Online Jobs 2015 - $700 - Lionbridge Work...

Work From Home Jobs Legitimate Online Jobs 2015 - $700 - Work From Home ...

Work From Home Jobs Legitimate Online Jobs 2015 - $700 - Work From Home ...

Work From Home Jobs Legitimate Online Jobs 2015 - $700 - Work From Home ...

Work From Home Jobs Legitimate Online Jobs 2015 - $700 - Work From Home ...

Work From Home Jobs Legitimate Online Jobs 2015 - $700 - Work From Home ...

Work From Home Jobs Legitimate Online Jobs 2015 - $700 - Work From Home Kit

Work From Home Jobs Legitimate Online Jobs 2015 - $700 - Work From Home ...

Work From Home Jobs Legitimate Online Jobs 2015 - $700 - Work From Home ...

Work From Home Jobs Legitimate Online Jobs 2015 - $700 - Work From Home ...

Work From Home Jobs Legitimate Online Jobs 2015 - $700 - Work From Home ...

Work From Home Jobs Legitimate Online Jobs 2015 - $700 - Work From Home ...

Work From Home Jobs Legitimate Online Jobs 2015 - $700 - Work From Home ...

Work From Home Jobs Legitimate Online Jobs 2015 - $700 - Work From Home ...

Work From Home Jobs Legitimate Online Jobs 2015 - $700 - Simpsons Homer ...

How Marketing Funnels Work

If you’ve spent any time learning about marketing analytics, you’ve probably come across the term “funnels.” If you’re curious about what they are and how they can help, this post is for you.

What Are Funnels?

You undoubtedly want visitors on your website to take certain actions. Maybe you want them to make a purchase, sign up, or fill out a form. When someone does something you want them to do, it’s known as a conversion. The visitor converts from browsing to taking the action you want them to take.

A funnel is the set of steps a visitor needs to go through before they can reach the conversion.

Think about the Amazon purchase funnel. There are a few steps a visitor has to go through before they can purchase a product. Here’s how it looks:

• They have to visit Amazon.com
• They have to view a product
• They have to add a product to the cart
• They have to purchase

There are additional steps/actions that can be taken in between each of these steps, but they do not matter in the purchase funnel. For example, a visitor may view Amazon’s About page, Contact page, and Careers page, but we don’t need to count these in the funnel because they aren’t necessary steps.

Why is the set of steps to conversion called a “funnel”? Because at the beginning of the process, there are a lot of people who take the first step. Then, as the people continue along and take the next steps, some of them drop out, and the size of the crowd thins or narrows. (And even further along in the process, your sales team gets involved to help close the deal.)

The top of the funnel is where everyone goes in (visiting your site). Only the most interested buyers will move further down your funnel.

So when you hear people say “widen the funnel,” you now know what they are referring to. They want to cast a larger net by advertising to new audiences, increasing their brand awareness, adding inbound marketing, etc. in order to drive more people to their site, thus widening their funnel. The more people there are in a funnel, the wider it is.

You aren’t limited to using your funnel strictly for signing up and/or purchasing. You can put funnels all over your website to see how visitors move through a specific website flow.

You may want to track newsletter signup (Viewing newsletter signup form > Submitting form > Confirming email) or a simple page conversion (Viewing a signup page > Submitting signup). Figure out what your goals are and what you want visitors to do on your site, and you can create a funnel for it.

Once you have the data, you’ll be able to see where roadblocks are and optimize your funnel. Let’s dig a little deeper into that.

Why Funnels Are Beneficial

With a funnel report, you can see where you are losing customers.

Let’s take your average SaaS business as an example. Here’s how a funnel may look for them:

• Visited site
• Signed up for a trial
• Used product
• Upgraded to paying

Do people have to use the product before paying? They don’t, but it’s a good idea to track it so you can see if it’s a roadblock for them.

Here’s how that funnel would look in the Kissmetrics Funnel Report:

In this example, the business manages to get 165 people to use the product, but only 13 people convert to Billed. There are opportunities for improvement at every step of the funnel, but it’s important to first work on the areas that need the most attention. The more people they can convert to Billed, the more revenue they’ll have. This should be the first area of the funnel to optimize.

A Funnel in Real Life

Funnels occur everyday with consumers. Let’s look at the funnel process for a retail store and see the corresponding steps in an ecommerce store. We’ll be tracking a purchase funnel.

The Ecommerce store has the fortune of being able to see a funnel. If they use Kissmetrics, they’ll see the exact number of people that move through the funnel, and where and when they drop off in the purchase process.

Okay, so now we have an understanding of what a funnel is and why it helps. Let’s take a look at two products that offer funnels – Google Analytics and Kissmetrics.

How Google Analytics Funnels Work

Google Analytics offers funnels, and we’ve written extensively about it in the past. There are a few things you’ll need to know when creating funnels in Google Analytics:

• It’s a pretty basic funnel. If you don’t want to dive deep into the data and optimize, you can go with this.
• You cannot go back and retroactively view data. Once you create your funnel, you’ll only be able to the funnel going forward as the data comes in.

How Kissmetrics Funnels Work

Kissmetrics funnels, on the other hand, are simpler. You just create your events and then set up the report. Events are various actions people take on your website. These may include signing up, downloading something, clicking on something, viewing a page, using a feature, etc. Once you have these set up, you can create funnels. There are a few benefits to Kissmetrics funnels:

• You can go back and retroactively view data. Want to create a funnel that views your performance 3 months ago? No problem. As long as you were tracking data during that time, you can go back and view your performance. If you weren’t tracking data during that time, there are ways to import data into Kissmetrics.
• It doesn’t matter if people leave your funnel and then return to it and convert. In other words, they don’t have to follow a strict path. In the example funnel above, a visitor can go on other pages of your site before signing up. They don’t have to go to your homepage and then straight to signing up. If they go to your homepage, then your About page, your Contact page, and your Pricing page, and then enter signup, they’ll still be counted.
• It doesn’t matter if the conversion takes a long time to happen. As long as it’s within your date range, you can track it. Do you have people who visit your site one day and sign up 20 days later? If it’s within your date range, Kissmetrics will register the signup conversion.
• You can segment your traffic to see your most valuable segments. This can come in especially useful if you’re tracking traffic or UTM segments. Tracking these can help you find your highest converting sources. Once you know what they are, you can put more effort into getting more traffic from those sources. We covered this in this blog post on increasing conversions.
• We don’t track pageviews. Our technology tracks every person on your site. This means you can see each person in every step of your funnel. Take, for instance, the example funnel above. With the Kissmetrics funnel, you can see the people who did not convert to “Billed.” You can then email them to gather feedback and find out why they decided not to convert to paying. You can then take this information back into your product development and marketing.

Recap

We’ve gone through a fair amount, here’s a recap:

• When someone on your website does something you want them to do (i.e., sign up, make a purchase, fill out a form, etc.), it is known as a conversion.
• A funnel is used to track the steps that lead up to that conversion. For example, Ecommerce companies want people to purchase products on their website. Their funnel may have these steps – visited site > viewed product > placed product in cart > purchased.
• Using a funnel report you can see where people are dropping off in the path to conversion.
• Both Google Analytics and Kissmetrics provide funnels. Each have their unique use cases. Kissmetrics provides additional reports in addition to the Funnel Report.

Video Explanation

Want to know more about the Kissmetrics Funnel Report? Just click play below.

Ready to see how the Funnel Report and other Kissmetrics reports can be used to grow your business? Then request a personal demo today.

About the Author: Zach Bulygo (Twitter) is a Content Writer for Kissmetrics.

from The Kissmetrics Marketing Blog http://ift.tt/1NYEGSP
via IFTTT