The customer journey today has become an increasingly personal path. Consumers have the power to research their own pain points and potential solutions themselves. Brands who want to understand how customers progress need to have a guide, and that is the role of the content journey maps.

The importance of consumer journey maps has risen in response. Here is what our community should understand how this strategy and the process of designing one for your organization.

Understanding the importance of customer journey mapping

The value of customer journey maps lie in their ability to help everyone throughout the organization understand how prospective customers go from leads to customers. Journey maps force organizations to dive in depth into this path, giving them greater insight and a better idea of what prospective customers want to see at each journey maps stage as they get closer to making a purchase.

Customer journey maps explore questions related to what customers want to know at each stage. It allows the marketing and sales team to know the types of inquiries they will receive and the types of content they should produce. Journey maps also help the brand understand how customers feel, which offers greater insight into the type of interaction they want to have. Brands will find it significantly easier to create customer-first experiences armed with this information.

Perhaps even more importantly, these customer journey maps can be used across departments and throughout the organization. Everyone at the business will find it easier to remain on the same page regarding customer expectations and wants. When a new lead lands on the sales team’s desk, for example, they will have a far greater understanding of the process and emotions this individual went through during the early journey maps stage of their purchase process, helping them to create a more tailored experience for the prospect now.

The journey maps improvement in the customer experience will also help the business better identify potential holes in the customer experience. They will find it easier to identify gaps that might hurt their ability to coax new leads through the journey towards conversion.

Similarly, all of the departments can work together to ensure that a person going through this journey encounters the right user experience at each journey maps stage. People will provide better service. For example, those who work in UX will better understand what brings new visitors to the site, what they feel, and what they want to see. This will improve their ability to create a highly-effective website.

Getting started with customer journey mapping

Now that the importance of customer journey maps have become clear, let’s explore how to create an effective map that will improve your ability to engage with your customers.

Review your customer personas

You likely have already built customer personas for the rest of your marketing efforts. If you have not, this should be your first priority of starting your journey maps. Explore the core questions about your customers that let you see why they choose your brand and what pain points they want to solve. Ask questions such as:

• What brought you to our site?
• What problem did you want to solve?
• What motivated you to buy with us over our competitors?
• How helpful were our sales representatives? How could they have been more helpful?

These personas will give you ideas about the people you want to bring into your buyer’s journey and thus help you understand what they need and want to see from your organization.

Research how customers move through your journey maps

Now you want to analyze how your existing customers have gone through your buyer’s journey. You want to gain a better handle on the path they took, including the touch points they engaged with, how quickly or slowly they went from their first interaction towards a purchase, and what motivated them along the way.

Begin by looking at your website data. You should be able to gain a good idea of where your customers originated, such as whether they came from the SERP, a paid ad, social media, or a direct visit. You may use the StoryBuilder feature in BrightEdge to help you easily visualize this important information.

At this stage of your journey maps, you also want to see how customers behave on the site. Look at the rate of new and return visitors as well as how long customers spend on the page and the bounce rate.

In addition to your internal site data, take your inquiry outside your site to sources such as social media. Look at customer engagement rates on these channels and what they most likely want to see as they engage with your brand. At this journey maps stage, consider the questions they ask and the information they seem the most interested in obtaining.

The information you gather from this journey maps data should then be combined with interviews and anecdotes from customers to ensure you have a firm picture of customer behavior. For example, make sure that your bounce rate is not low because customers have trouble navigating your site and they have to jump around to multiple pages to find important information.

Ask your customers questions such as:

• Did you have trouble finding important information on our website?
• Did you need to speak with our customer support teams at all? Were they able to help?
• What objections did you need to overcome to purchase from us? Can we do anything to help more with this process?
• What were the most useful types of content and engagement you received from us during your buying process?
• How did you feel at each stage of the buyer’s journey? How did we help? How could we help more?

List your important touch points

List out all of the different important touch points you have with customers throughout the buying process. Do not neglect any of the channels where customers might engage with you. In this stage of your journey maps, think about website, email marketing, social media, and conversational touch points that your customers progress through as they get closer to making a purchase.

You want to map out when customers will likely reach these touch points, so you know what stages of the buyer’s journey they will likely embody. When mapping out the touch points, consider both your interviews and conversations with your customers as well as research into consumer behavior to make the best projections for when touch points will be reached.

As you map out the touch points, also include how customers felt during the different stages of your journey maps. Record their likely questions and emotions that you want to address as they progress. Align their questions and feelings to the content you expect them to consume.

Watch customers move through your journey maps

Now that you have built your customer journey map, you need to test your ideas to see how well it aligns with the actual experience of your customers. 

When a new lead lands on your site, use journey maps to note their persona and the path they take. Compare their engagement with touch points and how they interact with your brand to your expectations. 

Watch for evidence of the lead stalling throughout the process. See how well your organization meets the needs of the customer as they progress through the journey. Once this customer converts, speak with them about their experience during the buyer’s journey and ask about any unexpected events-- such as delays in progression-- and see if you can make adjustments to better assist the buyer.

Analyze and adjust your journey maps

Now that you have your customer journey maps, along with evidence as to your maps’ accuracy, see if any adjustments need to be made. If customers do not follow the path you outlined, adjust your path or your strategy to better align them. Take into account what customers quoted as presenting problems for them and make changes to your marketing and sales process to better accommodate these needs.

Your customer journey maps will guide your organization as you work to improve your customer engagement. As you better understand how customers move through their journey as well as the questions, emotions, and obstacles they encounter along the way, your business will find it easier to nurture leads and produce the sales and marketing engagement they want to see using journey maps.

Discover how to rank well in Google's SERPs after you've mastered your customer experience and journey mapping.

Today’s digital world offers a number of different platforms for engaging with customers. Each one has a particular audience it reaches most effectively, targeting different populations and people at different stages of the buyer’s journey. Marketers must understand how the different platforms interact, how they line up with different touch-points, and where they can find their target audience at different stages of their journey towards conversion. 

An estimated 71 percent of customers say that they want a consistent experience across all channels where they interact with brands, but less than a quarter report actually receiving it during their buyer's journey. Brands that understand how to use cross-channel marketing will have the chance to capture the attention of these potential customers and demonstrate their commitment to the customer experience. Organizations must understand how to optimize their use of the different marketing channels during the buyer's journey so that these customers receive a consistent user experience.

As marketers begin to develop their buyer's journey digital marketing strategy, it is important for them to have an omni-channel approach. It is not enough to simply market to customers on different platforms. You do not want to run simultaneous campaigns through different channels. Instead, organizations should focus on having a consistent experience for customers regardless of where they interact with the brand. All the channels should work together to bring customers through the buyer’s journey across different touch-points on different platforms.

Here is what we wanted to share with our community about running integrated campaigns to enhance the buyer's journey sales funnel.

Understand the different types of digital marketing

Before we dive into building a firm understanding of running these omni-channel campaigns, let’s first explore the role that these different channels play in multi-channel marketing.

What is SEO and content marketing?

SEO and content marketing describe the material you use to attract people through the SERPs. You optimize this material with keywords, topics, and promotion to help Google find the material and then to encourage the search engines to rank it highly on the SERP. You can utilize the BrightEdge Data Cube to drive your keyword research efforts. Using Data Cube before or during your SEO strategy will help you to create the content your audience wants to read. Decide which keywords to use before you spend time writing content or after you write it to revise and optimize existing content for new keywords. Your SEO strategy using Data Cube can increase organic traffic, results, leads, etc. Check out how Graco Inc. did it!

With content marketing and SEO, you need to have a firm understanding of keyword research to identify topics of interest for your target audience throughout the buyer's journey. You also must produce quality writing, video, and images to attract users and search engines. Website metrics will help you monitor your success with this material.

Social media marketing involves engaging with prospective customers through the various social media platforms, including Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. When running campaigns on these platforms throughout the buyer's journey, you might run promotions, promote content you think followers will appreciate, and inspire conversations to keep people engaged with your brand. The goal here lies in regularly producing high-value content. Discover how SEO and social media power together to create a strong bond with this BrightEdge POV.

What is email marketing?

Email marketing uses registration pages to capture the contact information for site visitors. This contact information can then be used to create segmented email lists. Brands that maximize their potential here during the buyer's journey understand how to send material that will interest their site visitors, encouraging them to engage more with the brand and continue to move through the sales funnel.

What is mobile marketing?

Mobile marketing involves understanding how to use these different channels throughout the buyer's journey and maximize your ability to engage with users accessing them through mobile devices. According to BrightEdge Research, nearly 2/3 of Americans are smartphone owners and 57 percent of searches are performed on mobile devices.

BrightEdge offers a mobile option for discovery. While you add and track keywords in BrightEdge Keyword Reporting, you can easily navigate through different device types including desktop, tablet, and smartphone in order to collect data on how your keywords and pages are doing by device. Knowing how to appeal to people on-the-go will enhance a brands’ ability to remain relevant.

What is paid marketing?

Paid marketing, also known as PPC, includes the ads you can post on several different platforms, including the Google SERPs themselves, social media platforms, and even on other, ad-friendly, websites. Success at this point in the buyer's journey involves knowing the keywords that correspond with the visitors who are most likely to find your content calendar helpful or finding contextually or behaviorally aligned sites on which to place your ads.

Before you decide to spend your budget on paid advertising, it is a good idea to do plenty of research to make sure you're getting the most for your money. By using BrightEdge Instant, you can see real-time results with real-time research to determine whether or not a keyword is worth paying to promote. 

What other channels should brands consider?

In addition to these central digital channels, many organizations also find it helpful to remember other traditional advertising areas, including radio and TV ads and in-store promotions. Although these channels function quite differently from digital options, ensuring that they remain consistent with digital marketing efforts will engage and advance customers at a better rate.

Understand the common platforms that influence customers throughout the funnel

To build effective omni-channel campaigns, you need to now take these different channels and bring them together. Understand the channels and touchpoints potential customers will most likely encounter as they move through your buyer’s journey. Some of this information will be customized to your precise customers, but here is a good starting point based on where most brands find their customers at various phases in the buyer’s journey.

Channels for the Awareness Stage

During the awareness stage of the buyer's journey, customers are looking for information about their pain points and potential solutions. Thus, they perform a lot of searches, building the importance of SEO and content marketing. Content production should also include videos and webinars as alternative ways to engage potential customers and interest them in the brand.

Complementing your SEO and content production efforts should be PPC campaigns, which will run for similar core topics as the content marketing and SEO efforts. Use PPC throughout the buyer's journey to attract attention to important keywords that your material does not yet rank for.

Similarly, during the buyer's journey, email can keep customers engaged and learning about your potential solution for their pain point.

Channels for the Evaluation Stage

During the evaluation stage of the buyer's journey, customers have narrowed down their options and seriously consider your brand as a potential solution to their pain point. Continue to demonstrate your expertise and ability to help with content on your website, webinars, and ebooks. This material will help them dive deeply into the solutions you offer during this step of the buyer's journey. Before launching a webinar, get your basic approach to creating a successful one with this BrightEdge checklist.

Social media will also play an increasing role here, as prospects turn to the platforms to engage directly with your brand and gauge your ability to help them.

Customers may also reach a stage of the buyer's journey where they want to see quality demos that allow them to see first-hand how you will help them. 

Channels for the Purchase Stage

During the purchase stage, customers continue to engage with the content you produce and use the search engines to learn more about the product or service they have purchased. They want to make sure they get the best value possible. 

Events you host and meetings you can offer your customers during this period can also help keep them engaged with the company and be happy with their purchase. This sets the stage for repeat customers. 

Channels for the Usage Stage

While customers use your product or service, you want to make sure that what they have purchased solves their pain points and continues to benefit them. Your email list will provide value here as you can regularly send customers articles to help them maximize their usage of your product.

You can also continue to produce content that customers at this stage of the buyer's journey find helpful, such as FAQ pages and case studies, helping them to see how others have seen great results with your brand.

Channels for the Repurchase Stage

During the repurchase phase of the buyer's journey, you need to convince people who have purchased from you before that they want to purchase from you again. Creating content that once again demonstrates your superiority over the competition can help. Email messages that help customers learn more about getting the most out of their purchase and also remind them of the successes they have already seen will help at this stage of the buyer's journey. 

Channels for the Advocacy Stage

Once you have already convinced a customer to buy from you again, now you want to turn them into an advocate. Customers willing to speak highly of you to other prospects can be a powerful source of persuasion. Encouraging them to help you produce content, such as case studies or even writing reviews can benefit your organization. Use email, social media, and events to remain closely connected to these repeat customers. 

Bringing your different channels together

Now that you understand how these different channels typically interact throughout the buyer’s journey, let’s review how to bring the platforms together to create an omni-channel approach that nurtures customers through each stage of the funnel.

Understand buyer personas

To create a successful campaign across these channels, you must understand your buyer personas. Know what these customers want to see and the pain point they want to solve. The better you understand where the prospect is coming from, the easier it will be to produce content tailored to their unique needs. 

You will also be better equipped to coax them through the sales funnel. You will find it easier to find the customers across the different channels, and you will know what they want to see as they get closer to conversion.

Create a common campaign

With your understanding of your customer personas and your use of different platforms, work with specialists across the different platforms within your company to create common campaigns. Your campaigns should follow the customers' buyer’s journey and work to coax them from one touchpoint to the next. The campaign should create a consistent user experience and operate with well-aligned goals.

Know how your different platforms and channels work together throughout the buyer's journey. For example, your PPC strategy will drive traffic, while your site content should then take that traffic and build engagement and the number of people who register for email lists. 

Measure progress

As you create your integrated campaigns, carefully measure your progress for each step of the buyer's journey. Your selected KPIs should explore how well your campaign brings people from one stage of the buyer's journey to the next. For example, measure top-of-the-funnel channels by looking at new visitors and engagement. As you move into the mid-funnel, gauge your return visitors, their engagement, and their rate of mid-funnel conversions.

Looking at all your channels and platforms together as a part of a single customer engagement picture will give you a better understanding of how your different strategies can work together to bring in new customers.

Building omni-channel campaigns throughout the buyer's journey will allow you to take your marketing strategy to the next level. You will improve your ability to engage with customers as they move throughout the digital atmosphere. Bring your channels together and help them function together as one and see how you can improve your own customer engagement ability for a repeated buyer's journey.

If your site sees a sudden drop in SEO results after an algorithm change, it's worthwhile to wait before panicking and making changes. Google updates have a history of dialing back changes and restoring some of the traffic to legitimate sites that produce quality content and use white hat techniques. In some cases your site can regain rankings on the next Google updates or even sooner. So there is reason to hold out hope at least initially when impacted by Google also updates.

A few months ago I published a blog on the March 19 algo update and how to react and respond.

Google Algorithm Has Historically Softened

Google has a history of updating their algorithm in order to soften some of the unintended impacts on quality sites. I can remember many Google updates where some high quality sites were negatively affected with algorithm changes and then recovered on the next update or sooner.

In the search industry this is known as "dialing back" the algorithm. This phrase has its origins from various statements from Google about how they were softening the impact.

There are many examples of statements from Google affirming that they are softening the Google updates impact (dialing it back). Here's an example from back in 2013 where Google's Matt Cutts states in a YouTube Video that they will be releasing a new version of their Panda algorithm that will soften the impact for high authority websites.

"We've also been looking at Panda and seeing if we can find some additional signals, and we think we got some, to help refine things for the sites that are kind of in the border zone, in the gray area a little bit.

And so if we can soften the effect a little bit for those sites that we believe have got some additional signals of quality, then that will help sites that might have previously been affected to some degree by Panda."

As you can see from the above quote, subsequent Google updates softened the impact of the Panda algorithm by adding some quality signals that helped Google understand that a site is high quality and should not be affected by the Panda algorithm.

What Are False Positives - Quality Sites Hit by Google Updates?

In the above example discussed by Matt Cutts, Google updates are adding signals of quality. Externally, it is seen as "dialing back" on the algorithm, which describes the effect of how Google updates revise an algorithm so that there are fewer false positives.

A false positive is the term for when high-quality site content is hit with an algorithm update. There are false positives in every algorithm update.

Google used to recalculate the ranking signals on a monthly basis to account for new web pages and pages that had changed.

The Google Dance in Google's Broad Core Update

The process of "updating" the data center algorithm changes took days. This resulted in a nail-biting period of time where search results fluctuate wildly. This instability was generally the process of rolling out the new search index to Google's worldwide data centers.

This is the origin of the phrase, Google Dance, a period during which search results are in a state of change, something that still happens today.

Wait. Your Site May Recover From Google Updates Soon

The advice for Google updates, both then and now, is to wait and not take action until they have settled.

If your site has been affected by Google updates, it's possible your site may recover within the first five days of an announced algorithm update.

Google Dance Ranking Flux

If your site recovers from Google updates within the first few days, the reason could be the Google Dance. That's why it's recommended to wait and not panic over Google updates. Fixing things can sometimes make algorithm changes worse. If your site is high quality then it may recover during the Google Dance.

Ranking Factors Dial-back

For some sites, it can take 10-15 days to recover rankings from Google updates because the updates dial back some of the weighting factors. 

So if your site doesn't recover within the first few days, then there is still a window of ten to fifteen days where the Google updates might spot false positives and take action to soften the algorithm.

Why Do Some Sites Recover on the Next Update?

Google updates are tested internally before releasing them. That's what Google's external Quality Raters do. They are part of the testing process to check if new algorithms are working as intended.

Yet, no matter how much testing is done, some high quality sites lose rankings because of an algorithm change. Google will try to figure why the good pages lost rankings and in a broad core update, those false positives will regain their rankings. 

Google updates do not fix the rankings of sites individually. When a quality site loses rankings, it's because of an unintended algorithm factor that is affecting many sites, not just the one site.

The solution to this Google updates issue, as Matt Cutts described in the video above, is created to scale in order to positively affect all the high quality sites that deserve to recover rank.

How to Know if Your Site is a False Positive During Google Update

There is no way to know for certain whether your site has suffered a ranking loss as a false positive. That's Google's information and only someone at Google can know.

However, in my experience with Google updates, there are clues that can help you understand if your site has suffered from the algorithm for a reason or is possibly a false positive.

Why a Site Loses Rankings: Percentage of Traffic is Lost

Sometimes a site may lose a percentage of traffic after Google updates. In my opinion there are two reasons to explain this. The first reason is that a site is suffering a ranking loss due to relevance issues. The site is still ranking, but not as well as it used to.

The second reason for a percentage loss after Google updates could be associated with a technical issue related to links or quality. But those kinds of technical issues are likely to affect rankings on a daily basis.

A broad core algorithm update is generally focused on relevance factors.

In general, the reason is because the new algorithm determines that another site is more original or relevant for the search query.

How to Tell if a Site Will Not Recover on Next Update?

Sites that suffer a collapse of rankings higher than 70% of traffic more from Google updates are likely suffering from a profound issue. While it's possible these sites could be suffering as a false positive to the algorithm, it is likelier that there are important quality issues to look at it.

Know When to Fix Your Site

If your site does not recover within the first fifteen days after a broad core algorithm update, you should look into diagnosing site problems. 

Alternatively you can wait until the next core algorithm update to see if your rankings return. But that’s not an ideal scenario as that does not happen to the majority of sites.

False Positives and Algorithm Dial-backs are Real

If you have lost a percentage of rankings because of Google updates, it is possible that your site is suffering from a false positive and that rankings may return. But don't wait too long before taking action in the hopes that your site will recover on its own as that is not generally the norm.

So if your traffic drop was due to an algorithm change and does not revert, what can you do?

Google’s guidance and BrightEdge best practices are consistent:

1. Increase your content production cadence of blogs, pages, FAQs, glossary, and videos to try to offset the lost traffic
2. Continue to focus on high-quality content
3. Be authoritative, deep, and relevant, target over 1000 words per piece and preferably over 2000 words
4. Be original, fresh, accurate, and current
5. Build multiple pieces in a content silo and internally link them together
6. Be well liked and linked to internally, externally, and socially
7. Work on page load speed until you get to 95 score
8. Reduce the bounce rate of people landing on your site
9. Provide an excellent customer experience and site performance
10. Consider using schema markup, which Google has been promoting since 2011 and people are starting to report positive rank and traffic impact from schema

An estimated 79 percent of Americans have at least one social media account, making these platforms an immensely popular means of engaging with friends and family as well as businesses. The engagement people have on these platforms has paved the way for organizations to build a strong social media marketing strategy if they want to ensure they take advantage of all opportunities to find leads and customers.

Social media has evolved into an important part of e-commerce and digital marketing. Seventy one percent of customers are more likely to make a purchase based upon referrals and recommendations they receive on social media. Further, more than half of users on Facebook, Pinterest, and YouTube report that they follow brands on social media to help them learn about products and services.

A quality social media marketing strategy opens the doors for you to engage with these consumers and turn them into customers. Here is how to build a social media marketing strategy that works for your brand.

What is a social media marketing strategy?

With such a large percentage of the consumer population on social media, a good social media marketing strategy empowers you to take your promotions to these popular platforms. It provides an excellent channel for incorporating many of the most valuable elements of modern marketing, including personalized marketing and direct engagement.

Through social media, customers feel as though they can get a better idea of the values of a particular business as well as answers to their questions or concerns. It helps to shed the impersonal view of the business as an entity, and instead helps potential customers see the people behind the scenes who work at the organization.

A good social media marketing strategy will understand how to incorporate these optimal, unique elements of social media into a broader marketing strategy that represents the brand well across multiple channels and platforms. If you have not created a quality social media marketing strategy for your organization, here is what we would recommend.

Examine your overall marketing strategy

Begin by examining your current marketing strategy. Remember that you want your marketing channels to integrate seamlessly, creating a consistent experience for customers regardless of where they interact with your organization. A good social media marketing strategy, therefore, will want to understand the precise goals and positioning for the rest of the marketing team so that they can easily align these new platforms.

Consider important factors such as:

• Who your target audience is
• The types of channels and platforms this age group appreciates
• The pain points of this target audience
• How these prospects and existing customers respond to different types of content and outreach
• The language and tone you typically take with your customers-- do you focus on being friendly and approachable? Do you take effort to present yourself more formally as an expert?

Look also at the KPIs you want to measure for social media. Before you get started, you need to understand what your goals are concerning social media marketing. Knowing what you want to accomplish will help you understand where to focus your efforts and what to measure. This will guide the rest of your social media marketing strategy.

A social media marketing strategy can help in a variety of ways. It can increase brand exposure, drive leads, help customer service, and build traffic for websites, to name a few. By determining precisely what role you want your social media marketing to play within your greater advertising strategy, you will find it easier to build a plan that will help this goal materialize.

1. Look at competitor strategies

Considering that an estimated 91 percent of businesses use social media marketing, the odds are that your competitors already live on various social channels. Therefore, take the time to dive into their profiles and campaigns a bit to gain a better idea of how they use social media for their organization. You can look at their followers and the engagement with the material they post. You can also use the Data Cube to gain even more insight into how this particular company builds their marketing strategy and the success they see. 

Take this information and start to develop some ideas regarding how you want to create your own strategy. Look at their statistics, such as posting rate, the amount of content they post from their own site versus non-affiliated sources, and how often they interact with their followers. Use these insights to start forming more ideas about a successful social media marketing strategy for your organization.

2. Research your target audience and their social media usage

Assuming you have created a thorough marketing strategy outside of your social media marketing strategy already, you should have a good understanding of your target customer. Knowing important demographics and information about this target customer can now also help you find them on social media.

Make sure you develop your information about where your target audience lives on social media through data, as the demographics on a number of different platforms continue to change.

3. Work with your content marketing team to plan what you want to post through social

Now that you understand where your target audience lives and what you want to accomplish with your main social media accounts, work with your digital and content marketing teams to draft potential posting schedules. Review the types of content that will likely generate the best results on the social media platform. See if you can collaborate to draft some content that will serve the social media audience particularly well.

Remember that your social media marketing strategy should revolve around a conversation with your perspective customers and existing customers. They do not want to log into their social media accounts and find themselves subjected to regular commercials or information coming from a so-called soapbox. Instead, they want to engage in conversations with prospective brands. They want to feel as though organizations care about their needs and answering their questions. Posting content that aligns with these goals, even if it doesn't come from you, can be OK, as it helps to build relationships with these customers.

You can use BrightEdge, along with social listening, to track emerging trends and popular topics. This can help you develop the best posts for engaging with your audience and posting content that resonates best with your customers. Staying on top of the conversations that matter the most to them will help your organization stay relevant in the mind of customers.

5. Incorporate customer service

Remember that an important part of social media is nurturing more direct relationships with your customers. Customer service plays an important role in this goal. Social listening tools can help you pay attention to mentions of your brand or industry across the social platforms. This can help you keep track of conversations and know when a response from your organization might be warranted. Let your customers know that you pay attention, and if they need something, you will be there to help.

6. Measure the results of your campaigns

Once you begin leveraging social media marketing, you now need to regularly measure the results from your campaigns. Look back to the KPIs you wrote down at the beginning of this process. These KPIs will help you track the most important results involved, and thus can help you determine your success rate.

Social media can provide a powerful means of driving traffic back to your website. BrightEdge makes it easy to track the traffic rates and rankings of your website pages, so keep careful track of the pages you post on social media. This will help you see how posting the pages on social media impacts the success of that page. You want to watch your engagement and traffic metrics on this content.

Also monitor your internal social media metrics, such as the number of followers you have and how often people engage with your individual posts. Do not overlook opportunities to engage with people in conversation, but monitor how they respond to your efforts. 

The better you can track the results from your campaigns, the easier it will be to see real progress and continue to evolve your marketing plan to help your business thrive.

7. Make adjustments

Armed with your data from the success and shortcomings of your social media marketing strategy, you should now continue to make regular adjustments to help you improve in the areas where you struggle. Continue to monitor your progress and fine tune your social marketing strategy to keep it well aligned with your business goals.

A good social media marketing strategy empowers you to better engage with prospective customers and join the global watercooler. Brands who understand how to do this effectively can take their branding to the next level. Take advantage of the BrightEdge capabilities in monitoring social media content engagement and tapping into the latest trends and see what these platforms can offer you.

According to BrightEdge Research an estimated 52 percent of clicks on non-branded queries will go to the top 3 sites listed on the SERP. The higher your site ranks, the more clicks you will naturally receive. When Google ranks websites, they use their algorithm to try and identify the sites that best answer the needs of users. This means that they take into account engagement metrics, including a good (lower) bounce rate. This ranking factor assumes that sites with a low bounce rate do a better job of engaging readers and encouraging them to further interact with the content. When users engage with the site, Google assumes that this indicates they answer the user’s intent and needs.

Obtaining a good bounce rate involves a firm understanding of what Google measures when they discuss this factor, how bounce rates can differ between sites, and how you can improve your bounce rate. Here is what we want the BrightEdge community to understand about a good bounce rate.

What is bounce rate?

Google uses the term ‘bounce rate’ to describe single-page sessions on your website. This means that if someone starts at Google, clicks on your site, engages with the content on your page, but then clicks back to the SERPs or closes the window, they will be counted as a bounce and their buyer's journey ends there. Activity that does not involve clicking through to another page on your website or otherwise engaging with your domain counts as a bounce. The type of content you create, your industry, and even where the visitor originates before they land on your page will all influence your bounce rate.

What is a good bounce rate?

A good bounce rate can be a challenge to determine and it can vary widely between sites, and even pages within the same site.

Take, for example, blog sites. Blogs tend to have high bounce rates because their purpose generally consists of answering a specific question that people ask. If someone wants to learn about optimizing their site for the holiday season, for example, they might click on a blog post that professes to answer that question. That does not mean they ever had any intention of engaging further with brands that produce the content, they just wanted an answer to their question. 

Similarly, pages that provide specific information, such as contact information pages, will generally see high bounce rates. People looking for this information often search Google for it, click on the page to find their answer, and then click off once they have satisfied their needs. These people want to contact the business, and now they have the means to do so. They have no reason to look elsewhere on the site.

Types of websites and their industry will also impact what can be classified as a good bounce rates. E-commerce sites, for example, will generally expect people to navigate through their website as they shop for particular products and compare their options. For this reason, these types of sites should aim for bounce rates that fall below 45 percent. Non-ecommerce types of websites should consider their bounce rates to be average to good if they fall below 60 percent.

Remember that certain pages on your site will have different bounce rates than other pages. Your blog and landing pages will have higher bounce rates than content that helps people travel the journey to understand your products and services.

Determining a good bounce rate for your particular site

Determining a good bounce rate for your site will involve taking into account all of the factors that will influence people’s levels of engagement, including the industry, type of page, and how people landed on your page. This metric will be highly individualized to your site.

Google Analytics offers helpful information about how other sites perform within these criteria. You can look at average bounce rates for other sites in your industry, for example, to gain a better idea of where your target goals should be for your site.

Track also where your site falls currently. Record your bounce rates for various types of pages including website pages, landing pages, and blog pages. This will give you a starting point that you can compare to as you begin to optimize your site further to obtain a good bounce rate. 

Use the data from Google Analytics as well as the information specific to your website to create goal bounce rates. See where you have the most room for improvement by finding the pages that perform worst within specific categories of pages (so you compare blog pages to other blog pages, for example) and working to understand what separates them from the pages that perform best. To be confident your site is properly optimized and ensure a healthy bounce rate, check out this BrightEdge site audit checklist.

How do I earn a good bounce rate?

The key to improving your bounce rate lies in better understanding what customers want to see so that they engage with your content and feel interested in exploring your website further. If your bounce rate does not fall where you want it too, here are six ideas you can implement to improve it.

1. Make sure the page is well linked to the rest of the site

You want people to have easy access to relevant links that will help them move throughout the site. Including links to other pages that might interest your readers based on the content they are currently consuming. Content that gives more information about particular topics or offers them greater depth concerning this particular subject will all work well. Be sure to avoid linking to broken pages such as orphan pages.

2. Have a highly relevant CTA

Your CTA should tie in closely with the content your reader consumes. Links to gated content that offers more information about the topic at hand, for example, would be a good place to get started.

To take this strategy a step further, see if you can analyze where your readers pay the most attention on your site. If you see, for example, that people pay more attention to the top of your page, you can place your call to action higher on the page.

3. Maximize the user experience

You want to make an optimal user experience those who land on your website. This means that your site should be:

• Easy to navigate
• Relevant to their needs
• Easy to read
• Personalized

The material your visitors see should reflect what you know about them. If the visitor has visited the site before, offering content suggestions based on past interests can help. Clear navigation and site maps can guide people around the site. Content that aligns well with the query that brought people to the page and thus fills their needs will also benefit your bounce rate. Finally, using features such as headlines, bullets and lists all make the content easier to digest and understand, which makes it more engaging for your visitors.

4. Improve your page loading speed

Fifty-three percent of your site visitors on mobile will leave a page that takes more than 3 seconds to load. Such little engagement will make it difficult to rank well in the SERPs. You want to try to minimize your load times as much as possible.

To reduce load time, consider factors such as:

• The type of files you include on your site
• Whether you should compress files on your page
• Your JavaScript and whether it slows down rendering

5. Make sure your page has been optimized for different audiences

6. Use engaging images and videos to drive engagement

Images and videos naturally increase engagement, which is why Facebook posts with images receive 2.3 times as many shares as those that do not. Adding relevant, optimized images that encourage people to fully engage with your content can also entice people to learn more about your brand, and help you achieve a good bounce rate.

Just remember as you add these visuals to ensure that they do not hurt your load time. Carefully consider the type of file to ensure it will not hurt a good bounce rate.

Convincing people to remain on your page and further engage with your site make a tremendous difference in the performance of your content. It will make Google look upon your site more favorably and it encourages an increasing number of people to enter your buyer’s journey. Gather data on the bounce rates you want to see for your content and consider how these tips can help you achieve a good bounce rate for your domain.