Inspiring Content Personalization Examples For B2B

Harness the power of content personalization to make customers more likely to purchase. Learn new ideas for personalizing B2B content here.

Today’s consumers don’t just enjoy content personalization – they expect it.

Yet, far too often, we think adding <firstname> to our email headlines is all it takes to personalize well.

In this article, we’ll look at why personalization matters, and how to get started implementing personalization across your customer journey.

Why Personalize?

Personalization is all about cutting down the noise and delivering exactly what your customer or client needs to hear.

It’s a way to make a deeper and more meaningful connection with the people you’re trying to reach.

From a business perspective, personalization has a huge return on investment (ROI).

Epsilon research found that when companies use personalization in their content, 80% of customers are more likely to make a purchase.

And according to Google research, a highly personalized shopping experience makes customers 40% more likely to spend more than they had originally planned.

If you want to create high-performing content that delights and engages your customers, personalization is key.

Metadata Is The Key To Personalization

The backbone of any personalization strategy is data.

Metadata is simply information about your data. Why is this important?

Well, to personalize content, you need to connect your customers to the correct content, which means you need data about both customers and content.

Once you collect customer data, you can use this information to create custom content.

Read more: Inspiring Content Personalization Examples For B2B

Google Ads Account Managers Shouldn’t Contact Clients Directly

Google Ads account managers are reportedly contacting clients and telling them to dump their agencies.

There are a growing number of reports across the web of Google Ads accounts managers threatening to contact clients directly, despite not being allowed to.

According to the reports, agencies who don’t respond to emails from Google Ads account managers are being met with threats from Google reps to contact clients directly.

In some cases, the Google Ads account managers call clients and tell them to drop their agencies.

There are two things to make clear here:

1. Agencies are not required to speak with Google reps
2. At no point should a Google Ads account manager call an agency’s client

A Google Ads rep telling clients to fire their agency crosses the line.

However, these reports are becoming more frequent.

Matt Janaway, CEO of Marketing Labs, shared his experience on LinkedIn this week:

Janaway’s post caught the attention of Google Ads Liaison Ginny Marvin, who says the issue will be addressed “immediately.”

Read more: Google Ads Account Managers Shouldn’t Contact Clients Directly

Google releases new ranking systems guidelines

Google will be publishing new guides to inform people about the updated ranking system. The guide will talk about the different criteria and ranking systems the company will use to rank the search results. It will also inform about the obsolete ranking systems.

Google also published new terminologies where it talked about the difference between the term systems and ranking updates. The latest guide gives a lot of new insights into the ranking system.

Google cleared that an update is just a one-time change to the systems. The system always runs in the background, even when Google delivers search results. Moreover, it can still receive updates to improve how the particular system functions.

Some examples of such updates are core algorithm updates and even spam updates. These are one-time changes to ranking systems. Some ranking systems are currently operational for users.

Some of them are BERT, Crisis information systems, Deduplication systems, Exact match domain systems, etc. BERT is short for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers among these systems. This is a system in Google to understand the meaning of different words and even their intent.

On the other hand, Crisis information systems provide different sets of information at the time of the problem. Some examples can be SOS alerts while searching for natural disasters.

Read more: Google releases new ranking systems guidelines

Hotz on board to improve the Twitter search functionality

Twitter has been in the news for some or the other reason for a few days. Be it about the microblogging site going off or the site rolling out the new feature for Twitter search. Recent reports claim that Twitter CEO Elon Musk shifts his focus on the site’s functionality.

The CEO of the microblogging site hires a prolific hacker and a long-time critic George Hotz to fix Twitter search’s functionality. Hotz promises to take over a lot of roles. He will take up a 12-week internship. In due course, he promises to fix the Twitter search. He will also introduce a few features.

Hotz will be introducing some really interesting features, like searching among the liked tweets. Hotz enjoys a very distinctive reputation. He was the one and the first person in the world to jailbreak an iPhone. So the hopes are high for him. George Hotz will surely bring new capabilities to existing platforms.

But one of the most interesting things about the entire proposal is Hotz’s previous viewpoints. George Hotz criticized Elon Musk for several reasons. George Hotz also refused to work for Tesla. Also, George even commented that, given an opportunity, he could develop a better self-driving car system.

Read more: Hotz on board to improve the Twitter search functionality

GoogleBot Can Now Crawl From Outside The US

Gary Illyes from Google announced at the Google Search Central Live in Singapore yesterday that Googlebot, Google, can now crawl from outside of the US. He said, according to reports, that the system to handle this is currently live but may not be used in all cases or it may not be used at all for your site.

Update, this report is not 100% exactly accurate. Gary posted on Mastodon after he saw this story saying “that’s not quite what I said. I said that the IP blocks are allocated and you can check the countries they are assigned to, and we may use them in the future for local crawls.”

Kenichi Suzuki, who was at the event, posted on Twitter saying “Googlebot can crawl from a country where the server is located (i.e. from outside the US). The system has already gone live but may not be used (at all). In addition, it becomes effective only in a condition where access from outside of the country is blocked.”

Read more: GoogleBot Can Now Crawl From Outside The US

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TikTok introduces a new solution that helps businesses

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Twitter receives goodbye as it nears its end

TikTok introduces a new solution that helps businesses

TikTok is introducing a new feature that can become very useful for businesses. The tool will provide a deeper understanding of the customers. This is a new business tool introduced recently. TikTok gives the audience insights into the businesses. 

With this new tool, TikTok assists businesses with planning and organic content strategies. This audience insights tool is present in TikTok Ads Manager. The tool mainly aims at advertisers. However, businesses don’t need to pay for advertising to use this tool. 

The tool provides paid content plans. The plan comes from the data collected from users across TikTok. Businesses can explore the interests and behavior of the users. The tool will also help in understanding the demographics to find ways to reach the customers. 

One of the widely talked about features is the hashtag feature. Businesses can also find out the top ten hashtags that the audience engages with. These hashtags help in increasing engagement instantly. 

Moreover, these tools also help in filtering the information using several filters. This TikTok tool gives cumulative data on active users within the last thirty days. 

On TikTok, the users can go to the Ads Manager option and select the “Reporting” option there. There the users can find “Audience Insights”. From there, the businesses or users can configure the audience by using the panel on the left. 

Businesses can define their audience by customizing the Locations, Languages, Demographics, and Interests & Behaviors filters. The first tab that the user finds is the overview tab. 

The audience tab gives information on age, gender, country, state, device OS, device Prices, etc. The tool also talks about the top 10 interests of the users. 

The tool also highlights the bottom 10 interests and other audience interests through the feature. There is an interesting tab that gives the option to change top hashtags and ad interest categories. 

Read more: TikTok introduces a new solution that helps businesses

Divi 5.0 Aims to Bring Greater Compatibility with Gutenberg

Divi, the popular commercial WordPress theme and page builder created by Elegant Themes, has announced major changes coming in version 5.0 that constitute a complete rewrite of Divi’s core technologies. The update, which is expected to be released in beta next year, will focus on performance, stability, scalability, and extendability, but it will not introduce any new features.

“We are recreating Divi’s backend framework, cleaning up years of technical debt, changing Divi’s storage format, and improving its rendering mechanism,” Elegant Themes CEO Nick Roach said. “This new version of Divi will be able to process design settings much more quickly.”

One of the most notable changes coming in 5.0 is that Divi will be migrating away from shortcodes.

“This change will bring Divi into alignment with the future of WordPress, which is evolving in a new direction,” Roach said.

Divi will migrate to a new JSON format that is similar to the way Gutenberg stores data. The legacy shortcodes will continue to work and for a time Divi will lazy load in the old framework as necessary.

“If you are using Divi shortcodes outside of your post content, it will be highly recommended to replace these shortcodes with our new json-based elements,” Roach said. “Otherwise, you are going to take a performance hit.”

As part of the 5.0 update, Divi’s developers plan to include a button to perform the migration away from shortcodes, which will automatically change posts to use the new system.

Read more: Divi 5.0 Aims to Bring Greater Compatibility with Gutenberg

New Tool Checks If Google Fonts Are Hosted Locally

Earlier this year, WordPress’ Themes Team began urging theme authors to switch to locally hosted fonts after a German court case decision, which fined a website owner for violating the GDPR by using Google-hosted web fonts. Since that ruling, German website owners have continued to receive threats of fines for not having their fonts hosted locally.

The makers of the Fonts Plugin, a commercial product with a free version on WordPress.org, have created a tool called Google Fonts Checker that will help website owners discover where their fonts are hosted. The tool analyzes any URL entered and if the fonts are hosted by Google, it says “Google Fonts Connection Found” with a red ‘X.’ Sites that are in the clear will show a notice that a Google Fonts connection was not found:

Google Fonts Checker is useful for non-technical users who are not sure whether their theme or plugins are referencing fonts hosted on Google’s servers. Beyond delivering the simple connection message, the tool scans the website and returns a list of the font files used to render the page, which can be helpful in tracking down the specific extension loading these files.

Read more: New Tool Checks If Google Fonts Are Hosted Locally

Google Maps Tests New Sidebar Navigation

Google is testing new thin sidebar navigation on the left side of the maps interface. The sidebar has the Google Maps pin icon, then the explore tab, then trips saved places, contribute, and more icons.

This was spotted by Punit on Twitter and Mastodon where he posted a video of this new sidebar in action. Here is a screenshot followed by his videocast:

Read more: Google Maps Tests New Sidebar Navigation

Google Key Moments SeekToAction Markup Supports 12 Languages

Google key moments is a feature where Google Search highlights the sections in a video through a chapter-like interface. Google added support SeekToAction markup for videos on your site so that you can use the SeekToAction markup to communicate the key moments (timestamps) Google shows for videos in Google Search in 2021.

Now, Google has documented the 12 languages supported for SeekToAction structured data.

These 12 languages include:

• English
• Spanish
• Portuguese
• Italian
• Chinese
• French
• Japanese
• German
• Turkish
• Korean
• Dutch
• Russian

Google said it hopes to expand to more languages, Google wrote “We aim to extend this to more languages over time. Even in supported languages, not all videos will have key moments identified, but we aim to improve this over time as well.”

Read more: Google Key Moments SeekToAction Markup Supports 12 Languages

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Google is testing the new Rewarded Ad Gate beta program for publishers

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Google is testing the new Rewarded Ad Gate beta program for publishers

Google has just started testing a new rewarded ad beta program for publishers to serve their players long-form, playable ads.

How it works. As described by WebmasterWorld.com, “The Rewarded Ad Gate beta program will give you an opportunity to monetize your most engaged users. If a user frequently visits your site, you’ll have a way to collect additional ad revenue.”

1. The Rewarded Ad Gate will be displayed to a visitor on their fifth-page view of each month.
2. If the visitor chooses to view a short ad, a video or image ad will play for 30 seconds or less.
3. A “Thank you” message will appear after the ad is complete and the visitor will gain access to your site.
4. If the user chooses not to view a short ad, they won’t be able to access the site until their page views reset the following month or they choose to view the ad.

Dig deeper. There is no info from Google on the new test, but you can read the post from WebmasterWorld.com here.

Read more: Google is testing the new Rewarded Ad Gate beta program for publishers

Link juice: Is it the new snake oil of Google SEO?

Google’s Search Advocate John Mueller – in a rare case of annoyance – said that any SEO advice mentioning “link juice” is not to be trusted. Is it or not?

I wondered about the context and doubted whether it was true. There are different opinions. 

After Barry Schwartz shared the news on LinkedIn, a lively debate ensued. Even Moz and SparkToro founder Rand Fishkin chimed in on the comments saying, “Maybe link juice is real after all. Maybe y’all should write more about it!”

On link juice and bad SEO advice

When he dismissed link juice, Mueller was answering a question about outgoing links. He essentially ignored the original question and solely responded to the undesirable “link juice” mention. 

While Mueller is usually neutral in his tone this time he came close to a rant on Twitter: 

• “Anything that talks about ‘link juice’ should be ignored.”

This is nothing new. He’s just reiterating what he expressed in the past more than once.

Here’s a similar quote from his Twitter account back in 2020: 

• “I’d forget everything you read about ‘link juice.’ It’s very likely all obsolete, wrong, and/or misleading.”

So is link juice such a detestable term? Is it akin to the “snake oil” fringe SEO practitioners are still offering? Let’s take a look at the bigger picture.

Snake oil: A popular type of panacea in SEO

There’s a reason why the SEO industry had a bad rep for many years. Metaphorical snake oil has been sold in various ways and many websites have been harmed by misguided SEO advice or tactics.

The proverbial “snake oil” – a synonym for misleading promises of miraculous cures to all kinds of diseases – has often been likened to SEO.

Even in 2022, we see many more #seohorrorstories passed on Twitter and other social media than inspiring success stories. SEO experts themselves, not just outsiders, rather focus on those negative news.

Of course, the SEO industry is not the only one guilty of selling snake oil or spreading the word about it. 

I had many clients asking me for unethical SEO practices over the years. To this day, you have to be very firm in your ethics in order not to get caught up in a downward spiral of shady SEO techniques. I also get requests for paid links and other similar offers regularly by mail.

The history of link juice

When Google started out in the crowded and messy search engine market, it had a revolutionary ranking algorithm that used the so-called “PageRank” to determine website authority. It was named after Google co-founder Larry Page, not (just) the actual “web page.”

SEO specialists started to use many different slang terms for PageRank – “Google juice” or “link juice” being among the most popular.

In the early years since its inception, Google performed pretty well by PageRank alone and grew its market share continuously. 

First-generation search engines like AltaVista, Yahoo and Infoseek were easily gamed by simply using:

• Keyword stuffing.
• Hidden text.
• Misleading meta tags.

Read more: Link juice: Is it the new snake oil of Google SEO?

YouTube Brings Photo Editing & Quizzes To Community Posts

YouTube is adding photo editing features and quizzes to the set of tools available to creators when crafting community posts.

YouTube is giving creators new tools to work with when publishing community posts, with the addition of photo editing features and interactive quizzes.

Community posts are social media-style updates available to YouTube channels with 500 subscribers or more.

YouTube surfaces posts in users’ recommendation feed and the Community tab on channel pages.

Quizzes In YouTube Videos
YouTube is running an experiment with a small number of creators, which allows them to add quizzes to community posts.

Quizzes are a new, interactive way for creators to engage with viewers. Creators in the beta can create quizzes the same way as other kinds of community posts.

I am already brainstorming different ways YouTube channels can take advantage of quizzes in community posts.

An idea immediately comes to mind is running a quiz based on your latest video. You can include questions users would have to watch your latest video to answer.

If you incentivize users to take the quiz with a contest or a simple shout-out, you could potentially drive more repeat viewers to your content.

With this being an experiment, YouTube may expand access to quizzes if they receive positive feedback.

Photo Editing On YouTube On iOS
YouTube creators on Apple’s iOS can now add filters, text, and stickers to images when creating community posts in the YouTube app.

YouTube brought these features to Android earlier in the year, and now they’re rolling out on iOS.

A small, randomly selected group of creators with access to the Community tab can test this on iOS phones.

Read more: YouTube Brings Photo Editing & Quizzes To Community Posts

Divi 5.0 Aims to Bring Greater Compatibility with Gutenberg

BuddyPress will soon be improving the way it loads its JavaScript and CSS assets so that they are only loaded on community pages. Previously, the plugin would load them indiscriminately on every page.

BuddyPress lead developer Mathieu Viet said he’s not sure there is a specific reason explaining why this was kept in place. Before the plugin introduced the BP Theme Compat API in version 1.7, it was necessary to use a BuddyPress compatible theme like the one bundled by default (BP Default).

“I think we kept the way this theme was loading these assets into the first Template Pack (BP Legacy) we added to BuddyPress,” Viet said.

Users have often requested BuddyPress only load its assets on community pages in hopes of further optimizing their websites. For example, in 2020, a user on the BuddyDev forums requested custom code to accomplish this. Experts recommended against doing it

Read more: Divi 5.0 Aims to Bring Greater Compatibility with Gutenberg

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