So your Google Postmaster domain reputation gone Bad? And thinking how you can improve your domain reputation now?
No problem. You are in the right place.
A few days back, I was also in a similar situation and didn’t get any right suggestions regarding improving domain reputation. In this article, I will share How my domain reputation went from “Bad” to “High” in the Google postmaster tool.
Google postmaster domain reputation changed from Bad to High
What Google Postmaster tool all about?
It’s an email reputation management tool from google to monitor your domain email sending details to Gmail users. Using the google postmaster tool, you can see how your domain emails are performing with Gmail users. You can see details like domain authenticated traffic (SPF, DKIM & DMARC), Gmail user-reported spam percentage, IP reputation of the email sender, delivery errors, and more.
This is a must-have tool to monitor your email marketing performance. If you are not using it, then you are missing a lot of information. You can start using the google postmaster tool by visiting here.
How Google Postmaster Domain Reputation Affects Your Email Deliverability?
If your domain reputation is bad, whatever emails you send to users will land in the Gmail spam folder. Having a high domain reputation is very important to reach your emails to the user inbox.
Currently, Google gives 4 types of domain reputation to users. They are Bad, Low, Medium, and High.
Below is what google tells about these statuses.
- Bad: A history of sending an enormously high volume of spam. Mail coming from this entity will almost always be rejected at SMTP or marked as spam.
- Low: Known to send a considerable volume of spam regularly, and mail from this sender will likely be marked as spam.
- Medium/Fair: Known to send good mail, but has occasionally sent a low volume of spam. Most of the email from this entity will have a fair deliverability rate, except when there’s a notable increase in spam levels.
- High: Has a good track record of a very low spam rate, and complies with Gmail’s sender guidelines. Mail will rarely be marked by the spam filter.
Why Your Google Postmaster Domain Reputation Is “Bad”?
Google uses various data to determine your domain reputation. Below are the few things google could consider assigning domain reputation to your domain. At least, that’s what I noticed in my case.
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All of sudden, you sent bulk emails (consider more than 100 emails at one day) from your domain without having proper email sending the history
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Too many unengaged users (email open rate)
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Too many spam complaints from users
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You don’t have a good domain reputation, and your email content includes spam filter words which make google send your emails to the spam folder. Because your emails are land in the Gmail spam folder, it decreases your open rate, and ultimately it affects your domain reputation even more
How to Improve your Domain Reputation in Google Postmaster Tool? (Bad to High)
If you are doing the right thing, then don’t get discouraged with google postmaster’s domain reputation status being “Bad.”
There is a solution for us to fix the bad domain reputation.
Just Don’t think of giving up email marketing or changing your domain to reach user inbox. At least that’s what I thought when all my genuine emails are directly landing on the user’s spam folder.
Because we can fix bad domain reputation.
Although we can fix a bad reputation, it does takes some time to fix it. For me, it took 2 months to fix it. It could vary for you. It all depends on how users respond to your emails.
I believe your domain reputation is already changed to “Bad.” That’s the lowest score google can give to any domain.
Let’s see how we can improve our “Bad” domain reputation to “High” in the Google Postmaster tool.
- Properly authentic your sending domain with DKIM, SPF, and DMARC. You can check authentication details in Postmaster Tools » YourDomain.com » Authentication. Make sure all the statuses are 100%
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Stop sending bulk (more than 50 emails) broadcast emails
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Check email spam score by using https://www.mail-tester.com/ tool before sending it to your users
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Collect new leads and give valuable content in emails which makes them open your emails
Also Read: Why Reader Don’t Open Your Emails?
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Setup an Email autoresponder to engage new leads before sending an email broadcast to existing users. Our goal is to get users to engage with our emails. So with new users, we can easily make them open our emails even if it reaches spam folder by informing them to check spam folder
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When new users opt-in to your list, guide users by redirecting to thank you page explaining to check their spam folder and mark your email as not spam. This step is possible only if you offer a very high-value lead magnet, or else users don’t bother checking their spam folder and mark your email as not spam.
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Domain warmup is real. If your domain is not warmed up, you should not send any bulk emails without a proper warmup. You can warm up the domain by sending emails only to highly engaged users and excluding Inactive users. This is important steps. You should not ignore this step.
Let’s say your list contains 5,000 email contacts. You should split your list and send an email, as shown below.
| Number of Users | On Day |
|---|---|
| 50 | 1 |
| 100 | 2 |
| 200 | 3 |
| 400 | 4 |
| 800 | 5 |
| 1600 | 6 |
| 1850 | 7 |
Send same email content to all the above lists in the same order. You gradually increase email sending from your domain instead of suddenly sending all users at once.
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Send only value content till you improve your domain reputation
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Send emails which your users are likely to open your emails. If you cannot get them to open your email, then you won’t be able to improve your email sending domain reputation. In my case, the average email open rate during warmup time reached 65% for a list of 5,000 email lists (after excluding 4,000 unengaged users).
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Keep user-reported spam rate low during domain warmup time—possibly 0%.
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I hope you are already sending emails from a good IP reputation (100%). If not, you can use Amazon SES with Sendy. Their IP reputation is High in google’s eye.
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If possible, avoid Gmail “Promotion” tab to increase your email open rate by sending only education or asking question kinds of emails. You can check Gmail inbox placement by using the Gmass Inbox placement tool.
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Monitor Google Postmaster Tool regularly to see important stats
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If you are sending emails irregularly, then you should remember users why they are receiving your email at the bottom or top of the email to avoid email being marked as spam
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Include “Unsubscribe” link preferably at the top of the email to make it easier to opt-out instead of user marking your emails as spam till you improve your domain reputation
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If possible, include your Photo at the bottom of the email to increase trust with your users
- Create a google account for your email sending domain and add your photo in your Google account to show your face with your email address when you send emails
If you follow about tips carefully, you can easily increase your domain reputation. That’s how I went from Bad to High domain reputation in the Google postmaster tool in 2 months.
Let me know if you have any doubts in the below comment section.