Google Analytics Limitations and Workarounds

By Jeff Campbell, VP, Product Development

People always seem surprised that Google Analytics (GA) has some rather large limitations. Specifically the limited number of conversion events you can track (“goals”), lack of deep traffic segmentation by source, and ability to create custom funnels. There are plenty of reasons GA hasn’t dethroned the Omntiures and WebTrends of the world, and these limitations are a couple biggies. That said, I’ve found setting up additional GA Profiles with Include or Exclude filters is a simple and effective workaround.

We have very rarely inherited a GA account with more than the single profile – but then again, that’s why they’ve hired us. GA only allows you to set up four conversion events…per profile. Solution: create more profiles and combine where necessary. Google only lets you set up one Funnel…per profile. Solution: set up additional profiles with “Include Only” filters to show only designated traffic types. Solution 2: set up a different funnel process for a second profile with the same traffic. As a Paid Search optimizer, I certainly want to compare funnel conversion/fall-out rates to natural (organic) traffic. Second, I simply don’t want to go through several layers of drill down menus to segment my paid search traffic reports. As a site designer, I’d be interested in if New Visitors seem to exit/struggle with the ‘create an account’ page in the checkout process.

Convinced? Good. Lunametrics wrote up excellent instructions on how to set up new profiles and filters in February; it takes less than 2 minutes to set up a profile/filter. Once you are familiar with these basics, I urge you to dig deeper in the filtering capabilities in order to segment traffic or assign additional/specific goals to those segments. I’ll leave you with one important point: profiles start collecting data AFTER they’ve been set up, they do not back-populate. If you ever, ever think you’d want to see traffic segmented by Paid, Organic, Display, New Customers Only, etc., or to have different conversion goals or funnels from your main profile, take 10 minutes to set it up today!

How to Determine Purchase Latency

Purchase latency is the time that passes from when a customer first visits a website to when they eventually make a purchase. Knowing your website’s latency period helps a marketer answer a few tough questions:

· How many visits, and how much time, elapses before customers make a purchase?
· Should you invest more in acquiring new customers or in generating additional value from existing customers?
· How long before you can measure ROI on media investments?
· Do different visitor segments respond differently to advertisements?
· How long should I test copy or landing pages?
· How do I assign credit for a sale (introduction to site or visit of the purchase)?

The first step is to find the average latency period for the website. As all online marketing should be tagged with campaign tracking codes from your web analytics (WA) program, WA is exactly where to start. Use the website average as directional and segment deeper for the traffic in question. Although each WA program has different names for the reports, here are a few examples and a quick analysis:

1. New vs. Returning Visitors – who is coming to the site and who ends up purchasing? Based on these reports, we see evidence of latency with 51% of visitors being new but 73% of purchases coming from returning visitors:





2. Loyalty – How often do folks visit on average? How does this differ from purchasers? In the charts below, 49% of visitors only saw the site once (consider cookie deletion). The good news is that 53% of purchases were from this visitor type. That said, a large chunk of buyers don’t convert until visit 4 or 5. Based on your accuracy goals, you’ll probably want to wait until at least 80% of visitors have purchased before judging ROI success.





3. Time Passed Since Previous Visit – The chart on the left supports the previous slide that most visitors visit only once. For those folks who do return, it’s important to note that there is a significant portion of visitors who wait 2-4 weeks before they return. In terms of purchases, 65% happened on the same day of their first visit (note, there can be multiple visits in a day), and 77% happened in the first week. Although some may be repeat purchases (another report available in WA tools), 11% of purchases happened >30 days after the initial visit.





Determining the average purchase latency window depends on the level of accuracy desired. In the above example, I’ll capture 80% of purchasers within 14 days or 93% in 60 days – how confident do I need to be before I measure ROI or establish an A/B test winner? It’s situational dependant. If you want to be more technical in determining statistical significance or confidence intervals, there are calculators out there. Further, I urge you to segment your traffic – visitors from Search typically have a much different latency period than visitors from display. Finally, what’s the point of gaining these insights from the data if you don’t take any action to shorten it, re-target during, personalize return visits, incorporate it into test durations, etc.? Data leads to insights which lead to actions – don’t stop halfway.

Posted by: Jeff Campbell, VP Product Development & Innovation

There’s no S-T-R-A-T-E-G-Y in Testing Technologies

Last week, Google announced their webpage testing technology, Google Website Optimizer (GWO), has been released from beta and is available, at no cost, to the general population. The questions poured in asking if this would cause our clients to take page testing in-house rather than rely on agency offerings. Here are a few reasons why this free technology isn’t going to be an immediate game changer for Resolution Media:

1. Testing is not just about technology. GWO is an execution tool. Prior to even using the tool, the strategy must be developed, data analysis completed, benchmarks/KPIs established, hypothesis written, confidence intervals agreed upon, etc. GWO isn’t going to tell you to test page two of the checkout process vs. a category landing page vs. your product page template…much less, what the alternate page designs should look like.

2. Landing page testing is as much about gaining new traffic as it is about improving the experience for current visitors (OK, a close second). Besides crunching historic bounce rates and conversion rates of landing pages, SEO & PPC opportunity must be included in the page selection strategy. As both Natural and PPC rankings factor in page relevance, someone versed in traffic levels, competitive opportunity, and ranking algorithms certainly should be part of any page design. It’s important to test which headline visitors react to more, but you also have to weigh which one may bring your more visitors via Natural Search or lower your PPC CPCs/ROI.

3. Lack of experience, talent, and ownership of page testing. No matter how many flash demo or help pages exist, there is a barrier to entry on experience on running tests as well as talent to interpret the data. This won’t exist for long, but in the meantime the testing talent is found in many agencies and WA consultancies. In addition, who, on the client-side, would own a testing initiative? IT, Marketing, E-Commerce?

4. Limitations of GWO. Like GA (Google Analytics), GWO is built for the general masses and that will not suit advanced/custom experiments or data analysis. For example: editing tests mid-stream, throttling test delivery, conditional element testing, traffic segmentation, testing non-conversion events, and more. You’ll need someone experienced in test design to navigate the waters of technology selection as GWO isn’t right for some experiments.

5. Google paranoia. Be it justified or not, there is reluctance to share conversion data (and profitability) with a media vendor who sets pricing (i.e. minimum bids for AdWords placement).

I don’t want to rain on the parade of a great tool; I am a big fan and user of GWO myself. In fact, I am thrilled to see the shift from optimizing incoming traffic to including the website experience itself. However, GWO is not the full answer to webpage testing. A quote sums it up well: “Using technology without strategy is a waste of technology.”

Posted by: Jeff Campbell, VP Product Development & Innovation

The Hypothesis is Wrong, Jeff

To follow-up on last week’s “Google Buys Arizona and Southern Idaho” post hypothesizing on a shocking title leading to the most popular post ever, um, it was wrong.

In my defense, the version that didn’t make it through RM editorial had a much more enticing title involving one starlet from “Herbie Fully Loaded” that just may have toppled the current winner. Who knows, with my natural search keyword prowess, it may be too early to declare defeat. Special thanks to Google attorneys who have ignored my outright false statement. (They aren’t allowed to do something evil like send me a cease & desist anyway, right?)

With the not-so-popular post appearing on 4/8, let’s look at the tape:

Daily Visits Report:


Top Content Report:


Ouch, not even close. I knew the A/B testing instructions from mid-January was the post to beat, but I didn’t even crack the top-25. I did have several comments such as “Your title totally made me read the post in my iGoogle today.” Unfortunately, reading our blog in a RSS feed reader doesn’t show up in our Google Analytics KPIs. Consider this hypothesis…BUSTED!

Posted by: Jeff Campbell, VP Product Development & Innovation

Why do Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft have Web Analytics Platforms?

Yahoo joined the group last week with the announcement to acquire IndexTools and today will be announcing it will be offered free to partners & clients. Google started the trend with the purchase of Urchin, which has morphed into Google Analytics, which is also free. Microsoft AdCenter Analytics, formerly known as Gatineau, is in beta stages currently with early reports showing many valuable and unique segmentation/demographic reports. AdCenter Analytics is also free.

Yahoo always had an analytics tool built deep in their Search Marketing suite, but it was mainly for a deeper analysis of your PPC performance only (I speak from legend, not experience). The big ‘ta-da’ was seeing “assists”, the previously searched keywords that introduced the user to your website prior to when they finally made that conversion. Either it didn’t catch on or wasn’t scalable outside of PPC and now it’s been replaced with an industry leader. So why the race to provide free analytics tools for customers? IMHO, to increase their media spend:

• Competing on analytics is the future of paid search (and all digital media). There is only one 1st place ranking on “auto insurance”, which causes CPC prices to continue to rise. Direct marketers must go deep in data analytics to measure the ROI and in turn, their budget limits. These engines are providing the data to show you the value in your media buys and hopefully take media from less efficient venues (i.e. newspaper/tv).

• SEMPO’s Annual State of Search Survey 2007 asked "How would you likely react to a hypothetical scenario where the cost of Paid Placement steadily increased for the next two years?” The top response: “Improve Site Conversion Efficiency”. How do you measure site conversion efficiency? Web analytics, of course. What happens when you improve site conversion rates? You can spend more money on media, especially on expensive terms that historically have not converted.

• Yahoo is a very large media network, with IndexTools customers will have an all-in-one ‘data-warehouse’ that should show the interaction of display and search buys. In addition, a search engine would be able to see domains (websites) sending large volumes of traffic (and conversions) and may add them to their networks. More quality traffic = more media spend.

• Advanced PPC optimization includes using Web Analytics data. Optimized media = more spend.

• Search engines (may) want client conversion data. If I were Google, I’d love to know which keywords were most profitable for clients and HYPOTHETICALLY capitalize on these strengths by raising minimum bids. There is no evidence of this, but it’s a concern of many.

• Search engines (may) want competing engines’ pricing. If I were Yahoo, I’d love to know that top spots for “auto insurance” were going for $25 per click on Google when only $8 on Y!, because HYPOTHETICALLY, I’d could set minimum bid prices or change my quality score to factor in bid price a bit more than normal. Engines could also look at comparative natural search volumes by engines to help reverse engineer competitive ranking factors or improve their own. There is no evidence of either example, but it’s a concern.

Whatever the reason for the trend, it was solidified today… Building or buying, search engines are offering free web analytics platforms to clients. Hey Ask.com, where you at?

Posted by: Jeff Campbell, VP Product Development & Innovation

Google Buys Arizona and Southern Idaho

Hypothesis: If I use a shocking blog post title, I will receive more traffic than any previous blog post on this site.

Um, so Google didn’t start buying U.S. States? No, not yet. My apologies; this is a post about the importance of having a hypothesis before optimizing search campaigns. Thanks for participating.

In our data-centric, direct response world of Search Marketing (PPC+SEO), you can basically run an experiment on everything: different ad copy, bids/positions, landing pages, match types, day-parts, geo-segmentation, meta titles, keyword density, calls to action, and much, much more. Because we have this ability, does that mean we should test just to test? Of course not. Does that mean we should always be testing something? Probably.

With all of the available options, one should choose an experiment based on its potential for positive impact on campaign goals (aka, KPI’s). From looking at digital media ROI reports or on-site behavior in web analytics, there is a vast amount of data to comb over and ask, “Is this what I expected?”, “Can performance be improved?”, and “…by how much?” Further, compare the data to industry benchmarks to see if your expectations and performance goals are in line. Speculate on why things are happening and what influences them.

Once you’ve identified a testing opportunity, step one is to write a hypothesis. In other words, write down the steps you are planning to take and the improvement you expect. “Copy A will outperform Copy B in Click Volume, CTR, and Conversion Rate by using ‘Official Site’ in the ad title.” “The Category X landing page would have a higher entry to conversion rate by using product images over people images.” “Broad matching keyword phrases containing over three words, I’ll gain more high converting ‘tail’ traffic.” Wrong assumptions will be made; it’s OK, as not trying is much worse than failing. The next steps of a good experiment include establishing baseline data and KPI success metrics as well as determining the test duration and projecting performance. Remember, testing always starts with a hypothesis. Don’t just test to test, have a goal and design that test around it.

Posted by: Jeff Campbell, VP Product Development & Innovation

Proving SEO ROI for E-Commerce is Simple

How do you prove ROI with SEO? This question is causing a debate in the blogosphere…if only they were to Find Resolution here. The current answer out there is SEO ROI can’t and shouldn’t be tracked to ROI. I totally disagree.

ROI must be tracked if an agency or 3rd party wants to win and retain business (SEO, PPC, or web dev). In fact, I’d be skeptical of any agency that didn’t show ROI performance or question any e-commerce business that didn’t want to see the monetary value generated from a major investment such as this.

Increased Sales from SEO Efforts / SEO Cost = ROI

In my opinion, tracking SEO ROI is simple. Using web analytics (WA) data, add the sales increases of targeted keywords achieving higher positions to sales generated from targeted referral domains and divide by what was paid in employee hours or agency fees for research, implementation, and data analysis.

So why are people overcomplicating this or disagreeing that you can put an ROI on SEO? Here are a few arguments followed by my responses:

- Looking at monthly SEO ROI is too short of a period as ranking results can take 6+ months to achieve.

• First, ROI is not the only KPI (Key Performance Indicator) to be tracked. And I agree, in the first few months it’s about eliminating technical hurdles, and getting pages indexed. Set short term goals with different KPIs or set expectations on a short-term negative ROI, but the cost portion of the initial months can’t be overlooked in quarterly or annual ROI reports.
  

- Factors other than SERP Rank effect revenue, such as seasonality, product changes, price, or promotion.

• Yes, account for those factors in your ROI forecast; adjust that forecast as necessary. Rarely have I encountered a company without months or years of past data, even if it can only be used directionally. Further, ask for the advertising calendar to anticipate lift from a Super Bowl ad or radio push.

- Increase in traffic/clicks, rather than revenue, is a better determinate for success.

• There is something to be said for the numbers game, but ultimately why waste optimization efforts or bandwidth on visitors whose intent does not match that of the website’s (sales). It’s not too difficult to get traffic; it’s difficult to get converting traffic. Selecting the right keywords to match the desired behavior is an important process with SEO.

- What about a non-e-commerce website or branding intentions?

• I wouldn’t accept a penny from any client without first establishing and gaining agreement on quantitative goals and KPIs. Be it time on site, clicks, or page views, I can set a monetary value to that success and measure that ROI with the above method and benchmark against past data.

- What if the engine algorithms change?

• They absolutely will change; “improve” is a better descriptor. If SEO efforts are in the name of providing a good/relevant user experience, providing accessible content, and steering clear from shady practices, the site, and its ROI, should not be in jeopardy.

- What if the site has a poor conversion rate or poor checkout process that hinders revenue?

• The client should be focused first on converting the quality traffic they are already getting. Every visitor is a potential sale. That said, your benchmark data should reflect the poor conversion rate and it becomes a constant.

Bottom line(s): 1) never optimize anything (or pay for optimization via a 3rd party) without an initial hypothesis on what you plan to achieve, and 2) gain agreement on all quantitative methods and timeframes to track the progress/achievement of that goal. Go forth and measure your success!

Posted by: Jeff Campbell, VP Product Development & Innovation

What's in Your RSS Reader?

My mantra (and Rick Pitino’s apparently) is “Success Is A Choice.” I’ve blogged numerous times that self-education is the key to getting ahead in this industry and that the knowledge is readily available in the 100’s of blogs, websites, and networks out there. Sure, you can get the full list of “Top” SEM/SEO blogs here, see Barry Schwartz’s Top 76, or enjoy Rand’s Top 50, but I’m interested in what you find useful. Please use the comments section to list your top 3 to 5 industry favorites (be it SEO, PPC, or WA). I’ll start…

I read the following most often (outside of this one, of course), but as my role has changed over the years, so has this list:

1. Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik
Why: Google’s “Analytics Evangelist” doles out tactical advice. No comments on other blogs, no predictions, no regurgitation of the news…this is a “how to” blog if you are looking to learn and master WA.
2. Sphinn Hot Topics
Why: A good aggregator of PPC, SEO, and Social Marketing news and discussions. Users submit and “Sphinn” the articles they like and the more popular posts gain higher placement (warning: just because it’s popular, doesn’t mean it’s news). It’s in the most prominent spot as the content changes frequently.
3. AdAge Digital
Why: When major digital news crosses the wires, you can read it here. Also a great place to learn about what other Omnicom agencies or competitors are up to. Advertising Age is read by everyone who’s anyone in the ad biz, and it’s probably best if you are able to hold a conversation with those people. ;)

Three very diverse blogs…if I was to add a fourth, it would be a ClickZ or MediaPost, where you can get general Search industry news/updates. What about you? Please help others optimize their RSS Readers & Bookmarks!

Posted by: Jeff Campbell, VP Product Development & Innovation

Lessons Learned from Blogging

I learn by doing, simple as that. About a month ago, I was inspired to jump on the blog bandwagon and am surprised how well what I’ve learned translates into Search Engine Marketing:

1. Picking/finding an interesting niche topic (interesting for you and readers/searchers). With Technorati’s latest State of the Blogosphere Report showing there is a new blog created every 1.4 seconds (and over 70 million blogs already out there), the more specific the target, the better if you are to gain readership and search engine rankings. I wanted to keep track of wines I’ve enjoyed over the years and avoid repeating the non-enjoyable ones. There are an endless amount of wine reviews sites out there, but few focusing on ‘cheap’ wine (<$15) and few using humor in the reviews. I used tools like Keyword Discovery to find words like “cheap” and “inexpensive” + wine = ranking opportunity.

2. Publicize it at every opportunity. Grass-roots marketing at its finest. The catch 22 of search engines rankings is they consider your current traffic a factor determining your SERP rankings; to increase your chances of top rankings to gain new traffic, it helps to already have a baseline of active visitors. Involve your friends for guest postings. Heck, use your work blog to promote your personal blog. http://awineaweek.com/ – check it out. I also made myself findable by creating RSS feeds and submitting them to the major readers and track the adoption. I’ve created/updated profiles in the major social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Digg, MyBlogLog, Technorati, Del.icio.us, etc.) to include a link to my blog. After giving a few thumbs-up/favorites/reviews out to others, the reciprocity has been overwhelming.

3. Basic web development and HTML. I was astonished how easy it was to select a basic template on Blogger.com and create my blog. Leaving the WYSIWYG template and making HTML edits was a bit scarier. Thanks to trial and error, I can now read, write, and edit basic HTML. Outside of HTML, I conquered many other web development tasks such as buying a domain name, setting a 301 redirect, and masking my free .blogspot.com domain.

4. Applying SEO best practices works indeed. Using keyword-rich URLs and post titles, manually adding alt tags to my images, and editing meta data are minor tasks that the common blogger is not doing and should help with search engine rankings. I’m still struggling with adding a site map and playing nice with the W3C validator, but there are endless resources out there that tell me how to do this. 72% of my March traffic is from new visitors, 56% coming from search engines. I installed tags for Google Webmaster Tools and Yahoo! Site Explorer to help me see what the search engines see (and got indexed quickly!).

5. Using web analytics. I know where my traffic is coming from and why it came from there. I know that a review about 1 Chianti brought double the traffic of 10 Pinot Noirs combined. I know the right mix of small vineyards to popular ones, or California wines to French wines. I know what works because I use web analytics. I installed Google Analytics in 6 minutes, without knowing a lick of HTML. I’ve set up multiple behavior profiles and have my traffic segmented four ways to Sunday.

6. Seeing results. I’ve lived through the pain of DMOZ submission. I’ve seen how much and how quickly StumbleUpon can generate traffic. I have seen the power of Google Webmaster Tools firsthand. I know what trips Yahoo!’s trigger for rankings. I am in a better position to add value to clients because of my blog experiences.

Learn by doing…and enjoy a good cheap wine in the process!

Posted by: Jeff Campbell, VP Product Development & Innovation

Web Analytics Responsibilities Will Move to Media Agencies

by Jeff Campbell
Appeared in Web Analytics, Demystified

Based on my experience, the majority of web analytics (WA) tools are currently managed by a single, in-house person. More than likely, the WA tool is underutilized and the WA team is too small and undertrained. Heck, web analytics is hard. ;) I predict that within three years, media agencies will build out ‘web insights’ specialties and capitalize on the web analytics opportunity. Why will they be successful?

Read the whole post…

Branded Keywords: To Buy or Not to Buy?

It’s typically in the best interests of an SEM to include branded keywords in their PPC portfolio for a multitude of reasons, such as including the superior performance in the overall performance numbers and the added media spend (if paid on a percent spend model), but is it in the best interest of the client?

I consistently get two questions from clients regarding spending their media dollars on branded keywords. Hopefully, my answers show the strategic benefit for the investment.

1) “If the searcher knows my brand name, won’t they eventually find my website?”
Hopefully. But, bidding on brand keywords moves the chances of being found from ‘maybe’ to ‘probably’. A searcher could just as easily find a related competitor product, not find anything, or find one of your resellers/affiliates. It’s amazing to see the misspellings people search on, the complex queries in which your brand name may appear within, or brand taglines where you don’t yet/no longer appear. As smart marketers know, visitors = potential conversions and you have to capture that searcher to make them a visitor. Invest in a two week test (factoring in any latency/seasonality, of course) and bid on branded keywords. Then compare those traffic volumes and conversion rates to a similar two-week period where you didn’t target that traffic with Sponsored Listings. Did you get more traffic? Was the ROI worth continuing? I’m betting on yes and yes.

2) “We already have top rankings in the Natural/Organic section, why pay for Sponsored Links?” (Or, “Won’t PPC listings cannibalize my free traffic?”)
Reason one for buying brand terms: Get additional traffic, which should result in additional conversions. See the previously suggested test to verify this as some cannibalization will occur, but typically ROI will justify it. Reason two: Displace your competition/own the limited real estate. Some searchers simply favor Sponsored Links as they’ve found (thanks to savvy marketers) the copy reflects their wants, the links are targeted to deep and relevant pages, and they don’t see them as evil advertising (hey, if Google put this as the top listing, it must be the best). If you aren’t there, your competition will be. Reasons three and four: Utilize different copy and/or landing pages than your Natural listing. Free shipping promotion? Seasonal landing page? Spring sale? Different strokes for different folks – cover your bases. Finally: Because industry studies have shown appearing in both Paid and Natural top positions dramatically increases click thru rate, visitors, actions, pageviews, orders, and more.

To Buy or Not to Buy? ‘To Buy’…that is the answer. Still not convinced? Well, you’d be the first and I’d love to know why you weren’t sold (or if data showed you the ROI didn’t support it). As a final reminder, branded keywords should be tracked separately, but not looked at/optimized in a vacuum, as much of their traffic comes from repeat visitors.

Posted by: Jeff Campbell, VP Product Development & Innovation

Have You Achieved Rockstar Optimizer Status?

After my previous “How to Become A Better Search Marketer” post, young grasshoppers asked which specific skills to develop and managers inquired on what skills to dig out in interviews. IMHO, there are at least ten core skills that must be present before someone has achieved Rockstar Optimizer Status (R.O.S.) in the land of PPC & SEO optimization.

1. You realize the endgame of data analysis is to gain INSIGHTS that lead to ACTION. If no action is taken, your crunching was for naught. Again, don’t be scared to test the ideas that the data leads you toward.
2. You spend at least 15 minutes per day reading tactical blogs, and can rattle off your favorites.
3. You are an Excel expert when it comes to analyzing data. You have embraced the Pivot Table and use it weekly. You know how many rows are in Excel (a great interview question) and mass quantities of data don’t scare you.
4. You optimize to multiple success events (it’s not all about immediate revenue) and know the true business value of each KPI metric. Further, you understand/agree with how those KPI goals were derived.
5. Before doing any important data analysis, you visit the website as a consumer – from SERP to checkout. (adapted from Avinash’s #8 in Signs You Are A Great Web Analyst)
6. You track/act on competitor and industry trends with research from ComScore, Nielson, AdGooRoo, Hitwise, Alexa, Google Alerts, Compete, and buzz tools. You take advantage of your competitor’s bid management tools weaknesses. You know when they run out of budget for the month and plan accordingly.
7. You “start high, then dig deep” with data. Then you go back up to tell a compelling story about why certain changes need to be made and the big-picture impact on the business/results that makes your recommendation a priority.
8. You are an avid tester: A/B/C Splits or Multivariate, Entry pages or exit pages, copy on the website or on the SERP, PPC ranks or match types…you’ve tested it all and still aren’t satisfied. You “play offense, not defense” as Avinash describes in his #1.
9. You understand the impact of seasonality and conversion latency on results. You know the typical number of visits before purchase, average number of days that pass, and keyword types queried (ah, the funnel). You know your average visits/costs/conversion rate differences by hour by day by traffic source, and possibly by positions. You realize that “knowing” these things are only half the battle…and the other half is doing something about it.
10. You can translate the science of data analysis into the creative art of optimization. You understand your business, data trends, and the rules of Search well enough to pull/create/tweak different levers to bring positive change.

No matter where you are on your quest for R.O.S. superstardom, accept that there will always be room to develop/improve – and remember, Success is a Choice. Let me know your thoughts.

Posted by: Jeff Campbell, VP Product Development & Innovation

A Valentine’s Ode to Excel

You’re the first thing I think of when I turn on my screen,
Without you in my life, I’d probably scream.
My use of you has gone to extremes,
You have even worked your way into my dreams.
Your fancy ’07 format is staring to make me smile,
Just using the new bubble charts makes my life worthwhile.

You make my data analysis so friggin’ simple,
I love you more than a school kid all full of pimples.
I hunger for your sweet vlookup and advanced auto filter,
Without it, my life would be greatly out of kilter.
A day without subtotals or fancy pivot tables,
Is the day I hang myself with my internet cable.
What’s at the top of my list of Excel infatuations?
I’m head over heels for your concatenation.

Microsoft Excel, it’s come time to say, my love for you is somewhat scary on this Valentine’s Day!

Fill out the poll below and let us know what Excel feature has made you a better Search Marketer.

Posted by: Jeff Campbell, VP Product Development & Innovation

Using Web Analytics to Optimize PPC Campaigns (Part 2)

And we’re back! To follow up my posting yesterday, which introduced the first 5 of 10 ways to use Web Analytics data to optimize your Paid Search campaigns, I am happy to bring you the remainder of the tips:

6. Identifying “Influencer Keywords” – A 2005 DoubleClick study showed consumers search anywhere from 2.5 to 6 times before making a purchase and refine those searches from generic keywords to brand or product names prior to conversion. When judging the success of your generic keywords like “mortgage”, “computer”, “car rental”, etc., it’s important to use WA data to find out if they do indeed bring converting users, even if it’s for that initial introduction to the site.

7. Identifying Conversion Latency – As previously mentioned, not everyone converts immediately. What is your same-session conversion rate? How many days pass before a visitor returns to convert? How many sessions does it take before conversion? Page views? Time on site? Don’t judge PPC success until the latency period has passed. Know your audience’s sales cycle and build that into campaign expectations and testing windows.

8. Finding Day-Part Opportunities – Sundays and Mondays will vary in conversion volume and rates, as will 9am and 9pm or MSN to Google. Turn your PPC spend dials up and down to maximize ad exposure; keep in mind “AdScores” penalize excessive bid/budget changes. We’ll save predictive modeling for a future post.

9. Hot Products, Top Converters – With a limited budget and possibly thousands of Product URLs, which product pages get the attention (detailed keyword lists, customized copy, page-level optimizations, budget share)? WA tools typically have a product analysis/comparison report to view quantity of orders, product page visits, revenue/order size, profit margin, conversion rates and more, by product. For most e-commerce companies, the 80/20 rule holds true; see what moves the needle (or doesn’t) with WA data and focus your limited resources where appropriate.

10. Landing Page Analysis/Bounce Rates – There are typically multiple landing page choices for your PPC destination URLs – home pages, category, sub-category, product pages, geo, seasonal promo pages, and more. Bounce rates are immediate indicators of what is or isn’t working and A/B or multivariate tests can further improve both page ‘stickyness’ and conversion rates.

Having WA access is major advantage for Paid Search optimizers – use it if you got it and keep in mind that these 10 tips are only the tip of the iceberg. The real challenge to using WA data to optimize our campaigns is gaining access. I’ll save that diatribe for another post, but a quick quote from Andy Beal sums it up well: “Too many clients guard their web data as if it’s the secret recipe to KFC. For us search marketers, it’s like navigating a plane through a thunderstorm without instruments.”

Posted by: Jeff Campbell, VP Product Development & Innovation

Using Web Analytics to Optimize PPC Campaigns (Part 1)

Successful insights and optimizations from Web Analytics (WA) data hinges on analyzing timely, consistent, and accurate/clean data; all online advertising should be tagged with WA URL tracking parameters to provide a complete and centralized view of site activity and conversions. Now that disclaimer is out of the way, here are the first 5 of 10 quick and simple ways to use WA data to optimize Paid Search (PPC) Campaigns:

1. Traffic Volume & Conversion Rate Comparisons – Comparing performance between Paid and Natural traffic, paid engine to paid engine, and Paid keyword to Natural keyword offers a great opportunity to set goals and find new and missed opportunities. If keyword ABC has an 11% conversion rate from Google Natural, but 2% on Google Adwords (paid), a PPC optimizer should be making comparisons between landing pages, copy, etc. to make drastic changes versus minimal ‘tweaking’. Without the WA/Natural performance data to benchmark against, an optimizer would have been content (and quite happy) with doubling the conversion rate to 4%.

2. New Keyword Opportunities – Looking at keyword level performance data from both the natural search engine reports and the internal search box queries is important to do monthly to find new paid search keyword opportunities. Look for new misspellings, high volume converters, or run a vlookup to identify missing paid search keywords. Add new keywords, increase appropriate paid ranks/bids where gaps exist, and focus budget on top converters to find instant gains.

3. New Traffic Source Opportunities – Domain referral reports show where visitors are coming from the associated volume and conversion rates. Look deeper than the big search engines, what do the converting sites have in common? Is there a way to increase exposure to this audience with Display ads or Contextual Ads? Do you notice a lot of mobile traffic converting? Do you see an increased average order size from non-US visitors? Is it time to think about getting budget for PPC mobile ads or international search engines?

4. Budget Forecasting – Flat month-to-month PPC budgets seem to be the standard, yet I have never seen a single business where conversion rates or volume doesn’t change month-to-month. Seasonality is evident in WA data and monthly ad budgets should reflect those ebbs and flows, down to the engine and campaign levels. Just because certain search engines get more press doesn’t mean they should get more budget, unless conversion rates dictate it.

5. Segmenting User Behavior – Using click path tools, do you notice similarities in Ask.com paid traffic that is different from Yahoo? What about people who search on brand keywords? Visitors who have been to the site previously? You bet – there is no average user, why give them a single website experience? Personalize user experience based on what you already know…or are seeing unfold that visit.

Tune in tomorrow for the remainder of the 10 ways Web Analytics can be used to optimize your campaigns!

Posted by: Jeff Campbell, VP Product Development & Innovation

Become a Better Search Marketer

So, you’ve landed a job in the Search industry and have learned the basics: what’s next for you?

Our industry is full of twenty-something’s that jumped on a great opportunity. Here’s some advice for those young Search Marketers looking to stand out from the pack and join the ranks of the Sr. Management (which isn’t so ‘senior’ in age; it’s experience).

· Self-educate daily. There are tons of industry blogs out there, some tell you what to think, some tell you how to do it, and all of them intend to make you a better Search Marketer with just 15 minutes of dedication daily.
· Change willingly. When joining a smaller organization, you probably expected some change…but wow! With this industry growing as fast as it is, new positions will be developed, roles will expand, organizational structure must adapt, and goals may shift. “In a time of drastic change, it is the learners that inherit the future.” –Eric Hoffer, philosopher.
· Don’t be scared to fail; promote a test it/track it culture. Stock Analyst Jim Cramer says to put up to 20% of your portfolio in speculative stocks – and spread that risk across several strategic selections so you never fail miserably, while taking a shot to hit it big. With Search, when everyone is fighting for first place on ‘back pain’, try a scientific term such as ‘fibromyalgia’ to generate traffic. Be speculative in the name of creativity – we are blessed with nearly instantaneous results to act on.
· Become a subject matter expert. Show leadership through picking an area of interest for industry growth (mobile, local, geo, IYP), process development (technology use, research tools, MS Excel, data analysis), or company need (Where is Search going? What are competitors doing? What are clients asking for?). Make sure your manager is comfortable with your selection and that you’ll spend 10% of your time dedicated to being an expert. Find ways to spread yo