Ambient and Transparent

Questions I always hear with regards to SEO and marketing optimization:

• How does Google Analytics improve my search engine optimization (SEO)?
• How can I get more out of my SEO?
• What is the real effect of ranking on search engines for my business?

I am hoping the case study below will shed some light on these questions. If you apply a similar analysis you can help your customer, manager, or whoever is delaying your SEO effort. But instead of answering “the importance of ranking” question, maybe something more quantifiable and measurable might get your decision makers’ attention! How about “how does ranking on a specific keyword, or lack thereof, impact the bottom line?” Answering such questions will help us make the most of our marketing spend during these tough economic times and help us do a more effective job in marketing and campaign optimization.

I’ll use real time data and analysis but won’t mention the name of the website for privacy reasons. Here are the details:

• Website type: eCommerce
• The website used to rank near the top of Google on two competitive keywords until August 2008.
• Historically, these two keywords have driven traffic to the site. For a specific time period, these two keywords drove 5,684 visits and led to 46 conversions for a 0.81% conversion rate.

If you have your Google Analytics eCommerce features properly configured and working, the above data is easily accessible under the Traffic Sources -> Search Engines -> Non-paid report. The inline filter was used to get data for just these two keywords.

• We then start examining the time period when the ranking for these two keywords took a big hit.
• Next, using the date comparison function in Google Analytics, we compared the traffic generated by these two keywords for this year with poor ranking versus last year with better ranking. Here is the result:

The table on the left is for one of their keywords and the table on the right is for the other. As you can see, a significant drop in visits in 2008, 4471 to be exact. So the negative impact of the drop in SEO ranking was less opportunities to make sales on their primary keywords!

• The 4471 visits might be a small percentage of the overall website traffic but when you put a dollar sign next to it, we typically react to it more quickly. Take the 4471 visits and multiply it by your average conversion rate for these keywords, which is 0.81%, and then multiply by the average order value, which is $846.
• 4471 x 0.0081 = 36 lost sales
• 36 x $846 = $30,456 of lost revenue!

Now one can argue that this number is not accurate because of many factors BUT the findings are very actionable! If I were to present this analysis to my boss or client, I would add 2-3 other scenarios:

• Scenario 1, with a higher conversion rate of 1.62% after improving the design and usability of the site, the lost revenue would be $60,852. (ouch!)
• Scenario 2, with a lower average order value and the existing conversion rate of 0.81%, our lost revenue would have been $15,228.
• You could create a table to show the range. The main point is that there was between $15K and $60K of lost revenue. In tough economic times, wouldn’t you rather have that revenue?

Depending on your company size, marketing budget, and other factors, the $30K might be a significant number or it might be a rounding error. But at the end of the day, $30K of lost revenue is $30K of lost revenue, especially in times like these where cutting cost and marketing optimization is more important than ever. By doing similar analysis, you can find other lost sales opportunities, monetize them, and get some corrective actions underway.

I think you can take this analysis to a business owner or marketing manager, and I am pretty sure they would get the SEO effort prioritized.

written by Feras Alhlou \\ tags: actionability, actionable insight, conversion, google analytics, integrated marketing, marketing strategy, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, tips for internet consultants, web analytics

In September of this year, Yahoo! announced the formation of a Digital Advisory Council to drive discussions with advertisers. Our agency was invited and we welcomed the invitation to listen to what Yahoo had to say and provide some feedback. Our office being literally less than ten minutes away made the decision a little bit easier!

During the meeting we were told that we are under an NDA so I won’t go into the specifics.  But here are some comments and thoughts:

• We applaud Yahoo’s efforts to be open, reach out to their clients (advertisers and agencies), and solicit their input. That spirit was felt throughout the council meeting, from the Senior VP that hosted the event to managers and other Yahoo staff.  They really wanted to be transparent and sought input from us.  Good job, Yahoo!
• Despite the poor picture that might have been portrayed in the news about Yahoo and search, we were reminded that Yahoo! is still a profitable company and has some very high traffic sites, including Yahoo! Sports (we were told it has more traffic than ESPN) and Yahoo! News (gets more traffic than CNN).  I didn’t know that and I would say it is pretty impressive!
• Various folks from Yahoo! presented about new features and innovations (sorry, can’t blog about it yet ) but expect to hear from Yahoo! on areas they are strong in, including Display (banner) Advertisement.
• There was a talk about Traffic Quality and the favorite discussion topic of click fraud.  Without spilling their beans, we got a better picture of how Yahoo! handles click fraud and also learned that you can get reports from within your Yahoo! Search marketing account about credits your accounts is getting for false clicks.
• Lunch was really good too, including the Israeli Couscous which was very tasty!  To be fair, I have to say that the food in Mountain View during the GAAC Summit was really good too.

So in summary, I am really glad to see Yahoo! opening up and creating additional forums to communicate with advertisers and agencies.

While we are on the subject of Yahoo! Search Marketing, there is another topic that we have been wanting to blog about but didn’t get to until now.  Yahoo! has a mechanism of optimizing your accounts and campaigns on their own! Yes, that means without your
knowledge.  Maybe this is not so recent but many clients I speak with are still not aware of this mechanism, so it is important that we share it. The following was drafted by a couple of folks in the office:

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We hope you are aware of Yahoo’s decision to optimize PPC accounts by creating optimized campaigns on their own and running them without checking with the client. As strange as this may sound, it is very true! For a regular advertiser who doesn’t tag his campaigns and review them in any analytics tool, this may not be that bad. For those who do tag their campaigns and review all of their traffic sources and conversions via an analytics tool, this could be trouble.

Yahoo does the whole nine yards when it comes to campaign creation (naming convention, ad group, keywords, ad copy) but they miss a very crucial step. They don’t tag the campaign at all with tracking parameters so a web analytics tool can recognize it as PPC traffic. This means traffic from this new campaign will be recorded as organic traffic and will dilute the quality of your data. The number of visits attributed to Yahoo cpc and Yahoo organic will be wrong, and conversion rates for these two sources will be subject to speculation.

There are two ways that you can deal with this issue:

1. If you would like to try these optimized campaigns and see how they will perform while capturing the data properly in your analytics account, you need to go to your Ads under the AdGroup they created and make sure that you tag the destination URLs properly. If you are using Google Analytics, here is a good post from our friends at PPC Hero that will help you.
2. Otherwise, once you see a new optimized campaign in your account, pause or delete it and make sure that you opt-out from this service. You can opt-out by submitting a request to Yahoo customer support.

If you have too many campaigns in your own or your client’s accounts, the easiest way to spot the Yahoo optimized campaigns is by their naming convention. See the below snapshot for an example.

Alternatively, if you are using Google Analytics, under Traffic Sources/Campaigns you can use the inline filter with the “ysm_optimized” parameter and then schedule this report to be emailed to daily, weekly, or monthly. This way you capture any new campaigns as they pop up in your account.

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My request to Yahoo! is that they back out of this practice and allow user more control before they turn campaigns on and spend someone else’s money!

written by Feras Alhlou \\ tags: google analytics, pay per click, search engine marketing, web analytics, yahoo search marketing

Here at E-Nor, we recently completed a project for the The Learning Community (TLC), which happens to be a collection of links to informational websites, articles, and videos based on different subjects that affect child development.  Their mission - to provide that “children’s manual” parents never seem to receive with the baby!

The project initially started in December of 2007 as a conversion of their original pure HTML site to Dotnetnuke (open-source Content Management System), but ended up turning into a significant redesign and restructuring project.

The services we provided were:

• Basic online marketing consultation
• Creating a new, brighter aesthetic look.
• Implementing a different site-structure based on our understanding of their users flow.  (We also took some tips from their more successful and professional competitors, such as the commercial magazine www.parenting.com)
• Improving their SEO (Search Engine Optimization) by cleaning up their meta tags and recommending some content enhancements. Their site is now on the first page of Google for some keywords when previously it was nowhere to be found.
• Helping promote their videos on Youtube.
• Cleaning up their Google Analytics setup to properly track where visitors are coming from, which external sites they are going to, and which PDFs they are downloading.

Oh yah, I forgot to mention the project was done PRO BONO. We had a great working relationship with the client, in that any work we recommended, if they could find volunteers to implement, they did, which saved us time.  Any technical implementation we could throw in, we did, and they practically understood that since the work was pro bono, it would take priority accordingly with respect to our other projects.

E-Nor encourages our clients, partners, and blog readers to support non-profits.  Though altruism may already be inline with your corporate and personal values, a year’s worth of pro-bono work may scare even the most giving of companies and people.  However, here are some benefits you may not have considered (in no particular order):

1. Necessity is the mother of innovation. The nature of non-profits is that their revenue is limited yet they provide great services to the community. Thus, they may require strong functions for their site. You’ll be forced to learn valuable work-arounds when their budget may not cover high end modules or spending, giving you great ideas for options when you need to close a sale with those paying clients who are a little tighter with their money.
2. Practice makes perfect. Just like anything you do in life, the more you do it the better you will get. You can chalk this pro bono run as practice. For us, TLC being a year project, it strengthened and even expanded our research on techniques, functions, modules, etc, that we can now apply to all our sites!
3. A non-profit “word-of-mouth” could still lead to profit. We know that as technology evolves, so does marketing. If Google has taught us anything, free services and products actually go a long way in branding and exposure, and could result in lucrative opportunities in the future. Non-profits do have friends that could end up being your paying clients with the right referral. And because your existing relationship had no financial motives, the trust and rapport has already been built.
4. Had a bad day? They’ll pick you up. For all those clients who didn’t see the extra work you did for them and who complained instead of showing gratitude, you could expect the opposite for your non-profit pro bono clients. They can’t help but see the void you filled for them and be grateful for it.
5. Testimonials. Along the same lines as the above, a testimonial will virtually be an everyday occurrence if you’re doing your job right.
6. Pat yourself on the back.  You did a good deed! Because of the site you provided for a parenting non-profit or a domestic violence shelter, a lost parent now has a little bit of direction or a helpless victim is a little bit safer.
7. Experimentation (with the permission of the client). Since your client doesn’t have dollars riding on this project, they are more likely to allow you to do light experimentation on it, within reason of course. Not only are they more comfortable since no hard earned grant money is at risk, but that also means there’s a more flexible timeline for you to play with the site. For example, if you see a new module you wanted to try or your organization is new to analytics and you need a site to try it on, especially if the end result could possibly benefit your client, non-profit free sites may in fact welcome experimentation. Don’t forget to back up, though!

written by Farid Alhadi \\ tags: dotnetnuke, internet consulting, marketing strategy, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, tips for internet consultants, web design

Back in November of 2006, our friends at GA Experts posted a method to get detailed PPC keyword data from Google Analytics. This method involved creating a seperate profile and using some intimidating but powerful filters. I really liked and referenced this method because it isolated the changes to a single profile and didn’t involve any updates to the GA tracking code. Obviously I would prefer if this feature came built-in to GA but at least now you could get to some very useful data with very little work.

As Google Analytics was updated over time, the way the filters were using Custom Field 1 was no longer possible and so the profile broke. The smart folks over at ROI Revolution came up with another way to get to the exact PPC keyword data using the User Defined field and adding 2 lines to the GA tracking code. This was a great solution and probably suitable for a lot of people. However, I preferred not having to update the tracking code (this can be very difficult on some client sites), saving the User Defined field for other uses, and also being able to isolate the keyword extraction and concatenation to one profile.

I still see some blogs referring to the original method that doesn’t work anymore so one day I tried playing with the original filters approach and after 2 months of observing the data, it appears to be working correctly. Please follow these screenshots & instructions to give it a try for yourself.

Filter 1 - look at only paid traffic data.

1. From your account, click on Filter Manager.
2. Click on Add Filter.
3. Give it a name such as Data Filter - PPC.
4. Filter type is custom filter.
5. Select on the Include option.
6. The filter field should be Campaign Medium.
7. The filter pattern can be cpc|ppc
8. Click on Save Changes.

Filter 2 - extract the actual keyword that was typed and concatenate it to the paid keyword that was matched.

1. Assuming you are still in the Filter Manager, click on Add Filter.
2. Give it a name such as Data Filter - PPC Keywords.
3. Filter type is custom filter.
4. Select the Advanced option.
5. Field A -> Extract A should be set to Referral and the value needs to be (\?|&)(q|p|query)=([^&]*)
6. Field B -> Extract B should be set to Campaign Term and the value needs to be (.*)
7. Output -> Constructor should be set to Campaign Term and the value needs to be $B1 - ($A3)
8. Field A required, Field B required, and Override Output Field all need to be set to Yes.

Please click on the screenshot to view the full version.

Finally create a new profile with a name such as PPC Keywords Data and all your usual settings (default page, search settings, goals, etc). Make sure you apply these two new filters to it.

This method seems to work for Google, Yahoo, and MSN paid traffic. Below is a screenshot with sample results. Let me know if it works for you!

written by Rehan Asif \\ tags: google analytics, msn adcenter, pay per click, search engine marketing, tips for internet consultants, web analytics, yahoo search marketing

Strategy, Techniques, and Track it all with Google Analytics

So you are the resident pay-per-click (PPC) guru, you have your campaigns running in Google Adwords, your metrics are looking good, your cost per acquisition is looking great, your post-click metrics in Google Analytics are just shining, and your return on your marketing spend is just outstanding. Your boss, or your client if you are an online marketing agency, says: “bring me more (and dangling the promotion/bonus carrot)!” And being the good sport you are, you say with confidence, “of course!”

You know Google is king when it comes to traffic volume, but you more or less exhausted your creative ideas to drive additional traffic through Adwords - what do you do? It is now time to explore other search engines, Yahoo! Search Marketing, MSN adCenter, and maybe some vertical or secondary search engines.

In this blog post, I’ll cover some PPC implementation techniques to optimize your paid search marketing across multiple search engines, especially Google Adwords and MSN adCenter, while ensuring your PPC post-click metrics are properly tracked in Google Analytics.

The process of transferring campaigns from one search engine to another can be very time consuming and tiring, especially when you have a big account with a large number of campaigns, ad groups, and keywords. A frequent problem popping up on the web these days is the ability to transferring campaigns from your Google Adwords account into your MSN adCenter account. In this post I hope to to answer this question and a little more.

• We first advise that you optimize your campaigns in Google Adwords, allowing enough time for testing different ad variations, adding relevant and negative keywords, and applying other PPC optimization techniques. You can even go further and test few landing pages and pick the best performing ones. When you feel satisfied with the performance in Google Adwords, you can now start planning to migrate them into your MSN adCenter account.
• You need to create and run an ad performance report in Adwords to get the needed information to transfer into your adCenter account. Our friends at Affiliate-Blog have came up with a clean and straightforward way to create this report and transfer it into your adCenter account.

Adding the campaigns in adCenter is one thing, but to be able to see campaign data and more in Google Analytics requires a little more work. It is time to tag those URLs! Here are few tips that will help you tag your URLs properly so that the data shows up in a clear and consistent manner. You can use the Google URL builder to create custom tags for your adCenter destination URLs.

Here is a list of the elements you needs to tag.

1. Campaign Source: msn
2. Campaign Medium: cpc
3. Campaign Term: {QueryString}
   Adding this parameter will allow you to track all your keywords in Google Analytics without having to type each keyword manually.
4. Campaign Content: (used to differentiate ads)
5. Campaign Name: (whatever the campaign name is)

Example:

http://www.domain.com/?utm_source_=adcenter&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=mykeyword&utm_content=variation1&utm_campaign=campaign1

For more details, check out this article written by our friends at PPC Hero

Few Suggestions:

• I recommend you use a unique naming convention to make it easier for you to identify your adCenter campaigns in Google Analytics reports. For example, I want to set up a campaign to market E-nor’s Google Analytics services. In Google Adwords, the campaign name can be g_GAServices and for an adCenter campaign you can name it m_GAServices. Using this naming convention will make it very easy for you to visually identify which PPC system the campaign belongs to.
• I would recommend you import one campaign to adCenter and allow enough time to test it. Check the results in GA to make sure your URL tagging was thorough. If everything goes smoothly, then start transferring the rest of the campaigns after following the same steps we mentioned earlier.

Have a great day transferring and tagging your campaigns!

written by PPC Team \\ tags: google adwords, google analytics, msn adcenter, pay per click, search engine marketing, web analytics, yahoo search marketing

In working with clients, we often come across companies both small and large that run their SEO or PPC programs in-house. As consultants, we aim to be objective and offer a recommendation that is in the best interest of the client.

Our general recommendation to clients is that you either build the expertise in-house and do the job right or you should outsource. So many times we have seen companies that claim to be running an effective PPC campaign internally, but after further examination we find that thousands of dollars are spent on an account that is running on auto-pilot and no optimization techniques or best practices have been implemented. The Internet marketing program might be running “OK” but it is no where close to the potential ROI it can bring. In one incident, we were asked to audit an existing PPC campaign and optimize its performance. One month after implementing a few best practices, we were able to achieve double the amount of site visitors for half the click spend. And this was just the beginning!

If you are planning to run your web development, web design, or Internet marketing programs in-house, invest the time in learning and mastering these fields or hiring someone with that expertise. Otherwise, work with a professional and let them do what they do best.

Feel free to contact us for further information on website design, internet marketing consulting or a free Internet Business Analysis.

written by Team Marketing \\ tags: integrated marketing, marketing strategy, search engine marketing

For tips on presenting and selling PPC/Adwords, Google has a set of very good Powerpoint Presentations. You can access these presentations and other useful information by signing up for Google Advertising Professional Program (at no charge).

Meanwhile, contact us if you have any questions or need help in selling or managing your client’s PPC accounts. Feras as well as Gazlan (our Senior PPC Consultant) are both Qualified Google Advertising Individuals, (Feras is also a Yahoo Ambassador), and both are a good resource to tap into for optimizing PPC accounts of any size.

written by Team Marketing \\ tags: google adwords, pay per click, search engine marketing

90% of Internet surfers use search engines such as Google and Yahoo to find products and services. On average, these search engines average 300-500 million searches a day. Only 7% of websites are properly optimized for maximum search engine visibility. Search engine optimization (SEO) is about improving your website so that search engines will rank it higher. Proper SEO takes time and is about improving your website for your visitors and the search engines. There is no way to guarantee any ranking for any period of time. There are ways, however, to make your website more useful to visitors and easier for search engines to browse through and rank.

As your website begins to rank higher on the search engines, more visitors are brought to your website. Good SEO is part of a comprehensive and well thought out plan. Not only do you make your website look better in the eyes of the search engines, your visitors are presented with content that is useful to them. The SEO efforts, if done right, will not only bring in more visitors but it will also bring in higher quality visitors. When high quality visitors are presented with useful content, conversion rates are bound to improve. In that sense, SEO is not about shady tricks and deceptive practices, but more about improving your business in a less conventional way.

A few of the things you might do as part of your SEO program:

• Write high quality, relevant, and unique content that is useful to your visitors.
• Obey webmaster guidelines, such as the one posted by Google.
• Validate your website code so it is error free.
• Run your content through a spelling and grammar checker.

What you do NOT want to do as part of your SEO program:

• Try to trick the search engines so you rank well but offer little value to visitors.
• Copy content from other websites.
• Fill your website with content that is not useful or relevant.
• Join a link farm where you pay to have lots of other websites link to your website.

Sometimes it can seem tempting to do whatever you can to get higher rankings, no matter how deceitful the technique is. Whenever this thought enters your mind, remember this: when was the last time a search engine purchased something from you? The answer is absolutely NEVER. Your website will never be a success if you don’t think about your visitors first. What good are all those visitors if they never buy anything? Make your website more useful to your visitors and make it search engine friendly at the same time. Y our rankings, online business presence, and overall success will improve over time if you stick to this formula. If you have any questions or are looking ways for your website to appear strong and with legitimacy under SEO, please contact us today!

written by Rehan Asif \\ tags: google webmaster tools, search engine marketing, search engine optimization

The global marketplace continues to shift online and a clear example is the phenomenon of Search Engine Marketing. Individuals continue to shift online to read the latest news, look up information and researching products which eventually lead to purchasing them. According to Nielsen/Netratings, the number of searches across all search engines grew to 5.1 billion in December 2005 from 3.3 billion in December 2004.

The amount of exposure and opportunity for businesses online has never been higher. Many companies have shifted their traditional marketing philosophy of off-line advertising (yellow pages, newspaper ads, radio commercials, etc.) to the online space and in particular, Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising. PPC allows your listing(s) to show under the “sponsored links” section which is easily visible to the users. It also appears on many affiliate sites under specifically marked “advertising” boxes.

In a nutshell, when an individual decides to search, there are a number of results to choose from. As an owner of a business or head of marketing, there are several options and strategies which you may take. For example, the more you pay per click the higher your advertisement is listed but is that what you would like to do? Is this a case of branding or gathering traffic to come to your site? Or do you wish to limit your online advertisement to a specific geography or can the product be delivered to everyone worldwide? These are some questions a business has to think about when developing an Internet Marketing approach. Thus it is important to come up with a strategy and objectives before deciding to fully pursue this marketing medium. Here are some important factors to keep in mind:

• ROI: For any marketing initiative, pay close attention to Return on Investment (ROI) and results. ROI Analysis will enable you to see where success is coming from and where to pay attention.
• Competition: Pay Attention to Competition. It may not be important to appear #1 on Google or Yahoo’s search results given your marketing objectives. Assess other companies and see where it may be effective to appear under results.
• Landing page: Once a visitor clicks on the PPC ad, where do they go? Are they seeing relevant information or are they just led to a page where they have to navigate all over again. Guide them through the landing page on the decision that you want them to make.
• Negative keywords: A new concept which definitely helps. Make sure that you identify terms which do not relate to your business. This will help gather more relevant traffic and eliminate any unnecessary visits from unqualified clicks.

When setting up a campaign, a business needs to come up with a thorough and well formulated strategy to gather results and have an attractive Return on Investment (ROI). It is greatly stressed to set the objectives and goals for the campaign. Make sure that you understand the nature of the business you are marketing, and what kind of traffic you want to receive. It is always helpful to have some type of checklist when setting up your campaigns. E-Nor manages accounts across different industries and holds the recognition of being “Qualified Google Advertising Professionals” along with a “Yahoo Search Marketing Ambassador.” If you have any questions or need any information on Internet Marketing Solutions or professional website design or assistance on improving conversion, please do not hesitate to contact us and we will be glad to help you. Thanks!

written by Team Marketing \\ tags: pay per click, ROI, search engine marketing