If you are like most search marketers, you’ve often wished for more insight into your campaigns than what AdWords alone can provide. You may also be looking for a “one-stop” place to analyze all of your PPC data from all engines and campaigns. Recent upgrades and enhancements to Google Analytics make both possible.

Google Analytics offers tons of fancy charts and graphs that can be intimidating to even the most seasoned search marketers. To turn that stream of data into useful and actionable information, you must create reports that give you the information you need when you need it.

This month, I will discuss how to create and use four fundamental GA reports to help you manage your campaigns. These are:

• Goals > Funnel Visualization
• Custom Reporting
• Traffic Sources > Search Engines
• Content >Top Content Report

A quick recap from part one: Any of the reports reviewed here can be added to your Dashboard. They can also be set up as recurring reports under the Email>Schedule tab. How you view the data varies as well, whether as a table, percentage, performance, comparison, pivot or detail. Lastly, you can deliver finished reports in Excel, or PDF, XML, TSV or CSV based on your preference.

Now let’s take a look at the four fundamental reports that will help you manage your campaigns.

Goals > funnel visualization

Setting up goals is vital to understanding PPC performance. The Goal>Funnel Visualization report will show you a visual representation of a goal funnel based on the steps that you defined for the goal. Much like a real funnel, this report can also show you where the “leaks” are in your website’s steps to goal completion.

I use this report to identify key reasons prospects don’t take the desired online actions. This is a great way to identify steps in the “path to conversion” that need to be improved. For example, if the report indicates that the vast majority of prospects are bailing before completing a registration form, then perhaps your form is too long or onerous based on the perceived value of what is received in exchange for personal contact information.

Custom reporting

Custom reports can be set up for information that you need daily or monthly. If you find that you are running multiple reports and then combining into one report, this might be a good solution for you. The user-friendly interface makes setting up these reports pretty easy, but you will want to use the Preview Report feature to make sure that you are capturing what you intended prior to saving the report.

One custom report that I use weekly is a single view report of revenue by source/medium. With one click, I can easily review and compare how each campaign, ad group and keyword is performing in terms of revenue generation. This type of insight is critically important if you need to better focus a limited PPC budget or improve overall ROI.

Traffic sources > search engines

This report breaks down the site traffic by source (e.g. total/paid/non-paid), site usage, goal conversion or ecommerce. This report will give you information on where your site traffic is coming from, and which sources/mediums are trending up or down. You can also look at month over last very easily.

Content >top content report

This report shows which pages or sections are the most popular on your website. Pages with fewer visits can be better optimized and landing page efforts can be evaluated. Once you click through on to the page that you want to view, take a look at the Analysis features. Navigation and Entrance data can be displayed and is particularly helpful in analyzing user behavior.

I primarily use this report to identify landing page opportunities, opportunities for improvement in content, navigation and for text ad optimization. As you might suspect, this is a great report for SEO as well.

PPC & Google Analytics: a symbiotic relationship

There is no doubt that using Google Analytics for all of your PPC needs makes sense. The cross-engine compatibility, user-friendly interface, robust Help section and an unlimited number of ways to pivot information makes PPC management a breeze.

Please be sure to review Part One of this article to insure that you are starting off on the right foot with Google Analytics. Of particular importance are making sure that GA has been properly installed on the website pages that you are tracking. Also, that you have properly used the GA URL Builder, or compatible application to build your keywords for the other engines.

Most importantly, have fun and remember to always test and refine. The more you use Google Analytics, the more you will learn to love it!

Measurement. Better yet, effective measurement. Because, as we all know, you can’t improve what you don’t accurately measure.

If you’re like most search marketers, you’ve often wished for more insight into your campaigns than what AdWords alone can provide. You may also be looking for a ‘one-stop’ place to analyze all of your PPC data from all engines and efforts. Recent upgrades and enhancements to Google Analytics make both possible.

While those of us who rely heavily on Google Analytics (GA) are still getting up to speed on the new features released in October, it is important to get back to GA 101 and look at the features that can really give you the most bang for your PPC buck.

In this article, I’ll present four steps to improve PPC performance by using Google Analytics:

Before we continue, there are some assumptions and necessary steps for success. Most important, however, is that GA has been properly installed on the website pages that you are tracking. If you are unsure about this, please stop here and read this.

Another assumption is that you have used the GA URL Builder, or compatible application, to build your keywords for the other engines. More information on this is available within Google Analytics support documentation.

Linking your AdWords account to your GA account

The biggest benefit to using Google Analytics to measure you PPC efforts is its ability to have all of your data in one place. Linking your AdWords account to GA brings all of your PPC data to a single, customizable repository you can use for measurement and reporting.

Before you link your account, ensure that you’ve used the same Google Account email address for both your Analytics and AdWords account, and that the AdWords login email address has Admin access on the Analytics account. If you haven’t used the same Google Account, simply add your AdWords login email address to your Analytics account as an Account Admin.

• Go to Reporting>Google Analytics
• If you already have an Analytics account, click I already have a Google Analytics account
• From the Existing Google Analytics Account drop-down list, select the name of the Analytics account you’d like to link to
• Click Link Account
• Next time you log in to AdWords, go to  Reporting>Google Analytics and you should be linked up

Setting up your GA Dashboard

One of the greatest strengths of GA is the ability to customize your initial screen or dashboard view to display data that is most important to you every time you log in.

All GA reports have an “Add to Dashboard” icon in the upper left side of the screen. If you have a report that you use daily/monthly, click this button to add it to your front-page dashboard for easier access. The four fundamental reports that we will review should definitely be part of your GA Dashboard.

Setting up GA goals

As I said earlier, you can’t improve what you don’t accurately measure. And you can’t accurately measure your PPC performance without clearly defined goals or metrics for success. There are many factors that go into creating goals. You should consider the following issues when setting goals:

• Did you or the client help with these goals?
• Match types/Case Sensitive. Are they working?
• What are your conversion goals for the site?
• Do you have a good idea of what the user is doing while on your site to get to that goal?

Google Analytics is most powerful when you are tracking these additional steps as well as the goal itself. Be sure to get buy-in from your client or your boss before creating these goals. What you think is a good goal may not be right for them. You all need to be on the same page to prove the success of your campaigns.

Creating reports to measure success

The Google Analytics interface is full of pretty charts and graphs that can be intimidating to even the most seasoned search marketers. To turn that stream of data into useful and actionable information, you must create reports that give you the information you need when you need it. They can be canned GA reports or custom reports you create yourself. Either way, these reports will give you the ability to extract and present your successes and show you where there is room for improvement.

In Part two of this step by step guide, I will discuss four fundamental GA Reports to help you manage your campaigns.

This is a very legitimate question, particularly in this economic climate where companies are looking to cut corner Consider, too, that this becomes a stickier wicket when some search engine sponsored listings can have the appearance of organic listings.

The short answer?  ”Because you need to be in both places to increase the searcher’s confidence.”

We all learned this in SEM 101. The famous heat map showing how a searcher views a results page.  Well, this tried and true research still holds firm. So tell them they need to be in both places.

Maximize conversions

In a 2007 report, Enquiro Search Solutions reported that for branded keywords, there was a +7% increase in conversions when branded terms were in both the top ad and top organic positions. This data clearly indicates a lack of confidence when a brand name is searched on and there are no results!

Block competitors

Leaving your brand name to only show up in organic results offers an easy target for your competitors to exploit. With just a few well-placed header tags of your name, they can leapfrog your listings rather easily. And speaking of confidence, imagine the lack of searcher confidence if they look for your brand and only find your competitor.

Capitalize on early research

Do not underestimate the ‘research’ search cycle either. B2B marketers must embrace their customers’ entire buying process and reach prospects early during the research phase. If you are not visible in early-phase search results, customers are not going to buy from you now, or later.

Benefits of PPC and organic visibility

Summing it up, the benefits of combining branded SEO and PPC include:

• Improving your market positioning
• Blocking competitor’s ads
• Maximizing “share of voice” and search engine results page real estate
• Improving brand recall
• Improving purchase and lead generation results
• Maximizing overall marketing ROI

How to maximize results on a limited budget

Once you have convinced your company or client, you can expect another question: “How can I maximize my exposure on a limited budget?” These five pieces of advice will help increase exposure and stretch those shrinking budgets.

What to include (and what to leave out). Forget trying to be all things to all searchers. Focus on the brand names that you must have—branded searches that have the highest conversions and lowest cost. These are the terms that should also be present in your ad copy so that you are ranking well on paid and organic listings.

Provide a specific destination. In the interest of getting more bang for your buck, consider linking searchers to a targeted landing page rather than the home page. Not to say that you want to have a loss-leader pitch, but take them to whatever promotion you are currently hawking in your other marketing efforts.

Leverage other marketing efforts. Nothing says “well-rounded marketing program” like having your paid and organic listings support your other marketing efforts. Leverage these “non search” efforts by sending them to the same page.

Pay attention to your analytics. As previously mentioned, the ‘research’ cycle is often unappreciated. Those 90 day cookies are very important to understand and refer back to so that you have a full picture of how successful your marketing efforts have been.

Consider day-parting. Hourly and daily reports are your friend. Take a good look and try to maximize your spend by turning your campaigns off on your slower days or time of day. Make sure however, that your company knows you will be employing this tactic. You don’t want to receive a call on a Sunday morning because someone decided to Google themselves.

The importance of branded search programs for both paid and organic listings can be an economical and powerful way to promote your company even with budgetary constraints. With careful planning and close monitoring, it is possible to not miss a beat (or a conversion) even in these tough economic times.