For many of us that own blogs and generate excellent relatable content, engagement seems to linger just beyond our reach. We write well, there's praise, tweets, shares, +1's – but just how much of your content is being read? Going beyond the search and keyword into how those keywords bring the visitor into content they either read or don't read, is the next step beyond basic Google Analytics. Many in the industry believe a fast bounce from your page back to the search results is a negative in Google's eyes. That user is basically voting your content down, saying "this isn't what I wanted [...]

Related Topics: Beginner | Channel: Analytics | Google: Analytics | How To: Analytics | Search & Analytics

A critical part of doing a site or link audit is checking to see how many 404 (page not found) pages there are in a site. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen an audit that lists the total number of 404 pages and advises developers to find appropriate pages to redirect these 404 pages to. That’s no big deal if we’re talking about just 20 to 30 pages. But, when a site has 404 pages in the thousands, and you tell the developers to fix these pages, you’re going to look more than a little ridiculous. So, how can you find out which of those 404 pages are actually important? Two [...]

Related Topics: Beginner | Channel: Analytics | How To | How To: Analytics | How To: Links | How To: SEO | Link Week

A few weeks ago, at SMX West in San Jose, George Michie of RKG, was talking about the challenges of managing enterprise-level PPC campaigns, and he made the interesting observation that you can either manage to ROI or to budgets, but not both at the same time. The context of George’s remarks was setting expectations with client C-Level executives and educating them about what is and what is not possible with online marketing campaigns. [caption id="attachment_153754" align="aligncenter" width="550"] Maximizing PPC ad spend and managing to best ROI are usually conflicting goals.[/captio [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | How To | How To: PPC | Intermediate | Paid Search

As you might guess, we QA a lot of Google Analytics installs. It is often a maddening task that makes you want to "gaq." However, there are some nice tools that go a long way toward making life easier. If you are questioning the data you're getting out of Google Analytics; if your e-commerce reporting doesn't match your sales; if you really thought there'd be more downloads of your whitepaper on the fonts used in movie credits; then you can use these tools to find out if Google Analytics is broken or if the error lies somewhere else. This is how we do it. Things That Go Wrong Typos [...]

Related Topics: Beginner | Channel: Analytics | Google: Analytics | How To | How To: Analytics | Search & Analytics

Google Webmaster Tools can be a powerful ally. But, if you make a mistake or put this power in the wrong hands, it can mean trouble for your search engine optimization. In this post, I provide a basic SEO Guide to Webmaster Tools to help get you started if you aren't taking full advantage of WMT yet. It is very important to point out that some of these things are more detrimental than others. Also, there could be multiple articles written about each of these tools and reports. This SEO guide to Webmaster Tools is a simple overview with a little insight. [caption id="attachment_153210" al [...]

Related Topics: All Things SEO | Beginner | Channel: SEO | Google: Webmaster Central | How To | How To: SEO

I've recently spoken with three business owners who have approached me in a fairly atypical way: instead of asking me for a proposal, they've given me theirs. It's been a fascinating glimpse into the dangers of thinking that just because you read a lot about link building (and by and large, most people who tell me what they "know" will work say that they read every link building article that comes out), you're equipped to run a successful campaign. Here's the most common thing that these guys have in common:   They have a link plan that is absolutely and completely unsustainable [...]

Related Topics: Beginner | Channel: SEO | How To | How To: Links | Link Building | Link Building: General | Link Week

It’s officially Spring! The time when we all start thinking about websites. No, I’m lying, you’re probably thinking about getting outside instead of reading this article. But, on the subject of website redesign, we’re leading several of our clients through this right now. As they’re all at various stages and have various requirements for the finished project, I thought it might be beneficial to write up a content strategy process you can use when you do redesign your website. Hire The Right People You need: A Website Developer: one who is open to a variety of platforms and c [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | How To: SEO | Keywords & Content

Recently, I was asked to run an estimate of traffic opportunity for a multinational sports franchise in which I modeled their current global traffic against brand visibility growth opportunities. However, I also identified that to make the estimate relevant, I needed to quantify the traffic more than they had suggested. So, like all good Web marketers do, I got revenue involved in the equation. Want to know how to understand the revenue opportunity available to your brand globally? Read on... Calculating The Size Of The Pie First up: what's the current global reach of my client? To und [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | How To | How To: Analytics | How To: PPC | Intermediate | Multinational Search

As every search marketer should be aware by now, AdWords enhanced campaigns now allow you to set campaign-level bid multipliers for your mobile impressions, and also by geo. While mobile bid multipliers seem to be more of a step backward compared to mobile targeted campaigns, geo bid multipliers are actually a nice feature and definitely a step forward in terms of control and transparency. Anyway, this post is about helping search marketers determine those mobile and geo bid multipliers based on historical data. 1. Pulling The Data From AdWords In AdWords, first go to the ‘Dimensions� [...]

Related Topics: Advanced | Channel: Analytics | Google: AdWords: Enhanced Campaigns | How To | How To: Analytics | Search & Analytics

Getting the whole story from your analytics is always a work in progress. Not only do we need to look at user behaviors (or the lack thereof), we need to look at user experience interaction as well as revenues. One mistake I see many novice and new-to-analytics marketers fall into is ending their research path at the Revenue report in the E-commerce section of Google Analytics. While knowing how much revenue your products are generating is important, there's more than just direct revenue. While the argument can, and should, be made for engagement being a form of ROI, I'm actually referring [...]

Related Topics: Beginner | Channel: Analytics | Google: Analytics | How To: Analytics | Search & Analytics

There’s been a lot of confusion among paid search marketers upset about the lack of device targeting in Enhanced Campaigns. This article will tell you how to advertise your mobile app using AdWords while checking out the new app promotion ad format in AdWords. One of the most common hypothetical use cases for device targeting in AdWords has to do with mobile apps. For example, a mobile app developer who doesn’t want to target desktops because their app only works on say, iOS tablets – it would make no sense for these ads to show up on Windows desktop computer searches. One Search E [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | How To | How To: Mobile Marketing | How To: PPC | Intermediate | Paid Search

My previous article was about estimating the potential for growth for those paid search campaigns capped due to insufficient budget. This was definitely the easy part since the logic behind the assumptions involved in the calculation was fairly simple. Now, we can address those paid search campaigns capped due to insufficient rank – and there are going to be more assumptions involved since all metrics are going to be impacted: the rank obviously, then the CTR, CPC, and pretty much everything else as a result. This article goes beyond impression share (IS) analysis and is actually mostl [...]

Related Topics: Advanced | Channel: Analytics | How To | How To: Analytics | Search & Analytics

Unfortunately for those of us who work in the international space, launching a global PPC campaign is much less successful than doing so domestically? Why is this and what’s to be done? Culture and language is the answer you’re expecting from me – right? Yes, that’s definitely an important part of the mix, but there is more, much more, to it than that. Listening to Chinese military strategist, Sun Tzu, can give us a few clues. I have a sneaking suspicion that he would have also made a great PPC strategist. [caption id="attachment_148854" align="aligncenter" width="480"] Knowin [...]

Related Topics: Beginner | Channel: SEO | How To | How To: PPC | Multinational Search

More so than any other product in the AdWords suite, managing, reporting on, and making sense out of Product Listing Ads (PLAs) extends beyond the toolsets provided in AdWords. The levers that we can push and pull exist within two unique systems -- AdWords and Merchant Center -- and, as a result, we need to do some internal legwork in order to effectively merge the inputs and outputs and come up with actionable analytics to optimize on. At my agency, we’ve been working on some different ways to more effectively work with PLAs, given the available analytics and levers for optimization. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | How To | How To: Analytics | Intermediate | Search & Analytics

In January, Marin Software released a study on Google’s 2012 transition from Google Product Search to the commercial, “pay-to-play” model built on Product Listing Ads. When this enhanced shopping experience was first announced in May of 2012, online retailers reacted with both praise and criticism. However, since the transition, PLA campaigns have performed with a great deal of success. In fact, by the end of December 2012, the share of spend on PLA campaigns had increased 600% compared to January. More importantly, during the fourth quarter of 2012, as holiday shoppers searched and p [...]

Related Topics: Advanced | Channel: SEM | Enterprise SEM | Google: AdWords | Google: Product Search | How To | How To: PPC

I'm sure many of you are aware that Ad Rank in Google AdWords is derived from the price you are willing to pay (bid price) multiplied by relevance (Quality Score), along with other factors. This is an extremely profitable model for Google as the majority of its income is derived from advertising revenue. Since Google has a history of applying successful strategies to solve different problems, the use of Paid Inclusion was not unexpected when it introduced Google Shopping and Product Listing Ads (PLA). Retailers advertising in Google Shopping should know the definition of Google Product R [...]

Related Topics: Advanced | Channel: Retail | How To | How To: SEM | Search & Retail

The bane of most search marketers’ existence is search query ambiguity. Is a user searching for [one night stand] interested in an illicit affair or a piece of antique oak furniture for his bedroom? Does the query [internet security] reflect the needs of a consumer fed up with viruses or a CIO looking for a $10 million enterprise solution? John Battelle has called a search engine a “database of intentions,” but that database is often fuzzy, to say the least. In many cases, it would be much easier for marketers to know who the user doing the search was, as opposed to for what they w [...]

Related Topics: B2B Search Marketing | Channel: Social | How To | How To: SEM | How To: Social Media Marketing | Intermediate

The quest for the right Google Analytics dashboard, custom report or advanced segment generally begins with a problem that you cannot solve. Until now, you searched for others with your same problem and hoped they shared the solution in a blog post so you didn't have to figure it out all by yourself. While there's real value in solving your own issues, that take so much time to figure out; whereas, finding a solution that others have created is a win in my book. Google Analytics Solution Gallery Last week, Google announced an effort to make finding such solutions even more easily available [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Google: Analytics | How To: Analytics | Search & Analytics

As promised last month, I’ll be sharing more information about how to do mobile SEO specifically and less about why to do mobile SEO. This month, I’m going to go through how to do mobile keyword research. First, though, a brief explanation of why to do mobile keyword research. Mobile Keyword Research Then & Now One of the primary reasons for doing mobile keyword research is that you could be missing out on keywords that your audience uses on mobile that they don’t use on desktop (e.g., [keyword + “nearby”]). There are some categories, such as restaurants, where upwards of 30 [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | How To | How To: Mobile Marketing | How To: SEO | Intermediate | Mobile Search | SEO: Mobile Search

In a typical organization, the social media tweets away in one department while content writers toil away in another. The social team links to fresh content, sure... and that’s about the extent of their interactions. But, at the end of the day, what you post and share on social media is content, and it’s time we start treating our social postings with the same amount of gravity as we do our content. Fact: social media posts are content. They may be abbreviated and (in some cases) more casual, but they’re content all the same. They’re written to get attention; they can be optimized f [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | How To | How To: Social Media Marketing | Intermediate | Search & Social