Have you ever done a search to find out how to do something in Excel, just to find the search results littered with macro options? I used to avoid those results like the plague because I found macros (at least those beyond what I could create with the Macros Recorder) really intimidating. And I’m writing this post because I'm assuming that I’m not the only one who has done that. Amiright? So I’m going to show you how to take a macro you find online or get from a trusted source and add it to your workbook and run it — on both a PC and Mac. If you want to follow along, you can down [...]

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

Custom variables are one of the most (if not the most) powerful tools Google Analytics has to offer to better understand your audiences from search and social. Unfortunately, they’re also one of the most underrated and underused. So, if they’re so useful, why do so few sites utilize them? For the same reason that custom variables (CVs) are so powerful: they’re infinitely customizable. In other words: there is no one-size-fits-all variable. It doesn’t come equipped straight out of the gate; additional assembly is required. You’ll need to set it up yourself to match your site’s a [...]

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

You must test ads to make your paid search account grow and thrive. That fact is no longer debatable – it is just a best practice fact. Ad testing in small accounts is very easy as there are not thousands of ad group or hundreds of thousands of ads to track. However, in large accounts, ad testing is often not done well. In today’s column, we’ll examine the most common testing techniques and why they are rarely successful, and then address how to test ads across large accounts. Common Testing Techniques For Large Accounts One of the most common is to create lots of ads. Turn on ‘op [...]

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

It’s said that keywords are a proxy for a customer, right? So let’s talk about the customer. Schema this, canonical that, and black and white zoo animals… if you don’t have a search expert on payroll, you’re already behind the Joneses. I get emails like the one below all the time, this one being from the talented owner of Castleview 3D Architectural Renderings: “I need your help.  I realy don't get the whole keywords/SEO/web marketing thing -- but I know enough to know that I shouldn't and don't want to tackle it myself. I'm a small business (small = just me) and maybe I can't [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Critics | How To: SEO | Keywords & Content | SEO: General

We've all seen it, lurking in our Analytics reports, nearly always at the top, sucking a huge chunk of data into a black hole of uncertainty and uselessness. Not provided was predicted as having a single-digit impact on sites. In my research, I've found it to have upwards of a 40% impact, especially on smaller traffic sites. In conversations with clients, and looking at my own sites, I knew the numbers had to be better – but what do you tell a client when chunks of data, in some cases over 30%, are attributed to (not provided) instead of the keywords you've given time, attention and te [...]

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

A client asked me the other day why we were optimizing his software for Los Angeles, when he’s located in Raleigh, NC. In explaining the reason to him, I realized that a basic guideline for optimizing pages is long overdue. I’ve developed the following flow chart and explanation in response. Theming Content The first question you need to ask yourself when optimizing a page is, What is the Page About? If you can’t answer this or your answer is a keyword, then maybe you shouldn’t be building the page. Seriously. You need the page to be about something in order for it to have value [...]

Related Topics: Beginner | Channel: SEO | How To: SEO | Keywords & Content | SEO: General | SEO: Titles & Descriptions

If you're an intermediate to advanced Google Analytics user, this article will probably be of little interest to you personally. I suggest you bookmark it anyway as a reference for clients or friends who are just starting out with Analytics. As a long-time agency employee, I see many clients, prospects and even casual acquaintances with websites that feature absolutely no Analytics data. They have no idea what is going on, or what they're missing because the visitors that come to their site disappear into a vacuum. This article is meant to walk first-time installers through the process, [...]

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

When starting out with a new search effort or performing a keyword refresh for an existing website, the options for discovering new keywords are limited only by the SEO’s imagination. From the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, to digging through analytics, to leveraging sites like Soovle that discover ‘suggest’ keywords across multiple search engines, keyword discovery options abound. Building a pool of potential keywords to optimize for, however, is only half the battle. For those websites driving visitors to a ‘conversion event’ (e-commerce, asset download, form completion, etc [...]

Related Topics: All Things SEO | Channel: SEO | How To | How To: SEO | Intermediate

In the comments section of my last column, someone asked me about link audits, and after looking around to see if I could find a good resource to point her to, I didn't find anything that was exactly what I was looking for. I found loads of great pieces on SEO audits but not that much specific to links. (Maybe that particular SERP was affected by the latest Google update.) One reason that I've not written much about link audits is that it's a process that's very fluid for me. I love trying out new tools and there are always algorithm updates that favor something more than something else. [...]

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

As I start each day managing our PPC accounts, the same two questions always come to mind: "What problems do we have to address right away?" and "Where can we find more opportunities?" The more quickly I can get a handle on these two questions, the more quickly I can take appropriate actions. That’s why I love all the visual trend line graphs available in Google AdWords, Microsoft AdCenter and other paid search analytics tools. With a quick glance, well-trained eyes, and the same sense of investigative curiosity that we see every night in crime and courtroom TV programs, I can quickly [...]

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

When working with AdWords Keyword reports downloaded from the Web interface, you may come across Keywords with their Match Types signified by special punctuation, rather than a separate column indicating Match Type. In this post, we will use some Excel VBA code that will help us work back and forth between this format and the regular, two column format recognized by AdWords Editor. As an example, we can add all of our existing broad match keywords as exact match so we can refine our bidding control on them. Let's get started. This posting format originated as a means of uploading keyword [...]

Related Topics: Advanced | Channel: SEM | How To | How To: PPC | Search Marketing Toolbox

Linkbuilding still lies at the core of any successful SEO campaign. Indeed, campaigns at the very top end in the most competitive verticals are all about the effectiveness of their linkbuilding strategy. When you look at delivering significant returns across a range of countries, this truism is even more pronounced: despite all the advances in SEO strategy over the years, without a killer linkbuilding strategy you won't compete at the very top level.   Achieve Lasting Link Value The guts of a solid strategy, for me, revolve around achieving excellence in two areas of your linkbuil [...]

Related Topics: Advanced | Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | How To: Links | Link Building | Multinational Search

There is little doubt that mobile search is the hot topic in the SEO world at the moment. Some brands are now finding that more than 30 percent of all searches come from mobile devices, according to Mobile Marketer. It’s fair to say that mobile search is quickly moving out of the Stone Age and into the digital age. That's the premise of a new insight paper, Mobile SEO Best Practices, published recently by my company, MediaWhiz (disclosure: I lead MediaWhiz's search marketing and digital strategy divisions). In addition to a list of our top-10 tips for effective mobile SEO, the paper offers [...]

Related Topics: Beginner | Channel: Mobile | How To | How To: Mobile Marketing | Mobile Search

Google’s display network is massive, encompassing more than 4 billion daily page views, 700 million monthly users, and reaching more than 80% of the online audience. Yet, with all this inventory, many marketers fail with display marketing. The major reasons are they either are trying to reach the incorrect goals or they don’t understand how all the targeting options work. In this article, I’m going to walk through how to get started with display advertising so you can avoid some of the most common mistakes that cause marketers to fail with the network. Display Keywords Most ma [...]

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

Recently, I ran an audit on 56 music industry websites and received a startling result. Sixteen sites, 28.6%, forward people from their domain name to their homepage using 302 Temporary Redirects. These sites are tossing away valuable link authority! If your domain and homepage are different, determine how the domains forward visitors to the actual homepage. The correct way to forward visitors from one Web address to another is via a 301 Permanent Redirect. A permanent redirect tells search engines to take the authority from off-site links pointing at your domain and apply it to your rea [...]

Related Topics: All Things SEO | Channel: SEO | How To | How To: SEO | Intermediate

Often when I complete a keyword research project for a client, they ask me about keywords I may not have included, or they want to know what the relative competition on the keywords looks like. This happens often enough that I thought I would remind everyone that while research for SEO and PPC can go hand in hand, they’re actually very different. First, think about what your goals are with each medium. What are you trying to do, and what constitutes success in that area? Next, think about how the keywords will be used. Where, when, how often? Finally, consider what your margin for erro [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: SEO | How To: PPC | How To: SEO | Keywords & Content | Microsoft: Bing SEO | Search Marketing: Search Term Research | SEO: Writing & Body Copy | Yahoo: SEO

Remarketing has been around for quite a while as part of the Google AdWords suite of tools. Remarketing works by creating a "list" or "audience" within Google AdWords. The pages that are pertinent to that audience are tagged with special code that allows Google to place a cookie in the browser of anyone who visits that page. It's a great way for you to get your brand out there in front of your website visitors, even when they're not thinking about shopping and buying from your site. There are tons of ways for you to segment your website to serve remarketing ads; you can even get as granular [...]

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

Do you spit out status updates on Facebook for your local business without much thought? Carefully engineering your status updates can result in more effective targeting, better engagement with your audience, and improved EdgeRank to help more of your followers actually see your status updates. These tips should be considered to be "spice", rather than the meat in cooking up your Facebook contents. Use these tips with some restraint and balance or you could create fatigue for your followers, resulting in reduction of your audience engagement rather than growth of it. Increasing engagemen [...]

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

Recently, I was on an in-house SEO panel at SMX with REI's Jonathon Colman. Most of the audience's questions centered around explaining and reporting relevant metrics to upper management. Turns out, while search has come a long way, many execs still use terms like "Google Juice" and define success as launching a PPC campaign to "rank number 1 for our competitor's name". This issue is even more pronounced in larger, established companies where search makes up a smaller portion of the marketing mix. :::sigh::: Jonathon's primary recommendation centered around "data visualization" - expl [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Enterprise SEO | How To | How To: Analytics | Intermediate

In my last column, I looked at some of the differences between small and large accounts as the best practices vary for each. In this column, we’re going to specifically focus on one of the most common small accounts: local accounts; and examine some of the best practices for this type of small account. A local account is where there is a limited geographic area being served. When you combine a limited geographic reach with a small budget, you often run into problems trying to balance spending the budget on highly relevant keywords while getting a high enough return for the budget so th [...]

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