Although worth the money, the investment in these programs sometimes escapes the marketing budgets of smaller companies. The argument for better conversion rates is sometimes enough to convince you, or your client, to make the leap. I find that the higher the cost of the products, sometimes the conversion rates are quite low, and this step is scary.

Sometimes we have to tweak and maintain PPC accounts the old fashioned way, by hand. We also don’t always have unique landing pages available, so we build what we can and use existing pages as landing pages. This makes analysis of what you’re doing even more critical. Does the query match the landing page – in your eyes, your user’s eyes, and the eyes of the Search Engine that uses relevancy to determine your CPC, position, etc?

While maintaining keywords, ads and landing page bounce and click-through rates by hand, I generally have Google Analytics open on the other monitor so I can review bounce rate from PPC ads and keywords to show me what keywords and ads land on landing pages that in turn realize high bounce rates.

I use a couple of indicators to find this data. First,I open Google Analytics and navigate to the Traffic Sources section.  If we’re talking Google AdWords traffic, the built-in features here make it easy to get to the data you want – we’ll start there.

Google AdWords

Drill down into the AdWords section under Traffic Sources, then choose the AdGroup you’re working on.

Choose the AdGroup you want to work on:

• In the first column, leave the drop down on “Keywords”
• In the second column, change the drop down to “Landing Page”
• Under “Views” (top of the image below on the right) choose “Comparison”
• Leave the 3rd Column “Visits”
• Change the 4th Column to “Bounce Rate”

Now start reviewing the landing pages that have a higher than the site average bounce rate. If the site average is kind of high, don’t forget to look at pages that have a bounce rate that is “x% better” than the site average. Because you should be writing multiple ads for each ad group, you need to look at what landing pages you’re using for each ad. One keyword can have a few potential landing pages.

In the example above, the keyword is the same but has 3 potential landing pages, we can see that one landing page is not acceptable at all – showing a bounce rate 122% HIGHER than the site average; but the bounce rate on the other two landing pages is 100% better than the site average. From this data,  you can do two things:

• Give this keyword a dedicated destination URL
• Tweak ad creative to eliminate the poor performer

If your AdGroups are VERY granular, I would tweak the landing pages on the poor performing ads to match the best performing landing page. You can take this testing a step further and write a comparison ad exploring the possibility for another landing page, if you have one.

If your AdGroups are not that granular, you could choose the best URL above and make it a dedicated destination URL for that keyword. It depends upon whether you want to test more ads and landing pages for this keyword.

Referrer accounts that are not AdWords

These are a little trickier. The key here is to have a unique source code, or have campaign tracking set up for our outside PPCs. We do this in two different ways:

1. Add “?source=MSNPPCGroup1″ to the end of your landing page URLs in the AdGroup or at the keyword level in the non-Google CPC/PPC site
2. Use the Google Analytics URL Builder to set up a source code that can be turned into a campaign in Google Analytics.  These urls look like this: http://www.domain.com/?utm_source=Yahoo&utm_medium=CPC&utm_campaign=Group1

You’re going to be better off using option 2 and setting up campaigns in the long run. We have clients that have done it the old way (version 1) for years, so we’ve continued doing that. It does work quite well and its quick. If you don’t have huge campaigns, this might be enough for you.

If you’ve set these up as campaigns, you can drill into them nearly exactly like you did for the AdWords above. If you use option number 1, you can get the same info by following the steps below:

Choose content from the menu, and then select “Top Content”:

• Go to the bottom of the list and in the Filter Page box and leave the drop down as “Containing” and enter “MSN” or “Yahoo” or another parameter from your ?source= code & select “Go”
• Select the source code that correlates to the campaign/group you’re working on
• From the drop down next to “Analyze” choose “Entrance Keywords”
• Choose “Comparison” from the “Views” menu
• Make the 2nd column “Landing Page”
• Make the 3rd column “Unique Pageviews”
• Make the 4th Column “Bounce Rate”

You can evaluate the keywords and their landing pages much the same as you did above! Find the poor performing landing pages, tweak them in your dashboard according to keyword or ad and make educated decisions on what landing pages work best for your users.

Although there are some good posts out there on conference strategy, I’d like to share my top twenty tips for making your conference investment of time and money a fulfilling experience.

1. Plan your session strategy. The agenda should be available weeks ahead of time. Print it out and circle the sessions you know you want to attend. If there are conflicts, maybe you can go to the first half of one and then the last half of the other. Are there lulls in the schedule where you can take a break? Make your game plan before you arrive. You can always switch it up when you get to the conference, but at least you have a well thought out schedule ready for you.
2. Stay at the conference hotel. Not every conference is located in a hotel or has one attached, but unless the cost is astronomical compared to staying elsewhere, book early so you can stay there. The few times I stayed offsite (simply due to the lack of rooms available) made my trips less enjoyable.
3. Pack accordingly. This should be a no-brainer, but check the weather, folks.  Just because it’s Phoenix doesn’t mean it doesn’t get cold there. And will there be any formal occasions where a suit/tie (or dress, ladies) will be needed?   This is a general tip for good traveling but it’s even more important to consider as you’ll be representing yourself and your company to hundreds (maybe thousands) of people in your industry.
4. Get a room with a view. Most conferences are several days long. Getting a room that has a nice view of the city will definitely make your stay more enjoyable. Call the hotel days before you arrive to see you can avoid a view of the parking lot.
5. Check the speaker list. As with the session list, you should have a pretty good idea of who the speakers are before you arrive. Sometimes, you may want to attend a session of a topic which you normally wouldn’t go to except for that one of your favorite thought leaders will be speaking. The search marketing community is a small world – chances are someone who wrote an SEM article of interest to you may be speaking at the next conference.
6. Get the lay of the land. One of the first things I do when I arrive to the site is figure out where I am and what’s around me. In the hotel:  where’s the vending, where’s the ice, what time does the gift shop open in case I need a razor, when does the pool close, etc. Around the hotel: what’s within walking distance, where’s the closest convenience store, is it safe to walk at night, etc. At the conference: where are the bathrooms, where are the meeting rooms, etc.
7. Pace yourself. Sitting there, hour after hour, looking at charts and listening to speakers can exhaust your mind. If you need to, take a session off. Go back to your room or take a nice walk. You’ll get more out of four sessions with a break than five without one. Stay hydrated!
8. Don’t neglect your work at home. Some people like to “shut off” when they go away for conferences but my opinion is that this isn’t a vacation, it’s work. I try to check my email regularly and urge my colleagues and clients to text my cell if I’m needed. I’d much rather take care of an issue with a quick five-minute phone call than get back and discover a big problem could have be averted.
9. Ask questions. Write them down so you don’t forget as the Q&A portion is usually at the end of each session. Also, stand up and say your name and your company name when/if it’s your turn on the micrphone. Not only is it good promotion, but the rest of us want to know if you have a background that could change the way we perceive your insights.
10. Get a seat. Some conferences are overbooked and certainly some sessions can fill up quickly. If you get there too late, you may find that you’ll have to stand in the back of the room or sit against the wall and have people tripping over your legs as they walk by. If there’s a session you really want to attend, it might be best to leave the previous one a few minutes early so that you can get a good seat.
11. Bring lots of business cards. Every conference, I always hear someone say that they’re out of cards. To me, that’s a sin and you should be whipped with a wet noodle for eternity. Bring a whole box of cards if need be. Don’t lose a business opportunity because of such a simple mistake.
12. Know that anyone could be listening. A little tip from a guy who’s put his foot in his mouth on more than one occasion. You never know who you could be over hearing your conversations. I’m going to leave it at that.
13. Find out where the parties are. Other than the conference sponsored events, there are usually other fun things going on such as vendor parties. Ask around. Someone will clue you in eventually. Yes, you’re there for business but search marketers can be fun folks. Go hang out!
14. At least ask other pros about resources. Many of the people you meet will actually be competitors of yours and may not want to share some of the intimate details and tactics of their client campaigns. However, most search marketers will share what resources they use such as technology solutions, valuable blogs, etc. Feel free to ask very direct questions as you may strike gold.
15. Work the exhibitor hall. I try to hit each booth and really get a good understanding of each vendor and what they offer. Not only is this a good way to network, but you may find some gems hidden in the rough. Even if you think you know all about Vendor A, check in with them to see if they have anything new to share.
16. Mix it up. Don’t sit with the same folks during the sessions, at the dinners, etc. Put yourself out of your comfort zone and sit down with complete strangers.  By the time you’re done, you’ll have five new friends.
17. Always be aware of where the outlets are. Either inside the session rooms or on the conference floor, there’s going to certainly be a low ratio of people to power outlets. Find out where they are and make a mental note.  You may need to add some juice to your phone or laptop at some point. (Tip: find pack a small powerstrip and you’ll have instant conference friends.)
18. Get your hands on the presentations. After the event, most conferences provide the opportunity to access some or all of the content that was presented during the sessions. If for some reasons one of the presentations you really want isn’t available, try contacting the moderator directly to see if they’ll send it to you. They usually will.
19. Take notes to share with your company. Unless you’re a solo operator, you have a company back home who is fitting the bill for this trip. Increase the value of this expense by bringing back a ton of good tips and tricks which you can share with your co-workers. At my agency, we usually write up a recap of the conferences we attend and send those out when we return. You may even want to setup a short company meeting where you go through what you’ve learned. Spreading this knowledge out is almost like your entire team had attended the conference–that’s value.
20. Follow up. All of those connections and networking events were worthless if you don’t follow up. I usually write details of the people I meet on the back of their business cards. That way, a week later when I’m back in the office, I remember which ones I need to call back or were waiting on something for me to send.

Before I start with a problem site, I take a few measurements.  Whenever you’re trying to solve a problem, you need to figure out where you’re starting from to make sure you’re helping and not hurting your efforts. I start by pulling a variety of data:

1. Note the number of submitted and indexed pages from Google Webmaster Central. Generally, you need to submit a sitemap to get this data, and if you’re having indexing problems,  this can really help. That being said, I don’t always submit an XML sitemap to Google. There are times to do it, and times to not worry about it. If I haven’t submitted a sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools, I do a site:domain.com query in Google and look at the number of pages listed initially. By paging through all of the results of the site: query, you’ll see that number reduce as you get to the “end.”  This is the true number of pages Google has in the index showing as query results.
2. Run an SEMRush report to measure how many organic top-20 rankings I have.
3. Use a crawling program to pull a realistic page list from my site.  Once I have this list I move through and eliminate any pages I don’t want in the index and figure out how I have or should have eliminated them, either by no index tags, roboots.txt exclusion, or parameter exclusion in Webmaster Tools (see more about parameter exclusion below).

NOTE: If my number of indexed pages matches my total page count pretty closely, I’m not really looking at a problem. The reality is – the larger the site, the more problems I generally find.

After I’ve pulled the baseline data, I look at all of my URLs and start comparing them to the list of indexed pages, and note the ones that are not indexed. Once I have a true grasp on the pages that are not in the index, I start navigating the site to those pages. I move through the site to the un-indexed pages and try to determine why they’re not being crawled. As you perform this step on your own site, look at the links, the navigation, urls, and navigation as you go through.

Generally speaking, I can solve the problems with indexing by finding remedies for at least one of the following problems:

• Robots.txt file excludes that page/folder by mistake. For whatever reason, you may haveexcluded a folder or section of the site during design or testing, and forgot to remove that restriction in your robots.txt file. This is probably the easiest thing to check and fix,  and if you’re really lucky, that’s all it takes.
• URLs contain excluded parameters. As with the robots.txt file, you can tell Google to ignore specific parameters if those parameters contain duplicate content.  One indexing issue may be3 caused by asking Google to exclude a parameter you actually wanted included.  Check your webmaster tools account under site configuration, settings, Parameter Handling.
• Content that is inadequate or duplicate of other pages. Many sites contain duplicate content. In some cases, this is inevitable and even okay. The key to controlling duplicate content issues is to tell Google which page you want them to read, and how to get there. Use your robots.txt and parameter handling to tell Google which pages to ignore, and make sure the bots can get into the page you want them to index easily. Not all pages with content problems are duplicate; sometimes the content is just inadequate for ranking.

  The goal of content is to tell the user and the search engine what that page is about. If there’s no text on the page, or very little, the search engines don’t know how to rank that page. Having a page title and a meta description isn’t enough; the content on the page has to support the keywords in your titles and descriptions or you might as well not even have them.

• Not enough inbound links to trickle interest deep into the site. Links are the bread and butter of search engine rankings. If you don’t have a healthy number of links coming into your site, there’s not enough link “juice” to trickle down into those interior pages. Ideally, you’ve build a good number of quality links into interior pages of the site to help push that juice deep into the site. Keep in mind, the larger the site, the more quality links you need to support high rankings. While bringing links into a site is important, being careful not to bleed a ton of page rank with off-site links is also important. Consider your website to be like a kitchen colander, the more holes it has (outbound links) the faster the juice drains out.
• No link to that page exists on an indexed/cached page.  Having either a good contextual link or navigational link to those deep pages is key to getting the search engine boxes in there.  Believe it or not, sometimes links gong to deep pages are graphical or buttons, and in many cases those are not being followed by the bots. Although this sounds like a simple thing to check, depending upon the number of un-indexed URLs you’re digging through it can take a lot of time to review.
• Navigation that cannot be indexed. Every once in awhile I run across navigation that is built in flash or other solutions that don’t provide indexable links to interior pages. Honestly, you can solve this by building contextual links to your interior pages, but I would probably look at an overhaul off the site to help with this problem. Good websites have indexable and contextual navigation links, in my opinion.

Figuring out  and fixing your indexing issues is definitely worth the time you invest into it, but it also takes a variety of approaches. Start with the easy steps, and progress into the hardest ones to complete. I listed the steps above in order of effort involved to check and solve, so start at the top and work your way down. Once you’ve found your issue, start watching for improvement in the metrics you baselined at the beginning of your efforts.

With the evolution of tracking software – what we know, and what we can track has become much more sophisticated. With that ability,comes the onset of confusion.

• What should you be looking at in your analytics dashboard?
• There’s a ton of stuff there – where do you start?
• Is the end result the most important result?

The sale or the submission may be the goal of your site, but there are a lot of choices and clicks between points A and Z. Keeping track of path through your site may be more profitable than just looking at the end results.

My work at Blizzard deals exclusively with the travel and tourism industries; as such, we try to track revenue from online bookings for most clients – although there are a few who don’t book online, or don’t have booking engines sophisticated enough for us to track online revenue. Many clients have come to us with very little or no tracking in place with the misconception that as long as they’re getting the phone call or the booking, it doesn’t really matter what they’re doing on the site.

In any industry, profit lies in taking advantage of what you’re not already getting. Online revenue tracking tells us what is working – and what isn’t working – but it doesn’t necessarily tell us why it might not be working.

Depending upon the purpose of your website, tracking goals may vary. A site used to generate leads for a sales force would pay very close attention to the number of Requests for Proposal submitted. The goal of the affiliate marketing site is to achieve the click through the link that brings the most revenue to the site owner.

Whatever your end goal, finding fault with the process users follow to reach that end goal is where the real return can be found. Think of it this way: if you’re making $50,000 per year and you have no idea what your highest bounce rate page is, you could have the potential increase your annual revenue via traffic you’re already receiving. Think about it – a 5% conversion rate, increased to a 10% conversion rate means double revenue from existing traffic!

These are the elements I watch the most when I’m looking to increase a client’s conversion rate:

• Bounce Rate – If traffic is leaving before I even get them past the first page – why and how can I stop them from leaving?
• Top Landing Pages – My content may be great, but if my landing pages don’t give a clear path to conversion, I can make it better and keep more visitors involved in the process.
• Exit Pages – Where are people leaving my site, and why?  Exit pages should be booking/sales pages – if they’re not, you can reinforce your conversion path on these pages to keep the user interested further into the process.
• New vs. Returning Visitors – Sales and submittals are usually made by returning customers, after they’ve shopped the competition. This ratio tells you how well you’re engaging the first time visitor and helping them find you again.
• Browser info – If 20% of your visitors are landing on your site via a Firefox browser, but your site doesn’t “work” in Firefox, you have the opportunity to serve that many more visitors by coding your site to work in multiple browsers.

The most important thing to remember about analytics is to stay focused, don’t get distracted by all the bells and whistles, and only bit off as much as you can chew, so to speak. Being aware of the issues doesn’t mean they all have to be fixed right away. Prioritize the problems and attack the one that has the highest potential return first.

Paid search management tool basics

1. Allows you to manage your campaigns from anywhere in the world at any time.
2. A simple and intuitive interface that does not require a degree in engineering.
3. The ability to manage the most popular PPC advertising vehicles: Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing.
4. A wizard or step-by-step instructions on setting up an account and campaigns, determining a budget, selecting keywords and writing ads.
5. The option of monitoring multiple campaigns with multiple goals at the same time.
6. The ability to set goals and use several different bidding strategies automatically without human intervention.
7. The flexibility for you to fine-tune your campaign keywords, ads, goals and budget at any time.
8. The option to set-up e-mail alerts for performance changes that you define based on your own criteria.
9. A history or summary screen that gives you an overall picture of your campaigns without having to run reports.
10. A robust reporting function that allows you to generate reports using many different variables that you choose on your own.

Many tools on the market allow you to do these ten tasks and much more, so it can be hard to navigate through the field in order to find the right one. They certainly all say they have the best customer service, show off their extensive client list, and boast about how their approach and their technology is the best in the market. Certainly companies that have been in business for awhile could may at first seem to have the advantage over newer startups, but you may find that it’s these more nimble players that have the most cutting edge solutions. And even if it’s easy to cut out most of the field immediately, it can get really tough to pick a winner from the final, worthy candidates.

One good piece of advice I can pass along is that no matter how many features the current tools have to offer, there probably never will be one that has all of the bells and whistles you really want. We often end up choosing a solution that we know isn’t going to meet one hundred percent of our needs, but  enough so that it sets itself apart from the field. In the end, we hope that our final decision will bring to our team a tool that fits the bill enough to be a valuable partner for years.

Choosing the right tool can be paralysis by analysis. The final decision could be more about chemistry and a gut feeling than the technology itself. You want to make the right decision, but without a crystal ball, who could possibly know what your experience will be until your team really gets into the tool and puts it through the wringer?

I’ve seen demos for about every SEM tool on the market, sat through countless pitches, and worked in at least a half dozen of the top tools available. Having recently performed an SEM tool review (and switch) for my company, I’d like to share some of the best practices and things to consider when in the market for a new search engine management tool.

• First of all, do you really need something new? Switching tools is not like switching which laundry detergent you use. It can be an absolute nightmare. Just the training and getting your entire team comfortable with a new SEM platform can be a two to six month process. No matter how great the new tool is, be prepared to hear the moans and groans of your team when they find something in there that isn’t as good as the previous one. Make sure your current pain points are truly a justification for making a switch.
• Don’t just go with the first guy. Do your due diligence. Even if the first tool you demo seems like it’s the right fit, you owe it to yourself and your team to make sure you look at least one or two others to see what’s out there.
• Know what’s most important to you. For SEM tools, the main points which influence the final decision are usually price, technology, track record, look/feel of the interface, bells & whistles, and support. I know that many companies just look for the safest option. Even if there are other, newer tools that seem to have more robust features, they don’t want to take a chance that their search data will be handled poorly. For some companies that are short on resources, having a SEM tool that provides more of a full service approach could be key. For others, especially online retailers, a tool that has the best bid optimization to handle millions of keywords towards a CPA goal is the biggest factor. Before going into this review process, make sure you have truly gathered all of the feedback from your team so that you can set you criteria.
• Remember, no one tool will be 100%. I have literally never seen any tool (let alone a search management one) that completely fulfills all needs. It just doesn’t exist. Even if your find a tool that fits most of your needs, you will have to settle. This tip isn’t meant to be negative, it’s just the truth. The point is, don’t feel discouraged that you’re not finding the perfect platform.  The goal of your review will be to find the best one for you out of what is available.
• Ask around. Personal recommendations from other professionals are going to be your best source of data.  Word of mouth is always a very powerful influence in buying decisions for good reason. Try to find a SEM pro that you respect and get their opinion. Find out what tools they use and why. You may uncover some excellent intel to help you make your decision.
• What’s on the product road map? Is the vendor constantly updating their tool? They should be able to share with you which features are currently being developed and what will be added in the near future. However, take this information with a grain of salt. When they tell you a feature will be available in six months, just know the development process can sometimes have unforeseen delays. Do not hold your SEM vendor to a tight product roadmap schedule. My best advice is to base your decision on the state of the tool today and not what it could be next year.
• Bring your team into the process. Everyone who is going to be using the tool should have some say into the final decision. Once you’ve narrowed the vendor consideration set down to a few of the best, have them take your team through their demos. Urge your team to address every question/concern they have and collect feedback immediately after the session.  They could uncover issues that you may have not thought to ask.
• What is the level of support? This is actually one of my most important criteria. Will you get an experienced account manager or is the tool more of a self-service solution? Can you reach an actual technical support person on the phone 24/7, just during business hours, or is it an email ticket system where you may have to wait hours for an answer? Also, what level of initial training is provided? What is available to you after the setup phase? Training videos? A robust knowledge base? Do they even have a manual for you? 
• Find out exactly what the deal is. There can be hidden soft costs such as setup fees, overages, etc.  Be especially aware of your minimum spends…tools need to have monthly/quarterly/yearly minimums in place to make sure they have enough support bandwidth in place to handle the volume of business. But what happens if your spend levels drop?  Will you have to pay them thousands of dollars at the end of the quarter? Minimums are actually a good business practice but just know what you’re getting into.
• Ask each vendor what questions you should ask their competitors. Search management software is their business. They know the industry better than anyone. Some of the best advice I’ve received about a tool is from competitors. Don’t try to get them to talk poorly of the other tools on the market, but they may certainly have some insight regarding the other vendors that could prove to be invaluable.
• Make sure you have an “out clause”. You never know what you’re actually getting into. At first, it may seem like the perfect partnership, but if you’re two months into the relationship and it’s become obvious that they aren’t the tool for you, make sure you have an out clause in place so you can bail if you need to. It should be fair to both sides and usually is in the thirty day notice range.

Choosing the right search marketing tool for your company is not an easy decision. Just make sure you get as much information as possible and follow the tips above.

Testing on the web has come such a long way in recent years. Once upon a time you had to make a change, and then watch metrics to see if things were better or worse. Now you can make educated choices to determine why people aren’t clicking on a button, or why they’re distracted from beginning your sales funnel with a variety of inexpensive tools and metrics that any webmaster, beginner or expert, can use. Aside from systemic issues such as bad coding that makes pages load extremely slowly, its quite easy to fix your high bounce rate pages.

Fixing high bounce rate pages in two simple steps

The first thing I do when I work on a web page with a high bounce rate is figure out what is distracting the user and making them leave. I always start with the organic phrases used to find that page. For example, one of my clients offers vacation rental units in a variety of complexes around Mexico coastal resorts. His number two keyword is “Riviera Maya weather.” The landing page for that keyword has a 70%+ bounce rate, and my client wanted to know why. All it took was a quick look at the page to see that it isn’t about weather at all—it’s about renting vacation units in a complex, with weather info pasted in below the fold.

The problem? the searcher is mislead to believe the page is about weather. When they land on the page and don’t see the weather information they’re expecting, they leave right away, their queries unanswered. In this scenario we’ve learned the first rule of fixing high bounce rate pages: Make sure traffic to the page is targeted and you’re giving users what you promise in the search query on the landing page they arrive on.

After determining the traffic to the page is targeted and should be engaging with the content, I look at the layout itself. I use a few tools for this depending upon the timeframe I have for research. If I need immediate results I capture a .jpeg of the above the fold portion of web page, and run it through the Attention Wizard tool from Site Tuners. This tool simulates the eye tracking on a page via an algorithm and generates a heat map of the hot spots and path the typical eye will take around the page. This provides really quite remarkable insight that can help you find fast ideas for improving engagement on a page. Attention Wizard is also great for testing page layouts you want to try, because the page doesn’t have to be live anywhere. If you can create a .jpg of a page you can test its potential results.

If I have more time to test, and want results based on the eyetracking from actual visitors rather than that simulated by an algorithm, I use ClickTale, which I’ve talked about previously.

Either tool will help you determine where they eye and the mouse is going instead of into your sales funnel. Use this data to improve page layout and get users to your message faster. The second rule of fixing high bounce rate pages: Make your conversion path so easy to follow that a monkey could figure it out.

Bounce rates can kill your conversion path, but in reality they’re pretty simple to fix. Can every high bounce rate page be fixed with these steps? Probably not, but I bet you can address 75% of the issues caused by high bounce rate pages by following these steps.

One step that seems to be overlooked when people are starting to test their own websites is developing a benchmark or baseline.  Knowing where the starting line is makes the finish line visible, if you don’t know where you started – how do you know where you’re finishing?

Benchmarking data is definitely a subjective practice. Back in the day, the baseline was Google backlinks and Pagerank. Now in the age of hardly changing Pagerank and stingy reporting on backlinks, those metrics  change enough to validate testing unless you’re changing one thing a year – and who has time for that slow progress?

Today, I’ll take you through some tools and data I use to determine a baseline of where my clients are when I start testing something new; mainly to see if they’re affected negatively or positively as soon as possible after the change is made.

Google Analytics benchmarking service

Although this service has been available since May of 2008, I fear its being underutilized in most cases. Honestly, I find this feature to be one of the most valuable tools I’ve used to see how we’re doing as an agency. I also use it to watch increases and declines based on changes I’m making to a clients web strategy or website. Of course, sharing the information with a client is also a smart move as it allows them to compare their website against other websites in that may be direct or indirect competitors.

Benchmarking data can be found in your Google Analytics under Visitors and it must be enabled to start tracking. After you’ve enabled the data to be collected, it can take up to 2 weeks to see the benchmark data. Once you start receiving data, benchmarking is activated, the information is eye opening for sure. Below, I’m sharing some benchmark info for a new client that is a large resort property just north of Playa del Carmen. We converted their old website to WordPress in November and watched our benchmark data to see if we helped or hindered the user. We saw immediate results. Before pulling this data, I set the benchmarking data to compare their website to other hotel and accommodation websites of similar size. Our client is the data in blue, the black is the benchmark average of the aggregate data within the category.

Visits Benchmark

Bounce Rate Benchmark (Can you tell when we launched the new website?)

Average Time on Site Benchmark

As we work on reoptimizing or revamping some pages on this site, I’ll watch this data day to day to see if the changes we make are affecting the benchmark in a positive or negative way.

Eye tracking and heat mapping

These services have been around for a few years – although they’re mostly used for finding problems, I use them to make sure I’m not “creating” problems with my testing and fine tuning. I recommend checking out ClickTale to get a great idea of what is and is NOT working on your pages. I like the heat maps and the movies you can see of your visitors’ browsing sessions. This gives you great insight into where people go and what they “try” to do on your page. As you make changes, watch how the videos change, and if your calls to action, button insertions, image changes, etc are changing things for the better or worse.

Tracking ranking and links

I do tend to agree with the folks that encourage us to not obsess over rankings – they’re not a true measure of how you’re doing. But, do keep in mind when you’re testing – loosing ranking for terms that you did well for can be an indicator of one of those crappy theories I talked about previously. To stay on track and be sure I’m following the Search Marketer’s Hippocratic Oath “try not to screw this up too bad”, I use SEMRush or SheerSEO to track ranking and/or incoming link growth or decline, for my clients. SheerSEO accomplishes both of these and is fairly inexpensive, and the more domains you sign up – the less expensive each is. Their customer service is top notch and they’re easy to work with. You can track hundreds of keywords and have a report emailed to you weekly or monthly showing gains and declines along with nice graphics that show the data for each keyword or as an aggregate.

SEMRush is rolling out new features every day, the one I like right now is the ability to see the number of keywords for which a domain is ranked top 20. That’s a handy measure to track with clients as you’re reoptimizing a site or adding and changing content or structure. The one downside is they only update the data about every 3 months or so. Therefore, any report you ran after December 10^th is the same as it is today. That being said, the data is really cool to track on a quarterly basis and the clients love it.

These tools are all great for getting a comprehensive snapshot of the starting line as you test and fine-tune your way to better ROI. But I still think your most valuable tools are going to be common sense and a methodical approach to making changes. If you’re not sure your thinking is sound, don’t be afraid to bounce the idea off a mentor or a friend in the industry. Consider trying your more abstract ideas on sites that, while not necessarily “disposable,” can afford to take a hit or two when it comes to ROI.

Ad exchanges are marketplaces for online display [banner] inventory that have been creeping up on us for the last several years. These technology platforms create major efficiencies for both the buyers and the sellers of online display. Effectively cutting out the sales team and the middle men (i.e. ad networks), advertisers and their agencies can purchase inventory directly through these exchanges in an auction-based model without all of the extra soft costs that usually accompany media buying.

It gets even better – with the rise of demand-side platforms such as Turn, Invite Media and others, users can now manage multiple exchanges from one tool (the same way DART Search or other SEM tools allow you to manage your Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft keyword buys.)

The biggest step for the ad exchange business happened in 2007, when all three major search engine players acquired exchange companies to strengthen their foothold in the space (Google bought DoubleClick, Yahoo bought RightMedia, Microsoft bought AdECN.) Since then, the ad exchange universe has been growing steadily.

The major evolution of exchanges that affects you, the search marketing pro – is the advancing ubiquity of real-time bidding (RTB) across the exchanges. Instead of loading up targeting and bidding instructions in your demand side platforms and letting them buy the compatible inventory, RTB allows you to appraise each and every available impression and decide on the spot whether you want to bid on it and how much it’s worth to you.

For example, in real-time, you may discover an impression that is about to be served to a user who has visited your site multiple times but never purchased. Because of this, you may be willing to pay a premium to get back in front of that person. As well, data providers like Blue Kai and Excelate allow you to import valuable third party data, which may open up the opportunity to be able to identify the cookies on users who have been to certain websites, taken various actions online, belong to your target demographic, etc. There are literally thousands of data points which could influence bidding strategies.

Ad exchanges certainly won’t supplant all media buying as we know it today. But they are here to stay. In fact, the pundits are predicting that there will be tremendous growth in the buying of digital media via these platforms within the next five years. It seems inevitable that a portion of all inventory that can be digitally bought and sold will eventually be on exchanges: search, mobile, digital television, digital out-of-home, etc.

So if these platforms represent a huge shift in the way media is bought today, where are we going to find the human capital to manage these systems? (Hint: the name of this website is a clue.)

Check out this quote from one of the thought leaders in the space, Eric Picard:

I envision a world where media planners will spend the bulk of their time defining the goals of the advertiser, and translating those goals into complex instructions that can be interpreted by software. The ad platforms of the future will match these instructions against available ad inventory that is enriched with targeting attributes based on user behavior and content associations — and then optimized in an automated fashion by very smart systems.

Does that sound like a media buying system you already know and love, SEMers? Sounds like AdWords to me.

There’s further speculation from a recent article about how the market will begin to change as more and more buyers flock to exchange platforms:

–with lots of people targeting the same audience the profits to be made through specialized advertising become more and more spread out… instead of competing for one large pool… you will have price war in each targeted segment as the slice gets more and more narrow.

Does this remind you of what happened in the mid-2000s when paid search keyword costs skyrocketed as the market became saturated with bidders?

In my experience, digital media scares the bejebus out of traditional marketing buyers. And for even savvy digital media buyers, exchanges represent a huge change in what they do. I think it will be you, the search Analysts, that are most prepared to live in this data-intensive, auction-based valuation system. You’ve lived in pivot tables for years. You’ve spent countless nights digging into the most granular of data looking for the trend lines that will make your PPC efforts sing. That’s the kind of mindset that will be worth its weight in gold very soon.

And if that doesn’t make you happy to be in this field, check out this article from Rob Griffin called The Opportunity Impact of Change, where he outlines even more situations where the Search Analyst skill set will soon be in demand.

The one constant in search engine marketing is change. Things that worked a few months or even years ago don’t work today. Conversely, things that work today maybe didn’t work 2 months ago. Learning what is best for you and your site takes a lot of patience, research and testing.

If you’re a do-it-yourself website owner—or run your own company and do your online marketing in-house, using a tool like Google Website Optimizer can help you test different ideas and theories with ease. Testing your landing pages and conversion funnels can help you craft a site that is user friendly and more conversion friendly. Whether your goal is to sell an item, or generate a lead, simple steps to set up and implement a test can help you gain insight into what your audience is looking for.

Visiting Google.com/WebsiteOptimizer is an easy—and free—way to easily get started with a great tool that’s easy and intuitive to use. If you can design a new page and paste a bit of code into your website, you don’t need any help at all to get started. If you’re a design novice and have someone help you out, have them help design your test page and then it’s literally less than a half-hour of effort to install the scripts, provided there aren’t any special steps needed to make them work.

Tip: If you use WordPress, install the Easy Google Optimizer Plug-in for Wordpress from ImpressionEngineeers.com. This makes setting up your campaign a snap!

I also like to recommend Website Optimizer if you’re testing out some targeting and segmentation ideas, like the ones I put out in my last column “How to Target your SEO Landing Page’s Demographic Profile.” The reality is sometimes segmentation and targeting takes many many versions to dial in the right one. Being able to A/B test your original against a new version is a great way to see if the change should be permanent without guesswork.

The nice thing about the Website Optimizer interface is the step by step setup instructions. There is a “shopping list” of what you need before you start your test, and then a step by step Q&A to help you decide what type of test you need, what your conversion goal page should be and then the code is generated… voila!

Here are some screenshots to get you familiar with what you’re doing. This will take you through to the code generation portion of your test:

Step 1: Create a new experiment

Step 2: Choose the type of experiment

Step 3: Name and identify your control, test and conversion pages

Step 4: Tell Google how your scripts will be installed

Step 5: Copy and paste the code into your site and validate your pages

The most important rule to remember is to allow enough conversions for an accurate test. Google recommends around 100 conversions for an accurate measure. Some pages can reach that goal in a day, while some may take a month or more. If you have a site that receives a few conversions a week or month, you can still test. Consider making your “goal” a clickthru to the next page in the conversion path instead of a full blown conversion.

If you’re not sure where to start with your first test, some things I would suggest are:

Conversion button style and placement. Whether you’re looking for a “book online” or “contact us” type of conversions, work on how that message appears to your visitors. If it’s a text link buried in a paragraph, separate it out and give it a colorful, eye-catching button to entice more conversions. Use your testing to design the right button for your audience.

Navigation overhaul.. Is having left-hand navigation the best or should you move it to the right, can you eliminate some navigation to encourage the conversion action? Is the order of your navigation encouraging or discouraging engagement and conversion? Do some testing to figure it out.

Page layout. The middle left side of your page is a dead spot. Are you putting important information there? Try rearranging your text and important links to encourage more time on site and more clickthrus.

Virtual tour or image conversion optimization. If you use virtual tours or image galleries, try different techniques to layover or include links to help the visitor into your conversion path. These pages can rank well, so try to use them as much as you can.

Getting started with your testing can be intimidating, but the first test is definitely a milestone you should hit in January 2010! The results you see and the potential become addicting. Remember, a key part of the overall SEO process is to take time to work on not only the rankings and traffic to your site, but the nuts and bolts that make your site work for visitors.

One of the main reasons why grouping upwards of hundreds of thousands of keywords for an account (sometimes millions) is so difficult is because there are many different schools of thought on which direction to guide segmentation. First, there’s the ad copy assigned to the group which can dictate grouping decisions.

We all know that the best copy for the job is usually the most relevant. So, if you find a keyword you’re questioning in a group, the most effective tip I usually recommend is to try to get into the mind of the user. Does a person searching on that term match the message? If they’re using terms such as “more info” or “research” and the ad speaks to “buy now”, then it’s off target for the user’s current place in the buying cycle and the keyword should be moved.

You also have to consider pure logistics when it comes to keyword grouping. Having too many campaigns and ad groups can really make the reporting, managing, and optimization of an account a weighty task. With your keyword landscape constantly changing, you have to be flexible when it comes to targeting, pacing, and bidding, but you can’t let this completely dictate your grouping strategy. Don’t shy away from a bigger structure just for the sake of ease.

On a recent client campaign, we made the hard decision to split their initial single national campaign into forty separate geo-focused campaigns. Yes, frankly, it was a pain in the butt — especially because the client didn’t care either way when we brought up the issue. But we knew that by targeting at the metro level gave us the ability to personalize the creative to be locally focused (including the address of the store locations) and would be crucial to the success of the account.

And don’t forget Quality Score. A bad apple can ruin the batch. We generally take out poor QS performers and move them to their own campaigns so that they don’t negatively affect the others in their group.

Once you’re gone through the process of segmenting by message, management, and Quality Score, then you still have the chore of segmenting by branded terms, top of funnel/bottom of funnel terms, where in the buying cycle they seem, competitor terms, product terms, etc. It’s a huge ordeal. Luckily, there’s help. WordStream (which I wrote about in a previous column) is a tool specifically designed to help search marketers segment their keywords. This week they released two free tools that utilize their grouping technology.

I spoke with WordStream’s founder and VP of Product, Larry Kim, the likable, humble brainiac behind the scenes about these new tools and to pick his brain on keyword grouping; something he is very passionate about.

Q. You’ve suggested that if PPC marketers have time for only one change to optimize their SEM, they should “turn their attention to keyword grouping and organization.” Why do you feel so strongly on this particular optimization?

Larry: Google says that click-through rate is the biggest component of Quality Score. I have found the best way to improve CTR is through a structured approach to keyword research. If you ensure that the keywords in your ad groups are closely relevant to each other – which in turn enables you to match them up with highly relevant ad text and landing pages,  your CTR goes up because people tend to click on the ads that are most relevant to their searches.

With higher CTR and Quality Scores, you’ll realize better ad positioning, a reduction in actual cost per click, and even better conversion rates (by sending specific searches to specific landing pages, your potential customers are more likely to find what they’re looking for.) Furthermore, when you bucket similar keywords together into themed groups, routine tasks like bidding and reporting become easier and more effective. For example, if you decide to stop selling a particular product line, just turn off those ad groups rather than hunting for individual keywords.

My view is that keyword organization is a central point of leverage that affects everything in your PPC account. Do a good job here and everything else works much better.

Q. Keyword grouping can be hard. From a top level perspective, what’s your process for grouping?

Larry: Here’s a high-level overview of my strategy:

1. Start with broad keyword research. Assemble and aggregate keyword data from as many sources as possible, including Web analytics and keyword tools. Starting with plenty of keyword data allows you to test various avenues and determine which pockets of keywords perform best—it’s difficult to predict which keywords will actually end up working the hardest.
2. Form top-level keyword groups. These should be fairly broad and large. A good rule of thumb is to form top-level groups around your main offerings. So if you sell baked goods, top-level groups might include “cake,” “pie,” and “cookies.”
3. Create smaller subgroups. Each top-level group will break down into more specific groups of keywords—usually with a modifier tacked onto the offering. Subgroups under the cake group might include “chocolate cake,” “birthday cake,” “cupcakes,” etc. Do this with all your top-level groups and you’ll start to see a taxonomy, or hierarchy, emerge.
4. Keep going until your low-level groups are very small and tightly related. Pay particular attention to verbs and modifiers within a search query, which can reveal different layers of intent on the part of the searcher. The inclusion of transaction-oriented terms like “buy” and “compare prices” indicates someone late in the buying cycle. These clusters make great, highly targeted ad groups.

Q. Your company has just released two free tools to help with keyword grouping. Can you share some information on those?

Larry: Sure. We’ve released two patent-pending free keyword tools to showcase some of the power of keyword grouping and organization. The first is the Keyword Niche Finder. This tool is basically a keyword suggestion tool and a keyword grouping tool in one. You enter a keyword, and rather than getting back a list of single keywords, you get back structured keyword suggestions, grouped by relevance into potentially profitable keyword buckets. The idea is that once you have a keyword list, you need to start organizing it before you can do much with it, and the Keyword Niche Finder helps you get started with that organization. So for example, in the following screenshot, I did a search for “business cards” – the niche finder organizes the keywords into different niches like custom business cards, color business cards, etc.

The second tool is the Free Keyword Grouper. This one is similar but instead of starting with a keyword, you input a full list. So if you’ve already done some research using keyword tools, or if you have a keyword list from your analytics, you can just drop that in (up to 10,000 keywords) and it quickly groups them for you.

Using these tools instead of or in addition to standard keyword suggestion tools makes your keyword research much more actionable, by giving you tightly related groups that are ready to become PPC ad groups or themed content ideas for your website.

Q. So what if I have a keyword that could be in more than one ad group? That happens to me all of the time.

Larry: Different people have different approaches to duplicate keywords. My recommendation is to analyze the search query in question and try to infer the intent of the searcher. For example, consider the query “buy chocolate cake online”. Suppose you were selling food products online – you could possibly match this keyword in a group with other “cake” terms, or in a group with other “chocolate” terms. But which is more discriminating? What is the user actually looking for? In this case, I’d put it in the cake group. But you can always try putting the keyword in multiple groups and seeing where it performs better.

Q. How do match types enter into this conversation? Should you create separate groups for them?

Larry: Match types can kill all of your campaign organization efforts, because a non-specific keyword set on broad match can soak up millions of different search queries, even if you’ve gone through the effort of properly segmenting your keywords and creating targeted ads and landing pages. What we need is a keyword strategy for grouping and bidding so that AdWords will actually display the ads that we want to show.

I tend to group and subgroup keywords by intent, starting with non-specific categories and going towards more specific stuff, as described earlier.

If you’ve set up your keyword groups this way: bid slightly less on the less specific terms, and slightly more on the longer tail groupings. This way, you’re far less likely to have the more general keyword groupings “overshadow” the more relevant long-tail keywords. Also, consider putting the less-specific keyword groupings on more restrictive match types, like exact match, so they don’t soak up irrelevant impressions.

Q. Can you share any stories you’ve had where keyword grouping has been utilized for success?

Larry: Restructuring your ad groups based on your actual search query report data is like running your PPC campaign through a car wash. The before/after difference is staggering, particularly for accounts that have just a small number of ad groups with very general search terms (which is terrible.) We recently published a few case studies that show how much improvement is possible, including 1-800-Bakery and 1-800-Mattress. (Our strategy is to cornering the market on e-tailers with 1-800 in their company name… kidding!)

Q. Any last keyword grouping tips or tricks that you’d like to share?

Larry: Here are a few more tips:

1. Prioritize! A keyword grouping strategy can inform your PPC and SEO workflow. Simply look at the keyword groups that are driving the most traffic and conversions and direct your optimization efforts there. Ad groups that are soaking up tons of impressions/clicks/conversions should be analyzed and broken up into smaller, more specific ad groups. You can also prioritize landing page creation based on those ads.
2. Remember that keyword grouping is applicable for both PPC and SEO – it helps with topic selection, copywriting, on-page SEO, planning your information architecture, etc.
3. Think “scalable”. This is one of the biggest mistakes I see people make (and a lot of the impetus behind our Keyword Management solutions.) Lots of people use Excel or AdWords Editor and build groups that are short sighted and aren’t designed to scale with new keyword ideas, new products, etc. Be sure to focus your tools and your strategy on long-term organization.

I’m sure this all sounds like a lot of work (and believe me, it is) but if you care about profits, these are the tasks that will actually improve your ROI and give you a competitive edge in search in the long term.