Search & Analytics provides readers with tips and techniques for utilizing web search analytics and measurement tools to define and manage success metrics from (organic and paid) search driven traffic. Columnists write about the basics of implementing analytics software, covering tagging and tracking search traffic to more advanced issues and topics such as ROI and conversion tracking, as well as how to gain greater insight and develop actionable strategies from your search analytics data.

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Justified – Beginning Steps To Proving Your Internet Marketing Point

Jan 13, 2012 at 9:38am ET by Carrie Hill

If you’re working in online marketing in some function, you’ve battled this – the need to justify your marketing budget to the bean counters in the office 10 floors up, or even next door. Those not "in the know" about the truly trackable benefits of online marketing are generally skeptical at best when told "I can show you where every penny went, and what we got back in return." The inability to track return on radio, tv or even print ad buys without extensive (and frankly pretty difficult) work and integration between multiple departments makes these less than desireable mediums i [...]

How Much Is A Click Really Worth?

Jan 6, 2012 at 9:46am ET by Benny Blum

All forms of paid advertising use the max bid - it’s the most basic concept yet calculating the theoretical maximum value to pay for a click is surprisingly difficult. It’s not that the math is tough; it just takes stepping back from the granularity of channel specific optimization to get a more holistic look at how marketing channels interact with each other. Looking at one marketing channel at a time provides incomplete insight into performance yet, ironically, many businesses split management of channels across multiple teams and incentivize marketing mangers on performance leading t [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Search & Analytics

How To Track Emerging Search Engine Blekko In Web Analytics Systems

Dec 30, 2011 at 9:01am ET by Sean Carlos

More than a year has passed since search engine upstart blekko launched, yet Web marketing analysts using digital media measurement tools like Google Analytics won't have seen any traffic attributed to blekko in organic search marketing reports. Instead, traffic supplied by blekko will show up in a referring websites report. It is possible to properly attribute blekko search traffic referrals by implementing advanced Web analytics configuration techniques. Is the extra effort worth the trouble? Certainly investors are betting on blekko. In late September, blekko received an addition $30 [...]

It’s All About Data: Our Most Popular Analytics Posts In 2011

Dec 23, 2011 at 10:36am ET by Elisabeth Osmeloski

You know how some people always tend to put 'analytical thinking' skills down on a resume, even if it's not 100% accurate? Luckily, that's not the case with our analytics experts at Search Engine Land. Over the course of 2011, our contributors shared everything and anything they know about measuring the value of website traffic, social media influence, direct ROI and looking critically at campaign data to squeeze out any insights and create efficiency. Here's a look at the top analytics-related posts, organized by their respective categories from the last year. Big Picture Analytical T [...]

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A Beginners Guide To Finding Ad Placements & Fine Tune Conversions With Analytics Data

Dec 16, 2011 at 11:56am ET by Carrie Hill

Many new webmasters and website marketers are under the mistaken impression that online marketing is a "Field of Dreams" and "if you build it, they will come." Unfortunately, you can build it, but if you don’t market it, and place it in front of the audience that buys your products, nobody will come, and neither will their credit cards. Using data from your website, you can find and fine tune advertising placements that increase your foot and online traffic; today, we’re going to show you how. First, have a realistic idea of who your audience is. If you’re a travel or tourism busin [...]

The Search Marketer’s Dilemma: Reporting Vs. Optimizing

Dec 9, 2011 at 12:59pm ET by Benny Blum

Cross-channel revenue attribution - arguably the most widely agreed upon concept in the analytics space – is ironically the source of the search marketer’s dilemma. The dilemma is simple conceptually but digging into it brings up some fundamental flaws in conversion modeling and highlights the underlying catch-22 that marketers face. It all starts with a simple question: Should you optimize a specific marketing channel based off analytics data or proprietary channel data? To answer the dilemma, let’s set the stage of why the dilemma exists in the first place: it’s impossible to a [...]

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Search Campaign Optimization Through Touchpoint Analysis

Dec 2, 2011 at 8:59am ET by Manu Mathew

A vitally important first step to the attribution management process is to gather all the data associated with the "touches" that have been experienced by your target audience both as a result of being exposed to all your marketing efforts and direct traffic. Each "touchpoint" associated with each individual has numerous attributes or characteristics associated with it. For example, each search impression or click has attributes such as keyword, engine, placement/ranking, ad creative, offer, landing page, day-part, and more. Each display ad impression or click has a different set of c [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Search & Analytics

A Beginner’s Guide To Setting Goals In Google Analytics

Nov 25, 2011 at 9:17am ET by Carrie Hill

When I first started using Google Analytics, my "goal" was to not run away screaming. The intense amount of information, seemingly disconnected, made understanding what I needed so overwhelming. In my last article,we talked about the basic reports you should watch as a beginner. This week, we’re going to work on how to make Google Analytics work for you via Goal setup and configuration. The first thing you need to do after login is find where to setup goals, which is not where you see the goal results. In reality, most of the setup in Google Analytics happens behind the sprocket in th [...]

How To Analyze Your Content Performance In Google Analytics

Nov 18, 2011 at 12:09pm ET by Matties Otter

Google Analytics is divided in five main categories: Visitors Advertising Traffic Sources Content Conversions In this post, I want to talk about the Content category. I will not discuss all the reports available, but the ones I use most frequently. If you click on Content it will expand to the sections below: Overview The overview gives a quick overall view of your content. You can see metrics such as pageviews, unique pageviews, avg. time on page and bounce rate. By using the date range option on the top right corner, you can select your date range and also ea [...]

How To Measure The True Return On Your Ad Spend

Nov 11, 2011 at 8:56am ET by Benny Blum

Proprietary campaign management systems (eg AdWords, AdCenter, Facebook, etc) allow advertisers to track conversions and manage towards efficiency metrics such as Cost per Acquisition or Order (CPA / CPO). Some, such as AdWords and AdCenter, take performance management a bit further and allow advertisers to return a revenue value per conversion to report Return On Ad Spend (ROAS). But these systems stop here; failing to allow advertisers to optimize based on true, billed, revenue rather than booked revenue. Booked orders are the gross – total orders captured via a standard online purch [...]

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Data Shows Retailers Need To Pace Spend To Maximize Black Friday Performance

Nov 4, 2011 at 11:24am ET by Siddharth Shah

Traffic volatility can make spend pacing during Black Friday very challenging. Spend too much too soon and you might suffer a lower ROI and not have money left for Cyber Monday. Spend less and you might be missing out on consumer volume. Performance data from the past three years reveals that search marketers are indeed leaving money on the table. Spend drops during the week in anticipation of Black Friday and then picks up on Black Friday. The ROI increases by 20% over baseline too. Spend on Cyber Monday increased 50% over baseline in the past three years but the ROI more than doubled t [...]

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3 Metrics Google Analytics Beginners Should Watch

Oct 28, 2011 at 10:56am ET by Carrie Hill

The first login to a Google Analytics account can be daunting. There are so many things to see, and so many different ways to tweak data, that deciding which are the most important metrics to watch can be an insurmountable decision. Ultimately, in my opinion, you are the only one who can decide what metrics and reports are important to your business. Some websites don't collect money but do send traffic to other sites, or collect subscriptions or email sign-ups as a form of conversion. Some do collect money, but it's just a small portion of their business; the phone call may really be co [...]

Want Better Google Analytics Data? Learn To Tag Your Campaigns!

Oct 21, 2011 at 2:07pm ET by Klaas Knook

One of the most important hurdles to tackle before analyzing data is collecting clean and correct data. There are many ways to make your data more accurate; tagging is one of them. Although the correct tagging of your campaigns seems something basic, I still see a lot of companies and websites that aren’t tagging at all or do it in a wrong way. In this article, I will explain the major tagging issues and how to tag correctly. Campaign Tagging Problems The most important issue with tagging your campaigns is the involvement of many different colleagues and partners. With the implementa [...]

Social Deals: Opportunity Cost & Customer Lifetime Value

Oct 14, 2011 at 11:59am ET by Benny Blum

It’s probably my fault but I receive what seems like 20 emails a days from an endless stream of Groupon emulators, flash sites and discount etailers that have taken my inbox by storm. These sites are saturating the online marketplace with tantalizing deals designed to make even the most staunch consumers (like my wife) … well, consume. It’s inevitable after seeing other businesses participate on Living Social or Google Deals to think about giving it a shot, but before joining the social ad phenomenon, I’d like to offer some insight and analysis behind this new movement. Like any [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Search & Analytics

How The Rise Of Mobile Devices Has Affected Search Spend

Oct 7, 2011 at 9:36am ET by Siddharth Shah

A few months ago, I published a report about the rise of mobile devices including tablets. In this report, I showed that in a span of less than a year, mobile paid search spend went from 0.5% to 4.2% -- an almost 9 fold increase. In that report, I also projected that by the end of 2011, mobile spend would be between 7 and 9.5% of all paid Search spend. Well, it seems my projections are right on track with current market trends. When I looked at mobile spend for September 2011, the share is aggressively on the rise. Here is how Mobile usage stacked up against Desktop usage in September [...]

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Event Tracking 101 For Google Analytics

Sep 30, 2011 at 4:13pm ET by Carrie Hill

Setting up Analytics accounts has evolved beyond installing "generated" scripts on pages and calling it a day. What started with the advent of software that told us how many "hits" we got a day has evolved into a sophisticated decision assistance engine, and keeping up on the new and cutting edge offers full time employment for many people across the world. As part of our website designs, many of us feature various graphic "buttons" or images on our site that either link to interior pages, booking paths, or even lead users off-site. We embed video, or have image links to our social media [...]

How To Use Day Parting In Google Analytics To Optimize Your Budget

Sep 23, 2011 at 1:56pm ET by Matties Otter

All too often, there are still companies who set their daily budget on their Adwords campaigns that is not sufficient in comparison to the available search volume. This will cause lost impression share. If your campaigns are performing according to the KPIs you have set, the budget should not be a factor. With the day parts option in Google Analytics, you can see the performance of your campaigns during the different hours of the day or days of the week. For companies with a fixed daily budget, the day parts option can give you insight to increase or decrease bids on certain hours of th [...]

Is Google’s Doubleclick Trying To Squash Search Technology Providers?

Sep 16, 2011 at 10:53am ET by Benny Blum

Since no analytics provider seems to have invented the perfect system to meet every need, we’re seeing an increasing number of advertisers using multiple systems together in order capture a wider set of data for reporting and optimization purposes. This is generally some combination of a search/display/Facebook technology provider and one or more analytics systems such as Google Analytics, Omniture, Web Trends, or Doubleclick. Each system requires some combination of dynamic parameters or URL redirects to capture the necessary data about a click and/or conversion, so there’s a scienc [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Search & Analytics

Cost Per Like Campaigns On Facebook: The CTR, Conversion Rate, Reach Tradeoff

Sep 9, 2011 at 12:40pm ET by Siddharth Shah

Managers of Facebook Fan acquisition campaigns are often faced with a dilemma when creating campaigns. They often ask whether or not they should they go for a broad audience and greater reach or should they go narrow and target audiences that might have a very small reach but a high affinity for a product. Marketers also frequently ask if they should design ad copies solely with click though rate (CTR) in mind or not. The thinking goes like this: since the incremental effort in liking a product or brand is small and there is no monetary transaction involved, a person who clicks on an ad wil [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Search & Analytics

How Analytics Can Help Balance Your Annual Search Advertising Budget

Sep 2, 2011 at 9:34am ET by Klaas Knook

At the online marketing agency I work for, we primarily focus on ROI driven online marketing campaigns. With this marketing philosophy, search engine advertising (SEA) budgets don’t play a role, and as long as every order delivers profit / ROI, the SEA budget should be endless. Of course, this ideal situation doesn’t happen at a lot of organizations. They are working with half-year or yearly SEA budgets set at the beginning of each year. These search advertising budgets are mostly divided by the number of months and maybe a little extra in the busiest months of the year. But is this [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Analytics | Search & Analytics

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