Improve Your Google AdWords Quality Score - The PPC Chain

The beauty of pay-per-click advertising (in particular, Google AdWords) is that it's entirely possible for smaller businesses with lower budgets to compete with advertisers working with a six figure monthly budget. In their quest to always provide the most relevant results to end users, Google will reward advertisers that structure their PPC campaigns in a logical manner, via a higher Quality Score - with a higher Quality Score, your ads will appear in a higher position and at a lower cost-per-click compared to advertisers working with a low score.

A proper understanding of the Google AdWords hierarchy is key to this, but first we'll examine the elements that your campaign has to have in place to increase conversions; that is, the idea that there are three important items under your control that must align with user intent and expectation. If any step in this "PPC Chain" breaks, the user flits away like a distracted hummingbird, leaving you footing the bill for their visit with no conversion to show for it.

Whenever a user searches on Google, they have a clear end goal in mind - whether it's product research before buying all the way to actually making a purchase, there is an objective. Your job as an advertiser is to provide them with that information via these three items:

1. Search query - this step in the PPC Chain is essentially proper keyword research - the answer to the question, "What are my potential customers typing into Google?" Volumes have been written on this subject, but for a conversion-focused PPC campaign, your keywords should be the ones entered when a user is ready to buy. This will save unnecessary clicks (and ad spend) from visitors that are still far too early in the buying process to actually make a purchase decision.
2. Your ad - The placement and text of your ad plays a large role in the chain. Within the landscape of a Google search results page, your message has to cut through a lot of noise - other PPC ads, the natural or organic search results, Google Images results, Google Product results, YouTube videos, Google News results, etc. The text and headline of your PPC ad must be as specific as possible to the user's search query (step 1 in the chain), but also provide an incentive or selling proposition that tells the user why they should click on your ad rather than the 25 other results provided. 
3. Your landing page - Where does the visitor go after they click on your ad? Generally speaking, your website's homepage is not the best landing page. Remember, specificity is important here! Don't make me dig through your website to find the specific product I'm searching for - just take me there!

All three steps of the PPC Chain must align with user intent - if this chain breaks at any point, the chances of a conversion happening dramatically decrease.

Let's put this in context with an example. Let's say you're a PPC specialist for Amazon.com, camera division. How can you work through the 3 steps in the PPC Chain?

1. Search Query - If I'm considering purchasing a digital camera, and you sell digital cameras, this is a very good keyword for you to bid on. For one, it clearly shows what stage of the buying process I'm in! I haven't typed in "best digital camera" or even "nikon d3000 reviews" - no, I've made my decision and now I'm ready to spend money, dang it.

At this point, the user has clearly showed their intent - they're expecting Google's search results to transport them to their end point or objective of buying this camera.

2. Your ad - Specificity is the key here. Ideally, your ad will incorporate the search query in its entirety - when displaying PPC ads, Google will bold the words in your ad that match words within the search query. Again, in the highly competitive landscape of a search results page, you want to take any opportunity to can to increase the visibility of your ad.


This ad shown hits the key points - the specific product is called out within the ad copy. Rather than saying "Digital cameras for sale", the ad specifically calls out Nikon, and even better, the exact model I'm trying to buy. Note also that the destination URL contains the brand as well - this further reassures me that when I click this ad, I'll go to a specific page and not a generic homepage. Amazon gets bonus points here as well for including an incentive! I like free shipping. :)

3. Landing Page - the final step, where the user goes within your website, is a critical point in the process. An advertiser can have a great keyword list, awesome ad copy, then utterly break everything by sending a user to a list of products or, even worse, their homepage.

[Another mistake that many service industries make - taking users directly to your contact us page. This is like asking someone out by walking up to them and handing them your home address. A bit presumptuous, we think. :) ]

Similar to steps 1 and 2, we could talk all day about landing page quality, but generally you want to make sure that your page conforms to good design practices (IE, loads quickly, doesn't redirect users or attempt to install malicious software), has relevant & original content and addresses any expectations given by the ad copy. If you say free shipping, make sure your page says it!

With a proper understanding of the PPC Chain, you can properly structure your Google AdWords account to make this process run seamlessly for your pay-per-click visitors - apply this to your campaign and Ad Group structure to ensure that the proper search queries generate relevant and valuable ads, and that those ads take users to the most specific, conversion-focused landing page possible.

We'll discuss how to apply this framework to your account in a later blog post, but in the meantime, what are some examples of how you've best applied this process? Any horror stories on how this process can break down?

Add Facebook's "Like" Button in Blogger's Classic Templates

Adding Facebook's "Like" button to your blog is a great way to allow your content out and about for a night on the town. Any users that are logged into Facebook can visit your blog and immediately post your article to their Profile - thus showing up in their friends' News Feeds and (hopefully) increasing your readership base! If you're using a classic template in Blogger, here's how to add the button to each one of your posts.

First, get the HTML code for the "Like" button from Facebook. Depending on how much space you want to allocate, you can adjust width, text, and other settings. For example, here on the BEM Blog, we've specified not to show profile pictures of people who have Liked our content - this saves a bit of space for each post.

You'll be asked to enter your "URL to Like" - just put your blog's URL for right now. In a second, we'll modify this so it references each individual post's permalink. Hit "Get code" and you should see something like:

Go ahead and copy the HTML code under "iframe" - this code doesn't require the use of Facebook's Javascript SDK (that's a whole 'nother blog!) and can be dropped directly into your classic Blogger template.

Log into Blogger and click on the "Template" tab, which should bring up the HTML code running your blog's template. Here, we're looking to insert this iFrame code at the end of each post, so scroll down (or hit CTRL + F to find) and look for something like "$BlogItemBody$, "p class=post-footer", or "PostedByAuthorNickname" - this code typically signifies the end of an individual blog post and tells Blogger to include these common elements every time you post something.

On our blog, we've inserted the button between the author's name & permalink and the comments area. Go ahead and paste your iFrame code within this general location (remembering to insert a few breaks if needed, so it doesn't appear on the same line as your Author name):

Now we've got the button in place, but it's still referencing our blog's homepage, rather than the individual post URL - if we want people to share our content on Facebook, we want them to link to that blog post that they loved so much! So we're going to remove that URL from the iFrame code:

...and replace it with "<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>" - this is some Blogger code that will automatically fill in the permalink to that particular post. Make sure to leave the rest of the iFrame code untouched!

Now, just one more step! Your button should be squared away now, but we need to add some meta data in the top of your template that tells Facebook what to display in users' News Feeds and Profiles when your content is Liked.

Scroll to the top of your template and look in the head section - you should see some title tags and possibly some additional meta data. We're going to add 3 lines of code before the body of the template:

• <meta property="og:title" content="<$BlogPageTitle$>"/>
• <meta property="og:site_name" content="The Name of Your Blog"/>
• <meta property="og:image" content="URL of your logo or another picture"/>

The first line tells Facebook to use the title of your page to display within Profiles and News Feeds - aka, "John's Blog - What's the Deal With Facebook?" or what have you. The "<$BlogPageTitle$>" code tells Blogger to automatically fill in this area with your page title, so don't change this line.

The second line is the name of your site or blog, which enables Facebook to display "Johnny Social likes "Blog Post" on John's Blog". The third line is any picture you would want displayed alongside your content on Facebook - this should be at least 50x50 and have a maximum aspect ratio of 3:1.

And that should do it! There's lots more information out there on leveraging Facebook's Open Graph system, but this is an easy way to let your readers quickly and easily share your content.

Google Analytics, Marketing Campaigns & Conversion Attribution

In the words of web analytics commando Avinash Kaushik, "I humbly believe that the world of data perfection ("clean auditable data") does not exist any more." And he's right! In the interests of moving away from data regurgitation and towards drawing actionable conclusions in the sea of web analytics and statistics, the first step should be the realization that even today, with all the cool gadgets at our disposal, web analytics data is imperfect and inherently flawed.

I mention this not to provide an excuse for incorrect conclusions and strategy ("If only that tracking code was installed correctly on my blog, I would've known to avoid using flashing strobe banner ads!"), but rather as a step towards analytics enlightenment. Yes, data may be flawed, but this should be your call to arms - find out how the data is flawed (or, stated another way, the limitations of the data set) and what you can do, as an analyst, to draw real-world conclusions from these numbers.

Here's an example. To let you identify high/low performing marketing efforts, Google Analytics will automatically track the source of visitors to your site. These are segmented into a few default mediums.

Check out the first row. The "cpc" segment captures traffic from "cost per click" or "pay per click" campaigns, such as Google AdWords. From here, you can see how many visitors that clicked through from your pay-per-click ad actually bought something from you, filled out a lead-generation form, etc.

But! You now know that this data has issues. Remember, your newfound acceptance of this axiom shouldn't be an excuse, a crutch to lean on; instead, this should inspire you to dig deeper and not take these numbers at face value.

And here's why: there's a specific way in which Google attributes things like conversions and e-commerce transactions to traffic sources. Let's say a user visits your website several different times via several different mediums, and finally buys something or completes a conversion. How do you know which of these mediums drove that purchase? With one exception*, in Google Analytics, conversions are attributed to the most recent campaign or medium by which that user arrived. For example:

1. Due to a recent break-in at her home, Jane Customer is shopping for broadswords. To begin her buying research, she searches for "home defense broadswords" on Google. From the results page, Jane clicks on a PPC ad for ADT's line of security swords. She browses the site for a while, checks out prices, but does not make a purchase - Jane wants to check out some other brands and options.
2. After sifting through the highly competitive landscape of medieval residential defense products, Jane settles on ADT and clicks on one of their banner advertisements on her Yahoo homepage. She arrives on ADT's site and makes her purchase.

In this example, it's fairly clear that Jane's first visit, via ADT's pay-per-click campaign, was probably most responsible for generating this sale! However, the purchase actually occurred on her second visit, when she arrived via a referral site - her Yahoo homepage. Google Analytics will attribute this purchase as being generated by a referral visit from Yahoo...and all the while your PPC conversion rate sadly continues to drop, bit by bit.

Uh-oh. So how flawed is your data? Can you make a serious business decision regarding the effectiveness of any given marketing campaign, based off incorrect or incomplete information? (Or as Mr. Kaushik would say, the "known unknowns"!) In terms of severity, this can be a serious issue if you're selling a product that's fairly expensive, fairly complex, or otherwise has a high-involvement buying process - every time a potential customer returns to your site, whether to continue researching or to purchase, their previous traffic source data is being overwritten!

(*The exception! For repeat visitors that return directly via a bookmark or typing the URL directly into their browser, Analytics will attribute any conversions to the immediate preceding traffic source. In the example above, if Jane's 2nd visit to ADT was from a bookmark or simply recalling the URL from her first PPC-sourced visit, the conversion would still be attributed to the PPC campaign.)

So for e-commerce sites with these high-involvement/long buying cycle products, or sites with a very high Visits-To-Purchase ratio, analysts may want to direct Analytics to ignore these secondary campaigns and attribute any conversions to the first campaign that directed the visitor to your site. With links under your control (such as banner ads, external blogs, or links posted on your company Twitter account), simply append the variable "&utm_nooverride=1" to the URL. This will prevent the original traffic source from being overwritten, thereby preserving the origin of each visitor. (For more info on Google Analytics tracking variables, see our post on Tracking Facebook, Twitter & Social Networks in Google Analytics.)

Is this solution perfect? No way. But this knowledge of inherent error is what should keep you nimble as an analytics commando. The idea that you can always learn more and refine your conclusions...this is what keeps us on our toes.

Five Top Don’ts of Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing – using tools like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Digg – is a hot topic in the worlds of both Internet Marketing and Traditional Marketing. If you are considering stepping into the world of Social Media, here are five common and deadly mistakes to avoid.

1. Don't rush. Take time to learn about Social Media and how it works. Before you rush to set up that LinkedIn profile, take time to write, edit and plan your content. Understand the difference between Company and Personal profiles and don’t mix the two. Know the advantages of choosing an appropriate Twitter ID, before you just select the first thing available and start building followers. Having something well structured and crafted in your Social Media profiles will win the long race over something fast – just to get started.

With sites like Digg or Stumbleupon, take some time to become involved in the community and learn the ins and outs of the different categories. Nothing will kill your great article faster than submitting it in the wrong category – just because you think it’s a “Technology” article instead of “Science” doesn’t make it so. Learn the norms and get a feel for the community before jumping in.

2. Don’t forget your overall marketing strategy. Social Media should work with, not outside, of traditional marketing. What are your goals? How are you taking your brand to market? Blasting out a poorly strategized campaign that doesn’t compliment your brand image is a surefire way to confuse and disorient your audience. Craft your desired message, make sure it’s aligned with your overall objectives, and THEN start engaging.

3. Don’t PUSH. Virtually all forms of Social Media are about being popular and seen as welcoming to others. While traditional marketing might scream “buy me,” Social Media needs to be invitational and position you as an advocate for your potential clients. Remember, your audience has spent time and effort building up their online network and image. A pushy, “sales-y” intrusion into their social community is the equivalent of hitting up your dinner party guests for an investment in your ergonomic toilet seat venture. Don’t push – respond.

4. Don’t go it alone. Social Media Marketing is a fairly new way of going to market with your product or service. Be certain to consult with others about what they are doing successfully and reach out to professionals for advice and direction. There are scores of “social media gurus” flooding Twitter right now, simply because it’s a low cost medium and fairly easy to build a large network of followers and throw out some buzz words. Turning this into measureable and meaningful business results is something else entirely.

Be wary of anyone who tells you that you can’t handle your Social Media Campaign. It may be a little daunting at first, but once properly conceived and set-up, most Social Media requires only measured attention.

5. Don’t do everything. Social Media and Social Sharing tools are as numerous as the days are long, and trying to incorporate every possible Social tool into your marketing will leave you diluted and make it difficult to measure results. Once you decide on your goals, select the Social platforms that will help you accomplish those goals best.

Social Media Marketing isn’t a fad. These internet based tools are transforming the way companies position themselves on the internet. Get started. Be deliberate, strategic and measured, but get going.

Social Media Optimization - SEO and Social Media, Killing two birds with one stone

To put Search Engine Optimization into perspective, as a brand/website online, it is all about being the popular kid in the schoolyard. The popular school kid usually has the coolest shoes, the latest branded clothing and a wealth of cool insight to share with other kids, which makes kids aspire to be more like him.

In terms of SEO and Social Media, you want adoring followers, sites finding value in your services and products and eventually working towards gaining the top slot in the search engine results. Now social media such as blogs, twitter, etc. give you a chance to be among the popular school kid of the websites.

Why should you be bothered about it and why you should bother about getting into it in the first place? Everyone has his or her domain of expertise. Even clients in industries as diverse as say, ball bearings have expert knowledge in their domain. In their duration of business, they have surely encountered unique problems and delivered tailored solutions to solve them.

A blog post about a problem faced and solution delivered in daily business serves as a historical document establishing expertise. The beauty of social media is not only a blog can be a historical asset; this asset can be passed around, if the users find value. The key thing to note is that as a writer or contributor, a focus on demonstrating the solution of a problem needs to be displayed, not a blatant advertisement of your products and services. That creates value for other users and eventually might get passed around.

Along with the post, a link to your site, a photo and logo serves as an important tool towards bringing in new visibility. It helps to have an important, oft-visited site point to your domain and an advertisement that users are tuning into voluntarily. Best of all, it is usually free or costs little! An industry journal or a forum would appreciate your time and effort, in return, they get valuable content and you, as a client get traffic and exposure. Additionally, it lends a personality to your company. Industrial clients, where relationships thrive, please take note! A personal touch can make a line manager exclaim, “I like this guy Larry, he knows his stuff. Lemme give him a call and have him come and fix our motor before this thing conks out.”

In summation Social Media Optimization:

1. Helps establish your reputation as a Subject Matter Expert (SME)
2. Increases exposure of your company, services and products
3. Gets valuable traffic originating from a high traffic website, generating buzz
4. Gives you valuable back links
5. Gives you historical assets for customer referral

Have you had any experience with similar situations? Please leave a comment, I would love to hear your feedback or any points that you may want to add from your experience.

Web Analytics: Stats, Data, and Unwavering Devotion

Congrats (and apologies!) to Jacob Kildebogaard ("Webstatistik, Webanalyse og Effektmåling"), seen here perusing Avinash Kaushik's excellent book "Web Analytics: An Hour a Day".

Facebook, Twitter and Google Analytics – Tracking Social Networks in Google Analytics, Part 2

(for Part 1, see our previous blog Track Facebook, Twitter & Social Networks in Google Analytics Pt. 1)

Previously, we discussed accurately categorizing your social network traffic within Google Analytics. Instead of seeing your Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube traffic scattered amongst all other referring sites, we used a filter to group social media sites under one medium.

But what about tracking visitors down to a more granular level? For example, you know that 100 visitors came to your site from Twitter – but which tweet drove the most traffic? Do your Twitter followers click when you talk about one product vs. other? We can collect this information using two very simple tools.

Tagging Links in Google Analytics

I discussed this awhile ago (Top 3 Google Analytics Tracking Tips), but for this, let’s focus on tracking specific social marketing efforts. We want to know which specific link brought traffic, and be able to analyze that information. This is fairly easy and only takes about a minute to incorporate.

With a text limit of 140 characters, microblogs like Twitter or Facebook force users to keep it short and simple. Usually, there’s no room for long, drawn out URLs like www.example.com/products/XYZproduct.html. So, websites like TinyURL.com and bit.ly take web addresses, shorten them, and provide that hyperlink, which users then use to direct visitors – thereby giving them more room to include actual text. The great thing about these URL shortening services is that you can tag the original link with Google Analytics’ tracking variables and correctly identify the source of visitors. Here’s one in action:

Let's walk through an example. JimBob P. Yokel owns an online malt liquor supply store (“You ain’t never gon’ find no better booze, no how,” JimBob swears). He uses Twitter regularly to inform his customers of sales and specials, and like many other Twitter users, incorporates shortened URLs into his posts.

But before he shortens these URLs, he uses BEM Interactive’s Google Analytics URL Tagging Tool. This enables him to identify, down to the individual Tweet, how visitors found his site. So for a Twitter post promoting Colt .45 (“It’s the maltiest!” says JimBob), he might tag the link like so:

• Source: twitter (the site he’s posting on)
• Medium: social network (if you’ve created the filter described in Part 1 of this blog, this will correctly identify the traffic as belonging to that category. If not, this can be “tweet” or something similar)
• Campaign Name: colt45 (if JimBob is grouping his marketing efforts by product type, and Colt 45 is a type of malt liquor that he’s promoting in the tweet)
• Term: 7_15_11AM (identifies which specific tweet or post drew the visit. Here, JimBob has identified a post by time - July 15th at 11AM. This can be classified according to whatever works best for you – as long as it’s consistant)

So, if JimBob’s destination URL is http://www.JimBobsHouseOfMalt.com/colt_45.html, then the entire link, with tags, is:

http://www.JimBobsHouseOfMalt.com/colt_45.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social network&utm_term=7_15_11AM&utm_campaign=colt45

Pretty nasty looking, eh? A visitor arriving after clicking that link would be correctly identified and tracked – but a URL like that won’t even fit in a Twitter post! What’s to be done?

Here’s where the TinyURLs of the world come in! JimBob copies his resulting URL, complete with Google Analytics tags, out of the builder tool. Then he heads to TinyURL.com (or bit.ly, or any other URL shortening service), plugs in his nasty-looking tagged URL and hits submit, getting a cute little link in return! It looks better, gives JimBob more space to pitch the product (“Only the maltiest make the cut,” he vows), and perhaps most importantly, retains all the visitor tracking tags and information.

Maintaining the correct variables & formats of those variables, you can track all your website traffic from links in Twitter tweets, Facebook status updates, or any other links. This control and flexibility really comes in handy when analyzing the numbers and impact of social network marketing.

Track Facebook, Twitter & Social Networks in Google Analytics (Part 1)

A cornerstone of any organization’s overall social marketing strategy should be reliable web analytics – that is, accurate tracking of traffic coming from networking sites on which you’re conducting marketing efforts. This will enable you to slice and dice statistics for those visitors, and hopefully align those numbers with your marketing goals - when a client comes to us and wants to engage in some form of social media marketing, this melding of analytics and strategy is always paramount.

Google Analytics will automatically track referrals from other websites, including Facebook, LinkedIn, and other networking sites. In your reports, you’ll see something like this:

However, these sites are grouped in with all other referring traffic! What if you want to track statistics for incoming traffic from ALL social network sites? It’ll be hard to do that if you have to sift through all your other referral traffic.

Additionally, how can you track what exactly someone clicked on to visit your page? Wouldn’t it be nice to know which of your Twitter posts (ah yes, which “tweet”) generated that $500 purchase?

With a few tweaks, we can track exactly that in Google Analytics.

Grouping Social Network Traffic in Google Analytics

Google naturally defines traffic as being organic, direct, referral, etc – so what we’re doing here is telling Analytics to place certain sites within a certain category, or “medium.” Chances are, this is how your Traffic Medium report looks right now:

Organic traffic covers non-paid visits from search engines, (none) means direct traffic (IE, a visitor typed in your website’s address directly), and all your social networks are grouped under referral traffic.

We want a separate category for those sites though! Using a filter, we can tell Analytics to remove specific sites from the “referral” classification and group them under a new medium.

(Note: This technique involves creating a filter. Create a duplicate profile (how?) before proceeding – any mistakes can screw up your historical data. We’ll install the filter on the new, duplicate profile.)

Once you’ve got the profile set up, click “Filter Manager” from the Overview Screen (the one that lists all your profiles), then “Add Filter”:

Name your filter something descriptive, then select “Custom Filter” from the Filter Type drop down box. We are advanced analytics ninjas, so select the “Advanced” button and configure the filter like so:

The “Campaign Source” and “Campaign Medium” fields can be customized based on your site’s traffic – in this example, we’re pulling any referrals that contain “Stumbleupon” or “ezinearticles”, and we’ve grouped them using the Regular Expression character “|” (directly below your Backspace key), representing “or”.

So, to pull out all traffic from Facebook, Digg and Twitter, I would type “face|digg|twitter” into this field – any referrals that contain these terms (“face”, or “digg”, or “twitter”) will be grouped into a new medium called “social network”.

After you’ve applied the filter, you should see this spiffy little line in your Traffic Medium report:

…and presto! Your social network traffic is grouped in one distinct category, separate from your Google Image referrals (man, that’s a lot of cat pictures).

In part 2, we’ll talk about tracking visitors down to more specific sources, enabling us to answer questions like “Which tweet drove more visitors, the one about lunch or the one about that jerk-face Bryan from accounting?” and “Does anyone really care about my Facebook status?” Stay tuned!

Note: Part 2, Facebook, Twitter, and Google Analytics is now up.

Search Engine Marketing & SEO Tips for MSN's Bing

Microsoft's massive marketing engine has brought the world of search into the public eye with the launch of Bing. Bing has been labeled as not a search engine, but rather a "decision engine" - that is, capable of delivering intelligent results, rather than simply aggregated data. It's MSN's latest attempt to take on Google, and Bing is equipped with some pretty fierce weaponry for the job.

Attracting Traffic In A Sea of Options

From a business standpoint, the advent of engines like Bing and Google means a dramatic shift in the amount of information available to customers. Marketers and webmasters will have to adapt to users having a much larger set of options and greater access to detailed information. A great example is Bing's "Related Searches" options displayed on their results page.

Bing provides not only related searches, but provides subsets of similar information. Here, a search for "1966 GTO" yields multiple links to more specific data (click to enlarge).

Case in point: your vintage car dealership may hold the number 1 position on the search results page for the term "1966 GTO." In Google, this is great! Related searches are listed at the bottom of Google's search results page, and anyone looking for anything dealing with a '66 GTO is likely to click through to your site - simply because it's in the first position. But in Bing, the related searches are listed directly alongside the results! Someone looking for "1966 GTO body parts" may see that term displayed directly to the left of your website. Since that's what they're really looking for, they click, and boom - they're off on another, more relevant search, and your #1 position listing goes sadly unclicked. More than ever before, it's important to anticipate (as specifically as possible) what people are truly seeking, and optimize around that.

Learning How Bing Ranks Pages

But for many folks, the big question is still the same: how can I rank highly in Bing search results? Early analysis of Bing shows that when determining ranking, the engine is actually much more strict than MSN's previous incarnation, and perhaps even harsher than Google! One report indicates that Bing places lots of emphasis on domain age - that is, how long your website has been around.

Oddly enough, Bing seems to pay less attention to incoming links (other sites linking to your page). This is contrary to Google's appreciation for a keyword-rich, widely distributed network of incoming links. This ranking technique, among other innovations, made Google into the search juggernaut it is today - it's quite interesting to see Bing taking a different approach.

There's also some evidence that page titles, text-heavy pages, and even lots of outbound links to other sites (a no-no for Google) have much greater importance in Bing than other engines. Of course, this is essentially a brand new engine attempting to topple the search behemoth - expect to see some volatility in Bing's algorithms (as well as Google and Yahoo!) as the dust clears.

Avoiding the Internet Billboard - Incentivizing Your Website

One question that's sure to come up when any website owner is dissatisfied with their traffic numbers/conversion numbers/what have you is The Big One: "How can I draw more traffic?" And, if they're thinking with a bit of strategy behind them, this question will hopefully be, "How can I draw more qualified traffic?"

As any wet-behind-the-ears web marketer knows, it's really not that hard to increase a site's hits. The trick is attracting the right people and incentivizing.

Incentivizing. Offering value to your visitors. You must do it. Your website is not a billboard.

This seems to be a staggeringly obvious, "well, DUH" statement, but it can be difficult to move past the idea of the website as a simple, traditional sales tool. It's a brochure on a computer, right? An internet commercial, if you will.

But the problem with not incentivizing your website is this: people don't have to be there. When you're driving, plopped in front of the TV, or otherwise trapped by the advertising powers-that-be, the biggest advantage they have is that really...you can't do much about it! You're a captive audience, and you will watch this commercial for mops and that's that.

And of course, that's not how the internet works. Users are drawn to your site because they need something - information, a product or service, entertainment. They're actively seeking out what you've got!

This is the big advantage that a lot of internet-based advertising has over the traditional, shotgun-style mass market approach: pay-per-click ads and search engine optimization, when done properly, will ensure that the right audience finds your site on their own. And therein, simultaneously, a huge weakness - the user is in control! They're not in front of the TV and the remote is on the other couch, or stuck in traffic and staring at a billboard; all they need to do is click the "Back" button.

Here's where incentivizing comes in - you've got an interested, qualified prospect hitting your page. Chances are, you've got some competitors that offer a similar product, service, or content. Providing visitors with an incentive to do what you want them to do will immediately give you a step up over other sites that just say, "Well, here's our stuff. NOW GIVE ME SOME MONEY."

So what are some incentives? Well, that depends on what you're looking for from your website.

1. Lead Generation. What services you provide, site design, how you present the company, etc - all these things are very basic and certainly affect the number of leads you get. However, between 2 similar companies, all things being equal, the one that provides an incentive for filling out a "Contact Us" form will probably get more leads. These incentives can be coupons, white papers, 50% off first month's service, etc - it really doesn't have to be much! The idea of getting something for free is a pretty big draw in itself.
2. Lots of traffic. As always, nothing pulls traffic like quality content. Controversial, informative, entertaining, useful - solid content is, by far, the best way to increase and maintain visitor numbers. And don't assume that just because you sell bumpers for industrial graders that you can't have interesting content! Start a blog and post - show your passion through your writing, and people with similar interests will come.
3. Product Sales. This goes without saying - price and free stuff have a lot of pull here! "Limited Time Reduced Shipping", "Free Widget with Every Gadget Purchased" - again, with all other things being equal, incentivizing the purchase will bring more transactions your way.

In closing - take a serious look at your website. Get into the perspective of a first-time visitor - they've found your site, they're already interested in what you've got. What's the value you're offering the user? Why should they submit their info for your sales team? Why should they spend time browsing your site if all you've got on every page is sales jargon but nothing they can use? Where's the value?

Just as no one would volunteer for more commercials or more billboards along their morning commute, no one will spend time on a website that offers them nothing in return. Delivering solid content or other incentives will show visitors something of value, and keep them coming back.

Google Analytics Link Tagging Tool / URL Builder from BEM Interactive

Hey all - just a quick heads-up that BEM Interactive's URL builder tool for Google Analytics is now available. Using this, you can tag inbound links in your newsletters, banners, non-AdWords PPC, etc, so Google identifies and categorizes the visitors correctly (you can read more about that in our previous post on using Analytics to track non-Google marketing & advertising).

We assume no responsibility if you mis-tag your links! But there are some instructions to go with the tool - so go nuts with our Google Analytics URL tagging tool.

How to “listen” for key information on the web

Would you like to be sent an email whenever your company is mentioned on the internet?

How about when a competitor wins a big contract or issues a press release?

Well there are several ways to make this happen and it’s all about “listening” on the internet.

One of the key tools for digging up these juicy secrets is to use Google Alerts. You can setup a Google Alert for just about anything. Google will send you an alert either daily or weekly with the latest updates on all your alerts.

Google offers a great tutorial on how to setup alerts. Check it out here and you'll be on top of all the things you need to know.

Tips for what to listen for:

• Listening for your company name will make you aware when you are the topic of conversation.
• Listen for primary competitors names. You’ll be notified when they send a press release, win a new big contract, as they bring on new staff or if they have a layoff.
• Listen for your trademarks and service marks to ensure you are on top of any potential legal issues with your protected marks.
• Listen for key phrases related to your products or services to keep abreast of your industry.
• Listen for mention of your customers to keep up to date with your key accounts
• Listen for key vendors to make sure you know about any issues they are encountering
  

Although this is a great way to keep informed of key events, it’s not 100% reliable. Google catches many conversations and alerts you to them, but some will be missed.

Affiliate Marketing, Pay-Per-Post Blogging, and the End of Social Networking?

Mitch Joel over at Six Pixels of Separation posted a great blog the other day discussing paid links and pay-per-post blogging in Twitter. In a nutshell, it's when companies pay avid bloggers or established social networking figures to post/blog/link to their product/site/whatever. Since social media sites thrive on accurate & credible word-of-mouth ("Oh, Joe thinks these sunglasses are cool and he's a pretty cool guy. Maybe I can get these sunglasses and be similarly awesome!"), these campaigns are much more effective without full and accurate disclosure on the part of the poster and/or advertiser.

In his post, Mitch pretty accurately sums up my feelings on the matter:



YES. I'm already weeping tears of joy that someone is with me on this, and then:



Awesome stuff, Mitch (the following is my comment on his blog).

One of the things I always attempt to pass on to clients is the genuine understanding and appreciation for XX Social Networking site (wherever they're trying to be). A lot of companies will assign the task to SOMEONE in-house in hopes that simply generating a presence on Facebook, Twitter, whatever, will help their company; of course, it DOESN'T, and sometimes ends up hurting the brand because of actions similar to the ones discussed in your post. There's NO overall strategy, NO matching of marketing objectives to the proper social media site (if there ARE any marketing objectives for the campaign), and ultimately, no understanding that for a social media effort to work, that company has to honestly contribute to and become part of the community.

As marketers, I really think we've got to be conscious of the personal effort people have put into constructing their social media personae and networks. To those folks, this ISN'T seeing a banner ad on CNN.com - affiliate linking (which, let's face it, is more credible/profitable if people think it's genuine and not a marketing campaign) and pay-per-post blogging is seen as an uninvited intrusion into the user's social network and personal life. I've heard dozens of stories of businesses diving headfirst into Facebook or blog networks and just RUINING their name by attempting some silly, heavy-handed traditional "push" campaign, or a poorly thought-out affiliate marketing design.

I don't think social networking will completely be destroyed by things like this, but it certainly will cause more user movement between different websites. Sites will build up buzz and momentum but ultimately, will be deserted as affiliate marketers, link farmers, what-have-you, follow the masses.

Great post Mitch, cheers.

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3 Easy Ways to use Google Analytics to track offline, email & other marketing efforts

One of the things I frequently notice when talking to both clients here at BEM Interactive and the general public is a general acceptance of hazy numbers when it comes to measuring the success of marketing and advertising campaigns. By hazy numbers, I'm referring to the traditional standards of how managers can identify marketing efforts as being beneficial to the bottom line...and really, they're not great!

With Google Analytics and similar web analysis tools, the doors have been opened to an entire new world of measurement and research. Google Analytics will automatically track traffic coming from AdWords PPC, other search engines, and referrals from other sites (anyone arriving at your site via a link from another domain) - and we're not talking simply vist numbers here! There's an incredible level of detail available to Analytics users that requires no additional effort beyond the initial setup. Things like bounce rate, conversions, revenue, and even your visitor's physical location and internet connection speed are automatically captured.

Analytics' geographical overlay showing the physical location of site visitors. Currently, you can drill down to the City level of detail. Coming soon: What room of their house are your visitors in?

This is great information, but what about offline marketing efforts? Traditional markets such as print, radio, and television advertising offer numbers like "potential audience exposure" to provide a general idea of how many people you'll reach. But wouldn't it be great to know how many people actually watched your commercial? Or even better, how many people saw your commercial and then bought something from you? It would be great to say, "Well, our site got tons of high-quality traffic from our TV commercial during Seinfeld, but we got nothing from our spot during The Andy Griffith Show." (The problem here is obvious: people that watch The Andy Griffith Show do not own computers.)

Not very internet-savvy at all.

And how about measuring online marketing campaigns that aren't automatically pulled into your Google Analytics interface? For example, did you know that if you're running sponsored ads/PPC in Yahoo or MSN without implementing proper tracking methods, all that incoming traffic is being tracked as direct or referral traffic? How can you tell if spending $500 a month in Yahoo is generating quality traffic?

Luckily, we’ve got some tools at our disposal! Here are three easy steps to take to track non-Google-sourced traffic:

1) Specific landing pages

Honestly, this is best practice for any marketing effort! Driving customers to a special page rather than your homepage is a great idea anyway, and here’s why:

• Tracking and Analysis. The easiest way to study the success of marketing campaigns is to pull people to a specific domain or page. For example, you run www.FruitsJuice.com. You might run a magazine ad in “Fruit Juice Enthusiast Monthly” that urges people to visit www.BananaKoolAid.com – a site specifically promoting banana fruit juice. Since you’ve only promoted this website in one place, you’ll know soon if that magazine is right for your advertisement.
• Customized appeal. You are segmenting your potential customer base, right? If you sell banana-flavored Kool-Aid online, your conversion rate will be much better if your ads AND the page you drive traffic to are related to one specific product offering. Don’t bring people to your homepage – send ‘em to the banana juice page!

2) Google’s URL Builder is your friend

This is important! All non-Google-based marketing efforts need to have tagged links! By appending a unique identifier to the end of any off-site links, you’re telling Google, “Any actions by this visitor should be attributed to THIS campaign.” This should be done for banner ads, paid links, newsletters & email marketing – in short, anything you’d like to track as a source of traffic and/or revenue!

For example, say you purchased some banner ads on FruitJuiceEnthusiast.com and you’d like to see how people like your banana-Kool-Aid related ads. By linking the banner to this tagged URL, you’re classifying the traffic for Google Analytics. You don’t need to tell Analytics to watch for these tags – when someone hits this page, the tracking script automatically pulls the information in and categorizes it!

http://www.BananaKoolAid.com/?utm_source=juiceenthusiast&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=banana_ad

Here, 3 parameters are defined:

• Source. FruitJuiceEnthusiast is the website that’s generating the traffic. Keep in mind, you can name these as you see fit, and shorter is better. Abbreviate if necessary!
• Medium. This identifies the venue or type of link that the visitor arrived on. For example, you might have multiple types of ads on FruitJuiceEnthusiast – by tagging the banner link this way, you can identify which style of ad generates better metrics
• Campaign. Great for different products or categories – this notifies Analytics that this particular ad was part of a certain campaign.

Luckily, these can be generated very quickly using Google’s URL Builder tool or our own spiffy BEM Interactive Link Tagging Tool. There are additional parameters you can add to the tag to identify further details, but the three parts shown above are the only required ones. Shorter URLs are better, so only tag what is absolutely necessary – don’t go nuts.

Banana Kool-Aid: Probably a horrible, horrible idea.

3) And, as always…don’t forget the housekeeping

URL tags and traffic metrics are gathered by the Google Analytics tracking code, which should be installed on every page of your site. This code has a tendency to vanish into thin air when changes are getting made to pages.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME.

All your tracking and campaign management can go to waste if basic site maintenance falls by the wayside. This is a relatively simple tip, but I always like to include it – from time to time, this code will take an extended vacation from some of your pages.

With a little attention to detail and some creative campaign management, you can move traditional marketing campaigns out of the "hazy numbers" field and start working with realistic, actionable data.

Contact page audit

Have you looked at the contact page on your web site lately? Give it a quick audit. Here is a list of things to look for:

• Make sure you have a contact page and it's easy to get to from every page on your web site.
  
• Your contact page should have a form for people to fill out versus just mailto links to specific email accounts. Contact forms are easier for people to fill out, allow you to obtain consistent information from all contacts, and forms work for everyone (mailto links can sometimes cause problems with gmail and other web based email clients).
  
• Have fields for all the information you want people to provide. However, only require the minimum info you need to collect. Requiring too many fields to be entered can significantly decrease your conversion rate on this page. You can always find out the other info you need when you follow up with them.
  
• Clearly identify the fields you require to be filled out.
  
• Research shows that listing the fields in a one column format is easier for people to fill out and results in higher conversion rates.
  
• Try to keep the form and the submit button "above the fold" so people don't need to scroll to complete it.
  
• Be sure to list your address, phone and other related contact data on the contact us page.
  
• Consider adding directions, links to GoogleMaps or provide users ability to SMS - text message directions to their mobile phone.
  
• Audit the page visitor get once they fill out the form, oftentimes referred to as the "thank you page". It should say thanks and set expectations for when you will be contacting them. Consider adding graphics and links to key pages on your site.
  
• If you are using Google Analytics, set this page up as a goal or funnel (as appropriate). Keep an eye on how many people get to this page and how many complete this page.
  
• Do some A/B testing and make adjustments to layout and content on this page to improve the results. Improvements on this page can deliver big returns.

Mobile Website 101 - Making Your Site (gasp) USEFUL!

It goes without saying that mobile search and data usage is exploding - Comscore reports that in 2008, 20.8 million U.S. subscribers used a search function from their mobile device. "But wait," you might say. "That's only 9.2% of total U.S. cellular service subscribers!" That's true (and strangely accurate!), but it's a whopping 68% more than 2007! Revenues and ad spend are dramatically increasing as well, and as more and more mobile devices ship with full HTML-capable web browsers included, you can expect to see the dividing line between traditional web search and mobile use blur and overlap.

Clearly, this is a venue that any forward-thinking company needs to appear in. But rather than simply throwing their current website's content into a mobile-friendly format, how can businesses take advantage of this new medium in a strategic way? Hmm - the wind is just right for a checklist!

1. The Biggest Mistake. DO NOT DO NOT simply throw your entire website at mobile users. If you own a car dealership, there's no reason to slow down the visitor's site experience by steering them towards a testimonials page. That's great for your traditional website, where visitors will spend more time browsing around, but for mobile pages, you want to keep the focus on fast, easily actionable content. Ask yourself: why would people need to get to your site on a mobile phone? Think of time-sensitive issues - in the above car dealership example, why not offer a form to schedule maintenance? How about an option to sign up for a SMS (text) campaign to remind customers of oil changes and tire rotations? Remember...
2. Your site is not a billboard. This is actually really important to traditional websites as well, but essential to mobile sites. Your site has to actually offer something of perceived value, otherwise...no traffic! No one would voluntarily sign up for longer commercial breaks on TV - why would they go to your site unless it gives them something that they need? Tone down the sales pitch and focus on offering users something that will benefit them more immediately.
3. Functional issues - not everyone has an iPhone! Eventually, mobile web browsers will be powerful enough to navigate every website in the same way your PC's browser does - but it's not there yet. While it's true that most users of smartphones (iPhone, Blackberry, etc.) spend a great deal of time browsing on their device, only designing your site for them is ignoring a huge portion of potential visitors. Some basic functional guidelines:
   -No Javascript, such as in navigation menus; some handsets don't render this correctly.
   -No Flash elements, pop-ups or other graphically-intense objects - remember, you want your site to be FAST.
   -Include numbers by each navigation option for users navigating via their phone's keypad. It's much easier to hit "7" rather than the "down" arrow 6 times.
   -Make sure text is big enough to be read on smaller displays. Keep scrolling (horizontal and vertical) to a minimum.
   
4. Who are you targeting? Google likes to divide mobile users into 3 distinct categories, based on usage patterns. What can you offer these groups? Keep in mind, there is a bit of overlap here - and, as always with mobile, your focus should be on easily accessible, relevant content.
   

• Repetitive Now - these folks are constantly checking the same places for the most recent info. These are things like stocks, sports scores, breaking news, etc.
• Bored Now - users that surf simply because there's nothing else to do. They're on the subway, the bus, the plane, that 3-hour accounting meeting. Games, trivia, and other easily digestible content really appeals to this group
• Urgent Now - the focus for these users is on functionality and efficiency; they need information NOW, with no frills or roadblocks. This can include things like weather, directions, and most local searches.

As always, the focus here is on strategic implementation - without a overall plan of what you want to offer and who you want to target, your mobile initiative could be crippled from the start.

All Star eMail marketer

When Maitland-Smith, a high-end furniture & fine home furnishings manufacturer, asked us to help them with their email marketing strategy a few years ago we jumped at the chance. After many years of traditional print advertising in industry publications like Veranda, M-S decided to add an online newsletter to their marketing mix and used Constant Contact as their email service provider to send out their campaigns.

Their quarterly email, branded The Art of Living, is distributed to furniture dealers, buyers, as well as the general public.
Each edition includes articles on trends, curator techniques, and also offers exclusive sneak peeks to their readers on the new product releases that are announced at the biannual Furniture Market in High Point, NC.

We are pleased to announce that Maitland Smith is the receipient of the 2008 Constant Contact All-Star award!

Here's how they did it.
-Their average bounce rate was less than 25%
-Their average open rate was 15% or higher
-Maitland sent email newsletter campaigns regularly (during all 4 quarters in 2008)
-There were zero compliance related complaints reported from their subscriber base


Read more about their award here.

PPC for seasonal campaigns

For segments of your business that are seasonal, PPC or Pay per Click is a better strategy to employ than SEO. Why? SEO (search engine optimization) takes a while to get results. For highly competitive markets it can take several months.

When you use an SEO strategy to get your web site ranked for seasonal keywords, it's possible that the season will come and go before you get your target keyphrases ranked. Then all your efforts will be in vain.

Better to use PPC for seasonal phrases. PPC is immediate. You can start a campaign and stop a campaign at a moments notice. It's also easy to adjust a PPC campaign mid-stream if you are not getting the results you need.

As you are putting together your web marketing strategy for Easter, Mother's Day and Father's Day, be sure to keep this in mind.

Bounce Rates Primer - Top 7 Common Issues and Solutions

Web marketers really like bounce rate data. And what's not to like? In the massive sea of data that analytics software can provide nowadays, the bounce rate for any given web page is one number that can immediately indicate a problem or a success. It works across all levels of visitor traffic, and can generally be applied to almost any website. As Malinda said in her previous post explaining bounce rates, it really is the golden metric - for a general overview of what constitutes a "bounce" and why it's a solid metric to use, definitely read through that first.

Now, as explained , when a visitor "bounces", they arrive at your website and immediately leave. It's usually a good indicator that whatever they saw, they didn't like. What I'd like to do in this post is go over some common causes of high bounce rates for certain pages, and some actions you can take to reduce these numbers.

Generally, a bounce rate over 40% - 45% is something you definitely want to check out. If people are treating your site like a trampoline, run through this list.

1. Remember your statistics class? Of course you do! Begin by applying a Bayesian inference model - OK, just kidding, but the big takeaway from stats is that you really need actionable, significant data. If you've got a 80% bounce rate on a page with 10 visits, don't freak out! Do some digging if need be, but drawing any sort of conclusion from such a small sample pool won't do you much good. Build up some data first!
   
   
2. Maybe it's NOT so bad. What's being displayed on the page in question? Remember, most analytics programs consider a visit to be a bounce if they don't click through to any other part of the site - it's entirely possible that the visitor got everything they came for without needing to browse deeper. You'll generally see high bounce rates for:
   -pages with an offline call-to-action (IE, a phone number)
   -pages that only link out to another domain (counted as a bounce, since the visitor is leaving www.yoursite.com)
   -pages that many people have set as their browser's homepage
   -blogs (most folks tune in to read the newer entries; for these, it's better to examine returning visitors vs. new visitors).
   
   
3. MAN that's ugly. For designers, this is always hard to take, but look at your site through a visitor's eyes - how attractive is the site? Look at color scheme, graphics, font size and choice, content placement, etc...does the site make you want to hang around? Could you remove maybe one or two of the flashing "CLICK THE BUTTON!" banner ads? Run it by your friends & co-workers to get some fresh eyes on it.
   
   
4. Functional Issues. Closely related to design, site usability is paramount! Some very basic features are still being ignored by some websites - is the navigation easy to use? Do links lead to functioning pages? Is the text size big enough to read? Does the logo at the top of the page lead back to the homepage?
   
   For a great general checklist covering details like these, check out Larisa Thomason's Web Site Usability Checklist over at NetMechanic.
   
   
5. Technical Issues. Perhaps the most basic, but still forgotten often! Does the page work? Find out what links/search engines are driving most of your visitors - then take that route yourself! If the page in question has dynamically-generated content, make sure the page is getting populated with the right information.
   
   And folks...it's 2009. Pop-ups, pop-unders, etc...let's just set aside that ugly chapter in web marketing and move along. Nothing to see here!
   
   
6. CONTENT. Really, after doing the housekeeping of the previous steps, this is what it comes down to. Most analytics software allows you to segment your visitors, so try to narrow down which sources are sending you traffic with the highest bounce rate:
   
   -For PPC traffic, make sure your keywords, ad text, and landing pages all align and are relevant to each other - the more they match, the better. If someone types in "tennis balls", make sure your displayed ad and the landing page are about tennis balls, not tennis rackets.
   -For visitors from organic search results, examine the keywords that visitors came in on. Make sure the page is optimized for the correct keywords. Most search engines are getting better about indexing pages correctly, but on-page content still has a lot to do with it; if folks are coming to your tennis balls page, make sure they're not finding it by typing in "tennis nets."
   -For traffic coming from links on other sites, be sure that your link is surrounded by the appropriate keywords and content. Your bounce rate for the tennis balls page is gonna be pretty high if someone gets there via a baseball equipment site.

These are some problems we look for right off the bat when we spot a high bounce rate. Run through this checklist thoroughly and hopefully you'll see that bounce rate drop!