This data can give you powerful insight into how SEO landing page recipes should be adjusted in order to better serve certain keywords sending you free organic traffic. Here is how you can find this valuable data:

Step  1: Find high traffic SEO landing pages with bad bounce rates

1. Within Google Analytics, navigate to the Top Landing Pages Report (Content > Top Landing Pages)
2. Change your advanced segment to Non-paid search traffic
3. Look for a page you want to test with high bounce rates

Step 2: Copy the URI of the page you would like to analyze

1. In this example, I chose /search-marketing-glossary/return-on-advertising-spend-roas.html because it is getting a lot of traffic but 90% of users are bouncing from the page.

Step 3: Go to the Keyword Report (Traffic Sources > Keywords)

Step 4: Add the “Landing Page” secondary dimension to the report

Step 5: Add an Advanced Filter to the Report

1. Dimension: Landing Page
2. Containing: (the URI you copied) for this example it is /search-marketing-glossary/return-on-advertising-spend-roas.html

Step 6: Analyze this report data and look at your KPI’s.

Many marketers are intrigued to see their conversion rate per keyword based on the SEO landing page. Any goal you have set up can also be analyzed at the keyword and landing page level. Look for valuable keywords where performance is suffering and consider adjusting the page or creating a new page to perform better on those keywords.

In an effort to answer all of these questions, I’ve create a comparison chart with two leading heatmaping tools: Clicktale and Crazyegg.

Tracking Capabilities	Main tracking mecanisim: The Confetti. This tool provides user details for each click on a page through a visual dot that represents a user click. Clicks are tracked on a single page only.	Tracks user keystrokes, mouse clicks and the time it takes for users to move around a web page. There is no permanent access to recordings.
Heatmap capabilities	Heatmaps popular locations of clicks on a page, lists and overlays.	The heatmap display red hot zones where most users spend longer periods, and blue or cold areas where users spend the least amount of time.
Analytics/Reporting	Reporting features include: - the location of the click on the page, - referrer information including search terms - operating system - day and time of visit	Reporting features include: - time of field completion - the number of entries - which form fields have the highest abandonments - which form fields  take the longest to complete - which form fields have the most back-tracks due to errors or confusion.
Implementation	Easy to set up. Uses JavaScript which you place on each page you wish to have tracking on.	Easy to set up. Uses JavaScript which you place on each page you wish to have tracking on.
Pricing	Priced on a monthly basis: $9 per month for the basic plan $19 per month for their Standard plan $49 per month for their Plus plan $99 per month for their Pro plan As you move up in plans, you increase the number of trackable visits, and you can track more pages.	Priced on a monthly basis: Free plan $99 per month Bronze $290 per month Silver $790 per month Gold Each comes with specific support options, number of pageviews, domains tracked, and recording history time. The Free plan is very bare-bones and does not, for example, allow playback of all of the pageviews a user visits during a session.

So, which tool is best? Both are fairly competitive but Clicktale offers you more reports than CrazyEgg. Unfortunately, their customer service is not quite as strong as CrazyEgg.  I think both tools are worth trying out for yourself. A small investment ($9/month or free) for improving overall usability for your site.

A) Pivot Tables – enhancements

1. Slicers – a new way to filter pivot tables

It used to be that if you wanted to filter the pivot table, you had to click on the little drop-down, and start checking/un-checking boxes, or doing a text filter with “Does not contain” and similar exclusion criteria.

In 2010 pivot tables have a new, much sexier way, to get filtered.  It’s called slicers.  When you insert a slicer (from PivotTable Options) it brings up a separate box containing all the entries in the field you want to slice (Search Engine/Distribution, in this example).  To include a Search Engine in the pivot table, click it in the slicer.  To exclude it, unclick it in the slicer.

Slicers have their own tab on the ribbon, from which they can be edited:

2. Repeat down labels – we can now used VLOOKUP and HLOOKUP with pivot tables

If we wanted to do a VLookup on SearchEngine&Campaing in this 2007pivot, we wouldn’t be able to, because  the Search Engine label does not repeat on every row.

In 2010, we can adjust the pivot table to repeat the Search Engine label on every row, so VLookups are now a piece of cake:

- highlight the pivot column on which you want the label repeated

- right-click > Field Settings

- Layout & Print > Repeat item labels

B) Sparklines

Miniature charts that fit inside a cell.  Chart types supported: bar, line, win-loss.  Works with data that trends,  for example daily data over a month.  You can then show the general trendline in a cell, surrounded by the first days’ and last days’ data:

C) Charts

The user can now double-click on a chart element to edit it.  No longer necessary to right-click, then try to guess under  which menu item you’d be able to find the feature you’re trying to edit.

D) Ribbon – customizable

The Ribbon is now customizable.  As an example, the user can now add a tab, with the commands they use most often:

The user can also turn off/on the commands on the ribbon.  All this functionality resides under the File tab.

E) Developer tab

Excel add-ins and COM add-ins (those are the custom ones we build) can now be managed from the Developer                 tab.

The way to add the Developer tab has changed a little bit.  It is now done via File > Options > Customize Ribbon >                 check the “Developer” box.

F) PowerPivot Add-in

This is a Microsoft add-in, that’s basically a pivot table on steroids (http://www.powerpivot.com/).

The data source for a regular pivot table is an Excel file.  PowerPivots, on the other hand, can work with all sorts of data sources:

1. i.      a database: SQL Server, Access, Analysis Services & Power Pivot, Other Sources
2. ii.      a file: Text or Excel
3. iii.      a data feed: Reporting Services or Other Feeds

This gives the user the flexibility to work with very large data sets, over the 1,048,576 rows that Excel can hold.

PowerPivot opens its own window, from which the user can select the data source, and preview the data imported:

Other advantages of PowerPivots:

• a bigger variety of functions that can be used for calculated fields
• users can set up filters, and save those filters by creating sets.
• users can create their own BI systems

Excel 2010 is an exciting upgrade from 2007 in terms of cool new features, like the Slicers, the Sparklines and the PowerPivot add-in, and also a welcome improvement in ease of use with options like the repeat-down labels on pivot tables, the double-click to edit of the charts, and the customizable ribbon.

Google Insights for Search - "gift" (US, Different Years)

When overlaying years on top of each other, GIS does not appear to scale the years to January 1 or anything like that – some keyword trends that are zooming up are reflected in the years clearly showing up above each other in progression, and some that are dropping also show years appearing successively below each other (try “dial-up internet” for a good example). The term “gift”, which one would think would be representative of holiday sales, has been below previous years in the last week or so.

Google Insights for Search - "tiffany" (US, Different Years)

Brand terms of diamond retailers with significant sales volume, like “Blue Nile” and “Tiffany” also have lower search volume on Google recently than in the last several years, as does the perennially popular Christmas gift term “digital camera”.

If you project the blue line for “gift” forward, it suggests searches for this term in 2009 could potentially come in significantly below 2008′s volume (on the order of 5-10%).  It will be interesting to see what these graphs look like after Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday.

• Increase Conversions
  • Study your site’s bounce rate and conversion funnel. Follow visitors through the navigation of your site to see where the weak (and strong) areas are.
  • Use the data to improve your conversion path and conversion rates while reducing bounce rate. Maximizing conversion rates allows you to compete more effectively in the online marketing space. If you convert better than your competition you can afford to pay more per customer and grab more traffic.

• Maximize ROI By Segmenting Traffic
  • Identify which referral sources (i.e. search engine marketing, banner ads, email campaigns, sponsored links, social media, etc.) are generating the most revenue for your business.
  • Find new marketing opportunities by segmenting and analyzing organic traffic.

I’m often asked to give my opinion on different third party analytics products.  For many marketers, the decision on which product to implement is not an easy one as the web analytics landscape has changed drastically over the last few years.  Although there are a number of alternatives, most online marketers end up choosing between two products: Google Analytics and Omniture Sitecatalyst. Google and Omniture are on top of the web analytics industry, competing products are falling behind quickly. Here are some pros and cons of the top two web analytics products:

Google Analytics

• Pros
  • Free of charge
  • Easy for non-specialists and specialists alike
  • Works well with small sites and enterprise-class websites
  • Includes algorithmic driven intelligence engine report changes in data patterns
• Cons
  • Limited data history
  • Modification is somewhat limited
  • No way to add offline sales or internal data.

Omniture Sitecatalyst

• Pros
  • Data in real time
  • Can be modified to suit the needs of specific websites
  • Set targets with corresponding alerts
  • Extensive data history

• Cons
  • Expensive
  • Difficult for non-specialists
  • Difficult implementation

The best way to get started with web analytics is to implement a basic platform and expand your knowledge as your site develops. I started with the basic Google Analytics code on my site and then slowly branched into conversion tracking, traffic segmentation, and ecommerce implementation. I also experimented with some other products when Google Analytics could not deliver what I needed to see.

What has your experience been with Google Analytics or Omniture?  Are there any other platforms a web analytics newbie should consider?

As a large part of the account manager’s work at The Search Agency is educating clients on SEO tactics and success metrics, I decided this was a perfect opportunity to “demystify” some of the metrics we use to measure the performance of an SEO engagement.

Although publishing limitations meant not every data point and reporting tool could be covered, the article gives the basics on data collection, measurement considerations and recognition of SEO success.

Comments, thoughts, and questions are welcome here or at iMediaConnection as well as suggestions around future article topics you may want to see published.

In many instances, referral sites are a combination of organic referring sites and paid referring sites (or sites that have been targeted in marketing efforts). Tracking the Return on Investment (ROI) of paid referring sites or sponsored links is a little more difficult than standard SEM because marketers with SEO knowledge know that they should keep their paid links as clean as possible without any kind of tracking parameters in order to improve search engine rankings and avoid URL confusion. This article will show you how to track the direct benefit or ROI of certain types of referring sites by using filters in Google analytics.

For example, I run a photography network which has a wide variety sites linking to it. There are partner links (reciprocal links), sponsored links, social media sites, links from blogs, and other “organic links” that I cannot really put into a specific bucket. In an effort to estimate the ROI and effectiveness of my marketing efforts in these separate areas, I decided to split these referral sites into these 5 different groups as shown below (starting with #2):

As you can see, by splitting the referral sites into these groups, I can see the conversion rate of each group separately and see which types of links are most worth pursuing (from a direct traffic perspective). By using this method I found that links from blogs are extremely effective at a 1.8% New Member conversion rate compared to the other types of referring sites. The 2^nd most effective referral site type is social media at a 0.64% conversion rate. Also, since some of these link groups have a cost, this method allows me to multiply the visits by the New Member conversion rate, apply a value to the conversions, and arrive at the ROI for each link group.

In order to do this, I set up five custom filters within my Google Analytics account which is found under Analytics Settings  >  Filter Manager  >  Edit Filter. Each of the link groups uses the same basic filter setup just with a different regular expression in the “Field A -> Extract A” field (shown below).

Here is the regular expression I used to create the “Blogosphere” group of sites (you may want to add to this depending on what referral sites you consider to be blogs):

blog|wordpress|typepad

This regular expression tells the filter to apply the “blogosphere” medium tag to anything with “blog, wordpress, or typepad” in the campaign source. The pipe symbol, “|”, symbolizes the logical expression OR.

Here is the regular expression I used to create the “Social Media” group of sites (once again you will probably want to create your own unique version based on the social media sites you find meaningful):

Facebook|myspace|msplinks|flickr|twitter|photographyvoter|linkedin|delicious|youtube|propeller| fark|reddit|digg|mixx|deviantart|redbubble|smugmug|webshots

For the “partner links” links group, I simply add any sites that I am currently partnered with in to the regular expression in the same manner (picturecorrect.com is an example of one of my link partners). For the “sponsored links” group, I add any sites where I have links with costs associated to them in to the regular expression. The “organic links” group is made up of any site that is left over from the various other groups (just a filter to rename the default “referral” to “organic links”).

Once the filters are set up and you have data flowing in, here is how you find this report. Log into Google Analytics and navigate to Traffic Sources > All Traffic Sources > Show: Medium. When you arrive at the report shown above, you can also drill down deeper to see the sites within each link group.

This method has been a huge help to me in building a successful social network and allows me to focus my marketing efforts on the most efficient sources of potential new members.

10.      “Why aren’t we ranking number one for our brand term?  I’ve been going in every day and checking and we just fell to #3!”

This is a great one.  If you do the same search over and over, Google will modify the paid search results for you on a personal level.  So if the same result keeps coming up #1 and you never click on it, guess what – eventually Google will give up and start presenting something else in an effort to try to get you to click!  It’s not immediately obvious to end-users though, so we do get the occasional CEO or Chairman of the Board of a client who drops us a note to this effect – a perfectly understandable question and one of my favorites.

9.      ”Bleeders are bad, so we should cull them wherever possible.”

I’ve heard this a LOT over the last year from various people in the industry. The problem with overaggressive culling of so-called “bleeding” keywords, particularly long-tail terms that get clicks very infrequently is, it takes money to make money; you have to accept that some keywords at any given moment in the short term will be consuming spend without conversion – it’s the cost of allowing the remaining low-click keywords to stay active so they can be the converting ones.  Culling bleeding keywords too aggressively is like going to Vegas and putting nickels into every slot machine in the casino, then slowly eliminating slot machines that don’t seem to be “performing”.  If you do that long enough, you won’t be putting nickels into any slot machine at all.  Out in the tail, you need to bet across a wide number of slot machines precisely because you don’t know which ones are going to hit this time; the key is coverage over time to capture the payoffs.  That being said, culling bleeders does make sense if they’re bleeding over a longer period – if a term is never going to convert, that’s a no-brainer.

8.      “Your quote is higher than the other agency I’m considering. Why are you so expensive?”

From time to time I’ve heard this from prospects; the question that really should be asked is “why is this other agency bidding so low?”  Is it because they are planning on putting your account on autopilot?  Like most things in life, if you go with a partner that will go all-out in a full-court press and have multiple experts with specializations in each area of search marketing working on your behalf (like TSA does), then you’re far more likely to get real results and a great ROI at the end of the day.

7.      “It’s not statistically significant, but the data we have suggests it’s performing well”

Sometimes I’ll see analyses of keywords or creatives with limited history; it’s human nature to want to put things in a box and tie a nice ribbon around them, but if it’s not statistically significant, then all you can really say is, “we have no idea if it’s performing well or poorly – yet”.  The key is to let enough data accumulate, then you’re your determination.

6.      “We have extensive bid optimization technology developed in-house”

Much of the time when an agency claims this, they do bring something substantial to the table (like TSA’s AdMax Online Marketing Platform which has, among many other features, an industry-leading bid optimization engine).  But all too often, an agency’s in-house technology behind the scenes is based on a 5-letter word starting with E and ending in L, and does not have the horsepower for your account to…OK, I’ll say it…”Excel” .  Microsoft Excel has its place of course and it’s a great tool – but it’s like a cruiser; you really need it in combination with an aircraft carrier to get the job done right.

5.      “How does your bid optimizer work.  I understand the mins and caps, but how does it actually calculate the bid recommendation?”

You have got to be kidding.  Seriously though, I get this question fairly frequently – it’s like asking Colonel Sanders, “What’s the recipe for your fried chicken?”.  First of all (ignoring the fact that he’s actually dead of course Colonel Sanders would never give it to you because he doesn’t want his competitors to obtain it.  Secondly, he doesn’t want you making the fried chicken at home!!!  If your agency has sophisticated in-house bid optimization technology, the reality is, that is key intellectual property of the company, and they can only go so far in explaining it to you  – so please give your account managers a break and stop asking them this!

4.       “I don’t care what the math says, we need to [insert action here]“

Search Marketing is the ultimate ROI-driven marketing activity; numbers are what it’s all about.  If you are presented with math-based proof that something is going on, with statistical significance etc., but choose to ignore it, take heart that the math doesn’t care what you’re saying either…

3.       “You should either leave the keyword where it is, or bid it up”

Actually, bidding a keyword down can often make perfect sense.  If you can free up some money to spend somewhere else and get relatively more conversions than you lost, of course it makes sense to bid that keyword down in position.  As humans, we suffer from an “anchoring” effect where they look at an existing position for a keyword and the only question they ask is, is it in the right place or should I bid this up?  We tend to ignore that bidding down can be an effective tool to drive higher volume and ROI.

2.       “I always bid $1.01, $1.03, or $1.05 rather than $1.00 because I figure the other guy is bidding $1.00″

This makes some intuitive sense, but in Google’s case for instance, the auction is determined not simply by your bid but also by your Quality Score; if your bid is that close to your competitor’s bid, the Quality Score difference will very likely overwhelm any such extremely minor difference.  However, I must admit some personal fondness for this strategy anyway, because it’s highly competitive, a little sneaky, and who knows, once in a long while, maybe it will make an ever so slight difference.

1. “I pushed them up, but these keywords won’t play!”

My absolute favorite.  What this jargon means is: “I bid higher on some keywords, and although position and spend both increased as expected, it unfortunately did not result in an increase in additional conversions”.  Anthropomorphizing keywords always cracks me up.  Bad keywords!  Go home or I’ll tell your Mom!

And, because this one goes to 11:

Contribute your own favorite SEM/PPC Coconut Headphone moment below!

comScore

Is this the best data mining tool?

When using comScore Marketer, take the findings with a grain of salt.  Since this data is derived from a sample size of Internet Users all over the United States we cannot make decisions with a hundred percent confidence level.  This tool is a great resource in examining how the general marketplace is performing.  Thus, it provides useful insight into keywords competitors are buying, sites internet users are engaging with, and the demographics for specific terms and sites.

Comparing comScore to other rating services tools like Nielsen/NetRatings, Hitwise and Compete, one can conclude they all offer similar functions, but differing figures.  Search Engine Land emphasizes that one should not draw too many conclusions based on month-to-month comparisons and from only using one rating services tool.   I would agree with this statement.  Even though comScore may charge a premium price, their software is easy to use and that their product support team is superb.

What is a good example of the benefits of using comScore?

Eli Goodman, Search Evangelist of comScore, reported in his June 16^th presentation entitled “Start Digging!  Search Data is a Hidden Goldmine for Online Publishers” that this tool can be a good way to monitor branding success.  As this slide from the presentation shows, marketers can use this web analytic tool to examine which advertisers are receiving traffic from their brand term.  As one can see from this scenario, Turner Network received 90% of the Organic traffic for the brand term “CNN”, but is losing out on paid click Traffic to competition like Xacti Corporation.

In summary, finding takeaways like these allows Web Advertisers to make the best decisions and is another reason why comScore can be a very beneficial web analytics tool.

This is a really powerful statement that can be applied to business and life in general. The applications to online marketing are too numerous to count. Looking at our business, this truly captures the essence of what we have in integrated marketing. We strongly believe that the answers are always in the data just waiting to be discovered and optimized. This is true for everything from search to display to landing pages to feeds.

That is why the team here loves what we do. The Search Agency was founded on a core of optimization technology that to this day the company continues to enhance with over 100 man years invested in our core platform. Anything that we can get accurate, measurable data on, our team of experienced online marketers can then apply strategies and tactics to improve performance. The more granular the data, the more performance we can squeeze out of an online campaign. Take paid search for example, if we can get performance data for leads and sales or subscriptions at the search engine, keyword, match type and creative level, then we can ultimately drive to a target CPL or CPA based on an advertisers stated goals using our core optimization technology.