Internet Marketing Course BLOG

How Linking These Two Applications Can Improve Your AdWords ROI

By Dave Ingalls
Internet Marketing Consultant
December 13, 2009

You’ve got your AdWords ads click through rate (CTR) up in the 5-15% range, and sometimes higher, but those clicks are not translating into either online sales and/or product inquiries. Sound familiar?

In Part I of this article, we put the pieces in place to try to better understand this situation. If you haven’t read Part I (steps 1 thru 4 of this exercise), please click on the following link:

Google AdWords and Analytics – Put a Bounce (Rate) in Your Step (Part I)

And now to pick up where we left off in Part I:

FIFTH, go to your AdWords account and follow these steps to see the “bounce rate” for your individual AdWords Campaigns (and even more detail if desired) compared to the overall bounce rate for all of your AdWords ads:

In AdWords, follow this link path:

Reporting (tab at top) > Google Analytics (in dropdown menu) > Traffic Sources (in left column) > AdWords > AdWords Campaigns

Once at AdWords Campaigns, select the “Comparison” icon located over the “Bounce Rate” box on the right side of the screen display. You are now looking at what the Bounce Rate of each of your AdWords campaigns is compared to the average bounce rate for all of your AdWords campaigns. If you click on an individual campaign, you will then see the Ad Groups in that campaign and their bounce rates.

Bounce rates in RED are BAD (visitors click on your ad and then immediately leave your Web site/Blog), bounce rates in GREEN are GOOD (visitors arrive and, on average, stay – they visit more than one Web site page/Blog post).

I think you’ll find this exercise to be a REAL eye opener – I know I did!

Even more informative (or potentially shocking!) is to find the bounce rate for your Web site/Blog without AdWords ads included and compare THAT bounce rate to your AdWords bounce rate. At the very least, you’ll certainly be more focused on where your bounce rate problem REALLY lies!

In Part III we will examine what the possible problems could be that lead to high AdWords bounce rates – AdWords ad wording, keywords being used, landing page content, wording, etc.

Next – Please come back for Part III of this exercise.

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How Linking These Two Applications Can Improve Your AdWords ROI

By Dave Ingalls
Internet Marketing Consultant
November 29, 2009

Does this sound familiar? You’ve got your AdWords ads click through rate (CTR) up in the 5-15% range, and sometimes higher, but those clicks are not translating into either online sales and/or product inquiries.

Waz up with that?! Here’s a way to find out what’s going on.

FIRST, watch this short video on YouTube by Google Analytics Evangelist Avinash Kaushik on why “Bounce Rate” might be the BEST metric to use to quickly understand what’s going right, and more importantly, what’s going wrong with your AdWords program:

“Google Analytics – Bounce Rate: The Simply Powerful Metric”

SECOND, if you haven’t done this already, you need to create a Google Analytics account and add the analytics code to each of your Web pages/Blog posts. (I’m assuming that you already have a Google AdWords account or else you wouldn’t be reading this article!)

THIRD, you need to link your Google AdWords and Google Analytics accounts together. This step can be a little tricky, so be patient and follow Google’s directions.

From Google AdWords Help:

“How do I link my Google Analytics account to my AdWords account?”

FOURTH, wait 2-3 weeks until you have some AdWords/Analytics data to analyze.

Next Steps – Please click on this link for Part II of this exercise.

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Internet Marketing Course Blog
Dave Ingalls
August 27, 2009

Do you have a Site Search function on your Web site? If not, here’s what you’re missing!

In addition to publishing this Internet Marketing Course Blog and the accompanying Internet Marketing Course, I oversee several technical products B2B Web sites for my company. Our main Web site highlights our major product line and a smaller “micro” Web site was created to highlight a companion product line.

I recently added Site Search to the main Web site and when I looked at what visitors were searching for on THAT site, I was completely floored!

Before we get into Site Search, let’s make sure you already have a Web analytics program on your Web site(s). I use Google Analytics – it’s free, it’s simple to install, it really works, and for the products we sell, our prospective Customers use Google almost exclusively as their general search engine. How do we know that? Our Google Analytics program shows us that over 50% of our total Web traffic comes to our main Web site from Google organic (natural) searches.

Specifically, you need BOTH an analytics program and a site search program to prove the value of Site Search to YOU.

Our Google Analytics program allows us to “drill down” into the data on visitor traffic, and when we took a detailed look at the keyword phrases Google searchers were using to get to the main site, we saw a number of iterations of our company name pulling in a lot of the traffic (mainly different spellings of the company name). Sounds reasonable.

After the first few days of having Site Search installed on the main Web site, we took a look at the keywords being used to search for information on that site. To my surprise, almost ALL of the site searches on the main site were for part numbers or phrases related to the products on the micro site! And even more unsettling, when I performed those same searches on the main site, the search returned no results! Yikes!

» Continue reading “What Site Search Can Tell YOU!”

B2B Online
May 15, 2009

Dave’s Comments (Internet Marketing Course Blog): Paul Gillin, in this video clip that is less than 2 minutes long, gives B2B Internet Marketers GREAT advice for marketing in today’s evolving “Inbound Marketing” online world. Make the commitment to providing the best, most informative and timely content for your area of expertise and you can become the New York Times of that niche. (You can learn more about Paul on his Web site Gillin.com.)

“At BtoB’s Boston NetMarketing Breakfast on May 14, B2B caught up with Paul Gillin, author of “The New Influencers” and “Secrets of Social Media Marketing”.”

Click on the link below to see where Paul thinks B2B Online Marketing is headed and why the collapse of traditional print publishing is making it possible.

Read the entire article online by clicking on the following link:

Paul Gillin, author and consultant on new media technologies

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Search dominated by paid placement, more SEO to come.
eMarketer
March 30, 2009

Dave’s Comments (Internet Marketing Course Blog): The beat goes on! Nice to look at any spending projection chart these days (see full article on eMarketer) and see the numbers going UP! This article also does a nice job making the case for why SEO will continue to grow at a rate faster than paid search engine advertising.

“New data provided by the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), based on research conducted by Radar Research, sheds light on how search marketing dollars are being spent.

In 2008, $13.5 billion was spent on search marketing. The space was mostly made up of paid placement and search engine optimization (SEO), with a sliver going to technology providers whose software assisted in the execution of search campaigns. Paid search ads saw 88% of the total pie, SEO only 11%.

The ratio of paid placement to SEO will change in the future.

“Internet users prefer organic listings to paid search. They generally find them more relevant—or simply more acceptable—than advertising,” said eMarketer senior analyst David Hallerman. “Therefore, they tend to click on organic results more often than on paid search ads.”

SEO is also cost-effective and works across all search engines. In addition, an optimized site doesn’t drop off the first results page even when a marketer’s spending slows or stops, as paid search does.”

Read the entire article online by clicking on the following link:

Search Marketing Spending and Trends

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