Internet Marketing Course BLOG

“Inbound Marketing – Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs”

By Dave Ingalls
B2B Internet Marketing Consultant
April 21, 2010

“Inbound Marketing – Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs”, by HubSpot founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah is THE seminal book on how to use the new concept of “inbound marketing” instead of the classic outbound or “interruption” marketing model to succeed in your online marketing efforts.

In fact, as far as I can tell, Halligan and Shah basically invented the term “Inbound Marketing” when they opened the doors at HubSpot, a marketing software company that helps businesses “get found”, and have now formalized the concept with the release of this book.

Even though the book is a quick read (a little over 200 pages), you’ll find yourself re-reading and “dog-earing” many of the pages!  It’s stuffed with incredible insights and useful tips on how to put those insights to work in your online marketing program today.

I won’t bore you with a section-by-section review of this very useful book. I’ll just leave you with this thought: the next time you buy something, anything really, think about the trusted sources you used to help you make that buying decision, and where YOU found those trusted sources. I’ll bet most if not all of those sources had some online aspect to them, and here’s the KEY point, I’ll bet YOU found them and not the other way around.

My advice – Buy this book Now! Here’s a link to the book on Amazon:

Inbound Marketing – Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs

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How Linking These Two Applications Can Improve Your AdWords ROI

By Dave Ingalls
Internet Marketing Consultant
January 23, 2010

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 Parts I and II of this article, we put the pieces in place to try to better understand this situation.  If you haven’t read Parts I and II, please do so by clicking on the following links before continuing:

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

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

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

In Part III we examine the possible causes of high AdWords ad bounce rates – leading candidates include ad wording, keyword phrases used, and landing page content and wording.

AdWords Ad Wording – let’s start by looking at the AdWords ad itself, although it’s going to be important to look at how all of these elements work together to produce clicks on a specific ad.

As all of you who run AdWords ads already know, there is not a lot of text to work with in a typical ad!  25 characters, including blank spaces, in the ad title line that is also the link to the landing page, then 35 characters in each of the next 2 lines, then the Web site Home Page URL in the fourth and final line in the ad.

I think the most important point to make about AdWords ad wording is to include the most important keyword phrase in the title line if possible, and then include the words in the phrase at least one time in the second and third text lines.  If you have more than one important keyword phrase (and who doesn’t?!), then I advise you to create more tan one “Ad Group” in AdWords.  In this way, you can dedicate each ad to a specific keyword phrase.

Keyword Phrases Used – The key here is to be very specific – remember, you are not trying to maximize the number of clicks on your ad – you are trying to maximize the ROI of each of those clicks!  Two things to keep in mind – one as you select keyword phrases for a specific ad, and one to watch just after the ad starts running to better target the ad.

As you select keyword phrases, FIRST try them in Google searches to see what search results are returned for each phrase.  If the keyword phrase returns too many of the wrong search results for your product or service, try enclosing the phrase in quotes (go from a “Broad” search match to a “Phrase” search match).  If it’s still not returning the results you want, try enclosing the phrase in brackets (an “Exact” search match).  Of course, if this process does not return the desired search results, then you need to rethink the use of that keyword phrase.

After you start running your ads, check the Quality Score for each keyword phrase (I use AdWords Editor to do this – this is a great tool for editing/evaluating a number of AdWords components – check it out/download it at AdWords Editor).  The Quality Score for each keyword phrase should be 5 or higher – if not, work toward achieving that score or eliminate that version of the keyword phrase.

Landing Page Content, Wording – Now that you’ve got the RIGHT folks clicking on the AdWords ad, you better be sending them to a page on your Web site that is INSTANTLY recognized by those same folks as RELEVANT to what they were searching for in the first place. And this is probably where most Web entrepreneurs drop the ball!  Admit it – if you’ve been using AdWords for a while, you probably do a decent job with the first 2 items (AdWords ad wording and keyword search phrase selection), but it’s creating and testing killer landing pages that ALL of us drop the ball!  Too many AdWords ads point to Web site home pages or all-the-products-for-sale pages.

So roll up your sleeves and create at least one unique landing page for an AdWords ad that currently only directs AdWords ad “clickers” points to your Home page or to a multi-product purchase page.  Split the traffic between the 2 for a week and then measure the respective “conversion rates” and bounce rates of those pages.

How do you do this quickly and relatively easily.  Use the Google Website Optimizer to put together your first A/B page test – here’s a link to the Website Optimizer Quick Start Guide.

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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!”