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ICANN Reveal Day

mark — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 13:27:07 +0000

ICANN have just revealed the applied for strings, you can view them here,varying from ‘AAA’ to ‘ZIP’.

We’ve come across some interesting ones, including both Google and Amazon applying for ‘Play’ as well as Amazon going for ‘tunes’. Interestingly Facebook hasn’t got on the bandwagon with no one applying for ‘Facebook’.

Have a look through the list and comment with what you find, there’s quite a lot to go through!

-Soon we all might all be visiting Amazon.tunes or Google.play!

Bounce Rates

alan — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 15:05:47 +0000

Bounce rate can be defined in two ways

The % of visitors that do not visit another page on your site after initially arriving at your site
The % of visitors that leave your site after a small amount of time (e.g. 5 or 10 seconds)

If you want a much more detailed discussion on bounce rate definitions please take a look at the very knowledgeable and informative blog by Avinash Kaushik.

Here I am going to take a look specifically how Google Analytics handles bounce rate and what can be done about it.

The first definition of bounce rate is the default in Google Analytics, which has limited value for single page sites and for sites such as blogs where the visitor may come and read a whole lot but not click on another page of your site.

But you can override this ‘page visit’ bounce rate, by using Event Tracking.

_trackEvent(category, action, opt_label, opt_value, opt_noninteraction)

Note the last parameter opt_noninteraction is optional and only when it is included and set to true will it NOT interfere with bounce rates, so in most cases tracking an event will effectively reduce your bounce rate. See Google’s guide for details.

Some sites inadvertently trip over this, they suddenly see their bounce rate change from a typical 40% to 15%, because they asked their developer to track something like playing a video. If you suddenly see a jump in your bounce rates, check out where Event Tracking has been added or changed in some way on your site.

One limitation of Google’s default bounce rate is it doesn’t cater for an interaction that is an outbound link, you may consider that a visitor that comes to your site then clicks on an outbound link (maybe to an affiliate) is a valid visit not a bounce. In this case you can implement code to create an event that tracks the outbound link, with the opt_noninteraction not set. Details of how to do that on Google Analytic’s pages here.

The second definition, time based, can be performed on Google Analytics using the same trick of using Event Tracking. In this case you just need to create a line of code to add to your standard Google Analytics code in your tags that creates an event after 5 or 10 seconds on your page. This event will then ‘eliminate’ the bounce.

setTimeout('_gaq.push([\'_trackEvent\', \'NoBounce\', \'Over 10 seconds\'])',10000);

so your GA code may look something like this

Can Facebook beat Google Display Network?

mark — Thu, 17 May 2012 17:51:53 +0000

Get the most from AdWords

mark — Mon, 14 May 2012 15:10:32 +0000

If you’re using AdWords chances are your account isn’t performing as efficiently as it could be!

Bold statement, but this observation is coming from a search marketing agency with experience of 50+ accounts with monthly budgets ranging from £500 – £50,000.

Ok, so the million pound question – why? Why isn’t AdWords being used efficiently? Because AdWords is not simple, there is a plethora of techniques and skills that AdWords demands from its user, that most don’t even realise.

Google is trusted by many people (for better or worse), and that is the first fundamental error when using AdWords – Google is a business, it would not make business sense for them to spoon feed and make AdWords easy, they would ultimately end up making less (AdWords contributes to 97% of their revenue!). The AdWords model has changed countless times over the last 10+ years, take a look at the most recent change – match type modifier, this new AdWords addition is set to make a ton of money from the ‘ unwary marketer ’.

Managing an AdWords account can be a time consuming process, but there are tools out there designed to lighten the load and give you an idea of how your account is performing like the WordStream performance grader. Tools like this can be handy to give you a foundation; however, internally we’ve always use best methods and practice built from years of PPC management experience when managing AdWords on behalf of our clients, supported by pages and pages of strategy documents.

Last year we came across this nifty bit of software called Goalscape, not only did we find it to be extremely useful when planning PPC management projects for our clients but also presenting and tracking our work in a visual, tangible way.

We have many Goalscapes for many different uses, varying from Goalscapes on social media strategy review and PPC marketing to optimisation of AdWords accounts.

Today we are feeling in a generous mood and want to share with you our ‘AdWords tune up’ Goalscape. This is a Goalscape that we use to help benchmark how a client’s account is currently performing; it helps us communicate visually to client where we believe focus should initially be set.

In case you are new to Goalscape, it works simply like this.

Project name goes in the middle
The key project elements surround this
Then the subfactors of those project elements
Then the sub-elements of those subfactors etc

As you can see, the key project elements in the AdWords tune up is ‘Keyword analysis’ comprising of 3 elements; Match type, Keyword mining and generation and Quality score. ‘Adcopy analysis’ is next then account structure. If you are looking to give your AdWords account a tune or are looking to embark on your very first AdWords experience this Goalscape will really help you on your way.

You can view the full interactive Goalscape by liking our Facebook page.

Once you have liked our page you will then be able to interact with the AdWords Goalscape, read the notes that we have made and view the other tiers not visible in the image.

Have you used Goalscape before?
What are your thoughts?
Please let us know.

Google “improve” exact & phrase match type

mark — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 16:32:21 +0000

Google has announced today that they are “improving” exact match and phrase match for us, how very kind (have you sensed the sarcasm yet?!)

As Search Marketing Agencies know, your ad is only shown from a [exact] match keyword when a user searches that exact term. For example [tennis shoes]. Today Google has announced that they will “also show your ad when someone searches for close variants of your exact match and phrase match keyword” It will do the following:

Google claims that this move “ means that you can broaden your reach to customers who search for close variants of your keywords, while still having more precise control over which search terms trigger your ads.”

To untrained eye this sounds like a generous move from Google to give us PPC service suppliers a helping hand, but wait a minute – what about all the adgroups and campaigns that us PPC agencies have painstaking put together for search term plurals and misspellings? This “improvement” will be putting AdWords accounts in serious risk of being diluted. This is a perfect auto tool for the ‘lazy marketeer’ who hasn’t carefully architected the account, splitting out seed keywords into different campaigns and adgroups to improve quality score, CPC and other KPIs

Broad match is a great way of doing some market research, provided it is done in a controlled manner, when this “improvement” is introduced in mid-May this will basically turn [exact] and “phrase” match into a broad match modifier. However, there is some good news! It is possible to opt out (which we will be doing). The frustrating thing is that it is opt out… so we have to go through the laborious task of doing that.. anyway, of course feel free to give it a go, but you have be warned!

If you want to opt out, you can do this by going into your Campaign settings and select do not include close variants

What are your thoughts to Google changing [exact] and “phrase” match into broad match modifier? A move to make our lives easier or just a way to make more money? Let us know your thoughts.

Social Media Monopoly

mark — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 14:54:58 +0000

We came across this cool infographic today from flowtown Ok, granted it is a few years old, Google+, Pinterest and a few others are missing… but we really want one! We’re half tempted to print it out & give it a go!

Should your business be on Pinterest?

mark — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 10:52:38 +0000

For those who haven’t heard of Pinterest (where have you been!?) – Pinterest is “a content sharing service that allows members to “pin” images, videos and other objects to their pinboard.”

Want to know whether your business should start pinning? Have a look at Intuit’s decision tree below:

SEO Infographic – SEO Periodic Table

alan — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:45:19 +0000

Pretty awesome infographic simplifying the mystery of SEO onto one sheet. We just had to put this on our blog, a handy reference guide. OK it won’t help you unless you have a basic understanding of the key factors of SEO, but once you have gained that knowledge, this is what you need as an aide memoir.

If you want to grab your own copy you can hop over to Search Engine Land and get one.

The Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors, reproduced with permission

Building and Reviewing Landing Pages

alan — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 22:22:42 +0000

We found this useful video that give you the seven sins of landing pages. It is a good primer to help you under stand what is good and bad regarding landing pages.
After all, you probably are spending a lot of time with SEO or money with Adwords to get visitors to your pages, so its really is worth finding out about optimising those landing pages.

Infographic for Digital Marketing ROI

alan — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 11:49:13 +0000

For many organisations PPC and SEO bring a higher return on investment than TV, print and radio.Traditional Media is not in danger of being totally replaced by digital marketing, but used correctly digital marketing can provide a very high ROI. Many large internet brands are now using traditional media to complement their internet marketing efforts.

Based on a survey by SEMPO this infographic illustrates the survey responses to the following question – “What are the top three most efficient forms of advertising or marketing you spend money on in terms of return on investment (ROI) or return on ad spend (ROAS) that they yield”.

[diagram created using Goalscape see www.goalscape.com ]