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The ROI Revolution Blog

Upcoming Google Analytics Seminar LIVE in Atlanta, GA, Apr. 14-15

February 3, 2010

Join fellow Google Analytics peers in learning how to use and implement Analytics this spring in Atlanta, Georgia, April 14-15.

Wednesday, April 14th, the Introduction & User Training day is designed for the beginner in Google Analytics and is primarily for non-technical users such as marketers and analysts. It is designed to give a broad and solid introduction to the reporting features of Google Analytics. A large part of the day focuses on the reports available and how to use them. The intent is to present reports, explain what they mean and how they might be used with a site. While covering the reports, the various tools (the calendar, different chart views, tabs, etc.) are explained in context.

Thursday, April 15th, the Advanced Technical Implementation day is primarily for the technical user who installs and configures Google Analytics. Familiarity with JavaScript, HTML, and cookie management is assumed.

Location: Courtyard Atlanta Vinings, 2857 Paces Ferry Road SE, Atlanta, GA 30339

Cost: $499 each day or $898 for both days (a savings of $100 for attending both days!). For attending a session you'll receive a $50 AdWords credit (so you'd receive $100 in AdWords credit for attending both sessions; limit 2 per company).

Agenda: Instruction begins each day at 9am (with registration at 8:45am to get your training materials, the seat of your choice and coffee!) and goes until 5pm with a one hour break at noon for lunch on your own. Both sessions feature multiple question and answer sessions. These seminars are officially sponsored by Google, so you can trust that you are receiving the most accurate and up-to-date information on the best practices for Google Analytics.

See what previous attendees had to say about the in-person seminars:

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Custom Variables in Google Analytics

February 2, 2010

Last fall Google announced the release of the much anticipated Custom Variables in Google Analytics. Previously the only out of the box way to segment visitors on your site using custom metrics was to use the User Defined variable. While the User Defined method was useful for segmenting traffic into members vs non members, and for things like Michael's Exact Keyword Tracking script, Analytics users requested more options, customizations, and more control. Well, Google listened.

Unlike the User Defined variable, the Custom Variables allow you to determine the scope of the visitor engagement. Basically that means in addition to setting just a visitor level segment, you can also set session level segments, which will persist while the visitor is active on the site, and page level segments, which correspond to pageviews and events on the site. This allows you to get much more detailed with the information you're gathering and storing in the custom variable. For example, you could separate different sections of the site by using the page level scope, or you could track if a visitor has completed a particular action during their session with the session level scope.

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Be Your AdWords Account Historian

January 28, 2010

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
- George Santayana

Previously tucked away under the tools menu in the old AdWords user interface, the "My Change History" tool is an account manager's best friend and as such, has been moved to a more prominent place within the account under the reporting tab.

Why has this tool been granted such a prominent position in the new interface, alongside such heavy hitting account management tools as Google Analytics, Conversion Tracker and the Report Center? Well, sure it's a reporting tool like the others, but it's unique ability to track changes to your account, coupled with its performance metric graphs and visual timeline overlay make it a key weapon in any AdWords account manager's arsenal. It's placement under the Reporting tab is a testament to its usefulness.

While managing any AdWords account, it is common to make tens or even hundreds of changes to your account in one sitting in an effort to optimize traffic for better return on investment. Periodic tweaking of your account is essential to long-term growth and greater ROI. However, these changes are only beneficial to you if you can account for which ones resulted in performance improvements, and which ones didn't. In fact, it is the accountability of PPC optimization that affords us confidence in the power of split testing to boost profits.

And so, AdWords has given account managers the "My Change History" tool which records all changes made to an account for 2 years prior to a given date, then categorizes those changes for easy access.

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Is it Time For a Winter PPC Account Makeover?

January 19, 2010

January is a fresh start, a time for resolutions, and a time for cleaning up the mess made from the holiday season. The same should apply to your Pay-Per-Click campaigns. Breathe new life into them with fresh keywords, ad text, and competitive research.

Here is a 5 step plan to give your PPC accounts a (much needed) winter makeover:

1. Read Blog Articles For New Keyword Ideas: Read your industry blogs to keep up with the latest buzz words. Reading the latest and greatest articles may help you think of new ways people will be searching for your products. Setting up a Google blog reader to follow blogs from your industry can help make this task much more time efficient.

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Want more traffic? Check your delivery setting.

January 13, 2010

Often times our clients want to get as much traffic as possible, yet their campaign settings are not set up appropriately to accomplish their goal and that's where we come in.

There are two different types of budget delivery standard and accelerated.

Standard Delivery: Selecting this option can potentially limit the number of times your ads show throughout the course of the day. This option designates the campaign to spend the daily budget allocated steadily throughout each day.

Accelerated Delivery: Selecting this option guarantees that your ad will show as much as possible throughout the course of each day except in the event that the budget you allocated for that campaign is depleted before day's end.

As an AdWords advertiser you must decide which of the two settings is a better fit for you and your overall account budget.

To switch between Standard Delivery and Accelerated Delivery, follow these steps:

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Easy Recipe for Successful Ad Text

January 7, 2010

When it comes to ad text "Always Be Testing" is the motto that we hold in high esteem here at ROI Revolution. If you continually test your ads (to beat the current best performer) you will constantly improve the performance of your campaigns.

It is important to remember that there are a few strategies and tips you pretty much always need to implement as you are writing and testing ads. I"ve come up with an "ad recipe" that I keep on my desk to ensure all necessary elements are included in the new ads I write.

I"ll break down each ingredient:

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Qualify Your Customers With Your Ad Text

January 6, 2010

With PPC advertising, the best use of ad copy is not just to attract prospects, but sometimes to filter out searchers who are unlikely to become your customers.

Since you pay for each click to your site, when a click-happy searcher pops into your site just to browse or to do a little price comparison, you're probably wasting some of your precious ad spend.

One way to effectively ward off some of these searchers is by including the price of your product or service in your ad. You obviously can't eliminate clicks from these users entirely - if they want to click through, they're going to. But adding the price makes them less likely on average to want to click.

For searchers who sincerely think they might be interested in your product or service, your price acts as a great filter, keeping out prospects that don't want to pay or can't afford your price point. And if the searcher has zero interest in spending money, your price makes it loud-and-clear that they won't be getting any freebies by clicking your ad.

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Updated: Urchin 6 Demonstration Webinar

January 5, 2010

We've updated our Urchin 6 Demonstration webinar to include examples of Urchin's CPC integration (AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing), tracking and reporting for the next presentation on Tuesday, January 12th at 2:00pm ET.

During this 35-40 minute webinar we'll be reviewing a few of Urchin's signature features along with pricing and upgrade information. The webinar will be conducted online and over the phone for your convenience (this is a live event, no recordings will be available). The presentation will be followed by Q&A, so don't miss out on the chance to bring your Urchin 6 product questions to the experts!

The updates we'll be going over include:

The Cost Per Click (CPC) Data Import Manager allows you to create CPC Sources. It enables automatic extraction of CPC Campaign Data from AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing (YSM). The CPC Sources can be linked to existing profiles and this will enable automatic inclusion of the CPC Data into Urchin reports.

Once the data has been imported, Urchin has the following features to manage your CPC campaigns:

• The Keyword Generation Tool allows you to generate and manage keywords and to see their performance information.
  
• Direct links to AdWords allow you to navigate directly from Urchin to the appropriate screen in your AdWords account.
  
• The Urchin Tag Manager inserts a dynamic keyword insertion tag {keyword} in ad destination URLs. This feature simplifies the URL tagging experience and allows you to seamlessly import AdWords cost data into Urchin.
  
• A CPC Structure group of reports has been added under the Advertisement Optimization section.
  

Join us live by registering for our free Urchin 6 webinar.

Our Top PPC Blog Posts of 2009!

December 30, 2009

Here at ROI Revolution we've enjoyed reviewing our most popular posts of the past year. There have been a lot of changes in the Pay-Per-Click world over the last twelve months, and it's been exciting to watch them unfold.

To wrap up the year we've ranked our top 7 PPC blog posts of 2009:

1. The One vs. Many-Per-Click Breakdown --Turn to this article for a breakdown of the One Vs. Many-Per-Click conversion change that happened in Google AdWords this past year. Since conversions are a reflection of your bottom line, understanding this change is crucial!

2. Top 5 Free PPC Tools --There are tons of FREE PPC tools on the web. Some of them are great, some are alright, and some are just OK. Here are ROI we've had experience with almost all of them, and have compiled a list of the top 5 for you to reference.

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Our 8 Most Popular Analytics Posts of 2009

December 29, 2009

The end of the year is a nice time to take a look back over all that was accomplished throughout the year. To that end, I'm going to give you a list of our top 8 Analytics Blog Posts of 2009. As we go through the list, I'll give you a short description of each post as well as any random thoughts I have about the post.

Enjoy the posts and have a Happy New Year!

Keep Reading »

Previous Entries:

• Happy Holidays from ROI Revolution!
  December 20, 2009 11:56 AM
• 5 Step Google Initial Quality Score Checklist
  December 16, 2009 1:05 PM
• New GA Feature: Annotations
  December 8, 2009 10:54 AM
• The Positives of Keyword Negatives
  December 8, 2009 10:12 AM
• LAST CHANCE To Attend Google™ Analytics Seminar in Charlotte, NC
  December 1, 2009 11:11 AM
• Get More from the Navigation Summary and Pivot Tables
  December 1, 2009 10:28 AM
• Are Long Page Load Times Driving Your Visitors Away?
  November 25, 2009 3:43 PM
• Search is from Mars, Content is from Venus
  November 20, 2009 9:49 AM
• Funnels on the Fly in Google Analytics
  November 18, 2009 10:18 AM
• Geotargeting: Do your ads accurately reflect your service area?
  November 11, 2009 11:45 AM

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