One of the biggest challenges in Pay-Per-Click advertising is trying to capitalize on the Content network. Search Engine Marketers know there is qualified traffic out there, but reaching it is the biggest obstacle. Did you know Google offers a report that details exactly which Content sites your ads are placed on? Yes it's true! Google will not only tell you what sites your ads were placed on, but also which sites brought in conversions for your business. In order for the report to show conversion data you must have Conversion Tracking properly set-up on your sites success/thank-you pages.

The report is called Placement Performance and it is an invaluable tool to help you get the most out of the content network. It reveals which sites are making you money and which sites are costing you money. The AdWords Help Center outlines exactly how to create this report. You should create a Report Template so it's easy to run again .

There are two main objectives when analyzing this report;

1) Exclude sites that are not profitable. To do this, sort by cost. Are there certain sites that are not relevant that you are getting clicks from? If yes, add them as excluded sites. By doing this, you are telling Google you do NOT want your ad to show on these sites.

2) Capitalize on sites that are making you money. If there are certain sites that your ads are showing on where conversion rate is through the roof, then you should think about creating a placement-targeted campaign. This will allow you to target specific sites giving you more control over bidding, ad text, and budgets.

The Google AdWords help center offers a great article on more ways to benefit from this report. If you are not currently using this report, I recommend that you run it at least twice per month. The money it will save you will definitely be worth your time.

It's hard to get things right the first time. You may come up with a brilliant plan for your Google Analytics setup and think that you've thought of everything, only to have the data start coming in and realize that things are not looking quite like you hoped they would. Or perhaps your analytics just need a modification and you need to change your goal steps or create new ones. When these kinds of things happen, you may need to alter your Google Analytics profile settings.

And that's OK. While we recommend setting up a "sandbox" profile where you can test what effect changes to your profile might have on your data before editing your main profile, at some point you'll have to make those changes live in order to reap the benefits of cleaner, better data. When this happens, you will want to record those changes.

Continue reading "Keep Track of Changes to Your Profiles" »

If you are into PPC advertising in any way, shape or form, then very seriously consider attending the PPC Summit.

Like I've said before, this conference is arguably the most valuable conference for anyone in search marketing, as it's focus is 100% PPC advertising. The variety of tracks and presentations at any given time makes it easy to find something that you both need to learn and want to learn. Within each session, you can choose between keynote speeches, clinics, panel discussions and workshops, on three simultaneous levels: fundamental, advanced or advertiser-specific. Everyone is covered.

Attendees also have several opportunities to strike hands and hob-knob with industry experts from all sorts of companies and agencies. Historically, PPC Summit has brought in reps and marketers ranging from big-name companies (Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, eBay, Amazon) to independent entrepreneurs to agency team members. Either way, you'll be surrounded by expertise, ideas and experience to draw upon from passionate PPC marketers.

Some of the tracks include:

Continue reading "PPC Summit in Dallas, Boston" »

I was thinking the other day about the relationship between exit rate and bounce rate. It's often assumed that there's some type of mystical relationship between these two metrics, so I thought it would be worthwhile to dig deeper into this relationship to see what's actually going on.

First, we can define these measurements using rather simple equations.

exit rate = exits / pageviews
bounce rate = bounces / entrances

Now if we think about it, every visit to your site has an entrance. And unless you have visitors who stay active on your site 24/7, taking 15 minute power naps in lieu of actual sleep just to keep their current session alive, every visit to your site will also have an exit. Therefore, if we're talking about the exit rate and bounce rate of your site, we can say that entrances = visits = exits and make the appropriate substitutions in the above equations:

exit rate for the site = visits / pageviews
bounce rate for the site = bounces / visits

This would seem to indicate that if the number of visits increase then exit rate will increase while bounce rate will decrease, and alternatively, if the number of visits decrease then exit rate will decrease while bounce rate will increase. Of course, this assumes that visits are independent of both pageviews and bounces, which they aren't. So to understand this relationship, we have to think about the quality of visits that we're getting to the site.

Continue reading "Some Thoughts on Exit Rate and Bounce Rate" »

In mid-October Google announced the beta release of the new tracking code: ga.js. Then, in December, they released the new code to all Google Analytics users. So you might have noticed, within Google Analytics, that there is now a tab labeled 'New Tracking Code' within the Profile Settings > Tracking Code section.

You may be thinking, "Why should I care?" Well, here are a few reasons why the migration to ga.js is practically inevitable for those of you who want to remain on the cutting edge of the latest and greatest technology. And why, for those of you who don't want to rock the boat, it may not be necessary to switch over... yet.

With the upgrade to ga.js you will have access to several new features including Event Tracking, and Outbound Link Tracking.

Event Tracking will be especially useful for those who have Flash based sites, or for those who use multimedia on their site. An "event" is an action that a user takes on a webpage that doesn't necessarily involve a new pageview. Examples include clicks on buttons or images, navigation in embedded Flash, or Ajax events, like moving a map in Google Maps, or applying a label in Gmail.

Outbound Link Tracking will tell you which links visitors clicked on your site that direct them to another site without the manual tagging. This means that instead of adding urchinTracker to each and every one of your outbound links to see where visitors are going once they leave, you don't have to do anything.

A few other benefits of the updated ga.js include:

• Faster, smaller source file - which will allow for a faster download time


• Object oriented - instead of using functions


• Automatic detection of HTTPS


• Increased namespace safety

One question seems to keep surfacing about the migration, so I will go ahead and address that now. The new Google Analytics tracking code (ga.js) will NOT work with the previous tracking code (urchin.js). They are not compatible, so all pages on your site should be updated with the new code.

So the bottom line: Should you switch to ga.js?

Google is still supporting the urchin.js tracking code, and sources predict that that they'll continue support for another 12-18 months, so if you're happy with the current features and you're not worried about any new releases to ga.js (and the potential discontinuation of support down the line), then you're probably OK for another few months, at least. Eventually, though, you're going to need to switch to ga.js.

If you want event tracking and automatic outbound link tracking, as well as any new features that are released in the future, and you're willing to spend a little time and resources on getting everything set up properly, then you might want to consider joining the migration.

If you're looking for help, Google has written a reference guide for switching over to the code in pdf format, and if you need any assistance from ROI Revolution, an Authorized Google Analytics support partner, be sure to take a look at our Google Analytics support plans and we'll get you on the path to a seamless migration.

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