In Google Analytics, there are a couple different ways to match up the products you sell with the keywords that brought users to your site.

The first method is already built right in to Google Analytics. All you need to do is look under the Ecommerce section of your Google Analytics profile and expand the Product Performance section. There you'll find a report called Product Overview. In this report, you'll see a list of all the products that were sold for the given date range. You can click on an individual product and segment it by Keyword to see which keywords were responsible for the product sale.

But what about when you want to see things the other way around? In other words, for each keyword, can you see which products were sold? Well, if you use the above method, you'd have to segment each and every product. That's not very efficient.

Luckily, you can use filters to find this information pretty easily. Here's how:

Continue reading "Products and Keywords in Google Analytics" »

If you've been following this blog, you've likely heard several references to the Google Analytics Keyword Sleuth that Michael Harrison wrote back in April of 2007. This is a tool that anyone in paid search should be using. Basically, it captures and displays an ongoing list of new keywords and phrases straight from your customer's mind. We're often advised to "imagine what your customers are typing before they see your ads, then bid on those keywords." With the Keyword Sleuth in place, you don't have to imagine anything. They've already told you.

For a long time, Google, Yahoo!, MSN and others would not reveal exact search queries, and still don't for the most part. They'll tell you the bid keyword, but not the exact search query. In May 2007, Google stepped up and created the Search Query Performance Report (SQPR), which now shows this data within the Adwords reporting tab. There was a wave of excitement when Google released the SQPR, and it's become a popular report for Adwords users.

Both the Keyword Sleuth and the SQPR were developed to do essentially the same thing, but in reality, they can be worlds apart for the PPC manager. In explaining the Keyword Sleuth to other PPC professionals, I'm often asked how it's different than the Adwords SQPR. There is a lot that is different. A side-by-side comparison between these two tools is long overdue.

Speed
First, I'll run Google's SQPR. When that's done, I'll retrieve the same data using Michael's Exact Keyword Sleuth. In summary, I'm gathering the same data from the same Adwords campaign and the same time frame (one month), using two different methods. My teammate Matt will time it from the moment I touch the keyboard to the moment the report is viewable on screen.

The results...

Continue reading "Google Analytics Keyword Sleuth vs Search Query Performance Report" »

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.

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" »

Welcome back to another episode of ROI Revolution's Funny Adwords Contest. We're pleased to announce the arrival of the next wave of ads that have been collected over the last several months.

You can see the Round 1 Winners here.

The rules: Read the ads and post a quick comment to declare your winners for the top 3 funniest Adwords Ads. You can just put the ad numbers in your comments, but clearly label each ad 1st, 2nd and 3rd place. If you enjoyed this post, forward the link to people you know and encourage them to vote too. The more votes we get, the more indisputable the winners are.

The point system will be as follows:

• 1st place vote = 3 points
• 2nd place vote = 2 points
• 3rd place vote = 1 point

Round 2:

The more votes we get, the better, so pass it on. Later on, we'll announce the winners, losers, whatever. The funniest.

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What do replacement grandmas, weed, new brains and vacations to Hell have in common? If you just said "They're all being advertised with Google Adwords" then you are correct!

I'm sure we've all seen some strange stuff out there in PPC land. There have been so many wacky things in Adwords that I decided it's time to have a little contest before these weird little ads disappear. So, I Introduce to you ROI Revolution's First Annual Funny Adwords Contest.

Update 12/12/2007: Round 1 Winners:

1st Place: #6- eBay (40 Points)
2nd Place: #1- Kayak.com (20 Points)
3rd Place: #7- NextTag.com (14 Points)
Honorable Mention: # 5- Target (13 Points)

See Funny Adwords Contest: Round 2 Ads.

Find The Secret To Solid, Sustainable Improvements To Your Website
Learn the insider secrets to making more money from your website than ever before – Guaranteed! Get started right away with the Google Analytics Training Course..

Continue reading "Funny Adwords Contest: Round 1 Winners" »

The weeks between Halloween & Thanksgiving fly by so start preparing your paid search campaigns now to maximize on the biggest retail season of the year. According to comScore last year during the Holiday season consumers spent $24.4 billion online! That number alone should motivate you.

During October and early November you should flesh out holiday keywords and ad creative and load them into your Google AdWords account. This will give your ads time to gain history, and since part of your quality score is based on history, this is a must. It will also give you time to sort out any disapproved keywords or ad text.

Also, in December keep a close eye on your bids and positioning. Obviously competition will be higher than normal, so you will need to be more aggressive. Google is expecting ad approval delays on the following dates in November: 1,5,6,7,8,9 & in December: 17,18,19,20,21.

It is important to ensure your ads are showing up through all stages of the buying cycle. Google suggests that you target general holiday gift terms to reach potential customers early in the buying cycle. But this can be a challenge! How do advertisers with niche products make money off of general terms? Qualify, qualify, qualify. Use your ad text to weed out people who wouldn't be interested in your product, and get your potential customers to click! For example, let's say your company sells leather laptop cases and you wanted to target the keyword "gifts for dad."

Continue reading "Holiday PPC Preparation: You should have started yesterday!" »

If you're serious about making your Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC) campaigns really shine, then don't waste time or money attending generic, dime-a-dozen "online marketing" conferences.

Here's why: Most conferences offer a more general online marketing theme all bundled into one "jack of all trades" conference, with a few general PPC tracks if you're lucky. "Okay, PPC people, go into that room over there. We'll see you again in about an hour for an ice cream break." Sound familiar?

It's great that many marketing conferences offer break-outs or alternate tracks for PPC. Really. But it's almost always to cater to general marketing professionals who either want to know what PPC is or are still deciding whether to use it in their marketing mix.

So hold on, what about the PPC gurus who sit at their desk polishing PPC accounts all day? What if I don't give a rat's behind about SEO or affiliate programs? I don't know about you, but I'm tired of sitting through "Intro to Adwords" and "definition of CTR" slides for 3 hours. Especially after slapping down $1,000 to attend. My order: Less milk & honey, more steak & potatoes...with A1 sauce.

That's why I'm so pumped about the upcoming PPC Summit in San Francisco (Thursday & Friday November 15-16). No matter what hour of the day, no matter which room I wander into, it's PPC-focused and designed for enlightening the PPC die hards. This is the ONLY conference that can boast that.

Continue reading "PPC Summit: The One & Only PPC-Only Conference" »

I recently attended the PPC Summit in Los Angeles where I interacted with online marketers from around the country. To my surprise, many of the presenters at the conference referenced MSN adCenter Labs. This is Microsoft's website for testing new prototypes of tools they are currently developing.

After returning from the conference, I decided to check it out for myself. Below is an overview of the tools I found most useful for optimizing your paid search campaigns:

Continue reading "MSN AdCenter Labs - What a Surprise!" »

From left to right: Shawn Purtell, Meredith Smith (back), Erin Skinner, Mark Curtis, Page Christenbury, Michael Harrison, Timothy Seward, Katherine Anderson

I recently returned from a trip to the famous Googleplex for the GAAC (Google Analytics Authorized Consultants) conference. Besides the conference itself, the best part about Google (other than the food!) was experiencing the sense of community on the Google campus.

As I walked around the campus, I was greeted with smiles from resident Googlers buzzing all around. It was clear that I was a newbie to the campus by my orange name tag and by my obvious look of confusion, and everyone around me noticed me and took the time to welcome me.

I was given a tour by a Googler named Laura, who all the other Googlers called a "Noogler" because she had just started - a recent Princeton graduate.

In the lobby where they gave me my name tag and where we started our tour, there was a screen with live searches that appeared on it from all over the world in different languages. Laura said that they "tried" to filter out some of the searches, but some of them were pretty random and slightly inappropriate. It was actually entertaining to see that some people really haven't yet learned how to best search on the internet.

As Laura led my team on our tour, dozens and dozens of Googlers passed by on beach cruiser style bicycles with kid-like orange flags on poles rising out of them. She told us that you can just pick up a bike and ride it wherever you want on the Google campus and just drop it off wherever. My teammate Mark took her up on this opportunity as you can see in the picture.

Continuing on our tour, we saw that Google basically offered everything you could ever dream of in a work environment. Jars full of candy. Refrigerators full of free drinks. A massage room. An herb garden. A gym. A Laundromat. A swim station. Even a volleyball court. Oh yes, and how could I forget, the endless cafeterias.

Continue reading "ROI Revolution's PPC Team Tackles Analytics at the Googleplex" »

2 years ago, NOBODY was a bigger dummy than I was when I first began fiddling with Google AdWords. For me, it was an overwhelming mix of internet articles here, a free eBook there, some trial and error and a pinch of "how hard can it be" that got me started (if you're one of my clients, please stop crying. This is long before I worked here). My first Adwords recipe wasn't a complete disaster, but it certainly wasn't anything delicious either. It was like pulling the dish out of the oven, waving off the smoke, and then scrambling to read every cookbook I could find to figure out what went wrong. Times have changed, and I definitely have a newfound appreciation for the words WARNING: Read the instructions first!

So, I just finished reading Adwords for Dummies by Howie Jacobson. First things first, congratulations to Mr. Jacobson. This is the first "For Dummies" book that I finished, cover-to-cover, every single word (except the index). Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the other Dummy books, but I typically treat them more like dictionaries than books. Yes, it's a reference book. But regardless, I read it straight through and it still kept my interest. That's certainly no small feat.

Howie explains things very well, evenly balancing casual tones with occasional (and necessary) tech talk. His steady use of examples, analogies, humor, tips, pictures and additional resources will no doubt engage readers, whether they seek the "techy" stuff or just a casual read on Adwords. With so many best practices, business blessings, warnings, and parables, one could rightfully call this the Bible of Adwords and feel somewhat justified. There's even a Revelation-esque chapter at the end called "The Ten Most Serious Adwords Beginner's Mistakes," crammed with stories of woe and all manner of marketing budget destruction. Regardless, there is still a happy ending.

Continue reading "Adwords For Dummies: Who's the Dummy Now?" »

Heather Lutze, of Lutze Consulting, sat down with me to record a podcast at the New York Pay Per Click Summit about why Google Analytics is such an important part of the Pay Per Click process to learn what happens (in detail) after the click.

I'll be joining Heather and a whole host of other PPC experts as a speaker in a few weeks in Los Angeles at the next Pay Per Click Summit in Los Angeles.

I'm super impressed with how Heather produced this Google Analytics podcast; she didn't just take our interview and slap it up on her blog, she actually took some serious time to record a detailed intro to the topic, added music in the intro and in the close, and wrote up a nice piece on the blog.

I don't know where Heather gets her direct, pull-no-punches-style interviewing experience but I felt a little like I was being interviewed by an experienced network-level journalist. Katie Couric look out!!!

We talked about the biggest challenges with Google Analytics, specifically how improper configuration/setup can affect the data that an advertiser has access to (or not) .

From Heather's blog: "This invaluable tool, configured correctly, can help you bridge the gap between a paid search click and what happens after the click."

Heather outlines how we can help companies configure Google Analytics correctly through our many services, including the free Google Analytics webinar and newsletter, as well as training packages.

You can listen in on our whole conversation here.

All pay-per-click advertisers listen up. I want to tell you about the one-stop-shop for PPC education. Finally we are getting exactly what we have needed & wanted - an internet marketing conference focused exclusively on PPC---and it does not just cover Google AdWords, but Yahoo Search Marketing, Microsoft adCenter, and all of the other smaller PPC Engines at one event, the PPC Summit in Los Angeles!

It is being held at the Omni Los Angeles Hotel at the California Plaza on September 24th & 25th, and I could not be more excited to attend. If you want to be an expert in PPC in all search engines then this is the event for you because it will be the most comprehensive PPC conference to date. Plus, the knowledge you'll gain will help kick your PPC campaigns into overdrive, giving you a serious edge over your competitors.

At this interactive two-day summit, you will get insider tips and strategies from expert speakers---one being Mary O'Brien, the chairman of the PPC Summits. She has optimized high level accounts such as Expedia and Amazon, and was formerly the Senior Director of Sales for Overture Services (Yahoo! Search Marketing). This woman knows everything there is to know about PPC, and I cannot wait to hear her secrets.

Continue reading "PPC Summit - Upcoming Premier PPC Event!" »

Learn How To Kick Your PPC Advertising Into OVERDRIVE with Google Analytics In This New Webinar Being Hosted LIVE from The Googleplex in Mountain View, California!

Featuring special Google guest (and highly respected author, speaker, blogger and practitioner of web analytics) Avinash Kaushik!

On Tuesday, July 31st at 4pm ET (1 pm PT) ROI Revolution is hosting a *no charge* live Webinar presentation on how to use Google Analytics to kick your pay-per-click advertising into overdrive. I'll be at the Googleplex in Mountain View, CA *web/telecasting live* seated right beside Avinash for this rare event.

This 60 minute live web/teleseminar presentation will include:

Learn "The Most Important Lesson" -- a critical success element we have found to be true after helping dozens of people implement Google Analytics and improve their pay-per-click (PPC) performance.

Hear case studies that showcase three companies that went from good to great with their PPC advertising. We'll go over what was the problem that held them back, what they did differently, and the results.

Discover the 7 most common Google Analytics mistakes people make and what you need to know to fix them

Walk away with 7 Actionable Tips to help you go from good to great and kick your PPC advertising into overdrive

Get several great resources to help you jump-start your pay-per-click advertising performance with Google Analytics

And...learn from the insight of special Google guest Avinash Kaushik! If you've heard Avinash present in person you know you are in for quite a treat. If you haven't, now's the time to capture his amazing insight on a live call.

So register today for this *totally free* live session. Space is limited to 200 participants.

To sign up now, click here.

Deciding which search engines to develop paid search campaigns on can be a bit overwhelming. How does a company know when and where to expand their paid search campaigns? Most online marketers realize that Google accounts for at least 49.7% of all US searches, so it makes sense to start their paid search campaigns in Google AdWords. When it comes to expanding beyond Google, this area gets grey quickly.

Questions arise like:

• When should I advertise on new search engines?
• Which keywords should I bid on?
• What should my budget be?
• Should I use the same ad text?

The questions don't stop. Below are a few recommendations that I offer to get you moving in the right direction:

Continue reading "Expanding Your Paid Search Campaigns" »