introduction course to google analytics and adwordsby: brian steketeechief alchemiststeketee greiner company19may10

1. Introduction Course to Google Analytics and Adwords By: Brian Steketee Chief Alchemist Steketee Greiner & Company 19MAY10

2. What We’ll Cover Today • What is Analytics • How can it help you • Getting registered • What can it track • What should you measure • Advanced considerations • What is Adwords • Getting started • How CPC works • Best practices • Setting up a campaign • Testing and optimization • Reporting • Advanced considerations

4. Analytics – Dashboard

5. What is Google Analytics? • Definitions of Google Analytics on the Web: • Google Analytics (abbreviated GA) is a free service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about the visitors to a website. ...en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Analytics • is a free web analytics tool offering detailed visitor statistics. The tool can be used to track all the usual site activities: visits, page views, pages per visit, bounce rates and average time on site etc. But it can also be used to specifically track Adsense traffic ? ...www.midatlanticseo.com/information/internet-marketing-glossary/SEO-keywords-and-definitions-g.php

6. What is Google Analytics? • Web Analytics: the study of the behavior of your site’s visitors • What can you use it for? • Build, track and improve of the goals of your site • Stem ideas for SEO and marketing campaigns including newsletters, press releases, etc. • Utilize the data repository for monthly reporting / recommendations for future performance • Testing!

7. How Can it Help You? • Understanding where your traffic coming from? • How are they finding your site? • How are they interacting with your site? • How effective your marketing activities are • Leads • Sales • Etc. • Provides business justification & direction • Dashboards & tools

8. How do you sign up? • Sign up! - http://www.google.com/analytics/sign_up.html • Add your site • Implement the code to all pages of your site • Usually a common header or footer is the easiest • Data will appear in 24 hours Don’t forget! – Common headers or footers on your site are the easiest way to Implement your analytics code.

9. What Does Google Analytics Measure? • Visitors • Language, location, screen size, browser, visits, etc. • Traffic Sources • Click trough from news sites, AdWords, keywords etc. • Content • Pages viewed • Goals • Conversion rates and goal paths • Ecommerce • Commerce tracking, revenue sources, etc.

10. Visitors • Benchmarking • Geography of visitors • New vs. Returning visitors • Languages • Browser capabilities • Network properties • Mobile

11. Traffic Sources • Top Keywords • All Keywords • Paid • Non-Paid • Campaigns • Referring Sites • Search Engines

12. Content • Top content • Content drilldown • Top landing pages • Top exit pages • Site overlay

13. Goals Reverse Goal Path • Total conversions • Conversion rate • Reverse goal path • Goal value • Goal abandoned funnel • Funnel visualization

14. Ecommerce • Total revenue • Conversion rate • Average order value • Product performance • Transactions • Visits to purchase • Days to purchase Product Performance

15. Initial Measures To Focus On • Overall site traffic • Bounce rate • Site content popularity • High value landing pages • Top traffic sources • Top keywords and phrases • Goals

16. Overall Site Traffic • What is it? • The total number of visits to your site within a given time. • What to do with it? • Correlate to PR, Ad campaigns, key events, etc. • Trending - year over year, quarter over quarter, month over month

17. Bounce Rate • What is it? • The percentage of website visitors who see just one page on your site, or stayed on the site for a small amount of time (usually five seconds or less). • What to do with it? • Use this metric to measure visit quality. • High bounce rate mean your visitors aren't seeing content relevant to them immediately.

18. Site Content Popularity • What it is? • A snapshot of traffic metrics specific to each page of your site. • What to do with it? • View the most popular pages based on traffic, time on page, bounce rate, etc. • This helps identify which pages are performing or which pages need to be evaluated to get more traffic.

19. High Value Landing Pages • What is it? • Pages with a high traffic volume and high bounce rate should be optimized • What to do with it? • Evaluate the sources and the keywords related to this traffic to determine the type of content they are looking for to get them to stay on your site and complete the goals you want them to by providing relevant content. • Evaluate site structure, SEM campaigns, SEO effectiveness and links

20. Top Traffic Sources • What it is? • The top sources of traffic to your site in the selected time period. • What to do with it? • View the most valuable and effective links • PR activity correlations • Allocate budgets to the most effective sources

21. Top Keywords and Phrases • What it is? • Understand what people are actually searching for to get to your site verse what you think they are. • What to do with it? • Understand the terms visitors are using to more accurately bid on keywords. • Understand which keywords and phrases are driving traffic, completing goals, etc. • Allows you to focus your budget on working ads and optimization

22. Goal Setting • Example of a Goal : “Submitting a contact us form or making a purchase” • Why is this important? • Track all sales on your site • Top selling products • Shipping data • Track file downloads, lead submissions, views of key pages, etc. (Any “key action” you want your visitors to do on your site)

23. More Advanced Considerations • Motion Charts – a chart with multiple variables in a timeline • Custom Reports – Create custom reports specific to goals, main pages, etc. • Inbound and Outbound Link Tracking – Track effectiveness of web advertising • Filters – Use to filter out information that is relevant, Internal traffic, etc. • Leaderlander.com – View traffic by company with an IP address lookup • URL Builder – Create URLS to embed on the web coded with specific sources • Website Optimizer – Create multiple versions of your site and see which works the best

25. What is Google Adwords? • Definitions of Google AdWords on the Web: • AdWords is Google's flagship advertising product and main source of revenue ($21 billion in 2008). AdWords offers pay-per-click (PPC) advertising en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_AdWords • A Pay Per Click contextual advertisement program which is used as the majority way to advertise onlinewww.johnmurch.com/2008/06/02/basic-advertisement-glossary/

26. What is Search Engine Marketing? • Search Engine Marketing (SEM): a broad term that describes all of the activities used to promote web sites and thus generate leads and sales from search engines. SEM includes PPC Management, landing page optimization and SEO.

27. How Does it Work?

28. Why SEM? • Target advertising • Better advertiser ROI than untargeted ads • Improved user experience • No minimum spend • Choose your daily budget • Measurable • Only pay for click

29. Why Google? • The Google Network reaches over 80% of internet users worldwide • Google’s network includes: • All Google services • Search partners: Amazon, AOL, Etc. • Content publishers: New York Times, About.com, etc. – Any AdSense User • Integration with Google Analytics to track impressions to lead/sales/etc.

30. How: Setup • http://www.google.com/ads/adwords/

31. Setting up a new campaign • Thought starters • What is a CPC and how does it work? • What should I bid and how does it work? • Creating an advertisement • Setting up keywords • Testing and optimization • What should I report on

32. Thought Starters… • Start broad and be budget conscious (small) • Evaluate your progress with Analytics • Refine based on learnings • Wireless power technology – selling to people searching Austin Powers or Power Rangers • Repeat process and optimize budget off of learnings

33. What is CPC? Definition “Also called Pay Per Click (PPC). A performance-based advertising model where the advertiser pays a set fee for every click on an ad. The majority of text ads sold by search engines are billed under the CPC model.”

34. How CPC Bidding Works? • Google’s goal is to find the balance between the User, Advertiser, and Google • CPC is a calculation between an AdRank and Quality Score • AdRank is derived from a calculation: • (Max Bid) x (Quality Score) = Ad Rank • Max bid is the maximum you will pay per click • You will only pay the amount the bidder below you pays • High quality score approach or high bid • Quality Score is a combination of the following three attributes: • Click through rate • Relevance of your site to the search • Landing page stats like bounce rate

35. How CPC is Calculated? • After AdRank is determined taking into account Quality Score and Max Bid • The actual paid CPC is determined by: (AdRank of the placement below you) / (Your Quality Score) = Actual CPC • If you have the highest bid for a keyword – say $3.00 and the second highest bid is $2.00 – then you will pay $2.00 for that keyword

36. Bidding Considerations • Consider the following variables: • Click Through Rate of your advertisement • Profit Per Sale • A helpful approach to understanding how much you should spend • (Profit Per Sale) X (Conversion rate) / 2 (for 100% ROI) = Max CPC • $20 x 2% = Max CPC of $0.20 • $100 x 2% = Max CPC of $1.00 • $1000 x 2% = Max CPC of $10.00

37. Bidding Options • How to use basic options • Setting up bidding • Locations and languages • How to set a budget • Delivery method • Considerations for position and preference

38. Creating an Advertisement • Headline – “attention getter” • Limited description • Display url verses real url • Keywords • Placements

39. Setting up Keywords • Cast a wide net – Then narrow based on Analytics • Find good keywords and add negative keywords to be more efficient • Consider user intent • Use customer lingo, not just industry lingo • Pricing • Don’t forget • Synonyms • Misspellings • Geographic keywords? • Brand and Trademark terms? • Narrow the net based on how long ads last and effective keywords with goal conversions

40. Keyword Example – “Disney Toys” • Broad Match- Disney Toys • Yes- Buy Disney toys, buy toy Disney, Disney toys online • Phrase Match- “Disney Toys” • Yes- Buy Disney toys • No- Buy toys Disney • Exact Match- [Disney Toys] • Yes- Disney Toys • No- Toys Disney, buy Disney toys • Negative Match – Story • No- Disney toys Story

41. Keyword Variations to Consider

42. Testing and Optimization • Google Analytics – Paid keywords / Ad Groups section • Which ones are giving you conversions? • What content are they looking at (is it right?) • How much time are they spending on site? • Are you getting the traffic (click throughs) you are looking for? • Where is your traffic coming from? Google CPC should grow • Also keep an eye on • Budget burn • Ad duration and frequency

43. What Should I Report On? • Look for your top performing Ad Groups and Keywords based on: • CTR, CPC, Clicks, Average Position and Impressions • Look for your top Ads based on: • % Served, CTR, CPC, Clicks, Average Position and Impressions • Look to understand through Google Analytics how the Ads are translating into conversions

44. More Advanced Considerations • DoubleClick – Ad Planner – Allows you to view the sites a demographic visits • AdSense – Google Ad program for sites, Allows site to add Google ads to gain revenue from traffic – Part of the Google network • Google Insights – View and compare the trending of keywords • WebMaster Tools – A collection of Google Tools to help optimize your site

45. Resources • Google has great resources to help you along your journey! • Google Analytics Blog - http://analytics.blogspot.com/ • Google Adwords Blog - http://adwords.blogspot.com/ • A copy of this presentation will be available for download on our blog at SteketeeGreiner.com next week

46. Q & A Thank you!