Analytics and AdWords tips - Part 1 of 4

In our survey last month you told us you were interested in hearing more about how Google Analytics can help you improve your AdWords results. Today, we're going to kick off a four-part series on precisely this subject.

For those of you unfamiliar with Google Analytics, it's a free tool that lets you see how visitors interact with your site. While AdWords helps you drive traffic to your site, Google Analytics helps you find out what happens to these visitors after they get to your site. For example, if your ad for shoes directs visitors to a page with all the brands of shoes you offer, here are some things Analytics can show you:

• Which types of shoes do visitors view most often? For example, do people prefer sandals or sneakers?
• In which order do visitors view pages? For example, do people view more expensive shoes, but then buy cheaper ones?
• Which pages are the last ones people see before leaving the site? For example, do people get confused on the sign-up page and leave?
• Do people actually complete a goal on your site? For example, how many visitors buy or sign-up?

All this information can help you make better decisions about your website and your AdWords advertising. For example, if your ad directs people to a page that Analytics says has a high bounce rate (where many people leave the site after viewing the page) you can change your destination URL to point to another page. In that way, you can get more value out of your website traffic.

Over the next few weeks we'll explore specific ways that you can use Analytics to maximize your AdWords investment:

Part 2 - Linking your Analytics and AdWords accounts & tracking your revenue
Part 3 - Identifying keywords that lose you money & calculating your ROI
Part 4 - Finding keywords and ad positions that drive revenue

But if you're in a hurry to get started, you can watch the Google Analytics in 60 Seconds series to learn how to effectively use Google Analytics:

Google Analytics in 60 Seconds: Find the Best Keywords
Google Analytics in 60 Seconds: Location Targeting
Google Analytics in 60 Seconds: Find Poor Performing Campaigns and Keywords
Google Analytics in 60 Seconds: Placement Targeting
Google Analytics in 60 Seconds: Identifying High Spenders
Google Analytics in 60 Seconds: Conversion Funnels
Google Analytics in 60 Seconds: Tracking Ecommerce with Google Analytics

And if you'd like to learn more about Google Analytics, including case studies and in-depth looks at its features, you can visit the Google Analytics site.

Posted by Amanda Kelly, Inside AdWords crew

Do more with less -- Part 3 of 3

In last week's post we discussed how to use Conversion Optimizer to get more conversions from your existing AdWords campaigns and keywords. This week, in the final installment of this series on doing more with less, we'll show you how you can tightly focus your AdWords campaigns on the areas that are converting the best, uncover the hidden traffic gems you're missing out on, and expand on what you already know is working.

If you want to refocus your existing budget on your highest performing product areas, or reach potential customers that you are missing, the secret is in the keywords. The Search-based Keyword Tool, a new, free tool from Google, looks at the content of your website and matches it against Google search queries (entered by Google users) providing you with a list of extremely relevant, actively searched keywords. The list of suggestions is then filtered to remove any keywords that you're already advertising on, so every single keyword you see is a new one.

Helping your bottom line
Other than giving you new relevant keywords, how does this help your bottom line? Say you sell two product lines - widgets and gizmos - and you know that your widgets product line is selling much better than your gizmos product line. You can use the tool to identify high-potential widget search terms that you're missing and expand that campaign, applying more of your budget on the campaigns that are most effective.

Focusing your campaigns
The Search-based Keyword Tool is equipped with a number of powerful filters and features to make it easy to find keywords for the parts of your website and business that provide you with the greatest ROI.

• Looking for bargain terms? In the 'more filters' section, sort by 'low-competition' or pick a bid you're willing to pay and sort by 'suggested bid'.
• Only looking for keywords in a particular product area? The tool automatically groups keywords by categories, so simply select the category you want on the left-hand side of the results.
• Can't find the category you're looking for, or want to find terms for a specific page on your website? Click on 'more filters' and enter a term into the 'url contains' field.

The tool also offers additional information on each keyword so that you can choose the best ones for your campaigns. Each suggestion shows the average monthly searches for that term, how competitive placement on that term is, the estimated bid to place your ad in the top three positions, your Ad/Search share for the term, and the page on your site the term is most related to, which you might chose to select as the landing page (destination url) for that keyword.

Getting started
Get started with the Search-based Keyword tool in 4 easy steps:

1. Go to http://www.google.com/sktool
   
2. Sign-in to your AdWords account
3. Enter the url of your website
4. Click 'Find Keywords'

For more information on the tool, please visit our support site. And remember, you can find other helpful Google tools at www.google.com/domorewithless.

Posted by Amanda Kelly, Inside AdWords crew

Do more with less -- Part 2 of 3

Last week we talked about how Website Optimizer can help you convert a higher percentage of your website visitors (getting you more conversions with the same amount of clicks). This week we'll see how you can get more conversions from your existing AdWords campaigns and keywords with the Conversion Optimizer. We're also happy to announce that the Conversion Optimizer is now available to all campaigns using AdWords' free Conversion Tracking tool that also have at least 30 conversions in the last 30 days. So, if you were previously unable to use the Conversion Optimizer in AdWords, you may now be eligible to use it.

Whether you want visitors to fill out a form, sign up for an account, or buy a product, you want the people who click on your AdWords ad to complete some action on your site. The Conversion Optimizer, a free AdWords feature, helps you get the most conversions for your ad spend by using your conversion tracking data to improve your advertising efficiency. It does this by optimizing the placement of your ads in each auction based on the likelihood of a conversion. This process helps to avoid unprofitable clicks and to get you conversions without requiring you to spend as much time managing your bids - thus saving you money and time (which is particularly useful during a down economy).

For example, say you advertise on the keywords 'shoes' and 'brown leather shoes'. If the Conversion Optimizer determines that people who search for 'brown leather shoes' buy more shoes on your website than people who search for 'shoes', it will adjust your bids so you can appear higher on the page for the more profitable term and lower for the less profitable term.

You might already adjust your keyword bids with the goal of increasing your conversions or decreasing your costs, but the Conversion Optimizer is able to adjust bids using additional factors that are otherwise unavailable. This includes varying bids by broad match query, user location, and the particular search or content partner sites where the ad is appearing. These extra adjustments enable many advertisers to achieve double-digit percentage increases in conversions while paying the same price or less for each conversion.

To learn more or to get started, check out the Conversion Optimizer page. And remember to visit www.google.com/domorewithless to find a list of other Google resources that can help you achieve your advertising goals -- even in a downturn.

Posted by Amanda Kelly, Inside AdWords crew

(Ad)Word of the Day: Landing Page

Today on (Ad)Word of the Day, we'll be covering landing page from the AdWords Glossary:

An active webpage where customers will 'land' when they click your ad. The web address for this page is often called a 'destination URL' or 'clickthrough URL.'

Your landing pages are most effective when they are consistent with your ads. For example, if your ad is for a specific product at a certain price, both the product and the pricing should be featured prominently on your landing page.

If you're not sure what landing page design works best with your customers, you can use Google Website Optimizer to try different pages to find the most effective one.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Inside AdWords crew

(Ad)Word of the Day: Keyword Insertion

For today's installment of (Ad)Word of the Day, we're looking at keyword insertion from the AdWords Glossary:

Keyword insertion is an advanced feature used to dynamically update your ad text with your chosen keywords. You insert a special modification tag into your ad text to enable this feature for your ads.

Keyword insertion is a powerful feature that can save you time and also help make your ad text more relevant. This feature will automatically customize your ad to a user's query, which means your ad is more likely to attract a user's attention. And, since ad text that matches a user's search terms is shown in bold, your ads will stand out even more.

Even with these benefits, keyword insertion shouldn't be used all the time. We recommend reading this article and going through this tutorial before you start using keyword insertion.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Inside AdWords crew

(Ad)Word of the Day: Conversion

We all know the importance of measuring the impact of your ad campaigns. That's why, today, we're discussing the term conversion from the AdWords Glossary, which is defined as follows:

When a user completes an action on your site, such as buying something or requesting more information.

In AdWords, a conversion occurs when a user clicks on your ad, then proceeds to complete an action on your web site that you deem valuable, like a purchase, registration, or sign-up. You can track actions like this on your web site by using one (or both) of the tools we offer:

1. Conversion tracking: A tool for measuring conversion metrics for your campaigns.
2. Google Analytics: A more robust tool that tracks not just conversions, but also gives insight into how your web site visitors found your site, how they navigated through it and how you can improve their user experience -- all things that ultimately help you improve the ROI of your web site.

Both conversion tracking and Google Analytics are free tools and are great ways of ensuring advertising accountability and making smarter online advertising decisions.

Learn more about setting up conversion tracking for your AdWords ads, and signing up for Google Analytics. 

Posted by Emel Mutlu, Inside AdWords crew

(Ad)Word of the Day: Ad Variations

Did you know that we have an AdWords Glossary? It's a great resource for learning more about AdWords; so we're starting a new series here at Inside AdWords entitled (Ad)Word of the Day. Each post in the series will cover one term in the glossary and talk a little bit about it.

For our inaugural post, we'll start with ad variations:

Ad variations are multiple versions of an ad for a single product or service, all based on the same set of keywords. Variations are a good way to test many versions of the same message to see which works best with potential customers.

One advantage of using ad variations is that AdWords can automatically show the best performing ad. If you are not sure which message will work best with your potential customers, you can simply create multiple ads for an ad group. AdWords will automatically show the best performing ad more often over time.

We hope you've enjoyed the first part of our new series. If you have suggestions for words you'd like to see, we're always listening at inside-adwords@google.com.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Inside AdWords crew

Google Analytics 101 (Part 3)

In this installment of Analytics 101, we'll dive straight into some statistics that you can use right away. Hopefully by now you've finished installing your tracking code and have had some visitor traffic you can look at.

When you sign in to Google Analytics and view your reports, you'll be taken straight to the Dashboard, which is a top-level view of your site so that you can see how you're doing at a glance.

(Click on the image for a full-size version)

It's important to make sure you always have the date range you want selected. Use the Date Selector in the top right to choose your range with either the Calendar or Timeline view.

(Click on the image for a full-size version)

The large graph shows your Visits over time by default. If you click on the drop-down near the top right of the graph, you can make it expand to select any one of six important statistics for your site: Visits, Pageviews, Pages/Visit, Bounce Rate, Average Time on Site, and % New Visits.

(Click on the image for a full-size version)

You might also notice that these same six statistics appear in the Site Usage section under the graph. You can learn how Google Analytics defines the basic terms of Visits, Pageviews, and Pages/Visit from this Help Center article; to be consistent, make sure everyone who'll be using your reports understands them.

The latter three stats are where it really gets interesting. Each of them will provide unique insights into your traffic based on context that only you, the person who best understands your website, can provide.

• Bounce Rate is the percentage of visitors who left your site after only seeing one page. For most sites, a high Bounce Rate is bad since people are arriving, taking a quick look around, and leaving immediately. Either the site isn't useful or they're turned off by something. By monitoring your Bounce Rate over time, you can optimize your landing pages and then check to see if your changes worked - a lower rate means people like what you've done with the place. Bounce Rate is best used to compare different sets of your own data. Websites and industries vary too greatly for us to give you here a set number on what a healthy Bounce Rate is. For example, blogs usually have high Bounce Rates no matter what since normal visitor behavior is to read the newest post and then leave.
  

• Average Time on Site indicates the average length of time a visitor spends on your site's tracked pages. A high number may mean that visitors are very engaged with your site, which is great if, say, your goal is to provide entertaining content. However, you may not necessarily want it high. If you have an e-commerce site and people spend a long time on it, perhaps your buying process is too long or confusing. Once you find out which way is best for you, you can take steps to change your Average Time on Site number in the desired direction.
  

• % New Visits tells you the percentage of visitors that have never visited your site before. If you look at a date range where you've run a far-reaching ad campaign, you'd be excited to see an increased number of new visitors who have been exposed to your campaigns and are curious to see your website. Or perhaps your goal is to create loyalty among your customer base, in which case you'd want a significant portion of your visitors to be returning. Because % New Visits is a statistic that usually needs more context and absolute numbers to be useful, go ahead and click on the link to see a detailed report for it. You can do the same for any of the statistics we've discussed. In fact, you can pretty much click on any stat in the Google Analytics interface to drill down for more details.
  

We've just covered the first set of metrics that you can use to measure the performance of your site, as well as the success of any changes you happen to make to it, and we didn't even have to leave the comfort of the Dashboard. Next time, we'll look at another set of useful data, your Traffic Sources reports.

Posted by Christian, Inside AdWords crew

Google Analytics 101 (Part 2)

In Part 1 of Google Analytics 101, we talked about what Google Analytics is, how it helps site owners, and how to sign up. At the end of the sign-up process, we arrived at the Analytics Settings page, which is where you administer your account and make important changes. Let's take a closer look around it (we've numbered the screenshot to make it easier to follow).

(Click on the image for a full-size version)

(1) This picture is of an account that hasn't finished code installation. At the top you'll notice the box with the yellow exclamation mark that says the tracking code hasn't been detected. This box will go away once your code is installed. If you need to look at your code again, click the 'Check Status' button to get it.

(2) This grey-headlined box in the middle of the page contains your Website Profiles. Here's the first of some important Analytics definitions: a profile is a set of rules that determines what data shows up in your Analytics reports. The rules for a particular profile include user access levels, advanced configurations, and most importantly, the website being tracked. You can have as many profiles as you want, meaning that you can track multiple domains each with their own profile. Or, you can track one domain with multiple profiles to look at different sets of data. For now we'll stick with one domain and one profile. You have to have at least one profile per Google Analytics account at all times.

(3) To the right of the Website Profiles box are links to our Help Center. These common FAQs in the Help Center fill in a lot of details if you're having trouble setting up, or just feel like poking around.

(4) Underneath the Website Profiles box are links to add more profiles, manage user access, and create filters for your data. These tools, when properly set up, allow you to control what data shows up in your reports, making it easier to focus on certain segments of traffic. We'll give these options individual attention in the future.

That's it for this installment on Analytics Settings. In Part 3 we'll introduce the reports, as well as feature a certain statistic that web analytics experts often say is the one of the single most useful around.

Posted by Christian, Inside AdWords crew

Google Content Network Tips: Optimizing for a content network audience

Recently, we wrote a three part series on the Google content network. Many of you were interested in more optimization advice for the content network, and we're sharing more of those tips today:

On the search network, ads are shown to users who are specifically searching for results using one of your keywords. On the content network, ads are shown to users as they research interests and browse sites that are related to your keywords and ad text. Users on the content network are in a different mindset than users on search, so changes to your keywords, ad text and account structure may be necessary to make the most out of your content network advertising.

• Create separate search and content campaigns.
  This will allow you to:
  
• Optimize your ad groups and ad text specifically for content pages.
• Target different audiences. If you sell flowers, you may want to create a content ad group to show your ads to couples by targeting pages relevant to them.
  
• Use general keywords to strengthen the theme of your ad group, without affecting your search performance.
  

• Think about the type of user browsing a web page and write ads to catch that user's attention.
• It's important for your ad text to relate to the webpage on which it appears. If your target user is going to be on pages related to flowers, mention flowers or closely related products in the ad text.
• Test multiple creatives and ad formats (text, image, video) in all available sizes to gain better insight into what sort of ads will perform the best for you.
  

• Include call-to-action phrases.
• Phrases like 'Register now," "Get a free quote," and "Call now" can can help set expectations for the person who is about to visit your site.
  
• Your call-to-action should be what you consider to be a conversion.
  

• Highlight special offers or features available on your site.
• We've found that advertisers often get higher ROI on the content network when they include product prices in their ads. Prices and special offers can help you stand out from competitors and showcase your best deals.
  

• Link your ad to customized landing pages that match the information in your ad text.
  
• If your ad highlights a special deal on cell phones, make sure that the ad directs users to the specific cell phone page of your site. And ensure that your landing pages are clear and easy to navigate.
  

As you implement these tips and those from the previous optimization post, we recommend that you track the performance of your campaigns and iterate to figure out what works well for you.

• Track the performance of your contextually targeted ads using Placement Performance reports.
  
• The Placement Performance report (PPR) provides information on where your contextually targeted ads are showing up and how they are performing. You can use placement targeting (CPC or CPM) to further target the placements where your ads are performing particularly well and use site exclusion to exclude them from sites where they are not performing well. You can find more tips on how to use PPR effectively to boost campaign performance here.
  

• Let Google track and manage your campaign's performance for you.
• Using the Conversion Optimizer, you can specify a cost-per-acquisition (CPA), and Google will automatically adjust your CPC bids to meet your CPA goal. Learn how Bingo Card Creator used Conversion Optimizer on his content network campaigns to save time and increase his profits.
  

We hope you found these tips useful. Please continue to send us feedback on the content network and what additional content network topics you would like to read about in this blog.

Posted by Feng, Inside AdWords crew