SearchCap: Google AdWords hack, SEO ROI & more

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. The post SearchCap: Google AdWords hack, SEO ROI & more appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Google App for iOS Gets a Speed Boost by @SouthernSEJ

The Google app for iOS is now faster according to an official announcement from the company. In addition to cutting down loading times the app is been updated with the new features that are designed to help people save time and get information more quickly. Opening the app and conducting a search will be just a bit quicker now than it was before. Google says this incremental boost in speed will save users a collective 6.5 million hours this year. For the first time Google’s accelerated mobile pages will now be surfaced in the Google app for iOS. AMP articles […]

The post Google App for iOS Gets a Speed Boost by @SouthernSEJ appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

True performance baselines & ROI for SEO without attribution modeling

It’s an old trope of the Search Engine Optimization industry that SEO is the channel with the greatest return of any online marketing channel. But, given Google’s increased ability to identify and penalize sites employing poor-quality link-building practices, my experience in the new business trenches with QueryClick (my employer) tells me that many agencies today are failing to deliver return for their clients. And, in some cases, they report fantastic ROI figures despite presiding over declining organic traffic!

If you oversee SEO and want to get a true picture of your (or your agency’s) real return on investment improvement, what criteria do you need to use? Though this is a seemingly simple question, it’s a very important one to ask because SEO truly can — and should — be at the very core of your online marketing strategy.

So, what is my baseline?

Again, a seemingly simple question with an obvious answer: year-on-year improvement in revenue from the channel (independent of any attribution model). But let’s analyze what needs to come into the spotlight when building this baseline.

• Industry seasonality
  • Adjust for one-off trend items. For example, smartphone retail traffic is affected hugely by Apple’s iPhone release cycle, even if you’re looking at the upgrade halo effect or refurbishment market impact. Equally, insurance markets, FMCG markets and luxury brand markets all have easily identifiable one-off trends you can account for and remove from your forecast baseline.
  • Adjust for the expected external events that influence your category. Fashion is hugely affected by weather, for example, and if you know you’re in for early heat waves and disrupted winterwear demand in your target markets (Hello, 2016!), then make an assessment and adjustment. Make sure you record a note about this adjustment in your numbers, however (See below).
• Offline brand activity/paid media
  • Adjust for (and annotate in your web analytics package) any spends across your paid media channels, including TV and radio, outdoor display, promoted posts, paid social and general paid search trends (See also much further below). You’re looking to remove year-on-previous-year variation.
• Earned & owned media
  • As above, annotate and adjust for year-on-year variance in spends and discount values for earned and owned, for example, store discounting, promotional activity/aggressive online discounting, rewards for reviews (Make sure you are not doing this in 2016, BTW) and so on.
  • Bear in mind we are looking for year-on-year variation. We have to start somewhere, so if you haven’t gone through this exercise before, take the previous year as your standard to start from, unless you have good reason not to (big data gaps, multiple new territories, changing from free to paid SAAS, removal of free delivery and so on). You may have to insert some manual adjustments here; this is perfectly acceptable, as rational thought and an attempt to be comprehensive and fair is the key here, not splitting the difference on minor variation.
• Market trend impact
  • Are you in a growth market? If so, adjust to exactly counterweight this influence based on your accepted industry growth (revenue or spend industry figures). Same for declining markets. If you’re affected by this item, your business will already know what these figures are. If you don’t know, ask your finance folks.
• Keyphrase trend impact
  • This is interesting, as it assumes intent, and as such, it does not make my list for adjustable components. For example, say you happen to be on trend for the fashion fad of the year (gold lamé baggy trousers, say), is it fair to remove that from your baseline? Well, I’d argue if you have stormed the SERPs with awesome rankings for that term, and fashion follows your farsighted decision, then you should reap the benefit of that. After all, if you don’t, you’d then have to remove the decline in traffic for previously popular terms. You’re not trying to remove the effect of strategic decisions from your SEO performance calculations. This is about removing external, unearned influences.
• Historic trend impact
  • This is simply taking a view of the “state of play” performance of the site based on a two- or three-year historic view and including this as part of your baseline against which performance improvement and ROI calculation are measured. This is important, as it allows assessment of your improvement over and above your “status quo” activity. You could argue that this is an overly harsh view to take: in essence, you are obliging better performance before any ROI calculation because you are taking the previous year’s performance improvement away from your upcoming year calculations. But if there is to be any purpose to your ROI metric beyond comparing it to a third-party performance (and that would be better done by comparing flat revenue growth, or not at all, if you aren’t performing full attribution analysis), then you should consider this improvement on the status quo to be the very key to what you’re trying to achieve. To allow leeway, call ROI that’s calculated using this approach “Incremental ROI,” and also calculate unadjusted ROI to allow for context. Performing this calculation requires forecasting forward the expected performance given the historic data in a statistically significant way. We use ARIMA modeling at QueryClick, which has proven very effective.

This defines an ARIMA(p,d,q) process with drift δ/(1−Σφi)… but you don’t need to know that. Apply a data scientist to R and automate this part.

Keep all your adjustments available and clear in your baseline, and pull in the R data from your ARIMA calculation. In Excel, for example, instead of stacking up all of the above, keep the modifiers for each item separate — I like to run a separate tab — and place your modifiers in month-by-month grids, adjusting up and down by percentage rates based on the absolute difference and total volume affected. If you keep it all in a separate sheet, you can review and assess against the reality and include commentary when you set out your baseline.

If you are applying this adjustment historically (and I strongly recommend you do, even if you are going through this process for new campaign planning and to secure budget), take the same approach and place confidence rates (zero to 100 percent) against each item. These can be set to 100 percent for items you are certain affected the baseline (stuff in the past, say). For example, in the UK, we have had four consecutive “hottest months ever” this year. If your data covers this period, you have a 100 percent modifier to your early/late sales impact rate (itself a percentage).

If there is a level of doubt about a modifier you insert, try to use modifiers that are widely accepted in the business category or industry, and, where none exist, take a moderate view and use that year’s data to assess if the modifier needs to change next year. This narrative continuity, and declaration of “known unknowns” will engender confidence in your baseline stability and remove subjective influence — allowing you to take an objective view of performance over and above this baseline.

Also, annotation within your web analytics package is a best practice to ensure any segmentation and subsequent data export can take your data in context and allow adjustment.

Attributing value within an attribution model

Attribution is, itself, an in-depth post, so, other than asking you to think deeply about Avinash Kaushik’s excellent primer, let’s restrict ourselves to the most pertinent and independently measurable facet of attribution as it relates to SEO year-on-year performance: How much has SERP overlap affected SEO channel traffic capture year-on-year?

Answering this requires us to adjust for spend variation in paid search over the year, and also to deal with the old issue of brand and non-brand conversion impact. In short, brand typically converts at a higher rate on last-click attribution models, which then takes revenue (unfairly) away from other channels which contributed to the brand search in the first place.

Another way to think about this issue is that the time to convert is lower for brand traffic compared to non-brand, and so traffic via non-brand appears “harder to convert.”

For our SEO baseline, we can account for this by simply adjusting to:

• overall paid search spend adjustment (Again, we adjust month-on-month by a percentage rate based on variance with the same month for the previous year.); and
• brand vs. non-brand split.

The importance of the first of these items is self-evident. Increased paid listings where once there were only organic for your brand will impact organic traffic (regardless of any incremental halo effect where both exist) and should be removed from our baseline measurement for fairness in the same manner as the previous items. The second is less evident.

The theory it models is: if SEO is to drive new business (as opposed to cannibalizing other channels), and if we are trying to measure growth, then increases in non-brand traffic should be critical and weighted up.

Therefore, in determining our baseline, we should weight-up the value of non-brand traffic and depress the impact of any brand increases. This further limits the impact of external factors and rewards the capture of highly valuable new business that would not otherwise have engaged if our ranking had not existed.

Adding this into your baseline requires an understanding of the brand versus non-brand split in your paid and organic data, which I described in my previous article on building lightweight attribution models for paid and organic media mix analysis.

Returning the “true” ROI

At this stage, we have normalized for many of the unearned components that contribute to the performance of any metric assessed from organic search. Obviously, to calculate ROI, you will need a value for Revenue (or Net Revenue). Taking a historic view, we can assess the previous year’s Net Revenue from our normalized baseline: this is the “R” in our ROI calculation and should be used for the calculation.

If you are managing an internal team, you must decide how much to weight up the influence of increased generic performance to counterweight the stark reduction of trend performance you are removing with all the above normalization With a new or growing team, you may want to down-weight the trend performance as encouragement for future performance. With a more experienced team, you could be more stringent and allow for more “carryover” performance from the previous year.

Regardless of your decision, you now have the tools and a solid methodology for why you are calculating ROI figures that will allow you to interact more meaningfully with the rest of the business. Normalizing SEO ROI enables you to to be closer to the measurement protocols used with other business activities.

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Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

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About The Author

Chris Liversidge has over twelve years web development experience & is the founder of

QueryClick Search Marketing

, a UK agency specialising in SEO, PPC and Conversion Rate Optimisation strategies that deliver industry-leading ROI.

3 Google AdWords hacks to drive high-quality leads

You already know that Google AdWords can be an important tool for scaling your business, even if you’re new to PPC marketing. If that’s something you didn’t know, beware of the spoiler to follow: Google AdWords can be an important tool for scaling your business. 

The problem for most advertisers is that AdWords can be expensive. Every dollar you spend paying for clicks is a dollar you can’t allocate to other areas of your business, so it’s vital to make each one count.

Today, I’m going to walk you through three Google AdWords hacks to help you drive high-quality leads and ensure that every dollar you spend is well spent.

These are hacks that I used with almost all of my clients during my time at Google and now employ with all our customers at AdHawk. They have been very successful for these clients and will help you save some serious time and money.

Let’s dig in!

Google AdWords hack #1: the only way to bulk-modify broad match modified keywords

One AdWords feature I consistently see advertisers struggle with is keyword match types. There’s a lot of bad information on the internet about what match types advertisers should be using exclusively. The truth is that each one has a time and a place, but I’m going to focus on two of my favorites today: broad match modified keywords and phrase match keywords.

I subscribe to the Goldilocks way of thinking for the keywords match types I use most often. Broad match keywords can trigger too much irrelevant traffic. Exact match keywords can severely limit the number of eyeballs on your ads. Broad match modified and phrase match keywords, however, are just right.

(If you need a refresher on the differences between keyword match types, check out this great piece by Josh Dreller.)

Broad match modified and phrase match keywords strike the perfect balance between reaching the largest audience possible and still maintaining some control over the type of user your ads are being served to. This is incredibly important if you’re looking to stretch every dollar you spend on AdWords.

The last thing you want is for your ads to be triggered for irrelevant traffic and result in clicks. Those customers will likely never convert, and you’re probably better off flushing your money down an AdWords-shaped toilet.

Phrase match keywords are pretty simple to enable. All you have to do is head to the “Keywords” section of your campaign, check the box next to the keywords you want to turn into phrase match keywords, click “Edit,” click “Change match types,” make sure the form says “From broad match, to phrase match,” and BOOM! You’re done.

Broad match modified keywords, on the other hand, are a little bit trickier to modify in bulk. As of the publish date of this post, the only way to move your broad match keywords to broad match modified keywords is to edit in a “+” to each of the keywords you want to change one by one. That is, unless, you follow my simple Google AdWords hack. It’s a simple two-part process to get this up and running:

Part 1 — Find and replace

• Navigate to the “Keywords” section of your Google AdWords campaign.
• Check the boxes to the left of the keywords you want to change from broad match to broad match modified.
• Click “Edit” and then “Change keyword text.”
• Keep the “Action” section “Find and replace.”
• In the “Find text” field, put your cursor in the box and click the space bar once. (You’re telling Google to find all your spaces.)
• In the “Replace with” field, put your cursor in the box, click the space bar once, and add a plus sign (+). (Google AdWords uses the plus sign to indicate which keywords are broad match modified keywords.)
• Click “Make changes.”

Part 2 — Append text

• With all the keywords from above still selected, click “Edit,” and then “Change keyword text.”
• Change the “Action” to “Append text.”
• Add a plus sign (+) in the “Append text” field.
• Click “Before existing text.”
• Click “Make changes.”

It may seem like a lot of steps, but I promise it will save hours of your time (especially if you have large keyword lists). Make sure to review the keywords that were modified and remove any plus signs from filler keywords terms (like “the” and “an”) and from any individual keyword terms you don’t want to be broad match modified.

Google AdWords hack #2: mastering Quality Score with the “One Per” Rule

Just uttering the phrase “Quality Score” can strike fear in the hearts of Google AdWords advertisers. What is it? How does it work? What can I do to make it better? I get these questions all the time, and my response to them is always, “Follow the ‘One Per’ Rule.”

As the name suggests, the One Per Rule requires you to limit the number of keywords per Ad Group to 1. It may sound a little crazy and counterintuitive, but there is a method behind the madness.

Limiting yourself to one keyword per ad group ensures that your keyword is tied closely to your ad text and the text on your landing page. This tells Google that your relevancy is through the roof, therefore awarding you a high Quality Score. It’s easily my favorite Google AdWords hack.

This isn’t a technique to use with every keyword, however. Only employ the “One Per” Rule on your top-performing keywords. Here’s how to get it going:

• Step 1 — Research. Select the Campaign you want to optimize and locate your five to 10 top-performing keywords across Ad Groups. If you’re looking to optimize conversions, choose the keywords that are most successful in generating that result. Or, if you want to optimize cost per conversion or cost per click, choose those top keywords. Every keyword you choose should be competitive when it comes to click-through rate (one percent and above).

• Step 2 — Create one AdGroup per keyword. Create an Ad Group for each of your top-performing keywords. If you have five top keywords, you should also have five Ad Groups. Keep things organized by using each individual keyword as the name of the AdGroup.

• Step 3 — Ensure your ad text is relevant. One of the keys to ensuring the “One Per” Rule is effective is sprinkling the keyword throughout the ad text. The keyword in your Ad Group will appear multiple times in your ad text and again on your landing page.

Quality Scores tend to be higher when the keyword appears in the ad headline, description and display URL. If one of my top-performing keywords is “women’s hats,” the structure of my ad should be similar to the one shown below:

• Step 4 — Optimize your landing page. The final step in the “One Per” Rule is simple: Ensure the keyword appears somewhere on your landing page.

Thinking about Quality Score as numbers between one and 10 makes it easy to forget why it’s really important — it’s Google’s way to determine how you as an advertiser create a good user experience by matching your ad to its message, its destination and what you are offering the consumer. Following the “One Per” Rule puts you in a position to check each one of those boxes and makes your life a little easier along the way.

Google AdWords hack #3: enabling call-only campaigns

Phone calls are the lifeblood for lots of businesses leveraging Google AdWords. It’s important to note that there are tons of opportunities to take advantage of. A recent study by BIA/Kelsey estimates that “annual calls to businesses from smartphones will reach 162 billion by 2019.” That’s billion with a B.

If you’re an advertiser who’s looking to maximize the number of phone calls you get from AdWords, you need to make sure to create a clear path for your potential customers to pick up the phone and give you a ring.

This can be difficult when you’re accustomed to guiding them through the normal AdWords flow of clicking on your ad and landing on your website. There are lots of distractions in those two simple steps that could keep your customers from doing what you really want them to do.

The best way to avoid all distractions is to encourage your customers to call you directly from your ad, and the best way to do that is through setting up a call-only campaign.

via Google

Google’s call-only campaign type is designed to only serve ads on mobile devices that are able to make phone calls. Instead of the traditional “click to website” flow, call-only campaigns prominently show your business phone number and a “click to call” button.

via Google

This means each click you pay for could equal a phone call to your business. It also means you have more opportunity to get creative with your ad copy. Action-oriented phrases like “schedule a call today” or “call a local expert now” will encourage customers to take action directly from the ad text.

Getting up and running with a call-only campaign is pretty simple if you follow the instructions below:

• Click the red “+Campaign” button.
• Select “Search Network only” from the drop-down menu.
• Select the “Call-only” radio button on the right.
• Fill out the remaining information regarding the campaigns settings.
• Click the “Save and continue” button.
• Fill in the information to create your call-only ad. Make sure to include action-oriented phrases, and enable a Google forwarding phone number if you want to track phone calls (We highly recommend this).
• Click “Save ad group.”

Final thoughts

With these three Google AdWords hacks, you can keep your accounts lean, precisely targeted and better optimized to drive high-quality leads. I’m always looking for new Google AdWords hacks to experiment with. If you have a good one, feel free to share it in Search Engine Land’s social media channels.

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Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

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About The Author

Todd is the CEO at

AdHawk

, a digital advertising software that aggregates and optimizes digital ad data. Before taking the startup plunge, Todd worked on the AdWords team at Google, where he helped high growth startups and small businesses with their digital advertising strategies. He is an expert at optimizing advertising accounts and improving ROI.

10 Reasons to Attend SEJ Summit by @annaleacrowe

Love learning at conferences but hate how behind you get at work while you are gone? There is a better way: SEJ Summit. Get your SEO knowledge on with our one-day conference featuring short, 20-minute jam sessions. You will get to learn from 12 SEO and marketing experts plus connect with them over scrumptious treats at lunch.

Best of all, the SEJ Summit adds a fun twist to every conference (you’ll have to attend to find out more!).

Continue reading below to see why I’m obsessing over the SEJ Summit.

1. Just One Day

Only a few conference destinations have it all: a relaxed vibe, up-to-date news and knowledge, an awesome speaker list, and great food. SEJ Summit is one of them. With targeted, actionable marketing expertise at every turn and a warm atmosphere, it’s a place where you can feel completely at ease.

And, my favorite part? It only takes one day — and your full attention, of course. Cut back on the all the planning it takes to coordinate travel for a multi-day conference (no hotel, no plane, no rental car required). Plus, you’ll get to meet more local like-minded marketing folks. Since it’s a one-dayer, it will most likely be local marketers that you can schmooze with over culture and cocktails.

2. 20-Minute Sessions

The idea of sitting through another 3 or 4-day conference can be pretty painful. This is where SEJ Summit shines with eight intensive presentations distilled down into quick 20 minute bursts of actionable information.

Whether you’re on the hunt for insider tip on Google’s AMP pages or you need a super-secret tip for your new website launching, SEJ Summit has done the dirty work for and packed it into these short, 20-minute jam sessions of magical marketing mastery.

3. Q&A Discussions

Chicago has been the talk of the SEJ Summit team for quite a while now. Santa Monica is still having a moment, New York just keeps getting cooler and cooler. But, no matter which SEJ Summit venue you’ll be heading to, there’s one thing that’s included in all (and something that everyone’s currently obsessing over): Q&A discussions.

There’s more than one reason this under-the-radar bonus feature has become one of the highlights of the SEJ Summits — in fact, I can think of at least 20. From the quirky mic tosses to creating an open forum that can only be described as magical, the Q&A discussions at the SEJ Summit really creates a collaborative environment between the expert and the audience that you don’t see at bigger conferences.

4. 8 Intensives + Panel

Let’s face it: Staying up-to-date on the latest marketing trends is no picnic. The days are short, the email newsletters are long, and there is little time. Even Hermione might be pulling out her Time-Turner necklace to play catch-up on the recent happenings. Needless to say, if you’re feeling a little behind or looking to try new tactics, the SEJ Summit 8 intensives (plus a panel) unearth some pretty innovative, leading edge strategies that are helping to shape the way the SEO landscape is changing.

5. Get Answers to AMP

Google AMP is almost a mythological place — especially to those marketing newbies who get started with dreams making it big to page 1. It’s an SEO strategy that still keeps me up at night. Those green lighting bolts I once loved for their Google page placement are now just reminders of how tough it can be to actually make it there.

At times like these, we need to renew our allegiance to the Big G (also known as Google). The Chicago SEJ Summit is doing just that by having Gary Illyes, Webmaster Trends Analyst for Google, explain what’s next for Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). This is BIG.

6. Manage Your Site Better

There are infinite ways to make your site more efficient and easier: CDNs, compressed CSS, page caching, and all those other details that work together to make a website so fast. But after a while, even the someone like myself, the all-SEO-everything kind of strategist, will find themselves daydreaming of one (or two) more fixes, but we’re not quite sure if it’s needed.

So, why not take a break and get inspired by SEJ Summit speakers like Carolyn Shelby, Ryan Jones, or Jordan Koene who manage Fortune 400 sites? These keynoters know everything from removing extra script to increase performance to a completely well-organized mobile site that will transport you from page to page without a blink.

7. Improve Conversions

If I had it my way, I would hit Add To Cart every time consumers landed on my client’s website. And, sure I could go HAM fueling this need, but to keep my client’s conversions coming in at steady pace, streamlining the conversion process is crucial. This is where speaker session with keynotes like The Home Depot’s Erin Everhart are 100% warranted. And, the potential for personalized one-on-one time at the lunch table is the greatest afternoon pick-me-up.

With advice from industry-renowned experts, I won’t be stuck asking myself, “Do I really need to split test this now?” again.

8. Increase Audience Engagement

When you start scrolling through Instagram or a website, you can spot the audience engagement trend over and over, it might be hard to admit it’s gone mainstream. Audience engagement has been lurking on the edges of marketing, but, like all good trends, audience engagement is getting it’s time in the spotlight.

To quell any naysayers,  audience engagement is here. It’s a collection of user experience, building trust off-site with social media and email, velvet ribbon, reputation management, and video marketing. SEJ Summit speaker Amy Vernon from the Daily Dot shares her iterations on audience engagement in 2016 ranging from the bold and the cool to the bad and worse.

9. You (Really, Really) Learn from Your Peers

Don’t get me wrong — I love learning from industry thought leaders at all conferences – both big and small. But, the beauty of the SEJ Summits is you get to make real connections with your peers. Local, smart, digital marketers that are also dealing with the same challenges I am? Count me in! You may not learn exactly what their tactics look like IRL, but it’s definitely a jumping-off point for some major inspiration.

10. Accelerate Site Speed

With Google AMP pages, everyone knows site speed is where the SEO power is now, right? Site speed makes everything else possible, as long as you know how to remove a few white spaces in your CSS and Javascript files, populate your sitemaps correctly, and get your content discovered by the bots.

In case you haven’t heard, the SEJ Summit boasts 8 intensives plus a panel to discuss new ideas for your site faster. To wit: Carolyn Shelby of Tribune Publishing is fronting the coveted site acceleration session where she walks you through her best practices for large sites like The Chicago Tribune and the LA Times. It’s going to be quite fabulous.

If you’re interested in staying up-to-date on SEJ Summit, sign-up here.

 

Image Credits

Featured Image: Image by Search Engine Journal. Used with permission.
In-post Photo: 

A Simple Trick That Will Improve Your Outreach by 10x by @sejournal

This post was sponsored by Ahrefs. 

Email outreach remains one of the most powerful ways to promote and grow your online business.

With effective outreach, you can:

• Gain backlinks on sites that did not previously link to you
• Build relationships with influencers in your niche
• Get people to write guest posts for your blog for free
• Land new affiliates for your product or service
• Onboard new customers or make direct sales
• Turn haters into brand ambassadors
• Have people promote your product or content on social networks

The possibilities are endless (unless, of course, your outreach looks like SPAM).

“Timing” is What Will Multiply Your Outreach

When it comes to getting the most of email outreach, timing is everything.

For example, let’s say you received the following email:

“Hello %NAME%,

I just found your article that you wrote 2 years ago about %TOPIC% here: %URL%

And I wanted to reach out to you and offer you %OFFER%.

Let me know if you’re interested

-Random Person”

Would you even remember an article you wrote two years ago?

I’m guessing probably not.

Which means that email is likely to go straight into trash.

How about this email?

“Hello %NAME%,

I saw you published an article about %TOPIC% on your blog yesterday.

So I wanted to reach out immediately and talk to you about %OFFER%.

Let me know if you’re interested..

-Random Person”

Much better.

Why?

Well, in this case, the email references an article that you published yesterday. The post will be fresh in your mind and you will be much more receptive to any opportunity/offer presented to you.

So if timing is key to effective outreach, how can you ensure you identify business opportunities as they arise on the web and act on them quickly?

Ahrefs can help.

Never Miss an Outreach Opportunity by Using Ahrefs

Ahrefs marketing toolset has a great section called Alerts that will monitor the web and notify you about new opportunities for your business in close to real-time:

Here are some alert ideas:

1. Your website’s new backlinks: Knowing who links to you in real-time gives you a lot of “warm” prospects to connect with, which can lead to further opportunities.
2. Your competitors’ new backlinks: If someone is talking about your competitor, they might as well talk about you – just reach out to them and ask.
3. New backlinks to any page on the web: If someone wrote a great article on a topic you’re interested in, you might want to monitor who links to it. The linking sites could be strong prospects to reach out to when you publish similar content.
4. Mentions of your brand(name): Whether people are saying good or bad things about you, it’s important to connect with them.
5. Mentions of your competitors: The people who mention your competitors could be your customers.
6. Mentions of what you do: Many people will talk about their challenges online not knowing that you have a solution for them.

Setup these six alerts in your Ahrefs account and use these opportunities for your outreach. You’ll see with your own eyes that timing can improve your outreach by 10x.

 

Image Credits

Featured Image: Image provided by Ahrefs. Used with permission. 
In-post Image #1: Image provided by Ahrefs. Used with permission. 

How To Build Amazing Personalized Influencer Marketing Campaigns by @annaleacrowe

It’s no secret that marketing means something different nowadays. Commercials have turned into 60-second Instagram spots, direct mail flyers have been replaced with personalized email campaigns, and brands have traded celebrity endorsements for mom sponsored blog posts to rep their products.

With this surge of consumer-centric marketing efforts, strategists must consider which platform is most effective for driving not only positive trending business results for their brands but personalized experiences for the consumer.

Enter: Influencer marketing.

What is Influencer Marketing?

Raise your hand if you work in marketing.✋

Now, give me two high-fives if work for a small business or even a big brand. 🙌

If you find yourself sending me any these positive hand signals (or emojis) from the above then, you’ve probably heard of some or more of these terms: Brand ambassadors, brand advocates, blogger campaigns, sponsored posts, word-of-mouth marketing. While all of these require different marketing tactics, they can essentially be bucketed into the influencer marketing category. All of these tactics drive awareness, action, and acquisition, same as influencer marketing.

Influencers influence the buyer’s journey.

Real quick, let’s do a pop quiz!

Can you guess the celebrity associated with each catch phrase? (Answers are at the bottom of the article).

1. Jello Pudding, You Can’t Be A Kid Without It
2. You Want To Know What Comes Between Me And My Calvins?
3. The Joy of Pepsi (Hint: 2002 Super Bowl)

There was a time when our favorite celebrity would endorse a magical, miracle face cream, the shake weight, or even Total Gym and we’d buy it. Why? In the past, consumers connected with celebrities and trusted the brands they endorsed.

Let’s be honest, if Oprah said swimming with blue whales would make you lose weight, then half the women in the U.S. would be exercising with blue whales in the South Pacific.

The market has evolved as the world has changed. With the rise of the internet and social media, consumers were given a voice. Consumers search for authentic opinions online from their peers. Before the internet, consumers didn’t have access to ordinary people the way we do today.

When consumers begin to go through the buying cycle, they start to seek out genuine feedback from other consumers that have similar budgets and lifestyles versus searching for the often unattainable bling-bling that comes with the life of being a celebrity.

A 2011 survey by BlogHer stated that 20 percent of women active on social media are motivated to consider products promoted by bloggers they know, yet only 13 percent are motivated by celebrity endorsements. In a recent study by Buzzstream, they discovered that celebrity endorsers did not result in actionable purchase intent by the consumer when compared to vloggers.

Also to show the transition, even more, SheKnows Media estimated that women control 85% of all purchasing decisions in the U.S. Within that report, 86% of the 1,470 women stated they put trust in real peoples’ product and service recommendations. Consumers turn to “everyday experts” as the report calls them because they are seen as having an authentic and honest voice.

As times are changing, brands are personalizing their approach with one individual versus targeting the market in mass.

Why Influencer Marketing Works for Brands

While any girl loves shopping for her new make-up buys, there’s just something about stalking, researching, and watching tutorials on other beauties. Seriously, if you’re going to master the #wokeuplikethis face, then you’ve got to choose your products wisely. Beauty bloggers have the market cornered, not only on beautiful skin and all-around gorgeousness but on influencer marketing.

These “real” influencers act as the model, writer, and promoter of the product.

Here are a few examples of beauty influencer and brand collaborations:

Maybelline and MakeupbyAmarie

Smashbox Cosmetics and Raye Boyce

 

Birchbox and Cupcakes & Cashmere

Nars and Bekka Plamer

These beauty bloggers and social media powerhouses are just one example of how brands are utilizing the personalization of content and the footprint of influencers to drive authentic brand engagement. Brands get the most bang for their buck when they can mesh the influencers with their brand lifestyle and values.

It Works Because It’s Authentic and Personalized

In a survey from digital agency Burst Media, Burst Media discovered that influencer campaigns earn “$6.85 in earned media value for every $1.00 of paid media.” Pretty impressive, huh?

Real people are approachable, authentic, and deliver personalized content. Brands enlisting the help of influencers can see an increase in revenue, consumer loyalty, user-generated content, boost in social media, organic growth, and so much more.

The personalized content your influencers deliver have the opportunity to change consumer behaviors. That’s insane!

Personalized content is the new king of content. Take a peek at how brands are personalizing their content:

• Warby Parker sends a customer a thank you note through a YouTube video.

• Warby Parker sends a personal customer service email after a dog ate their glasses.
• Birchbox sends custom email newsletters based on your previous subscription preferences.

• Sittercity targets the homepage you’ll see based on location.

• And, check it out…Google does Facebook ads.

As you can see from the examples above, brands are already doing a good job at turning data into amazing user experiences. Brands can leverage personalization and influencer marketing to guide their potential buyers down the funnel from the awareness stage to the purchase decision stage.

Insights Into My Influencer Marketing Strategy

Real people equal approachable, authentic, and personalized content. Brands enlisting the help of influencers can see an increase in revenue, consumer loyalty, user-generated content, boost in social media, organic growth, and so much more.

Step One: Define Your Goals

Before I get into the nitty-gritty details, let’s discuss your goals and expectations of influencer marketing. Do you want people to try a new product? Or, increase sales?

Here are a few examples:

• Drive traffic to your website
• Increase social following
• Promoting a new product
• Boosting SEO through earned media

When writing goals, try to be as specific as possible. For instance, instead of saying “drive traffic to my website,” make a goal of “increase organic traffic by 20% in 3 months.” As a marketer, I use brand influencers to help me achieve my goals. I collaborate with influencers to help win genuine interest for a brand product. They spread the word in an unbiased way while supporting my goals.

Google sponsored this vlog below for the launch of Nexus.

When comparing this 11,000,000 views to Google’s 15,000 or so views, it’s easy to see how this vlog helped Google introduce a product plus supported their goals.

To start, pull data from your other paid marketing channels to determine how you’re performing. You can gain insights by aligning your influencer marketing goals and your other paid campaigns.

Yep, I said it influencer marketing is a paid marketing channel. And, just like any other paid marketing channel, you need a few months of data before you can perfect the strategy. However, the length of your campaign should be directly tied to your goals. For your first campaign, I recommend gaining data for three to six months to gauge what your influencers want and need from you in this specific channel. From there, you can go with 1,3,6,9, or 12-month influencer programs. Whatever works best for you and your brand.

In the past, the longer I’ve had my influencer campaigns running, the more trust I was able to gain for my brand. Meaning, it wasn’t a “one and done” blog post or social promotion with a blogger. The blogger became part of our brand culture, became part of the team, and they had time to truly embrace all the awesomeness our brand has to offer.

Step Two: Determine the Budget

“Wait, what?! You mean people want me to PAY them to write about my product?” said every client I’ve ever worked with on influencer marketing. I recently worked with a client that wanted to target the top of the top influencers.

Here’s the outreach email template they wanted me to pitch to Lauren Conrad:

Hi Lauren, 

We’re big fans of your May collection with Kohl’s! Summer never looked so chic. 

We would love to partner with you on a blog post and cross-promote on social media for an upcoming campaign we’re launching in July. Does this sound like something you’d be interested in?

Of course, we’ll send over some free swag (t-shirts, sweatshirts, the whole sh-bang!). 

Please email me back to let me know if you’re interested. 

Thanks, Lauren! 

Well, if you’ve read any of my past articles on SEJ, I’m sure by now you can guess that I didn’t send this email outreach template to anyone, much less Lauren Conrad.

The idea that blog goddesses like Lauren Conrad or others from sites like Oh Joy! or A Beautiful Mess will just naturally mention your product is most likely not going to happen. Like or not, these top bloggers (or influencers) are getting paid one way or another to mention, feature, or post with a product. With bloggers and social media influencers, you have to pay them for the years they’ve spent cultivating, nurturing, and growing their audience. Think about this way:  How much would you pay to rank position one on Google? Or, for a billboard in Time Square? Or, a 30-second spot on during Super Bowl?

There are ways to collaborate with influencers are a small budget. You don’t need to pay $4,000 for 50 photos. But, you do need to have a budget.

Here’s an example of my budget template for working with influencers:

This is how I break down my budget:

• Graphics and content: This is the man hours that go into creating these myself.
• Project management: The time you spend emailing, calling, and managing the influencers.
• Products (and shipping): Depending on your product, set a budget for the influencer to have products.
• For Influencers: This is what you pay the influencers. You can split this budget up however you like.

This is a budget for targeting influencers with a smaller reach. In my experience, you can expect smaller influencers to charge around $50 per hour whereas the bigger names can get up to $500 to $1,000 per hour.

Step Three: Develop a List of Relevant Influencers Within Your Niche

When searching for influencers, don’t be blinded by the social following. As you can see this massive spike in 2012, your social following doesn’t really represent how much influence you have.

Sites like Fiverr give bloggers and social media maven wannabes engagement metrics only big brands like McDonalds can dream of. This causes marketers to make bad decisions when choosing influencers to collaborate with.

To find the right influencers, first, target influencers that align with your brand image and values. When I stumble across a blogger that may be a good fit for me, I do a site search (site:[www.websitename].com “competitor name”) to see if they are mentioning any of my competitors. If they are talking about your competitors or have similar interests, they will most likely be a good match for your brand.

Here are the questions I ask myself when vetting influencers:

1. Where are they located? Do they speak a specific language?
2. Are there keywords within the post?
3. Do they have any brand affinity?
4.  Do they mention any products?
5. Is there a price range for the products they are mentioning?
6. How many shares are their posts getting that would be similar to mine?
7. What type of social following do they have?
8. What level of social engagement do they receive on their posts?
9. How many comments do they average per post?
10. What types of hashtags or mentions do they use in social posts?
11. Does the influencer have repeat business from other brands?

The last question tells a lot about how well brands work with an influencer. For example, Studio DIY did a workshop with SkinnyGirl cocktails in August and another workshop in October.  This tells me that Studio DIY and SkinnyGirl cocktails were a good match for both the brand and influencer.

Think about the lifestyle of your audience and your influencer. Can you imagine your brand naturally fitting? Get creative.

Here is a great example of how HP targeted fashion bloggers:

Are you asking yourself why HP didn’t target the tech influencers? HP recognized the industry was over-saturated with tech products. They altered their approach to target a niche sector of their overarching target audience.

Step Four: Send Outreach Emails

If you’re a fan of copy and paste, then this will be your least favorite step. Personalization is key. You need to craft personalized emails to each and every influencer you want to collaborate with. This step is extremely time-consuming, but it might be the most important. Why? It’s your first impression.

This starts with the subject line. Grab their attention by making a connection to another touchpoint and calling attention to something they can personally connect with.

Subject Line: Your article X on Twitter!

Heya [influencer first name],

It was great connecting with you on Twitter earlier this week!🙌 I’m excited to learn more about how your PRIMAL movements class goes this Sunday. Keep me updated! 

I’d love to find out more about how you collaborate with brands on [website name]. Your overall vibe, tone, and presence represent the direction our brand, [link to brand website], is heading. I feel we’d make an awesome fit! 

Would you be interested in working together with us?

Warmly, 

Anna

P.S. I’ve also attached our media kit for you 🙂 

These influencers are real people who want real relationships. Start the collaboration off positively by addressing them by their first name. And, acknowledging how their blog or social presence connects with your brand can give them better insight into how you want this relationship to move forward. You can go one step further and actually read a blog post (insert gasp sound effect). I spend about 20-45 minutes vetting each influencer on my list. I read multiple blog posts, social postings, and learn their likes and dislikes.

Once I get a response from a potential match, I try to set-up a Skype chat or Google+ Hangout. On the call, I’ll ask the following:

1. Have you worked with other brands before? For how long?
2. What are your business goals?
3. Are you looking for other brands to collaborate with?
4. What do you like about our brand?
5. What do you typically charge for working together with brands?

Before you chat, be sure to do your research. Think about creative ways you can personalize your brand content with the influencers audience.

Here are some examples:

• Hither & Thither, a lifestyle and travel blog, partner with Activia in this post.

Step Five: Get Your Logistics Together

Whoo hoo! You received a “yes” to your email pitch. Now what? Time to craft your follow-up email response to give the influencer as much information as possible.

Below is what I include in the follow-up email:

• 1099
• Influencer agreement
• Timeline

Here’s a sample of what the email might look like:

Hi, [First Name]!

Welcome to [my brand name]! My name is Anna, and I will be here to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you for joining us — [brand name] and I are thrilled to be working with you! Now that you’ve decided to partner with [brand name], I’m writing to follow-up about the next steps.

Next steps:

1. Please review, agree, and digitally sign the Influencer Agreement.
2. Please complete this 1099 form.
3. I’ve attached a calendar screenshot of rough timelines for us to work together.

I am delighted you’re a part of the [brand name] community and look forward to working with you! Please let me know if you have any questions regarding the above.

Thank you, [First Name]!

All my best,

Anna Crowe

Marketing Coordinator

So, the influencer agreement is something that is pretty in-depth with all the FTC regulations popping up and what Google deems “ethical.”

Here’s an example of an influencer agreement I did on Typeform.

Essentially, your influencer agreement should answer the following questions:

1. Who gets creative control?
2. What are the image specs?
3. How will copy be generated?
4. How will tracking be implemented?
5. Will a preview be made available before the post is live?
6. Will content be promoted on other channels?
7. What is the length of the campaign?
8. How much will the influencer get paid?
9. What are the standard contract details?
10. Who gets third-party clearance?

You want to give the influencer everything they need to succeed.

Step Six: Optimize and Analyze

With the end on the horizon, there’s one thing I always think about: How is my influencer campaign performing? Thinking back to all of my influencer marketing campaigns from the past, I remembered there is no guarantee it will perform. Influencer marketing isn’t a Google Adwords or Facebook Ads. It’s natural, all-around exciting, and trusted by many. This is what makes it work. By creating custom UTM codes, tracking blog comments, and social mentions, you can analyze what’s working and how to spend your marketing budget in the future.

Plus, you’ve made a new best friend in your influencer. Try creating a private Facebook Group for your influencers to share feedback. This Facebook Group gives the influencers a creative space for open communication with their peers and you.

Wrapping Up

Brands tend to meet the influencer marketing world with a “meh.” But, it offers so much more to the brand than one would think. As I mentioned above, influencer marketing is so much more than…influencing.

Influencer marketing is nothing new. Influencer marketing that performs best is all about personalizing your email outreach for the influencer, then personalizing the content for the influencer’s audience. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in or what your market landscape looks like. Whether you’re a food brand talking to a style guru like Emily Henderson or dog lovers looking to giveaway goodies to a fitness fanatic, there are opportunities for your brand to build personalized influencer campaigns.

If you have any other tips or influencer marketing campaigns you admire, I’d love to hear about them in the comments below!

Answers to pop quiz above:

1. Bill Cosby
2. Brooke Shields
3. Britney Spears

 

Image Credits

Featured Image: Ann Haritonenko/Shutterstock.com
All screenshots and images by Anna Crowe. Taken May 2016.

Ask an SEO: Filtering Referral Spam in Google Analytics by @jennyhalasz

Want to ask Jenny an SEO question for her bi-weekly column? Fill out our form or use #AskAnSEO on social media.

This week, we received a question so big, I decided to dedicate an entire post to it. I’ve also received this question multiple times while presenting analytics presentations.

How can I filter out spammy referral traffic to my site? I heard Google started filtering them out but still see them.  –K. Fong

My static answer when giving presentations is to view the Google Analytics Solutions Gallery and search for referrer spam or block bots or similar. There are some great resources there for people just getting started. But the real answer to this question is a lot bigger, and it has many parts:

1. Understand what you’re dealing with. It’s not just bots.
2. Filter wisely: Set up a separate view.
3. Block Bots in Analytics.
4. Discover referrers manually.
5. Create a “bad referrer” filter.
6. Block bad bots from the website. Carefully.

Part 1: Bots Aren’t Bad, They’re Just Drawn That Way

Not all bots are bad. Many, like Googlebot and Bingbot make our search world go ‘round. There are plenty of bots belonging to companies like Screaming Frog, Deep Crawl, SpyFu and others that are respectful to the sites they crawl, not dangerous, and not bad for your visitors.

The ones you want to block are the ones that seek to hijack your traffic, find loopholes in your CMS to exploit for hacking, and scrape your content for their own nefarious purposes. Depending on what industry you are in, some forms of bot traffic may be worse than others.

But it’s not only bots you should be worried about. There are plenty of referral sources that send lots of traffic your way that you may not want to muddy the waters of your data.

Part 2: Filter Analytics Traffic Wisely

When you’re just getting started, you should be fully aware of what is being taken out of your data set. To understand that, you have to compare. What I recommend to clients is that you create a separate view in Analytics and name it something like “bot traffic filtered”. To do this, click on “Admin”. Then in the right column under “View”, click on the drop down menu. Select “Create new view”. On the next screen, be sure you set your time zone to what’s appropriate; Google defaults to Pacific Time. If you forget this step, you won’t be comparing apples to apples in your new view.

Creating a new view in Google Analytics

Part 3: Block Bots in Analytics

Google gives you an “easy button” for blocking known bots. This will take out 75-80% of your work compared to doing this manually, and it’s regularly updated as Google finds new bots. For your new view only, select the “view settings” option and click the checkbox to “Exclude all hits from known bots and spiders” as shown below:

How to Filter Bots in Google Analytics

This way, you get a very clear picture of what’s going to happen to your traffic once you turn on the bot filtering. You can make sure that none of your important traffic sources are in Google’s known list of bots (they do make mistakes occasionally) and you’ll be able to prepare other people who view your analytics for the change if/when you decide to roll it out to the main profile.

If/When you do decide to roll it out to the main profile, help yourself and everyone else out by adding an annotation which explains any changes, for example: “Started Filtering Bot Traffic”. To add an annotation, simply click on the little arrow under any analytics chart in Google Analytics and follow the simple instructions:

Creating an annotation in Google Analytics

Part 4: Add Spam Referrers Manually

No matter how good Google’s bot filtering system gets, there will inevitably be other referrers that send high volumes of low or no quality traffic to your site. To spot these, open the referrer report in Google Analytics as shown below. Then sort the data descending by bounce rate, so you bring the 100% bounce rate to the top. Finally, filter the data by using the advanced filter to only show a number of sessions over a certain threshold. This will vary according to your traffic volume; I used 50 for this example.

Viewing referral traffic in Google Analytics

Now you can scroll through the list and find sites you may want to add to your referral exclusion list. I say “may” because you need to check with other stakeholders in your company to make sure none of these are just a failed advertising attempt. This is another reason why you should test this in a separate view first.

Once you have your list of sites to filter, cut them down to just the main TLD (top-level domain). For example, af401e8c.linkbabes.com is probably a specific affiliate of linkbabes.com. So it’s better to just add linkbabes.com to your potential referral exclusion list.

By the way, this is not for the faint of heart. You may find some risqué websites in these lists. I strongly recommend you do not visit any of them to “check them out” or you may find yourself the recipient of some unwanted malware or spyware.

Once your list is fully vetted and you’re sure you won’t be blocking any important traffic that someone else in your organization wants to see, go ahead and create a custom referrer filter.

Part 5: Create a Bad Referrer Filter

Once you have a list of bad referrers that you want to block, create a new filter in the view you set up earlier specifically for “bad referrers”. Be sure to do this in the view screen (the one on the far right under admin) and not at the account level!

To set up the filter, select “Admin”, then under “View”, select “Filter”. Click on “Add Filter” and give the filter a name. Now click on “Custom” and “Exclude”. Select “Referral” under “Filter Field” and enter the domains you want to exclude in the box. Do this in a notepad or word doc first and then paste it in; it’s too easy to mess something up using this tiny little box.

Create a referral filter

To enter multiple domains, use regular expressions. Use the “/” to escape (make it function as text) the “.” in “.com”, and separate multiple domains with a pipe bar “|”.

Be sure and test your filter and update it frequently as you find new domains to exclude.

Part 6: Block Bad Bots from Your Website

This last one is not for the beginner, because it involves using .htaccess or web config in IIS, which is the backbone of your entire site. One wrong character can bring your entire site down. So make a backup copy, make sure you have access directly to your server (through WordPress doesn’t count) and tread lightly and carefully.

Disclaimer aside, the .htaccess file is a powerful tool at your disposal, because for very bad or very high volume bot traffic, you can block it from accessing your server entirely. The command to use is

Rewrite Engine On

Options +FollowSymlinks

Deny from 123.45.67.89

Allow from all

You will have to integrate this code into your existing .htaccess file, so don’t just copy/paste it. Remember, one wrong character, and it’s lights out.

This is an effective way to block bot traffic that is placing a high load on your server, but it shouldn’t be used for just anyone, because the longer this list gets, the more load it puts on your server, and the more it can actually slow your site down. So don’t use it to block former employees (go ahead and laugh, this actually happened to me!) and remember that IP addresses change. If you’re having a serious security issue, contact your web host or system administrator for help.

The effect of blocking bad bot traffic at the server level is two-fold. It will help reduce load on your server, and it will also take these visits out of Analytics, because the traffic will never resolve to your website.

TL;DR?

• Bots and referrers are different, but have the same effects: slowing down your server and muddying your analytics data.
• You can block them by IP address or by top-level domain depending on what blocking solution you choose.
• You can block them in .htaccess or web config, or you can filter out their traffic in analytics either with Google tools or with a custom filter.
• Be careful about what you filter and make sure other stakeholders know what you’re up to. Don’t filter at the account level; you always want one view that has all traffic just in case.
• Annotate, label, and inform as much as possible about changes you make and the dates that you make them.

That’s all for this week. Keep the questions coming; we’ll do another rapid-fire Q&A next time.

 

Image Credits

Featured Image: Image by Paulo Bobita
All screenshots by Jenny Halasz. Taken May 2016.

7 essential Google Analytics reports every marketer must know

For marketers, there are few skills more important than a deep understanding of Google Analytics and its conversion measurement capabilities.

After all, this is the tool that tells you whether your efforts are actually translating into results.

Unfortunately, mastering Google Analytics can be challenging, even for experienced marketers. There is far too much data and too few easy-to-follow dashboards to sort it out.

To help you out, I’ve put together a list of seven custom and standard reports you can use right away to get better insight into your marketing performance.

1. Mobile Performance Report

You know this already: ours is a mobile-first world. The total number of mobile users now exceeds the total number of desktop users…

…and mobile e-commerce is nearly 30% of all e-commerce in the US.

In fact, mobile is so important now that Google even penalizes the websites that are not mobile-friendly.

For marketers, knowing how their sites perform on smaller screens is vital to staying alive in the SERPs and winning over customers.

The mobile performance report shows you how well your site (not app) is optimized for mobile and where you need to make improvements.

You can even segment the report further to see which mobile devices/browsers customers are using to access your site. This will tell you if your site is performing poorly on some devices.

Accessing this report is easy – just go to Audience -> Mobile -> Overview

This will show you how your site does on different platforms:

You can add more dimensions here as you see fit. Take careful note of bounce rate, time on site and page views to see whether your user experience is failing on one or more mobile channels.

2. Traffic Acquisition Report

Want to know if people are actually clicking on your ads? That guest post you published earlier — is it generating any traffic to your website? How about your SEO strategy? Is it actually working?

The traffic acquisition report will tell you all this and more. For many marketers, this will be their first step in the reporting process.

This is a standard report, so you can find it by going to Acquisition -> Overview.

This will give you a quick breakdown of your traffic sources.

Of particular insight here is the “Referrals” tab (Acquisition -> Overview -> All Traffic -> Referrals). This will tell you which external sites are driving traffic to your site.

Clicking on a referring website will show you the exact pages visitors used to enter your site.

3. Content Efficiency Report

Do you generate a lot of content on your website and find that tracking it is getting a little overwhelming?

Avinash Kaushik, author of Web Analytics 2.0 and a Digital Marketing Evangelist at Google, created this report to solve this exact problem.

This report tracks entrances, pageviews, bounces and goal completions to help you answer questions like:

• Which content is engaging your audience the most?
• What type of content (images, videos, gifs, infographics, reviews) performs best with your readers?
• Which content converts readers into customers?
• Which content is shared most by your users?

Here’s a quick overview from Avinash himself:

You can get a more detailed explanation of the report here. To grab a copy for yourself, check this link (you’ll need to log into Google Analytics first).

4. Keyword Analysis Report

Getting organic traffic from Google is great. Unfortunately, ever since Google started encrypting search data in 2012, your organic traffic keyword report has mostly shown this:

However, you can still gain a ton of insight about your visitors by tracking the performance of unencrypted keywords.

This report created by eConsultancy analyzes the most popular (and available) incoming keywords to your site. It shows visitor metrics, conversion rates, goal completions and page load time for each keyword.

Use this data to figure out what keywords are working best for you, how many of them are actually contributing to your goals, and what keywords you need to optimize for in the future.

5. New vs. Returning Visitors

Getting a user to come to your site for the first time is great. Getting them to visit again is even better. After all, it is the returning visitors who usually end up becoming readers, followers and customers.

This standard report in Google Analytics will tell you what percentage of your users are coming back to your site.

You can find it by going to Audience -> Behavior -> New vs. Returning in your Analytics account.

Usually, the metrics for new and returning visitors are quite different. Returning visitors tend to stick around longer and have lower bounce rates.

 

6. Landing Pages Report

Your users will enter your site from all sorts of pages. Some will type in your homepage URL directly, some will find a page through search engines, and some others will click on a link shared on your Twitter feed.

This report will tell you which pages visitors are landing on when they first enter your site. Based on data from this report, you can figure out how users are interacting with your site.

For example, if the report shows that some pages have a substantially higher bounce rate than others, you can take steps to make high bounce rate pages more engaging.

Find the report – Behavior -> Site Content -> Landing Pages

7. Bounce Rate vs. Exit Rate Report

“Bounce Rate” is the percentage of visitors that don’t take any action and leave from the same page they landed on.

“Exit Rate” measures the percentage of your visitors that browse more than one page on your site before leaving.

This report compares the bounce rate vs. exit rate for different pages on your site.

You can find it by going to Behavior -> Site Content -> All Pages:

Next, select “Bounce Rate” and “% Exit” in the Explorer tab.

This will give you a visual comparison between bounce and exit rate for all your pages. You can drill down further to get this data for each page.

Use this report to find pages with low engagement and detect UX problems on your site. For example, if visitors are exiting a three-page article after reading only the first two pages, there’s probably something that is causing them to leave on the second page (too many ads, bad copy, a distracting link in the sidebar, etc.).

Over to you

Google Analytics is essential analytics tool for any marketer, but making the most of it can be challenging. By using a mixture of pre-created custom reports and standard reports, you can gain valuable insight into your users.

Google Analytics’ Solutions Gallery is particularly useful for someone new to analytics. Here, you can import expert-created reports into your Analytics account to build powerful dashboards quickly. You can also use these reports as guides to help you understand this incredible tool better.

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Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

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About The Author

Khalid Saleh is the CEO and cofounder of

Invesp

, a leading provider of conversion optimization software and services. In the summer of 2016 he will launch

FigPii

, the first and only comprehensive conversion rate optimization tool. A recognized expert of marketing strategy, he has presented at marketing conferences across the globe. Khalid has been a frequent guest in key media outlets, including CNN, BBC, SKY, France 24, MSNBC, New York Times, National Public Radio, and more.