5 Questions to ask before starting a Retargeting Campaign

Retargeting or Remarketing is way to put your ad in front of the people who have been to your site before and are likely to respond to you ads and offers.

Retargeting via Google Adwords

Retargeting is not new, I have been writing about it since 2006 and working in this area since 2003. Recently, Google Remarketing, via adwords, has brought retargeting to the masses. Though, in my opinion, Google has not done a good job in educating advertiser on how to effectively engage in retargeting. To start with, Google says, you should retarget every visitor who came to your site. That is a wrong approach and I highly discourage it. As you read through this post , you will know my reasoning behind it. You have to understand remarketing to effectively use it. I am listing 5 questions that you should ask before you put that JavaScript code to start remarketing.

5 questions to ask before starting a Retargeting Campaign

1. What is the purpose of this retargeting campaign?
   This is first question you should always ask. Also ask, Why are we doing this? What is the purpose of retargeting? As you answer this question, you will automatically start to answer some of the questions listed below.
   
2. Who are your target customers?
   Remarketing to all of you visitors, in most cases, not a good idea. If you are a portal, news site, have daily updates then it might (maybe) make sense to remarket anybody and everybody who visited your site. For most of the sites it doesn’t make sense to retarget everybody. Think about this, why would you want to target me with an ad to sell TV when I recently bought a TV from your site?
   
   
   
   
   Trying to sell ice to the Eskimo?  Try it. You'll be sorry. To be effective, you should segment your visitor base and understand their needs. For example, by targeting the shopping card abandoner you have a better chance of conversion. By targeting those who have already downloaded a whitepaper, you have better chance of selling your free trial. The message (ad) you will put in front of these visitors will speak to their needs and hence will be more attractive than a generic message. Which leads to our third question.
   
3. What will be your message?
   If you know the purpose and audience segment for the campaign then it is much easier to write your message (ad copy). Your ad copy has to be effective to drive people to take action. Make it right. Say you want to target all the people who downloaded a whitepaper on A/B Testing but did not sign up for free trial then your message can be “You know A/B Testing leads to higher conversions. Get started with a Free trial of xyz tool”. Alternatively, if you are trying to remarket to all the visitors who came to your site, reviewed few page and left without downloading the whitepaper then your message should drive them to download the whitepaper. Remember, one message does not fit all. Message has to resonate with the segment that you are targeting.
   
4. Where will the visitors land?
   You have identified why you want to engage in remarketing and who you are targeting, now you have to make you sure that when customers arrive on your site they get the relevant information and clear call to action on the page they land. Sending visitors to an appropriate landing page is critical for the success of remarketing .
   
5. How will you know you are successful in remarketing?
   You can’t manage what you can’t measure. Define your KPIs so that you can measure the effectiveness of remarketing. Properly defined success measures will also allow you to take necessary actions (test and fine tune ad copy, message or even the segments) to ensure you achieve your goals.
   

Google Remarketing Gone Wild.

Recently I came across two examples of remarketing where, in my opinion, the thought was given to the first 2 questions. I have an example to share with you. A while ago I visited Lyris newsletter template download page via a newsletter link. I gave my email address and downloaded the templates. Since I am done downloading, I don’t have a need to download them again.

However, the remarketing campaign keeps remarketing to me with a message inviting me to download the whitepaper (see below). If they have something new to offer then I might go back. If they have to offer the next logical step in moving me towards the sales, I might pay attention to it but I am not going to go back again to download the same templates that I downloaded few days ago. Seriously! Do not waste your impressions on me. If increasing brand awareness is the goal of this campaign then they should have a different message in the ad copy.

(Note: Currently there is a limitation in Google Adword retargeting which makes it harder to segment and target that segment only. If you are interested in segmenting and targeting then send me an email and I will provide you a solution that will help you target efficiently.) 

Sidebar: Below are some of the ways you can use remarketing

• Cart Abandonment – Target visitors who have abandoned the shopping cart to bring them back to the site and complete the purchase. This is the most widely used and talked about use of remarketing.
• Next Steps towards Conversion - Target visitors who took some prelim steps but did not complete the next steps towards purchase. E.g. Target the visitors who downloaded a whitepaper but have not come back to sign up for free trial.
• Cross Sell/New Products – Target past customer with an up sell or cross sell. If a visitor bought a shirt recently maybe it is time to show them an ad for a tie that will go well with that shirt.
• Brand Awareness – Remarket to people who have visited your site in past. Remarketing can put your brand right in front of them to further build brand awareness. Though this one is difficult to measure.

Thoughts/ Comments? Are you doing remarketing?

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Google Analytics Motion Charts Overview with a PPC Example

Most people look at click through rates, clicks or visits when analyzing their keywords. Some people will go a step further and look at the conversion rates. If you have a content site with no end conversion you might look at bounce rate to figure out what keywords are working or you might look at the page views/visit or look at some other form of engagement metrics. To look at all the data points you need to do full analysis, which requires you to look at a few reports and maybe use excel to pull all that data together in one view. Google Analytics Motion Charts make it really easy to visualize several data points in one screen.

In this post I will show:

1. Step-by-step overview of how motion charts work.


2. An example of how I used Google Analytics motion charts to figure out which keyword to spend money on.
   Note (I could have got similar information from a few reports in Google Analytics, but motions charts just made it easier and faster).

Let’s get started

To access motion charts,

1. Click on your report (keywords report in this case).


2. Select the date range that you want to analyze.


3. Click on Visualize button on the top. This will bring the motion chart (see below).

In the motion charts interface you can choose up to four dimensions that you can plot your data point against and see it in this graph. The four dimension areas are circled in the image below. Two dimensions can be plotted on the chart on X-axis and Y-axis, one using the color and the fourth using the size of the bubble that represents the data point.



For the dimensions on X-Axis and Y-Axis you have the option to plot the data either on “Linear” or “Log” scale. I chose linear in this case. (Note: You should choose log when your data points have too much variations in their values from one day to another. Using a linear scale will make it hard to draw them on one chart but log scale will make the chart much cleaner.)



You can select the dimensions by clicking on appropriate section (see below)



After you have selected your dimensions and chosen the scale (log or linear) you want, click on the data points (bubbles in the middle of the chart) to show the name of the data point. Also, those data points are will be tracked when the “Trails” option is enabled (discussed below).



Once all your selections are done you can check the “Trails” check box to track the progression of each data point on each of the dimensions you selected over the time period that you selected. Even though “Trails” is optional, I have found it to be an important feature to explore the full power of motion charts.
Note: if you select too many bubbles (keywords in this case) along with “Trails” then the motion charts become very crowded. You should limit selection to no more than 3 bubbles at a time.

In this case I chose two keywords, Keyword A and Keyword B since I wanted to see how they compare to each other on the dimensions that I chose. (Actual keywords are disguised for this example).

So why did I choose those two keywords? I actually chose a lot of keyword combinations. I was trying to find the keywords which I should buy on search engines to drive more traffic. Since the budget is limited (isn’t that the case everywhere?) I had to pick the keywords that will give us the biggest bang for our buck.

This site had two main site goals:

1. Convert visitors to registered members (Registration).


2. Drive more page views/visit to increase the ad inventory and hence ad revenue.

Based on these goals we needed to see following metrics:

1. Conversions driven by keywords


2. Visits Driven by Keywords


3. Page views/Visit


4. Bounce Rate

Since both the keywords had about same conversion rate, it was not important for us to plot it on X and Y-axis and it was chosen to be represented by the bubble size. I plotted metrics 1 and 2 (see above) on Y-axis and X-axis respectively since I wanted to see how the traffic is driven and how many pages people view when they visit the site. Bounce Rate was chosen to show different colors.

In my option, any critical metrics should go on X-axis and Y-axis. You should play with plotting all different metrics on different axis, color and size to see which one provide you more meaningful view. Plotting them in different ways provide different views and ideas of additional metrics that you might want to look at.

After all the dimension selections were made, I checked the “Trails” option and hit the “Play” button to see the motion chart in action (You can also manually move the slider next to play button).

Here is the final Motion Chart:



Looking at this it is clear that Keyword A is driving more traffic but lower Pages/Visit than Keyword B. The bounce rate is also higher for keyword A. The conversion rate is about the same for both keywords.

It is clear that we should put more dollars behind Keyword B as it helps us achieve goal number 2 better than Keyword A. Goal 1 is about the same for both these keywords.

Hope this post was helpful in demystifying Google Analytics Motion Charts.

For any questions on Motion Charts and Google Analytics please visit Ask an Expert section on my site.

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Search Pay Per Click Tip : A Simple Way to Increase Profit

Visitors go to search engines because they are looking for something. They enter their search query and want the search engine to provide relevant results.

Marketers buy Paid Search listings because they want to cash in on visitors searches by providing relevant product/services/offers etc. Remember, users are looking for results and not another set of search boxes or additional navigation to get to what they want. It is marketers’ responsibility to make sure the offers shown on their landing pages are relevant to the search keyword that the user searched for. DON’T make the visitors search again. Provide the user with relevant results right away. Don’t make people click more buttons or links to find what they are looking for.

You are wasting your money if you are doing PPC without thinking about the experience visitors will get once they click on the ad and land on your site. Landing pages are very critical to the success of any kind of advertising, but are even more critical in search advertising. Visitors don’t have patience. They need answers and if you can’t provide them with one immediately, they will go to a site that does. Your competitors are providing answers just a few clicks away. Here is an example to prove my point:

I searched for “hotels in Vancouver bc” on Google,



I clicked through three results,

1. Orbitz - Which is the top listing on the left hand side


2. Hotels.com – which is the 2ndd listing on left hand side


3. Expedia– Which is on the 1st spot on the top

Which one do you think will be most successful in getting visitor to book a hotel? See the screen shots below and you will know.



Orbitz takes me to a generic hotel search page and wants me to search again. It has “Ski Sale” listed in in-house banners on two prominent places. Where is ANYTHING related to Vancouver BC??? The site wants me to search again and does not provide offers or banners that are speaking to me. This site is pushing what it wants to sell and not what I want to buy. I don’t like it. I click back.



Hotels.com takes me to a generic hotel search page, just like Orbitz did. It shows Bora Bora, New York but Vancouver is nowhere to be found. What, you want me to search again??? Sorry, but I don’t have time. Check your bounce rate, you will see me there.


Expedia shows me the Vancouver hotels right on the landing page, provides me ratings, rates etc. It makes it easy for me to book my hotel. Rather than making me search again, it is getting right to the business of selling.
Which one do you think will drive more conversions? Lesson: When it comes to buying paid search traffic, don’t make your potential customers search again or browse around your site to find what they need because they won’t. Give them a relevant landing page and get to the business of closing the deal.

One thing you might be worried about is how you will go about generating all of these relevant landing pages. There are several tools such as Optimost, Test&Target, Widemile etc. that will take care of this for you. Most of the time you might just setup a generic landing page template and fill-in the content on the fly based on the referring keyword (see Follow the Search blog post that I wrote). The increase in conversion will itself pay for the cost of setting up unique landing pages, so cost should not be an issue.

If you still can’t justify the cost of having a unique and relevant landing pages then keep in mind that if you bid without relevant landing pages, two things will happen; First, as we already discussed, your visitors will bounce off of your site and go elsewhere. Second, the ad network (Google AdWords, especially) will penalize your page by decreasing your quality score, thus making it increasingly expensive over time to buy clicks. Yes, Google does score your landing page and will increase your minimum keyword bid prices if it doesn’t think you are providing its users with what they are looking for. Long story short: make your landing pages relevant.
Having relevant landing page will result in increase in revenue, lower bid cost and increase in profit.

Questions? Comments?

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5 Best Practices for any Campaign

Burger King recently launched a TV ad that directed visitors to WhopperVirgins.com. I learned about this on AdAge.com which wote:

“What if you don't remember the exact Web address and Google it? You still better remember the domain name. While WhopperVirgins.com ranks first in Google for "whopper virgins," it's invisible when you omit the plural. “

AdAge writes further:

”This is a major missed opportunity. Google Trends shows that recently, the volume of searches for the singular and plural versions have been nearly equal. "Whopper virgin" searchers must either go to an intermediary site or refine their search. Why can't consumers 'have it their way' and get to Burger King's site even if they're off by a letter? This multimillion-dollar branding campaign could have covered all its bases with a $10,000 search marketing investment. As it stands now, Burger King risks frustrating consumers instead of serving up one whopper of a video.”

AdAge listed following three areas of neglect:

• The domain: WhopperVirgin.com is a parked domain filled with ads for Burger King store listings, Virgin Mobile gifts, Virgin Atlantic flights, Virgin Islands vacations and Virgin Mary checks.


• Search engine optimization: The microsite doesn't appear on the first three pages of Google results for "whopper virgin" searches.


• Paid search: While reviewing Google's listings over several days, there hasn't been a search ad running on "whopper virgin" queries.

In addition to above another area which was partially neglected by Burger King was Web Analytics. I found two main issues with the web analytics

1. Web Analytics Tool Implementation - This site did not have any web analytics code implemented on the landing page. However the video does start as soon as user lands on the site which then fires WebTrends code. With this implementation I am not sure if they are getting an referring site or search engine information.


2. Data Analysis - Clearly Burger King is using web analytics tool. I am sure they were passing the web analytics reports around but I am assume that they were not doing any meaningful analysis. If they were doing any analysis at all they would have uncovered the SEO/SEM issues listed by AdAge.

Simple keyword analysis using their web analytics tool would have helped them uncover these issues. (Lesson: If you are spending millions of dollars on the campaign you should also keep aside few thousands for deeper analysis. Just passing the reports around is not enough).
It is very common to report on top 10 -20 keywords but these keywords alone don’t tell the whole story. Yes they can be good ego boosters but you have to look beyond top keywords and analyze the keyword that are either in the long tail or are not driving any traffic at all. Doing some basic analysis on search engine keywords would have shown them that they were not getting any traffic (or are getting very little traffic) from “Whopper Virgin” or “Burger King Virgin” keywords (I am sure there are more variations).

I hope Burger King learned its lesson and will be smarter next time they run campaign. (Note: All campaigns, offline or online end up having an impact on the site, search engines and online media)

Below are the 5 lessons that all marketers can learn from Burger King Campaign and apply to their own campaigns in the future:

1. Search Engine Optimization - Make SEO an Integral Part of your any micro-sites and campaigns (offline or online).


2. Paid Search - Plan to spend few thousand dollars from your campaign budget to SEM to augment or fill any gaps in SEO.


3. Web Analytics Tool Implementation - Plan to spend few thousand dollars from your campaign on Web analytics tools (which they did). Make sure the tool is properly configured to capture the accurate data. As I mentioned above, it appeared that the site did not have any code on the landing page, which means they were missing a lot of data and hence not getting the whole picture. Conduct an accuracy audit of the tool implementation; it can potentially save you millions of dollars by providing you data beyond click-throughs.


4. Data Analysis – Analysis is different from reporting. Web Analytics tools and SEM reports just provide you a view into the data. You have to conduct a full analysis to understand what the data means and what actions to take to generate a higher ROI from your campaigns. Plan to conduct an analysis on all the data you collect from various tools. Learn from this analysis, it will tell you where you are wasting your money and what’s working for you. Use the insights gained from the analysis and take appropriate actions to improve your campaigns.


5. Online Reputation Monitoring - Monitor news sites, Social Media (conversations/actions that happen away from your site) etc., look at what people are talking about your campaign and your brand. Learn from it and take appropriate actions. A simple tool like Google Alert can provide this to you this for free. I believe Burger King did pay attention to what was being talked about and as a result now you can see Burger King’s Paid Search campaign for “Whopper Virgin” and “Burger King Virgin” keywords.

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Search Behavioral Targeting

Microsoft and Google both have plans for using users past search behavior to provide tailored search results, practice commonly known as Behavioral Targeting. While companies like Revenue Science and Tacoda (now part of AOL) use users web surfing behavior on the internet to determine what users are interested in and server Relevant Ads, search giants are using the past search queries and click though activity to determine users intent and show them relevant search results (organic and paid ads).

As these practices become more prevalent no two users will see the same results on search engine results page for same queries, some of this is already happening. In future even the same user might see her results change from one day to another based on what he/she searched and clicked on between those two days.

An example of how search behavioral targeting might work A user looks for hotels in Bahamas and then search for Scuba Diving lessons the next day, she might see the search results (organic and paid) that combine both the queries to show her Scuba Diving Lessons in Bahamas. Yet another day she decides to search for Jamaica. Guess what? Her organic and paid results might show her Hotels, Airfares (though she never searched for it) for Jamaica and maybe Bahamas or even some other Caribbean destination. She might also get results for local Scuba Diving lessons. So why will the search engine showing all these results when user never explicitly searched for them? Search engine is trying to determine user's intent based on what user searched for and then show the customized results based on the intent. In this case the user's intent is clear; she is looking to go somewhere, most likely in Caribbean. Since she is searching from a geo location other than Caribbean, she might need flight and hence airfare might be shown. She has already indicated she needs Hotel and is looking for Scuba diving lessons so her search results are related to those keywords as well. Once the intent is determined search engine can show can show customized results for a particular user. As the user searches more her intent become even clearer and the possibilities of how search results can be customized for this user are endless.

Last July Google started using immediate search queries to show targeted paid search results. Google is now expanding the time frame that it uses to look for search queries. Here is what NYTimes.com reported on Google’s plan:

Nick Fox, a director of product management who looks after ads on Google’s search site, said the company was now testing the use of more search queries in its ad targeting. He did not describe how it was doing that. But Internet experts said that it was most likely using its cookies.
Mr. Fox said that Google’s approach was different from what Yahoo, AOL and others call behavioral targeting. Those companies look at what a user did a few days earlier to show them ads about the same topic today. Google says it believes that search engine advertising is most effective if it relates to what the user has most recently searched for.
“We are trying to understand what the user is trying to do right now,” Mr. Fox said. “In some cases, those queries are ambiguous, so you need a little more context.”
Google’s previous system of looking at a user’s immediate past query was not useful enough, he said. “It is probably not just the previous query that matters,” Mr. Fox said. “You want to know if the user is still doing the same thing. You wouldn’t want to go back a month. You wouldn’t want to go back a day. But you may want to go back two or three queries.”

Microsoft plans to take it one step further and expand the “behavioral targeting” to the organic search results. Here what is what CNET reported:

Specifically, the company believes examining a full sequence of user queries can lead to more useful results. Today, the company only keeps track of the immediately prior search, but often users use search engines to explore subject areas broadly, said Satya Nadella, senior vice president of Microsoft's search, portal and advertising platform group, at the Search Engine Strategies conference.
"I believe this notion of understanding user intent--being able to analyze (search queries) and come up with search patterns and use them to shape the search experience--is one of the most important areas for us," Nadella said.

Recently Behavioral Targeting has been under a lot of fire from privacy advocates and lawmakers. It will be interesting to see how privacy police reacts to search behavioral targeting. Though Behavioral Targeting from Revenue Science is anonymous, Search Behavioral Targeting is based on user provided information (search keyword), which can easily be tied to PII information.

I have always advocated an opt-in model for Behavioral Targeting, a system where users give their consent to be tracked and have an easy option to turn the tracking on or off. I believe that Search behavioral targeting makes it even more desirable to have an opt-in model.

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Google Collecting Data on 3rd Party Sites to Target Ads on Google.com?

Is Google collecting data on the 3rd party sites to target Ads on Google.com? A user called "Discovery" on Search Engine Watch Forums reported that Google showed targeted ads (sponsored search results) on Google.com based on this user's behavior on 3rd party sites (Fry's, Circuit City, HP.com and Best Buy).

Here is what “Discovery” wrote:

“As far as I knew Google's PPC was strictly KW search based, then an odd thing happened yesterday.

Without going to Google I had visited Fry's, Circuit City, HP.com and Best Buy looking for a PC for a family member. After some research on these sites I decided I wanted to look at some comparison engines. I opened up a new browser window and went to Google, I did a search for "Comparison engines".

My results were very interesting.

Instead of a generic list of comparison engines touting to find the best prices for all products all the advertisements were related to PCs! Specifically HP PC's! I had not done a search on Google at any time for PCs, or on their shopping site.

Is Google using behavioral targeting already? I had heard there were announcements that this would happen with the acquisition of DoubleClick, but I have had no notice that it was in practice?

If it is being tested, how does this type of advertising effect the KW advertisements that are competing with it?”

So the question is “Is Google doing Behavioral Targeting on Search results using visitors behavior off the search engine?”

I have written quite few blog posts on this topic and have always believed that Google will get into Behavioral Targeting sooner or later.

It started “in-session” behavioral targeting on the Google search engine, which uses a user previous search query and combines with current query (both in same session) to provide sponsored results on the SERP (search engine results page).

This person noticed that Google was using more than search data to target sponsored results on Google SERP. The kind of behavioral targeting that this person is talking about can only happen if:

1. Companies such as Best Buy, Fry’s, etc share their data with Google and allow Google to tie the users behavioral data collected on their site with other data that Google collects about those users (using a common cookie or some other common identifier).
   For this kind of data sharing to happen, Google (or Doubleclick) code has to be implemented on the pages (or servers) on those sites. I did not find any code, but it is possible that the code is there because if these sites are doing online advertising using Doubleclick then they must be putting the code to measure the success of these online ads. However, I highly doubt that they will let Google (Doubleclick) use the data collected on their site to power Google Search results unless Google is using the data to put their ad in front of users. Think about this. Why would Best Buy allow Google to use its data and allow it to show Circuit City’s or some other competitor ad?


2. Google collects this data via a toolbar or some other application that tracks user across the sites and on search engines.
   This sounds like an option that might have been used to collect data, if Google really did do Behavioral Targeting. I am not sure if the user had a Google Toolbar installed. If the user did have a Google Toolbar, then Google could collect the data (and it does) and can use it anyway (debatable) (as long as they state so in their privacy policy). In this case, Google does not need to seek permission from Best Buy or Circuit City, because user, by installing the toolbar (and accepting the terms), is giving permission to Google to collect the data.
   

This brings up few more questions.

• Who owns the data? It is up for debate.


• Is it fair to Best Buy or Circuit City or any other site owners? That is a question that needs a bigger discussion.


• Does Google has power and scale to collect data across sites and do targeting? Absolutely.

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Pay-Per-Click Behavioral Targeting

Last year I wrote extensively about major online players Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL using Behavioral Targeting. Microsoft and Yahoo have been very open about it but Google has not admitted openly about engaging in Behavioral Targeting.

I speculated about Google entering Behavioral Targeting, you can read my past blog posts at http://webanalysis.blogspot.com/search/label/google). Recently, Google Analytics Data Sharing option reconfirmed my belief about Google entering Behavioral Targeting and using all the data it collects via Google Analytics (and other applications) to better target the ads.

A recent survey by SEMP.org (Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization) found that four out of five advertisers are willing to increase their online advertising budget in order to add behavioral targeting to their pay-per-click campaigns.
The survey also found that

• 57% of online advertisers were willing to spend more on demographic targeting, such as age and gender


• Advertisers, on average, would pay 11% more for both behavioral and demographic targeting


• Some 40% of the respondents said they are not currently targeting or retargeting searchers but they plan to in the next 12 months

Considering these stats and all the things that I have observed (see my past blog posts), I won’t be surprised if Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL and ASK soon start offering behavioral targeting to it’s Paid Search (PPC) advertisers. To get the most of out of behavioral targeting, they won’t limit the behavioral data to search only, they will most likely use every data point they collect about visitors in various places including browser toolbars.

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Should you be paying for the clicks on your brand keywords?

When you do a search on your brand name or your company name, chances are that you will have you company’s site listed as the top organic result. If it is not then you should first learn about Search Engine Optimization before reading this post (email me and I can help you with all your SEO/SEM needs).
It is also very likely that there won’t be any paid listing on the SERP (Search Engine Result Page) when you do a search on your own brand name.
If you do buy paid search listing, it is going to appear just above you’re your own organic listing. Is it a good idea to buy the paid listing and pay the money to Search engine for something you could have got for free (next listing after paid is also yours)? And visitor by searching on your brand name has shown their intent of visiting your site.
If you use an agency, I am sure that your agency is already buying your brand keywords and showing you how good your conversion is on your aggregate keyword buy. Well if a consumer is already looking for your brand name then their intent is very clear, they are ready to be converted. A lot of users use brand keyword in search to get to a particular site, they use built in search functionality in their toolbars (Google, yahoo, msn etc) which then takes them to SERP of the toolbar provider. If a user is looking for your site and you know you will be number 1 in the SERP, does it make sense to buy a keyword? Isn’t it unnecessary? Won’t you be wasting your money?
Some might argue that buying that keyword reinforces your brand name and your site in visitors mind and hence you will result in more click-through, visitors, conversion and ROI. But how can you be sure? That’s exactly what I am going to show you in this article.
The first and foremost thing is to understand what value you are getting from your search marketing efforts, paid and organic. Once you understand the complete impact of both types of Search Marketing efforts you will be able to make an informed decision. A decision that will be based on your ultimate business goals e.g. increase site traffic, increase conversion, increase ROI or a combination.
Here is my 5 step process to determine if you should buy Paid Search on your brand name keyword or not.

1. Configure Web Analytics Tool: The first step is to configure your web analytics tool so that it can measure and report on the traffic for your brand keywords in 3 separate segments, paid, non-paid and total,. Below is a screen shot from Google Analytics showing paid, non-paid and total for a particular keyword. (I will not cover how to configure your tool since they all have different configuration. I will be able to help you if you email me).
   
   
   


2. Develop Baseline: Develop a baseline for total traffic and conversion for the three segments (paid, organic, and paid and organic for your brand keywords). See how much traffic is generated by each segment and how much of that traffic is converting.


3. Test: This is the crucial step in determining if you should buy your brand name keyword or not. If you are not currently running paid ad then this step is much easier than if you already have the paid search running. If you already have the paid search running, you have to be willing to take a chance to do this test. It might not work out in your favor but unless you try it you will never know.
   
   1. Paid search already running:
      Stop the paid keyword for your Brand Keywords – Stop the keyword for time enough to generate significant traffic and conversion data.
   
   
   2. Paid Search Not Currently Running:
      Start the paid search for your Brand Keywords - Start the paid search campaign for time enough to generate significant traffic and conversion data.
      
   
   
   
   



4. Report the numbers: Report the new number with your baseline. Putting them side by side will help in easy comparisons (See the example below)


5. Analyze the data: Let’s take a look at an example which will help you with analysis.

Example:
Let’s look a company, whose brand keywords generates on an average of 150 searches. Let’s assume that conversion rate on these keywords is of 50% , cost per click on paid placements in $0.50 and profit margin on each conversion is $3
A typically time period, when you have both Paid search running, results in the following data


Table 1


You get 100 click throughs, 80 from organic and 20 from paid.
* Total Profit on Paid Efforts = (Profit Margin on Conversion * Conversion resulting from Paid Search) – Total Cost of Paid Search. This calculation only uses CPC cost and does not include agency and other direct or indirect cost. Other costs associated with buying, placing and reporting will further add to total cost.
So far, it all looks good, your paid search efforts are paying off and you continue to keep buying your own Brand name keyword.
Now stop running the paid searches.
Now let’s take a look at numbers when you stop running the paid search. Using the same assumptions as above

1. A conversion rate of 50%


2. Cost Per Click of .50 cents


3. Profit Margin on each conversion is $3

Table 2

* Total Profit on Paid Efforts = (Profit Margin on Conversion * Conversion resulting from Paid Search) – Total Cost of Paid Search. This calculation only uses CPC cost and does not include agency and other direct or indirect cost. Other costs associated with buying, placing and reporting will further add to total cost.

Since there is no paid search listing, all of the 100 clicks (assuming same number of clickthoughs) will go to organic. Say now instead of 100 (that you got when you had paid search running) you only get a toal of 96 and rest of the 4 go to your competitor or somebody else who shows up under your brand name in organic listing.

Now we have all the data we need, let’s put them side by side and compare



Table 3

Paid search placements result in a total of 100 (from paid and organic) while only organic results in 96. Your cost per conversion from paid is $1.00 and you are making $20 in profit from your paid search efforts. It all looks good.
Now, let’s take a look at the results in another way.


Table 4
*Assuming you have basic SEO for your brand keywords.
**Cost Per Extra Conversion = Cost for paid search/(Additional conversions you gained by running paid search)
As you see above you only get 2 more and not 10 conversions by participating in paid search.

You only get 2 more conversion by paid listings and not 10 as paid listing report was showing. You got 48 conversions when you stopped paid listings and 50 when you used paid listing. So effectively you paid $10 for 2 more conversions. That is $5 per conversion not $1.00 as you agency might have reported on your paid search listing report.


So in light of this information, here is your profit and loss statement.


As you see above you have a loss of $4.00 instead of a profit of $20 on your paid search efforts on your Brand keywords.

Note that above example in only for illustrations so you have to look at your own number and test them to see if you are making or losing money. As I showed above this issue is really significant on branded keywords but you should apply the same login to your non-branded keywords too and see if you are losing money or making money by participating in paid search.

Please send me an email if you would like the excel sheet for these calculations so that you don’t have to recreate it. Also email me if you would like a PDF version of this post.


Here is an example where, I think, the company is losing money by buying their own brand keyword.

They should probably file a complaint with Google to not sell their brand name to the ToyRMall (listed on the right hand side sponsored listing) and not but their own brand name keyword. Most of the listings on the first page of SERP point to ToysRUs site anyway.


So are you wasting money? Chime in.

Even though I have written about the brand name keyword, you should do this exercise with your top keywords to make sure you are not losing money.

Note: After I had written this post, I found out that Gary and Gary had also written post on this same topic (Thank you Jaimie Scott, for sending me these links).

Web Analytics, SEO and Online Marketing Posts from 2007

I have compiled a list of some of the web analytics posts that I wrote in 2007. In case you missed them or want to read again, here they are:

Web Analytics

• Understanding time spent of site - I have come across this KPI over and over again. Many of my clients want to report it on frequent basis and some even have this as one of their goals for the site. However, I am surprised to find that not many people (not even a lot of web analysts) understand how this metrics is calculated and what this is actually reporting. This post explains what time spent on site or a page means and how it is calculated.


• Referring Domain Demystified - This two part series explains how referring domains are reported by the web analytics tools.
  
  
  
  1. Referring Domains Demystified - Part II
  
  
  2. Referring Domains Demystified
  
  


• Bounce Rate Demystified – This post answers three questions about bounce rate
  
  1. What is bounce rate?
  
  
  2. What is the industry standard for bounce rate?
  
  
  3. What causes high or low bounce rates?
  
  


• Are you doing Web Reporting or Web Analytics? – This post clears the confusion between Web Reporting and Web Analytics.


• Books Recommended by Web Analysts - If you are starting a career in web analytics or are already working in this field but are looking for some good reads then this list is for you. Please note that this is not a list of recommended books by me, these are from the analysts I interviewed (except for Competing on Analytics). I have not even read most of these books yet.

Online Marketing

• Targeting Cart Abandonment By Email - This post provides some steps that you should include into your process for using email incentives when you target users who abandon shopping cart on your site.


• What does Website Optimization mean? - Depending on your role in the organization you might have define Optimization which might not be the same as somebody else in a different role. The people responsible for different pieces of website optimization do not understand the complete picture and are locked in their own definition of website optimization. This article explains what optimization means.


• Do you really need a home page? - Home page has long been the focus of attention of most of the marketers. But should it be? This post shows you how you might be missing on a huge opportunity by focusing on just the home page of the site.


• 10 steps for measuring online advertising success – This post shows my 10 steps process for measuring the online advertising success, nothing fancy, a simple straight forward process that will improve your bottom line.
  

SEO

• Relying too much on SEO? Think Again. - A lot marketers are getting too obsessed with traffic driven to their sites from Google, Yahoo, Live (MSN), ASK etc without thinking about the consequences of dropping off from search engines rankings. I understand that it is relatively cheaper (notice I did not say Free) than paid inclusions, banner ads, affiliates etc. And ranking high on search engine is something to be happy about and proud of, ranking high on search engines provides you competitive advantage. But Free comes with risks.


• Follow the Search - Search is a powerful (relatively free) way to generate site traffic. However it also results in huge bounce rate, this article talk about a simple way to engage these users and decrease the bounce rate which increasing the conversion.

Google Web History: Google and Behavioral Targeting - The Beginning

Google launched a new service called
Google Web History This service will allow users to keep an archive of their web browsing history. The service will also allow integrated web and search history to personalize results based on previous search and viewing patterns.
This service requires a Google account and the Google Toolbar, and users will be able to access their histories from any computer with the service enabled.
As I have been talking about Google and Behavioral Targeting, this is one of the steps towards that goal. Google will track everything you do (of course with your consent) and then in near future will show you targeting ads based on this information.
Side Note: The most interesting thing to watch will be the effect on organic search listings. This is the free source of traffic (sort of free) that a lot of sites have become dependent on but with all the personalization they are bound to get hit.
To ease the privacy, this service is not enabled by default. It also requires PageRank feature in Google Toolbar to be manually enabled. Also, there is an easy way to remove items from you history, however not sure if Google will still keep those in their logs to understand a users behavior.
Giving user an option to opt-in instead of opt-out is the right approach to Personalization and Behavioral Targeting. I believe if you show the users the value and benefits for targeting and let them make the choice then you will create loyal customers and won’t have to deal with privacy backlash.
Stay tuned for more data integration news from Google, this is just the beginning.
I just enabled this services so am going to take it for test drive.

Google and Behavioral Targeting Part III – Google Buys Doubleclick

Google buys Doubleclick for record 3.1 Billion.

Remember 1999 - 2000 when Doubleclick tried Behavioral Targeting but had to shut down efforts due to privacy concerns. Since then things have changed. Many Behavioral Targeting networks have sprung up. Dave Morgan, founder of Tacoda provided several reasons why BT will work now.

Will Google revive BT capabilities of Doubleclick? As I wrote earlier in my blog posts Google is preparing for the largest BT network (see my previous articles) and this is one of the biggest step deep into that direction and further confirms what I wrote in my article.
See my old posts at
Google and Behavioral Targeting
Google and Behavioral Targeting Part II


Here are quotes from Sergey Bin, Google's Co-Founder & President, Technology and Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google on Doubleclicks's acquistion. Source: Yahoo
"It has been our vision to make Internet advertising better - less intrusive, more effective, and more useful. Together with DoubleClick, Google will make the Internet more efficient for end users, advertisers, and publishers," said Sergey Brin.
"DoubleClick's technology is widely adopted by leading advertisers, publishers and agencies, and the combination of the two companies will accelerate the adoption of Google's innovative advances in display advertising," said Eric Schmidt.
So far Google analytics, Adsense, Google checkout codes were only available on small – medium size websites. With this deal the big brand sites will have Google code on their sites as well (DoubleClick Publishers and Advertisers). Obviously by having a code on virtually every site on the internet Google will have such a wealth of information about individuals (see my previous article) that it will be foolish for them to not use that information to target individuals with ads that match their interest shown by online (soon they will tie in offline with something like GoogleTV, Google Times, Google Radio and so on) behavior.

Another effect of the widespread code of Google could be the death of companies like Alexa, Compete comscore etc. Google can provide the internet usage data that won’t be based on a sample of those who participate (voluntarily or by installing some kind of application such as a toolbar) but on the Google cookies which will be on almost every single computer connected to the internet. However, this business might not be so lucrative for them. Why would they want to let others know how people use internet when they can use it to make it Googlenet (formerly known as internet) or GWW - Google Wide Web (formerly know as World Wide Web).

You are about to enter the world of Targeting.

Books Recommended by Web Analysts

In past two months I have interviewed a few web analysts. One of the questions that I asked all these analysts was about the web analytics, SEO and marketing books that they have read or are planning to read. In this post I compiling a list of books recommended by these web analysts.

If you are starting a career in web analytics or are already working in this field but are looking for some good reads then this list is for you. Please note that this is not a list of recommended books by me, these are from the analysts I interviewed (except for Competing on Analytics). I have not even read most of these books yet.

Here is the alphabetical list of books:

Actionable Web Analytics: Using Data to Make Smart Business Decisions	Jason Burby and Shane Atchison
Big Book of KPIs	Eric Peterosn
Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant	W. Chan Kim , Renée Mauborgne
Call to Action: Secret Formulas to Improve Online Results	Bryan Eisenberg, Jeffrey Eisenberg, Lisa T. Davis
Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning	Thomas H. Davenport, Jeanne G. Harris
Drilling Down: Turning Customer Data Into Profits With A Spreadsheet	Jim Novo
Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data	Stephen Few
Measuring the Success of Your Website: A Customer-centric Approach to Website Management	Hurol Inan
Search Analytics: A Guide to Analyzing and Optimizing Website Search Engines	Hurol Inan
Search Engine Marketing, Inc.: Driving Search Traffic to Your Company's Web Site	Mike Moran, Bill Hunt
Show Me the Numbers: Designing Tables and Graphs to Enlighten	Stephen Few
Submit Now: Designing Persuasive Websites	Andrew Chak
The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More	Chris Anderson
Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?: Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing	Bryan Eisenberg, Jeffrey Eisenberg, Lisa T. Davis
Web Analytics Demystified: A Marketer's Guide to Understanding How Your Web Site Affects Your Business	Eric Peterson
Web Analytics: An Hour a Day	Avinash Kaushik
Web Metrics: Proven Methods for Measuring Web Site Success	Jim Stern
Web Site Measurement Hacks: Tips & Tools to Help Optimize Your Online Business	Eric Peterson

As per Apurba’s recommendation I just ordered <>Blue Ocean Strategy. I also ordered Competing on Analytics, this was recommended by a friend of mine. I am also going to order Actionable Web Analytics: Using Data to Make Smart Business Decisions and Web Analytics: An Hour a Day when they come out.

Have you read any books that you would like to recommend? Send it to me and I will include them in my next update.

Here are all the interviews if you missed them
Interview with Web Analysts
Web Analyst Interview: Julien Coquet
Web Analyst Interview: Adam Berlinger
Web Analyst Interview: Michael Notte
Web Analyst Interview: Thomas Carrillo
Web Analyst Interview: Joel Collymore
Web Analyst Interview: Apurba Sen
Web Analyst Interview: Pere Rovira
Web Analyst Interview: Scott Baldwin

Google and Behavioral Targeting Part II

In my last article titled "Google and Behavioral Targeting" I talked about how Google is putting its footprint all over the web and could be preparing for the largest Behavioral Targeting Ad network.

I got several emails in response to that article. Two main questions that were raised are:

1. Won’t there be technical challenges to aggregate all this data and make it meaningful for behavioral targeting?


2. Won’t there be privacy and trust issues if Google were to go that route?

This article is to address these two concerns.

1. Technical Challenges
   Yes technical challenges will be there but that’s why I believe if anybody can successfully do it today then it is Google. Last I head Google had a pretty good team of engineers. If all the best engineers can’t overcome these technical challenges then Google should change its hiring process. In my opinion technical challenges are not such a big deal. Even if you delete a cookie Google will be able to identify a visitor via their Google account. This is where Google has the biggest advantage over other BT networks such as Tacoda or Revenue Science.


2. Privacy and Trust Issues
   Privacy and trust issues are everywhere on the internet.
   Google will of course have to get a buyoff from all the parties involved i.e. consumer, advertisers, publishers etc. Below I show how they could get a buyoff from each one of them.

1. Consumers – How many consumers know what the cookies are? Not a lot. How many know that they are being targeted online in some way e.g. Google Personalized Search? Not a lot. How do Behavioral Targeting companies target the visitors on their network? They give visitor an option to OPT-OUT. Yes, they opt-in visitors by default and then give them an option to opt-out. Can’t Google do that? Sure. They could opt-in everybody, just like they opted me in on personalized search. Yes I can opt-out but how many visitors do know the meaning of opt-in or opt-out? So getting a visitors buy-in is simple. To calm any privacy and trust issues give users a tiny little link to opt-out.


2. Publishers – There are two avenues to sever ads today, these same avenues could be used to serve BT ads.
   
   1. Google Search – Their own search engine, they don’t need anybody permission to target ads here, they own the site.
   
   
   2. Adsense Publishers – How many Adsense publishers really know how Google chooses what Ads to show on their site? I don’t think anybody really knows. If Google starts showing behavioral targeted ads than what do Publishers have to loose? Nothing. Instead their click-thoughs will go up resulting in an increase in their revenue. It will be a huge win for them. No privacy or trust issues here.
   
   


3. Advertisers – They will benefit the most from this network. They will get quality visitors to their site. Visitors who are really interested in the advertisers offer will be targeted. These visitors will be determined via their behavior on the Google network. Easy buyoff here.


4. Providers of Behavior – These are the individual sites on which the behavior will be collected. Such sites include Google Search, those using Google Analytics, AdSense Publishers, Google Checkout Sites, and Advertisers etc. This will be the hardest to convince and this will be the main source of all the behaviors. Let’s take them one at a time
   
   1. Google Organic Search – Nothing new here, organic searches are easy to collect behavior on since nobody is paying for it. Google can do (and is doing – personalized search) whatever they want to.
   
   
   2. Advertisers – Advertisers will mind if the click behavior on their ads is used to help their competitors. However, if Google gave them a way to filter their competitors than they might have a lesser issue. To make it even better for them Google could provided them some free advertising in lieu of letting Google use the click behavior on their ads. Google can make up for all these free advertising by charging a higher rate for behaviorally targeted ads.
      
   3. Google Checkout Users – Same as advertisers, they might let you use the behavior only if you don’t empower their competitors with that knowledge. So if I am selling dress shoes, I don’t want you to empower somebody else selling dress shoes but you can use it for advertisers who are selling dress shirts. Again, Google will have to provide a way to filter out competitors or certain types of sites. You provide a good enough incentive and site might be ready to participate.
      
   4. AdSense publishers – A majority of the publishers are small content sites and they make their money via Google Adsense. They will let you use the behavior on their site if you provide them incentive. Well there are two incentives that I think will do the trick.
   
   
   
   
   1. Allow them to make more money from the Adsense network – Google will pay higher click-though for behavioral targeted ads (they will charge more) if the publisher agrees to allow them to use the behavior on their site for the behavioral ad targeting.
   
   
   2. They might be able to monetize those users who have left their site. Google might be able to provide a cut for their (Adsense publishers) traffic that they use in Behavioral Targeting, if I make a cent for every visitor I get on my site just by participating in Behavioral targeting network won’t that be great? Again, as long as I can filter out the sites I don’t want to benefit from my sites visitor behavior. How you can monetize when visitor leaves your site will be covered in detail in another post.
   
   
   
   
   5. Google Analytics User – Same as Adsense publishers if you provide them incentives a lot of them will be able to sign-up as long as it is not empowering their competitors. As mentioned above in 4 b, Google might be willing to pay for your visitors by having them use their behavior in the BT network. Alternatively Google might keep this tool for Free for only those who will allow them use their visitors’ behavior and charge a fee to others. Why will a company give anything for Free?
   
   
   
   
   

This is my view on how Google could get all different players involved in their BT network and build the largest BT network.


I welcome any comments.

Search Retargeting – My View

I recently read an article on ClickZ by Robin Neifield title Search Retargeting It’s ready. Beahviroal Targeting networks currently selling search retargeting include Advertising.com, BlueLithium, and Revenue Science.

Basic concept behind Search Retargeting is to target Visitors who come to your site via search and then leave without converting. The idea is to reintroduce them with relevant message on the network once they leave your site.
For example a Visitor searches for cellphone arrives at your site (that cells cellphone and other electronics) but than leaves without buying one. Sometime in future (next day or whenever) visitor arrives to a news site (which does not cell phone), the visitor is shown a targeted message from your company trying to bring the visitor back to your site so that visitor can purchase the cellphone.

In a nutshell what these networks selling Search Retargeting are implying is that the fact that visitor searched something on a search engine and then clicked on paid or organic listing to arrive at a site is a strong indication that a visitor is interested in a particular products/service. I agree that such a behavior (searching for a keyword) indicates strong interest.

But isn’t the fact that visitor who arrived to the site (no matter how) and looked at product pages (cell phone in above example) indicates the visitors strong interest? Isn’t the whole idea of behavioral targeting based on determining visitor intent via their behavior on site or on the network? So why only target those visitors who arrived via search? Is search stronger indication than on-site behavior? Maybe it is, I don’t think Behavioral Targeting companies will agree with that. By just focusing on retargeting the user who arrived via search only you will be missing out an opportunity to fully utilize Behavioral Targeting. So why do I think so?

Let’s look at a scenario of a visitor:

A visitor searches “cell phone” on a search engines and lands on your site. As soon as visitor arrives on your site you should make an attempt to engage the visitor by having a well designed and optimized landing page. If the landing page is generic then you should use the tactic I described in my article title “Follow the search”. Granted not everybody buys in the first session and so you need to target them with right message based on their behavior (intent to purchase cell phone in this case) even after they leave your site, this is behavioral targeting.

Now there are two scenarios after the visitor arrives on your site.
1.Visitor looks further into the site – Great you landing page probably has done its work. Which leads into the following two scenarios
a.Visitor converts
b.Visitor does not convert
2. Visitor leaves the site without looking further than landing page – Your landing page or the offers are not enticing enough for this visitor.

Let’s analyze each of these scenarios one at a time


1a. If Visitor looks around and converts then no more targeting need. Mission accomplished.

1b. Visitor looks deeper into the site and then leaves without converting– In this case you need to target them. But the question is - How is this visitor different from those visitors who did not come via search and then browsed you site for cellphones? Didn’t their behavior showed that they were interested in cellphones and need to be retargeted?

So my point is that weather a visitor comes from search or some other way, if they have looked around on your site for a particular category or product and their behavior (on site usage) show they are in market or aremost likely to buy a product then they should be retargeting (if you are going to invest time an money in retargeting). How does it make a difference how they arrived to the site? Search is one more element of the behavior but on site behavior (BT Company’s core strength) is suggesting the same thing. By Offering Search Retargeting are BT companies indicating that search is better indicator than on-site behavior so we should only target those visitors who came via search? Does not make sense to me because this goes against their core offering which was based on the premise that onsite behavior is a better indicator of visitors interest.

2b. If a visitor leaves the site without going any further then you have a bigger problem which won’t be solved by search retargeting. It won’t matter how user arrived at your site. It requires landing page optimization and over all product/or service that your company offers. No matter how much you retarget if your landing page sucks or you don’t have the products or services that Visitors want then you are not going to convert.

If BT networks are going to place their bets on search retargeting (by showing that search is a better indicator than onsite behavior) than they better watch out because Google, Yahoo or MSN will have a more understanding and control of Search than them. For example, Google knows a lot more about visitor’s search behavior (I am not talking about Google and Behavioral Targeting that I talked about last month). Google knows not only which keyword drove visitor to your site but also which other sites the visitor clicked on before and after. Google also know what kind of keywords and keyword combinations (e.g. cellphone battery or buy a cellphone) Visitor searched before or after she searched “cellphone” to reach to you site, this is far better information for retargeting than just knowing “cellphone” keyword drove them to your site. Google can easily target the Visitor with their “Personalized Search” or Adsense network.

What do you think? I would like comments from BT providers as well as those who have tried search retargeting.

Follow the Search

Search, as you already know, is attracting a lot of attention from Marketers. People who use search engines to navigate to Web sites far exceed those who type the URL directly into the browser address bar or use bookmarks according to a survey by Piper Jaffrey Investment Research.

Marketers are spending more and more money on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) activities to boost their organic search listings. However, nobody really knows how search engines index various sites and pages in their organic listings. So many times I have seen that a keyword search will show a site’s page (mostly home page) even though that page is very generic and has little to do with the keyword that was searched. The page might have had the content related to that keyword sometime in past or that keyword is still there but there is a lot of other content too, the content that is not really relevant to the keyword that drove the visitors to that page.

Note: Even in Search Engine Marketing efforts, there are a lot of marketers who spend a lot of money buying keywords and then send the visitors who click on their paid listings to a very generic page, most of the time to the home page. Not only are they wasting money on these clicks they are losing an opportunity to convert those visitors into customers. I will cover this in a future article.

A visitor, who types in that keyword and lands on the site, gets confused because he/she does not find what he/she was looking for. Visitors are very impatient, they do not have time to go through all the content on the page to search (yet again) for what they were looking for. As a result visitors immediately bail out causing a very high bounce rate and a lost opportunity for the website owner.

So, as an owner of the site, what do you do?

Simple answer is “Follow the Search” in 5 simple steps. The basic idea of “Follow the Search” is to provide user with a relevant content that will drive them further into your site and hence drive up your conversion. Don’t assume that visitors will find their way because they won’t. Give them an immediate reason to stick around, show them they have arrived at the right site.

Here are simple 5 steps of “Follow the Search”:

1. Capture the search word – As soon as the user lands on your site, capture the keyword user searched on a search engine to get to your site. This can be accomplished by writing a simple code on your page to look for the referring url that drove the visitor to your site. Note: If you have the money then you can also use tool such as Offermatica to do the same.If the referring url contains one of the search engines (you can create your own list of search engines that you want to track but for simplicity I would suggest looking for major search engines and the top search engines driving traffic to your site) then extract the keyword from the referring url. Google, MSN and ASK have the keyword in query string called “q”, while yahoo has the keyword in query string called “p”. Example of the Google referring url is
   
   http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=anil+batra&btnG=Google+Search
   


2. Build a list of links to the content (or products) that that matches the keyword user searched on the search engine. You can use your on-site search technology or human defined list of content (or products) relevant for your top 50 or 100 (depends on the resources you have) keywords.


3. Use a highly visible area of your home page (or any other page) to display the list that was built in step 2. You can use left side, right side or main content area of the page but make sure it is in the highly visible area of the page, I recommend conduction A/B test to figure out the best location. Use a catchy label such as “Top 10 Resources for [XYZ keyword]” or something similar. Visitors love the top 10 or Top X lists and by tying it with the keyword they searched on the search engine you will make their life so easy that they will not abandon you.


4. When a user arrives from a search engine, capture the keyword (step 1), use the list of content related to that keyword (step 2) and display it to the visitor (step 3).


5. Save the search keyword in session or cookie – Save the search keyword in session or cookie so that you can display the results every time user comes back to the entry page (the page where search engine sent him/her). By saving in cookie you can even show the same results in subsequent visits.

Don’t forget to configure your Web Analytics tool to measure your success - Some of the things you might want to track are

• How many visitors or visits clicked on items in these lists?


• Which links are getting the most clicks?


• What is the conversion rate (whatever your end actions are) by visits (or visitors) who click on these links?


• Change in end action conversion rates


• Change in bounce rates

Here is an example:


Here is a screenshot of http://www.portlandindian.com. This is the page visitors gets when they arrive on PortlandIndian.com. Note, home page above has very little to do with "Roommates". It has top navigation link and maybe some listings mixed in with classifieds.

When visitors searche on Google for "Portland Indian Roommates”, they get Home Page of PortlandIndian.com as the 1st listing. As I mentioned above this page has very little to do with "Roommates" search keyword that user searched.

However, when the visitors arrives on the site via this keyword, the site follows the above mentioned steps and presents the visitors with the Home page with a section called "Rentals and Roommates" right in the middle of the page.





Questions? Comments?