Phone Call Tracking & Google Analytics
February 18, 2009 by Ed Reese · Leave a Comment
I haven’t tested this myself yet, so I don’t have much to add other than my excitement. But I gotta say, I’m pretty giddy. If this service delivers, it has the potential to have the biggest impact in tracking offline conversions/sales this year for small and medium sized businesses. Unique phone number tracking has existed for a while. But those packages are pretty expensive for small companies and not easily integrated with existing analytics packages. Getting to see these results within Google Analytics (with pretty easy integration from what they say) sounds pretty sweet. Here’s the complete story from the GA Blog.
The offline phone call tracking is provided by a company called Mongoose Metrics. I’m looking forward to checking this out for myself. Has anyone else tried it out yet? I’d love to hear your feedback. Offline conversions are one of the toughest metrics to track. This has the potential to fill in those data gaps.
Here’s what they list as their top four questions (and answers) about their services:
1. How many phone numbers do I need to track my keywords?
We have several methods that help track keywords affordably.
2. Is your phone call tracking service expensive?
No. Our phone call tracking service is extremely affordable with our starter plan beginning at $35 a month with no contracts. We also provide pricing discounts with extremely low rates for customers with higher monthly minutes requirements. See $35 A Month Starter Plan Details
3. Do you offer phone call recording?
Yes. Phone call recoding is provided at no extra cost.
4. What tracking numbers are available?
We offer toll free numbers which provision instantly and over 250,000 local U.S. and Canadian numbers which typically provision in 1 to 2 business days or less.
Search Marketing & American Idol
February 11, 2009 by Ed Reese · Leave a Comment
How will your marketing campaigns be judged in 2009?
Yep, the economy is bad. There is no way to sugarcoat it. Sure, it has impacted some industries and areas more than others. But even if it hasn’t caused a serious downturn in your market, geographic area, or your business in particular, I’d argue that fiscal caution reigns supreme at the moment.
But what does that have to do with American Idol?
Every marketing spend out there is currently being judged by the corporate version of American Idol’s Randy Jackson (as VP of Business Development) , Simon Cowel (CEO/CFO), and Paula Abdul (VP of Marketing) and new exec Kara DioGuardia (VP of Technology). Think of this audience. They are in your meetings. They decide whether you live or die (at least from a project standpoint). In a good economy, Randy (Biz Dev) is given enough rope to risk new products and experiment with new business channels. ”Yo Dawwg, I’m gonna roll with your new Facebook-but-for-lawyers-website-thing. It could be HUUUGE! .” Paula (Marketing) can argue that a new emotionally charged TV campaign will have a big impact. “Honey, it’ll be great. Soccer Mom’s all over the country will be calling in to sign-up. “Kara (Technology) will be allowed to pursue the latest and greatest tech solution to save the day. That’s all fine and dandy in a good economy. Yes, it’s still evaluated and put to discussion. But it’s not quite as tough. In a bad economy, people want a sure thing. And the final (and sometimes only) vote goes to Simon (CEO/CFO). And guess what’s he going to look at? Yep, the ROI. What would Simon say about your marketing campaign?
Hopefully, he wouldn’t be this harsh
Search Engine Marketing (both SEO & PPC) Continue to Provide ROI
Fortunately, for search engine marketers, ROI can be easy calculate for the Simon’s of the business world. In fact, a recent article from Enquiro discusses how search engine marketing (primarily from Google’s perspective) is still growing despite poor market conditions. Here’s an excerpt:
Despite one of the worst economic years in recent memory, Google showed 23% growth in revenues. During the same time period every other economic metric went into free fall. Consumer confidence plunged to its lowest levels ever. Retails sales and online sales both hit the skids. Let’s not even talk about home sales. The Dow Jones is down 40% in the past year. The economy didn’t just slow down. It screeched to a halt. But in this same time, search kept plugging through without a hiccup. Did the astronomical growth continue? No, but 23% is pretty damn good in anyone’s books.
The article then went on to say:
So, when we hit bottom and start climbing out of this economic black hole, Search will have consolidated its position as the most accountable of marketing channels. It will form the basis of a new marketing model: consumer driven, immediate, measurable, effective, interactive.
Search Engine Marketing is consumer driven, measurable, & effective.
A completely non-scientific inquiry search engine marketing professionals (myself and people I know and trust in the industry) has shown that we are busier than we have ever been. A big part is due to our unique ability to prove that we are improving business for our clients. It’s not a gut-check. It’s not a demographic guide that says we likely reached 17% of our target audience. It’s detailed analytics showing how we provide value and increase revenue. In addition to the obvious, we are also able to make insightful recommendations to help aspects of your business we aren’t even managing. But don’t take my (somewhat un-objective) word for it:
Marketing Sherpa’s Recent Internet Marketing ROI Survey
Web Pro News’ Top Internet Marketing Strategies
Search Engine Optimization came in first place with 36% of respondents indicating SEO was likely to be the most important online advertising channel. Blogging came a close second at 33% and Pay per Click (PPC) advertising came third with 26%. These three marketing channels, which are the mainstay services offered by search marketing firms, tend to offer the strongest returns on monies invested by the advertiser.
And to give you an idea of the wide variety of options on the table, nearly 500 marketing professionals were polled last November by public relations expert Lee Odden about the Internet marketing strategies and tactics they would be employing in the next six months. Their responses are quite interesting.
All of this data helps me remain confident in my belief that search engine marketing (SEO & PPC) will make it out of Hollywood week and continue its trek to the finals despite the worst economy in decades. Oh yeah, when we win you (our clients) win, too. That’s why we’re in business in the first place.
Analytics + Segmentation = PB&J
February 5, 2009 by Ed Reese · Leave a Comment
Analytics + Segmentation is the PB&J of web data
I just love a good PB&J. Tasy, tasty, tasty. At least I loved them before the recall. But I digress. It’s just that they remind me of analytics plus segmentation (or maybe I’m just hungry). But it just never fails me. Each and every time I segment important web analytics data I learn something new and am able to make immediate recommendations that helps my clients save money and grow their relevant search traffic.
So what is analytics segmentation, anyway?
It’s really pretty simple. It’s the process of comparing a set of data against a specific variable. Here’s an example that compares traffic sources of a specific web site against individual bounce rates. A bounce rate is recorded when a visitor gets to your web site and leaves without taking another action, so a lower bounce rate is better than a high one. It means that you have engaged your visitor and they are checking out your web site. It’s important to note, however, that blogs typically have high bounced rates and probably shouldn’t be judged by this metric. Here’s an analytic segmentation example:
What can we learn from the data in this example?
In this example, we are comparing the top five referring web sites against the bounce rate average of the web site (22%). In the easy to read chart, green mearures the percent lower than average and red the percentage higher than the average bounce rate (remember, you want low - green = good, red = bad). Let’s find out what we’ve learned that we can immediatelly apply to the web site.
Lesson #1 - Our existing customers are likely a bit bored
Direct traffic comes from visitors that type the web site URL directly and go to the web site (no search or referral). In this example, direct traffic has a 33% higher bounce rate than the web site average. Why is that? We can’t be exactly sure, but we can make some educated guesses. As these are likely returning visitors, maybe they are a bit bored. Maybe they want fresh content. They likely came to the web site, saw that it was exactly the same, and left, thus resulting in a bounce.
Action: Give them some tasty new content!
Lesson #2 - Review your Google CPC campaign conversion rates
Look at that horrible bounce rate for Google CPC! Their Google CPC campaign has a bounce rate that is 87% worse than the web site average. That is a huge waste of money! It’s time to take a look at this pay-per-click campaign and see what keywords have poor bounce rates and throw out the garbage.
Action: Review your paid search campaigs and eliminate poorly performing keywords.
Lesson #3 - Organic search traffic is kicking some serious butt
The organic search traffic has a significantly lower bounce rate than the web site average. The visitors from the search engines are finding their web site and clicking around. Very Nice!
Action: Expand SEO campaign to rank on page one for more long-tail keyword phrases
I hope this helps understand your web analytics a bit more. There are many more ways to segment your data. This is just one example. It’s exciting and powerful stuff. If you have any questions about analytics and what it can do for your business, just let us know. However, for those of you interested in really educating yourselves, I highly recommend checking out Avinash Kaushik’s blog. He’s the man.
We held Stephen Curry scoreless…
November 26, 2008 by Ed Reese · 1 Comment
It’s the day before Thanksgiving and I feel like blogging about college basketball. I just saw an amazing story about the Davidson/Loyola of Maryland game that I may or may not try to relate to SEO. I’m sure many of you remember Davidson. Specifically, Stephen Curry, their sharp-shooting point guard that torched Gonzaga (and everyone else) in the tourney last year until they lost to Kansas, the eventual National Champions.
Anyway, Davidson beat Loyola of MD by thirty points last night. But here’s the thing… Stephen Curry didn’t score a point. Loyola played a triangle-and-2 defense the entire game (meaning that Stephen Curry had two players guarding him at all times, while the other three played zone). So what did he do?
He stood in the corner the entire game! With two players constantly guarding him at the corner, his team essentially had a 4-3 power play for 40 minutes. Talk about not seeing the basket through the trees! I don’t know what the Loyola coach was thinking. It’s one of the oddest strategies I’ve ever seen. There’s a really good write-up about the game on Rivals.
From an SEO perspective (come on, you knew I was going to wrap this into an SEO post) I see this all the time. People are always looking at their trophy phrases and saying “Yes, I’m #1 for my super cool search phrase. Awesome!” But that’s akin to being featured on SportsCenter. Is it super cool? Sure. Are you going to tell everyone you know to search your phrase so they can see you atop Google in all your glory? Absolutely. But, does it really help you win more business? Well,.. maybe. In some cases. But truly understanding your analytics really is the key to getting more clients. It’s just not as sexy. I doubt any of you are going to talk about long-tail organic search traffic, conversions, and bounce rates over Thanksgiving dinner with your family (And you shouldn’t, btw. I can tell you from experience).
Just know that understanding these metrics are what’s going to help you get through this troubled economy.
By the way, Gonzaga is playing in a stacked tournament (with Michigan State, Georgetown, and Tennessee to name a few) that starts tomorrow. This should really let us know if they’ve got what it takes for a deep run come March. Davidson will no doubt look for an encore performance this upcoming March.
I have so much to be thankful for. Happy Thanksgiving to all!
Search Rankings are Dead!
November 23, 2008 by Ed Reese · 1 Comment
Two interviews caught my attention recently regarding the future of search. Here’s a quick summary of them for you. I believe what they discuss will have a pretty significant impact on SEO in the future.
So what’s all the buzz about, anyway?
It came from two interviews by Mike McDonald of WebPro News at Pubcon with Matt Cutts (of Google) and SEO Pioneer Bruce Clay. Here are the interviews in their entirety and my summary.
The death of search engine rankings (Bruce Clay)
The personalization of search (Matt Cutts of Google)
What, search rankings are dead? Well no, they aren’t dead. They’re just evolving-dramatically. Bruce Clay talked with Mike McDonald of WebPro News about Google’s efforts to personalize search results. Here are a few of his main points/opinions:
1) Google will personalize your searches in the near future. That is, your past searches (whether logged in to Google or not) will effectively bias your search results based on your search history. He used an example of a search for “java.” Your past search history could determine whether your search yielded results about coffee, programming, or travel. Chris Crum wrote a good recap of Bruce’s personalization comments here.
2) Intent based search is here. Search engines will determine intent and bias results towards that perceived intent. For example, reviews or general information queries will likely lead to global search results while a shopping or perceived local search (even without the local qualifier) will lead to geo-local search results.
3) Ranking is dead. According the Bruce, “The day of how high do I rank as a measure of doing SEO right is gone. You’re going to have to look at analytics… You’re going to have to measure traffic… You’re going to have to measure bounce rates… You’re going to have to measure action… Did I get the conversion I was after? Did I really deliver on the promise of SEO?”
4) Universal Search will be HUGE in 2009. Universal (also called Blended Search) was launched in early 2008. I have seen a massive increase in organic search traffic for my clients based on optimizing for Universal/Organic search. Bruce believes that web sites without video, images, and other variables of Universal search will be essentially left in the dust.
I love the point/counterpoint of Matt Cutts (from Google) being interviewed right after a top SEO like Bruce. I can’t help but say “Jane, you ignorant slut!” However, in this case, they more or less agree with each other, which lends even more weight to their comments. Here’s my summary from the Matt Cutts interview regarding Google’s future:
1) Is ranking really dead? Matt addressed this directly by saying,“Well, I’m not sure whether I’d say that ranking is dead. But it’s not as important as it used to be. But the fact is, the smart SEO’s are not necessarily just looking at the rankings. They’re looking at their conversions… and server logs. They are saying, sure, it’s great if I rank for a phrase, but unless that leads to sales it doesn’t help very much.”
2) If rankings are less important, what’s an SEO to do? Again, he addressed the the changing landscape directly by saying: “SEOs are starting to embrace the fact that they are marketers. It’s a broader spectrum. You have to think about how you build buzz, how do you get loyal customers, how do you optimize your ROI. All those different things and that can include how do I make good videos, do I have a book, things like that.”
3) But what about personalization? This is where it will be pretty interesting moving forward. His localization example makes perfect sense. But the personalization aspect seems a bit vague. “As you see more personalization… as you see more localization.. it changes. For example, If you do a search for the word “bank” in the United States, you’ll get Bank of America and other American banks. If you do that search in England, you’ll get Thomas Cook and different banks entirely. The challenge is not to pay so much attention to rankings and to pay attention to your traffic,… pay attention to your conversions,… keep building good content,… and then not worry so much about can I show people that I rank #1 for my trophy phrase.
4) Universal Search is really useful to users. Without telling us that we need to have videos, blogs, and other Universal Search content on our web sites to stay relevant and rank well, he certainly talked about how users are embracing video and blogs as well as how important creating quality content is to Google.
Read: Videos and blogs are mas importante! Get on this train if you haven’t already.
My next post will delve a bit deeper into these topics and include some real world examples of how Universal Search strategies have helped my clients. It will also include my thoughts of how businesses can work to capitalize on the personalization of search in the future.