Check out my Site Lite's intro video narrated by our CMO and Founder! If you want more information on mSL:
Hi, we are my SiteLite (our friends call us mSL). Our marketing services company delivers flexible, end-to-end marketing solutions to meet your goals today, while providing a clear path for your future investments. Come check us out at http://www.mysitelite.com.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Launching our new website
So here it is, we've turned our new site to the public eye: http://www.mysitelite.com/. Come by, and check us out as we're continuing to refine and improve our content. We'd love to get your feedback so drop us a note and we'll get back with you.
Happy Saturday
mSL
Friday, July 30, 2010
3 Google Analytics Tips for Search Engine Marketing
By Trada
Do you use Google Analytics to see who visits your website? Do you use G
oogle Analytics when determining how to market your website? Be honest…do you even know how to use Google Analytics?
Here are 3 tips on how to make Google Analytics work for you in your search engine marketing campaigns, inspired by our latest webinar, ‘Google Analytics for Good (and Evil)’ hosted by Trada’s own Anna Sawyer and Trada Founder and CEO Niel Robertson.
1. Know when your landing pages are converting to schedule Ad run-time
This is also called day parting…which is the art of knowing what time of day you should run your marketing campaigns to get the most bang-for-your-buck. Using Google Analytics, you can see when your clicks are converting and allocate your PPC budget accordingly (a.k.a. save money!).
To start, set your date range in the upper-right hand corner of your screen (i.e. June 1-30). Next, we want to see the average visits/day broken down by the hour. To do this, go to Visitors>Visitor Trending>Visit and click on the “graph by hour” button (with a picture of a clock face). This provides a look at when the bulk of your traffic is reaching your website.
You can go one step deeper into this and look specifically at just one place on your website. If you’re company values social media, you’ll know it’s important to see what time people are reading your blog. To do this, click on ‘Advanced Segments’ in the lower-right column of the screen and then click on ‘Create New Custom Segment’ on the following screen in the upper-right corner. Create a segment that includes all pages starting with your specific blog URL (i.e. All of Trada’s blog links start in /blog) using the ‘Landing Page’ dimension. Save the Custom Segment and add the new blog segment to the filter (found in bar above the calendar) of your Visits report to cross-reference.
Do you see a difference? Where are the interesting spikes in traffic? Do people visit your blog only during the morning but overall site visitors are higher on the weekend? Tweak Ad campaigns to match peak hours on your site.* If your AdWords aren’t scheduled correctly, you might be missing out on good leads and possible conversion.
*Quick Tip: To schedule ad display times in Google AdWords go to settings>ad scheduling>set>and add copy to all days/weekdays.
2. Figure out which search engine is converting for you.
Google AdWords generally runs the show in paid search when it comes to impressions and overall click volume. But it’s important to ask the question: statistically is Google converting better than Yahoo or Bing? This is simple to figure out once you create a custom report, and is an especially important metric for e-retailers or anyone wanting more than just traffic from their search marketing campaigns. Knowing the quality of your traffic allows you to take advantage of every advertising network and teaches you how to decipher which ones work for you. Yes, advertising on all three networks is cumbersome – but if you are getting more conversions per impressions on Bing…. it’s worth the time sink.
Go to go ‘Traffic Sources’, filter by paid search, click on your Goal Set tab (assuming you’ve set a conversion goal) and then sort by search engine to see what search engine is converting the highest. You can also set up a custom report to see which is driving the most leads if you have multiple goal/goal funnels through the ‘Custom Reports’ section found in the lower-left corner of your analytics screen. (Comparing paid search conversion/sort by custom report goals). The moral of the story is: if your ads are getting 20x more visitor traffic in Google, but 10x more conversion traffic in Yahoo, you probably should put more time in where the value is.
3. Analyze your SEM data to determine your SEO strategy
It’s important to strategically build custom landing pages to align with the offer you’re advertising in paid search. But this can be difficult if you aren’t exactly sure how or what people are searching for before they find your company. Aligning landing pages with offers, services and tying this back into your advertising will give you a needed SEO boost as well as help keep your paid traffic interested in your content/offerings after they’ve click on you ad.
First, take a look at the keywords people are using to find your site. Remember, Google Analytics is oriented for organic search. The trick to turning this SEO data in SEM strategy lies in assigning the top keywords to their own specific landing pages and ads to match.
Because Google Analytics only shows organic search keywords, before looking in Google Analytics, be sure to check out the “search terms report” within Google AdWords – which is based on SEM keywords. The “search terms report” in AdWords show the actual phrases typed into Google search that triggered your paid ad to display that resulted in a click.
Cross-reference the difference between the top search terms reported by Google Analytics and the top search terms reported in your Google AdWords report. By integrating some of the top keywords in Google Analytics and the top keywords in AdWords, you’ll add value, increase relevancy and boot your SEO while better understanding your SEM traffic. AdWords and Analytics are good for different things, but together they are can be an invaluable toolset.
As you can see, using Google Analytics for good (and evil) lets you control your data. Hopefully this post will give you the courage to use Google Analytics to its fullest potential. Feel free to direct any Google Analytics questions to Trada’s CEO Niel Robertson on Twitter . Remember: use your newly found Google Analytics information for good, not evil. And may the force be with you.
By Trada
Do you use Google Analytics to see who visits your website? Do you use G
oogle Analytics when determining how to market your website? Be honest…do you even know how to use Google Analytics?Here are 3 tips on how to make Google Analytics work for you in your search engine marketing campaigns, inspired by our latest webinar, ‘Google Analytics for Good (and Evil)’ hosted by Trada’s own Anna Sawyer and Trada Founder and CEO Niel Robertson.
1. Know when your landing pages are converting to schedule Ad run-time
This is also called day parting…which is the art of knowing what time of day you should run your marketing campaigns to get the most bang-for-your-buck. Using Google Analytics, you can see when your clicks are converting and allocate your PPC budget accordingly (a.k.a. save money!).
To start, set your date range in the upper-right hand corner of your screen (i.e. June 1-30). Next, we want to see the average visits/day broken down by the hour. To do this, go to Visitors>Visitor Trending>Visit and click on the “graph by hour” button (with a picture of a clock face). This provides a look at when the bulk of your traffic is reaching your website.
You can go one step deeper into this and look specifically at just one place on your website. If you’re company values social media, you’ll know it’s important to see what time people are reading your blog. To do this, click on ‘Advanced Segments’ in the lower-right column of the screen and then click on ‘Create New Custom Segment’ on the following screen in the upper-right corner. Create a segment that includes all pages starting with your specific blog URL (i.e. All of Trada’s blog links start in /blog) using the ‘Landing Page’ dimension. Save the Custom Segment and add the new blog segment to the filter (found in bar above the calendar) of your Visits report to cross-reference.
Do you see a difference? Where are the interesting spikes in traffic? Do people visit your blog only during the morning but overall site visitors are higher on the weekend? Tweak Ad campaigns to match peak hours on your site.* If your AdWords aren’t scheduled correctly, you might be missing out on good leads and possible conversion.
*Quick Tip: To schedule ad display times in Google AdWords go to settings>ad scheduling>set>and add copy to all days/weekdays.
2. Figure out which search engine is converting for you.
Google AdWords generally runs the show in paid search when it comes to impressions and overall click volume. But it’s important to ask the question: statistically is Google converting better than Yahoo or Bing? This is simple to figure out once you create a custom report, and is an especially important metric for e-retailers or anyone wanting more than just traffic from their search marketing campaigns. Knowing the quality of your traffic allows you to take advantage of every advertising network and teaches you how to decipher which ones work for you. Yes, advertising on all three networks is cumbersome – but if you are getting more conversions per impressions on Bing…. it’s worth the time sink.
Go to go ‘Traffic Sources’, filter by paid search, click on your Goal Set tab (assuming you’ve set a conversion goal) and then sort by search engine to see what search engine is converting the highest. You can also set up a custom report to see which is driving the most leads if you have multiple goal/goal funnels through the ‘Custom Reports’ section found in the lower-left corner of your analytics screen. (Comparing paid search conversion/sort by custom report goals). The moral of the story is: if your ads are getting 20x more visitor traffic in Google, but 10x more conversion traffic in Yahoo, you probably should put more time in where the value is.
3. Analyze your SEM data to determine your SEO strategy
It’s important to strategically build custom landing pages to align with the offer you’re advertising in paid search. But this can be difficult if you aren’t exactly sure how or what people are searching for before they find your company. Aligning landing pages with offers, services and tying this back into your advertising will give you a needed SEO boost as well as help keep your paid traffic interested in your content/offerings after they’ve click on you ad.
First, take a look at the keywords people are using to find your site. Remember, Google Analytics is oriented for organic search. The trick to turning this SEO data in SEM strategy lies in assigning the top keywords to their own specific landing pages and ads to match.
Because Google Analytics only shows organic search keywords, before looking in Google Analytics, be sure to check out the “search terms report” within Google AdWords – which is based on SEM keywords. The “search terms report” in AdWords show the actual phrases typed into Google search that triggered your paid ad to display that resulted in a click.
Cross-reference the difference between the top search terms reported by Google Analytics and the top search terms reported in your Google AdWords report. By integrating some of the top keywords in Google Analytics and the top keywords in AdWords, you’ll add value, increase relevancy and boot your SEO while better understanding your SEM traffic. AdWords and Analytics are good for different things, but together they are can be an invaluable toolset.
As you can see, using Google Analytics for good (and evil) lets you control your data. Hopefully this post will give you the courage to use Google Analytics to its fullest potential. Feel free to direct any Google Analytics questions to Trada’s CEO Niel Robertson on Twitter . Remember: use your newly found Google Analytics information for good, not evil. And may the force be with you.
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