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Bing + Yahoo is it Enough to Make Google Look Twice?

Jason Katzenback — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 18:25:37 +0000

Well, the announcement is official, as of this morning. Microsoft and Yahoo have come to an agreement, which will integrate their search and advertising channels. From the early buzz that is being heard, it seems that Yahoo SEO Carol Bartz didn’t get the upfront payout she was looking for, but they will share ad revenue, and Microsoft will pay Yahoo a traffic acquisition fee. The deal, while finalized between the two companies, still needs to be approved by regulators.

By Bing and Yahoo combining forces, it now gives them 28.1% of the search market, while Google holds strong at 65%. But is it enough to make Google look twice. By your comments yesterday, it seems that there is more and more traffic being driven by Bing.

After doing a little bit more digging after I wrote the post about Bing yesterday, I began to realize that this Google/Microsoft thing went a lot further than just search engines. And it’s not all Microsoft trying to push at Google’s total world domination in search and PPC ads, either.

Remember, Microsoft’s got a little total world domination of their own going on in other areas, and Google’s got some products of their own to try and worm their way into those markets. In fact, Google and Microsoft both have products in so many categories it’s astounding. Why we haven’t noticed before is because one is usually far and away better than the other. Whether it’s Google or Microsoft that’s better just depends on what category we’re talking about.

A lot of you commented yesterday that Bing putting some pressure on Google was a good thing, that a little competition might knock Google out of their complacency and start trying to please their customers a bit more. So could Google do the same thing to Microsoft? Google’s got an OS, Chrome in the works, but without Microsoft’s distribution channels, how will it get a foothold in the category?

The Chrome web browser hasn’t exactly taken off gangbusters since it was introduced in 2008, getting about 2% of the market compared with the 66% that Explorer has.

So in search, Google is Goliath and Microsoft is David, but in OS and browsers, Microsoft is Goliath and then Google is David. Whatever their positions, the back-and-forthing competition should prove to be interesting, and hopefully good for the consumer (meaning us).

And, on an interesting last note, if you want to compare Bing and Google directly, check out http://www.bing-vs-google.com Just put in your keyword of choice, and you can compare the search results.

Bing! What’s that Sound? Someone Trying to Take a Bite Out of Google?

Jason Katzenback — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 04:03:09 +0000

Have you seen the commercials?

They’ve been everywhere lately – making fun of keyword groupings and how one search for one thing can end up with search results for something completely different.

Bing.com has been marketing themselves as a different kind of search engine, according to them, a “decision” engine instead of a “search” engine.

What I found really interesting about the Bing.com commercials is that nowhere do they mention that they are a Microsoft product, which is one of the most recognizable brands in the world. If you had a new product launch, wouldn’t you want to capitalize on that notoriety?

Apparently, not, although they don’t seem to mind using the deep Microsoft products to pay for the big advertising campaign.

And anyone who’s ever been on the internet knows what Microsoft is trying to do with Bing – they’re trying to take a piece out of the big boys, which, as everyone knows, is Google. Google is the king of search engines. When we talk about keywords, PPC ads, SEO and search rankings, it’s all in relation to Google.

Bing’s latest step to search engine, sorry, that’s ‘decision’ engine, domination is to strike a deal with Yahoo for all of its users to use Bing for all their decision needs. The terms of the deal are still being hammered out, but when the deal goes through, it will give Bing not only a larger share in the search market, allowing it to creep up on the monolith of Google, but it will also eliminate a competitor.

And what does Yahoo get out of it?

Well, first off, it wouldn’t have to maintain its own search infrastructure anymore. And according to the deal as it stands now, they would get a share of the revenue of ads both on the Yahoo search site as well as Bing.com, which is not bad considering that they are already losing market share to Bing.

If these guys can make this deal work out, then they both stand to benefit. As the bigwigs over at Yahoo point out, their search engine is not their major business focus. And Microsoft has the motivation and the money to put behind become a force to be reckoned with in search – and they’ve already got distribution channels all lined up through their own products.

Part of the details that still need to be worked out is whether they will use the existing Yahoo Panama system for buying ads or switch over to Microsoft’s AdCenter.

I personally vote for AdCenter – it’s better than Panama, and is almost on par with Google’s AdWords.

Once the deal goes through, you’d better believe that I’ll be watching Bing and Google to see how this will affect PPC campaigns and search engine rankings. While Google is still the king, Bing is starting to look like…well, I can’t think of a historical reference that isn’t too obscure that actually fits, but Bing is like the guy that’s trying to slowly and carefully take over the throne while the King has become complacent is his authority and position.

Anyone got a good reference for that?

PS – I would love to see Google get some true competition here… I think it will make both services that much better!

Now this is all just my own opinion… whats yours?

Hey… Click on My #$(@^)% ad! & Other What Not To Do’s When Writing Your Google AdWords Ads

Jason Katzenback — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 12:51:27 +0000

One of the most popular methods of PPC advertising is using Google’s ad serving platform, AdWords. While most people understand the basics of how it works, from picking keywords and creating ads, most people don’t have a thorough understanding of the AdWords editorial and content policies. And Google not only has algorithms in place to monitor the ads, but editors (real people!) who also make sure that all AdWords ads adhere to the policies. So here’s what to avoid if you want to keep your site up and running

This is my $$(@$%&@ing ad – Using Inappropriate or Offensive Language

This should seem obvious, and I’m sure no John Cow readers would ever resort to such dastardly tricks, but you’d be surprised with the number of people who try and get away with this. As a shock tactic, it may work in the short-term to get you come clicks, but this kind of as will get noticed fast and get taken down. If you’ve managed to be really offensive, or have tried this multiple times, your site will get shut down as well.

And don’t assume that you can get away with double entendres or being clever. While the Google algorithms may not get it, you can be sure the editors will. This is a cheap tactic, and not worth getting your campaign pulled.

G**gle and M*cr*s*ft click here – Using Copyrighted or Trademarked Terms

You didn’t think I’d actually use trademarked terms, did you? Much like Google, I don’t want to be sued for trademark infringement. And using the asterisks like I did won’t work in your AdWords ad either – if you could figure out what I meant, then so will the editors.

Free** Stuff (**well, not really free) – Misleading Offers, Special Prices, or Discounts

If you mention a special deal, price, or discount, make sure that the offer mentioned in the ad is prominently displayed on the landing page. Be careful on this one – even if you’ve used a valid offer in your ad, and it exists somewhere else on your site, but can’t be found on the landing page, then your ad will get flagged and removed.

Click here…but you’ll really end up here – Redirecting to a Different URL

In the past, some advertisers took advantage of a grey area in Google’s policies to redirect users to a site completely different than the one indicated in the ad. Google has since cracked down on this practice and expects to see the user taken directly to the URL listed in the ad, or, you guessed it, they will shut down your campaign.

We’re the best ever! Woo #1! – Using Superlatives or Competitive Claims

You may think that you’re the best in the world, or that you can beat your competitors with one hand tied behind your back, but if you don’t have the proof or 3rd party validation to back it up (and your mom doesn’t count) then don’t use the claim in your AdWords Ad.

Have you checked out PPCKahuna Yet? Click Here Now to Check Out the Brand New Affiliate Marketing System “PPCKahuna Elite”…Your Very Own Revenue Generating Trojan Horse that will allow you to infiltrate your competitor’s backyard and Profit Like NEVER Before!

Things You Need to Consider When Planning Your Placement Targeted Google AdSense Campaign

Jason Katzenback — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 19:38:28 +0000

AdSense placement targeting campaigns can provide a huge amount of additional reach when combined with your AdWords Search campaign, but the conversion rates have traditionally been much lower for content than search. So, how can you maximize the results from your content campaign?

The most important thing to remember is: don’t treat content like search!

The only thing they have in common is that you’re using text ads for both. With search, people are actively searching out information in your niche (well, they should be if you picked your keywords correctly); with content, the ads are incidental to the content they’re looking at.

Users are also further along in the buying cycle when they’re searching as opposed to looking at content. Therefore, the ad copy that worked for you in search won’t work for you in content. You’ll need to tailor your ad copy specifically for the content environment.

Also remember that contextual advertising (used in the content network) is targeted at the AdGroup level, not at the keyword level. This will also impact how you structure your AdSense campaign. If they aren’t even running on the same parameters, why would it make sense to structure your campaigns the same way?

Take a long look at your keyword combinations; what may have worked well in search, again, won’t work in content. Make any adjustments you feel are necessary. You can also create different mixes AdGroups using similar keywords and creative. By adding keywords, combining them in different ways, changing match types and creating new phrases, you can try to get a greater number of impressions.

One of the benefits of the content network is the ability to site-target; there is software out there (such as AdwordsDigger, found at http://www.adwordsdigger.com) that can run through the thousands of sites on the content network based on your keywords, and come up with a leaner list that will maximize your return on investment.

You’ll also need to take a look at what landing pages you’re directing your content ads to. They may have been created specifically for a search campaign, which means, you guessed it, they won’t be as effective for a content campaign. Since the content user isn’t actively searching for a certain product or service, you’ll need to create dedicated landing pages for your content campaign, which could focus more on learning about your product and creating interest before pushing the sale.

So, how do you run your content campaigns? If you use the same parameters as your search campaign, how is that working for you? If you’ve customized your content campaign, what kind of improvements did you see?

PPCKahuna is Open… Finally, Really Start to Make Money Online

Jason Katzenback — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 18:47:04 +0000

PPCKahuna (http://www.ppckahuna.com) is finally opening the doors again for new members. On March 5, 2009 at 1pm Eastern time, you’ll be able to become a part of the best system online to make money with PPC.

No more time wasted building campaigns that only lose money… no more wasting time trying to figure out what your niche is…PPCKahuna was created to help you achieve the incredible income you’ve always wanted.

Do any of these apply to you?

You spend hours looking for the ‘right’ keywords…but they either burn through your budget too quickly, or you don’t get any results at all.
You waste days creating landing pages, obsessing over every detail…and they don’t convert any sales.
You search in vain for the ‘right’ product to sell….and it works for everyone but you.

Then you need PPCKahuna. They’ve researched and tested, then researched and tested some more, and have come up with a tried-and-tested way to make Google and Yahoo work for you. Their services and tools will give you what you need to start really making money with PPC.

Now, not six months from now!

I know you get about a thousand emails a day on how to make money online. And with most of them, the only one making any money is the guy selling the info. That’s not true with PPCKahuna. With this system, you get access to the same tools that the owners use in their own, successful businesses. Their mission is to make their user’s lives easier and most importantly, wildly profitable!

How can they do this? With an amazing array of tools and a fantastic strategy that will help you uncover highly profitable markets and then help you cash in on them!

Here’s just a sampling of what PPCKahuna has to offer:

Fast & Easy PPC Market Research
Fast & Easy SEO Market Research
Uncover “Winning” Ad Copy
Create Mass PPC Campaigns In Seconds
Create Instant Targeted Landing Pages
Automated Taguchi Ad Copy Split Testing
Proven Money-Making Formula
Find the Best Products to Promote
Let Us Do The Work For You
And much, much more….

In preparation for this release, PPCKahuna opened the doors to a select few for a round of Beta testing back in January (yes, only a little over a month ago.) Check out what some of those NEW PPCKahuna users had to say:

“It works! PPCKahuna has helped me double the size of my list… and yes, I have made a lot of money as a result. Yesterday I launched a new product in my business and did over $15,000 in 24 hours” ~ Matt Wadsworth, London UK

“Working with a very modest budget of $150, I have gone from zero adwords income to $450 net profit in my first month!” ~ Ron Howell, Halifax CA

“Through the use of the tools and training available inside PPCKahuna, I was able to uncover a few profitable campaigns in my first week!” ~ Mel Slabaugh Wooster USA

This is a serious opportunity for someone who is serious about making real money online.

So, if you want to start dominating your competition and make this your most profitable year ever, then go to…

http://www.ppckahuna.com

If not, then just keep doing what you’ve been doing, and getting the same old results you have been!

Google Analytics – Creating Goals

Jason Katzenback — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 05:53:35 +0000

Goals are a fantastic way of helping measure success of your efforts and when used in conjunction with “Javascript Events” (I talked about this yesterday) can be very informational for people running an online business.

Goals are a very quick and easy way to get a good picture of your conversion rates and understanding your conversion rates is critical for being successful.

The following is how to set up a basic goal for a double opt in mailing list.

Step 1: Click on “Analytics Settings” to ensure you are on the settings page.

Step 2: Click on “Edit” under the settings for the site you want to create the goal for.

Step 3: Scroll down to “Conversion Goals and Funnel” and click on “edit” for G1 (goal 1)

Step 4: Select the “On” radio button of “Active Goal”, keep the “Match Type” and “Head Match” (click the question mark if you want an explanation of the different types of matchtypes).

In the “Goal URL” just put the file name of the page. So if your url to your opt in page that the reader goes to once they have verified their subscription is…

www.yourdomain.com/thanksforconfirming/

…then simply enter /thanksforconfirming/ as the Goal URL. Then name the “Goal URL” and just leave the rest as default.

Step 5: Scroll down and in the “Define Funnel”, in step 1 enter the URL of the initial page that the user goes to when they initially opt in. Click on the “required step” check box and then click “Save Changes”.

Step 6: Once your goal is set up, you will want to let it run for at least 48 hours before you start looking at the info but I would recommend at least 2 weeks of allowing the goal to run, to get a real sample of your opt in conversion rate.

To check your “goals” (conversions), click on “Goals” and then “Overview”

Purpose: By settings goals you are able to effectively understand the conversion rate of your opt in and this allows you to test different things, such as headlines, and track improvements. Understanding your conversions helps you to understand if your efforts are providing an effective ROI.

But COW what about Tracking Affiliates!!!

Hmmmm…. have not I given you enough… do I need to give more????

OK then.. Here goes

Goals for tracking how well an affiliate page is doing is very powerful and it is super easy to set up. Lets say for example you have a review on your site and you want to know what the conversion rate is of people landing on your page and visiting the actual affiliate product page. To do this you would first of all make sure you add the JavaScript event to the links on your pre sales page. You will want to make sure that all the links in the content that are using the affiliate link, use the same event code.

So you link might look like this…

onClick=”javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview(’/aff_event/abc_com’);”>

What you would then do is create a goal with your goal URL being…

/aff_event/abc_com

…and then your step 1 required step would be the URL of the actual presales page on your site/blog.

This will now track for you the percentage of people that visit your page and actually go to the affiliate product page.

SO what do you think.. you like this tip or what?

This is the last one in this Analytics series and I am thinking I am next going to get into creating effective presales material but please let me know your thoughts on this tip.

Part 1: Google Analytics – Installing
Part 2: Google Analytics – Keywords
Part 3: Google Analytics – Incoming Links
Part 4: Google Analytics – Outgoing Traffic
Part 5: Google Analytics – Content
Part 6: Google Analytics – Tracking with JavaScript Events
Part 7: Google Analytics – Creating Goals

Google Analytics – Advanced Tracking with JavaScript Events

Jason Katzenback — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:06:59 +0000

In the previous post I talked about “Google Analytics – Content” and how you can use the information to understand what are popular topics on your site to create content about. Today I want to talk about another “Content” feature in Analytics but this one is a little bit of a different tactic.

Google Analytics offers the ability to create what is called “Java Script events” that are added to the html of a link on your blog. These events will treat the link like it is an actual page and by doing this you will be able to see specific details about the links that are very worthwhile to know.

There are dozens of different things you can use this strategy to track and when you tie it in with setting up goals (I talk about this tomorrow) you have an extremely powerful “one – two” punch that gives you very powerful data.

Some examples of things you can track using this strategy…

If you have a page with multiple call to actions that link to the same page, you can track which one is getting the most action.
If you want to track clicks on different banner ads on your site, you can know specifically which banners are getting the most clicks.
If you want to track the amount of times someone downloads a PDF, ZIP or some other file.
If you run PPC and you have multiple copies of the same page for specific keywords and you are promoting the same affiliate product, you can track which specific page is getting the best CTR (Click Through Rate) on the actual “Call to Action” link. This is very powerful since most affiliate products do not allow you to put conversion tracking on their thank-you page… hmmm I see another series of posts here for tracking PPC.
and the list can go on and on…

To create an event you simple add the following code to your link…

onClick=”javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview(‘/event/nameofevent’);

So the html of your link would appear like…

the (‘/event/nameofevent’) is what Analytics will use to identify the specific link. So for example, say I have a pre sales page that I want to track which call to action link on that page is getting the most amount of “Action” to the product I was promoting at abc.com, I would put with the top link in the post…

(‘/aff_event/top_abc.com’)

…and with the second link you could put…

(‘/aff_event/bottom_abc.com’)

…and if I had a banner ad in the post to the same product, I would put…

(‘/aff_event/image_abc.com’)

This is effective for testing links in different parts of your page and also using different call to actions or images.

Another example of how you could use a Java Script event is if we were giving away a free download. For that I would use…

(‘/downloadevent/pagefilename_pdf’)

If the file name is too long then just use abbreviations.

These are just two simple examples of how to use Java Script events and again when you tie them in with goals, it is very worthwhile.

How to Track the Events

Step 1: In the sidebar navigation menu, click on “Content” and then “Content Drilldown”

Step 2: Make sure to select “500″ in the display drop down and you will see all the content that Analytics has tracked being visited. Scroll down and click on /event/ (or what ever you called the first part of your file name in your event)

Note: you can name this what ever you want in the code.

Step 3: You will now get a list of all the javascript events you have created on your blog and you can start to see what links visitors are actually clicking on.

Purpose: I realize I reviewed different strategies already but for a lot of you who are just getting started and are primarily promoting other affiliate programs and this strategy is very effective for helping to understand whether a specific affiliate product is converting well or not. What you can do is add the javascript event to your links and if you see you are sending a lot of traffic to the affiliate site but not making sales, then you would want to test different affiliate offers, since you are sending lots of traffic but the sales page itself they are landing on is not converting.

If however you notice that you are sending very little traffic (getting a small amount of clicks on the affiliate links) you would want to focus on getting more visitors on your page and test a stronger “call to action”.

Often times we want to blame the affiliate program for not selling well but we are to blame because we are not even sending traffic to them… or we think we suck at affiliate marketing because we can not make sales when it is the actual affiliate product that is doing a poor job of converting sales.

Whew I hope that makes sense

So, any ideas pop up on how you can use this strategy?

Google Analytics – Content

Jason Katzenback — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 13:05:16 +0000

This was honestly one of the last things I ever started looking at when it came to using Google Analytics but I quickly realized it was one of the most important for planning out your content.

Step 1: In the left hand navigation menu click on “Content” –> “Top Landing Pages”

Step 2: Make the date range a couple months of data.

Step 3: Now you will have a list of pages on your blog that are ranked by highest to lowest for traffic.

Step 4: Click on the link and look at the data that Analytics provides for where the traffic to that page is coming from and what keywords are being used to find it.

Purpose: There are a couple different things you want to look for here…

What content is getting lots of activity? You can not always tell by the amount of comments that a blog post gets (although it is a fantastic indicator), sometimes the content does not really cause a reader to comment but it does cause them to share it with others. You want to highlight this content because obviously it is important to your readers and you will want to write more content on that topic. It is great to poll and ask your readers what they want but this is truly not the majority opinion because everyone does not participate… but using the Analytics data will tell you the true answers.
Where is the Traffic Coming From? Do not assume that the traffic must be coming from the search engines… I often find very popular posts have recieved most of the traffic from sites like StumbleUpon. If this content was popular on Stumbleupon, then it is probably a good idea to create more similar content.
What Keywords Are Being Used? Check out what keywords your page is being found with, check to see where you rank in Google for that keyword and if it can be improved… Just Do It!

So what are your thoughts on todays tip and do you have any to add?

Take Control of Your Email Sprawl with Gmail

Jason Katzenback — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 04:20:24 +0000

This is a guest post by Owen Walcher of Gmail Tips

One of your biggest bugbears as an internet marketer is having an unorganized email set up. You know, organizing your affiliate marketing emails, your downloads, your log in information, your domain and hosting correspondence, promotions, personal and family and the list goes on.

What happens to most of us is what is known as email sprawl. Your inbox suddenly starts to looks like peak hour traffic in New York City. Hundreds and sometimes thousands of emails sitting in your inbox without a home.

That is, they are all sitting in your inbox – business emails thrown in with personal emails and in the end, you just don’t have the time to check or categorize them all so you do a mass delete out of frustration.

Then later on, you go looking for a particular email and it’s not there. You deleted it which means having to track down the person who sent it and tell them your wife accidentally deleted it.

Sound familiar?

Well today, I want to show you something so effective and simple from Gmail that will literally solve this problem. It’s called labeling your emails within your Gmail account but better still, you can assign an email to several categories rather than just one.

In other words, with a normal email account, if you move an email from your inbox it can only be moved to one folder. But what if that email came under a number of categories?

For example, an email with a link to an article on affiliate marketing you want to keep could also come under the marketing, promotions and article material banner. But a restricted email service will only allow you to move it to one folder.

Gmail however, allows you to apply labels to that email and in actual fact, you can move it to as many folders as you want simply by applying some settings within your account. You are no longer restricted to just one option. Check out this video that shows you exactly how to do this.

And because Google offers almost 7 gigabytes of storage space with each Gmail account you have, there is virtually no need to delete them anymore if you don’t want to.

That’s one of the big advantages of a Gmail account and the above process is just the “tip of the iceberg” with what you can achieve by using one.

There are more great tips like this at http://gmailtips.info/ with full tutorials to help you bring some sanity back to your email account. All of the information is free and there is no upsell to access more of the information.

So out of curiosity…

[poll id="7"]

Google Analytics – Outgoing Traffic

Jason Katzenback — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 11:35:07 +0000

This is continued from the previous post Google Analytics Incoming Links

Getting lots of traffic is great but if no one is going where you want them to, well then there is a problem. Google Analytics helps you get a clear picture of not only where the traffic is coming from but also what it is doing once it gets there. Below is a very brief walk through of one way you can use this data provide.

Step 1: In the left hand navigation menu, click on “Content” and then “Top Exit Pages”

Step 2: You will now have a list of pages from your blog that are the top pages that people are leaving your site according to Analytics. Click on the top link.

Step 3: You want to look at “Time on Page” and if the page has a very low time on page.

Purpose: This is very powerful information because if you are finding that there is one page in particular that is getting lots of traffic but is also losing lots of traffic, then you know you may need to focus on that page.

You will want to look at the time spent on that page and if the average time on your top exit page is 20 seconds or less, then it is safe to assume that people are landing on that page and leaving right away. Now you will also have to understand the type of page it is. If your top exit page is an opt in “thank-you for opting in please confirm your subscription” page, then that is a good thing but if it is your main sales page… well then that is not so good.

STOP –>The time frames I gave are NOT hard fast rules. Alot depends on the length of your content and all that good stuff. If you want to see how long the average person should be on a certain page (say a pre sales page), then time yourself. Time how long it takes you to quickly read over the content and then click the link to buy… then that should become your goal for that page.

IMPORTANT –>You want to look at each page listed and look at the type of page they are and focus on ways of improving these pages.

TIP –> Do not just ignore pages like a ‘Thank-You’ page as a top exit page. This is very valuable real estate and if the ‘thankyou’ page only says “Thanks for Opting In” and does not provide other instructions, then there is roon for improvement. This is a great time to offer a recommended resource or an upsell.

So did any lights come on from this post?

Google Analytics – Incoming Links

Jason Katzenback — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:53:58 +0000

This comes in very handy when looking to help “Promote Your Promotions”. If a site is sending you traffic, you want to know about it and identify any ways you could help increase that traffic… even if it just means digging the story or submitting it to stumbleupon.

Step 1: In the left hand navigation, click on “Traffic Sources” and “Referring Sites”

Step 1: Now you will get a list of sites that Analytics has tracked sending traffic to your site. This informations is extremely valuable, no only does it show you the sites you have submitted links to that are sending you traffic but it also shows you all the other sites that you did not expect to get traffic from

Step 2: Click on the drop down box at the bottom of your screen that says “Show Rows” and select 500. This will now display all your sources on one screen.

Step 3: Do NOT click on the little icon beside the listed site, this will take you to the root domain of the site and not to the actual page that sent the traffic. Instead click the actual blue underlined link.

Step 4: You will now have a list of all the pages on that site that have referred traffic to your site, you will want to click on them and you will come to a new page that has the link “Visit the referring link”, you will want to click on this.

Purpose: With this information you will want to look for three different things.

The first is the sites that you have promoted, you will want to see which of these sites have sent you traffic and which ones have not. You can then tweak your promotions to exclude the sites that are not sending traffic and you can test new sites.
The second thing is for sites that sending traffic and you were unaware of. You want to look at these sites and see how you can improve the traffic they are sending. Perhaps it is a blog that posted a comment about your site. Look and see and then make a plan of how to help them send more traffic to your site.
The third thing is to look for potential JV partners. If someone has published your content or linked to you, perhaps they will let you submit more content to their site. The next time you do a promotion, you can then send them an article to publish on their site as well.

Hope you liked this post , if so let me hear about it… if not keep it to yourself and then make up a story of how you liked it and post that comment instead!

Google Analytics – Keywords and Covering the Basics

Jason Katzenback — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:03:22 +0000

One of the issues that we feel happens when people start using a system like Google Analytics, is they over complicate things and try to figure out super complicated calculations, when at first there really should only be a few things you look at. Once you start using it and get a good grasp on the basics, then you will be at a position to start playing with the more advanced functions that they provide.

What we decided to do is to put together a quick and easy series for you on how to use Google Analytics for basic organic traffic improvement. Each day we will cover one different element to give you bite size pieces to be able to play around with.

This is by no means going to be a detailed course that will make you a Google Analytics pro but we promise it will give you a solid foundation to start with and you will love the information it gives you.

If you have just installed Analytics, you are going to want to bookmark this and come back to it in a couple weeks. We personally like to have a good 4 weeks of data under our belt before we start analyzing it but at minimum you want 2 weeks.

Over the next few days we are going to cover using the analytics function of…

Keywords
Incoming links
Outgoing links
Content
Creating Goals
Tracking through Java-Script events (create for affiliate marketing)

We will cover one topic per day only (trying to keep our posts a little shorter), each lesson will assume that you have already installed Analytics (if not then read yesterdays post on Installing Google Analytics) and will end with a “Purpose” that explains how we use the info.

Today we are going to talk first about…

Google Analytics for Keywords:

One of the first things we like to look at with Google Analytics is what keywords are being used to find our blog. We are always amazed at how words we never even plan to market for that can sneak their way into becoming huge opportunities.

The mistake a lot of people make is they look at these results and look for the keywords they were trying to get traffic for and ignore the other words. What we do is look for the words we want to rank for but also look for the words that are sending us traffic and we try to figure out how to increase that traffic.

Step 1: Log in to your analytics account and click on “View Reports” for the site you are wanting to analyze.

Step 2: In the left hand navigation, click on “Traffic Sources” and then “Search Engines”. Do not click on keywords because you are primarily focused on Google right now.

Step 3: Now you will get a list of all the search engines that have been sending you traffic. Click on “Google”. If you do not see Google then either give the system a little bit of time to gather some data or go back and do some promotion

Step 4: You will now have a list of all the keywords that analytics has tracked from Google. What you will want to do now is click on the drop down box at the bottom of your screen that says “Show Rows” and select 500. This will now display all your keywords on one screen.

Step 5: Now you will want to start at the top of the list and find out where you are ranking in Google. To do that copy the first term and then go to…

http://www.google.com/advanced_search

…and enter the term and make sure to select 100 for the results per page. You will also want to make sure you are searching in Google.com for the USA unless you are trying for traffic in a different specific country.

Step 6: Now in your browser go to “Edit” in the top menu bar and then click “Find it in this page”. Now enter your URL in the “find it” box.

Purpose of these Steps: What you are looking for here are keywords that are sending you some traffic but are not ranking for you on the first page (in the top 10). So if you find a keyword that has sent you 10 hits in the past month and you see that you are on page 4 of the results, you can safely assume that if you could increase that listing to page one, you could get a lot more traffic.

It is much more effective to focus on keywords that you are already getting some action for then blindly researching for keywords that you currently do not even exist for. We recommend once a month to make a list of the 5 keywords you want to improve on and focus on that every month. Since you are already ranking, it is often very easy with just a little focused keyword focused back link promotion to bump yourself from page 3 to page 1.

So, whats your opinion on this little tip and what we plan on covering?

Google Analytics & Social Marketing Go Hand in Hand

Jason Katzenback — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 13:44:38 +0000

Testing and tracking is a huge component to running a successful business long term. Without it you really have no clear picture as to what your current situation is, what is doing good and what needs improving.

With a blog or website:

understanding where your traffic is coming from
what pages they are going to and
where they are leaving from are crucialThe easiest way to understand this in my opinion is by using the free Google Analytics service.

Yes, there are other free and paid services but none of the free services can even compare to analytics in our opinion and yes many of the paid services are extremely effective but are not realistic (nor necessary in our opinion) for the average person.

When starting a new Web 2.0 (Social Media) promotional campaign, you are going to be testing lots of different sites and you want to understand if these sites are even worth while.

Part of this process is using lots of different sites but filtering out the ones that do not provide good results, eliminating them and then adding in new sites and Google Analytics is a great tool in understanding this.

For any of you that have never used Analytics, do not worry. First of all, the process to implement Analytics is extremely easy and only takes a couple minutes, assuming you already have a Google Adwords account. If you do not have an free AdWords account you really NEED to get one… the extra tools Google gives is very worthwhile.

Once you have the analytics account then translating the data into useful information is very easy once you know what to look for and we will go through that in detail over the next few days and you when we are done you will wish you would have been doing this a long time ago

All you need to be concerned with right now is implementing it… translating it is not needed until you have a few weeks of data to actually look at.

If you did not already sign up for a Google Adwords account… PLEASE DO SO NOW. I mentioned earlier in some posts that you should to do this for the keyword tools but you also want to gain access to all the other fantastic tools and services that are included such as Analytics and the Website Optimizer.

To add analytics to your blog there are two easy ways you can do this; one is to use a plugin and the other is to enter the code directly into your wordpress template, both are very easy to do… the plugin of course being the easiest

Part 1: Using The Analytics Plugin

Step 1: Download the Google analytics plugin from…

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-analyticator/

…and install and activate it on your blog.

Step 2: Log into your Google Adwords account and click on the “Analytics” tab on the top of the page.

Step 3: Click on the “Add Websites Profile” link.

Step 4: Leave the box checked that says “Add a Profile for a new domain” and then enter the URL of your blog. You can leave the box checked for applying adwords data…. it will not hurt anything. Then click “Finish.”

Step 5: Click on “New Tracking Code (ga.js)“ and copy all of the provided code that Google gives you into a .txt file. You only need the Google Analytics UID which is between _uacct = “UA-11111-1″; in the JavaScript.

Step 6: In the drop down menu for “Google Analytics logging is:” click on “Enable”.

TIP –> Not all themes support this but it is better to have your analytics in the footer of the page to allow the page to load much faster and so to enable this scroll down to “Footer tracking code:” and select enabled. You will then need to log out of your admin and then go to the index of your blog and refresh the page (make sure you are logged out). Now view source and you should see the anaytics near the footer of your page. If you can not find it then your theme might not support this function.

Step 7: Go back to your analytics account and click the “Check Status” to verify that your code has been entered correctly.

Part 2 –>Adding Analytics Directly into Your Template

Step 1: Log into your Google Adwords account and click on the “Analytics” tab on the top of the page.

Step 2: Click on the “Add Websites Profile” link.

Step 3: Leave the box checked that says “Add a Profile for a new domain” and then enter the URL of your blog. You can leave the box checked for applying Adwords data…. it won’t upset anything. Then click “Finish.”

Step 4: Click on “New Tracking Code (ga.js)“ and copy all of the provided code that Google gives you.

Step 5: Log into your WordPress admin account and go to Design –> Theme Editor and then click on the footer.php

Note: If under the template code box you do not see the “Update Now” button then you will have to change the permissions for that page. To do that, use your favorite ftp software and go to…

/public_html/wp-content/themes/yourthemename/

…click once on the footer.php file and then right click and depending on what FTP software you’re using, select “properties” or “permissions” and change the permissions to read/write access.

Step 6: In your WordPress admin area, paste the analytics code in the footer.php template directly above the

Step 7: Go back to your analytics account and click the “Check Status” to verify that your code has been entered correct.

Congratulations your Analytics is set up and you will soon start to be gathering some very powerful data!

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