How Google Analytics Can Break Your iFrame
We were dealing with a very frustrating problem recently with one of our Internet marketing clients that you could experience if you use iframes on your website to display content actually located on another website. First, a tip: if you ever view your website and at first it looks right, but then there is a flicker and it changes to something else, THERE IS A SCRIPT FIRING THAT IS CAUSING IT. JavaScript will run after the page loads, meaning it can start changing things after the page loads.
That is what we ran into. We had a client that uses an external reservation system that is loaded in an iframe, but we noticed that even if the iframe loaded the correct page, the screen would flicker and the wrong page would suddenly appear. After much gnashing of teeth, what we finally realized is that we had a Google Analytics script in the code that was pushing a URL to the iframe after the page loaded. The script had the wrong URL. So even though the page would first load with the correct page in the iframe (for just a split second), the script would then fire, replacing the correct page with the wrong page.
The lesson? If you use iframes or any similar technology, be very careful of any scripts that might possibly be changing things without you realizing it.
Why Your Reported AdWords Conversion Data Differs from Your Analytics Data
One thing that mystifies a lot of people who engage in ecommerce using Google AdWords as an online marketing tool is why the conversion data (including revenue) reported by AdWords tends to differ so much from the data shown in their Google Analytics account. We recently (like, yesterday) had to explain this to a client, so it seemed like information that would be good to share.
AdWords places a cookie on the user’s computer when they click on an ad so that it can track a conversion back to the ad for reporting. Analytics does the same thing. However, with analytics, if the user visits various other websites or clicks on any other ads, analytics will associate the revenue with the LAST thing the person did. AdWords still reports it all the way back to the ad, even if they have clicked on other ads or done any number of other things. Up to 30 days, at which point the AdWords cookie expires. To put it technically, AdWords uses “first attribution,” whereas Analytics uses “last attribution.”
So in Analytics, some of the revenue generated after a visitor clicked the ad is being reported as coming from another source. In addition, AdWords actually back-dates revenue to the date that the original click occurred, even if the conversion happened the next month. For this reason, the revenue reported by AdWords for a particular month may actually increase if you look at the report at a later date. To see this effect closer, if you log into AdWords and then go to Tools/Conversions, and look at the list of conversions, each one has a little text balloon that you can mouse over that shows you the “last reported conversion date.” If you look at that data some time after the end of the month, you may notice conversions showing up for that month that actually occurred the following month because that is when the click occurred. And that is why the total revenue reported by AdWords for a given month may increase over time. This does not happen in Analytics because it only shows revenue when the conversion actually happens.
As far as total revenue from all sources, it should be a wash. But the revenue and conversions reported by AdWords reflects the actual number of transactions that occurred after someone clicked on an ad in Google.
So there you have it! Mystery solved. Which one is more accurate? If you are most interested strictly in AdWords conversions, go with the AdWords data. But for a more “big picture” view, go with Analytics.
Four Things the New York Giants Can Teach You About Business Success
Last night, Eli Manning did it again. He put a team that barely made it into the playoffs on his back and carried them all the way to a Super Bowl win. He also proved once again that he owns Tom Brady. Now, I don’t think Eli actually spends much time engaged in Internet marketing, but I think there is a lesson to be learned from what the Giants pulled off this year that is very applicable to your Internet marketing or business in general. Here it is, as I see it:
1. Just because your present situation does not reflect where you want to be doesn’t mean you won’t accomplish your goals. Late in the season, the Giants were 7-7 with little hope of making the playoffs. But they kept fighting, managed to get in, and went on to accomplish their ultimate goal of winning another Super Bowl. If your business isn’t where you want it to be, just have faith in your plan and keep working hard. And have a clearly defined goal. What is your Super Bowl?
2. You don’t have to look like a superstar to be a superstore. Tom Brady is good looking and has the famous super model wife. Manning is a good ol’ boy from the deep South who has now beaten Brady time-after-time. So maybe you’re not the best looking or the most charismatic – if you believe 100% in what you’re doing, and give everything you have, you can be a star in your industry.
3. Have people on your team who believe in what you’re doing. Clearly, there is a lot of unity on the Giants squad, and those guys truly believed in each other. Compare that to the other NFL team in New York, and it is easy to see why one has won two out of the last four Super Bowls, and the other does nothing but make headlines for what people in the organization say (rather than what they do). The lesson for you? You can teach skills, but you can’t teach the desire to grow and help build something great. Look for people who want to help you build something, rather than those who are just in it for a paycheck.
4. Be thick-skinned. At one point during the 2011 – 2012 NFL season, there was a mass cry from New York media for Tom Coughlin to be fired. But that guy is thick-skinned and tough as nails. He just kept working, believing in his plan and his players. And it paid off. You are going to be rejected by potential customers, you are going to be rejected by potential employees, and you are going to have hard times. But let it slide off of you and just keep working. Be a tough guy.
So there you have it. Be like the Giants and you just may win your own Super Bowl! If you need help with the Internet marketing part of your marketing mix, call or email Work Media today. We’re ready to be part of your team!
Blog Friday
An associate here who regularly blogs on another website we have commented that today was “Blog Friday,” and it hit me that that is a great concept. Blogging needs to be a consistent part of your Internet marketing; something that you do every week, maybe even on the same days, regularly. It should be a habit. Now, I can’t say that I have done very well with this habit…for a couple of years now. But I’m back, baby! One of my goals for this year is to blog three times per week. So let’s explore this idea.
Why would you want to blog regularly? There are some very good reasons:
- You cause your website to grow with content. Google loves websites with lots of content. The more you have, the better.
- You can re-purpose your blogs. We’ve published a couple of books which have been very useful in spreading our brand and attracting clients. Most of the content in those books started as blog posts. You could do the same thing, turning your blog content into articles, reports, books, or anything you can think of.
- It helps establish credibility. Chances are pretty good that if you blog about a particular subject regularly, those who read the blog will think you know what you’re taking about.
- It can cause people to return to your blog to read your updates. This is a very favorable thing. You WANT people to want to come to your website to read what you have to say.
- It can cause you to think critically about what you do. If you’re constantly having to come up with something to say related to your business, it may force you to have to learn some new things about your industry and keep up with what’s going on. This is a very good thing.
So there you have it. Five very good reasons to have your own Blog Friday…or Blog Monday…or whatever day(s) work for you.
An Introduction to Local SEO
If your business operates at a local level, or has a geographically-defined market area, then it is important that you engage in local SEO. This process should probably start with Google Places.
Google Places is Google’s online business directory, similar to Yellow Pages listings, with the listings appearing on pinned onto a local map. So if I am in Savannah, and I search Google for “carpet cleaner,” Google will likely show me a few local carpet cleaning businesses. Or I may have to click on Maps to view those listings. Then Google will show me a list of businesses, along with little pins showing where they are on a map of Savannah. Obviously, you would like your carpet cleaning business to appear high up on this list.
Go to www.google.com/lbc and provide very complete information about your business. Don’t play games here. It can be a real pain to “fix” your local business listing in Google, so give your exact business address and don’t try to trick Google into thinking your office location is somewhere it isn’t. Give a detailed description of your business and include your major keywords. You have 200 characters, so make every character count. Include any other relevant information such as your hours of operation, if you have parking available, awards you have won, etc. This is not time to be modest.
Also add some multimedia. Add images and videos. In fact, add as many images and videos as Google will allow. If you don’t have videos, create some! This is the 21st century! Go get a cheap video camera and have someone record you sitting at your desk explaining how you have helped your customers. Or create an informational video explaining how you do what you do. This ain’t Hollywood. Just think of something to talk about, comb your hair, and press record.
Here are few tips:
- Use your exact business name for the titles.
- Use your search keywords in the description.
- Use your proper street address (a P.O. box defeats the whole point).
- Use your local phone number.
- If you have more than one location, fill out a profile for each location.
For local businesses, local search optimization is extremely important for generating search engine traffic to your website, so follow the above steps and you will greatly increase your odds of making this happen.
SEO Ain’t What It Used to Be
Search engine optimization ain’t what it used to be. Back in the good old days (pre-Google) all you had to do was use your keywords in your meta-tags, title and copy. You had a very good chance of ranking in search engines for the keywords. Then Google came along the with the idea that the number and quality of links pointing to your website, as well as the text content of those links, was a good indicator of your websites relevance. And thus was born the linking campaign. Now, it’s a lot more difficult than that.
Google remains the leader in the search engine race, still owning a large percentage of all search engine traffic. So it makes the most sense to optimize for Google, and work down from there. So what is Google looking at these days? Increasingly, Google is taking social media into consideration. In a way, they are sort-of forcing your hand into using Google Plus. Although other social media platforms certainly come into play as well.
Google is now looking for links to websites or social media profiles contained in social media accounts. Want to have your website appear highly ranked to your prospects? Then become social media friends with them. This will increase the likelihood that those individual see your website prominently in Google.
And ultimately, aren’t you most concerned with your website being found by those most likely to purchase your products or service?
And putting aside the idea of improving your visibility to your social media friends, it is very likely that this process will improve your rankings to anyone. If Google sees that lots of people promote your website in their social media accounts, then that will likely have a similar effect to having lots of external links from other websites.
So now you need to think of SEO in a couple of areas. Certainly, you still need to continue the process of optimizing your website in the traditional way. In other words, make sure that your web pages use your keywords in the correct way. And make sure that you have a catalog of high quality external links pointing to your website, especially links that contain your primary keywords.
A much newer area of optimization is concerned with the visibility of your website in the local portion of Google search results. This is called local SEO. I’m not going to go into the details, but there are a number of things you need to do to improve the chances of your website appearing prominently to those searching for your business in your market area.
And of course the newest area involves using social media to influence search results. Regardless of your opinion on the effectiveness of social media as a lead or sales generation tool, it cannot be denied because of its effect on your search rankings.
So regardless of your comfort level being social online, it now must be a part of your overall Internet marketing strategy
Need some help? Work media would be glad to assist with this process. It is time consuming and not necessarily all that intuitive. Call us today at 615-375-8793. Or e-mail us at info@workmedia.net.
How the Little Guy Can Take on Expedia
Work Media has been doing some business with a company in the destination lodging industry and they have, like everyone else in the industry, an interesting and difficult problem that I think is probably going to be more prevalent across other industries over time – the problem is well-funded, much larger competitors crowding them out – crowding them out of search rankings and obtaining traffic that should be their’s. In this case, it’s companies like Expedia and Travelocity that are both crowding the search results and becoming such dominant players that companies like our client have no choice but to get leads from them.
Interestingly, in this case, most people don’t realize they get the same deal just by working directly with the company in the first place.
We’re finding that there are two strategies which the local companies need to utilize in order to fight back. These strategies are being local and being social. Local optimization and social media marketing. Expedia is not a travel agency located in Miami, Florida. It is not a hotel located in Nashville Tennessee. That Nashville, Tennessee hotel has an advantage from a local search perspective because it has a local address which can appear on Google maps and thus can have a strong presence in Google Places. Similarly, that Nashville hotel can build a following and an audience for itself on Facebook, Twitter and other social media properties. It can have a personality specific to its market. It can have a conversation. It can be of much greater use and value to those looking for a Nashville hotel than Travelocity or the other large travel aggregators.
So the key to competing against these types of much larger, better funded organizations is to combine aggressive SEO with strong local optimization and very systematic social media marketing. If you want to take it even farther than that, you mix in paid search and e-mail marketing – the two other components that can add even greater leverage to the overall package of strategies.
In this particular post we’re not going to go into the details of local search optimization or Facebook marketing. But needless to say, just do it. Go set up a Google places account. Set up a Facebook account. Set up a Twitter account. Start updating these accounts daily. Even if initially you don’t have any friends or fans, you got it started.
Filling the Pipeline
I am speaking now from a personal standpoint. My advice to you today is this:
Always Keep Filling the Pipeline
Consistency is one of the hardest things to master in the world of business. Once you manage to establish your business and bring in a fair number of customers/clients, it is easy then to set marketing aside to concentrate on servicing your existing business.
Big mistake. You must devote some portion of your time every day toward bringing in new business. My favorite marketing guru, Dan Kennedy, talks about one of his core strategies being that he does at least one thing every day to fill his pipeline with new business. This is a guy who is quite rich and would be just fine without a single new client. But he keeps promoting, bringing in new business.
It’s really basic economics: supply-and-demand. The higher the demand for your services (the more people who want to hire you or buy your product), the more you can charge. Having a pipeline filled with potential new business is a core key to maximizing the amount of money you can extract from your business.
I have personally failed in this concept over the last few months. I think what I am experiencing is a stair step pattern that a lot of businesses go through. Do some marketing, get more business, stop marketing until some time frees up, then do some more marketing, etc. The problem with this approach is that you generate plateaus. You don’t want plateaus. You want a nice upward slope.
So take my advice: promote every day. Fill the pipeline.
Four AdWords Strategies You May Not Be Using
Despite what you hear these days about Facebook domination, search engine marketing is alive and well. Since I’ve got AdWords on my mind, I thought I would take this opportunity to pass along some strategies that might help you be more successful using Google to promote your business.
1. Bid high in the beginning. I’ll admit that I hate to make this recommendation. Higher bids just make Google that much richer. But a big part of your Quality Score (a metric Google uses to rank competing ads) is your historical click-through ratio (“CTR”). How do you generate a high CTR? Assuming you’ve done everything else right (with a strong congruency between the keyword, ad and landing page), a higher CTR will get your ad positioned higher at a lower bid. So the idea is that you bid high at the start to accrue a high CTR and then back off of your bid over time. I should point out, however, that if your keywords and ads are not well-chosen, this strategy will only cost you money.
2. Use alerts. Alerts are emails that Google will send to you when some aspect of your account meets some particular criteria. For example, if an ad group’s click-through ratio declines by X%, Google will alert you via an email so that you can make whatever adjustments are necessary. These devices help you stay on top of your account.
3. Track your conversions. Conversion tracking is critical. Before you even think about starting up a pay-per-click account, you need to decide exactly what action it is you want the visitors to your website to take, and how you are going to measure that action. If you are selling products directly from your website, this should be a no-brainer. If you are not selling products directly, then you may have to be inventive. Create something that people want to view or download, which will create a conversion event that can be tracked back to a specific click for a specific keyword and ad.
4. Make use of dynamic keyword insertion. This is a very easy way to make your ads more effective, and something I don’t see many amateurs doing. Having the exact search term that triggered your ad appear in the ad copy causes Google to highlight the keyword in your ad. People also like to click on ads that contain their exact search term. So it is often a good strategy to insert the search term into the ad headline or body. However, if the search term is too long to fit in the allotted space (such as the 25 characters you are allowed for the headline), then the ad will not show unless you supply an alternate keyword to use in its place. The Google syntax for inserting a dynamic keyword makes this quite easy: {KeyWord:Default keyword}
For example, let’s say you own a hotel in Orlando, Florida. You might use something like this as your headline: {KeyWord:Orlando Florida Hotel}. So if someone searches for “Orlando hotel,” then the headline in your ad would be “Orland hotel.” But if the person searches for “The best four star Orlando Florida hotel,” then the headline will be “Orlando Florida Hotel” because the search term contains too many characters.
Google has made so many changes to the AdWords interface in the last couple of years that we have barely scratched the surface of features and strategies that can help make your account more successful. But these are four tips that could make a profound impact on your AdWords performance.
Time to Build Your Own Marketing System
You should spend serious time thinking about how you market your business. You need to design and IMPLEMENT a system for delivering leads to your business. I am a student of guys like Jay Abraham and Dan Kennedy – guys who have helped millions of business owners like me build successful businesses. But there is an advantage that you have – and that I have – over those marketing geniuses. The advantage is this:
You know your business.
So it’s not a matter of having to learn how a business or an industry works. You already know how it works. You have a product or service that your market needs – you just need a way to bring them to you. Again…you need a system.
And I’m sure you have lots of time to sit around doodling marketing ideas on napkins and daydreaming about your vision for your business. Hey, I know where you’re coming from. I’m struggling with it myself right now. I finally managed to hack out a marketing plan but I’m already struggling staying on schedule because there’s just so much work to do. Not that I’m complaining. I wouldn’t want it to be the other way around. But you and I have got to have the discipline to carve out the time to build marketing systems for our businesses.
Your marketing is a funnel. At the top of the funnel are a whole bunch of prospective customers. But where do those prospects come from to start with? From whatever devices you use to promote your business – sales letters, advertisements, referrals – and of course search engine marketing. As these devices drive people to your website or cause them to pick up the phone, that’s where you hopefully move them further down the funnel. If you get them on your mailing list, that moves them along. If you can get them to request a free book or download, that moves them along. Anything that causes them to interact with your company helps move them along.
So what do you do with those prospects who request more information, download something, or perform whatever the required action is?
You want to do whatever you have to do to get them to trust you. This generally involves giving away a lot of free information, dripped to them indefinitely. In other words, once they have held their hand up and said “we are interested in what you have to say,” then you need to nurture that relationship until they finally buy something from you. Then you continue to nurture that relationship even more until they buy more goods or services.
In other words…you need a system for delivering prospects to your company and converting those prospects into paying customers. This is not something that should be taken lightly. In fact, it is probably more important than the actual product or service you are selling. There may be lots of companies selling the same thing. You have to figure out how to capture as much of your market as you can. As the owner or marketer for your business, that is job number one. Sell, sell, sell.