How To Attract High Value Traffic to your Website

Lots of SEO experts talk and write about the value of incoming links to your website, as links add to the ‘authority measure’ of your site and help you to rank higher in search results. Most SEOs will also tell you that the higher the authority of the site linking to yours, the more value the link gives your site in the eyes of the search algorithm. That advice is all good and all true. But there’s more to an incoming link than just its search ranking value.

Even more important, a good incoming link can also bring high-value visitors directly to your site. Just like referrals you get from your customers or partners – referral traffic is coming on the direct recommendation of someone your visitor already trusts. That trusted source is called a referring site in Google Analytics.

Let’s look at what Google’s web analytics tells us about referral traffic for a sample website that sells subscriptions for a financial newsletter.

First, we’ve set up 3 Advanced Segments in Google Analytics to track website traffic from the various marketing promotions the company is running:

Content referrals — traffic from sites that have published content with embedded links to the company’s site.
Social media sources – traffic from tweets and Facebook posts with embedded links to site content
PRweb – traffic from press releases the company has posted online, containing embedded links

The segment analysis makes it possible to get insight into how effective the different promotions have been in driving traffic, engaging visitors and – ultimately – getting them to take the desired actions on the company’s site. Here’s what we find:

Analyze your website traffic by source

Driving Qualified Traffic

The largest segment of traffic is search-generated, represented by the blue shaded area between “All Visits” and the 3 target segments in the graph. However, the quality of the 3 segments shows they are sending traffic that is more highly qualified than the rest.

See the lines on the graph for:

Content referrals (yellow). This traffic is from sites we’ve cultivated by targeting influential bloggers and online publications in the financial sector and sending them high-quality articles and guest blog posts on financial topics, which then link to the company’s website. Content referrals draw more visits than the other promotions, have significantly higher engagement by visitors as reflected by more pages/visit, more time on site, and lower bounce rate. Because of the high quality of the referring sites, these are highly qualified prospects.

Social media referrals (orange). The company posts on Facebook and Twitter, but doesn’t engage much with its followers. Nevertheless, because it has an established brand, it does generate some traffic from shared tweets and Facebook posts.

PRWeb referrals (green). The company releases news frequently on PRweb, which, because of its established reputation gets picked up and sends timely traffic to the website. PRWeb traffic has the highest percentage of new visits, so it’s an effective means of targeting new leads.

Market segment analysis of website conversions

Analyze your website conversions by source

Driving Conversions

When we look even closer and see what traffic is converting, we see that the 3 targeted segments of marketing-driven traffic are more valuable to the company than the rest of its search traffic.

See the lines on the graph for:

Content referrals (yellow). Our cultivated content referrals drew the most visitors and therefore resulted in the highest number of transactions. In addition, they maintain a strong, steady conversion rate over time and as a result are the most valuable traffic source for the company.

Social media referrals (orange).. Social media traffic had an initial high conversion rate, but has dropped to almost zero. Unless the company becomes more engaged, this will likely not turn into a valuable lead source.

PRWeb referrals (green). When news is released on PRweb, the company benefits significantly, with a conversion rate approaching 8%. News happens only periodically, however, and conversion rates on that news varies depending on conditions in the stock market (market volatility generates more sales). So, this is a great source but can only be used sparingly.

Given the analysis of just a 3-month period, it is clear that the highest value online marketing campaign for this client is the ongoing generation of high-value content, with periodic release of newsworthy press releases on PRWeb (we will continue to experiment and analyze results as we further hone the online marketing strategy).

For anyone doing online marketing, Advanced Segments analysis in Google Analytics will give you the smarts to find and attract the high-value traffic to your website and business – and to track it with insight-giving metrics.

Review of Google’s Real-Time Analytics (distilled.net)
7 Google Analytics Advanced Segments I Love (and you should too) (seomoz.org)

0 Comments

Make Your Advertising Accountable

July 5, 2011 Filed under: PPC,Web Analytics — Tags: online advertising ROI, PPC —

Courtesy of http://www.leadformix.com

Guest Post by Brandon Clay

Pay per click (PPC) advertising has deep roots in the advertising industry. The exact medium may be new but the principles have been unchanged for generations. It’s why PPC works so well.

Here’s the backstory:

In 1923, Claude Hopkins published a breakthrough in the advertising world Scientific Advertising. In it, he explained one of the foundations of Direct Response advertising. Its premise suggested that advertisers could test small ads, mediums, and offers. After finding a statistically-verifiable response in the market, advertisers could roll-out the tested strategy on a larger scale.

Hopkins showed how testing small greatly improved the chances for a positive ROI. He provided a mechanism (“scientific” testing) to get the desired result (positive ROI). And he paved the way for advertisers demanding a return from their advertising investment.

Fast forward nearly 100 years…

ROI is Essential in Advertising

This science of advertising has progressed significantly since Hopkins’ time. Nearly all advertisers now demand a good return on their investment. We see Hopkins’ principle of scientific (now accountable) advertising at work in the marketplace. Ad dollars have fled low-ROI mediums like the Yellow Pages and newspapers and have flooded into higher-ROI mediums like Email marketing, PPC advertising, Facebook marketing and more.

Why?

Advertisers get more return from buying ads in Google versus sponsoring a billboard. They vote with their ad budgets. If they can measure good performance, then they renew the advertisement. If not, it gets cut. It’s that simple.

ROI is Easy to Measure with PPC

Despite Hopkins’ assurances, it’s not always easy to tie successes to every ad campaign. However, that problem is not as nearly acute with PPC advertising.

First, PPC can easily tie ad dollars to success on a website. For instance, an advertiser selling luggage with PPC may create 2 campaigns: one focused on US-based prospects and the other based on European-based prospects. With proper tracking setup, the advertiser tests and refines each campaign. The results may look something like this:

Campaign 1: Luggage – USA
Cost: $2,552
Revenue: $8,235
ROI (Revenue ÷ Cost – 1.0): 222.7%

Campaign 2: Luggage – Europe
Cost: $2,459
Revenue: $3,402
ROI (Revenue ÷ Cost – 1.0): 38.3%

In this example, we can see how much more effective this luggage manufacturer is selling to US-based customers compared to European-based customers. Based on these numbers alone, it would make sense to increase advertising budget in Campaign 1: Luggage – USA and lower (or remove) budget from Campaign 2: Luggage – Europe. That’s how PPC advertising works overall.

But PPC provides even more granular optimizations. Proper conversion and ecommerce tracking shows exactly what campaign, ad group, ad creative, and keyword resulted in particular actions on a website. This allows adept advertisers not only to pull bad campaigns, but also to pull lower-performing ads, keywords, and other less-than-stellar elements.

In addition, advertisers can bid-up on well-performing keywords and further refine winning ads. More importantly, advertisers can see what their PPC dollars bought them and if it was a worthwhile investment, thereby achieving accountable advertising. Hopkins would be proud.

PPC Works with Many Businesses (you should test it!)

I’ve worked in 70+ verticals and managed hundreds of pay per click campaigns and I’m convinced of one thing. PPC works. Thousands of businesses invest hundreds, thousands, even millions of dollars in PPC advertising every month. These businesses are getting return from their advertising investment. They couldn’t afford to shell out all those ad dollars if they didn’t get positive ROI consistently.

For instance, SpyFu, an online advertising intelligence tool estimates that Geico.com spends up to $90,710 in PPC advertising every day. That’s over $2.7 million per month. GEICO is a smart company, owned by Berkshire Hathaway (Billionaire Warren Buffett). If they didn’t see return from their advertising dollars, they would stop doing PPC.

Your business can probably benefit from PPC advertising, get a positive ROI, and ultimately get consistent revenues from PPC advertising. But don’t take my word for it.

Test it. In the spirit of accountable advertising, setup a good test with enough keywords, good tracking, an experienced manager and enough budget. Once you conduct a good-faith test in the PPC medium, you’ll know whether or not it can work for you.

If it works, expand your business, improve your revenues, and grow your bottom line with PPC. If not, you can explore other advertising mediums. Whatever the result, you’ll practice one of the best time-tested, principles in business: testable, accountable advertising. And you’ll see whether attractive ROI is possible for your business with PPC.

For more information on the concept of accountable advertising on the internet, checkout Avinash Kaushik’s webinar: Accountable Advertising on the Internet.

1 Comment

3 Case Studies – How Marketing Numbers Tell a Story

June 28, 2011 Filed under: Internet Marketing,Web Analytics — Tags: marketing metrics, web analytics —

I hear lots of colleagues in the online marketing world talk about how they increased traffic by 20% or bumped conversions by 50% or grew Facebook fans by the hundreds or moved a search ranking to page 1. But I rarely hear the story that goes along with it. Numbers without a supporting story are like words without a sentence – there’s no context and therefore no real meaning. And most importantly, there’s no insight to be gained about where to go next. For numbers to be useful in marketing, they must be related to goals and must be understood in the context of the underlying business. Here are three examples from companies we’ve helped out recently.

from Wikipedia

Cloud computing company. This company has seen website traffic drop by 10% in the past year and conversions have remained flat – not good news, at first glance. But that doesn’t tell the real story. On closer examination, their direct traffic (people who have bookmarked their site or enter the URL directly) is actually down 16%, while first-time organic search visitors are up by 17% and referring sites traffic increased by 22%. At the same time, despite the traffic decline, their business is suddenly booming. What’s going on here? A few contextual elements tell the story:

Thanks to SEO efforts and inbound link building, ranking for critical keywords broke onto the first SERP page, causing more searchers to find the company and click through to their site.
Because of guest blogging, with valuable links placed on numerous well-regarded blogs, the site has started drawing more referral traffic.
Website visitors are calling the phone number published on the site, and company salespeople are following up and closing new business.
BUT, visitors aren’t returning to the site, which has caused a drop in direct traffic. The site has no blog and no source of freshly updated content – so there’s little incentive for people to return.
NEXT STEP is to create a company blog and, with regular compelling articles, build a reason for visitors to return. Promoting the blog through social media will help spread the word that interesting things are happening and encourage followers to check it out regularly. Additional call-to-action buttons will allow them to nurture leads through followup emails.

Financial Trading newsletter. This publisher typically suffers when the stock market is up and does well when stocks are down and people need advice. But during the market’s recent rise they’ve increased organic traffic to their site by 15%. That growth is now slowing and the percentage of first-time visitors is declining. What’s happening?

The steady rise in stock prices has caused fewer people to actively search for financial advice and newsletters, so search demand is down.
BUT, the site has a high return rate by existing subscribers, as the publisher posts valuable information in a ‘question of the week’ format that clients love.
NEXT STEP is to launch a social media campaign and build a following so that loyal clients can share the weekly tips and bring more new visitors to the website to sign up for a trial subscription.

High-end Furniture Retailer. This retailer of fine custom-designed furniture has an excellent reputation and a loyal customer following. They have a beautiful website with lots of pictures but since they don’t sell online, they are looking for ways to use their web presence to drive retail and ‘walk-by’ traffic. What’s the best solution?

They don’t want to try “local deal” services like Groupon because it may tarnish their reputation.
They’ve tried Facebook but it hasn’t caught on well and they don’t really have deals to offer.
BUT, PPC campaigns have driven search traffic up by 15% in 6 months
Local SEO efforts have added 1500 new local visitors per month, coming from a Place Page with positive customer reviews.
The company just had their best Spring Sale results in 3 years.
NEXT STEP: Since search marketing seems to work well for them, focus on a content creation campaign that will help them rank for additional search terms. And since beautiful pictures are a key asset, get pictures loaded into Google Merchant so Google Shopping customers can see them and come to the website for more.

The first takeaway here is that numbers have to be understood in context of the business goals and circumstances. And secondly, finding what works may take several rounds of trying different tactics, measuring results, and determining what works best for you.

0 Comments

Is Your Website Doing Its Marketing Job?

June 1, 2011 Filed under: Internet Marketing,Web Analytics — Tags: lead conversion, online marketing —

Is your web site doing the job you need it to do? Last week I addressed how to Create Awareness by bringing traffic to your website, which happens mostly through activities off your site – search engines, online advertising and social media. Once these tactics have led people to your site, you need to convert them from visitors into qualified leads and customers. That’s when your website needs to step up and do its job.

(more…)

3 Comments

How to Give Your Website a Health Check

May 10, 2011 Filed under: Web Analytics — Tags: Webmaster Tools, website analytics —

Google Webmaster Tools gives your website a regular checkup to keep it running in ways that allow Google to do its job – to index your pages and help people find you. Unlike Google Analytics, which tells how your site is performing on traffic and conversions, Webmaster Tools just tells you if it’s working – and, if not, how to fix it. It’s like the difference between your sports doctor and your coach: the doctor (Webmaster Tools) makes sure your body is working well and fixes your injuries, while the coach (Google Analytics) helps you perform at your best and measures your accomplishments over time.

Basic Website Diagnostics

Google Webmaster Tools crawl stats

To extend the medical analogy, the first thing to do in a website health check is to run diagnostic tests. Like checking your heart rate, a check of your website’s crawl statistics will tell you how many pages the spiders are crawling (should be all unless you’ve purposely blocked any) and how long they take to download a page (should be <2 seconds). Then check to see if you have crawl errors. The most common error is a 404: page not found, which means a link is pointing to a deleted page. A quick fix is to erase the link, or redirect it to a different page (called a 301 re-direct). Google may also have some “HTML suggestions”, which can include things like missing or problematic HTML tags or duplicate pages which you can easily fix.

How Are People Finding You?

(more…)

6 Comments

5 Questions to Diagnose Your Website Bounce Rate

May 3, 2011 Filed under: Internet Marketing,Web Analytics — Tags: website bounce rate, website engagement —

The first 5 seconds of a visitor’s experience on your website will most likely determine what they do next. If the user is not attracted or impressed, they will “bounce” or quickly leave your website – and then likely visit your competitors’ websites instead. Google measures your bounce rate, and you can track it in Google Analytics; anything over 50% is potentially problematic – and an opportunity for improvement. Here the key questions to ask yourself if your bounce rate is high and your visitors aren’t sticking around on your site.

Question 1: Are they confused?

The first job of your website’s Homepage is to tell visitors who you are and what they should do next. If they don’t find the answers quickly, they won’t hang around and try to figure it out. Introducing your company and providing clear calls-to-action can be accomplished in many ways.

Company logo and tagline. Make sure your identifiable branding logo is clearly visible and accompanied by a short tagline that explains the essence of what you do.
Short Description. In addition to your tagline (a phrase), place a clear description (2-3 sentences) of your company’s value proposition in a prominent location on your homepage.
Benefits. Add a brief bulleted list of the key benefits your product or service offers to customers, with visually clickable links for more information.
Video. Consider a short introductory video to tell your story. According to ComScore, consumers who view videos on websites are 64% more likely to buy something from the site, and they also tend to spend more time (up to two minutes) on webpages per visit.
Desired Call-To-Action Activities. What do you want your visitors to do on your website? If you want to collect personal information for future follow-up, provide a compelling reason for visitors to give it to you. Download a white paper or e-book, offer a free trial or demo, sign up for an event or webinar, or fill out a contact form…whatever your most valuable call-to-action activity, it should be clearly and quickly obvious on your Home page. And it should be easy to do – don’t complicate things by asking for multiple steps.
Obvious links to core content. For the products/services you most want to market and sell, add a direct single-click link from your Home page to each product/service page. This will not only help your visitors access desired information quickly, it will also direct search engines to the information they should index.

(more…)

13 Comments

Top 5 Hidden Features in Google Analytics

March 29, 2011 Filed under: PPC,Web Analytics — Tags: Google Analytics, PPC metrics, website metrics —

The best little-known, under-utilized features in Google Analytics to boost traffic generation and conversions, plus improve website design.

Guest post by Brandon Clay

Every good online marketer knows that web analytics is essential to running a successful website. And Google Analytics (GA) is one of the best web analytics tools on the market. Because it’s free, simple to implement, and easy to learn, GA has become the default analytics software package for 44% of Ecommerce websites. And many other businesses have discovered GA’s power.

As useful as Google Analytics is, not every online marketer uses it to its full potential. That’s why we compiled a list of the top-5 hidden features. These little-known items can take your GA experience to the next level. They can also boost your performance in traffic generation, conversion optimization, and even website design.

1) Advanced Segments

The default setting for visitors in Google Analytics is “All Visits”. That means, every visitor that is tracked will be seen in every report. However, if you’re trying to drill down on any one traffic source – say new visitors – then you should segment new visitors from the rest of the traffic.

You segment traffic for every report using the Advanced Segments option. It’s located just above the date range on the top right of the Dashboard. You can select standard segment like New Visitors or Paid Search Traffic, or you can create a custom segment.

Advanced Segments is useful when determining behavior for a particular segment of your audience. For instance, if you want to see which pages your Bing/Organic traffic is visiting and how many Bing visitors made a purchase, segment by Bing/Organic in Advanced Segments and review your reports just like normal. Once Advanced Segments are set, every report will reflect that segment.

2) AdWords Integration

Many online businesses using Google Analytics also use Google AdWords. Online marketers spend hours optimizing their AdWords account, but never look in Google Analytics to see how effective the AdWords traffic is – a marketing tragedy!

You can now easily drill down on just the AdWords traffic by checking out the last option under Traffic Sources > AdWords.

Although this feature has been around for awhile, AdWords Integration was in Beta for many months, thus somewhat hidden to many GA users. This feature helps you to see your most effective keywords, ads, ad groups, and campaigns measured by goal conversions, bounce rates, and more. Instead of relying on AdWords data, it’s a great way to see what your paid traffic is doing and then optimize your Google AdWords traffic.

3) In-Page Analytics

Until recently, Google Analytics did not display click overlay view. But with the addition of In-Page Analytics, you can now see a screenshot of your website with clicks. This feature shows click data for your HTML links to help you better optimize link positions on the page – a great way to test your website design.

Here’s the path to find In-Page Analytics: Content >> In-Page Analytics (last option)

One limitation to In-Page Analytics – screenshots are limited to current website version. If you plan to make any changes to your site for links, make sure you take a screenshot of your In-Page Analytics. Once the new version is in place, the old version is lost until changes are reverted.

4) Funnel Visualization

Goal tracking, aka conversion tracking, is one of the most useful features of Google Analytics. But there’s more to goal tracking than just counting conversions. One way to optimize conversions is through funnel visualization. It requires a little setup, but the results are always worth it.

Here’s the path to setup goal funnels:

Analytics Settings > Profile Settings > Goals > + Add Goal (or use existing Goal with Edit) > Goal Funnel > + Yes, create a funnel for this goal.

Once you create a new funnel, choose the URLs that visitors visit before converting on your website: anywhere from 1 to 10 Steps. When you start collecting conversion data, you can then review the results in the normal interface.

Funnel Visualization can be used a number of ways. The best way is to optimize your conversion path. If you discover one step is a bottle-neck to your conversion (say 80% funnel abandonment rate), you should find a way to optimize the problem page or eliminate it altogether. Funnel visualization is especially helpful to Ecommerce sites with multi-step conversion paths.

5) Top Exit Pages

It’s hard work getting visitors to a website. Once visitors are there, many visitors just don’t stay. Google Analytics tells you where your visitors leave from – via exit pages.

This report is found under Content > Top Exit Pages

This feature is useful when trying to optimize your website’s engagement metrics: time on site, bounce rate, pages/visit. If visitors leave your website from certain pages, there may be a problem on those pages. By optimizing your Top Exit Pages, you can improve website activity on the entire site.

Perhaps you need to give visitors another option to click before they click the back button – or perhaps you should remove some links to make things more obvious. Once you make the changes, measure the exit percentage before and after the changes. This will help to increase overall site goals and improve your visitor experience – a win-win situation.

Google Analytics is a great tool for online marketers. Learning the hidden features in GA and implementing lessons learned is tremendously beneficial. It will help to improve your effectiveness as an online marketer and ultimately grow your bottom line.

1 Comment

6 Metrics For Measuring SEO Success

November 18, 2010 Filed under: SEO,Social Media Marketing,Web Analytics — Tags: SEO metrics, web analytics —

Search Engine Optimization is a long-term investment. Unlike PPC advertising, which can produce results immediately and generate qualified leads within days, SEO often takes months before it moves your website into the desired top search rankings. So, how do you know if you’re on the right track in the meantime? What metrics can you use along the way to determine what’s working, to keep you moving in the right direction, and to course correct as needed? And how can you tie these into your bigger-picture online marketing analytics, to help you make better marketing and budgeting decisions?

Here are the 6 most important measures that will tell you how well you’re doing in the Organic Search Ranking game. These are the tools of the SEO trade, and any SEO consultant should have them at their fingertips. Before you embark on measuring, however, make sure you know what goals you’re trying to reach, and set yourself up to measure the things that will have the greatest impact on your long-term success.

Ranking Reports

Since the main objective of SEO is to improve your website’s search ranking for valuable keywords, the most obvious metric is your ranking. At the simplest level, you can easily track this by typing your keyword into Google each week and watching where your website appears in the list of results – if you’re doing the right things in SEO, you’ll see it inch up over time. If you’re tracking multiple keywords, Google Webmaster Tools allows you to track the top search queries people are using to find your site, and the average position each one achieves in rankings. If you’re looking for broader and deeper metrics, consider some of the more sophisticated ranking tools that measure your all keywords on all search engines, and track progress over time. We use and really like Advanced Web Ranking from Caphyon – it’s easy to set up, easy to use, and has a simple, intuitive interface that shows progress for all your keywords over any time segments – but there are many others as well. (more…)

1 Comment

Online Marketing: How the Pieces Fit Together

November 10, 2010 Filed under: Internet Marketing,PPC,SEO,Web Analytics —

How Web Design, Content, and Analytics Work Together to Generate Online Leads and Sales

Guest Post by Brandon Clay

Good online marketing is like a jigsaw puzzle.

Dump all the puzzle pieces on the table and you have a mass of colorful cardboard. The pieces are useless when separate. However, when everything fits together it’s a different story. Once the pieces are connected, you have a picturesque seaside complete with beach house, sand dunes, and seagulls floating in the wind. Your pile of disjointed sections becomes a beautiful picture.

Successful online marketing is much like that jigsaw puzzle. There are many pieces to a solid online business. A good business, a strong market, an engaging website, and other factors play a role in determining how well a company does online. But if you remove any of those key components, a business will falter online. It takes everything working together to maximize the online medium. (more…)

1 Comment

Older Posts »

Related articles