The presentation on Search Engine Marketing that I did for UK charities and nfps back in June 2008 has now been viewed over 1,000 times. It covers the basics including products such as Google AdWords and Google Analytics. Hopefully people have found it useful. It feels like`good karma`- I have now given a  little back having been a major beneficiary of all that great data and info on SEM available to all at the click of a mouse.

Since I gave that presentation I have been working on eMarketing and Search Engine Marketing challenges with some UK charities – including YouthNet, RNIB, maggie`s and of course Breast Cancer Care. Top thing that I have learned so far ? that web dev teams are really busy making those lovely features that marketing want. Meanwhile marketing groups have web monitoring tools that would really benefit from dev team input. But everyone is too busy to sit and review the data. The result is sub-optimal measurement and understanding of the web site performance.

One of the most common questions from pretty much any organisation that uses Google Analytics (GA) is `what Key Performance Indicators (KPI) should we be monitoring ?`. Of course the simple answer is to measure what is important to you. This points us in the right direction but gives no clear answer. For me the biggest challenge when talking about GA is the lack of engagement from marketing, fundraising, management, etc with web stats. Now, if the finance dept show data dealing with budgets or wages then there is noooo problem in getting attention to and understanding of numbers. So we have to conclude that the reason that few pay real attention to GA stats is that they feel the data does not impact them and/or they have no control over it. So the 3 KPIs I have chosen are designed to show that GA data can tell you something important and you can impact the customer experience:

1.`Nobody likes my pages`- bounce rate: this is the % of site visitors who entered and left the same page without going anywhere else. For the biggest impact go to GA> Content > Top Landing Pages and over on the right you will see the Bounce Rate. Below 30% is excellent, 30- 50% is not bad. Anything above 80%  is a bit embarrassing for the person or group who created the page. However do check the `Time on Page`as some pages such as Sign-Up, Register can legitimately have high Bounce Rates.

2. `People do not like our stuff`- engagement: most nfp sites are designed to provide information. What should be happening is more visits consuming more info ie staying longer. Look in Visitors > Visitor Loyalty at both Length of Visit and Depth of Visit.  Over 70% of people looking at just one page and staying less than 10 secs is not a good sign. To isolate this data for a group of pages or a section of the site either create a specific Profile or use Advanced Segments.

3. `Yeah, but our visit number are growing` – share of search: the number of visits is rising and everyone is happy but what if someone else in your market is gaining visitors 3/4/5  times faster than you ? You have a problem and you do not even know about it !  Compete will give you info on how you are doing relative to your competitors. Google Trends will show you what people are looking for. Google Trends for Websites gives you data on your competitors. Finally look at the Keyword Tool and see how many searches per month there are for your main keywords in Exact Match. You should be getting between 20% and 50% of that traffic if you are in top spot and if you are not in top spot for your top brand or cause related terms then your audience is going somewhere else.

ah. But what about the stuff that everyone is talking about eg Conversion Rate,  Donations / Sales per visit, etc?  For most of us the first tasks are to show that GA data is relevant and individuals can influence it directly. Once you have won those battles *then* you can start to build KPIs that matter to people and that they will pay attention to.

Google`s new search engine produces, as expected, a range of results when tested with top keywords from UK charities. Announced last week the beta version of Google`s search engine, codenamed caffeine, with the same interface as the existing search is available for testing now.

To see how it may affect UK charities I compared the search results for the current Google and `caffeine` using the nifty comparison tool put together by sembience ( nice example of link bait !). For four different sites that attract between 50k and 250k visits per month I looked at their top 10 keywords. From them I excluded the `brand` terms eg organisation name and terms clearly not related to the organisations mission – leaving about 5/6 keywords per organisation. For one organisation `caffeine` put all 5 terms lower than current search results. Two organisations had a majority of terms producing lower results and one had no net loss or gain.

Before it becomes Google`s new search engine no doubt `caffeine` will have a lot of modifications but it is well worth checking your top terms now and seeing if you are on track to lose or gain visitors when it happens.

Google recently updated Webmaster Tools making it easiser for  marketing and business types to find great data to improve site performance.  The good stuff is under the tab Your site on the web.  Top Search Queries tells you the number of times your site appeared in Google search results ranked in order plus the percentage of those top queries represented by each query. So to begin with you are looking for the larger percentages. Next, to the right of the query term, is the Position that your highest ranked page appeared for that query. So if you are ranked low for a query term that has a large percentage of impressions that represents a good opportunity for more traffic for that term if you can get a better ranking.

Webmaster Tools Top Search Queries

Further to the right is the section headed Clickthrough. Here you can see similar data but  now for those who clicked through to your site.  First  look at the search query terms.  Are there any here that you did  not expect ? If you are gettings clicks from a term that you do not rank highly for and want more of that traffic then get working on that. Note that you can select the specific date range and region that you are particularly interested in.

Further down Your Site on the web is the Keywords menu. This shows ” the most common keywords Google found when it crawling your site “. This is great data when planning the next steps for your site.

The AdWords Impression Share Report tells you the percentage of times your ads were actually shown compared to the total number of times your ads could have been shown. Google introduced it some time ago as a share of market/ share of voice measurement. While it is not an easy report to fully understand it does give useful information which allows for more targeted and successful Campaigns.

Impression Share Report

The Impression Share Report can be created in the AdWords Report centre. The report shows the Impression Share(IS) for the Campaign and the percentage lost due to either the budget being too low, Lost IS (Budget) or lost due to poor ranking, Lost IS (Rank). For most Campaigns the largest loss has to do with Rank.  As Rank is CPC X Quality Score the most cost effective way to improve is to improve Quality Score.

Given that not all of the keywords in the Campaign will have a great Quality Score and your Maxm CPC will not always be high enough it is very unlikely that you will get 100% Impression Share (IS).  One reason for low IS could be that the keywords are not showing up on broad match. The Exact match (IS) figures helps here as they show how the Campaign would perform IF all keywords were Exact Match. Increasing your bid will also improve your Ranking too. However in chasing greater Impression Share remember that 30% or 40% Impression Share of a large `market` is better than a 100% IS of a small market. So do not be afraid to keep less than optimal keywords in the Campaign.

One drawback of this report is that it is only available at the Account and Campaign level where there is often too much data to make sense of it all. If this report was available at the ad group level I think it would be more widely used.

Building an efficient keyword list is critical to the success of an AdWords Campaign – whether using a Google Grant or a regular paid-for AdWords account. The best and easiest way to start a Campaign is to begin with small groups of closely related keywords/ phrases covering a single idea in each AdGroup. Initially they should be all Broad Match. With Google this means extended Broad Match ie your ad will be triggered by synonoms or keyphrases related to your initial keyphrase.  After a week or so of the Campaign you should check how each of the main keywords are performing.

New Search Query Tool in AdWords

The new AdWords interface allows you to very easily access this information, by AdGroup or individual keyword, via the Search Query Performance Report.  Say you had an AdGroup relating to working part time and you had  included the keyphrase `part time`. After running the Campaign for 7/10 days you check the Search Query Report and see that for the keyphrase `part time` 25 clicks were registered. Of this 25 the report shows that 5 were as a result of Exact Match,  10 via Phrase Match and 10 via Broad Match. Review the keywords marked as Phrase or Broad Match and see if any of the search terms that triggered the ad were used 2 or more times. If so add these terms into the AdGroup as Broad Match. Doing this regularly will exand your keyword list with more high performing keywords. Note that if any of the Phrase or Broad match terms are not related to your ad eg `electrical timer`, `kitchen timer`you should put `electrical` and `kitchen` as negative keywords to prevent your ad from showing for these unrelated terms. Keywords that regularly achieve less than a 1% CTR should be looked at very closely with a view to either deleting them or moving them to a more appropriate AdGroup or Campaign.

In the Keyword Tool Google has modified the Search Volume columns. The two columns are now labelled `Global Monthly Search Volume` and `Local Search Volume: `. Note that Local here means regional eg UK, France, etc.

Keyword Tool Local Global Search

A quick test indicates that the data in Local Search Volume is good but the lack of historic `Local` data is a pity eg a search term may be popular globally each month but here in the UK you will be making a decision based on just one months data. I suspect that for many the reverse would be better ie the current months data for Global with Local showing historic data. Google has not yet explained how this new data relates to the statement further up on the Keyword Tool page that ” Results are tailored to the languages and countries you choose below:” My vote would be for more local data and less world wide.

Hard data on the growing popularity of social networks from Hitwise and Nielsen. Data released by Hitwise on March 5th shows that now  ” Social networks now account for 1 in every 10 UK Internet visits and 1 in every 5 page views.” To get an idea of just how popular they are “During February 2009, social networks received 13.1% more UK Internet visits than online retail websites.”  Mind you retail web sites probably did not have their best month ever in Feb !

In a separate study Nielsen noted  that  “in February the largest age group on Twitter was 35-49; with nearly 3 million unique visitors, comprising almost 42 percent of the site’s audience. ” with a further 25% aged 55+.  Note – this is based on US data.  To find 50 or 500 fans/supporters for your brand or cause now, more than ever means creating something that resonates with the target audience via social media.

The quickest and easiest way to improve performance of a Google AdWords Group is to find more keywords similar to those that are already successful. Google make this very easy via  either Quick Add or the Keyword Tool.  Simply select the AdGroup that you want to work on. Once inside the AdGroup select the Keywords tab. Once the tab is selected you will see the Quick Add and Keyword Tool links as shown.

Image showing Quick Add and Keyword Tool links

Selecting the Quick Add link will allow you to add words or phrases directly. Having selected Quick Add on the right you will now see a selection of words that Google has chosen based on your currently top performing words – as measured by CTR. Selecting the Keyword Tool link gives access to it. However unlike versions of it accessable in other ways this version has a Radio Button marked Existing keyword. As always you need to review the new keywords proposed carefully as they may not be appropriate. If they are clearly not appropriate you have the opportunity to add them as negative keywords. This will reduce the number of unwanted impressions and will hence lower your cost per click.

Note that if you are a not-for-profit organisation using AdWords via a Google Grant then you do not have access to the Search Network. The Approximate  Avg Search Volume data shown in the Keyword Tool is based on data from both the Google Network AND the Google Search Network. This means the Search Volume numbers shown will be higher than you will be able to achieve.

The TouchGraph Google Browser shows graphically the relationship between web sites. It helps make sense of the mass of data on web connections. It takes its data directly from Google – specifically from the Google `related` operator. ie for a list of web pages that have similar content to a given site, type “related: ” followed by the website address into the Google search box.                        Initially the display can be a bit confusing. I found it best to make sure that `Display`> `Filter Singles` is selected. This reduces the amount of data on display. Next step is, in the display window, select the site you are interested and from the right mouse menu select `Graph` >`Keep Selected`. Now you should have a single web site with around 10 `related` sites. You can now expand by selecting the plus sign on any web site shown which gives a further 10 results. Putting in sites that you are you know about eg google.co.uk, bbc.co.uk quickly gives an idea of what `related sites` means. Versions of it are also available for visualizing Amazon and Facebook relationships.