Knowledge is the Foundation To Success  

Google Analytics is a great tool to use for website owners – it gives you lots of interesting information to help you improve your site, can track revenue and a whole slew of other things, all for free. But sometimes it can be a little difficult to figure out why it’s not working properly, even for the Google Analytics team.

Case in point: I have a client who I’ve been working with for about three weeks, trying to get Analytics to properly track their site. They use NetSolutions storefront, so it’s easy to add the Analytics code to the site, as they have it built in to their store. We just added the client’s UA number to a field and the code is automatically added in the footer.

Of course, one of the first couple of things I did to try figure out why it wasn’t working was to verify the UA number (it was correct) and that it was populating the code on every page (it was). I called in JumpFly’s dedicated Google Account rep for help, since that about exhausted my troubleshooting options.

After some back and forth with Google and the Analytics team, they finally asked if there was a potential redirect on the site, since the “gclid=” portion of the URL was being stripped off of the destination URL from Google Search, and they couldn’t think of anything else that was wrong. (Basically the “=GCLID” holds all the visitor information for analytics to track; if it gets removed, Google Analytics attributes the visitor to no source or Google organics.) Sure enough, if I seached for the client’s ad, clicked on it, and checked the destination URL, there was no “=GLID”, therefore Analytics couldn’t attribute the source properly.

And that’s when I figured out that the client’s webmaster, in order to improve natural rankings, had changed the client’s site to use more search-engine friendly URLs – instead of a “category=##” URL, it was now using actual names, like military.asp or movie.asp. He had done the right thing in creating automatic redirects so old links didn’t go to dead pages, but it’s not something we were notified of, so we had no idea it was happening.

Now that we know, we can fix the URLs to the correct pages so the redirect stops happening, and Google Analytics can properly attribute traffic to the correct source. At least, that’s the hope.

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According to Google, “Click Through Rate (CTR) is the number of clicks your ad received divided by the number of times your ad is shown (impressions).”

Every once in a while a new pay-per-click (PPC) advertising client will come in who considers their account CTR to be the benchmark by which their accounts performance is judged. Depending on the keyword strategy, it is most likely not a good idea to use CTR to judge an entire account’s performance.

True, we know that CTR has a big influence on the somewhat mysterious Google AdWords Quality Score(s). It is also a great indicator for comparing performance on your various AdGroups’ different ad copies. There are certainly many instances when Click Through Rate (CTR) is a very good indicator of performance.

Now, what about when low CTR is a good thing?

There are definitely times you want to eliminate a worthless click from a potential keyword, and while this would have a negative impact on the Click Through Rate (CTR) it would certainly have a positive effect on the account.

For example, a strategy that I recently adopted for a client really drives this point home.

One of my client’s competitors has a very common word for a company name. For the sake of confidentiality I will simply call it “widget.” Well, this competitor name “widget” is also the name of a very popular movie, an artist, a location overseas, a highway landmark, and dozens of other completely unrelated things. As you might imagine, the search volume for this popular term is through the roof, while the percentage of people actually using it for the company name we wished to target is extremely small. So small in fact, that it would almost certainly discourage anybody from even trying it as a keyword.

I thought it was worth trying, and to give it the best chance at success I used only the exact match version of “widget” in its own campaign, with a very specific ad designed to only solicit the searchers looking for my client’s services.

The results were surprisingly great. The campaign resulted in my client converting at half of his target conversion cost. The CTR for this keyword was a downright horrible 0.02%, however this was a good thing as it meant the ad was eliminating all of the unnecessary searchers and only targeting the exceptionally small amount of people looking for my clients competitor. In this case, the exceptionally low CTR was a good thing.

The low CTR also had a definite impact on the keyword’s quality score and forced my client’s minimum bid up to $10/click. Even with the the high minimum bid, the conversion cost was cheap and the quality of leads generated tens of thousands of dollars in new revenue for my client. Winner.

Now, the 0.02% CTR dramatically lowered the whole account’s CTR. If that figure had been used as a benchmark to judge performance, it would have been a huge mistake that would have cost my client a considerable amount of revenue. In this case, the actual conversion cost/rate was a far better benchmark than the pathetic CTR.

The bottom line here is that a low CTR can be a good thing in some strategies and is not always the best indicator of an entire account’s performance. Every account is different, just as every marketing strategy is different. Helping to determine the best strategy for your PPC marketing campaign is just one of the many unique skills that JumpFly PPC account manager brings to the table.

What’s your benchmark?

Did you know that you can customize your 404 Error pages? Did you know it’s a really good idea to customize your 404 error pages? Customizing a 404 error page is a great way to prevent a lost click, a lost visitor and a lost sale or conversion.

First off, what is 404 error page? Let’s say you’ve updated your website and all your URLs have changed. Natural, or organic listings can take awhile to catch up, and someone could click an old listing and land on a 404 error page. Same with bookmarks. Unless you’ve taken the time to automatically redirect every old URL on your site to your new pages, that visitor is going to land on a 404 error page. Another way to land on the 404 page is if someone misspelled a page of your site, or forgot the “L” at the end of the “.html.”

Now here’s why creating your own custom 404 error page is a good thing: The standard 404 error page is pretty generic, it really doesn’t explain what a 404 error is and every server displays different error text. It can also be pretty confusing for a visitor. After all, the page they get is not what they are expecting. They could just leave, and you don’t want them to do that after they took the time to visit you. Custom 404 errors are good customer service. Think of it as one more way of being extra helpful and friendly.

So, here’s what to include on your new custom 404 error page:

• First, apologize. It might not be your fault, but that’s okay. Just say you’re sorry, but the page they are looking for doesn’t seem to exist.
• Give them reasons why it might not exist. Maybe they spelled a word in the URL wrong. Maybe all your pages end in HTML, and they missed the “L” on the end.
• Give them a few links of where they could go, like Home, About, Products, or maybe the top five pages on your site.
• Include a search box. But a search box should be the last resort, not the only option.
• Brand it as your site, without overwhelming them. This page should be simple without every choice possible.

Another school of thought is sending 404 errors to the home page (and before you give me a hard time, yes, I know the JumpFly website 404 error page goes to the home page. I’m not in charge of our site. And this Blog is just a matter of my opinion and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the owners of JumpFly.). However, sending 404s to the home page can confuse users because they’ll wonder why they ended up back on the home page. You could also send someone to your sitemap, but again, they’ll wonder how they got there, and why. The point is, we’re trying to help visitors, not confuse them more.

I’m not going to go into the mechanics of HOW to create your 404 page. There are a couple of good sites out there that explain how – here’s two that I think are decent resources:

• www.plinko.net/404/custom.asp: explains the mechanics of how to create a custom 404 page based on the server your site is hosted on
• www.404errorpages.com: much more technical on what exactly a 404 error is.

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