One of the most important aspects of setting up a SEO or SEM campaign is identifying which keywords you are going to target. This is always a juggling act trying to find the phrases that are the most searched for, the most relevant and most likely to convert.

There are several tools that Google provides that can help with this process, namely Google’s Keyword tool and the Google Traffic Estimator. As a research-lead consulting organisation, we have decided to carry out a study to understand how accurate these sort of tools are, as well as document some of the inherent data limitations.

There now exists new Google Webmaster Tools functionality that shows impression and click through rates for organic search. After a bit of digging into this data, we were able to examine whether the tools complement or contradict each other.

We looked at three different keywords that give us a view of some different types of consumer searches.

Please note:

• All figures were derived using the ‘exact match’ data provided by each of the tools.
• Date ranges were almost all the same, Webmaster tools data was a couple of days out due to the limited time range this gives you, but deemed “close enough” for a rough comparison.
• The site examined had a number of first position rankings for all phrases under examination, so we can be sure the impression number from webmaster tools is the most reliable possible.

We can see that all of these tools are presenting quite different numbers. While the External Keyword tool appears to be massively overestimating traffic, Traffic Estimator seems to be doing the opposite. This is especially surprising since they are supposedly driven by the same data. The positive news is that all of these seem to follow similar trends, and whilst the data does not line up exactly, the tools do give us a good relative indicator of what is being searched for.

What About Search Trend Tools?

Three major Google search analysis tools that provide trend-based data are Google Trends, Google Insights and the Google Keyword tool. We wanted to have a look at whether these lined up.

Looking at a “generic 1 word key phrase” and superimposing the graphs for each tool over each other, we can see that Google Trends (the red line), Google Insights (the blue line), and the Keyword Tool (the green bars) all correspond quite well, showing dips and peaks at the same times during the year.

Conclusion

You can’t use any one of these tools with absolute certainty. And no amount of data from last month will ever be able to tell you exactly what to expect next month.  What these tools are great for, however, is giving you an idea of what phrases and (product-) areas to focus on first. Common sense, knowledge of common consumer search patterns and understanding how the tools work (as well as the limitations) will help you find the best phrases possible for your site. And don’t forget to factor in Google Analytics keyword conversion data!

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First Rate uses SearchIgnite to drive client ROI for search engine marketing campaigns, as well as deliver increased performance from the total digital media spend using conversion attribution across all digital media channels.

First Rate has partnered with SearchIgnite, a company that works with a variety of marketers across all online channels including email, display, social media and search.

One SearchIgnite client in particular has enjoyed incremental success with its online bookings, increasing from 14-20% before 2006 to 70% at present. However, a key element that was missing from their strategy was an understanding of the contribution each channel makes across the entire click path, with a specific focus on understanding generic keywords that initiate or assist a conversion and using these insights to maximize ROI. This client faced a number of key challenges and partnered with SearchIgnite in order to find a solution.

Multiple Platforms to Track all Media Channels
Marketers often report the same conversion multiple times as a result of using separate tools for tracking across different channels, e.g. an analytics tool for post-click conversions and DART for Advertisers (DFA) for display post-view conversions. In the SearchIgnite conversion attribution case study featured in this blog post, the client’s conversions were being tracked multiple times and with no ability to “de-dupe.” It was therefore difficult to get an accurate depiction of the contributions of each channel and took a drawn out process to identify their real marketing ROI. This made it challenging to allocate budgets most effectively across channels.

Understanding the Consumer Journey across all Channels
Most online marketers give all credit to the last click or exposure that lead to the conversion – the approach known as “last click attribution.” When using this method, multiple clicks may occur from a user across the same or multiple channels, but only the last one that resulted in the action or booking gets credit – this is common practice because most technologies do not offer the ability to track and optimize multiple clicks across channels.

When all credit is given to the last click that resulted in a conversion, marketers run the risk of moving budget away from channels and keywords that may have actually been critical in moving the consumer to convert, earlier in the decision process.

Finding the correct Attribution Model
It is very difficult to pinpoint the correct attribution model to each media discipline. To do this many different scenarios needed to be run to see the impact it would have had on the number of conversions and revenue on each channel, down to keyword level.

Generate Insights that allow Real-Time Optimisation
Most analytics tracking tools provide the data, but don’t give insights on cross-channel interactions or use it to optimize paid search keywords effectively using bid management rules in real time. Additionally, many tools do not provide the consultative service, support and client-relevant analysis needed to use this data effectively.

After a thorough technology audit of its marketplace, the client opted to use SearchIgnite technology. This selection was particularly due to advanced attribution technology to meet these challenges and optimize their online spend across all channels. Other key reasons for selecting SearchIgnite were:

• Advanced search, email and digital media tracking platform

• Cross-channel media insights on exposures which assist sales to understand user exposure paths

• Use of insights and ability to perform attribution analysis based on marketing goals upon request

• Use of data for budget allocation and optimization

• Ability to use combination of rules based and portfolio bid optimisation

SearchIgnite’s advanced search and digital media attribution platform allows marketers to see the entire click path across all channels leading to the conversion and use this data for optimization. When considering allocating online budget, clients using SearchIgnite are able to see multiple clicks across their paid search, natural search, display, affiliates, and email. In addition, SearchIgnite, working alongside its world-wide partners including First Rate, provide support to perform attribution analysis and recommend a custom weighting method specific to individual clients and marketing goals.

SearchIgnite’s 5 Step Approach to Maximise Revenues Across Digital Channels

STEP 1 – Analyze the number of touch points in the online marketing mix and understand the full interactions of all channels
From the initial analysis it was found that 64.6% of paths had more than one click or exposure and that more than 50% of the client’s customers were interacting on more than one media channel before converting. The average number of exposures before conversion was 3.4 across all channels. The key insights found were that:

• 42% clicked on a PPC ad and booked with no other channel involved in the booking

• 52.1% clicked on organic search then a PPC ad and made a booking

• 4.8% viewed a display ad then clicked on a PPC ad and made a booking

• 0.4% clicked on a display ad and then a PPC ad and made a booking

The decision making process on which scenarios should be run was based on the amount of interaction there is between the channels.

STEP 2 – Define Channel Prioritisation
SearchIgnite enables advertisers to let specific channels take pre-determined priority over other channels, which means that clicks or exposures won’t get any credit over channels which are in higher tiers (set by the client).

To each channel, we defined the value of an impression and reviewed:

• Display clicks over display views
• Organic search and email channel priorities over paid media channels
• Display view look-back window
• Display view weight

More information: SearchIgnite’s v4 release.

All attribution settings had been reviewed based on the current competitive landscape, TV, above the line campaigns and ad creatives. Importantly, settings can be varied seasonally.

STEP 3 – Distribution
SearchIgnite enables advertisers to move from a last-click ad exposure distribution to a customized distribution model. A key USP of the SearchIgnite technology is that clients can analyze 60 days worth of data through various scenarios to see what would have been the impact on bookings and revenue.

Using a different range of distribution models, the client compared this against the traditional last click attribution to evaluate the most accurate distribution model. As a result, campaign settings were altered and realigned to the right distribution model. This is based on the number of bookings and revenue allocated to each channel, campaign, placement and search keyword.

STEP 4 – Insights
Finding the best suited weights is often an iterative process of viewing how credit is distributed and the logic behind whether or not it best suits the dynamics of the business. With the new tier prioritization, channel settings and distribution model, the client observed a significant shift in the balance of revenue attributed between paid search and organic search.

STEP 5 – Apply Insights to Optimize Through SearchIgnite’s Portfolio Optimization Technology
After three months of testing, new attribution settings were selected and a new, custom distribution model was built for the client. In addition, SearchIgnite implemented bid rules using proprietary portfolio optimization technology (SPOT). Budgets allocated to each of the channels and campaigns were reviewed more accurately due to being able to eradicate duplicate bookings and re-attribute conversion data. Visibility on generic keywords and brand has been increased, which has resulted in a decrease in CPC and an increase in revenue.

SPOT’s prediction and optimization engine is driven by non-linear statistical modelling and other advanced mathematical techniques to find the optimal bid for each keyword across multiple search engines. SearchIgnite dynamically allocates a client’s budget across their portfolios of keywords based on business goals. SPOT’s technology then closely monitors click-through and conversion rates, adjusting results consistently based on real-time findings. More info: PPC bid technology case study.

Results

Significant year-over-year improvements in CPC, ROI and revenue were generated, resulting in increased confidence that the online advertising budget is being tracked, attributed, measured and spent more accurately to optimize ROI. The key performance indicators saw the following results, with a 4% decrease in paid search spend:

• 14% decrease in CPC
• 28% increase in overall bookings
• 43% increase in overall revenue
• 54% increase in ROI

About SearchIgnite
SearchIgnite is a leading provider of paid search and performance media optimization solutions that enable large, sophisticated marketers to achieve their online goals faster and smarter. The company’s media platform gives advertisers an advanced suite of tools to manage, optimize and report on their paid search campaigns in one central dashboard. In addition to saving time and achieving their paid search goals, marketers who use SearchIgnite have the ability to gather insights into the relationship between media channels, enabling them to spend smarter. Some of the world’s leading brands and advertising agencies depend on SearchIgnite technology to power their online campaigns.

For more information on SearchIgnite’s PPC bid management and digital media performance optimisation technology, please contact First Rate.

Related Posts:

• The Integration of Search Marketing and Display Advertising
• New SearchIgnite 4.0 Driving Increased SEM Performance for First Rate Clients
• Do you want better results from your Paid Search?
• First Rate Announces Exclusive New Zealand and Australian Partnership with SearchIgnite

There are many online marketing tactics you can employ to drive traffic to your website or brand profile, but you can’t underestimate the importance of keywords.

In paid search, choosing the right keywords can be the difference between a campaign that delivers results at a great ROI and a campaign that just costs you money; in search engine optimisation (SEO), choosing the right keywords can help you to achieve search engine rankings, resulting in increased visitors from natural search results, and increased sales; and on your blog, compelling headlines that are keyword-rich have the potential to attract many more visitors than just compelling headlines by themselves.

All of this means choosing the right keywords is absolutely crucial when building links to your website. In fact, in the 2009 SEOmoz Search Ranking Factors survey, the number one factor as agreed by SEO experts was ‘Keyword-focused anchor text from external links’.

We know that many things can drive external links, including press releases and articles: so do your press release and article headlines contain appropriate keywords, and are these also included in the content? Are you using keywords in your social profile links and signatures? And have you thought about how important keywords are in other areas?

If optimised correctly for the right keywords, YouTube videos can also appear in the search results for relevant phrases and more people will find the video via a search on YouTube. Are you generating as many viewers by including relevant keywords in the video title, description and in the assigned tags? If not, you may not be leveraging this media as much as possible.

Real-time results such as those from Twitter are also now included in the search results. If you are in a competitive industry, this offers another opportunity to be seen in the search results for relevant phrases.

The use of brand keywords is absolutely essential for online reputation management success in the search engines. And by including keywords in social profiles and leveraging those profiles, you can increase the number of positive results for brand-based keyword searches.

Keywords are of extreme importance in so many ways. So it’s important to take advantage of these opportunities to optimise and increase results.

Grant Osborne, First Rate’s Director of Strategy & Performance, will expand on this topic at the Social Media Junction event on 17 May.

Related Posts:

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Source: Kiwi Flickr

This year was the third time I’ve been to Webstock. I go for a few reasons: to visit Wellington!, to get perspectives on web design & web development that I wouldn’t normally, to let my brain think about things other than digital marketing and to catch up with people.

Of course, it isn’t easy just to turn off from the digital marketing side of things so I spend a lot of my time at Webstock thinking about the impact of changes & future trends to the digital marketing industry.

Here’s what I learnt online businesses need to be doing this year:

• Iterate. Listen to your customers, watch your analytics, learn what needs improving and optimise like a crazy person. The website that is most agile will win.
• Don’t be late to the mobile party, be early. How does your online audience want to engage your business via mobile? Does that exist? Is there a business case for it?
• Be wary of “gut feel” or “I just know” interpretations of data by your staff or your third party providers. Expect empirical evidence that backs up that gut feel.
• “If you review the first version of your site & don’t feel embarrassed, you spent too long on it” – Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn.com
• For Barack Obama’s US presidential campaign, his online team were tracking how dollars spent on online ads were turning into dollars received via fundraising. If a campaign that complex can achieve it, no-one has an excuse for not knowing their ROI from online spend.
• Jeff Attwood’s description of social software was very good: “tiny slices of frictionless effort, spread across an online community”. A good reminder that to leverage user-generated content you need your users to want to contribute and make it super-easy to do so.
• I thought Daniel Burka’s recommendation that “subtraction is iteration too” was a good reminder. Don’t be afraid to subtract

The talks & presentations are going to be made available in the near future so keep an eye on the Webstock blog for those.

You can also follow Webstock on Twitter: @webstock.

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• Using a Custom Google Analytics Configuration to Understand Online Marketing Performance
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Do you know how well your online marketing tactics are performing?

How much does a conversion cost from your pay per click campaigns, search engine optimisation efforts or your email marketing campaigns…? – Do you know the answer?

Most Marketing Managers would answer yes to this question. For example: “Our PPC campaign costs us $6 for every sale”. For the majority of organisations, the data would come from Google Analytics or another web analytics platform.

But what does “$6 cost per sale” really mean?

You would probably agree with me that the data provided from any of the major web analytics platforms (including Google Analytics) can actually be quite misleading. Especially if data is used from analytics software that is installed using the “default” parameters, without correct configuration and expert interpretation.

Interpreting Analytics Data

Let me give you an example: Let’s assume your website sells Sony TVs.

A searcher on Google searches for a Sony TV and finds your Google Adwords PPC ad. They click on the ad (and if your PPC account is set up correctly) they land on your website and are presented with a range of relevant Sony TVs. They find the “SONY Bravia KDL40X4500 model”, they like the look of it and decide they want to buy it. Let’s assume they do this on a Monday.

But before they purchase, let’s assume the consumer wants to do a bit more research the next day on other websites. In the end they find that the product is cheaper on your site and that your delivery and returns terms are more favourable. So they decide to buy the product from you.

However, this particular consumer didn’t bookmark the product page – and can’t remember what your web address is! But they do remember what your company is called. So they type in your company’s brand name into Google, and click the top natural listing. They navigate around your site, find the TV that they liked, and finally, purchase it.

Here’s how that process would look:

The default setup on most analytics packages would register the sale under the branded keyword clicked in the natural results. Is this fair? What about the paid search click that happened first?

By comparison, the conversion tracking option within Google Adwords would attribute that same sale to the click on the paid search ad. The data within Google Adwords and Google Analytics would fail to match up and there is a strong possibility that sales would be “over-reported” using Adwords data only. The reason behind this is due to the differences between first-click and last-click conversion attribution.

Google Adwords Conversion Tracking

Google Adwords employs first-click attribution. If Google sends a visitor to the website because the visitor clicked on that paid search ad, Google Adwords would always attribute any sale to that initial click. The cookie is not over-written and even if Google Adwords was further down the buying cycle, it would always attribute a sale to the click as long as the sale happens within 30 days of this click.

Google Adwords employs post-click tracking, which is initiated when the user clicks on a paid ad that has been assigned a tracking URL. From that moment, a cookie is stored on the user’s machine and if they visit the website’s complete page within 30 days, the Google tracking pixel meets with the cookie and reports back to Google Adwords which click brought the sale, and on what date.

Google Analytics Conversion Tracking

Google Analytics (and the majority of the other analytics packages), as a default, employ last-click attribution. This means that the cookie will always overwrite itself based upon the last referrer to the website. This means that no-matter what medium referred the latest visit to the website, the sale would always be attributed to that medium (other than direct – Google Analytics doesn’t overwrite direct traffic). This means that the website that initially referred the visitor gets no credit for the initial introduction.

This is where first-click and multi-click attribution comes in.

First-Click Attribution

For a Google Analytics installation, First Rate has produced a product called “Acquisition by Referrer”. This product changes the way data appears in Google Analytics and attributes the sale to the first click the visitor made (much in the way that Google Adwords would record it). In the above case, Google Analytics would record the sale as a coming from the PPC advert, rather than a branded organic search phrase. (Note: The script records both first-click and last-click – it doesn’t stop the default nature of GA recording last-click.)

Another interesting thing to note is the cookie length set by Google Analytics. The cookie that stores where the visitor came from, what link in an email was clicked on (it is possible to tag the links to tell Google Analytics about the email campaign and each individual link), what keyword was used if they came from a search engine and also other data such as screen resolution and browser language used when the website was accessed – all of that is stored in the Google Analytics UTMZ cookie.

The UTMZ has a 6 month life-span. This is adequate for most websites, but for some websites it may be necessary for this period to be longer, or potentially shorter. First Rate can recommend a suitable cookie length to suit your company’s business model (eg. time it takes for customers to make a purchase decision or a cookie length that aligns with your own understanding of your customer’s loyalty/lifecycle).

Multi-Click Attribution

For the serious analysts out there, it is possible to assign multiple values within the JavaScript employed in the implementation of the Google Analytics tracking code.

The implementation of multi-click attribution is quite tricky and not for the faint-hearted. It requires JavaScript programming to draw data out of the website and send it to Google Analytics within a field reserved specifically for advanced reporting.

In addition, because of the overload of data, the results will become illegible within the Google Analytics interface. The best way to make sense of the data would be to export the data into excel and then use pivot tables to analyse the data.

A reason why multi-click attribution is becoming more popular is due to the ‘weighting’ of visits to the website. How much weight should the first click have, then a potential second, and what about a third or fourth?

Of course we can go another step further – what if you have a traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ store. The TV example above is a perfect example – a visitor goes online, researches the product that has the required specification, and then goes into a store to look at it, or even a competitor’s store! The salesman tells them about the TV, gives them a demonstration that could never happen online, and then the shopper returns home, goes on the net and buys from your website. How much emphasis should be placed on the in-store visit, but more importantly – how can we measure it? How can an analytics package possibly tell that the customer went in-store? At the moment, we simply can’t.

Website Analytics Recommendations

First Rate suggests initially using first-click attribution to see how the data is affected to get a ‘clearer’ picture as to how each marketing is acquiring traffic and sales (and at what cost!)

As a Google accredited partner (GAAC), First Rate can certainly help with custom Google Analytics implementations, please do contact us if we can assist in any way.

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