Google AdWords Enhanced CPC – How to Implement

If you have been running your Ads in Google AdWords and have received numerous impressions and clicks, this is the right time to enable enhanced CPC. With enhanced CPC, Google will determine the bid rate for you. Based on previous clicks and conversions, Google will increase your bid or lower your bid for better and worse performing keywords. Remember, the bid variation is based on conversion and not click through rate.

If you have not yet enabled conversion tracking in your AdWords account – read our article about Google AdWords Conversion tracking

Once you have enabled conversion tracking in Google AdWords, follow these steps:

1) Click the Campaign Tab

2) Choose your Campaign

3) Under Settings tab, click Bidding and Budget.

4) Enable the option “Use my conversion tracking data and bids to optimize for conversions” under Enhanced CPC

Why your E-Mail Newsletter Open Rate is inaccurate?

The 1×1 pixel image was introduced in Email newsletter Campaign Services during a time when Email clients like MS Outlook downloaded images by default. But since MS Outlook 2007, images are disabled by default. The open rate that you see in your Email Campaign Analytic Dashboard might not be entirely accurate. 

How Does Email Marketing Service track Open Rate?

The Open Rate in HTML Email is tracked by embedding a 1×1 pixel image, mostly GIF file at the bottom of the message. The images, linked to a tracker code will record an open when the image is downloaded by your email client. 

What are the problems of tracking Open Rate using Pixel Download?

1) MS Outlook:  According to June 2011 Email Stats Report from Constant Contact, Outlook has 27% market share. Outlook by default doesn't download the 1 x 1 pixel tracking image. So it is important that you track the Email clients used by your readers.

1) In Mail Chimp, visit List Dashboard

2) Scroll Down and you will see Top Email Clients

2) Apple IPad and other iOS Clients: Email clients in Apple iPad and iOS will download the tracking image by default so if the percentage of iOS users opening your email is high for your newsletter, then it might be because of that. 

3) Text Only 

If you have given the reader an option to subscribe to Text Only version of the Newsletter, then measuring the open rate accurately would again be a problem.

4) Tablet Devices

Tablets by default will download the tracking image. If majority of your core demographic use Tablet devices to read your newsletter then the open rate shown in Email analytics would be closer to the actual open rate.

What is the workaround?

The workaround that Email Marketing Services like Mailchimp are suggesting is 

“It’s true that only HTML email can have embedded tracking images. But you can track "opens" from a plain-text email too. MailChimp lets you enable click-tracking in your plain-text emails. Whenever someone clicks a link in their plain-text email (or if they leave images turned off while viewing your HTML email) we can track that as an "open."

The Click Through Rate in your email is actually the only reliable metric to measure the effectiveness of your message. A better strategy, which is less dependent on the Email Marketing service, is to divide your newsletter to useful links (above the fold) and Main Email Topic (below the fold). If targeted to all segments, the useful links above the fold cannot be ignored. Your readers will click the link and you can measure the effective open rate. 

If you want expert help for your Email Campaigns, contact us or you can call us at: India (Ph): +91 9497189032, UK (Ph): +44 (0)20-3371-9976 or US (Ph): +1 650-491-0004

ByteFive provides Internet Marketing Services (Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Develop processes and best practices for Internet Marketing, Manage and Analyze Web Analytics packages, Perform Landing page Optimization, Manage E-Mail Newsletter, Perform Competitor Research, Content Creation and Marketing) and Training to help you achieve your revenue and business goals.

How to Handle page layout Algorithm Update?

Google Search team has announced a change in Algorithm that would impact websites with high Ad/Content ratio. According to the Search Team, this tweak would allow sites that are content rich to rank better than sites that have too many ads above the fold. 

Google has also clarified that it won’t affect publishers that use leaderboard and right sidebar Ad above the fold of the page. This move is targeted for websites that use too many Ads above the fold, before the actual content can be seen.

What is above the fold?

Above the fold in a webpage is the visible area in your webpage without scrolling. 

How will I know whether the Ads above the fold are impacting the visitors?

1) Go to your Google Analytics 

2) Click Audience->Technology->Browser and OS

3) Click Screen Resolutions

4) Find the top 5 screen resolutions of your visitors

Example: In ByteFive’s case it would be:

How will you know whether you have too many Ads?

1) Once you have the top 5 screen resolutions, visit Browser Size Tool or add one of the Chrome Screen Resolution Plugins

2) Test how your page looks in the top 5 resolutions

What is the impact of the change?

This tweak in the algorithm is expected to affect 1% of searches, globally. Since the tweak is algorithmic, a change in page layout can help you retain your position is SERPs

6 SEO Best Practices for your URLs

URL (Uniform Resource Locator) allows web users to access the webpage, documents or any other resources hosted in your server. How should the urls be structured for blog sites with 40 pages, 1000s of pages or e-commerce site with over 10000 pages? The answer is each type of blog has a different way of presenting its unique page to the user. More than the bots being able to figure out what your webpage is about, it is important that you structure your web urls for your visitors. Here are some best practices:

1) Power of Hyphen: Google in its webmasters blog recommends the use of hyphens. For example http://www.example.com/home-insurance is much better than http://www.example.com/homeinsurance. Although Google Algorithm has evolved and can recognize words and phrases from urls, make it easier for Google bots. Using hyphens to separate words make it much more readable for visitors too. 

2) Static over Dynamic URLS: For websites that are run on CMS (Content Management System), a common problem is the generation of dynamic urls. Most CMS has plugins to convert non-readable dynamic urls to static easy to understand urls. Make use of them. If you don’t have the flexibility to use plugins, use 301 redirects on the dynamic urls and map it to readable urls.

3) Session Ids and URL Parameters: Another common issue seen in websites is the generation of session ids and URL parameters, which are difficult to recognize. Such URLs are inevitable for sites with search and sort features. Most of these URLs are not necessary to be indexed. Exclude such urls by using robot.txt

Let us say that you have a search page that passes the page id to the url and also sorts the results, like

www.example.com/search?id=132

www.example.com/search?id=132&sort=asc

For such cases, disallow indexing any urls with parameters by using robot.txt

In Robot.txt use the following entry:

User Agent: *

Disallow: /search*

The above entry will disallow any parameters after the www.example.com/search

4) Mind the Length

Although the Maximum URL allowed by Internet Explorer is 2,083 characters, follow the best practice recommended by Matt Cutts (Head of Google’s Web spam team) – Stick to 3-5 words in your URL. This can be tricky when you have category and sub-category pages

5) Keyword in URLs

Use of keywords in the initial part of the URL can improve the relevance of your webpage and improve click through rate in SERP. 

For Category Page:

www.example.com/category

For Sub-Category Page

www.example.com/category/sub-category

For the actual page use the following variations:

www.example.com/keyword1-sub-category-category

www.example.com/keyword1-category-sub-category

Depending on whether the page has close resonance to the category or sub-category page, use the corresponding structure after the keyword

For pages that have long keywords, avoid categories and sub-categories altogether

www.example.com/keywordWord1-keywordWord2-keywordWord3

Any URL with more than 3 words can be construed as spam by the visitor.

6) Case Consistencies

Although there is no one solution for all websites, avoid ALL CAPs in your URL

www.example.com/BEST-OFFER

How many times have you clicked such URLs when you search for a topic? The URL has spam written all over it.

If you are going to use First Letter Caps for all categories and sub-category pages, stick with it. Don’t change after 100 pages.

www.example.com/Category

www.example.com/Category/Sub-category

As a general practice, use of lower case in URL keywords has been found effective. Not for SEO but to improve click through rates in SERPs

If you want expert help in Creating Search Engine Friendly URLS, contact us or you can call us at: India (Ph): +91 9497189032, UK (Ph): +44 (0)20-3371-9976 or US (Ph): +1 650-491-0004

ByteFive provides Internet Marketing Services(Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Develop processes and best practices for Internet Marketing, Manage and Analyze Web Analytics packages, Perform Landing page Optimization, Manage E-Mail Newsletter, Perform Competitor Research, Content Creation and Marketing) and Training to help you achieve your revenue and business goals.

Subscribe to ByteFive's Newsletter

Bing Markup Validator

Bing has introduced a new feature in its Webmasters tool – Mark-up Validator. If you are worried whether your website follows the standard coding and mark-up conventions, visit the crawl section in Bing’s webmasters tool. 

1) At the far right you will see the Mark-up Validator

2) Enter your website url/or the url of a popular site

3) With the mark-up validator you an access information about HTML Microdata , Microformats, RDFa , Schema.org  and Open Graph

If you are wondering what some of the popular sites in the web are using as mark-ups, Bing’s mark-up validator might be a useful tool for you.

Search Intent – 6 Types that you Should Know

The great thing about Search Engines, especially Google Search Engine is that you can get the intent of the search with Keyword Research and monitoring tools. You don’t have to guess what your prospects are searching for. There are six categories of searches:

1) Brand search: Is the most common type of search used in search engines. Your website and you social media accounts should rank for this category. Brand keywords include:

<Company Name>

<Company Name> <Product Name>

<Product Name> prices

<Product Name> features/technical specifications

<Product Name> guarantee

Let us take the example of a smart phone that I had recently bought. 

As you can see from the visited URL, I didn't visit the Company's website but a third party review site to learn more about the product. But for starters, your company's website should rank for Brand keywords like the ones mentioned above before any other third party websites. If you are not ranking for the keywords mentioned above then you need to re-evaluate the site structure, content management system, the source code and .htaccess file(to check whether you have not set any rules that are hindering crawlability of your website). 

2) Research search: is the second most common type of search. We used this type of key phrases to find out what customers are saying about a product. The most common set of keywords for this search are:

<Company Name> <Product Name> review

<Company Name> <Product Name> sucks 

<Company Name> <Product Name> high price

<Company Name> <Product Name> poor/bad/great/good <feature>

Let us suppose that your prospect have heard rumors that your company(say Company Z) provides poor customer service, then they would start their research with the key phrase

"Company Z poor customer service"

If your product is valued at a high price then prospects would search and find out what other customers are saying about your product. More importantly, whether it is worth investing in your products?

Example: Software X high price

It is difficult to get visitors for research key phrases but understanding how prospects search will allow you to focus on critical metrics rather than just increasing the number of visitors to your website.

3) Informational search: This type of search query might not immediately get you customers but will give you leads that you can nurture and convert to customers. Our recommendation is that all companies, from 1 man start-ups to mid-size companies to multi-million dollar companies, everyone should allot at least 8-10 hours every week on writing blogs. The blogs ideally should cater to information search that your prospects are using or on problems that your products/services are trying to solve. 

Typical Information search starts with "How to", "Ways to", "Tips to", "What is" etc.

If you are in the Business of providing 'Internet Marketing Solutions' then you have to educate your prospects with articles like: 

How to pick the right keyword matching option

10 Tips to Reduce Bounce Rate

4) Navigational search: Once you have built a brand, people would like to know your thoughts and approach on solving a problem in your niche. 

For example:

You know that you get a wide variety of products on eBay. Instead of visiting the website and using the 'Search Box' or the wide range of category pages, you will search for 

You can see above that you get a sub-category(Goggles) and a brand(Reebook) for your "SunGlass" search

This search is normally used by a regular visitor. It is important that you don't ignore Navigational searches and optimize your pages for these search phrases. If you have done the basics right (Relevant Title/Keywords and Meta-Tag Description), users can easily reach your internal pages with Navigational Search. 

For Advanced searchers and SEOs the searches would look like:

5) Commercial search: gives hints on whether your prospects will buy your product. Lot of commercial key phrases overlaps with the Research Search but common commercial search will have specific feature themes in it. 

For Example: Suppose your 'Internet Marketing' software has one plan that help SEO professionals monitor 1000 keywords on 'Search Engine Results page', then Commercial search would look like:

Company X Plan A 1000 keyword limit

Company X Plan A keyword limit

Most commercial keywords would be about your niche and would focus on features. You have to understand that prospects starts with Research Search phrases like "Company X Plan A" review and once the prospect is educated about the various features under this plan, he will go one step deeper into the features.

Commercial search often results in visits to your product/service page. You have to use the copy accordingly. It should answer your prospect's question.

Unfortunately for Samsung, they are not ranking(in top 10)  for the commercial search, but they have cleverly used a Samsung wave 2 Ad highlighting the Camera Feature 3.7" Full Touch in it (passing the answer to the potential customer). The good reviews that are ranking in the top 3 results will help the company get the sale.

6) Transactional search

The most profitable keyword category is the Transactional Search. People often assume that Transactional search means phrases that results in a sale like "Buy iPhone 4”, " Buy iPhone 4 <City Name> <Street name>", but that is far from true. Transaction can be:

1) Purchase

2) Sign-Up or

3) Download

1) Purchase Key Phrases: can be anything that starts with "Buy", "Get", "Discount" etc.

Examples: 

Buy iPhone4 

Get Loan at 5.5% Interest Rate

15% Discounts on Samsung Smart Phones

Discount Code for Samsung wave

2) Sign-Up Key Phrases can be anything that starts with "Sign-Up", "Newsletter Sign-Up", "How to Sign-up"

3) Download Key Phrases can be anything that starts with "Free <document type/Topic> Downloads, Download <type> or <Topic> Free/Download"

Examples:

Download Whitepaper on Internet Marketing

Free Internet Marketing Downloads

Internet Marketing Downloads/Rapidshare/Megaupload

As you can see, prospects will compare the prices mentioned in the search results and might pick one according to the meta-description provided. 

To optimize your pages and campaign to get more leads: 

1) Focus on how your prospects search. 

2) Perform keyword research in your niche. 

3) Find out how your competitors are attracting prospects to their website.

Would you like our team to help you with Internet Marketing?

Please fill this form. Feel free to call us –  India (Ph): +91 9497189032, UK (Ph): +44 (0)20-3371-9976 or US (Ph): +1 650-491-0004

Top 5 Social Media Monitoring Tools

Social Media has evolved from a niche tool to a widely adopted communication media for brands, customers and prospects. Search Engines are using clicks from social media links as one of the ranking signals that decides how your web page rank for certain keywords. It is important that you see the value of social media beyond SEO. 

Why should you use Social Media?

Trend Monitoring: Social Media is highly effective to get the latest trends or widely discussed topics in your industry. Monitor the topics discussed by your prospect, partners, customers and advertisers. Can give a unique insight on the same topic? If you can, then start creating articles that will answer some of the questions asked by your market.

Engage with the Market: Most of the time, prospects will ask direct questions about your industry. This is a great opportunity for you to interact and engage with the prospect. Solve the prospect’s problem with your articles or your services. Don’t sell your products/services directly. Focus on their problem first and give your expert advice. If they find your advice/articles useful then suggest your services.

Customer Service: Although Email is still effective in maintaining a solid relationship with your customers, B2C markets have seen customers using social media for communication. It is easy to use, has a direct reach (you don’t have to worry about Junk Folder) and the interaction is public (brands don’t want to risk being projected as a slacker when it comes to customer service).

There are many paid and free social media monitoring and influence measuring tools. These tools will help you monitor mentions of your brand/keywords and your influence in the market. Here are our top 5 picks: 

1. Socialseek

Socialseek enables any kind of brand, including companies, celebrities, sports teams, universities and more, to provide one web destination for customers and fans that combine all social activity and web content, making it easier to engage a brand’s audience and for fans to stay abreast of news of their favorite brands.

2. Klout

Klout allows users to track the impact of their opinions, links and recommendations across your social graph. Data is collected about the content users create, how people interact with that content and the size and composition of their networks. Klout identifies influencers and provides tools for influencers to monitor their influence.

3. Hootsuite

HootSuite is a social media management system for businesses and organizations to collaboratively execute campaigns across multiple social networks from one secure, web-based dashboard. Launch marketing campaigns, identify and grow audience, and distribute targeted messages using HootSuite’s unique social media dashboard. Streamline team workflow with scheduling and assignment tools and reach audiences with geo-targeting functionality. Invite multiple collaborators to manage social profiles securely, plus provide custom reports using the comprehensive social analytics tools for measurement. Key social network integrations include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and new Google+ Pages, plus a suite of social content apps for YouTube, Flickr, Tumblr and more.

4. Addict-o-matic

Addictomatic is a Free, user friendly and free web application that collects information from all major social and news sites for a given search word and displays in a nice looking user interface. 

5. Social Mention

Social Mention is a social media search platform that aggregates user generated content from across the universe into a single stream of information.It allows you to easily track what people are saying about you, your company, a new product, or any topic across the web's social media landscape in real-time. Social Mention monitors 80+ social media properties directly including: Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google etc.

If you want us to help you pick the best social media monitoring tool, contact us or you can call us at: India (Ph): +91 9497189032, UK (Ph): +44 (0)20-3371-9976 or US (Ph): +1 650-491-0004

ByteFive provides comprehensive Internet Marketing Services and Training in Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing (PPC Campaign Creation, Management and Optimization), Developing processes and best practices for Internet Marketing, Managing and Analyzing Web Analytics,  Landing page Optimization, E-Mail Newsletter Management, Competitor Research, Content Creation and Content Marketing.

4 Micro Conversions you Should Know

Conversion – the one metric that make sense to all publishers and internet marketers.  But often we forget to monitor the path, actions and behaviours that led to the conversion. The small steps that eventually led to conversion are called Micro-Conversions.

Qualitative Micro Conversions:  Micro Conversions can be broadly categorized based on the visitor’s action. Actions that doesn’t directly contribute to your revenue but which would eventually lead to revenue generation are called Qualitative Micro-Conversions. 

Some Qualitative Micro Conversions are “Tweeting about your article”, “Liking your article on Facebook”, “+1 ing your article on Google Plus” and “Digging your article”.  

Quantitative Micro Conversions: Quantitative Micro-Conversions as the name suggests can be measured and are much closer to conversion. “Clicks on a Banner Ad”, “Subscribing to your newsletter” and “Subscribing to your RSS Feed” are example of Quantitative Micro-Conversions. If you have configured your analytics to measure the number of RSS readers or subscribers, it is very easy to measure the total numbers from those marketing channels that eventually converted. 

If for every 100 subscribers 12 of them bought your product/service, then invest resources to improve subscription rate in your pages.  Similarly, if you are aware that for every 20 clicks on your Special Promo Code Banner Ad, one sale happens, then focus on improving the impressions on the Ads.

Businesses that generate revenue with lead generation consider “Subscription” as a conversion. For the traditional Brick and Mortar or online Business, these actions are micro-conversions.

Path Based Micro Conversions: are little tricky. The persona and the web design influence the path of the visitor. But if the visitor checks the Pricing and Plans page then it is a path based Micro-Conversion. That was the planned path for which you were optimizing. Even if the visitor doesn’t buy your product/services, your web design has enabled Path Based Micro-Conversion.

Visit Based Micro Conversions: The characteristics of the visit influence the conversion. If you know that after fourth visit, the probability to buy your products/services improve by 75% then 2nd and 3rd visits are Visit Based Micro-Conversions. Assign appropriate value to the visit. Other characteristics of the visit like time on page, time on site, exit rate and bounce rate can also be categorized under Visit Based Micro Conversions.

Source Based Micro Conversions: Traffic source influences the behaviour of the visitor. Search Engine users have a specific problem to solve. Will your product/service or articles help them? 

Social Media Users have a different information consumption pattern. Their behaviour is influenced by the recommender’s credibility. If the link is recommended by an expert in a particular domain, the likelihood that the visit will eventually lead to a conversion is very high. The first visit might lead to Qualitative (retweet, like or +1) or Quantitative Conversion (“Subscription”). But for many Businesses the first visits would hardly lead to any conversion but you just might have earned a brand evangelist. Assign a value to the Social Media visits

Similarly, conversion on links mentioned in blogs is also influenced by the authority of the blogger.  Which traffic source is worth your attention?  The visits are Source Based Micro-Conversions if you can track the complete life cycle of a user’s visits.

ByteFive provides Internet Marketing Services(Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Develop processes and best practices for Internet Marketing, Manage and Analyze Web Analytics packages, Perform Landing page Optimization, Manage E-Mail Newsletter, Perform Competitor Research, Content Creation and Marketing) and Training to help you achieve your revenue and business goals.

Subscribe to ByteFive's Newsletter

How to set Location and Language in Google AdWords Campaign

For Google Adwords Campaign, it is important to target the right location and language.  

Location: When you place your Ads, you can target all countries and territories or you can choose the region/country or city. To select the region/country/city:

1) Click Create New Campaign

2) Give a Name for the Campaign

3) Under Locations and Languages, there is a section for Location.

4) Pick “Let me Choose”, option

5) You can either enter the city/state or metro in the textfield ( it auto-completes)

You can also select country (below)

6) If you click the “Show Map” link, you can see “Target a Location”. On entering the target say “Canada”, you can see the target location in Map along with the reach

Location by Radius

1) If your campaign is focused on local markets, then click the “Show Map” link

2) What kind of local Businesses are we talking about?

 Retail, Movie Theatre, Furniture, Florists, Dentist or any Business that has a local reach.

3) Click “Target a Radius”

4) Enter the locality you are targeting. Google will add a 20 miles default radius around the locality you have entered.

5) Let us say that you are a Dentist in South Olive Street, Los Angeles. You can enter that address in the textfield (as below)

6) As you can see, the 20 miles radius is defined by default. For countries using metric system, you can select Kilometre radius instead of miles. Based on the historical data on the reach of your Business, you can increase or decrease the radius of the target.

7) Click Add to add the radius to the map

You are all set to run the campaign in your relevant local market

Language

The biggest drawback of targeting your Ads based on language is that Google Adwords doesn’t translate your Ads. It only shows to users according to their Google interface language setting. If the user has set the interface language setting as “Spanish”, you can select Spanish in your language settings

Now your Ads will be shown to a market that speaks Spanish and English.

Advanced Location Targeting  

The advanced location targeting is available only for the search network. You can target the user based on his/her location or on the search intent.

Target by Physical Location/Search Intent: If the user is traveling to Los Angeles for the weekend and wants to visit the dentist there, she would search “dentist los Angeles”. For such terms, you can show your Ads to that user. All other users who are nearby your locality, you can use targeting by radius. In advanced location targeting, you have an option to let Google pick the Ad based on location or search intent.

Exclude by Location: You can also exclude Ads from physical location only or by both physical location and search intent. Excluding by physical location is easy to understand. Let us say that you are Toy Store owner who ships in all states except three. You can exclude your Toy Ads from showing in those three states. 

Exclude by Location and Search Intent: Let us say that you are based in California and wants to exclude shipping your Toys to Alaska. Someone from California wants to buy toys made exclusively in Alaska. She might search “Toy store Alaska”. Even though the customer is in California, she is searching for “Toy store in Alaska” 

Showing your Toy Store Ads for this user will waste your Ad Impression and target the wrong user. By using physical and search intent exclusion for your Toy Ads, you can not only exclude you Ad from showing in Alaska (where you don’t ship), you can also exclude users in your State (interested in Toy Store in Alaska) from seeing your Ad.

If you want expert help in setting up your Google AdWords Campaign, contact us or you can call us at: India (Ph): +91 9497189032, UK (Ph): +44 (0)20-3371-9976 or US (Ph): +1 650-491-0004

ByteFive provides comprehensive Internet Marketing Services and Training in Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing (PPC Campaign Creation, Management and Optimization), Developing processes and best practices for Internet Marketing, Managing and Analyzing Web Analytics,  Landing page Optimization, E-Mail Newsletter Management, Competitor Research, Content Creation and Content Marketing.

Meta Description – Top 6 tips for SEO

Meta Description is the text snippet that is visible just below the title of your page in Search Results. Although Google has announced in 2009, that Google’s algorithm doesn’t take into consideration the meta description and meta keywords for ranking each page, meta-description is important to improve your click through rate in SERPs.

ByteFive provides Internet Marketing Services (Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Develop processes and best practices for Internet Marketing, Manage and Analyze Web Analytics packages, Perform Landing page Optimization, Manage E-Mail Newsletter, Perform Competitor Research, Content Creation and Marketing) and Training to help you achieve your revenue and business goals.

Subscribe to ByteFive's Newsletter