The Internet Marketer» Pete

Google Analytics | Scheduled reports updated

Pete — Wed, 16 May 2012 01:11:19 +0000

If you’ve been using Google Analytics to monitor your website’s performance for a while now, you may have recently received an email similar to the one below asking you to update your email reports.

You will have received this because you are being emailed scheduled reports, and as Analytics migrate to their new reporting system (as part of a wider upgrade of their system) you will no longer receive these reports

The email includes instructions on how to migrate to the new reporting system although I can arrange this for you for a modest fee.

Understanding Analytics reports If you run a business that relies on your website...
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WordPress Basics | Keep your site updated & out of strife

Pete — Mon, 14 May 2012 05:03:06 +0000

WordPress is my absolute favourite Content Management System (CMS)

It’s simple, has an amazing range of free and low cost plugins that can provide amazing functionality and the core system is free. I typically use it in my own web space, but you can also use WordPress hosting if you choose including free options.

Unfortunately WordPress is not a set and forget type of website and there are a couple of important routine tasks that need to be carried out, particularly to keep hackers at bay and.

Updates
WordPress is a sophisticated system which is continually evolving, so there is a stream of regular updates to correct minor issues, to introduce new functionality and even to protect us all from hackers.

A typical WordPress installation also has plugins and a theme and these elements may have updates from their creators from time to time as well.

In WordPress’ standard form, you’ll need to log into your WordPress site from time to time and check for any available updates.

Goto Dashboard | Updates to see a summary page of any outstanding updates

You can click on any or all to perform the updates quickly and easily

NB Its important that you backup your site before you perform updates so that if it all goes astray you can roll back to a working website

Smart Updates
Performing updates is made very easy with the use of the Plugin Central plugin which shows all updates in your Dashboard – nice!

If don’t login on a regular basis the WP Updates Notifier Plugin is for you.
It will send you an email if there are any updates waiting for your site – Very handy indeed!

So updates are easy and can be made even easer with these smart plugins

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New AdWords Ad Extn | email subscription built in

Pete — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 02:06:43 +0000

The adwords team are trialling AdWords ads that enable a prospect to subscribe directly to a Newsletter etc.

I believe these will be called ‘Communications Ad Extensions’ and look like this one I stumbled over recently

This ad picked up my Google ID and pre-populated the email field with it making it a one click process for prospects to register for a newsletter.

The Communications Ad Extension is another Ad Extension in an increasing portfolio being offered by AdWords

Are your ads using Ad Extensions to maximise your online advertising ?

Cheers

Pete

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Google AdWords | Auto-spell checking your keywords ?

Pete — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 08:03:37 +0000

Google Adwords has introduced (yet another) feature this time to deal with typos and spelling errors in your clients searches

Typically if you use Phrase or Exact versions of keywords, you’ll miss out on typos/misspelt versions of these terms

The alternative is resorting to using broad match which introduced its own issues

Adwords has now introduced a ‘feature’ to match these typos with your target terms, but presumably without the broad search ugliness*. Here’s how it should work:

Ill watch with interest to see what happens

* Broad term ugliness experiment
Add a term into Adwords with no match syntax
Let your campaign run for a week or so
Prepare yourself for Ugliness (ie take a seat; suck in a breath; grit your teeth)

Go to Dimensions | Search Terms (in dropdown menu)

The page will reveal the ACTUAL search terms being searched

Make a note of the plethora of seemingly irrelevant terms that have wasted your click budget

At this point bemoan the ugliness of broad matches
Use negative keywords and apply a cold compress to forehead

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Understanding Analytics reports

Pete — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 00:16:42 +0000

If you run a business that relies on your website then its absolutely critical that you know what’s going on in your website.

Just knowing how many visitors you have is not enough. Website metrics can tell you if your visitors are engaged, how are your visitors finding your site and where do they come from. Analytics provides deep information on what your visitors are doing and how engaged they are, and the new Google Analytics has even more sophisticated analysis tools built-in.

The problem many business people encounter is that there’s too much technical/web information and its difficult to correlate this data with business goals and sales objectives, so way back in 2009 I wrote Interpreting Analytics

Please feel free to download this, but if it doesn’t answer your questions, please let me know what other information you think it should include…

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Online Shopping stats reveal interesting changes

Pete — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 03:20:44 +0000

There’s some interesting stats about online shopping

Mobile Retail
Google’s Mobile Ads senior marketing Manager Johanna Werther provides stats to project 44% of total searches for last minute gifts and store locator terms will be from mobile devices this holiday season based on historical growth rates.

Better Consumers?
Google research has revealed in the US customers check on average 10.7 sources when making a buying decision - double the rate of 2010

Does that mean it s getting harder to sell online ?
Google are promoting this as Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT)

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A legal precedent restricting keyword advertising?

Pete — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 23:54:35 +0000

Landmark legal decision about using Google Adwords ?

The Federal Court has handed down a decision presumably setting a legal precedent that may impact “competitor campaign” strategies.

A competitor campaign uses your competitor’s name or product as a ‘keyword’ to trigger the display of your Google ads in your campaign that present your busines sor products

eg If your compeditor is XYZ then your online advertising displays your business or products should there be a search for XYZ

The Court held that “ had engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct through the use of the Google Adwords to create a sponsored link…” …because the use of keywords in this manner (ie the ads) implied there was an association between the businesses.

This was therefore considered to be a breach of the Trade Practices Act

Caused by Keyword Insertion ?

Where this becomes interesting/challenging is if your Adwords campaign uses keyword insertion to insert the searchers terms into your ads.

In these cases as the advertiser you have no control over whether a competitors name or brand is part of the original search (which is then automatically inserted into the ads) -

From my interpretation of reports in various legal blogs it may be that keyword insertion was in fact used in the Adwords campaign and that the advertiser is probably innocent from blatant misleading and deceptive conduct and simply naive about Adwords keyword insertion facility.

I wonder if this was raised in court (or even understood by the parties involved) and if this was the case would there have been an impact on the outcome…?

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Social media churn rate is faster than is necessary for effective exposure

Pete — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 07:39:14 +0000

This interesting post by Bit.ly asserts that the “half-life” of social media link is short; so short in fact that it’s effectiveness comes into question.

Sarah Kessler helpfully translates this as:

A link to breaking news typically has a short half life; it is no longer relevant after a short amount of time. Something less timely, like a funny video, wouldn’t see the same steep drop off — so those cute kittens tend to have a longer half-life.

Mason found that the type of content, however, isn’t the only predictor of how a link gets shared. It also matters where it is shared. The half-life of links posted on Facebook is on average 24 minutes longer than links to the same content posted on Twitter. And links in emails and instant messages remain active slightly longer than links on Facebook.

Bitly’s chart above indicates the Mean Half Life of a…

Link on Twitter: 2.8 hours
Link on Facebook: 3.2 hours
Link via Direct Sources (email, IM, etc): 3.4 hours
Link on YouTube: 7.4 hours

Simply put: Social media churn rate is faster than is necessary for effective exposure

Many thanks to Paul B for flagging this interesting info

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Smartphone boom may shift retail boundaries in Australia

Pete — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 07:22:41 +0000

The increasingly pervasive SmartPhone is creating the critical mass for new retail applications which may change the way we shop, and so by association will impact online advertising strategies.

This article by Matt Paish goes on to say: The popularity of smartphone shopping is changing retail horizons. New smartphone applications have been launched in Australia in the past month by major Australian food retailers. Multinational food giant Tesco has launched the world’s first ‘virtual shop’ in Korea during the same period.

Australian Food News reports have included new smartphone apps launched by Australia’s two largest supermarket chains, Coles and Woolworths, as well as a new smartphone app from Australia’s largest pizza chain Domino’s.

Should you be promoting your products/services to a mobile client base ?

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Seen the new Site Links in Google?

Pete — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 06:16:11 +0000

I notice that Google have changed the layout of the SiteLinks

These are extended SERPs that Google may choose to display for certain searches closely related to your site. Mine now looks like this:

They now look more like a series of mini-SERPs rather than the traditional one line SERPs in SiteLinks Google have used until recently.

Read more inGoogle WebMasters Tools Help:
https://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=47334&hl=en

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