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Google Analytics URL Builder

May 10, 2011 By

Tracking your referral sources accurately in Google Analytics is a big deal.

As the marketing person for a resort, you may increasingly rely upon the reporting that Google gives you to evaluate how your marketing efforts are working.

The problem with relying upon referral reports in Google Analytics is that:

  • Some or all of the data gets lost (Twitter can have this problem).
  • The referral website actually has several websites and your traffic gets spread around so it be hard to calculate.
  • The referral website has a paid and free component (like LinkedIn and Facebook) where your fee-based advertising gets lumped into the free version.
  • You are doing email marketing and the emails aren’t being tracked.
  • You are not tracking your 301 redirects or domain forwarding usage.

My favorite tool to solve this problem is the Google Analytics URL Builder which quickly and easily appends “campaign” data the  URL I use in some of my (Blizzard Internet) specific advertising campaigns.

So, for my LinkedIn Pay-Per-Click campaign aimed at Hotels… and specifically, the ad where I offer a consultation plan would look like this:

This ad would send traffic to this landing page URL: 
http://www.blizzardinternet.com/plans-and-pricing/website-marketing/consultation-plans/ [Read more...]

Filed Under: Analytics, Marketing Musts, PPC Pointers, Toolbox

5 Ways to Improve Your AdWords CTR

March 29, 2011 By

Click-Through-Rate (CTR) in Google AdWords is important not just as a benchmark for how well your ads are doing in terms of clicks and impressions, but it’s one factor that may gain you better positioning and lower cost per click prices, and is a component of Quality Score.

Here are 5 ways to improve your CTR:

1)    Theme, Theme, Theme!

Keep your ad groups tightly themed.

Group like keywords into one ad group. For instance, if users are searching “Napa Valley Vacation” and “Napa Valley Lodging,”  keep those terms and their “siblings” in two separate ad groups – vacation and lodging.

Write  your ad(s) to include those specific terms in the copy.

The specific search terms will then be bolded in your ad in the search results, catching the user’s eye and helping to increase CTR.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: PPC Pointers, SEM

Best Practices for AdWords Sitelink and Product Extensions

March 25, 2011 By

If you spend time in AdWords then you know that there are countless ways to enhance your Google ads.

Don’t get overwhelmed, one of the easiest (and most profitable) enchantments you should spend on time is AdWord’s Product and Sitelink Extensions.

Do it right from the start – learn the best practices for using the extensions in Carrie Hill’s newest Search Engine Land Article – How To & When To Use Product and Sitelink Ad Extensions.

While you are in learning mode, check out How and When to Use Google’s Ad Extensions and How to Increase Your Click Through Rate with Ad Sitelinks.

Filed Under: PPC Pointers

Who Said Google AdWords was Perfect?

March 23, 2011 By

Dear AdWords,

Thank you for this cost per click (CPC) recommendation:

This might seem reasonable to you at the moment, but we will check back later to see if you have another suggestion.  (Maybe you are sleepy?)

Love,

Us

Filed Under: PPC Pointers, Words of Wisdom

Helpful AdWords Resources

March 22, 2011 By

Google AdWords account maintenance is not an easy-breezy task, and sometimes it can be downright difficult if you run into an issue or you don’t have time to stay on top of the latest news, tips, and insight.

Here are a few quick links to help you find answers to issues that might be plaguing you and resources that can provide you with more advanced knowledge of the intricacies of Google AdWords and managing your account.

AdWords specific resources include:

AdWords Help Center

  • Find formal help documents written by Google or search through their help forum and find a variety of answers to issues that other AdWords advertisers have encountered.
  • If you can’t find something in the AdWords Help Center, try searching the Help Forum using a variety of search phrases.  This can be time intensive, but you might find your answer with some digging.  Look for replies to posts from actual Google Employees if possible.

Inside AdWords

  • Find out about AdWords updates, new features, tips, tools and articles.
  • RSS Feed this to get news and updates as they post.

AdWords Classroom

  • Review free online training videos and tutorials.
  • This is a great resource if you prefer visual assistance to document style instructions.

If you would like third-party advice that isn’t Google cookie-cutter, here are some great additional resources:

[Read more...]

Filed Under: PPC Pointers, SEM

AdWords Performance Averages from 101 Lodging Websites

March 15, 2011 By

Google AdWords is used by a majority of lodging operators to promote their website in search engines.

A hotel is constantly optimizing its AdWords account to maximize ROI.  A tough question asked by many hotel marketers is not just “what is my ROI?” and “How do I compare to the market? ” but, “Are others spending more or less?”

In an effort to try to answer some of those questions, we looked at Google Analytics for 101 lodging websites. 59 of those websites had AdWords data.  The 59 include hotels, vacation rentals, resorts and inns.

We found that the average lodging website got 6,825 AdWords clicks during February, 2011:

  • That is down from about 10,000 clicks a year ago.
  • For those sites that used AdWords, AdWords accounted for 12% of their visits during February 2011.
  • The average per-click price was $1.24.

Of those 59 lodging website, 45 of them had their e-commerce tracking turned on and setup.  Because this smaller group was tracking $ revenue, we were able to generate a few other interesting averages:

  • The average revenue generated in February, 2011 from AdWords was $33,478.
  • The average ROI was 16 (for every $1 spent, $16 in revenue was generated

How does your AdWords performance compare to those averages?

Filed Under: PPC Pointers

Increase Your CTR with AdWords Sitelinks

March 10, 2011 By

In a September, 2010 AdWords article by Trent Blizzard, he showed you a cool new AdWords feature that improves your click-through-rates (CTR) called Ad Sitelinks.

Did any of you put this info to good use and apply it to your AdWords campaigns?
If the answer is no, you are missing out!

Here is a quick snapshot of five random Blizzard Internet clients’ data from the last 30 days:

Client Search CTR Sitelink CTR
A 7.55% 19.29%
B 9.66% 13%
C 7.67% 25.34%
D 7.26% 9.87%
E 7.06% 17.12%
Average 7.84% 16.924%

You can see that on average, these 5 clients saw that their Ad Sitelink CTR’s were almost a full 10% (or double) higher than their Search CTR’s.

That should be enough proof to get you motivated and add Sitelinks to your campaigns today!

Here is an example of Ad Sitelinks:

Did you know that we are Google AdWords Certified Partner Company? We are!

Contact us today if you need AdWords assistance; we offer both a-la-care AdWords plans as well as comprehensive online strategies.

Filed Under: PPC Pointers, SEM
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