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Thursday, March 15th, 2012
Facebook’s position as the biggest, most popular social network is unassailable, right? Even with the force of the world’s biggest search engine, its “nearest competitor”, Google+, has failed to take any significant slice of the social pie.
Up steps Pinterest, then, which in the past year has seen a seismic Big Bang of activity which some commentators have said shows just how fragile Facebook’s popularity may be.
After all, Facebook rode in on the waves of social popularity created by MySpace: and, well, MySpace kind of crumbled and died as a result. Will Pinterest be the next big thing?
More than 11 million monthly US visitors suggests that, perhaps, Pinterest could eventually rival Facebook in the popularity stakes.
For those who can remember back about five years, it was mainly females who made the switch from MySpace to Facebook, signaling a seachange for respective boyfriends, husbands and prospective love interests who reluctantly followed along.
Funnily enough, the mainstays of Pinterest’s early success have also, on the whole, been female. That alone, of course, doesn’t really tell us anything (accusations of fickleness are best kept quiet), but the rise of interest groups on Pinterest is making it an evermore tempting distraction from Facebook’s news feeds.
But is it worth putting any effort into Pinterest? At least, before Facebook’s popularity truly starts to wane?
Perhaps not. But it’s well worth ascertaining how Pinterest is affecting your other online activity: whether that’s PPC marketing campaigns, search engine optimisation or social media marketing.
One clear way to get a handle on this is to track how traffic is accessing your sites from Pinterest: and for those au fait with using Google Analytics, the program can provide valuable feedback on visits, conversions and engagement from Pinterest users.
Mashable’s Social Media pages carry an interesting breakdown of ways to track Pinterest traffic in Analytics this month.
Amongst them, users are encouraged to set up traffic sources referral reports, using pinterest.com or m.pinterest.com to discover how visits from Pinterest weigh up against your averages. Set some goals and you can really track how effective a referrer Pinterest is.
Custom reports will help you track articles or pieces which are “pinned” on Pinterest, how many visitors saw the pins and followed the links, whether these are repeat visitors, how long they stayed to see your products, and whether they converted, bounced or helped score a goal.
The Analytics dashboard also allows you to monitor daily visits from Pinterest, which come from mobiles, and the usual info such as popular items, visit length and whether Pinterest is assisting goal completion.
Finally, Multi-Channel Funnels has an assisted conversions feature, which, when filtered for Pinterest, should show you how many times the site helped you convert a visit. You could find Pinterest is a great signposter, but not a great path to conversion – this at least gives you something to build on.
Of course, for now, if you’re already embarking on large scale social media marketing campaigns, it’s not worth pulling the plug on Facebook and jumping ship to Pinterest just yet. It is, however, definitely worth some time investigating whether Pinterest provides another great marketing opportunity: or just a flash-in-the-can fad.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in SEO, Pay Per Click Services, Multilingual Search Marketing and Website Conversion Enhancement services.
Tags: conversions, facebook, Google Analytics, pinned, pins, Pinterest, referrals, site visits, social, traffic
Posted in Social Media Marketing
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Monday, October 3rd, 2011
Google has provided users of its Analytics tool with a significant boost – launching a number of new features – according to an article published by Search Engine Watch.
Having lacked the inclusion of real-time reports for a number of years, Google Analytics – a useful tool in monitoring PPC marketing campaigns – has now rectified this with this latest update.
As well as producing reports with a 24-hour delay, the feature will now produce reports that display updates showing site activity as it happens.
Changing graphics are amongst the displays that will provide users with detailed information regarding site views, country source and pages viewed.
Available only in the latest version, the real-time reports can be found in the Dashboard area from this week onwards.
Google Analytics’ new interface is to be introduced at some point this week; Search Engine Watch states that users will be able to find the new interface under Home tab.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in Search Engine Marketing & Internet Marketing.
Tags: Google, Google Analytics, PPC marketing
Posted in Search Engine News
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Wednesday, August 24th, 2011
Google’s latest web analytics move has seen two considerable updates made to Analytics and may provide interesting reading for those in the search engine marketing industry, according to an article published by Search Engine Watch.
The changes will alter the way in which Session IDs are calculated, as well as referrals coming in from Google Image Searches now being counted as standard search traffic.
Session IDs are typically used to produce an accurate insight into user behaviour when using your site. Sessions were previously ended when:
- A time period of 30 minutes had elapsed between page views by a site visitor.
- The end of a day was reached.
- A visitor closed their browser.
While the first two items in that list remain applicable, the session will no longer end just because the browser has been closed.
Google will now assume that the user may have closed the browser due to technical difficulties. Also added to the list, a new session will begin if a user leaves a site and then subsequently re-enters, but from a new source.
Meanwhile image referrals will also see a significant change.
Traditionally incoming traffic from images.google.com have always registered as referrals. Now this traffic will feature in Google’s organic search traffic data.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – specialists in Search Engine Optimisation and Internet Marketing.
Tags: Google, Google Analytics, search marketing
Posted in Search Engine News
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Friday, June 24th, 2011
Google has improved its free Google Analytics tool to help track click conversions more thoroughly.
The new Multi-Channel Funnels feature will help businesses understand where conversions are generated.
The old Analytics would only tell businesses where users had clicked prior to conversion. So, if they had followed a Facebook advert through to a Google ad click, Analytics would only displayed the Google click.
The new feature allows businesses to trace exactly how users have arrived and converted on their site.
It will display a more tangible pathway from the original click – whether it was on Facebook, Google or elsewhere – right through to conversion.
The Multi-Channel Funnels will also help analyse how different website marketing strategies are converging – such as email marketing, campaigns, organic search results and paid advertising.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in SEO, Pay Per Click Services, Multilingual Search Marketing and Website Conversion Enhancement services.
Tags: conversion, Google Analytics, multi-channel funnels, search
Posted in Website Conversion Improvement
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Wednesday, June 16th, 2010
A search demand gap analysis is an essential part of a search engine marketing audit to check how well your search engine optimisation and/or pay-per-click marketing is working for your company. It will show you the commercial opportunity available from search engine marketing and compare your current performance against this opportunity, so showing sales growth potential. It’s often completed as part of a quarterly or annual review, but due to seasonal fluctuations in search volumes and changes in Google’s ranking approaches and competitor activity it should also be completed more regularly; we suggest monthly.
Here’s an example of a gap analysis. As, you can see it’s based around the main strategic high volume generic for a particular market, in this case related to LCD TVs.
Benefits of a gap analysis
A gap analysis will show you where you are underperforming for particular keyphrases or products and you can then set goals and then brief an agency or colleagues to take actions to improve performance in these areas.
A gap analysis also has the benefit that it enables you to compare performance of your search engine optimisation and pay per click marketing. Since these channels are often treated separately, it helps bring these together in an integrated way to compare their relative performance. For example, in the example above where bounce rates are relatively high or market share is relatively low the cells are shaded in red.
What is a search marketing gap analysis?
A gap analysis is a comparison of the potential visits, leads or sales from searchers arriving on the site against what the company is actually achieving. It should focus on high volume phrases which are typically two to three keyword phrases including brand searches. However, a form of the analysis can also be completed for longer ‘long-tail’ keyphrases made up of more than 4 keywords.
What should you measure for a search gap analysis?
As for the review of the performance of all traffic sources, the main measures you need to look at are traffic volume, quality and cost:
- Traffic volume – measured through the number of actual visits from paid and natural search. Actual visits are then compared with potential visits
- Traffic quality – measured by bounce rate, lower if the quality is good. Also measured by conversion rate to lead or sale, higher is better.
- Traffic value – The value generated through sales or leads can be compared against the cost of search marketing. The revenue per visit can be calculated for each keyphrase and for pay per click can be compared to visitor acquisition costs – amount bid.
These measures are all available from your web analytics system such as Google Analytics from which data is extracted for the analysis.
You should also measure the percentage traffic gap which can be calculated by comparing the number of visits against demand indicated by a keyword research tool. We recommend using the Google Keyword Tool to review demand in a single country. It’s best to select the exact match reporting although it can be worthwhile to select phrase match for a different form of long-tail review.
About the author
Dr Dave Chaffey is Insights Director at ClickThrough Marketing. As Insights Director he’s responsible for the quality of analysis and reporting used to review and improve the performance of clients’ natural and paid search campaigns. He’s also involved in consulting on digital and search strategy for ClickThrough’s clients through analytics-based audits typically using Google Analytics for which he holds the Google Analytics Individual Qualification (GAIQ).
You can also read his advice on best practice and updates on the latest developments in digital marketing at his Smart Insights Digital Marketing advice site. Dave is a recognised expert in digital marketing, listed in 2004 by the Chartered Institute of Marketing as one of 50 marketing ‘gurus’ worldwide who have shaped the future of Marketing. Dave is author of five best-selling business books including Internet Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice and eMarketing eXcellence (with PR Smith). He is also author of the Econsultancy best practice guides to Search Engine Optimisation, Paid Search Marketing, Web site design and Managing Digital Channels. Dave also contributed the foreword to ClickThrough’s first two search engine marketing books.
Tags: gap analysis, Google Analytics, internet marketing, keyword research, Pay Per Click (PPC), Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, Web Analytics
Posted in Blog, Keywords, Pay Per Click (PPC), SEO, Web Analytics
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Wednesday, August 26th, 2009
We are very pleased today to announce the launch of our add-on for phone call tracking with Google Analytics.
This add-on allows you to track phone call conversions from any source – banners, affiliates, forums, as well as PPC and organic searches. The importance of demonstrating ROI to internet marketing clients can never be under-estimated, particularly during economic rough patches, and this analytics add-on does precisely that.
We have been offering phone call tracking as a free service to clients for some years, but this latest version of the tool adds deeper functionality to enhance the service.
Tags: Google Analytics, Pay Per Click (PPC)
Posted in Google, Pay Per Click (PPC), SEO, Web Analytics
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