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If you are using an analytic program, you have likely encountered the power of tracking your paid advertising efforts by utilizing tracking tags on your URLs.  But can tracking tags actually do more harm than good?  Are you using the right tracking methodology to measure your campaigns effectiveness?

I was recently asked these questions from a colleague of mine who was wondering what the best way to track a text link from another website with IndexTools Analytics.   In short, I advised that the easiest way was to set up the campaign in the analytics to track visitors from the referring parent domain URL versus using a tracking tag because it would avoid duplicate content and also pass link juice to the website.  However, when tracking PPC visitors, its best to track from the landing page URL with a unique tag.  Clear as mud right?  Allow me to elaborate…

If you set up your analytics to track a referring or entry page URL such as www.url.com/?source=websitelink that’s published on another website, the good news is that it will track the visitor in the right bucket.  However, the bad news is that you run the risk that a search engine will crawl that URL and treat it as a unique page which unfortunately looks like an exact replica of www.url.com/ thus potentially diluting your PageRank.  To correct this, a better methodology would be to set your analytics to look for the referring parent URL (like www.url.com) if the link appears on more than one page of the same website or set it to track the exact referring URL such as www.url.com/page-that-your-link-appears-on if its on a single page.  By doing so, you will avoid the duplicate content issue and also receive link credit.

When tracking PPC campaigns, this is usually not possible because most PPC vendors like Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. place your ads on more than just one site and also would be confused with your organic search visitors.  To remedy this, setting your analytics to look for a unique landing page entry URL such as www.url.com/?source=adwords will allow your analytics to count all the visitors that was delivered by that advertising network regardless from where they arrived from.

If you are currently using tracking tags on your advertising campaigns, don’t panic. You only need to begin worrying about websites that provide a direct link to your website and many don’t for internal tracking purposes.   In addition, your analytics solution likely has all of your campaigns located in a central place where you can begin your search for websites that you are currently tracking.  With a little investigation, you should be able to locate campaigns and revise them with ease.

For more information on how to deal with tracking tags and other tips, please visit Google, duplicate content caused by URL parameters, and you

If you are currently using Google Adwords, you may be interested to hear that Google just made some improvements to its quality score algorithm. In case you are not entirely sure, Google Adwords quality score is a major determinant in how much an advertiser ranks and pays for their keywords relative to competitors. Google’s quality score is based on several factors including but not limited to:

1. Click Through Rate (CTR)
2. Relevance of keywords in relation to its Ad Group
3. Quality of your landing pages
4. Account history, which is measured by the CTR of all the ads and keywords in your account
5. Relevance of the keyword/ad to the search query

Essentially, the new quality score adds several new components to increase the relevancy of Google’s search and content network results:

1. Real-time calculation of relevancy of keywords/ad to search queries
2. Keywords will no longer given “inactive” status
3. First page bids will replace minimum bids

Probably the most notable variable above is the real time calculation of keywords and ads because campaign optimization enhancements will have an immediate effect within Google’s network. As the landscape of PPC advertisers is highly dynamic, changing ad text and keywords will likely occur more frequently as competitors will want to continually want higher positions and strive for a lower cost per click. In addition, “first page bids” will enable advertisers to see how much it will cost to receive first page exposure without too much guessing with max bids.

There are a lot of mixed opinions on how the above will benefit an advertiser. Over at the Marketing Pilgrim, Andy Beal has a humorous ending to his post in that he claims these new changes will immediately translate into more revenue for Google. I have to say that although I agree with that statement, I believe that there are many positive outcomes for SEMs that keep a watchful eye on their PPC campaigns. Moreover, I look at these changes as weeding out lesser experienced campaign managers or do it yourselfers that don’t understand the importance of a well structured and organized Adwords account, one of the most critical components in setting up a PPC campaign in my opinion.

In any regards, if you haven’t read about these recent changes and are a Google Adwords advertiser, I would take a moment to familiarize yourself with these recent enhancements.

Its been a very busy week for us here at TMA E-Marketing…

iBizRadio- Thanks to our talented web developer, our business podcasting radio is back on the air.  Its been a rather bumpy road to get this back up and running since our server was attacked earlier this year.  Long story short, our podcasting radio station had to be relocated to another server and reprogrammed.  Its still in its beta format, but we plan on working out the bugs in the near future.

Radiospectives- We are pleased to announce that we are on our 3rd consecutive week and are thrilled with the response we have received.   So thrilled, that we have decided to more forward with more interviews in 2009.  If your a business that would like to be interviewed, please don’t hesitate to contact us.  As a side note, Radiospectives was recently approved and available via iTunes store.  (It’s free)

TMA E-Marketing- This week we were approved by the SEO Consultants Directory which only showcases 114 SEO firms (as of this writing) from around the world.  Each SEO firm is reviewed by a peer group from which only 30% of the submissions are actually approved.  In any regards, we are happy to be part of a great SEO resource.

That’s it for now!

A common question we receive is whether a business should consider refresh or redesign their existing website. Fielding website design questions like these are always a little touchy because many companies have an attachment to their current website that likely took a long time to get it where it is today. Additionally, complete website redesigns typically connotate higher cost, however is sometimes not the best choice given the business’s ROI objectives.

As I put my consulting hat on when I get in these tight spots, I usually start by defining the difference between the two. I believe that there lies many varying opinions on the matter and that no two are the same. Generally speaking, I define a website refresh as a website needing new content or imagery that doesn’t significantly effect the main design. Websites that are usually 2 - 3 years old fall into this category for a variety of reasons such as dated content, new products or services are available, or the website requires some minor image enhancements. Companies that are considering refreshing their website should ask themselves the following questions:

1. Is the appearance of their website in keeping industry competitors?
2. Do the marketing messages remain consistent with the brands strength?
3. Is the website achieving a healthy ROI that could be enhanced by a website refresh?

If you answered “no” to any of the above questions, then a website redesign is likely in your future. Redesigns in contrast to website refresh’s encompass everything that is mentioned above with the addition of a complete new design. I would be inclined to guess that over 80% of the websites we encounter fall into this category as most of them are older than 2 - 3 years or significant industry competition has raised the bar enough to require continual innovative redesign. What seems like a potentially long costly project, is likely a blessing in disguise because a website redesign focuses attention to all of the variables that affect conversion (what your website will ultimately produce.) Moreover, a major component to the conversion equation is offering a perceived experience (by design) that is better than your competitors.

When you put it all together, consumers and businesses are savvy enough to formulate a “stereotype” of your business just by your websites appearance and content. Simply put, if your website doesn’t clearly communicate to its target market with these key variables in mind, then a website refresh or redesign will be likely required to achieve your business objectives.

Web analytics may not seem like a hot topic to some. But the use of web analytics in my opinion has gained much popularity since the introduction of free tools like Google analytics. I think that this is great because it shifts general focus from the state of promotion, to user behavior of a website. Ultimately those that are able to understand their web users are in line to win the game in the long term. Why? Anyone can purchase advertising, but getting your target demographic do what you want them to do is real art.

One fundamental question that your business must ask when choosing web analytics is whether you need a free or paid service. What seems like a no-brainer kind of question, is really not all that simple. First, there are literally some companies that believe that because they have the most expensive solution that it’s the best for their needs. Oh yeah, except of course when you ask them how they use it, only to find out that not even the IT guy knows how to interpret a simple report. Then there are companies that run multi-million dollar businesses that use free solutions because the sheer cost of a paid solution appears too high to incur.

Believe me when i say that there is no perfect or magic solution that fits all. Foremost, the solution that you choose should match to your overall experience with web tracking along with your business goals. In the senarios above, i would say that purchasing a solution that you wont utilize is probably the worst followed by a free solution that is out of its league when it comes to business goals. Which leads to a fundamental question:

Which web analytics program is right for by business?
In my opinion, there are three key components that web analytic programs offer:

1. Traffic- knowing where your visitors come from, whether you paid for them or not, and where they go when they get there.
2. Trending- basically identifying site wide user behavior & identifying what actions visitors are taking.
3. Automation- using statistical programs to aid in making purchasing decisions.

The first two components believe it or not, can be handled by most free analytic programs like Google, StatCounter, and soon to be released Yahoo! Analytics (formerly, IndexTools.) As a general rule of thumb, if you have over 50K unique visitors a month and use your website for lead generation or e-commerce, I would recommend using a paid solution.

The last component relates to automating the tough task of monitoring your paid advertising programs as well as user behavior. This comes in very useful in managing very difficult campaigns that require the aid of electronic automation to anticipate user behavior. For example, if your website garners 100’s of purchases or leads per day, a bid automation plugin would significantly help reduce waste expenditures as your watchful eyes likely cannot micro manage 1000’s of keywords. If you find yourself in this predicament, a professional solution like that is offered by Omniture or Coremetrics is a wise investment.

As i stated above, choosing the right solution is not an easy task. If your new to the whole tracking game, you might consider free analytical package is best while you learn the ropes. However, if you expect your startup to become a multi-million dollar web property overnight, perhaps a paid solution will have a better pay-off in the long run as you gain more familiarity with the program. Lastly, if you are not sure whats best for your business, ask a company that has experience with web tracking or choose a web analytic supplier that has live support/training. Regardless, staying on top of your web analysis is a wise decision no matter how you slice it. Its just a matter of how you interpret it.