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Using ‘SeoTools’ Excel add-in for PPC

April 19, 2012 By Leave a Comment

In my last post I spoke about how much I rely on Excel to effectively and efficiently run paid search campaigns, and gave an example of one particular piece of actionable analysis. Today I want to focus specifically on how you can leverage the SeoTools for Excel add-in: Not for SEO, but for PPC.

Introducing Niels Bosma’s SeoTools

If you aren’t aware of this fantastic add-in, then I’m delighted to be able to introduce you to an essential addition to your search marketing tool kit. The tool itself was developed by developer named Niels Bosma, based in Sweden, and essentially extends the powers of Excel by allowing it to reach out to the web and grab useful pieces of information.

From a user perspective it does this by arming you with a range of new formulas. For example, once installed you will find that =HtmlTile() function has appeared and will allow you to grab the title for the url in the cell referenced:

 Example of HtmlTitle formula

Further functions include, but are not limited to:

  • LinkCount
  • HtmlCanonical
  • HtmlMetaDescription
  • CountWords
  • FindDuplicateContent

For more information and to download and install SeoTools, visit the project website

SeoTools? What’s that got to do with PPC?

Feeling a bit left out by all this SEO love, I soon discovered that there are plenty of useful ways I could use the add-in to help me with the task of managing and optimising paid search campaigns, so have since integrated it quite heavily into my work flow. Today I wanted to share a couple of the techniques and tools that I have built out since starting to work with SeoTools, which hopefully provide a starting point for your own adventures.

Example 1: Finding & Correcting Destination URL Errors

Websites are not static in anyway, especially when it comes to pages and urls – url structures and formats can change, pages can be retired, pages can be redirected by 3xx rules, pages can drop off the face of the earth for any number of reasons! As a PPC account manager it is vital that you don’t accept you will always be kept in the loop, so should always be checking that your traffic is still going to the correct pages, and most importantly, isn’t going to an error page of any sort.

This sheet takes a raw export from AdWords Editor, uses the HttpStatus() function to lookup the url, and then:

a) provides the correct url for errors (including for 301′s as, although this is not major, it’s good housekeeping to not rely on redirects) and

b) outputs a list of urls and details the error.

Most of the work is done in the hidden ‘URL lookup’ sheet – this essentially references your urls, looks up the http status first instance (to save making unnecessary server requests) and provides the correct url for redirects or highlights errors.

Example of the URL lookup sheet searching for http responses:

Example of worksheet output

 To use the workbook, simply:

1) Copy the advert view from AdWords Editor and paste into sheet 1

2) On the tab ’2 – New Adverts’ adjust filter in column G to exclude ‘No Change’ cells

3) On the last sheet 3 – Highlighted Urls, exclude cells matching ’0′ in the filter on column B

Download the full Excel workbook

Example 2: Price, Product & Stock Reference

When running an ecommerce campaign having the correct details in your adverts is crucial for ensuring a relevent experience is provided to the user (this improving your conversion rates and ROI). Again, as the marketer, it’s best not to assume that all stocking and price details are passed on to you as a priority.

Using the swiss army knife of the tools, the XpathOnUrl you can again paste in your campaign export and use it as the basis for a look-up.

What we are going to utilise is the html class or id which identifies certain bits of information – for example, if you inspect the html of an Amazon product page, you will find that prices are displayed within the class name ‘priceLarge’

 

So to utilise this with the XpathOnUrl, we need to find the Xpath (if you are not familiar with the language check out the wikipedia page). This can be done incredibly simply by following these steps:

 1) In Chrome, install the subtly monikered PsychoXPath plugin

2) Open the page you type you want to get the info from and highlight it


3) Right-click the highlight section and select ‘PsychoXPath > Element (Short)’

You should now have the correct element on your clipboard, so just paste this into cell B2 on the ‘Details’ worksheet, this becomes the reference for the sheet.

Example of XPath elements for Amazon product pages:

 Example of Xpath input details

Similarly, grab the ‘in stock’ message from the site your are working with, and paste into cell B3

Once done, add an example url (one with products currently in stock) to B6 – this just gives us the exact text with which to reference stock statuses.

 Getting the correct in stock message

[Note: to ensure we are not overloading the servers by pasting in huge lists of urls, I'm using the built-in BuildHttpDownloaderConfig to create a pause between events. It will mean sheets take longer to populate, but is just good manners in my opinion]

Now it’s just a case of once again pasting in an export of your ads direct from AdWords Editor and this will give you a list of incorrect prices on price-led adverts, and also highlight any items which are out of stock.

Example of sheet output:

Example output

Download the full Excel workbook

The sheets provided are essentially simplified guides to highlight the potential of the plug-in, but should still be useful for running these tasks. Hopefully these examples will give you plenty of inspiration for creating your own custom sheets which take advantage of the excellent functionality that SeoTools adds.

Filed Under: Google Adwords, SEM, Tips

How Mind Mapping Your Niche Could Improve Your Marketing Output

February 24, 2012 By 3 Comments

Do you remember being sat at School doing mind maps? Mind maps were great ways of exploring topics, questions, subjects, events, characters and were great indicators of just how vast one simple idea or area could become.

These benefits of mind mapping shouldn’t have just stopped in those distant classroom days, in fact a simple mind map could be exactly what you need to improve your marketing output and start dominating your niche, and here’s why.


Why Should You Mind Map Your Niche?

Image of mindmap on bloggingMind maps are a great way to plan projects, events and more traditionally assignments, but mind maps could also be of great benefit to your marketing output.

When you consider your subject area be it plumbing, screen printing, fast food or whatever it might be, there is a wide array of topical content within that subject area that can discussed, published and broadcasted across the web.

For instance a branch off of video could be video distribution, which could encompass online and offline distribution, such as DVDs, USB sticks or video sharing sites. From just that one branch you could create an article or eBook on anything from the best DVDs to use for playable video or for storing video data files, to what the benefits are of hosting your video on a social media platform than on a video sharing site.

One branch from your primary subject area could generate reams of marketable content for your website, blog, webinar or conference. By sitting down with your team and thoroughly mind mapping out your niche you can create a multipurpose content marketing schedule that could dictate your marketing output for the entire year!

Mind Maps Create Great Content

The extent and depth you can map out your niche is incredible when you get down to it. The length and breadth of topics and angles you can take on those topics provides you with endless article titles and tips that you can market on and off the web.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks with creating great content worthy of marketing is coming up with an arsenal of marketable content to fuel a consistent and worthwhile marketing output, and mind mapping could be the answer to this problem.

Bloggers, businesses and brands will know all too well that coming up with content for infographics, webinars, videos or for industry conferences isn’t always easy, but by arming yourself with an almost limitless plethora of subjects to discuss and market through mind mapping you’ll never be stuck for remarkable content again.

Mind Maps Improve Social Shares

The extent of your mind maps will in some way reflect the array of keywords online users type into search engines everyday to find specific answers to their questions within your niche.

Typically only a handful of short-tail keywords related to your website, blog, YouTube Channel or social media profile may come up in the search results, and that handful of keywords may not answer the query online users are searching for. However, by creating in-depth content that explores every topic and area of your mind map, you’ll more than likely have created content that actually answers the online users query search.

By becoming one of the rare online sources to go into every possible branch of your niche, your content will be much more sharable to a social audience. Social media users will be grateful for your helpful content and share it with other online users who may have been trying to find a similar answer to their query.

When something is hard to find on the web online users are much more appreciative and ready to share content when they finally find the answer they were looking. If your mind map can truly encompass every possible subject, topic and angle in your niche, then your site will become that valuable and sharable source of information for online users.

Mind Maps Improve Search Engine Optimisation

All that super specific content you create in your niche will undoubtedly be of huge value to your SEO campaigns. Search engines like Google love similar keywords, and by creating great content that uses similar words to your keywords you’ll be vastly improving your SERPs for your main keywords.

For instance the word Film has similar keywords that include cinema, DVD, video, television, festival, premier, preview, trailer and release date. Those similar keywords all leave you with mini mind maps in which to branch off and explore to create exceptional and valuable content to boost your SEO. Not to mention those similar keywords will also have keywords to branch out from as well. The levels of similar keywords and the content you can create for those keywords are almost endless, and the SEO value generated from creating content for those keywords would be limitless.

Summary

It’s amazing how a simple idea taught to us from way back in those distant School days can become a powerful marketing tool today. Mind maps are a premise rich in simplicity, and an even richer one in marketing value. Mind maps help to really explore every topic in your niche, and those topics in turn create SEO keyword opportunities to boost your SERPs, and the great content you create for those purposes will see your social shares hit new exciting heights.

Filed Under: internet marketing, marketing, Tips

How To ‘Excel’ At Search Marketing

December 16, 2011 By 6 Comments

I love Excel. There you go, I’ve said it. It’s not even a love/hate type thing – I genuinely find that my life is a better place because of this wonderful, agile, willing gem of a piece of software.

Excel Mug

Gushing, maybe, but in the 7 years I’ve worked in search engine marketing (SEM), I have almost certainly used Excel every day for one purpose or another.  So what I really wanted to do in over the course of a couple of posts was share some of the key formulas that are most useful in this line of work and then expand these into examples of how I would use them on a daily basis to analyse and optimise campaigns.  

 

Formulas With Specific Benefits For SEM

LEN(text)

What does it do?

Counts the number of characters used in a given piece of text

Why is this useful for SEM?

Whether writing advert copy for PPC or meta descriptions/titles etc for SEO getting a visual aid within Excel can really help you make the most of these characters available in these situations (especially combined with conditional formatting):AdWords Using Len Formula

VLOOKUP()

What does it do?

Uses a given text or numeric input to reference related information, grabbing it out of a table or list.

Why is this useful for SEM?

There are endless instances when you will be given data from two sources which need matched up. As an example, it could be your web analytics tool data and customer details from your offline sales team. This is probably the formula that’s given me the most satisfaction, and is probably one of the most useful single formulas in the toolbox:

2 Semi-Useful Data Sets:

Using VLOOKUP

One Even More Useful Data Set:

Tables without vlookup

SUMIF(), SUMIFS()

What does it do?

Allows you to specify conditions on which to add data from a specific range or array of data. For example, turning it spoken word logic you could have:

“Sum values from the specified column IF they match criteria 1 AND they match criteria 2”

Why is this useful for SEM?

With so many sources, mediums and keywords we will often find ourselves with raw data sets which are no use to man nor beast and are left thinking “If only there was a quick way to tidy this up into some meaningful order”. There are often many ways to tidy up data, such as creatimg subtotals, but I find SUMIFS to be the quickest and most flexible way:

Example of using the SUMIFS function

The Real Magic

Now, all these formulas are well and good, but the real power comes in learning to combine them in the right way, at the right time, to get actionable insights.  I’ll go into this further with some walkthroughs of sheets which I regularly use for SEM analysis, but here’s a quick example which illustrates what I mean:

My ‘Keyword Category Potential’ Analysis Sheet:

For this report, we take data from our Google Analytics account, regarding current traffic levels and a success metrics, such as the ecommerce conversion rate, and match it against traffic estimate data pulled from the Google Keyword Tool.

The key requirement of actionable data is that there is significant context created by the chosen metrics. This is achieved by combining the click and traffic estimate data to get a rough ‘share’ of potential traffic. Pulling this into the table below is done on the fly by typing a keyword into the ‘Category’ column, and relying on the SUMIFS in to pull the relevant pieces of information from other sheets which use VLOOKUPs (amongst other formulas) to tidy up raw output from the tools used:Example Table

The final piece of the puzzle is to make it even easier to get the actions to take away from the analysis. I like to do this by populating a 2-axis scatter chart. A quick glance at the below tells me that there are a few keyword areas that fit the bill of having both a high potential to get more traffic, and a higher than average conversion rate:

Chart showing category metrics across 2-axis

Quickly and easily we can take from this that there are 3 categories of good converting keywords which have potential to drive more traffic

—————–

Note: all data sets have been arbitrarily created for the purpose of the post, so no client information is included whatsoever

Filed Under: landing page optimization, SEM, SEM Training, Tips, Web Analytics, Web metrics, Website Optimization

Passwords, authorised accounts and back ups – keeping safe

December 13, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Given the time of year we’re wrapping up warm in the UK, enjoying(?) Christmas shopping and looking forward to a few days off work. You may also have been wondering about some of the less positive things associated with this time of year; burst pipes at home or in unattended offices and security when shopping online.

Passwords – the basics

The past couple of years have seen high profile stories relating to databases being hacked and personal details including passwords being compromised. In the autumn the Good to Know campaign started appearing in print and online adverts. This collaboration between Google and the UK Citizen’s Advice Bureau provides a set of resources for those wanting to learn more about internet security and how to stay safe on-line. Best practice for passwords include:

  • Avoid the obvious passwords, like Password or 123456, the majority of us are guilty at some point of using what can  be termed risky passwords, that is proper words with little or no numbers or special characters
  • Make sure your password is at the very least 8 characters long – ideally it should be 10
  • Use a mixture of upper/lower case letters, numbers and special characters, this makes it much harder to work out your password and it opens up millions and millions of possible variations.
  • Don’t use the same password across your important accounts like your blog, google, social media sites or affiliate accounts. I fell foul of this one years ago when my password was gained from a less secure account and then used in my paypal account. It’s that simple, once your oh-so-hard-to-guess password has been identified then all your accounts where you use it are at risk.

For more information regarding passwords a good place to start is the Google’s “Good to Know” set of resources.

Screenshot of how secure is my password

 

Even more fun is looking at http://howsecureismypassword.net/ and while you may not wish to enter an actual password you use, it gives you an idea of how even simply adding a number and special character can increase the time it may take to crack…try it with sauages, then add a number somewhere in the word, and finally add a special character. Sometimes a good password is a nonesense phrase or statement and then just mix it up with different cases, numbers and characters – just don’t go choosing sprinklecoateddoughnuts if you’re known for having a fondness for them!

Passwords – authorised accounts

The ongoing conflict between convenience and security! Many of us authorise widgets, applications, external services to connect with our key on-line entities e.g. a Facebook widget that Tweets your status updates, a widget that notifies you when you have a new story. What happens when you change your password on your main account, should you have to reauthorise all those add ons? What if your account had been compromised and a couple of new applications had been authorised that would allow the unauthorised person to still access your account and post or tweet as you?

Thanks to Adrian Kingsley-Hughes for flagging this one in relation to twitter but it’s worth taking note and periodically checking out the applications that you’ve authorised to interact with any of your blogs, or social media accounts. 

Burst pipes – Lost Passwords – Back up plans!

So what if the worst happens and your password is compromised, or you’re on holiday over Christmas and spill eggnog over your laptop, wrecking your hard drive? The best way to think about backups is – what would happen/how would I feel if everything got lost? 

  1. Make sure you’ve populated answers and emails in your password recovery settings. If you have populated this information, do you still have access to the recovery email address? Yes I’ve fallen into this trap, not updating my recovery email address when I changed jobs.
     
  2. Back ups for PCs, emails and online applications. We hate doing back ups, they take time that we could really be using somewhere else  Of course if you have a hosted blog then excellent, your provider will look after the back ups…but is that covered in your contract, are they daily or weekly backups? Perhaps you have an IT team who run back ups on the network, but what about those files you’ve not copied across to the network folder? Sometimes it may be best going for a “belt and braces” option and running your own back up on your important content or files. 
There are automatic back up programmes, password managers and many articles which can help you to work this out, but it’s worthwhile at the least looking at what your password security and back up current status is and then deciding if you want or need to take action. As you spotted I’m far from perfect when it comes to passwords, but I’ve learned from my mistakes and the regular back up activities at Web Analytics World gives me a calming feeling of “it’s okay” for a little while every week!
Filed Under: Blogging, internet security, Tips Tagged With: , ,

Are these your top 10 biggest website mistakes?

September 22, 2011 By 2 Comments

Following on from my last post about building websites to take account of Social Media, I thought, seeing as I spend most of my life reviewing sites that I’d share some of the most common errors I see – these are not in any order and the list is not definitive, but hopefully they may strike a chord!

1) What’s it all about then?

If I see another website where I struggle to understand why on earth it was built in the first place, who it’s for, what it’s supposed to do or what I’m supposed to do on it, then, I will …… have seen an awful lot that fall in to this category. Websites need a purpose!

2) Build it and they will come?!

The key to a successful website is understanding your audience and building a site that offers value to them. Without knowing that, you’re on a hiding to nothing!

3) Accessibility isn’t for me Logo for Positive about Disabled People

There are laws and there are standards – make sure you follow them. Visually impaired and people with other disabilities use the web too you know!

4) Well I know where everything is!

Any usability study will tell you that when people are lost, they leave. Clear, logical navigation and tools to improve (such as breadcrumbs) are key.

5) Looks good in my designer’s office!

It looked great when you saw it on a 25″ widescreen monitor, on a safari browser. Now that you’re looking at it on a 17″ monitor using Internet Explorer 6 – it’s not so great! Ensure that you build for the widest possible audience.

6) They’ll get in touch if they really want to

Image of button saying Talk to UsYou build a site, you attract traffic through Search Engines and other mechanisms and then you leave site visitors to their own devices when it comes to what you want them to do – be clear, be bold. Make specific to the page the visitor is on.

7) Website – done. Now back to the day job.

You have a site which is invisible to the outside world – don’t get me wrong, there are occasions when you don’t want any profile, but most clients build a site to attract business, yet the site has either been built so the Search Engines avoid it like the plague, or there are no links in to it……

8) Build for now, we’ll think about tomorrow, tomorrow!

Think of your site as an apartment block. If you can consider what you’d like the block to look like over a 3-5 year period and then build the site – even if it’s the first storey, then at least you’ve got the architecture to allow you to continue to built. The amount of multi-storey bungalows I see!

9) My developer knows what I want

“I thought the guy knew what he was doing and gave him £1500 and my logo and he built me a site – now I find it has no search engine profile and I can’t update it myself”. True story and oh, so common. Always specify your requirements before starting.

10) We’ll get an enquiry one of these days……Image of magnifying glass over graph

Everyone says that Google Analytics is wonderful – question whether they use it and that’s a different matter. It’s as if by the very fact that Analytics is plugged in that the site will heal itself! Analytics are great, learn how to read them (Google’s Conversion University is great) and make decisions based on the information . Two words of warning – make sure that you filter yourself/ your developer out from the data and make sure that you treat the data with a certain amount of common sense – after all they only tell you what people did – not what they wanted to do!

Filed Under: analytics, Conversion Rate Optimization, Engage, Google Analytics, Tips, Web Analytics, Web Design, Web metrics

Blogging is Addictive

March 28, 2007 By 2 Comments

I think I have officially got my wife hooked on blogging. Earlier this year she started a blog called Aditi World and now she is always looking for tips and insight in order to grow her daily traffic numbers and subscribers. Every evening you can find us battling for use of the computer so we can update our respective blogs.

She’s a great writer to begin with and with my assistance on the SEM side of things her blog is ranking quite well for a lot of phrases related to restaurants, cities, movie reviews and activities she has written about. She doesn’t quite understand the way search engines index and rank sites therefore she is always curious on why her blog is not on the first page of the results for more generic keywords. Lately she’s been leaving useful comments on other blogs and has been submitting her blog to various blog directories such as My Blog Log and Blog Catalog.

If you have been wanting to start your own blog and want to hit the ground running try implementing the following suggestions (I had my wife do all of these):

- Post to your Blog Often. The fresher your content is the more search engines spiders will visit your blog.
- Don’t spam your Blog posts with the repetitive keywords
- If you want to see Search Engine Rankings consider a niche rather than a generic blog
- Become a part of communities in your niche (other blogs, forums)
- Sign up for a Google Alerts account you can find out when other bloggers post about the same topic. This will be useful in establishing relationships through commenting.
- Sign up for Technorati and also tag your content. Newer blogs should be patient with Technorati because it tends to update newer blogs slower then more authoritative ones.
- Use FeedBurner and offer subscriptions via email.
- Email your blog to your friends and family and have them pass it their contacts
- Have your significant other dedicate a post to you so you can receive more visitors and back links

Filed Under: Tips

28 Tips for being a Successful Domainer

March 20, 2007 By Leave a Comment

What is a Domainer?

A domainer is someone who earns a profit buying and selling domain names. The philosophy is similar to the stock market: buy low and sell high. Here are 28 tips, tools, techniques and financing options to get you started on your way to successful domaining.

The Aviva Directory has compiled very thorough list summarizing 28 tips on how to become successful at buying/selling domains. Their list starts off with some eye popping numbers by Marcus Frind and Yun Ye who were making $10,000 and $100,000 per day respectively.

The tips are divided up into 5 main categories:

- Domain Buying Strategies
- Financing Your Domaining
- Important Practices
- Techniques for Monetizing
- Tools for the Trade

Here is just a taste of the tips you’ll find but you’ll have to visit the Aviva Directory to get the entire list.

- Trademark Typo Domains.
One of the original domainer buying strategies was to hunt for any trademarked names that hadn’t yet been purchased, and failing that, to purchase typos of those domains.

- Trademark Typo Domains.
One of the original domainer buying strategies was to hunt for any trademarked names that hadn’t yet been purchased, and failing that, to purchase typos of those domains.

- Organize and auto-renew.
If you’re holding domains for longer than a year, it’s a very good idea to have them all set to auto-renew.

- Create traffic.
If you own domains that aren’t receiving a lot of type-in traffic, you may want to try to increase their value by getting them indexed into the search engines so that the eventual purchaser will find it easier to get the site to rank for relevant search engine results.

- Park and go.
While running your own PPC or adsense is the more lucrative solution, some domainers who are short on time or technical expertise choose to simply park domains at a service like Sedo.

Source: http://www.avivadirectory.com/domain/

Filed Under: Tips