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I've been able to track the initial referral URLs my buyers when they purchase a widget. Most are from search engines, while the rest are link referrals from related web sites. Now that I have this information, how do I take advantage of it?
Do I continue to building content pages around the keywords that are most effective? Least effective? Do I build content for related keywords (i.e. Google Sets)? Do I continue building link referrals? Do you suggest something completely different? Of course, I still want to build content or request links with the customer in mind.
I need advice on what direction you think is best knowing the initial referral of buyers. Any advice?
1. Think! - Why do these keywords convert better than others? 90% of the times it's just because the keywords are more shopping oriented, product orientred etc. rather than information and research oriented.
2. Research! - Check out your statistics from A to Z - know it by heart, know exactly why goes well and what doesn't
3. Check Compteition! - Go to Overture and look for your keywords (wordtracker might save some time) - the ones with the highest bids usually are the winners for most web sites - remember - The weel is (usualy) invented once!
4. AWA - adwords analyzer - nice softwar that shows in one interface the Overture suggestion tool + great feature of # of existing overture and google campaigns for that word - very similkar to #3- enables you to see if your site performs like others or different.
5. Optimize your budget and SEO! - focus your efforts and money on converting keywords - promote them via SEO and allow yourself to bid higher for them - as they bring money back...
6. Throw away losers! - Really bad keywords should go to the trash OR:
as you mentioned - build relevant content for them and try again - perhaps your landing page is not good enough.
Repeat these sreps over and over again - you will see improvement each new round!
Good luck ;-)
As I click through each referral URL manually :( , I see that some links are converting well because there are no search results and only my PPC ad. Hmmm, you think its a good idea to create content for these search terms with no results? Maybe there is a reason why there are no results?
Interesting... buyers are also using my company name to find me. :)
B. The 'no results' strategu might work and might not. Perhaps these are low traffic terms,. perhaps low conversion - I don;t know so you will have to check. did you look at the overture suggestion tool?
i highly recommend ad words analyzer. if you want a more links please send me a private message as I don't want to break the forum rules.
Based on your recommendation, I checked Overture and saw the bid price for certain terms. Is bid price an indicator of potential success or just competitiveness? One term I searched for has more "hits" according to Overture, but the minimum is only $0.05 (one bidder only). While the less viewed term has a $0.15 minimum (three bidders). Oyyy... this is all very confusing.
The AdWords Analyzer sounds like a great program. I am somewhat cautious as automated queries to Google and Overture sound like they could get me in trouble.
1) I don't understand your 'conversion data' - isn't is simply the split of conversions between different referrals?
Conversion is: number of actions (sales/leads etc.) / number of clicks from that traffic source - that is how you should check conversions.
2) Regards Overture - first, remeber that the minimum bid is $0.10 so a $0.05 bid means a very old one. there is USUALY low traffic on such terms, but you might be surprised - my suggestion - for $0.10 you can try with a minimum risk. Actually, it's the same for the $0.15 - only 3 bidders mean that the minimum bid puts you on 4th position (not bad). you should check words like 'ionline gambling' and see the bids there... (ouch)
3) Price is an indicator, however not final rule - it may suggest an opportunity but you must check to see results.
4) Regards software - I can see your p[oint however I can't see any search engine penalizing you as you are querying places where you are not positioned at all... so they don't even know what your site url is no?
1) I don't understand your 'conversion data' - isn't is simply the split of conversions between different referrals?
Yes, you are correct. I need to look at the PPC campaign and see how much it cost me to get those sales. Sorry, I am new to conversion tracking so I have not considered all the required factors. There is more to analyzing pay-per-click performance than I originally thought.
Can I apply the same conversion tracking concept to SE referrals as well? I was thinking I could divide my sales by number of specific page hits? That may be an oversimplification... In any event, I like your suggestion about focusing on converting keywords. By focus, I mean adding content with related keywords. What else can I do?
(Don't let myself and Pierre take up this whole thread. Feel free to join in. :) )
We're making progress!
Finally, it all depends on how many transactions and traffic your site serves... If you only have a few it's a waste of time, however looking at your previous post (170 total conversions) I think there's room for a lot of analysis work.
Analyze everything you can - from SE's, PPC providers, and keywords to specific ads per keyword and same keyword with different pages. Your only limit is the amount of time you're willing to invest into this. As I don't know how much does a conversion worth to you, I can't really tell for if for instance every conversion equals $50 you have 170*50=$8,500 worth conversions. every minor change can sometimes doublwe your income and in some cases I would suggest hire a conversion analyst )(in house help) or outsource it as it might take a really long time and labor.
Your content optimization idea is also really good - you should try it and see how it affects conversion rates.
If the site doesn't come up at the top in editorial results for all these different variations of the site/company name it may be worth spending the $.05 or $0.10 to make sure people find the site easily and maybe even entice them with a special offer.
