Category: Other PPC News

In Oct 2011, Google took a decision, which displeased many webmasters. It decided to encrypt the search queries of the users who use Google in the logged in status. So, even if you would see that there’s traffic being directed from Google to your website, you wouldn’t be able to find the search queries they had used. ‘Not provided’ has become the top query that directs traffic to your website. Instead of whining about this, how can one make the most out of this?

Information on Personalized Search Results

One of the key information which you can directly get from ‘Not provided’ keywords is the percentage of users who find your page in their personalized searches. Google personalizes the search results based on the past activities of the users. While it can do the same for logged in and nor-logged in users, the level of personalization is more for logged in users. So, if you are seeing that larger proportion of your traffic is coming from users with ‘Not Provided’ keywords, then chances are high that you are appearing at the top of the personalized results of many users.

The information extraction

What are the things you expect from the analytics of your website? The most important piece of information that one can derive from the analytics is whether the traffic is coming from branded keywords or non-branded keyword. Branded keywords would be queries which have the name of your website/company in them. Non-branded are keywords in which people were searching for getting your services and they accessed your site. Larger proportion of branded data is important since it means that you are becoming popular. In the initial stages of the development of the website, you would need the non-branded traffic working out well for you.

With ‘not provided’ keywords, how would you get this information?

Separating the branded traffic from Non-branded

You can use the Google Analytics to separate between the branded and non-branded queries by doing the following:

• Go to the ‘Traffic Sources’ tab.
• For the keywords, go to the advanced settings and change settings to include only your brand keyword.
• Record the number of visits, time spent on each visit, and pages seen per visit.

In order to see the non-branded traffic, all you have to do is change the ‘include’ to ‘exclude’.

Using on-site analytics

In order to get more information, you can use the on-site information from the analytics. Though this will be way lesser in content than Google Analytics, but something’s better than nothing. You can know what people are searching in your site, so that you can get a hint of ‘not provided’ keyword which visitors used to get to your site.

Google tries hard to make users login when they are using Google searches. So, the proportion of ‘not specified’ keywords would keep on increasing. It’s best to adjust your sails against them now, rather than working through the debris later.

LogicSpeak:

This was always needed by marketers who have relied on keywords to guide their content strategies. This will work as a value addition for enhancing and focusing on need based content strategy.

From an SEO perspective, the optimiser will not know the product for which the visitor was surfing the website. Additionally, he/she will not be able to know if the consumer has received the relevant information for which they have been surfing.

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For service based businesses, Pay Per Click Advertising is one of the most cost effective forms of marketing. However, it is very difficult to track certain functions. Most businesses are forced to focus on web forms with CRM integration to track their leads and follow up with potential customers. When leads come in from paid search, they can track them from an analytics platform and goal setup. An additional tool that is often not utilised is call tracking.

Call tracking is not a new concept which helps to differentiate your search campaigns from other website traffic. Typically, this works by placing a snippet of code onto the website that can alter the phone number when someone enters the site through a paid advertisement. The new phone number is forwarded to an existing phone of the business’s choosing (no additional lines to manage).

When someone calls in through the call tracking number, there is a lot of data that can be provided for analysis. Some of these features would include phone number of caller, call duration, if phone was answered, time of call, and location of caller (if available). This data can then be used to analyse the effectiveness of paid search efforts and the quality of the phone calls that come in through different marketing campaigns.

Additionally, a company could have multiple call tracking numbers based on the different search engine campaigns they run. For instances; separate tracking numbers for Google and Bing. This would allow to see which engine delivers more calls and which drives more quality traffic to the website. In addition, call tracking can help you better understand aspects of campaign performance that web analytics alone cannot. Given below are few pointers.

• Preferred method of communication — Depending on the industry, audience and product or service, leads may be more inclined to call than fill out a form. Understanding your audience’s preferred communication method is key to adjusting calls to action on PPC landing pages, and other marketing initiatives, to improve conversion rates.

• Landing pages — If your landing page is designed to generate web form submissions, but instead drives more calls, it may be an indication that the page content is confusing, the main call to action is not obvious or the web form is too involved. Making adjustments and tracking the number and type of conversions over time can help maximise performance.

• Call recording — Most call tracking solutions offer the option to record phone conversations. From a PPC campaign perspective, these recordings can be used to better understand the type of questions leads are consistently asking, so you can adjust the content on your landing pages accordingly. Lead volume generated by your PPC campaign is often the most important metric for evaluating success. By simply tracking online conversions through web analytics, you may be missing a significant portion of lead data.

• Tracking online conversions is easy with PPC and web analytics programmes, such as Google Analytics. This tool associates online conversions directly with a campaign, ad group, ad and keyword. Unfortunately, as soon as someone picks up a phone, this useful lead intelligence is lost.
• To effectively gauge PPC campaign success you need to see all pieces of the lead-conversion puzzle, whether activity occurs online or off. Without a complete understanding of conversion rates and cost per conversion no matter where they take place, making edits to a campaign may do more harm than good.
• To track offline conversions, you may want to consider a call tracking solution. Call tracking captures lead information for all phone calls received from PPC and associates them with the appropriate campaigns, ad groups, ads and keywords.
• Call tracking involves more than simply recording the number of calls received. It’s part of a sophisticated marketing methodology that gives users accurate, real-time campaign effectiveness figures.
• Call tracking allocates a distinct phone number, local or toll-free, for each unique source you want to track. Reports can be as general as calls from all search engines or as specific as calls from one unique paid search term.
• When a visitor arrives on your site, the software conducts a search to determine which phone number is associated with the visitor’s origin. That phone number is then dynamically added throughout the site and cookied within their browser, so even if they return at a later time, they will continue to see the same number until the cookie is deleted.
• As soon as a visitor makes a call to this tracking number, the program logs call time, PPC campaign information, available ID information, geographic location and the last web page visited, among other things.
• A complete lead picture shows how each campaign, ad group, ad and keyword is performing, helping advertisers more effectively identify best- and worst-performing elements to efficiently shift budgets and update or delete under- performers.

LogicSpeak:

For effective improvement of your campaign performance and maximising your ROI, you need to track both online and offline conversions. This requires the integration of both web analytic and call tracking. Call tracking for local Pay Per Click ads enable you to understand your consumer base better along with the overall effectiveness of your campaign.

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