Wouldn't you like to know how to optimize your product listings on shopping engines? With today's economy every little bit helps. If you're not already listed on comparison shopping engines such as Amazon and Shopping.com, we'll cover the basics and for those of you who are listed, wouldn't you like to get more out of it?

On Thursday, September 10th, 2009 at 4:00 pm Eastern (1:00 pm Pacific) Timothy Seward, CEO of ROI Revolution, Inc. will host with guest presenters John Kleven, CEO of Versafeed.com (pictured left with his Senior Feed Engineer, Andy Hund) a 45 minute presentation detailing how to get your products optimized and listed on comparison shopping engines and marketplaces.

This webinar is ideal for online retailers looking to expand sales. Every day, thousands of consumers visit these popular shopping portals to search for products. Don't miss out on this source of income.

Topics include:

• Best sites to list on (some are free!)

• How to give your inventory listings to shopping sites

• Methods to optimize your product listings

• Monitoring ROI

Listen in to find ways to increase your visibility while decreasing your costs. We'll also discuss data feed optimization, a proven technique to help your products rank above your competitors.

This webinar will be conducted live, so no recording or replay will be available.

Reserve Your Spot for this Complimentary Webinar

As some of you may have noticed (Amit), there has recently been a new addition to the Google Analytics Report Enhancer. Refresh Rate is a new metric that was conceived of by Caleb Whitmore of Google Analytics Authorized Consulting firm Analytics Pros. This metric gives you a great way to measure user engagement at the pageview level. I could say more, but Caleb has written a fantastic post that gives the whole story on Refresh Rate, of which the inclusion into the Report Enhancer is but a small part.

Now that Refresh Rate has joined the GARE family, it's a great time to download the latest version of the Report Enhancer. Here are the steps:

1. Get Firefox
2. Get GreaseMonkey
3. Get the GARE

• Refresh Rate
• New Dimensions:
  • Market (Thanks to Caleb again for this one)
  • Hour of the day
  • Day
  • Week
  • Month
• Additional Segments for Secondary Segmentation and Pivot Tables
• Improved Advanced Segment handling
• Improved Data Sampling Handling
• Deselect All Visits for two or more Advanced Segments

And just in case that wasn't enough for some of you (Amit), I'm planning on doing another post either late today or early tomorrow to reveal a new GreaseMonkey script that I've decided to release independently of the GARE for now. So you may want to stay tuned :)

Here at the ROI Revolution blog, we usually strive to provide you with helpful how-tos and the best examples on making your Google Analytics accounts lean, clean, and useful. Today, we're going a different route in the hope that instead of teaching by example, we can show what not to do.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you our top five Google Analytics FAILs. These are real life examples that our intrepid Google Analytics support staff have encountered in the line of duty. They are not pretty. You have been warned.

1. There Can Be Only One: utm_nooverride=1

We've talked at length about utm_nooverride before. We're big fans of using the utm_nooverride query parameter to make sure that branded and email traffic doesn't overwrite more important long tail referral data.

But there's really only one parameter value to use in this situation. One. It's one. The only one is one. Does that make sense?

No? Ok. Well, see the screenshot to the left? That's what you shouldn't use.

First of all, you should never see the utm_nooverride parameter in your Google Analytics reports. Secondly, you should spell it correctly. Third, don't pass "2" as a value. It doesn't work. Just follow Shawn's instructions in his three-part series on using utm_nooverride and you won't FAIL.

2. You Are Not Selling Medium Green T-Shirts

At the very least, you're not selling only medium green t-shirts, right? Well, maybe you are. Who am I to judge?

The example provided in the Google Analytics Help Center article on e-commerce is just that: an example. But I'd be lying if I said that I hadn't seen people cut and paste that example script right onto their receipt pages, then called it a day.

Google Analytics can't figure out what you've sold unless you tell it. You need to roll up your sleeves and find the variables that contain a visitor's transaction data. Then pass that data to Google Analytics. It's like a relay race, except you're passing product names and revenue figures.

Place a test order. If you view your receipt page's source code and you don't see the correct order total or the products you purchased (or if your code says you bought a medium green t-shirt), then you've got more work to do.

You'll probably also want to check out the values you're passing. We've seen some pretty hinky stuff show up in the Google Analytics e-commerce reports because someone threw too many numbers into the revenue or shipping fields (see left).

Start by checking out Caitlin's article about de-stressing your Google Analytics e-commerce setup. If you're still mired in FAIL, you can always hire us.

Hit the jump for three more epic Google Analytics FAILures.

Yeah, we know that Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer renewed their vows last year and that you can view A/B experiment in Google Analytics. But they're not inseparable. They like their space. They are their own individuals. It's a healthy marriage.

So don't go mistaking your Google Analytics account number with your Google Website Optimizer account number. They may look similar, but you should always be sure to differentiate.

If you get them mixed up, you'll start seeing some pretty odd pageviews in Google Analytics (see right) and your Website Optimizer experiments will tank.

And while GA and GWO live their own lives (are you as sick of this metaphor as I am?), they want to be treated equal. So if you're using a customized Google Analytics script, you may need to make a few changes to your Google Website Optimizer script. Shawn talks about these modifications in detail in his article on installing Website Optimizer if you use Google Analytics, and Jeremy's world-famous Google Analytics Report Enhancer script lets you customize your Google Website Optimizer scripts in the browser before plugging them into your source code. It makes the whole process FAIL-proof.

4. Let Your Visitors Come As They Are

Be a gracious host. If your website's visitors are coming to a page with a redirect, be sure to let Google Analytics figure out where they came from. Otherwise you're going to miss out on the referring site, any keywords they searched for, and whether or not they clicked on one of your ads.

The way that you redirect your visitors will impact how they get tracked. If you use 301 (permanent) redirects, then the HTTP referrer—essentially, the URL of the webpage that linked to your site—gets passed on to the new page. This means that Google Analytics can figure out how the visitor got to your site. 302 redirects or JavaScript/meta redirects don't do this.

But there's another issue. If you're using Google Analytics link tagging and the query string doesn't move along in the redirect, you're losing valuable intelligence. Make sure the query string shows up on the new page after the redirection. Otherwise: tracking FAIL.

5. You Want to Track Your Website

It might seem pretty obvious to most of you, but when it comes to adding a Google Analytics tracking code to your site, it's very important that you actually track that site's traffic.

Check out the tracking codes below for a site called cheesemongr.com. The site's fake, but these are all FAILs I've actually seen before. Can you figure out why these tracking codes FAIL? Leave a comment and tell us how to fix them.

I've written a few articles before about the power of integrating Google Website Optimizer with Google Analytics, but the landscape has changed considerably in the past few months. I thought it would be a good idea to provide an update as to how you can view Google Website Optimizer and other kinds of experiment data within Google Analytics as it has become much easier with the addition of a magnificent feature called Advanced Segments.

As the title implies, this article will focus on finding data quickly and easily for A/B (or A/B/C/D, etc.) experiments, whether they be Google Website Optimizer experiments, or just some testing that you're doing on your own.

First, why would you want to do this? Doesn't Google Website Optimizer (or AdWords, etc.) provide you with Conversion Rate already? Sure it does! But I maintain that an aggregated Conversion Rate (for a single goal no less) is simply not enough. I demand more from my experiments, and by looking at my experiment data within Google Analytics, I can get a great idea of how the experiment is working for different segments of visits and for every goal on my site. What's even better is that by using Google Analytics, I'll also have access to transaction and revenue data, along with any powerful customizations that I'm already using to get the most out of my tracking.

Here are some of the benefits to using Google Analytics to measure your A/B experiment results:

• Segmenting the data
• Seeing statistics for more than one goal
• Looking at transaction and revenue data
• Excluding internal traffic
• Flexibility and the ability to customize data
• Custom reports, emailing and exporting reports, all of the other fun features in Google Analytics

I hope you'll agree there these are some pretty massive benefits. So enough of my gabbing, here's how to do all of this for an A/B test in two simple steps:

1. Create your Advanced Segments

This is the step that has made examining A/B tests within Google Analytics a joy instead of the awkward wobbling toddler of a process that it used to be.

Fortunately, now that Google Analytics has put on its big boy pants, creating these Advanced Segments is a relatively simple task. You can access Advanced Segments from one of two places. The most common place is in the top-right corner of the Google Analytics interface:

You can also access Advanced Segments from the link on the left-hand side of the interface:

Once you choose to create a new Advanced Segment, you'll be taken to a screen that looks like this:

Since we're looking at the efforts of landing pages here, you'll want to select either Page or Landing Page from the list of dimensions on the left. You can simply type in 'Page' into the search bar to find them a little more easily.

Once you've done than, you can start typing the name of the page into the input bar and a list of the pages that match your string will pop up, allowing you to easily select the page you are looking for. If your site uses query parameters or URL variations, you may want to change the match type to 'Contains'. You can even use Regular Expressions if you have more advanced needs.

Once you've created both segments, you're ready for step 2.

2. Apply your Advanced Segments

The easiest way to apply the segments that you created is to use the dropdown menu in the top-right of the Google Analytics UI. You'll see something like this:

Simply check the new segments that you've made and click on the Apply button. The report that you are looking at within Google Analytics will change to feature the new segments:

As you can see, there is some pretty powerful information here. The above report is an example of the AdWords Campaigns report that's been enhanced with our Google Analytics Report Enhancer tool. As you can see, sometimes a page may be winning in one campaign and losing in another.

Also, you can see how conversions are faring for multiple steps in a single funnel, and you can segment the data even further by Ad Group, keyword, ad version, geographic location, and anything else you may need. You can even set the report up to show up in your inbox every morning!

The other great thing about looking at this data within Google Analytics is that you'll have a record of the entire test's performance over time. You can see how overall fluctuations in the marketplace, or snags with your server's load times have impacted your test over time, and can exclude irrelevant data. I really can't stress enough how powerful this kind of analysis can be.

That's all there is to it! Please feel free to try this method out and leave comments - I'd love to hear your feedback or if you've found a better way to do this.

Interested in learning more about Google Analytics?
Attend our LIVE Google Analytics Seminars for Success training in Chicago, IL Wednesday, September 16th, 2009 and Thursday, September 17th, 2009 or get the latest tips and tricks sent to you via our free, twice-monthly Google Analytics newsletter.

Paid search offers a wealth of opportunity to monitor your competition's every move. With traditional media, such as print, you may have had to scour through thousands of pages in magazines to find one competitor's ad. With PPC marketing, you simply have to perform a search on one of your keywords to see exactly who is in your space and determine how aggressively they are competing.

Follow these three simple steps and you will reveal more about your competitors than you ever thought possible.

Step 1: Find your top performing keywords

Obviously you can't monitor the competition on every single keyword in your account, but you can keep an eye on your top performers. Identify the top 10 to 15 keywords in your search campaigns over an extended date range and use these as the basis for your competitive analysis. Chances are that your competition has identified these 10 to 15 keywords as their top performers as well.

Step 2: Identify your biggest competitors

While there are probably many advertisers bidding on each of your keywords, it is important to identify the ones that are the most relevant to you and your product offering. After performing a few searches and visiting the websites from the top ads, you will begin to gain an understanding of who is the most similar to you. Keep a spreadsheet of every domain that appears in the paid search listings and make a note of what products they have to offer.

Once you have performed a search on all of your top keywords, figure out which competitors show up the most often and offer the most similar products/service to you. These are your biggest competitors.

Step 3: Learn from competitor ad text

It is extremely important to monitor what your competitors are communicating in their ad text on a regular basis. Ultimately, good ad writing comes down to clearly stating what you have to offer in the most enticing way possible. If you see the same message being communicated repeatedly in a competitor's ads, they have probably had success with this copy.

Keep an ongoing list of competitor ad text and look for similarities between each of their ads. If you are able to identify a message that is consistently repeated, see if you can offer something better. If you can't beat their offer, look for ways to differentiate yourself from them.

Be sure to keep track of competitor ads that are no longer active as well. Your competitor may have realized that a particular message wasn't working well and decided it was time to test something else. By keeping track of this, you essentially get ad test results on your search traffic without spending a dime!

Final Thoughts

Having a good understanding of what your competitors are doing will enable you to make more informed decisions in future ad testing. Learn what does and doesn't work from your competitors and your own ad testing. Always pay close attention to competitor changes and always be on the lookout for someone new.

Perform this competitive analysis on a routine basis and you will be well on your way to dominating your paid search market!

You are cordially invited to ROI Revolution's Google Analytics Seminar For Success in Charlotte, NC this December.

WHAT: Wednesday, December 9th is the Introduction & User Training Session designed to help users explore and understand their data in Google Analytics. See what you'll learn in our Google Analytics introduction and user training day.

Thursday, December 10th is our Google Analytics Advanced Technical Implementation day and will cover installation and customization techniques to suit the needs of your business. This day is perfect if you're the webmaster for your site and are comfortable working with html and JavaScript. Learn more about what is covered.

Both sessions feature multiple question and answer sessions so you can get your specific Google Analytics questions answered. Google Seminars for Success is officially sponsored by Google, so you can trust that you are receiving the most accurate and up-to-date information on the best practices for Google Analytics.

WHERE: The seminar will be held at the Holiday Inn Center City in Charlotte, NC.

WHEN: Instruction begins each day at 9am (with registration at 8:45am to get your training materials, the seat of your choice and coffee!) and goes until 5pm with a one hour break at noon for lunch on your own.

COST: The cost to attend the seminar is $499 each day or $998 for both days. For attending a session you'll receive a $50 AdWords credit (so you'd receive $100 in AdWords credit for attending both sessions; limit 2 per company).

Don't pass up the opportunity to learn from the experts what you have to know about Google Analytics in one (maybe two) days! Save your seat for either Google Analytics seminar day here.

See you in Charlotte, NC this December 9th and 10th!

P.S. Just a reminder that we're also teaching our Google Analytics seminar in downtown Chicago, IL on September 16th and 17th if you'd rather not wait until December. Find out the details here.

Investing money in online advertising always carries some level of risk. Whenever you increase a bid price, it is a calculated risk that the additional spend will produce more profitable sales. 

 Of any form of advertising, PPC carries the least risk since success metrics are available almost immediately. Even so, there is a temptation to minimize all risk.

Even though the following 5 tips are all low-risk & high reward, they are often considered too risky by weak-kneed advertisers. 

 These are the exact risks you should be taking if you want to strengthen your profits.

1.  Be liberal with your daily budget

Are you making direct sales through PPC advertising? If so, what use do you have for a campaign budget? Keywords often have seasonal and/or news-related spikes in traffic. When setting a conservative budget, you risk missing out on the revenue this additional traffic would generate.

The potential sales loss of a constrained budget poses more risk to your bottom line than some crazy clicking event of unqualified traffic. You can always scale back your bids if the traffic decreases in profitability. An unexpected surge in profitable traffic, on the other hand, is usually hidden in historical reports of lost impression share. Your budget should probably be at least double your average daily spend.

2.  Play in the same pool with your SEO

There's enough traffic for both PPC and organic listings. Some advertisers are afraid they'll waste money if they bid on keywords that rank well organically -- such as their brand or product name. Yes, you will probabably pay for some clicks where the visitor would have otherwise clicked on your free listing. But you will also get some additional clicks where the visitor would have clicked on a competitor ad or another organic listing.

The result of bidding on your organic keywords is typically a net profit. If you aren't convinced, do your own test. Bid on your organic keywords for a week. See how many additional visitors came to your site from those PPC keywords versus the organic counterparts. Take the PPC cost for these keywords and divide it by additional conversions you got. If this is still an acceptable CPA on the marginal sales, continue the practice.

3.  Keep optimizing your sales funnel

A profitable sales funnel should be considered a starting point, not finish line. Yes, that new ad might decrease your CTR. Yes, that new landing page might decrease your conversion rate. Yet if you are consistently keeping the good and throwing out the bad, you will ratchet up your success to increased profitability. Don't be afraid to test new things.

4.  Bid on competitor brand & product keywords

It may seem obvious, but the word "competitor" comes from the word "compete." This is the same terminology used in professional sports. The goal of the competition is to win (get the sale). Yes, sometimes the opposing team gets mad when you make an interception. The ball was, in fact, meant for their own team. Yet there is no disputing that interceptions are perfectly within the rules of the game.

Don't be a PPC pansy. This is a real life competition and the strong survive. I'm not advocating breaking the rules or doing anything unethical such as putting on the other team's jersey

I've written a GreaseMonkey script that allows you to copy and paste profile settings from one profile to another. This includes main website profile information, goals, filters, and users. Hopefully this will save you some time in situations where you need to create multiple profiles that share a lot of the same attributes.

The best way to understand exactly what this script does is to download it and try it out:

1. Get Firefox
2. Get GreaseMonkey
3. Get the Copy Profiles script

• The main profile settings are rarely the same for profiles across accounts.
• The goals are rarely the same for profiles across account. If you want to copy goals across accounts, I would recommend getting Lunametrics' Goal Copy add-on.
• Some filters may be the same across accounts, but there's a danger of accidentally copying filters that reveal too much about a particular account if you simply copy all filters from one profile to the other.
• Ditto for users.

If you think I'm wrong and you'd really like to be able to copy profiles across accounts, let me know why and I'll see what I can do. Or if you're into writing GreaseMonkey scripts, you could always write the script yourself. I'd be very interested to see it when you get done.

I purposefully wrote this script so that it wouldn't break in the way that these types of scripts would normally break. It's possible it could break in other ways, so let me know if you see any issues.

You should have no problems using this alongside the GARE. It will most likely be included at some point depending on the response I get.

I have one additional script idea that I may release today, tomorrow, later, or not at all. It might be easier to guess this one.

The Copy Profiles GreaseMonkey script now allows you to copy filters from one Google Analytics account to another. Simpy go to the Google Analytics account that has the filters you want to copy. Go to the Filter Manager. Check off the boxes for the filters you wish to copy and hit the "Copy" link located in the column header.

Once you've done this, navigate to the Google Analytics account that you want to paste the filters into. Go to the Filter Manager again and click the "Paste Filters" button.

Now sit back and watch it go.

Again, this script is actually an addition to the Copy Profiles script. If you already have the Copy Profiles script, you'll want to download it again to get the filter copy feature. Here are the steps for everyone else:

1. Get Firefox
2. Get GreaseMonkey
3. Get the Copy Profiles script

Both this post and the previous post will give you the same script. For those who haven't been following along, this script is a separate script from the GARE, at least for now.

That's it! I'm fresh out of scripts. If you think of an improvement to this script or find a bug, let me know. I wouldn't mind hearing from you if you've just plain found this script useful either :)

When I learned of the update, I (mistakenly) assumed that the policy referred to active ads only. Lately, I have started finding out that my initial assumption was very wrong.

I'm in the process of working with a client who has dozens of different domains in their AdWords account to migrate those domains down to one central domain. To implement the migration, I started pausing their ads to preserve the history, duplicating those ads, and changing the display and destination URLs before taking them active.

I posted phase one of our domain migration yesterday, and all of my new ads were immediately disapproved.

Let me reiterate that all of the active ads in each ad group were sending traffic to one domain. However, there were multiple paused ads in the same ad group sending traffic to old, outdated URLs.

All active ads in all of the affected ad groups were disapproved, because essentially, the ad group was violating the updated URL policy for containing ads, active or paused, that sent traffic to multiple domains.

I checked with my Google rep on this, and he let me know that from now on, all ads in ad groups with more than one domain will get disapproved. Further, he said the best thing to do would be to delete any non-conforming urls.

Another way to get your ads running again would be to pause entire ad groups where you're testing ads with new domains, duplicate the keywords and negatives, and add your new ads to a new ad group. Neither way is ideal, because you're not keeping the established history that your ads and ad groups have built up.

I found the disapproved ads because I was checking back on my implementation. Unfortunately, there is no notification when ads are disapproved, so we just have to be on the lookout for it. You can use the filters feature in the new AdWords UI to find all ads that have been disapproved at once.

If you've tested multiple domains in the past, it might be a good idea to check your account to make sure your ads are still running!

Domains:
If you can help it, one domain will make the Google Analytics setup and tracking much easier. By increasing the number of domains, you will complicate the tracking process. Because Google Analytics uses first party cookies, each time your visitor travels to another domain, you have to pass along all the information about who they are and where they came from. Doing this again and again could potentially result in a loss of data and your referral information might not make it to the final destination. That means that if you are running paid advertising campaigns you won't be able to attribute the sale or conversion to its correct source, which might make it look like you're losing money when actually your paid campaigns are very profitable. By simplifying the number of domains on your site you will not only save yourself some headaches with the Google Analytics Tracking Code, but typically it will make for a much better user experience since the user will know where they are at all times.

Subdomains:
I've given subdomains its own category because tracking them with Google Analytics can be much less painful than tracking separate domains. Let's assume your site has one domain and two subdomains: my.widgets.com and shop.widgets.com. A simple code modification will make the tracking seamless. But add in a few other domains to the equation and you begin to see a web of confusing data. Stick to subdomains instead of additional domains whenever possible. This not only makes the tracking easier, but it's much better for SEO and quality score to have a single domain to drive traffic to.

In-house applications vs. 3rd party applications:
If you have the option always choose applications that give you the most control. Using 3rd party applications, shopping carts specifically, will cause additional complications with Google Analytics tracking. Typically 3rd party shopping carts are on another domain and they don't allow you to paste your own javascript code on the shopping cart pages. When someone goes from your domain to the 3rd party's domain there's no way to pass along the visitors information without Google Analytics code on the pages. Even if you use the utm_nooverride=1 method to maintain the referral information, there's still the issue of whether you will be able to get the transaction level variables on your domain's receipt page in order to pass the information into Google Analytics.

Not all 3rd party applications are bad. There are 3rd party applications that have made efforts to integrate with Google Analytics, so you can consider using an application with a plug-in for your tracking needs. There are also customizable shopping carts and CMS' that will allow you to track Google Analytics effectively.

When it comes to having a successful Google Analytics setup, the simpler your site architecture is the better. Draw out your site's architecture on paper before installing Google Analytics. Is there anything you can simplify? Making all the necessary changes up front will save you a lot of time in the long run.

Urchin has done it again! Version 6.6 is available for purchase, as an update to your already purchased license and for trial.

Version 6.6 introduces some really great improvements to the software including:

• A deeper integration with Google AdWords, including Budget Alerts, a Keyword Generation Tool, direct links to AdWords (so you don't have to switch between programs), an Urchin Tag Manager, AdWords Optimizer, and a Copy Campaign Tool!

New Reporting:

• Time On Site Report under Content Optimization, Content Performance, Engagement Metrics
• An entirely new reporting section called Advertiser View and Section (If you're upgrading from an older version of Urchin, you'll need to reprocess your data to populate these reports.)
• Click here for a complete list of Urchin 6 Reports

Also new:

• External Authentication (LDAP)
• New Urchin "Home" Page (modified to provide metrics for all the profiles that are visible to the logged-in user)
• Automated CPC Data Import from Yahoo Search Marketing (YSM)
• Data Export API

For more information on the benefits and features of Urchin 6.6, check out this table.

If you currently own Urchin 6, simply download the software to have the latest updates.

If you don't yet own Urchin 6 Software you can purchase it online for a one-time licensing fee of $2,995.

Any campaign with at least 15 conversions in the last 30 days is now eligible to use Conversion Optimizer, whereas previously it required that a campaign needed at least 30 conversions in the last 30 days.

In case you're not familiar with Conversion Optimizer, it's a multi-dimensional bid management tool that uses your AdWords Conversion Tracking data to get you more conversions at a lower cost. You enter in your maximum cost per acquisition (max CPA), and the tool takes into consideration many factors including user location, time of day, and the search query to automatically calculate the equivalent cost-per-click (CPC) bid for your ad each time it's eligible to appear.

You still pay per click, but you no longer need to adjust your bids manually to reach your CPA goals. Sweet!

So just to review, your campaigns that are now eligible to use Conversion Optimizer are ones that:

• have received 15 conversions in the last 30 days
• have AdWords Conversion Tracking enabled and running for at least 2 weeks
• have received conversions at a similar rate for at least a few days

For more information on Conversion Optimizer and how it works, please click here

Be sure to take advantage of our LIVE in person Seminars for Success where we share our Google Analytics™ knowledge with you!

When we attend conferences the remark we hear most often is that finding the time for an analytics course is the most difficult part. We also hear that some people just "get it" better IN PERSON. Well, we're always trying to make Analytics training more accessible, so in answer to these comments, we're thrilled to offer Analytics Seminars for Success for those of you who really WANT tracking on your website to get the actionable data you NEED for key business decisions.

Stop letting your schedule get in the way! You can get the training you need during this live event. In these two full day sessions we cover a broad range of topics for those who only need user training on the different reports to implementing regular expressions on the technical side. For a full detailed list of all that's included in each session check out the content for the Introduction and Advanced sessions.

Don't pass up the opportunity to learn from the experts what you have to know about Google Analytics in one (maybe two) days!

--Location and Cost--

The seminar will be at the Holiday Inn Chicago Mart Plaza. Click here for the street address.

The cost to attend the seminar is $499 each day or $998 for both days. For attending a session you'll receive a $50 AdWords credit (so you'd receive $100 in AdWords credit for attending both sessions; limit 2 per company).

Instruction begins each day at 9am (with registration at 8:45am to get your training materials, the seat of your choice and coffee!) and goes until 5pm with a one hour break at noon for lunch on your own.

Sign up quickly as registration will be limited due to space and the supplies that come packaged with the training seminar such as workbooks and tasty snacks during breaks. Space is restricted but we want YOU, so click over to register for the Seminars for Success! You can register right away, because even if you have to cancel, we can offer you a full refund up to 8 days before the event. After that you can transfer your registration to someone else if necessary.

Don't miss out! Register at least one week in advance to receive the $50 AdWords™ credit ($100 AdWords™ credit if you register for both sessions; limit 2 per company)* Google graciously offers to all Seminars for Success attendees!

*Promotional credit must be applied to an AdWords account within 30 days of attending a seminar and is valid only for Google AdWords customers with self-managed signup. Advertisers will be charged for advertising that exceeds the promotional credit. Advertisers will need to suspend their ads if they do not wish to receive additional charges beyond the free credit amount. Subject to ad approval, valid registration and acceptance of the Google AdWords Program standard terms and conditions. The promotional credit is non-transferable and may not be sold or bartered. Offer may be revoked at any time for any reason by Google Inc. One promotional credit per AdWords account. New advertisers with self-managed signup accounts are subject to an $5 activation fee that will be deducted from the promotional credit. Expires 30 days after Advertiser's registered seminar session. Void where restricted or prohibited by law.

This workbook is a simple, easy-to-understand, 35-page guide that maps out the process of setting up your very own AdWords campaign from start to finish.

The book lays out in 3 fast chapters the processes of organizing your account, picking the right keywords, and writing targeted ads---all essential components to a successful AdWords campaign.

Each chapter is then broken down into simple steps that any beginner would be able to understand, along with a section of key terms and a helpful worksheet at the end to guide you through the setup process of your account.

First, let's start with the section on Organizing Your Account. This section really focuses on helping you, the advertiser, organize your campaign around your personal business goals, concentrating on one goal per campaign. After all, how could you hone in on a specific cost per conversion or certain ROI level for a campaign, if it had more than one goal?

That brings me to another aspect of this handy guide that I liked. Not only does it describe how to go about setting up your campaign, but it also lays out a sample campaign with various goals and how you would break these down into logical ad groups. This process is not so clear in the beginning stages of learning Adwords, so I think advertisers would find this particularly helpful.

I also found the second chapter on Picking the Right Keywords beneficial. If you have the wrong keywords or if your keywords are too general, you will never get your conversions at the right price (or you may not get any at all, for that matter!), so readers, this chapter is essential. It walks you through the steps from start to finish of developing and refining a keyword list and even provides you with links to the tools you will need for this research.

Chapter 2 has a helpful example showing you how to group your keywords, once you have created your keyword list. Many advertisers make the mistake of improperly grouping their keywords or making ad groups with too large of a keyword list, and this guide teaches you how to avoid these common mistakes. It even covers the importance of negative keywords and gives examples of some essential negatives such as "free" and "cheap" that many advertisers commonly make the mistake of not adding.

The final chapter, Writing Targeted Ads, walks you through a 3-step process of ad writing, giving you samples of poorly written ads in comparison with great ads, pointing out in each which parts of the ad are right, and which parts are wrong.

In essence, this short quick, how-to guide would be helpful to any AdWords beginner setting up their first campaign. I would not recommend it to advertisers who immediately want to spend tons of money advertising online, but if you want to get started with some basic campaigns on your own, this guide will give you knowledge you need to get started.

Register Before Midnight on Tuesday, June 9th To Save YOUR Seat For The Miami Google Analytics Classroom Training!

One last post before our June 10-11, 2009 seminars in Miami, to remind you that there is still time to take advantage of Seminars for Success, where we share our Google Analytics knowledge with you in person!

Which Google Analytics seminar day is for you?

The Introduction and User Training, on Wednesday, June 10th, is for you if you generate and interpret the reports in Analytics and would like some in depth user training so you can better understand how to really leverage Google Analytics as a powerful website and online marketing reporting tool.

The Advanced Technical Implementation Training, on Thursday, June 11th, is for you if you are the webmaster for your website, are comfortable working with html and javascript, and you either need the technical set up of Analytics explained/shown to you or you have an analytics account, but are not satisfied with the results from a technical setup viewpoint.

There will be plenty of time for Q&A so you can get all your questions answered in a dedicated learning environment.

There is a limit of 40 persons for each session. Learn more about what will be covered and save your seat at our Google Analytics Seminar for Success today.

Each seminar costs $499 (or $998 for both sessions). For attending a session you'll receive a $50 AdWords credit (so you'd receive $100 in AdWords credit for attending both sessions) when you register at least 7 days in advance of the session(s) you'll be attending.

The seminar will be at the Embassy Suites Miami - International Airport.

Each session will be a full day from 9am to 5pm. In order to keep the cost of the seminar as low as possible, lunch will not be provided, but morning and afternoon breaks will be offered.

Don't wait! You can get the training you need to set up and use Google Analytics in one (maybe two) days!

A few weeks ago our agency received an update that Google released a new tool called Wonder Wheel. I could not help but conjure up all these funny images related to wheel of fortune. After a training session with our Google team, I realized that even with a funny name, this was a very powerful keyword tool.

While searches can use the Wonder Wheel to help narrow their search results, there is a plethora of different ways that advertisers can use this tool to optimize their AdWords campaigns:

Creating New campaigns: If you are starting a campaign from scratch, using this tool can help you decide how to organize your campaigns. Using each leg of the wheel can be a great starting point for creating ad groups. The legs of the wheel are partially based on search volumes, but you will want to also reference Google's keyword tool as well as other resources to get keyword ideas.

Negative Keywords: Google obviously views these keywords as related, so if you see terms that you do not want to advertise on then add them as negative keywords! This is Google's way of giving advertisers more transparency as to how their expanded broad match works. Before adding broad match keywords to your account be sure to reference this tool to ensure you do now show for any highly irrelevant terms.

Building Out Content Campaigns: This tool can be very useful in developing content campaigns. Use each leg of the wheel to build out uniquely themed ad groups for your content campaigns. Then write highly targeted ads around those themes. We've recently learned it's best practice to use 4-6 broad match keywords in content ad groups.

Additional Keywords: If your campaigns have been on autopilot for a while, it's highly likely that your keywords lists are a bit stale. Use this tool to add fresh new keywords to your campaigns.

Ads are being shown next to each generated Wonder Wheel, so adding the relevant queries found by researching with this tool will bring you additional clicks and hopefully conversions! The ad auction for these clicks works in the exact same way as regular google.com clicks.

Hopefully you will find this new tool as useful as I do. Remember to use it in your searches as well as your adwords optimization!

Are you or is your outsourced provider maximizing the results from your Google AdWords account using tools like the new Google Wonder Wheel?

Get a second opinion with our unique Google AdWords account audit and strategy session.

With this new version there are a couple of very helpful updates that increase efficiency when working on your account.

Additionally, the desktop-based keyword tool within Editor has been enhanced by creating a more robust capability in order to increase your presence on both Google's search and content networks.

There are three main upgrades that come with updating Editor to version 7.5.1:

1. Increased efficiency with CSV import feature: Now you are able to work on your AdWords campaigns within Microsoft's Excel and then import them back into Editor.

This is a nice added feature because occasionally you can make sweeping changes more quickly to your account by using various filters within Excel. And if you can take care of the tedious changes more quickly, it frees you up to focus on areas where vast improvement can be made.

Having the luxury to now work in Excel and then import the changed spreadsheet right back into Editor is a great new benefit.

2. The ability to download certain campaigns only when downloading recent changes: Is your AdWords account so large that you could step away from your computer, grab a cup of coffee, a donut and watch an episode of Seinfeld while the account downloads before returning to your computer and begin making changes? If the answer is yes, than this feature is a great addition for you.

With the updated version of Editor you can now download only the campaign or campaigns that you intend to work on.

It's not the biggest update in the world, but when you just want to make one or two very quick changes, this makes the effort more fluid and efficient.

3. New ways to organize new keywords that you research: For quite a while you have been able to conduct keyword research through AdWords Editor in order to avoid the more time consuming user interface. Now, on the search-based keywords tab you have the ability to search for keywords by category.

This new feature is similar to when you browse by category to identify placements for your content network campaigns.

You probably have a good list of keywords that fit your target customers already; however using this feature may uncover some keywords hiding under rocks that could provide valuable traffic for you that are relevant to your product or service category.

As has always been the case, Google comes out with another winning upgrade to their AdWords platform.

The next time you open AdWords Editor you will be asked if you would like to upgrade.

With the benefits mentioned above, it's hard to find a reason not to.

Being able to see these actual queries for your broad and phrase match keywords gives you the opportunity to add the queries that perform well as keywords to increase granularity, and find queries that are not converting and add them as negatives to cut the fat.

The only catch was that some queries with very low volume were pooled together in a line item called, "other unique queries." The main issue was that although the queries contained in this grouping had low volume, some advertisers saw that collectively, "other unique queries" accounted for a significant portion of overall traffic.

Needless to say, it's a bit frustrating to run a report for the sole purpose of gaining insight towards what users are typing when they click your ads, only to find that a decent percentage of the data is still hidden behind the curtain.

But, to the excitement of AdWords advertisers everywhere (we're excited at least), last week Google announced that they are getting rid of the "other unique queries" field entirely. So from this point forward, Search Query Performance Reports will include all queries regardless of click volume, the one exception being that clicks from users who have blocked their referrer URL will continue not to show. Also keep in mind that queries done before this update that were listed within the "other unique queries" field will stay that way, so this update doesn't affect your reports retroactively.

Google mentions in their blog that this change will likely result in longer lists, and emphasizes that your focus should still be on the most trafficked queries since concentrating your efforts there will have the greatest impact. This is a very good point, and advertisers will have to make sure to not get caught in the weeds since these reports can be massive, but simple sorting and filtering can make even the most daunting lists manageable.

The bottom line is that this update will only help those managing AdWords accounts, and is just another example of why Google continues to be at the top of the PPC game.

Google wants you to find the information you're looking for fast, without having to search multiple times to get what you want.

While I won't bore you with all the details of what's changed, I'll briefly summarize the main changes: Google has added AdWords ads to the Google Suggest box, tries to point searchers of "navigational queries" directly to the website, and makes suggestions not just on the homepage of Google.com, but on the search results page as well.

An example of a search suggestion box showing a navigational link and an AdWords ad is below:

Pretty cool, huh?

Well, I'll give you some ideas on how you can use this new tool to research variations of major keywords, observe what customers are saying about you and your brand, and see what people think of your competitors.

Open up a new window and start to type in your brand name or product and see what comes up.

Many times I see "scam", "fraud", "reviews", "complaints", and "alternative" being suggested for particular brands. There's nothing you can do to change this, but it should give you some insight into what your customers are typing in regarding your brand or product.

Keep your customers happy and the search volume should be very low for these types of terms, meaning Google won't suggest them, and therefore people won't get the funny idea that you're running some sort of scam. Remember, it's not what you say about your brand that counts; It's what Google says that matters.

You can use this same method for your competitors' brands and products. It will give you great insight into what others are saying, be it praise or frustration.

Another way to use this feature to grow your business is to begin to type in some of your major keywords. Do you see any that you're not bidding on? Do you see any that might make for good negative keywords in your account? These search terms that Google is suggesting to its users are sure to gain additional volume over time, as searchers realize that one of the suggestions being made is actually what they meant to search for in the first place.

I predict the wide, broad terms might even lose volume as users begin to type in a broad search term, then refine it with one of the suggestions Google makes.

For fun, if you want to just play around with the tool, I like to type in a brand with the word "is". You'll get some pretty funny suggestions:

If you are a self-managed AdWords advertiser and found this tip helpful, you may want to learn more about our Google AdWords account audit and strategy session where we'll research and then present specific tips for your account structure, campaign settings, keywords (including negatives), conversion tracking analysis and much more.

To the delight of many, Google announced an update in their AdWords trademark policy that will go live on June 15th for advertisers in the U.S. only.

In short, a few categories of advertisers who were previously unable to use a trademarked term in their ad text will be allowed to do so - even if they don't own the trademark or have explicit approval from the trademark owner to use it.

These lucky advertisers include the following:

• Resellers of the trademarked goods or services
• Sellers of components, replacement parts or compatible products corresponding to a trademark
• Informational/review sites that provide non-competitive and informative details about the goods or services corresponding to the trademarked term.

So for any of these types of advertisers who have ever felt the pain of bidding on a trademarked keyword but were unable to use the actual term in their ad text, rejoice! By allowing advertisers to highlight their specific inventory to users and create more specific ad creatives, Google intends for the increased query to ad text relevancy to boost CTRs, improve Quality Scores, and increase conversion rates.

Dan Friedman of the Inside AdWords crew makes a great analogy on the AdWords blog, likening the problem to newspaper ads from a supermarket only listing the categories of products on sale, such as "Buy discount cola" and "Snacks on sale". Would this really be any good to you if you didn't know what kind of cola or snacks were being offered? Not at all, and so this is why Google is making this change to improve ad quality and user experience by discouraging overly generic and low quality ads.

As a simple PPC example, let's say that you're a company who retails Boston Red Sox merchandise online (what great timing for this policy update!). The MLB has always been especially stringent on policing their trademark laws, so if Mr. HugeRedSoxFan Googles "boston red sox apparel", he'll see your ad with others that have fairly generic headlines such as "Boston Team Apparel", "Boston Baseball Apparel", etc., with the exception being the official Shop.MLB.com ad that has "Boston Red Sox Apparel" as the headline.

Under the new policy, you'll be able to specifically state in your ad that the apparel you sell is not just any random Boston team or Boston baseball organization apparel, but is in fact Boston Red Sox Apparel. It's just what Mr. HugeRedSoxFan is searching for, and he'll have no doubt about what you're selling if he clicks on your ad.

Of course, there are advertisers who aren't particularly overjoyed by this new update.

Starting June 15th, trademark owners may see their trademarked term ads blending in with the landscape and also lose their previously clear CTR/Quality Score advantage. For trademark owners as well as those bidding on trademarked terms, it will be imperative to not lose focus on differentiating your offer within your ad text when the new policy takes effect. Also, for competitors, critics, and counterfeiters -- sorry, but you're still not allowed to use trademarked terms in your ad text.

So for all you lucky advertisers:

• You can go ahead and submit ads now that contain trademarked terms for review, and eligible ads* will begin showing in the U.S. only on June 15th.
• If you have ads in your account which were previously disapproved for trademark policy reasons but will comply with the new policy, you can submit those ads for re-review now and eligible ads* will begin showing in the U.S. only on June 15th.

*To determine which ads adhere to the new policy and are eligible to run, Google will check BOTH the creative and the landing page content. Your site must either sell (or clearly facilitate the sale of) goods or services corresponding to a trademarked term, or as information site you must clearly provide non-competitive and informative details about the goods or service corresponding to the trademarked term. Therefore, make sure that your landing pages meet these guidelines!

For FAQs regarding Google's trademark policy, please click here.