Discussion on the measurement of the basic analysis tools of search Marketing

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Today, I want to discuss how search marketing is measured, especially for paid search engine activity.

I've often stressed the importance of "having a strong analytical framework before launching a search engine marketing campaign," but I rarely discuss how to do that with my readers.

In fact, a solid analytical infrastructure ensures that the information you want is available to you when you need it, and that you make informed decisions about how to optimize your activities. If the optimal decision can be made in time, then its advertising effect will be significantly better than those "blind" management of advertising activities. The so-called "blind" refers to the inability to obtain valuable advertising effect data.

In today's column, I'll focus on some of the more basic analytics tools for search engine marketing, and for the more advanced analytics tools, I'll discuss them with the reader in my next column.

First of all: Search Engine Analysis interface

The paid search marketing products of most major search engines on the market will design a password-protected user interface for the active managers. In this interface, the ad campaign data is automatically tracked and displayed in the dashboard format, and the interface provides reporting tools for in-depth analysis and additional tracking capabilities that can be activated.

You only need to work with Google or other major search engines, you can get some activity data, such as: show the number of ads, click Rate, the cost of each hit and the total advertising costs (click X per click Cost) and so on.

In other words, unless your activity is purely to improve brand awareness or access to traffic, the data is too superficial and does not give you enough information to make informed optimization decisions. The only thing you can really optimize is the hit rate or the cost per click ... But the optimization based on these metrics does not tell you how quality visitors are. Do you attract targeted users to visit your site? Are they willing to stay on the site to look at all kinds of content? Do they have other actions besides clicks?

Ideally, you would want to use a more visible indicator of the success of the activity, such as whether the user took appropriate action on the site. This behavior can also be called conversion. Any kind of online behavior can be regarded as a conversion, and the rate of conversion determines the success of your activities. For an E-commerce Web site, a conversion can be a sales transaction, but for a product or service site that prefers content-oriented or involves a sales process, the conversion may also represent a user's interest or intent. These behaviors include: users use specific tools, download product manuals, register electronic journal accounts, request business quotes, or any other behavior that is valuable to an enterprise product.

Determining the transition target of an advertising campaign is an essential element of the search engine marketing metrics framework, and it is best to decide before developing this activity.

To ensure that you can process these transformation data at any time, you need to turn on the conversion tracking function. Typically, turning on this feature involves placing the tracking code (usually pixels) on the page where the conversion is completed. For example, if your conversion target is a new user who has just registered for an electronic journal, the code should be placed on the Thank You registration page that appears immediately after the user registers.

This tracking feature also allows you to obtain additional data, such as conversion rates, cost per conversion, and so on.

Conversion goals can provide better metrics to optimize your advertising campaigns. For example, you might find that keywords A, b, and C can produce a higher conversion rate at a lower cost than keywords X, y, and Z. Based on this data, you may be able to make some improvements, increase the bidding for keywords A, b, and C, and reduce the use of keywords X, y, and Z. Advertising copies, landing pages, or any other element of advertising activity are all the same.

Next: Google Analytics or other free analytics kits

Google Analytics or other free web analytics kits can provide you with additional advice on these metrics in addition to providing all the data available through the search engine interface.

It is a good idea to optimize your advertising activities based on the conversion data, but if you also refer to the overall effect of the advertising campaign, it will be more conducive to making decisions. and web analytics will provide some additional data to help you improve the chances of advertising campaigns and Web page success.

Additional data and insights obtained from network analysis

(1) Visitor information

Determine how many clicks in the ad are actually connected to your site.

For example, you may find that only 50% of the ad clicks do visit your site, which may indicate a problem with loading time or a page fault.

(2) Statistics of the visitor population

Find out where users come from (geographic location), and details of their browsing experience, such as access platforms, browsers, screen resolutions, and so on.

For example, you may find that most of the traffic or conversion from a site is from a particular country, city, or region, and you need to increase the amount of publicity in the area or focus on the area.

(3) Data on audience participation

You need to know how long the visitors to the search engine will stay on your site, how many pages they will browse, what their exit rates are, and so on.

For example, you might find that some keywords have a low conversion rate, but visitors to these keywords spend a lot of time staying on the site and browsing through a lot of content. Without this information, you may have given up these keywords, but now you may consider continuing to use them in your ads.

(4) Flow source data

Compare the results of your search engine marketing campaign against other sources of traffic, compare the results of different search engines, or compare the effects of organic and paid search.

For example, you may find that Yahoo's user quality may be much higher than Google's, so you might want to consider increasing your advertising spending on Yahoo's search engine.

(5) Data Conversion path

The conversion progress of the user is tracked by means of conversion and omission.

For example, you may find that users in the second page of the registration program are declining, which may indicate a need to reassess this form of user experience.

While this article does not detail all of the additional services that the Web Analytics tool can provide, it also gives you an idea that more optimization opportunities are available when taking the next step.

Whether using basic or advanced analysis tools, you must set up a framework to track and evaluate your search engine marketing activities.

(Original: August 2, 2010, compiled: Zeng Cui)