Tip for using Advanced Segments in Google Analytics

Despite the fact that many people are experiencing a drop-off in their keyword data in Analytics, due to the volume of (not set) and (not provided) results, which are in turn caused by logged-in Google account holders performing searches, keyword research remains very much a useful part of the daily Analytics routine.

To avoid getting results that are clouded by lack of keyword data, Advanced Segments can be used to filter out the (not set) and (not provided) results. The process is simple:

1. click the 'Advanced Segments' button at the top of the page;
2. on the next page, click 'Add Segment' - it's on the right hand side, under the box of 'Custom Segments';
3. for the first filter, select 'Exclude', and look for 'Keyword' in the green box;
4. type (not set) in the text edit box;
5. click 'Add OR Statement' and repeat the steps to add (not provided);
6. click 'Save Segment' - you will also have to enter a name!

The segment will then be applied, and only the data with meaningful keyword values set will be shown. If other filters are being applied, they must be removed. If that creates an issue (i.e. if you want non-bounce traffic) then you will need to add the filter conditions to the 'KW' filter that you have just created.

Top tip : these filters can also be used to target specific traffic profiles by Keyword - Keyword Cracker subscribers will already have received a specific how-to for using Advanced Segments for Keyword Research!

The Three Aspects of Search Engine Marketing Explained

Today, I received an interesting email entitled Back to Basics with SEM from Website Magazine. If you're not signed up, and are a web site owner or search engine marketer, then you need to! (They don't even pay me to tell you that, either...)

Even if you don't want to give away your email address to receive yet another inbox magazine, it's worth taking a look at the Back to Basics with SEM article. With all the anxiety over Google updates, shifts in the landscape of paid search inclusion, and the like, some of the basic definitions are often overlooked.

So, for a 30 second scan-read, or a more in depth 5 minutes of your time, it's worth remembering that SEM is not the same as SEO, and that there are other traffic acquisition strategies out there.

Keyword Competition and Making Money from AdSense

I've been playing around with Market Samurai a lot recently, trying to get my head around the effect that Google's policy to not reporting keywords used by logged in users is having on my ability to turn a profit using AdSense.

(If you missed out on what actually happened, check my blog post on The Death of Keyword Research.)

One thing I'm pretty sure of is that Google themselves know what keywords are being used. After all, their AdWords, and AdSense programs both rely, to a certain extent, on that knowledge.

Google is also passing that information along, not via Analytics, but via products like Market Samurai, which aggregates a lot of data from search providers, and AdSense to enable us to find profitable niches. Not to hundreds of keywords to go with them, content to promote them, and something called the Competition index.

Now, a simple competition index might be the number of search results returned by Google for a keyword phrase. This is fair, and workable, but a bit artificial. After all, 90% of those search results might be complete rubbish!

Market Samurai goes one step further, and provides another layer of competition information based on the top domains and their comparative reliability, influence, and authority.

This is all good, but is competition really important when making money from AdSense?

The answer may well be no. Or possibly just maybe.

A lot of content creators make money from sites that have installed AdSense, and pass those earnings along. Suite101, for example, and Squidoo, HubPages, and many blogs with authoritative top level domains.

So, just because there are a lot of entries in a search engine result database for a keyword phrase, the weighting of the individual domains may well mean that the competition index can be ignored. 

Comparing a new domain with a single article on it with an established and regularly indexed site like Suite101 isn't comparing like with like. Google sees these two things very differently - and will probably give more weight (higher ranking) to Suite101 articles.

Added to which, there are other traffic acquisition strategies that can bring traffic. Analytics reports that for some of my most popular articles, the majority of the traffic is by referral and social media.

The kicker is that the social media traffic has more traction, with visitors spending more time on the site, and with much lower bounce rates. My guess would also be that, were AdSense to be installed, they'd bring the biggest profits!

(Disclaimer : I am an affiliate for Market Samurai, as well as being a user. By clicking on any of the links, I will potentially earn an affiliate payment. If you do not wish this to be the case, please use this link.)

Keyword Research is Dead. Long Live Keyword Research.

So, the number of (not provided) and (not set) keywords in my Google Analytics reports has now eclipsed the actual keywords reported.


The reason? People being logged into Google (and therefore using https) when they do queries, and therefore not giving away their keyword information.


Does it matter? To me, yes. If only because I like to know them in some special cases, such as if the Bounce Rate is consistently 100% for a keyword, it indicates that the keyword phrase is mis-matched with the content.


Does it matter for keyword research in general? That's a question that it might be a bit early to ask. However, it will skew the results that some suggestion services provide, as there is the possibility that Google users use different keyword types to other people, and are therefore removed from the database.


Arguably, if we assume that logged-in Google users are (a) more internet savvy, and (b) more technical, then if they are removed from the keyword database, a lot of technical traffic goes with them.


Whether that's a good or bad thing, is anyone's guess right now, but I suspect that, in the long term, these things will even out.


I've long suspected that keyword research is a dying beast - to be overtaken by tagging, social media, and various other traffic acquisition strategies that have little to do with search engines in the traditional sense.


However, keywords will remain important for evaluating on-page performance, and for tools such as the AdWords traffic and value estimators built into tools like Market Samurai.


Long live Keyword Research!

Why is Knowing the Landing Page Important for Keyword Research?

Sometimes knowing the keyword phrase that has brought in traffic isn't enough - especially if you happen to have a lot of fairly diverse content on the same web property.


Sites that are essentially marketing funnels (see Leveraging the Marketing Funnel) will have the worst issue when looking at keyword phrases in isolation, since the net is cast especially wide at first in the hope of bringing in qualified leads among a wide range of visitors.


If you are already getting keyword traffic reports from Analytics - or an equivalent service - on a regular basis, pull one up and look for an entry with a high Bounce or Exit rate.


(If not, the article How to Use Google Analytics Daily Reports for Keyword Research may well be of interest!)


What Does a High Bounce Rate Tell Me?


On it's own, nothing, sadly. The trap that many new Analytics users fall into is assuming that a keyword phrase that has a high number of incoming visitors, but an equally high bounce rate denotes traffic that falls into one of two categories:

• Mis-targeted (i.e. content not related to keywords) or;
• Not interested by the content.

In fact, the visitor who has used the keyword phrase may well fall into a third camp - interested in the content that the site has to offer, but has fallen into the site on a page that doesn't happen to contain that content.


Asking Google Analytics to reveal the landing page as well as the keywords also adds a third metric - the Exit Rate.


Keyword Phrase, Exit Rate, Bounce Rate, Landing Page


The accuracy of keyword research often depends on knowing what the visitor is actually interested in, rather than just guessing from the keyword. 


This is very important when using Google Analytics, as the Bounce Rate on its own may well not be a reflection of the site as a whole, but the validity of a specific page. This page could fall into one of several categories, for example:

• poor content - needs rewriting;
• mis-matched content - needs rewriting;
• no clear call to action - needs rewriting;

Of course, the page could be slow to load, or not load at all - typically looking at the Average Time on Page (all zeros shows no engagement at all) alongside the Bounce Rate and Exit Rate will help to diagnose these pages.


Otherwise, it should be obvious from looking first at the page, then at the keywords that delivered traffic to the page, and then at the metrics, what the problem is.


Sometimes a page with a reasonably high PR (Page Rank) that appears in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) above other more relevant ones, does so because a keyword phrase is quite precise, and has been matched with a reference to the more-relevant content.


More often that not, however, it's a case that there's a high Bounce Rate and/or High Exit Rate coupled with a low Average Time on Page which indicates poor or mis-matched content that needs to be rewritten.


However, it's important not to do anything without confirming the trends by analysis, as the article Using Google Analytics to Improve Stickiness and Engagement explains.

Do Keywords Really Matter?

It seems a bit odd to sit down at the keyboard and write an article on the Keyword Cracker blog which questions whether keywords matter at all, but it's important to look at SEO techniques from every angle.


And that's what keyword research is - an SEO technique.


Generally, keyword research reveals:

• what people are looking for in conjunction with certain key words;
• what specific keywords have brought traffic to a site;
• trends within the browsing community.

Specifically, as a SEO technique, web masters use keyword research to try and find out how to drive traffic to a site that concentrates on a specific niche.


So, it's a traffic acquisition technique, and as such it's not the thing web masters can do to get visitors to their site.


Traffic Acquisition Techniques


Assuming we know that the site is of use, and interest, to the web browsing community as a whole, we don't need keyword research to tell us what to build.


Traffic can come from search engines, and I'd be foolish not to (a) acknowledge and (b) point out that in many cases, Google provides the lion's share of traffic to many web sites that I write for.


But it's neither the only source, nor necessarily the most profitable.


In fact, looking over my Google Analytics statistics, I note several things:

• search engine visitors tend to result in more bounced visits;
• search engine visitors tend to result in lower pages viewed, per visit;
• search engine visitors tend to spend less average time on the site.

So, it's not just about the traffic, but what the visitors that make up that flow of traffic do when they get there.


My most engaged visitors come from other traffic acquisition techniques, such as:

• Twitter, via SocialOomph;
• Twitter, via su.pr (a StumbleUpon service);
• Directly, via word of mouth;
• Directly, via Yahoo! Answers;
• Directly, via Forum posts.

I've yet to test which the most engaged are, but rest assured my findings will make their way onto the Traffic Acquisition blog, and the method on the Test, Track, Traffic blog.


Where does this leave keywords, and keyword research?


Use it to research trends. Use it to estimate interest in a topic, and use it to generate some traffic by way of a test.


Keep an eye on the statistics, see where visitors come from, and what they spend their time doing, and then work what continues to work.


But don't rely on search engines to deliver the lion's share of your customers, even if they do deliver the lion's share of your visitors!

Why the Geographic Source of Traffic Matters to Online Marketers

A lot of filtering options are available in Google Analytics, but one that is often overlooked is the ability to sort, filter, and order by geographic location.
This can be applied in a number of ways:

• Country
• City
• Continent
• Region

It's certainly interesting, but is it useful? In fact it's more than that. Knowing the geographic source for keyword (and content) traffic can be vital to making a sale.


For Whom is the Geographic Source Important?


While knowing where the traffic comes from can be important for any online marketer, it is of particular importance to affiliates. Let's use Amazon as an example.


The web sites Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk stock different products, with different prices, ship to different locations and have different affiliate schemes.


If visitors to a specific page come from one geographic reason, and are confronted by products, spellings, and terminology that they are not familiar with, then there is a risk that the sale will be lost.


More than that, they may not even be able to buy the product and have it shipped, or they may be directed to another web site. Either way, the sale is lost to the affiliate.


Targeting pages (content) to specific geographic markets based on specific keyword trends for that geographic location enables marketers to promote the right products, using the correct affiliate account, to the right visitors.


In addition, brands and brand names may also be different. This helps keyword targeting to specific brands; the more niche the better, as people often type specific brand and model names into search engines.


Finally, once the geographic segment is known, and content has been created to fit each demographic, the online marketing strategy can follow it. For example, Twitter can be used to schedule tweets designed to be released at times that are appropriate for the target market.


All of the above needs some research, which is where Google Analytics comes in.


Segmenting Search Traffic by Location


The best way to view this relationship is to select a relatively small time window (say one week to one month) and then access the Demographics filter from the left hand main menu in Google Analytics.


The Location filter can be found under the Audience tab on the main menu.


The Demographics option needs to be selected, and then Location clicked.

Selecting the Location Filter from the
 Left Hand Menu in Google Analytics

As can be seen in the screen shot, the map will then light up with different shades of green indicating the global results returned for each location.


The actual lcoations that return these visitors are then listed below the map, in the usual results pane in the Google Analytics system.


The usual column headings can be found here - page views, time spent, bounce rate and so on - but this is only half the story.


To get the keywords, it is also necessary to add them as a Secondary Dimension.


To do this, the 'Secondary dimension' button is clicked.


From the resulting menu, the Traffic Sources option needs to be selected.


Underneath that, are a number of options, but for keyword research, the Keyword option is the most useful.

Selecting the Keyword Secondary Filter
from the Results Toolbar in Analytics

Having selected the Primary and Secondary Dimensions, the user then needs to sort the keyword list  based on the metric that most interests them.


One interesting metric is likely to be the Bounce Rate, as a high Bounce Rate could indicate that the geographic targeting needs to be adjusted.


This can be spotted by the presence of two identical keyword phrases, each with different source locations. If one has a Bounce Rate that is significantly higher than the other, then that may indicate that different content should be created for that specific keyword.


This is just one of the ways in which geographic tools in Analytics can be used to hone the marketing message, and is a very interesting and valuable aspect of keyword research.

An Introduction to Traffic Research Using Google Tools

One of the questions that  comes up fairly often is 'How do I do traffic research using Google?' People tend to forget that Google isn't just about search, but also about advertising, publishing and revenue generation, too. 


The two main tools that Google provides that can help with traffic research are:

• Google AdWords Keyword Tool
• Google Analytics

 Both of these tools need to be used together; when people talk about traffic research, what they mean is:

• finding traffic
• getting traffic to visit
• holding on to that traffic to make a sale

The Google AdWords Keyword Tool can be used in traffic research to scope out new opportunities (keyword phrases) that will yield visitors. Luckily, it's not as hit and miss as it might sound, as the AdWords Keyword tool provides some excellent comparison and filtering modules.


Tip : When using the AdWords Keyword Tool, look for traffic of around 10k and Low competition, as this is usually the easiest to target.


The other side of the traffic research question is Google Analytics. This is a very sophisticated service that takes a lot of experimentation to master. Luckily, the Traffic Research with Google Analytics  article will give you a head start in unerstanding how to make the most of it.


Key to using these two resources together, however, is in feeding back some of the Analytics results to the AdWords Keyword Tool in order to find new traffic sources. The process for bloggers is described in the article Using Blog Posts for Keyword Research.


In essence, traffic research using Google tools is like having an insight into the mind of potential customers, and is part marketing and part traffic acquisition.

Using Google Analytics and The Google AdWords Keyword Tool Together

As the largest search provider, Google is uniquely placed to help online marketers, content providers, entrepreneurs and business owners research their online market niches. They have even placed the tools to do so at our disposal, so why not make the most of their generosity?

The technical side of Analytics and using AdWords for SEO (search engine optimization) often challenges people who would rather be writing, selling, or out there doing business.

This short article should help to dispel some of those fears, and help the reader get to grips with using these powerful tools to propel online earnings to new heights.

Google Analytics Organic Search

The secret to online success is often said to be traffic. It's like footfall in the real world – a retail outlet on a busy high street is expected to do better than one in a less frequented side street.

However, as in the world of bricks and mortar retailing, online customers will also travel a bit further than the high street if you offer them something special. At the same time, mere visibility is no guarantee of success.

Google Analytics provides a lot of information, but for the purpose of keyword research, only one page is of special interest : the Organic Search page.

It's found on the left hand menu, under Traffic Sources->Sources->Search->Organic. Once a project has been selected, and the right page located, the user is presented with a spreadsheet style page containing several columns.

We're interested in the following:

• Keyword
• Visits
• Pages/Visit
• Average Visit Duration
• Bounce Rate

In essence, we want to find those keywords for which visitors are viewing multiple pages, and spending time on the site, with a low bounce rate. This may only generate five keyword phrases that we can honestly mark down as being of interest, but they're the online equivalent of a warm lead.

That is, they are people who have raised their hand, and volunteered to go the extra mile to find your page. This implies that there may be others who just missed out, stuck to the high street, and found one of your competitors.

These people might have used slightly different keyword combinations which returned pages higher up the search engines indexes (Search Engine Result Pages, or SERPs) than yours; so, how do we find them?

The AdWords Keyword Tool

The AdWords Keywords Tool provides a way to estimate the potential comparative search volumes over a set of generated keywords.

For each keyword or phrase it is given, the tool will look through a database of actual online searches, and match relevant keywords to the initial phrase, and return both the competition for that phrase (in AdWords terms) and the potential search volume that it could capture.

There are a whole raft of filters, and some are useful in certain situations, but for now we just want to get a feel for the market, and so we look at:

• keyword phrase
• competition index
• global search volumes

Analyzing each keyword phrase from the Analytics tool in turn, we want to select a reasonably limited number of phrases and so can afford to be quite selective. Different markets have different thresholds, but a good rule of thumb is to target 'Low' competition keywords with 10k – 100k global search volume figures.

Anything larger than this will be terribly hard to capture, and indicates that the keyword phrase might not be niche enough to be certain of providing a stream of qualified leads.

The keyword phrases can be written into your content as blog posts or article prompts and used to generate traffic towards your web properties. As long as you remember to keep applying the process to discover new keyword phrases, you'll never run short of inspiration or targeted traffic again.

Traffic Research With Google Analytics

Many online publishing platforms have either switched their statistics packages to Google Analytics, or have introduced ways for users to link their Analytics accounts to the publishing platform.


Suite101, for example, no longer retains any statistics or tracking (including keywords) on-site, having moved everyone to their own Analytics accounts some months ago. Squidoo, another large online publishing platform, have followed a similar path, but retain some basic on-site reporting.


Google Analytics itself has evolved (as has the Google AdSense Keyword Research Tool, another firm favorite) and in doing so has become more modern, more minimalist, and considerably more useful.


Google Analytics Reporting Tool


Anyone with a Google account can have access to Analytics. Anyone with a blog, Squidoo Lenses, a web page, or other online publishing platform needs to use Analytics to have any chance of leveraging their online presence.


It's misunderstood, however, by people who look only at the organic keywords as a way to gauge where they should be concentrating their publishing efforts.


Simply targeting the most searched-for keyword phrase that has delivered visitors is slightly missing the point. Yes, it's important, but so is tracking and measuring other statistics.


Using Google Analytics Organic Search Results


The aforementioned report can be found in the menu on the left hand side, under Search->Organic Search. It produces a list of the most frequently used keywords that have delivered visitors to the site, along with the number, and two other vital bits of data:

• the time spent on the site;
• the number of pages viewed (per visitor).

So, why are these important?

Firstly, the time spent is important for sites like Squidoo and Suite101, where advertising provides an important source of revenue.

The number of pages viewed is especially important for Suite101, as it shows which pages (articles) are keeping interest up, and, more importantly why.

Making the most of these two statistics requires that the whole list be exported to CSV, or a similar format, and then some clever sorting applied in a Google Docs spreadsheet.

There are a number of interesting formulae that can be used to weight these, but each reader is likely to want something different from the results, and so they should use their own experience to help filter out the best keyword phrases to target.

A final note - use the keywords to guide content, but don't write around them. Otherwise, you'll only ever have the same list coming back, and it's far better to introduce variety and try to capture fresh traffic.

Using Blog Posts for Keyword Research

Blogs are great for many things; from getting quick feedback on an idea (if you've allowed comments) through to testing out new ideas and marketing formulae (if you're testing and tracking the keywords properly).

However, many people forget that they are also great for keyword research. In particular, they work well for researching long tail keywords, as well as keyword phrase variants. 


A word of warning – they're not much good for one or two word primary keyword phrases; use traditional methods, as well as commercial products such as Market Samurai or WordTracker for these.

Easy Keyword Research with Blogger.com

Perhaps the largest of all blog sites is Google's Blogger. You're reading a blog hosted by Blogger, and one of the principal advantages from many users perspective is the relatively tight integration with Google's tools, such as Google Documents.

One other aspect that's attractive, and which prompted this article, are the statistics that can be tracked.

For example, Blogger tracks the location of people visiting your blog. There are also the usual page view statistics, as well as one very interesting piece of data – the keyword phrases people used to find your blog.

Here's how it works: 

• someone types a keyword phrase into Google;
• Google fetches the pages from its database and displays the result list (SERPs);
• the user clicks a URL;
• Google redirects the user's browser to the target page.

Now, once this redirection has taken place, the session variable known as the HTTP Referrer contains the original Google search URL (the one you can see in the browser status area, if you hover over the link text.)

Blogger can then access this data, and extract the exact keyword phrase that the user originally typed in before choosing your page from the SERPs.

How does this help?

Well, if even if your page appeared well down in the list for one or two keywords, there's at least half a chance that other keywords in the query are related to content that you could provide. 

So, at worst they'll be good prompts for future blog entries.

The place to look for these gems is in the Traffic Sources menu item, accessible from the Overview page of the blog in question (Overview->Stats->Traffic Sources).
At best, these keyword phrases can offer useful insights into what people are looking for, and what you should be targeting in order to make the most of the traffic on offer. And that's the key – traffic. 

But what happens if you've got a blog that doesn't get enough traffic for this analysis to be helpful?

The answer is simple - blog, promote and wait. Or, boost your profile by simultaneously publishing on other places like Squidoo and HubPages. Once Google notices your blog, and you've got a few posts under your belt, you'll be able to reap the keyword research rewards!