How To Increase Traffic By Google Analytics

Traffic and Conversion-An Overview
Google Analytics (GA) is a free online service which is able to produce details of traffic analysis for a website. It is a service offered by Google that was originally developed for Adwords Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising but has since then expanded and is available throughout the World Wide Web.
Google Analytics is a product for anyone who is running a website that would like to track the visitor traffic flow going to and through their website. The traffic can be tracked from all forms of referrers such as search engines, PPC advertisements and email marketing.
Some information that Google Analytics provides for its user includes the identification of unproductive webpages, the duration, which visitors stay as well as their geographical location. Information such as these, are important for advertisements and play a crucial role in PPC secrets and directing and increasing Internet traffic flow.
Enhancing PPC Advertising
With the use of Google Analytics, there are many ways to optimize and direct traffic to a website, one of which includes the enhancement of PPC advertisement. Thus the strategic use of GA becomes a PPC secret. So what is a PPC secret? A PPC secret is information or methods that can be used and devised to reach PPC optimization wherein keywords used are distinguished.
Some examples of Google Analytics being used as PPC secrets includes the following:
1) Monitoring the bounce rate and average time on site gives an indication of the effectiveness of landing page and keywords. Bounce rate refers to the percentage of visits when the visitor leaves the site from the landing page.
2) Check to see where target market is located and use this information increase target market visits by changing keyword list.
3) Be able to analyze and use the most suitable keywords for PPC advertisements.
Increasing traffic flow
Increasing traffic flow is one of the most important ways to increase exposure of a website to browsers as well as buyers. This is important in that with more exposure, more opportunities will become available. So then how does Google Analytics play a part in this?
Google Analytics can help increase traffic by presenting vital information on the website being monitored and for the user to use this information to their advantage. One of the ways where GA can increase traffic is to look at the entrance source to find which site delivers the most traffic and to work on improving those entrance sources.
A cheaper way to increase traffic by Google Analytics is to look at the how  a specific search engine (such as Google) is giving traffic by looking at the keywords or phrases used by people to reach the destined websites. The website can then be improved by adding these keywords as part of the contents of the page or as tags if there are blogs.
However, this too can result in high bounce rates if people do not find the page useful. To prevent this, it is important to make the webpage more relevant to the additional keywords.

November 29, 2008 · Filed Under Analytics 

Pay Per Click Tips to Success

Pay per click campaigns are advertisements placed on websites, often displayed as search engine results where the cost is calculated in relation to the number of times the advertisement is clicked on. These campaigns are known as rather costly affairs, here are some pay per click tips that can help to bring the cost down and improve the results:

Calculating value for money

An 2001 Jupiter Media Metrics study found pay per click advertising to offer the best return on investment when it comes to online marketing. The first pay per click secret is that sometimes its just not worth it!

Pay per click campaigns are more suitable to products where the profit margin is bigger as apposed to items with small profit margins that rely on mass sales like ballpoint pens. Take your website statistics in consideration by checking the conversion rate, this will give you an indication of how many clicks will be needed per sale. Use this to calculate a budget per click and do not bid higher than that.

Creating your Successful advertisement

Make sure that your advertisements are very specific, it is a pay per click secret that advertisements keywords should not be general, more specified advertisements receive more hits. It is very important for your keywords to be included in your ad copy. Once you are included in the correct searches you will still appear next to several competitors’ advertisements and it is crucial for your ad title and description to set you apart.

The description should include benefits or incentives that your company offers to clients. A great pay per click tip is to switch off your ad during late night hours if you have a professional business product, as these searches are unlikely to deliver any serious business.

Finally it is crucial to test your ad by doing various searches, changing the description of your ad or the landing pages on your website. You are paying for these ads and should make the best of it, continuously test to see if your ad is still performing and make the changes where necessary.

Small adjustments, big results

Most pay per click software programs will be able to give you popular search phrases related to your keywords and misspellings often searched for. A great pay per click tip is to add negative keywords to make sure that your ad does not show up in irrelevant searches.

Most pay per click programs have the option to only include your advertisement where it exactly matches the keywords or phrase searched for, another pay per click secret is to add quotation marks or square brackets around the phrase that you only want exact matches on. Remember that you pay every time someone clicks on the Ad so it is important to try and limit the inclusion of your advert in irrelevant searches. Make sure that visitors are taken directly to the pages relevant to the advertisement that they clicked on, by sending them to your homepage they might not be able to find what they were looking for and you can loose the sale.

November 27, 2008 · Filed Under PayParClick Marketing 

Making It Easy To Understand Return On Investment (ROI)

Return on Investment Explained

Return on investment (ROI) or rate of return is a way of measuring and evaluating the efficiency of an investment. ROI is calculated by looking at the ratio of money earned or lost versus the money spent on an investment. There are various types of investments that one may invest in such as savings accounts, real estate, stocks, businesses and capital upgrades. So how does ROI play a role?

By looking at the ROI on different forms of investment options, an estimate of the profit can be easily visualized. Thus calculating ROI aids in investment selection before settling down on the best possible option(s). Furthermore once an investor has settled down on an option, ROI also aids in calculating profit or loss on investment if there are any changes to figures such as interest rates or inflation.

Finally, ROI can be used to compare the profits when the money gained or lost cannot be easily compared. ROI is normally expressed as a percentage and correlates with the profit or loss made on an investment. Which is to say, the higher the positive ROI calculated, the higher the profits or capital growth and conversely, a negative ROI value is associated with loss or exponential decay.

However, ROI does not give an indication of the duration an investment is held, nevertheless it is most commonly calculated as annualized ROI, which takes the timing of investments, return and compounding into consideration.

Calculating Return on Investment

In order to calculate ROI a simple formula is devised where ROI = (Gain or loss on investment) / (Cost of Investment + any other expenses on investment). However, ROI can be calculated for different time periods from one day to years so it is important to note the time periods on which the ROI is calculated.

This is especially important when making comparisons between different investments. Further, when comparing ROI, fees and expenses must be included to ensure that a fair comparison can be made. ROI is a very popular metric because of its versatility in that the ROI calculations can be modified to suit different situations.

Even so, there are disadvantages to its flexibility in that ROI calculations can be manipulated for various purposes and can often be confusing. That being said, it is important to be clear as to what the inputs are when calculating ROI.

Tips
When calculating and comparing ROI it is important to note the factors that may influence the investments: These may include changes in interest rates, currency fluctuations, depreciation and appreciation on investments. ROI may also exaggerate economic value.

Exaggeration may depend on factors such as
1) Investment duration,
2) Capitalization policies,
3) Depreciation rates,
4) Investment growth rates and
5) Lag between outlay and earnings.

Overall, ROI depends on many factors so investors must be clear on their inputs and have up to date information on their investments to calculate an accurate and useful ROI value.

November 27, 2008 · Filed Under Website ROI 

How Free Is Free Return on Investment Software?

How they assist you

When it comes to investments whether they be corporate or personal, the way they are managed is the key to success. One of the ways in which investments are managed is with calculating and comparing return on investment (ROI) values. This can be done by setting up a spreadsheet to do the calculations however, most people are not professional mathematicians and the setup could take months because it involves learning about the metrics, the formulas, tables and other financial knowledge.

Hence, most people turn to the option of ROI software to do all the necessary investment managing work for them. ROI software calculates the ROI for more situations than the average financial calculators and Excel programs can handle. The user enters the figures for the cash flows and dates while the program handles the complicated math to give ROI.

ROI software have further been extended to plot tables and charts for analysis, monitor marketing ROI and to analyze market data at given periods. Various markets can be monitored trade-by-trade including stocks, mutual funds, currencies and bonds by linking up to the Internet. Much ROI software can be downloaded over the Internet whether they purchased or free.

Effective marketing ROI

ROI, apart from acting as a measure of profit on investment, it is also a business tool to measure how effectively money is spent. Thus ROI can influence a business’s strategic decision-making process. A well-known example of marketing ROI is advertisements. Money is invested in advertisements to give a business exposure so that viewers may buy their products of services. So then what is effective marketing ROI?

How does one know which half of the money spent on advertising is wasted and which is the effective half? Effective marketing ROI requires the definition of various marketing strategies such as budget for a marketing campaign, incremental customer value and customer behavior. Thus effective marketing ROI ties in very closely with marketing policies and plans.

ROI software

As previously mentioned many ROI software can be downloaded via the Internet. Some of these software packages must be bought and some are free. Many people may think that if free software is available, why would they bother buying?

The answer is that some free ROI software is really good and others may be unreliable and are often produced by scammers. Free software may not work as their description promises. Free ROI software may require the user to enter personal details such as banking details (since the software works with finances) so the user may be billed without user authorization. Certain “free” software may be pirated so if this is bought one is breaking the law. Further, free software may contain malicious, illegal programs and if it is installed may destroy data on the computer and cause system problems.

Finally, the free software may contain spyware once installed may collect personal information such as username and passwords without the users knowledge. Thus after taking everything into account, one must be careful with software especially those dealing with finances such as ROI software.

November 26, 2008 · Filed Under Website ROI 

What exactly is Post Click Tracking?

Post Click Tracking is a program that allows the owner of a website to have an understanding of a visitor’s next move after clicking onto the advertisement or a link for the website. Other commonly known terms for post click tracking are “conversion” or “pixel” tracking.

When clicking onto a website, the visitor may want to request more information about what is offered, make some purchases, pass a comment or even subscribe to the newsletter. Depending on what is being offered on the website, numerous actions can occur. Every action that is taken by the visitor will lead to an event that is monitored and recorded. At the end of the day the web owner will have a good idea of all the events that have taken place on the website.

Post Click Tracking can be a very useful tool if it is utilized or implemented. Besides letting the owner in on which are the most frequently used pages, it also monitors everything to do with the sales transactions for the day. This information is of course of vital importance to the owner as from there he can make informed business decisions that will eventually lead to better profits and improved sales. The owner can also pinpoint which of the advertising pages are visited the most or more often as well as which are the ones that are completely ignored.

Is Pay Per Click A Worthwhile Campaign?

PPC, or Pay-Per-Click, is an advertisement that is placed on a searched page by the browser. PPC engineers and managers offer pay per click services on how to effectively place advertisements on search engines as to get the maximum benefit from it. The adverts (called sponsored links) usually appear at the top, top right hand corner or on the right side of the page. If the browser clicks onto the advertising link, it opens up onto the website of the advertiser.

The advertiser is charged a minimal fee as soon as the browser accesses the website. Advertisers make use of specific keywords that the users will use to make accessibility to the website as easy as possible. PPC engineers will help the web owner to gain maximum benefits from the advertising.

What Do The Engineers Focus On?

A PPC advertising campaign that is run by PPC manager can almost predict success when used in conjunction with tracking software. The advertiser can expect to pay only for receiving clicks from serious or interested users and therefore have prospectively more clients and sales. This will affect the advertiser’s budget positively as the traffic increase will be mostly that of serious buyers.
PPC campaigns are designed to be very cost effective and the returns will definitely have a positive effect on the advertiser’s investment. The advertising campaign is also analyzed by the engineers by using web traffic tracking facilities provided by the SEO’s and this will accurately determine the amount of trafficking onto the website. The use of PPC managers almost guarantees a successful campaign.

November 24, 2008 · Filed Under Analytics 

Helping You Understand The Concept Of What Return On Investment Is !

The financial term ‘return on investment’ (ROI) is often referred to as rate of return and is a percentage indicating the profits or losses from money invested.

Many companies also calculate ROI for future investments and use estimated figures for such a calculation. It is usually done for a specific investment project or marketing campaign over some period or term but it can also be calculated as an average over a whole quarter or year.

The ROI metric is flexible and simple and can be adjusted to any situation when you calculate ROI. This calculation is vital in any investment review.

Why this calculation is necessary

It is not possible to compare the performance of investments in monetary values simply because not all investments require the same financial input. It would be incorrect to compare the profit of a $100 investment to that of a $10 000 investment unless you calculate it in proportion to the investment.

In this case and $30 return on the smaller investment could be better than an $700 profit made on the bigger investment. In order not to try and compare this $30 and $700 and make correct investment decisions, a formula was written to measure investment profitability as apposed to the size of an investment.

Calculating ROI

When calculating ROI there are many factors that should be taken into consideration: These include the sales over the period, latent sales, value; average rate of return of an investment project. Latent sales can sometimes make up a significant part of the return on a item that has a long sales cycle like a big ticket item.

To calculate straight return on investment the profits made from the investment is divided by the cost of the investment. Many prefer to calculate the rate of return that takes short term and long term sales cycle into consideration. The overall rate of investment is calculated based on a timeline of costs and returns.

Investments may have many hidden cost that should be included when you calculate ROI, these include maintenance costs, taxes, research costs and the time that the investment will demand. Because very few investments are straightforward and often include additional payments or lumps sum pay-out, many companies now offer spreadsheet software that make ROI calculations simple and more accurate. This software comes highly recommended as complicated ROI calculations may be very time consuming and errors may lead to poor investment decisions.

What ROI calculations are used for?

When companies draw up budgets of how they will apply capital during a specific period, they rely heavily on return on investment calculations to identify the most profitable investment projects.

This study is vital in maximising profits to be made from investments. Investors look intensively at inflation estimations and the risk of an investment when calculating the ROI at which they are willing to invest at. More recently the rate of investment is not only being used for traditional capital investment calculations but also when purchasing assets or programs like marketing or recruitment software.

November 23, 2008 · Filed Under Website ROI 

The basics to understanding Pay Per Click fundamentals

What the buzzwords mean

Dreamhost is a private company based in the Los Angeles area of the United States of America that provides web hosting and is also a domain name registrar. The company hosts a lot of servers, estimated to be around 700 000.these domain names are on a network of mostly Linux based servers.

What sets the company apart is the one of a kind control panel that includes integrated billing and support ticket systems. Most of the hosted domains operate on a shared hosting environment while a few have dedicated servers.

Google analytics is a service aimed at marketers providing detailed statistics about visitors to a website. This service is offered free of charge by Google and is capable of a range of functions including tracking visitors from diverse sources such as pay per click networks, search engines and email and viral marketing.

How it works

Pay per click secrets aren’t really secret once a few fundamentals are understood. The source of the mystery and confusion is ‘not knowing’ how it really works, or if you do being unsure of how effective the medium really is. The workings of the model are quite simple and easy to grasp.

The site owner writes a title and description then selects a keyword searchers must enter in order to bring up that particular listing. The next step is to bid against other site owners for its rank in search results. The bid amount refers to the money to be paid for each click on the listing. As is to be expected there is fierce competition for good rankings on common keywords, which are very popular.

The way to get ahead of the competition is to bid on plenty of keywords, which aren’t as massively popular but are still searched for. These keywords will have a cheaper bid price and ensure that you can still get good listings.

There are several tools to find these keywords, but the most successful results come from extensive research and playing with different combinations of words. The next step is to bid to put these keywords in an optimal position on a search engine. If the highest place is out of your budget its worth bidding for another space as long as its on the first results page which always attracts the vast majority of searchers.

Google analytics works by including a hidden piece of Java script code known as a snippet to every page. This code collects data, which is sent back to the data servers for processing. The processing is a continuous function so it can be available in real time. The main obstacle to the efficient running of the system is the fact that there are programs, which can block the application by deleting or blocking the cookies. Dreamhost offers hosting with increasing storage space and bandwidth every week.

In conclusion

If utilized together Dreamhost, Google applications and the pay per click synergy can work in synergy to truly make a site competitive.

November 22, 2008 · Filed Under Analytics 

The Best Way to Calculate ROI

ROI or Return of Investment is a calculation that is made by the owner of a business to keep track of the amount of money that has been invested into the business compared to the amount of money gained through sales or for services provided.

The whole objective for regularly and meticulously calculating ROI is to give the owner a near 100% overview of the status of his business. This will allow him to make the necessary changes in the business so that he does not sell himself short; a common mistake made by many small business owners. He will also be able to assess if the business venture is a profitable one and all sacrifices of time and money worth his while.

Ways to calculate ROI

There are many ways to calculate ROI. The simplest calculation is Payback – Investment = ROI. This formula will work on straightforward business transaction or in a small business operation. As there are many types of transactions involved in larger businesses a 100% correct calculation of ROI is not easy to obtain and various methods and formulas are applied to achieve the desired results. One of the most common reasons for a failed business venture is because ROI has not been implemented correctly.

When starting up a small business the owner often neglects or purposely omits his own efforts or labor when calculating ROI. These should also be considered as a very important and valuable part of the investment and an amount must be calculated into the ROI to reflect the true status of the business. Small business owners still in the teething stages should find a way that will gradually allow them to earn a living wage from their business. Calculating it into the ROI will certainly show whether the business is viable or not. ROI calculations should be done regularly on a monthly as well as on a yearly basis.

Is ROI Optimization worth it?

ROI optimization is made to assess the viability of advertising on a website as well as ways and means to improve visibility. Businesses spend huge amounts of money on advertising and Internet or website advertising has become one of the best means to get the business maximum exposure.
The correct marketing process will ensure that the investments will get the highest returns for the minimum cost. To calculate ROI, ROI optimization minimizes cost and increases revenue. Marketing this is has become quite a challenge for marketers.

There are many reputable consultants that can assist a business with ROI optimization. They help in finding a way that will not only keep track of your ROI but also use various methods to increase your web ROI. Regular reports will follow once the formula has been applied and positive results start to show. This is invaluable to any business as it will not only reflect the current situation but will give insight into the future prospects as well. ROI optimization can be a costly affair but well worth it in the long run.

November 21, 2008 · Filed Under Website ROI 

The ABCs of Return on Investment (ROI) Marketing

ROI marketing represents a massive shift away from traditional internet marketing strategies, which consisted of throwing large amounts of money into advertising and other forms of marketing, and hoping to obtain positive results in terms of brand recognition and increasing market share of the product.

The inherent flaw in this system is glaringly obvious: there didn’t exist a reliable way to quantify the results from the money spent and see exactly what impact the advertising budget has on a company’s bottom line.

In today’s fast paced and increasingly competitive business world CEO’s and those with a vested interest want to know in measurable terms how effective the marketing strategy is and more importantly how the customer satisfaction translates into increased profit and better returns for shareholders. Thus evolved systems to optimize marketing spend and measure the impact using a specific set of metrics including Hitslink, which analyzes traffic to site.

The ABC

Essentially hitslink is a service that provides accurate, real time information online regarding who visited the site, what search engines led them to the site. It also can show how the visitors navigated the site, how much time they spent there as well as if they made a purchase or transaction on the site and all this information is put together to give a quantifiable measure of how accurate your advertising is.

The ROI marketing metric has two forms. The first is a short-term method, which simply uses an index to compare the dollars of revenue generated by every dollar spent on marketing. The genius of this method lies in its simplicity, as it’s easy to look at the figures and use then to make a decision about the marketing mix and decide on more effective ways to get more bang for your advertising buck.

The second method is slightly more complex as it takes a long-term view and measures less tangible aspects of marketing effectiveness by combining marketing as well as business analytics to measure the benefits created by marketing investments.

Why change a winning formula?

For every voice shouting from the rooftops about how wonderful the concepts of ROI marketing and hitslink are in terms of improving efficiency and competitiveness there is a chorus of dissenting voices shouting the opposite.

They argue that the short-term metric doesn’t include the long-term brand building value gained from communicating with the market. There is also a perception that the long-term metric is overly complicated and thus only suitable for large corporations able to run sophisticated business analytics.

This is the traditional quandary facing businesses globally as they must make choices every day between the known past and the uncertain future. While both arguments have their merits only time will tell whether the future path lies with those who stick with time-honored tried and trusted methods or if fortune will favor those who step boldly into the brave new world to seize all the myriad opportunities it offers.

November 21, 2008 · Filed Under Website ROI 

Master the Art of Using Sales Tracking Software

There is a variety of sales tracking software on the market that can provide literally any of the needs that are required by a professional salesman to increase sales and improve heavily on ROI. The main requirements needed by any sales professional are to keep track of the sales as well as leads and prospects. Sales tracking software replaces things like files, spreadsheets and databases, to name but a few. It also enables the sales professional to be constantly in touch with the headquarters and details of customer’s accounts records.

It Can Only Improve On Sales

The benefits of sales tracking software are numerous. It is specifically designed to help the salesperson increase his performance level and this will in turn have quite a positive impact on his income. The software will also enable him to perform many more functions entailing in his job at a much faster and cheaper rate. Another important factor regarding sales is the follow up of sales leads. Sales tracking software is highly proficient in tracking sales leads that pop up during a business process. The leads are monitored and stored and this helps to improve on tracking precision.

Maintaining a healthy level of communication with prospective buyers is vital for the professional salesman. Sales tracking software allows instant access to prospective clients and at the same time optimizes the communication levels. Various aspects of sales reports are also available on the software. All aspects regarding the management of sales can be reported and printed. The reports can also be modified to suit your fancy as well to make it easier to understand and analyze.

Web Marketing is Guided By Sales Tracking Software.

Web marketing has become a highly demanding profession as more and more companies are using the Internet for advertising their goods and services. An online marketer is always on the outlook to gauge the effectiveness of online advertising as well as at the same time brings the costs down as low as possible. Marketing strategies can be greatly improved if the website design is effective and attractive.

A skilled website marketer can greatly improve the ROI of a business if the relevant sales information is used correctly and specific targets hit. Information obtained from the sales tracking software can enable the marketers to create the type of advertising that will provoke site visitors to become buyers instead. The art of creating new and innovative ways to attract more traffic to the website can be aided by the sales tracking software reports.

Because of sales tracking software, web marketing campaigns can be accurately and instantly monitored and analyzed. The effectiveness of the campaign can lead to higher productivity and increased ROI, depending on the outcome of the result. Because of the efficiency of the sales tracking software, web marketing can reach the specific customer base through relevant advertising campaigns. Sales tracking software enables goals set by the web marketer are also easily met.

November 19, 2008 · Filed Under Analytics