Google’s New Keyword Planner: Positives & Negatives

Google Keyword Planner

 

The once useful and efficient Google Keyword tool is no longer in use. It has now been reincarnated as Google Keyword Planner. This has earned a mixed response from its users, and there are both positives and negatives to be found with this new Keyword Planner application.

The Keyword Planner function is a combination of the Keyword Tool and the Traffic Estimator, which aims to give you results for both through one platform. Here is a breakdown of the positives and negatives of this new Keyword Planner.

 

 

Positives of Keyword Planner:

• A major development in the Keyword Planner is its ability to provide the volume of a keyword search at a city level, which enables organisations to segment their audience to specific geographic locations for optimum results.
• Users can now upload up to 10,000 keywords from their own list to get performance data.
• The Keyword Planner also allows users to categorise results by ad group, landing page, among others.

 

Negatives of Keyword Planner:

To use the Keyword Planner, users must now login to a registered AdWords account.

The Keyword Planner doesn’t offer the following;

• Match type data for search volume.
• Global vs. Local monthly searches.
• Device targeting.

Are you having problems with the new Keyword Planner?

At WebResults, we have a team of Adwords experts who know how to best use the Keyword Planner tool for optimum results. Please contact us, and we can help you set up an effective Adwords campaign, among our many other services.

How to Solve The “Not Provided” Problem in Google Analytics

Google Analytics: The “Not Provided” Problem

Google analytics is a fantastic tool for viewing visitor trends and behaviour. It helps you to figure out what your website is doing right or wrong, and to see how effective your current SEO strategy is performing.

The one problem many people have with the service is its organic search terms report. In this report, you can see what search terms are giving you the most visitor traffic. However throughout this report the term “not provided” regularly appears and the content is not accessible to the business, although this information is available to those who have a paid premium account.

Why is this data hidden?

 In 2011 Google updated their privacy settings, focusing on protecting those with a Google account (Gmail, Google+ etc). If a person conducts a web search through Google whilst they are logged into a Google account, then their search is conducted over a Secure Socket Layer (SSL), therefore the referral data relating to that search is hidden.

This referral data contains some very useful information, such as the keywords used to perform that search. This data is however only viewable to Google and those with a premium analytics account.

There are ways around this for you with basic accounts. One such way involves analysing landing page results. This involves mining through Google Analytics for other information that will reveal more about who your visitors were and what they were doing on your site. This involves 3 steps;

1. In your Analytics account, head to Admin, then Profiles.
2. Click the name of the profile you want to work with, and select the Filters tab.
3. Create a new filter in your Analytics account and follow the guidelines in  the image below:

After applying this filter, future keyword reports while provide some more useful information. Instead of “not provided” appearing in the report, it will be presented as

 “np – / landing page”.

 While this doesn’t reveal the actual search term used by the visitor, it does show you what page within your site appeared in their search result. This can give you the information  of which pages within your site are appearing on search results. This new data will only be presented like this for future reports.

Why use Google Analytics?

Measure Your SEO performance:

With Google Analytics you can analyse your current SEO strategy and see what keywords are working for you. It will also show which pages on your site are most popular. You can assess the amount of traffic coming into your site, and quantify goals and conversions. If you have any questions regarding Google analytics, please contact us.

Measuring SEO Success

 

Having put a lot of time and effort into devising a SEO strategy, it is now time to measure how effective it actually was. To do this there are three key performance indicators (KPI) to look at; 

• Rankings
• Traffic
• Conversions

The information gathered from these KPIs can be used to both measure the success of this campaign and provide valuable information for future campaigns.

 

Rankings:

Keyword rankings are a key component of the SEO process with the websites who are listed on the first page receiving up to 92% of the traffic share (Searchengineland.com, 2012). Over time a business can track keywords and see how effective each are with the ability to change them at any time. Keyword analysis involves some trial and error as a business might find out overtime that a keyword is just too broad and competitive for their business to rank high for.

 

Traffic:

Having your site appear on the first page of a search engine isn’t enough to classify a SEO campaign as a success. The traffic volume and quality of a search term must also be analysed. Traffic volume should be measured based on the number of visits that come from organic search. With a successful SEO strategy, there should be a significant increase in organic search traffic over time.

How much traffic you should expect depends on the size of your target audience. For example, a successful SEO campaign that targets people who are looking for a nationwide online retailer will deliver significantly more organic search traffic than a successful campaign targeting people who are looking for a local hairdresser.

Within this volume of traffic, the quality of the traffic must also be analysed. Some areas of interest when determining the quality of such traffic include, pages per visit, average visit duration and bounce rate. You are essentially looking for a high average duration with a large amount of pages visited whilst keeping your bounce rate low.

Conversions:

Through web analytics you can determine what you consider to be a goal or a conversion. This could be something like a visitor completing a subscription form or contacting the business. When these conversions are set up by you, you can use Google Analytics to track and record each conversion as it happens. You can even track each page a visitor viewed leading up to the conversion to see what links they clicked on etc, this can be done with tools such as mouseflow. Sales aren’t essential from first time visitors, it is good to make them aware of your brand and have them complete some form of conversion which will keep you in their minds for future reference. After analysing your conversions you can also pinpoint which keywords from organic search results attracted each visitor.

Conclusion                                                                                                                                                

Tracking these KPIs will not only allow you to measure your SEO campaign’s current performance, but it will also provide you with vital data to help ensure your next campaign is a success. For more information on measuring SEO or any other marketing activities, please contact us            

3 SEO Musts

Are you struggling with your sites SEO and ranking?  Read our 3 musts of SEO now to see how you can improve your website and it’s search engine ranking!

To read the full article, visit 3 SEO Musts.

For more information on search engine optimisation and web marketing, contact us.  For more information on this topic, click here.

Back to School With Your PPC Campaign

PPC campaigns need constant monitoring and refreshing, check out our “back to school” PPC tips for advice and help on your PPC campaign and its ROI.

To read the full article, visit Back to School With Your PPC Campaign.

For more information on PPC advertising and web marketing, contact us.  For further information on this topic, click here.

Keyword Research, SEO Vs PPC

Do you treat your SEO and PPC keyword research the same?  Read our article to find out why they’re different and why your keyword analysis should be carefully thought about.

To read the full article, visit Keyword Research, SEO Vs PPC.

For more information on SEO, PPC and web marketing, contact us.  For more information on this topic, click here.

10 Tips for Linkedin Networking

Are you on Linkedin? See how Linkedin can benefit you and your business through networking and making your profile more visible! Read our article on the 10 Tips for Linkedin Networking now!

To read the full article, visit 10 Tips for Linkedin Networking.

For more information on social media marketing and web marketing, contact us.  For more information on this topic, click here.

What Is SEO?

What is SEO and how can it help your company?  Read our article for more information on SEO to get a better understanding on search engine optimisation and how it can benefit your business.

To read the full article, visit What is SEO.

For more information on SEO Dublin, our search engine optimisation company – Webresults.ie, contact us.  For more information on this topic, click here.

The Rules of SEO

Have you got to grips with SEO? Are you confused about the constantly changing world of SEO and how to keep up with the ever changing tips?  Read our article on the must have rules now!

For the full article, visit The Rules of SEO.

For more information on search engine optimisation and web marketing, contact us.  For more information on this topic, click here.

9 Questions to Ask Before Entering Into A PPC Campaign

Are you entering the world of PPC?  Have one or two final questions before you click the Okay button on your campaign?  Read our article on PPC FAQ’s to see if we can answer your questions!

To read the full article, visit 9 Questions to Ask Before Entering Into A PPC Campaign.

For more information on PPC and web marketing, contact us.  For more information on this topic, click here.