I find metrics and business intelligence to be extremely telling and cannot live without them. The ability to test, optimize, re-test and ultimately obtain the desired action of a user or customer at the best possible price is something only afforded to online advertising and marketing as long as you use the right tools.

I am sure you have heard of conversion tracking, and Google’s tools within AdWords and Analytics make it very easy. Here is my guide to setting up, finding the data, and understanding the differences between Google AdWords Conversions and Google Analytics Goals and Filters.

First Setup Google AdWords to talk to Google Analytics

Be sure to tie your Google AdWords account to your Google Analytics account. To do so you need to have the email that you use as your AdWords login the same as an email of a user of your Google Analytics. Once you have an email that is the same for both AdWords and Analytics you login to your Google Adwords account. On the top menu click the Analytics tab (see graphic below).

The Analytics account will be listed as long as your Analytics has a user with the same email as your AdWords account. Follow the steps and you will then see your Analytics reports available via the “Analytics” tab within Google AdWords.

How to Setup Conversion Tracking within Google AdWords

To set up the conversion tracking within Google AdWords click on the “Conversion Tracking” submenu underneath the “Campaign Management” tab.

You then “Create a New Action” and you need to name it, such as “Registrations”, other data can be associated to it also. Once you save the action you will be given code to put on the page.

You copy the code and paste it into the page that the user will see after they take your desired action. For example if you have a registration page named “register.php” and it collects their name and email with a button to “register” and the next page once registered is “welcome.php” then you put the code on the “welcome.php” page.

Example of how the flow of data works with AdWords: an individual searches on your keyword within Google, the Google network, or Content Network (depending on how you set up your AdWords campaign) then they see one of your advertisements (you can create many different variations) and go to your landing page, submit the information to register with you, then the next page which has the Conversion Tracking code is presented to the user “Thanks for Registering” and the code pings Google AdWords to register a conversion.

You will now see which Campaign, AdGroup, Keyword and Advertisement within Google AdWords generated that conversion. Cost per conversion and other useful information is provided as well.

How to Setup Conversion Tracking within Google Analytics

To set up the conversion tracking with Google Analytics you create what they call “Goals”. To set up a goal you first look under the “Website Profiles” and next to your Domain you will see the “View Reports” and “Edit” under “Settings”.

You will see under the “Conversion Goals and Funnel” heading a list of Goal Names, starting with sequential numbering of G1 G2 G3 etc. Click the “Edit” link under settings to set up a Goal.

Note: What is different about the Google Analytic Goal tracking code as opposed to Google AdWords Conversion Tracking is that you do not need to set up code on your pages for the Goal Tracking. However, you must have the generic Google Analytics code on all your pages for it to work.

There are a list of fields to fill out, the question marks provide information on what is needed. Two main items to understand, Goals and Funnels. Goals are set up by simply putting the URL of the page that as the Goal page. Every visit to that page will be counted so you need to be careful and assure that is a unique page that can only be accessed the way you want. For example if the Goal page is your home page because a new registrant is taken to the home page after registering you will not only have the total of new registrants but it will also show the total number of visits to the home page for that day. The total will be inflated. This is the major difference between the accuracy of the AdWords Conversion tracking and the Google Analytics Goal tracking. However, the Funnels, which are optional, assist in removing the inflated Goal counts.

To utilize Filters, which are incredibly helpful and powerful, you define the path you would like to see a person take. In other words your Goal may show 10 registrants, however you may want to know if they went to the Goal page by first going to the registration page as this would remove all the inflated visitors. For example, if the Goal shows 20 visits to the Goal page and only 10 came from the registration page then you know there were 10 registrants. Utilizing filters can be used for many purposes.

Here are two powerful uses of the Goals and Filters, for internal site development and optimization as well as external advertising campaign testing.

First, internally you can use the filters to show the paths that are taken to registration. Is it home page –> registration or content page –> registration, any path you may suspect or see within Analytics you can filter here.

Also, internally if you have a multi-page sign up process you can determine exactly which pages potential registrants drop off. You may have individuals drop off when you ask certain questions or on certain pages, great to be able to test.

Second, to monitor external advertising campaigns that use unique landing pages you create, you can show filtering from page1 –> registration or page2 –> registration etc. This is a great way to determine, in a process of pages, which campaigns work best.

Where to Find the AdWords Conversions within Google AdWords

You can also find the AdWords conversion data within AdWords. Total number of Conversions are listed by Campaign Name, by Ad Group Name within the Campaign, by Advertisement Variation and by Keywords. The data will always be listed under the “Conversions” column.

Where to Find the AdWords Conversions and Goals within Google Analytics

Before we discuss how to use the Goal and Conversions, here is where you find the data with Google Analytics. The image on the left shows the data for AdWords is found under the “Traffic Sources” menu item. While the image on the right shows the Goals information is shown under the “Goals” tab, a lot of great information.

Now You’re Ready!
That’s it, now you are up and running and know the differences between the Google Conversion tracking with AdWords and the Google Analytics Goals and Funnels. The above is meant to get you started, however does not even begin to touch on the various ways in which you can use the data. Begin to use the tools, use your imagination and you will be wondering why you never used them before.

I found this Google Website Optimizer presentation that was created by Google. Basically a slide show with audio as well. Good introductory overview.

Post Ratings is a plugin to allow your users to rate all or a select number of your posts, stars or thumbs-up/down. Easy to install and free, instructions here. Try it on this post please, let’s see how well it works.

If you are using WordPress and your traffic increases, you may need to use a caching plugin to lower your CPU load or your webhost will make you upgrade your account to a more expensive server. Here is a great free cache plugin called SuperCache.

When I first began this site to monitor my online marketing progress I sat back to determine what metrics I should use to monitor progress. My first thoughts were about 50% right and 50% wrong. There are many statistics available for websites, however not all of them are relevant. Whether or not a statistic makes any sense for you depends on what your goal is.

As my site was new I thought it would be important to monitor site traffic, unique visitors, page views and other typical metrics. While these are valuable and can be used in many ways, such as encouraging advertisers to advertise, they alone are not metrics from which I can make decisions that will impact my main goal.

Determine Your Main Goal
Before you determine which metrics to utilize when monitoring your success and to make decisions from, you must first determine your goal. A site may offer a paid newsletter subscription, their goal would be to obtain new paid users. There are various steps in the process from a first time visitor through the final action of subscribing to a newsletter. In the case of this site the main goal is revenue. Simply tracking traffic to the site is not enough. Therefore should I really of cared about Alexa, Quantcast and Compete?

Alexa, Quantcast and Compete Do Not Matter
In the case of these tracking sites they track overall traffic but that is not the goal of this site. Having third party numbers showing that this site is visited more or less than another is not helpful. Alexa, Quantcast, and Compete have their uses. Alexa Rankings recently changed and Quantcast actually allows you to add code to your pages to add additional information to their statistics about your site. Why would you use them? Mainly to have a third party validate the web traffic to your site and Quantcast also provides information such as demographics about your site visitors. Useful for some purposes but not for this site.

Revenue Metrics
What matters in the case of this site is the ultimate goal of revenue and which metrics assist in determining how to optimize the revenue. If 100,000 people visit my site in one day and I do not generate revenue it does not matter if another 100,000 come the next day, so my Alexa ranking may be high but increasing my Alexa ranking through non converting traffic does me no good. Determining where my visitors come from, such as keywords in a search engine, what they do when they are here, and whether they ultimately end up increasing revenue for this site are the only metrics that matter.

Suggestion
I strongly suggest adding the Google Analytics code to your site. The information they gather is only accessible to you, a free statistics package from Google, and the information is invaluable. You cannot beat this free statistics package and you can better track the metrics that matter to your site.

Alexa announced today that their algorithms have changed. Alexa is a third party website ranking service. Alexa is free and until Compete and Quantcast came along Alexa was the only game in town. You may see your Alexa ranking have a sharp increase or decrease today.

Of course you can use statistic packages and analytics to view your traffic. However a site like Alexa is a third party independent verifier of website traffic. Many individuals may be suspect when you tell them your traffic because you are the owner of the site and the source of the traffic statistics. Showing someone the statistics from a third party is more easily believed and leaves less doubt.A second reason Alexa and the others are useful is the rankings, they show you how you rank in comparison to other websites. Therefore you can view the popularity of a website, page views per person, what countries the visitors are from and more. Quantcast even offers code to put on your pages in order to obtain even more information, it is helpful to show potential advertisers the demographics of your audience and have them originate from a third party.

Alexa first received their data from users that installed the Alexa toolbar. Many did not believe the rankings would be accurate if the toolbars were not installed in a large enough population then the sample size may not be valid. Currently they state that the new rankings also take data from other sources.

Take a look at the new Alexa rankings here.

I ran across and interesting script for maximizing your eBay affiliate earnings. This script is very well thought out, with excellent documentation and features.

The script creates an entire website for you and pulls in eBay listings while using your affiliate ID. The listings are updated in real time and therefore the content (eBay listings) of your site is automatically changing for you. After visiting eBay you choose the category you would like the site to focus on and all the subcategories are automatically pulled in as well.

You may choose from a couple templates and if you would like, you can even modify the templates. You are also able to add code to pages easily using their admin tool and templates. For example, I added advertising code using the PubMatic tool I wrote about.

The sites are search engine friendly and you may add text and other content to every page of the site. You may also enter unique meta tags and descriptions for the search engines as well.

I bought the script and am testing installation, usability, and whether the site is indexed on search engines and whether any money is made.

After an hour I have the site up and running, take a look at Purchase the Script Here.

---

Determine your site traffic with the most popular free ranking sites: Alexa, Compete and Quantcast. Instead of using Comscore many opt for the freely available site traffic rankings sites, here is how they work.

There are 3 publicly available traffic sites: Alexa, Quantcast and Compete. Most in our industry not consider them statistically valid, and we do not rely on them for a variety of reasons including:

• Alexa extrapolates rankings from their data. The data is collected based on those individuals that decide to download their tool in their browser (Firefox just recently added) and Alexa then determines rankings based on their behavior. Anyone can download their utility and they may not control the sample. You may see wild fluctuations month to month due to their methods. Visit Alexa Here.
• Alexa is very similar to Alexa and individuals must install the Compete bar. Visit Compete Here.
• Quantcast has some basic data, however you must implement their code on your site so they can collect information about your site and visitors. This may be the most accurate of the three, so the data may be the most relevant. Visit Quantcast Here.

Each one of these sites is worth looking at as third party verifiers of your site activity.

Increase sales with an Autoresponder!

Once someone vistis your site they may never return. However if they find your site interesting they may provide their email but not yet be ready to purchase your service or product. Autoresponders are a simple and easy way to communicate with your leads since it is automated.

Here is how it works, once an email is entered into the system that user receives follow up emails at predetermined times, such as 1 day after they sign up, 3, days, 14 days etc. You only need to setup the autoresponder once by creating the messages you would like to have sent. In each message you put the link back to your site or service and allow this automated system to constantly market your product or service for you. You choose which messages to be sent when.

They provide incredible tools such as 51+ Templates for newsletter and follow up design, web forms so you do not need to code, training guides, videos and free customer support.

You can get started in three steps:

1. Sign up for a 30 day trial here.

2. Add a Form to Capture Website Visitor Subscriptions

Use their form generator, with video tutorials, to create unblockable pop-ups or standard forms that are easily installed on your website without programming experience.

3. Create and Send Follow Up Emails and Newsletters to Opt-in Subscribers

Configure unlimited follow up and newsletter messages with name personalization, click thru and open rate tracking, attachments, RSS, and split testing at no additional cost. Messages can include HTML using their 51+ pre-designed templates, or create your own with the integrated easy editor and images or plain text.

No Risk Offer

Their current offer is risk free for 30 days, if we don’t help build your opt-in list and convert more website visitors we’ll give you a 100% no questions asked refund. Sign up for a 30 day trial here.

Jobamatic allows you to easily and quickly install a job board on your site. You can earn revenue and there is no work on your part necessary, more on revenue below. The job board is fully hosted and free, you can sign up here for Jobamatic.

Fully Customizable
The system is also customizable so it has the same look and feel as your website by allowing you to modify the header and footer. You can also call your own CSS file from your server to assure the look matches yours. Take a look at my site VentureCapitalUpdate here (a new window will open) then compare to the screen shot below or go to the jobs.VentureCapitalUpdate.com to compare.

Subdomain
You can also create a subdomain of your domain and through a CNAME mapping it will have your URL and look as if it is part of your site. For example I set up on my Venture Capital Update site the Jobamatic site http://startup.jobamatic.com/ which is the default. I am now changing the CNAME and it will point to http://jobs.VentureCapitalUpdate.com.

Relevant Jobs
You also create categories to filter through the jobs. Since I have a site related to startups and venture capital I used those categories. After the jobs posted on your site are listed they then list jobs from around the web filtered with the terms you chose for your category.

Revenue?
You decide the price to charge for postings to your site, as well as how long the job postings will run. You receive fifty percent (50%) of the Net Revenue. You will also receive thirty percent (30%) of the Net Revenue received from paid clicks on your page on Sponsored Job Listings. Therefore for each posting you receive 50% of the price you specified as well as 30% of any click throughs on paid listings that are displayed, these are displayed after your search results using the filter described above.

What a great way to create a job board with little to no effort on your part. The job board can have the same look and feel as your site along with a subdomain, and the jobs listed are relevant to your sites content. I think the site and service is very well done. You can sign up here for Jobamatic.