Don’t delay, install it today (or get your friendly geek to). Invaluable information & free.

Click the image for the expanded version…

If you’ve been using Google AdWwords for more than a few days, you probably understand that changing the maximum bid price that you’re prepared to pay will change the position your Ad will show in.

All things being equal (which they never are, but let’s assume that for now) if you bid more, your Ad will get displayed higher up the page. You’ve probably seen that yellow (sometimes blue or green) box at the top of the left side of the screen with an additional 1, 2 or 3 Ads in it.

Think of these Ads as ‘getting promoted’ from the right side of the screen to the left side. For phrases that get enough searches Google decides to show more than the standard 8 results.

Want this for your Ads? Before we get to the ‘how’, let’s look at why you might want to…

Why do you want your Ads to show in the top positions?

As you bid more for your keywords, your Ads move up the page (ie from position 7 to 5, from 5 to 2 & from position 2 to the left side of the page) and you’ll generally get more clicks on them. In other words, your CTR (Click Thru Rate) will increase: you get more clicks for the same number of times your Ads are shown (impressions).

The result of course is that you get more people coming to your website. The trade off is that you pay more to Google, as you’re paying for more clicks and you’re paying more for each click… at least to start with (if you use AdWords the right way, it actually gets cheaper the better you get – but more on that another day).

So if getting lots & lots of traffic to your site is a priority (because of the business owner’s ego, or wanting to impress the board/investors!) and you’re prepared to pay, bump up the bid price & voila.

However most of the time, this increase in position does not mean an equal increase in sales (or sign-ups, or lead generation, or whatever your site is trying to do). Generally speaking, the higher the position, the lower the quality of the traffic.

Think of it this way, the harder someone has searched for you (ie the lower down the page your Ad appears), the more likely they are to stick around once they get to your site… and hopefully fill in that contact form, or add a product to their shopping cart.

Generally we advocate aiming for positions 3-5 in Australia & positions 4-7 in the USA or UK. For most keywords this gives the best trade off between the quality of the lead and the cost of that lead. As always we suggest testing for yourself.

How do you get your Ads in the top position?

Easy. Bid more. AND, write a quality Ad. You won’t get into those top positions (to distinguish between the ‘normal’ positions & these ‘top-left’ positions, Google labels these as T1, T2 & T3) with a bad Ad.

This is why testing your Ads is so vital. You should always, always have 2 Ads running for each AdGroup (if split testing confuses you, signup for our free 5-day AdWords video course & watch the video on day 4).

The short answer (which we’ll expand on over the coming days) is to make sure that your Quality Score is as high as possible. How? By making sure that the keyword you bid on closely matches the keyword the searcher typed into Google.
Then making sure that you Ad is highly relevant to that keyword (ie those words appear in your Ad!)
And lastly making sure that the page you take that searcher to, is closely related to both the Ad and the keyword.

Don’t worry – it’s not as hard as it sounds & we’ll show you exactly how to do this if you want.

Are my AdWords Ads performing well?

Use the AdWords position report in Google Analytics to show all the data you could ever want for each of your main keywords.

This image shows the number of visits for each position the Ad showed in. You can easily show the sales that you got in each Ad position, or whichever Goals you’ve setup (number of sign ups, conversion rate etc)

As always, you need to know your numbers. Test & measure the results. Then rinse & repeat.

Have experience with this report? Got a comment that might help other businesses? Please comment in the space below. Thanks

It’s been a very interesting (very busy) experience and dozens of people now understand AdWords a bit better and, thanks to some great folk, I’ve learnt a lot about eBay.

What does this mean to you?

I was amazed to see that maybe just 5% of these smart people were using any kind of Analytics. And even those (I think it’s fair to say) aren’t using it to it’s fullest potential.

So what should you do?

If you own your own site, install google analytics (or any other analytics program) today. If this is all you do today, go do it now – then take the day off.

Now use it!
Use to find out how people use your site.
Use it to find out which of your products are most popular
Find out how long people stay on each page
And which pages they hate & leave as soon as they get there
You can find out which country your visitors are in & which language they prefer
And of course you can find more technical information – like screen resolutions – which is wonderful when you get around to that particular to-do & redesign your site.

Optional extra – watch the Google Analytics Tutorials on this site to learn all the ins & outs of this powerful, free tool.

How can you use Google Analytics to make more money?

Simple. Do more of what works & less of what doesn’t.

Use the 80/20 rule to your advantage. Improve your strengths even more & cut out the really weak areas. Don’t try to be everything to everyone.

Sounds so easy I know… but most people do the opposite. They spend all their time trying to make the crappy bits look better & figure the good bits are good enough.

Wrong!

Make the good into great. And turn the great into outstanding!

You’ll increase your income & profits by a factor of, well, lots. You’ll stop trying to be all things to all people, and your site will get further & further ahead of your competition, and you’ll start to dominate your niche.

By spending as little as 5 minutes a week, you can track some key areas of your site that will give you clues & insight into the minds of your visitors. That means you can get better and better at offering them exactly what they’re looking for … which results in dramatic increases in the number of leads generated or sales made

• See where visitors are leaving your site – once you know where the ‘holes’ are in your site, you can patch them up & keep visitors on your site for longer, leading to more and more sales
• Find out how your visitors are finding you. If you’re spending a lot of money on Yellow Pages & other directories you need to find out exactly how many prospects they send to you and if its worth your while to continue… WebSavvy just saved a Sydney legal firm $10,000 a quarter. They stopped spending on a well known Sydney directory and now spend less, get more qualified visitors & spend a fraction of what they used to.
• Speaking of which, do you already use Google AdWords? (hint: if you don’t, you need to give it a try!). Google Analytics integrates seamlessly with Google AdWords – so you can track which keywords generate the most signups/sales & which are actually losing you money

• See how long visitors stay on your site. Measure this number each week & notice any changes.
• Depending on the type of site you may want this number to be as short or as long as possible – the number isn’t important, it’s the trend over time as you start to change bits of your site
• You can see at a glance where your visitors are coming from. For example, if you have lots of visitors from New Zealand, do you offer a product that they can purchase? Is there a version of your product or service that could be altered, or created to make the most of this market?
• Maybe you’re thinking of updating your site, but not sure how much or how little to do? Google Analytics will show you dozens of useful reports so that you can see exactly how your site is used. If you are going to redesign your site, wouldn’t it be useful to know the screen size of your average visitor – or better yet, all the screen sizes & connection speeds for all of your visitors last month. Then you could take this real data to your web designer to make sure you build the site that best suits your visitors
• Knowing which days (or which hours of the day) are most popular can save you thousands on your advertising – whether that’s online, tv, radio or even just your own newsletter. Once you know when its most profitable to advertise, uou can stop the unprofitable media & just keep those that make you money
• Oh yes… it’s FREE!

All up, Google Analytics offers over 80 different reports on all aspects of your website that allow you to follow a prospect from the moment they search for you, to the point where they become a customer. Valuable & vital information that allows you to better target your advertising, create more effective marketing campaigns & offer what your customers want to buy.

Do you have a Google Account?

If you’re going to use Google AdWords or Analytics, you’ll need a Google Account.

This does not mean that you have to get yet another email address or pay Google any money, just go to
https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount

Enter your current email address, pick a password (Google even tells you how good the password is), choose your country, read & agree to the Terms of Service.

Google will now send you a quick email to confirm that you are who you say you are. Just click the link in this email & you’re set.

NOTE: sometimes this confirmation email goes astray or finds its way into the Spam or Junk folder of your account. If you haven’t received a confirmation email after 5 minutes, check these and/or click the link again to resend the email.

If you already have a Google AdWords account, you won’t need to go through these steps.

Here’s a short video that shows just how easy it is to setup a Google Account in preparation for your Analytics Account.

Full size version: How to set up a Google Account