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Will Your CMS Cause Paid Search Problems?

cgseo — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:08:13 +0000

For many marketers involved in SEO, the three letter acronym CMS can sometimes be more like a four letter word. Depending on the CMS and the implementation, there are some serious problems that can impact your SEO efforts. From duplicate content to unfriendly redirects to lack of content optimization, the list can get quite long. The irony is that CMS packages are supposed to make your life easier (and many do), but there are times they can negatively impact your SEO initiatives (and that’s an understatement). There are many types of content management systems on the market. Some are tailored for specific industries, others for running e-commerce shops, and then you have the major players which can run robust and high volume websites. Some packages are more flexible to work with, while others have limits. I’ve mentioned SEO a few times already, but you probably noticed that the title of my post focused on SEM and not just SEO . That’s because I’ve been running into more and more CMS-related SEM problems than I’d like to. Some of the problems can be avoided if they are addressed up front, while others are more difficult to tackle. My goal is to arm you with information that can help you avoid some of the headaches I’ve seen when running SEM campaigns while using a CMS to power a website. And as many of you know, hell hath no fury like an SEM that can’t track his campaigns properly. By the way, I am by no means saying that CMS packages in general are problematic for marketing departments. I simply want to explain specific situations where content management systems can be a thorn in your SEM side. But Isn’t SEM Straight Forward? There are times when I’ve been brought in to help companies and clients vet and choose the right CMS packages. Regardless of the size of the client, most of the focus has been on the potential SEO impact. I think many people see paid search as something relatively easy to implement. For example, choose your keywords, build campaigns, point them to your site, and you’re good to go. That’s not necessarily the case. Sure, the SEO implications of choosing the wrong package for your specific situation could be catastrophic, but when many SEM campaigns are heavily judged on ROI, you should be able to give yourself the best shot at success (and that means control). That’s where some CMS packages can be a pain in the neck. I’ve included four categories of problems that you could face when implementing your SEM campaigns while using a CMS. I’ve also included some recommendations and workarounds later in the post. Customizing Content and SEM Landing Pages Meeting visitor expectations in SEM is critically important for increasing conversion. Since you are spending $x per click to drive targeted prospects to your site, you definitely want to make the most of it. So as a smart search marketer, you decide to craft campaign landing pages tailored for each visitor segment. Smart move, but will your CMS cooperate? For example, you probably want to limit the amount of navigation on your SEM landing pages to ensure the focus is on the product or service at hand. I’ve run into circumstances where clients could not remove parts of the navigation (or the entire navigation if that’s what they wanted to do). Your CMS could potentially limit what you can provide, which can have a big impact on the user experience (and on your ROI). Depending on your CMS package and your implementation, some might be able to give you what you need, while others might require additional development. Other smaller CMS packages might not be able to bend at all. An Example of Customizing a Campaign Landing Page: You might also want to tailor content areas on the landing page. CMS packages use templates to render the layout of certain categories of pages. If you didn’t have specific templates created for your marketing landing pages, then you might be extremely limited with what you can tailor. For example, your product detail pages all might be driven from one template. Depending on how detailed you were while setting up your CMS, you might not be able to add new elements so easily. Or, you might have to cut down your requirements and only get some of those elements implemented. Tracking Conversion Web analytics packages have come a long way over the past several years. Most packages enable you to track both macro-conversions (sales, registrations, etc.) as well as micro-conversions (downloading a document, viewing a video, clicking an email address, etc.) However, some CMS packages are not ready to track conversions the way you need them to. The beautiful part of a content management system is that it can make it much easier to update and manage the content on your site. The downside is that it might limit the level of functionality you want to implement for tracking visitor behavior. The problems I have encountered typically deal with micro versus macro-conversions. For example, as long as your macro-conversions are triggered in a standard way (such as submitting a form), you probably won’t have problems tracking them in your CMS. However, tracking micro-conversions in your CMS could be problematic. I’ve provided a quick example below. Let’s say you choose to tag a download link as a pageview to track it as a conversion in Google Analytics. That’s a quick way to see how many visitors from your SEM campaign reached that goal. But, you found out that your CMS doesn’t allow tagging of links (due to several reasons). That might sound ridiculous, but I have run into this issue a few times. For example, you might not be allowed to add JavaScript to links in a CMS template. Another example would be if you decided to use event tracking to analyze your flash video files . Maybe you want to know how many campaign visitors are watching each video, if they reach certain points in the video, and if they click a call to action in the video player. That’s cool, but what if you find out that you can’t include the necessary code or files to implement this correctly? Your solution might be to custom develop a tracking mechanism for your CMS, but that costs money and can take time. Destination URL’s The CMS-related URL problems I have seen are more like little gremlins versus major issues. But these little gremlins can still cause big problems. In some CMS packages, URL’s are tied to fields for product name or SKU. So, if the product name or SKU changes, the URL also changes. I’m sure many SEO’s reading this post just had adrenaline shoot through their veins since they understand how big of a problem this can be SEO-wise . But, this can also be an equally big problem for SEM. If one of your destination URL’s changes but nobody tells you, then you’ll be driving traffic to a 404. That’s right, you’ll still be spending money, but with absolutely no chance of converting visitors. That’s until you (or Google) realizes what’s going on, which depending on the size of the account, could be hours or could be days. Think about it, you could have hundreds of ad groups running in a larger account. If even five of your destination URL’s change, you could potentially lose thousands of dollars per day (depending on the size your budget). I have also seen some weird tracking issues with URL’s in certain CMS packages. For example, destination URL’s that work flawlessly when you click through your ads sometimes don’t track properly in your analytics package. I haven’t seen this problem as much as others mentioned in this post, but it still could be an issue. The most serious impact is that you cannot effectively track campaign performance if your destination URL’s aren’t picked up by your analytics solution. The problems that I encountered were the result of how the CMS implemented URL rewriting. For example, the original URL might have querystring parameters, product id’s, etc. and the CMS is rewriting the URL to be descriptive. I would keep this in mind while testing your campaigns. Just because the link works and the page renders doesn’t mean it’s being tracked properly. Double check your reporting to ensure all of your campaigns and ad groups are being tracked. Landing Page Optimization I mentioned earlier that SEM landing pages were critically important. Once you map out your campaign landing pages, you might choose to utilize A/B split testing or multivariate testing to increase conversion. Unfortunately, you might run into some problems while implementing testing with your CMS. In order to implement testing, you will need to add code to your landing pages and conversion pages in your test. You also might need to tag “sections” of your page if you want to test multiple versions of each element and their impact on conversion. To understand what’s working and what’s not, you also might need to tag micro-conversions as your success metrics (as mentioned earlier in my post). Unfortunately, if you don’t have the ability to add the necessary code or tag certain actions as conversion, you might have a hard time effectively optimizing your landing pages. It’s important to speak with your CMS vendor to ensure this can be accomplished BEFORE you launch your campaigns. Will Your CMS Enable You To Add Code For Testing? Recommendations and Workarounds I have provided some recommendations below that can help you while choosing the right CMS package for your site, as well how to manage certain situations if you already have a CMS in place. Vet CMS Vendors and Packages The first and most obvious recommendation is to thoroughly vet potential CMS vendors and packages. Ask vendors about both SEO and SEM, and how their packages hold up under the conditions mentioned in this post. Ask to see examples of the CMS in action with regard to SEM landing pages, multivariate testing, analytics and tracking, etc. Bring up some of the latest SEO and SEM advancements to see if the package supports them (or if it has plans to support them in future releases). Also ask to speak with a few clients that are using their CMS with paid search. If Needed, Take It Outside the CMS If you are already using a CMS and cannot implement landing pages or effectively track your SEM efforts, then you might want to build static pages that can reside outside of your CMS. Then you can have more flexibility in developing custom landing pages, tracking what you need, adding code where you need to, etc. Yes, this defeats the purpose of a CMS, but you will only be doing this for your SEM campaigns. I’ve had several clients go down this path with success. Hacks Are Sometimes Needed… If you are already tied to a CMS and cannot do what you need SEM-wise (and you cannot build pages outside the CMS), then you might have to use some hacks to get what you want. For those of you not familiar, a hack is simply a way to get a system to do something that it wasn’t meant to do out of the box. For example, you might be able to use on-site search to get the right products and content on your landing page. You might be able to hide the navigation via a CSS hack or use product-based URL’s for tracking purposes. Hacks work, but they typically aren’t pretty. I would use them as a last resort. Testing Is Critically Important Create a system where campaigns can be easily and thoroughly tested. For example, ensure your analytics solution is tracking campaigns accurately. Make sure your destination URL’s are working properly. By analyzing key metrics in your reporting, you can pick up signs that problems are brewing. For example, if AdWords shows you that a specific ad group had 450 clicks yesterday, but your analytics package shows a fraction of that (or none at all), then you might have a CMS/SEM gremlin causing problems. Summary and Takeaways I hope this post introduced some potential CMS-related problems that could inhibit the success of your paid search campaigns. In a perfect world, you would address these concerns before choosing a package. That said, the reality is that many companies have already implemented a CMS package and need to make the most of it. Content management systems can be extremely powerful for your business, but just make sure the one you choose can track your marketing campaigns effectively. And a quick note to CMS vendors. You can give your CMS a serious competitive advantage if it’s SEM, SEO, and Analytics friendly. Please feel free to reach out to me with information about your CMS if you feel it already is. I’d love to take a look. Glenn Gabe is an online marketing consultant at G-Squared Interactive and focuses heavily on SEO, SEM, Social Media Marketing, Viral Marketing and Web Analytics. You can read more of Glenn’s posts on his blog, The Internet Marketing Driver and you can follow him on Twitter to keep up with his latest projects, news, and updates. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Will Your CMS Cause Paid Search

How to Predict Traffic from Google

admin — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 13:43:34 +0000

Google gives you plenty of really good tools at the moment to predict the traffic to your website from Google rankings. In this post I will show you how you can make a guestimation of the %age of traffic that a particular rank will give you, this is something that I have been trying to figure out for a long time now, and with Google’s wealth of tools available we can use these to get quite fair estimations (Well I think so anyway.). So what do you need to do this: Google Adwords Keyword Tool Your Analytics Package Daily Rankings Reports Google Insights for Search Firstly some caveats, This is an estimation tool remember this and make no promises based on the results, Results can depend on many other factors other than just this such as how appealing your result looks to the searcher, Results do not take into consideration the number of sponsored listings on the page or local search results and the maps with them, real time search box and Shopping results. Collecting the

How to Aggregate Google Analytics Stats with SEJ Tools

admin — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 11:48:08 +0000

The best thing about the SEJ tools is that you can have all aspects of your website promotion campaign and performance tracking under one combined login. Using one tool you can create and publish content , track links , monitor and compare rankings , do on-page diagnostics and also view your traffic stats. Traffic monitoring is based on Google Analytics: SEJ toolset allows to import all your Google Analytics accounts into your SEJ tools account to view your stats. To activate Google Analytics, you should first login and authorize a specific Google Analytics account so the system can access the data. This process is secure , and you can revoke access at any time. So to start: Go to ANALYTICS tab and click the link saying “Authorize Google Analytics”. Then click “Grant access” link and select the Google Account profile you want to import; You will then be taken back to your SEJ tools account where you will be able to instantly see the imported stats. The software will fetch and display the following data: The Dashboard view:

Weekly Search & Social News: 12/15/09

admin — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 16:50:21 +0000

Welcome to another edition of ‘ 7 Days of Search and Social ‘ – Well, maybe it’s the holidays or maybe it was SES, but the world was a little quieter than usual last week. But that’s no problem as the behemoth that is Google put out (yet another?) big announcement/roll-out with Real Time Search. That was enough to feed the savages on its own. Other than that, it was busiest in the Local SEO world and well… if you aren’t on your game with local… Get on it! Enough rambling, let’s get to it.

Learn WordPress SEO from Joost de Valk

admin — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 03:22:01 +0000

When it comes to WordPress SEO , and tweaking websites in general, there is no other blog or man I would recommend SEJ readers to read or follow more than Joost de Valk. Joost is the developer of a good number of most of the well known SEO plugins for WordPress including a brand new Google Analytics Plugin , Yoast Breadcrumbs and the Meta Robots WordPress Plugin . Joost is also one of the most helpful people I’ve ever met in SEO and/or blogging and is always willing to share his wealth of information not only on his blog, but also on messager, in various comments and his WordPress email newsletter. Whether you are a seasoned SEO or novice blogger, almost anyone in search or publishing can learn something from following Joost on Twitter (pronounced Yoast) and read his blog, Yoast.com. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Learn WordPress SEO from Joost de

Weekly Search & Social Coverage: 12/08/09

cgseo — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 15:22:17 +0000

Welcome ot another edition of ‘ 7 Days of Search and Social ‘ – I hope you are well and getting well into another week in the trenches. It was a somewhat quiet week out there as far as kick ass blog posts, (although ‘Dave baiting’ is in season) but we did make up for it with a bunch of tools and even some patents of interest. Of course the big news was from the fine folks at the Googleplex with the announcement that personalized search is now default for everyone; logged in or not. Anyway, let’s get on with it shall we? Lead

Google Analytics Rolls Out More Great Features

cgseo — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 00:22:07 +0000

Google continues to improve its Analytics service by introducing some more great features namely – annotations, custom variables, new tracking code setup wizard and a new version of the Google Analytics API. In brief, here’s what each of these new features will let you do on your Google Analytics account. Annotations – Lets you leave shared or private notes right on the over-the-time graph of any Google Analytics account which you have been granted access to. This is useful for company analytics account which is being shared among several members of the company. Each of these members can leave comments whenever a significant spike or downturn is experience by the company’s website as recorded by Google Analytics. Custom Variables in Advanced Segments – Lets you create advanced segmentation based on any key, value or a combination of all custom variables. You can see this advance segment across all your Analytics report. Custom Variables in Custom Reports – lets you create custom reports with any of the key or value dimensions that are associated with any custom variable. This is useful for seeing how a custom variable segment behaves on Google Analytics’ metrics. New Analytics Tracking Code Setup Wizard – automatically generates appropriate tracking code based on the setup options you specify. New Google Analytics API – new features will be announced later this including support for advanced segmentation. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Google Analytics Rolls Out More Great

Google Analytics Unloads 7 Powerful Features

cgseo — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 21:50:59 +0000

In case you have not noticed from your Google Analytics account yet, Google has recently added 7 new features into the already useful site traffic analysis tool. These new features are – Analytics Intelligence with Custom Alerts, Expanded Goals and New Engamenet Goals, Expanded Mobile Reporting, Unique Visitors Metric, Advanced Analysis Features, Advanced Segments and Custom Reporting Templates, and Multiple Custom Variables. So, briefly here’s what each of these features can do for your Google Analytics account: Analytics Intelligence with Custom Alerts – monitors your site’s data patterns on a daily, weekly and monthly periods. It brings up significant data trends and insights and lets you create custom alerts for monitoring site dimensions and metrics. Expanded Goals and New Engagement Goals – lets you track site conversions per up to 20 goals. It also measures user engagement and branding success through Time on Site and Pages per Visit. Expanded Mobile Reporting – lets you track your mobile websites performance through your iPhone or Android phones. It lets you track non-Java-Script enabled phones as well. Unique Visitors – a nice feature that tracks how many actual visitors with unique cookies got into your sites Advanced Analysis Features – find deeper meaning into your Analytics data with pivoting, secondary dimensions and advanced table filtering features. Share Advanced Segments and Custom Report Templates – allows you to share URL link for Advanced Segment and Custom Report to any Analytics user. This will import the pre-formatted template into the person’s account. Multiple Custom Variables – lets you customize Google Analytics for collecting unique site usage data. It also lets you define and track visitors based on various attributes – visitor, session and page-level. Overall these are nice addition to the already powerful features of Google Analytics. And these more than add for the reasons why Google Analytics is the only site-monitoring tool that I’ve used since I started managing my blogs. In case you want to learn more about these new Google Analytics features, you might want to join this webinar . Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Google Analytics Unloads 7 Powerful

Monitor Multiple Google Analytics Accounts with TrakkBoard

cgseo — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:49:12 +0000

TrakkBoard is Adobe Air tool allowing to manage multiple Google Analytics account from your desktop. Trakkboard enables you to look at data from different Google Analytics accounts and profiles on your desktop and to compare them with each other without being logged in at Google Analytics. The main benefits of using the desktop utility is the ability to see any important performance indicators of multiple websites at a glance: See multiple report types on one dashboard; Compare data from different Google Analytics accounts as well as from different Google Analytics profiles; Arrange dashboards to adjust them to your needs (e.g. arrange dashboards by topics, tasks, or websites); Quickly change between different display options; Define time spans, which can either be updated automatically or protected from changes. To get the application you will have to provide your email address, click the verification link inside the email message and finally get the licence key: Now download and install the tool: you will have to provide your license key, create a password and specify your Google Analytics login details at the final steps of installation process. Now click “ Add a New Widget ” (Trakkboard’s widgets are small windows which show chosen data from Google Analytics), and from the drop-downs, select: Your Google Analytics Account; Google Analytics Profile; Data to display (visits, visitors, pageviews, medium, source, top/flop keywords, bounce rate, time on site, goals); Time frame; Now at your dashboard you will be able to see all your created widgets on one page (tip: to separate data related to multiple sites, add new tabs): Add another Google account: If you have several Google Analytics accounts, you can add more via the control center: The tool was reviewed under SEJ policy . Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Monitor Multiple Google Analytics Accounts with

7 Days of Search and Social; the source for search geeks

admin — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:19:32 +0000

Hello and welcome to another week in the world of goodiness from the trenches. My name is Dave, and I am a Seriously Obsessed Search Geek (or SOSG ). I shall be your guide in this is our second edition of weekly geek reading for those that can’t get enough. It was a fun week with asshats, crap hats and SEO sucks to boot! And oh yea, there was also a TON of other great reading too… (we do so love a drama don’t we?) Anyway, on with the show shall we? Lead