How to run simple AB testing programs with Google Analytics

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AB testing can sound daunting at times. I suspect this is why so many organizations have yet to conduct much testing of their own. So in the light of the new year and resolution setting here’s to a 2017 full of ab testing!

Step number one of AB Testing: Plan

We have already discussed what to ab test previously, but once you have that idea you need to enact a plan to implement it. For our article we’re going to assume that you’re testing easy things, such as button colors or page layout changes. These are typically easy things for a marketer to do within their content management system and it’s the first place to start when dipping your toe into the AB testing game. Here are some quick things to keep in mind:

  • Start with small and easy changes
  • Consider starting with either a page at the end or beginning of your conversion funnel
  • Have one or two page variations, but no more than that

How to setup an ab test in Google Analytics

Setting Up Google ExperiementsOnce you create an experiment you have a bunch of quick and easy settings to get you up and running. If you already have goals set up in GA (and if you don’t call us immediately) you can select them via a dropdown for your test conversion. Then, you must decide if you want all traffic to the original page to be part of the AB test or just some. We would typically recommend just doing 100%. In the Advanced Settings we would advise when you’re first starting to distribute traffic evenly across all variants. When Google starts deciding, especially with low volume, it can get wacky very quickly. For example, at 100 sessions, if the Original saw 25 conversions and Variant 1 saw 15 Google would start showing Original more often. But 10 conversions isn’t hard to make up and in our example it’d be just 10% of the sessions!

The next step is implementing your page variants. It’s as simple as entering the URLs of the pages. So the Original URL is the page as it currently exists and the variants are your competitors. It’s literally that simple. Once you enter these pages and click “next” Google Analytics will give you code to place on the Original page. There are tons of different content management systems out there, but for WordPress you can simply edit the header.php file:
google experiments in wordpress
…Or you can use a plugin such as Simple Content Experiments. Again, your content management system should have some sort of way to implement the GA Experiments code in the head tag somewhere, just ask your development team.

That’s it for implementation. If you want to do simple AB tests any marketer with a good CMS could have a test up and running in a matter of hours. So what then are you waiting for? Get to testing and watch your website conversions skyrocket!

Tools to Help with Keyword Research in 2017

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SEO continues to evolve as it always has and one of the core aspects of SEO, keyword research, is no different.

While the classic method of keyword research has been identifying the best keyword opportunities and then creating individual pages with on-page content focusing on those exact keywords, Google’s continued focus on user-intent has forced content creators to focus on the intent of a user’s search versus matching towards select keywords.

So, with Google focusing more and more on returning results that match with the full intent of a user’s search versus matching keywords, what does that mean for you?  Does the classic style of exact keyword research still work?  Or should you be focusing simply on researching broad, topical context strategies when creating and optimizing content for SEO?

Most experts in the SEO realm, like Moz, believe that a combination of the two keyword research strategies is what will continue to work best.

Tl:dr: Keyword research in 2017 should focus both on what question is your content answering and what questions are your target customers asking?

That means that the classic method of keyword research is still vital but so is making sure you understand if your content is answering the same question topics your customers are asking.

What tools should I use to research at Topics?

There’s a host of good topic research tools out there, he’s a few of my favorites:

What tips or tools have you found useful for your online marketing in 2017?

 

 

Helpful Google Analytics Custom Reports

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google analytics custom reportsCustom reports within Google Analytics are not as widely used as they should be. We won’t discuss the setting up of customer reports as Google’s already done that for you here: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1151300?hl=en. However, we’ll walk you through three reports that we typically set up immediately when gaining access to a client’s Google Analytics account.

Dimension: Hostname

The hostname is the domain that fired the GA code. Why is this necessary? Well often times there are development or staging sites where we get everything set up before pushing a site live. The hostname report can show us if those sites are still firing GA code or if we have not properly removed them. Other times it may be nice to see what subdomains are getting the most engagement.

Dimension: Hour of Day

This report is pretty self explanatory, but we have used this report a TON to see when site engagement or conversions are highest. This can help you find out when to increase marketing spends and also help to target visitors more effectively.

Dimension: Day of Week

Similar to the hour of the day, the day of week can help target your marketing spends much more effectively. Does your audience typically engage throughout the week or do conversions happen more often on the weekends? This report can also help to dictate when to launch new website additions to ensure any issues would have the least impact.

There are so many more amazing custom reports, but if you’re just getting started these are three that can help you immediately. Happy reporting!

Setting Up Your Analytics Profiles

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Have you deleted an analytics profile? We analysts cringe at that thought for one huge reason; historical data trending. We have experienced a handful of clients over this last year who, for a myriad of reasons, deleted profiles or started anew. Below are a few quick tips in setting up analytics for your website that will eliminate the need to do such a thing again!

Setting Up Analytics Raw Data Profiles

This is job number one. Any time you have an account in Google Analytics you should have a raw & unfiltered profile that just keeps on truckin’ and collecting data as it comes in. This is helpful for a few reasons. First off, if you run into site issues it’s much easier to track them down without the filters getting in the way. Secondly, sometimes filters are too restrictive and it is then necessary to run an Advanced Segment against the raw data profile to see what went wrong! But don’t forget that best practice though is to make sure your goals make their way to the Raw Data Profile as well!

Profile vs. Advanced Segment

Remember that a Profile starts collecting data the day you set it up. Therefore it inherently removes the ability to review historical trends. Advanced segments are so powerful these days that it often removes the need to create a separate Profile. All you do is apply the Advanced Segment to your filtered profile and away you go. I would say that 95% of the sites we have worked with can get away with having 2 Profiles, Raw Data and IP filtered, simply because of Advanced Segments. However, if you need to restrict user access to data then new profiles it is!
If you’re considering removing a Profile or just starting from scratch take a look at Advanced Segments before you do so and you just might find that they solve all the world’s (analytics setup) problems!

How to Prepare for Google’s Mobile-First Index Change

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If you follow the SEO industry, you’ve likely heard that Google has begun testing its Mobile-First Index.  If not, the short-version is Google currently indexes both the Desktop and Mobile versions of your website based on the Desktop version.  Google now plans to flip that and begin indexing your Desktop & Mobile versions based on the Mobile version of your website.

“Awesome.  So what?”

Well, for those of you with a standard Responsive or Dynamic Serving website, there isn’t much to worry about as quoted by the Google Webmaster Blog:

If you have a responsive site or a dynamic serving site where the primary content and markup is equivalent across mobile and desktop, you shouldn’t have to change anything.

Seems you can sit back and relax.

But I don’t have a responsive website though…

For those of you with a website that serves different markup to mobile and desktop and feel that your organic search results are important, the Mobile-First Index is another signal that Google is looking to push website owners further towards a responsive standard for the web. At this point, if you run a website, you’ve likely had to field the “Why aren’t we responsive yet?”question. And if you haven’t, the Mobile First Index test is a great conversation starter for a move to Responsive. With that in mind, I’ve put together the below list of guides that can get you on the right path towards avoiding penalties when Google pushes the Mobile First Index live in 2017.

  • http://searchengineland.com/5-steps-optimizing-site-googles-mobile-first-index-262716
  • http://searchengineland.com/faq-google-mobile-first-index-262751

What The 2016 Election Taught Us About User Research

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The 2016 presidential election has come and gone. We won’t get into politics here, but I think we can all agree it was a shock that Donald Trump was able to overcome what seemed to be a large gap. But the question many have been asking is, did the gap really ever exist? Did anyone bother to ask rural America how they might be voting? This is a huge issue within many businesses as well. When was the last time you ‘polled’ your audience? When was the last time you asked your customers what they wanted? This user research is paramount to a an optimized marketing and website experience.

Customer Surveys

Conducting a survey is one of the easiest types of user research around. It’s easy to use a survey tool, such as Survey Monkey, to ask your customers what they may want to see out of your business offerings or website experience. We’ve seen the most success when surveys are short, maybe 3-5 questions, but try to never go above 10 unless you are providing some kind of offer.

Old Fashioned Talking

It’s ok to reach out to customers every once in a while to get a sense of how they feel about your brand. This one-on-one user research method can be focus groups or a simply phone call. The act of holding the conversation goes a long way with customer and audience trust. The most important thing that comes from it is that customers feel a part of your business, galvanizing their support for your brand!

Usability Testing

You’ve probably heard of AB Testing, but its cousin is Usability Testing and a really great way to use user research to get real time feedback of abandonment points on your website. Usability testing is where a moderator will walk audiences through processes or site sections to see how easy it is to perform actions on your website or compare them to a newly proposed alternative. After about 5 participants the answers start to repeat so you could do this exercise in as little as 10 total work hours.

These are all just a few ways you can connect with your audience for very little investment. If you’re interested in understanding your audience in more detail and optimizing your website accordingly contact us by filling out the form on the right hand side of this page (or below on mobile!).

Pay Per Click Strategy vs Management

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In the last week we’ve had two separate clients remark to us about their displeasure with the way they pay for Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising and the lack of PPC Strategy. Side note, we do not handle their PPC (yet). Below is an outline of what came from our discussions.

PPC Management

When these clients described the way they were sold the management of their PPC campaigns it was all the same. “We’ll ‘manage’ your PPC account for X% of your spend” was the common synopsis. The problem here is that it really only includes the “management” part and little to no “strategy”. Both clients were frustrated because all they received was a report showing the numbers. Impressions, Clicks, Quality Scores and Conversions are all well and good, but how are you optimizing the account?

PPC Strategy

A number of our clients have moved to a more strategic model and away from simply “Management”. Management is the easy part, which is why most agencies have a junior-level resource watching over your account. It’s a margin game! So break free of the game and start making strategic optimizations to your PPC account on your own. It all begins by developing your initial PPC Strategy, by evaluating opportunity keywords, developing relevant ad copy, and selecting the most relevant and conversion-focused landing page. This is where a company like Bluefin Strategy comes in. We have provided strategies for many of our clients who then can easily manage their own accounts day-to-day or we work with them to get a management platform in place. Again, the management part is easy, it’s more about what strategic changes have to take place in order to take the account to the next level!

Don’t settle for simple “PPC Management”. If you’re still paying a percentage of your PPC spend and getting nothing out of it then it’s time to shift your campaigns into full gear with a sound PPC Strategy & Optimization plan. Start targeting your search audience at the right time with the right message today and see more conversions tomorrow!

Online Marketing Strategy You Say?

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Current Digital Marketing Landscape

In today’s complex digital marketing landscape decisions are made on a daily basis.

  • What marketing tactics should we use?
  • Where should we drive visitors?
  • What do we do with the pages to make visitors convert more?

Often these questions are answered by pulling some data from the analytics platform and running with whatever it spits out. But what if the data is skewed, what if visitors simply don’t see what you are promoting on your pages?

This is the heart of digital strategy. Taking data, evaluating what they say, deciphering the user intent, and ultimately recommending a better approach. All too often these steps are not taken into account and the design team simply requests some data that either confirms or goes against their design theory and they move on.

The Why of Digital Strategy

Data is any marketing team’s best friend. Tracking opens, clicks, engagement and conversion happens every day, every hour, every second. But often we get lost in the data and we are no longer telling a story or creating a journey. When data alone is the only means of decision making it can easily lead you astray.

The Analytics Gap

A digital strategist can bridge the gap, translating volumes of data into actionable advice and clear recommendations.

For example, analytics may show that no one visits the “locations” page on your site. So the data would suggest that it is unimportant and can be buried. However, what if the links to the page are hidden or the color of the button/text do not stand out?

The data provided a problem, but the digital strategist can provide the solution.

The Design Gap

On the other side, a design mockup can be developed that is stunning, but when it goes live, engagement drops like a rock. Had a digital strategist been involved, they would have uncovered that 90% of website traffic views it in a browser smaller than a tablet. Since the design did not account for such a small screen size, only 10% of the audience saw its beauty.

And Before You Start

A digital strategist is the key to day-to-day marketing decisions as well as the principle of any web project. A digital strategist not only evaluates web analytics, but conducts surveys and Q&A sessions with stakeholders and visitors to gauge their needs and wants, develops website testing plans to evaluate website usability, and so much more.

A handful of hours at the beginning of a project can save you thousands in the long run and tons of frustration. A digital strategist gets to the bottom of any user problem online and helps to ensure your digital efforts are optimized for website conversion!

3 Free Blogging Tools to Combat Writer’s Block

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Writing, regularly, is difficult for most. It requires a deep well of inspiration and discipline, tightly aligned with the ability to allow the perfectionist within us all to let go of the reins on a regular basis.

However, the myth usually surrounds the enviable idea that most writers are at least writing about their passions. For us Marketers that have to do this regularly but on topics we may lack passion on, simply getting started can be a monumental task.

Given this, I’ve put together three websites I use to help me get over the initial hump of generating topics. Getting this first step down makes the next step easier and snowballs into momentum, which is what all of us need as writers to generate near infinitely.

Portent’s Title Generator

https://www.portent.com/tools/title-maker

portent-content-generator-screen

Portent’s Content Idea Generator is the first place I go whenever I have a writing assignment on the horizon. Matched with a slick design and clever tutorial tips, it simply asks you to put in a topic (anything you want) and responds back with a singular, random 4-piece topic idea.

Hitting the refresh button will endlessly churn out new ideas, giving me a very quick set of titles based on a topic to start from. Below are some examples I did just now:

  • The Only Digital Publishing Resources You Will Ever Need
  • 19 Things Your Boss Expects You Know About Digital Publishing
  • How Digital Publishing Will Stop Poverty

It doesn’t write the article for you. It simply gives some ideas (many very clever as they sometimes insert pop culture references) to start from.

With a few ideas in mind, I move to my next site:

Answer the Public Topic Generator

http://www.answerthepublic.com/

Answer the Public Idea Generator Screenshot

Answer the Public isn’t the same type of site as Portent’s Idea Generator. It returns actual questions searched by users on topics you search for.

Note: When searching, the only annoyance is the “Country” drop down defaults to UK. Ensure you check that with each search.

Using the above ideas from my searches on Portent, I then take the singular keywords (digital publishing) and see what actual questions people are asking regarding the topic, like the below:

  • digital publishing without adobe
  • digital publishing with xml
  • problems with digital publishing

These are singular instances of searches the site returns from Google/Bing that give me a few ideas on what I should possibly add to my topic if any are relevant.

It’s important to note, this is more an optional step I take to see if any inspiration hits me that I wasn’t expecting. Most often, the results return bland or irrelevant options but each gives me a good idea on the structure I should use on my overall topic regardless.

Once checked, I simply move on to the next step.

HubSpot Title Generator

http://www.hubspot.com/blog-topic-generator

Hubspot Blog Topic Generator Screenshot

By now, I likely have a few terms and structures I’m considering. In this instance, the “How Digital Publishing Will Stop Poverty” has began to nag at me as a very interesting idea I could begin to research.

With that, I use HubSpot’s Topic Generator and enter up to three terms to get some final topic ideas, like the below:

  • How To Solve The Biggest Problems With Poverty
  • 14 Common Misconceptions About Poverty
  • The Superpower the Digital Publishing Industry is Hiding

Again, these are to simply see if anything adds to my already branching ideas. I’ll typically research multiple times until I’m certain the ideas being returned don’t detract or deter my anticipated course. In the above, it simply gave me some added ideas on how to approach a topic that is both sensitive, human and likely not considered a tie between digital publishing and poverty.

With that done, I begin my research and my writing.

The above, typically taking me around 5-10 minutes and aiding me to skip the part of chewing on my pen and staring at a wall until my head magically makes a new idea.

What is a Content Management System?

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It struck us the other day that many sites still do not have, nor do they realize the importance of, a content management system. So in no uncertain terms we will outline the strategic reasons for getting a content management system as well as some of the potential pitfalls you need to think about from a digital marketing perspective.

What is a Content Management System?

So lets start with the basics. A content management system, or CMS for short, allows you to manage content on your website from a sort of repository if you will. Typically you use this CMS tool to create/edit the content on your website instead of having single HTML (or other) files on some sort of server. You will typically log in to a CMS tool and then navigate to where the content lives, edit it, click save, and BOOM, content changed.

Why should I use a Content Management System?

Here are just a few reasons why we recommend a CMS tool to everyone:

  • Quickly create/edit website content
  • Add new landing pages on the fly
  • Keep a consistent look to your entire site
  • Manage global site elements in one location
  • Keep page titles and meta descriptions consistent

There are certainly many other reasons, but those are the biggies.

A Content Management System in Action

Here is a pretty common example we run into. When running any kind of digital marketing campaign we want to always have a landing page that speaks to our marketing message in the medium (eg: PPC, Display, Email). What if we see that a particular search query is getting searched but we do not have a page that discusses it?
Scenario 1 : No Content Management System

  • We need to outline the content and select a similar page on our site to mirror
  • Then develop the content (the easy part)
  • Have the developers build the page with the created content
  • The page is pushed to a staging or dev environment for review
  • Page is pushed live, often times as part of a larger push

How long did that take? I’ve very rarely seen this process take place in under 3 days honestly.
Scenario 2 : We have a Content Management System

  • We log into our CMS
  • We create the new page and enter the content
  • We click save/publish
  • The page is live

Depending how long it takes you to create the content this process can take as little as 30-minutes!

It’s all about timing when it comes to marketing. The ability to be agile and create and edit content on the fly is crucial to a digital marketer. Make sure you have a system in place that allows you to make quick pivots or don’t… But your digital marketing will surely suffer without it!