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Custom Google Analytics Reports You Can Actually Use

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google-analytics

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As a business owner, you’ve probably heard of a little thing called Google Analytics. Google Analytics (or GA) collects data such as referral traffic, paid search traffic, social traffic, and more to help you track where your visitors are coming from and what they’re doing. But these default reports just barely scratch the surface of what Google Analytics has to offer.

In fact, if you just use the defaults and regular configurations, you’re only utilizing 30% of what Google Analytics has to offer.

Let’s talk about the other 70%: Google Analytics Custom Reports.

Like its name, a custom GA report is one that you create and customize based on the information you need. You can create your own report or you can utilize the reports from the Google Solutions Gallery – which allows you to access to custom reports created by others.

Here are five GA custom reports created by the experts that you can either import into your own account or re-create to customize further.

Site Speed Metrics by Browser & Browser Version

This site performance custom reports allows you to identify browsers or versions of browsers that have slow load times. You’ll want to keep a close eye on how long before the page is actually usable, known as the average document interactive time. Make sure your site is loading quickly to keep your bounce rate low – especially since slow sites are a conversion killer.

Metrics by Day of Week Name & Name

This custom report is great for finding out when an online store or site is most active. This is especially helpful if you’re planning to run a promotion or flash sale. It’ll show you the day of the week and even hour of the day when your customers are most active on your site.

Paid vs. Organic Search Performance

If you’re running a paid advertisement, this custom report is a must-have. It allows you to take a peek into the user experience of both paid ads and organic search. You will be able to see the behavioral differences between the two and learn ways to improve user experience.

All Campaigns: Cost Analysis

This custom report allows you to see how much you spent on an ad, how often it appeared, how many people clicked on it, the per session value, the cost per click, and more.

PPC Keyword/Matched Query Report

If you’re looking to find out which queries are being matched to your ad, this report will do the trick. It’ll give you an understanding of what PPC type – exact, phrase, broad – you should use in order to keep your ads relevant.

Whether you plan on creating your own custom Google Analytics report or using one of the above ones, you’ll gain insight into your customers behavior so you can take your business to the next level.

In need of some marketing help? Let Retaliate1st help. We offer services such as search engine optimization, content marketing, and social media. Learn more about our services here.

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How to Get Your Site Featured in Google’s Snippet

How Do You Get Your Site Featured in Google’s Snippet?

Getting to the top of Google’s search pages is no longer enough to dominate your completion. While good SEO keeps your site on the first page, and well-written ads keep you atop the PPC results, there is a newcomer in the search world: Snippets

Snippets

Google wants to help searchers. It’s what launched them to become the dominant search engine that they are today. Anyone who remembers the frustrating search results on Yahoo, Lycos, or Dogpile will attest that Google simply delivers better search results.

With mobile and “question” searches rising, Google has changed the game again.

In almost any search you’re now bound to find a snippet of info, often enumerated, in a small box between the final PPC ad and the first organic listing. Below is the snippet that appears for the search “How to Get More Leads:”

Snippets Are Quick Answers

Google puts up snippets with the best info available. This allows users to get the answers they’re looking for without clicking the link. However, since the snippets tend to display only part of the info, the links inside of the snippet box tend to be clicked a lot.

  • Google can source simple, direct answers from their own knowledge base.
  • But, most business or product related queries are sourced from third party sites, i.e., your web site.

Imagine the potential traffic that would result in an SEO strategy that lands you in the top 3 of the PPC ads, with a featured snippet, and then the top organic search result.

How to Get a Featured Snippet

The problem is that getting your site featured isn’t easy. But, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. And, with snippet results being so new, we’re not even exactly sure how Google pulls the info. Or, if they will rotate results in the future.

But, we can speculate and improve our business sites so that we have the best possible chance of being featured. At worst, you’ll improve the content of your site and make your customers very happy. An informative, easy-to-read site will almost always bring in more leads, clients, and sales.

Step 1:

  • SearchEngineLand recommends the following tactic for your first step:

Identify a common, simple question related to your market area. Provide a clear and direct answer to the question. Offer value added info beyond the direct answer. Make it easy for users (and Google) to find the information

The advice is solid. Their answer is actually the featured snippet for the search “how to get a featured snippet.”

Step 2:

  • Answer Questions

Research the most asked questions about your product, service, or industry. Create pages and blog posts that answer this question.

Be direct

– title pages and blogs with the exact question wording. Then, answer the query with as much info as needed. Use numbered lists and bullet points.

Break up info to make it both easier for your customer to absorb (or skim), and for Google to pull the best bits.

Step 3

  • Make your snippet-worthy information easy to find

This requires some basic SEO housekeeping:

  • Giving each article or blog a strong title that uses the question
  • Using the question and its variation in the content
  • Adding pictures or video, with proper tagging, as needed
  • Over deliver on info. Don’t skimp on the answer. You can provide long copy while also using bullets and numbered lists.
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The Three Reasons Your Landing Pages Don’t Convert

Landing pages are still the most important pages on your website. They are the funnel that allows you to convert your ad traffic and social media traffic into paying customers. landing pages are the pages that showcase your value proposition, your product and close your leads. These landing pages are the life blood of your business. At Retaliate1st, we specialize in developing landing pages that convert, that achieve their goal. We want to showcase the landing page mistakes we continually see, so that your business can thrive.

Why Your Landing Pages Don’t Convert

  1. Too Many Options

Barry Schwartz wrote about the paralysis that sets in in many shopping situations in his book the Paradox of Choice. He uses the example of a man shopping for shampoo at a grocery store. He is faced with hundreds of choices – for dry hair, for brittle hair, for oily hair; olive oil base, coconut oil base; flower scented; and just about every color imaginable. This leads to frustration, and often people with either simply leave the store, or buy the closest option and later be unhappy with it.

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Now, take a look at your landing pages. Are they leaving your customer in the isle frustrated because there are so many options they’re not sure which to choose?

If so, narrow it down to one choice (two, maximum).

What’s the goal of your landing page?

Email opt-in? Make sure the opt-in form is easily accessible, easy to read, and has a strong, clear call to action.

Do you want phone calls? Make your number big and visible and clickable.

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Would you take either a phone call or a web form opt-in? Make it clear that either option gets them the same result: contact, free estimate, discount, services, etc.

  1. Too Many Visual Distractions

It can be tempting to overwhelm your visitor with slick graphics. You may think you’re helping them find their way to your CTA.
But, there is a point where the graphics cause confusion.

When using infographics, pictures, video, or graphics, make sure they are absolutely essential to achieving the page’s goal. If they’re not, cut them. You can use them elsewhere (Thank You page, in email marketing, on blogs or pages).

Customer Centric Landing Pages

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. They’re asking “What am I supposed to look at?”

If your landing page is littered with graphics, it will confuse them. This includes going overboard with exotic background colors, text colors and fonts, and headline sizes. Keep it simple… white background with black text is still the best option because it’s easiest to read.

  1. Entry Pop Ups

Pop up windows upon entry are, unfortunately, overused. Some sites will display the pop-up every time you refresh the page, visit a new page on the site, and every time you vist the landing page, even if you’ve already opted in. IT can be frustrating for your user, especially if they’re viewing your content on mobile.

Responsive landing page development vector template illustration

Your better option is to use an exit pop-up. At this point, on a true landing page that you’ve driven traffic to, if they’re leaving, they’re gone. An exit pop-up is a last-ditch effort to salvage the lead. It can work fairly well, and will increase your leads significantly over time.

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The 6 Best Extensions for Your Site’s SEO and Adwords

SEO is the perfect tactic to optimize to drive free traffic to your website. While organic traffic is fantastic and can be created through optimizing web pages, this organic traffic can be amplified by using SEO extensions. Here Retaliate1st list our favorite SEO extensions to boost your organic traffic.

The 6 Best Extensions for Your Site’s SEO and Adwords

Google Tag Assistant

IF you are running your company’s SEO without help from a professional firm, or if you just want to check up on your SEO investment, Tag Assistant can help you verity that Adwords and Analytics are up and running properly. The best part about this extension is that with one click it lays out everything you need to see without digging around in the minuteau of Adwords (and it’s oft-lugubrious interface) or analytics.

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Builtwith

Builtwith works with Google Chrome, and Is an excellent way to see what your competitors are up to by letting you know what they’re using to build their site. You can see

PageRank for Firefox

This is a great tool for evaluating other sites when it comes to building links, guest posting, forming joint ventures, etc. The best part is, you don’t have to dig at all – the site’s Page Rank is displayed right in the toolbar at the top of your browser.

Further SEO Extensions

Majestic SEO Backlink Analyizer

If linking building is part of your SEO strategy, you need to make sure those links are not coming from bad neighborhoods. Further, you want the best quality links possible to your site. You can check out anchor text, site reputation, as well as Page Rank and a few other key indicators.

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Boomerang

This isn’t so much for SEO as it is a productivity tool. Boomerang for Gmail allows you to schedule emails to be sent later, schedule follow ups. IF you are dealing with multiple clients, and working with people in different time zones, this tool is a life saver. No more worrying that you’re emailing your Japanese clients at 4am Tokyo time… just schedule the emails to hit their offices during work hours. This can cut down on a lot of back and forth.

For any sales pro, follow ups are essential. Boomerang will do all of these for you.

Keywords Everywhere

This Chome extension can cut down on your keyword research time dramatically. When you search something in Google, it will display the volume of searches for this term and gives you the average cost per click for that keyword or phrase. This will help you cut out a lot of groundwork when searching for perfect keywords and phrases, and you’ll get a quick idea of what you’ll need to invest in Adwords to make them work for you.

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Buying Facebook Ads Directly

Facebook is the great advertising platform of our time. Were once television ads and billboard ads were the go to platforms for advertisers, they have now lost ground to Facebook ads. Retaliate1st discuss the reasons why you should focus on this platform for your advertising.

Customers Can Buy from You Without Leaving Facebook

This is huge for both your business, where can sell directly to a warm audience that you’ve built a strong relationship with, and for Facebook, which can help businesses sell more products, buy more ads, and have the whole thing take place on Facebook’s platform, without having users click away from the social media giant.

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It works by giving your customers the option to buy products in Facebook messenger. If they’ve already filled in their Name, address, phone number, etc. for their profile, all they have to do is click “pay.” If not, they can do so at point of purchase.

Payments will go through PayPal or Stripe. At this point, these are the only two usable payment platforms, and you can only sell in the U.S. However, both of these rules will likely change as the program grows.

Facebook ads

If you’ve ever fretted about the transition your customers make between Facebook and your landing or sales pages, now you don’t have to worry. If you crafted a great ad or promoted post, your customer can now buy with one click.

How to Sell In Messenger

This will take some finesse. Facebook is allowing click from ads in the newsfeed to be sent directly to messenger now. This is a slow roll-out, but it will take off soon enough. Obviously, some customers will be put off by having their messenger blow up with ads, but it seems Facebook will allow consumers the ability to choose who they receive ad messages from.

Once there, your customer can chat with a “sales bot” or they can buy direct. And, in a further move toward utilizing similar buy-sharing options as Amazon, Facebook will allow your customer to send the ad copy to their friends if they need help deciding between multiple products. So, if your customer can’t decide between the wing-tips and the quarter-brogues, they can now share it with their friends.

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This helps them take the plunge and make the purchase, and it exposed your products to an even larger pool of warm prospects.

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3 Steps To Designing a Landing Page That Converts

Running adwords, Facebook ads, or even pouring time and effort into SEO campaigns only to drive traffic to a landing page that doesn’t convert is maddening. It’s also a waste of resources. Even if you craft a fantastic ad, your landing page must walk the visitor from curious clicker to lead. This is an art and a science, and its why designers and marketers charge so much to develop high-converting landing pages.

If you have the budget for it, get a pro to build your landing page. If you don’t, learn how to do it yourself until you can raise the capital to hire someone.

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Follow these – tips and you’ll build a landing page that converts visitors into leads, and leads into sales. Even if you do have the budget to go pro, you can use these tips to evaluate what the marketer has designed for you.

3 Steps To Designing a Landing Page That Converts

  1. Every Page Must Have a Clear, Powerful Headline

Many businesses make one of two mistakes when developing landing pages:

  • Their headline is weak and does nothing to inspire visitors to take the step of buying/signing up/calling.
  • Their headline is well-written, but is confusing or doesn’t mesh with the test of the ad and landing page

Writing great headlines has been the subject of countless books and sales courses, so it’s beyond the scope of this article to explain it fully, but if you lead with benefits, ask a question or create interest, you’ll be head-and-shoulders above your competition.

If you manage to create a great headline, don’t waste it by matching it to a landing page with text that doesn’t quite fit the main message. Also, keep your headline in form with your ad text. The headlines of your ad and landing page can be very similar, or at least close enough so that your visitor knows they’re in the right place.

  1. Bullets are Weapons

The current fashion is to build a great headline, then follow it up with a few bullet points worth of text, then ask for the sale or sign-up.

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Great idea. But choose your bullets wisely.

Bullet Points

In reality, bullets are just sub-headlines, and should be bursting with benefits. Not features! Don’t waste a bullet telling me your product is blue unless that somehow benefits me. Now, you can say

  • Our Widget Only Weighs .5oz, So it Fits in Your Pocket (and we now offer it in blue!)

That statement pairs benefit with feature, which is common practice on landing pages and sales letters because it’s proven to work. In this case, it’s a good idea to follow the bold benefit, and italicized parenthetical feature.

Pick your strongest 3 – 5 benefits and turn them into your bullet points. Put your strongest first and last, since your last bullet point will be just above, or to the left of the call to action.landing page

  1. Call to Action Better Call Them to Action

Your call to action is vital. Weak CTAs lose leads.

Online, most companies turn to the simple, and ineffective, “Submit” to get the customer’s info. Submit is a terrible, boring, and is loaded with subversive subtext. No one wants to submit to anything, especially when giving their info to strangers online.

Use strong CTAs on web forms:

  • Click Here (basic but proven to work)
  • Click Here + Benefit (Click Here to Get Your 10% Discount/Free E-book/Free Estimate)
  • Yes! Give Me My Benefit (discount/info/estimate)

Match the benefit in the CTA with the major benefit promised in your headline for maximum conversions. For more tips on converting using inbound methods check out our optimization page.

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5 Steps to Dominating Google Local

Google Local is a great way for start-ups and small businesses to grab a foot hold in their industry. It allows marketers to target local customers and consumers to search for local businesses and products. Here we list our 5 keys to dominating Google Local.

5 Steps to Dominating Google Local

  1. Consistency in NAP

Consistency in branding is important. It’s even more important when it comes to your listing on Google MyBusiness (Google Local) and across the internet on local sites. If you want to crack the top 3 in map listings, your business’ info must be on point.

Make sure that your business’ name, address, and phone number is the same on all sites. This can get tricky if you are using local numbers for different offices, but if you can manage to use an 800 number as your go-to, then add the locals as secondary points of contact, that’s a safe bet.

While it may seem trivial, make sure your address is the same on all sites that list your business. Sometimes this can be daunting because dozens of new sites pop up every day, and many of them simply scrape your info and post it. They make mistakes.

  • If your office is on 100 Third street, and one of them lists it as 100 3rd street, you will run into problems.

Your business name should be consistent as well. Keep it simple! If you’re Joe’s Plumbing, don’t get cute with Joe’s Plumbing Brooklyn, Joe’s Plumbing Staten Island, Joe’s Plumbing and Hot Tubs. Pick one, and stick to it.

Google Local Guidelines

From Google’s guidelines regarding business names:

Any additional information, when relevant, can be included in other sections of your business information (e.g., “Address“, “Categories“). Adding unnecessary information to your name (e.g., “Google Inc. – Mountain View Corporate Headquarters” instead of “Google”) by including marketing taglines, store codes, special characters, hours or closed/open status, phone numbers, website URLs, service/product information, location/address or directions, or containment information (e.g. “Chase ATM in Duane Reade”) is not permitted.

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  1. Choose the Best Categories

Don’t “category stuff.” Google views this in the same way they view keyword stuffing, ie, they’ll hit you for it. Pick out the minimal number of categories that fit your business.

Content Drives Google Local

  1. Add Content

Add as much relevant, helpful info as possible on your Google+ local page. IT’s possible to add video, photos, and long-form text. It’s no secret that Google thrives on content, and rewards content marketing. If you have videos of your product or service, add them. Link to your YouTube page.

  • Have pictures of your product? Social media-driven photos of your customers? Add them.
  • Go into detail (benefit-driven detail) about your products, services, staff, awards you’ve won, and what you can do for the customer.

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  1. Cultivate Customer Reviews

This is good practice in general, as user reviews are crucial to the health of your business. Having customers review you on your Google listing is important to both your business’ reputation, and your local ranking. Well-reviewed businesses have a leg up on the competition.

  1. Build High Quality Links

Links to your business site help with SEO. The stronger your main site is, the stronger your local listing will be. Links from quality sites helps build domain authority, which in turn boosts your local ranking.

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Why Your Pay Per Click Campaigns are Tanking

For many businesses, Pay Per Click advertising is their go to tactic for paid media. Pay Per Click has been the largest spend for over 85% of online advertisers since its inception. However, with the market being saturated, it can be difficult to market your ads to maximize your clicks. The first thing any advertising team must do is to eliminate the mistakes. Here we list 3 of the biggest mistakes that PPC advertisers make:

3 Reasons Your Pay Per Click Campaigns are Tanking

  1. Your Ad Stinks

Listen, no matter how many metrics you can drown yourself in… no matter what new analytic buzzword is being written about on the digital marketing blogs… no matter what new secret trick is being spewed by the experts, one truth remains about pay per click ads:

  • They mustn’t suck

Look at your PPC ads. Are you proud of them? Would you run them in a magazine? If you were handed budget to run that on page 3 of the NY Times, would you use that ad?

Granted, print ads have a different structure, but, the content of the ad is key.

Frankly, most PPC ads are nothing more than follow-the-leader, me-too marketing pieces that are written with weak wording, and yawn-inducing calls to action.

Your headline must be strong. If it wouldn’t pull in a newspaper, sales letter, magazine, billboard, or direct mail piece, then it won’t pull on Google, either.

You can take a different approach. You can get more creative since the feedback loop is faster. But, if the headline is weak, forget about sales.

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You literally have to drag someone by the eyeballs from the white, black, and blue jungle of the SERP to your ad. To do that, you need a strong headline.

You get very limited space in the body, so make it count. If you’re giving something away for free, say it now or lose the sale. PPC ads are nothing more than headline/subhead/CTA. Don’t waste even one character of space.

  1. Your Landing Page Stinks

You wrote a great ad. Congrats.

Now, go make sure your landing page matches the content of your ad, represents the product or service that you sell, and is written with a strong headline, strong benefit-rich copy, and a benefit-rich call to action.

Where most businesses fail with their Pay Per Click Ads

Where most businesses get into trouble is trying to send 100+ keyword-driven ads to the same (or a few) landing pages. Using broad match over a litany of keywords is fine… if you can match the content to the keyword. We all use the internet in a similar way. We are multitasking, multi-windowing, and listening to Adele’s new album while shopping for running shoes. And our phones are buzzing with texts, SnapChats, and Whatsapps.

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In that chaos, you can not expect your customer to make the subtle (but really profound) leap between what they searched for, what they saw in your ad, and what they’re now reading on your page. It’s kinda close but not exactly what I’m looking for… lemme go back to Google and keep looking.

  1. Your Bids are Too Low

In the early stages, it pays to overbid. The number of clicks your ad gets plays into how much a click costs, where the ad is displayed, and the overall adrank.

Early on, it’s better to pay extra and get those clicks so you can:

  • Get a better adrank
  • Formulate data about which keywords are working, which landing pages are testing the best, and which headlines are pulling leads

After you gather this info, you can begin to scale back, underbid, then work your way up.

But, this only works if the first two rules are followed. No matter what your bid, bad ads produce no leads. Check out Retaliate1st and our PPC services to optimize your campaigns and save you time and money.

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The Pitfalls of SEO

Getting to the top of the Google rankings can be extremely difficult, especially in a competitive market. But, it is possible if you optimize your website in the right way. SEO or Search Engine Optimization is so ubiquitous at this point that it’s very meaning has become lost in the shuffle. This leads to much confusion about how a business should optimize its website.

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This causes two problems for business owners:

  1. You either have to hire an SEO firm. Finding a good one can take a lot of expensive trial and error.
  2. You need to learn how to do SEO by yourself. This can take years, and the rules of the game constantly change. If you’re not a marketer or computer genius, mastering it alone is near impossible.

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You can make your digital marketing life much easier by knowing what to look for when hiring an SEO firm. If you’ve handed your site over to a pro, but aren’t getting results, see if they’re making any of these mistakes:

5 Common SEO Mistakes for Business Websites

  • Entering duplicate material on your site’s pages or blogs – identifying duplicate content is essential because most of the search engines do not accept duplicate material. This will crush your ranking. There are tons of solid tools and software available to check for duplicate content.
  • Using bad backlinks – links to unrelated pages or directories; or to spam websites- spam links coming into your site is a sure-fire way to kill your rankings.
  • Over-Optimization of required keywords – Although putting your target keywords as much as possible can be a good idea, blatantly over-optimizing will hurt your SEO strategy. Make sure your text sounds natural, and you aren’t stuffing in keywords to please Google. If a human would have trouble reading your text, Google will penalize you
  • Bad Page Titles – When someone searches for the target keywords, the search engine displays the title page in search results. Try to make your title page with limited characters, while hitting relevant key phrases (again, naturally)
  • Image Optimization and Poor Meta Description – A search engine can recognize images in text form only, so it’s best to optimize your image with target keywords or phrases. Imagine describing the image to a non-sighted person. Meta data may not directly help with rankings, but Google does display it on the results page, so it is useful for drawing in visitors and helping you stand out in the crowd of results.
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Organic vs Pay Per Click Traffic

Which is better for small businesses, organic traffic driven by Search Engine Optimization (SEO), or pay per click advertising?

  • 70% of the time, searchers are clicking on organic links. Some surveys have shown that 70 – 80% of searchers purposely ignore the ad listings because they feel that paid ads = them being pressured to buy once they reach the site

This can be an advantage. If you are having a sale, an event, or you are running a weather or time-dependent service, then focusing on the 20 – 30% of users who happily click paid ads can eliminate most of the information seekers and tire-kickers.

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Organic Traffic vs PPC

But, long term, relying solely on PPC can miss out on a huge portion of your potential customers.

  • In many businesses, the close rate for SEO traffic climbs as high as 15%, while ad-driven leads close at less than 2%.

This varies by industry, but the numbers speak overwhelmingly in favor of organic traffic. The situation can flip when it comes to “emergency” services, i.e., plumbers on sub-zero nights, roofers during heavy rain storms. In those cases, they numbers even out. But, the rest of the time, organic heavily outperforms PPC.

Want the Most Leads and Sales? Use Both PPC and SEO

While organic out performs PPC in most cases, there are times when you need PPC ads to survive. The problem usually arises when small companies treat PPC as the holy grail, throwing money at it, hoping for the best.

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The truth is that pay per click ads must be:

  • Highly focused – use them during the best times, then get out of the market. If you’re having a sale, launching a new product or event, or you are offering a product or service that tie-in with the weather, time of year, or new-event, use PPC to leap-frog your competitors.
  • Well written – most PPC ads are awful; poorly written and playing follow-the-leader. Would you send out a mailer that looks exactly like your competitor’s mailing? OF course not. Don’t waste capital on PPC ads if you’re unwilling to stand out
  • Used to boost organic traffic – when you’re first starting, it can take a while to get the SEO/organic search ball rolling. PPC is very useful during this time because it brings in much needed traffic.

Combining focused, well written ads with a strong SEO platform will have your business accessing 100% of your potential customers, driving in new traffic and leads year-round.

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