As we all know, social media has taken the world by storm, and latest statistics show that Australians are spending more time on social networking sites than ever before. The average Australian will access some form of social networking up to 12.4 times per month [Source: AIMIA / Sensis Social Media Report, May 2011].

Search engines, particularly Google and Bing have incorporated “social signals” as part of their rank algorithm, and we of course all know Google’s own social networking platform, Google +.

To take things one step further, Google also recently expanded their Analytics to include social media and provide more in-depth data than ever before. What does this mean? It shows Google is looking to social engagement to determine quality sites, on top of the traditional signals such as on-page factors and quality backlinks.

So how can Social Media help with your organic search performance and how can it be measured?

Traffic

By sharing quality content across different social channels, such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, you’re spreading your presence far and wide across the web. The more doors there are to your content, the more opportunities for users to visit your site.

Google Social Analytics has extended their social database to more than 400 social sites. This means it’s easier to see which social sites have referred visitors to your content. One of the highlights include the  “Social Sources” feature which shows which social networks and sites refer the highest quality traffic so you can refine social campaigns. Learn more about capturing the value of Social Media using Google Analytics.

Keyword Rankings

In late 2010, Google and Bing both announced  they do take into account social media mentions as part of their ranking signals.

There have been many tests conducted to see if social signals from Google+, Facebook and Twitter really do have any effect on organic search rankings. And yes, it appears that social media signals do have an influence on the search results.

Changes of up to 15% have been observed in terms of increases in ranking.

Placing social share buttons on your blogs, publishing interesting content, and posting videos, can encourage users to share content and spread it further across the web. “Social Plug-in Analytics” helps you see the effectiveness of the content and from which social network. For example, if you publish articles on your site, you’ll want to know which articles are most commonly “liked” or shared, and from which social networks they’re being shared. You can use this information to create more of the right type of content.

Conversions

The link between social and conversions has now been bridged with Google Analytics Social Conversions report. This allows businesses to quantify the value of social media by showing the total number and the monetary value of conversions that occurred as a result of referrals from each social network.

Google further breaks down conversion types into ‘Last Interaction’ (social referral generated conversions immediately) and ‘Assisted Conversions’. Last Interaction is when someone visits your site and converts. The visit is considered a last click.  The higher these numbers, the more important the social network’s role in driving completion of sales and conversions. An Assisted Conversion occurs when someone visits your site, leaves without converting, but returns later to convert during a subsequent visit. If this number is high, it means that particular social network is very important in assisting conversions.

This is useful, as it shows which content is effective in conversions and which needs attention. Insights from this, also allows better direction in creating other marketing initiatives.

We can now see just how achievable measuring the value and effectiveness of your social initiatives can be using Google’s Social Analytics. By participating, optimising and measuring your social components, businesses can see the bigger picture on how their online assets work together.

Are you already using Google Social Analytics? If so, what impact has it had on your business?

As you know, SEO deals with your organic listings and SEM deals with your paid search advertising. The two are completely separate. Or, are they? When you think of a paid ad, it’s easy to assume that you pay for every click they generate, but research shows that just isn’t true.

Where Do Those Clicks Really Come From?

When we think of the clicks generated by a paid ad, we often think only of the clicks that go directly through the ad. But did you know paid listings are actually responsible for many of the clicks your organic listings get as well?

A recent study from Google‘s lead researcher David Chan looked at this very thing. After examining six months worth of Search Ads Pause studies, he found paid ads didn’t detract from the ROI of organic listings and the clicks they generated weren’t limited to the ads themselves. Chan discovered paid ads could increase the incremental lift of organic listings by an estimated 86%.

In all, Chan found 81% of the ad impressions occurred alongside a related organic result, while 66% of the impressions did not. He was then able to further breakdown the numbers:

• When the related listing appeared in the #1 position, 50% of the paid search clicks were incremental.
• 82% of clicks were incremental, when the related organic results appeared in position #2, #3, or #4.
• When the associated organic result appeared in position #5 or higher, 96% of the clicks were incremental.

This means, if you were to turn off your SEM campaigns, you’d experience an estimated 85% loss in clicks that your organic listing will be unable to recapture. Your profits would take a huge hit, and the only way to stem the loss would be to turn the campaigns back on.

While the above data shows the location of the organic listing affects the incremental lift of paid ads, it isn’t the only factor. Industry, offering, company, surrounding listings and ads, time of year, and the audience being targeted can all have a profound effect on user behaviour and the ROI of organic and paid listings. Regardless, the research proves organic and paid search work much better when they’re planned, executed, and managed together.

How Combining SEO and SEM Can Maximise Your ROI

Some marketing components such as AdWords, social ads, image and video ads, mobile advertising, local ads, and content networks are SEM-specific. Other components such as onsite optimisation, link building, social media, mobile, and local marketing tactics are SEO specific. But you still need to consider both SEO and SEM together to get the most out of every search-marketing dollar.

By considering paid and organic search when designing a search strategy, for instance, you can get an accurate look at the entire marketing environment. It’s then possible to identify the most profitable long and short-term opportunities, and adjust your SEO and SEM strategies to maximise return and obtain your objectives efficiently. Lastly, if something changes, you can easily adapt your SEO and SEM strategies and budget to meet these new needs.

Both search marketing methods should also be included in your KPI and reports. Again, this gives you a more accurate picture of what’s going on, allows you to get more accurate measurements, and ensures both methods are on track when it comes to achieving your goals.

Keywords and keyword research should also take SEO and SEM into account. Armed with a large list of terms, you can examine each keyword and identify the specific traits associated with each one (the amount of potential traffic, the search cost if they were to be included in a paid search campaign). Then, you’re able to distribute the keyword phrases between your SEO and SEM campaigns in a way that keeps spending down while maximising opportunity.

Landing page optimisation can also benefit from this approach. For example, we use SEO keyword phrases to optimise landing page content. This brings in more traffic and improves the landing page’s quality and relevancy score, keeping SEM costs down. In short, we use SEM to improve the results of your SEO campaign and vice versa.

Because SEM includes testing to maximise click-through and conversion rates for each keyword, you can collect and use this information to create more effective content and meta descriptions. And the same goes for competitor analysis. You can get a more accurate idea of what each competitor is doing, and therefore, it’s easier to identify opportunities, strengths, and weaknesses.

Investing in SEM for terms you’re already ranking for organically might seem like a bit of a waste at first, but when you consider the benefits of using SEO and SEM together, how can you afford not to?

It just got a whole lot easier to engage your customers with quality video content thanks to Google’s new beta video management tool, Google AdWords for Video, which sits within the adwords interface.

Google Adwords for Video allows you to create targeted video strategies, manage campaigns, optimise and create in-depth reports, all from the AdWords interface as seen below:

What’s really impressive is the tool allows you to target users through a variety of methods right within the interface, giving you the ability to manage and optimise your campaigns on a very detailed level.  An example of “topic” targeting is below, however you can create many groups also targeting YouTube search keywords, display keywords, demographics, interests, remarketing lists and specific placements.

There is also more access to data than before. It enables you to see important metrics such as cost-per-views, view rates, website click through rates, etc, down to a very granular level.  You also have visibility into exactly where your ads are being played.  A simple click on the placement takes you straight to the video placement within YouTube so you can view and check the video is in line with your brand.

As an added bonus, Google has also expanded the types of remarketing lists that are able to be derived from your video campaigns and YouTube channel.  This will have a great impact on your conversions as you can remarket to a massive cookie pool of people who have already interacted with your brand in YouTube.  The following types of video remarketing lists are now available:

• Watched my video(s) from a channel: watched any video on your channel anywhere the video is played – watch page, channel page, embeds, TrueView Video Ads, etc.
• Watched my video(s): watched a single video or any video among a set of videos you select (must be from the same channel)
• Watched my ad(s) from a channel: viewed any video in your channel as a TrueView Video Ads (all four formats)
• Watched my ad(s): viewed a single video or any video among a set of videos you select (must be from the same channel) as a TrueView Video Ads (all four formats)
• Liked my video(s) from a channel: Liked (thumbs up) any video within your channel
• Liked my video(s): Liked (thumbs up) a single video or any video among a set of videos you select (must be from the same channel)
• Disliked my video(s) from a channel: Disliked (thumbs down) any video within your channel
• Disliked my video(s): Disliked (thumbs down) a single video or any video among a set of videos you select (must be from the same channel)
• Subscribed to my channel
• Unsubscribed from my channel.

Click here for more tips from Google on how to create video campaigns within AdWords using Google AdWords for Video.

Will you try it? Let us know!

When it first came out, Google+ (Google Plus) seemed like nothing more than just another ill-fated attempt at being social. Wave had just failed, and the death of Google Buzz wasn’t too far behind. No one would have been particularly surprised if Google+ had died just as fast as it launched, even if it did get some good reviews.

For many business owners, Google+ seemed like “just another social network to update”. And its small user base meant that it didn’t have near the potential Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks did, so there wasn’t much point in wasting time and money on it. Even now, Google+ only has an estimated 62 million users,
 1.44% of whom are believed to be Australian.
This works out to just over 502,000 users and 3% of the market share.

But, the recent introduction of Google+ to the search results could change all that, especially considering the other benefits the social network now has to offer. In fact, if you aren’t already broadcasting and connecting on Google+, you might want to start.

Hello Search Plus

The line between social media and search has been blurred for quite some time, but with Google+ content appearing in the search results (called Search Plus Your World), the line has all but disappeared.

Users who are signed into their account and using https://www.google.com/ to perform Google searches will now get two sets of results: personalised results, and “other results”.

The “other results” are what we’re used to seeing. Listings are personalised to the user through either their Google Account (using implicit and explicit information collected while signed into the account), and/or their web browser (if the user is signed out). There are universal results and social results, which include content written and shared by people you know. Under the new personalised results option, however, users will see something quite different.

If you choose personalised results (located just under the search bar where you find the number of results for a given query), you’ll see results determined by your own social networking behaviour, the behaviour of those you’re connected to, and your Google+ account.

In short, the three main algorithms Google uses to provide search results — the social, personal, and personalised algorithms — have been combined to produce one comprehensive list of results. This means users can search their social networks and the Web, without having to switch sites or perform multiple search queries.

Search Your World. Almost.

Sites like Twitter and Facebook may have more users, but relying on them to fill the social part of your search portfolio could be a huge mistake. Why? None of the information found on these sites are included in the Search Plus Your World feature.

This doesn’t mean they won’t be included in the future, but so far, there’s no indication that this will change. For the moment, Google+ has a monopoly on the personalised results pages and that’s the real benefit of this social network.

Still not sure why you should get on board and start using Google+? Here are a few more reasons:

• Google+ is young and it has tons of room to grow. In fact, the network is expected to have well over 400 million users worldwide by the end of 2012. And with Search Plus Your World being something users have to opt-out of, rather than opt into, these numbers could go even higher. That’s a huge number of potential consumers for a business of any size.
• Between paid search ads, universal listings (videos and images), local listings, and now social listings appearing on search results pages, organic listings are slowly being overtaken. If you hope to compete, you need to diversify and increase your chances of being seen.
• Rumours are already swirling that Google favours its own content over other results.
• Google+ Pages for Business let you take advantage of the search engine’s new “quick connect” feature. This makes it possible for users to find your Google+ Business Page by simple putting a “+” in front of your brand in the search box (like +Pepsi, for example).
• Google Profiles now appear in the search suggestion box and take up more space in the search results, providing businesses with even more opportunities to be seen. They also give businesses and professionals a chance to be included in suggested user boxes found on the right side of the search results.
• Google+ Circles are already in Gmail, which currently has over 200 million users. It’s only a matter of time before it’s incorporated elsewhere and content starts appearing inside products like Google Checkout, Google Wallet, Chrome, and Google Maps. In fact, information from Google+ could appear (or be used) just about anywhere.
• Google+ has a huge amount of potential. After all, Google already provides businesses and consumers with everything they need online. The only ingredient they’re missing is integration. If the search engine gets this right, there’s no telling how much more powerful it could become and which sites could get swallowed up in the process.
• Sites like Facebook focus solely on helping users connect, while Google has focused on creating tools and providing information. Through this, they’ve collected a ton of information and now control a large amount of an Internet user’s time.
• Google has become a trusted information source, and this is a big part of the conversion process. If Google recommends a particular product, service, or website, some of that trust transfers to the destination page, increasing the likelihood of conversion.
• The more situated and established you are on a social network before it goes mainstream, the more authority you can build and the more opportunities you’ll have to attract users. This is ideal for getting a edge over your competition. In fact, Vodafone, Telstra, iiNet, Google Australia, and National Australia Bank (NAB) took advantage of this when they became some of the first Australian organisations to create official pages.

How Australian Businesses Can Get the Most from Google+ and Search Plus Your World

Google+ is still relatively new, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do anything to take advantage of it. First, if you don’t already have a Google+ Page for your business, get one.

Fill out the profile as best you can and include any relevant information consumers and users may find helpful. Be sure to include important keywords (in a user-friendly manner), images, and URLs. (If you need more information, look at ZDNet.com.au’s post on the Google+ Pages Guide.)

Once your Google+ Page is set up, you need to use it. Regularly. It’s the only way to stay visible and build your connections, but you need to be careful about what you post. Don’t fall into the trap of automatically posting content, or promoting only your own content and products. Look around the Web for quality content that will pique the interest of your target audience.

Want to get more interaction and attention out of your posts?

• Share content from new and unusual sources.
• Select content people are naturally passionate about. It might be a slightly different view on a particular topic, or provide just enough information to make people curious and want to dig deeper. Find things that are unique and unpredictable.
• It doesn’t matter what you want to see on the page. Choose information your target audience wants to see. This could include trends, news items, or maybe even variations of a popular meme.
• Be choosy when promoting your own stuff. Make sure it’s worth sharing. Otherwise, if every sale is the ‘biggest you’ve ever had’, users will tune you out and miss the most important information.
• A large number of Google+ users belong to the IT crowd. Keep this in mind when creating your marketing strategy.
• It may be a social network, but call-to-actions still count. Make sure people know what you do, what you have to offer, and what you want them to do.
• Use Google+ to do more than just broadcast information. Not sure how? Check out 7 Google+ Tricks That I Know and You Don’t from Unbounce.

The Rel=Author attribute has been available to Australian websites since October 2011, and since then, it has become a vital element of Google+ Pages and the search results. So, make sure you use it and get credit for each piece of content you publish by placing the Rel=Author attribute on each page you create. (You can learn how to implement this in SocialMediaNews.com.au’s simple guide.)

A link attribute like this might seem like a minor detail, but with the advent of Search Plus Your World (and even before this), content you create now appears in the search results with your name, photo, and a link to a page that lists other pieces you’ve published. Think of it like a catalogue of your content.

Search Plus Your World hasn’t been rolled out to all users just yet. It’s going to take some time, but don’t put it off. Take advantage of the advance notice by educating yourself and getting prepared for what’s coming. You can’t afford not to.

Have you tried out Google+ or gotten a look at Search Plus Your World yet? What do you think?

Mobile is here and no-one can deny this is the way of the future.

For some time, we’ve spent much of our discussions regarding mobile convincing clients this was going to be the next big thing – but now the conversation has shifted from “why should I?” to “how should I?”

Previously, many advertisers rejected mobile; writing it off as a fad or just a tool for social engagement. This has led to companies refusing to allocate budget to the development of any mobile properties, citing a lack of visibility or ROI. However, according to a recent report by the Australian Marketing Institute, almost 40% of Australian marketing executives expect their marketing budget to increase in 2012, with advertising campaigns increasingly targeted at mobile devices.

So, what’s changed? Lots.

Mobile devices have become smarter and more sophisticated, allowing users to do more with greater ease. They can click on an ad and be dialled into the advertisers call centre with just one click. They can manage all their banking through a basic app. Essentially, they have their world in their pocket.

Advertisers can leverage this ‘ease-of-use’ to learn more about their audiences habits and advertise and promote their services to complement these habits. For example, many high street retailers are leveraging the power of Facebook’s mobile app, by offering shoppers a discount when they ‘check-in’ to their store. They can then use this as a database for enticing shoppers to keep up to date with store offers and exclusive deals. Banks are offering their customers calculator tools to show their monthly repayments on a home loan or car loan, or how much money they can make on a term deposit – all on the go. And with the emergence of ‘Mobile Wallets’ such as Google Wallet, the sky is the limit.

With mobile use increasing at a staggering rate, the challenge for advertisers is to be continuously innovative to satisfy users’ needs. Below are some key do’s and don’ts for any mobile strategy:

Do:

1. Create a “Mobile Friendly” site – your audience will appreciate it and Google has started to penalise advertisers with non-mobile friendly sites with poor quality scores in the Adwords campaigns
2. Invest in mobile – not just in advertising dollars, but especially in staff – mobile is here to stay and the sooner you have dedicated resources the better!
3. Embrace flexibility – from systems compatibility (e.g. building for iPhone or Android) to customising user experience – you must keep an open mind and test, test, test.

Don’t:

1. Spam or Overload. Whether by email, SMS, pop-ups or otherwise – just don’t do it. We hate it, OK! (Oh, and let us unsubscribe if we want).
2. Don’t forget a call to action. This is a general rule in marketing your product through any medium, but it’s crucial for mobile where users can easily be diverted to something else more interesting. Plus, telling users what to do might just help your bottom line….
3. Don’t forget about screen size. We all suffer from fat finger syndrome, so help us to get where we want to go.
4. Don’t just think about selling – it’s also about engagement, learning and getting leads. The sales will come, believe it.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and online PR are inextricably linked, more so now than ever! When used in tandem, the two share many synergies in driving exceptional results online.

Branding

Public Relations, at its core, is about building a favourable public image, while SEO seeks to improve a brand’s visibility in search. Both disciplines essentially share the same goal online – to raise the profile of a company by establishing trust, authority and reputation with key audiences.

While well-optimised content provides a powerful form of brand awareness and reputation management for online PR, brand and reputation correlate with strong search results, making the two inseparable.

Coverage

A key component of any PR campaign is generating positive media coverage. SEO plays a vital role in ensuring media releases, articles and announcements have better visibility online. Google’s Universal Search provides additional exposure via news, blogs, reviews, videos, images and more.

Similarly, off-site SEO involves generating coverage via inbound link acquisition.

Online PR is the key to building quality, authoritative, editorial links, through media relations, blogger outreach, industry partners and social engagement.

Leveraging both disciplines to create and distribute high-quality content is key.

Audience

While PR involves managing communications between an organisation and its publics, search engines provide the key means in reaching these audiences online. Whether they’re journalists, bloggers, influencers or brand advocates, active within news sites, blogs, forums or social communities, PR and SEO work hand in hand.

For both disciplines, social media plays a fundamental role. Not only are Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn powerful communication channels, both Google and Bing have confirmed the use of social signals within their algorithms.  Creating engaging content and participating in conversations not only encourages ‘likes’, ‘tweets’ and ‘shares’, it generates positive coverage, brand awareness and links -, a win-win all round!

Using SEO and online PR in isolation is no longer enough, as one will not survive without the other. A holistic, integrated approach to online marketing is essential in maximising performance online.

Last Thursday Google announced a significant change to their ranking algorithm which aims to return “fresher” and therefore more relevant search results for approximately 35% of search queries.  Following the recent “Caffeine” infrastructure change, which provides a much faster and larger indexation of the web, this freshness update provides more timely and recent results.

Google said:

‘We completed our Caffeine web indexing system last year, which allows us to crawl and index the web for fresh content quickly on an enormous scale. Building upon the momentum from Caffeine, today we’re making a significant improvement to our ranking algorithm that impacts roughly 35 percent of searches and better determines when to give you more up-to-date relevant results for these varying degrees of freshness’.

Which types of searches will be affected?

Google giving prominence to “fresh” content is nothing new. QDF (Query Deserves Freshness) is an algorithmic component which promotes newsworthy, topical content for queries requiring frequent updates, such as breaking news and hot topics. Previously impacting just 17.5% of search queries, this has essentially doubled, with fresh content now getting rewarded more than ever.

As different searches have different “freshness” needs, this algorithmic improvement is designed to better understand how to differentiate between these types of searches and the level of freshness required. These include:

• Current Events, News & Hot Topics – For events, breaking news or hot topics, you want to find the latest information immediately. This change will return high-quality, real-time content which may be just minutes or seconds old. Major brands, celebrities and a variety of news sites have already been rewarded with greater search visibility.
• Reoccurring Events – For events which take place on a regularly recurring basis, such as annual conferences, federal elections, company earnings or the Olympics, this change will ensure you see the latest information ahead of content from previous years.
• Frequent Updates - For information which changes often, such as the best SLR camera, Mazda car reviews, the cheapest flights to NZ, or other ecommerce/ transactional queries, this change will ensure results are accurate and up to date.

For example, a search for “earthquake” in the US now returns relevant content about the latest earthquake in Oklahoma, just a few hours old:

Evergreen content, which includes historical or long-lifespan content requiring no or few updates, will not be affected by this change.

What does this mean for Search?

While this change is yet to be rolled out internationally, a number of key actions have been identified for your organic search campaigns:

• Identify relevant industry-specific keywords which may require “freshness” updates
• Closely monitor rankings and traffic for search terms likely to be affected
• Incorporate industry-specific “Trends” and “Hot Topics” within your keyword research process
• Regularly update content to keep it fresh
• Include news, articles, blogs, videos and reviews as part of your overall content strategy
• Use RSS Feeds to promote content, there is a strong correlation between “freshness” links and RSS
• Include timestamps within XML sitemaps
• Implement time tags if using HTML5
• Encourage social sharing, it is believed social engagement may influence which content is displayed.

If you focus on addressing these areas, when it comes time to being rewarded, chances are you will be up for it.

You may think your Internet Marketing Agency is just another supplier. But your search marketing agency can be so much more than that. If you want to get the most out of your search dollars or your internet marketing specialists, you need to make your chosen search agency a seamless extension of your business – a partner.

1. Your Search Agency Needs Help Only You Can Provide

No matter how good your search agency is or how much experience they have, they can’t do their job alone. They need information, and the only place they can get it is from the people working in the various departments of your company.

Your branding and product/service development departments can keep the search agency in the loop about upcoming products that will need visibility, descriptors to use with keywords, the kind of content (writing) styles to use, and how to interact with clients.

The PR, marketing and sales departments can keep your search agency updated on current conversion rates (which keywords, pages, referrers, and techniques worked best), products/services to focus on or push, and big news items the company has that could be used to generate content, build links, and increase visibility.

Customer service teams are also an ideal source for content, keywords, ad ideas, and other tools your search agency can use to improve the results of various campaigns.  You’ll make your search agency’s work more effective and improve your bottom line, just by working together.

2. SEO, SEM, Social Media and More

Social media and personalisation influence SEO and SEM more than ever before. Unfortunately, your SEO team can’t run your marketing department, and the marketing department can’t be your SEO/SEM provider. They have to work together.

Keywords and behavioural targeting can help people find your content through site search, and make it more appealing to the right audience. Your SEO, social media and other marketing will all be more effective when they’re fully integrated with each other.

3. Search Agencies Handle More Than Just SEO and Paid Advertising

The main reason you probably hired a search agency was to improve your search rankings, or run your PPC campaigns. But it can do so much more.

For example, your search partner can help push down a negative listing in the search results, when you’ve had a bad situation get worse, or when you’re simply looking to build up your reputation or authority. (We call this “reputation management”.)

They can also help you launch new products or marketing plans, either by adding to their existing keyword lists or starting a new campaign. You can target a specific audience, test certain pages, and get to know your ideal customers and their needs.

Link building strategies such as outreach and content placement programs can build connections and open the window to opportunities.

These are just a few examples of how your search agency could help you and your business succeed.

4. Make Changes on the Fly and Be Ready for Anything

Things move pretty fast in the business world, but online things can move even faster. So, if something changes, you need to be ready to act just as quickly (one example is using a news item or hot social network topic to market a particular product or service). But if your search partner doesn’t know anything about it, how can they possibly help you?

Working closely with your SEO/SEM agency also means you’ll know what they’re doing, what techniques they’re using and how things are going. You’ll always have a good idea where things are at, so you’re less likely to get a nasty surprise.

As you can see, treating your SEO and SEM agency as a partner rather than just a supplier gives you a huge advantage over your competition. How could you possibly pass that up?

Conversion Optimisation

When people talk about search marketing, they tend to talk about the keywords, ad copy and landing pages. Which is all good and well because afterall, these three levers are all key to improving campaign performance and improving overall ROI to your business. 

But we believe it’s imperative to not only develop a test and learn strategy by using only these three levers, but it’s just as important to consider the landing page itself – landing page optimisation.

Landing page optimisation can have the largest impact on your conversion rate. You’ve already done most of the hard work to ensure the highest quality users are driven to the landing page through an optimised search campaign. Now it’s about converting these users into customers.

When looking at landing pages specifically, people usually talk about AB landing page testing where you run two landing pages simultaneously in the SEM campaign to determine which landing page generates a higher conversion rate and ROI for the business.

However, AB landing page testing can be limited. It only allows you test two elements of the landing page. If you’re running two completely different landing pages (i.e., with different content and/or layout), you are unable to determine the key driver of any change in performance.  Was it the new layout that improved the conversion rate, or was it the change in key imagery on the page?

The easiest and most efficient way to optimise landing pages is through conversion optimisation. Conversion optimisation, also known as Multivariate Testing (MVT), is the systematic process of identifying and testing multiple variables on a landing page to improve conversion rates and ROI. This allows you to test multiple variables, such as, headlines, copy, images, forms, layouts, call to actions, all simultaneously whilst maintaining a control – your current landing page.

From a development point of view, conversion optimisation can be easier to implement than A/B landing page testing as you don’t need to create any new landing pages, you just need to input code onto the landing page that you’re wanting to test as well as the conversion page. It’s that simple.

When it comes to conversion optimisation, one of the most important things to remember is to plan. Don’t just jump straight into it and set up a test. You need to sit down and decide on a strategy and list of hypothesis that could improve performance. From here you should list everything you want to test and brainstorm ideas for each of them.

While it might seem tempting to test everything at once, you need to consider how much traffic your site and landing page receives and take this into consideration when deciding how many sections and variables to test at any one time.

Just prioritise and remember that you can always create a second test, so start simple and concentrate on areas that will have the highest impact. Then watch the results roll in….

Recently, Google Analytics Blog made 2 announcements: Google Analytics will soon be able to provide real time data and Google has released Google Analytics Platinum, a  paid version of Google Analytics targeted specifically at corporate enterprises.

Real Time Reports

Up until now, Google Analytics has only been able to provide reports on visits up to at least 24 hours in the past. With these latest reports, which are being released over time, you will be able to see what you website visitors are doing as it happens.

You will be able to see the number of active users within your website, where they came from (traffic channel), and even the keywords used. Sent a tweet with a link to your site? Now you can see the exact impact as it happens.

To be able to get the full benefits of real-time reports, you will need to ensure Google Analytics installation has been correctly implemented as well as ensure all marketing channels (i.e. Display, CPC, E-Mail, etc) have been correctly tagged.

Unfortunately there are some restrictions to using the real-time reports, you must:

• Be an account administrator
• Not have any filters applied to the account.

If you want to try out the new real-time reports, sign up here: https://services.google.com/fb/forms/realtimeanalytics/

Google Analytics Platinum

As mentioned above, Google Analytics Platinum is primarily targeted at enterprises, although currently only available within the US, Canada, and the UK.  The cost will be a fixed annual fee, which is set by Google or through Google Analytics Platinum Retailers.

Benefits of Google Analytics Platinum include:

• Additional data available for reports, with the ability to view reports with billions of hits as oppsed to the current 50M, and the use of up to 50 custom variables to provide deeper insights into user behaviour
• Advanced analytics through attribution modelling of your various marketing campaigns
• Secure data with a Service Level Agreement of up to 99.9% in any calendar month, as well as you will own the data
• Your own personal account manager to assist with setup, technical and business training and general support.

So to get the competitive edge, it’s definitely in your best interests to ensure you’re leveraging these new Google Analytics tools as soon as possible. If you already are, do you have any feedback?