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Ad position, the forest containing all your account metric trees! (Sorry, it’s Friday, and the clichés abound.) A high quality score combined with the right keyword bid means your ad gets a higher and higher position on Google SERPs. But, how do you analyze your ad position in AdWords? And, how do you know what your optimal position really is? Some accounts do perform better when ads are shown on the side versus the top of a page, as we’ll explore a little later in the post. My goal today is to help give you a solid understanding of ad position in AdWords so that you can think about this metric in the right way for your individual accounts.

Ad Position Basics

First, let’s start with some ad position basics. As of November 2011, Google considers your ads to be in one of two areas of SERP real estate, “top” or “other.” Not specific enough for you? Let me illustrate. Ads in the top position are outlined in red below, and ads in the “other” position, which in this example is the side of the page, are outlined in orange.

Here’s where things get a little hairy. Google recently decided that ads could be shown on either the side or bottom of a SERP. Translation: “other” means side or bottom (outlined in purple below).

Keep in mind that if ads show on the side of a SERP they will not be on the bottom, and vice versa, so side vs. bottom ad position is an either/or situation. Google’s reasoning behind showing ads at the bottom of pages is that for some searches the natural flow of a searcher scanning from top to bottom has yielded higher click-through rates (or so they say). Ads will only show at the bottom once they’ve already been shown on the side, and, of course, which ads are shown on the bottom of a page is something determined by Google behind the scenes.

What does this all mean? In short, knowing your average position doesn’t really tell you exactly where on the page your ads are showing, but you can determine whether yours ads perform better at the top or side/bottom of the page.

Finding Your Optimal Position

“Why wouldn’t all my ads perform the best at the top of all SERPs?” you just asked yourself. Well, many reasons. Maybe your top of page cost per click is too expensive for you to see a good return on ad spend. Or maybe your competitor’s ad position is having a shading effect on your ads, and people are just more inclined to click on your ad when it’s on the side or bottom of a SERP.

Whatever the reason, you can easily view top vs. other segmentation in AdWords. On the Campaign, Ad Group or Keyword tab in the AdWords interface, go to segment in the sub menu below your tab headings and choose “top vs. other:”

Then you’ll see the break down of your account metrics by page position for both Search and Search Partners:

As you can see in my example above, this particular account clearly performs better on the top of search results pages for this specific time period. To get a complete snapshot of your account’s ad position performance, I would create a report that segments your account’s metrics, including ad position, monthly for the past year. Take note of how your account metrics have improved (or not) as your ad position has increased or decreased. Once you can identify a definite trend, you will know the position in which your ads perform the best, and then you can optimize your account accordingly. How might you optimize your accounts for a specific ad position? Excellent question.

Optimizing Your Account Toward A Specific Position

As of April 2011, Google retired their AdWords position preference option, which let you specify which positions you wanted your ad to show for. While this system wasn’t perfect, it took a lot of guesswork out of achieving an optimal position. Google stated that they wanted to dissuade advertisers from focusing on a specific position, but we all know that it can be a good account tune-up to spend some time analyzing this data.

So, how do you optimize your account manually for a certain position? If you want to target a higher position, focus on your keywords’ quality scores. This will improve your position and lower your cost per click. Obviously if you determine your optimal position is below the first spot, you’ll want to focus on conservative keyword bids. Don’t be afraid to lower your bids if you need to come down in position to achieve better performance.

In regards to quality score, sometimes a low quality score is okay, but if you want to have the most control over your campaigns, you might want to consider segmenting your account by quality score to have more of an effect on each campaign’s position. Your branded terms, for example, might have lower quality scores, but are valuable in terms of gaining name recognition. Likewise, your competitor keywords probably also have a lower quality score. For more information about when low quality score keywords are okay, check out our post on this.

If you want an estimation of what bid you would need to achieve a specific position with any given keyword, you can use Google’s Traffic Estimator. This tool allows you to enter a keyword and a cost per click, and will show you your estimated ad position. You can also enter a daily budget amount to see how that would affect your estimated daily clicks.

You can access this tool from the Tools and Analysis menu in AdWords:

This might be labor intensive to do for all your keywords, but it can help give you a ballpark range to start with for your keyword lists.

Closing Thoughts

While ad position in AdWords can be fluid, and actual page placement a never sure-fire bet, it’s still good to analyze and optimize your account for a position that conclusively yields the best results. You may find that this boosts your account performance, and if not at least you’ll know that your account is not effected one way or the other by its page position. Also, if your page position starts to mysteriously drop down and you haven’t made any drastic changes to your account, don’t forget to take a look at your competitive landscape. External factors, i.e. your competitors, can dramatically change where your ads are showing.

If I’ve left out any tips for using ad position data advantageously, feel free to let us know in the comments below. I hope this has helped clarify some things for you in regards to ad position!

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2010 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

We love having a great sponsor like Zoomerang and their free polling software to figure out what and how marketers feel about both our content and to provide insight into what strategies are deploying. Our latest poll asked about plans for marketers when it comes to the tablet market.

Last year, Forrester predicted huge growth in the ereader and tablet market – and the market produced. It didn’t produce with simple sales, but the aggressive discounting of ereaders and tablets are making them more affordable than mobile phones!

What does that mean for your organization? Thankfully, about 50% of our audience said that they were planning on optimizing their sites for tablet usage…. but a surprising 27% said they had no plans at all!

I’m going to make a prediction to those folks here… 2012 adoption of tablets will make you rethink your plans. Ereaders and tablets can provide a unique reading experience that the average website can not produce. Automated applications for publishing, new tablet optimization libraries and CMS themes are being released at a huge rate, and responsive websites (that conform to tablet screen sizes) are making life easier for designers.

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post written by Ann Davlin who works at MotoCMS – an advanced Flash CMS and Flash templates provider.

It’s not a secret that many recruiters and business owners use social networking sites to screen prospective employees. According to the survey of 300 hiring professionals conducted by Reppler the most popular online resources for time wasting are Facebook (76%), Twitter (53%) and Linkedin (48%). It probably means that the whole (online and offline) business world considers it necessary to take social networks activity into account and use it for corporate objectives. But there are not so many employers who enable their employees to use these social networks at the working time if they are not engaged in corporate social accounts maintenance: In 2009 Robert Half Technology proclaimed that:

• 54 percent of U.S. companies ban workers from using social networking sites while on the job;
• 19 percent of companies allow social networking use only for business purposes;
• 16 percent allow limited personal use of the web.

In 2010, Manpower Inc. published a survey of over 34,000 employers in 35 countries and it turned out that three out of four companies have no formal policy regarding on-the-job use of social networking sites. In addition to the fact that social networking sites expose employees’ productivity to risk, corporate networks security and confidential data prove there is a strong need to determine how social networks can influence organizations.

Surely the problem related to the non-purpose use of the web at workplaces is quite hot and is an object for debates. There are numerous pros and cons of on-the-job use of social network sites including:

Strengths

• It gives the “bush telegraph” effect.
• Employees will be well-informed about latest online trends.
• Organizations with an access to social networks are considered to be progressive ones.

Weaknesses

• It’s hard to influence social networks messages of employees.
• Occasionally there is a need to invest money into office networks security.
• Some employees spend too much paid working time using private social network accounts.

Opportunities

• It is possible to increase labor productivity using this tool.
• It can be a good stimulation for workers enthusiasm.
• It’s also a good mean to increase the pleasure employees get during working hours.
• Using permissions for social communication it is possible to motivate and encourage workers.
• It can be a strong advantage while searching for new employees.

Threats

• Some public messages on social networks can really hurt the company’s public image.
• There can be some emotional and moral disorder of staff.
• There is a risk to infect corporate networks with viruses.

You can also supplement this list with other points which you consider to be important and influential. This ones are just examples that we think will make you think about the harm and benefits from using social networks at workplaces.

As Manpower’s survey states, very few organizations all over the world mentioned that their reputation has ever been impacted as a result of employees’ use of social networking sites at their workplaces. Here is a strict illustration on how little damage was caused by social media websites from the employers’ point of view.

Has your organization’s reputation ever been damaged by employees using social networking sites?

Americas – 11,000 employers from 9 countries from South and North Americas.
Asia Pacific – 7,700 employers from the Asia Pacific region.
EMEA – more then 16,000 employers from 16 countries of Europe, Middle East and Africa.

It shows that the threat of being damaged on the web by your own employees is lower than it’s considered to be. Within the whole world there are only 4 percent of companies whose business interests were negatively affected by the private online communication. Nearly 90 percent of businessmen don’t see any harm in social networks. Probably this diagram will look a little bit different in case of taking into account the employees’ productivity and time which they spend on social networks.

Now let’s get to another part, which can really be more important. This previous diagram was about actual damage, but what’s really widespread is not the damage, it’s the lack of any use from those employees spending their working time on social networks. Official Facebook stats claim that there are more than 400 million users which log in to Facebook every day and what is more important all of them combined spend something about 2 billion minutes a day on Facebook. Do you really think that all these people check their accounts at home after a working day? Nope! They spend their working time to chat with friends and relatives! Unfortunately, nobody estimates the work efficiency before and after such brakes. There are many employees who frankly think that social media communication during working hours relaxes them and even tones them up. This point of view is quite interesting and challenging to make some employers think about enabling their workers to surf through social media websites. But undoubtedly, this question requires a strong regulation.

For example, look at the graph below. Too much lemonade makes you hate lemons. This statement relates to pretty much everything – like eating sweets, watching TV and social media communicating too. So it is possible to find some solution when private communication becomes more of a useful thing than the harmful one for your business (position A). The point is that even if an unlimited access to the entertainment sites would be given to the employees during their working hours after some time general interest towards such form of wasting time starts to fall (position C) .

For example: if employees can use their private Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc. accounts at workplaces 30 minutes a day they will be waiting for this time and will try to take maximum advantage of it. Then if they are allowed to communicate on the web for 2 hours a day – be sure workers will do the same as if they have had only 30 minutes (there is no need to hurry up if there is a plenty of officially allowed time). And when an unlimited access to all social media sites is provided people either get bored of this idea very quickly or they will waste the whole working time on the web (however in such case the employee risks to be fired).

So here are several suggestions on what can be done to minimize the threats and maximize the benefits of on-the-job usage of social media sites (as well as other entertainment online resources):

• Provide an unlimited access to entertainment sites and wait until employees will be tired of playing around on the web. In this case you’ll need a strong network protection software and plenty of patience.
• Provide an unlimited access to the web but do not let things drift – a constant online activity control is demanded.
• Allow a free access to the web only during breaks. It will save your corporate network from overloading and employees from time wasting.
• Another option is to forbid any access to social network sites at workplaces whatsoever. This step will probably reduce company’s popularity among current and potential employees, so be ready for a public dissatisfaction (especially if your competitors are not so strict).
• Provide an access to different sites for different categories of employees according to their duties. It requires some monetary and labor spending, but it is a very effective optimization tool.
• Describe all conditions concerning non-purpose use of social networks in the employment contract. This measure will clarify everything for both parties: employees and employers
• Establish fines for those who use Internet for private purposes. However there is a need to separate different types of employees: those which were and always will abuse an access to the web, those which will react and those who are indifferent to the web. All these people need an individual approach.
• It is possible to make entering social media sites a some kind of encouragement. The more effective employee is the more time he/she can spend on social networks. It will stimulate those workers who like to relax on the web and will build convenient labor conditions for others.

Probably there are no universal solutions for every single case but there is one good rule of thumb: be useful and don’t harm. If employees follow it then probably they deserve getting some encouragements from the company. A few minutes in social media communities a day can hardly hurt any business but this time will bring a feeling of satisfaction for every worker. But of course it’s all up to you: to allow web surfing during working hours or forbid it. You are welcome to choose your own way of solving the problem of non-purpose use of social media websites on workplaces.

Have You Registered For Explore Dallas-Fort Worth?

Don’t miss a day of intensive learning with some of the leading thinkers and practitioners in the digital marketing and social media marketing space. Copyblogger’s Brian Clark, Edison Research’s Tom Webster, Edelman Digital’s Zena Weist and more headline one of the leading digital and social media marketing events of 2012, February 17 in Dallas, Texas! DON’T WAIT TO REGISTER! The first 100 to do so get an incredible discount! Reserve your seat today!

Ann Davlin is a young inspired blogger who is always open to trying new things. She works at MotoCMS -  an advanced Flash CMS and Flash templates provider. And if you are a fan of web design and social media (like Ann is) you can always follow her on Twitter (@SmilingAnny)

 

This post is written, with love, for those who are trying to maintain a content strategy, but failing miserably.  These five tips should get you on the path to success for 2012:

1. Start by asking "why?": Why did you start a blog in the first place?  What were you hoping to acheive?  If you don't have an objective, you are doomed for mediocracy. Goals give you a fire in your belly to reach for something and accomplish it.  Once you have goals set, your next steps will become much more clear.  If you can't come up with any, save yourself (and your future potential blog visitors) the time and quit now.
2. Identify what you have to offer: Success is found where your interests and your target market's interests intersect.  Do you sell fishing equipment in a town full of novice fishermen?  Create videos, how-to articles, and blogs describing the best tactics for fishing your local bodies of water.  Use this great content to populate your blog and even an e-newsletter, and you will grow an active following in no time.  Don't have anything to offer?  Start with your market's needs and fill in the gaps.
3. Commit to a schedule: When you are busy, everything that is out of sight is out of mind (you know the saying).  This being the case, make sure you have dedicated time slots to creating content and measuring the effectiveness of your efforts.  This could be the most important tactic you implement this year.
4. Measure: The obvious reason to measure the effectiveness of your efforts is so that you can make adjustments to improve.  When you are struggling to maintain a content strategy, measuring is equally important for the sake of seeing the fruits of your labor.  There's nothing quite like seeing data prove the value of your hard work.
5. Copy the best: You may be thinking, "Lee, are you really suggesting that I copy someone else?"  Yes, if you are limited in time and struggling to keep things afloat, don't kid yourself.  You are not going to turn into a cutting-edge thought-leader overnight.  Keep your eye on the best content marketers in your industry.  Note their best strategies, put your own spin on them, and give them a try.  Not everying you try is going to work, so it will be important for you to trying a myriad of different tactics and iterate along the way.

Have questions specific to your suffering blog?  Have time-saving tips of your own?  Please share in the comments!

With the first month of the New Year nearly behind us, it’s time to reflect. Take a look at your to-do list for the month. Have you gotten everything done? I’ll bet not! Guess what? That’s ok! We’re all human and we’re certainly not perfect. You may even intend to knock a few more things off your list before the month comes to a complete close and I encourage you to keep working at it, but I’m also here to help with some tips for how you can improve your time management skills!

Last week we had our monthly full-day training session at Hanapin and the following lists and helpful hints were a product of one of our small group sessions that day. The entire team agreed to having learned a thing or two and we’ve seen increased results in our productivity already!

1. Use a/your to-do list. Maybe you went to check that list I was talking about before and realized…you forgot to make it! Now is the time to get serious about keeping track of all the tasks you need to get done in a given day, week, month or year. Having all your tasks in a running list keeps things from falling through the cracks as easily, which is never a bad thing!
2. Develop a routine. This can be a small or as big as you want, but make a part of your schedule typical so you can plan for something. Pull spend numbers every morning, check email, make a coffee, answer blog comments…you see what I mean? Having the smallest tasks planned out to start or round out a part of your day can make it feel more manageable and again, keeps you from forgetting things as they become monotonous.
3. Break things up. Not like…your desk and chair, but your big tasks. If you have one big project you’re dreading, try breaking that project up in to smaller tasks that you can check off quicker and more frequently. You’ll feel more accomplished as you check things off and that motivation will keep you pushing through to finish the project.
4. You are not Superman. You are also not a first grader. What’s this mean? Don’t put too much on your plate and don’t leave it too empty. Accepting too many tasks leaves the most organized person frazzled because, as it turns out, the day does not get longer no matter how hard we wish. However, idle hands, they say! Give yourself credit for what you can get done in a given time and load your plate accordingly. Leaving holes with ‘nothing to do’ makes time go by slower, too.
5. Close the circle. Once you’ve completed a task or project, put it away! This fulfills the sense of accomplishment for a job well done and also allows you to move on to the next task (never done, right?). This is also the time to follow-up with anyone else on your team that may need to know the results of whatever you were working on so everyone knows the task is complete.
6. Start tomorrow today. This might make it sound like I’m insinuating the key to time management is to just never sleep, but I promise I am not. All I’m suggesting is before you leave the office or stop working for the day make your to-do list for the next day. This way, you can make sure to note whatever didn’t get done from today’s list for first thing on tomorrow’s list. It will also help you sleep better tonight knowing you’re prepped for the next day, trust me. Work this in to your routine from tip #2 and thank us later!
7. Stuff comes up, but don’t forget it! Within a day’s time, there are many conversations where a quick comment a colleague makes reminds us of something we need to do…write it down! I have more than one post-it pad at my desk and I take at least one to every meeting I attend. I can then take notes on extra things that need to be added to my to-do list and add them to the master list according to priority once the meeting is over. This also keeps my to-do list fairly organized, which is also extremely helpful.
8. Speaking of priorities…a fatal flaw to any plan is the inability to prioritize the steps to implement the plan. Basically, put the cart before the horse and let me know how far you get. When you go to make your to-do lists, assume you’ll make a few drafts and even scribble a few arrows around to show that this now needs to be done here. The important note is that when you’re ready to start your day/week, you have the most important tasks at the top of your list that way in case you don’t get to something, it will be something that can stand to wait until the next day.
9. Yes! You can say no! As I’ve mentioned a few times, things will come up throughout any given day that you are requested to do that you hadn’t planned on. Sometimes you have time, and sometimes you don’t. When you can say yes you should and when you can’t, politely decline or give a reasonable delivery date based on your current task load. Everyone wins!
10. Give yourself a break, man. When you get a big task or a chunk of small tasks complete, take a few minutes to soak in the chill. Rewarding yourself with a few minutes looking away from your computer screen or whatever you’ve been focusing on for hours is one of the easiest and best ways to re-motivate yourself to keep busting through that list and get to the end!

Now that we’ve shared our tips for how to more effectively manage your time, tell us what you do to keep yourself organized, productive and on task! Share your ideas and experiences in the comments section below and thanks for reading!

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2010 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

I keep telling folks I’d share how we’re integrating authorship microdata to produce search result rich snippets. It’s working well for our clients in increasing their SERP CTRs) so I figured I’d document it here for WordPress sites.

There are two pieces to this… and the two elements are not related. The authorship data is now being displayed in Search Engine Results Pages. I have not seen publisher info displayed yet… but I’m sure it will be!

Publisher

Google Plus now has a verification system where a publisher of a site can point to their Google+ page. By adding the following code in our theme’s functions.php page, we’ve added a section to our WordPress Administration general settings where we can paste our Google+ Page URL:

function social_settings_api_init() {
add_settings_section('social_setting_section', 'Social Sites on the Web', 'social_setting_section_callback_function', 'general');
add_settings_field('general_setting_googleplus', 'Google Plus Page', 'general_setting_googleplus_callback_function', 'general', 'social_setting_section');
register_setting('general','general_setting_googleplus');
}
add_action('admin_init', 'social_settings_api_init');

function social_setting_section_callback_function() {
echo '<p>This section is where you can save your social sites where readers can find you on the Internet.</p>';
}

function general_setting_googleplus_callback_function() {
echo '<input name="general_setting_googleplus" id="general_setting_googleplus" type="text" value="'. get_option('general_setting_googleplus') .'" />';
}

The next step is to publish the publish link on every page on the site outside of your single blog post pages. So, in our header.php, we add the following code:
<?php if(!is_single()) { ?><link href="<?php echo esc_attr(get_option('general_setting_googleplus')); ?>" rel="publisher" /><?php } ?>

Authorship

Authorship is a little more in-depth, especially if you have a multi-author blog like ours. Basically, we want all of our pages that authors write to display their Google+ profile data in search engine results. To get this down, I had to go to the master himself, Joost de Valk and read up on his rel=”author” post.

The first step is to override WordPress settings and allow anchor tags to be published with the appropriate rel element. Within functions.php, add the following code:

function yoast_allow_rel() {
global $allowedtags;
$allowedtags['a']['rel'] = array ();
}
add_action( 'wp_loaded', 'yoast_allow_rel' );

The next step is to add code to functions.php that adds a field to your User Profile page where the authors can fill out their Google+ URL:

function yoast_add_google_profile( $contactmethods ) {
// Add Google Profiles
$contactmethods['google_plus_profile'] = 'Google Plus Profile URL';
return $contactmethods;
}
add_filter( 'user_contactmethods', 'yoast_add_google_profile', 10, 1);

Now that you’ve got the field in there, you’re going to have to add an author link to every page that will point to your author content, like single.php, index.php, author.php and archive.php. Within those template pages, display the author link along with the rel=”author” and that link should point to your author.php profile page:

<a href="<?php echo esc_url( get_author_posts_url( get_the_author_meta( 'ID' ) ) ); ?>" rel="author"><?php get_the_author(); ?></a>

Within your author.php page, you’re going to want to display the profile information along with a rel=”me” link that points back to your Google Profile page:

$google_plus_profile = get_the_author_meta( 'google_plus_profile' );
if ( $google_plus_profile ) { echo '<p><a href="' . $google_plus_profile . '" rel="me"><img src="http://www.google.com/images/icons/ui/gprofile_button-32.png"></a></p>'; }

You tired yet? Don’t be… next step is to actually add a contributor link back to your author page within Google Plus:

Ok… now your author links are pointing to your author page, your author page is pointing to your Google Plus profile, your Google Plus profile is pointing to your author page. Do you see how we’ve got the entire circle covered here? One last step…

Use the rich snippets tool and actually verify that your rich snippets work okay! Test it on your root domain and your single post pages.

And now put in your domain and give it a shot:

Last note… all of this works pretty good, but not all the time. Sometimes I notice the rich snippets tool gives me an error and other times I see where rich snippets test fine, but it takes a few weeks to see them in search results. Either way, it’s a modification worth doing! Keep in mind that, since we did all of this within our theme that a new theme would require us to implement it all over again!

Regular expressions can seem like a foreign language, but once you know how they work you won’t know how you ever used Google Analytics without them . This post will help you understand how each of the regular expressions function and includes examples of how they can be used for your account.

What is does: Turns the character following the backslash into plain text.

How it works:

Say you want to create a goal for the url /thankyou?id=123. In Regex, “?” has another meaning, which we’ll get to in a little bit, but we need it to be plain text since it is part of the url string. To do that, we place a backslash before the ? to tell Analytics to treat it as plain text.

/thankyou\?id=123

What it does: Creates an “or” statement.

a|b will match a or b

How it works:

Let’s say you want to find all visits from branded terms for PPC Hero. You can create a custom filter setting a regular expression for all brand keywords.

ppc hero|ppchero

All terms containing ppchero or ppc hero will be returned.

What it does: Tells Analytics that the previous item is optional.

ab?c will match ac or abc

How it works:

This expression comes in handy when you are filtering for keywords that are commonly misspelled. I want to find all visits to our site that contain the term “heroes,” which is often misspelled as “heros.”

heroe?s

This will catch keywords that contain either “heros” or “heroes.”

What it does: Tells other regex characters how to function. Works the same way as in math.

2 + 3 x 5 = 17                                         (2+3) x 5 = 25

How it works:

You’ll most often see parentheses working in conjunction with pipe bars. I want to all the searches for Google Display Network. I know people also refer to it as the Google Content Network and I want to include both searches in my results. Without the parentheses, Analytics would return anything containing “Google Content” or “Display Network.”

Google (Display|Content) Network

By including parentheses, this Regex will return anything containing “google content network” or “google display network.”

What they do: Create a list of items to match to. The regular expression will only match ONE item in this list.

p[aiu] will match pan, pin, pun but NOT pain

How it’s used:

I’m interested in how many click to the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th pages when they come to our blog. The url for each page x on the blog is /page/x. To find pages 2, 3 and 4 I would set my expression as follows:

/page/[234]

Before we see what the results look like in Analytics, I want to introduce you to the next regex character which helps in creating lists.

What it does: Works with brackets to extend lists.

• [a-z] matches all lower case letters in the alphabet
• [A-Z] matches all upper case letters in the alphabet
• [a-zA-Z0-9] matches lower and upper case letters and digits

How it works:

Lets use the same example above. Using a dash in my regular expression, I can quickly include more page numbers for it to match to without having to type them all out.

/page/[2-9]

This will return any page which url ends in /page/2 through /page/9.

Looking at these results, you might be wondering about two things. What happens when you want to view pages higher than 9 and how do you keep regex from including the category pages. Those questions will be answered as we continue to get to know the rest of the Regex characters.

What they do:Braces tell Analytics to repeat the last piece of information a certain number of times.

Braces can be used with one or two numbers.

This will pull all urls that end in page/1 through page/99.

What it does: A dot matches ANY one character. Characters include letters, numbers and symbols. A dot even matches a whitespace.

a.c will match “abc”, “adc”, “a$c”, “a c” ,etc. It won’t match “ac” because there is no character between a and c.

How it works:

Truth be told, I really don’t use just the dot in analytics much. Even so, it’s still important to know how it functions so you set up your regular expressions correctly.

If I want to see all keywords for which someone included “.com” and I don’t use \ to remove the regex function of the dot, will find anything that has any character before “com.” Look at the difference in results below when .com is used with and without the \.

What it does: A plus sign matches one or more of the previous items, and only the previous items.

a+bc will match abc, aabc, aaabc but not bc.

You can also use lists with plus signs to match more than just one previous item.

[abc]+ wil match a, ab, abc,  acb, c, b, bbbbbbb, etc.

How it works:

Going back to the page number example, we can use + instead of { } to match to pages above 9.

What it does: A star matches zero or more of the previous items. Similar to plus signs except they allow you to match ZERO or more of the previous items (plus signs require at least one match).

a*bc will match abc, aabc, aaabc AND bc.

How it works:

Let’s take the example above. This would only match to page urls that have some number after them. If I use a star, it will match all urls that end in page/ with or without a number after it.

What it does: These two regular expressions put together mean “get everything.”

How it works:

If I want to compare visits for the 2^nd page of every piece of content on my site I can set up my regular expression as .*/page/2/.* to catch every 2^nd page url on my site.

What it does: When you use a caret in your RegEx you force the Expression to match only strings that start exactly the way your RegEx does.

^abc will match ab, a, abc but not bc

How it works:

Let’s revisit my earlier task of wanting to see all the pages in my main blog feed past page 1. Remember, I was getting category pages and not just main pages. Placing the carat at the beginning of my string can solve this problem.

^/page/[1-9]*

What it does: Indicates the end of the string. It tell Analytics not to match any target string that has any characters beyond where I have placed the dollar sign in my Regular Expression.

abc$ will match abc, bc but not abcd

How it works:

Finally we have all of the characters necessary to create an expression that only shows the different pages of the main blog.

Understanding how to use these regular expressions will help you quickly find the information you are looking for in your Analytics account. If you have any questions or comments please post below!

 

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2010 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Suzanne Norman, director of brand at Emma, an email marketing and communications company.

The bot problem

Let’s face it: most companies write marketing copy for the web and email that reads like it was written by a robot.

And nobody likes bots. (See: spambots, twitbots, fembots, that 80s movie with Emilio Estevez where all the semi-trucks come to life.)

I spot this kind of writing all the time in email marketing campaigns — that’s the realm I work in — but it’s just as rampant in every other digital medium.

“The objective of our organization is to provide best-in-class e-commerce solutions that facilitate bottom-line growth.”

Okay, fine, but don’t you just help people sell more stuff?

When we marketing-types talk about content, we talk a lot about relevance and architecture and SEO optimization, but we don’t talk much about voice — that intangible quality in writing that shows off your company’s personality.

And that’s a shame, because voice drives how people feel when they read what you write. And when you can evoke a feeling in your customer, you’re closer than ever to a sale.

A few organizations have parlayed a memorable voice into brand distinction that delights their customers. (Moosejaw, Innocent Drinks and 826 Valencia come to mind right away.) But anybody can strengthen their company’s voice with writing that’s simply more conversational.

Three ways to fix it

Think, then talk, then write.
Writers often mistakenly believe that writing is about writing. It’s not about writing.

(It’s not about caffeine, either. Most days, anyway.)

It’s mostly about thinking.

When I haven’t thought enough about a piece, I know it. I find overwrought sentences, rambling paragraphs, lazy word choices and ill-advised Dolph Lundgren jokes. Those writerly fits and starts add up to a stilted, distant voice that bores readers faster than the plot of Rocky V.

To fix it, I call a smart friend and talk through my idea. A living, breathing audience asks questions and checks assumptions better than a blank page, and the dialogue always helps distill and refine my main points.

Best of all, it tricks my brain into approaching the problem conversationally, so I end up writing the thing considering what my reader wants, when she hesitates and how she reasons.

Ditch the multisyllabicness.
In email marketing — and really, in any marketing channel — your words have a few seconds to grab and keep your readers’ attention. And even then, people don’t really read so much as scan.

So when you write multisyllabic words overwrought into convoluted sentences with which one requires assistance in comprehending (you see what I did there), you lose readers.

Use simple words instead, words you can read at a glance. It’s the surest way to copy that’s warm and friendly since it reflects how we actually talk.

It helps me to read my stuff out loud. Thesaurus-y words and convoluted phrases might sneak past my eye, but my ear will catch them every time. If I stumble over a phrase, I rework it. If a sentence stalls the whole paragraph, I rework it. If it’s another Dolph Lundgren joke, I rework it (begrudgingly).

Okay, two caveats. First, we web writers have to keep our copy keyword-rich and shiny for the Googles, so if your industry’s vernacular includes five-dollar words, try offsetting them with straightforward sentences and brief paragraphs.

And second, I’m not suggesting you dumb down your writing. Keep your sentences varied, your adjectives meaningful and your verbs brimming with life. Just put clarity and brevity before the fancy stuff, okay?

Have fun. Seriously.
Although the cats are giving us a run for it, I believe humans are the masters of humor.

Humor erodes our defenses. It makes us feel good. It puts us on the same team.

These qualities are wonderful for humanity and whatnot, but they also come in handy if you’re trying to sell something.

Humor isn’t right for every brand, but it shouldn’t be reserved only for the energy drinks and beer conglomerates of the world, either. Add simple, friendly asides to your writing or build your whole brand around a laugh-out-loud silliness — whatever seems in line with your company’s values and goals. Either way, readers will know that there’s another person behind the writing.

You know, talking about humor gets a little humorless, so I’ll point you to an essay I came across earlier this month by author, writing instructor and all-around badass Anne Lamott. Her style keeps you reading and makes you love her, but her humor never upstages her point.

What’s next?

It’ll take you fifteen minutes to apply some of these thoughts to your latest blog post or a landing page. Try it this week.

When you do, remember it’s not merely writing. It’s your company speaking. And your readers aren’t merely listening to what you’re saying. They’re reacting to how you say it.

Show no mercy to robotic words and phrases. Replace ‘em with words that show your humanity. Shape and refine your company’s voice, and your readers will respond.

You’ll boost your pageviews, I promise. You’ll sell more stuff.  And you’ll make the world a less robotic place.

Suzanne Norman works on all manner of brand-y things for Emma, an email marketing and communications company that serves more than 30,000 customers around the world. She lives in Nashville with her husband, son and inexhaustible supply of goat cheese.

We had the pleasure of an interview with Matthew Umbro, the founder of PPC Chat and Senior PPC Specialist at Exclusive Concepts.  Matthew will be speaking at Hero Conf, April 16-17, 2012, in Indianapolis, IN.  We are looking forward to hearing Matthew present “Proving the Value of PPC through Conversion Tracking,” as well as share his knowledge on the Account Structure panel.  If you would like to hear Matthew and other PPC experts speak at Hero Conf, you can register here.  If you register before January 30, you will also receive your company’s logo in the conference handbook.

PPC Hero: How did you get started in PPC, and how long have you been working in this industry?

Matthew: Shortly after I graduated from college in 2007 I was hired at a web design firm as an entry level search engine marketing associate.  I helped with SEO and PPC but became very interested and fascinated with the PPC side.  After a couple of months I took over some of my own accounts and really tried to familiarize and engrain myself more into the industry.  I started blogging, actively participating in Twitter and soaking up all the information I could.  Over my almost 5 years in the industry I’ve managed over 70 accounts for both lead generation and ecommerce campaigns.

PPC Hero: What was the idea behind starting PPC Chat?

Matthew: So much great information is shared on Twitter every day to the point where I use Twitter as my primary source of PPC news and insight.  The problem, though, was that as PPCers we really didn’t have a central community where everyone could interact.  I saw other Twitter chats such as #seochat and #blogchat that created a community and I wanted to do the same thing.  I put some feelers out to see if anyone would be interested in a weekly PPC chat and the overwhelming response was “yes!”  Piggybacking off #seochat I came up with the hashtag #ppcchat for people to follow.  After a couple of night sessions the chat was moved to Tuesdays at 12 PM EST to accommodate more people.  After a few weeks people started using the hashtag to share PPC related news and ask questions to others.  The PPC community has really embraced PPC Chat to make it what it is today.

PPC Hero: At Hero Conf, you will be speaking on the Account Structure panel.  Why is this topic of interest to you?

Matthew: A sound account structure is the basis of how well a PPC campaign will perform.  It is imperative that keywords utilize correct match types and be segmented into tightly themed ad groups.  The text ads will be that much more relevant to searchers and improve click-thru-rate and hopefully conversion rates and return on ad spend while decreasing cost per conversion.  Additionally, a well crafted account structure will help you to make better use of ad extensions by using in the most appropriate campaigns.  Finally, aside from segmentation it is necessary to review every campaign’s individual settings so you are not wasting money and/or hurting the effectiveness of the account.

PPC Hero: You also are planning to present a session called “Proving the Value of PPC through Conversion Tracking.”  Why do you feel this is an important session to bring to Hero Conf?

Matthew: When I first started out I didn’t fully understand the importance of conversion tracking.  Of course I tracked conversions and reported on conversion metrics, but I didn’t give this tracking the attention it deserved.  I soon realized things needed to change.  At the time I was primarily working with lead generation clients.  I updated and created new conversions to track each specific lead; whether it was a whitepaper download or a contact us form submission.  I segmented these conversions for clients and made it a priority to showcase top performing keywords, ad groups, campaigns and text ads.  I even went so far as to ask if I could be CC’d on all form submissions.  I had clients where I was writing down all PPC leads on a spreadsheet and consistently asking what was happening to these leads.  Today I work with many ecommerce clients where revenue is tracked down to the keyword level and we are able to see the purchased products to better optimize campaigns and work to expand them.  Sometimes it isn’t enough to get the conversion; you must emphasize the importance of this metric to prove the value of PPC.

PPC Hero: What are you looking forward to the most at Hero Conf?

Matthew: I’m most excited to meet members of PPC Chat in person and listen to their insight first hand.  Over the last couple of years I’ve interacted with these people online and read their blogs, but have not been able to speak in person.  With this conference so much PPC knowledge is being congregated in one place!

PPC Hero: Are there any speakers or sessions you are especially excited to hear at the conference?

Matthew: I’m definitely looking forward to hearing Brad Geddes speak as he consistently puts out great, thought provoking material.  Other speakers I’m excited to hear are Joe Kerschbaum, John Lee, Joanna Lord and Melissa Mackey, but really every speaker at this conference will be presenting great material!

If you are interested in sponsoring Hero Conf, check out our sponsor packet.

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2010 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

Why are blogs such a powerful communications tool in the arsenal of a company? There are lots of reasons, really. But the explanation I’ve used that normally gives those who don’t quite understand blogging have their “ah-ha” moment is a simple one. To understand the power of a blog you have to compare it to something familiar.

Think about your company newsletter. If you’re not that hip to blogging yet, your company newsletter is probably still printed and circulated in everyone’s box in the mailroom. Or maybe it’s mailed to everyone’s house. But in some form or fashion, some printed piece of information is circulated monthly or bi-weekly to everyone in the company. There are pictures of new hires, company softball team news, maybe even some tips and tricks articles for the sales team and a list of birthdays.

The problem with that mechanism of communication is that the information has a limited life cycle and, due to costs, the publication has a limited circulation. Only a few people can access it.

With a blog, even if just focused on internal news, everyone, in or out of the company, can access it. There’s less hard cost to produce and adding news or information doesn’t add cost to the project. And the information can be updated on a whim, giving it a forever life cycle. Not to mention, the content can be more easily found thanks to the ubiquitous power of search.

Those reasons alone make a blog a much more powerful communications mechanism — internally or externally — than a company newsletter.

Capitalizing on that same analogy, though, think about how many company newsletters you’ve read that were interesting enough to want to read again.

It’s a comparable medium, but not the same. With more power, comes more responsibility.

It’s time companies grasped that and made their new newsletter, in whatever form, worth reading.

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