Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
i am not suggesting that your web analytics program replace your bid manage-
ment program. i do believe that web analytics are vital for helping your company allo-
cate funds among paid search, SeO, and other online and offline marketing initiatives,
while ensuring that proper optimization plans and initiatives are in place.
Bid Management
The term “bid management” encapsulates tools and processes that help manage bids on PPC
search engines such as Google and Yahoo! in an automated manner.
Once you can truly measure the value of a visitor, and in particular a search visi-
tor, you can begin thinking about optimization. Start your optimization efforts around
the following:
c
•
ampaigns
•
a
d groups
•
S
earch listings (keywords)
284
•
S
earch phrases
in paid search, the higher the position of the listing, the more incoming traf-
fic you are likely to get, but the higher the listing, the higher the costs are. a set of
variables are involved, some set by the search engine, but more importantly, we must
understand that search listings are not equal.
many of the paid search programs i've worked with are amazingly large and
have embraced the concept of a
long tail
. i am not surprised when i see ten thousand
keywords or even one hundred thousand keywords. the reason i mention this is that
when using web analytics, you may never see any of those single clicks, as they are by
themselves so limited in volume.
Long Tail
A data distribution pattern, which when applied to an e-commerce business, shows a small num-
ber of top-selling products and a large number of products sold in small quantities that together
make up a large percentage of revenue.
the long tail becomes a challenge for a number of reasons. First, you might not
have full access to the tail as it is sometimes cropped by your web analytics solution.
yahoo! Web analytics does not crop any of its data, but bulk exports are currently
maxed at 200,000 rows, which if not filtered, might not be enough for you. remember,
you can always add a geographic filter and split the export into two or three and then
combine everything in microsoft excel later.
