Better landing pages will increase your quality index score in Adwords which should help reduce your costs and increase your exposure.

Here is a recent article that explains why landing page quality is not only good for your site but good for your PPC pocketbook:
http://adwords.blogspot.com/2006/07/landing-page-quality-update.html

Now there is a another economic incentive for making your landing pages match your keywords to provide the best experience to your visitors and to the search engine visitors.

-Dylan

Thanks for the comments, it is my favourite part of blogging.

-Avinash.

As for Testing and Experimentation, don’t be afraid to think outside of the box. There are many web analytics tools out there that will assist with the structure and monitoring of AB testing. Some web analytics providers provide assistance in creating multivariate testing as well. With my background as a statistician, this is one of the most intriguing uses of experimental design that I have seen.

In closing, I wanted to comment specifically on cannibalization. You will rarely (if ever) find a client that will be willing to shut down a PPC campaign for a week just to test cannibalization. We have designed a new way to track cannibalization by utilizing historic data (sometimes gettign this is like pulling teeth!). Using robust forecasting techniques that track chronological fluctuations, we estimate future organic traffic. As we implement our PPC campaigns, the “new” organic traffic is compared to the forecast to provide a decent estimate of cannibalization.

Web analytics must be the theme for the day as Avinash posts some useful advice for managing a PPC campaign from a web analysts view.

Some of the great advice includes measuring bounce rates and determining whether you are matching the best keyword buy with the most relevant landing page. He also recommends adding tracking parameters to your PPC URL strings, allowing you much more granular tracking.

I’d definitely add that companies working with agencies should share as much analytical data as possible. Too many clients guard their web data as if it’s the secret recipe to KFC. For us search marketers, it’s like navigating a plane through a thunderstorm without instruments.

Avinash also suggests that companies could be cannibalizing their organic traffic by bidding on keywords they rank well for organically. He suggests that you try turning off your PPC bids for a week and measure the impact. I’d certainly caution against this, especially if you are a relatively unknown brand. While “big brands” can often maintain their traffic levels from organic alone, most smaller brands need the positive reinforcement, projected to potential visitors, that comes from having both an organic and paid listing. If you decide to take Avinash’s test, be sure you are acurately measuring all metrics, not just “did we lose a lot of click-thrus”.

Cannibalization of organic by PPC is definitely something I’ve seen, and it’s quite sad! We work to do the opposite: provide a PPC campaign up front but then phase it out as the organic positioning takes over we may provide a PPC campaign up front but then phase it out as the organic positioning takes over! This is a bit of a twist on things but it is one way to provide a more measurable ROI for organic SEO.

Thanks again for the helpful blog,

Gradiva

I can think of three instances recently where the client felt they were not getting acceptable ROI on their PPC campaign - and we saved it by appliing the principles of the long tail.

Basically, by taking a PPC campaign and expanding the keywords from dozens, to hundreds, the traffic increased dramatically and the average CPC dropped by the same.

You can use your analytics program to find the actual phrases people used to get there, and keyword research tools to find other obscure phrases and then bid on these.

Excellent blog - I would never image you are a newbie :-)

Your philosophy background probably makes you unique because it gives you a fantastic ability to relate to the “web interactions”, beyond just “hits” that the numbers show.

IMHO that’s the difference between Web Analytics and Web Insights.

Thanks for taking the time to comment, I appreciate that very much.

-Avinash.

I have come to the conclusion that you — and probably a majority of your readers — know a whole lot more than I do about SEM/PPC.

I’m a relative newbie to Web Analytics, with experience in more traditional forms of marketing/communications and a broad knowledge of Web development and electronic communications. Basically, I have had the good fortune to hang around Robbin Steif long enough to know that a marketer/Web developer like me must understand Web marketing and analytics in order to do justice to my client’s goals. Right now, I work with a lot of graphic designers and design firms who know they need to offer Web marketing expertise to their clients, but they don’t have that expertise themselves.

In a former life, I studied the history and philosophy of science at the University of Pittsburgh, and I like to think this allows me to bring a bit more to the table than just an ability to crunch numbers and give an effective presentation.

Sometimes the opinions of a relative outsider can be very valuable because it’s hard for “insiders” to see the forest for the trees.

But, when it comes to Excellent Analytics Tip #3, I think you have got a better handle on the issues.

I must say, I see some strong similarities between the Web analytics community and the scientific communities that I studied as a grad student at Pitt.

History and philosophy of science tries to understand a lot of different aspects of science, especially those that are not examined very closely in the normal day-to-day proceedings of science and society.

As I follow Web Analytics discussions like the one that ensued after your Top Ranked Web Analytics Blogs post, I find myself wondering a lot about the power of argument and presentation of evidence. I think you have alluded to this aspect of your job in your blog a number of times.

As analysts, we may have what we consider to be an air-tight case — or at least a respectable case — for doing one thing or another, but, unless we can convince the client (our boss, etc.) and/or our peers of its validity, it does no one any good!

There are a lot of “non-scientific” — or “non-analytic”, as the case may be — elements that go into decision-making. At the very least, the definition of what is considered “scientific” changes over time.

Thanks again for spurring discussion!

Mark McLaren

I promised I would devote a post or two to Turbocharging your SEM/PPC Analysis which Avinash just covered in his blog.  Too exhausted to do a long post but I’d like to add a couple of things to the comment I……

Adding the Parm to the url is a nice, and easy thing to do in most cases (except where I happen to work - where every single change needs to be examined and signed off on - we probably could not easily to it there). But for everywhere else, yes, I think this is a great idea. In fact, you want to be able to match up the traffic the agency says ther’re buying for you vs. what the analytics records you got - as well as the other measurements which give you a lot more behavioral data.

I like the Measure Cannibalization Rate (vs. Organic as it’s easy to measure (again, it depends on how easy it is to convince the client to turn the PPC off for a week so you can gather the two sets of data). I posted something on this last March http://www.webmetricsguru.com/2006/03/cannibalization_by_organic_sea.html

Now the long tail is a very interesting subject - worth a couple of posts (and intersting to any large site with a lot of content - much of it deep in the site). The Long Tail, as applied to Search is the 3, 4, 5 + word queries that there are only one or two searches for a month- but in aggregate, can make up half or more of your traffic. The Long Tail, as it applies to Advertising is something else - it’s all the possible sites your ad can be seen on, including viral media.

Studying the Long Tail and how it applies to various online industries is facinating.

Sounds like you were busy listening to someone, we know, who knows a lot about this stuff, and some of those ideas got into the post.

I’ll write up a post or two on this at Webmetricsguru later on today.

I Absolutely agree. After reviewing the bounce rate reports in depth, we can prevent the click fraud
upto some extent.

The Line “If the traffic comes for a few different purposes why measure them all by one goal? (To beat a dead horse, this is another reason to do testing.)” This is where most of agencies are lacking and Reporting the success, while they dont think about this at all.

And as your Bonus Recommendation suggests , After analyzing the keyphrase referal in detail we can use more effective keywords for SEM/PPC.

Waiting for your new post to learn something new.

Best of luck
Goldy