Google Analytics Periodic Table
Great breakdown of the different features of Google Analytics.
Courtesy of: Depth of Knowledge by Jeffalytics
Changing Broad Keywords to Modified Broad
Broad match keywords are an accident waiting to happen in your search marketing campaigns. Anyone who has spent any time reviewing their search query report (keyword details-search term report) has had a cringe moment when they discover a totally irrelevant keyword that Google matched to your keywords based on a synonym or related term.
The easy way to eliminate a lot of relevant search queries and still take advantages of broad keywords is to use modified broad keywords instead.
Google has a detailed article on Modified Broad Match.
The different in the keyword is regular broad keywords look like “tennis shoes” but modified broad match keywords look like “+tennis +shoes”.
I use a simple series of Excel functions to clean up my keywords.
Steps:
- In Adword Editor, select keywords and export the current view to Excel.
- Use this function (or a variation) to edit your keywords:
=TRIM(LOWER(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(CONCATENATE(” “,[Cell w/ original keyword]),” “,” +”),”+ ++”,” +”),” ++”,” +”))) - Use Adword Editor to bulk upload the modified broad keywords using the Campaign and Ad Group. If your broad keywords are already broken out into separate Ad Groups, then use the Adwords Editor feature when uploading to overwriting all the keywords that are already in the account.
What the function does:
- Concatenate adds a space to the beginning of the keyword
- Substitute adds the “+” sign and cleans up any errors. Common errors are “++” and “+ ++” if there were modified broad keywords already in the account.
- Lower makes all my keywords lowercase.
- Trim erases the space at the beginning of the keywords.
You can also add additional substitute functions to edit out unnecessary words in your keywords. Common words I like to edit out of modified broad keywords are: “in”, “and”, “a”, “to”, “be”, and any special characters like & or /.
Let me know if you have a better Excel function to use or method.
3 Tools to Manage Your Inbox
Gmail Extensions (mostly for Chrome) I use to manage my inbox:
ActiveInbox – Adds GTD (http://goo.gl/xYco) folders to Gmail to manage the flow of email in you inbox. Adds Actionable, Waiting, and calendar buttons to each message that adds labels to messages. You can create project folders right in the email and the assign messages to a project. Costs about $25 a year but gives you two accounts: a business account and a personal account.
http://www.activeinboxhq.com
Rapportive – Adds sender profile information to the right sidebar of your email. Works on a variety of email platforms and you do not need to be connected to the sender to see their information. Shows past messages from the current sender and attachments. Best of all, allows you to send invites from your email with one button (perfect for adding LinkedIn contacts). Free
http://rapportive.com/
OtherInbox – This extension uses crowd sourcing to create a filter for your inbox which automatically archives email in your inbox to a category folder (for review later). Also, you can take emails that are not in the OtherInbox system and add the email to a category folder. Then future emails from that sender are automatically archived. Simple to use and really effective. Free
Adwords Script: Change Keyword Params based on Campaign
Have you ever wanted to dynamically insert prices or a percentage off into your Adwords ads but were unsure how? This simple script references a Google Document with the data you want to insert into your ads and adds the information as keyword parameters.
Keywords parameters are integers that are linked at a keyword level and can be referenced in your Adword ads.
Uses for dynamic keyword parameter insertion.
- Insert prices into ads
- Insert percentage of into ads for a sale
- Insert temperature for a region
- Add event times and dates to a campaign
Google has brief article about Ad Parameters worth reading.
Steps for this script:
- Create a Google Doc spreadsheet. Create a header row with three columns: Campaign, Param 1, Param 2.
- You can find the code I edited here: Dynamic Adwords Parameters by Campaign. Add to your Adwords account as a Script under Bulk operations.
- In the Adwords Script, edit the URL for the Google Docs spreadsheet and the sheet (tab).
- Run the script, you should see a log that has the list of campaigns edited and a list of changes.
- Before your values will be dynamically inserted into your ads, you have to edit your ads to include the param “trigger”: {param1:Default text} and {param2:Default text 2}.
One final note, only integers can be inserted. You can also add a dollar sign but no text.
Let me know if you have any questions or comments.
Simple Google Adword Scripts Pacing Doc
I love using Google’s Adword Scripting tools to monitor campaigns. Despite a couple problems (the inability to edit match types and not being able to pull many-per-click conversions), I find the documentation fairly straight forward and the use of JavaScript makes it easy to create simple programs which are very useful.
The first Adwords Script I created is a simple data pull for a pacing document. The script pulls spend for the month and spend for yesterday so I can figure out roughly how much the Google Account is going to spend for the month.
Simple Google Adword Scripts Pacing Code
There are only four simple steps needed to make the script work:
- Create a Google Doc to house the data the script pulls
- Add the script to Adwords under Bulk operations
- Edit the four fields at the top: Google Doc URL, Google Doc Tab, Report Name, and your email.
- Save the script and schedule the script to run everyday (mine run at 1 am).
I took the pacing doc a step further and have the Google Doc with the data pulled from Adwords publish to the web (under file in the Google Doc) and then pull in the data into an Excel document using a web query.
The formula I use for Google Adwords pacing is: [spend yesterday]*[days left in month]+[entire current spend for the month]
Please send me any suggestions or questions and thanks for reading.
