I read an interesting article that discussed the importance of targeting and bounce rates and it got me to thinking about the clients that I have had, past and present and the buckets of money I have seen thrown away. So, I decided to put a list together of 10 ways you or your client may be wasting money they could be paying you:

1. Stop sending paid traffic to your home!
   1. Your homepage is rarely the page your potential customers are looking for. If I am searching for �buy sony flatscreen 1080p� PLEASE send me to a page with sony flat screen tv�s on it!
   2. Check your homepage�s bounce rate. It is 60% than you should only be sending people searching for �sitename.com� to that page otherwise, you are throwing at least 60% of your money away. Why do I say at least? Because if you are sending all your paid traffic to your homepage than you probably haven�t optimized your paid search ads and are just looking for a high click through rate.
2. Stop duplicating terms in your paid search accounts
   1. It never ceases to amaze me when clients are using the same keyword in multiple ad groups with the same geo-targeting and timing. Don�t do this
3. Have goals for your website
   1. Set goals for your website. �I want to make money.� Isn�t a sufficient goal. Come up with trackable metrics to get you there so you can optimize your website to eventually make you some more money.
   2. Publishing sites - # of page views, repeat visitors, high CPM.
   3. Ecommerce � lifetime value
   4. Lead-gen sites are a monster in and of themselves. If you generate leads so that they become sales then focusing on the lead only is going to inhibit you from making money. Remember, unless you are selling leads, they don� t make you any money until they become a sale.
4. Don�t cut the long-tail
   1. If you aren�t tracking performance over-time, you are probably missing all of your long-tail terms. Don�t cut terms that are attracting people in the educational phase of the sales-cycle. If you market to them differently you can increase your conversion rate over time. Don�t cut them just because these phrases take a little longer to convert - MARKET TO THEM DIFFERENTLY. These are long sales cycle leads
5. Use negative keywords in your paid search campaigns
   1. This may sound basic, but if you aren�t using negative keywords than you are paying for traffic that will NEVER make you a dollar, pound or euro. If you have paid-search clients or use paid search and using mostly broad match than you really need to spend some time investigating exactly what terms are being clicked on.
6. Learn what terms lead to conversion and optimize your site accordingly
   1. Welcome to the beauty of the internet and web analytics. You can actually tell how people get to your site, what they do there and if they are making you money. It�s brilliant. So why are you optimizing your site based on what you think will work well?
7. Stop making creative decisions based on what your boss thinks is a good idea.
   1. See point 6. We have the ability to test and optimize, which means we can run multiple ad creatives (banner and search) and see what drives the greatest revenue rather than based on the CxO�s affinity to the color blue. Back your decisions with data
8. Test, test, test and SPLIT TEST!
   1. See point 7. Products like Google website optimizer and Omniture�s Test and Target (formerly Offermatica) can optimize your landing pages based on conversions. There is no excuse for not testing your landing pages and assuming that your designers first try is always correct. In all likelihood it is not optimal and assuming it is will make an ass out you but not me because I�m split testing
9. Track how changes to your website affect your bottom line
   1. If designers, programmers, your kids or whomever are making website changes that affect your business� especially your homepage � you should be recording that this is being done and how this is affecting organic placement and conversions. If there is no tracking there is no accountability.
10. Know what your users are clicking on
    1. Heatmaps and click analysis tools, like Crazy Egg are great at letting you know what your users are clicking on and responding to. Using this information to optimize page layout should help you to make the most of the traffic that you have

Originally published on SEO Chicks

Normally, I like to spend sometime using a new product before coming to a decision about it, but I couldn’t wait on this one. At the web metrics conference today in Washington D.C (which I am not at since occasionally even I have to do work) Avinash Kaushnik announced the new Google Analytics Beta. Over the last 12 hours I have seen new features start to appear in the variety of analytics account that I work with, and I have to say, it is pretty amazing and I only have about 20% of the new additions.

Disclaimer: Yes, I know Google having all of our information is a terrible thing and could easily lead to a Skynet and a general machine takeover and I have long since agreed with this statement, but I may give in on this one.

For a little background information, I love the high end analytics packages, like Omniture. Yes, it costs a small fortune, but I love the ease of use and the bells and whistles. Only on my own low-cost projects and a couple of client sites have I used Google Analytics, because if you had the choice and money was not object, wouldn’t you choose the Porsche over the beat up Ford Pinto? Sure they both get you from point A to point B, but you just feel so much cooler in the Porsche.

I’d always felt that Google Analytics was a great tool, BUT segmentation, site-search, custom event tracking and a variety of my favorite aspects of web analytics took a lot of custom code and were a huge head ache to get working. This is why, when working on corporate site, I chose the pricey already assembled packages with the integrated click tracking for the C suite. GA is about to correct this for me and making it tougher for me to want to go with a premium analytics package.

Over the next several weeks, GA users will get the ability to set up Advanced Segmentation in their interface as well as create custom reports. They are also adding Motion Charts, a Google Analytics API, and will automatically pull Adwords cost data into GA. To the lucky people on the Private Beta release, you will be able to integrate Adsense with analytics in your GA interface as well. As I get more time to play with my favorite new toy (hey it’s more productive than spending hours playing Guitar Hero) I will put a more thorough review of it all together. For now, I think Avinash does a great job of explaining all the new features and why it is a game changing event.

Originally Published on SEO Chicks