Free Data To Continually Improve Your Search Campaigns

It’s important to track the results of any campaign: Sales, Conversions, Email Signups, Customers Acquired, et cetera. But another key to long-term success it to build in additional tracking that will make you more successful in the future. ‘Search’ is fantastic for this: by simply capturing the right pieces of data & making sense of it, you are building yourself a free pot of information to feed your future success.

What Are Your Visitors Searching For?

Let’s say you’re running a campaign targeting the keyword ‘Laptop’. This could be a broad match PPC campaign (eg AdWords) or a natural (SEO) campaign. The obvious thing to track is results: How many laptops did you sell? How many visitors did you get? How many newsletter signups? But there are also big advantages to tracking the actual search terms the visitor used to reach your site.

A Quick Example

Here’s an example to illustrate this. I’m advertising against the phrase ‘Laptop’ & my landing page is trying to sell Sony laptops. I track what my visitors are actually searching for & see the following list:

• HP Laptop 2120
• 13″ Sony VAIO Laptop
• How to fix a Laptop

Based on that knowledge alone, I can see I may want to:

1. Start selling HP laptops (if I don’t already)
2. Set up a new campaign to target HP laptops
3. Perhaps add the negative keywords “hp” and “fix” to my Sony PPC ad campaign to avoid spending money on clicks that are never going to convert
4. Set up a landing page specifically for 13″ Sony VAIOs, plus a more targeted ad to aim for that

This is a simplistic example but, over (say) 5000 search engine referrals, you begin to build up a good picture of ways to improve your campaigns & what you’re offering to visitors.

Five Simple Ways To Use Search Referral Data To Improve Your Marketing

1. Bid on those more refined keywords & tailor new ads/landing pages toward those
2. Expand your natural search campaign to include high-converting long-tail terms
3. Expand your product/service range to meet the demands of your visitors
4. Monitor bounces (visitors that hit your landing page & then just exit straight away) to see which keywords aren’t working for you
5. Cut out wasted clicks using ‘negative keywords’ in your PPC campaign

Turn This Into A Regular Process To Continually Improve

You can use search referral data to keep expanding what you offer & tightening up your marketing. Here’s a simple process you can use to continually refine your search campaigns: