Presentation given March 11th at SMX West. The session topic was Fast & Easy PPC Analytics. My presentation included a framework for effective reporting, and specific methodologies for Search Query Analysis & Landing Page Audits.

1. Fast And Easy PPC Analytics
SMX West – March 11, 2013
Rick Galán
Associate Director, Search Marketing
RickGalan.com
@RickGalan
gplus.to/rickgalan
/in/rickgalan
@RickGalan

2. A strategic methodology for
REPORTING
@RickGalan

3. Reporting | Efficiency is Key
Efficient and effective
reporting is KEY to
success in PPC.
YOU HAVE ENOUGH TO DO.
If you are spending a large % of your time
pulling and massaging numbers, you are
doing it wrong.
@RickGalan

4. Reporting | Build a Reporting Product
Build reports like you are building a product.
YOU ARE.
A couple of rules to live by…
• Build reports in such a way that they can be repeated and updated.
• Any repetitive report should be on a schedule. Stick to it!
• Reports should always have an action or output.
• Never pull in calculated metrics. Only hard numbers.
• Learn Pivot Tables & nested formulas. For serious.
@RickGalan

5. Reporting | Elements of User Experience
What will the report look like?
What actions can it drive? What
visualizations would help achieve
the purpose?
What will views of the data will be
provided? How do these views
satisfy the needs of the audience?
How can the data be combined to
get the right metrics? How can
this data be combined ongoing?
What are the KPIs, frequency, data
sources? Who will need to be
involved? What can be
automated?
Who are the stakeholders &
audience? What is the purpose of
the report? How it will be used?
Source: The Elements of User Experience by Jesse James Garrett. http://jjg.net/elements
@RickGalan

6. Reporting | Before & After
Old Reporting:
• 2 People, 6 hours each
• Giant files, almost
unreadable
• Manually Collected
• Extremely error-prone
New Reporting:
• 1 Person, 20 minutes
• Small files,
Formatted for execs
• Visualizations and
trending
@RickGalan

7. Reporting | Summary
Build scalability and repeatability into all reports
you build.
Automate everything.
Design reports for their intended users and uses.
Save time. Go home early.
@RickGalan

8. A quick, repeatable methodology for
SEARCH QUERY ANALYSIS
@RickGalan

9. Search Query Analysis | Pulling Data
• Run SQ Report for all keywords
• Customize your columns – no
calculated metrics!
• Save the final column set for
quick access next time
• Export to Excel
@RickGalan

10. Search Query Analysis | Future-Proofing
• Delete the top and bottom rows
of the export – Title & Total
@RickGalan

11. Search Query Analysis | Create Pivot
• Create Pivot Table by selecting
entire column
• Insert > Pivot Table
@RickGalan

12. Search Query Analysis | Calculated KPIs
Start by creating your calculated metrics
Pivot Table Tools > Options > Calculations > Fields, Items & Sets >
Calculated Field
CTR = Clicks/ Impressions
CPO = Cost /'Conv. (1-per-click)'
ROAS = 'Total conv. value'/ Cost
CR = 'Conv. (1-per-click)'/ Clicks
RPI = 'Total conv. value' /
(Impressions/1000)
@RickGalan

13. Search Query Analysis | Structure
• Add fields to the table & clean it
up!
• Change all "Count of" to "Sum
of"
• Rename the field to remove
"Sum of" - add a space before or
after the field name
• Change the number formats
across the board
@RickGalan

14. Search Query Analysis | Options
Check the Pivot Table
Options for a few settings
to make things a little
easier
• Display empty cell
instead of #DIV/0
• Turn off "Autofit column
widths on update" -
Annoying!
@RickGalan

15. Search Query Analysis | Finished Product
@RickGalan

16. Search Query Analysis | Sort & Filter
• Sort the keyword list by any of
the metrics by clicking More
Sort Options
• Sort by cost to find terms
impacting your efficiency
• Sort by impressions to find
terms impacting your CTR
& QS
• Sort by Orders to find
terms you may want to add
to your program
• etc.
@RickGalan

17. Search Query Analysis | Dig Deeper
• See the overall impact of a specific term
• Use the Label filters and “Does Not Contain” to
see your whole account without a term.
• Measure the impact of a negative on your ROI!
@RickGalan

18. Search Query Analysis | Summary
Spend 20 minutes building the framework for an
analysis tool that allows you to spend 1 minute
updating it.
Quantify the impact of keyword negatives
before you make them – quickly.
Save time. Go home early.
@RickGalan

19. A quick, automated methodology for performing a
LANDING PAGE AUDIT
@RickGalan

20. Landing Page Audit | Export Data
• Export an ad report or keyword
report with Destination URLs
• Include metrics to gain
further insights!
• Copy the Destination URL
column & paste a copy
@RickGalan

21. Landing Page Audit | Clean up Tracking
• Automate the removal of
tracking
• Formulas
• Find & Replace
• You want clean URLs so you
don’t affect tracking
• Do a gut check – scroll
through to make sure
things are cleaned up
• Copy & paste this list into
another spreadsheet
@RickGalan

22. Landing Page Audit | Remove Duplicates
• Remove the duplicates
• Data > Data Tools >
Remove Duplicates
• Save this file as a .csv
@RickGalan

23. Landing Page Audit | Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
• http://screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider
• Free Download: 500 URL limit
• Pro Version: £99 / year BUY IT.
• Windows/Mac/Linux
 Errors – Client & server errors (No responses, 4XX, 5XX)  Meta Refresh – Including target page and time delay
 Redirects – (3XX, permanent or temporary)  Canonical link element & canonical HTTP headers
 External Links – All followed links and their status codes  X-Robots-Tag
 URI Issues – Non ASCII characters, underscores, uppercase characters,  File Size
dynamic uris, long over 115 characters  Page Depth Level
 Duplicate Pages – Hash value / MD5checksums lookup for pages with  Inlinks – All pages linking to a URI
duplicate content
 Outlinks – All pages a URI links out to
 Page Title – Missing, duplicate, over 70 characters, same as h1, multiple
 Anchor Text – All link text. Alt text from images with links
 Meta Description – Missing, duplicate, over 156 characters, multiple
 Follow & Nofollow – At link level (true/false)
 Meta Keywords – Mainly for reference as it’s only used by Yahoo.
 Images – All URIs with the image link & all images from a given page. Images
 H1 – Missing, duplicate, over 70 characters, multiple over 100kb, missing alt text, alt text over 100 characters
 H2 – Missing, duplicate, over 70 characters, multiple  User-Agent Switcher – Crawl as Googlebot, Bingbot, or Yahoo! Slurp
 Meta Robots – Index, noindex, follow, nofollow, noarchive, nosnippet, noodp,  Custom Source Code Search – Analytics code, specific text, or code etc.
noydir etc
 XML Sitemap Generator – You can create a basic XML sitemap
http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/screaming-frog-guide
@RickGalan

24. Landing Page Audit | Start the Crawl
Change the mode from “Spider” to “List”
Select your file, click Start.
@RickGalan

25. Landing Page Audit | Crawl Results
• Enough info to get to work
cleaning up URLs
• Or export to .csv for more
analysis
@RickGalan

26. Landing Page Audit | Data Mash-up
• Now Back to the Ad Report…
• Use VLOOKUP
• Bring in whatever data
you want to analyze
• Pivot the data set
@RickGalan

27. Landing Page Audit | Gain Insights
• Build views to gain the
insights quickly
• Drill down to find what
changes need to be made.
• Quantify the effects of
landing page issues.
• Remember: Metrics don’t
always tell the whole story.
@RickGalan

28. Landing Page Audit | Gain Insights
• Don’t forget to look at
what is working too!
@RickGalan

29. Landing Page Audit | Summary
Don’t manually do what you can automate. Let
crawlers and Excel do the work for you.
Verify the state of your landing pages frequently,
because metrics won’t always show the real
story.
Save time. Go home early.
@RickGalan

30. Rick Galán
Associate Director, Search Marketing
rgalan@1800contacts.com
RickGalan.com
@RickGalan
gplus.to/rickgalan
/in/rickgalan
@RickGalan