Kirksey Solutions » Google

Using Google Analytics Cookies in Web Forms

Tyson Kirksey — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 17:40:22 +0000

Justin from EpikOne wrote a great piece earlier this week explaining how to extract source, medium and campaign information from Google Analytics to insert in contact or lead forms. Essentially, it takes the data already stored about the visitor, and adds those values to hidden fields in the form. This means when your form submission comes through, it will contain valuable info about the visitor. Wouldn’t it be cool to get a lead email that looks like this:

Name: Joe Smith
Phone: 555-555-5555
email: joe@email.com
Notes: I’m interested in your product or service, please call me ASAP.
Visitor Source: Google search for ‘dallas widget maker’

Sure, you can always tell from the Google Analytics reports the conversion rate of each medium and source, but this allows to you tie each individual lead or contact form to a source. Why is this better? Well, all leads are not equal in value. If you do high volume on the Internet, you should probably know that 30% of your PPC leads turn into customers, but only 15% of your email leads do. Attaching this kind of tracking will enable you to make this next step calculation that would have otherwise been impossible.

So again, great job Justin! We went back and forth a few times in the comments about some ideas for improving the code (incidently, I had written the exact same program for my employer last week, but hadn’t published it). I definitely suggest implementing this on your lead forms if you use Google Analytics.

Search Engine Strategies

Tyson Kirksey — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 14:42:46 +0000

Search Engine Strategies has about 3-4 large conferences each year. I was fortunate enough to attend the New York conference back in 2005, but even when I can’t attend I love it because so much happens. Not only can you virtually attend almost all the sessions thanks to Barry’s awesome coverage of the show, but inevitably, search engines wait until SES to make big announcements. Here’s a few more reasons to follow the coverage:

Concentrated gathering of industry experts. The panelists are hand-picked very knowledgable.
Nuggets of gold in the Q/A time after each session
Sometimes search engine reps have a slip of the tongue and reveal too much!

I would encourage all of you small business owners to take a few minutes and read one or two of the sessions at seroundtable.com from this week’s show. Have some questions? Leave a comment, or email me and I’ll be happy to answer. I love working in the SEO / SEM industry, but maybe even more, I enjoy educated and training people to understand and utilize search engine marketing to benefit their business.

Will Google’s Universal Search Impact CTR?

Tyson Kirksey — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 02:20:35 +0000

Nearly a month ago, Google introduced a most radical shift to its search results page, dubbed Universal Search. Universal Search combines listings and information from multiple sources and mediums, all compiled and displayed to the user. This means that along with normal “blue text” links, Google may display data from blog search, book search, finance, images, local, video, etc. For a complete rundown of Universal Search, see Danny Sullivan’s writeup at SearchEngineLand.

What I am concerned with today is Universal Search’s affect on PPC listings click-thru rate (CTR). I am particularly concerned about PPC listings in the top spots which are displayed above Google local results. Here’s a screenshot from a search for Dallas gas grills.

Now, after looking at that screenshot, why in the world would you want to be in the top PPC position? The large map image immediately grabs your eye’s attention, completely skipping over the yellow PPC listings. Furthermore, the map points A, B and C serve as eye arrows, leading you even further down the page towards the organic listings. The first time I saw a result set like this, I didn’t even notice the top PPC listing.

As we know, CTR is an important factor in the Quality Score algorithm, which in turn determines the minimum bid price and ad ranking. Will we see a drastic drop in CTR for advertisers who hang out at position #1? In the past I’ve used position preference to avoid the top spots in order to get less traffic (but arguably more qualified). Now I may be using position preference to stay out of the top spots to get more traffic.