A Formula for Success
Keyword value is best assessed by a combination of metrics
May 2006 By Michael Stebbins
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Look to Conversions
If your site doesn’t sell online, you want visitors to convert—whether it’s a completed lead form or a newsletter signup. Conversions happen in a shorter time span than most revenue events—often in a single visit—so the degree of accuracy is higher. Also, it’s a good bet that more visitors convert than buy, so by counting converted visitors per keyword, we move closer to a measurement of the keywords that bring engaged visitors.
Time on Site is Your MVP
Conversion and revenue numbers show you the overall effectiveness of your marketing and sales efforts. In comparison, time on site measures your Web site’s ability to successfully retain each visitor’s interest. It’s also a good indicator of the synergy between the expectations visitors had before clicking to your site and what they found once they arrived. For example, if your highest volume keyword is “pomegranate” and your landing page has no mention of pomegranates, then you’ll probably have a relatively high number of visitors with short times on site.
Combining Volume, ROI, Conversion and Time
Let’s say you learn your lesson from the situation above and finally update that landing page to actually mention pomegranates—yet the prices are absolutely outrageous. Checking out Web metrics, you may see that you now have a high volume of visitors with a long time on site, but no conversion or revenue events. If you used the time-on-site metric alone, you’d have an accurate picture of the value of each keyword, but a big waste of pay-per-click (PPC) and SEO dollars until you update your site, product or message to influence visitors to convert or buy.
PPC and Natural Search
PPC ad providers are supposed to review each ad for relevance to the keyword used, the message in the ad and the content on the site. But guess what? Sometimes they don’t, and suffice it to say that marketers inadvertently can buy inappropriate keywords, over-promise in their ad messaging and under-deliver on their landing page. You’ll want to measure PPC ad effectiveness for each keyword separately from natural search listings. A good Web analytics tool will show these side-by-side for all measurements. It’s a sign of effective PPC advertising if your PPC ads deliver visitors with more time on site than your natural search engine listings deliver.
A Strategic Option
Given the limits and benefits of the aforementioned keyword metrics, here’s a look at a formula I’ve found to work when it comes to keyword selection. Remember, this works for me, but you may want to tweak this formula or come up with one all your own:
• Start by getting the top 40 search keywords—and keyword phrases—that drive traffic to your site, listed by number of visitors.
• Show average time on site using only the 40 top-volume keywords from the previous step.
• Export the list to Excel for easy sorting, and tweak the view so that the longer time on site (better) appears on top. When measuring natural search results, remove any phrases and keywords from the list that contain your company name. Now you’ll have a list of the keywords most effective at keeping visitors on your site.
• Look at the top 10 to 15 keywords on the list and do a conversion rate “reality check.” This involves looking for conversion rates at or over your average visitor conversion rate. If visitor conversion for a keyword falls below the threshold, consider updating the site for better conversion before investing in this keyword.
• Do a reality check. If you’re working with a site that captures online sales, I recommend a reality check on the top 10 keywords in terms of revenue generation. If there’s a keyword that doesn’t generate revenue during a time period that encompasses eight to 10 sales cycles, consider updating the site for better sales conversion before investing in this keyword.
What you’re left with—meaning the top terms that passed both the conversion and revenue reality checks—are the top keywords and phrases for PPC advertising, SEO and other SEM investments.
Repeat the steps above to check PPC campaign keywords. Finally, compare natural search and PPC time-on-site results to confirm that PPC performance is, well, worth paying for. If PPC ads generate the same or better time on site as natural search, then you know the PPC ads are doing what you want them to do.
Additionally, marketers can make the most of their keyword analysis by measuring keywords against numerous visitor behavior profiles. For example, you can reveal the worst PPC keywords by taking a look at particularly short visits, or those conversions with a higher cost of sale. Advanced Web analytics tools support spur-of-the-moment visitor labeling for behaviors like repeat visitors who made multiple online orders, or visitors who touched certain goal pages yet exited on the shipping page. And analyzing internal search terms reveals visitor intent once on your Web site.
As Web analytics tools evolve, so do Web metrics. Perhaps next year, my formula will need revamping. But for today’s online marketer, the combination of volume, revenue, conversion and time on site will yield a set of keywords that are well worth your investment.
Michael Stebbins is vice president of marketing for Santa Cruz, Calif.-based ClickTracks Analytics, a Web analytics software and services company. He has authored several patent-pending Web analytics methods and occasionally speaks on Web analytics and click-fraud topics. He can be reached at (877) 773-2249.
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