Introduction
A simple and effective way to attract new customers to your business
is to pay a search company to list your web site inside its search results when
people search for words associated with your business. These "paid listings" are
often a more efficient way to attract web visitors than tradition search engine
listings which may be difficult to achieve and maintain. Two large internet
companies that specialize in paid listings are
Overture™ and
Google™.
How paid listings work
Paid listings search engines
generally work in the same way:
- Create a user account with the search engine
- Write a search engine listing to be displayed in seaches
- Choose which URL will be displayed when the listing is clicked
- Create a list of associated key words and phrases
- Decide how much money to bid to buy your clicks
- Provide the search engine with your billing information
- Regularly read the search engine billing reports
- Regularly update bids to ensure high placement
Measuring web traffic from paid listings
Both Overture™ and Google™ provide detailed billing reports showing
the cost of your search terms, but they are unable to show you how your web
users browse your web site after clicking on your paid listings. This is
where WebtraffIQ™ can help you measure your online marketing
campaigns.
To measure your web traffic from paid listings, you should:
- Choose target URL's like www.yoursite.com/?source=overture
- View your WebtraffIQ™ Entry Pages reports
- Click the ?source=overture page in the Entry Pages report
- View detailed page navigation paths from your custom entry page
- View your WebtraffIQ™ Web Traffic Log reports
- Click the "Filter" button to list only traffic from paid listings
- Measure the effectiveness of your campaign according to web traffic quality
The special URL www.yoursite.com/?source=overture will direct the web
user to your home page, but also provide WebtraffIQ™ with the extra
tracking information needed for your web traffic reports. For example, at
Google™ you should use a URL like www.yoursite.com/?source=google
so you can identify web traffic originating from Google™ AdWords™.
Measuring sales from paid listings
The WebtraffIQ Commerce service provides extra e-commerce reports to help
you account for e-commerce revenue, especially from paid listings services such
as Overture™ and Google™.
To measure your sales from paid listings, you should:
- Choose target URL's like www.yoursite.com/?source=overture
- Sign in at WebtraffIQ
- Click "Settings"
- Enter your e-commerce page names, for example "thankyou.html"
- View your Commerce Entry Pages reports
Your e-commerce pages are web pages that are presented to your web users after
they have conducted a commercial transaction on your web site. This may simply
be providing you with their contact details, or ordering an item from your shop.
The Commerce Entry Pages report lists all the custom pages (such as www.yoursite.com/?source=overture) that delivered commercial activity. This report
enables you to account for your e-commerce revenue from your online marketing
campaigns at paid listings search engines.
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