How to Lower Your Cost Per Acquisition

Posted on February 4, 2010
Affiliate Marketing Tips, Google AdWords, Landing Page Optimization, PPC Keyword Tools, Pay Per Click, Toronto SEM Consulting |

How to Lower Your Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)

Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) advertising, or Cost Per Action advertising, is a method of paying for advertising that allows the advertiser to pay for each conversion such as a download, transaction, and lead instead of paying each time someone clicks on the ad. In other words, the advertiser only pays when the user completes a transaction. When differentiating CPA vs. CPC (Cost Per Click), with CPC, the advertiser pays each time someone clicks on the ad.

The best way to lower your CPA is to maximize your keywords so that you are using keywords that people use when searching for your product and service.  You must be able to turn your keywords into a sale. This involves constantly looking for quality keywords so you gain a competitive edge and that the researched keywords result in a profit. One important step you should take is setting a maximum cost-per-acquisition (CPA). This is the bid you are willing to pay for a conversion such as a transaction. For instance, if your maximum CPA bid is $5.00, you will not pay more than that price. You may also end up paying less depending on what others are bidding. You have the option to increase or decrease your maximum bid, depending on your marketing strategy. Google’s recommended maximum cost-per-acquisition (CPA) is the ad group bid that they suggest to help an advertiser keep costs steady.

Other than Google’s free conversion optimizing service, there are also cost per action paid service companies that specialize in finding the right keywords and setting the price. There are keyword research services available that provide advertisers with the ability to continually research keywords and create a relevant and effective list of keywords that will help them increase site traffic and lower their cost per acquisition. It is an effective method of controlling advertising spending and reducing advertising waste. People can also manually set keywords and bids themselves. Cost Per Acquisition Optimizing is an important tool if you are looking to optimize the number of conversions to maximize your advertising dollars.

Quality Score is another way to lower your CPA. Quality score is a grade search engines apply to your advertising campaigns. The higher a search engine grades your campaign, the less you will be charged. As well, you ads will become better established in the ‘Sponsored Links’ column. Quality score is affected by ad text relevancy, keyword relevancy to its particular ad group, landing page quality, and the click through rate. By producing search engine friendly ad campaigns, you will reduce your advertising costs by permitting the search engine to generate reduced minimum bids and first page bid for your advertising account. With better CPA management, businesses can drastically improve conversions while lowering their CPA.

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Google AdWords Management

Posted on February 4, 2010
Google Ad Words, Google AdWords, Google Analytics, Google Quality Score, Toronto SEO Consulting |

Google AdWords Management

Google is the most popular and most used search engine today. When website owners promote their site, it is essential that they are included in Google. Google AdWords ™ is an innovative advertising program available to all business marketers, no matter the size of the company, which allows businesses to reach potential customers.

When you do a Google search, you will see a list on the right side of the results page that says ‘Sponsored Links.’ These advertisements are placed by Google’s AdWords program on behalf of the advertiser. An advertiser only pays Google when someone clicks on the ad and goes to the advertiser’s website. It is an effective marketing campaign that allows for any budget no matter how big or small. As well, advertisers can reach national or global internet users.

With Google AdWords management, you create your advertisements and choose keywords that are relevant to your business. When people search on Google using one of your keywords, your ad may appear next to the search results. One can then ‘click’ on your ad and go directly to your website. When it comes to setting your budget, there is no minimum spending amount required. For example, you can set a daily budget of $3.00 with a cost of .10 cents for each click. It will all depend on how much you can afford and you can modify your budget at anytime. You are charged only when someone clicks the ad, not when it is displayed. Payment options vary by country and currency.

The key to running an effective Google Adwords campaign is implementing the best possible AdWords set up. The keywords and phrases should describe what product or service you offer. The goal is to place your ad ahead of your competitors and where potential customers will see it. You have to be able to come up with the keywords people use when searching for a company that offers your products or services. The ads and keywords have to be highly targeted so that Google shows it in the appropriate place. Google’s ‘contextual targeting technology’ can automatically place your ads on web pages in their content network that are most relevant to your business. If you want more control, you can use placement targeting to manually pick exact sites or sections of sites where you want your ads to be displayed. You can then measure and optimize your results.

With the ‘Placement Performance Report,’ you will be able to review the performance of your ad on each site. That is, you can assess how well your ad is performing by looking at the number of clicks and impressions, cost, and conversion figures. You can then make modifications to improve your marketing strategy allowing for effective Google PPC management.

With so many quality business websites competing to attract customers, Google AdWords is an excellent way to reach your targeted customers. It only takes a few minutes to have your campaign go ‘live’ after you have completed the setup process. You have a choice of image, text, and video formats. The key to a successful AdWords campaign is to select the right keywords so that your ad appears on the first page of a users search results and the ad is positioned at the top or near the top of the ‘Sponsored Links’ column.

Setting Up Asynchronous Google Analytics Tracking

Posted on January 26, 2010
Google Analytics, Google Updates, Web Analytics |

Google launches asynchronous tracking as an alternative google analysis tracking tool to help website owners track their site visitors. The Google Analytics Asynchronous Tracking Code snippet is a small piece of JavaScript code that website owners paste into their web pages. It activates Google Analytics tracking by inserting ga.js into the page which then provides an API for customizing how the page is tracked.

Google explains that there are a number of advantages to using Asynchronous tracking that include: ‘allows for much quicker tracking code load times as a result of the improved browser execution, optimizes how browsers load ga.js, eliminates tracking errors from dependencies when the JavaScript hasn’t fully loaded, and improves data collection and accuracy.’

The below snippet displays the minimum configuration required to track a page asynchronously. It denotes the page’s web property ID and then calls ’trackPageview’ to send the tracking data back to the Google Analytics servers.  The best location for the google analytics tracking snippet is at the top of the <body> section. To set up asynchronous tracking, you just have to copy and paste the following snippet replacing UA-XXXXX-X with your web property ID:

<script type=”text/javascript”>

var _gaq = _gaq || [];

_gaq.push([’_setAccount’, ‘UA-XXXXX-X’]);

_gaq.push([’_trackPageview’]);

(function() {

var ga = document.createElement(’script’); ga.type = ‘text/javascript’; ga.async = true;

ga.src = (’https:’ == document.location.protocol ? ‘https://ssl’ : ‘http://www’) + ‘.google-analytics.com/ga.js’;

(document.getElementsByTagName(’head’)[0] || document.getElementsByTagName(’body’)[0]).appendChild(ga);

})();

</script>

If you want to add the asynchronous snippet on pages that do not use Google Analytics or are currently using traditional tracking with ga.js, Google shows how you can convert your pages to use the asynchronous snippet by doing the following:

1. If the page already uses Analytics, remove your existing tracking code snippet and any customizations you have made.

2. Insert the asynchronous snippet at the top of the <body> section of your pages.

3. Modify the _setAccount method with your web property ID.

4. Add your customizations back in using the asynchronous syntax.

If you would rather place the Analytics snippet at the bottom of the page, you can still keep most of the benefits of asynchronous loading by splitting the snippet in half. You have to keep the first half at the top of the page and the other half at the bottom of the page. You will have to place the snippet that inserts ga.js at the bottom of the page. For more detailed information about setting up asynchronous analytics tracking and answers to common installation questions, Google Analytics provides a helpful guide on their Google code web pages.

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