Google analytics is for anyone with a website. It is a powerful tool that provides reports on performance data on all your ad campaigns, how visitors use your website etc. Learning how users interact with your website and using that knowledge to make improvements is key in build an effective online business. Google analytics will help you to answer some difficult questions like why are user abandoning my shopping chart? Is my website design driving people away? What do people do while they are on my site? How are my visitors finding me?

Analytic reports can also be used for the following:

• Evaluate ROI on all your marketing efforts
• Evaluate visitor’s navigation to identify areas for improvement
• Track e-commerce metrics such as revenue and conversion rates
• Analyze your AdWords account
• Define user segments, and analyze the behavior of each segment

To get started with Google analytics you simply need to add the Google analytics tracking code (JavaScript) within each body of the HTML on each page you want to track. This is another brilliant way of optimizing your web business with Google.

Regional and city advertising are usually used by advertiser with an audience in a defined and constraint area. For example regional specific businesses like hotels, stores, restaurants and boutiques will find this ad targeting option very useful. This option does not only help to keep your quality score high but also keeps your costs low. The users that click on your ad are also more qualified.

It is important to note that regional and city ad targeting are not offered in every country. Some countries do not offer the infrastructure to allow Google to detect a user’s location. It is still possible to achieve a regional and city targeted ad campaign by making use of a national targeting campaign. This can be achieved by including the relevant cities and regions in your keyword list and ad text. Google AdWords will then display your ads for queries related to those cities and regions. You can also add the regions and cities that you do not want to target as negative keywords in your keyword list.

The aim of Google AdWords is to provide the users with a positive experience when they click on the Google AdWords ads. To achieve this Google AdWords have a link policy that provides guidelines on the following topics:

The Display URL:

The display URL is the fourth line in your text ad. This URL must give the user a good indication of the actual destination URL. It does not need to be exactly the same but similar. For example using a Display URL: www.bigbooksstore.com and a Destination URL: http://www.amizon.com/books.html will not be allowed. The Destination URL must be something along the lines of http://www.bigbooksstore.com/indes.html.

Destination URL:

The destination URL is the actual landing page of your text ad. This web page has to work properly (no typos in URL). The page is also not allowed to be under construction. The destination URL must also be an html page so that no additional software will be required by the user to view your page for example Acrobat Reader.

Back Button:

The back button on the landing page must allow the user to return to his previous Google search results. Your ad will not be approved if the back button on your landing page does not work properly.

Pop-ups or pop-unders:

Pop-ups or pop-unders are defined by Google AdWords as any additional page that opens other than your landing page. The Google AdWords policy does not allow any pop-ups or pop-unders when entering or leaving your landing page. Users find them distracting and this leads to a poor user experience.

Only simple text is allowed when creating your AdWords text ads. Formatting options like bold, italicization or underlined are not provided for your text ads. Google AdWords will however make part of your ad text appear in bold whenever it matches or nearly matches a user’s search query. This can be achieved by adding the relevant keywords for a specific Ad Group in your ad text. Whenever the keyword triggers your ad it will also become bold in your ad text. This will catch the user’s attention and increase the likelihood of a click. Your text ad heading is the clickable part of your ad and placing the relevant keyword there will make it even more likely for a click. This can really give your text ad’s a performance boost.

Google AdWords allows you to chouse your preferred ad position ranking on the Google search network. For example if you notice that your ad perform much better in the ad position three and four, you can set your ad for those positions. The position preference option must first be enabled at the campaign level before enabling it at the keyword level. Each keyword in an Ad Group can then have its own position preference setting.

The system will then automatically try to adjust your keyword bid to get your ad in the preferred position. Position preference is not guaranteed and your ad may still appear in other positions. After selecting the ad preference option it might even take the system a few days before delivering the ad accordingly.

It is important to note that your ad will not be served if your ad ranking is not high enough for your preferred position ranking. Your position preference settings also have no effect on your ads on the content networks. The ads average position in your campaign report will give you some indication of what your ad position preference setting should be. It is important to remember that the report might not provide you with an accurate indication if your ad campaign has only been running for a short while. The position preference option can drastically reduce your ad impressions and caution must be taken when using this option.