Internet Marketing - Matt Bailey [261]
Clicking that drop-down will bring additional segment information. The default segments available to you are the typical KPIs: new visitors, returning visitors, search traffic, direct traffic, paid search traffic, and so on. Although those segments are very good to gain information, the custom segmenting tools provide an easy means of customizing these reports to your website and your business. To the left of the default segments are two links that provide that customization. Click Create A New Advanced Segment. Now, just about every variable is available to you in developing a segment (see Figure 21-7).
Figure 21-6: Starting to set up advanced segments
Figure 21-7: Creating advanced segments
As I mentioned earlier, the easiest method for beginning segmentation is to work with the search analytics. This is because you have become very familiar with your keywords and rankings, so it is simply a matter of taking that familiarity and applying it to your analytics. The first pass at segmenting search terms will focus on the general terms. The first few segments will be based on your core keywords.
To the left of the page you will see two highlighted terms, Dimensions and Metrics. In this case, the primary objective is to evaluate the source of visitors. This is a dimension—an attribute of the visitors you want to analyze. The sources of the segmentation that have been covered in this chapter and in Chapter 20 are all dimension metrics (by keyword, by action, by content, or by product category). You can think of these as the “intentions” of the visitor. The metrics shown in the report are based on the dimension selected in the segment. Metrics are the pages they viewed, the time they spent on the site, the time and date they visited—all of the “detail” information that are typical KPIs. Get it? You are in the process of adding the context to the KPI.
Now, click and drag the dimension Keyword from the Dimensions list on the left (click the toggle arrow next to Traffic Sources to reveal the Keyword option) into the Dimensions or Metrics box at the top of the page (refer to Figure 21-8). Now, to match the keyword, since this is focusing on the large segment data, simply set Condition to Contains (Figure 21-8), which will provide the broadest variety of keywords available that match the core term. In this example, I am selecting VW in the Value field, since this is a site about Volkswagens. Name your segment, and click the Test Segment button in the upper or lower right to see whether there is any data available. If so, click Create And Apply To Report, and you will see your newly created segment.
Figure 21-8: Creating the large segment
Dealing with Tricky Keyword Segments
Sometimes, you may have to get creative with matching the search terms. A lighting website may show a dozen or more spelling variations of the search referral chandelier. Instead of using the entire word, find a value that contains enough of the core letters of the term, such as chand. Alternatively, find a core spelling of the root word that may be consistent enough to gather most or all of the searchers within that keyword segment.
You may have noticed that the screenshots in this section are from a Volkswagen website, and in order to capture brand-name searches, the core term had to be one that used the core letters of volks in order to capture anyone who misspelled the brand name. Variations include Volkswagen, volkswagon, and Volkswagan).
The segment shows that about a third of the total search traffic used the core term VW. This can be valuable and answers a few questions, but it can be refined further to give a better idea as to what exactly people are looking for and the intent of their searches. This is where creating the subsegments provides a much deeper view of the