Welcome to Your Google Game Plan for Success! My name is Joe Teixeira, and I am honored to be the author of a book on this fantastic, rich, deep, and insightful subject. I hope it will help you expand your knowledge of some of Google's greatest products.
Whether you just started doing online marketing yesterday or have been doing it for 20 years, I believe — no, I know — you can get a lot from this book. If you're fairly new to the Internet and have just started as a marketing manager or web designer, or have even started your own business, you'll be able to learn how to get comfortable (and good) with Google AdWords, Google Analytics, and Google Website Optimizer. You'll learn a boatload of techniques and tactics for using these great tools, obtaining insights from them, and, of course, significantly increasing your chances of making money.
If you've been doing business online for a number of years, either on your own or for your organization — small, medium, or large — this book is going to serve two purposes. First, it's going to serve as a very handy desk guide: as you'll see by flipping through the pages, there's lots of information gathered from lots of different places, including a healthy amount of my own personal experiences and ideas that are not available anywhere online. This book is going to give you insights, knowledge, and angles that you may not have considered before.
If all those who read Your Google Game Plan for Success can learn at least three new tactics, techniques, or pieces of useful information that they can apply to their own business, organization, or personal knowledge, this book will have completed its mission. Of course, you can learn many more than three things And if you see me at a conference or catch me at a local bookstore somewhere, feel free to ask me a question or two. At the end of this book I've provided some ways for you to reach out to me online, because I feel that the ability to connect with me via LinkedIn or Twitter is the best "add-on" feature that I can provide.
The idea behind Your Google Game Plan for Success is to take three of Google's most successful products, show you how to use them, and explain how to draw significant insights from them. Each of the three programs — Google AdWords, Google Analytics, and Google Website Optimizer — is at the top of its class and is used by the majority of businessmen and -women who do anything online.
Google AdWords is the most successful online advertising program in history. It specializes in pay-per-click advertising programs for people just like you who are looking to promote, sell, or announce their products, services, or content. Unlike traditional means of advertising, AdWords is fast, cheap, and extremely detailed. And you — the website owner — are in full control.
Google Analytics is the most popular web-analytics tool in the industry. Hundreds of reports and thousands of segmenting possibilities and enterpriselevel features allow anyone who has or is building a website to access rich information about that site's visitors. It's also completely free of charge, and may always be. Web analytics is the best way to measure success online, and Google Analytics is simply the best in the industry.
Google Website Optimizer allows website owners to conduct scientific experi-ments on their site pages to improve conversion rates (referring to successes, such as a visitor's buying something from your online store or filling out an inquiry form). In a matter of days you'll be able to allow the most important audience — your website's visitors — to determine which content/color/call to action appeals to them, and which website elements don't. Like Google Analytics, Google Website Optimizer is free — you can conduct as many controlled website experiments as you want.
While the "Big Three" Google products are the core focus of this book, I also cover some other Google programs, like Insights for Search, Ad Planner, AdSense, and Webmaster Tools. Each of these programs plays its own role in helping you deliver your message to your audience, and each should be tried at least once in your website's lifetime. They're all free and easy to use, so your operating costs are low, and AdSense even gives you money for using it! You probably won't be able to retire on your AdSense revenue, but hey, every bit helps.
I've divided this book into six parts:
Part I: Getting Started. This is one of a few chapters in this book that is "vendor-neutral." In other words, it isn't geared toward Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, or any other vendor. Instead, Chapter 1 focuses on organizing a plan of attack for your online marketing, and asks important questions about whatever it is you're currently doing. I dive deep into how you may be measuring success currently, and how marketing and conducting business online really differs from offline efforts.
Part II: Google AdWords. In Chapters 2 through 6, you'll gain a deep understanding of the new Google AdWords user interface, the Google Content Network, and cost-per-click advertising online. If you're already the world's foremost expert in all things AdWords, you can use these chapters as a reference guide for the future, or as a good refresher course. Everyone else will learn not just how to use AdWords, but how to pay per click like a professional.
Part III: Google Analytics. My personal area of expertise will become your most trusted resource, and the key to unlocking your understanding of your website's visitors. I'll not only cover the most popular web-analytics program, but will also talk about the web-analytics industry as a whole, provide a technical guide to Google Analytics, and explore some of the more sophisticated features available. If you like numbers, data, and insights, you're going to love Chapters 7 through 10.
Part IV: Google Website Optimizer. To truly optimize your website for conversions and increase the number of leads, phone calls, and sales, you'll need to start using Google Website Optimizer immediately. I'm going to go through the entire process of opening, creating, and analyzing your experiment data in Google Website Optimizer, and set a good foundation for understanding how the program works by discussing elementary statistical concepts. There's also a technical side to Google Website Optimizer, which I'll also cover.
Part V: Executing Your Game Plan. Chapters 14, 15, and 16 will show the sheer power of using the aforementioned three Google programs together. You'll learn how to sync Google AdWords and Google Analytics, how to use Google AdWords and Google Website Optimizer in tandem, and how to analyze experiments from Google Website Optimizer in Google Analytics. As you'll see, you're going to need to use the combined strength of multiple programs to really succeed online.
Part VI: Wrapping It Up. The final section of Your Google Game Plan for Success will provide you with a potpourri of other awesome programs out there that are just waiting for you to take advantage of them. Programs like Insights for Search, FeedBurner, Merchant Center, and even Yahoo! Search Marketing are all there to further help you succeed. I then wrap everything up in a nice summary in the book's final chapter, and provide you with a solid appendix of links to popular industry blogs and significant Twitter accounts.
It should be clear from the previous pages what you'll be getting out of Your Google Game Plan for Success. You're going to receive a deep knowledge of the "Big Three" Google programs, and a great reference guide.
However, there are two major things that you're not going to get out of this book:
Productbashing: This book features a big section on Google Analytics, but that doesn't mean that I hate or dislike Omniture Site Catalyst, WebTrends, or Yahoo! Web Analytics. In fact I like those products very much — specifically Omniture's Test&Target, the new WebTrends Live UI, and Yahoo!'s Path Analysis reports. The title of this book has the word "Google" in it, but that doesn't mean I won't talk about non-Google products, or that I dislike them.
Vendor hype: In the same breath, let me say that I'll try to keep my "Google love" to a bare minimum. Do I love Google Analytics? Yes, absolutely. Are there things that suck about Google Analytics? Yes, absolutely. So when something isn't useful, I'll point this out to you so you don't have to waste your time on it.
And as I indicated earlier, you'll get a unique and (I hope) colorful perspective on using these Google products. However, I wouldn't feel right about asking you to pay hardearned money without offering something further. I want to be able to answer any questions that you may have during or after your reading of this book, and I most definitely want to hear your feedback and comments. You can contact me at [email protected]. My Twitter handle is @tex316 and my LinkedIn profile is at http://linkedin.com/in/joeteixeira. Again, I probably can't reply to you instantaneously, but I'll get back as quickly as I possibly can.