Google Marketing Blog
I increase online revenue for managers
and marketers of transactional websites.
Learn how I do it with Google Marketing.
Latest Posts
How I Got Into Google Ads Management
I was working as a software developer when I decided to quit my job to start a business. I had been creating heat maps to identify threats in cybersecurity data and so I hung up my shingle as an analytics expert, and picked Google Analytics as a platform. I quickly...
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Use WooCommerce? Here’s How to Fix Missing E-commerce Transactions in Google Ads and Analytics
Several of my e-commerce clients have problems with Wordpress WooCommerce websites not tracking all of their sales correctly in Google Analytics. This often happens on a WordPress website because there is more than one way to set them up, and this lack of consistency...
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If You Run Display Ads You Need to Know This Little Known Secret
There's a common misconception that Display (banner) ads are just for "awareness" or "branding", not for conversions. Nothing could be further than the truth. Of course it depends how you use them. You can use them in an awareness kind of way (just promoting a brand...
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This is What Happens When Your Dog Eats a Rainbow Bagel
The missing bagel... We have a local bagel maker. He makes these amazing rainbow bagels. Last week my daughter got out a bagel and left it out for her breakfast. Later that morning I heard "Mum! I've lost my bagel!" We looked under the sofa. We looked under the bed....
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This Week on The Freelancers Show
TFS 374: Overcoming the Corona Slump with Jim Huffman July 7th Jim Huffman, Petra Manos, and Joel Schaubert discuss how they've handled downturns in business due to Coronavirus and how they've been able to turn them around. Jim's company focuses on conversion rate...
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How To Find Out What Changes Were Made in Your Google Ads [video]
Hi its Petra here! Today, I'm going to show you how to find where your changes have been made in Google Ads. This "Change History" feature definitely comes in handy, especially if you are changing from one agency to another or when you've got more than one person...
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5 Reasons Why Google Display Is My #1 Content Distribution Strategy [Updated July 2020]
The problem with "traditional" ways of getting traffic to a blog... I've been blogging for more than three years now, and if you have ever run a blog you would know the frustrations of creating content and then having to spend even more time on distributing it....
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The Pros and Cons of Hiring Remote Help
I've become a regular panelist on a podcast called The Freelancer Show. Its been running for several hundred episodes now and helps small business owners to navigate the waters of freelancing. In this week's episode I was the guest speaker and we discussed the pros...
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Using Google Tag Manager to Track The Value of Checkboxes
Today I setup conversion tracking for a website that was designed around a more-complex-than-usual intake form. This form required the user to select from check boxes at each step (5 steps total). The final submission passed the values from the check boxes along with...
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What is the Difference Between a User and a New User in Google Analytics?
I was working with a client today who was a bit perplexed. Our Google Data Studio report providing the results of our Google Tag Manager tracking for an insurance comparison form was showing 27% more users than their CRM collected for the same date range. At first...
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5 Reasons Why Google Display Is My #1 Content Distribution Strategy [Updated July 2020]
The problem with "traditional" ways of getting traffic to a blog... I've been blogging for more than three years now, and if you have ever run a blog you would know the frustrations of creating content and then having to spend even more time on distributing it....
read more
Using Google Tag Manager to Track The Value of Checkboxes
Today I setup conversion tracking for a website that was designed around a more-complex-than-usual intake form. This form required the user to select from check boxes at each step (5 steps total). The final submission passed the values from the check boxes along with...
read more
How to switch your website over to Google Tag Manager (without losing any data)
Summary: Step-by-step instructions for how to switch your website over to Google Tag Manager without losing any of your existing Google Analytics data. Using Google Tag Manager to manage your Google Analytics and other tags is great - once you...
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Why Google Might Say Your Advertising is Costing You 37% More
You might not realise this, but when Google Analytics or Google Ads says which marketing source led to a successful sale, it as actually an estimate, never 100% true. And if you choose different settings between the two you might get completely different numbers from...
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I Found Out Today That the Way I Manage My Agency is Unusual
Today I was enjoying my usual habit / hobby of listening to a business audio book, today's pick being Hacking Marketing by Scott Brinker. As soon as I heard the introductory chapter I knew it would be a book that I liked. But as the book went on I became really...
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How To Increase Search Impression Share on Google Ads (Without Going Broke)
In Google Ads, Impression Share is the percentage of users who saw your ad relative to the number of users who were eligible to see your ad. By 'Eligible', essentially you need to have a bid that is within a competitive range, you need to be not excluding that user...
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Three Causes of the “Still Running” Issue in Google Tag Manager
I ran into a pesky problem today in Google Tag Manager, where some tags were listed as 'Still Running' when viewed in the Google Tag Manager preview pane. One 'Still Running' tag prevents other tags from firing if they are triggered at the same time and haven't run...
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How to Remove Slashes From The End of your URLs in Google Analytics
ECommerce analytics requires accuracy in order to make good use of the mountainload of data you have coming to you every day. You need to understand precisely what is happening on your site. And this really requires you to be on the ball, as just an errant character...
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Using Google Analytics Filters to Rid Yourself of Rage-Inducing Referral Spam
Once upon a time, spam was just a particularly horrible type of tinned meat. Nowadays, when we hear the word spam, we instantly associate it with unwanted emails, and all kinds of other nonsense generally wasting our time. Spam is everywhere, and unfortunately the...
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Use Google Analytics to find your best Pinterest pins
This is a step-by-step Google Analytics tutorial that you can use to find the Pinterest pins that are driving traffic to your website. Follow along with me and soon you'll know which pins are driving all your traffic and who is pinning them....
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