Backup Your Magento Database:

1. Login to your site’s cPanel
2. Go into phpMyAdmin
3. Find and open your site’s Magento database
4. Now is a good time to clear the “logs” if you want to make the DB a little smaller. There are about 5 tables with the word”_log_” in the name which can grow quite large, so it’s ok to empty those now.
5. Go to “Export”, select custom, and under “Compression” I usually choose “gzipped” because it is a smaller file. Also, make sure “SQL” is set as the file type.
6. Click “Go” and your database will begin downloading. This may take a few minutes.

Backup your Magento Store Files:

1. in cPanel, Navigate to your “File Manager”
2. In the “PUBLIC_HTML” folder, click “Select All”
3. Now click “Compress” and select “GZiped Tar Archive” in the pop-up.
4. Choose a name for your backup (I’d recommend something including the date) & Click “Compress File (s), to begin the archive. This should only take a minute or so.
5. Now select the file you just made and click download to save it to your local machine.

Now you have a copy of both the DB & site files in 2 separate, tidy little files. You can also do this more quickly using SSH. We’ll have an article on that soon.

They did send out the email with the files to unlock it, but if you didn’t get in there to fix it before they completely shut the server down, you might have a nasty pop-up saying that you are using an unlicensed version of Ultimento that comes up with every page load, and you have to wait 15 seconds or so to close it. Frustrating.

So… well here’s the email:

All is not lost if you feel abandoned by Ultimento. If you missed out on the files, or don’t want/have time to dig into fixing the Ultimento validation error, we can fix these files for you. Send us an email: kelly@ballisticwebsites.com. We can get your Magento Admin running like new in less than 24 hours.

To many business owners think that “gaming” the search engines will yield long-term results, but this helps to break down the right way to do SEO and I think every legit SEO’er follows this method, whether they refer to the infographic or not.

Sitelinks Tracking Report

First Step: Adwords sitelinks tracking can only be initiated by manually tagging the sitelink destination URL. You can use whatever tag you’d like, but I would recommend using “sitelink”. So, let’s say your url is (and mine is) https://www.ballisticwebsites.com you’d add /?sitelink= which sets the variable name & the value PPC-Management (note that there are no spaces) to define which sitelink is being tracked, in this instance, “PPC Management”. Set a unique value for each individual sitelink in your account so that you can properly track. If you have the same name on multiple campaigns, I would recommend making them uniquely tagged so that you can properly track. The final result will look like this: https://www.ballisticwebsites.com/?sitelink=PPC-Management.

Once you’ve got them tagged, you’ll want to sit on them for a few days of course, to gather data. Then, jump on over to Google Analytics. Navigate to Content -> Site Content -> Landing Pages Then, in the “Filter” box (it’s the little box on the right side, just between the graph & rows) type “sitelink” & click the magnifying glass.

Analytics Custom Report Interface

Make sure to select “Regex” here!

1- Turn off the Display Network
This is the #1 thing that could cost you hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars if you don’t realize that it’s happening. Under “Campaign Settings” & “Networks” it should always look like this on a keyword-based campaign:
If you’re wondering why, well it’s because the display network is showing your ads to thousands of “browsers” all over the internet and the click-thru-rate is terribly low. The quality of clicks isn’t very good either. This is your very first step toward refining your campaigns to know exactly what your ads & keywords are doing.

2 – Set Up Analytics
Hey I thought this was an AdWords Post? Why are we talking about analytics now? Well, you do want to know what you are getting for your money don’t you? Analytics isn’t just a recommendation, it’s crucial to getting top performance out of your advertising. Make sure that you have your Analytics account linked to your AdWords Account, Auto-Tagging enabled in Adwords (My Account -> Tracking) & Some sort of conversion tracking set-up. This allows you to know exactly where your traffic is coming from, which keywords they clicked, how many stayed on your site, where they are, how many took the action that you wanted to take & so much more.

3 – Learn Your Match Types
The 2nd fastest way to burn through your advertising budget is to use the default “Broad Match” keywords. By “Broad Match” we mean “really broad, match-ish”. Broad match will match to synonyms or words that Google deems to be “close matches” to your keyword. The problem with this is that if your keyword is “blue shoes”, the search engine may literally show your ad to someone searching “aqua boots”. If you don’t sell aqua boots, this is a wasted impression & possible click. Consider all the ways that this could go awry. Using “phrase match” or “exact match” will show your ad only to the most relevant searches. Personally, I almost never use broad match. If you are looking to explore for new keywords it could help you, but don’t expect a lot of conversions from it.

4 – Accentuate the Positives – Eliminate the Negatives
The longer your ads run, the more data you will aquire. If you’re account has been running for a little while you need to start making decisions on this data. When you are able to identify the top keywords that getting high-quality traffic are making you the most money, put it into a campaign where you can give it it’s own budget and MAX IT OUT. If a particular ad/keyword combination is making $2 for every $1 that you spend, you want to spend as many dollars on that ad as possible, right? Next, using your search query report, find the least valuable keywords and either delete or make them negative keywords. Don’t waste money on a product that is unprofitable or irrelevant to your business.

5 – Test Your Ads Continually
Don’t think of PPC as a selection of keywords. A keyword is just that… a “key” word. Your ad text is what’s doing the work. Continually test your ads to see which one gets the best results for your ads. Better ads get better Click-Through, so they get yo more traffic and lower CPC. How do you know when you have a winner? I like this tool. It takes a solid amount of data to make an informed decision, so this tool will tell you how it’s doing.

These are just some of the top tips to help you put your money in the right place. There are many, many other things that you can (and should) be doing to get the most out of your budget, such as refining your campaign structure, optimizing for mobile & using remarketing to stay top-of mind, to name a few but hopefully you will (or have already) log into your AdWords account today and make these changes right away to maximize your marketing dollars.

So, what is Website Optmizer, you say? In a nutshell, Website Optimizer was an awesome tool that allows webmasters to be able to quickly serve up dynamic content to a website visitor & measure which change had the greatest impact on conversions & therefore sales. For instance, say you have a “Lead Generation” landing page for, let’s say veterinary medicine, and you want to see if photo #1 (a happy, little Jack Russell) or photo #2 (a sad & lumbering Irish Wolfhound) would cause more people to fill out your contact form. You could set up the test to show half the visitors photo #1 & the other half would see photo #2. Once the test was completed, you could see which photo led to more conversions & decide whether or not to make the change for all visitors. Pretty cool & an amazing resource for landing page optimization.

So why is it being retired? Well, here’s the letter from Google:

An important note about the future of Website Optimizer
Dear Website Optimizer User,

We’re saying goodbye to Google Website Optimizer. Many marketers and publishers have improved the web by using insights from Website Optimizer to create better experiences for their users. To elevate website optimization and provide one fully integrated tool for testing, content optimization will now have a new home within Google Analytics. The last day you’ll be able to access Google Website Optimizer will be August 1st, 2012.

If you’re looking to start a new experiment, please use our new tool, located within Google Analytics called Content Experiments. We’ve put a great deal of effort into providing this tool that makes testing as easy as possible. Content Experiments comes with a simple set up wizard, identifies the statistically significant best variation, and provides insightful reports on your website engagement. This is just the first step we’re taking to simplify website testing, and we’re looking forward to adding more experimentation features into Google Analytics.

If you’re not a Google Analytics user, we invite you to sign up now to get access to the new Content Experiments tool, which is available to all Google Analytics users. To learn more about the new Content Experiments tool, read our blog post or check out this video. Make sure you’re a Google Analytics user now to ensure uninterrupted experiments when Website Optimizer is shut down on Aug 1, 2012. If you would like professional assistance in designing, implementing, or interpreting the results of a test, simply go to the Google Analytics Partner page and select “Website Optimizer” from the Specialization menu.

We hope you enjoyed using Website Optimizer and that you will find a lot of value in our new Content Experiments tool. Thank you for helping to make websites better.

Sincerely,
Google Website Optimizer team

Ok, so it’s not really dead… It just moving to another location and I think this actually makes sense. While Website Optimizer is a tool for advertisers, it more of a tool for webmasters, in general so it makes sense that it would be part of analytics. And it’s being revamped, as well. According to Google Analytics Support site, in the new “content Experiments” tool:

You’re not testing just two versions of a page as in A/B testing, and you’re not testing various combinations of components on a single page as in multivariate testing. Instead, you are testing up to five full versions of a single page, each delivered to visitors from a separate URL.

It will be interesting to see just how this new tool works out. As soon as I get some time to play around with it, I’ll try to get a write-up about it.

And since we are talking about changes that make sense, I personally would like to see Webmaster Tools integrated into Google Analytics as well. Why do I need a completely different site & experience to see the top search queries & rankings or submit a sitemap? It would be so much nicer if it were part of Google Analytics.

So, here’s the link to the new content experiments tool and hopefully you will have some good results. Let me know if you find anything that really stands out about it.

Thanks for reading.