SEOptimise » google analytics

Tracking Your QR Codes to Bring Offline Marketing Online

Daniel Bianchini — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 12:10:43 +0000

Over the past few years, QR Codes have become more mainstream and can be seen in most day-to-day activities. There are examples of some very good uses of QR Codes as well as some badly thought out QR Codes.

QR Codes are great for getting offline marketing messages online quickly. Adding QR Codes to typical offline marketing material such as posters, flyers, business cards or event badges allows the user to see the message instantly.

With all these offline marketing activities being used, how can the business track what is working and what isn’t? Well, with Google Analytics and I am sure most other analytics packages, you can put tracking codes directly into the QR Code and track when users scan the code.

Below is a step by step guide to tracking QR Codes in Google Analytics.

1. Choose the URL that you would like the QR code that you are generating to return once scanned.

Example: www.oxondigital.co.uk/register/

2. Now create your campaign tracking code that you will use to identify the traffic that you receive from the different marketing activity you are running. You can do that by either using the Google URL Builder tool or my GDocs campaign tracking spreadsheet.

Example:

Campaign Source: University-Flyer
Campaign Medium: QR
*Campaign Content:
Campaign Name: OxonDigital4

This will provide you with the following URL to use:

http://www.oxondigital.co.uk/register/?utm_source=university-flyer&utm_medium=qr&utm_campaign=oxondigital4

*Using the campaign content tag you can differentiate between the ads. In the example above I could have used the Campaign Content to differentiate between the different campuses (Wheatley, Headington, Botley).

3. Now that you have your URL with the correct tracking code, you need to find a QR Code generator or use one of the following:

- http://createqrcode.appspot.com/
- http://qrcode.kaywa.com/
- http://goqr.me/

The example below shows the outcome of what we have just created. Give it a try by scanning the QR Code on your smart phone.

4. Now place the QR code on the relevant marketing material that you are going to distribute.

5. To see the results of the tracking code, you need to go to Traffic Sources > Campaigns

6. Now that you have your campaign data you are more than likely wanting to delve further into your analytics to see metrics such as types of devices and locations.

To do this you will need to create an advanced segment or two. This can be done in a number of ways, two of which I have shown below.

Segment 1

Include > Metric = Medium > Exactly Matches > Campaign Medium (QR)

This segment will bring back results that were generated using the campaign medium name of QR.

Segment 2

If you are using lots of different QR Codes you might want to split them by campaign name and campaign medium to delve into the specific marketing channel at the time.

Include > Metric = Medium > Exactly Matches > Campaign Medium (QR)

AND

Include > Metric = Campaign > Exactly Matches > Campaign Name (OxonDigital4)

Once you have created your segments, you will be able to delve further into the data you have received.

The above shows you how you can track your QR code. So whether you put them on a poster, event ticket, t-shirt or coffee cup, you will be able to see what traffic they have generated to your targeted page and/or website.

How do you use QR Codes? Are you making sure that you are tracking your offline marketing channels with techniques such as QR Codes? I look forward to hearing your thoughts in the comments below or on Twitter @danielbianchini

Thanks to Dan Barker for help on some aspects of this post

Why is (not provided) My Most Popular Keyword in Google Analytics and How Can I Fix it?

Tad Chef — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 13:08:32 +0000

While the search industry has been all abuzz with the bad news of Google SSL search, most average people might not even understand what happened. They may wonder “why is (not provided) my most popular keyword in Google Analytics?” (Other analytics solutions might not even show up this data at all). Also: how can you fix it?

First off, I want to explain in simple terms what happened. I tried to explain it to my wife recently and she didn’t understand at once. So this is the version she could fathom easily: Google hides the keywords people use to find your site from now on, or at least a significant part of them. All these hidden keywords are tagged as ‘(not provided)’ in Google Analytics.

On SEOptimise currently (the first week of November) 14,7% of Google search visitors had no keyword sent with its referrer.

The referrer is the page address where they came from. On my own blog, SEO 2.0, the number was even higher, with 16,27% of Google visitors. Also, (not provided) is the most popular “keyword” on both blogs.

Whose referral data gets hidden? All users logged in to Google services get redirected to SSL search now by default.

So all these people hide the keywords they use from the sites they visit. Google and thus the CIA, MI5 or any other secret service can still access these data for at least 18 months.

SSL search isn’t bad – it might be secure for some purposes. As a privacy advocate I can understand that someone would want to use SSL search. I don’t see why Google would force everyone logged in to one of the multiple Google services to use it though. Also, the only way to “opt out” of this forced security measure is to log out of all Google tools, including:

Gmail
Google+
Google Reader
Google Analytics
Google Webmaster Tools

When you log in again, Google automatically forces you to use SSL search again on its https//google.com site. Advertisers who use Google ads will see the hidden data as well, by the way. So if you use SSL search to cover your tracks, at least from the website owners of the sites you click in Google, you have to refrain from clicking Google ads. So what can we actually do about this (not provided) issue?

Updated:

To ask your web hoster whether they offer SSL for your hosting package or otherwise upgrade to one where SSL would seem an option.

Usually sites that use SSL will still see complete referrers from other SSL sites.

Can’t you use SSL on your site to see Google keywords used by logged in searchers to find you? No, you can’t! Google does not use the same traditional SSL solution it used for SSL search before. Now, according to our colleague Mark Edmondson of Guava it doesn’t work anymore as Google uses a proprietary “hack” to remove the keywords from the referrer. Otherwise you wouldn’t get even the (not provided) notice. Instead there would be no referrer at all. Thank you for pointing this out Mark! Also many thanks to our reader Matt Curry for bringing it to our attention first.

Also, on the other hand, many sites may not notice from then on that you have sent them valuable traffic as long as they don’t use SSL for their sites. You may wonder how that affects you. In the SEO industry at least, people monitor their analytics for incoming traffic and thus find out who links to them. Based on that, relationships between webmasters and bloggers sometimes get forged to the mutual benefit of the two parties. This “SEO technique” will not work most of the time in future unless most webmasters embrace SSL.

Google’s business model is to sell ads on search results and third party pages. More than 95% of their revenue stems from these ads. So they compete against webmasters and SEOs to get the attention of web users.

Advertisers buying Google ads will have access to the referral data. So in a way Google is blackmailing webmasters either to buy ads or lose a truly important and meaningful metric. They have presented the change as a move to protect privacy, but we all know that Google doesn’t care about privacy in many other cases. Just think Google Street View.

I won’t let Google force me to buy ads. I don’t need them as I do SEO myself. It’s like having a car and still using a taxi regularly. We can only hope that lawmakers throughout the world will make Google stop anti-competitive measures like this one. It may take a few years before the authorities can sort out this issue, and until then we have to deal with it ourselves.

Going SSL yourself is the best option as of now. It doesn’t work with the new Google SSL search.

Google removes the keywords using a script so that even SSL sites can’t see them.

So soon 1/5 or 1/4 of your Google search visitors may not provide you with the full referral data. You won’t know for sure which keywords have the biggest impact on your site. The number one keyword will be “not provided” as more and more people start using Google services where they actually stayed logged in throughout the day.

Unless of course you’re in an industry where most people are not Internet-savvy and thus do not use Google services much. There are many people, if not the majority, who do not even know what RSS is and thus do not use Google Reader, for example. Only webmasters use Google Analytics or Webmaster Tools and Google+ has still a market share below 1% of social networking. So in many cases the impact might be far smaller than in the technology-driven search marketing space.

Ironically, the people who really care about privacy, such as Linux users for example, are also rather prone to browse the web anonymously than using Google services

and tell Google their real names each time when they search for some questionable sites. So in niches where real power users are the majority, the search referral issues might be a minor one. Everybody else has to consider buying ads at Google as encrypting their site won’t help to get proper referrer data again. Sad but true, Google can exert its monopoly here and there is no free way out as long as you care about analytics. It seems there is no way to fix it.

More resources on SSL search, (not provided) and analytics:

© SEOptimise - Download our free business guide to blogging whitepaper and sign-up for the SEOptimise monthly newsletter. Why is (not provided) My Most Popular Keyword in Google Analytics and How Can I Fix it?

Analytics: How to Get Clients to Track the Correct Metrics

Tad Chef — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 12:36:24 +0000

In an ideal world everybody uses analytics tools in a way that ensures that

conversions
leads
sales
ROI

get tracked and both client and SEO can

see where the most valuable visitors come from and how SEO efforts contribute to the overall success of a site.

Sadly, in reality it’s not always as easy to accomplish. While it’s now easier to sell analytics services to clients (as everybody agrees that you need them and clients are quick to give you access to Google Analytics), in many cases there are lots of issues that combined make you apply SEO tactics blindly.

In recent years many clients of mine (not SEOptimise clients), even some having good knowledge of SEO themselves, have failed to establish and provide a working measurement system for the long term SEO campaign. Usually one of the first things is to determine the conversion goals, what a lead or sale is and where your most valuable visitors are at. Sometimes it can be as simple as a click on a PPC or affiliate link; sometimes it’s a complex e-commerce transaction that you have to track.

I’ve seen a lot of great resources on how to measure ROI or prove the value of SEO.

It doesn’t suffice to know how when you can’t make the client track the correct metrics according to the highest standards though. Also, many clients tend to work with lots of other people who directly or indirectly influence analytics. I have seen web developers or third parties break the conversion tracking so many times that I often wished to return to simpler site independent metrics, which you can’t break easily. Just measuring rankings and traffic is rarely sufficient though.

One client of mine has broken goal tracking by using frames on their thank you page, which I pointed out a few days after it happened, but he wasn’t able to fix it or provide alternative tracking methods for months.
Another client has been unable for several months to get exact amounts for e-commerce tracking because some of the payment handling providers did not return the data properly.
In another case, a third party “pay per performance” PPC agency has been hired by a client of mine. The agency used a redirect on all of the Google ads served by their system so that they can track their “performance”, but in Google Analytics these referrers didn’t show up as “paid” anymore.

As an SEO consultant I don’t do everything myself so that clients and their employees have to perform tasks I recommend them.

Analytics often seems to be a low priority.

As long as the site is obviously doing great that may be no problem, but the first day the obvious metrics such as traffic or rankings drop, the SEO practitioner has to explain. If they don’t have data beyond the obvious, they can’t.

Third party tools that work without any installation on the client side can work wonders in such cases. Most of them are paid ones though, and you don’t want to pay for analytics tools for clients who can’t acknowledge the importance of such tools. I always suggest additional, easier to implement analytics tools in cases where clients can’t get their GA to work properly. Even such a simple alternative is often neglected.

The free Google Webmaster Tools shows lots of valuable data that no broken Google Analytics installation can disturb. It’s always a good idea to check your GWT data regularly, be it for sheer SEO inspiration or to identify potential issues Google may point out there. When your analytics set-up is insufficient and the client or site owner is not able to or keen on spending time and effort on fixing it, you can use GWT data to show the impact of your SEO campaign. You can track micro conversions like click throughs. Also, approximate rankings get tracked by GWT automatically. Sadly the GWT data is now less exact than it once was; it gets rounded and we can only see a few weeks of data. Older data gets deleted.

You don’t have to give up yet though. Even clients unwilling to fix their Google Analytics tracking or install other analytics tools to get proper data can be shown the advantages of conversion tracking. I’ve recently discovered a free third party Google Analytics tool called Paditrack that enables you to export and analyse GA data with ease. It’s even fun to do so. Also, you can gain quick insights whereas conversion and conversion funnel tracking in Google Analytics can be a little tricky sometimes. Even with the additional “Multi-Channel Funnels” data from new Google Analytics you often have funnel visualisations that confuse clients more than they demonstrate the value of the actual SEO campaign.

With Paditrack you can quickly set up conversion funnels you expect to work for you and check whether they do. For example, I chose to add four conversion funnels for the SEOptimise website to see how they perform assuming that the conversion goal is to request a proposal:

Homepage -> Contact Us -> Thanks
Blog -> Contact Us -> Thanks
Services -> Contact Us -> Thanks
Careers -> Contact Us -> Thanks

This way, most of the actual events of the Contact Us page being visited has been accounted for. That is, most of the visitors who decided to contact us used one of the four paths or conversion funnels. Then you can visualise the conversion funnels for each traffic source or even keyword when you choose “Google” as the segment you want to examine.

In Google Analytics itself you can check the “reverse goal path” to find out a lot about where the converting users come from.

What do you do when GA goal tracking is broken though, as in the “frames” case above? Well, rejoice, the Paditrack conversion funnel visualisation still works. I tried it on that project. Using Paditrack I could quickly reinforce my own assumptions on which paths convert and why. The “Careers” path converts best, as almost 20% of the people who visit the site use the Contact Us form. This is no surprise, but it shows that using the same form for job and client inquiries can have a negative impact on measuring website success.

The blog, on the other hand, converts worse and has an overall low conversion rate. This is again no surprise, as the blog is not for direct conversions but mostly for users searching for informational queries. These users ideally link to the helpful blog posts and at the end of the day the whole site ranks better for related queries that then convert.

For actual client inquiries, of course, the services path converts best.

That’s only half the story though. The reason why the people find the services section in the first place are more complex as suggested above.

Using the conversion funnel visualisation I can both argue that we need a better analytics set up and can also point out the potential improvements. These should be a better motivation for the client to act upon.

How to Pass the Google Analytics Exam

Mike Browne — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 15:02:59 +0000

If you want to become qualified in Google Analytics, Google offer an online exam called the Google Analytics Individual Qualification. It’s a useful qualification to have when working with Google Analytics on your clients’ sites (and you should be using some analytics software!).

I passed the test last week and thought I’d put together a few tips for anyone else who may be thinking of taking the exam.

General Information

The exam is all done online in a multiple choice format, usually with four different options for each question. There are 70 questions in total and you have 90 minutes to complete these questions. If you think that doesn’t sound like enough time don’t worry, you’ll be able to answer most of the questions quickly and I found I had a lot of spare time when I finished.

Unlike the Google AdWords exam, the exam is “open book”, so you can look up resources during the test if you need to.

Once you’ve gained your qualification it will last for 18 months, so don’t forget that you will need to take it again in a year and a half if you want to stay qualified!

Resources for Preparing for the Exam

Easily the most useful thing to do is watch the video lessons at Conversion University. Watch as many of these as you can if you have the time, as they are all very useful, but the most important ones will be the videos on cookies, filters and regex.

Have a read through the help center on any topics you feel you aren’t confident on after watching the videos.

Also, experiment! Take what you’ve learnt and try it out in Google Analytics. Familiarise yourself with all parts of the interface, try applying filters, add users etc. Set up a new profile so you don’t affect any important profiles in your account, and once you’re confident with everything you’ve learnt, it’s time to take the exam!

Resources for When You’re Taking the Exam

That’s right, as I said earlier the exam is “open book”, so prepare yourself and have these links open on your browser before you start in case you need to refer to them:

Your Analytics account
While this might seem a bit obvious, it’s important to have in case you forget where something is located in the interface. You don’t want to be worrying about logging in while the timer is counting down, so log in and have a profile open before you start.

Analytics Help Center
This is useful for when you forget something. A quick search for the relevant topic should refresh your memory, so keep this open in the background.

IP Range Tool
You may get a question asking for a regular expression to cover a range of IP addresses. Luckily Google provides a tool to do just that. Just type in the two ranges and it gives you the regular expression to use.

Regex Tester
I found this tool quite useful for testing any regex rules. Type the rule in the top and enter the URL in the bottom and it will highlight it if it meets the rule.

URL Builder
Another useful tool from Google. This will add tracking parameters to a URL.

Google Analytics API
You may get asked about some of the functions in the Analytics API, so you can find descriptions of what each of them do here.

Of course this list isn’t exhaustive, so if there was anything else useful you came across when preparing be sure to have that open too.

After the exam

Hopefully if you follow these tips you too can pass the Analytics exam. Then it’s just a matter of showing off your new certificate!

* CC Image by Alberto G.

Significant Traffic Sources You Probably Miss Unless You Blog

Tad Chef — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 13:25:36 +0000

10 New Google Tools, Products and Services Every Business Person Has to Know About

Tad Chef — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 14:29:37 +0000

One of the few products Google doesn’t offer yet*

It seems Google wants to inundate us with new tools, products and services these days. Is this a way to divert attention away from all the bad news about antitrust lawsuits, the FTC and the like? I don’t know. In any case, there are lots of new tools to test.

Many of these will have a huge impact on search and the Web as a whole in future.

Others mights seem less noteworthy at first, but they underscore the long term Google strategy which focuses on social, mobile and HTML5 among others.

Either way, I assume that every business person has to know about these tools, as there are plenty of opportunities here and in some cases also pitfalls.

Google+

Google+ is a fully fledged social network that Google has started to compete against Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. It consists of several services in itself, including groups, chats etc.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/introducing-google-project-real-life.html

http://searchengineland.com/googles-facebook-competitor-the-google-social-network-finally-arrives-83401

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/06/inside-google-plus-social/

Google +1 (button for websites, worldwide in search)

Google +1 is the Google ”like” button. You can now find it in search results, on websites that include the button, as browser extensions and in most Google products (Blogger, Youtube, Shopping Search etc).

WDYL (What Do You Love)

WDYL is a personalised interest hub for Google users that lets you combine most of Google services around your favourite subjects.

http://www.wdyl.com/

Google Web Fonts V2

Google Web Fonts allow webmasters to replace their boring web safe headlines with some more appealing free fonts. Also, the Google Web Fonts are faster than some of the older font replacement techniques. The new version, V2, is far sleeker than the old one. I’m not sure about the user experience though.

http://www.google.com/webfonts/v2

Social interaction tracking in Google Webmaster Tools and Analytics

While many people provided JavaScripts to track Google +1 votes in Google Analytics, the tracking wasn’t easy to use and wasn’t very insightful in most cases. Now Google has not only launched built-in Google +1 tracking in both Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools, but also allows tracking of other social sites such as Facebook, Twitter or Delicious. This requires additional coding though.

http://analytics.blogspot.com/2011/06/1-reporting-in-google-webmaster-tools.html

http://www.google.com/support/analyticshelp/bin/answer.py?topic=1316551&answer=1316556&&hl=en

Postrank (Analytics)

Postrank has been one of the best known tools for measuring the social impact of one’s posts. It also provided a great social media analytics tool. Google has acquired the service and stopped sign ups.

While in Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools, you need some coding to track your social media performance. Postrank just makes you verify your social accounts and lets you add a URL. I hope Google won’t neglect Postrank like they did with Feedburner.

http://www.postrank.com/

Google Offers (Groupon alternative for daily deals)

Google Offers may be the biggest news of all the news services when it comes to business. Google Offers is a Groupon competitor focusing on daily deals.

http://www.google.com/offers/business/

Authorship attribution

In HTML5 you can use so-called microformats to indicate that you’re the author of a posting or article across different websites. Using a meta tag and your Google Profile where you connect your websites and blogs, this will make content creators recognisable across web properties and inside search results.

http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2011/06/highlighting-content-creators-in-search.html

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=1229920&&hl=en

Google Swiffy (tool for converting Flash files to HTML5)

This little tool may have a huge impact. It allows you to convert Flash files to HTML5. I don’t know how good the outcome is, but even the idea of being able to adapt your Flash content to the modern Web is a clear sign of the times.

http://swiffy.googlelabs.com/

Google Sites mobile landing pages

One of Google’s main focuses is the mobile Web. Google Sites, the search giant’s own website editor for starters, has added a mobile option to make these websites mobile friendly.

http://googlemobileads.blogspot.com/2011/06/mobile-ize-your-business-with-google.html

Have you tried these tools already? What do you think about this unparalleled wave of new services Google has been announcing recently? Does Google want to cover our every need on the Web? How do you plan to use these tools for your business purposes?

* Image by missha

© SEOptimise - Download our free business guide to blogging whitepaper and sign-up for the SEOptimise monthly newsletter. 10 New Google Tools, Products and Services Every Business Person Has to Know About

Everything Webmasters Need to Know About the Google +1 Button for Websites

Tad Chef — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 15:03:41 +0000

Google +1 for websites is here for a few days, and while some people are still (or again) skeptical, there are quite a lot of webmasters who have adopted the + 1 button almost immediately. The SEO industry has been especially quick to include the buttons. I am among them, while I still don’t use the Facebook like.

I’m not going to shout hooray because Google finally released a button, but nonetheless I can see that it’s the best and the hitherto most important attempt by Google at entering the social media arena. Most others failed miserably and Google has learned some lessons it seems.

The ease of use, for instance, and the quick announcement that the +1 votes will count as a ranking factor, are good signs that +1 will still be here a year from now.

It seems that Google is also adding up the best technologies from its former failed social services and products. I see features from Google SearchWiki, Google Bookmarks, Google Buzz etc. converging.

Google’s own +1 resources

Google +1 was introduced initially at the end of March, and I provided a list of 40 resources back then. Thus here I’ll add only those you need for the actual button. Most importantly, there is the code to include the website button, which is as easy to implement as Google Analytics or even more straightforward. So if you use Google Analytics already, inserting Google +1 is even easier to accomplish.

How to install Google +1 on WordPress, Blogger, Joomla etc.

You can of course add Google +1 buttons to your blog or CMS, either including the code yourself or using extensions, add-ons or plug ins. There are ways to do so on WordPress, WordPress and Thesis, Blogger, Joomla (both a how to and an extension), Magento, Open Cart… For those who want to add the button according to web standards (so that it validates), there is also a small tweak or a bigger workaround for HTML5.

Add your extension, tutorial or how to below in the comments.

Google +1 Extensions for WordPress

While you can include the +1 button manually as suggested above, there are already plenty of Google +1 WordPress extensions. I have tested several of them. There are simple ones, even one you have to save as PHP file to add-ons with multiple customisation options and features.

Choose the one that fits you best and that you trust the most to get updated in the future. I currently use the one by Alex Moss from Pleer SEO. For bloggers who already use a Google Buzz button, there seems to be a conflict and this extension has been suggested as a solution.

How to track Google +1 in Google Analytics and elsewhere

Yoast has quickly come up with a way to track Google +1 votes in Google Analytics. Others have expanded on this script with the actual URLs that got clicked and to consider negative clicks (when someone clicks +1 again to revoke the vote).

Several bloggers have come up with similar scripts. Google has already suggested that +1 votes will both get counted by Google Analytics by default and that +1 will get its own analytics suite, at least according to screenshots shown on a conference. Other analytics tools use their own hacks to allow +1 click tracking: Sitecatalyst.

I’m still on the lookout for Piwik, Woopra and other solutions.

How to use Google +1 on websites that don’t have a +1 button installed

While the quick adoption of +1 buttons on websites is quite impressive, and there are far more of them than Google Buzz buttons already, many sites don’t yet include the button. If you want to +1 them anyway, you need a bookmarklet or a browser extension for Chrome. Of course, you can still vote the site or article up in the search results as well. I haven’t found an extension for Firefox yet, but expect one to appear soon.

Why or why not use Google +1?

Many bloggers argue that it makes no sense to click the +1 button on websites because there is nobody you actually share your endorsement with, at least not directly. This may indeed be an advantage, as you can +1 twenty articles on the same topic in a row without alienating your friends or followers. Theoretically, there are many reasons to actually click +1 instead of liking or tweeting. On the other hand, privacy concerns get cited as a reason not to use Google +1 and Google forces you to join a social network again.

The single biggest reason to click +1 right now is, of course, that it is a ranking factor for Google. So webmasters want visitors to click the button. Social Media B2B suggests informing all your existing connections. Also, Google users customise their search results using +1. They see their own votes and those by friends while searching. Logged out users also see the +1 votes. The first search results on Google for a given keyword displays the number of +1 votes, if there are any.

How does Google +1 affect your SEO and social media optimisation?

Judging from my own use of +1 buttons, I tend to click +1 instead of like on Facebook or tweet it. It easier than sharing on Twitter, and it prevents flooding your followers and friends with your numerous votes. So some people may vote more often now, while the number of likes and tweets may suffer. Another point to remember is that many people tweet just for the SEO of it. Now, with +1 they can go the direct way to improve their rankings – they don’t have to tweet.

Aside from my subjective musing, there have been two very impressive studies, one by SEO Effect to test the actual ranking and CTR impact and another one that analyses the performance of the Google +1 button and the scripts it uses. While the SEO is seemingly improving significantly, the website speed issues are a drawback right now. The Google engineers haven’t done their homework here. Also, there seem to be canonical issues.

I have to repeat here: Google has officially announced that +1 votes will count as a ranking factor. Many in the SEO industry doubt that the impact will be big, but as we see the actual tests show otherwise. So using +1 buttons on your site and encouraging your readers to click them will be a part of link building from now on.

What else you need to know about the Google +1 button for websites

Google +1 buttons are also displayed on YouTube and Google Shopping (products) search results. As of now (June 8th, 2011) only Google.com users can see the +1 votes from their so-called social circle. These might be people connected to you via the various existing social sites like Twitter, Google Buzz, Quora, Friendfeed etc.

Still, so-called social search results seem to be separate from +1 votes right now. Both are connected to the same social circle you can manage on your Google Profile. While Android smartphones of course support +1, it seems that the buttons do not display on iPhones.

Additionally, WebProNews has compiled a list of things you have to know about Google +1. Kikolani has also a great guide.

Google Analytics Location Tracking Changes: Where Has London Gone?

Tamsin Mehew — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 13:53:23 +0000

One of our clients’ sites had a sudden drop in traffic from London. After the 25^th of February, all London traffic – paid, organic and direct – had dropped by nearly 45%. There wasn’t an obvious reason. There hadn’t been any changes to the PPC campaigns or search rankings. It didn’t look seasonal; there was nothing similar in previous years. Google announced that it was updating location targeting in AdWords earlier in February, but the list of affected locations didn’t include London. The site’s total traffic had increased slightly, so why would London’s be down?

After a little while cross-referencing half-term dates and glaring at search term reports, I looked to see if any other towns or cities had been similarly affected. And while London’s traffic had nearly halved, that Kensington’s traffic had increased by over 20,000%. Lambeth was up by over 140,000%.

For those unfamiliar with London’s geography, here are the same places in the map view from AdWords:

Other areas within London such as Sutton, Potters Bar and Croydon had similar increases in traffic.

It seems that Google has been redefining London. Or rather that it has become better at recognising which district a visitor is from; Kensington, Lambeth and the other areas were not new to Analytics, but only had a handful of visitors recorded before the 25^th.

What does this mean? It’s a reminder that location names are ambiguous. Ignoring cities of the same name outside of England, ‘London’ can refer to Greater London (which covers over 1,500 km²), the City of London (a mere 3km²), or something in between. It apparently means something else to Google. This isn’t all new; the London district of Teddington has been separate since August 2007. And it’s not just London; Edgbaston, a district of Birmingham, has been separate since 2009.

If you want to monitor traffic from an area in Analytics, you need to make sure Google has the same idea of where the area is. Same for targeting an area with an AdWords campaign. And you need to keep an eye on the data in case it’s not the traffic which is changing, but the area you’re looking at.

Simple Goal & Conversion Tracking with Piwik: the Open Source Google Analytics Alternative

Tad Chef — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 12:22:06 +0000

It’s not only the black hat and the paranoid who are increasingly wary of Google’s privacy issues. Google Analytics has come under attack repeatedly in Europe. Recently, German government officials even threatened to declare Google Analytics illegal.

While I consider Google Analytics a minor threat to privacy compared to other Google products and services (like Doubleclick, Google toolbar or Google Chrome), I think there is still room for improvement.

These and other reasons made me revisit Piwik, the open source, self-hosted Google Analytics alternative.

It’s a German project on top of that, so the solution is already there. I was testing Piwik two years ago in an early beta stage. Now it’s available in version 1.1.1 and already it’s quite a powerful web analytics solution.

Before we go on: Piwik can’t yet replace Google Analytics for most websites, either for entry level or professional users. On the other hand, it is an excellent tool for intermediate users – bloggers, for instance.

Once it’s installed, one of the truly outstanding advantages becomes apparent: the goal tracking and management, or in other words the conversion tracking. It’s very easy to implement, easier than in Google Analytics or other web analytics tools if you ask me. Today I want show you how it works. Let’s use an average blog as an example.

You don’t have any goals to track on your blog? You have no conversions? You don’t sell anything on your blog?

Well, think again. I’m with Avinash Kaushik here: you have to track so called micro-conversions. These are small things that show engagement or have some positive impact on your business. Typically on a blog you could track:

Comments (comment submissions)
Facebook likes
Retweets
Delicious saves
StumbleUpon shares
RSS clicks (as in people trying manually to subscribe to your blog)
Ad clicks
Contact form submissions
“About Us” or “Services” section visits
Downloads

So you see there are plenty of ways in which you want to convert people even on a blog. Watching traffic trends is one thing, but tracking goals is a completely different way to find out what’s popular on your site.

I will show you three of them to start with: comments, Delicious saves and “About” views. I chose these three for two reasons: almost everybody has comments and an About Us page on their blog, and Delicious saves say quite a bit about your content. Furthermore, Piwik allows basically three ways of setting up goals. Each example shows one of them.

To add or edit goals in Piwik:

1. Click the “Goals” tab in the top menu.

Look for “Goals management” in the content part below.

2. Click “Create a new Goal” below.

A “Create a Goal” dialog like the one pictured below should appear:

Tracking “About”

Let’s start with “About” as in “About Us”. Why track “About”? Well, people clicking the About page express genuine interest in who you are and what you do. They are those visitors who might trust you in future based on the information you provide. That’s why tracking “About Us” visits makes sense as a micro-conversion.

3. Enter a “goal name”. I’d suggest “about view” as we track how often the About page has actually been viewed.

4. Check whether the radio button “Visit a given URL (page or group of pages)” is already selected, or select it.

5. Check whether “contains” is already selected in the drop down menu, or select it manually.

6. Add the file name of your About page in the input field right beside it. In case it’s something like example.com/about you can add “/about”. In case you have more than one page or post starting with “/about” you can add a more exact part of the URL.

7. Click the button “Add goal”.

Tracking “Delicious saves”

Facebook likes and Twitter (re)tweets are great, but Delicious bookmarks are still the granddaddy of all social media engagement ways. Users who save your post on Delicious do it for their own sake; they want to read it later, save the resource for future reference or use it in some other way for themselves (I do it for publishing). Also, only an elite few use Delicious these days. Last but not least, Facebook and Twitter sharing does not mean much. People who share do so because they want to show it to others, not because they want to use a post for themselves.

3. Enter a “goal name”. I’d suggest “delicious save”, as we will track how many people have saved your site from a Delicious link on your site. Of course, you need a Delicious save link on your blog first. Most social media plugins provide one. Delicious itself offers tools to integrate it as well.

4. Select the radio button “Click on a Link to an external website” (the third one in the row).

5. Check whether “contains” is already selected in the drop down menu or select it manually.

6. Add the URL “delicious.com/save?” in the input field beside it, or check the actual URL your social media plugin links to and adapt it accordingly.

7. Click the button “Add goal”.

Tracking Comments

Why should you track comments? You can see them in the WordPress back end anyway, can’t you? Well, tracking comments with Piwik allows you to see which users engage with your blog, and thus which traffic is your most valuable based on measuring interaction. Hint: it’s not the search or social media traffic.

Tracking comments is a bit more tricky than the other goals, but if you can customise WordPress themes you can do that as well.

3. Enter a “goal name”. I’d suggest “comment”, as we track comment submissions here.

4. Select “manually” in the “Goal is triggered” drop down menu.

5. Copy the “piwikTracker.trackGoal()” JavaScript call.

6. Click the button “Add goal”.

7. To find out the goal number of your “comment” goal, click the “Goal” tab again.

8. Scroll down and roll over the “Goal ‘comment’ ” link.

9. You see the following JS link “javascript:broadcast.propagateAjax(‘module=Goals&action=goalReport&idGoal=3′)” where the idGoal parameter is your goal number. Remember the number.

10. Add the number in your JS call in your WordPress theme comments.php.

It can be found in Appearance -> Editor -> Comments (comments.php).

Search for the “submit” button. My form submit button looks like this:

11. Add onclick="piwikTracker.trackGoal(3);" at the end of it so that it looks likes this:

Done.

Piwik not only allows you to set up goals easily, but also to get a quick and useful overview of which traffic converts best. Make sure you check out the “Conversions overview by segment” table view in the Goals tab. You have to scroll a bit to see it. It shows you which traffic sources, countries etc. perform best:

Piwik also has advanced privacy options: you can both opt out of Piwik tracking if you want to enable the feature, and anonymise the last digits of the user IP. Google allegedly does this as well, but the data is sent to the US where, due to the patriot act, all kinds of government agencies can access it for a plethora of reasons. That’s why it’s basically already illegal in Germany. You are not allowed to send user data to another country. Furthermore, you’ll never now where your data is . Google has data centers all over the world, and I’m not sure it’s vulnerable to US secret services only.

With Piwik, which is self-hosted, you can decide yourself where your data is stored. It just depends on the location of your hosting. This big advantage is also a drawback. You need to install Piwik on your server or webhosting package. The process is largely automated, but nevertheless even I experienced some issues while installing it: my FTP client had problems copying the ca. 5MB to my server and thus some files ended up being crippled. Instead of the installation page, I only saw garbled code on the page and rather unhelpful error messages.

Piwik is a software package for intermediate users. Ask yourself: can I install a WordPress blog? If so, then you can install Piwik. Don’t know what your PHP and MySQL version is? Maybe you should stick with GA.

While Piwik is not yet a fully fledged Google Analytics alternative, it can compete quite well with popular entry level freemium or paid tools like Clicky, Woopra or Reinvigorate.

© SEOptimise - Download our free business guide to blogging whitepaper and sign-up for the SEOptimise monthly newsletter. Simple Goal & Conversion Tracking with Piwik: the Open Source Google Analytics Alternative

40 Google Instant SEO, SEM & Analytics Resources

Tad Chef — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 12:03:34 +0000

Image by Westside Shooter.

Google Instant is the talk of the town not only in the SEO industry. While some people still hope SEO will go away most experts agree that SEO is either just changing a bit or now more important than ever due to the recent changes. So I won’t list most of the usual “SEO is not dead” posts here as I expect you to know that. I’ll focus on what the instant search results will mean for SEO, SEM and analytics in reality.

Check out the following 40 Google Instant SEO, SEM & analytics resources list. Btw. The last item is probably the best one.

What is Google Instant all about

IMHO Google Instant is just Google Suggest on Speed. The first four suggestions from Google Suggest get shown in Google Instant now. As of now only registered and logged in users see it so its impact may be not yet that huge. Google wants to roll it out to all others though in future. Click the links below for more exact definitions and broader explanations.

What are the motivations behind Google Instant?

Speed is the official motivation behind the new search interface but some pundits including Kevin Gibbons of SEOptimise suspect monetization as the key idea behind Google Instant.

What are the issues with Google Instant?

Is Google Instant really better? Many people encountered problems like distraction, censorship, or downright irrelevant results. Find out more about them. The owners of Naked Pizza will have to rethink their branding strategy it seems because NSFW results don’t show up.

What are the ramifications of Google Instant for SEO, SEM, analytics etc.

Most people seem to agree that the long tail, that is often exotic search queries with 3 or more keywords will get used less by searchers. On the flip side people will probably at least in some cases follow the trail laid out by Google Instant and click search results from partial queries. Sadly Google Analytics won’t show partial queries you ranked for. Instead Google will always send the “predicted query” as part of the referrer.

Google Instant SEO Techniques

How do we adapt to the new search interface? How do we explain the changes to clients?
Do we have to optimize for partial queries now? Do you have to try to rank for flow when you sell flowers? Questions like these arise and get answered already by some SEO practicioners. Apparently others already practice black hat SEO for Google Instant, make sure to click the last item for these techniques.

What else? Last time Google has introduced a big change to its search result interface it hasn’t worked out due to unnecessary complexity. Do you remember the Google SearchWiki (NOT the SideWiki)? You could add, remove, move and comment on search results. I really liked it but most people got annoyed by the new options. This time I expect many people to get annoyed as well. Some of the articles linked above already mention that.

So Google Instant might disappear within a year like Google SearchWiki did. So don’t panic and change your SEO strategy altogether. Keep in mind that you should try to act independently and not follow every whim of Google. Keep calm and add more content, promote it and get links. You should be fine with that, mo matter the search interface.

Use Google Analytics custom segments to audit and improve search marketing

Dave Chaffey — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 09:20:06 +0000

Use Google Analytics custom segments to audit and improve search marketing

Anyone who has ever reviewed the keywords attracting visitors to a site will have seen that brand search terms usually dominate, often accounting for more than 50% of search related visits for well-known brands.

Every site has associated brands, but to paraphrase Morrisey, some brands are biggger than others. For these, isolating brand search is essential if you’re serious about using search to create incremental business i.e. create awareness and sales from new customers.

It follows that it’s futile to try to review and improve search engine marketing without taking brand phrases into account, but that’s the default for the less than savvy. For marketers, reviewing their analytics it’s easy to understand since the analytics tool doesn’t readily isolate brand and non-brand phrases.

For the search agency, well maybe they’re being less than transparent with their clients since it’s even easy for the incompetent to attract branded site visitors to a site. Of course this won’t apply to most readers of this esteemed blog!

This short tutorial will show you how to use Google Analytics to quickly set up Advanced Segments to help you review your search performance.
Setting up custom segments for search keywords in Google Analytics
Custom Advanced Segments are what you need to set these up. If you haven’t come across these because they’re hidden in Google Analytics, then you’re missing out – see my Smart Insights post on “10 different types of advanced segments”: http://www.smartinsights.com/blog/web-analytics/google-analytics-web-analytics/segmenting-google-analytics/.

For search marketers, there are standard segments for paid and natural segments which I’m sure you’re all using already – if not that post gives and example.

To understand the interaction of paid and natural brand phrases, I recommend setting up 4 advanced segments. I advise setting them up and labelling them as follows:

1. Natural search visits including brand.

2. Natural search visits NOT including brand.

3. Paid search visits including brand name(s).

4. Paid search visits NOT including brand name(s).

It just takes a few seconds to set each one up. I’ll show you how for an advanced segment for natural search visits containing the brand name. I’ll use my “brand name” from my site since I can’t use client data to illustrate this…

Step 1. Select “Create a new advanced segment” from the Advanced segments box top right or click on the Advanced Segment menu option in the left sidebar and chose “Create a new custom segment”

Step 2. First, select Keyword as the dimension to segment on from the “Traffic sources” dimension group on the left of the screen. Drag across. Easy.

Next filter by entering the brand name by choosing “contains” . Also, easy.

Tip: In many cases, you will want to include some variants of the brand. You do this using the pipe symbol and selecting “regular expression” rather than “contains”. For example, Starbucks|Star Bucks, although contains “bucks” would be easier…

Step 3 Next segment by natural search choosing a segment dimension as “and” as shown in the screengrab above. This will match “organic”. Paid is “cpc”

Step 4 Choose a name for your segment and press the “test” option to make sure you have it right.

Step 5 Finally you can apply your advanced segments to the report by selecting the segments you want from the Advanced Segments box on the top right as shown in the first screengrab.

This example shows a high level view of the breakdown of search traffic.

You can also use these segments within keyword reports to easily separate out brand and non brand keywords. For high volume phrases it can be worth setting up a contains “high volume keyword” so that you can analyse that in depth.

I hope that works for you. How do you use advanced segments for search analysis – I’d be interested to hear about the segments you use.

In the meantime, I’d be interested to hear how you use segments in Google Analytics.

30+ More Google Analytics Tools, Apps, Hacks, Tweaks and Other Resources

Tad Chef — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 08:54:30 +0000

A year ago we’ve published a list of 30+ Google Analytics tools and resources. It was one of our most successful posts ever. The list has been even nominated for a SEMMY award. I’m not sure I can top that but I can provide a new list of 30+ more Google Analytics tools, apps, tweaks and other resources.

Google Analytics is still one of the most popular tools for SEO practicioners and webmasters alike.

It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in you either already use Google Analytics or you should in future.

There are many alternative web analytics providers for those who prefer non-Google products for privacy reasons but to be honest: I’d rather give up on Google search for privacy reasons than Google Analytics.

The links in this post are either new (published after the last years post went live) or they weren’t on the other list. Some of the links might have been indirectly included as it was also a meta-list with several resources’ lists. Also this time I’ve included apps for mobile phones and some paid software.

Google Analytics tools and software

Google Analytics how to articles, hacks and tweaks

Google Analytics apps for mobilephones

Firefox add ons and WordPress plugins

Google Analytics resources’ lists

Do you know any other Google Analytics resources worth to be added here? In case they are neither listed here nor on the old list make sure to add them in the comments.

Sadly I haven’t the time to test all of these tools and tweaks. So first hand accounts are appreciated as well.

Is PPC Canabalising your Brand Traffic?

Richard Fergie — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 13:38:51 +0000

Are your PPC campaigns eating your organic traffic? Google love for you to bid on your brand name in AdWords, but how to you know if you are wasting money on traffic you could have got for free? Of course, to find this out you need to run some sort of test.

I don’t know how you could run a good A/B split test for this because I don’t know how to randomly segment people into the “see’s PPC ad” and “does not see PPC ad” buckets. Without random segmentation our test will not be fair but hopefully we can get a test that is “fair enough”.

Use AdWords ad scheduling to set time periods where your brand adverts run and do not run
Be aware of that you can’t split a day into more than 6 segments. You should also think about if your traffic changes much depending on the day of the week.
Wait. Be the surfer. Get ready to ride the gnarly wave of data.
Use Google Analytics to get the data. I’ve done a post in the past about how to segment by time .
Draw some graphs (call them “data visualisatons” if you want to impress) and calculate your averages.
Bar charts will give you the info you need; I’ve used stacked bar charts to show a bit more detail about how PPC has performed.

We are interested in the incremental value of adding PPC which is the difference in value between the “No PPC” and “With PPC” averages. This is the figure which you need to compare with the cost of your PPC to decided if it is worth running or not.

The idea of incremental value is important here. Just looking at the value of the PPC traffic will almost certainly give you a positive answer because brand clicks are so cheap.

Avinash Kaushik shows HMV & M&S how “They Came, They Puked, They Left!”

Kevin Gibbons — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 22:41:45 +0000

Last week, Avinash Kaushik opened SES London with a superb keynote presentation about web analytics – see this video interview if you missed it.

There’s some good writeups following this, but one of the parts I found particularly interesting was the examples of how brands perform using search.

Marks & Spencer
One of Avinahs’s examples included an M&S paid search ad, where the landing page for a query on “Marks and Spencer underwear” produced a general Valentines Day landing page – no sign of a relevant product in sight! Here’s the landing page I now see for a query on the same term, the Valentines Day page has been replaced:

“They Came, They Puked, They Left” is how Avinash Kaushik described website’s with a high bounce rate, because users aren’t finding what they are looking for, so they very quickly leave. This is very true in the M&S example, where users are dumped onto the homepage, relying on users navigating to find what they want – instead of directing them straight to it.

HMV
Avinash’s first example showed how despite having a very well-known and established brand, HMV appeared to be relying on this too heavily in the organic search listings. Obviously brand visibility is very important in the search engines, especially when your brand is as strong as HMV, but long-tail is where the real value of traffic comes from. Rather than attracting traffic at the head of the tail, it’s generally the longer-tail and specific queries which generate the bulk of a site’s traffic. Avinash calls these visitors “impression virgins”, these are users who are unlikely to have visited the site before and are attracted by a specific or unique keyword query.

The examples given were queries for branded terms, where HMV were almost always listed as both organic and paid search results. And when performing a product query with the brand name added to this, HMV still dominated these listings – see the example below for “Up DVD HMV“:

Yet when searching for more competitive queries, where the user still has the intent to buy – but they don’t have a preference of where from – HMV aren’t doing enough to attract these first time visitors/buyers into the site. Queries for a range of competitive product queries all failed to display HMV within Google’s top 10 organic listings – here’s an example of a query for the very popular query “Up DVD“:

You may notice that a paid search ad is appearing on the right-hand-side, but in the same way as M&S, this points users straight towards the homepage instead of taking them to the actual product. This has possibly been triggered from a “DVD” phrase matched AdWords keyword, as opposed to the individual product term producing the ad, explaining why a general ad description and landing page has been displayed. Same for the M&S ad being triggered from a “Marks and Spencer” phrase, instead of an underwear term.

Wireless Printers
Another example, although this time for a US site, was a query for “wireless printer” which produced PPC ads for general printers. The ones who actually did sell wireless printers only went as far as sending users to a general printer category page – instead of directing them towards the actual product they searched for. Avinash highlighted that this was a $500+ product – so they really need to be doing everything they can to clinch a sale, rather than hoping they find what they want by navigating and then complete a purchase.

So this goes to prove how important it is to maximise the value from the traffic you are currently generating. An increase in traffic isn’t always the answer, a few small changes in all of these cases is likely to see a big improvement in conversion rates and overall sales figures.

Finding Errors in Your Google Analytics Tracking Code

Richard Fergie — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 13:12:53 +0000

Installing the Google Analytics code is pretty easy – usually nothing goes wrong, and it is simply a matter of copying and pasting the code that Google provides you with. However, there are some cases where you might want to change the default code:

Google provides clear instructions for these tasks but nobody is perfect so sometimes errors will be made and nothing will be tracked. Normally it would take you 24 hours to realise this, 5 minutes to fix what you thought was the error and then 24 hours to find out that you hadn’t actually fixed anything. Repeat this cycle until you give up or get it sorted. Here is my guide to help speed this process up and make it less likely that a small typo in your Google Analytics code will take a week to fix.

So what do you do when there is no data in Google Analytics?

Firstly, visually confirm that the tracking code is on the website. It sounds like a simple thing but you can end up looking pretty stupid if you miss this step out.
Then install httpfox or some other program to monitor the requests your browser is making
Start up httpfox and perform a full refresh (Ctrl-F5) of a page.
In httpfox search for requests made to the google-analytics.com domain. If you see a request for _utm.gif then you know that data is being sent to Google Analytics. Apart from checking that the UA id is correct I have no more ideas about what could be going wrong here.

If there is no request for the tracking pixel then something is wrong with the code (duh?).
For simple errors (like typos) the firefox error console will give you a pretty good idea of what has gone wrong.
Firefox Error Console shows that I missed of the closing quotation marks when setting the session timeout to 5 minutes
For more complicated changes to the code use a more powerful tool like firebug to find out where the error is occurring.
Fix the problem and then repeat steps 3 and 4 to check that information is being sent to Google Analytics.

10 Free Google SEO Tools Everybody Should Use

Tad Chef — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 14:11:39 +0000

Some people, even at Google, still think that Google hates SEO. In some cases it really does. At the same time Google loves SEO as actions speak louder than words. Google provides not a few, not several but by now 10 free Google SEO tools everybody should use. I remember the times when we had none of them. Today we have an abundance of data Google allows us to mine.

You know, I’m often quite critical of Google but when there is one thing the search giant does right then it’s the plethora of tools it offers. So here is the list of 10 free Google SEO tools everybody should use. Most of these SEO tools are good for keyword research and on page SEO. Please read to the end, I guess some of you won’t know all of them.

Google Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster tools is the equivalent of a mechanic looking after you car daily but for websites of course. Identify broken links, malware and other issues and find out what search queries lead to your pages even with clickthrough statistics. It even checks your website speed and tells you why it’s too slow.
Google Analytics
In case you still don’t know GA you have probably slept for years. Some SEOs don’t use it due to paranoia of being controlled by Google though. You have to decide yourself what’s more important, a very useful analytics tools or the fact that Matt Cutts can look under your skirt.
Google Website Optimizer
With Google Website Optimizer you can test different versions of your pages. This way you can determine the best converting ones. It’s called A/B split testing or multivariate testing and is all the rage lately in SEO circles and beyond.
Google Zeitgeist
Google Zeitgeist is not a tool in the strictest sense but you can use it keyword research nonetheless. In fact it shows the most popular queries so it’s a good starting point in your SEO campaign. Take the Zeitgeist popular keywords and then test some keyphrases containing them with the other tools that will follow in this list. Also checkout the current Zeitgeist aka Hot Trends.
Google Trends
Google Trends lets you compare traffic for popular search terms and websites. This way you can determine whether a topic is rising in popularity or not. Works gret combined with Google Zeitgeist and Google Insight for Search
Google Insights for Search
Insights for Search is like Google Trends on steroids. You can look up most keywords here, even those that aren’t popular at all. Compare up to five keywords and their ensuing traffic.
Google Traffic Estimator
This is a classic tool. It says “Adwords” but you can use it to find out the probably number visitors a keyword can bring to your site.
Google Keyword Tool
The Keyword Tool is like the Traffic Estimator but from a differnet angle. Some people prefer this others prefer that. You’ll want to check both to make sure you’re on the right track with your keywords.
Google Search Based Keyword Tool
This very neat tool allowas you to find out related keywords to a site or existing keyword or rather both. It’s connected to Google Insights for Search is a very useful way.
Google Ad Planner
Google Ad Planner is like Alexa and SpyFu in one. Use it to screen popular sites or your competitors for keyword intelligence or both.

While using theses tools remember to take the numbers with a grain of salt, they are never completely accurate but in many cases thy are the best numbers we can get. As you can see Google facilitates both keyword research and on page SEO. We get even some assistance with link building by Webmaster Tools.

So does Google hate SEO? Maybe some engineers are rooted in the past or prefer prejudice over judgment but based on the tools Google works together with webmasters and SEOs the best it can. Don’t ignore the tools Google offers. You lose money right now when you do.

On a side note: Guess what the Google Search Based Keyword Tool suggest me when I add my site onreact.com and SEO? The first result is: Google SEO tools. This is just coincidence, I didn’t check the tool to get inspired to this article but the other way around. So in a way Google knows what I will think next.

30+ Google Analytics Tools, Goals, Segments, Filters, Hacks & Resources

Tad Chef — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 19:42:19 +0000

Google Analytics is used by most of us search marketers with the exception of the paranoid and even a growing number of top 500 websites. This free web analytics suite is just too tempting not be used. It’s very advanced compared to many other, especially free web analytics tools. Google Analytics has some significant flaws and shortcomings though.

CC Image Credit: Flickr

Google Analytics can’t track full referers right by itself which is especially a shame in connection with StumbleUpon traffic
it counts one user as dozens by counting recurring visits as referring ones from the source s/he came from initially
it barely can see most of Twitter and short URL traffic which only gets noticed as traffic without source (type in traffic)

To name just a few.

For these and other problems there are solutions out there some well known some still quite “underground”. Also there are lots of advanced functions in GA you have to set up first before you can use them.

Most important here are goals which allow you to track conversions in the first place.

Last but not least there are quite a few Greasemonkey scripts that enhance the Google Analytics interface on the client side that is in your browser.

So check out the 30+ Google Analytics Tools, Goals, Segments, Filters, Hacks & Resources:

Tools

Goals & Segments

Filters

Hacks

SEOptimise GA tips

Google Analytics resources lists

Of course I haven’t tried all of them myself, they’re too many. Those I haven’t tried yet are mostly from trustworthy sources. Just in case they have issues or if you know better Google Analytics tips add them in the comments. They might end up in the list.

The Conversion Attribution Problem

Richard Fergie — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 15:14:35 +0000

One of the most interesting topics talked about at SES London was the problem of conversion attribution. The easiest way to describe it is with an example. Suppose you sell widgets over the internet and that you use AdWords rank well for some organic terms and are also running a radio advert. A customer’s path to conversion might look something like this:

They hear your radio advert
They search on Google and click your PPC advert
At a later date they arrive at your site organically
They buy something from you

From Tobo on Flickr

If you are using AdWords conversion tracking to monitor your campaigns all the credit is given to the PPC advert. If you use Google Analytics, the credit will be given to the organic keyword. Neither will give any credit to the radio ad slot which prompted the initial search. Fuor.net have an informative white paper about the problem of conversion attribution.

Tracking offline advertising is a lot harder then online (particularly PPC) so the problem is simplified a bit if we ignore it. Of course this is not a good assumption to make; another key point from SES London was that “Search does not exist in a vacuum;” people can be prompted to search for things for a variety of reasons, including TV, radio and magazine adverts.

Ignoring the offline channel still leaves us with the problem of splitting the conversion between organic and PPC. There are 4 possible options:
1.    Credit the last referrer
This ignores the fact that the buyer first found the website through a PPC advert. If that advert had not been there then the conversion might not have happened
2.    Credit the first referrer
Similar to above, this ignores the fact that without the 2nd visit there wouldn’t have been a conversion. For some queries the last referrer may be a brand keyword which indicates that the searcher had already decided to buy from you and was just trying to navigate to your site. In this case there may be some justification for only crediting the early referrers.
3.    Credit both referrers
Crediting both referrers leads to the SEO people saying “we made 500 sales last month” and the PPC people saying “we made 750 sales last month” when fewer than 1250 sales have actually been made.
4.    Partially Credit both referrers
As far as I am aware, this is the best method that anyone has thought of so far. Unfortunately, it leads to another difficult question: “how much credit should I give to each referrer?” I think it is more complicated then crediting all referrers equally.

Credit Crunch? Splitting Credit between referrers.

This is a really hard problem and anyone who comes up with a perfect solution will make a lot of money. How will you know if you’ve got a perfect solution? I think a perfect solution must have the following properties:

If each keyword used is credited with x% of the conversion then adding up all the x’s should not be more than 100%. It would be acceptable to have the total at less than 100% if you think that offline marketing played a part in the conversion.
A solution must distinguish between different buying cycles: Imagine one day I search for “football boots” then the next week I search for “tennis rackets” and make a purchase (of a tennis racket). Then my first search should not receive as much credit for my purchase. I’m not sure if it should receive no credit at all because maybe appearing for “football boots” as well as “tennis rackets” may have increased my confidence in the site.
In the case of an existing customer, their terms used in their previous purchases should be partially credited with each new purchase; this builds lifetime customer value calculations right into the system.
It must be workable. This should go without saying, but turning an idea into a workable system could actually be the most difficult step.

Avanish Kaushik thinks that time on site may be a good way to split up the conversion. I can see the advantages of this method because if a user visits your site and purchases quickly then they have probably already decided to buy from you meaning that the final referrer is not so important. Attributing the conversion in proportion to the time spent on site satisfies property 1 from above and I can see how it could also satisfy property 4 but more work needs to be done to make it compatible with 2 and 3.

My preferred solution would be to consider all conversion paths and compare the effectiveness of each step. For example, by finding all conversion paths that differ by only 1 stage the effect of not engaging with the user at a particular stage can be measured. This will fail property 4 unless you have a lot of conversions and a relatively small number of conversion paths; for most people the number of users taking each conversion path will be small because there are so many possible paths.

Any method using current analytics techniques will be incomplete for two reasons; firstly because not everyone uses cookies (this could be fixed by recording an IP address, but not everyone has a fixed IP) and secondly because you can only track people who actually visit your site. Currently, the effect of seeing a text ad or placement that is not clicked cannot be measured.

The conversion attribution problem is not a new one and as I’ve said, a perfect solution does not exist. I will discuss some existing methods that partially solve or improve our understanding of the problem next week.

Should You Show Ads to Mobile Users?

Richard Fergie — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 11:55:04 +0000

Recently Google have added an option in the campaign settings menu which allows you to choose not to show your ads on mobile phones running standard browsers. This is different to the mobile format ads; it is to do with modern phones (like the iPhone) that can view web pages with a normal internet browser.

Quite a lot of people use their phones for searches but I don’t know anyone who has ever bought anything from a website with their phone. It could be that phone traffic converts very badly so, particularly for sites with a very short buying cycle, it will be worth preventing ads from showing to people with mobile devices.

The real question is how do you tell if mobile traffic is working for you? I don’t know how you can analyse the behaviour of people who visit your site through a mobile and then purchase on their PC, but at least part of the question involves looking at the behaviour of mobile visitors.

I’ve made a Google Analytics segment for mobile devices; it wasn’t obvious how to do this and capture all of the wide variety of mobile platforms. My first thought was to do it by screen size. When I looked at the Google Analytics screen resolution report I realised this wasn’t practical; there are too many screen sizes to select them all individually (people visited this blog with resolutions of 170×174 and 170×176) but excluding traffic above a certain resolution risks including PCs with small screens or excluding high resolution phones.

Instead I segmented based on operating system, and even this time the list was quite long. The mobile operating systems that have visited sites where SEOptimise has GA access are:

iPhone
iPod
SymbianOS
Playstation Portable
Android
Danger Hiptop

I also set the segment to pick visits where the OS contained any of the following:

Nokia
Motorola
O2
Mobile
Phone
Palm

I think this should get most traffic from mobile devices without including any from PCs or laptops (in this context excluding non-mobile devices is more important).

Results? Right now, mobile traffic levels are too low to say anything for sure. I’d expect volume to rise in the New Year so it might be worth keeping an eye on this unique source of traffic

Google Analytics Tip – How to Find All AdWords Search Queries Triggered from Phrase/Broad Matches

Richard Fergie — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 17:41:01 +0000

It can be very difficult at times to find the actual search terms your PPC traffic arrives from, so this is a Google Analytics trick all advertisers should know. Google’s search query report can be useful but for high-traffic phrase or broad match keywords being told that 8 of your clicks arrived on “85 unique queries” doesn’t really give you the complete picture!

Since the introduction of expanded broad match Google can (and does) match your broad match keywords to just about anything vaguely relevant; knowing these queries is important, either to negative match them or to reduce CPCs by using an exact match. The image below really does highlight this point, notice the extremely irrelevant term “shooting holidays USA” was triggered by a broad match of travel PPC!

This report was setup last week and shows the AdWords keywords (either exact, phrase or broad match) followed by the actual search term which triggered the clickthrough in brackets:

(Click for full-size image)

Step by step guide on how to setup a Search Query report in Google Analytics
This information can easily be found in Google Analytics but, although the method is simple, it is not obvious; to be able to access this PPC goldmine you have to use filters. Until last week I didn’t even know the filters feature existed and even if I had I wouldn’t have been able to do the regular expressions stuff that our filters will need. For this reason I’d like to thank the Google Analytics Experts and the linklove blog for giving me some simple step by step instructions.

In the above case we’ve set up a new profile before messing around, just to ensure that if a mistake was made none of the data is affected. There’s an “Add a Website Profile” option on the Analytics settings page; you want to add a profile for an existing site and then name it.
Then you want to write the two filters; click the “Filter Manager” button and then add a filter.
This first filter will get the search query and place it in a user defined field. I call it “Get Search Query” but you can name it whatever you want to. Select “Custom Filter” from the filter type drop down menu and select the “Advanced” radio button. You should see some input fields named “Field A -> Extract A” and similar.
In the “Field A -> Extract A” drop down menu select “Referral”; this will pull out the SERP’s URL on which the ad was shown. In the box to the left on the drop down menu write “(\?|&)(q|p)=([^&]*)” without the quotation marks. This is a regular expression which extracts the search query from the SERP’s URL.
In the “Field B -> Extract B” drop down menu select “Campaign Medium” and write “ppc|cpc” in the box. This filters out all the organic clicks.
In the “Output To -> Constructor” drop down choose “Customized Field 1” and enter “$A3” in the box. This just tells Google Analytics where to store the data. Finally you need to click the button to make field B required and the one to turn off case sensitivity. Then apply the filter to your new profile.
The 2nd filter includes this new data in the keyword report. Again, you want to set up an advanced custom filter but this time choose “Customized Field 1” from the “Field A -> Extract A” drop down. In the box write “(.*)”
For “Field B -> Extract B” select “Campaign Term” to find out which of your keywords the search query matched and enter “(.*)” again in the box.
Finally in the “Output To -> Constructor” menu choose “Campaign Term” or wherever you want your data to go and then enter “$B1, $A1” The space after the comma means that you can export your data to a .csv and have a separate field for the actual search term.
If you’ve followed the steps as I’ve laid them out then the filters should be applied in the right order; if you want to check the information is there when you click to edit the new profile from the “Analytics Settings” page.

As always, it’ll be a little while before Google Analytics starts to register the new data so don’t be too impatient. Unfortunately the filters can’t be applied retrospectively so you can’t start using them on all your old data but as far as I’m concerned this is the only downside. Set up the filters and start refining your AdWords campaigns!

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