All posts in website analytics

Google have announced this week at SES New York the introduction of AdWords Search Funnels. The conversion attribution problem has been heavily discussed during the last year and this led me to think of a quote which was on Twitter a while ago, (I think it was from Chris Lake – correct me if I’m wrong though): “Conversion Attribution is Like Selling Xabi Alonso & Hoping for the Same Result”.

Xabi Alonso
Image credit: Flickr

Even if you don’t know anything about football, hopefully this will still make some sort of sense – but being a big Liverpool fan this quote really struck home with me as an excellent analogy. For those who don’t know, last season Xabi Alonso often provided the assist before an assist leading towards a goal. So if you’re looking at stats on goals scored and direct assists it may be difficult to understand the true value Alonso added to the team.

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:

Marks and Spencer

“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.

This blog post is a bit of fun that might give you some idea of the sorts of  thing that cannot be tracked by your web analytics system…

1. Odysseus Off-Site

Image from Litmuse on Flickr

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.

Smashing Magazine Tweet

Do you remember a site called Digg? This is a site that has been very successful in 2006. A few years earlier a site called Slashdot was that popular. Both sites exist today and are used by some fringe groups. Back in their heydays they have been notorious for their “effect”, like in “Slashdot effect” or “Digg effect”.

It basically meant that in the best or rather worst case your website was taken down by a huge number of users accessing your site at the same time. It happened when your site went popular on the respective frontpages.

In 2009 the frontpage metaphor taken from newspapers has been overcome. There is no real frontpage on Twitter. There is only a stream or a myriad of streams. Still some tweets or links get popular here as well.

Roughly a year ago I published a list of not yet popular web tools you should know here on SEOptimise. It’s the most popular post on this blog ever since. While I considered updating the list I decided to compile a new one with a new generation of tools instead of just fixing broken links: 25 new & free Web tools you should know – 2009 edition

This is of course a biased list of Web tools (both web based tools or tools for the Web), my own one, but it is fueled by my business blogging, social media optimization and SEO practice so you’ll probably like it as well. Some of these tools are not really new but they are probably new for you as they are not widely known yet.

All of the tools below either offer free versions or are entirely free. I sorted the tools in 4 categories:

  • Twitter
  • Search, SEO & Analytics
  • Blogging & Social Media
  • Web Development & Misc. Web Tools

Nowadays lowering bounce rates and increasing conversion rates are two or rather one (as both are closely tied together) of the main tasks that modern SEO is about.

Bounce Rate
Image credit: Sean Dreilinger

It’s obvious: Rankings and traffic do not mean much when the website visitors bounce off and you fail to convert them to buyers, subscribers or whatever you desire your visitors to do for you. Some industry insiders even suspect bounce rate to be a ranking factor itself already.

Did you know that there is a whole mobile SEO and mobile Analytics industry on top or underneath the SEO and web analytics offerings we already got used to? I didn’t until this week. I underestimated the mobile Internet and it’s search by and large. I read about the iPhone impact on mobile Internet usage a few times and then forgot about it. Meanwhile others didn’t. It’s time to jump into mobile SEO now more than ever. You won’t be an early adopter of mobile SEO anymore but you’re not too late to the table yet.

Update: We now have a 15% discount code for the SMX London 2010 event.

For those who couldn’t make it to SMX London I’ve written up my notes from the last 2 days spent at the event.

SMX London 2009

Flickr Image credit: burningmax

I didn’t quite make it to up to my 77 SES London takeaway tips, but overall I felt this was a very useful conference and the audience certainly seemed to appreciate the more advanced approach to the sessions this year.

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.

Google Analytics tools, tips & tricks

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