I worked and worked and worked with Bernadette, at the New York City Harvard Club (where we are having our Google Analytics training on Wednesday, 6/4/08) so that we could accommodate extra people. She is such a gem. I drive her crazy, I know…

If you are coming, now is the time to register. We’ll have two concurrent tracks: implementation and analysis.

Implementation Track: If you are a techie (or even if you aren’t a techie, but need to do the technicals to make your Google Analytics work well), you’ll want to hear John Henson talk about filters and profiles, goals and cross-domain tracking.

Analysis Track: If you’re an analyst (or even if you aren’t, but your company expects you to do that kind of work), you’ll want to hear us talk about how to make sense of all that Google Analytics data. (That’s me — I am speaking for the first three sessions of the day.) Traci Scharf will talk about creating a leaner, meaner AdWords program. Megan Kiel is going to join us from the Google Website Optimizer team to talk about testing your website.

At the end of the day, Jonathan Weber will talk about getting the whole organization on board. And we’re going to work and work and work to be sure your questions are answered.

Don’t worry, you’ll be able to pick and choose among the sessions, and if you have to miss a critical session, we’ll see if we can’t sit with you at lunch and go through the key points. Everyone will get copies of all the handouts, too.

So here’s the link to read all about the training, and here’s the link to look at the agenda.

Robbin

I was really surprised to read Taylor Pratt’s article about the state of SEO. If we can all just get along and respect each other, he said — not in so many words– we’re on the road to victory, and that road leads toward more conversions.

Really?

I think Taylor cares about conversion, but I just don’t think that a lot of other SEOs are on board there. Maybe I am just out of touch… but it just seems like the vast majority of SEOs show ranking reports. “You used to be in position 25 in the SERPs, sir, and now you are in position 5!”

In fact, there are really three ways to measure how well your SEO is doing:

1) Showing the customer how their position has changed in the search engines (Position)
2) Showing the customer how many more visits they got from the keyword. (Clickthrough)
3) Showing the customer how many more conversions they got from the keyword (Conversion)

Position is the easiest to prove. And after all, many SEOs feel like that is their job. Clickthrough is harder to achieve, because the click is a function of position, title tag and description. The description might be the one you wrote, or not at all. So it is capricious.

But what about conversion? Some web analytics tools allow you to easily track conversion to the first referrer and last referrer (and everyone in between.) In Google Analytics, you will always get the last “real” referrer. (Use of a bookmark or directly typing in your URL, for example, won’t overwrite a real referrer like a banner ad click, but every other kind of ad/keyword/reference will. Sure, you can do some fancy footwork to capture the first referrer, but most people do not.) This is a topic that has been addressed a lot…

Unless you take the time and effort to set up your analytics, or unless you have a site where most conversions take place on the first visit, you will often feel like your organic efforts are for naught. Sure, they’ll find you on a non-branded keyword, but will often come back on a branded keyword. So I think most sites (who aren’t going to do that kind of analytics set up, which has its drawbacks, too) should be doing trend analysis — comparing increase in organic traffic to increase in conversion, even if those conversion ultimately came on branded searches or through advertisements.

Robbin

If you don’t know what this is, have a look at my previous post, Copying Goals in Google Analytics

This version has 3 new features:

1. Ability to clear a goal
In the new Options pulldown button you have 4 “Clear Goal” items. Selecting one of these will clear the corresponding goal and reset the name to “Empty”

2. Autosave after Pasting a Goal
The extension can now automatically save a goal after you paste it. This can be toggled on or off from the Options button. It defaults to off (does not automatically save). If you turn it on, when you paste a goal into the goal form, it automatically submits the form and returns you to the previous page.

3. Paste All button
The Paste All button is used from the ‘Profile Settings’ page that displays the Edit links for your four goals.

Profile Settings Page:

From this page, the Paste All button will:

Navigate to the Goal Settings: G1 form
Populate that form with the goal that is saved in the first slot
Save the goal

Navigate to the Goal Settings: G2 form
Populate that form with the goal that is saved in the second slot
Save the goal

Navigate to the Goal Settings: G3 form
Populate that form with the goal that is saved in the third slot
Save the goal

Navigate to the Goal Settings: G4 form
Populate that form with the goal that is saved in the fourth slot
Save the goal

If any goals have been “Cleared” from the Options pulldown button, those goals will be skipped in the Paste All process.

Installation

Open this link in Firefox

Then click Install Now.

Depending on your setup, Firefox may want to download the file instead of installing it directly. Just select “Open With. . .” and choose Firefox from the list of applications.

Thanks again to everyone who helped with suggestions and with troubleshooting.

-John

Today, I want to write about the GA “change chart.” You might even call it, the delta chart. Or, the red and green chart (Note: If you come to our Google Analytics Training Day in New York City, June 4 2008 at the Harvard Club, you’ll hear us talk about this specific topic right before lunch.) I am sure this chart has a great name, and I just don’t know what it is.

Here is where the chart capabilities sit (see screen shot at left) the best kept secret in Google Analytics. Notice how it is in the far right of the GA interface, immediately below the graph and above all the lines of reporting. The red arrow is mine, and points to exactly which chart I am loving - because you can get the regular grid, a pie chart, a bar chart, or — ta da! — the delta chart.

When you click on it, you suddenly have data in context. For example, consider this site, engineering-education.com. They work in two areas, statics and finite element analysis. I can use the delta chart to compare how well certain keywords performed, as compared to the rest of the keywords on the site — like this the screenshot here. Notice how his branded keywords (mini FEA, minifea, etc) - and in fact, most things related to finite element analysis — do well, but a generic term like “engineering education” — which this site, would seem to want desperately — does not convert at all for FEA goals.

But that’s not all. No, that’s not all. (As the Cat in the Hat might say.) When you are in “compare date range” mode, the green and red bars automatically change to do a date comparison. So notice how referrals (in the screen shot below, which compares media this month with media last month) are just not working as well for this company as they did last month. On the other hand, organic is way up, as a conversion rate. So now they have the context to go drill down and understand why they are “doing better” in organic and “doing worse” in referral. (A bonus for the SEO guy?)

Well anyway, now you have seen one of my favorite charts in GA. Come to NYC and learn more at our training.

Robbin

Do you do this Regular Expression stuff in Google Analytics? If you don’t, I would really like your help. (Sorry, this is for newbies only.)

I worked with the documentation pros at GA to improve the Help Center documentation on Regular Expressions, but I can no longer look at it through newbie eyes. I still worry that the uninitiated will read and and think, “Huh?” but maybe I am wrong. I wrote another article, but the documentation people said, “Robbin, we think we have enough.” And maybe they are right. (That’s the part that I don’t know.)

So please go to this page in the GA Help Section (if you are new at it), and send me email, telling me how new you are to this, and whether it made enough sense for you to be able to get started with Regular Expressions. Send me email so that others won’t be influenced by your thoughts. Remember, the less you know about this, the more valuable your thoughts are.