Archive for June, 2011
Posted on June 30, 2011 by Michael Harrison
In case you haven’t been paying attention, it’s been a big week at Google. On Monday, the +1 button was released on all Google search pages. On Tuesday, the Google+ Project was announced. Then, on Wednesday, Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools got new social tracking features. So far, no big announcements for today, but it’s early yet.
If you’re like me, you feel like the world of Google is moving too fast to wrap your head around it all. That’s why I took the time to put together a cheat sheet of the recent additions to Google Analytics. At least for one of Google’s many products, you’ll know exactly what is available, what’s new, and what you should keep an eye on in the future.
Wow. That’s a lot of new stuff! Let’s go into detail.
Quick Over-Time Insights with Plot Rows
The first real treat of the year was the new Plot Rows feature, which we covered when it was announced.
If you were one of the lucky ones who had access to the new version of Google Analytics, you could mark off rows on a data table and see those segments displayed in your timeline. It is, hands down, the quickest way to gain on-the-fly insight into the performance of your traffic over time.
Try It Now: Go into Traffic Sources / Incoming Sources / Campaigns and plot two of your largest campaigns. Change the timeline to view the Bounce Rate. See any big peaks or valleys?
Of course, this feature was only available in the new version of Google Analytics. Thankfully, the next big feature announcement was…
Google Analytics v5 is Available to Everyone!
Yes, that’s right. After months of waiting for beta invites, Google opened the floodgates and gave everyone the opportunity to try out (and critique) the new version of Google Analytics. Redesigned from the ground up, v5 meant more useful features right away, but also an easier time with ugprades down the road. Based on the slew of new features in May and June, it looks like the plan worked.
Try It Now: One of my favorite features of the new version gets overlooked a lot, but I absolutely love how I don’t have to wait around for reports to load while I’m navigating through the sections. Click on Content or Conversions and the report sections open up immediately. In the old version, you couldn’t have more than one section open at a time. This saves me so much time every day.
Mixed Attribution with Multi-Channel Funnels
It’s not officially available, except in an extremely limited beta, but the announcement that Google was introducing a mixed attribution model into Google Analytics got a lot of people talking. Measuring assisted conversions and labeling traffic sources after-the-fact are two features that many users have been waiting on for a very long time.
Try It Now: Chances are you don’t have Multi-Channel Funnels at this point. As soon as it opens up to more people, look for a post on the LunaMetrics Blog.
Measuring Page Load Time with the Site Speed Report
One of the first new additions to v5 was the Site Speed report. With a minor addition to the Google Analytics Tracking Code, users could begin to see how quickly their content was loading for site visitors.
Try It Now: Pull your load time out of the Site Speed report and match it up against more interesting dimensions. Create a Custom Report that pairs browser, campaign, or location with the Average Page Load Time metric. See anything strange about those dimensions?
Integrate Google Analytics with Google Webmaster Tools
People have wanted a more fully featured SEO report set in Google Analytics for a while. Most of us use both GA and Google Webmaster Tools together, but now we can integrate the two and get search query information, clicks, impressions, and average organic position data right inside of Google Analytics. At the moment, this feature is still in a pilot program, so it hasn’t been rolled out to all accounts, but you can request an invite here.
Try It Now: If you’re lucky enough to be involved in the pilot, here’s a fun experiment to try. Pick a keyword that shows up in your Search Engine Optimization / Queries report and segment by landing page. Then modify your meta description for the top landing page and upload it. Monitor Google Analytics to see how the keyword’s CTR is affected. It’s a cheap and easy way to do A/B split testing on your organic results.
Improvements in Mobile Reporting
Based on anecdotal evidence (e.g., browsing the web on my Android phone) there are still a lot of site owners out there who aren’t convinced that mobile-designed websites are necessary. This may or may not be true, depending on the site, but you should be sure before making a decision either way. The updated Mobile report set shows precisely how many visitors are accessing your site from a mobile phone, and even shows you what model of phone is accessing your site. You can even see a picture of the device and find out how the user interfaces with the phone: touchscreen, clickwheel, or even stylus.
Try It Now: Before you do anything else, go to the Mobile Overview and change the report view to Percentage. What does the pie chart look like? What is the total percentage of visits to your site from mobile phones? If it’s small, it obviously means you don’t have a big share of mobile users. Do you need more, or is mobile browsing not something in your roadmap?
Social Tracking in Google Analytics
Tracking social media interaction on your website has been possible with Google Analytics, but up until now, it’s never had its own report set. Now, with the use of the new Google Analytics _trackSocial method on your site, you can start to track social interactions–Facebook likes, Twitter shares, and Google +1s–in the new Social report set.
Now, each time a visitor clicks one of those buttons, a special kind of event will be fired off and recorded by Google Analytics. You’ll be able to see the total amount of traffic that was “socially engaged” with your site and how it compares against the traffic that wasn’t. You can segment by the type of social actions and even see the specific pages that engaged visitors to click “Like” or “Share”.
Try It Now: By default, Google +1 clicks are tracked, so if you have a +1 button already installed on your site, you should already see some data in your Social report section. Take a look at the Social / Pages report and see what pages are getting +1′d. Is there anything special about them? As you think about ways to promote your content, keep an eye on this report and the Social / Engagement report to ensure that your social efforts are moving in the right direction.
What’s Next?
It’s obvious that the Google Analytics team isn’t sitting still. They’re bringing out new features and new reports at blazing speeds. What are you hoping is in the pipeline? Share in our comments!
View Comments (4 Responses) | Categories: Google Analytics, Social Media, Web Analytics
Posted on June 27, 2011 by Robbin Steif
Just a quick post to update people on our upcoming Google Analytics training (Seminars for Success, sponsored by Google.) We will be training in Philadelphia (July 12-14) and in Baltimore (August 9-11). The Philadelphia training will be at Temple Center City, and Baltimore will be at Johns Hopkins. Both cities will include three days of optional training:
- Google Analytics 101 for beginning marketers/analysts
- Google Analytics 201 for intermediate and advanced marketers/analysts
- Google Analytics 301 for techies
Trainees typically walk away with a strong understanding of GA for their level. Note: many people take more than one day of training, but you are welcome to pick and choose your days. There are discounts for one person taking more than one day of training. ($50 for two days, $100 for three days)
The day starts at 8:00 for continental breakfast, includes lunch, and goes to the end of the business day. We also include jump drives with all the slides on them and a hard copy of the material, so that you can review and ask questions later, too.
Robbin
View Comments (2 Responses) | Categories: Google Analytics, Industry News
Posted on June 24, 2011 by Dorcas Alexander
aka “Catching the Purple Squirrels”
Google officially recommends not to use more than one include filter, because it can lead (rather unintuitively) to excluding all the data in an Analytics profile.
“Adding more than one Include filter to a profile can cause data to not appear in your reports. To allow data to populate your reports again, we recommend assigning a maximum of one Include filter to each of your profiles.”
But sometimes using more than one include filter is the only way to catch the purple squirrels. Let me explain.
When One Include Filter Isn’t Enough
A reader sent us this question:
“I’d like to create a GA profile and to apply one filter to include only the SE organic traffic coming to a specific part of my site…. For example, all the traffic coming from SE organic to www.example.com/mydir/”
Unfortunately, even though he’d thought outside the box and (very creatively!) tried to use a single include filter based on Campaign Target URL, he was not successful.
In this case, a single include filter will simply not suffice. He needs one include filter for the traffic medium (organic) and another include filter for the set of pages visited (the specific subdirectory).
Why Using More Than One Include Filter Can Exclude All Your Data
So what’s the problem with using more than one include filter? Why does Google recommend against it? Here are two helpful tips to remember:
- When it comes to filters, “include” means include only (i.e., exclude everything else)
- When applying multiple filters, imagine the word “and” between them
If you remember those two things, then applying filters like the following will obviously exclude all your data:
“Include only squirrels AND include only dogs AND include only cats…”
It all boils down to the types of data you’re trying to include. Ask yourself, can members of one type be members of another type, or are they mutually exclusive?
Why Using More Than One Include Filter Can Be Okay
Our reader is trying to include two types of data that are not mutually exclusive. He needs to include data from organic search traffic and data from pages in a specific subdirectory. Viewed another way:
- Data from one subdirectory is our set of squirrels (a different subdirectory could be dogs, etc.)
- Data from one medium is our set of purple things (a different medium could be yellow things, etc.)
And here we want data that belongs to both sets, i.e. the elusive purple squirrels.
In this case we absolutely can use two include filters. We can say “include only purple things and include only squirrels” because then we’ll end up with the purple squirrels.
How To Catch the Purple Squirrels
First, the standard warning. Don’t apply new filters to existing profiles! Always create a new profile or use a test profile to “test drive” new filters and make sure they get the data you want.
Now create your two include filters. Navigate to the new/test profile, then go to the Filters tab and click +New Filter.
To include only organic traffic, create a custom filter. Choose “Include” and Filter Field “Campaign Medium” and Filter Pattern “organic” (don’t include the quotes). Click Save.
Then create another filter to include only traffic to a subdirectory. You actually have two options here: One way is to create a predefined filter. Choose “include only” and “traffic to the subdirectories” and “that are equal to” and then enter the subdirectory, such as /mydir/.
Predefined vs. Custom Filters
The drawback to the predefined filter is that it does not recognize regular expressions. (Say what? Check out our free e-book for an easy intro to regular expressions.)
So the other way to include only traffic to a subdirectory, and the only way if you need to use regular expressions, is to create a custom filter. Choose “Include” and Filter Field “Request URI” and Filter Pattern ^/mydir/.
In a custom filter I can use special characters from regular expressions, like the caret (^). The caret means “starts with”. So I enter Filter Pattern ^/mydir/ if I want to match pages like /mydir/abc.html but not /sub/mydir/abc.html. To match /mydir/ at any level, just leave the caret off.
And voilà! With an include filter for organic traffic and an include filter for /mydir/, our reader has a new profile containing exactly the data he wants.
But one more thing before I go…
Catching Squirrels and Dogs
Remember how I said you can’t include only squirrels AND include only dogs? We can actually work around that, using custom filters.
What I’ll do is create a custom filter that says “include squirrels OR dogs” because I can use a special character from regular expressions called the pipe (|). The pipe, or vertical bar (found above the Enter key on most keyboards), simply means “OR”.
To include traffic to /mydir/ or /mydir2/ create a custom filter, choose “Include” and Filter Field “Request URI” and Filter Pattern /mydir/|/mydir2/.
To match pages that have to start with /mydir/ or /mydir2/, change the Filter Pattern to ^/mydir/|^/mydir2/.
What are some other issues you’ve had with filters? Have you discovered creative ways to get the data you need? Let me know in the comments.
View Comments (9 Responses) | Categories: Filters, Google Analytics
Posted on June 14, 2011 by Brian Honigman
Here’s a list of the most effective conversions to look for when measuring social media:
1. Engagement is the most common conversion that brands see within their social media profiles and it is often the most easy to achieve in varying degrees. Engagement includes any action a user takes on your brand’s profile. For example, a Like on Facebook, a comment on a YouTube video or even a Retweet on Twitter. This conversion helps spread awareness to a user’s entire personal network about your brand. Engagement that holds more weight in social media are the higher level actions that take more efforts from a user. For example, a Like in Facebook hold less weight than a comment in Facebook does. While a Retweet holds less weight than a mention in Twitter. Any engagement is helpful, its just important to remember some is weighted more heavily than others.
2. E-Commerce as a conversion is still in its infancy in terms of social media, but is growing by leaps and bounds. Having a browser directly convert to a buyer from one of your social media accounts can be extremely powerful because that sale can be instantly shared with their entire network. Whether its through a shopping application on Facebook or through a direct buy from a link on twitter, social media ecommerce comes in a variety of forms. For instance, the ticket retailer for concerts and events Eventbrite has completed a 12 week internal study that estimated that a “share” on Facebook is worth $2.52 in increased tickets sales and a share on Twitter is worth about $0.43 for their company, which is indirect ecommerce. Now this example does not apply to everyone, but its just an example of how converting a user can help you brand earn profit in the short or long term.
3. Lead generation is another common conversion brands receive from their social media efforts. Lead generations also encompasses many different things, for instance gathering the usernames of prominent industry leaders in your Twitter account can help you learn more about your industry and connect with potential partners. While setting up a contest on Facebook that requires users to enter their names and email addresses as entry is another form of lead conversion. Even something as simply searching through current conversations and gauging whether there is interest for your product, services or cause within a specific geographic location is social media based lead generation.
4. Service conversion is best visualized as a 3 step funnel. When a user receives service from your social media profiles it’s a type of conversion that helps strengthen your overall brand awareness in both the short and long term. If that user learns something from the content you shared it will help them associate that type of information with your brand. If a user is made of aware of new services and information about your brand they will also hopefully associate you as the industry standard for that type of cause, product or service. For instance, ING Direct regularly shares True and False investment tips on Facebook that gain a lot of leverage. People begin to come back for more tips, while strengthening their association with ING Direct as the resource for investment knowledge on the web.
5. Traffic to your website is another conversion many brands receive through their social media accounts. Sending traffic to your website can lead a user to read an article on your website, learn more about your business, continue on the sales funnel or help them complete a sleuth of other actions. Many websites you their social profiles for merely news aggregation platforms, not actively monitoring the network, but focusing on letting people know when they’ve posted a new article or resource. For instance, Mashable and the New York Times merely update the majority of their Twitter profiles with new articles they’ve posted, but because they are actively choosing to use the Twitter platform in this manner.
View Comments (No Responses) | Categories: Conversion Science, Social Media
Posted on June 8, 2011 by Brian Honigman
Social media is more than just a tool for looking at pictures of your friends and reminiscing about times past. It’s become a tool with measurable and predictable power that truly has a place with almost any kind of business. There are many benefits to using social media for business, but here are my top choices.
1. Branding: This is one of the most obvious benefits for most businesses using social media. Whether users directly engage with your brand or not, they will still see your brand name within the networks they use. The more impressions a consumer gets of your business, the more likely they will remember your name in the future. Whether you’re a shoe retailer or a non-profit looking to gain recognition for your cause, brand awareness is vital for your continued success.
2. Reputation Management: Managing your online reputation is essential within social media because your brand or industry is being talked about regardless of whether you take part in the conversation. It’s beneficial to know what your customers think about your products, cause, services etc, and with this input in mind you can react accordingly. Since social media is open to everyone, anyone has the ability to say what they want about your brand. Therefore, making sure what is being said is truthful, not necessarily positive, is key to developing the trust of your audience and influencing them in a positive manner. Feed back from Social Media can also inform your decision about how you deal with your clients or market your business.
3. Customer Service and Feedback: Providing support to your customers is vital to the success of any business and social media is no exception to the rule. When a person reaches out to you, whether their input is good or bad it is extremely important to respond in a timely and helpful manner. Social media provides the platform for consumers to interact on a person to person level, so that they aren’t talking to a faceless representative over the phone or via email. Respond whenever a user reaches out, just not to users acting profane, misleading or hateful. Providing this level of service, which can be something as simple as thanking someone for mentioning your brand, is completely transparent to your entire network, showing how dedicated you are to your audience.
4. Lead Generation: Social media can help act as a means of finding customers for your business, advocates for your cause or as a means to make many other beneficial connections. Like we’ve previously discussed, conversations are happening constantly within each social network and it’s just a matter of you monitoring these conversations and reaping the benefit. These leads can be anything from an idea for an article to an online sale. For example, just by searching through Twitter you get a feel for the buzz in your industry and who’s saying what and possibly interact with interested future customers.
5. Educational Asset: In any industry its important to remain innovative in your field and find the best ways to continue the conversations about what you do. Since you’re here with us today learning about social media, it’s obvious you’re one of the people looking to stay ahead of the curve on a new form of media. Social media provides your brand with a free source of constant information from other brands, media outlets, friends, coworkers and even your competition.
6. Competitive Analysis: In any industry it’s important to keep pace with your competitors. Social media merely makes this process easier by allowing for complete transparency of the content and conversations your competitors are having on their various social accounts. Social media can help keep you on track with other non-profits, businesses, publications or whoever your interested in keeping tabs on or on the other side of the fence looking to partner with in the future for a promotion, campaign or some other type of partnership.
View Comments (4 Responses) | Categories: Facebook, Social Media, Twitter, YouTube
Posted on June 1, 2011 by Jordan Knox
If you haven’t been preparing for the imminent zombie apocalypse you may have heard about Game of Thrones. If, like me, you are a total geek then your mind has been blown the last seven weeks while watching the show. For everyone else who isn’t into epic sprawling fantasy Game of Thrones is a show on HBO based off the book series A Song of Fire and Ice by George R.R. Martin. How does this tie into link building though Jordan? Good question inquisitive reader. At first I thought the quick blurb at the top would be enough and then jumping out in paragraph two and yelling surprise we tricked you and did it for the queries and linkbait would suffice, but a sense of déjà vu traveled over me. Therefore, I’m going to do my best to parallel a cornerstone of SEO practices with a fantasy show. Yep. So how is an epic fantasy series comparable to Link building?
It’s Confusing as All Hell
While watching the first episode I was bombarded with about a thousand characters in roughly 60 minutes. The series is so massive the wonderful Magda Maslowska at Haute Slides made this nifty infographic detailing all the relationships in Game of Thrones. Heavy, I know. If you have ever tried digging through the countless columns and rows of data pulled from the tools you use when looking at links you’ll agree it can be just as overwhelming, if not more. The show did a wonderful job of pacing out all the information and by the end I was craving more. Just like the show a few simple actions can make sorting through all that link data a lot easier. The first step would to have a thorough keyword list. There are several areas I like to keep track of for my keyword list:
• Traffic volume
• Keyword difficulty
• Ranking for the Site
This helps me focus on the words I feel the site has the best potential based on those factors and then I grab a sampling of the best, around 10, to start to see the competition.
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Understanding what you are specifically trying to rank for quickens the process and you can grab the results and color code them. I use SEOmoz’s KW difficulty tool to export the results and then double check through Google as well. The data SEOmoz gives out is the Page Authority and Domain Authority saving me the time of having to go through each site. Additionally, I like to see who keeps showing up and who is a onetime outlier. I just use the find function and work my way down coloring light orange for one time sites, blue for multiples, and yellow for the site you are working on. Then you’re left with a nice picture of common competitors and potential one time sites that may have an interesting backlink structure, which I base on PA and DA for them.
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You can grab the multiples and interesting one time sites and put them in another sheet or an entirely different excel sheet. For organization purposes I tend to use another file for the following steps, therefore if I mess up royally, pun intended, I can go back to earlier versions.
Everyone Wants to Be on Top (and will kill you to get there)
Okay, that’s kind of harsh. I have yet to receive any death threats or sword attacks by having high ranking sites up in the SERPS. Still you can’t deny that certain terms are fiercely competitive and determining the effectiveness of your site against competitors is the difference between a victory and countless hours of wasted work. So now you’ve got a nice section of multiple sites and interesting outliers that have shown up and you’ve put them in their own file. Now it’s time to open up the trusty Open Site Explorer and start to dig into some links. Setting up the filters to only focus on followed + 301, External Pages only, and focusing on all pages on the Root Domain.
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I export the data from OSE and sort the entire list by Domain Authority from largest to smallest using the sort feature through Excel. Then I copy the first 100 URL results from column A into the pre-existing file we created for the time being. Using the find and replace function I eliminate all the http:// then use the text as columns feature in Excel to pull out each individual part of the string allowing me to look at anything unusual or interesting.
I make a note of anything interesting and then delete all the columns except for the main domain, which would be column B, then delete Column A. Going back to the original CSV file and copy in everything and go through a couple final steps:
• Delete the first six rows (superfluous data)
• Get rid of every column except URL, Anchor Text, PA, DA
Giving you something like this:
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This leaves me with a nice sheet full of the main domain, the actual URL, Anchor text, Page Authority, and Domain Authority. From here I can group the backlinks and start to look for common trends. I do this for every URL from the main page of data we created. I also make sure to cross-reference this data with a backlink analysis of the site I’m trying to build links for so I’m not wasting time on shared link prospects. In no time at all you’ll be looking at a list of over 1,000 links all ready to gleam insights and see if any can be used to gain a high level link or online partnership down the road.
Knowing Secrets about your Enemies is Golden
After setting up a decently robust list of data looking for groupings and outliers continues as a theme. By grouping similar sites you can start to get a better picture at the areas that tend to link to assets your competitors have. Even if your site is lacking in similar content make note of this and add it into your content plan. Additionally, it is worth noting localized assets even if they don’t affect your site. For instance, if a Competitor from Virginia got a great .gov link for a specific law but your client is based in Maryland; don’t disregard that piece of information. With that knowledge you can use the similar terminology but search within Maryland, possibly granting you a .gov link as well. You shouldn’t dismiss using that information at the correct time as it is the difference between ranking higher or being double crossed by a man with a magnificent mustache (These two things have nothing in common).
View Comments (No Responses) | Categories: Search Engine Optimization
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