Archive for the ‘Miscellaneous’ Category
Posted on March 20, 2009 by Robbin Steif
Do you know what the definition of an Analytics Ninja is? By rights, I should link to the blogpost of the person who coined the term, but he gets so much link love already. Plus, I think the definition should be changed: “Analytics Ninjas have cool Ninja t-shirts.” The sleeves are just the best, they are wide and then banded. (You can tell that I am writing a fashion column and not an analytics or conversion blog.) While I am at it, let me show you where to get your own. Jeremy Hutton did all the work. I think Jeremy or Caleb Whitmore bought this Analytics Ninja shirt for me, and I know that I have to figure out how to thank one or both of them.
Continuing on the topic of late-Friday superfluous blog posts, I have to tell you about the case of beer John Henson of LunaMetrics Fame received this week. I got an email last week with the title, “Regarding John Henson.” I was wondering what kind of trouble he had gotten himself into…. Anyway, the email went like this, edited a little to disguise the writer:
“I called today to ask about getting some technical support from your team on a GA Subdomain tracking issue. I spoke with John about the issue and he said shoot him over the info and he would take a look. My jaw dropped when he offered to take a look and see if there was a quick fix.
“John got back to me within 10 minutes with the catch. I have to tell you that with all the companies I have worked with this was one of the most impressive examples of customer serv
ice I have experienced. I work with many startups, have consulted for numerous clients, and have called on dozens of vendors. Never once have I seen something this gracious. [Comment from Robbin: He is talking about JOHN? Who insults me every day?]
“I am sending John a case of beer as a personal thanks. Know that any opportunity I have to recommend your company and services I will do so ….”
We didn’t really believe the beer was coming (because it is hard to get beer from another country into this one, much less into Pennsylvania), but you can see the picture here of the case John received earlier this week.
OK, enjoy your weekend; next week Jonathan will write about site overlay, part II, and I’ll tell everyone to hold June 2 for GA Training in NYC.
Robbin
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Posted on February 2, 2009 by Jim Gianoglio
Using the hash mark (#) instead of the question mark (?)
Have you ever wanted to track the visits to your site from a specific link, but worried about the negative implications of using query parameters in the URL? (I know, it’s kept me up late at night too.) We recently talked with Mike Plummer, a Seattle-based web analyst at POP, about this topic and he gave us some ideas to chew on – thanks Mike!
Using tracking parameters in the URL is a great way to track visits from links on other sites, but it raises a couple of thorny issues: duplicate content and (possibly) devaluing the links to your site if they are perceived to be paid links. Let’s look at the first issue – duplicate content.
Duplicate Content (Duplicate Content)
Here’s a hypothetical example: Let’s say LunaMetrics is running a special promotion of giving away a lifetime supply of ice cream to all new clients. In fact, this (hypothetical) promotion is such a big hit, web analyst guru and all-around great guy Avinash Kaushik decides to blog about it and post links to our homepage.
Of course, being the analysts we are, we want to track the visits from those links, so we ask Avinash to add the following tracking parameters to the links:
http://www.lunametrics.com/?utm_source=avinash&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=icecream
Things are going great – we are able to segment the traffic to just the visits from those specific links, and see that visits from Avinash have an 87% conversion rate! In fact, readers of Avinash’s blog are so excited about our promotion (and they love ice cream so much) they all start bookmarking our homepage and linking to it on their own blogs and websites. The only problem is that they bookmark and link to the URL with the tracking parameters (who can blame them – they just copy and paste the address from the browser).
The problem is that the search engines view the URL with the tracking parameters as a different page than our homepage URL without the parameters. So the value of all the links to the URL with the parameters doesn’t count toward our homepage at all. (And we all know how important links are when it comes to ranking higher in the search results, right?)
What are we to do?
Anchors Away!
Instead of using a question mark (?) in the query parameter, set it off with the hash mark (#). Of course, you’ll want to modify your Google Analytics Tracking Code with pageTracker._setAllowAnchor(true); to track the parameters after the hash mark. Google’s documentation on this feature is a little confusing, so we’ll be covering the proper usage in a short follow-up post later in the week. (Update: As promised, here’s the follow-up post – “Campaign Tracking with _setAllowAnchor“)
The great thing about this method is that when Google sees a URL with a hash mark, it ignores everything after the hash. So…
www.lunametrics.com/#this
and
www.lunametrics.com/#that
and
www.lunametrics.com/
are all the same page in the eyes of Google. That means that when someone links to www.lunametrics.com/#utm_source=avinash&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=icecream it will be the same as linking to www.lunametrics.com as far as Google is concerned.
The Issue of Paid Links
Here’s what Google says about paid links:
Google and most other search engines use links to determine reputation. A site’s ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to it. Link-based analysis is an extremely useful way of measuring a site’s value, and has greatly improved the quality of web search. Both the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of links count towards this rating.
They go on to say that some SEOs and webmasters have participated in buying and selling links that pass PageRank in an effort to rank higher. That is in direct violation of their webmaster guidelines, and they have been getting more aggressive in detecting these paid links and devaluing them. (It’s only fair to include that Google isn’t against all paid links – as long as they are designated as being paid.)
In the last paragraph, they say “Google works hard to ensure that it fully discounts links intended to manipulate search engine results, such as excessive link exchanges and purchased links that pass PageRank.”
Let me put on my aluminum-foil hat for all you conspiracy theorists out there. There are some that believe that if Google sees campaign parameters in a URL that it’s a signal for a paid link. If that’s the case, then links to your site that include campaign parameters may not pass any PageRank to your page.
But there are certainly cases (like our ice cream promotion example) where we aren’t paying for the link, but want to be able to track it. Again, using the hash mark (#) instead of the question mark (?) should accomplish this.
There you have it. Now, who wants ice cream?
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Posted on October 10, 2008 by Jim Gianoglio
Canonicalization is a fancy word to describe the process of choosing the best URL to display for a given page when there are several choices. The most common scenario is www vs. non-www URLs. For example, most people would consider the following URLs to be the same:
- www.example.com/
- www.example.com/index.html
- example.com/
- example.com/index.html
The problem is that even though each of these example URLs could all point to the exact same page, they are still different URLs, and are treated as such by search engines. The reasoning for this stems from the fact that technically, a web server could return completely different content for all the above URLs.
So why does it matter?
There are many negative effects of serving both the www and non-www versions of your site. It can result in duplicate content (having the exact same content at more than one URL) and can also lead to “dirty” data in your Google Analytics. First, we’ll discuss the problems from an SEO perspective – serving duplicate content and splitting your links to different URLs. Our next post will dissect the problem from a Google Analytics perspective.
Canonicalization from an SEO perspective
Having the same content at “different” URLs presents duplicate content. Now, let me dispell a common myth: there is no such thing as a duplicate content penalty by Google or the other major search engines. In other words, if you have duplicate content on more than one page, the search engines will not actively lower your rankings.
The problem with duplicate content is that it splits up the links you have pointing to your pages. We all know (hopefully) that links to your website from other websites (inbound links) play a vital role in increasing your rankings in the search engines. When you have one page with two or more URLs, there is a chance that not everyone will link to the same URL.
For example, if you have 1,000 inbound links to www.yoursite.com/ and 1,000 inbound links to yoursite.com/ (without the www), then the search engines will only count half of the total links to your homepage. If the search engines saw that all 2,000 links were in fact pointing to the same page, however, then your homepage would certainly rank higher than if the search engines only counted 1,000. So that begs the question: “How do I consolidate those links to one canonical URL?”
URL Rewriting Tools
The easiest way to fix this very common problem is by using mod_rewrite and adding URL rewriting rules to your .htaccess file. This requires being on an Apache server, however, which some of us are not fortunate enough to be on. If your website is on a Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS), then you can accomplish the same task by installing ISAPI_Rewrite. The basic idea is that when someone requests http://yourpage.com/, your server would do a 301 (permanent) redirect to http://www.yourpage.com/.
Stay tuned for Part 2, which will discuss domain canonicalization and how it affects your Google Analytics.
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Posted on July 26, 2007 by Taylor
Hello WA/Conversion world, Taylor here. Oddly enough, my very first LunaMetrics post is to brag about how great my first year with the company has been (and first year in the “real world.”) I’m the SEO here at LunaMetrics, and Robbin had asked me to prepare a self-review. Naturally, my SEO skills kicked in and Robbin thought it would be great for me to share my thoughts with all of you!
*short pause to let the excitement sink in*
7 Reasons Why My First Year at LunaMetrics was a Success
- I was very concerned that because this was my very first job out of college I wouldn’t be able to meet expectations, and eventually be the demise of LunaMetrics. Thankfully, I feel like I was able to carry my share of the work load, and (with Robbin’s help) deal with any adversity.
- My SEO knowledge has quintupled (I say “quintupled” because I don’t know what’s higher than that!) When I first came into this job, all I had was some very basic knowledge of SEO and a lot of passion. I really wanted to excel in this field, and get a full understanding of the Search Engine world. I think I’ve done an amazing job so far with the help of my early training with Robbin, reading SEO books, attending conferences, asking Rob questions (he’s our Canadian SEO friend), reading blogs, and (of course) trial and error.
- I feel confident with my SEO abilities. Am I an SEO guru? No way. I do, however, look forward to new SEO challenges – instead of fearing that I won’t be able to solve a problem. I really owe a lot of that to my trip to SES NY in April. During one of the Q&A sessions, I was able to answer about 8/10 of the questions. I realized that maybe I’m a lot better at this than I thought. Don’t confuse arrogance with confidence. I by no means developed some sort of ego when I had this epiphany. I know now that no matter what I have to tackle in the future (in the SEO world at least), with enough time and commitment I’ll be able to understand it, and overcome it. And that is a BIG deal to me.
- What I thought was going to be the biggest disaster of my SEO career, ended up being my biggest success. Of course I am talking about the [specific client's] website. That website was a complete disaster, and I had to deal with a dozen SEO issues that I had never addressed before – all at once. On top of that, I was having to deal with the ego of a web designer who just didn’t get the SEO world. When [that client's site] lost most of its rankings, their traffic plummeted, half the site didn’t work, and 90% of their site was in the supplemental (all on Christmas Eve, of course), I thought for sure this account would get me fired and my career would be forever scarred. After a lot of hard work, patience, and help I was able to make this site my biggest success story. Oh, the irony.
- I’ve done a couple of public speaking events…and enjoyed them! After working here for 2 months I remember Robbin telling me that she hoped I would start speaking on SEO in the future. I remember my jaw hitting the floor and I tried to start thinking of a way out of it. Fortunately, after watching multiple great presentations from Robbin and the help of Tim Sweet, I was able to overcome my stage fright and give well informed sessions (in my opinion). I look forward to my next speaking engagements!
- I enjoy what I do. I can’t tell you how great it is when people ask if I enjoy my job and I tell them how much I love it. I just feel bad that they don’t get the same joy out of their jobs. My biggest goal in life was to enjoy what I do for a living. I’m very thankful that I was able to find that so quickly.
- My self review is a top 7 list! Who else can say that?
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Posted on May 21, 2007 by Robbin Steif
My parents were taken aback when I first told them that I was going to quit my webmaster job with a multi-billion dollar company to begin a new venture with LunaMetrics, a small internet consultancy specializing in web analytics, search engine optimization and conversion (among other things). They wondered why I would take such a risk. “After allâ€, my dad said, “you aren’t in your 20’s anymore, you have a mortgage and a child and you need to consider your retirement.â€
But, really, who ever listens to their parents?
So I ditched the webmaster job and began an exciting new phase of learning, exploration and frequent contributions to the LunaMetrics blog (starting with this one). That was 5 days ago.
On Friday I received my first phone call at my new place of employment. Who was on the other end of the phone? It was a career recruiter who found my name (and my new job title) online. She first asked me if I would be interested in interviewing for a job as the vice president of web marketing and analytics for a large public company. And then she asked me how long I’ve been with LunaMetrics. Needless to say, 4 days is not a very impressive length of tenure so the phone call ended pretty quickly.
After I hung up, I turned to Robbin to tell her the story. After laughing a bit, we started talking about this industry and how it is in such demand. There are so many possibilities and so much opportunity to make an impact. And it all comes at such a great time because companies (and the people who run them) are beginning to recognize the power behind the data. They understand why they must make their company more visible on the web. They realize that they can get to know their customers by seeing how they interact online. And, by optimizing their company’s web site, they can enhance their customer’s/member’s experience, thus building their brand loyalty.
On the way home from work, I called my mother to tell her about the call. She responded by saying, “You made the right choice. Congratulations. This is going to be a great experience for you.†And it really is!
So, by way of a long story, I wanted to introduce myself to you, let you know how thrilled I am to be involved in the web analytics industry and how excited I am to begin sharing ideas with you.
Shareen Jordan
Director, Web Analytics
LunaMetrics
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Posted on February 14, 2007 by Robbin Steif
When I used the phrase blog whore the other day, Taylor, our search analyst, and I both turned so red that I said, “Just go home so I don’t have to be any more embarrassed than I already am.” (And ironically, LunaMetrics has been getting ready to work with Prolasta, so we have no end of opportunities to be embarrassed.)
So the blog whore problem is about people who write and say, “Please feature my product in your blog.” “Please mention my survey in your blog.” Please, please, please. On the one hand, I’m flattered, on the other, I feel like … well, you get it by now. (And I don’t even get to make money at it…)
Now, whomever you are, reading this, don’t think I am talking about you. I know you take it personally, but I get email a couple times a week asking me to write about something. Don’t you want to rate my product? Don’t you want to publish my new study? (At least all those investment bankers who call to talk about web analytics don’t ask me to blog about them.)
Let me point to Eric Mattson as a shining example of how to market to bloggers. When he wanted me (and everyone else who participated in his first research study on Thinking Like a Blogger) to blog about it, he didn’t write me and say, “Here’s the study you participated in, please write about it.” Instead, he made me feel really special. I can’t find his original email, but it said something like, “I’ve just finished this study in conjunction with the University of MA, and normally the download costs money, but since you participated, here is a complimentary copy.” And I thought, wow, this would be cool to blog about. He might have had that in mind all along, but he didn’t make me feel … well you get it.
So if you want someone to blog about your report/survey/article/whatever, woo them. Take the indirect route, which always works well in matters of the heart. Make that blogger feel special and loved, like s/he’s getting a scoop.
Happy Valentine’s Day.
Robbin Steif
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Posted on February 9, 2007 by Robbin Steif
Those of you who have Internet consultants working for you – do you ever wonder if you are getting the most out of them?
Here are six ways you can get your Internet (or other) consultant to work harder for you:
1. Leave some money on the table
Yup, you read that right. It’s hard to love clients who negotiate too hard. If you have negotiated to get less work for less money/time, that’s pretty reasonable. It’s when you’ve pushed really hard to get the same amount of work for less money that you’ve started a relationship where they love you less. (And on the supplier side: Never ask for a higher price with the assumption that “that’ll give the client room to negotiate.” The client will just feel like you were ripping them off to start with, and you’ve begun a relationship where everything is negotiable.)
2. Don’t ask for five different rewrites of the proposal.
You aren’t turning your consultant into your business partner by doing this — you’ve made him do a lot of work for free, and it wasn’t even work that you can use to improve your bottom line. If you have to ask for one rewrite, be sure that you are very specific in what you need (so that there won’t be a third!) One might argue that if the proposal isn’t meeting your needs, the consultant isn’t asking the right questions — what kills me is when I do multiple rewrites and they all say basically the same thing, and finally the client is happy with the adjectives or verbs in the nth rewrite.
3. Stay involved.
You may feel like you want a consultant so that you don’t have to be involved. But the more involved you are, the better the quality of work will be. Any way you look at it, you know so much more about your business than your consultant ever will or can afford to learn. Furthermore, if you are involved, you create a stronger bond with the consultant – they know that you care. And let’s face it, if you’re involved, you see what they’re doing. (If I only got to make one point, it would be this one. Clients who are involved get so much more value that the ones who are hands off.)
The best-loved are the clients who invite us to their marketing meetings (and pay for our time there.) They’ve signaled loud and clear, “You’re a member of our marketing team.”
4.Don’t ask for free work.
Andy Beal wrote the most wonderful post on the power of saying no. Soon after I read it, a client wrote me and asked if I would take a two day trip to another state to attend her all-day meeting. She offered to pay for my flight and hotel. Empowered by Andy, I wrote her back and gave her a couple of different ways we could do this (in person, by phone) and I attached prices to each. She didn’t answer that email but business went on as usual until she wrote again, asking for more free work. This one was an easier request (no travel required) but I didn’t want to stick her with another price tag and I didn’t want to do the work for free, so I just ignored it. The work was incredibly important and time-sensitive (I eventually learned), and if she hadn’t started the pattern of asking for free work, I would have stepped up to the plate immediately with a reasonable price.
5. Think twice before you tell your consultant that she’s wrong, and then think one more time.
Most of my company’s clients hire us because we know a lot more about the Internet than they do or want to. So I’m often baffled when they turn around and tell me, or someone from my company, that they aren’t going to do it our way. It sometimes makes sense (they don’t have the resources, for example), but often, the answer is “I just don’t like it.” “It’s not me.” “I really don’t care what the numbers say, this is what makes me feel comfortable.” I walk away thinking, “But wasn’t the idea to improve your website? — what happened to that notion?”
6. Don’t insult your consultant.
I was worked with a client who wanted me to consider his way of doing things. It was an interesting idea, he had. But still, I was absolutely shocked when one of his lieutenants sent me an email, musing that rational people don’t like to be open minded. “Right,” I thought cynically before deleting it without replying, “That’s absolutely the way to get your consultant to work hard for you — insult them.”
Many thanks to the brilliant mind who suggested this topic.
Robbin Steif
LunaMetrics
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Posted on January 10, 2007 by Robbin Steif
Blogger did an update yesterday (scheduled for the same day as an update of Google Groups.) My feeds are not working now for new subscribers (at least on my computer – I would love if someone else would try it and send me email or just comment) and I can’t even complain about it on the Blogger Google group… Another good reason to get off Blogger.
Sorry.
Robbin
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Posted on December 18, 2006 by Robbin Steif
For anyone in the blogosphere who has been living under a rock (that must be hard to do at the same time), there is a game of blog tag going on. The idea is, you tell five personal things about yourself and then tag five other bloggers to do the same. June Li tagged me but I am ready to turn the game upside down now. (No offense June, and your article on Mountain Dew not owning their own chatter was excellent.)
Let’s face it, readers really don’t care whether I hate my mother-in-law or that I got kicked out of the sixth grade for telling the teacher that she was wrong. On the other hand, I am dying to know who you all are. (Well, maybe not dying. But certainly, incredibly curious.)
Every once in a while, I find out who reads my blog. Thrice I’ve gotten emails about things that were broken on my blog. Sometimes I find out by seeing myself in another blog. Sometimes I find out through my role in the WAA (I’m co-chair of the marketing committee), and I’ll be going about my WAA business, working with a volunteer who then volunteers, “Hey, I read your blog.” On Friday, someone sent me a RegEx question.
So, in the same vein that Time Magazine voted you Person of the Year — do tell about yourself in the comments. You don’t have to say how you embarrassed yourself in junior high (so what else is new?) or that your boss doesn’t approve of blog-reading time or anything else personal. Just… tell us who you are. But if you don’t know what to say, or just don’t want to say, maybe you will answer some of these questions:
- What do you like about this blog and/or why do you read it?
- What do you hate about this blog? (I’m a big girl, I can take it.)
- Are you more interested in web analytics posts or conversion rate posts?
- Do you have a Regular Expression that you are trying to figure out (and if so, what is it?)
- If you are one of a handful of people who come to the blogsite all the time but never subscribe — why not?
Well, that’s five suggestions to my five readers, maybe I can feel like I still played the game.
Robbin Steif
LunaMetrics
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Posted on December 4, 2006 by Robbin Steif
So here I am, actually writing my post in the FeedBurner office. I figured that while I was here, I would learn about IE7 and Feedburner.
But first, let’s not forget what’s really important: The FeedBurner offices. Every bit as cool as the company. All the walls are different colors, and the tables are set up like industrial picnic fences. You can feel the energy in the air.
Anyway, John Z, my always-responsive correspondent, explained the issues to me.
The new IE 7 has the ability to subscribe to feeds (just click on the feed button.) But since it’s not a “standard FeedBurner thing,” I couldn’t understand why I was getting FeedBurner statistics showing me that I had IE7 subscribers.
The issue, John said, is about autodiscovery. Many blogs and podcasts have set feed preferences in their source code. That way, when someone goes to subscribe to a feed with IE7, if they have their autodiscovery set up as FeedBurner, they can track the subscription through FB. Blogger users like me are out of luck – Blogger doesn’t support autodiscovery.
So why do I still see IE7 subscribers? When someone clicks on a generic feed link on my blogsite, and they are using IE7 as their browser, IE7 knows that I have a feed (and knows that I have FeedBurner, since that’s the spot that the orange feed link usually goes to), formats it like a feed and serves up the opportunity to subscribe. Like this – see the Feedburner address in the address bar (with their flaming icon)?
Summary: If someone uses IE7 to subscribe to a feed with FeedBurner autodiscovery enabled, FeedBurner always measures it. If someone uses IE7 to subscribe to a feed like mine (no autodiscovery) they have to use the icons on my site, not merely the IE7 icons, for FeedBurner to notice it.
So for all you IE7 subscribers whom I don’t know about: hello out there! (And it is oh! so cold in Chicago.)
Robbin Steif
LunaMetrics
ps John Z gets all the credit for this post. I am just the journalist here and get credit for all the mistakes.
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