One of the things that I’ve been most impressed with since starting here at LunaMetrics is the systematic, yet enthusiastic approach to coordinating blog efforts. Let me explain. Believe it or not, behind most successful blogs, there’s a defined process for writing, publishing, and sharing each post. While a great blog might garner hundreds of returning visitors daily, a new blog (which, by my estimation, has every capacity to be great) won’t be inherently populated. Wishful thinking aside, visitors won’t instinctively flock to your posts like the salmon of Capistrano. (Shameless Dumb & Dumber plug. Check.) Content is king, but it isn’t the whole kingdom. By coordinating your blog efforts with defined processes, open communication, and a little elbow grease, you can give your new blog a head start.

Let’s look at four tips for coordinating blog efforts:

1. Maintain a Post Calendar

As is true in most walks of life, when it comes to blogging, it’s good to have a plan. If you’re managing a company blog, maintaining a blog-specific Google Calendar is a great way to keep everyone prepared and informed. For each day that a blog post is set to be published, simply create an Event with the scheduled blogger’s name. Easy enough, right? It takes a little time to set up, obviously, but you can rest assured that your coworkers will appreciate your efforts.

You’ll want to decide your posting schedule ahead of time, of course. How many posts would you like published each week? On which days should posts be published? What is the best time to publish each post? You get the idea. These are all things that you’ll want to consider when crafting your calendar. If you’re just starting, don’t feel that you need to rush into publishing three or four blog posts a week. Take it slow. When you feel that you have the process down pat, you can make adjustments.

2. Link to Relevant Posts

A great way to convey a sense of company-wide ownership and trust is by promoting relevant entries via internal post links. In doing so, we’re not simply trying to flatter the man or woman typing away at the keyboard to our left or right. Instead, we’re providing the user with a link from within our own blog that we’re confident has information that they might find useful. When users are able to trust the insights of multiple authors on your blog, they’re more likely to see value in returning. Linking to your own posts can be effective, as well, if done when appropriate. Remember, apart from just referencing relevant posts, internal linking has direct SEO benefits.

3. List or Share Blog Post Ideas

Unique ideas, although infectious, are often hard to come by. Something that you may want to do, via Google Docs, Dropbox, what have you, is maintain a list of blog post ideas that others can draw from and contribute to. If your blog covers a wide spectrum of topics from within an overarching industry, this can be especially useful. For instance, if I notice that Reid (a colleague here at LunaMetrics) has a post coming up on the calendar, I might add a link to an article that I find interesting, in hopes that it spurs his imagination. An alternative to this, which we do often, is sharing directly via email or chat. In general, if you find something industry-related interesting, chances are that your colleagues will, as well. You’ll have your duds, of course, but that’s okay! Inspiration requires only one impetus.

4. Have a Social Strategy

Unique, thought-provoking content is great, and so is making it happen on a regular basis. Do you know what’s better, though? People reading, responding to, and sharing your content. Sounds like a community, right? Right. While it takes time and effort to build a blog community, having a strategy in place for social sharing is a great way to get a head start. Consider the following options when planning your social outreach:

• Social Buttons/Plugins – Social media is the medium through which outstanding blog posts take flight – being read, promoted, and shared by thousands, or hundreds of thousands. Needless to say, I highly recommend giving your users the option to share or vote for (Like or +1) your blog posts socially. Check out this list of social plugins for WordPress.

• Promote Your Posts – Promoting your posts via company and personal social media accounts is a great way to inform your fans or followers about both recently published and dated content. The key here is providing value on a consistent basis. If you’re utilizing your accounts simply to broadcast your latest blog post (or worse, having a bot do it) and not adding any value to the community, you’re not going to keep your followers for very long. However, if you share your own content intermittently, in the midst of general insights and relevant articles from other sources, you’ll add value and retain your community. The same goes for personal accounts.
• Track Social Shares – Tracking social shares from your company and personal accounts is a great way to see how your social outreach strategy is playing out. One way to do this, which Jim has kindly set up for us (and you!), is to track with Google Spreadsheets.

Those three should get you started! You’ll learn to implement more tactics in your social strategy as you develop your blog community.

Remember, coordinating blog efforts is a process that takes time, energy, and a little easing into. By keeping things organized, communicating with one another, and taking a personal stake in the company blog, you and your colleagues can create a community that users are thrilled to be a part of.

What has your company done to coordinate blog posts? Have any of the above tips worked for you? Let us know in the comments below!

In a change aimed at increasing the relevance of its suggested videos and discouraging misleading thumbnail practices, YouTube announced that it has changed its video recommendation algorithm. Now, total viewing time will be factored into the suggested video algorithm, meaning videos with spammy, irrelevant content or deceptive thumbnails will not rank as well as more focused and rewarding clips. It’s important to note that rather than determining the video’s viewer retention as a percentage of video watched, the algorithm instead accounts for the total number of seconds someone watches a video, regardless of overall length. Here’s three ways to increase your viewing time and keep your viewers hovering at the edge of their seats instead of hovering over the back button.

1.) Thumbnails are still important

Although total viewing time is the new change that will affect the recommended selections, clicks will still be incorporated into the overall algorithms suggestions. To that end, it’s still very important to make an expressive thumbnail to draw in potential viewers. Think of your thumbnail like a movie trailer – it should capture enough of the video’s essence to let viewers know what it’s about without giving away the ending. It also should be reflective of the title of the video – don’t forget that these will come up in search results, so don’t rely on your channel or personal brand to provide the entire context. Just like a movie series, it should also incorporate some standardized branding visuals as well, providing a link in the viewer’s mind between videos.

2.) Monitor your response and adjust accordingly

YouTube is adding additional tools to help manage videos and monitor their progress. In addition to their tools for tracking viewership and traffic sources, YouTube has debuted their downloadable Watch Time report, accessed in the top banner of the Analytics Views Report, with helpful metrics like Total Watch Time for videos as well as standard demographic and referral data. Use these metrics to help shape the content and timing of your videos. Additionally, the Audience Retention tool provides a visual way to break down where your videos are losing or gaining traffic.

3.) Get Brand Messages in before your content

Most viewership peters out towards the end of the video, dropping sharply when the outro includes company or personal branding. Content-hungry users will skip onto another video, losing you extra seconds of viewership that can factor into your videos relevant ranking. A simple way to diffuse this is to move all branding and ‘credits’ towards the beginning of the video. Be careful to include an introduction before your credits to ensure the viewer doesn’t simply skip past them in the beginning as well. This simple shift will earn you extra viewing time and ensure that your brand is getting exposure to the viewer.

Do you think the changes to the Suggested Videos algorithm will be helpful or hurtful? Sound off in the comments and let us know what you think.

It’s a common misconception that using broad match keywords in PPC campaigns will always result in out of control spend and loads of unqualified traffic; when used correctly, however, broad match keywords can be some of the most successful keywords in an account.  Deciding if broad match keywords are right for your account?  Here are three reasons why you should think about using them:

1.)    Increase in traffic

This reason is obvious – having broad match keywords in your account is going to increase the number of visits your campaigns will receive.  People often get too stuck in the mindset that broad match keywords are bad, and therefore limit the potential of their AdWords accounts by not adding any broad match keywords to them.  If you’re spending time (and money) ramping up bids on exact and phrase match keywords trying to increase their positions to increase the traffic they receive, it may end up being more cost effective to implement some broad match keywords.  Broad match keywords are also an extremely effective way to build brand awareness, reaching a wider audience to get your name out in front of more people.  If awareness is one of your PPC goals, then broad match keywords are right up your alley.  Remember, however, that broad match keywords should be implemented correctly and efficiently, or else they could run wild.

2.)    Keyword Discovery

Broad match keywords can be a great way to find new keywords to add to your campaigns, due to the fact that they have the ability to capture traffic in response to a wider variety of search queries than exact and phrase match keywords.  Make sure to keep up with search query reports in AdWords to see which searches triggered your ads, as these searches can spark great ideas for long-tail keywords or different keyword phrase variations.  One of my favorite benefits of the search query report is its ability to expose typos and/or misspellings that triggered some of my broad match keywords.  Misspellings are something that should be implemented in every PPC account, and a great way to discover all the different types of variations is through search query reports.  While phrase match keywords can also be an effective way to discover some long-tailed keywords, they won’t do you any good in discovering typos or misspellings of your keywords.

3.)    There ARE Limitations Possible

Many advertisers often forget this reason when considering broad match keywords in their account – they forget that there ARE limitations to broad match.  While the word “limitation” often carries a negative connotation with it, it can actually be a very positive thing when it comes to the broad match keyword.  One way to have more control over your broad match keywords and limit their reach is to implement negative keywords, something that EVERY AdWords account should have.  Here is where Google’s search query report is going to come in handy again – just as I referenced using the report to find additional keyword variations, you’ll also want to use it to find negative keywords that you don’t want your ads to show up in response to.

Another way to limit the reach of your broad match keywords is to use the broad match modifier.  This is a great way to have enough control over your broad match keywords but still allow them to have that extended reach they’re useful for.  If you’re not familiar with the broad match modifier, it’s something you’ll want to familiarize yourself with.  While a standard broad match keyword can show up for a search that Google deems relevant to the keyword, the broad match modifier allows you to set which word(s) in the keyword phrase are required to be part of the search query in order for the keyword to be triggered.  The modifier is easy to use – simply add a “+” sign in front of the word or words of the keyword that you’ll require to be part of the user’s search query.  For example, if you have the broad match modified keyword “+girls +dressy +shoes,” this keyword could be triggered from the search “dressy shoes for girls” or “girls dressy shoes,” but not for the search “girls shoes,” since you set a modifier before the word “dressy.”

Remember that the type of keywords you should use within your campaigns is really up to your overall goals and what works well for your account.  Broad match keywords may or may not work well for your particular account, but when used correctly they can often be a great way to generate conversions.  It’s important not to rule anything out right off the bat without taking all the possibilities into consideration.

How have you successfully used broad match keywords in your campaigns? Share your comments below.

Now that Pinterest is all the rage, and more sites are starting to put the Pin It buttons next to their images, the next logical step is to track those buttons. Just like we want to know more about the people who share our content on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and others, we’ll obviously want to do the same for Pinterest.

We can do this with Google Analytics, but there are two problems:

1. Pinterest uses an iFrame for their Pin It button, making event tracking difficult
2. They don’t have a publicly available API, making social interaction tracking a challenge

Today I’ll show you a workaround for the first problem, while the second problem will be the subject for a later post.

Event Tracking on the Pinterest “Pin It” Button

Because the code for adding the Pin It button sets it up in an iFrame, we can’t just add the event tracking code whenever someone clicks on the button. Tracking across iFrames requires the _getLinkerUrl method to transfer visitor and campaign cookies between domains. This also requires cross domain tracking to be set up between the domains. Since you can’t put your own tracking code on Pinterest.com, that option is out.

The other option is to take the code that Pinterest tells you to copy and paste, and hack around it a little bit. That sounds like fun, don’t you think?

You can get the code from the Goodies page on Pinterest. There are two versions – basic and advanced. The advanced code is asynchronous and lets you add the button to multiple images on the same page. If you only have one instance of the Pin It button on your page, then the basic code is all you need.

From the Pinterest goodies page, once you fill in the details (URL of the page the pin is on, URL of the image to be pinned, and description) the basic code will look like this:

<a href="http://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.example.com&media=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.example.com%2Fimage.jpg
&description=Awesome%20description" class="pin-it-button" count-layout="horizontal">Pin It</a>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://assets.pinterest.com/js/pinit.js"></script>

The line I highlighted in bold is the culprit that inserts the iFrame and takes the joy out of event tracking. It pulls in the pinit.js file (you can see the contents here). To restore our event tracking joy, we need to modify the code above to look like below:

<a onclick="_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'pinterest', 'pinned']); window.open(this.href, 'signin', 'height=300,width=665'); return false" href="http://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url='document.URL' + &media=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.example.com%2Fimage.jpg&description=awesome%20description" style="position: absolute; background: url('http://assets.pinterest.com/images/pinit6.png');font: 11px Arial, sans-serif; text-indent: -9999em; font-size: .01em; color: #CD1F1F; height: 20px; width: 43px; background-position: 0 -7px;" count-layout="horizontal">Pin It</a>

You should recognize the part in green as the event tracking code. This makes sure that a click on the Pin It button gets recorded in GA as an event. (Don’t forget to track your events as goals!) In the example above, we’re setting the category to “pinterest” and the action to “pinned.” You could also include an optional event label for additional info, like the page they’re on or the image being pinned.

The code in blue is what opens up the new window where the user can write a description for the image and complete the pinning process. The code in orange is all for looks – it includes the styling that controls how the Pin It button will look on the page. This information originally comes from a different source – pinit.html (you can see the source code here). That file, however, is usually referenced by the pinit.js file and placed in an iFrame. Since we are no longer including the pinit.js file, we need to include the styling that is lost.

If you’re using the advanced code for the Pin It button (shown below), you’ll need to remove the first part (the section that starts “Include ONCE for ALL buttons in the page”). In the advanced code, this is the part that calls the pinit.js file. Then, you’ll need to modify the second section (the part that starts with ”Customize and include for EACH button in the page”) to look like our color-coded code above.

<!-- Include ONCE for ALL buttons in the page -->
<script type="text/javascript">
(function() {
window.PinIt = window.PinIt || { loaded:false };
if (window.PinIt.loaded) return;
window.PinIt.loaded = true;
function async_load(){
var s = document.createElement("script");
s.type = "text/javascript";
s.async = true;
if (window.location.protocol == "https:")
s.src = "https://assets.pinterest.com/js/pinit.js";
else
s.src = "http://assets.pinterest.com/js/pinit.js";
var x = document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0];
x.parentNode.insertBefore(s, x);
}
if (window.attachEvent)
window.attachEvent("onload", async_load);
else
window.addEventListener("load", async_load, false);
})();
</script>

<!-- Customize and include for EACH button in the page -->
<a href="http://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.example.com&media=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.example.com%2Fimage.jpg&description=awesome%20description" count-layout="horizontal">Pin It</a>

 It’s your turn

How are you tracking Pinterest? Do you think Pinterest is even worth tracking? Let us know in the comments!

Last week, most of us logged in to a big surprise in our Google Analytics, and it wasn’t a traffic spike, it was the new, new look:

Whoa! Google Analytics, you lookin’ fine.

Now that we’ve had a week to digest the changes, here’s a few of our favorite things that Google has added in this substantial update.

1. Sharing of Custom Reports and Dashboards has never been easier.
   
   I think this most affects people who work with clients or have teamwork among analysts, but if you’ve ever wanted to share a custom report with someone before, it was a pain (usually ending up in the wrong profile), and the ability to share Dashboards was just nonexistent. The new interface lets you choose what profile to apply the dashboard/filter easily.
2. Less flash!
   
   You can now view Google Analytics on your iPod/iPad and see the line charts. I suspect this also explains why GA feels a little peppier. They are most likely phasing out all flash in favor of HTML 5. (A peek into the source code shows that graphs now come from an Iframe which is rendering things with scalable vector graphics)
3. Toggle Buttons are More Clear.
   
   A bunch of features that have been in GA for some time are more apparent now, thanks to a clean new layout of buttons. For me, the Compare Metric and Plot Rows options are much more obvious now. I also really like the Day/Week/Month toggle, it seems cleaner and is definitely less buggy then the old drop-down.
4. Sampling Slider.
   
   While you still can’t turn off sampling (unless you use GA Premium), at least it’s possible to show your customers that sampling can be pretty accurate (or inaccurate) depending on the amount of sampling. I’ve played around with this to see what percentage Transaction data gets the most inaccurate. I’m not sure why anyone would want .02% of their data sampled in exchange for speed, but it’s possible now.
5. Pretty Thumbnails.
   
   This small bit of eye candy makes the sections in GA really pop out, and makes the overall tool look a little more exciting. Although Daniel Waisberg makes a great point that the $ symbol should be by goals instead of Advertising, but I guess Google doesn’t see it that way!

Still using the old GA? We’re offering a free online webinar to help with the transition. Sign up now, we’re limiting this webinar to the first 90 people.

In like a lion, out like a . . . panda? In Google’s month-ending post on the Inside Search blog, over 40 changes were highlighted for the month of February – one of which spells a more than negligible change for local results.

The City of Bridges

The codename for this alteration: Venice. Appropriately enough, the local result has always functioned metaphorically as a bridge between customers and businesses in a given locale. Traversing the gap between creating a brand and creating local brand awareness is plenty bridge-worthy, after all. Anyways, back to Venice. Here’s the snippet from Google that pertains to this particular update:

Improvements to ranking for local search results. [launch codename “Venice”] This improvement improves the triggering of Local Universal results by relying more on the ranking of our main search results as a signal.

Interesting. As I touched on briefly in a previous post on listing your business in Google Places, traditional ranking factors have long been a consideration for those striving for local search exposure. Now, more than ever, perhaps, these traditional on- and off-site signals are playing a pivotal role in ranking local results. Adding fuel to this barely-speculative fire is this last tidbit from Google:

Improved local results. We launched a new system to find results from a user’s city more reliably. Now we’re better able to detect when both queries and documents are local to the user.

All things considered, a properly optimized website is no longer just an option for businesses hoping to rank in competitive local results; it’s a necessity. We’ll look at three different things that you can do today (both on- and off-site) to give your business a better chance of pulling rank in the local results.

1. Create a Google Places Page

The gateway to appearing in Google’s local results: Google Places. If you don’t have an owner-verified Places page for your business, get one. Whether you’re a product-based entity or a service provider, there’s nothing better than a pin drop to attract a local click. One thing that you should pay special attention to when creating your listing is the website field. Make certain that you enter the URL of your business website, as this is what you want your local result to link to. If you leave the field empty, the user will be lead to your listing page. While this is great for providing general information and encouraging customer reviews, it’s not nearly as customizable as your actual website.

More importantly, in linking your website to your Places listing, you’re providing Google with a set of pages from which to draw the aforementioned ranking signals. Essentially, if you don’t link your website (or you don’t have one), you’re probably missing out on these additional signals. In competitive markets, you need every edge you can get your hands on.

2. On-Site Optimization

This is where traditional ranking factors really come into play. As is popular sentiment in David Mihm’s industry survey, in some cases, signals from your website are among the top ten in determining local rank. With February’s updates, we can only assume that this is more true now than ever before. Here are a few things you should consider when optimizing your website content for local results:

• Appearance of city/state in title tag/meta description of landing pages
• Crawlable address and phone number
• Appearance of geo-modified keywords (i.e. Pittsburgh landscaping company)

Pretty elementary, I know. In implementing some of these simple changes in your on-site elements, though, you can make some significant headway in the local results. Remember, consistency is key. Ensure that the crawlable address and phone number on your website match those that you’ve included in your Places listing.

3. Build Links – or Citations

As we all know, links are the ever-present currency of high-ranking websites. In the realm of local search, traditional links to your website (and the relevance/authority of these links) can play a huge role in determining where your site/listing ranks. However, link-building is a tedious process. It takes a boatload of time and an aircraft carrier’s worth of effort. One thing that’s nice about local search is that links in the form of online citations are especially valuable.

Citations are basically other online listings from which Google can pull data and verify that it is consistent with the information provided in a Places listing. Some of the most popular of these citation engines (or seed sites) are Yelp, Citysearch, Yellowpages, etc. In listing your business on these sites, paying special attention to consistency, you’re providing more sources for Google to use to verify your information. This, and the outright benefits of the links, can go a long way in boosting your local results.

Give these suggestions a try and let us know if you see a positive impact over time! Remember, local search, like search in general, is always evolving. Try to think like your users and stay ahead of the curve.

Have you gotten business from local search? Tell us your keys to success in the comments.

Facebook begun rolling out Timeline for brand pages recentely, which presents many opportunities for brands to showcase themselves on Facebook like never before. The new format will be pushed live to everyone on March 30, but for now, you have time to get comfortable with the layout, add content and prepare for when you either choose to publish Timeline for your Page or hold out till March 30th. Here’s a comprehensive guide to all the new features Timeline for Pages offers your business with this new layout.

1. The Cover Photo: This feature is already well known among the Facebook community since it’s already incorporated as a feature of Facebook Timeline for Profiles. Now brands can use a Facebook cover photo at the very top of their Timeline to show a new, striking visual layer to their offerings the moment a fan lands on your Page. Is the cover photo the death of the Facebook landing page/fan gate? Most likely yes, but not just because of the cover photo but due to the removal of a default landing page when a user initially lands on your Page. More on this later in the article. When it comes to customizing your Facebook cover photo, crop a branded image to 855 by 320 pixels. Here are some other important dimensions for Facebook’s interface.

      Burberry’s Facebook Cover Photo

            Louis Vuitton’s Facebook Cover Photo

Zena Caffe’s Facebook Cover Photo

Take into account your now much smaller traditional profile picture and how this plays into your new cover photo. There’s been a lot of creative examples of cover photos over the last few months, so the opportunities are endless. Think outside of the box and make use of this worthwhile feature. Above are a few examples of  cover photos from Pages that have made their Timeline live such as Louis Vuitton, Burberry, Canlis and Zena Caffè.

2. A Smaller Profile Picture: The height of the profile picture has drastically changed, therefore it’s time to change your photo as soon as possible to reflect the new format. The appropriate dimensions for a profile photo are now 180 x 180. Try using just your logo or another image that quickly summarizes your brand.

3. The About Section: The about section has long been a part of your Facebook Page, but now it’s more predominately featured at the top of your Timeline. It’s important that you update this section of your Timeline, depending on the which of the two versions of the about section applies to your Timeline.

• About Section for Timelines with Physical Location: If your Timeline is associated with a physical location (categorized as a local business), then it will look like this. It lists any Place Sub-categories an admin previously defined, your address, telephone number and your hours of operation. Fill out any of the missing information by clicking on the section and add what’s missing.

• About Section for Timelines with no Physical Location: If your Timeline features a business without one physical location (your Page is not in the local business category), then it will look like this below. The section lets you add a description of your Timeline up to 255 characters. It’s important to be extremely clear and concise, giving first time visitors a clear understanding of what your Timeline is all about.

4. The Applications Banner: Replacing the photo banner at the top of the previous Facebook Page design, the new brands Timeline design highlights the applications added to a particular Timeline. The applications you previously had as tabs on the left hand side of your Page will now appear here on your Timeline in this banner. Admins can choose which applications to show in the 3 available slots in your banner. Choose the most important applications to be highlighted here, a custom application, videos, the public version of your Timeline insights and others.  You can and should customize the image for each of theses applications as well by clicking on the pencil symbol on the application box, then edit settings to choose a new photo. These images should be 111 x 74 pixels. All your applications can be seen here at the top of your Timeline, but to access the others a user most click the drop down menu. It’s unlikely these hidden applications will receive the same amount of visibility because there’s another click required to view them. Therefore, be selective when choosing what to highlight in your application banner.

 Butterfinger’s Facebook Application Banner at the top of their Timeline.

This is where your old fan gate/landing page application will now live, making it obsolete as a way of converting new visitors into fans because it won’t be the first thing that’s seen when you land on a Timeline. There’s no longer an option in the Admin settings to select a landing page, your Timeline is your permanent landing page. This is where the cover photo will pick up the slack in terms of a fan gate, although it’s still important to fan gate your other applications and content encouraging a user to like your Timeline before they can access it.

5. Turn On/Off Timeline Messages from Fan: Fans now have the ability to privately message a brand’s Timeline through the new message feature located at the top right hand corner of your Timeline, above the application banner. As an admin, you can choose to turn this feature on or off. One advantage or reason to turn this feature on is so fans can report issues to your Timeline privately, especially issues dealing with customer service concerns about your products or services. It’s a way to deal with negative feedback by keeping the conversation off of your public Timeline, but still on Facebook in a private setting. To turn it on go to the Admin Panel, Manage, Edit Page and then to Manage Permissions.

6. Choose to Hide the “Recent Posts by Others” Section: Timeline now features a section at the top right that highlights a list of recent postings from fans. It’s suggested that you leave this visible to help show engagement across your Timeline, but many Pages in the past have only chose to make their own posts front and center in the past, therefore they may continue to do this in the future by hiding this section. When you’re in Manage Permissions, you can turn off the section of your Timeline easily.

8. New Admin Panel Incorporates Notifications & Insights: Your Timeline notifications, insights, Timeline settings and private message inbox are all now available in one interface known as the Admin Panel located at the top of your Timeline, obviously only visible to admins. This new dashboard gives you a quick oversight over the 4 areas of administrating a Facebook Timeline and allows you to dive deeper into each section from here as well by clicking see all on the desired section. You can also invite your Facebook friends and email contacts to join your Timeline’s audience, as well as start a Facebook ad and use Facebook as your Page from here as well.

An example of a milestone, as added by the Today Show’s Timeline.

10. Pin Your Posts: Brands can now choose to pin particular posts to the top of their pages for up to 7 days. This makes it easier to highlight important, newsworthy topics to the top of your Timeline for longer promotion and visibility. Go to a piece of content on your Page, click edit and then choose Pin to Top to have this piece of content featured.

SEO writing is a struggle for many professionals. It’s difficult to be creative in the face of keyword constraints or produce quality when charged with the blistering quantity requirements of SEO action plans.

SEO writing is also a target for non-SEO writers, especially literary traditionalists. Consider the following sentiments:

“SEO writing is for machines – not people.”
“Compelling content and SEO friendly content are mutually exclusive.”
“How do you turn a good writer into a bad one? Make them write for SEO.”

It’s true that some writers don’t exactly prove these statements wrong. But SEO writers overly obsessed with keyword repetition rarely add value to websites. Once you get people on the site, you need to keep them there with good content, or at least make a compelling case for your brand.

Today, quality content really matters on the web. Author authority has become an important concept, and engagement metrics count. Search engines are becoming better and better at understanding if visitors think the content on a page sucks or not.

Now, I’ll never claim to be one of the world’s most formidable literary giants, but I will say this: SEO copywriting has turned me into a better writer. Really. First, it defeated my propensity to succumb to writers block. I no longer have the luxury of getting stuck. The demands on quantity and speed have forced me to forge a deeper, more direct connection to my inner-writer; SEO has actually helped me find my voice. SEO has also helped me write in a more accessible manner: I now use words that people actually use, helpful links, and better headings and headlines.

SEO Need Not be the Enemy of Good Writing

It’s totally possible to write search-engine friendly material you’ll be proud of without making yourself miserable. You must identify the needs of your audience, search engines, and yourself, and focus on where those needs overlap.

Reader’s Needs

First, web readers need to understand as quickly as possible if your content is worth reading. Thus, your content needs to be easily digestible. You should speak the reader’s language, and you should sharpen your message with a strong title and techniques such as headlines, headings, images, bold, links and bullets. Also, readers need the content to be relevant to them, or they just won’t read your content. Readers may also need to be informed, entertained, or inspired.

SEO Needs

The first step in an SEO plan is keyword research – you need to learn what phrases matter to the people that matter to you. Next, you’ll be taking the keywords that are relevant to your readers and making them easily digestible to the search engines through your plain text, your title, headings, alternate text (for images), use of bold, and anchor text of your links. Sound familiar? Well, search engines are designed for people, so you should serve your SEO objectives and your audience simultaneously.

Your Needs

The true writer is not satisfied writing merely for search engines and other people. They need to write for themselves too; they need to write something that intrinsically satisfies. When you write, you still care about something other than getting paid, right?

What does your inner-writer care about? Informing and empowering people? Stringing syllables together in an aesthetically pleasing way? Expressing yourself creatively? Painting compelling pictures with your words? Being the wisest ass in the farm? Brutal honesty?

Indulge your needs as a writer in some way for every piece. It’s the only way you can write inspired work, and your delight in your craft will come across in your work. It’s the only way you’ll find your voice, and readers love an authentic, original voice.

Finding the SEO Writing Sweet Spot

That’s the secret. Find that sweet spot and never stray away. Identify the needs of all three parties – yourself, your readers, and the search engines – for every piece, and devise a tactic that meets needs of each party. Different pieces serve different needs, and every writer needs to figure out their own sweet spot.

For example, suppose you need to attract quality traffic for the keyword “hamster cages” to your online pet store. If you love to enlighten and inform, a piece explaining the pros and cons of several types of hamster cages may be appropriate. But if you have an innate inner salesperson inside you, go for the landing page highlighting the awesomeness of your particular selection of hamster cages. Whichever route you take, write what’s relevant to your target audience in a digestible manner, and it’s “win” all the way around.

You’ll know when you’ve found the SEO Writing Sweet Spot. It gets tricky to maintain the balance of the SEO writing “trinity”, but keep working at it, and you’ll soon be churning out killer content in no time.

Do you write content with SEO in mind? Why not?

Recently, the brilliant Brian Honigman wrote a blog post here at LunaMetrics about How Nonprofits Can Get The Most Out Of Foursquare which got me thinking about how a nonprofit could get the most out of Google Analytics.

There are some estimates that 60% of websites don’t use any type of Analytics tracking, and that the number is even higher for nonprofits.

We’re not sure why this is. It could be that some people view tools like Google Analytics as very commercial and profit oriented, and therefore something that a nonprofit wouldn’t, or even shouldn’t use. It could be that Nonprofits tend to have passionate people who wear more hats than they would at a commercial enterprise, and they’re doing their best, but data analysis isn’t in their wheelhouse.

(If you’re a Nonprofit and aren’t using Google Analytics for another reason, drop us a comment after this post and let us know why! We’re honestly curious.)

Sometimes people at nonprofits feel that this sort of analytics and tracking is about “selling” and that as a nonprofit it’s somehow gauche to look at their websites as places to track “conversions”, however all the major Nonprofits do just that. There are plenty of things you can and should track as far as Goals and Conversions on your sites. You might not be selling anything, but you’re still engaging people in calls to action.

How Can you Use Google Analytics to track a Nonprofit goal?

If you're losing it, just hold on, Google Analytics will make it better

Well let’s look at something like “Donor Activity”. You might have a place on your website for people to donate money. With Google Analytics you can parse all those donations with various other data points to help you increase your Donor Activity.

For instance you can see where they came from, whether it was a Google Search, or an Email, or a Facebook page, or another website. You can then compare where they came from with donation patterns. Maybe certain emails generate higher levels of donations than others, which can help you tailor your email campaigns to better grab and engage your network.

If they arrived via an organic Google Search you can see what keywords they used, and you can take those keywords and tailor your Search Engine Optimization (or SEO) to get even more people to visit your site. (And hey if you’re interested in SEO for Nonprofits you should check out our SEO Training Day on April 2^nd, 2012 in San Francisco, which we’re offering in conjunction with the Nonprofit Technology Network’s annual conference. A full day of nonprofit specific SEO training)

You can look through your visitors and see what pages they looked at, how long they stayed on your site, and which content engaged them, or which content “bounced them” from your site. You can what pages were more likely to get people to donate.

There are so many things you can do to track and improve your efficacy with specific conversions, and so many different types of conversions you could track besides Donor activity.

• How many people are hearing and reacting to your message?
• How many people are visiting your site when you post something on Facebook, and what do they do on your site?
• How much information do they read?
• Are there better ways to get your message out?
• Do people respond better when they come to your site from various social media, or from email campaigns?
• Which campaigns?
• Which methods?
• Which referring websites?
• Are you increasing your networking and email lists?
• What methods work best for that?
• Are you increasing attendance and participation at your events, fundraisers, participation and number of people served by your Nonprofit, or the number of volunteers or volunteer hours?

There are plenty of things that Nonprofits can and should track to help them improve their entire organization.

Why Should A Nonprofit use Google Analytics

There are a number of reasons why a nonprofit would want to use Google Analytics over other software. First of all it’s one of the most sophisticated analytics packages available. It allows you to do more types of tracking, segmentation, conversion tracking, than other pieces of software, sometimes offering more options in certain areas than even paid solutions.

Which brings us to the second reason: It’s free. Nonprofits don’t necessarily need to pinch every penny, but if one of the most sophisticated analytics software packages is available for free, you have to question whether it’s worth paying tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for a paid solution, that might not give you any additional functionality that you would use. It’s also a hosted solution, which means that Google hosts the data. This frees up your IT department, if you have one, from maintaining a server devoted to your analytics, and simply let Google take care of that.

In addition, it’s easy to use. Google provides free tutorial videos that are quite excellent  and there are plentiful resources, websites, and books that can help. On top of that there are opportunities for training both on site, as well as  at the Google approved training programs the “Seminars for Success”  which are offered by only a few Google certified trainers.

All in all it’s a solution that makes sense even for large and reputable Fortune 500 companies, down to the local Mom and Pop shop, as well as Nonprofits.

Getting Started – Step 1: Don’t Panic

Yes, I stole that from Douglas Adams.  It’s applicable though, and something you should hold onto before we go any further. The world of Analytics might be scary, particularly if you’re not technical, but I promise you, that if you follow a few simple steps, you’re going to find that Google Analytics is a tool that can really help your Nonprofit in many ways. So whether you’re taking the initiative or your boss told you to get this done… Don’t panic. Don’t worry. It’s honestly not painful.

Step 2: Check out Google for Nonprofits

If you aren’t already using it, I highly recommend you head over to Google for Nonprofits and sign up. There are a number of benefits, including free or discounted versions of Google Apps, Free (with a catch) Adwords advertising, Premium branding and increased uploads on YouTube, Free licensing for Google Earth, the Maps API and more. If you are a Nonprofit and you’re on the internet, you have no reason not to sign up for this. They also provide a handy checklist for Nonprofits entitled “12 actions to expand your reach“ which gives you great ideas of things you can do to help your Nonprofit reach out online.

And guess what the very first item on their list is?

Step 3: The Most Technical Part

Google Analytics Asynchronous Tracking Code

It’s like ripping a band-aid off, and it’s really not that scary. You need to get the Google Analytics Tracking Code  installed on your website.  To do this first you need an Analytics account. Head over to Google Analytics and create a new one.

I recommend that if you’re doing this for your Nonprofit, you should create an administrative account in Gmail first, if you don’t already have one. This way you don’t do it on your personal account. Don’t worry. After you create your new administrative account, you can give your personal account admin privileges to the analytics so you’ll be able to access it without constantly changing your login.

So create your new “Nonprofitname@gmail.com” account, and then create the analytics account using that account.  It’s quick and relatively painless, and at the end the Google Analytics page provides you with the code to use which you can have your developers cut and paste onto your webpages. OR if you’re using a WordPress site there are a variety of plugins that will help add the code to all your pages for you. I recommend Google Analytics for WordPress if you go that direction.

Be sure to install the newest Asynchronous code and place it in the <head> section of your website code for the best tracking results.

Once the tracking code is installed I recommend reviewing a number of our blog posts including Phil Anderson’s excellent series on increasing conversions from website traffic starting with The Infinite Conversion Loop  and moving onto 10 Things to Check in Your Google Analytics.

Step 4: Get Addicted To Your Data

Be careful! If you haven’t had Google Analytics before on your site, it can be a bit addicting to track your numbers, checking day to day… Before you know it you’ll be talking to someone about Custom Reports and they’ll just give you a blank stare in return. Don’t worry! This is normal.

So what can a Nonprofit do to really make use of that data. Well a lot more than I can put in a single blog post, but here are a few fun starter ideas.

1 – Google Analytics in Real Time: Watch your data update within seconds.

Are you placing a television commercial, or participating in some sort of event and want to see immediate data? Well with Google Analytics you can watch that data come in in real time. It’s unfiltered data, so if you have a large number of filters on your profiles, it won’t be totally accurate to a profile, but you can see those hits. If you normally only have 10-20 people on your site, it can be exhilarating to see an immediate and real time impact of your marketing efforts and watch people actually click through your site, submit forms, donate money, etc.

Google Analytics in Real Time: Watch your data update within seconds.

2 – Tracking Your Marketing Campaigns

It’s amazing how many people, even those who already have Google Analytics installed don’t use Campaign tagging. Campaign tagging allows you to parse your data based on your marketing efforts. Sending out an email? You can see which email specifically did better than another. Posting on social media? Does Twitter or Facebook generate more interaction with your information? By using Campaign tagging in all your links you can find out what efforts you are doing are working better than others, and help tailor your ongoing marketing efforts to attack those channels that really work for your Nonprofit better than others.

4 Steps to Better Campaign Data in Google Analytics

3 – Tracking your SEO Progress

SEO seems like magic sometimes, and people want to see what kind of success their SEO campaigns have, or if it’s even worth their time.  However Google Analytics provides some great ways to track how many people from which keywords found which pages, and their change over time. You can use it also to track your referral traffic and link bait. If you’re doing SEO for your nonprofit website, and you should, then you can use your Google Analytics data to help in your efforts to improve and gain even more traffic. It’s useful to see the top 20 words and phrases that people search for your website and organization on. What do people want from you, and what are they looking for? This lets you develop content for these terms, and catering to your users helps you build traffic.

You can even look at the bounce rates for keywords (bounce means that the visitor leaves the site without interacting with it at all). Then by seeing keywords with high bounce rates you know to avoid those keywords, because they are bringing in visitors who aren’t finding what they want on your site. OR if it’s a keyword you do want to emphasize then maybe you need to look at your website to see how you can better grab those users on your site who come in via that keyword.

How to use Google Analytics to Track SEO Progress

4- Tracking Your Social Media Engagement

Google Analytics comes pre-installed tracking Google+ sharing, but with some extra tweaking you can track which of your users are logged into Facebook, Twitter, etc while they’re on your site. With some additional page code you can track how many people visit your Facebook pages, how many “Like” your website or specific page content from within your website, etc. Social Media is a big way for nonprofits to communicate with their audience, so it’s very important to track their engagement with your website, rather than relying simply on something like Facebook’s internal Insights. By tracking engagement on your pages, you can tell more about your users behavior, as well as which social networks to target, which content grabs users better, and more.

Tracking Social Media Engagement in Google Analytics
Event Tracking or Social Tracking or Both?

5 – So much more

You can view high bounce rate pages, and review how people got to those pages, and determine if you need to change the content, the keywords, or anything to better retain users to those pages.

You can ensure that the most viewed pages include calls to action, so that you are getting your goals into people’s faces as much as possible. People can’t convert if they aren’t offered an opportunity to do so.

You can do the same on high exit rate pages, and find ways to keep people on your pages rather than pushing them away. Give people an easy out on a donation page for instance to somewhere else on the site, and make them feel ok with not donating.

Use Goals. Determine what you want to do on the site, and set Goals in Google Analytics so that a form has a conversion rate. A donation process has as goal and a funnel so you can see where you lose people along a process. Use the goals in conjunction with other data to determine if some users are more likely to convert than others and leverage that information.

Moving Forward with Google Analytics as a Nonprofit

We’ve only brushed the surface here.  Really anything you’re doing on your site you should be tracking to see how you can make it better. Always be testing. Always be checking your data. Always try and improve and do better, and Google Analytics is a great tool for nonprofits to use. It’s powerful, it’s free, and it’s fun to use! If you aren’t leveraging Google Analytics in your efforts on a daily basis, then it’s time to start.

Recently a client asked us to help them do a better job tracking employee visits to their website. For many websites this is a relatively small segment of traffic and often comprises visits from the dev team. But this particular client, like many of our nonprofit clients, has a staff that uses the organization’s website regularly over the course of a normal workday. And so it’s especially important to separate external and internal traffic.

The usual advice for removing internal traffic from your Google Analytics data is one of two methods. Either set up a filter based on your IP address (or range of addresses). Or if your organization is large enough to be its own ISP (Internet Service Provider), then the filtering is even easier.

Internal Traffic is a Moving Target

But neither of these methods address how your employees visit your website on their mobile devices or laptops. They might be out of town for a business trip on a hotel network, at home on their home network, or even on the Wi-Fi at the local coffee shop.

And we all know this is a rapidly growing segment of visitors, especially as more and more people use tablets. Your internal traffic is literally a moving target.

Cookies for Everyone!

Which brings us to a third method, having your employees set a visitor cookie to identify themselves. Google Analytics has a field called User Defined that you can use to filter internal traffic. User Defined is the older version of what are now called Custom Variables – but those aren’t available yet for filtering.

Because a visitor cookie is specific to a computer and browser, your employees can identify themselves on every device they normally use. Simply have them visit a special page that will set the cookie for them, and ask them to visit that page one time on every device and every browser.

Remind Staff to Visit the Cookie Page

After that you’ll be able to identify your internal traffic and filter it, regardless of their IP address or ISP. Of course, if they delete their cookies, they’ll need to visit the page again. So you could remind them periodically, “Hey, here’s that URL we need you to visit. Help us keep our analytics data clean.”

To make it even easier, here’s what the code looks like. Just insert your UA-number where I have UA-XXXXX-YY and publish the page.

<html>
<head>

<title>Remove My Internal Traffic from Google Analytics</title>

<script type="text/javascript">
              var _gaq = _gaq || [];
              _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-YY']);
              _gaq.push(['_setVar','employee']);
              _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
              (function() {
                var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
                ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
                var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
              })();
</script>

</head>

<body>

<h2>Remove My Internal Traffic from Google Analytics</h2>

Visit this page on every computer, tablet, and smartphone, and for all browsers you use on those devices.<br>

</body>
</html>

Create the Filter

You could also choose a different value for _setVar; where I have ‘employee’ you could insert any identifier you like. Remember to create the exclude filter using this identifier and apply it to a test profile – make sure it’s working before applying it to your main profile.

Check Your Profiles

You may also want to create a new profile that includes only internal traffic. Or cross-check everything against your unfiltered profile. (You do have a completely unfiltered profile for troubleshooting, right?) With a glance across profiles you can see that the data is in fact being sent to GA and appears in one profile, while being correctly excluded from another profile.

Tracking employee visits is essential for nonprofits and other organizations with staff who use the website regularly. Adding to the complexity are employees working remotely and the increasing use of mobile devices. The cookie page is a relatively easy to implement solution. What obstacles have you encountered and what methods do you find most accurate for capturing employee data? The comments are yours.

Have you worried about employee visits muddling your analytics?