Google is attempting to layer a Chrome-like look onto all of its tools and analytics is their latest product to receive a new coat of paint. Today we look over these changes and see how you can adapt and then easily transition to the new, shinier Google Analytics v5:

The most glaringly obvious change is the new interface which eschews stark white borders and functional text for an pleasing look which takes a few minutes to get used to; but once you are familiar with the new look analytics, the streamlined aesthetic will assist you in more easily monitoring your campaign. When you first logged into the old look analytics, there was a snapshot of your accounts with bounce rate, visits and so on; the new screen allows you to handily jump straight to the most accessed pages – visitors, traffic sources, content and conversions to be more precise.

The newly tabbed interface facilitates a greater user experience and gives you the option of creating as many dashboards as you wish, with configurable widgets for added flexibility. For instance, if your business only requires content data then a customizable widget will ensure that the pertinent data is always on the front page of your reports. For everyone else who needs the full Monty, the ‘My Site’ button will display the usual statistics much like the old reporting system did. Any search marketing solutions based company worth their salt has already started incorporating customized reporting into their data, as should you.

Intelligence reporting is now built straight into v5, in contrast to the older reporting model where it was in the ‘Beta’ section. Intelligence reports allow you to set variables and detect variations; such as receiving an alert if your sites traffic dips below a certain level or if your content reaches a specific amount of views.  Other key enhancements include the page speed report and enhanced overview reports. Very recently, Google has said that page speed counts towards the overall rankings and learning to improve the speed of your site can be beneficial to your campaigns.

Sadly, one of the greatest failures in the beta version of the Google analytics tool is the loss of the ability to add secondary dimension drill-downs in custom reports. Users have bemoaned the loss of this feature which basically removes the ability to create high-level reports which could be drilled into on the microscopic level to analyze where each campaign was performing, or underperforming. Hopefully when v5 comes out of beta, this tool will be restored to full usefulness.

Excellent new for Webmaster Tools lovers, V5 of Google Analytics now enables users to view their webmaster data directly on their analytics page. Why this was not integrated sooner, no-one knows. Users can sign up for the pilot program here. You will have access to a new section called ‘SEO’ which offers data for queries and landing pages.

In summation, the new look Google Analytics tool is made up of the myriad improvements which Google has made to its analytics over the past years. The redesigned interface, combined with better access to your most pertinent details will ensure that v5 only goes from strength to strength as companies begin to harness its possibilities. For those who cannot handle the change, simply click ‘old version’ in the top right corner and enjoy the old Google analytics interface. For further details, the video below highlights the new features.

Related posts:

1. DO’s and DON’Ts of Using Annotations in Google Analytics
2. Google Introduces Social Engagement Tracking in Webmaster Tools and Analytics
3. Is Google Analytics sufficient for your click tracking needs?

Google Analytics – Winds of Change

David Scottimano and John Straw

John Straw – Linkdex

David Sottimano – Distilled

We are all faced by the  typical CEO’s question:– why are we not number 1?

As experts we can give a technical answer. But we actually need a clear answer, not just stats. They need something to work off, an actionable process. Don’t waste time. In competitive analysis just find they key things that matter.

1. Identify your competitors (Online in the SERPS not offline) then educate the client. We have a template to do this work that shows us who is in this space (http://dis.tl/smx-london ). Reviewing every few weeks shows the up and coming and also people in this space who are not selling your products who are this possible link targets.
2. Get data for high level decisions. Get your keyword list, get the rank and ranking URL and work out what section of the web is beating us.
3. Make sense of it all – give it value. Which content drives their rankings / which is most valuable?  Try a desktop tool like Screamingfrog to analyse the website, also look at SEObook.
   
   (in my example the competitor was winning on Q&A. In fact they were answering their own questions via administrator rather than UGC)

Thus you can answer the clients question – this is how they are dominating us – and this is what we need to do to fix it.

So,

Find your competitors
Answer the question
Deep dive for data, find the exact framework of what’s beating you.
Use the data to build your own better feature

John Straw – Linkdex

We all talk about competitive analysis but we don’t take action. Get intimate with your competitors. I want to look at their site meta and structure. We need to look at the Source Data – Use something like Open Site Explorer or MajesticSEO. The issue is this is all this Data is just link data. We can’t see what is on the page. We need to understand what the sites are about.

Finding the right parts. We need to curate the data into something meaningful. At Linkdex Our work is made available to the public – see State of Search post “Linkdex and Yoast team up for wordpress update”

We have a mathematical formula for defining influence and our formula is giving us a 70% correlation with pagerank. We then classify the signals, from on page text, and features found on the page like RSS, comments (Would define a blog) or whether it is a wiki, etc. This allows us to define the structure of the competitor sites and gives us insight into their SEO strategy.

Q&A

Is it a fair assessment to suggest that any advanced SEO needs to be able to build their own tools? John says that companies like Bigmouth see these tools as being a competitive advantage. However the smaller guys though have to do without it. The problem is not really money but resources are scarce. Also, the marketplace is changing. It is becoming more collaborative with more parties involved, and thus tool data needs to be more shareable between client teams as well as the different agencies involved (SEO, PR).

Related posts:

1. London SMX Coverage: Essential Paid Search Tools
2. SMX London coverage: Social Signals & Search
3. SMX London Coverage: Speaking In Tongues: Mastering Multinational Search

SMX London Coverage: Search Analytics And Competitive Intelligence

We’ve all been to conferences, seminars and online marketing networking events where we meet new people and exchange ideas, theories and strategies that have worked on our websites and others. It is always useful to take note of these strategies and give them a go yourself to try and measure the effectiveness of each strategy on your own websites.

When it comes to measuring the effectiveness of different strategies, it is important that you are able to segregate the different tactics you have implemented and be able to measure the effectiveness of EACH INDIVIDUAL TACTIC. The most common mistake in these situations is when online marketers hear of a few good ideas which they decide to try out. They get home; take hours to implement all the recommended changes to their website and wait to see what happens at the end of the month. Come the end of the month, they see a vast improvement in rankings, traffic and conversion and think, “WOW, I need to do this with all my websites! “ They then proceed to spend hour upon hour making ALL these changes to ALL their sites in the hope that similar results will be achieved.

Now, there is one MAJOR problem with this scenario…

Yes, great results have been achieved, but it took ages to implement all the recommended changes to all the different sites, and because all changes were made at the same time, one is unable to measure the effectiveness of each individual change made to a site. You will probably find that you spend 5 hours making changes to your site to achieve the above-mentioned results, however it could very well be just that one title tag that you altered that resulted in ALL the improvement. Hence, you could have spent a mere 10 minutes making the change and achieved the same results.

This is where effective performance management comes in!

The basics of measuring any new strategies

The best way to measure the effectiveness of a particular change to a website is to make ONE CHANGE AT A TIME. By doing this, you can accurately measure the effectiveness of each change and identify which changes result in which improvements. Thus, by effectively measuring the performance of each tactic, you can more easily identify opportunities on other websites where you can implement a similar tactic and know what to expect.

Often as SEO professionals working for an SEO agency, we have more than one website which we optimize for ourselves or for clients. This is the perfect scenario in which to easily measure the effectiveness of numerous tactics by simply using one tactic per site and effectively measuring the results on each site. Yes, strategies change for different sites in different industries etc., but by measuring the effectiveness of one strategy at a time, we are able to obtain some genuine results with measurable performance. We are also able to save time by eliminating tactics that we identified as a waste of time thanks to effective performance measurement.

All of this culminates in the fact that when we bump into different clients and other SEO professionals at future events, we are able to suggest innovative strategies and tactics to them; backed-up by factual information which helps to motivate why you think these tactics could benefit them. All of this thanks to logically measuring the effectiveness of individual strategies.

Related posts:

1. Online Marketing + Conversion Analysis = ROI
2. Online Video SEO for SMBs
3. Review Your SEO Strategies Regularly And Be Surprised At What Opens Up!

How to Accurately Measure the Effectiveness of Experimental Online Marketing Strategies

A Screenshot of annotations being used in Analytics

1. DO: Noting any technical or structural changes to your site is important. If you’ve switched servers, hosting companies, added new H1 tags, changed URL structures or anything that could affect your sites performance, by tracking these changes in Google web analytics you will get a good idea whether these changes have had a positive or negative effect on your site’s indexing and traffic.

DON’T: Note every single tiny change that you make to your site. Annotating tiny changes to your site that will have no effect on site performance or conversion is not necessary and will only end up crowding your Google analytics data.



2. DO: Track any major online PR articles or press releases that are written by you or about you and are bound to result in major inbound links and traffic. If you know that a major website has published an article about your company, note this in Google analytics so that you can be reminded of this when it comes time to complete your monthly report.

DON’T: Track each and every inbound link or online PR piece that is written by you or about you. If you’re a reputable company, you should have numerous press releases and links coming in to your site every month and annotating each one in Google Analytics would kind of defeat the purpose.



3. DO: Track the implementation dates of any major campaigns, be it an organic campaign, an AdWords campaign or any major offline advertising campaigns that your company may be implementing. Annotating these in Google Analytics is extremely important, especially in monitoring the seemingly “immeasurable” effect of offline advertising campaigns.

Summary of the “DON’Ts”: As a general rule, don’t fill your Google Analytics annotations tool with unnecessary information that is not going to make any major or immediate difference to your sites performance, traffic or conversion. The whole point of using Google Analytics annotations is so that when monthly report time arrives, you will be able to quickly and easily be reminded of the notable events and implementations that took place during the previous month, and compare these dates to the Google Analytics data for the weeks following these implementations.



All in all, annotations in Google Analytics can be extremely useful if used correctly. If, like me, you work for a search marketing company, then it is impossible to keep a mental track of all major work carried out on clients’ websites over the course of a month. Using Google Analytics annotations will ensure that when time comes to do monthly reports, you will be reminded of all significant events that took place for ALL of your clients. Good Luck!

Related posts:

1. Is Google Analytics sufficient for your click tracking needs?
2. Google Analytics – Winds of Change
3. Google Introduces Social Engagement Tracking in Webmaster Tools and Analytics

DO’s and DON’Ts of Using Annotations in Google Analytics

The 4Q survey revolves around the four most important questions that should be addressed to all visitors of a website:

1. What are my visitors at my website to do?
2. Are they completing what they set out to do?
3. If not, why not?
4. How satisfied are my visitors?

Now, the answers to these 4Q survey questions might not always be what a website owner wants to hear, but remember that all feedback, positive or negative, can be used constructively.

My client’s 4Q survey was completed by over 500 people in one month and provided us with the following information on which to base some important decisions:

As you can see above, this 4Q survey has revealed that the majority of our client’s visitors are visiting their site mainly to find out information about products, and not necessarily to buy products. Our 4Q survey has also stated that 70% of visitors are generally satisfied and have achieved what they set out to do. This means that we are still missing out on 2 important areas:

1. 30% of users are not achieving what they set out to do – this should be less.
2. We need to focus on converting the 78% of visitors who are simply looking for information, into paying customers.

Now, this is useful, but why aren’t 30% of our users achieving what they want to? Our 4Q survey has more information in the form of written comments from our users. Here are a couple of common answers we received from clients who completed the 4Q survey as to why they didn’t achieve their goal included the following comments:

“I am a beginner to the world of solar. I found it difficult to get my head around all the info. I need “entry level” recommendations.”

“I want more technical info on the solar panels: What is the voltage output per panel as well as the amps, What is the size of the battery I will need for me to give me an idea where to start.”

Now, these are two common answers we received from the 4Q survey and were thus able to address the issues with the following solutions which we implemented:

1. We analyzed the site and came to realize that some information was too technical for the average shopper, perhaps overwhelming and needed to be simplified. This has since been rectified and the 4Q survey feedback on this matter has improved as well.
2. In addressing both issues mentioned above in the 4Q survey, we implemented a series of buying guides for numerous products on the site and have since experienced improved conversion, better feedback on our 4Q survey, fewer unnecessary enquiries and improved traffic created by this extra content.

There are so many great uses for implementing a survey such as the above-mentioned 4Q survey. What is mentioned above is merely a small sample of the insight we have received with one client and a couple of the solutions we have been able to implement thanks to 4Q survey. Our clients are benefitting from this sort of 4Q survey feedback and it is also a great way for a search marketing company to go that extra mile for their clients. I am in NO WAY affiliated to 4Q, but I would definitely recommend it to clients and site owners everywhere.

Related posts:

1. How to construct an online survey that appeals to social media circles
2. Internet software candy
3. Customers` have the last word

4Q Survey Software – A Good Survey Software Option

Research carried out by Econsultancy/Lynchpin via survey-based research, revealed that companies are now only spending less than 30% of their budget on web analytics software, which is 8% less than last year. The financial cut on web analytics software expenditure seems to now be going towards investing more in people with web analytics tracking skills that are able to expertly utilize this software and manipulate it in order to get the desired results and reports. When it comes to finding the right person to run your web analytics, one also needs to decide whether to hire someone in-house to take care of web analytics or whether hiring an SEO Consultant would be a better idea.

What tools are people using?

The study showed that 87% of companies use Google analytics for their web analytics requirements, and why not? Google is by far the dominant market shareholder and their analytics tool is more than capable of providing in depth reports upon which important business and brand strategy decisions can be based upon. What is interesting is that of the 87% of people using Google Analytics, 57% of companies choose to use it alongside other paid for web analytics tools. One of the major downfalls of Google Analytics is its ability to track flash scripts, Ajax and other on-page technologies. Heatmap or click tracking software is also a popular choice of paid for web analytics software that can provide detailed reports that Google simply cannot.

So what does this mean?

Basically, it’s all good and well investing in software, setting up a Google web analytics account and tracking your progress, but unless you actually have skilled employees who are able to correctly use and abuse the web analytics software, then you’re really just wasting your time and money. There is so much useful information that can be extracted from web analytics, all of which can be used to make enormously effective business decisions; but if you are simply sing web analytics tools to just see how much traffic your web site is receiving each month then you’re really not benefiting from the resources at your fingertips.

Related posts:

1. Are you getting the full picture from your analytics? – Mobile Analytics
2. Is Google Analytics sufficient for your click tracking needs?
3. Google Introduces Social Engagement Tracking in Webmaster Tools and Analytics

Companies Investing More in Web Analytics

Google Analytics Site Overlay

THE PROS:

The great thing about tracking clicks with Analytics’ site overlay is that if you have Analytics running on a site, you automatically have access to its click tracking software, there’s no need to pay for anything and EVERY page of your site is tracked automatically. You simply click on the “content” tab of your dashboard and you’ll be able to check out the hotspots for each page, as shown in the image below:

Image courtesy blog.stamats.com:

As you can see above, the image clearly indicates exactly what percentage of visitors to the page have clicked on each link. This is extremely useful for click tracking and does give a fairly good idea as to what people are clicking on when visiting this page.

THE CONS:

The big problem with analytics click tracking is that it only tracks clicks referenced with the HREF tag. In addition to this, if you have two identical HREF tags on one page, it treats them as a singular link and assigns an equal percentage to the two, made up of the sum of both tags’ clicks. EG: IF you have a menu item with a link to your “Contact us” page, and then a button further down the page that links to “Contact us”, and both these HREF’s are identical, then they get treated as one link. If 30% of visitors click the menu link and 20% of visitors click the button further down the page, Google analytics click tracker calculates this as 50% of visitors are clicking the HREF for “contact us” and assigns this value (50%) to both links, thus not indicating to you which is more effective between the two links.

The other big downfall of this click tracking software is that it doesn’t detect any JavaScript, Flash or any other non-HREF links. Therefore, if you have a Flash banner on your page, in most cases you will not be able to track who clicks on that banner, and where on the banner they have clicked.

All the above flaws result in you not actually receiving an entirely accurate report of where people are clicking on your page and which could result in your making inaccurate conversion analysis decision.

Specialised click tracking software – crazyegg:

For the purpose of this comparison, I have decided to compare a click tracking utility with which I am well acquainted with. This is not a promotional tactic of any kind, I have personally just found that crazyegg provides what I need from a click tracking tool.

THE PROS:

Basically, software such as crazyegg is that it tracks each and every click on a page. If a user clicks on an HREF link, a flash banner, an image that doesn’t actually link to anything or any other events that happen on a page, crazyegg tracks your clicks.

By tracking all clicks individually, you get a detailed click tracking report of where users are clicking and can therefore make a fully informed decision on how to better optimize your page for conversion. EG: if you notice that you have an image on the site that users constantly click on without realizing that it doesn’t actually link to anything, you can then ensure that you make the image clickable and link it to the most appropriate page. This is just one example in a sea of endless possibilities with such great click tracking software.

Some of the other benefits include the following:

- You can apply limits to the amount of clicks or visitors you wish to track

- You can view click tracking in different formats including a heatmap, individual clicks tracking, site overlay (similar to Google) and

- You can block certain visitors. Therefore if you don’t wish to track search engine traffic, or referrals from a particular site, you can block them from being tracked.

- Click tracking data is 100% live and up-to-date. You do not need to wait 24 hours to see a particular page.

Below is an example of a site overlay from crazyegg:

THE CONS:

I suppose the biggest downfall would be the fact that most decent click tracking software programs are paid services. They’re minimal, starting from approximately $5 a month upwards, but they still require you to pay. A $5 package will entitle you to track about 10 pages. You will need to add click tracking code to each page individually which can also be a slightly tiresome task.

Conclusion:

Google analytics’ site overlay does provide a good free service. HOWEVER, if conversion is of utmost importance to you and you need to really make a well informed decision on any design changes to a site or specific page, then it could be immensely beneficial to spend a minimal cost on some good click tracking software that could provide you with invaluable data.

Related posts:

1. Google Introduces Social Engagement Tracking in Webmaster Tools and Analytics
2. DO’s and DON’Ts of Using Annotations in Google Analytics
3. Companies Investing More in Web Analytics

Is Google Analytics sufficient for your click tracking needs?

1. What do you want your customers to do again?

This is the VERY FIRST QUESTION you need to answer before going any further to optimize your website. You are creating a website for a purpose. Before you’ve even thought about any layouts or page wireframes or anything of the sort, you need to know exactly what you want from you site. Do you want visitors to buy something, register their details or maybe you just want them to call you? Don’t go any further until you have answered this question.

2. Understand the conventional buying cycle.

The buying cycle for internet users is similar to a normal customer entering a shop. Below is a basic summary of the basic cycle of converting visitors to buyers:

• Needs: You need to know why the customer has landed at your site and what they are looking for.
• Awareness: Make sure the customer is immediately aware of what your site has to offer them and if they’re in the right place. Whether it’s Website optimization services or selling cricket balls, make sure it’s clear.
• Consideration: This is where you sell your product to the customer and persuade them that your product is the best of its kind and the most valuable.
• Purchase: The checkout process needs to be simple and fast. Many sites lose their customers here because they either don’t have sufficient checkout methods, or they are too complicated for your average user to cope with.

3. Have a simple flow from arrival to checkout

Once you have the basic understanding of the buying cycle you can apply this to your website. Optimize your site by ensuring that the customer can ideally get from arrival to checkout in about 3 – 5 clicks (if they know what they are looking for). Not every single phase of the buying cycle needs to be targeted on every page, or even on the homepage. Logically plan which calls to action will go on which page. You don’t want your own calls to action competing for space on the same page.

4. Don’t make your customer think

It is important to remember that very few visitors have your full attention, especially first time visitors who have arrived at your site purely because of your successful SEO strategy (Website search engine optimization). Visitors are initially just screening your site to check if you have what they want. Whilst evaluating the relevance of your site, they are most likely watching telly on the side, waiting for their dinner to cook or chatting to a friend so ensure that your calls to action are simple, clear and grab the user’s attention immediately upon landing on a page.

5. Use actionable lingo

When choosing what text or phrase to place on your various calls to action, ensure that your phrase has an active feel to it. Active language results in users taking action.

EG: Instead of saying “Contact us” – You could say “Contact us now”

Some other examples of good calls to action:

• Register now
• Order now.
• Subscribe to our newsletter.
• View pricing plans.
• Choose a product.

6. Take advantage of prime page space

Users read web pages in the same way they would read a book – Their eyes go from left to right, and top to bottom. Yes, web users know how to scroll down and find out more information, but hey, as mentioned before, they aren’t concentrating and it is important that your calls to action are above the fold (immediately viewable space on page without having to scroll down) and in immediate view. Accomplishing this means that the user know exactly what their options are to proceed without having to look too far down the page. This is one of the most important website optimization tips that should never be forgotten.

7. Use good anchor text

Web users have come a long way and understand web conventions (as should you or whoever you’ve hired to optimize your website), so there is no need to say things like “click here to view Media Vision’s site”. Instead, you simple just have to hyperlink the words “Media Vision”. This enables you to easier manage a larger volume of links to external or internal pages within your website.

8. Keep your site seasonal

Ensure that you stay with the times. If it’s nearly Christmas, be sure to incorporate this into your site, if it’s Valentines Day, add a call to action on your homepage for Valentines Day gift ideas etc. The idea is to ensure that your site is fresh and up-to-date and taking advantage of the numerous crazes that people experience year in and year out.

EG: South Africa is hosting their first World Cup Football tournament this year and you cant actually visit a single website or shop in South Africa that doesn’t somehow incorporate this into their sales and web optimization strategies. You should do the same.

9. Make your calls to action eye-catching

Ensure that your calls to action do not only incorporate active text and a good position, they still need to be eye-catching. Remember to use a bold colour and bold text to ensure that a user’s eye can easily find the call to action on the page. Avoiding a cluttered page is also a great way to ensure that your calls to action are easy to find.

10. Test, analyze and test again!

Once you have designed your site and launched it, don’t stop thinking about conversion. The concept you need to follow is known to web experts as “rinse and repeat”. Basically, this points to the fact that you need to constantly try new ideas and experiment with different angles of conversion. If something doesn’t quite work out, fear not, simply just RINSE and REPEAT! The web evolves continuously and so should your website. Use web analytics tools or website optimization software to regularly analyze your traffic and do whatever you can to optimize your site. This is probably the most important of website optimization tips; all websites eventually become outdated if not constantly pampered. Do not fall into this trap.

If you examine your website and are confident that it adheres to the above principles then you’re already on the right track to increased ROI. Website Optimization is essential so ensure that you spend some time or hire someone to spend time on ensuring that you’re constantly on top of the conversion game!

Related posts:

1. Write calls to action that convert
2. More website conversion tips from Brian Eisenberg
3. Don’t forget your website!

Website Optimization: Optimize your Calls to Action

Converting Traffic to Sales

This (slightly lengthy) blog takes a look at some of the basics of conversion and how it can be monitored and optimized.

The definition of Web Conversion and Conversion rates:

Web Conversion can simply be defined as “converting a new visitor to a customer”. Many websites are generating enormous amounts of traffic through online marketing and do provide a great service, however their visitors are somehow getting lost in the website or quickly losing interest, which results in them leaving the site before taking advantage of what the site has to offer.
Your conversion rate is calculated by simply working out the percentage of your total traffic which converts to customers.

EG: if you have 100 visitors and 3 of them purchase something, then your conversion rate is 3%.

What is the Point Of Action (POA) for your site?

Every website has an ultimate goal for what they want their visitors to do once they reach the site. This is defined as your Point of Action (POA). Your POA could range from getting a customer to purchase something and make a payment into your account, or even be something as simple as getting your customer to sign up to your monthly newsletter.
It is important that you not only identify your POA’s before designing your website, but also prioritise these into primary, secondary and tertiary POA’s. Any more than 3 POA’s is difficult to manage and could result in simply too many options for visitors.

Calculating your ROI:

It is hugely important that you and your online marketing manager are able to track your ROI. Calculating your Web revenue and comparing it to the amount of money you are investing in online marketing will give you a good idea of your ROI.

Web Revenue can easily be summed up in a simple formula as shown below:

Amount of Traffic * Visitor Conversion rate * Average Order = Web Revenue

Your average order is calculated by simply working out how much money a customer spends per order. IE: customers will purchase one or more products. Whether they purchase one car for £10 000 or a 10 000 different types of pens which cost £1 each, your average price is the same at £10 000.

Obviously, using the above formula, if your traffic is high and your average order amount is high, but your conversion rate is zero, then you have a problem as 10 000 visitors multiplied by a zero percent conversion rate = ZERO!

How to improve your conversion rate:

This is where a good online marketing company comes into play. Any company worth its salt will be able to use numerous tools to analyze your website’s traffic and see where your visitors are exiting your site or simply getting lost. Ideally, you want your visitors to go from a landing page to your primary POA within three or four clicks. Any more clicks than this means that your site has is not optimally designed and you are missing out on web revenue.

A reputable online marketing agency will be able to identify problem areas and use their knowledge of web conventions and conversion to plan and implement subtle changes to your site that will ensure you get the results you desire.

So bear this in mind if you find yourself searching for a good online marketing company. It’s all about the bigger picture and ensuring you achieve maximum ROI – so make sure they know what they’re doing.

Related posts:

1. How to Accurately Measure the Effectiveness of Experimental Online Marketing Strategies
2. Why aren’t site owners obsessive about conversion metrics?
3. More website conversion tips from Brian Eisenberg

Online Marketing + Conversion Analysis = ROI

Organic Search

Ranking reports are good and well, however, we all know that the SERPS change daily, even hourly and running ranking reports every day is simply a waste of time. If you are using Google Analytics, you are able to track your search phrase rankings (positions) in analytics that result in clicks and the traffic your site receives. This information will help you decide which search phrases and “pages” require additional work as well as fine tune your optimised pages for your “money” phrases.

Do you have a members or login area within your site? You may want to track members VS non members within your analytics. You can do this using the Google Analytics setVar method, which you can use to “label” members visiting your site (seen within the user defined section in analytics).

Remember to only add this line of code in your GA tracking script to one page within the member area that will be seen by all members. This will help track performance of non member traffic to the site through informational or transactional queries (even navigational).

Paid Search

You should have goals setup within your Google analytics profile. Import your analytics goals into your AdWords account and use the conversion metric to help refine your AdWords campaigns. This can be found under the Reporting section in AdWords and then the “conversions” screen.

Do you know what search phrases resulted in your AdWords ad clicks? If you are running phrase or broad match types for your PPC campaigns create a new analytics website profile and apply term filter to this profile. This will help you to track the actual PPC search phrases that resulted in the clicks for your campaigns.

Conversions & Goal Tracking

Is your website ecommerce enabled? Enable ecommerce tracking within your analytics profile and update the GA tracking script on your receipt page. Track ROI off any marketing campaigns that may be running such as email marketing right through to SEO & PPC. Simple enough, however you would be surprised by how many ecommerce sites are not using ecommerce tracking within analytics.

Run an ecommerce site with the ecommerce tracking enabled and create successful/failed transaction goals to help with conversion analysis and data to help improve the purchase funnel. Are buyers falling out the funnel when selecting payment options or typing the card details incorrectly?

Not running an ecommerce website but you still want to track the most valuable pages on your site? Assign a value to your analytics goals, allowing you to use the $index value within analytics reports to monitor the top earning pages or those pages that should be performing better than they currently are.

Don’t have a specific URI to use for goals? This may be the case for downloads or click events such as mailto scripts. Track these with custom onClick tracking:

This can be used to track contact using mailto, or for those with blogs wanting to track comments as goals, then use the onClick tracker on the post comment button. As the script is customisable and will appear as a URI within your analytics content report, you are also able to use this URI to set up goals in analytics.

Keep your data clean

Always keep a backup analytics website profile. When creating filters it is usually best to apply new filters to a new website profile. If anything goes wrong, you have a backup profile to fallback on.

Exclude your internal traffic and website owner traffic using exclude filters for specific IP address ranges. No point including your own visits within your analytics reports.

WordPress users create an exclude filter for your page/post previews, get rid of those pesky preview=true occurrences within you analytics content drilldown reports.

Related posts:

1. Google Introduces Social Engagement Tracking in Webmaster Tools and Analytics
2. Is Google Analytics sufficient for your click tracking needs?
3. Staying on top of local search: ranking and tracking made easy.

Tracking SEM more effectively