Google Analytics is updating their their system. To ensure AdWords continues to pass information to your Google Analytics account, a setting change may be needed. I have already taken care of this for my customers and in doing so found several cases where a change was required.

I wanted to alert other readers that you should check your AdWords account to be sure the information is correct.

For instructions see this Google Post Important change to AdWords/Analytics cost data importing

 Thanks to Rusty Brick at Search Engine Roundtable for the heads up and Brad Geddes for his coverage (here).

Analytics, SEM adwords, Analytics, google

It is beneficial to separate and track your Pay Per Click traffic from Organic in Google Analytics. If you don’t make the effort, PPC and Organic traffic will be lumped together, making it difficult to know how your SEO efforts are progressing.

Once you make the link between Google AdWords and Google Analytics accounts, the tracking will occur automatically. To set this up, simply access the Analytics tab in your AdWords account and then either select Create New or Link to Existing.  Once you have done this, all your campaign information, keyword information et cetera will be nicely broken out in your Google Analytics account.

If you previously messed up and selected Create New (when you had an existing account) this can be corrected. You use to have contact Google to have this done manually. This recently changed with this AdWords announcement explaining how you can now un-link and link AdWords and Google Analytics.

In addition to seeing Google (CPC) broken out, you can also have Yahoo (CPC), MSN (CPC), and others broken out in Google Analytics.  While tracking additional marketing campaigns in Google Analytics requires a little extra work when you set the campaign up, it’s definitely worth the effort.  

Tracking other campaigns is accomplished by editing and adding a tracking code to the end of each of the URLs used in your ads. While adding this “tracking code” stuff may sound complicated or technical, it’s not. But just in case, Google has created a tool that simplifies things. To set these up go to the Google Analytic URL builder , enter the URL of your landing page with the associated campaign information and the tool will generate  an updated URL complete with the code . The codes can be placed on any incoming links you wish to track enabling you to track banner ads, paid placements, and so on with your Google Analytics  account.

Note: AdWords will automatically appear in your Analytics account as “Google (CPC)”, so using “CPC” (cost per click) as the “Campaign Medium” setting for other Pay Per Click marketing campaigns will make them appear in like fashion, Yahoo (CPC), MSN (CPC).

Analytics, SEM, SEO adwords, Analytics, incoming links, ppc, SEM, tracking campaigns

Whether launching a new website or changing an existing one it is important to do a little upfront work. I have had a couple of clients come to me recently either wanting to toss out their old site and start over or who have sadly, already made wholesale changes to page names or content only to find that their website can no longer be found in search results.

Things to consider when launching a new Website or changing an existing one:

1. Never rename or delete a page (well almost). If you are contemplating a site change, be mindful of your page names and extensions. If you make changes with abandon, you will loose any ranking associated with those pages and your site.  This can be specially tricky if you are moving to a content management system or changing platforms.  301 redirects are critical to this process,
   see: Never delete or rename a page.
             
2. Before you make changes, you need to be sure you don’t derail existing traffic. It’s important to know what pages are receiving traffic on your site. You want to know what terms or phrases are attracting attention. You want to know what external sites are linking to and insure there is equivalent content going forward. Review analytics data and web logs before you make changes. If you don’t have tracking in place, don’t wait to add it.  I recommend installing Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools at the very least to see where you stand. You can’t tell if you have made improvements or where you may have gone wrong, unless you have some history! 
   See: Getting Started with Web Analytics Tools

Read more…

SEO 301 redirects, Analytics, mod rewrite, SEO, SEO Tools, webmaster tools

Many people rely on server logs to monitor uptime or will ping a server from an in-house location. Unfortunately, this is not adequate as there can be many reasons a website is unavailable.

In shared hosting environments* your bandwidth and availability is potentially at the mercy of dozens of other websites that may or may not be commercial in nature. However, even in dedicated hosting environments outages occur, modems to go off line, routers fail, and networks go down, making it important to monitor availability regardless of your environment.

Read more…

Analytics Analytics, monitoring uptime, website monitoring