Web Analytics Articles

Google uses page load speed as one of the signals in their ranking algorithm. While they previously provided an indicator of your sites speed in Webmaster tools, but it wasn’t on-going (they only sampled periodically).

With this announcement, Google has added Site Speed To Google Analytics.

I think page load speed is something everyone should be monitoring, especially if you’re in a share hosting environment (like most of my customers). It will also be beneficial in identifying slower pagers on you site. Monitoring page speed does require a change to your Google Analytics tracking code, I recommend everyone update this ASAP. I am sure the Joomla and WordPress plug-ins will add this feature shortly, but you may want to check to be sure the plug-ins you’re using support this feature.

5/10/2011 Update: Google Analytics for WordPress, by Yoast de Valk now includes this feature by default.

SEM Huntsville, Web Analytics google analytics, page speed, site speed

My clients will tell you that I am always preaching the importance of site architecture (or information architecture). Your site’s architecture, links, and navigation communicate how information is related within your site. Each page in your site passes rank to the pages beneath it. If your site lacks organization, Google must rely on other factors to determine the importance and relationship of your pages.

WordPress and SEO guru Joost de Valk has a great write-up on this topic. http://yoast.com/site-structure-seo

Google’s Matt Cutts discusses site architecture here: http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-matt-cutts-012510.shtml

I encourage new clients or anyone wanting to improve their rank to start with a Website Audit. The audit examines the way people you use your site, the keywords and topic of the highest importance and makes recommendations for what an optimized site structure would be.

SEO Huntsville, Web Analytics audit, information architecture, site architecture

An update to Bing’s webmaster tools was announced today. Webmaster tools provides valuable insight into the search engine’s view of your website. Unlike Web Analytics, which shows you what traffic came to your site, webmaster tools tells you what search phrases triggered the Search Engine to display your content in the search results and if that content was clicked or not.

Bing’s new interface does list the search phrases your site is displayed for, which is especially useful when your site is displayed for the wrong things, and what was actually clicked. However, since it doesn’t show the URL that was displayed or your position in the results (you can preform an actual search to figure this out), you don’t have a compete picture of what content is working and what isn’t.

Crawl errors are recorded and graphed, but Bing provides no specifics to guide you as to what the errant links are or what they are linked from. And the tool lacks reports for incoming links, linked phrases, and ranking information.

In summary, Bing’s new interface is slicker looking than the previous product and has some attractive charts. However I am hoping this is just the first pass and that Bing will flow-in additional information to expose the critical details that are currently missing.

SEM Huntsville, Web Analytics bing, Web Analytics, webmaster tools

When dealing with a decline in traffic it is important to determine the source of the problem. Is the change something indirect that you can’t control such as change in a search algorithm or a new competitor in the market, or is the change due to something more direct, like recent (well intentioned) changes to your site or a a server outage?

The clues are all in your Analytics data. 

• Is the loss from a single referer (Google, Yahoo, Bing)?
• Is the traffic loss clustered around a specific keywords or phrases?
• Has your website been off-line due to a server outage or update?
• Is there a basic configuration issue, such as an incorrectly written “No Index” entry in the robots.txt file?
• What changes, if any were made to the website preceding the loss?

Jill Whalen with High Rankings in Boston has a really great write-up on looking for the root of the problem here.

To summarize:

1. Determine what type of traffic loss you’re dealing with.
2. Look at the extent of the traffic loss.
3. Compare apples to apples.
4. Review and filter out “brand” traffic.
5. Analyze which keyword phrases have had a significant decrease in visitors.
6. Do a quick Google search for the phrases.
7. Review the landing page for the keyword phrase that lost traffic.
8. Review your long-tail traffic.
9. Decide if you’re dealing with a search engine penalty

SEO Huntsville, Web Analytics SEO Huntsville, traffic analysis

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).

SEM Huntsville, Web Analytics adwords, google, Web Analytics

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).

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

I thought Avinash Kaushik prepared an especially good article on new features coming to GA. Google updated their java-script about a year ago to support more features and this update starts to float some of those changes to the surface.

If you haven’t moved to the new (non urchin) code, you should do so as soon as possible. How can you tell which code you have? In a browser window surf to your website and do a “view source” on any web page, then search for google-analytics.com.  The old urchin code is urchin.js, if it says ga.js your OK.

If you need to upgrade, you can get the updated code snip-it from the Google Analytics Analytics Settings panel. In the Settings column click Edit, and then click the Check Status link at the top right of the panel. There you will see two tabs, New Tracking code and Legacy Tracking. You want new

Articles on the upgrade:

• Google Analytics Releases Advanced Segmentation
• Google Analytics Upgrade: AdSense Reporting, Visualization Tools, & More

Web Analytics google analytics

I am always surprised when I find businesses measuring Ad effectiveness based on click-thru rate. CTR is a simple measurement of clicks given as a percentage of impressions. That is, for a given volume of ad impressions, some number of readers have clicked-thru to your site. Unfortunately CTR can be very misleading. If you create a gee-wiz ad (such as click here to WIN), you can make your CTR soar, but if 100% of those clicks bounce, or otherwise don’t go past your landing page, you have wasted your money. What is needed is some kind of conversion or success metric to indicate that a positive step has been taken beyond just clicking the ad.

Conversion tracking is offered within Google’s, Microsoft’s and Yahoo’s the Ad interface. To track conversions, a code snip-it is placed on a confirmation page and information, like total purchase amount, can be captured. For a eCommerce site this provides straightforward business case as it is easy to understand that paying $1.00 for a click that result in a sale that nets $2.00 is a good investment.

If you don’t sell on-line, you can measure demo requests, requests for information, or file downloads as conversions. For service businesses, if the prospect selects your Contact page, where your street address, phone number, or email link are displayed you have established a clear ‘buying signal’.

I highly recommend turning on conversion tracking and installing the conversion code for every search engine you work with. Once this is enabled, you will have an additional column in your ad account showing ‘conversions’. Use conversions to help you tune the wording in your ads and to see which keyword phrases are producing the best results. One note, if you rely on a Contact page as a success metric, be sure to remove address, phone number, email contact, etc. from other pages on your site or your conversion rates will be skewed low.

There is also a conversion measure is also available in Google Analytics called Goals. Google Analytics Goals lets you identify a single page visit as a goal or visits to a series of pages can trigger a Goal. Setting ‘Goals’ helps you identify your most fertile source of leads and tune your advertising budget accordingly.

Web Analytics adcenter, adwords, conversions, CPC, leads, yahoo marketing