Posts Tagged ‘metrics’
Best Web Analytics Tools and Tips of 2009
Tuesday, May 18th, 2010There’s a great scene from the original Cannonball Run in which one of drivers hops into his Ferrari convertible, rips the rearview mirror off of the windshield, tosses it out and then says to his startled co-driver, “What is behind us—does not matter.” In the world of analytics, all information is, by its nature, backward looking (you can’t measure what hasn’t happened yet). But it isn’t the historical measures themselves which are of interest to analysts, rather the trends they reveal and path(s) forward they illuminate. In short, to be valuable, analytics must be actionable; they should provide hard data to clarify what you should keep doing, what you should stop doing, and what you should do differently.
Learn more about creating custom reports in Google Analytics, improving site conversion rates, interesting tools that extend the capabilities of Analytics and more here in some of the best articles and blog posts on web analytics from the past year.
Google Analytics 101, Part 1 by Search Engine Watch
Frequent best-of contributor Ron Jones provides an excellent introduction to Google Analytics for newbies, and even intermediate users may learn something new here.
Eyes on the Prize with Custom Reports by Google Analytics Blog
Sebastian Tonkin provides step-by-step instructions for creating custom reports within Google, such as a report showing the conversion rate for visitors from a specific geography or traffic source.
Web Analytics and Segmentation for Better Conversion Optimization by SEOmoz
A detailed tutorial on using the Advanced Segments Tool in Google Analytics to gain insights into measures such as differences in conversion rates based on content viewed: sure, that popular blog post drew a lot of traffic, but was it productive traffic? Advanced Segments can help answer such questions.
6 Tools Every Google Analytics User Should Have by ROI Revolution
For technical analysts, Shawn Purtell reviews six—actually seven—Firefox extensions, Greasemonkey scripts and other tools that enhance the functionality of Google Analytics. One example is Social Media Metrics, a tools which “allows you to see social media and link bait statistics for your specific pages.”
Is Yahoo Analytics Better than Google’s? by ECommerce Guide
David Needle reports results of a CMS Watch study which gave higher marks to Yahoo’s analytics tool in a couple of areas, including higher default pageview limits for larger enterprises, and the ability to access and view raw data, which would “let you continue to maintain a historical record instead of starting over” if you ever move to a more robust paid analytics platform.
Polaris Puts Google Analytics On Your Desktop by I’m Just Sayin’
A brief but helpful review of Polaris, a free Adobe Air application that delivers eight of the most popular Google Analytics reports straight to your desktop without logging in. A slick, quick way to stay current on your web traffic stats.
New AdWords ID Data in Google Analytics API by Google Analytics Blog
Alex Lucas explains how to combine data from Google Analytics and Google AdWords to “get a (more) detailed picture of the performance of…ad creatives and keywords.”
New Google Analytics Features Can Help You Track Your Social Media Success & Failures by Social Conversations
Li Evans showcases several new features recently added or planned for Google Analytics, such as new goal tracking types, custom variables, mobile apps tracking and custom alerts.
100 Ways To Measure Social Media by MediaPost Social Media Insider
What metrics can be tracked in social media? David Berkowitz offers up his list of “100 thought-starters.” Some are easy (e.g. numbers of fans and followers), others are more challenging and may require more sophisticated tools, but it’s a great list for generating ideas.
12 Steps to SEO Success
Thursday, December 17th, 2009This post was originally published on the WebMarketCentral blog in October 2008.
In an ideal world, SEO would be taken into consideration from the earliest stages of a new website design process, and “baked in” to the site from the start.
(Okay, I take that back; in an ideal world we’d all have movie star looks, be in Olympic athlete condition, and have the net worth of Larry Page, so none of us would worry about arcane things like SEO. But I digress.)
In the real world, however, SEOs are often called in to optimize an existing site, after all of the URLs are created, the navigation is already in place and all of the content is written. While that obviously reduces flexibility and makes certain steps impossible, the site’s search performance can still be improved using this 12-step process.
1. Compile an initial keyword list
This involves two independent activities. First, generate a list of keywords based on the content of each page. Second, ask key individuals in the company (sales, top executives, etc.) for their lists of key search phrases. It’s not unusual to turn up several important 2-4 word key phrases that don’t even appear on the website!
2. Expand, verify and prioritize target keyword list
Use SEO keyword tools to expand your initial list of key words and phrases from step one, then prioritize the list based on search term popularity as well as value to the business. In other words, ask two questions for every key phrase: 1) how popular is this term among searchers? and 2) how likely is it that a searcher using this phrase is looking for what we have to sell?
3. Match keywords to pages
Once the keyword list is established, search terms should be mapped to specific pages. Each page can support, ideally, one “core” key phrase as well as 2-3 long tail variants. So, for example, a page optimized for a high-volume two-word phrase like “blue thingamabobs” could also be the target page for “screaming blue thingamabobs,” “blue thingamabobs sales” and “screaming blue thingamabobs sales.”
An excellent way to start matching keywords to phrases is to use Google Advanced Search. Enter your key phrase in the box for “this exact wording or phrase:” and your domain (in the form company.com) in the “Search within a site or domain:” box. If no good matches are found, you may need to rewrite an existing page to target the key phrase or even create an entirely new page.
4. Review URLs / Modify content and meta tags
Modifying URLs on an existing site is much more painful than using a search-friendly URL in the initial design, but can be worth the effort if the initial URLs were chosen with no regard for SEO. For example, if you sell call recording software, then a URL like call-recording-software.html is much more likely to get you ranked highly by the search engines than is a URL such as products.html.
In addition to URLs, perform other on-page SEO work to optimize each page for its corresponding set of target key phrases by optimizing title tags, on-page headings (h1, h2 etc. tags), use of key phrases in bold and italic, and a target keyword density of 1.5% to 4%.
5. Perform initial SEO check (baseline)
With on-site SEO tasks completed, it’s time to perform a baseline SEO check. This is like the “before” photo in a weight loss ad. Run you final list of key terms through an automated tool such as the SEO Chat keyword position tool or the SEOBook Rank Checker tool. The results probably won’t be pretty, but they are important, so save this check and back it up.
6. Re-submit site to search engines / Create and register Google site map
It’s true that unless you somehow have managed to create a site that absolutely no one links to, there is no need to manually submit your site to the search engines; they’ll find it (eventually). However, this step doesn’t hurt, it can get your re-indexed more quickly, and it only takes five minutes to hand-submit a site to Google, Yahoo and Bing, so there’s no real reason not to do this.
Next, create and submit an XML site map for Google. Again, there’s no guarantee this step will improve your search engine positioning, but it will help Google to index more of the pages on your site.
7. Identify sites for linking: by keywords and competitors
Perform searches for your top key terms as well as competitor names. Compile a list of sites for link-building efforts based on these searches.
8. Build external links
External links are a critical component of SEO. In addition to getting your site linked from appropriate directories and social media sites, undertake an effort to get your site linked on sites that show up well for searches on your key search phrases (such as blogs, publications, portal sites and specialized directories) as well as on sites where your competitors are listed. In this post you’ll find several more tactics for SEO link building.
9. 30-day SEO check and report
These on-site and off-site SEO efforts should begin to show results within 2-3 weeks, but give it a month to be safe. After 30 days, run an updated search position check. Normally, this will show a mix of significant improvement in search engine position on some terms, more moderate improvement on others. The results will indicate for which terms additional efforts are needed.
10. Ongoing content edits
Based on the results of the 30-day SEO check, make additional content edits to improve search engine positioning for your “challenging” terms. These include title tag modifications, image alt tags and image file names, internal in-text links, on-page headings and page content.
11. Ongoing link building
Link building is a process; over time, you’ll discover new sites and blogs to approach for links, develop new link bait content (articles, podcasts, video etc.), and establish new relationships that can facilitate links.
Make sure to maximize the link-building value of your PR efforts as well by writing SEO press releases with keyword text links. (Here are more press release SEO tips for writing search optimized press releases.) Use Interactive PR practices to get your news linked from blogs and social bookmarking sites.
12. Monthly SEO checks / Ongoing reporting, analysis and optimizing
Monitor and analyze the results of your SEO efforts on a monthly basis, so you can bask in your successes and focus continuing efforts where needed. Review critical website analytics each month such as sources of traffic, top-performing keywords and navigation paths through your site. SEO isn’t just about driving more traffic, it’s ultimately about producing ROI, so focus efforts on getting visitors to take a desired action (purchase a product, sign up for a free trial, download a white paper, or whatever). If, for example, you’ve written a keyword-rich article on “Exciting New Applications for Screaming Blue Thingamabobs” that’s drawing a lot of organic search traffic, maximize the benefit of the page by linking to relevant white papers, demos and other materials on your site.
There you have it. If you’re relatively new to SEO, I hope you find these 12 steps helpful. If you’re an SEO pro, feel free to improve on this list by leaving a comment.
