Building Your Brand: Test Your Content, Not Just Your Keywords

I was doing my usual shuffle through a few analytics accounts the other day, for interest rather than with a clear goal in my mind when this blog post occurred to me. Firstly apologies for again writing something that is not ‘in the news’ as such. I promise my next post will be about current events – from Google plus-ing to site mobile-ing and everything in between.

For now, back to the thought I had about content, brand and analytics.

Here’s my train of thought:

1. We all know that our analytics accounts tell us what content is working, what search terms people come in on and  even what search terms send the ‘right’ kind of people to our site.

2. We all know that we need to hone our keyword targeting in order to get those ‘right’ kind of people – even if we are limited to using endlessly frustrating tools like the dreaded Adwords Keyword Tool.

3. We all know we need to write content, using those target keywords, in order to get conversions.

4. How often do we think about brand visibility and its value alongside conversions?

Let me give you an example. … Continue Reading

Giveaway: 500 Extra Mouseflow Recordings

Recently I wrote about a very nice tool called Mouseflow which can be used to easily track the movements of visitors on a website. Mouseflow has now offered us some recordings to share with our readers. And who are we to say no to something our readers benefit from right?

If you want to give the tool a try you can sign up for a free account, after you added the Javascript code you have 100 free recordings per month. These 100 recordings aren´t much and so if you have more than 100 visitors per month you will run of out these recordings very quickly.

… Continue Reading

Google Analytics Premium a game changer?

Last week, Google launched Google Analytics Premium. An enterprise solution for some of the largest customers that currently use the Google Analytics free edition. These customers have specific needs that Google Analytics could not meet previously. Yesterday, one of the few selected Premium Resellers, Cardinal Path presented Google Analytics Premium with a 1 hour webinar and Q&A.

I will summarize the session for our readers. … Continue Reading

Google Analytics presents new interface, premium package and real time data

Since the launch of the newest version of Google Analytics users are eagerly waiting for new features presented by Google Analytics. Slowly it’s developing towards the complete package we’re all hoping for. Thus far Google already added site speed measurement, multi-channel funnels, and linking multiple AdWords accounts in the new version.

Yesterday was a busy day at the office for the Google Analytics team. They introduced a few new and very interesting possibilities in a short time. We will discuss the below. … Continue Reading

Google Analytics rolls out Multi-Channel Funnel reports for all accounts

Google has announced that as of yesterday (August 24) all Google Analytics accounts will have Multi-Channel Conversion Funnel reports available. Previously available to only a limited amount of accounts, Google has now decided to roll out this feature for all users in the new version of Google Analytics.

Below is a short video from Google explaining what these Multi-Channel Funnel reports are:

… Continue Reading

Google Image Search traffic is ruining my SEO reports

In case you missed it, a few weeks ago Google seems to have made a quiet change to how Google Analytics records visits coming from Image Search results.

Whereas previously Image Search showed up in your Google Analytics as a referral visit – and thus allowed you to easily filter it from your reports – now it seems Image Search visits are part of the organic search traffic in your Google Analytics reports. … Continue Reading

Jim Sterne on Social Media Metrics – London SES

This post was written by Thomas Schonenberger from Mediavision who was our guest at SES London last week.

Thursdays keynote at SES London was given by Jim Sterne, founder of the eMetrics marketing Optimisation Summit and current chairman of Web Analytics Association. Jim presented us some thoughts on what and why we should be measuring to gauge our effectiveness on Social Media. When we consider that everything we do these days involves other people and the community in some form or another, it is really important to consider the context in which we define “Social Media”. Essentially all channels are social media! Any platform that allows content to be easily distributed (not necessarily online) – this is how connected humans communicate with each other. It is going to be around for a while to come! Embrace it.

Jim opened with a bit of background on marketing, considering the good old days of trading: How many chickens for that sheep? We would negotiate till we had a deal – it was done face to face and one to one. That was till they invented a price tag! Then came factories and shipping. Now we do commerce with people we don’t know. So we need to make noise to sell product and we call that advertising. Repetition of your message builds trust and you create desire. In the hay day of advertising you needed a Logo, a slogan and a jingle and you were set! That was the only channel. Now with the interweb, it is about making noise – not just about how loud, but where to focus that and how best to tune it. … Continue Reading

Geotargeting Based on IP Address is Broken

When websites try to determine a user’s geographic location, this is usually done via the user’s IP address. In theory an IP address can be related to a physical location. This is how Google determines a user’s location in Analytics and Adwords – and even search – and Facebook in Insights.

It seems the accepted wisdom is that while IP address geolocation is not perfect, it’s mostly accurate. Estimates reach from 60% accuracy all the way up to 95% accurate. The problem is that the actual accuracy of IP geotargeting is nowhere near that. … Continue Reading

Measure your +1 metrics in WebmasterTools and Analytics

Google + is here, big time. If it will become a success or not, we’ll have to wait and see. But Google doesn’t stop there. It is just the beginning actually.

One of the first things they’ve rolled out after Google+ is the ability for webmasters to track and measure their +1 buttons, both in Analytics as in Webmastertools. Social Engagement has really become the main focus for Google. … Continue Reading