Customizing the View

This journey into the extensive capabilities of Google Analytics continued this week with the addition of custom filters and keyword performance tracking to my blog.

Filters allow you to select specific visitors or visits in your analytics reports to either show them, exclude them or only display these visitors in certain reports (Link love, 2007). As I have previously stated on this blog, I have started to publicize it a bit more as I become more engrossed and knowledgeable on this topic.

Social media has been the cornerstone for me reaching new audiences with my blog. With that in mind, I placed the filters to show if the visitors reached the site via Twitter, Blogger or Facebook. I wanted to see if my efforts were proving to be successful.

Since placing these filters on my report, I have received three hits directly from Blogger. Going forward, I hope to see an increase in traffic via other social media sites and search engines such as Google and Bing. I will be reviewing my SEO strategy for the site to maximize this blog’s presence. I plan on tweeting about new posts either later tonight or tomorrow morning. This may increase traffic from this social media site.

Once the filters were established, it was now time to work on keyword identification. When I decided to establish this blog, I had the following keywords in mind: “social media,” “digital media,” “Web analytics,” “Search Engine Optimization,” “SEO” and “Web statistics.” These are common keywords in this field of study, and it may be difficult for this blog to reach the top of the rankings based on keywords alone since it is relatively new and does not have the longevity of other sites focused on this topic (Kettler, 2010). So, it should not come as a surprise when I noticed that none of these keywords appeared on my keywords report.

Instead, the keywords that appeared centered on Valspar, which is a competitor of the company for which I completed my social media plan. While this fact was interesting, it does make me motivated to tweak the blog in how it is written to increase keyword usage throughout.

I have learned throughout the past six weeks the critical role that Web analytics plays in helping a company gauge the success of a Website. The numbers in Web analytics reports provide a wealth of actionable steps one can take to increase Web presence.

This resonated for me when I viewed my Web analytics report for this past week. It demonstrated to me that I need to increase search engine rankings through SEO techniques such as linking and keyword usage. In addition, it indicated to me the need to publicize the blog more via social media networks that are available to me.

I also looked at the depth of my visits. It showed me that the majority of visitors, 62% to be exact, only viewed one page, and 62.5% of all visitors were on the site for no more than 10 seconds at a time. This demonstrated to me that I need to write longer posts. Just kidding, but it indicated to me that conversations need to be started with my blog, and I could do this by posing more questions. Also, I needed to link back to other postings as well to demonstrate that this blog does possess useful information on subjects such as social media, digital media, Web analytics and SEO. I am happy to report that nearly 25% of all visitors have come to my blog more than three times. Slowly, I am reaching one of my goals of increasing visitor loyalty.

This is a learning process, and I am happy to be participating in it. I am learning knew things, and upon seeing them applied, I am seeing the true power of Web analytics and SEO.

References
Link love (2007). Filters in Google Analytics. Retrieved February 22, 2010, from http://www.vdgraaf.info/filters-in-google-analytics.html

Kettler, N (2010). WebDynamic Five Crucial Steps to increasing SEO Importance Web Presence Credibility. Retrieved February 22, 2010, from http://www.articlesbase.com/sem-articles/webdynamic-five-crucial-steps-to-increasing-seo-importance-web-presence-credibility-1697490.html