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

Mission Accomplished…Or Still in Progress?

Mission 1: Set up Google Analytics on my Blog

Mission 2: Delve Deeper into Google Analytics and Establish Funnels, Tracking and Segmentation

Mission 3: Decipher the Meaning of the Text and Evaluate the Blog

Mission 1 and Mission 2 have been accomplished, but now Mission 3 is upon me. The first step of Mission 3 was to gain an understanding of the different terms that are used to segment data. For example, a funnel is no longer something I use in the kitchen; it’s the process one takes to reach a certain point (BridgeWorks, 2009).

Funnels are a means to attain a goal on a site, and tend to be a common application for ecommerce sites (BridgeWorks, 2009). Yet, can funnels be applied to content-driven sites? I believe it could, and this meant I needed to take a closer look at my blog, and the goals I had established for it. These goals, which have been added to Google Analytics, are the following:

1. Track the number of visitors to the site
2. Track page views
3. Track overall time on the site

I thought these goals were pretty straight forward and would indicate whether or not my overall goal for the blog -a go-to source of information on digital media - was being accomplished.

I selected the number of visitors to the site for a few reasons. First, I wanted to see how many people were actually reading this blog, apart from my WVU classmates and professors. Too, I wanted to see if loyalty was being established for my site. As indicated in this presentation, loyalty is one of the biggest indicators of success for a non e-commerce Website (Kaushik, 2007).

Unfortunately, since establishing the goals for my site, I have only had one visitor and two unique page views. This could be because I have not updated the blog since then (Note to self: Update more frequently). Also, I believe I need to get the word out about the blog more. I need to tell friends and Twitter followers, who seem to have an interest in marketing and all things digital media, about the blog to increase visitors and comments. This way the blog will be a conversation generator and not simply a place to post class assignments.

Speaking of social media, one of my segments is for people who reached the site via a social media site, such as Twitter. I thought it would be interesting to see if people were viewing the site from a post or a retweet. In addition, another segment I established was for those who found the blog via a search engine. Throughout this process, I am trying to increase the search engine optimization on this site, and I thought it would be beneficial to see if those efforts have proven fruitful.

Tracking overall time is another factor I like to measure. This way I can see if people are finding the information useful. The more time one spends on a site, the more information he or she is digesting. This is another sign of success according to Kaushik (Kaushik, 2007).

Finally, page views were important. This way, I can see what topics are of most interest to my visitors. This principle can also be applied to any other marketing campaign. The most popular content on Websites translates into where consumer interest lies and can be the foundation for stronger, more targeted sales and marketing programs. Page views also demonstrate if my visitors are funneling through the site in the manner in which I hope or have mapped out. By looking at the page views, I can see if my funneling strategy needs to be re-designed to ensure the site's goals are being met.

The hardest part about adding goals, funnels and segmentation to my site was the process of me sitting down and actually thinking about what I wanted to track for my blog. What do I want visitors to read and learn about? How do I want visitors to find the blog? These were just a few of the questions I took into consideration.

Once I had answered these questions, I was able to see the behind-the-scenes direction for my blog. I wanted to be able to see the pages viewed as well as whether or not people were using the links to exit the blog, and if they were returning. These answers also helped me to develop the funnels for my site. I was able to see if they go from the home page to the most recent blog. I also reversed that to see if they go from the most recent posting back to the main home page to view other postings. The basis for selecting this funnel was to determine whether or not my blog was meeting its goals as an educational resource.

I did experience some difficulty in establishing these funnels, but as I selected them, I was able to see the true value of funnels and the fact they could be placed on non-ecommerce sites. It was just taking a different approach to thinkin about the process. I look forward to adding funnels to the analytics reporting for some of my current B2B clients.

This process is in its infancy, but as time goes on, I do see more goals being met, and even greater data being captured for this blog. I wish there was more data to report, but I believe I have laid the proper foundation for Web analytics and have gained a deeper understanding for how this process works. I would have loved to see some early results, but I now know how to get these results and look at these numbers, which may prove to be more valuable in the end.

Why is that?

The most important thing though is I am learning that these are more than numbers; they are tools that can determine overall success of a company’s marketing efforts. It shows me areas of enhancement and improvement that can be applied to my daily job and help my clients achieve Web success.

References
BridgeWorks Creative (2009). Four Rules to a Thriving Ecommerce. BridgeWorks Newsletter. Retrieved February 22, 2010, from http://www.bridgeworkscreative.com/news/?p=128

Kaushik, A. (2007). “Google Analytics - Non-Ecommerce Sites: Beyond Averages.” Retrieved February 22, 2010, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgXDUuAK77M&feature=PlayList&p=7A545E796C2CFA72&index=1

Adding Analytics…More Than a Numbers Game

Web analytics. I seem to stare them in the face each and every morning. In fact, I do. Each morning, like clockwork, I sit at my desk and put together a Web stats report for one of my clients. Within that report, I detail visitors, page views, and traffic sources. The report can be exhaustive and sometimes dare I even say tedious, but the information contained in it helps this client’s business grow and provides them with valuable data that can determine successes, and yes, even failures.

Knowing this, I have become intrigued with Web analytics, and I was actually excited to place them on this blog. The process itself was somewhat simple. I simply logged into my Google account, searched for “analytics” and followed the steps on developing the code. I will admit; I was a little hesitant on placing the code directly on the site myself, but this site was extremely helpful in providing detailed steps on how to make this happen. By following these steps, adding the code was a snap. Now I am ready to analyze, but what was I going to track on the site?

First and foremost, I do want to track the number of visitors to my blog. As Justin Harrison notes on his blog, it is critical to know who is visiting a site to determine not only if the site is meeting a business’ goals for the site, but to see from where visitors are coming (Harrison, 2009).

Granted, the goal of my blog is to inform and educate about my experience in the digital marketing program at WVU, but I still want to have an understanding of who is visiting my blog. Is it just my classmates and professors, or are there individuals who have seen my Twitter posts that have taken a gander? Too, maybe some of my content is being picked up by search engines and companies, and they are visiting the site. For example, in our social media class, my posts were showing up in Rust-Oleum’s Google alerts, and the company took notice of my blog. In hindsight, I would have love to have known they were visiting.

Another area of focus for me will be returning visits. Yes, this does go hand-in-hand with visitors, but by looking at returning visitors I can see if my blog is providing valuable information on this topic. I do hope that I am providing some insight on this topic, and measuring returning visitors is one such way to accomplish this. At least in a quantitative perspective.

Traffic sources are another component I will look for in my analytics reports. Are people coming to the site directly? Is a search engine helping them? Or are they using a social media vehicle, such as Twitter or Facebook to find the site? This is important because as we delve more into this topic. I am looking at ways to further optimize this site to bring it up in the search engine rankings. As mentioned in other posts, linking (both internal and inbound) will play a key role in this.

While content is different for some posts, I would like to see which posts are being read the most. This ensures that I am providing relative information about a wide variety of topics that are of interest to my followers. This is especially helpful since comments are not always posted to the site.

And finally, I will want to see how long people are spending on the blog. Is it informative and entertaining? I believe by looking at the time spent on the site this can be determined. While times will vary, I think the longer the time on the blog the more information is being digested.

While I have thought that Web stats reports may be viewed as numbers, I have gained a better understanding that there is meaning behind those numbers. I can’t wait to log onto my account and see who is, or isn’t reading, my blog.

References

Harrison, J. (2009). Why Place an Importance on Web Analytics. Internet Marketing with Justin Harrison Blog. Retrieved February 3, 2010, from http://www.justinharrison.com/web-analytics/why-place-any-importance-on-web-analytics.php

Let the Learning Curve Continue

Throughout my career, and especially in the past four of working at an agency, I have been tasked with collaborating with clients and my agency’s design team to develop Web sites for a wide range of clients. It is a fun, creative and yes, challenging process that I have come to enjoy. Yet, in my role as an account supervisor, I am charged with creating the copy for the site and supervising the execution of the project. Essentially, I need to ensure a client’s happiness. I have left all the search engine optimization (SEO) practices and challenges to my expert design team. Well, that changed when I needed to create a site and optimize it for my Web Analytics and SEO class for the graduate certificate program at West Virginia University.

I will be the first to say that I knew keywords were critical to the success of your Web site, but I did not know the importance of links and title tags. In fact, according to an article on the Web Workshop blog, link text is the single most important method for Google, and other search engines, to track and rank your site (Craven, 2007). Once Google adopted this method, linking became almost essential. The rationale behind this practice is that the more links to and from a site, the more important and credible the site (Craven, 2007).

This is why I can see the importance linking played in developing my site for this experiment. Yes, even though this is marketing and not chemistry, we still conduct experiments. For this experiment, I followed the text anchor model specified by Randfish on the SEOmoz blog. His experiment looks at links vs. keywords vs. tags in increasing search engine optimization (Randfish, 2008).

The first step was creating a site. In accomplishing this, I used Google’s site building tool. This was an easy tool to use. My only challenge was coming up with content for the site . Taking my knowledge of the importance of linking, I used some information contained on this blog and those links to help populate the site, including taking the steps recommended by Randfish. I placed inbound links on both my Facebook and Twitter pages to help increase traffic and ranking. As mentioned before in this blog, social media does play a crucial role in site optimization, especially as this medium continues to increase its breadth and depth. Too, I believe now that this link has been placed on this blog, the SEO placement will also increase.

The keywords I selected for this site were the following: “Web analytics,” “WVU,” “West Virginia University,” “SEO,” and “search engine optimization.”

My results were exactly what I thought they would be: a combination of linking and tagging helped this small, experimental site increase its presence. For example, when entering the keywords “Web analytics WVU” my site ranked third on Google. The reason for this ranking, I had fallen behind a site from the university. Next time, I will be sure to be more creative with my title and possible keywords. The site also ranked third on Google with the keywords “SEO WVU.” Yet, when entering the phrase “Web analytics SEO WVU” in to Google, the site ranked first. In fact, that combination of keywords placed me ahead of the WVU blog on the topic. In some ways, I am happy to say mission accomplished. But this mission is far from over. It is only the beginning of me gaining a better and applicable understanding of SEO.

When conducting a search on Bing and Yahoo, my site was virtually non-existent. This may be because of the importance this method placed on linking. Too, my site is relatively young, and the age of a site does have a factor on SEO. According to the blog, SEO Chat, domain age is a key factor in SEO results (SEO Chat, 2006). Plus, I do wonder if using a Google Web site tool, and having google.com in the site address played a role in my site’s placement, or lack of on other search engines. As a continuing experiment, I will continue updating this site to see how linking and other tagging tools can help this little site gain momentum on other search engines, besides Google.

This exercise allowed me to see what I was actually reading, and as we have heard, seeing is believing. I learned the true importance of keywords. I had to think as a searcher, not as someone familiar to the product or service. When I selected my title and keywords, I thought about how I would go about searching for this site on Google if I was going into it blind. This can be a cumbersome task, but it is one that I found beneficial, as evidenced by my ranking results.

Too, I witnessed first-hand the importance of links - both internal and inbound – to a site. I watched my site advance in the search engine rankings. Yes, seeing is believing, and I am excited to continue on this learning curve and increase my knowledge of SEO. I look forward to having my clients benefit from the knowledge I have gained throughout this course.

References

Craven, P (2007). Inbound links, link exchanges and link acquisition. Web Workshop Blog. Retrieved February 5, 2010, from http://www.webworkshop.net/inbound-links.html

Randfish (2008). Results of Google Experimentation - Only the First Anchor Text Counts. SEOmoz Blog. Retrieved January 31, 2010, from http://www.seomoz.org/blog/results-of-google-experimentation-only-the-first-anchor-text-counts

SEO Chat (2006). SEO Tools – Domain Age. SEO Chat Blog. Retrieved February 8, 2010, from http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/domain-age/