Paul Sizemore

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Nov 19 / 2:15pm

Adding a new Google Analytics User

If you have an existing Google Analytics account, and want another user to have access to the data and reports, the best practice is to share the account with their Google Account.
1) After logging in to GA, select  ‘Analytic Settings’ in the upper left hand corner.
2)  At the bottom of the window, select ‘User Manager.’
3)  Select ‘Add User’.
4)  Select account administrator and enter the valid google account's email address.

       
Click here to download:
Adding_a_new_Google_Analytics_.zip (78 KB)

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Oct 26 / 1:54pm

What has your site done for you lately? / Conversions

A lot of people in interactive believe traffic is king; not true, conversions are king. Every web site has a goal, or should have. Every site has a way to measure value. Conversions are the measure of value on a web site. The higher your conversions, the higher the value of your site. 

Sales or leads are evident as conversions, but what if you don't sell anything on your site? If your site is in place to build a brand, or communicate a message, then when a user lands on that page, they are a conversion. Your goal has been reached. 

Conversions are more clear cut in a sales or a lead generation site. Every conversion has steps the user follows to make it to the conversion point. This is often represented as a funnel, and it's great to look at a funnel report in your analytics package. Once set up, it can help you identify places in the sales cycle that users fail to make it to the next step. For example, if you have a large number of visitors delivered from organic search results, and those users are failing to convert, that might indicate a problem with the user's expectations based on the search terms. 

You can test several designs and funnels using A/B testing or multivariate testing. Your analytics package might be able to help you implement this, and it's best tracked in your analytics package. The concept is you test, for example, two versions of a page and then collect data on the one that leads to the most users doing what you want them to do. 
Filed under  //  Analytics   Internet Marketing   SEO  

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Oct 26 / 12:42pm

Succeeding in SEO

Since the SEO environment is in a constant flux, it is imperative to maintain your SEO efforts consistently over time. Measurement is essential. There are many different ways to measure SEO success, and the way you decide will be determined by your overall goals of your SEO campaign. 

The fluctuation of success can be caused by the search algorithms, changes to the site or efforts of your competitors to gain rankings. Therefore, rankings and traffic are best measured long-term. 

Set and Reset Expectations

Setting realistic expectations can help your campaign maintain forward movement, keep pressure low, ensure success. Expectations drive the stakeholders actions and decisions. 

Remember, when you are defining expectations, be SMART -  Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound.

People expect immediate results. Be sure to set these expectations first. Also, it helps to have a few low hanging SEO fruit that you can implement. If needed, you can pull that card out and play it. SEO can take months to see results, be sure to pass that along to the stakeholders.

Touch Points
It's also essential that you maintain touch points within the organization to be able to reset the expectations anytime it looks like the campaign starts lagging, but most important, it allows you to know what's going on in the organization. Be an evangelist, that will ensure people understand the process better, and know what to expect. 

Metric: Web Analytics 
Google Analytics is a good solid choice for baseline stats, but will not provide your analytics with very strong of a competitive advantage. It's free, and everyone uses it. The most important thing is to collect baseline stats, those are stats taken before any SEO changes are made. The more historical analytics you can collect the better. If you haven't set up Google Analytics or another script based package to collect the historical data, it might be a good idea to assess you server logs. Log based analytic packages can be loaded with historical logs, so if they are on your server, they can be loaded and analyzed. 

Metric: Referring Web Sites
Looking at the referring sites will let you know if you are getting inbound links, and if the number is increasing or decreasing. In addition, this metric will help you identify new partners. 

Metric: Referring keywords
Keyword tracking will let you know the search terms people are using to find your site. This report is invaluable. It will help you further refine your keyword research. 

Metric: Visit Duration & Depth
This report will let you know how targeted your pages are for the searchers. 

It's important to measure and report SEO results, once you are doing this, you can manage expectations and succeed in SEO. 
Filed under  //  Analytics   SEO  

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Oct 24 / 2:51pm

The tools to reach your analytic goals

There are a few different ways to collect analytics. There is script page tags, log file tracking, packet sniffers and api. There are benefits to each, and a good analytics package for an enterprise strategy often will employ more than one. 

Script Page Tags are common, and include Google Analytics. They are very useful for capturing user driven data. They have more accurate session tracking, event tracking and can capture client side events. However, be careful, because any errors in the data capture are permanent. Also, the script might not load for all users, so if page views correlate with revenue, such as pay per impression, stay away from these analytics (or at least load the script in the head of the HTML page). There is also the problem of making sure all the pages have the proper script tag on them; large sites rarely achieve 100% page tagging accuracy. Some sites will be able to use 'mod_layout' to write the script to every requested page. 

Log file tracking: In my earlier days, I loved throwing logs in the White River and watching them float on. As a professional I love watching log analytics accumulate. Log file tracking makes a data impression for everything. It counts partial page downloads that Script Page Tags don't get a chance to count because of the page not fully loading, or the user navigating away from the page. Also, Log File tracking allows you to see more errors and historical log files can be loaded, so you collect all the data. To pull a little SAT analogy Script Page Tags versus Log file tracking is like shooting photos in JPG versus Raw. 

Packet Sniffers: If you look longingly at in depth segmentation reports, packet sniffers might be for you. Packet sniffers logs the communication that comes through your server, each request and response. You can collect an enormous amount of data, and determine exactly how each user is interacting with your site, even replay a user's click path. 

API: If you subscribe to the thought that analytics is one of the most valuable business intelligence, and you want a competitive edge, a custom API is the path you need to pursue. Each business process is unique, and an off-the-self product might not fill all your needs. A custom API for your web application can better address the key performance indicators for your site, and help you gain a competitive edge in the marketplace. 

The most important thing is to define the analytic goals before you invest resources in a solution. 
Filed under  //  Analytics  

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