With online marketing becoming more and more prevalent, it’s essential to be up-to-date on the latest strategies. To help students in our Google Analytics training and Google AdWords training classes, we welcome Dominick Frasso, an SEO/SEM expert, to provide additional insight on using the bulk upload feature of Google Places. The following blog is written by Dominick.

Eighty-three percent of those under 35-years old turn to search engines when researching local businesses, according to a recent local search study. If you aren’t paying attention to your local search presence, you are likely missing out on potential customers and sales.

One powerful way to expand your business’ local search footprint at no cost is to make sure you have a Google Places listing. For any business that has multiple locations or multiple stores, Google makes it easy to submit, edit and verify all of your Places listings through a bulk upload process. If you already have a Google Places listing and want to add multiple locations to your account, here are some simple steps to make that happen.

Step 1: Download and Edit Data Template

At the bottom right hand of your existing Google Places listing, select Upload a data file.

Use Google’s upload template available for download on the next page (example below). This will help expedite the process of the bulk upload. Make sure all fields are submitted according to the template. Each column includes additional tips as you hover over the field headers to help you decide what data is appropriate to use for your business.

You can optimize your keywords within your Google Places listing, but it would take too long to cover right now in this blog. Try to be as accurate and descriptive as possible with business information in your data file. The entire optimization process includes utilization of accurate business information, keyword research and targeting as well as appropriate image and video use. You can also take advantage of Google Places Coupons. Places Coupons can provide potential customers with information and special offers to increase sales at your location.

Step 2: Upload File and Edit Errors

Once you upload your file, Google will automatically identify any errors you may have. Errors are identified by a red highlight in the cell in which the error resides. Google Places allows the errors to be corrected inline and allows you to export the new file to make multiple changes or for safekeeping.

 Step 3: Publish your listings!

Once all errors are resolved, you are ready to publish and verify.

Once you publish your listings, your status update will indicate that it’s time to verify!

Step 4: Request Verification

Google needs to make sure that you are a true representative of the business for which you are creating a Places listing. After you publish locations, you’ll see a listing of your places with the status set to “Request Verification.” When using the bulk upload feature, you can actually select or designate one person from your business to handle verifications for all Places listings. I was able to have verification from Google to go directly to me for our Google Places listings nationwide. Be sure to provide a valid phone number and email address when you request verification.

After requesting verification, within a couple of weeks you should receive an email from the Google Places team indicating successful verification and the status will change to “Pending” (illustrated below) until your Google Places listings are officially up.

Google Places is a great place to start when implementing a local search strategy. The majority of your time setting up your Google Places listing should be focused on insuring your business’ details are as accurate and as optimized as possible so that your business and the services you provide can be found.

Be sure to check out Google Places quality guidelines to avoid suspension or listing removal and for additional help, visit the Google Places User Guide.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dominick Frasso is the SEO/SEM Specialist at Vistage International,an executive coaching organization that helps CEO members build better companies through unique business coaching opportunities. After a successful enlistment in the United States Marine Corps, Dominick began his career in marketing.  He has spent time in traditional marketing roles such as advertising and media buys, direct mail, email, and marketing analytics.  Over the last 3 years, Dominick took those marketing skills online to concentrate solely on SEO and SEM projects for Vistage as well as his consulting clients.

To help students in our Google Analytics training and Google AdWords training classes, we asked Google Analytics experts to provide their real-world expertise in this multi-blog series. Today, we welcome Shervin Eli Natan is a serial entrepreneur specializing in creating internet-based technology companies and web marketing. He shares how he originally got started with Google Analytics and offers advice for others looking to learn the technology.

Q: How did you get started in the world of web analytics?

A: When we first got into Internet marketing, we would use the Google keyword tool to research the search volume behind the keywords we would target for our client’s website. Once we selected the keywords that had  high traffic volume, we would launch their paid search campaign and use analytics to track the traffic from the campaigns.

Most importantly, we used Google Analytics to track the conversion of keywords and then refocused our efforts on what keywords converted well based on our ad spend.

Q: What is the number one selling point for using Google Analytics to track your social media activities?

A: This one is a little trickier, Google Analytics will help you to monitor your campaign but it is up to you to constantly check and refine your campaigns based on which social networks bring the most relevant and important traffic to your site. Once you do a post, see which social media are bringing you the most traffic, and which post got the most amount of engagement via comments and retweets.

There are other tools such as bit.ly and Facebook page insights that go deeper in social media analytics that can better assist in your social media analytics efforts.

Q: If you could offer one step-by-step tutorial for someone using Google Analytics with their social media work, what would it be?
A: First, the user needs to monitor which are the top referring sites that are bringing in the traffic and further find out which social media network is the top traffic source. Next, with user’s ability to select which social media network is bringing the most amount of traffic to the site, Google Analytics provides the data of which pages the traffic is coming from. For example, if you post a link in a dog group for deals on dog food on your site, your analytics will be able to tell you how many visitors came from that posted link from that Facebook group. Being able to go in-depth and checking referring links from social media networks allows a user to redefine there social media campaign and focus on what works and what doesn’t.

Q: What advice do you have for someone who is just starting to track their social media efforts with Google Analytics?
A: First thing is to create a brief social strategy and test it. Start small on posting your site on different social media networks and test an ad budget. Then use Google analytics to track the incoming traffic and monitor if any traffic is generated by your efforts. Once you test and reconcile your efforts on Google Analytics, focus on the efforts that bring relevant traffic and double down on your efforts.

—–

Eli Natan is a serial entrepreneur specializing in creating technology companies and marketing company’s on the web. In 2008, Eli founded an internet marketing company called Promoting Group, which provides custom marketing solutions for brands, celebrities, top online retailers, athletes, tech start ups and businesses. Eli received his BA in History at the University of California, Los Angeles graduating High Honors, Summa Cum Laude and President of Phi Alpha Theta.

If you’re currently using Google AdWords, or you’ve been tossing around the idea of search engine marketing, this blog is designed for you. I teach numerous online Google AdWords classes each month, and the overarching concern of most students is the same: what keywords should I spend my time, energy, and money on? While it is almost the “million dollar” question of any marketer, spending some time with Google’s free tools and a little time wearing your customer hat, can go a long way! Ready?

First, we need to assume a few things about your online marketing:

1. You’ve already thought about what products/services you are going to promote.
2. You’ve already decided on what other marketing avenues you will use (to guarantee cohesive branding)
3. And, most importantly, you’re willing to throw any of your current “marketing keywords” out the window!

With that, lets’ getting rolling. Either sign into your  Google AdWords account, or sign up for a free account and follow along. Brand new to AdWords? Check out some of our AdWords blogs or AdWords training.

Now, we need to begin thinking about your customer hat. Pause here for as long as you need, and think about what people are searching for to find your business. Pull up a Google search if need be. It’s not going to be “My company is the best.” Let me just use my company as a generic example. We provide both business and technical training. Let’s focus on Crystal Reports training. Sure, what I just mentioned is a great keyword, but our customers are most likely searching for terms such as: “crystal reports help,” crystal reports tutorials,” or “how to use crystal reports.” Think about your own customers, which keywords they may be using to find you, and write the keywords down. Stuck? Hop onto your website, social media outlets, and search in Google for help.

When you’re ready to move on, let’s take that list and use two of Google’s tools: Google Insights and Google Keyword Tool.

Up first, Google Insights. Take a look at the screenshot below. This tool allows you to see the most popular search terms (keywords), how they compare to each other, and what Google thinks will happen with those search terms in the future (pretty cool, huh?). Now, if you have a search term for your industry that you know is popular, throw that into the mix, so you can compare any new search terms to one you know is already popular. For example, as a training provider, our industry standard is “HTML training,” that we include on our Insights research. We know people have previously and continue to use that search term.

Quickly looking at that example, you can see that most terms have gone down a little bit in respect to number of searches, but you can see that in green, “HTML training,” is our industry standard, and in red, “Crystal Reports tutorial,” is still fairly popular, and I would consider using this term. Go ahead and try this tool for yourself! There are also filtering options on top as well, if you’d like to play around with them.

Now, lets look at Google’s Keyword Tool. Take the list you just developed, and choose your top search terms you’re considering using within AdWords (or with any SEM campaign). For the sake of example, I’m going to use all three searches I mentioned around Crystal Reports training. Put your terms in at the top of the tool, in the “Word or phrase” box, and hit “Search.” One more step: go to the far right hand side and pull down “Columns,” and add in “Approximate CPC.” As you see in the screenshot below, you will see the search terms you choose up top, and the similar search terms that Google might recommend.

Here are ways to read/use this report for your benefit:

1. Look at your chosen keywords on top and see if they have a good number of searches and have a fair cost-per-click (CPC) which you might be comfortable spending.
2. Go through Google’s suggested keywords and see if any of those options might be good for your business as well.
3. Click on any of the keywords to see a live Google search and check out your competition.
4. When you’re ready, check off the desired keywords, and add to your appropriate Ad Group, and you’re ready to begin testing!

If you want to learn more, check out all of our upcoming Google Analytics training and Google AdWords training classes. To receive the latest news on our blogs, classes, and tutorials, sign up for our free newsletter. Click here to sign up.

To help students in our Google Analytics training and Google AdWords training classes, we asked Google Analytics experts to provide their real-world expertise in this multi-blog series. Today, we welcome Jon Tucker, a Senior Strategist at Compete Marketing Group. The post below was written by Jon. He focuses in on how to effectively use Google Website Optimizer for a business.

As a marketing agency (specifically an SEO agency), our clients expect us to increase the traffic they receive to their website. However, another often overlooked opportunity for business owners is to maximize the sales they receive from the website traffic they already have.

It’s Possible to Double Your Leads Without Increasing Traffic

For example, if your website currently receives 1,000 visitors per month and produces 50 leads, then it’s “converting” visitors to leads at 5% (i.e. 50 leads per 1000 visitors). Rather than focusing on driving more visitors to your site, it may be possible to double the conversion rate to 10% thus producing 100 leads per month from those same 1000 visitors.

The reason why businesses should consider improving conversion rather than just focusing on increasing traffic is because conversion is often a much easier thing to influence than traffic, at least over the short term.

“Conversion Optimization” 101- A Step by Step Example

The process of improving your website’s effectiveness at producing leads is called “conversion optimization”- we’re going to walk through a case study of how we’re working to improve the conversion on one of our client’s websites.

TicketKick.com, a client of ours for quite some time, helps drivers in the US get their traffic tickets dismissed. Specifically, TicketKick focuses on red light camera tickets but is also able to get other types of tickets (speeding, traffic signs, etc.) dismissed using what is called a trial by written declaration.

You can check out TicketKick.com for more info; the purpose of this blog post is to show you how we’re testing ways to increase the leads they receive from their website.

Start With the Obvious- Test Your Homepage

While you can test the effectiveness of nearly every detail of your website, you should start with the most obvious opportunities such as the homepage. The reason this is recommended is that testing two different versions of your homepage can give you data the fastest and help you make a good initial dent in improving your conversions right away.

With TicketKick, we’re testing 2 different versions of the homepage to see which one causes visitors to start the ticket dismissal process that is linked to from the homepage (i.e., the get started buttons that you see on the homepages below). We’re testing a homepage which uses a flash banner to describe TicketKick’s services versus a short video that communicates nearly the same information, but in a different way with video.

Homepage A: Flash Banner

Homepage B: Video

Keep the Successful Conversion the Same on Each Page Being Tested

You will notice that the call to action on both homepages (i.e., the get started buttons) is nearly identical. This is important so that we can know that it was the flash banner versus video that produced the change in conversion rather than another element that differed between the two test pages.

How to Run Your Own Test Using Free Tools in 5 Easy Steps

We’re constantly testing new versions of pages with TicketKick, so we’re going to focus this post on how to setup your own test rather than the results of our own tests.

While there are advanced tools you can use to test the conversion on your website, the best free option is Google Website Optimizer. This tool, provided by Google, is rather simple to setup and can test a lot of different details within your website, including a simple test of homepage A versus homepage B.

Here’s a quick start guide to setup a test of two pages on your site:

1. Create the 2 different pages on your website that you want to test, such as a homepage with a video versus a homepage with a banner in our example above. These will be two different webpages (i.e., website.com/home1 and website.com/home2) and are created as you would create any other page on your website – you won’t be working within Google Website Optimizer yet. The goal of both of these pages needs to be the same, such as sending visitors to website.com/submit-order.
2. Signup for an account at Google.com/WebsiteOptimizer.
3. Once you have 2 different pages setup to test and a single success page, you will create an “experiment” in Google Website Optimizer. This will tell the tool what pages you want to test and which page visitors arrive at to be considered a lead, sale, or other measure of success.
4. As part of the experiment setup process, you will be given short snippets of code to input on the pages you want to test as well as the success page. Inputting these codes is very similar to how you setup Google Analytics on your website – you simply input the code into the webpage and Google does the rest. Google Website Optimizer will even “validate” your code at the end of the experiment setup process to confirm that it’s seeing your code inputted successfully on the pages.
5. Once the experiment setup process is confirmed, you’ll be ready to launch the test. In short, Google Website Optimizer will alternate which version of the test pages visitors coming to your website are sent to and track the percentage of visitors from each of those pages which reach the success page. Over time, the tool will know which page performed best in sending visitors to the success page at the highest rate.

Testing Time Varies Based on Traffic Volume

Depending on how many visitors your website receives on a typical day, the experiment may take a matter of days or a few weeks to test since Google Website Optimizer needs to run the test on a suitable number of visitors to receive statistically valid data. This basically means that more than 5 or 10 successful conversions are needed on a page to know that the page truly performs better than another page. However, Google Website Optimizer keeps track of how much data has been collected and will let you know when it has enough data to make a statistically valid decision regarding which page performs better.

We’ll dive into deeper tests in future posts. Remember, start with the most obvious and simple tests – you can always get more granular at a later time. Happy testing!

—–

Jon Tucker is Senior Strategist at Compete Marketing Group, an SEO agency based in California with clients across the US and Canada. In addition to managing the agency’s link building services, Jon operates a number of online businesses of his own and is active in the California startup community.

With social media interest and use booming, most companies are looking for ways to track their results. Most use Google Analytics, but don’t fully grasp the full capabilities. To help students in our Google Analytics training classes, we asked Google Analytics experts to provide their insight to social media tracking in this multi-blog series. Today, we welcome Jeff Sauer, VP of Interactive Marketing at Three Deep Marketing. Below is a question and answer session with Jeff.

How did you get started in the world of web analytics?

I started off as a web developer, concentrating on building websites. Web “stats” tools at the time were ugly and inaccurate, so never paid much attention.  Got into search marketing and built traffic for clients through paid and organic search.  Some traffic was great and some did not convert visitors at all.  I needed a tool to track this efficiently and I could not afford enterprise software to use on SMB clients, so I gave a beta test of Google Analytics a shot.  It opened the doors to the “wow” that is modern Web Analytics.

What is the number one selling point for using Google Analytics to track your social media activities?

I wouldn’t say that Google Analytics is the tool for tracking social activities, but rather a vital element in the tracking toolbox.  Google Analytics is still fairly confined to activity happening inside of your website, as well as what activity driving visitors to your site.  For understanding what social media visitors do within your site, their browsing and purchasing activity, there is no better tool than Google Analytics when properly configured.  However, to understand the entire social ecosystem surrounding a brand, incorporating metrics from tools and services such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. is equally important.  There are third party services that consolidate this data through API’s and create a true social media dashboard.  One such tool is PostRank Analytics, which was recently purchased by Google.

If you could offer one step-by-step tutorial for someone using Google Analytics with their social media work, what would it be?

We have created two presentations on Slideshare that show how to track incoming social media traffic.

Google Analytics: Make Your Site Work Harder (check out slides 8-15!)

Google Analytics: Going Beyond Traffic

What advice do you have for someone who is just starting to track their social media efforts with Google Analytics?

Make sure that you add campaign variables to each social media post and that you are consistent with tagging your URL’s with campaign variables. If you are not, you will have a very difficult time tracking activities. Keep a spreadsheet with your tracking URL’s or utilize a tool that automatically adds GA campaign variables to your posts.

Anything else you would like to share?

Since social media is so vast in scope, it may be overwhelming to try and measure.  The important thing to realize is that there are a finite number of activities that social media traffic can do on your site, so it’s important to measure the rate at which each item happens.  The best way to do this is configure conversion goals.  We recommend tracking both macro (sales) and micro conversions (engagement, downloads, time on site, page views, etc.) to help understand the economic impact of your activities.   Another thing to measure is time saved through social media on customer support.

Three Deep Marketing offers social media monitoring and management services as well as Google Analytics Consulting. We are based in St. Paul, Minnesota.

With social media interest and use booming, most companies are looking for ways to track their results. Most use Google Analytics, but don’t fully grasp the full capabilities. To help students in our Google Analytics training classes, we asked Google Analytics experts to provide their insight to social media tracking in this multi-blog series. Today, we welcome Jon Tucker, a Senior Strategist at Compete Marketing Group. The post below was written by Jon.

Any form of online marketing should be measurable, and using social media to engage with your market should be no different. The problem with social media is that it can sometimes be difficult to measure accurately since there are many factors involved.

Measuring the amount of traffic received from various social media channels and how these visitors interact with your website can be helpful in gauging the value of your social media efforts. More importantly, it can help you make decisions regarding what type of content to write about, how to position your products based on various levels of interest shown by social media visitors, and much more.

Google Analytics can be a helpful tool for tracking social media visitors…

The Secrets That Google Analytics Can Reveal

By utilizing special “tags” to link to your website from social media channels (more on tags in a minute), it’s possible to use Google Analytics to view the number of visitors that come from specific places online.

For example, you can track the specific number of visitors that came to your website through the link in the bio section of your Twitter profile. More specifically, you can even track the specific number of visitors that came from a Tweet you sent last Wednesday at 10:12am- it all depends on how granular you want to go.

Tagging URLs in Google Analytics

When you refer someone to your website by linking from your Twitter page, you probably use www.website.com as your website. While this will send the visitor to your site, it’s important to understand that people who visit your website through www.website.com will all be grouped together in Google Analytics- it will be difficult (if not impossible) to segment which visitors came from different places.

Tagging a website link, which basically means adding additional information to the link, enables the visitor to end up at the same place as a non-tagged link (i.e. www.website.com) but provides Google Analytics with specific information about that visitor. For example, if you link to your website with the below “tagged” website address then the visitors are going to end up at the same place (i.e. www.website.com) but you’re going to be able to see information about each of them within Google Analytics.

www.website.com/?utm_source=social&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=profile

What Does a Tagged URL Tell Google Analytics?

In the above example, the tagged URL is telling Google Analytics the following:

• The source of this traffic is social media (i.e. social)
• The specific medium within social is Twitter (i.e. not Facebook, etc.)
• The specific place where this person came from (i.e. campaign) is your Twitter Profile

The content of each tag is written by you when creating the tagged URL, so it can say whatever you’d like. However, it’s best to have a structured system that you stick to so that you can look back and compare different traffic sources in the future consistently.

How to Create a Tagged URL

There are a number of ways to create a tagged URL, but the easiest way is to use the Google Analytics URL Builder provided by Google. This tool enables you to simply input the webpage you want to send visitors to as well as the tag information- it will then give you tagged URL to use.

In most cases, you will only need to use source, medium, and name although you can experiment with the other tags as needed during other marketing campaigns.

The Quick Start Guide to Tracking Social Media Traffic

Now that we’ve covered how to setup tagged URLs, it’s time to start applying this to your own social media efforts. The below quick start guide will help you implement a foundation of tracking in your social media efforts right away.

• Track Each Social Media Profile For each social media channel, create a tagged link that you will use as the website link on your profile page. Users won’t see the tagged link, but they will be taken to that tagged link when they click to visit your website. For example, your Twitter bio link should use www.website.com/?utm_source=social&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=twitterprofile while your LinkedIn should use www.website.com/?utm_source=social&utm_medium=linkedin&utm_campaign=linkedinprofile. This will help you see which visitors came from your different social media profiles.
• Track Each Status Update Sent Out- When sending out messages via social media, considering tagging the URLs that you’re using. For example, if sending out a Tweet about your “Google Analytics Tags” blog post via Twitter, you would use www.website.com/blog/google-analytics-tagging?utm_source=social&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=tweetanalyticstag…you might event track the date of the Tweet by changing campaign to tweetanalyticstag102811 where 102811 is October 28, 2011.
• Analyze The Traffic Received- Once you’ve been doing this for awhile, you can login to your Google Analytics account and see each traffic source as a “Campaign” as shown below. From there, you can see standard Google Analytics data for each traffic source such as number of visits, time on site, and even goals completed if you have Google Analytics Goals setup. Over time, you will begin to see patterns of which social media channels send the most traffic or the “best” traffic (i.e. highest time on site, highest percentage of goals completed, etc.).

While you don’t need to go overboard and track every specific detail of your online activity, it’s important to have an idea of what’s working and what’s not in your online marketing efforts. If you’re not tracking your social media activity at a basic level, then you may be wasting half of your marketing time- you just won’t know which half.

About the author: Jon Tucker is Senior Strategist at Compete Marketing Group, an SEO agency based in California with clients across the US and Canada. In addition to managing the agency’s link building services, Jon operates a number of online businesses of his own and is active in the California startup community.

As part of a commitment to constantly provide quality training resources, Webucator will offer free access to specific courses throughout the year. The courses included in this promotion contain video presentations, interactive exercises, quizzes, and other activities.

To kick off this free course promotion, Webucator announced its first course giveaway: Introduction to Google Analytics.

In this course, students will:

• Learn the fundamentals of web metrics and web analytics
• Understand what web analytics can do for your business
• Explore key features and capabilities of Google Analytics
• Setup accounts and profiles in Google Analytics
• Activate Google Analytics tracking
• And much more!

To get access to this free course, simply click here.

About Webucator
Webucator provides online and onsite business and technical training, including Google Analytics training and more. Webucator has provided training to about half of the Fortune 100 Companies, and over 1,000 of our customers have volunteered to serve as references. Webucator is a Microsoft Certified Partner for Learning Solutions (CPLS) and has a GSA contract. Learn more at http://www.webucator.com.

I like to consider myself a marketer. And, as all marketers can attest, there are a lot of marketing-related resources available these days. But, every once in awhile, you find that one blog, news story, case study, or other document that really makes you shift your mindset. Recently, for me, it was an ad I saw from Google promoting their e-book: Winning the Zero Moment of Truth. Doesn’t the name alone intrigue you? Needless to say I spent hours one night pursuing through this content. Here are my thoughts on applying this model.

Ok, lets start with role. I’m currently a Marketing Manger as well as a Google Analytics and AdWords trainer. I want to put on all of my hats, and share some insight with you. I’m going to show you how to determine your “Zero Moment of Truth” (ZMOT) by using the tools Google has provided in both Google Analytics and AdWords.

We need to begin by understanding ZMOT. The following quote and screenshot are all courtesy of Google’s eBook.

“ZMOT is that moment when you grab your laptop, mobile phone or some other wired device and start learning about a product or service (or potential boyfriend) you’re  thinking about trying or buying.  I’m sure you know what I mean — you probably do web searches like this every day .”

And take a look at a screenshot showing this in a little more detail (again from Google’s eBook). To learn more about ZMOT, again, I absolutely recommend you download the e-book: Winning the Zero Moment of Truth.

Let’s get into finding your ZMOT using AdWords and Analytics. I’m going to use a self-serving example: someone looking for online training. Up first: Google Analytics. This exercise will help you try and find your current ZMOT.

1. Log into the appropriate Google Analytics profile for your business.
2. Swing over to your Traffic Sources report and then the Keyword Report.
3. Sort your data by % New Visits, and then check off the Weighted Sort option. This report now produces a report of your best performing keywords in respect to new visitors to your site. (I also added in the Landing Page sub-dimension to see where these visitors were landing as well)

In the screenshot, after we sorted the data, we can see that our best performing searches are all related to people searching for specific training needs, with “quickbooks training” on top. I’d like to call “quickbooks training” one of our training ZMOT’s: a lot of new people searching for this keyword and not leaving right away. The amount of time on site is not the absolute best, but I’ll use this for example purposes. I can conclude that these people had a need to learn Quickbooks and spent some time (almost three pages per visit) on our site figuring out if we should be their go-to training provider.

Now, we always need to take a step back in a marketing role to decide if this is good enough, or if we might be missing customer acquisition opportunities with other awesome keywords, or ZMOT’s. This is where Google AdWords can come into play. Let’s run with “quickbooks training” and try to see if there might be a more specific ZMOT.

We’ll need to check out the Keyword Tool. This is found in the Reporting and Tools pull down menu. Go ahead and type in your ZMOT from the previous exercise up top. I’m adding in “quickbooks training” as seen in the screenshot below.

Looking at that screenshot, you can see up top, our original thought for a ZMOT, “quickbooks training” has around 27,000 monthly searches in the United States (and a pretty high cost-per-click). Now, scrolling through some of Google’s suggestions, take a look at the bottom result in the screenshot…..”quickbooks how to.” Now, thinking about that, thats what people who need to learn Quickbooks are searching for! They might not think they would need training on QuickBooks, but if we can present an appealing offer to take training (low cost, right away, guaranteed results), then you have a great audience waiting to take you up on your offer! Our Quickbooks ZMOT! This keyword gets over 1.5 million monthly searches and the CPC is pretty low at $2.67.

I hope this blog helps you find your ZMOT for your business! If you did, share it below in the comments. In the meantime, want to learn more? Check out some of our self-paced Google Analytics courses and our Google AdWords courses.

]]> http://seo.blogs.webucator.com/2011/10/07/finding-your-zero-moment-of-truth-zmot-using-google-analytics-and-adwords/feed/ 0 http://seo.blogs.webucator.com/2011/10/07/finding-your-zero-moment-of-truth-zmot-using-google-analytics-and-adwords/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GoogleSeoSocialMediaBlog/~3/oUYQERk0FrE/ http://seo.blogs.webucator.com/2011/09/08/10-small-business-online-marketing-ideas/#comments Thu, 08 Sep 2011 14:36:44 +0000 Bob Clary http://seo.blogs.webucator.com/?p=1302

I’ve been teaching a lot of Google Analytics and Google AdWords classes recently and a majority of my students have been from small-to-medium sized businesses. All of them are taking these classes because they need to learn online marketing tips and tricks quickly. So, this blog is for them, as well any other online businesses who need help with general marketing ideas to get good exposure for their business and start bringing in qualified leads. So, let’s start off with my list of the first top ten things every business owner or marketing manager needs to know and implement right away!

1. Google Analytics – here is a FREE powerful tool from our friends at Google. The basic idea is that by adding some tracking code to your website, you can then view numerous reports (way too many to list!) that give you insight on your website visitors. You can then make effective website changes as needed. Again, its a free tool that you need to implement. Action step: Take these Google Analytics self-paced courses starting at $69.90. (The classes are instructor-guided, give you real-world experience and practice with Analytics, and have options to meet with live instructors.)
2. Google AdWords - another cool tool from Google. If you’ve ever done a Google search and you’ve seen relevant ads displayed (top and right-hand side), that’s AdWords. Clicking on the ad results in the company paying a pre-set bid amount to get you to their site. There’s really too much information to list here, but if you want to increase traffic to your site, check out AdWords. Action step: Take these Google AdWords self-paced courses starting at only $34.95.
3. Google Places – okay, last Google tool, I promise! If you have a bricks-and-mortar location, this free tool is for you! It’s Google’s way of promoting your physical location, similar to the Yellow Pages. Action step: Confirm your business by clicking on this link.
4. Adobe Dreamweaver – having an engaging website is essential for marketing your business online. You will need to keep your site updated with fresh content. Dreamweaver can help you set-up and maintain your website, even if you have a limited knowledge of web development. Action step: Take this Introduction to Dreamweaver self-paced course for only $69.90.
5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – do a quick Google search for your business. Did you find it on the top of the search results, or even on page one? If not, some SEO work is needed. The basic idea here is the develop a lot of meaningful content and getting links to your website. It takes a lot of time, but can certainly pay-off in the long run. Action step: Get links! And read some great blogs from groups like HubSpot and SEOmoz!
6. Social Media – here are way too many opportunities to list. But, social media is growing amazingly fast! Don’t loose the opportunity to promote your business and engage your target audience on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more. Action step: Get profiles setup on all relevant platforms, and start following social media news sites, like Mashable for the latest news and tips.
7. Blogs - another great way to promote your business and engage your audience. (You’re reading this blog, aren’t you? ) Joking aside, here’s a great tool that gives you unlimited opportunities for sharing great, free content out there in cyberspace. Action step: Setup a company blog. We use WordPress.
8. Webinars - if travelling across the country, or globe, to events and conferences has not been too fruitful, try webinars! Here’s another great avenue to share  free industry knowledge around your product and/or service. Not only can you have fun sharing this information, you now have a great list of sales leads! Action step: Think of a great topic, schedule a webinar, and start promoting it!
9. Partnerships - every company out there can’t be a competitor of yours, so why not team up and work with them? Partnerships can be a great win-win opportunity to cross-promote your products and/or services. We partner with relevant sites to give away some of our courses in the form of a contest. Here is our latest contest listing. Action step: Think of ways you could work with other organizations and start reaching out to see if there are any win-win opportunities!
10. Email Marketing – we can’t end our top ten list without including one of the most successful online marketing techniques. Email marketing is a direct, engaging way to reach your current, past, and prospective customers. Try thinking of exciting reasons that these audiences would want to hear from you (product sales, new contest, latest service offering, etc.) and try out email marketing! Action step: First off, never send spam! With that, think of some email messages, and compile a list of customers that have worked with you before, and try your first message!

Did this list help you with your online marketing? I’d love to hear any feedback. And, do you have any other suggestions to share with others? Leave a comment below. I’m already thinking of my next ten ideas to share in my next blog! Happy Marketing!

In Google Analytics, Ecommerce reporting and tracking are not available by default. To enable Ecommerce reporting you will need to follow these steps:

1. Modify your profile level settings to enable Ecommerce reporting.
2. Add GATC to your receipt pages.
3. Add Google Analytics Ecommerce tracking code to track each transaction.

Step 1: Enable Ecommerce Reporting

You will have to enable Ecommerce reporting for a particular profile to view Ecommerce reports. To enable Ecommerce reporting you will need to modify your profile level settings as shown in the following screenshot:

Note: You have to enable Ecommerce settings for every single profile under which you want to track Ecommerce transactions.

Step 2: Tag Pages

Ensure that you have included GATC tracking code on your receipt pages. The GATC tracking code can be found in your profile settings as shown in the following screenshot. For Ecommerce implementations, place GATC near the top of the page instead of the bottom of the page.

Implementing Ecommerce Methods

Let’s take a look at how to implement Ecommerce.

The _addTrans() Method

This method collects the primary order information and takes the following arguments: Order ID, Affiliation, Total, Tax, Shipping, City, State, Country. The order ID parameter from this method is used to link a transaction with the _addItem() method.

The _addItem() Method

This method collects all the product related information such as the name of the product, it’s SKU, quantity, etc. For each item that the visitor purchases, you will have to call the _addItem() method and pass different parameters as listed above.

For example: If someone purchased two computers of the same make and model, then you will call the _addItem method just once.

The _trackTrans() Method

This method will be called at the very end of the process and it is used to send data to the Google Analytics server. Ecommerce data is sent separately from the visitor data using this _trackTrans method.

The implementation of these methods will vary depending on individual cases (e.g. based on Ecommerce platforms, coding structure, coding language, etc). Here is an example of what the code on your final receipt might look like:

Note: The values shown in the above example are what you will see if you view the source code on the receipt page after the transaction is completed. However, your website code will need to dynamically retrieve the values from your Ecommerce platform to populate these fields.

To learn more about Ecommerce tracking and reporting in Google Analytics check out our Advanced Google Analytics training class, with our new self-paced format starting at only $69.90

Webucator’s marketing team recently presented a webinar to follow up on the basics of social media, “Take Your Social Media to the Next Level.” Check out the recorded versio below, and if you have any questions, please leave a comment and the marketing team will respond to them. You can also learn more about social media by exploring our social media training options.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwupzDnBVIU=505&w=640]

Want to see a fun, yet very informative way to look at your data in Google Analytics? If yes, keep on reading, and learn about motion charts! A motion chart, as the name suggests, is basically a standard Google Analytics report in action. A motion chart is just another way to visualize your data. Motion charts are available for only selected reports in Google Analytics. Motion charts show the same data available in the standard tables.

Significance of Motion Charts

1. A motion chart provides you with visual clues to identify trends and patterns which could be hidden behind tables.
2. Motion charts allow you to see how your data changes over time with respect to multiple dimensions, allowing you to identify relationships in your data that you might otherwise miss.

Here is an example of what a motion chart looks like. The following motion chart is generated from the All Traffic Sources report available in the Traffic Sources category.

Understanding the Architecture of Motion Charts

Motion charts allow you to visualize your data in 5 dimensions. Here are the five dimensions you will need to define:

1. Metric to represent the X Axis.
2. Metric to represent the Y Axis.
3. Metric to represent size of the dots.
4. Metric represented by unique colors of the dots.
5. Time period (default dimension).

In the above example, data from the All Traffic Sources report has been represented in five different dimensions. This motion chart is providing us with information regarding how the quantity and quality of the traffic coming from various sources has changed over the given period of time.

Accessing Motion Charts

Motion charts are not available for all the reports in Google Analytics. You can access a motion chart by clicking the Visualize button available in selected reports. If the Visualize button is not available for the report which you have selected then it indicates that you can not create a motion chart for that report.

Building Motion Charts

When you click on the Visualize button, you will be taken to the configuration screen. Based on which report you choose to launch the motion chart, every dot on the motion chart will be a data point from that report. In order to build your motion chart you will have to provide 4 different parameters using the drop down menu available in front of each dimension i.e., X Axis, Y Axis, Color, Size. The fifth metric, i.e., Time Period, will get selected by default based on the date range that you have selected for viewing the parent report. You can add labels to the bubbles, as shown in the above example and enable trails for making the paths of the bubbles easier to read. You can also switch the graphical representation of any motion chart from bubble to bar graph. Happy visualizing! If you want to learn more, check out all of our upcoming Google Analytics training and Google AdWords training classes. To receive the latest news on our blogs, classes, and tutorials, sign up for our free newsletter. Click here to sign up.

Welcome to the next installment of our Google AdWords training blog series: Optimizing Keywords. This series introduces key concepts derived from Google AdWords. And, if you have any suggestions for future blog posts, just leave a comment below! Let’s take a look at an overview of optimizing your keywords within an active AdWords campaign. (If you’re brand new to AdWords, I snuck in a embedded copy of my recent AdWords 101 webinar for you!)

Let’s start thinking about strategy. Keyword optimization is equally important as keyword research. Benefits of keyword optimization are as follows:

1. Enables you to increase conversion rates.
2. Improves CTR which can lead to improvement in your quality score.
3. Improves return on investment (ROI) for SEM campaigns.

Consider the following points for your optimization strategy:

1. Do not try to invent new keywords.
2. Identify keywords that your customers use commonly (leverage data from organic sources).
3. Understand which type of keyword (e.g., long tail vs. short tail, wide vs. deep) perform well for your Web site.
4. Set up conversions to analyze the quality of traffic brought by paid keywords.

Long Tail vs. Short Tail Keywords

Long tail keyword are keywords that are highly specific. Long tail keywords tend to be three or more words in length. To what extent you should leverage long tail keyword depends on the context. Consider the following points:

1. Long tail keywords are often less competitive to bid for.
2. Long tail keywords are less frequently used and will usually represent less search volume.
3. Long tail keywords are often specific and thus it is important to use an appropriate pair of ad copy and a landing page.
4. It is not uncommon to create a separate Ad Group dedicated to long tail keywords.
5. Consider using proper match type when using long tail keywords.

Don’t forget! Google has vast amounts of data related to organic and paid search. Google offers some free tools which can be leveraged to optimize your keywords list. Also, there are third-partly tools which provide you with competitive analysis. Here are links to some of the most popular keywords tools.

1. Google Search-based Keyword Tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal)
2. Google Sets (http://labs.google.com/sets)
3. Google Trends (http://www.google.com/trends)
4. Google Insights for Search (http://www.google.com/insights/search/#)
5. Wordtracker (http://www.wordtracker.com/)
6. Keyword Discovery (http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/)
7. KeywordSpy (http://www.keywordspy.com/)
8. SpyFu (http://www.spyfu.com/)
9. Compete (http://compete.com/)

Google’s Keyword Tool

To access Google Keyword Tool, follow these steps:

1. Log into your AdWords account.
2. Select Reporting and Tools tab from the top navigation bar.
3. Use the drop-down menu and click the More tools option.
4. Select the Keyword Tool.

Following are the two main ways of finding keywords with this tool:

1. Keywords based on your Web pages (landing pages).
2. Keywords related to a specific root keyword.

To see all the keywords associated with each of your Web pages, simply click the Find Keyword button.

The output will show you suggested keywords, bidding amount, and associated web pages.

The above two techniques allow you to pick appropriate keywords for specific landing pages, thus allowing you to optimize your keyword performance.

I hope using some of these tools help target your current or upcoming AdWords campaigns!

If you want to learn more, check out all of our upcoming Google Analytics training and Google AdWords training classes. To receive the latest news on our blogs, classes, and tutorials, sign up for our free newsletter. Click here to sign up.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU_69f-dx18]

Google has been testing a new version of Google Analytics. Learn all about the changes and new features from this recorded webinar.

The New Version of Google Analytics

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTw2EygCnMw&h=505&w=640]

Learn more by taking our Google Analytics training. Hear about our latest webinars by subscribing to our newsletter. Click here to subscribe.

This recorded webinar on leveraging pivot tables in Google Analytics is geared towards enhancing your skills in ‘slicing and dicing’ Google Analytics data. This Google Analytics webinar will start with some basic information about different visualization controls available in Google Analytics, after which you will learn how to use pivot tables to obtain business intelligence from your data. This information is also covered in our Google Analytics training.

How to use Pivot Tables in Google Analytics

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPi4tWbD6Os&h=505&w=640]

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Welcome to the next installment of our Google AdWords training blog series! As a prelude to new Google AdWords training offerings which we will announce shortly, I’m regularly adding to this mutli-part series. This series introduces key concepts derived from Google AdWords. And, if you have any suggestions for future blog posts, just leave a comment below! Let’s take a look at an overview of using Google’s Content Network for your Google AdWords campaigns. (If you’re brand new to AdWords, I snuck in a embedded copy of my recent AdWords 101 webinar for you!)

Let’s take a look at how we can leverage Google’s content network. Content ads are different from search ads.

If someone is reading an article on a blog, Google content network will help you advertise your ads based on the content of that particular page. Here is an example of a content ad by Google from the bottom of www.nytimes.com:

How Does Advertising on the Content Network Work?

1. Google scans a page within their content network and then assigns a theme to that page.
2. Google scans your ad groups and based on all the keywords in each of your ad groups Google assigns a theme to that ad group.
3. When a content page and your ad group contain the same theme, your ad can be displayed on that page.

A Few Things You Should Know About the Content Ads

1. Content network ads will obey all your campaign settings (e.g., location, budget, etc.).
2. For content ads, Google will only consider negative keyword match.
3. You cannot set different bid amounts for each keyword as all the keywords are looked at as a group to decide your theme.
4. It is highly recommended that you create a separate ad campaign for your content ads.

How to Leverage Content Network in Google AdWords

Google has two types of content targeting techniques:

1. Automatic Placements: Google decides where your ads will be shown based on the process which we discussed in the above section.
2. Managed Placements: You get to choose where your ads will be displayed.

Automatic Placement

1. Navigate to the Campaigns tab and select the campaign that you want to use for content network ads (top left, under All online campaigns).
2. Click on the Settings tab.
3. Under the Networks and Devices section, click on the Edit link in front of the word “Network.”
4. Select the Display Network check box.
5. For automatic placements, select the radio button Relevant pages across the entire network.
6. Click Save.

Targeted Placement

To use targeted placement follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the Campaigns tab and select the campaign that you want to use for content network.
2. Click the Networks tab.
3. Under Display Network, click the Show Details tab in front of Managed Placements.
4. Click Add Placements.
5. Select the Ad Group for which you want to use targeted placement (remember content network uses the concept of themes).
6. Add the list of domain names where you would like your ad to be displayed.
7. Use the negative sign (-) in front of domain names on which you don’t want your ad to be displayed.
8. Click Save to save your changes.

I hope using some of these tools help target your current or upcoming AdWords campaigns!

If you want to learn more, check out all of our upcoming Google Analytics training and Google AdWords training classes. To receive the latest news on our blogs, classes, and tutorials, sign up for our free newsletter. Click here to sign up.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU_69f-dx18]

Our Google trainer recently presented a webinar on developing a Google AdWords campaign. You can view the recording below. This information is also covered in our Google AdWords training.

Google AdWords Help from our 30 Minute Webinar

[youtube:http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6u5dfDq4__Q&h=505&w=640]

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In our Advanced Google Analytics training class, we have a lesson on using Regular Expression, commonly known as RegEx. Many of our Google Analytics students are new to the coding languages, so I wanted to help everyone out by developing a blog post that gives a high-level overview of RegEx.

Let’s begin with the overview. What exactly is RegEx?

RegEx is a string of text that uses characters, numbers, and wildcards to match certain data patterns. Here are commonly used wildcards in RegEx. Take some time to go through this chart. RegEx takes a lot of time to fully understand.

Below the table are real examples of these symbols in use to help you understand RegEx in more detail.

RegEx Examples

Here are some RegEx examples using the test word of food and various RegEx code. You can also test out any regular expressions you are thinking about using in your account right within in your browser using our RegEx tester, which we developed for our students found here.

Start and End ( ^ $ )

A caret (^) at the beginning of a regular expression indicates that the string being searched must start with this pattern.

• The pattern ^foo can be found in “food”, but not in “barfood”.

A dollar sign ($) at the end of a regular expression indicates that the string being searched must end with this pattern.

• The pattern foo$ can be found in “curfoo”, but not in “food”.

Number of Occurrences ( ? + * {} )

The following symbols affect the number of occurrences of the preceding character: ?, +, *, and {}.

A question mark (?) indicates that the preceding character should appear zero or one times in the pattern.

• The pattern foo? can be found in “food” and “fod”, but not “faod”.

A plus sign (+) indicates that the preceding character should appear one or more times in the pattern.

• The pattern fo+ can be found in “fod”, “food” and “foood”, but not “fd”.

A asterisk (*) indicates that the preceding character should appear zero or more times in the pattern.

• The pattern fo*d can be found in “fd”, “fod” and “food”.

Curly brackets with one parameter ( {n} ) indicate that the preceding character should appear exactly n times in the pattern.

• The pattern fo{3}d can be found in “foood” , but not “food” or “fooood”.

Curly brackets with two parameters ( {n1,n2} ) indicate that the preceding character should appear between n1 and n2 times in the pattern.

• The pattern fo{2,4}d can be found in “food”,”foood” and “fooood”, but not “fod” or “foooood”.

Curly brackets with one parameter and an empty second paramenter ( {n,} ) indicate that the preceding character should appear at least n times in the pattern.

• The pattern fo{2,}d can be found in “food” and “foooood”, but not “fod”.

Common Characters ( . \d \D \w \W \s \S )

A period ( . ) represents any character except a newline.

• The pattern fo.d can be found in “food”, “foad”, “fo9d”, and “fo*d”.

Backslash-d ( \d ) represents any digit. It is the equivalent of [0-9].

• The pattern fo\dd can be found in “fo1d”, “fo4d” and “fo0d”, but not in “food” or “fodd”.

Backslash-D ( \D ) represents any character except a digit. It is the equivalent of [^0-9].

• The pattern fo\Dd can be found in “food” and “foad”, but not in “fo4d”.

Backslash-w ( \w ) represents any word character (letters, digits, and the underscore (_) ).

• The pattern fo\wd can be found in “food”, “fo_d” and “fo4d”, but not in “fo*d”.

Backslash-W ( \W ) represents any character except a word character.

• The pattern fo\Wd can be found in “fo*d”, “fo@d” and “fo.d”, but not in “food”.

Backslash-s ( \s) represents any whitespace character (e.g, space, tab, newline, etc.).

• The pattern fo\sd can be found in “fo d”, but not in “food”.

Backslash-S ( \S ) represents any character except a whitespace character.

• The pattern fo\Sd can be found in “fo*d”, “food” and “fo4d”, but not in “fo d”.

Grouping ( [] )

Square brackets ( [] ) are used to group options. This creates what is referred to as a “character class”.

• The pattern f[aeiou]d can be found in “fad” and “fed”, but not in “food”, “faed” or “fd”.
• The pattern f[aeiou]{2}d can be found in “faed” and “feod”, but not in “fod”, “fed” or “fd”.

Negation ( ^ )

When used after the opening square bracket of a character class, the caret ( ^ ) is used for negation.

• The pattern f[^aeiou]d can be found in “fqd” and “f4d”, but not in “fad” or “fed”.

Subpatterns ( () )

Parentheses ( () ) are used to capture subpatterns.

• The pattern f(oo)?d can be found in “food” and “fd”, but not in “fod”.

Alternatives ( | )

The pipe ( | ) is used to create optional patterns.

• The pattern foo$|^bar can be found in “foo” and “bar”, but not “foobar”.

Escape Character ( \ )

The backslash ( \ ) is used to escape special characters.

• The pattern fo\.d can be found in “fo.d”, but not in “food” or “fo4d”.

Translating your requirement into an appropriate RegEx can be complicated even for experienced users. RegEx in general is considered to be tough to digest, so practice is the best way to master this. Take some time to review this information and feel free to use this blog as your go-to tutorial when working with RegEx!

If you want to learn more, check out all of our upcoming Google Analytics training and Google AdWords training classes. To receive the latest news on our blogs, classes, and tutorials, sign up for our free newsletter. Click here to sign up.

Webucator’s marketing team recently presented a webinar to introduce the basics of social media. Many attendees asked questions that we didn’t have time to answer. Below are some of the questions, and the marketing team’s responses to them. You can also learn more about social media by exploring our social media training options.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jqk7HxsSJlY=505&w=640]

Social Media Questions and Answers

Q: I’d like to know if other entities have specific staff dedicated to social media tasks. I can’t imagine having to perform my other job duties AND have to maintain all the various social media communications as well.

A: Yes, social media can be time consuming, but it depends on how much you want to get out of it. If you look at some of the larger corporations, they do have social media teams, spend a lot of time and resources, but they do get some desired results. I would recommend trying one social media platform at a time, and use a social media monitoring tool, such as HootSuite to help with the managing. If you do have multiple people who will be contributing to the effort, consider assigning tasks, dividing up the various social media sites, and having regular meetings to make sure you are all on the same page.

Q: Where / how do you insert HTML in Facebook?

A: There are numerous apps you can use to do this. Here is a link to all of the Facebook apps. The old way to add HTML to a page was using Facebook’s Static FBML application. Now, Facebook has changed the way that companies can add HTML to a page. We suggest using one of Wildfire’s applications.

Q: Do any of these social media sites include “mapping” components?

A: Of the sites we discussed in the webinar, Facebook has “Places” where people can check into your business. Here is a link. Although we didn’t discuss this site in the webinar, we also suggest looking into Foursquare, if you are trying to launch a location-based campaign.

Q: Can you recommend where/how we can create videos for YouTube?

A: There are numerous sites out there that can help you create videos. If you are doing a screencast-type video, we’ve used Camtasia Studio and if you need a quick, marketing-type video, we’ve used Animoto.

Q: Do you have an example of a college or university who is using Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn well?

A: We may be biased in our answer to this one, but as we’re in Syracuse, New York, try checking out what Syracuse University is doing on social media. Here is a link.

Google Analytics offers the ability to filter out some of your analytics data that you’re not concerned with, and in turn, allows you to concentrate on just the data that you need to help your website grow. You can easily sort through data by setting up filters for your Google Analytics profile. This content is from our Introduction to Google Analytics training class. Let’s take a look at the steps below.

Lets start with the basics: why and when should you use filters in Google Analytics? In a general sense, filters are used to clean and segment your data.

1. Filters provide segmentation to gain a better understanding of a particular subset of activities happening on your website.
2. Filters help in customizing the report so the most useful data can be highlighted.
3. Filters can also help in cleaning up unwanted data such that irrelevant information is filtered away.

Understanding How Filters Act on Your Data

When a filter is created within your profile, it is immediately applied to new data coming into your account.

New filters will not affect historical data and it is not possible to reprocess your old data once it passes through a filter.

Here’s a very important tip: it is highly recommended that you keep the raw data intact by not applying any filters to your original profile. Create a duplicate profile for applying filters.

Overview of Different Types of Filters

Google Analytics provides you with three predefined filter types and several customized filters.

Understanding Best Practices for Setting Filters

Always keep the default profile without applying any filters.

Adding more than one include filter to a profile can cause data to not appear in your reports e.g., if you use include filters to only include certain IP addresses, then traffic from all other IP addresses will be ignored.

Here’s another very important lesson: Filters are executed sequentially in the order they are listed in your settings. Thus, output from one filter serves as input for the next filter. Thus, it is important that you apply filters in a correct and logical manner.

Try setting up secondary profiles with your filters today to see how this tool can help your website’s analytics reporting!

If you want to learn more, check out all of our upcoming Google Analytics training and Google AdWords training classes. To receive the latest news on our blogs, classes, and tutorials, sign up for our free newsletter. Click here to sign up.

Welcome to the third installment of our Google AdWords training blog series! As a prelude to new Google AdWords training offerings which we will announce shortly, I’m regularly adding to this mutli-part series. This series introduces key concepts derived from Google AdWords. And, if you have any suggestions for future blog posts, just leave a comment below! Let’s take a look at some basics on tracking your ad performance within Google AdWords. (If you’re brand new to AdWords, I snuck in a embedded copy of my recent AdWords 101 webinar for you!)

Performance of your AdWords account can be analyzed by generating various reports available right within the Campaign tab, under the specific metric you are looking to track.

Google recently moved the reporting functions from the Report Center tab to the Campaign tab. If your account had previously created reports, check out this Google Help Center link .

Let’s begin by going through the definitions of the various types of reports that are available. AdWords allows you to generate the following reports:

Generating Reports in Google AdWords

Take a moment to consider what report(s) might be most relevant to the performance you’re looking to track. Once you have determine which report you would like to run, follow these steps to get to the correct report interface:

1. Navigate to your Campaign tab.
2. Go to the desired campaign you would like to run the report on. Please note: You can also run a larger report showing all running campaigns – just skip over choosing a specific campaign.
3. Across the top, if the desired report is shown as a tab option, click that, and go down to step #7 below. If it is not shown, such as the Destination URL report, continue to the next step.
4. Go to the pull-down menu after the Audiences tab.
5. Choose the Dimensions tab to make it viewable.
6. Open the Dimensions tab and chose the appropriate report from the View pull-down menu.
7. After determining you have created the data for your report, click the downward arrow icon, which opens up the reporting module.
8. Choose the appropriate name and download format.
9. Choose any additional segments you would like to include in the report.
10. Choose the Email and schedule report option and determine your preferred download methods.

I hope these tools will help you in starting to think about how to track your AdWords performance and change your campaigns, as neccesary. Best of luck!

If you want to learn more, check out all of our upcoming Google Analytics training and Google AdWords training classes. To receive the latest news on our blogs, classes, and tutorials, sign up for our free newsletter. Click here to sign up.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU_69f-dx18]

Google Analytics offers a great variety of default reports that are available to you within the platform. But, there may be times when you find yourself wishing that there was a report a little more specific to your business’ website needs. Enter custom reports! Google Analytics allows you to setup your own custom reports and tailor them according to your needs. Let’s take a look at the steps below.

Designing your custom report

Custom reports are a great way to analyze and share your account data. Here is a list of suggested steps to follow before you build your custom report:

1. Develop a general outline of how the data should be presented in your reports. (Build a table).
2. Select the appropriate pairs of dimensions and metrics. Ask yourself, what kind of dimensions you want to categorize the metrics into?
3. Create a test report so that you can see how the report will look once it’s completed.
4. Create a relevant name for your custom report

Building your custom report

Take a look at the steps for creating a custom report once you’ve determined what information you need to include.

1. Select the account you want to create a custom report in. It doesn’t matter which profile you select.
2. Click View reports from the left navigation panel.
3. Select Custom Reporting and click on Manage Custom Reports.
4. On the Custom Reporting Overview page, click create new custom report. You will be taken to the Create Custom Report page.
5. Label your report by clicking on the tiny edit link on the right of the default title. (Remember to click on Apply after you enter your report name).
6. Drag and drop each metric into the blue dotted fields labeled metric. To undo this selection, simply click “X” on the top right corner of the metrics key.
7. Drag and drop your top level dimension into the green dotted field labeled dimensions. You are allowed to have up to four sub-dimensions to drill down to.

Take a look at the following example to see what this completed process will look like.

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Welcome to the second installment of our Google AdWords training blogs! As a prelude to some upcoming offerings we will announce shortly with our Google AdWords training, I’m regularly adding to a mutli-part series to introduce key concepts derived from Google AdWords. And, if you have any suggestions for future blog posts, just leave a comment below! Lets take a look at some basics to writing ads within Google AdWords. (If you’re brand new to AdWords, I snuck in a embedded copy of my recent AdWords 101 webinar for you!)

Below are the main components we need to begin thinking about for our SEM strategy.

Writing Effective Ads in Google AdWords

Call to Action:

Direct your viewers to take certain action via your ad text. If your ad copy is directing the visitors to take certain action, then it is going to influence them to look for that action on the landing page. Here are some examples of common calls to action:

1. Call Now to Get a Free Quote
2. Buy Now to Save 10%
3. Try/Download Software for Free
4. Sign up for a Free Demo

Value Proposition:

Separate benefits from features. Focus on what benefit you are going to provide to your customers. For example, instead of saying “Buy New Power Efficient Furnace,” it will be better to say “Go Green & Reduce Your Energy Bill.”

Use Keywords in Your Ad Headlines:

If possible, use keywords in your headlines. If your ad is triggered by a keyword, then users are more likely to click on that ad if they see the same keyword in that ad. It increases the relevance of your ad which can improve your click-through rate.

Have relevant display URLs:

It is important to have user-friendly display URLs. Your users may be hesitant to click on strange looking URLs which could be mistaken as spam. Use your company’s home page for display URL.

Have Emotional appeal whenever possible:

Try to speak to your intended audience. For example, use ad text such as “Feel Confident With the Way You Look,” instead of saying “Improve Your Looks.”

Understanding Google’s Text-Ad Structure

In Google AdWords you need to abide by a particular ad structure with requirements for how many characters can appear in an ad:

Only the first four elements listed above will be displayed to the user. The display URL is simply the Web address users see when they view your ad. Destination URL is where users land when they click your ad and it is not visible in the ad. Display URL and destination URL don’t have to be the same. However, a display URL must be an actual URL for your site.

Here is an example from Google, in which each of the following ads is intended to sell more gourmet coffee beans.

Let’s analyze the ads shown in example 1:

The above tools will really help you in starting to think about writing some effective ads for your business. Best of luck!

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[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU_69f-dx18]

If you’re looking for an easy and powerful program for creating videos to spread on the web, Camtasia is your solution. Watch this recorded webinar to learn the Camtasia 7 basics!

How to use Camtasia to Create a Video

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9NIjSIA-OE&h=505&w=640]

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Looking to grow your business with AdWords? We have just the thing to get you started! We created a webinar based on the introductory lessons from our Google AdWords training. Here is a recording of the webinar.

Introduction to Google AdWords

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU_69f-dx18&h=505&w=640]

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How do you track the results of your social media campaigns? In this recorded webinar, we show you methods for analyzing the success of your campaign in Google Analytics.

Social Media Monitoring in Google Analytics

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ2w4Nof0pk&h=505&w=640]

Learn more by taking our Google Analytics training. Hear about our latest webinars by subscribing to our newsletter. Click here to subscribe.

This brief webinar on sub-dimensions in Google Analytics is geared towards enhancing your skills in ‘slicing and dicing’ Google Analytics data. 

Using Sub-dimensions in Google Analytics

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNo4gzBqJcI&h=505&w=640]

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Welcome to the first Google AdWords training blogs! As a prelude to some upcoming offerings we will announce shortly with our Google AdWords training, I’m beginning a mutli-part series to introduce key concepts derived from Google AdWords. And, if you have any suggestions for future blog posts, just leave a comment below! Lets get kicked off with a discussion around building a keyword strategy. (If you’re brand new to AdWords, I snuck in a embedded copy of my recent AdWords 101 webinar for you!)

Keywords form the core of your ad campaign. They set the entire advertising process in motion. Thus, building a strong keyword strategy is a vital process. Here is a guideline for building your keyword strategy:

1. Product/brand association

Understand the correlation between products/services that you offer and how others will associate with them (e.g. bleach as in product vs. Bleach as the Japanese cartoon series). Good keywords should accurately map your products and services with your ideal customer profile.

2. Read your prospect’s mind

Keywords are your customers’ intentions expressed in their own words. Find keywords that will answer a customer’s queries (e.g. if you are a plumber then you might want your ad to show up for keywords such as basement flooding, low shower pressure, etc).

3. Organize your keywords into buckets

Before looking for actual keywords, identify different themes for your keywords. Each theme could represent a variation of your focus.

Note: Keywords are not case sensitive and you can have a maximum of 50,000 active keywords.

Keyword Discovery

The first step in this process is to come up with as many keywords as you can think of about relating to your products/services. Before you seek help from keyword tools, it is recommended that you build your own keyword list using an excel file. A good keyword discovery process is:

1. Build a high-level list of your products and services by looking at the content available on your website.
2. Examine your print collateral or content available in your marketing emails and identify specific keywords.
3. Review your competition’s website and try to identify those elements which distinguish your products/services from your competition.
4. Look at keywords report in your Google Analytics account (highly recommended).
5. If you have an internal site search tool on your website, then examine keywords typed in your internal site search. Google Analytics has dedicated reports to analyze internal keywords.

Keyword Research

There are various tools offered by Google and third parties that will aid your keyword research. Here is a list of some keyword tools:

1. Google Keywords Tool
2. Google Insights for Search
3. Google Sets
4. Google Trends for Websites

The above tools will really help you in building up your keyword list! Good luck in beginning your business’ keyword strategy!

If you want to learn more, check out all of our upcoming Google Analytics training and Google AdWords training classes. To receive the latest news on our blogs, classes, and tutorials, sign up for our free newsletter. Click here to sign up.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU_69f-dx18]

If you are a beginner to Google AdWords, here’s a basic overview of search engine marketing (SEM). In this post, I want to provide a basic understanding of SEM and the associated definitions. I hope it helps offer some additional insight to key terminology!

Here are the basic definitons to get you started:

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Recently our Google trainer presented a webinar introducing the basics of Google Analytics. Attendees learned to set up an account, access essential reports, analyze data, and other concepts that are also covered in our Google Analytics classes. Here’s a video recording of the webinar.

Introduction to Google Analytics

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6DP6EOr2Es&h=505&w=640]

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When I first learned Google Analytics, I wanted to begin by understanding web analytics from a big picture perspective. In this post, I want to provide a basic understanding of web analytics: how to incorporate into a business and the main definitions used. The content is from our Introduction to Google Analytics course, in which we go into much more detail. I hope it helps offer some additional insight to key web analytics terminology and thought processes!

Web analytics is an art and a science. Here is a structured approach for incorporating web analytics into your business:

1. Identify the objective(s) of your website. Why do you have this website?
2. Define Key Performance Indicators (KPI) to align measurable web metrics with your business objectives.
3. Generate relevant reports.
4. Understand the What, Why and How.  This is called Trinity Analysis.
5. Optimize. Find the opportunities for improvement.

Successful implementation of web analytics can drive your bottom line. However, it requires organization-wide buy-in.

Now, here are the main definitions when looking at web analytics and the Google Analytics platform.

Definitions of Important Parameters

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Recently the Webucator Marketing team presented a webinar to introduce the basics of using social media for businesses. The webinar covered important social media statistics, tips for developing a strategy, the basics of setting up your business on the main social media sites, and case studies of successful campaigns. These topics are also covered in our social media training.

Here’s a video of the webinar.

An Introduction to Social Media

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMFT7Dk8EzM&h=505&w=640]

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If you are looking to follow a visitor’s path through one of your website goals, setting up a funnel is a great resource! A funnel is the set of steps or pages that you expect users to visit on their way to complete the conversion. In other words, a funnel is a sequence of steps which leads to the completion of a goal.

Why use funnels in Google Analytics?

1) Analyzing funnel activities helps in assessing the effectiveness of your website in pursuing visitors to continue to the next step towards conversion.

2) To understand from which pages visitors abandon the funnel and where they go after that.

3) Analysis can lead to streamlining the important processes, such as the checkout process or sign-up process which can enhance the conversion rate.

How to Set Up Google Analytics Funnels

Setting up funnels in Google Analytics is an optional process in defining goals. To begin, you will need to navigate to the Goal Settings page under a specific Profile Settings page.

Notice the Goal Funnel section shown in the following screenshot. To define your funnel:

1. Enter the ‘URL‘ of the first page of your conversion funnel.

2. Enter a unique name for each step.

3. Continue entering funnel steps, maximum 10.

4. Click Save Changes.

Tip: When the Required step option is checked, visitors reaching your goal page without traveling through this funnel page will not be counted as a conversion.

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I recently found myself interested in becoming “certified” in Google Analytics, and low and behold, there is a Google certification: Google Analytics Individual Qualification. Beyond being great proof that you understand the workings of Google Analytics, it’s a great way to increase your knowledge of GA. I just passed recently, so I wanted to offer some thoughts and key resources that really helped me in the preparation process.If you’re very familar with Google Analytics, this exam should not be that hard, but going through some of the key topics I will share below will be a great refresher. If you’re not familiar with Google Analytics, I would recommend our Introduction to Google Analytics class and our Advanced Google Analytics class.

Tips for the Google Analytics Individual Qualification Exam

• You have 90-minutes to take the test, but you can pause it at anytime (I’m not sure how many times you’re allowed) and you can save your answers and come back anytime to finish within 5-days.
• You can “mark” any questions you’re not positive with the answer, and then go back through these before you submit your results.
• Some questions are pretty easy, so quickly go through those. I say that because they mix in a lot of “chose all that apply” questions that will take some time to digest and consider the best possible answers.

I think your best bet for a first step in preparing for the exam is to check out Google’s Conversion University. While I believe all tests are somewhat different, I feel these lessons below had the most associated questions for my test. After reading through some other blogs online, I think most others feel the same way.

• Profiles in Google Analytics
• Installing Google Analytics Tracking Code
• Filters in Google Analytics
• Regex in Google Analytics
• E-commerce Tracking

Now, after you’ve gone through those lessons, here are two key resources!

• Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics by Brian Clifton. This book provides a very comprehensive overview that offers great insight into Google Analtics. Tip: Have the book available during your test and use the Index as needed, to search for answers.
• Jens Sorensen’s Blog. This is a great overview of additional thoughts on the exam. Tip: Make sure you pay a lot of attention to the suggestions in the During the GAIQ test section! Those links were a huge help for me.

So, those are the basics I used to prepare. I devoted a few hours per day over a three-day period to review the information I laid out above.

Good luck! Once you pass, you’ll get a nice little certificate to share, and you’ll be able to use this image!

If you have any questions or I can help offer any additional feedback, just leave a comment below. And, let me know if you ended up passing the exam as well!

Next up for me, the Google AdWords Certification . Stay tuned for tips on these exams as well!

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In the previous posts, we provided a tutorial on setting up goals for your website. In this final post in our “Google Analytics Goals” series, we will suggest some standard reports, which will help you analyze your results. Google Analytics provides a variety of reports to help you interpret your data. Here is a list of suggested reports for analyzing goals.

Google Analytics Reports for Analyzing Goals

Overview Report

The Overview Report provides a quick glance at the total number of goal conversions, the goal conversion rate and the total goal value for a non-Ecommerce site. The overview page cannot be customized to show particular metrics.

Total Conversions Report

The conversion rate is the percentage of visits that resulted in the visitor taking an action that you defined as a goal for your web site. This indicates what percentage of total visitors reach the goal page that you have established.

Goal Verification Report

This report enables you to view the specific URLs that trigger the reporting of a goal.

Reverse Goal Path Report

This report shows you how visitors reached the goal page and which path they followed.

Goal Value Report

The Goal value report shows the monetary value for your conversion of non-Ecommerce sites. It provides you with an estimate on the potential revenue each conversion is worth.

Adding Goals in Google Analytics

Using goals will help you determine the success of your website initiatives. Goals in Google Analytics if covered in depth in our Google Analytics training classes. Good luck!

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In the previous post on Google Analytics goals, we introduced goals and discussed the various types of Google Analytics goals. In this post, we will outline the steps needed to configure goals for your Google Analytics account. This information is also covered in our Google Analytics training classes.

Configuring Goals in Google Analytics

From your Google Analytics Settings page, first select the appropriate account and then select a profile for which you wish to create a goal. Click on Edit in the actions column to edit the profile settings. You will see the following screen:

For a single profile in Google Analytics, you can create up to 20 goals in total. These goals are segregated into four sets; every set allows you to create up to five goals. Tip: In order to create more than 20 goals for a website, you will have to create a duplicate profile for the same website which will give you four more sets of goals to track.

Click on the Add Goal tab in the above screen, you will be taken to the Goal Settings page; here you will need to execute the following steps:

1. Provide a relevant Goal Name e.g. Sales Lead
2. Set the radio button to the ON position for activating a goal (Default value: ON)
3. Select your Goal Position
4. Select a Goal Type

For “Goal Type” you can set a goal for a visitor’s destination URL, time on site, and the pages per visit.  Here is an example of setting one goal type, “Destination URL.”

Configuring a URL Destination Goal

Once you select a Goal Type (e.g. URL Destination), you will see the Goal Details page as shown in the following screenshot. You will need to execute the following steps:

1. Select the Match Type.
2. Enter the goal URL for your goal page.
3. Select your preference for case sensitivity.
4. Enter the value for your goal (non-Ecommerce site).

Here is an example:

Analyzing Goals

In the final article in this series, we will suggest several standard reports to help you analyze your goals.

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In our Google Analytics training classes, we discuss the value of establishing goals to help you measure the success of your website. Goals will help you assess the success of your website initiatives. In a series of three posts, we will introduce goals and provide instructions for using goals.  

What is a Google Analytics Goal?

Using Goals in Google Analytics

Goals help to distill data into performance benchmarks. Here are some drivers for using goals in Google Analytics:

1. To assess how well your website meets your business objectives.
2. To estimate revenue for a non-E-commerce website.
3. To find out how many visitors are becoming customers.

Types of Google Analytics Goals

Adding Goals to a Google Analytics Account

Now that you have been introduced to Google Analytics goals, you will want to configure goals on your account. You can learn to do this in the next article in this series, Google Analytics Goals: Configuring Goals.

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Sharing reports from your Google Analytics account is simple. Any of the reports can be exported and shared via email, in just a few simple steps. How to Export a Google Analytics Report

1. Navigate to the report that you would like to export.
2. Click on the Export tab, which can be found in the upper left-hand corner. Several format choices will appear:
3. Pick the format you would like (e.g. PDF, XML, CSV etc.). Note: If you are trying to export the Dashboard, you will only be able to export as a PDF or XML file.
4. Google Analytics will automatically download the file to your computer.

How to Email a Google Analytics Report

1. Navigate to the report you would like to share.
2. In the upper-left corner of the window, click the Email tab.
3. A form similar to the following will appear:
4. Add the recipient’s email address in the Send to Others field.
5. Add a subject in the Subject field.
6. In the Description field, explain the report and provide any other messages you wish to send to the recipient.
7. Choose a format and complete the word verification.
8. Send!

If you would like to learn more about Google Analytics, consider our Google Analytics training.

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The Hostnames Report in Google Analytics usually does not get much attention from an average Google Analytics user. In this article, I will shed some light on the functions and uses of the Hostname Report.

About the Hostnames Report in Google Analytics

In Google Analytics, the Hostnames report can be found under Visitors –> Network Properties –> Hostnames. Let’s assume that you have two different domain names (e.g. mysite.com and mysite.net). Both domain names bring your online visitors to the same website essentially displaying the same content.

The Hostnames Report will display the data associated with traffic coming from each of the different domain names and the respective engagement associated with it. In a nutshell, the Hostnames Report in Google Analytics shows the list of domain names that cause your tracking code to execute.

The Hostnames Reports shows your different domain aliases, thus if you have setup a redirect from mysite.com to mysite.net, then you will only see mysite.net in this report.

Application of the Hostnames Report

Resolving Identity Crisis

A participant from our Google Analytics training program had an interesting application of the Hostnames Report. A year ago, her organization changed their name and thus they had to change their domain name. The organization invested in marketing to promote the new brand name and the new website. Her organization was interested in understanding statistics associated with the usage of the old domain name vs. the new domain name.

The Hostname Report was able to provide her with an insight into this matter. We found out that despite  a substantial amount of marketing, most of her visitors were still using the old domain name. By applying sub-dimensions we further discovered the respective mediums (channels) that sent traffic to each of the domain names. This allowed us to determine which channel needed more attention in order to increase the brand awareness. In nutshell, if your website has two many identities, and if your website is facing an identity crisis, then the Hostnames Report is a great place to find answers.

Hostnames Report as Internal Watchdog

Recently, I came across an interesting question on LinkedIn regarding the Hostnames Report. Someone asked, “if you see a competitor name in the Hostnames Reports, should you be concerned?”

As explained above, the Hostnames report in Google Analytics shows a list of domain names that are causing your tracking code to execute. Your Google Analytics Tracking Code (GATC) can be viewed by anyone by simply using the View Source Code feature available in a web browser. It is possible that someone can install the same tracking code on a different website, which will muddle your data.

The Hostnames Reports will show if any other websites are causing your code to execute. In this case, the first thing you want to do is apply a profile level filter to block the traffic coming from that particular domain name.

If you are unfamiliar with using sub-dimensions or applying profile level filters in Google Analytics, then our Google Analytics Training may be of interest to you.

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The web analytics industry is gaining substantial momentum and people have started to respect “data” for decision making. However, I believe that data is not information. Data contains information, and that’s why you need to slice-and-dice your data to derive actionable insights.

Google Analytics recently introduced an enhancement within the report interface. This new enhancement is called “Weighted Sort.” It greatly enhances your ability to convert data into actionable insights. This article will shed light on this new enhancement and how you can leverage it along with other standard features for intelligent data analysis.

What is Weighted Sort in Google Analytics?

Weighted sort allows you to quickly focus on important data points, without getting lost in the plethora of data that Google Analytics shoots at you.  Currently weighted sort is not universally available within all the reports in Google Analytics, and it only works with percentage metrics (e.g. Bounce Rate, % New Visits, Goal Conversion Rate).

How Weighted Sort Works In Google Analytics?

Weighted sort uses a new sorting algorithm that allows you to use two complementary metrics (e.g. Visits and Bounce Rate) to sort your data. Weighted sort adds weight on certain data points, which allows it to bring the most actionable data points to the surface.

As a result, you won’t see the standard ascending or descending order that you usually see under a strict sort method.

Applications of Weighted Sort in Data Analysis

The main objective behind using this feature is to transform your data into actionable insights. In our Introduction to Google Analytics Training and Advanced Google Analytics Training, we spend a substantial amount of time training our participants on the various techniques that they can use to accomplish this task.

Weighted sort plays an important role if you’re working on keyword optimization and landing page optimization projects.  However, these are not the only two applications of weighted sort. The following video tutorial features an example of using weighted sort for keyword optimization and landing page optimization.

Any data collection and analysis tool is just garbage in and garbage out if you are unable to convert the data into actionable insights.  There are numerous ways through which you can convert your Google Analytics data into actionable insights.  Some of these techniques may include exporting your Google Analytics data into statistical tools such as SPSS.

Since there are so many tools at your disposal, it is important to understand which tool to use in a given situation. In our Google Analytics Courses, we take practical examples and exercises that teach you how to leverage appropriate techniques, so you can dig deeper into your data. Regardless of the method you use to slice-and-dice your Google Analytics data, you will first need to understand how data is organized in Google Analytics.  In this article, I will shed some light on how the basic report structure works in Google Analytics.

Metrics and Dimensions in Google Analytics:

A metric is defined as a numerical measure of the user interaction on your website. Metrics have the following characteristics:

Characteristics of Metrics

1. Metrics will always be expressed in form of a number.
2. Metrics are stand-alone entities. When you look at a metric in a stand-alone fashion it provides you with information about the site-wide performance.
3. Metrics will form the columns of a report structure in Google Analytics.

Some of the common metrics you will find in Google Analytics are visits, pageviews, bounce rate, etc.

Dimensions, on the other hand, have the following characteristics:

Characteristics of Dimensions

1. Dimensions are non-numerical data fields.
2. Unlike metrics, dimensions are not stand-alone entities, i.e., dimensions are not generally meaningful when viewed individually.
3. Dimensions, when coupled with metrics, provide meaningful context to the data.
4. Dimensions can be used to segment a metric.

The following example should help you understand the above concepts:

Google Analytics: Metrics and Dimensions

In the above screenshot, you can see that the stand-alone metrics allow you to compare their performance with overall site average. In the above example, I am sharing a screenshot from the Referring Sites report found in the Traffic Sources category in Google Analytics. In this case, the stand-alone metric, Visits, indicates that 655 visits are coming from different referring sites and constitute 9.53% of the overall traffic.

The above screenshot also highlights the default dimension in the report. In this case, the default dimension is called Source. As highlighted in the above screenshot, the dimensions are forming the rows of this report structure and the metrics are forming the columns.

A good grasp on how metrics and dimensions work in Google Analytics is essential, especially if you want to learn how to leverage Custom Advanced Segment and Custom Reports in Google Analtyics. We cover these topics in great detail in our Google Analytics Advanced Course.

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The Google Analytics dashboard is a powerful tool. It is very helpful, especially if you have cross-functional teams within your organization. Let’s explore how you can leverage the dashboard in Google Analytics.

What is a dashboard and how do I access it?

The Google Analytics dashboard is a place where you can quickly reference the most relevant summary information about your website. When you view a profile in Google Analytics the first screen that you see is the dashboard screen. Take a look the following screenshot; you can see what a dashboard looks like.  As highlighted below, notice that a dashboard in Google Analytics has a fixed portion and a variable portion.

Google Analytics Dashboard Screen

How do I make use of the dashboard in Google Analytics?

Consider the following points to understand the power of the Google Analytics dashboard:

• The dashboard is completely customizable. You are allowed to add a maximum of 12 reports to the dashboard.
• The dashboard is profile specific, which means you can create different dashboards for each team member. For example, you can create a dashboard for your webmaster, one for your marketing team, and another for your CFO. The list can go on and on.
• The dashboard modules are interactive. They provide a direct link to the actual report in Google Analytics. There is no need to navigate through the report interface.
• If you customize a standard report in Google Analytics to meet your specific needs, then the dashboard modules will maintain that formatting.

An Example of a Powerful Dashboard in Google Analytics:

Take a look at the following screenshot. It shows a customized dashboard created for marketing managers. The modules in the screenshot are customized. The dashboard provides important information for your marketing team without requiring in-depth use of Google Analytics.

Customized Dashboard in Google Analytics (Click to Enlarge)

Now your marketing team just needs to log-in using their Google Account and…. boom….they see the powerful dashboard that you have created for them!

Let’s analyze some of the modules shown in the above screenshot starting from the top left corner.

New vs. Returning Report

This module is a customized version of a standard report available in Google Analytics. This module is showing the top five countries that are sending traffic to your website and the type of visitors coming from each of these countries.  This module is powerful enough to convey that most of the traffic (including new and returning visitors) comes from the United States. For some reason, this website is not able to attract enough returning visitors from countries like India, the United Kingdom and Canada. A marketing manager can obtain this important insight without knowing where to find this report in Google Analytics and without any knowledge of segmenting data in Google Analytics.

Keywords Report

This module shows a list of the top five organic keywords and the search engine associated with each keyword. For a marketing manager, this module shows the combination of keywords and search engines that are sending organic traffic to your website.

Top Landing Pages Report

This module shows the top five landing pages and the respective keywords that were responsible for bringing traffic to these  webpages.

Content By Title Report

This module shows webpages related only to Cisco Training and also shows which sources (e.g. Google, Bing, etc.) brought traffic to these webpages.

This is just one example of how you can leverage dashboards in Google Analytics. You can create powerful dashboards for different departments within your organization.  In order to effectively use the dashboard feature as shown in the above example, you need to understand how to customize standard reports, create appropriate profiles for each department, and then add customized modules to your dashboard. You will learn these and many other techniques in our Google Analytics Training program.

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If you are using Google Analytics for tracking your website performance or user activities, you should know that under standard implementation Google Analytics will not track certain user interactions, including downloading files (e.g., product catalogs, brochures, trial software, etc) and interaction with media players (e.g., embedded flash player for product demos).

Event Tracking and Virtual Pageviews are the two techniques you can use in such scenarios. In this article we will learn how to leverage the concept of Virtual Pageviews in Google Analytics to track file downloads and then setup Goals to further analyze this user interaction.  Just to clarify, you can also use Event Tracking to track file downloads. However, you cannot measure file downloads as Goals when you use Event Tracking. The difference between Event Tracking and Virtual Pageviews is covered in great detail with hands-on examples in our Google Analytics  Advanced Courses.

Tracking File Downloads using Virtual Pageview:

Step 1:

You  need to change your website code such that Google Analytics will start capturing file downloads. Let’s assume that you have links on your website to download your  services catalog. For example, your original link for downloading the services catalog may look like:

<a href=”http://www.example.com/srvcatalog.pdf”>Download Our Services Catalog </a>

You will need to modify the above link as follows:

<a href=”http://www.example.com/srvcatlog.pdf” onClick= “pageTracker._trackPageview (‘/downloads/ServiceCatalog/srvcatlog.pdf’);”> Download Our Services Catalog </a>

In the above example, I am calling the trackPageview method by using an onClick event in JavaScript. The argument that I am passing through the trackPageview method is allowing me to create a pseudo pageview in Google Analytics. I recommend that you use an appropriate tree structure that will make your reports more intuitive to read and analyze.

Step 2:

Now let’s setup a Goal in Google Analytics which will allow you to measure how many times your services catalog was downloaded. Most importantly you can build a funnel around this user activity to understand what motivates people to download your services catalog.

Within an appropriate profile, navigate to the Goal Settings page and use the following configuration to setup a Goal for the above example :

Goals for Virtualpageview in Google Analytics

You can use Goal Value to monetize this Goal.  Click on the Save Goal button to save your Goal and exit the Goal Settings page. Google Analytics will now track and record your services catalog download as Goals and will allow you to analyze this user activity via six different reports available under the Goals section. If you are new to the concept of creating Goals in Google Analytics then we cover this topic in great detail with hands-on examples during our Google Analytics Course.

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Google Analytics is commonly known for analyzing site stats such as the number of visitors, number of pageviews and lots of other quantitative metrics. Google Anlaytics can also be used for understanding users’ navigation patterns, though this feature is limited to individual pages only. The following example shows how to use the navigation summary report in Google Analytics.

Accessing the Navigation Summary Report in Google Analytics:

Within your Google Analytics account, navigate to the Content Report and then click on the Top Content report. Here you will see a list of web pages with their respective pageviews.

Google Analytics Content Report

Select which page you would like to analyze by clicking on a URL displayed in the report. For example, let’s analyze the Google Analytics Training page which is shown in the above example as ‘/socialmedia/google-analytics.cfm’. When you click on this page you will be taken to the Content Detail report:

Google Analytics Content Detail Report

From the above report, use the drop down menu as shown in the following screenshot and select Navigation Summary in order to access the navigation summary report in Google Analytics.

Google Analytics Navigation Summary Report

Analyzing the Navigation Summary Report in Google Analytics:

Take a look at the following screenshot:

Navigation Summary Report in Google Analytics

The icon in the middle of the report represents a page under analysis. In the left hand column Google Analytics shows how visitors arrived at this web page, and in the right hand column it shows where visitors went from this particular web page.

In the above example, by looking at the information available in the right hand column I can quickly see what percent of people proceeded to fill out our ‘contact us’ form after viewing this web page, and what percent of people looked at our course schedule.

In the left hand column, % Entrance indicates the number of times a particular page served as an entrance to your site.  This column will also show you a list of ‘Previous Pages’ indicating which pages on your website were responsible for sending traffic to the page under analysis.

When you are planning to optimize site navigation around a particular page (e.g. product page, special offer page, etc), the information presented in the above report is helpful as it provides you with a better understanding of how people interact with the page.

Currently, the navigation summary report has a bug: it claims all pages have a 0.00% Exit rate. A topic for a future post!

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In a prior article,  How to Use the Google Analytics Navigation Summary Report, I explained how to use Google Analytics to see how visitors got to specific pages and where they went from these pages.  I also pointed out that while the navigation summary report is insightful, there is a significant bug in the report.

Take a look at the following screenshot:

Google Analytics Navigation Summary Report, Error in % Exits

The ‘% Exits’ metric is inaccurately representing the actual data. As of today this report will show ‘0.00% Exits‘ for every page on your website, which is not accurate. Fortunately, there is a simple work around to find the real % Exit rate.

To find the accurate exit rate for a particular page, use the drop down menu as shown in the following screenshot and select the Content Detail report.

Google Analytics Content Detial Report

This report shows the actual % Exit rate for the particular webpage which you were analyzing in the navigation summary report. The metric % Exit indicates percentage of site exits that occurred from that page.

By looking at this metric I can understand what percentage of traffic leaves my website from this page. If this particular page is meant to act as a gateway page and if it has a high % Exit rate, then you definitely want to consider making changes to this page. If this page is meant to be an exit page (e.g. your receipt page) then a high % Exit rate is expected and acceptable.

Google is working on fixing the error in the navigation summary report. Until then you can use the above work-around to find the % Exit metric for a particular page.

When teaching Google Analytics courses, I always recommend to my students that they build cross-functional teams to take full advantage of Google Analytics within their organization. A cross-functional team should include members from the IT, marketing and web development teams. In this article you will learn how to use Annotations in Google Analytics to keep your cross-functional team members in synch.

Notice the sudden dip in the graph below:

Google Analytics Report Without Annotations

After seeing this graph people from different departments might start calling each other to find out why that dip exists. Annotations can prevent such unnecessary panic in your organization.

Creating Annotations in Google Analytics

Hover your mouse over the region of your interest and then click on a particular dot. You will see a small dialog box, as shown in the following screen shot:

Creating New Annotation

Click on the ‘Create New Annotation’ tag to open a text box in which you can enter your remarks, and then choose whether to share them or keep them private. In this example, we discovered that the web development team uploaded a newly designed home page without adding Google Analytics Tracking Code (GATC).  As you can see in the following screenshot, I noted this in the text box and chose to share my annotation. To save and exit the annotation mode, simply click on the Save button.

Adding Annotation in Google Analytics

Viewing Annotations in Google Analytics:

For all shared annotations, Google Analytics will show a tiny callout box on the graph to indicate that someone has left a note there.  When a user clicks on that callout box, Google Analytics displays the note right below the graph, along with the name of the person who created the annotation.

Using Annotations in Google Analytics

Managing Annotations in Google Analytics:

Account administrators can edit and delete annotations. To edit an annotation, click on the edit tag as shown in the above screenshot. Once you’re done editing your annotation, click on Save to save your changes and exit.

To delete an annotation, click edit and then Delete. You will be asked to confirm your action; click OK in the dialog box to delete the annotation. Beware: there is no ‘undo’ for retrieving your annotation.

There are numerous situations in which one can use annotations in Google Analytics. For example, your marketing team can use annotations to mark the starting and ending dates of online marketing campaigns. If you have creative ideas for using annotations in Google Analytics, please share them by leaving a comment on this blog.

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In our Google Analytics training classes, I recommend our students create multiple working copies of the default profile. These duplicate copies of the default profile are useful for carrying out experiments and tests on your data using filters, goals and funnels.

Consider the following scenario: you have 8 goals and 3 filters applied to your default profile.  You want to tweak these goal and filter settings to see possible variations in the outcome. To test these different variations you will have to manually configure all 8 goals and 3 filters in different profiles. This is a mundane task and as of today there is no feature in Google Analytics that allows you to import your settings from one profile to another.

So, is there a work around? There sure is!

Importing Goal Settings in Google Analytics

Step 1: Download and install this Firefox extension. In order to install this extension, you will have to first save the downloaded file (goalcopy.xpi) on a local hard rive (e.g. desktop) and then open this file from your Firefox web browser (click on the File menu and then choose Open File).

Once you install this extension, you should see the following toolbar in your web browser:

Google Goal and Filter Copy Toolbar

To remove this extension from your browser, because it does use a lot of space, simply go to the Tools menu, select Add-ons, and then disable the Google Analytics Goal Copy add-on. You can always re-enable it later.

Step 2: Access your default profile in Google Analytics and navigate to the Goal Settings screen. In the following example I first copy goal and funnel settings from my default profile.

Google Analytics Goal and Funnel Settings Page

Click on the Copy button in your new tool bar and it will capture all your goal and funnel settings. If you have more than one goal in a profile, repeat the above process but use different slots available to you in the toolbar. Notice that the Paste button will display your goal name (e.g. Checkout Process).

Google Analytics Goal and Funnel Copy Toolbar

Step 3: Open the profile in which you want to import goal and funnel settings. Navigate to the Goal Settings page within this profile and then press the Paste button from your toolbar. Your goal and funnel settings will get pasted in the appropriate fields. Make sure you save your settings before you move on to import your next goal.

Importing Filter Settings in Google Analytics

You can also use this tool to copy and paste your filter settings. The process is the same as for importing goal settings, though you will have to first navigate to your filter settings page in Google Analytics.

If you have any other innovative ways to import goal and filter settings from one profile to another, please let me know by leaving a comment on this blog.

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In our Google AdWords class, I introduce students to Google Places. For those who are new to Google Places, it is a service where you can list your business on Google. You can provide details about your business such as the hours of operation, photos, and product offerings. Google Places allows online users to find local businesses on Google, read reviews and more. If you have a brick and mortar location, then listing your business on Google Places is a great way to increase your online presence in front of your local community.

Google recently added a new twist to this service; it’s called Google Tags. This new service is going to make it really simple for local businesses to advertise on Google.  In fact, it is simpler than using Google AdWords. Just to clarify,  Google Places is a free listing service and it’s not an advertising platform. However, with Google Tags a business can now enhance its Google Places listing that appears on Google.com and Google Maps with a yellow tag that emphasizes specific information, such as a coupon, video, menu, reservations, photos, or a custom advertising message. Unlike Google AdWords there will be no auctions to monitor and there will be no bidding for keywords. Google Tags come with a monthly flat fee of $25!

Here is an example of Google Tags in action. When I searched for ‘hair salons in Washington DC‘ I got the following search result page. Notice that Easel Hair Studio is using Google Tags and has a promotional message for “20% off color service”.

Example of Google Tags

How do I get my Google Tag?

Simply follow these three steps.

• Step1: Sign-up for Google Places and add your business on Google Places (free).
• Step2: Fill out your business information to claim your listing, and then validate your listing with Google Places.
• Step 3: Go to your Google Places dashboard and activate your Google Tag (credit card required).

As of today, Google Tags is currently available only in selected cities such as Atlanta, Austin, Boulder, Chicago, Houston, Seattle, Washington DC and the entire state of California.

Google Tags is a great way to communicate the uniqueness of your business with your local community. Also, If your brick and mortar store happens to be in a touristy area, then Google Tags is a great way to advertise your business on Google since Google Tags appear on mobile searches as well. Here is a live example from our recent Google AdWords class: one of my students has a boutique near the Washington D.C. area and his boutique specializes in bridal shoes, so for him Google Tags will be a great way to communicate that specialty item with the local community.

Happy Tagging!

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With the advent of micro-blogging services such as Twitter and link tracking services such as bit.ly, it’s easier than ever to share short pieces of news with the world and track its spread and popularity. Third-party tools for Twitter such as TweetDeck make it even easier and quicker to use Twitter, by eliminating the need to log in to twitter.com and navigate through its web interface.

Although TweetDeck can automatically shorten your URLs, it doesn’t by default make them trackable under one single bit.ly account for you.  One possible workaround to this would be to create a new bit.ly link within your bit.ly account and then post it through TweetDeck, but it would be quite cumbersome to constantly hop back and forth between these two services.

Not to fear, fellow Tweeps and linkers:  there is a bult-in solution within TweetDeck for this. You can connect bit.ly and many other services to your TweetDeck!

To do this:

1. Press the Settings button in TweetDeck.
   
2. Go to the Services category, select bit.ly, enter your bit.ly username, and click on “Get your API key”
   
3. Copy your API key from the website that pops up.
   
4. Go back to Tweetdeck and enter your API key. Save your settings.

Now, whenever you automatically shorten a URL in Tweetdeck, your URL will automatically be added to your bit.ly account for you to analyze.

You can also set up other services, such as TwitPic and others, through the Services category as well.

What other third-party services do you use with Twitter or Tweetdeck? Comment and share!

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TweetDeck is a well known Twitter application which provides a desktop client for managing your Twitter account, along with Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Buzz, Foursquare, and MySpace. TweetDeck is one of the most popular Twitter applications. However, you may have heard of a similar Twitter client called HootSuite. Many TweetDeck vs. HootSuite comparisons were done in response to a post by Denise Dell. After reading that post, you might ask yourself  “Should I switch from TweetDeck to HootSuite?” I try to help you answer that question here.

TweetDeck and HootSuite have similar user interfaces. I used TweetDeck for a while, however I switched to HootSuite mainly because of its ability to send scheduled tweets. This feature was not available on TweetDeck until recently. So now which application is better?  I’ve laid out the advantages and disadvantages of HootSuite below.

Advantages of HootSuite

1. HootSuite has its own click tracking and analytics service which is well-presented and easy to view. So you can pool up analytics reports to show things like number of clicks, referrals and the geo-location of your audience.  On the other hand, TweetDeck does not have inbuilt analytics services.
2. HootSuite is completely web based and does not require you to download any client on your computer. TweetDeck uses Adobe Air as an underlying platform. Abode Air requires periodic updates which are pushed to your computer. With HootSuite you are not dependent on any specific computer to access your dashboard and you will not have to deal with installing periodic updates.
3. HootSuite integrates with Ping.fm in addition to all other social networks that TweetDeck can connect with. Ping.FM allows you to broadcast your tweet to 40+ social networks. This feature is not available on TweetDeck.

Disadvantages of HootSuite

1. In Hootsuite you can’t clear columns to remove the tweets you have already read thus it is hard to distinguish between read and unread tweets.
2. With TweetDeck you can have pop-up notifications. That feature is missing in HootSuite.
3. TweetDeck has the ability to automatically compress a link without clicking any buttons. For Hootsuite you have to click on the “Shrink It” button to compress your link.

So, do the advantages of HootSuite outweigh the disadvantages? Your call. I think both tools are good and each has room for improvement. It all comes down to personal preference.

Happy Tweeting!

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In my previous article I mentioned that search engine companies are now competing in a new way — they are racing to protect their users’ privacy. Recently, Google made announcements providing more choices and transparency to their users.

On May 21, Google rolled out a secure search https://www.google.com, and on May 25th Google released two new privacy related features for the Google Analytics service. You can read more about Google secure search in my previous article; for now let’s review some new privacy features in Google Analytics.

Google Analytics Opt-Out Feature

The first feature is geared toward end users, and it is officially labeled as the ‘Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on’. It is a browser based plug-in for Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome. Once you install this plug-in, Google Analytics will not track your visits from that specific browser. In other words, your browsing data will not be sent to Google when you visit websites that use Google Analytics. You can download this plug-in at this address: tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout and follow these steps to install it:

Installing Google Analytics Opt-out Plug-in

Google Analytics and IP Anonymization

The second feature is geared toward website owners. This feature allows website owners to anonymize IP address information sent to Google Analytics service. I think this is a good provision for website owners in countries which do not allow web analytics tools to capture location based information. Just to make it clear, this feature is different from the opt-out feature which we discussed before, and there is nothing an end user can do to activate this feature. Rather, website owners will have to change their Google Analytics Tracking Code (GATC) to enable this feature. If you are a website owner and want to enable this feature, you will have to add the _anonymizeIp() method to your existing GATC.

Both of these features are great. The only improvements I would like to suggest are:

• Google should provide a count of visits which were dropped due to visitors using the opt-out plug-in. This count would be helpful from web analytics point of view.
• Google should provide some sort of visual representation to an online user when a particular website is running GATC  with _anonymizeIp() method. This will make users feel more secure as their location is not been tracked.

Please let me know what you think the impact will be of the opt-out feature on the web analytics industry. I always say there is no point in getting stuck in the minutia of details — rather it is better to focus on the story that your data is trying to tell.

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In this Internet era, privacy has become a concern for many users. I often say that you will leave your digital footprint behind when you traverse through the Internet. Recently this digital footprint has been exploited everywhere from marketing agencies for behavioral targeting, to law enforcement agencies for convicting criminals. Your searches provide a unique glimpse into your recent intentions as well as your personality, and thus search privacy is becoming a hot topic these days.

Search engine companies are now competing in a new way — they are racing to protect their users’ personal information. Microsoft, Yahoo and Google have gone public with their privacy policies to win the trust of their users. On May 21, Google rolled out a secure search at httpS://www.google.com which helps protect your search terms and your search results pages from being intercepted by a third party. Notice the “SSL” on Google’s secure search page:

Google Secure Search Home Page

When you’re using Google secure search, Google forms an encrypted connection between your browser and Google’s server by using Secure Socket Layer (SSL). SSL is very commonly used by e-commerce and online banking websites to encrypt information that travels between your computer and their service. Here are a few things you should know when you search using this new secure search service from Google:

• You won’t see links to offerings like Image Search and Maps.
• Your browsing experience might be slightly slower than your regular Google search experience.
• Clicking on any of the search results could take you out of SSL mode.

Secure Search and Web Analytics

The secure search method as described above presents a unique challenge to the web analytics industry. When people click on an external link from the search results generated via SSL sessions, the referrer information will not be passed to any web analytics tools. Thus, secure search will not allow web analytics tools including Google Analytics to track organic traffic coming from any secure search engine. In Google Analytics all the visits coming from a secure search service will be considered as direct visits instead of organic visits.

If secure search becomes the de facto standard, it will definitely have an impact on web analytics and web analytics software. If you have thoughts as to how to resolve the challenge secure search presents, please share them via comments on this blog.

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In our Google Analytics Basic Course, we spend quite a bit of time doing exercises on access management. During this session students learn how to segment their website data into different profiles and then grant access to external users (e.g., their marketing agency) to a particular profile within their Google Analytics account.

In order to complete this process you are required to enter the email address of an external user, and this email address has to be a Google account. Most of our students think that they need to use a Gmail address (e.g., externalagency@gmail.com) for this purpose. However, that’s not the case; you can convert any email address into a Google account and then use it in Google Analytics access managment. For example, externalagency@company.com could be a valid Google account. Here is how you convert an existing email address to a Google account:

1. Visit the following link: https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount.
2. Complete the below form with appropriate information. While completing this form make sure to follow these guidelines from Google:
   1. In the field labeled ‘Your current email address‘, enter an email address from which you currently send and receive emails (e.g., externalagency@company.com).
   2. Your password should be at least eight characters long and can’t be a commonly used word. Select a unique combination of letters and numbers.
   3. In the Word Verification section, you’ll need to type the wavy characters exactly as they appear in the picture.


Creating Google Account: Step 3

3. After you complete the above form, you will have to accept the terms of service and click on the ‘I accept. Create my account’ button, after which you will see the following confirmation page.


Creating Google Account Step 4

4. Google will send an email to the address associated with your Google account. In order to activate your Google account make sure you verify the email address by clicking on the appropriate link in the email.

Note that creating a Google account doesn’t give you access to Gmail. However, it simplifies things by allowing you to use an existing email address to access Google Analytics.

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I just did a search on Dreamweaver CS5 Training to see if one of our new Dreamweaver classes would come up.

I then used the Google Wonder Wheel just to see what searches Google would consider related. Here are the results:

The two in red boxes are interesting.  I can’t imagine that anyone ever searches on either phrase. Clearly fitness is related to training, but
not Dreamweaver training. And Dreamweaver CS6 is probably at least 18 months away as Dreamweaver CS5 was just recently released.

It makes you wonder if the Wonder Wheel algorithm needs a little love.

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wefollow is a great website for finding Twitterers who tweet about subjects you’re interested in. The site is easy to use, but for new twitterers to Twitter, there is one thing that can be very confusing. To demonstrate, I’ll walk you through the steps of finding someone to follow on Twitter using wefollow. Let’s assume you’re interested in following people who tweet about Microsoft Project.

1. Go to http://wefollow.com/
   
2. Enter MSProject where it says Enter a tag… and press Enter (note your tag should not include spaces). You’ll get something like this:
   
   
3. Click on one the photos (e.g, projectnation). You’ll get something like this:
   
   
4. Click on “Follow this user”. And you might think that you’re done. But you’re not. This is the confusing part. The button should not say “Follow this user.” It should say “Visit user’s Twitter page” or something to that effect. All it does is take you to the user’s page.
   
5. As a final step, you need to click the Follow button on that user’s Twitter page:
   
   

Hope that helps!

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We use Yammer as a broadcasting tool, like a Twitter, but private to our company. Yammer allows you to create groups, so that you can broadcast some messages to subsets of your team. For example, at Webucator we have a Trainers group for messages that are only relevant to trainers.

In general, their help is pretty good, but the Yammer’s documentation on groups doesn’t address how to add members to a group and, oddly enough, it’s not very intuitive in the admin interface. Follow these steps to add a member:

1. Click on the Groups tab.
2. Click on the group name (e.g, Trainers).
3. Click on the Invite Members tab.
4. Add email addresses for those people you would like to invite.
5. If you would prefer to just add the members, rather than invite them to join, check the Add these members without an invitation checkbox.
6. Click Invite.

Easy enough, once you know how to do it. It’d be nice if they would allow you to add the member to a group through the member’s profile page, sort of like you can with the Gmail administration.

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In the first article of this series, I mentioned that Google Wonder Wheel can be leveraged for the following tasks:

• To obtain ideas for topics to blog about.
• To find appropriate search terms for making your search more effective.
• To find marketing keywords for your SEM (search engine marketing) campaigns.
• To obtain insight into your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) initiatives.

So far, I have demonstrated how you can use Google Wonder Wheel to discover interesting blog topics and for making your search more effective.

In this article, we will see how to use Google Wonder Wheel for identifying keywords which you can use in your search engine marketing campaigns.

Let’s take Webucator as an example. Webucator is known for its instructor-led online training. Thus, for Webucator’s SEM campaign we are interested in identifying keywords which are closely related to this phrase. Here is how Google Wonder Wheel helps with this task:

Step 1: Start with a stem keyword or phrase

Type the phrase “instructor led online training” in the Google search bar and then click the Search button. Notice the new navigation bar on the left-hand side of the screen; click on More Search Tools to display enhanced search options.

Google Wonder Wheel Part III: Step 1

Step 2: Under the standard view click on the Wonder Wheel link

Google Wonder Wheel Part III: Step 2

Step 3: Analyze the Google Wonder Wheel Results

Take a look at the spokes in the following diagram; these spokes show keywords which are related to your stem phrase. These keywords are semantically related in terms of their relevancy.

In context to our SEM project, these are some relevant keywords for which you can bid. For example, Webucator could consider buying keywords such as “instructor led learning”, “classroom online training” or “instructor led online courses”, etc. These are real keywords which have been used by their online prospects.

Google Wonder Wheel Part III: Step 3

Step 4: Digging Deeper Into Google Wonder Wheel

Google Wonder Wheel is an interactive tool. You can click on different spokes to dig deeper into your keyword search.

In the following example, I clicked on the spoke labeled “instructor led learning,” and another wheel was generated with related search terms. By doing so, I am able to pick up another relevant keyword: “instructor led learning elearn.”

Google Wonder Wheel Part III: Step 4

You can repeat steps 3 and 4 to discover different keywords which are related to your stem phrase. Those of you who are familiar with Search Engine Marketing already appreciate how important it is to identify relevant keywords. Google Wonder Wheel makes it easy to find keywords which are used by your online prospects.

You will learn a lot more about keyword discovery in our Google AdWords Class. If you have any other ideas for using Google Wonder Wheel, please share them with me by leaving a comment on this blog.

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You must have noticed that Google recently changed the look of their search results page. These changes are enriching, and in this article I will provide you with a quick run-down on this enhanced interface.

The timing of this launch was perfect in the sense that I just wrote an article about how to use Google Wonder Wheel and in this new interface, Google has provided more visibility to Wonder Wheel. It was a bit hard to find before and I am glad to see that Google has decided to bring this tool to the surface.

In my previous article, I mentioned that Google Wonder Wheel can be leveraged for the following tasks:

• To obtain ideas for topics to blog about.
• To find appropriate search terms for making your search more effective.
• To find marketing keywords for your SEM (search engine marketing) campaigns.
• To obtain insight into your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) initiatives.

I already demonstrated how you can use Google Wonder Wheel to find different blog ideas. The current changes in Google’s interface warrant a slight change in my explanation. Let’s take this example to illustrates those minor changes.

How to use Google Wonder Wheel to make your search more effective:

A search begins with an intention to seek information. However, it is not always easy to find keywords which best describe our intentions and provide us with the results we are looking for. For example, I would like to seek information about the different issues the new iPad may have before I buy one. However, I am not aware of any specific issues to search for. Here is how I can use Google Wonder Wheel to enhance my search.

Step 1: Start with a search term or keyword that best expresses your intention.

In this case, I will start with a search term “iPad Issues” and then click the Search button. Notice the new navigation bar on the left hand side of the screen; click on More Search Tools to display enhanced search options.

Google Wonder Wheel: Step 1

Step 2: Under the standard view click on the Wonder Wheel link

Google Wonder Wheel: Step 2

Step 3: Analyze the Google Wonder Wheel Results:

Take a look at the spokes in the following diagram; most of the associated search queries around the base keywords are related to wi-fi.

Google Wonder Wheel: Analyzing Results

This makes me think that most problems people experience with the ipad are related to wi-fi.  I can then refine or narrow my search by changing my original search query to “iPad Wifi Problems” or “iPad Wifi Signal Issues” to obtain relevant information about iPad issues.

How do you use the Google Wonder Wheel? If you have any other ideas for using Google Wonder Wheel, please share them with me by leaving a comment on this blog.

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If you already have plenty of LinkedIn connections, but don’t have too many Twitter followers yet, you may want to “tweet” from LinkedIn rather than from Twitter. You can set it up so that your LinkedIn status updates carry through as tweets in your Twitter account.

You’ll need to modify your Twitter Settings in LinkedIn first:

1. From the LinkedIn home page, click on Settings in upper right.
   
2. Under Profile Settings, click Twitter Settings.
   
3. Add your Twitter account.  I have mine visible to anyone, but I only share tweets that contain #in.
   

And that’s all there is to it. Now when you update your status in LinkedIn, you can choose to have it also tweeted:

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Last week, Google came out of its winter cocoon to reveal their new spring makeover. If you’ve been paying attention, however, you’ll know that more has changed in Google recently than just their interface. Within the past month, Google announced a big change: the inclusion of a site’s load time as a contributing factor to site ranking and indexing. Unlike a new look, though, this change will have a profound impact on SEO.

Why Worry About Load Times?

We’re living in fast times. If the 20^th century gave us fast cars and fast food (don’t speed to your next McDonalds drive-thru, though!), it seems the 21^st century is giving us fast information. When thought of sociologically, we can see that SEO isn’t necessarily changing the way businesses advertise themselves online. Instead, SEO is helping the internet achieve its destiny, which is to become the ultimate, instant information highway. By encouraging site designers to create pages that load more quickly, Google helps make the web faster for everyone. Considering the immense popularity and potential commercial value of fast-paced social media and the general increasing speed of the internet, it’s easy to see we’re inevitably entering instant times.

What This Means for SEO: Flash, Client-side Java, and Other Technologies

“Clunkers” need to either move aside to the slow lane or upgrade to information highway hotrods, because Google is now “weighing in” websites and favoring the lighter ones. With the new consideration of load time in site indexing, web designers must now exercise more prudence in the use of popular yet memory-consuming technologies such as Flash and client-side Java. Also, now moreso than ever, companies and industries must now consider themselves as runners in a virtual footrace to reach the user first. Sites can’t be Flash(y), but without good content. Flash and Java aren’t forbidden of course, but you must now honestly ask yourself, “Does [enter your amazing Flash/Java/image idea for your site here] add any value to my site that I couldn’t get using HTML with JavaScript?” If the answer to this question is “No”, then you may find that your flashy content cost you SEO points and, ultimately, visitors.

If you’d like to know the load time of your own website, there are various free online load time tools (e.g, Pingdom and Web Page Analyzer) that can analyze your site’s load time, in addition to other miscellaneous information.

How are you going to make your pages load faster without compromising your core content?

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What is Google Wonder Wheel

Google Wonder Wheel is a free tool from Google that allows you to dig deeper into a search term by providing you with related search queries associated with that particular term.

I often say that Google holds the database of our intentions. What I mean by that is a search begins with an intention to seek something and keywords are people’s intentions expressed in their own words. Google Wonder Wheel sorts relevant keywords or search terms in a logical way, allowing you to see the inter-connection and relevancy of different search queries.

You can leverage Google Wonder Wheel for different purposes such as:

• To find marketing keywords for your SEM (search engine marketing) campaigns
• To obtain insights for your (Search Engine Optimization) initiatives
• To obtain ideas for topics to blog about
• To find appropriate search terms for making your search more effective.

In this article, I will introduce you to Google Wonder Wheel and show you a quick example of how I use Google Wonder Wheel to find hot blog topics.

How to use Google Wonder Wheel

Step 1:

Start with a search term or keyword that best expresses your intention. Let’s take a real life example; I blog about topics related to Google Analytics, SEO and SEM.  I am interested in finding topics to blog about which are related to Google Analytics training. So, I will start with the search term “Google Analytics Training” which I will type in the search box on Google.com and then click the Search button.

Step 1: How To Use Google Wonder Wheel

Step 2:

Click on the “Show options…” link and this will open up a navigation bar on the left side of the screen.

Step 2: How to Use Google Wonder Wheel

Step 3:

In the options navigation bar, click on “Wonder wheel” under the Standard view category.

Step 3: How to Use Google Wonder Wheel

As you can see, your search term, in this case “Google Analytics Training,” is at the center and there are spokes which represent related search queries.

Google Wonder Wheel Example

Analyzing Results From Google Wonder Wheel

Coming back to the example at hand; how to use Google Wonder Wheel to find blog topics related to Google Analytics?

Take a look at the spokes in the following diagram;  the related search queries are providing me with hints for three potential blog topics.

Google Wonder Wheel and Blog Ideas

The spoke labeled as “google analytics conversion” is telling me that I can blog about how to use Google Analytics to drive conversion. Another spoke labeled as “google analytics filters” is telling me that I can blog about filters in Google Analytics. Finally, the spoke labeled as “google analytics funnels” is telling me that I can blog about funnels in Google Analytics.

Digging Deeper into Google Wonder Wheel

Now, one may say that these topics are too broad. However it gives you a good starting point to think about a blog topic which is probably in demand.  Let’s elaborate more on the example at hand.

From the above three topics, I decided to write about filters in Google Analytics. Now let’s get more granular to find out a specific topic in Google Analytics filters. For that,  I would  simply click on the spoke labeled “google analytics filters” and another wheel will get generated with related search terms:

Google Wonder Wheel and Blog Topics

This new branch of my Wonder Wheel,  provided me with another hint for my topic: Google Analytics Hacks. I used a combination of these hints and decided to write a blog on “Google Analytics Hacks: Filtering Internal Traffic With Dynamic IP Addresses” which covers both the areas (Google Analytics filters and Google Analytics hacks).

In future blogs, I will show you how to leverage Google Wonder Wheel to:

• find marketing keywords for your SEM (search engine marketing) campaigns
• obtain insights for your (Search Engine Optimization) initiatives
• find appropriate search terms for making your search more effective.

If you have any other ideas for using Google Wonder Wheel, please share them with me by leaving a comment on this blog.

On Twitter, in addition to deleting a tweet and linking to a tweet, you can also favorite a tweet.

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Did you know that on Twitter you can view and also link to individual tweets? Just click on the timestamp of any tweet and you’ll be taken to a separate page that only shows that single tweet. You can also grab its URL for linking purposes. Here’s a 30 second Cantasia video on how to do it.

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Google Analytics is known for its web analytics capabilities, but it can also be leveraged to aid your search engine optimization (SEO) initiatives. A good SEO strategy needs to involve both internal SEO (the design and content of your own web pages) and external SEO (your web presence and popularity outside of your own domain).

Here is simple trick in Google Analytics which can provide you with good insight for your SEO initiatives.

Step 1: Within your Google Analytics account, navigate to the Top Landing Pages report in the Content section.

Navigate to Top Landing Pages Report

Step 2: Click on the Pivot Table icon in the control panel labeled as Views.

Pivot Option

Click on the Pivot By drop down menu and select Pivot by = Source.

Pivot By = Source

Step 3: Use sub-dimensions to segment your data based on keywords. For that, click on the Dimension drop down box within the report interface. Select Dimension type = Keywords.

Sub-dimension = Keyword

Here is what your output should look like:

Google Analytics Top Landing Pages Report

In this Google Analytics report, you can see all your top landing pages, keywords which brought visitors to these pages and the respective sources associated with each keyword (e.g. Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc). This information can be very helpful for SEO purposes. For example take a look at rows 9,10 and 11. People who are searching for “sas training” and “xp 70-270 training” are directly brought to the most relevant pages on the website. However, people who are searching for “online excel training” are coming to the homepage instead of landing on the Excel course page. This information can help you determine which pages you need to optimize for SEO and what key phrases you might want to focus some attention on.

This is just a quick example of one of the numerous ways with which you can leverage Google Analytics  to understand your online business environment. You will learn more cool tricks in our Google Analytics Introduction and Advanced Google Analytics class. We also have a new SEO training class coming out very soon.

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Twitter has received much attention lately from Google with the introduction of Twitter search and the recognition of its potential for permanence on the web. But, not everything you say to the ethos has to be eternal; you can delete any Tweet you don’t like.

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I discovered a WordPress app for LinkedIn that allows you to pull your WordPress blog posts into your LinkedIn profile. This is a nifty tool that provides an example of how social media can be incorporated skillfully into search engine optimization (SEO) strategies.

If you’re interested in learning more about WordPress, I deliver WordPress Training.

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Google provides a free Keyword Tool, which is designed to help AdWords users find keywords and key phrases to target for their Google ads.  The tool, however, can also be utilized to select phrases to include in the content of your pages to help those pages appear higher in search results.

I’ll illustrate with an example. A colleague recently published a blog article, which he initially titled “What is a JavaBean?” in which he briefly describes what a JavaBean is and then gives a couple of code examples. Using the Keyword Tool, I found that “JavaBeans Tutorial” was a much more commonly searched-on phrase than “What is a JavaBean?” and so I renamed the article “A Simple JavaBeans Tutorial”.

The short video below quickly demonstrates how to use the Google Keyword Tool.

There is a new Google Keywords tool that is currently in beta. I tried it quickly, but I found it less intuitive than the old one.

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How Web Analytics Can Benefit Your Business

The effectiveness of your web presence is largely dependent on the overall online experience of your visitors. Web analytics provides you with the ability to collect, measure and analyze activities of your online visitors. If you can measure something, you can understand it. Once you start understanding it, you can control it. If you can control it then you can work towards improving it. In nutshell, you can tune your web presence with a customer-centric approach.

A website can be viewed as a system that a visitor has to navigate through to find what they need. There are many assumptions and beliefs that go into the creation of a website and thus it important to verify if these assumptions were accurate enough to satisfy the needs and expectations of your audience. Web metrics and web analytics offer different tools with which you can monitor visitors’ online behavior, in order to help validate these assumptions.

Web Analytics to Measure Key Performance Indicators

It is important to understand that web metrics may vary based on the nature and purpose of the website. For businesses which provide online content, web analytics can be used to determine how deep visitors dig and how often they revisit the website. For businesses selling goods online, the major benefit of web analytics may be to find out the average amount of time taken to close an online sale. Web analytics helps to determine key performance indicators such as overall conversion rate, bounce rate, etc.  Key performance indicators (KPI) are covered in detail in our Introduction to Google Analytics class.

In addition, web analytics can be used for complex tasks such as:

• Market segmentation
• Personalization of content
• Collaborative filtering, etc.

Web Analytics and Opportunity Cost

The concept of ‘opportunity cost’ is another important driver for using web analytics. Some minor website modifications, which could appear insignificant, can make all the difference to your visitors. Web analytics tools provide the means to test and investigate if you are achieving your business goals associated with running a website. Further, tools like Google Analytics come with no price tag but offer powerful enterprise grade web analytics services. Thus, there is a huge opportunity cost to not using web analytics tools.

Here are some Google Analytics case studies on how some organizations are using Google Analytics to drive their bottom line. You can learn what Google Analytics has to offer by watching the Google Analytics Product Tour. If you have any questions on this topic please feel free to leave a comment and I’ll see if I can address them either here or in another post.

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Google has long been a strong proponent of enhancing our experience on the Internet by speeding up the web on various levels. Over the past few years Google introduced several products geared toward increasing web performance. Products such as Google Chrome and Google Public DNS were created to improve the browsing speed.

Now Google wants you to share their passion and join hands with them to make the web faster. Google is encouraging you to come on board by including a new parameter in their famous, yet mysterious search ranking algorithm. If you haven’t guessed it, it’s called: “your site speed”. According to Google, site speed reflects how quickly your website responds to web requests.

If you are thinking “does site speed really matter?” then Google has compelling research which will convince you that site speed results in happier visitors and reduced operating costs. The good news is that currently site speed doesn’t carry as much weight as the relevance of the page. Google clearly indicated that out of 200+ signals, page relevancy is the primary component for determining the search ranks.

Here are some free tools Google is recommending to evaluate the speed of your site:

1. Page Speed, an open source Firefox/Firebug add-on that evaluates the performance of web pages and gives suggestions for improvement.
2. YSlow, a free tool from Yahoo! that suggests ways to improve website speed.
3. WebPagetest shows a waterfall view of your pages’ load performance plus an optimization checklist.
4. Google’s own Webmaster Tools, shows the speed of the website as experienced by users around the world.

At this point fewer than 1% of search queries are affected by the site speed parameter, and site speed only applies to Google.com. That being said, this is what Google is saying about this topic:

“We encourage you to start looking at your site’s speed …. not only to improve your ranking in search engines, but also to improve everyone’s experience on the Internet.”

I think this is a smart move from Google. They are entering into the ISP market with an ultra high speed internet connection and Google wants everyone to get serious about improving individual website speeds. In this way Google will be able to provide an end-to-end blazing experience.

I would like to hear what you have to say about this Google move!

At Webucator, we use Yammer for internal communications.  We like it a lot, but I considered trying to use TweetDeck instead as many of us Twitterers already use it.  My thinking was as follows:

Advantages of using TweetDeck instead of Yammer

1. Those of us using Twitter regularly would only need to have one application open.
2. Savings of $3/user/month.  With 20 employees (and growing), that’s $720/year (and growing).

Disadvantages of using TweetDeck instead of Yammer

1. Yammer works well for us already.  Why mess with a good thing?
2. With TweetDeck, you’d have to manage multiple Twitter accounts and you might, by accident, send from the wrong one.
3. TweetDeck can be annoying if you follow too many people (easy solution: don’t follow too many people).

Note that people not following anyone on Twitter could just have a single column in TweetDeck that functioned just like Yammer.  Here’s a short video I put together on it.  The quality isn’t great, but I thought I’d share it in case anyone else is considering using Twitter instead of Yammer.

So I tried it out for awhile.  I set up a private Twitter account and added it to TweetDeck.  I wanted to make sure I didn’t publicly tweet private messages, so I made my private account my default.  Of course, nobody was following that account yet, but I was just playing with it to start.

It turned out that the killer disadvantage for me was that I often tweeted from my private account when I meant to be tweeting publicly.  The thing about tweeting is you shouldn’t have to think much about it.  If you have to pick between accounts, it’s one tiny little barrier to tweet, which is, at best, annoying.  So, I scrapped the idea.  Yammer stays.  And, of course, TweetDeck does too.

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I attended a terrific webinar hosted by SocialMedia Examiner and picked up many social media marketing tips that I find to be both practical and easy to implement.  Here are the ones that most resonated with me.

Tip# 1: Video is Your New Darling

I say video has become the new darling for search engines. According to Forrester Research a properly submitted video is 50 times more likely to achieve a first-page Google ranking as compared with standard search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. Thus, quality video content has tremendous SEO opportunities.

So what types of video content should you generate? Here are some hints:

1. About Us or Welcome Videos: This category of video is used to inform visitors about your company as well as the product or services which you offer. If you are looking for an example to start with, then check out this welcome video.
2. How to Videos: These are tutorials to educate your visitors. This is a great way to increase their trust and deepen the engagement. If you are eager to jump on this video bandwagon then you want to consider learning tools like Camtasia. At Webucator, we realized this trend and we have already started generating useful video tutorials. Check out this sample video on how to use Google Toolbar for SEO.
3. Interviews and Video Testimonials: Although we have yet to experiment with this, I do think that video testimonials will be a very effective way to share what customers have to say about you.

Tip #2: Exploit Twitter

Optimize the use of Twitter for increasing your visibility. Make it easier for others to tweet your blog or video content by adding the TweetMeme button. Try to find some fire-starters; these are people who are your hardcore fans and most likely to retweet your tweets.

So, why should you care about retweets?

Tweets are fully indexable on Google and Bing. In my opinion, retweeting provides more avenues for search engines to find your tweets. Further, retweets can act like a vote of confidence indicating that your tweet was appreciated and shared by others.

You can find helpful information on our Twitter blog page to get you started in this direction.

Tip #3: Create a Facebook Fan Page (Eyeballs can be monetized)

Here is why a fan page can help your business in viral marketing:

1. For the week ending March 13, 2010 Facebook surpassed Google in the US to become the most visited website for the week. Thus, having a professional and compelling fan page can help you in putting your company’s name in front of billions of Facebook users.
2. Facebook fan pages are fully indexable on Google and thus your fan page can help you in your SEO strategy.

Tip# 4: Develop a Social Media Hub

Relying on Twitter and Facebook is like putting your content on someone else’s property. You are subjected to their rules and are dependent on the popularity of these platforms.

You can utilize these social media platforms to grab the attention of your prospective clients, however you should bring these “watchers” to your own blog page.

In order to be successful at this, you will need to supply fresh, engaging and relevant content on your own website which will help in building the loyalty of your visitors.

There were some other tips discussed during the webinar such as using Google Buzz and leveraging Social Bookmarking. However, I am yet to see compelling evidence that these tools are more difficult to use effectively for business purposes.

Please share your opinion on how effective you think it would be to add Google Buzz and Social Bookmarking in your marketing mix.

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Good SEO incorporates much technical tweaking and maintenance. Most of this technical tweaking involves web design, which includes link text, headers, HTML tags, and much more. Fighting your way to the top spot of Google will require more than simply making your site SEO friendly, however.  Rather than just polish your site and reactively wait for good rankings and increased traffic, you need to proactively put your site’s name out there.  Yet, at the same time, you don’t want to spend a fortune in paid advertisements to do so. SEO creates an opportunity for you to work your way to the top naturally.

Remember, SEO promotes organic link building, which means links obtained naturally through other sites linking to you. You can’t exactly just go up to every good site you’d like a link from and just ask. You need to build trust and comfort. And, just like humans are social beings, websites, through the use of social media, can become social entities themselves and build the appropriate customer trust to ultimately increase traffic and revenue. This, after all, is the underlying theme behind SEO: transforming your website from a statue in a museum waiting for visitors, to a living, breathing, organic personality that can reach out to people like a handshake. You can’t hope to get to the top by staying in your cyber island.

Step 1 – Start a blog

One of the easiest things you can do to immediately become a more social web entity is start a company blog, in which you blog about your field and its hot topics. The logistics and specifics of it may vary depending on your company’s size and structure, but the point is to establish your company as an authority in your industry. If possible, have your company’s name in your blog’s domain in some way (e.g. “seo.blogs.webucator.com”). Allow comments so that viewers can leave respond and, when they do, reply appropriately to encourage discussion and further traffic. And don’t just blog: read others’ blogs, too, not to shamelessly plug your own, but to leave sincere comments or questions (don’t worry, you can link to yourself in a signature—so long as you don’t comment just to advertise your own blog). If the blogger responds, this can build rapport. Do this enough with various different blogs and you will have a slow SEO snowball building up. You should blog at least once a week, to always keep your viewers coming back for more info; this also helps from an SEO point of view, by conveniently creating more web pages for yourself for search engines to index and display in search queries. (To optimize your ranking, as usual, it’s important to use your target keyword throughout your content, without being excessive, since SEO keywords are still important)

Step 2 – Start a Twitter account

Another easy thing you can do is create a Twitter account for your company. You can use Twitter as a “micro-blog” to keep your followers informed about exciting new developments in your company, like limited special offers, contests, or new offers. You can further maximize your use of Twitter by tweeting about your blog posts. Use Twitter’s function as a real-time social sphere to engage in real-time communication directly with your customers.

There are many more, miscellaneous avenues of social media you can explore to increase your traffic; blogging and tweeting are just the two most basic and fundamental. What others tactics do you know or have used before successfully? Please comment with your thoughts, opinions, or suggestions!

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Here are what I find to be the best 3 tips for using WordPress for blogging:

My three tips for using WordPress

1. Install social media plugins to ensure that your users can share your articles and stories with their colleagues and friends.
2. Use Askimet to prevent comment SPAM.
3. Use WordPress mu to enable multiple blogs to cover functional areas.

Please let me know what you think are the top 3 tips for using WordPress.

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As of this morning, Guy Kawasaki (@guykawasaki) has 223,631 followers (including me). With that many followers, wouldn’t it be great if you could get Guy to follow you? On the face of it, it seems like it would lend a lot of credibility to your account and if you could get his attention, he might retweet one of your tweets to all of his followers!  Now wouldn’t that be awesome!

But it’s not likely to happen.  Guy is following 245,897 people (his followees), which basically means he’s not following anyone or he follows a small subset of his followees using lists or some other tool.

I’ve been using Twitter for a little more than a year.  I currently follow 110 people and I find it very hard to keep up.

Assuming my followees have the same difficulty, I figure that they’re not paying attention to my tweets if I’m one of a thousand people they’re following.  Furthermore, if they have a ton of followers, but about the same number of followees, I figure they’re just playing “I’ll follow you if you follow me,” which seems silly to me though I know a lot of “social media gurus” consider it good practice.

Why do we want Followers?

If you’re in business, then presumably the reason you want followers is so that you can communicate to them for one of two reasons:

1. Add value to your services through providing support or useful information.
2. Sell more either directly through some kind of special offer or indirectly through building your brand.

In either case, you need your followers to actually be paying attention to your tweets, which I’m assuming they can’t do if they are following a zillion people.

Twitter Follower Value (TFV)

So I’ve come up with this simple formula for the value of a follower:

Follower Value = #Followers / #Followees

I’m not sure that it’s original. It seems unlikely to me that it is, but just in case I’m going to call it the Why-it-does-not-matter-if-Guy-Kawasaki is-following-you formula or the Twitter Follower Value (TFV) formula for short.

Let’s take Guy as an example:

• #Followers: 223,631
• #Followees: 245,897
• TFV: 0.91

That’s not a great TFV.

Take Tim O’Reilly (@timOReilly) as another example.  He wrote a book on Twitter, which is mostly geared towards using Twitter for staying in touch with family and friends, but has some business tips in it. Here’s what his TFV looks like:

• #Followers: 1,428,799
• #Followees: 644
• TFV: 2,218.6

Can you see the difference?  Is it really almost 2,500 times more valuable to have Tim O’Reilly follow you than it is to have Guy Kawasaki follow you?  I think it is, because I think Tim O’Reilly may actually follow his followers, whereas I can’t imagine that Guy Kawasaki does.

Twitter Follower Value (TTFV)

The value of all your followers or your Total Twitter Follower Value (TTFV) would be the sum of your followers’ TFVs.  So, if both Guy Kawasaki and Tim O’Reilly are following you and they are your only followers, your TTFV would be:

0.91 + 2,218.6 = 2,219.51

So there it is.  Anyone want to build a tool that calculates TTFV?  That would be cool!

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1. Create your profile with an image.  Nobody follows people who look like one of these:
   
2. Create a Twitter background.
3. Provide links.  For example, don’t just tweet “Adobe CS5 will be release soon!  Yay!”  Add a URL where people can get more info.
4. Because URLs are long, you need a URL Shortener.
   1. If you use Firefox, get this URLShortener plugin.
   2. If you use TweetDeck, you can have it automatically shorten your URLs.
      
   3. Otherwise, you can shorten your URLs at http://bit.ly.
5. When replying to a tweet, start with the twitterer’s handle (e.g, @natdunn,…) and provide some context about the original tweet, especially if your reply isn’t immediate.

For the salesman, it’s a phone call. For a businessman, it might be a signature. But, if you’re reading this, you probably know that, in the world of Search Engine Optimization, amongst other things, it’s about links. Valuable links (particularly inbound links – links from other sites that link to you) are extremely rewarding, and it’s what everybody strives for, either in good web design or SEO. Maybe you’re a new SEO Specialist and you just got your first inbound link and don’t know what to do, or maybe you’re a webmaster designing internal links on your site: in any case, whenever you create or get a link, it’s important to follow through the linking to the end, which means making sure it’s presented properly.

You might wonder why its presentation matters. A link is a link is a link, right? Especially if you get an inbound link from a highly ranked site, then you might think it’s time to start laughing your way to the top spot on Google. But, you shouldn’t laugh just yet: presentation should matter to you because it certainly matters to search engines.  Most search engines operate by indexing websites on the internet, sending out small web-programs called “spiders” or “web crawlers” to browse websites and analyze the keywords and links contained within them, either inbound or outbound. The overall quality (and the quantity secondly) of your keywords and inbound links determines your place on search engines, depending on the query. Think of it as a Google site-to-site salesman knocking on your domain’s door for a moment to analyze it for publication later; you’d want to make sure your site looks superb in hopes of high search engine rankings.

So, what dictates quality links? Aside from the quality of the external site if it’s an inbound link, it’s how specifically the link text targets your keyword audience for your SEO plans. If possible, you should always have your link be your target keyword (“T-shirts” if you’re a T-shirt company, “SEO Classes” for an SEO training company, etc.). Consider link text as a snapshot to search engines of what you offer. As with keywords and headings, search engines will categorize you in queries according to the text of your links, so you want to make sure you get the message across as clearly and succinctly as possible. If your company offers Windows training, you’d want your inbound links to read “Windows Training” not “Click here for Windows Training”: no user will enter “Click here for Windows Training” on Google if they’re looking for training. Therefore, have your links contain only your targeted keywords whenever possible, or as close to it as you can get.

Your links should NEVER:

• Be a sentence or a question; “Click here to look at our classes”
• Have special characters or punctuation; “Windows Classes!” or “***Windows Classes***”
• Be the URL itself; (e.g. http://www.webucator.com/business-skills-training/course/seo-training.cfm instead of SEO training.

This also means that, whenever you score an inbound link from another site, you must specify where and how you’d like the link to appear. Webmasters, depending on how busy or demanding their own jobs/lives may be, can often haphazardly slap your link online without giving any thought to how descriptive or appropriate its text might be if you don’t ask for specific criteria for your link.

And note, this is just about SEO. A link with meaningful text is better for the visitor too.

Good luck linking!

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Google Analytics has about 80 standard reports. With various segmentation techniques coupled with advanced features such as custom reporting and custom segments, you are looking at numerous possible ways to analyze the data. Further Google Analytics allows a good deal of customization to meet your specific business needs. But with all these features, it’s easy to get lost. According to a study conducted by Forrester Research; the strategies, resources, and technology employed for this task are often misaligned with enterprise needs.

Thus, even though Google Analytics comes with no price tag, it is important to train your staff so that they can appropriately leverage the tool to drive the bottom line. At Webucator, we believe in “learning by doing”. Thus our Google Analytics Introduction and Advanced courses are fully loaded with hands-on interactive exercises. Students are exposed to a live Google Analytics account where they get firsthand experience of the tool. Exercises encourage students to think and apply the techniques learned during the training program which leads to better absorption and retention of newly learned skills.

Here is a sample of an exercise which you will find in our Introduction to Google Analytics course:

Your company is planning to add audio/video content to deliver product information.
Using Google Analytics, determine whether adding audio/videos content to your company’s website is a good move.
Further how would you decide if you want to use flash or some other platform to deliver this content?

Students receive the guidance they need from the instructor as they work through the exercises. This helps students to gain confidence and increase their overall comfort level with Google Analytics in general. Exercises help to ensure that students who complete the course are able to use Google Analytics on their own website right away in an efficient and effective manner.

More importantly, we have heard from our students that exercises make learning fun and interactive!

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I first read Hubspot’s Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs (The New Rules of Social Media) book about six months ago.  It’s an easy read and well organized, but it doesn’t go very deep into anything. For example, if you’re looking to figure out how to build a following on Twitter, which seems like a pretty important topic to cover in a Social Media book, you’ll only find two paragraphs on that, which can be summed up quickly as:

• Paragraph 1: People can follow you on Twitter.
• Paragraph 2: Use our Twitter Grader to see how you’re doing.

But this isn’t really a how-to book.  I think that it’s meant to inspire you to get involved in social media by:

1. Convincing you that social media presents an enormous opportunity.
2. Making you feel that this whole social media thing is doable.

And I think it does a good job of meeting those goals. Their ultimate goal, of course, is to get you to buy their services. Fair enough. That’s why most business books are written.

Chapter-by-Chapter Review

Chapter 1: Shopping has Changed … Has your Marketing?

Covers how buying has changed. People are better at filtering traditional advertising like TV ads and junk mail and they use tools (e.g, TiVo) to do so.

Because you can no longer push your ads out to people, your company needs to be findable in search engines, in the blogosphere and on social media sites.

The only part I don’t like about this chapter is the reference to Obama’s social media campaign, which as every one knows was fantastic.  I just don’t see how that relates to business.

Chapter 2: Is Your Web Site a Marketing Hub?

The message in this chapter is to engage your site visitors. Your website should not talk at them, it should talk with them. I buy this. If you have the time and money to engage with your site visitors, it can be a good thing. But, if you’ve ever tried it, you know that it can be a time sink and it’s hard to do right.

Chapter 3: Are You Worthy?

This is a good chapter. The premise is that you must have something really exciting to talk about if you’re going to get any attention in the social media world.  You can’t just sell what everyone else sells in the same way that everyone sells it. If you do, nobody is going to talk about your product. Using my company as an example…

1. We sell ASP.NET training. Well, so do a lot of other companies.
2. But we’re certified by Microsoft to sell ASP.NET training.  Well, so are a lot of other companies.
3. But we deliver our certified ASP.NET class with a live certified instructor every month over the web AND we don’t cancel class based on low enrollment AND we give a full money-back guarantee. I don’t think any other training company can say that.

And I think it makes us worthy. I also think it’s a better example than the one used in the book. Their example of a company that produced remarkable content is the  Grateful Dead! That’s like showing my kid a YouTube video of Michael Phelps and saying “Swim that way.”

Chapter 4: Create Remarkable Content

There is a play on words here.  You’re supposed to create content about which others will remark. And if you’re lucky, their remarks will come in the form of links, which help with SEO.

This makes perfect sense and the chapter explains it well. Good content results in more visitors, which hopefully turns into more sales.

But again, a not-so-helpful example: Wikipedia. Sure, it has incredible content and it’s brilliantly successful, but how does it relate to your business?

Chapter 5: Get Found in the Blogosphere

This is my favorite chapter in the book. It provides great examples of good blog post titles and a great example of a real company (Whole Foods) that has done well (presumably) using social media and blogging.  This chapter alone makes it worth buying the book.

Chapter 6: Getting Found in Google

This provides a good overview of how Google works. It felt a little misplaced in the book, which I think is more about generating interesting content than it is about SEO (though, of course one plays into the other). If you’re new to SEO, it’s worth the read.

Chapter 7: Get Found in Social Media

My second favorite chapter. Also worth the price of the book. This is the Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, etc. chapter. It introduces you to all the biggest social media sites and provides a great to-do list at the end of the chapter.

Chapter 8: Convert Visitors into Leads

Summary: Have compelling and visible calls to action on your website. Simple but solid advice.

Chapter 9: Convert Prospects into Leads

This chapter covers landing pages (e.g, from an email newsletter) and form design. Definitely worth the read.

Chapter 10: Convert Leads to Customers

Hubspot has a product that helps you grade and develop your leads and I think this chapter is meant to whet your appetite.

Chapter 11: Make Better Marketing Decisions

While the chapter title is catchy, the content is a little weak. I’d recommend skipping it except that it’s only 5 pages.

Chapter 12: Picking and Measuring Your People

This is a good chapter to make you think. Who should you hire to do your social marketing? Is it better to hire the “Digital Citizen” who grew up on Facebook, but doesn’t have a lot of business experience or is it better to hire experienced business people and try to get them up to speed on social media. I think the authors would argue the former. Personally, I’m betting on the latter.

While we have brought on some “digital citizens” recently, it wasn’t because of their familiarity with social media. We’ve made a bigger investment in more than a half dozen very experienced and exceptionally talented trainers who will be responsible for doing some blogging and tweeting and such. I’m betting that they’re great at it. These are people who have plenty of “remarkable” knowledge and experience. They may not create the cool music videos that Hubspot’s people can, but they can teach you a lot about web development and Adobe and Microsoft products.

My advice: don’t be too quick to replace an expert business person with some new college grad just because the latter has 5000 friends on Facebook.

Chapter 13: Picking and Measuring a PR Agency

I don’t know if this chapter is valuable or not, but any company would be lucky to get the amount of PR from their PR agency that FutureWorks must have gotten from being in this book.

Chapter 14: Watching Your Competition

Good advice and some good pointers on how to watch your behind.

Chapter 15: On Commitment, Patience and Learning

Summary: It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

Chapter 16: Why Now?

Summary: The world is changing. Adapt or die.

Conclusion

The biggest shortcoming of this social media book is the lack of actual examples of businesses making money using social media.  But almost every book and article I’ve read on social media has the same shortcoming.  Is anyone making money using social media? And I don’t mean companies like Hubspot that make money selling other companies on the benefits of social media, but actual companies that have been around for awhile and will still be around when the hype dies down.

I believe there is a prize to be had in the social media world and this book does a good job of making you feel like you can win it.  It is sort of like going to see an inspirational speaker.  You walk out thinking “Awesome!  That’s going to change my life!”  And then when someone asks you what he said, all you can come up with is “he said to spend more time doing things that are important to me.” Well, yeah, that makes sense. How much did he charge you for that?

After reading this book, you’ll want to tackle this whole social media thing, but you’re still left wondering how and you’re hard pressed to explain why. Still, for $16.47 and a few hours of pleasurable reading, I think it’s well worth it. Whether or not you buy into the hype of social media, you should know what the hype is about.

Excluding Internal Traffic for Geographically Dispersed Teams

If you are using any web analytics tool to measure your website usage, then it is highly recommended that you filter out the data generated by internal members of your team. Google Analytics offers several ways to filter internal traffic and the most common method relies on IP addresses.

Limitation on IP Based Filtering Method

Telecommuting is becoming more popular in today’s workforce and thus your staff members could be geographically dispersed making it challenging to use IP addresses to filter internal traffic. In this blog, you will learn how to overcome the above challenge using an alternate method for filtering internal traffic.

Alternate Method for Filtering Internal Traffic using Google Analytics

On a high level, we will use a JavaScript function to set a cookie on every internal computer and then filter all visitors with this cookie using an advanced filter.  Here are step by step instructions on how to implement this setup:

Step 1: Create a new web page

Either create a separate HTML page that is not a part of your website or create a new page on your site which is not publicly accessible to your visitors.

Step 2: Add pageTracker.setVar()

In addition to the Google Analytics Tracking Code (GATC), add the following line of code on this newly created web page:

Sample of GATC with setVar Method

In the above example, the setVar method will help us uniquely identify and filter out internal visitors based on the parameter labeled internalstaff.

Step 3: Create an Exclude Filter

In Google Analytics, Create an exclude filter to exclude data from visitors with the above parameter. Follow these instructions:

1. Choose the custom filter option and provide an appropriate filter name
2. Select filter type = Exclude
3. Use the drop down menu and select filter field = User Defined
4. Enter filter pattern = internalstaff (name of the parameter)
5. Select case sensitive = No
6. Assign appropriate profile and save the filter.

Filter for Excluding Internal Traffic

Step 4: Direct All Staff to Your New Page

Request your internal staff members to visit the newly created web page from all computers that you would like to exclude from your data.

You are all set, the above procedure will allow you to filter internal traffic irrespective of IP addresses.

If you’re a SEO newbie, the easiest way to start understanding the general concept behind it all is to download and explore the web using Google Toolbar. View this video to see how.

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