Using Google Analytics To Track Website Optimization Success – Iii

admin    Google Optimization     Analytics, Google, Optimization, Success, Track, Using, Website

Using Google Analytics To Track Website Optimization Success – Iii

During the last few segments of this series we talked about the benefits you can get from tracking software, of which Google Analytics is one of the best and free examples. We have also looked a bit on how to set up an account for Google Analytics, as well as some instructions on how to install it into every page of your website.

This time, we will be taking a dive into Google Analytics and explore its functions. There is a lot of available information that Google Analytics gathers, analyzes and computes and it can be daunting at first. If you are reading this, be sure that you have at least read part II and have your account set up and ready to follow the examples given here.

Reports Google Analytics’ reports generation is one of its powerful features and it will do you well to understand how to navigate and generate these reports. These reports are available for each website profile you have created. If you have made your website profiles accurately, the reports generated for each profile will be accurate as well. You can access the report for a particular website profile by clicking on the “View report” link just beside it.

Dashboard Clicking on the “View report” link will take you to that particular website profile’s dashboard. The dashboard is a very general overview of your website’s performance as Google Analytics gathered. You are also able to change dashboards to your other website profiles by clicking on the drop-down box where it says “View reports.”

·Visits. On the upper part of the dashboard is a graph that displays the number of visits on your site over time. Note that there is a distinction between visits and visitors: a visit means a session that was initiated by a visitor of your site. There is a 30-minute window of inactivity where a visitor’s visit is recounted. For example, if a visitor visits your site that is counted as one visit, but if the visitor idles or otherwise performs no activity whatsoever on your site (maybe because he or she switched to a different program) for 30 minutes or more, the next time your visitor performs an activity (like clicking on a link) it will be considered a new visit.

·Page views. Aside from showing you an overview of visits, your dashboard will also show the number of page views your site has generated. A page view is the number of pages a visitor had viewed. Note that this number can be skewed, especially for ajax-heavy and dynamic webapps, since there are practically no new page requests with these types of sites.  A visitor can have as few as only one page view per visit, even though he or she had stayed on your site for hours.

·Bouce Rate. You are also able to know what percent of your visitors only visit the front page and leave, without visiting any other places in your website. Most of the time, these are people who came in via a search engine and are tentatively visiting to see if your website has the content they were looking for and then leave after quickly judging that it does not. Knowing the bounce rate is extremely helpful when doing front page refactoring since you might find that the search engine queries or keywords are actually relevant to your site and yet the visitors still leave after only visiting the front page. It is possible your front page content is too cluttered or does not immediately present the necessary information.

·Average Time on Site. Your dashboard will also show the average amount of time your visitors spend on your site as a whole. The rule of thumb is that the higher the time a visitor spends on your site, the better (because your visitor is exposed to more of your content, might be enjoying interacting with your site, or eagerly browsing through your catalogue and consuming your data). However, one caveat is that this statistic can sometimes be misleading as some visitors will leave their browsers open while still pointing at your site. Cross reference this statistic with your pageviews to get a better picture.

·Map Overlay. One of the coolest features on Google Analytics is geolocation – a process by which a website visitor’s ip is correlated with its estimated geographic origin. Geolocation is more or less accurate and this information is gathered as well from each visit. On the map overlay, you can see a small map overlayed with information on which part of the world your visitors are coming from. This is most useful when you want to optimize your site to better target your audience. The numbers from gelocation are a very effective convincing tool as well.

·Traffic Sources. The dashboard also gives information on where your visitors are coming from. You will see a pie-chart that easily describes which sites feed traffic into your own. This resource is very helpful when trying to optimize your website for search engines; you will know which search engines drive traffic into your sites (and perhaps optimize for that search engine or add optimization for other engines) and which sites link to yours (such as forums, blogs, discussion boards). You can also use this report to figure out if your search engine consultant is actually driving traffic to your site due to his own methods and not because of other, irrelevant means.

·Content. You can also get a quick, good summary of your page content from the dashboard. You can determine the top drivers for page views from this report. This overview is more of a compilation of all the other reports and it is good for gaining a quick insight into which sections of your site are your prime assets.  You can then either capitalize on these assets by including a sales pitch or cross reference your other pages from this asset to get otherwise unseen pages more exposure.

This is just a very brief overview of the dashboard. Going even deeper into the various report generation capabilities of Google Analytics will take a whole book. It is advised that you play around with the report generation especially when you already have existing data. Also, the help section at Google Analytics is a very good resource for additional information.

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Google Use Search Trends to Track Flu Outbreak in the U.s.a

admin    Google     Google, Outbreak, Search, Track, Trends, U.s.a

As soon as the leaves fall from the trees the inevitable flu virus starts to spread. The symptoms are often the same, head-aches, coughs, fevers, sore throats and muscular pains. Google noticed an increase in the use of search terms for flu related symptoms. The data directly related to known outbreak areas and the results were in real time as the searches were taking place while someone was ill. This has given rise to Google creating an early warning system which actually tracks the spread of flu outbreaks across the USA. The system is called Google Flu Trends and it can be found at www.google.org/flutrends .

Tests of the new system by the company’s philanthropic unit have so far suggested that the system may be able to detect regional outbreaks 7 to 10 days before they are reported by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

It’s being reported that this amazing tool could help public health experts increase their response time to a potential flu outbreak, allowing the vulnerable and weak to be inoculated before the levels of risk become too high. This could really save lives and stop the spread of disease.

“The earlier the warning, the earlier prevention and control measures can be put in place, and this could prevent cases of influenza,” said Lyn Finelli, lead for surveillance at the influenza division of the CDC.

“In theory, we could use this stream of information to learn about other disease trends as well,” said Philip M. Polgreen, assistant professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of Iowa and a co-author of the study based on Yahoo’s data.

A website called www.whoissick.org has been trying to do this very same thing by inviting people to report about their ailments. The results are superimposed on a map. The problem is that they do not have the levels of online exposure that Google receives and as a result they have a very small level of visitor traffic.

Google.org has also backed the HealthMap project which is affiliated with the Children’s Hospital in Boston and Harvard Medical School. The system scour the web for news, articles, blog posts and electronic newsletter to a worldwide create map of new diseases.

Google Flu Trends uses the world’s largest source of user generated data in order to track and map Flu trends. As with all things Google, if this pilot project is successful it could see the start of a new age of preventative medicine, allowing information to fight the spread of disease.

Is There A Way To Track The Google Page Rank Of A Blog?

admin    Google     Blog, Google, Page, Rank, There, Track

I keep hearing everyone suggesting I increase my page rank if I want more traffic, is there a way to track the page rank of my blog?

Fast Track Your Website Onto Google In Less Than 48 Hours!

admin    Google     Fast, Google, Hours, Less, Onto, Than, Track, Website

We all know that if we are looking for something online, we usually make our first stop a search engine, such as Google or Yahoo. It is important to remember this when you are trying to increase traffic to your website. If you look for everything in Google or Yahoo, then the chances are that is what everyone else is doing so as well. So I use a search engine, what is the big deal? I hear you saying. Well the big deal is that you use a search engine and so does everyone else!

But of course I am sure you know that already, so why am I still banging on about it? Well the thing that many small businesses fail to grasp is that getting your page onto a search engine and as a highly ranked page at that is often not fully understood.

Here are the options for getting your site recognized by the Google search engine:

o Put in an application. Not an altogether bad idea and relatively easy, but how long are you willing to wait? Putting in an application via Google Addurl, Yahoos How to Suggest Your Site page or via the Open Directory Projects How to add a site to the Open Directory page is a worthy effort, particularly as Google has made agreements with Yahoo and Netscape ,owners of the Open Directory, that any sites indexed in their directories will be placed in Googles index. The downside of this is that you could be waiting anywhere from 6 to 8 weeks before this happens, and even then you may end up somewhere around page 20 in the rankings; basically your efforts are hardly worth the time spent on them!

o Link your site to others. Great, sounds terrific but what does it mean? Well quite simply linking your site to others is just what it sounds like, having links to other sites on your page; but more particularly, having links to your site from other peoples pages. The advantage of this is that it creates a search engine position that is known as organic. This means that the search engine crawlers that locate links to pages via other related pages find your site and index it by linking to it from another site. The advantage of being indexed in this way is that instead of being relegated to a page ranking where you are unlikely to ever be found, the organic placement of your website will start to creep up. The more links the more popular your site becomes, and the more links you can establish the higher your ranking is likely to climb. As an added bonus, you may also pick up traffic to your site from other sites that people with an interest in your particular product or service are visiting.

Clearly option number two is going to get you a higher ranking and a whole lot faster, so the next question is how do you get those links in place? Well to start with, consider what sorts of sites would be interested in linking to your site. If you are selling fine wines, then you may not get much benefit being linked to a site for pet food. A great way to get started is to link via relevant directories for your product or service. These can often be found simply by looking in the very search engines you are trying to get your site on to.

You can also request to exchange links with sites that are related to yours, simply add a link from your site, contact the other site to do the same, and very soon you will start to build up a large number of incoming quality links that will boost your page ranking. If you are unsure about taking this step, then it is worth getting started with the help of a reciprocal link managing tool. The better quality links you get the faster you will rise in the page rankings on Google.

A final sure fire way to get your page ranking to increase is by having articles and information about your site posted on article directories, which then include a link to your site from the article. If you are selling fine wine, then an article for example about how to store fine wines could be posted with a link to you site. This can be a great way to bring in traffic that you know is interested in your product or service, whilst at the same time increasing the quality links to your site and the ranking your page is given by Google.

Getting onto Google is a worthwhile endeavor, as this is one of the surest ways to bring targeted traffic to your website. By following a few simple steps to be certain that your site can be easily found, you will be on your way to getting onto Google in just 48 hours!