Cool Features in Google Analytics for your Website

Google Analytics is the most widely used web analytics solution available with almost two million websites (56% market-share) running the software and over 400,000 of the top one million most-visited sites on the Internet. It offers tremendous flexibility as it tracks site visitors, referring sites, search engine traffic and site activity – and it is free. A simple cut-and-paste of the JavaScript snippet before the tag brings an onslaught of data about visitors’ interaction with your website! But how do you get started deciphering this treasure trove of information?

1). The Intelligence Report Explained

The purpose of the Intelligence Report is to alert you to important changes in traffic patterns. It is able to do this by performing statistical analysis on previous data and predict traffic values, compare metrics, and create automatic alerts based on: All Traffic, Visitor Type, City, Region, Country/Territory, Campaign, Keyword, Source, Medium, Referral Path, Landing Page, and Exit Page. These are displayed on the Intelligence Report in green. You are also able to create custom alerts based on: Visits, Visitors, Page views, Bounce Rate, Average Time on Site, Percent New Visits, Goal Conversion Rate, Goal Value, Per Visit Goal Value, Revenue, and Average Order Quantity. Custom alerts appear on the Intelligence Report color-coded blue. Because this requires a large enough sample size, the Intelligence Report makes most sense for sites with over 100 visitors per day and data going back at least one month. This report can be customized so that the information that is important to you is immediately available to you when you log in. It is also able to send you email notifications of specified alerts.

2). Using Motion Charts

Motion charts animate data allowing you to watch multiple metrics evolve over time using a slider. A motion chart is a viewing option for reports in Google Analytics that is accessed by selecting the tab with the 3 circles at the top right when you are looking at a full report screen.
Animating a report plots five dimensions: x-axis, y-axis, data point size, data point color, and time. You can adjust the speed of the animation, have it plot trails over time, highlight important data points by altering opacity, and change between bubble chart and bar chart. Here is a great video from the Google Analytics Youtube channel giving demonstrating a motion chart:

3). The Benchmarking Report

Essential to every effective business strategy is your ability to accurately track and intelligently evaluate your results. Google Analytics allows you to filter and view a tremendous amount of raw data, but what does this tell you about the success of your site? How do you know how your results compare to your competition? Google gives you the option to share your data anonymously and in return be given access to anonymous data from web sites similar to yours. The Benchmarking Report allows you to compare metrics from your site (no revenue or conversion data) with sites of a similar size within your industry that have also chosen to share their data anonymously.
Comparing information such as visits per day, bounce rates, time on site, and traffic sources can lead to meaningful insights into the effectiveness of your website and Internet marketing efforts.

4). Site Overlay Reporting

The Site Overlay Report allows you to view a page from your website with key metrics for each link displayed in a pop ups as you mouse over them. This gives you a visceral way to understand your visitors’ interaction with a given page. The default displays the number of clicks for each link, but you can easily customize the metrics you would like to view in the “Displaying” drop down menu found at the top of the report. This report is an HTML preview of your site, so you are able to follow the links to other pages on your site and view them through the Site Overlay as well.

5). Campaign Tracking

Google Analytics allows you to uniquely tag landing pages so that you can isolate data into different campaigns. This has many uses. One that I have found helpful is to create a campaign for my email signature. By adding some code to my homepage URL using the URL Builder tool and then using this link in my email signature, I am able to track just the metrics of visitors who get to my site through this link. It is also very useful to tag embedded links in digital media such as PDF files and multimedia presentations. Be careful not to tag links that will be visible to search engine robots – they will be indexed as different links to identical pages making it appear as duplicate content.
Google Analytics is a great tool for evaluating your online marketing efforts and generating reports that allow you to make data-driven decisions about your website. When you understand the metrics that are important to the success of your site, you get reporting that goes beyond raw data and answers questions. Learning how to use the features available in Google Analytics is a crucial first step to seeing what this data is showing you–the actionable insights that it contains. In order to take advantage of these metrics, you want to have clear conversion goals and know what information is helpful. If you do this, Google Analytics has the answers you need to build a successful website.

SEO and SEM Services Difference in Business Promotion

SEO and SEM are two terms that are commonly bandied about by webmasters. Sometimes it seems as if the two terms are used almost interchangeably. But both are different.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It refers to anything you do to your page to make it more search engine friendly. SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing. It forms a sort of umbrella term that can refer to anything you do to get your page ranked higher in search engines, from search engine optimization to requesting backlinks to submitting your URL to search engines.

It's very important to know the difference between the two when you're shopping for SEO or SEM services. If the company doesn't specify what services it offers as part of its "SEM Package," then don't hesitate to ask. And don’t handover any money until you confirmed. Some companies may mean nothing more than submitting your website's URL to a few search engines, and you can do that yourself.

Whenever possible, get a list of specific things they plan to do to help surfers find your website. Will they submit your URL to search engines? Get a list of the search engines they plan to submit it to. ("Yahoo!, Google, and 100's More!" doesn't count.) Will they keyword optimize your site? Be sure to ask if they include META and ALT tags.

Ultimately, whether a company uses "SEO" or "SEM" doesn't matter as much as what services they offer. Ideally, SEM would be more valuable than SEO, because it would include SEO as well as other marketing strategies. But this is not always the case. As we have noted before, it can be simply a code for "stick your URL is a few search engines and be done with it." Look for reputable websites, and ask for specific services they offer. Once you've done your homework, you will be able to make an informed decision between SEO and SEM and march forward proudly, know that you truly got the best value for your money.

Latest SEO Trends for Business Website Promotion

When you think to promote your business website and performing better online, you must have the strong foresight for your businesses and willing to walk through the Internet marketing techniques. Chock full of cost effective technologies that can take a business to a whole new level of interactive marketing, for the most part there are few companies who truly grasp, let alone embrace, what the web has to offer.

How has SEO changed over the past few years?

In past blogs we have talked about how SEO has changed from an injection to a process those factors in everything from your website, to such things as blogging, social networking and even YouTube. In reality, there more than 30 points of relevance that the spiders look for when searching and sorting out the most relevant sites. It is no longer sufficient to pay someone to tweak your keyword density and Meta Tags and expect to wind up on page one. To get the job done, you need to create compelling content on a regular basis as weekly. Ignore this fact of online life and you will relegate your website to the backwaters of the major search engines. Embrace this concept and it is not only possible to generate a page 1 result on such search engines as Google, Bing, and Yahoo, but you can potentially generate multiple page 1 results.

Gone are the days when seasoned online marketers created an user website that was composed of numerous pages that web surfers could be expected to navigate through. Today you almost need to treat a web search as a question and the website (or landing page) as the answer. In other words, in terms of SEO viability, it is far more effective to create a number of micro websites that are targeted at high value keywords. Not only is this tactic more effective at generating a page 1 result, but it is also much more effective at generating a conversion. Particularly if you include a video that answers the question posed by the keyword selected, this could jumpstart your online results in a hurry.

Why is Blogging Critical to Your Online Success?

A blog post properly optimized can be one of the quickest ways to jump the queue online. The posts are extolled the virtues of employing video testimonials in order to boost credibility, as well as turning your best customers into your best salespeople.

Creating and disseminating compelling blogs is one of the easiest ways to wind up on page one. This is the fact that Google is gaga for mixed media, particularly when they own the conduit. By posting your blogs on Blogger, which Google owns and posting your videos on YouTube, which Google owns, not only will you improve your content worthiness, but you will also feed the 800lb gorilla in the room that owns and operates the most successful and profitable search engine on the planet.

How Social is Your Social Network?

This is another area where most businesses miss the boat when it comes to online success. To get a bead on how to successfully employ social networking, the first thing that you have to understand is what it is not designed to do. Just as with blogging, if you simply attempt to create and disseminate ad copy via social networking, you will quickly find yourself isolated in an ever shrinking pond of influence as your audience either ignores or you.

While social networks can be used to generate an audience and augment the bottom line, there is a right way and a wrong way to go about doing so. The best approach is to create an environment in which compelling stories, humorous insights and helpful hints about your business are produced and promoted online. The key is that unlike ad copy with is 90% pitch and 10% information, when it comes to social networking, this equation is turned on its head. In fact, the best way to turn a reader into a customer when using social networking is to show them that you are an authority who can save them time or make a problem disappear. Interacting with an ever growing audience is what social networking is all about.

What Can Video do to Revolutionize Your Marketing Results?

When it comes to breaking out of the box, online video can be your elevator to the top if employed properly. As with social networking, no one wants to watch a 60-second commercial online. What people want to see is what I refer to as "infotainment." If you can entertain and inform your audience you will get your message across and have the opportunity build a vast audience who wait with baited breath for your next installment.

Viral video can be one of the most effective promotional tools of all times. What most people do not realize is that YouTube is viewed by more people than all the TV networks combined. (More than 1 trillion videos were viewed in 2011 alone.) It is also a search engine and social network where video content is available on-demand 24/7. More importantly, the cost of streaming content on this online mega-station is exactly zero. So there really isn't any reason why your company can't start "programming" your YouTube channel today.

Want another reason to jump on the YouTube bandwagon? Consider the fact that every video you upload on YouTube can be embedded on your website and blogs, can be linked to your social networks and newsletters, and can be used to put every piece of printed literature and advertising that your company gives out on steroids and you'll soon wonder how you ever did without this online wonder weapon.