Mining search keyphrases, entry pages and top content for nuggets of insight
Value: [rating=4]
Our commentary: In this post I share a quick tip that often crops up on Google Analytics courses. It is relevant mainly to larger sites with multiple products, but even smaller sites with limited products can benefit from this analysis.
The problem
Google Analytics limits the display and export of search keywords, landing pages and entrance landing pages to 500 within its reports.
While the 500 limit will still certainly give you insights on the most important keyphrases and pages, you are still missing an opportunity.
The opportunity
If you do export more than 500 rows of data, these are just two of the options available to you:
1. Complete long tail keyphrase SEO gap analysis to review number of keyphrases that are exact matches or "contain" a target keyword.
2. Review entry pages with advanced Segment natural search applied to…
A how-to guide for setting up goals in Google Analytics
In another post, I've written about how to set high-level goals for digital marketing, this post shows how best to set them up within Google Analytics.
What is a goal in Google Analytics?
A goal is a record of a page you specify being viewed which shows that a visitor has engaged with your website showing interest in your products and services. Since you can group goals in Google Analytics, I recommend you group in a logical way. This example shows one suggestion for a grouping.
Which goals should I use?
Different types of goals include to think about including are:
1. Leads from signup such as a whitepaper download or contacts us
2. Site engagement goals which show time on site, these are most useful for a publisher, but
3. Top of funnel product…
Four options for tracking offline marketing campaigns showing the method for Google Analytics
To track offline campaign effectiveness requires use of a campaign URL within offline communications like Print or TV ads.
There are several choices with which URL to use, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. Here's a quick run-through with links to more detail at the end. I'd be interested to hear about your preferences for which are most effective. Do most people ignore campaign tracking or vanity URLs so it's a waste of time or is it worthwhile?
1. The standard home page address
Example: http://www.domain.com
This is a common approach by advertisers since it's the simplest. The main disadvantage from a measurement point-of-view is that there is no way to directly track this. Although you can review an increase in direct traffic arriving at this URL through a segmented landing page report.
From a marketing point-of-view this also has the…
5 tips showing how to Google Analytics to review your marketing campaign performance better
Value: [rating=4]
Our commentary: I wrote a guest blog post on the dotDigitalBlog this week which has been quite popular, so I thought I would alert you to it here.
Marketing implications: My post covers 5 techniques or measures which are opportunities I find are often missed when training marketers, so I hoped to make people aware of them.
Recommended link: 5 tips on using Google Analtyics to review marketing performance…
Setting up campaign tracking in Google Analytics to track campaign response
In this months poll I asked readers of this blog to see which campaign tracking techniques they or their company or clients tend to use. Later in this post I explain how to setup campaign tracking.
Around 100 people voted, thanks!, how you voted is shown below:
We asked readers to tick all that apply even if you didn't generally use a channel, like display or affiliates, but still knew how to tag, track and review it.
The results seem to confirm what I find when I meet people face-to-face which is that:
1. Marketers tend to review all visitors to their site in analytics without breaking them down to segments - this is partly for time reasons or simply being aware of the options. T0 find out how to use…
A presentation to ECMOD October 2010 London by Dave Chaffey
This workshop covered the customisation needed for Google Analytics to tailor it to a specific business. I have shared it here to help other businesses and agencies get the most from Google Analytics.
If you have any questions on Google Analytics please ask them via the comments or contact us.
The workshop was structured in 6 areas from basic to more advanced and I aimed to include some of the latest developments like weighted sort, Adwords beta and some advanced hacks like segmented funnels and custom variables for Ecommerce linking to advice by other web analytics specialists elsewhere on the web. Thanks if you're included here!
1.Working Smarter with reports
Advanced filter/weighted sort
Pivot tables
Analytics Intelligence
2.Advanced segments
Medium dimensions
Time period dimensions
Value metrics
3. Dashboards and custom reports
RACE Digital Marketing Framework
Time-based custom reports
Value and engagement custom reports
4. Marketing campaigns
Campaign tracking for email
Campaign tracking for social
Adwords funnel and Match…
If you're like us, you love using Google Analytics for its ease of use and insights, but still, you will find yourself wasting time completing the same actions again-and-again as you review the performance of your site each day.
Bookmarklets (check out other useful bookmarkets for digital marketers) provide a quick way to save time through shortcuts for these repeated actions. Here's my top 5 saving which allow you to go straight to the report you want even if you don't have GA loaded! They all work through a standard URL query string for each report .You will need to set them to the profile id you're currently working with otherwise you'll just see the first profile in the account. I've saved the best for last.
1. Show today's data
By default you start with the previous day, but when customising Google Analytics you often need to check the latest data collected to…
Through their experience, search marketing specialists know intuitively the questions to ask to review and improve the contribution of search marketing to an organisation. But what if you"€™re a business owner or marketer where search marketing is only a (small) part of what you do? Which questions should you be asking and where do look in your web analytics to find the answers?
Our compilation of top-level questions is intended to give you a framework of questions to ask yourself or colleagues or agencies who are managing search engine marketing.
Your review frequency will depend on the importance of search to your business. But you'll want to review the time-series or trends through time of the KPIs we suggest these over a period of at least 3 months to see changes in performance. This is the type of report you should produce to review effectiveness over time - fairly stable performance in this…
There are maybe many missing measures in Google Analytics which could be useful, but the one I'm referring to is useful AND is available if you know where to look.
What is the missing measure?
The measure I'm referring to is Second Page Viewed on your site.
In this example, I'm looking to see the second page which within the [Visitors:New vs Returning] report. Filtering for New visitors shows me the most important path is visitors going back to the home page. (not set) is the bounces.
How will it help me?
Why would I be interested in that you're thinking - I can see my top entrance or landing pages, that's what really counts.
The main reason I find this useful is to do with understanding how site visitors use site-wide navigation.
Although you can see a forward path for a page from its navigation summary…
I've recently given three presentations about our passion here at Smart Insights, which is getting the most value from the fantastic customer and market insight available online through tools like Google Analytics and user feedback software.
We believe that the majority of managers don't give the right business priority to using analytics for improving performance. Consequently, they're often used for spewing reports which are ignored rather than identifying problems and opportunities for business growth. Our mission, through guidance on this site and consulting work is to help companies get more value from their investments in digital marketing by driving improvements using Google Analytics.
Far too much time is wasted exporting, importing and formatting data into dashboards used to run teh business.
These presentations suggest some approaches to make analytics more actionable and build them into business processes in a lightweight, integrated way.
Show Me the Money! Driving Commercial Value from Your Analytics
This presentation to…
