Lesson 3 of Google Analytics – Notes
9SHARESFacebookTwitter Lesson 3 – Setting up Google Analytics This video details how to create a Google Analytics account, placing the Analytics tracking code, website setups that require certain customisation and how to verify an installation. Getting Started With Google Analytics Sign up Add the tracking code Link to AdWords (To report costs and click data) Create a New Account Google.com/Analytics – Sign Up You can create a new Google Analytics account in your Google AdWords account under the “Reporting” tab. Google Analytics Tracking Code (GATC) Uses JavaScript to gather first-party cookies to gather anonymous information about your visitors. As you setup your Google Analytics account you’ll be provided with a tracking code. The tracking code needs to be setup on all pages of your site in order to track use throughout the entire website. The data will be collated and then used throughout your Google Analytics account. Finding your tracking code Go to “Analytics Settings”. (Now “Admin” Settings) Click on edit for the appropriate profile. Click “Check Status” in the top right hand corner. Your tracking code and instructions for how to add to your site will be displayed. Asynchronous tracking code The asynchronous tracking code allows your site to render the tracking code as fast as possible. Google recommends that this should be used for faster page loading time. Using Google Analytics with AdWords and Other Google Products If you are using Google AdWords you can see how your paid keywords perform in terms of ROI, conversion rates and revenue. Ad performance Checking Reports for Data Once you’ve installed the tracking code it can take up to 24 hours for data to show up in your reports. Best way to verify data is by checking your reports. Check your pages’ source code for the tracking code – to ensure that it has been installed. Search for ga.js in the source code to search for the tracking code. Understanding the tracking code <script type=”text/javascript”> var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push([‘_setAccount’, ‘UA-27159470–2‘]); _gaq.push([‘_trackPageview’]); (function() { var ga = document.createElement(‘script’); ga.type = ‘text/javascript’; ga.async = true; ga.src = (‘https:’ == document.location.protocol ? ‘https://ssl’ : ‘http://www’) + ‘.google-analytics.com/ga.js’; var s = document.getElementsByTagName(‘script’)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); </script> Unique Google Analytics Account Number Property Index – in this case, the 2 represents the the 2nd most account/property that I’ve added to my Google Analytics account Detects secure (https) vs non-secure pages (http) Custom Website Setups The basic tracking code works with most site setups There are certain situations where small changes will need to be made with the tracking code Examples: Track multiple domains in one profile (Main site as well as...
Lesson 2 of Google Analytics – Notes
9SHARESFacebookTwitter Notes – Interface navigation You can toggle to different accounts using the drop-down menu located on the top-right hand corner of the Google Analytics page. Dashboard The dashboard feature operates similar to the way you can create new specific dashboards like in BrightEdge. You can add widgets such as views, visits, unique visits, visits by browser, and the many other options that are available. You can set them to be private or shared among those logged into the same account. Active Date Range You can change the active date range on the top right hand corner of every report. (Using the calendar or timeline to set your active date range) You can see your site’s traffic trends in the Timeline. You can compare different dates by ticking the “Compare to Past” box and then by choosing the dates you want to compare. You’ll then see two date sliders – overlaying each other to visually see how you performed before to now. When you change the active date range then this will affect every other piece of data in Google Analytics until you change the date to the current date or when you close the browser. (Default is the current date) You can also compare other (2 at a time) metrics such as visits, pageviews, PageVisit, Avg. Time on Site, Bounce Rate and % of new visits. (Find the “Compare 2 metrics” option) Curriculum Links / Navigating Some reports contain additional links for reports (in some cases these re reports not shown in the main navigation) Provides a quick way to find information. — This may be out of date. I tried finding these Curriculum Links or anything similar to what the video is showing and I cannot find it. [Look into this] You can always see where you’re in a report by looking at the breadcrumb navigation to see where you are. Report Views 5 ways to view data in Google Analytics: Grid View Pie Chart View Bar Graph View Comparison Bar Graph View Summary Report View Report structure Visitors Visitor information such as loyalty, language and location. Traffic sources Natural and paid sources of traffic; includes AdWords reports. (As sub-reports) Content Pages viewed Goals Conversion rates and goal paths Ecommerce (If enabled) Commerce tracking, visitor loyalty, revenue sources, and product-specific information. You won’t see this option if you don’t have the ecommerce functions enabled. Exporting Report Data You can export data using 4 different formats: PDF, Excel, HTML, CSV and Tab-Separated. Email reports: You can schedule reports to be sent daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly. Additionally, you can choose which formats (One of the 4 above) to...
Lesson 1 of Google Analytics – Notes
9SHARESFacebookTwitter I’ll be going through each and every YouTube video on the Conversion University channel writing notes down on here. It’ll help me remember what I need to know when I eventually do the test! 🙂 These are my current notes along with Conversion University’s video underneath for the first lesson: Notes What does Google Analytics do? Informed decisions to improve your site’s content Monitor conversions Measure keywords Ad performance Track a wide variety of metrics Revenue Average order value E-commerce conversion rates Provides answers to difficult questions How are visitors using my site? How can I make my marketing campaigns more effective and accountable? Am I creating effective content? Where and why are visitors abandoning the shopping cart? How do I improve site interaction? A few features Map Overlay Where is traffic coming from? AdWords integration Are PPC campaigns performing? Internal Site Search Tracking how people use search on your site Bench-marking Do your site’s metrics perform or not perform in comparison to the industry your site is in? Funnel Visualisation Optimise your checkout, view conversion rate and click-paths. How it works When a visitor accesses a web page, a request is made to display the page. (POST & GET functions) Once the page is served the Google Analytics JavaScript code is activated. It calls the track_page_view method. The Google Analytics first-party cookies are read or written. Then the web page sends an invisible .gif containing that information to Google’s secure servers. That information is then captured and processed for use on the Google Analytics site. (Report data) Data is reported regularly throughout the day, so you’ll be able to see this data in your reports. What will stop/change Analytics tracking system If people block first party cookies. If someone deletes their cookies they will be counted as a new visitor when they access the website again. If someone disables JavaScript then they won’t be tracked. If there is another JavaScript element being executed and it fails or causes an error to occur before the Google Analytics JavaScript code then the tracking code will not function and will then not track new visitors. What won’t stop Analytics from tracking If people block third party cookies If people access your website via a cached page they will still be counted as a visitor so as long as they are connected to the internet. Data confidentiality Google Analytics does not collect or report on personally identifiable information. Google does not share Analytics data with any 3rd parties. Google staff may access your data with your permission. You may elect to share data from your site to improve Google products and you...
Do .pdf files pass link equity to links within PDFs?
17SHARESFacebookTwitter I’ve read many articles on this subject to get to the definitive source for this question and I can now say that Google does pass link equity to links within PDF files. From the off start I’ve definitely seen .pdf files in search results and they definitely do obtain PageRank. Here’s a neat example of a .pdf that has a PageRank of 2. For me this is something new as I’ve never really dealt with .PDF files before and it’s potentially something that I should be suggesting at work or something that can be used to optimise eBooks that use the .pdf extension. Back to the original subject! Do links within .pdf files obtain any link equity/juice? Well… If we look at this document: Search Appliance > Documentation > Admin Crawl > Introduction Search for “.pdf”. You’ll find the following piece of text: The search appliance crawler only follows HTML links in the following format: <a href="/page2.html">link to page 2</a> It follows HTML links in PDF files, Word documents, and Shockwave documents. The search appliance crawler does not follow HTML links embedded in Javascript code. This leads me to believe that links do get a bit of lovin’ inside .pdf files – so as long as they are formatted in HTML format, as seen like the above. Do Google index & pass link equity to links within .pdf files?: Yes. They do....
A tip to finding guest post opportunities
12SHARESFacebookTwitter Warning: This shouldn’t be your only outreach method. In the near future I will be detailing other ways to find guest post opportunities. Now that I’ve started working as an actual SEO I’ve created this blogging category to share my big tips on SEO and specifically with this article, finding blogs that allow guest posts. This will essentially mean that whatever I’ve found useful during work – I’ll share it. It’ll also be a reference that I can look back to in case I stupidly forget what I’m doing and have a nervous breakdown. (Not going to happen…) How do I find blogs that allow guest posts? The one major part of my work is to link build and content marketing is a very decent method to promote your site. After all, every major digital marketing company is using content marketing to build up links for major brands. To find blogs/websites that allow guest posts I’ll use the aid of Google search operators. You don’t really have to type in anything fancy and you’ll only really need to use the more technical search operators if you have specific requirements. Though I find that the quotation marks usually work well for most search uses. If I wanted to find a blog that allows guest posts that fit, let’s say, “cars” then I would type the following into Google: “guest post requirements” “cars” Result: Those are all sites that you could potentially get guest posts on and the list is endless. Or if I wanted to find financial websites that allow guest posts, I’d change “car” with “finance” and we’ll also change the key term (The first part in quotations): “guest post” “finance” As you can see there is a large list of sites that are potential guest posting opportunities and they fit the niche that I’m trying to target. Now I would not use the term “guest post requirements” or “guest posts” for all your guest post finding adventures and I would vary these searches with the following key terms that I’ve found and they are quite useful for content marketing. You can also be country specific by doing something like the following: “guest post” “finance” “uk” 9 times out of 10 you’ll get websites that are based in the United Kingdom. I guess for the US, you’d simply type in US or “.com” or just leave it blank. However, you can also enter other top level domains or domain extensions to find specific country based sites. Key terms These are the key terms that I’ve found useful and I’m sure you’ll be able to find more creative ways...
Biting the silver bullet with AdSense
10SHARESFacebookTwitter I very recently cancelled my Google AdSense account; this was to do with not being able to be paid and I slowly built up a significant tab, which I was not able to withdraw or cash-in on. A couple days ago I decided to, essentially, bite the bullet and close the account. I mean, why continue building up cash, when you can’t withdraw it. The only way I could see myself withdrawing it is if I went back to Taiwan. Now, unless they owed me $2,000 then it’s simply not worth going back. I had built up around $100 — which is somewhat significant and is of course something that I worked hard in getting. If you’re reading this, you are probably asking, why did you close your AdSense account that still had around $100 dollars in it? AdSense does not allow you to change countries… … from Taiwan to the United Kingdom. They don’t allow you to change countries due to legal reasons, according to the message that popped up when trying to change from Taiwan to the United Kingdom in the AdSense account settings tab. While I did reach the payment threshold, – and they did say they’d send payment within 90 days to an address in Taiwan where my friends are living, how will I cash that? I’m guessing I won’t be able to and now and that money will be in limbo. I even posted on the official Google product forums to no avail, so I guess this situation doesn’t happen very often. It doesn’t matter anymore. I now have a UK AdSense account and while I’m posting about AdSense, I’d like to point out the very significant differences in the Taiwan (Asian?) AdSense control panel and the UK AdSense control panel. UK AdSense vs Asian AdSense control panel I’ll be honest by saying that I never really knew there was a difference in control panels until I recently switched over to the UK AdSense control panel; it’s significantly different to it’s Asian counterpart. The Taiwan or Asian control panel version doesn’t have the option to pay direct into your bank account. Instead, you have to either accept a cheque or payment via Western Union. – I, of course, accepted Western Union due to their service not charging any fees. While it seems the UK control panel gives you the option to add your bank account details, so they can pay you when you reach the £60 threshold. The UK version of AdSense looks newer. It looks sharper and it looks like someone spent some time cleaning the old version. Additionally, the UK control panel looks like...
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