If you have been tasked with the link building for a website, you don’t necessarily have to look far from home to improve things. Google Analytics has its many uses, and with a little help it can get even better. To improve the value of existing links with Analytics, here are is a very useful custom filter.

Discovering the Full Referral URL

This feature should be available by default in Analytics, but even after all this time it isn’t. When looking at the referring traffic on a website you are only provided with the domain view as opposed to the specific page in which the referral came from. To see the full referral URL in Google Analytics an advanced custom filter is needed – and here’s how: (credit to Sebastien Page for posting this).

1. Log in to Analytics and click ‘Edit’ on the profile
2. Scroll down to the filters and chose ‘Add Filter’
3. Name the filter (eg ‘Full Referral URL’) then use the following options:

Filter Type: Custom Filter

Advanced

Field A -> Extract A:         Referral               (.*)

Field B -> Extract B:         blank

Output To -> Constructor:            User Defined     $A1

Field A Required               Yes

Field B Required               No

Override Output Field    Yes

Case Sensitive   No

4. Save the changes

The custom filter won’t work retroactively, but after it has been applied you will be able to view the full referral by going to the ‘Visitors’ option in the navigation menu of the profile, and selecting ‘User Defined’.

Improving the Value of Links

Once you are able to see the full referring URL you have the ability to explore those links in more detail and improve the value (in some cases). Here are some instances in which you may wish to change how a link is being directed to a website:

• The link is pointing to a non-primary URL (for example the non-www copy of the site)
• The anchor text is irrelevant (or untargeted)
• The link would be better suited to another page on the website
• The link has the ‘nofollow’ attribute applied to it
• The link is positioned around irrelevant content, such as headings that say “Sponsored Links”

Contacting a website owner to request a change to a link isn’t a difficult task, and you will find that most of the time they are willing to do so. It’s a quick and easy job for them, and if you could also offer them a bit of free link advice for themselves to sweeten the deal!

The post Improving the Value of Links with Google Analytics appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Ok so to get started you will need to login to analytics and click on the visitors option in the menu and select hostnames. This will display a list of all the urls including non WWW ones and how many visits have been made to each one. Hopefully the non www one won’t be to high.

Now er need to go a little deeper to find the links themselves. You will need to click on the non www version link and then once the new page has loaded click on the referral option in the advanced segment drop down. Finally you will need to select source in the dimension drop down. All the urls will then be displayed.

As you can see they are pretty quick and easy to find and can be a really useful tool in your seo campaign.

The post Finding Links Pointing to Your Non WWW with Analytics appeared first on PushON Ltd.

This works with Outlook 2007, and the tracking we are using is Google Analytics

If you don’t have access to amend your website

1. Use the following url to generate your tracking link: Google Analytics Link Tracker
2. Using the details in the following format:
3. Click on the Create URL button, and copy this long url
4. Create a new email message
5. Go to the Insert menu
6. Select Signatures
7. Select your default signature
8. Insert your tracking urls, and remember to amend the display text to a short pretty url or some anchor text
9. Save it and test it works by creating a new email message, inserting your signature (if this isn’t done by default), and checking your links look good and work in Rich Text, HTML and Plain Text.

If you do have access to change your website

Option 1

Ben suggests an alternative method if you have access to your website code.

1. Use the following url to generate your tracking link: Google Analytics Link Tracker
2. Create your tracking url described above.
3. Creating an index page, and use a server side redirect using the following code:(or the ASP equivalent) stick that right at the top before the html tag and it will seamlessly redirect.  Your ‘Location’ is the tracking url that you created.
4. Create a short directory, eg http://www.pushon.co.uk/kg
5. Put the index page in there and use the link in your signature http://www.pushon.co.uk/kg.

Option 2

Alternatively, use a client side redirect:

1. Use the following url to generate your tracking link: Google Analytics Link Tracker
2. Create your tracking url described above.
3. Set up a redirect by creating an index page with this code** in it:
4. Create a short directory, eg http://www.pushon.co.uk/kg
5. Put the index page in there and use the link in your signature http://www.pushon.co.uk/kg.

The benefit of this is that it works with plain text as well as RTF and HTML.

*Gathered moss along the way

**Code is nicked from Google as Ben’s code was stripped from his comment by our security features.

The post Track Email Signature With Google Analytics/Outlook 2007 appeared first on PushON Ltd.

This is the bit :

“Every site should be designed to meet 4 essential goals: acquire, engage, convert and retain. Take your list of micro goals (and related insights) and assign one of the 4 essential goals.

Examples:

• Get maximum traffic from organic search (= Acquisition)
• Get users to read product description (= Engagement)
• Get users to purchase products (= Conversion)
• Get users to come back (= Retention)”

Read the rest of the post here: Defining actionable & business-driven KPI’s – a practical methodology

For your website to be useful (to you and your user), you must ensure your site has these steps in place, and that you have a way of getting people back (e.g. an email newsletter, follow up call or RSS feed).

You then need to ensure you have your goals tracked with your analytics package.  And based on the results of your marketing campaigns (using these defined goals), you can make more informed decisions about what to spend your budget on next, what needs to be improved, etc.

You can then do more than just tick the box of “yes I have a website”.

The post Acquire, engage, convert and retain website visitors appeared first on PushON Ltd.

I was thinking that the ability to plot points or add little descriptions to dates on analytics graphs would be ideal as it would allow people to track changes that they have implemented. So for example if you have recently acquired five new authority links then you could mark this point on the graph and then in the coming months see how the new links have affected your traffic levels. If you think how often we make changes to a strategy or campaign. Being able to monitor everything in one place would be idea. Anyway I would love to hear your ideas on this one or if you have come up with any other ideas.

I asked the guys in the office and they had some other interesting ideas. The ability to view rankings against the keywords driving traffic to your site was a particularly nice one. This would not be a difficult thing for Google to implement considering some of their other services. Another good one was being able to see conversions as an actual number rather than percentages. It’s often difficult to relate to a percentage.

The post Analytics Annotations appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Analytics installation has been the bain of my life this month, so I’ve been reading up on the topic more than usual.

I’ll focus heavily on Google Analytics, as this is my poison of choice, but will develop this to include more resources for alternative Analytics solutions further down the line.

If you have any suggestions, or would like your site to feature, then please add a comment & I’ll update the list… if I like it.

Introductions & Explanations

• What is Web Analytics Wiki has the answer
  
• What do these metrics mean?

Analytics Installation Guides

• Google Analytics Installation Guide – By Google
• Google Analytics Installation Guide from Epic One – Much more clear than Google’s Effort

E-Commerce Tracking

• Standard E-commerce Tracking
• E-commerce Using 3rd Party Shopping Cart

Advanced Analytics

• Exact Pay Per Click keyword reporting (will tell you what phrases you pay for when phrase/broad matching)
  
• Track your phone calls within Analytics
• Web Analytics Can Track Offline Campaigns
• Tracking Offline Campaigns (ROI Version)
• How to track 301 redirected websites
• Using Google Analytics to track “exit links” (which external links people use on your site/where they go next)
• Tracking Google TV Adverts
• Tracking traffic from a Twitter Campaign
• Track Downloads (e.g. PDF, AVI, Excel, or WMV)
• Track your Email campaign
• Track your 404 pages (error not found)
• Get the exact page of your referring url

Check Analytics Is Installed

• SiteScan – Diagnostics tool that produces a report for each page of you site
• WASP – Plugin for Firefox
• GA? – Very simple plugin for Firefox

Analytics Blogs

• JU2 Esense Analytics Blog – News, tips and links to resources helping you make use of data.
• Hurol Inan – Short, easy to read tips
• Occam’s Razor – Excellent blog about Analytics, very Google oriented
• Epic One – Great tips & tools from an agency specialising in Analytics
• Visual Revenue – open minded, with info on a variety of analytics tools – veering towards Yahoo

Blog Analytics

Let’s not reinvent the wheel, here’s Lee Odden’s list of blog analytics tools

Certification and Training

• Web Analytics Association Certification – this is likely to start in early 2009
• E-Consultancy courses – based in the UK
  
• Conversion University – Online resources by Google
  

Analytics Software

These are some of the popular Analytics solutions available.

• Google Analytics – Free analytics package
  
• Google Urchin – Server side paid for analytics package
• Omniture
• Webtrends
• Coremetrics
• Indextools – acquired by Yahoo

Other Analytics Resources

• Web Analytics Discussion Group (on Yahoo! Groups)
• E-consultancy Web Analytics Section
• eMetrics
• Great presentation by Yahoo [PDF] – Don’t just report, take action based on results
• Lesser Known Features Of Google Analytics
• Introduction To Analytics For Non Profit Organisations – (useful for profit making organisations too!)

Social Media Analytics

• Beyond Analysis
• co.mments
• Cymfony
• Compete
• Envisional
• IceRocket
• Nielson Buzz Metrics
• Opinmind
• Radian6
• Reputica
• Reputrace
• SEER by VML
• Sentiment Metrics

(List courtesy of Andy Cleff)

Excellent screencast

It will never be perfect

There are a number of reasons why your tracking will never be a 100% accurate account of what happens to your website in real life. For example, some tracking is dependant on Cookies, and/or JavaScript which are often blocked or deleted (Avinash has a great article on types of Cookies involved in tracking).  And tracking using server logs can vastly overestimate your visitors if each image and page element is tracked as a unique hit.

However, most of the large errors and inaccuracies with Web Analytics will be down to the installation rather than the tool itself.  So take the time to check your work, using tools mentioned above, and cross referencing with the number of enquiries/purchase actually received.

I love the quote by June Li, who says:

“Complaining about the inaccuracy of web traffic numbers is almost like complaining about weather forecasts. Yes, weather forecasts are inaccurate. We still want those forecasts even though we know that they’re not 100% accurate.”

If you compare the accuracy of tracking an online campaign to a magazine or television advert for example, I think it puts it in perspective.

Other than setting up specific phone numbers or offer codes, how do you know what advert the consumer saw and on what channel?

Analytics can be an utter nightmare to get right, but it’s really worth it because otherwise you’re just playing in the dark.

The post Web Analytics Resources appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Google & Urchin Analytics Background

A common misconception is that Urchin is simply the old name for Google Analytics and is no-longer around. However Urchin is a product in its own right and has some key differences to its free cousin.

Urchin On Demand was an Analytics tool bought from Urchin Software Corporation by Google.    To use this Analytics tool, you signed up with an account and copied and pasted a piece of code into each page of your site.

After some time as a paid for product, in around November 2005 Google offered users this tool for free.  At this time, Urchin On Demand was also re-branded as Google Analytics .

Urchin 6 was developed by Google as an analytics software tool that you installed on your own servers.

This server side tracking tool graduated from Beta on April 16th 2008.

Google Analytics/Urchin Comparison

Google Analytics and Urchin software rely on different code and track visitors in slightly different ways. Here’s a comparison table adapted from an illustration by Benjamin Mangold:

Features	Google Analytics	Urchin (version 6)
Install and manage on your own server
Hosted and maintained by Google
Reprocess historical data (from logfiles)
Track content behind firewall
Track search engine robots/spiders
Goal tracking
Campaign tracking
Automatic Google AdWords tracking
E-commerce reports
Cost	Free	£1495 ($2995) for up to 1000 domains

Results

The differences in the results that you are likely to see are:

• With Google Analytics, page views are recorded when the external JavaScript on Google’s servers is executed. Search Engine Spiders and automated bots don’t call this JavaScript file.  So Google Analytics may show lower page views as a result.
• Google Analytics relies on JavaScript to track results, so users who have JavaScript disabled won’t be tracked, whereas they will be tracked using Urchin.

Benefits of Urchin

• You don’t necessarily need to tag web pages with JavaScript code
• You can control the processing schedule of traffic logs, including the option to process data immediately
• You can re-process and post-process data, which can’t be done with Google Analytics
• View all website traffic, including images, downloads, robots, status codes (e.g. 404s, 500s), and referral errors, including outdated links – particularly useful in identifying “Page Not Found” (404) errors
• You can create customized reporting for different types of visitation data
• Report data can be easily audited by 3rd parties
• You can analyze firewall-protected content, such as an Intranet
• You can save 5 years’ worth of old server log data
• You can integrate your e-commerce logs directly with Urchin

Benefits of Google Analytics

• This will be the latest version, and includes advanced features not yet found in Urchin Software
• It is updated automatically when new features roll out
• It integrates really well with AdWords reports from the AdWords user interface.
• Can be set up quickly with limited technical knowledge
• It’s free
• It is translated into more languages that Urchin
• You can drill down to unique visitors – view session/path, platform, geo-location, browser/platform, etc. data for individual visitors

The post Google Analytics v Urchin appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Or you can try scanning your site using SiteScan – which is a diagnostics tool for Google Analytics.

This is by no means the answer to all your Analytics prayers, but it gives you a great headstart to check your basic tracking is in place.

There are a couple of other tools that can help.  If you use Firefox, you can use the plugins WASP or GA?.

The post How To Check Google Analytics Is Working appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Something really useful came up in one of their recent posts about Monetizing Goals. Whenever I’m working on a Pay Per Click campaign, my usual objective is to achieve the highest revenue, with a low cost per conversion, ensuring a good ROI.  And when I’m working on a non-ecommerce site, I aim to achieve the highest number of conversions, and lowest cost per conversion.

However, up until now, I’ve not assigned a monetary goal value to non e-commerce sites.  But with input from clients who have a rough idea of how many enquiries result in sales, and the average value of a sale, we can see a more informed representation of the Return On Investment (ROI) that we achieve.

ROI Revolution suggest that you would divide the average sale by the number of enquiries required to acheive a sale.

The benefit they see is much more information available in the pre-defined reports.  But what I can see as a big advantage is assigning a different monetary value for a different type of enquiry which may achieve a higher average conversion rate (post initial enquiry) and/or higher average sale price.

This gives a higher degree of clarity (albeit estimated), so you have more information to tailor your Pay Per Click spend to achieve a higher ROI.

The post Pay Per Click Advertising Goals appeared first on PushON Ltd.