Biggest SEO News This Month - Google Shakes Up Blog Networks

Here's the Small Business Internet Marketing Weekly with a summary of news and helpful links for small/medium sized business owners. And WOW what a big week it has been! You'll discover in this week's SEO news that SEO is definitely not for the faint hearted - this week we've seen a massive shake up with Google's latest Panda update.

There's plenty of talk around the traps about how SEO as we know it is dead - but you always expect that ;) SEO is long from being dead and it's really just a matter of responding to the changes.

We've found those following our methods have been safe since we're following the rule "build a variety of links, from a variety of different sources, with variety of different anchor texts, pointing to a variety of pages on your site". If you've been following the method... you're safe.

I'm actually working on a new report (as we speak) about solid SEO. Stay tuned for that since I'll be looking for some proofreaders who want a preview copy

SEO Melbourne

List Building Strategy To Grow Your Business

[caption id="attachment_7045" align="alignleft" width="243" caption="It's time to build your list."][/caption]

It would be great if all customers who visited your website were ready to buy and only needed to double check your prices and see whether you have a one hundred percent money-back guarantee. You can achieve this kind of success if you have a system in place to build your customers' confidence and trust in you and what your business has to offer. That is what a good list building strategy can do for your business.

Consider an offline clothing store. Sometimes a customer will be in a hurry, rush into your store and be ready to make a purchase straight away. All sales are just not that easy. They might have entered the store just to do a spot of browsing, so how do you get them to the point of actually wanting to buy something.

To get to the point of wanting to make a purchase, the customer needs to go through a certain number of steps. They need to find the types

SEO Melbourne

Spotted this inside article ranks. RE: "The Great Google Blog Network Slap"

Announcement

NOTICE You may be well aware that Google has deindexed some other blog networks quite drastically. All in all ArticleRanks has not seen much deindexing going on, since the beginning of the year we have had about 20% of the the network deindexed (So quite a little increase, but this is always expected) - But we are getting 20-40 new sites added daily so it kind of counteracts this. We think the reasons other networks have been hit quite bad is because: 

- They make reports easily available of published URLs, This list then gets reported to Google.
- They are mainly private networks which are a lot smaller and if wiped out are a lot harder to restore.
- They post garbage to all sites, with no media.
- They are solely wordpress based sites which are easier to spot, we not only have wordpress but support tons more platforms.
- They do not post to relevant sites or even relevant categories like we do.

This being said we are also planning on adding a big batch of PR sites to counteract this even further - Plus we have some new improvements being implemented into the backend 

For the last 2 months Google have been sending out MASS notifications to website owners via webmaster tools. Now this is triggered and done with the algothirm. This in our opinion is a scare tactic, we don't believe this is usually followed with a penalty. 

The reason we believe for this message being sent is Google are forcing people to self report themselves. We already know some networks got hit around 90%+, so all it would have taken is one or two users receiving that auto notification, getting scared and then saying to Google, but I only used such network for links (possibly even sending them reports as Google have been asking for these), and its basically bye bye to all them sites in their link profile or the ones the algo deem as low quality, effectively wiping out a chunk of sites in any given network. Or they could also possibly do it algothirmacally, I mean any sites that have been sent this notice, they start panicking and removing the links its a sure reg flag and those domains get deindexed and the cycle continues. 

Its a very clever, but sneaky approach by Google because it reduces human intervention and overheads when the algo is initially triggering off the messages. This year they have already sent around a million webmaster reports so even if they get a response from 2% it is well worth it for them. Its just too much of a coincidence that the messages started going out in bulk around feb time and now an onslaught. 

Alot of people have basically been ranking solely using networks - So what happens they get the notice, then their rankings drop, so they think they have a penalty. But its not a penalty its just because they lost a big batch of links so it has the same effect. A penalty would happen straight away, losing the link juice takes 3-4 weeks and this is when most people notice a drop in their rankings. 

Please note the above information is only a theory from us after analyzing data of ours and third parties as well as speaking with many users, as no one knows 100% except Google. 

Please remember if Google are giving penalties out for link building, then they could have an even bigger issue on their hands with negative SEO, the guys over at Google are far too clever to open such a loop hole. 

All in all we think this is a scare tactic so
1) Google get more data
2) Google may possibly give a 30 days penalty after the notices (So whoever ignores them panics and does file a reconsideration request) - But I highly doubt this due to the nature of ranking drops, it usually happens 4 weeks or so after the notice, when people are contacting them directly.
3) People just overall get scared and stop using blog networks completely. (Which is Google's main aim, scare people enough and make them thing that blog networks do not work and they will stop doing it)

=====

Don't get caught in the hype, follow solid SEO: http://www.theSEOmethod2.com

Just got an email from a client about BMR and what to do... here's what I said.

Hi XXX,

Yes we're aware of the situation with Build My Rank and that's why it's critical to follow the SEO method.

You need to build a variety of links from a variety of sources... if you've been following that mantra
relax - you'll be fine.

We have also update our recommendation here:

http://www.daveapproved.com/build-my-rank-review/

With regards to our plan of attack we are removing all their links as shown here:

You really should do this for all your Build My Rank links. {RT} twitter.com/davidjenyns/st…

— davidjenyns (@davidjenyns) March 23, 2012

And we're ramping up the other areas of link building particularly PR web and other more whitehat methods.

Your SEO Coach,

Dave Jenyns
www.melbourneSEOservices.com

Google Maps Overview: Why Small Businesses Need It

There has been a lot of talk about Google Maps over the last couple of years. With satellite images, everyone in the Internet has been able to see our planet in an amazing degree of detail. Street View advanced this technology even further and created a degree of controversy along the way.

The most significant aspect of all this advancement in technology for the business owner is that Yellow Pages is now declining in popularity almost to the point of extinction. That is why a Google Maps overview is important for small businesses to understand.

Despite the globalization of the world, people still like to do business with people in the local area. Some businesses, like restaurants, doctors and dentists, always have clients in their immediate vicinity. You might think that would be good for Yellow Pages, but in fact it is Google Maps which has taken over.

People are so used to going to the internet to solve all their problems, they’re now entering their local search terms

SEO Melbourne

The 3 Golden Rules Of A Link Building Strategy

The 3 Golden Rules Of A Link Building Strategy

#1 Melbourne SEO Services Company

Building Links

Over time you will find that your website will be linked to by other sites without you even having to ask. Until you reach this stage however, you need to take the initiative. Let us consider some ways to build links. Regardless of which link building strategy you use, there are three rules that you need to keep in mind.

1st Golden Rule:
You need to make link building a long term process. If a huge number of links appear on your site overnight, the search engines will get suspicious and think that you are trying to cheat the system.

2nd Golden Rule:
Mix up where you get these links to point to. You don’t want all the links to go to your home page. About 50% of the links should go to your homepage, and 50% should point to the other pages of your site. If you stick to this rule, you’ll find other pages get ranked, not just your homepage.

3rd Golden Rule:
Use your keywords in the text that links to your page, and put some variety in there. The words that are hyperlinked to your site are called the ‘anchor text’. This is something that you won’t always be able to control, but where you can, take full advantage. Try and think of some variations that include your keyword for that destination page, and some that don’t include it. Some variations of links if you want to rank for the keywords “Pennant Hills carpenter” might be:

• Pennant Hills carpenter
•  Carpenter in Pennant Hills
•  Local Pennant Hills carpenter
•  Local carpenter in Pennant Hills
•  www.yoursitename.com
•  Click Here

For a great link building strategy, you want to have your links coming form a variety of places, so things to do are leaving comments on blog posts, related to your area and also commenting on relevant forums.

An excellent way to begin building links to your website is to ask family, friends and colleagues if they will put a link to your website on their own website. After that, you should head to some free directories. Each directory has a different waiting period, so you will get your links staggered over a period of time, which is good, because it appears natural. The links you get from directories don’t carry as much weight as some of the other methods I’m about to detail, but they are a very good start.

The links which will carry most weight come from authoritative sites. These are places like charities, organizations and well-established blogs. There is no one sure-fire way of getting links from these places. You could try a polite email, or even phoning them. Sometimes it might be necessary to offer an incentive to let you have a link, like offering to write them an article they can use on their site. Sometimes this won’t be necessary, they will just be happy to oblige.

Finally, you can find out where your competitors are getting their links from. To do this, simply go to Google and search ‘link:’ followed by a web address. So you could type in: link:pennanthillscarpenter.com

You only need to put into practice those things I’ve outlined in these last few paragraphs to see a giant surge in your traffic. You will be surprised how quickly it can happen, and if you do go ahead and put these steps into place, you will be a long way ahead of your competitors. Most simply don’t bother to do these things. Of course you can always outsource your off-page optimisation to us. We provide high quality SEO services, helping our clients rank to the top of Google. Simply click here to contact us.

Follow the rules of link building for success.

Other Posts You May Be Interested In:

• Link Building Strategy: Vary Your Anchor Text!
• Stage 3: Website Link Building
• Is Reciprocal Linking Worth Your Time?
• 4 Best Approaches To Natural Link Building For Your Website
• Use More Than One Tool To Build Links – Our Linkvana Review

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The 3 Golden Rules Of A Link Building Strategy

Building Links

Over time you will find that your website will be linked to by other sites without you even having to ask. Until you reach this stage however, you need to take the initiative. Let us consider some ways to build links. Regardless of which link building strategy you use, there are three rules that you need to keep in mind.

1st Golden Rule:
You need to make link building a long term process. If a huge number of links appear on your site overnight, the search engines will get suspicious and think that you are trying to cheat the system.

2nd Golden Rule:
Mix up where you get these links to point to. You don’t want all the links to go to your home page. About 50% of the links should go to your homepage, and 50% should point to the other pages of your site. If you stick to this rule, you’ll find other pages get ranked, not just your homepage.

3rd Golden Rule:
Use your keywords in the text that links to your page, and put some variety in there. The words

SEO Melbourne

Google Search Update And More In The SBIM Weekly

OK let's cut to the chase...

Here's another round of the Small Business Internet Marketing Weekly - the post that summarises news and helpful links for small/medium sized business owners.

It's another big week in news - here's what I spotted:

Matt Cutts comments on an "over optimisation" penalty - definitely one to review
http://selnd.com/FO503K

How garbage ranks in the SERPs - detailed report explaining some dodgy tactics
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-garbage-ranks-in-the-serps-a-case-study

10 useful findings about how people view websites - how can you apply this?
http://conversionxl.com/10-useful-findings-about-how-people-view-websites/

Need help with the basics of onsite SEO - you can't go wrong with these tips
http://www.melbourneseoservices.com/onsite-seo/

Paypal accepts payments from iPhones - wow! love the innovation
http://mashable.com/2012/03/15/paypal-here-hands-on/

Re-imagining classic ads for the web - interesting initiative by Google

SEO Melbourne

Posterous has been acquired by Twitter {Good thing, Bad thing?}

Got this today. Can't decide if it's a good thing or a bad thing.

Hi David,

I’m thrilled to announce that Posterous has been acquired by Twitter!
The opportunities in front of Twitter are exciting, and we couldn’t be happier to bring our technology and expertise to hundreds of millions of users around the globe.  Plus, the people at Twitter are genuinely nice folks who share our vision for making sharing simpler.
Posterous Spaces will remain up and running without disruption. We’ll give users ample notice if we make any changes to the service. For users who would like to back up their content or move to another service, we’ll share clear instructions for doing so in the coming weeks.
You can find more information answers to other questions you may have.
Finally, I’d like to offer thanks to everyone, especially those who have been with Posterous since day one. The last four years have been an amazing journey. Your encouragement, praise and criticism have made Posterous better, and I really appreciate everything you’ve done.
Thanks again and I look forward to building great things for you at Twitter.
- Sachin

Posterous Spaces loves posting for you!

Post now by emailing post@posterous.com »

Attach photos, music, video, documents and any type of file. We take care of the rest.

Updates On Google - Competing With Siri And Hitting Blog Networks

Here we are with a slightly belated Small Business Internet Marketing Weekly - our summary of news and helpful links for small/medium sized business owners.

And what an interesting week it has been - did you hear Google targeted a whole bunch of blog networks over the weekend? Here's my take:
http://audioboo.fm/boos/712356-blog-networks-targeted

I'm curious, what do you think? Is this the end of blog networks?

And in other news this week:

Google's plan to compete with Siri - it's the future of the web
http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/02/2011-was-the-year-of-social-for-google-2012-is-the-year-of-assistant/

Online reputation management and the spaghetti method - some good insights
http://www.wolf-howl.com/reputation-management/orm-spaghetti-method/

Solid example of how to use video marketing - ask how you can apply this in your biz
http://www.dollarshaveclub.com/

New Internet Marketing Training site - I'm biased but it's good

SEO Melbourne

How To Do Basic Onsite SEO

[caption id="attachment_7006" align="alignleft" width="240" caption="Target the best keywords"][/caption]

When it comes to doing onsite SEO, it's really all about finding the keywords to best optimize your website with and knowing where to place them. Keep on reading to understand this better.

Know Your Market

This is about choosing the right keyword for your area of business. If you are a carpenter in Pennant Hills, you might choose ‘carpenter Pennant Hills’. If you want to widen your search a little you may want to choose ‘carpenter Sydney’. This will be the keyword for your home page. You might have another page on cabinet making, so you could go for ‘cabinet making Pennant Hills’, and another on Pergolas, where you could choose ‘Pergolas Pennant Hills’ and so on.

On-Page Optimization

Now it is a matter of placing the keyword in the right places on each page of your site. You should place the keyword once in the ‘Title Tag’ and once in the

SEO Melbourne

Are You New To SEO? Understand Some Google Basics Today

[caption id="attachment_6996" align="alignleft" width="199" caption="Being popular greatly helps."][/caption]

Ranking well in Google cannot be overestimated. Not only does it bring a huge increase in traffic, if you’re number one in Google for a search term relevant to your business, your credibility is also greatly enhanced.

People have seen search engine optimization as a very complex subject, and this, coupled with the idea that there is huge competition, have made many reluctant to even try to come to terms with it all. This is good for the business owner who is willing to give it a try, because there are fewer competing players. It’s true that SEO can be a difficult subject, but there are some basic principles which can be easily mastered. You can soon start to dominate once you’ve conquered these few Google basics.

You might think it a tall order to try to learn SEO in just a couple of pages. Never fear, it is possible, and in fact, the main thrust of search

SEO services company

Sales Copy Writing Tips You Should Not Ignore

[caption id="attachment_6982" align="alignleft" width="216" caption="Great sales copy needs a great body."][/caption]

Good sales copy writing is an art that is well worth taking the time to learn. If you know how to write good sales copy, your offline business will benefit as well as your online business.

There are several things that you can look at right away. Let’s begin right at the start with your headline. This is the large bold text at the top of every page and is perhaps the most important part. It needs to be catchy and enticing enough that the visitor will want to go on to read the body of the article.

Tweaking your headline to make it more arresting can be a good first start. You then move onto the main body of your copy. Working on this might seem to be a bit daunting, but once you get started, it doesn’t need to be an overwhelming task. Remember that people like to do business with people, not with faceless corporations.

With this in mind, try to keep

SEO services company

Get More Paying Customers Thru Better Website Usability Part 2

[caption id="attachment_6969" align="alignleft" width="270" caption="Make your visitors feel glad they dropped by."][/caption]

You simply can’t get away with a clunky, hard to read website. Visitors will quickly suss out whether what they’re reading is easy to read or hard going. Rest assured that they’re not going to continue reading if the way it’s formatted makes it all too hard; they’ll hit ‘back’ and quickly find one of your competitors. That is why you should take website usability very seriously.

Can you improve your site with a few simple corrections? If so, go ahead. If there are just too many knotty problems, you might need to scrap the whole thing and start again. Hire someone to redesign the front end, and here is one time when it definitely doesn’t pay to scrimp on the cost. You pay to get good quality work done. Find a web designer who is capable of creating a simple, clean, uncluttered layout.

You have a web design you’re happy with. Now read

SEO services company

Get More Paying Customers Thru Better Website Usability Part 1

Most website owners would say that the one thing they need most is to get more traffic. This might seem like a smart answer, but it in fact shows a misunderstanding about online business. What I’m going to talk about now is the most important thing you will learn: website usability.

The Purpose Of A Commercial Website Is To Make Money

This is an important statement because although it seems so obvious, many business owners actually behave as if they don’t really understand it. You could have the most appealing, interesting website which attracted a million visitors a day, but if this traffic did not translate into sales, what would be the point of the exercise?

Increased traffic might mean more clients, but it is usually a lot easier and a lot faster to try and increase the percentage of your existing traffic into paying customers. Let’s say you get 700 visitors a month and 2% of those actually buy something from you. You could try to double your traffic, and this

SEO services company

Google Analytics Tips And More In The SBIM Weekly

I know there's a mountain of information online, sometimes it's hard to know what to avoid and what to focus on, but as always, we've got your back. Small Business Internet Marketing Weekly summarizes news and helpful links for small/medium sized business owners.

Here's what's news this week:

11 Google Analytics tricks - good tips here
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/11-google-analytics-tricks-to-use-for-your-website

SEO is responsible for traffic not conversions - we do both
http://www.searchmarketingstandard.com/seo-is-responsible-for-traffic-not-conversions

If Google Maps calls don't answer - haven't seen this in Australia yet
http://www.localseoguide.com/hey-seos-if-google-maps-calls-dont-answer/

Google Panda changed my life - web business is more than SEO
http://www.seroundtable.com/panda-story-14825.html

Hollywood to reinvent downloadable movies - this could be big
http://mashable.com/2012/02/29/hollywood-downloadable-movies/

Upgrade YouTube

SEO services company

Get Customers With The Right Online Marketing Strategy

[caption id="attachment_6937" align="alignleft" width="270" caption="Stay ahead of the race with the best strategy."][/caption]

Every successful business needs a website. Even if your business is primarily run offline, it is essential that you have an online presence as well. There are two main reasons for this. The first is that customers expect you to have a website. If your prospective customer wants your phone number or wants to find out your opening times, he is far more likely to search the web (on his laptop or smartphone) than he is to pick up the Yellow Pages. The second reason is that if you search for a particular business on Google Maps, you’ll find a dozen suppliers within your area. If you’re not listed there, then your prospective customer will go to one of your competitors.

I’m sure you understand that your online marketing strategy needs to involve more than just a one-page website. Internet marketing is not something you do once and forget about. It’s

SEO services company

Online Reputation Management and the “Spaghetti Method”

Online Reputation Management and the “Spaghetti Method”

Michael Gray - Graywolf's SEO Blog

Online reputation management (ORM) is a huge, and growing market. For others it means they have a huge public relations problem. I have worked with a few companies and individuals with just such a problem. I’ll tell you the story and outcome of one such client, who will remain nameless.

ORM Problem: My client fired an employee who posts negative information about the company on a forum and review site. The truthfulness of the postings are irrelevant and they stand to lose a lot of business for people searching their company name. The negative postings (negatives) were listed in positions 2 and 4+5. Even someone searching for their phone number will see these negative results!

ORM Failed Solution: My client came to me through a referral. They had already hired an ORM firm ranked on the first page of Google and got literally no results after 3 months. They gave me all of the information they had which included a few business listings and web 2.0 type sites that were built with duplicate content. In all, they spent $3500 and had 6 web 2.0′s and 25 business directory listings. None of those 31 pages were showing up on the first 3 pages of the SERP’s. $3500 down the drain.

My ORM Solution: When I explained my approach to his problem my client was shocked and initially not interested at all, and you might be as well.

• Step 1: Scrape content and spin heavily. I spun a single 400 word article to 98% uniqueness, then did it again with a different article and combined them into one 400 word article.
• Step 2: Throw it against the wall and see what sticks.

When all that matters is the negatives moving down and off the first page or two, who cares what site is showing up in the #2-10 positions? All my client wanted was to have the negatives out of view. I created 8,000 unique pages of content over the course of 48 hours.

Step 3: Wait. For most people this is the hard part. You want to do something, but until you know what is going to stick against the wall. During this time, I’m getting the pages indexed. I usually give this step about a week. After a week I expect to have about 75% of the pages indexed and usually see some starting to show up on the first 5 pages. For this client, I had 5 pages in the top 10, and controlled the entire 2nd and 3rd page. Literally every single page was one I created for this client.

Step 4: Link building to the ranking pages. Now that we know what is sticking to the wall, we need to build some links to these pages to get them to move up. The timeframe is completely dependent on the quality of your link building methods. I generally shoot for 1-6 months depending on the competition of the keyword for this step.

Step 5: Change content so it’s appropriate. After you move the negatives off the first page, you should have 3-9 pages one the first page that you created. If the content isn’t reflective of your client, it needs to be rewritten and changed on the pages you created…You did keep the username and password of every page you created, right? Depending on the client, they might want to provide the content, they might want to review content you have created, or they might not care as long as it’s good.

This method does not work for competitive keywords and should be clearly explained to your client along with a timeline of expectations. In SEO, it’s usually impossible to give an exact timeline and I find it’s usually better to over deliver.

Some clients have a very public brand, are overly concerned about their public reputation, or get themselves into regular trouble. These clients generally need an ongoing ORM relationship. Small companies and single issues can usually be handled in under 6 months.

For my client, the total time from start to finish for 3.5 months. He now owns the entire first page. One negative is at the bottom of the second page, and the other negative is nowhere in the top 100. Success!

Brandon Hopkins owns a complete link building service at DiamondLinks.net. He frequently works with ORM clients and even agencies building links and content for their clients. Contact Brandon if you have a reputation problem!

photo credit: Shutterstock/Josh Resnick

No related posts.

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

Online Reputation Management and the “Spaghetti Method”

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Should You Focus On Viral Videos Or Branded Videos?

Should You Focus On Viral Videos Or Branded Videos?

Melbourne Video Production

Help create a strong brand with your videos!

As a small business, should you be aiming for your videos to go viral or should you just concentrate on making well put together branded videos?

For your business, it is important to concentrate on your brand as much as possible. To be perfectly frank, it is not really possible to simply make the decision that your video will become viral. It is up to the world to decide that, and all you can really do is make the very best video you are capable of.  Also, it is more often that the video which goes viral, is not really selling anything. People don’t usually like to send videos which are selling something to their friends.

The more usual video to go viral is the one like that of Chris Crocker who in 2007 implored the viewer to ‘leaveBrittanyalone’. That video certainly went viral but it had nothing to sell, no hidden agenda. Sometimes, although rarely, a brand will get lucky and go viral. An example of such a video is the Old Spice ad featuring Isaiah Mustafa as ‘the man your man could smell like’. After 71 years, the Old spice brand had the reputation of being an old man’s brand. The new videos went viral and breather new life into something when had been seen as past its use-by date.

There is of course a huge difference between the Chris Crocker video and the Old Spice series. The Old Spice ads were a carefully coordinated and orchestrated branded content series of videos rather than viral videos. There is obviously a strong marketing message in them and although they may be seen as entertaining in their own right, their effects are longer lasting than the ‘short, sharp shock’ effect of viral video marketing.

Some of the best branded content will be in the form of a series of videos rather than just a single, one-off video. They will be carefully structured, orchestrated and planned, not haphazardly thrown together and put out there to ‘see what happens’.

If you are an online small business owner, your efforts will be better spent planning a carefully structured series of branded videos than hoping one of your videos will suddenly be picked up by the viewing public and ‘go viral.’ Your video may be lucky enough to be sufficiently entertaining to be suddenly viewed by million world wide, but this is something you cannot really plan for, and anyway, the effects may not last very long.

A branded video is more about telling a story and giving information about a product or service. It will have a long term effect and make the viewer connect with the brand. It is a message that you are trying to get across and it is usually more niche than a viral video.

The Old Spice ad is now taking advantage of the viral aspect by getting the actor Isaiah Mustafa to answer questions put to him through tweets. However, this is the exception to the rule, and not many ads will take off in the way that this one has. It is much better to carefully plan your series of branded videos than to hope for the one in a million chance that it will take off virally.

There are a lot of ways to promote your videos if you only know the techniques in doing so. Just click here for more tips on creating viral and branded videos for your business.

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11 Google Analytics Tricks to Use for Your Website {solid}

11 Google Analytics Tricks to Use for Your Website

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

Posted by Eugen Oprea

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

Do you know what is the most common question that I get every day on social media, forums or email?

"How to get insights about my Google Analytics data?" People approach me saying that they have a Google Analytics account for years, but they look only at page views or the number of visitors they get.

And this is wrong, this is so wrong when they have powerful free Web Analytics tools that they can leverage to learn more about their visitors and use those insights to better serve their visitors.

That is why in this article I am going to tell you some Google Analytics tricks that you should use for your website.

You can get the basics from my Google Analytics course, but right now I am going to take this one step further to help you get even more insights from Google Analytics.

Now, if you don't use the latest version of Google Analytics, login into your account and click the [New Version] link from the top right corner of your screen before we get started.

This way I can be sure that you use the latest Google Analytics interface and you can follow this article along.

1. Setup Goals

Something that it's quite a straight forward process, it's actually neglected by the majority of people and this is the fact that after you install the tracking code on your website you need to setup goals.

The goals you setup for your website are the foundation of your website analysis because everything gravitates around your goals and conversion rates, the goals that are ultimately your business goals.

If you are wondering what goals you need to setup, start by asking yourself what is the purpose of your website. Is it an eCommerce site and you want to sells tangible goods, is it a blog where you want to make revenue from ads, do you sell eBooks or services? What is the main purpose of your site?

Then, once you figure this out you can go and start setting up goals base on your business objectives.

If this is still unclear for you, here are some examples that will give you traction:

• eCommerce site - enable eCommerce tracking and start checking the conversion rates for your products
• Engaged Visitors - people who spend more than one minute on your site
• Readers - people who visit at least two pages on your site
• Calls to action - use event tracking (see below in the article) to measure calls to action
• Best performing ads - again, use event tracking to measure your best performing ads
• Subscriptions - check how the visitors who subscribe to your list behave
• Purchases - if you sell eBooks or courses you can get insights about your buyers

Later, these goals will help you track conversion rates and get insights about what are the main traffic sources that send you visitors which convert, what are the keywords who send you customers, which page your visitor use most to signup for your newsletter, where are your customers from and examples can continue.

Use these examples to get started, but please note that every website is unique and it will have unique goals.

2. Connect your Google Webmaster Tools account

Google Webmaster Tools is another free product from Google which helps you see data about your website such as the number of impressions for your search queries and their position in Google, the number of links to your site or diagnosis information reported by Google after crawling your website.

Additionally, you can check +1 metrics, your site performance or submit a sitemap for Google to index.

But what the really interesting thing is the fact that you can connect your Google Webmaster Tools account with your Google Analytics account and get access to the new Search Engine Optimization reports.

Once you do that, you will be able to see three new reports in your Google Analytics account: Queries, Landing Pages and Geographical Summary. They will help you learn more about your top performing search queries (keywords) and landing pages.

Then, you can use that data to identify:

• Keywords with a low click through rate, but a good average position. Once you know them, you can change the meta title and description of your page to improve their click through rate.
• Landing pages with a good click through rate, but a low average position. These pages can be easily run through an on-page optimization process that will improve their rankings.
• What are the countries of your organic visitors and who your target market is.

To connect your site from Google Webmaster Tools in Google Analytics, go to the [Traffic Sources] section, select [Search Engine Optimization] and then one of the three reports.

At this stage you will see a page with the benefits of linking your accounts and a button where it says [Set up Webmaster Tools data sharing]. Click that button and then click [Edit] from the [Webmaster Tools Settings].

Then, you will be redirected to your Google Webmaster Tools where you can connect it with Google Analytics.

3. Enable Site Speed

Site speed is also a neat feature of Google Analytics that lets you see the load time of your pages. This will help you check what pages need your attention and determine you to look for ways of speeding up the load time of your pages.

If you wonder why this is important, I can tell you that the load speed of your pages can significantly improve your visitors experience on your site and it's also a ranking factor in Google.

So a good load speed can make your visitors happy and can also increase your rankings.

Along with the number of Page Views and Bounce Rate, you can see the Average Page Load Time (in seconds) and the number of visits that have been used as a sample for every page on your website.

Additionally, if you click on the [Performance] tab, you can check different buckets of your page load time and see what is the average load speed of your pages.

The [Map Overlay] will show you what is the load speed for different countries or territories.

If before you needed to add an additional code to your Google Analytics tracking, now that is no longer required and Google Analytics will automatically add data to your reports.

4. Enable Site Search

It's a fact that visitors who use the search box on your site are more likely to convert than the ones who don't. The reason why this happens is because they are more engaged with your website, with your content or your products and services.

The beautiful thing about site search is that it lets you discover the exact keywords that people use to search for your products, so you can take this a step further and use them in your search engine optimization campaigns.

You can actually use the most important keywords that people use to search on your site to optimize your pages and drive more targeted traffic to your website.

Additionally, they might look for products or services that you do not have on your offer, but you can add them with little effort and increase your sales.

Or if you have a blog, site search is a great way to see what your readers are looking for and get a ton of article ideas out of them.

If you would like to enable site search on your website, first make sure that you have a search form on your site and then enable Site Search in Google Analytics.

5. Track Events

Event tracking is a powerful feature in Google Analytics that can help you track among others:

• How many people download your eBook
• What ads are performing better and who clicks on your ads
• Which signup form converts better (sidebar, below the post, about page)
• Who pauses, fast forward or stops a video
• What errors a visitor encounters during the checkout

But that is not all. Using the latest version of Google Analytics, you are also able to set these events as goals which can help you see the performance of your events based on different metrics.

Enabling event tracking it's not a hard process. All you have to do is just add the code below next to your URL, before you replace the default values.

onclick="_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'category', 'action', 'opt_label', 'opt_value']);"

These default values will help you identify your events and here's what they represent:

• Category – You can use this element to identify what you want to track: eBook, video, signup form, ads.
• Action – This element can be used to define the interaction of your visitor and can be: click, button, play, stop. Personally, I use it to specify the place of my button/signup form/ad.
• Label – Use this to identify the type of event that is tracked.
• Value – This element helps you specify a value for you event that can be used when you setup a goal for your event.

If you would like to see a working example, here's what I used to track a link to my new product, where "Ads" is the category of my link, "Sidebar" the place where I added the link and "WAB" the label.

<a href="http://www.webanalyticsblueprint.com/" onclick="_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Ads', 'Sidebar', 'WAB']);">

Then once you setup your links, all you have to do is just setup that event as a goal, using the Category, Action, Label, and Value conditions you have setup for your event.

6. Real-Time Reporting

Google has taken analytics one step further recently and introduced Real-Time Reporting, which displays information about visitors that are on your website in a specific moment.

Your are able to see how many visitors are on your website in that moment, where they are on your website, from where they come (keywords and referrals) and where they live.

Additionally, you have access to another 3 reports with more insights about their location, how they arrived on your website and what pages they visit.

To access the real-time reports you need to go to the [Home] menu > [REAL-TIME (BETA)].

The [Locations] report will provide you information about the number of your visitors and the countries where they are located. You can also check their location on a map.

[Traffic Sources] will display information about where they come from. You will see the medium and source along with the total number of your visitors.

The [Content] report will show you what are the active pages that your visitors read and how many active visitors are on each of the pages displayed on your report.

7. Multi-Channel Funnels

With Multi-Channel Funnels Google Analytics provides even more value for users who are passionate about conversion rates.

If before you were able to track the last source that the visitor used to convert, with Multi-Channel Funnels you are able to also track other sources (ads, referrals, social media, organic) that the visitor used to reach your website from.

Let's say for example that your visitor (Cindy) landed for the first time on your website from Twitter and subscribed to your RSS feed.

Next time, Cindy used the feed reader to come and read your new articles. Ultimately she was looking for advice on blogging and found your eBook using a search engine.

Now, because she knows your site already, she will buy it and become a customer.

Using this example, in the old version of Google Analytics the search engine was used to be credited for the conversion, but now, with Multi-Channel Funnels you can see the whole path that Cindy took to convert: Social Network > Referral > Search engine.

To check the Multi-Channel Funnels reports, go to the [Conversions] section.

Watch this video to learn more about Multi-Channel Funnels:

8. Use Campaign Tracking

Tracking online marketing campaigns will help you get past that large number of direct visits that come from URL shorteners like bit.ly or clients like tweetdeck.

Additionally, it will help you track more accurately links from other websites and links that you use to promote your content or campaigns.

In order to use Campaign tracking in Google Analytics, you need to tag your URLs with special parameters. Those parameters can be added to your links using the URL Builder tool from Google.

Once you tag your URLs with the mandatory parameters, use them as they are or use an URL shortener when sharing them.

Then, check the [Campaigns] report, under [Traffic Sources] > [Sources] to get insights about your online marketing campaigns.

To see step by step instructions and how to check Google Analytics Campaign Tracking reports, read more in this article.

9. Plot Rows

Plot Rows allows you to create instant segments of your data in tabular reports. If you usually look at standard reports, you can use Plot Rows to get more insights from your metrics.

To use this feature, you need to select two rows from any tabular report and then click the [Plot Rows] button from the bottom of the table.

Once you do that, you will see that the chart has changed and you are able to see additional information there about the items that you have selected.

In other words it instantly creates a segment with two of your items compared with the total metrics.

Use this feature to check how your main keywords, referrals or pages compare with each other and with the overall metrics of the site.

But make sure that you select items that do not have a big difference between their metrics (i.e. compare a keyword with 2340 visits with one that has 154).

10. Custom Dashboards

In the old version of Google Analytics you used to have available only one dashboard. However, right now you can create up to 20 dashboards customized to your needs.

To create a custom dashboard, go to the [Home] menu > [Dashboards] and select [+New Dashboard].

Once you do that, you will need to choose whether you will want to start from scratch with a blank canvas or get some pointers with the [Starter Dashboard].

Then you can use slick widgets to create custom metrics, pie charts, timelines or tables.

To get started with custom dashboards, have a look at my screenshot above and try to duplicate it or check out 5 Insightful Google Analytics Dashboards.

Then, you will be able to customize it and add the metrics that are relevant to your business.

11. Flow Visualization

Flow Visualization definitely deserves a separate article to present it, but in the meantime I will outline it's benefits.

Google Analytics rolled out two reports, [Visitors Flow], under the Audience section and [Goal Flow], under the Conversion section.

Visitors Flow

The Visitors Flow will display the path that your visitors have taken to navigate through your website.

You will be able to see, based on a selected dimension, such as country source or keyword, the exact path of your visitors and where they stopped to read your content.

On hover, the report displays for each page additional details, like the total number of visits, how many visitors moved to a different page and how many of them dropped the funnel and left.

If you click on a page, you will be able to highlight the traffic that went through that page, explore traffic through that page or display in a popup even more details.

Goal Flow

The Goal Flow report is essentially a better representation of the Funnel Visualization report and contains the same dimensions as the Visitors Flow report.

But the main difference between this and the Visitors Flow is the fact that the Goal Flow report doesn't uses all pages, but the steps you configured in the conversion funnel.

Additionally, you can also use advanced segments to filter your data and get additional insights from the Visitors Flow and Goal Flow reports.

Your turn

In this article I presented 11 tips that you should use for your website and ultimately some of my favorite features in Google Analytics, but now it's your turn to do the same.

What do you like most in Google Analytics and what features/tricks you think that everyone should know about?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

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