Google Analytics Jay Murphy

Trionia Incorporated – The Science of Marketing jmurphy@trionia.com 877­234­0591

Agenda

Google Analytics A Whirl­Wind Tour of Onsite SEO Google Analytics and SEO

Google Analytics to Start SEO Measuring your results Optimizing your results

Resources

Audience

Who is interested in measuring a website? Owners Online and Offline Ad Agencies Site Developers – Design & Technical Online Marketing Specialists

Search Engine Optimization Search Engine Marketing Email Marketing Display Ads – and more

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Answers

Question Analytics can help answer Who is visiting my site? How are people finding the site? What will bring more people to the site? What are people doing on the site? Are people accomplishing the site goals? How can the website be improved?

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Analytics – a brief history

Hit Counters Log File Page Tagging ­ Javascript/Cookies

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Analytics Tools

The Big Three Google Analytics Omniture Webtrends

A few open source choices:

AWStats Webalizer

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Accuracy?

No analytics tool is perfectly accurate – however trends in data are the most useful information.

If you use two or more metrics tools do not reconcile the data – it will be different

If some of your metrics are critical for your business For example how much advertisers pay per click : agree on measurement in advance

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GOOGLE ANALYTICS

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How to Install

Google Analytics is easy to install: Using your Google Account, access Analytics: http://www.google.com/analytics/sign_up.html

Add JavaScript code before the </head> tag

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Google Analytics JS Code

The code is: <script type="text/javascript"> var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA­xxxxxxxx­x']); _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') + '.google­analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); )(); </script>

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Installation Check

Check on your Google Analytics Analytics Settings > Profile Settings > Tracking Code

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How it works

JavaScript that uses first party cookies Sends an invisible GIF to the analytics server for processing

Users that delete cookies will be seen as a new visitor

No personal identifying information is saved Cached pages are still tracked if visitor is connected to the internet

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Google Analytics Cookies

__utma Used to measure unique Visitors – 2 year

__utmb Session/Visit measure – 30 minute timeout

__utmc Session/Visit with __utmb – no expiration

__utmz Stores referral information. Including Source and Medium. 6 months from set/update. 13

Google Analytics Cookies (continued)

__utmv Contains information passed by the _setVar() Google Analytics method

__utmx Used by the Website Optimizer.

More Detail at: http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/concepts/gaConceptsCookies.html#cookiesSet

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Definitions

Visits A visit is defined as a series of page requests from the same uniquely identified client with a time of no more than 30 minutes between each page request. So for a user who visits at 11:00 AM and then again at 11:20 this user counts as a single unique visit; if the user clicks on a new page at 11:35 it now counts as two visits. (Some analytics packages use the term session in place of visit.) Unique Visitors A unique user who accesses a Website, while people cannot be identified by analytics, we substitute computers. So a single computer that accesses a website is deemed to be a Unique Visitor. (Most analytics tools use cookies, small files saved by a browser, to determine if a machine has been to a website before. Since many users, estimated to be 25% or so, remove cookies on a monthly basis, unique visitors can be overstated.)

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Definitions (continued)

New Visitors A visitor that has not made any previous visits. Again, since New Visitors are also determined by the use of cookies saved on a visitors computer; visitors that delete cookies show as new visitors. Bounce Rate The percentage of visits where the visitor enters and exits at the same page without visiting any other pages on the site in between. (In general a higher bounce rate is not a good sign – but some websites are designed for a single page view before leaving, for example blogs. Use bounce rate to analyze your site based on your site’s users goals.)

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Definitions (continued)

Average Pages per Visit The average number of page views a visitor views before ending their visit. It is calculated by dividing total number of page views by total number of visits. Average Time on Site Average amount of time that visitors spend on the site each time they visit. (This metric can be complicated by the fact that analytics programs cannot measure the length of the last page view, since the time is measured by start time of second page minus the start time of the first page.) Page Views A request for a file whose type is defined as a page in log analysis. An occurrence of the script being run in page tagging. In log analysis, a single page view may generate multiple hits as all the resources required to view the page (images, .js and .css files) are also requested from the web server.

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REPORTING INTERFACE

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Reporting Interface

In your account click on the "View report" link to see the report interface

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Reporting Dashboard

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Dashboard

User Configurable view of up to 12 user defined reports.

All Reports – including the Dashboard Exported in PDF and XML format. Emailed – one time or scheduled

Additional Control is offered by: Date Ranges Daily, Week or Monthly data points Advanced Segments

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Reporting Categories

Visitors Traffic Sources Content Goals Additional Reporting Features

Intelligence Custom Reports Advanced Segments

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Visitors

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Visitor Reports

Answers these questions (and more)? Where are my visitors coming from? Are they new visitors? How many are new? When do my visitors come to my site? What browsers, version of flash, java… do they use?

How do our visitors compare to other sites?

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Visitor Reports Map Overlay

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Visitor Reports New vs. Returning

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Visitor Reports Visitor Trending

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Visitor Reporting Browser Usage

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Traffic Sources

Answers these questions: Where did people find out about my site? What proportion of visitors come to the site:

Directly, through search engines and through referral websites?

For search engine traffic – what keywords? Which referrals provide the ‘best’ traffic? What campaigns are most effective?

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Traffic Sources Overview

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Traffic Sources Search Engines

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Traffic Sources Keywords

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Traffic Sources Referring Sites

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Traffic Sources Direct

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Content

Answers these questions: What are the entrance pages (landing pages)?

What keywords were used to reach these pages? Or what or referrals?

Where did people leave the site? (Exit Pages) Further detail to determine if a user goal was satisfied or it was a failed visit.

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Content Overview

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Content Navigation Summary

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Content Entrance Keywords

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Content In­Page Analytics

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OTHER TOPICS Goals, Custom Reports, Advanced Segments and Data Access API

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Goals

Used to track specific actions on your website. These can be:

Site registration Sign up for a download, webinar, newsletter…

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Setting up Goals Step ­ 1

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Setting up Goals Step ­ 2

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Setting up Goals Step ­ 3

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Setting up Goals Step – 4

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Goals on all Reports

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Integrating with Ad Words

Link AdWords and Analytics accounts together One AdWords with one Analytics account. One account for each client

Autotagging helps analytics track your AdWords clicks. This adds a gclid value to your query string http://mydomain.com?clid=1234321

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AdWords Reporting

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Other Ad Sources

Use the Google URL builder http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55578

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Multiple Campaign Tracking

Visitors can visit from multiple campaigns. In the standard setup, the most recent campaign will get credit for a conversion.

How to assign credit to the first campaign? Setting utm_nooverride=1 in your campaign URLs will attribute the conversion to the first campaign.

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Custom Reporting

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Custom Reporting Dimensions & Metrics

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Custom Reports Dimensions & Metrics

Dimensions

Visitor Campaign Content Ecommerce Internal Search Custom Variables Events AdWords

Metrics

Visitor Campaign Content Ecommerce Internal Search Goals Events

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Custom Report Example – Avinash Kaushik

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Advanced Segments

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Advanced Segments

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Data Access API – from PHP

GAPI – Google Analytics API PHP5 Interface Supports arrays for Dimensions and Metrics Returns results in a PHP object Date ranges and filtering provided

For more detail see: http://code.google.com/p/gapi­google­analytics­php­interface/

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Data Access API – from PHP Sample Code

$ga = new gapi('email@yourdomain.com','password'); $pId = 11223344; // Profile ID $metrics = array('country','city'); $dimensions = array('pageviews','visits','newVisits'); $ga­>requestReportData($pId,$metrics,$dimensions); foreach($ga­>getResults() as $result) echo '<strong>'.$result.'</strong><br />'; echo 'Pageviews: ' . $result­>getPageviews() . ' '; echo 'Visits: ' . $result­>getVisits() . '<br />'; echo 'New Visits: ' . $result­>getNewVisits() . '<br />'; echo '<p>Total pageviews: ' . $ga­>getPageviews() . ' total visits: ' . $ga­>getVisits() . '</p>';

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WHIRL WIND TOUR OF SEO

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Whirl­Wind Tour of Onsite SEO

Content is King – with SEO we can get caught up in optimizing for key words and search engines We can forget about the people!

Whirl­Wind Tour of Onsite SEO (continued)

In order of priority update the following: Titles Meta Descriptions Headings Content Links Images Page Speed Meta Keywords

Whirl­Wind Tour of Onsite SEO (continued)

Titles Use short titles that include the keyword(s) at the start. (50 to 80 characters)

Meta Descriptions The content that will frequently show up in your search results – use keywords naturally in your description. (160­180 characters)

Whirl­Wind Tour of Onsite SEO (continued)

Headings Use the main keyword for the H1 tags and lower priority keywords for H2 and H3 tags.

Images Use keywords in your alt tags as well as naming the images with your keywords. So images names like this are good: newport­harbor­view.png

Whirl­Wind Tour of Onsite SEO (continued)

Links Use links to connect to reputable sites. Also link internally to related pages. Use keywords in your links: <a href=“tropical­fish.html”>See our list of tropical fish</a>

Content Include keywords throughout your content, in a natural way. Do not force or ‘keyword stuff’.

Whirl­Wind Tour of Onsite SEO (continued)

Page Speed Fast load time is critical for user experience. A factor in Search Engine Optimization. Performance techniques include – CDN, CSS sprites, compressed JavaScript and more.

Meta Keywords While less important – it is good to have a list of 12­15 descriptive keywords in the page meta keywords tag.

More on SEO

Off­site SEO – inbound links Look to social websites to get started

SEO related to SEM (paid keywords)? Not on Google; Yahoo? Maybe

Setup a sitemap.xml and a robots.txt Other factors:

Age of site, number of pages, internal links…

SEO Summary

How do we determine our keywords? Some people call this process keyword harvesting.

The next section will show how to use Google Analytics (and other tools) to start harvesting.

ANALYTICS REPORTS TO START AN SEO PROJECT

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Keywords

Helpful – but these are all ‘branded’ keywords

Non­Branded Keywords

Using the report filters we can create a ‘non­branded’ keyword report:

‘Group’ Keywords

To find related keywords we can create an ‘Advanced Filter’ in this case we want to see all non­branded keywords with the word ‘visit’ included.

Google’s Keyword Tool

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Other Sources for Keywords

Competitor research Examine the structure and keywords used by competitor websites

Use services like Compete or Alexa to determine

Brainstorm Keywords Ask customers and/or sit down and write as many keywords as you can imagine.

Keyword Baseline Results

http://www.mikes­marketing­tools.com/ranking­reports/

ANALYTICS REPORTS TO MEASURE ONGOING SEO

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Traffic Sources

First look at percentage increase in Search Engine Traffic This provides a high level look at overall traffic. Then check the search referrals in more detail.

Search Engine Traffic

Look at the ‘non­paid’ traffic sent to the website. Look for gains to indicate SEO improvements.

Landing Pages

The landing pages indicate which pages on your site get direct traffic from search engines (and other sources)

Landing Page Keywords

The entry keywords tell you both what is working and what can be optimized further.

Advanced Segments

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Advanced Segments

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‘Restaurant’ Segment

We can view behavior of this segment.

‘Restaurant’ Segment

SEO Rank Report?

How can you see where your terms are ranking? Applying three filters to a new profile will provide the answers. First filter to include Google traffic Then filter to keep organic traffic Finally use a custom filter to provide a ranking report

Filter Detail

The three filters are: Filter Type: Custom Filter Select "Include" Filter Field:Campaign Source Filter Pattern: google

Filter Type: Custom Filter Select “Advanced" Field A ->Extract A: Referral : (\?|&)q=([^&]*) Field B ->Extract B: Referral : (\?|&)start=([^&]*) Output To -> Constructor: User Defined : $A2 (page: $B2)

Filter Type: Custom Filter Select "Include" Filter Field:Campaign Medium Filter Pattern: organic

SEO Rank Results

The output can then be seen in the ‘user defined’ reports – which will then show the page for each organic keyword:

Page Load from Analytics

The new version of Google Analytics (in Beta)includes tracking Page Load speed.

Simply adding this new line of code to your Google Tracking will allow reporting on page load speed:

_gaq.push(['_trackPageLoadTime']); The new ‘Site Speed’ report will now provide speed statistics on your website.

Sample Site Speed Report

QUESTIONS?

To Learn More

CDIA BU is offering two Analytics Courses Google Analytics for Business : Introduction When: Friday, July 15, 2011

Google Analytics for Business : Advanced When: Friday, July 29, 2011

REGISTER ONLINE

Analytics Resources

Blogs Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik

Books Web Analytics Demystified – Eric T. Peterson Web Analytics an Hour a Day – Avinash Kaushik

Education Google’s Conversion University

Other Resources (continued)

Twitter Follow the #measure, #analytics and #ganalytics hash tags

Organizations Web Analytics Association The Analysis Exchange – Students and Mentors team up to assist Non­Profits

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SEO Resources

SEO Links: Google’s SEO Guide SEOMOZ Beginners Guide to SEO Wordtracker SEO Intro Video

Intro to sitemap.xml and robots.txt http://www.advancedhtml.co.uk/robots­sitemaps.htm

CASE STUDY Online Marketing – B2C

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B2C Banner Advertisement & Pay

per Click

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Metrics Visits

Coupon Prints Sales

Targeting

The Campaign used two types of targeting Geographic

West coast of Florida Keyword Based

Diabetic High Fiber Whole Grain Flax Seed

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Metrics Keyword Performance

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Metrics Ad Performance

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Landing Page Optimization A/B Testing

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No Email Signup Conversion Rate 23.9%%

Original Conversion Rate 17.45%

Campaign Summary

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Campaign Summary

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Results Florida banner advertisements led to additional direct

and indirect website vistors.