Nov 2, 2012 at 2:31pm ET by Annie Cushing

Have you ever done a search to find out how to do something in Excel, just to find the search results littered with macro options? I used to avoid those results like the plague because I found macros (at least those beyond what I could create with the Macros Recorder) really intimidating. And I’m writing this post because I'm assuming that I’m not the only one who has done that. Amiright? So I’m going to show you how to take a macro you find online or get from a trusted source and add it to your workbook and run it — on both a PC and Mac. If you want to follow along, you can down [...]

14 Ideas To Utilize Custom Variables For Search & Social Tracking

Oct 30, 2012 at 11:46am ET by Jordan Kasteler

Custom variables are one of the most (if not the most) powerful tools Google Analytics has to offer to better understand your audiences from search and social. Unfortunately, they’re also one of the most underrated and underused. So, if they’re so useful, why do so few sites utilize them? For the same reason that custom variables (CVs) are so powerful: they’re infinitely customizable. In other words: there is no one-size-fits-all variable. It doesn’t come equipped straight out of the gate; additional assembly is required. You’ll need to set it up yourself to match your site’s a [...]

How To Turn (Not Provided) Into Useful, Actionable Data

Oct 19, 2012 at 4:55pm ET by Carrie Hill

We've all seen it, lurking in our Analytics reports, nearly always at the top, sucking a huge chunk of data into a black hole of uncertainty and uselessness. Not provided was predicted as having a single-digit impact on sites. In my research, I've found it to have upwards of a 40% impact, especially on smaller traffic sites. In conversations with clients, and looking at my own sites, I knew the numbers had to be better – but what do you tell a client when chunks of data, in some cases over 30%, are attributed to (not provided) instead of the keywords you've given time, attention and te [...]

How To: Google Analytics Installation For Novices & Beginners

Sep 21, 2012 at 10:51am ET by Carrie Hill

If you're an intermediate to advanced Google Analytics user, this article will probably be of little interest to you personally. I suggest you bookmark it anyway as a reference for clients or friends who are just starting out with Analytics. As a long-time agency employee, I see many clients, prospects and even casual acquaintances with websites that feature absolutely no Analytics data. They have no idea what is going on, or what they're missing because the visitors that come to their site disappear into a vacuum. This article is meant to walk first-time installers through the process, [...]

A Primer On AdWords Remarketing Using Google Analytics

Aug 24, 2012 at 9:39am ET by Carrie Hill

Remarketing has been around for quite a while as part of the Google AdWords suite of tools. Remarketing works by creating a "list" or "audience" within Google AdWords. The pages that are pertinent to that audience are tagged with special code that allows Google to place a cookie in the browser of anyone who visits that page. It's a great way for you to get your brand out there in front of your website visitors, even when they're not thinking about shopping and buying from your site. There are tons of ways for you to segment your website to serve remarketing ads; you can even get as granular [...]

How Scattergraphs Can Be Your Best Friends

Aug 13, 2012 at 10:43am ET by Conrad Saam

Recently, I was on an in-house SEO panel at SMX with REI's Jonathon Colman. Most of the audience's questions centered around explaining and reporting relevant metrics to upper management. Turns out, while search has come a long way, many execs still use terms like "Google Juice" and define success as launching a PPC campaign to "rank number 1 for our competitor's name". This issue is even more pronounced in larger, established companies where search makes up a smaller portion of the marketing mix. :::sigh::: Jonathon's primary recommendation centered around "data visualization" - expl [...]

Figure Out What Is Important, Then Measure It

Jul 27, 2012 at 12:33pm ET by Carrie Hill

As search marketers, we are constantly digging around in analytics, finding data, thinking it looks neat, then stepping back and saying, "But is this important?" I've done this a million times, and recently came across a quote that put some of what I'm always looking for into perspective. Don't make the measurable things important but make the important things measurable. The data you have is not necessarily the data you need to succeed. I think we go about this all wrong sometimes. Instead of finding data in Google Analytics or some other tracking program and trying to figure out if [...]

Tips For Cutting Down Overhead When Managing Multinational SEO

Jul 17, 2012 at 9:05am ET by Chris Liversidge

Handling established campaigns across multiple countries can quickly become a case of handling overwhelming quantities of data interspersed with never-ending menial jobs, preventing the SEO from developing their strategy to squeeze yet more value from their campaign ROI.

Using Google Analytics To Collect & Benefit From AdWords Position ROI

May 4, 2012 at 12:06pm ET by Carrie Hill

As an agency, we talk a lot about client expectations and understanding. Reality and actuality sometimes don’t start off in the same place, or even the same hemisphere. When we talk about Google AdWords, clients sometimes expect a few hours of education on how the setup of a campaign works, and then they’re off and running – generating thousands of dollars with minimal involvement. That’s their expectation. The reality is AdWords for even a moderate budget could really be a full-time, 40-hour-per-week job. There are many intricacies in an AdWords account, and it’s becoming more co [...]

Are You In Danger Of An Online Traffic Crisis?

Mar 30, 2012 at 2:30pm ET by Carrie Hill

As relative newcomers to the world of analytics and site and revenue improvements through analytics, many clients ask me about the traffic sources chart in their Google dashboard: Why is this important? I give one explanation of this as a measure of "Are my eggs all in one basket?" and "What happens if they are?" For example, the client above has 66.57% of their traffic from search engines. This is a combination of organic and paid traffic. Of that 66.57%, when we drill further into that segment of data, we see that 84.5% of that is from Google alone with a breakdown of 45% [...]

Work Smart, Not Hard – An Introduction To Google Analytics Dashboards

Mar 9, 2012 at 9:12am ET by Carrie Hill

I love my Google Analytics dashboard and I'm not ashamed to admit it. It saves me time, helps me look like I'm 100% on top of things when a client calls, and helps me add hours back into days that were previously spent hunting and pecking for information. Right now, my client load consists of about 19 different domains that all have their own analytics installs. Each week that's a lot of information to check, verify, monitor, and create an action plan from. Without my dashboards, and most importantly, my consistently formatted dashboards, I would spend hours finding information - now I have [...]

5 Common Tracking Problems: How To Troubleshoot & Fix Them

Feb 3, 2012 at 3:55pm ET by Carrie Hill

I spend a lot of time trying to figure out exactly what is wrong with some clients’ analytics installs. Unlike types or broken code, or misspelled words – issues with tracking scripts don’t always raise their hands and scream, "Hey dummy, you deleted the </script> tag!" I thought it would be handy for the beginners out there to have a few tips for finding issues with your tracking and some tricks to resolving those issues without tearing your hair out. I’m Referring To Myself… This is probably the most common error I find, your own domain is showing as a referrer to your s [...]

Justified – Beginning Steps To Proving Your Internet Marketing Point

Jan 13, 2012 at 9:38am ET by Carrie Hill

If you’re working in online marketing in some function, you’ve battled this – the need to justify your marketing budget to the bean counters in the office 10 floors up, or even next door. Those not "in the know" about the truly trackable benefits of online marketing are generally skeptical at best when told "I can show you where every penny went, and what we got back in return." The inability to track return on radio, tv or even print ad buys without extensive (and frankly pretty difficult) work and integration between multiple departments makes these less than desireable mediums i [...]

How To Track Emerging Search Engine Blekko In Web Analytics Systems

Dec 30, 2011 at 9:01am ET by Sean Carlos

More than a year has passed since search engine upstart blekko launched, yet Web marketing analysts using digital media measurement tools like Google Analytics won't have seen any traffic attributed to blekko in organic search marketing reports. Instead, traffic supplied by blekko will show up in a referring websites report. It is possible to properly attribute blekko search traffic referrals by implementing advanced Web analytics configuration techniques. Is the extra effort worth the trouble? Certainly investors are betting on blekko. In late September, blekko received an addition $30 [...]

A Beginners Guide To Finding Ad Placements & Fine Tune Conversions With Analytics Data

Dec 16, 2011 at 11:56am ET by Carrie Hill

Many new webmasters and website marketers are under the mistaken impression that online marketing is a "Field of Dreams" and "if you build it, they will come." Unfortunately, you can build it, but if you don’t market it, and place it in front of the audience that buys your products, nobody will come, and neither will their credit cards. Using data from your website, you can find and fine tune advertising placements that increase your foot and online traffic; today, we’re going to show you how. First, have a realistic idea of who your audience is. If you’re a travel or tourism busin [...]

A Beginner’s Guide To Setting Goals In Google Analytics

Nov 25, 2011 at 9:17am ET by Carrie Hill

When I first started using Google Analytics, my "goal" was to not run away screaming. The intense amount of information, seemingly disconnected, made understanding what I needed so overwhelming. In my last article,we talked about the basic reports you should watch as a beginner. This week, we’re going to work on how to make Google Analytics work for you via Goal setup and configuration. The first thing you need to do after login is find where to setup goals, which is not where you see the goal results. In reality, most of the setup in Google Analytics happens behind the sprocket in th [...]

How To Analyze Your Content Performance In Google Analytics

Nov 18, 2011 at 12:09pm ET by Matties Otter

Google Analytics is divided in five main categories: Visitors Advertising Traffic Sources Content Conversions In this post, I want to talk about the Content category. I will not discuss all the reports available, but the ones I use most frequently. If you click on Content it will expand to the sections below: Overview The overview gives a quick overall view of your content. You can see metrics such as pageviews, unique pageviews, avg. time on page and bounce rate. By using the date range option on the top right corner, you can select your date range and also ea [...]

3 Metrics Google Analytics Beginners Should Watch

Oct 28, 2011 at 10:56am ET by Carrie Hill

The first login to a Google Analytics account can be daunting. There are so many things to see, and so many different ways to tweak data, that deciding which are the most important metrics to watch can be an insurmountable decision. Ultimately, in my opinion, you are the only one who can decide what metrics and reports are important to your business. Some websites don't collect money but do send traffic to other sites, or collect subscriptions or email sign-ups as a form of conversion. Some do collect money, but it's just a small portion of their business; the phone call may really be co [...]

Want Better Google Analytics Data? Learn To Tag Your Campaigns!

Oct 21, 2011 at 2:07pm ET by Klaas Knook

One of the most important hurdles to tackle before analyzing data is collecting clean and correct data. There are many ways to make your data more accurate; tagging is one of them. Although the correct tagging of your campaigns seems something basic, I still see a lot of companies and websites that aren’t tagging at all or do it in a wrong way. In this article, I will explain the major tagging issues and how to tag correctly. Campaign Tagging Problems The most important issue with tagging your campaigns is the involvement of many different colleagues and partners. With the implementa [...]

Event Tracking 101 For Google Analytics

Sep 30, 2011 at 4:13pm ET by Carrie Hill

Setting up Analytics accounts has evolved beyond installing "generated" scripts on pages and calling it a day. What started with the advent of software that told us how many "hits" we got a day has evolved into a sophisticated decision assistance engine, and keeping up on the new and cutting edge offers full time employment for many people across the world. As part of our website designs, many of us feature various graphic "buttons" or images on our site that either link to interior pages, booking paths, or even lead users off-site. We embed video, or have image links to our social media [...]

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