Google Analytics: Follow Your Visitors’ Navigation Patterns
Google Analytics has a cool feature that I thought I'd share with you. It allows you to see at a glance where your visitors have been on your website. You can follow their navigation from entrance to exit, seeing each page's bounce rate and entrance and exit links at a glance. Here's how you access this feature in Google Analytics: Log in to Google Analytics account Click on the account and website you want to analyze Scroll down to the Content Overview box and click "view report" Click on the Navigation Summary link Here you can see what percentages of your visitors entered any particular page on your site and what percentage came to each page from previous pages. You can also see how many visitors exited from each page CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Analytics Trends: What Should You Measure?
You already know why it's important to look at your trends in analytics. But which trends are important? In a word, it depends on what type of site you are running, but there are certain trends that should be important to every webmaster. Bounce rate is generally thought of as an important metric. That is true for the most part but if your site is an AdSense site then you'd expect that your traffic is going to show up, click and ad and leave. Bounce rate might not necessarily reflect the important details for your site in that case so understand that there are exceptions to every rule. Nevertheless, there are some important metrics to follow. I recommend that, for most websites, you should pay attention CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Measuring Analytics Trends: What’s Really Important, And Why?
If you do business online at all then you will have to face the fact that analytics is an important part of conducting that business. Whether you rely completely on organic search results and search engine optimization, pay per click, or a combination, you'll have to measure your performance against results and that requires some form of analytics package. But what should you measure? First, before getting into specifics about what you should measure, how about a little discussion on why you should measure. In essence, you want to look at the trends. Individual numbers by themselves don't really tell the story. Numbers over time are the story. Here's what I mean: Let's say you know that you had 1,000 visitors last month of which 899 were CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Use Analytics To Improve Your Organic SEO
Avinash Kaushik has written one of the best manifestos on analytics that I've read in recent memory. His nine point checklist is awesome and I've got to say that when I read it I come up way more short than I want to. There is some really awesome stuff in there! I specifically love Point #7: Search, Organic, Get Good At It. This should be a gentle reminder that all web business begins with organic search. You may use analytics heavily for PPC, and you should, but how well do you use it for organic search? Here are three ways that you can use analytics to improve your organic search campaigns and search engine optimization efforts: Learn and Know Your Top Search Queries (from Avinash): CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Do You Test Your Web Pages In All The Popular Browsers?
Every time you update the web pages on your website you should test your new updates in the most popular Internet browsers. Some new webmasters make the mistake of thinking that if you test for Internet Explorer then that is enough. That isn't true. Mozilla Firefox use is gaining a lot of ground so if you don't test for Firefox usage then you'll miss out on a lot of good website visitors if your web pages don't look the way you want them to. Even if you test for Firefox and IE you'll still miss out on valuable traffic as there are other browsers that get quite a bit of usage. The following list of browsers should be tested with your web pages and this CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
HTML With APIs: Where W3C Standards Are Moving
I've had a chance to look over some of the proposed though changing specifications for a work in progress: HTML 5.0. I'm impressed with some of those proposed changes and you'll soon see why. The W3C is a consortium of volunteers who participate in discussions about ways to improve web development standards. These volunteers look at the code involved and suggest standards that all web masters can implement to make it easier for the browser market and developer market to work together for common standards. They started to propose new changes to HTML, current version HTML 4.0, back in 2004 and have been working on development since. After looking over some of the proposed changes at this stage of development, I've found three aspects of HTML 5, CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Prevent Hackers From Breaking Your Code
MSN Live is now trying to convince us that you are in danger of being hacked and malicious software downloaded onto your website for your visitors to be attacked. Is that possible? Yes. But I don't agree with the way that MSN Live is handling this. First, it should be noted that MSN was the victim of web hacker last year. As a result, the search engine no longer reports inbound links to your website (or anyone else's for that matter). Meanwhile, Yahoo! and Google seem to have web security down pretty good. And so should you. The scare tactics that MSN is using to convince searchers that they have a handle on the hacker and malicious code problem just plain stinks. You can see it in CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
How To Choose Your Google Crawl Rate
Did you know you can change your Google crawl rate? It's true and you can do it in Google Webmaster Tools if you have an account. The default setting for the Google crawl rate is to let Google determine how often it crawls your website. However, if you have special needs then you can set your own crawl rate. But I wouldn't recommend changing this unless you understand the special needs of your server and you are an advanced webmaster. To change your crawl rate, log in to your Google Webmaster Tools account and click on Settings. In these settings you can establish a geographic targeting area, set a preferred domain (using www or without www), and choosing a customized crawl rate. Find the crawl rate button CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Error Codes: What Are They?
If you're browsing the web and you click a link that takes you nowhere, you're likely to be hit with an error page. The most popular error page is the 404 page, but it's by no means the only one. Here are some error pages that you are likely to find and that you might be interested in customizing for your own website to be more helpful to your site visitors: 401 Error - This error code is to tell visitors they do not have the proper authorization to view a certain page. If you have a membership site and an individual tries to access a page that requires signing in and their username and password are incorrect then you might deliver a 401 error. 403 Error CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
How Many Tools Do You Need To Run A Website?
Webmasters love tools, but how many do you need? Do you need every single tool available or can you get by with just a few. Search Engine Optimization Journal has compiled a list of essential webmaster tools - the ones you can't get by without: Keyword Research Tool - You can spend thousands of dollars on some fancy gadget with bells and whistles or you can opt for the free version that does the job. Google's Keyword Research Tool works for everyone. Link Popularity Check - You'll need to check your link popularity from time to time. Again, you don't need a bunch of fancy tools with bells and whistles. Marketleap not only reports your link popularity but it also tells you what CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
How Google Analytics Can Help You Optimize Your Website
Google Analytics is a free web-based metrics solution offered by Google. You can use Google Analytics to help you optimize your website. You'll have to insert the Google Analytics code into the page of your website so you can traffic important details about traffic and entrance / exit pages. Three important tools that are a part of Google Analytics, which can help you optimize your website, are: Entrance Sources Entrance Keywords Site Overlay All three tools can be found under the Content tab in Google Analytics. Entrance Sources First, check your entrance sources. Where is your traffic coming from? If you see more of your traffic coming from other websites and social networks than from search engines then it could mean that your pages are not optimized well enough to receive the CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Webmaster Tools Now Warns Of Website Security Issues
If you log into Webmaster Tools and you are running an older edition of WordPress on your blog or maybe even an older version of a CMS then you'll see a warning sign telling you that you may have website security issues. I like that. What this tells me is that Google believes website security is important. Not only is it important from a webmaster's point of view, where if you don't upgrade to the newest software, the fact that Google Webmaster Tools is now warning webmasters of potential security holes means that it is possible that weaker security could affect your authority rating, search rankings, or PageRank. Do I have proof of this? No. But I'm just speculating that if Google deems it important enough CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Leverage Your Top URL’s
One of the core's of excellent search engine optimization is that content is king and that you cannot have too much content - so long as it is good content. However, anyone who is keen on analytics will know that only 20-25% of your pages actually draw significant traffic. Whether it is 20% or 50% is not relevant although the more pages you have, the more traffic you will receive. What is important is what you do with those pages that do draw the traffic. In effect, they are your 'landing' pages for any internet searches. The pages that draw significant traffic need to be optimized carefully to encourage the visitor to complete the visit. If they are potential customers, you want them heading to your sales CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Your Website Stats May Hold Hidden Treasures
Many web owners veer well away from stat packages such as AWStats or Google Analytics. They data can be confusing to the initiated. However, once you get an understanding of those stats you will see that often they hold real SEO treasures that can be used to increase your sites visitor numbers. Keywords are always a problem. Which keywords should I use; how much competition is there for them; how many people are using those keywords? If you check your stats and AWStats if you have in on your server, or Google Analytics, both provide results based on keywords used to find your pages. If check those results you will be surprised at what you find. Along with the keywords that you have optimized your site CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
SEO Analytics Are Not Always Accurate
Part of your search engine optimization strategy is the study of analytics particularly when it comes to where your visitors are coming from and what search terms they are using to find you. I know some search engine optimization consultants keep a daily watch on sites to track exactly what effects their actions are having on the sites they have been optimizing. It seem that, for about a week, Google analytics had problems with their databases and data displayed was incorrect. The admission from Google was simple and straightforward: Google Analytics experienced a data processing error from April 30th to May 5th. Almost all of the data has been recovered and is currently being reprocessed. The recovered data will be reflected in your reports within CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
SEO Journal is Written by
Brick Marketing Founder,
Nick Stamoulis:
Nick Stamoulis - SEO Bio.
Tel. - 877-295-0620
nick@brickmarketing.com
Connect with Nick Stamoulis
Brick Marketing - SEO Company
