The Google Blog puts it like this, ‘a dedicated assistant who is focused exclusively on your site’s analytics? Your assistant would be so diligent and detailed that they wouldn’t miss a thing.’ As usual, this is Google self congratulating, but also as usual the congratulations are entirely justified. It basically works like this. Intelligence will watch your site’s analytics data and flag when anything significant happens and place an alert on a timeline with the exact date. It will also rank the alerts in order the results in terms of relative importance. The whole thing ends up looking like a bar chart on a month by month timeline.

This is an absolute godsend for anyone whose job it is to analyse websites, for one simple reason – it cuts through the data. Up until now, Analytics has almost been a victim of its own success – the sheer amount of information you can track with Analytics data can be a little intimidating, what’s more, no one working on a big site can hope to track it all which means it can be easy to miss pertinent information.

Just to drive home how this could be useful, here’s a helpful hypothetical example. You run a popular ecommerce website, one day you’re looking at Intelligence and you notice that on Wednesday last week your bounce rate suddenly jumped 25 percent. You reasonably assume there must be a reason and, because Analytics can’t do everything for you… yet, you set out to find out what it is.

You call an immediate staff meeting to discuss what happened on Wednesday and find out that a picture was added to the flash banner at the top. Since that was the only change you assume that was it and remove it, if over the next few days the bounce rate goes back then you know you were right. Obviously that’s a simplistic example, though the principle stands for everything.

Another great thing about Intelligence is that it has a quite a sophisticated algorithm behind it, which means that, according to Google, it can tell the difference between changes that are part of ongoing trends and ones which are properly out of the ordinary.

All in all, it’s actually remarkably simple to use though, as this is analytics, there are ways to complicate it. You can instruct it to be on the lookout for specific things and
even set up custom alerts, much like you can do with Analytics goals. The finer points of this will be the subject of a post or two in the near future… Once I’ve figured out exactly what those finer points are that is.

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If you’re sure the campaign is fine then the obvious answer is the site. This is the point at which you breathe a deep sigh as a website is a much more complicated and difficult to change beast than your Adwords account. That’s why, if you have to do it, you want to be completely sure about why you’re not converting before you go changing too much. However, at this stage you know nothing, something’s wrong with your site but you have no way of knowing what.

You need data, and one of the best ways to get it is to set up a funnel on Google Analytics. Funnels essentially isolate users who visit a particular page and then track the ones who continue through a designated series of pages like, for instance, an online payment process or form, to an eventual goal, usually the completion of a sale or enquiry.

The funnel will tell you how many people make it from start to finish and where the ones who don’t give up. If, for instance, 95 per cent of people who start the process at page A make it to page B, but only 40 per cent of those continue on to page C you have a pretty clear indication that the problem is page B because 6 out of 10 people couldn’t be bothered with the hassle of it.

Numbers don’t lie, people.

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A good trick is to create a PPC only profile on analytics in addition to your existing analytics, you can do this by excluding irrelevant data. Here’s how…

1.First, you need to create a new Analytics profile – otherwise you won’t be able to retrieve any excluded data.

Create A New Analytics Profile

Be sure to click ‘add profile for existing domain’

Add A Profile For An Existing Domain

2.Name this profile PPC then click and save. Next click ‘+ Add Filter’ from the profile settings page to edit it

Add New Analytics Filter

3.Name this filter Google Filter, set the type to ‘custom filter’ and select the ‘include’ radio button and the ‘non case-sensitive’ radio button. Also, set the filter field to  ‘campaign source’ and write ‘Google’ in the filter pattern

Create A Custom Include Filter

4.Save this filter, now we need to create another new filter. Call this CPC Filter, make the filter type: custom filter, and select ‘include’ as the type. Make the filter field: ‘Campaign Medium’ and write ‘CPC’ as the filter pattern. Once again set the case sensitive to: ‘No’

Add A Custom CPC Include Filter

5.Make sure the filters come up in the below order

Assign Filter Order

There you go, only PPC traffic will appear in this filter – you’ll be able to see & isolate the information accordingly now from your main analytics start page.

Tune in next Friday for more from the Analytics School

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This almost always means getting to grips with a particular application that we’ve all come to know and love, that’s right, Google Analytics.

These days more and more people are looking to gain a competitive edge on the competition by analysing their websites to the point of obsession and fine tuning pages daily, using Analytics. This is no bad thing to do – in fact in most industries I’d even go as far as to call it essential –, Analytics provides you with a wealth of information that can provide you with a significant competitive advantage… If handled correctly, that is.

And that’s just the thing, isn’t it? The wealth of information that Analytics provides, the amount of features that the programme offers, the almost limitless ways of breaking down your user data can be overwhelming if you don’t know what you’re doing, and even if you do.

For this reason, the Top Click Media team have kindly decided to provide those of you who are just venturing, bleary eyed into the world of analytics with a few tips which should help you avoid a few of the traditional trap-doors that can catch out new users, and give you a head start on your competition.
So, without further ado, let us introduce… Analytics School.

Tip #1
Keep track of your 404 Page

This is a really useful one. As we all know, when people try to go to an expired or non-existent page within your site they usually see a 404 page. Having analytics code on that page will allow you to see what people typed to get there as well as what they did when they got there, did they simply leave the site? Did they hit the back button? Did they hit the redirect button (if there is one)?

This information is useful in a couple of ways. Firstly, if a significant number of visitors are going to a particular non-existent page, you might want to consider creating that page and then redirecting its visitors to your home page. You could also create some text for that page explaining that the page doesn’t exist but suggesting some alternatives – with links, naturally. You’d then be able to track the number of people that follow those links.

Tip #2
Classify your Users

Analytics obviously classifies users along all the obvious lines like region, time of day, origin of link, time of month, etc., however, it also allows you to create your own classifications of user using the line of code below…

<script type=”text/javascript”>pageTracker._setVar(’Marketing/PR’);</script>

Once you’ve placed this piece of code on a page you can track users who go to that page, or even more granular, users who click a link or select an option on a form. Those visitors will then be assigned a group name and their movements will be tracked. This is useful because it allows you to customise the data that you receive from analytics to suit your market sector.

In this example, visitors are assigned to a segment according to their selection in a form.

<form onSubmit=”pageTracker._setVar(this.mymenu.options
[this.mymenu.selectedIndex].value);”>
<select name=mymenu>
<option value=”Technical/Engineering”>
Technical/Engineering</option>
<option value=”Marketing/PR”>Marketing/PR</option>
<option value=”Manufacturing”>Manufacturing</option>
<option value=”General Management”>General Management</option>

Still not with me? Let me give you an example…

You run an online sports store that has five different categories; rugby, tennis, football, cricket and general. You put code on each one of these categories to classify the users and over time you start to see that the tennis group spend more money than any other. Using this information, you ramp up the PPC advertising you do on tennis keywords to make this even more pronounced. You then realise that, for some reason, a lot of people leave the tennis group and move back into the general category and buy sports drinks. With this information, you can tailor a specific deal – maybe a free six pack of Lucozade with every Tennis racquet?

Tip #3
Track Outgoing Links & Banner Ads

Very simple and very useful – simply add  the code below to each outgoing link…

<a href=”http://www.example.com” onClick=”javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview(’/outgoing/example.com’);”>

Once tou’ve done this, you’ll be able to track how many users and which kinds of users are following those particular links. This is good because if provides you with that bit more information about the interests of your clients, which allows you to tailor your site to them i.e., if you find a huge amount of people like a link to an article about Rugby (Might as well stick with the sports angle) then it might be a good idea to actually pay for a news feed or series of articles on rugby to actually put on the site.

As a neat fringe benefit, it also allows you to know exactly how beneficial a link from your site is to another site in terms of traffic.

The same code also allows you to track banner ads – you then know exactly how well your advertising clients are doing out of the positioning on your site, which pages offer the most clicks, which group are most likely to click a banner ad etc. This sort of tracking is really useful for setting advertising prices.

Flash banners obey the same principle but require slightly more complex code, see below…

on(release) {
getURL(”javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview
(’/bannerads/advertisername/bannername’);”);
getURL(”http://www.advertisersite.com”);
}

Tip #4

Track Downloads

Using the same principle (but different code) to above, you can keep track of the number of people downloading information, you then, as above, use this to tailor the site to their interests.

The code you ned to do this is…

<a href=”http://www.example.com/files/map.pdf” onClick=”javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview(’/downloads/map’); “>

Tip #5
Track Mail to: Links

Now this really is useful. Conversion tracking only allows you to track enquiries when fed through an order form, or some mechanism with a ‘thank you page,’ to put the code on. However, many pages don’t have such a function, either because it wouldn’t fit in with the design or it’s just not appropriate for the site, instead they rely on a mail to button (or even just a email address link) that opens up the user’s preferred email service.

With analytics you can track this. There are flaws of course, for instance it doesn’t take into account the emails that get started but for whatever reason don’t get finished, also Google has no way of tracking the people who simply copy the email address into an email address bar (yet), but it’s significantly better than nothing.

Here’s the code you’ll need…

<a href=”mailto:[email address]“onClick=”javascript:urchinTracker(’/mailto/jerry’);”>[email address]</a>

Tip #6
Exclude Internal Traffic

How many times have you looked at good analytics data excitedly before realising that the bulk of the impressions are you making changes to the site or checking on things, Analytics can put an end to this. This is particularly good for smaller or more elite companies with fewer visitors – otherwise the stats can be easily thrown off balance by a few clicks from you or your staff.

The function works by excluding a list of IP addresses from being trackable. Literally all you do is put a list of IPs into Analytics, maybe all your staff’s work and home computers and Bob’s your Uncle, they no longer distort your precious data.

Tip #7
Set up Funnels to track the Purchase Route

About the most useful thing I’ve yet discovered in Analytics is the funnels feature – especially when it comes to ecommerce sites. Funnels work by designating a series of page views that when completed in sequence lead to a goal – in most cases a sale.

The best way to use it that I’ve come up with so far is to track your payment pages, simply designate each page in your payment process  as part of the funnel ending with your ‘thank you’ page. Analytics will tell you how the number of people who begin an order with you relates to the number of people who complete one and crucially, at which point they abandoned their purchase.

If you’re looking at a sixty percent fall off on a particular page in your payment process it’s pretty safe bet that something on that page is wrong. You can then inspect that page thoroughly and put the issue right.

This function really is a godsend. If you only do one thing with analytics, make it this.

Tip #8
Find out the value of a visit

Analytics allows you to track ecommerce in other ways as well, such as the amount of money actually spent per visitor to your site. You can also filter this information by visitor source which is very useful indeed when trying to work out your advertising budgets and which form of advertising to actually use.

Tip #9
Compare different Segments

Analytics allows you not only to graph various Segments (page views, time on site) but to compare those metrics to each other. By doing this you get to understand the relationship between two different segments much better.

An interesting one to get you started is comparing impressions with numbers of pages viewed. This should be pretty illuminating as it shows the actual number of people that actually use your site as opposed to the people that get bored with it quickly.

Be warned though, once you get going the segment comparison feature can become very addictive.

Still want more? Well, dont worry, next week we’re introducing a new feature called ‘Analytics Tip of the Week.’ Check back on Friday for the first one.

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To get valuable insight into your analytics, you must segment your data in to sources,  Behavior, and outcome.
This will help you understand the behavior of visitors on your site.
As explained before,  you should never look at analytics in a whole, split it into sections which can be managed and analyzed properly.

Right, lets set this up!
Once you have loaded up Google Analytics, Click the Advanced Segments link on the left side of the screen.

This will show you a “default” list of segments. ( this is the results from the Google Analytics team, a large sheet of paper and a lot of brainstorming!)

You can either use one of these “default” options, or you could choose one of these as a starting point. (click on copy and customize from there)

An example of this would be to copy new visitors, and set it to show you only new visitors from France.

You could alternately click on the “create new custom segment”
I will run through this in my blog next week!

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Essentially it’s a really good way of judging the aesthetic, dare I say artistic, side of your site in purely scientific, commercial terms. This comes in handy when you want to cut short long tedious debates between designers, by simply asking, are we making money with this content?

There is, of course, a limit to how much you can engineer these complex, inherently creative elements to deliver results, but at least now you know when you’ve hit upon something that’s working.

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Essentially, all they’ve done is translate the existing Google Analytics code into a new programming language (ActionScript 3, if you must know) that makes it much more straightforward for the programme to analyse trends with your website’s flash elements to help you optimise their effectiveness.

The translation has retained all the features of the original version, so fans of ‘event tracking,’ ‘campaign,’ and pageview needn’t worry.

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Custom Reporting has been improved, now allowing you to view more data and customise the report properly. If you’re more interested in the geographical makeup of your users, you can skew the report towards that, it you want to find out about their referring source you can.

Perhaps most interesting of all, you can now integrate Analytics with your AdSense account, allowing you to view traffic information and financial information in the same, easy to use portal.

These updates will go a long way towards making Google Analytics the premier reporting tool. If you’re a user, stay tuned for some huge improvements, if you’re not, think about becoming one.

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Keyword Popularity
Impressions show you the number of times your advert has been displayed.
Clicks show you the amount of clicks the advert has received (and you paid for)
Click Through Rate(CTR) is the percentage of times a searcher clicked on your advert.
By looking at these, you can get a good idea of how often people search for a particular keyword, and when being supplied with your advert, how likely they are to click it.
If you want higher click through rate, you should consider bidding for a higher position or possibly rewriting your advert so this it is as relevant to the search as possible.

Keywords that make money
First click in the revenue column to bring the highest revenue keywords to the top.
These keywords may or may not be your highest ROI keywords.
If the ROI shows you are loosing or not making money, you might want to try lowering you bid price. (this will lower your cost per click and increase your ROI)

Analytics Feedback
Keeping an eye on AdWords reports will let you see how effectively your AdWords campaigns run.
Making these small changes to your account (keywords, bid price, and advert text) and tracking how these changes work for you, you will be able to optimise your AdWords campaigns for maximum ROI.

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Keywords that lose money.

To identifying the keywords that will lose you money, first click on the ROI Column header to bring the lowest ROI keywords to the top of the table.
Are there any 100% ROI keywords? These are the keywords that lost you all your money!Before making any changes to the keyword in your AdWords, you need to make sure have enough data on these. (A lot of the time the keywords that have -100% ROI have only received a few clicks)
If you have only spent a few pence on the keyword you might want to wait to see if pays off.
However, if you have received lots of clicks, and spent a significant amount of money you can increase your overall ROI by deleting it.
If you have a 0% ROI this means you earned in revenue the same amount you spent
If you have a 100% ROI this means you doubled your investment. (E.g. If you spent £10 and made £20)
You can get 500% to 100% ROI, this means that your revenue is much higher than your cost.

Make sure you have enough data

Checking your AdWords reports and making changes daily will not give you an accurate representation of how your account is running. You need to sit back and get more data to get a real perspective before making decisions.
Considering return customers: Think about customers that find you via your AdWords and return at a later date to make a purchase. (You’ll miss repeat conversions if you sent your date range too short.)
It is very important to make sure you set the date range no lower than your sales cycle!
I advise testing out different date ranges to see how this affects your ROI. Test your most recent days/weeks/months and look a whole year’s data. This will give you much more informative information about your AdWords and what you need to change.

Next week i will conclude on ‘Getting the best ROI from Adwords’

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There are many reports to be looked at in Google Analytics some being more important than others.
One report in particular, can show you the ROI for each keyword your bidding on, letting you keep the ones that work and dropping those that don’t.

Step 1:
Linking your AdWords account to your Analytics account.
After you have linked you Adwords to your Analytics, you can then see you spends for each keyword. (as well as other costs) in the reports generated.
Now your accounts are linked together, you can view keyword spending with how your visitors navigate your  site.

Step 2:
Goals:
If you have an e-commerce site, your return will be from sales, however if your selling a product, than what are your goal values going to be?
In this case, you should put an intelligent value down. So for example, if you know that every 100 enquiries results in a £300 sale, than you could put a goal value of £3 for the enquiry form being filled in.

Step 3:
Analyzing Your AdWords:
Under the traffic sources section you will see AdWords Campaign reports, this is how you track your ROI on keywords.
Clicking on the Campaign will open up a view of your AdGroups, and clicking on AdGroup will open up the keywords.
Now you can click the clicks tab to have a look at the ROI data.
Tip: If there is no cost data, make sure you have linked your AdWords correctly, and enabled the auto tagging.
Tip: If revenue is nothing, make sure that Goals have a value, also check that you have enabled your shopping cart reports.

Check back next week when I shall continue this article.

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So how do you do it? Well, if you use Wordpress then good news, it’s as easy as simply installing the DoFollow plugin. Other blogging platforms make things a little more complicated though there is a way to make it happen for any blog. There are too many to go into here but this page contains a comprehensive list that should answer the specifics.

Once you’ve converted you can submit your page to the DoFollow lists mentioned in yesterday’s blog, which will obviously help greatly with your marketing. However, be warned, not every SEO is as ethical as we are. You will get spam. Be sure to monitor your board and, if necessary, play policeman.

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In order to stop this you would normally add a filter to Google Analytics for your ip (if it was static), but how would you go about doing this if you have a dynamic IP – which most every day broadband users will have?

Well, the solution lies in using a cookie as opposed to using IP addresses to filter out your computer. The idea behind this is to set a cookie and then use filtering system to look for the cookie and the filter out and ignore all data from the computer/s storing the cookie.

To set the cookie you need to create a new page on your domain with the following code:

<body onLoad=”javascript:__utmSetVar(’no_report’)”>

This code is in addition to the tracking code added at the bottom of all pages on the site. The next step would be to visit this site from any machine you want to exclude in order to set the cookie.

The last step is quite simply creating the filter that will look for the cookie and exclude the data. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Click ‘Analytics Settings.’
2. Click ‘Filter Manager.’
3. Click ‘Add Filter.’ The Create New Filter page appears.
4. Enter a Filter Name for this filter (maybe use ‘dynamic IP filter).
5. From the Filter Type drop-down list, select Exclude.
6. From the filter field select: User Defined
7. From the filter pattern, select: no_report
8. Make case sensitive: No
9. Under the ‘Apply Filter to Website Profiles’ section, select the Available Website Profiles to which this filter will be applied.
10. Click Add to move the selected profiles into the ‘Selected Website Profiles’ list.
11. Click Finish to create this filter and start applying it to incoming data

The only bit left to do here is If you use multiple browsers, you will need to visit the newly created set cookie page from each browser you use as they all store cookies in different locations.

I hope this is useful!

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