Google Analytics & SEO

Ben Rogers

Contacting me

• www.twitter.com/attacatben • Skype: attacatben• LinkedIn: Ben Rogers• ben@attacat.co.uk• 0131 220 1441• www.attacat.co.uk/contact-us

seo

ppc

social media

website thinkin

g

website analytic

s

The Business Case

• two ways to double website sales

or

What is this Google Analytics anyway...

• Sexy graphs of what people are doing on your website

• It’s free! Zip! £0! FA! But Why?

Using the data

• What sort of questions do you want to answer about your own websites?

Key Terms

Accessing and using your data effectively

Hits, Visitors & Visits

• Hits (don’t use!)– Download of a single file from the

server– 1 page can actually show as multiple

hits• HTML files, CSS files, images

• Visitor– Visitors are unique– Visitors are tracked using 1st party

cookies– One person could show as several

visitors – if they are using a different computer for example

• Visits– The number of times someone has

visited your site– Sessions time out after 30 minutes of

inactivity. Activity after this will record a new visit.

• New vs. Returning Visitors– Visitors are tracked with cookies, if

the cookie exists they are retuning if not they are new

Page Views & Unique Page Views

• A Page View is defined as a view of a page on your site that is being tracked by the Analytics tracking code. If a visitor hits reload after reaching the page, this will be counted as an additional page view. If a user navigates to a different page and then returns to the original page, a second page view will be recorded as well.

• A Unique Page View, as seen in the Top Content report, aggregates page views that are generated by the same user during the same session. A unique page view represents the number of sessions during which that page was viewed one or more times.

GGA: Google Analytics Seminar

Key Terms – Bounce Rate

• Bounce Rate– Bounce rate is the percentage of

single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page.

GGA: Google Analytics Seminar

Key Terms – Exit Rate

• Exit Rate– Exit rate shows the percentage of

visitors who left your site at the named page

Exit Pages

• Where people get fed-up & leave!

• What should you pay attention to...

• ‘Utility’ pages are the ones to watch– About Us– Terms & Conditions– Contact Us– Delivery Information– FAQs

Setting Up Goals in Google Analytics

Goal setting

• Take your KPIs & set them as goals in Analytics

• Sales, downloads, email links, contact form submissions, donations, video content views, newsletter registrations, time on site, key page views, visits even

• Create funnels for linear progressions to a KPI (e.g. checkout process)

Google Conversion University

• Lots of useful help files & presentations

• Creating Goals:• http://services.google.com/analytics/breeze/en/goals/in

dex.html

Goals & Funnels – before

• Slides removed

Want to learn more?!

Google Conversion University

• http://www.google.com/support/conversionuniversity

• Learning centre to study for the Google Analytics Individual Qualification (IQ)

• Good resource for basic navigation, interpreting reports & in-depth analysis

Books

• Great Google Analytics ‘handbook’

• Great for more advanced web analytics & theory

Blogs

• http://www.advanced-web-metrics.com/blog• http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/• http://analytics.blogspot.com/

Who, What, When, Why

What numbers & stats can't tell you

Putting the Why into the What

• Google Analytics can help you understand what your visitors did – Not Why!

• Use other tools to help close the loop– Low cost usability testing– Google Website Optimiser– Surveys

• Was this article helpful• Ask for feedback

Low cost usability testing

• Rocket Surgery Made Easy – Steve Krug

• Simple, quick wins, ongoing exercise, fast, cheap!

The HiPPO in the room

• Highest Paid Person’s Opinion (wins)

“Change that picture on the home page to something

else.”

From: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3559/3447007036_e8a612b89d.jpg

Results – 20% uplift

• Slides removed

Crazy Egg - $9/month

ClickTale – from $99/month

4Q Perceptions - free

search engine optimisation

A Brief History of Web Search

• http://vimeo.com/11111177

what is SEO?

what is SEO?

• great internet marketing leads to great search engine rankings

• on-page & off-page factors– content– page structure– site architecture– usability/accessibility– links– website speed– Google products data?– the social factor

Ranking Factors?

On Page Ranking Factors?

Why blog – the expert opinion!

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=livzJTIWlmY

Keyword Research

30 second presentationBy ?

Take-aways

• It’s about 100’s, 1000’s or even 10,000’s of phrases• Very easy to leave a large chunk of business on the

table.

Your Keyword Universe

• Descriptive terms – e.g. Showers• Brands – e.g. Mira• Adjectives e.g. Cheap Showers• Geography – e.g. Glasgow Shower Shop• Misspellings – e.g. Mirar• Use of – e.g. Shower fitting• Related – e.g. bathroom mould

Keyword Research

• Brainstorm with Colleagues• Look at competitors sites• Ask existing customers• Website logs & Analytics• In site search logs• Use keyword tools

AdWords Keyword

Tool

SEO & Blogging

Why Blogging is Good for SEO

• Many organisations who blog, enjoy good search engine rankings. Is this because Google thinks blogs deserve to get a ranking boost? Probably not.

• The ranking boosts are more indirect. It just so happens that blogging encourages a lot of practices that tick the search engine algorithms’ boxes.

Good Quality Informational Content

• Made up statistic of the day!

• Informational searching involves looking for a specific fact or topic

• Navigational searching seeks to locate a specific web site

• Transactional searching looks for information related to buying a particular product or service

• Research by: Penn State Uni

80% - 10% - 10%

Fresh Content

• Ranking factor?– Sites or Pages

• Attacat Google Caffeine experiment

• “way to get blog comments”

Depth of Content

• What will rank better?

• Page about mugs• Site with lots of pages about different aspects of mugs

& general mug chit chat

Search Engine Friendly Content

• Easy for the search engines to index

• Well considered site architecture for optimisation

• Tags & categories– Tags are keywords & searchy– Categories are navigational & structural

9 Tips

• In approximate reverse order!

• Update URLs– www.blog.com/?post=1&articleid=3– www.blog.com/this-is-my-blog-post-name

• Full version of your post is available in ONE place alone– See Attacat Brain snippets

• Linking– Link to other posts & pages – Use anchor text

• i.e. Write something that includes your keywords & make the link from them.

9 Tips

• Use tags & categories– Tags are keywords & searchy– Categories are navigational & structural

• Build the blog into your main site – not as a separate entity

• Unless you have a good business decision behind it!

• Use a leading blogging platform– Wordpress.org (self hosted)– Posterous, Blogger, Wordpress.com, Tumblr (in that order!)

9 Tips

• Market your blog!– Sharing buttons– Feedburner– Press releases (for great posts!)

• Quality links• Exposure to media• Qualified traffic• Search engine exposure

• Write GREAT CONTENT

SEO is Easy

Because all you have to do is:• Create a good site;• Include the phrases that you want to be found for within

the copy of your website;• get lots of relevant sites to link to you;• get users engaging with your site.

SEO is Flippin’ Difficult

Because you have to:• Create a good site;• Include the phrases that you want to be found for within

the copy of your website;• get lots of relevant sites to link to you;• get users engaging with your site.

DIY? Or leave it to the “experts”?

CEO, designers, hr department,

developers, copy writers,

R&D, marketing department,

management team, customer service department, sales

department, corporate comms, operations, it department

Ask me Questions!

• www.twitter.com/attacatben • Skype: attacatben• LinkedIn: Ben Rogers• ben@attacat.co.uk• 0131 220 1441• www.attacat.co.uk/contact-us