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Why You Need Social Media Analytics

If you do any kind of online marketing at all, then you need to measure your results. The best way to do that is by using analytics software. Google Analytics is the most popular free analytics tool online. Many Web marketers have opted instead to pay for a third-party solution rather than allow Google to keep tabs of what they are doing. Either way, analytics software is a useful tool.

It’s just as useful in social media as it is in search.

Recently, Twitter has acquired its own analytics service. That’s good news for Twitter users.

The reason you want to use analytics with your Twitter is because Twitter has become such a useful marketing tool. And you can be a lot more effective in using it if you know how successful your tweets are. That is particularly true if you can measure click throughs on your links, retweets, and which short URL services you use are most effective.

While Twitter is important, other social media services like LinkedIn and Facebook are equally important. And I envision there someday being a social media analytics tool as effective as Google Analytics that will allow you to measure results across all of your social media. Maybe Backtweets, owned by Backtype, or a similar service, will be that tool. But one thing is for sure. Social media analytics is as necessary as search analytics and it’s just a matter of time before someone introduces the breakthrough service we all need.

Do You Use Heat Maps?

Heat maps are useful web analytics tools. If you are into metrics – and you should be – then you might consider using a heat map to help you plan and develop your website beyond its current incarnation.

So what can a heat map tell you? A lot, actually.

One of the most useful bits of information you’ll get from a heat map is knowing which parts of your web pages are the hottest. That is, where do visitors’ eyes go?

The heat map gives you a graphical representation, in colors, regarding the behavior of your website visitors. For instance, your heat map will display the hottest parts of your website in red, the next hottest parts in yellow, then the lesser hot parts in green and blue, and so on. When you see red splotches on the heat map, you know those are the parts of your web pages where visitor eyeballs travel. That’s where you want your most important links.

Another thing a heat map will tell you is which links are clicked on the most. If you have a part of your web page that is the hottest yet your hottest link is in another section of the web page, then that should tell you something. Maybe that hot link would be even hotter if you moved it.

I am sold on heat maps. You should be too. They tell a real story where your website is concerned, and you can take that story and use it to improve your website for your visitors.

Why Page Load Time Is Critical

Google Analytics recently announced that they’ve started tracking page load time. This is great news for website owners and there are a few good reasons why you want to start measuring page load time (if you haven’t already).

1. Conversion Rate – The first reason you want to measure page load time is because it can affect your conversion rate. A slower loading website or landing page means more bounced traffic. As a result, you’ll make fewer conversions.
2. Lower PPC Quality Score – A slow loading landing page will also affect your PPC quality score. That could mean lower ad placements. Your competitors will fill the gap and push you down while taking traffic that was meant for you.
3. Lower Search Engine Rankings – Google’s organic search results are based in part on page load time. All other things being equal, if one of two competing websites has a slower loading landing page, then that page will likely rank lower. Increase your page load times and you’ll see an increase in search engine rankings.

Is is important to measure your page load times. If you have slow loading web pages on your website that are dragging the rest of your site down, then you should fix those ASAP. You can now measure your page load times individually, across your entire website, within sections of your website, geographically, according to traffic sources, and by browser type. Don’t pass up this opportunity to make your website better than ever before and increase your search engine ranking opportunities.

Google Webmaster Tools Gives Analytics Some Oomph

If you are a keen user of Google’s Webmaster Tools then you’ll already be aware of some of the new features. To begin with, users can now link their Google Analytics sites to their Webmaster Tools sites. This will certainly make life a little easier with many of the important SEO tools all on one page.

What is more interesting is the updated top queries section in Webmaster Tools. This has been expanded from the 100 queries limit to a virtual unlimited number of queries. To add further oomph, you can open each query to see how many times your pages appeared in search results, and how many times your search listing was clicked.

This all makes interesting reading, especially if you collect this data for long term comparisons. If those stats aren’t enough, you can break them down even further to show which pages were listed for each search phrase, that page’s search position, how many times it appeared in search results, and how many times it was clicked through. You can also define a date range which can be important for comparing before and after situations.

What makes this feature handy is that you are able to see which of your own pages are competing against each other and whether or not this is putting your site at a disadvantage. Often, while pages may complete against each other, if the traffic is converting, then you may need to look at the issue favourably. However, if the same page is appearing, but with different URLs, then you may have a duplicate content issue that could cost you in the future.

Analytics are important for measuring both the success of your website and the success of your SEO and social media marketing campaigns. For a free tool, Google Webmaster Tools has a lot to offer most webmasters.

Does Your Website Have A Peak Hour?

Do you know which days of the week are the busiest for your website? Or which hours for that matter? Being able to tell when your website’s peak hour is can be a big help in your marketing tactics – and the data is easy to find as well.

Most web hosting packages include a small program called AWStats. This program will give you a graphical view of  what is happening on your site when it comes to traffic. You can see a breakdown of traffic based on days of the week, hours of the day, and days of the month. Using this data, you can determine if one day is more popular than another, and if there is a particular time of the day when traffic is heavier.

You can also use this data to compare your own activities. If you publish a blog post at 6pm each day, does your traffic peak at 7pm? Likewise, if you are busy on social media at a particular time of day, is that reflected by a spike in traffic around that time?

Some websites receive more hits due to the nature of the niche.  A pizza site may get more traffic between 6pm and 10pm while a site offering recipes may get more hits in the afternoon. If you are in business, you can use this data to try and increase your business. One method frequently used is to offer discounts during the quieter periods – these can be promoted through Twitter and Facebook.

Your website is no different to a bricks and mortar business. It has quiet times and busy times. To be successful, you may need to find a way of increasing your traffic during the quiet times.  Web analytics are not tools to purely measure the success of your SEO campaigns – they can also be used to make real business decisions.

Web Analytics Continues To Improve

While much has been said about the changes to search and social in 2010, one of the biggest changes, from an SEO perspective, has been the changes in web analytics. This is particularly true of the Google stable of Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics and even the Google Adsense reports. For a free set of tools, the pairing of Google’s Webmaster Tools and Analytics provides all the basic information that most website owners need.

Webmaster Tools has become a must have for all website owners. Simple jobs like defining the region in the world that your site targets is an important option. Submitting sitemaps, reviewing crawler access and pages indexed is also valuable information.

One of the new features in 2010 was the inclusion of search statistics. Which keyword phrases appeared in search results, their position in search results, and how many clicks each search phrase received is a powerful set of statistics. Many website owners get quite a surprise when they review those statistics. Keywords and phrases they have optimised are often overshadowed by longer tail phrases – phrases they have probably not even thought about.

While there are reported to be several hundred different factors used to determine search results, it is interesting to note the correlation between search impressions, search positions and click through rates.  I have noticed on several sites that increased click through rates seem to have a slight affect on search position.

By making modifications to areas such as meta descriptions, and you can often improve those click through rates and your search position over time. Without good web analytics, you are not aware of data such as long tail phrases, your search position, and your click through rates. These are important, especially if you want to measure the effect of any changes you make to your website.

Web Analytics And Tracking Codes

Web analytics is an important tool in any online business owner’s toolbox. Knowing which marketing channels are delivering the best quality traffic can help any web site owner when it comes to decision making and allocating funds for further marketing. It’s pointless expending time, energy, and perhaps money on a channel that is failing to deliver, especially if that time and energy could be better spent further developing a channel that was delivering. Tracking codes are just little addition to inbound links that help with those analytics.

The principle behind tracking is very simple. By adding a code to a link, you are making that link unique when it comes to web analytics software. Because that link is unique, it can be recorded and reported. At the end of any marketing campaign you can call up your analytics report to see which links have delivered the most traffic. You should also be able to see at a glance which links have converted and so produced results.

Tracking codes are easy to create. Simply add a forward slash to the end of your inbound link and follow that with a question mark and a unique code.  If you were wanting to see how much traffic comes from your blog, then you could add /?blog to the end of every link from your blog to your website. You can make each link unique by changing the code slightly, for example, /?blog1  or /?bloghome.

It’s easy to add to links you want to measure and can often be added to banner advertisements, some pay-per-click advertising, images, videos, and of course general text links. The data provided should help you to refine your marketing efforts, either to increase traffic and conversions from channels that are failing, or by concentrating on channels that are delivering.

Web Analytics – Use It To Reassess Your Web Site

Web analytics are an essential SEO tool for gauging the performance of your web site.  Used in conjunction with sales data, you can identify which pages are converting, which pages are producing the best profit margins, and which pages are performing poorly. The latter is an important statistic to review, especially if those pages are receiving their fair share of traffic.

Before proceeding, I think it’s important to assess the desired outcomes of pages. Every page does not have to be an income earning page. For example, FAQ pages are not designed specifically to deliver sales. Many actually follow sales pages. However, there are going to be pages that have been created with the intent of funneling visitors through to a sale. These are the pages that need to perform well, or be reassessed.

There are several areas that need to be considered:

• is the data up to date or does it need refreshing?
• is there a clear call to action that takes the visitor to the next step?
• does the page load quickly, look good, and have good navigation structure?
• does the information on the page really reflect the keyword or search term used to find the page?

That last point is often one of the main reasons behind high bounce rates. You should also evaluate whether the keyword is a sales related keyword, or is it more of an information gathering keyword? It is a very important differential that should be considered for every page that is related to the conversion side of incoming traffic.

Web analytics will tell you which pages your visitors are arriving on, what search terms are being used to find your pages, and what actions they take while on your page. Use that information to find poorly performed pages that, with a little work, could help to boost your business.

Do You Rely Too Much On Web And Analytics Tools?

You can use all the best optimisation tools in the business while recording statistics from the best analytics tools around, and still go broke overnight. There are some sections of the online community that treat these tools like gods with an unerring belief that the use of these tools can drive success.

There is no denying that search engine optimisation tools can help you to find some direction with your search and/or social marketing. However, they will never deliver success. There are for more factors involved than just finding a good set of keywords, for example. In fact, in many cases a good set of keywords could turn out to be a dud set of keywords if they don’t convert.

Some of the factors that need to be considered include:

the niche – some niches just don’t convert and when they do it is at a fairly low volume. Think babies’ nappies – you may find a great set of keywords, but in the end, mums and dads will still buy them from the supermarket;

your web page – if your web page doesn’t have appeal then no amount of tools will convert traffic into sales. Most online shoppers use a page’s look as their first indication of quality – poor website, poor business, they move on;

your sales pages – right keywords, attractive web pages, poor sales pages. Again, another turn off;

your reputation – if you have a poor reputation, especially if you have several unanswered reviews in local listings, then potential customers may not even arrive on your site, no matter how good it is;

your product’s reputation – ditto. If your product has a poor reputation, potential customers won’t be visiting and when they do chances are they will move on.

There is a big difference between using tools to help guide you through the online world and relying on those tools to do all the work for you. We see tools such as article or directory submission automation. Sure, they save hours of time, but those submissions are generally too poor quality sites. You would be better spending a little time submitting your site by hand to a few quality sites or article directories.

You could say the same about web analytics. This is useful information and can help you to identify pages that do (or don’t) attract traffic and convert. It’s no good just identifying these pages – you then need to do something about them. Tools are just that – tools. You still have to have the hard yards as a business person.

Web Analytics – If I Had To Chose One Free Tool

Web analytics are essential to the success of any website. If you cannot measure your performance and, more importantly, measure your progress then you are working blind in an environment where the smallest changes can make big differences. We also live in a world where time is at a premium so if you were pushed and had to chose just one free web analytics tool, which one would it be?

After careful thought, the clear winner from my perspective is Google Webmaster Tools. Twelve months ago I would probably have recommended Google Analytics but with the addition of search data in the Webmaster Tools site, it now stands out. Having data on how many visitors arrive on your site and where they come from is important. However, knowing where you are ranking for each keyword; knowing how often your keywords appear in different positions; and knowing what traffic is flowing from each position is even more important.

This data can be clearly tracked and provides an indication as to whether or not your search engine optimisation program is proving to be successful. One of the important statistics is that of average search position. This shows at a glance where each of your keywords are ranking. It also show where you are ranking for phrases that you may not have included in your original keyword list. These are often opportunities that, with further optimisation, could lead to even more traffic to your sites.

Other data that Google’s Webmaster Tools provides includes the number of pages indexed, problems that Google has encountered while spidering your site, and advice on which areas may need addressing. You can also advise Google through this tool as to which region you want various parts of your website to target, important aspects of SEO if your site targets multiple regions.

While there are many paid tools that do a good job, getting the data from the search engine itself is very handy. For a free tool, Google Webmaster Tools provides a wealth of information.  If you had to chose one free web analytics tool, which one would you select?