Web analytics, SEO and social channels: Through the marketer’s lens

The Basics

The goal of web analytics is to measure the success of a given website. And the success of a website is ultimately dictated by the behavior of its users. Therefore, the idea behind analytics is to track users as they interact with a website in order to shed light on any strengths and weaknesses within that website. From there, marketers can use analytics data to make the appropriate changes to the website.

The following paper will give a brief summary of web analytics and a few related topics that are crucial to understand as a contemporary marketing professional. As marketing momentum shifts from brick and mortar storefronts to the online marketplace, it is the marketer’s job to understand how and why this is happening, and capitalize on it moving forward. 

Web Metrics

Web analytics data is comprised largely of web metrics. Metrics are the numbers and figures that illustrate the activity taking place on a website. There are a huge number of metrics that can be tracked, so the business of selecting the most insightful metrics becomes very important. And as Kaushik points out, the simplest of metrics can actually be the most insightful. (Digital model, 2013)

The most basic metric is unique visitors. Unique visitors are a representation of the number of people who visited your site during a certain time period. It may seem rather surface level at first, however, unique visitors is a gage that reveals which promotional efforts are translating into more visitors and which are not.

Visits constitutes the amount of visitors who interacted with a website and requested one or more pages.

Again, page views is a very simple metric, and yet it can quickly and easily reveal which pages are working with users and which are not.

An event is any recorded action that has a date and time assigned to it, making it ideal for tracking. An event includes things like downloads, ad clicks, and video views.

These are four foundational web metrics that are key in understanding the more advanced concepts of web analytics. The next challenge is the task of tracking all these various metrics. Which will be tackled in the following section.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a powerful web analytics tool that is utilized by millions of marketers, business people, and content developers. Google analytics can be used to yield a host of valuable information regarding how users interact with all sorts of different websites. It tracks and organizes web data into actionable research, and does so free of charge. This has made Google Analytics one of the most popular web analytics tools in existence.

Google analytics goals allow marketers to track the flow of users by setting up and monitoring specific interactions within your site. Goals can give marketers an idea of what users are doing during their time on a site, and what aspects of your site are adding or taking away value.

The goals that one chooses to setup within Google Analytics depends heavily on website type and the desired business outcomes. Kaushik stresses the importance of identifying concrete business objectives before picking your analytics goals. Essentially, your digital goals will need to grow out of the basic goals of your business. (Digital model, 2013)

Business Objective (Offline)	Google Analytics Goal (Website)
Create B2B network                            >	>  Capture contact information
Increase awareness of new products  >	>  Generate downloads of product guide
Generate social media following          >	>  Engage users via social tab

Once one has determined their goals for a website, it’s important to then determine corresponding key performance indicators. For instance, in the table above, we would need to elaborate on our goals by identifying which KPIs indicate whether or not our goal is being achieved. (Digital model, 2013)

Google Analytics Goal	Corresponding KPI
Capture contact information                     >	>  Conversion of sign-up form
Generate downloads of product guide      >	> Number of downloads
Engage users via social tab                      >	> Conversion  of social tab

Once you have defined your goals and KPI’s you are ready to analyze your conversions. A conversion is any measurable, completed activity on your website. For instance, downloading a product guide would be a completed conversion. Every time an ecommerce site makes a sale, that is a completed conversion.  Ultimately, goal conversions will be understood by examining your conversion rate. Conversion rate represents the amount of unique visitors who completed a certain task out of the total number of unique visitors.

In order to get a more accurate look at conversion rate, there are a variety of customizable elements within Google Analytics. Kaushik notes that segmentation is key when evaluating your conversions. Seeing a figure that represents outcomes over all unique visitors doesn’t really tell us much. What about outcomes vs. unique visitors from a certain region? Or what about outcomes vs. unique visitors coming from a certain URL? These sort of adjustments could reveal some pleasant surprises for your business. (Conversion basics, 2013)

Along the same lines as segmentation, marketers can also utilize filters in order to generate more focused data. Filters can be used to focus on data coming from specific domains. One of the most common uses of the filter tool is to exclude data from internal IP addresses. In other words, it can be used to ensure that traffic generated from your own company and employees is not reported.

While goal conversions are a very valuable tool in web analytics, the addition of funnels to your mix can add much deeper insights. Funnels take into account the various steps that it takes in order to reach a completed conversion. A user may have to click on a number of pages before they make a purchase or click on a download. Within this process, there may be any number problems impeding the completion of the intended goal. Funnels are a function that allows marketers to isolate each step and identify any problem areas. Are there any technical bugs? Misleading copy? Where are we losing users? Basically, funnels will reveal any evident level of confusion that seems to be hindering your goal conversions.

Within Google Analytics, one can input the URLs of each page of a funnel which is essential in determining the funnel conversion rate. The funnel conversion rate represents the percentage of visits that included a click of the first page in the funnel and the final page of the funnel, or the goal page. (KISSmetrics, 2013)

Reports

Google Analytics data is organized and presented in the form of reports. There are a great number of reports available to Google Analytics users, each dealing with specific areas of website information. Reports are organized into categories like visitor, traffic, content, and keyword. Users also have the opportunity to create their own custom reports.

Social Media Analytics

Google Analytics and similar analytics programs provide an excellent solution to tracking basic website data, but what about social media? How do marketers measure the effectiveness of their social media efforts?

Luckily, there are a number of social media tools available to today’s marketer. There is even a plugin that is compatible with Google Analytics (Lesson 3, 2013).

When considering a social analytics approach, it is important to keep in mind that the ultimate goal of social media is to create engagement and interaction between consumer and brand (Lake, 2009).

With this in mind, we can start to identify some of the key performance indicators within the social media realm. In social media terms, engagement translates into comments, shares, followers, and posts, among others. These are the sorts of things marketers want to look at as they begin to track social media.

Search Engine Optimization

Search engines utilize spiders to retrieve and index web pages from the Internet. SEO is the process of making adjustments to your website in order to generate a higher ranking in search engine results pages or SERPs. The goal behind SEO is to produce more traffic to a website. If a site appears on the 20^th page of search engine results, then it has a very low chance of being clicked on. SEO involves a variety of on-page and off-page techniques to boost a sites search engine rankings to increase the likelihood of being clicked on. For sites that rely on traffic to generate revenue, SEO is a necessity. In fact, SEO is so crucial for marketers, that the temptation to employ exploitative techniques threatens the fabric of SERPs.

Keyword/Phrase Selection

Keyword selection is a critical step in the pursuit of higher search rankings. Keywords and phrases are terms built into your website design that mirror the most common search terms from web users. When selected properly, keywords ensure that your site has the exact content that people are searching for. Search engines will recognize this, and boost the site’s search engine rankings.

There are a variety of keyword tools available for determining the highest volume keywords. And while volume is an extremely important indicator for a keyword, there are other less obvious determinants that can lead to quality keyword selection. 

First, marketers should focus on incorporating the best converting keywords to their sites. Which keywords are synonymous with customers who are ready to act?

And second, are your keywords related to your content? There is no sense in choosing keywords based on volume alone. If they are loosely related to content, this may succeed in generating traffic in the short term but your site will suffer when it comes to converting. (Enge, n.d.)

Off-page Techniques

Whereas on page optimization involves manipulating the elements of a website to produce a more search engine-friendly destination, off-page optimization leverages outside promotional channels to grow the popularity of a website.

Link Building

One of the most significant contributors to search engine rankings is link building. Search engines will evaluate a website based on the number and significance of the external links that lead to the target site (Lesson 8, 2013). Links can be purchased, exchanged, or generated organically by producing compelling content. There are a few factors that determine the effectiveness of a link.

A link from a popular site is worth far more to search engines than a link from an unknown site. Websites that have links from popular websites have a much easier time gaining trust from search engines. (Moz, 2013)

In addition to a link’s popularity, the degree to which a link is topic-specific goes a long with way with search engines. For instance, a dietary supplement site that links with a health food distributor is a very topic-specific link. These outlets belong to the same community, and matter a lot more than links from outside the community.

Blackhat Techniques

If you are willing to risk penalization from search engines, one can take a blackhat approach to link building. The practice of building link farms and dummy pages that link back to the target site is a common practice that produces a high amount of phony links that, when undetected, can boost search engine rankings quickly and affordably.

Social Channels

The popularity of a website does not rely entirely on the notion of SEO, these days there are a variety of social channels that help get the word out. Some of the most powerful social channels are Google Adwords and Facebook Ads.  In 2012, it was reported that Google had a global advertising reach of just over 2 billion users, while Facebook had a reach of 900 million. (E-telligence, 2013)

There are a few points of contention between these advertising channels. First, a lot of marketers would argue that Google Adwords has a far superior audience in terms of their intent to buy. Often times, Google users are on Google because they are actively pursuing a purchase. They are farther down on the sales funnel. Facebook is comprised of an audience that may have no intention of purchasing anything. They are simply there to communicate with friends.

However, proponents of Facebook Ads would argue that although Facebook’s audience may not be as “ready to buy,” Facebook’s platform allows for superior segmenting, ensuring that ads are being seen by the right people. Facebook allows marketers to hone in on their audience on the basis of demographics, psychographics and geography. You can target specific age groups, or key in on interests and lifestyles (Carter, 2010).

Conclusion

For marketers, the advantages of utilizing web analytics, search engine optimization and social channels are plentiful. There are so many techniques and tools out there that almost any kind of website with any kind of goal can benefit from the use of web analytics. However, what it all boils down to for many, is marketing accountability and ROI. Conducting marketing activities online allows for far more measurability than traditional marketing. With web analytics, marketers can directly attribute marketing dollars to rises in sales and engagement. This is an attribute that sits very well with business people.

References

Kaushik, A. (2013). Digital marketing and measurement model. Retrieved 21 December 2013 from http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/digital-marketing-and-measurement-model/

Kaushik, A. (2013). Conversion rate basics & best practices. . Retrieved 21 December 2013 from http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/digital-marketing-and-measurement-model/

KISSmetrics. (2013). Google analytics funnel conversion guide. Retrieved 21 December 2013 from http://blog.kissmetrics.com/conversion-funnel-survival-guide/

Enge, E. (N.d.). The art of keyword selection. Retrieved 22 December 2013 from http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/the-art-of-keyword-selection.shtml

WVU Staff. (2013). Lesson 8: SEO/ On page optimization. Retrieved 22 December 2013 from https://learn.wvu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_group=courses&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2FdisplayLearningUnit%3Fcourse_id%3D_1678_1%26content_id%3D_102557_1%26framesetWrapped%3Dtrue

Moz. (2013). Growing popularity & links. Retrieved 22 December 2013 from http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/growing-popularity-and-links

WVU Staff. (2013). Lesson 3: Social media analytics & advertising channels. Retrieved 22 December 2013 from https://learn.wvu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_group=courses&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2FdisplayLearningUnit%3Fcourse_id%3D_1678_1%26content_id%3D_102557_1%26framesetWrapped%3Dtrue

Lake, C. (2009, October 30). 35 social media kpis to help measure engagement. Econsultancy Blog. Retrieved on March 23, 2012 from http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/4887-35-social-media-kpis-to-help-measure-engagement.

E-telligence. (2013). Google Adwords vs. Facebook Ads [Infographic]. Retrieved 11 November 2013 from http://visual.ly/google-adwords-vs-facebook-ads

Carter, B. (2013). Facebook advertising vs. Google adwords. Retrieved 11 November 2013 from http://www.searchenginejournal.com/facebook-advertising-vs-google-adwords/25532/

Nike utilizes wearable tech to advance data collection techniques

Nike’s investment in television and print advertising has dropped by 40% in the last three years, while Nike spent nearly 800 million in non-traditional advertising last year. That means paid Internet search ads, interactive elements, big data and social media. Revenue has responded quite favorably to the advertising shift as Nike continues to show huge gains moving forward.

Nike came to the realization that today’s media landscape allows a retailer to better serve their consumers. Through advanced web analytics techniques, you can get to know your consumers better, and you can communicate with your consumer better.

Although they were a little late to the party, Nike is now fully committed to becoming not just a shoe and apparel company, but a technology company as well.

As a result of this digital onslaught, Nike’s ecommerce sales rose 32% in the fiscal year 2013 (Brohan, 2013).

Below I will explore some of the steps Nike is taking to further their ecommerce division.

Data Collection Techniques

Some of Nike’s most effective data collection techniques rely heavily on innovative product development. Through new pieces of technology, Nike is taking their information gathering from online activity, to on field activity.

Nike Plus

Nike Plus was conceived with the help of Apple, and is essentially a running sensor that can be installed on your mobile device to track your fitness performance. The application is great for runners of all fitness levels, and can become quite addicting with features that let you compare statistics with friends, and share your progress via social media.  Today, around 5 million users log on to Nike Plus to check their performance (Intelligent, 2013).

In order to run Nike Plus on your mobile device, you must first sign up for an account through Nike. The sign up form is below:

Nike Plus and accessories like the Fuelband (a tracking device you wear around your wrist) all lead to a growing wealth of data for Nike.

Nike now knows how much distance you have traveled in your shoes. So they will know ballpark when you are due for a new pair of shoes, and when to target you with offers.

Because Nike Plus uses GPS to measure the distances of your runs, Nike has a steady stream of data regarding your geographic location as well. They can identify popular running routes across the country and integrate them into future marketing efforts.

Data on athlete performance is also being used to understand the needs of today’s athletes. What are they struggling with? How can Nike improve their products to address the needs of the athlete?

Nike Plus relies on the fact that people want to receive some sort of credit for their athletic activity. They want to document it, show it off, and be proud of it. The resulting strategy from Nike is considered a “gamified platform,” which for many turns the act of exercise into a game. However, from Nike’s point of view, it turns the athlete into a collection of trackable numbers and figures that provide targeted direct marketing opportunities, as well as larger marketing insights. (Rijmenam, 2013)

NikeID

NikeID is online service that allows consumers to customize their Nike products while they shop.

Let’s say you visit the Nike store and you really want a pair of basketball shoes in orange and black, but the store doesn’t carry them, nor does Nike produce them. Well, traditionally you would be sunk. However, NikeID allows a user to customize certain elements of the shoe in terms of color, shape, and firmness.

The service succeeds in pushing consumers to make online purchases, where they will then be prompted to provide information upon checkout.

Targeted URL’s

Nike’s online store is very impressive. Navigating the site is a breeze and the aesthetic is impeccable. I believe one of the most important aspects of Nike’s analytic efforts, is the creation of multiple websites to handle their extremely diverse audience.

Nike sells products for several different sports. Instead of trying to squeeze all those sports under one umbrella, Nike has created separate URLs for each sport, in terms of both their online store and website.

I think this allows Nike to get to know the online behavior of each specific audience a lot better. If all of your data was coming from one singular URL you couldn’t connect which behavior was coming from which audience. Maybe Golfers are having trouble with the checkout cart, while Basketball players are not, for example.

I think this multi website approach is ideal for segmenting the audience and understanding the nuances that come with each sport culture.

Suggested Tools

Nike’s ecommerce sales rose 32% in the fiscal year 2013 (Brohan, 2013). So I am hard pressed to find suggestions for their ecommerce/analytic strategy.

Speaking instead from a small business standpoint, (because Nike has more money than God) I have noticed one area that presents a challenge analytically.

For many of their product information pages, Nike has two or three well produced videos that tell the consumer about the product.

I’m sure the production cost of these videos is not cheap, and as a business leader I would want to know if those videos were in anyway contributing to online sales.

At first glance, I would recommend tracking what users did after viewing the video, but after thinking about it, this wouldn’t really prove anything. If users are viewing the demo videos then they are probably already interested in the product and more likely to buy anyway. Meaning that this measurement would be biased.

In a situation like this, Kaushik recommends a program called Clicktrack. Clicktrack is able to compute the influence of specific tools within a page. “Influence is defined by the existence of that piece of content in the visitor session, regardless of what path the visitor took, regardless of when the content was seen.”

Or you could send out a simple survey to customers following a purchase that asks them to rank in order of importance the roles that each tool played in their purchase. For example, product, demo video, informational article, testimonials etc. (Kaushik, 2013)

IntelligentHQ. (2013). Nike takes digital data and social media marketing seriously. Retrieved 9 December 2013 from http://www.intelligenthq.com/social-media-business/nike-takes-digital-data-and-social-media-marketing-seriously/

Rijmenam, M. (2013). Valuable big data insights via nike+ gamification platform. Retrieved 9 December 2013 from http://smartdatacollective.com/bigdatastartups/119886/big-data-insights-nike-gamification-platform-delivers

Brohan, M. (2013). Nike envisions $2 billion in web sales in four yearsRetrieved 9 December 2013 from http://www.internetretailer.com/2013/10/21/nike-envisions-2-billion-web-sales-four-years

Kaushik, A. (2013). Measuring value of ecommerce sales tools. Retrieved 9 December 2013 from http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/excellent-analytics-tip-measuring-value-of-ecommerce-sales-tools/

Implementing goals in Google Analytics

Hello again, and thanks for joining me as I continue to document my foray into the world of Google Analytics.

In this week’s post we will be moving beyond traditional metrics and taking a look at some more advanced manipulations including goals, and filters.  I will be applying some of these concepts to my personal blog in an effort to understand their value and applicability in a business setting.

First, I selected some goals that I deemed appropriate for a personal blog site. The goals you set will depend largely on the nature of your site.

Goal 1

Visit Duration & Page Views

As the author of a blog, I’m very concerned about the effectiveness of my content. However, gaining insights into your content is a difficult task. I ran into problems last week when trying to get a grasp on engagement within my site. I determined that page views could be a misleading metric as all my content could be viewed on one single page. In addition, visit duration is determined by timestamps, which are recorded every time a visitor clicks through to another page. With my lack of pages, this again becomes a problem. Still, due to the low number of pages on my blog, I came to the conclusion that visit duration would give me a better chance at some meaningful conversion data. So, I made the decision to set up a goal pertaining to visit duration.

Successful conversion of this goal is achieved when a visitor stays on my blog for a period of 4 minutes or more. I figured that this amount of time is equal to the time it would take for a visitor to read two posts. And if I can get a reader to read one post, then move on to an additional post, then I feel comfortable saying that my content was effective with that particular visitor. For a blog site, any visit duration under 4 minutes would indicate a passive interest in the content.

Hypothetically, if I were to monetize my blog with advertising content, this conversion rate could be a great selling point for potential advertisers. If 90% of visitors spend over 4 minutes on my blog, this shows superior engagement and the opportunity for quality impressions for advertisers.

If this discussion pertained to an ecommerce or business website, goals associated with visit duration and page views become more complicated.

First, let’s you set a goal of recording five or more page views per visit. You find that your conversion rate is around 75%. This is a good sign right? People are showing a high level of engagement while on your site. Not so fast. A high amount of page views could be a signal of poor site design. Visitors could be clicking through to a high number of pages because they are confused and cannot find what it is they’re looking for (KISSmetrics, 2013). The same goes for visit duration. For this reason, these goals might not be ideal for ecommerce and business sites. In fact, with ecommerce and business sites the goal more commonly would be to reduce page views and visit duration, to ensure that users were easily navigating the site and finding what they needed. In which case, you would want to switch the setting in Google Analytics from “greater than” to “less than.”

Goal 2

About & Contact Pages

Again, I wanted to utilize Google Analytics goals to get a better idea of how the content on my blog was being received by visitors. This goal revolves around the creation of additional pages on the top bar of my blog. In this case, I created an “about” page and a “contact” page. The “about” page is a short autobiography, while the “contact” page lists all the ways visitors can reach me. The main purpose of these pages is to measure site engagement through the creation of corresponding goals.

When visitors click through to the “about” page they are showing additional interest in the blog. If they are buying into the articles, then they most likely want to buy into the author of those articles as well. For many bloggers, the “about page” is one of their most visited pages. For visitors, the “about” page can be a valuable source to get a sense of the author’s voice, credentials, background, and mission for the blog. If a good percentage of visitors are clicking on the “about” page there is good chance they are developing a positive identification with the blog.

Filter

Exclude Internal IP Address

One of my first thoughts when I started taking a closer look at filters was to ensure that my data was not being skewed in anyway.  More specifically, I wanted to make sure that all the traffic that was being reported was not a result of all the time I had spent on the blog over the course of this term. Often times, in the early stages of a website, failure to account for internal IP addresses can lead to misleading spikes in unique visitors (Knutson, 2013). Since my unique visitors remain in double digits every week, 10-15 visits from an internal IP address represents a substantial, false spike in data. In larger businesses, internal IP addresses can pose an even bigger threat to the validity of data. A variety of factors can cause heavy internal traffic that should not be reported as actual visits.

Luckily, Google Analytics provides a method to filter unwanted traffic. After retrieving my internal IP address (which can be achieved by looking on your network settings, or utilizing an online service) and selecting “exclude” I have seen my number of visits remain pretty much consistent. This makes sense because in the initial stages of my blog I was not generating nearly as much traffic, as I am presently. So in the early stages of the blog, my own visits must have been generating a substantial amount of the traffic. Moving forward I can be sure that all visitors are coming from IP addresses other than my own.

KISSmetrics. (2013). Why You Shouldn’t Set Pageviews and Time on Site as Goals in Google Analytics. Retrieved 2 December 2013 from http://blog.kissmetrics.com/pageviews-time-on-site/

Knutson, B. (2013). Exclude ip from google analytics reports. Retrieved 2 December 2013 from http://bradsknutson.com/blog/exclude-ip-google-analytics-reports/

What measurements to consider when it comes to Google Analytics and your blog

I would first like mention that I ran into some hiccups in my first couple weeks using Google Analytics. After my first time installing the tracking code, it took over 12 hours before I started receiving data. The few times I logged back in to check my data, Google Analytics reported that the “tracking code was not installed.” Each time, I reinstalled the code and the site began receiving data again. So my data has undoubtedly been underreported.  For the time being the problem is resolved, and although it has been a minor source of frustration, it is a learning process!

Below I will list a few measurements that caught my eye when tracking the progress of my personal blog (the one you are reading right now)  

In these early stages of my blog, promotion has been on the light side. I’ve sent out a few emails to friends and family notifying them of them of the blog, and I’ve posted a couple links on social media. As you might imagine, my number of unique visitors thus far is quite low. So at this point, this measurement is a signal of my lack of promotional support if anything. So, what I thought would be a more reliable indicator of site success in these early stages is average visit duration.

Average visit duration can answer a few very important questions. First, am I reaching out to the right audience in terms of my promotional activities? In other words, when I tell people to check out my blog, do they end up liking it? Or maybe you have the right audience but your content is not up to par. If your content is not holding the attention of your audience then average visit duration will decrease drastically.

However, my average visit duration was 00:00:00, which I was not particularly enthused about until I started doing some research on the measurement. According to experts, for Google Analytics to accurately capture average visit duration, it needs to record at least two timestamps. One time stamp is recorded at the beginning of the visit and the next time stamp is recorded when the user clicks to another page. (Wedderburn, 2013) So, theoretically, some of my users visit times could have been counted as zero because they only viewed one page. Even if they spent 5 minutes reading a post and never clicked to another page,  this is counted as a bounce and recorded as zero on average visit duration.

This also explains why my bounce rate was 100%. If you look at how a lot of blogs are organized, a reader could read every post of your blog and still spend their entire visit on only one page. This is because all the posts appear on one page, you simply scroll down.

So how do we start getting better data in terms of average visit duration? My first thought is to organize your blog in a more interactive fashion that encourages users click on another page. Whether it means limiting your homepage to one post with other posts as links on the sidebar, or creating email subscription and comment pages, it will encourage more page views and start giving you more accurate data regarding average visit duration.

Source/Medium

I found the source/medium function to be a great resource to track the origin of your web traffic. Viewing your traffic in this way allows you to see what channels are responsible for the visits to your site. Are they coming from sites on which you are promoting your blog? Or are they coming from a source that is otherwise unknown to you? In my case, the source/medium measurement revealed that promotion via social media accounted for the majority of traffic to my blog. This is considered referral traffic.

Traffic sources can be broken down into three major traffic categories; search, referral, and direct. Search traffic comes from search engines. Refferal traffic is caused when someone clicks on a link to your site. Direct Traffic comes from individuals entering your URL directly. (Using google analytics, 2013)  Google Analytics will indicate in a percentage how much each source is responsible for site traffic.

Again, it comes down to the principle of accountability. Am I putting my time and resources in the right place? Are my marketing activities paying off? Source information is extremely valuable in answering these questions.

Social Reports

As I was looking into traffic sources I also came across the social report function. Social reports allow you to determine how many people are finding your blog via social media sites. Looking at social reports can give you valuable information on the effect of specific campaigns executed through social media networks.

I was drawn to this metric because social media can seem like a challenge when it comes to measuring ROI. Devoting time and money to these “gated communities” can sometimes seem like a toss up. To some degree, with Social Reports Google has addressed this issue. Giving us real time data regarding the contribution of social networks to our blog sites, shedding a little more light on the social media world.

Keywords

Another area of Google Analytics that I think is extremely valuable in the development of my blog is the keyword function. Although I haven’t received any specific keyword data at this time, I am closely monitoring the report. Once I start receiving organic keywords that were searched to arrive at my blog, I will start getting a better idea of the issues that people want to read about. How can I give the people what they are they looking for? The more closely my content caters to these keywords the higher my blog will appear on search engine results. 

The fact that I am a beginner to web analytics and SEO, and that it is a complex and evolving topic, the keywords function becomes a helpful resource. Are their innovations and schools of thought that are new to me? Is my terminology and phrasing on point? Studying keywords and making sure you are seeing results via Google Analytics is a great way to stay up to date and informed on your topic.

Wedderburn, J. (2013). Meaning of 00:00:00 visit duration. Retrieved 25 November 2013 from http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/analytics/GLFvjrucTME

Side Income Blogging. (2013). Using google analytics on your your blog: Traffic sources. Retreived 25 November 2013 from http://sideincomeblogging.com/analytics-for-your-blog-traffic-sources/