Google Analytics - storage period

One of the disadvantages of Google analytics over other web analytics tool is that the storage period of your analytics data is just for 25 months. This is very sufficient for most Google analytics users. However, if we wish to retain data for longer period we just need to modify a single line of the Google Analytics Tracking Code (GATC). The additional code that you need to add is highlighted in bold below.

<script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-xxxxx-1");
pageTracker._setLocalRemoteServerMode();
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}
</script>

Importance of Anchor text

Anchor text is the keyword that is been linked to a site or web page. This is one important SEO practice that many people miss out or do not use it in the right way. It is very essential that we link our keywords to the respective landing page.

When we use a proper keyword for the anchor text, it informs or tells search engines what the page is all about. When used wisely, it boosts your rankings in search engines. It is more rewarding as the search engine visibility improves as more users click on your properly done anchor text. For example, if your site is about SEO then link the keyword "SEO", if it is about Jewelry link the text "Jewelry". Instead what many people do is provide anchor-text for text like 'Click here', 'Page2', 'Next', 'Part 2' or the name of the website.

Important notes on Anchor text
- Remember to provide proper anchor text for internal links & external links.
- Do not over optimize the page with the many anchor texts.
- Link it to other pages of the website as well and not just the homepage.

Command: The command to identify websites using anchor text is "allinanchor:yourkeyword".

Video on Anchor text: Check out the SEO tutorial video on anchor text by Gareth Davis.

Google giving small businesses local search data

Google is providing some valuable information for local businesses center users in the US as to how users are searching for services/information related to your business. But it will take a while for users in India to avail this service from Google. For more information Click here.

Google Analytics & Email Marketing - Let the tracking begin

Tracking your email campaigns is such an easy process when intergrated with Google Analytics, making it the most powerful Internet marketing measuring tool. In the process helping many online marketers understand the campaign performance, traffic share, sales conversion and ROI.

Open an account
To begin with sign up for an account by visiting Google Analytics. There are 2 tracking version, preferably select the newer version. Follow the instructions provided and place the tracking code in all the pages of the website.

Generating Email tracking code
Visit Google URL tool builder and put the required variables in the fields provide and generate indivial tracking urls for each link. Add these newly generated URLs to each of the links to track & understand your campaign in detail.

After the e-mail campaign is dispatched, Google Analytics automatically monitors the traffic the email campaign generated to the website, which links were most popular with your recipients, which region the campaign was most seen, how long they stayed and the number of conversion received (i.e. how many purchased or the number of leads received).

Online marketers can measure these metrics and then compare it over other online campaigns during the same period and understand the success/failure of their email marketing campaign.

Bing it on!!!

Bing it on!!! Microsoft's Bing a "Decision Engine" and not a "Search Engine" gonna be launched soon!!! kinda cool... but need to try and see to decide if it is better than Google. Check it out here.

What are sitelinks

One of the common questions that I get from my clients is - "How can I get my sub-page links listed along with my website URL in Google search result when I search for my company name?". Phew! such a long question. To begin with, these links that appear along with your domain name in Google search results are called "Site-links".

Basically, it is out of the Search engine optimizer's control to enable sitelinks in organic search result. Google has a process that produces these sitelinks which is executed through its algorithm based on various criterias. This typically occurs when someone searches for a brand or a company name in Google. It should be understood that not all sites get these sitelinks, it occurs mainly for websites that are huge, meaning sites with multiple subpages which should also be indexed by Google robots. Few of the criterias that enables these sitelinks are - the navigation format, the main navigation links and the popularity of these links. So it is obvious that one has no control which links of your website will appear in a sitelink.

If you had guessed 'relevance' also plays an important role, then you are right.

Hope this information was useful to people who wanted to know what sitelinks was.

Cheers!

Does Web Analytics help SEO?

Yes Yes Yes. It definitely does help SEO.

Very recently, I faced a situation where the client was adamant that he is only concerned about SEO and how his keywords rank. He was not interested in understanding how web analytics will be useful for his business and how it helps SEO. For him Web analytics is not important. Only if he had a little bit of sense, he would understand that reaching his target audience and serving them better would be beneficial, rather than just pleasing his boss.

So with no luck, I was trying my best in educating this educated fool and explaining to him that selecting keywords and achieve high rankings is not enough. We should understand the traffic our SEO efforts are generating and the valuable data's that we could get to analyze further and come up with strategies to improve the website performance. Though I convinced him, he was still not willing to implement it. I am sure he will learn his lesson, become a bit more prudent and understand the power of web analytics and will seek my assistance in a short while.

There are many web analytics Gurus who talk in depth about what we can derive from web analytics. But let me just brush through the benefits and let you understand some basics.

You can find out the following if you have web analytics set up in your website.
1. Find out how many people visited your website.
2. Understand where your customers come from (country and city) and which markets are most profitable to you.
3. How much time they are spending in your website.
4. What keywords they used to find your website.
5. Which domain is getting you the largest traffic.
6. What is the most visited page in your website and what was not. Analyze it further and understand why people are leaving your website.
7. Find out how much traffic is generated through organic search engines.
8. How new visitors came to the website and what was the source they used to visit you.
9. Analyze your online marketing campaign performance and how much traffic they brought you. Whether if was effective or not.
10. If you have ecommerce - you can find out how many people purchased through your web-store.
11. Find out the navigations patterns of users.

After you understand all these data's, there would be many questions arising in your head. You can infact dig deep into these data using your analytical tool and uncover many of your unsolved issues. In fact, I love to measure performance by comparing two periods and understand what has changed, whether organic search engine traffic has improved, which campaigns brought in higher ROI, what has improved and what to do next. It definitely gives a lot of insight if you analyze it in a micro level which takes you to the next level.

Keep tracking!