Google Analytics -The Tracker

Google Analytics -Analytical Tool for SEO

Google Analytics is a free web analytics service that provides statistics and basic analytical tools for search engine optimization (SEO) and marketing purposes. The service is available to anyone with a Google account. Google bought Urchin Software Corporation in April 2005 and used that company’s Urchin on Demand product as the basis for its current service.

You may have hundreds and thousands of visitors to your site but if you don’t know anything about them, then it would be meaningless. Google Analytics is a tool that helps in turning most of the visitors to customers. In addition to providing the information of the visitors of your site, it also provides key insights on how your website is performing and what you need to do more to meet your goals. You can track everything related to your sites, i.e how much traffic your site has, where the traffic is coming from. You can even monitor social media activities, track mobile app traffic, identify trends etc.

Google Analytics features include:

• Data visualization tools including a dashboard, scorecards and motion charts, which display

changes in data over time.

• Segmentation for analysis of subsets, such as conversions.

• Custom reports.

• Email-based sharing and communication.

• Integration with other Google products, such as AdWords, Public Data Explorer and Website Optimizer.

Why you need Google Analytics?

Do you have a blog? Do you have a static website? If the answer is yes, whether they are for personal or business use, then you need Google Analytics. Here are just a few of the many questions about your website that you can answer using Google Analytics.

• How many people visit my website?
• Where do my visitors live?
• Do I need a mobile-friendly website?
• What websites send traffic to my website?
• What marketing tactics drive the most traffic to my website?
• Which pages on my website are the most popular?
• How many visitors have I converted into leads or customers?
• Where did my converting visitors come from and go on my website?
• How can I improve my website's speed?
• What blog content do my visitors like the most?

There are many, many additional questions that Google Analytics can answer, but these are the ones that are most important for most website owners. Now let's look at how you can get Google Analytics on your website.

Here are a few terms you should know:

• Property the website or mobile app you want to track.   
• Account is a place where each property lives in your dashboard. You can have multiple properties for an account or have multiple accounts for different properties.
• Tracking ID is a unique code added to your site that allows Google analytics to track it.
• Conversions - visits that turn into customers or potential customers.
• Session duration -how many long visitors spend on your site.
• Bounce Rate- percentage of visitors that view only a single page and leave.
• Event - visitors behavior, such as when a visitor clicks on ad, watches or stops a video, download a file or more.
• Landing Page - the first page a visitors see when visiting your website.
• Organic search - visitors who visit your site from a link.
• Segment – a way to filter the data, such as by category and types of visitors.

 Types of reports you shouldn’t miss

Acquisition - shows from where the traffic comes from, such as search engine, email marketing campaigns, social media etc. You can find it under Acquisition Tab.

Keywords – tells what search words the user has used to reach in your site on a search engine. You can find it under Behavior Tab, under Site Search.
Conversions - track how many visitors are converting into newsletter subscribers, shoppers, actual customers. Click on the Conversion Tab and choose type or category of conversion to view a report.
Life Time Value -   its value reports track visitors throughout their visit to conversion, return visits, future purchases and beyond. This help to figure out what turned those visitors into customers.
Landing Page - shows you which pages are the most important and frequently visited first so you can track down, where those visitors are coming from and what’s attracting customers.
Active Users - monitors how many visitors are active on your site within a specific time period, such past week, within 14 days or month.  This will show you what pages the most active users are visiting so you can figure out what’s keeping their attention and apply it to the rest of your websites. You can find active users on the Audience Tab under Active Users.

How to use Google Analytics for tracking the website?

        1. Sign into Google Analytics with your Google account.

          2. Click the admin button on the bottom left sidebar of your dashboard.

          3. Select an account or create an account.

          4. Click on the drop-down menu to create a property.

          5. Click on the website option and add your sites name and URL.

          6. Choose your industry.

          7. Choose your time zone.

          8. Click on Get Tracking ID.

          9. Install Tracking ID on your website.

        10. Paste the Tracking ID in the Analytics and Web Property of Other option of the blogger. 

        11.Also,  paste tracking code in the Theme section of the blog.

        12. Then Save the theme

Google Analytics is geared toward small and medium-sized retail websites. The service has limitations that make it less suited to more complex websites and larger enterprises. For example, the system collects data through a JavaScript page tag inserted in the code of pages the user wants to collect data on. The page tag functions as a Web bug to gather visitor information. However, because it’s reliant on cookies, the system can’t collect data for users who have disabled them. Google also uses sampling in its reports rather than analyzing all available data. 

Furthermore, some security experts have raised concerns about privacy issues in Google Analytics. Through the Google Analytics Dashboard, users can collect information on people whose websites link to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
Hope you liked my post and now you have an idea about Google Analytics.Please go through my previous post on Google Webmaster Tools also.Thank You.

Tinty Padmakumar

Google Webmaster Tools - An Overview

Google Webmaster Tools /Search Console

Google Webmaster Tools is a free service that helps you evaluate and maintain your website's performance in search results (1). Offered as a free service to anyone who owns a website,Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) is a conduit of information from the largest search engine in the world to you, offering insights into how it sees your website and helping you uncover issues that need fixing.

You do not need to use GWT for your website to appear in search results, but it can offer you valuable information that can help with your marketing efforts.

Main Features of Google Search Console

• Submit and check a sitemap and also helps the webmasters to check if there are any errors with their sitemap.
• Check and set the crawl rate, and view statistics about when Google bot accesses a particular site.
• Write and check a robots.txt file to help discover pages that are blocked in robots.txt accidentally.
• List internal and external pages that link to the site.
• Get a list of links which Google bot had difficulty crawling, including the error that Google bot received when accessing the URLs in question.
• See what keyword searches on Google led to the site being listed in the SERPs, and the click through rates of such listings.
• Set a preferred domain (e.g. prefer example.com over www.example.com or vice versa), which determines how the site URL is displayed in SERPs.
• Highlight to Google Search elements of structured data which are used to enrich search hit entries (released in December 2012 as Google Data Highlighter).
• Demote Sitelinks for certain search results.
• Receive notifications from Google for manual penalties.
• Provide access to an API to add, change and delete listings and list crawl errors.
• Rich Cards a new section added, for better mobile user experience.
• Check the security issues if there are any with the website. (Hacked Site or Malware Attacks)
• Add or remove the property owners and associates of the web property.
  

How Search Console can help monitor your website's performance

1. It verifies that Google can access the content on your website.

2. GWT makes it possible to submit new pages and posts for Google to crawl and remove content you don't want search engine users to discover.

3. It helps you deliver and evaluate content that offers users a more visual experience.

4. You can maintain your website without disrupting its presence in search results.

5. It allows you to discover and eliminate malware or spam problems that may not be easily found through other means.

How Webmaster Tools helps you understand how Google search views your website

1. It tells you the most popular queries causing your website to appear in search results.

2. It tells you which queries are driving the most traffic.

3. You can see which websites are linking to yours.

4. You can evaluate how well your mobile website is performing for people searching on tablets and phones.

Verifying the Website using Webmaster Tools

1.Search for google.com/webmaster/tool

2.From the Home screen appearing, click on Add a Property.

3.Copy the URL which you want to fetch and paste it in the text field appearing and click the add button.

4.From the left panel select Crawl option, from that select Fetch as Google. Here we are requesting Google to Fetch our page.

5. In the above step, we asked Google to fetch the base URL.  Similarly to fetch a post we need to copy rest of the URL and paste it into the text field next to the base URL and click Fetch.

Hope you have got an outline of Global Webmaster Tools. You can also view my last posts on On Page Optimization and SEO History&Evolution.

Tinty Padmakumar

SEO On Page Optimization Guidelines

 On Page Optimization

If you have read my first blog, you will now have an idea about SEO. As we know there are two strategies in SEO-On Page SEO and Off Page SEO. In this blog, we are focusing on On Page Optimization .

 On Page Optimization refers to all measures that can be taken directly within the website to improve its position in the search rankings. In fact the modifications, additions or actions done on the web page as part of SEO before it is published is On Page SEO. We optimize both the content and the HTML source code of a page. It also helps users to easily understand what the page is all about.

On Page Optimization Techniques

1. Title Tag

Title tag means title of a web page. Title plays an important role in SEO.  It is the the title that the user first sees in the search engine's results. Page title is the clickable link of the web page that appears on the search engines results page. It tells the user and the search engine the topic of the web page. It gives an idea about the content of the web page. Google will check the CTR(Click Through Rate) of your web page before listing it in the search results page. CTR is the ratio of users who click on a specific link to the number of total users who view a page, email or advertisement.

We must consider some points while giving title.

Tips for Title Optimization

• Character limit for SEO title is 55-60 characters. 
  
• The pixel width of title must be 512 pixel.
• We must include the focusing keyword in the title
• We must use atleast 3 words in the title for more clarity.
• Title must be unique.
• It must be a meaningful sentence.
• There must not be any spelling or grammar mistakes.
• It must be impressive.
• It must be simple.

2. Meta Description

Meta Description is the description shown under the SEO title in the search engines result page. It is an HTML element that describes and summarizes the contents of your web page. Search engines sometimes use these meta descriptions in search results to let visitors know what a page is about before they click on it. Meta descriptions has a large impact on CTR(Click Through Rate) which can influence the page ranking.

Tips for meta description Optimization

• We must include the focusing keyword in the meta description.
• If we are optimizing a page the character limit is 155-160 characters.
• If we are optimizing a post the character limit is 155.
• Must be impressive and unique,
• We can use the content from the relevant web page as meta description.
• The pixel width limit for meta description is 1024.
• It must not be too short or too long.

3. Body Section Optimization

SEO analyst must consider some points before writing the content for a page. Content needs to be broken down into paragraphs and must be given suitable headings. Headings should contain focusing keyword so that both the user and the search engine can understand your content easily. Heading tags are lines of text on a web page that are wrapped by HTML to create a heading element on a web page. These tags range from H1 to H6. H1 and H2 are among the more heavily weighed elements of on page content by the search engines. H1 and H2 can be very effective in helping to shape search engines perception of your page's content. The heading tags H1 to H6 represent the beginning of a new section or area of a page's content and alert google bots the relevancy of the content that follows the heading tag.

H1

• It is the text area the user will notice first.
• It is the most important portion in the body section.
• It must not exceed 10 words.
• There must not be more than one H1 in the web page.
• It must be a relevant and impressive

H2 to H6

•  Its better to use only one h2 in the web page.
• The description we are giving for h2 to h6 must be relevant.

4. Anchor Tag Optimization

Anchor text is the text containing hyper text in the content section of the web page. It is the most visible or highlighted text for Google. The anchor texts work as a fuel for Google bots. We must not give the focusing keyword in the anchor text. But we can use the related keywords. If we give the same focusing keyword as anchor text  Google will list only that web page neglecting our web page.

5. Content Optimization

Content Optimization is a process in which a webpage and its content are optimized to become more

attractive, useful and actionable to users. The processes typically include fixes and improvements on technical performance (ex: page speed) and content copy for it to perform and rank better on search engines. The content of a page is what makes it worthy of a search result position. It is what the user came to see and is thus extremely important to the search engines. As such, it is important to create good content. So what is good content? From an SEO perspective,  all good content has two attributes. Good content must supply a demand and must be linkable.

Keyword Density

It is the percentage of the number of times a keyword occurs in a web page. It is very important to have the necessary keywords. But do not over use. Use relevant keywords in your content. If there are 10 focusing keywords in 200 words then the keyword density is 5%. It must not exceed 7%.

Tips for content optimization

• There must be more than one focusing keyword in the content.
• If we make the focusing keyword bold it will help in easiness while reading.
• We must consider the user and the Google bot while content optimization.
• If we are arranging the focusing keyword before a comma(,) or full stop(.), it will help in page ranking.
• We must use simple sentences.
• We must use a space after' .' and ','

6. Image Optimization

Image optimization involves delivering images with the smallest possible file size while maintaining visual quality. Optimizing images means saving bytes and improving performance for your website. The fewer bytes per image, the faster the browser can download and render the content on your users screens. Google bot do not read the image. So there are 3 identities which help Google to recognize that it is an image.They are

• Alt text -It is a word or phrase that can be inserted as an attribute in an HTML document to tell website viewers the nature or content of an image.
• File name
• Content describing the image.

7. Authorship Optimization

If a single person writes in more than one blog then he/she may have more authorship. Similarly, if more than one person writes in a page, then also the Authorship of the page increase. Authorship increases the visibility of the page and leads to achieve more links to the page. It is a noteworthy process in marketing strategy.

I expect now you have an idea on On Page Optimization.You can refer to my first post History And Evolution Of  SEO  to dive deep into SEO.

Tinty Padmakumar

History And Evolution Of SEO

                                 History And Evolution Of  SEO

     

Whenever a question comes to our mind the first thing we think off is "Google it”. Nowadays the word "google" has become the synonym for the word "search".

 “Google “company was launched in 1998 by Laury Page and Sergey Brin. It was actually a project done by them in 1996, at first known as “Back Rub" - a search algorithm. At that time Google took almost 24 hours to give the results but now we will get the results from google within fraction of seconds. Google reached this heights after lot of hardships and challenges.

 One of the most important challenge it faced was when the World Trade Center got attacked in 11th September, 2001. Google was unable to provide sufficient information about the World Trade Center at that time and it became a serious drawback for google. The reason they said was during those days all the websites was not crawlable for them. So they have decided to share their optimization files with the webmasters. Thus they introduced SEO starter guide and it was a 32 page PDF file.

 

 Google search engine was content specific when it started but keyword stuffing became a chaos for them as they couldn’t distinguish between low and high quality websites. So they changed to link specific but that too proved unsuccessful because people started buying links to attain higher rankings for their web page. Then google switched to quality link specific i.e. based on Page ranking. They also introduced a system called "passing the juice" technique which means while passing page links to other websites the ranking of that web page drops down straight away.

Search Engine Optimization(SEO)

Search engine optimization is the process of influencing the online visibility of a website or a web page in a web search engine's result. SEO in short is a set of rules that can be followed by website owners to optimize their websites for search engines to improve their rankings. In addition it is a great way to increase the quality of their website.

Working Of Search Engines

It involves 3 steps

• Crawling
• Indexing
• Caching

Crawling

Crawling is the process of scanning the particular web page.The google bot scans or crawls through the particular web page.

Indexing

 After crawling the search engines categorize these web pages and store them in the particular databases.

Caching

 Taking a snapshot of the web page is called caching.

SEO Techniques

• White Hat SEO
• Black Hat SEO

White Hat SEO

SEO done in an ethical way by following the search engine rules is called white hat SEO.

Black Hat SEO

Black hat SEO refers to search engine optimization done in a non-ethical way by breaking the search engine rules.It is done mainly to get higher page rankings.

Strategies in SEO

• On Page Optimization
• Off Page Optimization

On Page Optimization

Modifications or additions done on the web page as part of search engine optimization before publishing the page.

Off Page Optimization

It refers to modifications, additions or actions taken outside your website as part of SEO to improve rankings.

Tinty Padmakumar