Canadian SEO guest blog with information from North American SEO leaders.

Getting the whole story from your analytics is always a work in progress. Not only do we need to look at user behaviors (or the lack thereof), we need to look at user experience interaction as well as revenues.

One mistake I see many novice and new-to-analytics marketers fall into is ending their research path at the Revenue report in the E-commerce section of Google Analytics. While knowing how much revenue your products are generating is important, there’s more than just direct revenue. While the argument can, and should, be made for engagement being a form of ROI, I’m actually referring to referral paths and assisted conversions.

I think the information contained in the reports below the “E-commerce” section is important, but perhaps can be confusing; really, anything in the multi-channel funnel section of the site is pretty intimidating to a novice analytics user. I’d like to take some of the confusion out of these reports in an effort to encourage beginners to delve into their information more often.

Your Top Conversion Paths

First, be aware that interactions are just that, interactions – a user might have more than one sales interaction in any given period of time. This is useful data, but you cannot just add these numbers to your revenue numbers and get a number. It doesn’t happen that way. You do need to be aware of these numbers, though. Understanding that visitors use many different ways to reach your website before they buy is an important step toward understanding what channels drive useful traffic

Looking at your channel traffic and your top conversion paths can help clear up where important traffic comes from. I don’t think people quite understand what a conversion path looks like until they see this. Seeing evidence of the different methods people use to find a site really opens eyes to the importance of a varied approach to your online marketing.

For instance, paid advertising can support organic placement and conversions. Social media can be the doorway for a new user to find your brand, and supports paid, organic, and direct revenues. There are many different ways to look at the data. The standard overview tells a good story.

Using Filters To Drill Into The Data

If we drill into the data – we can see even more. Use the filter feature to look at any path that includes a specific channel. I can see how much revenue involved an organic click, or a social media referral – that’s important data to have when you’re trying to convince accounting, or the c-suite, that it’s worth the investment. Many times, in-house or agency account managers need ammunition to defend their desire to play in more than just one or two fields. This report helps us do that – and includes the revenue numbers that correspond to these channels.

Just looking at the first page of the standard report itself can tell a small portion of the story, but digging in and filtering the data can tell us so much more. The first page of the standard report is impressive – it shows a variety of channel paths:

But, if we just look at the first page, we have no idea which channels included a social network referral that sent nearly $5,000 in revenue during the month – that’s a significant chunk!

We can take the data here a step further and look at which social networks are assisting the conversions by drilling into the data.  From the Top Conversion Path report, add a secondary dimension for “Source Path.”

Adding Secondary Dimension Filters

Now that we can see the grouping path, and the source path – we see the actual websites included in the organic, paid, social, and referral clicks in the secondary dimension. There are hundreds, if not thousands of paths – so we need to filter to group things together a bit more. We’ll use the advanced search function to do this. Click on Advanced next to the search box and create an advanced search that looks like this:

We can now see every conversion that contained a social network component, and group them together by social network. Filter by only the “Basic Channel Grouping Path” of “Social” if you want to see all conversions that included a social network click; add the second dimension of “Social Path” if you want to see the data for a specific social network. Below, we see the conversion paths that contained a Facebook click.

You can change the source path to Twitter or Pinterest – whichever network you want to explore, and click Apply. Now, you see every conversion path that contains a Facebook click.

You can complete these same steps to see Paid Search channels by engine, or organic. You can make your secondary dimension a keyword and see how keywords and organic search assist in future sales. Sometimes, standard data is enough to tell us whether a keyword or a referral is worth it; sometimes, we need to dig a little deeper to see the whole story.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

Related Topics: Beginner | Google: Analytics | How To: Analytics | Search Analytics

Use Siri To Search Your Notes

Nope, I don’t know what “Paris corot porn” means either. Still, thanks for remembering it for me, Siri.

Di you know that you can search your iPhone’s notes using Siri? Neither did I. But according to Dave Caolo at 52 Tiger, you can not only get Siri to flip through your notes for you, you can even find notes from a particular day.

Here are Dave’s two tips:

1. Search by date. Activate Siri and say, “Find notes from March, 2013? or “Find notes from March 7, 2013.” You can also ask, “Find notes from yesterday.”
2. Search by keyword. You can have Siri search your notes for a specific word by saying, “Search notes for ‘x’”, where “x” is the term you’re looking for. Siri returns the results as a tap-able list.

The first works just great for me. You can use most time-based search criteria, too: “Find notes from last year” does just that, and you can always just say “show me my notes” to see a tappable list of your notes, right there in Siri (and you know you can do the same for e-mail, calendar entries, text messages and reminders).

But try as I might, I can’t get Dave’s keyword search to work. Whatever I search for, Siri returns all my notes. A shame, as this could be super-handy otherwise.

I’ll keep trying. If you work it out, then leave a comment or e-mail me.

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International Women’s Day is a day to celebrate the many achievements women have made over the years in various fields. The day is being appropriately celebrated with a Google Doodle made up of the faces of women from all over the world.

International Women’s Day started out as International Working Women’s Day. The original event was heavily political and focused on what women attributed to the workplace. The day has lost some of its political meaning in some countries, but many others still keep the political overtones of women’s rights strong, including the U.N.

International Women’s Day has been a designated event in the U.N. and the organization sets a theme for each year to bring attention to a women’s rights issue. This year’s theme is “A Promise is a Promise: Time fo Action to End Violence Against Women.” Past themes included “Equal Rights, Equal Opportunities: Progress For All” and “Empower Rural Women, End Poverty and Hunger.”

The hundredth anniversary of the day is coming up soon in 2017. In that year, there are plans for reenactments of the original protests in St. Petersburg that started the movement.

If you have a real estate website, following basic search engine optimization techniques is critical for generating traffic and attracting home buyers. While some aspects of search engine optimization are more complex, on-page keyword optimization is easy to understand and easily fixable, even to real estate agents with little web or SEO experience.

© cienpies – Fotolia.com

But what is on-page optimization exactly? Simply put, on-page optimization refers to those aspects of a web page that can have a direct effect on its natural search engine results. Examples of these items include the page title, meta-description, filename, H1 tag, and the actual content within the page. Ensuring each published page on your real estate website has adequate on-page optimization will only benefit your overall web presence and drive more traffic.

In order to know whether or not your web pages have correct on-page optimization, simply follow these straightforward guidelines and you’ll be well on your way to website success:

1)      Select a long-tail keyword phrase to use as your primary keyword for each page. For example, if you’ve created a page focused on condominiums for sale in Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood, you may want your keyword phrase to be “Chicago Gold Coast Condos For Sale.”

2)      Add your keyword phrase to the Page Title. Search engines generally consider page titles to be one of the most essential places to identify keywords and associate a web page with a specific topic or set of keywords, such as a long-tail keyword phrase.

3)      Use your keyword phrase as your H1 tag. A properly SEO’d webpage should only have one H1 tag, and with that, make sure this tag incorporates your keywords.

4)      Apply your keyword phrase within the content naturally. Depending on how much content a specific web page has, your keyword phrase should be used throughout the page between 3-4 times. Be careful not to overstuff your keywords, however, as too much keyword usage can harmfully impact your search engine rankings.

5)      Include your keyword phrase in the meta-description. A web page’s meta-description is highly viable to users running a search and search engines will even bold matching search terms within the meta-description on the results page(s). But much like the content of a web page, be sure not to overuse keywords in the meta-description, as search engines will quickly associate your website with spamming and over-optimization should there be an excess of keywords.

6)      The filename (URL) of a web-page should match your long-tail keyword phrase. Ideally, your URL should be under 76 characters, so if your long-tail keyword phrase exceeds this limit, try to adjust the URL and include only your main keywords, however.

7)      Bold and italicize your keyword phrase. Although search engine weigh bold and italic keywords much less than in the past, it still doesn’t hurt to incorporate this strategy into a web page’s content.

Joe Heath is a graduate of Indiana University and also holds a Graduate Certificate in Real Estate Development from Drexel University. After working as a Market Research Associate and writing published Market Snapshots for Hanley Wood Market Intelligence in Chicago, Joe now works as a Web Marketing Specialist and is a managing partner at Real Estate Web Creation, LLC.

Google has the unenviable position turning around Motorola Mobility and making it profitable again. That means the company has to make some tough decisions that will affect its employees around the world.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Google has begun laying off 1,200 employees at its Motorola Mobility hardware division. The cuts are a result of Motorola’s inability to return to profitability as the smartphone maker attempts to compete against the likes of Samsung and Apple.

The email announcing the layoffs said that the company “is optimistic about the new products in our pipeline,” but says that high costs and operating in non-competitive markets has led to a situation where the newly christened subsidiary of Google just isn’t making money. The layoffs will affect employees in the U.S., China and India.

The new round of layoffs is apparently a continuation of the layoffs announced last summer that affected over 4,000 employees at Motorola shortly after Google bought the company for $12.5 billion. Since then, the company has struggled to create a smartphone that could be certified as a hit.

Despite its struggles, Google is still trying to get the most out of its purchase. The company is reportedly working closely with Motorola on something called the “X Phone.” The rumored device is said to be “a real breakthrough” and will go on sale in July. It’s unknown if Google will announce the phone at May’s Google I/O, but it very well could be if the device is chosen to house the next version of Android.

Ever since Google announced that it won’t be releasing search data for people logged into Google and instead offing “not provided” we’ve been waiting for an answer. We’re all looking for accurate search data that includes impressions, clicks, click-through rate and average position. This afternoon, Raven Tools became the first large-scale Internet marketing platform to integrate and automated Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) search query data to give us this data.

Dubbed “Top Searches” inside Raven’s GWT and SEO Metrics tools, the newly added data includes up to the top 2,000 search queries (a.k.a. keywords) for which Google displayed your website, as well as impressions, clicks and click-through rate for each keyword.

Most importantly for SEOs, it includes the average position of each keyword in the Google SERPs.

“Average position is currently the best possible way to measure where your site ranks for a keyword,” Raven Tools’ Chief Product Officer Jon Henshaw said of the addition. “Universal search, geo-influenced results, search history and more all influence where your site actually ranks, and that varies greatly. An average is a good measure. Also, this data comes directly from the source, Google, not someone scraping Google’s SERPs.”

After you sync Raven with your GWT account, Raven updates your website’s GWT data once a day. It also shows change over time, which is handy for tracking campaign progress.

There are lots of SEO insights in this data. You can see which keywords have high average positions without any actual clicks through to your website, or discover keywords that have a high CTR, but low average position. It’s also interesting to sort results by high impressions but low click-through to your website.

For SEOs who are looking for more reliable, valid data to report to clients about keyword position, this is a tool to check out.

I would love to know what everyone thinks about this and how you think this will impact SEO?

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Back in September of 2012, Google released an app called Field Trip for Android. The app, a creation of Google’s Niantic Labs, was billed as “your guide to the cool, hidden, and unique things in the world around you.”

Today, Google has finally launched an iOS version.

Field Trip runs in the background of your phone, and it only makes itself known when you are near something interesting. Field Trip uses your location to trigger popup info cards on various places including landmarks, historical places, food, art, and more.

“The hyperlocal history experts of Arcadia and Historvius will unveil local lore in places you never expected. Trend-setting publications like Thrillist, Food Network, Zagat, and Run Riot will point out the best places to eat and drink. Experts at Sunset, Cool Hunting, WeHeart, Inhabitat, and Remodelista will guide you to the latest unique stores and products. Atlas Obscura and Daily Secret help you uncover hidden gems no matter where you are. Songkick and Flavorpill guide you to local music,” says Google.

Here’s the full feature list:

• Discover thousands of interesting places/experiences that fall under the following categories: Architecture, Historic Places Events, Lifestyle, Offers Deals, Food Drinks Fun, Movie Locations, Outdoor Art and Obscure Places of Interest around you.
• Choose from three different modes to set frequency of Field Trip notifications. See “Field Trip” worthy places around you on a map, by tapping on cards in map view to pull up enthralling points of interest around you.
• Go on a Field Trip while you drive. Field Trip can detect when you’re driving and automatically “talk” about interesting places and experience around you.
• Came across an amazing story or restaurant? Mark it as a favorite to easily come back to it at any point.
• Capture the memory of a special place, by sharing a wondrous discovery through email and social networks such as Google+, Twitter and Facebook.
• Wondering where the gem that you recently discovered is? Find your discovered field trip cards in the “recent’ section.

You can grab Field Trip for iOS today.

With nearly 5,000 earthquakes a year, it’s important for people in Japan to have crisis preparedness and response information available at their fingertips. And from our own research, we know that when a disaster strikes, people turn to the Internet for more information about what is happening.

With this in mind, we’re launching Google Public Alerts today in Japan—the first international expansion of a service we debuted last year in the United States. Google Public Alerts is a platform designed to provide accurate and relevant emergency alerts when and where you’re searching for them online.

Relevant earthquake and tsunami warnings for Japan will now appear on Google Search, Google Maps and Google Now when you search online during a time of crisis. If a major earthquake alert is issued in Kanagawa Prefecture, for example, the alert information will appear on your desktop and mobile screens when you search for relevant information on Google Search and Google Maps.

If you click “??” (“More info”) right under the alert, you’ll see more details about the announcement, including the full description from the Japan Meteorological Agency, a link to their site, and other useful information like observed arrival times and wave heights for tsunamis.

And when you open Google Now on your Android device, recommended actions and information will be tailored to where you are. For example, if you happen to be in Tokyo at a time when a tsunami alert is issued, Google Now will show you a card containing information about the tsunami alert, as well as any available evacuation instructions:

We’re able to provide Public Alerts in Japan thanks to the Japan Meteorological Agency, whose publication of data enables Google and others to make critical and life-saving information more widely available.

We hope our technology, including Public Alerts, will help people better prepare for future crises and create more far-reaching support for crisis recovery. This is why in Japan, Google has newly partnered with 14 Japanese prefectures and cities, including seven from the T?hoku region, to make their government data available online and more easily accessible to users, both during a time of crisis and after. The devastating T?hoku Earthquake struck Japan only two years ago, and the region is still slowly recovering from the tragedy.

We look forward to expanding Google Public Alerts to more countries and working with more warning providers soon. We also encourage potential partners to read our FAQ and to consider putting data in an open format, such as the Common Alerting Protocol. To learn more about Public Alerts, visit our Public Alerts homepage.

Posted by Yu Chen, Partner Technology Manager

Starting a blog of your own is a very easy process. Becoming a well known authority in your blogging niche however is not.

Becoming a leader in anything is not easy. Not only does it take skill and time, but you must also become a trustworthy source while also becoming a value to everyone who seeks you out.

Let’s take a look at a few of the areas you must work on to become a leader among the blogs in your niche market.

Become the Voice for Information

No matter what niche you are creating a blog in, you simply need to become the “go to” source for information. If you are going to be writing about “blue widgets”, then cover everything you can possibly think of about the topic. When people continue to see your rankings in the search engines, they will keep coming across your articles and content… making your site one of the authorities within that niche.

Create a Community Around Your Blog

Blogging is all about having a two way conversation. Instead of just writing for the search engines and trying to rank based off of your keyword content, focus on building a community around your site. This covers everything from making your site more shareable, spread among the social networks and interacting with people who leave comments on your site.

What is Your Blogging Brand

Lastly, you are going to want to focus your efforts on building your brand. This can be anything from creating a logo or your site, using your personal name or focusing on the domain name of your site. No matter what you choose, it’s going to be what people search for and reference back to your site whenever it’s mentioned or searched for in the search engines.

Becoming an Authority in Your Niche

As you can see, a lot of work goes into becoming an authority within your niche. This is not a process that can quickly be done over night, and it usually takes several months if not years to establish.

At the end of the day, your audience is going to become your branding partners as they will decide whether your content and brand is worthy enough to share with friends online and link to your content from their own web sites.

Focus your efforts on quality content and it’s quite possible for you to become an authority within any given niche on the internet.

This article is an original contribution by Zac Johnson.

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Last year, we started a program to partner with advertisers and agencies to re-imagine how brands tell stories in a connected world. Project Re: Brief set out to recreate some of the advertising industry’s most iconic, classic campaigns using the latest technology tools. This year we’re expanding that program to work with some of today’s most iconic brands and innovative marketers, in our new project: Art, Copy Code.

Art, Copy Code is a series of projects and experiments to show how creativity and technology can work hand in hand. Some of these will include familiar brands like Volkswagen, Burberry and adidas—projects developed in partnership with their creative teams and agencies. Others will be creative experiments with innovative filmmakers, creative directors and technologists to explore how brands can connect with consumers through a whole range of digital tools—including ads, mobile apps and social experiences. Our first partner project is a new social driving experience—Volkswagen Smileage.

Building off their 2012 campaign, “It’s not the miles, it’s how you live them,” Volkswagen Smileage is a mobile app and web service that aims to add a little bit of fun to every drive, from your daily commutes to holiday road trips. The app measures the fun factor of each trip using a metric called “smileage,” based on signals like weather, traffic, location, time and social interactions (e.g., a long drive on a sunny Saturday afternoon might accumulate more smileage than a morning commute in the snow). You can use it with any car, not just Volkswagens.

Powered by the new Google+ sign-in, you can choose to share Smileage experience with friends and family. For example, during a road trip, photos and videos taken by you and your co-passengers can be automatically added to a live interactive map. The inspiration for the service came from a recent study showing that every day, 144 million Americans on average spend 52 minutes in a car—76 percent of them alone. We wanted to make that time a more shareable experience. Volkswagen Smileage will be available soon in beta—you can sign up on this webpage for early access.

We’ll have many more experiments to share in the Art, Copy Code project soon—subscribe for updates at ArtCopyCode.com. We’re committed to investing in technology and tools over the long term to help brands and their agencies succeed not just today, but in a digital future that will look very different.

If you’re planning on attending SXSW, stop by the Google Playground on March 9 to see demos of these experiments, or attend our talk on March 10.

Posted by Aman Govil, Art, Copy Code Project Lead