The Maine SEO Blog

Conversions are more important than rankings – they are the goal.  Sure, good rankings should lead to higher conversions; but being #1 should not be your first priority.  Using Google Analytics, you have the opportunity to set up a total of four goals for each website (should you have multiple sites) to track your conversions.

Click the edit button on the Dashboard page in your Analytics.  There, you’ll find all of the settings for your account.  What we’re interested in are the Conversion Goals and Funnels.

Again, you see you have four goals to choose from.  Pick “edit” for one of the goals.

1. Turn the goal “on”.
2. Choose Match Type. Exact Match requires the URL you enter to be exactly the one your users will land on – good for things like a Thank You page for email subscriptions.  Head Match is best for URLs with unique values – checkout pages, for example, where the content is dynamically generated.  Regular Expression Match is best for pages where the stem and/or URL is dynamic.  Google uses this example: “page=1 will match http://sports.example.com/checkout.cgi?page=1&id=002 as well as http://fishing.example.com/checkout.cgi?page=1&language=fr&id=119.”
3. Goal URL/Goal Name/Case Sensitivity.  All fairly self explanatory.  Insert the URL – or landing page – where your customer will complete the goal.  A thank you page for an email sign up or filling out a contact form.  For E-commerce sites, a checkout page for continuing to checkout or a receipt of payment for the actual sale.  The goal name should be specific – something other than “Goal 1″.  Case sensitivity is explained above.
4. Goal value is the dollar amount of what a single completed goal will mean to you.  For example, if you know that for every 10 people who fill out a contact form, 1 will do business with you; and the average person will spend $10,000 with you, then your goal is worth $1,000.  (NOTE: Be sure to leave the amount without $ sign; as in 1000, NOT $1000.)
5. If you would like to track your conversions through the steps your customers take to get there, use funnels.

Once GA starts collecting data, you can view it in the Goals section of your account.

Nicki Hicks
Happy Converting!

Finally, the (highly?) anticipated the new features on Google Analytics went live on Monday.  Among the improvements were changes to the User Interface and completely new tools: Advanced Segmentation, Custom Reporting, and Motion Charts.  So here’s a quick run through of the new tools:

Advanced Segmentation

Until now, you’ve been able to segment your Analytics history in each category (number of visits, pageviews, etc.) according to the date.  In other words, you could compare this past month to the month before.  Now, though, you can compare almost everything using advanced segments.

It wouldn’t allow you to see it, but Conversion Goals are also on this list.  You can choose any number of segments you’d like to compare.  Here, I chose to compare All Visits and Referral Traffic from this blog:

The benefit?  I can see that my traffic depends directly on the number of referring links to my site.  Other trends should also show up by using this tool and comparing other advanced segments.

Custom Reporting

If, for some reason, the advanced segmenting misses a conversion you’d like to see, you can use custom reporting.

You can choose which metrics you’d like to measure, then which dimensions to cross reference them by.  While GA gives you the ability to measure almost every conversion possible, the custom reports are helpful if you’d like to see your goals convert for more than one metric or more than one dimension.

Motion Charts

Finally, motion charts.  The Google Analytics Blog did a full synopsis on this already, so here’s a quick recap.  With several of the GA tools, you can “Visualize” the data – you will be redirected to that particular motion chart.  Here is a snapshot of what my new vs. returning visitors for yesterday look like:

Motion charts play like a movie, so this shot is the last frame.  While motion charts cannot be made for every conversion, you can customize the axis, colors, and even size of the data points.  Then, you can save individual motion charts you create – as they return to their default settings when you leave the page.

So, overall, pretty cool stuff.  Helpful, too, for that matter.  I’m interested to see what Analytics will be able to tell us next…

Nicki Hicks
Geeking out at GA

Are you a little over-excited when you check your Google Analytics because your stats look great?  You might be if you, people at your company, or maybe a consultant are on your website a lot.  Your analytics pick up those high stats from you!

So what to do?  Block your IP address! Check it out:

First, go to your homepage for Analytics – Analytics Settings – and click on your filter manager.

Click “add filter”.  You’ll see this screen:

Insert your filter name (using the IP address is a pretty easy choice), choose the filter type (to exclude all traffic from an IP address), and insert your IP address.  Below that, choose which sites you’d like to filter, and you’re all set!

You’ll find that your Analytics may no longer look as impressive, but at least they are no longer skewed!  Also – be sure to filter any other IP addresses you don’t want included in your analytics!

Nicki Hicks
Filter your measurements