Clickthrough Data & Google Analytics Skewed Matches

Matt Cutts recently answered a question that many might have had on why click through data for the keywords in your Google webmaster tools report does not always match your Google Analytics data. Most of it deals with the surfers and javascript in their browsers.

Tracking Facebook Likes With Google Analytics

If you use some of the Facebook addons on your site that I have talked about previously and you also use Google Analytics, I have come across a tutorial on how you can track Facebook Likes with GA. This type of analytics I would suggest only on higher volume sites that you know will have traffic and know will get an occasional like. It is not a perfect fit for every site, but I am in the process of implementing it on a small handful of my heavier traffic sites that I blog on quite frequently. It is actually a pretty easy process and just one more way to track traffic and actions. Kudos to David Booth for the short and easy to understand tutorial.

New Verification With Google Analytics

On Wednesday, Google announced a new way for site verification if you use Google Analytics. You can now use a Google Analytics JavaScript snippet to verify ownership of your website. If you already have Google Analytics set up, verifying ownership is as simple as clicking a button. You will note in the post that this only works with the newer asynchronous Google Analytics javaScript code. Google also introduced an improved interface for verification as well. The new Google verification page gives you more info about each verification method. In some cases, they can now provide detailed instructions about how to complete verification with your specific domain registrar or provider. Of course if you believe in a Google conspiracy, none of this will apply to you.

Google Analytics Firefox Addons

If you use Google Analytics as much as I do, you need to check out the two FireFox addons listed by Ann Smarty on Search Engine Journal. So far I have only gotten to play with the first one, Google Analytics Watcher and intend to try out the Google Analytics Monitor next week. I like the ability to switch quickly between different Google Analytics profiles as well. As Ann says, the second tool promotes being able to use multiple accounts as well, but she was not able to figure it out yet. This will be really nice as well as I too use multiple accounts and profiles. Firefox addons continue to be more more creative. I have used Firefox for years now and the addons have made it a reason why I stay.

Track Wordpress Outbound Links With Google Analyticator Plugin

If you are a Google Analytics conspiracy theorist, this post will not be for you. For everyone else, I wanted to post a link on How To Track Outbound Links From Your WordPress Blog. It shows how to use the Google Analyticator WordPress Plugin along with Google Analytics to track your outbound links clicks. If you already have the Google Analytics code on site in the footer or header, you will need to remove it beforehand as the plugin will automatically add the code for you. Give it a try on a site.

SEO Metrics From Analytics Video

Happy Black Friday everyone. I hope everyone's traffic is through the roof like mine is today. Christmas shopping time is definitely here.

Rand Fishkin released an excellent Whiteboard Friday video on what SEO Metrics you should be looking at in your web analytics. As always, Rand does a great job of explaining the "why" behind it. Theses metrics give you a great idea of where you need to improve in certain areas of your site. Below is the video.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday - Analytics for SEO from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

Gold In The Long Tail

I was always horrible in math, but always loved stats. Growing up I could figure a baseball players batting average in a heart beat and recite statistics from my favorite teams players at a drop of the hat. This has led to my love affair with web stats and Google analytics. Once you learn the ends and outs of it, it will tell you more than you can imagine about your site. I watch for where surfers come from and what links they exit on in particular and then match up items purchased on eBay that match terms of the exit link from the site. On my best well structured and content laden sites, the long tail search terms convert the best from the search engines. These surfers general use 4-7 keywords in their search from the engine, land on my site and exit through an eBay product link on the page. The longer the keyword the surfer uses, the higher the ratio of out-clicks to an eBay product.

Focusing on longer tail keywords is simple to implement into a relative content page. Just drill down in MNF, Google Keyword tool or whatever tool you are using and these will pop right out at you. Do not get caught up in the low search for count as you can integrate a lot of long tail phrases into one parent page of a shorter keyword focused targeted page. These low searched for terms add up the more you integrate them into your site and have a ton less competition as well. People tend to get too hung up on search numbers of primary keywords, that they neglect to pay any attention to adding longer tail phrases. The article will usually be only driven around a 2-3 word keyword phrase, thus leaving the big money surfer on the table. If you buy content from Need An Article or Text Broker, you may want to instruct the writer to integrate in a couple of the longer tail phrases you research out into the article. Remember while most of these writers are great writers, they are not SEO or keyword specialist. The article you might purchase might be great on the surface and actually solve a problem or need, but can truly gather more money from the table with longer tail phrases added.

If you have already purchased and posted your article, you can easily go in and weave in some long tail phrases into it without any problems. There is no penalty for improving your content on the page. You will be at the mercy of waiting for the search engines to re-index, but this normally only takes a few weeks at most.

If you are not using some sort of analytics program, I suggest you start. There are several out there besides Google as many have been lead to believe that the less you give Google the better. I am not one who wears a tin foil hat, but if you are, just use a different analytics. You will see that the big money is indeed in the long tail and will better learn how to attack it.

Google Analytics Tutorials

I continue to learn more and more about Google Analytics and how it can help me.
Google Conversion University has some great flash video tutorials so you can go at your own pace. These are very well put together and easy to understand. I suggest a half a day to go through them all and completely understand them. If you do not have time now, make sure to bookmark for future reference.

Using Google Analytics To Track Rankings

I have played around with Google Analytics for a while and am far from exploring all of it's capabilities. Fortunately there are way smarter people than me to learn from. I myself have tried to track rank with the filters but have been way off. Enter SEO mastermind, André Scholten, who made a guest post on the Joost de Valk blog about how Track SEO rankings with Google Analytics. Very nicely done and is definitely worth doing. Make sure you go to the directions on how to set up a filter as well. Let me know how you like it after playing with it.