Local Online Business Listing Hijacking: Protecting Your Identity
Many businesses, local search platforms, and social networks suffer from listings hijackers. Usually, listings hijackers are individuals that attempt to tamper with local business listings, repurposing those online identities for their own benefit…
Read more on Search Engine Watch

Why TV Companies Couldn’t Care Less About Original Online Video
Editor’s note: The following guest post was written by Ashkan Karbasfrooshan, founder and CEO of WatchMojo . The rise and proliferation of cable grew the total pie for television, leaving networks with bigger businesses even if their share of the pie shrunk. While the network-to-cable shift was evolutionary, the television-to-web transition is revolutionary. Nonetheless, TV’s Traditional Media …
Read more on TechCrunch

How Analytics Are Shaping Social Games is a post from: Top Blog Placement

Technorati Tags: analytics, games, Shaping, Social

As Social media is expanding its wings, it starts acting as the most influential communication channel known ever. The dimensions of traditional media has changed now and several internet marketing services providers have now started to look forward, evaluate and analyze such extensive quantity of data in structured manner and some in unstructured.

This data comes both from the internal and external sources and helps organizations to monitor overall business business strategies and predict the future volume of conversations and its impact on the business. The article elaborates the overall outline to configure your analytics package to measure the matrices that may have impact on your social networking strategies.

Manage a filter for Social media traffic: You are suggested to setup a social media profile with the help of a internet marketing services provider in your analytics account that portrays the relevant traffic from these websites. It certainly helps you to put a quick glance over the strategies you adapt, the pitfalls it contains and additional fuel it needs to rush.

Setting up several virtual pages: The process is very much similar to the mechanism, business owners do execute in pay per click technique. The process that an internet marketing company follows allows you to create some virtual URLs that redirects users to the tracking URL that contains the bulk information in original. This virtual URL offers very comprehensive link  proportion to the  user and an ability to the business owners to  track the path through which a user navigates through various social networking websites.

Event tracking mechanism: Event tracking in the SMO services indicates the methodology that organizations use to measure their efforts in the domain. The event tracking schedule is all set to specify the happenings conferred around the various social media events, a user executes while visiting the social networking sites.

Add Campaign Tracking to URLs: URL shortening process in search engine optimization has conferred another step to social media experts to track the social URLs. Vertical is now setting it up one step further and conceiving a tracking URLs for each social platform including tweets walls and posts.

In addition to above, you may consider a number of things while setting up your social media analytics plan. The strategies an internet marketing services provider defines, sets up your insight of the initiatives you suppose to take across the process. All you need to be considerate here about the creative process of media analytics. Social media analytics is all set to manage and head the pathway through which your site would be on the top list of this emerging sky walk.

Best Social Media Analytics Plan To Explore Effective Audience Engagement is a post from: Top Blog Placement

Technorati Tags: analytics, audience, Best, Effective, Engagement, explore, Media, Plan, Social

Webmasters and Internet marketers alike need to monitor their website traffic closely in order to manage and position the site features, products or services accordingly. An in-depth analysis of site traffic is necessary for effective planning and implementation of strategies to accomplish desired business objectives. There are numerous website analytics tools available on the cyberspace. But, Google Analytics rules the roost because of its simple user interface, free availability, brand support and numerous sophisticated features. Some of these powerful features of Google Analytics include:

With Google Analytics tool used for your website, you can easily track your site traffic and events. You can actually track your traffic in terms of a wide array of parameters such as total visits, unique visits, time spent on website, page views, average page views, visitor loyalty, bounce rate, etc. This is not all. Some additional and valuable information is also provided in the form of types of operating systems and browsers used by visitors, their depth of visit, screen colors and screen resolutions used by them, network configurations and many others. Various events recorded by the tool include videos, music and flash players, and downloadable files.    

Another masterful feature of Google Analytics is its ability to provide data on traffic sources, i.e. the origin used by a particular visitor to enter your website. Various sources may take the form of organic searches from search engines, sponsored listings, direct visits and banner advertisements.   

This popular tool also offers content on the landing pages where your visitors get into the site for the first time. These pages may be the home page or any other internal pages. Similarly, exit pages used by visitors to leave the website are also tracked. Other helpful contents consist of summary on site navigation and pages with the highest visits. You’ll also find an increase in return on investment (ROI) being monitored by the tool. Tracking of your goals is possible as well. Just specify the particular areas of improvement for the online business and get reports on their progress.    

Google Analytics is well-known for the generation of customized reports quickly in 5 different formats. Simply search the desired information and send it to your clients in no time. This specific feature comes in handy for internet marketers. If you seek to follow the activities of the visitors for some particular areas of your website, then there is the advance segment to server your purpose.

Yet Another advance feature is the presence of filters that purify and tailor-make data to deliver precise results. Make use of any of the two forms of filters, namely predefined and customized.  

Google Analytics allows owners of newfangled as well as existing websites to create multiple profiles. However, there is limitation on the number of goals in each profile. If you have many goals, it would be advisable to opt for new profiles. The tool also supports XML, PDF, TSV, and CSV for MS Excel formats to enable data export. It is possible to straightway mail the reports in the given formats by means of this web analytics application.

Google Analytics ? The Popular Tool to Track Website Visitors & Plan Strategies Accordingly is a post from: Top Blog Placement

Technorati Tags: Accordingly, analytics, google, Plan, Popular, Strategies, Tool, Track, Visitors, website

Last time we mentioned tracking software in general and briefly stated possible scenarios you can experience, as well as your possible actions when they actually occur. We also saw that Google Analytics is able to provide all of these features and much more. In this second part of the series we’ll be looking at Google Analytics in much more detail.

Creating a Google Analytics account The first thing you have to do to install Google Analytics is to sign up for an account. Head on over to http://google.com/analytics/sign_up.html and get a Google account; alternatively if you already have your own Google account you may just sign in there and associate your account with Google Analytics. From here on you simply need to sign into your Google account and you’ll have access to the statistics gathered by Google Analytics.

After that, you’ll need to provide your website URL. In case you would like to track more than one website, you can add those after setting up your account, but for now just add one of your existing websites. You’ll also have to fill in an account name. Remember that you’re not just limited to the root URL; you can assign an account name to a specific section of your website.  For example, if you have a blog section, you can create an account just for that blog section that is separate from your products section or from your company information section.

The last thing you need to do to create an account is to accept the terms of service. Read through and understand the agreement and tick the checkbox signifying that you have read and accepted the terms. After that, you will have created an account. Setting up your Google Analytics account

It is very easy to install Google Analytics. Installing it is as easy as copying and pasting a snippet of javascript code into all of your web pages. However, you must first understand your site layout, as the Google Analytics code snippet is different depending on whether you have a single domain, one domain with multiple subdomains or multiple top-level domains.

·Single domain. The single domain option is the default option. This option should be used when you have a single top-level domain and all of your webpages are under this domain. For example, if you own http://www.seoconsult.co.uk/ and every webpage has that domain as its root, then this option is for you.

·One domain with multiple subdomains. If you own a domain but prefer to use subdomains to keep separate the sections of your website, then you should use this option. For example, if you have code.google.com and labs.google.com this option is for you.

·Multiple top-level domains. Sometimes you would like your domain to be available in as many top-level-domain extensions as possible, so that it looks more official. For example, if you have yahoo.com as well as yahoo.co.uk then this option is what you should choose.

Notice that whenever you choose an option, the snippet of text to the right of it will change. This is the reason that identifying the category your domain falls into is important: there are different code tracking snippets for each category, and choosing the wrong category (leading to the wrong code snippet) may cause your reported statistics to be inaccurate.

Installing Google Analytics Now that you have the snippet, all you have to do is copy that piece of code and paste it in every page of your site that you want to be tracked. It is recommended that you place it before the tag, so that it is read last and will not affect page loading times.

For static sites, where each page is pre-generated and is served as-is by the webserver, all you need is to copy and paste the code to each of those static pages. Sometimes static sites make use of server-side includes which make site-wide changes of similar content easier (like headers and footers, for example). In this case, the best way would be to add the snippet to a server-side include that is called on just before the tag.

In case you are using a dynamically generated site (like a blog using WordPress or a Content Management System like drupal), the easiest way to install Google Analytics to every page of your site is to install it in the template you are using. For example, in WordPress a theme usually contains a template for the page layout – once you paste the tracking code to this template, each page that uses the template will be tracked by Google Analytics.

Website profiles Your Google Analytics account is not limited to tracking a single domain. You don’t have to create a new Google Analytics account if you wish to track a different domain or segregate tracking within a single domain. So how do you separate the reports between domains? You create a new website profile for them.

In fact, during the setting up section, you have in fact created an initial website profile. The procedure for creating a new website profile is very similar to that first set up. All you need to do is to click on “Add Website Profile” and continue as you would when you initially set up your first website.

Adding users Most of the time, you will not be the only one who wants to see the statistics gathered. Maybe your boss would like a piece of the action or perhaps you would like to delegate monitoring and responsibility of specific sections of the reports to subordinates. You can of course just share your Google Analytics account username and password, but that will not be very secure. The secure way of adding collaborators is to add users.

To add a new user, just click on “User Manager” and then “Add User.” Note that the user you are adding must have a Google account. The easiest way to make sure the email address has a Google account associated with it is to sign up for a Gmail account. After that, simply choose the access privileges you want this user to have, as well as which website profiles he or she can access. Then just click on “Save Changes” and your new user would have been added.

Using Google Analytics To Track Website Optimization Success – Ii is a post from: Top Blog Placement

Technorati Tags: analytics, google, optimization, Success, Track, using, website

During the last few segments of this series we talked about the benefits you can get from tracking software, of which Google Analytics is one of the best and free examples. We have also looked a bit on how to set up an account for Google Analytics, as well as some instructions on how to install it into every page of your website.

This time, we will be taking a dive into Google Analytics and explore its functions. There is a lot of available information that Google Analytics gathers, analyzes and computes and it can be daunting at first. If you are reading this, be sure that you have at least read part II and have your account set up and ready to follow the examples given here.

Reports Google Analytics’ reports generation is one of its powerful features and it will do you well to understand how to navigate and generate these reports. These reports are available for each website profile you have created. If you have made your website profiles accurately, the reports generated for each profile will be accurate as well. You can access the report for a particular website profile by clicking on the “View report” link just beside it.

Dashboard Clicking on the “View report” link will take you to that particular website profile’s dashboard. The dashboard is a very general overview of your website’s performance as Google Analytics gathered. You are also able to change dashboards to your other website profiles by clicking on the drop-down box where it says “View reports.”

·Visits. On the upper part of the dashboard is a graph that displays the number of visits on your site over time. Note that there is a distinction between visits and visitors: a visit means a session that was initiated by a visitor of your site. There is a 30-minute window of inactivity where a visitor’s visit is recounted. For example, if a visitor visits your site that is counted as one visit, but if the visitor idles or otherwise performs no activity whatsoever on your site (maybe because he or she switched to a different program) for 30 minutes or more, the next time your visitor performs an activity (like clicking on a link) it will be considered a new visit.

·Page views. Aside from showing you an overview of visits, your dashboard will also show the number of page views your site has generated. A page view is the number of pages a visitor had viewed. Note that this number can be skewed, especially for ajax-heavy and dynamic webapps, since there are practically no new page requests with these types of sites.  A visitor can have as few as only one page view per visit, even though he or she had stayed on your site for hours.

·Bouce Rate. You are also able to know what percent of your visitors only visit the front page and leave, without visiting any other places in your website. Most of the time, these are people who came in via a search engine and are tentatively visiting to see if your website has the content they were looking for and then leave after quickly judging that it does not. Knowing the bounce rate is extremely helpful when doing front page refactoring since you might find that the search engine queries or keywords are actually relevant to your site and yet the visitors still leave after only visiting the front page. It is possible your front page content is too cluttered or does not immediately present the necessary information.

·Average Time on Site. Your dashboard will also show the average amount of time your visitors spend on your site as a whole. The rule of thumb is that the higher the time a visitor spends on your site, the better (because your visitor is exposed to more of your content, might be enjoying interacting with your site, or eagerly browsing through your catalogue and consuming your data). However, one caveat is that this statistic can sometimes be misleading as some visitors will leave their browsers open while still pointing at your site. Cross reference this statistic with your pageviews to get a better picture.

·Map Overlay. One of the coolest features on Google Analytics is geolocation – a process by which a website visitor’s ip is correlated with its estimated geographic origin. Geolocation is more or less accurate and this information is gathered as well from each visit. On the map overlay, you can see a small map overlayed with information on which part of the world your visitors are coming from. This is most useful when you want to optimize your site to better target your audience. The numbers from gelocation are a very effective convincing tool as well.

·Traffic Sources. The dashboard also gives information on where your visitors are coming from. You will see a pie-chart that easily describes which sites feed traffic into your own. This resource is very helpful when trying to optimize your website for search engines; you will know which search engines drive traffic into your sites (and perhaps optimize for that search engine or add optimization for other engines) and which sites link to yours (such as forums, blogs, discussion boards). You can also use this report to figure out if your search engine consultant is actually driving traffic to your site due to his own methods and not because of other, irrelevant means.

·Content. You can also get a quick, good summary of your page content from the dashboard. You can determine the top drivers for page views from this report. This overview is more of a compilation of all the other reports and it is good for gaining a quick insight into which sections of your site are your prime assets.  You can then either capitalize on these assets by including a sales pitch or cross reference your other pages from this asset to get otherwise unseen pages more exposure.

This is just a very brief overview of the dashboard. Going even deeper into the various report generation capabilities of Google Analytics will take a whole book. It is advised that you play around with the report generation especially when you already have existing data. Also, the help section at Google Analytics is a very good resource for additional information.

Find More Optimize Website Articles

Using Google Analytics To Track Website Optimization Success – Iii is a post from: Top Blog Placement

Technorati Tags: analytics, google, optimization, Success, Track, using, website

I was ranked on the first page of Google for a term for a long time, and then once I put on Analytics I dropped to page 29!

I found a thread on the net about Google using Analytics data in calculating ranking positions, especially Bounce Rate.

Any comments on this?

Google Analytics impacts your rankings????!!!!? is a post from: Top Blog Placement

Technorati Tags: analytics, google, long time

I was ranked on the first page of Google for a term for a long time, and then once I put on Analytics I dropped to page 29!

I found a thread on the net about Google using Analytics data in calculating ranking positions, especially Bounce Rate.

Any comments on this?

Google Analytics can hurt your rankings!!!! True/False? is a post from: Top Blog Placement

Technorati Tags: analytics, google, long time

I was ranked on the first page of Google for a term for a long time, and then once I put on Analytics I dropped to page 29!

I found a thread on the net about Google using Analytics data in calculating ranking positions, especially Bounce Rate.

Any comments on this?

Google Analytics can hurt your site rankings??? is a post from: Top Blog Placement

Technorati Tags: analytics, google, long time

The reason why website owners implement website analytics tracking software onto their websites is to be able to quantify the activities of their visitors and measure their online advertising programs.  Once the analytical data starts to flow into the reporting modules, the Internet marketing team begins a detailed review of the behavior and performance.

Before we look into activities that are Beyond Basic Website Analytics, we will review the obvious or basic website data review including things like: unique visitors, page view, keywords, time on website, most viewed pages, least viewed pages, etc.  This important analytical activity needs to include website conversion components.

What is a Website Conversion?

These are the goals that are established by the website owner i.e. lead generation, revenue, etc.  How can these goals be measured?

- Make a Purchase

- Download a Document

- Sign Up for a Newsletter

- View or Request a PDF

- Complete a Contact Us Form

- Submit a Request a Proposal

- Fill In a Request for Info Form

- Click on a Specified Link

The process used to measure these goals is found in submitting a Thank You page to the visitor who made the request or took the action.                          

Establishing the Website’s Monetization Value

Many times the website owner or Internet marketing team uses subjective and often arbitrary methods to place value on specific website activities.  We believe you should quantify the value of a lead or conversion in a more analytical manner i.e. establishing the value of a lead followed by the value of a new customer.  This is often done using the simple equation of establishing the # of Visitors : First Order Value.

Relating Website Traffic Sources to Conversion

The basic analytics review focuses on visitor source i.e. Natural Search, Paid Search, Referral Site, Email Marketing, Banner Ads, etc.  The next step is to review the Keyword Phrases that are driving traffic and are converting.  Quantifying the value in Dollars vs. Source is a very important measurement within website conversion enhancement.

Selecting the Website Analytics Solution

Remember… web analytics is the process of gathering and analyzing your website’s data in order to glean meaningful information about how your site is being utilized by your users. There are plenty of web analytics programs to choose from.  Some of the larger, better known applications are: GoogleAnalytics, Omniture, Webtrends, HitWise, Coremetrics, ClickTracks, ComScore, etc. There are also a broad number of alternative programs that are lesser known; however, they are useful and free of charge: Piwik, FireStats, Snoop, BBClone, Whoopra, JAWStats, MochiBot and Grape Web Statistics. The intention in showing you numerous analytics programs is meant to provide insight into the various methods used to collect and distribute the data for user analysis and reporting.

Asking Pertinent Questions

So now the question is: How do we go beyond basic website analytics in determining the present and future of our website? Let’s take a closer look at some issues by asking questions:

-         Why do some of the keywords drive high traffic volume to the website with the conversion rate being very low?  What about the opposite situation?

-         Have you compared analytical data against keyword rankings within the SERPS to determine if more or less investment of time and money is required?

-         After reviewing recent monthly analytical report data, did you come to the conclusion as to where your Internet marketing effort should be placed?

-         What effect does each website promotion activity have on your bottom-line?

Now that you have focused on specific some points of measurement, we need to move on. One More Step Beyond the “Basic”…

Prospective Client Data Collection

Expanding your basic website analytics and information gathering can be assisted by considering the use of the following two [2] programs:

iPerceptions 4Q Program – This program is provided by one of North America’s leading web-focused attitudinal analytics providers. webValidator Continuous Listening Solution and its proprietary Satisfaction Index turn thousands of data points into easy-to-understand strategic and tactical decision support.

ClickTale Heatmap Program – The service helps you analyze the traffic that goes to your site. It is similar to a Google heatmap result that tells you on which part of a page people look at the most, and in what order they tend to scan the page.  Think about it… with that information, you could design each page to place the critical components exactly where people look at the most, scroll to or click on. 

This insight provides the Internet marketing team with specific data that can be used to modify each webpage to the optimum level possible. 

Now you know that basic website analytics are not enough!  Using tools like the ones mentioned above will provide your Internet marketing team with the special insight needed to create and maintain a highly optimized website.

Finally, be sure to hire Internet marketing professionals to do the job if you don’t have the capabilities in-house.  Too much is at stake to leave this part of your business to chance!  We are pleased to provide you the insightful comments contained herein.  Please contact us at www.InternetConsultingAndCoaching.com or call us at 631-423-0815 for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team or to review the Full list of PDF documents on Internet Marketing and Conversion techniques.

Beyond BASIC Website Analytics is a post from: Top Blog Placement

Technorati Tags: analytics, Basic, Beyond, website

I am still in high school. I still need another year to finish my high school program. I am already 19 years of age. However, is getting my High School Diploma is not my best option? Should I just go to community college and begin some classes? I have taken various AP, Honors, an Advanced classes, I just never got credit for them. I dont know if a University will accept me without a diploma. My ACT Score is 33.

1. I am an eBay Powerseller and Top Rated Seller; with experience in global logistics, and importing an exporting, and working with Chinese Manufacturers and other outsourcing experience. This was my first company I started when I was 17.

2. I am an AdWords Qualified Professional and Search Marketing Expert, I have my own Search Agency that is a partner with Google, and I offer Lead Generation services to Law Firms and Sole Practitioner Lawyers. I also hold Advanced Google Certification in Analytics in search engine and performance based marketing and statistical and quantitative SEM analysis. (And I just want to be more financially sophisticated as a personal goal.)

3. I am currently studying for my Series 7 Exam, a financial exam to become a licensed stock-broker. I have a Financial Firm that will sponsor and offer me employment.

4. I am running for a current political position in my country, we have started my campaign, and I have a very high chance of getting elected. I am very active in my political party and backed by my party.
I meant to add:

"(And I just want to be more financially sophisticated as a personal goal.)"

Under point 3, not point 2.
My GPA at presence is 2.1.

Should I finish High School? [Google AdWords Professional, eBay Powerseller] 19 Year Male? is a post from: Top Blog Placement

Technorati Tags: 19 years, act score, analytics, chinese manufacturers, ebay, ebay powerseller, generation services, global logistics, goal 3, google, gpa, high school diploma, personal goal, political position, practitioner lawyers, search agency, sem analysis, series 7 exam, sole practitioner, stock broker