Digital Analytics Fundamentals #5/1 - Reporting Overview

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Unit 5/1 - Reporting Overview

The Google Analytics Academy started a new course (March 11th 2014) called "Google Analytics Platform Principles" which ended yesterday.  Though not required, it is recommended completing the "Digital Analytics Fundamentals" course on Analytics Academy before beginning this course:

The first part of the fifth lesson provides an overview to the reporting interface of Google Analytics.

For each report you can adjust its date range, which will stay active till changed again or you log out. In addition you can add a second date range to compare current with historic data.

The granularity of the shown data can be changed to day, week, or month.

You can select the shown metric, and also select a second one for comparison.

To mark certain events e.g. for future reference, you can add annotations.

For tables you can choose primary and secondary dimensions as well as its metrics - which are organized into tabs at the top of each report.

You can use filters to display only specific values of the primary dimension or use advanced filters consisting of various rule sets.

You can visualize data in different ways using view options:

• the data view as default option,
• the percentage view with pie charts,
• the performance view with bar graphs,
• the comparison view to see which values are above or below averages,
• and the pivot view with a pivot table with rows and columns showing different dimension values.

The plot-rows feature plots selected rows or segments of the table in the time graph.

Shortcuts remember specific settings to avoid tedious reconfigurations ...

Digital Analytics Fundamentals #4/5 - Collecting Campaign Data

Unit 4/5 - Collecting Campaign Data

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The Google Analytics Academy started a new course (March 11th 2014) called "Google Analytics Platform Principles".  Though not required, it is recommended completing the "Digital Analytics Fundamentals" course on Analytics Academy before beginning this course:

The fifth part of the forth lesson addresses marketing campaigns.

Two user attributes - dimensions - Google captures are source - the referring website - and medium - the referral mechanism, how the user got to your site.

By default there are three mediums:

• organic - identifies traffic coming from unpaid search results,
• referral - traffic from other websites which are not search engines,
• none - for users typing the URL directly or using a bookmark.

Via link tagging you can add extra information to links to track campaigns - the first three should be added for all manual tagging:

• the Source and Medium tags allow to overwrite the default values described above,
• with the Campaign tag you can name your marketing campaign,
• the optional Term tag allows to identify keywords of paid search campaigns,
• and the optional Content tag allows to specify different versions of your campaign.

 The URL builder helps to create those tags correctly.

Because Google AdWords and Google Analytics are connected, there is no need to create campaign tags manually for AdWords campaigns. The AdWords auto-tagging is enabled by default and adds also other dimensions specific to AdWords campaigns.

Channels allow to group traffic based on various link tags. There are predefined channels Direct, Email, Social, Organic and Display. It's possible to redefine them and to create new ones.

Campaign information shows up

• in the All Traffic report - including all sources and mediums from default values and tags,
• in the Campaigns report - including data for each campaign used in tags and AdWords campaigns, but also information from the Content tag, which however will requires a change of the Primary Dimensions to Ad Content,
• and in the Paid Search Keywords report - including tagged keywords.

Smart Passive Income #280 - Sandbox Effect & SEO Crash

SEO Crash

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Last time Pat learned about the Google dance, now (September 2010) "he had to" discover the sandbox effect.

The sandbox effect describes the "unconfirmed" phenomenon of being penalized by search engines for bad SEO ... e.g. link spam, buying back links, ...

Pat wanted to speed up his ranking for the niche site duel, using a service which should enter his site into hundreds of web directories ... he paid real money ... his rank did not improve ... now Pat thinks, Goggle does not like him any more :(

Tiny Tiny RSS-Stream Colelctor Udated

Collect RSS Streams

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In Summer last year Google discontinued the Google Reader - a free service to collect various RSS streams and to view them online. Tiny Tiny RSS is an open-source software which provides the same functionality on your own (local) server. It requires PHP and MySQL, is quite easy to install and allows even to import data from Google Reader ...

... however running the reader on your own server - even if it provides "more" privacy - requires keeping the software up to date.

How to update Tiny Tiny RSS?
First backup your current installation as well as the database.

database backup using phpMyAdmin

Let's say your current installation version 1.11 is at ttrss, just create a copy of that directory naming it with the "old" version number. Why? If something goes wrong, you want to go back to the current - working - installation.

cp -rp ttrss ttrss-1.11

To create a backup of your current database use your favorite tool, e.g. phpMyAdmin

or by command line

mysqldump -u [db-username] -p ttrss > ttrss-1.11.sql 

For the actual update, you could download the new version and do a manual update, but there is a more convenient way. Let it do Tiny Tiny RSS itself:

cd ttrss; php -q update.php --update_self

This will download the new version, (create a copy of the current version - which we actually do not need because we created a backup above).

The current version also fixes the permissions on the cache folder, but still seems missing the upload folder which it will tell you when opening the online interface the next time. Just change it yourself e.g.

chmod -R 707 cache/upload/

Now open the online interface in your browser, the software will run an update on your database ... done ...

Digital Analytics Fundamentals #4/4 - Setting Up Goals and Ecommerce

Unit 4/4 - Setting Up Goals and Ecommerce

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The Google Analytics Academy started a new course (March 11th 2014) called "Google Analytics Platform Principles".  Though not required, it is recommended completing the "Digital Analytics Fundamentals" course on Analytics Academy before beginning this course:

The forth part of the forth lesson explains how to track macro and micro conversions using goals.

Macro conversions are primary business objectives. Micro conversions are activities necessary to reach the final macro conversions.

Goals are set up for specific views. Different views might/will have different goals.

There are goals that track user actions

• web pages or views that are shown when the business objective is reached - like a "thank you" page - called destination goals,
• goals that track starting a certain action - like downloading a file - called event goals,

and goals that measure user engagement

• like a certain number of visited pages - a pages-per-visit goal,
• or reaching a certain threshold spending time on a site - a duration goal.

Setting up the URI for a destination goal allows to use different match types - "begins with", "equals", or regular expressions.

The goal-verification tool allows to test goals during the setup process using a preview of the conversion rates for the last seven days.

Setting goal values allows to specify the monetary value for that goal to interpret its conversions as actual revenue.

Funnels are pages/actions leading to the goal. They show where a user enters or leaves the path to the goal. Multi-channel-funnels reports provide the path a user took to reach the conversion across multiple visits.

eCommerce reporting shows transactions, revenue, and many more commerce-centered metrics.

Where goals are counted only once per visit, eCommerce transactions are counted every time they occur.

Digital Analytics Fundamentals #4/3 - Setting up Basic Filters

Unit 4/3 - Setting up Basic Filters

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The Google Analytics Academy started a new course (March 11th 2014) called "Google Analytics Platform Principles".  Though not required, it is recommended completing the "Digital Analytics Fundamentals" course on Analytics Academy before beginning this course:

The third part of the forth lesson addresses filters to modify data within a view

• to exclude data - e.g. filtering out traffic from your own IP addresses,
• to include data,
• to adjust the look of your data - e.g. adjusting URL names to lower case ...

They are applied during data processing. The transformed results are shown in your reports.

Instructions/rules for a filter are called conditions. TRUE conditions are used for processing. FALSE conditions are ignored.

A filter needs to know

• the type of data to use - e.g. IP address, device type, or geographic location,
• the actual condition - e.g. the pattern it should match or not match,
• and the action - what to do with the data.

Predefined filters provide templates for common situations. Custom filters can be used for almost any other unique situation.

Multiple filters can be applied and are processed consecutively.

All filters are stored in a filter library for reuse in the whole account.

Don't forget to use new filters in the test view first!

Digital Analytics Fundamentals #4/2 - Understanding your Account Structure

Unit 4/2 - Understanding your Account Structure

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The Google Analytics Academy started a new course (March 11th 2014) called "Google Analytics Platform Principles".  Though not required, it is recommended completing the "Digital Analytics Fundamentals" course on Analytics Academy before beginning this course:

The second part of the forth lesson investigates the structure of an Google Anayltics account.

Google Anayltics accounts are a way to group digital assets. Certain configuration settings - like managing user access - apply for a whole account.

Within an account, properties collect data from unique tracking IDs. Typically you would separate distinct business using accounts, and different websites, mobile applications, or other assets belonging to that business using properties.

Nevertheless, you can still collect data from different websites using the same tracking ID, which is called roll-up reporting.

You can configure multiple views for a property to show different aspects of your data, e.g. to manage and protect your data.

At least three views are recommended:

• an unfiltered view, which is generated by default,
• a master view holding all settings to provide useful information,
• a test view to play with your settings, before adjusting the master view.

Once data is processed, it can not be adjusted or reprocessed anymore ... Creating a new view will only hold information starting with the creation of that very view.

It's also strongly recommended to develop the measurement plan before setting up an account.

Digital Analytics Fundamentals #4/1 - Creating an Account

Unit 4/1 - Creating an Account

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The Google Analytics Academy started a new course (March 11th 2014) called "Google Analytics Platform Principles".  Though not required, it is recommended completing the "Digital Analytics Fundamentals" course on Analytics Academy before beginning this course:

The first part of the forth lesson creating a new Google-Analytics account.

During the first setup you will be asked whether you want to track a website or a mobile application. Depending on your choice different instructions will be displayed to add the correct code to your site or application.

For websites you will receive a piece of JavaScript which needs to be added to every page you want to track. It's best to add it at the top of each page, just before the closing </head> tag. It can be added directly to the template you use.

For mobile applications you need to download the software development kit (SDK) which is available for Android and iOS.

Once the code is added to, real-time reports are generated immediately.

It's also possible to use tag management instead or features of your software tools (e.g. Blogger, Wordpress, Drupal) integrated directly or via plugins.

Digital Analytics Fundamentals #3/2 - Key Detrics and Dimensions Defined

Unit 3/2 - Key Detrics and Dimensions Defined

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The Google Analytics Academy started a new course yesterday (March 11th 2014) called "Google Analytics Platform Principles".  Though not required, it is recommended completing the "Digital Analytics Fundamentals" course on Analytics Academy before beginning this course:

The second part of the third lesson addresses the types of data used in Google Analytics - dimensions and metrics.

Dimensions are user characteristics like geographic location, traffic source, or the name of the viewed page.

Metrics are the counts how often those characteristics are seen on your page, their averages, or sums like the total purchase value associated with those dimensions.

• Visitors or users measure the number of unique users visiting at a certain time. They can be segmented in new and returning users.
• Visits or sessions measure a period of consecutive activity of the same user. The default timeout - till a new visit is counted from the same user - is 30 minutes. It can be changed depending on the site context (e.g. text based vs video site)
• Pageviews count the number of times a page is viewed. Other interactions need to be triggered separately and need additional customization.
• Visit duration is the time difference between the last and first interaction with the site.
• Time on page is the time difference between two page views of the same page.
• Bounce rate is the percentage of sessions with only one single page view.

Digital Analytics Fundamentals #3/1 - How Google Analytics works

Unit 3/1 - How Google Analytics works

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The Google Analytics Academy started a new course (March 11th 2014) called "Google Analytics Platform Principles".  Though not required, it is recommended completing the "Digital Analytics Fundamentals" course on Analytics Academy before beginning this course:

The first part of the third lesson provides some insights to how Google Analytics works.

It consists of four major parts data collection, configuration, data processing and reporting.

Collecting data from a website works by adding a piece of JavaScript code to each page that should be tracked. When a user visits those pages information about the page (e.g. the URL), the user (e.g. browser name, language, operating system) and the referring page is collected and sent to Google. It is possible to sent additional information by adapting the JavaScript code.

Collecting data from mobile apps works by using device specific methods. Instead of tracking page views, certain "activities" are monitored which need to be handled by the device. If a device is not online all the time, activities can be cached and are dispatched when the device reconnects to the Internet.

At Google the data is processed, e.g. by categorizing certain information like the type of the device.

Depending on your configuration, filters - to include or exclude certain types of data - are applied and finally the data is stored in a database.

Reports can be accessed via the web interface or via the Core Reporting API.

Digital Analytics Fundamentals #2/4 - Creating a Measurement Plan

Unit 2/4 - Creating a Measurement Plan

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The Google Analytics Academy started a new course yesterday (March 11th 2014) called "Google Analytics Platform Principles".  Though not required, it is recommended completing the "Digital Analytics Fundamentals" course on Analytics Academy before beginning this course:

The fourth part of the second lesson is about measurement plans.

To use analytics efficiently, the data you measure needs to be relevant to your business and goals.

• First decide what to measure, what identifies your business objectives ... the measurement plan
• Document your server technologies, mobile applications, responsive designs, possibilities to use tracking ... the technical infrastructure
• Define code snippets and product features necessary to track relevant data ... the implementation plan
• Start over, refine your plans to measure your products more efficiently or to adapt to changes of the environment.

For the measurement plan

• define your business objectives - your goals,
• identify strategies to reach your objectives (e.g. eCommerce: selling products, lead generation: collecting leads, content publishing: engagement and revisits, support sites: help finding information, branding: awareness and loyalty),
• choose metrics to indicate performance changes (e.g. revenue, visits, clicks, ...),
• segment your data (e.g. by marketing channel, customer type, geography, ---),
• define targets for your performance indicators.

Depending on your technical infrastructure you might need additional planning, e.g. whether you are using

• string parameter queries,
• server redirects,
• Flash and AJAX requests,
• multiple domains and sub domains,
• responsive webdesign.

An implementation plan for Google Analytics will most likely consist of

• the standard Google Analytics tracking snippet,
• the goal tracking and eCommerce module to cover your key performance indicators (KPI),
• filters to normalize your data,
• campaign tracking and AdWords linking to track marketing activities,
• custom dashboards and reports for analysis and reporting.

Digital Analytics Fundamentals #2/3 - Conversions and Conversion Attribution

Unit 2/3 - Conversions and Conversion Attribution

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The Google Analytics Academy starts a new course today (March 11th 2014) called "Google Analytics Platform Principles".  Though not required, it is recommended completing the "Digital Analytics Fundamentals" course on Analytics Academy before beginning this course:

The third part of the second lesson discusses conversions and conversion attribution.

The final goal of most sites is selling a product or service. The best outcome of a marketing activity is persuading a customer to buy the product ... which would be a macro conversion.

However, not every marketing activity will be successful for all potential customers. Most likely they come to your site but do not follow all necessary steps, they change their mind, or might come back later ... this is measured using micro conversions, and helps optimizing your processes.

To know which marketing efforts produced which results, it's necessary to attribute those conversions to your marketing campaigns.

Most commonly last-click attributions are used, meaning only the marketing activity leading to the final - selling - click is attributed with the conversion. But is also possible to attribute the activity leading to the first visit of your page - first-click attribution - or to split the attribution to all activities involved in the conversion.

Digital Analytics Fundamentals #2/2 - Core Analysis Techniques

Unit 2/2 - Core Analysis Techniques

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The Google Analytics Academy starts a new course tomorrow (March 11th 2014) called "Google Analytics Platform Principles".  Though not required, it's recommended completing the "Digital Analytics Fundamentals" course on Analytics Academy before beginning this course.

The second part of the second lesson explains two techniques on how to analyze data, by segmentation and by context.

Segmentation splits the data into subsets and allows to compare those subsets with each other. E.g. segmenting data

• by date and time shows how customers behave differently depending on certain days or hours,
• by device shows how customers interact with your site depending on the hardware they use,
• by marketing channel shows how effective certain marketing activities are,
• by geography shows which countries, regions or cities perform,
• by customer characteristics shows e.g. how first-time customers act compared to repeat customers.

Context allows to compare performance to external sources like industry benchmarks or internal sources like historical data of the same site.

Digital Analytics Fundamentals #2/1 - The Importance of Digital Analytics

Unit 2/1 - The importance of digital analytics

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The Google Analytics Academy starts a new course tomorrow (March 11th 2014) called "Google Analytics Platform Principles".  Though not required, it's recommended completing the "Digital Analytics Fundamentals" course on Analytics Academy before beginning this course.

The first part of the second lesson starts by defining "digital analytics":

Analyzing qualitative and quantitative data to continuously improve the online experience of your customers/users.

While the traditional marketing concept is represented as funnel with it's stages building awareness, acquiring interest, engagement, conversion, retainment, the customer/user is now in the center of everything.

Previously online tracking and analytics was only available for websites. Nowadays analytics include also mobile applications/devices, gaming consoles, and nearly every digitally connected device.

Depending on the business objectives there are different desired outcomes:

• eCommerce sites are focused on product and service sales,
• lead-generation sites want to collect user information for potential leads,
• content publishers need to encourage engagement and revisits,
• support sites have to provide information as quickly as possible,
• and branding stresses awareness, engagement and loyalty.

The final outcome/goal represents the macro conversion. How close this goal is reached can be shown by micro conversions (the steps needed for the final goal).

To provide continual improvement, those conversions need to be measured, reported and analyzed continuously, to finally test possible adaptations and repeat the whole process ...

Digital Analytics Fundamentals #1 - Course Overview

Unit 1 - Course overview

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The Google Analytics Academy starts a new course tomorrow (March 11th 2014) called "Google Analytics Platform Principles".  Though not required, it's recommended completing the "Digital Analytics Fundamentals" course on Analytics Academy before beginning this course.

The first unit explains how the course is structured. There are

• video and text lessions,
• practice activities, 
• and course assessments.

Additional information is provided in the resources as well as in the FAQ section of the course .

Smart Passive Income #261 - Nontraditional Search Engines

Nontraditional Search Engines

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There are other search engines out there ... besides Google ... and some of them are quite powerful ... even when they are not traditional search engines.

Pat discovered four of them: YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and iTunes ...

YouTube shows you

• what people talk about ... get inspired, find new ideas ...
• who else (competitors) is out there ...
• what's missing ... find your very own niche ...

Twitter lets you run search queries, too. Try adding the following (Pat-approved) phrases to your keyword searches:

• need help
• what is
• i hate
• i love
• can't
• bit.ly
• twitpic.com

Facebook ... well, Pat just comments that it works as search engine in a fantastic way ... and it's really great ...

... iTunes shows eBooks and podcasts from your competitors ...

Smart Passive Income #254 - Security through Obscurity

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Pat describes in great detail how to tell Google not to index a certain page, and how to remove it from Google if you do not want it there ...

For the first part you create a file called "robots.txt" and place it on  your web site e.g. with the following content:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /NAME_OF_THE_PAGE_YOU_WANT_TO_KEEP_HIDDEN

Most likely your service provider will have an online tool to create this file automatically. If not, there are tons of free tools online ...

Nevertheless, please note this does not keep Google or any other search engine away from your "secret pages". It just asks "in a friendly way" not to do so ... Google might follow your pleading, others might not ... the fun part is that you can actually browse those files yourself and you will know immediately which sites the owner of that webpage does not want to show everybody ;)

For the second part, Pat's description is a little bit outdated ... Just google for "remove page from index" and you will find an up to date documentation ...

... again this helps for pages indexed by Google, other search engines might not provide such a service ...

Why did Pat actually want to remove a page from Google?

Normally - in the business of internet marketing - you might think that the opposite is the case, we like to get indexed by Google ...

Google had indexed Pat's download page ... people just had to visit that very page to get the download link for his eBook(s?) ...

This is very bad if it is an eBook you charge money for, but it's still bad if it is one which you give away for free in exchange for an email address for your newsletter ...

In both situations it is a really bad idea to protect your property just by not telling everybody where to find it. ... there is a term for it: Security through Obscurity ... and it does not really work ...

Imagine you lock your house door, and keep the door in your backyard open ... nobody knows, so you are completely safe, aren't you? Nobody would dare to go around your house and enter from the back entrance ...

Please, please, please - you wouldn't do something like that in real life - please don't do that on the Internet ...

Even when Google follows your request, not to tell other people about your page ... what happens when you provide the link to that page to your "customers" ... what keeps them from sharing your link?

If you want to protect your pages, protect them using passwords:

• ... use different usernames and passwords for every single user
• ... use the email address of your customers as their usernames
• ... use scripts that do that automatically for you ...

Smart Passive Income #201 - Article Marketing

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Yet another guest post ... This time from Henri Junttila addressing article marketing.

For Henri article marketing means writing a short (300 to 400 words) article and submitting it to an article directory. He especially mentions a directory called EzineArticles, which according to Henri is "loved" by Google due to its "high" quality ... and (if you follow the link above) according to wikipedia is not that "loved" by Google ... Following the comments on Pat's blog - which contain quite a high a mount of spam, article marketing seems dead ... To me it rather sounds like another name for keyword or affiliate marketing???

Smart Passive Income #149 - Result of the Google Page Rank Experiment

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Remember Pat started an experiment trying to rank on top places for a specific google search.
He succeeded within one week making place #1.

He started with a blog post where he put the key phrase, in the title, the URL, the meta description and the first sentence of the post. He made the keywords bold everywhere in the content of the post. He embedded a YouTube video with the same title, using the same key phrase as anchor text and an image with the same title.

The tweeted and linked the post on Facebook (using the same key phrase).

He added bookmarks on Digg, StumbleUpon, and Delicious (again using the same key phrase in title and description) and used a browser plugin (SocialMarker) for a number of other bookmarking sites. (He also used those bookmarks for the YouTube video).

He submitted the video to five other video websites (again including back links and keywords).

He added additional articles (with new content) on eHow, eZineArticles, GoArticles, ArticleAlley, Squidoo and Hubpages linking back to the original article in multiple ways.

... and became #1 ...

Smart Passive Income #144 - SEO by Keywords

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Pat starts a new experiment: Pushing the search ranking of his site using keyword positioning.

He starts by determining which keywords are looked for most - using the tools provided by Goolge Adwords (and another one which does not seem working any more).