Google Analytics & Website Optimization: Grow Your Website with Data

YouTube Analytics are a bit of anomaly because YouTube itself is an anomaly.

It’s not your website and it’s not purely a social network. It’s more than a video hosting platform even though videos are it’s thing. It’s the world’s 2nd largest search engine by queries processed, but it’s not a search engine that crawls & indexes the Web like Google or Bing.

There is a lot to going on. And that makes YouTube Analytics challenging. There is a lot of noise. There are a lot of metrics. Some matter, and some don’t. Some matter in ways that you would not expect.

However you use it, YouTube wants you to improve. More videos viewed means more revenue and more visibility for YouTube. They want you to have more watch time, a bigger audience, and more reach. So like other social networks, YouTube provides a wealth of data to help you understand your audience, discovery and engagement.

But it goes further – because, again, there’s a lot going on. Since YouTube is a Google product, it integrates well with other Google products such as Google Analytics, Ads, AdSense and Search Console. And that’s just the marketing tools – there’s another universe of app integrations and Google Play integrations.

Unlike other social networks, you can get a better understanding of how YouTube fits with your other marketing data. The key (like other analytics products) is to set it up correctly, know what you are looking for, and to keep exploring.

I’ve worked on client YouTube channels, personal channels, and I’ve started exploring my own ShivarWeb YouTube channel. So here’s what I’ve learned about setting up, understanding & using YouTube Analytics (plus additional resources at the end).

[Read more…] about YouTube Analytics Guide: Setting Up, Understanding & Using YouTube Analytics

If you’ve done any research on tracking data on your website, you’ve probably heard about Google Analytics. But what exactly does Google Analytics do?

Google Analytics is a free website analytics service offered by Google that gives you insights into how users find and use your website. With Google Analytics, you can track return on investment (“ROI”) for your online marketing.

You can sift & sort your visitors with dozens of “dimensions” like where they came from, what browser they are using, etc and with “metric” like what page they clicked on and what form they submitted.

You can seamlessly integrate Google Products like your Ads account & Search Console. You can also use tracking codes to tag & track any advertising, social, PR campaign or any kind of campaign on any platform/website.

All you have to do is install a small amount of “tracking code” on each page of your website.*

*Installation varies depending on your website software. If you are using self-hosted WordPress, then you just paste it in your theme’s header or use a plugin. If you are using a hosted builder like Wix, Squarespace, Google Sites, GoDaddy, Weebly, Jimdo, or Sitebuilder – then you’ll use their built-in embed option. Not all customization options will be available with all platforms (examples w/ Wix and w/ Squarespace).

*Quick aside – all the screenshots in this post are real to show Analytics in action. They are taken from several websites that I own. The date ranges have been changed on each & I’ve blocked any sensitive data.

[Read more…] about What Does Google Analytics Do? And What Can I Do With Google Analytics?

I know what you’re thinking: “Twitter has analytics?!”

Yes, yes it does. Now, in addition to the plethora of free social media tools at our disposal, Twitter offers an in-depth view of how your Twitter account is performing.

Getting started with the platform is easy. As long as you have an existing account that’s more than 14 days old and isn’t deleted, restricted, protected, or suspended, just sign in with your account credentials at http://analytics.twitter.com.

After you log in, click Get Started on the Analytics homepage. [Read more…] about How To Understand & Use Twitter Analytics Effectively

So you’ve decided to create some custom marketing campaigns. That’s great! Before you roll out your email newsletters and social media ads, let’s talk about a tool that will help you immensely: the URL builder.

The URL Builder is a tool provided by Google that helps you add parameters to your custom campaigns, so Google Analytics can sort the data. It’s a quick and easy way to generate URLs by using the “plug and chug” method.

But in order to understand how to effectively use the URL Builder, you first have to understand campaign tagging itself. [Read more…] about How To Use URL Builder: UTM Parameter Tagging Effectively

You already know social media analytics can be a powerful tool in your marketing toolkit. Not only can they tell you about how your content performs on social (like Twitter & YouTube)… but the data can also give you tons of insight into your target audience and new potential business opportunities. Pinterest is no different.

Pinterest Analytics is a powerful social media tool that allows you to see what people Pin from your profile and website, as well as what your audience enjoys to pin outside of your own content.

[Read more…] about How to Understand & Use Pinterest Analytics

You probably know that a large portion of your traffic numbers in Google Analytics is either bullsh*t, spam, or straight-up wrong.

But you know that already. Even if you are tracking everything that you should track – there are still plenty of “unknown unknowns” in Google Analytics.

Like the fact that you did not know that Google Analytics does not track right-clicks (or any non-left click).

Think about how you browse the Internet. Right-clicking all the time, right?

Now think about those PDF downloads and external clicks that you are tracking as Goals in Google Analytics.

Yep – all wrong.

So here’s how to fix it – and track right-click events in Google Analytics as goals. [Read more…] about How To Track Right-Click Events & Goals in Google Analytics

Most marketers and website owners agree that you should make decisions based on data.

But too often, marketers and website owners think of data as something that you can go acquire on demand. Some data is available on demand. But there is some data that once it’s gone – it is gone forever.

If you aren’t recording and storing it, you can never access it to create reports, run analysis, make decisions or launch a campaign.

In other words, some data is like a lake. It’s a body of water that you can access simply because it’s there. But some marketing data is more like a pipeline. If you aren’t filling it up on one end and channeling it as it flows – you’ll never get to use it.

I’ve gone to optimize websites and kicked off client engagements only to realize “Oh, actually I have no data to base recommendations on” – so here’s my list of 14+ website marketing data that you need to track now or lose forever. [Read more…] about 14+ Website Marketing Data To Track Now or Lose Forever

The great wonderful world of Google Analytics Referral Spam & Bot Traffic – the most recent in a long tradition sending irrelevant or inappropriate messages on the Internet to a large number of people. This guide outlines why it matters, what’s going on, and most importantly, exactly what to do about it (skip to that section here).

EDIT 12-15-2016: Google has not developed a global solution. In fact, GA spam is worse than ever. And with the latest wave of spam in November, the most reliable methods are not effective. Your best bet is to keep “layering” all the defenses that I mention below. Additionally, keep learning what you can do with Analytics, and look carefully for spoofed traffic.

EDIT 7-24-2015: Google has announced that they are looking into a global solution. Additionally, Analytics Edge has released a plug and play Advanced Segment for Google Analytics that implements most of what I explore below.

Either way, if you want to understand what is going on with referral spam, keep reading!

You’ve probably recently logged into your Google Analytics account and seen odd domains like darodar.com, buttons-for-website.com, hulfingtonpost, and countless others in your referral report.

Or, you’ve checked your organic keyword report and seen “ilovevitaly SEM”

Or, you’ve seen a giant spike in direct/(none) traffic that spikes one day then goes away.

Or, you’ve seen visits to URLs that are not anywhere on your site (not even hacked pages).

[Read more…] about How To Filter Google Analytics Referral Spam & Bot Traffic

Bounce rate can be a great metric when evaluating how people interact with your overall website and individual pages. Yet, it’s one of the more mystifying metrics in analytics, mainly because there are a ton of misconceptions about what bounce rate actually is and what it means.

To provide some clarity, I’ll be diving into what bounce rate is, what it isn’t, and some proper ways to look at the metric in order to garner real insights about your site.   [Read more…] about What Is Bounce Rate & How Should You Use It?