The Net Impact Roadmap

 The presentation focused on:

-Understanding your Google Analytics Dashboard

-Navigating the Google Analytics report suite

-Defining the metrics that matter most

-Setting up goals to track conversion

The engaging conversation highlighted all of the advantages, latest features and benefits of Google Analytics. One of the topics covered was tracking social media traffic. Erica emphasized the importantance of tracking social media sites on the campaign level to effectively gather and analyze social media analytics.With Google Analytics, you can thoroughly analyze results using the various filters and components Google Analytics offers.  For example, tracking social networking sites will show you social media traffic sources in relation to your overall site traffic. This will in turn give you a good idea of which social media tools are working most effectively for your brand.

Web Account Manager, Erica Sharinghausen leading the discussion on understanding your Google Analytics Dashboard

What is a good bounce rate for my website?” …. “How do I track my Facebook Advertising? … “What metrics should I pay the most attention to?”

These were just a few of the questions answered “at The Net Impact’s Introduction to Google Analytics seminar, which was geared to introduce business professionals to the basics of web analytics. Erica shared valuable insights on how to utilize Google Analytics to optimize online marketing, improve website performance and increase conversions.  Attendees left with a better understanding of how Google Analytics works and what tools and reports would best serve their individual business.

The Most Important lessons learned from the presentation

- Adjust spending on paid keywords that have high bounce rates

- Identify your problem – unpaid keywords with high bounce rates

- Identify landing pages that need to be more relevant or need stronger calls to action

-Setting up goals to track online success

The Net Impact Team would like to thank everyone who participated in the Introduction to Google Analytic Seminar and we are  looking forward to having many more interesting informational sessions to come!

Check out these great photos and videos from Wednesday night’s seminar!

Getting in the mind of your website visitor

In the last decade, tracking website analytics has rapidly evolved from simply data crunching to a very powerful decision making platform. Web analytics is an important tool for Internet marketers and web designers alike to make choices about how to improve traffic flow, design calls to action, update search engine optimization and enhance the overall strategy of a website.

Paying close attention to visitor behavior on a website through analytics, is very similar to paying attention to the consumer behavior for a store, brand or product.  Think of it this way… a store manager arranges their shop with the most marketable items in places that grab the shopper’s attention and are easily accessible and highly visible. Just as the store manager is looking to make the shopper’s experience more satisfying by arranging their store based on the habits of his consumers, so that it is easy and enjoyable to navigate through, a website creator should take into account what information is most sought after on their website and the habits and pathways visitors are taking to get there.

Without web analytics it is next to impossible to measure and analyze website visitor behavior. Analyzing visitor behavior allows you to determine activity as it affects profit, sales and areas (pages) of interest. Page views, navigation, entry and exit pages, time spent, languages, geographic locations, visits, and keywords used in searches are a few of the features that are able to be determined using web analytics. By simply tracking items that are most often viewed you can learn what items or products on your site, receive the most attention. In this way you can adapt your offerings to attract more traffic and while doing so monitor what sparks and keeps visitor’s attention.

The Net Impact team places special emphasis on the importance of clickstream tracking, or the following of a visitor’s clickstream as they move throughout a website, down to every microscopic detail. This analysis offered by Google under the name Event Tracking Tool,  allows you to track every movement your visitor makes as a unique event. Analyzing every small movement, or micro-conversion, your visitor makes provides you with useful feedback used to make changes to your website to improve your visitor’s experience, which will in turn enhance the overall value of your website. Every micro-conversion a visitor makes is important because, no matter how small the movement is, it is still conversion, you are still getting the visitor to do what you want them to dig deeper and deeper into your website.

An excellent example of this is The Net Impact’s findings with the website www.vangoghgallery.com. VanGoghGallery.com is an online collection of Van Gogh’s works. The website received thousands of visitors each day. The Net Impact helped Van Gogh gallery setup Event Tracking Methods to gain greater insight into the navigation patterns of its main landing pages.  Through event tracking, Van Gogh Gallery was able to determine that the large image links on the page received 98.5% of the click-throughs compared 1.5%  for the side navigation links, going to the same page. This was helpful for determining the elements necessary on each page to get visitors to take the next step.

In conclusion, if you ever wondered how to analyze website user behavior, determine which search terms they come from, which pages are most visited, which pages are of least interest  and how to maximize your ROI, look into implementing  a Web Analytics solution. Analytics will help you conduct a behavioral analysis of your website visitors, and with that information you can make the required changes to your website that will improve your overall conversation rate and make your visitor’s website experience one that is enjoyable.

To find out how The Net Impact can help you with your Google Analytics needs, contact us today for a free assessment and consultation!

Online public relations increases search engine visibility

Until recently,  companies and PR Firms wrote press releases in a very uniform fashion designed for the eyes of the traditional journalist. But the evolution of online public relations has created an entirely new approach to the writing and distributing process of press releases.

The purpose behind most online public relations efforts is to increase overall online exposure, which will in turn direct more people to visit your targeted website.  Increased online exposure can lead to greater brand development, a stronger relationship with your public, increased interest from the media, more connections with potential partners and increased lead generation causing greater revenue.

Any topic that will be of interest to prospects, the media and potential partners (such as a new product launch, industry news, events, community activities, etc…) can be used to construct a press release that is search engine optimized and distributed online. Then, distributing optimized press release via newswires has the power to directly reach millions of Internet users, generate inbound links to your website and raise search engine visibility of your website. The Net Impact’s most often used press release distributor is PRWeb, an excellent proven third party partner for publication of your online press releases, with an average charge of $200 per release.

Most newswire services offer you an exact report on how many people accessed your optimized release. This is an essential tool in gauging your reads and impressions.  In addition, through other analytical tools, such as Google Analytics, you can determine when someone follows a link to your targeted website through your optimized press release.

Now that online news sites such as Yahoo News and Google News contain such an abundance of press release content and RSS feeds, it is easy to syndicate news. An optimized press release can get you a page one SERP result for your relevant keywords in the search engines, news engines and news websites. So we see that press releases are not only an effective tool for distributing content to the media and consumers, they are easily syndicated creating an excellent opportunity to attract organic traffic and incoming links.

 A well written online press release has the ability to:

1.) Capture the attention of editors, journalists and bloggers looking for compelling topics for news stories

2.) Live on the web indefinitely. Press Releases are  published to various websites and blogs, giving your content a long shelf life as the content is never deleted creating enduring links.

3.) Create conversation on social networks.The press release link will be shared indefinitely through social media marketing, such as Twitter and Facebook

4.) Be viewed by new prospects – your target audience.

*As a result of all of these activities, hyperlinks will generate that will point back to the release creator’s targeted web site.

How to re-purpose a press release.

Once the press release has been released, there are still opportunities for increased exposure. The Net Impact Recommends:

-Writing a company blog post with the press release content

-Sharing the announcement using Twitter                                                                                        

-Posting an update on the press release on your Facebook                                   

-Adding the press release to the news page on your company website

-Posting any media collateral on other social sites

-Sharing the press release on your company newsletter

-Distributing the press release internally so associates can share it with their friends and business partners

Lastly, creating a calendar for PR that plans a regular expectation for your potential publishers is important.  Frequent and consistent news will generate more interest in your pieces as publishers begin to rely upon them. 

 Don’t forget, the best public relations strategy is to find a worthwhile angle to a story and create excellent content that is visible to your target audience. Combining creative ability and optimization skills to create compelling, keyword relevant press releases will only prove to be a rewarding public relations effort for your company.

 If online press releases sound like something your company should be doing but you do not know the right approach,  have the time or the resources, Contact The Net Impact to help you begin your online public relations effort in an organized manner. The Net Impact’s public relations services include press release copy-writing and press release submission through third party online platforms.. We can help you implement a successful public relations strategy into your overall marketing plan.

Are you finding a huge discrepancy between your Facebook Analytics and your Google Analytics?

You are not alone. As social media advertising opportunities continue to emerge, the emphasis on the importance of reliable web analytics is more important than ever. Web analytics are a pillar of any successful social marketing campaign. Analytics provide an accurate report of traffic coming from networking sites on which you are conducting marketing efforts, and serve as a vital tool in aligning traffic results with your marketing goals.

Facebook Ads are a very low cost and deeply targeted social marketing option. While Facebook  is a brilliant platform for matching your product to a niche market, advertisers are coming across a common problem in consistency when tracking Facebook Ads via Google Analytics. The clicks advertisers are paying for from Facebook are not matching the recorded hits from Facebook on Google Analytics.

So what is the problem? Google is not tracking the traffic source as Facebook. It is likely that your ads are going through a redirect or a rewrite that is causing both the referring data and the URL parameters to be stripped off. Facebook redirects users when sending them to the site. Therefore Google Analytics does not trace the source back to Facebook, due the redirect striping from the referring code.

Is there a way to effectively monitor my Facebook Traffic using Google Analytics?

 The answer is “Yes”. Don’t worry Facebook is not scamming you.  There is a simple solution to this frustrating problem, tag your Facebook Ad itself with the source so that it can be captured when someone comes to your website. Luckily, these can be quickly generated using Google’s URL Builder Tool.  Appending a unique identifier to a link, tells Google that, “Any actions by this visitor should be attributed to this particular campaign.” By linking a Facebook Ad to a tagged URL, you are classifying the traffic for Google Analytics.

If your Google Analytics Account has been linked to an active Google AdWords account (Google’s PPC Advertising platform) there is no need to tag your AdWords links. When someone hits this page; the tracking script automatically pulls the information in and categorizes it.

Another option for tracking Facebook Traffic using Google Analytics is using a unique landing page for your Facebook ads. Google analytics will then show you which hits come from your Facebook ad and let you analyze bounce rate, unique visitors, click numbers etc. Then visits to this unique landing page from Facebook would have the source and campaign name set as “Facebook”, and the medium set as “social”.

Although the tracking of Facebook ads does not have to be complicated, many advertisers may not be aware of the restrictions of tracking social media using Google Analytics. All of your tracking and campaign management efforts can go to waste if basic analytic maintenance is not accurately recorded.

In order to have a successful marketing campaign that includes social networking efforts,  the campaign must be consistently and accurately monitored. The attention to detail when reviewing analytics is necessary to produce realistic and actionable data –  a cornerstone in analyzing the impact of your social media marketing campaign.

Contact The Net Impact for more information on Google Analytics Consulting or for assistance with tracking your online campaigns.

Become a Fan of The Net Impact on Facebook!