“Currently, Google Analytics does a great job analyzing past performance. Today we’re very excited to bring real time data to Google Analytics with the launch of Google Analytics Real-Time: a set of new reports that show what’s happening on your site as it happens,” says  John Jersin.  Google Analytics Blog

Let’s take a deeper look into the Real-Time tool.

Right Now

Right Now allows users to see the number of active visitors on site.  If there is more than one active user at a time, you can click on any of the active visitors to follow them.  At any time you can click out of following only that one visitor and view all visitors.  Right now also gives the user a closer look at who is a new visitor and who is a returning one.

Top Referrals

Top Referrals gives the user the opportunity to see where the visitor was browsing before they got to your page. Real-Time also enables user to click on the specific link to see the actual site.

Page Views

Real-Time allows the users to see the average time per minute and per second each visitor is on each page of the website.  This tool is a way to indicate whether a specific page has the information a visitor is looking for.  For example, if a visitor is on a page for a few seconds the page might not have appropriate content for that visitor but if the visitor is on a page for a few minutes then that would indicate it had the correct information they were looking to find.

Top Active Pages

Top active pages enables users to see what pages the active visitor is looking at, allowing the Real-Time user to follow the path they take throughout the website.  This can come in handy if the user wants to navigate the visitor to specific pages on the website.

Top Locations

Top Locations is an easy way to see where the visitors of the website are geographically located.

Google is not the first company to offer such data.  Woopra, Chartbeat and numerous other tools offer Real-Time but Google allows you to use it for free.

Real-Time is able to track the immediate impact to site traffic, making this great for social media.  For example, if a user posts a picture on their website and then tweets about it, Google Analytics Real-Time is able to track when traffic from the tweet stops driving visitors. The new version of Google Analytics was turned on for only a small number of people before to test it out in September of 2011. According to the Google Analytics blog, the full version of Google Analytics will be full force sometime January 2012.

Google Analytics provides tracking for anyone with a web presence, whether the user is an executive, marketing professional, content or a web developer.   It’s important for any person who has a website and wants it to succeed in the crazy world of the internet.  Google Analytics is a way to take control of your website and turn page views into profits.

Interested in Google Analytics? Contact The Net Impact.

 Worth a Look

New features for Livestream's player improve broadcasting functionality.

• Last week, popular online video broadcasting service Livestream announced major changes to their player. Changes include an adaptive bitrate that dynamically adjusts video quality, DVR rewind features, and enhanced live blogging capabilities. We recently started live streaming at our most recent TXCHANGE event on The Net Impact Live page.
• As we mentioned on our previous Trend List, Google has begun to limit keyword referral data in its analytics. Many analysts thought this change would have severe consequences for the SEO community. In response, Search Engine Watch provided some valuable perspective on the implications of Google’s changes.
• Facebook’s major changes announced at its annual F8 conference are impacting the way brands communicate with fans, and the data is coming in to show it. According to a new report from Page Lever, the changes have increased brand reach greatly, but frequent posting is far less effective.

Trending Searches

Find out the search terms that have been trending on Google during the past week. Data was gathered using Google’s Insights for Search tool.

During the past week, searchers on Google have been highly curious about Halloween costumes, The World Series, and the imminent end of Daylight Savings Time. Don’t forget to “fall back” on Sunday November 6^th!

1. 1. bibi jones (+1,550%)
2. 2. battlefield 3 (+250%)
3. 3. daylight savings time (+170%)
4. 4. daylight savings (+160%)
5. 5. daylight savings 2011 (+150%)
6. 6. world series (+90%)
7. 7. halloween costume ideas (+70%)
8. 8. halloween (+60%)
9. 9. rangers (+60%)
10. 10. texas rangers (+50%)

 TNI Partner Spotlight

• Nonprofit partner The Karla Smith Foundation will be in the spotlight this Friday, November 4^th, during this week’s episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. In August, The Karla Smith Foundation helped build a new home for Allen Hill, an Iraq War Veteran suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Tune in Friday night at 7pm central on ABC to watch KSF help “move that bus”!
• Sansai Japanese Grill is social in St. Louis! Be sure to “like” Sansai on Facebook and follow Sansai on Twitter to receive event information and discounts!

Stay up to date on industry news and commentary, TNI happenings, and events with web experts. Sign up for The Impact Update today!

At The Net Impact, we conducted a short study pitting the SEO efforts of our local St. Louis non-profits against national powerhouse non-profits.  In other words, we graded their websites using HubSpot’s Website Grader tool. 

HOW WE DID IT

Through a Google search, we selected 10 recognizable St. Louis based non-profits for our St. Louis SEO sample.  Then we selected the top ten non-profits from a 2005 Forbes list of the Top 200 national charities (we verified that all 20 organizations in our sample still exist and have websites).

Using HubSpot’s Website Grader tool, we analyzed all 20 non-profit URLs.  Then we averaged all the statistics to compare St. Louis SEO to national SEO.  Here are the results:

WHAT WE MEASURED

Average Website Grade.  This is a HubSpot scale from 0 to 100 (100 being the best).  Hundreds of thousands of websites make the top 5% (scoring 95-100). An average score of 77.1 means there is a huge opportunity for St. Louis non-profits to improve their overall SEO efforts.

Average Indexed Pages.  This metric is the average number of pages that Google indexes from each website.  Google indexed as many 37,000 pages for the top indexing St. Louis non-profit in our sample and as low as 58 pages for the lowest indexing St. Louis non-profit in our sample.  Interestingly enough Google indexed only 32,000 pages for the top indexing national non-profit.  And the average page index of 5,742.2 pages nationally versus 4,552.1 pages here in St. Louis, is fairly comparable. 

Average Linking Domains.  Perhaps the largest gap in performance is the number of inbound links to St. Louis non-profit websites versus the average number of inbound links to national non-profit websites.  St. Louis SEO fell short with an average of 1,063 inbound links compared to the national average of 15,256.2 inbound links.

Best Traffic Rank.  Traffic rank is a statistic that defines a website’s overall rank in terms of site visitors compared to all indexed websites.  The top ranked website of our entire 20 website sample hailed from St. Louis as the 1,422^nd most visited website (which is actually pretty darn good).  The top national traffic rank was 8,547 (hint: it was the Red Cross). 

% Sites With Blogs.  Only 4 websites in our sample contained blogs that Google recognizes.  One non-profit in our St. Louis SEO sample had a recognized blog.  Three national non-profits hosted a recognized blog.  So on this metric, everybody gets a big fat…Eh….

MozRank.  Yet another linking measure.  The Moz Rank weights inbound links not only by quantity but by the popularity of the referring website.  For example, one referred link from CNN.com might be worth as much as many referred links from a small blog. 

Overall, St. Louis SEO is growing among local non-profits, but we can do better and we’re well on our way to competing with huge national non-profits.  If your non-profit is looking for an SEO solution or any other type of interactive marketing solution, check us out at http://www.thenetimpact.com/.

 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!

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!

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.

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