google analytics | Web Training Wheels

How To Deal With Google Analytics Spam Data

There are 2 primary kinds of spam data you’ve probably seen show up in your Google Analytics reports. In some cases you may not have even realized it was spam:

1. Spam sites in your referral reports

It looks like this:

These are just a few of the hundreds of spam URLs you might see show up – share-buttons.xyz (actually, lots of sites with the .xyz extension), free-social-buttons, free-floating-buttons.com, copyrightclaims.org are some other common ones, but there are soooo many! Those kinds of sites look pretty dodgy from the outset and might ring some alarm bells.

3 Actionable Ways To Use Google Analytics

Online Marketing

The good folks over at MemberPress (an awesome and powerful membership plugin) were kind enough to allow me to write a post for their blog recently. “3 Actionable Ways To Use Google Analytics” takes a deeper look at what can be done with Analytics so that instead of just putzing around in there, you can actually …

Get More Out Of Google Analytics – 4 Gems You Might Be Missing

Online Marketing

Google Analytics is a super-powerful tool and most people only scratch the surface. Here’s a few cool features to check out that you may not have discovered yet.

Do You Need A Better Mobile Strategy?

Talk of responsive design, mobile apps, mobile plugins etc are all the buzz right now, but what will be the best strategy for you? If your site is not responsive, will it be worth investing in a responsive design, or should you just use a WordPress plugin to cover your bases?

Well one way to find out is to look at the mobile report within Analytics to see how many people are even trying to access your site from a mobile device. You’ll find this report under the Audience tab on the left. Click on Overview and you’ll see a simple breakdown of how many visits came via desktop vs mobile devices. Currently Analytics doesn’t distinguish between tablets and smartphones – both are ‘mobile’.

Click the pie chart icon on the right to get a nice visualization of what percentage of visitors use a mobile device.

Improve Your Site’s Effectiveness With Google Analytics Event Tracking

Online Marketing

This post is a taste of what’s to come in my forthcoming Google Analytics Ebook. Sign up to be notified of its launch and for a special promotional price.

Internal Link Tracking Using Google Analytics

On your blog or website you may have multiple links –such as icons or calls to action in different locations – leading to the same page, product or piece of content – but do you know which link placement and type is most effective?

Heatmap software and services such as CrazyEgg will give you this type of information in great detail and in a visual format. But there’s usually a cost involved and for a lot of cases it might be overkill if you just need simple comparisons. So while not as elegant, you can use Google Analytics to do some simple testing and comparison.

Warning – Don’t Use Link Tagging!

Google Analytics offers a link tagging feature which allows you to label links with a referral source, and other tracking info. On first glance you might think you could simply use this to tag your internal links in a similar way. However link tagging is designed to track promotional campaigns with traffic coming from external sources. If you use it for internal links, you will screw up your data. If someone arrives at your site via a link from another site, this would be tracked in GA as a referring site. However if that visitor then clicks an internal link that you’ve tagged, it erases that referral source and replaces it with whatever you’ve used in your link tagging.

Set Up Your WordPress Site For Success – Online Webinar

WordPress

The next online training webinar is scheduled for : Wednesday, August 25, 2010 from 6:00 PM – 7:00 PM (PT)
Fee: $10
The topic is: “Set Up Your WordPress Site For Success”.

If you’ve got your WordPress site up and running, the fun is just beginning! This webinar will help you make sure your site is an effective marketing platform for your business. Do you have all the right plugins and features in place to capture email addresses and encourage social sharing? How do you know who’s visiting and where traffic is coming from?
Learn how to get all the business features you need on your WordPress site.

Should You Worry About Your Bounce Rate?

Online Marketing

Should You Worry About Your Bounce Rate?
A low bounce rate is often cited as a hallmark of a good website – 40% or lower is typically heralded as the goal. But does it really matter that much? The answer is “yes” and “no” depending on your goals and your site.

What does bounce rate mean?
“Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page” – from Google’s Analytics help pages.

When does bounce rate matter?

– If you have a sales or conversion process which requires the user to follow through multiple pages on your site

– If exploration of your site is important to you

– If you are trying to turn new visitors into loyal readers or customers

– If yours is a retail site and want people to shop around and make purchases

– If your homepage is not inducing further clicks, particularly if it contains blog excerpts or other ‘teaser’ content