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A Powerful Analytics Tip Every Website Should Employ

On August 8, 2010, In SEO, by randfish

Posted by randfishHow many presentations do you see that show traffic stats like these? Or this: Or this: These charts aren’t wrong, per se. They’re not lying to you, but they are obscuring the truth, and they’re making it impossible to know what’s…

Posted by randfish

How many presentations do you see that show traffic stats like these?

Or this:

These charts aren't wrong, per se. They're not lying to you, but they are obscuring the truth, and they're making it impossible to know what's going right and wrong.

The problem isn't that the numbers are inaccurate, it's that no website is just ONE SITE. A website is a collection of pages, and oftentimes, a collection of lots of different KINDS of pages. Even the simplest of sites, built on blog CMS' like Wordpress or basic CMS' like Drupal have unique sections within them - the homepage, individual posts, static pages (about, contact, et al.), categories, search pages, posts by month, author, etc. - all of these have different formats, different functions and, almost certainly, different visitor stats.

Yet, for some reason, when we as marketers look at a site, we don't ask "how are the category pages doing this month?" or "how is the blog performing compared to the white paper articles?" We ask, "how's the site doing."

The singular answer to that question often obscures a more nuanced, but valuable truth: Different website sections perform differently.

If your car starts having trouble accelerating up hills, you don't blame the entire car for the subpar performance, you start to examine potential causes (electrical system, engine, tires, etc.) and break these components down until you find the cause. Likewise, with a website, every piece should be performance tested, tuned and monitored on a regular basis.

Don't do this:

The total page views data is fine as an overview, but we need to monitor each individual section to really understand what's gaining vs. falling.

Do this:

By segmenting out traffic to URLs that include */blog/* and those that include */ugc/* (YOUmoz), we can see when/where/how each section is rising or falling in traffic and contributing to the overall site's performance.

Even better, we should do this:

How did I make that chart?

Step 1: Separate the areas of your website by the words/characters in their URL string (or other identifying factors like keywords in their titles). For example, on SEOmoz, we've got:

The Blog - all URLs include /blog
YOUmoz - all URLs have /UGC
Guides - nearly all have /articles
Tools - most URLs are different, but there's only around 20 so I can lump them together
etc.

Once I have these segments, I'll use the URL structures to get data about pageviews (or any other metric I care about) separately through analytics.

Step 2: Use the content filter in Google Analytics to select only those pages that contain the URL string you're seeking:

By using the simple filter for URLs "containing" /article, I've got a segmented report I can now use to start seeing what's really happening on my site.

pretty simple, right?

Step 3: Filter on each report and grab out the relevant pageviews number on a weekly basis:

I grab those numbers for each of the segments each week (well, actually, Joanna does - but she says it's less than an hour of work) and plug them into a spreadsheet.

Step 4: Create a spreadsheet and a stacked graph

This spreadsheet shows the number of pageviews to each section of the site

This stacked, area graph shows where traffic is falling (e.g. the Beginner's Guide) vs. Gaining (e.g. the Blog)

When you run these over long periods of time, you can really see the impact a new section is having, or where problems in traffic might exist. If you neglect to break things out in this fashion, you'll often find that traffic from one section's gain may overshadow the loss in another area. This over/under-compensation can hide the real issues for a site, especially in SEO (where indexation, rankings and keyword demand all play inter-connected roles).

Joanna, in her post on benchmarking, shared this chart:

Also see this larger, detailed version

This helped us to realize where things had gone awry and why (the problem stemmed from some poorly done redirects from Linkscape to Open Site Explorer). I can't recommend this practice enough - if more marketers managed their analytics in this fashion, we'd have a much easier time identifying potential problems, opportunities and understanding not just the quantity of traffic, but the "whys" behind it.

Anyone with some clever Google Analytics methodologies to build these faster/more efficiently than my Excel hack, please do share!

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Three Ways to Create a Better Performing Website (Using One Sneaky Tactic)

On August 1, 2010, In SEO, by RobOusbey

Posted by RobOusbeyLet’s start with a sneaky tactic. I know that SEOmoz blog readers are an internet-savvy crowd, so many of you are probably familiar with the ‘browser history sniffing’ techniques that exist. (Bear with me, we’ll get to internet marke…

Posted by RobOusbey

Let's start with a sneaky tactic.

I know that SEOmoz blog readers are an internet-savvy crowd, so many of you are probably familiar with the 'browser history sniffing' techniques that exist. (Bear with me, we'll get to internet marketing advice in a moment.)

In case you've not come across the concept before, it's probably best exemplified by the site Start Panic - just hit the 'Let's start!' button to watch it trawl through your browser history, and start listing sites that even you forgot you'd visited.

StartPanic uses Javascript to do the dirty work, but it's also possible to do this completely using CSS, and without Javascript. (There's advice about implementing the technical side of this in a popular post by Niall Kennedy.)

I wanted to show how you can use this to help your website perform better - let's begin with the least controversial, and work on from there

1 - Customize the User Experience

Niall's post - linked above - suggests one very sensible use of this technique: offering your users links to the social sites they use, and hiding the ones they don't. In this bottom of this live example page, you'll see a 'Digg It' button if you've been to Digg, a 'Share on Facebook' button if you've been there, etc. By limiting the set of sharing buttons, you can remove that 'social clutter' that is prevalent on some sites - this doesn't just give a cleaner page to the user, but may have a much higher 'sharing' rate for your page.

Customization can also be made is to the content of your site: use the browser history sniffing technique to see the kinds of blogs and news sites your visitors are reading, and then adjust your content based on the results. For example: I might consider writing a weekly post about PPC for the Distilled blog. We could check to see how many of the Distilled visitors had looked at PPC Hero, the AdWords blog, and the AdWords support pages. If the number was high enough, we might consider adding content to satisfy that niche.

Likewise, if you find that a high proportion of your readers visit KittenWar, then you might consider adding a little more 'cute' to your posts.

2 - Retarget Your Publicity

Traditional ad-network retargeting works in the following way:

a visitor comes to your site, and leaves without making a purchase
your advertising network drops a cookie onto that user's computer
the user visits a different site which displays ads from that network
the network recognizes the user, and shows them an ad for your product
hopefully they're reminded of you, and come back to the site to make a purchase.

However, this retargeting only works when you can cookie people once they've visited your site. I'd propose using this technique to alter the copy on your site, based on what the user has already seen about you elsewhere.

For example: check for new posts about your brand each morning (or can I assume you do this already?) If your company had three product reviews on blogs and news sites today, then record these URLs, and check to see if each visitor to your site has already read one of them. You could then display a prominent content box on the front page with information about the exact product they saw reviewed, and a link to your page for that product. You might even acknowledge they'd seen the review: "Initech wants to offer you a 10% discount, as a reader of The Daily Bugle"

You could use the same technique for Reputation Management. If a site has published a negative article about you, there's a potential that people will come to your site to find out more. However, you may not want to simply have a message on your front page that reads "The Bluth Company has NOT committed treason - read more" - but you could choose display this headline only to people who've read about the story already.

3 - Find Your Competitors' Customers

This is where you could really up-the-ante with your CRO efforts.

I recently saw a bank who offered $100 to people who closed their account at a competitor's bank and switched over. This would be a perfect opportunity to sniff each visitor's browser history, to see if you should promote this offer to them on your site. You can even avoid showing it to people who have been shopping around (and looking at every bank's website homepage) by checking to see if they've visited the URLs for logging in and out of the competitor's online banking to see if they're actually a customer of that company.

For e-commerce sites, you could check to see if your visitor has visited your competitor's site, but could also check if they've looked at the competitor's product on Amazon or other retailers. Your product page could then include a comparison between the two products. That could increase conversions, but you'd avoid comparing your product to a competitor's for anyone who'd never seen the competing product.

To Conclude

So, the practice of checking to see if a visitor has already been to particular pages might seem a little shady at first - but this part of the way that the web and web browsers are designed, and people can block their browser history if they'd prefer.

Executed in the right way, it could be a very powerful technique for creating high performing, high converting websites. Use it wisely.

(Thanks for reading; you can follow me on Twitter: @RobOusbey, and I'm pleased to be speaking alongside some of the best SEO practitioners around at this year's Pro Training Seminar - tickets are still available.)

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Launching the SEOmoz Free API and Enough Power to Build Open Site Explorer

On January 27, 2010, In SEO, by Nick Gerner

Posted by Nick Gerner

The launch of Open Site Explorer last week opens up a lot of link data, filters, and anchor text to a much wider audience than we’ve ever had before. In that same vein, today we’re announcing our new and improved SEOmoz Free API.

Any registered (it’s free) SEOmoz member can visit our API Portal and get an API key that gives you access to:

Data for any URL in our index including
- Domain and Page Authority
- mozRank
- total link count
- external, followed link count
The first 500 links to any page, sub domain or domain
Filtering on those links: 301s, Follows, External, etc.
The first 3 domains linking to any page, sub domain or domain
The first 3 anchor text terms or phrases in links to any page, sub domain or domain

You’re welcome to use this data for private or publicly-facing purposes. We already have a variety of partners integrating this data including:

Buzzstream
Brandwatch
HubSpot’s Grader Suite
Quirk’s Search Status toolbar

Check out some sample code and applications on the wiki.

Our idea is that getting this data into the hands of webmasters makes everyone better off: we’re excited about our new authority scores, marketers are thirsty for metrics, and users of all kinds of tools are better off with a deeper look at real data. The free package will keep you covered up to a million links per month that you’re free to use for any purpose from consulting to building an SEO campaign management suite.

In addition to the free API (which I think is quite powerful already), we’re expanding our paid API offering. The paid API includes everything above, but also includes:

Additional metrics:
- number of domains that link to you
- mozTrust
- number of links to all pages on your domain
- and more
A deeper look at links, way beyond the first 500 (first 100k for each sort per page, domain or sub domain)
Plenty of sorts on links:
- domain authority
- page authority
- linking root domains
Way more anchor text terms and phrases (up to 100k per page, domain or sub domain if you’ve got that many)

We don’t even have an attribution requirement. Although, we have a tasty 15% discount if you do cite us as a source

To sign up, just contact us, and we’ll start the process.

EDIT: The paid API is available outside of a PRO membership. A PRO membership buys the tools, and content, and sweet sweet badge. The paid API is extra. Of course, the free API is both free and full of awesome.

Do you like this post? Yes No

Posted by Nick Gerner

The launch of Open Site Explorer last week opens up a lot of link data, filters, and anchor text to a much wider audience than we've ever had before. In that same vein, today we're announcing our new and improved SEOmoz Free API.

Any registered (it's free) SEOmoz member can visit our API Portal and get an API key that gives you access to:

Data for any URL in our index including
- Domain and Page Authority
- mozRank
- total link count
- external, followed link count
The first 500 links to any page, sub domain or domain
Filtering on those links: 301s, Follows, External, etc.
The first 3 domains linking to any page, sub domain or domain
The first 3 anchor text terms or phrases in links to any page, sub domain or domain

You're welcome to use this data for private or publicly-facing purposes. We already have a variety of partners integrating this data including:

Buzzstream
Brandwatch
HubSpot's Grader Suite
Quirk's Search Status toolbar

Check out some sample code and applications on the wiki.

Our idea is that getting this data into the hands of webmasters makes everyone better off: we're excited about our new authority scores, marketers are thirsty for metrics, and users of all kinds of tools are better off with a deeper look at real data. The free package will keep you covered up to a million links per month that you're free to use for any purpose from consulting to building an SEO campaign management suite.

In addition to the free API (which I think is quite powerful already), we're expanding our paid API offering. The paid API includes everything above, but also includes:

Additional metrics:
- number of domains that link to you
- mozTrust
- number of links to all pages on your domain
- and more
A deeper look at links, way beyond the first 500 (first 100k for each sort per page, domain or sub domain)
Plenty of sorts on links:
- domain authority
- page authority
- linking root domains
Way more anchor text terms and phrases (up to 100k per page, domain or sub domain if you've got that many)

This is exactly the same API powering Open Site Explorer. So if you think OSE missed a feature, or should include other data sources, you can build it over again and do an even better job :) If you do, drop me a line and I'll take a look. We'd love to share partner apps on our wiki, Twitter, the blog, and elsewhere.

We don't even have an attribution requirement. Although, we have a tasty 15% discount if you do cite us as a source ;)

To sign up, just contact us, and we'll start the process.

EDIT: The paid API is available outside of a PRO membership. A PRO membership buys the tools, and content, and sweet sweet badge. The paid API is extra. Of course, the free API is both free and full of awesome.

Do you like this post? Yes No

http://www.seomoz.org/blog

Tagged with: 100k • Access To Data • Anchor Text • arizona search engine optimization • arizona SEO • arizona seo firm • Campaign Management • Domain Authority • Free Api • Gerner • Hubspot • Indexing • Launch • Management Suite • Marketers • Metrics • Page Domain • phoenix SEO • Phrases • professional search engine optimization • Quirk • Root Domains • scottsdale marketing firm • search engine optimization • Search Status • seo consultant • seo expert • Seomoz • Site Explorer • Ter

It’s Only A Clique If You’re Not In It

On January 26, 2010, In SEO, by Dr. Pete

Posted by Dr. Pete

This post started as a reaction to accusations in the SEO industry that Top X lists, awards, etc. are only going to people’s friends. As I was writing it over what ended up being 2 weeks, I realized just how broad this issue really is, from personal to professional to political. I hope you’ll indulge me as I try to do justice to a topic that goes well beyond SEO.

We all know how it feels to be on the outside looking in. You start out feeling awkward and a little envious, but slowly it turns into something worse – depression, resentment, even rage. Eventually, we find a group to belong to, and the tables turn. No matter how often we were excluded (and maybe because of it), we eventually start to exclude others. It’s a vicious, if all too human, cycle, and it extends to every corner of our social interactions.

My Friends Are The Best

Just ask them; I’m sure they’ll agree. Do we prefer our friends? Do we give them the best opportunities and accolades? Absolutely. This is more than bias, though; it’s the simple reality of relevance. If you ask me who the "best" expert is in some niche of my own field or what the best article is on Topic X, I’m going to immediately draw from what I already know. Stating the obvious, I can’t recommend someone or something that I don’t even know exists.

Of course, there are times when we have a responsibility to dig deeper and look for the best candidates outside of our own limited realm of experience. When I was a graduate student at the University of Iowa, I had the opportunity to be the first student in my department to serve on a faculty search committee. One aspect of that experience that stuck with me was Iowa’s affirmative action policy. It wasn’t about numbers and quotas so much as a core philosophy that we had a professional obligation to search far and wide for the best candidate. We had the duty to leave our comfortable world of people just like us and venture into the world of "them".

Confirmation Bias

Beyond simple relevance is something more powerful, and sometimes more insidious. We all have a natural tendency to take sides, and, once we do, to find reasons why our side is right and the other side is wrong. Psychologists call this "confirmation bias," the often unconscious need to find data that confirms what we already believe. If we like someone, we’ll find reasons to support them and give them the benefit of the doubt. If we dislike someone, we’ll find reasons to be suspicious of everything they say and do. If you think confirmation bias is something only other people have, you’re fooling yourself.

Choosing Sides

Beyond our friends, confirmation bias quickly begins to apply to all of our cliques and teams. If you’re a sports fan, then that team mentality is usually just harmless fun – associating with your team provides a shared emotional experience. I’m a Cubs fan – believe me when I say that I understand the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, although not in quite the ratio I’d like. What happens, though, when that team mentality starts to apply to things like politics, as we’ve seen far too often over the past couple of decades (on both sides of the fence)? Suddenly, our clique is 50% of the population, and our enemies are the other 50%. At best, it’s divisive. At worst, it breeds hate, violence, and bigotry.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Of course, we all like to think that we’re free from bias, but the power of bias is that the flaws that are obvious in others are often hidden and unconscious in ourselves. If I mention that I do SEO, do you picture a savvy internet guru or spam-spewing snake-oil salesman? If you’re an SEO, and you hear that I work with SEOmoz, do you think I’m a paragon of white-hat virtue or part of Rand’s evil conspiracy to take over the industry? Reality is probably somewhere in between. If I tell you that I voted for Obama, do you see a beacon of liberal hope or a Communist bent on destroying our nation? I can assure you that I am neither. So, how do we get past these labels and start to understand people, whether personally or professionally?

Get to Know People

Social media has given us a difficult dichotomy. On the one hand, it’s never been easier to "friend" people in shallow and meaningless ways. On the other hand, we have the tools to get to know our peers and friends of friends in ways that were never before possible. The next time you friend someone, take a moment and find out something about them. Where are they from? What do they do? What kind of music do they like? Do they blog? If they do, read a post. If you see a label ("liberal", "conservative", "Twilight fan"), don’t jump to conclusions. Give that person a chance to speak for themselves.

Play In a Different Park

It’s easy to be self-righteous when you’re surrounded by your fan-boys and girls. It’s easy to get a standing ovation at your campaign rally when you only invite the people who gave you the most money. If you want perspective, you have to give up the home-field advantage. If you disagree with someone, comment on their post instead of running back home to write a rant. Try guest-blogging – even better, guest-blog in a different industry. Try to explain why SEO is worthwhile to an audience of small business owners, designers or UX professionals. It’ll be a tough sell, but you’ll learn a lot in the process.

When In Doubt, Ask

Social media is a mine field of misunderstanding – if you’re not sure what someone means in that 140-character Tweet, ask them. If they write a blog post that seems like a personal attack, call them. It’s not just about being nice – bad blood runs deep, and today’s simple misunderstanding could destroy relationships and opportunities tomorrow.

Open Your Circle

We all remember the people who excluded us, and we too often hold that fact against the universe. Let it go. When you finally get into that circle, especially your professional circle, try to remember that someone else is still outside looking in. Here are a few ways to give someone else a chance, because we can all use a little good karma:

Promote other people’s links and awards, even the competition.
If you’re at a conference talking to a group and you see someone standing outside the circle with that awkward look of faux participation, invite them in.
Make an introduction to help someone’s career along.
If someone is new to blogging, comment, subscribe, or even link to them.
When someone challenges you publicly, listen and think before you counterattack.
Don’t envy other people’s success – learn from it and improve.
Every once in a while, shut up and listen.

At the end of the day, those of us who have attained some measure of success need to remember that we all had a little help along the way. Try to return the favor once in a while.

Photo licensed from iStockPhoto.com (Photographer: Hélène Vallée)

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Posted by Dr. Pete

This post started as a reaction to accusations in the SEO industry that Top X lists, awards, etc. are only going to people's friends. As I was writing it over what ended up being 2 weeks, I realized just how broad this issue really is, from personal to professional to political. I hope you'll indulge me as I try to do justice to a topic that goes well beyond SEO.

We all know how it feels to be on the outside looking in. You start out feeling awkward and a little envious, but slowly it turns into something worse – depression, resentment, even rage. Eventually, we find a group to belong to, and the tables turn. No matter how often we were excluded (and maybe because of it), we eventually start to exclude others. It's a vicious, if all too human, cycle, and it extends to every corner of our social interactions.