Google Analytics is a platform offered by Google to track and report all of your website’s traffic. After launching in 2005, Google Analytics is the most widely used analytics service for the web on the internet. Webmasters are able to add an asynchronous tracking code to the header of the website; you are able to view all stats in real-time as well as data collected over the period of time the tracking code is added to the website. Additionally, this platform has been integrated with AdWords and Webmaster Tools to allow for seamless tracking of statistics.
Research and Statistics Google Analytics Offers
Google Analytics Goals
Setting up goals allows a webmaster to assign a value to a specific action. For example, a user navigating to a specific page, filling out a contact form or spending a certain amount of time on the website.
Demographics and Interests
In order to enable this feature, the analytics profile should be integrated with Google Webmaster Tools. By enabling this feature you’re able to break down interests of your users. This information is important to the marketing research of a company. Is your website being viewed by the audience you’re looking for?
Geography
Breaking down the geography is important to your business’ advertising and marketing plan. It is important to know where your users are visiting from; is the marketing team hitting the right cities? Or maybe there is another city to look into for branching your business out.
Landing Page & User Flow
Do you ever wonder what pages users are navigating to after landing on a specific page? Google Analytics doesn’t limit the tracking information for how users are navigating your website. By evaluating your top landing pages, you can add calls to action to make a conversion, or make changes to ensure users stay on your website.
Keyword Queries
This feature also require Webmaster Tools integration. An important aspect of search engine optimization is keyword research. With the queries (Acquisition > Search Console > Queries) you’re able to view the phrases users are searching to find your website amongst the search results.
Begin with Advanced Digital, Inc.
Google Analytics is used on thousands of websites across the web. With easy access to stats, you’re able to evaluate, edit and test the performance of the pages and research the users navigating the pages.
If you need search engine optimization services, we are located in Destin, FL and all of our services are completed in-house. You’ll work closely with our team of analysts, programmers and designers to achieve the goals of your business. Give us a call today to begin!
For today’s 12 Days of Christmas post, we’d like to do a true #ThrowbackThurday and share with you what you may be missing if you’re not following Advanced Digital Inc. on Instagram!
What is #ADTipTuesdays? Every Tuesday we share a web design, search engine optimization, marketing or social media tip with our followrs. We have many more up our sleeves for the new year so make sure you follow us to keep up to date!
Our Weekly Tips
You can see all of the tips we’ve shared so far below!
As 2016 is quickly coming to an end, the Advanced Digital Inc. Team thought we’d share with you our Top 10 favorite resources of the year. These range from specific articles that spoke to us, to tools that helped us create some of our web design projects this year and achieve our search engine optimization goals.
1.) Smashing Magazine’s post from August 17th Photoshop Etiquette For Responsive Web Design is one of our favorite articles from 2016! For almost 10 years, Smashing Magazine has provided quality articles and resources for programmers and designers.
2.) Dreamstime is one of the many stock photo resources our team uses. Conveniently, customers are able to either purchase subscription packages or pay by the photo.
3.) By using Lynda, our team is able to expand their knowledge, learn additional skills. As SEO is constantly evolving and there are many layers involved in it, it is important to keep on top of skill-sets.
4.) We all have our routines and our Friday’s usually start off with a White Board Friday video from Moz and a cup of coffee. Each video is packed with great tips for our search engine optimization team. One of our favorites is 8 Rules for Choosing a Domain Name.
5.) Keyword research is a large part of search engine optimization and one of our favorite tools to use to help with this is, Google Keyword Planner. If you’re planning on running an Adwords Campaign, all of your keywords can be saved to use at a later date.
6.) With over 1,000 fonts to choose from, Google Fonts make choosing fonts and pairings easy for all of our web design projects.
7.) Adobe Color has analogous, monochromatic, triad, complementary, compound, shades and custom rules available. Easily create a custom color palette for your design or marketing materials. Check out our blog post from October on Color Psychology!
8.) GetHub is a large depository for programmers. The open source community allows programmers to contribute their skills, follow other projects and more.
9.) Bootstrap is our favorite way to program responsive websites for all of our clients. The easy framework is set up with 12 columns that collapse for tablets and mobile devices.
10.) Lastly, WordPress is our choice for a content management system. With 1,000’s of plugins and themes available, this content management system is customizable to any business and is perfect for our clients.
Do you have a favorite resource? Let us know in the comments below and be sure to follow us on social media!
A blog is a great way to create content, build a following, share relevant information for a business’s industry and create link building opportunities. You should not just stop at creating the content, by commenting on blogs in the industry, it allows you spread your business name and establish your business as a leader in your industry and more!
The Benefits of Commenting on Blogs
Credibility – Posting knowledgeable comments on blogs can help create a credible name for your business. Comments similar to, “Great post, keep it up.” could damage your name instead of help. Comments should spark a conversation, so add to the key points of a blog post.
Visibility and Exposure – After leaving comments on blogs, you may notice an increase of traffic on your own website. Commenting consistently on fellow industry blog posts, you present the image of being engaged in your industry out side of your own company. For many, this would read as your company valuing customer service and genuinely showing a passion for what you do.
Creates Opportunities – Once you have established yourself as a leader in your industry, you may find you have guest blogging opportunities. It is important that your guest post has valuable information and does not read like an advertisement. Add calls to action to follow you on social media platforms and leave comments on the post.
Increases Traffic – Becoming a credible leader in your industry, increasing your visibility and exposure, and taking advantage of guest blogging opportunities, you’ll find the traffic of your website and social follows have increased.
Let us know in the comments if there are additional benefits you experience after commenting on blog posts. Follow us on social media for additional holiday fun this December!
On Monday we discussed the Top 5 Questions you should be asking your Web Designer. Today, we will go over the Top 5 Questions you should be asking your SEO specialist! First, what exactly is Search Engine Optimization? SEO, for short, is the process of organically ranking a website with both on-page and off-page methods.
1. How will you improve my search engine rankings?
Your potential SEO specialist should be able to explain to you the strategies they will be using to drive up your rankings. Steer clear of a consultant who is hesitant to discuss their strategies, or who may keep things vague as this may result in their strategies being of the black-hat SEO variety. During the proposal meeting, ensure your SEO candidate’s proposal includes an initial review of your website which would include weeding out any initial outliers or flags that could potentially hinder your search engine rankings; this can include error pages, broken links, poorly structured content pages, or inconsistent meta tag usage.
2. What types of SEO work will you do?
This may come up naturally in the course of your meeting, but if it does not – take a moment to ask the question, straight out. Ideally, the SEO candidate would bring this up during their proposal. Take note during their proposal review of the types of SEO optimizations are offering or focusing on. Have they mentioned “off page” SEO, or will they only focus on, “on page” optimization? On-Page focuses on the content of the site and how well it is optimized for keywords, as well as the overall experience for users. Just as important, is Off-Page SEO wherein the focus is on websites outside of your own and the inbound traffic they can bring to yourself. As Google now takes into account backlinks as part of your ranking, your SEO candidate should be able to speak to Off-Page SEO strategies.
3. Do you follow Google’s webmaster guidelines?
The only answer that should be accepted to this question is simple: Yes. And it should be a resounding one, at that. Simply put, failure in adhering to Google’s webmaster best practices may result in being relegated to a low search ranking, and could go as far as Google banning your website from search results altogether. While the end goal may be that #1 ranking slot, it shouldn’t be at the expense of less ethical SEO practices. Familiarize yourself with these guidelines, and do not hesitate to question your SEO candidate about said guidelines to ensure peace of mind that your website is in good hands.
4. Can you guarantee my website will achieve a number-one ranking on Google, Bing and Yahoo?
In an ideal world, the answer that both your SEO would like to give and you as the customer would like to hear would be “Yes!” However, it’s important to note that the end result, and what your SEO should be working towards consistently is progress and improvement. Be wary of an SEO who can guarantee you a Top 3 ranking in a 30 day time frame. Any specialist who is making such claims is either simply trying to make a sale, or could be participating in black hat tactics which can detrimentally hinder your website in the long run. Put your faith in a company who focuses on the improvement of your SEO and can back it up with their methods of improvement (see: Question #1).
5. How will we communicate and how often?
The answer to this may vary by the client. Truthfully told, the answer to this comes down to what you as the client would prefer. At the very minimum, on any given week you should have a good idea of where your website’s SEO is standing. This could be due to a weekly phone call, video chat, or simply an e-mail if that is what you prefer. If you know going into it that you would like an every other day touch point, or you simply are seeking a once-a-month breakdown then you should be able to communicate this to your SEO specialist and they should comply.
Search Engine Optimization is multifaceted, but none of the tactics used are proprietary. While it may be a bit intimidating to ask some of these questions, what you’re looking for most of all in the answers is a level of transparency to ensure their methods are adhering to Google’s webmaster guidelines, as well as specifics as any good SEO specialist should be willing and able to discuss with you their strategies to improve your overall ranking.
