Top Posts of 2012 – All About Facebook, Infographics and Google Analytics

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I don’t know about you, but 2012 was a busy one over here! I think it is always fun to look back on the past year as we prepare for the next. I thought it would be fun to put together a list of our most popular blog posts again (determined by Pageviews in Google Analytics) from the previous year.

Here is the rundown of the most popular posts from 2012:

10 – What You Need to Know About Facebook Cover Images

Facebook had a crazy year – growth, user experience changes, advertising updates, IPO, and its fair share of controversy. A big change this past year was how business pages worked and looked. Adding cover images was a huge change to the look of business and personal pages.

9 – Understanding Google’s Disavow Tool – When and How to Use it

Do you know what your link profile looks like? Do you have unwanted spammy links coming in? In this post we look at how to assess both and if you need to use Google’s Disavow Tool to clean up your link profile.

8 – Should You Delete Bad Facebook Comments?

One of the scariest aspects of social media for businesses is that barriers are down and anyone can say anything (good or bad) about your business. When someone leaves a negative comment on your business Facebook page, should you remove it?

7 – Facebook Timeline Switch is Today

Facebook’s switch to the Timeline format was a major change in user experience. We listed some resources to help you figure out what the change meant for your business.

6 – How to Grow Your Mobile Presence [INFOGRAPHIC]

2012 was the year infographics exploded on the scene. In this infographic we use images to show how your business can grow its mobile presence.

5 – Responsive Website Design – What is it? [INFOGRAPHIC]

Responsive website design also was a popular topic in 2012. With the use of mobile phones and tablets on the rise, creating a site that has a good user experience on any device is more important than ever.

4 – Landing Page Optimization – Produce Better Conversions [INFOGRAPHIC]

Landing pages are a great way to increase conversions on your website. You can tailor content to be specific to what the user needs and is looking for. In this infographic, we break down the keys to successful landing page design.

3 – SEO at a Glance [INFOGRAPHIC]

SEO can seem very complicated. In this inforgraphic, we broke down the biggest elements of SEO that every website owner should be paying attention to.

2 – How do I exclude my internal traffic from Google Analytics reports?

To get the most accurate picture of how your website is performing, we recommend excluding your internal traffic from Analytics. This post shows you how to do just that.

1 – How to Turn Your Personal Facebook Page into a Business Facebook Page

Our most popular post again deals with the most popular social network – Facebook! With all the changes to Facebook over the years, some people made the mistake of setting up their business page as a personal page. This year Facebook gave us the opportunity to flip those without losing your page’s audience. This posts shows you how to make that switch.

Looking back at our top posts, they seem like a pretty good reflection of what was happening in our office last year. I looked back at the year before too (Ten Most Popular Blogs of 2011). Lots of times by looking back, it can help you prepare for what is to come. Do you do the same thing? What were hot topics for your blog and business this past year?

new-year-fireworks-2012

Cheers to a successful, busy, and fun 2013!

Photo credit: redcti

Understanding Google’s Disavow Tool – When and How to Use it

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Google’s Disavow Tool was designed in the wake of the engine’s Penguin update as a way for webmasters to indicate to Google which inbound links are unwanted.

Understanding Penguin’s Impact

The guiding principle of the Penguin update was to penalize websites using manipulative techniques to achieve high rankings. The update negatively impacted websites selling links, as well as sites with spammy link profiles. Many sites which have not been intentionally buying links were also impacted by the update, because they have links from “untrusted sites.”

The primary purpose of the Disavow Tool is to help webmasters clean up if they’ve hired a bad SEO or made mistakes in link-building in the past.

So, what’s a Bad Link?

Bad links may include:

- Links coming in from poor quality and spammy sites.

- Links from irrelevant and “untrustworthy” sites.

- Links from paid posts or directories.

- Links that have “unnatural link warnings” in Google Webmaster Tools.

Evaluate Your Website’s Link Profile

Analyzing your site’s link profile can be a time intensive task. Google Webmaster Tools is an effective, free tool that you can use to evaluate domains and individual links pointing to your site. After you’ve logged in to Google Webmaster Tools, go to your Dashboard > Links to Your Site > Download Latest links. Your downloaded file will have the newest links on top.

With this list, you can judge the domain on your own to see if it is a healthy one or not. Given the risk associated with disavowing good links by accident, it’s important that you carry out a little investigation to conclusively sort the good from the bad. You’ll want to click through to every referring website. You may find that many of the links that appear to be suspicious are actually harmless, or, at the very least, they’ve been deactivated or appended with the “no follow” code that will prevent them from negatively impacting your site.

You should not disavow an entire domain unless you are completely sure that every single link is useless and potentially damaging. The bottom line is to research thoroughly before taking any steps for link removal.

Email First, Disavow as a Last Resort

Google recommends that you contact the sites that link to you and try to get links taken off the public web first. For example, if you’ve paid for a link on directory website, the webmaster may be agreeable to removing the link without further issue. If, despite your best efforts, you’re unable to get a few backlinks taken down, it may make sense to use the Disavow Links tool.

Using the Google Disavow Tool

In order to submit links to the Google Disavow Tool, you’ll need to compile a text file that outlines the domains or specific links you’d like blocked, as well as comments on why these links should be disavowed. The information should be listed in the following format:

1. Exact link domains “as is” (http://www.spammywebsite.com/terrible-link).

2. Root domains or subdomains should be paired with the prefix “domain” (Example: “domain:spammywebsite.com”).

3. Comments should be preceded by the “#” sign (Example: #The webmaster has not responded to my requests to have this link removed”).

Each of these pieces of information should be listed on its own line. Once your file is complete, upload it to the Disavow Links tool within Google Webmaster Tools.

Once your file has been uploaded and propagated across Google’s servers, you should see changes in your site’s link profile. Remember that Google has indicated that they may not remove every disavow link request, and that it may take a few weeks for your site to be indexed with these changes.

Finally, Google allows webmasters to upload additional files with corrections, if you find that you’ve excluded the wrong domain or link. However, repairing mistakes made to a disavowal file can take weeks or month to be implemented across the web. During that time, your site may experience decreases in PageRank, as well as referral traffic. Proceed with caution and be sure to check your work.

Photo credit: Horia Varlan

How to Use Profiles in Google Analytics

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A profile is a customizable layer in between the raw tracking data and the reports you see in Google Analytics. Profiles can be used to filter or limit the raw data so you only see the data you need in your reports.

If you want to collect data for just your company’s website, you can use a single account with multiple profiles to help get staff members from different departments the data that they need. For example, the Director of Marketing for a large hotel needs to monitor how prospective customers interact with the website as well as how employees are using the employee portal. He can set up a profile that filters out all internal traffic, and monitor site interaction, ranging from time on site for new visitors to sales, to share with the sales team. He could also set up a profile that filters out all external traffic and share these reports with the Manager for Internal Communications and the Human Resources department, in order to better assess how staff members access the website.

Some important things to keep in mind:

  • User access is also set at the profile level, so you can restrict the data that account users have access to as necessary.
  • Other Google Analytics reporting tools, such as Goals and Advanced Segments, are all applied to individual profiles. Using our earlier example, the Director of Marketing may want to set up a hotel booking as goal for the external-traffic only profile. Different goals could be established for the internal-traffic only profile.
  • Google Analytics creates an unfiltered profile for every website that you add to your account. Do NOT delete or add a filter to this profile. Data can never be retrieved once it has been filtered. A much better option is to set up multiple profiles and customize each one.

For most websites, I recommend setting up three profiles to start:

  1. The default, unfiltered profile. Again, you want to leave this profile untouched so you can always revert to the raw, unfiltered data if necessary.
  2. An external traffic only profile, filtering out the IP addresses or IP address range of your business. This profile is a great place to start when you’re making decisions about the effectiveness of your public-facing website.
  3. A test profile. If you want to experiment with adding additional filters, try them out using this profile. Again, once data is filtered at the profile level, it cannot be retrieved.

Note: you will need Administrator-level access to your Google Analytics account in order to set up profiles.

How to Set Up a Profile

  • Click Admin in the top right in the menu bar from any Analytics page.
  • Find the account that contains the URL or what Google Analytics refers to as a property to which you want to add a profile.
  • Click the property to which you want to add a profile.
  • Click +New Profile.
  • Select either Web or App.
  • Enter a name for the profile. I recommend being descriptive so you know what this profile is for.
  • Select a Reporting Time Zone. Choose a country/territory and standard time zone. Note that Changing the time zone only affects data going forward, and is not applied retroactively. If you change the time zone for an existing profile, you may see a flat spot or a spike in your data.
  • Click Create Profile.
Image credit: Google Analytics Help

Understanding User Behavior: Segmenting with Google Analytics Custom Variables

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Candies segmented by color

Ever wish there was a way to segment your users based on their ongoing (or not ongoing) interaction with your site? And then decode why they may have stopped coming back? Not placed that order? Abandoned that contact form? You can – with something Google calls Custom Variables.

You may have noticed them while cruising around Analytics, but their functionality often goes overlooked. Although Custom Variables require a bit of technical heavy lifting and coding to get them running, once they’re set up, it’s easy to utilize them to further segment your data into behavioral groups.

Visitor Engagement Levels

Custom Variables can be created based on the different levels of visitor engagement as defined by Google: Visitor, Session and Page. To understand these levels it’s best to think in terms of duration and corresponding examples.

Visitor-level – Current session and all future sessions*

Think types of visitors: first time visitors, returning visitors, members with account login, visitors who have already filled out your contact form or made a purchase, visitors who have ever been referred by social media.

Session-level – Current session of the visitor

Think visitor experiences: started to fill out form but never completed, put items into the cart and never checked out. Session level variables help segment visitors based on their interaction with your site during a single visit or session.

Page-level – A single pageview

Think in terms of user activity and content: which areas of your site are users going to? You can segment your site’s pages into categories and see which types of content users are interacting with (or not interacting with).

Once you’ve decided what you want to track and at what level, Google Analytics Custom Segments provide a way to even further segment your data on several levels to help you develop a picture of how certain types of visitors interact with your site and why. You can then drill down deeper to analyze why they may be interacting with your site in specific ways. Did they put items into their cart, but never check out? What page did they visit last? Was it the shipping page or the return policy page? You can then think about adjustments that may need to be made based on that data.

You can also use custom variables to assess how past customers interact with your site going forward. Do they purchase again? Do they tend to spend more or less? With Custom Variables the segmenting possibilities are almost endless (there is a 5 variable limit).

*If the visitor never returns, this data will expire after 2 years. If they return within the 2 year period, that time limit resets with each return visit.

Photo credit: Mr. T in DC