http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog We share tips on search engine optimization, pay per click advertising, local search optimizing, and other tactics to improve your online presence. Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:12:23 +0000 en hourly 1 http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/how-can-i-tell-seo-working http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/how-can-i-tell-seo-working#comments Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:12:22 +0000 Taylor http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/?p=2785 Core Values. We recognize that one of the biggest challenges facing businesses is figuring out a way to evaluate if their SEO campaign is successful. Ultimately, the only factor that determines success is the bottom-line; like any investment, we do not think that our services are truly successful unless we can provide positive ROI.

At the same time, we recognize that SEO is a long-term investment, and it simply isn't possible to provide positive ROI right out of the gate. So with that in mind, we usually focus on three distinct indicators of SEO success:

Keyphrase Ranking Improvements
Non-Branded Organic Search Traffic
Conversions

At different stages of our campaigns, we tend to focus on these indicators to varying degrees. Because search engine rankings tend to improve relatively quickly to quality SEO, we can use rankings for individual keywords to measure our earliest efforts. Later on in the process, the additional data that trickles in over time allows us to evaluate success based on organic traffic and conversions.]]> http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/how-can-i-tell-seo-working/feed 0 http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/5-tips-google-analytics-site-search-reports http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/5-tips-google-analytics-site-search-reports#comments Wed, 11 Jan 2012 16:40:57 +0000 Taylor http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/?p=2628 setting up goals so that you can see what actions users performed once they reached your website - this is very important! This can show you the value of the traffic coming to your website and how well your marketing is working for your business. All the upward trending graphs and thousands of visitors don't mean much for reporting purposes if you don't know what actions those visitors took. Now the next step is figuring out how the users interacted with your website and one great way to understand both user action and user intent is through the Site Search reports.]]> http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/5-tips-google-analytics-site-search-reports/feed 0 http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/conversion-source-attribution-game-changing-report-version-google-analytics http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/conversion-source-attribution-game-changing-report-version-google-analytics#comments Mon, 09 Jan 2012 15:23:56 +0000 Steven http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/?p=2593 Assisted Conversions report in the new version of GA has been particularly useful in identifying the true origin of a site’s conversions.]]> http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/conversion-source-attribution-game-changing-report-version-google-analytics/feed 0 http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/goals-google-analytics http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/goals-google-analytics#comments Fri, 16 Dec 2011 19:42:00 +0000 George http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/?p=2495
If you're going to do only one thing in your analytics implementation, YOU SHOULD TRACK GOALS.]]> http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/goals-google-analytics/feed 1 http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/annotations-google-analytics http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/annotations-google-analytics#comments Mon, 12 Dec 2011 15:23:53 +0000 Steven http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/?p=2403 annotations within Google Analytics. As your website continues to develop, inevitable changes will occur - your traffic may increase or decrease, rankings in the SERPs may rise and fall, and in the end, determining the cause of such events is a quintessential piece of the puzzle. If you are able to identify sources of improvement, or in some cases regression, taking the necessary steps in creating the most efficient, well rounded internet marketing campaign possible becomes easier. Making improvements should always be a goal; the ever-changing nature of search engines forces us to constantly re-assess both time-proven and more recent, untested strategies that may help a website's performance. Knowing how to effectively utilize annotations can be quite helpful in that process.]]> http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/annotations-google-analytics/feed 2 http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/google-analytics-keyword-not-provided-statistics http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/google-analytics-keyword-not-provided-statistics#comments Tue, 29 Nov 2011 21:53:20 +0000 Steven http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/?p=2169 encrypt searches for those signed in to a Google profile, rendering a portion of keyword referrer data "(not provided)" within Google Analytics reports. Webmasters and professionals throughout our industry utilize this information to improve a site or campaign. At the time that Google announced this decision, Google associate Matt Cutts attempted to allay fears that a large percentage of this keyword data would be lost by stating that only a "single digit" percentage of people are actually signed in while searching. Since then there has been much debate as to whether or not Cutts' statement was accurate. We decided to investigate further with a study of our own.]]> http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/google-analytics-keyword-not-provided-statistics/feed 0 http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/tracking-internal-site-search-google-analytics http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/tracking-internal-site-search-google-analytics#comments Tue, 15 Nov 2011 21:36:33 +0000 Roger http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/?p=1861 http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/tracking-internal-site-search-google-analytics/feed 0 http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/not-provided-showing-google-analytics http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/not-provided-showing-google-analytics#comments Wed, 09 Nov 2011 16:28:40 +0000 Tim http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/?p=2163 So what gives?]]> http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/not-provided-showing-google-analytics/feed 0 http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/finding-fixing-404-pages-google-analytics http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/finding-fixing-404-pages-google-analytics#comments Wed, 02 Nov 2011 16:23:51 +0000 Tim http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/?p=2137 common error pages that can be found online. As that post explains, the most common, and problematic, error page is the dreaded 404. Whenever a server spits out a 404 page, it means that the user is trying to access an invalid URL. This might be because they misstyped an address, or it may be because they followed a bad link. Whatever the cause, no site owner wants users to see 404 pages, and minimizing their appearance should be a central goal for any webmaster.

In this post, I want to give a quick tutorial on how to identify and fix 404 errors using Google Analytics. With just a few short steps, you should be able to identify how often users are accessing the 404 page, how they arrived there, and how to fix any issues.]]> http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/finding-fixing-404-pages-google-analytics/feed 0 http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/google-encrypting-searches-hiding-terms-analytics http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/google-encrypting-searches-hiding-terms-analytics#comments Wed, 19 Oct 2011 16:06:08 +0000 Tim http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/?p=2114 announced that they have decided to make the default method for searches encrypted. In layman's terms, this means that, when a user is logged in to a Google account, through Gmail, Google+, or any other of their services, site owners will no longer be able to see exactly how a user found their site. While this change will rouse annoyance from quite a few site owners, it actually presents a great opportunity for attentive SEOs who do high-quality work, and might even put a dent in the prominence of so-called 'content farms'.

Before this change, site owners using Google Analytics, Adobe Omniture, or any other decent web analytics package, could track the actual search term that a user entered into Google to get to their site. On our own site, for example, we could track how many of our visitors had searched for 'chicago search marketing' before coming to our home page. Beyond that, we could track their behavior once they landed on our site; Analytics would let us know if those visitors were likely to click around to various pages of our site, and how they differed from users who entered something like 'chicago internet marketing'.]]> http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog/google-encrypting-searches-hiding-terms-analytics/feed 0