Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. It helps to track information about the way visitors interact with our site. The Google launched the service in November 2005. Google Analytics has two additional versions they are Google Analytics Premium which is focussed at enterprise users and Google Analytics for Mobile Apps  which deals with usage data from IOS and Android Apps. Google Analytics gives information about how many people are visiting our site which keywords and phrases they are using and how long they are staying on various pages etc. 

Google Analytics Features includes 

• Data visualization tools including a dash board, scorecards and motion charts, which display changes in data over time.
• Segmentation for analysis of subsets, such as conversion.
• Custom reports
• Email based sharing and communication.
• Integration with other Google products such as Adwords, Public Data Explorer and Website Optimizer.

The basics

Pageviews

Pageviews is the number of times users view a page that has the Google tracking code inserted. It covers all page views. So if a user refreshes a page or navigates away from the page and returns, all are counted as additional page views. The unique page view number counts all the times the page was viewed in an individual session as a single event.

Visits

Visits are also known as sessions. They are the individual periods of time that visitors spend on our site. When a user visits our site for the first time, a new visit and unique visitor both are recorded. If the same user returns to the site, only a new visit is added.It is called as unique visitors. With the help of cookies Google Analytics is able to recognize whether a user has been to the site.

Segments

Segments enable us to analyze data in detail by filtering the results. We can also use segments to compare results between group of visitors. 

Landing page

The page which user begins their visit to our site is known as Landing page. 

Bounce rate

Bounce rate is defined as a percentage and represents number of visits when users leave our site after viewing only one page. 

Visitors flow

The visitors flow report shows how visitors moved through our site from landing page to exit page. It also shows details such as the Geographic location of users, the traffic source etc.

Tracking ID

Tracking ID is a string like code used to tell Analytics which Account and Property to send data to

Google Analytics Reports

1. Mobile Performance Report

 The Mobile Performance Report shows how well our site is optimized for mobile and where we need to make improvements. We can also segment the report to see which devices or browsers customers are using to access our site.

2. Traffic Aquisition Report

This report helps us to know whether people are actually clicking on our ads. It also helps us to know whether the guest post that we published earlier is generating any traffic to our websites etc.

3.Content Efficiency Report

This report tracks entrances, page views, bounce rate etc. It also helps us to know about

• Which content is engaging our audience most?
• What type of content is best
• Which content converts readers into customers?
• Which content is shared most by users?

4.Keyword Analysis Report

This keyword analyzes the most popular incoming keywords to our site.It shows conversion rates, page load time for each keyword etc.

5. Landing Pages Report

This report tells about which pages visitors are landing on when they first enter our site. From this report we get an idea about how users are interacting with our site. Users enter our site from different pages. Some will enter in home page URL directly. Some will click on a link shared in twitter feed etc.

6.Bounce Rate v/s Exit Rate Report

Bounce Rate is the percentage of visitors who enter a page and leave the same page without making any conversions. Exit Rate measures the percentage of visitors who browse more than one page on our site before leaving.

Steps in Google Analytics

1. Sign into Google analytics

2. Click the admin button

3. Click on create an account

4. Click on create a property

5. Enter site's name and URL

6. Select industry

7. Select time zone

8. Click on get tracking id

9. Install tracking ID on website

10. Paste the tracking ID in the Analytics and Theme section of  the blog

11. Save the theme 
You can also view my last post on Google Webmaster tools

Neethu T

Google Webmaster tools

Google Search Console or Google Webmaster tools is a no charge web service by Google for webmasters. It allows webmasters to check indexing status and optimize visibility of websites. Google Search Console is a free service offered by Google that helps monitor and maintain our site's presence in Google search results.  We don't have to sign up for Google search console for our site to be included in Google's search results but doing so can help understand how google views our site and optimize its performance in Google search results.

Why we use Search Console?

Monitor our sites performance in Google Search results

• Make sure that Google can access our content
• Submit new content for crawling and remove content which we dont want to show in search results
• Create and monitor content that delivers visually engaging results.
• Maintain site with minimal disruption to search performance
• Monitor and resolve malware or spam issues so our site stays clean

Discover how Google search and world sees our site

• Which queries caused your site to appear in search results?
• Did some queries result in more traffic to our site than others?
• Are our product prices,company contact info, or events highlighted in search results?
• Which sites are linking to our websites?
• Is our mobile sites are performing well for visitors searching on our mobile.

How to use webmaster tools to increase traffic

There are seven ways to use webmaster tools to increase traffic. They are

1. Add a Sitemap

A sitemap is a list of pages of a website. Sitemaps are used during the planning of a website by its designers. Sitemap is an XML file that is full of our's individual webpages URLs. XML sitemaps are important for SEO because they make it easier for Google to find our site's page. XML sitemaps convey information about the URLs that make up a site.

2.Structured data

Search Engine uses Structured data. It is used to generate snippets. snippets  are small pieces of information that will appear in search results. Structured data is added directly to a page's HTML markup. Structured data is also called as Schema mark up. It is a code that helps search engine to crawl, organize and display content.

3.Sitelinks

The hyperlinks that appear under google listings are called as Sitelinks. Sitelinks helps users navigate the site. Google adds them through its automated algorithms. Sitelinks are additional links that appear below the main URL. Google Sitelinks are sub listings that appear under first listing on first page in Google search results.

4. Keywords

Keywords are the words and phrases that searchers enter into search engines.They are also called as "search queries".  We can use Google keyword tool to increase traffic to our site. Keyword research involves identifying words and phrases people enter into search engines to rank for.

5.HTML improvement

The potential issues reported during crawling and indexing of sites are shown in HTML improvement page. It includes Title problems, Meta description problems, Non indexible content etc. It helps to improve user experience, and hence increase traffic to our site.

6.Crawl rate

Google helps to set the rate at which we want them to crawl the site. Google webmaster tools helps to change this feature. We can set the crawl rate to high or low depending on our needs. Crawl stats shows Googlebot's activity.

7.Fetch as Google

Fetch as Google tool is used to analyze a page's performance in search engine result page. It helps to test how Google crawls or renders a URL on our site. Fetch as Google can be used to see whether Google bot can access a page on our site.

Verifying the website using Webmaster tools

1.Search Google.com/Webmasters/tools

2.Click on Add a property

3. Copy the URL which we want to fetch

4. Paste the URL in the text field and click the add button

5. From the crawl option in the left side select fetch as Google

6. To fetch a post copy rest of the URL and paste it in the text field and click fetch.

You can also view my last post On Page Optimization in SEO

Neethu T

On Page Optimization in SEO

In the last blog we had seen History and Evolution of Search Engine Optimization. SEO can be divided into two. They are On Page SEO and Off Page SEO.

On Page Optimization refers to all measures that can be taken directly with in the website in order to improve its position in the search rankings. It is the practice of optimizing individual web pages in order to rank higher and earn more traffic in search engines. It refers to both the content and HTML source code of a page that can be optimized. On page optimization includes providing good content, good keywords selection, putting keywords on correct places, giving appropriate title to every page etc.

On Page Techniques

Title optimization

An HTML title tag is put inside the head tag. The page title is displayed in the title bar of our browser. Correct use of keywords in the title of every page of our website is extremely important to Google especially for the home page. Title tag is an HTML element that specifies the title of a webpage. Title tags are displayed on search engine result page(SERP) as the clickable headline for a given page.

Best practices for creating title.

Here are some best practices we should follow for creating titles on pages

1.Each page should have a unique title.

2.The title should be relevant.

3.The title should be impressive.

4.The length of an ideal title is in between 55 to 60 characters long.

5. The width of title is 512 pixel.

6. Do not use full capital letters in title.

7. Avoid spelling mistakes or grammatic errors.

8. The title should include minimum three words.

Meta Description

The meta description tag in HTML is the 160 character snippet used to summarize a web page's content. Search engines shows the meta description in search results mostly when searched for phrase is contained in the description. It helps to improve Click Through Rate(CTR). As it receives impression, the click through rate increases.

Features

1. The length of meta description lies between 155 to 160 characters for one page.

2. The length of meta description is limited with in 155 characters for one post.

3. The width of meta description is 1024 pixel.

4. The meta description should be relevant.

5. The meta description should be impressive.

6. Grammatical errors or spelling mistakes should be avoided.

7. The meta description should be unique.

Body Section Optimization

The header tag or the <h1> tag in HTML is usually the title of a post. It is the largest text. There are six heading elements ranging from H1 to H6. They are called as section headings.

features

1. The length of a header is 8 or 9 words.

2. The header should be relevant.

3. One page usually have only one header.

Keyword Optimization

Keyword Optimization is also called as keyword research. It is the act of researching analyzing and selecting the best keywords to target to drive traffic from search engines to our websites.

Steps

1.Choose the keyword to focus on.

2. Prioritize keywords.

3. Check that the important content on the page is getting indexed.

4. Ensure the indexed text is unique.

5. Improve the search listings for the keywords.

6. Add a Headline.

7. Optimize existing text.

8. Look for text in images.

9. Develop ALT tags for the Image Links.

10. Update the HTML page title and Meta Description tag.

11. Increase internal and external links and social engagement.

Benefits

1. It helps to drive qualified traffic to our website.

2. It helps to measure traffic potential.

3. It helps to understand user behaviour.

Keyword density

The keyword density is the percentage of times a keyword or phrase appears on a webpage compared to the total number of words on the page.

Image Optimization

The ALT tag is the most important image optimization factor. ALT stands for alternate. The text in the alt tag is displayed in the place of image. Most of the search engines are text-based. They cannot read images and videos.

Authorship Optimization

Authorship Optimization or editorial power is the way for article authors to connect with Google profile to their published content to create ownership. Authorship provides authority and validity to content readers. Authorship increases the visibility of pages. It is an important process in Marketing strategy. It increases traffic to our website also. Authorship Optimization can be established by creating a Google plus profile and then linking Google plus profile with our content. You can also refer to my last blog on History and Evolution of Search Engine Optimization to get deep idea.

Neethu T

History and Evolution of Search Engine Optimization

Google is a search engine started by Sergey Brin and Larry Page as a Research Project at Stanford University to find files on the internet. It is an American Multinational Technology Company that specializes in internet related services and products. We usually search for information about(Someone or something) on the internet using search engine Google.

 Search Engine Optimization  

The process of optimizing content so that it can be displayed as a top result for searches of certain keywords is called as Search Engine Optimization. It is also a process of affecting online visibility of a website in a web search engines results referred to as organic, natural and earned results. It increase traffic to our website.

History

In 1996 Google co founders Larry page and  Sergey Brin started an idea of building a search engine and was called as BackRub. In September 1997 Google.com is registered as a domain name. In June 2009 Microsoft released Bing . As search engines came into existence the problem was regarding about the quality of information. According to user queries search engine provides matched keywords. Then came a process called keyword stuffing,in which in order to improve ranking the usage of repeating keywords over and over again was increasing. In addition to this people were using spammy backlinks also.

2000-2002

It was found that page containing large number of inbound links ranks higher.

2003-2004

It came with the" Florida" Update to  Googles Algorithm. Site receives penalties for things like keyword stuffing,signaling google's emphasis on solving for the first  quality content.

2005

A big year for SEO was 2005. Google united with yahoo and MSN for the Nofollow Attribute to decrease the amount of spammy links and comments on website particularly blogs. In November 2005 Google Analytics was launched.  It helps us to track visitors in our website.

2009

Google provided caffeine algorithm change to test the next generation infrastructure. It was made to speed crawling,indexing and hence ranking.

2010

Google introduced a new term called as Google Suggest. When we are typing in a search query to google,it provides suggestion.

Technical terms

Crawling

Crawling refers to the programs that search engines use to scan and analyze websites in order to determine their importance and thus their ranking in the results of internet searches for certain keywords. A process of fetching all the web pages linked to a website. This task is performed by a software called a crawler or a spider(or Googlebot).

Cache

Cache is a snapshot of a webpage that google creates and stores after they have indexed a page. When pages are indexed they are categorized and filed with in Google's indexers.

Index

An index is another name for the database used by a search engine. Indexes contain the information on all the websites that google was able to find. A process of creating index for all the fetched web pages and keeping them into giant database from where it can later be retrieved.

Webmaster

Webmaster gives data about all important SEO aspects of a site such as keywords,links,crawl errors etc

The two types of SEO tactics are:

1.White Hat SEO

2.Black Hat SEO

1.White Hat SEO

An SEO tactic is considered as White Hat if it has the following features:

 It conforms to the search engine's guidelines.

 It does not involve in any deception.

 It ensures that the content a search engine indexes,   and subsequently ranks is the same content a user will see.

 It ensures that a web page content should have been created for the users and not just for the search engines.

 It ensures good quality of the web pages.

 It ensures availability of useful content on the web pages.

2.Black Hat SEO

Techniques that search engines do not approve and attempt to minimize the effect of. These techniques are also known as spamdexing .

An SEO tactic is considered as Black Hat or Spamdexing if it has the following features

 Attempting ranking improvements that are disapproved by the   search engines and/or involve deception.

 Redirecting users from a page that is built for search engines to one that is more human friendly.

 Redirecting users to a page that was different from the page the search engine ranked.

Page rank

Page rank is an algorithm used by google search to rank websites in their search engine results

Google Algorithm

Google is centered around enhancing its websearch administrators for online users and by keeping a track of changes in Google's algorithm updates

Keyword Stuffing

Keyword Stuffing is the process of overloading the content or metatags of the webpage with every possible keyword or phrase that relates to the site in many different forms

Keyword metatag

Keyword metatag gives a brief description of the page.Keyword metatag is not used by google since 21 september 2009.

Link Juice

Link Juice refers to the amount of authority or value that one backlink passes to the website it connects with. Link juice is also called link equity.

Hyperlink

A hyperlink is one of the most important element in search engine ranking.Search engines use internal hyperlinks to find other pages in our site.They also use hyperlinks that point to our page from other sites to increase the authority of the sites specified in the external links.

No follow

No follow is an html attribute value used to instruct search engine bots that a hyperlink should not influence the link target's ranking in the search engine's index.

Google Adwords

Google Adwords is an online advertising service developed by google. Here advertisers pay to display brief advertising copy,product listings,and video content with in the Google Adword to web users.

Google Adsense

Google Adsense is a program run by Google that allows publishers in the Google network of content sites to serve automatic text,image,video or interactive media advertisements that are targeted to site content and audience

Pay Per Click

Pay Per Click is a model of internet marketing in which advertisers pay a fee each time one of their advertisements is clicked.It is a way of buying visits to our sites.

Cost per Click

Cost per Click bidding means we have to pay for each click on our ads.

Cost per impression

Cost per impression is defined as the price the advertiser agrees to pay for every thousand impressions received by the advertisement.It is also known as cost per thousand or CPM.It is regardless of whether the ad is clicked or not.It helps to determine Cost Per Click(CPC) and Click Through Rate(CTR).Cost Per Impression is usually used in Internet Marketing.

Google Suggest

Google Suggest provides suggestions to users when they enter a letter or a word in Google's search field.They are automatically shown in a drop down menu.So it is also called as Autocomplete.The suggestions are based on frequently used terms.

Personalised Search Result

When a user performs a search the search results are not only based on relevance of each webpage to the search term but also on which websites the user visited through previous search results is called as personalised search result.

Pogosticking

Pogosticking describes the condition when a user enters on our first webpage from a search engine result page and then exits our page and goes back to search engine result page and they click on next result to a different website.

Subscription

The process of subscribing into the webpages to increase trust value and ranking is called as subscription.

Google Updation

Google panda updation was to reward high quality websites and diminish the presence of low quality websites in google's organic search results.It is related to

1.Content spamming-it is a type of content duplication and is also called as content plagarism.It is a method of copying content.

2.Low quality contents-contents with spelling mistakes,copied contents are called as low quality contents.

3.Thinny pages-pages with very little contents are called as thinny pages.

4.Content mismatching search query-pages that promise to deliver relevant answers if clicked on in the search results but then fail to do so is referred to as content mismatching search query.

Google panda 4.0 updation introduced Digital Millenium Copyright Act

Google Penguin update was launched by google in April 2012 to better catch sites deemed to be spamming its search results and is related to link spamming and link exchange. Link exchange refers to buying and selling of links with money. It is also related to link farming that is to generate links with software. It is designed tp penalize and prevent link spamming.

Comment spamming-there are machines which post irregular comments. The comments posted by these machines are called as spam comments. They provide links to other websites.

Wiki spamming-spamming after registering in wikipedia sites is called as Wiki spamming. They provides advertising links to other sites.

Guest posting-The process of creating content and publishing it on another person's website is called as guest posting.

Google Pigeon Update

It is the code name given to one of google's local search updates. It was released on 2014. It was meant to increase the ranking of local listing in a search.

Parked Domain Update was launched in 2012. The additional domains which we host on our accounts are called as parked domain. They display the same websites as primary domain. In parked domain updation Google  avoids websites which lists parked domains.

Exact Match Domain Update was launched in 2012.  It prevents poor quality sites from ranking because they had words that match search terms in their domain names.

Piratte Update was introduced in 2012. The contents which are copied from other websites will be removed by means of Digital Millenium Copyright Act(DMCA). It provides an option to file DMCA complaint.

Hummingbird Update was launched in 2013. It is related to semantic searching. It primarly focus on improving the indexing of information rather than sorting through information. It was designed to embody special characteristics of speed and precision.

Rankbrain Update is an artificial intelligence program. It was launced by Google in 2015. Google uses rankbrain to help sort through its search results. Google updates searches based on age,educational qualifications etc of different people in different ways. It provides aid to google to process its search queries through algorithm learning program.

Mobilegeddon Update

 Mobilegeddon update is the name given to Google's algorithm update. It gives priority to websites that display well on smartphones and other mobile devices. The websites with good contents even if it is not mobile friendly is ranked first. It is also called as mobilepocalyse, mopocalypse or mobocalypse. It make a significant impact on how company's websites are ranked in search results on smartphones. 

Neethu T