Koushal Singh SEO Corona News - Digital Marketing Specialist | SEO The latest news about Search Engine Optimization - SEO and organic search marketing, including coverage of search algorithm updates by Google, Bing & others, plus expert analysis, advice, SEO best practices & How To Guides for search engine optimization. Coronavirus Update - Come visit one of our Digital Marketing Clinics today!
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Koushal Singh SEO Corona News - Digital Marketing Specialist | SEO The latest news about Search Engine Optimization - SEO and organic search marketing, including coverage of search algorithm updates by Google, Bing & others, plus expert analysis, advice, SEO best practices & How To Guides for search engine optimization. Coronavirus Update - Come visit one of our Digital Marketing Clinics today!
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Professional SEO services can lift your site above your competitors. According to SEO experts, they help business owners deliver their sites to top rank search engines. They ensure that the site has a unique setting that attracts Internet users. Search engine optimization experts apply the newest analytics service, which has a positive impact on a website. SEO companies are facing great competition in the SEO field. However, they introduce guaranteed SEO services to cope with the competition.
These SEO companies have a strategy requiring clients to pay the major search engines (including Google and Yahoo) for monthly website maintenance. However, the company has guaranteed SEO services, where clients do not pay maintenance for that month.
Google has remained top, since they have accurate methods and algorithms that deliver credible results to the searchers. However, Google has made it difficult for web developers to use optimization tricks in manipulating search engines. This is why SEO companies have the guaranteed SEO money refund.
SEO companies ensure that guaranteed SEO services include the Google's webmaster guidelines. Webmaster guidelines boost website rank and search activity. The services clients get from SEO experts are like marathons. However, clients should be aware that SEO tricks can have a great impact on a website and damage it-which is why they have to use the legitimate SEO strategies in order to receive impressive results.
Although one may read a lot about the search engine ranking, no search engine optimization company can ensure that his or her site will get the first page in Google or Yahoo search engine results. Despite this, SEO companies have guaranteed SEO services and it is great when one signs with Google. The fact remains that SEO services assure clients that even if the site will not rank among the top search engines, the money will not be a waste because of the refund.
Many webmasters are confused when hiring a search engine optimization SEO expert. Although SEO experts are believed to save time and improve webmaster sites through SEO strategies, they can also frustrate webmasters. Thus, webmasters must investigate the pros and cons of SEO services. The major tasks of the SEO experts are:
- Ensure that the site is well reviewed in the content or structure
- Provide Search engine optimization SEO advice on website development like use of JavaScript and web hosting
- Develop website content using SEO services
- Provide online business improvement campaigns
- Target keyword research
- Offer SEO training
However, the webmasters can grasp search engine optimization SEO through websites. They will understand the benefits of hiring an SEO expert and what to expect from one.
It is clear that when webmasters hire a search engine optimization SEO expert, they stand a better chance of maximizing their SEO services. When they want to start a new site it is good to look for web developers who have web design talent. The web developer will ensure that a webmaster's site reaches the top search engine ranking like Google or Yahoo. The web developer also assists in improving an existing site.
However, webmasters have to ask several questions about search engine optimization SEO including:
1. Do they have previous examples and testimonies from past clients?
2. Do they follow the guidelines from the Google webmaster?
3. Do they implement the SEO Internet marketing services to improve online business?
4. Do they have experience in the webmaster's industry?
5. Do they have knowledge of the webmaster's country/city?
6. Do they have experience in developing sites for international companies?
7. What are the best SEO techniques to implement on the webmaster's site?
8. How long has the SEO expert been in web design?
9. Does the SEO expert have good communication skills when making changes on the client's site?
Although the SEO experts provide great SEO services to their clients, there are a few who ruin the web design industry through their greed in marketing efforts and manipulate search engine rank. If search engine optimization SEO does not involve ethical practices, the site may have low visibility on Google or even be removed from the Google index.
SEO and social media marketing ensure that one's site has the best SEO Internet marketing, which means that their company can remain competitive in the online market. All the individual has to do is transition in their online business.
SEO Internet marketing has major components, which develop the website traffic, and top search engine rankings. However, webmasters should be aware that these components are not easy to get. They must apply formulas and SEO strategies to produce effective results. There are many websites providing pertinent information about SEO and online marketing, and you can learn from them.
If one's business does not have SEO Internet marketing strategies, he or she will need help from SEO experts. They will have to find SEO expert websites, who will help the business owner's site have many customers in online marketing. The obligation of SEO experts is to create exposure to businesses. They focus on SEO Internet marketing goals and provide top search engine rank like Google and Yahoo. However, to accomplish all this, web developers use SEO custom services, which have long-lasting SEO Google rank.
SEO companies ensure that your site has all the SEO Internet marketing such as business improvement, localized product sales, high quality online generation and the rest. Webmasters are guaranteed to remain competitive in the online business if they stick with SEO experts. They will have all they need to ensure business success.
Business owners who do have a business website lose massive amounts of money from online marketing. They should know that SEO Internet marketing mandates a business website, since it is a necessary online marketing tool. A website or blog is same as news ads, letterheads, or the yellow pages. However, the website must be user-friendly and just as advertisement is important, the SEO website is the same.
It is true that 44% of small businesses do not have a website or blog. They are unable to reach 73% of Internet users each day. If your company has a website, customers can research the latest products the business owner's company offers. SEO Internet marketing can help any company through their site to sell products. All businesses should have their own website, including companies using websites provided by insurance.
Our SEO writers for hire can write engaging content that your potential customers will find online.
Barry Schwartz is the CEO of RustyBrick, a New York Web service firm specializing in customized online technology that helps companies decrease costs and increase sales. RustyBrick sells custom web software including advanced e-commerce, custom content management systems, social networking sites, CRM applications, custom web-based business software, iPhone applications and much more.
Barry Schwartz is the founder of the Search Engine Roundtable and has covered search for over 15 years. Barry is also the News Editor at Danny Sullivan's Search Engine Land. Barry hosts the Search Marketing Expo in Israel and is a speaker, moderator and coordinator at many search marketing conferences, including Search Marketing Expo, Search Engine Strategies, La Red Innova Madrid, Spain, PubCon and many other marketing and technology events. Barry is always at the forefront of the latest news and trends in search. He was also the former News Editor at Search Engine Watch and is a moderator at several search marketing forums. Barry has and currently provided an advisory role for Google, Yahoo! Search, Microsoft's Bing, and several other Internet companies and many startups. In 2019, Barry was awarded the Outstanding Community Services Award from Search Engine Land and in 2018 he was awarded the US Search Awards the "US Search Personality Of The Year," you can learn more over here. Please also see my writer disclosures and disclaimers page.
Barry graduated from the City University of New York (Baruch College) in 2002, with Summa Cum Laude honors. Schwartz received several honors while in university, including Beta Gamma Sigma and the Golden Key International Honor Society. He, his wife and children live in the New York area.
Barry is often quoted and interviewed in publications such as Forbes, Reuters, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Bloomberg, USA Today BuinessWeek, News.com, Publish and many more. He has appeared on primetime TV, specifically NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams to talk about Google Instant and on CBS Sunday Morning with Charles Osgood in regards to mobile apps. Barry has also made multiple appearances on the TWiT network shows This Week in Google and Tech News Today. He has over a decade of hands on experience in web strategy, marketing and business optimization.
To hire Barry for a site consultation please visit our search marketing consultation page to learn more about rates and how to hire Barry.
International Keynote Speaker At SEMSEO In Germany, La Red Innova in Spain, & Many U.S. Based Conferences
Hosted "The Pulse" Radio Show at WebmasterRadio.FM
Former Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization’s Education Committee
Appeared On TV on CBS, NBC, CNBC and more
Often cited in major publications including Forbes, Reuters, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Bloomberg, USA Today, BuinessWeek, CNET and many others
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The fundamental part of a digital measurement and optimization plan is defining your goals. Get this wrong and you’ll set yourself up for disaster!
There are a lot of Google Analytics goal guides available on the web.
However, after reading through many of them I came to an important conclusion. Most guides explain about what goals you can set up in Google Analytics and how to do it. And this is important, but there is a lot more than that!
I recommend to take a strategic approach when setting and optimizing your goals.
In this post I will guide you through a 10-step process to set your goals. A process you can easily replicate in your unique situation. Setting up smart and meaningful goals is an important part of my Google Analytics audits.
I will take Amazon as an example. Here are a few resources addressing Amazon’s business objectives:
To become the best place to buy, find and discover any product or service available online. Source
To be earth’s most customer centric company, to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online. Source
As you can see, these are strategic, high level objectives. Of course, they want to earn more money, but think about it. These high level objectives definitely support that!
1.2 Strategies and Tactics
After you have set your business objectives, you need to come up with strategies and tactics that support your business objectives.
Amazon example:
Strategy: sell products
Tactic: sell online and drive physical store visits and sales
1.3 KPIs
Your KPIs should be aligned with your business objectives, strategies and tactics.
For ecommerce companies, revenue and value related metrics are key.
Example list of KPIs for Amazon:
KPIs for selling online are: revenue, average order value, gross margin etc.
KPIs for driving physical store visits are: find store location, print voucher etc.
It is important to set targets for each of your KPIs. For example, you want your average order value to be $100 or higher.
This will ensure that you take the right actions to improve your KPIs toward your targets.
I recommend to watch the video (from Justin Cutroni) below if you want to get a better understanding of how and why to create a measurement plan for your organization.
Another great resource is this good old article from Avinash. By reading this article, you can learn a lot about goals, metrics, KPIs, targets and segments.
“Your measurement plan is the very first important step in setting up goals in Google Analytics.”
2. Create Implementation Plan
Your measurement plan and determining what you want to track is a great start, but you are not there yet.
Simply deploying your Google Analytics tracking code on all of your website pages is probably not sufficient.
What if you have to deal with AJAX forms? Measuring these type of actions requires tracking code modifications.
In short, you have to translate the business needs into a technical implementation plan.
And document the technical requirements to measure things in the right way.
Happily Google Tag Manager can make the life of marketers and analysts a lot easier.
“Very often technical code changes are required in order to accurately measure your business needs in Google Analytics.”
3. Align Goals with KPIs
In Google Analytics you can track 20 different goals per view. The goals are divided in four different goal sets.
It’s important that the goals that you define in Google Analytics are as much as possible in line with your KPIs. However, Google Analytics goals are not the same as your KPIs or business objectives.
External data manipulation might be needed to transform your Google Analytics data and goals into your KPIs.
Macro goal: the primary goal or conversion on a website. This could be a sale.
Micro goal: a secondary goal on a website. This could be a newsletter subscription.
It is important to set up both macro and micro goals on your website.
This will help you to get a more holistic understanding of your visitor’s behaviour.
Not everybody that visit’s your website will immediately buy your products or services.
Defining both macro and micro goals makes it also more easy for you to judge the impact of one of your micro goals on the main conversion on your website.
Example of simple goals set up:
If you find out that prior to a purchase a lot of people watch a product video, you know your micro and macro goals are connected.
This is great input for further optimizing your online business results.
“Every online business has and should define macro and micro goals for their website.”
5. Set Up Google Analytics Goals
Google Analytics allows you to define 20 goals per view, divided in four goal sets. Most probably you don’t need to set up this many goals in one view.
You have the option to either define your goals by yourself or import them via the solutions gallery.
In my opinion you should always set up your own goals instead of importing a goal from someone else. It’s ok to take a look for inspiration, but don’t just copy them! Your business is different and so should be your goals.
Destination Goals
Step 1: click on “New Goal”.
Now you can choose what goal you want to create and to which slot you want to add it.
Step 2: fill in a name, choose a goal slot ID and goal type.
In this case I choose to set up a destination goal.
Step 3: fill in your goal information.
Google Analytics wants you to fill in a couple of fields:
Choose the destination URL of your goal (or app screen name)
Assign a monetary value to the conversion (non-ecommerce goals) – optional, but highly recommended
Set up a funnel for your goal – optional
A quick example for letsdefinegoals.com.
Leadform is located at letsdefinegoals.com/leadform
Leadform thank you page is located at letsdefinegoals.com/leadform-thanks
Here we go:
As you can see, I have included three different regular expressions here:
^ = begins with
$ = ends with
\ = indicates that the adjacent character should be interpreted literally rather than as a RegEx metacharacter.
In order to get your numbers right, these regular expressions are very important.
This is it! Save the goal and you will start collecting goal data from this point on.
Keep in mind:
Always check the “thank you” page in the content reports or via “verify this goal” option.
Step 1 required influences the Google Analytics goal funnel report itself, but the goal conversion reports stay the same. In other words, setting step 1 as required or not doesn’t influence the goal conversion rate in all other reports except the funnel report.
Goal values provide a lot of additional value in uncovering what and where to optimize.
In addition to destination page goals that you can define three more goal types:
Event based goals (e.g. for on-page interactions)
Duration goals
Pages/session goals
Event Goals
Event tracking is the key to track all kind of on-page interactions on your website.
Within your Google Analytics account, you can set up an event based goal.
For example, an embedded YouTube video on your website.
Event Category: YouTube video
Event Action: Click play button
Event Label: 10 Google Analytics goal tips
This is how to set up the goal in Google Analytics:
You have the option to add a value via the event tracking code (as you can see above) or you can define a goal value in Google Analytics.
Setting duration and pages/session goals are helpful to create context around your most important goals on your website.
Examples of questions you can answer through setting up these additional goals:
Is there a correlation between time on site and conversion rate?
Do converters visit more pages than non-converters?
How many pages do people visit before they convert?
You are limited to define greater than duration and pages/session goals.
Once again, don’t solely focus on these goals when trying to get better business results.
Why? It doesn’t bring in extra money if visitors spend a long time on your website without taking any desired action!
Concluding Remarks
Use goal set 1 for your macro goal and directly related goals. E.g. goal 1 is the ecommerce thank you page, goal 2 to 5 are your funnel steps. You can build horizontal funnels when you define your funnel steps as a separate goal.
Use a separate goal set for you micro or secondary goals.
Immediately turn of goals that don’t collect data anymore or that are obsolete. In the future you can use them to track other important website actions. And it will skew your overall perfomance view if you leave them on.
Set up a different view for duration and pages/session goals if you want your overall conversion rate to make sense. High conversion rates for minor goals will skew your overall goal conversion rate data.
In addition to session-based goals, define calculated metrics so that you can set up user conversion rate goals as well. We talk about this in a minute.
Goals are session based. Two visits to your “thank you” page in one session result in one goal.
“Goals are crucial to analyze the performance of your landing pages, channels etc. A proper structure and suitable naming conventions for your goal sets are extremely helpful for you and other people that have access to the same reporting view.”
6. Set Up Goal Values
It is easy to add a value to each of your transactions if you are running an ecommerce site. But what if you deal with a leadgeneration or content website?
Like I mentioned before, each website has it’s unique set of business objectives, KPIs and goals. And at the end, if you define an action or outcome as a goal in Google Analytics, it should contain a certain value.
Here are two examples:
Leadgeneration website: 100 leads in a year, total revenue from those leads is $10.000. This means revenue per lead equals $100. If you set a goal in Google Analytics on the “thank you” page after someone submits a lead form, you want to add a goal value of $100.
Content website: 1000 subscribers are worth $50.000 revenue in a year. The revenue per subscriber (on a yearly basis) equals $50. So the goal value of a new subscriber is $50 (calculated with LTV of one year).
These are two simple examples of how to determine the goal value for specific actions on your website.
Don’t set a goal value on the “thank you page” of an ecommerce transaction. You already measure the value of an ecommerce transaction if you set up ecommerce tracking on your website (which I highly recommend).
Work with relative goal values if you don’t know how to set a precise value for the actions on your website. This is no problem at all, since you can optimize on these relative numbers as well. And if you know the value of your macro goal, you can define relative values to your other goals.
Setting up goal values allows you to better analyze your content effectiveness by a metric called “page value“. It shows you how important your page is in relation to the Google Analytics goals. If you want to go from great to awesome, I recommend to check out this very useful guide on Online Behavior as well. It talks about page velocity, something you can analyze in context to page value and goals.
“Goal values unlock the real potential of outcome driven optimization in Google Analytics.”
7. Create User Level Calculated Metrics
99% of the reports in Google Analytics are session based. In my opinion you should look at user level metrics as well.
Here is an example (ecommerce website):
Pete visits your website on January 1st and views two product pages.
Pete comes back on January 3rd and adds one product to his basket but doesn’t convert.
Pete visits the website on January 5th and buys your product.
On default, Google Analytics measures a session based conversion rate. In this case 33,33%. This number is skewed since Pete is one and the same person.
If Pete visits your website three times via the same browser and device, we can recognize him as ONE user. The user based conversion rate equals 100% in that case.
Let’s face it, you will never get 100% accurate numbers, but do your best to get the best metrics possible!
I want you to think about a set of user based metrics that work for you.
Here is an example of a simple calculated metric (user based conversion rate):And the corresponding custom report:
As you can see, the user based conversion rate for organic search is 20% higher than the session based conversion rate.
Further you can create custom metric and use those as input for your calculated metrics:
You can segment your Google Analytics goals (individually or aggregated) to almost all dimensions that are available.
“It’s good to know your average conversion rate. It’s nice to know your average conversion rate for different segments on your website. It’s crucial to know where you need to make improvements based on your segmentation results. But it all doesn’t have any meaning if you don’t take action to actually improve your results!”
9. Go Beyond Google Analytics Interface
It’s great to get a first idea on how your website and channels perform through the Google Analytics interface.
However, if you like to crunch your data to come up with more hidden insights, the Google Analytics API can really help you out.
In the screenshot above you can see a “Create new report” link. Click on the link and fill in the metrics and dimension you want to pull into Google sheets.Click on the “Create Report” button down below.
Step 3: Check Your Sample Report Configuration.
After you click on “Create Report” you will see the following screen:
On default, the API selects the last 7 days. You can modify this field to your own needs.
Please note that this is only showing you the setup of your report and not yet any data.
In order to pull any data into Google sheets you need to click on “Run reports”:
Search on “goal” in order to see relevant metrics and dimensions related to goals:
By doing this you will get a better understanding of the possibilities of the Google Analytics API.
A quick example:
You want to get the absolute goal numbers in Google sheets for goal number 1.
In that case you need to add ga:goal1Completions to the metrics field.
The good thing is that you can use a ton of Excel formulas to manipulate the data in the best possible way.
You might want to combine your goal data with other metrics to calculate a value more in line with your KPIs.
The next step would be to build a visual around it so you can better monitor the performance and find areas for improvement.
This short tutorial is just meant as a starting point for leveraging the Google Analytics API. Read this reference guide if you want to learn more about it.
In a future post I will dive deeper into the API and how to use it in the best way.
“The Google Analytics API helps you to automate your reporting efforts so that you can spend more time optimizing your website performance.”
10. Act on Your Insights
There is one important final step after you have captured valuable insights from simple Google Analytics goal data.
And that is acting on the insights you found.
A few simple examples:
Insight: your email marketing campaigns perform not as well as they did in the past. Action: find ways on how to improve your email campaigns.
Insight: you have an above average abandonment rate at funnel step 3. Action: use qualitative surveys and user tests to find out more about why users abandon your website on this step. Create a hypothesis around it and set up a few A/B tests to test your hypothesis. So that you can hopefully improve your funnel success rate.
Insight: returning visitors convert 5x better than your new visitors. Action: set up a suitable retargeting campaign to turn more visitors into customers. And try to persuade more first time visitors by offering attractive discounts for becoming a client.
So finding insights is really great, but it is all about taking ACTION.
“A lot of people find out that something is wrong on their website, but you can only make more money if you know how to fix it and do so.”
Final Remarks
Here is a list of things you should take into account when setting up goals in Google Analytics.
Taking a strategic approach when setting up your goals takes time, but it’s definitely worth it.
Start with a measurement and implementation plan before you simply add a few goals to your Google Analytics view. You might want to use a spreadsheet for outlining your goals.
Google Analytics goals are session based, think about user level goal metrics as well.
Keep in mind that each reporting view has a limit of four goal sets with five goals per set.