Archive for the ‘Google’ Category
Get Your Competitor’s Web Traffic Data
Different tools to help you with your competitive website data analysis
In an earlier post SWOT analysis for your website, I mentioned the four elements of your SWOT analysis include identifying your website strength (S), uncovering your its weaknesses (W), identifying opportunities (O) for the site and uncovering threats (T) against it. While a decent web analytics application like Google Analytics can help you get insight into your own website S and W elements, what and how can you know about your competitor’s web performance in order to make your SWOT analysis more complete? I emphasized “web performance” as opposed to other general information that you can obtain by browsing your competitors’ websites. Below are some tools to help you get some idea about your competitors’ website performance.
Google Places “At a Glance” Wrong Description
Google displays wrong information under your Google Places “At a glance”?
Find out why and how to fix it
Google Places has been around for quite some time. Since my first post about how to use Google Places to your local business advantage, there have been questions regarding the accuracy of the information displayed under the “At a Glance” section on the Google Places page. For many people/websites, the descriptive terms are insufficient; for others, they are inaccurate and sometimes to the point of providing incorrect information that the owners have never provided while listing their businesses on Google Places.
Install New Google Analytics Tracking Code
Brief overview of Google Analytics tracking code and how to set it up properly
Google Analytics (GA) is a web analytics tool that works based on the page tagging method. To set up Google Analytics on your website, you need to tag individual web page with the tracking code (written in Javascript). When a tagged web page is open in the web browser, the tracking code is triggered and begins to collect web traffic data. The tracking code, thus, is the center of Google Analytics. Properly installing it on your site will be the first essential step in using this application.
What Google Analytics Can’t Do
An overview about what Google Analytics can’t tell you in its reports
One of the key factors of getting your site a visible ranking is to know how well it performs with search engines and with your site visitors. Google Analytics (GA) is a web analytics tool that reports performance metrics of your website as well as give you insights into your web visitors’ behaviors and their activities while they are on the site. Performance metrics/indicators can vary depending on the priorities and goals of your site, but basically they include metrics like average time on site, number of page views, number of visitors and unique visitors, bounce rate, entry and exit points, goal conversion and so on. Those metrics are fundamental as they quickly let you know the overall health of your site, how it is performing against your goals. Google Analytics reports basic metrics and much more, but what can’t it tell you?
Google Places – Google Local Business Listing
Get your business on Google Places
In the previous post Has Your Website Search Ranking Dropped Lately? we briefly mentioned search localization emphasizing the fact that today’s search engines tend to give more priority to local search results over general search results. A search term like “London pizza” on Google UK will give pizza restaurants based in London more priority over the rest as Google displays a map with highlighted London-based pizza stores at the top of the search results. To take advantages of this change and trend in search, you can and should list or claim your business with Google Places.
