A Discourse on Google Analytics.

Google Analytics is a free web service tools for SEO. This service is available for all who have Google account. It offers an easy and free way to track and analyze visitors on your website. You may have hundreds and thousands of visitors to your site but if you don’t know anything about them, then it would be meaningless. Google Analytics is a tool that helps in turning most of the visitors to customers. In addition to providing the information of the visitors of your site, it also provides key insights on how your website is performing and what you need to do more to meet your goals. You can track everything related to your sites, ie how much traffic your site has, where the traffic is coming from. You can even monitor social media activities, track mobile app traffic, identify trends etc.

Here are a few terms you should know:

• Property the website or mobile app you want to track.   
  
• Account is a place where each property lives in your dashboard. You can have multiple properties for an account or have multiple accounts for different properties.
• Tracking ID is a unique code added to your site that allows Google analytics to track it.
• Conversions - visits that turn into customers or potential customers.
• Session duration -how many long visitors spend on your site.
• Bounce Rate - percentage of visitors that view only a single page and leave.
• Event - visitors behavior, such as when a visitor clicks on ad, watches or stops a video, download a file or more.
• Landing Page - the first page a visitors see when visiting your website.
• Organic search - visitors who visit your site from a link.
• Segment – a way to filter the data, such as by category and types of visitors.

 Types of reports you shouldn’t miss:

• Acquisition - shows from where the traffic comes from, such as search engine, email marketing campaigns, social media etc. You can find it under Acquisition Tab.
  
• Keywords – tells what search words the user has used to reach in your site on a search engine. You can find it under Behavior Tab, under Site Search.
• Conversions - track how many visitors are converting into newsletter subscribers, shoppers, actual customers. Click on the Conversion Tab and choose type or category of conversion to view a report.
• LifeTime Value -   its value reports track visitors throughout their visit to conversion, return visits, future purchases and beyond. This help to figure out what turned those visitors into customers.
• LandingPage - shows you which pages are the most important and frequently visited first so you can track down, where those visitors are coming from and what’s attracting customers.
• Active Users - monitors how many visitors are active on your site within a specific time period, such past week, within 14 days or month.  This will show you what pages the most active users are visiting so you can figure out what’s keeping their attention and apply it to the rest of your websites. You can find active users on the Audience Tab under Active Users.

How to use Google Analytics for tracking the website?

        1. Sign into Google Analytics with your Google account.

          2. Click the admin button on the bottom left sidebar of your dashboard.

          3. Select an account or create an account.

          4. Click on the drop-down menu to create a property.

          5. Click on the website option and add your sites name and URL.

          6. Choose your industry.

          7. Choose your time zone.

          8. Click on Get Tracking ID.

          9. Install Tracking ID on your website.

        10. Paste the Tracking ID in the Analytics and Web Property of Other option of the blogger. 

        11.Also,  paste tracking code in the Theme section of the blog.

        12. Then Save the theme

If you enjoyed the post I would be very grateful if you'd help it spread by emailing it to a friend or sharing it on Twitter and Facebook. Thank You!

Also, view my last post on Google Web Master Tools.

Ancy Thomas

Get The Drift Of Google Webmaster Tools.

SEO Analysts uses many tools while analyzing a site. Out of many SEO tools Google Webmaster Tool also known as Search Console is one of the most useful. It is actually a set of tools for webmasters. It allows you to communicate with Google and sequencing many features of how Google views your site. Google Webmaster tool proposes insights and tools about your errors, metadata, keywords and more. To improve your SEO approach it's better to be familiar with these tools and reports.

How To Use Google Webmaster Tool To Improve Your Website Traffic?

1. Always be up to date on the quality guidelines Google offers. 

SEO practitioners are bound to follow the guidelines provided by Google to uplift the ranking of their page. Guidelines provided by Google are straightforward and it's not difficult to follow.

Don'ts for an SEO.

• The pages should be human readable.
• Don't betray your users, don't use unrelated keywords, titles etc.
• Don't copy the content of other website or page.
• Don't use the tricks and tips used by Blackhat SEO to achieve a high ranking.

2. Build structured Data.

Checks if your site is missing important components like title tags or meta description. You can check if your data is structured or not with HTML improvements tab or by using Structured Data Testing Tool. Check whether Google can pull out your websites and its content to make sure it matches with what you are optimizing for.

3.Keywords   

Google analytics offers intuition into what keywords, keyword phrases people are using to find your site. It will also find what keywords you optimized the page. It also helps to optimize according to the user's query.

4.Crawl Info

i.Crawl Errors will identify site or URL errors that might be present.

ii.Crawl Stats gives the general overview of Google bot activities, i.e, how many pages its been crawling and indexing for the last 90 days.

5.Sitemaps

Sitemaps help Google understand how to crawl your site and how many pages your site has. Sometimes you can see some discrepancies between pages submitted and indexed, especially if you offer seasonal packages and count those pages indexed.

6.Mobile Usability 

You should have a responsive site as all of your content should be mobile friendly. It should be checked out to make sure everything is working the way it should be.

7.Links to your site

Google learns more about your site and boosts it via internal externals links of your site. This tool help in showing what sites are linking to yours, so you can make sure non-spammy sites are linking to you.

Verifying the Website using Webmaster Tools.

1.Search for google.com/webmaster/tool

2.From the Home screen appearing, click on Add a Property.

3.Copy the URL which you want to fetch and paste it in the text field appearing and click the add button.

4.From the left panel select Crawl option, from that select Fetch as Google. Here we are requesting Google to Fetch our page.

5. In the above step, we asked Google to fetch the base URL.  Similarly to fetch a post we need to copy rest of the URL and paste it into the text field next to the base URL and click Fetch.

Hope you have got an outline of Google Webmaster Tools. You can also view my last post On Page Optimization.

Ancy Thomas

On Page Optimization Dexterity To Be Implemented

In the last blog, we had just peeped into history and evolution of SEO, techniques used, its updates. As we know SEO can be split into On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO. So in this blog lets see what is On-Page SEO.

On-Page Optimisation is also known as On-Site SEO is the task of optimizing elements on a web page. In order to attain high ranking and earn more traffic in the search engine, we optimize both the content and HTML source code of a page. It also helps users to easily understand what the page is about. In short by doing On-Page optimization search engine can serve high-quality content for their query. Let us have a glance through the effective ways to increase page ranking on search engine.

                            7 Substantial On-Page SEO Techniques

Title Tag

A catching or good title in SEO pages plays an important role. A user first sees the titles in the search results. Google display 50 - 60 characters of a title tag. So its suggested limiting the characters around this range. Google displays titles currently at 512 pixels. They are the major factor in helping search engines understand what your page is about. Google check for CTR(Click Through Rate) as an element for how relevant you are for a specific keyword.

Page Title is the clickable title of a web page that appears with the result on the Search engine results page. Page title tells people and search engine the topic of the web page. They also tell search engines an estimate of how relevant a page is to searchers query. Page title must be relevant and accurate to the page's content.

Title tags are used in 3 key places:       

• Search Engine Results Page(SERPs).
• In Browsers.
• In social network.

Page Titles in SEO

1. Keep titles about  55-60 characters long. Don't use a too short title, long title, don't duplicate it.

2.Use target keyword in titles.

3.In the title describe the content of the page in the best possible way.

4.Use keywords like How, Why, What and Where.

5.Use words like best, review, ultimate.

6.Don't duplicate the title.

7.Use brand name wisely.

8.Keep it simple.

 Meta Description

A snippet includes title, URL, meta description. Let's see what is meta description. It's HTML attributes that give a summary of web pages. It varies between 155-160 characters. It let visitors know what your page is about before they click on it. Meta Description has a large impact on CTR(Click Through Rate) on Google which can positively impact a pages ability to rank.

• If users query for a keyword or question then if Google lists it then we will get one impression.
• If we get 2500 impressions but fewer clicks because it's in 5th position. If Click Through Rate(CTR) is less than we must optimize our meta description.
• Its always good to include focusing keywords in the meta description.We can also include offers rebate, discounts to increase clicks.
• Meta description must be unique.But the content on the page can be similar to the meta description.It must be very impressive.

Body Section Optimization

For an SEO Analyst writing contents for a page is very important, content needs to be broken up into paragraphs and should be given headings. Headings should be keyword rich so that search engine can understand your content easily, focusing words should nearly appear 4 times in body section. You should include only one H1 in one page, use a relevant keyword in it, use 7 to 8 words in it. Subheadings, minor headings can be given using H2, H3.Long contents in the body help to achieve high rank.

Keyword Optimization

We should and use relevant keywords to attain a good traffic for our site. Its one of the hardest task and most of the site owners, bloggers don't spend enough time for it. In order to attain the traffic select and use relevant keywords. Let us see where all we need to include the keywords.

•  The title should contain the relevant keyword.
• There must be keywords in the links(anchor text). Inbound links, internal links, outbound links all should have your top optimized keywords.
• Optimise keywords in the pictures of your pages.
• Include keywords in the URL structure.

Keyword Density

It is the percentage value of the number of times a keyword occurs in a webpage. It is very important to have the necessary keywords. But don't overuse and make your site rank low. Use keywords wisely in your content. Try to keep keyword density in the range 2-5%.

Image Optimization

Using images within your content is very appealing to the readers.Important things to be noted while optimizing your image.

• Name your image in plain English in a descriptive way.
• Optimise alt-tag for your images.
• Create a master plan for how to use your product angles and image dimensions.
• Don't use large images since it will overload the page.

Authorship Optimization

If a single person writes in more than one blog then he/she may have more authorship. Similarly, if more than one person writes in a page, then also the Authorship of the page increase. Authorship increases the visibility of the page and leads to achieve more links to the page. It is a noteworthy process in marketing strategy.

On-Page optimization is an important aspect of an affluent search engine optimization. Even if it's crawling of the search engine or indexing of page On-Page Optimisation plays an important role in ranking. You can also refer to my last blog based on History and Evolution of SEO to dive deep into SEO.

                                                                                                                                        Ancy Thomas

Bygone Times And Transformation of SEO

"Google it" is the sentence that we probably hear and use every single day. Searching the internet using Google or another Search Engine is the activity that we all practice daily. So let us have a glance through the history and evolution of Search Engine. Its birth is speculated around 1991.

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the task of influencing the online visibility of a website or a web page in a web search engine's results. It can be boiled down to 3 core elements crawling, caching and indexing for publishing the results. Crawling basically means following a path. SEO begins with crawl experience of Google bot, for example, crawls our site, details of which are recorded in a file within our server log files. Indexing is the process of adding web pages into Google search depending upon which meta tag you used(index or no-index). Caching helps you to improve the load time of your web pages and thus optimize your site for the search engines.

SEO practices can be broadly classified into two, ie, White hat and Black hat SEO. White hat SEO refers to the most genuine practices to gain higher page rank. They strictly stick into on to the Googles guidelines for SEO. Black hat SEOs look for loopholes in Googles algorithm in order to rank higher in the search engines.

SEO techniques adopted include On Page Optimisation and Off Page Optimisation. On page optimisation refers to the activities carried out in the page which is to be published. This activities helps in giving high ranking in the search engine result pages. Off page optimisation activities are done on a page after it become live on the web. 

Where did SEO begin, and how did it become so darn important.Let us step back in time and try to unravel the story.

The idea for creating a chancery for all the World's data came to gratification in 1945. Dr. Vannevar Bush, then the director of  Scientific Research and development(now defunct) had published a piece in The Atlantic putting forward collection of data and record. There is no evidence that Dr. Bush's article went into bringing forth of the search engine, but it would have planted a seed in the minds of tech heads of 90's.

Rise of SEO

As the number of users of internet increased, information can be attained with greater ease. But the quality of information provided was too low. To improve Page ranking site owners used Keyword stuffing -- repeating keywords over again and again. In addition to that, they also practiced spammy backlinks.

Google - Unbosom

Sergey Brin & Lawrence Page need to par 2 hurdles when they begin the journey to create Google -- keyword stuffing and backlinks. In 1998, they bring forth Page Rank the technology that Google uses to attain the quality of the sites.

Updates of 2000 - 2002

Google AdWords ,Adsense and Google Toolbar were launched. With Google AdWords, a user can do the advertisement of their product. Using Google Toolbar people could search without visiting Google homepage. Adsense distributed the ads to the relevane places on the web page.

Updates of 2003 - 2004

Many sites lost their ranking because of keyword stuffing because it emphasized mainly on quality content. In 2004 'Google Suggest' is introduced as a Google Labs feature.

Updates of 2005

In the dawn of the year, to decrease the spammy links Google joined with Yahoo & MSN for the Nofollow attribute. Then in June, Google launched a personalized search, where it used users to search and browsing history. That November, Google Analytics got introduced, which is still used to measure traffic and campaign ROI(return on investment).

 Revamp of SEO in 2009

Bing premiered at the beginning of the year by providing better results than Google. In August, Google introduced Caffeine algorithm, that was designed to speed crawling, experiment the index and integrate indexation and ranking in nearly real time.

 Updates of 2010

We can see the suggestion from Google while we type for a query. These rolled out in September. In December, both Google and Bing added social signals.

 Panda Update

Google Panda update is a search filter introduced in February 2011. Its aim was content farming, content spinning. It also checks for content duplication, grammatical errors, spelling mistake

to lower the rank of low-quality sites or thin sites, in particular

Content Farming or Content mill is a website, where it's content is written for SEO bots instead of human readers. Topics for the sites are chosen to attain high ranking in search engine. Their aim is to create large revenue by laying down ads on the page or setting the links within the content.

Content Spinning is taking out a text written in one way, and rewriting it so that it sounds in another way.

Penguin Update

It rolled out in April 2012, real-time updation. It was an effort to avoid low-quality websites that give spammy links and keyword stuffing. Link Spamming include link exchange, link selling, and buying.Penguin also peeps out for:

Comment Spamming is by trying to get links to their websites by posting links to their websites by posting links to their sites everywhere. They also give the links in the comment space.

Wiki Spamming: Wikipedia is a site where everybody who can access the internet can edit the content. It is a very popular site since they are big non-profit sites. Before 2005, wikipedia.com never had added nofollow tag, so all links from it are counted as a valuable link to any site. But after that, it added a nofollow tag, so it tells the search engine not to pass any link power to that link. But there are still 100's of wikis that have not added nofollow tag and are subject to spamming.

Guest Blogging is a method where you can write an article for a website and get a link to your website/blog in return. It was a powerful strategy until Google's engineer Matt Cutts told to stop practicing Guest blogging as a way to get links.

Parked Domain Update

This rolled out on 12th April 2012. Parked domains is an alias domain for your primary domain. It will be pointing to the same web page. Imagine if someone queries for a brand name and if the search engine brings up the parked domains first, this activity will lessen the quality of the page.

Exact Match Domain

Google launched it as a filter on 28th September 2012 to prevent a low quality site from ranking high. Google caught the sites which had been developed with keywords that match search terms in their domain name and does not have upgraded to maintain the quality of web page.

Humming Bird Update

Google updated its algorithm in September 2013. According to this

change, a search engine will pay more attention to the phrase rather than the keyword. Google will bring forth semantic search result. Google will give out the best matching result after the query. They had used Artificial Intelligence with algorithm while updating.

If majority opted for a specific answer for a query/forum. Then Google will go along with the majority even if it's the wrong answer. So its a drawback of Humming Bird Updation.

Rank Brain Update of 2015 was an updated version of Humming Bird. Here artificial Intelligence is was deeply used. Let see an example, if different age group people searched for a cordless mouse in a different manner. Google always try to give the result incorrect way. For Google plays as a person with high intelligence. This had also lead to voice search on mobile rather than typing.

Mobile Giddeon Updation(Mobile Friendly Updation)

By 2015 the number of mobile users increased drastically. By April 2015 Google also released new mobile-friendly ranking algorithm that's designed to give mobile-friendly pages in mobile search. To make a website/page highly ranked the design of the page must be more responsive. That is, there should not be horizontal scrolling. Also, the user would not have to tap the screen to read the content. If a user gets into a website using a specific mobile device using a specific mobile device then the website should be shown accordingly. Earlier it was mentioned that even if a page is not mobile friendly then also if it's rich in content then it may rank high. The latest update came in 2016 (Mobile Giddeon Updation 2.0). 

If the sites don't open fastly then its ranking will be low by July 2018.
Hope you have got a brief idea on the history and evolution of search engine optimization. You can post the comments for more queries.

Ancy Thomas