Google Search Plus Your World

Every web marketer needs a Google+ strategy for their site so says SEOMoz's Rand Fishkin in this video in latest SEOMoz blog post on the subject of Google Search Plus Your World. Here is a quick summary of the six reasons why Rand things a Google+ strategy is important to your SEO

• Google Search Ranks: Google+ profiles can appear above all other content in  Google search, also displayed are Google 1+ counts, lists of people in your circles who have 1+d your content as well as lots of other rich content. Google is not displaying the number of Facebook Likes or Twitter followers so if your not sharing your content through Google+ you are potentially missing a huge opportunity.
• Personalisation of Google Search : currently appears to be a bias towards Google+ shared content and you content is pushed higher the more followers you have so its important to have a large network of followers.
• Google Adoption: Facebook has 800 million users, Google has billions. Google+ currently has 60 million users but its growing fast.
• Richness of Snippets and mark up: Google is blending images, icons and all sorts of Google+ shared content. People are endorsing your content who already know your customers - its the social sell.
• Spam signals - likely that Google will use the Google+ social graph to identify spam or low value content and reduce search rank. If a site has not been shared then likely to be poor quality.
• Biasing to Social: certainly in the short term Google will pay less attention to page quality and relevance and more to social relevance across your network - a window of opportunity to build search position.

Letter to the Google Analytics Santa

First of all let me say thank you to Google Analytics for providing such a great FREE tool. 2011 has been a particular bumper year with the roll out of the new interface and many other great new features such as real time analytics, multi channel funnels, visitor and goal flows, search engine optimisation reports via integration with Google Webmaster Tools, site speed, social and mobile reporting.

Its wonderful to be able to switch between profiles while retaining the current time period and report and the new dashboards are fantastic too. Plus find the ability to apply secondary dimensions to reports is very useful.  And I have just discovered the engagement report now gives a break down of of visit duration rather than just reporting the average.

So I don’t want this post to appear to be criticism.  I am a great fan - but if there was a Google Analytics Santa this article in Analytics Insights outlines what I would be asking for this year.

See full article here

My eMetrics London 2011 To Do List

Here are the 12 things I said I was going to do when I get back to the office after  EMetrics London 2011 with a quick update

• Start being a change agent – provide to do lists not reports. Getting there.
• Score ourselves against Stephane Hamel’s Online Analytics Maturity Model  and present to senior management team. Completed
• Integrate Customer Data Sources On going - increased use go Google Analytics Custom Variables
• Create and Name My Customer Framework HEART Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, Task Success  or something similar  - Neil Mason Completed

Practitioner Web Analytics 2010

Jim Williams is presenting a case study on A/B testing at this year's Practitioner Web Analytics conference in Madrid. Working with a fast growing social networking/virtual world/gaming site generating revenue from digital sales. To purchase digital assets users are required to purchase points which can be done in a variety of ways including Pre Paid Cards, Credit Card, PayPal, Mobile Payments or Surveys via a combined purchase page..

But how can you test the affects of design changes to this page on revenue generation if all transactions are completed off site via third parties. Google Website Optimizer and other MVT tools were not an option. The presentation will discuss ways to get around this problem and maximised revenue generation. 

Sign up to Practitioner Web Analytics 2010 here