Central Perk: SEOptimise

vineri, 23 septembrie 2011

SEOptimise

Posted: 23 Sep 2011 01:43 AM PDT

For those of you who missed the Livestream of yesterday’s F8 Facebook Conference, CEO Mark Zuckerburg announced some major changes to the future of Facebook, which in a nutshell is to try and realise his vision of making the whole web social. Within Facebook, the focus is shifting from ‘what you say’ to ‘what you do’. Here are some of the major changes announced:

1. Facebook Profiles Are Replaced With ‘Timelines’
Facebook claimed that Facebook is no longer going to show ’15 minutes of your story’ but instead a timeline of your life. Here is a snapshot of the new Facebook Timeline design.

2. Facebook Announce Open Graph
Facebook have announced that they’re going to be closing down their ‘Connect’ product and replacing it with a new protocol and API called Open Graph. The purpose of Open Graph is to help external websites integrate with Facebook as easily as possible. Websites currently using the Open Graph include Microsoft’s Docs.com, Pandora, and Yelp.

The Open Graph will also allow external websites to auto-login users who have never visited the website before, raising some serious privacy concerns.

3. Facebook Verbs
Facebook have announced a new set of verbs that can be used to interact with content. You no longer have to ‘like’ a post – instead, you can ‘watch’, ‘hike’, ‘cook’, ‘bike’, ‘listen’, or ‘read’ people’s updates.

Here is a good post outlining what Facebook Verbs mean for marketers.

Other Updates

There were also more updates announced around Facebook launching a new ‘Facebook Bar’, new like buttons, advanced location tracking, and more social plugins. Here is a more in-depth summary of some of these minor updates.

How to Pass the Google Analytics Exam

Posted: 22 Sep 2011 08:02 AM PDT

If you want to become qualified in Google Analytics, Google offer an online exam called the Google Analytics Individual Qualification. It's a useful qualification to have when working with Google Analytics on your clients' sites (and you should be using some analytics software!).

I passed the test last week and thought I’d put together a few tips for anyone else who may be thinking of taking the exam.

General Information

The exam is all done online in a multiple choice format, usually with four different options for each question. There are 70 questions in total and you have 90 minutes to complete these questions. If you think that doesn't sound like enough time don't worry, you’ll be able to answer most of the questions quickly and I found I had a lot of spare time when I finished.

Unlike the Google AdWords exam, the exam is "open book", so you can look up resources during the test if you need to.

Once you’ve gained your qualification it will last for 18 months, so don’t forget that you will need to take it again in a year and a half if you want to stay qualified!

Resources for Preparing for the Exam

Easily the most useful thing to do is watch the video lessons at Conversion University. Watch as many of these as you can if you have the time, as they are all very useful, but the most important ones will be the videos on cookies, filters and regex.

Have a read through the help center on any topics you feel you aren't confident on after watching the videos.

Also, experiment! Take what you've learnt and try it out in Google Analytics. Familiarise yourself with all parts of the interface, try applying filters, add users etc. Set up a new profile so you don't affect any important profiles in your account, and once you're confident with everything you've learnt, it's time to take the exam!

Resources for When You're Taking the Exam

That's right, as I said earlier the exam is "open book", so prepare yourself and have these links open on your browser before you start in case you need to refer to them:

Your Analytics account
While this might seem a bit obvious, it's important to have in case you forget where something is located in the interface. You don't want to be worrying about logging in while the timer is counting down, so log in and have a profile open before you start.

Analytics Help Center
This is useful for when you forget something. A quick search for the relevant topic should refresh your memory, so keep this open in the background.

IP Range Tool
You may get a question asking for a regular expression to cover a range of IP addresses. Luckily Google provides a tool to do just that. Just type in the two ranges and it gives you the regular expression to use.

Regex Tester
I found this tool quite useful for testing any regex rules. Type the rule in the top and enter the URL in the bottom and it will highlight it if it meets the rule.

URL Builder
Another useful tool from Google. This will add tracking parameters to a URL.

Google Analytics API
You may get asked about some of the functions in the Analytics API, so you can find descriptions of what each of them do here.

Of course this list isn't exhaustive, so if there was anything else useful you came across when preparing be sure to have that open too.

After the exam

Hopefully if you follow these tips you too can pass the Analytics exam. Then it's just a matter of showing off your new certificate!