Central Perk

marți, 27 septembrie 2011

Damn Cool Pics

Willow The Cat Reunited With Family After 5 Years
Apple in China [infographic]
The Burning House: What Would You Save from Your Burning House?
Stormtrooper Cosplay

Willow The Cat Reunited With Family After 5 Years

Posted: 27 Sep 2011 12:29 PM PDT

Five years after she went missing from her Colorado home, Willow the cat has been reunited with her owners in New York City. How the calico cat ended up on a Manhattan street remains a mystery. But three children and their parents are certainly glad that she'll be headed home with them.

Willow disappeared when a contractor left the front door ajar during a home renovation project five years ago. The family sent out frantic online messages and put up posters around their home in Broomfield. But when Willow didn't return, they assumed the petite 2-year-old had been eaten by a coyote.

But it turns out Willow was never on the menu. On Sept. 14, a man brought her to Animal Care & Control in New York, saying he had found her on East 20th Street. A quick scan identified a microchip implanted when she was a kitten. The chip contained a code linked to a database of owner information. Despite moving from Broomfield to Boulder, the Squires had updated their information, making it easy for authorities to contact them.

Apple in China [infographic]

Posted: 27 Sep 2011 12:22 PM PDT

What do you get when you combine two world leading forces on massive growth trajectories? We wanted to do a piece on Apple's presence in China. China represents one the largest opportunities for most international businesses. The land with over a billion people can't be ignored both as a manufacturing juggernaut and retail opportunity. Apple is heavily involved in both aspects and largely succeeding in China where many businesses have struggled. Will Apple be able to dominate the Chinese retail landscape like they have in the rest of the world? Will Apple be able to maintain its margin advantage and still reach deep penetration in such a low income environment.

Click on Image to Enlarge.

Source: sortable

The Burning House: What Would You Save from Your Burning House?

Posted: 26 Sep 2011 11:02 PM PDT

If your house was burning and you only had a few minutes to gather up a few things to save from the fire, which of your possessions would you choose? The Burning House is a neat photo project by Foster Huntington that asks this question, with photographs submitted by various people showing their most valuable possessions neatly arranged.

It's true that what makes the project interesting isn't necessarily the objects themselves, though some of the arrangements pictured are beautiful in their own right. What makes the photos so fascinating is the guessing game that we play in trying to piece together the personalities behind the choices. An artist might choose a favorite painting while a designer might be sure to pick a certain dress. Chris Adamiak, a maintenance worker in Ontario, Canada, selects a utility knife and work boots.

Stormtrooper Cosplay

Posted: 26 Sep 2011 10:19 PM PDT

Star Wars fans will love these people who are wearing amazing stormtrooper costumes. Some of them are weirder than others but they are all incredible.

Pink Gentleman Trooper

Peace Trooper

Zombie Trooper

Easter Bunny Trooper

Rockstar Trooper

Mario Trooper

Hip-Hop Trooper

Troll Trooper

American Red Cross Stormtrooper

Burger King Trooper

Three Musketeer Troopers

Santa Trooper

Spider-Stormie

Sherlock Holmes and Pancho Villa Stormtrooper

Elvis Trooper

Batman Trooper Kid

Borat Trooper

Couple Trooper

Family Man Trooper

Disco Trooper

7 Google Analytics Advanced Segments I Love (and you should too)

Posted: 26 Sep 2011 02:06 PM PDT

Posted by dohertyjf

I love using Advanced Segments in Google Analytics. Sure, you can export a big chunk of data to Excel and then use some Excel wizardry to clean up the data and display it in different ways, but what if you just need to get a quick snapshot of certain traffic or trends, but the default segments don't go far enough? I've put together a few of my favorite Google Analytics Advanced Segments for you, so that you can add them to your own Analytics and use them as you need.

Segment 1: 1 word keywords

This first segment will just give you all of the one-word keywords that are driving traffic to your site. Sometimes there are crap keywords, but I am increasingly finding it interesting how sites can rank for one-word keywords because of personalized results.

^\s*[^\s]+(\s+[^\s]+){0}\s*$

Segment 2: 2-3 words

This next statement gives you all of the two and three word keyphrases driving traffic to your site. These are normally the important terms for you, because 2-3 word phrases have been shown to drive the best targeted traffic. For example, "vouchers" might be too general too really bring you good traffic but "voucher codes" or "quality voucher codes" will probably give you better traffic.

^\s*[^\s]+(\s+[^\s]+){1,2}\s*$

Segment 3: 4+ words

This segment is like the statements above, but instead gives you all keyword phrases that have four or more words in them. This is all you need for segmenting down to your longtail keywords quickly and easily in Analytics.

^\s*[^\s]+(\s+[^\s]+){3,}\s*$

Segment 4: Social Media Traffic

Sometimes you need to see the easy breakdown of your referral sources, and even more often it can be helpful to see just your Social Media traffic. Here is how we have our Social Media Advanced Segment set up in the Distilled Analytics account:

Segment 5: Traffic to Blog (where URL is http://www.site.com/blog)

If you have a separate blog where you write and try to generate both links and traffic, it can be helpful to have a way to easily segment out the traffic to just this section of your site. Sure, you could just use the Filter section, but why do this when you can set up an Advanced Segment and have it forever? A little more work in the short term can save some big headaches. Note: this is really only helpful if your blog articles have the URL structure of http://www.site.com/blog/(post-url) Here is how I have set up an Advanced Segment to do just this:

Segment 6: Google as Source

Since SEOs often care mostly about Google traffic (for better or for worse), since it is where the bulk of our traffic comes from in almost every case, I also have an Advanced Segment set up to show me the traffic where Google is my source. Here you go:

Segment 7: Twitter Traffic

Segmenting down to just Twitter traffic is a chore, because so many different Twitter clients show up differently in your Analytics. This has become less of an issue recently, since Twitter changed to putting all shared links shortened with the T.co shortener (which Tom wrote about here), but we still need to account for all Twitter clients when segmenting out back traffic.

Here is the Advanced Segment I use. Have I missed any?

How to set up Advanced Segments for any section of your site.

Much like the "/blog" example above, if your site is broken into areas (for example, my site is broken into /category/search-engine-optimization and /category/social-media), you can also create advanced statements for these.

Here is how I set up an Advanced Segment for my SEO category:

Finishing Up

These are the most useful Google Analytics Advanced Segments that I have in my arsenal that can apply over almost any client. Others have written about more specific Advanced Segments in these posts:

I suggest you read those as well. Please add in your favorites (especially ones involving RegEx) in the comments!

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What You Missed: President Obama's Town Hall with LinkedIn

Your Daily Snapshot for
Tuesday, September 27, 2011

What You Missed: President Obama's Town Hall with LinkedIn

Yesterday, President Obama was at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California for a discussion on putting America back to work with members of LinkedIn, the world's largest professional network with more than 120 million users worldwide.

LinkedIn members from Gainesville, Florida to Phoenix, Arizona submitted their questions on the economy and jobs for the President to answer during the live Town Hall.

Watch the full video

SEOptimise

SEO Metrics Everybody Can Use

Posted: 26 Sep 2011 05:53 AM PDT

As an SEO it is essential to report on the metrics that will show the progression of the project that you are working on.

These reports need to provide the client and yourself with actionable information, whilst also being able to outline your KPIs clearly. All reports should ideally include metrics from both on-site and off-site activity, providing the client with a clear understanding of what improvement has been made.

SEO reporting metrics
Image by seoinc

To ensure that you are reporting on the correct areas during the initial stages, you should arrange to have a meeting with your client.

Client Meeting

Before any SEO project can start you need to have a (kick-off) meeting with your client to understand everything about the project. This meeting should include, but not be limited to, knowing the objectives, system limitations, potential target keywords and reports required.

When it comes to discussing the reporting, there are a few areas that you should get the client’s feedback on before creating your report.

How often would you like reports?
What metrics do you (the client) want reporting on?
What search engines would you (the client) like to target?

The three points above are not the only areas you should be talking about when it comes to reporting, but you get the idea. In today’s market, the majority of clients tend to have a good idea of what they would like to see in their weekly/monthly/quarterly reports, but some are still unsure.

Below are some suggested metrics that you can report on for any website, whether it be ecommerce or informational, that you could discuss with the client.

Keyword Visibility

Keyword visibility is still a good indicator of how any SEO project is coming along, and is still a report that EVERY client wants to see.

Compare target keywords/phrases against identified competitors – this will allow you to see how you are comparing to your closest competitors and what needs to be done to improve.
Report month-on-month keyword/phrase movement – showing the progress of your target keywords on a monthly basis. You should also chart the report over time to show a visible representation of any improvement.
Run report against target search engines – make sure that you run all your target keywords against all target search engines so you know your visibility across the board.

Non-brand Metrics

Driving non-brand traffic to the website should be one of your main KPIs for any SEO project; therefore reporting on this is essential.

Split by non-brand visits by search engines – split the following metrics by search engines to give you a much more granular look across your non-brand SEO campaign.
Top non-brand keywords/phrases driving traffic – reporting on this metric will help identify which keywords are converting higher and will identify where improvements need to be made.
% of non-brand traffic vs organic traffic – with non-brand being the main target area, you can see what the organic split is and any movement over time.
% of non-brand traffic vs search traffic – seeing how non-brand traffic is compared to organic brand and PPC will identify the significance of the work being done.
% of non-brand traffic vs total traffic – this metric will show how much non-brand visits are contributing to the overall traffic received from the website in general.
Landing Pages – run a top landing page report to see which pages are receiving the most non-brand traffic. This report can also highlight any areas that might benefit from seasonality or yearly trends.
Non-brand Traffic Driving Keywords to Landing Page – once the top landing pages report has been compiled you can dive further into this metric by identifying the keywords/phrases that drove traffic to those pages. Understanding which keywords generate traffic to certain pages will help you improve the relevance of a specific page.
Time on Site – the time on site report will provide an average time each individual has spent on the website. This report should focus on the non-brand keywords, looking at which keywords/phrases are keeping the user on site for a large amount of time, whilst looking at the other end of the spectrum and seeing which keywords might need to improve.
Pageviews generated by non-brand traffic – for a website that does not offer a service or sell products, a pageviews report is a good metric to base a conversion on. Some websites also make money through advertising based on a pageview model. Knowing which non-brand keyword/phrase is generating the most pageviews will help you identify which keywords are more valuable.

Landing Pages Report - creating a second landing page report that includes brand terms will provide a better indication of how many pages are indexed within the SERPs. You can then compare this number to the number found within GWT and your CMS to see how much of your website has been indexed.

Top Referrers – the top referrers report is a great indication of which websites drive you traffic over a period of time. It also provides you with a source of links to analyse and potentially improve the anchor text that used to link.

Link Building Report - not many people seem to disclose their link building reports to the client, but for me it is an essential report that you should be providing. It is quite simple really; record EVERY link you create, with the date, URL where it is hosted, the anchor text and destination URL. If this is done every month you can show the client exactly what you have created, where you have created it and how many links have been created over a period of time. This is the minimum that the client should receive on a monthly basis, although a more thorough report can be time consuming.

The above SEO metrics are only the tip of the iceberg in terms of what can be reported for any SEO project. This post only discusses metrics that can be used on every website; I haven't even considered the complex reporting for eCommerce websites, which is an entirely different post altogether.

Do you agree or disagree with any of the metrics that I have mentioned above? What other metrics do you use across all your websites? I will be interested to hear your thoughts in the comments below or on Twitter @danielbianchini.