Google Analytics Checklist for New Projects

Posted: 16 Feb 2014 03:13 PM PST

When on-boarding a new client, there is a lot that needs to get done. Usually the list includes a tech audit, reviewing content, and combing through back links to name a few tasks. A review of the analytics implementation is often overlooked though.

If you don't review how the analytics account is set up, you could set yourself up to waste a lot of time down the road, even finding yourself investigating an organic traffic drop that doesn't exist.

Below is my Google Analytics checklist that I review when starting a new account. Many of these items joined the checklist as the result of previous "learning experiences." My hope is that this list will help you avoid those same experiences.

The basics

Exclude internal IP addresses

If we don't exclude internal and partner IP addresses, we will over-report traffic and reduce our conversion rate.
To implement, go to Admin > Filters (in the appropriate view) > New Filter.
Documentation can be found here.

Pro Tip:
Create a copy of the profile, and apply the filter to that copy. If your filter creates a problem, you wonâ€™t be able to get back any lost data, so itâ€™s nice to have a backup.

Google Analytics code on all pages

If GA code is missing from pages, we will get incorrect site engagement metrics and misappropriated conversion data. A quick way to check this is to look at your referrals report. Do you have any self referrals?
It is not uncommon for pages in the checkout process to not include GA code. If this is the case, you will see almost all conversions are from "referral" or "direct."
To check this more thoroughly, fire up Screaming Frog and update the custom field to check for the proper UA ID

UA account is only listed one time

Running two GA codes simultaneously is ok. Two instances of the same code is not.
The two separate instances of Track Pageviews will mess up metrics such as pageviews, time on site, bounce rate, and pages per visit.
The best way to find this one is to pull up the source code and search for "ua-".

Linking related accounts

Link Google Analytics and AdWords

This will allow you to share data across Google Analytics and AdWords
Documentation can be found here

Link Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools

This will allow you to share Webmaster Tools data with Google Analytics
Documentation can be found here.

Ensure proper campaign tracking implementation

Auto tagging is enabled for Google Analytics

If you don't have auto tagging enabled, odds are your paid search traffic is showing up in Google Analytics as organic traffic
To check the status of auto tagging, log into your AdWords account, go to Account Settings, and then to Preferences.
Documentation can be found here.

Non-Google paid search campaign URLs contain UTM tags

If you're not including UTM parameters in your non-Google paid campaigns, the traffic is most likely being counted as organic search visits.
Google Analytics interprets utm_medium=cpc and utm_medium=ppc as paid search traffic, so one of these should be used for the medium.
Documentation can be found here.

Vanity domains redirect using UTM parameters

This will allow you to easily attribute visits and conversions from the vanity domain to the campaign associated with the vanity domain

Email campaign links use UTM parameters

This will allow you to properly attribute visits and conversions to the right email marketing effort

Conversions and interactions

Set up goals

This should be a wide range of activities such as purchases, contact form completions, creating an account, time on site, signing up for a newsletter, etc.
Associate monetary value with these goals if possible.
Documentation can be found here.

Set up e-commerce tracking

Ecommerce tracking will allow you to understand not only how much revenue you're making but what channels are responsible for driving revenue
Documentation can be found here.

Set up event tracking

Event tracking is a simple way to track how users are interacting with your site.
You can track just about anything such as videos played, submitted forms, if people scroll through your content, or downloads.
Here's an overview of event tracking from the SEER blog.
Further documentation can be found here.

Content grouping

Create content groupings

These can be groups of pages like blog posts, ecommerce category, landing pages, or any other group of related pages.
Here's a useful RegEx Guide from LunaMetrics.
Documentation can be found here.

What else do you always check in your Google Analytics implementations? Let me know in the comments.

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SES London – Day Three

Posted: 17 Feb 2014 02:51 AM PST

Missed the other days of SES? Read about day one here and day two here!

And so to day three of SES London 2014. Day three started with a headache, probably as a result of all of the ‘networking’ I did the night before. Determined to move on with the day regardless, here are my notes from the third and final day at SES…

Assess. Diagnose. Fix: How to Become a Leading SEO Mechanic – Andre Alpar & David Naylor

Key takeaway – You need a human to be looking at your links

Andre Alpar and David Naylor delivered one of the highlights of SES London 2014. Alpar opened proceedings by explaining that your website is like an onion. His analogy was in reference to the layers of content your site has but one plucky tweeter highlighted that it also works because your website can sometimes make you cry as well. Well played indeed.

RT @paulwould: Think of your website as an onion, says @andrealpar – lots of layers #SESLon < and makes you cry a bit?

— Tom Griffiths☝ (@TomGriffola) February 13, 2014

Back to the point being made. Alpar explained that your web strategy should split content into three ‘layers’:

Content for users and internal linking (noindex / follow)
Content for users, internal linking and SEO (index / follow)
SEO oriented landing pages (index / follow)

The idea behind Alpar’s thinking is that as a website owner, you should identify content that isn’t any use for a search engine to crawl. By taking this approach you can ensure that search engines crawl more of the important content and less of the content that wastes time.

Next up was David Naylor who focused heavily on links and how they can cause trouble. He explained that unless you are checking your links almost every day you could be missing negative links pointing to your site. Naylor also proposed that links need to be checked by a human (ie. you can’t rely on metrics alone). Naylor explained that if a link pointing to your site is not providing at least some traffic to your site on a quarterly basis you probably don’t want it in your link profile. A case strengthened when you consider the user-flow information Google gets from Chrome users and what links they actually click on.

Naylor also had some tips on tools to use including a new tool called Botify which, among other things, can crawl your website and give you in-depth page speed information for the entire site. Naylor described it as the “tool of the future, without doubt”; high praise indeed.

Driving Business Value with a Social and Content Master Plan – Heather Robinson & Bas van den Beld

Key takeaway – Content and social all about timing (not the first time this has come up at SES!)

This session was another that focused on content and its relationship with social. Heather Robinson was first up and like other speakers from the past two days confirmed that timing really is everything.

Robinson used an example from personal experience to highlight this. Explaining how she published a Facebook status which essentially told her friends she was enjoying a cup of tea, Robinson pointed out that the update had become her most ‘liked’. Robinson conceded that the message itself was of no real use to anyone but what did work was the timing. The message was sent at a time of day when her contacts would have been scrolling through their feeds and as such was in the right place at the right time.

Bas van den Beld was next on stage who had the message that good content marketing is good storytelling. Bas explained how a story need not be a long written piece of content but could come in the form of a simple image. Bas’s other key message was that you should stay away from talking about yourself; instead focus your effort on creating content about others.

Growing Your Business With Winning Mobile Strategies – Matt Brown & Ade Oshineye

Key takeaway – Keep the same user experience across different contexts

This was another session that addressed the ever growing importance of mobile when considering your digital strategy. It was kicked off by Matt Brown who tackled the issue of ‘showrooming’. Showrooming is the act of browsing for products in physical shops before consulting your smartphone to find a better price. It is a practice that has presented obvious problems for shop owners and Matt Brown explored various ways to turn the problem into an advantage. Among the solutions Brown suggested was to offer exclusive deals to users who ‘check-into’ a shop on their mobile; a little thin on the ground in terms of true creativity but an important topic none-the-less.

Next up was Ade Oshineye who is a Developer Advocate at Google. Oshineye gave a talk highlighting the joys of a user experience that remains consistent across different devices and contexts. An example he used was with music service Deezer which allows its users to log-into the service on a computer and then ask the website to begin playing music on a different device. The takeaway was that users will begin expecting digital services to remain consistent across all of their devices and within different contexts. In short this means that mobile is important…but you knew that anyway.

Filthy Linking Rich: Driving the Right Traffic to your Site – Kristjan Mar Hauksson & Paul Madden

Key takeaway – Beware risky links!

The final session of SES 2014 was all to do with links. Kristjan Mar Hauksson started things by putting forward his case for the power of ‘earned links’. Hauksson suggested that links need not be actively built but instead should be the bi-product of a genuinley good piece of marketing. Among his examples Hauksson showed the Vovlo advert starring Jean Claude Van Damme doing the ‘epic splits’. Hauksson explained that the campaign had not been created with the aim of building links but despite that fact it had proven very successful at gaining links (see below).

SES London 2014 was finished off by Paul Madden who described himself as a ‘carbon neutral’ link builder; with recent changes in search he now removes as many links as he builds. Madden spoke from a position of real authority on link building and amongst the advice that was on offer was the need to understand how to spot ‘risky’ links. Madden explained that risky links can be identified in a number of ways including commercial anchor text; he suggested that this could well be something Google looks at when reviewing links.

Madden also suggested that there is the potential for your website to be “guilty by association” if it is connected to bad sites either upstream or downstream. The other key message to come out of the final session at SES London 2014 was the importance of keeping your best content on your own website.

Madden’s talk also contained perhaps the best story from this year’s conference; there is a directory website owner in India who owns hundreds of directory sites. A few years ago his websites would charge $0.50 to add your listing to a directory. Following algorithm changes relating to link quality by Google the website owner now charges $5.00 to remove your website from the directory. A tale that summarises the shape of the industry and highlights just how important it is to approach SEO and link building from a position of care and with an eye for the highest of quality.

Conclusion

A fantastic time was had by all at SES London 2014 and my notebook took a real hit. The general messages coming out of SES this year were that:

Lots of people are thinking of ways to include social in their digital strategies
Mobile is important, either accept it or miss out
Cleaning up bad links is as important (if not more important) as building links
SEO people can stay out late and still turn up and speak at a conference with authority the next day

This concludes my summary write up of SES week in London, but fear not, my notebook is bulging with blog post ideas so watch this space.

The post SES London – Day Three appeared first on White Noise.

TrueView, or not TrueView: That is the question.

Posted: 17 Feb 2014 01:36 AM PST

I am often asked by clients, 'What's the big deal with Video advertising?' Well, given that by the end 2013 22% of the global population already owned a smartphone and 6% had a tablet device (Businessinsider.com), I'd say it's pretty crucial. Mobile video has grown rapidly in the past few years, but 2014 will be the year that it explodes.

Why? The obvious answer is greater smartphone penetration, supported by the unveiling and current rollout of various 4G networks. Whether it be walking the dog whilst checking your bank account, or writing a blog on the bus on the way to work, we are turning to mobile devices more and more to help us increase efficiency in our already busy lifestyles.

According to Cisco, more consumers in emerging market places are acquiring handsets, bandwidth is improving, and 37% of consumer media consumption already takes place on mobile devices. It’s a trend that looks likely to continue into 2014 and beyond, with Cisco predicting mobile video will increase 8-fold by 2018, accounting for over 70% of total mobile data traffic by the end of their forecasted period.

Due to the increased penetration and usage of smartphones, smartphones are expected to account for 66% of mobile data traffic by 2018, while tablets will exceed 15% of global mobile data traffic by 2016.

So, yes, a pretty big deal.

So what is TrueView exactly?

TrueView is a Video Advertising platform brought to you by Google. TrueView ads give viewers choice and control over which ads they watch and when. This is good news for the client, as they're only charged when a viewer decides that their ad is of interest and actually watches the ad. As such, it’s easy to increase or decrease your budget according to what you want your ad to achieve, primarily engaging people who are interested in your message. As your view count goes up, you know that you are reaching those viewers who are truly engaged.

There are 3 ad formats available for TrueView advertisers, allowing you to choose the format that works best for you: TrueView in-stream, in-slate, in-search and in-display (I will go through each format in greater detail further down this post).

Does TrueView video advertising work?

Some advertisers have achieved up to 4% click-through rates with in-stream TrueView ads. For advertisers who are more performance-oriented, we've seen some campaigns achieve CPAs that are in line with what you might expect from search advertising.

TrueView video advertisements give viewers choice and control over which ads they watch, and when.

Due to this ability to skip ads, you are only paying for ads that are of interest to people when they watch the ad. This way you are not wasting budget by advertising to people who are not interested in your message.

You can focus on the people your ad is aimed at via who they are, where they are and what they're interested in – for example, females aged 40-60 in London who enjoy travelling to Europe.

With the increased availability in full-browser mobile phones and widely available YouTube app, 25% of all YouTube views originate from a mobile device.

With TrueView, you can build brand awareness and a loyal following. Your video ads can drive video shares, channel subscriptions and create opportunities to communicate with your customers in a new and more engaging display format.

According to Google, the owners of YouTube, eight out of ten viewers prefer TrueView to other in-stream video ad formats. The company also maintains that because viewers can skip ads or select the ads they want to watch, the advertiser saves money and reaches a more targeted audience.

An online video analysis and news website, VideoNuze.com, reported that abandonment rate for skip-able pre-roll (In-stream) ads was 18% lower than the rate for ads that don’t offer that option. The site also reported that almost 50% of viewers watch pre-roll ads to the end, even if they have the option to skip the commercial.

With AdWords for video reporting, we're able to evaluate how engaged viewers are with your video ads, where they choose to watch your videos (device, location for example), and when they drop off from watching your content. This will enable us to optimise the target demographics, remove ill-performing videos etc.

So let's take a look at the available video formats and how they may work for you.

As I mentioned earlier in the post, there are three formats available.

Firstly, In-Search video ads format:

This ad format was previously known as the search ads portion of “YouTube Promoted Videos”, this format lets you promote a video next to search results on YouTube.

Your video’s keywords will highlight your video to YouTube viewers who may be interested in your content. This format will include a 640×90 Rectangle or 300×70 Small Rectangle depending on the ad’s position in search results.

Your ads will appear on the YouTube Search results page and you will only be charged when viewers begin watching your video.

Secondly, In-Stream video ads format:

This is the ideal format for video content you would like to promote before short or long form videos on YouTube and the Google Display Network. Your ad can appear on YouTube watch pages and on video published pages that are within the Google Display Network.

Viewers have the option to skip the ad after five seconds, or continue watching.

For ads that are 30 seconds or longer, you’ll be charged when the viewer reaches the 30 second point of the video. For videos shorter than 30 seconds, you’ll be charged when the viewer completes the video. If the viewer decides to skip the ad at the 5 second threshold you will not be charged.

And finally,

In-Display video ads format:

There are two video ad preview unit sizes available in this format. You can choose whether the video plays within the ad unit, or when a viewer clicks the unit to watch the video on its YouTube Watch page.

Use this format to promote a video next to YouTube videos or other website content across the Google Display Network. The appearance of the ad format will vary, depending on which ad sizes and display formats content publishers on the Google Display Network support. For example, YouTube is a key content publisher within the network and these ads will function and appear in the same way across the entire YouTube website.

TrueView in-display videos will only appear on YouTube Videos (Watch pages on YouTube) and Watch pages on video publishers of the Google Display Network. You will only be charged when viewers choose to click to watch your ad.

Ok, so what are the costs of using TrueView?

Many (if not most) business' are often concerned with video advertising, primarily their perception of the cost. So what is the answer? Well, for the clients I work with, I recommend TrueView, as it gives the client the ability to target the audience they want and provides viewers with choice and control over which ads they watch, and when. Therefore controlling the client's ad costs and reducing the chance of a wasted CPV (cost-per-view) bid.

What we know as a Cost Per Click (CPC) in AdWords Text Ads, is known as a CPV bid in TrueView. You enter the highest price that you want to pay for a view during the setup process of the AdWords for video campaign. Your bid is called your maximum CPV bid, or simply “max CPV”. This bid applies at the campaign level, but you can also set a CPV bid per ad format, similar to that of Text Ads at AdGroup level. Your maximum CPV bid is the most that you’ll be charged for a video view, but you won’t always be charged this amount. The final amount that you actually pay for a view is called the actual CPV. The actual CPV is often less than the max CPV because, as with the AdWords Text Ad auctions, you pay no more than what’s needed to rank higher than the advertiser immediately below you.

Display ads traditionally charge you for impressions but with CPV bidding, you won’t be charged for just an impression or a video interaction click on your ad. For example, if you think it’s worth 25p to have someone watch your video, you can set £0.25 as the max CPV. For an in-search or in-display TrueView video ad, you’ll pay a maximum of £0.25 when users begin watching your video. For in-stream, you’ll pay the maximum CPV when the user watches 30 seconds or sees the end of the ad, whichever comes first. You pay nothing if they don’t initiate the video, or drop off from the video before the minimum amount of time passes.

The max CPV that you set helps to determine your ad’s position among other ads on search results pages in the Search Network (including YouTube search results) and Display Network pages (which include YouTube as a publisher). The higher the bid and the more relevant the ad to the viewer, the more chance you have of receiving a click and increased CTR.

In both cases, a higher CPV will improve your ad’s chances of appearing, and increase your ad’s chances of appearing in a higher position compared to other advertisers’ ads.

Can you forecast costs using the TrueView platform?

Yes, forecasted CPV bids are produced when we set the targeting options for the particular video. But, as with all auctions, these are only estimations. More accurate forecasting becomes available once historical data becomes available.

I hope you have found this post useful. What are your experiences with video advertising? I’d love to hear your comments and suggestions.

The post TrueView, or not TrueView: That is the question. appeared first on White Noise.