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marți, 16 septembrie 2014

How to Combine Screaming Frog Data with Google Analytics Data

Posted: 15 Sep 2014 03:52 PM PDT

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz, Inc.

I love Screaming Frog. It is without doubt the best SEO tool I use on a daily basis (no offense, Moz). The sheer amount of data you can get about your website, or someone else's website, is incredible. You can find broken links, you can check for your Google Analytics (or any other) code on all pages through the custom search, and you can even go so far as to follow all the redirects and find out the redirect paths in a website.

In this quick guide, I'm going to show how Screaming Frog data can be used to help perform a content audit.

The data in Screaming Frog is incredible, but one thing it can't do (yet…give it time) is tell you how popular your pages are. For that, you need an analytics package. We're going to be working with Google Analytics on this one, as it's probably the most well known (and well used) of the analytics services out there, and we're going to combine the two data streams into one to give you a full overview of your content and just how popular it is. As this data is from a website I work with (rather than my own), I'm going to hide the URLs in the screenshots for obvious reasons.

Why would you want to do this?

Combining Google Analytics data with your Screaming Frog data has a myriad of advantages. You can get an overall picture of your site and identify any issues that are occurring on popular pages. You can see which pages within your site have no page views at all, or the ones that have very few page views. Maybe there are issues on these pages that become immediately apparent when you combine the two datasets.

Getting your data

Step 1: Screaming Frog

Spider the website you're working with in Screaming Frog. Just type the URL in the box and click go, and off it goes getting all the data from your website.

Filter the list to just include HTML and hit export:

Step 2: Google Analytics

Head over to Google Analytics and go to the "All Pages" tab:

Set a decent data range of a couple of months so you get some decent data (especially if it's a low traffic site), and set "show rows" at the bottom to 5,000 so you get as much data as possible.

"Hang on a minute, Jim," you're saying….I have a lot more than 5,000 in my list. How do I get the rest? Well, that's a simple hack. Go to the URL at the top and look at the end of it for the 5000. It will look something like this:

Now just up that figure to cover all of your page views, and you'll have a huge long list. I have 9,347 on my list, so I'm going to up it to 10,000.

Great. Now export that data to an Excel file:

Now you have the two sets of data in Microsoft Excel format. Next, we're going to combine these two data sources into one

First step. Open them up and put them both into a single excel file on different worksheets, then label them so you know which is which:

Now, make a third empty worksheet for your compiled data. Here's a view of the worksheets you should have at this point:

To make this work, we'll need the URL (page name column) to be the same on both sheets. The Screaming Frog data contains the domain, where as the GA data doesn't, so use find and replace on the Screaming Frog data to remove the domain up to the first trailing slash. The two data sources should now have URLs that match.

With me so far? Great. Now it's time to link the data sets together and get that lovely combined data in your third worksheet.

Linking the data

OK. Go to your Screaming Frog worksheet and select all the data and on the formula tab, click define name – give it an easily identifiable name (I would name it the same as your worksheet).

Then do the same with the GA data: Select it > Formula Tab > Define name > Name it the same as the worksheet.

Got both of them defined? Groovy, time to put this data together.

Save your file.

Go to your third worksheet, named "compiled data."

Then on the data tab, select "From Other Sources" then From Microsoft Query.

It will then ask you to choose your data source, choose excel file from the options and click OK. Then, find your saved Excel file and select it; you'll be given the option to include your two named data sources.

Select both, and add them to columns in your query. Click next, you'll then be presented with what looks like an error message (but isn't really).

Click OK.

Then drag "Page" on the GA Data onto "Address" on the Screaming Frog Data like this

And, you'll notice all the data from the two data sources below will reorganise itself.

Then, click file > "Return data to Microsoft Excel."

On the next one, just click ok… and that's it. You should now have a single worksheet with the combined data from Screaming Frog and Google Analytics to play with and do what you want.

Hope my little tutorial made sense and people find it of use. I'd love to hear what other people use this tutorial to accomplish in the comments :-)

Thanks all!

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The Graze Box – An Employee’s Survival Kit

The Graze Box – An Employee’s Survival Kit

Posted: 16 Sep 2014 02:05 AM PDT

I have to admit, I am a bit of a sucker for a free trial or a free gift. I am also the type of person who never stops being hungry and who cancels their free trial just before the 30 days are up. Until now, I think I’ve found one I won’t be cancelling.

The Company

Originally started by 7 friends who love food and wanted more from snacking, they began inventing snacks that showed off healthy eating’s more pleasurable side and working out the best way to get snacks to their customers.

With a kitchen in London, their team of snacking inventors are forever busy coming up with new and inventive, tasty ideas and have so far created over one hundred snacks.

Their motto – "Healthy snacks delivered straight to your door". And they do exactly what they say on the tin, or should I say box? A healthy snacking company that has been around for a couple of years now after exploding onto the food scene, bang on trend when the world was starting to question where their food came from.

How does Graze work?

In a nutshell, Graze is a selection of snacks that are delivered right to your work or home. You receive a box in the post with four well branded plastic containers of randomly selected snacks. There is a variety of food ranging from small puddings to seeds and flapjacks. They are also the only snack delivery business that offers dips with their snacks, like their incredible Salsa Fresca snack.

The Graze Website

The Graze website has a remarkable amount of options for a simple product. The main thing Graze has going for them? The choice of 100 different and yummy snacks. Once you receive your randomly selected snack box, you can rate how much you like it. Or simply navigate around the site to review their products before you’ve even received your box in the post.

You also have powerful control over the delivery frequency of your snacks. Navigation through the site is handled through the main menu at the top of the screen and it's probably where you would spend 90% of your time on the site. Unless you're like me and just want to browse through rows and rows of mouth-watering food!

The Menu

When you enter the site through the homepage (and you're logged in) you can see a list of categories on the left, some foods that have been sent to you recently, others that haven't. The main images on the homepage display what you have ordered recently and this is an easy way for you to rate the snacks that you've received.

Your Food Preferences

Graze has a simple to use rating system that will allow you to control the content of your boxes.

Graze Rating buttons - Bin, Try, Like, Love, Send Soon

Graze's food preference system works on four levels. Bin, Try, Like and Love. If you really want an item, click 'Send Soon' and Graze will do their best to get it to you in one of your next deliveries. If you didn't have time to set all of your preferences during signup, you can access this again from your control panel in your account under 'Your Snacks'. You can also adjust your ratings based on deliveries you receive. If you receive something that was on your 'try' list, and you end up loving it (or even hate it) you can rate the product accordingly.

When I used Graze the first time I went through to the snack categories on the left of the homepage and went through their snacks to see what they offered. It was at that time I rated the food – it was just me trying to save time in the future (and being nosey). When I had binned some of the items, Graze had noticed that I was eliminating certain foods with Almonds in and asked if I wanted to bin everything with Almonds in. This shows Graze has some sort of clever algorithm, making the menu selection just that bit easier!

Also on the food menu are three filters that allow you to list items based on your religion / dietary requirement. These include Non-Vegan, and Non-coeliac. Each of these areas has a quick button to bin all foods in that group so you dont have to search through every group to remove individual items. Clever eh?!

Getting your Graze Box

Deliveries is your second most important tab. From here you can control the frequency and destination of your Graze boxes. The centre screen shows your previous deliveries (as well as any that are currently being prepared), with the right displaying three tabs 'Holidays', 'One-Off boxes' and 'Your Weekly Boxes'. From this screen you can view / rate previous boxes, manage your upcoming deliveries and their frequency, tell Graze when you're on Holiday and wont be wanting your boxes, order single boxes, or manage your reoccurring deliveries.

Graze – Your Last Boxes

From here you can view all your previous boxes, as well as any boxes that are being prepared by Graze. You can view the contents of each box by clicking 'What did I get?', you can share the contents of this box on Facebook and Twitter, or you can send feedback to Graze about the box and its contents.

Your Holidays

From here you can schedule breaks in your Graze Deliveries by telling Graze the dates when you'll be away From and Until. This way no food will be sat in your mailbox while you're sunning yourself on a beach. This is also useful for scheduling occasional breaks from your Graze Boxes.

Your One-Off Boxes

From this section of the website you can tell Graze to send you a single box without creating a reoccurring delivery.This is useful should you need that little extra on a certain day, or just want to sample a different type of box.

Your Weekly Boxes

This is where you are able to control your deliveries and the frequency in which you receive your box. When you create a new reoccurring delivery it is automatically set to 'Weekly' for frequency. You can change this to 'Every two weeks' once you've initially set it up. Graze also allows deliveries to multiple addresses (I’ve recently set my Nibblebox to to be delivered to work and my breakfast box to my home address).

If at any point you decide to cancel your Graze Deliveries, you just need to remove your Weekly Boxes from here and your deliveries will stop.

Creating an account

So now you’ve taken a look around the site, how do you sign up? Creating your account is simple, all you have to do is press the ‘get started’ now button. There’s loads of them dotted around the site! It’s an email and password kind of thing and you select the type of box you want to receive, you have a choice of light snacks (low calorie), the breakfast box, nibblebox… the list goes on! I started with the nibblebox and then signed up for a breakfast box to be delivered as well!

Once you have your account basics set up, you then choose how often you want to recieve your box, monthly, fortightly or weekly. And then hey presto! Your 1st box is delivered to you as and when you requested it.

My Final Thoughts

I am so obsessed with this snack delivery service. The only downside of the product? I eat it all in one go because it always looks to good! My recommendation for the site though would be to offer different package types for customers. For example, a basic account would be 4 snacks, Silver package 6 snacks and a Gold package would be 8. All with different pay monthly charges. It just allows another option for the customer to customise their box.

One thing I have noticed is that there is no easy way to delete your Graze account. You can stop all deliveries and subscriptions in your account settings however I feel there needs to be an easier way for customers to cancel their account. A ‘delete account’ option in the drop down navigation from the account holders name would fit nicely and offer customers an easy route to delete their account.

Additionally, I want to take the time to mention their branding. I think they have it spot on. It’s unique, it looks quirky and contemporary but also has an ‘earthy’ edge. Do you like their branding? Have you used a snack delivery service? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

The post The Graze Box – An Employee’s Survival Kit appeared first on White.net.

Seth's Blog : People who like this stuff...

People who like this stuff...

like this stuff.

When you work in a genre (any genre), break all the rules at your own peril. Sure, you need to break some rules, need to do something worth talking about. But please understand who the work is for.

If it's for people outside the genre, you have a lot of evangelizing to do. And if it's for those that are already in it, you can't push too far, because they like the genre. That's why they're here.

Those who have walked away probably aren't just waiting around for you to fix it. Those who have never been don't think the genre has a problem they need solved. Blue sky thinking isn't really blue sky thinking. It's a slightly different shade of the blue that's already popular.

It's a little like the futility of the "Under New Management" sign on a restaurant. People who like the place don't want to hear you're changing everything, and people who didn't like the old place aren't in such a hurry for a new place that they'll form a line out the door.

The opportunity is to create a pathway, a series of ever-increasing expectations and experiences that moves people from here to there.

• Email to a friend •

luni, 15 septembrie 2014

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Deflationary Spiral Nonsense; Keynesian Theory vs. Practice; Eurozone Policymakers Concerned About Falling Prices

Posted: 15 Sep 2014 05:42 PM PDT

Price Deflation Hits Italy First Time in 55 Years

The Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) reports that consumer price inflation declined by 0.1% from August 2013 to August 2014.

Italian consumer prices fell 0.1 percent year-on-year in August of 2014, matching preliminary estimates. The country's annual inflation rate touched the negative territory for the first time in nearly 55 years due to a drop in energy prices.

Year-on-year, prices of energy fell 3.6 percent in August, mainly driven by a 1.2 percent drop in cost of non-regulated energy products. Additional downward pressures came from food cost (-0.5 percent), mainly unprocessed food (-1.8 percent) and communication (-9.0 percent). Meanwhile, prices of services slowed (0.6 percent in August compared with a 0.7 percent increase in July).

Italy CPI 2000 - 2014

Eurozone Policymakers Concerned About Falling Prices

A Financial Times headline portrays falling prices as a negative thing: Deflation Takes Shine Off Sales for Italy's Shopkeepers.

The appearance of deflation in Italy suggests a worrying spread from Spain, another peripheral eurozone economy, where it reared its head this year. Deflation is now stalking the home of Rome-born Mario Draghi, the European Central Bank president, who has sounded the alarm about the need to restore growth across the continent and has taken aggressive and unorthodox measures to do so.

Matteo Renzi, the youthful prime minister who gained power in February with an agenda of radical economic and political reform, acknowledged last week that growth would in fact be "around zero" this year.

The hope is that lower prices will start luring Italians back to the shops. But policy makers – particularly Mr Draghi and other ECB officials – do not seem to be betting on the resurgence of the Italian consumer.

They have been more focused on – and fearful of – the worst case: that the country, along with the eurozone more generally, could fall into a deflationary spiral, in which consumers hold off purchases in the expectation that prices will fall even further. Deflation would also raise the real value of Italy's monumental €2.1tn public debt load, causing angst among investors.

"Even if you think the probability of damaging deflation is low, if it were to happen it's a disaster," says Erik Nielsen, global chief economist at UniCredit, the Italian bank. "The ECB was right to take out an insurance policy against it," he adds, referring to measures including interest rate cuts the central bank took this month.

Deflationary Spiral Nonsense

The idea that falling prices are bad for the economy is ridiculous. Taking out insurance against falling prices is even more absurd.

Ask any consumer if he wants lower gas prices, lower food prices, lower hotel prices, lower computer prices, or lower prices on any consumer items and the answer will be yes.

Next, ask any consumer who needs a coat, computer, TV, or any other needed item if he would he wait a year to buy one because prices were falling.

Assuming the consumer had enough money to buy any needed item, he would buy that item now.

Thus, the entire deflationary spiral concept of consumers delaying purchases because prices are falling is ridiculous.

Keynesian Theory vs. Practice

Keynesian theory says consumers will delay purchases if prices are falling. In practice, all things being equal, it's precisely the opposite.

If consumers think prices are too high, they will wait for bargains. It happens every year at Christmas and all year long on discretionary items not in immediate need.

In general, people like bargains, and when bargains get big enough, people do not wait for even bigger bargains. Consider Christmas shopping. Most do not wait until after Christmas when bargains are even bigger than before Christmas.

Yet, these ridiculous myths of consumers waiting because prices are falling as opposed to consumers waiting for prices they can afford have been repeated so many times that people actually believe them.

Delays For Other Reasons

People do delay purchases if they don't have a job, or the money, or they perceive prices are simply too high.

The problem is typically debt, not falling prices. If consumers have too much debt or too little income they cannot buy. If businesses have too much debt they cannot expand. If governments have too much debt, they eventually run into problems.

Assets vs. Consumer Goods

Asset prices are different. Consumers will buy houses, stocks, bonds, land, and other assets they if they perceive central bank inflation will bail them out with ever-increasing asset price inflation.

Eventually prices get ridiculously stretched. Then when the greater fool stops buying, bubbles burst, asset prices fall, and then debt deflation takes over. Debts cannot be paid back, businesses cannot hire, and consumers out of a job cannot shop.

Keynesian Nonsense

Keynesian economists want government to pick up the slack when businesses fail. That's nonsense. Several decades of Keynesian and Monetarist attempts to jump start the Japanese economy with nothing to show for it but debt to the tune of 250% of GDP should be proof enough.

Falling prices are never the problem. Rather it's central-bank sponsored inflation that causes asset bubbles and promotes debt and malinvestment that is the problem.

The solution, that no central bank cares to promote, is to not sponsor assets bubbles in the first place. Once in asset bubbles, the best thing to do is let the bust play out.

Assuming Japan remains on its current path, the upcoming collapse in the Yen will provide the final proof that Keynesian economics is pure idiocy.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Ukraine Offers Amnesty to Rebels, 3 Years of Limited Self-Rule; War and Peace Factions Split; More Killing is No Way to Honor Dead

Posted: 15 Sep 2014 11:43 AM PDT

War and peace factions are at odds in Ukraine.

The war factions claim Putin cannot be trusted but the peace factions have finally had enough of war. The likely loss of Mariupol within weeks was simply too much to take.

One thing is certain, more killing will only make matters worse.

Ukraine Offers Amnesty to Rebels, 3 Years of Limited Self-Rule

RTE reports Eastern Ukraine Offered Three Years of Limited Self-Rule.

Ukraine's president has offered parts of the country's separatist east limited self-rule for three years under the terms of a peace plan reached with Russia.

Petro Poroshenko's official website said the pro-Western leader told top lawmakers the proposal would be part of a broader deal with pro-Russian rebels signed on 5 September.

He intended to formally submit it to parliament on Tuesday.

The bill also extends the right of people in the rebel-held Luhansk and Donetsk regions to use Russian in state institutions and conduct local elections on 9 November, according to media reports.

The bill further permits the regions to "strengthen good neighbourly relations" between local authorities and their counterparts in Russia.

It protects from criminal prosecution "participants of events in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions" - appearing to apply to both the insurgents and Ukrainian government troops - and allows regional councils to appoint local judges and prosecutors.

The bill also promises to help restore damaged infrastructure and to provide social an economic assistance to particularly hard-hit areas.

Mr Poroshenko had promised to offer parts of the war-torn industrial east broader autonomy under the terms of the truce agreed earlier this month with the Russian government and two separatist leaders.

He urged parliamentary faction leaders to quickly back his efforts to end five months of fighting that have killed more than 2,700 people and forced more than half a million from their homes.

Mr Poroshenko said his proposals guaranteed "the sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence of our state".

The presidential website said the three years of limited self-rule would give his government a chance to implement "deep-rooted decentralisation, which will be the subject of corresponding constitutional changes".

"War" and "Peace" Factions Split Ukraine

The above details sound like a reasonable start of negotiations to me. However, the "war party" led by Ukraine's prime minister will have nothing to do with it.

Please consider "War" and "Peace" Factions Split Ukraine Politics

An agreement to secure a permanent end to fighting might avoid more casualties in a war that has cost 3,000 Ukrainian lives and has involved Russian troops directly since last month – but at the cost of Ukraine potentially losing control of the separatist-held regions of Donetsk and Lugansk.

The truce agreed earlier this month in Minsk has exposed faultlines among the Kiev leadership that emerged from the protests that toppled Viktor Yanukovich in February.

Since the ceasefire, two camps have materialised – a "party of peace" around President Petro Poroshenko, and the "party of war" associated with Arseniy Yatseniuk, prime minister, and Yulia Tymoshenko, the former premier.

The divisions may partly reflect competing ambitions ahead of the October 26 parliamentary poll, which is intended to sweep away remaining vestiges of the Yanukovich era.

The split became concrete last week after Mr Yatseniuk pulled out of talks to stand on the president's party list in the elections. He unveiled his own "Popular Front" party, including commanders of some volunteer battalions in east Ukraine. These are composed partly of far-right activists who came to the fore when the winter protests turned violent.

"You're giving land for peace, but a lot of people died," says Mychailo Wynnyckyj, a sociology professor at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. "[Mr Poroshenko] is going to have a constituency in the country that is against that kind of deal."

More Killing is No Way to Honor Dead

Anyone remember the ridiculous pro-war argument during the Vietnam War?

"It would be a dishonor to the dead to pull out now." So instead, thousands more soldiers died to "save honor" for the already dead.

Honoring the dead with more dead didn't work then, and it won't work now. That should be a lesson for the party of war, but it won't be.

Ceasefire Under Pressure

The Financial Times reports Violence Puts Ukraine Ceasefire Under Pressure.

Fighting in eastern Ukraine continued on Monday in the worst violence between pro-Kiev forces and Russian-backed separatists since a fragile ceasefire was brokered on September 5.

Colonel Andriy Lysenko, an army spokesman, said shelling at the weekend near the airport in rebel-held Donetsk, which officials said claimed six lives and injured 15, was triggered by an attack by some 200 separatists. Government forces had repelled it and were "holding positions", but fighting was continuing and there had been additional fatalities and injuries, he said.

Ukraine forces were observing the truce and fought back only when attacked, he said. But separatists contradicted the claim, accusing Ukrainian forces of shelling Donetsk and other areas dozens of times in the past 24 hours.

Who to Believe?

There are likely war proponents in both the rebel and the Ukraine side.

However, it is 100% clear Ukraine's prime minister Arseniy Yatseniuk wants a war conclusion with total surrender of the rebels.

With Yatseniuk in control of the "Popular Front" volunteer "Far Right" activists, it's easy to see where the problem might be.

Without a doubt Obama, McCain, and NATO hope for more war. Ukraine in NATO is the goal.
I propose peace is a far better deal than WWIII.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

marți, 16 septembrie 2014

How to Combine Screaming Frog Data with Google Analytics Data

How to Combine Screaming Frog Data with Google Analytics Data

Why would you want to do this?