Locksmith professional SEO (Online search engine Optimisation)-- Be Found On Google, Yahoo or Bing

How Will The Google "Freshness" Update Impact Your Attorney Website?

Inbox by Google: Gmail as your new "to do" list

If you utilize your e-mail box as a To Do list, you’re going to get very thrilled when you see what Google is rolling out today. It’s not a lot a Gmail upgrade as it is an entire brand-new way to procedure e-mail. It’s called Inbox and it takes the very best of exactly what other third-party apps do and rolls it into one, easy unit.

Unlike many email handlers, Inbox groups, highlights and reschedules messages. It likewise acts as an individual assistant, including info you may have to finish an anticipated job. Actually. It’s spooky and it’s very.

Have a look at this clean interface. It looks far more like an app timeline than an email inbox. That’s going to take some getting used to.

In the middle, under Purchases, you see an example of highlighting. Inbox immediately highlights essential information it finds in an email like flight travel plans, event information, documents, visits. The app also adds on details from the web that had not been in the email. In this case, it pulled the actual time tracking information on those headphones so, at a glance, you understand when to expect the package.

When you get a discussion reviewing e-mail, Inbox will bundle all the messages together into one file (for lack of a much better word), so you don’t need to look for all the pertinent bits and pieces. It can also bundle like info such as receipts, expenses, and promo codes so when you’re done, you can do away with all them at one time with a single swipe.

Since you’re already using your e-mail as a To Do list, Inbox makes it easier by letting you add real reminders that aren’t e-mails. Then there’s Assists – – and this is actually insane things.

And speaking of to-do’s, Inbox assists you cross those off your list by supplying Assists– helpful pieces of info you might have to finish the job. For instance, if you compose a Pointer to call the hardware shop, Inbox will supply the shop’s telephone number and tell you if it’s open. Assists work for your email, too. If you make a dining establishment reservation online, Inbox adds a map to your verification email. Book an air travel online, and Inbox provides a link to check-in.

My preferred feature is the capability to “snooze” e-mails and suggestions so they leave your field of view and come back at a designated time or when you’ve reached a certain location. I get a lot of e-mails with embargoed press releases and I’m constantly fretted about beating the gun, with the snooze feature, those emails would go away till they’re clear to be posted.

What’s in it for online marketers? If Inbox replaces Gmail, there will be a decrease in email mess which benefits any e-mail online marketer. When I open my Gmail and see 50 marketing messages, I struck erase all. It’s excessive. However if Inbox sorted, cataloged and highlighted details, I ‘d be much more likely to benefit from a lunch voucher, a B1G1 online deal or an invitation to try a new app.

Today, I mainly use Gmail as a catchall for spam however Inbox could alter all that.

Inbox is on a slow rollout. If you didn’t get an invite, you can get one from a buddy. I didn’t get an invite, so if you have one to extra, send it my way. I can’t wait to try it.

Marketing Pilgrim

Inbox by Google: Gmail as your new "to do" list

If a link drops on the internet, does Google care enough to penalize you?

I receive several link removal demands a month from people who have left genuine remarks on my blogs. These individuals followed the guidelines and only embedded links in the little URL field that WordPress offers by default in the comment type. It is not required that you place a link there but many people do it.

The links utilize the “rel=’nofollow"” quality and I manually evaluate all the remarks. When in a blue moon a spammer surpasses my caution with a well-crafted generic comment. I have actually learned to be more suspicious and to often search the Web for the 1-2 sentences that the spammers leave before approving comments.

The Issue Is Not the Hyperlinks: It is the Absence of Research study

Not every Web marketer has been doing this as long as I have so I aim to cut people with less experience some slack when they make errors. However the growing number of link reduction demands from people who clearly do not understand exactly what they need to be removing is beginning to alarm me. The requests all have generally the exact same explanation: “Google Web designer Tools reveals me that I have 500 links originating from your website.”

Firstly, you do not have 500 links coming from my website. It’s more like 1,000 links. And you should be HAPPY that someone with my experience would be thankful to hand you 1,000 NoFollowed links. They won’t injure you in anyhow.

Secondly, I removed the WordPress widget that was providing you those links quite some time ago. So when you search in your GWT link file, you need to comprehend that those links may no longer exist. The widget I utilized was “Current Comments”. It’s a standard WordPress widget. It’s a blogger’s method of rewarding people for commenting and assuring new visitors that genuine individuals do read the blog (and leave comments).

The Marketing Web is Changing Due to the fact that of You, Not Because of the Guidelines

It’s simply a shame that lack of knowledge and fear are compeling individuals like me to change exactly what they place on their Sites. I did not eliminate the widget for your sake; I removed it for mine. There is no chance Bing or Google will appreciate any connect to your site from my blogs. They understand my sites, they have known my sites for many years, and they understand those links are great, safe links.

It’s not the online search engine’ fault that Web marketers are beginning to run in a panic toward the nearby exit from the Link Building. Web online marketers did this to themselves, and to each other. If you check out advice on a popular SEO blog it must be good, right? After all, it’s a popular SEO blog. And I am offering you recommendations on a popular SEO blog. However the difference between my guidance and the bad guidance out there is that I am not telling you how to playing around the Web and construct spammy links.

If you see a short article on your favorite SEO blog that informs you ways to get links from a certain Site, using a specific tool, and so on think of any links you obtain through that technique as spam. The online search engine might not have an issue with those links today but as more marketers follow that advice all those links will set a pattern of apparent manipulation and abuse that becomes identified as spam.

So the links you ought to be disavowing are the links you developed for SEO, not innocent remark links.

If you cared enough about what I wrote someplace to leave a remark, to thank me or to disagree with me, and you embedded a connect to your site in that comment: you’re fine. If, on the other hand, you used XRumer or some other spam device to leave a bajillion comments throughout the Web connecting back to your spammy affiliate website or client site, well, you need treatment.

Excellent comments might be rewarded with links from excellent Sites.

Bad comments should just hit the SPAM folder and become erased.

The Variety of Remark Links from a Site Does Not Matter

You’re confusing the old SEO practice of asking for/buying sitewide links (which did not utilize “rel=’nofollow"”) with the Web large practice of sharing genuine links. Browse engines know the distinction.

Remark links injure you if, unlike a real individual, your Website amazingly appears in comment links on hundreds or countless Sites within the space of a day, a week, a month.

Remark links are reasonably harmless if, like a ravenous healthy commenting passionate person, your Site appears normally in comment links on dozens or perhaps a hundred Sites a month. If you leave 5 real discuss Websites every day, you can leave 150 healthy comments a month.

That ought to not injure you. How do I know this? I leave comments on blog sites all the time and I have never as soon as received a suspicious links discover from Bing or Google. And I publish thousands of linky comments on my blogs without ever receiving any warnings, charges, downgrades, or memos from Bing and Google.

The online search engine do not appreciate real-world, passion-driven links. If you’re charging up your blog comments with lots of connect to malware-laden Sites– well, you’re probably not the sort of person who would care about charges anyhow.

The Only Thing You Required to Find out about Any Link is WHY it was Left There

If you were not spamming at the time you left a discuss my blog, and if your comment was approved, your links are great. You don’t have to ask me to eliminate them. You do not have to disavow them.

Let your honest intents be your guide. Your gut impulses will serve you far much better in evaluating your link profiles than all the SEO bloggery worldwide.

The only good link is the link you didn’t appreciate when you created it since you were so bent on taking part in the discussion.

The only bad link is the link you made due to the fact that you keep reading some marketing blog or online forum that this was an excellent connect to get.

About Michael Martinez

Michael Martinez has been establishing and promoting Websites considering that 1996 and started practicing search engine optimization in 1998. He is the principal author of the SEO Theory blog site.

Marketing Pilgrim

If a link drops on the internet, does Google care enough to penalize you?

Writers Rejoice! Research study shows Google benefits those with more to state

Material marketers, would you like to know the secret to obtaining in excellent with Google’s online search engine spiders? Come better and I’ll whisper it in your ear … …all you have to do is post high quality, pertinent content.

Honestly, it’s a little bit more complex than that but when you boil down all the data from the extensive 2014 Ranking Aspects Research study from Searchmetrics, that’s very much exactly what you’re entrusted.

However Searchmetrics did go through the problem of writing an 83 page document. And they did produce a lovable infographic with retro robotics (its as if they know me!), so we’re going to invest some time digging a little deeper.

I want to make one thing perfectly, clear. That I wish to make this post longer has absolutely nothing at all to do with Serachmetrics’ findings about content length. By while we’re on the topic, the research study states that there was a considerable increase in the location of word count.

In 2013, the top ranking sites on Google had approximately 500 to 600 words per post. This year, the leading websites are posting content that falls in between 900 and 1,000 words.

Searchmetrics puts the maximum length at 975 words per post/ article. I’ve composed for a range of websites over the years and that number is a lot higher than many blog publishers. It’s best in the ballpark for publications and newspapers, so it appears like our love affair with fast checks out is over.

Of course, a nonsense post with 1,000 unassociated words isn’t going to do you any excellent. Google also ranks content based on keyword importance. That indicates that keywords such as icing, fondant and wedding event are excellent if your article has to do with cakes for the bride-to-be. Not so excellent if you’re talking about honeymoon travel.

Here’s one that amazed me. As much as Google likes long-winded copy, it does not like intricate copy. Utilizing the Flesch-value scale to figure out grade-level, Searchmetrics found that the top websites on Google have copy that can be quickly checked out by a 13 to 15 year old student.

Top sites have a Flesch-value in between 73 and 74. I ran the test on the top part of this short article and got a 75.4, so I’m ideal in the ballpark. (Hear that, Andy! I remain in the Google search sweet area for readability!) You can check you work making use of an online readability calculator like this one.

Connect me

Internal linking and backlinking are still vital for a high Google rank. The infographic says that URLs in the leading ten have an average of 130 internal links! I can’t believe I read that right. That’s an enormous variety of links for a single page. Or am I translating that reality incorrectly?

As for backlinks, 1,352 is the typical number for sites in the top 10. Again – – wow.

Social Signals

Finally, let’s look at how social effects Google ranking.

Searchmetrics warns that though there seems to be a relationship in between high social signals and high search rank it may be a chicken or the egg situation.

As you can see, the leading ten URLs have a big number of Facebook signals (likes, shares, etc) and a healthy number of Tweets, Pins and Google+ ones. But it’s more most likely that they have these responses due to the fact that the content ranks high on Google and not that they assisted push the material high up on Google. On the other hand, social shares and likes assistance create traffic and up brand awareness, so in such a way social is aiding with the Gooogle rank.

I could go on but I won’t. If you would like to know more, visit Searchmetrics and download the report. There’s a great deal of complicated information packed into the pages however it likewise ratings well on the readability scale. Win. Win. Win.

Marketing Pilgrim

Writers Rejoice! Research study shows Google benefits those with more to state

Consultants Hesitant on New Google Targeting

Professional Hesitant on New Google Targeting
Consultants state it"" s just like Facebook"" s Customized Audiences, where a project can post a list of supporters" " e-mail addresses or telephone number who after that obtain served ads on the website. … List building. “When we"" re looking for brand-new people over search …
Learn more on Campaigns & Elections

Digi International Announces General Manager to Lead Cold Chain Solutions Team

We assist our customers develop next-generation connected foods and set up and also take care of vital interactions infrastructures popular atmospheres with high levels of safety and security, ruthless dependability and bulletproof performance. Established in 1985 …
Find out more on MarketWatch

Spirit Realty Resources, Inc. Closes 5 Million Senior citizen Unsecured Term Lending

Financial institution of The u.s.a Merrill Lynch, J.P. Morgan Stocks LLC and SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, Inc. were Joint Lead Arrangers for the home. … Single-tenant, operationally crucial realty normally refers to free-standing, industrial realty …
Check out more on CNNMoney

Consultants Hesitant on New Google Targeting

Low Cost Local Business Marketing Ideas - Google Places

Google Still Leads in Video Audience

Google Still Leads in Video Audience

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) is by far the Internet"s largest search engine, and its various websites, including YouTube, continue to attract the largest audience for viewing online video on a desktop personal computer (PC), either at work or at home …
Read more on 24/7 Wall St.

A Look at Internet History: The Most Popular Websites from the Past
With its roots back in the early 80s, the Internet has been with us for over three decades now. Nowadays it"s impossible to imagine that we didn"t have YouTube before 2005, and Google was barely used before the year 2000. This leads us to the question: …
Read more on Tech Cocktail

Google Still Leads in Video Audience

Google getting into plumbing, home cleaning?

Google getting into plumbing, home cleaning?
"So, they saw an opportunity to pick up almost a readymade chunk of services that can add to their site." A Google spokesperson confirmed that "a portion" of the Homejoy team was joining the company. But the company said it wasn"t "sharing additional …
Read more on CBS News

Plumber blinded in one eye after accidentally steering his out-of-control toy …
The remote control chopper, which retails new for around £400, claims to be built to "deliver maximum power and precision," according to its website, and is designed for advanced pilots rather than novices like Phil. Phil"s mate tried to get him to …
Read more on Mirror.co.uk

Your Plumbing Repairs Launches Website To Provide Local Plumbing Services To …
Plumbing is something we often forget about until it goes wrong, whereupon it is almost always an emergency to get it fixed. Searching the internet several years ago would have resulted in general websites about plumbing or major American chains that …
Read more on Free Press Release Center (press release)

Area plumber gives back to the community
… for him at Sarkinen Plumbing and another son at their other business, Sarkinen Rooter. Giving back to his community has always been a priority for Sarkinen. To find out more about Sarkinen Plumbing or to get a free plumbing estimate, visit their …
Read more on The Reflector

Google getting into plumbing, home cleaning?

Locksmith Marketing - Google Places, Google+ Local, SEO, SEM May Not Matter Any More with This App

SearchCap: Voice Search, DuckDuckGo Answers & Google Bolding Answers

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. The post SearchCap: Voice Search, DuckDuckGo Answers & Google Bolding Answers appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

SearchCap: Voice Search, DuckDuckGo Answers & Google Bolding Answers

More Google+ News

Why Google+ is the place for passions
Google"s current head of social networking, Dave Besbris, really nailed what people misunderstand about Google+ when he said this in an interview this week: "People underestimate the connection Google+ has with its users around interests." He went on: …
Read more on Computerworld

The untying of Google+ from Gmail is the final nail in the platform"s coffin
The arrival of Google+ in June 2011 was greeted with great fanfare. The US giant"s arrival into social media had been the subject of industry whispers for some quite time. After all, given the company"s ubiquitous digital presence, established through …
Read more on The Guardian (blog)

What Teens Really Think About YouTube, Google+, Reddit and Other Social …

I personally do not know anyone who actively uses Google+. I"ve heard from some friends that Google+ is really awesome for photos and Hangouts, but that"s about it. My only friends on Google+ are those who are more interested in technology. I …
Read more on Backchannel

More Google+ News

Today"s Google+ News

Pengguna Google+ Kini Dapat Melihat dan Edit Foto Mereka di Google Drive
Pengguna Google+ sekarang akan dapat melihat dan mengelola foto-foto mereka yang diunggah ke situs media sosial melalui Google Drive menggunakan tab Google Photo. Foto mereka akan disimpan dalam folder bersama dengan jenis file-file lainnya.
Read more on Android ID

Google Drive-app laat nu foto"s en video"s van Google+ zien

Google-plus Google maakt het mogelijk om foto"s en video"s die je met de Google+ app hebt bewaard, te bekijken via Google Drive. Voorheen moest je naar Google+ gaan om de foto"s en video"s te kunnen zien. Vanaf nu kun je ze terugvinden in een aparte …
Read more on iCulture

Remove Google+ birthdays from your Calendar
In the past, to remove Google+ birthdays from your Calendar (and alerts on Google Now), you would have to remove all individual circles from the Your Circles group. However, the latest update to the Google Calendar app on Android added an option to …
Read more on CNET

Today"s Google+ News

Google Faces More Antitrust Trouble in Europe

The European Union is very close to bringing antitrust charges against Google, which controls 90 percent of European search traffic, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.
Home – SearchEngineWatch

Google Faces More Antitrust Trouble in Europe

Are You #Winning at Google Shopping Campaigns?

If you’re down for a little spring cleaning this season, something you could be optimizing right now are your Google Shopping Campaigns.
Home – SearchEngineWatch

Are You #Winning at Google Shopping Campaigns?

Today"s Google+ News

Google Street View vous amène dans la région reculée de l"Everest (VIDÉO)

Google a dévoilé jeudi un tour virtuel de la région de l"Everest, au Népal, offrant un aperçu de la vie dans l"un des lieux les plus durs et inaccessibles sur terre. Il offre sur Street View des vues du coeur du parc national de Sagarmatha, où des …
Read more on Le Huffington Post Quebec

Google"s new Street View allows viewers to explore Amazon jungle
WATCH: Google has teamed up with the Sustainable Amazon Foundation(FAS) to give armchair explorers a close-up view of the Amazon jungle in Brazil. The system works in the same way as Google"s Street view and was made possible by hikers carrying …
Read more on euronews

Iditablog: Former UAF professor capturing part of Iditarod trail for Google
Google is heading out on the Iditarod Trail this year, at least for a while. John Bailey, a former University of Alaska Fairbanks professor who now works as a program manager for Google Geo Education, is doing a Google Street View “special collect” to …
Read more on Alaska Dispatch News

Taj Mahal among the top searched destinations on Google Street View in Asia
According to the Google Asia Pacific Blog, India"s iconic Taj Mahal, which was published on Street View February 2014, has emerged as one of the most popular Asian places for global virtual travelers. This destination is viewed by people not only in …
Read more on Firstpost

Today"s Google+ News

Google Launches Major Push To Get Local Businesses Online, Improve Data

New site offers tools, content and solicits business owners to update information. The post Google Launches Major Push To Get Local Businesses Online, Improve Data appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing

Google Launches Major Push To Get Local Businesses Online, Improve Data

Advanced Content Analysis in Google Analytics

Posted by Jeffalytics

We analyze the performance of our content every day. Sometimes it’s subconscious, like when we check the number of tweets we get from a new blog post. Other times, we make more conscious efforts, like reviewing performance metrics in Google Analytics. 

This feedback—both formal and anecdotal—informs what we do next. It influences future blog posts and validates our strategies. Reviewing content performance on a regular basis has been key to the growth of many online publishers. We should all be taking note of these successes as we build our own content marketing efforts. 

Paying attention to which of your content efforts are working well is the cornerstone to data-driven marketing. The companies that make these investments can produce tremendous results. For an in-depth analysis on the importance of being data driven, here are two recent articles that inspired me:

• How A Real Estate Blog Went From 2,000 To 18,000,000 Visits Per Month In Two Years


• Quantifying the Clickbait and Linkbait in BuzzFeed Article Titles

These articles show how taking data-driven approach to producing content can produce great results. Exponential traffic and revenue in these cases. 

I don’t know about you, but exponential traffic sounds pretty great to me! 

But we will never get there without taking a methodical and data-driven approach to our efforts. We will never get there if we are only counting page views. 

It’s time to take things to the next level!

Using Google Analytics Content Groupings and Dimensions to inform our content strategy

For many of us, Google Analytics is the tool of choice for analyzing website performance. It’s free, easy to use, and extremely powerful. But because of the free and easy nature, most users do not explore the more advanced features of the product. 

One of the more advanced features that you have at your disposal is content grouping. Content grouping allows you to gather your content into common themes to create a more meaningful analysis of your data. 

For example, you can group your blog posts by the type of content that they represent. This grouping is helpful if you cover many topics on your website or sell many products. 

This is something that I have been doing for years on my own site. It helps me understand which topics resonate the most with readers. It also helps understand which topics drive organic search visitors. 

In the past, I would have to do this in a manual fashion. It involved exporting data into Excel and grouping content by the presence of certain words in the page URL. This was an ugly manual process that I would not wish on anyone. 

With content grouping in Google Analytics, we can get a view of this data with little effort involved. Here is a screenshot of traffic performance by content groups, based on common topics that I cover on my blog.

This simple screenshot is quite revealing. It shows which topics resonate the most, as well as content deficiencies. And these reports get even more valuable once you start to segment your data. More on this shortly.

Configuring content groupings in Google Analytics

Before we can get into deep analysis of our content, it makes sense for us to talk about how we can configure this report in Google Analytics. 

There are three ways to set up this feature. The easiest way to do it is by creating rules to define your groups. Rules work like advanced segments in Google Analytics. Set the criteria for your groupings and Google Analytics will do the rest of the work. 

Note that these rules work only on the page URL, page title or screen name (for apps). 

Here is an example of how to configure groupings matching words found in your page URLs. 

The definitions work as a waterfall. If a page url/title fits in your first definition, we exclude it from each future definition. For this reason, we want to be specific with our first rules and then leave the more general and “catch all” rules for the end. 

Notice how I used a regular expression to define what makes up a PPC Page. The pipe (|) symbol serving as an “or” statement in the expression. You can also use the “or” statement on the right, but this can get unwieldy fast. 

For long regular expressions, use the extraction method for content grouping. This works wonders for complex regular expressions with several criteria to classify posts.

Using code to define your content groupings

The above options use the data that you already send to Google Analytics with each page view (page URL and page title). While this works well if we have search friendly URLs and titles, it is also limiting in our ability to perform analysis. 

If you would like to analyze beyond words in your content, then you will need to use code to push this data into Google Analytics. 

While this sounds daunting, it is not too bad. I was able to get this code working in less than 30 minutes to provide a proof of concept. 

What are some groupings that you might want to use for measuring content performance? 

How about the length of your content? Many of us have seen studies on the importance of the length of our content. Is it worthwhile to write longer articles, or is that just a “best practice” that does not apply to your site? 

Let’s measure it! 

How about the date that you published your content? If you put the date of your post in the URL, you can use rules to build these content groupings. I don’t include the publishing year in my URL, so I would need code to get this done. 

Here is how I configured Google Analytics to track word counts and publishing year of articles. 

First, you set a new definition for your content grouping in the admin section. I selected indexes 4 & 5 to avoid any potential conflicts.

As soon as you have defined your grouping, Google will give you code snippets to use for tracking in Google Analytics. There is code for Classic and Universal Analytics. 

I use Google Tag Manager on my website, so I pushed data into the system using the data layer functionality.

My code looked like this for tracking word count, word count range and year published:

 

We trigger this code on every page of my website using native functions from WordPress. If you are using Google Tag Manager and WordPress, I would be more than happy to provide you with the code that I used to build this data layer. 

Next, I created a macro in Tag Manager to recognize these variables. I gave a default value of 0-200—in the event that a word count is unavailable from WordPress, it will list 0-200 words. Then in my Universal Analytics tag, I set content groups in the tag configuration options. My indexes correspond to the groups we set in the Google Analytics interface. The words in the {} brackets represent the macros we defined above. After publishing, every page load will send content grouping data into Google Analytics. Pretty awesome! 

Once your definitions are in place, you will see your groups listed in the admin section of Google Analytics. You can define up to 5 unique content groups per view. For even more on the topic of setting up content groupings, here is an awesome article by Michael King on content groupings for the user journey.

Viewing this data in Google Analytics

Once your definitions are in place, Google Analytics will start to push this data into your account. Note that these definitions do not work retroactively—only on data moving forward. Unfortunately that means that you will need to wait a few days for meaningful analysis of this data. 

But when the data starts to come in, it’s beautiful! 

Let’s start with the content grouping definitions for post topic type. I have had these in place for a while, so this data is already providing meaningful insights. Here is what we start to see when looking at website visits by topic type. 

While WordPress pages drive the most traffic, they have relatively low value per page view. This does not count any affiliate revenue, but it is indicative of the traffic brought in by this topic. High traffic volume/low value. 

This high traffic volume, low page value metric helps me draw two conclusions:

1. I need a better call to action and offer for WordPress content. I can’t write about this topic without having an action for visitors to take. I may need to invest in some sort of premium content for this topic.


2. As I plan my content strategy, it may not make a lot of sense to focus on WordPress if I cannot find a way to get more value out of the visits. It is clear that Google Analytics content is more valuable for me.

By grouping my content into themes, I now have a fresh perspective on the effectiveness of my content. Instead of choosing the topic on my mind on any given day, I may benefit by only writing about Google Analytics. 

This level of insight is not possible without content grouping. Content grouping is incredible when you have this data tied into the goals you have already set up with Google Analytics.

Checking in on our code-driven content groupings

As you can see, content grouping provides excellent insights into your content strategy performance. If you have thousands of articles on your website, content groupings will help you sift through the noise and go right to the signal. 

You can gain insight into other aspects of your content strategy through this same method. Let’s check in on the groupings that we set up through code earlier in this article. Please note that this is a proof of concept with only a small amount of data to support the groupings. Over time, your picture will start to become more valuable as you see conversions rolling into your account. 

How many page views are we getting for the content we produced over the past 4 years? This is easy to view with our content groupings. This is a traffic pattern that I had assumed in my mind (I wrote much more in 2013 than 2014). Now, I have the numbers to prove it. 

What about by word count? 

Not surprising, lower word count pages (like the homepage) are getting the most traffic.

This data will get even more interesting over time.

Applying segmentation to our content groupings

We have grouped our content by length of the article and when it was published. Now we can measure how these factors impact our organic search traffic. We can do this a few ways. My preferred method is to look at the medium of organic search and then use a secondary dimension of content group. 

Again, we see that our shorter articles are driving the most search traffic. This is for two reasons. 1) The default content range is 0-200, so this includes articles with no word count defined by WordPress. 2) It includes our home page, which often ranks for branded search results. 

If granular keyword data were still available in Google Analytics, we would be able to segment brand/non brand traffic. But alas. 

We can do this same analysis by year as well.

Notice that the current year is receiving the most organic traffic. I can only assume that this is again due to branded traffic. 

Content grouping makes everything better!

Where else does content grouping make Google Analytics data shine?

Many of your favorite Google Analytics reports get better with content groupings. The behavior flow report comes to life with your content groupings.

 

We no longer need to look at this report with several branches of data hidden from view. Now you can see how people visit your site based on your pre-defined content groupings.

Custom Reports 

You can also use custom reports to combine several fields together. For example, try to view organic visits by the year you wrote the content and the topics into a single report. 

You can also start to add your conversion data in place and understand the value of the content that you have produced over the years. 

Several years ago I wrote a post about investing in SEO for YouMoz. The basic premise is that SEO investment does not fit into normal budget constraints. For example, you may budget for all your SEO efforts in 2015, but there is a revenue impact of these efforts for years to come. 

A custom report by post year can help you better understand the continued return on your SEO investment over the years.

What other content groupings make sense to explore?

Once we start grouping our content for analysis, many possibilities become available. Here are a few more ideas for what we can measure for content groupings:

• Grouping by social share counts. How do share counts affect traffic and conversions? I have done a proof of concept with social shares in the past and the data is revealing.


• Grouping by external links using the Mozscape API. Push this into your data layer and you can start to analyze how links may be impacting your content performance.


• Grouping by any on page metadata for your post. We included word count here, but we can also include title length, keyword usage, etc.


• Grouping by targeted keyword. Use a custom field from WordPress (or your CMS) to push this into your data layer for content grouping.


• More specific date based grouping. Instead of grouping by year, group by month or week to see how strategies take hold more quickly.


• Grouping by author of content. Which authors drive the most traffic and revenue?


• Grouping by department of company. Are certain departments producing better content? 

You can measure pretty much anything with content grouping. The only real limitation being your imagination AND Google’s current limit of 5 content groups in each view. You can even get around that by using multiple views if you want.

What type of questions can we answer with content groupings?

With content groupings in place, we can answer more business questions than standard content reports. Here are a few business questions I can start to answer with the content groupings we have already discussed.

• Is our content marketing hitting the mark?


• Are we making progress toward our goals with our recent content marketing?


• Did our SEO investment mature like we thought it would?


• Has our new focus on converting visitors affected overall revenue significantly?

Through content grouping, we can find answers within our pre-defined points of analysis. We no longer have to look at individual posts and pages to find answers. 

We provide the taxonomy that works for our business. Then we use this taxonomy to show how visitors reached our website through acquisition reports. We see how they performed on the site through conversion reports. 

Now Google Analytics starts to think a lot more like our business. It uses our own words to describe content within a structure we define. Plus, we have the tremendous processing power of Google Analytics to handle our queries.

Bonus: Use custom dimensions to make these reports even more useful

If you were paying close attention to the data layer variables I showed earlier in the post, you will see a third variable. This third variable is the exact word count for each page. This variable was added to the data layer as I was starting to do analysis on the content groupings. I found that some analysis may become easier if I have the exact word count available in Google Analytics. 

In Google Tag Manager, I set a custom dimension of Word Count using my third data layer variable. Now, I can view post topic by word count of the article in Google Analytics. 

Useful? Definitely! There are many times when you need an exact number available to conduct analysis. 

You can add up to 20 custom dimensions per web property in Google Analytics. It only works with the Universal Analytics version.

What type of content analysis are you going to do now?

Groupings are like a cheat-code for content marketers to take their analysis to the next level. You get to push your own data into Google Analytics. You get to use your own definitions within the tool. 

There are really no limits to what you can measure. What is it going to be? I would love to hear your ideas in the comments section.

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Advanced Content Analysis in Google Analytics