Month: February 2013

Off to Coorg

Prasad Ajinkya7 Comments

Map of Coorg

Every year we make it a point to go on a week long vacation. This year is like no other, most of the times I try and leave behind most of the ties at work. This time around, the deluge of work was in such a high volume, that I decided to take some work with me (not proud of this, but I thought I could get some time to reflect and some more additional time to hack WordPress).

We decided to make avail of our Club Mahindra membership and make a booking at Coorg. Typically this needs to be done well in advance, which gives me enough time to book the tickets and work out most of the jinks in the travel.

Getting there

This is the most challenging part if you are with kids and also a Club Mahindra member!! Most of their properties are so well into the interiors that it takes half a day just to get there! With the exception of perhaps Lonavala and Goa, I doubt whether the rest of the properties are within city limits!

Getting to the Kodagu (which is the actual name of Coorg) is quite a bitch. Either you take a flight to Mangalore/Bangalore and drive it up from there. Or you take a train to Mysore and drive it from there to Coorg.  We chose to take a flight from Mumbai to Mangalore and then hire a van (there were 6 of us, plus 3 kids).

Mangalore

The Mangalore city is quickly developing and you can see the development happening as soon as you land in new airport which is on the outskirts of the city. It’s a good place to setup a business!! You have real estate which is on the verge of sky rocketing, you have people coming to the city in search of jobs, you have a decent airport with high flight volumes. A good idea would be to setup a nice hotel/restaurant nearby the airport … to grab a quick lunch, you currently have to head towards the city which is a good 10 km away from the airport.

I always loved Mangalorean cuisine, and the city’s restaurants did not disappoint. We grabbed an easy lunch and headed towards Coorg.

Bad Roads

The roads are a classic testament to the Indian infrastructure. Neglected and getting wasted. It seems as if the government has suddenly woken up to the fact that Coorg has started becoming a hot tourist destination … and its efforts are to increase the width of the roads … at least in certain places. However the entire road to Coorg is like a bad Bollywood thriller, full of twists and turns which don’t thrill you, but simply keep you hoping for the twists to end.

Getting 3 children below the age of 5 is not advised … they were travelling non-stop for 10 hours and I adore all of them for tolerating this travel! Taking a van there on these roads is also not advisable, since the van has a higher center of gravity and tends to throw the contents around when going around the bends. That includes people too!!

A gruelling 200 minutes letter, all the kids had puked, all the adults were frayed, and we were nearing Coorg. The only thing I remember seeing Coorg is not how beautiful it is, but a great relief that this god awful journey had come to an end.

Kodagu Valley

The resort is pretty awesome, and it has quite a few things to keep the family busy … which gives me enough time to spend on the laptop!!

Window to Coorg

I have firmly planted myself in the outside balcony of our studio apartment and am looking forward to the week. This is the place to go to if you want to be close to nature, go on treks, reflect on your thoughts … which is what is on my agenda. Travelling is just incidental ;-)

Demystifying (not provided) Keywords

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Removing (not provided)

Google has started protecting signed in users by not reporting their search terms, instead we see a (not provided). People have written this off saying that the number is insignificant, in fact you can make use of this nifty little Custom Report to check the impact of how many searches are not reported to you. Over a period of time, it has grown to be a huge 39% of the total organic results worldwide.

Blog owners have every right to be concerned; they are missing data and for content driven blogs, this can be painful. I have noticed that for all my games posts, the %age is quite high … 70%!!!

However, there is an alternative. If you are concerned with finding out the keyword data about your site, then you can retrieve this data from Google Webmasters (GWMT). This in combination with the Top Content Report for the Non-Paid search traffic segment should get you any data you require.

Combining the GWMT data with Analytics will help you get a better understanding for the funnel data on each of your individual keywords … all the more so if you have Goals configured.

Do note that there is a slight discrepancy in the data that is reported in GA and the one which is reported in WMT. GA reports visits, WMT reports clicks. GA’s SEO report does not provide the data of the past 2 days, WMT does. So if you are just starting out, using WMT would help you gain more insights on your on-page optimization as compared to simply using Google Analytics.

Edit: I found this great (but a tad tedious) article on SEOMoz on how you can decode the (not provided) keyword. If you are not well versed with Google Analytics and Filters, then I would suggest you skip it.

What is Branded Traffic?

Prasad Ajinkya3 Comments

Have you ever searched your own name on Google?

Don’t answer that, it’s a trick question! We all have!! In fact, if you have not yet (which I would be surprised to know), you must be doing that by now!

It’s always the little bit of curiosity, perhaps a bit of reflection that drives us to see what gets listed on our own name … on our brand name. We people are brands, and the reason we search our own names is to see what shows up in the search … do our profiles show up or does a different person stealing away your thunder!

Site owners also do this, in fact they have a nice name for traffic which originates from such searches. It’s called Branded Traffic.

Branded Traffic is not only limited to search, a portion of the branded traffic is also the direct traffic viz., the set of people who already know your site URL by-heart (love you folks :-D).

Importance of Branded Traffic

Shakespeare had written in his famed Romeo and Juliet,

What’s in a name?

Well, apparently a lot! Branded Traffic is important for us …

  • These are the set of users who KNOW your site … who are searching for you. Be nice to them, these are your friends
  • If you do work on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies, then you will notice that your brand keywords will have awesome Click through rates … eye popping ones. At EduPristine, the CTR of the “pristine” keyword is around 32%, that of “edupristine” is a whopping 70%!!
  • Google will always give you additional benefit for your branded keywords, so get ready to be ranked on top! In fact the sad state of the Indian SEO industry I see is that most of the sales people get clients using such statements like “

Sir, we will get you on the top of Google Rankings (Meh!!)

  • If you do have Conversions setup on your site, then you will notice that your brand keywords will perform better as compared to your non-brand keywords!! If this is not the case, then perhaps you should consider taking a serious look at your site’s navigation and information architecture
  • This traffic is yours for the taking! I cannot stress on how important tracking this metric is … in fact as your site becomes popular you should see an increase in this traffic. It’s the digital version of your brand value.

How do you measure Branded Traffic?

This one is easy-peasy!

In case if you have a Google Analytics (GA) account setup, go to Advanced Segments, and define one segment.

Branded Traffic

I have set this up in my GA, you can use this segment and customize the keyword field with your brand terms! Get the Custom Segment for your GA profile here. Please keep a note to edit this Advanced Segment after you import this in your account and change the brand keywords!!

Do set up this segment and watch the general metrics for your site. I am sure that for your branded traffic all the metrics would be outperforming the site average!

Doesn’t it feel good to be loved!