I wanted to explain to a set of interns how remarketing in Adwords worked. An hour later, I realized that had I chanced upon this infographic by Google earlier, it would have saved my time!
Tag: google
Just Completed the Google Analytics Platform Principles
Google launched one more basic course for anyone who wants to roll up their sleeves and get into analytics. If you want to become an awesome data driven developer/growth hacker, then I would strongly recommend this course. It really opens up your eyes to using the platform not only for web analytics but also as a data storage and analysis tool for mobile and offline events.
This time around I was a bit more serious about the course, and gave it a decent shot. The test is fairly simple, however going through all the video provided is strongly recommended! I found some of them very useful.
If you are a frequent visitor of Avinash Kaushik or Justin Cutroni’s blog, then you would breeze through this course and enjoy it. If not, then boy do I have this awesome course for you to attend!!
Google Analytics launches one more course
Google Analytics blog came out with a brilliant new post which every marketer should read. This at the same time when they launched their new course and a shiny new infographic to go alongside. I have included the infographic on this blog, however do follow the link, it should convince you to sign-up for this course.
For students or career seekers, these courses are a god send since they also provide you with a certificate. Do not miss these courses folks!!
Just Completed the Google Analytics Digital Analytics Fundamentals
Google launched a course last month on Digital Analytics Fundamentals. It’s a great course for all people who are interested in learning the basics of Digital Analytics. If you are interested in web and love data analysis, then I would recommend that you sign up for this course and go through the simple set of videos.
The course also had a assessment test with a Certification of Completion (yes, I graduated .. yayy!). The test is fairly simple if you go through the course or have been working with Google Analytics. However when you have a busy work week, you often tend to procrastinate these things … such as I did for the last day!!
However, this is a great starting point for anyone who wants to learn Web Analytics.
And, here’s my certificate of clearing the course! Unfortunately, this is linked to the Google Account that gives the test, so it’s not available to view for the public!
Google Webmasters explains Search Appearance
This month, Google rolled out a new help feature in their Webmasters tool. If you have been working on your site’s SEO, then probably you know most of this, however, its good to see how Google has nicely summarised this in one helpful page.
If you are not completely confident about your SEO fundamentals, then this is one thing that you should do immediately!
Why should you use Annotations in Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is a tool which often amazes me. It contains so many features packed into it that it would take years simply to understand and appreciate all of them! One such feature which I do not see being used as much as it should be is the Annotations tool within Google Analytics.
What are Annotations?
Annotations are comments which you can put for a particular date. So in this picture above, I have indicated at what dates did I publish a post on my blog. I have been busy in the months of April and June!
You can see the annotations bar in the Audience Overview of your Google Analytics profile, there is a small expandable div which you need to click on first.
The thing with Annotations like most of the Google Analytics features is that in order to retain flexibility, it is an open framework. Meaning you can use it as you see fit. Which could be one reason why its not used as often as it should be!
Why should you use Annotations?
Annotations are a simple way to Attribute certain action that you did to a rise in traffic.
In the figure above, there are two trends which I want to explain using annotations.
- One is a clear spike in traffic which fetched me around 350 hits in a day. This I am attributing to commenting on a popular gaming blog with my link (I cross referenced that with the referral traffic coming to that site and they match)
- The other is an increase in the site traffic, this I am attributing to the increased frequency of posts that I am publishing on this blog
So, How does one use Annotations?
Well there are multiple scenarios how you could use annotations –
- If you are a team working together on a site, then you can decide on a format for annotations such as Dev. Post, SEM. Having this communicated across the team helps ensure that too many annotations do not clutter your dashboard and confuse you or your team members.
- If you are a blogger like me, then simply noting the time of the day you blog will help you maintain some regularity on the blog, with a clear sight on how this is impacting your traffic.
- If you are a marketing manager of a site and handle additional campaigns, say a product launch or a TV Commercial, then you can correlate the increase in traffic and goals on the site to that particular campaign. Remember the first step in attribution is measurement!
- Cyclicality and Seasonality can be tracked and predicted in the future using annotations. A simple example of this in action is when I had written about the Sunday Dip.
Enough of ideas on how one can use annotations, did you use annotations before and how did you use them?
How to setup your Google Authorship correctly
I was intending to write this post for some time now, however this brilliant infographic by Mervik Haums was available and its a great resource of tips of getting your Google+ Authorship setup.
To put this in a nutshell,
- Ensure you have put your best DP on your Google+ profile
- In the post you are writing, ensure that your name is displayed as the anchor text with a link pointing to your Author Profile with rel=author
- In your Author Profile, have a link to your Google+ profile with rel=me
I did this the earlier day for Good Home Advisor, and it worked within the next couple of days.
PS – Google Authorship has been nerfed by Google and the data is no longer available. Just one more example in the SEO industry when everyone starts abusing a particular rule, Google nerfs it!