Joshua Ziering discusses the importance of Google Analytics (GA) for websites, emphasizing that analytics should be used with clear objectives and calls to action for maximum effectiveness. He highlights common pitfalls and the significance of segmenting data to evaluate performance while avoiding over-complication with goals. The talk also covers best practices for tracking user behavior to improve site profitability and marketing strategies.

1. Using Google Analytics To Make Money Joshua Ziering, Owner, FullSpeedSEO.com

2. Don’t forget: You can copy-paste this slide into other presentations, and move or resize the poll.

3. Why Listen To Me? Joshua Ziering Nerd, Reformed Hacker, SEO Consultant, Over Enthusiastic Speaker When I can't demonstrate results for my clients, they fire me .

4. Why Do I Use Analytics? Based off Urchin. Used to cost 50k. Free. Insanely Powerful. Remotely Hosted Keeps me employed

5. Who Shouldn't Use GA? Cloakers (Cutts says Google will focus harder on cloaking in 2011) Black Hats Flash Sites

6. Are You Even Ready For Analytics? Cutting Up Your Site For Value Basic Analytics Concepts Oft Misunderstood Advanced Concepts To Bank On Site reviews for those brave enough. What I Will Cover Today

7. "If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without them knowing it." -Edward Bernays

8. Are You Ready?! Your page needs to have a clear purpose. Installing Analytics without a clear and defined objective is ludicrous. 'Building traffic' is not a goal

9. Are You Ready?! Your home page, and every page you can expect someone to land on needs to have a call to action. Deliver content and with that content deliver a directive.

10. Are You Ready?! Assign a value to every possible call to action. Even if you don't think you can,you can. Let's see the math...

11. Are You Ready?! Consider if your email list converts at 3% and your average order is $200. If you have a 100 person list: 3% = 3 Orders = $600 $6.00/Email Address

12. Pitfalls of GA GA uses javascript and a set of cookies to do it's magic.

13. Pitfalls of GA Google is attempting to self regulate analytics to head off government regulation. Regulation is still highly likely once the rest of the world figures this stuff out. Not instantaneous data.

14. Basic Analytics Almost every transaction in GA is based around the 'Pageview'. It's the currency of Google Analytics. Almost all the data available is encapsultated by the Pageview. They are processed every few hours into your data. Some Terms...

15. Basic Analytics Where Is The Juicy Stuff Though?

16. Traffic Sources >Keywords Gives you specific data on each keyword. If a key phrase isn't performing like you thought, time to evaluate the page or ranking.

17. Traffic Sources Pro Tip Segment keywords to find weird problems. If Safari bounces 2x FF, time to look at the site in Safari.

18. Traffic Sources Pro Tip Segment keywords to find weird problems. If Safari bounces 2x FF, time to look at the site in Safari.

19. Traffic Sources Pro Tip You can segment by location, OS, and almost any other conceivable metric. Consider location for local business, and landing page for most others. Compare Pgs/visit and bounce rate.

20. Goals Triggered by a Pageview Can have up to 20 goals. (Kind of) Pageview gives all kinds of abilities to sort by metric. Great for thank you pages, contact forms, email forms, et al Versatile because they integrate using javascript.

21. Goals Proper Usage Use goals to get people somewhere. Not for generic information. With goals come funnels. Usually, no funnel, not worthy of a goal.

22. Goals With goals come further segmentation. You can see performance, rather than metrics.

23. Goals And even more segmentation...

24. Goals The money is in segmentation. By segmenting, you know what is performing and what isn't. You can compare investment vs. return on investment. You can use this data to invest in your marketing more wisely. Whether it's PPC, SEO, et al. The previous screen shots were a custom report filtering by Goals and Source, then Keyword.

25. Goals Don't go crazy with goals. Sometimes they aren't good everywhere. Let's see an example...

26. Goals What are people sharing most?

27. Goals What are people sharing most? Doesn't meet our litmus test of people going somewhere. While we could setup goals to fire on /share/twitter or /share/aim it would increase the pageviews of the site. Our aim is better button placement.

28. Goals What are people sharing most?

29. Event Tracking Event tracking is great for things where you don't want to inflate the page views. Similar metrics Handy for “What's being used” Not as robust as goals No funnels Slightly harder to read data from

30. Pro Tips Finding Problem Areas Using Top Content

31. Pro Tips Finding Problem Areas Using Top Landing Pages

32. Pro Tips Site Search Tracking

33. Pro Tips Site Search Tracking

34. Pro Tips Final Thoughts Use Annotations to mark time Make a new profile when screwing around Using analytics is a profitable endeavor if used actively, not passively. Understanding how people use your site and what they use it for is always lucrative.

35. Thank You! FullSpeedSEO.com [email_address] @JoshuaZiering Who's brave enough for a site review? Questions? Comments? Diatribes?

36. Don’t forget: You can copy-paste this slide into other presentations, and move or resize the poll.