2. Who am I?
• Since 2000 : freelance webmaster, researcher, teacher…
• 2006 – 2009: Google Search Quality and Google
Analytics teams (Dublin, Ireland)
• Since 2009: SEO in France. Founder of the SEO Agency
Woptimo
• 2011 : Co-founder of Search Quality Alliance
5. Zero Bounce Rate !!
Bounce rate below 10% is almost impossible
The blogger had the GA code 2 times in the source …
6. DATA GATHERING AND
ACCURACY
1. Data collection
2. Visits, PageViews, Unique Visitors : what’s the best choice?
3. Returning visitors
4. Too much traffic?
5. GWT and GA
6. Negative Analytics & Stupidity
7. What tool do you use?
Is your tool server-side or client-side?
Number of hits ≠ Number of visits
Each tool has its own definition of visits, PageViews, Bounce rate…
8. Accuracy
Is your tool accurate?
Check your data with several sources
Actual sale vs Analytics
Number of PageViews vs ads impression
Adwords data vs Analytics data
Or just use 2 Web Analytics tools
9. What metric to chose?
It depends on what you want to achieve !
10. What do you want to do ?
Check notoriety and engagement Unique Visitors and Returning
Visitors
Impress your boss / ads PageViews (or even go for server
publisher hits!)
Daily check Number of visits segmented per
source of traffic
11. Ghost visitors …
Have you ever noticed
- Visits from an Adwords campaign you stopped ages ago ?
- Huge number of visits for a very long tail keywords?
12. Master your source attribution
If a visitor comes to your site from a defined source of
traffic (Google organic, Google Adwords, referring sites…)
Next times he’ll visit entering urls or via bookmarks It
won’t count as direct traffic but GA will use the original
source !
A keywords entered one time in Google can lead to
hundreds of visits by the same browser !
To avoid this, segment only New Visitors from
Organic
13. Visit’s duration
A new visit is counted every time you leave the site for 30 minutes
or more and come back to it
Let’s say you have a Flash game site that do not need to refresh
between 2 games…
Every time a user visits another page ater playing games (to save
his score for example), a new visit will be recorded.
Your organic landing pages can be a page
that is not even indexed !! (Link)
14. Negative Analytics and Stupidity
Evil Black-Hat technique
Evil competitors can use your tracking code on other websites, or just
send http request with our GA code …
Stupid webmasters can also make a copy-paste mistakes…
16. Too much traffic?
If you have more than 10K visits a day, your GA will get really slower and
advanced segments won’t be accurate.
Do not rely on number of visits for big websites’ segments. Only check big
pictures
17. Work around
Create several profiles using include filters
Check you data on a smallest time range
19. RECHECK YOUR
KEYWORDS
• Broad , Exact, Phrase?
• Adwords vs SEO
• Adwords reports
• Ranking
• Keywords and « not provided »
• Universal Search
20. Keywords Search Volume
Use broad for very specific keywords
Use phrase for expression and compare with exact it gives you an idea
of the long tail potential of this expression
Use Exact for most keywords but keep in mind that 0 does not mean this
keyword is totally useless.
21. Adwords and SEO
If you don’t properly tag your campaign or link Adwords to GA : your
Adwords keywords will show up in organic search !
Check your current data and your past data
Check if you have several Adwords accounts. You can now link several
Adwords to 1 GA account.
22. Adwords Keywords
≠
Matched Search Query may be one of the most efficient report for
Adwords.
Check keywords actually searched, and not just the keyword you targeted
23. Keywords ranking
Ranking in which city?
Universal ranking or web ranking?
Who’s ranking before you?
Is there any Adwords?
24. Keywords ranking
Good tips on what happens in Google SERP but should not be your SEO
main objective.
However, ….
25. Not provided : a threat for good SEO
Up to 50% SEO visits impacted
It’s a Google Search policy, not a GA : all tools are impacted
Only way to work around is checking landing pages and … check the
ranking
26. Universal Search in GA
Everything is merged into one keyword report. Whether you come from
Images, Maps, News, Shopping …
Filters can be used for news.gg / shopping.gg
No filters possible for integrated universal search (except for images)
Universal search merged in Webmaster Tools too…
28. Referral on GA
You don’t have parameters of the referral url !
Can be very annoying
Work around with a filter « exact referral »
29. PageRank
Toolbar PageRank is not the actual PageRank
No frequent update
Not inline with ranking or link quality
30. Number of backlinks
Number of backlinks is quite useless
Number of domain is a little more clever
Quick change can be due to tools update rather than actual changes
Try to measure backlinks quality rather than focusing on quantity
31. Beware of Alexa and tools like that
Some interesting data for big websites, but don’t rely on it too much if you
have less than 500K visits a month
Don’t install Alexa toolbar on your computer !!!
32. If we still have more time
Other common mistakes
• GA code only on some pages
• No tracking in your e-mail
• Your office IP not excluded
• Your GA code twice
• Goal configuration
• « useless » Goals
• Goals counted twice