Google Analytics is every Internet marketer’s best friend. The tools are always changing and updating, making the Google Analytics blog an important one to keep up on so you know the features, capabilities and data available to you. There are a couple new tools that got us really excited because of the intel they provide about how visitors are using our sites. Learn about the new Customer Journey tool and the Real-Time Widget now available through your Google Analytics account.
The Customer Journey to Online Purchase
Google is offering more detailed information to make marketer’s lives easier. On April 25, Google introduced a new benchmarking tool for marketers: The Customer Journey to Online Purchase.
The tool is Google’s response to:
The increasing complexity of the customer journey and
The increasing need of marketers to make sense of the contribution of each marketing channel in the final purchase so that they can improve their strategy accordingly.
Before committing to buy online, a customer may engage with a specific brand through many different media channels over several days (or even months, in some cases).
Based on the different sectors, different marketing channels come into play at different times and contribute to the final purchase decision.
The tool has been built on data gathered from over 36,000 Google Analytics clients that authorised sharing, including millions of purchases across 11 industries in 7 countries (Australia is not included at the moment).
How different marketing channels (such as display, search, email, and your own website) help move users towards purchases. For example, some marketing channels play an “assist” role during the earlier stages of the marketing funnel, whereas some play a “last interaction” role just before a sale.
How long it takes for customers to make a purchase online (from the first time they interact with your marketing to the moment they actually buy something), and how the length of this journey affects average order values. The length of the customer journey, in both number of days and number of interactions, varies widely depending on the type of purchase. Some decisions require substantial research, while others are made very quickly. Typically, more complex purchases lead to longer paths and larger purchase values.
Implications of the Customer Journey to Online Purchase Tool
Online retailers need to understand their customer journeys in the context of how a broader data set does similar journeys.
By understanding the different stages of the customer journey, businesses can evaluate the success or otherwise of online campaigns and the role each one plays in the conversion.
Using this information will help to design campaigns that deliver the right message at the right moment in a customer’s journey to purchase.
Google Analytics New Feature: Real Time Widgets
This is better than TV!
On April 16, Google announced four real-time widgets that can be added to any new or existing Google Analytics Dashboard, marking the first time real-time data has been possible in a dashboard widget.
The widgets make it possible for users to perform many types of real-time analysis and they can also be combined and customised with different filters to segment and compare data side by side.
To set-up a Real-time widget, webmasters simply need to click the +Add Widget menu option from the Google-Analytics dashboard.
Once a widget has been added, they can select Counter, Timeline, Geomap or Table from the Real-time section.
Counters show the number of active visitors on the site, in a similar way to the prime “Right Now” counter on the Real-Time overview report. The major difference is that it is possible to determine what the dimension is, if any, to be shown under the counter. On the Real-Time Overview report it shows New vs. Returning users, while on the widget it is possible to select a different dimension to break out that counter’s numbers from the set 11 dimensions available in all the Real Time Widgets: Campaign, City, Country/Territory, Keyword, Medium, Page, Page Title, Referral Path, Source, Traffic Type, or Visitor Type.
Timelines show the scrolling pageviews over either the last 30 minutes or last 60 seconds.
Geomaps show visits on a map. It is possible to choose to display by country or cities, and drill down a region from a world map down to a national one.
Tables show active visitors, with up to three of the dimensions listed above.
Another widget that has been recently added (May 5) to the real time reports is “Goal Conversions”.
Google Analytics real-time conversion widget
Implications of the Google Analytics Real-Time Widget
This helps businesses to instantly see how traffic is moving around their website.
This gives insight at a very specific level, enabling specific decisions to be made.
Real time widgets provide a drill-down that immediately displays the data that matters.
‘Tis the season of reflections and SEO predictions, and yes, here’s another for 2013: SEO and search marketing in the coming year is going to see trends in the way of SEO ranking data and tools that work in compliance with Google’s terms of service, more interest in Google’s Knowledge Graph and putting the kibosh on social media spam, according to Bruce Clay in his 2013 predictions.
And while we’re on the topic of predictions, nothing helps you ponder the future better than analyzing the trends of the year previous. And we’ve got some gems for you there, too. First, what happened globally in search marketing, and then how’d Bruce do on his 2012 predictions?
We rounded up Bruce Clay Australasia, Bruce Clay Japan and Bruce Clay Europe to talk about the trends of the year in their neck of the woods. I think you’ll find it interesting to see the adoption rate of certain methodologies across the globe, and what’s important to different business communities.
What were the buzz words of Internet marketing in 2012?
In what concrete ways did SEO change in 2012?
What proved to be the most effective SEO tactics of 2012, the most popular or the most requested?
What was the demand for content and content marketing in 2012 compared to 2011?
How did budgets for Internet marketing shift in 2012?
What was the demand for link building in 2012 compared to 2011?
And the big question is: How did Bruce do on his predictions for the state of search marketing in 2012? Virginia Nussey put together this month’s Back to Basics article, “Bruce’s 2012 Predictions Scored: How Accurate Was He?” and says:
“It’s one thing to make a prediction. It’s another thing to be held accountable for your claim. There might be far fewer fortune tellers in the world if they were confronted by the accuracy of their soothsaying later down the line.
Bruce is a veteran SEO who has witnessed the rise of Google, seen the value of search algorithm ranking factors ebb and flow, watched the results page morph and grow, observed the many faces of spam, and assisted countless companies to develop websites that attract visitors and establish loyal communities.
Bruce has been at the forefront of the online marketing industry since 1996; it’s hard to be involved with something for that long and not see patterns.”
The article analyzes his forecast for 2012 using survey data from readers just like you who cast their vote to score how his predictions panned out in conjunction with feedback from thought leaders in our industry, including:
Tim Ash, CEO of SiteTuners and chair of Conversion Conference
Motoko Hunt, president and search marketing strategist at AJPR
Kendra Jaros, VP of marketing at Third Door Media
Joe Kerschbaum, VP at Clix Marketing and author of Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Marketing: An Hour a Day
Mike Ramsey, owner of Nifty Marketing and The Voice
The results? You’ll have to check out the article to find out!
So what are your 2013 SEO predictions? Have you got any feedback on Bruce’s for 2013? Don’t be shy — tell us about it right here in the comments section below!
This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.
With the recent Google Webmaster Tools security bug, I thought a deep dive into what GWT has to offer SEOs might be prudent since many SEOs may have logged in recently.
Google Webmaster Tools was once Google Webmaster Wasteland. But the past year has been a fruitful one as Webmaster Tools has rolled out improvements faster than Facebook does new privacy statements. Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) is now full of insightful data and metrics that you cannot get anywhere else. Some GWT data is useful, some is not. Let's dive in and take a look at each tool in GWT.
When you first login, you'll see a list of all websites in your Google Webmaster tools account as well as few links to view all messages from Google, 'Preferences', 'Author Stats' (Labs), and a few miscellaneous links under 'Other Resources'.
All Messages
Google used to rarely communicate with Webmasters through messages. This year some probably wish they communicated a little less with the amount of "love notes" many SEOs have received. You might see a message here if:
Google thinks your site may have been hacked
Google detected unnatural links pointing to your site
Google thinks links pointing to your site are using techniques outside Google’s Webmaster Guidelines
You can set the messages email threshold to: 'only important' or 'all messages' under the "Preferences" tab
Since authorship isn't tied to a single domain, Google shows authorship stats for all sites you write for as well as individual stats. You'll need a valid author profile (go Google+!) to see stats here. The stats are interesting, and good for verifying which URLs are showing your ugly mug in the SERPs.
If you've never used the rich snippets testing tool, now known as "structured data", bookmark it now. It's a one stop shop to test URLs to see if your author profile is linked correctly.
You can also use the tool to check if you've setup or verified your:
Author Page
Name
Google+ Page as a Publisher
Any structured data detected (reviews, products, song titles, etc) in the form of microdata, microformats, or RDFa
Once you select a site after logging in, you see the real meat of the tool. The site specific dashboard has a nice overview showing:
Crawl Errors
URL Errors
Site Errors
Health status of DNS, Server Connectivity & Robots.txt
Overview of # of Queries (plus clicks and impressions)
Sitemaps (including submitted URLs and indexed URLs)
There are five major sections once you've selected a site: 'Configuration', 'Health', 'Traffic', 'Optimization', and 'Labs'. I find that the most insightful data is in the 'Heath' and 'Traffic' sections, and what you can get inside Google Analytics.
The 'Configuration' Section
Settings
Here you can target a specific country for your website, choose a preferred domain (www or non-www), and limit the crawl rate of Googlebot if you so choose.
Sitelinks
Google automatically choosing Sitelinks to display below your main URL on certain queries, usually brand related. If you have certain URLs you wouldn't want showing as Sitelinks you can "demote" them and Google won't show those demoted URLs.
URL Parameters
If you're having problems with duplicate content on your site because of variables/parameters in your URLs you can restrict Google from crawling them with this tool. Unless you're sure about what you're restricting, don't play with the settings here!
Change of Address
If you are switching your site to a whole new domain, do a 301 redirect, then make sure Google knows about it here.
Users
Ever taken like 20 minutes to add a new user to your Google Analytics account? No? OK, maybe that was just me. Luckily adding a user to GWT is much easier. There are two main user types: 'Full user' and 'Restricted User'. Restricted users are good for clients if you want to give them most view-only access, but little ability to change settings or submit things (you probably don't clients filing random reconsideration requests!).
Associates
This setting is a way for members of YouTube's Partner Program (probably not you) to link their YouTube Channel with Webmaster Tools. My guess is this section will get more settings in the future, but for now, it's very confusing. More details on the Google Webmaster Central blog here.
The 'Health' Section
Crawl Errors
Crawl errors shows you issues Googlebot had in crawling your site. This includes response codes (404s, 301s) as well as a graph of the errors over time. This is a fantastic resource for spotting broken links, as the URL shows up as a 404 error. You can see when Google first detected the error codes and download the table of errors into a spreadsheet.
Crawl Stats
Pages crawled per day is a good SEO metric to track over time. You can get some insight from the chart, but this is a metric to check in on and record every week. Ideally you want that number continuing to climb, especially if you are adding new content.
Blocked URLs Fetch as Googlebot & Submit To Index
Fetch as Googlebot will return exactly what Google's spider "sees" on the URL you submit. This is handy for spotting hacked sites as well as seeing your site the way Google does. It's a good place to start an SEO audit.
The really neat feature that's new this year is "Submit to Index". Ever made a title tag change and wished Google would update its index faster to get those changes live? 'Submit to Index' does just that. 50 times a month you can submit a page to update in near real-time in Google's index. Very handy for testing on-page changes.
Here's Matt Cutts on how to use the 'Submit to Index' tool:
Index Status
Make sure and hit the 'Advanced' button here so you can see all the interesting index stats Google shows about your site. Keep an eye on the 'Not Selected' number as that could indicate that Google is not viewing your content favorably or you have a duplicate content issue if that number is rising.
Malware
If Google has detected any malware on your site you will see more information here. Google often sends messages now if Malware is detected as well.
The 'Traffic' Section
Search Queries
These queries are when your site shows up in a search result, not just when someone clicks your site. So you may find some keyword opportunities where you are showing up but not getting clicks. I much prefer the interface in Google Analytics for this query data, and you may find a lot more queries showing up there then here.
Keep an eye on the CTR % for queries. If you have a known #1 ranking (your brand terms for example) for but an abnormally low position 1 CTR that's a sign that someone might be bidding on your brand terms (which may or may not be good). If you have a high position but low CTR it usually indicates that your meta descriptions and title tags may not be enticing enough. Can you add a verified author to the page? Or other structured data? That could help CTR rates.
Links To Your Site
This is my favorite addition to GWT this year. The link data here keeps getting updated faster and faster. When this was first launched earlier this year the delay on finding links was around three weeks. I've seen the delay down to as little as one week now.
There are two ways to download lists of links, but the "Download Latest Links" is the more useful of the two.
"Download More Sample Links" just gives a list of the same links as the latest links but in alphabetical order instead of most recent. The main report lists the domains linking to your site sorted by the number of links. Unfortunately drilling down into the domain level doesn't give really any useful insights other than the pages that are linked too (but you can't see where they are linked from on the domain). You'll find domains listed here but not in the "Latest Links" report. Bummer.
Internal Links
Pretty good report for diagnosing internal link issues. This tool is nothing fancy but URLs are sorted by most internal links. Use this to diagnose pages on your site that should be getting more internal link juice.
The 'Optimization' Section
Sitemaps
See a list of all the different types of sitemaps Google has found or that you have added and some stats about each one. You can also test a sitemap as well before submitting it and Google will scan to find any errors. Webmaster Tools shows stats here on Web sitemaps, as well as Video, News, and Image sitemaps as well
Think of this as a basic On-Page SEO audit tool. Google will show you lists of URLs on your site that don't have unique Title Tags, or are missing Meta Descriptions. This is a handy tool for quick On-Page SEO issues when you first take over a new website. Click on any of the issues found to return a list of the URLs that need improvement.
Content Keywords
See a list of single keywords, not key phrases, which Google thinks your site is about. As long as you don't see spam stuff here, you're good.
Structured Data
If you have some structured data on your site, such as a linked Google+ author or product review data, you can see stats about that data including the type of data found and the schema. This is useful to mass verify that all the pages you think are marked up correctly actually are.
The 'Labs' Section
Custom Search
Ever wanted to build your own search engine? You can with Google Custom Search. If you have a collection of sites that you're always searching through using Google, you might consider using Google Custom search to build your own Google that just returns results from those sites. You can see how the custom search engine would work on just your own site using the preview tool here in Webmaster Tools.
Instant Previews
Input any URL on your site (or just leave blank and click 'Compare' to see the homepage) to see what the preview of the site might look like in a Google desktop search results set, or on a mobile SERP.
Site Performance
This tool got dropped by Google's spring cleaning in April 2012. I like using webpagetest.org for testing site performance.
Webmaster Tools Data In Google Analytics
Connecting your Google Analytics account with your verified site profile in Google Webmaster tools brings some GWT data directly into your Google Analytics account. No need to login to two places.
To connect a verified GWT site to the correct analytics site, click the "manage site" dropdown:
Once connected, GWT data shows up in the Standard Reporting section of Google Analytics under "Traffic Sources" -> "Search Engine Optimization".
Not all GWT data is available in GA. You'll only get three data sets in Google Analytics:
Queries
Landing Pages
Geographical Summary
Let's look at each of these and see what's worth looking at.
Queries
Queries are interesting because you can see some of the keywords that might be hidden under (not provided). This doesn't help with attribution of course, but at least we can still use that data for keyword research. Darn you (not provided).
What's really interesting is how many more queries show up in the query report in Google Analytics (that is supposed to be GWT data) than do when you directly get the query data in Google Webmaster Tools. For example, for the timeframe: Oct 28th-Nov 27th we had 317 queries report in Google Analytics:
but only 93 in the Google Webmaster Tools 'Top queries' report:
I'm not sure why such a big discrepancy between GWT queries and queries in Analytics from GWT. I definitely see more Google Images type queries in the GA report and less in the 'Top Queries' in GWT. Interesting discrepancy. Anyone else notice a big difference in query data?
Nonetheless the Query data can be interesting and it's nice to have right in GA. I hope that Google continues to provide more GWT data directly into Google Analytics like this.
Landing Pages
You're better off getting your actual top landing pages list from Analytics, but you can see what GWT sees as your tops pages sorted by Impressions. The interesting nugget of info here is the CTR. That's not data you see in analytics and could be insightful. I like comparing the CTR to the site average:
Geographical Summary
This section is again useful really for the CTR rate data. Looking at specific countries you can see where it might be worth running more Facebook ads or doing some international SEO work in.
What do you use Google Webmaster Tools For?
OK, I've ranted enough about what I like in GWT. What about you?
What data do you find useful in Google Webmaster tools?
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If you've never used the rich snippets testing tool, now known as "structured data", 
