age of sharing email Link Building link building etiquette link building outreach Link Building: General link request spam Link Week Net Etiquette netiquette Search Engine Land share URL social media Uncategorized

9 Netiquette Reminders For Today’s Link Builders

Eric Ward

For many years, email was one of just a few ways you could share a URL with another person. And, people were far less accepting of link request spam than they are today. So, for today’s column, let’s talk about the ancient concept of net etiquette and link building. In many ways, it’s come full…

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Content Marketer content marketing Google SEO

Creating Content For Online Stores (when people don’t really read)

Clarissa Sajbl

contentContent is on top of every digital marketer’s priority list. We need to design sites in a way that users can easily scan the copy to improve user experience

Post from on State of Search
Creating Content For Online Stores (when people don’t really read)

bing bing mobile Microsoft Microsoft: Bing Microsoft: Bing Mobile Microsoft: Mobile Microsoft: Windows Phone Search Engine Land Uncategorized windows 8

Bing Updates Windows 8 Apps Enhancing News, Finance, Weather, Sports, Maps & Travel

Barry Schwartz

Microsoft announced they have made major updates to the Bing Apps for Windows 8 across most of their apps including News, Finance, Weather, Sports, Maps and Travel. The video below walks you through the changes but here are some highlights of the core …

Game Theory

Your Links Suck and Your Content Stinks: Now What?

Michael Martinez

Imagine 3 people entering a room. There is a table with 2 chairs on 1 side and 1 chair on the other side. The 3 people choose seats randomly. All 3 bring some unique qualities into the room. Which of the 3 people is most likely to be seen as the “leader” of the group? If you say the one who chooses the lone seat, you’re a proximity marketer. If you say the one who takes the initiative and acts first, you’re an engagement marketer. Proximity Marketing looks for the best angle, the strongest advantage, the leverage that makes a difference. It’s all about location, location, location. In other words, what is fastest, easiest way to get the message to the consumer? In search engine optimization a proximity marketer believes that the only way to influence a search engine algorithm is through [INSERT FORMULA HERE]. Up until about a year ago most SEO agencies would have told you that in order to win in the SERPs you had to have links (they were wrong). Now most SEO agencies tell you that in order to win in the SERPs you have to have content (they are wrong). All you get to […]

Search Engine Land search friendly content SEM Industry: Conferences SEM Industry: Search Marketing Expo - SMX SMX & DMD Alerts SMX Advanced Uncategorized

Live @ SMX Advanced: Think You Know Good Content? Fuggedaboutit. Here’s What Really Counts

Chris Sherman

Ever since Google “pandalized” the rankings of many sites, the mantra of many publishers and search marketers has been “content, content, content.” Wise words: The now ongoing Panda updates are designed to reward websites that offer valuable information and penalize sites…

Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

11 valuable Google Analytics advanced segments

Graham Charlton

Just click on the link and, if signed in to Google Analytics, you’ll be prompted to add the segment to your account. 

Not provided segment for organic search

This is a major pain for marketers, and this segment allows you to quantify exactly how much of a pain it is. Then you can bitch about it with the facts at your fingertips… 

See? Almost 25% of all visits are ‘not provided’: 

It gets worse when you view this as a percentage of organic search traffic. Then it’s almost 65% of all organic queries, essentially rendering measurement of keywords almost useless, in our case at least. 

Not provided custom segment

 

Organic searches minus not provided

This one filters out all the pesky not provided searches so you can concentrate on analysing the keyword referral data you have. 

Organic searces minus not provided

 

Google+ traffic

Who knows? There might actually be some. 

In our case, not an awful lot, as this segment shows. The spike, if you’re interested, was down to the Google+ discussion around this GA custom reports round-up. 

This does show that, if you provide something of value to the G+ audience, and get involved in the discussion, it can produce results. 

Google+ traffic segment

Search queries with multiple keywords

This one comes from the fantastic Avinash Kaushik, and you’ll see a more in-depth explanation on his blog. You’ll see how much time you’ll save with this if you read how Avinash created it. 

Basically, it’s a great way of measuring long-tail traffic, and shows visits with three or more keywords in the search term. 

For Econsultancy over the past month, this segment shows that 22,183 visits used three or more keywords, 19,967 used four or more, 12,454 five or more, and so on. 

Search queries with multiple keywords segment

Branded vs non-branded keywords 

Of course, branded keywords are unique to your business, so you’ll need to create this one yourselves. Here’s how… 

Click on ‘+new segment’ and select ‘exclude’ from the first drop-down. After this, choose ‘dimension’ and select ‘keyword’. 

Then it’s a case of adding your brand keywords to exclude from the non-branded report. If you have more than one, select ‘add AND statement’ and repeat the process for other brand terms. 

For the branded keywords, it’s a similar process, only you need to include the keywords you excluded in the non-brand segment. 

Mobile traffic (excluding tablets)

Google Analytics has a pre-loaded advanced segment for mobile traffic, but this includes tablet traffic. Since mobile and tablet can be very different, it makes sense to look at each individually. 

Mobile traffic (excluding tablets)

Organic traffic with conversions

The next couple of segments will help you to see where converting traffic is coming from. 

This one shows organic search traffic which converts: 

Organic traffic with conversions

 

Social traffic with conversions

This is the same as above, only for traffic from social networks. 

Here’s what it looks like, you can add any social sites which are missing, or remove to show the conversions from one particular network. 

Social traffic with conversions

 

Blog to website traffic

Wany to find out how much traffic your blog is sending to the rest of your site?

This segment shows unique visits where vistors have entered through a blog page and ended up elsewhere on the site. This one only measures unique visitors, but you can edit to add pageviews and other metrics. 

Blog to website traffic

 

Depth of visits

This segment shows the number of visitors viewing three or more pages on your site. (I found this one on Boagworld but I can’t find the exact article).

This is a good way to look at the depth of engagement, and how effective you are at keeping people on the site. 

For example, we try to provide blog visitors with ideas for further reading, through promotion of reports, and related articles, and effective internal linking. 

It’s a good idea to use this segement to compare time periods so you can see how effective your efforts are. 

In our case, happily, we’ve managed to increase the number of visits with three or more pages.

Depth of visits

 

Depth of visits for social traffic

This is a version of the report above, which will show you if social traffic is more or less engaged than the average. 

Here’s what it looks like. You can play around with this and use different traffic sources, page depths or see which of the social networks send the most ‘enagaged’ traffic. 

Depth of visits for social traffic

Depth of visits for social traffic

Related posts: 

What have I missed? Which custom segments do you use regularly? Please let us know below…