Archive for August, 2010
Tracking Offline Advertising with Google Analytics
August 11th, 2010 | 
Author: When we talk about tracking campaigns, it is not enough to focus only on online campaigns. We have to include the offline campaigns in our reports for complete analysis. You will need to use the Google Analytics URL Builder. In this section, I will share with you one method of tracking your offline campaigns in Google Analytics in 2 simple steps:
- In your offline ads, refer visitors to a page that is unique to the campaign; [www.store.com/computers]
- Tag all visitors to the unique page with the campaign variables [source, medium, & campaign name] set in the GA URL Builder.
How to tag all visitors to www.store.com/computers with the campaign variables?
We will assume that all visitors to the unique landing page [www.store.com/computers] are coming from a specific offline campaign lets say the ComputerUSA magazine.
How do we tag destination URLs?
- Go to the URL Builder
- Enter the following variables into the URL builder:
Website URL: http://www.store.com/computers Campaign Source: ComputerUSA Campaign Medium: Magazine Campaign Name: Holiday Promo - Add the following code to the header of landing page before the Google Analytics tracking code
<head> <link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.store.com/mother” /> <meta http-equiv=”refresh” content=”1;URL=http://www.store.com/?utm_source=usa-today&utm_medium=newspaper&utm_campaign=Mother’s%2BDay%202010″> </head>
Replace the url in the code above with your new url from the URL Builder.
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Does a domain matter in SEO?
A lot of people ask if domains matter when it comes to SEO. My answer to this question, is a big fat YES! A unique domain name describing something that you are trying to rank for is huge. It can dramatically help in organic rankings. For example: If you sold bachelorette party favors, you might have your domain be something like “bachelorettepartyfavors.com” because that is what people are typing in.
I know what you are thinking… Why did I pick that as an example. Reason being is that it is a niche term and people definitely make those kinds of purchases online. Niche terms tend to convert better when the domains are specific to one product vertical.
The search algorithms look at these domains as highly relevant sites because they match exactly what a user is putting into the search bar. The difficulty is that your company might not be able to use a domain like this(—Obviously not bachelorette related but something you sell) due to branding issues. However, if you can use a specific url to one of your products, you will be on your way to higher rankings.
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