Independent Digital

By Andrew Grant

If you think of Google as only useful for search and for emtying your wallet via your Adwords account; think again. One of it?s most useful services is completely free and very powerful.. Analytics is a no-charge, website tracking system that will give you incredible insight into the visitors to your site and how they use it.

OK, maybe you didn?t know it existed. Well you will find it at http://www.google.com/analytics or if you already have a Google Adwords account, take a look at the tabs at the top of your screen and you?ll see that you can access Analytics there too. Why not visit Analytics and sign up for your free account.

Setting it up is pretty easy. There are two bits of code which Analytics will generate automatically for you. One is the tracker code, which simply needs to be copied and pasted to the pages of your website. Some webmasters only put the code on their main pages, but I?d recommend putting it on every single page ? that way your stats will be much more in depth.

The other code is for Conversion tracking, which I?ll cover in a minute.

So now you have it set up, let me tell you the three reason why I absolutely love Analytics.

Reason #1 ? it?s incredibly comprehensive. Analytics will tell you how many visitors came to your site, how long they stayed, what pages they looked at, which site they came from, what kind of browser they had, what country they live in and whether they have been before.

It will tell you which keywords, campaigns and ad versions brought them here. It will tell you how long they stayed on each page, which page they looked at before and which one they went to next. It will tell you which page they came in on and which one they left from. You can look at the site as a whole, or each individual page and you can analyse whole months or just a single day.

In fact, at times there is almost too much data, so I tend to focus on my key metrics. Number of unique visitors, top pages and most importantly the traffic source. For example I know exactly how many visitors are brought in by my pay-per-click campaign and how many come from my article writing efforts. This is powerful because it allows me to directly measure my free of charge traffic building activity against my paid advertising.

Reason #2 ? Conversion tracking. The second piece of code that Analytics will generate is a conversion tracker. This is copied and pasted to whichever page or pages in your site mean that you have a made a sale. I use it for my newsletter sign-ups, by putting the code on the Thank you page.

Once a vistor arrives there, Analytics will record the visit and allow me to cross reference against other statistics.

For example, I know that visitors who find my site in a standard web search and click on the link, are almost twice as likely to sign up for the newsletter as those who come from an Adwords ad. So, you can see why free traffic is so valuable. Not only does it cost nothing but it is better quality too.

Reason #3 – Last but by no means least, Analytics lets me test and tweak to my heart?s content. Having such comprehensive data at my fingertips, means that I can see the effect of any change to my site, the very next day.

If I change my home page, I can soon see the effect on my conversions and watch whether visitors now navigate down a different route. I can see if they spend more, or less time reading my new content and I can see what it makes them do afterwards.

No matter what tweaks I make, the results are rapidly available to me and if things go wrong and traffic or conversions fall, I can see immediately what needs to be done.

Back to my original question. If you?re not using Google Analytics on your site. Why Not?

Hi my name is Andrew Grant, I’d like to invite you to visit my website and subscribe to my newsletter for more information and inspiration on Internet Marketing, Goal Setting and Positive Thinking. http://www.money-and-mind.com

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Now you can view presentations on Google Analytics on YouTube! Filmed live at the first Google Conversion University event on the 1st August, 2007. Have a look at the complete playlist here Google Analytics Playlist or check out the individual topics:

• The following by the Google Analytics evangelist and author, Avinash Kaushik
• Bounce Rate: The Simply Powerful Metric
• Non Ecommerce Sites: Beyond Averages
• Context and Actionability in Web Analytics

Have a look at his book, Web Analytics: An Hour a Day


• Introduction to Conversion University by Brett Crosby
• Optimal AdWords campaign by Stephanie Hsu
• Advanced techniques by Alex Ortiz
• Website Optimizer by Tom Leung

You can look forward to many more in-depth YouTube movies on Google Analytics.

Where should I place Google ads on my pages?

Certain locations on the page are ?hotter? than others. In the accompanying image (below), we notice that the colors fade from dark orange (strongest performance) to light yellow (weakest performance). Also, ads placed above the fold tend to perform better than ads placed near rich content and navigational bars because users are focused on those areas of a page.

Always put your users first when deciding on ad placement. Consider how they will navigate the page, and what will be most useful and visible to them. Sometimes this will call for the ad to be placed other than where expected.

Tip number eleven to follow. If you want to advertise your website for free then have a look at goFreeClick free text ads.

Making AdSense fit your forum site

Ad placement and format are crucial when designing successful ads for a forum site.

• Placement. Display your ad units where repeat users will notice them
• Forum regulars usually skip the header and go straight to the thread, so ad units above or below the first post can be more effective than ads next to the logo
• Put a leaderboard at the end of the last post which gives the user a ‘next step’ when the content ends. Avoid placing it after the footer
• Formats. Adapt your design for multiple ad units and limited space
• Multiple ad units allow you to use a variety of formats to fill ad space on your site. Skyscrapers above the fold on the left side of your forum produces better results than elsewhere. However, when using multiple ad units throughout the page, the leaderboard is still the best. See the image below:

  

• Place horizontal link units just below the header as these offer a wider range of relevant topics to browse

Always be sure to blend the ads so they don’t appear overly intrusive – but then be careful not to blend them so well that they mislead your users!

Consider using image ads to increase the pool of ads to display on your site. Forums tend to have lower clickthrough so use CPM (cost per 1000 impressions) ads that can improve revenue without the need for clicks.

This is the final of the eleven hot tips on how to make money with google adsense. If you want to advertise your website for free then have a look at goFreeClick free text ads.

Google adsense allows website owners to place ads on their websites for which they receive payment from Google when the ad is clicked.

Ads can be in text, image or even video format. When you sign up with Google adsense, you choose the format and then paste the generated javascript on your webpage. You need to choose the position carefully so that the ad is highly visible. When the page is viewed, Google determines from its index of webpages, which ad to display. If your webpage has not been indexed, then Googles? bot will scan the page to determine which is the appropriate ad.

Google adwords is an ad server. It contains ads that participating advertisers have added to the server. Google adsense calls on the adwords server to ?serve? or display the appropriate ad. Advertisers, who use Google adwords to create their adverts for display, bid on keywords and phrases. The more popular the word or phrase, the more expensive it is. They are then charged each time the ad is clicked. Website owners using adsense get a percentage of this revenue. The ads can either be displayed in Googles? search engine results page or within the content of a webpage. Google adsense is an ideal means for website owners to generate an income. However from an advertising point of view, Google adwords although an effective means of advertising, can be very expensive. The alternative is goFreeClick free text ads. Working on a similar principle as Googles? adsense, goFreeClickallows advertisers to create up to 10 adverts which are then displayed on participating websites, all for free. The only catch is that advertisers place the javascript code on their webpage. This code will then display the appropriate ad when the page is viewed. GoFreeClickis not a means of generating an income for website owners but it is definitely an effective means of free advertising.