What Are B2B Purchasers Looking For? - Teleseminar
Manoj Jasra - Friday, August 31, 2007B2B Marketing Teleseminar - Free online seminar Presented by: Stefan Tornquist, Research Director, MarketingSherpa and Gord Hotchkiss, President & CEO, Enquiro
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
2-3pm Eastern /11-12pm Pacific
- Who makes B2B purchasing decisions?
- How do they evaluate potential products and services?
- How do decision makers interact with online lead gen. forms? (a look at eye tracking data)
Business-to-business transactions represent the most complicated and
convoluted purchase decisions anywhere. Not only are these typically complex
long cycle purchases that require significant research, but they also involve a
number of people in each organization playing different roles. New research
focuses on what three types of business-to-business buyers are looking for: the
user buyer, technical buyer and the all-important economic buyer.
Register Now! for the B2B Teleseminar.
Labels: B2B
Join Web Analytics World on Facebook
Manoj Jasra - Thursday, August 30, 2007
Join our Facebook Group!
Labels: Facebook
Ask.com commercials - still moving in the wrong direction
John W Ellis -Even though they have dropped the algorithm message recently, they still need another basic marketing lesson. Telling the consumer you are not number 1, only reminds them they should use #1. Not you.
Clearly Ask.com is targeting Google in their latest ad. Ask.com needs to stop trying to be Google.
However, this is not to say that Ask.com can not be bigger then Google. They most certainly can, but not by trying to be Google. Google is Google, so Ask.com can not be Google. You can not go back and change the past. Currently, you have nothing to offer that they do not have already.
Consumers don’t remember #2 or # 3. Only #1.
A great marketing book is "Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind". Authors Al Ries and Jack Trout ask some interesting questions:
Ask.com has a positioning problem. They have to find something to be first in. Otherwise, there is first place … and everyone else.
** Find more articles from John W Ellis at http://www.johnwellis.com/
Labels: ASK, john ellis
I ran a quick search engine ranking test for my top referring keywords for Google vs. Yahoo! and noticed that most of the top rankings were at Google and for more than 50% of the keywords my blog was outside the top 30 at Yahoo!
| Keyword | Rank at Google | Rank at Yahoo |
| actionsource | 3 | >30 |
| analytics comparison | 1 | 3 |
| clickdensity | 18 | >30 |
| clicktracks | 9 | >30 |
| david cancel | 8 | 9 |
| digg apps | 4 | >30 |
| embed audio | 12 | >30 |
| facebook vs orkut | 2 | >30 |
| how google makes money | 6 | 29 |
| kpi | 9 | >30 |
| manoj jasra | 1 | 1 |
| noindex nofollow | 5 | 15 |
| omniture actionsource | 3 | 16 |
| omniture flash tracking | 1 | >30 |
| orkut vs facebook | 3 | >30 |
| seo conference san jose | 12 | 14 |
| ses conference | 8 | >30 |
| ses san jose | 16 | >30 |
| ses san jose 2007 | 16 | >30 |
| troy bolton | 15 | >30 |
| ultimate web analytics | 1 | 2 |
| web analytics | 16 | >30 |
| web analytics and search marketing | 1 | 4 |
| web analytics blog | 10 | >30 |
| web analytics comparison | 1 | 1 |
| websidestory | 25 | >30 |
| webtrends | 11 | >30 |
| yahoo api | 7 | >30 |
| yahoo search api | 5 | 20 |
Free Download: In House SEO PDF
Manoj Jasra - Wednesday, August 29, 2007- What is the biggest advantage for an organization to bring Search Marketing In-house?
- What is the biggest challenge in accomplishing a transformation to In-house SEO?
The PDF also includes a bonus section: Links to 10 great In house search marketing resources. Below is a snippet from the In House SEO PDF.
"Often search engine optimization is an after-thought, if it is thought of at all. The biggest benefit for bringing search marketing in-house is that you have someone internal who can champion and represent SEO in the hallways, at meetings, and through relationship building. Also, it gives everyone in the company someone to reach out to for an immediate answer and/or involvement when the need arises." - Jessica Bowman, Business.com.Special thanks to: John Ellis, Jessica Bowman, Jennifer Mathews Somogyi, Aidan Beanland, Rudy DeDominicis and Chris Smith.
Labels: Search Marketing In House, SEO In House
ShopVogue.TV Leverages Marketing Lab2
Manoj Jasra - Tuesday, August 28, 2007Leveraging the interactive nature of emerging Web 2.0 features, ShopVogue.TV features multiple channels of streaming video showcasing the best of fashion, beauty and culture that consumers are able to shop for as they watch. Building on the power of social media trends, viewers are also able to create and share with others their own fashion choices through a new, interactive user-generated feature. By providing compelling programming, rich images and detailed product information, ShopVogue.TV directly connects advertisers with consumers looking for entertainment and inspiration for shopping - both online and off. The site will feature original programming, including “60 Seconds to Chic,” “Behind the Lens”, and the previously syndicated “Trend Watch.”
"ShopVogue.TV is an innovative concept and will change the face of online shopping as we know it,” said Greg Drew, CEO and president, WebTrends. “The unique design provides consumers with an opportunity to further engage with advertised brands, explore new product offerings, interact with other passionate consumers to learn about fashion trends and ultimately move from shopper to buyer. WebTrends provides ShopVogue.TV with the intelligence needed to effectively understand the consumers buying habits and improve advertisers’ retail campaign performance."
Labels: Web Analytics, WebTrends
Eric Enge and his team at Stone Temple Consulting have released the final version of their Web Analytics Shootout Report. If your organization has ever been curious as to which Web Analytics package is the most accurate and which analytics is right for your business then I recommend reading Stone Temple's report.In this report, Stone Temple Consulting compares major web analytics packages on actual websites. The Analytics packages compared include: IndexTools, ClickTracks, Google Analytics, Affinium NetInsight, WebTrends, SiteCatalyst and Visual Sciences' HBX. They compared these analytics packages across the following items:
- Ease of implementation
- Ease of use and reporting
- Strengths of weaknesses of each analytics package
- Accuracy of data
- First party vs. Third Party Cookies
- Placement of JavaScript on page
- Which analytics tool to use for which type of website
What you will find in the Web Analytics Shootout - Final Report
Section 1: An executive summary of the report, key findings, and key takeaways
Section 2: Information about how the study was conducted, and its methodology
Section 3: An analysis of how the user deletion rates of third party cookies and first party cookies differ
Section 4: Comparative data showing:
- Visitors
- Unique Visitors
- Page Views
- Specific segments as defined per site for 2 sites
Section 5: A section on "Why Accuracy Matters"
Section 6: A detailed study of the effect that location of the JavaScript on the web page has on traffic data:
- Test results showing how JavaScript placement affects search results
- A discussion of what this means for web site owners and marketers
Section 7: A qualitative review of the major strengths and weaknesses of all of the packages we worked with during the study.
Labels: Web Analytics
Hitwise: Google Climbs - MSN Falls
Manoj Jasra - Monday, August 27, 2007| Percentage of US Searches Among Leading Search Engine Providers | |||
| Domain | Jul-07 | Jun-07 | Jul-06 |
| www.google.com | 64.35% | 63.92% | 60.23% |
| search.yahoo.com | 22.13% | 21.31% | 22.54% |
| search.msn.com | 8.79%* | 9.85%* | 11.77% |
| www.ask.com | 3.21% | 3.42% | 3.29% |
| Note: Data is based on four week rolling periods (ending 6/30/07; 7/28/07; 7/29/2006) from the Hitwise sample of 10 million US Internet users. * - includes executed searches on Live.com and MSN Search. Please note that the search volume share reported for www.live.com in the Search Engine Analysis Report for the four week rolling period starting the week ending June 9, 2007 includes searches automatically generated from a promotion on club.live.com. Search volume data from July 9, 2007 onwards does not include automatically generated searches from this promotion. | |||
| Source: Hitwise | |||
Labels: HitWise, Industry News
- From a cost perspective, both SES SJ and ad:Tech Chicago are priced similarly at around $1700 for a full conference pass.
- You'll find three times more exhibitors at SES SJ. I found that both shows are getting more and more companies who offer Sponsored Advertising as well as Affiliate Advertisers.
- I found the sessions at SES San Jose gave companies strategies that they could take away and apply to their own businesses. I found that at ad:Tech there were less strategic opportunities, many presentations simply discussed the status of their companies and the conference was much more geared towards future strategies such as mobile (which is good or bad depending on what you're looking for).
- From a networking perspective I noticed that it was easier to speak with people and discuss topics such as the conference, future bussiness opportunities, sessions and search marketing in general.
- If you're into "after conference events" then I think you would appreciate both the Google Dance/Webmaster Radio Bash at SES and the networking party at Fulton's on the River in Chicago. I do have to admit the SES events were geared more towards a younger crowd versus the Chicago event.
Labels: ad:tech, Search Engine Strategies, SES
SES San Jose: Top Takeaways Part 3
Manoj Jasra - Friday, August 24, 2007In this multi-part series we're covering the sessions at Search Engine Strategies San Jose (from the ones we attended) which we thought provided the most value. Yesterday we attended a session called In House: Big SEO which included the following speakers: Jeffrey Rohrs, Bill Macaitis, Marshall D. Simmonds, Melanie Mitchell, and Bill Hunt.
The most useful takeaway was presented by Bill Macaitis, VP Online Marketing at Fox Interactive. Bill Macaitis provided a list of 20 ways to push SEO projects past existing in house/client related barriers. Below is Bill's list and I have also added descriptions as I saw fit.
- Define the Opportunity: Make sure your strategies are aligned with the goals of the company and the strategies are communicated to the appropriate stakeholders.
- Evangelize: When SEO succeeds, let your entire team know.
- Sell all Stakeholders: Get buy-in from stakeholders and educate them on the importance of SEO through metrics that matter to them.
- Find Allies: Get as many people as you can from your company on board with SEO.
- Small Wins: Rather than trying to accomplish everything, create small attainable goals.
- Money Words: Capitalize on the words that affect your bottom line.
- Education/Training: If your teammates "get" SEO, they will be more likely to buy-into strategies.
- Weekly Meetings: Keep teammates and clients informed of tasks/accomplishments with weekly meetings.
- Build Relationships: Internally you can better acknowledge teammates you require to help you succeed with SEO. For your clients, create relationships with more than one "champions" within their organization.
- Bribes: If you need IT/programmers to help you, take them out to lunch or give them small gifts.
- Face to Face with Clients: Build trust by meeting your clients face to face on a quarterly basis.
- Internal Competition: If you have 2 teams working on similar projects what better way to motivate them then to have an internal competition.
- External Competition: Show how your competitors are performing against you for metrics such as rankings/page views/back links, etc....
- Show past Successes: Teammates and Clients will appreciate the rewards for all the hard SEO work.
- Past Failures for Not Implementing: Make everyone aware of the failures as they relate to the bottom line of your company's goals.
- Ranking Reports: Many executive level individuals love to see how their site is performing for their favorite keywords; give them what they want.
- Prioritize Projects: SEO is not the only marketing task therefore it's important to assign priority to projects.
- Names on Projects: If individuals are assigned to specific tasks, they will be more likely to finish them.
- Deadlines: Time lines and deadlines are an absolute must in order for people to understand the importance of completing tasks.
- Accept No Excuses: Don't give up and be persistent because YOUR butt is on the line.
Labels: Search Engine Strategies, SES
SES San Jose: In House: Big PPC
John W Ellis - Thursday, August 23, 2007It was refreshing to learn that even larger, world-wide companies have the same struggles. Although, I thoroughly love my job and my company, there are many unique issues when combing multiple products and brands under one SEM account. It was refreshing to hear that the grass is not really greener on the other side.
For example, when asked about web analytics all three major corporation said they have mixture of various programs for different products and brands. They have product lines that had little or no web analytics. There was also very little combined reporting. They are all wishing, and in some cases working on a combine solution for all of their sites. However, that did not sound like that was happening very soon.
The goal for Fox, Adobe, and Intuit is to combine all search engine marketing efforts of all brands, product lines, and business units. The idea is to not have internal bid wars and messaging conflicts in search marketing efforts. However, one of the struggles was figuring out how to pay for search engine campaigns when all of these business units have their own budgets and accounting codes. There was no clear answer on this topic. They all acknowledge it is a unique, large in-house, problem. Again, that was oddly refreshing to hear that they struggle with that as well.
I also learned from Bill Macaitis, VP of Online Marketing & SEO/SEM at Fox Interactive Media, that he is hiring. He asked several times for contacts and business cards for those who may be interested. I wanted to pass that on to all my search marketing pals.
** Find more articles from John W Ellis at http://www.johnwellis.com/Labels: john ellis, pay-per-click, Search Engine Strategies, SEO In House, SES
“When we started LegalZoom, we never imagined the day that we'd be large enough to launch a major national television campaign,” said Eddie Hartman, chief of
strategy and co-founder, LegalZoom. “Fortunately, we switched to WebTrends
Marketing Lab just in time. Integrating WebTrends throughout our entire site has
given us insight into our customers' specific behavioral patterns that we couldn't get from other companies. The reliability and speed of their systems is head and shoulders above everyone else we'd tried. With the price of advertising rising every day, it's an investment that has already paid off considerably.”
WebTrends Marketing Lab 2 an integrated suite of business solutions that optimize site performance, build customer engagement and drive more effective and targeted marketing. Available through on demand hosted and software options, WebTrends Marketing Lab 2 delivers enterprise-class solutions that can be tailored to the needs of an individual site or line of business with industry-leading reporting, automatic optimization, and marketing intelligence that can grow as customer requirements demand. These solutions include:
- WebTrends Score™, a patented methodology for evaluating visitors’ online behavior by quantifiably measuring the level of engagement or interest they have in content, products and services.
- WebTrends Visitor Intelligence™, a full-featured, multi-dimensional (OLAP) reporting and analysis solution providing deep insight into the person behind the visitor to drive micro-targeted marketing and online experiences that increase engagement and build loyalty.
- WebTrends Dynamic Search™, the solution that leverages True Optimization™ to automatically monitor, measure, and tune the variables impacting the success of paid search advertising.
- WebTrends Analytics™, analytics solution with collaboration tools and performance dashboards that deliver insight across organizations to understand and improve how visitors interact with web sites and marketing initiatives.
“LegalZoom joins other customers adopting WebTrends Marketing Lab 2 including
leading financial services, retailers, and media companies seeking to take advantage of the solution suite that provides marketers with the insight to optimize online marketing and increase consumer engagement,” said Greg Drew, CEO and president, WebTrends. “These customers provide testament to the depth and performance of the ML2 solutions suite and our ability to offer a secure future in delivering business value across their organizations.”
Labels: HBX, Web Analytics, WebTrends
SES San Jose: Top Takeaways Part 2
Manoj Jasra - Wednesday, August 22, 2007- Gord Hotchkiss presented the findings from an eye tracking study in which they tested the introduction of personalized results in Google's organic SERP. The conclusion was more clickthroughs, time spent and fixations on the results. The takeaway here is the importance of optimizing your results to be included in Google's personalized results. This includes applying themes to your website, adding competitive comparisons (to keep users on your site longer), adding useful widgets to engage visitors and to promote back links through the viral affect.
Sep Kamvar of Google confirmed that it is important to keep users on your site as long as possible, furthermore, widgets are an excellent way to engage users. Tim Mayer of Yahoo mentioned that it was important for your site to become experts on a unique subject and to use Delicious and Yahoo answers to help with this. - Jonathan Mendez brought up another good point on how companies should offer personalized content on their sites by analyzing all parts of referring URLs (esp search engines) such as: Language, Silo, and keyword. Natural search engine parameters are very easy to decipher using standard server side scripting languages such as PHP or ASP so try serving up dynamic content based on the parameters in the URL.
On another note, if anyone found a Silver Canon A85 Digital Camera at the Google Dance, please let me know, thanks!
Labels: Search Engine Strategies, SES
CMS Watch Introduces Courses on Business Process Management
Manoj Jasra - Tuesday, August 21, 2007Analysis and design of both process and content are the twin pillars of successful content technology implementations. Without these skills effectively in practice, technology alone cannot enable an enterprise to effectively manage business information and processes.
Developed by CMS Watch in conjunction with the AIIM Educational Advisory Group, these new courses bring together core concepts and best practices to give enterprises the proficiency to begin solving difficult information access and business process challenges.
The courses offer a strategic overview, including building a business case, leadership, and process/information governance. The BPM course then continues by covering the parts of BPM, such as Business Analysis, Flowcharting, Process Modeling, BPM Architecture and Technologies, the role of Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), and Collaboration.
The IOA course covers the nuts and bolts of content audits and inventories, taxonomies, metadata, document and content modeling, search tools and techniques, text mining, the user experience of information access, social tagging, security and privacy, information organization standards, and findability.
Alan Pelz-Sharpe, CMS Watch Principal, led the development of the BPM curriculum. "These courses offer a core base of knowledge to deal with information overload and process inefficiencies," said Pelz-Sharpe. "Investment in technologies without this base of knowledge and experience is much less likely to be successful."
Courses are offered as a 2-day Practitioner course or a complete 4-day Master course starting in September 2007. Workshops in Asia-Pacific are planned for 2008. Successful participants receive official Practitioner or Master designation from AIIM.
Training schedules, locations, learning objectives, and other workshop details can be found at http://cmswatch.com/Training/.
Labels: CMS Watch
SES San Jose: Top Takeaways Part 1
Manoj Jasra - Monday, August 20, 2007I thought I would simply report on information I found most valuable to readers and on strategies they could apply for their own online campaigns.
- Bill Tancer of Hitwise mentioned that in the late 90's portals such as Excite and Yahoo used to be people's homepages, in the early 2000's the homepages changed to search engines and today it's Social Networking sites such as Facebook and Myspace. This should make everyone aware of the importance of having a presence in Social Networking spaces, whether it's through groups, advertising, web applications or gaining an understanding of end users.
- Compete.com's Jeremy Crane showed that women tend to use Google less than men and tend to use ASK, Yahoo and MSN more often than men. He also said Seniors also tend to spread out their searches across the big 4 search engines. The takeaway here is that it's in order to gain the best returns it's important to segment your online campaigns/advertising to your target audience.
All 4 players offer industry leading rating and analytical information services which can potentially allow you to offer a more focused strategy to your audience.
Labels: Search Engine Strategies, SES
This Weeks Must Reads in Search Marketing
Manoj Jasra - Sunday, August 19, 2007By 'this week' I actually mean 'last week.' In no particular order, here are some articles/posts worth checking out:
- The Long Tail Is Dead -- Long Live the Long Tail - Kevin Newcomb at Search Engine Watch
- Greg Stewart: This Just In, Google Recruits Local Sales Force
- ASK Enquiro: Website Usability: How Can You Improve It?
- Tamar Weinberg: How Should You Handle High-Performing Keywords in Google AdWords? for SE Round Table
- SEOBook: What Is The Advantage Of A .Org Domain Name?
- Unofficial SEO: What Is The Advantage Of A .Org Domain Name?
- Eye Tracking Video: Capture Everything - Web Analytics World
- Google Analytics: Your success stories wanted
I will be reporting live on the best takeaways from Search Engine Strategies San Jose this week, so stay tuned for daily updates from the conference.
Labels: Industry News, Must Reads
MarketMotive Launched by Marshall, Stebbins and Kaushik
Manoj Jasra - Friday, August 17, 2007
John Marshall (previously CEO, ClickTracks), Michael Stebbins, and Avinash Kaushik have recently launched a new venture called MarketMotive. MarketMotive teaches a complete set of step by step programs for web analytics, SEO, paid search, online press and more. MarketMotive is looking to add the top minds in Internet marketing to their roster which already includes Todd Malicoat and Greg Jarboe."The distillation of our thinking, our philosophy, our advice and our tricks will be available through a subscription only website. Content within the site is exclusive material and is guaranteed to be timely and accurate. The tutorials will explain exactly how to get something done, walking you through the appropriate tools (and of course, we're vendor neutral). In addition, subscribers can hire Market Motive for direct 1:1 advice." - CTO, John Marshall
Some of MarketMotive's services include:
- An Internet marketing audit which covers:
- Search engine performance and site optimization
- PPC and paid advertising
- Web analytics implementation
- Email and customer communication system
- Web site conversion systems
- Speaking
- Premium Content (training material)
- Hands on assessment and implementation of Web Analytics, Email Marketing, PPC, Conversion Analysis and PR
Labels: Industry News, Web Analytics
Troy Bolton is so dreamy! – and other marketing lessons
John W Ellis - Thursday, August 16, 2007Friday August 17th is a big day in our house. It's the premier of High School Musical 2 on Disney Channel. Do the names Troy, Gabriella, Sharpay or Ryan ring any bells?
Now from this point in my post I have probably lost some of you. Trust me there is a marketing lesson here for all of us.
High School Musical 2 will break many Nielsen ratings this week. The soundtrack will be #1 on Billboard's Album charts soon. This is a phenomenon that you need to know about. You need to know how this became a hit. You need to know how to use these tools to market your product.
Disney targeted a relatively small audience and it exploded into a huge success. Through their very specific messaging, they allowed the audience to spread the word themselves.

With the first High School Musical there was very little advertising, outside of the Disney Channel. That would have been a waist of money. They knew they could not spread the words as easy as their audience could.
Now you don’t have to like the movie. I realize it's not for everyone, but you do have to appreciate the marketing efforts that made this the hit that it is.
For details on the steps they took to market this product, read my prior post: Disney used PyroMarketing to push High School Musical
** Find more articles from John W Ellis at http://www.johnwellis.com/
Labels: john ellis, marketing
For more information visit: http://www.enquiroresearch.com/. Enquiro Research will also be at Search Engine Strategies San Jose, booth #333.
Embed the video onto your site:
Labels: Eye Tracking
How to Get Started with Eye Tracking
Manoj Jasra - Wednesday, August 15, 2007
How do customers use my site? What areas of the page are customers focusing on and what content engages their attention? What areas of the page attract the most attention and thus should be utilized for calls-to-action and important messaging? Is our site easy to use?All the above can be answered with an Eye Tracking Study from Enquiro Research. A "basic package" Eye Tracking Study is very affordable and will quickly allow you to make effective decisions on your online campaign.
Enquiro Research's Basic Eye Tracking Study package, includes:
- Diagnosis
- Study design
- Panelist recruitment
- Conducting of the Eye Tracking Study with 60 panelists
- 2 possible scenarios (e.g. your conversion vs. your competitor’s)
- Data analysis
- A written report with specific recommendations
- Presentation and consultation on results
- All raw data, posted on a secure website, including aggregate heatmaps, gaze plots and participant session movies burned onto DVD
Optional Add-Ons 
- Exit Survey during the study to capture the subjects’ impressions of your site
- Enquiro presentation at your company
- Progressive time-sliced heatmaps
For more information visit: http://www.enquiroresearch.com/ or check Enquiro Research out at Search Engine Strategies San Jose, booth #333.
Labels: Eye Tracking, Search Engine Strategies
Internet Usage Trends Widget by Hitwise
Manoj Jasra - Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Hitwise, announced the launch of a new Hitwise Widget featuring online usage trends from Hitwise To Go, an RSS-based service that provides statistics on online usage behavior for the US, UK and Asia Pacific markets. This is the first release of a series of widgets designed to make it easy for marketers, academics, the press and digital enthusiasts to have access to the latest insights into online consumer usage.The Hitwise To Go Widgets can be downloaded at:
US: http://www.hitwise.com/resources/hitwise-widget.php
UK: http://www.hitwise.co.uk/resources/hitwise-widget.php
Asia Pacific: http://www.hitwise.com.au/resources/hitwise-widget.php
The Hitwise To Go Widget is available on the Yahoo Widget platform which runs on both Mac and PC platforms. The widget will soon to be available on Google Gadget and Yourminis platforms. A widget is typically a download application to a desktop that provides easy access to frequently used functions or provides some visual content of any kind, such as news, weather or maps. In this case, the Hitwise To Go widget allows users to view the latest in online trends.
“Releasing our data via desktop widgets makes it easy for digital enthusiasts to stay informed about key online trends as they happen. They also serve as a gateway to access a full archive of online statistics and other publicly available Hitwise data sources such as the Hitwise Analyst Blogs and our Data Center.” said Tessa Court, chief marketing officer for Hitwise.
- Local IP Exclusion: Have you blocked local IP addresses as well as your vendors' so that their activity doesn't get included within your results? If your site receives tens of millions of page views monthly this won't have a huge impact, however for websites that receive only 1,000-10,000 page views, this will skew the data.
- Sub Domains: Not all analytics solutions automatically track activity on a sub domain of a website, so make sure you either have activated the sub domain in the code or in the analytics admin area. Here's how you do it in Google Analytics:
_uacct = "ACCOUNT NUMBER HERE";
_udn = "DOMAIN HERE";
urchinTracker(); - Email/Download Links: Contact forms and newsletter email registrations aren't the only way to measure the number of leads and conversions. Don't forget to apply appropriate tracking for links to emails and downloadable collateral. Here's an example of how to track a link in Omniture's SiteCatalyst:
a
onclick="s_linkType='o'; s_linkTrackVars='s_events'; s_linkTrackEvents='event#'; s_linkName='Contact us email@domain.com'; s_events='event#'; s_lnk=s_co(this); s_gs(reportsuite);" href="mailto:email@domain.com">email@domain.com
/a - Development vs. Production: During the publish from the development to the production environment make sure you're referencing the correct attributes and files on the production server.
- Paid Search: Analytics providers often don't automatically attribute Paid keyword referrals to PPC unless there is an admin setting turned on or the referring URLs have appropriate parameters appended to them. Forgetting to setup Paid Search tracking can result in the inflation of natural/organic search referrals.
- Tagging Error Pages: Error pages are part of your site as well and a great way to determine if there are any navigational issues throughout the website, so make sure they're tagged.
- Internal search: Want to know what users are looking for on your website? Without being able to identify the internal search queries, this task becomes increasingly difficult. EpikOne has a useful post on how to track internal search queries using Google Analytics.
- QA and Testing: This should be an obvious one not to forget but after a long implementation, QA and Testing often don't get integrated into the implementation plan.
There you have it, 8 items to permanently add to your checklist for a proper web analytics implementation.
Download the Checklist - PDF!
Labels: Web Analytics, Web Analytics Implementation

The Simpsons Movie Spurs Immense Growth to Burger King Site
As the top gaining property for the month, Burger King experienced a 774-percent increase to 4.2 million visitors. The tremendous jump in traffic was attributed to
tie-ins with the recently-released The Simpsons Movie.
Labels: Link Bait
If you're constantly checking out the various Google Blogs for new posts using your RSS feed reader or manually browsing to them then I recommend you check out this new Yahoo Pipe I created.I basically took 20+ popular Google Blogs, grabbed their RSS Feeds and added a simple sort by date operator. The result was a quick way to see the latest news from various Google blogs in one quick snapshot. Some of the Google Blogs I added to my Yahoo Pipe included: The main Google Blog, Google Analytics Blog, Google Adsense Blog, Google Finance Blog, Google Gmail Blog and about a dozen more.
Here's a segment of what the output lo








