As many Internet Marketers understand, learning how to maximize the conversion funnel on your website or blog is essential for capitalizing on leads/sales.

• Add fields that are MANDATORY only
• Remove “Optional” fields
• Explain that you do not spam
• Add secure payment logos
• Give multiple payment/shipping options
• Show a cart summary during the process
• Remove unnecessary steps or combined steps

Google Analytics is a comprehensive reporting tool, that allows you to gain insights into your website visitors. However even though it provides a lot of useful data, there are still a few limitations.

Here are some neat hacks and plugins you can use to import detailed data into Google Analytics.

Getting Started with Google Analytics

If you need a complete guide to Google Analytics I highly recommend the Google Analytics Cheatsheet(pdf), created by Ian Lurie with Conversation Marketing.

Pull Adwords Keyword Data into Google Analytics

I’m sure you hate when you look at Google Analytics under Keywords and see “other unique queries”. Well this shows you exactly what the user searched. The keyword on the left is the keyword or phrase you are bidding on in Google Adwords and the keyword in the ( ) is the exact term the user searched. This can help you refine your campaigns by seeing exactly what is being searched to find your ad. It may be that you need to narrow the search match or add a negative to the campaign.

To add this to your Google Analytics data, follow these instructions.

Tracking Files Such as PDF, AVI, and CSV

In order to track files you need to tag the link with the _trackPageview() JavaScript.

To see an example of how this is done you can it in the Google Analytics Help Center.

Track Universal Traffic with Google Analytics

With the evolution of universal search it can be hard to know which type of listing a user clicked on. Say you have a video link, website link and blog link all on the same page of the search results. How do you know which result they clicked on? Here is how.

You need to apply these advanced filters:
Step 1 :
Create filter for organic traffic
New filter ->
Filter name `Organic`
Filter Type -> Custom Filter
Checked : include
Filter Field: Campaign Medium
Filter Pattern `organic`

Step 2:
Create filter for All Universal Search traffic
New Filter: ‘Universal Search Items
Filter Type: Custom Filter
Checked: Advanced
Field A -> Extract A -> Referral -> (.*)oi=([a-zA-Z_]+)&(.*)
Field B -> Extract B -> Referral -> (?|&)q=([^&]*)
Output To -> Constructor -> User Defined -> $B2 : $A2

You can also create separate filters for some of the Universal Search items instead of all of them

Custom Step:
Create filter for Universal Search – specific
New Filter: ‘Universal Search | images’
Filter Type: Custom Filter
Checked: Advanced
Field A -> Extract A -> Referral -> (.*)oi=image(.*)
Field B -> Extract B -> Referral -> (?|&)q=([^&]*)
Output To -> Constructor -> User Defined -> $B2 : $A2

Get more information about how you can setup tracking for universal search.

Tracking Local Search in Google Analytics

There are a number of ways you can track and segment localized traffic. Here are a few ways you can do it.

• Track Traffic From the Local 10/7 Pack
• Track Local Search Traffic from People in Your Area
• Create a Local Filter for a State or City
• Tracking Outbound Links
• Track Conversions By Location

Track Full URL in Google Analytics

Using the full URL can help you to see exactly where someone came from, instead of just the root level domain.

Add this filter to your Analytics profile:

Custom Filter
Advanced
Field A -> Extract A: Referral (.*)
Field B -> Extract B:
Output To -> Constructor: User Defined $A1
Field A Required: Y
Field B Required: N
Override Output Field: Y
Case Sensitive: N

Tracking Social Media Traffic in Google Analytics

• Tracking Twitter with Google Analytics
• Segment Social Media Traffic in Google Analytics
• Pull in Social Bookmarking Data in Google Analytics (Greasemonkey Script)
• Tracking New RSS Subscribers in Google Analytics

Tracking Outbound Links with Google Analytics

Currently you can see traffic coming from inbound links, but what about outbound links? There is a really neat jQuery plugin that will allow you to track outbound link data in Google Analytics. Visit Think2Loud to download the plugin and get instructions.

Once you have installed the plugin your data will look something like this.

Tracking SEO Rankings in Google Analytics

Have you ever wanted to see what page the user clicked on your listing in the
search engines. Well now you can, by setting up an advanced filter. It will look something like this when it is completed.

Get detailed instructions on how to add rankings to Google Analytics by visiting the Yoast website.

Tracking Website Optimizer Data in Google Analytics

This script will allow you to make the most out of your A/B and Multi-Variate tests, by leveraging the full use of Google Analytics.

See the full instructions on how to track website optimizer in GA.

About The Author
Mark is the Internet Marketing Manager for Atlantic BT, a full-service Web Design & Marketing company, located in Raleigh, North Carolina. He also is the creator of StayOnSearch, a search marketing blog dedicated to SEO’s and Internet Marketing professionals.

Follow Mark on Twitter (@m_thompson)

There are a number of SEO tools I use on a daily basis to help me analyze a client or competitors website. I will use specific tools depending on what type of data I am looking to analyze. If you have an Analytics job These tools can save you a lot of time when researching links, on-page/off-page SEO, social media, ORM, and site analytics.

Best of all.. each of these tools all free!

1. SEO Toolbar

This is by far the best SEO tool out there. No matter what client or industry I am researching, I always start with the data provided by the SEO Toolbar. It will give you a snapshot of a site, by providing high level information search engines analyze when ranking websites. Even though the toolbar will give you lots of different data points, there are only certain things I look at. I look at the follow data to get a basic overview of the site.

• Domain Age
• Inbound Links
• PageRank
• Pages Indexed
• SEO X-ray (nofollow links, H tags, meta data)

2. Xenu

There was a great post written by Ann Smarty that talks about the different things you can do with the Xenu tool.

Basically this tool will allow you to scan and analyze a site to help find potential problems.

• Broken Links
• Depth of the Site (crawling issues)
• Potential Duplicate Content Issues
• Orphan Pages
• 404 Error Pages

3. Website Grader

This web-based tool, allows you to enter a url and it will analyze the site, then it creates a user-friendly SEO report. This can be an easy report to generate for a potential client. However, sometimes it can be overwhelming for people because of all of the information it returns.

• Overall SEO Score (out of 100)
• Basic On-Page SEO (Meta data, Alt tags, H tags)
• Basic Off-Site SEO (Domain Age, Pages Indexed, Inbound Links)
• Blog Analysis
• Social Media Analysis

4. SEO for Firefox

SEO for Firefox is a plugin that will pull in data about the site within the Google search results. I will use this to see how fierce the competition is and to help determine how much effort and time it will take to optimize a potential clients site. The nice thing about SEO for Firefox is the flexibility to only add data into the results that you want to see. These are the data points I pull in:

• PageRank
• Inbound Links
• Domain Age
• Google and Yahoo Rankings

5. Rank Checker

Rank Checker is a stand alone firefox plugin (also on the SEO Toolbar) that allows you to check the rankings of a site for specific keywords/phrases. One nice feature about Rank Checker is you can check not only US search engines, but foreign versions of Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Data I pull from this tool include:

• Baseline Rankings
• Ranking Improvements
• What URL is Ranking

6. AuditMyPC: Sitemap Generator

There are a lot of sitemap generator tools out there, however I feel that this is the best…plus its free.

• Generate a XML Sitemap
• Generate a HTML Sitemap
• Analyze Website Pages & Structure

7. Reverse IP Lookup

This tool allows you to see what other domains are on the same server. It is not often, but sometimes if a site that has been penalized by Google is hosted on the same server as your site, it can penalize ALL that are on the shared hosting server. This is another reason why being on your own dedicated server can help your SEO.

8. Yahoo! Site Explorer

There are a number of link analysis tools like Link Diagnosis, BackLink Watch, and Link Assistant, however Yahoo! Site Explorer I feel still does the best job of not only finding backlinks, but ordering them in place of importance. Here are the main things I will look at when analyzing SiteExplorer links.

• Total # of Inbound Links
• Anchor Text
• Sites of the Fir
  st 10-20 Results
• PR of those site (Yoast Firefox Extension)

9. SocialMention

To see what is being said about a potential or current client, I will use a variety of real-time search engines. I usually will start at SocialMention because it will scour the web including Blogs, Q&A, Forums, Mircoblogs, Social Bookmarks, Events, Video, and News sites for mentionings of your brand or keyword you enter. I can get a better understanding of:

• Brand Perception
• Brand Reach
• Industry Position
• Influencers in the Industry
• Types of Communication/Discussions

10. Google Analytics

Of course if you have access to a clients Google Analytics you can find out a wealth of knowledge that you wouldn’t be able to gather with free tools anyone can use. When I first look at a sites analyics I will look at certain data including:

• Daily Traffic
• Traffic Sources
• Keywords
• Geo-Location
• User Engagement
• Conversions

With all of these free tools you can learn a lot about a potential/current client and your competitors. You are able to cover a wide spectrum of information including on-page/off-page factors, social media, reputation management, and user engagement. Feel free to try one or all of these tools the next time you perform some research on a site.

About the Author:

Mark is the Internet Marketing Manager for Atlantic BT, a full-service Web Design & Marketing company, located in Raleigh, North Carolina. He also is the creator of StayOnSearch, a search marketing blog dedicated to SEO’s and Internet Marketing professionals.

You can also Follow Mark on Twitter.