Google Reveals its Three Most Important Ranking Signals

We’ve already heard that RankBrain, Google’s artificial intelligence system, is the “third most important signal contributing to the result of a search query” and it seems like we may have confirmation on the top two factors as well.

During a live Q&A from WebPromo with Andrey Lipattsev, the Search Quality Senior Strategist at Google Ireland, SEO expert Ammon Johns suggested to Lipattsev that, knowing what we know about RankBrain, it would surely be beneficial to everyone if we also knew what the other two signals were.

And surprisingly, Andrey Lipattsev, obliges…

“It’s content and links pointing to your site.”

There you go.

I think what’s most surprising about this reply is Lipattsev’s candour. It’s a straight answer with little hesitation, that has an air of “look, you know this already” about it. And to be honest, we did. It’s just nice to have the confirmation.

Ammon Johns follows up with, “In that order?” To which Liplattsev replies, “There is no order.”

And although we believed RankBrain to be the third most important signal, Liplattsev reveals that this position is in fact “hotly contested.”

As Liplattsev warns himself, you should take the following with a pinch of salt…

“If you look at a slew of search results and open up the debugger to see what has come into play to bring about these results, certain things pop-up more or less often. Certain elements of the algorithm come into play for fewer or more cases… If you do that, you may see elements of RankBrain having been involved.”

HOWEVER!!!

“It’s not like having three links is ‘X important’ and having five keywords is ‘Y important’, and RankBrain is some ‘Z factor’ that is also somehow important, and if you multiply it all together [you’ll understand how your page is ranked] it’s not how it works.”

Google is trying to get better at understanding natural language and the meanings behind search queries, it’s still very early days for its machine learning algorithms.

Lipattsev also states that although it’s difficult for Google to claim that ’typed queries’ on mobile and desktop are subsiding voice search is certainly becoming more and more important. Google is also expecting this to bring about more stop words and mechanical language from users, because we still overthink our queries.

Before typing a query we often ask ourselves, “What is a query that is completely non-human in nature that sounds like what the machine will understand.”

It’s probably time we stopped doing this and let the machine learning algorithms get used to the way we actually use language.

Ultimately Google wants to support the people who have just started using the internet, those whose first experience is probably on a mobile, who haven’t developed this unnatural approach to search in the way that we have.

For Google, that’s the future of search.

So at the moment, yes it’s links and content that are keeping your webpages at the top of the SERPs, but with machine learning quickly developing and figuring out the best way to serve results as relevantly and naturally as possible, surely it won’t be long before intent is everything.

Check out the full one-hour long video below. It’s a fascinating watch and also features Rand Fishkin from Moz, Eric Enge from Stone Temple Consulting and Bill Slawski from Go Fish. The key information regarding ranking signals is at the 30 minute mark…

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The History of Google’s Biggest Changes over Time [INFOGRAPHIC]

The biggest change in search marketers’ lives is  arguably how search has morphed and is becoming more and more integrated into our daily routines. While Google innovates, we find ourselves harder to keep up.

For example, do you remember Yahoo and MSN were the alternate competitors to Google? Then, MSN (amongst many rebrands) became Bing all to leave Yahoo in the dust start taking back some search share. Or do you remember how searches were about “things” vs. “strings”? For example, we used to type “lumber utah” to find firewood for sale in Sandy, Utah. Now we ask Google “Where can I find lumber for sale for my fireplace near Sandy, Utah?” Voice search has aided the morphology of that.

Today, what we say and ask Google starts to matter less and less. Google tries to understand us before we even ask. It’ll morph or results based on our location, device we’re using, previous behavior, and more. It’s truly an engine of matching intent vs. matching keywords these days. And, of course, that’s changed how SEOs work.

Watching those keyword rankings go up and down are no longer as meaningful as they once where.  Below, my company MWI highlighted some of the most common theme changes over time.

Let us know in the comments if you know of any others.

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How The Search Engines Rank Content in the Search Results

As users have shifted to mobile devices, the limited screen size of the devices have pushed search engines to squeeze out & displace publishers with their own self-hosted information in an effort to offset the poor usability offered by tiny devices, while ensuring the search habit does not decline.

The philosophy of modern search has thus moved away from starting with information and connecting it to an audience, to starting with the user and customizing the result page to them.

"The biggest three challenges for us still will be mobile, mobile, mobile" - Google's Amit Singhal

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How to Help Your New Website Get Indexed on Google

Imagine this. You’re an entrepreneur with a hot new product. You’re about to launch your website, sell your product, and change the world.

All you need to do is get your website up and running. Oh, and you need to get it to rank, too.

So, how are you going to do it?

Is it possible to create a new website and start ranking on the first page of Google in just a few weeks?

The old-school SEO companies used to claim they could get a “first position” ranking for your company. Today, the SEO game is much different. You can’t guarantee or get first-page ranking with the same bag of black hat tricks. Today, there’s a new content-driven, user-focused approach to SEO.

The process is different, but it is still possible to get your website ranked quickly. I’ll explain how.

Know What You’re Targeting

First, you need to define what it is you’re trying to rank for. There is no such thing as simply ranking. You have to rank for a given keyword.

As you prepare your site for first-page success, decide what keywords you’re trying to rank for. I recommend selecting a few long tail organic keywords. Long tail keywords consist of more than four keywords. They provide the best level of focus and concentration for your site’s SEO.

Marketing Hub wrote a succinct post that defines long tail keywords and factors that proves its power.

According to Moz’s research, long tail queries account for more than 80% of all organic traffic on the Internet.

Here’s why this is important. If you want to rank for a head term, you have virtually no chance of ranking, let alone in the first few weeks of your site’s existence. For example, let’s pretend you want to rank for the term “mobile phone”.

Based on a keyword grading analysis from Moz, this is a hotly contested term.

The sites on the first page of Google have extraordinarily high Domain Authority — as high as 100 (Wikipedia) and 95 (Samsung). You don’t stand a chance.

But why would you want to target a word like that anyway? According to research, longtail keywords have more impressions, more clicks, and more conversions.

That’s what you want, right — more impressions, clicks, and conversions?

If so, then it’s in your best interest to choose a longtail term.

If you want to rank on Google, first define what keywords you’re targeting, and then you can move on to the tactical methods described in this article.

Make Sure You Have a Search Optimized Foundation

The foundation of great SEO begins with a good CMS (content management system), and a good website.

I recommend you build your site using WordPress. WordPress is the world’s most popular CMS for good reason. It’s intuitive, powerful, customizable, and provides a great platform for SEO.

WordPress by itself, however, doesn’t mean that your site will be optimized. You must select a WordPress theme. A theme is the way that your website looks, and how it works.

Tips for selecting a theme:

• Use a theme that has good support. You can probably find a bunch of free themes, but they may not have the level of support you need.
• Select a theme that is lightweight and fast. Site speed is a critical SEO factor, so you want to choose a theme that does not have bloated code. I’ve found the Genesis Framework by StudioPress to have some of the best and strongest coding.
• Choose a mobile optimized theme. A mobile and responsive site is now a requirement for search optimization. According to Google’s mobile algorithm, a site that is not mobile friendly will not be as likely to appear in mobile search results.

Once you’ve got the right theme, I recommend you conduct the next step — installing an SEO plugin. An SEO plugin like Yoast doesn’t do SEO for you. It simply makes it easier for you to do SEO.

Yoast is my choice for SEO plugin, because it provides full functionality for most of the critical SEO elements (apart from SSL and caching, which are handled by other plugins).

I consider these three features — the right CMS (WordPress), the right theme (your choice), and the right plugin (Yoast) to be foundational to a search optimized site. You don’t have to take my recommendations regarding CMS or plugins. If you follow the steps below, you’ll still be able to rank on the first page of Google.

Don’t Allow Your Site to be Indexed Until it’s Ready

Your new website is like a Christmas present. You want it to be wrapped up and put under the tree until it’s time to open it up.

Like a good Christmas present, you don’t want anyone to see it until it’s time to be opened.

To do this for your website, you can create a robots.txt that tells the search engines not to crawl your site. You may also add a noindex and nofollow tag to the site’s header. In WordPress, you can do this by adjusting the site’s privacy settings. Your website hosting provider may even allow a cPanel password protection if you want to add another layer of access security to your site.

The moment you want your site to be live, you should remove these tags (and the password), and let the indexation begin.

Create a Ton of Content

This is where the true SEO power is — creating content. Content is what makes the search world go around.

The most powerful way to propel your site to the top of the SERPs is by developing a lot of content before you let your site get crawled and indexed.

I recommend creating long form content. The exact definition of “long” is debated. Most people agree that long form content is an article or page consisting of 2,000 words or more. What’s indisputable, however, is the impact that long form has in the search results.

• SerpIQ discovered long content is correlated with higher search results. In other words, the more content on a page, the higher that site ranked in the search engines.
• When Moz measured word count and search ranking, they found a similar trend. Longer content received better indexation, higher ranking, and more backlinks — all ingredients to a successful website.
• My research and testing corroborated these findings. Long content like the kind I publish on my blog gets stellar rankings, compared with equivalent and high-quality content of a shorter length.

To help your website get ranked quickly, here is what you should do:

• Create at least 25 longform pages.
• Make each page focused, high-quality, and relevant for your target audience.
• Use keywords or semantic variants in the page titles.
• Make these pages 2,000 words or longer.

Once your site goes live, it will make a major indexation splash, and start to soar in the SERPs. Even though many SEOs know that longform content works, it’s hard to actually do the hard work of creating it.

If you do the work of creating the content, then the search engines will find you and rank you accordingly.

Keep Creating Content

Don’t simply create the content and stop. Keep at it.

The search engines reward websites that have a regular output of high quality content. Based on Moz research, the freshness of your content influences its ranking.

One of the things working in favor of a new website is the fact that it is new. Due to Google’s algorithm, newer websites — or recently updated websites, to be more precise — are likely to edge out more authoritative sites that publish content less frequently.

As an example of this, check out the following SERP (with scores from Moz). The top ranked page for “credit card score” is a page on CreditKarma.com. Notice that this page outranks both CreditCards.com and Credit.com. Why is this the case?

One reason is CreditKarma.com has been updated in the last two weeks. The other two sites have not been updated recently. Even though they have hundreds of thousands more backlinks, double the page authority, and more rank, CreditKarma steals the show. Even though it’s the new kid on the block, it gets higher ranking due to regular updating.

The takeaway is straightforward. Even though you may gain great ranking, you cannot rest on your success. You must continue to create great content if you expect to maintain your position.

Promote Your Content

Finally, you need to get people to read your content.

Many times, a site won’t get recognized by the search engines until it gets recognized by users. Why is this the case? It has to do with the impact of user metrics on search ranking.

When Google ranks a site, it does so based on more than 200 factors. One of those factors is <i>how many people click the site in the SERPs. The number of people clicking your site from the SERPs isn’t any secret. You can find out yourself using Google webmaster tools.

Moz considers this to be one of the top ten categories of the Google algorithm.

The more people you have looking for and clicking on your site, the better your ranking.

This introduces a bit of circularity into the issue. In order to get high rankings, you must have a lot of searches and visitors. But in order to get a lot of searches and visitors, you must have high rankings. Which comes first? How do you jump into the cycle?

The answer lies in promotion. Don’t simply publish content and expect it to magically become an overnight sensation. It’s up to you to promote it.

How do you promote it? The goal of promotion is to get eyes on your content. People need to see it, read it, click it, share it, interact with it, comment on it, copy it, email it, etc.

Here is what you can do:

• Facebook ads/promoted posts
• Email newsletters
• Sharing it with influencers and asking them to share it on their social networks
• Posting it on Facebook
• Posting it on Twitter
• Posting it on Google+
• Posting it on LinkedIn
• Posting images on Pinterest
• Posting it on industry forums
• Posting it in comments
• Promoting it using PPC
• Syndicating it

Don’t do anything dumb like buying links on Fiverr. Instead, go through the typical social and sharing channels.

Notice again, the algorithmic factors analyzed by Moz. Directly underneath “user usage” is the category, “Page-Level Social Metrics.”

Page-level social metrics are things like Twitter and Facebook shares. The more social signals that circulate around your page, the better it’s going to rank. You can impact this significant algorithmic feature by promoting your content as hard as possible.

Conclusion

Ranking on Google isn’t complicated. The fact is, not a lot of people are willing to put in the hard work required to make a ton of high-quality content. It is demanding, but successful. Start with right foundation, and start pushing out the best content you possibly can.

Have you helped a new website rank quickly? If so, how did you do it?

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Google Keyword Planner's Dirty Secrets

Sometimes our best data sources aren't exactly up to par. While nearly every search marketer will rely on Google Keyword Planner data at one point or another, especially while doing keyword research, the reality is that the data is often untrustworthy and should be viewed with great skepticism. Whether you plan to use it to help build a paid search campaign or determine which content to write, there are huge caveats to the numbers presented as Average Search Volume. Today, I want to walk through a number of the "gotchas" in Google Keyword Planner data so you can do better keyword research and make smarter decisions for you or your clients' sites.

Dirty secret #1: Rounded averages

By far, the most-used piece of data from Google Keyword Planner is the "Average Monthly Search Volume" metric. This key data point is used in everything from basic decisions on what keywords to use in an ad campaign to complex traffic prediction curves. But can we trust it?

Suppose you run a sports website and two keywords pop up in the recommendations: baseball scores and basketball games. Google Keyword Planner lets us know that each of these keywords has an Average Monthly Search Volume of 201,000. At first glance, you should be able to choose either of these keywords and expect similar traffic results, right?

Wrong. The "Average Monthly Search Volume" is more than just an average; it's rounded to the nearest-volume-bucket (which I will describe later). We know this is the case because Google Keyword Planner also exposes the last 12 months of traffic data. If we average that data, we will see that baseball scores receives 217,275 visits per month, while basketball games averages only 205,750! That is a difference of over 10,000 searches per month, which is obscured by Google KWP's rounding algorithm.
When we took a sample of keywords at the 201,000 Average Monthly Search volume, the standard deviation was 14,621 in the "actual average." In some cases, it was off by over 40,000 monthly searches per month! If you don't look at the last 12 months of data, your annual traffic estimates will likely be off by tens of thousands of visits. What causes this anomaly?

Dirty secret #2: Traffic buckets

Google Keyword Planner uses "buckets" to group keywords by traffic volume. When a keyword returns a traffic volume of 201,000, it isn't because the keyword was actually visited that many times, or really that it was particularly close to the number 201,000, but just that it was closer to 201,000 than the next biggest bucket of 246,000. The next lower bucket is 165,000, which gives us a nice 80,000-searches-per-month wiggle room — within which a keyword might actually fall and still be categorized as 201,000 by Keyword Planner.

After analyzing a massive data set, we found that Google has around 85 different "buckets" for traffic, which are logarithmically proportioned. This means that long tail keywords might fall into buckets which only differ by 10–20 searches at a time, while head tail keywords might see gaps of hundreds of thousands of searches per month. The bigger the search volume, the less certain you can be about the accuracy of the Average Monthly Searches, especially relative to other terms that fall in the same group. In fact, the largest buckets have variances of of nearly a quarter million searches per month!
Google uses this rounding procedure for convenience and, likely, to take into account the real month-to-month variance which can be huge for these very popular terms.
Dirty secret #3: Hidden keywords

Rand had an excellent write up on this issue a while back if you want to read the full details or want a more in-depth look at the problem. However, I thought I'd just throw out some stats here to show you just how ridiculous the recommendation system can be relative to the reality of related words and phrases. Let's start with the phrase "football." In this example, we will start with usingGrepWords data to find the most valuable words that contain "football" in them. Then, we simply ask Google what they recommend. How close do they match? What is missed?

The top 3 most-trafficked football-based keywords weren't recommended to us, and only 4 of Google's recommended made it into the top 10. In fact, when we analyzed dozens of Google keyword recommendation reports, we found that only 35% of the keywords were among the most trafficked terms.

It appears that Google Keyword Planner is simply trying to provide a diverse cross-section of terms, but for marketers it means you potentially miss out on huge opportunities unless you dig much deeper. 

You can battle back against this "feature" by choosing more short-tail terms to seed your searches and setting volume and CPC limits, as the recommendations get stronger and stronger the more specific you get. In the end, though, you're going to miss out on some great terms if you've restricted your research to only Google Keyword Planner.

Dirty secret #4: Combination inconsistencies

If you're like me and spelling isn't your forte, you have certainly seen Google give you the "showing results for {correct spelling}." This is very useful for the searcher, but throws a pretty big wrench into keyword volume metrics. What does Google do in these situations? Does it count all the traffic towards correctly spelled keyword (which is actually showing in the search results) or does it count the traffic toward the misspelling or variation? Well, it turns out it's a mixed bag. Let's take a look at a fairly popular term Texas A&M Football.

In the above picture we see several variations of how one might search for the concept Texas A&M Football.

Keyword                                    Corrected?              Distinct Volume 

Texas A&M Football                     No                          Yes

Texas A and M Football                No                          Yes

Texas AM Football                       Yes                         Yes

Texas A & M Football                   No                          Yes

Texas A& M Football                    Yes                         Yes

Now here's where it starts to matter. Let's say that you run a site that sells football attire and you're deciding which schools to include. You look up Google's Keyword Planner data and see that "Texas A&M Football" and "FSU Football" are both searched 201,000 times a month. These keywords seem equal in terms of volume but, in reality, there are many more keywords that are mapped organically to the phrase "Texas A&M Football," which makes its combined search volume much higher.
In this particular case, there are several thousand visitors a year that you might miss out on by choosing "FSU Football" over "Texas A&M Football" simply because Google doesn't combine the keywords in Keyword Planner despite doing so in organic search.Notice that whether or not the keyword is mapped to the canonical spelling makes no difference, in this case, for the total search volume. Even though many keywords will show you Texas A&M results, Google's volume count is only for the correct spelling of the term.

This might seem like a reasonable compromise. 

The Keyword Planner is giving you back the search counts for the keywords, regardless of whether those searches are redirected to a different phrase. This would be appropriate if it was consistent, but with certain punctuation in terms we see Google treat the case completely differently. Take the search terms facebook.com and facebook com. 

Google reports that both of these terms are searched 7.8 million times a month. Clearly these two variants are not searched an identical number of times; Google has simply mapped the keywords together BOTH in organic search results AND in volume. This forces keyword researchers to build huge keyword lists and go line-by-line removing the edge cases.

Here's a quick tip for you Excel experts out there: Look into using Jaro Winkler distance to find very similar terms that have identical search volume. Often these terms are mapped both in organic and in volume, and you can find those exclusions easily.

Dirty secret #5: Strange recommendations

Sometimes Google Keyword Planner gets the keyword recommendations completely wrong. Here are a couple of the examples that I was able to pull in just a few minutes of brainstorming:

Starting Keyword                                  Recommended Keyword

Baseball glove                                  boxing glove

pigeon                                             cabins

calamari                                           pork chops

rap                                                  country music

Because Google Keyword Planner uses more than just phrase matching to build their recommended keywords, you will regularly find some truly strange entries in your recommended keyword list, or connections that a computer might make but a human never would.

Unfortunately, this means you have to be very careful about what you get back, going keyword by keyword if you want to start a paid search campaign based on what's been returned. You simply can't be confident in the relevancy of the results. Can you imagine how many webmasters just blindly added Google's recommendations to their advertising campaigns?

All is not lost

Luckily, there is more than one way to get at and improve the Keyword Planner data using clickstream data sources. For example, we know of two keyword data sources — ClickStre.am and SimilarWeb — which correlate nicely with Google Keyword Planner volumes.

While this data from SimilarWeb is very useful, building a more accurate prediction of search volume for a term requires that you build a regression model comparing the user data to Google's estimates.

Moreover, demographic differences between the whole Google user base and those included in the user panels of SimilarWeb and ClickStre.am mean that building a ubiquitous regression model across all the keyword data might not be the best, as the users tracked by SimilarWeb and ClickStre.am might be biased towards different topics. The solution is to build models around topically-related keywords.

For example, instead of modeling all the keywords against one another, if Google Keyword Planner gave you 2 keywords on the same topic with the same keyword bucket (like 201,000 searches per month), you could build a regression model on the fly comparing a sample of topically-related keywords, using that to predict with greater granularity the performance of the two seemingly identical keywords.

While this user data helps you defeat issues of granularity, getting better (both more thorough and more accurate) recommendations for keywords can be a little more difficult. Your best bet here is to use keyword data aggregators like GREPWords, KeywordTool.io, or the upcoming Moz Keyword Explorer.

Keyword Planner is dead. Long live Keyword Planner

Unfortunately, despite all of the strange quirks and outright deceptions of Google Keyword Planner, it's the best thing we really have going for us in terms of getting search volume data out of Google. We can potentially refine some of the data with clickstream data, or get estimates by running Google Adwords campaigns and watching impression counts, or even looking in Google Search Console. But none of these are strong replacements for the Google Keyword Planner.

Instead of letting Google Keyword Planner's problems get in the way of your keyword research, use it to your advantage. Look for the edge cases where a keyword has a ton of misspellings mapped to the correct version, but not combined into the volume score.

This could be a great win that your competitors are overlooking because the head term looks smaller than it really is. Wherever there's bad data, there's also money to be made in sweating the details. So, put your gloves on and get to scrubbing your Keyword Planner data. Somewhere beneath the rough is a diamond.

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Top 20 SEO Tips & Tricks For Google

Want to buck up the search engine ranks of your website right away? Well, in that case, figuring out some of the best SEO tips and tricks can work wonders for you. In order to help you out, we’ve come up with a list of the top 20 SEO tricks that’ll buck up your search engine ranks in Google simply with a few clicks. Have a look at these awesome guidelines. 

A SEO friendly template- In order to buck up your SEO ranks, you’ve got to get started by using SEO friendly templates for your site. Go for a responsive theme, that loads quickly and is compatible with all browsers and devices.

High quality content- While coming up with your own website, make sure that the website content is engaging, innovative and non-plagiarized.

A good meta description- A good meta description is the backbone of a content. So every time you post a content, try to come up with a meta description of 120-140 words before the post.

Make the URL SEO friendly- Try to use permalink in order to make your URL SEO friendly. Also try to use the main keywords in the permalink title.

Keep a proper keyword density ratio- Try to maintain a proper ratio of keyword density. Too less of keyword or keyword stuffing won’t work. You’ve got to keep the a proper ratio.

Using proper headings- While coming up with a web content, try to use the headings in the H1, H2 and H3 format. Always write the keyword in the H2 format.

Optimizing your images- In order to optimize your images, always use the alt+title tag.

Coming up with quality backlinks- While building backlinks for your site, do not come up with these links very fast as Gooogle marks the extra-fast backlinks as spam. Take time to build quality backlinks on websites that have a proper page rank, Alexa rank and domain and page authority.

Length of the post- The minimum length of a good SEO optimized post is 300 words and the maximum length is 800 words. Don’t make it more than 800 words.

Good keywords- Do not figure out the keywords yourself. Rather, try to use some keyword optimizing tool to figure out the relevant keywords for your post.

Choosing key phrases- Key phrases have even better effects than keywords. So instead of concentrating on keywords, try to concentrate on key phrases as well. Try to go for phrases that compare the keywords well.

Choosing a proper place for navigation menu- While coming up with a SEO optimized website, always figure out a proper place for the navigation menu. We recommend you to place the menu below your logo or at the top right corner of your logo.

Social bookmarks- Social bookmarking bucks up SEO optimization of your website. So now when you come up with a site, make sure it has a Facebook page for social bookmarking.

Link your posts- Always try to link your newer content to the older ones. This has a more engaging appeal on the readers.

Speed of your site/blog- In order to buck up the speed of your site, try to use optimized images. Also make sure that there are lesser ads.

Relevant pages- Whether you have a blog or a website, always try to create separate sections for relevant pages like ‘about us’, ‘help’, ‘support’ and ‘privacy policy’.

Update your site from time to time- In order to rank high in search engines, you’ve got to ensure that your site is updated from time to time. Regular updates increase the chances of better ranking.

Redirect all your 404 error pages- Yes! In order to enjoy better SEO ranks, always redirect the 404 error pages to your homepage.

Send your sitemap to search engines- Always send your sitemap to search engines. This will increase the chances of better search engine.

Moderate the comments section- Maintain and moderate your comments section to avoid spam comments. This will automatically buck up the search engine rank of your site.

So what are you waiting for? Simply follow these guidelines and you will soon end up with better search engine ranks. Good luck!!If you have any other doubts or quires regarding SEO Tips & Tricks please let us know by commenting.Stay Tuned to All News At One for more SEO Tips & Tricks.

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How to Track Marketing Campaigns with Google Analytics

When it comes to tracking online success, Google Analytics is really good at doing that and it can help you get insights from your data.

All you have to do is just make sure that you use the proper metrics to measure the outcomes and not look at plain data. The secret is to check the outcomes from the data you have available.

If you are not sure how to do it, don’t worry, by the time you will finish reading this article, you will be able to easily apply my advice for your data.

When I say tracking online marketing campaigns, I am referring at a promotion for your eBook, at your latest newsletter, a tweet which promotes an article or your affiliate link shared on Facebook.

You can also track:

• Facebook advertising campaigns
• AdWords campaigns
• LinkedIn ad campaigns
• Microsoft adCenter campaigns

All these can be tracked and measured with Google Analytics, so you can see the performance of your online marketing campaigns.

Once you have data in Google Analytics (GA), you can see the conversion rate for different sources and mediums, check which campaign performs better and where you should put your efforts next time.

To do that, you need to tag your campaigns. Actually you need to tag the URLs that you will be using.

Tag Campign ULs

That’s a really easy and straight forward process and you can use the URL Builder tool from Google to do it. From that page you can easily build the URLs which you can later share on different mediums (email, ppc, referrals).

To make it easier for you to understand, I will use this tool to build an URL for this article, which I will share with my subscribers in the next newsletter.

First, you need to enter the URL that you want to promote.

Then, there are 3 mandatory fields that you need to fill out when building your campaign URL, fields that contain information which Google Analytics will gather and display in the reports:

• Campaign Source – this field is used to identify the source where the traffic is coming from. It can be: google, twitter, facebook, newsletter or a referral name.
• Campaign Medium – this field is used to identify the medium used by your visitors: organic, ppc, email, referral, friend etc.
• Campaign Name – this field should contain an easily identifiable name for your campaign.

Campaign Term and Campaign Content are optional and they are mainly used in AdWords and A/B testing.

Once you fill all the fields, just press the [Generate URL] button and you will get the URL which you can use in your marketing campaign.

Additionally, you can use a service like bit.ly to shorten the URL and hide those campaign parameters.

For my example, the main url is http://www.eugenoprea.com/google-analytics-campaign-tracking/ and here’s what I will use on each of the mandatory fields:

• Campaign Source – [Eugen Oprea - Free Updates] (this is the name of my newsletter)
• Campaign Medium – email (this is the medium used)
• Campaign Name – GACampaignTracking (an easily identifiable name)

The final URL is this one: http://www.eugenoprea.com/google-analytics-campaign-tracking/?utm_source=%5BEugen%2BOprea%2B-%2BFree%2BUpdates%5D&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=GACampaignTracking

As you can see towards the end of the URL, is better to use only letters & numbers, so avoid using special characters and white spaces.

Check the Google Analytics Campaigns Reports

Based on the data above, here’s how the final result will look like:

Now, once I have some data into my Google Analytics account I will be able to see how many visitors landed on this articles from my campaign and analyze different metrics based on that.

To access the [Campaigns] reports in Google Analytics, go to [Traffic Sources] > [Sources] > [Campaigns].

There you will be able to see how visitors that are coming from that campaign behave on your site and also analyze your conversion rates based on those campaigns.

All these details will help you better understand what are your most successful online marketing campaigns and where you should focus next time.

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Over to you

I hope that this article makes your job easier and help you get started measuring your campaigns using Google Analytics. If you have questions or if you would like to share with us the way you’ve build your campaign, please use the comments section below.

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