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In the past few months at PICnet, we’ve been focusing heavily on increasing our marketing efforts, particularly in our blog. Just as we do for most top-level programs, we’ve set goals, take regular measurements, analyze the results in detail, the rinse and repeat. Our tool of trade for building our metrics for success is Google Analytics, and it’s been serving us amazingly well. As we’re seeing further increases in traffic, we’re interested in knowing what people were searching when they found our site. Knowing that information allows us to better define our content strategies for the future, and give us a sense of what content is most interesting to those searching for answers online. It seems, however, that the most popular search keyword, by huge margins, is “(not provided)”. And when I say huge margins, I mean it’s 58x more popular a keyword than number two. What is this “(not provided)” keyword in Google , and why are we getting so much traffic from it?
As the nation’s capital cleans up from the weekend’s Inaugural festivities, it’s worth asking how we got here: How was it that President Obama came to be standing on the steps of the Capitol being sworn for a second term rather than his rival, Governor Mitt Romney, being sworn in for his first?
One undeniable factor was that Obama’s Digital Team ran one of the most successful online campaigns ever. Curious about how? Read more »
Google just released some major upgrades to Google Analytics that make it extremely valuable for anyone managing a website. So, if you haven’t logged into your account for a while, or if perhaps you never got around to signing up for one, now is the time to immerse yourself in Google Analytics. Here are a few things that have changed:
If you, like me, have ever ever scratched your head, dropped your jaw, or clenched your fist at that mysterious “bounce rate” figure in your site analytics, take a look at this fantastic article called “How-to: Improve Your Site’s Bounce Rate (Intro to Google Analytics Advanced Filtering” from the good people at NTEN. This article will help you understand not only what bounce rates are, but how they are relevant to your site’s success and how you can improve them in a meaningful way. We learned a lot and know you will too!
You’ve got your website. It’s your organization’s virtual front door. You work hard to lay out the welcome mat, tend the flower boxes, wash the windows, and offer enough content to get people inside for a heart-to-heart coffee table chat about you and your mission. So you’ve got curb appeal. You’ve got substance. But how do you get folks into your neighborhood and knocking on your door in the first place? Great question. Boosting traffic and attracting eyeballs to your site is key to online success. If people aren’t coming and viewing your site, it isn’t doing its job to move your mission forward. Tracking site traffic: Knowing who’s coming to your site The first part of improving is knowing how your site performs now. The easiest and cheapest way for assessing that is a handy tool called Google Analytics. This is free and tracks website traffic. Got some question you want to know about who and how people are visiting your site? How long the average person spends poking around? What search term they typed into Google to come across your little home away from home on the interwebs? How many people living in Burkina Faso visited your site on a Tuesday at 10:23 pm? The Google knows. It knows it all. And it will tell you – provided you’ve signed up for a free account and had us install the tracking code it provides. No Google Analytics yet? Interested? Check out our Tips and Tricks post about tracking traffic. You can also view an informative Google-created video there giving an overview of Analytics.
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