Conversion tracking with Google Analytics

September 15, 2009 by Anil · 3 Comments
Filed under: Events India, Google Analytics 

There had been lot of requests from the people who attended the seminar of Google Analytics Conversion University to share the presentation. The presentation was done by Ravi from Tatvic and we are truly indebted to Neha Jain and Dinesh Jain for making this conference possible. There was a great learning for everyone who attended there.

The presentation here is available for your review and you are welcome to share your questions, comments, thoughts on it.You can also click thru to slideshare and download a copy of the presentation.

Google Analytics Conversion University in India

July 17, 2009 by Anil · 11 Comments
Filed under: Events India, Google Analytics, Web Analytics India 

GOOGLE ANALYTICS CONVERSION UNIVERSITY ga-conversion-university-web-analytics-india

After a successful Search masters event early this year, For the first time in India, Google is organizing Google Analytics conversion university event at its office in Gurgaon India.

Why and who should attend

Do you have anything to do with digital media or online marketing? Are you spending online? Are you responsible for Online Marketing ROI.  If yes then here’s a great event to understand how Google Analytics can help you with all your digital marketing needs.

The Agenda

The Agenda consists of presentations and insights from Google Analytics in house experts, In addition the first three Google Analytics Authorized Consultants in India would be presenting on various topic.

Jesse Nichols – Google, Mountain ViewGuest Speaker
Jesse Nichols works on the AdWords Agency Team and is a “Guru” in both Google Analytics & Google Website Optimizer. He has been involved in various forms of Direct Marketing (online and off) for the past 6 years, and for the past 2 years has been working to increase adoption and an in-depth understanding of Google Analytics among online marketers.
His current role is split between managing relationships with prominent Online Marketing Agencies (Search & Digital) and connecting Agencies and Google Analytics through partner program. Jesse has a degree in Philosophy from the University of Michigan, and dabbles in photography and stand-up comedy.
Here’s an overview of the Sessions Agenda

  • Introduction to Google Analytics
  • Introduction to Partner Program and Google Analytics IQ
  • Guest Speakers
    • Vivek Bhargava – Communicate2 -  Integrating with Google Analytics
    • Carl D’Souza – Interactive Avenues -  Google Analytics Enterprise Ready
    • Ravi Pathak – Tatvic – Conversion with Google Analytics
  • Connecting the Dots: How Web Analytics Allows for smarter Business Decision
  • Google Website Optimizer
  • Webmaster Tools
  • Panel Discussion

How to Register:

You can register HERE

Note: The Registration is limited, the registration will be confirmed by Google a week before the event.

Where

Google India Pvt Ltd
8th and 9th Floors
Tower C Building No.8
DLF Cyber City
Gurgaon India
122002

This is indeed a great step for web analytics enthusiast and web analytics in general in India. So will you be there ? Drop in a comment.

Notes Searchmasters09 Google India Event – Bangalore

Late to write this, but here it goes :-)

The Searchmasters09 was indeed a great event to attend, one of the first event hosted by Google in India. This event had great sessions to keep one occupied for the entire day. Here’s a brief overview of what’ll happened in the event.

The event started with a talk from Vivaik Bharadwaaj (Manager of the Search Quality Evaluation team)  who spoke about why this conference was held, and also an introduction to the “Indian webmaster community” . He also gave a overview of Google’s initiatives in India and future plans.

He then shared some findings by Google about “India’s internet” status. Here are few important things i could make a note of

  • Internet users – 81 million
  • Internet subscribers 11.7 million (BB)
  • Mobile users – 287 million
  • Mobile internet capable 75.6 million
  • Mobile is the next big thing!

What works in Internet market in India, or rather what’s popular right now?

  1. Entertainment
  2. Education/job
  3. Banking/finance
  4. News/
  5. Travel
  6. Directory
  7. Others

On the terms of how sites in India are doing, here’s what Google Observed

  • Most site does not have robot.tx
  • No xml sitemaps ( majority of site dint have it )
  • Half of the sites analyzed dint have html sitemaps
  • Most of the site missing metatags.

India specific initiatives by Google

Orkut communities, India corporate blog, mobile search, transliteration tool, webmaster help forum, Google bus (a bus which is internet enabled, spreading knowledge of internet – started of in Chennai)

Webmaster Central and Beyond – Adam Lasnik – Mountain View

A sampling of best practices

  • Discovery (getting great pages discovered)
  • Accessibility (for googlebot and users)
  • Promotion (having your pages stand out)

What you can do with webmaster tools?

  • Diagnose issues: crawl errors, robot.txt concerns
  • Change settings: canonical domain, crawl speed
  • Get insights: Back links, referring keywords
  • Make improvements: enhanced 404 pages, sitemaps

Webmaster Best practices details

Discovery: Helping Google find our page

Sitemaps: A must have preferably in two formats

  • HTML: have this in your site
  • XML: this is great to have!

How do these help?

It tell the search engine, these are the pages I want you to look, these are the priority of the pages

Links: A bit more about links

Properties of good links

  • Just like good friends – attracted naturally
  • From trustworthy, relevant, choosy sources
  • Similar to votes: they’re given consciously

How can you get good links?

  • Create a notable site with original and compelling content
  • Participate thoughtfully in communities
  • Make pages easy to share and link to

Remember! Links that aren’t worth it

  • Those you beg, trade, bargain or pay for
  • Links from sources that aren’t respectable or selective

** don’t focus on beauty focus on function!

Content is really the foundation

Great Content is

  • Original: your own information or commentary
  • Compelling: People are likely to note and share it
  • Accessible: Users and Google bot can find and understand it

2.) Accessibility: Make your site accessible:

You site is accessible when users and googlebot can

  • load all the pages
  • Navigate successfully from page to page
  • See what’s on each page
  • Understand the content

Other points to ponder

  • And when users can bookmark their favorite pages, Homepage or even just “[company name]” is useless when reviewing history/bookmarks! Make sure page title is included as a best practices
  • Share pages with others Via social networks like orkut & facebook) business networks, email,im
  • Transact appropriately on your site ( submit forms, order materials, etc)
  • ** javascript are missing on many users, Ensure you have your site enabled for them
  • The most important word to remember is*****TEXT******, Even if it’s video, talk about it in text. Your core content and navigation should be in plain text

Testing Accessibility

  • Access your site with different browsers
  • This includes mobile browsers and screen readers
  • Also a text only browser, such as lynx
  • Or at minimum, a regular browser with JavaScript turned off
  • Make sure you not only browse but transact
  • Try submitting a form conducting a search etc
  • Have colleagues test it out

From accessibility to understanding

  • Ensure people and search engine understand what your pages are about
  • Create title tags, that are brief, descriptive, and compelling
  • Annotate photos with alt tags and user descriptive filenames
  • Add thoughtful text to give context
  • Effective use of Page titles

Good titles are

  • Specific to the page
  • Mention the company or organization
  • Are phrase based not a sentence
  • Making most of your images
  • Use alt text
  • Good Example: src=googlebot.jpg” alt =” googlebot with flowers”
  • Bad Example: googlebot photos with flowrers
  • Use descriptive filenames
  • Describe appropriately in plain text
  • Be Kind: Optimize your images for users.

Suggestions for Images, videos and more non text!

  • Use Points to check for / questions asked
  • *video xml
  • *transcript of the videos will help!
  • Keyword density does not have huge importance
  • Business name:city:what the page is about ( do not repeat it many times)

Google Custom Search! Rajat Mukherjee (Product Manager – Google Custom Search platform)

One of the most widely used internal search tools, It helps customize the Index, Ranking and Presentation

Why CSE

  1. Users today use search to navigate sites and find information
  2. Search integrated in minutes using look and feel of your own site
  3. Better user retention via target search instant high relevance
  4. Better clickthru rates and conversion on your site
  5. Enhanced indexing via cse index and on demand index
    1. On demand indexing: give a portion of your site all content will be indexed within 24 hours
  6. Features such as labels, synonyms, date biasing, promotions
    1. Synonyms/acronyms – you can now promote certain things for select queries (can be urls or information)
  7. Monetize with relevant ads via custom search keywords
    1. Features like, add keywords for relevant ads
  8. Advanced api’s customization, branding and support options
    1. Branding options available
  9. Integrated with Google platform, webmasters tools, sitemaps

Google Analytics and Google Web Optimizer:

This session was an Introduction to Google anlaytics and Google Web Optimizer tool. The following was covered in this session.

  • Introduction and capabilites of Google Anlaytics
  • Implementation and new features
  • Google Analytics Custom Segmentation
  • Tracking Campaigns and rich media
  • Google Analytics reports explanation
  • Google weboptimizer introduction
  • Using A/B Test and Multivariate tests
  • Advantages of Testing
  • Resources and Help

Next Steps by Google as some suggested is

  • Hold more events in India
  • Dedicated events to other Google products used by web masters

P.S: these were the random notes i took. There are few more folks who wrote about the event, find the links below.

Searchmasters09 event open invitation

February 20, 2009 by Anil · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Events India, Google Analytics, Web Analytics India 

After i wrote about the Searchmasters event in bangalore this month end, many readers reached out to me for the invites and passes. I reached out to Google to see if i could get more passes and i was pleased to see a mail from google announcing “Open invitation for searchmasters event”.

Here’s the excerpt so go ahead and register now and hopefully you should get an invite soon!

As you know, the event has limited seats and we have almost reached full capacity.
You can register through, or point your referrals to, the registration link mentioned in our latest blogpost: Opening invitations for Search Masters 09
We cannot guarantee a slot, but will send a registration confirmation mail only if you are slotted for the event.

Do drop me a note in case you get a invite so we could catchup and for those who cant make it. I’ll make sure i cover all the sessions via this blog.

Searchmasters09 -Bangalore Registration Link

P.S: In case you have any specific question you would like to ask on the sessions covered. Please mail me or leave a comment here. I’ll be glad to get that answered for you

Searchmasters Google India Event – Bangalore

I stumbled upon this great event which is a must attend if your part of the internet industry. Now everybody knows how google dominates the search market and also it’s extensive tool list to enhance your website from setting it up to reaching millions of people online.

This event is one of it’s kind with some valuable sessions, The event named as “Searchmasters 09” is a must attend. Here’s what it’s all about.The session 3 (Google Custom Search Engine) and (Google Analytics and Website Optimizer) are of great importance if your a web analyst.

1.) Webmasters Central and Best Practices

  • Understand why accessibility is important, how it improves the presence of your site in Google.
  • Discover the webmaster resources that Google offers and how it can help you.
  • Learn about webmaster guidelines and best practices to build websites.

2.) Webmaster Help forum

  • Learn about the thriving webmaster community and how it will help you find answers to search related questions.
  • Get to know more about the new platform we’ve recently launched for the help forum and its new features.
  • Get introduced to our community builders or ‘Bionic Posters’ as we call them.

3.) Google Custom Search Engine

  • Provide a better user retention via targeted search.
  • Achieve better click-through rates and conversions on your site
  • Monetize with relevant ads via Custom Search keywords.
  • Use Advanced APIs, customization, branding and support options.

4.) Building Mobile Friendly Websites

  • Find out why there is a need for mobile friendly websites.
  • What to consider while designing mobile websites.
  • Tools that will help in designing such websites.
  • Learn a few design tips and tricks.

5.) Google Analytics and Website Optimizer

Google Analytics is the next generation Web Analytics tool from Google that shows you how people find your site and how they navigate through it. It brings new accessibility to enterprise class web analytics, making it possible for all advertisers, publishers and web site owners to improve their online results. Learn the best way to make use of the product.

The Google Website Optimizer  helps in improving the effectiveness of your website in getting a return on your investment. Determine how you can best attract users and lead them to your site.

Registration: It’s by invite only and limited seats, so hurry up to ensure you get in touch with someone who can get you invite to this great event.

Look out for the coverage of the event and if you are attending the event, reach out to me or leave a comment below so we can catch up .

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