How to Use Google Analytics Site Search Reports

How to Use Google Analytics Site Search Reports

If your website has a search bar, you need to ensure you’re making the most of this valuable report in Google Analytics. It’s quick to set up and can soon be giving you all sorts of insights and ideas that you may never have had without it.

The Site Search report is found under Behavior and is focused on recording how people interact with the search functionality on your website. This is actually even more valuable since organic keywords started appearing as “(not provided)”, as this report shows what people have actually typed, even if it is on your site instead of into Google – it’s likely that there are overlaps!

Setting Up Site Search Reports

To set this report up, navigate to the Admin, then the View Settings for your chosen profile and scroll down to the Site Search Settings section. Here you just click the button to turn it on and then type or paste in the query that your website uses in search parameters. For example, searching on this site gives you a results URL that looks like this:

http://searchenginewatch.com/search?q=analytics

In this example, the “q” is the search parameter, so this is what would go in the field here:

You will find a tick box under this option which gives you the choice to strip parameters out of the URL. If that was ticked for Search Engine Watch all search results URLs would show in the content reports under /search, whereas without ticking it each search will generate a URL with the query included, which will break out the results and not allow you to see the data for search results pages in one row in the content report.

There are benefits to both methods, so it will depend on your reporting and website setup as to which choice will work best for you.

To get an even more detailed breakdown of data in the reports you can also specify categories, if that applies to your website. Here you pop in each category parameter and you will have a report available to group activity together within these.

Site Search Reports

The Overview report, much like any other, gives you a summary of the data relevant to that report. In this case it gives you a clear percentage of how many visits on your website included the use of the search functionality as well as how the interaction played out following the search.

Usage

This report has two rows of data, one for visits with site search and one for visits which did not include the use of the search functionality. This allows you to directly compare the success rate of people using search against those who don’t to work out whether the conversion rates are very different, whether new visitors are more likely to be using the search box, or how much revenue you have generated by people using this option.

All standard metrics are available and the Site Usage, Goals, and E-Commerce reports are easily accessible above the graph so you can drill into the most relevant report for your site.

Search Terms:

This is where it gets very interesting! The words and phrases that your visitors have used in your search box are recorded here so that you can work out what people are looking for on your website. Each query used is shown alongside search usage metrics but Goal and E-Commerce reports are also available.

There are many uses for this report. Some examples include:

• How many pages it took for people to find what they wanted
• How many visitors gave up and left the website
• Which keywords did not have good enough results so users had to refine their terms
• How persistent visitors were with their query, by how many pages of results they looked through
• Most common queries
• Trends and identifying new searches which can help you identify products to stock or content to write about
• Identifying common misspellings or other ways to phrase something
• Which areas of the site people choose to search for over navigating through a menu for
• Which queries lead to users being engaged with the website
• Queries that have good conversion rates

As mentioned above, this data can also be broken down by category, so if you have set this up, click the link above the data table for “Site Search Category” and you will be able to see this data.

Pages

The Pages report in this area is all about which pages of the website the user was on when they made the search. If you see (entrance) under this report, your visitors are entering the website on a search results page, which may be caused by marketing activity or natural search results using search URLs.

Sometimes the Pages report can be useful for working out which pages are the ones on which visitors give up on using the navigation and switch to a different method of using the website.

Clicking the “Destination Page” link above the data takes you to a report showing where users went on the website following a search.

Useful Tips

If you have the opportunity to do so, I encourage you to set this tracking up for your website. It’s your prerogative to know what’s going on within your website and what it is that people want or cannot find.

Here are some extra ideas to take away for this area in Google Analytics:

• International Comparisons: It is interesting to see the take-up of search functionality on websites around the world. The percentage of visits with search can vary dramatically from country to country, so do ensure you focus on the most suitable website navigation methods for your users.
• Language Use Globally: Also on the topic of international data, when you have a website specific to another country or language, you will benefit from keeping a close eye on the language used in search queries, as this can help you identify hard-to-translate items that people cannot find or terms that you can use an English version for as it may be more widely used than a local language.
• Internal Campaign Tracking: An out-of-the-box idea for tracking internal banners by Justin Cutroni is to tag them with parameters that you can analyze in search reports instead of resorting to using campaign tracking tags on internal links, which is not recommended. 

Top 5 Mistakes to Avoid When Using Google Analytics with Site Search

There is a wealth of information in Google Analytics, helping website owners gain a deeper understanding of who’s visiting their site and how often; what they click on and their navigation path; and what pages or links lead to particular outcomes like downloads or purchases. Google Analytics shows how effective site search is in generating clickthroughs and conversions, shopping cart abandonment rates and more.

However, without knowing how to interpret the data and what it’s telling you, you’re not getting the whole picture. For example, you might put too much attention on raw totals, when it makes more sense to look for trends or compare different segments of data. Or, you might inadvertently exclude traffic that you should keep measuring.

The engineers I work with have developed a useful list of common mistakes that website owners make when using Google Analytics and site search, along with guidance for better understanding of what’s happening on your site.

Mistake #1: Trusting that your site search statistics are correct. 

By default, Google Analytics tracks every page against the URL of the page loaded. Assuming that your search page has the URL “http://sub.domain.com/search?w=keyword” Google Analytics tracks the page as “/search?w=keyword.”

When setting up site search reporting, you specify the query parameter that defines a search page view. In the above case, the query parameter value would be “w.” This means that any URL on your site that contains the query parameter “w=xyz” will be tagged as a site search page view.

The problem here is that this query parameter may exist on non-site search pages. It’s not always easy to see that these pages exist. There could be non-site search pages that have this query parameter in the URL – which means site search reports may not be accurate, and you will not get a clear picture of how site search is performing.

The solution is to use advanced segments instead, since they’ll allow you to be more specific about the site search segmentation and will give you the platform to be more precise about identifying visits with a site search page view. For example, you can say something like: “Include pages that begin with /search” or “Include pages that contain the query parameter w.”

It’s also a good idea to avoid using site search URLs in your navigation and/or PPC campaigns. Get a different URL structure for the same page setup, such as http://sub.domain.com/ppc/keyword or http://sub.domain.com/nav/brand/nike/0.

Mistake #2: Focusing on the totals. Google Analytics will always under report results, given that it is focused on JavaScript tracking. Therefore, results don’t take into account that there is a small percentage of site visitors who will click away before allowing the page to load long enough for the tracking code to fire. There are also site visitors who will have JavaScript and/or cookies disabled.

Thus, you shouldn’t be too concerned with exact results. Instead, focus on trends and comparing different segments of data (e.g. visits with site search versus visits without site search) or time periods (e.g. visits with search in June compared to July).

Mistake #3: Forgetting about AJAX. The AJAX programming language has become ubiquitous on the web in recent years, since it allows site visitors to load content without reloading an entire web page. You’ll often see AJAX used for search results so that users can quickly access more results without waiting for new pages to load.

Before the widespread use of AJAX, if a user wanted to click on a new page of results or perhaps select different refinements, the page would have to be loaded again and the Google Analytics code would have tracked it as another page view. But with AJAX, these interactions on your site are no longer tracked. It has become common to use virtual page views or event tracking depending on what you are trying to track.

Source: searchenginewatch.com/
moz.com

What is Digital (online) Marketing? How it matters?

What is Digital (online) Marketing? How it matters?

In Marketing your goals of your business is satisfying your customers and keep them. In this process you also create customers and get your feedback internally for your product/service or process improvements.

Digital marketing is the word now online users and company owners are mostly using nowadays. It is the process to delivered over a digital channel, especially the internet as medium of your business process and goal.

Digital marketing is the en route to create strong online presence of your business, company, product or services and a fan page. There are 77.6% of small business owners,  entrepreneurs, freelancers and corporate using social media in their digital marketing strategy.

Digital marketing strategies:

1. Search engine optimization (SEO)

SEO or search engine optimization is the process to reach customers in a organic way by making manual work such as on page and off page submissions. This means your business will be shown in Search engine result pages, when someone search your business with particular keywords or products / services. There are lot of search engine optimization agency doing the best work for their customers.

2. Search engine marketing (SEM)

Search engine marketing is a process, using paid and unpaid services to promote the business. By using paid advertisements businesses that will appear on search engine results pages. When buyers or sellers looking for certain products or services, which gives the advertiser the opportunity to visit their ads by appearing alongside search results for those search particular queries.

Strategies are SEO and PPC.

3. Content marketing

Ii is a marketing process by creating and sharing relevant and high quality content basis on accurate audience. And eventually this will drive customers and will make strong relationship to take a profitable action.

This content might be as blog posts, articles, white papers, webinars, e-magazines, case studies, research papers/reports, infographics, email newsletters, videos, and e-books.

4. Social Media Marketing (SMM)

It is the process, using social media platforms to promote and sell your products/services.

Best Social media platforms to advertise on social channels are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc. By using this you can choose your potential audience and make number of reach and leads according to your budget.

5. Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) or Google Advertising

PPC or Pay per Click or Google advertising is the advertisement service by Google. Using this ads you can get no. of visitors or leads according to your target or Budget.

6. Email marketing

Email marketing is the more competitive at same time very effective and direct form of digital marketing strategy.

There are 82% of B2B and B2C businesses use email marketing today. Before you create an email campaign, you need to understand the psychology of your potential customers.

By email marketing, For every $1 spent, email marketing generates $38 on an average, and Over 34% of people worldwide use email.

It is the way to keep your customers informed about new sales or promotions you are running, and updated on your brand,  product and services, and offer coupons to encourage customers.

Conclusion of Digital marketing

There are lot of tools available for digital marketing for faster results. But mostly manual work or submission give the better and quality results. Before contacting for digital marketing or any strategies under these please consult the best consultant and make your budget.

Source: https://way2websoftblog.wordpress.com/2018/09/18/what-is-digital-online-marketing-how-it-matters/

Guide: How to Register Trademark For Your Brand in India

How many cups of coffee and scribbles on a paper did it take for you to zero-in on your brand name? A dozen, right? Would you let some Tom, Dick or Harry walk away with that name and identity? Hell no! So to your rescue is trademark registration!

As an e-commerce platform helping small as well as big brands start their own online stores, we at Zepo, frequently come across entrepreneurs asking us about how to register their brands as trademarks. Which is why, today, within the course of this blog post, we’ll take you through on how to protect your brand’s reputation, by way of registering your brand as a trade-mark.

Before we start, what exactly does trade-marking a brand name mean?
Trademark registration of a brand name means nothing but brand name registration. It basically means, “this brand name is ours! And if you dare to use it to sell your products, we can sue you!”
In India, you can trademark any of the following or even a combination of these things:
Letter, Number, Word, Phrase, Logo, Graphic, Smell, Sound Mark or a Combination of Colors
So, what is the procedure of registering a trademark?

Step 1: Search for a “crazy-enough” brand name
You get the point, don’t you? Come up with a whacky and quirky brand name, because all the generic ones are any which way taken. Before zeroing in on one name, you might want to do a quick search to make sure that no one else is already using the name. And your best bet would be to use invented or coined words, in a combination with generic words.

Step 2: Making the trademark application
Now that your name is finalized upon, fill in the trademark application i.e. Form- TM 1. The application costs INR 3500 and is a one time fee.
Along with the application, you will need to submit a couple of supporting documents:
1. A Business registration concern: Depending on what type of a registered business you have, say sole proprietorship, etc. you will need to submit an identity proof of the directors of the company and an address proof.
2. An image of your brand logo in a standard size of 9 x 5 cms
3. If applicable, proof of claim of the proposed mark being used before in another country.

Step 3: Filling the brand name registration application
There are 2 ways to file the registration – manual filing or e-filling.
In case of manual filing, you will need to personally walk down and submit the application for registration to any one of the offices of the Registrar of Trade Marks located in Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and Ahmedabad. After which you receive the acknowledgement of the application and the receipt, usually within 15-20 days of the filing.
But in e-filing system, the acknowledgement of the application is issued immediately.
And after you receive the acknowledgement, you can start using the (TM) symbol next to the brand name!

Step 4: Examining the brand name registration application
After receiving the application, the Registrar checks whether the brand name complies with the law and does not conflict or dispute with other existing registered or pending brands. That’s why we said, quirky brand name, people!

Step 5: Publication in the Indian Trade Mark Journals
After examination, the logo or brand name is published in the Indian Trade Mark Journal. If no one raises an opposition within 3 months i.e. 90 days or in some cases 120 days, from the date of publication, the brand name proceeds to acceptance.

Step 6: Issuance of the trademark registration certificate
If no one raises any opposition, within the stipulated 90 days period, the Registrar accepts the trademark application! Woohoo! And issues a Certificate of Registration under the seal of Trademark Registry.

You may now be allowed to use the registered trademark symbol (®) next to your brand name, once the certificate has been issued.

The whole process of registration of a brand name usually takes anything between 15-18 months. The trademark once accepted, is valid for a period of 10 years from the date of issuance of the Certificate of Registration. After the end of 10 years, the trademark will need to be renewed.

There there! We can understand if this sounds a little too over-whelming. In which case, just call up a lawyer. The lawyer will be able to help you wade through all this legal jargon.

Although the process of registering a trademark is lengthy and a little heavy on the pocket, it is definitely worth the investment of legally protecting your brand.

However, if you are just starting out, investing in a trademark may not be absolutely essential. What matters most is creating awesome products and putting in all the time and effort into building your brand, from ground up. But, there still is another cheaper alternative to lend you lawful protection against being copied – an unregistered trademark. Do ask your lawyer about it!

Read More here about Register your TradeMark

How to Optimize Your Google My Business Listing

SEO is expensive, competitive, and hard. But as a local business, you have something significant going for you: your pool of competition is much smaller than the ones national and international brands have to deal with.
Your website doesn’t need to be found by everyone; you just need to be found by the people who live in your community. If you get that right, the results can be significant. Half of consumers that do a local search on their smartphone end up visiting a store they found there that same day.
When people do a search in Google, they’ll see a map and a list of the top three local listings that are nearby, before they see any other results.


In local searches like this one, users get plenty of information on those top three choices right away – they can see both how other customers have rated each of them and exactly how far away they are. For most consumers, that’s enough information to make a decision and head out, without ever bothering to scroll further down.
For local businesses - seo starterpack, that means that while making sure your website is optimized for search engines matters, making sure that your Google My Business Listing is optimized matters at least as much.

1. Set up your Google Business Listing (if you haven’t yet).

The first step is to set up (or claim) your Google My Business Listing. Go to Google’s My Business page and click “Start Now” in the upper left corner. Then fill in every relevant field that Google offers. You want to make sure the profile is as complete as possible and that every piece of information is accurate.
 

2. Choose a relevant, specific category.

The category you choose will help Google decide which searches your local listing belongs in. You have to choose from the list of available categories, you can’t create your own. If there’s not a specific category that describes what your business is, settle on a more general one that still describes it accurately.
If possible though, you want to go for the most specific category available. “Grocery Store” is a more competitive term than “Gourmet Grocery Store” or “Indian Grocery Store.” The latter categories are more likely to land you in the top three for relevant searches, especially if you’re in a city with a lot of grocery stores.

 

3. Load quality, high-resolution images.

Photos help your listing to stand out and give potential customers a glimpse of what to expect.  Make sure you use high-quality images that make your business look good and show off your products (if you sell physical products).
Consider hiring a Google approved photographer to create a 360-view virtual tour of your business for customers. According to Google, listings that have a virtual tour and photos generate twice as much interest as those without.

4. Make sure your information matches everywhere else.

One thing Google’s algorithm looks at to verify the legitimacy of a listing is a consistency in how it’s listed across different websites. While that seems simple enough – your address is the same each time you enter it somewhere – it’s easy for little differences to slip in. Maybe you wrote out the Road part of the street name one time, and shortened it to Rd another time, for instance.
Pick a standard way to write out your address, a consistent phone number to use, and make sure all your listings match both each other and the information you provide on your website. And work on getting your website listed in as many relevant directories as possible.

5. Use a local number.

In addition to keeping your phone number consistent between your different listings, it’s also important to use a phone number with a local area code. That’s one extra signal to Google that you are actually local. Make sure the number you use for your Google My Business listing is also displayed somewhere on your home page or whatever landing page you link to from your Google listing.

6. Avoid penalty-inducing offenses.

Any work you do to optimize your website or local listing will be for naught if you incur a penalty. Google suspends business listings for a range of offenses. Getting suspended is stressful, confusing, and bad for business, so it’s best to avoid doing anything that puts you at risk of it.
Read through Google’s guidelines for Google My Business listings so you have a full understanding of what not to do. Some of the main things to avoid are:

• Using a URL that redirects to your website’s URL, rather than the actual URL itself.
• Trying to awkwardly add keywords into your business name field.
• Having multiple local listings for the same business location.
• Using any address for your business that isn’t a physical storefront or office space where you meet with customers.

Use common sense and don’t try to play the system or get extra listings and you’ll probably stay on the right side of Google.

7. Encourage reviews.

You’ll notice that the local businesses listed in the map snippet of a local search usually have star ratings next to their name. Google wants to provide the most useful information to its users, and users want to find the nearby business that seems the best. In both cases, it benefits your business to have a high star rating.
Ask your happy customers to take a few minutes to give you a review on Google. Include an encouragement on promotional materials you hand out or put up in your store. A gentle nudge or a reminder of how much it means for your business can make your loyal customers that much more likely to take the time to say a few kind words about you.

8. Make sure your website and content is optimized for search.

All the usual SEO advice that helps strengthen the authority of your website in the eyes of Google matters here too.  So don’t focus on optimizing your local listing to the exclusion of optimizing your website as well.
Make sure that you:

Read More about Google Business Listing

11 SEO Techniques and Strategies for 2017 (Infographic)

11 SEO Techniques and Strategies

With every upload to the internet, there is only one subliminal message echoing through the void expanse of websites: Keep up.

Naturally, it is not expected of you to ‘keep up’ with everything the internet offers-it is not possible. However, if you are someone who contributes to the mass of knowledge that is the internet, then your aim should be to put your content out there, right in everyone’s faces and make them WANT to read it.

Of course, if it was that easy, everyone would know everything and the search engines would become pointless. Today, only the smartest search engine optimizers with latest SEO techniques and strategies, and the best content writers reach the pedestal where they are the number one hit on the SERPs.

We are here to help you get there.

Pay attention to our following tips to learn the advanced SEO strategies in 2017, and start working on it before this year ends:

1. Mobile is the future

Something that almost everyone understands. It makes sense too. Do you think people in the future will walk around with desktops? No, because its ridiculous.

The vast population of people who are on the move use mobile devices for all their internet purposes. Many even use it at home. A lot don’t even own laptops.

Start working on a website that is mobile friendly or custom-made for it. Not doing so is guaranteeing yourself a setback.

Our personal advice: Go responsive instead of making a special website for mobiles. RWD is not a joke, and will be a better option.

2. The rise of voice search

Some movies do very little to limit our imagination of future technologies. Being able to speak to machines and having them work for us was among the top of the list for the R&D of various companies. Today, it is possible. Those who use ‘Siri’ on their iPhones are no strangers to this fact.

The time has come to include a recording button on your website to entertain voice requests and serve people better. This will free the user to put their fingers to better use like holding the morning coffee on the way to work, etc.

After all, who wants to type so much?

3. Make your site super-fast

Not everyone has access to high-speed internet. There are more complaints about slow internet speed than there are users. In the midst of all this, if your site has the audacity to load slowly and take its own sweet time through the tough hustle in the lives of the users — Don’t even bother optimizing your sites. Without speed, there is nothing.

Optimize the formats and responsive sizes of the media that you have uploaded onto your website and eliminate loose links and pointless data that slows down loading time.

Remember: its a race.

You can use these tools to check the webpage loading speed: Pingdom or GTmetrix

4. Make your website mobile friendly

Do I need a mobile friendly website?

Have you ever asked yourself this question? The truth is, a major section of target audiences are surfing internet through their smart phones; if you haven’t done it already get it right now.

Google has already programmed an algorithm on April 21, 2015 that the sites which are mobile friendly in nature will be given higher priority and rank them better in search results. They have given clear guidelines about how to make a website mobile friendly.

Use the Mobile-Friendly Test tool by Google to see if pages on your site are mobile-friendly or not.

Read More for SEO Techniques for 2017