SEO – Page 2 – idaconcpts.com

How to Install Google Analytics at a Real Estate Brokerage Website

I know, I know, I promised that the next 5 postings would be about the 5 key factors that determine that your website appears on a search engine query, but I really, really, really have to discuss about the implementation of Google Analytics at www.srbienesraices.com.

The main reason is that this will serve as guide for real estate brokers to implement their own Google Analytics code in their websites.

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMERS:

SYLVIA ROJAS BIENES RAÍCES is a 100% Ecuadorean-owned company specialized in the the negotiation of real estate in the provinces of Guayas, Manabí, Los Ríos, El Oro and with representatives in Azuay. The home page is www.srbienesraices.com and is in Spanish.
Since August 2007 I have served as the webmaster of this website.
Sylvia Rojas is my mother.
Since August 2007 I have not received any form of payment for maintaining this website and I have incurred in all hosting payments.

Let’s get to work!

Check that your website works properly! For example, check for broken links. There is really no sense to track a website that is full of errors. In our case, Sylvia Rojas Bienes Raices (from now on referred as SRBR) consists of only 6 pages so it was real simple to check that the website works like it should.
Once you have make sure that your web site works (if not, then DO IT NOW!), open a Google Analytics account at www.google.com/analytics. If you have an existing Gmail account, you can use that one. If not, then you can create one. In either case, keep things simple, use an existing Gmail account (no need to have 2 Gmail accounts), or when creating a new one, use a name that you can relate your website to. In our case, I already have an existing Gmail account.
Add your Website Profile. You will need your web domain. In our case is www.srbienesraices.com/, please note that I have added the “/” at the end. I am not sure of the importance of this parameter, but I have always included it. (Note to self: look up why we need it!)
Make sure that you indicate what is the default page of your website (e.g. index.html). This is important because otherwise Google Analytics would account www.srbienesraices.com and www.srbienesraices.com/index.html as 2 hits! Unfortunately, that would be cheating!
Google Analytics will provide a Java script code that will look like this:
Sample Google Analytics code. Source: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/03/traffic-stats-for-your-google-documents.html

Please note that the red underlined text will be different. This will be your own Google Analytics account number.
Copy this code.
Open index.html page (home page) using the html editor of your choice. In my case, I use Macromedia Dreamweaver 8. Switch to the code or source view. You cannot paste the Google Analytics code on design view. You must do it on code or source view. Make sure that you don’t see the code when you’re viewing your page in preview view.
Paste the code right before the </body> tag. In our case, it is the second to last line of code.
Save your page. Make sure that you save the changes!
Repeat steps 6, 7 and 8 with all the pages in your existing website.
Sign up to your FTP server of your hosting service and upload all your updated pages that now include the Google Analytics code. Note: yes, you have to replace the existing pages for the Google Analytics to start working.
Confirm that you have entered the tracking code correctly. No idea how to do it? Then try the SiteScan tool from EpikOne, available at www.sitescanga.com, you will just need your home page and an e-mail address to use this free tool. You will receive an e-mail confirming the status of your tracking code, also you will be able to download a report in CSV format (that means you can open it with Microsoft Excel). In our case, the report took 3 minutes and all URLS (6 in total).
Wait 24 hours for the code to kick in! According to Google:

Google Analytics generally updates your reports every 24 hours. This means that it could take 24 hours for data to appear in your account after you have first installed the tracking code.

Conclusions:

The whole process took about 1 hour.
After 2 hours of installation, I have not received any data. This is ok because I am still within the 24 hours. I will check whether Google Analytics has received any data tomorrow.
Google Analytics is a Java script based code so make sure that your browser and hosting accepts Java script.

Now, do it yourself!

Keyword Prominence and Link Popularity

Keeping the promise that the next 5 posts will be regarding the 5 key factors that determine website appearances on search engine results, I will discuss today keyword prominence and link popularity. The last post was more of a formality that needed to be put in place right away! Please take it as the idaconcpts blog readers’ bill of rights.

When preparing a website for SEO, keyword prominence and link popularity require more work on the developer’s site because the outcome of these tasks will physically alter the layout of that website.

Keyword prominence takes a look at various factors, but the two most important are 1) the physical location of the keyword(s) and 2) the keyword(s) within page link text. Physical location simply means that keywords placed at the top of the page are more relevant than at the bottom of the page. Typically, you will find pay-per-click pages that are trying to maximize their click-rate by using hundreds of keywords at the bottom of the page (either in fine print or mixed with the color of the background). You don’t want to be one of them! In the other hand, keywords within page link text is an art by itself. Check out this free keyword density and prominence tool and use your favorite website. Keyword prominence checks that the keywords that you select for your website should be within page link text. If your site is about web analytics tools. Don’t just say, click here. Better say, for example, click here for better web analytics tools.

Link popularity was invented by Sergy Bin and Larry Page (yup, those Google guys) and it is the foundation of their Search Engine Google. In simple words, link popularity deals with the quantity and quality of the links leading towards your website. It is not just a matter of every possible website linking back to your website, but rather the ones that are relevant to your keywords.

Conclusions:

Mark your keywords clearly at the top of every page of your website.
Network! Talk with experts in your field and create partnerships with them so that you can cross-reference each other.

More on Google Ad(key)Words

This post will be short and sweet because I need to take a drive road test today because I am buying a brand new car!

Yesterday on my way home, I was reviewing a SEO whitepaper by Brian Clifton and Nikki Rae from Omega Digital Media tittled “How Search Engine Optimisation Works”. This 20-page document explains how search engines work and how search engine optimisation (SEO) can help you achieve high search engine visibility.

According to Clifton and Rae, web sites appearance on search engine results depends on 5 key factors (p. 8):

Which Keywords the user entered
Your web page Keyword Density for these keywords
Your web page Keyword Prominence (page location) for these keywords
Your Link Popularity – the number of other sites that link to you
Your link and keyword Relevancy

These 5 factors are essential for SEO and I promise that the next 5 posts are going to be on these topics. In the meantime, let’s take a look at idaconcpts WordPress Blog Stats regarding keywords that that returned matches with www.idaconcpts.com:

As it becomes obvious the term that returned the most matches to idaconcpts is google analytics flickr. This makes sense because as of right now, 08/21/2008, my post that has an analysis of Flickr using Google Analytics is the most viewed page of this blog (30 views). The term flickr was included in 7 out of 20 of the search engine queries that matched idaconcpts. The term google had the same outcome.

Therefore, the terms google and flickr are golden ones to consider for my personal Google AdWords campaign. However, the important part is to be able to combine with appropriate terms (remember quality over quantity! I want my readers to remain in the blog, not leave right after they click on it!). Possible keywords are google analytics and the different mispellings of analytics (e.g. analytic, analystics, analytis)! Believe or not, including this misspelled words, inflates my search engine keyword result matching. Cheating? Clifton and Rae don’t believe so!

(p. 9) Don’t forgit misspelled keywhords! (p. 10) The Google Trends tool is an excellent free resource for checking mispellings, relative keyword popularities (e.g. product X versus product Y) and regional variation (e.g. cell phones versus mobile phone).

What do you think?

Apple vs Mac using Microsoft adCenter Labs

Today I began reading Avinash Kaushik’s Web Analytics: An Hour a Day. Supposedly I was going to read it for an hour (as the title clearly states!) but I found myself immersed in it for about 2 hours. The book is packed with useful terms, acronyms, companies, examples, best practices. All of this in just the first 49 pages. Just to name a few: customer driven innovation (CDI), Coremetrics, Omniture, WebTrends, WebSideStory, Clicktracks, comScore, packet sniffers, etc. A lot of food for thought for future posts here at idaconcpts.com.

Originally I wanted to discuss about Kaushik’s trinity, whose objective is actionable insights and metrics, but I got caught with Microsoft adCenter Labs.

I had no idea about the existence of this lab, so it is quite sensible to explain what it is all about (in their own words):

Microsoft adCenter Labs is an applied research group dedicated to researching and incubating new digital advertising technologies. Formed in 2006, Microsoft adCenter Labs combines the talents of more than 120 top researchers and engineers, all dedicated to developing cutting-edge ways for consumers and advertisers to connect. Our researchers work across a broad range of technology areas, including keyword and content technologies, audience intelligence, ad selection and relevance, social networking, and video and interactive media. The algorithms developed by our team operate in the engines of Microsoft adCenter products such as Paid Search, Content Ads, and Behavioral Targeting. We are also committed to investing in developing online advertising products that will shape the future of advertising through more relevant and meaningful ads across online video, television and mobile devices.

Here you can find plenty of free little tools that (if correct) would provide great insight into the field of web analytics. Just as Kaushik recommends, this website is “perfectly suited for 1) learning lots and lots and lots about search engine keyword behavior and long-term trends 2) understanding the demographic profiles for your (or your competitor’s) website visitors.”

Learning lots indeed! Today I had to continue to network to learn more about the needs of organizing large collections of photographs. I cannot go into much details but I can tell you that gender distribution is a major factor in my analysis. One particular question that I have is what are the differences between male and female Mac (or Apple!) users, and how does their experience relate to their use of Flickr. Let’s use the Keyword Forecast tool from Microsoft adCenter Labs to find some insights into this question.

According to Microsoft, “This tool forecasts the impression count and predicts demographic distributions of keywords. Enter keywords separated by semi-colons and click the submit button.”

So, I used the terms: Apple: Flickr; Mac. Originally I was going to just use Apple or Mac but after finding the results I found that there important differences about the keywords Apple and Mac.

: Keyword Search using Apple, Mac and Flickr

From the graph above, it becomes clear that before March 2007, the keyword Apple had a much higher trend than the keyword Mac, something happened in March 2007 that turned the tables around for the relationship between these two keywords. I would have to look into that and a useful tool for that would be Google Trends.

But let’s continue to use this tool for now.

: Gender Distribution of Mac, Apple and Flickr

Wow! According to this graph, it appears that for the period 04/2006 – 06/2007, the keyword Apple is associated mostly with females and the keyword Mac is associated mostly with males. This is a key finding for marketers trying to reach a particular gender of Mac (or Apple!) users. It appears that talking about Mac to a female audience of Powerbook users is not such a good idea! Earlier we discussed that Flickr.com is very related to Divinecaroline.com, so this would be an important to consider if Flickr is trying to reach female Apple users at the latter website. The keyword Flickr has almost neutral association with either women or men so the tipping point would be the use of Apple or Mac.

Lastly, the Keyword Search tool offers an age distribution bar graph.

: Keyword Age Distribution for Apple, Mac, and Flickr

From the graph above, my main observations would be that 50+ old keyword users prefer the keyword Apple over Mac, and that 25-34 old keyword user prefer Mac over Apple. All other age distributions seem quite normal.

Conclusion: vive le diference! Gender is highly important for SEO for Mac related web analytics projects!

What do you think?