February 2013 | The Web Authority

February 27, 2013February 23, 2013

Keyword Blackout in Google Analytics Makes It Hard to Know Your Traffic

Over six months ago, Google announced that for users signed into their Google account using https:// at Google.com Google, would no longer have their search terms or activity shown in Google Analytics. Matt Cutts at that time mentioned that this would not be a big impact for website analysis but would however provide secure searches for users.

Fast forward now about six months, and if you are like me, in Google Analytics I cannot see upwards of 54% of my website traffic’s search keywords. That’s no small number! So, what’s a website owner to do to understand what is happening on his or her website and to try to know what keywords are popular to your web presence.

Here are three things you can to to try to get more keyword data:

1. Make sure to link your Google Analytics account with your Google Webmaster control panel account and verify your access. When you do this, Google Analytics will show more keyword information under the Search Engine Optimization links from the left side bar. Although this is simply not as much data as before, it does give you additional insight into the traffic and keywords popular for your website.

2. In Google Analytics add query parameters to you can track activity on your own site search function. This article found at SiteProNews written by Nell Terry explains how to do just that; track searches in Analytics.

3. Advertise on Google AdWords for keyword and conversion keyword discovery. Using AdWords, and if you link your AdWords account to Google Analytics the data will flow into the section called traffic and then advertising and will give you more keyword insights.

Unfortunately with keyword blackout in Google Analytics, and the “not set” descriptor, even site owners find it hard to understand what keywords are driving search traffic. However, these tips will allow you to glean a little bit more knowledge into what is driving your own traffic so you can further evaluate activity and change accordingly.

February 25, 2013February 21, 2013

Yes That Is Facebook Stalking You Online

Now that Facebook has encouraged you to share every single detail of your life with timeline, and some of you have, and now that you have used your Facebook login to supposedly easily login to sites around the web, Facebook can now stalk you with ads online. Unfortunately, we’ve no one to blame but ourselves by over-sharing all our likes, where we go online, and what we are doing.

Facebook is now using every single thing that you ever shared on its platform to tailor ads to your specific needs and likes. But it isn’t just happening on the Facebook platform, now that we have shared and used our Facebook logins on other sites, Facebook knows even more and is sharing this information with other advertising platforms to target us in ways we never really intended by simply connecting with our friends and family on the Facebook website. If you’ve enabled Facebook Graph Search, and sorry to say it is a one way trip in, now you can even see more information about those in your network, including photos, that you may have never really wanted to see. This total loss of privacy is unfortunately of our own making. By trading away privacy for cool birthday apps on Facebook, or allowing games to see our settings, or by trying to uncomplicate our lives with one universal Facebook login, we’ve created an ad selling monster. Just wait until Facebook really ramps up its ad serving program, nothing will be private and in fact things about you may be revealed or shown to others in order to sell them products or services, using your own words, photos, or online activity without your express knowledge or agreement.If you didn’t know or remember, it’s all about the money.

“Facebook remains under pressure from its investors to make more money and advertising has been one of the social network’s main focuses. The firm brought in $5 billion in advertising revenue last year. Facebook also continues to push mobile advertising — it made 23 percent of its advertising revenue from mobile in the last quarter, up from 14 percent in third quarter.” Read the full article.

The unfortunate thing is that once we’ve shared as deeply as we have, we now are being used to make advertising profit.

February 22, 2013February 17, 2013

Introducing Rel=Publisher for Brands

Rel=Publisher is a new tag that can tie your website brand to a Google+ page and it is a hot new tactic that allows brands to expand beyond the rel=author tag.This is actually great news that Google now has expanded Google+ verification and authority beyond just a person. In fact, this was a problematic issue for large businesses on Google+ – who did you tie your business website too when you are really a brand more so than an individual.For a business like mine, using the rel=author tag makes perfect sense. I write for my own business exposure and I am my brand as the owner and founder of McCord Web Services, but how about a large company where the CEO really does not want to tie his or her name to a Google+ page which may be ghost written. In this case the new rel=publisher is a much better fit.

With rel=publisher a brand or large company can now tie their website and verify their brand tying to a Google+ Business page and not a Google+ personal page. This allows for the Google verification process to work, to build trust and web authority but without being tied to an individual who may or may not stay with the company in years to come.

With changes that Google is making on Google+ Business Pages by allowing Business Pages to now follow people this new tag is welcome news to help with the long term implementation and use of Google+ by large businesses.