Scott Stawarz's great talk on using Google Analytics to maximize your blog.

1. Know Your Stats:
Mining your website analytics
to improve your blog.
Scott Stawarz
Who am I?
twitter: @scottstawarz
web: octavity.com
web: simpleweight.com

2. Today’s Plan
• First Step
• Set-up
• Terms
• Site Searches, Event Tracking, Goal Tracking
• Beyond Google Analytics

3. First Step
• Why are YOU fit blogging?

4. First Step
For Fun? To make
money?
Stay Motivated?
• Why are YOU fit blogging?
Help Others? Improve Personal Health
and Fitness?
Recognition?

5. First Step
• Define Why?
• Define my Goals.
• Identify ways to measure success.

6. First Step You
Decide!
Define Possible Goals:
• Downloads of PDF’s • Ad Clicks
• # of Comments • Tweets & Likes
• # of Contact Us • RSS / Email Subscribers
• Weight Loss • Engagement | Visitor Loyalty
• Number of Page Views • Incoming Links
• Posts Published / Month • Cost (time & money)
• Affiliate Clicks • Return on Investment

7. Set-up
• Possible Tools to measure our goals.
• Methods for install (code, theme, or plugin)

8. Tools
• Most Common
Google Analytics, Yahoo! Web Analytics
• Stalwarts
Omniture, Webtrends, Coremetrics, Urchin
• Others
GetClicky, Woopra, Piwik, HaveAMint,
LuckyOrange, AWStats, etc...
1photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/justinbaeder/5317820857/

9. Set-up
• Code. (Works Faster)
• Plugin. (Easier and more functionality)
• Google Analytics for Wordpress
By Joost de Valk
• Google Analyticator
By: Ronald Heft
• In your existing Theme or Service.

10. Setup Demo:
Installing Google Analytics
• Manual Setup
• Plugin Setup

11. Setup Demo

12. Setup Demo

13. Setup Demo

14. Setup Demo

15. Setup Demo
Manual Set-up
Add this code right above your </head> tag.
New Analytics Site Speed Tracking.
000000

16. Setup Demo

17. Setup Demo
Pick
One

18. Setup Demo

19. Setup Demo

20. Setup Demo

21. Setup Demo
Add pdf, etc...
Leave blank

22. Setup Demo
Leave Defaults

23. Analytics is now setup

24. Terms
• Hits,Visits,Visitors • Exit Rate
• Time on Site, Time • Engagement
on Page
• Conversion Rate
• Bounce Rate

25. Terms
• Hit
Request for any file from your website
• Visit
A browser session.
• Visitor
Absolute Unique Visitor.

26. Terms
• Time on Site
• Time on Page

27. Terms
• Bounce Rate
• Bounce rate is the % of Single-page visits.
• Exit Page = Landing Page
• Bounce rate is the Single-page visit with
no user interaction on tracked events.
• Exit Rate
% of exit for the page and landing could be

28. Terms
• Engagement • Page Depth
Interest in your site.
Measured often by
• Time on Site
• Returning Visitors
• Surveys
• Click Path Analysis
• Conversions

29. Terms
• Conversion Rate
Does the visitor achieve the website’s goal?
• Google Analytics has Three types
• URL Destination
(Did I land on that page?)
• Time on Site
• # of Pages per visit

30. Terms Demo
• What should I write • How is my Link Building,
about? Social Media, or Ad.
>Traffic Sources - Keywords Campaigns working?
http://www.google.com/insights/ >Traffic Sources - Referring Site
search/ >URL Builder:
Campaigns: Example: Twitter
• What pages can I improve?
>Weighted Sort Bounce Rate • What Time Should I Post?
>Visitors - Map Overlay
• How Engaged our my Use the Geographic Report to
see what part of the world your
Readers?
>Visitors - Visitor Loyalty visitors are from?
>Custom Hourly Report
• Do you have fans?
>New vs. Returning visitors

31. Terms Demo
1. Choose your Site 2. Pick a Time Frame
3. Pick A Report
4. Analyze the Results

32. Terms Demo
1. Keyword 2. Sort By
Report Bounce Rate
3.
Magic

33. Terms Demo
1. Choose visitors
4. Do I have fans?
2. Visitor Loyalty
3. Do I have
engagement?

34. Terms Demo
How is my
marketing?

35. Terms Demo
Google: URL Builder
http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?
answer=55578

36. Terms Demo

37. Terms Demo
What time should I blog?
Where do my visitors read from?

38. Terms Demo
What Time Should I blog?

39. Custom Reporting
1. Pick Custom Reporting
2. Pick Manage Custom Reports
3. Create new Custom Report

40. Custom Reporting
Give it a name
Add Your Metrics
Add Your Dimensions

41. Reporting -
Let’s Do more.

42. Site Search
• Track what users are searching for on your
site.
• Why?
• Find hidden ideas for blog posts
• Improve Navigation

43. Site Search Demo
1. Edit the profile
Site Search

44. Site Search Demo
Click Do Track Search
Enter letter S
If you use Adsense

45. Site Search Demo
Look at Terms to Find ideas to Blog
Can people not find things?

46. Event Tracking
• Use for Tracking:
• PDF Downloads
• Outbound links
• Video usage
• Requires some custom code or a plugin.
• Note: Limited to 500 tracked events per session(visit)

47. Event Tracking Demo
• Manual Code
http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/
tracking/eventTrackerGuide.html
<a href="#" onClick="_gaq.push(['_trackEvent',
'Videos', 'Play', 'Baby's First
Birthday']);">Play</a>
• Plugin

48. Event Tracking Demo
1. Choose Content
2. Choose Event Tracking

49. Event Tracking Demo

50. Goal Tracking
• Used for tracking Conversions
• Once set up, recommend not changing them.
• URL Destination
(Did I land on that page?)
ie: Thank You Page.
• Time on Site
• # of Pages per visit
• Events (new analytics only)
• Think of Primary Goals & Secondary Goals

51. Goal Tracking
Possible Goals:
• Contact Us Form
• E-commerce
• Engagement
• RSS Subscriptions
• Blog Comments
• Event Tracking - New Analytics

52. Goal Tracking Demo
Step 1: Create the Tracking Page

53. Goal Tracking Demo
Step 2: Edit the theme
Step 3: Select theme to edit
Step 5: Add custom code
Step 4: Select Theme Functions

54. Goal Tracking Demo
6. Edit the profile
7. Add Goals

55. Goal Tracking Demo
Use Name of Page
you just created
Optional

56. Goal Tracking Demo
Last Step: Make sure the Page is hidden from Google.
Hover the Page with mouse
Identify Post ID
Identify any of your Theme Pages that use this
function and add exclusions
<?php wp_list_pages('exclude=636' );
// exclude page ID 636, the comment Thank You page
Optionally: Add Exclusions to SEO, robots noindex

57. Goal Tracking Demo
Wait a few days.
Run Report:

58. Goal Tracking Demo
Create a Custom Report to
identify what marketing
campaigns perform better
Goal Wise.

59. Goal Tracking Demo
Define what
engagement goals
mean for your site

60. Beyond
Google Analytics
• RSS Tracking - Feedburner, PostRank,
RapidFeeds, Feedity, Feedcat, Feedsqueezer
• HeatMaps - CrazyEgg, LuckyOrange

61. Beyond Analytics
• Qualitative: Understanding Why?
• Watch Customers - ClickTale,
LuckyOrange
• UserTesting.com
• Surveys: 4qsurvey.com, LuckyOrange

62. Bonus Time
• Feedburner
• In Page Analytics
• New Google Analytics Version

63. Feedburner Demo
Feedburner.com

64. Feedburner Demo

65. Feedburner Demo
Auto Post to Twitter &
Auto Tags Campaign for easy
Google Analytic Tracking

66. FeedBurner Demo
By Segmenting, the traffic, we can
use our Goals & Adsense to see if
the referral is effective.
Notice the filter usage

67. In-Page Analytics

68. New Google Analytics
At the Top of Analytics

69. New Google Analytics
New Analytics Code for Site Speed Tracking.

70. Homework
• Install an Analytics Tool
even if you don’t plan to use it.
• Decide on Your Goals and How to track.
• Set-up Goals, Event Tracking, & Site-Search
• Look at Trends, Segment, and Tie it back to your own
personal Return on Investment.

71. Credits
• Thanks to Screenflex.com Room Dividers
for letting me use some of their data.

72. Sources
• http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/
• http://cutroni.com/
• Web Analytics 2.0 Book

73. Thank you
• Scott Stawarz
• @scottstawarz
• http://octavity.com/
• http://simpleweight.com/
• Slides at: http://octavity.com/fit-analytics/