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Category: analytics

  • How to pass the new Google Analytics Individual Qualification exam

    How to pass the new Google Analytics Individual Qualification exam

    In the world of digital marketing, so-called “experts” are a dime a dozen. One way to distinguish yourself is to become a real expert. Since measurement is so important, I recommend you start with digital analytics. And Google is the king of analytics for most websites. According to one estimate, almost 70 percent of the top 10,000 websites use Google Analytics.

    Fortunately, Google has created materials and an exam to support your quest. The exam used to cost $50 to take, which kept many of my students from attempting it. Today it’s free. While the old exam was timed, you could mark questions and return to them. The new exam is linear; you start at question one and take them in order. You must answer 70 questions in 90 minutes. You need to get 80 percent correct or more to earn the certification. If you fail, you can retake the exam after one week.

    Here’s how to pass the new Google Analytics Individual Qualification exam:

    Step 1. You’ll need working knowledge of Google Analytics

    You should already be familiar with and using Google Analytics. It helps if you can get access to a variety of accounts. You’ll definitely want access to an ecommerce account. If you can’t get access to one, you can gain access to the Google demo account. This is for the Google merchandise store, where you can purchase Google logo merchandise such as water bottles, T-shirts and backpacks.

    It’s also essential that you have full access to an account at the administrator level. This kind of account is the only way you can perform some advanced activities, such as writing filters.

    Step 2. Study at the Google Analytics Academy

    Google has created learning activities to help you learn how to use their tools. Most lessons are video- and activity-based. There are five courses available:

    I suggest watching these over time, taking in a couple of videos in each session. As you watch them, apply the lessons on your GA accounts, and take notes in a text file. I suggest one long text file, so when you’re taking the exam you can CTL-F the relevant keywords easily. Take the practice assessment at the end of each class; these questions are close to what you’ll see on the GAIQ. You should also look at the Google Analytics IQ Study Guide, a text-based resource.

    You may think of Google Analytics in a narrow, limited way. The exam uses Google Analytics as the center of measuring sophisticated marketing campaigns. So expect questions about AdWords, Tag Manager, display advertising and mobile app tracking. These are all covered in the five courses.

    Step 3. Take the exam

    Since it’s free to take, you might as well take it cold and see how you do. Sign up at Google Partners where you’ll create an account. You might pass on the first try. If you don’t, use this experience to improve your performance.

    I breezed through it and came within one question of passing. While I was initially disappointed, I had it coming. I only spent 25 of the 90 minutes allotted. Had I carefully checked just one or two answers, I would have passed. My takeaway is that 90 minutes is actually a lot of time, and you shouldn’t stress if you have to look something up. Just look it up. It will improve your score.

    The hardest questions have multiple responses. Miss one and the question is wrong. It’s also essential to re-read questions to make sure you answer with precision.

    Unfortunately, you don’t get feedback on which questions you missed. You just get the number correct and the final percentage.

    Step 4. Repeat

    When you’re ready to re-take the exam, create an interruption-free place. Get a glass of water and turn off all your other devices. Choose a time of day when you’re sharp. The exam offers a time remaining meter on the bottom of your screen. Be thoughtful and deliberate. I was able to instantly answer about 25 percent of the questions. The rest, I checked my notes and the extensive support offered by Google. I copied the phrase “Google Analytics” to the clipboard to facilitate faster searches. I also favored Google-owned pages when checking details, because they use language consistent with the exam. At the time of the exam, I had the following windows open on my computer:

    • The exam
    • My text document of notes from the study sessions
    • An active Google Analytics account
    • Various SERPs from checking answers (close these as you use them)

    Searching efficiently alone won’t get you to the goal line. There are a fair number of interpretation-based questions. Either you know this process or you don’t.

    If you pass, you’ll earn the GAIQ Certificate, which is good for 18 months. On my second try I earned 88 percent; it took me 80 minutes.

    Regardless of how you perform on the exam, the act of preparing and taking it will help you become a better analyst. That’s the real reward of going through this process.

    Here are some other posts on taking and passing the GAIQ:

    https://www.viget.com/articles/how-to-pass-the-google-analytics-iq-test-in-two-days-zero-to-hero

    http://www.fivefifty.com/google-analytics-exam/

    Good luck, and let me know what worked for you in the comments, below.

  • PRSA Kansas analytics presentation

  • Google Analytics and the four kinds of traffic your web site receives

    Your first look at a Google Analytics report can be daunting. So many numbers! And some concepts you may not be familiar with. I remember showing a report to a senior-level VP on a consulting job. She looked it over and asked, “Is it good?”

    Ever since that day, I’ve tried to answer that question – is it good? – with every report I’ve shared. The overall goal is to take the mountains of data and to find the few precious, actionable insights.

    So if you’re new to analytics, log in to your dashboard and look at the opening report. Weigh it in your mind. And then let’s drill down to a good starting place – traffic acquisition. Follow down the left column of your analytics screen, and click on “Traffic Sources,” then “Overview.” You’ll see something that looks like this:

    traffic sources from Google AnalyticsHere are your four buckets of visitors:

    • Direct traffic comes when someone types your URL into their browser, or come on a bookmark. We love direct traffic.
    • Referral traffic comes on a link from another site. We love referral traffic.
    • Search traffic comes from search engines. Yes, we love search traffic, too.
    • Campaign traffic comes from, well, campaigns. Stuff like Google AdWords, email blasts, banner ads or social media shares. We love campaign traffic.

    So here’s your first takeaway: we love traffic. Especially when it’s qualified traffic that sticks around and converts (does some thing we want them to do, like buy something or sign up for our newsletter).

    Think of your web traffic as a financial portfolio, and each of the four buckets as positions. You want a balanced portfolio that minimizes risk and maximizes return. Let’s take a look at each of the four buckets (we’ll take a more detailed look at each in future posts):

    Direct traffic. These people know you and love you. They typed your URL into their browser or bothered to bookmark you. To further enhance your direct traffic, choose a short, easy-to-remember and easy-to-type URL and promote it abundantly in your offline materials – letterhead, business cards, newspaper ads, wherever you have a presence offline. Analytics expert Avinash Kaushik recommends that direct traffic should be in the neighborhood of 20 percent.

    Referral traffic. The people who linked to your site are your friends. Discover who they are (there are reports you can run, or you can use Webmaster tools or Open Explorer) and build those relationships. How? Reach out offline or online. Comment on a blog or guest author some content for them. Link back to them in appropriate content. You can also consider your list of friends, research others who are similar who should be on that list, and build relationships with them. There’s a bonus in doing this work: not only will you get more referral visitors in the future, but Google will also send you more visitors. That’s because the number and authority of inbound links are powerful signals that Google considers when ranking you in search engine results pages. Avinash says your referral traffic should be around 20-30 percent.

    Search traffic. When people first look at their analytics, they’re often surprised at how strong their search traffic is. Avinash says 40-50 percent is normal. Increasing traffic in this bucket is the work we call search engine optimization. In addition to link building, we work to make our content as relevant as possible to searchers, and as visible as possible to Google and the other search engines. Too much dependence on search engines can be bad, however, because just as Google giveth, Google can also taketh away. Search is a fast-moving area and change is constant. So by all means get as many visits from search as possible, but also try to diversify your visitor portfolio.

    Campaign traffic. By default, you will have no campaign traffic. But campaign traffic offers you wonderful opportunities to measure the effectiveness of your online marketing efforts. If you use Google AdWords (paid search) your AdWords campaigns will automatically show up here. Anything else, you’ll have to tag your links. How? By using the Google URL Builder.

    Let’s take a look at how NPR tags its social media posts using the Google URL Builder. Here’s a sample link:

    http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2013/02/28/173139266/go-away-i-want-you-as-far-away-from-me-as-possible-how-big-is-the-universe?utm_source=NPR&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=20130228

    Wow, that’s a long link! But the actual link is just the part that’s in red, above. The rest is campaign tagging. There are five possible variables (source, medium, term, content, name) you can tag using this tool. Here’s a screenshot of the URL Builder:

    Google url builderIf you look back at the URL, above, only three of the campaign fields are in use: source (NPR), medium (Facebook) and campaign name (20130228). Visitors from this link will show up as campaign traffic, and they will be easy to track as they click their way through the NPR website.

    Hopefully you’re having an “aha” moment right now. Something like, “oh, so you can finally assess the performance of your Facebook engagement as the referrals hit the website!” And you would be correct.

    Tagging requires a little bit of work, and you need to be consistent in how you apply your tags. Here are two articles that dig deeper:

    As you spend time online, start paying attention to URLS and look for utm_source and other utm tags, and study how others implement tags. Tagged URLs are more prevalent than you think.

    In upcoming posts, I’ll dig deeper into these four buckets of visitors, addressing limitations of the data, ways to optimize your traffic, and then ways to attract more visitors. When the new posts are up, I’ll link inline, above. See you then!

     

  • Improve your digital listening skills

    RSS SymbolOf all the benefits of social media for business, the greatest come from listening. Consider this: you can listen unobtrusively – no one needs to know you’re paying attention. You don’t even need to sign up for accounts to listen. This is a great place for the socially-shy business to dip its toes into social media. After you’ve observed some success from listening, it’s also easier to make the case to senior management for social engagement.

    Here are some tips to help you improve your ability to monitor the online chatter:

    1. Get right with Google. You might use Google and other search engines regularly, but you’re probably not making best use of advanced features. Not everyone knows the basics of Google. It’s common to do a search and get millions of results. But you’d be better off getting fewer, but more relevant, results. Your overall goal is to improve your “signal to noise” ratio. So learn these basic tips:

    • Put the exact search term in quotes, such as “Bob Jones University” to eliminate spurious results when using common words
    • Use the “site” operator to restrict your search to only one website, such as “Form 990 site:irs.gov”
    • Use Boolean operators, such as OR, as in “Bob OR Bobby Knight”
    • The exclude operator ( – ) eliminates specified words: “Bob Dylan young -forever” eliminates references to the song “Forever Young” from your results

    2. Use Google Alerts. (This service requires a Google account). Use Alerts to track mentions of your name, your company or your senior executives. As your alerts come in, you may find that you need to fine-tune your mix using the techniques above. You should also be a contrarian – be sure to monitor keywords that reflect your business category and your competition. It’s best to set your alerts to show up in your RSS feed rather than via email. Then monitor the feed regularly.

    3. Set up your RSS feeds. Some say RSS is in decline, in part due to “black box” technologies that don’t include RSS and in part due to the rise of social sharing. But you can’t count on social sharing when there’s a cost associated with missing important news. RSS is a powerful way to aggregate most of your listening in one place. The most common RSS listening client is Google Reader (requires a Google account). But once your feeds are running in Reader, you can monitor them using other clients by syncing the feed (on iOS devices you might try NetNewsWire or Reeder).

    Some argue that it’s too much work to set up and monitor RSS feeds. But if you’re a high-volume consumer of news and information, it’s too much work NOT to use RSS.

    4. Use Twitter Advanced Search. The best way to find out what’s happening now is on Twitter, the beating heart of the real-time web. The next time a popular live event is on television, see this for yourself. As you watch the show, follow the most likely hashtag (or search term) on Twitter. Note the volume of tweets. Observe the tone of the comments. People on Twitter don’t hold back – if you’re watching the Oscars, you’ll get detailed feedback on every dress and performance.

    The real money comes from the advanced search page (using “advanced search” pays dividends on almost every search). With advanced search, you can specify a location, very useful, say, if you’re a local chapter of a national nonprofit. Or, you could track response to a political speech in different regions. You can also search multiple keywords in one search and use other tools for a more tailored search.

    Unfortunately, Twitter no longer publishes RSS as part of its API, so you’ll have to do this manually or use a workaround unless you subscribe to a premium service such as Salesforce Radian6.

    5. Remember, you are the analyst. It’s your job to process a mountain of data, sift it, and then find the few insights that are worthy of action. Sometimes there’s no substitute for intelligence and experience. Some terms don’t search cleanly, so you’ll have to find ways to throw out the irrelevant results. Sentiment filters are notoriously unreliable. So never forget: you’re in charge.

    Remember also that the Internet never sleeps. If you’re working for a national brand, or for a smaller brand in the news, you need to monitor constantly. Online, a crisis can blow up in minutes. And when something good happens, you’ll want to capitalize on it.

    6. Listening doesn’t always require action. It’s good to remember that you can’t please everybody. Some critics fall below the noise floor. But when an influencer is talking about your brand, good or bad, you need to pay attention. These tools will help you get started. If the scope of listening or budget allows, you might graduate to a paid service, such as Sprout Social or Salesforce Radian6. These tools are not only more powerful, they also include dashboards so a manager can delegate jobs and create activity reports.

  • Web analytics resources

    Here are resources that I’ve found valuable in developing a deeper understanding of web analytics and digital measurement:

    Books:

    Web Analytics 2.0 by Avinash Kaushik

    Web Analytics: an hour a day by Avinash Kaushik

    Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics by Brian Clifton

    Measure What Matters: Online Tools For Understanding Customers, Social Media, Engagement, and Key Relationships by Katie Delahaye Paine

    Online resources:

    Google’s Conversion University

    Lynda.com offers a course on Google Analytics (monthly fee)

    Occam’s Razor blog by Avinash Kaushik

    Web Analytics Demystified

    More blogs about analytics from Advertising Age Power 150

    Organizations:

    Digital Analytics Association

    Public Relations Society of America

     

  • Google Analytics Individual Qualification (IQ) Test preparation

    If you run a website and don’t use analytics to monitor its performance, you’re a fool. Analytics provide rich, granular data about every aspect of your site and how it performs. Without this information, you can’t meaningfully improve your site – or justify the resources needed to run the site to your boss or board of directors.

    Because of the depth of information available from analytics, it’s essential that you go beyond the standard default reports. You may also need to modify your code to track downloads or ecommerce. You may also want to segment your reports (only visitors from Illinois or exclude employee use of the website, etc.). You need to be able to peel back the layers of this powerful tool.

    One way to make sure you’re learning the depth and breadth of the tool is to seek certification, the Google Analytics IQ exam. Pass it and you’ve got a credential that distinguishes you from the other so-called digital “experts.”

    Here are some resources to help you better understand Google Analytics, whether your goal is to pass the competition or simply to pass the test. I recommend you work through this material in conjunction with using Google Analytics (at the “administrator” level) for a client.

    Test strategy

    Evan Fazio’s recommendations. Evan is a student of mine who took the test. He offers strategies for making the most of the time allotted (90 minutes).

    How to pass the Google Analytics IQ test, guide from Slingshot SEO in Indianapolis. Other great Google Analytics and SEO resources available on this page, too. Includes some useful regex statements you can copy and repurpose.

    The Rise guide to passing the Google Analytics exam, from Rise Interactive in Chicago. Excellent multi-part guide, free downloads.

    SEOmoz article on how to pass the GAIQ test.

    Jens Sorensen’s advice on how to pass the GAIQ test

    Jens Sorensen’s online notes (use CTR-F to find relevant text strings on this long page)

    Books

    Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics, by Brian Clifton (third edition forthcoming.) Previous editions have come with a $25 voucher for taking the Google Analytics IQ test (full cost to take the test is $50). Clifton is a former Google employee.

    Web Analytics: an hour a day, by Avinash Kaushik. Avinash works for Google

    Web Analytics 2.0: the art of online accountability and science of customer centricity. This is Avinash’s newer book.

    Web resources

    Occam’s Razor, Avinash Kaushik’s excellent analytics blog.

    Google Analytics home page. Especially useful: Support and Education tabs.

    Filter IPs with this Regex calculator from Google.

    Videos

    Conversion University. This is Google’s set of videos, which are essential to study. Just a couple of notes: they mostly reflect the old version of analytics, and some of the audio is missing. If there is no sound, click on the notes tab to see the text.

    Lynda.com offers a complete set of videos on Google Analytics. Access to the entire Lynda site, which features many great instructional videos of interest to designers, videographers and digital marketers, begins at $25/month.

  • PRSA International Conference – downloads

    Here are some files I’m sharing at the PRSA International Conference:

    Analytics and campaign development – Analytics and campaign development

    Research summary – PDF; PR at the micro level summary

    Teaching poster – PDF; media relations for the digital age

    Detailed notes – PDF; creating the digital press release

  • The Missing Google Analytics Manual

    What good is a web site if it just sits there? I’m hearing from more and more small businesses and non-profits who are ready to start taking measurement of their web traffic seriously. For these smaller websites, Google Analytics is a powerful and easy solution. Here’s a treasure trove of support information from grokdotcom.com if you’re just getting started with Google Analytics.

    Here’s a quick overview: start by creating an account with Google. Your analytics account can be created from your Gmail login. Google Analytics will then provide some code that you’ll place on your website. Depending on how your site is configured, you’ll put it on every page, or in one place that’s served up with every page. When visitors hit your site, the code will “phone home” to Google. You’ll view the results a day later on a very nice dashboard viewable from your Google Analytics account page.
    If you’re a Movable Type user like me, a good place to install the code is in your Footer template file, just before the </body> tag. You just need to put it on your site once, since the footer is served with every call to your site. And, since it’s in the footer, disruption to the user is minimal, since it’s served last. Note that this code is “off the page” text; it’s not visible to your site visitors.
    There’s really no excuse to not measure your web traffic. It’s not hard to get started, and the service is free. Do this today!