Posts Tagged ‘tracking’

Youtube Gets Its Own URL Shortener

Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009

URL shorteners are a dime a dozen. If you don’t what they are, they are a shorter URL that represents a longer URL. The first really popular URL shortening service was Tinyurl, but it has its drawbacks. You can’t track when someone clicks on your links is one.

An example of how an URL shortener works can be found on Tinyurl’s own website:

Turn this URL:

http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53200-19255-0/1?t

ype=3&campid=5336224516&toolid=10001&customid=tiny-
hp&ext=unicycle&satitle=unicycle

into this tinyURL:

http://tinyurl.com/unicycles

Since Twitter has forced us all to communicate in 140 character soundbites, many other URL shorteners have arrived on the scene, some of them allowing you to track your licks. A few have attempted to offer compensation for using them. But I wouldn’t recommend most of them.

Google introduced its own URL shortener not too long ago. And now, the latest: Youtu.be.

Like Goo.gl, Youtu.be is not for widespread use. The former can only be used for Google products while the latter can only be used for YouTube videos. I guess those are selling points.

I suppose there is benefit in using Youtu.be. It has stability. You know the YouTube brand isn’t going anywhere any time soon. But can you track who’s watching your videos? Can you count clicks and see the effectiveness of your promotions? I see nothing yet that would indicate you can track your clicks. Until that happens, I’m not sure there is a real benefit to using Youtu.be. Other URL shortners, like bit.ly, will allow you to track your clicks.

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Posted in Tracking & Analytics | 2 Comments »

Google Analytics Is An Easy Set Up

Sunday, October 25th, 2009

Google Analytics is one of the Web’s easiest and most important tools for webmasters. You can have your account set up, literally, within minutes and be tracking your website statistics within a day. Just go to the Google Analytics website at http://www.google.com/analytics/ and click the link labeled “Sign Up Now”. You’ll find it under the blue button labeled “Access Analytics”.

Once you’ve signed up for your account you should get an e-mail with an activation link in it. Click the activation link. You won’t be able to access your account at Google Analytics until you do.

Once inside Google Analytics, click the button labeled “Get Started” and follow the directions to setting up your website for tracking. You can have more than one website, but I recommend starting with just one. At the end of the set up process you’ll be given some code that includes your website’s unique tracking identification number. Add the code to each page of your website in the footer, just before the end body tag. Remember, each page of your site must have the code or you won’t be able to track statistics for that page.

That’s it. Once you have the code in place you’ll be able to track website statistics through Google Analytics. It will take about 24 hours before you see any stats as they will appear for the previous day.

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Why Tracking Your Visitors Is Important

Thursday, January 15th, 2009

With any website, tracking is important, but if you are trying to build a business profile online, you`ll need to really take note of this. It`s vital to know who is visiting your site and why. There are a lot of trends that can be spotted in the statistics and contrary to popular belief, the sheer number of visitors is not the most important.

Unique visitors. This tells you how often NEW people are coming to your website. If you have 2,000 visitors and only 500 unique visitors, that means most people are coming back an average of four times. This is good to know.

Pages. Understanding where people are entering your site and where they are leaving is also useful. If they are all flooding to one particular page, you might want to optimize that page for conversion. On the other hand, if people are tending to leave from another page, take note and see if you can`t figure out a way to keep them longer on the site.

Search terms. Where are these people coming from? The list of search terms that your visitors are using to find your page can be handy to look at. It will give you an idea of what to optimize for, as well. If a lot of people are including the words “rubber tire” in their searches and ending up on your website, you might want to add an article or two that is optimized for those keywords.

Tracking is vital to online business success. You need to know who is visiting your site so you can tailor the experience to their needs and hopefully up your conversion rates.

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Email Marketing: Will You Change Tactics in 2009?

Saturday, December 27th, 2008

The new year is the perfect chance for you to mix up your email marketing strategy a little. While you don`t need to change everything around, it`s a good idea to take a look now at your tracking and analysis.

Figure out what you need to improve and where your weak points are so you can boost your email marketing strategy in the coming year. This is something that can make all the difference in how well things go in 2009. You`ll be able to adjust everything now so that you are able to be more successful going into the next year.

So, what should you be changing? Anything that doesn`t work. Is there a specific email that you find caused more unsubscribes than any other? Learn from the mistakes you`ve made and make sure that you understand what you did wrong or what experiments simply didn`t work out.

Email marketing is a great way to reach clients, but you need to ensure that you are doing your best or you won`t be reaching everyone you could be.

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Pay Per Click Advertising: Make It Work For You

Sunday, November 2nd, 2008

Pay per click advertising makes a lot of people nervous. If you don`t understand it, then it`s quite easy to make a lot of mistakes that could really cause some problems down the road, mainly, loss of money.

To make sure that you are getting your money`s worth out of pay per click advertising, here`s what you need to do:

  • Educate yourself. If you don`t know much about pay per click, read about it and learn as much as possible before beginning.
  • Track and analyze. Make sure you know which keywords are working for you and then increase efforts in that area.
  • Start slow. Rather than dumping a huge amount of money into a pay per click campaign, start out with just a few cents a day and keep your budget limited to reduce risk.

Pay per click advertising can be lucrative and pay. It’s important that you don’t lose your head and that you track everything.

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Tracking: Do You Know Where Your Traffic Comes From?

Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008

Are you tracking your website traffic? This is a subject that we don`t touch on too much, but it`s still an important one. If you don`t know where your clients are coming from, how can you increase them?

Knowing where your clients and website visitors come from is the best way to boost your online business. That`s why tracking and analyzing your website traffic is so vital. By keeping on top of where everyone is coming from, you`ll know which ad campaigns work and which should be dumped.

One of the biggest expenses for most small businesses is advertising and publicity, so it makes sense that you would want to know exactly which ads are working. Keep track of it and you will be able to increase marketing efforts in the areas that are producing and boost your clients.

There are tracking programs that allow you to keep an eye on these statistics and it`s very helpful to do so.

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