Other

Here’s some of my posts that don’t fit into any recognised category. They’re usually a little odd!

How To Identify & Block Spam Referral & BotTraffic In Google Analytics

All of us that use Google Analytics are to one extent or another blighted by bot and spam referral traffic. For those of us which rely heavily on data for business and marketing decisions its a real nuisance.

Whats the problem with bot traffic & spam referrals in Google Analytics?

  • It can seriously reduce reported conversion rate
  • It can negatively impact reported bounce rate
  • It can over-inflate reported traffic volumes

In short it makes analytics data unreliable. It’s particularly frustrating when comparing data for periods of time as inevitably the comparisons can’t be trusted if you suspect data in 1 period is tainted.

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5 powerful tips for those new to remarketing

Remarketing as a means of recapturing traffic and growing sales can be a powerful tool for web reliant businesses and the platforms and opportunities available to marketers that facilitate remarketing are growing and becoming more sophisticated. Here a few simple but powerful tips to help you get the most out of your remarketing.

1) Decide exactly who you are going to remarket to and test variations of that audience

For example targeting cart abandoners is likely to produce higher conversion rates as that audience already ‘almost’ bought and are more likely to be convert than other site visitors. You could also try targeting cart abandoners from yesterday v the last 30 days and see how ROI compares.

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Google cache not updating

google cache datesI noticed recently that many of the pages i’ve been working hadn’t been cached by Google for an unusually long time and that typically and probably not coincidentally those cache dates were mostly the 21st or 22nd October. I started looking at random other sites, big ones like booking.com and noticed the same thing there. Since then there has been the odd comment about it in Moz q&a’s and now it’s come to the attention of Search Engine Roundtable (https://www.seroundtable.com/google-cache-dated-19497.html) and I expect it will become a more mainstream topic in the SEO world.

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How to set up conversion tracking in Adwords

What is conversion tracking?

If you want to succeed with Adwords you need conversion tracking set up. Conversion tracking allows you to measure KPIs of your Adwords campaigns i.e. form fill enquiry, brochure download, sales etc. With conversion tracking you can easily identify what is producing conversions and identify what the cost per conversion is, giving you the data required in order to make for example bid changes per keyword. Lets look at a simple example…

conversion tracking example Click image to view large table
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Review of The Smart Marketer’s Landing Page Conversion Course

Oli Gardner and Unbounce.com have produced an exceptional 11 part online series that aims to help make our landing pages perform better. You can sign up for the course here.

The course is accessible via a secure link emailed to ‘students’ every few days. I recommend it to anyone that wants to increase the marketing performance of their site. Each of the 11 parts is very easy to understand, provides clear and often illuminating practical theory as well as examples that support what is being taught. My only criticism if I were to have one is that the focus is very much on lead generation rather than ecommerce, although much of the course applies equally to both types of site.

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Anatomy of a Google search result 2013

Wow hasnt the Google search engine results changed over the years?! Driven by advancements in its paid advertising model, Adwords, rich snippet mark up and Google’s seemingly growing desire to dominate particular search queries with its own web inventory things look a whole bunch different to a decade ago. Hell, they look a whole bunch different to last year! Inspired by Rock Cheetah’s recent post about how Google returns search results for hotel queries I wanted to take a look at and document the multitude of different items and features that show for a ‘typical’ search result, also hotel themed.

Understanding and where possible taking advantage of the various snippet types, ad units, extensions and features can be extremely beneficial to your SEO efforts e.g. the review rich snippets in organic search results can really help clickthrough rates.

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Page title and meta description length tool

Ok so we all (should) know how important page titles (or meta titles) and meta descriptions are. Page titles help you rank for keywords and meta descriptions really help increase your CTR (clickthrough rate) from search engines. Page titles also being your search result title (most of the time) also greatly helps CTR so you wanna get the title and meta description length right, right?

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Reason for absence

I started this blog recently as I wanted to make a serious effort to re-humanise my work, what I have to offer professionally and the knowledge I have to share. I want to keep up with that and make this blog something to be proud of and that will attract a willing and new audience. Its a pet hate of mine starting and not finishing new web projects (ive done that lots) but I will continue with making this site something to proud of.

Without going into detail (heres not the place) my wife and I have had some tragedy in our lives recently, and although our situation isnt as dire as it could have been, it has put a strain on work and simply just doing everyday stuff. Im slowly getting my head back in ‘the game’ and ill be publishing more regularly on here…

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