This is a follow up to the post I created yesterday on using analytics. When optimising your site and analysing data it’s best to go after the quick wins in the short term while still having a strategy for your long term goals. The quick wins would be to optimise and link build for the keywords that your ranking on the 2nd page of google and receiving traffic.

The appeal of this technique is pretty obvious. If your receiving traffic already from the 2nd page of google, how much traffic would you receive if you ranked on the 1st page of Google? If you already rank in the Top 20 of Google for the keywords how much link building will be required to move into the Top 10 compared with optimising and link building for a new keyword?

So now we know the benefits, how do we track our 2nd page rankings?

Thanks to Will and the guys at Distilled, I’m going to show you how to set this tracking up in Google Analytics.

• Create a new Profile for the site

• Add a filter and apply it to the newly created profile

• Set the filter up as follows:

The text in the Field A –> Extract A box is (\?|&)(start)=([^&]*)

This is a regular expression which extracts the parameter called ’start’ from the referring URL. Google uses this to determine which page of results to display (page 2 is start=10, page 3 is start=20 etc. for anyone with the default settings of 10 search results / page)

Segmenting the data

Now when we go into the profile we have the above data but it’s not quite what we want, we need to segment the data just to capture the keywords from referred from Page 2 of Google. To this we do the following:

• Select Advanced Segments

• Click on the drop-down and add a new segment as shown below:

• Finally Apply this segment to the report

Popularity: 6% [?]

When relying on search engine optimisation for your affiliate sites it helps if you can understand, analyse and make decisions based on the data you have for your sites. Google Analytics is a fantastic package for presenting your data regarding traffic to your site but it doesn’t offer everything you need right out of the box. But don’t worry Google Analytics is totally customizable and allows you to create filters and use expressions to get the data you need.

Some of the most important metrics I believe required to monitor your SEO efforts would be the ability to monitor Keywords, Rankings and Landing Pages. This data can always be manipulated with “Links to your site” data from Webmaster Central to monitor effects of link building.

There have been a couple of solutions on how to do this on the internet. Yoast had a post on how to track what page of google traffic came from along with keywords. This was good but it was still a bit awkward to read, i.e. the ranking report displays page 1 results as unset, (page: ), page 2 results as (page: 10) or (page: 11). Damon Gudaitis wrote a post on how to use Yoasts technique but how to make it more presentable, i.e. Page 1, Page 2, etc.

Again this was better but not quite there, it wasn’t actually tracking the ranking position. But then Google modified it’s referrer string for search queries and this was spotted by Patrick Altoft who immediatley realised it was now possible to track ranking positions.

Expanding on Patricks information using an example from James Morell, I’m going to show you how to setup Analytics to track keyword, ranking and landing page:

• Create a new profile in Google Analytics, and call it something like ‘SERP result and landing page.’

• Hit ‘Edit’ and add a new filter. There will be four filters in total.

• The first filter is for Google Traffic only. Set it up as follows

Select filter type: Custom filter
Check the ‘Include’ radio button
Select Campaign Source in the Filter Field dropdown
Type ‘google’ into the Filter Pattern
Select ‘no’ from the ‘Case Sensitive’ radio buttons

• Next, Create another filter called ’search term and rank filter’

Select filter type: Custom filter
Check the ‘Advanced’ radio button
Select Campaign Term in the Field A -> Extract A box. Enter (.*) in the text box
Select Referral in the Field B -> Extract B box. Enter (\?|&)(cd)=([^&]*) in the text box
Select Custom Field 1 in the Output To -> Constructor box. Enter $A1 | rank: $B3 in the text box
Select ‘yes’ from the ‘Field A Required’ radio buttons
Select ‘yes’ from the ‘Field B Required’ radio buttons
Select ‘yes’ from the ‘Override Output Field’ radio buttons
Select ‘no’ from the ‘Case Sensitive’ radio buttons

• Create a filter called ‘landing page’ to search for the landing page people are getting to:

Select filter type: Custom filter
Check the ‘Advanced’ radio button
Select Referral in the Field A -> Extract A box. Enter (\?|&)(url)=([^&]*) in the text box
Leave the Field B -> Extract B box empty.
Select Custom Field 2 in the Output To -> Constructor box. Enter $A3 in the text box
Select ‘yes’ from the ‘Field A Required’ radio buttons
Select ‘no’ from the ‘Field B Required’ radio buttons
Select ‘yes’ from the ‘Override Output Field’ radio buttons
Select ‘no’ from the ‘Case Sensitive’ radio buttons

• Finally, merge the last two filters together with one called ‘keyword, rank and landing page.’

Select filter type: Custom filter
Check the ‘Advanced’ radio button
Select Custom Field 1 in the Field A -> Extract A box. Enter (.*) in the text box
Select Custom Field 2 in the Field B -> Extract B box. Enter (.*) in the text box
Select User Defined in the Output To -> Constructor box. Enter $A1, LP: $B1 in the text box
Select ‘yes’ from the ‘Field A Required’ radio buttons
Select ‘yes’ from the ‘Field B Required’ radio buttons
Select ‘yes’ from the ‘Override Output Field’ radio buttons
Select ‘no’ from the ‘Case Sensitive’ radio buttons

To get value out of this report, go to Traffic sources, Keywords and select User Defined Value in the Dimension drop down. This will give you something like this once it has run for a few days:

So try it for yourself and see if it helps in monitoring your SEO efforts!

Popularity: 25% [?]

Websites come and go, this is the nature of the internet. Bloggers grow tired, directories shutdown, businesses fail and  this all leads to websites that cease to exist. Everything has a life cycle, living beings, businesses and web projects. I’m going to show you how you can use this life cycle to your advantage, help out another webmaster and get your self some good backlinks in the process.

For this example, and to show you how to apply it to your affiliate site, I’m going to show you how to use it for an affiliate site operating in the diet/weight loss industry.

• Your going to need a copy of Xenu Link Sleuth (it’s a backlink checker which can be downloaded here)

• Go to Yahoo Directory and Search for Weight Loss Supplement Retailers. (Why do we use Yahoo Directory? If they have a link in the directory we assume they understand the benefits of it’s link and have built up an active link profile

• Copy the URL to Xenu Link Sleuth and kick it off

• It will check the links of yahoo directory for broken links, any broken links will be highlighted in red or display “No Such Host”.

• We are now going to check that the sites highlighted in red don’t exist and if there are any websites still with links pointing to them. For this example we are going to use http://www.diet-weight-loss-center.com. We begin by checking to see if it’s indexed in google:

• We then check to see if there is any backlinks pointing to it using Yahoo SiteExplorer

• All of these websites with links to http://www.diet-weight-loss-center.com are generating 404 errors. 404 errors can penalise sites in terms of search engine optimisation because they are all dead links.

How do I get my backlinks?

You get your backlinks by contacting the webmasters of the sites linking to the dead/non existent site and explaining that the site they are currently linking to is dead or no longer exists. You then offer them to replace the dead link with a link to your website which has similar content as the dead site. You will usually get the link because:

1. You’ve helped the webmaster by identifying dead links on their site. Dead links are a problem for all website owners
2. You’ve offered a suitable replacement (your site) for the dead link. (You have saved them time so they dont have to look for a replacement themselves.)

Try this and let me know how many links your receive!

Popularity: 5% [?]

I came across an interesting result whilst using Google this week. The result listed breadcrumb data before the meta description in the results. I was lucky enough to see it on two related searches and obtained screenshots shown below:

The 2nd result:

Unfortunately I haven’t been able to see it since when performing searches but after a little further research it turns out I haven’t been the only person to see strange things in the serps regarding breadcrumbs. Rob Hammond also came across some strange results which utilised breadcrumbs in the url structure of the search results. Screenshot below:

As for the seo implications of this, it’s too early to tell as its obviously just a test but it does show that google can read and understand breadcrumbs. Has anybody else seen anything like this in the serps?

Popularity: 7% [?]

So google have decided to launch a new and improved version of their search engine. Today they launched their developer preview of it titled “Caffeine”. So whats it all about? Well the new search engine ( which can be tested at www2.sandbox.google.com ) is apparently a lot faster than the old engine. According to Matt Cutts most of the changes are in things like our core indexing, so there’s less changes for things like rankings. Lots of users won’t notice a big difference. Below are some quick Q&A posted on his site:

Q: How do I check out the Caffeine update?
A: If you search on http://www2.sandbox.google.com you can get a preview of how the search results will change over the next few weeks and months.

Q: It doesn’t look any different to me?
A: The Caffeine update isn’t about making some UI changes here or there. Currently, even power users won’t notice much of a difference at all. This update is primarily under the hood: we’re rewriting the foundation of some of our infrastructure. But some of the search results do change, so we wanted to open up a preview so that power searchers and web developers could give us feedback.

Q: Is this Caffeine Update because of Company X or Y is doing Z?
A: Nope. I love competition in search and want lots of it, but this change has been in the works for months. I think the best way for Google to do well in search is to continue what we’ve done for the last decade or so: focus relentlessly on pushing our search quality forward. Nobody cares more about search than Google, and I don’t think we’ll ever stop trying to improve.

Q: The url http://www2.sandbox.google.com doesn’t seem to work for mobile phones? I can only test on google.com, not google.co.uk?
A: That’s right. For now this is a only a preview, so we didn’t hook up a mobile version or an international version at this point. You’ll have to search on google.com to see the results right now.

Q: How do I give Google feedback?
A: If you want to give us feedback on how the search results are different, look on the search results page for a link at the bottom of the page that says “Dissatisfied? Help us improve.” Click on that link and type your feedback in the text box. Make sure to include the word caffeine somewhere in the feedback.

Q: Is there a way to give feedback in person?
A: Yes! If you want to give me feedback in person, I’ll be at Search Engine Strategies San Jose this week. I’m doing a site review panel on Thursday, or just walk up and say hello!

So How Does it Do When Measured Against the old Search Engine?

As usual Google lives up to expectations. The following are how it faired under the following tests:

Speed:

It’s almost twice as fast

Compare that to the original Google search:

Index Size:

The index size seems to have vastly increased.

Compare that to the original:

So why don’t you try Caffeine out for yourself!

Popularity: 4% [?]