Q1: With Google Analytics session timer set to 30 minutes, does a second visit trigger a new session if it is done within 30 minutes from last click/activity?

A1: If a visitor leaves the site (close the tab or browser) and come back within 30 minutes of last click/activity on the site, the second visit would trigger new session IF:

• it is a result of clicking on an Adwords ad
• it is a result of clicking on an organic search result
• it is a result of clicking on a link tagged with UTM variables

BUT, the second visit would NOT trigger new session if:

• it is a direct visit to the site (by typing the URL or using browser bookmarks)
• it is a referral visit (clicking on a link from a 3rd party website) that is not tagged with UTM variables
• it is a result of clicking on a link tagged with utm_nooverride=1

Q2: What if a website uses a 3rd party payment gateway (or shopping cart) with no GA code on it, and it throws the user back to the original website (to a thankyou page / goal completion page) upon conclusion of the payment?

A2: Then there is no need to tag the link back with anything. As long as the user completes the payment process and get back to the original website within 30 minutes, the first session (and campaign information) remains valid. However, if the user takes longer than 30 minutes to complete the payment, the jump back would be counted against the payment gateway as the “referrer”, and the goal completion would be incorrectly attributed towards this referrer website.

Q3: Is it true that any visit across midnight triggers a new session?

A3: Yes, visit across midnight triggers a new session (new visit), with the same campaign information as the first session. Midnight is determined based on the timezone set for the GA profile for which the visit is recorded. Hence, it is important to set your timezone correctly when setting up the profile.

This is a great infographics on SEO Tutorial, perfect for summarizing the latest main Search Engine Optimization techniques, courtesy of Datadial.net.

(continue reading…)

Webarena.com.au today gave me a surprise comment spam on one of my blog entry (How to Fix Wordpress Invisible Administrator Hack)  in my blog Comment list:

While I expect this to come up everyday fromcheap SEO labours in countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, China, etc, I don’t really expect to see one coming from Australia nowadays.

Such comment spam is totally non-ethical and manipulative, especially if it obviously sounds like the commenter did not even read the article he is commenting about. What were WHAT guys thinking? What do I need to spend some time checking over? The post they were commenting on about was about how to remove a Wordpress hack!

Ironically, this is what Webarena.com.au has written on their website:

A miss managed SEO campaign can do substantially more harm than good to your online reputation and sales channel. Not only should businesses be wary about conducting SEO themselves but also, fly by night operators, and discount outsourcing firms.
When it comes to SEO Perth, slow and steady truly wins the race.

Such blog comment spam techniques are normally done by fly-by-night operators and/or outsourced to discount overseas firms.

I think it is time for Webarena.com.au to really review deeply on their SEO ethics. I feel sorry for their clients, not knowing that they still engage in such rather black-hat and non-ethical SEO practice using blog comment spam.

The IP address of 109.230.246.119 is also mapped to Germany. Either their SEO expert is in Germany for business, or the SEO service is being outsourced.

Further to my post

I see the Murdoches (or the Ruperts?) are on it again.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/4347438/James-Murdoch-says-apps-cannibalize-newspapers

Sales of newspaper apps for devices like the Apple iPad are cannibalizing sales of physical newspapers, James Murdoch, head of News Corp’s operations in Europe and Asia, said on Friday.

Wherelse, in New Zealand APN seems to have a good grasp on the online/offline coexistence concept.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10686779

Brendan Hopkins, chief executive of APN, which owns the New Zealand Herald, yesterday told potential investors in its $150 million bond offer that the company was not interested in creating pay-walls.

“In the main we are an advertising company, 80 per cent of our revenue is from advertising.”

But Hopkins said the company hoped to build up its iPad application to allow differentiation between premium content and grazing.

APN launched its nzherald application in June and so far 24,000 had been downloaded for free.

Hopkins said he hoped to begin earning $1 million to $2 million from the application next year.

We all know what happens when an online searchers encounter a paywall. If I remember correctly, the number is above 80% of bounce rate. (quotable source needed here. Anyone?)

Instead of paywalling the news item, James Murdoch, why don’t you leverage the online space to build up a premium community with more-thorough demographics data and charge the marketers more to advertise to these people? They are prime market and advertisers would salivate over the opportunity to target the exact people that fit their products.

Apples don’t fall far from the trees, eh?

Hot off the press, Google just updated the way it presents local business in search overnight.

It now emphasises the local business results on certain keywords (e.g., “auckland hotels”, “car repair”, “supermarket”, etc) while others such as “life insurance”, “cpu”, “ad agency” and so on remains unaffected.

Links:

- Official Google Blog.

- Matt McGee

- Pariswells.com

Google updates local business results in search

Source: http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/5-quick-impacts-of-googles-new-local-search-results/3757/

My first impressions:

1. I don’t like it. It screws up my organic search results and places unwanted locations that I probably wouldn’t care about (e.g., search for “banks” showed one listing as in Onehunga, which is 15-20 odd kms from where I live and work). Organic Search is now also cluttered with biased results simply because some businesses have the resources to put their branches on the map. What about businesses where we can buy stuff online? Especially where they don’t have physical stores? Searching for shoes, perhaps?

2. Google should have fixed Google Places facility first before doing this. Up to now, bulk verification still takes a long time!

3. Reviews on the search results? This is a big can of worm. As I am a cynic, I firmly believe that those who cares don’t matter and those who matters don’t care. We all know that bad experience would multitudely spur reviews while customers who get good experience normally don’t bother to scream out. Reviews will be unfairly biased to businesses. Can Google be sued for defamation due to inaccurate representation through the reviews?

Google, if you are listening, if you want to mess up with the Paid Search space, that’s fine. But Organic Search results was fine as it was!

A lot of excitement these last 2 days as Google Webmaster Tools got supercharged with the long wished-for Organic Search impression numbers.

Google Webmaster Tools - Organic Search Impressions/volume and CTR

What it means is that you can gain insights on:

• The clickthrough rate difference for different organic search rankings on the keyword you are targeting. This may be very different for each keyword types: brand, generic, product-specific as well as different product types.
  

  CTR distribution by organic search rankings

• Analyse why your #1 ranked listing does not get the CTR that you are hoping for (i.e., unattractive Meta description and Title?)
• Search volume spikes around certain events and/or marketing (TV ads, print ads, campaigns, etc)
• Confidently analyse the real search volume for different keywords (if you are ranked within the top 10) and concentrate your SEO on the best-searched keywords.

However, further use of the tools revealed the following weaknesses (but since the tool is provided for free, I could not complain):

• Data only available back to 15 March (a month ago). Further backdating could not be done. Is it because the data recording on Google only started on that date, or is it because GWT only retains data for the last 30 days?
• No CTR graph available.
• No data-by-day export is available. I was hoping that I could export the search volume and clicks on a by-day basis and plot my CTR graph manually, but unfortunately this could not be done.
• Data is aggregated across any Google search. It does not separate searches on Google.com, local Google (e.g., Google.co.nz) and local search (e.g., Google.co.nz NZ-sites-only). As a result, you would most-likely get a variety of rankings for each keyword. However, the CTR is marked independently for each rankings as well as an average value provided. But it would be nice if you are able to just focus your investigation on certain Google domain.

OK, it’s not a cheat. But for now, it feels almost like it :)

Long Tail Keywords

Long tail is a term first coined by Chris Anderson (Wired Magazine, 2004). Typically long tail keywords may account for a large portion of the organic search visits, and can exhibit higher conversion rate by up to 200%. But how large is this ‘portion‘?

Interestingly, it has been proven a number of times that search does not exactly follow the Pareto principle 80:20 distribution (i.e., “80% of your sales come from 20% of your customers) – (Chris Anderson, Erik Brynjolfsson, Yu (Jeffrey) Hu, and Duncan Simester).

Instead, in a long tail distribution, typically the most frequently-occurring 20% of items represent only less than 50% of occurrences. In other words, the least-frequently-occurring 80% of items are more important as a proportion of the total population. In the graph below, the tail becomes bigger and longer in new markets (depicted in red) such as Internet retail. In other words, whereas traditional retailers have focused on the area to the left of the chart, online bookstores derive more sales from the area to the right.

Traditional vs. Long Tail

An interesting insight by Alan Mitchell on PPC long tail:

The Performance of Search Phrase by Number of Word

Due to the volume of keywords, targeting long tail keywords require a hollistic sitewide approach. Rather than manually targeting different search phrases on different pages, an example of smarter and cost-effective long tail keyword SEO on a template level is shown by WordPress by serving server-generated virtual pages via permalinks for every important phrase (e.g., tags, article titles, etc). Recording the performed site searches by your users also provide you with intelligence on what content/phrases are deemed important without you having to perform a manual keyword research.

There are other variations of targeting the long tail keywords. But the principles are the same:

1. knowing what your users want.
2. actively generating content on that topic/phrase using the easiest way possible, be it automated and/or manual.
3. ensuring such contents get indexed.
4. SEO on the content template.

As the search technology evolves, I personally expect targeting long tail keywords will get even easier. In fact, long tail keywords are probably the real future of search.

Further to my post before:News Ltd John Hartigan lashes out at bloggers

Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt has told a group of editors that he is confident that newspapers will find new ways to make money online by harnessing the vast reach of the internet.

(continue reading…)

Recently I noticed that my last 3 post was suddenly attributed to an unknown user (El****less77). I know this was abnormal since I am the only one currently posting on this blog.

I checked my user list and Administrator list, and could not find anything relating to that user ID.

After a long search in the Internet, I found a crude way to solve it thanks to http://www.journeyetc.com/uncategorized/wordpress-permalink-rss-problems/

(continue reading…)

Inserting Google AdSense into the Wordpress post content area, as opposed to the sidebar, gives it a more contextual appearance.

This is good because it allows the readers to see any relevant offers that may benefit them.

This website has the instruction needed to insert the Google AdSense ad unit into the Wordpress Post Content page.