web-analytics

How To Use Scroll Depth Tracking, Adjusted Bounce Rate, and Average Time On Page As A Proxy For User Engagement and Content Quality

I was helping a company a few months ago that got hit hard by recent algorithm updates. When digging into the audit, there were a number of problems that were surfaced, including content quality problems, technical SEO problems, user experience issues, and more. From a content quality perspective, the site had an interesting situation. Some … Read more

Measuring Infinity – How to identify, analyze, and fix an infinite spaces problem using a powerful SEO software stack

If you are working on a large-scale site, you need to be very careful that you don’t create infinite spaces. That’s when a site generates a near-endless list of urls that Google can end up crawling. Google does not want to churn through endless urls and it can cause problems on several levels SEO-wise. That’s … Read more

Beyond the UI – How to filter Google Search Console (GSC) data using regular expressions in Google Analytics (GA)

Update: April 2021 Google has finally rolled out filtering via regular expressions (regex) directly in Google Search Console! That’s great news and it’s something the SEO community has been requesting for a long time. You can access the filters in the Performance reporting directly in GSC. You can still do this in Google Analytics like … Read more

How To Set Up Adjusted Bounce Rate on Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Using Google Tag Manager

Understanding if people engage with your content is important on several levels (including SEO-wise). For example, if someone searches Google, visits your page, spends 2 seconds on the page, and then returns to the search results, that can send horrible signals to Google. That’s called low dwell time and I’ve mentioned that many times before … Read more

How To Bulk Export Top Landing Pages From Google Analytics Using Analytics Edge in Excel

I help a lot of companies with website redesigns or CMS migrations (from an SEO standpoint). As part of that process, it’s extremely important to download all of a website’s top landing pages so you can check them in staging and when the redesign or migration goes live. By doing so, you can test the pages … Read more

When The Hammer Falls – Analyzing Lyrics in the Google SERPs and Its Impact on Traffic [Case Study]

Summary: In the fall of 2014, both Bing and Google began surfacing song lyrics directly in the search engine results pages (SERPS). Since users could now find lyrics immediately in the SERPs, many wondered what would happen to lyrics websites that provided the same information, but required a click through to view the lyrics. This … Read more

Panda Analysis Using Google Analytics Segments – How To Isolate Desktop, Mobile, and Tablet Traffic From Google

In previous posts about Panda analysis, I’ve mentioned the importance of understanding the content that users are visiting from Google organic. Since Google is measuring user engagement, hunting down those top landing pages can often reveal serious content quality problems. In addition, I’ve written about understanding the devices being used to access your site from … Read more

How To Check If Google Analytics Is Firing On Android Devices Using Remote Debugging With Chrome [Tutorial]

We all know that having a strong analytics setup is important. Marketing without measurement is a risky proposition for sure. But in a multi-device world, it’s not as easy to make sure your setup is accurately tracking what you need – or tracking at all. And if your analytics code isn’t firing properly across smartphones, … Read more

How To Remarket 70+ Ways Using Segments and Conditions in Google Analytics

I know what you’re thinking. Can you really remarket more than 70 different ways using segments in Google Analytics?  Yes, you can!  Actually, when you combine the methods I’ll cover today, there are many more types of Remarketing lists you can build!  So the total number is much greater than 70. My post today is … Read more

I’m Speaking at the Weber Shandwick Data Salon on April 24th – Learn About Google Algorithm Updates, Manual Penalties, and More

I’m excited to announce that I’ll be speaking at the Weber Shandwick Data Salon on Thursday, April 24th in New York City (from 6:00PM to 7:30PM).  Each month, Weber Shandwick invites leaders from various areas of digital marketing to speak, to spark conversation, and to share ideas.  I’m thrilled to be presenting next week to … Read more

Panda Report – How To Find Low Quality Content By Comparing Top Landing Pages From Google Organic

Note, this tutorial works in conjunction with my Search Engine Watch column, which explains how to analyze the top landing pages from Google Organic prior to, and then after, Panda arrives.  With the amount of confusion circling Panda, I wanted to cover a report webmasters can run today that can help guide them down the … Read more