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Category: Reporting & Analytics

Discuss the best ways to report on performance and communicate results to stakeholders.

  • headeulogy


    Is this a good or bad for SEO and overall increase in business? Does it have negative effects on your relationship with google and other search engines?

    | headeulogy
    0
  • SQE-SEOMoz


    Our situation is this.. We recently went through a major redesign that included a significant change in content and URL structure. This of course cause a significant increase in 404 from our search traffic. In an effort to minimize those 404s we requested that Google remove certain URL directories from their index. Doing this resulted in a 90% drop in the number of impressions we were getting from search. My question is this, is it better to allow the 404s with a good landing page that explains the changes or better to remove the bad urls? Much thanks...

    | SQE-SEOMoz
    0
  • Ideas-Money-Art


    Hi mozzers, I have this weird case where one of my client's first referral is its own website!! I am really confused especially that I have checked there www vs non www and the non www is redirected to the www. This means that it resolve to one version which is good! Any thoughts on why the main referral is its own site? Thanks

    | Ideas-Money-Art
    0
  • KateV


    Hi all - I am just starting the 2nd month of a two month free trial. So far I have run advanced reports snooping at the dofollow backlinks of other bloggers in my niche to get an idea of where they're getting their backlinks from. I have also been looking at top pages of lots of blogs in my niche to get an idea of what the most popular content is. What else should I be trying out during my free trial period? Note, I'm not selling anything directly on the site. I'm looking to increase visitors, comments etc.

    | KateV
    0
  • Unity


    Hello. I have a question about funnel visualization in Google Analytics where there is an eCommerce goal (i.e. add to cart, shipping, purchase) with the first step being mandatory. Issue:
    The amount of completed purchases reported in GA doesn't match the actual transaction figure via the eCommerce platform. Question:
    I was wondering if anyone knows why this occurs? I have a few ideas on why  however I haven't been able to locate any supporting evidence. So I was hoping to generate a few ideas from the SEOMoz community to help me investigate further. Any ideas welcome! Much thanks,
    Davinia

    | Unity
    0
  • William.Lau


    Hi all, Having some trouble figuring out a metric I'm dissecting. We have a large amount of traffic going to deep pages and I'm looking at the traffic source and an alarming amount are coming as Direct traffic. The thing is this can't type in or bookmarked traffic, so what else could it be? We have numbers like 80% and 60% for direct traffic, which judging by our previous efforts, that just can't right. Anyone can figure out what I may be missing out? Deeper pages should usually not get as much Direct traffic, so what can it be?

    | William.Lau
    0
  • Chammy


    Hi fellow mozzers Has anyone seen a huge shift in the number of pages 'Not Selected' under Index Status in Google WMT, and been able to identify what the problem has been? My new client recently moved their site to wordpress - and in doing so the number of pages 'not selected' rose from ~200 to ~1100, It was high before but is ridiculous now. I am thinking there must be a new duplicate content issue which should be cleaned up in my quest to improve their SEO. Could it be the good old WP tag/category issue? In which case I won't worry as Joost is doing its job of keeping stuff out of the index. There are loads of image pages which could well appear as dupe as have no content on them (i do need to fix this), but Google is already indexing these so doesn't explain the ones 'not selected'. I've tried checking dupe title tags but there are very few of them so that doesn't help Any other ideas of how to identify what these problem pages maybe? Thanks very much! Wendy

    | Chammy
    0
  • GrumpyCarl


    Hi all Wondering if anyone could help out with this one please. My client is a government backed free internet safety website and in the next few days they will be launching an update on all of their pages which will let people know if their browser is out of date. For example, when you go to their site you will get a message advising you to upgrade your browser for security reasons. They have employed the following code to check the browser The client are keen to know how many times in a period this message is shown to users. Any idea how one would go about tracking this please. Would it involve some custom GA work, would I be able to track the hits on https://wxxxx.org/javascript/update.js in GA? I'm a little stumped. Obviously I can tell how many people loaded the page but not sure how to work out what % of them see the javascript Many thanks for your help Carl

    | GrumpyCarl
    0
  • Hermski


    Hi SEOmoz community In fact I have two questions I would like to ask (with future SEO in mind). Do you consider a WordPress Multisite or various Single installs 'safer' for SEO? Theoretically, having various sites packed into one Multisite network seems like an ideal solution. However, is there a chance that once a site in the network encounters a little 'negative turbulence', that your other sites in the network might get impacted too due to the cross-referencing, linked account i.e. Webmaster Tools etc.? It would seem outrageous, but then again I wouldn't rule it out. Do I even have to go as far as setting up new Gmail, Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools accounts, so they (the sites) are technically not linked? You can see, I don't trust search engines one bit... Is there still a point posting articles once Google is having a hissy fit with your site? Basically I am currently going through a 'rankings and traffic drops storm'. It's not as bad as being de-indexed, but it's still having enough of an impact. In addition, Google does not seem to treat my new articles (unique content) with the same attention anymore i.e. does not seem to index them 'fully' or not at all (i.e. posting the headline in Google should return the article, but it doesn't). Is there even a point spending time now and posting new material or may it pick it up again once I am through this low phase? Does Google still index what it considers worth or is it a waste of time right now to keep posting, posting and posting more? Thanks for your help. I really appreciate it.

    | Hermski
    0
  • ChristopherGlaeser


    Olympic athletes in track & field and BMX use our product in their training.  When they discuss how they use our product on Facebook, we get a boost in traffic.  However, all I see in programs like Woopra is facebook.com in the URL, but not the actual page.  How do I determine which FB post with a link to our site is causing the increase in traffic? Best,
    Christopher

    | ChristopherGlaeser
    0
  • JSOC


    All, The non www version of a site I own redirects to the www version. Recently, WMT began showing a big spike in 404 errors (1,000+) on the non www version of the site. Site traffic is off about 15% since the spike in 404 errors. There was also a brief period about two weeks ago,  where the site went down due to an issue with the code that has now been resolved. Any ideas how WMT is showing 404 errors on redirected pages? Thanks, John

    | JSOC
    0
  • sembseo


    Hi, In the analytics data (SEO - Landing Sites) on a site I just started working with - 2 different url's show up (when I filter the results): /example**.asp** /example**.asp?cpc=1** The first recieves 2/3 of the visits (among these 2 pages) and the other recieves 1/3 of the visits (among these 2 pages). The second (/example.asp?cpc=1) is apparently getting the clicks from Adwords, since it isn't indexed by Google.. Can someone explain me: 1)  why the cms is producing this kind of double landing page? is it possible to avoid it in any way? (it is not the only example on site - so it makes analyzing data more difficult). Thanks Christian

    | sembseo
    0
  • MirandaP


    Hey guys, anyone any idea how to do the following in google analytics? I need a little help, I am looking at my traffic for a given month, I can see how many unique users visit over X amount of times, but can instead of visits, can I see how many unique users I had that looked at X amount of pages or more? Appreciate all help!! 🙂

    | MirandaP
    0
  • MikiP


    I have read about the Google algorithm updates galore in 2012.  I would therefore be inclined to suspect a sudden sharp drop in Search traffic this year to be caused by such updates.  However, I am seeing what appears to be a direct switch from 'Search' to 'Direct' traffic as of about February 16th this year. There are no specific brand-building exercises or general advertising campaigns happening around this time for the site in question.  It seems very UN-explainable? I wondered if there are any thoughts from the various lurking gurus?  I have attached GA screenshot.. DjTu1.png

    | MikiP
    0
  • First-VehicleLeasing


    Just noticed in web master tools that we are showing 150 not found errors on our site, the majority appear to be from old blog posts that have been deleted, is this damaging from an SEO perspective on a scale from 1-10? Also we have over 100000 not followed errors throughout the same site, is this damaging from an SEO perspective on a scale from 1-10? Thanks in Advance Andy

    | First-VehicleLeasing
    0
  • JML1179


    I need to look at another sites traffic and figure out where they are getting it... Is this possible?  Which tool would accomplish this ?

    | JML1179
    0
  • JML1179


    I just added Google Analytics to my wordpress site with Google Analytics by YOAST. I then added Google WebMaster tools through via verify through google analytics account. I then tried to set a preferred domain. I chose the non www. version; however, google wanted me to verify ownership of both versions in order to set a preferred domain. I then added the www. version of my domain. I was able to set the non-www. version to my preferred domain. Now, there are two example.com's in my webmaster tools. I have 10 sites. I intend to replicate this process on all of my sites. Do I have to leave the non-preferred version of my sites in the google webmaster? Can I delete it after I have set my preferred version? If I delete the non-preferred version will it delete my setting on the preferred version because it is now no longer verified (saved)?

    | JML1179
    1
  • zedisdead


    Hi guys, Can you point me the best free tools you're using for SEO (link building, etc.) - apart from SeoMoz - I'm kind of newbie in that area and in a discovering process. Thanks !

    | zedisdead
    0
  • abhim12


    I am seeing a huge 30-40% traffic drop which started around 8-9 PM EST last night. I am compare the stats of today with last Saturday and the drop is significant. I am checking it in Google Analytics and Clicky and both report the same. The Adsense impressions drop also show the same. The rankings of my top keywords seem to be fine. I re-checked them using ranktracker for Google US, UK and others. I don't understand what has happened here. Anyone else seeing the drop? Is there a Google Panda update underway?

    | abhim12
    0
  • K2_Sports


    Hi- We are seeing an inflation in our traffic via Webgain in Germany. Our team in Germany does not use Webgains Our team in the US does not participate in any affiliate networks/programs Any ideas on why we would be seeing this inflation in just one region?

    | K2_Sports
    0
  • spymore


    Okay, so first off Google, I hate you. Before I signed up for SEOMoz, my website was hitting page 9 and page 10 for some ultra difficult keywords. After spending a month using Hubspot and SEOMoz, I finally made it on to page 2 of google, for said 'impossible to rank high' keywords, which I was super happy with. But last week, I login to find that I have disappeared off the top 100 pages of Google for about 100 of my top keywords!!!! What the hell did I do wrong? I tried to please Google, but my website is still indexed, but just not ranked at all for any of my top keywords. The last thing I did before I disappeared overnight was add "follow me" buttons to all my pages and "share this" buttons to all my blogs. Could this be the problem? My website and main keyword is Process Server Is there anyone who could help push me in the right direction? I have no idea what I did wrong. 😕 Martyn

    | spymore
    0
  • eVenuesSEO


    Hi All, I'm web marketing manager at http://www.evenues.com which is like an AirBnB for meeting space. When calculating the number of bookings for our meeting spaces, I've set up a goal in analytics with the confirmation page as the goal URL. The problem is, it seems that some users are looking at the same confirmation page several times. We have unique URLs for each confirmation page, but some users seem to be visiting these unique pages more than 2 to 5 times. This skews our numbers a bit. This makes things a bit problematic when it comes to segmenting visitors. is there anything we can so that each unique URL visited only counts once? Thanks, Kenji

    | eVenuesSEO
    0
  • chimptech


    Hey all, I'm seeing some weird problems with Webmaster Tools.  Specifically: We've submitted a sitemap with 174k URLs. According to the WMT dashboard, only 21 are indexed, though if you search our site via site:sitename.com blah blah, there are thousands of pages returned.  Why is WMT only showing 21 indexed pages? Yet if I go to Health -> Index Status, it's showing nearly 199k URLs indexed. This seems consistent with searching Google site:sitename.com blah blah. Under "Search Queries", it's showing "no data available".  Not sure why as it's linked to the proper Google Analytics account, which has keyword data. Any ideas what I'm doing wrong here? Thanks.

    | chimptech
    0
  • Arukor


    I have 2 domain names - 1 for a blog - the domain name contains key words related to the main subject of the blog. The 2nd is the main website with a domain name = company name - no key words.  The blog and main website are about the same subject. SEOMoz link analysis indicates that the main website is getting domain authority credit from the large number of links from the blog to the main website. The blog website gets more traffic than the main website and Google Analytics data indicates that we are getting a low number of referrals from the blog to the main website. If I can increase the referral traffic from the blog site to the main website do you think the link credit from the blog to the main website warrants keeping the sites separate or do people think the blog and the main website should be under the same domain name? Please share your thoughts - I need advice!

    | Arukor
    0
  • NRMA


    Hi, I am trying to exclude from referrals from a particular page i.e. www.domain.com/nothispage within Google analytics, I have tried a couple variations within the advanced filter (Regex etc) section without much luck, could anyone assist ? Updated-trying to do this using a filter for the entire profile. Thanks Marc

    | NRMA
    0
  • Morris77


    Google analytics is suddenly showing a new keyword "undetermined". Traffic Sources > Sources > All Traffic   with the primary dimension set to Keyword. It's currently our 13th keyword and it is displayed without parentheses around that you see with (not provided) or (not set). Anyone have any idea what this is? Thanks!

    | Morris77
    0
  • MarkScully


    Hi guys, I was wondering what would be the best approach to track the success of a URL restructure? What we plan to do is to implement the URL re-structure slowly by only having it on new pages which go live for property listings. Any previous listings will use the old URL structure. I thought it would be best to limit any potential problems by testing it on a smaller number of pages. So my question really is, what metrics should I be looking at to determine the success of this given the fact that we remove any property listings once they get rented or sold?

    | MarkScully
    0
  • newsmile


    Hello How can I add/place the Google analytic conversion code in a single wordpress page? Example: http://www.newsmilecostarica.com/thank-you/ Thank you so much Andy

    | newsmile
    0
  • Cuffsmaster


    Hi The report shows that I have 404 errors in the about of almost 300   but they appear to me to be active and part of the site.   ??? Examples: NOTE: warning -   these pages discuss BDSM and have some nude images here are some on the list http://bestslavetraining.com/groups/discipline-and-punishment/?acpage=6 http://bestslavetraining.com/groups/general-b-d-s-m/?acpage=13 also here is one that does not work http://bestslavetraining.com/activity/activity/ WHY does it show 404 errors for urls that work???   what am I missing and what in the world am I to correct if they appear on the SEOmoz  error log.???

    | Cuffsmaster
    0
  • RUNNERagency


    SEOmoz tells me my site's blog (a Wordpress site) has 2 big problems: a few pages with too many links and duplicate content. The problem is that these pages seem legit the way they are, but obviously I need to fix the problem, sooooo... Duplicate content error: error is a result of being able to search the blog by tags. Each blog post has mutliple tags, so the url.com/blog/tag pages occasionally show the same articles. Anyone know of a way to not get penalized for this? Should I exclude these pages from being crawled/sitemapped? Too many links error: SEOmoz tells me my main blog page has too many links (both url.com/blog/ and url.com/blog-2/) - these pages have excerpts of 6 most recent blog posts. I feel like this should not be an error... anyone know of a solution that will keep the site from being penalized by these pages? Thanks!

    | RUNNERagency
    0
  • nicole.healthline


    Since the penguin update near Oct 6th, both landing page & query  impressions are up 120%, but google traffic is actually down 4.89%. CTR is down 45% but we didn't change any of the meta tags on our site. Any ideas why impressions would be up and traffic down? And / or how CTR could decrease without making any edits to the meta data for our pages?

    | nicole.healthline
    0
  • GKLWL


    I am getting a lot of errors on pages with urls that aren't even legit. Like for example: /videos/support/index.asp No such path even exists like this on the site. I have a /videos and /support off root but no place on the site is there any reference or file at location /videos/support/index.asp so I get a lot of 404 duplicate page errors. This is just one example of several. How do I stop this?

    | GKLWL
    0
  • JuiceBoxOM


    Hi, So from what I've read, (not provided) organic search results in Analytics is a result of the user being logged into Google. The problem I have is about 20% of the organic search results are (Not provided), so what is mainly left are branded search terms. I think I'm clutching at straws, but is there anything I can do to see these organic traffic sources?

    | JuiceBoxOM
    0
  • accessKellyOCG


    Hi all, today I noticed that our homepage is located on page 2 if you do the site:domain query. As far as I know, the site:domain results mirror the importance in the eyes of Google. Some time ago, our homepage was the first result. I have to say that we do not often have changing elements or new content on the homepage, it is more like a static page. But still the most linked to page on the domain... What conclusion can I come to? Is our homepage of lower importance to Google than some time ago? Is it a problem for SEO? As we backed down our advertisments, the traffic from branded keywords fell the last months - could this be an explanation? And, most important: do I have to worry? (Besides, the SEO-traffic is fine and growing..)

    | accessKellyOCG
    0
  • David_ODonnell


    Hi Mozzers. Can anyone share their experiences using KissMetrics: pros, cons, how it compares to Google Analytics etc? Thanks, I appreciate any input.

    | David_ODonnell
    0
  • Feily


    I am looking to check the duplicate content of two websites against each other, www.housesalesbulgaria.com and www.housesalesturkey.com. What is the best way to check this?

    | Feily
    0
  • samersultan1


    Hi guys, I was reading  The Beginner's Guide to SEO and was confused about the importance of keyword density. As I see it, the main purpose of tools like Scribe SEO revolve around analyzing keyword density, however, Chapter 9 of "The Beginner's Guide to SEO" seems to downplay its importance and says "Despite being proven untrue time and again, this myth has legs. Many SEO tools still feed on the concept that keyword density is an important metric. It's not." If this is true, what is the real value of tools like Scribe SEO?  Currently, I follow keyword analysis tools very closely, and try to get the recommended density in my articles to help build back links.  Should I be focusing heavily on the density and prominence of keywords like I am in the picture below, or is there another way you suggest I go about using these tools? PhJnV PhJnV

    | samersultan1
    0
  • MSWD


    I have quite a few images that are being indexed for popular search terms and are getting clicks.  This site has a 0-10 second engagement of 69%.  I would like to eliminate these images from the equation because I tend to think they are hurting my "quality score" in organic Google rankings. How do you keep these images from ranking? I suppose I could rename them.   Should I disallow the images folder?  I hate to do that, because some of my images turn up in local searches, which is good.  I would rather keep those. But what is best practice? A little background info, this is a local service site.  So the images that are ranking are coming up for a broad national type search.  This has 0 value for the site. Any advice or suggestions would be appreciated, Thanks! Kathy

    | MSWD
    0
  • NeilD


    Hi, What tools do you use/recommend to analyse what/where links are being clicked on a page. I have seen a few mentions about CrazyEgg but are there any free (but good) tools around worth using?

    | NeilD
    0
  • Aggie


    For the past three days, I've been trying to use pivot tables on a couple of reports, most importantly I'm trying to use a pivot table on the All Pages report. I'd like to pull it for a year so I can see what our traffic sources are for top pages.  I keep getting an error in Google Analytics that says, "Resource is Not Available. Please Try Again Later."  See attached image. I've condensed my date range to a month, just in case a year's data was too much and I still get the error.  I'm unable to use pivot tables in ANY report, without getting this message.  Is anyone else having issues?EgZ25

    | Aggie
    1
  • BostonWright


    I was asked to take a look at a site that a friend redesigned and immediately plummeted in rankings. It was a flash site where the domain redirected to a flash landing page. When the site was redesigned, they removed the flash page and put in the new site on the domain URL without changing the redirect or putting a 301 in place on the old flash landing page URL. This site didn't have many backlinks to begin with, but it did ok for some important search phrases. Now when I look in Webmaster Tools, there are only 2 backlinks showing. Meanwhile I know there are more backlinks in existence, primarily from yellowpages and citysearch. I've had them put a 301 on the old flash landing page pointing at the domain URL and they've added a canonical URL. What have I missed here?

    | BostonWright
    0
  • RSGregC


    I'm an SEO newbie (my main roles are front-end designer and content manager). 
    I've been managing our company's effort to generate links. In the past, trying to develop relationships has gone nowhere. As a result, we're currently mostly creating good content ourselves and posting it on Web2.0 sites (weebly, etc.) and linking back to our site, and then using UAW (unique article wizard) to create a second tier of links to those links. We've been doing this for a while, and our traffic from SEO is going up - but we don't really know how to track our work. Can you please 
    a) give your opinion about our approach, and
    b) tell me which metrics we should be using, and which tools for these metrics? Thank you so much
    Greg

    | RSGregC
    0
  • ClintonP


    Hi Guys I've just had an awful fright as Google Analytics is saying my website http://www.clintonpower.com.au has dropped to nil traffic since the 14th September. I've checked Google webmaster tools and all is OK with no malware or Google blacklisting that I can see. Any ideas how I can find out what's happened? This is super scary because 99% of my business comes from Google. I really have no idea what to do next or how to investigate the problem. Is there a way I can submit a query to Google through webmaster tools? Thanks in advance! Clinton Google-traffic.png

    | ClintonP
    0
  • ChrisTS


    This is REALLY STRANGE!  Ok, so I checked my website's overall impressions this AM in Webmaster Tools and it was 18,000 (usually always is in that range slightly plus or minus). I just decided to go into WMT again and now it's 2,500 HOWEVER it shows that the past days and months impressions even far back are 2,500.  This doesn't make sense!  All the "peaks" are the same, but just lower. Another weird thing, I had 6,000 queries this AM (now it is showing 798). Is anyone else noticing this too?

    | ChrisTS
    0
  • EG0CENTRIX


    Hi All, I have noticed that ranks in the tool -rank tracker are not correct for my keywords sometimes. Does anybody else has experienced this? Isn't it real time updated? What other free rank tracker tool you guys would suggest which can send you weekly accurate updates? Thanks

    | EG0CENTRIX
    0
  • Alick300


    Where I can find 'Removed Content Tab' in webmaster Tools ?

    | Alick300
    0
  • theLotter


    I currently have one main .com site and am planning on launching geo-location subsites .co.uk, .com.au, .ru, etc... Traffic will flow between both sites and some of the content on the subsites will be duplicate and therefore include a canonical tag to the main site. I want to set up GA to capture who is going to the subsites and vice versa and correctly capture crossover traffic.  Any advice on implementing advanced analytics directly (or links to sources that will direct me the right direction for this project)

    | theLotter
    0
  • AdagioWaterFeatures


    I have just started using SEOmoz and found that we have both a www.adagiowaterfeatures.com site and a adagiowaterfeatures.com site. I have not been able to figure out how to set up the 301 redirect so the non-www site automatically goes to the www site. If anyone can tell me how the non-www site was set up to begin with I'd be interested. We only set up one site. Thanks!

    | AdagioWaterFeatures
    0
  • longdenc_gmail.com


    Hi Mozers, I recently changed my URLs for my ecommerce site and my traffic went from 2,000 visitors a week to 1,000 visitors a week, over a 3 week period. Traffic is down, so are unique Kwds. I need advice on why this happened and what I should do moving forward. To brief, I have a ecommerce website, www.ecustomfinishes.com.  I noticed pattern that a lot of my URLs with a unique URL structure (URL.Com/ProductDescription/ProductName) were getting a lot of entrances  ~30-50 a month, and others that followed the path of my subcategory (URL.com/SubCat/Product) were getting 0-3 entrances a month. The seo pattern was that those with unique product URLs were hitting long tail Kwds, and those URLs with  /subcategory/product were getting far less traffic. I changed 150 or so urls to be unique. Good idea, I thought. Since then: CON: Since then my traffic dropped from 2200 visitors a week to 1100 visitors a week. -25% week to week, over 3 weeks CON: # of non-paid keywords sending visits: -25% week to week, over 3 weeks PRO: my Urls receiving entrances +10% week to week, over 3 weeks REF: http://imgur.com/GwZT8 Question: What are your best suggestions moving forward? Any advice is much appreciated, Thank you!!! abBN3

    | longdenc_gmail.com
    0
  • easyrider2


    Google analytics '"not provided" is driving me insane. Can anyone recommend a half decent analytics program that will not clog up my site. I cant help but feel that Google are devaluing their own product as more and more people switch to chrome and are encouraged to use a logged in account. For me it makes analytics about as much use as a chocolate fireguard.

    | easyrider2
    0

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