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A4U Expo Slides: Barriers to Conversion and Discovering Untapped Opportunities with Analytics

Joanna Butler — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 09:13:55 +0000

Below are my slides from my presentation at A4U Expo 2009 in London this week – finally, after battling with Slideshare and firewalls, Scribd saved the day! I really enjoyed giving my web analytics talk where I managed to spy on delegates, give out free Latitude USB sticks and swear thanks to one of my favourite quotes – quite an achievement! Of course, that was all whilst giving out lots of practical GTD tips for analytics using segmentation techniques. I was also privileged to be joined by Will Critchlow and Lisa Myers who gave their own invaluable technical analytics presentations.

In case you missed it before the event, Search Cowboys also interviewed me about my talk, which I later learned was the most retweeted interview – so thank you to those who retweeted!

Overall it was a fantastic two days where I met and caught up with many inspirational people. If you have any questions or just want to keep in touch, please do! A few of my details are below, but you can find my full contact details here.

Email: Joanna at Search Engine Chocolate dot com
Connect with me on LinkedIn: LinkedIn.com/in/JoannaButler
Follow me on Twitter: @JoannaButler

Barriers to Conversion and Discovering Untapped Opportunities with Analytics Slides

View in Scribd:
A4U Expo – Joanna Butler – Barriers to Conversion and Discovering Untapped Opportunities with Analytics Presentation

There have been some great write ups of the event so far including Top 10 Quotes – A4UExpo Hall of Fame by Search Cowboys, A4UExpo London Coverage 2009 by Richard Baxter AKA SEO Gadget and My review of A4U Expo 2009 – Excel, London by Geoffblog.com.

A4U Expo Slides: Barriers to Conversion and Discovering Untapped Opportunities with Analytics is a post from: Search Engine Chocolate

My SEO Workshop Slides from the Chartered Institute of Marketing Conference

Joanna Butler — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 21:28:26 +0000

I’m finally back home in London after a fantastic day yesterday in Nottingham at the Chartered Institute of Marketing East Midlands annual one-day conference, the Power of Marketing. I really enjoyed giving a couple of workshops on SEO, including some cutting edge tips, practical social media and web analytics advice and some PPC guidance. A lot of you requested my slides after the event, so I’ve posted them below. I hope you find them useful – if you have any further questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch!

Talks from the other keynotes were fantastic; Sahar Hashemi, founder of Coffee Republic, was particularly inspirational in her talk about being an entrepreneur, Professor Malcolm McDonald‘s gave a great talk about the truth about marketing with some very funny quotes, some of which I had to list here:

“The good thing about being mediocre is that you’re always at your best”
“An increase of 100% on nothing, is still nothing”
“You don’t analyse the ROI (return on investment) of the wings on an aircraft”

Helen Jeremiah, Head of Marketing for Boots, also gave a great talk explaining the history of Boots and their aims and philosophies behind their current marketing strategies.

If you’re interested in web analytics, come and see me speak in London at A4U Expo on the 14th October – you can use my special offer code SEOCHOC10 for 10% off!

View in SlideShare:
Chartered Institute of Marketing – Joanna Butler – Harnessing The Power Of SEO Workshop

My SEO Workshop Slides from the Chartered Institute of Marketing Conference is a post from: Search Engine Chocolate

I’m Speaking at A4UExpo London 2009

Joanna Butler — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 20:02:13 +0000

I’m incredibly excited to announce that I’ll be speaking at A4UExpo London in October 2009!

Together with Lisa Myers from Verve Search and Will Critchlow from Distilled, we’ll be covering analytics for affiliate conversion, identifying and breaking down the obstacles preventing visitors from converting.

And, especially for you guys, I’ve got a special discount code giving you 10% off places at A4U Expo London! The discount code is SEOCHOC10, so if you haven’t already, make sure you register your place now as it’s already shaping up to be a terrific event, jam packed full of invaluable sessions.

I’m Also Speaking at the CIM Power of Marketing Event

While I’m on the topic of events, I’m also speaking at an annual Chartered Institute of Marketing all day event in Nottingham called the Power of Marketing.

In the morning of the 2nd of October I’ll be taking an interactive workshop on search engine optimisation, then later in the day delegates can catch author and professor, Malcolm McDonald, Boots Marketing Director, Elizabeth Fagan and co-founder of Coffee Republic, Sahar Hashemi. There’s an early bird discount that runs until the 11th of September, so make sure you book your place before it’s too late!

If you’re attending either of these events, don’t be afraid to come and say hello!

I’m Speaking at A4UExpo London 2009 is a post from: Search Engine Chocolate

Think Visibility: Advanced Analytics Slides

Joanna Butler — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 17:35:28 +0000

As promised below are my slides from my talk at Think Visibility on Advanced Analytics including advanced segmentation in Google Analytics. Thanks to all those who came to watch – I hope you enjoyed it and found it useful. If you have any questions about it at all or any feedback (both positive and negative appreciated!) feel free to drop me a line.

Several of you expressed an interest in some analytics posts with hints and tips to help you analyse your website statistics so I will schedule some of those posts shortly. I will also be writing up some step by step guides to using advanced segmentation so watch this space! To be notified on any new blog posts subscribe to my RSS feed or follow me on Twitter.

View in SlideShare: Think Visibility – Advanced Analytics – Joanna Butler

Huge thanks goes to Dominic for ensuring such a fantastic event. Look out for the next Think Visibility in September!

Think Visibility: Advanced Analytics Slides is a post from: Search Engine Chocolate

I’m Speaking at Think Visibility

Joanna Butler — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 10:21:31 +0000

This afternoon I’m off to Leeds to speak at Think Visibility tomorrow. I’m incredibly excited (and nervous!) to have this opportunity and on top of that be speaking alongside some really great people – it’s no surprise the conference sold out months ago! Huge thanks to Dominic for approaching me to ask me to do a talk.

The topic I’ll be covering is Advanced Analytics. I’m not going to give anything away, but suffice to say that I hope to help you rethink a few strategies using your analytics data by teaching you how to break down and analyse the information given to you.

While I was doing some background reading on the topic I came across a really great extension for Firefox called Better Google Analytics. I’ve only used it briefly but it has some fantastic features. If you’re responsible for reporting website statistics back to your managers or directors it is a massive help as it turns percentages into real figures that they can relate to. For example, rather than blind them with a goal conversion rate, turn that into the real number of people who converted and they are much more likely to listen. The extension also gives you a shortcut to open profiles in a new tab and export to Google Docs. Download it here: http://www.vkistudios.com/tools/firefox/betterga/

Also, while I’m on the topic of analytics, Google released a new qualification on Wednesday (4th March) called the Google Analytics Individual Qualification. It’s a great way to show off your analytics skills especially if you’re consulting or freelancing as you don’t need to be a part of company to take it. I passed on Wednesday – you can too.

Right, back to preparing for Think Visibility! If you’re coming along, let me know and I’ll look out for you! If you’re coming to my talk then I’m afraid you’ll have to bring your own rotten tomatoes

Wish me luck!

I’m Speaking at Think Visibility is a post from: Search Engine Chocolate

Website Referrals Part 2: Discovering Inbound Links

Joanna Butler — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 17:18:42 +0000

I’m going to be honest. I wasn’t happy with my previous post “Website Referrals: Who’s Linking to You?“. I wanted to delve much deeper into researching inbound links, but I also wanted a short and snappy post that visitors could read and find useful on the fly. After thinking a while, I decided to settle with adding this extra post with more information and tips which essentially makes this Website Referrals Part 2!

Level: Beginner / Intermediate

Discovering Inbound Links

There have been some fantastic posts about discovering inbound links to websites, including competitive link searches, so I don’t want to simply rewrite what has already been said. Instead I’m going to outline the main methods and provide some starting points.

Google

Arguably the most popular search engine, it seems like the perfect place to start. Wrong. While Google provides a method to discover inbound links to a specific domain, its data is innaccurate at best. So what’s the benefit of using Google at all? If you are optimising specifically for Google, it’s useful to know which websites Google is currently aware of that are linking to you. In the search bar:

link:www.domain.com or link:domain.com – finds the websites that Google is aware of that are linking to the specified domain
www.domain.com or domain.com – finds instances of the specified domain being mentioned in text form (not necessarily linked)

Yahoo!

Yahoo! has the most accurate data on links and should be your main port of call when finding which websites are linking to you. To get the most out of Yahoo! use SiteExplorer. In the search bar:

linkdomain:domain.com – site:domain.com or link:http://www.domain.com/ – site:domain.com – find web pages linking to the domain, excluding internal links within the website itself.

MSN Live

MSN isn’t as good as Yahoo! as its data is fairly incomplete, but it is reliable and it’s useful to know which websites MSN is aware of that link to you. In the search bar:

linkdomain:domain.com -site:domain.com

Website Analytics Software

Using tracking software such as Google Analytics can also help you track websites that are linking to you, but they will only do this once a user has followed the link and not before. However, what the software will tell you is which websites referred the best quality visitors – that is those visitors who interacted the most with your website and converted.

Website Referrals Part 2: Discovering Inbound Links is a post from: Search Engine Chocolate

Website Referrals: Who’s Linking to You?

Joanna Butler — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 15:02:15 +0000

Level: Beginner / Intermediate

So you might already know you’re getting X number of visitors from Google organic searches, X number from pay-per-click and X from Yahoo and MSN Live, but how often do you check referrals from other sites? If you don’t use affiliate marketing (meaning you’re devoted to knowing where visitors are coming from) chances are you may not remember to check your website referrers frequently enough.

If you have enough time to read this, you have enough time to check your referring sites. If you are using Google Analytics, you can find a list of Referring Sites under Traffic Sources (see screenshot above).

Ok, now what? Look at the sites that refer the most visitors. In response to the fact I get so much traffic through Twitter I set up a Twitter landing page specifically for people clicking the link in my profile. I’ve tailored it to help to explain who I am and encourage visitors to follow me if they aren’t already. Problogger has a great guide to creating a Twitter landing page.

Also, I noticed that I’m getting traffic from sites that have mentioned my blog in their articles (I’m especially proud to have been mentioned on the Search Engine Strategies blog). Online marketing (especially via social media) is all about give and take – so make sure you use this opportunity to thank your referrers.

It’s a great idea to keep tabs on what links people are using to find your site. Some clients of mine were getting links to an old domain so we were able to correct this. Also, it’s a great opportunity to ask the referrer if you can enhance the link back by using better anchor text or placing the link in a more prominent or relevant context for your website’s theme. You could also get ideas for other websites to approach for links back to your site and thus improve your site’s ‘trust’ ranking in search engines.

Website Referrals: Who’s Linking to You? is a post from: Search Engine Chocolate

5 Online Marketing Motivators

Joanna Butler — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 13:26:42 +0000

From time-to-time we all feel under the weather. That is why I created this mini list of online marketing pick-me-ups. Each one takes little time or effort, but should leave you feeling more motivated, or if nothing else, be able to take a constructive break from your work. Feel free to leave a comment with what online marketing motivators you use and help to expand the list.

If you have a pay-per-click campaign: take the best performing ad from each ad group and make a slight variation of it. It only takes a minute but could improve the click through rate of your campaign even further.

Start or join a discussion on online marketing: use your blog, Twitter or even FriendFeed. Interacting with other online marketers can be very rewarding and motivating and it’s a great way to learn something new.

Set up an A/B test: use Google Website Optimiser to test a change on your website and find out which version produces the best results. Get higher conversion rates with little effort involved.

Find out 3 new things about your website’s visitors. Use (or install) the analytics software on your website and use the information to improve the targeting of your campaigns. Some ideas:

Which websites are referring the most visitors?
- Exactly which web pages?
- What anchor text?
What time of day does your website get the most visitors?
- Is there a pattern?
- What does this say about your visitors?
Which pages do visitors spend the most time on, and which pages give the highest exit rate?

If you use Google Analytics, take some time out to explore your website with the Site Overlay feature. (In the left navigation bar, this can be found under ‘Content’). Learn about navigation paths through your website by seeing which links are most popular on each page.

And just for fun: take a look at the humourous SEO Motivators on Wiep.net.

5 Online Marketing Motivators is a post from: Search Engine Chocolate