Well +1 metrics have now been added into Google Webmaster Tools to show you the different ways your +1 button can affect your traffic:

Search Impact: This report shows you how each +1 affects your organic search traffic and whether these personalised recommendations assist in boosting your content ranking. You can compare clicks and impressions with and without a +1 addition to see how things are sitting.

Activity Report: This enables you to see how many times you’ve been “plus-oned”, both from search results and website pages.

Audience Report: This gives you geographic and demographic info about the users who have clicked +1 on your relevant pages.

Used along with Social Plugin Tracking in Google Analytics, you can use all these metrics to see how users are sharing your content, and get a real sense of your impact online.

We provide award winning website auditing, search engine optimisation, social media marketing and website analytics to help your business grow and succeed online. Get in touch for more information on how we can help your company.

“We are writing to inform you of a potential security issue with Website Optimizer. By exploiting a vulnerability in the Website Optimizer Control Script, an attacker might be able to execute malicious code on your site using a Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attack. This attack can only take place if a website or browser has already been compromised by a separate attack. While the immediate probability of this attack is low, we urge you to take action to protect your site.

We have fixed the bug, and all new experiments are not susceptible. However, any experiments you are currently running need to be updated to fix the bug on your site. Additionally, if you have any Website Optimizer scripts from paused or stopped experiments created before December 3, 2010, you will need to remove or update that code as well.

There are two ways to update your code. You can either stop current experiments, remove the old scripts, and create a new experiment, or you can update the code on your site directly. We strongly recommend creating a new experiment as it is the simpler method.

Creating a New Experiment

1.        Stop any currently running Website Optimizer experiments

2.        Remove all the Website Optimizer scripts from your site

3.        Create a new experiment as normal. New experiments are not vulnerable.

Updating the Website Optimizer Control Script Directly

1.        Locate the Control Script on your site. It looks like this:

A/B Test Control Script

<!– Google Website Optimizer Control Script –>

<script>

function utmx_section(){}function utmx(){}

(function(){var k=’XXXXXXXXXX’,d=document,l=d.location,c=d.cookie;function f(n){

if(c){var i=c.indexOf(n+’=');if(i>-1){var j=c.indexOf(‘;’,i);return c.substring(i+n.

length+1,j d.write(‘<sc’+'ript src=”‘+

‘http’+(l.protocol==’https:’?'s://ssl’:'://www’)+’.google-analytics.com’

+’/siteopt.js?v=1&utmxkey=’+k+’&utmx=’+(x?x:”)+’&utmxx=’+(xx?xx:”)+’&utmxtime=’

+new Date().valueOf()+(h?’&utmxhash=’+escape(h.substr(1)):”)+

‘” charset=”utf-8″></sc’+'ript>’)})();

</script><script>utmx(“url”,’A/B’);</script>

<!– End of Google Website Optimizer Control Script –>

Multivariate Test Control Script

<!– Google Website Optimizer Control Script –>

<script>

function utmx_section(){}function utmx(){}

(function(){var k=’XXXXXXXXXX’,d=document,l=d.location,c=d.cookie;function f(n){

if(c){var i=c.indexOf(n+’=');if(i>-1){var j=c.indexOf(‘;’,i);return c.substring(i+n.

length+1,j<0?c.length:j)}}}var x=f(‘__utmx’),xx=f(‘__utmxx’),h=l.hash;

d.write(‘<sc’+'ript src=”‘+

‘http’+(l.protocol==’https:’?'s://ssl’:'://www’)+’.google-analytics.com’

+’/siteopt.js?v=1&utmxkey=’+k+’&utmx=’+(x?x:”)+’&utmxx=’+(xx?xx:”)+’&utmxtime=’

+new Date().valueOf()+(h?’&utmxhash=’+escape(h.substr(1)):”)+

‘” charset=”utf-8″></sc’+'ript>’)})();

</script>

<!– End of Google Website Optimizer Control Script –>

 2.        Locate the following in the Control Script: return c.substring(…

 3.        Modify the following line as shown:

BEFORE: return c.substring(i+n.length+1,j

FIXED: return escape(c.substring(i+n.length+1,j)

Make sure to include the final closing parenthesis “)”

 Fixed A/B Control Script

<!– Google Website Optimizer Control Script –>

<script>

function utmx_section(){}function utmx(){} (function(){var k=’XXXXXXXXXX’,d=document,l=d.location,c=d.cookie;function f(n){ if(c){var i=c.indexOf(n+’=');if(i>-1){var j=c.indexOf(‘;’,i);

return escape(c.substring(i+n.length+1,j}}}

var x=f(‘__utmx’),xx=f(‘__utmxx’),h=l.hash; d.write(‘<sc’+'ript src=”‘+

‘http’+(l.protocol==’https:’?'s://ssl’:'://www’)+’.google-analytics.com’

+’/siteopt.js?v=1&utmxkey=’+k+’&utmx=’+(x?x:”)+’&utmxx=’+(xx?xx:”)+’&utmxtime=’

+new Date().valueOf()+(h?’&utmxhash=’+escape(h.substr(1)):”)+

‘” charset=”utf-8″></sc’+'ript>’)})();

</script><script>utmx(“url”,’A/B’);

</script>

<!– End of Google Website Optimizer Control Script –>

Fixed Multivariate Control Script

<!– Google Website Optimizer Control Script –>

<script>

function utmx_section(){}function utmx(){}

(function(){var k=’XXXXXXXXXX’,d=document,l=d.location,c=d.cookie;function f(n){

if(c){var i=c.indexOf(n+’=');if(i>-1){var j=c.indexOf(‘;’,i);

return escape(c.substring(i+n.length+1,j}}}

var x=f(‘__utmx’),xx=f(‘__utmxx’),h=l.hash; d.write(‘<sc’+'ript src=”‘+

‘http’+(l.protocol==’https:’?'s://ssl’:'://www’)+’.google-analytics.com’

+’/siteopt.js?v=1&utmxkey=’+k+’&utmx=’+(x?x:”)+’&utmxx=’+(xx?xx:”)+’&utmxtime=’

+new Date().valueOf()+(h?’&utmxhash=’+escape(h.substr(1)):”)+

‘” charset=”utf-8″></sc’+'ript>’)})();

</script>

<!– End of Google Website Optimizer Control Script –>

Note that the k=XXXXXXXXX line in the above Control Script examples is a placeholder.

Your experiment will continue as normal after you’ve made this update. There’s no need to pause or restart the experiment.”

 
Public Relations Management software providers Vocus held a fantastic webinar on Wednesday 28th July 2010, including talks from five influential speakers from the PR, marketing and social media world: Deidre Breakenridge, David Meerman Scott , Beth Harte, Lee Odden and Brian Solis.

We thoroughly enjoyed the whole day of marketing and 2.0 insights and we thought for those of you who didn’t get a chance to watch the speakers and get involved in the live chat, we’d summarise each speaker’s presentation (and their scheduled chat afterwards) and try to answer any unanswered questions from the chatrooms. Every weekday this week, we will post a summary, following up next week with the chat questions. Enjoy!

Beth Harte – Client Services Director, Serengeti Communications

Beth Harte was the third speaker of the day, with a talk on “Integrated Marketing Communications: Engaging Your Audience”.

Overview

Harte’s speech concerned integrating marketing and communication, using public relations as a mutual relationship and formatting a successful social media strategy. She began by emphasising the importance of listening to what your customers are saying about your company. They have a large portion of control in how your brand is perceived, regardless of your own brand management – they will tell the real facts about how you do business: if your customer service is slack, your delivery is slow, your products are shoddy. No amount of shiny publicity will make up for poor customer relationships.

Public relations is a mutual relationship. Marketing and communications integrated (Marcom) can help you connect and respond to your customers. Ensuring you have happy clients will create advocates who will talk positively about you and your brand across the internet for free.

How to Integrate

Integrated Marcom is not just about your site/blog/print campaign/press releases/etc looking exactly the same. It should be data driven, incorporating careful planning and monitoring to effectively target your audience.

Use Data to Identify Customers/Prospects… and Their Buying Behaviour

You need to show an awareness of a customer’s specific need or problem and provide the answer. All along the journey of purchase, people are using social media to talk about it. First they make a search (or ask others where they should look for a product); next they’ll do some evaluation, prompting more suggestions and opinions from their friends/connections; after they’ve made a decision and a purchase, there will be a post-purchase evaluation, letting others know their final summary and satisfaction.

Estimate the Value of Customers

Demographic targeting is no longer enough. We need to look deeper into psychographics, sociographics and ethnographics, into customers’ values, personal choices and unique preferences, into the online communities and the language they use to interact. Tap into these individualities and connect with them in a way they will be receptive to.

Plan Communication Messages & Incentives

Previously, customers might ally themselves with a certain brand because they enjoy what it provides, or agree with its methods and ethics. With the rise of social media, customers are able to connect and make relationships with communicators within the brand, from the CEO to a representative from a specific department. This allows for multiple audiences, micro targeting and segmentation to broaden your personal touch. Think carefully about putting feelers out to the right channels – where will your audience pay attention? What’s the easiest way to get to them and at what time?

Estimating Return on Customer Investment

Plan, measure and prove. Find ways to monitor your interactions and present these findings to your boss/executives to show how your social media networking is making a difference. For a short term option, perhaps offer a coupon via Twitter or Facebook, something tangible that you can track to see how much traffic or how many conversions it provides. For long term results you need to look at the benefits of your brand identity, customer relationships and general visibility.

Evaluation and Future Planning

Take your data and use it to plan and project into the future. But remember to be flexible, agile and adaptable. If something isn’t working then stop, rethink and find a solution. Experiment and try different methods, different avenues until you get the results you are looking for.

Five ‘R’s for Successful Engagement

#1- Relevancy: Are you delivering what your customers want? Is your communication relevant, compelling and meaningful? Are people finding you where they want to?

#2 – Receptivity: Are you reaching your customers or prospects where they are most receptive? Do you understand how they want to communicate or be communicated with? Don’t be annoying and pushy, get into a conversation, don’t pitch.

#3 – Response: How easy is it for a customer to respond to your offerings? Are you easy to do business with? Is every point of contact knowledgeable? Can you respond quickly and effectively?

#4 – Recognition: Do you recognise who your customers are; their histories, opinions, preferences? Do they recognise you in a sea of brands?

#5 – Relationship: PR and marketing cannot create relationships. Customers determine relationships, in response to how well you treat them. Provide great customer service and you will keep your relationships strong. Do customers pull you to them – are you aware of their needs and answering them?

Strategy and Planning

As Harte explained, to be measurable, objectives must include:

• A specific desire, communication or behavioural effect
• A designated target audience among whom the effect is to be achieved
• The expected level of attainment
• The timeframe in which those attainments are to occur

Some signifiers of success that you can monitor are: a change in sentiment; mentions, followers and fans; page views and clicks, bookmarking, comments and subscriptions; customer satisfaction impact; and actual increased revenue/conversions. A simple process example Harte gave was:

- Output – the content you have posted, distributed, communicated.
- Outtake – did your audience understand and act/respond/acknowledge?
- Outcome – the result – a change in sentiment, more links, views, traffic etc?

Be aware of “Shiny Object Syndrome” – don’t rush in and spread yourself too thinly because you think you need to have fingers in all the pies. Gather your tools and your research before you go charging in and setting up multiple accounts on lots of different networks. Monitor, listen, THEN respond.

Make the most of the media available to you, and use it according to how your audience will best respond – if your targets are mainly conversing on Twitter, that’s where you should be. If they’re most interested in video then put some content on YouTube. Make your media kits searchable, optimised and shareable. Use tools and monitoring programs to measure your progress and adapt it accordingly. Finally, process the data and analyse with human logic as well as digital metrics – work out the value of everything you do, plan accordingly and move forward.

Tips and Hints (from the live chat):

Business to business (B2B) marketers can struggle, or find it hard to implement B2C techniques appropriately to their market. The benefits of B2B marketing is that data is easy to come by – people may already be talking about a business before they’re even a presence online. Businesses who operate on the internet normally already have some data understanding and data gathering in place, so you can start from there to build a deeper relationship with their customers by sharing and interacting socially.

Social media is ideal for small businesses. They can use the same tools and tactics as a large corporation, but their extra benefit is their small budget. Small businesses tend to be less wasteful with their marketing budget (and remember social media only costs time, otherwise it is generally free). For small businesses, they must first have a goal in place, then start small, make use of the personal side of local business and gather information where their customers are social.

Well, that’s all from us today – thanks again to Vocus and Beth Harte for a great presentation. Come back every weekday this week for the rest of the webinar summaries, and check the blog next week for our Q&A session comprised of all the questions that couldn’t get answered on the day.

You can read the other parts of our Vocus Online Conference Summaries with Deidre Breakenridge, David Meerman Scott, Lee Odden and Brian Solis at the Ikroh blog.

Resources:

Books:

Integrated Marketing Commmunications, The Next Generation by Don Schultz

Measuring Public Relationships by Katie Paine

Websites:

www.endlessplain.com
www.serengeticom.com

Here at Ikroh we LOVE Google Analytics and seeing as we’re Google Analytics authorised consultants, we felt the need to talk about the newish “Intelligence” section. 

There are a bunch of new functions, including the Daily Alerts feature, which comes in incredibly handy as it can send you emails whenever something peaks. To set this up, click on Google Analytics -> your site -> Intelligence -> Daily Alerts -> Create a Custom Alert.

Google Analytics is designed to constantly monitor all traffic throughout your website. At any given moment that your chosen important information happens, an alert within your intelligence reports will automatically be relayed back to you. The Google Intelligence System will define individual sectors and always keep you updated. If your bounce rate was to rise or fall, an alert will also be raised for you to check over and make adjustments. It’s not always easy to keep tabs on every little area within your website and its performance, but by using this tool, every alert could be significant to handling your business more simply, ensuring you’re not missing any important information.

Together with Analytics Intelligence is an algorithm which detects any fluctuation in your site’s traffic. These notifications will give you a clear insight to the changes required within your site to make it more beneficial. Simple – listen to intelligence.

When using the navigation system to view your reports you will see three different possibilities: daily alerts, weekly alerts and monthly alerts. From these you can see exact information on what has been happening within your website on three different timeframes.

A fantastic feature within this service is the ability to customise your options. For example, if you are most interested in producing results from a specific country or town, you can do this from using the selection: Manage Intelligence Alerts. You can also set up more than one customised alert at a time. This can really benefit online business as you will be able to see information from specific targeted areas.

When you first start out using this tool, setting up your own alerts can be a little confusing until you understand how the system works. If this is the case, try starting with one of the available templates on the Manage Intelligence Alerts page. Click copy, then simply rename the alert to what best suits your requirements.

Just the same with automatic alerts, it will always be most effective to try all custom alerts out with your own data. Sign in, or create your own account to try it with your website and you will soon see that with practice, massively beneficial results will be not too far away.

In a weeny expresso cup, by the Styrofoam bucketful, all the colours of the rainbow, injected directly into my eyeballs – I’ll take it any which way – I’m not a coffee snob. Google also seems to appreciate the drug in all its manic wonder, dubbing its new search algorithm and index update, “Caffeine”, accompanied by an equally insane visual representation of the new indexing system that makes your eyes go a bit funny.

The changes, apparently “imperceptible to users”, have been implemented to increase the real time relevance of searches when dealing with the 400 million+ queries Google is faced with each day. The result is a faster, more accurate, relevant outcome to a search, from a much bigger index – in fact, “the largest collection of web content” Google has ever offered.

Results do seem to appear up to twice as fast as ‘old Google’, and are meant to be more up to date – pulling content from a constantly-crawled web (in little sections simultaneously rather than trying to do the whole shebang in one go) which means the findings are ‘real-time’ as opposed to potentially being from a two week old index. Caffeine is able to index hundreds of thousands of parallel pages per second. Google geeks – go take a cold shower.

Searches are also more focused on analysing what Google believes the searcher is really looking for – phrases and keyword strings – rather than individual keywords. This is to incorporate the influx of multimedia that the web is infused with – video, images, music, social media etc, and to second-guess what else the user might want to know.

Google Vice-President of Engineering, Udi Manber explains: “People’s expectations have grown. Ten years ago, when you looked for something and found it, you’d be really impressed. Now when you don’t immediately find what you want, you think something’s broken.”

Ok, so we’re spoilt. Some might say a result in 0.13 rather than 0.25 seconds is not going to make a vast amount of difference to your average searcher, but the larger indexing system and more targeted results surely will. “…Search is ‘give me what I need, not what I said’. And the way people express themselves is often very different from what they need,” says Manber. Like when you drink so much coffee you start believing you can read people’s minds… Perhaps that’s just me. And Google.

With regard to SEO, how is this going to change the way online marketers work? Improved, ‘real time’ analytics? A push to use a wider range of key-phrases and related keywords rather than relying on targeted ones? Focusing on multi- and social media to produce extra/higher ranked results on SERPs? After the Mayday algorithm change, it seems search is becoming ever more specific, more accurate, which is fair to be expected given the ever-expanding nature of the internet universe. Let us know your thoughts on the affects Caffeine will have on the world of search.

By using funnels in Google Analytics you can track where visitors are choosing to leave your site. By using this system you can identify any trends in customers leaving certain pages. It is always important to track this process over a lengthy period of time to single out the negative pages causing your business to lose potential customers.

Customers leave at certain points of your website for different reasons, for example:

Content is hard to read:

• Spelling/grammar mistakes
• Not enough content
• Irrelevant content
• Too much writing
• Poor content

Marketing attracting the wrong audience:

• Non-informative, bland ads will not promote a service well
• Poorly designed site promotions will not attract the eye
• Not enough marketing
• Marketing information is in the wrong places

Website design not doing your business any favours:

• Incorrect colours chosen
• Offensive images
• Bad layout
• Not eye catching

By keeping a good tracking system on exit pages via Google analytics, you can single out which pages are having a detrimental effect on your website. Making slight changes and keeping a clear tracking record can help any website work more effectively.

The worldwide web is a big old place, and everyone is fighting to be number one on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). It’s not easy, even if you have an incredible product, a beautiful website and great employees and skills. Search Engine Marketing (SEM), also known as Online Marketing or Digital Marketing, covers the various methods of increasing a website’s visibility in SERPs, increasing awareness around your brand, increasing traffic into your site and hopefully resulting in more leads and sales for your company. Techniques vary from business to business but generally include:

-          Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

-          Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising or Paid Search

-          Monitoring, Auditing and Analytics

Companies like Ikroh specialise in these complicated fields, helping to develop a unique strategy for your particular company to drive prospective customers to your site. Research has shown that the top 30 search results get 90% of search traffic, and the top 10 results receive a staggering 80% more traffic than the following 11-30.

Search Engine Optimisation is also known as Natural or Organic Search – using well written SEO copy to increase familiarity within search engines, raising your website’s ranking on result pages. Keywords are important, but not the be-all-and-end-all of SEO, as peppering your articles and blog posts with mindless repetition of keywords is not only unappealing to read, but excessive overuse will be penalised by search engines. (Make sure your SEO is ethical, using white hat avatars, or your website could be dismissed, dropping through the rankings, or even banned.) Content can also be distributed through Social Media Marketing, shared via blogs and social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter, and bookmarking sites such as Digg or Del.ic.io.us. Search engines will recognise an increase in coverage or links to your site, and raise your ranking appropriately. Though results are generally slower building than other techniques such as PPC, SEO is cheaper and the overall outcome will be stronger with regular monitoring and upkeep.

Pay Per Click campaigns are comprised of paying for the top positions in search page results by bidding for selected keywords associated with your product or service. This is a more expensive solution, but if implemented well can be quick and efficient at getting your website noticed and ensuring exposure to your customers.

Both types of SEM require specialist knowledge and continual monitoring and auditing to ensure that your site not only gets to the highest ranking it possibly can, but stays there! SEO companies can also analyse your site, tracking statistics to find out whether it is performing at its best, where it loses customers, where it succeeds in making conversions and if it is usable and engaging.

There are other avenues to pursue in Online Marketing, which can go hand in hand with your SEO or PPC campaign and increase your marketing success further, such as Email Marketing, Blog Marketing and Social Media Marketing. A professional SEO company like Ikroh will be able to tailor the most effective marketing plan for your business and get the results you are after.

At the end of May, Google announced it was adding the option of an SSL encryption to its primary search engine which will protect your network from unfriendly snooping, but could coincidentally render third-party webmasters impotent in tracking traffic and search terms and worrying SEO firms whose techniques involve web analytics.

Google also encrypted its email server gmail earlier this year, and offers an SSL version for Google Docs, Calendar, Web History and Bookmarks. At the moment, SSL search is an optional service, only available when logged in at https://www.google.com, and is not currently compatible with Google Maps and Images.

What is SSL?

SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer. When searching over SSL, the protocol encrypts your search queries and search traffic information to protect them from being read by any third party, increasing the security of internet communications and data transfers. When SSL search is turned on, any non-SSL sites you visit will stop receiving referral data, eg: which search terms you used to arrive there and even whether you used a search engine or typed in the URL manually.

Will encrypted search cast a shadow on web analytics?

Some people think so, but at the moment the service remains tagged as “beta” and is by no means mandatory. Google are reportedly considering making it a default option, “…once we better understand how it affects users’ search experience,” according to a Google spokesman. But they also anticipate SSL search to slow down search time, and will be more likely to offer it as a default service in response to users who regularly choose the https version over the original. Certainly, it has the potential to throw web analytics into a quandary – if it becomes a popular way to search, trying to track traffic and come to solid conclusions based on these results will be difficult.

But this does not seem dangerously imminent, so calm down everyone. We’re still here…