You’ve heard the saying “content is king!” so many times by now that it’s become a joke. A joke that isn’t funny and doesn’t even accurately depict the real role of content. Content is what your visitors see when they come to your site. It’s how you engage with them. It is the key to building long-term authority for the sites you work on. It’s what they remember about you. Content isn’t king. It doesn’t rule over other elements of the site. Content is the whole darn kingdom.

Okay, that’s great, content is a fiefdom, Rebecca, but what’s your point? My point is that if we need to take all of the content we create seriously, that means measuring the data, learning from what we’ve done, and tweaking and making improvements for future content projects. To that end, my co-worker, the Google Analytics Whisperer Michael Wiegand, and I designed this Big Content Real-Time Dashboard to help you do just that for your 10% content. And we’re giving you the template. For free. Download it here. (If you don’t know how to install a dashboard template, hold off on downloading it until you’ve reviewed the how-to at the end of this post.)

Hang on. 10% content? What’s that?!? There’s a great post about it here so I won’t go into too many details, but basically, 10% content is what we Portentites call the bigger, riskier pieces of content that can help draw attention to your brand, improve your reputation, and add lasting value to your site. Here at Portent, we’re increasingly focusing on producing some really awesome 10% content for our clients and we wanted an easy way to measure our success – or failure – starting right at the moment we begin our outreach campaign and through the lifecycle of the content piece. So we created a comprehensive dashboard.

Big Content Real-Time Dashboard

You’ll find help on how to install and set-up your dashboard at the bottom of this post. But first, let’s take a closer look at the elements – what Google Analytics (GA) calls “widgets” – that make up this Big Content dashboard masterpiece and why they are important things to record and track.

Active vs. Static

There are both active and static elements to the dashboard.

The active ones are real-time and will change by the second. The static elements are dependent on the date range you have set. The real-time measurements will be important to monitor during your campaign to get an idea about how well your outreach is working. For example, if your active visitors on-site suddenly falls from 100 to 0, it might be time for a new tweet or Facebook post to get the content back in front of potential consumers.

The static elements will be important to measure over the lifecycle of the content piece. These metrics will give you an idea of how your content performs in relation to all of the other content on your site. You’ll be able to use the insight you gather to make improvements and tweaks for your next big piece of content. You can also use it to prove the value of the content to decision makers within your organization or your clients’ companies. You know what happens when they start to see the impact of big content? You get to do more. Booyah!

Goal Completions

Front and center on the Real-Time Dashboard is a widget that shows your goal completions. By default the dashboard has all goal completions set. That means that any goals you’ve set site-wide will be measured on the specific piece of content this dashboard is measuring. We’ve put it first on the dashboard interface because it can have the most impact on proving the value of the big content you’ve produced.

Depending on the objective of your piece of content, you might want to only measure for a project-specific goal, though, especially if you’re working to improve brand awareness rather than get conversions. In that case, you’ll want to make Engaged Visitors your goal, which means you’ll have to create a goal just for this piece of content. Here’s how you can do that:

Setting Goals

An engaged visitor is a visitor who spends more time than average on the site. To determine what that means, you have to first find how long your average visitor spends on the site as a baseline measurement.  Check out the Audience > Overview report. The Avg. Visit Duration is the metric that gives you the site-wide measurement.

Next, you’ll need to create your new goal. In order to do this, visit the Admin > View Goals section and click “Create Goal”:

Choose anywhere from 2x – 10x your average visit duration for the goal setting, depending on what you believe will represent a truly engaged visitor:

Active Visitors

The next real-time widget is your Active Visitors which shows you how many visitors are currently on your site. As I stated before, measuring this regularly can give you a good idea of when you might need to refresh your outreach efforts. It will also help you monitor how much traffic you’re getting from each outreach element and inform you of the best places to expend more time, energy, and resources.

Active Visitors by Source

Next up, you’ll find another real-time widget, the Active Visitors by Source widget. Keeping your eye on this metric will help you understand where your current traffic is coming from. Understanding this will help you make on-the-fly tweaks to your outreach strategy as you determine what’s working and what isn’t.

Active Visitors by New vs. Returning

The New vs. Returning widget will give you a real-time look at what kind of consumer is currently active on your piece of content. If there are lots of new visitors, you know that your outreach is working to effectively drive traffic to the site. A lot of returning visitors, on the other hand, can be indicative that your piece of content is acquiring “content evangelists” – essentially that your content is engaging enough to draw people back to the site.

Active Visitors by Location

The Active Visitors by Location is another real-time widget that can help boost your content campaign. Keeping an eye on this data can help you understand the regional appeal of your content, where people are consuming it, and help give you some ideas to shift your outreach resources.

Pageviews in the Last 30 Minutes

The final real-time widget is the Pageviews in the Last 30 minutes graph. This gives you a look at how your content is performing within a fairly short window. It’s helpful if you can’t monitor the dashboard 24/7 to at least get a 30-minute window into the not-so-distant past. By comparing this chart to your outreach efforts, you can glean some pretty valuable information on how each element of your outreach plan is working. For example, if you know that someone influential has tweeted about your content, you can keep an eye on your pageviews to get an understanding about just how much impact a single tweet from an influencer really can have. If it’s a lot, you can configure future outreach plans to have more social outreach and less email.

Pageviews

This is a static measurement and will give you an idea about how many people visited your piece of content over a specific amount of time. It’s a valuable metric for determining the overall appeal of a piece of content throughout its lifecycle.

Uniques

This will measure the number of unique visitors your big content garners over a specific time period and is useful for determining the overall reach of the content. Essentially, it allows you to know how many unique pairs of eyes landed on your big content.

Uniques by Source and Visitor Type

Next, the static Uniques by Source and Visitor Type graph is a simple way to determine how many unique visitors your piece of content drew over a specified amount of time and from which sources. This metric can be vital in understanding what outreach worked, who your content appealed to, and how you can tailor future content campaigns for maximum effectiveness and success. The blue and green in each bar is the New vs. Returning breakdown we discussed earlier.

Avg. Time on Page, Bounce Rate, and Exit Rate

Finally, you have static widgets Avg. Time on Page, Bounce Rate, and Exit Rate. Keeping an eye on these over the lifecycle of your big content can help you understand how site visitors responded to the content in comparison to all other content on the page. Are they staying on the site longer? Are they continuing on to other content? Did they just stop by for that piece and then leave? The better you understand how the public interacted with your big content, the more you can do to tailor it to your reader the next time you create a piece.

Installing and Configuring the Dashboard

Installation

Installing this dashboard is a fairly straightforward process. Simply open up your GA page and then cut and paste the following link into your browser’s location bar—aka the spot where URLs usually go: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1068218

You will be prompted to add it to a profile. Add it to the profile where you’ll be staging your big content.

Configuration

Since this is meant to be used for a single piece of content, all the widgets in the dashboard will need to be configured to the page on your site you want to measure.

In this case, I’m measuring our Title Maker.

Make sure you set every widget in the dashboard to only show the page exactly matching your URL:

The post The Big Content Real-Time Dashboard Template appeared first on Portent.

At Portent, we’re pretty big fans of Dashboards in Google Analytics. We’ve made a few. So here’s another for all of you writers out there; it surfaces the stuff that’s most important to you, so you don’t have to sort through a zillion different screens to get to the stuff about your blog.

So with that, let’s hop into it:

The Blogger Dashboard

The first thing the dashboard does is filter the information so that it only pulls information related to your blog. I’m not saying other stuff on the site isn’t useful, but if you’re a writer, you’re probably more concerned with the interaction your articles are getting, and less about how the sales pages are converting.

(The filter is the one part that might need to be customized so be sure to check out the video at the bottom of the post that shows you how to do that.)

Visits, views, and all those number things

While the dashboard is focused mostly on content stuff, there are some numbers that you’ll want to pay attention to. These are pretty straight forward, but just in case, here’s what they are telling you:

Next to that, you have the “New Visits vs Visits.” This shows you the number of people coming to your site for the first time vs returning visitors.

Unfortunately, readers doing things like switching devices, clearing their history, or switching browsers will screw this part up, so it’s important just to look at this graph from a high-level point of view. I have this set up as a line graph for that reason; this way you can focus more on trends and less on the literal numbers.

More graphs and numbers

There are more graphs as you go down the left-hand side of the dashboard. These are breaking down where your visits are coming from. The first is “Visits by Medium.” This is breaking down how people are getting to your site.

The next thing we have is referrals. This way you can see which social networks and which other websites are driving the most traffic.

The last thing we have is the On-Site Social Actions widget. This is cool but only covers Google+ data without special markup.

Using the dashboard for content

The main thing you’re probably looking to do with Google Analytics is to figure out which content is performing, consequently that’s where most of the real estate in the dashboard is focused.

The sections that focus on the actual articles are the “Top Landing Pages” and “Top Landing Pages from Social Media” sections.

These are sorting the most popular articles by channel so, at a glance, you can see which articles are getting the most overall visits and the most visits from Social Media.

You can also quickly see the average time spent on page. This way, if you see an article is getting a lot of traffic but only a few seconds average time on page, you know that people probably aren’t reading. This could be the time to revisit that article and make it more engaging, if possible. More importantly, you can see what works and what doesn’t.

The keywords!

The last section is the “Top Organic Keywords.” It shows you which terms people typed into Google to get to your site. This can be an excellent source for content ideas and show you opportunities that you might have missed otherwise.

Is this all?

Absolutely not! This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t learn more about Google Analytics or ignore the other sections. In fact, one of the most helpful things about the dashboard is that if you click on any widget’s title, it’ll take you the relevant section within Analytics, so you can go as deep into to the data as you’d like.

Setting it up

To use the dashboard, the first step is clicking on the link below and selecting the site you want to use it with:

The Blogger Dashboard

The second step is customizing it so it only shows the blog traffic. The dashboard is set up to only show you analytics for the pages that contain the word “blog” so if your site is set up with a “blog” sub-folder (like http://www.eigene-homepage-erstellen.net/blog/), you’re all set.

If you have it a folder named something else (like eigene-homepage-erstellen.net/buzz/) or a subdomain (like blog.eigene-homepage-erstellen.net) you’ll need to customize each widget. To do that, just follow the directions outlined in the video below.

Also, if you want to filter out branded searches from the “Top Organic Keywords” section (for example your company name or an author name), the video goes over that, too.

Did I miss anything? If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions, just let me know in the comments below. If you have a really amazing suggestion, I’ll probably add it!

The post The Blogger Dashboard: Google Analytics for Writers appeared first on Portent.

If you’ve followed my blog musings in the last year or so at Portent, you’ll know that I’m a bit of a dashboard nut.

My Perfect Google Analytics Dashboard post took off in ways I never imagined. (Thanks guys!)

But here’s the thing: I was lying to you all – or misleading you, anyway. There is no perfect dashboard. There are many.

The New Google Analytics PLA Dashboard You Need

Elizabeth wrote about the Google Shopping transition going down on October 17th. It’s all moving to a paid service through Product Listing Ads (PLAs).

With that move comes the need for greater analysis and insight. What greater way to do that than a dedicated PLA dashboard in Google Analytics?

So you have a choice: either scramble for a way to track this after the transition, or steal this dashboard now and be prepared!

The Anatomy of the Product Listing Ads Dashboard

Much like the dashboards I’ve shown you before, the layout on this one is very intentional:

• Most important stats: Top Left
• Sexy graphical element: Middle
• Some detail, but not too much: Right, Bottom

Let’s walk through the widgets individually.

PLA ROI

How much did I make? How much did I spend to make it?

Two stats that are essential to any paid advertising campaign, and PLAs are no different.

I have a rule about not putting anything on a dashboard that you could get by applying basic math to existing metrics. But since we’ll want to watch ROI very closely out of the gate in October, I’ll make an exception here:

PLA Impressions & Clicks Timeline

How many people are seeing my PLAs?

Whether you’re just launching your product feed or if you’re uploading it manually, it helps to visually see when your impressions start kicking in (or when they drop off):

PLA Product Performance

Which products are people buying when they click on your PLAs? How much is that worth to your bottom line?

Ad Group Clicks, Conversion Rates & Revenue

Can I break down PLA performance by ad group?

PLA campaign structure will usually dictate that you establish ad groups geared towards either adwords_grouping(s) or adwords_label(s) that align with the product categories in your feed.

This widget will tell you which of your themed ad groups are pulling their traffic and revenue weight and which ones are wasteful with the clicks:

Matched Search Queries for PLAs

Which keywords trigger my PLAs?

This, my friends, is the Holy Grail of PLA advertising. Before this report, it was tricky to figure out which searches were actually triggering PLAs, short of some inventive tagging in the adwords_redirect field of your feed.

But it turns out the queries can be seen in the Matched Search Queries report, which can then be added to a dashboard widget:

Installing the PLA Dashboard

Easy, peasy:

Click here to install the PLA dashboard

Or paste the link into the browser you’re currently logged into Google Analytics (GA) with. Either way, GA will prompt you to apply it to the profile of your choosing.

Configuring the PLA Dashboard

Every widget in this dashboard assumes a couple things:

1. That you have Google AdWords and Google Analytics properly linked and are utilizing Auto-Tagging, or that your AdWords Campaigns/Product Feeds are Manually Tagged properly with utm variables.
2. That the AdWords Campaign you’re running PLAs in has either “PLA” or “Product Listing” in the campaign name.

If #1 isn’t true, go fix your tagging! It’ll behoove you to have that fixed, even if you’re not running a PLA campaign.

If #2 isn’t true, my widgets allow you to fix it. In each widget, there’s a regular expression that looks like this: (PLA|Product Listing|Custom)

Simply replace “Custom” in the regular expression to match the campaign name you’re running PLAs from. Like this: (PLA|Product Listing|My Campaign)

Do this in the all the widgets and click “Save” and you’re good to go!

Run Your PLA Campaigns Fearlessly

With this data at your fingertips, you’re equipped to optimize your PLA efforts and reap the rewards.

Be sure to comment on this post with any questions!

The post Steal This Product Listing Ads Dashboard Before Wednesday appeared first on Portent.

No, not Frodo. His will shredded like wet toilet paper. Gollum took the lava bath, destroyed the ring, and saved everyone from a 36″ Dark Lord. Does he get any credit? Nooooooo. Nine-fingered Frodo is the hero. The ladies all swoon at Legolas and Aragorn. But not poor Gollum.

Internet marketers, and SEOs in particular, are a lot like Gollum: We’re shunned. We don’t get much sunlight. Our diet is awful. And we never get the credit for business success.

It’s our fault. We’re good at building rankings and building traffic. But we’re terrible at demonstrating the value of our work. So we fling ourselves into the lava. Every single time.

The way to avoid the lava swan dive? Collect big data. Present simple analysis. Don’t deliver reams of data. Use those reams of data to generate insightful, at-a-glance analysis.

I’m going to walk through whole process, from data collection to analysis and presentation, in this post:

Our sample company

Nazgul Cyclery. Cycling through Mordor? We’ve got your rigs!

None of my clients wanted to be compared with ravening hordes of goblins and uruk, for some reason. So, I’m going to use a fake company: — Nazgul Cyclery — as an example throughout this post. Nazgul is the world’s largest bicycle shop chain. We do 10% of our business online, and the rest off. Competitors tend to, er, encounter problems, so we’ve grown fast.

We’re best known for our chainrings. There are 9 of them. Plus one forged in darkness… Never mind.

First, collect your tools

You’re going to want some tools to do all the stuff in this post. My suggestions:

• At least one really good authority measurement toolset. SEOMOZ (affiliate link), MajesticSEO and/or ahrefs are all great.
• A site crawler. I like Screaming Frog SEO Spider. Xenu Link Sleuth is great, too.
• Google and/or Bing Webmaster Tools.
• Analytics with goal tracking.
• A rank tracking tool. Yes, we still have to look at the rankings. They go up and down. They vary. They get [not provided]. But face it: The higher ranked stuff gets more clicks. I use AuthorityLabs and Advanced Web Ranking, but SEOMOZ’s toolset can do it for you, too.
• A basic keyword research tool. For our purposes, Adwords’ keyword tool will work OK. You can use Wordtracker, Wordze, KeywordDiscovery or something else, if you prefer.

1: Grade yourself

First, you have to answer the question: How are we doing right now?

Create a report card for your web site. Collect and track stuff that influences rankings:

1. Number of duplicate pages on your site.
2. Number of 404 errors.
3. Number of 200 status pages.
4. Number of indexed pages.
5. Home page load time.
6. Inlinking unique domains.
7. Keyword diversity.
8. Pages with no title tag.
9. Pages with duplicate title tags.
10. ‘Thin’ pages.
11. Domain authority from Open Site Explorer, Majestic SEO or ahrefs.
12. Number of top 10 rankings.
13. Klout score, as a general social media indicator.

Stuff that doesn’t influence rankings, but you should still track:

1. Unique visits from organic search.
2. Non-branded unique visits from organic search. These are folks coming to your site searching on phrases that have nothing to do with your brand name or products. Someone finding my bicycle shop after a search for “fix my stupid flat tire” is a non-branded search.
3. Time on site from organic search.
4. Time on site from non-branded organic search.
5. Average pageviews from organic search.
6. Average pageviews from non-branded organic search.
7. Bounce rate from organic search.
8. You guessed it: Bounce rate from non-branded organic search.
9. Conversions from organic and non-branded organic search. This one is really important. You must have some form of conversion. There’s always one — folks who contact you, a purchase, an information request. Whatever it is, track it and assign a dollar value to it.
10. Dollar value of organic search. Also really important.

More on goals for a second: I only sell 10% of my stuff online. I’d love to do more, but my shops are important, too. So I’ll track a few things: Web sales, visits longer than 6 minutes (the site average), social media interactions and ‘find a store’ searches.

I use a spreadsheet to track it all. If you want to use my example sheet, click here. The end result doesn’t have to be pretty. This is just storage:

Store everything you think you’ll need later

Collect everything you ever think you’ll need. Ever. You can’t go collect it later. You want a big, happy data warehouse you can use later.

2: Build the opportunity map

I’ve talked a lot about SEO opportunity gap research. Here’s a quick summary:

1. Find phrases that generate traffic and conversions, right now.
2. If there aren’t any, find phrases that generate traffic, right now.
3. Check your rankings for those phrases.
4. If you rank between the #4 and #20 positions for a phrase, record it in a spreadsheet.
5. Map it: Record the page for which you best rank for that phrase.
6. Record the current traffic volume.
7. Record the traffic volume according to your keyword research tool.
8. Figure out how many more visits you’d get if you got to position 1, 2, 3 or anything else better than current. You can use Slingshot SEO’s current research for this.
9. Based on conversion rate, volume and potential ranking, calculate how many conversions you can gain with an upward jolt.

Now, do the same thing for top key phrases for which you have no ranking at all. When you map these phrases, you won’t know the current traffic volume or the mapped page. That’s OK — just record ’em anyway.

The result is an opportunity map, showing phrases, current rankings, current conversions/revenue and the potential lift for each. I used a little conditional formatting to highlight terms that may offer the most promise:

The opportunity map

Important: Yes, I’m using keywords to do this. But I’m using keywords to figure out my site’s strengths and weaknesses. I will not be telling clients “We are going to rank for blah blah.” Use keywords as a comparison tool, not a success metric. Otherwise, when keyword data goes bye-bye forever, you’ll be hosed.

3: Estimate difficulty

How hard is it going to be to make the gains you’ve mapped out? Grade that, too, using these factors:

1. Number of competing pages with the same phrase in their title tag.
2. Domain authority for the top 10 competitors.
3. Social media metrics for the top 10 competitors.
4. CPC for each phrase.
5. Inlinking unique domains for the top 10 competitors.

I tend to do this at-a-glance, by eyeballing some of my competition data for keywords:

Competition data in the opportunity map

Then I look at competition data by site, too:

Phrase data by site and SERP

If you want to get fancy, you can also track your competitors’ issues:

1. Duplicate pages.
2. 404 errors.
3. Thin pages.
4. 302 redirects.
5. Server response code handling.

That can help you determine where you may have a competitive advantage.

This can get tedious. Learning a little Python or another scripting language will save you a lot of time. At Portent I wrote a script that grabs a lot of this for me. It saves us about 1 hour per report.

I actually assign a 1-10 difficulty score based on what I see. This is a holistic, numeric grade I assign by just looking. I find it a lot easier to organize my work once I’ve done this.

Remember: Everything we’ve collected to this point should never see the light of day. It’s your data, for your use. Don’t lob it at the client.

4: Track SEO goals based on your grades

Start tracking goals based on what you’ve found. There’s no hard and fast process for this, but I usually:

1. Find the best possible conversion-generating opportunities from step 2.
2. Look at my site’s weaknesses based on step 1.
3. Look at my site’s strengths based on step 1.
4. Look at competition for each opportunity, based on step 3.

Then I sort and prioritize. Some ultra-competitive phrases may offer huge traffic and conversion gains. Those become long-term goals. Other less-competitive phrases may offer solid traffic and conversion gains. Those become my near-term goals.

5: Map actions to opportunities, based on your grades

What’s it going to take to move up for these goals and grades? You now have a lot of data. You can use it to make some pretty solid decisions. Look at each opportunity in your map. What do you need to do to pass your competitors?

You need to map specific actions to these opportunities, so that your team knows what to do, and the potential impact.

• Great link profile + thousands of duplicate pages = You’d better fix those duplicates. Provide specific recommendations for fixing each duplication problem. Track completed recommendations.
• Thin content + competitors with great content = Content strategy. Provide an editorial calendar and publication guidelines. Track launched content and response.
• Lousy authority + competitors with high authority = Social media and link acquisition. Provide curation guidelines and start a link campaign. Track links acquired and social media profile growth.

Again, look at how I’m using the keyword data: Not to measure success. Instead, I’m using it to drive decisions about next steps.

This is the first bit of information you’ll show the client. This is the ‘what’—what you’re going to have to do to grow.

6: Track it all

Every day, update your tracking sheet. If you’re short on time, do it every week. Or, find a way to automate it all.

My favorite tools for automation are Google App Script and Python. Use what you like.

Whatever you use, make sure you update your site and goal data on a regular basis. A real masochist will also update the data on all competitor sites. But I train using a video series called TheSufferfest and I still don’t do that, so it’s totally your call. If you have underlings to do your bidding, go for it.

7: Create the report card

All of the work you’ve done so far sets the stage for the report you’ll show your bosses. Right now, you probably have spreadsheets with a lot of columns and even more rows. You can’t send that to the Nazgul Cyclery VP of Marketing. I hear he’s a real hardass:

My clients are all cats, so I’m in really good shape. I won’t bury them in all the data because I like them.

You want the report card to link action to results. That’s the entire purpose of this exercise. So my dashboard would include:

• Sales.
• Change in SEO issues, such as duplicate pages. Improvement should mean good things, after all.

Here’s my result:

The dashboard – all that work, for this?!

That’s it. Keep it simple. If you need a more complex dash, go to step 8.

A ‘report card’ is just a style of dashboard. There are lots of great resources on creating good dashboards. Take a look at the examples on http://patternry.com/p=information-dashboard/ for starters.

8: Layer your dashboards

You may have multiple layers of bosses.

If so, create additional, more complex dashboards as needed. Track changes in individual social metrics, keyword diversity and other stuff. Allow your audience to drill down through the data.

9: Don’t report. Analyze

Don’t just hand over the report every week/month!!! Little misunderstandings can lead to big consequences.

Include good, useful analysis.

Good analysis:

• “We fixed all duplicate content issues and added 10 inlinking domains last month. We now have 300 more indexed pages, and our domain authority rose 2 points. The result? We’ve got 10% more non-branded traffic and sales from search are up 2%. Next action: Step up the content campaign and start our next Smeagol Sweepstakes.”
• “Our site had a serious duplication issue last month. That meant more indexed pages, but poorer rankings. As a result, sales fell 1%. Next action: Fix the duplication issues. Potentially dump guilty parties into Mt. Doom.”
• “The last blog post we did was featured on Overlord Weekly! We gained 25 inlinking domains. That hasn’t kicked up the rankings yet, but it will. Next action: Figure out why that particular post attracted so much attention and adjust our strategy. Also, let folks know by publicly thanking Overlord.”

Bad analysis:

• “Rankings are up. Sales are up.”
• “Traffic fell 10%, but we expect it to recover.”
• “We’re all doomed!!!! Dooooommmmmmmeeeeed I tell you!!!”

Last advice

Don’t be afraid to brag! Most SEO’s (including me) are so paranoid about over-promising we never take credit for anything. Get over it. Take credit when it’s due. One great way to do that is to give credit, like this:

“Thanks to the dev team, who put in a lot of extra time with me to figure out the duplication issues, we fixed all duplicate content issues and added 10 inlinking domains last month. We now have 300 more indexed pages, and our domain authority rose 2 points. The result? We’ve got 10% more non-branded traffic and sales from search are up 2%. Next action: Step up the content campaign and start our next Smeagol Sweepstakes.”

Also, put everything in context. Say the company is investing $50,000 a month in content strategy (I stifled a giggle right there). Your team produces 25 great pieces each month. That’s, uh, $2,000 per item if you do the simplest math (and everyone will). Yikes.

But that one piece that got into Overlord Weekly generated 25 great links, at least 1,000 new followers, and $5,000 in sales. Compared to the banner ad campaign, or the direct mail campaign, that’s a fantastic result. Be sure your boss or client knows.

Most important: Stick with it. A dashboard with gaps and inconsistent data is as believable as Nice Smeagol. Keep it in mind.

The post SEO Analytics, Middle Earth-Style appeared first on Portent.

Building dashboards is a big to-do for any marketing professional. The temptation is to cram it full of juicy data and a novel worth of narrative explaining said data.

Well, you shouldn’t. Trust me. There is such a thing as the perfect dashboard. And I’ve already built it for you.

The Anatomy of the Perfect Dashboard

I get the skepticism, I really do. But hear me out.

A good dashboard should:

• Inform on business health quickly,
• Make time comparison easy,
• and Encourage deeper investigation.

To do this, you’ll need 5 key elements.

1. Bottom-Line First, Always

The amount of Revenue (or Leads) should be the first thing seen. Always.

All for-profit businesses are in this to make money.

2. Path to the Bottom-Line

Under your most important metric, show how you achieved that metric.

To do that, you’ll need to demonstrate:

• Customer Engagement
• Customer Acquisition & Retention
• Customer Volume
• Customer Conversion

The funnel above does exactly that. You know you made $394k in Revenue. But how did you get there? This funnel tells you how, precisely.

That Revenue was generated from:

• 411k Pageviews (Engagement)
• during 75k Visits (Acquisition & Retention)
• from 57k Visitors (Volume)
• leading to 2k Sales (Conversion)

3. Clearly Visualizing Growth

Beyond the key bottom-line metric, you also need a visual timeline to demonstrate growth (or lack thereof).

Aside from being the lone piece of eye-candy in the dashboard, it clearly helps you understand:

• How Days of the Week affect traffic and revenue
• How Weeks of the Month affect traffic and revenue,
• and how Months of the Year affect traffic and revenue.

Understand the timing and seasonality aspects of your business through this timeline.

You can also demonstrate growth in specific channels:

4. Show Detail Sparingly

This is where most people get in trouble with dashboards.

How much detail should I surface to the top?

Knowing which keywords and referrals are most vital to your site is nice, but this isn’t an FBI mission briefing, it’s a dashboard. Show just enough detail to encourage further investigation.

I’ve found 7 to be the magic number here.

A top 5 won’t change much from month-to-month. And a top 10 will lull you into thinking you have more of the big picture than you do.

7 splits the difference nicely: enough consistency to show important trends and enough variance to warrant deeper investigation.

5. A Brief Glimpse at Content

Discovering how good (or bad) your landing pages are can be very beneficial.

It’ll give you a better sense of how folks find you and how sticky the site’s core pages are once they arrive.

I like to exclude homepage here.

Download the Perfect Dashboard

Now that you know the rationale behind the dashboard, give it a shot!

Get the Perfect Dashboard Now:

The Perfect Dashboard for E-Commerce Sites

The Perfect Dashboard for Lead Generation Sites

Configuring the Perfect Dashboard

Despite the simplicity of design, there are a few housekeeping items to attend to when you first load these dashboards in your profile.

Here’s a short tutorial video on configuring the dashboard:

There is a hidden form on this page that contains values From the GA tracking
cookies. Click the button to show the extracted values.

The post The Perfect Google Analytics Dashboard appeared first on Portent.