There have also been lots and lots of new features in Google AdWords, Google Analytics, and Google Website Optimizer in the past year that I am extremely thankful for. These features have made my job easier, more enjoyable, and have helped a lot of our clients improve their conversion rates, sales revenue, and their bottom lines. Therefore, I’d like to dedicate this post to all of the following features:

1. Conversion Tracking (AdWords):

For years, Google has offered a free conversion tracking script that can be placed on a receipt page, a “thank you” page, or any important page where you ultimately want your AdWords traffic to go to. Recently, the AdWords team has upgraded the Conversion Tracking section within AdWords to include the ability to create multiple conversion actions, new “one-per-click” vs. “many-per-click” metrics, and a verification feature that can detect if the tracking code is properly installed. Way to go AdWords Conversion Tracking team!

2. The Opportunities Tab (AdWords):

The Opportunities tab within the AdWords GUI provides awesome intelligence on how to improve your campaigns. Whether you should be spending more money, using different keywords, or other suggestions, the Opportunities tab can make very good estimates on areas where you could be missing out.  Log-in to your AdWords account and try this amazing feature today!

3. Google Ad Planner (AdWords):

Do you need to see detailed demographic data, domains and sub-domains, keywords, and other traffic statistics for the site or audience that you’re planning to advertise to? Google’s Ad Planner is nothing short of amazing in this department! If display advertising (images, video, rich media) is important for you, you seriously need to sign up for Ad Planner before you do anything else. Any site that you want to run your ads on with Google AdWords should be listed in AdPlanner, as well as the estimated volume of traffic each site receives as well as what types of ads each site supports.

4. Segmenting (AdWords):

Did you know that you can now easily segment your Campaigns, Ad Groups and Keywords in AdWords, much like you can segment any dimension in Google Analytics? This helps you to slice and dice your AdWords campaign data to make better decisions about how you’re spending your hard-earned marketing dollars.

5. Secondary Dimensions and Pivoting (Analytics):

The combination of Secondary Dimensions and Pivoting in any Google Analytics report table makes my job so much easier, faster, and more fun! You can now see up to five separate dimensions all in one report table view, which makes data-mining a far less arduous task.

6. Multiple Custom Variables (Analytics):

No longer are we bound by one label or one bucket for any website visitor. We can now assign visitors multiple labels, thanks to the new Multiple Custom Variables feature in Google Analytics. It takes just a bit of coding to pull it off, but the little bit of technical implementation is by far outweighed by the sheer flexibility and depth that you obtain!

7. Enhanced Mobile Tracking (Analytics)

Mobile analytics with Google Analytics has improved dramatically with this new report section. Found under the Visitors section, site owners can now view the many different mobile devices and mobile carriers that bring visitors to their websites. With a little bit of additional coding, any one using a .mobi site can track their mobile website’s activity in a much smoother and easier way. Oh, by the way, iPods and Nintendo DS Lite’s are counted as mobile devices

8. Intelligence / Custom Alerts (Analytics)

Want to know about significant events that happen on your site, and some guidance as to what to do next? The new Intelligence section is your new best-friend. Google Analytics can now alert you to highly significant events that are happening on your website, who or what are the causes, and what Google Analytics expected to happen (vs. what actually happened). It can also iron your pants and make toast! Well, maybe not yet – perhaps it will be able to soon

You can also create your own custom alerts and have them emailed to you on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Define your own important criteria and observe significant increases or decreases of stuff that’s important to you.

9. Experiment Notes (Website Optimizer)

I’m also very thankful for the wonderful people at Google for their Website Optimizer product. Specifically, I really like Experiment Notes, a brand new feature within the Google Website Optimizer interface. With each new A/B or multivariate experiment, I can write notes about that experiment, such as the start date or important specifics that I need to keep track of, which I can go back to at any time.

10. Over-time charting (Website Optimizer)

Finally, over-time charting in Google Website Optimizer lets me view conversion data plotted daily across a Google Analytics style trending graph, at the top of my experiment report. This lets me observe experiment success / failures over the course of time, and allows me to watch the observed improvements in a cleaner, more graphically-pleasing way.

Those are just some of the many features that I am thankful for. I hope that you have a happy Thanksgiving, a happy “black Friday” and a very happy “cyber Monday”!

While it’s great that so many folks are diving head-first into the ocean of analytics, it’s very important to understand that one individual cannot do it alone. Everyone – even one man / one woman shows – needs a village…a community of individuals that can support, educate, and collaborate with one another to install, upload, and subsequently measure and take meaningful, useful insights from their analytics data.

Each person needs to rely upon any one (if not all) of the following types of people to truly achieve Web Analytics success:

1. The Web Analytics “Champion”
Each organization needs that one person who stands proud and champions the cause to their colleagues. This person takes command and learns everything possible about Web Analytics, and can eat and drink metrics and reports for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. This person can calculate search campaign ROI and Average Order Value figures in their sleep. He / She is the quarterback / point guard / captain of the team.

2. A Colleague who Shares the Vision
Forging a relationship with a co-worker who can get as excited and enthusiastic about Web Analytics as the “Web Analytics Champion” is key to promoting a culture of data insights throughout your organization. It becomes contagious to the rest of the company when they see that others are being positively influenced by Web Analytics, and they’ll want to be a part of it.

3. A Friend in Need is a Friend in IT
No matter what type of Web Analytics program you choose to run with, a technical / IT person is going to be necessary at one point or another. IT folks can help you upload any necessary scripts, code your website’s pages, manage APIs, parse server log-files, fix and repair bugs, and anything else needed for Web Analytics success. Making friend(s) in the IT department is a crucial, often overlooked step.

4. Don’t Forget the Marketers
At the end of the day, the purpose of Web Analytics is to understand the behavior and actions of your website’s visitors. Marketing / advertisement is what drives traffic to a website, be it a pay-per-click ad or a couple of months of hard-nosed SEO optimization work. The marketing department is going to need reports and statistics from Web Analytics to be able to refine their efforts, and evaluate which are working and profitable, which ones are wastes of money, and which ones have potential.

5. Sell, Sell, Sell!
Sometimes, the concepts and the philosophy of Web Analytics are hard to explain throughout an organization – anyone who has ever heard “Why Should I Spend Any Time with This?” will understand. This is a great opportunity to get a sales rep, or even the VP of Sales on board with Web Analytics. They can probably share with you some persuasive techniques that can be used to attract interest.

6. Who’s The Boss?
Not Tony Danza – unless he IS your boss. The Senior VP, Chief Technical Officer, Executive Vice-President, or perhaps the CEO themselves should be on board the Web Analytics gravy train. This is, understandably, a vital part in the ultimate success of building a culture of Web Analytics within your company – important colleagues or co-workers who were on the fence before may be strongly persuaded to jump on the bandwagon if a supervisor, partner, or even the owner supports the efforts.

In a lot of situations, people do not have the ability to take the reigns and create this prosperous culture of finding actionable insights. They work alone, in a small group, or in large companies where teams are spread across several offices, making building a community near impossible. Fortunately for us, MoreVisibility is that culture of Web Analytics. We are a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant, a Google AdWords Qualified Company, and have an entire organization of colleagues who champion the cause for Web Analytics.

Part 1 of this post: Domain Aliases

“Domain Aliases” is consistently one of the top 10 searched terms on the Google Analytics Help Website. You can definitely track domain aliases properly so that Google Analytics reports cleanly, and cookie integrity holds up. The question then becomes “How do I do that?”

There are two possible ways to do this, but it depends on the type of web server – Apache or IIS – that you’re running. Following the steps outlined in this article will ensure that visitor tracking with Google Analytics is getting set under the primary domain and that all visitors are tracked consistently. Basically, you’ll want to redirect any domain aliases to the primary domain – this actually helps out with cookie integrity.

Redirecting Aliases in Apache:

Create two VirtualHost entries – the first for your primary domain (normal configuration), and the second for all aliases re-directing to the primary:

#---primary virtualhost

Servername www.mysite.com
Serveralias mysite.com
...

#---second virtualhost

Servername mysite.org
Serveralias www.mysite.org mysite.net www.mysite.net
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^(.*) http://www.mysite.com$1 [R=301]

Redirecting Aliases in IIS:

With Microsoft IIS webservers, you can create two websites in the IIS configuration – the first being the primary domain and the second will be for all other aliases redirecting to the primary.

Follow these steps to create a 301 redirect:

1. Log in as an Administrator and open the Internet Services Manager by going to Start >> Programs >> Administrative Tools >> Internet Services Manager.
2. Choose the server which is hosting your primary domain.
3. In the folder, click the primary domain with your right mouse button and select Properties.
4. Click the ‘Home Directory’ tab.
5. In the “Redirect to:” field, enter the domain you want to redirect to. For example, if you want to redirect to mysite.org, enter http://mysite.org in this field.
6. Under the “The Client will be sent to” section, select “A permanent redirection for this resource.” This will create a 301 redirect from your primary domain to mysite.org.

Read the rest of this article to find out how to use a 302 redirect instead of using a 301 redirect.

Part 2: Google AdSense + Google Analytics Integration

It is now official – you can sync your Google AdSense Account with your Google Analytics Account! When you do this, a brand new “AdSense” report section appears within your Content section of reports. There, you will find four reports:

1. Overview - This gives you a top-level breakdown of how much money the pages on your website have made for you. You’ll see brand new and exciting metrics such as AdSense Revenue, Revenue per 1,000 Visits, AdSense Click-Through Rate, Unit Impressions, Page Impressions per Visit, and other awesome analytical statistics.
2. Top AdSense Content - This allows you to see specific details about each page of your website to analyze AdSense performance. See which pages lead to AdSense clicks, and which ones don’t.
3. Top AdSense Referrers – Which sources of traffic are contributing to your AdSense bottom line? This report should answer that question for you.
4. AdSense Trending - View this histogram to see which days and what times of day visitors are clicking on the AdSense Ads on the pages of your website.

Isn’t this very exciting? But wait, there’s something else – you will now notice a new “AdSense” tab in several reports throughout Google Analytics, which allows you to analyze AdSense performance in several different report sections.

Linking your AdSense Account with your Google Analytics account is not that difficult – so ask your Administrator to set this up for you, and enjoy the new report section!

…and enjoy your properly redirected domain aliases, too .