Google Analytics How-to

Just a small reminder that Jerri and I will be visiting the Work at Home Productions small business chat today at 12:30 ET  (that’s noon-ish). If you have a web site–or a question–definitely come. If you’re just one of Jerri’s or my personal friends, moral support is always appreciated.

Search Engine Optimization is one of those things I do, so I watch the search terms and the traffic they bring in, both in AWStats and in Google Analytics. I also use this keyword tracker to get an idea where my sites rank for particular terms.

But sometimes there’s no substitute for doing a by-eye search–most keyword trackers only search down to 200 in the rankings. If you rank lower than 200, you’re SOL. Of course, if you rank lower than 200, you might as well not exist since pretty much no one looks any lower than about 50 (page 4) in the Google rankings.

So anyway, we do exist. I found this mention of Google Analytics on page 18. Page 18 is not good. But at least it’s in the top 200. That means we have a prayer. I didn’t find any mention of our site Google Analytics How-to. Oh well. Haven’t been up more than a few days.

What I did find surprised the heck outta me. I found Jerri’s forthcoming book on Google Productivity Tools, due out in January of 2007. There it is. Right there in black and white.

Congrats, Jerri.

So something funny happened to me yesterday and I thought I’d share it since I don’t have huge amounts of actual content. More content later, I promise.

The night before I had been mucking around on Amazon, looking at all the people who reviewed books like ours–the same books we list in our “further resources” section in the first chapter of our Google Analytics book. Most of them are generally about analytics, rather than beeing about Google Analytics. But we need the reviews, ya’ know?

So I was contacting reviewers through their email or web site if they listed one and through Amazon’s Invite as Friend feature if they didn’t. I offered review copies of our book to people who would post reviews. Response, BTW, has been rather good. So far about 12 of the 25 or so people I contacted have replied and requested review copies.

One declined and it’s about this one I’m writing. He wrote me that he was swamped. So I wrote back that I understood being busy and it was okay and if he got unbusy, he should give me a yell. Fair enough.

I guess having seen our blog, he came and wandered around—wish it made him want to review the book, he was a top reviewer at Amazon—but apparently not. But he did reply that he thought my bio was “amazing.” Now, personally, I’ve always found Jerri to be far more impressive. People outside of IT have actually heard of her clients. But, one takes compliments when they come… and gives a self-deprecating reply. Mine was:

“Gee, I didn’t know the tomatoes were that impressive.”

Don’t get it? Visit our About the Authors page for a clue-stick with which to beat yourself.

The good news is that I finally have the blog looking like I want it to. The colors are right. The layout is right as far as I can tell. It even shows, automatically, who posted which post: me or Jerri, at the bottom of each post. It even has a nifty horizontal rule straight off our book cover. Oh, and if you buy a copy from Amazon using the sidebar links, Jerri and I split the Associate revenue… might as well make a few more pennies on each copy, eh?

The bad news is that the producer over at Internet Voices Radio won’t let us archive the interview from Janet’s show last night. Its too bad because, most of people I talked to couldn’t make the audio feed work in the first place. So, hopefully, y’all can can find it. Internet Voices Radio isn’t the best designed—or easiest to navigate—site around.

Sound peevish? Me? No!

No, really. Welcome! Hello world!

This is my first post to our new Google Ananlytics Blog. Jerri and I started this blog to support our new book from Wiley and Sons Google Analytics. We’re going to try to make this useful: answering questions, updating the book’s materials as GA changes, and providing information on our promotional events.

We had our first interview last night on Janet Elaine Smith’s Marketing for Fun and Profit show on Passionate Internet Voices Radio. We’re negotiating for the rights to distribute the interview from here in mp3. In the meantime, if you want to listen, you can visit the site, scroll down to the link to Janet Elaine Smith (9:30 PM, Monday nights). Click on her name and the scroll down (beyond the same listings) to the list of her archived shows. Download the one for 7 August 2006.

Thanks for dropping by! Please come back.