Web Analytics Event – “Web Analytics Wednesday” Ahmedabad (WAW)

Hello Friends,

As you all know, I am here to share with you all my research and new facts that I come across related to SEO, Web Analytics, SEO Tips And Techniques, Internet Marketing Industry Updates and such others. So, in this post I would like to draw your attention towards a Grand Event that is going to be organized especially for Web Analytics Lovers. Many of you might be knowing that, there is an International Event called WAW (Web Analytics Wednesday) which has been started by a very well known Web Analytcis Practitioner “Eric T. Peterson”. Normally, these kind of events used to be held at US, UK & Canada, but since last 2 years, We were fortunate enough to get this Event at India. Last year, the same kind of events were organized at Banglore, Chennai & Hyderabad.

And, NOW, With Lot Of Cheers, I am happy to announce that, We got got an opportunity to get this event to our own “Ahmedabad”. This event is hosted and managed by IMJ-Internet Marketing Journal which is usually maintained and handled by the combined efforts of industry experts. Credit goes to my industry friends (Dipali, Kaushal & Jaydip). It will be for the first time in North-West India where such kind of events are going to be held. The agenda of this event is to share and discussion about the Role of Web Analytics Insights in the Business.

Yup, WAW- Ahmedabad sounds so good isn’t it…

I would like to invite all of you people to attend this event. We will have a great presentations during this event (Might be few speakers who have presented their knowledge in Google India seminars last year will going to speak in this event)

Please visit the below URL to send your RSVP

http://www.webanalyticsdemystified.com/wednesday/list.asp?event_city=Ahmedabad

Event : Web Analytics Wednesday – Ahmedabad

Date : 14th April, 2010

Time : 7.00 pm onwards

Venue : Gloria Restaurant, Anand Nagar Cross Road, Satellite, Ahmedabad Gujarat

Agenda : To share and discuss about the role of web analytics & data based decision driven process.

If you have any queries Or concerns, Plz feel free to ask.

Feel free to get updates of WAW-Ahmedabad event on LinkedIn & Facebook.

Hoping to meet you all at WAW – Ahmedabad

 

Top 20 SEO requirements for eCommerce platform

Having spent the last 6 years Client side as Head of eCommerce and agency side managing digital marketing teams, one constant has been confusion in new platform builds over what a “search engine friendly” website actually is.

eCommerce solution providers advertise optimised platforms and Clients demand search engine friendly sites; do both mean the same thing? Rarely. Client side eCommerce managers can confuse technical and content optimisation, leading to miss-matches between expectation and delivery. A technically optimised web platform does not necessarily mean that keyword planning and meta content optimisation have been carried out.

This blog provides a tick list of the core elements that you should specify in any RFP or ITT when scoping a new eCommerce platform. They act as a starting point for SEO dialogue, enabling you to push vendors on specific areas of optimisation expertise. Please note the list is not in any order of priority.

1. 301 redirects to preserve search engine rankings

2. Avoiding duplicate content and use of the canonical tag where relevant

3. Dynamically generate search engine friendly URLs for product and content pages e.g.

www.yoursite.com/category-name/product-name instead of www.yoursite.com/productdetails.aspx?pid=037012&cid=144&language=en-GB

4. Ability to specify / edit URLs for individual pages via CMS – important for campaign landing pages and microsites

5. Support for linking of product pages and content pages to improve internal linking – should be delivered via the Catalogue Management tool or CMS

6. CSS absolute positioning for text links on product list pages to ensure the first link for each product is keyword rich

7. Dynamic XML sitemap that is submitted on a regular basis

8. HTML sitemap that is auto generated based on your catalogue and site structure

9. Support for rich snippets within platform – encoding of data in RDF format e.g. customer ratings & reviews

10. Custom 404 error page and automated report to flag error pages so your internal team can take action (you can achieve this through a separate monitoring tool such as Indiabook)

11. Robots.txt file is provided and you can access and edit when required

12. Core provision for meta content (title, description, keywords) that is auto generated when you load new products and content pages and can also be edited easily from within the CMS

13. Text links in navigation not images; if coders are using sIFR (flash replacements) push them for clarification on how this is being done to ensure it complies with accessibility standards

14. Keyword optimised H tags within html for headings – structure for use of H1 to H6 to provide a relevant hierarchy of content

15. Ensuring flash objects are search engine friendly

16. Ensuring pdf content is readable e.g. captions for images, document meta data

17. Graceful degradation – when elements like JavaScript are disabled in the browser, key content is still visible to search engine spiders/bots as well as to visitors

18. RSS feeds to support product and news announcements e.g. deal of the day

19. Page load time to meet agreed threshold but make sure you define how load speed is measured e.g. after all page elements have loaded – this factor will be included in Google’s algorithm in 2010

20. Social media content such as blogs are hosted on your primary website domain using an SEO friendly blog engine (e.g. WordPress is better than Blogger) – blogs usually sit on a sub-domain such as blog.yoursite.com to ensure you benefit from the search engine juice.

It is essential that your site specific SEO requirements are accurately documented during your project scoping phase to ensure you evaluate the relative optimisation strengths of potential vendors.

Please note that this checklist does not attempt to tackle bespoke areas of website optimisation that relate to business specific commercial goals. You may have more detailed needs for elements such as Google Sitemap (e.g. separate news sitemap) that will need thorough mapping. My recommendation is to make sure you have the essentials covered and then work with an SEO specialist (in-house or outsourced) to overlay the detail.

Source : econsultancy.com

 

Mobile, Video Analytics Slowly Evolving

The latest report to come from analyst firm CMS Watch (news, site) is one that will grab the attention of those who want to understand who is visiting their site and what they are doing while they are there. We suppose that includes just about everyone then. Or at least it should.

The CMS Watch Web Analytics Report 2009, is an analysis of 20 web analytics firms against twelve potential use cases. What they found was that mobile and video analytics vendors are offering a variety of solutions to track the usage of video and mobile more closely, but there’s still work to be done.


Video Analytics: No Picnic

Traditional analytics vendors can only track if a video has been started, not much else. Tells you something, but you want to know more. You want to know if the entire video was watched, if it was paused, rewound or how long it was viewed.

With some invasive coding in the video, this could probably be done by traditional vendors, but there is another answer. There are new niche vendors for video analytics coming out such as Visible Measures and GlanceGuide who can track this type of activity.

Of course, these new vendors have different approaches to measuring video says CMS Watch contributing analyst Phil Kemelor and some are more complex than others.
Mobile Analytics: Still Pie in the Sky

Another critical market is the mobile user. This user base is becoming much bigger with the release of all the cool new phones and devices and the increasingly mobile workforce. We told you to pay more attention to your mobile content strategy didn’t we?

To help you measure mobile usage on your website, new vendors such as AdMob, Amethon, Bango and Mobilytics. Of course the big players have also come to the table with their own mobile analytics solutions this past year — Omniture, Coremetrics and WebTrends.

What kind of information can you get from these vendors? Reports such as percentage of mobile visitors by screen size, handset manufacturer and browser. Even the mobile device header can give you some useful information. Unfortunately, header info varies by device and personal settings among other things.

As you likely know, the biggest issue with tracking mobile usage today is that not all devices accept cookies and JavaScript (both used to measure traffic) or have them enabled.
Still Inexact Science, But Evolving

CMS Watch says that both video and mobile metrics are very young and inexact practices. Which means, the metrics are here, but take them with a grain of salt because there are still some technical issues to resolve.

“If mobile or video is very important to you today, you may need to use both a niche player and a traditional analytics vendor,” concludes CMS Watch founder Tony Byrne. However, he adds, “In the longer run, it’s hard to know how successfully the niche vendors will fare, as the major analytics players catch up, and new phones come on the market that support JavaScript and cookies.”

Pick up your copy (or a free sample) of the CMS Watch Web Analytics Report 2009, available today and watch CMS Watch closely for a new four-hour online certificate course in Web Analytics Technology which will include mobile and video tracking.

Article Source : Mobile, Video Analytics Slowly Evolving