BYU Independent Study

Below are my observations and recommendations for how BYU independent student can improve their online math courses SEO.

Observations:
Math Courses (general):
Most visitors visit the page on Monday. About 50% are going directly to the page (bookmarked). Of the top 10 keywords, “byu independent” has the lowest number of pages viewed and the lowest average time on the site. This could mean that the site isn’t what the user was expecting. “BYU online courses” has the most pages per visits, average time on site, and % new visits.

Math 110:
The top 3 keywords all have the word “byu” in them. This means that the people getting to this site are looking for byu courses offered by BYU instead of those just looking to take an online math course.

As to referring sites, most of the referring sites are BYU owned pages. However, a couple came from emails. This method of advertising could continue to be effective.

Stats 221:
Most of the keywords are once again containing “byu” in it. About 43% of traffic is direct. Most significant referring site is byu.edu, however, there are other sites such as facebook.com and email (mail.yahoo.com to be more specific) that have referred uses to the site

Recommendations:
It seems as though the majority of the traffic comes from users who are looking specifically for byu courses. It may be helpful to pay more for other keywords that will attract other users. I went to SpyFu.com to see what key words other online sites are using. I looked up “online courses” and found that those who bought online courses also bought: courses online, correspondence courses, online course, online degree, degree online and more. The thing to realize about these is that they are not specific to one school, so those searching don’t need know about the school, they just need to know that they want a course online. I would recommend buying some broader level keywords such as the ones above in order to expand the reach of who is actually being advertised to.

I would also recommend doing a little more advertising on sites ideal users use. For example, facebook came up in for each page as a referring site as well as mail.yahoo.com. It is very inexpensive to send emails out with a link to the site. Doing this also makes it easier for recipients of the email to forward it on to those they think may be interested.

Guest Speaker - Curtis Morley

Yesterday, my web analytics class was lucky enough to have Curtis Morley come speak to us. He taught us more about things we can do with Google web analytics especially in conjunction with flash pages. Below I've included what I found to be the highlights of his presentation.

In web analytics, there is a lot of data, so you need to know where to look. More specifically, you need to know what path is important to the information you want

On the blog AboutNiceo under the "Analytics Reporting Suite bets for AIR 1.0 available" there is a link to download, or you can go directly to the page of download through this link. I have yet to experiment with it, but it seems exciting. The site describes it as "The Google Analytics Reporting suite is an Adobe AIR application that brings Google Analytics to the desktop. It uses it’s own custom API to interact with Google and nearly implements all features of Analytics. See the feature list for more info." One of the coolest features I've seen is that you can actually select a range of dates to view.

If you want to track specific actions using Google analytics, you can create a new profile by following these steps:

• Log in to Google Analytics
• Select Account Settings (top left)
• Select the + button or "Add Website Profile"
• Make sure the "Add profile for existing domain" radio button is selected
• Give it a profile name and select finish
• Select edit for that profile
• Select Add Filter
• Add your filter
• Example: select the "include only traffic to a sub directory" then type in the sub directory
• Finish

By applying this filter to your profile, that profile will include only the data that you have told it to. When adding a filter, make sure to double and triple check the spelling. A missed or added character will impede your ability to receive data.

With FLASH
Google’s analytics through flash tells you to use a string called geturl. It makes it so javascript is sent across constantly (like constant mouse over’s).

The following piece of code contains how it is actually sent (an example used in class):
Private function sendAnalytics (trackURL)
{
GAShared.date.today = theDate.getDate();
GAShared.data.topFive = this.topFive;
GAShared.flush();
ExternalInterface.call("pageTracker._trackPageview", "/[insert your subdirectory name]/" + trackURL);
}

The last line of code is what is really important…that line is what actually sends the data. Make sure to import the external interface class at the top of your code. Then you’d say to send the analytics whenever something happens (color to bw, or mouseovered) by calling sendAnalytics and passing in the trackURL.

It was great to have Curtis come speak to us. I haven't had previous experience coding in flex or flash, but I still feel like I learned a lot about how to setup the web analytics on pages coded in flash. If you are interested in learning more about him or voting on his logo go to curtismorley.com.

Omniture Summit - Wed morning

I was able to attend the Wednesday morning session of the Omniture Summit and it was great to hear about what direction web analytics and specifically Omniture is going. I'll just go through and highlight what each speaker talked about:

Josh James, Peter Kim, Ted Cannis
(sorry...i didn't write when each speaker came in for the first 3) Omniture wants to have the Omniture Summit conference so that they are able to get feedback from their customers so they can improve. Some of their goals include automating analytics and tying together the online and offline world, training users to analyze data. Omniture has strengthened many relationships with partners including Bai du (bringing metric-based online marketing to the largest Internet economy), Adobe and Accenture.

Currently, websites overall are average. They are not using best practices. Some examples of sites that are using best practices include Adidas and Apple (for navigation) and Ford virtual show room (e-commerce). The best in class web 2.0 website is Nike + [I found this very cool because I actually use this. I've had my nike ipod nano running kit for the last year and it is great to be able to challenge other all around the world, track my runs and see what routes people use in any given area]. The way websites are moving is to making a custom experience for each user.

Online marketing is evolving to a place where you are able to store and manage in real-time. There are 3 basic components for doing so: (1) Reporting and analytics: site catalyst, discover, genesis, (2) Campaign Management: search center, (3) Conversion: Test & Target.

Brett Error
Discussed how Omniture products (site catalyst, discover, genesis, search center, test & target) can be used. I thought that the discussion on search center was very interesting. Assuming I understood correctly, it is able to optimize your spending by allowing you to say how much you want to spend on keywords and it will provide you with suggestions of what keywords to pay more/less for.

Matt Belkin
Went over improvements made in the recent upgrade to Site Catalyst including consolidated menus, new charts (bubble chart), 9 new video report (combined into 1 server call that will track start, stop etc.), report distribution, and presentable/tailored data.

Chris Knoch
Improved integration between site catalyst and search center, actionable reports (add keywords to account from one location), and the portfolio management system (forecasting).

Mikel Chertuidi
I found this speaker's topic interesting also. He talked about test & target. For example, he asked which ad got the most people to register for the summit. He showed the percentages against the baseline, defining baseline as "a nice way of saying it lost." The winning banner add was the Flight of the Conchords. The test & target feature is a great way to do some guess and checking both for what ads to use and where to place them.

It was a great experience to be able to attend this portion of the summit. I was able to meet a couple people there including someone from PayPal and another from CNN. It really was a gather of people all over that are interested in improving online marketing.

OWAC Recap

The beginning of the Omniture competition was a little overwhelming, but it was nice to have learned more about various parts of web analytics from our in class presentations a couple weeks prior. After attending Omniture University, my team decided we each needed to spend some time alone getting familiar with how to use Site Catalyst. Our overall strategy was to spend time familiarizing ourselves with Site Catalyst on our own, then meeting together to bring up any points of interest / possible KPIs that we had come across. (After going through the KPI tutorial, we also went and bookmarked the specific reports that were talked about). The day before presentation, we selected what we thought were our strongest KPIs and dove further into them, gathering the necessary information and that's what we presented.

From this whole experience I've learned that there is a lot of data and it might be useful, but you need to decide what your ultimate goal is before proceeding with the analyzing of the data. It great to become more familiar with Site Catalyst and to be able to see the broken down portions of what information can be tracked such as all the different keywords or the paths that visitors take or where visitors are leaving the site. Having actually ran the reports first hand, it makes them make a little more sense. However, as I went through the process, I also developed additional questions.

What is a "loyal customer?" If cookies are erased when the browser closes, how is a "loyal customer" tracked? At what point do you begin to implement changes to see the reaction? How long is a long enough time frame to draw reasonable conclusions?

It was a great experience and I'm excited to hear what recommendations other groups made and how they approached the competition.

Great Sites

I was looking around online learning more about web analytics and came across some great sites. I started with last year's web analytics class blog and just by following the links came across a great web analytics tutorial that is easy to understand. I also found a resource page.

Speakers

We've had two speakers come in and share with us what they know about web analytics and marketing.

Ben Robison
I really enjoyed having Ben come into class especially at the beginning of the semester. It was comforting to hear they he did not have a strong background in web analytics (or even really know what it was) when he enrolled in the class, yet he was able to learn a lot and now has a job with Omniture that he loves. I found it interesting to hear about some of the highlights of web analytics including what types of things you can look at / not look at to show you how a site is doing (for example: don't look at unique visitors).

Dr. Glenn Christensen
Dr. Christensen shared with us more about marketing, what it is (marketing mix = Product, Place, Price and Promotion), and how the online world might cause problems for physical stores in the future. From a marketing perspective, it was great to get his insight, however, I found it more difficult to figure out how his topics relate directly to web analytics. I think as we progress in the course and I review my notes, I might find his presentation more applicable.

Link Exchange

I began to research Link Exchange really not knowing anything about it or how it is used. I've found some sites that shine some light on it: First, Second, Third

Lauren and I also began piecing a BrainHoney Lesson together with what we do know. It still needs a lot of work, but you can view what we have thus far by clicking here.