Google has recently made a number of changes to increase author visibility. The search results page now displays the name and image of the author along with the content. Writers can easily set up authorship using their email address.

The author information displayed on search results page allows users to find out more about the content creator and enables them to connect with the writer directly.

The information offered on search results page also includes the Google+ circle count of the author, apart from name and image. Users have two options for engaging with writers. They can either comment on the content or add them to their circles from the results page itself. The changes are applicable to Google News as well.

If journalists link their Google profiles to their articles, along with the content the news results page will also feature author name and picture as well as the number of users having the writer in their Google+ circles.

Recently Google also introduced ‘Author Stats’ in Webmaster Tools. The tool enables content creators to find out how frequently their articles are appearing on the search results page. For instance, SEO experts creating informative content on the subject can find out the number of clicks and impressions that their articles attracted using the new ‘Author Stats’ tool.

In order to find out how often users are viewing their content, writers just need to connect their articles with their Google profiles through a simple link or e-mail verification.

Missing transactions

Missing transactions are not uncommon in Google Analytics reports. The most common reason for a few missing transactions is users moving away from receipt page before data transmission.

If the difference between the number of transactions reported by your accounting software and Google Analytics is more than 10%, the problem may be deeper than visitors moving away too quickly. In this case, you need make sure that there are no mistakes in implementation. You may consider placing ecommerce tracking code at the top of receipt page to ensure that data is transmitted to Google Analytics as soon as page loads in user’s browser.

Your website is displayed as the source for all the transactions

If you use a third-party shopping cart, you may have come across this problem. The problem usually lies in cross-domain tracking, rather than ecommerce tracking code implementation.

Examination of ‘all traffic sources’ report will help you find the cause of problem. You can find the revenue driving traffic sources using the ecommerce tab. There is most probably a problem with cross-domain tracking, if the report contains your website’s hostname.

Garbled data reports

Problems in your hidden form data may result in grabbled product category or product overview reports. Ensure that there are no commas or dollar signs in the monetary data and only alphanumeric characters are present in the product and transaction lines.

Analytics

In analytics you need to consider not just the traffic that a market segment brings to your site but the bounce rates and conversion rates as well. For instance, if a market gives great traffic but the bounce rate is close to 50%, its importance is much lesser. Give higher scores to markets that give good traffic and have average bounce rates.

Competition

You need to consider both local as well as global competition in terms of their size, brand name etc. The higher the competition, lower are the scores for such markets.

Technical Challenges

Preferences of people differ according to countries. Your site needs to be designed to suit the market. Give high scores to markets that do not pose much of a technical challenge for your site.

Keyword Research Data

Your English keyword may be highly optimized but for foreign markets, a translation is not enough. Taking help of a search expert will help you find the hidden potential in foreign markets. Give high points to markets that offer highest search data availability.

In case of an e-commerce site, you also need to consider transactional challenges. These can include different preferences for payment methods. For example, in the U.S, credit card is the most preferred mode of payment while in China it is money transfer. Rank the markets that use familiar payment modes highest.

For successful internet marketing, consider all these factors to ensure that you do not miss out on any high potential markets.

Last week a video leaked out of two Domino employees doing revolting things to a pizza. Although claiming to be a hoax, the video got millions of views within minutes as it went viral on twitter and other social sites. The video is currently unavailable due to copyright claims done by one employee, but unfortunately for Dominos pizza the damage was already done. CNN has covered the story as well saying the employees have been sentenced to jail time.

Outraged at the video, people on all social media sites (mostly Twitter) were asking Dominos what was going on and how they would counteract this. Once again, unfortunately, Dominos was not on Twitter to discuss what was going on and how they would make things better. Dominos was doing and saying things but just not covering social media sites.

The President of Dominos pizza in the US did make a you tube video to discuss the measures being taken.

However, Dominos biggest failure in this viral disaster was that it was not on Twitter to pick up what was being said about them. So the lesson of the month is that Social Media is not just about viral marketing but for customer relationship as well. Especially relevant when there is an online crisis!

Realizing this, Dominos has reacted positively and set up a twitter account, which has over 1,000 followers already, and they are communicating about the issue openly. If you notice that their twitter name is dpzinfo it’s because they also failed to secure their company’s name on social media sites (highly recommended) and someone else has squatted on their name.

It seems companies would rather learn the hard way. Social media, although time consuming, can save your company at the end of the day. A good start to recovery by Dominos but they are another example for all companies out there to realize how powerful Social Media is.

View what people are saying now on Twitter about Dominos.

People trust a Robot
People trust a logo
People trust a human being.

Ok so maybe neither really sound the best but let’s put it this way. What is the common theme behind all of the above. Human influence. Humans had to make robots and company logos. Humans are behind everything that we create, especially on the web. So why are we hiding behind fancy designed logos and pictures?
It has been scientifically proven that people like people. A familiar face is far more affective than a company logo when trying to engage in conversation, or anything for that matter. After all, we are social beings. The day we are born we have the innate capability of facial perception, even after many years of no exposure. It’s a fact people forget patterns easily, such as those in logos and advertising, but faces are much easily remembered, “I recognize you from somewhere..” So why don’t companies take advantage of this?

Well, I know a few people have said that when it comes to social media especially it’s easier to designate a logo to a company as opposed to a face because for one, logos are timeless, two, faces age and three, people sometimes change ownership. These pose a problem. So what can we do about it?

Well for starters not all is lost. There are a few options that companies can take into consideration.

1.    FACE: Put a face up. Ok sure maybe you will have to update it every 5 years to show those wrinkles and white hair, but in reality that’s what people want. Humans. Nothing that looks fake or intimidating. A nice big old-fashioned smile in a photo does wonders. It gives relevance and creates trust. It makes a reader think “ Ok I am dealing with a real person and they mean business”. If you are changing ownership, honesty is a great way to keep that trust going. A message to say that the face will be changing won’t affect following, as long as quality stays the same. Big company? Many owners/partners? One picture with everyone in it is still as affective or individually written blog posts (like Wolf21 does).

2.    LOGO:  Ok, so if you really don’t like the idea of a picture, then putting your company logo is fine. How you can make it work for you is by writing your blog in first person. This gives your blog a better feel to it, as if someone is talking and giving information. It adds relevance. A company logo might have reader’s think it’s a bit cold, but by writing in the first person you can add a bit of personality, which will give it some warmth. Once again giving room for trust and that illusion of a one-to-one conversation with a real person.

Make it social, make it relevant.

With return on investment (ROI) on everyone’s minds during these difficult economic times, you need to stay ahead of your competition by making every penny count. There is no better place to start than Google Analytics.

One major drawback to Google Analytics is that it does not store historical data for you. If your website, perhaps the coding or the tagging encounters problems or changes that interrupt Google Analytics, you can lose a lot of data. Forever. With a couple of paid programs out there, however, you can retrieve that lost info without problem.

On Linkedin a little while ago, I actually read a conversation about how the tagging on someone’s website had, for some unknown reason, been changed and as a result Google Analytics had stopped capturing data. They ended up losing a whole bunch of unrecoverable data.

At a conference a little while back, Tim Armstrong, SVP, Google, admitted that Google Analytics needed to improve upon capturing ROI. This is not new information; anyone that makes a living providing online marketing help can tell you that tracking and measuring ROI is not as easy as pasting some code on a client’s site. We also know that this is not an issue that is unique to Google Analytics. Every program out there has its strengths and weaknesses. I am hopeful that Google will improve Analytics ability to measure ROI soon. Until then, however, many of us are utilizing a combination of Analytics and other tracking programs to in an effort to provide data and ROI measurement to clients.

Many SEO Experts agree that Google Analytics is one of the most useful free tools available in our industry. It is free, easy to install and easy to use. There is so much information that, if installed and interpreted correctly, it would be near impossible not to improve several aspects of a website under evaluation.

It is not, however, always easy to interpret Google Analytics data. This is especially true for the average small business/website owner. Let’s consider the page views section.

Many people look towards the page views section of Analytics to gauge viewer engagement. It is commonly thought that, the higher the page views, the more actively engaged the viewers are with the site and the more likely the viewers are to contact/purchase/return. While this may be true for some sites, it is not necessarily true for all sites.

So, if a high page rank is not indicative of a higher level of user engagement, what exactly is it telling us? Well, a high page rank could be an indication that your website is not well laid out. This is especially true for ecommerce sites. In all likelihood, viewers are having a difficult time finding exactly what they are looking for and, as a result, are having to delve more deeply into your site than they would prefer.

A better indication of user engagement would be to 1. Take a look at bounce rates and 2. Implement well designed goal funnels then track your abandonment rates. If either of these two numbers is higher than you are comfortable with, it is time to decide how to alter your site so that you are achieving the right engagement / higher conversions.

Why do I make such a bold statement? The reason is simple… why do you have a website? – To get more business of course! (Presumably this would be the answer for 99% of corporate website owners). The next question is … how are can you get more business from your website? – One of the answers to this question is by capturing your web site’s usage statistics. But that would cost a lot of money or be a huge amount of work you say! So how does one set about to capture website statistical data and measure a web site’s performance? Well there is an easy and best of all it’s FREE! It’s called Google Analytics. Google is one of those wonderful free killer apps from the good folks over at Google. Setting up Google Analytics on your website requires three things: a) Register for a Google Account (you can use any existing email account) b) Sign-up for Google Analytics c) load the a few lines (the Google Analytics tracking code supplied by Google) code to the bottom of every page on your website. See below for an example. Sit back and watch the statistics accumulate! I will delve deeper in the setup and usage of Google Analytics in future blog posts.

The snippet of code to be added just before the </body> tag on each page of your website.

Note: You must get this code from Google Analytics as they will assign you an account number when you sign up.

<script type=”text/javascript”>

var gaJsHost = ((“https:” == document.location.protocol) ? “https://ssl.” : “http://www.”);

document.write(“\<script src=’” + gaJsHost + “google-analytics.com/ga.js’ type=’text/javascript’>\<\/script>” );

</script>

<script type=”text/javascript”>

var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker(‘UA-9999999-1);

pageTracker._initData();

pageTracker._trackPageview();

</script>