$Index is revamped by Google Analytics, Adwords Search Funnels Indepth Webinar and Tongue-in-Cheek SEO at MozCon 2012
A Marketing article written by Elle Meech
This week the focus is on clever marketing using tools and features from Google Analytics and Google Adwords to find out the journey of customers. Google Analytics is bringing back the much missed $Index metric (now named Page Value) to understand the importance of content. Google Adwords experts this week are answering questions on the Search funnel's features to get the most out of the tool that allows companies to analyse a customer's search path. Finally MozCon 2012 delivered the best in SEO presentations with some interesting veiws on one of the most important online marketing techniques of recent times.
Google Analytics $Index makes a Comeback as Page Value
A long time ago, circa 2005, Google Analytics contained the metric $Index; this metric was included to help businesses understand the value of their content. Unlike Pageviews or visits it was a calculated metric, however, with the launch of Google 5, $Index was removed. The good news is, it's back, well a version of it at least, now named Page Value. The new metric is calculated using your transaction and your goals (provided you have set some!) and looks like this: Page Value = (Transaction Revenue + Total Goal Value) / Unique Pageviews for the page. There are some handy features allowing for multiple page directories to be set up. For a full run down of the revamped metric take a look at Google Analytics detailed breakdown of Page Value.
Following Google Adwords recent webinar on Search Funnels, a lot of questions were left unanswered, but don't fret, Google Adwords experts made sure to answer them. The webinar primarily covered how search funnels allow companies to see the full search path their customers take when 'converting' or purchasing on their site. There were several questions including "What are the requirements for Search Funnels?" and "Could you please define the Search Funnels terms?". All of these questions were fully answered on Google Adwords blog along with links to the webinar and other resources.
MozCon 2012 SEO Conference
The MozCon 2012 SEO conference was recently held. If you missed it, that's OK, the SEOMOZ website has the full three day agenda including downloadable presentations of each guest speaker. One presentation particularly stands out from day 3 - Mike Pantoliano's Attribution Modeling: Why You Must be Doing It and How to do It Easily with Google Analytics. This tongue-in-cheek presentation focuses on how a company or individual can define the journey of a customer, figuring out how a customer was driven to their site from places such as Facebook, advertisements or direct visits. Check out the fantastic presentation among others at the SEOMOZ website.
