$Index is revamped by Google Analytics, Adwords Search Funnels In Depth 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 Analalytics 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 funnels features to get the most of the tool that allows companies to analyse customers 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 alook a Google Analytics detailed breakdown of Page Value.
Following Google Adwords recent webinar on Search Funnels alot of questions were left unanswered, but don't fret Google Adwords experts made sure to answer them. The webinar primarily covered how search funnels allows 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.
The MozCon 2012 SEO confrenece was recently held, if you missed it that's ok, the SEOMOZ website has the full 3 day angenda including downloadable presentation 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 tounge and 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 amoung others a the SEOMOZ website.
