By Jordan Metts
Inetzeal
Successful bloggers, consultants and SEO Services make good use of the advanced features in Google Analytics (GA) and use scripts liberally. GA users monitoring multiple profiles need tweaks. When profiles number in the hundreds, finding the data you need becomes a hassle. This post helps solve that problem, and provides three other useful GA tweaks that will make your life easier.
1. Showing All Profiles Instantly
The default number of profiles you can display in GA ranges from 10 to 100. For those with several hundred profiles to manage, clicking "Show 100" all the time becomes repetitive. John Henson created a Greasemonkey script that addresses this problem. Greasemonkey is available here if you do not have it installed already. His show100.user.js script displays all profiles at once.
The script takes note of certain URLs by location.href, adding ns=100 at the end of those URLs. If you have 10 or fewer profiles, however, the script does not add the ns=100 parameter. The final step is to get the Show 100 script. Greasemonkey prompts you to install the script, and you're done.
2. Fully Automated Link, File and Mailto Tracking
If you have read Brian Clifton's book, "Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics," you may recognize this hack. Normally, tracking downloads, mailto and outbound links requires adding onClick event handlers to "a" tags. Brian's script automates this process; get the latest version from his site here.
The tracking of downloads, mailto and outbound links requires the user to create virtual pageviews. Manually tagging hundreds of static, or even two dozen constantly fluctuating, virtual pageviews can now be an automated procedure with Brian's script. It creates event handlers by Document Object Model (DOM) to monitor non-standard pageview links, tracking them so you don't have to.
Two performance caveats: One, the script reads every link per page. It handles hundreds of links with ease, but for pages with a couple thousand links or more, the script takes more time. Two, a likely result of this is that if a visitor clicks a link before the script has loaded, GA does not track that click through.
3. Regionally Tracking Search Engines
Another helpful script from Brian Clifton is for SEO professionals managing regionally, requiring data on regional search engine variations. If you need data from not only MSN.com, but also MSN.co.uk, MSN.fr, and so on, this script is what you need. In the standard GATC, you can add a call to the script between "set account number" and "track pageview visit":
< script >
// load the ga.js file
< /script >
< script >
// set account number
< /script >
< script src="http://www.advanced-web-metrics.com/scripts/custom_se-ga.js" type="text/javascript">
< script>
// track pageview visit
< /script>
< /code>
Once the script runs, your Search Engine report under Traffic Sources will display many more regional search engines. Mr. Clifton notes that that script no longer works for the Yahoo search engine due to changes made by Yahoo.
For those with multiple GATCs, the script requires one quick alteration. The script reads "pageTracker._clearOrganic()", and should be changed into a list for it to work:
tracker1._clearOrganic();
tracker2._clearOrganic();
...etc...
4. Goal Conversion by Landing Page
Is it more important to improve a weakness or amplify a strength? Answer that question with this one. Can one enhance the strongest landing pages, the ones with the highest conversion rates, to also become the pages with the most traffic? Yes. Three strategies are necessary to achieve this:
First, budget for a more aggressive link building campaign for the strongest landing pages. Second, up your bids on keywords for the ads that point to those pages. Third, tactfully redirect traffic from other pages.
Lastly, looking at goal conversions based on landing page requires a custom report. Using the right GA scripts and studying the appropriate metrics, any website can make it far in the race to the top.
