Where do I find the new Benchmarking report?

You can find it here: Left navigation > Audience > Overview > Benchmarking. In order to see the benchmarking report, you need to go to your Google Analytics Account Settings and find share youvr data “Anonymously with Google and others”.

Simply check the box “Anonymously with Google and others” and save the changes. By checking this box, you are joining other companies in agreeing to anonymously share their web data with Google. Google is then able to generate benchmarking reports from this shared data.

Once you have checked the box and saved your settings, go back to the Report  page and you will be able to see the benchmarking data.

How do I use the Benchmarking report?

At the top of the Benchmarking report, you can choose from different industries, locations, and daily traffic ranges. Pick the ones that best fit your business. Once you refine your report,  at the fourth column, it will show you how many web properties contribute to this benchmark.

• Industry Vertical — Google provides 1600 industry categories for you to choose from. You can also use the drop-down list’s search feature.
• Country / Region— You can refine your benchmarking data by different geographic locations.
• Size by daily session — Simply choose from seven size buckets.

The new Benchmarking reports display Acquisition (Sessions, % New Sessions, New Users) and Behavior (Pages/Sessions, Avg. Session Duration, Bounce Rate) metrics by three different categories — Channels, Location, and Devices.

• Channel — Shows all default channel grouping. Usually, it includes organic search, direct, referral, email, social, and paid search. This report can help you identify your competitive advantages. You will know which channel works best for you. At the same time, you will know where you’re lacking compared to other companies in the same industry.
• Location — Shows the benchmarking report based on different geographic locations. The report is very useful if you have different geo-targeted markets. Now you can compare your web performance with other players in different regions.
• Devices — Shows three types of devices: desktop, tablet, and mobile. You will see your web traffic from different devices compared to the industry benchmark. It can help you plan your mobile strategy. For example, do I need to consider a mobile strategy if the benchmark shows that other players in the industry are seeing greater traffic from mobile device, whereas I only have a few sessions? What kind of mobile strategy should I implement? Do I need a responsive website? Or do I need a mobile app?

It has been two months since Google launched the new benchmarking report.  If you  want to join in and get the benefits, simple follow the above steps. According to Google, they will continually expand these capabilities in the coming months, including incorporating conversion metrics and adding support for mobile apps. We will keep you updated on any new features.

Want to optimize your website?

Logic Solutions is happy to assist!
Check out what we have to offer in web development, SEO optimization, web solutions, and responsive designs!

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Cheryl Gong is the SEO specialist at Logic Solutions. With experience in SEO, digital marketing strategy, and website development, Cheryl has worked with different sites and brands to provide best practices for each client’s unique business needs.

The post How to Use Google Analytics’ New Benchmarking Report appeared first on 雷技信息科技（上海）有限公司.

It is always recommended to try to regain access to your Google Analytics account rather than creating a new account for your website. All of the historical data in your account is critical when analyzing trends and making business decisions.

To regain your Google Analytics account access, simply follow the 8 steps below:

1. Go to the Google Adwords Help Center and login to your Google Adwords account. (If you don’t have one, you’ll need create one first. )

2. Click Contact Us and you will see several different ways to contact Google.

• Call 866-246-6453, Monday �?Friday, 9am-8pm EDT
• Live Chat
• Video Chat
• Email Google

If you need immediate help, we suggest that you call Google directly or chat with an Online Specialist.

3. When you speak with a Google Online Specialist, be sure to have your Google Analytics account number (UA-XXXXXXXX-X) with you. You can find the account number in your website source code. It is usually in the <head> section. With this account number, Google can identify the current account admin, contact the him/her, and ask him/her to reach out to you directly.

4. At the same time, you will receive an email from your Google Online Specialist. This email includes the steps to demonstrate ownership of your Google Analytics account if you don’t hear from the current admin within five business days. Make sure you don’t delete it.

5. So, you wait for 5 business days and the admin didn’t reach out to you. Now it’s time to ask Google give you the permissions directly. First, create a text file and save it as: analytics.txt.

6. Put a string of text in this text file. Usually, Google Online Specialists will highlight it in yellow for you in the email. Replace {INSERT EMAIL ADDRESS}, {INSERT UA-ID}, and {INSERT DATE} with your information.

7. Upload the text file to the root of the domain that you’re requesting access for. If your website url is www.example.com, you should be able to visit the text file via www.example.com/analytics.txt

8. Reply to the Online Specialist’s email with the URL of the uploaded text file. Once the Google Online Specialist receives it, Google will grant the email address you listed in the text file your Google Analytics account.

Want to optimize your website?

Logic Solutions is happy to assist!
Check out what we have to offer in web development, SEO optimization, web solutions, and responsive designs!

Find your perfect web solution

Cheryl Gong is the SEO specialist at Logic Solutions. With experience in SEO, digital marketing strategy, and website development, Cheryl has worked with different sites and brands to provide best practices for each client’s unique business needs.

The post How to Regain Access to Your Google Analytics Account appeared first on 雷技信息科技（上海）有限公司.

A frequently asked question from our clients is: “We used a CMS to build the new website, and we keep updating our pages and writing blog posts. Why can’t people find us in the search results?”

How do search engine spiders see your web pages?

Search engines are smart, but not as smart as humans. We design beautiful looking websites and captivate our audience with slides, animations, images, videos, etc. Can search engines spiders see that stuff? Not all of it. Search engine spiders can see text and code. They can’t see text embedded in an image, and they don’t know what your image is about unless you can tell by using descriptive file names and alt text.

Google provides us with an easy way to help us know how Googlebot sees web pages. You can find a “Cached�?choice from a drop-down menu if you click the green arrow in Google’s search results.

Click this choice, and you will be on the cached page. The top grey box tells you some basic information and on the bottom right corner, you’ll find a �?strong>Text-only version�?link. Click this link and you can see the text-only version of your page. This is a great way to check to see how your page appears to Googlebot because search engine spiders mainly crawl text. Now you can figure out which part of your page isn’t visible in the text-only version.

Usually, search engines can’t see text content embedded in image and animated content in a flash. Google can access limited content within JavaScript and AJAX. So, put important content on your page in basic HTML to make it easy for Google to crawl your content.

Build your page right the first time

Let’s face it: How many times do you forget to add image alt text when you insert a image to your blog post? Do you try to change a page URL after you’ve posted it all your social networks? Do you post a full page of plain text without using heading tags and make some important content bold? Some of these missing points are easy to change, but not all of them. So, why not build your page right the first time?

1. Crawl-able Link Structure

If your friend asks you how to go to the closest grocery store, how would you tell him or her? You would say: ”Oh, it is on the 5th Avenue, two blocks away.�?You can even use your smartphone to show your friend where it is.

The same thing happens when search engines crawl your website. If you want search engine spiders to quickly find your page, make sure to add your new page to the navigation menu, update your HTML site map and XML sitemap, and put links in other related content.

2. URL Construction

Remember how you answered your friend’s question? �?Oh, it is on the 5th Avenue, two blocks away.�?This is a path to find that grocery store. Your page URL is similar. Here’re two different URLs:

Which one tells you (and search engines) a clear path to find your page? You’re right! The second one. Why?

• It is appropriately descriptive. You can easily imagine what this page’s topic will be by just reading the URL. It is a press release, and the press release says a new XYZ (brand name) store will be opening in Ann Arbor (location) this June (time). Can you find similar information just by looking at the first URL?
• It uses keywords. Brand name “XYZ,�?store category “grocery,�?store location “Ann Arbor�?are all good local SEO keywords that will help users and search engines find your page. We all know putting keywords in the URL will help SEO, but be careful to not go overboard.
• It uses hyphens or dashes to separate words in the subfolder & file names.

One more tip here: make sure you create the web page URL correctly the first time. If you change it later, don’t forget to redirect the old one to your new URL, otherwise your previous shared links will be broken.

3. Page Title and Description
Search engines pay particular attention to the words in a page title because it tells both users and search engines the topic of your page. Description meta tags give search engines a summary of what the page is about. Usually, search engines will use it as snippets for your page. Some tips for you when you write page titles and descriptions:

• Use a unique, brief and informative title and description for each page.
• Search engines usually display the first 50-60 characters (including spaces) of a title tag, and display the first 155 characters (including spaces) of a description
• Use keywords. Again, don’t go overboard.

4. User-friendly content layout

Take a look of these two pieces of content. Which one is better?

The right one looks better to me. What do you think? A good content layout helps users to read your content quickly as well as search engines to know your content structure better. Below are some tips for you to layout your content:

• Use appropriate heading tags (h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6) to present different sections of your content. h1 tag is the most important heading tag that search engines get an idea about your page topic from it, just as the <title> tag does.
• Use <bold>, <strong>, <italic>, <em> tag, bullet list to highlight some of your important content.

5. Image File Name and Alt Text

Search engine spiders can’t see your images, but they can crawl image file names and alt text. Here is a photo I took from my trip to Seattle. The original file name is P1000032.jpg. Will you keep the same file name if you put it on your website? File names such as DSC_1372.jpg, 2012082135.jpg don’t tell search engines anything about your images. So, two tips for you:

• Use short, but descriptive filenames and alt text.
• Use hyphens/dashes instead of underscores or spaces in filenames. Google sees “space-needle-seattle.jpg” as “space needle seattle.jpg�? but “space_needle_seattle.jpg” as “spaceneedleseattle.jpg�? “space needle seattle.jpg” as “space%20needle%20seattle.jpg�?

It is not easy to remember all these when you build every new page. We’re all very busy. But think about how much time you will spend fixing these after you’ve published hundreds pages/posts, and wait for search engines to crawl your changes. It’s worth it to build every page right the first time.

Want to optimize your website?

Logic Solutions is happy to assist!
Check out what we have to offer in web development, SEO optimization, web solutions, and responsive designs!

Find your perfect web solution

Cheryl Gong is the SEO specialist at Logic Solutions. With experience in SEO, digital marketing strategy, and website development, Cheryl has worked with different sites and brands to provide best practices for each client’s unique business needs.

The post Search Engine Friendly Website? Build It Right The First Time appeared first on 雷技信息科技（上海）有限公司.