Study About Google Analytics

Introduction to Google Analytics 

It is a brief study on Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a free tool introduced by Google. It was launched in November 2005. Google Analytics is used to analyze the website activity of the users such as user interaction time, traffic sources, bounce rate, etc... 

Traffic reporting 

Google Analytics is a traffic reporter. This service will tell you how many users are visiting your site each day. And identifies the source of traffic.

There are different types of traffics,

Direct traffic: Visiting the website by searching with the website URL. When the domain name is ranked, then it gets more direct traffic.

Organic Traffic: Visiting the website by a keyword search or brand name.

Referral Traffic: Visiting the website by using referral links.

Social Media Traffic: Visiting the website using links or blogs posted on social media websites.

Ad Traffic: Visiting the website by clicking website advertisements.

Google Analytics also tracks mobile applications.

Steps to implement Google Analytics for your website

1. First login to your Google account. Then go to the Google Analytics home page and click on sign up. 
2. After sign up, then you have to enter a name for your account, a name for identification of your website that is website URL.
3. The reporting time zone is an important factor. It is used for generating reports based on a country's time zone. Different countries have a different time zone. So we must select a country according to our business.
4. Then go down and click on the Get Tracking ID button.
5. Here also select your country and Accept Terms and Conditions.
6. Copy the website tracking code given, and paste it inside the HTML code head section of your website. If you are using a blogger account, then go to the blogger sidebar and click the template option. Then select Edit HTML. So you can edit your website's HTML.
7. Then go to the Google Analytics home page and click on your account name.
8. Now you can analyze your website through overview or real-time options.

If you liked this blog share and comment. You can also refer to related blogs about On-page Optimization Techniques and Google Search Console Tips and Guidelines.

The Complete Guide to Google Search Console

Introduction to Google Search Console

Google Search Console is earlier known as the Webmaster Tool. It is used to check indexing status and optimize visibility of websites. It is the most important tool for an SEO analyst. It provides a controlled form of SEO. That means we have control for website language, target country, crawl rate, and errors. 

Features of Google Search Console

• It helps to crawl websites.
• Used as a communication link for Google to communicate with webmasters about website issues.
• It helps in submitting and checking of sitemaps. 
• And also helps the webmasters to find out any errors with their sitemap.
• Check and set the crawl rate.
• Google also crawls without search console but it is an uncontrolled form of SEO.
• Reports and errors of websites seen in the search console.

Different Methods of Verification

If a web page is created by a webmaster and caching in search console is done using another google account. Then Google shows different methods for verification.

1. HTML File verification method 
   It is the recommended method by Google, other methods are alternatives. You can verify ownership of a site by uploading an HTML file to your site. Removing this HTML file from your site will cause you to lose verification for the site. 
2. HTML Tag verification method
   You can verify your ownership of a site by attaching a <meta> tag to the HTML of a specified page. Google verify that the meta tag exists in the correct location. If Google can't find the tag, Google gives you information about the error encountered.
3. Google Analytics method 
   Google Analytics is another verification method used to track your site's traffic. You can verify your site using the Google Analytics tracking code associated with the site. To do this, "edit" permission for the web property is needed because the tracking code is used by that page.
4. Google Tag Manager method
    If you have a Google Tag Manager account, you can verify ownership of the site using this Google Tag Manager container snippet code. For this, you must have View, Edit, and Manage container-level permissions in Google Tag Manager.
5. DNS Record method
   This is to verify ownership of a property at the domain level. It is done by adding a DNS record in your domain name provider. For this, you must sign in to your domain name provider. For example, GoDaddy.com or networksolutions.com. And add a new TXT record. Google will verify that your personal record is present and this record is assigned to your domain.

INDEX

It consists of the tools related to indexing. The tools are,

• Coverage
• Sitemaps

        1. Coverage

It shows the coverage issues related to your website. We have to fix the occurred coverage issues, otherwise, it will affect your website negatively. Coverage issues may be warnings, errors, etc...

        2. Sitemaps

A sitemap is an XML file that consists of the URLs on a website. It allows the search engine to crawl the details of the site more efficiently and highspeed. An XML file is easily scanned by google bots in a highspeed manner than an Html file. One sitemap can contain 50,000 URLs. More than the limit can be included in separate sitemaps. We can also add a sitemap as a zip file.

Enhancements

It shows the improvements needed for your website. Like improvement of the website to a mobile-friendly stage.

       1. Mobile Usability

It is another feature in Google Search Console. It shows the issues and improvements related to your mobile sites. So you can fix the issues and make the site mobile friendly.

       2. AMP

AMP is Accelerated Mobile Pages. It is used for making the website more faster and quick loading on mobile devices.

Security and Manual Actions

       1. Manual Actions

It is the actions taken by google against the spammy websites that are not punished by google algorithms (Panda, Penguin, etc...). So the google manually take actions against spammy website and removes those web pages.

       2. Security Issues

It shows security issues like hacking, malware, etc... on your website. And we can take the necessary steps and fix the issues.

Legacy Tools and Reports

It consists of,

• International Targeting: We can select the target country for business.
• Removals: Removing the unwanted URLs from the google search results. There are some URLs that don't require indexing and also URLs with any mistakes. So we can remove those URLs from indexing. The removal request is only for 6 months.
• Crawl Stats: Shows the rate of crawling by Google.
• Messages: Shows the messages related to your website.
• URLs Parameters: Using special parameters in URLs, that helps to show important site changes.
• Web tools: Other tools that are useful to your website.

If you liked this you can share it. You can also refer related blogs like On-page SEO techniques.

Comment your valuable feedback below.

On Page SEO Techniques

On-Page SEO

On-page SEO is a method of performing modifications within the web pages in order to rank higher.

A snippet is defined as a piece of information shown in a search result. A basic snippet consists of,

     
• Title
• URL
• Meta Description

Different On-Page Optimization Techniques

Title Optimization

• The characters in a title tag are limited to 55 to 60 characters.
• The title tag must be doesn't exceed 512 pixels. Some letters take more pixels according to the letter width.
• Spelling mistakes in SEO title greatly affect the website than other mistakes.
• The SEO title must contain 3 or more words. Because the google extract information for showing the search result is from this SEO title. Less than 3 words in the title did not give proper information for google.
• SEO title must be Unique. Otherwise, title duplication occurs. And results in cannibalism, that is a competition performed within the website.
• A search bar is limited to 70 characters.

h1 and h2 Optimization 

If a page didn't have an SEO title. Then Google shows its content in h1 tag as a title. More than one h1 tag results in the sandbox. Sandbox is a temporary storage area. Google gets confused while caching when more than one h1 headings occurred. So google stores it into the sandbox. Websites dropped in the sandbox doesn't get any ranking. If h1 tag has no heading then Google goes to h2 tag. And shows heading in h2 tag as the title.

 Meta Tags

  

• The content of the web page is given in the meta tag.
• The character limit in the meta description of a page is 155 to 160. For a blog post, it is 155 characters. Because blog post shows its posted date.
• Pixel width is limited to 1024 pixels.
• Meta description must be unique.

Content Optimization

• Short sentences are preferred by Google. Long sentences are not SEO friendly. Because users can easily understand small sentences.
• Readability Test is a test performed to determine the understandability of content.

Keyword optimization

Keyword Density: It is the percentage of keyword occurrence in content.

• Focusing keyword in the starting of content helps to improve page rank.
• For a large paragraph, giving focusing keyword in bold letters will improve the easiness of reading. 
• Arranging focusing keyword before a comma or a full stop will help to improve the page rank.

Anchor Text Optimization

  

• Anchor text is given inside anchor tag.
• It is the most visible portion in content for google while crawling.
• Anchor text improves the crawling of content.
• Don't give focusing keyword as a link to another website.

Image Optimization

• The image tag is used to display an image.  
• We can give descriptions for the image using the alt tag. This description helps Google to understand more about the image.
• It is better to give a meaningful name as the filename of an image.
• Avoid the use of white space in the file name of an image.
• We can use hyphens in the place of white space.

You can also refer related blog about History and Evolution of SEO

History and Evolution of SEO

History and Evolution of SEO

Google is a search engine established in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Google specializes in Internet-related services and products, which include online advertising technologies, search engine, cloud computing, software, and hardware.

Google mainly performs three operations crawling, caching and indexing.

Crawling is performed by web crawlers, they are programs for crawl web pages, that is scanning the information from a website. This web crawlers are also known as Google bots, spiders, etc...

Caching is the process of saving data on web pages. This process involves, taking snapshots of the web page and save it on the database in a categorized manner.

Indexing is the process of forming indexes for the web pages.

Sometimes these operations may misunderstand the actual meaning of web pages. It will result in incorrect information storing. The incorrect information stored on database produces irrelevant results for the user while searching.

On-page optimization is performed by webmasters. On-page optimization involves modification or editing done inside a web page. Webmasters have the user id and password for controlling the websites. Webmasters perform on-page optimization and make the website easily understandable to google.

During the time of world trade center attack, a large number of users search about world trade center. But at that time google failed to provide results to the users. This was seriously discussed by the google company and arrived at a solution. The solution was, release the guidelines of google to the webmasters for maintaining the website. Many of the members of google were against that decision. Because it will affect the security and secrecy of google, but google took that risk. This released guideline is known as an SEO starter guide.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of increasing the quality and quantity of website traffic by increasing visibility of a website or a web page to users of a web search engine.

                           

After that, low-quality results are seen on google. Low-quality results mean it doesn't provide the actual information needed by the user.

So Google introduced content specific ranking to the websites. The content-specific ranking is performed according to the number of times the focusing keyword is present on a web page. A Website with a maximum number of focusing keyword is ranked as first. A focusing keyword is a keyword or term searched by the user. But many websites followed keyword stuffing. It is the process of increasing the presence of focusing keyword on the website. It comes under the Blackhat technique. SEO techniques are divided into Blackhat and Whitehat techniques. Whitehat is related to ethical ways of  SEO techniques and Blackhat is related to unethical ways.

Then Google introduced ranking according to the link. Links are recommendations or pointers given by one or more websites to pointing any specific website. And ranking is given according to the websites having recommendations from a maximum number of websites. This results in the selling and buying of links without google's control. So Google introduced another ranking method, quality link specific. It is according to the links or recommendations from high-quality websites. Here google used a scaling factor for ranking web page that is page rank. Page rank is taken as out of 10. This page ranking technique was stopped in 2016. There were fewer websites have the page rank 10 out of 10.Page rank is given by Google, according to the use of the website for the users. Twitter is an example for a website with page rank 10 out of 10. When a website is giving links to a large number of websites, it will decrease the page rank of that website. This process is known as passing the juice. But we can prevent the loss of rank by using 'no follow' link. By using 'no follow' link the website did not share its rank to the other websites.

Google Adwords is an advertisement program. The function of this program is posting advertisements on websites. The client pays money for posting their advertisements. So it played a main role in increasing the income of google. Now, Google AdWords is known as google ads.

The user can easily customize their ads according to their need. The clients paid amount will decrease according to the CPC, Cost per Click. When the user visited the site by clicking the ad and leaving the site without purchasing will google decrease the amount paid to google for posting the advertisement. Google takes the cost for each visiting without purchasing. When the amount is exhausted, then the advertisement will be removed by google. After that, Google AdSense is introduced. It is for making earnings from google. We can post other advertisements on our website and the google gives a commission for the clicks on the advertisement.

Web Spam Quality Team is introduced by google to find out spams and make strong updation for the corresponding problem.

Google suggest is for helping the users while typing a term for searching. Google automatically shows some related terms and recent searches.

In 2009, website ranking in Google is based on user interactions. In this method google analyze the interaction time of each user on the website. The website with more interaction time will be ranked first.

Bounce rate is the percentage of users with very low interaction, that is quick exiting from the website. A website with low ranking has a high bounce rate.

Pogo sticking is a process of changing the rank of the first website to low and increasing the rank of the second website and make it as ranked first, according to the bounce rate.

In 2010, social media got a high degree of user interactions. Users spend more time on social media websites.

Google Algorithm Updates 

Panda Update

In 2011, google performed an updation known as google Panda updation. This updation was against content specific spamming. There are different types of content spamming,

• Duplicate Content: Copying contents that are published by others.
• Low-Quality Publication: Information with grammatical errors.
• Content Spinning: Using the same lines or content in different paragraphs.
• Thinny pages: Web pages with fewer contents and information.
• Keyword Stuffing: Increasing the use of focusing keyword on the website in an uncontrolled manner.

Panda 4.0 version is the most successful panda update. It was introduced in May 2014. This updation removed lakhs of low-quality websites. And this updation implemented as a permanent filter in the Google algorithm. All the websites are passed through this filter before storing to the database. So it stores only quality websites.

Penguin Update

Penguin is another update from google in 2012. It is against link specific spamming. There are some link specific spamming,

• Paid links: Buying and selling of links for increasing the website rank.
• Low-Quality link: Links given by low-quality websites.
• Link Exchange: Giving and taking links between two websites for increasing rank of both of the websites.
• Link farming: Creating a large number of links by any link schemes or automatic link building. It is similar to link exchange.
• Comment spamming: Attaching links along with the comments on the comment box.
• Wiki spamming: Posting links in the wiki pages.
• Uncontrolled guest blogging: Guest to a website post links and articles in that website in an uncontrolled manner.

Pigeon Update

• It was another update from google. It is related to local SEO, that is targeting on local customers.
• Local SEO makes the website locally visible.

Hummingbird Update

In 2013 google introduced another update known as a Hummingbird. 

This update provided semantic search results, that is providing deep information and interactive results.

Rank Brain Update

It was another update of google in 2015. It is related to artificial intelligence for identifying the actual need of the user. That is, analyze the search term and give accurate results.

Mobile Geddon Update

It was another update in which ranking is done according to the mobile-friendly nature of the website.

There are some features for a mobile-friendly website,

• The website must not contain unplayable contents
• Only Horizontal scrolling is allowed

Parked Domain Update

It is mainly focused on hiding the booked domains. Booked domains are domains which are pre-registered by any company or person. It is hidden because it is pre-registered only, no content is published in it.

Pirate update 

It is another update, that is mainly for taking action when any copyright complaint is submitted to google by a website owner. This update is for stopping piracy. The website owner submits a complaint when any content of their website is copied by another website. The complaint is known as the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Exact Match Domain (EMD) Update 

EMD is another update from Google. This update is for identifying and removing poor quality website with focusing keyword as a domain. Otherwise, the poor quality website with search term as domain name gets ranked high.

Bracket Update 

This was introduced in 2017. It is to stop review manipulations.

Medic Update

It is targetted on health and wellness related websites. It is an update based on the value of the website.