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Google Analytics

Track Keyword, Rank and Landing Page with Google Analytics

by james on May 5, 2009

Google recently changed the referring strings that they are using to send traffic through to sites once you click on a search result. One of the major benefits of this to analytics geeks and SEOs is that you can now see where you rank for a given keyword, and what page people go to when clicking on the search result.

A post on the Google Anayltics blog mentioned the gradual roll out of these new referring URLs for some search queries. It was pretty much immediately noticed by people like Patrick at Blogstorm that there is a number contained within the string, the example which was given being:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=7&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.example.com%2Fmypage.htm&ei=0SjdSa-1N5O8M_qW8dQN&rct=j&q=flowers&usg=AFQjCNHJXSUh7Vw7oubPaO3tZOzz-F-u_w&sig2=X8uCFh6IoPtnwmvGMULQfw

You can see cd=7 within the string, and Patrick wondered if this could be the rank that a result appears it. In the comments on the post, Matt Cutts suggested very strongly that this was the case. For the search geeks amongst us, this was fantastic news, as it means that we can now track rank against keywords and the landing page people go to.
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Second Page Keyword Targeting

by james on April 18, 2009

Which keywords should you target for a link building campaign?
How do you make sure that the work you’re doing is having an impact?
These are two fundamental questions to ask yourself in any link building campaign. It’s all very well blindly targeting keywords that your client wants to rank for, but far more sensible to spend a little time looking at what they’re ranking for already and seeing if you can give their rankings a little nudge in the right direction.

This is variously called “advanced white hat SEO”, “second page keyword targeting” or just “a damn good way of getting results.” You’ll need a few tools to get this set up and running correctly and a little patience to ensure that you’ve got enough data.
Continue reading Second Page Keyword Targeting

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