See How Easily You Can Learn About Google Analytics and The Power of Your Brand in Search

November 17, 2011 By Trent Blizzard

Blizzard has a few Webinars coming up. Hope to see you there:

Google Analytics Multi-Channel Conversion Tool
Monday, November 28th, 2011 10AM MST

Learn about the most exciting new Google Analytics feature to come along in years! This may be the single most exciting online marketing development during 2011.
Learn how to setup and interpret this valuable new data which is guaranteed to shed new light on where your online bookings really come from and will most likely change your budgeting process in 2012. This is a 30 minute webinar.

The Power of Your Brand in Google’s Search Algorithm
Thursday, December 8th, 2011 1PM MST

Learn how your Brand is becoming an increasingly important component in Google’s organic search algorithm. Google monitors your brand signals and will rank you higher and drive more search engine traffic to your website if your brand appears stronger than your competitors.

Learn about the brand signals Google tracks in its algorithm and what you can do to increase the strength and frequency of those signals.

Google Plus for Hotels and Vacation Rentals: Strategies, Tactics and Tips
Wednesday December 14th, 2011 10AM MST

Get a head start in the new Google+ social networking platform. Learn how to get your account going and how to get the most out of it. Includes tips for newbies but focuses on strategies and tactics that will work in the world of guest marketing.

Filed Under: Analytics, Blizzard News, SEO

Insight Finder from Google makes Google Research Easier

November 16, 2011 By Trent Blizzard

Google has a website called thinkinsights with Google that is a great source to get insight, facts, stats, research, planning tools and… data!

There is a lot of great travel related data that is worth checking out. They also have a “Real Time Insights Finder” which can help you discover all kinds of free real-time data from a plethora of Google Tools:

Filed Under: Analytics, Industry Stats, Out and About

How I Improved my Google Analytics Reports in 90 Seconds

October 18, 2011 By Trent Blizzard

The “new” version of Google Analytics has several new reports that are worth studying. One report I like is the “site speed” report which is newly available in Google Analytics… it simply tells you how fast your website loads on average and also breaks down specific pages for analysis.

In order to make this new feature work you have to add a snippet of code to your tracking scripts: “_gaq.push(['_trackPageLoadTime']);” You can read all about how site speed works and how to add the tracking script on the Google Analytics Blog.

The other 90 second improvement I made to my Google Analytics reporting was to integrate it with my existing Google Webmaster Tools account.

Both these steps are worth the few seconds required!

Filed Under: Analytics

Integrate Your Google Webmaster Tool Data into Google Analytics

October 14, 2011 By Trent Blizzard

Connecting your Google Webmaster Tool account and your Google Analytics account provides better reports in your Google Analytics AND more convenience. This feature was released last week on the Google Webmaster Central Blog.

I especially like having the “Queries” report right in Google Analytics which shows how many impressions my website received in Google search results (by Query), the Click-Thru-Rate and the average ranking. Pretty Handy.

Here are the step-by-step instructions… with a caveat: you must be in the “new version” of Google Analytics, not the old. If your screens look different, you are in the old version. The login to the new version is at the very top of your page.

Here are the step-by-step instructions to integrate these two accounts:

1) Login to Google Analytics and click on the gear to the right of the reporting tabs:

Google Analytics Gets Past First Touch Attribution with Multi-Channel Funnels

May 17, 2011 By Trent Blizzard

Most online marketers use and love Google Analytics. We get excited by the numbers and spend hours figuring what is working and what is not. Google Analytics is continually improving and rolls out new features regularly. The next new feature it is rolling out is exciting; multi-touch attribution and multi-channel funnels.

“Huh?” you say? Here is the problem: Google gives “referral” credit to the most recent referrer… so if yesterday a visitor finds your site a link at your chamber of commerce, and then today returns after searching for you by your business name in Google, and then books a room in your hotel booking engine… Google’s brand name search gets ALL the credit (assuming you are one of the 35% or so that actually track referrers for online bookings… see our online marketing benchmarks yourself.).

This last-touch referral drives marketers crazy. Adding “first” touch referrals is nice… but there are often other channel involved. Enter Google’s new Multi Touch Funnels which will give us reports on how all the channels work together. You can read about it at Google or watch this video:

Or, this video: [Read more...]

Filed Under: Analytics, Breaking News

Google URL Shortener for Your Long URLs

May 11, 2011 By Trent Blizzard

Now that you are making ridiculously long URLs with Google’s URL Builder you may have a new problem: those long URLs look stupid in many places…

If you want to make a quick short version, go to the Google URL Shortener and turn this link:

http://www.blizzardinternet.com/plans-and-pricing/website-marketing/consultation-plans/?utm_source=LinkedIn&utm_medium=cpc&utm_
content=Consultation%2BPlan&utm_campaign=Hotel

into

this link: http://goo.gl/J6xpw [Read more...]

Filed Under: Analytics, SEM, Toolbox

Google Analytics URL Builder

May 10, 2011 By Trent Blizzard

Tracking your referral sources accurately in Google Analytics is a big deal.

As the marketing person for a resort, you may increasingly rely upon the reporting that Google gives you to evaluate how your marketing efforts are working.

The problem with relying upon referral reports in Google Analytics is that:

Some or all of the data gets lost (Twitter can have this problem).
The referral website actually has several websites and your traffic gets spread around so it be hard to calculate.
The referral website has a paid and free component (like LinkedIn and Facebook) where your fee-based advertising gets lumped into the free version.
You are doing email marketing and the emails aren’t being tracked.
You are not tracking your 301 redirects or domain forwarding usage.

My favorite tool to solve this problem is the Google Analytics URL Builder which quickly and easily appends “campaign” data the URL I use in some of my (Blizzard Internet) specific advertising campaigns.

So, for my LinkedIn Pay-Per-Click campaign aimed at Hotels… and specifically, the ad where I offer a consultation plan would look like this: