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Archive for category: EOS Blog

Mar
19
2013
| EOS Blog | Leave a reply

Three Reasons Why Tracking Your Center’s Google Analytics Goals for SEO Matters

Three Reasons Why Tracking Your Center’s

Google Analytics Goals for SEO Matters

 

Track Google Analytics Goals for SEOMany Businesses do very little when it comes to tracking the results of their search engine optimization efforts. Given the mass volume of search being conducted every day over the internet, if you are not engaged in serious efforts to track your traffic, you may not be making the necessary adjustments to keep up with the search engines.

We came across the article posted below from www.searchenginewatch.com. It outlines very clearly what businesses need to consider regarding configuring and tracking Google Analytics goals. Not everything will be relevant to your center, but it’s an important enough topic that we thought we’d republish the article here.
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How to Configure & Track Google Analytics Goals for SEO

Goal measurement is quite possibly the most important element of SEO itself… because it is the justification of the investment.

Those new to SEO often want to base campaign success on surface value metrics such as rankings. Rankings are great because they provide exposure, visibility, and something even greater: traffic. Once upon a time, rankings and traffic were the main ways to measure the success of SEO.

Increased rankings and traffic are good, but if your traffic doesn’t convert, then SEO becomes a producer of negative ROI. Would you know that though, if you weren’t tracking goals/conversions on your site?

What Are Your Goals?

Goals in Google Analytics (using this as 99.999 percent of site owners use it) can come via a few different forms, but before you decide how to measure your goals decide what your goals are in the first place.

  • Conversions: Sales, etc.
  • Lead: Submission forms, contact forms.
  • User behavior: Pageviews, etc.

Think about what the mission of your site is. What was it created to do? Once you have answered this question you will have your goal metrics.

How to Track Goal Metrics

There are three basic types of goal tracking in Google Analytics: ecommerce tracking, event tracking, and standard goal tracking.

Ecommerce Tracking

How to get this: You will need to select the ecommerce site button in the Admin>>Profiles>>Profile Settings>>ecommerce Settings section in Google Analytics. Additionally, you will need to place additional tracking code on your receipt page. Refer to Google’s instructions on tag placement.

What is this good for: This is a must for any site that is transactional as it is critical that you understand transaction and revenue growth. Digging deeper, you can look at transaction success at the keyword or landing page level. Understanding your organic traffic, more than watching high level numbers, is your key to honing in on what is helping you sell, or not helping you sell. Analyzing at a more granular level also allows you to begin looking at your landing pages with an eye on conversion optimization.

Event Tracking

How to get this: Additional code placement on text links, image links and videos. Refer to Google’s instructionson Event tracking code placement.

What is this good for: Event Tracking helps you gain a better understanding of user actions/behaviors on-site. Do you have a goal such as PDF downloads for which you cannot tell through standard tracking those who land on the PDF? This allows you to understand how many of these goals are being reached. Do you have a few key calls to action on the homepage you want to test link click-throughs? Are you engaged in an external site partnership and want to see how many clicks are leaving your site to visit theirs? These are all good situations to use Event tracking.

Standard Goal Tracking

How to get this: This goal method, of the three, is the easiest to implement. By visiting Admin>>Profiles>>Goals from your Google Analytics dashboard you simply can add the type of metric you wish to analyze, whether it be a visitor usage related goal or a URL as a destination.

What is it good for: The latter above is typically the most commonly used value for these type of goal tracking. Do you have a lead/contact submission form? Ensure you have a thank you page after user submission and this can become a goal page. Do you have several different types of lead forms? Then you can use multiple goals for multiple form types, common if some lead types are worth different values to your organization. Be mindful of your match types here though as selecting the wrong type for your goal URL needs whether exact, head or regular expression can cause goal tracking to be inaccurate or broken all together.

Get to Tracking!

This article has only scratched the surface – there is so much to goal/conversion tracking that once you get acquainted with these basics, the analytical possibilities will become seemingly endless. Hopefully it has helped provide a guided approach into the true investment justification of SEO – and offered you a new viewpoint of success.

Thanks to www.webmasterstudio.com for the image.

Republished with permission by Sue Saldibar

Mar
7
2013
| EOS Blog | Leave a reply

Tech Trends: Is Your Workspace Pushing the Right Buttons?

Tech Trends: Is Your Workspace Pushing the Right Buttons?

Tech trends

Technology is shaping and influencing the way we run our lives at work, at home and everywhere in-between. It’s ingrained in everything we do and it’s developing at an incredible pace, fueled by social behavior and an insatiable appetite to have everything ‘now’. Remember when IT lessons at school felt a little alien? Not anymore. The next generation is growing up surrounded by technology, with the same appetite for knowledge and collaboration that we as business people demand today.

So the multi-million pound question – and the one that fascinates the human race – is what’s next for technology?

A recent article on Real Business by Vanessa Zainzinger unearthed some fascinating trends about technology and how it’s about to turn the way we do business on its head.

The culture of immediacy

We live in a world where we want everything yesterday. From music downloads and streaming movies to answering that annoying question, we want information at our fingertips – and the internet gives us instant gratification.

In this must-have-now culture, businesses are expected to adapt. Whether it’s a booking system with online payments or immediate customer service, clients expect immediacy. Workspace operators can tackle this in many different ways – such as checking their customer service protocols and assessing their online presence. Those with coworking or meeting spaces should have an online booking facility, and centers can assess their ‘immediacy’ by making sure their websites as user-friendly as possible – ensuring they are delivering the right information to clients quickly and accurately.

Collaboration and sharing

When bank funding is hard to come by, businesses get creative. Crowdfunding is one such solution. It’s a way of generating funds through people power and it’s all part of our sharing ethos and collaborative culture, the same concept which is made possible by social networks and which has fuelled sites such as eBay and Airbnb. If you can share goods, rooms, parking spaces and even cars, why not share money – and use it to invest in something that you believe in?

Zainzinger describes it as “rebooting” the business world, a move that was inspired by public anger at Wall Street, bank bonuses and interest rates. “It has enabled a new channel for business growth,” she says. “Now, crowdfunding lets you generate funding, build customer feedback, market and improve your product, all in one, without any significant upfront investment.”

Continuing the sharing concept in business, Spacedadi is one tool that’s actively bringing the workspace industry closer together by encouraging operators to market each other’s space. This culture of openness and sharing is expected to develop rapidly over the next few years, so operators should use it to get their workspace ‘out there’. Market it through systems like Spacedadi and you’ll not only help to sell your space and your competitors’ space (earning a commission while you’re at it), they can return the favor too – meaning you’re also sharing the marketing burden. In short, sharing helps the world go around.

The real era of mobile

Gartner predicts that in 2013, mobile devices will overtake desktop PCs as the most common web access tools. This has triggered a BYOD boom and means that barriers to market are quickly shrinking. As we have written about so much on Officing Today, it is essential that your work space website is adapted for mobile. And if users can book online through their device, you’re already ahead of the curve and ready to welcome Gen Y in their droves.

This is driving concepts such as ‘talent as a service’ – based on the idea that thanks to mobile technology, businesses can hire talent anywhere in the world. By 2020, ‘talent as a service’ is expected to impact one-third of professionals worldwide. This breaking down of geographical boundaries means that the traditional workplace will continue to change, and alternative forms of officing such as the virtual office and coworking will keep growing.

It shows that technology and workplace are intrinsically linked. It’s an exciting time for the workspace industry and equally, a time when the industry is expected to be at the forefront of alternative workplace solutions, with the tools to let mobile businesses find and book space online whenever they want. And we all know that businesses want it ‘now’. So instead of waiting until your front desk opens at 9am to accept a booking, accelerate your business by embracing technology and providing that ‘instant gratification’.

What is your business centre doing to address these demands and stay ahead of the curve?

Image source

Republished with permission by Jo Disney

Feb
26
2013
| EOS Blog | Leave a reply

Mobile Worker Outfits Car as Virtual Office Space

Virtual Mobile OfficeTexting while driving can be dangerous – and can even get you pulled over in some cities. But a man in Germany took remote work to a whole new level.

According to The Associated Press, German police say they nabbed a driver who had wired his Ford station wagon with an entire mobile office, creating the equivalent of a virtual office space.

“Built on a wooden frame on his passenger seat they found a laptop on a docking station tilted for easy driver access, a printer, router, wireless internet stick, WLAN antenna, and an inverter to power it all,” the AP reports. “A navigation system and cell phone mounted to the windshield completed the array.”

If this doesn’t show the mobile workforce trend is catching on, what does? As business center owners and operators are well aware, mobile workers are on the rise. But hard statistics drive the point home. By 2015, the world’s mobile worker population will reach 1.3 billion, representing 37.2 percent of the total workforce, according to IDC.

“Despite recent market turmoil, mobility continues to be a critical part of the global workforce and we expect to see healthy growth in the number of mobile workers,” said Stacy Crook, senior research analyst for IDC’s Mobile Enterprise Research program. “Our forecast shows that the worldwide mobile worker population will increase from just over 1 billion in 2010 to more than 1.3 billion by 2015.”

What’s more, Forrester Research estimates 66% of information workers in North America and Europe already work remotely. Over time, Forrester predicts this trend will have profound implications for everything from the location and design of offices, to IT’s provisioning of technology, to how business leaders marshal expertise.

Is your business center ready to accommodate the demands of the mobile workforce? With a mobile workforce working from remote locations, business centers should expect more foot traffic – but business centers that market their serviced office space as mobile worker friendly will lead the charge.

Many mobile workers may be yet unaware of the availability of day offices and meeting rooms. Savvy business centers are commuting the message to large corporations and entrepreneurs alike. How do you do this?

For starters, be sure to include language on your website – preferably an entire webpage – dedicated to marketing your services to mobile workers. Use keywords like “mobile workers” on those web pages so you will come up in the Google search results. Show mobile workers that you understand their needs by listing services that appeal to their pain points. Treat the mobile workforce as a niche – a niche that’s worth plenty as business evolves.

Image source: Saarland State Police, Germany

Republished with permission by Mike Sullivan