Problem: Revenue and leads are down for a site, and site owner assumes it’s because they lost ranking for a particular keyword(s).
Solution: Set up goal tracking in Google Analytics, so you know how to nail down what EXACTLY is causing the drop in leads.
I spoke with a client who runs a successful affiliate site who was working through an SEO conundrum. This exec was bemoaning the fact that revenue was down and assigned the blame to a drop in ranking for one of their big keywords. So I asked how they made their money. He explained that they made their money whenever someone clicked through to one of the affiliate sites. Immediately I made a mental note to check to see if JavaScript was added to the links to track them as goals. Then I asked if they track goals in their analytics. <crickets> Sure enough, I went to the goal-tracking option in Google Analytics, and here’s what I saw:
Can you imagine? He didn’t even know you could track click thrus to external sites in Google Analytics.
If you want to track click thrus to external sites as goal conversions, it’s really easy to do. But first, why would you want to track these clicks? Well, for one, if you have social media buttons on your site — like you want people to follow you on Twitter or Facebook — you may want to see how many of your visitors are clicking through to those sites. Here’s what a report will look like where you track click thrus to social media sites.
Or if you’re an affiliate site that wants to track how many people click thru to the sites that pay you money to send them traffic or sales and you want to make sure they’re crediting you for the traffic you’re spending. There are, of course, other examples, but you get the idea.
So how do you do it? It’s easy.
If you have the traditional Google Analytics on your site, you’d add the following snippet of JavaScript to your link:
pageTracker._trackPageview(“/virtual/outbound/facebook”);
If you have the newer, asynchronous tracking set up on your site, you’d use:
_gaq.push([‘_trackPageview(‘/virtual/outbound/facebook’)’]);
Of course, you can call your pageview whatever you want and put it in whatever virtual directories you want. Personally, I always like to put all of my virtualpageviews in a directory called virtual. And then I include a subdirectory (outbound, forms, or downloads). That way I can easily create a segment that either only includes virtual pageviews or excludes virtual pageviews. (How to do that is for another post.) But some people just use one directory; others like to give the file an extension. It’s really up to you. Just keep your naming conventions intuitive and consistent.
badmash says
I just signed up to your blogs rss feed. Will you post more on this subject?
Annielytics says
I sure will. Anything in particular you’d like to know? 🙂
medical billing says
found your site on del.icio.us today and really liked it.. i bookmarked it and will be back to check it out some more later
Annielytics says
Thank you. Glad you’re getting something from it. 🙂
Annie