Advanced Techniques in Google Analytics to enhance SEO Reporting: Part 1

Most people who have a website and an Internet marketing campaign have taken advantage of the free Google Analytics tool which will enable you to track the visitors to your website. But what happens when you need to meet a requirement in your reporting that standard results don’t show. In part 1 of this series I will go over the first query that I have experienced as an SEO consultant working on my clients sites which made me need to go that step further in analytical installation.

Roll Up Reports

One client of mine has 4 separate websites that I complete SEO services for and although they receive regular reports for the performance of each site the director wanted to have a report which showed the performance for the company as a whole.

For this I decided to install a second tracker to each of the sites with the Google Account code for a new roll up account. For this to be done properly you need to edit the GA tracking code as follows:

var gaJsHost = ((“https:” == document.location.protocol) ? “https://ssl.” : “http://www.”);

document.write(unescape(“%3Cscript src=’” + gaJsHost + “google-analytics.com/ga.js’ type=’text/javascript’%3E%3C/script%3E”)); </script>

try {

var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker(“UA-XXXXXXXX-1″);

pageTracker._trackPageview();

} catch(err) {}

try {
var pageTracker2 = _gat._getTracker(“UA-SECONDTRACKER”);
pageTracker2._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}

</script>

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The edit you would make is in the red text. Add this additional text to each of the accounts to add a roll up account without causing conflicts with the original account.

This roll up account will then allow you to let your client know a total of visits and goal conversions for the whole SEO investment.

In Part two I will talk about how to edit your GATC (Google Analytics Tracking Code ) to enable you to track actions on a site that happen within a URL i.e. like a video being played so enable you to understand the worth of these aspects in a site by using Event Tracking.