Google Analytics is a great tool, but it is greater if you can help it be as smart as possible by tweaking certain things.  The human element is what makes it "Analytics" after all.

Filtering out internal traffic is one of those things.  If you are analyzing a high volume of public traffic on your site and you are trying to make marketing decisions based on the trends you are seeing, and on top of that you and your colleagues are compulsively accessing your own site, your data is probably skewed (that is if what your intern does on your site does not move and shake your business). 

What you want to do is add a sub profile to your main profile.  The main profile will have ALL traffic, so ... Read More

Sitemaps can often be an afterthought in the website development process. However, they can help in your search engine optimization efforts. There are two types of sitemaps, each with its own benefits for SEO. Read More

Google Analytics has several types of segmentation options that can all be used to splice data and determine the behavior of specific, high value segments.  Understanding the uses and limitations of each of these segmentation options is a crucial step to ensure you are getting the most of your Google Analytics implementation.

There are multiple segmentation options in Google Analytics:
-    Profile Level Segmentation
-    Advanced Segments
-    Advanced Filters

Profile Level Segmentation
Profile level segmentation is available if you click on the "Edit" link next to your profiles in GA. Profile-level segments allow you to create ... Read More

As part of the process of search engine optimization, duplicate content is a fundamental issue that needs to be dealt with, similar to 404 errors. In a nutshell, duplicate content is a situation where the same content can be found on multiple URL's within the same website or even on different websites on different domains.The problem this causes for SEO is that search engines robots will see multiple versions of the same content but will only index one copy, or may stop indexing a website if the search engine robot finds too many copies of the same content on a single website. ... Read More

(Not the kinds of goals you kick, but the kinds of goals you set). 
You know what you want out of your website, you have determined what success means to you, but you are not sure how to track it.  The answer is goal setting in Google Analytics.

Follow these steps to setup your goal:

1.  Determine a name for each of your goals

a. site registration
b. lead form
c. request a quote
d. sale

2. Determine the value of each goal.  This is really a simple math question. For example, if your goal is to get people to register for your site.  You know that on average you get 3 registrations a day worth 30 dollars.  Figure out how much ... Read More