Using Google Analytics to Measure Your Contact Form

A blog can be an excellent source of new business. But if you don't have a measurement tool in place, it can be difficult, if not impossible to know which topics are bringing in leads or sales. Did you know you can easily set up a Google Analytics goal funnel to measure your contact form? Today you'll find out which blog posts are creating new business as we look at creating a goal funnel to measure your contact form.

If you're not using goals in Google Analytics, you're not using the powerful web analytics tool effectively at all. Sure, visitors, pageviews and tweets are important measures of engagement, but what about conversion? If there's a business aspect to your blog, a lead or a sale is what brings in money. We should be just as, if not more interested in measuring these things, too.

Measuring Your Contact Form: Getting Started

Setting up goals on Google Analytics is a simple process that should take you no more than five minutes on most blogging platforms. We're going to cover how set up a contact form goal on a Squarespace blog specifically, but the general process is the same for nearly every blogging platform. Before we get started, please note that you must have Google Analytics installed and you must have Administrator access to your Google Analytics profile.

Ok, let's do this. Log in to your Google Analytics account and choose your active website account.

Go to the Analytics Settings page and select the Edit option from the Actions column that corresponds to the website profile you want to measure.

Once you're into your website's profile settings, scroll down to the Goals section and select the Add goal options from the right side of the page.

Google Analytics Goal Information

The first step of the Google Analytics goal setup form is entering information about your goal. Give you goal a name, make it active and position it within your profile. Be sure to select URL Destination as your Goal Type.

Google Analytics Goal Details

Most websites' contact forms behave in a very similar fashion. The web page someone visits directly after submitting the contact form is typically a simple variation of the contact form's URL containing the word Success or True or something like that. Submit a contact form on your own site to determine the specific URL seen after someone submits a contact form. Make note of the URL of this page. This is your destination, or Goal URL. 

Contact Form URL:

Example Squarespace Goal URL:

Now, take your goal URL and strip out your domain name.

Place this relative URL in the Goal URL field within the Goal Details section of the goal setup process. Also, make sure you've selected Exact Match as the Match Type.

You also have the chance to use a Goal Value. If you know your average lead or sales value, use that dollar figure here. If in doubt, just use an arbitrary number at first so you can at least see the relative performance of your website content until you know an exact average goal value.

Google Analytics Goal Funnel

Now let's set up a goal funnel for your goal. With a goal funnel, you can specify the sequence of web pages involved in a goal (e.g., Shopping Cart -> Checkout -> Payment Details -> Order Confirmation). Your goal funnel for your contact form process starts on your contact page and finishes on your Goal Url page. Simple right?

Enter the relative URL and a label for your contact page in the Step 1 row. Make sure to select the Required step checkbox. Save your goal.

Congratulations! You've just unlocked the real power of Google Analytics. You now have a goldmine of data pouring into the Goals section of your Google Analytics account.

Which Blog Post Lead to Contact Form Submissions?

Now that your goal is set up, you can start to collect data on which blog posts are converting into contacts. Looking in the Goals section of Google Analytics, you can see which blog posts are getting people to reach out and ask you for more information. You can also create and email custom reports to yourself that tell you exactly how you did each month.

What we've seen today is the step-by-step process on how to set up a Google Analytics goal funnel for a contact form submission on a Squarespace website. Although the steps may vary slightly on your specific website, the general process is the same regardless of what you use to publish your blog or webiste. Find your start and destination URLs and then carefully configure them in your Google Analytics account's goal setup interface.

Spending some time to set up goal funnels like this on your blog/website is the best way to use Google Analytics to its fullest potential. Set up your contact form goal funnel on your site. I bet you'll be surprised by what content is driving new business.

What goals do you have for your website? Could you use the steps described in this blog post to set up a funnel on your site? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

A New Logo is Worth a Thousand Posts

If you've been to Big Picture Web before, you'll notice that I've started sporting some new digs in the last week. That's right. I've rolled out a new logo and design that I hope you'll like. And since I was heavily influenced by my readers throughout the process, today I wanted to share what went into the new look's selection and its meaning.

First, a brief chronology. A few months ago I blogged about getting a new logo for Big Picture Web. Unlike the folks at Gap, I tried to involve my audience before doing anything drastic. I asked for your thoughts on three logo concept finalists through Twitter and my blog comments. I even invited people to take a brand attributes test, a word association exercise that revealed how people perceived the three logo concepts I was considering. After receiving a ton of great feedback, last week I finally redesigned and launched the new look and the new logo.

First Impressions Matter

Thank you so very much if you were one of the people to comment or take the brand attributes test. I'm always fascinated by data, and especially by "voice of the customer" data like what you provided.  What subtle messages were each of the logo finalists sending?

(Click to enlarge)

It's hard to say which of the above characteristics are more important in the long run. I liked how both logos one and three brought to mind words like strategic, authoritative, and technical. And while I like to think of myself as a friendly person, it's just not the primary goal of my blog, which ruled out logo number two. Maybe my passion as a measurement geek just barely surpasses my friendliness, but Big Picture Web is here to help people hone their Internet marketing skills before it's here to be nice.

At that point I was stuck between finalist one and three going into my final meeting with my logo designer, John Stucker. In the end it was some words from John and a comment left by web analytics author and one of my professional role models, Avinash Kaushik, that persuaded me to pick the design you see today:

These things are so subjective, in the end you should go with what makes you happy.

-Avinash

What made me happy enough about the new logo to shift from the old look to the new?

The old look vs. the new look.

The Winner and Meaning Behind the New Look

I typically only blog once per week on Big Picture Web for a number of reasons. It's partly out of respect for everyone's time because there's so much content out there nowadays. It's also because I don't want to create throwaway content for the sake of creating content like a lot of the "me too" blogs out there. Most of what I write about is an attempt at applying the concepts of strategy and measurement to your online efforts. That's where the "big picture" comes from in Big Picture Web. I want my posts to be hearty and substantial and something that will stay with you for a while. Like a  stew or a lozenge.

The new logo supports my mission visually, and here's why. On the surface, you see a bunch of cursors all moving towards a blue dot. The blue dot symbolizes success on the web in the sense that when it comes down to it, we online marketers all just trying to get people to click on something or do something on the web.

But if you look at the logo the right way, a visual sleight-of-hand called multistability reverses the image and a person clearly emerges instead of the cursors and dot. It's the same on the web. Behind all the clicks is a person. Big Picture Web wants nothing more than to be this shift you need to see through all the noise and find the human insights. The "ah-ha" moment. The epiphany. The nugget you needed to make a well-informed decision with your online marketing.

In a nutshell, that's why I blog about SEO, web analytics, social media and Squarespace and that's why you're looking at a new design you see today.

What do you think of the new look? Have you gone through a logo/design change before? What was it like? Did you audience appreciate your decision or did you get scorned like Gap? Leave a comments and share your thoughts below.

4 Visual SEO Tools for Quick and Easy Keyword Research

A picture is worth a thousand words, right? The same is true in SEO. In a discipline with so many words and numbers, sometimes being able to visualize SEO concepts can help you find insights and make decisions more quickly. Today we'll take a look at four visual SEO tools that will speed up your keyword research process.

I typically blog about things like Squarespace, SEO and Google Analytics, but lately I've felt the urge to add another topic I'm sure is near and dear to all of our hearts, Justin Bieber.

But is this a smart move? Will it be a good fit for my current audience? Is there any potential for search engine traffic? What does the competition look like? I should probably do a little SEO homework first before plowing forward.

I could use a bunch of hardcore keyword research tools and do a full analysis, which I'd do for my main target keywords. Or I could us a few simple SEO visual tools to get a good idea of what I'm up against before I commit. The four visual SEO tools listed here are a quick and easy way to make well-informed content strategy decisions without spending a lot of time or effort.

1. Baseline Your Content: Wordle

If my goal is to start ranking for Justin Bieber, I better have a solid idea of where I stand currently. I have a better chance of ranking for Justin Bieber-related searches as I build up the related content on my site. I could dive into my Google Analytics Keyword Report and do some exhaustive research to see where I stand, or I could use a simple tool like Wordle.

Wordle is a great visual SEO tool because it provides you with a beautiful word cloud of the content on your site. Just enter your blog's RSS feed URL into Wordle and watch the main themes of your blog pop out as clear as day. I can quickly baseline my ability to rank for Justin Bieber.

How much Justin Bieber content does Big Picture Web have?

Big Picture Web's content, presented by Wordle.

Ouch. Looks like I might be in trouble.

2. Assess Your Ability to Create Content: Google Wonder Wheel

If I want to become the place on the web for Justin Bieber content, I better be able to deliver what people want. 

Wonder Wheel is one of my favorite Google secrets. Hiding innocently within the More search tools option on the left navigation of any Google search results page (Note: Instant Search must be turned off), Wonder Wheel is a tool that shows you the terms most closely related to a specific target term.

Wonder Wheel shows semantic relationship between search terms.It makes sense that a blog dedicated to Justin Bieber would feature information on his history, pictures and of course, his love life. Unfortunately I'm afraid I don't know the first thing about any of that.

3. Assess Your Potential SEO Traffic and Competition: Keyword Eye

At this point you could pull up the Google Keyword Research tool and start looking at columns stuffed with words and numbers to get an idea for potential traffic and competition. Or you could use a visual tool like Keyword Eye.  

Keyword Eye provides pretty much the same information as does the Google Keyword tool but lists all keywords across the main interface instead of a grid format. Keyword Eye renders the size of a search term according to its search volume. High-volume terms are huge. Long tail terms are tiny. A search terms competitiveness is indicated by color: red, yellow or green.

Keyword Eye has a pie chart and 3D function to help visualize SEO too.As you can see, there is a ton of potential and relatively little competition in the Justin Bieber world. Things are looking up! If only I were a fan, I'd be set.

4. Pay Attention to Trends: Google Insights for Search

I'm just about ready to pull the trigger on this whole blogging about Justin Bieber thing. The last thing I should do is to make sure that what I'm blogging about will have a little staying power. I'd hate to jump on the bandwagon after his popularity peaked. How embarrassing would that be?

Enter Google Insights for Search. See a search term's popularity over time and see if things are trending up or down. 

Google Insights is a powerful SEO research tool.On second thought, it looks like our Justin Bieber fever may have broken in April. Is this a dip until a new album comes out or has Google Insights predicted the slow and gradual decline of yet another pop star on the way out?

Four Tools. Four Minutes.

After taking a look at these four visual SEO tools - which took about four minutes - we were able to:

• Form a baseline
• Assess competition
• Gauge traffic potential
• Gauge competition
• See trends in popularity

Keep these tools in mind as you're thinking about your blog and content strategy. SEO can be daunting, but some smart research and helpful visual SEO tools can go a long way without a lot of effort.

How might you use these tools in your own blogging efforts? Is there a visual SEO tool that you recommend above all others? Did you find one not on this list? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Squarespace SEO Secrets You Should Know

I've been getting a lot of questions lately about Squarespace and SEO. Is Squarespace search engine friendly? Is Squarespace good for SEO? Can I rank my Squarespace website in the search engines? In a nutshell, yes, yes and yes. For a more detailed look into Squarespace SEO secrets for your site, read on.

As a professional SEO, I'll be the first to admit that search engine optimization is like digging a never-ending hole. You're simply never done optimizing because nothing is perfect. At some point, it takes more and more work to produce smaller and smaller results.

It's important to know when you've hit the proverbial 80/20 with any particular tactic, goal or content. It can be tricky finding that balance between producing content, and simply producing and fiddling with a much smaller quantity of said content. 

You want a web publishing platform that is SEO-friendly. But you also need to be able to publish quickly without jumping through extra hoops. 

Keep in mind this balance between creation and optimization as we continue looking into Squarespace's SEO.

Basic SEO Fundamentals

SEO primarily comes down to three things:

1. Accessibility - Can search engines find and properly crawl your website?
2. Content - Are your key search phrases effectively positioned in your content?
3. Links  - How many and what kind of websites are linking to your content?

There are countless SEO tactics on the books, but these are the three main buckets. Knowing how to make a few changes here and there to your Squarespace controls in these areas can have a dramatic positive effect on your SEO traffic.

Squarespace and Search Engine Accessibility

Having an accessible website is critical for good SEO. If search engines can't crawl, interpret and index your site, how are they supposed to know what to display in the search results? Squarespace's careful attention to the design of its web publishing platform is evident in several accessibility aspects:

• HTML and CSS. Unlike some platforms that heavily utilize iframes or Flash, Squarespace is built on a solid HTML and CSS platform. Search engines have little trouble reading the main content on your site because it's on a lightweight XHTML structure.
• (Click to see an article that was indexed in less than a minute.)Super fast indexing. Maybe it's Google's Caffeine update. Maybe it's Squarespace. But articles on this site are often in Google's index within 15 minutes of posting. What's not to love about lightning-fast indexing?
• XML sitemaps. XML sitemaps help Google find all the content on your site. It's easy to create an XML sitemap and upload it to your Squarespace site.
• Code minimalists. You want a site that is put together simply by a thoughtful minimalist combination of HTML and CSS. Squarespace does this for you, giving search engines more content and less code to read while they're crawling your site. Also, this allows your pages to load quickly, which is important to both search engines and your visitors.
• Robots.txt. Squarespace does a pretty good job of populating your Robots.txt file, which determines which pages on your site search engines shouldn't crawl (Tip: See your robots.txt file by visiting http://YOURACCOUNT.squarespace.com/robots.txt). While I wish Squarespace would let me edit my own Robots.txt file, I think they took a decent stab at creating one for me.

Creating SEO Content With Squarespace

It's my humble opinion that optimizing the on-page factors of your content is the easiest part of SEO because it's the part over which you have the most direct control.

• Page-level titles and descriptions. With Squarespace, you can change the page titles and descriptions on each page of your website (with a few minor exceptions like tags and categories pages). Having unique titles and compelling descriptions are important for SEO.
• Optimize Title Ordering. If you do one thing after reading this post, please optimize your Squarespace page title ordering. Doing this puts your site title after your page title within your page's title tag. To do this, go to Website Management -> Website Settings -> Search/Indexing within your admin controls. You'll find the Optimize Title Ordering option here. In fact, you might as well check everything under the Search Engine Parameters section, just to be safe.Adjust search engine settings in your Website Settings.
• A few page title exceptions. A few page types like folders and a galleries will automatically use your page header as your page title. Personally, I wish I could decouple this to tweak my headline and my page title independently on all page types. A little more forethought to create a page title that doubles as an effective headline can easily overcome this small Squarespace design nuance.
• Keyword-rich content. You're pretty much free to use keywords everywhere you typically are told to put them for positive SEO results: the title, throughout your page content, within anchor text of links, alt tags for images, you name it. Squarespace promotes great on-page SEO.
• A reminder for images. Squarespace  has a great image importer within its WYSIWYG controls but the one thing it lacks is a place to edit your image alt tags. It's a good idea to switch to HTML mode before publishing your content to manually add your alt tags as a work-around.

Getting Links to Your Squarespace Site

Link building is the elusive third aspect of SEO. Creating high quality links to your site is the only way to rank well for a search terms with any sort of competition. The thing about link building is that it almost never involves your website platform. Link building relies on a carefully planned internal and external linking strategy.

The only exception to this rule that I can think of is when it comes to 301 redirects, which allow you to signal to search engines when content has moved on your site. Squarespace has a nice SEO 301 redirect utility that does what is necessary to support changes to your site's architecture.Setting up SEO-friendly 301 redirects is a cinch on Squarespace.

Squarespace SEO: Your Thoughts

Overall, Squarespace has been excellent for Big Picture Web's SEO. What do you think of Squarespace's SEO capabilities? Does your site rank well or is your search engine traffic coming in at a trickle? Is there a tactic that works for you that I haven't listed here? By all means, share your perspective in the comments below.

How to Become an SEO - 5 Proven Ideas

Do you want a job in SEO (search engine optimization)? Last Friday, Danny Dover from SEOmoz posted a great Whiteboard Friday episode on how to get an SEO job. Having recently gone through this exact same process (you're looking at a new online marketing manager of SEO at Rasmussen College.), I just had to share my experience of becoming an SEO as well. Here are five tips to become an SEO (or anything else, for that matter):

1. Constantly Consume Content

SEO is fascinating to me. There is vast body of knowledge out there on the topic and yet all the factors can change on a daily basis. Reading books, listening to podcasts and engaging blogs regularly is necessary to stay up-to-date. You can count on your potential future employer to ask about the industry during your interviews. It's best you know about it. Raise your hand in the comments below or hit me on Twitter if you don't already have a list of great SEO blogs, books or podcasts. I have you covered.

2. Do Actual SEO

Unlike, say, an astronaut, there aren't that many barriers to entry when it comes to SEO. If you can afford a domain name and a website (like the Squarespace web publishing platform), you can practice SEO. Starting a blog provides practical SEO experience, as well as a platform to show your growing knowledge and experience in the subject.

3. Get an SEO Education

There are now a handful of Internet marketing degrees available through online colleges. While I've taken some courses online in the past, I'm particularly excited about Rasmussen College's Market Motive-backed Internet Marketing degree. Perhaps I'm a bit biased because I work for them, but who wouldn't love a curriculum filled with content from industry experts like Todd Malicoat, Bryan Eisenberg and Avinash Kaushik?

4. Use LinkedIn to be Found

My new boss found me by typing "project manager SEO" in the LinkedIn search box. True story. Once he pulled up my profile, he saw a detailed description of my experience, links to my blog, my Amazon reading list/book reviews and recommendations from people with whom I've worked in the past. Spend some time to fully flush out your profile. Make online connections with your on- and offline colleagues. And just for good measure, make sure to add keywords and phrases relevant to the job you want in your profile.

5. Dive Right in

Danny hit on the most important tip, which was to dive right in. The earlier your start, the earlier you'll start gaining experience and pave the way to becoming an SEO.

If you're an SEO, what advice do you have to become a part of the search engine optimization community? If you've landed a career in another profession, what steps helped you get there?