In the online marketing world, research tools like comScore Media Metrix, Nielsen Net Ratings and Hitwise are considered the authority for competitive metrics. But their measurement methods have been challenged and new and interesting competition has been booming. Significantly Google, the uber online force, has entered the space which means that the premium services are under pressure to reduce prices and deliver better products – great for us consumers!

No one market research tool is perfect and often it is best to look at more than one to get the information that you need. It is so much easier when they’re free! So here are four of the best free tools that you can use for competitive analysis. (more…)

Most people know that Web analytics providers like Google Analytics and Omniture use JavaScript to track user activity on Web sites, but many people do not realize that ad networks like Google Adsense and DoubleClick also track user behavior. It’s even scarier for Web site owners to realize that these third party services have complete visibility into your Web site traffic. WASP is a Firefox plugin that shows what each of these providers are tracking on the page that you are viewing. (more…)

In a previous post on the best Web analytics solutions I mentioned that in my view Omniture is the clear leader in enterprise Web analytics and that Google Analytics is the best free solution. Omniture has spoilt me and I often wish I could get a little more out of GA (which I use on Da Vinci Planet). After some digging around I found a few hacks that enable valuable reports in Google Analytics, including full referrer URLs, file downloads, and custom segmentation. (more…)

If you own, manage or are in some way involved in a Web site then chances are that you want to know what kind of demographic you are attracting. Are they male or female, young or old? It’s especially interesting when you’re considering paid keywords to attract users. For instance, you may have been trying to target the hippies from the 60′s using the keyword flower power; meanwhile you are attracting young women in their twenties and early thirties! Microsoft adCenter Labs, the R&D team for paid search at Microsoft, offers surprisingly cool paid search researching tools. Their analysis is based on MSN Search data which represents a significant sample group, even if they’re small compared to Google. Their Demographics Prediction tool returns this interesting and visually pleasing result for flower power: (more…)

It is said that title tags are one of the most important of the on-page factors for SEO. So I put it to the test. A couple of weeks ago I implemented the SEO Title Tag plugin for WordPress which updated the HTML titles of my pages to be “more SEO friendly”.

The idea was to give keywords more importance in title tags by placing them first, e.g. a page formerly titled “Da Vinci Planet ›› Blog Archive ›› Essential Portable Apps” is now titled “Essential Portable Apps | Da Vinci Planet“. Google’s search results pages have since updated and are now showing the “SEO friendly” page titles. The results are somewhat surprising! (more…)

Web analytic tools have come a long way since log file analysis. Once Webtrends ruled the domain, but in recent years client side visitor tracking has come to the forefront and companies like Omniture and Google Analytics (formerly Urchin) are dominating. Omniture, in particular, has a very rich business optimization offering and is the leader in the enterprise market. Omniture’s Discover and Data Warehouse tools are what make them really stand apart. Google Analytics is the favorite in the free tools department and while it doesn’t have the depth Of Omniture, it is a fantastic tool for small sites and offers a lot of enterprise level features. I have worked a lot with a few of the tools including Webtrends, NetTracker, Omniture, Google Analytics and Webalizer, however, many new tools that track visitor behavior have appeared so I thought I’d take a look. (more…)

Alexa uses statistics gathered with it’s browser toolbar to estimate traffic to Web sites. While the toolbar’s purpose is questionable amongst those concerned about privacy, the free traffic stats can be very useful. Alexaholic uses alexa.com’s traffic data to create comparisons.

Alexaholic blends Alexa website traffic graphs with a lightweight ajax-enhanced interface to satisfy hard-core Alexa traffic chart junkies – aka Alexaholics.

Webmasters, SEO/SEM specialists, and domain owners can compare and measure website statistics for up to five domains at once, switch traffic chart types and ranges without page loads, and generate report pages that are easily bookmarked and shared.

Not surprisingly though, Alexaholic reports that Yahoo gets about three times as much traffic as Google (click on page views tab).

Google Analytics is arguably the best free Web analytics tool available. It’s free and they have now made it available to everyone. To sign up go to google.com/analytics and login using your Google account info. After creating an account you will be guided through the steps to set up your first profile. Copy the tracking code or keep it close for the next step.

There are two ways to add the tracking code to your WordPress blog: 1) by installing a plug-in and 2) by editing the theme source pages directly.

Install a Google Analytics plug-in.
There are a number of plug-ins available for free and they are mostly similar and very easy to use, including:

• Google Analyticator
• Boakes Google Analytics Plugin for WordPress
• Semiologic Google analytics plugin for WordPress
• OraTransplant – Ultimate Google Analytics plugin for WordPress

Edit your WordPress pages directly.
This is probably the no so smart option, but since I did it I might as well mention it. You will need to edit the source of your theme pages. Login to your WordPress admin tool, select the Presentation tab and then Theme Editor. The Header (header.php) or Footer (footer.php) is normally the best place to insert your Google Analytics code, but make sure that you insert it after the <body> tag in the Header or before the </body> tag in the Footer, depending on which file you inserted the code. After saving the file, preview your blog and view the page source to verify that the tracking code has been inserted. Google Analytics can can lag a few hours to show traffic.