Bit of a mouthful I know - but I spent hours trying to find this on the net, with little luck. So I thought I would write a comprehensive article on how to solve this problem. This article explains the process of setting up funnels for multiple conversion paths over different subdomains using regular expressions. It assumes you are already using funnels and are familiar with the basics of Google Analytics. If you are looking for a basic guide to setting up funnels, try here, if you are already familiar with basic funnel setups then read on!

What are funnels?
Funnels are a great way to visualize your visitors’ paths through your site, with the aim of completing a particular goal. Using funnels can help you identify usability problems in your site that need to be addressed in order to increase click through rates and ultimately conversion rates.

How to create a funnel across different subdomains
Example
mypointyhat.com wants to track visitors who land on a forum post at forums.mypointyhat.com and end up buying a pointy hat from www.mypointyhat.com/shop they then want to look at the funnel visualization for this particular behaviour.

Setting up cross subdomain tracking correctly
Before creating a funnel across different subdomains you need to ensure that you have setup the tracking on the site correctly. Firstly you need to check that the Google Analytics script is the same code on each sub domain with addition of a piece of code:

pageTracker._setDomainName(”.mypointhat.com”); (for example)
Once you have setup the tracking you need to setup an advanced filter, otherwise forums.mypointyhat.com/index.php and www.mypointyhat.com/index.php would both be treated as /index.php. To do this you setup an advanced filter and use the data shown in the following image:



Advanced Filter for Sub Domains
Once these two things are done your pages will appear with their subdomain attached:
e.g. forums.mypointyhat.com/index.php and www.mypointhat.com/index.php instead of /index.php

How to create a funnel that works across subdomains using regular expressions
I’m guessing you have a funnel in mind, but for this one we are going to use the example I mentioned above. So essentially we want to track the funnel from forums.mypointyhat.com/thread/post-title through to www.mypointhat.com/shop/confirmation.php.

Regular Expression Matching
If you are not familiar with regular expressions, I suggest you do a Google search and do some background reading - once you understand regular expressions it gives you a whole new World of options to consider when trying to solve complex problems and arduous tasks.

The first point I will make is that in regular expressions a . (period) represents a character, therefore to get a . (period) to actually represent a . (period) you have to escape it before hand (so the program understands that it is a literal reference) the syntax for this is a backslash:
e.g. \.
Also please note, I haven’t tested my regular expressions in the example below, so they may not work - so no copying!!!

Bearing those points in mind our steps will look like the following:

The first part to setting up the goal involves activating the goal, setting the match type as regular expression, choosing the goal and the goal name (see image below for an example)




Step 1: forums\.mypointyhat.com/thread/[A-Za-z\-]+ Forum Thread (Required Step should be checked
Step 2: www\.mypointyhat\.com/shop/index\.php Homepage
Step 3: www\.mypointyhat\.com/shop/products/[A-Za-z\-]+\.php Product Page
Step 4: www\.mypointyhat\.com/shop/basket\.php Basket Page
Step 5: www\.mypointyhat\.com/shop/checkout\.php Checkout Page
Step 6: www\.mypointyhat\.com/shop/payment\.php Payment Page
Goal: www\.mypointyhat\.com/shop/confirmation\.php Confirmation Page
Don’t forget to escape your periods!!! See the example below for a better illustration of where these
URL’s go:




Now give it a day, if it doesn’t work you can check your funnel analysis and see where the problem is occuring. If you are still having problems check Google - if you STILL have problems - ask him on Twitter and I’ll do my best to help you :)

Article Courtsey: David Naylor.co.uk

As Bing and Wolfram Alpha have shown over the last couple of months, big sums are still being gambled on finding a chink in Google’s armour. Of course, search engines can only maintain their market share by serving the most relevant results. Historically this meant matching results to a query through algorithmic calculations. Increasingly though, the search engines are trying to provide better data to their users through other things – such as timeliness and geography.

How it works
Geotargeting takes place in various ways. The most obvious is by tailoring search results by requests made by the searcher. Someone searching for ‘underpants’ will be served a very different set of results to someone searching for ‘underpants London.’ In the first case, the person might just be looking for a definition of what underpants are (perhaps they’ve grown up in a very liberal environment). In the second, they are more likely to be searching for shops to buy them.

Each of the major engines now has its own mapping software – populated with local results through advertising channels. Google have taken this to its logical conclusion by embedding map results in its main results wherever there’s a geographic element to a search.

Secondly, they can get an idea of a person’s location by information that has been supplied to them by the user. Google and Yahoo, for example have accounts which are used by people who sign up to their ancillary services like email. Often, users will even supply their postcode as part of the sign-up process, allowing the engines to give highly tailored results. A common example for Google account holders for example is to see local results on a map within the main results whilst logged in – even if they haven’t searched using a place name. When I search for a film while logged in with my Google account, I’m shown local film times. Neat!

Putting flags or text links (hint: keyword links in your target language) on your site to indicate other languages is a safer option.


Target local languages with localised text, and make it accessible with obvious links

If you’re after something more esoteric, like ranking for a term in a foreign iteration of the search engine, there are a shedload of things to shovel into the boiler: ideally, a full foreign language version of your site on a country-specific TLD and hosted in the target territory. If that’s not practical – and very often it isn’t – you can rank by having language-specific content and building keyword links in the target language from sites in the relevant territory. The alogoritms are sophisticated enough to make judgements about what content to serve.

"Of course, leaving your link request emails to the vagaries of Babelfish might not be the best idea but other than that, it’s simples."

Article Courtsey: David Naylor.co.uk

World Wide Web maintains a standardised web document format to make the most out of this virtual world. There are several technologies also contribute to this Web Standardisation Process. Some of these influential technologies are Browsers, Internet Connectivity and Search Engines. Now-a-days, all available browsers are supporting most of the web document formats. Internet connectivity quality has been substantially improved with the introduction of broadband technology.

In comparison to previous two, search engines are a bit slow upgrading their technology. Search engine industry leaders like Google, Yahoo, Live and Ask are investing to cover as much web document formats as they can. This process is an ongoing one and this suits the best to the ever changing web technology sector. One of such recent recommendations has come from Google – Specify your canonical. Let’s learn what a Canonical URL is all about!

Though some months back the concept of “Canonical URL” was no where around WWW. But this has really been a great problem for those who largely depend on the search engines to make business. Search engine is all about a tool that provides relevant web documents when a search is made. Everyday millions of web documents on various niches are generated and search engines too regularly indexes them. But things become worst when a web server provides different version of URLs for a single web document. This results into indexing duplicate copies of single information. To avoid such technical shortcoming, Google introduces Canonical Tag.

Google spokesman Matt Cutts informs “Canonicalization is the process of picking the best url when there are several choices, and it usually refers to home pages.” Here goes the Google defined tag:

So there is a question that how somebody ensures that Google indexes the URL you prefer? First ensure which URL (i.e. http://yourdomain.com/ or http://www.yourdomain.com/) you want to use widely and consistently throughout your website. Once that has been fixed, use that particular URL in Canonical Tag consistently. Don’t make your half of the site URLs without www and half of the URLs with www.

Matt Cutts too suggests some other solutions in his famous article on Canonicalization. Checkout more information on Canonicalization in SEO advice: url canonicalization.

Article Courtsey: 247topseller Blog

Just years back, the concept of Micro Blogging was nowhere in the internet. Now Twitting might have made itself a legitimate lexeme in several mainstream dictionaries. So the fact is what compels Twitter a real hit among online folk! I tried to have a small research on the various aspects of micro blogging and soon got some interesting opinions and facts on micro blogging.

John (requested to be mentioned anonymously) is an active member of aerospace engineering research team at the University of Manchester since 2005. Last summer, I had the opportunity to speak to him while I was on a business tour to Manchester. During this brief conversation, John mentioned that he and his team were using twitter to share their daily research briefs on Twitter. Twitter! Really, I need to have a look at it at least to what it is all about. Since then I’m an ardent fan of Twitter. Since then Twitter, a micro blogging application has achieved a lot and successfully established itself in the mainstream blogging community. The best example would be Barak Osama’s Election Campaign as Obama micro-blogged from his campaign trail using Twitter. This has successfully followed by media giants like The New York Times and BBC to publish headlines and links in micro blog posts.

The initial concept behind Twitter is to promote mobile blogging, especially through SMS. Here we can assume that Mobile Blogging is the base concept from which Micro Blogging has evolved out. In simple words we can sum up Twitter is a micro-blogging application that facilitates its users to connect with people directly on their cell phones or computers in a non-obtrusive way.

Twitter is all about speed and participating in the discussion. This concept is so important to your success in Twitter that it bears repeating. Twitter is about individuals, involvements, and influences. Twitter like micro blogging application has really revolutionised the way people share their thoughts, discoveries, questions and happenings. The impact of micro blogging throughout internet is so immense that Twitter like, micro blogging applications have qualified to the discussion as significant as about global recession. A close look all major news headlines would confirm the popularity of Twitter across the globe.

Along with Twitter, there are other big players too that have substantial shares in the micro blogging industry. Here follows some of them: Pownce, Tumblr, Jaiku, MySay, Hictu, Moodmill, Frazr and Emotionr.

In the end, we can conclude as Micro Blogging isn’t not her online for a day or two – it is here to stay and stay alive forever. The evolution of blogging to micro blogging has spawned this new tiny version of blogging and many sectors like mobile technology, media and other similar sectors are eyeing on its growth minutely. The simplicity and ability to post frequently are basic facets that attract micro blogging the most. I expect a much faster adoption of micro blogging and mainstream penetration than blogging in general is evident in near future.

Article Courtsey: 247topseller Blog

What Twitter has achieved as a popular blogging platform, no other blogging application can achieve that. Though there is a major shift in the blogging trends after introduction of Twitter like blogging tools, yet the basic remains same as it was previously. The only difference we can find in blogging is Micro Posting and Colloquial Text. Blogging applications like Blogger, WordPress and LiveJournal are still popular among serious bloggers, who prefer writing more elaborately on various topics. Micro Blogging applications like Twitter are for young mass which facilitates short, crispy and informative personalised online briefings. The best aspect micro blogs like Twitter are their Marketing Aspects. It suits the online marketing scenario, where everyone is in hurry. Micro blogging services like Twitter can help your business not only reaching out potential customers, but also help your campaigns more organised and traceable. I’ve personally used, analysed and rated some of the popular Third Party Twitter Applications and here follows the top 5 chronologically:

Twitpic – Twitpic is a Twitter tool that lets twitters sharing pictures on Twitter. Just login to Twitpic with your existing Twitter User ID and password and now you are all set to twit your favourite pictures.

TweetDeck – TweetDeck is your personal browser for staying in touch with what’s happening now, connecting you with your contacts across Twitter, Facebook and more. TweetDeck is a simple and fast way to use Twitter on your desktop. TweetDeck allows users to customise Twitter experience with columns, groups, saved searches and sharing your tweets on Facebook instantly.

Digsby – Digsby is an application that centralizes e-mail, IM and social networking accounts into one desktop program. Digsby is an IM type application where users can maintain one combined buddy list for all your AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, Jabber, and Facebook Chat Accounts. Users can manage email accounts like Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL/AIM Mail, IMAP, and POP accounts right from Digsby. Users too can get real time updates from Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn like social networking site. What more you can expect from such an application, if you are a social networking buff!

Tweetburner - Twitter just offers 140 characters to tweet. So it’s not possible for its users to give every detail in a single tweet. That’s why, very often Twitters write a brief with a reference link to it. Tweetburner is an online tool that helps you tracking the reference links you tweet.

GroupTweet – If you maintain groups on Twitter and want certain messages to send to a specific group of followers, the GroupTweet is the right tool for you. Register on GroupTweet with a newly created Twitter account for your group. You need to change your Twitter settings in order to make your group a private one. Now you can easily broadcast messages among the members of that group using GroupTweet tool.

Give these Twitter applications (developed by third-parties) a try to help simplify your social networking campaign. These tools certainly help your campaign an easier and traceable one. Reach more people, and stay organized just for free or a marginal payment. In the subsequent posts we will be including more useful Twitter tools to the existing list. Check the post regularly!

Article Courtsey: 247topseller Blog

Search engine optimization is one of the most dynamic fields on the web. It is the most time intensive and constantly evolving area and because of the same reason, it is also highly misunderstood. Because search engine optimization standards are constantly evolving, what may be true today might be useless tomorrow. And designers who are not up to date with the changes often find themselves creating websites that are not search engine friendly!

Web designers who understand the importance of SEO can create websites that are not only attractive but also perform to achieve good search engine rankings. Here are some design focused SEO tips that helps to create websites that are efficient on both the fronts – design as well as SEO.

Use Descriptive Text Links
Links inform the search engines about the contents of the web page. And the words you use in your link text holds immense importance with the search engine crawlers. Therefore, avoid using 'Click Here' and instead try to include your keywords and phrases in the link text.

Even though 'Click Here' may guide visitors to click through a particular link, it offers absolutely no value to the search engine crawlers. On the other hand, keyword rich headings not only inform them about the page contents but also add to the relevancy of the page. You can use CSS to maintain the style of the web page design but make sure to link the major headings and change the link text to make it more descriptive. This would improve the internal linking of the website to an enormous level.

Practice Linkbaiting
One of the most crucial processes of SEO is to gather links from across the web. And websites that generally offer links love great looking designs. Therefore, a well designed website would help you find favor of a major chunk of web communities like gallery lists, showcases, directories and so on.

Test your Website on Lynx
This is one of the most precious SEO tips! If your website can perform well on a browser like Lynx i.e. it is easy to navigate, the content renders well and so on, then you can be sure that you have designed a great website. The idea is to think of search engine crawlers as extremely poor, non-functional browsers or probably unintelligent users. So you would need to make sure that they are able to browse through your website with ease and come across no problems. And this is the key to designing efficient and search engine friendly websites!

Learn to Use Hash
The hash symbol (#) is an extremely powerful SEO tool that helps developers create an element in the URL that is not considered unique by the search engine crawlers, and so, it dropped. For example, for long web pages that require users to scroll down a lot, there is generally a 'Back to Top' link placed towards the end that leads users to the top of the page. This link uses the hash! These small tweaks go a long way in optimizing the website for search engines at the same time preserving its look and feel!

Bergstrom-SEO is a leading Best Seo Company that offers seo services that guarantees top search engine result page positioning along with higher organic traffic inflow from all major search engines. We provide expert seo services worldwide. For more details, click seo usa.

Article Courtsey: Article DashBoard.com

Starting an online business is one thing and making it grow is an entirely different thing. It is useless to deny the fact that anyone can start an online business but it is another reality that not everyone can reap same benefits. In order to get most out of your online business it is crucial to pay attention to few specific things. One of the most important things is the search engine optimization.

When people shop, they prefer making use of a search engine to find relevant sites to shop at. But, they often go with the sites occupying top position in search engine result page. What it means is that if you are at the top of the result page, you are going to get more visitors.
If you are interested in occupying this position you need to use all available search engine optimization tools. These tools offer a lot of help to acquire a better search engine ranking. But, it is important to choose a right tool to get things started. One of the best options in this regard is website reviews.

There are lots of website review sites available today to promote your site. The basic objective of using any internet marketing tool is to make others know about your products and services. Using website reviews is a good option because it allows people to read something valuable about your website. They don’t only get information about your products but they also become able to learn more about the special offers. This often helps in an amazing way.

However, when you check it form SEO point-of-view, it become evident that it also provides a great help in this regard. Actually, there are some specialists search engine optimizers offering their assistance in writing reviews for your website. They don’t only promote your site in the right way but they also make use of such keywords that enhance your search engine visibility. Now it is clear that when search engines get easy access to a website review sites, it becomes easier for people to come and read reviews about your site. These SEO experts write reviews in a convincing tone and compel people to visit your site. This always helps increasing traffic to your website.

So, you can easily see how useful website reviews can be. There are lots of people who often forget to make use of this particular option and end up losing a lot of customers. You must never make this mistake as there are several benefits of using right website review sites. Always keep in mind that website reviews don’t only help you to get more traffic to your website but they also elevate your search engine ranking. With increased traffic and better ranking you can expect an increase in your sales. More sales mean more profit, and more profit is directly related to business success and expansion. So, pay attention to this particular option and get in touch with a right professional to publish your website reviews.

Bergstrom-SEO is a leading Best Seo Company that offers seo services that guarantees top search engine result page positioning along with higher organic traffic inflow from all major search engines. We provide expert seo services worldwide. For more details, click seo usa.

Article Courtsey : Article Dash Board.Com

Bergstrom-SEO is a leading Best Seo Company that offers seo services that guarantees top search engine result page positioning along with higher organic traffic inflow from all major search engines. We provide expert seo services worldwide. For more details, click seo usa.