Who saved Middle Earth? No, not Frodo. His will shredded like wet toilet paper. Gollum took the lava bath, destroyed the ring, and saved everyone from a 36″ Dark Lord. Does he get any credit? Nooooooo. Nine-fingered Frodo is the hero. The ladies all swoon at Legolas and Aragorn. But not poor Gollum. Internet marketers, [...]

Building dashboards is a big to-do for any marketing professional. The temptation is to cram it full of juicy data and a novel worth of narrative explaining said data. Well, you shouldn’t. Trust me. There is such a thing as the perfect dashboard. And I’ve already built it for you. The Anatomy of the Perfect [...]

I noticed that my original Google Analytics video tutorial is a wee bit out of date. Like, 4 years out of date. So, here’s a new basic install video:

If you’re in the SEO world, you’ve heard a lot about the ‘not provided’ statistic: Google is now hiding the key phrases logged-in Google users enter to find your site. So, if you go into Google Analytics (or any other analytics software), you’ll see something like this: Instead of a full keyword report, you get [...]

A long time ago, alchemists tried to turn lead into gold. They were pikers. Compared to digging keyword data out of the Google’s lovely (not provided) statistic, lead into gold woulda been a cinch. But I’m stubborn. So, I’ve pulled a bunch of keyword analytics data from Google Analytics, and the Search Queries report from [...]

I’d promised myself I’d stop ranting about Google’s ongoing analytics assassination. But I checked my data for this blog, today, and I’m missing 19.5% of my keyword data: Google. What. The. Hell. I know, I know: I’m supposed to use Google Webmaster Tools to look at search queries. So, I toddle over there and take [...]

Google Analytics now has this cool, real-time stats dashboard. At first, I thought it was just fluff—something to use up my spare 2 minutes/day. But, it’s really handy. I’ve found five good uses for it so far: Test social media posts in real time: Send out a tweet, and then watch the result. Send a [...]

Multi-Channel Funnels (MCF) can provide a lot of valuable data about the entire multi-touch conversion process. But the most common question I’ve heard from people in this industry is – okay, but what do I do with this? Today I’m going to step through using MCF for opportunity analysis both in Paid Search and Organic [...]

I was sure I’d get crushed by a falling NASA satellite today. It didn’t happen, but it was very motivating. I completed my legacy to the marketing world: A Google Spreadsheet that automatically grabs everything from Linkscape data to Google Analytics numbers to Twitter follower counts. It’s purty: More important, I’ve provided a link to [...]

Prospective clients always want to know: What kind of impact will SEO have? How much traffic will I get? I’m an empirical guy. I want to give an answer. But based on what? Well, I did some serious digging into traffic patterns over time across 200 Portent clients, and I have some answers. Warning: This [...]