The post Access Your Stats in Google Analytics 4 appeared first on Web Services.

That’s it for now!

DUC is currently working on the transition to GA4. In the meantime please continue to access your analytics as you normally would.

What’s Next?

Consolidation

Our current analytics structure consists of many individual accounts, properties, and views. Best practices recommend consolidating accounts across the university. The new structure will bring everything together. This will allow for customized reports and dashboards to view data relevant to the goals of the university, departments, and units.

Technical Implementation

Web Services will take care of the technical implementation of GA4.

Access Reports and Training

DUC is in the process of:

• Setting up automated, interactive dashboards where you can view your data
• Planning onboarding sessions and documentation
• Setting up workshops to teach people the fundamentals of GA4

Please stay tuned for more information on the change over to GA4!

The post Google Analytics is Changing appeared first on Web Services.

Do you know what pages are the most popular on your website? Google Analytics can tell you!

Use the Top Page report to get a quick glimpse into what users are viewing on your website. It lets you know which pages are the most popular by how many page views they received over a certain period of time

Why is this report helpful?

It tells you about visitors鈥� interests

Having a look at your most popular pages can give you insight into your visitors鈥� interests. You get a sneak peek into the kinds of topics that they are interested in. Perhaps you can create more content related to this subject.

Recently one of our most viewed pages is this blog post on Using Categories to Organize your Website. This suggests that people may be interested in reviewing their website structure. And they may be looking for ways to organize things. We can use this info to:

• 
  
  Create posts on categories and tags, navigation best practices, or tips on organizing content on a page.
  
  
• Add a call to action on that page that directs them to our Website Review Training.
• Link to similar content that already exists on our site.

You can see if people are getting to important content

There may be pages (programs, events, important dates) that you would like your visitors to see. The top pages report tells you how often these pages are being viewed. If they are not getting frequent visits, you can do a few things that might help out:

• Add the page to the menu, create a Quick Link on the homepage, or link from the banner.
• Optimize the page with some SEO techniques, so people find it in Google.
• Highlight the information in other communications (newsletters, links from other pages and websites)

You gain insight into trends

Look at your popular pages and how many views they received. Consider what the numbers mean and can tell you. Look at trends. If a particular page was very popular this month, is that an increase or a decrease over the previous month? What might have caused a recent spike in interest on this page? For example, a newsletter or social media campaign may be driving traffic.

Put your data in context. What other variables or factors could be affecting these numbers? It could be the season or term, or topics of interest in the public and larger university environment.

Use this information to inform your web content decisions. For example, at the start of the academic year, ITS wants to make sure that account information is front and center on its site for new students. And during peak recruitment cycles, academic departments can make sure that program and application information is easily found.

How to View Top Pages

To view the top pages on your site:

1. Login to analytics (here’s how to get access)
2. Go to Behaviour > Overview > Site Content > All pages
3. Choose how many rows to view in the bottom right

Tips

• Change the date range at the top right. You can look at the last week, month, quarter or whatever time period is relevant.
• Check off 鈥淐ompare to previous period鈥� to view changes in how particular pages perform over time.
• 
  
  Have a look at the average time spent on your top pages as well as the bounce rate. This gives you an idea of how engaged users are with the content.
  
  
• Use what you have learned to make changes. Start with one thing and review your analytics in a few months’ time to see if it made a difference.

For more tips on optimizing your website, check out our online training!

The post Discover your most visited pages and what this can tell you! appeared first on Web Services.

In Google Analytics you can see how people are getting to your website by checking the Traffic Sources reports.  These reports will tell you the medium (generally one of three – organic/search, direct, or referral) and the source (Google, Twitter, carleton.ca, etc).

Now let’s say you’ve published a post, have optimized it for search engines, and have promoted it on Facebook, Twitter, and the Intranet.  How do you know which traffic source was most successful for that post?

You use a tool called ‘secondary dimension’.  This tool allows you to dig into more info – such as traffic sources – on specific pages and posts.

To check traffic sources on specific pages:

1. Log into Google Analytics.聽 (Don’t know your username and password? Email its.service.desk@carleton.ca and we’ll get you set up.)
2. Click ‘Behaviour -> Overview‘.
   
   Your top 10 pages will appear.聽 If you do not see the page you want to analyze, click ‘view full report’ on the bottom right corner.
3. Click the page you want to analyze.
4. Click the Secondary dimension drop down menu.
   
   
5. Within the drop down menu, click Acquisition -> Source (or medium, depending if you want to see general or specific traffic sources).
   
   Your list of traffic sources for that page will appear.

You can then see how successful each of these traffic sources were by looking at the time spent on the page and the bounce rate.  Did they spend enough time there to read the post?  Did they only read that post then leave?  If you have a high bounce rate you may want to consider adding a call to action at the bottom of the post to keep them on your website.

Want to learn more about Google Analytics?

Check out some of our past posts on using your analytics to improve your website.

The post How to Check Traffic Sources on Specific Pages appeared first on Web Services.

鈥淨uicklinks鈥� is a list of links placed on your website鈥檚 homepage. In the current CMS template, quicklinks are paired with images and offer one-click access to content.

Quicklinks are quite ambiguous in the sense that the links can be anything you put your mind to (as long as they benefit your site鈥檚 users of course!)

In the new template it’s easier than ever to .  When creating them make the title short and intuitive, always include a short description, and change up your images.  You can choose from the preloaded images or upload your own, just make sure they are high quality and appropriately sized.

Not sure what to put in your quicklinks?

Here are some suggestions:

• Content that鈥檚 difficult to find 鈥� look at your Google analytics (which is now easily accessible in your dashboard!) to see what people are not looking that you had hoped they would
• Popular or important content聽鈥� again, you can look at your Google analytics on your dashboard to see which pages are most often visited by your site鈥檚 visitors
• Call to actions 鈥� links to forms, applications, etc.
• News stories that have been pushed down in your news feed that you want featured
• Your blog series

Quicklinks in Action

Here is an example from the which uses a call to action (‘subscribe’), a link to important content (‘forgot your password’), a link to content that’s hard to find (‘staff/faculty email’), and a link to a blog series (‘IT security tips’).

Do you use your quicklinks in a unique way? Let us know by commenting below.

The post What to Put in Your Quicklinks appeared first on Web Services.

Google Analytics is one of the best tools out there to keep track of your site鈥檚 traffic and improve your web content. When your content is fresh, it’ll rank higher in search engines. However, with several reports and complicated sections in Google Analytics, not knowing what to do with all this information can be overwhelming. That鈥檚 why we鈥檝e prepared five simple tips to easily and quickly improve your CMS site using Google Analytics. Follow these tips to make some quick fixes go a long way!

1. Update your quick links

Quick links on your homepage are a great way to easily access popular 2^nd and 3^rd level navigation pages (pages that take 2+ clicks in the navigation to reach). Check your Analytics for your most visited 2^nd and 3^rd level navigation pages by clicking Content > Site Content > All Pages. Consider choosing these pages for your quick links. If there are no popular 2^nd and 3^rd level pages (not in the top 10), select your most popular pages as your quick links.

2. Check for broken links

A broken link is a link on your site that leads to a non-existent page. The error code for broken links is 404. By navigating to Content > Site Content > All Pages in Google Analytics, and by entering 404 in the search bar, you can find the broken links within your site. You can often find where the link is located and what page it is trying to access by taking a look at the URL.

The 鈥榩age=鈥� section of the URL tells you what page the user is trying to access, while 鈥榝rom=鈥� shows you where the user clicked this link. If 鈥榝rom=鈥� is blank, the location is untraceable, or could be a manual typo. If 鈥榝rom=鈥� is within your site, navigate to that page in WordPress and modify or remove the link. If it is from another 杏吧原创 website, consider contacting the site owner to change or remove the link.

3. Check your keywords

Keywords are the search terms users are entering in search engines like Google or Bing. You can see what keywords users are entering by navigating to Traffic Sources > Search Engine Optimization > Queries, and sort by Clicks. If the keywords don鈥檛 match your site, or what you鈥檇 like users to be looking for, improve your SEO by using the tool in WordPress. If the keywords are representative of your site, continue to make your content people are searching accessible by using the Yoast function.

4. Check your site鈥檚 mobile traffic

M.carleton.ca, 杏吧原创鈥檚 mobile site, is the fifth-most visited site on campus, with traffic increasing every day. is extremely important, and checking your mobile traffic stats can emphasize that. Navigate to Audience > Mobile > Devices to see how many visits are coming through mobile phones. The higher the percentage of visits coming from mobile devices, the more important it is that your site is mobile-friendly. You’ll be surprised by how high your mobile traffic truly is!

5. Clean up your navigation

If your navigation is quite large and you have more pages on your site than you鈥檇 like, Google Analytics can help determine which pages are worth getting rid of. Navigate to Content > Site Content > All Pages, and sort in reverse order by clicking on the Pageviews column. If there are pages that have 1 view, ditch them. If pages with important content have less than 5 pageviews a month, consider merging the information into one page with headings and/or anchors.

Aim to check your Analytics once a month. Checking your Analytics too often can be counter-productive, but never checking them is unfortunate when such a great tool is available and ready to use. If you’d like to make the most of your Analytics, these tips are only the beginning! Learn more about Google Analytics by visiting our  and video tutorials. If you’re still puzzled about Analytics, or if you would like a Google Analytics site review conducted, please visit our training registration page.

The post 5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Site Using Google Analytics appeared first on Web Services.

How many times have you been strolling about the 杏吧原创 University campus when – wham! you collide with a texting, web-surfing, directionally-challenged individual who wasn鈥檛 paying attention to where they were going? Seriously, I am pretty sure you have suffered this fate and it鈥檚 a good indication of the number of people out there who are connected to their gadgets to keep up to date on the latest information. In response to this trend, Web Services is working on a future initiative to make all 杏吧原创 University web sites mobile-ready. With the increase in the use of hand-held gadgets such as Smartphones, Androids, iPhones, iPads, and so on to access the web, creating sites that support a smaller screen configuration for surfing makes good sense.

In anticipation of 杏吧原创鈥檚 mobile-ready sites and to pique your interest, you can use Google Analytics now to check out the number of visits you are receiving from various mobile operating systems, how many pages they visit on average, and how much time they spend on your site. It鈥檚 easy and here鈥檚 how.

From your Google Analytics Dashboard window, select Visitors > Mobile > Mobile Devices. And ta-da 鈥� the Mobile Devices report opens enlightening you with the mobile traffic your web site is getting.

[modal title = “Mobile Devices report”聽 url=http://carleton.ca/webservices/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/Mobile-Devices2.jpg]

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Stay tuned for future Web Services communications about when mobile-ready websites will be ready and for tips on writing content for mobile-friendly sites.

Note: I know how much you are all anticipating part 2 of the post on using the Site Search feature and don鈥檛 worry, it hasn鈥檛 been forgotten. We are currently working towards setting up all CCMS sites to use this feature and when complete, it will coincide with part 2 of my post of how you can start using this feature.

The post Monitoring Mobile Traffic with Google Analytics appeared first on Web Services.

You may think that you do not have too much control over your site鈥檚 URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) and that URLs magically appear when sites go live. Web Services provides your site with a new URL when it is migrated to the new WordPress platform and then  automatically redirects your old web site鈥檚 URL to the new URL. Although you cannot change this top-level URL, there are ways you can improve the structure of your internal site URLs, which coincidentally, is the topic of this week鈥檚 blog post. A well-structured URL, which includes descriptive text and avoids lengthy alphanumerical strings, is more visitor- and web-crawler friendly and generates more traffic to your web site. But above all, a good-looking URL is SEO-friendly.

As you already know, using good practices on your WordPress CCMS pages not only keeps your site better organized, but is also a way to help establish visitor- and web-crawler friendly URLs. There are some other handy features on the WordPress CCMS you can use when creating new pages that will help you create shorter, descriptive, and visitor-friendly URLs. Since URLs are derived from your CCMS page titles, for longer page titles you can customize the text and the length (thereby shortening the URL for the page) using the Permalink Edit button located under the Title field.

For new pages with longer titles that appear in your web site鈥檚 navigation bar, use the Menu Label field in the All in One SEO Pack feature to create a shorter page label.

This is also good way to display acronym forms  in your navigation, and the expanded, more descriptive form as your page title.

WordPress has built-in functionality that automatically cleans up URL formatting by:

• Removing special characters. As a general rule, you should never use special characters in your URLs because it causes problems in some browsers such as IE6.
• Presetting some characters such as apostrophes and spaces to hyphens. For example, if you have a page title such as 鈥淟et鈥檚 go to 杏吧原创鈥�, WordPress creates the following URL www.carleton.ca/webservices/let-s-go-to-carleton. As you can see, it鈥檚 a little awkward looking and is also confusing to web crawlers and can impact SEO.

WordPress does not apply formatting before the first character in the page title. This means that if you add an extra space before you start typing your title, this space will appear in your URL and in your navigation bar label causing formatting havoc.

Here are some other things you can do to maintain healthy and happy URLs:

• Create short URLs with readable text. URLs that contain strange, unrecognizable text and characters are very intimidating and confusing to your visitors. They also limit the potential of your visitor to memorize the link or create a bookmark for it without having to provide a more descriptive label to remember what content it linked to. For CCMS pages, links to media files such as images, videos, or PDFs can cause confusing URLs if the media file is not provided with a meaningful name. For example, if we added a confusing title for a PDF on our page the URL would appear like this: http://carleton.ca/webservices/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/1x_10892570024a.pdf.
  

  In addition, long URLs often wrap to two lines if sent in an email message for example. When the user clicks on a wrapped URL, they receive an annoying file not found page as the link is broken. This URL is useless unless the user goes through the hassle of copying and pasting both lines of the URL into their browser window. If accessing a URL requires this much effort, it is likely that the user will not bother visiting this site.

• Use descriptive text and keywords in your URLs. If possible, use keywords in your page titles that will produce more meaningful URLs. If your URL contains words relevant to your site鈥檚 content, this provides visitors and search engines with more information about the page than an URL containing session IDs or unrecognizable parameters. Also, visitors may be able to better remember  these URLs for future reference.  Search engines tend to provide the content of the title tag the greatest weight of any single element on the page, so it鈥檚 best if the most important text appear here. Also avoid using generic page names such as 鈥減age1鈥� and using excessive keywords.
• Create simple navigation structures. Web Services helps you create a well-planned navigation structure as part of the CCMS migration process. When you take ownership of your site and add new pages to your navigation, ensure that you maintain a simple structure and avoid multi-layered, deep-nested pages which lengthen your URLs.
• Be aware of how your URLs appear in the SERPs. The URL to your web site is displayed in the SERPs below the page鈥檚 title and description. Like the title and description, words in the URL on the search result appear in bold if they appear in the user’s keyword search. Therefore, it is beneficial to have a URL that is as clear and concise as possible as visitors are more likely to click on the link for your web site in the SERPs if it contains descriptive keywords versus unrecognizable text such as http://www.example.com/index.php?id_sezione=360&sid=3a5ebc944f41daa6f849f730f1 which is much less appealing. For CCMS sites, you should check to see how the URLs for deeper pages in your site鈥檚 navigation appear in the SERPs and whether the information displayed accurately represents your content.
• Avoid broken URLs and duplicating content at two different URLs. This was discussed in last week鈥檚 blog and it certainly applies to URLs as well. Check out this post if you missed it.
• When posting URLs, use applications that shorten the URL length. If you have a long URL address that you want to make known to the world through a social media site such as Twitter, use sites such as or to shorten the URL length. Twitter has a 140 character limit so you don鈥檛 want to use up your limit displaying the URL when you could be using the space to convey your message.

The post My Name is URL: Creating SEO-Friendly URLs appeared first on Web Services.

As first revealed in a past blog post, optimizing links on your web site is another method that can help increase your site鈥檚 ranking in search engine ranking pages (SERPs). This week鈥檚 blog will explore this topic further and provide tips on how you can maximize link optimization by embedding links within your site content and establishing backlinks from other external sites.

So some may be asking why links are such a big deal and how can something so small help increase visitor traffic to my web site. Most 杏吧原创 sites already do a fairly good job of embedding internal hyperlinks to other sections of their own web site within the body of their text. The Quick Links feature on CCMS pages is also a good way to highlight specific sections of your site to visitors on your home page.

In addition to internal linking, one of the most important SEO tactics according to SEO gurus is optimizing backlinks to your web site. Backlinks, also known as incoming links or inbound links, are links directing visitor traffic to your site from an external web site or page. It is believed that the number of backlinks to your web site is an indication of the popularity of your site so web site administrators often go through a lot of trouble to maximize their backlink numbers often leading to unethical web practices that do their site more harm than good. For example, link broker companies offer inbound link-building services that claim will boost your search engine ranking but that is actually is a form of link spam. Also, some sites will engage in link farming which is a group of sites that all hyperlink to every other site in the group.

Here are some best practice tips to help you optimize your links.

• Use keywords in your link anchor text. When linking to pages within your own site, use keywords or descriptive text as the text link. For example, if the link will take the visitor to a page with information about the Graduate program, the text link should say 鈥淕raduate Program Information鈥� instead of 鈥淐lick here鈥�. The same practice should be used for backlinks directing traffic to your site. Other generic anchor text to avoid is “page” or “article”.
• Obtain quality backlinks. One of the key link SEO tactics to help move your pages up in the SERPs is inviting other web sites to link to your content. The best external links to your site are those created by your readers on their blogs and various social networks, as they鈥檙e the most trusted and also generate a lot of direct traffic. It鈥檚 best if you get links to your site that are embedded in an article that is relevant about your site as search engines consider them more relevant because they look more natural (like a person links to your article on your site in their post because they like it). Tweet your posts and if they catch other tweeters鈥� interest, they will want to retweet them. Remember though, if you practice reciprocal linking you may find your site penalized for link farming.
• Update links regularly. If your links direct users to timely content, such as news or event posts, ensure that these links are kept up-to-date. For example, if you are promoting your department鈥檚 speaker series and the keyword Speaker Series is linked to a specific event that occurred in 2009 when you first wrote the content, you must update this link to direct it to the most recent speaker series. Ideally, unless you want to be regularly re-directing this link, target your links to a standing URL, or a page that contains static content which may be your news or events home page or a link to your Speaker Series category listing.
• Link to internal pages located deep within your site. Many web sites focus on creating links to their home and top-landing pages, however, directing traffic to harder to find content located deep within your site鈥檚 navigation is also beneficial to SEO. Deep internal and external linking provides a more diverse link portfolio as links pointing to deeper, specific content will lend to a greater variety of keywords and attract a wider audience to your site.
• Avoid broken links. Broken links reduce the credibility of your site and are a traffic killer. Avoid them like the plague! If you retire or change page URLs, make sure all links pointing to that URL are updated. Many 杏吧原创 pages contain links to external pages and when these external pages are updated it causes broken links. It鈥檚 good web practice to regularly check these external links to ensure they are pointing visitors to the intended content.
• Avoid duplicate content. Never duplicate news or events articles under different directories (or multiple URLs) on your site hoping that they will have more hits in doing so. Search engines such as Google penalize sites for this practice. As previously mentioned, it鈥檚 best to direct links to a standing URL.

Given that linking is such a crucial SEO builder, an upcoming Web Services initiative involves outfitting the 杏吧原创.ca site with role-based home pages (top-level pages such as Students, Faculty, and Staff) where published news, events, and blog post links will be displayed on one of these pages based on their relevance to visitors of that page. This will enable 杏吧原创 sites to have greater visibility and accessibility across the 杏吧原创 web community. The emphasis on establishing good linking practices on your web site is extremely important as it impacts the entire 杏吧原创 web community. Happy linking!

The post Love Your Links: Google Analytics Link Optimization appeared first on Web Services.

Today鈥檚 blog post will require you to remember your classroom grammar lessons (yea!) as we unravel the web-wide debate over which keyword metatag and post tag vocabulary forms to use to establish a consistent classification structure to help optimize your web site. A web search on tagging best practices reveals an ongoing debate over whether to use singular or plural forms. Some theorists believe that in order to fully optimize your site you must input all possible forms of a keyword or tag that a user may enter, including possible typos (for example, email, e mail, e-mail, emails, e mails, e-mails, emali, eamail, ameil, and so on). However, to avoid keyword spamming and for the sake of simplicity, we don鈥檛 advise this practice at all. Instead, we recommend being aware of your audience and using good grammar practices when planning your classification structure.

Consider your audience by creating keywords and tags that users would actually type into a search field. For instance, when users type in words and phrases in a search field, they tend to type very quickly and the quickest way to type in words is without capitalization. A combination of logic and 鈥渨hatever sounds right鈥� also comes into play for tagging best practices. For commerce sites, it makes sense that when a user is looking for a certain product to purchase, no site only sells or contains one thing so the use of plural forms would be the logical choice. For 杏吧原创 University sites, the search words users enter may concern fields of study where the singular form implies the whole. In these cases singular forms of program names such as Engineering, History, and English would be accurate.

For SEO keyword metatags, experts advise optimizing for both plural and singular forms of the keyword if possible, especially if the singular and plural form varies greatly (for example, party versus parties). Plural forms tend to get more accurate search results. For example, when entering a general search for 杏吧原创 students versus 杏吧原创 student, although the results are fairly similar, you can see that the results for the plural form returned slightly more specific results.

Here are some additional tips for controlled keyword and tagging vocabulary:

• Use unambiguous words (Master Degrees instead of Masters).
• Use the plural form for nouns except in cases where the plural form changes the meaning or is grammatically inaccurate (Education, Disciplines instead of Educations and Discipline)
• When tagging action or task-based blog topics, gerunds are better than plural nouns. (Engineering and Tagging instead of Engineer or Tag)
• A simple rule that satisfies the overall goal of natural-sounding tags is when tagging an item, simply complete the following sentence 鈥淭his item is about __________.鈥� This rule is consistent with all guidelines.

It is likely that your site classification system may suffer from the effects of over-eager bloggers riddling their posts with uncontrolled tags. Implementing a standardized approach to help clean up your tag classification system may seem like a daunting task at first but by following these simple rules and by being consistent it will add great value to your site and is worth the time commitment.

The post Singular Versus Plural? Keyword and Tagging Vocabulary Best Practices appeared first on Web Services.