Analytics For Local Search

How and What To Track For Local Search

presented by Mike Belasco@belasco

• seOverflow is a search engine optimization and pay per click marketing company in Denver, CO.

• We specialize in offering solutions that enable web design companies, marketing consultants, and other SEO companies to offer high end SEO services to their clients.

• The only company with 2 Local Search Ranking Factors participants. We know Local!

Who Is seOverflow?

• Status Of Tracking Local Search• Track Traffic From The 7 Pack• Pimp Google Analytics For Local• Other Local Search Tracking Techniques • Roll Your Own Call Tracking Service• The Future Of Tracking Local

Today’s Topics

The Google 7 Pack

Anatomy of a SERP

Universal Results

Pay Per Click

Pay Per ClickLocal 7 Pack

Pay Per Click

Flat Rate Local Ads

State Of Analytics For Local Search

What Sucks And What Doesn’t Suck …. Ok it mostly sucks

• Difficult to identify traffic from local ‘packs’• Search Engines telling you not to use tracking

numbers• Most true local conversions happen offline or

on the phone• Data in LBC Dashboard is incomplete

(keywords are pre-washed) and not exportable

• Most local analytics solutions are hacks• No great rank checkers for 7 pack

Current Road Blocks

Track Local ‘Pack’ Traffic

1. Use a 'local vanity' URL as your URL in your Google Local Business Center listing

2. Create a 'tracking' URL3. Set up a redirect to 301 redirect your vanity URL to a

real 'tracking' URL4. Update your GA Snippet to allow # instead of ? to

denote URL parameters (or use the canonical element)

5. Configure Advanced Segmentation in GA to view results

Track Local ‘Pack’ Traffic

Create Campaign URL

• redirect 301 /vanityurl http://www.yourdomain.com/#utm_source=google&utm_medium=localpack&utm_campaign=google-universal-local

Redirect Vanity URL To Campaign URL

• <script type=”text/javascript”>var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker(”UA-XXXXXXXX-X”);pageTracker._initData();pageTracker._setAllowAnchor(true); pageTracker._trackPageview();</script>

• OR• <link rel="canonical"

href="http://www.yourdomain.com"/>

Eliminate Duplicate Content

GA: Create Advanced Segments1. From the Dashboard, click on the Advanced Segments link in the left column

2. Choose Create a new customized segment at the upper right of the next page.

3. Using the Dimensions drop down menu on the left, click on Traffic Sources and you'll get a list of things by which you can filter the segment, including Source, Medium and Campaign.

5. Set up three ‘AND’ rules in this advanced segment.Rule #1 Source=Google

Rule#2 Medium=localpackRule #3 Campaign=google-universal-search

GA: Create Advanced Segments

Create An Advanced Segment

Display Advanced Segment

Pimp Google Analytics For Local Search

You can configure Google Analytics to quickly access and analyze important data regarding Local Search and to create reports

about it.Then, use this data to refine your

marketing to good prospects.

Google Analytics for Local Search

Tracking Local Visitors

Create an advanced segment to quickly identify and analyze traffic coming from your target “location”

An Advanced Segment For A City

Display Advanced Segment

A Local Custom Report

Create a custom report to quickly identify which cities/states your conversions are coming from

• Our Custom Report will show conversions broken down by state/city.

Custom Report For Conversions

Building The Custom Report

Pimp Your Local GA Dashboard

• Add Your Reports And Other Data To Your Dashboard

Pimp Your Dashboard

Other Ways To Track Local Search

What Google LBC reports: – Impressions.– Visits to website. – Requests for more info on Local Listing page– Requests for driving directions and where

those requests originated.– Keyword terms used by searchers who saw

your listing (pre-washed).

Google LBC Reports

Google LBC Tracking Data

Local Search Conversions Are Not All About the Website

Google LBC Tracking Data

Requests for driving directions-good indicator of conversion intent

Google LBC Tracking Data

Show clients they are being found by their potential customers for terms they could never hope to rank for in Universal Search.

Keep an eye on changes in what and how Google is reporting in the

Maps Dashboard.

These are clues to what is important to Google and what it thinks is important to Local searchers.

Google LBC Tracking Data

• If you are selling a product add a ‘Buy In Store’ option. (use discount code)

• Add a ‘In Store Pick-up’ option• Coupons• In-store survey (simple as asking)• Simple assumptions based on sales

volume/local website traffic volume

Ideas For Tracking Offline Conversions

• THIS JUST IN:– Decals for business windows with decals,

which upon scanning lead directly to Google Place Pages

Ideas For Tracking Offline Conversions

• No great tools for local ‘pack’ rank checking (seen any?)

• Advanced Web Rankings tool will rank check on Google Maps

• You can kind of spoof location with Google Global Firefox extension and manually check rankings

Rank Checking

Call Tracking

What You Need To Know and How To Roll Your Own

• Many call tracking solutions available, but watch out…

• Some don’t display ‘default’ number in code decreasing search engine trust

• Google has warned not to use tracking numbers in profiles as ph. numbers can be used as ‘primary key’

• Rumors that Google Voice will eventually allow call tracking (it does for flat rate ads now)

Call Tracking for Local Search

• We had many issues with phone call tracking solutions on the market.

• Our needs included:– affordable for most clients– ability to port numbers in and out– integration with Google Analytics for conversion tracking– call recording– email alerts a call was made– showing the 'real' phone number in the code to help with local search– easy to implement– ability to track only non-branded organic search traffic

Roll Your Own Call Tracking

• Build the ‘back-end’ in 7 steps• Build the ‘front-end’ in 3 steps.

• Only basic knowledge of web development is needed (eg how to edit file, basic HTML, and FTP).

Roll Your Own Call Tracking

• Back-end Step 1: Register for a free Twilio account.

Roll Your Own Call Tracking

• Back-end Step 2: Buy three phone numbers in your account (1 for each major SE)

Roll Your Own Call Tracking

• Back-end Step 3: Download our phone call tracking code zip file here. Once the file is downloaded open up calls/twiml.php, replace XXXXXXXXXX with the phone number where you would like Twilio to forward your calls.

Roll Your Own Call Tracking

• Back-end Step 4: Open calls/handler.php. Replace UA-XXXXXX-1 with your Google Analytics profile ID. Replace youremail@domain.com with the email address that is to get notices when a call is logged including a link to the recording of the call.

Roll Your Own Call Tracking

• Back-end Step 5: Upload twiml.php, handler.php, and Galavanize.php to a directory named ‘/calls’ on your website.

Roll Your Own Call Tracking

• Back-end Step 6: Go back to Twilio. Pick a number to use for Google visitors and click it in the table. Edit the description of the to be ‘Google’. Edit the URL to behttp://www.yourdomain.com/calls/twiml.php?callsource=Google Hit Save.

Roll Your Own Call Tracking

• Back-end Step 7: TEST! Make sure the phone numbers work, forward to your phone, send an email, hit your Google Analytics account, record the call, and finally send you an email. Call the number you assigned to Google. You can also check your email for an alert and your GA profile in a few hours.

Roll Your Own Call Tracking

• Front-end Step 1: Open displaynumbers.js. Enter your phone numbers as values for the appropriate variables Enter your ‘real’ or default phone number in the value for defaultNum. Enter a list of comma separated branded search terms for which you are not interested in tracking phone calls as the value for brandedTerms. Enter the name of the class used for the span or div containing your phone number on your HTML page.

Roll Your Own Call Tracking

Roll Your Own Call Tracking

• Front-end Step 2: Paste this JS code at the footer of your HTML page, and underneath the Google Analytics tracking code snippet. Make sure and update the path to where this file will be stored.

<script type="text/javascript" src="your/path/to/displaynumbers.js"></script>

<script language="javascript"> displayTextNumber();</script>

Roll Your Own Call Tracking

• Step 3: Upload displaynumbers.js to your server. Also upload the HTML file you just edited to include the JS as well.

• THAT IS IT, CONGRATS! You now can track phone calls from your SEO efforts!

Roll Your Own Call Tracking

The Future Of Tracking Local Search

• Google Analytics now supports tracking for mobile websites and mobile applications on certain platforms (iPhone).

• Very primitive tracking, but much better than the alternative

• Requires server side scripting rather than JS to create page views, etc.

New Developments In Mobile Tracking

• Call tracking enabled for at least Google via Google Voice (they’ve done it before)

• A more seamless tie in of LBC report data in Google Analytics

• A good local ‘pack’ rank checking tool• Agency LBC analytics tools to dig deep

into a large amount of listings

My Wish List