Google has now announced that they are making these reports available to everyone, without having to modify your tracking code!

Thanks to Search Engine Land for pointing out this video.

Yesterday, Google announced some new reports that will help you get a clearer view of how visitors move across your site. These new reports are based on aggregated data (no, you still can’t track a single person’s visit) and allow you to see the “most common” paths and fallout points on your website.

The visitors flow report lets you see how visitors enter, move through, and exit your site. For all of us who have dug far into GoAn to find this data in the past, well, we know how awesome this is. You can segment your data to see how visitors from organic behave compared to social media or paid advertising.

There is also a Goal Flow report. This one is super-cool because we’ve been able to set funnels in the past, but visitors don’t always follow the nice, neat paths we lay out for them. Now we can see the most common paths and fallout points, regardless of if they are part of our funnels.

Both of these reports let you do one of the most important things you can do for website success – get to know your website visitors better.

These reports aren’t available to everyone yet, so don’t panic if you don’t see it yet. Google did say they will be rolling them out over the next week to everyone. In the mean time, spend some time getting to know your advanced segments and multi-channel funnels.

You’re in luck. Kiss Metrics has a great blog post that lists 50 Google Analytics Resources for 2011.

I haven’t had a chance to read through them all yet, but I’m seeing some great posts on this list. I can’t wait to dig into the posts about Integrating Google Analytics with Youtube, Using Regular Expressions, and Reports & Personality Types.

Here are a few must reads – basics that you won’t want to miss out on.

Beginners Guide to the New Google Analytics

Measuring Social Media with Google Analytics

Using Filters to Keep Your Data Honest

11 Actionable Metrics

14 Awesome Features of the New Google Analytics

Which of the posts are you most excited about?

All local and regional businesspeople interested in staying on top of the latest internet marketing trends and strategies are welcome to attend. Our Internet Marketing Workshops will be presented by members of the Ecreativeworks team, who will share their knowledge and experiences in the world of internet marketing to help you make the most of your company’s online presence.

Our first Free Internet Marketing Workshop will take place next Tuesday, September 13, and will continue for four more installments through December 6. The full schedule is as follows: 

• Tuesday, September 13: Facebook Basics for Your Business
• Wednesday, October 5: Google AdWords Workshop
• Thursday, October 27: Social Media Workshop
• Tuesday, November 8: Google Analytics & Measuring ROI
• Tuesday, December 6: Advanced SEO Tactics

All workshops will take place at our offices in Plymouth, Minnesota. Click here for further information and to sign up for any or all workshops that interest you. RSVPs are required, so don’t forget to complete the form on the page linked above. We hope to see you here!

1.  If you are going to build something then you better have a plan on making it work right from the start, there is nothing worse than building something and having to tear it apart and start over again.

How I perceive this is that if I am going to be coaching a company on selecting their focus keyword phrases as a base for the SEO of this new project, we need to make sure we do it right.  We do not want to just pick phrases out of thin air, or use phrases that are used internally.  No, we need to do some extensive research on the terms that are being used on the search engines themselves.  Let’s make sure that the phrases we are using as a base for your website have a high search volume as well as a decent competition number.  Oh yeah, they need to make sense to the actual content that is going to be on the pages also.  The last thing you want is to build your site around a set of keyword phrase only to want to change them right after you launch your site.

2.  If you want it to perform better, then you need to build it better. Duh!

You would think this would be a natural thing that would enter everyone’s mind that is building any type of project.  Although, how many times have you had the conversation in your company that starts with we need to have a superior “X” and then in the next sentence comes:  but, do it with as little resources as possible?  What generally happens is that a great idea is often sidelined by the actual amount of effort that is put into the creation.  With a website, everyone wants to have the best, with as little effort as possible.  We need to make sure if we want a better website, we must do everything we can to build it better than our competitors, starting with using the keyword phrases that have the potential to bring in the most traffic.

3.  You will get out of it, what you put into it.

How true this one is, and obvious if you think about it.  Thanks dad for always pointing out the obvious to me.  This means that if you put extra effort, write more content, write better content and hand off work to “experts” when needed you will get a great site.  If you try to skimp on content, or just get by with minimal amount of effort, that is what you will get; a minimally effective website.

So like my dad always says:  “If you don’t want to do the work, don’t complain to me that you don’t end up with what you wanted.”

For those who are new to SEO, it’s a great way to understand how Google has changed over time, as well as showcasing their advancements and improvements to search. In a mere 11 years, Google has come a long way, and they’ve changed the way we search.

Think about this:

• Google Local Business Center launched in 2005.  Remember when we didn’t just “Google” an address but had to (gasp!) call someone to get directions?
• Personalized search also launched in 2005. If you’re wondering what personalized search is, you’ve got some catching up to do, as it’s impacting your visibility in Google  for 6 years.
• Universal Search Results launched in 2007. Before then, it was just the top 10 ranking pages clean and uncluttered. I think most SEO’s can relate when I say I miss those days.
• Google Suggest launched in 2008. Before then, we had to type all the keywords ourselves AND come up with our own alternatives. I don’t know how anyone found anything.

What Google changes have had the most impact for how you search?

“The initial release will be a set of reports in Google Analytics using search data from Google Webmaster Tools. This includes query information, clicks, impressions, clickthrough rate, and average position. You’ll also be able to use Google Analytics advanced data filtering and visualizations with this data.”

This news is incredibly exciting for internet marketers, especially those who value the data they are used to seeing from PPC campaigns. Impressions, clicks clickthrough rates can provide invaluable data for optimizing title and meta descriptions and keyword effectiveness . Average position data can help us get a more accurate picture of our visibility, rather than relying on checking rankings at a specific moment in time.

Even though this data is available currently in Google Webmaster Tools, it will be very convenient to have it in one location, making Google Analytics an even stronger tool in your online marketing toolbox.

Since the report was created by Google themselves, it’s entirely possible that they’re taking some liberties as to what accounts for “economic activity.” The report is based on the average number of clicks a company received from Google searches or ads, and assumes that every dollar spent on Google advertising equates to eight dollars in profit for the company doing the advertising.

This seems like a rather high cost-to-profit ratio—how often does one receive an 800% return on any kind of investment?—but given the nature of ecommerce and Google’s role in it, it’s probably impossible to know for sure just how much Google actually contributed to the reported economic activity.

But, if the numbers given are anywhere near correct, and given what we know about the effect page rank has on web traffic, the report gives 64 billion reasons why your company needs to succeed in search engine rankings, particularly on Google.

No matter how valid the report figures are, it is almost certain that Google’s economic impact is at least a few dollars greater than that of Ask Jeeves.

Now, you ask:  “how do you know you can beat them?”.  To this I reply:  All of those negative comments about how they are running their SEO program or the lack of, we will make sure your site has all those elements to give your website the base to compete right out of the gate.  After that it is up to you to decide if you would like to take your site to the next level and hire a SEO expert to watch your site every month or hire in house to do the same.  But, I say: “you must have an ongoing SEO effort to get to the very top and stay there.”   I can give you the basics and a good foundation, but like any marketing, it needs to be an ongoing process that you invest time and money into to be successful.

Bottom line:  SEO is your best bet to beat out your competition, especially if you are a smaller company you have a great advantage as SEO requires agility–and most large firms do not have that ability.  So, do it your own or take my advice and hire a professional.