Category Archives: analytics

[Guide] Google Analytics Cost Data Import Tool

November 29th, 2012 by Aaron Aders Google Analytics (GA) recently announced the creation of a new feature called the Cost Data Import Tool. The idea behind this tool is pretty easy to understand: you manually import costs related to the online advertising channels that you track through GA, and then you’ll be able to subtract […]

Don’t Fall for the Web Analytics One-Night Stand

November 28th, 2012 by Aaron Aders While attending SES San Francisco this year, I was able to watch an incredible keynote by none other than the Google Analytics creator himself, Avinash Kaushik. During his presentation, he drew an in interesting analogy in website data analysis called “the one-night stand.” Throughout his keynote speech, Kaushik frequently […]

[Breaking] Google Analytics Attribution Modeling Tool Whitelist Made Public

November 19th, 2012 by Aaron Aders Google has enabled Google Analytics users to apply to a whitelist to gain access to the attribution modeling tool that was previously only available to the enterprise GA package ($150k per year!). This is awesome news since current attribution modeling methods require quite a bit of spreadsheet work. The tool currently […]

5 Indy-500 Principles Guaranteed to Move the Needle on Your Marketing

by Matt Hunckler For Indianapolis natives, few things can match spending a day at the Indianapolis 500 track—the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Many of us here at Slingshot SEO grew up watching the race. We can recite the names of numerous winners and recall the years when it went down to the final turn. So how […]

Mission ImposSERPble: Establishing Reliable Click-Through-Rates (CTR)

by Casey Szulc What are the click-through-rates (CTR) for each organic position in a search engine ranking page (SERP)?  SEO aficionados have been pondering this question for years, and given the volatile nature of SERPs, it is an incredibly difficult question to answer.  Any given SERP changes on a day-to-day basis as domains compete for […]

3 Free Analytics Tools For The Busy Social Media Manager

October 11th, 2012 by Steven Shattuck It’s been said that what gets measured gets done, and improved upon. For the Social Media Manager engaging with communities across multiple channels, analytics are critical to proving ROI and honing future campaigns. Many social network have built in analytics tools, but if you’re looking to include more complex […]

Cyber Monday Recap: A Comparison of Before & After

by Casey Szulc As comScore recently reported, Cyber Monday 2011 was the heaviest online spending day in history, with $1.251 billion in online sales – up 22% from last year. Thanksgiving night and Black Friday are generally acknowledged as the start of the holiday shopping season and some of the busiest in-store shopping days, but […]

Sample Selection Matters: Wikipedia Ranks on Page One for 28% of Searches

by Mark Rees We saw the posts on Intelligent Positioning and Search Engine Watch earlier this month and did the exact same study but with a larger (2955 SERPs), more diverse (1-9 words in length) set of keywords. We used keywords serviced for real clients, which provide a sample representative of more competitive, valuable, and […]