Digital Roundup: Social Signals, CRO, Google Analytics and Syndicated Content

Welcome to another edition of the Digital Roundup. This roundup will cover some of the digital marketing articles that have been shared around the 3 Door Digital office over the last few weeks. We share the posts we discuss in our weekly hangout as we chat about them. Be sure to follow #3dddrm to stay up to date and join in the conversation. The hangout takes place every Wednesday at 10am GMT.

This week we were discussing a number of different and interesting topics.

Your Guide to Social Signals for SEO
Author. Jason DeMers

Although social signals are always a mystery in terms of rankings it is clear that the importance of social signals are increasing with time. Usually people who come to your site through social networks have a lower bounce rate since they actually wanted to come to your site. I do believe that direct and indirect impacts of social signals will eventually surpass links as the most valuable ranking factor.

How I Hijacked Rand Fishkin’s Blog
Author. Dan Petrovic

When a duplicate page is created and merged into a main “canonical” document version it will display it’s PageRank, cache, links, info but in Rand’s case also +1′s. Yes, even +1′s. For example if you +1 a designated duplicate, the selected main version will receive the +1′s. Similarly if you +1 the selected main URL the change in +1′s will immediately reflect on any recognised copies. When a copy receives higher PageRank however, and the switch takes place, all links and social signals will be re-assigned to the “winning” version. I am not entirely convinced that authorship will do much to prevent search result swap from a more juiced URL, however it could be a contributing factor or a signal and it doesn’t hurt to have it implemented regardless.

Announcing Enhanced Link Attribution for In-Page Analytics

This update gives us the ability to have multiple links to one page and be able to track which link is preforming better. Until now, when looking at in-page analytics if there is multiple links to one page then it would show the same percentage of clicks over all the links. To enable enhanced link attribution you can follow the instructions below:

You need to be using the async. version of the analytics tracking code. Then add the following (in red) before _trackPageview;

var _gaq = _gaq || [];
 var pluginUrl =
 '//www.google-analytics.com/plugins/ga/inpage_linkid.js';
 _gaq.push(['_require', 'inpage_linkid', pluginUrl]);
 _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXXX-Y']);
 _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);

Then simply enable it in the reports

  1. Click Admin at the top of any Analytics page.
  2. Navigate to the property for which you want to use enhanced link attribution, and click the Property Settings tab.
  3. In the In-Page Analytics section, select the Use enhanced link attribution option.
  4. Click Apply.

Read more about enabling enhanced link attribution here

What to track in case of lost traffic; a forensic blueprint
Author. David Harry

The post describes all the preparatory steps that you should take before starting an SEO campaign. As well as obvious steps such as monitoring Google Analytics & Google Webmaster Tools, it also talks about less obvious steps, such as tracking competitors links and rankings. This could all be valuable data should rankings ever drop.

Why your CRO tests fail
Author. Will Critchlow

Ensure that the blend of traffic that you are getting is fair. Some important points include:

  • Correctly assessing the amount of time needed to run the rest
  • Do not peek at the test before it is finished
  • Calling the test successful only if it achieves at least 95% confidence.

To obtain higher level of certainty you must run the test for longer or create another copy of each page in order to spread the traffic more evenly. By following these guidelines you will be more likely to achieve higher certainty in your CRO testing.

I hope you enjoyed our roundup and don’t forget to follow #3dddrm every Wednesday at 10am GMT to join the conversation. Feel free to leave a comment or ask any questions below.

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Gideon Wellins

As the Head of International SEO I manage and oversee the team and campaigns here at Angora Media.

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