Google Analytics 101

Google Analytics is a web analytics service, which anyone with a Google account can use for free. It provides statistics and analytical tools for search engine optimization and marketing purposes, among other things.

Let's start from the beginning: People purchase their goods online in stages. The last stage is known as conversions, or when visitors become customers by transacting with a business. Google Analytics can measure this behavior and other user data. It can even track key metrics of what led to purchases through traffic sources, and you and your business can use that data to make informed decisions about how to reach new and existing customers.

Imagine an online store that wants to sell more of a specific product, such as a shirt. Using Google Analytics, the store can collect and analyze data from an online social media advertising campaign to see what was most effective and then expand that effort. The store might look at geographical data to understand how people in a certain place buy shirts, and then it could run additional advertising campaigns in those areas. It can also use Google Analytics to see how online shoppers progress to their shopping carts. If it notices a user has difficulty navigating a certain part of their site before checkout, it can make changes to the site to resolve the problem.

Any type of business -- not just stores -- can use Google Analytics to collect and analyze user data from websites, mobile applications, online point of sale systems, video game consoles, and other internet-connected platforms.

HOW DOES GOOGLE ANALYTICS WORK?

Getting started

The initial Google Analytics setup process involves you: Defining your goals to identify the critical actions users need to take on your site to lead to more conversions; linking your Google Analytics and Google AdWords accounts to you can evaluate your marketing; and finally, viewing the reports to understand the performance of your site. However, to even begin collecting and analyzing such data like Bounce Rate, you need to add a small piece of tracking code to each page on your site. Once you do that, you will see data immediately in the Google Analytics reports.

Add tracking code

To add the tracking code to your site, open the Admin page in Google Analytics. In the property column, open Tracking Info and then click tracking code. Now, copy and paste the code snippet right before the closing head tag on each webpage you want to track. WordPress users can install an easy plugin to do the same thing.

Set up your business goals

Business Goals are also known as important events, like completing a purchase or moving up a level in game or reading five articles. Google Analytics can tell you how many users complete these activities. Open the Admin page in Google Analytics, then click Goals in the View column, and click New Goal. You can use a template goal or create a custom one.

Link your AdWords account

AdWords is a marketing platform you can use to attract new customers or retain existing ones. You need to link your AdWords account to your Google Analytics account to get a clearer picture of AdWords performance. Just open the Admin page, then click AdWords Linking in the Property column, and click New link group so you can choose which accounts to link.

View reports

Now, you can finally use Google Analytics reports to understand how well your business is performing. Use the Goals report to see how often critical actions happen on your site, or use the AdWords report to see if your AdWords campaign is resulting in goal conversions, amount of interactions per visit, exit pages, conversions, and more.

Acquisition Overview details how visitors arrived to your website. It's broken down into ten sun-categories that can help you target your marketing at customers: Overview, Channels, All Traffic, Referrals, Campaigns, Keywords, Cost Analysis, AdWords, Social and Search Engine Optimization.

Social Overview can provide social reports that break down social traffic so you know whether or not your social media marketing is working. Assisted Social Conversions are the conversions that social media helped garner. You can use this tool to tell which social media tool is working better to bring new visitors to your website. Is it Google, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or another social network that is resonating best with your target market?

Bounce Rate is an important topic to understand when it comes to Google Analytics. Bounce Rate is a single-page session on your site. In Analytics, a bounce is calculated as a session that triggers only a single request to the Analytics server, like when a user opens a single page on your site and then exits without triggering any other requests to the Analytics server during that session.

Google encourages Google Analytics users to examine their Bounce Rate:

• The Audience Overview report provides the overall bounce rate for your site.
• The Channels report provides the bounce rate for each channel grouping.
• The All Traffic report provides the bounce rate for each source/medium pair.
• The All Pages report provides the bounce rate for individual pages.

Google provides tips on its website to optimize bounce rate. If the bounce rate is high on your website, you can dig deeper to see whether it's uniformly high or whether it's the result of something like one or two channels, source/medium pairs, or just a few pages.

When is a paid account needed?

It doesn't cost anything to sign up for and use Google Analytics, as long as you're using the standard version, which is free and ideal for individuals or small businesses. If you're a larger enterprise, you should use Google Analytics 360, the premium version.

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A REGULAR GOOGLE ANALYTICS ACCOUNT AND A 360 ACCOUNT?

Both versions of Google Analytics enable you to collect data and analyze user behavior from websites and apps, but the premium version -- Google Analytics 360 -- offers more features and granular controls, such as:

• Native data onboarding integrations (DoubleClick Bid Manager, DoubleClick Campaign Manager, DoubleClick for Publishers, and DoubleClick Search)
• More native marking integrations (DoubleClick Bid Manager)
• Integration with Google BigQuery
• Advanced funnel reporting and data-driven modeling
• Cross-property roll-up reporting
• Up to 400 views per web property and 200 custom dimensions and metrics
• Access to raw data
• Implementation services
• Enterprise-level support and services.

Go to Google's FAQ page for a comparison chart and help on deciding which is for you.

WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENT WAYS TO CONFIGURE GOOGLE ANALYTICS? HOW SHOULD YOU CONFIGURE ANALYTICS FOR DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCES?

First, let's go over the hierarchy of Google Analytics accounts. Click Admin in Google Analytics. There are three columns in Admin: Account, Property, and View. Use the drop-down selector to select one, and then click the links in each column to proceed with configuring them.

An account is the highest level of organization -- and you can have more than one. An account contains one or more properties, which represent a specific website or mobile app. Properties display views, subsets of reporting data for the property. You can configure your Google Analytics account to fine tune access to your data.

For instance, as we mentioned earlier, you can set up goals to identify the actions you want users to take on your site or app, and to give a monetary value to those actions. Aside from that, you can modify your tracking code to collect additional data, like user interactions with links, buttons, video controls, and other elements of your site or app. You can even modify the tracking code to collect ecommerce activity like user engagement with product lists and internal promotions.

Go to Google's FAQ page for more information on how to configure Google Analytics.

WHAT ARE SOME COMMON ISSUES PEOPLE RUN INTO WHEN USING GOOGLE ANALYTICS? HOW DO YOU TROUBLESHOOT THESE ISSUES? WHAT RESOURCES ARE AVAILABLE?

Common problems with Google Analytics can range from issues with setup, tracking, discrepancies in goals, transactions, and AdWords conversions, and more. To begin troubleshooting any of these issues, just go to the official Google Analytics Solution Community, where you can connect with other business owners and product experts and get help. You can also take free online courses via the Analytics Academy. The Analytics Help Center even documents all aspects of using Google Analytics including how to get started and best practices.

HOW ACCURATE IS GOOGLE ANALYTICS?

Google Analytics must be accurate enough if it can count Mercedes-Benz, Progressive, TransUnion, American Cancer Society, Airbnb, Buzzfeed, Domino's, Zillow, Orbitz, and dozens of other well-known businesses as its clients to track metrics. Go to Google's Success Stories page for user testimonials.

WHAT ARE SOME ADVANTAGES OR DISADVANTAGES TO USING GOOGLE ANALYTICS?

• Advantages: The standard version is free, and you can use it analyze data all in one place in order to get a deeper understanding of your customers' experience.
• Disadvantages: The premium version isn't free, and whether you use the standard or premium version, there is a steep learning curve for the average user.

HOW DO YOU BLOCK GOOGLE ANALYTICS TRACKING?

Easy. Use an ad blocker, like AdBlock Plus, as long as it allows you to disable tracking, or you can use a browser extension, like Block Yourself From Analytics in the Chrome Web Store.

HOW CAN YOU TRACK DOWNLOADS IN GOOGLE ANALYTICS?

Clicks on links to downloadable files can be tracked as Events (it counts the clicks as event hits) or virtual pageviews (it tracks clicks on a link as page hits).

To track clicks as Events:

• If you use Google Tag Manager to manage your Analytics Tracking, see Analytics Events.
• If you have Analytics tracking added to your site, see Event Tracking Web Tracking.

To track clicks as pageviews:

• If you use Google Tag Manager to manage your Analytics Tracking, see the Analytics tag.
• If you have Analytics tracking added to your site, see Page Tracking Web Tracking.

ARE THEIR CERTIFICATIONS AVAILABLE?

Google has a Analytics Certified Partner program, in which you can become a partner or find companies with expertise in Analytics Solutions. Go to Google's Certification page to learn more about the program.

HOW IS GOOGLE ANALYTICS DIFFERENT FROM OTHER ANALYTICS TOOLS?

Unlike many other analytics tools, Google Analytics is free (the standard version is, anyway) -- and it works with your Google account and integrates with key Google products, such as AdWords, AdSense, and Search Console.

Sources:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-analytics-101-executive-guide-on-measuring-your-business-data/

Webmastering: Semantic Web

Wikipedia.org Definition: The Semantic Web is an evolving development of the World Wide Web in which the semantics of information and services on the web is defined, making it possible for the web to understand and satisfy the requests of people and machines to use the web content.
SemanticWeb.org wiki definition: The Semantic Web is the extension of the World Wide Web that enables people to share content beyond the boundaries of applications and websites. It has been described in rather different ways: as a utopic vision, as a web of data, or merely as a natural paradigm shift in our daily use of the Web. Most of all, the Semantic Web has inspired and engaged many people to create innovative semantic technologies and applications. semanticweb.org is the common platform for this community.

Semantic web is one of the Web3.0 technologies.

Semantic Vs. Syntax?

Syntax in linguistics: is the study of the principles and rules for constructing sentences in natural languages.

Semantic: is the study of meaning.

How Semantic Web (SW) works?

Although the computers present the data (texts, imges & videos) from any given website well, yet computers doesn't understand the content of the website sent data.

Semnatic web aims to give a computer valid meaning for the data sent through any given website, through applying metadata to any given site, to make these data readable by computers.

Such process will help much the quality of search results dramatically.

The process is simple, suppose that you have a blog where you post essays about technology and gadgets, with different images, videos.

Now you want to improve your rank through search results for semantic web search engines, you are going to mark up your videos with metadata, it is easier for semantic search engines to relate, find and exchange information about the content posted.

Webmastering: Beyond Web 3.0

Experts of the Web, seem to have no limit for their expectations about the Web.

Next is a part of "Howstuffworks.com: Beyond Web 3.0"

Some Experts opinions About the Web:

• According to technology expert and entrepreneur Nova Spivack, the development of the Web moves in 10-year cycles. In the Web's first decade, most of the development focused on the back end, or infrastructure, of the Web. Programmers created the protocols and code languages we use to make Web pages. In the second decade, focus shifted to the front end and the era of Web 2.0 began. Now people use Web pages as platforms for other applications. They also create mashups and experiment with ways to make Web experiences more interactive. We're at the end of the Web 2.0 cycle now. The next cycle will be Web 3.0, and the focus will shift back to the back end. Programmers will refine the Internet's infrastructure to support the advanced capabilities of Web 3.0 browsers. Once that phase ends, we'll enter the era of Web 4.0. Focus will return to the front end, and we'll see thousands of new programs that use Web 3.0 as a foundation [source: Nova Spivack].

• The Web will evolve into a three-dimensional environment. Rather than a Web 3.0, we'll see a Web 3D. Combining virtual reality elements with the persistent online worlds of massively multiplayer online roleplaying games (MMORPGs), the Web could become a digital landscape that incorporates the illusion of depth. You'd navigate the Web either from a first-person perspective or through a digital representation of yourself called an avatar.
  

• The Web will build on developments in distributed computing and lead to true artificial intelligence. In distributed computing, several computers tackle a large processing job. Each computer handles a small part of the overall task. Some people believe the Web will be able to think by distributing the workload across thousands of computers and referencing deep ontologies. The Web will become a giant brain capable of analyzing data and extrapolating new ideas based off of that information.

• The Web will extend far beyond computers and cell phones. Everything from watches to television sets to clothing will connect to the Internet. Users will have a constant connection to the Web, and vice versa. Each user's software agent will learn more about its respective user by electronically observing his or her activities. This might lead to debates about the balance between individual privacy and the benefit of having a personalized Web browsing experience.

• The Web will merge with other forms of entertainment until all distinctions between the forms of media are lost. Radio programs, television shows and feature films will rely on the Web as a delivery system.

it's too early to tell which (if any) of these future versions of the Web will come true. It may be that the real future of the Web is even more extravagant than the most extreme predictions. We can only hope that by the time the future of the Web gets here, we can all agree on what to call it.

As per my comment the Web is still under discovering it's real potential.

SEO: White hat Vs. Black hat SEO Techniques.

SEO Practices are divided into two types:

• White Hat Techniques
• Black Hat Techniques

White Hat Techniques:
are the techniques that are recommended by search engines, to enhance the quality of the website traffic by using good practice techniques in design and developmentand to make the website more appealing to visitors.

Usually, in white hat techniques the SEO aspects are involved in every step through the way from analysis to the development passing by designing, hosting, domain name selection and promotion.

SEO Activities:

• Review of your site content or structure.
• Technical advice on website development: for example, hosting, redirects, error pages.
• Content development.
• content enhancing.
• Management of online business development campaigns.
• Keyword research.
• SEO training.
• Expertise in specific markets and geographies.
• organic natural web design and development.
• fixing content.

BTW: Abiding to the W3C Design Guidelines is not an answer to your SEO issues, But of course abiding to the W3c standards will not hold back your SEO activities on the contrary it will enhance your site from within.

the most important W3C standard that concern content is the accessibility guidelines.

Black Hat Techniques (spamdexing):

black hat techniques are more concerned with spamming or fooling the search engine indexing algorithms by studying the algorithms' methodology and use these knowledge to cram the black hat site in search engines in a process called spamdexing.

The earliest known reference to the term spamdexing is by Eric Convey in his article "Porn sneaks way back on Web," The Boston Herald, May 22, 1996, where he said:

The problem arises when site operators load their Web pages with hundreds of extraneous terms so search engines will list them among legitimate addresses. The process is called "spamdexing," a combination of spamming — the Internet term for sending users unsolicited information — and "indexing."

Common spamdexing techniques can be classified into two broad classes: content spam (or term spam) and link spam.

Content Spam:

• Keyword stuffing: it is the stuffing of keywords deliberately in the pages whether hidden or visible to make the page appear to search engine crawler as legitimate page for the chosen keywords, this technique manipulates the older indexing algorithms which were built for counting the wordings in the page to determine the density of a given web page and upon the counting the rank is determined.
  
• Hidden or invisible for unrelated texts: usually, by tiny texts, background colored texts, off-margin DIV tags, zero-height zero-width DIV tags Or using No script Section, No Frame Section.
  
• Meta tag stuffing: using the meta tags to stuff keywords that are unrelated to the site content.
• Gateway Or Doorway pages: Creating low-quality web pages that contain very little content but are instead stuffed with very similar keywords and phrases. They are designed to rank highly within the search results, but serve no purpose to visitors looking for information.
• Scraper sites: are websites built using programs that scrape data Or wordings from various websites or search engines and pack these search words together in a website, this type of websites is also called "built for Adsense" as the name suggests the website usually contains Adsense Ads that are integrated within the site content.
  

Link spam: takes advantage of link-based ranking algorithms, such as Google's PageRank algorithm, which gives a higher ranking to a website the more other highly ranked websites link to it.

• Link farms: Creating a close network of links within separated pages.
  
• Hidden links: Putting links where they won't be seen in order to increase link popularity. Highlighted link text can help rank a webpage higher for matching that phrase.
• Sybil attack: This is the forging of multiple identities for malicious intent. A spammer may create multiple web sites at different domain names that all link to each other, such as fake blogs known as spam blogs.
• Spam blogs: Spam blogs, also known as splogs, are fake blogs created solely for spamming, by redirecting users by links to the main spamdexed site, They are similar in nature to link farms.
• page hijacking: This is achieved by creating a rogue copy of a popular website which shows contents similar to the original to a web crawler but redirects web surfers to unrelated or malicious websites, this considered more like phishing than page hijacking as SEO Technique, yet phishing is going further in scamming the visitors in a cyber crime. page hijacking is considered a type of cloaking.
  
• buying expired domains: Some link spammers monitor DNS records for domains that will expire soon, then buy them when they expire and replace the pages with links to their pages. Now Google resets the link data on expired domains, which is somewhat important aspect to take care if you are a fellow webmaster, Rule1: don't let your Domain Name Expire.
• Cookie stuffing: This involves placing an affiliate tracking cookie on a website visitor's computer without their knowledge, which will then generate revenue for the person doing the cookie stuffing. This not only generates fraudulent affiliate sales, but also has the potential to overwrite other affiliates' cookies, essentially stealing their legitimately earned commissions, this earnings are realized when a user is registered to the business website.

Using world-writable pages

• Spam in blogs: This is the placing or solicitation of links randomly on other sites, usually blog comments, guestbooks and forums.
  
• Comment spam: is a form of link spam that has arisen in web pages that allow dynamic user editing such as wikis, blogs, and guestbooks. and it is similar to the spam in blogs
  
• Wiki spam: Using the open edit-ability of wiki systems to place links from the wiki site to the spam site. The subject of the spam site is often unrelated to the wiki page where the link is added, and this technique is also called Vandalis.
• Referrer log spamming: referrer-log spam may be used to increase the search engine rankings of the spammer's sites, by getting the referrer logs of many sites to link to them.By having a robot randomly access many sites enough times, with a message or specific address given as the referrer, that message or Internet address then appears in the referrer log of those sites that have referrer logs.

Other types of spamdexing

• Mirror websites: Hosting of multiple websites all with conceptually similar content but using different URLs. Some search engines give a higher rank to results where the keyword searched for appears in the URL.
• URL redirecting: Taking the user to another page without his or her intervention, e.g., using META refresh tags, Flash, JavaScript, Java or Server side redirects
• Cloaking: Cloaking refers to any of several means to serve a page to the search-engine spider that is different from that seen by human users. It can be an attempt to mislead search engines regarding the content on a particular web site. Cloaking, however, can also be used to ethically increase accessibility of a site to users with disabilities or provide human users with content that search engines aren't able to process or parse. It is also used to deliver content based on a user's location; Google itself uses IP delivery, a form of cloaking, to deliver results. Another form of cloaking is code swapping, i.e., optimizing a page for top ranking and then swapping another page in its place once a top ranking is achieved.

Finally, According to W3 Consortium that site design guides for accessibility will eventually clash with the SEO Good practices, That means that complying with any of the guidelines or practice will conflict with the other's guidelines and good practices.