It has been a very busy couple of weeks for Google. The company has taken the +1 button global and has launched the Google Plus project. Google +1 button is more exciting for webmasters as these votes will surely help them improve their site’s rankings (maybe not now but Google will eventually use this information). Google is now allowing webmasters to track their +1 stats in Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools.

Using this information, you can figure out how +1 votes are affecting your search engine rankings. You can also find out the demographics of people who have +1′d your pages as well as the list of pages that have been +1′d. Google Analytics reports are more useful towards figuring out your visitors actions and behavior on your website. (more…)

There are plenty of ways to make money online. In fact, a lot of people are doing it already. But online marketing is not a walk in the park career. There are many things that an online marketer or business owner has to take into account and master to maximize profits. You can always use services such as Google Adwords to drive traffic to your website, but that’s not where the story ends. You’ll also have to watch your analytics data to see how others are interacting with your website, and how you can get more out of your traffic.

Web Analytics is one of the most underrated aspects of making money online. Without it, you are essentially operating blind, and that is not the way to run a business. Before throwing money at your problems with your online business, you want to make sure you have all the data you need to figure out ways to improve your business’ online performance. That is precisely the reason the below 4 analytics books are must read:

Web Analytics 2.0: one of the most exciting web analytics books in years. It shows you how to conduct advanced analysis on the data you get from your analytics software. Best of all, it teaches you how to develop actionable strategy from that data.

Google Analytics: Google Analytics is being used by many bloggers and website owners these days. Even some of larger organizations rely on Google analytics to optimize their online campaigns. This book covers everything you need to know to get started with Google Analytics. (more…)

Being lazy doesn’t pay in the pay per click industry. If you look at the most successful pay per click marketers, you are going to see folks who are constantly testing and tracking everything to figure out how they can earn more with their each and every campaign. I know a lot of folks watch commercials on TV that talk about setting and forgetting things. Well, PPC marketing is not one of those things.

Testing and tracking go hand in hand. You can’t test without tracking, and tracking without testing doesn’t really do you much. By testing different keys and concepts on your landing pages, you can find out what works better, which helps taking a step forward. A lot of folks don’t believe in testing individual keywords. They think of it as “overdoing” and a waste of time. No reasonable marketer would tell you not to test every keyword. Not all keywords are created equal, which means you should try to use ones that give you the best chance of making money.

I personally use WP Affiliate to test my keywords as far as tracking is concerned. I do use Google Analytics and have tied it into my Adwords accounts to figure out how conversions are happening. But I use WP Affiliate on my WordPress sites to reconcile the differences between Adwords numbers and my internal numbers. Tracking individual keywords with WP Affiliate it easy, and there are 10s of other solutions you can use for your keyword tracking. But you should never fly blind in pay per click marketing world. You should test everything, and then track them all.