As you read earlier here on this blog SEO helps customers come through your front door.

One of the newer things in Google Webmaster tools I have explored is the data highlighter in the search appearance.

Google Webmaster Tools

Data Highlighter

This makes your data show in the rich snippets the way you want them to show up in search. Google can display your data more attractively to readers in new ways enhancing your results.

You can use these for articles, products, software applications, events and more. This is why product reviews are becoming more important for retailers or even for you if you are selling items on your blog or website.

This highlighter only works for pages that have been crawled by Google recently.  You can also organize your data via page sets.

If you make changes to your pages you can go back and delete them and add new ones once Google has crawled the pages.

You can watch the following video for more info:

Malware

If you site has been infected by malware (software that has been intended to damage or disable your computer via bad links, etc) you will know via Google Webmaster tools now.

Neat, isn’t it?

Author Stats

Now you can see how your posts are doing on Google. This data shows search statistics for pages for which you are the verified author.

It shows you the impressions and clicks for each of your posts. It also shows your average page’s position within the Google search.

I liked seeing the impressions for certain keywords, as well as which keywords are being looked for the most.

Google Analytics

Page Speed

This is new! I love how Google checks every page for speed and tells you how to improve the page speed for each of them.

This is easier than the old chrome extension for developers. I just deleted my extension to keep up my chrome browser’s speed running fast. (The extension used to slow it down to a crawl).

You can find this under Content near the bottom left of your Google Analytics page. I went right for the page suggestions which take a little time to upload.

I will say though some of the answers or suggestions they give are NOT all easy to follow. There are some you can easily understand – like optimizing images. Others are much more complex.

This is a great SEO tool overall.

Social Value

This SEO tool is fairly new at your Google analytics. I was surprised to see Twitter ranking way up there for my blog’s conversions.

People who visited my posts via Twitter. Stumble Upon still remains at the upper part as well and I don’t use it often anymore. Google+ is rising as well.

You can see where you may need to spend more time on which of the social sites with this SEO tool.

In-Page Analytics

This SEO tool is a must. It really gives you a clear indication of where people are looking and clicking on your blog or website.

Above the fold remains high for me. How about yours? If I look further I will see some click higher on posts below the fold.

Very interesting SEO data to digest.

There are many new tools in these FREE services that Google offers webmasters. I don’t like to post too many at a time for it can be quite overwhelming to many bloggers and webmasters including myself at times.

Learn a few new ones for this week and see how your blog or website can grow with some SEO love.

Have you explored these new SEO tools in your Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics for your blog or website? 

Top Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

About the Author:

Lisa Buben at http://inspiretothrive.com/

However, many business owners fail to make proper use of the data provided by analytics due to lack of resources or lack of skills.

The following are some tips which will help you use analytics more effectively for your business website.

1. Establish Your Goals

When someone visits your site, there is an action you want them to take. This could be filling a questionnaire, purchasing a product, signing up for your mailing list or downloading a document.

Having these kinds of goals will make your analytics more meaningful.

For instance, you will be able to know how many people signed up for your mailing list, and how they found your site.

If you don’t have any goals, then analytics becomes useless.

2. Create a Dashboard

Many times, the amount of data produced by analytics can be quite overwhelming.

So how can you reduce your analytics to a manageable size? Simply create a dashboard which only carries the data of importance to your business.

For instance, your dashboard could offer information such as a list of referring sites, the keywords used to find your site or show where visitors are coming from.

It could also indicate which of your content is most popular with readers.

In case you are running a specific campaign, it would be advisable to create a separate dashboard to monitor its progress.

3. Video Event Tracking

For many businesses, video content is an essential part of their marketing strategy. You will need to keep track of the number of people who have watched your videos.

Analytics can help you monitor the amount of time people spend interacting with your content, as well as activities such as clicking on the play, rewind and pause buttons on your player.

To insert the tracking code on your website, you might need the help of a professional web developer.

4. Branded vs. Non-Branded Traffic

Though most businesses have dedicated customers who purchase goods and services on a regular basis, they are also constantly looking for ways of attracting new customers to their websites.

You need to think of keywords or phrases which your prospects are likely to use when searching for you.

Set up your analytics to show you the amount of traffic received, as well as which branded and non-branded terms visitors use to find your site. Remember to exclude your own visits to the site.

You may be interested in reading this : 35+ Traffic and SEO Tips & Articles From Bloggers

5. Set Up Social Channels

Analytics is a great tool for monitoring social media activity.

Set up your analytics to keep track of your social accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.

You will then be able to know how much traffic the social channels are generating for your site, as well as the number of conversions resulting from your social activities.

6. Campaign Tracking

Your online marketing strategy is likely to include activities such as social media updates, submitting links to other sites, email marketing and pay per click advertising.

You can set up your analytics to show which activities are producing the best results for your business.

For instance, you could share the same information on Twitter and Facebook. Analytics will show you which audiences gave a better response to your content.

You may be interested in reading this : How to Get Likes on Facebook – 500 and More FB Likes in 2 days!

7. Internal Site Search

When visitors are searching for something in your site, they are likely to enter a phrase in the search box.

Once you turn on your site search tracking, you will be able to monitor these searches and find out what kind of information most people are looking for.

In addition, analytics will show you how long they remained on your site, the number of pages browsed and whether they met any of your set goals.

8. Cross Domain Tracking

Some businesses have their information contained in several domains. For instance, you might have a business site, a blog and an ecommerce site all hosted on different domains.

You can set up your analytics to monitor results across different domains. This is a task which will require the help of a professional web developer.

Once the tracking code is set up, you will be able to monitor web users as they move from one site to another.

Image courtesy of bulldogza at FreeDigitalPhotos.net