Testing And Experimenting Is (Or At Least Should Be) The Backbone Of Any SEO Strategy.

Most professional SEO companies and experts routinely conduct formal and informal SEO experiments, some of which are generously posted online for education and calibration purposes. At SEO.com, we encourage our employees to build and monetize personal websites when they’re not at work, as an opportunity to innovate, test, and take risks that we can’t with our client campaigns at work.

Now I’m sure this post will attract a lot of scientific method purists that insist that 99% of these tests are invalid because they were conducted in uncontrolled environments, or didn’t account for all possible external variables, etc.  And they would be absolutely right, but I respond with a paragraph from John Quarto-von Tivadar’s MarketingLand post, mainly because I couldn’t have said it better myself:

Ever hear the adage, “Anything worth doing is worth doing wrong”? It’s a great way to think about testing and improvement of any kind, because it deals with the fact that the first step toward improvement always “feels” the hardest. It speaks to the moment when you’re most susceptible to false objections like “It’s too complex!” or “That’s inefficient!”

In my opinion, these studies are incredibly valuable and interesting, and should be read and understood with a conscious understanding that they are not examples of perfect science. They’re “helpful” observations, that in most cases increase our understanding of the science of SEO and its best practices, even if they’re not scientifically sound.

2012

• Do Capital Letters Affect SEO
• Google Plus SEO Experiment
  An experiment dealing with the effect of +1s on ranking URLs.
• Life After Penguin
  Ian Howells walks through some interesting findings regarding pages that have been hit by Penguin.
• SEO Experiment with Non-Link References
• Testing the Effects of Negative SEO
• Recovering from the Penguin Update (A True Story)
  Nick Eubanks depicts the effects of switching exact match vs branded anchor text.
• Diversity of Anchor Text Test (testing the Penguin update)
• SEO Experiment: Google Image Search
• Geolocation Results with Generic Searches (Google)
• Guest Blogging Outreach Test
  Brilliant post analyzing effectiveness of various methods of guest blog post outreach.

2011

• Testing the 1st Link Priority Rule
  Christian Greiner Follows Up on SEOmoz’s 2008 test regarding anchor text attribution.
• 6 Extreme Canonical Tricks
• Schema Examples
  Although not titled as an SEO test, Craig presents some examples and screenshots of the result of testing some Schema attributes.
• A Quick Experiment with Google+
• Eye Tracking SERPs Test
• HTML Link and Image Attributes
• Testing the Value of Hyphenated vs Non-Hyphenated Domain Names
• Which Type of Anchor Text is Most Effective?
• Title Tags – is 70 Characters the Best Practice?
  Cyrus follows up on David Naylor’s 2010 experiment proving Google indexed at least 213 characters of title tags.
• An Experiment in Boosting Google Rankings w/Search Volume

2010

• How Tweets Influence Search Rankings
• SEO Experiment: NoFollow Links DO Pass Value & Rankings in Google
• Whiteboard Friday – We Bought Links, and It Worked
• Local SEO Experiment – Google’s Change Location
• How Many Page Title Characters Does Google Index?
• Why Targeting an Indented Listing May Be a Bad Idea
  “Indented” listings are a little out of date, but I would be interested to test how/if it’s changed for double listings in 2012.

2009

• Keyword Rich Internal Anchor Text – How Much is Too Much?
• Testing the Value of Anchor Text Optimized Internal Links

2008

• First-Link Anchor Text Attribution
  Rand confirms that only the first link in the source code, pointing to any other specific page on the web, actually passes any anchor text attribution. So don’t think you’re helping your home page by linking with “cheap gifts” in your footer, after you’ve linked to your home page 3 times already.
• First Link Counted Rebunked
  SEO Scientist Rebunks SEOmoz’s tests on first link anchor text attribution.

2007

• Testing the Value of W3C Validated HTML vs Non-Valid HTML

This list is certainly not complete, so please be as generous in the comments as these professionals were kind enough to post their findings for our benefit in the first place, by adding any tests you’ve conducted, or that you feel will complete this list (to date).

31 Must-Read SEO Experiments and Test Findings is a post by SEO expert Claye Stokes. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Who isn’t loving the new version of Google Analytics? It’s clean, it’s fast, and the navigation lets you dive deep in one click instead of 10 billion. If I had only one complaint (and I might have a couple more), it would be that we’ve lost the ability to easily see a few specific things, without the need for advanced segments or custom reporting.

I’ve found that we’ve lost some features since the first release of v5 (Google’s codename for the new version of Google Analytics). Chief among them is the loss of a lot of metrics and dimensions in pivot tables, and accessibility of a few metrics, such as the total number of goal completions for a given page, keyword, etc. For some reason, GA only shows a goal conversion rate in their default reports, with no way to see total goal completions, which is frustrating in an agency setting when leads (goals, in GA) are all that matter to the client.

Enter the Google Analytics API. It’s free, with a pretty generous daily request limit, and if you know how to wrangle the API request calls just right, you can pull just about anything you can dream of.

Here is a little example I put together a few weeks ago in preparation for a presentation at the Extended Google I/O conference here in Salt Lake City. When I say  I put it together, I mean that Excel/Google Spreadsheet genius Mikael Thuneberg did most of the heavy lifting – please go check out his work, he has a lot of great tools. I just tweaked a few things and put it into a clean user interface.

Go get your copy of the Spreadsheet I put together here: http://goo.gl/QqlHZ

1. Once you’ve opened it, click File -> Make a Copy…
2. Now you have your own private, secure copy. Go enter your GA username and password in the Settings tab.
   
3. Find the profile number for your GA profile by logging in at google.com/analytics and navigating to that profile’s reporting dashboard. Now look in your address bar and copy/paste the number next to the letter ‘p,’ as shown in this screenshot:
   
4. Now configure the Reports tab to pull any data you want – note that by default, I set the Public Template to only pull 10 rows, but you can edit that in B23 to pull up to 10,000 URLs. I’ve found that Google Spreadsheets does fine up to 2,000-3,000 rows, and then starts to get slow and buggy, but if you’re patient, 10,000 will work. If you need to pull MORE than 10,000 rows, then run 10k at a time by changing the “start at” cell to 10001 the second time you run the report, etc.

To make the tool simple, I’ve made metric and dimension selections available in a drop-down, so that you can easily click and choose any metric. Use a comma to separate multiple metrics, dimensions, filters, etc.

I highly recommend checking out the Google Data Feed Query Explorer to get a more advanced feel for what you can pull. Plus, if you have custom Advanced Segments, you can use the Query Explorer to discover their ID, and enter it into the Google Spreadsheet Report Builder.

There is a little more information in the slides, posted below, and here is a short list of what I’m building into the next version of my report:

• Management API v3 implementation.
• Oauth 2.0 authentication (which means no more manually entering a username and password – rather, you get the usual “Grant/Deny application” buttons and you’re done).
• More interactive user experience, and a report that doesn’t build every time a parameter is updated.

Stay tuned for more developments, and let me know if you’ve found this helpful (or not) in the comments below – what Google analytics reports will you start pulling with it?

How To Pull Custom Google Analytics Reports Into Google Spreadsheets is a post by SEO expert Claye Stokes. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Thanks to everyone that attended the Google analytics webinar last week!

It was filled with some great questions and discussion. Specifically, we talked about actionable ways to use Google Analytics to measure and improve conversion rates. I stuck to the topic of analytics, and didn’t talk about any of the usual CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) topics, such as headlines, copy, calls to action, and keeping things above the fold.

I also may have ranted a bit about the constant loss of data and insight in the new version of Google Analytics (v5) over the last 6-9 months…

The slides are embedded below, and a recording has been posted for your viewing pleasure!

I love talking about conversion optimization and analytics, so if you have questions or comments, use the comment section below or hit me up on G+ or Twitter!

Using Google Analytics for Conversion Optimization Webinar Recap is a post by SEO expert Claye Stokes. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

SMX Toronto was full of a lot of great information. I found that most sessions had at least one presentation that rivaled SMX Advanced conferences I’ve attended in the past, both in speaker quality and in content. In all sessions, every speaker hit it out of the park.

My favorite session was the day after the Penguin update hit, and amazingly there wasn’t a single mention of the webspam update, yet all the content was directly relevant. The session was the “Google Kitchen Sink Panel”, featuring speakers Duran Inci, Ken Dobell, Aaron Bradley, and Ryan Jones.

As a follow up to Greg’s post yesterday about the webspam update, I wanted to throw a quick bullet-point list of my takaways that can be implemented immediately by anyone.

Here is a summary, in short form, of the best takeaways that can help future-proof your site against updates like this Penguin update, or if you’ve already been “pecked” by the Penguin, this is your battle plan, with hand-picked points I took away with me from Toronto:

[Note: Up-to-date SEO professionals won't find anything new here, but I'm a big believer in checklists to hold ourselves to a broad set of best practices, which is why I hope this is universally useful to anyone. My favorite points are at the top and bolded.]

• 2012 SEO is about optimizing data, not keywords, it’s about making content accessible in a wide variety of formats across all devices. – Ken Dobell
• Develop “Power Content” – this is how it’s done:
• Create an update schedule for the top performing 100 pieces of content and update them every 90 days or less (includes home page). Every time you update it, make sure the “last modified” field in your XML sitemap is updated to mark the date of the change. This keeps content fresh. - Duran Inci
• 1000-2000 words in length, should be exceptional quality, use advanced research and present new or interesting ideas.
• Content does NOT equal “copy”. It needs to be RICH – use images, videos, formatting, headings, quotes, etc.
• Use this power content on main pages and category pages, if you have an ecommerce site.
• Get social sharing buttons on all your pages (in another session, Aaron Friedman cited a BrightEdge study stating that social sharing buttons make your content 7 times more visible)
• Remove all exact anchor text links, when possible. - Duran Inci
• Refresh the home page content often. - Duran Inci
• Fix all crawl errors.
• Edit and optimize all major page titles and descriptions so that they are not keyword stuffed, and so they are unique.
• Make sure the blog is in a subdirectory (not subdomain), and is updated regularly with high quality content.
• Create a mobile version of the website – Google cares about multiple devices now so make sure the site works on all of them.
• No link exchanges or sketchy link schemes.
• Create supplemental content for pages and products, like shopping guides. – Duran Inci
• Use a video sitemap, if applicable.
• This is my thought, but heck, even a geo sitemap, schema, and any other ‘bells and whistles’ we can throw on the site will help to differentiate.
• Focus on long-tail: Google’s average search query is over 4 words in length – also, broad (trophy) terms are not nearly as valuable in conversion.
• “A good SEO optimizes where Google is. A great SEO optimizes where Google is going to be.” – @RyanJones, paraphrasing the Great One.

Which of these methods have you already used in practice, and for how long? Is anything here new to you? Did you attend SMX Toronto and want to add anything to the list?

Let’s talk in the comments!

How to Recover from the Penguin Webspam Update: Tips from SMX Toronto is a post by SEO expert Claye Stokes. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

The Search Query report in Google Webmaster tools is more important than ever, with the ominous (not provided) mask hiding 25%-40% of referring keyword traffic in Google Analytics. Google recently made WMT data available through an open source Python Library, making it easy to transfer that data straight into Google Docs or to your desktop, but setup and configuration isn’t easy for most.

To make it a little easier to access that data, I’ll walk you through the beginners steps to get search queries from Google Webmaster Tools using the Google Data Python Library on Windows. Expect this to take at least 15 minutes.

1. Download and install Python

First, download the Windows Installer from the Python.org official download page. At the time of writing, you’ll want the “Python 2.7.2 Windows Installer (Windows binary — does not include source).” If you have a 64-bit machine, make sure you select the “X86-64 Installer.” Once downloaded, open it up and follow the installation wizard. I recommend choosing default settings if you’re a beginner but feel free to customize if you know what you’re doing.

Installing with default settings will install Python in the C:Python27 directory. You don’t need to touch anything in there yet.

2. Download and extract the Google Data APIs Client Library for Python.

Download the latest Google Data API Client Library in .zip or .tar.gz format (recommended if you use WinRar or 7zip), depending on your preference, and extract the contents to the C:Python27 folder.

That will place the zipped “gdata-2.0.16″ folder in your C:Python27 folder, as follows: C:Python27gdata-2.0.16 , which should contain the following contents:

IMPORTANT: Now, you need to copy ALL the contents of the gdata-2.0.16 folder and paste them straight into the Python27 folder. You will probably get a popup saying that the README file already exists – you can  replace it, or skip it, you don’t really need either unless you enjoy the literary merits of README files.

Read more about the Google Data APIs Python Client Library.

3. Install the Google Data API Client Library

Now it gets fun – it’s time to fire up your Windows Command Prompt by finding it in your “Accessories” folder, or by pressing Windows+R, typing “cmd” and hitting “Enter.”

• Navigate into the C:Python27 folder by typing “cd Python27” without quotes.
  “cd” is short for “change directory,” which is how to move from one folder (directory) to another from the command line.
  
• Now that you’re in the Python27 folder, type “python ./setup.py install” without quotes, which will install the client library. If you start seeing hundreds of scrolling lines, you’ve done everything correctly to this point.
  
• (optional) Now you can start playing around with the sample scripts that came with the Data API Library – here is some information on how to do that.

4. Create a ‘wmt’ folder, and set up scripts

• Create a folder in the Python27 folder called wmt, so that it can be found at C:Python27wmt
• Download and place the downloader.py script in the new wmt folder (either copy the code from that page into a new file and save it as downloader.py, or right click the “view raw file” link on that page and save it to the folder).
• Download and place the example-create-spreadsheet.py script to the wmt folder, and right click the file and select “Edit with IDLE”

5. Open the command line and start getting Search Query reports

Now that C:Python27wmtexample-create-spreadsheet.py has been updated with your website of choice, along with your Webmaster Tools username and password, open your Command Line prompt, (make sure you’re still working in the C:Python27 directory), and type in this command:

• python ./wmt/example-create-spreadsheet.py

After several seconds you will see a message that says “Spreadsheet now accessible online at: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/….,” and you can access the CSV file at that URL or by logging into Google Docs!

That’s it!

If you would rather download it directly to your desktop rather than transferring the data to Google Docs, use example-simple-download.py instead.

6. Handy tip

The example-create-spreadsheet.py code provided for Google is great if you consistently pull search query data from only one website, but if you’re like me and you need to easily pull reports for multiple websites, I recommend downloading my modified version:  sq-report.py (right click->Save as…). Everything is the same except for the website field, which you can now call from the command line like so:

python ./wmt/sq-report.py http://www.seo.com/

Replace http://www.seo.com/ with any website your Webmaster Tools account has access to – and don’t forget to edit the sq-report.py file with your username and password.

Now you can easily pull a report for any site you have access to, without editing the Python file every time!

7. Conclusion

I will follow up with instructions for automating this every month for compiling historic data, as Google Webmaster Tools only provides the past 30 days of data.

I hope this is helpful for the average Windows user who may find it trick to install and work with Python code, let me know how it goes and if you run into problems, contact me on Twitter or in the comments so I can help you troubleshoot.

Tutorial: How to Get Google Webmaster Tools Data on Windows With Python is a post by SEO expert Claye Stokes. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

“What’s the best WordPress SEO plugin?”

I’m asked that question all the time, and recently took part in a debate discussing which plugin is best. I decided to draft a features list comparing the top three most downloaded SEO plugins to get a better picture of what each plugin has to offer, et voilà!

I’ll be comparing and contrasting features of the All in one SEO Pack, vs WordPress SEO by Yoast, vs Platinum SEO. To be fair, there is no loser among the three because each plugin is impressive and will make your WordPress site much more search engine friendly. I’ll talk about which plugin is my favorite in the conclusion, so you can review the features bias-free, and implement whichever plugin matches your specific set of needs.

If you know a developer – or anyone that would like their WordPress site to rank well in search engines – please help them out by sharing this review so that these plugins don’t go unused.

The plugins:

All in One SEO Pack
Downloads: 9,570,544
Author: Michael Torbert
Plugin page

WordPress SEO by Yoast
Downloads: 761,035
Author: Joost de Valk
Plugin Page
Author Page

Platinum SEO Pack
Downloads: 656,205
Author: Techblissonline Dot Com (Rajesh)
Plugin Page

Honorable mention plugin: I can’t leave out the oldie-but-still-goodie, SEO Ultimate.

Table of Contents

1. Setup and First Appearances
2. Plugin Features
3. Migration/Import/Export
4. Page-Level SEO Controls
5. XML Sitemaps
6. Google Analytics, Webmaster Tools, and Open Graph Schema

1. Setup and First Appearances

2. Plugin Features

3. Migration/Import/Export

4. Page-Level SEO Controls

5. XML Sitemaps

6. Google Analytics, Webmaster Tools, and Open Graph Schema

There you have it! I’ll repeat myself in saying that all three plugins are fantastic and one of these three plugins should be active on every WordPress installation (that is intended to appear in search engines). With that being said, I’m a huge fan of Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin. It is by far the most complete and has the best looking user interface. I’m certain that it’s only in second place in terms of downloads because it hasn’t been around as long — but just give it some time.

Review: Top 3 SEO WordPress Plugins is a post by SEO expert Claye Stokes. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

A few of these tools also qualify as resources or guides, but every one of these tools has made my life just a little bit easier this year. To all of you in this list, and to those I've missed or forgotten but who have offered free tools in 2011, THANK YOU!

If you're thankful for any other new free SEO tools, please give a shout out and begin a discussion about them in the comments section below.

1. GA Data Fetch Tool for Google Docs

This is a handy tool I’ve been using quite a bit recently to pull Google Analytics metrics into Google Spreadsheets.

Thanks to Jamie Steven of SEOmoz and Mikael Thuneberg of AutomateAnalytics.com.

2. Schema Creator

Raven Tools published built this with impressive speed after the announcement of Schema.org.

3. Excel for SEO

This is part tutorial, part tool, generously made available by Distilled and @MikeCP.

4. SEOmoz Toolbar for Chrome

The on- and off-page metrics provided in this toolbar are incredibly handy on the fly in an agency setting, and let’s not forget their Firefox toolbar. Here is more information about SEOmoz's Chrome Extension - thanks to SEOmoz for this tool.

5. Chrome Scraper Extension

Thanks to Justin Briggs putting this tool on my radar. Here is his summary on the tool and how it can be used for data extraction and SEO.

I’ve already found this tool useful for extracting data from a website for a redesign, and for gathering current on-page elements for analysis such as title tags, heading tags, etc. from a group of pages.

6. Competitive SERPs Analysis in Google Docs

Thanks to Tom Anthony for posting, and SEOmoz for hosting.

Very useful for competitive analysis, keyword research, and beyond (e.g. identifying competitors for on-page analysis and link opportunities, etc.).

7. Search Volume in Excel

Thanks to Richard Baxter for posting, and SEOmoz for hosting.

8. Bing Webmaster Tools Improvements

If you haven’t used Bing’s improved WMT suite, it’s time to start! Aside from tool improvements and multiple-user access, these updates are proof of Bing’s willingness to take feedback and listen to users and webmasters.

A large set of improvements were announced and launched in June, and even more updates were announced earlier this month.

9. Open Site Explorer Improvements

Open Site Explorer is better looking, more user-friendly, and sports some reporting upgrades that are more than worth a mention (and a thank you to SEOmoz for making this tool available for free).

10. Google+

I had no choice not to list Google+, because of its influence on search and communication in our industry this year. I’m a big Google+ fan btw – my Facebook use has remained the same but I’m never on Twitter anymore.

11. Google Analytics v5

Watching the new version of Google Analytics (v5) evolve over the past year has been a fun ride.

A few improvements worth noting:

• Multi-Channel Funnel visualizations
• It measures Site Speed
• Custom Dashboards
• It's prettier
• Webmaster Tools integration 

12. Future Rank

In-house and agency SEO professionals alike have been able to use this tool since April 1st to shock supervisors, get promotions, and land giant deals by predicting ranking improvements more accurately than ever before.

* If you haven’t heard of Future Rank, pay close attention to that launch date.

12 Free SEO Tools of 2011 to be Grateful For is a post by SEO expert Claye Stokes. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Thanks to everyone that attended the webinar this morning! As promised: here is my slide deck.

If you have any questions from the webinar or regarding the slide deck, shoot away on Twitter or in the comments below!

Short Summary

In this webinar, I talk about SEO KPIs that SEO professionals and business owners alike should care about first and foremost. I also talk about how to properly segment website traffic into useful groups in order to prove success in a meaningful and deliberate way.

I also provide some nuggets advanced segment towards the end – including Regexp code and settings for several key advanced segments in Google Analytics, such as:

• Branded terms segment
• Non-branded terms segment
• Target/project keywords segment
• Long-tail keywords segment

Proving the Value of SEO [Slide Deck] is a post by SEO expert Claye Stokes. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

I love tools that provide increased clarity in organic search campaign performance, and I also love finding new ways to use data to report the value of organic search to clients more clearly and precisely.

The GA team has been busy rolling out fancy new reports and features all summer, and two of them in particular provide more clarity in organic search’s role in generating conversions and revenue on websites.

Side note: I am more impressed with the new version (v5) of Google Analytics every day, I love their approach of making continued improvements and roll-outs over time.

Multi-Channel Funnels

If you’re not familiar with the Multi-Channel Funnels report yet, read up! It’s a report that gives marketers a new (for Google Analytics) wealth of data surrounding the various touchpoints visitors have with your marketing efforts before converting on your website.

The Multi-Channel Funnels report answers:

• How many ads did a user click on before making a purchase?
• How many marketing channels do my converting visitors interact with, and which are the most effective?
• What combination of marketing channels is most effective at leading to success?
• Is organic search, an email campaign, or another channel best at generating conversions?
• What role did organic search (or PPC/social/etc.) play in conversions attributed to Direct visits (or email/display/etc.)?

If you’re not familiar with channels in online marketing, they include organic search, paid search, social, email campaigns, direct traffic and referring traffic.

Here are the two reports in the Multi-Channel Funnels section of Google Analytics that you can begin to include in SEO reports today:

1. Assisted Conversions

The Assisted Conversions report provides data on how often organic search “assists” in conversions that are credited to referrals, PPC, banner ads, social media, etc., and vice versa.

Imagine that a user discovers your website via organic search, and only signs up for your newsletter on day one. Two weeks later, you send an email blast that is so persuasive that the user clicks on it and ends up making a purchase on your site. In this scenario, the email campaign gets credit for that conversion and the revenue associated with it, but the Assisted Conversions report will tell you that organic search played a role in that purchase.

In this example, Organic Search assisted in 3,822 conversions, amounting to $169k in revenue:

Before this report, we wouldn’t have necessarily given SEO any credit at all for playing a role in these conversions. Whether direct search, an email campaign, etc. drove the final visits before converting, we can see that organic search had an impact on these 4,000 conversions.

2. Top Conversion Paths

The Top Conversion Paths  report tells us just that – what the best converting paths are across each marketing channel – in most cases, organic will be included in the highest converting path.

Top Conversion Paths Report - Click to Expand

How to see the Multi-Channel Funnels Report in Google Analytics

1. Make sure you’re viewing the new version of Google Analytics by clicking the New Version link at the top of the page.

2. Then go to My Conversions -> Multi-Channel Funnels.

3. Now use the left hand sub-navigation to browse the Assisted Conversions and Top Conversion Paths reports!

Website owners and marketers: comment with your thoughts and what you see in these reports – what role does SEO play in your conversions?

2 New Google Analytics Reports for SEO is a post by SEO expert Claye Stokes. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

[Update 12/5/2011] Thanks to Roy (see comments) for reminding me to follow up with this post – as of two weeks ago, the Site Speed report is available by default in the new (v5) version of Google Analytics. No code snippets or special settings are necessary to view the report – just log in and take a look!

I’m excited about the new Google Analytics interface, and not just because it is faster and looks shiny.

The latest significant feature to be announced is the Site Speed Report (officially announced Wednesday), which gives us the ability to track page load time for every page on a website, and then analyze load speed in great detail.

Why Track Page Load Speed?

First of all, having a fast website can improve rankings, so improving slow pages can have an impact on your organic success. Site speed is an increasingly important ranking factor as Google continues to improve search results with websites that are more useful and user-friendly.

Second, page load speed metrics (in sweet detailed, decimal form) can also be used to improve conversion rates and usability.

Here are questions that Site Speed Reports will help you answer:

• Of your top 10 highest converting landing pages, which takes the most time to load?
• Is a certain browser or device experiencing page load problems?
• What is the relationship between your slowest or fastest loading pages and high or low bounce rates?
• What pages take the most time to load?
• Is a certain country or region experiencing speeds that are out of the norm?

How to Turn on Site Speed Reports to Track Page Load Speed with Google Analytics:

It’s really simple. Just locate the Google Analytics JavaScript snippet embedded in your HTML, and add this method just after the line containing the _trackPageview method:

_trackPageLoadTime();

Here is an example in context (default asynchronous snippet):

For more implementation instructions, or if you’re using a different snippet version than the example above, go ahead and refer to Google’s official Site Speed implementation guidelines.

More Screenshots:

Here are some more examples of the new Site Speed report in the wild. Go implement it on your site and have fun!

Site Speed Dashboard

Page Load Speed by Country

Load Speed by Page

New: How to Track Page Load Speed in Google Analytics is a post by SEO expert Claye Stokes. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.