Pull up a chair, because you're about to be given a whistle-stop tour of how to enhance your business and improve your food operation. You may have seen the huge collection of gold medals that the British cycling team brought home from the Olympics. If so, you might be wondering how they managed such an inspiring achievement? What made our cycling team suddenly succeed at a sport usually dominated by countries like Australia and the Netherlands? The answer is 'marginal gains'. This concept, coin...

When you know how to use analytics, it provides a treasure trove of data that you can use to get more visitors to your estate agency website, improve your website content and convert more visitors into customers. If you don’t already have Google Analytics and Google Search Console set up, then read our simple 'how-to guides' to getting set up on those first.How to set up Google Analytics How to set up Google Search ConsoleOnce you’re all set up, there are five things to look at i...

People leaving your website straight away is bad news. There’s never a time where you’d want someone to leave your website, but now it’s more important than ever thanks (or no thanks) to Google’s RankBrain. RankBrain is a complicated animal, but in a nutshell, Google are now paying closer attention if people click to your website from search results then immediately click back again. If someone does this, it’s a sign that your website didn’t satisfy them, and it’s likely Google wi...

You might have looked at how many people are visiting your website, but do you also pay attention to how many are leaving? Using Google Analytics to find out where people leave Google Analytics can give you insight into where people are leaving your website, and you can then do a bit of detective work to try and work out why that might be. Here's three metrics to look at. Related blog: Learn how to set up Google Analytics 1) Exit pages Go to 'Behaviour > Site Content > All Pages' and ...

Struggling to find the stats you’re looking for in Google Analytics? Then you’re going to love Google Data Studio! A relatively new product from Google, Data Studio allows you to create at-a-glance reports from multiple data sources, including Analytics, Adwords and Google Sheets. And even better, since February this year, Google Data Studio has been free to use for all businesses. Why use Google Data Studio? Instead of having to go into Analytics and spend time unearthing the key statis...

In previous posts we've explained why you should use Google Search Console, plus provided instructions on how to get set up. This is the first in a series on how to actually start using Google Search Console.  A lot of the features of Google Search Console aren't something you need to use every day, and that's certainly the case with the disavow tool. In this blog, you'll learn how you can use Google Search Console to disavow backlinks, and why you might need to do that in the first place....

In the second of our posts on using Google Search Console, we look at how you can tell Google that your site is no longer compromised if a "This site may be hacked" message is displaying above your website in search results. This can happen if your site has been the victim of hackers, spam or phishing scams. Sign up to get updates via Google Search Console If Google add “This site may be hacked” to your search listings, they will notify you via your Google Search Console. Even if your s...

Ever wondered where your website traffic comes from? How do people find you and end up on your site? Thankfully, it’s easy (and free!) to find out with Google Analytics. If you don’t have Google Analytics yet, here’s how to set it up. How to check your website traffic Once your website is set up on Google Analytics, head to Acquisition > Overview in the left hand side menu. From here you will see an overview of all the different sources that are sending traffic to your website....

If you’ve looked in Google Analytics and seen that people are finding your website through search engines, you might have wondered what they typed in to find you. You may have tried to find the answer within Google Analytics, in which case you probably came across the unhelpful term “(Not provided)” where you expected to see the keywords. So does that mean you’ll never know what people are searching for to find you? Thankfully not! Although Google Analytics no longer displays search t...

Google Search Console is a must for any business hoping to get more website traffic from search engines. Not sure what Google Search Console is and why you should use it? Read our Google Search Console blog first. How to set up Google Search Console Ideally, get set up on Google Analytics first, then adding Google Search Console is very easy.Go to Google Search Console.   First you will need to log in. If you have Google Analytics, log in using the same details as you use to access y...

Measuring your progress is an essential part of any successful digital marketing strategy. Google Analytics is a great free tool for measuring and analysing your web traffic, plus it’s fairly straightforward to get set up. If you’ve never used it before, here’s how to get started... Sign up to Google Analytics If you don’t already use any Google services, you will need to create a Google account at google.com/analytics. Ignore all the stuff about premium and sign up for a free account...

Google Search Console (previously called Google Webmaster Tools) has always been an essential tool for search marketing, but it became more important after the introduction of "not provided" search terms in Google Analytics in 2011.This move marked a big change in the world of search engine optimisation as previously search engine success could be precisely measured, right down to the number of click-throughs and conversions from individual search terms. Although not a replacement for detai...

To find out if your website stats are already being affected by referrer spam please read our blog post Is referrer spam affecting your website metrics? Many websites are hosted on web servers that use .htaccess files to control how the server should behave in response to specific requests. The .htaccess file is found in the root of your site directory and can be accessed either by FTP, SSH or web admin control panel such as cPanel. There are two possible methods to block referrer spam to your...

There are a number of WordPress plugins designed to block referrer spam from accessing your website and affecting your analytics data. To find out if your website is affected read our earlier blog post Is referrer spam affecting your website metrics? You can find instructions on how to block referrer spam with WordPress below: The following instructions assume you are familiar with both WordPress and installing plugins. We cannot be held responsible for any detrimental effects and we do not p...

The most effective way to block ghost referrer spam from accessing your website and affecting your analytics data is to set up a custom filter directly in your Google Anaytics account. To find out if your website is affected read our blog post Is referrer spam affecting your website metrics? Set up a View in Google Analytics Before you can begin to use any of the techniques below we recommend setting up an additional view in Google Analytics. The benefit of views is that you can see the effec...

If you are a serious business owner or marketer you probably use Google Analytics or another web analytics solution to help you to measure the results of your investment in marketing. However you may have noticed some strange changes in your metrics lately, including:A large increase in recorded traffic A reduction in your average page views per visit Decreased visit duration Higher bounce rate (visits to a single page)One possible cause could be the recent huge upsurge in referre...