Back in the early days of my online business efforts, I had very little knowledge about what was happening “behind the scenes”. In fact, the only way I knew where my customers were coming from was by reading the postal addresses they provided for me to send their products to. I would pick keywords out of thin air and just hope for the best! Surprise-surprise, the business never did turn out to be the million pound venture I had envisioned but it taught me how important it is to understand where your traffic is coming from.

Many moons later, I was introduced to Google Analytics and had a classic “Eureka” moment. If only I had known about this before! Not only did I realise what content was converting, but I could make adjustments quickly and effectively, gradually building a steady stream of traffic.

As the world of online business has developed and become ever more competitive, it’s not only vital that we monitor our traffic, but also that we make necessary changes as quickly as possible. It’s not enough to make changes as and when you add new pages, products or features. You have to be first to spot the gaps. But until now, we could only use Google Analytics to make changes based on information we had about the past. There’s only so fast you can be when you are reacting to something which happened a few hours ago, yesterday or last week!

With the new Google Analytics Real Time Reporting, we can monitor our traffic as-it-happens. It’s a live view at what’s going on RIGHT NOW. The old adage “Knowledge is King” still applies but now it’s about who can get it quickest.

Application of Real Time Google Analytics

I’m sure it won’t take long for SEOs and Digital Marketers to find tons of different ways to use the new real time data and you can’t help but get excited about the potential of this update.

Here are a few ideas that I’ve come up with but please be sure to leave a comment with some of your most elaborate ways to apply this powerful tool.

If you are launching a product discount, perhaps for one day only, you can monitor your promotional activity in real time. As soon as you see traffic tail off, you can see exactly when to “ re-engage” and get promoting again, without fear of overkill. You can also see what promotion techniques are actually driving traffic to the product and which are a waste of your time.

If you see searches are particularly high for a certain product/service, due perhaps to an unforeseen trend or news story, you can maximise your sales by promoting that particular product or service while the demand for it is still “hot”. Be the first to see the demand, be the first to supply it.
It’s hard to gauge how much immediate traffic a new blog post is generating, at least it has been until now. With Google Real Time Analytics you can see the traffic your new post is bringing your site, as it happens. You can also use it to see when your tweets have stopped bringing traffic to the blog post and re-engage again. Real Time Social Monitoring!

Real Time Google Analytics is available now, although you may have to select it via the “New Version” button, in the “Home” tab. Enjoy but be warned, it is highly addictive!

It's likely you will land on the "Standard Reporting" version. To see "Real Time", click on the "Home" tab

Here you can select how you want to sort the real time data.

We have been searching high and low for the perfect candidate, little did we know he was hiding in Wales, but we managed to persuade him to come and join us in sunny Surbiton. We are delighted to welcome Ben Holbrook to our team at Verve Search.

Ben is  a natural born entrepreneur having started his own coffee shop straight after university, but after working in the cafe trade for 3 years he decided to take a ‘year out” and moved to Spain to work as a language teacher. He then got “bitten” by the SEO bug in Barcelona whilst just minding his own business walking down the street. No not quite like that, he started working for a an online relocation company and was set the task of improving their organic and social media visibility. Ben then moved back to the UK this year where we quickly scooped him up after interviewing him a little while back. Ben will be working across our client portfolio on both SEO & Social projects and is currently a Jedi in training.

We asked him a few well thought out questions to help you get to know Ben, here’s what he said:

What’s your favourite movie?
I have watched “Catch Me If You Can” a thousand times and am still amazed that it’s based on a true story! I’ve read the book and the reality is even stranger than fiction.

Have you seen Star Wars (if not you’re fired) and which was your favourite?
YES! The first Star Wars film scared the hell out of me and I loved it!

Han Solo or Luke?
Yoda!

What is it about SEO that captures you?
It’s a dynamic and creative role which combines people, communication and technology. There’s always something new to learn and always something exciting going on.

City or Countryside?
Monday to Friday City. Weekend Countryside.

What’s the last song you listened to on your iPod?
I’ve never been able to listen to a song the whole way through until I discovered Gotye, check out “Hearts a Mess”.

Twitter or Facebook?
FACEBOOK! I don’t think I could have lived abroad for so long without it. Although I’m slowly but surely being sucked into “Tweetland”!

If you were stranded on a desert Island, hm I mean deserted Island (not a jelly or ice cream one) what would be the 3 gadgets you would need for geek survival?
1. A guitar. I know it’s neither a gadget nor geeky but I never travel without one!
2.  My iPod: 80GB of pure joy. It’s a bit outdated now but the content gets better with age!
3. A Skype equipped laptop: my friends are dotted all over the place!

Welcome Jedi Ben, let the SEO games begin.

You can find Ben on Twitter here!

I attended the UK Search Awards last week with Ciaran Oliver from my team here at Verve Search, we had entered the category ‘Best SEO Campaign’ for the awards and were totally stoked when we WON the category. Little did I know that wasn’t the end of the happy “surprises” that evening. Second to last was the category ‘Search Personality of the Year’. The category didn’t have a shortlist announced and was publicised as just announcing the winner on the evening of the awards. My dear Sam Skywalker (that would make me Obi One Kenobi, whom I always wanted to be, maybe minus the beard) entered me into the awards before he left on his travels down under (also known as Oz). BUT I didn’t for a million years think I would actually WIN this award. Albeit there is video evidence of me somewhere on the net applying lipstick just before they announced the winner (this was in fact just to hide the wine lips rather than preparation for my “winning speech” lol I honestly had no idea).

The lovely Richard Gregory (CEO of Lattitude) presented the category and gave me my award (below), I had to concentrate to keep my mouth closed and not look like a gaping nutter.

I did however do an acceptance speech (don’t know why its called that, it’s not like I would go: no thanks not accepted). As I wasn’t prepared for it, I accidentally swore, snort laughed (I do that when I’m nervous) and bla bla’d like it was no ones business. All around classy speech basically. Although I have had a few weird remarks about my “personality” I would like to point out I don’t think ‘Search Personality of the Year’ doesn’t literally refer to someones personality, I would never have won based on that (I refer back to snort laughing and bla bla).

The official description of the category ‘Search Personality of the Year’ on the Search Awards website is: “Recognition of a talented and inspiring practitioner who has revolutionized the UK search industry” and not “Recognition for getting people laughing at conferences and seminars near you”, although that would be pretty good too, like an ‘SEO Stand Up’. Although I do seem to recall the only people ever laughing at my jokes are Beccy Weeks and Sam (Ciaran isn’t there yet) so maybe a future in SEO Stand Up is not for me.

I did however (finally) get my hands on the entry that Sam wrote for entering me into the awards and that got me all “Halle Berry”. I would like to share parts of the entry with you (seriously Sam deserves a prize for the entry):

“Lisa’s main objective within and outside of the SEO Industry has always had a focus of transparency, leading by example she shares her knowledge willingly and without hesitation. She is passionate about SEO and works hard towards the objective of improving the SEO industry. SEO is not an exact science and there are a lot of opinions within the industry so separating what is good honest SEO advice to bad practise and potentially harmful to a business is key for Lisa. Having started her own agency, Lisa faced the difficulty of being taken seriously and gaining respect from prospective clients because of their previous experiences with SEO agencies that didn’t deliver. She overcame this by educating and building a relationship based on trust, honesty and transparency. Lisa is passionate about the industry not being smeared by the dodgy tactics that some agencies still employ. As a mother of 2 (of which one was born last year) she juggles, parenting, running an agency, blogging and still have the energy to fight for the industry she feels so passionate about.

I first met Lisa in 2007 and she has always been an advocate of demystifying the clouded and negative image a lot of individuals and organisations have about the SEO industry.  Lisa has worked hard to create transparency in the industry and has contributed to numerous best practise publications including B2B Marketing and e-Consultancy (2010 and 2011 respectively) as well as training course and speaking at conferences. Lisa is a firm believer in sharing her knowledge and does not hold back, as she often says “sharing doesn’t give me less clients it proves I know what I’m talking about”. Lisa is a firm believer in karma within business so often goes out of her way to help clients or individuals. A recent example is setting up the Google Places account for her favourite local coffee shop which is struggling for business. Lisa at heart is an educator and trainer and not only have I learnt a lot from her, she also inspires a lot of individuals inside and outside of search, most recently she has become an ambassador at her local university entrepreneurship society where she helps mentor young students.”

I’m genuinely honoured and lucky to be recognised and respected for my efforts within this fabulous industry and most of all very grateful to have such talented people working with me, not only within Verve Search but the blogging teams at State of Search and SEO Chicks and elsewhere on the “tinternet”.

Cheese fest over. Sam: thank you for entering me and writing such a fantastic bio and entry! SEO Industry: thanks for putting up with my stupid humour and slightly overtly direct nature. Cling cling (that’s a Champagne glass btw). Cheers!

Thursday night last week (3rd November) the UK Search Awards kicked off at the Emirates Stadium (the home of Arsenal football club). Myself and Ciaran were attending the awards ceremony (Nick and Sam are otherwise busy on opposite side of the globe) and were super excited. Verve Search had entered and been shortlisted in the category ‘Best SEO Campaign’ with our client Yale Door. We knew the competition was fierce in this category looking at the number of shortlisted entries. You can only imagine our surprise and utter delight when the category presenter said the words “and the winner is…..Verve Search!”. I looked at Ciaran, who was casually having another sip of his drink and saw the change in his face as he finally recognised the words VERVE SEARCH (get there faster Joey!)!

Here’s a very happy Winning Verve Search Team with the category presenter Christian Olson from Crystone giving us our award (in hindsight I should not have been in the middle between these two guys, I look like a hobbit, ha! But who cares, we won!):

In proper “Hollywood” fashion we would like to ‘give out’ some thanks. First of all we would like to thank the client, Yale Door, for being such a fantastic client. I truly believe that half the battle with SEO is getting the clients to implement and carry out your recommended changes. In my experience it can takes months just to convince a client to carry out extensive changes to a site in order to be optimised properly. But Yale Door came into this working relationship ready to take on board all our recommendations and trusting us from the word go. Secondly, I would like to thank the amazing team here at Verve Search, all of whom has worked on the Yale Door account; Sam, Nick and Ciaran have all helped making this a winning SEO campaign. As a result of this great working relationship and our SEO knowledge we generated a 713% increase in Organic traffic for Yale Door in a 12 month period. And maybe more importantly and true to our ethos of ‘generating traffic that generates business’ the Yale Door campaign achieved a ROI of 899%.

It’s truly an honor to win such recognition for our work, go team!

For a full list of the WINNERS at the Uk Search Awards last week check out the State of Search winners announcement

I went to the Adobe seminar on Search hosted at the Soho Hotel in, surprise surprise, Soho. What a venue by the way, great looking place. There was some networking to start with and I met quite a few of the movers and shakers in the industry, which was great. We were then shown into the sumptious cinema for the main event.

There was an introduction to the whole event by Neil Morgan, (Senior Director Digital Marketing, Adobe EMEA) and he explained the morning had been devoted to clients and the afternoon session was devoted to agencies.

What Neil explained was that Adobe is well know for the creative suite of software about 15 at the moment, but since it bought Omniture in 2009 for an eye watering $1.8 Billion they have moved firmly into the search and analytics markets. The combination of creating content and delivering then measuring the results seems to be their current mission. The brands that currently use Omniture reads like a who’s who of the biggest companies in the world, BBC, Oracle, Nike to name a few.

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