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2012 MozCon – Day One Recap

Top 5 take aways from each MozCon day one presenters

Blast sent a contingent from our online marketing team to the 2012 SEOmoz MozConconference in Seattle, WA. Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz CEO and arguably the most influential forces behind link building today, knows how to put on a conference. Over 700 link builders, marketers, business owners and other digital professionals have amassed for three days of talks by some of the best in the business. Day one is in the bag and we have the highlights for those of you not fortunate enough to make the trip.

Go to the MozCon-live site to download the full presentations for all of today’s speakers. Check our blog again tomorrow for another recap of day two of the 2012 SEOmoz MozCon.

Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz.org, Welcome to MozCon 2012

Rand came out like a rockstar to a crowd of groupies. He got everybody into the groove and feeling good with some laughs. by reminding us all that SEO is indeed alive and just as important as ever. The SEOmoz team is bigger and badder than ever before and they’re busy trying to make the digital marketing world a better place:

1. SEOmoz is going to be coming out with new product updates within the next 30 days.
2. A new personal Rand Fishkin blog that he’s going to use to get back to his roots and let his words and imagination fly a little more freely: Moz.com/rand
3. Marketing job board: http://jobs.inbound.org
4. SEO is changing; content and social media are more important than ever. With so many social media networks to navigate the need for expert help is greater than ever.
5. A happy update that Rand’s wife is well down the road to recovery after a serious health problem.

Paddy Moogan, Distilled.net, 35 Ways to Get Links

It’s tough to open a conference, especially when it’s meant to elevate the level of knowledge to an advanced group of professionals. Paddy Moody brought it though and not only shared a ton of very clever link building ideas, but he did it with pinache. He gave a whopping 35 real-world link building tips, but even more valuable was his advice to anybody trying to play in the link building game:

1. Link Building is not as easy as everyone thinks
2. You need influence/trust in order to get links to get links with good content alone. It takes time to gain that trust.
3. Build strong relationships with bloggers by asking them what content they want, instead of telling them, then create infographics based on what they say. Send them the finished product and they’ll rave about it like a real team player instead of a paid lacky.
4. Research your competitors – Find where they: have links, guest blogged, sponsored events, etc. You can then reach out to those same willing sources.
5. Create a Google (or some other of your preference) profile page for your clients. Very high quality link sources, such as newspaper sights, often refuse to link to a homepage. They are much more willing to link to a profile page so create one and offer it to them.

Jon Coleman, REI, Build the Agile SEO Framework

Working for REI gives Jon and his team plenty of opportunity to get feedback from customers and test new ideas. Jon’s talk highighted some solid, well-established business practices that no company should forget:

1. One thing at a time, waterfall development techniques don’t work anymore. They’re too slow
2. Embrace an agile development practice that is dynamic and easily customized and honed
3. Test, test, test. Use real people and listen to what they say
4. Be biased towards action; remove impediments
5. Stop chasing perfection. Mistakes will be made and that’s good

For a full review of Jon’s presentation take a look at a post at SEO.com

Roger welcomes you to MozCon 2012

Jennifer Sable Lopez, SEOmoz, Community as Inbound

Jennifer works for SEOmoz and has gone from being the solo social media manager to community manager for the every growing team of marketers. Strong, outspoken and ready to help, Jen emphasized the need to be a part of the community and helping to nurture the community so it can grow:

1. It’s a team sport – Everyone in the company needs to help and support the community
2. Test, Test, Test – Test everything to figure out what works best, then test again
3. Listen & Act – When someone gives you feedback make sure you act on it
4. Give ‘em Props – If someone in your online community does something good, tell them thanks, publicly
5. Give a Sh.. Care – We are all human beings. Act like it and truly care for those in the community

Jon Henshaw, Raven Tools, How Relationships Drive link Building

Raven Tools is awesome. If you don’t know that for yourself then you need to use it and figure that out. The team at Raven has come out with several big updates over the past couple of months and more are on the way.

Heres what Jon has to say about relationships:

1. Develop relationships naturally. Don’t push and cajole. Don’t be a stalker
2. Treat marketing relationships like any other relationship
3. People want to be heard, noticed and treated kindly
4. Don’t always be selling something
5. BE GENUINE

Annie Cushing, SEER Interactive, Badass Excel Tips and Tricks for Your Data

Annie is the queen of Excel. Spend 5 minutes watching her talk about it and you can see she loves it and loves what it can do. That love has motivated her to know it better than you (and pretty much everybody else), but that’s OK, she also loves sharing what she knows. Here are a few of her most helpful tips:

1. Format your Excel files to make really ugly data sexy
2. Use the Quick Access Toolbar to make formatting quicker
3. Use text filters to help clean up imported data
4. Use conditional formatting to highlight certain metrics
5. Add charts to help bring the data to life

Matt Peters, SEOmoz, Web Spam Research

Ever wonder who is behind all the crazy-advanced logic that it takes to make the SEOMoz index the powerhouse it is? Well, that’s Matt Peters. The guys has a PhD in Applied Math and clearly loves what he does:

1. “Unnatural” sites or link profiles are moderately easy to detect algorithmically
2. mozTrust does a good job predicting spam links
3. A high percentage of non-branded external links are spam – Don’t be afraid of branded anchor text
4. Overall, 17% of sites are penalized, 5% are banned
5. You are at risk to be penalized if you build obvious low quality links.

Will Reynolds, SEER Interactive

Without a doubt the best show of the day was Will Reynolds. I’ve mentioned that the other speakers love what they do, but Will LOVES what he does. The guys is a natural and he gets it in ways that few do. He’s at a point in his career where he can create his own reality and it’s an awesome thing to behold. He gave several great tips that we can all apply to our own lives and do our best to get to our own professional nirvana:

1. Stop talking to clients about “link juice”; they have no idea what that is and they don’t care. Talk to them about revenue, conversions and other “RBS”, real business sh*t
2. Stop utilizing tactics that don’t generate revenue or conversions
3. Building followers is the new link building
4. Set up Google Alerts when you launch new, real content and reach out to those who get on the train
5. DO NOT press enter when you enter a search term in Google. Look at the suggestions that come up and use them in your content. Those are the things people are searching for

Micheal King, iPullRank

If there’s one thing that can be said about Michael King it’s that he knows how to bring it. The guy opened his presentation with a DJ and a rap about marketing; YES! THAT’S how you keep the energy going. Micheal is obviously a guy that has more creativity than he can even harness. Not only did he successfully pitch a new tool to Rand, he also announced several new tools he and his team at iPullRank are in the process of rolling out:

1. Content is the glue of inbound marketing
2. SEOs are not doing Market research as the should – They should be building out personas, researching customers needs, learning what the demographics are
3. “A major virtue of personas is the establishment of empathy and undertanding the individual who uses the product” – Donald A Norman
4. Focus on the story of the customer. Learn what they are trying to accomplish on your site.
5. Find out what your competitors are doing. You don”t want to be left behind.

UPDATE: Check out our other MozCon recaps:

Mozcon Day 2 Wrap Up – Including talks from Richard Baxter, Cyrus Shepard, Ian Lurie, Greg Boser, Rhea Drysdale, Marty Weintraub, Peter Meyers, Jenny Lam, and AJ Kohn

Mozcon Day 3 Wrap Up – Including talks from Martin MacDonald, Aleyda Solis, Mike Pantoliano, Jessica Bowman, Joanna Lord, Rand Fishkin, and Tom Critchlow

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SEO Tips That Take 15 Minutes or Less

While a long standing concerted effort toward SEO can pay off big down the road, don’t forget that sometimes there are quick tasks that can turn the needle.

Over the years, I have heard many times from individuals desiring success in SEO, the request could never gain approval as the resourced time was too great of a budget allocation or that an SEO vendor wasn't in the budget.

This is true to some extent as a full SEO campaign involves the strategic revision to information architecture, attention to SEO design factors, creation of quality content, a blueprint for a link-building initiative just to name a few items. These tasks can take a lot of time and the thought of this can leave many companies throwing SEO on the back burner.

For those of who you fit into this group, read on for eight simple quick SEO revisions that will allow you to potentially create positive affect with your organic search traffic.

For seasoned SEOs this is rather elementary information but should serve as a reminder of what should be a daily check for a site as they require so little time to assess and can be implemented rather quickly. In fact, you could tackle one of these items every day over your morning coffee and in a little more than a week create the opportunity for additional site traffic.

1. Review Your Robots.txt File; Assess Your Meta Robots Tagging

If you have a robots.txt file on your site, check by visiting /robots.txt. You may be surprised to find out you are withholding pages, folders, images, etc. from search engines that can drive traffic to your site.

Additionally, run a site scan with a tool such as Screaming Frog to assess if there are any pages on your site you are excluding via a meta robots tag. Both of these are a very quick fix if you do find issues.

Unknowingly tagged pages or robots.txt entries are usually the culprit of a developer who forgot to remove the designations when a new page rolled live or a previous site administrator who deemed the quality content unimportant for the masses.

2. Review Your Site Organic CTR by Page; Revise the Worst Page’s Title Element and Meta Description

This is both a conversion optimization and SEO tip. The new world of SEO is heavily focused on the message you send, whether it be search engines or users.

Google provides click-through rate data on landing pages and keywords in your Google Analytics account. You don’t think they are providing this data out of the kindness of their heart do you? They are interested in sites that feature enticing and relative search result displays for web users.

While you may have many landing pages with atrocious bounce rates, identifying the worst one or a few will allow you to revise them in a short span of time to reflect listing users want to click. Simply visit your Google Analytics account and traverse to the Traffic Sources-Search Engine Optimization-Landing Pages section. You can also perform this test through the Keyword dimension of this analytical area as well.

Ultimately, You are improving your site in the eyes of the search engine and you may retain some visitors at the same time.

3. Assess Canonicalization of Your Domain

It only takes a moment to rid yourself of one of the most common forms of duplicate content and link value dilution.

Do your site pages exist at www.example.com and example.com? If so then you need to create a permanent 301 redirect directing all non-www. site pages to the www. version pages of your site.

Search engines don’t want to see two versions of your content. It's helpful to combine the inbound link equity of these versions into one page as many people don't always target links to your www version of site pages.

4. Review Your Most Frequently Linked Pages on Your Site

Through the use of a tool such as Open Site Explorer you can gain information in the server status of your most linked content. You may find out a site page that went viral last year and gained a ton of links has since been deleted from the server and displays a 404 code. Additionally, you may also see that a heavily linked page has since been temporarily redirected and is in need of a permanent redirection.

Finding a few of these can result in a few quick redirects to help boost the link value on the domain.

5. Review Your Site for Duplicate Title Elements

Do a quick check of duplicate title elements in Google Webmaster Tools. This can indicate duplicate pages, keyword cannibalization, and bad title element structure.

Checking this Google property feature can quickly show you these issues and give insight into whether you need to spend the next 15 minutes writing unique title elements, creating redirects, or thinking about which of the multiple pages should include a certain keyword term.

6. Find Your Most Authoritative Links; Request an Anchor Text Change

I see it all the time, sites which have links from very authoritative sites anchored on the text Click Here, Buy, Learn More. It drives me nuts!

All your anchor text doesn't need to be keyword-rich, but it helps to identify your strongest links and reach out to these sites and request a text modification to a non-branded are partially branded variation. You can assess your anchor text by linking site authority with tools such asOpen Site Explorer and Majestic SEO.

7. Review Your Link Targets in Your Site Navigation and Any Other Sitewide Links

By reviewing the links in your main, footer, breadcrumb and any other supporting navigation you can quickly assess if you have duplicate content issues with pesky default pages (e.g., /index.html). These pages should be redirected to the absolute page and the links should also be revised to target the absolute page. These revisions clean up many, many internal linking deficiencies across your site.

8. Verify Your Google and Bing Local Listing

As web users become more localized in their searching behavior it becomes imperative that your off-site listings are owned by you. It doesn’t take long to claim your listing and show search engines that you have control over your external profiles.

Another reason this is a must: this is also believed to be a local algorithm ranking factor. Look to establish verification with other web profiles on sites such as Yelp down the road.

No More Excuses

Creating an SEO friendly site is no longer too expensive or too time consuming. Taking 15 minutes out of your day here and there can do a lot to the search marketing success of your site.

Editor's note: This column originally was published on February 6, 2012, and comes in at No. 3 on our countdown of the 10 most popular Search Engine Watch columns of 2012. As the clock ticks down to 2013, we're celebrating the Best of 2012 by revisiting our most popular columns, as determined by our readers. Enjoy and keep checking back!

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Learn SEO And Earn Money Online|SEO Training Course|Adwords| Google Certification|seo expert Arif anjum

Adwords enhanced campaigns, tablets & responsive web design

The problem: desktop and tablet biddding is now one and the same Ive been using the new Adwords Enhanced campaigns now for a little while and it has some really great things about it and I promise ill be sharing some of those great things here shortly. I cant help feeling however exceptionally frustrated about Google not allowing me (and you) the ability to bid differently for tablet devices. Ive read alot about others finding tablet traffic converts higher. My experience is usually the exact opposite in that they convert significantly worse.

Why is this a problem? As good practise I use desktop, tablet and mobile version of campaigns (3 campaigns) as each device tends to convert very differently and without this separation, and bids being equal, CPA varies alot. In my experience worse on tablets and much worse on smart phones. The solution; have the 3 campaigns and bid differently based on the CPA data you witness, just as with any PPC campaign.  Now we can bid different for smart phones, BUT not at keyword level anymore (thats a whole different story) but we cant bid separately for desktop and tablet. This in effect means either a) reducing the desktop/tablet combined bid to counter the higher CPA from tablets and get overall CPA back where you want it or b) keep the bidding where it is to avoid a reduction in conversions and accept that your tablet traffic is going to convert more expensively and overall CPA is going to be higher.

Another solution Responsive web design. If you havent heard this phrase yet and you even remotely rely on a web site or sites for a living then you soon will. If you are a siteowner and especially an ecommerce site owner, responsive web design will be something you need to address sooner rather than later. In short we all need to get our sites to convert better from tablet and smart phone traffic. Google’s insistence that tablet and desktop traffic behaves similarly will then not be such a problem.

Why does tablet (in my experience) and mobile perform worse than desktop (when I say desktop I also inc laptop)? Screen size and ease of browsing/shopping is perhaps the biggest factor. User intent is at least a close 2nd i.e. people are more likely to research or look out of interest on a smart phone and part with their cash on their desktop when they have the inclination and easier experience of purchasing. Having a site that allows people to view your products clearly and, more importantly, buy them easily is important. Duh, stating the obvious I know but its going to become increasingly important because a) more and more people have smart phones and are using them to browse possible purchases b) increasingly more and more of your sites traffic is from smart phones (if you dont believe me just check your analytics!)  and c) your competitors are building sites that work better than yours on tablets and smart phones. Ill also throw in a d) if you do any kind of serious email marketing a disproportionate amount of your opens will be from smart phones. To wrap up, Adwords is changing, device usage is changing and all of us that rely on the web had better adapt and get used to it!

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Search Engine Optimization Research Tools

Do you know that MOST online businesses FAIL in SEO and Internet Marketing because of improper competitive analysis, improper keyword research and (because of Google’s Penguin Update) having the wrong keyword theme?

Many new clients and students come to us saying they feel that it is a lot harder today to rank high on Google’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) then it was a couple years ago.

But once they learn these 3 powerful professional SEO tools that I am about to share with you, they quickly realize that Google has opened new doors of opportunity for their online business while locking out their competitors.

Allow me a moment to explain.

First you have to do competitive analysis of all your competitors in your niche. Identify their strong points and weak points so you know what exactly what you have to do to take them out.

Second, you need to separate profitable keyword phrases from unprofitable ones. Find those windows of opportunity to focus your resources.

Now with Google’s recent Panda update, it’s critical to have your landing pages optimized with the correct keyword theme.

“Sure there are tons of free tools out there that you can pick from to compile all this data. However doing this effectively with a patchwork of tools will take hours if not days away from your business.

I have a site I’ve had for awhile, sells a physical product, and use it as my learning tool.  I wanted to run the tools on my own site to familiarize with them.  I watched the training webinar and rewatched the SEO advanced segments on Scout and Recon.  Holy cow.  This data is amazing!!  I have a lot to learn by making changes and observing the results…but damn.  If I combine the “minor search engine rewrite” from Scout data then modify on/off page factors with Recon, how do I not win?  It can’t be that easy.  I have the wide eyes of a newbie here, but it really boils down to math in my opinion.  What a powerful tool.  Wow. “ Shane – 2012

SEO Tool #1 – SEO Recon

Imagine having the power of “Spying” on the top online competitors in your niche knowing exactly what their strong points and their weak points are.

And then with this detailed reconnaissance information you could effectively map out your battle plan and align your resources to take them out.

Introducing SEO Recon – The Competitive Edge Solution

SEO Recon one of the most powerful competitive analysis tools available today.

• Gathers all your competitor data for you, both On-page and Off page SEO factors
• Performs more research in a fraction of the time
• Analyzes your competitive landscape without relying on traditional rank checking methods
• Reveals the EXACT SEO factors that are most important for you to focus on

Benefits of SEO Recon

• More Productivity – Saves you time and money by getting your competitive research done in a fraction of the time
• Better Intelligence – Know more about your competitors than your competitors know about themselves
• Specific Guidance – SEO Recon provides you with a detailed roadmap providing you with a strategy for your on-site and off-site SEO

SEO Recon requires a silver or higher Majestic SEO Account ($49.00 a month) and their SEO Recon OpenApp Authorization.

“A couple of weeks ago, I used your tool to grab a big list of high quality sites as potential link partners. The tool told me that if I improved my inbound links, I’d replace the #7 position on page 1 for my keyword, and I didn’t think much of it at the time.
Well, after about 2 weeks, my rankings jumped up onto page 1 for that keyword I was targeting (and this keyword has over 2 million EXACT MATCH Competing Sites, so it’s freakin’ competitive).
The freaky thing is I replaced the exact competitor that SEO Recon told me I was going to replace. Now THAT is amazing. It was also a weird feeling, like a prophecy coming true.
NOW do you understand why I want more training on SEO Recon? The tool is like a personalized treasure map that you create at will. Keep up the good work!”
- Rich Winer, Arizona (SEO Training SW Student)

(For Rich, the value of the traffic increase from one keyphrase in dollars in terms of Google AdWords would be worth $66,660 per month. Based on Avg. CPC and Estimated Organic CTR.)

SEO Recon Features and Benefits (PDF)
SEO Recon Action Step Report (PDF)

SEO Tool #2 – SEO Sniper

Did you know that the #1 reason most online business fail is because of improper keyword research?

Knowing the competitiveness, search demand and the commercial value for your each of your keywords is a critical for your online success.

Introducing SEO Sniper – Superior Keyword Research

SEO Sniper provides you with an estimate of monthly traffic volume for each of your keyword phrases. It’s based upon the research behavior of over 35 million searches and over 15 million click-throughs.

Benefits of SEO Sniper

• The SEO competitiveness for your key phrases
• The search demand for your key phrases
• The commercial value for your key phrases”

“I consider the combo of your service with Google data to be the best opportunity for enlightened keyword research. Beats the pants off Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery, etc., which, according to Wordtracker Mike Mindel, base their KEI on only .68% of actual Google search results”
Don Kaufman, NY – CEO, 

SEO Tool #3 – SEO Scout

Imagine knowing the exact keyword phrases, in order of their importance that Google uses to determine the ranking of your site!

In February of 2011 Google released the most significant change to their algorithm ever, the Panda update.

The Panda update basically compares the written content on your site to hundreds of other sites Google has already indexed in your niche for the relevancy of your content.

If Panda decides that your content is more relevant than your competitors, you will get a boost in Google’s SERPS. If it isn’t, your site is buried.

So how do you know if your content is more relevant than your competitors?

Introducing SEO Scout – Competitive Content Relevance for SEO and PPC!

SEO Scout takes your keyword phrase and compares the content on your landing page(s) to the top 100 sites Google already has indexed in their SERPS. It provides a relevancy score of your page along with a list of keywords ranked in order of importance.

SEO Scout takes the guess work out of copywriting by providing you with a detailed spread sheet of your competitive landscape for your primary keyword phrases.

You can now find and identify all the important missing secondary terms on your site within seconds.

Benefits of SEO Scout

• KNOW (not guess) which terms will boost the relevance of your copy.
• LEARN how relevant your link partners are.
• IMPROVE the Quality Score of your PPC landing pages.
• OVERCOME an important challenge posed by the Panda Update.

You will be able to measure the improvements you make to your page in real time.

“I often wonder when I talk to most SEOs if they actually have to go after the type of terms I need to rank for, like flowers or rose, which are the big money terms for 1800Flowers.com, where I run SEO. So I was delighted to try SCOUT on one of my other outside accounts to go after the word “glasses”. Using SCOUT I was able to move the site from page 3 to page 1 on Google, at position 1 to 6, mostly in position 3 or 4. Are there other factors like links, of course but I’ve used Mike Marshall’s technologies over the years and they work, give them a try!”

These Professional SEO Tools Are Now Available to the Public for the First Time Ever!

First allow me to introduce to you Michael Marshall the CEO of Internet Marketing Analysts, LLC who is the developer of these three amazing tools.

Michael has advanced degrees in linguistics, semantics, mathematics and engineering and is one of the top SEO consultants in our industry with a focus on competitive research.

Since 2007, Michael has only been offering his suite of professional SEO tools to his large 

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Earn with your own website

You can earn a decent amount of money 

if you dedicate some advertising space on your website or blog. 

You will get paid when someone clicks on a ad placed on your website or blog.

Earn for visiting sites - You can Earn a few cents per website you visit,

 through a specific paid to click network.

Earn by Writing article - There is thousands of websites want to pay you for your article or writings.

Get paid to signup - You can earn some money by joining a website as a member.

Work from home jobs - Actually i am talking

 about freelance and outsourcing jobs with what you can earn your livelihood.

Earn money with your own website

If you have your own website or blog with good number of visitors,

 then you can earn a good amount of money by placing advertisements on your website. 

There are some third party websites what serves ad on your webpage and pays you.

 All you need to do is just register with one of them and after logging into your account

 you will get some HTML ad code. Then place those codes on your webpages and ads will start appearing.

 The thirdparty website will pay you on the basis of how much visitor views and clicks on those ads.

 Finally after each month you will get paid via check, paypal or other payment systems.

Premium Membership Upgrades

YOU Premium Members Commission rate by level Earnings for this level Total Earnings

Level 1 5 members $2.00 each $10.00 $10.00

Level 2 25 members $1.00 each $25.00 $35.00

Level 3 125 members $1.00 each $125.00 $160.00

Level 4 625 members $1.00 each $625.00 $785.00

Level 5 3,125 members $1.00 each $3,125.00 $3,910.00

Level 6 15,625 members $1.00 each $15,625.00 $19,535.00

Level 7 78,125 members $1.00 each $78,125.00 $97,660.00

Level 8 390,625 members $1.00 each $390,625.00 $488,285.00

This is where the true power of the basic affiliate program comes into play.

 With 8 levels there's no limit on how much you can earn,

 although you'll have to upgrade yourself to take full advantage of this 

because Standard members earn only from their direct referrals. Whenever your direct referrals upgrade

, you're instantly paid $2.00! If you are a Premium member and if 

your referrals refer others who also upgrade

 you are instantly paid $1.00 for each upgrade through 8 levels! You just got paid for doing nothing!

The Standard membership is FREE. 

A Premium membership upgrade costs only $17.00 USD for 1 year, a fraction of what other wst  websites charge.

Below is an illustration of what could happen if you refer only five new members 

 who upgrade to a Premium account and your downline members do the same...through all eight levels:

Just imagine the possibilities if you and the others in your downline refer 3, 4, 5, or more members

 who upgrade to Premium each month!

Of course, this isn't the typical earnings that a member will receive. However, 

it does show the unlimited earning potential that ClixSense can provide to its members. As with anything else, 

the rewards that you receive is determined by the effort that you put into it.

Make Money With wst

wst offers one of the most lucrative affiliate programs in the wst  industry.

 Not only are you compensated for referring others you also get commissions

 whenever your direct referrals click on wst  Ads, complete tasks,

 purchase advertising or whenever they or their referrals upgrade to Premium through 8 levels!

 With multiple streams of income your earnings potential is unlimited.

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How to Track Outbound Links using Google Analytics

For sure you have some outbound links in your website going to other websites for various reasons. We sometimes cite other websites as sources of fun, information, or attribution, etc. You can track which outbound links are clicked by your users by adding a short, simple code in your Google Analytics Tracking code.

Where are you Going?

For sure you’d like to see where your visitors are headed to after they’ve been through your website. Tracking where all your outbound traffic is headed can tell you which outbound links are doing well in your website and which are not. Here’s the code to track all outbound links in your website:

<script type=”text/javascript“>

var a = document.getElementsByTagName(‘a’);
for(i = 0; i < a.length; i++){
if (a[i].href.indexOf(location.host) == -1 && a[i].href.match(/^http:///i)){
a[i].onclick = function(){
_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'outgoing_links', this.href.replace(/^http:///i, '')]);
}
}
}

</script>

What this code does is it gets all your <a> tags (which is what your links are made out of) and appends an onClick function to it. The onClick function will create an Event Category which will be outgoing_links, and the event action will be the URL.

Put this below your Google Analytics Tracking code like this (highlighted in blue):

<!–THIS IS YOUR GOOGLE ANALYTICS TRACKING CODE–>

<script type=”text/javascript”>

var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-xxxxxxxx-x']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);

(function() {
var ga = document.createElement(‘script’); ga.type = ‘text/javascript’; ga.async = true;
ga.src = (‘https:’ == document.location.protocol ? ‘https://ssl’ : ‘http://www’) + ‘.google-analytics.com/ga.js’;
var s = document.getElementsByTagName(‘script’)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
})();
var a = document.getElementsByTagName(‘a’);
for(i = 0; i < a.length; i++){
if (a[i].href.indexOf(location.host) == -1 && a[i].href.match(/^http:///i)){
a[i].onclick = function(){
_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'outgoing_links', this.href.replace(/^http:///i, '')]);
}
}
}
</script>

<!–END RECORD OUTBOUND LINKS CODE–>

This should track all your outbound links. You can check this at the Content -> Events section when you go to your Google Analytics account.

You will be able to see something like this:

(Click the Image to Enlarge)

Event Category is the name of the event. In this example, it is the name of my outbound links – if you noticed, I customized my Events Categories giving them names like ‘SEO Services SB’, ‘SEO School SB’, ‘Facebook Group SB’, etc. You can also customize your Event Categories by using the onClick function for Google Analytics Events tracking here.

Total Events is the times the Event occurred – in this case, it’s the number of times my outbound link was clicked by a user.

Unique Events is the times the Event occurred for a Unique IP address – in this case, it’s the number of times my outbound link was clicked by a Unique user.

Event Value and Avg Value can be set on Goals Settings. As of now, we will not use these.

Where are You Going?

If you check out my Event Categories, I name my links to my understanding. For example, I append an ‘SB’ label to my sidebar links to see if they are clicked more often than their in-content or image counterparts. For this timeframe, it strongly suggests that my sidebar links are the most clicked links – particularly my SEO Services link and SEO School link.

If you want to check your outbound links without the categories simply click the ‘outbound-article’ Event Category and it should take you to the raw URLs of your outbound links.

The results should look like this:

One More Trick

When you’re tracking site-wide outbound links, you can check which pages prove most effective in compelling your users to click-through. Simply add a secondary dimension like this:

Then filter the results such that it won’t show you anything but your site-wide links (you shouldmanually put a customized onClick Events Tracking code in your Site-wide links to effectively track them.) First, click on the Advanced Filter link:

Then Exclude all non site-wide links (Event Category) in my case it is labeled as an ‘outbound-article’ and an ‘outbound-menu’ :

Your Google Analytics should show you data that looks like this:

This data tells me on which landing page has any of my site-wide links have been clicked. This is especially helpful if you are testing sidebar ads, banners, links or email signup forms.

Tips for Keeps: Implementing this Google Analytics Outbound Links Tracking code is a piece of cake – paste the code beside your Google Analytics Tracking code to start gathering your outbound user activity data.