Learn how an innovative retailer used Google Voice to increase their re-orders in this guest post on the Econsultancy blog.

Want to know how to avoid the 8 Second Black Friday trap? Find out my advice on this guest post on the Microsoft Adcenter Community blog.

My good buddy Avinash does a fabulous job on this post explaining Social Media Analytics: Twitter: Quantitative & Qualitative Metrics.

Are you using Google Analytics but would also love the benefit that log file analysis brings in understanding what the search engine bots and spiders are doing? Learn How to Track Search Engine Bots/Spiders with Google Analytics in this nice post.

Garry Przyklenk of PPC Advice does a great job as he interviews me as a sneak peak to Search Engine Strategies Chicago. Will you be at SES Chicago? If so, let’s try and meetup. Feel free to call me at (718) 569-8240.

FreshDirect.com does a fabulous job sending out a lagniappe and reinforcing it in an email before the holidays. What kind of lagniappe are you offering your customers?

For all my American friends I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving. Here is something to enjoy:

Click here to view the embedded video.

and don’t forget this holiday tradition started by David Letterman:

Click here to view the embedded video.

For other great links through out the week, please be sure to follow me on Twitter.

Do you send out emails to your customers? What is the best time to send emails? But David wants to know if you get personal with your customers!

Customer reviews can do amazing things for your business. The questions is, how should etailers ask for customer reviews?

As many of you know I am a online marketing tool junkie (did you miss my 69 free tools?). This week my friend Rand Fishkin shares 30 SEO Problems & the Tools to Solve Them (Part 1 of 2).

How to Add Retweet Buttons in Your PDF Documents. Make it easy for readers to share your ebooks, whitepapers, etc.

Lee Odden does a great job summarizing the Best and Worst Practices Social Media Marketing. You’ll want to be sure you are measuring them properly with Econsultancy’s 35 social media KPIs to help measure engagement.

If you do any any marketing with videos on Youtube, you won’t want to miss this incredibly detailed post on Video Optimization and Analytics: A closer look at YouTube Insight.

Twitter started offering lists. Have you seen any really interesting lists? Have you created any? In the mean time check out 30+ Twitter Lists and 5000+ Twitter accounts worth following. Who is a must follow on your list?

Do you have a WordPress blog? Like free quality stock images for your posts? Check out the FreebieImages WordPress plugin from Crestock.

Earlier this month, The Brand Show headed to Scottsdale, Ariz., for the BOLO 2009 annual conference presented by agencyside. I was one of the keynote presenters with Guy Kawasaki. After the presentations, the Brand Show sat down with many of the speakers and did interviews with them. These interviews include: Jim Lecinski, Managing Director of Global Sales and Service at Google and Amanda Vega, author of “PR in a Jar,” and Marc Poirier, President and co-founder of Acquisio. You can download the mp3 of my interview if you want to listen to it on your iPod.

My friend Chris Garrett teamed up with fine folks from Wordtracker to offer a great new ebook on blogging for business.

In this new e-book “Business Blogging – 50 Steps to Building Traffic and Sales,” you’ll discover:

• Why your business needs a blog (yesterday!)
• The biggest pitfalls of blogging — and how to avoid them
• How to build a following of faithful blog subscribers
• Proven tips for converting your blog traffic into actual sales

The ebook is nicely done, providing very concrete advice to getting your blog set up and getting out of the gate running instead of crawlng. Even after all the years I have been blogging, I caught a thing or two things I needed to do for this new blog.

Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer made some major announcements regarding upgrades to their products. Google Analytics new features include: New Analytics Intelligence (which includes the ability to add an alerts (email) when a key metrics fluctuates, new mobile tracking support, Multiple Custom Variables for visitor segmentation, Advanced Table filtering, you can now have 20 Goals set up, and you can now add Engagement goals.Google Website Optimizer added a new Website Optimizer Experiment Management API. The API allows for the creation and management of experiments outside of the Website Optimizer interface.

I’ve been reading several new books including the just released follow up book to the amazing Web Analytics: One Hour a Day by Avinash Kaushik Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity, I’ve previewed The Art of SEO by Eric Enge, Rand Fishkin, Stephan Spencer and Jesse Stricchiola. The book is due out on October 27th, but pre-order now so you can get it as soon as it starts shipping.

Econsultancy released a new conversion research report. They found:

• Organisations whose online conversion performance had improved over the previous 12 months looked at twice the number of segments as those organisations whose online conversion rates have not improved. The main types of segmentation carried out are: demographic (39%) geographic (36%) and behavioural (33%). Thirteen per cent of companies do not segment at all.
• Company respondents who said they were very satisfied with their conversion rates carried out more than four times as many tests per month on their web properties as those who were very dissatisfied with their conversion rates.
• Only 32% of company respondents said that they were doing A/B testing even though 53% said it was “highly valuable” and a further 42% said they believed it was “quite valuable”. A/B testing is the method which is most likely to be on the agenda, with 46% of company respondents saying that they are planning to do this.
• Similarly, other methods including multivariate testing, user testing and cart abandonment analysis are widely regarded as valuable, but under employed by responding organisations.
• The four practices most closely correlated with high levels of satisfaction with conversion rates are:
  1. Removing bottlenecks and blockages to conversion
  2. Identifying key performance indicators
  3. Aligning keywords, calls to action and landing pages
  4. Using compelling and effective calls to action

Also don’t miss Econsultancy’s Search Engine Marketing Trends Briefing November 2009.

Google and Microsoft Bing announce deals to include real time Twitter search in their results. What will this mean? Microsoft Bing also cuts a deal to include Facebook to include status updates. These are huge events in terms of the future of social media, search engine optimization and of course measuring all this activity.

Google Analytics provides some great information about what is happening on your website. But what if you want to take it to the next level? Thanks to the many smart people who have created these wonderful hacks and plugins to get you some powerful additions to Google Analytics. Please note most of these need the truly awesome GreaseMonkey FireFox extension.

I’d also highly recommend the following 3 books for anyone trying to get the most out of Google Analytics:

• Brian Clifton’s Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics
• Avinash Kaushik’s (Google’s Analytics Evangelist and blogger extraordinaire) monumental Web Analytics: An Hour a Day
• The just released follow up book by Avinash Kaushik Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity

1. Social Media Metrics Greasemonkey Plugin For Google Analytics – it pulls the social media metrics right into Google Analytics Content Detail reports automatically, with links to the social media sites for your pages. It pulls in data from Digg, Sphinn, Mixx, Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Del.icio.us, with more to come.

2. Get Email Alerts from Google Analytics – With this script, you can get an email when any of your websites drop in visit or page view counts (or anything else you want).

3. Better Google Analytics Firefox extension – This wraps up several scripts into one. Among the MUST HAVE plugins. This super-script will allow you to:

• Auto press the “Access Analytics” button, if it is displayed
• Remembers settings you set when you switch between profiles, and allows you to open another profile in a new tab quickly.
• Allows you to export any report available as CSV to Google Spreadsheets.
• Converts percent values to absolute values in tables.
• Provides one-click access to year-over-year reports in Google Analytics.
• Sorts the visible table rows.
• and Adds Digg, Sphinn, Mixx, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us, and Yahoo InLink Metrics to your content detail reports.

4. The Google Analytics Report Enhancer – Get enhanced segmentation, you will also be able to segment by transaction, adgroup, and referral path anytime a segmenting opportunity comes up. Now you can see exactly which transactions are attributed to each source, medium, source/medium, keyword, campaign, new or returning visitors, and more. You also get the ability to see the raw number of conversions for each goal you have as well as goal revenue.

5. Unusual Keyword Trends in Google Analytics With Greasemonkey – provides a “What’s Changed” report which tells a) which referrers have sent most traffic in last few days and b) which have sent most traffic where they never did before.

6. Google Website Optimizer multivariate experiment data to show up in Google Analytics – While Google Website Optimizer by itself can give you a quick look at which combination is best at improving conversion, it tells you nothing about transactions, revenue, micro-conversions, navigation, segmentation by source, and bounce rate. If you integrate Google Analytics into your Google Website Optimizer experiments, you will get much richer data, and be able to get a true idea of how your test is doing.

7. Google Analytics Notes – Keep track of events by adding notes directly into Google Analytics.

8. SiteScan – A Google Analytics Diagnostic tool designed to provide you with a complete audit of your Google Analytics setup. SiteScan is a free way to ensure that your Google Analytics is configured properly on your website. The most comprehensive web analytics debugger is the WASP Firefox extension.

9. Goal Copy Extension – The Goal Copy extension records all of the values in a Google Analytics Goal Settings form. You can then navigate to another profile where you want to put that copied goal and paste all of those values into the new form. That way, you can get your goals from one profile to another without all the tedium.

10. The Google Analytics API – Use the Google Analytics Data Export API to download Analytics data in the form of Google Data API feeds. With the Data Export API, you can embed a customized dashboard in your website to display the most commonly viewed or requested page statistics for all your reports users. Or, you can integrate your Google Analytics Data with other website data that you might be tracking in a separate system.

11. Google Analytics to Google Docs Greasemonkey Script – do a one-click export to create a Google spreadsheet for analyzing Google Analytics data.

12. Get Detailed PPC Keyword Data from Google Analytics – This filter shows exactly the Search Term (i.e. keywords that are searched on) rather than just the Bid Term (i.e. the keywords that triggered a PPC advert). For example, if a visitor searches for “sony digital camera” and you have an ad configured for the keywords “digital camera” as a Broad Match in Google AdWords. With this filter the same search will show “digital camera, (sony+digital+camera)” in any Google Analytics report that shows keywords (e.g. Marketing Optimization -> Search Engine Marketing -> Overall Keyword Conversion) or any time you cross-segment against keywords.

13. Analytics KPI gadget for iGoogle – This widget allows you to see important KPI information from Google Analytics directly in iGoogle.

14. Google Analytics Reporting Suite – Using Adobe Air the Google Analytics Reporting Suite brings Google Analytics to the desktop.

15. Customize the list of recognized search engines – Adds 60+ additional search engines for detection (rather than listed as a referrer) and differentiates regional variations e.g. google.co.uk, google.com, msn.se etc.

16. Script to capture first and last referrer in Google Analytics – From my friend, Brian Clifton’s book Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics.

17. Excluding Internal Traffic the Easy Way – Make sure your data isn’t polluted with your own or your company’s clicks.

18. Tracking Your Twitter Tweets with Google Analytics – This method will track anyone visiting the site as a result of your tweet, regardless of where they clicked on the URL. It doesn’t matter if it’s in an email client, hosted email app. etc.

19. The Official Google Analytics blog – Get the latest from the Google Analytics team. They also publish the excellent Conversion University.

20. Google Analytics Help Center – The official forum to get your questions answered about Google Analytics.

21. Google Analytics for iPhone – Access your Google analytics on your iPhone.

22. Google Analytics for WordPress – This plugin easily adds your Google Analytics tracking code (the new ga.js one!) to all pages within your blog. This plugin adds the possibility to tag and segment all outgoing links, so you can see whether a click came from a comment or an article. This WordPress plugin also gives you the possibility to track downloads with Google Analytics based on a set of extensions you specify and adds the possibility to track all image searches as organic and collect their keywords.

23. Multiple Profile Greasemonkey Script – If you have multiple profiles setup for your google analytics account, you will be able to select a new profile to view you will see the same report you were just on, but it will be for the new profile which you selected. Also, if you wish to compare reports from two profiles, there is an option to view the new profile in a separate tab.

24. The Enhanced Google Analytics Firefox Plugin – is designed to allow analysts to get more action out of what changed in the Referring Sites and Keyword Reports.

25. Kampyle/Google Analytics Mashup – this plugin allows you to incorporate the feedback you get from using Kampyle on your website (you need account for both) and integrate it with your Google Analytics.

26. Excellent Analytics is a simple Excel plug in that lets you import web analytics data from Google Analytics in to an Excel spreadsheet.

27. Google Analytics IQ Lessons – become qualified in Google Analytics. Includes lessons and videos.

28. Insights For Analytics – you can now easily view traffic patterns for the keywords you are analyzing in Google Analytics inside Google Insights.  You can select up to 5 keywords at a time and Insights For Analytics will automatically grab the date range you are viewing and send that to Google Insights as well.

29. Polaris for Google Analytics – Adobe Air desktop application for Google Analytics.

30. Google Analytics hacks to obtaining full referring URLs – Provides two ways to get full referring urls into Google Analytics.

31. Google Analytics YouTube Channel – some great video content produced by the Google Analytics team.

32. Integrating Google Analytics with a CRM
- This post offers a couple of ways to do this.

33. Google Analytics Campaign URL Builder – a more visually appealing and intuitive version of the Google URL builder with additional options such as changing the conversion attribution, parameter separator and creating a short URL for easier distribution.

Please help me maintain this list as the one place to find all the Google Analytics plugins, hacks and tricks. Do you know of any others that should be on the list?

The myth of the page fold: evidence from user testing – we’ve been telling people about the problem with horizontal lines on a page for years.

The History and Evolution of Social Media and of course you’ll need the The Ultimate List of Niche Social Networks

Study: Consumer searchers were 2.5 times more likely to click after exposure to a brand’s social marketing

Tips for Better Google Analytics article I wrote for Website Magazine. Google Analytics blog shares a Forrester report about Appraising Your Investment in Enterprise Web Analytics.

Click here to view the embedded video.

On October 8th, I will be keynoting Econsultancy’s inaugural Peer Summit in New York. In order that Econsultancy readers could get to know the speakers better I was interviewed by Rebecca Lieb, who oversees Econsultancy’s North American operations.

I also had the pleasure to post my first guest blog on the Econsultancy blog – Omniture’s acquisition by Adobe has people saying “Huh?” I’d love to hear your opinion about the acquisition as well. I also covered OMMA’s Global 2009 Keynote: Social Media Strategy: Zero to 60 for the Microsoft Advertising Community Blog in honor of Advertising Week. Take the time to read what Scott Monty, Global Digital & Multimedia Communications Manager of the Ford Motor Company shared about how Ford set out to be the most social automotive brand in 3 years and accomplished it in 6 months.

IBM published an interesting paper on the end of advertising as we know it.

My good friend, Jeff Sexton reminds us that Nobody wants to read your sh**!

Make your PDF’s Social Media ready. Do your PDFs have embedded sharing options?

WordStream releases a Free keyword tool:http://www.wordstream.com/keywords/ And here’s a 1-minute video that shows how it works: http://www.youtube.com/v/gV-VB3P7frU

Nineteen Free Twitter Tools that Turn Tweets into Knowledge

What other things do you have to share from this week?