SharePoint SEO

Google Analytics (GA) is cool.  It’s robust enough for the major analytic components and you just can’t beat the value – mainly because it FREE!  GA is a web analytics package provided free by Google.  You sign up, plug some JavaScript into your site (provided to you during the sign up process) and of f you go to the next corporate meeting with the long needed proof to open that office in Hawaii!   

GA wires up to SharePoint 2007 tightly.  Thanks to the way SharePoint 2007 uses master pages, it’s a breeze to hook it up (almost).  I’m using GA for multiple sites, some are SharePoint 2007 WCM sites and some are not.  As you know, SharePoint already has some built in usage analysis capabilities and they are pretty good.  GA extends these capibilities and provides a more common interface and set of tools for slicing your web site usage data.

GA can be wired up to SharePoint 2007 by pasting the JavaScript code (provided to you by Google during the setup process) into the master page file somewhere within the HTML body tags.  The trick is back at the Google site you just signed up for…  You need to activate your new site after you paste the JavaScript into your master page.  To activate your new site, you need to provide the URL.  Here’s the “gotcha” part:  If you are using a publishing site (and you likely are if you are wanting to wire GA to it), then you need to provide the “/pages/default.aspx” part of your URL after the domain name.  For example; if your domain is www.mydomain.com you would enter www.mydomain.com/pages/default.aspx.  This is because Google won’t like the fact that it’s getting redirected to /pages/default.aspx and will bail if you don’t provide that part. 

GA is not the most robust analytics package out there, but it’s a great place to start if you’re not already using a web analytics package.  It will show you all the main things you need to know, and in time as you’re usage becomes more sophisticated, you will at least know what you need in your next package (the one that is NOT free)!