Archive for June, 2007
How successful is your website? Do you really know how well it is performing for your business?
Many website owners make the mistake of thinking that the more traffíc they get to their website the better, and they work towards this end. It is better to focus efforts on bringing in targeted traffíc that will convert to salës or enquiries. To understand more correctly how well a website is performing, and who is visiting the website, a good website statistics package is required, as well as an understanding of the data these website reports produce.
With many website hostíng packages frëe, website statistics are available. However, the information is not always easy to understand or doesn’t always give you the information in a way that is easy to understand.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a great application that Google provides absolutely frëe. It tracks all activity on your website, not just visits through Google. All you need is a Google Account, and FTP access to your website to insert a small amount of code in your website, and away you go. If you don’t already have a Google account, I encourage you to set one up as soon as possible! You can do so at: https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount . Not only will you have access to Google Analytics, but having a Google account gives you a whole host of other tools.
Visitors
As a start, it is a good idea to find out how many visitors are coming to your website. Visitors are broken down into new and returning visitors. While it is great to attract new visitors to your site, you should aim to see a decent percentage of returning visitors as well, as this gives a good indication that people find your site interesting enough to come back to.
Depth of Visit
How many pages are viewed during a visit to your website?
Length of Visit
How much time do visitors spend on your website? If they are spending very little time on your site when you have an information-rich site, then you need to start looking at the navigational report to find out where you are losing them.
Keywords
The Keywords that people are finding your website through, are a good indication of what keywords are performing well for you in the search engines. Are the keywords that are displaying for you truly reflective of what you offër? If not, then it is time to revamp the content on your website.
Referrals
Which referrals drive the highest quality traffíc? This report lists activity coming via referrals from other websites. This is useful for tracking links that you cannot control. You can gauge the overall effectiveness and importance of PR activities, partnerships, etc. The referrals are compared to the number of visits, page views per visit, conversion rates and average value per visit.
Navigation
Which navigation paths resulted in conversions during the visit? For each navigation path, this report shows conversion rates and the value per visit.
Exit Pages
From which pages do visitors commonly exit your site? This report shows the number of exits from pages on your site. If you notice a high number of exits for specific pages, it is time to seriously analyze these pages and try to improve them, because it is very likely that people are not getting the information they expect or want.
Conversion data
Arguably this is one of the most important pieces of information. Conversion data gives you a true understanding of how successful your site really is.
Conversional goals can be set up through your Analytics settings. Take time to think about what goals you want to track. These may be salës or web enquiries you are receiving, or specific pages in your website that you want to focus on. Keep in mind that if your visitor contacts you by telephone or fax, this will not be reflected in the goal conversions. However, you can set your contact page as being a goal to get a feel for how many people are looking for your contact details.
By monitoring the changes in conversion rates for your primary goals, you can monitor the overall effectiveness of website changes, marketing roll-outs and other events.
What is duplicate content?
Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar. Most of the time when we see this, it’s unintentional or at least not malicious in origin: forums that generate both regular and stripped-down mobile-targeted pages, store items shown (and — worse yet — linked) via multiple distinct URLs, and so on. In some cases, content is duplicated across domains in an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings or garner more traffic via popular or long-tail queries.
What isn’t duplicate content?
Similarly, you shouldn’t worry about occasional snippets (quotes and otherwise) being flagged as duplicate content.
Why does Google care about duplicate content?
Our users typically want to see a diverse cross-section of unique content when they do searches. In contrast, they’re understandably annoyed when they see substantially the same content within a set of search results. Also, webmasters become sad when we show a complex URL (example.com/contentredir?value=shorty-george〈=en) instead of the pretty URL they prefer (example.com/en/shorty-george.htm).Our users typically want to see a diverse cross-section of unique content when they do searches. In contrast, they’re understandably annoyed when they see substantially the same content within a set of search results. Also, webmasters become sad when we show a complex URL (example.com/contentredir?value=shorty-george〈=en) instead of the pretty URL they prefer (example.com/en/shorty-george.htm).What does Google do about it?
During our crawling and when serving search results, we try hard to index and show pages with distinct information. This filtering means, for instance, that if your site has articles in “regular” and “printer” versions and neither set is blocked in robots.txt or via a noindex meta tag, we’ll choose one version to list. In the rare cases in which we perceive that duplicate content may be shown with intent to manipulate our rankings and deceive our users, we’ll also make appropriate adjustments in the indexing and ranking of the sites involved. However, we prefer to focus on filtering rather than ranking adjustments … so in the vast majority of cases, the worst thing that’ll befall webmasters is to see the “less desired” version of a page shown in our index. How can Webmasters proactively address duplicate content issues?
Block appropriately: Rather than letting our algorithms determine the “best” version of a document, you may wish to help guide us to your preferred version. For instance, if you don’t want us to index the printer versions of your site’s articles, disallow those directories or make use of regular expressions in your robots.txt file.
Use 301s: If you have restructured your site, use 301 redirects (”RedirectPermanent”) in your .htaccess file to smartly redirect users, the Googlebot, and other spiders.
Be consistent: Endeavor to keep your internal linking consistent; don’t link to /page/ and /page and /page/index.htm.
Use TLDs: To help us serve the most appropriate version of a document, use top level domains whenever possible to handle country-specific content. We’re more likely to know that .de indicates Germany-focused content, for instance, than /de or de.example.com.
Syndicate carefully: If you syndicate your content on other sites, make sure they include a link back to the original article on each syndicated article. Even with that, note that we’ll always show the (unblocked) version we think is most appropriate for users in each given search, which may or may not be the version you’d prefer.
Use the preferred domain feature of webmaster tools: If other sites link to yours using both the www and non-www version of your URLs, you can let us know which way you prefer your site to be indexed.
Minimize boilerplate repetition: For instance, instead of including lengthy copyright text on the bottom of every page, include a very brief summary and then link to a page with more details.
Avoid publishing stubs: Users don’t like seeing “empty” pages, so avoid placeholders where possible. This means not publishing (or at least blocking) pages with zero reviews, no real estate listings, etc., so users (and bots) aren’t subjected to a zillion instances of “Below you’ll find a superb list of all the great rental opportunities in [insert cityname]…” with no actual listings.
Understand your CMS: Make sure you’re familiar with how content is displayed on your Web site, particularly if it includes a blog, a forum, or related system that often shows the same content in multiple formats.
Don’t worry be happy: Don’t fret too much about sites that scrape (misappropriate and republish) your content. Though annoying, it’s highly unlikely that such sites can negatively impact your site’s presence in Google.
In short, a general awareness of duplicate content issues and a few minutes of thoughtful preventative maintenance should help you to help us provide users with unique and relevant content.
Wonder why some people get better marketing results than others? It’s because they tweak.
One rarely discussed marketing secret (except amongst rabid direct marketers or online marketers), is the arcane art of tweaking. Tweaking your marketing is literally the key to getting more response to any marketing activity you attempt.
Tweak means to adjust or fine-tune.
And this is exactly what people fail to do when it comes to their marketing. In fact, most do the opposite: They develop a web site and never change a pixel for years; they settle on a marketing message and never try anything new; or they give a speaking engagement and don’t try various “pitches” to get cards from participants.
The Science of Tweaking
Tweaking is what scientists do. They test something using an experiment. They get a certain result. Then they change a measurable variable and see what new result they get. They keep at this until they get the desired result (or not).
Good marketers are like scientists, but they have more fun.
Instead of experimenting on rats, they experiment on prospects. They try one marketing tactic at a time and measure the result. Then they change a measurable variable and see if the prospect responds differently.
Good scientists, if they are persistent, get grants to keep experimenting. Good marketers, if they are persistent, attract more clients and often get rich.
Let’s look at a few marketing experiments you can tweak.
Ezine signups from a web site.
Growing a big eZine list is a great way to grow your business. Let’s look at the two main variables: a) home page of web site and b) eZine sign-up page of web site.
To conduct this experiment you must know:
a) how many people land on your home page in any given period
b) how many people click onto the sign-up page
c) how many people actually sign up
Using a simple web tracker that counts visitors and subscribers, you can get these statistics very easily.
So let’s say in a week, 100 people go to your home page. Of those, 40% click onto your sign-up page. And then 25% of those actually sign up for the eZine. That makes a sign-up rate of 10%.
Now you start tweaking.
You work at making changes to your home page so that more visitors click through to the sign-up page. You might improve the design, the graphics, the headline, the offer for the report you get with the eZine, etc.
Several tweaks might increase the number of people who click on the sign-up page to 50%. Now your total sign-up rate is 12.5%
Next you tweak away on the sign-up page. Perhaps you change the name of the report (more results-oriented), and you change the sign-up form (by making it simpler) and the placement of this form (you put it higher on the page).
Several tweaks of this kind may increase the number of actual sign-ups to 40%. Your total sign-up rate is now 20%. You’ve doubled your sign-up rate. And that’s how tweaking pays off!
Your Audio Logo
When I use a problem-oriented Audio Logo: “I help Independent Professionals who are struggling to attract clients,” I get about five times the response than a solution-oriented Audio Logo: “I help Independent Professionals attract more clients.”
Go figure.
You don’t have to know all the reasons your tweaking changed the results, you just have to keep tweaking until the results improve.