Any Web Marketer worth his salt knows that you can’t be successful without goals. And you can’t set goals without being able to measure them. So how do you measure goals in something as obscure as web marketing? Simple. Web Analytics. Web Analytics is technology that tracks how your website is being used. For example it can tell you how many visitors you have, where they are coming from, and what they are doing on your site.

There are two main types of web analytics softwares, server based, and client based. Server based software periodically scans the server logs to determine who was accessing your site. One of the most popular forms of server statistics software is AWStats The overview of AWStats is shown below:

As you can see, AWStats gives you an overview of information, mainly the number of visits organized by the time. There is a lot of other information that AWStats gives you. For example, The specific pages that were accessed, the countries of the visitors, their operating system, etc.

The second type of web analytics software is client based. What this means is that instead of the software running in the background on the server, it is activated every time a visitor accesses the website. This software can either be hosted on your site, or hosted externally. The most popular client-based analytics software is Google Analytics. Google Analytics works by embedding a small tag on each page of your site. This tag activates javascript hosted on Google’s Servers, which then retrieves data and information for analysis. The overview of Google Analytics is shown below:

As you can see, this overview is more intuitive than AWStats. It shows information in a more visual way, and is able to tell you if your traffic is coming from referring sites, or search engines. Google Analytics allows you to set up goals and conversions so you can get a detailed look at the traffic to your site(s).

This video should give you a nice overview of the Google Analytics Interface

As you can see, Google Analytics is very detailed, powerful software. However I would recommend you use both for your analytics needs. They each have their own pros and cons, so using them together is a better way to harness the power of the software.

Now that you know the basics of using analytics, here’s why you should:

• Gives you an overview of how many people are coming to your site.
• The only way to be successful is to measure success, and web statistics allows you to do so.
• Allows you to better focus your marketing efforts on the worst-performing parts of your site.
• Let’s you see the most popular keywords that people are hitting your site from.
• Allows you to set goals based on your traffic, so you can have measurable marketing results.

To get started with analytics right now:

• AWStats: Talk to your administrator or contact your web host to see if you have AWStats currently enabled.
• Google Analytics: visit http://google.com/analytics and sign up. Insert the provided tracking code into all of the pages of your site.

Are you spending too much money on the Yellow Pages and not getting the results? My office building has a huge stack of the Yellow Pages that no one has picked. If you are an advertiser in the Yellow Pages, how does that make you feel? People are searching for your business online in Google, Yahoo and Microsoft’s local listing but the bulk of your budget was spent in the Yellow Pages.

We do not know about you; we search the search engines local listing to find a business.  Can we find your business online?

It is a good idea to become familiar with Microsoft’s new search engine Bing.  Bing is branded as the decision engine providing faster more relevant search results.  For instance, Bing is broken down in four categories: Travel, Shopping, Health and Local.

Bing Local allows users to find businesses near them, where they want to go. Listings are returned in search results, removing the tedious tasks of businesses searching for new customers.  The customers have already located the company.

For now we will discuss local search, which is an enormous part of Bing.

A free local listing to add your business is Bing’s Listing Center.  Visit https://ssl.bing.com/listings/BusinessSearch.aspx and check to see if your business is listed on Bing Maps Search. If not add your profile in the Listing Center.  Make sure if your business is listed to verify the accuracy of the information.

Add all of your business locations separately. The following information can be changed:

1. Web page
2. Business description
3. Hours of operation
4. Payment methods
5. Photos
6. Year established
7. Company tagline
8. Brands carried
9. Professional affiliation
10. Languages spoken
11. Parking options and personal contact

Fill out as many fields as possible that are applicable to your business.  The more information filled out will lead to a higher probability of doing business with your company. Remember, people like to do business with companies close to them and it is integral that you sign up in the listing center.

In deciding on a search engine optimization firm make sure the firm uses an ethical approach. The ethical search engine optimization method is called White hat. White Hat SEO involves techniques and tactics that focus on a human audience as opposed to search engines. This technique completely abides by search engine rules and policies. A web site that is SEO optimized focuses on relevancy and organic ranking is optimized using White Hat SEO practices. Other examples of White Hat SEO strategies include using keywords, keyword analysis, back linking, link building to improve link popularity, and writing content for human readers.

Although White Hat SEO might not have instant results; however, the lasting success is worth the wait.  The objective of White Hat SEO is to improve overall site quality and increasing the site’s ranking. White Hat SEO is not just about following guidelines but is about ensuring that the content a search engine indexes.  Also that the subsequent ranks is the same content a user will see. White hat advice is generally summed up as creating content for users, not for search engines.   Then making that content easily accessible to the spiders, as opposed to attempting to trick the algorithm from its intended purpose.

White Hat SEO will not guarantee that you  top placement for keywords. No SEO company can guarantee top placement for keywords.  Search Engine rank is one of the most closely guarded secrets of the web. In fact, it was reported last year that the algorithm Google uses to rank sites changed over 400 times!  Make sure that they do not make big promises, because it is more likely they are unable to keep them.  Therefore, the search engines are always ahead in the SEO process.

The white hatters fix critical mistakes in design, set-up of their websites, so that the sites will rank well. The SEO experts discover and correct mistakes such as unreadable menus, broken links, temporary redirects, and weak navigation structure.

White hat marketers implement a common sense, ethical approach to SEO. These techniques include:

• Creating quality content
• Building legitimate links
• Developing a solid keyword strategy
• Maximizing spider friendliness
• Building page rank over time
• Use description meta tags without excessive use of keywords.
• Optimizing tags, titles and other parts of the code is integral.
• Using specific keyword rich page titles, headers, subheaders, internal linking, and page copy.

Using WordTracker or Google Adwords Keywords Tool to find popular and relevant keywords and phrases to use for your site. Monitoring the various search engines to ensure that your URL gets indexed by using programs such as Web Position. Increasing the amount of unique content on the site. Writing quality content for the website visitors instead of the search engines.

Today is our second post on SEO Marketing Tips. We are going to discuss two important aspects of any Search Engine Optimization campaign: Tags and Titles.

When your computer views a webpage, there is data that you cannot see that tells the computer how the page should be displayed. All of the code that you cannot see is called tags. Tags are useful to a Search Engine Marketer, because the search engine uses tags to determine what content is more important than others. For example, an html page uses tags to make headers look big. A search engine can “see” that these headers are bigger, and therefore determines that the content inside the header gives more accurate information about the page than just the content.

There is a set of tags that do not determine the look or the layout of the page, but rather give data and information about the page to Search Engines and browsers. These tags are called metatags. Metatags are the most important type of tags to a Search Engine Marketer. Let’s talk about why.

The title tag is the most important metatag of all. You see the title tag every time you open up a browser page. The title tag is what is displayed at the top of the browser window. The title tag is also what is displayed in a search engine when someone searches for your page. Search engines give title tags more bearing than any other tags when it comes to determining the content of the page. When picking a page title, you must create a good balance between ranking effectiveness, or crafting the title for a search engine, and referral effectiveness, or giving a user not only information about your page, but a call to action. The table below shows some examples of titles and their effectiveness.

Ellipses (…) indicates estimate truncation point onscreen.

–Taken From Search Engine Marketing, Inc. Second Edition, IBM Press

As you can see, there are many choices for a page title, both bad and good. When choosing a title, there are certain things to keep in mind.

• That the title has both keywords and a call to action.
• That the title is between 40-65 characters
• That important words are in the title before the truncation point.

Besides the title tag, there are other important tags. We are going to discuss the description tag, and the keywords tag.

The description tag gives the search engine a small bit of information about your site/page. Many times descriptions aren’t given much weight, however in Google, descriptions are displayed under the result, so it is a good idea to ensure your description is appealing to people, and gives them a reason to click on your link.

The keywords tag used to be extremely important in SEO, but because of the way it was abused by marketers, most search engines all but ignore it. It does not hurt to have keywords, but it shouldn’t take up the majority of your time for the SEO campaign. Ensure that the keywords are relevant, and that you don’t have too many of them.

This wraps up our post about titles and tags. Stay tuned for the third and final post in this series: SEO Marketing Part 3: Navigation, Categorization, Linking.

Our first post is going to be the ever-so-popular SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Marketing tips. First off, you should know that Search Engine Optimization may not work. I know there are tons of organizations promising top rankings, key placement, etc, etc. You should know however that even if you are at the top of the organic (normal search results) listings, it does not guarantee more sales. That’s why our first SEO post is going to be about content. I know you may have been expecting information about keywords, key phrases, metatags, etc, but in my experience good Seach Engine Optimization begins with good content.

In short, content that pleases search engine users, and fulfills and information need or prompts them to purchase something, is good. Content that’s highly optimized for search engine algorithms, but fails to satisfy search engine users, is virtually doomed to a fate of obscurity.

First off, you should know that most search engines look intently at the first paragraph of any given page, and then kind of skim over the rest of the content. That’s why you have to make sure that your first paragraph is top notch.

NOTE: Search engines normally determine the first paragraph by the first <p>, or paragraph tag.

The first step in writing good content is to come up with good keywords and key phrases. The phrases you think your target market might be searching for may very well be incorrect. To find the optimal phrases to optimize for, use research tools such as KeywordDiscovery, Wordtracker or Google’s Keyword Tool. Compile lists of the most relevant phrases for your site, and choose a few different ones for every page. Never shoot for general keywords such as “travel” or “vacation,” as they are rarely (if ever) indicative of what your site is really about. In future posts I will go more in depth on choosing keywords and key phrases, so stay tuned!

Now that you have a list of good keywords, you must put them into well written copy. This is a crucial component to having a successful website. The search engines need to read keyword-rich copy on your pages so they can understand how to classify your site. This copy shouldn’t be buried in graphics or hidden in Flash. Write your copy based on your most relevant keyword phrases while also making an emotional connection with your site visitor. Understand that there is no magical number of words per page or number of times to use your phrases in your copy. The important thing is to use your keyword phrases only when and where it makes sense to do so for the real people reading your pages. Simply sticking keyword phrases at the top of the page for no apparent reason isn’t going to cut it, and it just looks silly.

This post has given you a basic overview of writing good content for your pages. Stay tuned for:

• SEO Marketing Part 2: Titles n’ Tags
• SEO Marketing Part 3: Navigation, Categorization, Linking

Thanks for Reading!