Holy cow, did Google just add some crazy functionality to Analytics called the Multi-Channel Funnel! In the past if you were running a campaign and had a conversion – the last item clicked was the only one to get any credit. Not the case anymore. Now Analytics can track the entire chain of events that lead up to the sale. I’ll let this handy video explain.
Archive for the ‘Search Engine Optimization’ Category
One giant leap for Google Analytics
Thursday, September 1st, 2011
What’s a good bounce rate?
Wednesday, July 6th, 2011Q: What’s a good bounce rate? Higher or lower?
A: When tracking the traffic to your website, you should be aware of your bounce rate, which is literally when a visitor lands on your website and bounces right off.
Typically, you can expect a higher bounce rate if you are running a pay-per-click campaign, or if you are getting a lot of traffic through search engines. Why? Because you cannot control how people conduct a search and you certainly can’t know what people are looking for (not exactly anyway). This is why it’s so important to be very targeted with your blog post titles, title tags, tags, keywords, and description tags—it’s one thing to draw people in, it’s another to (more…)
Encourage Your Audience to Share Your Content
Wednesday, June 8th, 2011Q: How do I get people to share my blog content?
A: The most effective way to encourage others to share your content is to offer value so that people want to share it with their network: free resources, tips, advice, statistics, etc. But, you also need to make it easy for your audience to share that content. To answer this question, I would like to discuss the Share and Follow WordPress plug-in and offer a few tips that will help get your content out there and gain (more…)
Google’s +1 = a new social media giant?
Monday, May 16th, 2011Google is recently conducting an experiment with a new program they are calling +1. It’s similar to Facebook’s Like button, but it appears right there in the search engine and allows you to give that page your vote of approval (a nice way to remember which sites you liked in a previous visit), plus it shows you who else in your network of friends has approved that page.
Here’s how it works: First, login to your Google account and do a search for Google +1 – you will be directed to a page that allows you to sign up “Try it Now.” You then have to activate your account, which gives Google permission to access your profile information and share your +1 recommendations with people within your network.
To see the +1 feature, you will need to (more…)
Be #1 on Google for a Keyword Phrase
Friday, May 6th, 2011Q: How can I be #1 in Google for my keywords?
A: In order to gain ranking for specific keywords, you need to add them to your site frequently—as relative content. Let’s say for example that you want to rank for the keyword phrase “healing and transformation.”
Google will scan indexed sites for this term—frequency is a huge part of this. So, the question is: How often does this string of words appear in your site? AND—how much competition do you have?
Now, let’s consider a term that is specific to your brand. For this example, we’ll use the phrase “Sand Spirits Cards” because it appears frequently throughout the site of the person who submitted this question (thank you Pam). The competition for this phrase is very low – so of course her website comes up as number one.
Can we make your site come up for “healing and transformation” simply by optimizing your site for that term? (more…)
Finding the Best Web Designer
Thursday, May 13th, 2010
Why Are Web Designers Such Flakes? A Reality Check.
Circling the drain of unresponsive or missing in action web designers is a common dilemma. The Question is this: As a self-respecting author with a plan and a purpose, how do you choose a designer you can afford and rely upon?
As a small publisher, or self-published author, you are faced with the high-cost of publishing a book. Your ever-growing budget includes editors, book cover and interior design, maybe a book coach or adviser, printing costs, fulfillment needs, marketing … my goodness, where does it end? When does the author start making money? Well, this is a question for another article all together. The point here is, how much should you allocate to the added expense of (more…)
Blogging Demystified – Why Blogging Drives Traffic
Tuesday, May 11th, 2010Articles about Blogging are for the most part boring. It’s the same story over and over: you should be blogging—blogging drives traffic—blogging is a great marketing tool…. And yet, most bloggers quit after a few weeks, or worse yet, never get started.
There are a slew of reasons people have for not blogging: I don’t have time. It doesn’t seem to be doing my site any good—no one reads my blogs? I don’t know what to blog about.
The truth is, blogging does help drive traffic, blogging will build your audience, and it will establish your name in the marketplace! The trick is this: you have to be patient and consistent. You won’t see results right away, in fact, it can take up to a year before your blog builds a steady and loyal following—but it will, and that’s the exciting part.
Admittedly, when you first start blogging, it may seem like you are stuck on a desert island pontificating to the palm trees. Persevere!! Those smoke signals will reach your market eventually, and here’s the best part: even if no one reads your blogs, search engine spiders do. Here’s how it works: the more you blog, the more relevant content (and keywords) you have for crawlers to index.
Let’s say for example you are trying to increase your ranking for the term “kids and guns.” Google will rank your site for this term if it appears in your site frequently and it is relevant to the other content of your site. The best way to ensure relevance for this term is to blog about it frequently—don’t overdo it though, always blog as if you are speaking directly to your audience, saying the same thing over and over is boring. Even if you don’t think you have an audience now, you will. With this example, after a few months of blogging, your site might start to appear in the search engines for “kids and guns,” and slowly people will start to find you, read your blog, and tell others about you. If your content is relevant to this topic, readers might subscribe to your RSS feed or book mark your blog.
You see, it’s not really about how many people are commenting on your blog—although it’s certainly nice to get feedback. In the beginning, it’s about creating content! You know that saying, if you build it they will come? Well, this is true, but you have to upkeep your blog by adding new content a minimum of once a week—otherwise the cobwebs will build up and no one will ever visit your blog—believe it or not, Internet spiders and crawlers don’t like cobwebs (bad Internet humor).
Chances are, if your inspired your readers will be too.
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Blogger Discontinues FTP Publishing
Friday, May 7th, 2010For many years I have recommended that authors host their blogs on their own servers. I have several reasons for this way of thinking. Firstly, as authors, we are attempting to drive traffic to our websites, to draw in our audience, and to make the sale. Placement within the search engines is an important step in this process. However, the only way to gain placement is to be ranked for keywords that your potential audience is searching for. See, this is how they find you, which is way more effective than standing on a street corner shouting the merits of your wares.
A blog ensures that you have fresh, relevant content posted to your site frequently. This is important because the search engine bots and spiders are out their scanning websites for, you guessed it: fresh, relevant content. If you have a stale website then not only will your audience lose interest, so will the spiders. The blog is the perfect author-marketing tool, and there are so many good platforms to choose from: WordPress, Blogger…rrr, well, until now.
This new fact is important.
Blogger has discontinued FTP Publishing. This means that (more…)
The Value of Incoming Links and Anchor Text
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010One of the best ways to optimize your website and increase your visibility is to have lots of incoming links—that is, lots of sites that link to your site. The higher the number of incoming links you have, the higher you are ranked in search engines like Google. Of course, it’s best that these sites are already ranked in Google and have a certain amount of popularity. Think of it like you would the schoolyard politics of popularity: Let’s say you have 150 really unpopular friends in junior-highschool (follow me here), this doesn’t make you popular—you are judged in accordance with whom you hang with. This is also true with Google’s ranking system. If 150 unranked sites link to you, you have gained nothing. However, if 10 really popular, highly-ranked sites link to you, Google assumes you have something of value to offer and they increase your ranking, and you gain more visibility.
But this is not why I decided to write on this subject. What I really want to talk about is anchor text and how you can leverage it to promote yourself online.
Whenever you add a link to your site (even within the pages of your own site) the words that people click on (the link) is called anchor text. For example, if you use the word “here” as the clickable word (the link) that people click on to learn more, you are highlighting “here” as the notable subject. I’m sure you have seen this – click HERE to learn more and then you physically click “here.” This used to be common practice, especially for people leading visitors to pages within the same site. The truth is, this is a missed opportunity to promote your subject and optimize your site for a viable term. It is better to use words that describe what you are promoting. What you really want to promote and optimize for is your company name, or maybe your book name, or your product name, or maybe a service you offer.
For example: let’s say I want to promote my speaking service (which I do). I could tell you to click here to learn more about my speaking topics OR I could say something like: Jeniffer Thompson is a professional speaker…. OR Jeniffer Thompson offers seminars on Internet Marketing for authors.
Because I have used a keyword phrase as my link (my anchor text) Google will index my site for that term. And, if someone does a Google search for “seminars on Internet Marketing for authors,” they just might find my site—because Google now ranks my site for that term. The more this term appears on my site—the more Google will view it as relevant content and the higher I will appear in the search engines for that term.
So, next time you are writing a blog post, remember this: A blog post is a link. Strategically choose words that you want indexed in the search engines. Of course, make sure it’s relevant to your topic or people will never take you seriously and ultimately, every time you write content for your site you should be speaking directly to your audience, not to a search engine.
That’s all for now. I look forward to adding more tips weekly, so check back soon.
Oh, one more thing: Jeniffer Thompson offers seminars on Internet Marketing for authors (hee hee)
