Internet Marketing Toronto - Ignite!

Search Engine Optimization: Business Owners Should Get In The Habit Of Writing Fresh Web Content

Business owners looking to improve their search engine optimization should get in the habit of writing new web content for their website.

It should come as no surprise, but then again, perhaps it will, that HTML text is the only way to get a website to rank in the search engines and even then only for the words you’ve written. Then why do so many business web sites have very little text and much of it does not speak specifically to the services that people are looking for with precisely the combination of keywords their using in the search engines? There really is no good reason other than the fact that most business owners create a website, and then forget about it. They consider it “finished” and no further work is necessary. The exact opposite is true. Once the website is created, it’s just the beginning of an ongoing process of reviewing analytics to fully understand your visitors behaviour and expectations and then writing new content or optimizing existing content to meet their expectations!

Here is a simple process you as a business owner can repeat every month and it will surely improve your rankings and decrease your bounce rates. Keep in mind this is just about content, and bounce rates - there is a lot more you can be doing besides this.

1. Install analytics on your site - Google Analytics is free and easy to integrate
2. After one month of collecting data review the analytics to understand which keywords they are using and what the bounce rate is for each keyword.
3. For each keyword that has a bounce rate over 20%-25% you should identify which pages they are landing on for that keyword and then review the copy on that page.If the page is not really about that keyword - then create a new page (naming it with the keyword combination separating each work wit an underscore or hyphen). Make sure to mention the keyword in the title, description, H1, H2 and body content of the page.Link to this page from your home page using the keyword in question as “Anchor Text” to the new page.
4. Repeat these steps for each keyword that has a bounce rate above 20%-25%.
5. Wait another month, and start all over again at Step 2!

As you continue to do this month after month you’ll begin to see your bounce rates decreasing for the relevant keywords you are trying to optimize for. In addition, because your adding more relevant content to your site for each keyword your ranking for that keyword will improve and will continuously draw in more traffic!

Google Analytics Conversion University Video Series on YouTube

A few weeks ago Google launched a YouTube playlist of videos they produced as part of their “Google Conversion University”. These videos are aimed at helping users of GA get the most out of it with as little difficulty as possible. Below is the Google Conversion University Introduction by Brett Crosby. Below that is a link to the 11 videos currently in the playlist.

Here is the complete list of videos:

1. Google Conversion University Introduction by Brett Crosby
2. Google Analytics - Non-Ecommerce Sites: Beyond Averages
3. Google Analytics - Rules for Revolutionaries
4. Google Analytics - Bounce Rate: The Simply Powerful Metric
5. Google Analytics -Context and actionability in web analytics
6. Google Analytics - Optimal AdWords Campaigns
   
7. Google Analytics - Optimizing Customer Experiences
8. Advanced Techniques in Google Analytics
9. Creating a Data Driven Culture by Avinash Kaushik
10. Successful Web Analytics Approaches by Avinash Kaushik
11. Other Data-Focused Marketing Products from Google

Google Analytics Launches New Analytics Tracking Code

On October 16th Google announced it’s beta program for the new Google Analytics Tracking Code called ga.js. This new tracking code will replace the old urchin.js which was the sole remaining component of Urchin that Google had not re written since they acquired it in 2005.

The new ga.js includes features such as a event tracking (so you can see how users interact with dynamic elements such as Ajax and Flash without artificially inflating your page views), outbound link tracking (so you can track the clicks to links outside of your domain), and finally ga.js will track site search activity if you’re using Google custom search on your site. This will allow you to see what users are searching for on your site - the keywords used, and the pages accessed.

Here is a little more from the Google Analytics posting:

We’ll begin a limited beta test of the new Google Analytics Event Tracking capability. These new reports are designed to help you understand how people use and interact with Ajax, Flash and multimedia on your site without artificially increasing your page-view metrics. In order to provide a way for you to define and track a wide variety of applications and interactions, there will be a new tracking module called ga.js. Using ga.js on your site instead of urchin.js means you can continue to take advantage of the latest advanced tracking enhancements (such as Event Tracking) as we release them. Although we suggest everyone upgrade to the new JavaScript, if you aren’t interested in Event Tracking and you’re already getting all the information you need from Google Analytics, you don’t need to change your tags.

Not everyone needs to upgrade yet though - it’s still in BETA. According to Google they will not be retiring the old urchin.js code for another 18 months or so. We’ll be sure to migrate customers to the new tracking code only when the time is right!

Nielsen Search Share Ratings… what do your stats say?

Nielson released their NetRatings report for August 2007 with no big suprises. The top search providers were ranked by total searches in the following manner.

- Google: 4,199,495 searches, 53.6% market share

- Yahoo!: 1,561,903 searches, 19.9% market share

- MSN/Live: 1,011,393 searches, 12.9% market share

I decided to dig a little deeper into the stats and metrics of our own clients to see how the market share compares to the traffic source data we collect. Why? Simply because my hunch is that Google brings in more traffic than 53% and I agree with Rand at SEOMoz.org that Google’s market share is probably closer to 70%.

So… here were my findings:

I took a snap shot of 10 clients, all running Google Analytics. I tried to use a variety of business’ representing various industry types and business sizes (mostly small to medium size). I also tried to use a mix of service based industries and product based industries. Lastly, given that Nielsen was reporting statistics for August, I used the same date range.

Google: 85.20

Yahoo: 7.23

MSN/Live: 5.76

According to our clients stats, Google’s market share is higher that Nielsen’s 53% and higher than my estimated 70%… Now, I know this isn’t statistically relevant but it does make for an interesting blog post.

I would like to hear your thoughts on this, does your site or clients sites show the same statistics?

Using Bounce Rates For Search Engine Optimization

We’ve always known the importance of bounce rate when it comes to search engine optimizatino. As Google points out on their Analytics Blog:

If your site conversion rates are low, Bounce Rate can help you understand why. If your Bounce Rates are also low, your troubles are likely due to site design and usability issues. In this case, you might focus your efforts on streamlining your conversion funnel or making your site easier to navigate.

Since bounce rates are universally defined as a visitor exiting on the page they arrived on it’s easy to compare the metric to other sites. This is another reason why we insist on using Google Analytics on all our SEO and PPC clients - so that we can accurately monitor the results of our work across all sites and continue to improve the bounce rate statistic depending on each clients circumstances. How do we do that? It depends on the circumstances but it could include improving the page copy, look, calls to action, value propositions, or the quality of the ad text and keywords (if it’s traffic from paid advertising).

If you’re interested in the bounce rate of your site call your internet marketing consultant today.

Google rolls out new analytic and account snapshot

New Google Analytics Beta 

Google is rolling out their new analytics package that should make it easier for site owners and advertisers so see what is happening on their site. The new package is more intuitive and graphical. It also provides better report exporting capabilities. Another big change is the ability to build a dashboard to display your key performance indicators. These changes along with the price point (free) will make this package very attractive indeed.

New Google Account Snapshot Roll out

Some of you may have seen a new tab in your AdWords account.  Everyone else should see it soon. The tab opens a window to an account summary. There is also a visualization of some of the more important items and a drop-down to select some fixed date ranges. The tool is useful to spot dramatic trends or to see the effect of major changes. It generates mini reports quickly and easily. Is it a response to the Yahoo summary page?

Glen