Ok, now that you have a website what is it doing for your business?

In today's global world, it's a widely-accepted fact that if you have a business card you should probably have a website. It doesn't matter what your company is selling - a website, however modest, has become a standard for credibility and first impressions.

So the real question is "what is your website doing for your business"? Most people get a certain "deer in the headlights" look in their eyes when I ask this question. To be fair, it's not a question we're used to hearing. But that's not all that's going on here.

Traditional advertising mediums - print, TV, radio, etc. are notoriously difficult to track. Sure, you'll know how often the phone is ringing or how many people come in with a coupon clipped from the Sunday paper, but what you don't know is how many people saw/heard your ad and whether they were interested, oblivious or, worse, annoyed.

Business owners are used to this. We all know we need to advertise - it's a necessary cost of doing business - so we buy that half-page ad in the Yellow Pages or the local newspaper, we sponsor an event or a little league team, we have a radio commercial written and we hope for the best. This has been a given in marketing since the beginning. But the web, and analytics, changed the game.

So how should you be using your web analytics to grow your audience, and your business, online? Track Everything!

    

With web analytics on your site you can track:

  * Where your traffic is coming from by
       - The referring website and page
       - The search engine and keyword used

  * Your website visitors by
       - Their location
       - Their operating system, browser and monitor
         resolution
       - Their network

  * Visitor behavior and actions by
       - Duration of visit (time on site)
       - Pages per visit (number of pages viewed)
       - Bounce rate (percentage of users who viewed only
         one page before leaving)
       - Conversion rate (percentage of users who completed
         a preset task)

If you're planning on doing any kind of Internet marketing through search engines, email or advertising on other websites, information on your past and current traffic is crucial. Not to mention you'll want analytics in place so you can properly track the new traffic your promotions will, hopefully, bring in.

When reviewing your analytics data look at the behavior and action metrics. For example, if the bounce rate of your website or a certain web page has a 75% rate, then what what does that tell you? Well, this is a pretty high bounce rate - you should at least be shooting to have a bounce rate lower than 50%. But does this tell you exactly what is wrong? Likewise, if you have secured advertising or a listing on another website, the number of visits coming in from that site only gives you part of the picture. Tying your bounce rate to a specific traffic source, on the other hand, can tell you a lot.

If a given traffic source is generating a bounce rate of 85% or more, for example, this indicates that users are not being satisfied. There are a few possibilities as to why:

  * The users may not be well-qualified - or the site where
    you are listed or advertising might not have the best
    audience for your content/offer.

  * The listing/ad may promise something that the entry
    page does not live up to (or, at least, the promise is
    difficult to locate once the user arrives at your site).

  * Your site is simply not usable, is unattractive or
    unprofessional, causing users to leave immediately (and
    most don't come back)

  * Your users are  not connecting with your content/offer.

There are other possibilities, but you'll want to find the most likely answer here - and try to fix it. Then, using the same metrics (traffic source + bounce rate), you can see whether things improve moving forward.

Using metrics like these you can also get a sense of which advertisements are bringing you a return on your investment and which aren't. With goal tracking in Google Analytics, for example, a conversion rate is added to just about every traffic metric, including referring websites. If you're finding that a website is sending you plenty of traffic but none of it is converting, re-examine the referring website's audience, how your site is being presented and the user's experience when they click through.


Your website is more than a brochure or business card. It's an interactive tool for your users. The only true way to find out how they're using it (or not using it) is to get web analytics set up properly on your website.

And the best way to improve your website in the aim of building your business is to use the information your web analytics give you. If you aren't tracking everything, taking time on a regular basis to understand what the data reveals about your users and adjusting your efforts based on this information, you're missing an opportunity to optimize your advertising and get a better return on your budget.

Once again,

Good luck on your Search Engine Marketing Adventures.

Regards,

Matt - Your SEM Guro for the day............

Rioforma.com

        

Social Networking Activity Dec. 2008

Across the Web, social networking websites grew by 13% in the United States from December 2007 to December 2008.

Below you will find the top social networking websites rankings tracked by COMSCORE for December 2008.

                               


I know as a small business owner that LinkedIn has grow very quickly over the past year. As you can see, social networking is not just for kids anymore!

More to come later!

Regards,

Matt your SEO Blobmaster..............

        

Content Management Systems AKA - (CMS)

Content Management Systems do what they sound like - they help you manage your content. Essentially, a CMS allows you to create/edit/delete your site pages without getting into the coding side of things. For larger sites, they also make organization easier. The content is largely stored in a site database, which lives on a web server, alleviating the need to back up hundreds of HTML files.

Ecommerce websites, for example, use content management systems 90% of the time.Blogs use them too.

While they may sound expensive and complicated, there are several full-featured content management systems available for free. Among the most notable are WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Zen Cart and more. All these CMS systems are free to download/install at your web server, and have been developed by an open source community with ease of installation and use in mind.

                                                 

If you're considering moving your site to a CMS or building a new site with one but aren't yet sure of the benefits, here's a quick list:

No need to be a coder
      While the setup process can get somewhat technical and customizing templates involves coding, in the long term working with a CMS means working with less HTML/CSS and server side scripting code. That means an easier time for content editors and authors. It means you don't need to rip your hair out figuring out which HTML tag wasn't closed properly. It means you don't need to know what an HTML tag is at all, in most cases. This saves you a ton of time and resources in the long term.

SEO is built right in
      SEO is a concern for every webmaster, and most content management systems include beneficial features in this regard. There are many available SEO plugins for WordPress, for example, that make for well-optimized title tags, URLs, links, etc. Once your CMS is producing search engine friendly pages there is little need to go back and "tweak" on-page optimization or play with file names. This allows you to focus on creating great content without worrying about your on-page SEO.

Little risk of losing/overwriting important files
      Since site content lives mostly in the database with a CMS, there isn't much risk of someone accidentally overwriting a recently-updated page or losing important files. Most site authors and editors can work from within the CMS and don't bother saving/uploading a file at all. This will save you many headaches. Just be sure to back up your database on a regular basis and before upgrading your CMS.

Website can be accessed and edited from any location
      Most content management systems are web-based - meaning they live entirely on your web server. The only thing required to access/edit your site in this case is a username/password to log in. This means you don't need to worry about being at your computer or carrying your site files with you when traveling. Adding/editing/deleting site pages is a simple as logging in and using the web-based back end to get it done - and site updates can be published live instantly with no need for FTP.

Updates don't require you to use a webmaster
      This alone can save most companies thousands of dollars a year. With a content management system you no longer need to call your web developer every time you need to correct a spelling error or add an event to a calendar. You can handle updates yourself or have someone in your office - maybe even an intern - make the change directly. The point is: it's easy. You no longer have to pay the developer's rate for simple updates, and you don't need to waste time communicating the changes via phone or email and settling invoices.

Development costs are cheaper for open source
      If you're looking to either migrate an existing site to a content management system or use one for a new site, you are likely to be looking at a cheaper project overall (depending on the level of customization). Most of the bells and whistles are built right into the system - so development becomes more a task of updating the look and feel of the CMS template than building from scratch. Of course, design is crucial - so if you're looking for a polished site design you'll still want to hire a solid designer/developer, but a simple and clean site design with moderate customization shouldn't break the bank. There are also some very nice "out of the box" templates and themes available for most open source content management systems, such as the feature-rich and attractive Thesis theme for WordPress.

Essentially, there are few downsides to using content management systems, and the open source options available are very attractive (especially the price tag). If you're considering any of the open source solutions mentioned in this article, there are a few considerations you'll want to have in mind. Namely, keep in mind that WordPress was designed to be a blogging platform and is therefor somewhat limited in flexibility (although for most sites WordPress is a solid solution - even when you don't need a blog). Drupal offers much more flexibility and power, but it tends to require a more extensive and costly set up phase. The Zen Cart in a perfect fit for those of you who want to do an eCommerce website with shopping cart capabilities.

Also keep in mind that not all content management systems are created equal. Some lesser-known content management systems have rampant issues in search engine visibility - such as including session IDs in all URLs - that can render your site entirely invisible to search engines or at least sub-par when it comes to on-page SEO. So make sure you do your research if SEO is going to be important to you.

For companies operating on something of a shoestring budget for web development, an open source content management solution is often not only an attractive solution but perhaps the only viable one to stay within a budget without sacrificing the quality of your site's infrastructure.

And to those for whom the thought of working with HTML code causes instant panic: rest assured - with the right CMS setup, you'll rarely need to see an HTML tag again.

Well Good Luck finding the right CMS for your project.

If you would affordable CMS program installation of one of the open-source programs above, please feel free to contact me at Rioforma.

Regards,

Your SEO Blogmaster Matt

        

Below you will find the Search Engine Traffic for the major search engines for June and July of 2008:



Google's search traffic, still leads Yahoo by over 40% and Yahoo leads MSN by 11%,,,,,

Below you will find the Expanded Search Queries June and July of 2008:


Again Yahoo continues to grow............

More information after the first of the year....

Regards,

Matt

        

Most online business owners believe that all you have to do is put a good-looking website up on the internet and the phone will start to ringing instantly with new clients. But internet leads and mailing list work best when you build a relationship between yourself and the online prospect.

The best way to do this is to create a document of interest that you know your visitors want, need or enjoy. A website that is offering something for free in return for their name and contact details. That way you can build the relationship with them over time and don’t have to win them over in the space of one website visit. But what should you offer them?

Offer – Key Information on a Related Topic to your business or Website

We will call this a spot-offer-article. This is usually a free report, a newsletter, a top ten tips sheet… something that is so interesting to your target market that they are prepared to give you their name and email contact details right there and then to get their hands on it.

The important characteristics of a spot-offer-article are:
•    It’s free
•    It can be delivered immediately
•    It’s relevant to your target market
•    It has a strong title
•    It’s only available in return for name and email address details

Example of a Spot-Offer-Article Ad on your website


What you are aiming to do with your spot-offer-article is to create a strong and immediate desire in your website visitors. Strong enough for them to give you their details on the spot and get their hands on your offer straight away.

So you must ask yourself, what does this online target market really want to know?

Often the best way to come up with targeted content is to think of the title first. You know that question that so often gets asked in surveys… ‘What’s your greatest challenge?’ The answers to that question regularly get turned into freebie offer titles.

So if your target market’s greatest challenge is: ‘How to make more income from home”, the article title becomes something like this: ‘Top 7 secrets of high-earning home businesses’. Then you write your top 7 tips. You don’t have to give everything away, but what you write must offer value. And so begins the relationship with another potential new client.

What’s the best format for a spot-offer-article?

Many online marketing professionals deliver a free weekly or monthly newsletter with additional tips as their spot-offer-article. Others send a free report or top ten tips list, I think you get the point that it cannot be lame nor have no value, good information is the key to return visitors and creating new clients.

In closing, the immediacy of a spot-offer-article is generally more appealing to an interested website visitor, so you will probably find that you get more sign-ups if you choose this format. On the other hand, a newsletter gives you the opportunity to build the relationship better by offering useful and interesting content on a more regular basis.
Good Luck!


Matt – Your SEO SEM GURU!!!!

        

Search Engine marketing (SEM) is an 'instant gratification' advertising media. You can basically set up a Google Adwords campaign in half an hour - and often have your advertisements running within the hour. Try that with newspapers, TV or radio! You don't have to make any changes to your website structure or architecture. You don't have to know how your website is built. And best of all - you only pay when your advertisement is clicked on - not when it is shown.

                  

So whats the downside of SEM? Well - you pay whenever your advertisement is clicked on. You 'Pay Per Click' (PPC) - and will keep paying per click for all your traffic. You'll even pay for clicks by your competitors. The issue of 'click fraud' is a growing problem - and although every major PPC system claims to have ways of detecting click fraud - its out there.

Search Engine Optimization is a longer term approach, and encompasses many 'best practice' web design standards. There are often no payments required to the search engines, as the major search engine spiders (robots) visit your site for free (i.e. Google, and Yahoo), add it to their index, and rank it for relevancy against mathematical parameters. Good content, targeting well searched phrases, built to the 4 pillars of accessible web design (and built to conform to the published rules) - often win in the search engine rankings.

Regards,

Matt at Rioforma Consulting

        

Most of us know that a site that's well configured for search engine access is a major part of getting high traffic levels. However, you might not have thought about optimizing your video as well as the rest of your site. Since multimedia content is becoming a much more popular way of distributing information, correct video search engine optimization is important.

                                                   


For owners of video content, video search engine optimization is a good way to get exposure, ad income, and free traffic. Being discovered by the viewers has to happen before you can get lots of views. That means making sure that your data is rich in meta information, and that you use quality RSS or MRSS feeds that you update on a regular basis.

Make sure that your meta data is well placed and relevant to the topic. A cleaner can help you remove distracting or irrelevant meta information from the file.

Only after you produce well optimized content should you contact the search engines and submit your video. This places you in the queue of web crawlers, and means you'll be indexed more quickly and more often than if you hadn't bothered to submit. The more regularly your content is crawled, the better your chance of rating well on search results.

Index your site on other engines than Google or YouTube. They can spread your video to other search engines you may not have thought of. For instance, indexing your site on Blinkx will cause it to show up on Ask and MSN, among others.

One important part of your strategy should be a series of related videos. When a viewer sees a video online that he or she likes, there's a good likelihood that this viewer will look for others like them. While a single great video will be popular and welcomed, you'll do even better if it's part of a series.

Use an embedded video player, too. Many viewers will be more inclined to view your submission if it's part of your site or blog than if they had to go to your video hosting service to see it. However, you should avoid players that use only Flash. Don't use pop-up players, which annoy more people than they amuse, and will actually cause you to lose views.

The more views you get, the more likely you are to be picked up by other sites, linked to, and rank well on video searches. You can even customize embedded video players to display playlists related to your company, and adjust the layout, and other information.

Create traffic by placing a video search box on your site. This adds unique content and boosts ad revenue. Make sure that you create a video of the appropriate length for your audience, and that you're looking for the right response.

You can use analytics to find out how long a customer stays on your video page, which will tell you if your video is too long. You can also use analytics to tell you which of your videos get the best response. Once you know this, you'll be able to decide which content should be linked first on your home page.

Remember that no webcrawler has ever bought a product or a service. If you're a local business using video to advertise, clicks are a lot less important than calls. Include a call to action with your contact information as part of your video - thumbnails are an excellent way to do this. You can use YouTube to create thumbnails at the quarter, half, and three-quarter marks. Making sure that you have both a local listing and a video listing on Google's Search Engine Results Page also increases your likelihood of getting visits.

You may also wish to make sure that your videos are high enough quality for and in the right format for television. Google TV is very affordable, and lets you create closely targeted video.

Don't use Active X controls and export all files as swf format. Use Google Video sitemaps to help with navigation, and build a separate page for each video, rather than hosting many videos on the same page. Use a simple text title and description, and optimize that page as you would any other. Then, link to it from the index page.

Descriptions and titles need to be consistent across all your sites, and file names should descriptive and make sense to the viewer. Remember that Different communities require different approaches. Prominent keywords can help on many sites. However, while keyword rich content will help videos hosted on your site be noticed by Blinkx or Truveo, it won't help on YouTube.

You'll need to get the attention of the community in general. Video responses to popular, related videos can help get others to visit your contribution. Your content will appear in close proximity to videos that are already popular. Make sure you include an active URL in the description of your video, and end the video with a mention of the link. Annotations can help you link to other YouTube videos. Be sure to allow comments!

Don't tag with irrelevant search terms, no matter how popular they might be. Remember that you need to appeal to real people, rather than just optimizing blindly. While you might turn up early in a search with good optimization, an unappealing video will cause people to pass you by. If you know what kind of content your audience prefers, you'll be able to create the right video marketing plan for your business or organization.

Video search engine optimization is an important part of any video marketing strategy. If you're planning to market your business or organization using multimedia content, creating it correctly and surrounding it with the right keywords and other information can help it be noticed. Before you submit a video, make sure it's optimized.

Thanks to Randy Zlobec, president of RZ Concepts for this article.

        

iWhat is the difference between page views and hits within my website analytics?

It has come to my attention that many people do not understand the difference between a website “HIT” vs. a website “Page View”. Everyday your website will receive both hits and page views. What do millions of hits per month versus thousands of page views mean when you look at your traffic logs? It's all about the graphics on a webpage vs the user viewering the page.

Here’s some information you should understand before we proceed:

1.      1 graphic/image equals 1 hit

2.      1 webpage equals 1 page view

3.      A page view is sometimes referred to as a request. This is because you are requesting a page be loaded when you click on a website or any of the sub pages.

4.      Loading means the webpage appears on your browser.

5.      The terms visit or visitors have no precise meaning unless the site is tracking its users. The term page view is the basic agreed upon standard

Information about a website's traffic is kept in the log file, a kind of general record. For more direct identification of the user , many websites use cookies. Similar to knowing what apartment house someone lives in, but not the specific apartment.

The number of graphics displayed on the webpage equals the number of hits. The display of the webpage is a constant number. Number of hits equals number of graphics plus 1 hit for the page.

For example:

 1 graphic + 1 webpage ( 1 hit + 1 page view ) = 2 hits
10 graphics + 1 webpage (10 hits + 1 page view) = 11 hits
100 graphics + 1 webpage ( 100 hits + 1 page view ) = 101 hits
1000 graphics + 1 webpage (1000 hits + 1 page view ) = 1001 hits
10,000 graphics + 1 webpage (10,000 hits + 1 page view) = 10,001 hits
100,000 graphics + 1 webpage (100,000 hits + 1 page view) = 100,001 hits

I hope this helps everyone understand why the hit count is so great vs. the page views.

Regards,

Matt your SEO Blogmaster

SEO Consultant for Rioforma.com

        

The Alexa Traffic History Graph allows you to create a traffic history graph for any site. Alexa computes traffic rankings by analyzing the Web usage of millions of Alexa Toolbar users.

What is Traffic Rank?
The traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users. It is a combined measure of page views and users (reach). The three-month change is determined by comparing the site's current rank with its rank from three months ago.

What is Reach?
Reach measures the number of users. Reach is typically expressed as the percentage of all Internet users who visit a given site. Alexa expresses reach as the number of users per million. The three-month changes are determined by comparing a site's current reach with its values from three month ago.

Please use the FREE Alexa Rank Checker below to view your ranking changes.


 

Alexa Rank Comparison Tool © SEO Chat™ Domains Enter a one or more domain names (domain.com or www.domain.com) up to 10 domains. Width Width of the chart Height Height of the chart Graph Type Select Alexa Graph Type Daily Reach Rank Time Span Select Time Span 3 Months 6 Months 1 Year 2 Year Enter Captcha To Continue To prevent spamming, please enter in the numbers and letters in the box below Report Problem with Tool.

Regards,

Matt the Blogmaster

FREE SEO Website Review

        

There are many ways, some traditional and some quite innovative, to get other web sites to link to yours. That said,, it can be easier said than done. Google defines a link as it pertains to rankings and SEO as a "vote" from one site to another. The more quality votes your site receives, the greater chance you have of rankings well. If a well established site links to yours, that link carries more weight than one would from a  less reputable page.

If your site has useful content and is doing something unique, you're already ahead of much of the competition. People need a reason to link to your site, as very few will do it out of the goodness of their heart. Trading links can work, but link exchange networks have decreased in value and won't be of much use in competitive fields. Buying Text Links, if you haven't heard, is a big Google no-no. While entire articles could be written on this topic, here are a few popular methods of acquiring incoming links:

1)     Create and issuing press releases with a link back to your site

2)     Submitting to reputable business directories such as DMOZ

3)     Start participating on related blogs by commenting and exchanging ideas

4)     Ask clients with web sites, if they would add your link to their "partners" section

5)     Participate in relevant forums and discussion boards with a link in your signature

6)     Get involved in social media and bookmarking websites

Regards,

SEO Blogmaster Matt