Web Analytics And Why They're Important

What’s the difference between web stats and web analytics? It’s a question we hear all the time. Well web stats can give you lots of information on traffic, search engine referrals and page downloads but they can be difficult to interpret by the average business user. Web Analytics on the other hand gives detailed information on visitor behaviour and is a much richer source of information for marketers.

Typically web analytics solutions collect session information for every visitor to your website. This data can then be analysed pretty much in any way you want. So you can find out which search engine and queries people are using to find you. But you can also study the behaviour of those users who went on to sign up to your service or make a purchase. Users can be segmented and followed through the site to identify patterns of behaviours. These patterns of behaviour can then help to identify which pages or content produce most sales or show up usability issues which cause users to exit your site.

Combine this with ability to overlay visitor data over a live copy of your website and you have a really powerful tool for developing your web strategy. Perhaps you have a button on your homepage that you want visitors to click on and download a demo piece of software? The click through rate on this button is probably an important metric for your business. Does your web stats package tell you what the click through on this button is? Web analytics will not only tell you this but also allow you to track this metric over time. May be you decide to make the button more prominent or change the call to action. The analytics can tell you whether these changes have worked and suddenly you’re developing your site using objective information with a clear business strategy in mind.

If you manage some pay per click campaigns you are probably tracking the average cost per clicks you might even be using Google Conversion Tracking to give you some idea of the return on your advertising investment. Most web analytics packages can do this for Adwords and Overture but also for email campaigns as well so that you know which campaigns are the most profitable or effective in achieving your business objectives. However the real advantage over conversion tracking is that web analytics tells you what the visitor gets up to between the landing and final check out page.

With out web analytics you are pretty much driving your website blind but for a relatively small investment you can get the full dashboard plus satellite navigation.

To find out more about how web analytics can help your online business go to http://www.ju2.com/

Search Engine Marketing - The Full Package

After conducting extensive research I have come to the conclusion that there is a great deal of misunderstanding surrounding the subject of Search Engine Marketing. The greatest misunderstanding is in confusing the terms Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

One would think that those individuals claiming to be SEO experts should be knowledgeable about the subject and recognize the clear distinction. Apparently this is not the case; the internet is full of misguided information, from so called experts. Proving, I suppose that the industry is liberally spattered with cowboys.

To start, let us first define the term “Search Engine Optimisation” (henceforth referred to as SEO). SEO is the process of manipulating the structure and content of a website in such a way that it will perform better in the search engine’s organic listings. The techniques involved can be sub-structured into several areas of activity, as detailed below.

1) Page readiness – Search engines expect to crawl clean HTML code. Every page of a website should be validated to eliminate errors and sloppy coding.
2) Site readiness – Search engine web bots follow the links on your web pages and thereby find new pages to index. If a web bot meets a broken link it cannot continue spidering your site. Make sure you have no broken links. Also, provide a site map. A tool for creating site maps is available at my website, proSEO Zone.
3) Keyword selection – It is vitally important to select the right keywords for which a particular page is to be optimized. The most obvious keywords are not always the best choice, and are often mega-competitive. Choose wisely.
4) Site structure – Your website should be structured in such a way that each page can be optimized for a maximum of two keywords. Do not try to optimize for a lot of keywords on one page. Remember, you have to write for your users. Writing copy is a balancing act that keeps both users and search engines happy, and is better achieved on a well structured site.
5) Copy writing – the visible text on your web pages should be structured to include the two most important keywords for that page’s content. Get the keywords into headers. Work the keywords into paragraph text, having your keywords appear near the beginning, near the middle, and near the end. Make some keywords bold, some italic and some underlined.
6) HTML tags – The most important of these is the Title tag. Get both keywords for that page into the Title tag, without repetition. For example, if your main key phrase is “diet plans”, and your second phrase is “diet supplements”, the Title tag should read “diet plans and supplements”. Do not repeat the word diet, to search engines it may look like spamming. If your main concern is to improve your Google ranking, you may have overlooked the Meta keywords and Meta description tags, don’t, there are more search engines than Google and they can all bring traffic. Also, get the keywords into H1 tags, H2 tags, alt attributes, and very important, your link text.

And after doing all that for every page in your website you may be asking: so where does SEM come in?

SEM includes SEO plus all the other things you can do to boost your visibility in the search engines and increase targeted visitors to your website. A condensed list may be as follows:

1) SEO (see above).
2) A link building strategy
3) Pay per click (PPC) campaigns.
4) Banner exchanges.
5) Press releases.
6) And any other activity that will get your website noticed. SEM then, is the full package.

Whereas SEO techniques are a vital, but not the only, component of that package.

Richard Brennan is a search engine optimisation and marketing consultant, and founder of proSEO Zone. proSEO Zone specialise in improve Google ranking techniques.

For more information on Search Engine Marketing go to www.ju2.com

Blogging for Business

While there are some exceptions to the rule, a blog can help most businesses. Weather you're blogging to help promote a political party, blogging to market a dinner preparation business or blogging to offer debt advice for your visitors, the effort needed to maintain a blog is usually outweighed by the results that it delivers. So how can you use blogging to your advantage? After installing your blog you'll simply post information relevant to your web site that will be useful to other people on a regular basis. This information can range from currently events in your industry to tips that people can use to better their business or themselves. This helps to keep both your web site visitors and the search engine spiders coming back on a regular basis because your content is updated more frequently. It can also help your web site to be viewed as a resource, and as a result other web sites will often link to it. Over time you will have developed a substantial archive of useful information, along the way you will develop more loyal visitors and improve your ranking in the search engines. If you're ready to get started you can take a look at Blogger, Wordpress or b2evolution. These are the three most common blog programs and are powerful, customizable and free. The installation is pretty straight forward and you should be able to have a blog up and running in just a few hours — though customizing the appearance may take a bit longer. Once everything is in place you'll just have to link to your blog from your main web site and then start posting on a regular basis.

Article provided by www.wildfiremarketinggroup.com/

Craig's List Murders Newspapers

Ever heard of Craig's List? If you're in the local newspaper industry you should have! Craigslist started in 1995 as an e-mail newsletter that Craig Newmark sent to friends informing them of San Francisco cultural events. As interest grew, the newsletter became an online flea and job market and an essential community bulletin board. Now almost every major city in the US has its own list and its also growing in Europe too. London, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh as well as other UK cities have their own Craigslists.

The list contains small ads on anything from bikes to musical instruments as well as not so small ads for houses, rented apartments, cars and business services. Their are job vacancies, personals, community chat rooms and information on gigs and local events. In fact Craigslist is performing the role traditionally played by the local newspaper and it is said that the Craigslist has bought the local newspaper market to its knees in the US.

However, if you're not in newspapers, Craigslist is a fantastic cost free way of advertising what ever you have to sell. For further information on marketing opportunities on the web take a look at www.ju2.com

Its Goodbye to the Butler.

Say good bye to the butler - Jeeves is being retired as Ask.com roll out their re-branding. As part of their re-branding exercise Ask.com have rolled-out a whole host of new features.

The New Homepage has a sleek new design, which is cleaner and more straightforward. But more importantly contains shortcuts to more than 20 new search tools, including maps, images, weather, dictionary, local and desktop search. Due to a hectic weekend we at JU2 towers have yet to play around with any of these features but we did notice a new blogging tool. We’ll keep you posted.

For further information on what search engine marketing can do for your business take a look at www.ju2.com