Beginners Guide

Posted by admin | SEO Reseller | Wednesday 22 April 2009 3:58 am
Search Engine Optimisation is the buzzword around at the moment. It is the art of getting a website to appear higher up in the “natural” results pages of Search engines like “Google”. Although I highly recommended SEO for any business wanting to push online sales or increase website visibility it does have a few limitations:
Time frame:
Due to the nature of how search engines operate and the vast size of the Internet it may take several months before you “see the fruits of your labour” with SEO.
 
Cost:
SEO is a very specialised field and this is reflected in the cost of hiring a professional seo company.
 
Black Hat techniques:
There are still many people selling SEO services that use “black hat” techniques in order to gain high rankings in the search engines. By “black hat” techniques I mean unethical techniques that cheat the search engines, for example “cloaking” or “doorway” pages. These techniques may cause a temporary rise in rankings for a website but you run the risk of being banned by the search engines.
 
Keywords:
It is very difficult to optimise a website for many keywords. You may be able to rank top for some of your keywords but if you sell thousands of individual products then that is only a small fraction of your market.
Another option available to businesses wishing to promote their website on Google is to use their Pay Per Click Advertising programme- Google Ad words.Google Ad Words allows a website to instantly appear on the first pages of Google for any keywords related to your product or service.
Your listing appears on the right hand side of the “natural” results as a “sponsored link”. The beauty of this advertising method is that it is highly targeted. What I mean by this is that your website is put in front of people who are as far into the buying cycle as possible, they are searching to buy a particular product or service. Compare this to more traditional advertising like listings in the press. Lets say you place an advert in a local newspaper on page Twelve. The newspaper has 100 000 readers weekly. So 90 000 read page twelve. 20 000 readers noticed your ad and of those readers 500 chose to remember your company name for future reference. Of these 500 readers 50 actually think of you next time they require your product or service. So from 100 000 readers you have gained 50 new customers. Now with Google Ad Words your advert only appears when someone types in a keyword related to your product or service. Its like everybody reading the newspaper seeing your advert plus you only pay when they visit your website.
There is no minimum budget for Google Ad Words. If you wanted to spend one pound a day then that’s fine. You bid on your keywords and set the price you are willing to pay for each visitor to your website. Average price per click is approximately £0.05 to £1.00 but it completely depends on the competitiveness of the market.
Where you are positioned in the “sponsored links” depends on two things- your bid price for your keywords and your click through rate (the number of times your listing has been shown divided by the number of times your advert is clicked.) The higher the click through rate the more “relevant” Google deems your advert and you are rewarded with being higher up in the listings.
Google Ad Words is used by millions of people every day promoting their websites and increasing traffic and sales. It is relatively straightforward to set up and operate so what are you waiting for……
Share

Ways To Improve Your Site with Google Analytics

Posted by admin | SEO Reseller | Wednesday 15 April 2009 6:11 am

Among all the free web site stats analyzer, I think Google analytics is the best solution for your site because of its utility, richness and depth analysis. You are able to make informed editorial, navigational and page design decisions to boost your site’s traffic and effectiveness with the data that Google gives you.
Signup & installation
Google Analytics was launched in 2005; growth was initially slow due to the frustrating waiting list system initiated by Google to avoid over stretching their servers. Now the waiting list has been removed and anybody can sign up to use this great service.
You just need to visit Google analytics and signup for free Google analytics account.
Once your account is set up, to get Google Analytics tracking your site’s page views, drop a snippet of JavaScript onto your site’s pages (much like Sitemeter.) The guide should help you find your way around the new system. You just have to copy paste the JavaScript in the pages you want Google to track.
E.g.
<script type=”text/javascript”>
var gaJsHost = ((“https:” == document.location.protocol) ? “https://ssl.” : “http://www.”);
document.write(unescape(“%3Cscript src=’” + gaJsHost + “google-analytics.com/ga.js’ type=’text/javascript’%3E%3C/script%3E”));
</script>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker(“UA-1063593-**”);
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}</script>

If you’re a blogger, just include the Google Analytics code into all your blogging software’s templates.

Powerful report generating tool
Google Analytics has all the features you’d expect from a high-end analytics offering. It also provides tightly integrated AdWords support to view AdWords ROI metrics without importing cost data or add keyword tracking codes.
If you have an AdWords account, you can use Google Analytics directly from the AdWords interface. Google Analytics also calculates ROI metrics from automatically imported cost and keyword tracking data, by saving you time.
There are various ways to track your different needs for your site.
If your site allows downloads you can keep record of your downloads by simply adding a script in your site.
E.g.
<a href =”http://www.example.com/pdf/maps.pdf” onClick=”Javascript: urchinTracker (‘/downloads/map’);”>

Tracking ecommerce site
Tracking where your visitor come from is the most important thing you should know. You come to know from which search engine visitors come searching for your site.
Sales reports by traffic sources can be found under the “Traffic Sources > All Traffic Sources” section of the menu.

table

Tracking your sales
To track your sales you will need to use server side script on your confirmation page (the page people see after they complete a transaction on your site) to populate a form in the following format:
code_3

Example
UTM:T|34535|Main Store|111108.06|8467.06|10.00|San Diego|CA|USA
UTM:I|34535|XF-1024|Urchin T-Shirt|Shirts|11399.00|9
UTM:I|34535|CU-3424|Urchin Drink Holder|Accessories|20.00|2

Once you have populated the form, GA will start tracking your sales right away.
Redesign of your site
If you are planning to redesign your site and want to keep your screen resolution according to the most commonly used resolution, according to different browsers or flash installed ask Google analytics for your queries. Just go to ‘web design parameters’ for all the valuable data you want!

Above listed features is only the scratch of Google analytics. According to me Google analytics is one of the best web sites analyzing report generating tool build so far.
If you have not used Google analytics yet try it and I am sure you will love its rich features.

Share
« Previous Page