Using Analytics on Your Site

If you’re investing time or money in SEO/PPC, you need to know what you’re getting in return. The best measure is your bank account and ROI, but with careful analysis of your visitors and their behaviors, you can increase your bottom line, help redirect efforts to the most profitable website segments, and get more out of each landing page. In this article we discuss web analytics and its usage for your website.

Analytics Products

There are many tools on the web for free and others for reasonable prices. Take your pick.

* Google Analytics - Google has a lot of built-in advanced features comparable to expensive analytics tools. The down side is, when you use Google Analytics, you're sharing all your data with Google, and they can do anything with it. For instance, if a certain keyword converts well for you, logically it should convert just as well for other companies, so Google may raise minimum bids for that keyword to make more money.

* Sitemeter

* Omniture

* Efficient Frontier

* Yahoo Web Analytics (free, expected to be out soon at the time of this writing).

* Mint

* Clicky

* Clicktracks

* Microsoft adCenter Analytics

* WebTrends

* Piwik

Once you set up your tool, it's time to analyze your traffic!


Using Analytics on Your Site - Basic Analytics Measurements


Here we discuss basic web analytics measurements universal to all analytics software programs.

* Visits - total number of visits to the website.

* Page views - number of all page views in total.

* Pages Per Visits - average number of pages users sees per visit.

* Bounce Rate - percentage of visitors who come to your website and leave without clicking on anything.

* Average Time On Site - how long people stay on your website

These are the core metrics in all analytics programs. They give you an overall look, but to find real value you have to dig a lot deeper into statistics such as monthly comparisons, trends and segmenting, which can sometimes answer the "why" question.

Traffic Sources

Understanding traffic sources is straightforward. There are search engines, PPC search ads, contextual networks, direct traffic, RSS readers, email, and affiliate/link referrals. Each traffic source can hint at intention, and measuring sources is essential to finding out your strong and weak spots.

For instance, if most of your traffic is from search engines, with a small percentage of direct visitors, chances are you have a weak brand. Focusing on brand building can thus increase direct traffic. Let's take a deeper look at traffic sources:

* Search Engines - Google, Yahoo, Live, MSN, AOL, Ask, Altavista, AlltheWeb, Netscape, etc.

* Referring Sites - These include directories, links from other websites, blogs and banner ads. By exploring referring URLs you can sometimes learn why users clicked on the link. If particular links send you a lot of qualified traffic that converts, you might want to establish a commercial relationship with that site owner.

* Direct Traffic - Those are visitors who directly type in your address or land on your pages through a bookmark. This is a sign you have a strong brand. Direct traffic is free and usually converts well.

Bounce Rate

Bounce rate shows how many visitors land on your website (PPC, search, direct, etc), and then click the back button or close the window. Basically they leave without doing anything. The down side of this measurement is that the bounce rate on a site-wide level does not tell you much. You have to drill into each page, measure its bounce rate and only then make conclusions.


Page Level Bounce Rate

Why is measuring bounce rate on the site wide level wrong? You may change the wrong stuff. The site wide bounce rate is an average sum of the bounce rate from all of your pages. One page can be doing well, while another one is not. How do you know which one is doing well and where you need improvement if you only look at your site wide bounce rate?

By exploring each page one by one and by studying bounce rates, you can spot pages that are doing well in terms of this measurement and ones that need changes.

Using Analytics on Your Site - Measuring Conversion Rate

This is one of my favorite measurements, as it tracks the entire performance of the website. All investments in SEO, PPC, design, copy writing, content, and conversion optimization come down to this statistic. How many visitors do what you want them to do? How many subscribe, buy and become customers?

In this section we'll focus on goal tracking (conversion tracking) with Google Analytics.

"A goal is a website page which a visitor reaches once they have made a purchase or completed another desired action, such as a registration or download." - Google Help

Setting Up Goals in Google

To set up goals in Google Analytics you must meet a few requirements:

* There must be a clear URL for the goal page, such as a thank you page. Basically it's a page that users see after they do what you want them to do. This page should be only available upon completion of your goal. If it can be accessed otherwise (through search results, links, etc), then conversion results will be inflated.

* You must make up a name for your goals. For example, "registration" or "sale."

* You can specify a funnel to the goal page. The funnel represents the page flow before your visitors become customers. In e-commerce, this is the checkout process. In lead generation, this is the application process. Once you specify the funnel, Google will track goal completion. By analyzing goal completion you can learn the exact step in the conversion process that hurts your bottom line.

* Assign a value to your goal. A goal's value helps you estimate the ROI delivered with each conversion.

Google says that a good way to value a goal is to evaluate how often the visitors who reach the goal become customers. If, for example, your sales team can close 10% of people who request to be contacted, and your average transaction is $500, you might assign $50 (i.e. 10% of $500) to your "Contact Me" goal. In contrast, if only 1% of mailing list sign-ups result in a sale, you might only assign $5 to your "email sign-up" goal.

I personally think this is too much information to share with Google, since it can easily estimate how much you make with your website. As it measures goal values on other competing sites in your industry, it can create ROI benchmarks and use that data to price fix their AdWord bids with the excuse of quality scores.

Setting up your goals is easy. Keep in mind that it's essential to redirect users to the goal page once they have completed your action. Without a goal page, Google cannot measure your conversion rate. To set up goals, go to Analytics Setting and click on "edit" in the Actions tab (far right).Click on "edit" next to the goal and enter the required URLs along with the appropriate information.

Using Analytics on Your Site - Segmentation

Segmentation is a huge and complex topic. We'll introduce you to the overall concept and provide further direction where you can learn more, from people who understand it better. Segmentation is powerful and can help you answer the "why" question when it comes to online marketing efforts.

What is segmentation?

Website statistics is a mix of visitor intentions, visitor sources, behaviors and questions. By looking at overall website statistics you cannot find out how many visitors who were looking for "X" found it, and if they didn't, why not. You cannot answer why visitors did not get to "page Y" and what you can do to help them get there. With segmentation, however, you can break down analytics into small chunks of information that can help you market better.

For instance, if you've invested in branding, naturally you want to find out how many people search for your brand, and how many end up on your site and take action. To do this you can create a custom segment, and set a filter for "my brand keyword" (including related). You can go further and only count second time visitors, who spend X amount of time on the site, complete some sort of action or make X number of clicks. By setting advanced filters you can see how your campaign efforts affect visitor flow, engagement and ultimately conversion rate.

Here is a big point to keep in mind: you must know what it is you're trying to find out from segmentation before you segment. At the moment, Google has around 100 segmentation options, so you can waste hours just playing around with those. Know what you're trying to measure.

Here are some Google segmentation options: hours of the day, page depth, visitor type, count of visits, city, language, region, ad group, keyword, search engine, ad slot, referral path, medium, page title, host name, refined keyword, landing page, exit page, affiliate, city, product, product category, browser, connection speed, flash, entrances, bounces, purchases and a LOT more.

5 Top Ways To Generate Low Cost Website Traffic

There is one hard and fast rule in generating income for your website: A steady flow of website traffic. If no one goes to your site, it hardly bares a chance of generating an income. Many sites have tried and failed in doing so, and these results to the sites demise. It takes money to maintain an income-generating site; it also takes money to make money.

BUT, it doesn't take a whole caboodle of cash to generate website traffic for your site.

Ever wonder how does big hit sites drive traffic top their site? Most of them are spending tons of money to drive the traffic to their sites, investing in many advertising campaigns and different forms of marketing schemes and gimmickries. This is all worthwhile because, well, they are what they are now, high earning, and big hitting websites.

You don't have to do this if you don't really have their resources. There are many ways to generate low cost website traffic without having to spend what you don't have or can't afford. Many people have banked on high cost methods and have ended up losing their shirt over it.

Here I present to you the Five Top ways to generate low cost website traffic that could help your site a whole lot. Even if you only get a small percentage of successful visitors in to client ratio it still works especially if you get a high number of website traffic.

1. Exchange Links

This is a sure and proven method. Rarely would you see a site where there is no link to another site. Many webmasters are willing to exchange links with one another so that they could produce more public awareness about their sites. You'll soon see and feel the sudden upsurge of the traffic coming in to your site from other sites.

A major prerequisite in exchanging links with other sites is having the same niche or content as the other site. They should share a common subject so that there is continuity in the providing of service and information to what interests your target traffic.

Exchanging links also boosts your chances of getting a high ranking in search engine results. It is common knowledge that search engines ranks high sites that have inbound and outbound theme-related links. With a good ranking position in the search engines, you will generate more traffic in your website without the high costs.

2. Traffic Exchange

This is like exchanging links but on a different higher level. This may cost a bit more than exchanging or trading links but could be made cheaper because you get to earn credits. You can use those credits when viewing others traffic, while you earn credits when someone views yours.

Traffic exchange services are the viewing of another's site or page. This is done vice versa where a site can use your sites contents and so can you to his or her site. You both benefit from each other's efforts to generate traffic. The other sites visitors can go to your pages and know more about your site as well as theirs. Once again the public awareness of your sites existence is boosted.

3. Write and Submit Articles

There are many ezines and online encyclopaedias in the Internet, which provides free space for articles to be submitted. If you want to save costs, you can do the articles yourself. There are many freelance writers who are willing to write for you for a small fee, but to save money; it is wise to do those articles yourself.

Write articles that are themed along with the niche of your site. Write something that you have expertise on so that when they read it, they can feel your knowledge about the subject and will be eager to go to your site. Write articles that produce tips and guidelines to the subject or niche your site has.

Include a resource box at the end of your article that can link them to your site. Write a little about yourself and your site. If you provide a light, information-laden and interesting article, they will go to your site for more.

4. Make a Newsletter.

This may sound like hard work because of all the articles you may need to use to build a newsletter but on the contrary, this is not so. There are many writers and sites that are willing to provide free articles as long as they can get their name in on your newsletter. This will also provide free advertising for them as well.

As your newsletter gets pass around, you can widen your public awareness and build an opt-in list that can regularly visit your site.

5. Join Online Communities and Forums

This only requires your time and nothing else. You can share your knowledge and expertise with many online communities as well as your website. You can get free advertising when you go to forums that have the same subject or niche with your site.

Share your two cents and let them see how knowledgeable you are with the subject. As you build your reputation, you also build the reputation of your site, making it a reputable and honest business that could be frequented and trusted by many people.

By: Andromachi Polychroniou

Finding High Quality Web Directories to Submit your Site to

while such marketing methods as

Submitting to Web Directories is still a cornerstone of many website promotion campaigns.
Although they are not quite as important as they used to be, they still serve some important functions.
The major engines such as Yahoo and MSN send out their robots to search the web for new resources that come up. Being listed in established web directories
ensures that your website will be among those resources which are indexed quickly.
You can also build up your backlinks with directory listings. The top engines like Yahoo give a lot of weight to
the number of backlinks to your website when ranking it for a specific keyword or keyword phrase and one-way links are considered by many SEO experts to have more relevence than the two way, traded links.
This is also why writing articles and forum signatures can help boost your site in the rankings.
So what makes for a good directory to be listed on?
I look for something unique, hopefully something with a custom design, different categories and of course a high pagerank, such as

The RA Directory for example. I prefer to see it differentiated as much as possible from the many standard PHP directories out there. I do not mind paying a small charge to get listed as I know that this will allow the directory to have a smaller index and therefore send more traffic and PR
to my site.
The majority of web directories that are out there allow you to provide anchor text (link title text) with keywords describing your site. This very important because It is not
that easy to get links to your site with the keywords you want and web directories are one of the best ways to do this.
To get started finding directories to list your site, I recommend starting with directoryarchives.com and going from there

By: Aaron Wilmont

Real Audio and Real Video, streaming media for your web site

Anybody interested in creating RealAudio and RealVideo content
on their sites will find it's a great deal easier than they
might have initially imagined.

The instructions given below are for RealAudio on a Windows
95/98 computer, but the process is almost identical for
RealVideo and other platforms. I tentatively suggest you print
out this tutorial for easier reading, by copying the text and
pasting it into Wordpad or Word then printing it out. Or if, you
prefer, you can download the text as a zipped document from
here. Netscape users please press shift as you click to save the
file to disc.

Before you start, be sure you:

1: have an audio or video file in one of the following formats:
AVI, MOV, WAV, or AU format. If your file is not in one of those
formats, you will need to convert it before starting this
tutorial.

2: check with your internet service provider or the people who
provide your web space that they support streaming media. This
is the one sure thing that will guarantee that you'll never get
this technique to work on your site. Save your self a lot of
time and effort by finding out before you start this tutorial.

3: are not violating any copyright laws by placing copyrighted
material on your web site. It goes without saying that the best
files to put on your web site are files you've created yourself.
A snippet of the Spice Girls may titillate a few but it won't
encourage people to stick around or even come back to see how
your site develops and it may make you vulnerable to prosecution.

Step 1: Download RealProducer encoder The current version is
RealProducer 7.0. To get the encoder, click here, fill out the
form and download the encoder. I've been through this process
myself a few times and I can guarantee that Real won't send you
annoying bumf. After you finish downloading, you will need to
execute the file you downloaded and install RealProducer.

Step 2: Preparations to encode your music file Double click the
icon on your desktop or from the start menu called "
RealProducer." In the dialogue box which pops up choose 'record
from file'

Now you need to enter the name of the file that you want to
encode. Click "Browse" and browse for the file. Once you have
found the file, click "Open" then "Next".

In the next screen, enter the title, author, copyright and a
brief description of the track to inform your listeners of the
kind of thing they can expect to hear when they play it. Then
click "Next". Now you need to select the target audience. Select
"Multi-rate SureStream for Real Server G2" and click "Next".
Then choose 56k Modem as a target Audience stream format. Most
PCs, browsers and modems should be able to handle this.

The current screen asks for the audio format. Select the
appropriate type based on the type of file you are encoding and
click "Next".

Now you will be asked to enter the output file. You can choose
to enter it anywhere on your hard drive but you should be able
to remember exactly where you placed it. Then you should click
"Next". Please ensure at this stage that you avoid any spaces in
a file's name. Most servers are still susceptible to file names
which aren't continuous so a file like 'wake free zone.rm' would
be more easily recognised as 'wakefreezone.rm'.

Finally, RealProducer allows you to confirm your choices. If
there is nothing wrong with your choices, click "Start". If you
wish to change something, hit 'back' and change what you need to
in the appropriate dialogue boxes.

Step 3: Encode the file In the "RealEncoder" screen, click the
"Start" button in the lower left corner of the RealEncoder
window. It may take a few minutes to encode the file, depending
on the length of the original file. The blue bar in the lower
right corner of the RealEncoder shows your progress. When
encoding is finished, a "Recording Complete" box will pop up.
Here you are given the choice to upload the destination of your
file to Real Server Janus where, if you're lucky, someone may
stumble across your musical offering via their web site. You
simply connect to the internet and fill out the form at Janus to
inform them where they might find your music. Then you should
close RealProducer .

Step 4: Upload the file To upload the file to your Web site, you
will need to use an FTP program or Site Manager. You can upload
to any directory, just be sure you remember the address of the
file. If your program asks, this file should be uploaded in
"Binary" mode.

Step 5: Make a text file linking to the Real (*.rm) file Click
your Start Menu and go to "Run." Type "Notepad" and click "OK".
In Notepad, type only this line of text:
http://www.server#/username/directory/file.rm. # is the server
that you are on, username is your domain username, directory is
where you've uploaded the rm file to and file.rm is the actual
file that you uploaded. For instance the file wakefreezone is
at: 'http://www.eidosnet.co.uk/donkit racks/wakefreezone.rm'

Here's the rub. There should only be one line of text in the
Notepad window. When you are finished, click "File" and go to
"Save As." In the "Save as Type" selector, select "All Files
(*.*)". Select a directory you can remember, and in the "File
name:" box type a name with an ending of .ram. (For example,
sound.ram.) Click "Save." This is extremely important. What
you've done here is to create a kind of sign post to the .rm
file which then, when your visitor clicks on to the link, points
their copy of RealPlayer to the .rm file which the application
will then play.

Step 6: Upload the text file Use an FTP program or Site Manager
to upload the text file to your web site. You can upload to any
directory, just be sure you remember the address of the file. If
your program asks, this file should be uploaded in "Text" or
"ASCII" mode, however most FTP programmes worth their salt will
know what type of file you're uploading and change the mode
automatically.

Step 7: Link to the text file on your web site You will need to
edit one of your HTML files on your Web site and place a link to
the *.ram file. This link should be to your web site, not to the
file on your hard drive. Then you will need to re-upload the
HTML file.

Step 8: Test your RealAudio file Go to your web site and click
on the link to the RealFile (the *.ram file). Your browser
should quickly download a file, and RealPlayer should open and
play the RealAudio file. If anything does not work correctly
check the addresses you used and make sure they are accurate. If
your file refuses to play but no other error messages pop up,
you should check that you uploaded the files with the proper
file type.

RealVideo To make RealVideo, use the same method but be prepared
to wait while the file encodes as video is far more memory
hungry than audio.

Have fun!

By: Dominic Arnold

Discover How to Increase Web Site Traffic Through Search Engine Optimization

There are many different methods you can use to increase web site traffic. But the majority of traffic to your web site will probably come from one of the major search engines with estimations that range from 67% to 90%. The power of search engines can indeed drive free, capable online visitors to your web site.

To increase web site traffic, you need be knowledgeable enough with search engine optimization. Search engine optimization refers to the clever manipulation of the frequency and location of keywords in your web pages to increase web traffic to your site.

In using search engine optimization to increase web site traffic, there are a number of things to be considered. Firstly,you need to have distinctive and fitting keyword phrases. Usually, individual keywords are too cutthroat to rank favorably, except if they are exceptional to the business you're in. When you describe your business, make sure you come up with two or three word phrases that are precise enough.

The location and frequency of your keywords are also critical to increase web traffic to your site. The keywords should be placed in the page title and also high up in the page text. The keywords that you select will be used all throughout the optimization method so it is important that you choose the keywords well. The placement of keywords is also crucial. Your keywords should likewise appear in the alt tags, meta keywords, meta description, headers and link addresses.

Another way that you can increase web traffic to your site is by using meta tags to guarantee a precise description of the page and to utilize variations of the keywords that were not placed in the page text. Meta tags were initially made to aid search engines in finding out vital data about your page that otherwise they might have had trouble verifying. You should repeat the most essential keyword phrases in the keyword and description meta tags. But be aware if you're overdoing the repetition. This may not increase web site traffic since this can be misinterpreted as spamming, which may lead to your site not being listed.

Be aware that your links may become hidden due to frames and image maps. When this happens, you may not be able to increase web traffic to your site. There are search engines that are not frame compatible and may conceal your links and stop them from going further into your site. These search engines include Excite, Alta Vista, WebCrawler and HotBot. The search engines that do not support image maps are Lycos, HotBot, Excite, and WebCrawler.

You should also increase the number of links that lead to your page to increase web site traffic. It is advisable to trade links with complimentary web sites or with associates. The more links, and preferably one way, non-reciprocal links from other web sites to your web pages, the higher it will be positioned by several of the search engines.

You might also want to regularly update your web pages to increase web traffic in your site. Several major search engines arrange re-crawls on web pages to see the frequency of their updates. This in turn will lead to a higher position in search results. It is recommended that you change the page enough so the date in your file is recent.

By: Neil Day

Google Fun Facts

Google sorts billions of bits of information for its users. Here are some little-known bits of information about Google:

The basis of Google's search technology is called PageRank™, and assigns an "importance" value to each page on the web and gives it a rank to determine how useful it is. However, that's not why it's called PageRank. It's actually named after Google co-founder Larry Page.

Google's name is a play on the word googol, which refers to the number 1 followed by one hundred zeroes. The term was coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner, and was popularized in the book, "Mathematics and the Imagination" by Kasner and James Newman. Google's play on the term reflects the company's mission to organize the immense amount of information available on the web.

Google started as a research project at Stanford University, created by Ph.D. candidates Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were 24 years old and 23 years old respectively (a combined 47 years old).

Google's index of web pages is the largest in the world, comprising of billions of web pages. Google searches this immense collection of web pages often in less than half a second.

Google receives daily search requests from all over the world, including Antarctica.

Users can restrict their searches for content in 35 non-English languages, including Chinese, Greek, Icelandic, Hebrew, Hungarian and Estonian. To date, no requests have been received from beyond the earth's orbit, but Google has a Klingon interface just in case.

Google has a world-class staff of more than 2,668 employees known as Googlers. The company headquarters is called the Googleplex.

Google translates billions of HTML web pages into a display format for WAP and i-mode phones and wireless handheld devices, and has made it possible to enter a search using only one phone pad keystroke per letter, instead of multiple keystrokes.

Google Groups comprises more than 845 million Usenet messages, which is the world's largest collection of messages or the equivalent of more than a terabyte of human conversation.

Googlers are multifaceted. One operations manager, who keeps the Google network in good health is a former neurosurgeon. One software engineer is a former rocket scientist. And the company's chef formerly prepared meals for members of The Grateful Dead and funkmeister George Clinton.

Official Gmail Blog: A picture is worth a thousand words

Official Gmail Blog: A picture is worth a thousand words