Posted on December 4, 2011 by Hans Riemer
For Google's eyes only!
One of the most important things a Web Analytics tool can tell you is the keywords people are typing to find your website on the search engines. Lately, however, Google has been blocking significant portions of that data, ostensibly for privacy reasons.
To see what we mean, here’s an example of keywords as a traffic source. You can do this yourself in your own Web Analytics account. These instructions are for the new user interface in Google Analytics but instructions for the old user interface are also provided in parentheses, if appropriate.
- Log in to your account (and then click View Report).
- Select Traffic Sources > Sources > Search > Organic (Select Traffic Sources > Keywords and then select “non-paid” just below the graph).
- Scan down the list of keywords that brought non-paid traffic to your website. You may need to expand past the first 10 that are shown by default. You are looking for a keyword called “not provided” or “not set”.
In the actual example shown below, Organic Search brought 4,810 visits over a 30-day period. Of those 4,810 visits, the #1 keyword was “not provided” which brought 1,110 visits.
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Posted on May 19, 2011 by Hans Riemer
Would you build your house with a Faulty foundation?
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten a call that went something like this: “Hi, we just had our website completely redesigned and now that it’s live, we’d like the site to get more traffic from the search engines. Can you help?”
Of course we can help. But frankly, the correct answer is, “I wish you’d talked to me before you launched the new site.”
It’s a fact that most sites suffer a drop in traffic right after a re-build. Why? Most sites have search rank and traffic for at least SOME non-branded keywords before the rebuild. What often happens next is that they still show up in the same place in the organic search results for a while, but anyone clicking on the listing will land on a 404 error – Page Not Found because the content that Google was pointing to is now located at a new URL which Google doesn’t know about yet.
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Posted on March 4, 2011 by Hans Riemer
Google Search Results
Lately there has been a flurry of coverage in the mainstream media about Google’s efforts to improve the quality of its organic (non-paid) search results. In the past two weeks we’ve seen articles in the NY Times, Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg, just to name a few. Never before has the practice of search engine optimization, or SEO, received such prominent publicity.
The reasons behind SEO’s sudden fame are not very flattering, though. The story begins with Google’s rise to prominence in the search engine wars by delivering higher quality results than its competitors. It was common knowledge that nobody could “buy” their way to the top of Google’s organic search results, and whenever people tried to game the system, Google’s smackdowns were relatively swift and harsh.
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Posted on February 4, 2011 by Hans Riemer
place your effort on the overall goal
Improve Conversion Rates Through “Reverse Engineering”
Whenever we have been asked to troubleshoot an online campaign that isn’t working, the #1 problem we see is that most of the effort has been placed on driving traffic rather than the overall goal. In other words, instead of focusing on keywords or ads, you should begin by defining the desired result of your marketing activity or campaign. Is it a highly qualified lead? A sale?
Start at the end and work your way backwards. That’s what we mean by “reverse engineering.”
Let’s break down the process into a sequence of logical steps you can follow.
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Posted on January 20, 2011 by Darryl Delong
Question: What’s the quickest way to get people to leave your website?
Answer: Having a BORING headline on the entry page, also known as a landing page, that doesn’t grab the visitor’s attention or persuade them to take further action.
We’ve all seen websites that simply don’t present their product or service in a way that gets us to take further action. In fact, most websites are like that. Visitors bounce right off of them faster than you can flip a switch.
You may be getting tons of traffic to your site, but if your website doesn’t convert, it’s like putting coins into a broken coke machine over and over again, hoping to get a drink that never comes. What’s worse, if you’re paying for that traffic, it hurts your bottom line.
Having a high conversion rate allows you to outspend your competitors on advertising and still make money, which puts you at a tremendous competitive advantage and allows you to dominate your niche. Persuasive copy can help you accomplish this.
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