You need hard figures for real insights into who, how and why is using your website. Use analytics to measure and optimise web traffic and effectiveness.

The “build it and they will come” mantra is fine for Kevin Costner but in the fierce environment of online operations it is fool hardy not to have strategy (informed by data) behind your web presence.

Understanding the source and the behaviour of your users will help you get the best out of your website, generate more leads and hopefully help you fulfil your online objectives.

Web statistics have long been used to track where visitors are coming from (geographically and online) what language they speak, how often they visit and what browsers they use. There’s a barrage of software available, although, in its new 2012 incarnation, Google Analytics includes information for web strategists to use as part of their arsenal including ‘real time’ data.

SEVEN WAYS TO HARNESS WEB ANALYTICS

Track user behaviour by measuring pages per visit; average time on site; bounce rates. Create events to track such as enquires, conversions, downloads, how many scrolled all the way to the end. See what parts of the site are attracting the most users, getting them to stay, such as landing pages or campaigns. This allows you to adapt the site and content strategically rather than on an ad-hoc basis

Goal flow allows you to evaluate a conversion funnel and identify processes that aren’t working or that are too fiddly for most users to bother with.

View top keywords and search terms to spot trends based on different criteria that you select – including visits, bounce rates and pages per visit.

The ability to monitor the average page load time you can make sure your site is running smoothly as delays result in lower conversions.

Examining mobile web analytics enables you to cater your site according to what devices, smart phones and tablets people are using. This is a crucial consideration when building your web’s functionality and useability.

Gauge users’ level of social engagement with your site by tracking what content and pages inspired social action: such as shares, retweeting and likes. We recommend plugins such as Sharethis and AddThis sharing plugins to boost traffic and for which Google Analytics is a complimentary tool.

Personalise areas such as dashboards so your users can quickly access the statistics that relate to their area of responsibility. Or create separate areas for different campaigns or target groups.

Our advice is to employ analytics to put strategy, backed up by figures, behind your site and to ensure it is functioning at its optimum and designed for your business’ needs.

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Google have stated that it will have no impact on search results, however seeing that this now allows users rank results we assume that as popularity increases it will eventually influence the search result set for the general public.

The tool is simple at this stage, which the video below will show. Users can basically promote websites to the top of the pile, remove ones a user doesn’t like and leave comments.

Google Webmaster Tools lets web managers control their Sitelinks which are being displayed on Google results, it also alerts us to error pages or pages not being properly indexed by Google, and a displays info on how Google picks up the incoming links to our sites.
Bing Webmaster tools provides users with a range of graphs displaying info such as pages crawled, traffic summaries over the past six months.

Yahoo Site Explorer gives similar information with clearly indentified sections such as feeds, crawl errors, stats on their own indexing of your site.

The information provided by these three tools are essential in understanding how your web is being displayed to these search engines and will help identify areas which need to be improved or analysed to help scale the heights of search engine ranking.

Setting them up is relatively easy and if you don’t have the time, or don’t want to play around with a ftp program, just ask your web developer to set it up for you.

Are you or your web manager tracking your site on the major search engines? We are big supporters of using Google Webmaster Tools, Bing’s Webmasters Tools and Yahoo Site Explorer to upload XML Sitemaps and track the ways the different search engines are indexing our own and our client’s sites.

Google Webmaster Tools lets web managers control their Sitelinks which are being displayed on Google results, it also alerts us to error pages or pages not being properly indexed by Google, and a displays info on how Google picks up the incoming links to our sites.

Bing Webmaster tools provides users with a range of graphs displaying info such as pages crawled, traffic summaries over the past six months.

Yahoo Site Explorer gives similar information with clearly indentified sections such as feeds, crawl errors, stats on their own indexing of your site.

The information provided by these three tools are essential in understanding how your web is being displayed to these search engines and will help identify areas which need to be improved or analysed to help scale the heights of search engine ranking.

Setting them up is relatively easy and if you don’t have the time, or don’t want to play around with a ftp program, just ask your web developer to set it up for you.

When Magento was released in early 2008, it was met with excitement and interest from e-commerce site developers around the world. It quickly became the preferred software option for mid-range ecommerce sites due to its powerful administrative features and functionality. As Armando Roggio states on www.practicalecommerce.com,

“Magento’s feature list is clearly the result of years of ecommerce experience. The platform includes features like a built-in product image zoom capability, advanced pricing rules to support special promotions, a landing page tool to help with marketing campaigns, inventory management, side-by-side product comparison tools, and more.”

If you are in the market for a new platform on which to run your ecommerce site, here are some reasons why Magento may be the right choice for you.

Free

First off, Magento Community Edition is free! Not much can beat a well-built, highly functional product that you can download for no cost. However, dedicated support from Verian the company that developed Magento, is not free and can be quite expensive. Whether you need to purchase a support plan depends on the expertise of your in-house team. If you are have an experienced team, then the free open developers forum may meet your needs.

Feature-Rich

Magento is a highly functional piece of software. It has been developed with an eye on Google and includes Google analytic tools so that your statistics, traffic and search results are highly valuable and reliable. In addition, the site has strong search and sort tools that provide reliable and thorough results.

The software also includes SEO optimisation, including tags, descriptions, clean URLs, and Google site navigation. When getting a new or revamped site up and running, this is extremely important for building up your search engine results and driving in new traffic.

Another robust feature of this product is its ability to run multiple commerce sites from a single version of the software. Each site can have its own unique layout, storefront and templates all running simultaneously. Magento can combine databases to allow for a single report on all of your individual stores and sales. This allows for superior supply management and customer service to manage all your outlets from one single place.

With the Magento software, you can not only access great reporting, but also import large databases of customer and product information. This can be vital for any business and can help save countless hours in your migration process. The software does not restrict the number of sales or products on the site, unlike many competing products, which charge for any overages beyond certain limits.

A few additional features of Magento include the ability to upsell to your customers at checkout time, a single checkout page, and functionality with all major merchant accounts. Magento also offers a newsletter feature, customer review options and integration with all postal carriers for real-time rate quotes.

Some Words of Warning

There are also a few challenges associated with this software. Magneto is a robust product that provides a high level of functionality, but to take advantage of that functionality, you need a strong, dedicated IT professional who can design, build and maintain the site. In addition, Magento operates best with large drivers and a dedicated server. If you don’t have those resources at your disposal, you will likely be frustrated with Magento.

Some additional glitches have been reported when getting the product up and running, but work-throughs can be found on the solutions forum. During the initial installation, some of your directories’ permission levels may need to be adjusted to allow for all files to be downloaded. Also, when importing product databases, it is best to create product categories first, because it can be challenging to make adjustments to the database once the information has been uploaded. In addition, there are some concerns related to the creation of custom attributes.

In sum, Magento is a strong product with a good following and a very robust feature set. It merits consideration when you’re selecting the right IT solution for your business.

The more content, the better. Of course the content needs to be of good quality. Basically, a search engine will view a 50 page site to be more important than a 5 page site. Here are some ideas as to what can be used for additional content:

Educational Content

Adding useful information aimed at educating your visitors about your product and/or service can be extremely beneficial. Not only will search engines be happier, you’ll find that other web sites within your industry will be more likely to link to your site for the benefit of their own audience. If you know of a popular site in your industry that offers helpful links, try to think of what content you can create to inspire them to add a link to your site.

News

News articles are probably the most popular method of content creation, used by many of the major SEO companies today. All web sites should be able to create a news section filled with articles relevant to their industry. Articles can then be archived so that search engines can find them, even if they may seem out of date. Over time larger sites can accumulate 100′s of extra pages in their news section.

Expansion of Core Information

You may be able to expand the information that currently exists on your site. For example, you could create a separate page for each staff member in your business. Or you could offer a more in-depth explanation of your product or service. You may want to run a forum or a blog on your site that is focused on related topics to your web site.

Content must be applicable to your site

Keep in mind that all new content needs to be related to your web site. You will also need to think carefully about how you link all of the new information together. The basic rule of thumb is to minimise the amount of clicks a visitor needs to make from your home page to your new content. Also, make sure that you do not exceed 100 links per page.

Quality Relevant Link Establishment

Establish links from other quality web sites within your industry. The deciding factor in securing strong search results is the strength of your external link network. Building up quality links to your site is a very complicated process. Links need to be built to simulate a natural progression on a search engine, so you cannot build too fast. Links also need to be from relevant web sites with good PageRank. In building this network you will be communicating with hundreds, maybe thousands of webmasters. If you are planning to build links yourself, you will need to make sure that you have a good management system for following up and checking you link exchanges.

Here are the basic rules of good link building:

• Site must be Relevant:

  Ensure all of the sites are related to you industry. Do not swap links with sites that are very general unless they are a major portal with high PageRank.

• Link Page Needs to have a good PageRank:

  Source links from pages with at least a PR2. The higher the PageRank the better. Of course sometimes PR0 or PR1 links can be beneficial if the relevancy is very high. Ideally it is good to build up a network of PR4+ links.

• Link Page should have less than 50 links listed:

  The fewer links on a link page the better. If you can imagine a links page having 100 search engine points. If 50 links appear on the page, each link could theoretically be worth 2 points. If 10 links appear, each link could be worth 5 points and so on.

• Avoid Free For All Link Pages or any suspect sites:

  Google and other major search engines will penalise web sites that link with bad neighborhoods. These sites are usually very easy to spot. If you are ever unsure about a site – avoid it!

Things to avoid

Using the same colour text as your background

Even if you’re using an image background, this technique is heavily penalised and may result in your site being black listed.

Do not hide content by using layers

Some webmasters will hide search engine rich content behind a layer so that no visitor will be able to see the content. This technique is likely to result in a penalty. CSS layers seem to be OK. A general rule of thumb: keep your code as simple as possible.

Cloaking domain names

There was once a popular SEO technique that has now become very dangerous, which involved cloaking one domain name to another. The idea was that you could fill a page with very high quality search engine content, then redirect all visitors to that page over to another site without the user seeing any of the information. In most cases this technique is easily detected and therefore best left alone. If you’re unsure if your domains are being cloaked, contact your Web Hosting company or Web Designer.

Using link programs that establish large amounts of links quickly

There’s a number of linking programs that provide a large volume of links in a very short period. While this seems to be a great solution to link building, it can be extremely detrimental to your search engine results. Basically, linking too quickly is now penalised by engines like Google. Also make sure that if you are using a link management system, that your link building is customised and not just part of a link farm. A link farm is a group of web sites that are required to link to every other site in the group.

Change to a new domain!

We have occasionally seen instances where, against our recommendations, a client has completely moved or redirected to a new domain after having an already established, well ranking domain. Usually brought about by a re-branding campaign. With a re-direct please be aware that you may not see results drop straight away but from our experience it can have dire consequences.

Sign up for ‘free for all’ style linking strategies

These are very easy to obtain (for a reason). Google is well aware of them and they can certainly incur big penalties.

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(Credit: ZDNet.com.au)

Google will close its Australian operations, effectively blacklisting the country in response to the Federal Government’s “evil” plan to filter the internet.
Goooone

ZDNet.com.au has confirmed that the search engine giant will close its doors on Australia for good, effective immediately, marking the end of four years of its operation here and a long-running battle with the government over its plan to filter the internet.

Known for changing its famous logo to commemorate special occasions, Google’s Australian site this morning featured a somewhat blunt statement on how the company viewed its place in the local market (see screenshot).

“We’ve already left China. That was clearly not a bluff and besides I couldn’t take the food anyway,” said Google CEO Eric Schmidt. “Oh yeah, and our company motto is always… I mean never … wait, it’s ‘Don’t Be Evil’. So we just can’t be part of it.”

Schmidt did however concede that it would be harder to leave Australia than China.

“It’s a shame because our Sydney office has really nice views of the harbour. And have you seen our kitchen? I suppose Fairfax will want it now. Well, what’s left of it anyway.”

When asked for comment, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy was silent for a moment before shouting, “They can’t blacklist us … we’ve already blacklisted them!”
Stephen Conroy

Conroy was stunned (Credit: Ben Grubb/ZDNet.com.au)

Some Microsoft representatives were on hand outside Conroy’s office to offer their thoughts on Google’s departure — and to hand out the many “Bing” T-shirts they had brought along.

“Look, we believe in competition, and now that Google is leaving Australia we will be able to compete,” a Microsoft spokesperson said.

While it’s goodbye to Google for Aussies, the company will retain a local presence, according to Schmidt.

“We expect to continue operations in the region — just not in Australia”, said Schmidt. “We’ll probably move to another nearby country, like Tasmania or something.”

This was an April Fools Joke. We hope you enjoyed the gag!

Source: http://www.zdnet.com.au