• Google Anlaytics Changes

    Posted May 13th, 2012 By in General Information, Marketing, SEO With | No Comments

    Some of you may have heard that Google Analytics did a major update that became mandatory in January of 2012.  Much like with Facebook Timeline, Google has allowed a grace period where the old reporting style was still available (yet no longer), though with Google Analytics one had to click a link at the footer to view it.  The old reporting was my preference for a quick overview of my different client accounts, but change happens so I will adjust. 

    From what I’ve read, the new Analytics is geared more for larger corporations that want to provide custom tracking, charting and reporting options, and for those with ecommerce sites who are tracking conversions and AdWords.  The concern is that the “old reporting” scheduled emails will be discontinued soon (no actual date has been provided), so new email reports using the new interface will have to be created for each of my accounts. I note this since I am in the process of learning how the new reporting can best serve my clients, and if you don’t get your scheduled email, know that I will have it in place again soon.

    As my clients know, I have scheduled their analytics report to be sent out each Monday as a PDF.  But in case you were curious, there are other reporting options as well beyond PDF, which include CSV, TSV, and TSV for Excel.  There is also the option to have the report emailed once, hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly.  If you would prefer to have your report sent out in one of these formats, of course do let me know.

    The new reporting definitely provides more than the old one (at least in the online view); now the standard reporting can be customized by using “advanced segments” (you are allowed to select 4 options here) which provides a much more detailed overview page.  But I should note that the scheduled email report needs to be configured since the default “standard reporting” doesn’t really show much, only an overview which provides a line chart of visits over the last month, the total number of visits, number of unique visitors, page views total, page views per visit by person, avg. visit duration, bounce rate, percentage of new visits, and the language of the visitor. 

    As for the online options, you will find them on the left column.  From top to bottom there is:

    Audience.  Within this category we have overview, This is what is provided in the “standard overview report” that is sent out by default as a scheduled email. This category includes demographics, behavior, technology, mobile, custom, and visitor flow.  After “Overview” we have advertising, traffic sources, content, and conversions.  Each of these have sub-menu options which provide additional reporting information.

    As noted above, this new version has the “advanced segments” option in the standard report which allows you to select some addition values to track.  For myself, I tested all visits, search traffic, referral traffic, and mobile traffic.  This provided a lot more information than the simple standard report.  That being said, you need the “custom reporting” options to get a detailed email report. 

    I am still learning here, but from what I’ve seen it works like this: In Custom Reporting you create a new report, name it, and add a report name in the provided field.  Next you name the report tab, and choose the explorer or flat table option.  Then you add a “Dimension” (what is being reported on) and a “Metric” (the numeric summary of the dimension). In essence, you are creating a table of the data that will be displayed.  For example, your dimensions might be “city” and “count of visits” (two dimensions are allowed for) and the metric would be “pages/visits”.  The challenging part is to know which fields to select from the drop-down listing to achieve the best result (Google suggests trial and error).  And finally, you can limit the results further by adding a “filter”.  For the above example, I added a filter for “keyword”, and then added “webdesign”.  What this would provide me is a report table that would show the number of visitors by city who found my website using the keyword “webdesign”, and how many pages each visitor viewed.  Note that since a filter was applied, only results which correspond to the filter will be shown.

    This section is designed so that one needs to create a new report tab for every dimension (aspect you want to track).  The downside is that there is no “autocomplete” or “suggestion” option, which would be a nice inclusion.  And lastly, this new analtyics reporting only recently started providing the option to email or download a report.  Both are still in Beta, but upon my test they did work.  Based upon the many changes that have already come about, I expect more changes to follow.

    You can learn more about these at the Analytics website:

    https://developers.google.com/analytics/resources/concepts/gaConceptsDataCalculation
    https://support.google.com/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=98527#design

  • Marketing with Promotions and Coupons

    Posted May 13th, 2012 By in Marketing With | No Comments

    In our challenging consumer economy, one of the best strategies for success is the implementation of promotions and coupons.  It is well known that many people will purchase more readily if there is a perceived savings to be had, and providing specials and limited time promotions/coupons can be a good option for many businesses.  In this blog post I wanted to talk a little about some of the options that are often used and might be beneficial.

    Firstly, there are the Daily Deals.  My assumption is that you are familiar with these, but if not, these are websites that will email you with a deal/s that is specific to your location.  Of these, Living Social and Groupon are two of the most popular options.  The advantage of these is that there is a significant number of people who do use these services so these might bring you new customers.

    Living Social
    https://getfeatured.livingsocial.com/getfeatured/us

    Groupon
    http://www.grouponworks.com/

    While neither require an up-front fee, the catch is that they require you pay them a significant share of the money made from the deal (or so I have read, I could not locate merchant pricing information), and they encourage you to offer deals in the 50% off range to ensure they’re more attractive to customers. So you’re discounting, then having to share in the profits. 

    Another common option are coupon websites.  There are many of these, so it is important to ensure that your investment in time and money is spent only on the very best, and the most popular of these.  From my research I noted different types of coupon websites, meaning that some are geared more toward restaurants, others popular retail, and while others are more broad so include diverse services.  What is important here is that the one you choose provides local results, and is one that features your type of products/services. 

    The following popular options are of the more general variety.

    RetailMeNot
    http://www.retailmenot.com/static/advertise/

    Sacramento Entertainment Book
    http://www.entertainment-savings-offers.com/sacramento/book/

    DealGator
    http://www.dealgator.com/sacramento
    http://dealgator.wufoo.com/forms/submit-a-site/

    DealChicken
    http://www.dealchicken.com/sacramento-ca
    http://www.dealchicken.com/featurebusiness

    CitySearch
    http://sacramento.citysearch.com/deals
    https://signup.citygrid.com/advertise_with_us

    You may have noted “citysearch”, this is more of the yellow pages variety, but they do have coupons.  In this regard, there are many directory type of websites which do allow you to add your own images.  In this case, you could always include a featured image that is promotional (assuming there is no provision against this practice).  In this case, most will require you to pay for a premium listing.

    Another option that you may wish to consider is advertising on review websites, where possible, and the popular search engines. 

    Angie’s List – The Big Deal
    http://my.angieslist.com/thebigdeal/welcome.aspx

    Google Places
    http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=48187

    Bing Business Portal
    http://advertising.microsoft.com/small-business/getting-started/step-1
    * Bing offers the ability to provide coupons/discounts in your free listing

    Utilizing Social Media is another option that has become popular.  If you use Twitter, you can tweet about a discount or promotion and provide a link to it on your website.  For Facebook, you could install one of the Apps that provide this functionality (woobox.com is one popular option, though with a bit of searching you’ll find others) or you could have a coupon/graphic created, feature it on your Facebook page by “pinning to the top” and then providing a link to the page with the coupon. 

    There are scripts that can be purchased that will integrate within a website if your need is to provide multiple coupons with UPC barcodes or QR codes, etc. From my research the software associated with these can be rather expensive, and most are really geared toward people who want a coupon website, not a coupon inclusion.  So my suggestion, if you do want a coupon or a just a few, then have it created graphically, and add your own code to it (if needed).  This code can be easily created for free from a variety of websites, one I found was http://www.barcode-generator.org/

    A coupon that I recently created
     
    Finally, if your need is to provide a discount coupon that is for purchase on your website, one simple option that comes to mind would be to have a form created where they can purchase it.  This form would capture their contact information, and upon submission redirect them to your PayPal page (or Google Checkout, etc).  Upon payment they would be forwarded back to your websites page that would contain the printable coupon.  The PayPal email would be the buyers receipt of payment (so tell them to print it out), and since PayPal has a unique ID associated with each payment, you can easily validate that the coupon was in fact paid for by comparing it to the email that PayPal has sent you. 
     
    If you have need for a coupon created, or just have questions, I am here to help.

  • Domain Names: Top 10 things to watch out for

    Posted May 10th, 2012 By in Domain Names, Resources, SEO With | No Comments

    I thought I would share a few thoughts regarding common Domain Name oversights my clients (and yes, even I at times) have made with their websites, and a few strategies for web success that are often overlooked.

    1. Domain Name Choices:
    When you choose a domain name for your business, do your best to select one that is representative of your business, and one that will be memorable. If your business is Sacramento Drywall Repair, and your company name is “Mattheson Durable Drywall”, the best domain name would be “www.sacramentodrywallrepair.com“, not “www.matthesondurabledrywall.com“. Why? Because the domain name is one of the criteria of SEO ranking. Unless Mattheson and Durable are important SEO words (likely to be queried in a search) they should not be used in the domain name. That being said, this is not a critical concern, but it is one I would have made if I had known about domain names when I started by business.

    2. Domain Name Extensions:
    Where possible always choose the .com version, not the .net, .us, .info, .biz, etc. unless you are an organization (.org) or a government website (.gov). The reason for this is that most people will automatically assume that the domain is a .com since this is the most commonly used extension. In some cases the .com version of the domain name is already taken, and my suggestion is to find a unique one, don’t try to piggyback on someone else’s domain name success. From my experience when your company name is the same as someone else, and they have an existing web presence, your ranking will suffer. Finally, if you do have a very popular domain name, such as “www.sacramentodrywallrepair.com” be sure to purchase, and park, the .net, .info, .us, and .biz versions. The cost is relatively minimal, and this will prevent someone else from using them for legitimate or deceptive reasons. You can learn more about domain names at my blog post http://www.ecurtisdesigns.com/wblog/2010/11/domain-names/

    3. Domain Name (and Hosting) Company Selection:
    I think this should be self evident, but since many of my clients have fallen into this category I felt the need to provide this warning. When selecting a domain name company and/or a hosting company, select one that is large, established, and reputable. I have had clients choose people who resell from GoDaddy (which is fine) but the person who manages the business is non-responsive, does the work part-time, etc. When you choose a company you need to ensure that there is a knowledgeable person available to assist you, and solve any problems that may arise. That being said, many of the largest companies (such as Network Solutions) are much more expensive than their competition. What I have found is that many of the smaller hosting companies will provide very affordable rates, but they overstack the hosting server, and as a result the server speeds are much slower than is average.

    My advice is to read reviews about any company you are interested in. I used to use a company called WebHostingBuzz, their pricing was good, but their customer support was by ticket system only, and yes, they overstacked their servers so the speed of the server was not adequate for memory intensive websites such as CMS (Content Management Systems). Finally I came to HostGator, and while they are a very large company their servers are top-notch, they have great customer support, and their pricing is less than most. Also look at other features when choosing hosting, such as the administrative platform, ease of use, and add-ons available.

    4. Domain Name Registration:
    When it comes to domain names, never let your hosting company register it. In many cases they will use a third-party option, such as TuCows, and when you choose to quit them as your hosting provider they won’t release the domain name, or if they do, they’ll charge you a fee to do it, or take a long time to get it done. The reality is that if someone else registers your domain name for you, they are in fact the owner of the domain. The domain name is a critical to your business identity, so be sure to manage this yourself, or if someone else has to do this for you ensure that it is someone you trust such as a family member.

    5. Multiple Domain Names:
    Going back to #2, when you do purchase multiple domain names, don’t submit each to the search engines, and don’t have the domain name “masked or cloaked”. If you do, the search engines will see each as a duplicate of your primary website, which will lower your website’s ranking since duplicate content is viewed as spamming. What you need to do is park them. This will make the domains unavailable for purchase but otherwise not linked to your website. If you feel it is necessary to have each of these linked to your site then you need to set a permanent redirect for the parked domain. You can view one of my previous blog posts about how this works at http://www.ecurtisdesigns.com/wblog/2012/02/seo-friendly-parked-domain/

    6. Private Domain Names:
    Many companies, such as GoDaddy, will try to sell you on paying for a private domain name. The reality is that it isn’t inherently beneficial to have the domain name private, especially since someone might not choose a company who isn’t transparent in this regard. The idea that a website is more secure because the domain name is private is a fallacy. Domain Name Companies love to upsell people do to fact that most people don’t know what is needed.

    7. Domain Name Email Servers:
    Many of my clients have paid their domain name company for use of an email server. What this provides is a web mail option where one can login to, or have their domain specific (name@yourdomain.com) email address (or multiple addresses for additional cost) forwarded to their personal computer through Outlook or Outlook Express. Much as with the previous, this type of functionality really isn’t needed, and can become burdensome overtime. The thing is, any good hosting company will provide web mail. Web mail can be accessed by logging into the hosting server control panel, or yes, you can add the server’s .mail and .smtp settings to your personal mail program (Outlook or Outlook Express) and it will work the same as the paid for service. So firstly, you’ll save money. The other concern is that when you choose to use your domain name company for the mail server, your mail is stored on their server, so if you choose to quit them, you’ll lose all of the mail you haven’t saved on your personal/work computer. My suggestion is to use Google’s Gmail. Why? Well, it’s free, they provide nearly limitless web mail space, have good virus and spam protection, and you can easily set the reply address to be domain specific, or have it routed to your mobile phone/device, personal/office computer, etc. You can learn more about setting up Gmail from my blog post at http://www.ecurtisdesigns.com/wblog/2011/09/setting-up-email-for-your-website/

    8. Changing Domain Names:
    When clients have their website redeveloped some will ask about changing their domain name to improve their SEO ranking. The concern is that a website will improve in ranking over time and you don’t want to lose this ranking credit. It is true that content has a biggest influence on the domain name’s ranking, but just being registered for a long period will play a big role in your website’s ranking, especially if two website’s are otherwise equal in SEO strength. So, unless it is absolutely necessary, don’t arbitrarily change your domain name. If you do, your site will be seen as entirely new, and your existing ranking clout will be gone.

    9. Vanity Domain Name Extensions:
    I am sure you’ve heard of the vanity domain names that are now available. The .xxx extension may seem cool, but the cost is often very high (especially for the prime real estate ones), and many companies have found that their customers get confused by the unique extension. My suggestion, avoid these unless you’ve got money to burn. You can learn more about these at my blog post http://www.ecurtisdesigns.com/wblog/2011/12/vanity-domains-and-godaddy/

    10. Domain Name Registration:
    This will seem like a no-brainer, but considering that this happens often I felt I should conclude with this. When you choose a domain name, purchase it as an automatic renewal to your credit card. The reality is that many people forget about their domain name, and when registration comes up for renewal they either forget to pay it, or the email associated with the DNS (Domain Name Server) is no longer in use so they don’t get the renewal email. If a domain expires then the website will no longer be linked to the hosting account server. This is important since a website that is down may not get indexed, and accordingly will be recorded as no longer available, which will lower your ranking, or remove it entirely. Secondly, an interrupted web presence may have your customers lose trust in your company. Finally, a domain name that is registered for a years in the future will be viewed as more creditable by the search engine ranking algorithms.

    Hopefully you learnt something, and if you have questions please feel free to contact me.

  • Proven SEO Success Stories

    Posted Apr 25th, 2012 By in Client Websites, General Information, Marketing, SEO With | No Comments

    In my website and on this Blog, I’ve included a lot of information about website SEO practices that work, and a bit about those that don’t.  I’ve also noted that there are many SEO companies who promise to get you a high ranking in Google by optimizing your website.  As I’ve noted in previous posts, most of the companies who offer SEO services have little, if any, knowledge on what actually works well.  For one, practices that used to work, such as keyword stacking on the pages, stacking keywords in titles, and stacking in descriptions and keywords metatag, are quickly losing their effectiveness as new algorithms are put in place to circumvent such measures.  In fact, the reason the keyword metatag has so little value now in a site’s ranking is a result of the search engines attempt to provide more relevant results. Just know that many of the self-professed SEO Experts still use Blackhat techniques, which can not only hurt your ranking, but get your website blacklisted. 

    I’ve done a bit of research on these SEO companies (rarely a day goes by where someone doesn’t email me and promise to get me on the first page of Google…which I have been for several years), and while they all promise results, few note anything about what they do to get this ranking, few have websites, and even fewer still provide case studies, or any evidentuary proof that their services are of value. This is bad enough, but many of these companies will apply inline css code to their changes (which often invalidates the code), and then they charge the client a large fee, don’t provide reports on what was done or when, and what’s even worse, they charge an ongoing monthly fee.  Why the monthly charge? 

    After I optimize a website, I recognize that the search engines neeed a month or two to respond to the changes, and then, only after careful assessment will additional changes be made if needed.  Those who charge an ongoing monthly fee (assuming they had done their job correctly) are simply seeking to get rich by exploiting your lack of knowledge about SEO and rankings. If you’ve read some of my previous blog posts on the “SEO Experts” I am sure I sound a bit like a broken record, but since I care about the growth of my client websites I wanted to offer some sage advice, and a bit of information about my success with optimization.

    Firstly, a website needs to have text content to be optimized well. I hear from prospective clients all the time how they want a clean and simple website.  In effect they are telling me that they don’t want to pay much (who does), and the “simple” refers to the reality that they don’t have much by way of content ready.  The problem is that a website, especially a home page, which has little content, won’t do well in the rankings.  Why? Because there is little if anything for the search engines to index.  The truth is that the more pages you have, pages with well written  text “above the fold” (at the top of the page) the better your chance of having your content served up. If the content changes over time, … this will help some, if you get a lot of traffic, and they stay around a while, and if your website has been online for a long time, this is what will help get your site ranked highly.  

    So what do you need? 

    • A consistent domain name that is keyword rich
    • Lots of pages with good keyword rich content that is proofed
    • Quality inbound links (reputable websites linking to you)
    • Internal links to your other pages
    • Targeted page titles, page descriptions, and heading titles
    • A website that has been online for some time
    • Interesting and useful content to get new visitors and repeat visitors

    As you can see I note “keyword rich” and “keyword targeted” often.  As I’ve noted many times, a good keyword relationship is important, meaning that your targeted keywords (those likely to be queried in a search to find you) need to be relational to the key SEO areas.  These areas include the page titles, the text headings, the description tag, and to a lesser degree the keywords tag.  There are other legitimate techniques as well (such as quality inbound and internal linking strategies), but these are the most important ones.  And remember, the only way a company can promise to get you on the first page of Google is by using AdWords, which can get expensive, and may not have a lasting ranking benefit.

    When it comes to optimization, I use techniques which doesn’t cost my clients.  I don’t like paying for anything unnecessarily (I have never paid for marketing), and since many of my clients are small companies, I recognize their need to keep costs down.  For my clients I add the proper metatags to their pages, include a keyword targeted title (with regional specificity when possible), a keyword rich description, the keywords metatag based upon the words that related to the specific business, and I utilize heading tags.  In most every case my client websites, many created by previous “designers” moved from a placement so low that it could only be found by searching their company name, to a first page ranking on Google in a span of a couple of months. For those clients who have a lot of competition in their industry, I provide an advanced optimization service wherein I provide unique keyword targeted titles for every page, every page’s description, keyword rich “alt” and “title” tags, and often rewrite the content on primary pages for the important keyword density relationship.  These strategies work, and have been perfected by me over the 10 years I’ve been designing websites.

    To be clear, I would never consider myself an SEO Expert if I couldn’t prove this claim, and so today I am providing you the evidence.

    As most of my clients know, one service I offer is free analytics reports.  I have them sent out each week as a PDF so that my clients, and I, can keep an eye on their progress.  As you will see from the included image, each of these clients experienced improved traffic over the previous month.  Some of my clients still have a relatively small number of visitors since they’re in a speciality market, but many get well over a thousand a month.  I wanted to share this latest report with you to help illustrate some of my client ranking success stories.

    click image to view larger

    ACS Roofing (www.egroofing.com)
    Rebecca of ACS Roofing came to me with a Joomla website that had been hacked.  After the trojan removal process, I edited her existing website which the previous desinger had made a mess of.  As for its ranking, it initially did well in Elk Grove (based upon the efforrts of a  few SEO companies she had hired), yet very poorly in Sacramento.  Upon my recent SEO changes, her site went from a Sacramento ranking in the hundreds, to the first page of Google.  As the analytics report shows, her site’s traffic has increased by over 2,200% from the previous month.

    Autobody Workshp:
    ABW came to me with a website that was created in one of those hosting server simple website builders.  The site’s ranking was very poor, and after my redevelopment they moved from a very low ranking to the first page of Google.  They now get well over 300 visitors per month.

    CCMCA:
    Julie of the California Conference of Masons Association Contractors, came to me with a request for a new website.  She noted that the previous quotes were much higher that what I charged her.  After a few months the CCMCA website went from a poor ranking with few visitors, to well over 400 a month.

    Four Seasons Painting:
    Rich Davis came to me with a website created by one of the “do it yourself” website builders.  As with most of these builders, the website was very simple in layout, didn’t look professional, and the company charged him a monthly fee to use it.  His ranking was not evident in the first 20 pages or so using a logical search query.  Since the redevelopment, Rick’s website is now on the first page of Google for “sacramento residential painters” and “sacramento commercial painters”.  Other variations will provide similar results.  This is important since few will search beyond the first page.

    Gateway Community Charters:
    GCC came to me with the need for website redevelopment. After my new design and optimization, their site moved from a low ranking to the first page in Google.  They get well over 2000 visitors per month.

    Gilchrist Golf Cars:
    Derek came to me with a website that had been done in Front Page.  I created an initial design a few years back, which drastically improved his ranking.  Then Derek trusted me to do a redevelopment to bring it up to current standards, and since this, with a bit of additional SEO work, the website now gets well over 1,000 visitors per month, and he ranks #1 for most every related search city with golf cars or carts.

    GNB Valves:
    Amy of GNB came to me with a website that had a broken navigation, was visually dated, with outdated content.  After the redevelopment their website went from a very low ranking, to a first page ranking in their market (industrial valves).  GNB gets well over 1000 visitors per month. 

    The Highway 50 Association:
    The hwy50 wagontrain website had a loyal following, yet few new visitors since the website was dated in appearance, and not effectively optimized.  After my redevelopment and optimization, the site went from approx 20 visitors a month to well over 400.

    Sam’s Signs and Window Painting:
    Sam came to me with a website he had created himself.  Again, no ranking.  After a couple of months I had him on the first page of Google.  A few months after that he was ranked #1 for anything related to sacramento window painting. 

    Stonehenge Signs:
    Frankie came to me with a website created in one of those builders.  This was a Joomla CMS clone with limited functionality, and a poor design.  Frankie’s ranking was very poor. After a few months, Frankie now ranks on the first page, often #1, of Google for all relevant queries.

    These are just a small sample to illustrate that good SEO practices achieve results.  Not every company will get an immediate top ranking in Google, especially if the website is new, but by using proven strategies, then yes, you can get a better ranking than your competition. If your website’s ranking is low, contact me for a free assessment.

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