Website Design, Search Engine Optimization

Avinash Kaushik is a genius he is one of my favorite internet marketers. He discusses how to use twitter for a small business. Avinash, owns Market Movtive, but I think he is also employed by Google and was one of the creators of Google Analytics. Watch his video, it is only 8 minutes, entertaining and well worth it, Innovative Uses for Twitter for Small Business – Avinash Kaushik:

Three tools he recommends for measuring your twitter success:

1. Retweetist.com, that measures the popularity of your tweets,
2. Tweet-Rank.de that measures engagement, and
3. TR.IM that measures how many users follow a shortened link from your tweet.

Avinash also has numerous videos on YouTube for helping businesses analyze their websites, search  his name and you will find them.

If you currently are not twittering, I highly recommend getting started, twittering is not going away and will only continue to grow. The site is located at twitter.com. Sign up and follow me @tonicarr.  Comment here and let me and others know you are now on twitter so we can all start following you.   I will try to get better at following Avinash’s rules.  I will have to admit sometimes I do get carried away and  talk about what I am doing or get on a rant. Don’t be shy, join in.

OBTW, he mentions KPI, and if you are not familiar with the acronym it means Key Performance Indicators.

Just to prove how much I value Avinash’s opinion here is a picture of me  getting his book autographed  Web Analytics: An Hour a Day earlier this year at SMX West.

Next week I will attend the CMS Expo Learning & Business Conference.  I am a believer in continued education and try to attend a few conferences a year.   I have not been this excited about being a part of a development community since I started developing sites in (dare I say) 1997.  Developing sites with Joomla and WordPress have changed the capabilities of what a business can do on the internet today. With all the wonderful CMS solutions offered it will be exciting to hear from some of the movers and shakers in this field  and learn new tricks to share with you.

CMS Expo is designed for all members of a content management team, from the creators to the developers.  There will be learning sessions that include integration of  Social Media, CSS and techniques for many of the different CMS solutions that are available.  Not only will I become better acquainted with the applications that I am already familiar like Joomla and WordPress, but I will have the opportunity to be exposed to others that I would like to know more about, Drupal and Alfresco to name a few.

Technology is always changing and the website of yesterday or one that was developed a few years ago is being replace with these powerful open source dynamic CMS alternatives. The first steps to developing a website are only the beginning of an ongoing process. The truly powerful and successful websites are nurtured and upgraded constantly.  Don’t put your website in a drawer, open it up, dust it off and let’s bring new life to your on- line presence.  The beauty of CMS for a website owner,  is the ability to update the content without a lot of  technical background.

Glossary:

• CMS – Content Management System
• CSS – Cascading Style Sheet, control over how a web page looks to the user.
• Joomla – Framework, built by a development community or collaborative effort through open source to build dynamic websites.
• WordPress – Framework built by a development community or collaborative effort through open source to build the best blogs and now also has features that can be used to build a website.
• Open Source – Source code that is available to the general public for use for free.
• Blog – short for web log, an online journal that allows for comments and open conversation

This week Google announced two improvements to the organic search results listings.
They are:

• Expanded list of useful related searches
• The addition of longer search result descriptions

The expanded list of useful related searches is at the bottom of the search pages where it gives you suggestions of other searches. Since Yahoo offers it at the top of the page, Google offers the information at the bottom. I guess they figure you have looked through all the listings and did not find what you want, so you might want to try these. This is also good information when you are doing keyword research for website content or blog posts. The example they give is if you search “principles of physics” the Google algorithms understand that “angular momentum”, “special relativity” etc. are related terms that may offer more information. Try it and see what you get.

The second is the addition of longer search result descriptions in the SERPS (Search Engine Ranking Pages). This is interesting, in the code for a web page there are meta tags where a website developer can add descriptions and titles for each page on a website. Now it looks like Google will grab more of that information and list it on the SERP pages. This is for searches with more than three words. This allows the descriptions to give back more information on what you are looking for exactly. I also noticed that some listings may have two lines where others would have four. As people get smarter and more definitive in their searches they will receive better results. This is an opportunity to add more keywords in your web page description.

You may read more about both of these improvements in The Official Google Blog. 

Thinking about starting a blog, updating or need inspiration? Here is a list from Time Magazine of what they think are the top blogs for 2009. I am sure this list will change by the end of the year.

25 Best Blogs of 2009

Is your favorite blog on here? If not what is it?

Yesterday I attended SMX West 2009, SMX stands for Search Marketing Expo. I try to attend a few of these conferences every year for the networking benefits and to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to search marketing. I always return to my office with a few new tricks and insights.

Here is a list from one of the sessions that discussed the 12 most common strategic mistakes that companies or businesses make in their SEO and paid search initiatives. I am going to list them not go into detail.

1. Set measurable goals for a campaign
2. Failing to assign a dollar value to every “conversion action” available on your site.
3. Assessing the success of Search Marketing using solely a Direct Marketing model.
4. Treating SEO as a project NOT as an ongoing process.
5. Making a #1 ranking as your most important objective when it maybe costing you business.
6. Focusing on the big keywords and forgetting about the long-tail keywords.
7. Engaging in Paid or Natural (Organic) Search Engine Marketing but not both.
8. Using YOUR language for search terms and not that of your customers.
9. Optimizing only your web pages and not your other digital assets.
10. Treating your search marketing and other channels of marketing separately.
11. Failing to bid on the search terms that your site ranks highly with in the organic search results
12. Bidding solely on the “branded terms” and ignoring “non-branded terms”.

Let me know if you have questions or experience with any of these. If you are new to search and interested in search engine optimization (SEO) for your website, you may want to attend one of these conferences. The expo is usually free if you pre-register. Session passes are much more expensive.

Google Analytics is a free tool for analyzing the activity on a website. When I say activity I mean where the hits to your website are coming from. Google Analytics (GA) is getting more powerful all the time, the google team is doing a great job of adding new bells and whistles all the time. If you have a business and are marketing your website you should have some kind of analytics tool installed. Since GA is free it makes it very desireable.

Some of the basic information included in GA is:

• number of visits
• number of page views
• pages visited
• bounce rate
• avg. time a visitor spends on your site
• % of new visits
• Where are your visitors located by Country, State and City

But recently Google added some great new features that make it even more powerful than before. What I love is how well it is now integrating with your AdWords Account. These new tools are in beta:

• Custom Reporting for designing your own reports to drill down and get the exact information you need for your buisness
• Advanced Segments make comparisons of different segments of your business, such as visitors that are organic vs. paid, number of visit and what keywords are they using.

Not sure how to use Google Analytics or these great new tools. Below are three videso created by Google  explaining Custom Reporting, Advanced Segments and Motion charts. After watching these brief videos I had a better understanding of how they worked and a real good jump start.  They are short so give them a whirl. And if you have not installed some kind of Analytics tool on your website, make it a priority to better understand how your site is performing.

#1 Custom Reporting in Google Analytics
Learn how to create custom reports in Google Analytics that show the information you want to see, organized in the way you want to see it.

#2 Advanced Segments in Google Analytics
Learn to create and use Advanced Segments in Google Analytics to isolate and analyze specific parts of your traffic.

#3 Motion Charts in Google Analytics
Learn to use Motion Charts in Google Analytics to analyze your data in five dimensions.

Six Points to Get You Started Blogging

I have not visited my blog in three months and when I clicked on the link, I was overwhelmed when I saw the beautiful Golden Gate Bridge. I forgot that I had changed my theme that is how long it has been since I have visited my blog. Where have I been? I am not ignoring my web skills, in fact I have been so busy that I have ignored posting updates on this blog. Now I think it is time to begin sharing some of my experiences.  I have become addicted to the blogosphere and social networking. Once again the web is making it possible for the world to get that much smaller. Find a subject you are passionate about, either personal, social or professional and start blogging about it. It is amazing the comments and people you will meet.  If you are thinking about blogging start now and just jump in and do it, my advise:

• start with a good blogging platform, like WordPress
• pick a subject that you are passionate about, will enjoy writing about or want to learn more
• do keyword research so that your content will be found on the search engines
• get to know your blogoshere, that is the other bloggers that are also blogging about your subject
• social network, if you have never done it before jump in
• analyze what is working, install analytics on your blog and track it.

Happy Blogging!

Hi!  I just updated to wordpress 2.5. If you have a blog and have not done upgraded it is well worth it. The Dashboard has been updated and the control panel appears to be more user friendly. I am hoping that it has better capabilities for adding your own HTML that has always had some bugs.

On the write a post page they have added media buttons for image / video /audio / media. Under the title it shows the permalink that it will be posted as. I have not really traveled through the dashboard but on the write a post page it appears cleaner and more user friendly.

From what I can tell this is an upgrade you don’t want to miss. I may have missed a few upgrades from I was using 2.3.3.

Have a great week.

This morning I woke up and was unsure what day it was I don’t think I have ever had that happen, maybe “spring fever”. When I realized it was Saturday I was relieved the weekends are much to short. Should I go to yoga or should I go for a walk? The beautiful spring day beckoned me, yoga is great, my psyche needed to be outside. I grabbed my best buddie and off we went to Muir Beach. This is why I live in California, as expensive, crowded it may be nothing is better than a spring day on the beach. With my camera in hand I will share with you my walk from Muir Beach to Green Gulch Zen Center.

Self portrait, me and my buddy!	Muir Beach looking North.
	Muir Beach looking South.
	Ollie on the trail at Green Gulch Zen Center
If you look closely there are bike riders going into the canyon	the gardens ready to burst into bloom at Green Gulch Zen Center.
Prayer flags outside a green house at Green Gulch Zen Center	Buddha with bamboo
the yurt at Green Gulch Zen Center	Buddha and the dragonfly
a whimsical door window.	Buddha inside a potting shed

Wishing you a wonderful Spring and a Happy Easter Holiday.

Most people, especially small businesses  today have a website. Most very proud of their web presence and should be and naturally their websites bring them business. Many times in ways they never thought possible. But what  do they REALLY know about their website and what could be done differently? Until you emmerse (much like baptism) your site into search analytics you will never know.

Analytics is one method to get “personal” with your website. Common questions you should ask yourself: 

• Who is visiting your website?
• Where did they come from (referer)?
• How long are they staying on your site?
• What pages do they enter and exit your site?
• Are they submitting a contact form or buying a product (converting)?

How do you do this, without spending a lot of money on products that may not work?
I have tried different software packages (which I don’t want to get into here) and some do work, but right now my favorite is Google Analytics. Why? Because it is truly free and has great easy to read information. Google Analytics does take some time to learn and they say you get what you pay for, but I do believe it is worth the effort. I am now a “Google Analytics Junkie”.

Let’s get started with your website:

1. First you need a chunk of code to put on “every” page of your website that you wish to track. This is your tracking code. You can get this code by signing up for an AdWords account or if you have a gmail account use that as your user name/password (you don’t have to participate in AdWords). Here is the link to Google Analytics help center http://www.google.com/analytics/indexu.html
2. Now you are in your adWords account, this is really confusing. Across the top are tabs click on Analytics and that should get you started. “Create my free Google Analytics account”. Click on the continue>> button
3. Follow the directions on this page, submit >> accept the terms >>
4. Wallah - cut and past this code into your website right before the </body> tag on EVERY page you wish to track.
5. I know your lost, try the help center link above, it is worth your time and I know you can do it.

Now the fun begins watch the information roll in, give it some time. You will want to create what is known as the dashboard, personalize your dashboard.
Sample dashboard:

 This can be done by clicking through the information on the left hand navigation. For each category there is a button on the top of the page to either export / email / add to dashboard . Get familiar with these buttons. I have a report sent to me weekly with my dashboard information so that I do not have to login to find out what is going on and it gives me past week comparisons.

Some of my favorite information is: 

1. site useage 
2. the map overlay (where in the world are these visitors)
3. traffic sources overview  (where is all you traffic coming from)
4. content overview (what pages are most popular)
5. all traffic sources (who is referring to you)
6. Visitors overview (clicks per day, who is unique, how many page views…)
7. Now my favorite, setting goals and the funnel report

In each category you can get more and more granular, the best part – our friends at Google do it all for FREE!

Before I became a Google Analytics Junkie, I was THE original  Google Addict. My SEO addictions don’t appear to be going away. Does anyone know of a good 12 step program? Have fun and beware of the addictions.