Rather than keeping you from this awesome video any further… I present to you: SEOmoz “Man on Street” - A Who’s Who in Search Marketing.
Steve (sorry - didn’t get his full name or company. If you know him, let me know!)
Written on February 15, 2010 by admin
Filed Under: Advertising, book, marketing, seo
A friend of mine who is an experienced corporate marketer started a new business. The store just opened and being the good pal that I am, I was able to provide some advice regarding marketing on the web – specifically regarding blog marketing.
This is a new small business, so considerations for what to do about a web site included: cost, functionality, flexibility, ease of maintenance and marketability. The web site needed to serve as both an online representation of the business, but without transactional functionality, as well as a host for landing pages used with email and PPC campaigns.
My recommendation for a low cost, easy to use and search engine friendly content mangagement system? Blog software.
What often happens when friends ask for advice regarding web marketing is that I’ll make some recommendations in a casual setting or email links to a few resources like this one on blog marketing tips, then a few weeks or months later, the conversation will turn to, “So, how is your blog or web site doing?”, and I find out that the site/blog was either not started at all, it was created in a way that blows away any chance of SEO or marketability outside of advertising or it was built using resources with no cost of entry but without the capabilities to scale if successful.
Something along those lines happend with my friend’s blog.
What was the issue? The blog was started using Blogger.com, which by itself is not a problem, but the blog address selected was: nameofstore.blogspot.com. This is understandable because it’s the default URL selection when you create a blog with Blogger.com.
However, picking a third party domain for the blog address violates one of the most important rules in sustainable blogging: Always host the blog address with a domain name you control. That means yourdomainname.com/blog or blog.yourdomainname.com or yourdomainnameblog.com.
Otherwise, you give up control. How so? What if the blog host goes down? Free services rarely provide support. Also, what if the service does not support the functionality you need? You can’t change their entire platform to suit your individual needs.
There are other reasons for keeping the blog address as part of your own domain name including the ability to change blog software services without having to change your blog address.
Of course there’s also a benefit for search engine optimization if you host the blog as a sub directory of your main company domain name such as yourdomainname.com/blog. Blogs are very linkable entities and other blogs tend to be enthusiastic about linking, so any links to your blog can be percieved as a vote of credibility to your main web site since the blog and the web site share the same domain name.
Now back to our tale of the small business blog. My friend had only made one post on the blogspot.com URL so nothing would be lost by moving to a dedicated domain name. My own experience with Online Marketing Blog was different. After blogging for nearly 2 years at a blogspot.com address, I decided to move to a dedicated domain name and Wordpress. It took some talented optimization and 6 months of aggressive promotion to recoup the linking footprint (100,000+ inbound links) that was lost. Of course, now our traffic is multiple times more than what it was.
What my friend decided to do was register a domain name and setup a hosting account. Since there was no main company web site to attach the blog to, this makes the most sense. Essentially, the blog became the company web site. With more and more businesses, this is becoming a very practical, cost effective and functionally efficient way to manage web site content: Using blog software as a content management system.
As my friend asked what to do next, writing everything down in a notebook, it became clear that there’s a litany of things you COULD do with setting up a blog. Even if we filtered it down to what one SHOULD do, the list was amazingly long. As someone new to the whole idea of blogging and this not being a formal consulting arrangement, I decided to create what I think, is a short list of what a small businesses CAN do when starting a blog.
1. Decide the purpose of the blog.
Do this before going out and registering a domain name or anything else. Is the blog going to serve as a journal for starting the business? Is it a search marketing tool? Is it to be used to demonstrate thought leadership and create credibility? Will it be a communication tool for customers? Will it also serve as the main company web site? Is the purpose some or all of the above?
I could elaborate on setting up each of these types of blogs if I ever decided to write that book, but for now, we’ll stick with a blog that serves as a company web site, hosts landing pages, serves as a small business resource and marketing tool.
2. Pick a URL.
If the purpose of the blog is to support company brand and audience, then the URL should be part of the company web site. Ideally, the blog hosting situation allows for a sub directory such as companysite.com/blog. Otherwise, a sub-domain such as blog.companysite.com will work and you can can host the blog elsewhere, separate from the company web servers. IT will like that.
If the purpose of the blog is independent of the primary company brand, or messaging, then a dedicated domain name such as topicgoeshereblog.com might work better.
It’s tempting to use a keyword only domain name, but those keywords will not be a silver bullet for search engine rankings. A catchy, meaningul brand name for the blog will go much farther as content can always be optimized for search engine rankings.
3. Pick blog software.
In most cases, WordPress is the way to go. An inexpensive Linux platform hosting account that supports PHP and mySQL can be secured for $10-$20 per month. However, should the blog get really popular, expect to upgrade to support increased demand. It’s entirely worth it.
The blog software will need to be installed on the server that will host it and the database will also need to be set up. This is fairly straightforward, but in all honesty, it’s best to have someone that knows what they’re doing help. As an example, I do very little of the technical work on our blog and prefer to have a specialist (Thomas McMahon) take care of maintenance, adding plugins, design and functionality updates. We have outside programmers do any heavy lifting in the application development department.
Wordpress software is open source, ie free, so if you are code/technically savvy and you have the time to figure it out, it’s certainly doable. There is no one “right way” to setup a blog. There are literally hundreds of shades of gray.
It can cost a hundreds to thousand of dollars for a blog consultant to install, setup and customize the design of your blog. You’re not paying for the software, you’re paying for expertise that will save you MONTHS of time and allow you to get to market more quickly and efficiently.
4. Customize the blog.
After installation of the core blog software, there are a number of customization tasks.
First, the blog design should be modified to match your branding. If you don’t hire a consultant to do this, there are many free templates that can then be customized, but many of them require a link to the author at the bottom. Personally, I’m not a fan of those, but they are a low/no cost place to start. Design customization involves modifying the CSS, JavaScript, graphics and possibly a few database elements.
The second set of customization tasks involves plug-ins to improve the adminstration, front end functionality and the SEO friendliness of the blog. Thanks to Twitter and Thomas for this recommended minimum list of plug-ins:
- Redirection
- HeadSpace2
- Google XML sitemaps
- Gravity forms
- All In One SEO
- PostPost
- ACE WP Plug
- ComLuv
- Disqus
- Members only
- Cookies for comments
- Section widget
- Page order
- Related posts
- FeedSmith FeedBurner Plugin
- Sociable
- Askimet or WP-SpamFree
- Post Teaser
5. Create a content plan.
In concert with the purpose of the blog, it’s important to generate a basic editorial guideline for creating content. The easiest way to manage this is by creating categories for the kinds of content you plan on posting.
Before you create those categories, it’s a good idea to do some keyword research as the categories will become excellent repositories of related content. Why not make it even easier for search engines to understand and rank them?
Common keyword research tools include: WordTracker and Google. Paid keyword tools include WordStream.com and KeywordDiscovery.com
Once you identify which keyword phrases best represent the content you’ll be publishing, use them to name your content categories. Each time you make a blog post, that entry will be associated with one or more categories, creating a very search engine friendly repository of content.
Create an editorial calendar or schedule of posts to keep you on topic for your audience and true to the purpose of the blog. Leverage interactions with blog readers as well as your analytics to know if your content and keyword picks are productive or not.
6. Pick your blogging team.
In the case of most small businesses, the blogging team is a team of one. That’s fine, just be sure to document what’s working and what’s not so when the time comes, you can get your blogging team mate up to speed quickly.
Since blogger’s block (like writer’s block) can really dampen a good thing for a small business blog, go ahead and keep a good number of posts in draft mode. Add to them as you get new ideas and inspiration. Or facts and examples. That way, you’ll have a steady stream of blog posts ready to publish in advance. In fact, you can schedule blog posts in advance using WordPress.
7. Make it easy to share.
Blogging in a vaccum is inevitable blogging death. It’s essential that you solicit comments in your posts, respond to comments quickly, create and enforce a commenting policy. Being responsive is an essential part of attracting subscribers.
Don’t covet the comments either. Visit other blogs in your industry and write useful comments. Those bloggers may notice you and it can become something more, like an invite for a guest post, collaboration or simply a new online friend.
Make it easy for readers of your blog to save and share your content with sharing buttons or widgets. It pays to create accounts on the more popular services and develop social networks there. Your contacts on Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon and similar services will watch for your next post and vote for the good stuff, which can drive your content to be exposed on more popular areas of those web sites. More exposure can mean more traffic. The social bookmarks tool is handy for adding such functionality to any web page and Thomas offered several new blog promotion tips last week.
8.Get your social on.
RSS feeds come with blogs and it’s worth taking the time to make sure the RSS feed is readily available and obvious for people to subscribe. Submit your blog and RSS feed to our HUGE list of blog and RSS directories.
Set up social profiles on sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn as appropriate and automate the sharing of links from your blog posts to those services. In other words, you could use a service like TwitterFeed to publish your latest blog post to Twitter and Facebook automatically.
Be sure to publish your blog URL everywhere you publish your web site address.
9. Make static.
If you’re using the blog as a CMS for a small business web site, then make your static web pages such as those for About our Company, Product/Service pages, Contact Forms, etc. The blog can be customized to have a home page like any other web site as well. That way, visitors arriving on your site can see what they expect from a company selling products/services. At the same time, blogging creates a rich and frequent source of useful content that’s syndicated via RSS, promoted automatically to relevant social channels and leaves the door open for interaction via comments.
10. Measure. Test – Test. Measure.
It’s important that you set goals for the blog, a plan to execute tactics and most of all, measure progress. Most web site measurement is focused on web analytics and metrics specific to different types of marketing such as with email, SEO or PPC. Standard web analytics software such as Google Analytics will address the vast majority of your needs.
I would also recommend social media monitoring and analytics. Monitoring can be as simple as the RSS feed from search.twitter.com combined with the RSS feed from the results of a search on Google’s blog search. You could also use services like socialmention.com, trackur.com or more robust social media monitoring tools such as Techrigy SM2, ScoutLabs or Radian6.
Social monitoring tools will help you understand what your customers are saying about you on the social web as well as uncover new interaction opportiunities with influentials. Real time search means real time marketing and social monitoring can facilitate that. One example would be if a competitor Tweets a deal on a product. Your Twitter search on that competitor or product would create an alert. You could then decide to offer a deal at a lower price or some other counter offer.
Another example is if a customer complains about your company. Before others jump on the bandwagon, your social monitoring tools would alert you and you can then qualify and address the situation quickly.
As web analytics and social media monitoring tools become increasingly intertwined, you’ll be able to identify many other key metrics for the effect of your social participation on bottom line business goals.
There you go. Ten tips for starting a small business blog.
This was a long post and yet, it’s nowhere near a comprehensive guide to create a small business blog. Even though there is plenty of free blog software and advice available online, many companies would benefit from having professional help with a business blog.
The funny thing is, my friend will look at this post and say, “This is the SHORT list?”. Blogging can be simple to start, but no one said it wasn’t hard work.
If you’ve created a blog for your small business, what has your experience been? Did you do it yourself? Do you get expert help? Have you set up a small business web site using blog software? we’d love to hear about your experiences, challenges and successes.
![[StumbleUpon]](http://www.toprankblog.com/wp-content/themes/TopRank06/images/stumble-big.png)
![[Google]](http://www.toprankblog.com/wp-content/themes/TopRank06/images/google-bookmark-big.png)
![[Facebook]](http://www.toprankblog.com/wp-content/themes/TopRank06/images/facebook-icon.gif)
![[Twitter]](http://www.toprankblog.com/wp-content/themes/TopRank06/images/twitter.png)
Tags: Advertising ,analytics ,book ,business ,database ,design ,marketing ,media ,nature ,pdf ,seo ,sharing ,software ,words
No Comments
Written on February 14, 2010 by admin
Filed Under: Advertising, book, marketing, seo
An SEOBook reader, Josephbm91, outlined a problem many of us have faced: when you’re starting out, it’s easy for clients to walk all over you.
So let’s take a look at strategies for those starting out, be it in SEO, web design, or other small, web-based businesses. Those of you who have established web businesses, it would be great if you could share your experiences and strategies in the comments 
Making The Start
How do you make the start? You’ve got a computer, an internet connection, and a few ideas. How do you get from that point to a thriving business, when you have no customer base, no money and no experience?
Yeah, it’s hard.
But you’ll literally work through it
Society Is Testing You To See If You’re Serious
Ask anyone in business, sports, music or any other competitive human endeavor how they got recognized in their given field. They’ll most likely tell you it didn’t happen overnight. Whilst talent, luck and having the right connections play a part, the one trait common to those who succeed is persistent hard work.
In Outliers, a book about how people achieve extraordinary things, Malcolm Gladwell found that to achieve mastery in anything - be it golf, webdesign, programming, music, fashion - takes roughly the same amount of time: 10,000 hours.
Thankfully, we don’t need to be masters at running a small business before we start one, else no one would ever do so. But the underlying idea is sound - persistent hard work is the key to success.
Being persistent sends a message to those around you, including potential customers, that you’re serious about what your doing. If they see you often enough, doing the thing you say you do, then you’ll eventually be recognized for it.
So if you feel you need to prove yourself, you’re right. Society actually demands you do.
What Is Worth Getting Serious About?
Many people start businesses because they enjoying doing something. Someone who plays sport may have the desire to be paid a good living wage for playing the game she loves. Someone is good at art, so he wants to be a designer.
Whilst there is nothing wrong with this approach - having a genuine passion for something will help you get through the rough times - I’m sure you can spot the potential problem. There might be a LOT of people who have a passion for the same thing. The more people who want to do something, the more effort you need to put in in order to stand out.
In terms of sport, it’s relatively straighforward. The sprinter with the fastest times gets recognized and progresses. Those sprinters with slower times either get better, or go find something else to do. In business, its a little more complicated, but the principle remains the same.
You need to stand out.
Supply And Demand
Think carefully about supply and demand. Ask yourself: is there sufficient demand for what I want to do?
Let’s say you want to do web design. Is there demand? Why, yes, the demand for web design services is almost infinite. New companies start every minute, and most of them will need a web presence. Established companies who already have a web presence change their design from time to time, thus creating even more demand.
All good.
Now let’s look at the supply side.
How many people want to be web designers. The answer is: quite a few. In fact, it would appear that web design demand is more than met by the supply of web designers. What happens in such situations is there is a downward pressure on prices, because those who create demand have a lot of supply to choose from.
The world is oversupplied with web designers. At least, it’s oversupplied by people who call themselves web designers. There’s a difference, of course, between someone who owns the tools of production and those who use those tools well to solve business problems. Owning a camera does not make someone a commercial photographer. Likewise, those with the most artistic design skills may make lousy web designers if they aren’t focused on business aspects.
Recognizing the reality of the situation might may you reconsider your choice of career, and opt for an area where there is heavy demand and short supply instead.
Another way to face this problem is to differentiate. Can you do something better than other designers? You may be highly skilled in contemporary graphic design, in which case you may choose to place strong emphasis on displaying your portfolio, and target the type of clients who appreciate - and will pay for - this expertise.
You may have, or can acquire, detailed market knowledge in one particular niche - i.e. travel sites, real estate sites, etc. Clients, generally speaking, are a lot more comfortable with providers who understand their area of business. You have an advantage if you can speak their language, rather than just the self-absorbed language of design forums.
Can you focus on a geographic area? i.e. the immediate area where you live. Sometimes, people want to deal with someone local.
What is the thing you can do for which there is a market? If there are too many competitors in that market, then slice that market up until you can find a niche. Aim to be top of that niche. Then put in persistent effort working that niche in order to build reputation.
Chris Pearson gave away a number of popular free Wordpress themes on his site, created designs for popular sites (including Copyblogger & SEO Book), and then created the Thesis theme for web developers, which has since done 7 figures in sales volume. Yes Wordpress themes have become commoditized, but due to his strong marketing and continual increase in product value he was able to differentiate & build a solid business model. In his own words on starting out, Chris wrote:
Before I launched Thesis, I created a few free WordPress themes that became extremely popular. Although these themes defined the early stages of my career, they are really nothing more than visible markers of a learning process that continues today with Thesis.
Establishing Yourself
Once you’ve decided on an angle, you then need to establish yourself. Society wants to see how serious you are.
It is very difficult to market a business without some form of track record. But every business needs to start somewhere, and they don’t start with a track record. So, the most important task for someone starting out - in any occupation - is to get one.
One way to get a track record is to treat your first few jobs as a marketing cost. This is the cost of establishing a reputation, and if you make any money at all from these first few jobs, it’s a bonus. The aim is to get referrals and a portfolio of work.
Approach charities or small local business who need a web presence and offer your services for a deeply discounted rate, or for free. It’s a win-win for both parties, because they may not be able to afford web design, and you need their testimonials and experience.
Be sure to make it clear that the job is being done at a discounted rate, and let them know what your usual rate it. This way, they’ll perceive value, and won’t be in for a shock when you ramp your prices up for any future work. Focus on building a positive relationship with these clients. If they are happy with your work, they may well refer you to others.
Once you have a track record, the risk to a future customer of hiring you is diminished. You become a known quantity, which puts you above the wanna-bes.
Is this working for free? Some might consider it that way, but it could also be seen as just another marketing expense, like advertising. Many businesses, including big, established businesses, give away products and services - in the form of loss leaders - in order to help get their foot in the door. People who train for careers pay to learn, whilst as a freelancer, you can potentially learn on the job for free. Clients can teach you a lot about your own business , especially where your strengths and weaknesses lie.
Pricing
It’s important not to stay cheap or free, however.
Some think the easiest way to get business is to undercut competitors on price. This can be a self defeating strategy, especially for the sole operator, for a number of reasons:
You get cheap clients - people who seek the lowest price probably aren’t placing much value on what you do. These type of clients, ironically, can also be the most demanding. They want the most for the least, and will often push you on the amount of work you deliver.
Someone else can always undercut you. There will always be a competitor who has a cost base lower than you do. From there, you’re locked in a no-win race to the bottom.
If it looks cheap, it is cheap. It’s human nature not to value something that is cheap, and place a lot of value on something that is expensive. In the book How We Decide, by Jonah Lehrer, the author describes an experiment conducted with wine. Participants were told one bottle was cheap and one was expensive. The expensive bottle got rave reviews from tasters, and the cheap one - not so good. However, the labels were switched. The expensive wine was actually the cheap wine.
Perception counts for a lot.
So if your angle is cheap, make sure your margins are still high enough to sustain you. Only you know how much you need to survive at any given time.
Alternatively, target ruthlessly, either by offering a superior, needed product, more niche know-how, or find some other angle where there is untapped demand. Be prepared to prove your worth by providing case studies describing how you’ve solved people’s business problems in the past.
Got any other tips for those starting out? It would be great if you can share what you know
Go here to read the rest:
How To Start A Web Business And Survive
Written on February 12, 2010 by admin
Filed Under: marketing
There have apparently been some rumors (yes, there are rumor mongers in the Internet space which is SO hard to believe) that have been talking about Apple entering the search game with their own search engine. This whole game of Google v. Apple has lately been fueled by the rumor mill and comments like those made by Steve Jobs in giving his take on the “Do No Evil” mantra of Google. While that makes for some juicy headlines and speculation it is apparently not true about Apple’s attempt at search.
The Business Insider tells us the reasons why that rumor is not true.
The rumor that Apple is building its own search engine “isn’t credible,” according to a source familiar with Apple’s operations.
Our source tells us “there’s too many options” for search on the market, so there’s no reason for Apple to build its own search engine.
Another reason Apple might not want to build its own search engine: It’s getting over $100 million a year from Google in its revenue share deal, according to our source.
Now, $100 million in Apple’s case is not a huge sum of money. Of course, having that come in the door rather than putting valuable resources of time and talent on building its own engine is the better way to go. One thing that was not mentioned in the article is how long this deal is in place. This is an important piece of any business interactions between Google and Apple because as the days pass the fact that they don’t like each other is becoming very obvious. Of course, being head-to-head competitors for control of the Internet as we know it can make this happen.
There is mounting evidence that how these two giants interact is changing and may be less and less of a reality moving forward.
Our source tells us when Apple first introduced the iPhone, it hammered out its deal for Google Maps in two weeks. When Apple prepared to launch the iPhone 3G with GPS a year later, it was a six-month process “full of acrimony” to get the maps deal finished.
Google wanted access to all sorts of data from the maps, but Apple didn’t want to give it up, according to this person.
If you would like to see Business Insider’s take on the Apple side of the coin then visit their piece called 11 Apple Execs Hellbent On Destroying Google. It’s fun to think that people are rubbing their hands together furiously in Mountain View and Cupertino laughing their best “Buhahahahahaha” laughs as they plot each other’s demise. Gotta love the Internet.
View post:
Apple Will Take Google’s Money But Still Thinks They Are BS
Written on February 11, 2010 by admin
Filed Under: book, chat, marketing
Ah, Google Buzz. At last we see the chinks in your armor (well, aside from the fact that it looks a little useless)—the opt-out feature appears to automatically publish your contact list, which is compiled from the people you email and chat with the most.
As if it wasn’t annoying enough to be told you have dozens of new “Buzz” only to check and see the same message four times and twenty-odd retweets of an acquaintance’s old tweet, or to have to try to separate your work and your personal news.
Now, there are a few warnings: the standard light-gray-on-white text that states: “Your profile includes your name, photo, people you follow, and people who follow you.” Although it tells you you’re creating a public profile, it doesn’t clarify how they assign you people to follow. On a later page in the process, Buzz does specify that “You’re already set up to follow the people you email and chat with the most.”
As the Business Insider says:
A Google spokesperson tells us the followers lists are public by default so that people can quickly find new people to follow. Obviously, that’s a good thing for Google, which is hoping to get as many people using Google Buzz as soon as possible. It’s also meant to be helpful for users. And for those who are unconcerned with telling the world who they email most, it is. But for everyone else, it’s terrible.
It gets to a deeper problem with Google Buzz: It’s built on email, which is a very different Internet application than a social network.
I absolutely agree. Email is a whole different level of privacy than a social network—even with passwords and walled gardens, social networks are public, and far more public than email.
TBI has a solution: “We believe Google could and should simply make this feature ‘opt-in’ so that people know what they’re doing.” Agreed. Although Google has long been an opt-out only kind of guy, one of these days they’re going to have that turn around and hurt them. You know, kind of like what’s happened with Facebook . . . repeatedly.
Want to opt out of sharing your list? Read Write Web tells how in five easy steps:
- Sign into your Google account via Gmail (or any other Google service)
- Go to your Google profile here: http://google.com/profiles/me
- Click the link at the top-right of the screen that reads “Edit Profile”
- Here, you’ll see a checkbox that reads “Display the list of people I’m following and people following me.” To make this info private, just uncheck that box.
- Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the “Save changes” button
Or you could opt out of Buzz entirely. After all, who’s really found it useful so far? (We can turn it off, can’t we, Google?)
What do you think? Will Google learn their lesson? Or are they already too big to beat down?
Original post:
Google Buzz Publishes Who You Email
Tags: a-later-page ,agreed-although ,business ,facebook ,from-the-people ,google ,internet ,marketing ,most ,people ,personal ,profile ,social ,work
No Comments
Written on February 10, 2010 by admin
Filed Under: chat
WordPress is currently the most popular blogging platform as of 2 9 . It is released as open source and can be used by anyone for free. Because of this immense popularity it is widely supported by web developers who aim to improve the user experience through the use of WordPress plug-ins. If you want to submit or update a plug-in yourself keep reading….
Charter Business Bundle ® Bundle Services for Only $89/Monthly! Get High Speed Internet and Telephone.
See the original post:
Submit and Update a WordPress Plug-in
Tags: a-plug-in-yourself ,bundle ,bundle-services ,business ,immense ,improve-the ,keep-reading- ,most ,open-source ,telephone ,user-experience ,web-developers ,you-want
No Comments
Written on February 10, 2010 by admin
Filed Under: Advertising, marketing, seo
Posted by Sam Niccolls
The analytics ninja is not dead, but with Avinash talking more about SEO analytics and SEOs like Rand talking more about web analytics, 2010 has brought with it increased cross-pollination between analytics experts and SEOs.
This blog post is for the analytics driven, SEO savvy, search samurai looking to implement tracking code best practices and take advantage of some useful Google Analytics plugins.
The focus of this post is on Google Analytics, but many of the concepts are also applicable more generally, no matter what web analytics platform you’re using.
Tracking Code Basics
Asynchronous Tracking Code - Even before the asynchronous tracking code was rolled out, I was a believer in putting the GA tracking code in the header, rather than before the closing body tag, which is where Google recommends placing the tracking code. With the announcement of asynchronous tracking code, which loads in conjunction with the page as opposed to sequentially, however, you can now have your cake and eat it too. You can get the benefit of your data not being compromised by slow page load times and also keep from getting push back from the developer that implements your tracking codes.
Expanding Goal Limitations - Without setting up goals, your GA account is a glorified hit counter. So it’s imperative that you set up goal or eCommerce tracking (if not both). When setting up your GA goals in your analytics settings, you can either use the expanded goals, which allow you to track up to 20 different URLs or engagement metrics per profile. It’s important to realize, however, that you can also set your goals up so you can track hundreds or even thousands of goals. All you have to do is set up a logical hierarchy where the root of your goal URLs trigger your goal events. For us at SEOmoz, this might mean we have a tool run goal event triggered with /goal/tool-run - yet we also have the added granularity down to the individual tool level should we ever want to see which tools are being run the most or to segment traffic based on visitors who ran a particular tool.
eCommerce Tracking - Justin Cutroni did a great job with his series of blog posts that walk through how eCommerce tracking works, installing & setting up eCommerce tracking, explaining why everyone should use eCommerce tracking, & tracking lead gen forms. In addition to eCommerce tracking, not to be forgotten is using SetVar or a custom variable to segment repeat or premium buyers. For example, say your site gets 5 sales from keyword #1 and 5 sales from keyword #2. If sales for keyword #1 are each $800 and sales from keyword #2 are $10 each, you’re going to want to segment that traffic and make on-page optimizations by looking at the on-site behavior of your premium buyers who converted on keyword #1, rather than from keyword #2.
Tags: business ,code ,data ,goals ,google ,keywords ,marketing ,source ,tagging ,tracking ,visitor
No Comments
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=1a1974b0-6688-4620-bf29-2f8a1fb51b73)
