I usually laugh a little and say something like, “…there is no secret…just hard work…”  But I wonder if they believe me.  Maybe sometimes they do.  Certainly the ones who try the SEO firms that “promise them results” and “guarantee placement” do.  Those are the prospects that come back and turn into great clients.  Why?  Because they know the truth now.  Internet marketing is just plain hard work.

Steps To Marketing Your Business On The Internet

The simple truth of Internet Marketing is…

1) Find out what your audience is looking for
2) Put that on your website
3) Go social

Basically, this means find the keyword phrases your audience are typing in, have your website optimized for those keyword phrases and use the power of social media to let everyone know who you are, what you do and why they should use you.

I guess if I had to say that there was a secret to Internet marketing, this would be it!

I just read a great article from the SEOBook – it goes into a bit more detail on how to market your business on the Internet….check it out!

Wait, what?  Did I hear you say “What goals?” – Are you one of the millions of website owners who don’t have specific goals for each website page?  Then,  what are you marketing?  How do you know you’ve succeeded?  Just because the phone is ringing more doesn’t mean there are more sales.  Just because there’s more email in your inbox doesn’t mean it isn’t more spam!

Here’s the basic concept:

1) Go to each page of your website and make a conscious decision of what GOAL do you want to achieve with that page.  Do you want the visitor to move to another page?  Do you want the visitor to call you?  Do you want the visitor to email you?  Do you want the visitor to click on a specific button?

2) Write these down and then put them on your website stats program to track.  In Google Analytics you can do this through the Goals section or thru the Event Tracking section.  Either way, track them!

3) Monitor the stats monthly to see what goals are being met and which ones are not.  Of the ones that are not (and there will be those, believe me) – do some investigating to find out why they aren’t being acted on.  Maybe the graphic is too far down on the page.  Maybe the phone number isn’t easy to find on the website page.  Whatever it is, investigate.

Oh, and in case you don’t think you can track phone calls easily on a website, guess again.  Check into Google Voice.  You can use a FREE phone number provided by Google Voice on your website.  Forward it to your office phone and that’s that.  You’ve got a tracking of incoming phone calls from your website.

Basically, “Event Tracking” is a feature that you can use on Google Analytics that “…allows you to track visitor actions that don’t correspond directly to pageviews.” You know, things like downloading PDF’s, interacting with videos, etc.

So, what can you use Event Tracking for?  Let’s see if I can come up with some ideas for you.

1) Clicks on call to action buttons
2) Clicks on specific links
3) Clicks on specific graphics
4) Downloading PDF’s or other forms
5) Clicks on external links (links to other websites from your own website)
6) Clicks on shopping cart links to identify where most visitors abandon the process.  Can also be used on any multi-step process, not just shopping carts.

Well, these are just a few ways and ideas that Event Tracking can be used on your website.  Go ahead, take a look at your site and see where you can implement this great feature!

Google Analytics
Comparing  Google Analytics and Awstats
Comparing Google Analytics and StatCounter
Comparing Google Analytics and GetClicky
Comparing Google Analytics and Woopra

Awstats
Comparing Awstats to GetClicky
Comparing Awstats to Woopra
Comparing Awstats to StatCounter

StatCounter
Comparing StatCounter and GetClicky
Comparing StatCounter and Woopra

GetClicky
Comparing GetClicky and Woopra

Woopra

According to Google, benchmarking is described as…

“…an optional Google Analytics service that shows how your website’s statistics compare against other industry verticals. In the beta version of this service, you are able to compare your site’s Visits, Pageviews, Pages per Visit, Bounce Rate, Average Time on Site, and New Visits data against benchmark data from categories of other participating websites. You can use this data to gain broader context for your site so you can identify additional opportunities to improve your site’s metrics.”

Basically, the benchmarking service gives you some insight into how your website compares to other websites within your industry.  Well, at least within the category of your industry.

Let’s take one website as an example, this website is one for a divorce attorney in Miami.

When I open the Benchmarking tab in his Google Analytics account I can compare his website to all websites of similar size OR to websites who are listed in Family Law and are similar to his size.  I chose to be specific and get some benchmark data comparing my clients’ website to others in Family Law.

The results are as follows….

1) My client receives 11.44% more visitors than other family law websites of the same size.
Analysis: So, this stat is good.  It means that the marketing I’m doing for him is working.  He’s getting more visitors than other websites his size.

2) My clients’ website has 6.10% higher bounce rate than other websites in this comparison.
Analysis: This stat requires that I look a bit deeper into what pages are bouncing.  See if I can find why there’s a bounce, is there supposed to be a bounce?  And what can I do to fix it?

3) My clients’ website has 2.70% fewer page views.  That means less people are moving around the site to other pages.
Analysis:  Hmm – this tells me that I probably need to go in and create a “workflow” of how I want visitors to go through the site.  Once I’ve decided the workflow, I then need to create some call to action buttons to give the visitors guides throughout the site.

4) My clients’ website has 14.61% higher average time on the site.
Analysis:  This is good.  This tells me that the information on the site is good.  It’s what the visitors want.

5) My clients’ website has 12.69% fewer page/visits.
Analysis: The average visitor went to 2.23 pages on the website.  This is lower than normal and it tells me again, that I probably need to add some more call to action buttons throughout the site.  Or perhaps we need some more information about certain topics on the site.  I would have to analyze which pages are not being viewed and see if it’s a navigation problem (maybe the visitors aren’t seeing these pages?)

6) My clients’ website has 1.33% fewer new visitors to the site.
Analysis: This is not good.  My client is getting fewer new visitors to his site than his competition.  The Internet marketing is not attracting new visitors and I now need to find out if the problem is keywords or the site itself.

So you see, the information provided from the benchmarking feature on Google Analytics is a great way to “see” what’s going on with the website.  The next step then is to have the experience and expertise to dissect the information and create a plan to make any corrections needed.  So, I guess it’s true, Internet marketing is a bit of science and bit of an art form!

Today’s topic is on Bounce Rates.  If you’re not checking your website bounce rates, you should.  So, let’s see if I can explain it to you and help you figure out what to do if your bounce rate is not so great.

According to Google, bounce rate means:  “the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page.”

Basically, if someone comes in to your website on your Services page and then leaves your website without going to any other pages, that’s a bounce.

Is a high bounce rate a bad thing?  Well, it depends on what you wanted the visitor to do from that page.

If the visitor comes in to your website on the “Contact Us” you may want your visitor to call you.  So, a high bounce rate from this particular page would not be a bad thing.

But, if you do have a high bounce rate on a page that you shouldn’t, here are some reasons as to why that might be.

1) The information on the page isn’t what the visitor was looking for.
Solution: First, make sure that the keyword phrase you’re marketing is what’s on this page.  Second, make sure that the description  tag matches the information on this page.

2) The site design is poor, leaving the visitor confused as to where to go to next.
Solution: There’s a true art to website design.  It’s not just about the colors and the graphics.  It’s also about navigation.  Get as many different opinions from as many different people as possible about your site’s navigation.  Is it easy to find things?  Are the buttons clear?  Etc.

3) There’s no call to action on the page.
Solution:  In the process of designing (or redesigning your website) make sure that you set up an intended action for each page.  You want to know what action you want the visitor to take and you want to tell the visitor as clear as possible that you want them to take that action.

Benchmarking
Google explains “benchmarking” like this…”Based on the number of visits each site receives, sites of similar sizes are grouped together under three classifications: small, medium, and large. This way, you can compare yourself to other similarly sized sites.”

Basically, it gives you an idea of how your website is doing compared to others of the same size.  Of course, there are other factors to consider, the time of year, your industry, etc.  But at least you have a “benchmark” idea of where your site may be worse off than others in your size range.

Map Overlay
One of my very favorite stats on Google Analytics is the “map overlay”.  It gives me a detailed list of where my visitors are coming from.  It’s broken down to region, country, state and city.  And not only does it give you the places where the visitors are coming from, but it also gives you the keyword phrases the users typed in to find you!  There’s alot more information it also gives so check it out!

New vs. Returning
You may be working hard to get new people to your website.  You know, the first time visitors.  Google Analytics breaks it down for you by letting you know which visitors have been there before and which ones are new!  It’s a thing of beauty.

Languages
Are you getting visitors coming to your site who are French?  Do you want to attract a French demographics?  No?  Well, you’ll have to analyze why your website is doing that but at least this tool gives you the data on what language demographic you’re getting.

Visitor Trending
Here you can see “trends” on your site.  What days are the most popular?  Is your site bounce rate getting better or worse?  Are more people visiting more pages?

Visitor Loyalty
How many visitors come to the site once, twice or more?  How long do they stay?  How deep into the site do they go?  Lots of information here on this stat.

Browser Capabilities
What browsers are your visitors using?  Do the majority of them use Firefox?  What does your website look like in Firefox?  Maybe the majority of your visitors have a 1280×800 screen resolution.  What does your website look like in that resolution?  Fixing any of these problems may increase your conversion rate.

Network Properties
What ISP’s are your visitors using?  Are they on high speed?  Cable?  Satellite?  This many not matter but if your website has alot of Flash and graphics and loads up slowly, you may want to cut down the size of your pages so that slower service providers can accomodate.

Mobile
This is one of my favorite stats.  Because of the explosion of mobile use in the USA in the last year, it’s only natural to begin tracking how many visitors come to your website via a mobile device.   If your target audience is “on the go” then you may want to provide mobile coupons, interactive maps, easier forms, etc.

The concept here is to use the great information that Google Analytics gives you to improve your website.  Not only for the sake of the site, but for the sake of your business!

For Beginners – this tutorial at Mahalo.com is excellent.

For those who are a bit more advanced, here are some of our tips…

1) Take advantage of the Goals section.  Create as many different goals as possible to track as many different “campaigns” and “actions” on your website.

Some examples of what to track on your website…

a) number of visitors who fill out your contact form
b) number of visitors who take an action on a website page (like click on the “click here” button)
c) number of visitors who fill out any form on the site (free quote, get an ebook, etc.)
d) number of visitors that come to a certain page and then bounce off
e) number of visitors who come to the website from another specific website

Well, you get the idea.  Pretty much anything can be tracked and the point is, you should know what each page of your website is supposed to do and you should be able to track all of that!

2) Use the keywords section on Google Analytics to give you a list of the long tail keyword phrases that you’re getting customers for.  Find the conversion rate for each of these phrases and the ones that are giving you a decent conversion rate, well, add more to the website about that theme.

The concept is if ONE keyword phrase is bringing in 30 visitors a month and the conversion rate from that 30 is 10%.  Expanding on that theme should bring in more visitors and because it seems to be a “hot” topic, the conversions should then increase as well.

3) Analyze the pages that aren’t doing very well on your site and fix them!  Sure, you may not get it right the first, second, third or even fourth time.  But the point is to keep working on those pages until they bring in a decent amount of traffic.  (Decent being whatever you’re happy with!)

So,  let’s say Andrew who lives in Denver does a search for a “divorce attorney” and it’s a search he’s done before.  And let’s say that Sarah, who lives in Chicago, does a search for a “divorce attorney” and it’s a search that she’s done before.  Well, the results for Andrew are going to be very different than the results for Sarah.  Not only will Andrews results show Denver based divorce attorney (and Sarah’s will show Chicago based divorce attorneys) but Andrews search results will also show any divorce attorneys that he’s already clicked on before.  (The same for Sarah).

Even if Andrews next door neighbor did a search for “divorce attorney” – his results would be different from Andrews because of what he has searched for and clicked on in the past.  On the same computer, of course.

So, the old concept of tracking where the websites “rank” in the engines doesn’t work anymore.  It’s not a good and valid tracking system to identify if the website pages are succeeding or not on the Internet.

Instead, what every website owner and SEO webmaster should be tracking are Website stats and conversions.  Here are some thoughts on how you can implement this (if you haven’t already).

1) Create actions on your website.  In other words, provide forms for your visitors to fill out.   Forms for contact us, forms for specific quotes or surveys or questionnaires.  Create a specific “thank you” page for each form.

2) Using your stats program, track the number of thank you pages for each action.  You’ll be able to quickly identify what services or actions your website is converting and which ones are not.  In other words, you’ll know what’s working and what’s not.

3) If you use Google Analytics you’ll also be able to identify the exact keyword phrases that were used to convert those folks.  You’ll then know what keyword phrases to create more pages for.   If one page on your website converts 5 visitors all who used one specific keyword phrase, what would 3 or 5 more pages marketing the same phrase or semantic phrase do?

Conversions are the new tracking tool.   Use it!

As a good friend tells me quite often, “Oh, it gives me a headache!”.

So, although all those numbers and graphs are interesting and fascinating for me to read, to my clients, they just give them a headache!

I stopped sending them that information and I started sending them a short analysis of those reports.  That turned out to be better.  At least for my clients.

But, knowing what I know (or maybe I’m just a die hard geek) – I couldn’t get by in my business with that little bit of knowledge about my website statistics.  I want to know what all those numbers and details mean!  So, although I agree that many small businesses just need to know the basic facts, I still think it’s important to have some working knowledge of the terms and information that website analytics can give you.

The folks over at WebTrends created an excellent alphabetized glossary of all website analytics terms and their definitions.  So, without further ado, here’s the list of Website Statistics Terminology.

http://www.webtrends.com/Education/Glossary.aspx