Tag Archive for eckweb

27 Aug 2008
internet marketing • seo • small business

Website Metrics and Analytics


What’s REALLY important when measuring website metrics and analytics?

Now that Google has officially announced that they will no longer accept any automation tools scanning their search engine for website rankings, some SEO firms and SEO webmasters are wondering what can they use for their Website Metrics and Analytics? Honestly, they should have been using other measurements way before today! But for SEO newbies here are some website metrics and analytics that you should be following, for yourself and your clients.

1) ROI (Return On Investment) – possibly the most important website metric to follow. Your report should show how much was spent on Internet marketing for the month and how much was made. Of course, you’ll have to know the average profit per sale and then track the sales.

2) Unique Visitors – how many unique (or new) visitors have come to the website that month? This number should increase from the beginning of the campaign. Of course, there will be dips but in general, the trend should be upwards. The more new pages and new keyword phrases the website adds, the more unique visitors will be coming to the website.

3) Leads – every website should have a way to measure leads. Measuring these through website metrics and analytics is fairly easy and I’m always surprised at how many websites do not take advantage of it. First, the website should have a form (not an email link) for every possible reason a user would need to contact. For example: If we’re talking about a dentist’s website, that site should have a standard “contact us” form, an “appointment” form, a “ask the dentist” form and an “insurance information” form. Of course, each form would then go to a separate “thank you” page. The SEO webmaster would then track these “thank you” pages. The idea here is to see which of these forms is being used the most. What is the target audience looking for and how can the site owner build on that?

4) Conversions – Yes, if the website generated 50 thank you pages in one month (that would be 50 leads) then of those 50, how many converted into sales? The average is 1% – 3%. These are a bit tricker to track since some conversions will take place via a phone call (can’t track that with website metrics and analytics) but you can ask the site owner to ask the caller “How did you hear about us?”.

5) Time on Page – Depending on the type of website you have, you may want to measure the time spent on your website pages. After all, if your website page is filled with information that you want to user to read but yet the average amount of time spent on that page is 5 seconds, well, they’re not reading that information. So, what do you (as an SEO webmaster) need to do to make that page more “reader friendly?”

6) Call to Action – every website page should have at least 1 call to action. Measuring this through website metrics and analytics is easy. The call to action (something that you want the viewer to do) can be measured through forms and click throughs. Maybe a call to action is “email us today” – how many visitors clicked on that specific link? If it’s a small number? Why? What can you do to improve that number?

7) Bounce Rate – this is one of my favorite website metrics to follow. A bounce rate is the percentage of people who came to a website page and left the website entirely. In other words, these visitors never ventured to other pages on the website. This is usually an indication that the website attracted the wrong kind of visitor. If your website was a storefront and you put books in your store window but your store sold shirts, the majority of visitors coming into the store would leave because they “thought” your store was selling books. If you have a high bounce rate (I consider anything over 50% to be high) then your website is essentially doing this very same thing.

8) Backlinks – how many more websites are linking to you this month than last month? What websites? What anchor text linking are they using? A very important website metric to know.

9) Social Media – your website metrics and analytics program should be able to tell you how many referrals you received from any of the social media programs such as stumbleupon, twitter, linkedin, facebook, etc. Is your social media marketing working for you? Test it!

Website rankings are just a very small part website metrics and analytics. Give yourself and your clients the best possible measurement of their website success!
Be an internet marketing firm your clients will be proud to be part of.


eckweb | No comments | Tags: , , , ,
25 Aug 2008
internet marketing • seo • small business

Internet Marketing Tips For Small Businesses


Here at Eckweb, we specialize in working with small businesses as well as home based businesses. So, that means we usually get to deal directly with the business owners. We love that! After all, who’s more passionate about their business than the owner? (Answer – no one!) This relationship allows us to tap into the visions and dreams the owner has for his/her small business which in turn helps us with marketing their website(s). After all, Internet Marketing is NOT something you just hand over to an agency. Just like websites themselves, Internet Marketing is an interactive activity.

In our conversations and emails with these small business owners we find ourselves constantly listing valuable internet marketing tips for small businesses. We’d like to share these with you.

3 Valueable Internet Marketing Tips For Small Businesses

1) Long Tail Marketing – this is simply marketing keyword phrases on your website that are popular yet not so popular that the competition is very stiff. The best way to implement the long tail marketing strategy is to add as many pages as possible to your website, each one targeting 1-2 long tail keyword phrases. Let me give you an example of how this works.

Website One:
Has 10 pages – each one targeting a keyword phrase that has a high competition number. In other words, there is a huge number of websites out there marketing the same keyword phrase. As a result this website is having difficulty getting onto the first page of Google for these keyword phrases and as a result the number of visitors to the website is very low.

Website Two:
Has 30 pages – each one targeting a keyword phrase that has a low competition number (these are long tail keyword phrases). As a result this website is on the first page of Google for all of the keyword phrases they are marketing. Although the number of people searching for these keyword phrases is lower (than the number of people searching for the phrases in Website One) – because this website is on the first page of Google, and because it has 3 times the number of pages (thus marketing more keyword phrases) – the number of visitors and sales to this website is very high.

For small businesses, it may seem extremely expensive to create a large website (one with more pages) but the truth is, in the long run, it’s the KEY that helps you to get into the top of the search engines.

Here’s a real life example:

We’re working hard to get one of our clients, “Name-Tags.net” into the first page of Google for the phrase “name tags“. But while we’re doing that, we still want him to get business through his website (after all, what’s the point of a business website if it doesn’t bring in business?). Anyway, we optimized his website pages for keyword phrases like “custom name tags” and “window name tags“. Although these phrases are not as “popular” as the phrase, “name tags”, they are extremely profitable. According to our client, “…business has not slowed down, like it normally does during the summer.”

2) Template Websites – I know, it’s extremely tempting to use one of those template websites that you can make yourself and host yourself and change yourself. The problem with these types of websites is that because everything is “do it yourself” – it doesn’t allow anyone else to go in and make the kind of custom changes that need to be made in order to market the website. In order for that template program to be able to give you the tools to create it and change it, there needs to be alot of extra coding and programming that is placed on these website pages. Search engines don’t “see” websites like you and I do on the Internet. Just check out SEO-Browser.com and type in your website address, you’ll see what the search engines see.

In order for them to get to those “words” on your website, they have to go through all that coding. The more coding, the less words they get to display.

So, yes, financially, it’s very tempting to use a template website. But if you’re serious about marketing your business on the Internet, don’t be tempted. Get a custom website. Better yet, get a custom website from an SEO friendly web designer. That way you won’t have to pay the designer to create the site and then pay the SEO firm to clean up the site!

3) Write, Write, Write, Write, Write!!! – I know, I hear alot of sighs out there! Internet marketing is all about “words”. Why? Because search engines are just machines and they are programmed to find “words”. People type in “words” into search engines and they in turn search for those same and similar “words” so that the user finds what they’re looking for.

So, your website needs pages, and those pages need words. In addition, your website also needs incoming links and those links need to be the words that you are marketing.

How do you achieve this? Well, you can write in a blog, you can post your thoughts, ideas, etc. on social marketing venues such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. You can submit articles to article submission sites and you can also submit press releases. You can comment on other blogs and forums. I know, you’re probably saying “All of that takes too much time.” – Well, yes, it does take time. But when you join the chamber of commerce and you get up early on Wednesday mornings (or whatever morning your chamber meets) and you get in your car and go to a meeting and spend 1-2 hours at the meeting and talk with people you know and people you don’t know, doesn’t that take alot of time?

You are doing essentially the very same thing at Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other social media marketing sites. You are networking. You are showcasing your expertise. You are not only selling your services and products, you are selling your passion about your business. And you can do it in your pajamas, with your own fresh cup of coffee, just the way you like it.

BUT, there are times when keeping up or participating in all these venues is just TOO much. We understand that and we offer social media marketing for our clients. So, if you absolutely cannot do this type of work for yourself, then hire someone to do it for you.

There is no doubt in my mind, and after 8 years of this SEO business I can safely say, that if you follow these 3 Internet marketing tips for small businesses that I’ve listed above, your website and your business will benefit from all that the Internet has to offer.

What are you waiting for! Get started!


eckweb | No comments | Tags: , , ,
19 Aug 2008
internet marketing • seo • small business

Search Engine Rankings – How Important Are They?


So many of my clients are reliant on the search engine rankings report, it seems to be the most popular report that is viewed on the list of monthly reports that I provide my clients.

But is it REALLY indicative of how the website is doing? In short, NO!!

So, why do I provide my clients with a search engine rankings report? Because it’s the report they are most familiar with. Especially if they have been with another SEO firm in the past. Many SEO firms provide this report (as their only report) to their clients on a regular basis. Some monthly, some quarterly.

I’ll tell you why I think it’s not important and I’ll compare the information from the search engine rankings report to the information that I provide on the other reports. I’ll let you decide if I’m right or wrong.

1) I’ve recently been working very hard on a client’s website to market him onto the first page of Google for the phrase “name tags” (without the quotes). Obviously, well, maybe not so obviously, but the phrase “name tags” is extremely competitive. Over 45 million in total searches and over 1.4 million in allintitle searches.

I have succeeded in getting him onto the first page of Google, occasionally. This means that when I checked Google 20 minutes ago, his site was #7. Yesterday it was also #7 between 11 AM and 1 PM, but the rest of the day it was on page 12. So, if I ran a search engine rankings report between 11 AM and 1 PM yesterday, that report would show his site at #7 in Google, where in reality, for the majority of the day, the website is on page 12 in Google.

The search engine rankings report is ONLY a snapshot of where the website is at the moment the report is run. Yes, it takes 15-30 minutes to run a report and I honestly don’t know if the numbers are obtained at the beginning or the end of the run (I would assume the end), but either way, it’s just a snapshot of that moment in time. So, in my opinion, it’s not relevant to the overall success of the Internet marketing campaign.

2) The Traffic Analysis report I provide my clients with is a summary of the amount and type of traffic that comes through the website. In that monthly report I list the total number of visitors, the total number of unique visitors, websites that refer traffic, search engines that refer traffic, website pages that are visited the most, and those that are visited the least. I also list the top 3 keyword phrases that are bringing in traffic. I will tell you that 95% of the time, the keyword phrases that bring in the most traffic are phrases the Client NEVER thought of.

3) The Competition Report I provide my clients with is new. I take a keyword phrase the client is marketing and I compare their website to an online competitors. Sometimes the competitor rankings higher, sometimes lower, depending on the keyword phrase (and the time of the search) but the point of this report is to give my client an idea of what their online competitor is doing. After all, if my competitor has 59 pages on their website, all indexed and marketable, and I only have 23 pages on my website – well, chances are my competitor is getting more traffic. How much more traffic? Where is the traffic coming from? I want to know and my client should know as well.

4) Hot Keyword Phrases is a report that I love to create. Each month I give my clients 3 new keyword phrases targeted to their audience and of course, phrases that they are currently not marketing. The idea is to add information to the website, to a blog, to a newsletter, whatever!! The target audience is searching for these keyword phrases. The only way to get that group typing in these phrases is to associate these phrases with the website.

5) Tips Suggestions and Ideas is a report that is based almost entirely on the website statistics. I scrutinize the statistics to see how the website visitors are maneuvering through the website. What pages are they leaving in droves from? What buttons are being clicked on and which ones are not? What pages are being viewed least often and why? What percentage of people come to a website page and then just leave? And how does the online competitor handle the same situations? This report obviously takes the most time, but honestly, it’s great analyzing all this data. Sort of SEO CSI!

It takes anywhere from 3-5 hours to gather all this information, per client, so it’s not an easy task but if I want my clients to benefit from SEO, this is what I need to do. This is what I would want my SEO firm to do for me.

All these reports other than the search engine rankings report, provide the client with SO much more information, and relevant, useful information! This data, analyzed and acted on, is really what will help propel the website into generating the type of traffic your business deserves.

So, if your SEO firm is providing you with this information, learn to read it. Ingest it! If you have questions about the information, contact your SEO firm. They will be delighted that you’re actually reading the information they work so hard to provide you with.

If your SEO firm does not provide you with this information, contact us at Eckweb Designs, Inc. We’ll be happy to work with you and your website!


eckweb | No comments | Tags: , ,
16 Jul 2008
home business • internet marketing • seo • small business

Can Small Businesses Benefit From SEO?


Most small businesses begin with a small website, after all, the costs of creating a custom website can be out of reach for many small business owners. Especially start ups and home based businesses.

But the truth is, the cost is SO worth it! The monies spent on a custom website, especially one that is Search Engine Friendly will come back to the website owner in multiples! Not only will the website owner save money on re-designing the website but because the website is already structured to attract those search engine spiders, the site will naturally gain ground in the search engines.

But, can small businesses really benefit from SEO services (Search Engine Optimization)? Yes, if they put some muscle into their websites. The days of creating a 10 page website and expecting that to compete on the engines are pretty much gone. As the larger companies output websites filled with information and data and the “content” that search engines just love, the small business website owners need to do what they can to continuously add information, quality information, to their websites.

How can they do this?

1) Look at the long tail. Keyword phrases that don’t bring in a ton of traffic but also don’t have much competition are GOLD. Go ahead and look at your website logs. I will guarantee that the total number of visitors that you received last month from your Long Tail keyword phrases is more than the total number of visitors from your high competition phrases.

What should you do? – Create more pages on your website, you can do this slowly, adding one new page a month. Target each new page towards a long tail keyword phrase. By the end of the year, you’ll have 12 new pages bringing in more visitors. And an added bonus of long tail keyword phrases is that the type of visitor who is typing in this phrase is usually ready to “buy” – not just browse.

2) Go Social! Join those social networks like Linked In, FaceBook, Twitter, whatever other social network might be related to your industry. Not only are these places great for networking, but they offer you a place to link TO your website.

3) Write, Write, Write, Write, Write!!!!! – The absolute cheapest, most effective method of marketing on the Internet is to write articles, submit articles, press releases, blogs, online newsletters, comments on forums and social networks. Use anchor text in those articles and you’ve got incoming links TO your website. It’s really that simple.

So, although SEO is getting more and more competitive, there absolutely is a way for small businesses to benefit from SEO. And so they should, after all, what’s the point of having a business website if it doesn’t bring you business?


eckweb | One comment | Tags: , , ,
15 Jun 2008
home business • internet marketing • small business

Internet Advertising Ideas


As a professional Internet Marketer, I am often asked for Internet Advertising Ideas. It could be from a potential client on the phone or from someone I meet at a party. So many people have the notion that Internet marketing is some kind of bag of “secret tricks”, I suppose they are on the lookout for new and interesting Internet Advertising Ideas.

Well, in my 8 years of experience with Internet advertising, I’ve accumulated some knowledge about Internet marketing, so here are my “Internet Advertising Ideas“.

1) Be specific about what you’re marketing. If you sell greeting cards, assign several pages to each niche of greeting cards that you sell. “Birthday cards”, “Get Well cards”, “Thank You cards”, etc. This allows you to focus specific keyword phrases onto these niche pages and it allows the search engines to identify what the pages are about.

2) Write, write, write, write, write!!!! Do it yourself, hire someone, barter with someone, whatever! You are supposedly an expert in your field, well, show it! You gain trust from viewers on the Internet, you gain exposure on search engines and directories and guess what? Even the search engines will see that your website must be a hub of information because of all the incoming links! Post what you write on blogs, free article submission sites, your own website, other websites, forums, message boards, social networking groups, etc.

3) Craigs List – post your items on Craigs list, it’s free!

4) Create your own commercial and YouTube it!

5) Get your website optimized! Only about 20% of websites are actually optimized, which means that 80% are NOT! I don’t get it. What’s the point of having a business website if it doesn’t bring you business?

6) Add coupons to your site. There are directories out there that only accept websites with coupons on them. To get your site listed on those directories and benefit not only from their traffic but the incoming link to your website, you need coupons on your site. It’s as easy as adding another page to your website!

7) Internet advertising ideas also includes reviewing your website for flaws. Do you have enough call to actions? Is your contact information easily accessible? Do you have forms for your visitors to fill out? Do you change your content? There are many, many issues to consider! One huge mistake many website owners make is to create a website and forget about it. Websites are not brochures, they’re not flyers, they’re meant to be interactive and dynamic.

8) PPC (Pay Per Click) is one of those Internet Advertising ideas that can be quite costly but depending on your product and/or service, it can also be very profitable. The trick to PPC advertising is to make sure to keep tabs on the ROI. In my experience, after 3 months of marketing the ROI begins to decrease. It doesn’t mean you should stop the PPC campaign but perhaps you should focus the campaign on other keywords or themes.

9) Find out what your audience wants and then give it to them. How do you do that with Internet advertising? Easy! What are they typing in? What questions are they typing in? What information are they looking for? How do you do this? Well, there are programs out there that capture SOME of the keyword phrases people type in, programs like Keyword Discovery and Wordtracker. You can also use the Google AdWords tool, although this shows you what people are bidding on, not necessarily typing in.

10) Create a mailing list and use the mailing list. That means provide your customers, past, current and future ones with SOMETHING. A newsletter, an update of sales, events, etc. Anything to keep your company name, your company products and services as easily available as possible.

Internet Advertising Ideas are not “secret” or “magic”, they’re advertising like most any other business advertising. It just takes some planning and action by people who know the medium.

If you want to discuss other Internet Advertising Ideas, feel free to contact me, Esther Kane at Eckweb Designs!


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