BWMagic’s Internet Marketing News!<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
…….
\nContents:<\/p>\n
o How To Improve Your Site With Google Analytics<\/p>\n
o Top 10 Graphic Design Mistakes (And How to Avoid Them)<\/p>\n
…….<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
How To Improve Your Site With Google Analytics<\/b><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
All this week, I have been working on my sites,
\ntrying to improve them by using Google Analytics.
\nI am mainly concentrating on improving my conversion
\nrates or the number of sales I get compared to the number
\nof visitors.<\/p>\n
I am getting those sales numbers up by focusing on
\nimproving two factors that affect my conversion rates.
\nThese two are bounce rate and the time spent on my site.<\/p>\n
Google Analytics is a free program from Google and
\nevery webmaster should be using it but I am constantly
\nsurprised by how many webmasters and marketers I encounter
\ndaily who are not using it.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.google.com\/analytics\/<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Now Google Analytics is a free program from Google and it
\nis truly invaluable because of all the important data
\nit gives you about your webpages and content. It tells
\nyou how many visitors you’re getting, where they are
\ncoming from, where they go to on your site and how
\nlong they stay. All vital information for any webmaster
\nor marketer trying to improve the overall performance
\nof your content or sites.<\/p>\n
If you’re not using Google Analytics you’re missing
\nout on one of the best free programs on the web. And
\nit’s very simple to use – simply join up and then place
\na small snippet of code on all your webpages and Google
\ncollects all your vital site stats for you. And you can
\neven customize your own tasks and segments to check the
\neffectiveness of all your marketing goals.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Why is Google Analytics so important?<\/b><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
First of all, I am using Google Analytics to lower
\nmy bounce rate – if you have a high bounce rate this
\nmeans once visitors see your page they immediately hit the
\nback button. This is not good news. Actually it’s
\nhorrible news. Your potential visitors and customers
\nare voting with their back button and leaving your
\nsite without a second glance. No visitors, no revenues.<\/p>\n
I have been using Analytics for years and it has helped
\nme immensely. Lately, I have been concerned with the
\nhigh bounce rate of some of my pages – people were not
\neven viewing some of my important pages. Ouch!<\/p>\n
So I redesigned some of the page layouts and placed in
\nmore professional looking graphics and the bounce rates
\nare going down. I know this because I am checking my site’s
\nstats within the Analytics program daily.<\/p>\n
Besides just getting people to stay on my site, there’s another
\nreason why lowering your bounce rate could be important.
\nMany SEO experts believe Google is using your content’s
\nbounce rate as one of their 200+ ranking factors they use
\nto rank pages or content. Makes sense, what better
\nmeasurement of a site’s worth than people voting with their
\nback button.<\/p>\n
Let’s say you’re searching Google, you click thru to the
\nlisted page and a second later you have hit the back button
\nand looking for the next listing in Google’s SERPs. You
\nobviously didn’t find what you’re looking for and that
\nlisting can’t be very valuable to the searcher and Google
\nis no doubt tracking this fact. And wouldn’t it be in Google’s
\nmain interest to lower your site’s link in their results?
\nProviding relevant quality results is Google’s “bread and butter”
\nand the cornerstone of all that search engine revenue.<\/p>\n
How important a factor your bounce rate plays can only be
\nknown by Google but it’s something you should definitely
\ntry to improve. Besides, the lower your bounce rate but the
\nmore quality traffic you will get.<\/p>\n
Another issue and probably an even more important ranking
\nfactor is the time people spend on your pages or content.
\nGoogle Analytics will also give you this data so you can
\ntry and test different content to improve your times. Again
\nthe more time someone spends on your site, the better it
\nwill perform.<\/p>\n
Yet another factor is the pageviews per visitor – the more
\npages your visitors frequent the more popular your
\nsite will be. You want your visitors to stay and view more of
\nyour content and not just stay on the homepage or the landing
\npage.<\/p>\n
Working with Google Analytics you can improve all these factors
\nby test running different graphics, different layouts and of
\ncourse, different content to see what works best.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Several things I have discovered from closely monitoring my
\npages within Google Analytics:<\/b><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
– Traffic source is very important. Visitors coming from
\nreading my articles stay longer on my sites and have much
\nbetter conversion rates. This is very understandable since I
\n“pre-sell” in my articles and readers are familiar with
\nthe quality of my content.<\/p>\n
– When fine-tuning your webpages, make subtle changes or
\none change at a time. If it works keep it, if it doesn’t work
\nchange it back to your old design. I found it less nerve-racking
\nto make small changes and then gradually improve my pages, one
\nstep at a time.<\/p>\n
– Some keywords are better than others for delivering good results.
\nKeywords that are perfectly matched to your content obviously do
\nmuch better. For example, someone searching for cheap laptops
\nwho land on a page listing cheap laptops and discount coupons
\nwill have low bounce rates and high retention rates.<\/p>\n
– Professional graphics and professional web design do make
\na large difference in how your pages perform. I believe savvy
\nweb users have now grown a sixth sense when browsing the web
\nand can instantly tell if a page is professional looking and
\nworth their time. Using templates and cookie-cutter sites might
\nbe cheaper but they are not always the best route to go even if
\nyou’re on a tight budget. My suggestion – at least invest in a
\ngood professional logo and come up with a catchy phrase that sums
\nup your site so that people will remember it.<\/p>\n
– Here’s the deal clincher! Google Analytics will give you the
\nkeyword or keyword phrases that convert into a sale or sales.
\nYou need to make a list of all the MOST profitable keywords and
\nconcentrate the MAJORITY of your marketing on these keywords.
\nDon’t forget to market your site as a whole, but use Google
\nAnalytics to pinpoint the keywords you should be paying the
\nmost attention to in your marketing. I do articles, blog posts,
\npress releases – to create links and link bait for these all
\nimportant profitable keywords. By getting higher rankings I get
\nmore traffic and by lowering my bounce rate I get more of that
\ntraffic to my webpages and keep them there longer… all resulting
\nin more sales.<\/p>\n
Google Analytics is a very useful and beneficial program to
\nimprove the overall performance of your webpages or content.
\nUsed properly, it can also be an invaluable marketing tool to
\nincrease your bottom line. It doesn’t get any better than this!<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
….<\/p>\n
If you want more help on how websites should be designed – I
\nfound this very detailed free PDF report by Marlon Sanders to
\nbe very helpful.<\/p>\n
Top 10 Graphic Design Mistakes (And How to Avoid Them)<\/p>\n
Click to view or download:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n