Why Use Google Analytics?

This is guest post by Courtney Chowning

There are many different types of website analytic programs on the Internet today. Each one of them offers different features with different price tags. Google Analytics is undoubtedly one of the most popular website statistic programs currently available. For numerous reasons Google Analytics is also my web analytic program of choice.

Here are just a few of the reasons I think you should be using Google Analytics:

1. It’s free! There is no cost to use Google Analytics and you can monitor as many websites as you want under the same account.  Plus it’s super easy to allow someone else one time access to view your stats if necessary.
2. Set up goals. Within Google Analytics you can set up a goal to follow your product funnel and track where your customers leave the site in the purchasing process or how many customers actually follow through with the sale. Goals are technically just page views, but it allows you to view the data you want in a logical and meaningful way.
3. Link to your Adsense account. If you run Adsense campaigns you can easily link your Adsense account to your Analytics account in order to better under how well your ads are performing and the long term result they have on your website.
4. Site Overlay Map. With the site overlay map you can easily view which areas of your site gets the most clicks.  Is it the area above the fold?  Do links in your sidebar get clicked?  The Site overlay maps displays your site along with small boxes at every link telling you how many times that link has been clicked.  This is always a quick and visual way to see how your ads, affiliates links, or product links are converting.

From monitoring every aspect of your website’s traffic, visitor loyalty, site referrals, to keywords, Google Analytics provides everything you need to know about your readers and blog stats. Familiarizing yourself with Google Analytics and all that it can do will help you make the best decisions for your website and ultimately your readers.

I invite you to join me in a Google Analytics Workshop on August 30, 2010 where I will teach you how to use Google Analytics to help increase your readership and profits.

Top Five Essential SEO Tactics

Many people are unfamiliar with the top SEO tactics for making their websites profitable. You need to be sure you follow these tips if you want your website to make money for months and years to come.

1. Keep It Simple, Stupid The KISS rule is essential for success in the online business world. Spiffy Javascript and Flash effects may look nice, but they’re more difficult for search engine algorithms to understand, which will ultimately lower your page ranking. Because search engine optimization is all about tailoring your website to search engines, you want to make sure to keep your site simple enough for the engine to understand.

2. Content is King – Put lots of content together! Niche content is the best – simply defined as articles about things that everyone wants to know, that nobody already knows. Blogs are great, because they’re a regularly updated source of content. If you need to develop lots of high quality content, go through a freelance writers’ site and put out multiple requests – this way you can get a huge amount of content quickly.

3. Share Links – Send emails to the owners of established quality websites with similar content to yours and offer to share links. Chances are, as long as your site looks professional, like it’s going to make it big, they’ll accept, because they got where they are by sharing links. Search engines track how many sites link to yours, and use that to determine how valuable your site is.

4. Proper Sitemap and Meta Tags – When you submit your site to search engines, they will want to see that your site includes a sitemap that meets their search engine’s parameters, and that each page contains meta tags to help the engine categorize your site. The big engines like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft’s Bing all offer programs to help you figure out the most relevant meta tag keywords, so definitely make use of these.

5. Keyword Optimization – When you’re creating a page that you want people to “land” on from the search engine, you want to make sure that the keyword density on that page is sufficient. You can figure out the best keywords by downloading a keyword generator from Google or other engines. Once you know what your content keywords are, make sure your page contains a 1-3% keyword density – or 1-3 times per hundred words. This may seem small, but keep in mind that very high keyword densities often make your content unreadable. Trying to “game the system” often results in penalization by search engine algorithms.

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Do You Want More Targeted Traffic?

Of course you do! We all need more targeted traffic, and one of the easiest ways to attract more of it is guest blogging. The internet is buzzing with news about guest posting opportunities and its benefits.

I am quite new to gust posting: particularly I heard about it a few months ago, first in the form of a blog world tour from Nicole Dean, and then learned more about it from a challenge Lynn Terry had for her elite mastermind members.

This past month, Famous Bloggers had a guest blogging contest, and I took the opportunity to participate.  There are some great prizes that will be awarded by these sponsors:

* FamousBloggers.net – contest organizer

*MyBlogGuest.com our contest media partner

*WebmasterFormat.com - Webmaster Resource

*MMO social network – making money online tips

*DesignGizer.com a new design bookmark site

*Better Blogging for Bloggers blog

*DennisEdell.com - Dennis Edell

*IBlogZone.com a making money online blog

*CrazyEgg.com heat mapping tools

*SimplyFreshThemes.com Fresh Journal WP theme

*Kiesha @ WeBlogbetter.com Blogging tips & tricks

*JohnPaulAguiar.com - Twitter Dummy Guide

I’ve already seen a nice spike in traffic from my guest blogging, and I know I will make it part of my business marketing. I’d love to hear from you if you’d like a guest post from me.

Make this a goal today: guest post at least once this month (more if you can). If I can do it, anyone can.

4 Easy Ways to Build Traffic to Your Site

Who wants a website without traffic? Let’s face it: you need traffic to your site or there is no reason to having it.

But how do you get traffic to your site? We all know about content, but are there other ways to increase traffic?

1. Answer questions - if you see the same question asked over and over again, write an answer to it, and then direct those who asked it to your post. This way, not only do you have new content on your site, but now you have someone happy that they found an answer to their question. They’ll promote your post, letting others know about the answer to their problem.You can find all types of questions on Twitter, FaceBook, in forums, etc.

2. Write a Glossary for Your Niche – there is always a term someone doesn’t know: why not write a list of terms specific to your niche and define those terms. This information will be a magnet for links, and it’s not hard to do.

3. Invite Guest Bloggers -  there is a lot of buzz about guest blogging these days, so why not ask people you admire and follow to guest post at your blog? It’s not hard, and the worst that can happen is that they’ll say no. But if they say yes, you’ll have a nice traffic boost when their post goes up, as most people would let their followers know about the guest post.

4. Use Tags for Your Posts – I am not sure how many take advantage of the tags on their blogs, but I get a lot of visitors that come through tags I created for my posts. And  if I see enough visitors come through a specific tag, I create a blog post for that specific term: give people what they want!

There you have it: all of the above methods are easy to implement. What methods do you use to increase your traffic?

How Social Networking Grows Your Business

There’s no doubt, social networking gives you access to your audience but what else can you accomplish with this tool?

Social gives business owners the ability to:

• Build an online presence
• Increase website traffic
• Boost SEO
• Establish credibility
• Connect with your audience
• Glean valuable information to grow your business

Whether your online business is just starting out, or you’re a large corporation, adding social networking to your marketing strategy will help you promote and grow your business.

Options to Use Social Networking to Promote Your Business

There are a number of ways you can use social networking to promote your business. Let’s take a look at the most popular and powerful.

• Drive Traffic to Your Blog or Website - Post a curiosity generating or attention grabbing headline and include a link to your website.
• Promote – Launching a new product? Announce it via social networking sites. Offering a huge holiday discount? Let people know.
• Share Lessons and Experiences – Social networking is about connecting. If you have something relevant to your industry to share, share it. Start conversations and partake in them.
• Share Pictures, Audio and Video – Many social networking sites embrace visual forms of posting as well. YouTube of course is a video social networking site but even Facebook lets you link to and post audio and video messages. And Twitter developers have created picture and video sharing applications.
• Share Information – Post interesting and relevant statistics, quotes, or headlines and start a conversation. When appropriate, link to your company website.
• Advertise – Many social networking sites also sell advertising space.