How Do You Measure Your Website?

I was talking to a prospect the other day about their very well designed website. I asked them how was their traffic doing on their website. They could not answer me. I asked them what pages were most visited? They did not know. I said, “Well what analytics software do you have loaded on your website?” and guess what? They said

Search Engine Optimization…aren’t you tired of hearing that one?

I was tooling through some of my old notes from seminars and classes I took on Search Engine Optimization and thought to myself, “Man, things sure do change from month to month about SEO.” And really it does. I have notes that say do use Meta Tags, Don’t use Meta Tags, Use Submission Services, don’t use them, content vs. context, and MORE! So, I thought I would give my personal experience on how I’m improving my own SEO and my clients. I always say, if you want information…

The joy of web analytics

The joys of website analytics

How do you measure your progress on your website? Do you even measure it at all? When I began my website career I thought wow, I am a genius at this. I have a great design, people are constantly telling me how beautiful it is, and I am positive customers are visiting the site…Or are they?

If you aren’t

How to get people to your website…and keep them there!

When it comes to a website, sometimes the hardes part is not how to get them there, but how to keep them on your site longer than 2 minutes. Well, for me anyway. So, I thought I would share some techniques that have worked for me.

First things first
Your content should be the first thing you consider during a redesign. You need to make sure that you CALL THINGS WHAT THEY ARE!! Don’t use words like “surrogated-liner impact sealer” when its really just a door knob. If a search engine is trying to help a potential customer of yours find a door knob…do you think they will know your

How Search Engines Index

When a search engine crawls your site it is referred to as a spider. We want them to do this so that we are indexed for many words. A spider killer or something that immediately stops them and will turn them away or cause them to ask the question is this a valid website, are things like “Flash” designs, Javascript, duplicate content, session id’s and poor navigation. These things do not necessarily have to disappear from a website, but they must be done correctly. If a website is done completely in flash, it will not register at all in search engines. However, if a website has flash on the home page and has good content surrounding it then a search engine will find that friendly and will index it just fine. Always have a “skip intro” button to allow a user to have an option. Otherwise you may lose your audience from staying on your page. Although we think our video is something users want to see, we do not know that and some people may not be interested. The idea is to keep users on our page not to lose them. Additionally, do not make a website that has more than one click to enter the site or the search engines will ignore you. Some people do this asking for location and then trying to drill down further asking for zip code or what are you looking for Widget A or Widget B. This is a way to get google, MSN and others to mark you as a spam site.

Navigation on a home page once were thought of as being good if they were in a menu style but this is not the case anymore. Now, to be indexed faster and more often by search engines, it is recommended to have a navigation system that is done more in sentences. This can be tricky. An example of this would be to have the sentence “Are you looking for widgets to increase productivity?” The word “widget” would then link to our pages about widgets.

Twitter and PURLS make sense

When I use Twitter and PURLS what I am doing is tracking the success of my call to action which is my tweet.  If someone goes further and fills a form out on my “microsite” then I can track that within the software as well.  The vendor that I use has built in the ability for me to follow through and track which pages each of you have clicked on within my microsites, so once a person clicks on my tweet, I can actually tell if they clicked within a microsite and what pages they clicked on.  Should they decide to fill out the form, I now have real data as to who the “Tweeter” is.

Twitter and PURLS make sense.

Another quick tip. When tweeting and posting links, I always post in 4’s for business.  What I mean is if I am on my business page then I will post up a tweet and word it 4 different ways with unique call to actions to get folks to click on the same microsite.  Yes, I said the same microsite. If you think about this – IT MAKES SENSE for a business.  Most business pages have roughly 1000 followers.  Those followers have 1000 followers and so on.  For them to even see your tweet, your gonna need to post it at the very LEAST four times.  HOWEVER, you don’t want to be obnoxious or you’ll lose people from following you. So use this strategy wisely.  I myself have unfollowed people who tweet 10 times in a row because it’s just stupid.

Now, what this is going to do is raise your chances of having a great response on that microsite, but now I call this a tweet campaign not a microsite with high response.  Because if you base it solely on the PURL or microsite itself, then its not fair, because remember, your tweeting in 4’s.

Hope this helps you and you get tweeting with some PURLS! If you need some advice on who can provide you with PURLS at an inexpensive price, I have used a vendor down in Florida that I love! They even provided my CMS system that they programmed. Love, love, love it! Email me if you want the deets!