Your presence on the Internet is a collection of bases and outposts: your business blog or business website is your home base, your Facebook page is an outpost, your YouTube channel is an outpost, your Twitter account is an outpost. All your actions in all your outposts are meant to direct readers to your home base, to the place where you can fully show them what you can do for their businesses.

Tracking how effective your actions are on these outposts require different approaches, depending on the social network. In this article I’ll present a quick and easy way to track your impact on YouTube. As you probably know by now, your own video channel on YouTube can be a powerful marketing tool and a great way to drive traffic to your website.

In this article I’ll concentrate on how you can measure the impact of your videos over your website. The most important thing you have to keep in mind is that you need a strategic approach. The requirement for tracking your results is to have some kind of analytic software installed on your website. I personally use Google Analytics.

The simplest thing you can do is to look at your referral traffic and check for YouTube. In order to get some results you’ll have to edit your video description on YouTube and place a link to your website. People will click it and they’ll show up in your Google Analytics reports.

The big disadvantage of this method is that you can’t measure how effective each video is. I think is very important to know how many of your viewers for a particular video clicked the link in the description and not the overall performance of the video channel.

The solution is a small strategic decision. Instead of creating content that you’ll place as standalone videos on YouTube you’ll create video content that will supplement your articles. Each video will be designed for a specific article. And when you’ll edit the description of the video, the first thing to do will be to place a link to that specific article.

You’ll not have all your videos pointing to your home page but each video points to a specific page, where you’ll probably also embed the video. By making this small adjustment you’ll be able to track the impact of each video. You’ll know what videos work and what not and you may also find out that high number of views does not necessary means lots of clicks.

With this setup you’ll be able to go to your Google Analytics account, go to Content > Content by Title, locate a page that has a YouTube video on it, select it and as a second view option you can check for Source. Now you’ll be able to see how people reached that page. Search for YouTube and see how many visits you receive, what was the bounce rate or how much time they stayed on that page.

You can now compare the number of views with the number of visits and you can make decisions on what types of videos to create in the future so that you’ll increase the click rate.

What do you think of all this? How do you track your impact on YouTube? If you find this article useful please consider subscribing to my blog.

You must have some kind of analytic software installed on your website: you have no other option. Not knowing the stats for your website is like walking in the dark and hoping for the best to happen. I personally use Google Analytics because it’s free, easy to use and offers great info.

Basically an analytic software will tell you how users come to discover your content and what they’re doing while on your website.

A very important aspect of the problem is this:

1. Where are my readers located?
2. How they find me?

Why is very important to correlate these two reports: it may give you the answer to the question “why am I not selling anything?”. If you want to rank well for a certain keyword that you believe it will bring you conversions and you see that you receive traffic from that keyword but no conversion, what do you do?

The first thing is to look at the landing page to see if your readers arrive where you want. But if this is ok then you’ll have to see from what country your readers are. If your company only sells products in UK and you get traffic from other countries then that traffic it’s irrelevant to you.

This is something that you’ll have to think about not only in the case of keywords: direct traffic, referral or e-mail correlated with location can help you solve many issues. If you are trying to market on a social network and you’re not getting traffic from the location you’re interested in then maybe you should change your message or the social network.

Location can also be responsible for high bounce rates or low bounce rates with no conversion. The implications of a location can be huge: different culture, difference expressions, a different way to look at your products/services, different prices and the list could continue.

What do you think of this? Share your experience and if you find this article useful please consider subscribing to my blog.

Yesterday I started a small experiment related to SEO. It involved a very quick look at some websites to see how they target the keywords they say they target. The feedback was good and materialized not only in comments but in e-mails also.

After doing some of this quick analysis I concluded that people really need a complete guide on keywords. They need to know how to pick them, how to use keywords, what does it mean to target a keyword, how to check the status of their website, how to read Google Analytics reports about keywords and so much more.

So, I decided to develop an informational product only for keywords. I will keep it simple and it will be addressed to everyone: even if you know nothing about SEO you’ll still be able to understand what you need to do in terms of keywords. I’ll do my best and prepare this product until the end of January 2010.

If you have any questions, suggestions, opinions or ideas go for it and leave me a comment. You may also consider subscribing to my blog, so that you’ll be the first to know when I launch this product.

I want to try a more engaging article related to SEO. The idea is to get you, the reader, involved. And here is what I was thinking about.

You leave me a comment, where you say what your website is and a maximum of 5 keywords you say you target in your website and I’ll take a look and see if you really target those keywords. I’ll perform a quick analysis of your website to see how you use those keywords. Then I’ll post a comment and tell you the result.

There is only one rule and one limitation:

1. The Rule: The comment must be posted on my blog, in the comment section of this article
2. The Limitation: I’ll do my best to answer as many comments as possible. And I will do this only for the comments posted on 20 December 2009 and 21 December 2009.

Depending on the success of this experiment I’ll think about similar articles in the near future. Hope to see your comments on my blog. Also, if you find this article useful you may also want to subscribe to my blog and receive my daily articles in your e-mail.

Custom reports are a very useful feature from Google Analytics. I use it all the time but I don’t actually create the report. I don’t want to overcrowd my data. I just go and set different reports for preview only and this offers me enough information.

When to use Custom Reports

I’m using Custom Reports when I want to better understand some data. Of course that Google Analytics offers you all the information you need but sometimes is not easy to see the thing that interests you with all the additional information around it.

That is why I turn to Custom Reports: I like to be able to look only at what I need: things like the bounce rate for the type of visitors or for the source referrals. Basically you can set your custom report do display any metric or combination of metrics for all sort of events.

How to create a Custom Report

Log into your Google Analytics account and click the View Report link for your website. In the left side you’ll see a link Custom Reporting. Click the link, then Manage Custom Reports and Create new custom report. Then it’s easy: drag and drop the metrics you want to see and for what dimension.

Then you can click on the Preview report link and check your custom report. You have the ability to save it or just cancel. I like to create reports and just preview the results. For me this feature is a great way to better see and understand the data about my website.

How do you use Custom Reports?

How do you use custom reports in Google Analytics? Why? Share your ideas and opinions.

If you ever wondered about goals in Google Analytics, about how to set one up and why would you do it, here is some info on that. I’ll assume you have Google Analytics installed on your website and this is not the first time you hear about it.

It’s going to be basic operations that any person with a minimum knowledge of web browsing can perform.

How to set up a Goal in Google Analytics

Before you access the data for your website you’ll see an edit link in the right side of the name of your website. Click it and on the page that opens you’ll see the add goals link. You can create a maximum of 20 goals divided in 4 sets.

You’ll have the possibility to choose what type of goal you would like to set up. If you didn’t thought about your goals here is the moment to do it. I think that the types of goals that you can set up are very helpful in understanding how to think of your website’s goal.

You can set up a goal for a certain URL, a certain number of visits to your website or a certain pages/visit. And if you think about it this is all that you need. Maybe your goal is to make people read a certain page, or to receive a certain number of visitors. Maybe you’re goal is to keep people on your website for at least 5 minutes.

A great thing is that you can also attach a certain dollar value to your goal. Why this is useful: let’s say that every person that comes to your website and reaches a certain page is worth 5$ to spend for. And from all the persons that reach that page only 10% decide to contact you. Now you do the math and see if it’s worth to spend that kind of money to advertise that page. It’s an interesting way to evaluate your efforts.

How goals help improve the functionality of your website

A really great feature is the possibility to set funnels for URL goals. This means that you can track if the reader will perform certain steps to reach a certain page. For example you may design your website with the following goal: after the main page the user should go to page-X that will prepare the sell and then to page-Y where you make the sell.

It’s possible that accessing a certain page before the page that actually presents the service is extremely important to you. Here is a reason for thinking this way: maybe you explain your services in a page and in another you talk about prices. Or you want to see if people that accessed your testimonial page, automatically went to the conversion page.

Tracking this can be very useful to see how well you can control your visitors. Another example: a page contains an add with some special offers and you want to see how many people decided to access the service page after reading about your special offers. Basically the possibilities are endless.

What uses do you see for goals?

It’s your turn to share your experience or your questions. Share your opinions and ideas in comments bellow.

First, let’s talk about what is the bounce rate and how Google Analytics calculates it. Bounce rate for a certain page is calculated only when readers land on that page. This metric is telling you if people clicked and navigated deeper in your website or just left.

The thing is that the bounce rate is not taking into account readers that come from other pages of your website. So, a high bounce rate means that people that landed on a page didn’t clicked any link to navigate further.

Analyzing bounce rates

Not all the times a high bounce rate means a bad thing. I see many people saying that a high bounce rate indicates that your content needs improvement because it’s not providing the information users look for. But you can’t say this until you look at the analytics.

If you want to analyze your high bounce rate page go to your Google Analytics accounts, select Content -> Content by Title and sort the results to see the highest bounce rates. Now click one of the pages with high bounce rate and let’s see what you need to look for

1. NOTE: if a page has bounce rate of 80% means that 80% of the readers that landed on that page decided to leave your website. The other 20% stayed on your website and performed at least one more click
2. The first thing to look for is the average time readers spend on your page. The thing is that if you have a decent average time (more than 1 minute or more than 3,5 minutes) a high bounce rate is not necessary something bad. A high bounce rate together with decent average time on that page means that the readers found the content interesting but they didn’t received a good reason to click some more links and read some more. If the average time for that page is just few seconds then you need to understand why. Why people close the page so quickly. Now it’s the time to move further with the analysis
3. You need to know how people get to your page: keywords or other sources – and compare the two overall bounce rates. You need to see what kind of source generates the high bounce rate: basically what needs improvement.
4. Check the Keywords that send you traffic and ask yourself two questions (for each keyword that has a high bounce rate attached to it):
   1. How much relevance does this keyword has to this page? If I would have to describe the page by using a keyword, is this what I would use?
   2. If the keyword has relevancy to the page, do I provide complete information?
5. Check the Source and see from where the users come. It’s possible that this page to be marketed on the wrong channels. Look at the websites that send traffic to that page and see exactly from where because if the link to your page is placed in a content with no relation to the content you’re offering then a high bounce rate is normal.

Improving the bounce rate

Depending on what the analytics offered you here are some things to do, in order to improve the bounce rate:

1. If the average time is high enough for you then you need to decide if you want to determine people to also visit other pages of your website. Maybe your ordering page has a high bounce rate but decent average time and you don’t want people to navigate further. But if you do, think about some links that you could place in your content and that point to other articles on your blog that are related.
2. If the average time is low and the high bounce rate is generated by keywords here are some things to do:
   1. If you can incorporate new information in the article that is relevant to a keyword is ok
   2. If you consider that you already have decent information then check how is presented. Try making the words bold, or italic, or change the colors. If the article is more than 500 words use subtitles to break the content and let people know what each section talks about. The idea is that if someone is interested only in some of your information then he should be able to easily find it, without having to read the entire article
   3. If you can’t incorporate new information, consider writing some new content and place links to the additional articles
3. If the average time is low and the high bounce rate is generated by the source then you may consider other channels for marketing your content

What do you think?

Let me know what you think of this article and how did you improve your high bounce rate. Share your ideas and opinions in comments.

When I perform an analysis of a website, in terms of SEO, I have to take a look at the reports Google Analytics offers. Otherwise my analysis will only be a superficial one and it will offer information and suggestions without seeing the whole picture.

And here is where the problems begin. When I tell people that I have to look to their analytics they usually understand that I need their Google Account and password. And of course that they get suspicious. That is the reason for writing this article.

When an SEO needs access to your Google Analytics you just have to create another user and grant permissions to only see the reports. In time, if you begin to trust that person you may grant him administrator rights, or you can continue to act on his instructions.

There are few simple steps that you need to take in order to add a user:

1. Access your Google Analytics profile and click User Management (at the bottom of the page)
2. Then, click Add User
3. Enter the e-mail address of the SEO person (must be a Google account), specify his rights (View Reports Only) and select the Website Profile to which you want to grant access
4. Click Save Changes

So, as you see:

1. It’s simple
2. It’s completely safe
3. You don’t have to give the SEO person your Google Account and password
4. The right of just Viewing the Reports means that no modifications are allowed
5. After the job is done you can remove the user

What do you think?

Let me know if you knew about this, or if at some point someone requested access to your Google Analytics and you didn’t knew how to do it in a safe way. Share your experience in comments.

Every day millions of articles are published on the web and we all hope to get some kind of benefits from our content. We all want to be on the first page of search engines for our keywords but unfortunately there are only 10 spots and so many candidates.

Doing SEO is a combination of technical rules combined with consistency, patience, human intuition, human analysis, knowing what you really sell and what problems your product solves, competition analysis and so much more. The tasks are extremely complex so you need to know the project really well before you start working on it.

Questions to ask the client

Before you start working on a project and before you make your first offer, you should know exactly what the project is about. If you ignore this step it’s possible to encounter all sorts of issues along the way. So, take your time and ask your questions: it will not only help you understand the project better but also what the client expectations are.

1. Why do you think you need SEO services?
2. What do you hope to obtain/improve with SEO? How do you think I can help you?
3. How do you see SEO: short term results, or mid and long term results?
4. Do you see SEO as a constant job, directly connected to creation of new content in a constant way? If not, please explain.
5. SEO involves many tasks and the client might not want all. Explain what these tasks are and ask what he is interested in.
6. Do you have analytic software installed on your website?
7. Do you have a keyword list for your website?
8. Do you already target some keywords in your content? If yes, what are those keywords? If yes, do you know the stats for those keywords, like competition, number of monthly searches and so on?
9. Do you analyze your competition for certain keywords?
10. Are you looking for consultancy SEO services? Do you also need implementation?
11. What is your knowledge of metrics? What metrics do you think may need more attention? What metrics do you hope to improve?
12. Are we talking about a one-time SEO analysis or the project will go on for 6 or more months?
13. What SEO efforts have you already made? How did you measure the results? Have you tried to adjust your approach?
14. How many pages your website has? Are all indexed by search engines, or you don’t know?
15. When the website was built, did you discussed about the link architecture? Have you planned certain link architecture?
16. Name the top places where you use your keywords on a page.
17. Do you use Google Webmaster Tools?
18. Where your potential clients are located? Did you made something to target those locations?
19. How often do you produce new content? The new content is created based on a plan, a keyword list, to serve a certain article structure?

Establishing goals

Establish very clear what the client wants, what the client expects to get and in what time frame. SEO is not a magic thing that in a month will turn their website in a money making machine. If the client expects fast results think 10 times before you accept him as a client.

More than this: if the client wants fast results and his website has only 30, 50 pages and the keywords he’s after have competition more than 5 millions you should thing again. Identify what the client really wants: improve the bounce rates for certain pages, or improve overall traffic, or improve the flow to their conversion page and so on.

Targets like: “I want to be number 1 for keyword1” are not that important. Search is evolving. The same search will provide different results depending on your location, what you searched before, what your account settings are, and what time of day are you searching.

It’s our job as providers of SEO services to explain all these things to our clients. If you are afraid to speak the truth and you prefer to hide behind SEO myths then you contribute to all the bad things people talk about SEO services.

Key analysis points

Here are things that are extremely important in the evaluation process:

1. The project is about a website that already exists or a new one?
2. If you have a website, do you also have analytics software installed?
3. It’s important to know if the client wants a one-time SEO-analysis or we are talking about a project on 6 months or more.
4. The client is willing to develop new content based on my suggestions?
5. The client is willing to start a blog to market his products/services?
6. What type of website is it: static, dynamic, with just few pages, more than 100, 300, 500 pages?
7. Analyze the already made efforts to optimize the website.
8. Know the real expectations of the client, including the time frame.

Your turn

What do you think of all this? How do you evaluate your projects? What are the things any SEO provider should watch for? What questions do you ask your clients?

And you, as a client, what is your experience? What questions would you like an answer from an SEO provider? What questions do you think an SEO should ask you? What are your expectations? What do you hope to get from an SEO?

This is a problem that every person that launched a website encountered. When you are just starting a new project you are basically creating a point of light in the dark. Eventually every light will draw some attention but it’s crucial to send the right message in the right way, so that the attention you get on your website will lead to conversion.

There are some things that you have to think about in terms of SEO, things that some times are overlooked for other more common SEO tasks. The thing is that when you are just launching a website, or a product, or a service, no one knows about it.

It will take some time before you’ll start receiving traffic from searches made for your brand name, or the name of your product, or service. What you have to do first is position your website in front of readers. Every day people are searching the web for solutions to their problems. If your website offers a solution you need to identify the problem.

It may sound odd that you know the solution but not the problem. Well … you do know the problem but it’s possible not to know it as a client, or better said you might not express it like the client. Why? The client doesn’t know that the answer to his problem is your product so he’s searching in consequence.

Identifying the main problems can also lead to some planning on initial keywords to target. I’m talking about long tail keywords (or keywords that have low competition) that are easy to rank well for, that are providing a decent amount of monthly searches and that will provide a starting point. The more traffic you’ll get and the more information you communicate you’ll be able to also target more technical terms.

So basically in time people will learn what you have to offer, will learn the language of the market, the name of the products. In time they’ll search for your brand name, or brand name plus the product/service. That is why you have to create a connection between the product and your brand, your website. And this connection, from an SEO stand of point, means targeting the right keywords, in the right order.

This initial keyword planning is extremely important. The first keywords that you’ll start to target are the foundation on which you’ll add more and more related keywords. So, initially you have to think more like a problem solver and identify the problems rather than a service provider.

If you are running a website and you don’t have a list of keywords that you want to generate traffic from then I think you are walking blind.

Now, let me know what you think about things that you need to do, related to SEO, when no one knows you.

-          How important do you think that an initial keyword planning is?

-          Before you launch a website do you do a keyword list?