Online Marketing

Get Visitors To Come Back

Does your website stand out? Why would ANYONE come BACK to your website? Does your website have anything worthy of coming back to? These are all questions you should ask yourself when looking at the “Direct Visitors” metric in Google Analytics. Return visitors are super important for many reasons.
Here are some great resources about [...]

Does your website stand out? Why would ANYONE come BACK to your website? Does your website have anything worthy of coming back to? These are all questions you should ask yourself when looking at the “Direct Visitors” metric in Google Analytics. Return visitors are super important for many reasons.

Here are some great resources about return visitors:

• Website Goodies talks about getting your visitors to return back to your website
• A Promotion Guide talks about increasing traffic with return visitors
• Search Engine Channel talks about how return visitors gives you prominence in search engines
• Lastly, here are 10 Proven methods to attract and measure return website visitors

Top Internet Marketing Blogs

Winning The Web has compiled a list of the top Internet Marketing blogs. Site categories include affiliate marketing, blogging, copywriting, Internet marketing, link building, make money online, SEO / SEM, and social media. Their data includes the following (all sortable):

RSS Subscribers
Alexa Ranking
Technorati Rankings
Google Pagerank
YAHOO Inbound Links
Stumbleupon Reviews
del.icio.us Saves
Outbound links
Votes

Surprisingly, I didn’t see the number of [...]

Winning The Web has compiled a list of the top Internet Marketing blogs. Site categories include affiliate marketing, blogging, copywriting, Internet marketing, link building, make money online, SEO / SEM, and social media. Their data includes the following (all sortable):

• RSS Subscribers
• Alexa Ranking
• Technorati Rankings
• Google Pagerank
• YAHOO Inbound Links
• Stumbleupon Reviews
• del.icio.us Saves
• Outbound links
• Votes

Surprisingly, I didn’t see the number of outbound links from Google.

Here is a sample of the output:

Top Internet Marketing Blogs. Click for full size.

View Winning The Web’s IM Top Blogs.

Related Blogs

• Read excellent blogs on the Net
• So how do you explain the benefits of the accurate Social Media …

Overthrow Wikipedia Results

As most of you may have noticed, WIKIPEDIA is ranked on the first page for almost every term. In most cases, they provide a fairly thorough explanation about a topic. In other cases, it provides a terrible user experience. For example, if someone is search for “accounting sofware,” it is very likely that they are [...]

As most of you may have noticed, WIKIPEDIA is ranked on the first page for almost every term. In most cases, they provide a fairly thorough explanation about a topic. In other cases, it provides a terrible user experience. For example, if someone is search for “accounting sofware,” it is very likely that they are actually looking for accounting software and not a 10 page description about it. Well Blue Hat SEO has created an excellent blog post about overthrowing WIKIPEDIA results

Related Blogs

• Object oriented principles of wikipedia links
• SEO News Roundup for November 7, 2008

Improve Your SEO Rankings With These Basic Tips

TopRankBlog goes back to the basics and discusses three basic tips to achieve high SEO rankings. They are as follows:

Research keywords
Apply researched keywords to your website in page titles, meta description, paragraphs, headers and links.
Find sites related to your topic and let them know about your site. Don’t do this artificially. Create content worth talking [...]

TopRankBlog goes back to the basics and discusses three basic tips to achieve high SEO rankings. They are as follows:

• Research keywords
• Apply researched keywords to your website in page titles, meta description, paragraphs, headers and links.
• Find sites related to your topic and let them know about your site. Don’t do this artificially. Create content worth talking about and YOU WILL GET LINKS naturally.

It’s definitely easier said than done. For more information, read the entire TopRankBlog article.

Get Your Links Back! New Feature In Google Webmaster Tools

Google has added an important feature to the Google Webmaster tools area.
Google tells you exactly which pages result in a 404 error on your site. This has existed for sometime. They now let you know which of your 404 pages have links pointing to them. I used this tool and quickly found links pointing to [...]

Google has added an important feature to the Google Webmaster tools area.

Google tells you exactly which pages result in a 404 error on your site. This has existed for sometime. They now let you know which of your 404 pages have links pointing to them. I used this tool and quickly found links pointing to non existent pages for many of my domains. Of course, this was quickly rectified with 301 redirects.

Google wants to give you this information for a few reasons:

1. 404s creates a bad user experience
2. It benefits YOU. Google wants to count the valid links pointing to your site which translates into better rankings and more visibility on Google.
3. Having links to 404s can skew their algorithm.

Here are some more detailed posts regarding the change:

• Google Webmaster Central posts information their blog.
• Free Links to Your Site by Matt Cutts
• Google’s New Tools for Site Link Strengthening by Search Engine Watch.

Google Analytics Releases Powerful New Features

Google Analytics will be rolling out some new features in the coming weeks. Some of you may have already noticed the interface change.
The following has been added

Advanced Segmentation
Custom Reports
A data export API (private beta)
Integrated reporting for AdSense publishers (private beta)
Multi-dimensional data visualizations called “Motion Charts,”
Updated user and administrative interface

The biggest surprise - Analytics is now [...]

Google Analytics will be rolling out some new features in the coming weeks. Some of you may have already noticed the interface change.

The following has been added

1. Advanced Segmentation
2. Custom Reports
3. A data export API (private beta)
4. Integrated reporting for AdSense publishers (private beta)
5. Multi-dimensional data visualizations called “Motion Charts,”
6. Updated user and administrative interface

The biggest surprise - Analytics is now integrated with Adsense. You can see how much money each page generates, hourly earnings (for any metric available), which referrals are bring you profitable traffic and for each page on your site, you can view up to 10 Adsense metrics! You can cross segment with almost any data value!

Links

1. Visit the Google Analytics blog to view the features in detail.
2. If you would like to view a visual representation of the videos, view Google’s Youtube Playlist.

Sitelinks in Google Webmaster Tools

What are Sitelinks?
Take a look at the below Google listing. You will notice a few links under the regular listing … Inside Politics, Political Ticker, etc. Google has determined that this is the navigational hierarchy for cnn.com. These are referred to as Sitelinks.

Can I change the Sitelinks listed by Google?
Google webmaster tools gives you [...]

What are Sitelinks?
Take a look at the below Google listing. You will notice a few links under the regular listing … Inside Politics, Political Ticker, etc. Google has determined that this is the navigational hierarchy for cnn.com. These are referred to as Sitelinks.

Can I change the Sitelinks listed by Google?
Google webmaster tools gives you the ability to block specific Sitelinks. You are not able to modify the Sitelinks, or add to the list of Sitelinks. To block Sitelinks, login to Google webmaster Tools and click “Links” > “Sitelinks.”

Can I Influence the Sitelinks?
There are a couple of ways to influence Sitelinks:

1. Your website should be easy to navigate and users should understand how to drill through your site. It should be EASY to find the information they are looking over through a meaningful hierarchy. If a user experiences difficulties navigating through your website, chances are that a search engine will as well.
2. When you submit your XML sitemap to Google, you can set the priority of each page, 1 being the highest. The higher the priority, the more important the page is. Google may not use this data but they will definitely consider it.

I found the information on Hochman Consultants pretty useful. Here’s what they say:

I’ve worked on a number of sites with Sitelinks, and these sites are similar in the following ways:

1. Site ranks first for the keyword(s) that generate the Sitelinks listing
2. Easily spiderable, structured navigation
3. Fairly high natural search traffic
4. High click through rates from the search results page
5. Useful outbound links
6. Inbound links from high quality sites
7. Site age is several years or older

Here are some more helpful links:
Provide Feedback on Sitelinks
How does Google compile the list of links shown below search results?
How To Get Google Sitelinks

This stuff has been around for a while but it’s never too late to brush up.

Missing Data in Google Webmaster Tools

I came across an article on Search Engine Land and thought I would talk about the same issue since it’s happened to me (I thought I was the only one!). When you add a domain to your Google Webmaster Tools account, you can sign up using the “www” or non “www” version of your domain. [...]

I came across an article on Search Engine Land and thought I would talk about the same issue since it’s happened to me (I thought I was the only one!). When you add a domain to your Google Webmaster Tools account, you can sign up using the “www” or non “www” version of your domain. I just happened to sign up with the non “www” version of the domain and noticed no stats in my account. I then registered the www version and voila, things started appearing. I later found that Google considers these as two separate domains.

Here’s what Google says about this:

What can I do to make sure I’m seeing all my data?

• If you feel like you’re missing some data, add both the www and the non-www version of your domain to your Webmaster Tools account. Take a look at the data for both sites.
• Do a site: search for your domain without the www (e.g. [site:example.com]). This should return pages from your domain and any of your indexed subdomains (www.example.com, rollergirl.example.com, etc.). You should be able to tell from the results whether your site is mainly indexed with or without the www subdomain. The version that’s indexed is likely to be the version that shows the most data in your Webmaster Tools account.
• Tell us whether you prefer for your site to be indexed with or without the www by setting your preferred domain.
• Let everyone else know which version you prefer by doing a site-wide 301 redirect.

Are Your Images Labeled?

Lee Ogden wrote an excellent article regarding Organic SEO - specifically keywords within articles. He makes some excellent points.
Here’s one:
Using keyword research to flavor the content, whether it’s verbal, in print, in video or audio can all influence how the outcome of the PR action is available through search. Using keywords during an interview [...]

Lee Ogden wrote an excellent article regarding Organic SEO - specifically keywords within articles. He makes some excellent points.
Here’s one:

Using keyword research to flavor the content, whether it’s verbal, in print, in video or audio can all influence how the outcome of the PR action is available through search. Using keywords during an interview for example, can influence how the print version of that interview is discovered on site search or general search engines.

The thing to keep in mind is that if a digital asset (text, image, video, audio) can be searched on, then it can be optimized.

He brings up an EXCELLENT point regarding digital assets. Google images has been sending me a crapload of traffic for an images site. It is extremely important to optimize the ALT tag keywords of your images and also named the images according to the picture. For example, if you have a picture of a dog jumping, name it “dog_jumping.jpg” and create a descriptive alt tag. Read Google’s article about Using Alt Attributes Smartly for more information.

Here is a quote from the above link:

Update: Some of you have asked about the difference between the “alt” and “title” attributes. According to the W3C recommendations, the “alt” attribute specifies an alternate text for user agents that cannot display images, forms or applets. The “title” attribute is a bit different: it “offers advisory information about the element for which it is set.” As the Googlebot does not see the images directly, we generally concentrate on the information provided in the “alt” attribute. Feel free to supplement the “alt” attribute with “title” and other attributes if they provide value to your users!

Here is another great article about Optimizing Your Site For Google Search. Here’s a snippet of the article:

Most importantly enable enhanced image search in google sitemasters tools. Find it under Diagnostics / Tools / Enhanced Image Search

. I’ve JUST started using this a month ago so I can’t comment on it yet but I’ll keep everyone posted.

Google has also released an image labeler (a while ago). It works like this:
1) You click “Start Labeling” and you are automatically paired up with someone
2) Google shows you an image. If you see a picture of a house, Google will give you exclude words that you can’t label the images with.
3) You start entering words that describe the picture you see.
4) Once you and your partner enter a tag that matches, you move onto the next image. The purpose is to get as many points as
possible. The REAL purpose is to help Google identify what the images are.

Visit Google Image Labeler

This is all pretty old news but I’m sure someone out there will learn something from this.

8 Benefits of Blogging

Many online marketers underestimate the value of blogging. Blogging (in my opinion) paves the way to a great website and eventual success. Here are some blogging benefits:

Get Free Quality Links!
Write informative blogs and webmasters will create comments or blog posts about your post. More quality links = higher rankings.
Provide a GREAT user experience
Your visitors will [...]

Many online marketers underestimate the value of blogging. Blogging (in my opinion) paves the way to a great website and eventual success. Here are some blogging benefits:

1. Get Free Quality Links!
   Write informative blogs and webmasters will create comments or blog posts about your post. More quality links = higher rankings.
2. Provide a GREAT user experience
   Your visitors will appreciate the education you’ve provided. You can provide tips, write about yourself, provide a daily image, daily video, etc.
3. Talk About Other Blogs - Trackbacks
   The definition of a “trackback” is as follows:

   A trackback is one of three types of linkbacks, methods for Web authors to request notification when somebody links to one of their documents. This enables authors to keep track of who is linking, and so referring, to their articles. Some weblog software programs, such as Wordpress, Movable Type, Typo and Community Server, support automatic pingbacks where all the links in a published article can be pinged when the article is published. The term is used colloquially for any kind of linkback.

   Let’s say you come across an interesting blog post and you’d like to comment. Why not talk about it on your blog? Once you’ve posted a response on your site, you can send a “trackback” to the site and a snippet of your post will be posted in their comments area with a link to your website. You’ve just completed an ethical link exchange.

4. Unique Content
   We’ve all the heard the phrase “Content Is King.” Self-explanatory.
5. Search Engines Love Blogs!
   Search engines LOVE blogs and why not? It’s UNIQUE content and provides a great experience. Blog posts are usually indexed within 48 hours, giving the search audience immediate access to your posting.
6. Show Your Authority!
   Show your audience that you are an authority! Surfers don’t want to buy from uneducated websites. As a purchaser, would you rather buy from a five-pager website with a few products, or would you buy from a site that has hundreds of products, tonnes of information and a blog with recent postings. Recent blog postings show that you are legitimate, up to date and educated!
7. Maintain Communication
   Send broadcast communications through your blog. Your customers can always reference your blog for important communications.
8. Build Your Brand
   Users will remember your website and they will tell others. Word of mouth is a HIGH converting sales method.

As you can see, the benefits of blogging are tremendous. I would list the best blogging platforms but SpeckyBoy has already done a great job of it.

View the Top 10 Free Blogging Platforms

Here are some other related resources:
Benefits of Blogging - A Practitioner’s Perspective
Benefits of Blogging for Small Business