Web Moves Blog

Web Analytics – Murder by Numbers
Want to know a methodology to learn the exact effectiveness of every e-marketing initiative you conduct? It’s a method that every company online should implement. It’s a must-have if you’re actively trying to leverage your web presence to increase your bottom line.

One of the great aspects of the Internet and e-marketing is its ability to give immediate results and feedback regarding all kinds of online activities. This of course requires tracking.

Let us delve into the world of tracking. Part 1 of this two-part series will explain the basics of e-marketing tracking. Part 2 will provide a fool-proof method for website statistical acquisition.

If you rent some banner ad space at a website whose audience is your target market, you can learn exactly how many people saw your banner ad and how many clicked through to your site. You can also determine how many people actually became a lead from the banner ad and even see how many were converted into a sale.

If the numbers were low the first time around, you can create a new banner ad and submit it again, then track those results. You can keep tweaking ad infinitum until you discover the perfect combination of design, copy and presentation that yields the best results. This is one of the wonders of the Net. But you’ll need a way to make sense of all the numbers. And there will be a lot of numbers. Enter Web Analytics.

Here are the most important data points for an e-marketer:

1. Cost for campaign
2. Reach or total visits (in Netspeak, `eyeballs’)
3. Unique visits
4. Click-thru number
5. Click-thru percentage
6. Number of leads generated
7. Cost per lead
8. Lead conversion rate
9. Lead to sales ratio
10. Number of sales generated

In the banner ad example above, let’s say the statistics for a day are:

1. The banner ad’s cost for the day = $500
2. Total visits = 1000
3. Unique visits = 800
4. Click-thru number = 50
5. Click-thru percentage = 5%
6. Leads generated = 20
7. Cost per lead = $25
8. Lead conversion rate = 40%
9. Lead to sales ratio = 10%
10. Sales generated = 2

The daily, weekly or monthly visits to the site that houses your banner ad will be the reach or visits to the site. This number can be broken down to both total and unique visits. If there were a 1000 visits to that web page in a day but 200 of those visits were from the same people visiting twice in that day (and all the rest came only once), then total visits is 1000 and unique visits is 800. This is because if 200 people came to the site twice that day, then 200 of the total visits for the day were repeats which leaves 800 unique visitors (1000 � 200 = 800).

Continuing with the example, the number of people who view the banner ad and actually click on it over to your site is the click- thru number. The click-thru percentage is ascertained by dividing the number of click-thrus by the number of page visits. For example, if 50 people clicked-thru to your site from the banner, and there were a total of 1000 banner views (because there were 1000 views to that page that had the banner ad on it), then the equation would be 50 divided by 1000, or 5%. (You could also use the unique visits to calculate this percentage: 50/800 = 6.25%.)

Leads acquired is how many people actually filled out a form on your site or called as a result of the banner ad. In other words, the user saw the banner ad on another site, clicked the banner thru to your site, and then actually gave you their information via a web form or phone call.

Cost per lead is very important. The lower this is the better. You calculate this by dividing the total cost by the number of leads, in this case $500 divided by 20 leads, or $25 per lead.

The lead conversion rate is the percentage of new leads you obtained from the visitors driven to your web page as a direct result of the banner ad. Of course this page needs a call to action in order to convert a visitor to a lead. A call to action is a statement on the page that says “Call today” and gives a phone number or is a link that points someone to a web form.

If your banner ad cost $500 and you got 20 leads (leads acquired), then your cost per lead for this banner ad campaign was $25.

If 2 people out of the 20 new leads actually bought your product or service, then your lead to sales ratio is 1/10 or 10%.

Obviously, the whole point of all this is to increase the last number, our final sales. By monitoring all these numbers continuously and systematically, we can gain an almost omnipotent view of our various e-marketing campaigns. We can then leverage that knowledge to improve each initiative to yield the best results.

Look for Part 2 of this two-part series. It will explain how to get all the initial web statistics to plug into these formulas. It will also describe a great method for obtaining accurate click-thru numbers.

Good luck number crunching! The better you get at it, the more sales you’ll create.

Author Bio:
Jason OConnor is President of Oak Web Works The synthesis of Web marketing, design, and technology. Jason is a Web development expert, e-strategist, and e-marketer who is trying to affect the future of the Internet in a highly positive way http://www.oakwebworks.com mailto: jason@oakwebworks.com for a FREE site consultation and to learn how to increase your bottom line by properly leveraging the Web.

Introduction
Traffic exchanges are everywhere. A traffic exchange is a clever way to get hundreds or thousands of visitors to your website. The concept is very simple and the exchange process is easy to put into action. First, you join a traffic exchange program that includes individuals with websites to promote. Next, you set up the website you want to promote. Finally, you visit the websites of the other
members and they visit your website in exchange.

There are both free and paid traffic exchanges. Some of the exchanges are good and some are not so good. They come in two basic flavors: manual surf and automatic surf. In the manual surf mode, you have to visit a website for a minimum period of time and then click on a button to visit the next website in the rotation. In the automatic surf mode, the websites are visited automatically for a specific period of time before the next website is displayed. The order of website visitation in both the manual and automatic mode is controlled by the traffic exchange webmaster.

A rotator or randomizer can be used to display the member websites one after another in either the automatic or manual surf mode. The rotator will display a different website in an order specified by the traffic exchange. In the auto surf mode, the rotator usually displays websites for a specific time period that usually ranges from 15 seconds to 60 seconds. The randomizer, on the other hand, will randomly select the website to be displayed. You earn credits as you view more and more websites.

A traffic exchange will expose your website to many Internet users on a worldwide basis. As a result, the exchange can possibly give your website a lot of hits. Visualize the traffic exchange in the same manner you would view a TV. The exchange provides you with websites to view similar to watching TV commercials.

The basic traffic exchange program works on the “credit” principle. You earn a full or partial “credit” every time you visit another member�s website. In turn, you lose a full credit whenever another member visits your website. The typical exchange allows you to earn from 0.5 to 1.0 credit for every visit you make to another member’s website.

You can usually obtain credits on the traffic exchange by:

* Viewing the websites of other members
* Referring other individuals to join the exchange
* Purchasing credits from the exchange’s webmaster.

More on traffic exchanges
If you purchase credits, you generally have a higher rate of conversion of credits earned and/or purchased versus credits used when you receive visits from other members. You have greater control over how you use your earned credits when you pay to receive credits. It is possible to get a display rate of your website that exceeds 1.0 for every 1.0 credits you earned or purchased.

As an example, in the basic free mode you might have to use 2.0 earned credits to display your website 1.0 times to other members. This is a 0.5 exchange rate. Depending on the traffic exchange and the number of credits purchased, you can increase the exchange rate up to about 2.0 displays of your website to other members for every hit you receive.

Some exchanges offer a sign-up bonus (free earned credits) to encourage you to join their traffic exchange. This enables you to start getting visitors to your website immediately.

You have the ability to enable or disable your own website for viewing by other members. If you enable your website, other members can view your site and thus consume your account credits. If you disable your website, other members cannot view your website and you conserve your credits. This allows you to continue to surf the other member websites and build up your available credits for use at a different time.

The traffic exchanges specify whether or not you can have multiple websites for display. However, you can only display one website at a time if you are permitted to have multiple websites. You can specify how many of your earned and/or purchased credits can be applied to each of your websites.

Most exchanges have a referral program where you can earn credits for the people that you refer to the traffic exchange program and their surfing activity. As a bonus, you may receive a certain percentage of their earned credits. Your downline levels may be unlimited or limited depending on the traffic exchange structure.

Most traffic exchanges earn money from the “purchase credits” feature they offer and from advertisements. In general, an exchange member can specify whether or not they want to see popups, adult or erotic websites.

Most traffic exchanges have restrictions associated with your use of the exchange. For example, exchanges generally specify whether you can or cannot have: (1) popup windows, (2) message boxes, (3) inappropriate content or adult material, (4) break out of frames, (5) site rotation, (6) URL or domain forwarding and (7) more than one account.

Furthermore, the traffic exchange may be able to delete your account if: (1) your account is inactive for a given period of time or (2) your website is causing problems for the exchange system.

Some exchanges let their members sell their earned credits for cash back to the traffic exchange. The rate of conversion from earned credits to cash is controlled by the webmaster of the traffic exchange.

Your website design and the time it takes for the website to load are very critical when using a traffic exchange. Your webpage will never get viewed if your site takes 15 seconds to load and the exchange rotates the websites every 15 seconds. You want to have at least a 10-second viewing window to give the surfing exchange member time to respond to your webpage presentation.

Keep your website clean of unnecessary clutter. You want your visitor to make a quick decision whether to ask for more information or pass on your offering.

Make your displayed website short and simple. Do not send your visitors to the sales page on your main website. Provide a killer headline followed by supporting bullets and ask for their name and email address. Don�t make it complicated.

Put the lure on the fishing line and give your visitors a chance to say “yes” to your presentation. You need to get your message in front of your visitor quickly. Capture their name and e-mail address. You will have plenty of chances at a later time to market to your list.

Traffic exchanges can bring you a lot of traffic. It will take some work but the increase in your own opt–in list will provide constant inspiration. You should consider the benefits gained from traffic exchanges if you have the time and proper motivation.

Author:
F. Terrence Markle of QuikSystems.com

A little tip
“Here’s a little tip I would like to relate Big fish bites if ya got good bait.”

To attract more prospects and clients, you need what Taj Mahal calls “good bait” in his song the Fishin Blues. One of the biggest mistakes you can make, as a small business owner, is forgetting to use good bait in the form of your offers. Whether you use direct mail, a web site or media advertising to market your business, the success of your marketing depends on whether you provide prospects with compelling offers.

Your offers motivate prospects and clients to visit your web site, read your marketing materials, contact you and buy your services and products. Without the right offer you won’t attract big fish or as many fish as you’d like.

What bait are you using to motivate your target market to:
– Visit your web site?
– Sign up for your free newsletter?
– Buy your products and services?

How many new prospects per week are your offers attracting?

Which Offers Work Best?
Your offer needs to be something that your target market wants. You wouldn’t use a worm to catch a whale or a safety pin to catch a tuna. Offer your target market something they can’t refuse. Everybody likes to get something for free, whether it’s an article, guide, ebook, report, consultation, a demonstration, offer of membership or added services. If your offer helps your target market solve a common problem, it will attract more prospects and clients.

Whether or not it is free your offer needs to provide value. Prospects will judge the quality of your products and services based on your offer. If you give away a subscription to a newsletter, follow up with useful content and substantive ideas your prospects can use. Give them something that is so good they will want more.

Attracting Prospects
My target market is service professionals and business owners. I offer a 15 page free marketing guide to prompt people to give me their contact information so I can market to them in the future. My target market, want to attract more clients, want ideas to help them. A 15 page marketing guide is something that tens of thousands of people have found to be irresistible. Each week this simple offer pulls in hundreds of new prospects.

You too can come up with an offer to prompt more prospects to contact you. If you’re a lawyer you could offer a report on the “The 10 Biggest Legal Mistakes Homeowners Make”. If you’re a massage therapist you could offer a guide to “5 Ways to Avoid Damaging Back Pain.” If you provide an online service, you could offer a free or almost free one-month trial.

Clarify Value
People buy your products and services based on their perception of value. Whether you are charging five dollars or five thousand, your prospects need to be convinced that the benefits you provide will outweigh the cost. Too often service professionals and business owners rush to quote a price, trying to make the sale before clarifying the value to buyers.

To stimulate sales place your offer in the context of your target market’s concerns. Once you’ve clarified how your product or service meets their concerns the value of your offer will be apparent.

More Strategies
Use Problem Solving Offers
People don’t buy your products or services because you’ve been in the business for decades, or because your ebooks are well written or designed to please the eye. People buy your products and services because they solve a problem.

Use Additional Incentives Carefully
In their rush to sell their products and services some small business owners offer huge discounts or bundle free services. Discounting and bundling can work but make sure you’re not undermining prospects’ perception of the value of your products and services or your profits.

Key Elements of Your Offer
Creating a compelling offer is an art and involves blending the following items together to create a sentence or two which will move people to take action, whether it is contacting you or making an immediate purchase.

Include the following items to create an offer that helps sell:

Name – What you are selling
Benefit – The problem it solves
Credibility – Why they should buy from you Value – How useful it will be to them Guarantee – Your promise to them Motivation to act – A reason to take advantage of your offer today.

If you want to catch big fish, you need good bait. To increase your catch, improve your offers and you’ll be reeling in many more new prospects and clients.

Author Bio:
Charlie Cook, is Chief Executive of Ideas and Inspiration at In Mind Communications in Old Greenwich, CT and can be contacted via http://www.charliecook.net, or by calling 203-637-1118. To get the F*ree Marketing Guide and the ‘More Business’ newsletter, full of practical marketing tips go to http://www.charliecook.net.

The right keywords
From the outset, any given web site can look successful: it can be large, have plenty of good, relevant content and was designed in a way to help most users visiting the site. It is also listed in most of the major search engines. But the question is, are there any worthwhile visitors finding the web site? Is it possible that, using a very specific keyword or key phrase they cannot find your site in most of the same search engines? Most likely, the usual answer to that question is an affirmative yes.

More than ever web sites and web pages fail in search engine rankings simply because of bad keyword or key phrase optimization. Now some keyword optimization may have been done at one time or another, but was either done incorrectly or some of the keywords used daily by the real searchers have changed over time. The latter is usually the case.

How to find the right keyword combination
The problem is not using the right keyword and key phrase combinations, the very ones used by the large majority of the potential visitors and customers to any given commercial web site. If you were to make a search for a page on the major search engines with relative, specific keywords, the question is what keyword or key phrase combination would be best to use?

“Keyword and marketing”, “optimize keywords”, “keyword ranking” or what exactly? Now maybe it is that your web users are searching for “search engine keyword placement”? To most people, it’s hard to say. Your first guess could probably be wrong. The simple reason to that is most people do not think alike.

If you are really serious in the careful keyword and key phrase optimization of any commercial web site, what you need is a specialized tool that will tell you exactly the specific keywords and key phrases real day-to-day searchers are using when shopping for the services of any given company. You need a detailed list putting the most frequently used keywords and search queries to really begin any effective and serious keyword and key phrase optimization on any given site.

Free keyword suggestion tools
Some webmasters have been using for quite a while one of the free keyword generator sites available. Some pay-per-click search engines, i.e. search portal companies that effectively sell text ads to various search engines, can in fact provide some suggestions or similar tools for some of their clients.

One that is popular is the Overture suggestion site. They could possibly give you a certain number of alternative keywords or key phrase to the search queries you may have entered into the search form. Some results coming out can at times be misleading or misinterpreted, and generally do not give a true realistic picture of what really takes place in the search engines.

For example, if a person is looking for alternative keywords or search queries to optimize a particular web site, some of the above tools may offer some help. One could assume that, if some keyword or key phrase combinations haven’t been thought of by most of these webmasters, some would be inclined in thinking that those particular queries are probably not worth considering for optimization in the first place. Again, we need to investigate a bit more in the subject. Also, in the world of search engine optimization, one word of advice I would give is to never assume anything.

Over time, search engine optimization experts have found that the search engines are not in a position, to supply you with an ordered list of search engine keywords and key phrases relevant to your particular topic. In certain cases, some of them might tell you what could be some of the most popular search queries this month or the month before. But, generally speaking, this kind of information can be rather misleading for most people and could have an impact in the overall ROI of the site.

The Wordtracker professional search tool
If you are like most people, you might find that searching through various databases half of your typical work day could be very time consuming to say the least. Instead, optimization experts use certain tools such as the Wordtracker portal. Today, Wordtracker is the most popular fee-based keyword and key phrase analyzer on the Internet and is used by most serious search engine optimization professionals.

Wordtracker is based on meta search queries made by ordinary people searching the web everyday, meaning the keyword and key phrase combinations found are much more reliable than the pay-per-click listings generated by the Overture suggestion tool. Over time, we have also found that the data generated is also more objective.

Now the people at Wordtracker know that you should not always rely on the most competitive keyword and search query combinations. These are more or less dictated by large corporations that can afford to allocate much bigger budgets on various search engine marketing and sales campaigns. It might be just as sensible to optimize for less popular key phrases or search terms for your industry. But again, there could be exceptions to the rule.

One other way to look at the subject would be to write several articles on a certain topic that is relevant on that web site and have each article optimized for a certain keyword or key phrase. Just make certain they are truly unique articles so as not to use the same basic text, just simply exchanging a few keyword combinations here and there. Failure to do that could be termed as spamming and is certainly frowned upon by most of the major search engines.

Conclusion
Over time, additional tools will be developed to help people find the delicate balance between the total number of competing web sites for each search engine and the exact popularity of each search terms. It is extremely hard at times to consistently come up with alternative keywords or search queries that may seldom be used by competitors but that are used almost daily by the real searching public.

The idea here is to use a combination of carefully selected keywords and key phrases, some trial and error and view the results over and over until a satisfactory level of ROI and sales is achieved. It is a time-consuming approach, but in the end, one that can make a big difference in the search engine results pages. If your web site is bringing in many targeted visitors and has a high conversion rate, you will generally do well overall. In SEO, the keyword is quality, not quantity.

Author:
Serge Thibodeau of Rank For Sales

Introduction
Most Web analytics software are able to report on fundamental statistics such as visitors, hits, page views, bytes, top pages, entrance pages, exit pages, referrals, search engine keywords, browser and computer types and more. This information empowers a search engine marketer with basic information on how well his/her site is performing. Urchin 5.5 takes this one step further. Through the use of 1st party cookies, they provide additional details as to the nature of your Web visitor.

How visitors discover your site is as important as the action the visitor takes after reaching your site. Referrals, the technical term for how a Web visitor comes to locate your site, is one of the areas that SEOs track on regular basis. Referral information is able to give you data on where the user came from, such as a search engine, affiliate, article or no referral at all. In addition, this information can be broken down into which search engines brought you the traffic to you and which keywords the searcher typed in to find your Web pages.

As a marketer, you need not only focus on how the Web visitor arrives at your Web pages but perhaps more importantly what the Web visitor does after they land on your page of interest. I challenge you to take a look at your log files. I can guarantee that most of your Web visitors hit your pages and their most likely next action is to leave your site. One goal you should set immediately after reading this sentence is to reduce that exit rate! Even by just a small percentage. Keep that visitor on your site! Web analytics software can help you monitor all of this with ease. Set up one goal per page and make sure to increase the success rate of that goal on a weekly basis. The goal can be a purchase, add to cart, download a pdf, fill out a form or call a special 800 number – it can be any action that you want the user to take once they hit that page. Monitoring your micro goals will make the difference in your bottom-line.

With Urchin’s 1st party cookies, which they named “Urchin Tracking Module” (UTM), you can track these goals easily. In addition, you can track the number of times a visitor comes back to that page and the length of time it takes a specific user to reach a goal. I will explain all of this information in detail as you read on. The point is that Urchin gives us data that can be used to increase our client’s ROI. Urchin goes beyond any other Web analytics program I have ever used and it is affordable.
The remainder of this article will go through detailed screen shots of the Search Engine Roundtable Weblog’s log files and tracking through Urchin. Although the Weblog does not have e-commerce capabilities, I will try to explain what you will see if the e-commerce module was activated. For an overview of Urchin’s features please visit Urchin’s feature list at http://www.urchin.com/products/feature_list_master.html.

Detailed Review of Urchin 5.5 and Campaign Tracking Module
As mentioned above I will be taking you through a week’s time period of The Search Engine Roundtable Weblog’s Web traffic through the eyes of Urchin 5.5. The first part of this detailed review is the administrative configuration of the Urchin Web Analytics suite. The second part will be the reporting review of the Urchin 5.5 Software. Open up a bag of popcorn and enjoy this slideshow format as you continue on.

Urchin Administrative Configuration
Installing Urchin is really easy. It took me no time to install their free 15-day demo. After installing the software on my server, I logged in and set up my clients with access to their Web statistics. The screen you see below is the “Preferences” screen that allows me to change my password and more.

After setting up my preferences I was able to configure the settings for the domain seroundtable.com. I clicked on “Edit” on the “Configuration, Profiles” page.

Urchin allows you to configure each report with different options. For example, seroundtable.com has no e-commerce functions, so I easily removed those reporting features from the reports by selecting the “Campaign Website” profile type. Some of my customers have different profile types because they either don’t have e-commerce or campaign tracking or both. This GUI (Graphical User Interface) makes it easy to manage all your reports in one area.

Each report is individually configurable by the “Super Administrator.” Below you will see the screen that gives me the ability to modify criteria such as the number of levels in a users path stream that Urchin will track (by default this number is set to 3). All the way at the bottom you will see an option for “Primary Goal Match”. With Urchin’s Campaign Tracking Module, you are able to specify one or many goals for your site and track response rates to those goals. With seroundtable.com, the only goal I set up was if a visitor added a comment or not. The page to add a comment (at the time of writing this article) was seroundtable.com/mt-comments.cgi. Each time a user went to that URL, Urchin marked that there was successful goal completion. Repeat visitors were tracked and recorded as well.

For many reasons, it is important to have the ability to add filters to the log files reporting. Urchin makes this easy. You simply go to the report profile that you would like to set up a filter for, and click on the “Profile Filters” tab. Urchin has pre-defined filters that you can choose from or you can make your own custom filter with the filter wizard. This comes in handy when you want to make two reports for the same domain.

In addition, it is really easy to give multiple people access to one or more reports. With the use of the User Wizard, Urchin gives you the ability to quickly add users so that they can access their reports. As you can see below, you simply select which users are part of which group and then specify which groups have what access to specific reports. Urchin provides a very easy and logical method of setting up user and group access to reports.

Within the configuration section of the module, you can easily specify how often you would like to run each report. For seroundtable.com, I have selected a schedule that runs the update of the reports every hour, 45 minutes past the hour. Urchin can process huge log files in exceptionally quickly. Older versions of Urchin used to take significantly longer but with Urchin 5.5, running a report takes seconds.

That covers the first part of the detailed Urchin review – the set up and configuration component. More information on installing and configuring Urchin to your liking is available at Urchin’s Web site and via the Urchin customer service line. The next section will discuss in detail the available reporting features.

Reporting Review
One of the best attributes of Urchin has always been its ease of use. Urchin has always provided easy to read and understand reports and charts. I have seen many Web analytics programs that require a lot of interpretation and explanation to my clients. By having an easy to use and understand interface, the time required to explain reports can be reduced greatly.

As mentioned previously, reports remain restricted and can only be accessed with the use of a user name and password by logging in to the Urchin report module. The first screen that loads is the Traffic/Sessions Graph. This graph gives you a quick overview of the number of sessions over the week’s period. Urchin defines a session as follows:

A Session is a defined quantity of visitor interaction with a website. The definition will vary depending on how visitors are tracked. Some common visitor tracking methods and corresponding session definitions are: IP-based Visitor Tracking, IP+User Agent Visitor Tracking and Unique Visitor Tracking (cookie-based, such as Urchin’s UTM). For a more detailed explanation please visit http://help.urchin.com/doc/glossary.cgi#S

The data range can be changed at the bottom left corner of any report. You also have the option to click on the bars to make them “explode” or to change the bar graph to a line graph. They use a technology developed by Adobe named SVG, which helps make these reports more interactive and attractive. In addition, every report view gives you these SVG options and export options, which include export to text, Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel.

The next screen shot displays a similar graph. But. The information that is graphed is the “Pageviews” for that week. Urchin defines a Pageview as follows:

“A page is defined as any file or content delivered by a web server that would generally be considered a web document. This includes HTML pages (.html, .htm, .shtml), script-generated pages (.cgi, .asp, .cfm, etc.), and plain-text pages. It also includes sound files (.wav, .aiff, etc.), video files (.mov, etc.), and other non-document files. Only image files (.jpeg, .gif, .png), JavaScript (.js) and style sheets (.css) are excluded from this definition. Each time a file defined as a page is served, a pageview is registered by Urchin.”

As you can see below, I have selected the line graph mode for this pageview graph.

Urchin allows you to view not only the sessions and pageview reports they also give you the ability to view a hits graph, bytes graph and even a load balancer graph. In addition, Urchin gives you a data summary of all of these graphs on one page at the “Summary” link. That completes the traffic analysis portion of the Urchin Web analytics suite.

We will now move on to the “Visitors and Sessions” reporting section. The first report shown is the “Visitors by Day” graph. This graph has all the features of the other graphs but provides an additional level of detail. As you can see, there are orange and green colors on the bar graphs. The orange, represents the first time unique visitors and the green represents the prior unique visitors. You can click on the green part of a bar and it will tell you the exact number of prior unique visitors that visited that day. Urchin tracks this information with a 1st party cookie.

Urchin gives you the ability to view this information both by “Visitor”, as shown in this screen shot as well as by “Session”. The next screen shot you will see is termed “Unique Sessions.” Keep in mind that there is also a “Unique Visitors” graph that does the same thing but with different data points. The unique sessions graph can be charted as a bar graph or pie chart. I have selected the pie chart for this report. This report gives you the percentage of initial sessions, versus repeat sessions over that data range period. You can actually click on the piece of the chart to make it stand out, like an exploding affect. You will see examples of this later on.

Another interesting report in the visitors and sessions section of Urchin is the “Visitor Loyalty” graph. This report helps you understand the loyalty factor of your Web visitors. The more loyal your visitors (the more sessions per unique cookie) the higher the bar graphs will be on the right side. There is a similar report named “Session Frequency” which provides this information in a different light. All reports have their own individual purpose.

This final screen shot displays the visitors and sessions summary overview. It provides the user with the ability to see summarized numbers of the above graphs in an organized and efficient layout. I cannot stress how important it is to display this information in an intuitive manner. Urchin has done an excellent job in this respect! The format comprises consistent navigation on the left, date range information at the top and bottom left. The data you want is right in the middle, and the help is customized per report under the graph and/or data.

We can now move on to the “Pages and File” section of the reporting module. You can see that the first report option is “Requested Pages.” This report tells you the most frequently requested pages by your Web visitors. Most often the top page is your homepage but that is not always the case. On many other sites, the top page is a page that does well in search engines and people just go to that page directly from the engine. In this graph I have clicked on pieces of the pie to show you the explode effect. In addition you can see the page name as data below the graph and if you want more information, simply click on the little graph icon to the right of the data and you will be provided with the same data on a day-to-day basis.

Urchin gives you graphs and data for downloads requested, page query terms placed, and posted forms conducted as well.

Another important report is your “Status and Errors” report. Documenting the errors and statuses that are occurring on your site gives you the ability to implement changes and improve on bad error codes.

That now takes us to the section that reports on how your Web visitors are navigating throughout your Web site. I consider this section to be the most interesting and possibly the most valuable section of the basic Urchin module. If you can understand your users click patterns and see where they are dropping off, then you can implement changes to those pages and increase your conversion rates.

The first report within the navigation section is the “Entrance Pages” report. Where are people entering your site most? Most of the time, your top entrance page will be your homepage. But if you rank well for a specific keyword term and that keyword term takes you to an inside page, then you will see that page at the top of your entrance page. You want your top entrance pages to be the conduit to the pages or products you want your customers to visit. Use your top entrance pages well by putting links in visible areas to where you want them to go.

Statistically, your top entrance page will be your top exit page. Your goal will be to lower the ratio of exits to entrances for the page, to the smallest possible number. By adding “call to actions” on your top entrance pages, you can entice your Web visitor to make another click. Anything you can do to encourage that next click will be a victory for you. Later on, I will be discussing the Campaign Tracking Module (CTM). In the CTM discussion, I will be covering a lot of these concepts in detail.

Urchin gives you a number of ways to view your user’s actions on your Web site. The next screen shot displays the “Click Paths” of the Web visitor. The most popular click paths are displayed first. You can then go deeper and deeper to see the least likely click paths of your user.

Urchin recently added a new report named “Click To and From” that gives you the patterns of how the user got to one page and went to the next page. For example, if you want to see how people are getting to your homepage you click on the little arrow icon and it pops open the window in the screen shot. It shows that most people just enter the homepage from their browser. Yet, the second most active way to get to the homepage is by actually refreshing the homepage. In addition, you can see what the person is most likely to do after they get to that page. In our example, most people simply exit the site. About 13% refresh the page and others view blog details.

The length of a pageview is an important statistic because you might want to see if people are actually reading the content on your pages versus clicking around without finding what they are looking for. The longer the pageview can mean a number of things, such as they have found what they are looking for and they are reading the content. It is important to take advantage of these pages as well and try to encourage a response from the user. This will help increase your success factor of your pages.

The depth of a users session can also provide meaningful insight into your Web site’s navigation and design. With a Weblog, you will not see a deep click path. However, in regard to “rich content and product” sites, you will want to see a user go deep into your site. All usability and conversion specialists recommend to keep the click count (the number of clicks required to make a purchase) down to a minimum, many say 3 clicks is a good number. This report enables you to gauge this metric and make adjustments to your site to increase conversion rates and the usability of your Web site.

In addition to the depth of a session, Urchin gives you the ability to track the length of time per session that they are staying on your site. Depending on the site’s purpose you will want the numbers to be higher or lower. This report gives you the answers you need to make informed decisions about your site’s and page’s layout and architecture.

That covers the navigation section of the basic Urchin module. Navigation patterns and behavior is a critical metric that must be measured for every serious Web site. If you are not currently measuring these metrics then you are walking in the dark. As mentioned above, I will be discussing the Campaign Tracking Module (CTM), which expands on many of these concepts.

Referrals, is the next major reporting section in the Urchin module. Referrals are a search engine optimizers dream statistic. Urchin does an excellent job summarizing and reporting on all types of referrals from direct hits, search engine driven traffic, directory driven traffic, and other referral driven traffic.

The screen shot displays the referrals ordered by most frequent. This is an easy way to see how the majority of your visitors are getting to your site. Some sites get all of their traffic from one place, whereas others get their traffic from many places. It is important to track referrals to see where traffic is coming from and where it is not coming from. Then you will be able to adjust your linking campaigns accordingly.

The next report, named “Referral Drilldown”, groups the referrals by domain name. This is helpful to summarize which Web sites bring you the most traffic as a whole. This report differs from the report just mentioned above. The report above lists the pages that refer traffic to your site as compared to this report that lists the sites that refer traffic to your site. Pages are defined as individual html documents within a site, whereas a site contains multiple pages.

The next report named “Search Terms” report provides data on what keywords people are entering in to the search engines to find your site. This report is not grouped or filtered by a specific search engine. It is just a quick and easy way to see which search terms bring in traffic to your site. It is important to track this information in order to be able to change your keyword strategy for better quality keywords. Quality keywords are essential in order to bring relevant traffic to your site. If your keywords are unrelated to the service/product that your business offers then you are just wasting money on your monthly bandwidth bill.

The “Search Engine” report gives you a break down according to search engine. Firstly, it tells you which engines bring you the most traffic. Secondly, by clicking on the arrow for more information, it tells you which keywords are bringing in traffic for that specific engine. It is important to see which engines are driving traffic to your site. Based on what market share those search engines currently have, your traffic should be somewhat the same. If they are greatly skewed then you know your keyword optimization for certain engines are poor. For example, let us say Google has 30% market share, Yahoo! has 40% market share, and AskJeeves has 10% market share. It would be nice to see that 30% of your search engine driven traffic comes from Google, 40% from Yahoo! and 10% from AskJeeves. If the percentages look more like 40%, 40% and 1% then you know something is wrong. You will need to look at Teoma’s engine (AskJeeves is powered by Teoma) and see what you can do to improve your rankings. AskJeeves also has more paid listings on a page then most search engines, so that is a factor as well. Yahoo! plans on switching its organic results from Google to Inktomi within the next month or two, will your site do well with the Inktomi engine powering Yahoo!? This is all-important information that can be derived from this report and other reports in Urchin.

That wraps up one of the most interesting sections of the Urchin reporting tool, referrals. Referrals detail how people are getting to your site, what keywords they query the search engines with, and which engines drive the most traffic to your site.

The next section discusses the domains and users, a section I personally do not spend much time analyzing. The domains report gives you the ability to track, which ISPs are providing the traffic to your site. Basically, this report tells you how many people are using AOL or another Internet Service Provider (ISP) as their Internet connection to visit your site. This does come in handy if you want to build a site that requires high-speed connections, which requires your user to have a high-speed ISP.

The “Countries” report details what geographic location your user is coming from. This statistics is very useful for large International sites and content sites. One major reason why one would track this information is to know if they should possibly offer the content on their site in multiple languages. If most of your traffic comes from the United States, then you should update your site’s content based on that countries traffic patterns. In addition, your content should be United States focused and appeal to that cultural group.

The next report is named “IP Addresses.” It gives you a break down of the most frequent sessions by IP address. Further more you can click on the IP address and Urchin will do a reverse lookup on the IP address to give you more information on that user. So when you find out your “friendly competitor” has been chewing up all your bandwidth by creating a robot that downloads all your product graphics, you can send that competitor a note or simply ban that IP address.

That sums up the “Domains and Users” section of the Urchin reporting module. The “Domains and Users” section allows you to track the ISPs and Countries that visit your site. In addition you can drill down into a users IP address and conduct a reverse IP lookup. One thing I did not cover was the username reporting, which is a simple report of the length and time a user logged into your Web site.

Another useful section of the reporting module is the “Browsers and Robots” section. This section gives you information on the type of browsers and computers your visitors are using to visit your site. In addition this section also gives you information about the different robots visiting your site. This report is named Browsers and it tells you which browser the visitors are using. From Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Netscape, Opera and the new Apple browser Safari. Web sites work differently on different browsers. It is therefore important to make your Web pages compatible with most of the available browsers. Which browsers, will depend on what you see in this report. Urchin also gives you the ability to drill down into a browser to see which version of that browser people are using. As most of you know, Web pages also work differently with the same browser but a different version.

The “Platforms” report provides information on the type of operating system the person is using to visit your site. This report drills down into the version of the operating system as well. And yes, Web pages work differently on different operating systems.

A fun and useful report for search engine optimizers is this “Robots” report. It summarizes which “robots” or “spiders” visit your site. SEO’s use this report to ensure that the engines are visiting your site. If any robots are missing then you know you need to get them to visit your site some way and some how. In addition you can see which bots are most active. This report does not go into detail of which pages of your site the robots visited. There are plenty of free tools out on the Internet that can provide this detail, one is SpyderTrax by the founder of SEO Chat and can be downloaded at http://www.darrinward.com/.

That concludes the “Browsers and Robots” section of the Urchin Reporting Module. The next section is the last module included in the base Urchin license and it is called the “Client Parameters” report. The Client Parameters report requires that you place the UTM code on each of the page headers of your site. This allows Urchin to report on such attributes as screen resolution, screen colors, languages, Java, Time zones and JavaScript version information.

The first report you see below is the screen resolution report. How often do you ask yourself, if I was to do a redesign what size screen should the layout conform to? Most people just go with the standard 800X600 resolution. Yet, with this tool you are able to be able to be more creative.

The “Screen Colors” report is a nifty report that tells you whether your visitors have a 1 bit to 32 bit screen color settings. The languages report details the browser and computer language set by your Web site visitors, which helps you answer the question, should I make my content available in other languages? The Java Enabled report tells you the percentage of visitors that have Java enabled. The time zone report gives you information as to the visitor’s time zone settings and the JavaScript report tells you the JavaScript version information.

That covers all the reporting available within the base Urchin license. It is powerful, easy to use and extremely useful information. The next reporting section discusses the new Urchin Campaign Tracking Module (CTM). I have not yet used all the features within this module but the CTM can be an incredible asset for any Web business looking to increase conversion rates through the use of metrics. The CTM is powerful enough to breakdown by sub campaign how well you are doing in dollars and in goal conversions. So if you do an email campaign you can track how well the different links in the email campaign convert. In addition you can track organic and paid search engine traffic and so much more.

Urchin Campaign Tracking Module
The screen below is the Campaign Tracking Module’s Overview, which gives you an idea of how successful your campaigns are within a specified time period. The campaign tracking on the Search Engine Roundtable Weblog is not set up to work with the e-commerce module. If it were, there would be information on sales conversion rates, average response value, return on investment and overall transactions as well as revenue and cost figures. The report below gives you a summary and overview of what is contained within the module.

The next screen is named “Goal Results.” Here you have the ability to track how successful you are in accomplishing your goals on your Web site. A goal can be a click, a form submission, a procedure or something else. In my example, I set a goal to be each time someone clicked on the comments link in the blog. By clicking on the arrow to the left of the goal, you can see which sources of traffic bring you to the leading amount of goal completions. This figure gives you the ability to treat one traffic source with more care then another traffic source, or to supplement the word “care” with “dollars”.

I will now venture to the “Lead Sources” section of the CTM and click on “Acquisition”. You will see that each section within the CTM has subsections of acquisition, quality, conversion and cost breakdown. Each of these sections provides a different look at the data, helping you make the most informed decisions about your traffic. The acquisition subsection of Lead Sources gives you a break down of lead source by click, impressions, new leads, click through rates and percentage of new leads. You can then click on the information to break down the details even further by Lead Source.

The “Quality” subsection details the information listed by Lead Source but provides clicks, pageviews, sessions, depth and a loyalty factor. Loyalty measures visitor interest by calculating the average number sessions per visitor (per click). The more visitors return to your site, the higher the loyalty factor. Loyalty is calculated as Sessions divided by Clicks. These figures demonstrate to you the quality of the lead sources.

The “Conversion” subsection here shows the conversion in terms of goal conversions. By viewing this chart I can see that the Google organic Lead Source converts at 4.5% whereas the RustyBrick lead source has zero goal conversions. This information is used to see which Lead Sources you should allocate your marketing budget to. If the e-commerce module was turned on for this site, you would see transaction numbers and sales conversion percentages.

The last subsection “Cost Breakdown” does not have any information for a non-e-commerce site. If the e-commerce module were on, this section would enable you a look at the return on investment for those lead sources. The columns would contain the number of clicks, revenue, cost, ROI and average value, which is the average revenue per click and is calculated as Revenue divided by Clicks.

“Keyword Analysis” is the next main section within the “Campaign Tracking Module” and it gives you the data necessary to track your keyword success by search engine. In the example below displaying the acquisition, you can see Google provided 66 clicks whereas Yahoo provided only 8 clicks. Of the Google clicks, only 73% of those were new clicks whereas a 100% of Yahoo’s clicks were unique.

You can then click on the arrow on the left side of the search engine and see which keywords drove the traffic to your site.

Skipping through some of the subsections of the screens, I will now show you an example of the keyword comparison charts. In the chart here, you will see the keywords within the quality view. The “Keyword Comparison” report gives you a picture of which keywords are driving traffic to your site. You can drill down on the keyword to see which search engines are providing that traffic. It basically gives you a different top level view then the previous “Keyword Analysis” report.

The “Campaign Comparison” gives you a break down of your campaigns and how each individual campaign is doing. In the example here, I have three campaigns, referral, organic and direct. I recently ran an advertisement for another site in an email newsletter. I was able, with Urchin, to track the number of click-throughs down to the goal completion and transaction level. This level of detail gives you the required data to make informed decisions on your Web sites marketing campaigns.

The final chart in this section is the “Latency” reports. This report gives you the ability to see how much time remains to reach a goal or how many sessions left to reach a goal. In the example below, I have selected the sessions to goal chart, which tells me the number of sessions an individual user takes to reach a single goal on the blog. If the e-commerce module were on, it would give you “time to transaction” and “sessions to transaction” information as well.

I would also like to mention that this is an extremely useful module, which gives you the ability to test certain campaigns with the “Content (A/B) Testing” section. For example this gives you the ability to see if text based ads work better or if graphical ads work better. In addition you can see “Click Fraud” reports and report those to your Pay Per Click providers and much more.

SEO’s Wish List to Urchin Developers & Web Analytics Companies
Urchin’s Web analytics software is outstanding and extremely useful for analyzing a Web site’s traffic patterns. However, there are a few items that can be improved or changed in order to make it easier to use and more valuable. Namely, the ability to use a dual wan connection (two Internet connections from two different ISPs over a load balanced router) without being kicked off for security reasons, the ability to track impressions of other campaigns including email or banner ads and not just Google AdWords and Overture campaigns, and to implement funnel based goal analysis metrics into the campaign tracking module would all be wonderful additions to Urchin’s Web Analytics software.

The first difficulty I have while at work is that Urchin keeps on logging me out with the message “Session Error – Sorry, the IP address you are currently using does not match the one used at the initiation of the session. Please log-in again.” This is partially my fault because I have a dual wan router that loads balances two different Internet connections. So my IP is constantly changing between the two IP addresses and if I click somewhere and my IP changes, Urchin boots me. I can set my router to just assign me one ISP connection but I rather not do that. I rather see Urchin add a preference to the configuration section of the system to set whether I want this security feature on or off. I should say that they do have solutions for this. If applicable, you can give a client a URL that they can access and the system won’t log them out. There is nothing really easy to do to override this security feature.

The second difficulty came up when I wanted to test out the Content (A/B) Testing section of the Campaign Tracking Module. I sent out an email advertisement and wanted to not only track clicks and conversions based on those clicks but I also wanted to track impressions (views of the ads). I have submitted the request to Urchin and they said that you can currently import this data for Google, AdWords and Overture but they have not yet built in a mechanism to track this with any other campaign. They said it is a fault in the specification and that they are currently working on adding this feature. What we can expect is the ability to add a one by one transparent gif to the graphic ad and Urchin will see how many times that graphic is called and use that number for impressions. It can then provide other statistics such as CTR, or click through rates and more.

The final feature request would be something I call “Goal Based Funnel Analysis”. I have decided to allocate a single section to this concept, so please read on.

Concept of Goal Based Funnel Analysis
Goal Based Funnel Analysis is an extension of the current goal based analysis but adds another dimension to it. The ability to add multiple goals, which can currently be done by adding pipes (|) between the reporting setup, within the configuration section, would be a great improvement. It would allow you to track the linear or funnel flow of goal completion throughout your site. I think it would be even greater if somehow Urchin can specify the goals in priority order through the “funnel” and display it graphically in Urchin. A method of setting up a linear and possibly a tree-like structure for setting up goals and then tracking them would provide detail above any packaged reporting system I have ever seen. Keep in mind a funnel might split into sub-funnels.

This type of report is very important because it gives my clients the ability to see where on the site they are losing the customer. If they see 60% drop off after they add something to the cart, maybe they can add an incentive on that page to complete the order. The “click-to-and-from” report tells you the traffic patterns of your visitors but does not give you the ability to set up goals within those traffic patterns. You cannot see if goal completion throughout the stages of the funnel increase or decrease depending on the changes that you made to those pages.

Web Analytics Article Wrap Up
Overall, Urchin’s 5.5 Web Analytics Suite is an outstanding piece of software. The software enables you to track your success as a search engine marketer, beyond the detail of most other Web analytics software applications. The information and the manner Urchin presents the information gives you and your clients the ability to make informed decisions with their Web strategy. The graphs and user interface make for a an attractive, presentable and easy to use reporting tool.

With the 1st party cookie solution built in to the Urchin basic module, you can learn and track information that go beyond simple log files. In addition, with the E-Commerce Module and the Campaign Tracking Module, you can fine-tune each page to increase that individual page’s success rate with ease. If Urchin can devise an easy way to deploy the concept of Goal Based Funnel Analysis, the Urchin application will be light-years beyond its competitors.

For more information on Urchin please visit http://www.urchin.com/.

Author Bio:
Barry Schwartz is the President of RustyBrick, Inc., a Web services firm specializing in customized online technology that helps companies decrease costs and increase sales. Barry is a leading expert in the search engine optimization community. Barry has written and contributed many articles to the SEO community, by publishing in SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization). Barry also gives regular seminars covering the complete spectrum of search engine marketing technology and methods.

Search Engines & Links
Website owners: do you know how many links are out there on the Internet, pointing back to your site? If you’re interested in getting free search engine placement for your site, you ought to know. An easy way to find out is to download the Alexa toolbar from http://www.alexa.com. One of its many useful features is that it shows you how many links are pointing to the site. High quality links are one of the most crucial aspects of good search engine optimization.

When you think about it, this makes sense. After all, this is the Internet, the World Wide Web, we’re talking about. And in a web, everything is… right, everything is LINKED.

Links have always been a priority in search engine optimization. Search engines have long used link popularity as an indicator of a site’s “importance,” and this in turn affects the site’s performance in the search engines. Until recently, many different schemes existed that allowed a website owner to garner dozens, or even hundreds of links, simply by using specialized tools, reciprocal programs, and the like. Then came the Google “update” of November, 2003.

In that now legendary update, Google penalized tens of thousands of websites by dropping their placement in the index or eliminating them entirely. While Google isn’t talking about what happened, it is very likely that “undeserved” links, or links that do not have anything to do with quality content, played a role in this episode. Most website owners now seem to agree that while links are as important as ever, they have to be added the old-fashioned way � they have to be earned.

What does this mean? Simply put, it means that a link between two pages on the Internet should have some valid reason for its existence besides the desire of the website owners to hit page 1 on Google. So if Joe’s Auto Shop and Cindy’s Interior Design trade links, in order to boost their rankings, the link only exists for that reason, and it may well lead to lower search engine rankings for both Joe and Cindy. On the other hand, if Bud’s Cabinetry Shop, on its page describing different types of woods, is linked to the National Association of Wood Products, this is very likely to be viewed as a “quality” link by the search engine, and may help rankings.

How does one build these kind of quality links? There are at least four well-known methods, and creative website owners can come up with more. First, you can ask for them. At conventions, conferences, meetings, anyplace where the business of your website may be discussed, ask for quality links. If someone has a site you respect, and it relates to your product, simply ask them to link to your site. It’s good old networking at its finest. Second, you can write articles that promote your website, or your product or service, include a link back to your home page, and offer it for publication on the Internet. There are numerous forums for doing just this, try Googling some search terms to come up with them. Third, get on the Internet and find directories that relate to your product or service, and ask for a link to be placed. This is an easy step that most website owners can take themselves. Finally, and perhaps the best way to build a great site! Put up great content, and other sites will link to you. Because, in the end, that is what the Internet is all about  disseminating information.

Add valuable content, in terms of information, to your site, keep adding it over time, and gradually, people will link to you. If you build it, they will come.

Author Bio:
Neil Street is co-founder of Small Business Online, LLC, based in Wilton, CT., a website design, management, and promotion company dedicated to the Internet needs of the small business. His website is at http://www.smallbusinessonline.net. Send email to neil@smallbusinessonline.net He can also be reached at (203)761-7992

Mistake 1. Keyword Flooding
Here’s a consolidated list of things you most definitely do not want to be doing if you want a high ranking in the search engines. There are five main things that literally hundreds of thousands of webmasters err on regularly. However, with a few small changes, they could make a big difference in their rankings.

Below are the five most common errors and their solutions in no particular order.

Mistake 1. Keyword Flooding
The Error: Trying to optimize a home page for all possible keywords. For example, you will often see tags loaded with 12-plus keywords. Here a webmaster is attempting to squeeze in all his or her keywords on the home page. A classic example of a little know-how being a dangerous thing!

What generally happens is not one of the 12-plus words ever reach a high ranking because individually they can never get the density or repetitions needed in order to rank highly. This is especially the case for popular terms. I laugh when I see spammers hiding loads of keywords in long lists, knowing that rather than improving their ranking they just make it worse! Less, can mean a lot more when it comes to search engine optimization in this respect.

The Solution: Focus your home page for a maximum of three of your top keywords. If you have a particularly competitive field, then make that just one or two keywords. Concentrate on just those keywords on your home page and, of course, in your title tags.

On my home page, I concentrates on three keyword phrases that do very well in German searches (where my business is based): “Internet Marketing,” “Web Promotion,” and “Search Engine Optimization.” A newbie would have added more keywords to the title tag and would have tried to optimize the home page for all the terms rather than spreading them throughout the site as I have done.

Summary: Focus on your top three keywords (hopefully researched properly) for your home page, keep them to a maximum of three. If you are really in a niche market with little competition, it is okay to go up to four or five. Try to keep your title tag to less than seven words and make sure your text copy uses the three terms at least three times each. Don’t forget every page is a potential entry page from search engines, so there is no need to cram everything in on your home page.

Mistake 2. Header Area Duplication
The Error: It is human nature to be a bit lazy when developing a website. One of the most common, yet devastating for search engine traffic, mistakes is when a webmaster uses “save as” to work on a new content page but forgets to change the non-visible header area of a page in Dreamweaver or whatever content management system being used.

I think we’ve all seen these sites. A whole site has something like “widgets-for-sale.com” in the title on every page: the meta tags are identical on every page. Only the visible content is different. Rarely, however, do separate pages have exactly the same theme or content. Every page can be optimized for different keywords whether major or minor and can be an entry point to your site from a search engine. It is such a waste and almost makes me cry when I see great sites using mydomain.com for a title on every page.

The Solution: When developing a site, stick to a pattern. I will normally do the content first but I always make sure the last thing I do before moving on to a new content page is to make sure I have not only the content optimized, but the area as well. You will not find an identical title tag on my whole website, or meta description for that matter. Never forget that each page is an entry page and optimize each one to the best of your ability.

Summary: Never repeat titles or meta descriptions in a website. Treat each page as if it were the most important and optimize it thoroughly. Don’t be tempted to leave the head area without optimization.

Mistake 3. Unnecessary Framesets
The Error: It is now rare that I will see a framed website and believe that the use of frames in any way enhances the site or that it is a practical necessity for a webmaster. It isn’t so much that framed sites generally rank lower, it is that few webmasters know how to correctly optimize them. This might give you an idea of the scale of the problem. Click on this link.

The majority of those 536,000 websites require search engine optimization. Not many of them are going to rank in the top 10 of anywhere. Just to have “browser+does+not+support+frames” in your noframe tag is a great way to never get your website found on a search engine.

The Solution: Treat the noframe tag content as if it were a text version of your home page and optimize it as you would a normal website. Very important: Also link to your framed pages from your noframe area. For your framed pages, consider JavaScript that will call the frame set should it be found orphaned in a search engine. Normally, framed pages without the frameset mean no navigation and are not displayed as was initially intended. The following code placed in all framed pages is one solution and works on the majority of browsers…
There are more complex and better solutions, which really wouldn’t fit in the space I have here. Try NetMechanic for a more complete solution.

Also be aware that you can achieve what a frameset does through the use of cascading style sheets (CSS) layer positioning, iframes and other methods. Only use frames if you really, really have to.

Summary: If you must use frames, make sure you optimize them well. Use the noframe tag properly, and thoroughly link to framed pages. On your framed pages, use JavaScript to prevent them being called without the frameset.

Mistake 4. Splash / Flash Sites
The Error: I often see poorly ranked sites that visually contain a lot of text, but the text itself is not of the font variety but graphic. Great eye candy, but forget a high ranking and search engine traffic if that is the only text on a page. I would say at least half my clients used to suffer from overdoing graphic text. The main webmaster culprits for this are (surprise, surprise) adult sites, and also those targeting young markets where it is believed lots of graphics and eye candy is what impresses and sells (games console websites, games software sites, etc.).

Of course the worst of all has to be the Flash websites that offer no pure html alternative and the source code looks like the example I give in my search engine optimization for flash tutorial page.

The Solution: Integrate normal text where you can. You can make text and text links look great with a bit of CSS formatting know-how. You do not need graphic text to make text look attractive nowadays. At the very least, do not make your pages all graphic text. Leave something for the search engine spiders to find and index. This also applies to Flash sites. Rarely does everything have to be a flash object. You can quite often have text surrounding a Flash object without any negative effects.

Summary: Web pages that contain no normal text, or very little text, simply will not rank highly unless there is a very strong link campaign running. Mix graphics and objects with text. It is really this simple. Remember: No text = No ranking.

Mistake 5. Keywords Not Researched
The Error: Unfortunately, too many webmasters do not really bother using any of several keyword research tools � there are about four or five of them. Most, like the Overture keyword research tool, are free. Many webmasters don’t think they need to use them as they know what their site is about and don’t need to research the top keywords. This is a big mistake. Another big mistake is either optimizing for too niche or too obscure a search term, or going the other way and going for a very broad term. You either get too little traffic because you optimized for terms that are rarely searched for, or you go for the terms with millions of competing pages but you don’t yet have the experience or incoming links (one element of off-site optimization) to be able to compete.

The Solution: The balance is normally achieved through two- or three-word phrases in competitive areas. These are best found by cross-referencing the several keyword research databases to be found on my online tools page and through a fair bit of lateral thinking.

Summary: Don’t guess your best keywords. Know them through taking the time to use the free tools out there.

Author:
Alan Webb of ABAKUS Internet Marketing

The power of free
Every single day thousands of people from around the world are logging on to the Net for the very first time. Every single day thousands of people from around the world are attempting to factualize their dream of running an Internet business from home. And every single day, these same thousand people are searching the Net for that ultimate product or service that will BE their home business.

Would you love to be the one selling these same people the products and services that they need? I’ll just bet you would! But firstly you need to get these peoples’ attention. You want them to visit your site but so does every other marketer out there. What you need is a lure… a bait! Surveys have shown for years that the one word that gets peoples attention is the word – sex! Yes, sex… but we’re not going to use this word, (tricked you didn’t I) we are going to use the second most popular word – free!

Free, free, FREE, fReE… it doesn’t matter how you say it, it always means the same thing – some item of some description is going to cost you: nilch, nadda, nitch, nill, etc… You know it won’t cost you anything and if it is something that you can use in your business, something that will help with some aspect of running your business, then you are more than likely going to take those few seconds to click on that link, fill in your email address, and grab your ‘freebie’. You know you’re going to do it if it’s something that you want, so you know that others will too. A ‘freebie’ will go a long way towards gaining new customers. Offer them something for free that directly relates to your web site and watch your customer base grow!

Author Bio:
Kristy A. Taylor is the publishing Editor of Digital Dollars Ezine, dedicated to helping others earn their share of digital dollars. To subscribe to this free e-zine and receive free subscriber ads and products visit http://www.digitaldollars.biz

Introduction
Your readers judge you on the way you write.

This applies whether you’re writing advertising copy, a college or business report, a web site, or the next great novel; and it’s these judgements that will determine the success or failure of your venture.

For example, would you buy a book if you flipped through the pages and saw spelling errors? Probably not. Such errors would detract from the credibility of what was written. Similarly, the Internet is full of web sites offering to tell you how to write fantastic advertising copy that will triple your sales.

The irony is that most of these sites look like they’re written by an illiterate. You know the ones: spelling errors, poor grammar, ridiculous punctuation, and way too many exclamation marks.

Good, solid writing skills are necessary whether you’re writing for business, college or fiction. In this article, I’m going to look at a frequently misunderstood area: hyphens.

Yes, it sounds dull; I admit it. Wait, though, before being tempted to put this article to one side, and test yourself with these real-world questions.

Q1. Why do many dictionaries list “infra-red” with a hyphen, but “ultraviolet” without?

Q2. Why does only the first of the following sentences need a hyphen?
We will discuss public-safety issues.
We will discuss issues of public safety.

Q3. Which of these is the preferred spelling:
co-ordinator or coordinator?
mid 1990s or mid-1990s?
selfesteem, self-esteem or self esteem?

Are you certain of all your answers? If not, read on, and we’ll cover some simple guidelines for using hyphens. (You’ll also find the answers to the questions above.)

Seven simple steps for using hyphens
1. The prefix “self” is nearly always hyphenated; e.g. self-esteem, self-image, self-conscious.

2. When the prefix “ex” is used to mean former, it is always hyphenated; e.g. ex-wife, ex-premier, ex-treasurer.

3. Most of the time, other prefixes don’t need a hyphen; i.e. most dictionaries list “coexist” not “co-exist.”

4. We do sometimes use a hyphen after a prefix, though, if the main word is only one syllable; e.g. infra-red. By comparison, ultraviolet doesn’t need a hyphen (according to most dictionaries) because the main word is not one syllable.

5. Use a hyphen after a prefix in order to separate a doubled vowel; e.g. pre-empt, de-emphasise. There are some exceptions, though. Many modern dictionaries spell “cooperate” and “coordinate” without hyphens.

6. We tend to hyphenate compound words only if they come before a noun, not after. For example, we write a “public-safety issue” with a hyphen, but “an issue of public safety” is written without one.

7. Use a hyphen after the prefix if the main word has a hyphen of its own; e.g. non-customer-focussed approach.

Armed with these simple guidelines, you’ll soon be using hyphens like an expert. Good luck! 🙂

Author Bio:
You’ll find many more helpful tips like these in Tim North’s much applauded range of e-books. Free sample chapters are available, and all books come with a money-back guarantee. http://www.BetterWritingSkills.com

Getting started
Search engines have become a critical source of traffic for many Web sites. In fact, search engines can account for as much as 80 percent of their traffic.

However, search engine placement is a complex and ever-moving target to hit: search engines refresh their listings constantly to produce new content. They also use a unique and proprietary (read: ‘top secret’) algorithm to determine a site’s relevance to keyword queries. You can never be too sure as to what Google or Yahoo wants from a site to merit a top ranking.

Playing catch-up with search engines can be time-consuming and costly. Worse, search engine visibility takes time to achieve and only seconds to lose.

If you are operating a web-based operation, you will need to make a number of business decisions regarding search engine marketing. The key to successful search engine marketing strategy is constant testing, revising and optimizing based on metrics. Here are some business decisions that you need to address in search engine marketing:

Staying up-to-date
1. Are you keeping up with the changes?

Search engines are constantly trying to improve their search results. In so doing, you might find your site in the number one position one morning, only to slide to page 10 the following day, or worse, dropped from the engine’s entire index. You check your web stats to find that your traffic decreased by 10% or so because one search engine reduced its referrals to your site. Do you know what just happened?

Google, for example, constantly tweak their algorithms leading to a shakeup of the search results. A lot of webmasters are finding it hard to keep track of what Google wants or not. Yahoo, just recently, stopped showing Google results (Google used to be the provider of Yahoo search results) and shifted to their own ‘internally powered results’ (from all accounts, looks to be a hybrid Inktomi processed by Yahoo’s new algorithm).

Search engine optimization is a never-ending game. You need to dedicate time and resources to understanding how you can optimize your web site for search engine rankings. With each new shakeup, the results will either be positive (if your site gets better ranked in your keywords) or negative (if your site drops from your rank or disappears altogether). And paying to get into the search engines is not even a guarantee of a top (or even ‘good’) spot.

If you are running a business on the Web and you rely on search engines to give you a significant amount of traffic, you must keep your eyes wide open for any changes. Read as much as you can for information. Check out Webmaster or search engine forums. Absorb everything you learn and apply them to your site.

Pay for inclusion?
2. Are you willing to pay to get your site indexed or listed by the search engines or directories?

Getting into the search engines is not as easy as it used to be. With more Web sites sprouting all over the Internet, there are more pages for search engines to index. To ‘expedite’ your listing in search engines, some search engine providers have introduced the concept of Pay for Inclusion (PFI), which means submitting a web site or web pages for a fee in exchange for guaranteed inclusion into a search engine’s database/listings for a set period of time. Inktomi, Fast/AlltheWeb, Teoma/Ask Jeeves, and AltaVista are the search engines that currently require sites to pay to be included in their search listings.

If you are operating a small-to-medium site, your fee is based on the number of URLs that you submit for indexing (cost is anywhere from $16 to $39 per URL for one year). Bigger sites, often defined as those with 1,000 or more pages are typically charged on a pay-per-click fee basis. The benefit will be the assurance that the web pages you submitted will typically appear within 72 hours and updated every 48 hours. In many search engines, you will also be provided reporting details and ability to manage your account.

Yahoo also has a separate Paid Submission program for its directory. For a fee of $299 per year, you are guaranteed a review of your site. Inclusion into the directory, however, is not automatic and will depend only whether your site meets the stated guidelines for submission.

Take note, though, that PFIs can be pretty expensive, and costs can set you back thousands of dollars depending on the number of pages you want to be included. For example, a 100-page submission at $25 per URL will set you back $2,500 per year!

It is also important to take into consideration that PFIs cannot guarantee prominent listing or ranking in the search results. The rankings are often based on the search engine’s unique algorithm, which takes into consideration both URLs that paid for inclusion as well as URLs that are picked up by their spiders (for free!). PFIs will only guarantee that you are included in their database, but will not provide assurance that you will be in the top 10 of the listing. The ranking criteria will still depend on how your pages are optimized and their popularity.

A number of complaints have also been raised against the PFI programs. Some site owners report that pages already indexed for free suddenly disappear in the listing as soon as they paid for its inclusion. For example, a site owner with 500 pages in the search engine decides to pay for inclusion of 1 of its pages, only to see the 499 dropped from the index. Some webmasters opine that the thinking behind this action is to compel the site owner  who has already shown their willingness to pay for inclusion  to pay for the rest of the pages.

The alternative, of course, is to resist paying for inclusion and wait for your URLs to be picked up by the search engines for free (yes, they still do that!). It may take a few months for their spider or human editors to stumble on your site, but doing so can save you a lot of money. In the meantime, you can develop more pages, improve your content, requests for links from similar websites, and develop a customer base.

Paying per click
3. Are you willing to attract more search engine traffic by paying per-click?

Overture pioneered the pay-for-placement (PFM) model, where you bid a price on keywords you wish to be included. Payment is on a pay-per-click basis, and placement is often based on the amount of bid you placed in comparison with the offer of other bidders.

Your placement in Overture, FindWhat, Kanoodle, and others will depend on how high you bid on your keywords. The top placements are the highest bidders for the keyword. Google AdWords, on the other hand, combines the amount of bid placed on the keyword with your clickthrough rate.

It is important to note that PFM model is basically pay-per-click advertising (with emphasis on advertising). According to a study made, the top 2 organic listings usually receive more than 50 percent of the clicks on a search results page, whereas the average click through for a paid search placement is about 2 percent.

Listings are often shown under the label ‘Sponsored Listings’ and are not integrated with what is called the ‘natural’ search engine results. Once your budget runs out and you no longer bid for your term, your listing disappears.

When you run pay-per-click campaigns in the search engines, it is extremely important to manage your costs, as listings can be very expensive to maintain. The key is to choose the right keywords for your budget. Some keywords targeting the same customer may cost you $0.05 per click, while a different one can cost you $0.65 per click. A thousand click-throughs will cost you $50 if the keyword costs only $0.50, while the cost can go up to $650 for the $0.65 per click.

Diversification plan
4. Do you have a diversification plan?

The old adage “don’t put your eggs all in one basket” holds true even in search engine marketing: if search engines drop your site, do you have any back up plans to get people to visit your site?

If you concentrate solely on search engine marketing and it fails, you will lose not only traffic but also sales and revenues. It is important that you have alternative marketing plans in place. In fact, it is best to have a well-laid marketing plan, one that uses other online and offline marketing strategies in addition to search engines. Carve out a plan to market your site off the Web, whether through a press release in your community journal, or attending networking activities.

Conclusion
With almost 80 percent of Internet users using search engines to find information on the Web, there are only two possible outcomes when someone performs a search: either they will find you or they will find your competitors. Search engine marketing ” getting your Web site visible in the search engines” should be a key element of your business strategies.

Author Bio:
Nach Maravilla is the Publisher/CEO of Power HomeBiz Guides. For a step-by-step guide to starting a business, visit PowerHomeBiz.com at http://www.powerhomebiz.com