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Google Analytics

As I am reviewing clients current web presence many times I find that clients are not making use of any kind of analytics for their site. They have no idea how many visitors they have on their site and not sure how effective they are with their web presence.

There are a wide range of analytic tools on the market. There are high end enterprise solutions like Coremetrics which will monitor an online store and make relevant recommendations to the site visitor based on previous viewed or purchased products. For today, we are going to focus on Google Analytics and see, while it is a free tool, it does provide a lot of useful information that allows you to have a better understanding of your visitor and how effective your site is.

I am not going to take the time to go through the details of setting up a Google Analytics account and how to add the needed script to a site. If you are needing assistance in doing this please let me know and I would be happy to talk with you about getting you setup.

Above is the Dashboard for Google Analytics. This is where the fun begins for looking at the activities that are happening within a site. We first see a time line that shows the sites total visitors for the past month. This chart always surprises me with the fact that every site has its unique peak peak day. In the above example, we see that Monday and Tuesday are the traffic days for this site. Other sites that I work with vary greatly. One site that I work with peaks on Thursdays and another peaks on Saturdays.

What does this peak tell us? From a marketing stand point, it shows us when we need to drum up traffic to the site. Send out an e-mailing around the low time. Make an offer on a blog to drive traffic to the site. Most action that is taken will clearly be seen in this chart.

The next area that we can look at is the Site Usage, where we are seeing the overall numbers for the given time frame. In this section we see Visits, Pageviews, Pages/Visit, Bounce Rate, Avg. Time on Site and % New Visits. Let look at each of these and get a better understanding of each.

Visits – This is the total number of visitors to the site. In another section in the report there is also a Unique Visitor stat that is unique as defined by a machines IP Address.

Pageviews – This is the total number of pages that were served or viewed by the above users.

Pages/Visit – The average number of pages viewed by each visitor

Bounce Rate – This is an interesting item that is tracked. And can be used as a gauge for how effective or relevant the content of a page is. In other words, If visit comes to the site and looks at the home page then leaves without looking at additional pages that would be one bounce. This becomes informative when you drill down in the report and look at specific pages and see the bounce rates.

Looking at the bounce rate we can gather the value of the page to our visitors. If there is a high bounce rate we may need to look at the content of the page and rethink what is said or show about your product or services.

Avg. Time on Site – This shows the average amount of time that a visitor spends on a site. We can compare the statistics for Bounce Rate with this and get a better idea of the overall effectiveness of the site. If this number is high then we can say that our audience is spending time on the site.

% New Visits – This is the percentage of the total Visits that are new or have an IP Address that has not been to the site previously. When you first start gathering data on your site, this number will be high so keep that in mind as it goes down over a period of time.

Each of these sections can be drilled into further allowing you to see greater detail into your sites activity.

The next section that I would like to focus on today is the Traffic Source Overview. Clicking on the View Report link will allow us to drill down and see a greater wealth of information on the source of our visitors. In this section we will see details about Direct Traffic, Referring Sites and Search Engines. This is were you get a since for the overall value of your site. Questions that I ask when looking at these details are: Where are the largest number of users coming from? Is a large percentage of my traffic coming from a Search Engine? How effective are third party sites at bringing traffic to my site? Is Twitter, Facebook or a Blog driving traffic?

Here is where I can talk about needing a good Search Engine Optimization or SEO plan in place. But you will need to look at you sites data and make that call on your own. Better yet, give me a call and I can help you get a better understanding of what is going on.

Another part of the Traffic Source Overview is the keywords section. Here you will see a list of the actual words that were used to search and find you. Here is where you can monitor the effectiveness of your keywords found on your site. If the words you think are your keywords are not being searched for to find you, you need to revisit your sites content.

Remember, ultimately keywords are king, and those keywords are made up of the relevant content of your site. This is heading to the subject of SEO but we will have to wait to and discuss that at a later time.

John
I am your CEO for SEO
NosalCentral, Your Central Source for Internet Marketing Solutions

Tips For Using LinkedIn Effectively #8

Groups are the bomb...

One of the things that I enjoy using in LinkedIn is the Groups. In the Groups, you can do additional networking with people that have common interest. And best of all, you have the opportunity to post and respond to messages that are specific to that group.

Lets first define what Groups are. First off, Groups are made by users of LinkedIn. Anyone can create a group even you and I. So if you want to create a group for Breeding Goldfish for Fun and Profit, you can do that. Groups are a great way to talk and connect with others with like interest.

Lets focus more on how we can use groups to our advantage. First lets look at finding a group that we may want to join. Using the Search option at the top of any screen in LinkedIn , you are able to search for any keyword or topic that you may have interest in. Everything from Abacus to Zooligy there is probably a group on the topic.

Many times you may find a number of groups for a given topic. Here is where you have to look at the value of a group. Look at the number of participants that are in the group. If you have a couple of good fits, join both and get a feel for the topics that are discussed. If after a week or so you see one group is better than the other, you can unsubscribe from the unwanted group.

One thing you will want to do is keep the groups that you are members of relevant to your professional branding. So you may not want to join groups for political, religious, or others that are controversial in a corporate environment.

Once you have joined a group or groups, you are able to start posting and answering questions. This is a great opportunity to establish yourself as an expert in your area of interest or expertise.

A hidden gem that is part of being members of groups is that you now have access to the membership list for the group. You can access this from the More > Members secondary menu when you are on the page for a specific group. Here you will find the complete list for all the members in that group. Once viewing the Members list, you are able to search the members of the group for specific keywords.

When searching within the Members list you could look for contacts at specific companies for that you may be targeting for a work search or sales opportunity.

Groups allow us to add a whole new dimension to our networking with professionals in our area of interest. By responding to post we can establish our expertise in a given subject. Then using the members list we can find people in our area within companies that we may be wanting to connect with.

While Groups in LinkedIn are a great way to network, NosalCentral is a great way to gain control over your web presence. Weather it is Analytics, SEO or a Social Media we can help you with increasing your value on the web.

Tips For Using LinkedIn Effectively #6

Keywords and Branding

Our profile, resume and our social media presence are all key to defining who we are. One of the challenges that we have when defining who we are is defining things that set us apart from the rest of the world. We also want to be found if we are looking for our next career opportunity.

The way to stand out in the crowd is to have relevant keywords and a strong branding of who you are and what you do. Lets take a look at these two items, Keywords and Branding and how we can do this within our profiles on LinkedIn. Note: these same approaches can be used with our resume and other social media sites.

Lets first look at keywords. These are the words that are specific to who you are. For example, if you are a Project Manager: PMI, PMP, SixSigma, Green Belt, Program Manager, MS Project, Visio and any other terms or software that are specific to your expertise would be the keywords that you may have.

Another example that we could look at is a Administrative Assistant, they would have a list of software and skills that they are experienced with: Microsoft Office (MS), Excel, Word, Power Point, Outlook, FrontPage, Shorthand, Event Planning... Notice that I listed out all the pieces of Microsoft Office, I did this to cover the many ways that someone might be searching for your skills.

So why are keywords so important? Think about you being in a position where you are needing to find a person that has a specific skill set. You might search for specific software that this individual would need to have experience with in order to fill the position.

Now, do a search to find yourself, are you in the top 10 results? Take a look at the people that are higher in the ranking than you. These people may be your competition. Look at their profiles, what put them higher in the results?

You may be asking yourself, what can I do to get higher in the ranking. Here is the key... Review your profile and use your keywords as many times as you can in your Summary and Experience sections of your profile. Use the Specialties section as a place to put all of your keywords. Look at job posts or descriptions for your position and incorporate the terms and phrases that are used.

Now that we have identified keywords and looked at how we can increase the relevance of our profiles, lets talk about branding a bit more. In a recent marketing networking group, we had a lengthy discussion on branding ourselves. What can we do to set ourselves apart froom the rest of the crowd?

Work on developing a unique statement that defines who you are. It needs to be catchy and memorable. One friend of mine brands himself as "the Joe Montana of Marketing". As you might have seen with my company I am branding my company as "NosalCentral, Your Central Source for Web Solutions".

Develop a statement that you can use to brand you as... who knows, the "Stretch Armstrong of Admin Assistants". Have fun with it and you will come up with something great.

Keywords and Branding are an important aspect to having a strong presence on LinkedIn. These same tips can also be used for your resume and other social media sites.

Keywords are also a vital part of a corporate presence on the internet. Want to know what search engines see your keywords look like? Let NosalCentral help you get on top of your keywords and ultimately be at the top of the search engine results to increase your ROI on your website.

NosalCentral is your keyword for SEO, SEM and Analysis of your web presence.

Introduction

Greetings from NosalCentral - Your Central Source For Web Solutions. My name is John J Nosal and I am the President of NosalCentral, LLC. a company that I started in July of 2009.

NosalCentral offers web consulting to small and medium sized business that are needing to increase the effectiveness of their web presence through Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), and Social Media Marketing. In addition we can help you learn to use analytic tools to monitor your traffic and to react accordingly.

My goal with this BLOG is to share information about my areas of expertise like social media, SEO and other things that I run across from time to time. This will include tips and tricks on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and hints and tricks that will help in Networking with others.

A lot of the tips that I share will be from the perspective of the job hunt since I am active with a career networking organization called CareerConnection (www.careerconnection.org) where I am a regular presenter on the topics of LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook and there use in the job hunt.

If you have questions or suggested topics please let me know, I would be happy to write about the things you would like to know more about.

Happy Networking,
John