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New Secrets To Success In Website Performance

Is your website performing at optimum levels? It’s hard to measure Internet effectiveness levels unless you have some way to monitor your website traffic. Help is now available in the form of Google Analytics, a free software program that gives website owners easy access to in-depth data on key performance factors.

Google Analytics features an easy-to-use control panel and your choice of reports designed for the marketer, webmaster or executive. You get real-time data on critical variables, including:

Keywords that drive traffic to your site

Referring websites (like HG Experts)

Visitor counts by day, week or month

Global geographic mapping of site visitors

New vs. returning website prospects

The “site overlay” feature superimposes a small counter box over navigation links on one of your webpages, giving you a visual count of click-throughs and traffic patterns. You can easily see how visitors navigate your site with this data, as well as common exit pages.

Google Analytics is fully integrated with Google AdWords, so you will be able to quickly identify those keywords that deliver the best results for you.

It’s Easy to Sign Up for Google Analytics
You need a Google account to access Google Analytics. If you do not currently have a Google account, sign up online at: http://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount

If you are already using Google AdWords (which we highly recommend), your Google user name and password will give you access to the Analytics sign-in page at: http://www.google.com/analytics/

Download Google Analytics Code for your Web Pages
When you set up your Google Analytics account, you will be prompted to indicate the URL for the website that you want to track. Google will then generate about 5 lines of HTML code that you need to add to every page on your website (or just those pages that you want to monitor). You can do this yourself with basic HTML skills, or ask your webmaster to help you.

Once your Google script is installed on your webpages, Google Analytics goes to work and starts tracking a wealth of information about your website traffic.

Start Today for Revenue-Generating Online Leads
The knowledge you gain about your Internet prospects will help you streamline your website design, focus on stronger keywords and capture more expert witness assignments. Why wait?

Want to know more? We have dozens of ideas you can use to increase your 2007 business development efforts in the legal and litigation support markets. Contact the author for details.

Margaret Grisdela
30 June 2007

Margaret Grisdela is President of Legal Expert Connections, specializing in marketing and business development in the legal and litigation support markets. She served as the 2005 President of the Florida Direct Marketing Association. You can reach her at mg@legalexpertconnections.com.

Copyright - (c) Legal Expert Connections, Inc

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Striking Keyword Gold

Keywords are all the buzz these days, but the migration of keywords from what they were a year or two years ago to where they are now is a different thing altogether. Authors, entrepreneurs and business owners know they need keywords in their web site, in their press releases and in their articles but they don't often know how to find these keywords or what the best keywords are to use.

When your web designer says to you: "Pick your keywords for your web site" the first thing you think of are the root or "gut feel" keywords. These are almost always wrong. Why? Let's dig into this further and find out.

Let's say you're looking for a doctor. Are you going to go online and search for the keyword: "Doctor" Doubtful. You'll probably go online and search for doctor + internal medicine + San Diego, meaning that you want to find a doctor in your specific area and for your focused needs. If, as the doctor, you used the keyword "doctor" you'd end up with a mishmash of traffic to your site and, if you were using these keywords for articles or press releases, neither of those would bring up much in the search engines.

Why keywords?
The long tail has really forced us to dig further into our markets than ever before. In fact research has shown that regardless of the type of search someone is conducting, a consumer who uses focused, finite language is much more likely to buy than a search based on "gut feel" words. Let me give you an example.

Let's say you're looking for a red car, you want a new car and it has to be red. On a fluke you think: "Hey, Lexus makes a nice ride, let me see what comes up when I do a quick search." So you plug in the keywords: red + Lexus, what do you find? A hodgepodge of sites related to everything from the Lexus that someone is trying to sell on eBay to the guy so in love with his car he's created a MySpace page about it.

Chances are it doesn't really matter because you weren't that interested in the red car to begin with. But if you search on more finite terms, let's say red + Lexus + 4WD + sunroof, now we're talking a consumer who is 95% closer to a buy than the guy Googling "red + Lexus". In order for you to find your audience in the maze of traffic and the enormity of messages online, you'll need to get very, very focused.

Getting clear, getting focused
So how can you get focused? Well first, why not try surveying your customers or readers? Ask them to fill in a quick little survey and see what search terms come to mind when they think of your book, message, or product (to get more "buy in" to this survey, offer them a freebie if they do it).

Other ways to gain access to keywords are keyword search tools like Wordtracker and Overture. Both of these sites have a learning curve and Wordtracker does have a monthly fee (but if you have all your data together they offer a free one day trial that might get you started). But buyer beware! According to AME's keyword expert, Susan Gilbert: "If you go to http://inventory.overture.com/ and type in your keyword, you will get the results from search in Yahoo for that term only for the prior month.

"However, these numbers are not accurate.(Every time someone types a keyword into yahoo for SEO purposes, it counts as a search). Search numbers are only part of the equation, however. You have to evaluate the "results" aspect (how many pages of information are available in that search engine for that term). It's finding the perfect relationship between a keyword that has enough searches with low(er) competition that will tell you the best keyword terms for your purpose."

As you're navigating through a site like Overture, they key is to look for supply vs. demand. Ideally you want a keyword that's being searched on that doesn't have a ton of supply. Let's take the diet industry as an example, if you're trying to promote your message of diet and healthy living, using the word "diet" in your article, press release or web site keywords probably won't get you much ranking. Why? Well everyone in this market is using this same word, but if you dig even further into this market you'll find that the search term: "Lose weight fast" is getting a lot of searches but very few returns. When that's the case those are the keywords you want to zero in on.

So how do you know if your keywords are working? Test them. You'll see very quickly if they're working or if they're too general to matter. Sometimes the only way you can find out is if you test, test, test. Web 2.0 strategies are always growing, building and changing. And speaking of changing, you might wonder how long keywords will last. Well, that depends. According to Gilbert: "Keywords could work for months or years. There's no telling because the WWW is constantly filled with new sites and new information. Use the keywords immediately, and for as long as you are getting results."

Once you finalize your keywords you'll want to use them, but not overuse them. I'd recommend using your keywords in the article or press release title, then once in the first paragraph and once in the last paragraph. This will tie in your words nicely without overusing them.

The key with keywords is to understand that the more focused you can get, the better your results will be. Yes, it's a lot of work but the benefits can be enormous and like anything on the 'Net, it's growing and changing and if you can adapt and learn, you can grow your campaigns and your success!

Penny Sansevieri
01 July 2007

Penny C. Sansevieri, CEO and founder of Author Marketing Experts, Inc., is a book marketing and media relations expert whose company has developed some of the most cutting-edge book marketing campaigns. Visit AME.

More Freeware SEO Tools For The DIY Webmaster

Let's start with a look at meta tag generators. Since meta tags lost their SEO relevance several years ago, most of the freeware programs in this category are either no longer supported or haven't been updated for several years. But, then again, not much has really changed in meta tag usage so the apps listed below should still be useful.

Meta Tag Generators
1. BHead 4.1.1 (1.0 MB) is an advanced meta tag generator that can create your entire HEAD section, including CSS style sheets. Generates the code for all popular meta tags and also has an option for custom tags. Keywords and description can be imported from files. Comes with a basic Style Sheet editor that includes a color picker. Other features include spell chëck, search replace, syntax highlighting, etc. For Windows 9x/NT/ME/2K/.
2. Metty Meta Tag Maker 1.31 (2.5 MB) is a meta tag creator with support for 33 meta tags that ensure search engines properly index your website. Easy to use and requires no knowledge of meta tags. For Windows 95/98/ME/2000/XP.
3. Search Engine Buddy 1.0 (2.7 MB) analyzes web page meta tags and web page content on or offline to help you create the best possible meta tag combinations and web page content based on the requirements and algorithms of the major search engines. For Windows 9x/2000/NT.
4. MetaWizard 1.2a (617 KB) is a simple, bare bones meta tag generator that guides you through the process of creating basic tags for your web site pages.

Link Checkers
Where oh where did all the good freeware link checkers go? Well, apparently they went offline with the cos. or individuals that developed them or they went the shareware route. Of the three listed below, CheckWeb is probably the best.
1. CheckWeb 1.23 (74 KB) is a small, powerful links analyzer that can scan online/ offline HTML pages and generate a report on link, error and page size information. For Windows 95 and above.
2. Mihov Link Checker 0.5 (250 KB) can chëck multiple links on a web site or a local web page. It reports the state of each link as valid, missing, forbidden or otherwise not accessible. Links can be stored in a text file or extracted automatically from a local or internet page. For Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP.
3. SiteLinkChecker 1.0 (480 KB) is an easy-to-use link checker tool that checks websites for broken links. Easily locates broken links and links containing syntactic errors and reports the status of each link. For Windows 2000/XP/2003.

Link Popularity Tools
Another category of programs that has suffered attrition in the last few years. At least half a dozen are no longer available, no longer supported or no longer freeware. The first two are the best of the three listed.
1. Indexa 2.0 (115 KB) is a java website popularity program that reports Google Pagerank, the number of backlinks recorded on Google, Yahoo, MSN, Altavista and AlltheWeb and the number of pages indexed. Limitations: Analyses 4 urls and 2 search engines. For Windows 98/ME/XP/2000/2003/Unix/Linux/MacOS X.
2. Link Popularity Chëck 3.0.3 (941 KB) checks how many sites link to yours and your competitors in 5 major search engines. For Windows XP/Me/NT4/2000/98/95.
3. BackLinks Master 1.5 (1.3 MB) helps you find who is linking to you, whether links are direct and what keywords are in the anchor text. For Windows 98/ME/XP/2000.

General SEO Tools
Last, but not least, are tools that don't fall into any specific category, but that are multi-featured and definitely worth a look.
1. SEO Surf 0.7 (2.6 MB) is a powerful program for SEO enthusiasts. It offers numerous features, including keyword analysis, SEO page analysis, backlink management and search engine analysis. For Windows 98 to XP and I.E. 6.0+.
2. Keyword Crawler 1.1 (424 KB) is a keyword tool that can analyze your website and provide web page reports for the top keywords used, word density, Google pagerank, internal and external backlinks and broken links. In addition, the program can also generate a sitemap file in XML format. For Windows 98/ME/NT4/2Kx/XP.
3. SEO SpyGlass v.2.0.4 (7.8 MB) is a research tool designed to show how your competitors got top search engine rankings. It reveals backlink numbers, the URL, PageRank, Alexa Rank, and IP address of each backlink, website age, link value, backlink origin, keyword density, etc. Detailed reports can be generated but not saved in the freeware version. Requires JRE and email registration. For Windows 98+ and Unix/Linux/MacOS X. The current version is generally available from the SpyGlass site, but the site was experiencing problems at the time of this writing.

That's it folks. Feedback is welcome. If you are aware of similar freeware tools that are as good or better than those listed above, we'd like to hear from you. Just send your recommendations along to feedback@sitepronews.com and we'll highlight them in upcoming issues of SiteProNews.

Mel Strocen

Mel Strocen is CEO of the Jayde Online Network of websites and founder of the Independent Search Engine & Directory Network. The Jayde network is comprised of more than 20 websites, including ExactSeek.com, SiteProNews.com, SEO-News.com and GoArticles.com.