Bounce Rate

With a high bounce rate, the visitor is saying, “This site isn’t relevant to me – I’m outta here.” The bounce rate number is just the percentage of single page visits, meaning that all those people left your site without looking past the page they landed on. It’s possible that this means your landing page just isn’t interesting. More likely, it means the people landing on your site were led to believe they would find something different when they clicked on your paid advertisement or organic search listing. If you are getting a high bounce rate, look at what your ads are promising. Make sure your landing page fulfills the promise in the ad.

New vs. Returning Visitors

A high number of returning visitors says, “Your site is engaging enough that I think I’ll come back for more.” New visitors are a good indicator that more people are finding your site, but getting them to return is the part that takes work. Ask yourself what you are putting out there that will bring people back again and again. A really good blog is one great way to do this.

Time on Site

A higher time on site tells you your site keeps visitors from leaving. This could mean you offer plenty of things to explore. But be careful. When I logged into analytics on one of my sites this morning, I found most people were staying for three minutes or so. Then there was this one visit that lasted for three hours. I’m guessing that somebody left their browser open on my site while they left the house for a while. So I obviously didn’t give that visit much attention.

Pages Per Visit

This says, “The first point of contact was interesting enough to make me want to look around.” If you have high average page views, you have done a good job of sending the right people to the site and presenting the information in an interesting way. It might also mean you have created a page structure conducive to further exploration.

Traffic Sources

This is very valuable because it shows you the ways customers come to your site. If they are all coming from Google, then your search engine optimization campaign is working. If you see a huge influx of website traffic from a partner site, you could look into ways to increase your visibility on that partner site.

Content

This is where your visitors tell you which content they like best. You are also able to see how they interact with their favorite content by looking at bounce rate, how many of them left the site from that page, etc. If you notice a certain topic always trends to the top, it should probably be a main focus of your content.

The best companies are those that listen to the customer. Google Analytics provides all this wonderful data to help companies do just that. We just have to be willing to dig in a little.

Image courtesy of BigTallGuy

Is the amount of traffic you will get in the #1 position really worth the effort and cost?

The answer to this question is yes, it is generally worth the effort and cost to get in the #1 position. The stipulation, however, is that the amount of traffic return you will receive depends on your industry. Some keywords are able to bring in traffic percentages close to that top position, according to this study done on traffic percentage differences when they reach positions 1, 2, and 3 in Google. Unfortunately, some are not even close.

To sum up, the study suggests:

• Position one gets 34% of the projected traffic for the selected term.
• Position two gets 17% of the projected traffic for the selected term.
• Position three gets 11% of the projected traffic for the selected term.

How to Compare Your Industry to the Study

To know how your industry compares to the above projected percentages, do the following:

1. Dive into your analytics and gather historical data that shows how much traffic you were averaging each month when you were in positions 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and so on.
2. Go to the Google Adword Keyword tool (or some other reliable keyword traffic estimator) and get the estimated number of searches for that single term in exact match.
3. Do a little Algebra.

For example:

This example is from an actual client. Let’s take one of their terms that is projected to bring in 33,100 visitors a month in exact match. If we are to assume that this keyword is in the same industry as the study above, they would get roughly 11,254 visitors a month from that one term alone (if they are number 1).

But, it is not in the same industry. It is actually a completely different industry. So, from their historical analytics data I gathered, when they were in position 6 they were getting 1,006 visits per month from that term (3% of the projected search volume for that term). The study suggests that position 6 should be getting 5.05%. When they were in position 3 they were getting 1,728 visits per month (5% of the projected search volume for that term). The study suggests that position 3 should be getting 11%.

Now the Algebra:

To solve for x in position 2, I simply took 5, multiplied it by 17 (the study’s percentage of traffic for position 2) and divided that number by 11 (the study’s percentage of traffic for position 3). This equaled 7.7%. To solve for position 1, I took 7.7, multiplied it by 34 (the study’s percentage of traffic for position one) and divided that number by 17 (the study’s percentage of traffic for position 2). This equaled 15.4%.

Here is the client’s projected percentage of traffic for positions 1, 2, and 3:

This is great! According to this calculation, although we are not getting the same percentages of traffic as in the study, the client’s traffic will still double from position 2 to position 1. However, because their traffic numbers from when they  were in position 6 differ from the study less than their position 3 numbers differed, I had to do this calculation again based on their position 6 numbers and then take the average of the two calculations.

Take a breath (if you’re still reading this)…

Average the two for positions 1,2, and 3:

Because this is an actual case, I already know the results and how they compare to these calculations. When this client started with us they were in position 6 for this term. As of yesterday they are in position 1 and I will be able to compare the accuracy of my number 1 position estimations after a month of occupying that top spot.

When they were in position 3, they got about 1,728 visits from that one term alone, about 5% of the visits. My calculations say it should have been 5.7%. Last month they were number 2 and they received about 2,200 visits from that one term alone, about 7% of the visits. My calculations say it should have been 8.9%. So I’m a little off, but it’s safe to assume that over this next month (since they are number 1), their traffic should almost double for that one term.

It’s hard to project exact numbers for ranking positions, there are so many factors at play. Just as I’ve done here, you can kind of get a feel for what to expect when you reach number 1. I have a rank-checking tool that is funny. After showing that you are ranked number 234 it says, “Keep trying, you can beat Google one day!”

Not only have social media marketers taken up the infographic craze, but SEOs as well. Infographics, done well, can build a large portfolio of quality links. I’ve since noticed many SEO companies who are developing infographics for their clients and pushing them in the social media sphere.

When I discovered that so many SEO infographics already exist, I decided to rate them. David McCandless, at informationisbeautiful.net, revealed four criteria when evaluating information design:

1. Interestingness - Is the content relevant and original, such that the viewer sees value in it?
2. Integrity - Can I trust the content?
3. Form - Is it pleasing to the eye?
4. Function - Is this information useful and useable?

Take a look at his infographic about infographics:

Below, you’ll see some of the best infographics I could find about online marketing. I’ve rated them by giving pluses (+) for each category discussed above.

SEO Infographics

Elliance has, by far, the most search marketing infographics. The infographics cover everything from PDF Optimization to Keyword Clustering. I found most of the infographics contained quality graphics and interesting ideas, but they slightly lacked in functionality — meaning, most of the concepts presented are low-level, basic concepts that most SEOs should already know.

SEO Factors

• Interestingness: +
• Integrity: +
• Form: +
• Function: +

Long Tail SEO

• Interestingness: +
• Integrity: +
• Form: +
• Function: ++

Link Juice

• Interestingness: +
• Integrity:
• Form: +++
• Function: +

Google PageRank Explained

I found this infographic very beneficial in visualizing the Internet in terms of PageRank. PageRank is valued exponentially. While it’s easy to increase PageRank by 1 at the bottom of the mountain (e.g., from 2 to 3), it becomes much harder to increase by 1 (e.g., from 6 to 7) as you move up the mountain.

• Interestingness: ++
• Integrity: +
• Form: +
• Function: +++

Wired Magazine published an interactive infographic about the life of a blog post. With a flash-based, interactive spin, Wired has covered all the avenues of blogging as it moves around the Web, being picked up by search engines, data miners, and social bookmarks. If you haven’t seen it I suggest you check it out.

The Life Cycle of a Blog Post

• Interestingness: ++
• Integrity: ++
• Form: +++
• Function: +

Similar to Wired’s infographic above, The Social Media Effect by Infographicworld.com, shows the travels of content as it makes it’s way through the social media world. My favorite part of this particular infographic is how all the arrows, eventually, point to a Google search engine result for that story. It’s a nice way of showing that great content will bring in lots of quality links.

The Social Media Effect

• Interestingness: ++
• Integrity: +
• Form: ++
• Function: +

Rank Fishkin, from SEOMoz.org, created some pretty creative infographics. Although they are not the most visually appealing, they share some really creative insights about SEO. Great job, Rand.

Professions at the Intersection of Technology, Marketing & Statistics

This is true that SEOs need to wear many hats.

• Interestingness: +++
• Integrity: ++
• Form: +
• Function: ++

How SEOs Spend Their Time

• Interestingness: ++
• Integrity: +++! Those of you working directly with clients know how true this infographic is
• Form: +
• Function: +

Scatterplot of SEO Tactics

This is one of my favorite infographics as it is really helpful for SEOs to know how to spend their time.

• Interestingness: +++
• Integrity: ++
• Form: +
• Function: ++

The Size of the Mobile Market

We’ve seen the mobile market skyrocket in the last few years. Astonishingly, there are only 1.4 billion internet users compared with 4 billion mobile phone users. Any business would do well to understand how to tap into the mobile market. With the influx of smart phones, we’re making sure our clients show up on mobile searches.

• Interestingness: ++
• Integrity: +
• Form: ++
• Function: +

Individuals and Their Online Identities

Flowtown created an interesting infographic about how people utilize the Internet to manage their personal identities. Interesting quote: “Search engines and social media sites now play a central role in building one’s identity online.”

• Interestingness: +++
• Integrity: ++
• Form: ++
• Function: +

Google Facts and Figures

Although Pingdom’s infographic about Google doesn’t entirely pertain to SEO, I thought it was a great visualization of numbers. It is interesting to note how Google’s innovative search technology has made it the leader among search engines.

• Interestingness: +
• Integrity: ++
• Form: ++
• Function: ++

DIYSEO has, by far, some of the most visually creative SEO infographics out there. Most of the infographics show how SEO is a must-have in Internet marketing. While I’m only showing three here, DIYSEO has lots more. Go over to the site to check them out.

The Case of Disappearing Ink

Interesting visual graph displaying search methods by demographic:

• Interestingness: ++
• Integrity: ++
• Form: +++
• Function: +

Value of SEO v. PPC

This quote emphasizes the importance of SEO: “When buying, PPC links produce 25% less conversion than SEO.”

• Interestingness: ++
• Integrity: ++
• Form: +++
• Function: +

SEO ROI is King

It’s nice to know that SEO holds the largest ROI.

• Interestingness: ++
• Integrity: ++
• Form: +++
• Function: +

SEO FAQs – A Guide

Datadial.net created the most comprehensive SEO infographic. While it doesn’t offer much original material, it covers everything from keyword research to SEO tactics. It’s a nice way to sum up the basics of SEO in one graphic.

• Interestingness: +
• Integrity: +
• Form: +
• Function: ++

Well, there you have it — a semi-complete list of the best SEO infographics out there.

On July 8, the Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum will host its 21st annual Top 25 Under 5 Awards luncheon. The awards recognize the fastest growing companies in Utah less than 5 years old. The companies are chosen based on profit, job creation, job quality and growth.

The UVEF uses the Top 25 Under 5 to promote companies that may become region, state and global leaders in their industries. Some of the past award winners include ZAGG, Agel Enterprises, Interbank FX, Seastone, Altiris, Omniture, and Xango.

UVEF promises that this year’s event will feature exciting new companies and David Bradford of Fusion-io will be the emcee. And if last year was any indication, the food will be great, too.

Last year, Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert addressed the crowd and talked about the strength of entrepreneurship in the state and the positive affect it has on the entire economy. SEO.com ranked #17 a year ago, and we are pulling for a higher spot come July.

The event is on Thursday, July 8 at Novell building A. Noon to 1:30. UVEF members get in for free, non-members are $25 (including lunch).

To RSVP, go to: http://uvef.net/events/rsvp/

For more information, visit: http://uvef.net/2010/uvef-presents-top-25-under-five/

About UVEF
UVEF is a volunteer non-profit support group linking entrepreneurs to Money, Markets, and Mentors. Celebrating 20 years of new business success, UVEF empowers current and future business leaders to thrive in today’s competitive market. The organization provides real-world, practical educational and valuable resources on how to access needed capital, attract new customers and tap into industry experts. For information on upcoming meetings, speakers, and membership, visit www.uvef.net.

Here are a list of the things I’ve seen make a piece fall short, and my own personal recommendations to remedy them.

Top 10’s are SO 2008

Don’t get me wrong here, Top X type lists are great; they do well on social news sites and they are easy to digest for your readers.  However, some blogs out there overuse it. If you find that lists are your primary form of content, you may want to consider a bit of variety.

One site that pulls this off well is Cracked.com. Practically all of their most popular posts are in the form of a list. Cracked.com has taken the list-type articles and evolved them. Rather than a post about “10 Reasons Why Unicorns are Awesome” (which is a post I’m still looking for), they produce unique, well-researched ideas and top it off with stellar content.

Another new favorite site of mine that does well is ThisorThat.com. They’ve built their content focus only on comparisons. What better way to build activity on your site than to make a little controversy and pit Coke vs. Pepsi, or Madonna vs. Lady Gaga? Get your visitors to promote your site for you with a little competition.

Solution: Vary your content. Instead of lists, think of how you could produce that content into a how-to post, or a comparison-type post that puts it against a similar competitor. Some of my best pieces have been comparison posts, and, even better, ones that create a little controversy.

You rely too much on your images/video

I love pictures, especially in the blogs I read (picture books are my personal preference). I’m a huge fan and proponent of infographics as well! They’re trendy, eye-candy that just do well in the social sphere. One downside to an infographic, though, is the lack of content that could be indexed by the search engines. Sure, the added content may or may not affect whether your story hits the front page of Digg, but it does lose in the grand scheme of things (isn’t that why infographics are produced and promoted, so they can gain attention and links for better rankings?)

Solution: Add a summary to your infographics. Provide a general outline of what you are getting at with your piece. A couple of places that do this (and do well on social sites) are DegreeSearch.org & ChaCha.com. These give you all of the benefits that viral content can provide along with SEO factors that will help with better indexing from the engines.

You rely too much on your content

Building off of the previous segment, great content should be incorporated with great images to help the reader visualize your point. Images can be a great addition to any piece, and an absolute MUST if you will be putting it in list form.

Solution: There’s no need to beat a dead horse with this point, but if you’re investing a good deal of time and/or money into your content, be sure to add pretty pictures to illustrate your point.

There’s no fire under my feet!

People always say this, and maybe I’ve just come to realize it, but people can tell whether or not you believe in what you’re writing about. Now, I know some of you are asking, “Hey, Vince, I’m doing an article on people with STDs, does that mean I should get passionate about THOSE?”  Absolutely (but not in the gross way)! The love for what you write doesn’t have to be in the subject itself, but the DATA behind it.

I personally am extremely happy with the results of my last physical, however, articles like STDs Across America are somehow fascinating to me. Not so much that I now know where I won’t be taking any of my future vacations, but to see the statistics and demographics of the info.

Solution: Take a boring scenario or subject and find a way to twist it and make it viral. The Oatmeal does this every time he makes a comic.  Sure, your stuff doesn’t have to be so crazy or in-your-face as his, but you can create great ideas off of just about anything.

All problems, no solutions

I’m not the biggest fan of the “Why this place sucks” type of posts (personally). Some people like them, but it does nothing to add any value to my day and my time I spent reading your post seems to have been more of a waste than anything else. To be honest, when I initially started brainstorming and writing this post, it was going to be just a “Your content sucks” kind of a post. I then realized that I provided no real value to anyone reading this (all 4 of you).

Solution: How-to’s are one of the great ways to trump this. Providing a wrong and right way to do things will ring well with your readers and give them actionable items to take away after reading your post. Give them the good and the bad and help them to understand the distinction (I hope that’s something I’ve been able to do, even a little, here).

Not enough supporting data

What are they trying to say here?

Above all, this has got to be the one that irks me the most, especially when it comes to infographics! I don’t know why, maybe it’s the fact that it’s one of those pieces that “could’ve been” or was “almost there,” but didn’t have enough data to get me pass it on.

A map of the U.S. that shows the amount of foreclosures in each state isn’t THAT great of a piece. However, add another section below the map and include more information about the percentage of foreclosures compared to the previous decade, the number of abandoned homes and maybe some additional data about the amount of foreclosed homes that have sold over the past few years.

Solution: Give your readers something to digest! A simple graph that explains the fat content of a Big Mac is not going to cut it. Delve a bit further in your research and provide data that puts meaning into your piece. Adding more data, such as how a Big Mac a day would affect my body, weight and overall health would be much more appealing to read and share with those in my network. Get. Great. Data.

When creating viral content, it’s important to go the extra mile with your research and your writing. That’s what makes the difference between an article and a viral article. Let me know in the comments if you have any other pet peeve’s or recommendations about what you can do to better your work.

For the past few weeks I’ve been tasked with reviewing a few different sites that have seen a loss in traffic – their owners hoped to find out why. I love these kinds of reviews because it’s like solving a mystery or figuring out a puzzle. While it’s not always possible to determine the exact cause for the traffic loss, I can usually make some educated guesses based on what I dig up in Google Analytics.

Here are 9 steps you can take to diagnose the cause of lost search engine traffic:

1. Determine what type of traffic loss you’re dealing with.

Many people look at Google’s overview page, see a loss of overall traffic to their website, and assume that they must have lost their rankings in Google and the targeted traffic that comes with it. This may or may not be the case. Be sure to check for search engine traffic, and even more specifically Google non-paid traffic.

2. Look at the extent of the traffic loss.

Your research will be very different depending on whether there was a gradual decline in traffic or a sudden, drastic drop. I reviewed a site last week that lost all of their Google unpaid traffic overnight! This sort of loss is typically a technical issue such as a robots.txt file or a nofollow directive that keeps search engine spiders from indexing your pages. Sometimes it’s not actually a loss of traffic at all – your analytics code could have been inadvertently removed from all or most of the pages, making it appear like a traffic loss. I have seen all of the above more times than I can count in just the last couple of months!

3. Compare apples to apples.

Many businesses are cyclical or seasonal. A gift site may see huge spikes in traffic the months leading up to Christmas or the weeks before other holidays. This means that comparing any month to the previous month may not tell you the whole story. A drop in traffic in January is probably fairly normal for a gift site. If you’ve got more than a year’s worth of data, you’ll want to compare this month’s traffic to the same month in previous years. Ideally, you’d of course want to see a growth in traffic. And if you don’t, then you may very well have a problem on your hands. If you don’t have data that goes back that far, you can compare month to month, but be sure to take the data with a grain of salt.

4. Review and filter out “brand” traffic.

Most websites get a lot of Google traffic from people who’ve typed some version of the name of their company as their search query. You’ll want to note whether those visitors have significantly increased or decreased. If you receive fewer visitors for your brand, this could be caused by a decrease in marketing and advertising. Once you make note of the brand traffic, you’ll want to filter it out so you can study actual keyword traffic, which is what real SEO traffic consists of.

5. Analyze which keyword phrases have had a significant decrease in visitors.

Now that you’ve filtered out the brand traffic, you should be able to see the keyword phrases that are bringing you the most traffic. If you have lots, you may want to view 100 phrases at a time rather than the default of just 10. Are there lots of keyword phrases that seem to bring far fewer visitors over the last few months as compared to last year at the same time? You may also notice some that are bringing significantly more visitors.

6. Do a quick Google search for the phrases.

If you’re not seeing any pages from your site on the first page in Google, it may or may not be a clue (given the fact that everyone sees different search results) but it is definitely a cause to investigate further. If a page from your site does show up fairly high in the list, it could just be that fewer people are searching for that phrase now as compared to before. Or it could be that your listing isn’t quite what the searcher is looking for based on your title and descriptive snippet. There might also be other results for the keyword phrase that have images or video embedded whereas yours doesn’t. Or there might be local map results showing up that make your result less appealing.

7. Review the landing page for the keyword phrase that lost traffic.

Is there any obvious reason why it’s not bringing in as many visitors as it used to? Does it even exist anymore? Did it change substantially at some point during the year? Did it get buried deeper into the site architecture for some reason? Is the content duplicated from other pages within your site or contained on other websites? Were there links pointing to it at some point that no longer are? Does the copy read naturally, or are there a few extra instances of the keyword phrase than really makes sense to a person?

8. Review your long-tail traffic.

Since the end of April and early May 2010 a few large sites lost a substantial amount of traffic for keyword phrases that brought small numbers of visitors individually, but in aggregate they made up a lot of website traffic. You’ll want to filter your keywords to those that have only a few visitors (even just 1) and see if there are significantly fewer of those than previously. If this is the case, Google has gone on record stating that they’re doing a better job at sending long-tail traffic to more meaningful and relevant pages than they used to. Which means you’ll have to go above and beyond what you’re currently doing if you want to get that long-tail traffic back.

9. Decide if you’re dealing with a search engine penalty. For drastic drops, in the rare cases where it’s not a technical issue, you’re most likely dealing with a penalty. You can check your Google Webmaster Tools account to see if there is a notification of a penalty, but they don’t usually bother to tell you. Still, search engine penalties are much rarer than people think. In fact, most website owners know what they’ve done wrong when they have a search engine penalty. There are some cases, however, where they may have been duped by a less than scrupulous “SEO” company. The penalties I’ve seen seem to occur on sites that have no redeeming value because they have the same products and content that can be found on many other sites (often ones owned by the same company), plus they are deeply entrenched in massive link farms. It’s likely that they are also hosting part of the link farm on their own site in the form of a link directory. If this is what you find, you may be better off to start from scratch rather than trying to salvage the penalized domain.

I hope these steps help you diagnose your own loss of traffic. I imagine they will keep you busy for quite some time!

If you’ve lost search engine traffic and would like Jill to determine what the problem might be, fill out the contact form at http://www.highrankings.com/contact/ and mention it in the “Business Goals” section. She can review most sites that have Google Analytics installed for a one-time $600 fee.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

9 Steps to Diagnosing Lost Search Engine Traffic

Google introduced another algorithm update in May 2010 and many webmasters have seen a huge drop in traffic from Google for keyword phrases that are three or more keywords long, known as long tail keywords.

Google is now able to index longer keyword phrases more accurately. It seems that Google guessed the best pages for long keyword phrases until recently based on other signals and keywords on the indexed pages. The new Google patent indicates that Google now has the computing power to index longer keyword phrases on web pages instead of guessing them.

What does this mean to business owners, webmasters and SEO companies? It means that those who have taken the time to anticipate the need of their customers and Google’s customers will be rewarded.

Whether in SEO terms or in pay per click advertising terms, longtail keywords are highly valuable. Think about what your search process is yourself and you will more than likely realise this.

The average person searching at the research phase will use a competitive generic keyword such as “party dress”. Not long after searching and seeing some high prices they will modify their search to something like “cheap party dress.” Now we are already into long tail keyword territory but it can go further. As the search deepens the searcher realizes that pink is the trendy colour at the moment, or pink is what she fancies wearing on her next night out, so then she is using the long tail keyword “cheap pink party dress.”

The more experienced the searcher the more likely she will start off with this right at the beginning so as not to waste any time. And in general people are becoming far better at searching as the search engines continue to improve the results they show to us.

A long tail keyword means one of two things; either the person is close to making a buying decision or is an experienced searcher. Now with the Google algorithm update of May, combined with the buying profile of a long tail keyword searcher being stronger, and add in here the fact that a well optimised page for a long tail keyword has a far higher chance of getting to the first page of the SERPs then it is what they call a no-brainer.

Think about it logically, when you want to find information online on products, services or for research reasons, you want to find it quickly, you want it to be as precise as possible and give you something extra that other information has not up until that moment.

Long tail keywords can be optimised in this way. The trick here is getting into the mindset of your customer and pre-empting all the possible things they would like to know about whatever the subject of the long tail keyword is and then going at least one step further. You will create a page which is resource, which means customers will like it and sites which see it as an authority may link to it.

On some of the search engine forums SEOs have stated that this algorithm which was named Mayday by some and Black Tuesday by others has had a disastrous effect on some well established sites which did not have enough content in deep pages.

Whether you are a small business owner, or a medium to large business owner, all the signs show that drilling down into your site with niche information across all aspects of your site based on long tail keywords is a good way to go. Long tail keywords are important both to your customers and the search engines; ignore them at your peril!

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

The Importance Of Long Tail Keywords Since The Last Google Algorithm Update

A question I am frequently asked goes something like this, “With all the different social networking sites out there, how do I know which which is right for me, and how do I find the time to keep up with it?”

Great question! One that I am sure we’ve all asked ourselves at some point or another, right? This much is clear: If you don’t have a purpose for utilizing social media you are going to feel much like a person who has been thrown into the water and can’t swim! You are going to panic, and try to keep your head above water however you can. Not only is this scary, but it is exhausting. I would answer the above question with this question, “What is your primary reason for wanting to use social media?” Please don’t say ‘because everyone is doing it’. That is not a good reason. You need to have a well-defined reason so that you can then determine which site, or sites, you wish to spend your time on.

Here are five questions to ask yourself to help you determine which networking site(s) you want to utilize:

1. What is your *main* purpose for utilizing social media? Be specific with this question. Don’t generalize.
2. Who is your target audience?
3. What specific results will your social media efforts have on your target audience?
4. What is your comfort level with social media? Are you new to social media? Are you an intermediate user? An advanced user?
5. How much time do you want to devote to social media per day? Per week?

Once you’ve answered these questions, you can begin to explore what social networking site(s) are the best fit for you based on the answers you’ve provided.

The big three in Social Media are: LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Here’s how I like to think of these:

• LinkedIn is like putting on a suit.
• Facebook is like casual Friday’s.
• Twitter is like an afterwork party or hanging out on the weekend.

Business happens on all three of these sites just as it does in the traditional workplace during the day and after hours. I use this analogy only to provide an idea of how ‘business’ or ‘casual’ the site is. I, personally, am on all three of these social networking sites. They all ‘fit’ for me. The key to finding a fit is that you will then get involved. Don’t just sign up to sign up. You *must* get involved in some fashion. Whether that is joining a group and participating, or answering questions, or tweeting about some useful information, you must be involved. Remember, people need to know, like, and trust you *before* they will consider doing business with you.

As for how much time you need to spend on these networking sites, that will really depend on your purpose and target audience (see questions 1 and 2 above). Plan on at least 30 minutes a day. Block this time off on your calendar, set a timer (here’s a really cool no-cost one: http://www.nestersoft.com/timeleft/index.shtml ) for 30 minutes, and get busy! Once the timer goes off, you are done for the day. Wasn’t that easy? Doesn’t that sound manageable? If you find you really enjoy this, do this exercise again at the end of the day. As with anything, it is all about what you find comfortable, because when it’s comfortable you’ll do it!

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Social Networking: Is it for you?

Submitting articles by hand is the most time consuming method of doing article submissions, and it produces the most modest results. Still I know there are some people who prefer to submit manually as they are learning the ropes of how to do article marketing.

If you are submitting articles by hand, then there are a variety of article submission sites that you will want to submit to. There are three main types of publishers:

• Article Directories
• Ezine Editors
• Article Announcement Lists

We’ll be covering here how to submit to article directories.

How Do Article Directories Work?

An article directory is a website that publishes articles that other publishers can reprint for free.

Authors will submit their articles to an article directory, and then a publisher who is looking for content on that topic will find and republish it on his website or ezine. Publishers love article directories because they provide free quality content.

As an author, what do you get out of having your content appear in an article directory?

When you submit your article, you will include a resource box. This resource box will contain a short paragraph about you and your business, an incentive to visit your website, as well as a clickable link that leads back to your website.

Whenever your article is republished, the resource box will be too.

So, when a reader sees your content on someone’s website, they will also see your resource box, and they will (hopefully!) click the link that leads back to your website.

The resource box is also the means of ‘building links’ to your website. You gain a link to your website each time your article is republished. The more times it is republished the better, because that means you are building more links to your website.

Why Is It Important To Build Links?

These links are one of the main indicators that Google and the other search engines use when deciding how highly to rank your website in the search engine results lists. By building links to your website, you can effectively improve your website-s search engine ranking over the long term. The higher your search engine ranking, the more traffic your website receives.

Why Should You Submit To Article Directories?

By placing your articles in article directories, you are giving your articles the greatest opportunity of being republished.

You may think that publishing your article on an article directory creates just one backlink, from the directory itself. Actually, if all goes well that one backlink from the directory is only the beginning. Ideally your content will be republished repeatedly, building a link to your website each time.

Also, when you submit your article to an article directory it can show up in Google’s results lists. The more ways you create for people to find your content the better. Your ultimate goal is to draw more people from your target market to your website. Article marketing helps you do this.

How Many Directories Should You Submit To?

You will greatly aid your cause if you submit to as many directories as possible.

The purpose of placing your article on an article directory is to have it republished as many times as possible. That is how you build links to your website, which has an impact on your search engine ranking over the long term.

When you submit your content to just one directory, then you have gained one backlink, but you need to wait for publishers to find your article on that directory to build more links.

However, if you submit your articles to many article directories, you are building many links right off the bat, and any links you gain from publishers who find your articles on those directories are just icing on the cake.

If you are submitting articles by hand, obviously there is a limit to how many directories you can submit to. Submit to a few of the big ones, such as Ezine Articles, Go Articles, and Idea Marketers.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Article Submission Sites: Submitting To Article Directories

Question: What’s the best way to lose potential customers?

Answer: Make them mad!

Yet, that’s exactly what many Internet marketers are doing… upsetting customers. How? By using disrespectful marketing methods. Unfortunately, there seems to be a pervasion of intrusive and disrespectful marketing on websites across the Internet.

So, why is this happening? Well, mainly because we’re letting it happen. By not protesting loudly or often enough. And also because, as much as I hate to admit it, intrusive marketing works. After all, if it didn’t work, Internet marketers would have long ago abandoned this controversial and disrespectful method of marketing.

Okay, so intrusive marketing works…so what? What about the moral aspect? Don’t we as Internet marketers have a moral obligation to always be respectful to website visitors? I mean, just because something works doesn’t mean that we should use it, right? After all, steel-jaw animal traps are also very effective, but they’ve not very humane. Sometimes the end result doesn’t justify the means.

I Was in the Mood to Buy, But…

Studies have shown, the majority of U.S. households have some sort of pop-up blocker on their computer. Do you understand the full import of that statement? Do you know what it means? No? Let me explain it to you.

Since 204.3 million people in the U.S. have access to the Internet, according to a Nielsen/NetRatings survey. That means tens of millions of people don’t like intrusive marketing. And can you really blame them? Just imagine for a moment that you’re alone with your spouse, and you’re both in the mood for some long overdue intimacy…and so the sensual foreplay begins…

Suddenly the telephone rings…or the baby starts crying. Kinda kills the mood, doesn’t it?

Well, that’s exactly what intrusive marketing does. It pours cold water on your prospects buying mood. It kills their desire to buy from you. Here’s what marketing expert Joseph Carrabis wrote in his article, Intrusive Little Windows or “DeBranding Made Easy”:

“Imagine yourself in that buying mood. You’ve made up your mind you want something, you’ve done your research, you’ve found it, you want it, you want it right now, you want to spend money and there it is right in front of you and one click from now you can rest assured you’ll have it…

…and then an intrusive little window shows up, right between you and what you want.”

That intrusive little window is the equivalent of a telephone ringing, or a baby crying. Either way, you just lost a potential customer.

Let me ask you a question: Knowing there are tens of millions of consumers out there who don’t like intrusive marketing, why on earth would you ever utilize it on your site? Why risk upsetting and losing even one prospect, if you can avoid doing so?

People Don’t Hate Advertising; They Hate Bad, Intrusive And Annoying Advertising

Here’s what blogger and marketing expert Mike Masnick wrote on his Techdirt blog, in a post titled, People Don’t Hate Advertising; They Hate Bad, Intrusive And Annoying Advertising:

“More than half of U.S. households use some kind of ad-blocking technology, such as a spam filter or a pop-up blocker. However, that hardly means that people hate advertising. It just means they hate totally annoying, intrusive and unwanted advertising.”

Is Intrusive Marketing Disrespectful?

Look…don’t get me wrong, I’m all for aggressively marketing your products and services, as long as you do so legally. That’s called free enterprise, and aggressive marketing is perfectly acceptable.

And there’s certainly nothing wrong with using various marketing tricks and techniques to try to get visitors to stay on your site a little longer. After all, research has shown, the longer you can get visitors to stay on your site, the greater your chances of converting them into customers.

That being said, at what point do aggressive marketing methods cross the line? At what point does it become disrespectful?

By now, it should be obvious to anyone reading this article, I don’t like intrusive marketing. And I would never consider using it on any of my sites. Morally speaking, I consider intrusive marketing to be disrespectful, and I would never dream of disrespecting my visitors in that manner.

Conversely, if I choose to visit your site, I don’t want some intrusive floating window requesting my subscription to your newsletter, the moment I land on your site. At least give me the opportunity to look around your site a little first to see what you have to offer.

Perhaps, after I’ve done that, I’ll subscribe to your newsletter, or request your free report, if I like what your website has to offer. But don’t get in my face!

Hey, Advertisers! How Do You Close This Darn Thing?

And it’s not just Internet marketers who are guilty of disrespecting their visitors in this fashion. Corporate websites are equally culpable.

For example, the other day I was reading an article on The Huffington Post website, when suddenly, a giant advertisement opened up like an accordion and literally started pushing the article I was reading further and further down the page. I couldn’t believe it.

Now here’s the diabolical part. The way the ad was designed, I couldn’t figure out how to close the darn thing. As a result, the ad just kept getting larger and larger and larger, until it finally closed itself. But only after it was done playing.

Think about that for a second. The ad was intentionally designed to be difficult to close. That’s what made it so diabolical. True, it was only a 30 second ad, but that’s not the point. The point is the ad was forced upon me. It was intrusive. It interrupted my reading enjoyment. I have a problem with that.

About.com received so many complaints from it’s customers about intrusive advertising, they were forced to reduce the number of intrusive advertising on its sites. That should be a lesson to us as consumers, as well.

Perhaps, if more of us complained about intrusive marketing methods, other websites might follow suit and reduce or eliminate intrusive marketing on their sites. Writing this article is my way of doing just that.

In closing, I think marketing expert Frank Reed probably said it best, when he recently wrote on his Frank Thinking blog in a post titled, Hey Advertisers! I Can’t Find the Close Button Fast Enough!:

“I don’t care enough to look at your ad, especially because you are trying to trick me into seeing it. That’s pathetic. Get creative and make me care about your brand. Steamrolling your way through my web experience will not get you a customer. Instead, you’ll get “reviews” like this one.”

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

The Pervasion of Disrespectful Marketing