SEOenthusiast

Well, keeping up with Google is a real chore at times and a new, just launched program entitled “Google +1? has entered the online social mileu in the last few days. And what do I think? Ummm…well, here’s the skinny on this attempt by Google to try to IMHO, institute a new “social” indicator into their web results.

First, do go to that link and look over the video that explains what it is Google is attempting to “do” by instituting such a new method for those of us who wish to “review” a site, can do so. When you’re done that, come on back….

Back? Okay, so, what’d you learn? Did you hear the comment that “when you click +1, you’re telling your friends etc, that this is something you should check out!” In other words, you’re reviewing the link and offering up a postive review…least that’s how I read this….it’s a method for Google to collect reviews for web result links.

Here’s a quick sceenshot of what I see when I’m “in” the test program and have made a search…i.e. the new +1 button is now there — click to enlarge…

Here’s a quick screenshot of what I get (after enrolling in this test and making a click or two) here — click to enlarge…

Okay, so what you ask? Yes I do see the new bluish +1 buttons there on the far left hand side of the web results URLs…and I note that below it says “You +1'd this”…but so? IMHO, the addition of this is a “nice try” for Google, but I also think that there are already folks out there trying to “game” this new social ranking tool and that’s a worry always. I’ll wait and see, of course…but will be watching carefully, eh….as should all SMBs out there!

Well, let’s go a step further shall we? Google says this about this new program…”we will record information about your +1 activity in order to provide you and other users with a better experience on Google services…”

Oh, by the way, this whole area, i.e. the +1 reviews is all controlled by your own Google Profile area…here’s my own for instance for you to see what I’ve setup and your own will be similar of course…you can not keep those reviews a secret either, as the program is totally open to the web results searcher. Anything you therefore review by clicking on the +1 icon in a web results page WILL be indexed by Google and WILL be available for all others to see if that URL comes up again in a later search.

So, your comments are open for all to see….which, if you think about it, is a good thing, eh! Which gets me back to my point here….which is

So….think about using this…it’s an attempt as I said for Google to “move” into the social stratosphere…and from my own tinkering with same over the past couple of days, it’s interesting to say the least!

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Today’s article is a guest post from Kevin Lenton. Kevin works with companies to build and maintain their online relationships with clients, as well as prepare content geared at high conversion rates. In his spare time he enjoys playing the harmonica – an activity he’s been involved in since the age of 12.

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Most are well aware of the power and benefits of installing Google Analytics to find out who is coming to a website. Many are even aware that you can see exactly what keywords are being searched for to find that website. There are not many out there however, who are aware of the fact that you can use that data to skyrocket your traffic numbers.

If you follow the steps in this guide, you will see a significant traffic boost. The beauty of this strategy is that it is often limitless (depending on how big the market is for any given website). This is also a strategy that works no matter how much traffic you are currently getting. The only requirement is that your website is getting some sort of traffic from search engines. It works best if you are getting 35+ visitors per day via search engines. The more traffic you currently get, the easier this technique will be to implement.

There are dozens of different options for bringing a website live these days. If you are serious about your website/blog and increasing the traffic, you have to prepare for achieving that goal. If you are on a low grade hosting plan, be aware of the consequences associated with going that route. You do not need anything extreme, but a simple plan from a good web hosting provider will suffice. That way, you do not have to worry about your site going down or some sort of security issue arising. The traffic is not going to skyrocket over night, but it is better to switch hosting servers when your site is getting less traffic versus more. There is always that risk of a small downtime when you change servers.

The idea behind this strategy, is that you will be analyzing your current traffic data, to figure out new pages that should be added to your website and/or blog. There is a lot that can be seen from looking into this data. Sure, it is nice to be able to see the keywords that people are searching for and how many visitors you are getting each day, but what good does that do if you are not utilizing the data you are looking at? Depending on the traffic level of your website, there may be dozens (or even thousands) of keyword phrases that are bringing traffic to your website. Many of these are long-tail keyword phrases.

Taking a look at the list of keywords in question, along with where you currently place for those keywords, will allow you to further target them. If you are ranking fairly well for many of these keywords on accident, imagine what you could do if you actually tried to rank for those same keywords?

The theory behind this strategy is simple. Your job is to find keyword phrases that you already rank for (on accident) that bring you traffic. The key is to find phrases for which you rank below #1. If you are already ranking #1 for the keyword, then there is no point in taking this strategy.

The first thing you must do is login to your Google Analytics account and access your keyword data.

Find your way to the dashboard of the website for which you are attempting this strategy.Click on Traffic Sources on the left hand side of the page.This will expand and give you more options. Click on Keywords.On the bottom right hand corner, you will see an option that says Show Rows. Choose the option to show 500 rows.

You should now have a large list of keyword phrases from which to choose. From there, you can scan through and see what keywords are bringing traffic to your website. Additionally, you will be able to see how many visitors have come from each specific keyword phrase. You want to find a keyword phrase that looks like it is bringing in a few visitors and also was not something you were targeting on purpose.

As an example, notice above a list of keywords from a website. The keyword that was chosen was olay return policy.

This keyword brought decent traffic as is.This keyword was not something targeted to rank for.The current ranking is not #1 (it is #5).We do not have a current page revolving around this keyword.

Notice above, that the circled result is where we are currently ranking. Also notice that the page really has nothing to do with olay return policy. If we build a page all about olay return policy, we could easily rank #1 for this keyword phrase.

In the example, the page that currently ranks is an Oil of Olay Skin Care Review page. An option would be to build an additional page added on to this review called Oil of Olay Return Policy. Optimize the page around the keyword phrase olay return policy, and it should rank #1 fairly easy. This is what could be called a low hanging fruit.

According to available click distribution data, there is a significant difference between the 1st and 5th listed ranking results on Google. While approximately 45.46% searchers click on the 1st result when searching for something in Google, only 5.00% click on the 5th result. While this is just a study based on a lot of different variables, and there are far too many involved to get an accurate number, there is still going to be a lot more action from the first result versus the fifth.

In theory, if you were to go off the above study, then olay return policy could yield approximately 73-75 visitors per month if our page ranked #1 instead of #5, where it currently brings in 8 visitors per month. It is likely that the number would be much lower, however there would still be a significant increase in traffic. The numbers above would tell us that traffic could potentially increase more then 900%, at least in traffic from that specific keyword. If you were to rinse and repeat this process with 10 keywords in total, all similar to the example described above, then the numbers would quickly add up.

It is not possible to calculate an exact rate of traffic by analyzing your current traffic. In the example, the percentage of clicks may perhaps be significantly higher than normal, because the results listed above #5 are all irrelevant and do not give the user what they are looking for. They may even notice that right away within the results, and skip straight down to #5. Who knows what the variables could be with your website, but they are worth looking at. Really take your time with your keyword data to figure out the perfect keywords to target.

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A big thanks goes out to Kevin for writing a fantastic guest post!

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Yup, this new program, just launched,  offers up to any Canadian business the opportunity to get a free website, a free hosting deal, free tools to help build that site and a dot.ca domain address…and who’s footing the bill for this? Ah….well…it appears that this is from Google, RBC bank, Rogers Communications, the Globe & Mail, CIRA and a Toronto based firm called Silver Lining Ltd.

This is interesting….and as you’ve most likely alredy clicked on this link, and read the whole ITBusiness Canada story on same, you should have noted the following items….especially from a Canadian SEO point of view.

That CIRA, our  non-profit authority governing dot-ca domain names in Canada says that they’re not giving away a single .ca domain…but that Google is buying each and every one of them on behalf of the up to 1,000,000 Canadian businesses who dont have a website. With only about 1.5 million .ca sites created since the start of the internet, this kind of a new domain creating initiative would be a real boon for those of us who love our .ca’s….and specially good for those of us who market to just that kind of an audience for all things SEO! Good news, eh!

That other discounted Web and business services are being tossed into Google’s CIRA program by it’s partners. Silver Lining is offering its business planning software up for a free month, and then a discounted price of $365 for a year – the software typically costs $1,000 per year, sure they’ll attempt to latch onto some of the program members, but that’s not a bad thing, IMHO. And yes, there’s other deals available from various partners and some AdSense offers too….you do need to go and take a look/see….honest!

But to really see what’s offered – at least what is planned at this point, you need to go to the “Get your Business Online” site here…and see and read and learn….and here’s what the partners have to say about their goals for this program –

“The Internet is where the majority of Canadians go to find what they want and where more Canadians are buying what they want. Businesses without an online presence are missing out on a huge opportunity to find new customers, and to have new customers find them. We believe that any business, no matter how big or small, can grow and succeed online…”

Terrific deal in our mind…as “free” is always good, eh! We’ve signed up to be a full supporter of this and I’d hope that if you’ve a .ca of your own – or if you’re looking for a free one, that you’ll take the plunge to get online now — for free!

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Google analytics is probably the single most comprehensive tool that any webmaster can use to monitor the ongoing success of their site. The fact that it is free does not detract from its overall value. But it is still only a tool; the value comes with the person that knows how to use it. To most people the graphs, charts and figures will give a basic idea of how well your site is doing. What these figures don’t do is tell you where you could improve, what’s working on your site and what isn’t. To find these answers you have to know how to interpret the data.

Where to find the answers?

Bounce rate: The best place for many of us to start is with your site’s bounce rate, it’s the easiest element to understand and is often the easiest to rectify. To start, list your landing pages with the highest bounce rate, once this is done put together a list of the keywords that were used to get to these pages. Do the keywords used correspond with what is on the page? Did the searcher find what they wanted on this page; was it clear for them to see?

The keywords used and what the searcher finds on the corresponding landing page is often the highest cause of bounce rate, redesigning these landing pages to focus directly on what the searcher in looking for can have an immediate effect on your site. Other factors that may cause your landing pages to have a high bounce rate is a slow and clunky load time, over cluttered pages, poor navigation away from your landing page, or an unnatural progression away from these pages.

Goal, conversions and funnels: Analytics makes it easy to track your goals and conversion. If you’re not currently tracking these then you are essentially blind as to how well your site is doing. What is important about these elements of Google analytics is not necessarily the completion of the gold, but the steps and pages that led to the conversion. By reviewing the click paths of any converted customer you can get a much better idea of what convinced them to take the action you wanted them to. Was there something special about the content they consumed or were you running a special campaigns that may have led to this conversion? You will find the answers in Google analytics you just need to follow their click path backwards.

Segments: Looking at the raw data can be a daunting task, aside from the fact that you could be looking at hundreds of different keywords from searches all over the world. It will also be extremely hard to try and discern any useful and actionable data. To overcome this Google introduced segmentation which will allow you to break your traffic down by segments based on your requirements. If you want to review the search trends of the traffic coming from a specific country it will take two minutes to get a clear picture of this data by creating a new segment.

Site search: Basically site search will tell you what people search for on your site, but once you start to look at the data you will realize that it does so much more than just this, it gives you a clear idea of what your traffic really wanted from your site and what they wanted to find, the question should now be where they able to find it? Looking at the search refinement column and % if it sites exits after searching will tell you straight away if your site really provided them with the answers they were looking for.

Once you start to track your sites with Google analytics the amount of user data that will build up can help you make decisions that will have a positive effect on the future success of your site. Analytics can help you with your content strategy, competitor research, landing pages and the overall conversions of your site.

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This feature from Google was released in 2005 and now included within the Google Webmasters facility as a means of indicating to webmasters what may be wrong with their sites and pages with the purpose of helping pages to be indexed. It's not an SEO tool, but enable us to strat the SEO process by indexing. In attempting to dissipate the 'ivory tower' image Google began to acquire, sitemaps was a means of finding out how Google views pages in your site(s). The suite of tools consist of three tabs: Diagnostic, Statistics, Sitemaps. Use Google sitemaps to address any problems (there are always some!) The suite of tools is exceptionally useful and should be employed by every SEO practitioner on behalf of their clients to fix issues and measure the health of the site as seen by the monster of search engines.
The Diagnostic tab has - Summary, an overview of errors found, URL's that are unreachable, URL:'s that are blocked by the robots.txt file, network errors, when the Googlebot last accessed your home page and how many sitemaps Google has that you have submitted.Crawl Errors, a description of the errors encountered if anyWeb Crawl, a list of URL's that the bot had trouble crawling - organising these into category types (not found, not followed, timed out, etc.)Mobile Web, a list of any problems the bot has discovered for mobile web renderingrobots.txt analysis, what your robots.txt file looks like and what any errors areSite Verification, a somewhat misplaced section that is the starting point - how to get all this information retrieved from the sitePreferred domain, another seemingly misplaced section - a little tool that tells Google that if they currently display http://mydomain.com as well as http://www.mydomain.com - would the webmaster like just one of those displayed as default? (This should also be stipulated in the htaccess file for when external sites link to one when the other is preferred - Note: one format should be chosen and maintained so that no search engine sees both pages and lists them as separate thus exposing you to duplicate content penalties).
The Statistics tab has -
Query Stats, an analysis of which search phrases returned your site and which phrases resulted in click through's to your site.Crawl Stats, which pages have which pagerank in Google - the distribution of pagerank across your site. It also shows which pages historically have the highest pagerankPage Analysis, covering Type - the content type of your crawled pages (Google uses content type for the File Format search option in Advanced Search), Encodings - the encoding used by your crawled pages, and Common Words - most importantly for SEO, words in your site's content, and in external anchors to your siteIndex Stats, advanced operators used in your site to reveal valuable things about the site - which pages are indexed (rather than which pages aren't, found in the Web Crawl utility), external pages that refer to your site's URL, backlinks (Google only shows 'some'), the current cache of your site, information held about your site (generally the information displayed when searches retrieve the site in SERP's), and external pages that are similar to the site (generally useless and misleading).
The Sitemaps tab has -
Submission of the sitemaps for the site. If the site is large, it may have multiple sitemaps and all can be submitted here. The format can be URL (html or xml), text or XML RSS feed
If Google chose to charge an amount monthly for the use of this tool, we would advise our clients to pay it without hesitation, and we'd pay and use it ourselves. As with much from Google, it's free and as such shouldn't be regarded cheaply - it's gold dust to a search engine optimisation campaign.
Further Reading: Google Sitemaps Explanation | Google Sitemaps Review


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