The Dot Report

Are you looking for a tool to analyze your website traffic? We suggest using Google Analytics, which is free and offers several advanced features. Here are some of the advantages of using Google Analytics:

• You can utilize powerful visualization tools like In-Page Analytics and Flow Visualization. In-Page Analytics helps you see how users interact with the pages of your site, while Flow Visualization evaluates the path taken by your visitor to reach your site.
• An Advanced Segments option will help you differentiate and analyze specific traffic. For example, you can create a segment to get information on visitors who are purchasers, with another segment for non-purchasers.
• The Content section of Google Analytics helps you see how often visitors come to your site and how long they stay. The new Content Experiment section offers the opportunity to change the versions of your site’s pages to check which variation leads to the highest number of conversions. You can opt for up to five variations of a page and evaluate the conversion rate(s).
• Social reports help you track the impact of social media on your website traffic. You can easily track down the sharing of your content on various social sites as well as on your own website by others. This will help you decide which sections of your website are popular with end users and build promotion for your site.
• Goals and Event Tracking lets you trace conversions, sales, downloads or video plays. You can easily customize your reports based on which actions of visitors you want to watch that will be important for your business objectives.

Google Analytics Set-Up

To enjoy the above benefits, here’s all you need to do:

• Have a Google account and activate Analytics (http://www.google.com/analytics/).
• Click the “Access Analytics” button.
• Enter the account name (“domain.com,” URL of your website, your time zone). You will also be asked if you want to share your Analytics data with third-party services or other Google products.
• Once you are done with your account creation, you need to set up the Tracking Code Configuration for your website. The installation process differs and is based on how an individual website is built. If your website theme does not have an admin panel option, find the part of your site’s template before the closing </head>tag in the HTML code, which is generally the “header.php” file. If your site has a collection of HTML pages, install the tracking code before the </head>tag on each of the pages that you want to include in Google Analytics.

Google Analytics is a wonderful tool for search engine optimization as it allows great insight into the behavior of site visitors. By highlighting visitors’ behavior, it helps you put more focus on activities that will draw in more visitors to your site.

Google Analytics and AdWords

Google AdWords is a unique service that lets you buy ads that are displayed to users when visitors search or browse through Google or websites in Google. On the other hand, Analytics lets you analyze the traffic received by your website. By combining Analytics and AdWords, you can get valuable information on how your ads affect the page views of your site. The Analytics report will throw light on post-click performance metrics of the traffic you receive from AdWords to strategically assess the outcomes that result from searchers clicking on your AdWords ads.

With search engines getting smarter every day, it takes a lot more than just good content to stay ahead of your competitors. If you want a good ranking for your website, you need to follow a step-by-step process of search engine optimization (SEO). The first step to take is on-page optimization. On-page optimization involves techniques that will help increase your rankings, while also enhancing the overall readability for your site.

Here are some important techniques for on-page optimization that will do wonders for your site:

Title Optimization

The title tag of your website is very important and should include enough basic information about your business to describe it accurately. In fact, the title is the first thing in your website that is indexed by search engines. So your website title must be appealing and include certain information like the keyword(s) for which you want your website to rank. For example, if you are expanding your cake shop to an online business, you should include keywords in the title tag like “Cecilia’s Blueberry Cakes.” Or “Sam’s Hot Pizza” if it’s a pizza shop you want to rank.

Meta Tag Optimization

The meta description of your site should contain a brief description of the services the business is focused on. It should be well-written, concise, and appealing to your potential buyers. You should include your primary keywords and the main selling point of your business to attract targeted customers. For example, if you are selling tasty blueberry cakes, you can add a phrase like “tasty blueberry cakes from only $1.” As a result, if searchers are looking for “blueberry cakes at $1,” you can be found easily.

Keyword Optimization

The right use of keywords plays a major role in SEO. A good site must have a proper balance of content and keywords. Too many keywords in the copy can make your site unreadable to visitors. For this aspect of SEO, you should thoroughly research keywords before deciding on the ones to use. Think in terms of your target audience and the keywords they would use to find what you offer. There are many online keyword search tools like Google Adwords Keyword Tool, SEObook Keyword Suggestion Tool and Overture Keyword Tool that you can use.

Image Optimization

Images on your site are equally important, just like the copy and the keywords. You need to optimize them, too, to help search engines find them. Since search engine spiders can read only text, you need to use special tags for your images to make them readable by search engines. For example, you can create a file name for an image like “blueberry cake.jpg.” instead of “DSC24055.jpg.” You can also make the file name and alt text (alternate text) for the image the same. Alt text is the description that comes up when the mouse icon moves over an image. You can also use keywords in the alt text.

The techniques mentioned above, if followed properly, can make it easy for you to achieve a good page rank for your website on search engines.

If you’re new to SEO (search engine optimization), it’s very important to get acquainted with the related terms and definitions. There are many SEO definitions and terms, but for the convenience of beginners, here is a list of the most used terms that help one navigate the world of SEO.

SEO – SEO, or search engine optimization, is a process that enables you to clearly describe your site to different search engines for indexing. With an effective “description,” you let search engines “know” more about your site and increase its ranking on specific terms.

SEM – SEM, or search engine marketing, refers to marketing or promoting your website in the world of the Internet by increasing its visibility in search engine result pages (SERP) using different methods like inclusion, search engine optimization, PPC (pay per click) campaigns, contextual advertising and paid placements. These SEM techniques are used primarily for business purposes.

White Hat SEO – It is the most effective, long lasting, ethical and proper SEO technique, based on the guidelines of SEO best practices.

Black Hat SEO – This is often described as unacceptable SEO technique, which can easily boost page ranks but also has the risk of black listing by Google.

Manual SEO – This is a time consuming, but effective process without the usage of any kind of software or tool.

Organic Results – Non-paid results returned by search engines are known as organic results. Organic result ranks are determined by the relevance of content, based on the terms searched for.

Keywords and Keyword Density – Keywords are the short phrases or terms that represent your page(s) for the search engines as well as to users of different sites. Keywords are typed into search engines to generate relevant search results. Keyword density denotes how often a keyword has been used on an individual web page.

SpiderBot – This is a program that “crawls” the web and is assigned to search, gather and organize information. It is also used to refer to and index web pages in various online searches.

Meta Tag – In order to identify the purpose and topic of a given page, search engines uses meta tags which contain descriptive information about the web page.

Alt Tag – An alt tag is an HTML tag generally used with an image that boosts Google Image results. Its main role is to exhibit text if the image itself is not displayed.

Page Rank – Page rank is measured within the values of 0 to 10. This measuring parameter is used by Google to determine the relative value of a web page in comparison to all other pages.

Link Building – This is a process of building the popularity of a site with the help of inbound and outbound links. If a website has a high number of relevant links, it can easily achieve high page rank.

URL – URL, or uniform resource locator, is the address of a website.

Google uses links from websites as an integral part of their ranking mechanism. It is easiest to think of links in the same way you would associate words to describe a person. For example, often when people speak about Einstein, the first words that will come to mind are “genius, physicist, e=mc2.” Similarly, when pages “speak” of other pages, they do so with links, and when certain links are louder than others in the chatter, those are the keywords which are associated with the other pages.

Now, some pages are more important than others. For example, the main page of Google has a much higher value than, say, the website of Bob’s Bicycle Barn. As a result, a link from Google’s index page with a certain keyword counts far higher than a link from the latter. That being said, a high number of links still counts as strong currency in Google algorithm today. The reason Google’s index page is more weighty is because of the number of other pages that are linking to this page. You can think of this as a matter of tiered links coming in from different sources.

The process used by Google to sort out various websites based on their respective relevance depends on the bulk of links that come from other sites. For example, let’s talk about Wikipedia, a Google favorite. The reason Wikipedia is right on top is because so many other websites point to Wikipedia as an authority on a multitude of topics. The sites that link to Wikipedia are backed by other sites and thus create a tree-shaped linking structure. This type of linking structure is known as Tiered Link Building.

When you are seeking to rank your website for keywords with Google, it helps to use a Tiered Link Building structure. That means creating a three- or four-level structure of links, like building a house. Put your main website that needs to rank for a keyword right on top, and then have other websites link towards it, as if they were the foundation pieces for your house. Ideally, you should have about three levels of links pointing towards your site. Think of it as: tertiary links, secondary links, primary links, main website.

This is an excellent format when it comes to increasing the page rank of the main site since, with the increase of page rank in each tier, the tier ahead of it also improves. Hence, the main site gains a higher rank.

When you’ve spent a significant amount of time creating (hopefully) interesting content, you’re most likely expecting your readers to comment. Plus, comments can increase your freshness score with search engines. In addition, the number of comments on a page may bring about a difference in page ranking. Regardless, we all love having fresh comments on our pages to encourage community building and reflect user engagement.

Here are some tricks for generating more and more comments to your articles or page:

1. The first thing to consider is making it as simple as possible for viewers to leave comments. This means you need to have easy ways for viewers to leave a comment, like assuring them that their email address is secure and will not be used for anything other than unique identification. Or you can allow them to log in via Twitter or Facebook.
2. If your readers must register to comment, you can also allow them do that using social media accounts like Twitter and Facebook. You can also use Social Login if you’re looking for all social networks. This practice can generate a lot of benefits for your page, like comments from traceable users as well as an increased chance of your page being shared on social networking sites.
3. You must always consider giving the comment section a prominent position if you want the conversation to continue for very long. You should also place “Join the Conversation” or “Leave a Comment” at the end of the article.
4. Do something for your loyal commenters to make them feel important and a part of the community; and thus, generate more comments. Examples are attaching fun titles with each loyal commenter or awarding them badges to encourage your readers to visit your page and leave comments again and again.
5. Articles with comments always draw more comments. Hence, you need to respond to those comments in your articles. This will show how much you’re interested in your commenters.
6. Lastly, you should always make a point to track your progress by attaching the Google Analytics goal with a new comment.

You should certainly take advantage of these approaches to generating more comments to your page, article or blog. But, in the end, it is always interesting and compelling content that draws the first response.

Twitter poses a particularly interesting platform for marketers. We have a few tips that will enable you to make the most of your marketing efforts. The challenges lie in the fact that there is a limit on the length of the updates you can send and that you aren’t guaranteed an audience who will view your tweets.

1. The weekend is the best time for Twitter. Saturdays and Sundays have a 17% increased engagement rate over weekdays. Large brands are already using this statistic, and 19% of brands have marketing efforts active on Twitter over the weekend.

2. As far as a time to tweet goes, between 8:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. increases visibility by up to 30%. Some 64% of brands tweet during this time. This includes weekends and is a no-brainer since may be the most natural time to work in. If you are targeting a particular geographical region, be certain to calculate the difference in time zones before sending out your tweets.

3. Twitter is geared for short messages. Statistics reveal that messages with less than 100 characters have a 17% increased engagement rate. Keep your messages short and to the point for a better engagement experience.

4. #Hashtags are your friends. Tweets with hashtags have double the engagement effect as those without. Plus, being in a sweet spot to be trending helps your tweets to snowball. Most companies are still not taking advantage of hashtags. In fact, less than 25% of tweets have hashtags.

5. #Hashtags allow you to add emotional elements to your message and are an effective method of subliminal communication. For example, if you want to engage the idea of a launch, your product launch tweet could have the message, “Widget with increased efficiency is a go! #launch #greensignal” #greensigna.” Tweets with up to two #hashtags have over 20% increase in engagement, whereas more than two will decrease your effectiveness by over 15%.

6. If you want something ask for it. A message with RT or Retweet: will have a 12-fold chance of being retweeted versus a regular message. Just 1% of tweets ask for a retweet. There is a gold mine of traffic in simply asking for retweets. To maximize effectiveness, use a #hashtag that is trending and ask for a retweet in your message. Using the word RT increases your success rate by a factor of 10. However, using the word Retweet increases effectiveness by a factor of 23.

There will always be standard Twitter best practices such as completely filling out your profile, putting in a tagline, having a relevant profile photo and of course a name that doesn’t end with a number, etc. Make the most of your Twitter marketing and happy tweeting!

WordPress is a PHP framework that is commonly used not just as a blogging platform, but also as a Content Management System. Out of the box, WordPress is search engine friendly and has built-in functionality that automatically “pings” or calls search engines and directories to visit your site and crawl new content. However, there are a few basic steps you can take to further improve your search engine rankings.

1. Customizing URLs: Permalink Structure

A permalink is the link to your page or post. Including the keywords in your URL can help you in Google rankings. The default permalink structure when WordPress is first installed looks like this:
“http://yourdomainname.com/?p=123.” By changing the settings to “Post name,” it looks like this: “http://yourdomainname.com/post-title-which-includes-keyword.”

2. Optimize Your Titles

The titleof your page is one of the single most important factors for ranking in search results. The title shows up in both the top of a browser’s window and search engine results. Creating a descriptive, keyword-laden title is important for increasing search engine rankings. To optimize the title for search engines, keep it to a maximum of 70 characters in length and place important keywords close to the beginning of the title.

3. Optimize Your Descriptions

The meta description is the text that displays in search engine results, so it is important to capture keywords and look relevant. Descriptions should not go over 160 characters to avoid truncation which reduces your click-through rate. Use active words that entice your visitors and make them want to choose and click on your listing, such as including a call to action and making sure it contains the focus keyword of your post or page at least once.

4. Optimize Your Images

By including alt tags that contain keywords in your images and using keywords in the name of your image files, you can increase search engine traffic.

5. XML Sitemaps

An XML sitemap is a list of the pages of a website that is accessible to search engine crawlers. This is important for informing Google and other search engines that your site has been updated.

6. Sign up for Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools is a must-use service to see how Google crawls and indexes your site and to find out if your website has been hacked or has any broken links.

7. Link Building

Generally, the site that ranks first in a search query in Google is going to have a lot more links than the site that ranks fifth. The most important factor in getting traffic from search engines, besides relevant content, is backlinking. Backlinking is simply other sites that link back to yours. One way to start backlinking your site is to get free backlinks from well-trafficked, authority websites that will get you indexed in search engines quickly. For example, you could submit a YouTube video and a few articles to Ezinearticles. WordPress comes with a built-in RSS feed (Really Simple Syndication) which means that when you publish a post, your content goes to a feed directory with a link coming back to your site.

WordPress plugins are one of the best reasons to use WordPress. Installing a WordPress SEO plugin can help optimize your site for SEO easily, such as WordPress SEO by Yoast or All In One SEO Pack. There are loads of things available online for working with WordPress, so do a little searching and chances are good you’ll find just what you need.

In the last few months, Pinterest has become one of the most talked about topics among Web users who have spent a lot of time deciphering whether it actually helps to drive traffic or how spammers may be using it to create income. However, if we think broadly, we see that Pinterest can be used by Web publishers to add an extra advantage to their efforts.

There are plenty of companies that are effortlessly using it to connect with their fans and generate traffic. But publishers looking forward to using Pinterest should think beyond the mere goal of generating traffic. They should use it to research and evaluate their customers. Besides, putting up futile infographics can create a lot of clutter on the Web.

An important marketing trend involves a sharp rise in the value of recognition and praise, especially from contemporaries. This recognition draws traffic and can convert potential customers. Hence, a primary goal of publishers should be to create a name for themselves, then move on to other goals like campaign effectiveness and demand generation. In fact, this approach is applicable not just to online publishers. Offline publishers, too, face the same problem and often end up merely marketing to rather than connecting with their audience.

The best thing a publisher can do using Pinterest is to engage completely in the interests of the customer, based on their point of view. One needs to feel the way the customer feels, think the way they think. Research is essential to knowing what people are looking for and what matters to them.

Pinterest is a great medium, particularly for those who have a long-term goal and are aiming to concentrate on what their customers are thinking, rather than on a short or instant marketing horizon.