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Using Your Content for Internet Marketing

By Carl Hoffman in Featured

If you are currently marketing your business online and have not put a great deal of thought into the content on your website, you may be making an incredibly costly mistake. The content on your website is invaluable for a number of reasons.

First of all it gives visitors to your website their first impression of your business and the products and services you offer. Additionally, well written content can be instrumental in selling your products and services to your potential customers.

Finally, the content on your website can influence the size of the target audience you are able to reach by helping to improve your search engine rankings. With your content capable of doing so much, it is clear you should be hiring a professional content writer to assist you writing the copy for your website. This article will delve deeper into the importance of providing accurate, concise and informative content on your website when you are marketing online.

One of the most basic reasons why the quality of the content on your website is so important is because visitors to your website will likely form their initial opinions of your website based on the content on your website. If the copy is poorly written, does not hold the visitors attention and does not promote your products and services well visitors are likely to exit your website without making a purchase.

Conversely, if the copy on your website is well written, engages the reader and promotes the products and services you offer the visitor is more likely to investigate the website further to learn more about the products and services and may make a purchase. The content of your website will be one of the aspects of the website which is first noticed by visitors so it is important for this content to be well written.

Well written sales copy can also be very persuasive and may compel visitors to the website to purchase the products or services offered on the website. This is important especially if the main purpose of the website is to sell the products or services. The sales copy should accurately describe the products or services offered, stress the importance of these products and services and compel the visitor to make a purchase. All of this should be done without appearing to be blatantly advertising the products and services.

Writing this type of copy can be quite complicated and typically requires hiring a sales copywriter who is experienced and skilled at writing this type of informative and persuasive content. Sales copy written by an amateur or an inexperienced writer will not likely be as effective as copy written by a professional with a great deal of experience in Internet marketing.

Finally the content on your website is very important because it can greatly influence your search engine rankings. This is critical because high search engine rankings help your business to reach a considerably larger audience.

Internet users are typically looking for information quickly and want immediate results to their inquiries. Search engines understand this profile and write complicated algorithms which help them to supply the most relevant websites when a user searches for a particular word or phrase. This is important to business owners because Internet users realize the value of search engines and are likely to only visit websites which rank well in the search engines. This includes websites which rank on the first page or two of search results.

Your business might sell football jerseys and you may have a well designed website, a superior inventory and excellent prices but if your website does not rank well in search engines you are missing out on a great deal of free advertising. If your website lands on the third page or lower most visitors who search for relevant terms will not likely visit your website because they will have found what they were looking for on earlier pages. This is where the content on your website becomes important.

Websites containing content which has been optimized for particular keywords will likely rank well with search engines. Hiring a writer skilled in writing optimized content can help to improve your search engine rankings so you can reach more potential customers.
Author:  Carl Hoffman has over 20 years of sales and marketing experience and is considered an expert cook. he has many online ventures and author of countless articles on cooking, health, sales and marketing. You can vist him at Hoffy’s Kitchen.

Learning The Basic About Internet Marketing: Keyword Positioning

By Markus Skupeika in Featured

Hit the Bull’s Eye in Internet Marketing.

How? Simply do your homework: Perform proper keyword research.

Building up an online business is tricky. It is when you think you have the perfect formula for any real- time business to succeed, that you begin to realize your concept of traditional marketing does not work in online setting. While traditional marketing uses the gift of gab, Internet marketing utilizes the perfect combination of words or terms, unique for a particular website. In fact, the written word plays a pivotal role in online success.

On the internet, keyword positioning is strategic step: it can make or unmake your dream of hitting it big in a realm, where making money has limitless boundaries and anybody, sans MBA can challenge the masters. Search Engine Optimization, where keyword positioning is a primary factor, is the vessel that takes you to your destination.

By definition, keywords are searchable words or terms that refer to a specific subject matter. The main purpose of selecting keywords properly is to ensure that when an online user searches for a product, he types on the search bar keyword or phrases that are relevant to the information he seeks, AND exactly the keywords or phrases that would bring him to YOUR website - obviously, with the end-view of making a purchase.

Targeting keywords for your website is a challenging task, but there are proven ways on how to come up with a list that can work. Here are a few tips:

What to target:

Target keywords based on the names of your product, the brands you carry, nature of your service, or by the use of terms that are popular among online users when they search for products or services similar to yours. Targeting only keywords that are highly relevant to your business assures you that the traffic you need is already sifted from the time-wasters.

You can avail of all the help you need online. There are tools available online that rank keywords according to the number of clicks they generate or how in demand these keywords are among the present crop of searchers.

Internet Marketing Service is an umbrella of strategies, such as article marketing and link building to name a few, but each of these strategies is anchored on pre-selected keywords and keyword phrases. The success or failure of the total marketing campaign begins on keyword positioning.

How to target:

1.)Analyze keyword demand.

This is simply determining, which keywords search engines have ranked high, depending on how many times these keywords were used by online searchers when they accessed search engines for information. However, it does not stop there.

The trick is not simply to determine, which keywords ranked high, but how these keywords relate to your present needs. Are these the keywords that can generate the desired traffic to your website?

2.) Create your own list of keywords based on your products, services and ideas.

As apples cannot fall far from the tree, so do your keywords. They should describe your products or service, not your competitor’s.

3.) Be challenged by the best.

Who are your competitors? Which keywords have delivered to them the most number of traffic? Make a list of these keywords and decide which ones you could target as well.

4.)Conduct a performance review.

Determine your past performance among search engines and find a list of your own keywords, which performed well in the traffic department. If you did it once, you can do it again!

Internet Marketing may be highly competitive, with strategies that never remain constant, but it has never swerved away from the basic: choose good keywords and these will take care of your online success.

Author:  There are dozens of ways to run a successful internet marketing service than you know. Discover the secrets to local discount florida internet marketing with Markus today.

SEO for Images on Web Sites

By Patrick Heathcock in Featured

Excellent images are essential for web sites and can lift an ordinary web site to a professional level. The average surfer responds better to websites that use good quality images, tending to linger longer and browse more pages than when faced with dense, text-heavy pages. There are many reasonable priced picture libraries online where one can source everything from flower pictures to computer equipment images.

Here are a few rules that need to be followed to ensure that the images become an asset to your site rather than an unwieldy burden and that your careful SEO use of keywords in the text is enhanced by the images:

1. Make sure all your images are correctly optimized: i.e. a relatively large image of 600×475 pixels should be between 20KB and 50KB in size(maximum). If you use a lot of thumbnail images on one page (125×125 pixel) then they should be between 5KB and 10KB in size.

By sticking to these simple size guides you will ensure that your page loads quickly. Do check every single image that you put up. I have seen images on websites that are 2MB in size, leaving the web site owner scratching his head and wondering why the page takes so long to load. Casual surfers will have long since departed to faster loading sites.

2. Naming your images appropriately will substantially help by making it easier for Google to find the images on your web site (Google has recently changed its algorithm to take into account images and other media more than ever before) improving your overall search engine optimization.

Try to name each image using keywords that link to the subject of the page that the image is on. If the subject of your page is red flowers, then find an image of a red flower and name it red-flower.jpg. Hyphenate the image names or use underscore between the words. The search engine spiders will see this image name as separate words if you do this.

Don’t be tempted to abbreviate your image names, thus rendering them unrecognizable for SEO purposes e.g. rdflwr.jpg. You may end up with rather long image names by using the full keyword names but you will maximise the SEO benefits of your chosen key phrases for each page.

Lastly vary the image names that you use, when you have multiple images on one page, even by one letter to make it a plural e.g. red-flowers.jpg or flowers-red.jpg so that the search engines don’t penalise you for keyword loading.

3. Make sure you add alt tags to every image, which are also taken into account by the search engine spiders, once again using appropriately varied keyword phrases that link to the subject of the page.

4. Search on the Net for royalty free stock picture libraries. There are many of them, some specialising in one subject others covering a huge range of subjects. They are normally free to register with and generally use one of two payment systems: a credit system whereby you purchase x number of credits and each image costs a number of credits according to size; or a monthly subscription which allows you to download a certain number of images each month. Most libraries provide web ready images at 72 dpi or print ready images at 300 dpi. Web ready images are generally from 450-800 pixels wide or high, but this is perfectly adequate for use on a website. With prices often ranging from $1 per web ready image to $50 for a A4 sized print ready image this is a very affordable way of enhancing your web site and attracting both spiders and surfers.
Author:  Patrick Heathcock is a photographer and web developer. Co-creator of A Flower Gallery - an online art gallery and flower picture library, he has also recently launched a luxury travel website Just the Planet and maintains several other websites including Food and Family.

New SEO Waves: W3C Standards and Accessibility

By Mihaela Lica in Featured

One look at Google’s Accessible Web Search is enough to make even the most stubborn web coder understand that compliant, accessible design is no longer the infatuation of some W3C enthusiasts, but a necessity. Even amateur SEOs will stop affirming that W3C compliance has nothing to do with getting high Google rankings.

W3C compliance has a lot to do with accessibility. Correct codes are scannable. The search engine bots scan error-free HTML better and index the sites accurately.

But when the W3C enthusiasts started this project their idea had nothing to do with SEO. The plan was to create some web coding standards that will make it easier for the web coders to program websites that are visible in all the browsers, adaptable, flexible and accessible with any reading devices, in short: websites for the users. The idea was supposed to bring advantages for all: designers, web surfers and website owners (by providing the basis for sites with a good, logical structure, that would be more economical to update, change and so on).

The W3C standards are still a matter of debate, but this will not take so long anymore. Google, the Giant of the search, is already taking steps to support the W3C initial ideas.

In Google’s Accessible Web Search - right now a simple experiment - accessible sites rank higher. This is Google’s effort to deliver better search results (accessible websites) for the visually impaired. This means that sites that comply with the W3C standards and pass an official accessibility tests (ex. Cynthia Says) will rank higher into the search engine result pages. Accessible sites are not visually distracting: so the graphics or/and animations are kept to a minimum and they work well even without images. Such sites are easy navigable - navigation can be managed with the keyboard. Good navigation enhances user experience and that means that it increases website usability.

The fact that Google prioritizes websites that are accessible and compliant sets clear new goals for SEOs everywhere.

The truth is that people with disabilities should be able to benefit from the same tools as everyone else. And I suppose that Google’s purpose is to merge its Accessible Web Search into the standard Web search one day. More and more webtrepreneurs understand the importance of valid codes and accessibility, but till the day comes when the Web will run on smooth paths, we still have a long time to wait. In the meanwhile SEOs will introduce a new SEO service in their menu: HTML validation. I confess, I practice what I preach since 2004. It’s my understanding of “web optimization.” I also try to address the main accessibility issues on each site I work on, and make each and every page pass the automatic Cynthia validation.

Google’s guidelines on accessibility (still under development) will probably not be as strict as those of the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), but they’ll still make a difference for the impaired users.

With already existent sites it might be difficult to comply with all the accessibility guidelines, but it will not hurt to correct at least a part of them. There are no excuses for invalid HTML codes.

To make a long story short: validate your HTML and address your accessibility issues now, to create a solid base for website usability and to avoid imminent future financial strains.

Besides, by optimizing your site from these two perspectives (W3C and accessibility), you are increasing visibility in Google. Isn’t this what you wish for your site?

Author:  Mihaela Lica is online marketing specialist for the Luxembourg based web development company Red Dog Communications.

Keep Your Website Search Friendly

By Sharon Housley in Featured

So you have a fantastic website but no one ever visits. You may ask? Why? Your website should be designed with search engines in mind. Too many web designers are graphic artists that excel at image manipulation, but lack a basic understanding of search engine optimization. Web design and search engine optimization (SEO) should not be mutually exclusive. Webmasters should have a clear understanding of both design techniques and how the search engines work.

Incredible graphics on a website without any traffic, will do little to fill the coffers. Follow these basic guidelines to ensure that your website will be visited and attractive.

1. Navigation Both humans and crawlers (search engines) need to be able to navigate your website. Avoid using technology that prohibits the search engine’s ability to spider web pages. The majority of search engines have the ability to follow the links on a website if you use standard HTML. Observe normal convention and make the links obvious and available to all website visitors.

2. Easy to Read Fonts should be legible and webmasters should utilize white space judiciously. Text on the web page should be easy to read.

3. Speed Avoid using overly large graphics that are slow to load. Remember you only have mere seconds to capture the visitors attention, do not waste precious seconds with web pages that are slow to load. Search engines too will become impatient and give up on your website if it takes too long to view the content. As a result you should avoid using free hosting services that might be unreliable or slow to respond if you receive any web traffic surges.

4. Consistency Your website should maintain a consistent look and feel. In other words, all the pages on the website should have a similar look, color scheme and navigation.

5. Above the Fold The most important information on the your web page should appear above the “fold”. This means that the website visitor should be able to view the most important content without having to use the scroll bar.

6. Contact Information Include corporate contact information on the website. This lends your company credibility, anyone can pretend to be anyone or anything. Including contact information on a website shows that you are a serious and legitimate business entity.

7. Avoid Javascript /Ajax Javascript and Ajax are cool, but they are not search friendly. It is best to stick with good old HTML. Search engines at this point are unable to spider the website contents that are displayed using Javascript. This is also true of websites that are dynamically updated with Ajax. Chances are the body of your website will help your website rank well; do not waste the search engine opportunity by using Javascript or Ajax.

8. Meta Data Matters Each and every web page on the website should contain a unique title and description. Many search engines extract meta data from the website header and use it to classify and categorize the web pages listing. The web page title and description should relate to the webpage contents.

9. Keywords Naturally Use website keywords and keyword phrases in the web copy in a natural way. Search engines are starting to discern unnatural text, machine generated content and content that is cobbled together by a bot. Write your website’s content for humans not search engines.

10. Web Page Focus Each web page on a website should focus on one or two keywords or keyword phrases, no more no less. The keywords should be incorporated into the meta tags, and web copy.

An optimized website can bring search traffic and visitors who have a natural interest in your product or service. Optimization should be part of the design process. Before hiring a web designer make sure they understand both your design needs and search engine optimization.

Author:  Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for RecordForAll http://www.recordforall.com audio recording and editing software.

5 Ways to Add Human Touch to Your Business

By Joel Christopher in Featured

Make your business personal. This is the credo of the more successful internet marketers. Nobody wants to make business with a robot! While you will be using automation and outsourcing techniques, this is not an excuse for you to let them do all of the work for you.

There are different ways to add human touch to your business as an internet marketer. Review them, apply them, and you will surely have your business thriving in no time!

Modify Your Autoresponders

Your autoreponders must be as personalized as possible. The good thing about autoresponders is that it has a capacity to hold in huge amounts of memory. Your autoresponders must be tailored to suit the mood you want to convey to your prospects.

If at all possible, do multiple versions of autoresponders, be it in the form or text, audio or video, so that you will be able to reach out to more people who dig different types of media in getting information.

Ask your Prospects

You heard me right. Ask your prospects on what they would want to see, what they expect from you and what their needs are. You may have done your research, but there may be other pressing matters that went beyond the scope of your research at the time you were building your business.

Everyday, more and more people are being included in your target market. It would be safe to assume that it is perpetually changing, so in order for you to remain at the winning edge, you must be able to ask your prospects what is it that you can change or what you can do to further improve your business in serving them.

Invite Your Prospects to Interact with You

Have a contact number handy. Invite prospects to interact with you. This is really the ultimate human touch you can offer. Your autoresponders are not quite enough. There is a different appeal and ring to it when you are able to interact with your prospects. Treat them as you would treat a good friend.

Welcome their inquiries and actually encourage them to call you. If you find yourself unable to answer all of their queries at the same time, just make sure that you are able to get back to them somehow, either by means of having an assistant or an autoresponder while they wait for your response.

Be conversational in your approach

This is a winner when it comes to marketing. Since they do not really see you face to face, the next best thing you could do is make your text seem to be friendly enough for them to read. Communicate, register warmth and have them directly involved with whatever it is you are writing them for.

Customize Your Products

When you have a specific target market, you put human touch to it when you do choose to deal with products that are made just for them. It will also be so much better if those products can be modified to suit their individual preferences. Do not just make your autoresponders, conversation skills and website friendly. Include your products as well and make it as personalized as possible.

Author:  Joel Christopher is a best-selling author, speaker and mentor, known worldwide as The MasterListBuilder. To find out more on how you can triple your leads, sales and profits. Visit MasterListBuilder.com

5 Steps for Generating Targeted Leads

By Brian Lam in Featured

Anyone can just use cold calls to try to generate leads. But who would want to waste time on such unproductive actions? Wouldn’t it be better if you can have a steady stream of hot leads, leads that not only include contact information but give you an idea of what the prospect needs, the problem they want solved? Most importantly, they want what you have to offer and are ready to buy.

You have a web site and thousands of people are visiting your site each week. If everything is working properly, you should be generating dozens of targeted leads with hundreds of people on your marketing list to offer them what you have. But if not, then there are five reasons why your web site is not getting the targeted leads that it deserves to get.

1. You Should Collect Contact Information

Use incentives to collect the email address of every visitor. Offer them freebies such as articles, tutorials or a guide so that they will be motivated to give you their email addresses.

Most importantly, offer your prospects something related that they want. Plus, place your sign up form prominently at the top of your web page and also in your navigation bar at the side.

This way, you should be able to capture 10-20% of your visitors’ email addresses.

2. You Should Use Autoresponders to Collect Detailed Information

The most basic is to get their email addresses but wouldn’t it be more helpful if you have more information?

You can use an autoresponder to send a confirmation email where you ask them for more detailed information and some questions about what they are interested in will prove helpful in closing the future sale.

3. You Should Get People to Tell You How You Can Help Them

The internet is a great resource for free information and people specifically use that as their purpose.

To find solutions to their problems.

So in order to use this to your advantage, you will have to prompt people to contact you by including an inquiry form on your web site, especially on high visibility pages, at the bottom of your home page and other key pages.

Once you start receiving completed inquiry forms, you can sort through them to identify which ones are worth following up and try to close the sale through these useful information that you have gathered.

4. You Should Collect Feedback and Learn More About Your Prospect’s Needs

Some people buy immediately when being show the sales pages, others don’t even have an interest. But the majority falls into the middle. These are people who are interested but not ready to commit.

So you will need to capture them by using exit pop up to collect feedback and to find out what they are looking for.

By using an incentive, you can motivate them to fill up the form. When you have these feedback forms, you can follow up with them and ask them why they didn’t buy the services or products or just to get further information about the problems they want to solve.

You will be surprised at how many you can actually turn into clients by doing these.

5. You Should Send out Surveys to Identify What Sells

Having a newsletter has its advantages because you can leverage the trust of your readers to collect ideas on their needs. If you have been regularly following up with them, then it is more than likely that they will respond to your request.

Just send about two to four times annually on an informal survey to your readers. Ask them for their ideas, what they think of your services, products, what they like best, what they dislike and what they need and want. Tabulate the responses and develop products and services they asked for.

Eventually, use these five methods and I’m sure you will be getting your stream of targeted leads very fast. Plus, you will be able to turn them into loyal clients of yours using the following up to grow your business.

Author:  Brian Lam is an experienced Internet marketing specialist. Get his FREE 13 part internet marketing training course which exploded his opt-in list by 1133% at Internet Marketing Solution center plus 3 FREE bonuses. Check out his blog: The Internet Marketer’s Life Exposed too. Visit: http://www.powerlistgenerator.com

Blog Startup: Template Organization

By Ian Fernando in Featured

This weekend was very busy; I have been working hard on the new design and its layout/structure. I was going to post about it on Saturday, but I wanted to release my new blog by the end of the week. Template design is crucial and important. I want to make sure everything is organize and easy to navigate to all readers.

Designing your own successful web page can seem difficult and nearly impossible if you do not do a little research first. The reason you need to know the basics of web page design is because the design of your website will actually influence whether or not people continue to visit your site and ultimately, whether they will buy from you or not. Obviously, a lot is riding on your website design so it is worthwhile to take this seriously and put some effort into doing it right the first time.

A design flaw many beginners run into is organization. Your website must be well organized, and not just to you, but to the average person who has never visited your site before. It should be obvious where the information is and how visitors can get to it without wading through a lot of other links and information they are not interested in. Check out some larger, more successful sites to see how they deal with organization and just follow their lead.

With this specific blog, I decided to go with web templates, as these days templates are getting real popular and can be easily manageable. This blog as well is template base from Brian Gardner. I like this specific template for this blog because it has a blog feel to it and is very easily manageable. Of course I reorganize some things and added a small banner to make the blog look a live.

Template or Create your Own?

The first obvious mistake you should be aware of is using a template that is very popular. If many people use the same template, your website will not appear unique at all and your credibility as a solid, different website will be tarnished. In other words, you will appear generic just like your next-door neighbors. I made sure not a lot of users were using this specific template, by simply searching the footer that is usually left on a template.

But, if you want to create your own design, you can. But you will need to plan first. Ask yourself:

1. How many columns
2. Where is the MAIN content
3. Where is the MAIN navigation
4. How will they Contact me
5. Ease of Navigation
6. Will it be interactive

To me, these are the main issues that I look for and plan for when I decide to create my own design. But with this new blog I am creating I have decided to use a template, as it is very simple for me to use. I always look for ease of navigation when finding a template:

Fluent and intuitive navigation is vital to satisfactory user browsing experience and fruitful search engine optimization for obvious reasons. It is indispensable to ensure that the organization of your site is hierarchically logical and consistent. It is advisable to include a site map if your site has more than 10 pages. It is also wise to stick to obvious descriptions - titles for navigation buttons/ tools. It is an absolute must that all internal web pages sport a link to the homepage. This also increases the number of links pointing to your home page.
Source: Isha Sharma

The organization of your menu bar is very important it will help the reader easily flow with your website, making them stay on your website much longer than usual.

As well as the importance of navigation, color plays a big role as well. Internet readers usually stereotype your website by design and color. People who visit your website usually form an instant opinion about you and what your website offers. They can’t help themselves. Their instant opinion is formed in their subconscious mind. If you have been reading my blog, you can tell I talk about the mix match colors of web sites I review.

I have created a good report on web design which is far longer and lengthy than this post, It talks about template design with 3 columns and why it is beginning to be more popular than other layouts. If you would like to download this free report, just enter your name and email in the form above within the middle column.

Again, designs and layouts are important to your readers. It will determine re-occurring readers or losing prospects. It is all about flow when it comes to your web design and layouts.

Author:  Ian has just started up a new blog and is writing every step that he takes to achieve its success. To read more about blog startups, visit IanFernando.com

4 Great Reasons to use Google Analytics

By Sasch Mayer in Featured

Having used a large number of web site visitor trackers over the years, I first approached Google Analytics some time ago, with the somewhat jaded attitude of someone who’s ‘seen it all‘ or at least ‘seen most of it‘.
What could possibly make this particular utility stand out in such a large crowd of competitors?

But first… What is Google Analytics?

Analytics is Google’s very own visitor tracking utility, allowing webmasters to keep tabs on traffic to their site, including visitor numbers, traffic sources, visitor behaviour & trends, times spent on the site and a host of other information gathered via two pieces of JavaScript embedded in the source-code.

Unlike other free visitor trackers, which insist on displaying annoying and often amateurish badges or buttons when they are being used, Google Analytics simply runs quietly in the background, gathering the necessary information without any visible signs of its presence.

Which brings me quite neatly to Analytics’ first major plus-point; the price.
What webmasters are effectively getting, is a fully fledged visitor tracking utility without all the irritations and limitations normally associated with free products of this type.

Ok, so its free; but is it any good?

In a word; yes.
The sheer depth of information gathered, really leaves very little to be desired. From search engine analysis to page views, bounce-rates and more, the available data is presented so as to give users an easy overview of the most essential elements, with the ability to ‘drill down’ to less commonly accessed or more in-depth statistics and figures.

Additionally, on the 18th of July 2007, the Google Analytics old user interface was discontinued, making way for a newer, more ergonomic look which makes reports more accessible and the interface itself more intuitive for the user.

The new Dashboard provides ‘at a glance‘ visitor statistics for the previous month, as well as a graphical breakdown of your visitor’s geographical locations in the form of a world map. A pie chart clearly shows what proportion of visitors reached the site through search engines, by referral or through direct access, whereas the ‘Content Overview‘ provides a list of the most commonly accessed pages.

What makes Google Analytics special though?

Although Analytics boasts all the features and statistical data to be expected from a top-class keyword analysis and statistics tracker, it also features a number of additional tools which put it ahead of the most of the pack where ease-of-use and depth-of-information is concerned.

1. The Map Overlay
Essentially, this feature brings up a map of the world, highlighting the countries a site’s visitors stem from. Clicking on a country produces a close-up view, along with a geographical breakdown according to the region and/or city from which visitors accessed the site. This tool in itself is invaluable for all those webmasters with geo-specific sites, concentrating on a particular catchment area.

2. The Site Overlay
This is conceivably Google Analytics’ single most important feature from a webmaster’s or online business owner’s perspective, as it provides a hands-on view of visitor behaviour. When clicked, ‘Site Overlay‘ opens the tracked web site in a new window and, after a moment’s loading time, overlays each link on the screen with a bar, containing information about clicks to the target page and goal values reached [more about goal values in a moment]. Since it allows the webmaster or site owner to navigate his or her site and see exactly how visitors flow through it, it is difficult to imagine a more effective tool than this as far as raising a site’s conversion rates is concerned.

3. Goals and Funnels
Unless the site being tracked is an information site which does not rely on generating sales or enquiries, conversion rates are as important as sheer visitor numbers. The ‘Goals & Funnels‘ feature allows users to set up specific goals for their site, such as tracking a visitor to the ‘Thank you for your enquiry’ page for instance. It also allows the user to set up specific monetary values for each goal, and thus track the site’s financial performance and profitability during any given period of time.

The term ‘Funnels‘ refers to the specific path a visitor takes to reach the goal’s target page. Since most web sites sell a number of different product ranges or feature a number of ways to enquire, all of which lead to a single ‘Thank You’ page, the funnel allows for the tracking of each individual path with a minimum of fuss.

4. Graphical Representations
A great many visitor trackers out there will present the collected information in a certain way, be it a list, graph, pie chart, flow-chart or whatever. Whilst all these methods of presentation are of course valid, it is nevertheless a fact that most users are different, and a pie-chart is not necessarily ideal for those users preferring to work with graphs or vice versa. Google Analytics however, allows users to choose between views on many of its reports. Although this may seem like a relatively minor point, it nevertheless makes things easier, as it allows the user to work with the view he or she is most comfortable with.

In Conclusion:

Google Analytics provides webmasters and site owners with a highly effective means of tracking visitors and analysing statistical data, easily the equal of most subscription based services in the industry.

Although some concerns have been voiced amongst more paranoid internet users, that Google puts everyone’s collective data to its own evil demographic uses, there really are precious few reasons not to recommend this fantastic tool as one of the best means to boost any web promotion and marketing campaign.

Author:  As a technical writer with over a decade’s experience, Sasch Mayer has been living and working in the Republic of Cyprus since 2005.
Currently under contract to IceGiant Web Design and Promotion Services, he mainly covers topics such as SEM and Site Promotion.

What Can We Do About Spam?

By Jim Pretin in Featured

I receive approximately 5,000 emails containing spam each and every day. Well, maybe not that many, but it sure seems like it. Spam is spiraling out of control and shows no signs of stopping. The question is, where does spam come from, and can you do anything about it?

Most of the spam I receive in my inbox is sexually explicit, but I still like to look at it because some of this junk is actually quite entertaining. My personal favorites are offers to purchase discounted Canadian Viagra, ads for pornographic websites, and bogus work-from-home programs.

How do these people get their grimy hands on your email address? One way they can get it is through opt-in email. When you order something online, as part of the subscription or service that you signed up for, you may have inadvertently agreed to receive offers via email from that company in the future.

As a result, said company adds you to their mailing list and begins to send you email. This is perfectly legal as long as the company provides you with a way to unsubscribe from their mailing list. If they do not provide you with a means to unsubscribe, then the emails they are sending you are considered spam.

To make matters worse, a spammer will sell your email address and any other information you submitted to them to hundreds or even thousands of other companies who are looking for leads. Before you know it, your email address has been circulated everywhere. Once this happens, there is almost no way to prevent spam from reaching your inbox.

Another common way your email address can end up on a mailing list is when an internet marketer purchases a list of email addresses from someone else, and then sends a joke or an interesting cartoon to everyone on that list and asks you to forward it along to all your friends and relatives.

Once you forward the message, the email has a program attached to it that will copy the list of addresses that the message has been forwarded to and send that list back to the person who originally sent you the email. So now, that person not only has your email address, but also has the email address of everyone you forwarded the message to.

Another popular technique is known as harvesting. This is accomplished by writing a simple retrieval program that searches through every web site listed on a search engine for a certain keyword, and then grabs any any email addresses that are posted on those sites, and subsequently sends them back to the harvester. Using this technology, it is possible to acquire thousands of email addresses in an hour or less.

Harvesting has become a legal dilemma. The email marketing community feels that they should be allowed to harvest email addresses that are posted on public websites. In their opinion, if someone has posted their email address for all to see, then other people have the right to contact that person and ask them questions or send them offers.

However, web sites where email addresses are posted have threatened legal action against anyone that harvests email addresses from their site and uses them to build spam lists. Unfortunately, these web sites really have no way to prevent this, and it will only get worse in the future.

We will never stop spam completely. Both big businesses and small businesses have a strong incentive to send bulk email, because it costs nothing, and is a valuable tool for increasing their customer base. Sending regular mail or hiring a telemarketer costs a lot of money and is extremely ineffective. As a result, most companies would prefer to send massive amounts of email. So, expect your inbox to be chock full of spam for many years to come.
Author:  Jim Pretin is the owner of http://www.forms4free.com, a service that helps programmers make an HTML form