Google Analytics is one of the web’s most popular analytics tools. It’s a free service, so you should set up an account now if you haven’t already done so.

1) Organic search traffic section

Google Analytics (GA) lets you see the keywords people searched for when they arrived at your site via the organic search results, the traffic that comes from Google or Bing that you’ve not paid for.

To check your traffic, click ‘Traffic Sources’, ‘Sources’ ‘Search’, then ‘Organic’ on the left hand side of the navigation bar, as shown in this image.

You’ll notice an increasing amount of this traffic is (not provided) …

… which you can learn about by clicking on that last link.

If you want to look at subsections of that traffic, type in some of your target keywords in the search bar. Google will then show data for the keywords that contain that term. Here is the report for Wordtracker.com. I’ve put in SEO blogger, so all terms that contain that phrase are returned, such as Wordtracker SEO blogger and seo blogger tool for firefox add-on word tracker.

Looking at the traffic for certain keywords can be very informative. You can see how many people are searching for you by name (and how this changes over time). And you can see what stage of the buying cycle your customers are at. Are they looking for more general products, like laptops, or something very specific, like Samsung Series 3 laptops? These insights can help you ensure the content on your site matches your customers’ needs.

Similarly, if you’ve been link building to certain pages, using keyword rich anchor text, you should see (over time) traffic for these terms increase. So if you’ve been link building around the term shoes, you might see an increase in shoe-terms.

You can then compare this with any changes in your keyword rankings to see if there’s a correlation. There might not be. Often you can optimize a page for a given term like shoes, but you might not see any improvement in ranking for that term, at least not for a while. But if you’re looking at your traffic too, you might see an increase in traffic for long tail terms (like discount women’s shoes) that you’re not tracking the ranking for. Tracking both keyword traffic and keyword rankings will give you a fuller picture of how your SEO is doing.

If doing all this manually seems too much like hard work, Wordtracker’s Strategizer tool can do it automatically. We’ll look at your groups of keywords and overlay them with your ranking, traffic and conversion data. You can see all your most important data in the same place.

2) Search engine optimization section

If you type not provided into the search bar, you’ll see that Google provides less and less keyword-level traffic. So we can’t rely purely on the above method for our SEO reporting. We also need to look at the Search Engine Optimization section.

You can see that you have three options here: Queries, Landing Pages, and Geographical Summary.

I’m going to ignore Geographical Summary because it just tells you where your customers have come from, which won’t be interesting (or actionable) for most of you. But let’s focus on the other two areas.

Queries

This section of GA lets you see how people are reacting to your site in the search results. Let’s look at Wordtracker’s:

The keywords you’re looking at are the top 2,000 traffic drivers to your site. They’re only estimations (notice how they’re all conveniently round numbers). Again, you can see how much traffic you’re getting for your certain keywords by using the search bar.

With Queries however, you can also see you how many people saw your site in the search results, then clicked through. We call this the clickthrough rate, or CTR.

People are more likely to click on your search result if it ranks well (so it appears at the top of the page where users can see it), they recognize your brand or the page description is written persuasively. Improving your brand strength and search engine ranking takes time, but you can change your page descriptions quickly. If you’ve got a low clickthrough rate, see if you can improve the description with persuasive copy and strong calls to action, like ‘click here’ or ‘check us out today’. You could see uplift in traffic very quickly. TheBBC did this. Just by changing the page description, the clickthrough rate went from 67% to 81%!

You can also improve your CTR by using rich snippets. These allow Google to show more helpful information in the search results, like reviews or important dates. Snippets make search results more relevant to what the searcher is looking for, so they are more likely to click through.

As a rough idea of what sort of CTR you can expect, Wordtracker’s top ranking keywords typically get around a 20% clickthrough rate, rising to about 80% for branded searches like wordtracker. If your site isn’t very well known, or you don’t rank very well, your CTR will be much lower. But watch this improve as your brand grows.

Surprise ranking

Looking at your Queries, you might spot some terms that you’re not actually targeting. These can improve your business in unexpected ways.

Wordtracker ranks for LinkedIn logo for example. It’s a great traffic driver, even if it’s not one of our target terms. But we can still create relevant content for it. Users may arrive at the site looking for the LinkedIn logo, but if we can entice them to download an e-book in exchange for their email address, we’ve capitalized on that traffic. But we do this only because it’s a quick win. Don’t spend your time chasing irrelevant traffic because it’s unlikely to convert. But if you do get some traffic you weren’t expecting, think if there is an easy and quick way you can capitalize on it.

Landing pages

The pages people arrive at on your site are called landing pages. And the better your landing pages rank, the more traffic they’ll get. So with Google Analytics, we can monitor landing page traffic and see how our SEO is working.

You can see from Wordtracker’s analytics that we get lots of traffic to the LinkedIn page.

This is happening because we have great content that talks about LinkedIn and lots of links to that page.

If you want more traffic to a given landing page, make sure the content is well-written and focused. So if you want a page to rank forSamsung laptops, only talk about Samsung laptops on that page. Also try to get more keyword rich links to those pages. So in this example, try to get links that use Samsung laptops in the anchor text.

Get started!

To look at these numbers in Google Analytics right now, check out this Google dashboard I made. Click the link, and select the GA profile you want to use. You’ll then see the metrics we’ve talked about, using your site’s data. They’ll be presented in a dashboard, so you’ll see a collection of tables and charts. To drill down on a given data set, click the header, and you’ll go through to a fuller report.

In the dashboard I’ve also included some referrer data. This let’s you see the other sites that are driving traffic to yours. This lets you see the impact of various things. For example, if you’re running a social media campaign, you’d expect to see more referral traffic from the social networks you used, like Facebook or Twitter. Similarly, if you got a link from a very popular site, you’d expect that link to drive lots of traffic. The referral section is how you monitor this.

But this dashboard is just designed to get you started. As always with Google Analytics, explore the data for your own site and see what insights you can extract. Don’t be afraid to play around. Google Analytics offers a treasure trove of information, so go explore!

As search continues to go mobile, more and more commerce will take place from your customers’ smartphones and tablets.  Taking advantage of the opportunities that a strong mobile search strategy offers your business is just as important as optimizing for desktop traffic.

Thanks to the guys at Alchemy Viral for this excellent infographic.

If you’re new to search engine optimization, or SEO, and frankly, even if you aren’t, there’s a lot to take in, a lot to remember. To make sure your bases are covered, here are ten things to check right now. (Start at the top of your web pages and work down.)

1) The blue text you see in the search results (see the picture further down) is called the ‘title tag’. What do yours look like? Are they enticing? Keyword rich? If someone read yours, would you want to click through from the search results to your site?

2) Does your meta description, the bit that comes underneath the title in the search results, describe your web page accurately? Is it inviting? If I was a random user, would I click it? The answer to these questions should always be yes.

3) Are all your URLs (eg, www.example.com or www.example.com/example_page) easy to understand? If a human read them, could they get a sense of what your page was about? Test it now. Pick any page on your website (not your home page), copy what appears in the address bar of your browser and email a relative. An old one. Could they roughly describe your page without seeing it?

4) If someone was to look at your page for three seconds, could they tell you what it’s about? Make sure your headers, the headlines in the copy, and the H1 and H2 tags in the code, are descriptive and keyword rich.

5) Is your navigation clear and intuitive? If you asked a stranger to find something on one of your deep-level pages, let’s say, find a specific product or article, could they do it just by using their mouse? Great! OK, now test it. Ask a friend to do this now.

6) Are your images optimized? (Right click on an image and ‘inspect element’ and look at where it says “img alt” – is this an accurate description of the image? Does it even exist? The alt tag is what search engines ‘see’ when you upload an image. It’s also used for site readers for the visually impaired. Ensuring your alt tags are descriptive makes your site more accessible and better for search engines.

7) Does your copy (text) sing? Are the words on your pages inviting, informative and punchy? And do they use the language your customers use, or are they jargonized?

8) Is the copy on every page unique? (It should be.)

9) Does the footer (the bit at the bottom of the web page) offer some more navigation options? Navigation that’s keyword rich, and helpful for users (perhaps they have a slow internet connection – could they still get to where they want to go quickly?). If I just looked at the footer of your home page, would I see links to your most important pages?

10) Do you have clean code? (Right click on your web page and click ‘view page source’ to see the code). Is it free of Javascript and Flash where possible? If you’re not a coder and you asked this question of someone who is, what would they say?

The perfect SEO mix

In the weeks since Google first unveiled its Penguin update, I have seen smart business owners turn into Chicken Little. They’ve ripped apart their home pages, designed new layouts, added new pages — all in hopes of recovering their lost rankings. Plenty of the “Good Guys” were hit hard by Penguin, and hopefully, Penguin 1.1 is the first of many tweaks that will get the “Good Guys” back on top.

Whether you were hit hard by Penguin or not, you’re probably now wondering what the next algorithm change will bring. What cute animal will it be named after? How will it affect your web traffic and sales? And how the heck do you brace for it?

There’s actually a very easy way to make your business Penguin-proof (or Panda-proof, or Anteater-proof, or Mongoose-proof).

Stop obsessing over Google.

Seriously.

Penguin is proof that just about anyone’s rankings can disappear overnight — whether they deserve it or not. Even if you got your rankings back this time, you may not be so lucky next time. That’s why you need to rely on other marketing outlets — ones that have nothing to do with Big G.

Sure, target some keywords, and include them in your articles, blog posts, and videos. You can certainly make Google a part of your marketing arsenal, without making it the only tool you rely on.

But… But… How is that possible? Isn’t Google the only way to “see and be seen”?

If you’re one of the many website owners who thinks that Google rankings are only slightly less important than oxygen, it’s time to step back and try to see the forest from deep inside the trees. There are plenty of ways to market your business without Google’s help.

In fact, here are 5 great ideas that your business can start working on today:

1. Article Marketing

No, I’m not talking about “blasting” poorly-spun articles to thousands of low-level directories all over the ‘net. That method is sooo 2005, and it’s become totally extinct thanks to Penguin’s buddy, Panda.

Instead, I’m talking about publishing high-quality articles and getting them syndicated on authority sites in your niche.

How do you do it?

Think about the websites you visit on a daily basis. Think about the email lists you subscribe to. Chances are their owners would jump at the chance to publish an article of yours that’s interesting, informative, and an overall good read for their audience.

Having trouble finding syndication outlets?

That’s where resources like the Directory of Ezines come in. As a member, you’ll get listings of ezines (different from garden-variety article directories) that are organized by niche. You’ll have access to publishers’ contact information and their number of subscribers. The DOE even has its own directory where you can publish articles, so that other members can find and syndicate them.

2. Tap Into the Power of Guest Blogging

Bloggers are a hard-working bunch. If you can provide them a post that’s insightful and compelling, they’ll likely jump at the chance to give their fingers a rest for a day! In exchange for your guest post, you’ll get to be front-and-center in front of their audience — and a short bio at the bottom that’s similar to a resource box. All you have to do is wow people with your guest post, and you could wind up with a ton of new, loyal readers on your blog!

Not sure how to find guest blogging opportunities?

Check out Cathy Stucker’s Blogger LinkUp and Ann Smarty’s My Blog Guest. Both are free to join, and they can connect you with all kinds of content-hungry blog owners!

3. Lean More on Your Email List

Why not turn those old customers into repeat buyers? If you’re not taking full advantage of your email list, it’s time to start. But, remember, great email newsletters don’t just send out sales pitches. Instead, they’re designed to build a relationship with your subscribers. By sharing new developments and interesting finds, you’ll be at the forefront of your subscribers’ minds — and they’ll remember to tell other people about you.

4. Connect With Other People

No, this isn’t the same ol’ “find forums in your niche and post there” advice. Instead, use your time wisely by becoming a bonafide expert.

How?

Question and answer sites like All Experts are always looking for new experts to volunteer some time. On All Experts, there are dozens of different categories that need experts. Plus, all of your answers will feature a “signature” where you can insert your link, so that readers can head to your website if they want to learn more.

5. Behold the Power of Word-Of-Mouth Advertising

The more you make the rounds, the more people are going to be talking about you. And if people are talking about you, that’s way more valuable than your Google ranking.

Don’t believe me?

Sara Blakely, the creator of Spanx, turned $5,000 worth of capital into a billíon dollar mega-business. When she first started, she didn’t have any money to advertise — so she relied on word-of-mouth advertising. All of that talking was so successful that the company still doesn’t advertise today!

How can you make sure that people talk about you?

Think about things from your target audience’s perspective. Come up with clever ways to answer their questions and solve their problems. Prove to them that you understand their problems. Become an expert in your niche. Add a “human touch” to your blog posts, newsletters, articles, Tweets, and Facebook statuses, so that people see you as a real person and not just some corporate entity.

Remember, your target audience is the one who really makes or breaks your bottom line — not the spiders over at Google. If you can develop an arsenal of marketing weapons, you’ll be able to consider any search engine traffic you get to be a bonus. That way, instead of obsessing over the latest Google update, you can focus on ways to build a stronger business!

It’s not surprising that many businesses focus mainly on ranking well in Google’s local results, but working to rank well in some other search properties often has the benefit of helping to augment one’s rankings in Google, too.

Ranking well in directories can give your listing a better signal in terms of linking weight or citation value on other sites, so performing well in local on subsidiary sites may help to build your rankings back in Google.

There are other good reasons to spend some time improving one’s position on secondary search engines, too. Diversifying your sources of traffic can help to reduce your dependency on the big Google mothership, which is always a good thing.

If a chance algorithm update reduces your rankings for searches related to your business in Google, having some presence in other channels can help to offset the impact for your business.

So, here are a few search engines that you may not have considered. There is some variation in how many local searches are being conducted in each of these, but each have some amount of searches in which your business might benefit from being present.

Considering that Google estimates that around 20% of their searches may have some local intent, whatever amount of local searches happening on the following sites likely have some amount that would be relevant for your business.

Five Search Engines to Target for Local

1.  Twitter Search

Have you even noticed that Twitter has a search feature? Perhaps not. But, if you search for local businesses in it, you can sometimes find the ones which are more engaged with their customers.

To optimize for local searches in Twitter, be sure to set your company profile’s Location in it, using the city name and state. Don’t use geocoordinates for this field! While it might seem clever, it’s not human-friendly, and it likely wouldn’t be relevant for keyword/location search in Twitter.

Also, enable the “Tweet Location” to be added to your Tweets, and describe your business succinctly in the Description. Since a large component of Twitter’s search results page contains freshest Tweets, you should also frequently and consistently be tweeting about your product/service topics, industry mentions in the news, pics of your products and store, and things of interest happening in your area.

Finally, you also need to develop increasing numbers of followers and interact with them to beef up how often your updates are retweeted to show that you have a level of influence. See also my earlier article, Harness The Power Of Twitter For Local Marketing.

2.  Facebook Search

Facebook has become an extremely sticky portal, with consumers spending considerable time in it every day. So, it’s only natural to assume that they might also be conducting increasing amounts of searches from the ubiquitous search box at the tops of the site’s pages, and Facebook has quietly beefed-up their search results to where they’re becoming more and more useful, including Facebook’s local search results.

If you’re a local business, you may already be appearing in Facebook’s local results and have not even realized it, since Facebook has been displaying business listing locations from data providers for some years now. There are a couple of ways (primarily) for local businesses to integrate with Facebook.

If you’re already there under Facebook Places, you could claim your listing, add/correct your business categories, and add your website/phone/email and hours of operation. And/or, you can “Create A Page” about your business, and customize it with all the pertinent information.

As with Twitter, you should also expect to need to consistently update the information consistently, add friends, and interact with your followers to demonstrate influence and engagement (which are vital to improving rankings in Facebook). What’s different is that Facebook Places also has a check in service for mobile users, and the numbers and frequency of checkins may also be influential on rankings.

Note that having a picture avatar associated with your place may also influence rankings. For more advanced users, see my earlier article on how to leverage Open Graph markup for local SEO.

3.  Foursquare Search

Did you know you can search for businesses on Foursquare’s website? While socializing through checkins may be their main feature, the data they’re compiling is also making for a really strong local search engine. Businesses that claim their listing on Foursquare can customize it by adding categories, websites, and Twitter handles.

To further optimize, you need larger numbers of checkins than your competitors, get added to users’ lists, and it may be that paying Foursquare to offer a checkin special could also give your ranking a bump.

Finally, you also ideally want users to submit photos and tips for your place as well. See also my previous article exploring whether local check-ins are a local ranking factor.

4.  LinkedIn Company Search

If you feel like your business type doesn’t lend itself to the sorts of searches likely to be conducted in Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare, you might consider LinkedIn. LinkedIn is particularly suited for people who are searching for B2B providers, as well as for other professional services companies.

LinkedIn can be tricky to optimize for — you should set up a page for your company, upload a logo, add your website and specialties, your industry type, year founded, and your main address. Another big component involves encouraging all of your employees to set up profile pages on LinkedIn too, and getting them to associate their current job positions with your company’s listing.

The total number of employees with profiles on LinkedIn for a company may be a ranking factor — while that’s hard for you to control, it just reinforces the fact that you should encourage employees to join LinkedIn and associate their job history with your company.

For related tactics, see my article on how to leverage your employees for local search rankings.

5.  Pinterest Search

This image sharing site is growing its audience phenomenally each day, and it’s reached the point where the overall traffic is potentially quite advantageous for marketers.

As such, I expect Pinterest’s search engine is getting more and more use, including by people who might search for your type of business (see my example of local Wedding Photographer search results, below).

To optimize for Pinterest, your business’s products/services would need to lend themselves to photographs, or your business location should be photo-worthy. But it’s not altogether necessary to meet those qualifications, you could report on local events via your Boards and Pins, and you can post all sorts of photos related to your area and your company. Optimizing Boards and Pins is fairly simple — include your local keywords, link to your business, and describe what you’re posting.

Finally, you should interact with Pinterest’s community, commenting on other’s photos, repinning them, and posting to public Boards. For more details, read my article on how to use Pinterest for Local SEO.

One thing you’ll notice in the search engines selected above is that they all have a very strong social component. As these social sites and services gain a large enough market share, it’s important for businesses to pay attention to the volume of searches which may be conducted within those channels, including localized searches, and look for ways to make your business relevant in those platforms for those who may be seeking your products and services.

Considering how your business’s rankings in the search results in these sites can sometimes also influence your rankings in Google, local search optimization must now include some of the more specialized factors which can affect rankings in these specialized search engines — it’s no longer merely a matter of getting exposure for your website’s links and inputting your local citation “NAP” (Name, Address, and Phone number).

So when I saw dozens of requests from clients, business associates and friends asking me to join the site, I was intrigued. Pinterest is a new social networking site that enables you to have your own online bulletin board where you can “pin” stuff you like or want to keep. It’s easy to use but, like most other social networking sites, it can take several hours to prepare bulletin boards and pin relevant photos.

To make it easy, Pinterest developed a “Pin It” tool that you can drag to your Web browser desktop. This way when you’re surfing the Web and see something you want to pin to one of your boards, you simply click the “Pin It” tool and it lets you automatically pin to your Pinterest page.

On my Pinterest page, I have several boards, including: “things I love to do,” “social media,” “trusted bay area businesses,” “products I love” and “music I enjoy listening to.” “On my “things I love to do” board, I pinned my Web site, my radio show and my blog. These are just some of the things I love to do.

I set this page up as a personal page so I could make connections with various potential new business leads in the hopes of connecting on a personal level. This way, I could also repin items from other users and people that I follow (and follow me back).

It really is about that personal connection. For instance, I saw one of the people I follow pin a vacation spot they would like to visit, so I repinned it to my board. Instant connection made—we pinned the same thing. Something that we both enjoy or thought was interesting and another way for me to make a personal connection with someone I might not know that well.

Hilary Topper’s “Social Media” board on Pinterest.

My corporate page, on the other hand, has photos of publications my company appeared in, pictures of events that we have planned and even images of logos we’ve developed. We even have a section on social media where we show off the Facebook pages and Twitter pages we have designed and manage. This makes it easy for HJMT’s followers to repin things and work they like and admire within our firm.

How to Get Exposure Using Pinterest

In January 2012, Pinterest attracted more than 11 million unique visitors. This makes it a prime marketing tool for potential businesses—retail, service and even product businesses. The site is growing exponentially every day.

What interests me most about Pinterest is that a business can use affiliate links. So when someone, including the pinner, clicks on a product that they like, the product could be purchased and the seller gets a commission.

It also enables salespeople to get a real look at who they are soliciting before they meet the person. This enables them to connect and have an advantage above their competition.

Here are some tips to get your client business exposure on Pinterest:

1. Don’t Just Put Up a Page – Like any other social networking site, don’t just put up a page and walk away. You need to be able to curate it and put interesting pins on your page that will entice your followers. In addition, the more interesting the pin the more likely it will be repinned, which helps with search engine optimization (SEO).
2. Update Sites Every Week – Update them at least weekly, if not daily. Otherwise people lose interest and stop coming back.
3. Create Links Back to Your Web or Other Sites – Make it as simple as possible so that people can click on links easily and purchase or view products or services in other places.
4. Link Pinterest With Other Social Networking Sites – By doing this, your followers on other social networking sites will know your activity on Pinterest and will be able to make more personal connections with you.
5. Have a Daily or Weekly Theme – This will help entice your followers to keep coming back and keep piquing their interest. For instance, have a “yellow” day where everything you post on that day is the color yellow.
6. Don’t Only Promote Your Product or Service – Be sure to promote other brands that you like. By just promoting your product or service, you are being too commercial.
7. Follow Early Adopters – They often have an interesting perspective on new sites.
8. Use Back Links to Take Followers to Your Web Site – This will help increase your SEO and also draw attention to your Web site.
9. Need a Focus Group? – If you are interested in a particular demographic—say, for example, people who like to sew—check out their boards on Pinterest and see what interests them. This will help you target them better.
10. Use Keywords and Hashtags – This also improve SEO.
11. Enable Your Community to Add – Your followers can actually add pins to your boards, which makes your Pinterest page more interactive. This also helps with SEO and the engagement of your followers.
12. Use the Boards Creatively – You can use them for team building with your staff and you can also have a board on office things you need to purchase.
13. Have Fun – If your pins are humorous, they will be repinned more often than those that aren’t.

Although Pinterest is a relatively new site, it’s viable and sustainable. Don’t let this one get away from you. Check it out and try to make sure that it fits in with your client’s social marketing plan.

Advertising can be quite expensive with out the right strategy because if it is not done with the right balance, the return on investment will be small if there is any at all. Many clients have stated that they have tried advertising in many different forms of internet marketing and it did not work for them. The fact is that most internet advertising, when done alone is quite ineffective.

Our San Ramon marketing team looks at advertising as an investment. As you may have heard this before from other companies, we actually have a reason for this phrase. Let me explain our philosophy. Most people, when they are planning to invest their money, they meet with someone who has more knowledge on what will result in the highest return with the appropriate amount of risk that person is willing to take. Typically it is an investment advisor, financial planner or stock broker. The reason being, is that they want a professional to help them, so that they do not make a mistake and lose all of their money. In my experience, these professionals always recommend diversification of your investments because it almost eliminates the possibility of losing all of your money at once. So to sum it all up, when considering doing any type of advertising, business owners should do the same thing as they would with their financial investments. They should meet with a professional that is not bias to any one type of advertising.

Most of the representatives that contact you, work for a company and have a product or select number of products that they can offer. So they look at a way to position those products so they can sell them to you. Unfortunately, there are times where they are not the right product, or they are not being packaged with the right strategy. Thus, it does not work because it was not executed correctly.

Innovative Media Planners of the Bay Area does not have a specific product that we work with. So the advantage with working with us, is that we design a strategy based on your needs, not what we have to offer. We start with a proper assessment of the company first. This is a very detailed evaluation of your company  to find out as much as we can about your business and industry. Then we do market research about that specific business to put together an appropriate strategy to help that business achieve the goals that they have set for them self. We take into consideration the short term and long term goals. This is because if you only prepare for one, chances are you will miss the other.

Thank you for visiting us! Please feel free to contact us for a free evaluation.