Business Today

Google Analytics and Conversion Funnels

Google analytics being free and all, is probably the most used set of web analytical tools on the planet just now. Some are a bit wary of this and many big businesses will not touch it for fear of Google "knowing too much" about their web business channel. Google of course say that this is all nonsense and promise not to do anything "naughty" with the data. Some are however unconvinced and continue to boycott its use.

Whatever the true story here, many smaller businesses are quite content on using the system and gain a lot from it, however, one thing that has come to our attention recently is that the use of the goals needs to be carefully set up, as otherwise you can get some bad conversion data.

This has happened to one of the companies managed by one of our associate companies, their site being all about exclusive garden buildings, (in fact if you want a garden office, home office, garden room, garden studio, or just a place to get away from it all, you should not miss their site at www.thegardenescape.co.uk) as we found that Google we reporting some very funny data indeed.

The problem is however quite simple to sort out in that you can set up what are called "funnels", these being the route that visitors has to go in order to place an order (or whatever passes for a conversion on a site). With these in place the level of accuracy is increased many fold and thus the data is more useful and worthwhile.

For more tips on using the web to improve your business, check out our main site at www.intelligent-online-marketing.com.

Is Your Site Saying the Right Things to the Search Engines?

We think that the Search Engines are Clever

We all think that computers are clever, this being especially so with the Search Engines, but the fact is, that in reality, computers are quite stupid and have to be spoon fed information in the way that they have been programmed to look for it.

It's the words on the page that count

Thus when it comes to getting listed on the Search Engines you have to seriously bear in mind the way that your web pages are being "read" by those Engines. When you boil it down to the basics, this means the words on the page, (including those image tags etc) but as importantly, it is the way those words are used and where they are that can make all the difference.

A newspaper without headlines?

Imagine reading a newspaper that used the same sized text for everything on the page, no big headlines, just the same text all over. Wouldn't it be difficult to make out at a glance, what that page was really about? Now the newspapers have long known that you use Headlines to attract and the body copy to inform, something that (in most cases) is still understood and used by web designers today.

CSS is causing problems

The problem is that with the introduction of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) it is now easy to produce pages that don't use the "tags" that the Engines have been programmed to look for. Thus when Mr Google visits your site and reads the text, they will ignore the CSS (even if they can read it, they don't know that the 'Big-Red' style is your Headline) and just read the code. If they don't see the tags they are expecting (the old fashioned H1 etc) they will just assume that all the words have the same level of importance, and that means your pages have no Headlines, and in turn that means the Engines won't really understand the main thrust of that pages' content.

The Search Engines Expect (Nelson's signal at the battle of Googlefalgar)

The result of this is that when other pages do it the way the Engines 'expect' that they will beat you in the listings game, and that is probably not what you want.

More on making your pages say things in the right way tomorrow.

For more articles on online marketing, visit our site, the home of the online marketing experts.

The Dangers of Duplicate Content

The dangers of Using duplicate content on the Web

It is true to say that many many websites today are using exactly the same content as hundreds of other sites. Many of these are selling electrical goods, cameras etc and are using the maufacturers description, while others are selling holidays or overseas property. Often the content of the site is an XML feed, that is taken in by the site and used to fill its databases and pages. Result, a site that uses the same words as its competitors...

What are the dangers?

From a human point of view, the dangers look zero, after all the manfacturer of the product knows how to describe their goods better than the website owner, so what is the problem? Well actually it is not the human visitor we are worried about at all, but the Search Engines themselves. Why?, because when they see that the page contains a lot of words (in exactly the same order etc) as an other page, they simply decide not to bother with it, and thus it will never be listed in the results, which in turn means that one method of bringing people into the site has gone, and for some, the Engines are the main way that the site gets its visitors.

I have seen this problem re-enacted on countless sites and the result it always the same, loss of Search Engine traffic, sometimes completely, the entire site being labled as just a copy. One of my customers a site well known for providing excellent advice and offers on overseas property has suffered from this situation just recently, my searches for text on their site coming up with other sites but not theirs

In their case they had used the same text as dozens of other sites for property that they could sell, whilst in other cases, they had used what was unique text from their site on a number of high profile property portals and because the Engines noticed the text on the portals first, thought that the copy on the ourhomeabroad site was the copy and hence ingnored it.

The Morale of the story

If you can avoid it, don't use feeds from other sites as copy on your site and perhaps even more important, don't use exact copies of the words on your site on any high profile sites, as it could well be that these will be crawled by the Engines first and that your site will be labled a copy and accordingly ignored.

For more information about using the Web to promote your business see the expert online marketing articles on www.intelligent-online-marketing.com

Checking if your Google ads are showing

Google Pay Per Click and Checking to see your own listings - The Right Way to do it

If you have a Google PPC campaign, you probably want to check to see if they are appearing every now and then (especially if you are paying someone else to run the campaign for you!). This leads to some of the giving in to temptation of typing in their keywords to see if their advert appears...

Now while this may look like a good idea, doing it that way is a bad idea for two very important reasons:-

It's the Wrong Way To Check Because

Firstly, by getting your ad to appear and then not clicking on it, you will reduce the apparent effectiveness of the advert (Google measures something called Click Through Rate CTR%), which basically calculates the number of times an ad is seen against the number of times it is clicked. The higher the CTR%, the lower Google charge for the click (this is just a part of Google's Quality Score Algorithim by the way).

Thus, if you dilute the CTR by constant checking, you will be driving your own click costs up. Admitedly, you'll be doing the same for your competitors, but there will be only one winner and that is Google, and they really do have enough money already.

The second reason is down to the way that Google "take note" of what someone is searching for, at least in the recent past, so if a particular user keeps keying in the same phrases, they will keep changing the ads they are seeing in an attempt to show them something different, in effect trying to capture a click for something. This process means that they start providing totally different results on the screen to a "normal" searcher. Thus in practice this means that a user may well not see the very ad they were looking for, when another searcher would, which in turn means that checking that way is pretty much useless.

By the way, the system which Google use is based on the Google tool bar, as this will "personalise" the results you see, as well as the fact that Google will remember your searches in any given "session" of searches.

So, the Right Way is..

It's all very simple, just go to The Google Ad Preview Tool and then fill in the boxes there, it'll soon show you who is being listed for those phrases at that time, and thus is very useful for "spying" on the competition as well as for checking up on your own ads.

Better still, if you have targeted a country or geographic area which you are not in you can use this tool to see if your ad is appearing, something that you couldn't normally do.

In all cases it does not count as an impression for the ad and therefore does not harm the CTR.

For more tips and information on online marketing check out the experts at intelligent online marketing

Are Googles latest changes the end of SEO?

You may have seen a few emails and comments around the web about how Googles latest changes are said by some to be the "end of search engine optimisation" or at least the end of the need to optmise sites?

But what are these changes and what are their real effects?

Basically, what Google are now doing is to alter the lists of sites you see when you type in a search  phrase, this alteration being their attempt to make the list of sites more relevant. Of course the first time you search they don't have much to go on (although those of us with the Google tool bar enabled are giving Google data about our own search habits, and they might use it one day), but as you do search after search they can get a "feel" for what you are after, and thus can try to "help". Apparently they have been doing this with the adverts for sometime..

The effect of all this is that a website that is optimised and comes in on the first page for its "pet" keyphrases, may not actually come up when searched for, Google choosing another site that it thinks os a better match, this based on their recent search history.

For my part I don't feel it is the end of SEO, why, because it gives more websites the chance of getting on the first page, and guess what, the way that they will "impress" Google enough to be chosen is to have their site SEO'd so that it "SHOUTS" the right words.

So, not the end of SEO at all, it'll just mean that more people can have a slice of the first page pie, and maybe the results will be better to, which will increase useage even more and with that hopefully higher conversion rates for the website owner.

For more insights and articles on Online Marketing, visit www.intelligent-online-marketing.com.

Online Marketing Experts

I have at last decided that I should start and keep up my own Blog, after all it is all very well preaching to ones customers about the power of the blog and that they must start one (and keep it up), but doing one yourself...

Well the time has come and as I am a member of the online marketing experts club, I thought that I can also bring some assistance to the hard pressed business man with some free tips.

These start tomorrow, but in the meantime, please feel free to have a look at our range of internet marketing articles and search marketing videos that are available on the IOM site.

IOM a new face in the marketplace

Intelligent Online Marketing, a new face in the world of Internet Marketing is set to appear in 2007, full of bright ideas with a belief that the customer is king..

Watch this space

Intelligent Online Marketing

AV Equipment

Thinking about installing some top notch AV equipment in your offices??

If so I must recommend Reflex, I've seen some of their installations, chatted to their staff and even had a word or too with a satisfied customer.

Overall they just seem to be the one to talk to about AV installations..

www.reflex.co.uk

The Luxury Apartment

When you're in the mood for a bit of luxury, the thought always is of a hotel room, but there is an alternative....

How about your very own Luxury Apartment, fully serviced of course, just where you want to be??

More private, cheaper and more luxurious than most hotels, and of course "different".....

Have a look at JMPLuxury for that Holiday Apartment.

Choosing Hotels in the UK

If you're thinking about booking a hotel in the UK anytime soon let me let you into a great secret..

It's a simple one, but when you have to find a hotel, use a hotel directory like hotelshopuk, they have so much to offer and if you want you can become a "mystery shopper" and get some money off your next stay....

The Hotel Directory at HotelshopUK