Keyword Analysis on my site

Now that you have tools set up it's time for some improvement. People search in many different ways. Some people search by keywords and some people search by phrases and some by questions. Each of these will provide a different result in Google. For example, suppose I want to make travel reservations to Cancun Mexico. I may try "cheap vacations to cancun" or "cancun vacations". In my example, vacationtours.com hits 178 position and the other 186th position. You need to decide how you want people to find your site.

Eliminate unrelated information

This should be the first step and webmaster tools can help you out and can be fairly easy to fix. For example, vacationtours.com had a blog program installed on the site. Once I installed webmaster tools, I discovered that a significant amount of keywords from the blog program and it's examples were indexed. Words like "b2evolution", "linkblog", "archives" and "yabba". Since the company was not using the blog, I uninstalled it. You can find out what keywords are on your site through the webmaster tools program on Google, select keywords. I'm sure Google also appreciates clean up efforts as do I.

Help with keywords.

So what keywords should I use. Fortunately there is a tool for this also. Google's adword campaign tool can help you out. https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal Use this keyword tool as a starting point. It will give you an idea of what keywords to use. If your a small business the more narrow focus you can get your keywords the more likely you are to get a hit. It hard to compete with Amazon if your selling books, or expedia for those in the travel business. Once you've got a list of keywords you might want to check the keywords against some trend data searches.

Searching Trend Data

Since google is in the search business, you would have to make assumptions they keep data about how people search. And your right. Google Trends can give you an idea on the different keywords people are searching on. It can actually be fun to play around with this tool, especially if you are interested in Politics. For instance, "Sarah Palin", former Governor of Alaska, wasn't really heard of until she became the Vice Presidential Nominee for the republican party. Type this into your browser and you will see what I mean. http://www.google.com/trends?q=sarah+palin&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0 If your a travel business, trying to select a market you want to focus like destinations to Cancun, Cozumel, Aruba or Ixtapa, then trend data may be helpful.

Where do the keywords go?

Content. Content. Content. Sorry no tricks here. Meta tags don't play much of a role in googles searches. It's good to include the meta tags to help you think about what is the purpose of the page. But the content of the page needs to relate to the page. Your writing needs to be clear and match the title. Obviously the more content on the page, the more likely you are going to get a hit as long as it is relative to the topic.

What about url names?

It is best to match the url to the business or at the very least the page name. The more the name relates to the topic the more likely the hit is going to be. So if you don't have a domain name yet, you should consider naming your domain with relevant key words.

Other Areas for your keywords

Other areas to include your topic keyword is the page title and headers (h1, h2, h3). It is important to use the keyword appropriately, not scattered randomly around your page or the keywords hidden in your page. Make it relevant. You may be negatively hit for too much repeating.

Starting SEO process

So your new to SEO. My goal is to write these articles for small business. So follow these blogs in order I list below. This is just a start.

1. The Google Triangle - gives you idea of where people look.
2. Google Analytics - the start of metrics.
3. Traffic Sources in Analytics - How people are getting to your site currently
4. Google Webmaster Tools - still part of the setup process before going into SEO
5. Sitemap File - Tell search engines how your site is organized

More to come

SEO - Sitemap Files

"That's the trouble, girls. You can't keep a map in your heads." - Peter Pevensie, the Chronicle of Narnia: Prince Caspian

"That's because our heads have something in them", said Lucy. Maps aren't meant to be stored in our heads, but they are intended to provide direction and a purpose. In this manner, maps provided to search engines can help the engine provide direction about your site, called a sitemap file.

sitemap starters

Sitemap needs to be defined using the XML protocol. Thus the first line defines the xml version and locale.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

The second line is mandatory and defines the current version.

<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">

after that everything follows a similar pattern of defining the url by loc (location), lastmod (modification date), changefreq (how often you expect this page to change, and priority of the page from 0 to 1.0

<url>
<loc>http://www.vacationtours.com/</loc>
<lastmod>2009-09-14</lastmod>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<priority>0.8</priority>
</url>

You need to do this for each page on your site, such as this example.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
<url>
<loc>http://www.vacationtours.com/</loc>
<lastmod>2009-09-14</lastmod>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<priority>0.8</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.vacationtours.com/partners.html</loc>
<lastmod>2009-09-14</lastmod>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<priority>0.2</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.vacationtours.com/specials.html</loc>
<lastmod>2009-09-14</lastmod>
<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
<priority>0.9</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.vacationtours.com/cancun.html</loc>
<lastmod>2009-09-14</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
<priority>0.2</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.vacationtours.com/las_vegas.html</loc>
<lastmod>2009-09-14</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
<priority>0.2</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.vacationtours.com/ski.html</loc>
<lastmod>2009-09-14</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
<priority>0.4</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.vacationtours.com/adventure.html</loc>
<lastmod>2009-09-14</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
<priority>0.4</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.vacationtours.com/adventure/camping.html</loc>
<lastmod>2009-09-14</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
<priority>0.2</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.vacationtours.com/adventure/activities.html</loc>
<lastmod>2009-09-14</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
<priority>0.2</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.vacationtours.com/adventure/guide.html</loc>
<lastmod>2009-09-14</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
<priority>0.2</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.vacationtours.com/adventure/campingwkids.html</loc>
<lastmod>2009-09-14</lastmod>
<changefreq>never</changefreq>
<priority>0.2</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.vacationtours.com/adventure/deals.html</loc>
<lastmod>2009-09-14</lastmod>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<priority>0.5</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.vacationtours.com/vegas_cansinos.html</loc>
<lastmod>2009-09-14</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
<priority>0.2</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.vacationtours.com/vegas_activities.html</loc>
<lastmod>2009-09-14</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
<priority>0.2</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.vacationtours.com/vegas_guide.html</loc>
<lastmod>2009-09-14</lastmod>
<changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
<priority>0.2</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.vacationtours.com/vegas_deals.html</loc>
<lastmod>2009-09-14</lastmod>
<changefreq>weekly</changefreq>
<priority>0.2</priority>
</url>
<url>
<loc>http://www.vacationtours.com/about.html</loc>
<lastmod>2009-09-14</lastmod>
<changefreq>yearly</changefreq>
<priority>0.2</priority>
</url>
</urlset>

Now you need to submit the site to Google through your previously set up webmaster tools. Select your site, then the more options under Sitemaps heading. You will see an option like the following image to upload your sitemap.


After you Submit a Sitemap, check back to make sure the status has changed to a check mark from a clock. And make sure the number of url submitted matches the number on your site.

Now your site should soon be getting crawls. The nice thing about the sitemap is you can use it as a master document for planning purposes. Make sure you update it on changes to your site.

What's Next - Webmaster Tools

SEO is a process.

Hopefully you are getting the idea that Search Engine Optimization is a process. Anyone telling you otherwise, does not know the business. Google provides wonderful tools that can help web administrators improve the business. Which makes the "web guy" or in my case "webman" very important to the success of your marketing strategy. Unfortunately, most web designers are hired for their creative side and people who hire them often overlook the individual's business skills.

Webmaster Tools

After you've implemented Google Analytics, you need to implement Google's Webmaster Tools. This tool along with analytics will be the basis to improve your website search results. So what's in the tool? Let me start with the dashboard.





Dashboard

The dashboard is designed to give you an overview of your website statistics from Googles viewpoint. Since Google is the most widely used search engine, it's probably a good idea to at least get an idea of what they think of your site. Within the Dashboard are Top search queries, Crawl errors, Links to your site, and Sitemaps.

Top Search Queries

So just what are the top search queries? Google defines it as "queries that have returned information about your site". In reading the page, the # represents the position of the query on your site. This may be somewhat confusing. It does not indicate the likelihood of being high in the rankings on google. For instance, if I select the first hit on vacationtours.com, "funjet + vacation", I don't get a web hit for my site until 650 hits in. However the second on the list, I'm top of the google search. So top search queries are not how people find your site, but keywords in your site how people might find your site.

Crawl Errors

These are generated when google goes through your site and finds problems traversing your website. For example, a 404 error will report as not found. These should be cleaned up. You need to have an efficient site for Google to crawl through. Also users may hit the same problem.

Links to your site

This is where you can see who is linking to your site. Similar to running link:vacationtours.com in a google search. Except in here you can download it and sort it based on a comma separated list.

Sitemaps

Sitemaps are important to tell google how to crawl your site. It may help or it may not help your rankings. So if someone tells you absolutely need one for better search engine optimization, watch out. The crawlers usually follow links in your site. If the links are clear, then there is not much need for a sitemap. However, if you have alot of forms and hard to follow links, then it is a good idea to have them. I'll demonstrate a sitemap in a later post.

Now that you've got your Google Analytics going and Google Webmaster tools in place, it is time to start reviewing the data.

Traffic Sources - Google Analytics

How are people getting to your site.

Now that you have Google Analytics set up and gathering data, you will be able tell what is working for you and how people are finding your website. First go to the traffic sources from the dashboard in Analytics. Instantly, you can see how people find your site. Now let's take quick overview of the report I've been demonstrating from vacationtours.com.




At the top of the page you can change the date of the report. Defaults to 1 month from yesterday. The next section is a graph of visits. Day by day view of your visits is the default view of visits. Week and Month views are also available. If you launch a new ad campaign, you can use this as a barometer.

Traffic Sources Section

By default the tracking sources are distributed into 3 categories, Direct Traffic, Search Engines and Referring Sites. Google publishes it's API for traffic sources. You can configure options within your page tracker code. But this is a later topic. The sources do give you a good idea of how people arrive at your website. It is also configurable as part of ga.js, which might be beneficial for multi-domain websites. The idea is to get a sense of how people get to your site. Depending on your business the traffic patterns can be wide. A well known company like Ebay or Amazon may have a large pattern of direct traffic. Less known companies, probably will have a higher search engine results.

Top Traffic Sources

The top traffic sources will give you an idea how customers found your website. This area along with keywords section are two areas you will want to spent some time analyzing. It is from keywords that you will know how people find your site in what Google refers to organic searches. Think of organic searches like organic foods. Natural and very green for your checkbook. It is the way customers find you via search, and usually within the Google Triangle. If your not getting any keyword hits or organic searches then that is the place to start building a plan to improve. (And yes, another topic of discussion).

How are my ads doing?

All right so you are on a limited budget as are most small businesses. But you can still run ads. Some of these can be free, such as craigslist.org or even directory listings. Ads can be beneficial too! They are a quick way to boost traffic and site visibility. And with Google Analytics, you'll be able to measure the success/interest of an ad.

Analytics is a very valuable tool for any business, but especially small business. There a so many uses for analytics. It is a way of measuring a marketing campaign, product launch success, user analysis, globalization of your business and many other uses. Let me know your uses.

Google Analytics - One Giant Step for Webkind

One Giant Step for Webkind

Ok, So I'm not Neil Armstrong. But think of the importance of Google is to the Web. The innovations started at Google over it's short life have been tremendous. But for someone interested in improving their organic search and reducing advertising cost, Google Analytics the first step anyone should take.

Where have you been?

Without historical data how do you know what changes to your website is proving successful. Analytics provides you that historical data. For purposes of demonstration, I'm going to provide an example of a real website, vacationtours.com as an example of Analytics Power. Historically, this website had very few hits until some changes were made to improve the website. The example will also show some very interesting and cool features of Analytics.

A start

So how to start. First you need a Google account. Easy enough to do. After you sign up for a Google account, the next step is to sign up for Analytics. Once you've signed up the next step is to add the website to analytics. All you need here is the url of the website and select Add Website Profile. Once you've added the website profile, Analytics will provide you code to put on your pages. The code is a javascript code which gathers information about the user. Just cut and paste into your web page the data google provides.


<script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-9776939-2");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}</script>



Short code, but important items to note. First you will see two java script tags. That is because, the second code has to wait for the ga.js script to load before it executes. ga.js is the heart of the analytics program and provides information to Google to gather the data it needs to report on. You can view the API on Google's code website. http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/gaJS/gaJSApi.html

A look at the Data

So what kind of data does Google Analytics provide. Here is an overview picture of vacationtours.com.




The first page is an overview of your website statistics. You are able to select a date range you want to drill down on. A nice graph provides trend data of visitors. There is an overview of site usage. A visitor overview which has visitor specific data. A cool feature of a map overlay. Lets you drill down to the location where users are coming in from. If users use proxy servers, the location is from the proxy server not the end user. A graph of traffic sources and finally an overview of which page the user selected. Note for this to work, the analytics code must be on that page.

Now you see the benefit of using Analytics. The question is, how are people getting to your site now? I'll show you more in later posts. For right now, sign up and start looking at the data.

The Google Triangle

SEO

I get questions and see posts about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) all the time now. With the downturn in the economy, everyone is cutting back on advertising and trying to improve their organic google search hits (more about this in my Google Analytics Blog to come). There is no doubt, if you get in the Google Triangle as I call it, you will get hits.

Bermuda

So what is this "Google Triangle" that I'm talking about. Well you know about the legend of the Bermuda Triangle. The mysterious triangle off the United States Coast in the Atlantic Ocean, in which aircraft and ships have disappeared and never found again. The Google Triangle is just the opposite. It is where your website gets found. This magical triangle converts to hits on your website. Business hits could mean conversion to sales; Politicians - fund raising; Religious Organizations - Growth and Conversions; and what other objective you may have.

Location

So where is this Google Triangle? I don't think you would be surprised to find out its location. We all know where the Bermuda Triangle is anyway. The Google Triangle is actually on the first page of your search results. The location where an individual will find a relevant topic which interest him, and click on that topic. For example, If I'm interested in vacations to Cancun Mexico, I might query "Cancun Vacations". In which case I would get output today such as the figure to the left. I might be interested in an add or sponsor, if I'm looking at buying something immediately, but more than likely I'm searching to find out more about a trip to Cancun. The triangle represents the probability that I would select an item. The closer to the top I am more likely to be selected. Sponsors and Ads are not an organic search.


Why Grow Organic?

Organic foods? No, I mean organic searches. An organic hit on your website is a hit through a search, not an ad link or referral from another website. These hits are usually made by best matches to an users keyword search. My personal belief is that these are represented with more intrinsic value to the person doing a search. Although I cannot completely discount an ad, since I have selected them on occasion. But organic searches produce more results. Even Google in their analytics program refers to these type of searches as organic. The difficulty however is in getting your web site to the top of these organic searches. Tough competition, vastness of the web and users individual search habits all add to the difficulty of getting to the top. Enter a new career field, the Search Engine Optimization.

The Search Engine Mechanic

When your car or truck has problems, like mine did last night, more than likely you are going to take your vehicle to a mechanic. But how many times did you feel like you got taken to the cleaners? How could you have avoided it? Education. For instance, my battery went out in my Chevy Blazer a couple of months ago. It was a relatively new battery. I had the suspicion the problem was with the alternator. So I google'd it. Sure enough I had confirmed the problem was most likely the alternator. Next I called around to different mechanics to see, what they would charge to replace the alternator. The price range was quite a variant. After I little research on the price of an alternator, I had an idea who to trust.

The same goes for a Search Engine Mechanic. You need to educate yourself so you don't get taken to the cleaners. I'll discuss what you need to be aware of in later blogs. With the right mechanic or if you are good at fixing things yourself, you might be able to get into that Google Triangle.