Use Web Analytics to Become a Top Notch Marketer

All online and offline marketing campaigns should be tracked and measured. Let’s say you just wrote a blurb that promoted your website and there was an increase to that specific page. Without marking this blurb as a campaign within your analytics, what would you attribute the increase in traffic to? IN addition, having clear tracking for offline marketing, like trade shows, is an important way to compare the results of your entire marketing strategy.

Measure Traffic Sources. Find out how your visitors are finding you. Finding out which sources are driving the most traffic to the website will allow you to determine how well the search engines index the content on your website. You can also get the information to know if social media is actually working and which email campaigns are driving traffic. With the sources data, you can drill down further to strategize on what types of calls-to-action you place on specific pages.

Measure Conversion Rates. Getting visitors to the  website is the first step; getting them to convert into a lead or business is the next. Offering compelling content and clear calls to action will help to convert more of this traffic into leads for the business. Variant or A/B testing with landing pages and calls-to-action allow you to test which are converting at a higher average. Determine which keywords are giving you the best top, middle, and bottom of the funnel leads.

Ensure the data is clear. Focus on one metric. For example, if you notice an increase in traffic one week, can you tell what the cause of this increase was? You may notice there was a large increase of traffic from the blog; then, after drilling down further, you find that it was a specific article. This shows you that this specific content is compelling to your audience, and it would be a great idea to create more content on this topic.

Close the Loop. Most marketers are concerned about their marketing ROI and knowing where to devote more time, energy, and resources are important. Closed loop marketing finds out which campaigns are driving the most traffic, leads, and most importantly, customers. You want to devote your valued resources to marketing campaigns that are driving actual customers and business.

Proper web analytics can help you attract and retain customers and to increase the dollar volume each one spends.

Bing's Perspective on Quality Content

contentSince the Google Panda Update first launched back in February (and really for some time before that), there has been a lot of discussion about search quality throughout the industry – the quality of the content that search engines are returning in their results.

This is the whole reason the Panda update exists. It’s all about improving the quality of results. Some will dispute the success of that, but it is the reason for better or for worse.

But what about Bing? It doesn’t command nearly the search market share that Google does but, as it powers Yahoo search, it’s really the only major competitor in town.

Whereas Google had a list of questions one could ask themselves to asses the quality of their site, Bing has published a list of things to avoid, which reads as follows:

  • Duplicate content – don’t use articles or content that appears in other places.  Produce your own unique content.
  • Thin content – don’t produce pages with little relevant content on them – go deep when producing content – think “authority” when building your pages.  Ask yourself if this page of content would be considered an authority on the topic.
  • All text/All images – work to find a balance here, including images to help explain the content, or using text to fill in details about images on the page.  Remember that text held inside an image isn’t readable by the crawlers.
  • Being lonely – enable ways for visitors to share your content through social media.
  • Translation tools – rarely does a machine translation tool leave you with content that reads properly and that actually captures the original sentiment.  Avoid simply using a tool to translate content from one language to the next and posting that content online.
  • Skipping proofreading – when you are finished producing content, take the time to check for spelling errors, grammatical mistakes and for the overall flow when reading.  Does it sound like you’re repeating words too frequently?  Remove them.  Don’t be afraid to rewrite the content, either.
  • Long videos – If you produce video content, keep it easily consumable.  Even a short 3 – 4 minute video can be packed with useful content, so running a video out to 20 minutes is poor form in most instances.  It increases download times and leads to visitor dissatisfaction at having to wait for the video to load.  Plus, if you are adding a transcription of your video, even a short video can produce a lengthy transcription.
  • Excessively long pages – if your content runs long, move it to a second page.  Readers need a break, so be careful here to balance the length of your pages.  Make sure your pagination solution doesn’t cause other issues for your search optimization efforts, though.
  • Content for content’s sake – if you are producing content, be sure its valuable.  Don’t just add text to every page to create a deeper page.  Be sure the text, images or videos are all relevant to the content of the page.

If you’re living up to Google’s definition of quality, you probably won’t be doing too bad in Bing either, and if you’re doing well in Google, you’re probably getting a lot more search referrals from Google than you could ever get from Bing anyway, but it’s still helpful to get a look into Bing’s own thinking on this issue.

 

Thanks to Chris Crum of Web Pro News

Apple and Hulu? Could it Be?

internetBreaking Media News

Apple and Hulu? Could it Be?

Hulu’s owners, which also include Comcast Corp’s NBC Universal and Providence Equity Partners, have begun preliminary sale talks with about a dozen potential buyers, including Google Inc. and Microsoft Corporation.

The video site is a joint venture of Microsoft Corp. and NBC Universal.

The purchase could help solve Apple’s $76.2 billion conundrum. That’s how much money Apple has in its coffers, according the Wall Street Journal and investors have begun asking Apple how it plans to put that money to work.

The Journal said that some investors are pushing for Apple to return it to shareholders as dividends.

The paper’s All Things D”  blog said on Friday, however, that while Apple has met with Hulu’s bankers to kick the tires, Hulu is not a likely target for Apple.

The blog says that although Apple clearly can afford to buy Hulu, its core free-ad supported business is not to Apple’s taste. We shall see.  Two media giants doing the tango. Where will the chips land?

courtesy: MSNBC News

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