7 ways Google Analytics can help when redesigning your website

August 1st, 2010

Your analytics data is nearly as important as the financial accounts of your business when it comes to making a decision about your website. Your analytics data helps you understand how effective your site’s marketing, design and content is. And just as you wouldn’t hire more staff without being sure you have the budget for it, you shouldn’t redesign your website without understanding what your customers do when they are on it.

Below are seven ways Google Analytics can be used to help make the right decisions during a redesign.

1. What browsers and windows sizes should we support?

When designing your site you want to ensure that the majority of your customers can view your website and convert without browser versions or sizes preventing this.

I’d personally think that you should design your website in a size that at least 95% of your visitors can see without having to scroll horizontally. An easy way to check what browser sizes your current visitors are using is to go the Screen resolutions report under Visitors > Browser capabilities > Screen resolutions.

By comparing to site average you can also see if any particular screen resolution(s) has a significantly higher bounce rate

In the graph above you can see that the wider screen resolutions are actually performing much worse – this could be addressed by using a liquid layout or JavaScript to position content.

A quick way to check if your site has browser compatibility is to look at the browser report and compare each type to the site average, for the website below it is clear that there is poor support for safari.

The mobile browser report can help to decide whether a mobile version of your site is needed by looking at the bounce and conversion rate of mobile visits.

2. What territory specific pages or languages do we need to support?

The languages report under visitors is a useful way of seeing the proportion of foreign visitors to your site; this is particularly useful if you have an international website as it may indicate territory specific versions required that may help increase conversions.

Additionally, even if your website is UK focused, you may find that foreign speakers use your site.  This is especially relevant if your business is travel related as foreign people living in the UK or visiting short term may be interested in your services.  See this report under Visitors > Languages.

3. Can our customers find what they are looking for?

The internal search reports are really insightful as they show what your users are looking for once they are on your site, giving you an indication about missing or difficult to find content. A word cloud is a quick way to see what search terms regularly appear.

To create a word cloud, download the data, put the search term in column A, the number of times it was searched in column B and paste the formulae =REPT((A1&” “),B1) down column C. Grab all the words from Column C and paste into Wordle.

Word cloud from the internal search of World Vision, one of our charity clients (posted with permission)

4. Which landing/promotion pages need improving?

In a redesign it is important to understand which pages need changing as well knowing which pages are working well and should be left as they are. Google Analytics offers several reports & metrics for interpreting the performance of individual & groups of pages:

Goal funnel visualization – one of the most easy to understand, it graphically shows where visitors are leaking out of your sales funnels. Goal funnels need to be set up manually and when done so can be found under Goals > Goal funnel visualization

Site overlay – Using this report (Content > Site overlay) you can see at a page level what visitors are actually click on helping to show the effectiveness of call to actions and promotions. Not only can you look at the number of clicks on these items but also the ecommerce value i.e. users clicking this button have gone on to generate xx revenue

£ index – this under used metric, shown in the top content report, shows how important visits to a particular page are when visitors convert. You may find that pages like the about us, shipping & returns pages have high £ index values as visitors often view them before making a purchase and help a user decide if they should buy your products. Sounds obvious but it might suggest that including a shipping and returns policy info box on product pages helps improve conversions (particularly likely on high value goods).

Bounce rate/exit rates – bounce rate shows the number of visitors that viewed one page and then left, while exit rate shows visitors that leave the site after viewing a particular page (they may have viewed multiple pages before). These metrics can help you understand which landing pages are under performing or common places that visitors are leaving your site.

(Page URLs removed from image)

However, these reports, like most analytics, must be understood in context to know if there really is an issue or not. When evaluating a page it is important to consider the objective of the page, how does its performance compare to other pages and are any problems a result of a design, content, product or brand issue (always difficult to know!).

The analysis of the above reports provide a great starting point for user testing as they can help identify issues on your site that are preventing conversions.

After launch

When a new site is built it is obviously important to bench mark performance before and after using KPIs that are relevant to your business such as visits, conversions, average transaction value, revenue etc.

However, it can take a few weeks for these metrics to settle down making it difficult to tell early on if there are any problems with your new website. By setting up custom alerts you can get near real time warnings of any errors or changes that may have occurred. The sensitivity of these alerts depends on your website, suggested values are used below

5. Is tracking set up correctly?

A common error that occurs in Google Analytics is a large amount of self-referrals showing up in the traffic source report i.e. the top referring site is your own! This can happen for a number of reasons such as certain pages not having tracking codes, use of frames, page redirects or sub domain and/or multi domain tracking not set up correctly. These self-referrals overwrite the original referral information preventing you from knowing where these visitors came from.

To be able to fix these tracking errors quickly before they skew your reports, it’s useful to use a custom alert (Intelligence > Custom report) to email you if there are any large daily increases in self-referrals.

Even with this alert I recommend that you add an analytics check into your QA/testing process to ensure no errors or loss of data when an updates are made.

6. Has the redesign affected our search rankings?

With any luck your new site and content will have significant improvement in search engine rankings and subsequent increases in traffic.

But it wouldn’t be a lie to say I’ve seen a big brand push a site live without removing the staging server robots.txt file, which was being used to blocking search engine access, this in turn caused the new site to completely drop out of Google!  Even if large changes in rankings like that don’t happen, its useful to monitor organic traffic after launch to be aware of decreases or increases in visits (as well as changes in rankings using this GA filter).

If you do see drastic falls in organic traffic I’d recommend not reacting unless you’re absolutely sure you know the cause, rankings tend to jostle around a little after a redesign and you could end up changing something for the worse.

7. Tracking 404 pages

When launching a new site it is important to ensure you redirect old pages to new pages, however, errors can easily occur with redirect rules causing users to land on 404 pages.

Tracking visits to 404 pages in Google Analytics is easy, simply add the tracking code to the 404 page template and ensure the page title has 404 in it. Then to see which pages are missing navigate to Content > Content by title > find and click the 404 page, this will show you a list of page URLs that have been requested but not found. Unfortunately a custom alert does not work here as you cannot have the page title as an alert, therefore it is important to check this report regularly after launch. You can also use Google webmaster tools to check 404 pages but I prefer the additional traffic insights Google Analytics can give.

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Mobile Search, what you need to know

August 1st, 2010

Picture this: you’re stuck in Spain with thousands of other passengers. You need to get home but there are no flights. What are the alternatives? You pull out your mobile phone and start searching for buses, Eurostar trains, and cross channel ferries. If all else fails and you have to stay put, there are always local hotels.

But how many bus companies, ferry operators or hotel chains have mobile search campaigns running? Not many!

Of course, mobile search marketing isn’t just reserved for natural disasters and strikes. For years, marketers have been saying that “this is the year for mobile,” but it hasn’t quite come true until now.

Why you need to take mobile search seriously:
· Over the next four years, it is expected that searches made on Google from mobile devices will overtake searches from desktop computers.
· easyJet and BA, to name but two, run highly successful mobile campaigns that are driving real sales.
· All new Google product developments are now built with mobile use in
 mind. The focus is on high-end devices like the iPhone, Android and Palm Pre, which have full HTML browsers, rather than Blackberries, which use the lower-functioned WAP.

Developing your mobile search strategy
Building your mobile search campaign is easier than you think, and can be done from within your existing Google AdWords account. These are the key things to do if you want your campaign to be a success:

1. Be found: Just like your existing search campaigns, mobile search uses keywords to answer the user’s query, driving them to a landing page.

With mobile search, you also have the option of including a phone number in your ad so that, with a single click, users can call your business from their mobiles. Tests of the “Click to Call” numbers in ads have shown increases of between 5 and 30% in Click Through Rates (CTR).

2. Be targeted and precise: When setting up your mobile campaign, you can target users based on the device or mobile operator. For example, if you have a mobile site and want to target business travel users, you could choose to target Blackberries on Vodafone, which supplies many corporate mobile devices.

Google mobile search also allows you to target specific locations that can be pinpointed with frightening accuracy: to within 2 metres if the device has GPS! This means that you can target or tailor your message, showing your customer relevant information based on their location. You can then give them your address and phone number, so they can take immediate action.

3. Be relevant: Just like you would with any search campaign, give the user the most relevant information, and, if you’re driving them to a landing page, make sure it’s what they are looking for.

If the user is looking for ‘flights to Amsterdam’, give them a mobile-friendly page with flight information, special offers and related travel information like hotels or local events.

4. Be easy-to-use: Having a mobile campaign doesn’t necessarily mean building a whole new mobile site, particularly if you are targeting high-end devices like the iPhone that use full HTML browsers. However, you might need to make some changes: check what your site looks like on range of mobile devices, or use a tool such as http://validator.w3.org/mobile/ to check how mobile-friendly your site is.

Remember to include a Click-to-Call phone number in your ads, and test it, to ensure that the user can connect with you directly from your ad.

5. Be ready: Next time there’s a volcanic ash cloud or industrial action, you should be ready to offer people an alternative way to get to their destination, a place to stay, or just some help and advice, all through their mobile phones. Be ready to seize opportunities by building campaigns now and having them ready to go when you need them.

As the mobile internet grows, it will continue to offer new, exciting and innovative search opportunities, as well as being a cost effective way to target users in a time when marketing budgets are under scrutiny.

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Site Speed: Reducing Page Load Times and Increasing Pages Crawled

August 1st, 2010

I’ve always been a big fan of quick page load times on sites from overall User Experience standpoint. But, ever since Google announced that they were using site speed in web search ranking I have become a big time stickler about this. After watching this for the last couple months, I’ve realized that my peskiness about the whole thing warranted just cause.

Proving that Site Speed is directly correlated Pages Crawled

I tend to keep an eye on Google Webmaster tools to see any blips in crawl rate, pages crawled, etc. I don’t want any big issues to show up that catch me by surprise. When Google made the announcement I made sure to keep an eye on site speed. Here are a couple examples of the DIRECT CORRELATION

Website 1: Page Load times shoot up, Pages Crawled drops:

First look at graph three and notice the massive upswing in the page load times or as google titles it “time spent downloading a page.” Then, from there, look at the top two graphics and notice the massive drop off in the number of pages crawled per day and the amount of content downloaded per day.

Website 2: Page Load times go down, Pages Crawled dramatically increases:

I can tell you that this was a big positive for website 2, to notice a HUGE positive in the number of pages crawled daily.

What this means for SEO and User Experience

Understanding how to diagnose and address these issues is extremely important to any SEO and Webmaster now at days. I was a huge advocate of this at PayPal and lent a helping hand in diagnosing this and addressing it in hopes of increasing the user experience. Again though, we now know what a big part this obviously plays, as I’ve shown the direct correlation above with the number of pages crawled increasing or decreasing based on the page load times.

I was very happy to see this as it does increase the overall user and searcher experience by coming to sites that are loading pages faster. But, it is extremely important for an SEO to note and understand the importance of site speed, especially with sites that have extremely large indexes.

Diagnosing Site Speed in Google Webmaster Tools

Start by logging into webmaster tools and talking a look at the Diagnostics -> Crawl Stats section and make note of any increases or decreases in the third graph about page download times. If there are any big rises or drops, check out the above two graphs to see if it had an effect on your pages crawled. If you are seeing relatively steady movement, move on to the Labs -> Site Performance section.

On the Site Performance page you’ll notice a few things. To start with the graph that represents the avg. number of seconds it takes to load your pages. Something to take note of that they’ve highlighted the optimal time to download a page as 1.5 seconds or faster. Depending on your site, they’ll list about 10 URLs and their respective page load time. Finally, they provide some very useful info (which I’ll get to in a minute) on how to address these concerns.

There are a couple tools that you can use to diagnose site speed and page load times. My favorite isyslow and Google recently released their Page Speed tool, both of these plug directly into my favorite Firefox Plugin: Firebug.

Addressing Site Speed and Page Load time Concerns

Google Webmaster Tools and their Page Speed tool, along with YSlow provide you ample amounts of information to start addressing the site speed concerns one step at a time. Some of the biggest mistakes that people make run into is the size of images and image optimization, number of HTTP request and number of external JavaScript and CSS files. Here is a list of issues and how to address them:

Making fewer HTTP Requests

The number of HTTP requests you make can put a massive strain on the page load times. As mentioned in the screenshot below, try to combine external files to a very minimal amount. I’ve seen sites that have as many as 20 external JavaScript files and some of those files with only 1-4 lines of code. That is the type of thing that can be combined to reduce the number of http requests. The same goes with CSS files and optimizing the number of CSS calls into one main CSS document.

JavaScript Minification and Compression

Yahoo!’s Developer Network blog has a post dedicated to how to minify javascript. The main reason for doing this is to shrink the overall size of the JavaScript file by getting rid of comments, new lines, etc. that aren’t necessary for the JavaScript to process. There are a couple tools out there to do this, JSMinand YUI Compressor.

Using Gzip to compress components

You can drastically reduce the HTTP Requests and Responses using Gzip compression, and, it is the most popular and effective form right now. In Apache you can use mod_gzip and in IIS you can do this through IIS Manager and adding a Web Service extension using these IIS compression tips.

CSS Sprites

CSS Sprites are extremely useful for reducing the number of image requests (thus lowering http requests). Having your background images in one large image and using CSS for the background image and positions you can use a single image for many purposes. A List Apart has a great resource that goes into the details of the HTML Markup and CSS that is necessary to make this dream a reality.

Much much more!

There are a ton more ways of improving site performance and reducing page load time to not only help your page crawl rate and pages crawled on your site, but also, increase the user experience. Some of the things I didn’t even get to touch on like adding expires headers, reducing the number of DNS lookups, using a CDN (Content Delivery Network), etc. are all very important to reducing page load times.

Have you noticed similar things with page load times and pages crawled? How are you dealing with Site Speed concerns for both SEO and User Experience?

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Social Media Etiquette: 20 Dos and Don’ts to Avoid Looking Like an Ass

July 6th, 2010

Whenever I hear the word “etiquette” visions of stuffy old charm schools play in my head. I don’t believe you have to (or even should) be nice to everyone all the time just because you want everyone to like you. It’s okay to dislike people, disagree with people, and share honest opinions as long as you can back them up. I’m also not a big believer in wearing a peachy little persona all the time just because other people tell you that you should.

I’m going to throw a buzzword at you, but one I think really matters — authenticity. I’d rather someone truly be themselves when I meet them in the social media space as opposed to watching them putting on a show.

That said, I’m a surprisingly big fan of general social media etiquette. I think it’s often less about manners and more about basic common sense. There are plenty of things that you wouldn’t want people doing to you while you’re on social networks, blogs, or using other social media tools. So don’t do those things to others.

If you want to avoid coming across as a complete jackass, getting yourself banned, or just being blacklisted by your network, here are 20 tips for social media etiquette you might want to keep in mind.

  1. DON’T spam. Ever – Self-explanatory, no?
  2. DON’T keep everything private. – Online privacy is important. It’s very important. But if you’re keeping every social interaction private, why are you even taking part in social media? Stick to emails and instant messengers and text messaging if that’s your goal, and stop making everyone else feel like your “club” is too exclusive.
  3. DON’T “go after” competitors. – If your competitor does something stupid, comment on it to your heart’s content. But don’t take part in social media sabotage — trying to bury their posts or news stories, trying to get them banned from social media platforms, or pretending to be an unhappy customer for example.
  4. DON’T create multiple handles to “gang up.” – If other people aren’t supporting your viewpoint, that should tell you something. It’s never okay to comment using multiple fake identities to try to support your own point (making it look like several people are agreeing). Not only is that idiotic, but you will get caught and exposed.
  5. DON’T try to incite a mob mentality. — In addition to not setting up multiple identities of your own, also avoid trying to incite a social media mob. If you blatantly go around telling everyone to comment on something with the same opinion, you’re guilty of manipulating the conversation. Share a link? Yes. Tell people what to say or encourage them to gang up? I don’t think so.
  6. DO think before “speaking.” – Yes, social media involves the ability to publish your thoughts instantly. But just because something pops into your head, it doesn’t mean it should be shared with the world. Think first.
  7. DO personalize messages and introductions. — When you first connect with someone new and they don’t already know you, go ahead and say hello. Let them know how you came across them. It’s a little less creepy and you might just make a great impression.
  8. DO think (and network) outside your circle. — If your social networks only involve people who agree with you, you’re living in a box. It’s silly at best.
  9. DON’T post questionable photos of others without their permission. — Regardless of whether or not you legally need a model release to post a certain photo, don’t post anything questionable or compromising of someone else unless you check with them first. It’s just the right thing to do. And if you don’t, remember this — karma’s a bitch. You have no idea what they have onyou.
  10. DON’T send automated messages to new followers. — When someone follows you on Twitter, don’t use automated tools to immediately bombard them with messages (no matter howsweet you think you’re being in your not-so-personal “hello”). Remember, it’s not just you annoying them — others are doing it too.
  11. DO use your real name whenever possible. — At a bare minimum, use a recognizable name (such as a common pen name everyone already knows for you). When you interact anonymously, very little holds you accountable for your actions and words.
  12. DON’T excessively link to your own site(s). — This is another common sense one. No one cares about your site enough to want to see a link to it in every message you send out there in social media land. You’ll eventually just be viewed as a link spammer.
  13. DO give back. — Social media is a two-way street. Give as much as you get. Better yet, give even more!
  14. DON’T turn into a social media stalker. – Please don’t follow people around on the social Web like a lost puppy. It really is rather creepy. Unless you’re best buds, no one wants to see you not only on Facebook and Twitter but also on all of their niche social sites ranging from crocheting to auto body repair.
  15. DON’T invite everyone you know to every social media tool you decide to use. — If they’re already networking with you in two or three places, that’s enough. Really. Unless the new service is completely ground-breaking, don’t nag them with invites
  16. DO try to make your tweets comprehensible. — I try to avoid txt spk. Not everyone is a teenager who grew up with it in their blood. Cut the rest of us some slack and try to use… oh, I don’t know… words? By all means, abbreviate when necessary. Just try to use shortcuts your audience will widely understand.
  17. DON’T swap your name for a string of keywords. — When you comment on someone’s blog or create a social media handle, stick to your name. Don’t use a string of keywords because you think it’s good for SEO. It’s usually not (most of those links are no-follow by default). And people want to feel like they’re talking to a person (or your company) — not “detox foot spa.” I literally just pulled that example from some of my own blog spam.
  18. DO listen to what others have to say. — Conversations are two-way streets. Enough said.
  19. DON’T unfollow people just because they don’t follow you back. — Seriously. How lame is that? If the person noticed you and thought you were worth following, they would have. Either tweet things that make you worthy of a follow, or knock off the follow spam crap just to try to build your own follower count artificially.
  20. DO submit other people’s material to news aggregators and social bookmarking sites. — When you only share your own material, you just look like an egotistical little snot. Oh…. That’s what you were going for? Then proceed.

I’m sure you brilliant folks can come up with more tips on social media etiquette, so share some of your favorites in the comments. They can be general tips on social media etiquette or tips specific to different tools and platforms.

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A Comprehensive Guide to Link Building via Blog Commenting

June 30th, 2010

Though there is a lot of debate about the value of blog commenting as a form of link building, it is still a very popular linking strategy. This guide covers some basic things you will probably encounter while blog commenting, and how to make sure you get your comment approved more times than not.

Benefits of Blog Commenting Links
First off, let’s look at the benefits of blog commenting. There are five primary reasons we build links for websites. Here is what you need to look for to accomplish these goals with blog commenting.
Traffic
If you are looking to increase traffic to your website, your best bet is to comment on blogs that receive a lot of traffic that are in your niche or industry, without concern to dofollow or nofollow linking.
To find popular blogs in your niche, you can check out the variety of blog directories out there. Some of my favorite sites include:
Technorati – Use the search box at the top of the site – you can search for popular posts using specific keywords or change the “switch” from posts to blogs and search for a blog that covers particular topic.
Alltop – Alltop pulls in feeds for blogs on a variety of topics, showing the latest five posts from blogs on everything from ABC News to Zoology. You’ll be hard pressed not to find a blog on a topic you want to comment on here.
PostRank – Want some analytics details? Head over to PostRank Topics and search for your topic. It will bring up a list of blogs that are tagged wth that topic in order of social engagement, including comments and shares on social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, Delicious, Myspace, and more.
PageRank
If you are blog commenting to boost your PageRank, then you are going to want to look for blog posts that are relevant to your topic, have some PageRank themselves, and preferably allow you to have dofollow links, as that is how the magical “link juice” is passed.
To find blogs that are dofollow, you can simply do a Google search for dofollow blog directories or dofollow blog list. Some directories and lists are old though, so the PageRank information maybe out of date or the site may no longer be dofollow. It is kind of hit and miss.
To find blog posts with high PR, one method I like to use is a Google search for particular keywords in the Firefox browser using the Seoquake extension. When you install it, be sure to check to go to the Tools Menu > Seoquake > Preferences, and under SE plugins, and Enable the Google checkbox as well as change Load parameters to by request so you don’t overload Google and Yahoo with requests to the point they ban you from search.
Next, do a Google search for your keywords plus additional phrases to find blog posts such as Disqus (a popular blog commenting system), “register or login to post comments” (for Drupal blogs), site:blogspot.com for Blogger blogs, “leave a comment” (WordPress blogs), etc. You can sort the results by PageRank by clicking on the PR: ? and using the arrows to sort the results from highest to lowest PR.
SERPs
For boosting SERPs for a particular keyword phrase, you will want to find relevant blogs using dofollow (as you would for PageRank boosting), plus you will want to be able to use keyword anchor text for your link. This is a bit tricky in terms of getting passed moderation (more on that in a bit). But there are two ways to be sure you are safe with using keyword anchor text:
1. You find a blog post where others do it. If there are other people getting approved using keywords in their name field as anchor text or anchor text links in the body of the comment, then you probably can too.
2. If you search for your keywords and “Your Name@Your Keywords” you will find blogs using KeywordLuv. You will just need to enter Your Name@Your Keywords in the name field to get your website linked to your preferred keywords and anchor text.
Blog Post or Article Promotion
If you are blog commenting to boost PageRank, search rankings, or traffic to particular blog posts, you can search for blogs enabled with CommentLuv. These blogs allow you to have a link to your main website as well as a link to a post below your comment.
Typically, you can do this by simply entering your blog URL or your author page / profile URL in the website field, and CommentLuv will usually pull up your latest post. If you want the option to pull up your latest 10 posts, you can create a free account on ComLuv and then have access to your latest posts, linked to by their titles.
You can also promote articles using CommentLuv that are on particular article directories including EzineArticles, HubPages, Squidoo, or any network that allows an RSS feed for articles by a particular author.
Spam Filters
There are several roadblocks that you can run into when blog commenting, especially when you are trying to get a link added to your comment. The biggest is going to be spam filters.
Akismet
Akismet is the top spam filter protection for WordPress blogs, both self-hosted domains and on the WordPress.com site. The challenge with Akismet is that it only takes a few bloggers to mark you as spam before you end up triggering one of the many aspects that their database checks for, and once you’re in, you will have to request to be removed from their database. But of course, if you get marked as spam again, you’ll be back in it again.
How do you know you have been tagged as spam by Akismet? Typically, your comment will either be approved automatically or go into moderation. If you submit your comment, and it doesn’t show it as being in moderation, then you might want to email the blog owner to let them know you just commented and it didn’t show up on the site.
If you submit your comment on a blog post that is older than 30 days and get a white screen, then congratulations – you have found an Akismet protected blog that has turned on the option to delete any spam comments on older posts without it ever being recorded in the bloggers’ spam or moderation folder. Your comment, hence, will never be seen. Your only shot at this stage of getting a comment on that site will be to comment on a post that is less than 30 days old and email the blog owner to let them know you are in their spam filter.
Drupal
Drupal blogs (usually the ones you have to login or register for) also have a spam filtering system. Since I’m not a Drupal user, I don’t know exactly how it works, but you will know you have been caught by it because you will receive a warning when you submit your comment that it looks like spam because of the link in the body of the comment text. At this point, you’ll be prompted to enter a captcha – after that, it could go live or be sent to moderation.
Alternatively, it may simply tell you it is not going to approve your comment at all. You can try changing your keyword phrase to less keywords or something different. And if this doesn’t work, then your comment is probably not going to go through at all with any link in the comment body.
Standing Out From the Spammers
So if you do comment on a site that is heavily moderated or has a spam filter in place, how can you stand out and make yourself look like a legitimate commenter and not a spammer?
Gravatars
One of the most important ways to stand out from spammers in someone’s spam filter is by the use of a Gravatar, which puts a photo next to your comment. As a blogger who uses Akismet, I can tell you that 99% of the spam never has a Gravatar, so if your comment does end up in the spam filter it will stand out much better if you have your picture next to it.
Profiles
If a site requires you to register to submit a comment, be sure to fill out some details in the profile. It only takes about an extra minute to fill out a few fields and maybe add an image if the profile asks for one, and it will make you look less like a spammer and more like a real person.
Between a Drive By and One Hit Wonder
Spammers usually do one of two things – they do the one comment on the highest PR post they can find on a site, or they hit as many posts as they can get their hands on. Your best bet is to maybe do two comments on your first visit, on your target (most relevant or higher PR) post and on a recent post. If you want to continue to be able to comment at that blog, you will want to subscribe to comments (if that is an option) so if the blogger replies to you, you will be notified via email and can come back and answer. I have seen some bloggers that approve a comment and reply, and if the person doesn’t come back, delete it shortly thereafter (or strip the link) assuming they were a spammer.
Moderation
The other major roadblock in blog commenting is moderation. Sometimes you think you have gotten lucky because you submitted your comment and it was approved automaticaly. But don’t celebrate too soon. You might want to check back in a few days to make sure it is still there. Some sites will allow any comment to approve, but then will strip the link or delete it completely later on.
Getting Links in the Website Field of Your Comment Approved
On WordPress, Blogspot, or other websites that offer the standard name, email address, and website field, your best chance of getting your comment approved is to follow commenting policy, stated or implied. If you find a comment policy, read it and don’t break it, and your comment should get approved. If you don’t see anything that explicitly says what their commenting policy allows or doesn’t allow, take a look at previously approved comments. Is everyone using a real name or nickname? Then keywords probably aren’t allowed in the name field, and if you try it, your comment will not get approved. Just follow the trend.
Getting Links in the Body of the Comment Approved
Probably the biggest spammer red flag are comments with a link embedded in the body of the comment. If the blog allows you to add a link in a website field, I would go with that first over adding the link to the body of the comment to get it approved. But if you don’t have that as an option (as on Drupal blogs or others that you have to register for or connect with Twitter / Facebook) and you simply must have the link in the body of the comment, you have three options.
1. Include the link as your “signature” like you would in an email. Sometimes this will slip by moderation.
2. Include your link only if it answers a question from the blog post or another commenter. If the blog post says “where can I buy dog food at a good price” and your link is a discount pet food supply store, then it might be welcome.
3. Include your link only if it somehow adds value to the post. If the blog post is about website analytics (preferably a comparison of services out there and not simply an advertisement post about one service), and your link is to an analytics service, you can include it as an additional resource for people to check out when comparing analytics programs. Listing some differences and benefits of your analyics program compared to the ones listed in the post would also be a plus.
4. If none of these work for you, find blogs that have approved comments with links in their comment text. Chances are, they will be spammy, but if others have spammed it, you probably can too. Just make sure the other links aren’t really trashy and you should be in ok company.
In short, your link needs to add value to the post or discussion. Period. Or it’s not getting approved unless you luckout on a site that has laxed moderation.
The Golden Rule of Blog Commenting
Last, but most importantly, when it comes to blog commenting, there is one universal “Golden Rule” that should be followed, no matter what.
Make your comment valuable to the post and the discussion.
Great post is not going to get you far, and neither is a comment that has nothing to do with the post itself, no matter how long and intelligent it sounds. It is a time sucker, but you are going to have to read the post and make your comment a response to the post, or a response to another commenter’s comment. Be a valuable commenter, not a comment spammer.
Your Blog Commenting Strategies for Link Building
Do you incorporate blog commenting as a strategy for link building? Are you aiming for more traffic, boosting PageRank, or raising your search result positions? What kind of results have you seen, and what additional tips would you give to others who want to pursue this method of linking?

Though there is a lot of debate about the value of blog commenting as a form of link building, it is still a very popular linking strategy. This guide covers some basic things you will probably encounter while blog commenting, and how to make sure you get your comment approved more times than not.
Benefits of Blog Commenting LinksFirst off, let’s look at the benefits of blog commenting. There are five primary reasons we build links for websites. Here is what you need to look for to accomplish these goals with blog commenting.

Traffic
If you are looking to increase traffic to your website, your best bet is to comment on blogs that receive a lot of traffic that are in your niche or industry, without concern to dofollow or nofollow linking.
To find popular blogs in your niche, you can check out the variety of blog directories out there. Some of my favorite sites include:

Technorati – Use the search box at the top of the site – you can search for popular posts using specific keywords or change the “switch” from posts to blogs and search for a blog that covers particular topic.Alltop – Alltop pulls in feeds for blogs on a variety of topics, showing the latest five posts from blogs on everything from ABC News to Zoology. You’ll be hard pressed not to find a blog on a topic you want to comment on here.PostRank – Want some analytics details? Head over to PostRank Topics and search for your topic. It will bring up a list of blogs that are tagged wth that topic in order of social engagement, including comments and shares on social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, Delicious, Myspace, and more.PageRank
If you are blog commenting to boost your PageRank, then you are going to want to look for blog posts that are relevant to your topic, have some PageRank themselves, and preferably allow you to have dofollow links, as that is how the magical “link juice” is passed.

To find blogs that are dofollow, you can simply do a Google search for dofollow blog directories or dofollow blog list. Some directories and lists are old though, so the PageRank information maybe out of date or the site may no longer be dofollow. It is kind of hit and miss.

To find blog posts with high PR, one method I like to use is a Google search for particular keywords in the Firefox browser using the Seoquake extension. When you install it, be sure to check to go to the Tools Menu > Seoquake > Preferences, and under SE plugins, and Enable the Google checkbox as well as change Load parameters to by request so you don’t overload Google and

Yahoo with requests to the point they ban you from search.
Next, do a Google search for your keywords plus additional phrases to find blog posts such as Disqus (a popular blog commenting system), “register or login to post comments” (for Drupal blogs), site:blogspot.com for Blogger blogs, “leave a comment” (WordPress blogs), etc. You can sort the results by PageRank by clicking on the PR: ? and using the arrows to sort the results from highest to lowest PR.

SERPs
For boosting SERPs for a particular keyword phrase, you will want to find relevant blogs using dofollow (as you would for PageRank boosting), plus you will want to be able to use keyword anchor text for your link. This is a bit tricky in terms of getting passed moderation (more on that in a bit). But there are two ways to be sure you are safe with using keyword anchor text:

1. You find a blog post where others do it. If there are other people getting approved using keywords in their name field as anchor text or anchor text links in the body of the comment, then you probably can too.

2. If you search for your keywords and “Your Name@Your Keywords” you will find blogs using KeywordLuv. You will just need to enter Your Name@Your Keywords in the name field to get your website linked to your preferred keywords and anchor text.

Blog Post or Article Promotion
If you are blog commenting to boost PageRank, search rankings, or traffic to particular blog posts, you can search for blogs enabled with CommentLuv. These blogs allow you to have a link to your main website as well as a link to a post below your comment.

Typically, you can do this by simply entering your blog URL or your author page / profile URL in the website field, and CommentLuv will usually pull up your latest post. If you want the option to pull up your latest 10 posts, you can create a free account on ComLuv and then have access to your latest posts, linked to by their titles.

You can also promote articles using CommentLuv that are on particular article directories including EzineArticles, HubPages, Squidoo, or any network that allows an RSS feed for articles by a particular author.
Spam FiltersThere are several roadblocks that you can run into when blog commenting, especially when you are trying to get a link added to your comment. The biggest is going to be spam filters.

Akismet
Akismet is the top spam filter protection for WordPress blogs, both self-hosted domains and on the WordPress.com site. The challenge with Akismet is that it only takes a few bloggers to mark you as spam before you end up triggering one of the many aspects that their database checks for, and once you’re in, you will have to request to be removed from their database. But of course, if you get marked as spam again, you’ll be back in it again.
How do you know you have been tagged as spam by Akismet? Typically, your comment will either be approved automatically or go into moderation. If you submit your comment, and it doesn’t show it as being in moderation, then you might want to email the blog owner to let them know you just commented and it didn’t show up on the site.

If you submit your comment on a blog post that is older than 30 days and get a white screen, then congratulations – you have found an Akismet protected blog that has turned on the option to delete any spam comments on older posts without it ever being recorded in the bloggers’ spam or moderation folder. Your comment, hence, will never be seen. Your only shot at this stage of getting a comment on that site will be to comment on a post that is less than 30 days old and email the blog owner to let them know you are in their spam filter.

Drupal
Drupal blogs (usually the ones you have to login or register for) also have a spam filtering system. Since I’m not a Drupal user, I don’t know exactly how it works, but you will know you have been caught by it because you will receive a warning when you submit your comment that it looks like spam because of the link in the body of the comment text. At this point, you’ll be prompted to enter a captcha – after that, it could go live or be sent to moderation.
Alternatively, it may simply tell you it is not going to approve your comment at all. You can try changing your keyword phrase to less keywords or something different. And if this doesn’t work, then your comment is probably not going to go through at all with any link in the comment body.
Standing Out From the SpammersSo if you do comment on a site that is heavily moderated or has a spam filter in place, how can you stand out and make yourself look like a legitimate commenter and not a spammer?

Gravatars
One of the most important ways to stand out from spammers in someone’s spam filter is by the use of a Gravatar, which puts a photo next to your comment. As a blogger who uses Akismet, I can tell you that 99% of the spam never has a Gravatar, so if your comment does end up in the spam filter it will stand out much better if you have your picture next to it.
Profiles

If a site requires you to register to submit a comment, be sure to fill out some details in the profile. It only takes about an extra minute to fill out a few fields and maybe add an image if the profile asks for one, and it will make you look less like a spammer and more like a real person.

Between a Drive By and One Hit Wonder

Spammers usually do one of two things – they do the one comment on the highest PR post they can find on a site, or they hit as many posts as they can get their hands on. Your best bet is to maybe do two comments on your first visit, on your target (most relevant or higher PR) post and on a recent post. If you want to continue to be able to comment at that blog, you will want to subscribe to comments (if that is an option) so if the blogger replies to you, you will be notified via email and can come back and answer. I have seen some bloggers that approve a comment and reply, and if the person doesn’t come back, delete it shortly thereafter (or strip the link) assuming they were a spammer.

Moderation

The other major roadblock in blog commenting is moderation. Sometimes you think you have gotten lucky because you submitted your comment and it was approved automaticaly. But don’t celebrate too soon. You might want to check back in a few days to make sure it is still there. Some sites will allow any comment to approve, but then will strip the link or delete it completely later on.

Getting Links in the Website Field of Your Comment Approved
On WordPress, Blogspot, or other websites that offer the standard name, email address, and website field, your best chance of getting your comment approved is to follow commenting policy, stated or implied. If you find a comment policy, read it and don’t break it, and your comment should get approved. If you don’t see anything that explicitly says what their commenting policy allows or doesn’t allow, take a look at previously approved comments. Is everyone using a real name or nickname? Then keywords probably aren’t allowed in the name field, and if you try it, your comment will not get approved. Just follow the trend.

Getting Links in the Body of the Comment Approved
Probably the biggest spammer red flag are comments with a link embedded in the body of the comment. If the blog allows you to add a link in a website field, I would go with that first over adding the link to the body of the comment to get it approved. But if you don’t have that as an option (as on Drupal blogs or others that you have to register for or connect with Twitter / Facebook) and you simply must have the link in the body of the comment, you have three options.
1. Include the link as your “signature” like you would in an email. Sometimes this will slip by moderation.
2. Include your link only if it answers a question from the blog post or another commenter. If the blog post says “where can I buy dog food at a good price” and your link is a discount pet food supply store, then it might be welcome.
3. Include your link only if it somehow adds value to the post. If the blog post is about website analytics (preferably a comparison of services out there and not simply an advertisement post about one service), and your link is to an analytics service, you can include it as an additional resource for people to check out when comparing analytics programs. Listing some differences and benefits of your analyics program compared to the ones listed in the post would also be a plus.
4. If none of these work for you, find blogs that have approved comments with links in their comment text. Chances are, they will be spammy, but if others have spammed it, you probably can too. Just make sure the other links aren’t really trashy and you should be in ok company.

In short, your link needs to add value to the post or discussion. Period. Or it’s not getting approved unless you luckout on a site that has laxed moderation.
The Golden Rule of Blog CommentingLast, but most importantly, when it comes to blog commenting, there is one universal “Golden Rule” that should be followed, no matter what.

Make your comment valuable to the post and the discussion.
Great post is not going to get you far, and neither is a comment that has nothing to do with the post itself, no matter how long and intelligent it sounds. It is a time sucker, but you are going to have to read the post and make your comment a response to the post, or a response to another commenter’s comment. Be a valuable commenter, not a comment spammer.
Your Blog Commenting Strategies for Link BuildingDo you incorporate blog commenting as a strategy for link building? Are you aiming for more traffic, boosting PageRank, or raising your search result positions? What kind of results have you seen, and what additional tips would you give to others who want to pursue this method of linking?

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101 Social Media Tools for Social Media Marketing and More

June 28th, 2010

It doesn’t make sense to jump in and use all new social media tools that come along just because everyone else is or because you think they’re “cool.” No one can really afford to be that unproductive with their time (or if they can, that alone speaks volumes). At Social Implications, we’re big advocates of cutting through the noise by narrowing down the social media tools you use to the ones best suited for your target market or audience.

That said, you can’t choose the best social media tools for your business (or even personal networking) unless you know what’s out there. With that in mind we’ve put together a list of 101 social media tools you should know about. We’ve broken them down for you by category below. Note though that we’re not including some of the biggest staples in social media — Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. Rather we’ll focus on tools to help you get more out of the sites you’re already using or social media tools that you might not have heard of yet. Links in each section are in no particular order. Enjoy!

Social Networking

There are countless social networks on the Web today, letting you do everything from network with old classmates to joining communities with likeminded folks who share similar hobbies or business interests. But what happens when existing social networks don’t really serve your needs? You can start your own! Whether you’re interested in building a niche social network or one around your brand, here are some tools to help you do that.

  1. Ning — As of July 20th, plans range from $2.95 – 49.95 per month.
  2. GoingOn Community Platform — Emphasis on educational use
  3. BuddyPress — Create a social network on the WordPress platform
  4. Elgg.org — An open source social networking platform
  5. Boonex Dolphin — Feature-rich and free; Prime option also available
  6. SocialGo — Setup a free social network or purchase premium access to monetize your site.
  7. Crowdvine — Build a self-hosted or professionally set up community around your conference or other event.
  8. KickApps – Add social networking capabilities and other social media elements to your existing website.
  9. Snapville – Social networking solution focused on employee and customer engagement
  10. Cisco’s Eos Platform — Social networking and content management platform for the entertainment industry

Blogging

Blogging is one of the older aspects of social media, around even before the “social media” label really took hold. Blogs allow you to keep your customers up-to-date on company news. They allow you to have conversations with your audience. They serve as platform elements for professionals looking to build exposure and gain a solid reader base. They’re used in PR. They’re used in marketing. They’re used as private journals. They’re used to host content sites. They’re even used as business models all on their own. So let’s take a look at some blogging platforms you can use to set up your own new blog. The list below includes both hosted and self-hosted (you need your own hosting account) platforms.

  1. WordPress.com – Free hosted solution
  2. WordPress.org – Free self-hosted blog platform
  3. WordPress MU – Create a multi-user blog network using WordPress.
  4. b2evolution
  5. Blogger
  6. Typepad
  7. Vox
  8. Moveable Type – Commercial
  9. Moveable Type – Open source
  10. LiveJournal — For more personal blogging in most cases
  11. Posterous
  12. Serendipity

Blog Comment Management Tools

Sometimes the comment management tools built into your blog platform just aren’t enough. Here are a couple of extra options you might want to look into either to help you manage comments or encourage more of them.

  1. CommentLuv – WordPress plugin
  2. Disqus
  3. Subscribe to Comments – WordPress plugin

Microblogging Services and Tools

Chances are good that you’ve already heard of Twitter (and are using it). But there are other microblogging options out there, and plenty of tools to help you more efficiently manage your Twitter account to weed out some of that social media noise. Here are some of those tools and services.

  1. Tumbler – Microblogging service
  2. Jaiku — Microblogging service
  3. TweetDeck
  4. HootSuite
  5. TweetStats
  6. Seesmic
  7. Twitterrific
  8. Group Tweet
  9. Friend or Follow — Find out if the people you follow also follow you back.
  10. TwitPic
  11. Tweet Backup

URL Shorteners

Speaking of microblogging services and their limited character counts, let’s take a look at some URL shorteners currently available. These can condense your long URLs (that might not fit in a Tweet or other post) into a much shorter form. Some even allow link stats tracking.

  1. Bit.ly
  2. TinyURL
  3. Cli.gs
  4. Is.gd
  5. doiop.com
  6. SnipURL.com

Forum Software

Like what we traditionally think of as social networks, forums allow us to build communities around a niche, company, product, or anything else we’d like. If you think a forum would be better suited to your audience than a social network setup, then consider one of these forum software options.

  1. vBulletin
  2. PHPBB
  3. Simple Machines Forum (SMF)
  4. Vanilla Forums
  5. MyBB
  6. Invision Power Board
  7. bbPress

Social Bookmarking / Sharing

Social media is about more than conversations. It’s also about empowering members of your community to share what you have to offer, or “vote” if you will. There are several sharing, aggregation, and social bookmarking tools available to let them do that. Here are a few you might want to use or somehow incorporate into your website or blog.

  1. Delicious
  2. Digg
  3. Reddit
  4. StumbleUpon
  5. Sphinn
  6. Slashdot
  7. Newsvine
  8. AddThis
  9. ShareThis

Document, Video, and Photo Sharing Services

Social media encompasses all types of media. Users want to be able to share information, videos, photos, and other images in addition to their thoughts. If you’re one of those users, you might get some use out of the following social media tools.

  1. YouTube
  2. Flickr
  3. Vimeo
  4. Scribd
  5. Picasa Web Albums
  6. DocStoc
  7. MetaCafe
  8. Blip.tv
  9. Daily Motion
  10. PhotoBucket

Online Collaboration

Sometimes being able to share documents online isn’t enough. You need online collaboration tools like the ones listed below where your work group can collectively edit and save documents while you collaborate on projects.

  1. Zoho
  2. Google Docs
  3. BaseCamp
  4. WriteBoard
  5. ReviewBasics (Disclosure: ReviewBasics is a former client of SI’s Jennifer Mattern.)

Podcasting

Podcasting is a sometimes overlooked area of social media. But if your audience could be effectively reached through a podcast or other type of audio show, you might be able to put these podcasting tools to use.

  1. PodBean
  2. BlogTalkRadio
  3. Audacity – Free recording software
  4. Podomatic

Wikis

Love it or hate it, we’ve probably all heard of Wikipedia. But why not create your very own wiki on your company site or related to a niche you love? Pull people together with some of the following wiki software options.

  1. MediaWiki
  2. Confluence
  3. TWiki
  4. BrainKeeper

Online / Social Learning

Social media goes far beyond personal and even business use. It can also be used in education. If you’re with an educational institution or organization, or you’d like to add online courses and other learning materials to your site, these social and online learning tools could come in handy.

  1. Moodle
  2. Blackboard
  3. Articulate e-Learning Software
  4. Joomla Learning Management System (LMS)

Social Media Search

There is a lot of noise in social media that you have to sort through on a regular basis if you want to stay productive. These social media search tools can help.

  1. Technorati
  2. Google Blog Search
  3. Google Alerts
  4. Yahoo! Alerts
  5. Bing’s Social Search
  6. SocialMention.com
  7. Google Social Search
  8. SocialSearch.com SearchWiki

Social Media Monitoring and Metrics

There’s rarely a way to completely and accurately measure social media. Most tools have their faults and most metrics can be manipulated. That doesn’t mean you should ignore the information you can access though. Social media monitoring and metrics-related tools like the ones below can give you a solid snapshot of trends resulting from your social media work.

  1. Twitalyzer
  2. Feedburner – Track RSS subscriber stats.
  3. PostRank
  4. Omniture Site Catalyst
  5. Performancing Blog Metrics
  6. Google Analytics
  7. Compete
  8. Alexa

By no means do these represent all social media tools currently available. Do you have favorites not in this list? Share them in a comment below!

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Common Mistakes Big Brands Make in SEO

June 28th, 2010
1. Using a Non-SEO to Manage the Campaign
Kind of obvious really right? Maybe, maybe not. Although “hard” SEO skills may not be necessary, but an understanding of “basic” SEO definitely is for any serious brand. Doesn’t matter if the actual SEO is being carried out by an external agency – in order to align the brand and it’s strategies you need someone who understands both – an SEO Manager needs to understand both. Lack of understanding, or even lack of interest in knowing can not only slow the businesses SEO strategy, it can have negative effects.
An intuitive or intelligent individual can go a long way in improving your campaign – and be able to tell all the bullshit apart from real advice – as Rae so decently pointed out.

2. Assuming That They Can Do All SEO in-House – on Budget
SEO isn’t not a fixed skill, which once you have done it for a couple of years, then you know it all. It is an ever changing, ever moving set of goal posts. In house teams that are tiny, or haven’t been built organically based on skill, seldom have the time to research or play with unrelated categories. At the same time, unless you are a pure online player, the access to resources and broad skill bases may be limited.

If you are a big brand, and want to do real SEO in house on a budget, I wouldn’t advise it – you could hire a full time SEO agency for the cost of 2-3 staff – and have access to advanced skills and the benefit of their experience day to day with other campaigns. Not saying that it is impossible to have a full in-house SEO team – all I am saying is if you have never done it – plan this strategy with care.
Back in 2007 High Rankings Interviewed Danny Sullivan on the subject – many of the responses still hold true in my opinion.  If you are intent on running an inhouse team – at least set up some decent processes for SEO .

3. Not Treating SEO Like a Real Revenue Channel
Sounds surprising right? In my experience, 7 out of the 10 Big Brands I have worked with didn’t have SEO KPIs, Strategies or Plans in place. It was something delegated to an in house tech, or to an agency, often with dismal results. This happens when you don’t give the channel the respect it deserves.
SEO is actually more than a series of link builders and content writers, it is a full blown Marketing Discipline, that needs strategy, thought, research and focus on.

4. Not Separating Brand Traffic and Sales from Generic Keyword Sets
To me this is the biggest failure. Looking at “SEO” revenue as a whole and then assuming that the channel is healthy is quite myopic. Brand traffic in most cases is a given including those sales as part of the ROI is not the best way to judge the return on investment. A clued up Big Brand would value the revenue gained from Generic Keywords.

Some brands (especially those in highly competitive industries) do this really well – while more traditional Big Brands don’t in my experience.

5. Not Involving The SEO Team
This a massive process issue in many businesses. From full marketing plans to press releases, from product release to PR disaster, the SEO team should be involved or kept aware of at every stage. There are often first mover advantages in SEO, especially PR. Not giving your own team the edge means you are actually working in detriment of the brand in the long run. For example, one brand I worked with had a policy of distributing their Press Releases before they were published on the site “PR” Section. The result? A third party site that auto publishes press releases got into Google News first and made it next to impossible for this brand to get in that space.

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