Tag Archives: gator-crossing

How to Measure Website Success

Posted on August 21, 2013 by Hosting

Every website is different. What might be considered successful results for one website may be lackluster for another. To measure your own site’s success, you must first define what success means to you and develop a clear picture of how your website is performing according to these metrics.   What is the Purpose of Your Website? To start, ask yourself about the purpose of your site. Was it created to sell products? To boost fundraising efforts? To engage consumers in a particular niche? Defining the purpose of your website is essential to defining its success.   Setting Good Goals Next, you need to set some clear goals that coincide with your website’s purpose. When devising goals, consider the following questions: Are your website goals tied in to the overall goals of your organization? Are your goals measurable? Are they challenging, yet realistic? Are they set in a specific time frame? Do your goals depend on specific website visitor actions? (Signing up for a newsletter, buying a product, etc.)   As an example, say you’re a business owner who sells jackets online. Your organizational goal is to generate revenue through jacket sales, so one goal of your website is to get visitors to buy jackets (a specific website visitor action). Your goal might be to sell 500 jackets per month through your website (which is both measurable and constrained by a specific time frame), up from the 400 you sold last month (which is challenging, yet realistic).   Metrics That Matter Website metrics are a way to measure how people are interacting with your website. When you keep track of web metrics, you’ll be able to see what’s working on your site and what needs improvement as far as web traffic and conversions go. Here are some metrics that you should be tracking – no matter the purpose of your website: Conversion Rate: This metric measures how many people are performing your website visitor action. Conversion rate is given as a percentage, and is based on the number of people who convert versus the number who leave your website without taking the desired visitor action. Exit Pages: This statistic lets you know what pages your visitors are exiting your website from. This data, along with the conversion rate metric, can help you to optimize your sales funnel. Know what pages within your sales funnel people are exiting on and improve on those pages in order to maximize conversions (although, keep in mind that some pages – like your “Thank You” page – are natural exits). Unique Visitors: This numbers tells you the number of individual people who visit your website in a given time period, usually daily. This is more significant than just measuring page views. Page views can tell you that you had three visits to your website in a day, but not if it was the same person visiting three separate times. Referrers: This data tells you where your visitors are coming from and can be extremely helpful in measuring and strategizing your marketing efforts. Top Keywords: This important metric tells you what search engine keywords are leading people to your website. Top Internal Search Keywords: Don’t confuse this with top search engine keywords. This data tells you what people are using the search box on your website to search for. This could be helpful in determining what content on your website is most popular, or if there’s something you’re missing on your site that people are expecting to find. Top Search Engines: This metric tells you what search engines people are visiting your website from, which can be useful when it comes to prioritizing SEO activities. Average Time Spent: This number lets you know how much time people are spending on your website and individual pages, and it’s a good way to measure the quality of your website. Bounce Rate: Your bounce rate is a measurement of how many people visit your website and then leave after only viewing the page they landed on. In other words, it tells you if your website is driving traffic away before engagement can occur.   When you measure your website metrics, you gain valuable information that will help you to achieve the goals you’ve set. If, for example, you see that the most visitors to your jacket sales website arrive by searching Google for “winter down jackets,” you can use that information for both marketing and optimization purposes.   Measuring Metrics Given the importance of a website’s metrics, there are plenty of tools to choose from when it comes to measurement. Google Analytics is free and perhaps the most popular tool for measuring website metrics. Google Analytics not only lets you measure the success of your website, but also lets you perform split testing, helping you to turn your analytics data into actionable steps towards improvement. Piwik is another free tool that can be hosted on your own web server. It offers many of the same features as Google Analytics, but since it’s hosted on your server, you’re the only one that sees the stats. If you master Google Analytics and want to get deeper into your website’s analytics, Deep Log Analyzer is a good option. It’s not free, but it’s easy to use and could prove useful in further optimizing your website for conversions. Remember that measuring the success of your website is two-fold. First, you must set your website’s goals, and then you must measure how your website is performing. Consistently revising your goals, measuring your website’s performance, and making improvements are surefire ways to improve the success of your website. Continue reading →

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Infographic: Celebrity Twitter Battles

Posted on August 20, 2013 by Hosting

Oh, celebrities.  What happens when the rich and famous figure out that they can broadcast their every thought out into the world immediately via their cell phone, without the intervention or advice of their manager, publicist or other PR staff?  Celebrity Twitter Battles, that’s what happens.   Celebrity Twitter Battles via Hostgator Continue reading →

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Keep it Classy: How to Handle Negative Social Mentions

Posted on August 16, 2013 by Hosting

Social media is a powerful tool for engaging your customers, but it can also be a double-edged sword. Web 2.0 has largely put the fate of businesses’ reputations in the hands of the consumers. Arizona restaurant Amy’s Baking Company learned this the hard way when they engaged in perhaps the most out-of-control brand meltdown in Facebook history. Take some cues from the fiery owners of Amy’s so that you know what not to do in response to negative social mentions.   What NOT to Do Never reply in all caps The owners, Amy and Samy, posted quite a few of their status updates in all caps, no doubt to add emphasis. This is basic online etiquette and should go without saying, but on the internet, typing in all caps is considered shouting. Not only that, but readers don’t take you seriously when you do it. You don’t need to add extra emphasis to your message. Let the words carry themselves. Do not reply to everyone Amy’s Baking Company quickly gained popularity on Reddit when a member posted a video of the restaurant when it was featured on Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. The video drew a slew of comments, which the owners drew attention to on Facebook. This in turn drew a slew of Facebook comments, which drew more responses from the owners. You can see how this can escalate quickly. Not all negative comments warrant a response. Do not name call The owners called respondents names like “idiots,” “little kids,” and even went so far as to use profanity in their Facebook updates. This should also go without saying, but don’t call your customers names. Even if they insult your product, insult your wife, and question your parenting abilities, just don’t do it. Leave out your personal views The Amy’s rants contained quite a few uncomfortable comments about religion. Your goal should be to resolve the problem, not to have a rousing debate or convince others of your beliefs. Even if the customer is the one trying to engage you in discussions about religion or politics, stick to the issue at hand. Do not engage in public arguments As Amy and Samy have proven, public disputes tend to draw attention. You don’t want your customers to see you as unprofessional and combative. Avoid hashing out disagreements for all of your followers to see. Do not blame the customer Samy ended one status update in which he was defending the restaurant’s prices with “Do not blame us because you cannot afford quality.” Even if the customer is scathing in their rebuke of your practices, avoiding putting the blame back on them. You don’t want to come off as a business owner who responds to criticism by avoiding responsibility. Do not go on television and behave badly Viral video is real. If ever your business is featured on television, put your best face forward and avoid unprofessional behavior. Otherwise, you could find yourself with more negative social mentions than you can handle.   What to Do Instead Reply with empathy Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and try to understand why they’re upset. Try to imagine how you would want a business owner to respond in that situation. Ask questions Amy and Samy are also notorious for their indignant replies to negative restaurant reviews on Yelp. Instead of being defensive, try to clarify on the situation and why the customer is unhappy. This also shows that you’re serious about getting the issue resolved. Stay professional Avoid injecting your personal opinions and beliefs into the conversation. Make the goal to resolve the conflict at hand, not to win an argument. Hold conversations privately Instead of handling the negative mention in the comments section, invite the customer to call or email your customer support department. If necessary, encourage them to contact you directly. Moderate your social media Trolls do exist. Just because someone is dissatisfied with your business doesn’t give them permission to post spam and flame your Facebook page. Create a social media policy, make it available to the public, and boot those who violate it. Take advantage of constructive criticism Sometimes a customer’s negative social mention can help you to improve your products and services for the future. Use feedback to your advantage when it is constructive instead of dismissing it. Apologize when needed Never act too big to apologize if the problem was on your end. A simple apology can do a lot to diffuse the situation.   For the most part, social media is meant to yield positive results for businesses. However, as in the real world, businesses should be prepared to deal with unhappy customers from time to time. This isn’t always a bad thing. Constructive feedback can help you improve your business in the future. As for destructive feedback, you can always hit the block button. Continue reading →

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Google Issues New Info on Backlinks: Is Your Site Safe?

Posted on August 13, 2013 by Hosting

Backlinking is somewhat of a touchy subject in search engine optimization, especially since Google launched its much-publicized crack down on blackhat SEO last year. The search leader encourages a “proceed with caution” approach when it comes to backlinking, and understandably so, given the history that Google and backlinking have with each other. Last month, Search Engine Journal published a story on Google’s recent cautioning on using unnatural backlinks, particularly in “advertorials,” massive guest posting, and optimized anchor text in press releases.   A Brief History of SEO Back in the “Wild West” of the internet age – the mid 1990s – websites started popping up faster than people could keep up with them. Search engines were invented to help web users find what they wanted quickly and efficiently. Back then, all a webmaster had to do to get his or her site indexed was to submit their URL to a search engine. A spider would be sent out to crawl the website, searching for any and all outgoing links as well as relevant keywords to report back to the search engine for indexing. Eventually, people started to see the value in getting higher up in search results, and the term “search engine optimization” was coined. Since search engine algorithms relied so heavily on backlinks and keyword density, people began to come up with all sorts of ways to trick the system. One notably underhanded technique was the use of link farms. Link farms were networks of websites created with the sole purpose of hosting backlinks. Webmasters and internet marketers would commonly buy and trade backlink space. Search engines responded to such tactics by developing more complex algorithms to determine the relevance of a website. Google PageRank is one such example. While employing PageRank brought some much needed order to things, Google’s subsequent algorithm updates were what made the biggest difference. In 2011, Google released the Panda algorithm update, which lowered the ranking of low-quality websites. In 2012, Google unleashed the Penguin update to penalize websites that violated Google’s webmaster guidelines. Recently, changes made to Google’s Webmaster Guidelines provides even more insight into how Google is continuing to work on creating an environment in which natural backlinking is rewarded and unnatural backlinking is penalized.  Specifically, the changes addressed concerns about guest posting, article directory marketing, advertorials and more.   How Much Guest Posting is Too Much? In its recent update, Google didn’t specify how often a blogger should or shouldn’t guest post. A better approach would be to consider the reasons for the guest posting. To clarify, Matthew Cutts, Google’s Head of Webspam, released a video on the topic in October of last year. Basically, he says that there is a difference between guest blogging to add value to a blog and guest blogging to get backlinks. Generally, tactics like spinning and distributing the same blog post to multiple websites for the sake of backlinks is a no-no. Cutts advised to use the rel=nofollow attribute for backlinks included in guest blog posts.   What is “Rel=nofollow?” “Rel=nofollow” is an HTML tag used in links to tell a web crawler not to crawl that particular link. It was originally developed to discourage spammy blog comments. When you use this attribute, the backlink won’t count toward PageRank. You’re essentially saying that the link is for human eyes only, not for search engine consideration.   Backlinking from Advertorials Advertorials, also know as native content, is content containing backlinks that a company pays a webmaster to publish. In essence, this is paying for backlinks, and it’s also an SEO no-no. The reason is two-fold: It’s misleading to the reader, and It’s misleading to Google, which has always used “editorial votes” as a way to rank websites. If a piece of content is an advertorial, it’s best to disclose this, and also use the nofollow attribute for outgoing links. Again, not using the attribute could work against you.   Optimized Anchor Text in Press Releases Optimized anchor text is anchor text that includes keywords that you want to rank for. Google considers “links with optimized anchor text in articles or press releases distributed on other sites” to be in violation of their webmaster guidelines. Since the links within the press release or article aren’t a true indication of your website’s relevance or popularity, make sure you nofollow them. What all comes down to is this: It’s fine to use online content as a promotional tool, but you should use the nofollow attribute if you’re using backlinks in said content. Backlinks within your content should only be used to drive readers to your website, and if the readers like your content, hopefully they’ll link to it themselves. Yes, it sounds like a long workaround, but anyone in search marketing will tell you that building a great online reputation takes time. Ultimately, your goal should be to get your readers to like you. If readers like you, then they will leave a trail back to you for search engines to follow creating an optimum SEO experience without the manipulation that Google loves to penalize. Continue reading →

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Optimizing Your Mobile App for App Store Discovery

Posted on August 8, 2013 by Hosting

In case you haven’t noticed, there is no shortage of mobile apps on the market right now. Google Play and the Apple app store each have over a million of them. You can find an app for practically anything – from doing your taxes to calculating your BMI, to keeping you from drunk dialing your ex . With so many mobile apps vying for attention, creating the actual app is the easy part. Yet the majority of organizations and developers are not utilizing ASO (app store optimization) to give their labor of love its best chance of success. Here are some great tips for getting your app optimized for the mobile store:   Title and keywords According to mobile development company MobileDevHQ, the app store search is the second most popular way people find apps to download (the first being word of mouth). They also found that apps that use relevant keywords in their titles get 10.3 percent higher search rankings on average. That means that keywords are important here. Think about what keywords you want your app to be known for, and then do a search in the app store to see how relevant they are. Include the keywords that are most relevant to your intended audience in your app’s title and listing description.   Encourage reviews MobileDevHQ also states that user reviews are another big factor when users are choosing which apps to download. You can’t exactly control who reviews your app or doesn’t, but there are some ways to encourage it. First off, integrate some kind of review submission option with your app. You can use a prompt asking users to leave reviews if they’re happy or just provide a link to the review page. Apptentive is one easy way to integrate this option into your apps.  If you have a Twitter following, just ask users to leave a review if they like your work. Once you start getting thousands of downloads, use Applause to leverage your reviews. This free download analyzes your reviews and rates your app across key factors. It’s a bit like Klout for mobile apps. You can use this information to see what people are saying about your app, and to learn how to make it better.   Tweak and experiment It’s okay to tweak your title, change your category, and revise your description after you’ve created your initial listing. In fact, you should definitely do this to see which keywords and categories get you the most downloads. The MobileDevHQ app is great for keeping track of app analytics. Not only do you get detailed performance reports, but the program also has tools to help you select the best keywords. Once you’ve got your ASO in order, generate some buzz around your app. It’s best to get your product out there and on people’s lips as early as you can, as more downloads may mean better app store performance.   Create community A good number of Twitter users are also mobile users. Twitter’s real-time, short message quality goes hand-in-hand with the mobile lifestyle. Create a Twitter account for your brand and create a following. Don’t just Tweet about your app, though. Add your personality to your tweets. You can also join developer forums and other forums relevant to your app to get your name out there.   Release a screen shot This is probably the most underutilized technique of all, but keep in mind that a picture really does say a thousand words. Whet the public’s appetite with a preview of things to come.   Pitch relevant blogs If your app aims to solve a problem in a particular niche, then it might be worth it to pitch to well-known blogs and websites in that industry. For example, if your app focuses on teaching kids to speak a new language, you could get in touch with language learning and K-12 education blogs. The Appstorm app review network also accepts submitted iPhone apps for review.   Update often Devices are always being updated, so make sure that your app remains compatible with newer versions of the most popular devices. Also, keep tabs on user suggestions and incorporate them into future versions to keep your audience happy.   Hire a pro If you’re simply no good at marketing, there’s nothing wrong with sticking with what you know while somebody else does the heavy lifting. Hire someone who knows their way around when it comes to digital marketing, assign the task to someone else on your team, or use an app marketing firm like Appular . Sometimes, it’s best to outsource so that you can focus on what you do best. Above all, don’t be afraid to put yourself out there. The number of apps on the market may seem daunting, but the truth is, a lot of them aren’t that great – and most of their creators don’t employ proper ASO. If you have a killer app, half the battle is already won. Continual ASO, along with some solid marketing efforts, will give your app the best chance at getting noticed. Continue reading →

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