All Entries Tagged With: "traffic"

Why Did My Traffic Numbers Drop With Google Analytics?

Many small business owners get alarmed when they install Google Analytics for the first time and get a look at their traffic numbers. Especially if they’ve been using another metrics package.

Some blogging systems come with a proprietary analytics tool, but the problem with many of these tracking systems is in the way that they track traffic and visitors. It isn’t necessarily accurate. Some of them purposely record visits by bots and spiders so that it appears that your traffic stats are higher than they actually are. That’s why we prefer to use Google Analytics because you get a more realistic picture of your traffic counts.

The big difference in the way traffic stats are measured boils down to whether the analytics package is cookie-based or IP address-based. If your analytics tool measures traffic using IP addresses then it is likely tracking visits by search engine spiders and other bots. Every time a competitor lands on your site with a spybot or a search engine spider visits your pages to crawl it for indexing purposes you could be registering a visit, reflecting an inaccurate real person count of your traffic. A more accurate way to measure traffic is with a cookie-based analytics tool like Google Analytics.

Since robots and spiders don’t carry cookies, they won’t be counted in a cookie-based analytics package. The downside to this is if a real person visitor to your site has their browser cookies disabled then they won’t be counted as a visit either. Fortunately, most people don’t disable their browser cookies so that doesn’t happen as often as you’d imagine. Besides, it’s much better to under-report your traffic numbers than to over-report them.

Traffic: The Single Most Important Thing To Do For Your Blog

You’ve set up your company blog and optimize every post to achieve high rankings in the search engines. Now what?

Don’t rest on your laurels. You need to market your blog. But how do you do that?

There are several ways you can market your blog and drive traffic to it. Here are a few that we recommend:

• Article marketing
• Social bookmarking
• Social networking
• Forum posting
• Pay per click advertising
• E-mail marketing
• Directory submissions
• Sending out link requests

Each of these methods of online marketing is effective in its own way. Article marketing is one of the oldest forms of marketing online and is great for driving traffic if you do it on a consistent basis.

Chances are, if you have a blog with Blog Content Provider then we’ve talked to you about social bookmarking. If we haven’t then you should give us a call because this is one of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your blog.

Social networking is different from social bookmarking in one aspect – the emphasis is on building relationships with people with similar interests in order to bring them to your website so that they can see what you are doing. Social bookmarking focuses on the content; social networking focuses on the relationships.

Forum posting is also effective in driving traffic to your website. The idea is to simply join a conversation and be a contributor. When people see how valuable you are in giving contributions to the group they will trust you more and visit your website.

PPC click marketing, aka pay per click, is very effective, especially for the short term, but it’s the only method of marketing mentioned here that requires a fee beyond any service provider that you hire to act on your behalf.

E-mail marketing is still effective and even in this day many people use e-mail without being fully connected to the Internet. We always recommend marketing your blog through RSS feeds, but you should also have a way for people to receive notice of your blog through e-mail such as a blog promotion newsletter (be sure to ask about Blog Content Provider’s newsletter services).

Directory submissions and link requests are on the bottom end of the spectrum for blog marketing, but I wouldn’t leave them. You never know how people will find you so you should give them every opportunity to do so.

You can rely entirely on SEO for blog marketing, but why limit yourself. While most of your blog traffic will come from search engines, there is a lot more potential out there for getting traffic to your blog. Some bloggers report that Twitter, StumbleUpon, or another social media source is the biggest driver of traffic to their blogs. By focusing on marketing your blog, you can increase your traffic and your conversions. Don’t just leave it to chance.

For more information about blogging, talk to a blog consultant.

Should You Put Outbound Links In Your Blogroll?

Your blogroll is a list of favorite links that you highlight and showcase in the sidebar of your blog. Should you put outbound links in that blogroll or only links to your site?

Keep this in mind: Every outbound link is a traffic hole. You are essentially inviting your site visitors to leave your blog and go somewhere else. That’s why you should only promote your most important pages of your website in your blogroll. I’d offer just one exception: When you have a link exchange agreement with a complimentary, non-competitive business.

In other words, if your link partner is linking back to you then that’s OK. You might get some traffic from there site so if you send them a little it’s equal and fair exchange. But I’d make sure that your link partner is not a competitor and that his business compliments yours. You also want to go back and check periodically to ensure that your link is still there. Some webmasters will entice you into a link exchange and then delete your link when you’re not looking. So be careful out there and protect your blogroll.

When Should You Hire A Blog Ghostwriter?

There comes a time when you should think about hiring a ghostwriter for your blog. But when?

Maybe it’s time to start thinking about a ghostwriter when:

• You’ve realized that you don’t have the time to write any more
• You need a professional approach to blogging
• You want well-optimized content that delivers traffic to your important landing pages
• Your blog isn’t performing as well as you think it should be
• You are not confident of your own writing ability
• The competition is beating your socks off

I know what you’re thinking. A blog ghostwriter will cost me money. Yes, you’ll have to pay for the service, but if you get a decent ROI on the expense, would it be worth it? Let’s say that you pay out $300 per month for a ghostwriter and you get 1 lead each month from that. The cost of your lead is $300. Is that more or less than what you are paying now per lead acquisition?

Even if the cost of acquisition per lead is less than you’d normally pay, you still need to close the sale. Right?

Well, if closing one sale means an additional $1,000 in your pocket and you know you can close one of out every three leads, your ROI is $100. You have a positive ROI, correct?

But let’s say you only close one out of every four leads and you have $1,000 coming in out of a $1,200 expense on ghostwriting services. Are you losing money? Not necessarily. Your blog could be sending you one lead per month, but it is also building up new content and building links to your website, which pushes up your search engine rankings. Let’s say it takes you two years to capture the top spot in Google for your key search term and once you do then you realize a 500% increase in traffic.

If your traffic count from organic listings was 1,000 unique visitors and you start getting 5,000 unique visitors per month knowing that you can close 1% of those, your sales conversions go up from 1 per month to 5 per month on organic listings. Your income will also increase from $1,000 per month to $5,000 per month based on the $1,000 per sale. Two years of spending $300 per month on blog ghostwriting services equates to a total expense of $7,200. You’ll make that up in two months after you hit the top spot in Google. How’s your ROI now?

I’m not guaranteeing you a top spot in Google for blog ghostwriting services. We’ve accomplished that feat for customers in the past and I believe we can do it again. But the illustration does show that ROI is not as cut and dry as measuring the sales developed from your blog alone. There’s more to ghostwriting than mere dimes and nickels.