How to Sign up for Google Analytics
This video is the first in a series of “How-To” instructional segments. We get many questions about how to sign up for and use Google Analytics so the first few videos will cover Google Analytics and its various features and functionality; however if you have any requests for videos on other subjects please feel free to contact us. Also, as this is our first training video we highly encourage you to comment below and let us know what you think of the video – please be brutally honest!
Written Instructions:
All you need to get started with Google Analytics is a GMail account. If your business uses the Google applications suite and you have a business e-mail address hosted by Google that will work too. To sign up for Google Analytics complete the following steps:
- Go to the Google Analytics home page and login by entering your regular Google (or corporate) credentials and clicking “Sign In”.
- On the next screen, click the “Sign Up” button.
- On the screen after that, enter: 1) The address of the first website you’d like to track with Google Analytics. 2) Under “Account Name” enter a “nickname” that you can use to refer to this site within your Google Analytics dashboard. 3) Your country and 4) Your time zone.
- Then verify that everything is correct, and click “Continue”.
- On the following screen, simply complete the first name, last name, and country fields, and then again click “continue”.
- Read through the Google Analytics Terms of Service.
- If you agree to them, click the checkbox indicating your agreement and then click “Create New Account” button.
- Account setup is complete!
- (Optional) Copy/Paste your custom Google Analytics tracking code for insertion into your website, e-mail the tracking code to someone, or continue on to your Google Analytics dashboard.
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The Great Twitter Experiment – Listening for a Change
Yep, we’re doing an experiment. The Great Twitter experiment. You see, large companies like Coke already had global brand recognition before they engaged in social media so it’s no surprise that they were able to quickly grow to over 26 million Facebook fans and tens of thousands of Twitter followers. But what about the the little guy? How can “Joe the Plumber” or any other small business owner grow their social media following? And more importantly, how can the small business owner grow a quality following? The one word answer is “relationships”. And hopefully we’re going to prove that.
Why relationships? Because that’s what social media is all about. Sure, social media gives anyone a platform from which to spread the gospel of their business or their product, but who’s going to listen? Established brands like Coke have spent billions of dollars to acquire their customer base and build their brand. How can a small business do that on a small business budget? Well, it’s not easy but it’s simple:
- Listen to what people are saying in and around your industry.
- Ask questions.
- Make some new contacts who share some of your interests.
- Grow relationships.
- Share your expertise.
Growing your following is so simple in fact, that for the month of May Denton Business Solutions is going to be listening for a change. Rather than sharing content that we think would be useful to small business owners we’re going to be using the Twitter “Search” feature to actively listen to what people are saying and try to learn more about their technology challenges. We’ll also be actively engaging with other people who work within some of our core competencies such as Google Analytics, Social Media, etc and work on developing some new peer relationships as well.
What we won’t do is self-promote. We won’t post a link to our website or blog unless it’s in direct response to a person’s question. We won’t retweet other people’s posts, and we won’t be tweeting any new content unless it’s in response to another person’s Tweet we found through searching on keywords. We also won’t seek out new followers. We won’t redeem any Twiends seeds or ask anyone to follow us. We will continue to auto follow-back.
In summary, if we knew what the results of our experiment would be we wouldn’t do it. Over the course of The Great Twitter Experiment we’ll be checking several metrics. First off, the rate of Twitter growth, our Klout scores, and website traffic. Secondly, we’ll be tracking other interaction escalation from Twitter to e-mail, phone, RSS, or web traffic. All in all we’re pretty excited about what the month may bring. If you have questions, comments, or predictions let us know. Otherwise let the Great Twitter Experiment begin!
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Putting your Business on the Map with Google Places
A study by Pew Internet reported last year that fifty-eight percent of Americans research products and services online before buying. That means it’s more important than ever to increase your business’ online visibility and the chance that local consumers can find it. One simple way to do this is by maintaining a free Google Places page for your business.
Google Places is like a super-charged version of the Yellow Pages. Integrated into Google Maps (and by extension regular Google search results), it not only contains a business’ name, address, and phone number but also its location on a map, pictures, hours of operation, user reviews, and more.
Where does all this information come from? The reviews are pulled from all over the internet, including popular sites like Yelp.com, UrbanSpoon.com, and CitySearch.com. Some basic information can be filled in by the public but most of the details should come from you – the business owner!
To begin, search Google Maps for your business. Once you find it, click on the the light blue “More Info” link to arrive at your Google Places page. To begin editing, click the “Business Owner” link, follow the prompts, and you’ll be able to begin work on your business’ profile. For maximum visibility, make sure you fill out every section possible, including business hours, payment methods, and the types of services your business offers. Also, don’t forget to upload some pictures related to the products or services you offer.
Once you’ve completed your business’ profile and saved all the changes, Google will mail you a postcard with the steps required to validate the information. But what to do after you’ve setup and validated your site? Here are some ideas to get you started:
- Send your happiest customers a link to your Places page and ask them to review you.
- Run a special promotion on your Places page using the “offer” feature.
- Purchase Google Tags to highlight your business and make it stand out over the competition.
- Monitor your page to see what people are saying about your business.
- Print a QR code to display at your business to help your customers find and rate you online.
- Check your page’s interaction statistics to see how many people have seen and acted on your Places page and offers.
Have we left anything out? Have you found another way to use Google Places to add value to your business? If so, leave a comment here and tell us about it! Otherwise, check out this article by the Google SMB Blog for some more tips on creating an effective presence on Google Places!
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Search Engine Optimization – A Beginners’ Guide (part 2)
This article by guest blogger Greg Rodgers completes our two-part Beginners’ Guide to Search Engine Optimziation.
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With Google’s algorithm for ranking sites being one of the best kept secrets in the world, webmasters have to resort to speculation and leveraging what techniques are proven to create better rankings for their businesses.
All guessing aside, the only sure way to get a top-10 ranking in Google is to obtain as many high-quality backlinks as possible. Links on other websites which point back to your site should contain the keywords that you wish to target. Getting a link back to your site with “click here” in the link anchor text is hardly useful. Instead, encourage people to create quality links back to your site by writing good content.
A prime example: Perform a Google search for “badger” and check out the top result. This bizarre animation ranked #1 just because of the number of backlinks pointing back to the site with theword “badger” in the anchor text of the link. The site (www.badgerbadgerbadger.com) contains no useful information about badgers, SEO tricks, or keywords that would merit a #1 ranking; however, they beat thousands of entries simply because they received enough links which contain the word “badger” pointing back to their website.
When Google sees one website linking another, it serves as an “endorsement” of sorts for the website being linked. The only way to receive quality links from other people is to create useful content that they are interested in sharing with their own readers. While some small SEO optimizations can be made in the content of your site, always write material for humans rather than search engines. With Google earnestly on the lookout for cheaters and SPAM, stuffing too many keywords into a page is asure way to lower your ranking – or worse.
That being said, there are a few small things we can do onsite to make both search engines and human eyes happy.
- Choose one or two primary keyword phrases that you wish to target with your content; be specific. Take advantage of Google’s keyword tool to see what terms get more searches than others. Put yourself into the shoes of someone searching for your business among thousands of websites: What would you type as a search?
- Once you have chosen your primary keywords, put them once at the top of the page as a large header. Blogging platforms such as WordPress typically do this for you automatically. The keywords should be in <h1> or <h2> HTML tags and bold.
- Find a natural way to insert your primary keywords early in the article – preferably in the first or second sentence. Not only does this keep Google happy, it helps to hook your reader and ensures them that they are in the right place for what they are searching for.
- Throughout the content on the page, mention your exact keyword phrase a couple of times more – always naturally! Most word-processing software will allow you to check the keyworddensity of words in an article. A good, natural keyword density to aim for should be only between two and three percent.
- If the page contains a picture or image, use your keywords in the ALT description for the image. Search engines cannot “see” images, so adding an ALT tag to images that you use is important.
- Mention your keyword(s) in bold somewhere in the course of the article. Once will do, too much bold text can be flagged as SPAM for Google.
- Mention your keyword(s) once in the closing paragraph of the page.
- Some SEO experts contend that linking out from your page to one of the current top-10 results for your keyword helps ensure Google that your site is relative and friendly. Consider linking Wikipedia or another site that gives more information about the target of your article.
- In the HTML <TITLE> tag for your article, mention your keywords early – preferably at thestart of the title. A title written to target dog collars would look something like: “Dog Collars –Find the Best Prices on Collars for Dogs”.
- Mention your keywords in the META description for the page. The META description serves as the excerpt shown in search engine result pages. Put a call-to-action inside so that humans will choose and click on your site above the others. If your keywords happen to be “dogcollars,” use verbiage such as “Read more about dog collars” or “Everything you need to know about dog collars” in the META description.
While search engines do not put as much weight on onsite SEO optimizations as they once did, these small changes will ensure them that your site is relevant enough to be included in the search results. The main goal of onsite optimization is to keep your readers on the site longer and to hopefully encourage them to share your site with others by creating a backlink!
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Greg Rodgers left his job at IBM to travel and write full-time. He now develops and manages a family of more than twenty websites.
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Search Engine Optimization – A Beginners’ Guide (part 1)
“How do I make my site show up in Google?” “How do I drive traffic to my website?” “How do I increase my page rank?” These are questions we get a lot and they all ask the same thing – how to get greater visibility in Google to draw more traffic to your website. The two best ways to have your website displayed in Google search results are to purchase advertising through Google AdWords or to improve your site’s “organic” search ranking. “Organic” search ranking is how Google places your site within search results based on how relevant it is to a user’s search compared to similar sites.
We discussed Google AdWords in a previous article so this two-part article will focus on “Search Engine Optimization”. Called “SEO” for short, Search Engine Optimization is the practice of optimizing a website to improve its ranking in Google based on keyword searches relevant to your line of business. Good SEO engineers teach their customers best practices that include both technical implementation guidelines as well as a particular style of content creation. A complete guide to SEO best practices would fill volumes but in this two-part article we’ll cover some simple techniques you can use to start moving your page rank upwards. First up? The technical side of SEO. Please keep in mind that this blog is created for a non technical audience so we’ll avoid any techniques that involve more than minimal coding. We’ve included as many links as possible to provide further explanation of each tip but if you’re unclear about something please leave a comment or write us.
SEO Technical Tips
- When considering an online identity for your business, strive for uniformity. For example, avoid registering “Denton Solutions” on one service and “Denton Business Solutions” on another. Before you begin registering accounts do some due diligence and make sure your desired profile name is available on all the major social media platforms (see below).
- Offer as many ways for your customers to reach you as possible. Maintain as many online profiles and services as you can, including Twitter,Facebook, LinkedIn,YouTube, blog directories such as Technorati, industry and local directories, etc.
- Create an XML Sitemap of your site and submit it to the major search engines including Yahoo! Site Explorer, Bing WebMaster Center, and especially Google WebMaster Tools. This ensures the search engines “know about” each and every component of your site. For help with this, read this Google article about how to create a Sitemap.
- Create an RSS feed to syndicate your content. If your site uses a Content Management System (“CMS”) like WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla there are plugins to do this for you; otherwise check out this guide.
- Link said RSS feed to FeedBurner. This provides your readership lots more ways to get timely content updates from you. Additionally, it allows you to automatically notify other social media outlets when you publish new content.
- Register your business for Google Places to ensure potential customers can find you when performing searches for a particular geography. With Google’s integrated search results (web pages, images, videos and locations appear in one search) this could jump you way ahead of more well-established competition. Paid Tags on Google Places can quickly identify your business to potential customers.
- Create unique HTML page Title and Description meta tags for each page of your website. This is an opportunity to tell Google and potential readers what the page is about. Google may use these fields as the title and description that are actually displayed in search results. Don’t worry too much about the “keywords” meta tag as Google doesn’t use it for page ranking.
- Use meaningful webpage URLs (filenames). For example, rather than naming the files in your webpage “page1.html” and “page2.html” try “About-My-Company.html” or “Products-and-Services.html”. Google is smart enough to “read” page names so make them something descriptive!
- Build “back links” to your site. In other words, find websites that will place a link to your site somewhere on their site. Often times you may need to offer a “link exchange”, where you both link your sites to each other. Good places to start looking for link exchanges are professional societies, chambers of commerce, or local/community-based websites. Other large business directories you can list your business in include Yelp, CitySearch, YellowPages, or MerchantCircle.
- Lastly, sign up for Google Analytics. It will provide you with amazing insight into the people visiting your site, where they live, how they found your site, and more.
And that covers our top ten technical tips for optimizing your site for better search engine results. Keep in mind that these changes will not rocket your site to the top of Google searches overnight but with some diligence you should see some improvement in your site’s search rankings in just a couple months. If you have any questions or think we’ve left something out feel free to contact us or just leave a comment below. Thanks for reading and keep an eye out for Part 2, where we’ll discuss optimizing your site’s content for Search Engine Optimization!
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How to monetize your website with Google AdSense
What is Google AdSense?
Have you ever noticed those tiny little ads all over Google products? As we briefly explained in “Stretching your Advertising Dollar“, Google’s paid advertising (called “Google AdWords”) is not only how Google makes most of its money, but it’s also one of the most efficient advertising programs in the world. It pre-qualifies a consumer before showing him your ad, the tracking analytics that come with it are first class, but… I digress.
Example of Inline Google AdSense Ad
We’re here to talk about making money with AdSense, not spending money on AdWords. Google AdSense is the global advertising network through which Google displays the paid advertisements of Google AdWords customers. Google’s advertising network includes all of Google’s own “properties”, search sites such as EarthLink, Netscape, and Compuserve, affiliate advertising networks in the Double-Click Exchange, and last but certainly not least, you.
That’s right – you can become a part of Google’s global advertising network. But the question is… should you? If you recall from the AdWords article, Google displays ads relevant to what the viewer is already looking for. That means that if you run a website about microwavable organic pet treats, you can be reasonably sure Google will serve ads on your site that are also related to pet food. If you’re a blogger devoted to sharing “Petcake” consumption with the world this could be a great way to make some extra cash from your site, but if you’re running an e-commerce site you could end up displaying ads for your competition!
You’ve decided AdSense is right for you… now what?
If you’ve decided Google AdSense would benefit you, head to http://www.google.com/adsense to begin the account setup process. After applying, a Google employee will review your site to make sure it is complete, easily navigable, and has some substance to it. If everything looks good and your site conforms to the AdSense Terms of Service you will be welcomed to the Google AdSense program via e-mail two or three days after your submission.
Once your account has been approved, you can start placing ads on your site. Just login to your AdSense account and you’ll be able to copy the HTML code required to display all sorts of different ads – text-based ads, graphical ads, and more. Then just paste the code onto your site where you want the ads to display and you’re off and running.
In summary, Google AdSense can be a great revenue generator for a popular website, but unless you already have a sizable readership you won’t see overnight results. Keep working at building great content and eventually you will start seeing some paychecks.
To keep up with this and other DBS articles written specifically for small businesses, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and FeedBurner.
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