JM Spate Web Analytics

At first glance, web analytics (the practice of finding out about what visitors do on your site) should be easy. All you have to do is track each one, find out which pages they visit and how long they spend on them. However, even a total number of visitors per day or per week can be very hard to pin down with any accuracy.

Most people treat the figures that come from Google Analytics or another reporting suite as gospel, so it often comes as a shock when two sets of figures are compared. If the visitor numbers that come out of Google Analytics are plotted against the visitor numbers obtained by statistical analysis of the server logs, the GA figures will almost always be significantly lower.

It’s actually pretty hard to count visitors. First of all, you have to decide who should be counted- there is a world of difference between a real person looking at your site and an automated search crawler indexing the pages. Server logs count both search bots and human browsers, and while tools like AWStats and Webalizer do try and filter out the crawlers it can be quite hard to catch them all, so real visitor numbers might be a little inflated.

Google Analytics uses another approach. Users loading a page trigger a piece of Javascript. This code snippet is not tripped by robot crawlers, so the only people who register as visitors are real people. The downside is that a significant percentage of users browse the internet with Java disabled so they aren’t counted either. Therefore Google Analytics tends to underestimate visitor numbers.

There is also the issue of what counts as a session. If a user closes their browser window and then immediately reopens it on one of your pages, does that count as a separate visit? If they are inactive for an hour, then resume browsing, should that count as the same session? Different analytics packages have different ways of counting sessions and this will also affect total visit counts.

Then there are sampling issues. If your site sees millions of visits, some software packages will sample the dataset rather than examine each individual element. This can provide a good statistical picture of what’s going on, but it inevitably introduces some degree of error.

So, with all those accuracy problems, how can web analysts hope to generate useful insights? Consistency is the key. If Google Analytics always underestimates visitor numbers by 12% because 12% of the target market disables Java, the exact figures may be off but the trends are still sound. A 30% rise in visitor numbers is still a 30% rise in visitor numbers, even if the exact numbers aren’t known precisely.

Usually, problems only arise when measurement methods change. If you’re moving from one analytics package to another, it’s good practice to run the two side by side for at least a month. That way you’ll be able to see how the two sets of figures relate to one another. Don’t worry if they don’t match up exactly, because they almost certainly won’t!

Link building is an SEO fundamental. As a general rule, the more sites that link to yours, the better. Getting those links is probably the most frustrating and time consuming part of SEO but it does need to be done.

Why? Because, in search rankings as in life, you’re judged on the number and quality of your friends. A site that attracts a lot of inbound links from trusted sources is like a person that a lot of others speak highly of- reputation is all.

It’s worth noting at this point that being judged on the quality of your associates cuts both ways. If you buy links from a dodgy source it’s the equivalent of being seen shaking hands with a shady character. Links from poor quality sites are not good for your rankings at all.

So, the trick is getting respected and reputable sites to link to you. Naturally there’s a lot more too it than that- anchor text, landing page, and link placement are all important, but simply getting a link in place is a good start.

The first strategy is to give people a compelling reason to link. A piece of outstanding content or a useful tool can attract links very nicely, but producing something people really want can be tricky. The internet is full of useful things and it can be hard to make yours stand out. Getting some articles syndicated can also work very well, but again, it can be a little difficult for those who are just starting out.  We’ll say more on that another time.

If you’re new to the link building arena start with directories. Good, reputable directories are easy sources of inbound links and submitting your site is usually pretty easy. The most valuable directories in SEO terms are the picky ones (a listing at DMOZ.org is SEO gold) but even Google Places (very quick, very simple, and your listing will pop up almost immediately) is worth it.

Your local chamber of commerce is also worth a shot. Sometimes they’ll help new businesses out and they’re often on the lookout for innovative companies to showcase. Even if you sell UK-wide, don’t neglect local resources. They’ll often go further than most to help you.

Link building is all about making friends but you can start with the friends and business partners you already have.  The best strategy is usually to lay your cards on the table and just ask nicely for a link.  Talk to anyone your company does business with and talk to your friends.

Sometimes it’ll work and sometimes it won’t. Don’t get discouraged. Everyone gets turned down sooner or later. It doesn’t mean your site isn’t a good one. Link building is a slow process but keep at it and you’ll get there eventually.

Having a blog is the latest trend in SEO. It seems that everywhere you look there are online shops with blogs filled to bursting with content carefully written to target the phrases identified in their keyword research plan. The theory is that blogs are the easiest way to update any website with fresh content and build up a good body of text that will help build relevance in the eyes of Google spiders.

It works. There is no doubt that having a regularly updated blog is good SEO, particularly if it’s backed up by solid keyword research.

But here’s the catch. Google, Bing, and the other search engines aim to identify the best and most relevant website matching a particular query. That is the best website from the searcher’s point of view, not the one that pours the most effort into search engine optimisation.

The people who write Google’s ranking algorithms aren’t slow on the uptake. Sooner or later they’ll realise that not every online retailer really needs a blog and that many of them exist for search engine optimisation only. It remains to be seen just how rankings will change in response.

For now, blogging is a very effective tool for building SEO. It works, so we’re not going to tell you not to do it, but we do advise keeping it in perspective. Pay attention as much attention to other site content, to social media, and to link building as you do to blogging. The only SEO guaranteed to work in the long term is creating a great site.

Big changes at Google mean big changes in SEO. They hold something like 60% of the total search market, so when a major algorithm change comes through, smart search engine optimisation companies are quick to respond.

Instant hasn’t been rolled out across the board yet, and it’ll be a while before most of us see it as the everyday search tool that pops up as a matter of course. You can, however, try it at google.com/instant, and I recommend that anyone paying attention to SEO or a specific website’s performance do that ASAP.

This is a major change in the way organic search works. Now, you type in a query, click the button, and get results. Under Instant, suggestions will start popping up based on partial queries as soon as you start typing, and they’ll keep changing until you finish. Some users will ignore the partial results and just keep typing their search query, that’s pretty certain. Others may see something they like appear and abandon the full keyword phrase.

What this means for SEO is a whole slew of partial keywords that will become important, whereas up until now they saw precious little traffic if any. The cynical among us may see a clever way of making more PPC revenue from new keywords, but there is no doubt that Google Instant will impact organic search patterns and smart companies will adapt their SEO.

Organic search traffic keywords will change as Instant comes into common use. Longer keyword phrases will probably become less important sources and new shorter or partial ones will appear. Some websites will lose out, others will see gains.

Now is a very good time to go back to keyword research. Check out the new tool and see where and when your website appears for your existing keywords, and try to pick up any opportunities in the partial keywords. Smart people who get in quick will almost certainly find something valuable.

Banner advertising is a struggling beast, and as the massive pay per click industry depends on it, something had to change.

‘Banner blindness’ is the name given to the new-found ability of the brain to ignore any piece of a website that looks like an advertising banner. It’s not just an invention of SEO and web marketing types, but a well established and well understood phenomenon. Some internet users choose to block ads with software, others are so used to gaudy banners along the top of their browser screens that they simply don’t see them any more.

Making ads stand out from the background has been the favourite method of combating banner blindness for years. The idea has been to make ‘em bigger, make ‘em brighter, and in extreme cases make ‘em flash on and off or jump around the page. This strategy didn’t work, and annoying Flash-based PPC ads only really served to drive more people to install better ad blocking software.

Every impression that doesn’t result in a click is lost revenue, so obviously this banner blindness thing is a serious problem for AdWords and other PPC systems.

A couple of PPC providers got clever and started placing ads away from the usual locations, eg in sidebars, and this probably did work for a little while. Then, of course, users got used to an ad in the right hand sidebar and started ignoring it. The human brain is quick to adapt.

Google’s new search engine results page format takes a completely different approach to PPC ad placement. Smart cookies that they are, Google realised that making ads stand out is not the answer. The paid ads that now appear on their results pages now look more like organic search results than ever before. They blend in almost seamlessly, and even the most jaded internet brain has to actually look at the ads to decide whether or not they are in fact ads at all.

Seeing and reading are the first steps along the way to clicking a PPC ad. Will this new strategy drive up click through rates? Who knows, but I expect we’ll see more steathly advertising and less neon colours and flashy graphics in the near future.

SEO isn’t rocket science, or at least, not for small to medium sized websites. Unless you’re aiming to rank for very competitive keywords (in which case rocket science would probably be simpler, quicker, and cheaper), most SEO is pretty simple and you can almost certainly do it yourself if you feel the inclination.

Hiring SEO services is easier and saves time, but it can be expensive. To this end we can offer SEO advice and evaluation instead of a full package, which can be expensive, if you prefer. Sometimes not even that is necessary. Much can be done to improve the rankings for small websites with just a little guidance.

As with all search engine opimisation, content is king. Identify the search phrases you’d like to rank for and check where and how often they appear on your site. Aim for somewhere at around one occurrence of each per 100 words. Too many and your copy will look spammy and it won’t read well. Too few and search engine crawlers won’t pick up on the keywords and decide your page is relevant. Write for real readers, but keep your keywords in mind, and if you sell it, describe it.

Make sure your html is tidy, meta tags are populated, and the site looks professional. Ask for opinions from your mates and pay attention to what they say.

Once the site is up to scratch, submit it to some local directories. Google Places (the new name for the business directory linked to Google Maps) is free and inclusion is pretty much guarantees to all comers.

There is a great deal more to SEO, but to be entirely honest, small local businesses who are looking for publicity rather than full scale eCommerce probably don’t need to know too much about it. Make your site a good one and the rankings will follow.