maine web development, web design, internet marketing

Have you checked your traffic sources on your website’s analytics lately? What do you see? It’s good to see that search has a big piece of the pie, but you also want to make sure that you have a healthy balance of direct and referral site traffic as well. A couple of days ago, Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz, posted some advice on SEO for Startups. In the post he stressed the importance of not letting search dominate your traffic sources.

Why is web traffic diversity important?

If search engines provide an extremely high percent of traffic to your site and you are not getting traffic from other sources, it tells you that people are not finding value out of your website. A valued website will have a variety of referring site traffic from sharing links, blog posts, upcoming events, news, etc. Analytics would also show a sliver of direct traffic pie from people who have bookmarked the website or typed the URL into the address bar. Referring site and direct traffic sources show that people are connecting to a site because it offers useful content.

Photo credit: net_efekt

What can you do to diversify your web traffic?

• Provide valuable content on your website, like a blog, and keep your site up-to-date with news and events.
• Use social media like Facebook and Twitter to share links to the content on your site.
• Include links to your website on your press releases and traditional marketing pieces like direct mailers and posters.
• Use links to your web content within your email marketing newsletter that your subscribers will find useful.

Value is the key to successfully diversifying your web traffic. The content on your site needs to be of value to people or else they simply will not read it nor will they share it. Plus, search engines like to see that a site receives varied types of traffic; it lets them know that the website offers relevant content that people find useful. What does your web traffic source pie look like?

If you use a Content Management System (CMS) to control your website you are in a great position! Instead of having a basic static site you have the power over a fully dynamic system that allows you to update all your web content, which is important. If you currently have a static site the 7 perks below may have you reconsidering how you manage your web content.

1. Update and Add Content as Often as You Want
If you come out with a new product or service, you can add a new page about it on your website just by logging into your administration and creating a new article or post. With the ability to add and edit all the content on your site you are able to keep it fresh, giving visitors a reason to return. Why would visitors have a reason to come back to your site if the content never changes?

2. Instantly Update Content
It’s Saturday morning, you’re just about to go out for your morning run and you suddenly realize that you never removed the service you discontinued on Friday. Not a problem if you are near a device that is connected to the internet! A CMS is an internet application that allows you to make instant updates to your site through any computer.

3. Reduce Maintenance Costs
With the ability to update all your content through your CMS administration login there is no need to call your web maintenance provider to make costly updates. Spelling errors, address changes, and staff updates can all be done on your own through the CMS.

4. SEO is Easy to Add for Each Page
When you add a new page or make updates to an existing one it is easy to add the proper SEO elements. Most CMSs have areas to add the title, description, and keyword meta tags in addition to search engine friendly URLs and header tags. This gives you full control over how search engines find your content.

5. You Don’t Need to Know Code
The administration area of a CMS has an interface that allows you to update content through a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor. Edit and add content just like you would through a word processor. The system will then save the information in a database and you can publish it to your site, never having to see a bit of programming code, phew!

6. You Can Have Multiple Authors
A CMS often gives you the ability to add multiple administrator user accounts. These accounts can be assigned to have different permissions and access levels so that administrators can have different roles. Also, when someone is editing a page other users can not open it, so they can be in editing other content at the same time without worrying about overwriting each other.

7. Maintain Consistency Throughout All Channels
With a CMS you can place automatic feeds throughout your site that pull in your most recent news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. You are also able to maintain consistency from something mentioned through another channel by updating related content on your pages. For example if you mention a sale through Twitter you can link to the product page that you have edited to include the sale information. You can also link to these channels in your content giving website visitors a new perspective and branching them out.

Using a CMS to run your website allows you to keep your content fresh and consistent with your brand and all channels. This will help you maintain a professional appearance and also give visitors a reason to return to your site. Make sure that you use your CMS to its full potential by adding SEO elements and using feeds. Ensure a good balance of new content; adding too much or too many pages can overwhelm visitors and they may have a hard time finding what they are looking for. Keeping everything consistent and creating quality content is key!

We have been talking about Social Media a lot here over the last few years. We have covered tips on your strategy, tools and measuring. There is something I am not sure we have covered in depth yet… succeeding in social media and getting truck loads of business from it takes a lot of work.

Kasi and I are training for a half marathon in April, neither of us consider ourselves runners but we made it a goal to achieve during these cold winter months. We are following a formal half marathon training program. Up until now, the training has been relatively easy – running 3 days a week 3-4 miles each time. We got that down! From this week forward it starts getting really hard, more running and longer distances.

Running 3-4 miles 3-4 times a week can be done with little effect on my daily life. You can do that time on a lunch break, before work, after work, you can miss a day and make it up the next etc. If our goal was to only be people who ran 3-4 miles at a time we could rest comfortably right here without making any additional effort that would never really cause us any discomfort but, that is not what our goal was/is. Our goal is to run a whole half marathon (13.1 miles).

To complete our goal we need to really schedule our runs, keep track of time and pace, plan meals accordingly, as these runs get worse longer – we need to schedule recovery time and in some cases full half days need to be blocked off. This is going to be hard work from here on in.

Really succeeding at social media is work

Like our 3-4 mile running program, if you just want to be seen on social media and dabble you can sign up for Twitter, make a Facebook fan page, join LinkedIn, etc. If the goal for your business is to really succeed in social media (the whole 13.1 miles), you can’t just join social networks and wait for something to happen.

To really succeed at Social Media you need to:

• Set concrete goals and milestones for your social media presence (make a million dollars with social media is not a good goal to have here). You need actual tangible goals and to set a time-line for tracking your progress to these goals.
• Schedule time each day you are going to participate in this space. Social Media cheerleaders will tell you how great social media is and it is free. Signing up for most social media sites is free but it takes time to use them effectively. If you are going to be available 3 days in a row and regularly striking up conversations with your network, what happens when you take the next four days off? You need to set expectation for what people will get from a relationship with your business online and you need to stick to those or you will leave a trail of confused and possibly frustrated people online trying to keep a conversation with you going.
• Be dedicated to seeing this through and making it work. You are not going to be an overnight success. This is going to take time. You need time to build trust with your network and make useful connections online.
• You may need to reallocate resources and cut what is standing in your way. As with our running example, if I have a 12 mile run on Saturday – it is going to affect what I do on Friday. I may not be able to attend social events Friday evenings because they will conflict with the milestone I have to meet the next day. You may need to reallocate resources, personnel and more to make sure your needs are being met in this online space.
• Track what is working and what is not. Keep track of what you are doing online and see what is working and what is not. If something is not working (a specific site is showing no inbound links to your website, no one is interacting with your content et. al), then stop wasting your time in that space.

Social media is great. It is a really neat space that I am happy to be a part of. It has helped many businesses with their online marketing. Social Media has helped people find jobs, experts, answers, relationships, business partners, vendors and more. The real true people who are finding success with social media are actually working really hard. This didn’t just happen by accident. So let’s set up the Twitter account, Facebook page, LinkedIn group and blog but then let’s really get down to business…

Photo Credit: tapasparida

A couple weeks back, I blogged about the importance of engaging the visitors that come to your website and enticing them to convert; SEO is only a part of your overall web marketing strategy.  Search engine optimization gives you the opportunity to be found when someone searches for the keywords related to your business, but it can’t convince someone to sign up for your newsletter or contact you for more information.

In fact, just because you come up on the first page of a Google search, there is no guarantee that someone will click on your site to see what it’s all about.  Use the meta description tag to make a great first impression before they even see your website.

Think of it as your first conversion opportunity.

Meta Description What?

You may not be familiar with the term, but I am sure you’ve seen them a million times:

In the simplest terms, all the meta description tag does is describe what that particular web page is about.  The example above, taken from the famous celebrity gossip blog perezhilton.com, is the meta description for the homepage of his site.

On the “techie” side of things, it’s located in the header of the HTML code and looks like this:

<meta name=”Description” content=”Since 2004, Hollywood’s most hated website has been delivering the juiciest celebrity gossip. The blog is The go-to source for daily happenings in Hollywood. Written by the internet’s most notorious gossip columnist, Perez Hilton (Mario Lavandeira).”/>

Search engines often take the information in the meta description tag and display it as a snippet in the results underneath the link, so this is your chance to tell people what the page is about and that it’s worth the click.

Meta Description Basics

The meta description for each page needs to be unique.  Why?  Well, aren’t all of the pages on your site different?  Exactly.  You’ve got between 20 and 40 words to state the facts and you need to keep in mind that the search engine often doesn’t use the entire text – you can see that by looking at the Perez Hilton Google results snippet and comparing it to what’s in the code.  Use the important keywords in the beginning of the statement if possible to ensure that they appear in the results snippet.  Google will also  bold the words in the description that were used in the search query.  I searched for “celebrity gossip blog” to get to Perez Hilton’s site and Google bolded those exact words for me in the snippet.

Be Specific

Put your web copy skills to work and be concise; this isn’t the time to use industry jargon.  Think of the person who might be visiting the page – what kind of information do they need?  What are they looking for?  If you’re a florist in Boston specializing in wedding arrangements, then be sure to say just that.  When someone searches for “Boston wedding florist” and your website comes up in the results, having a description that says something like “We specialize in custom wedding arrangements in the Boston area…”, you’ve got a good start.  You’ve just reinforced to the searcher that you provide the service that they are looking for.

Whenever I do a search, I always scan the description underneath the link to see what I’m in for and whether or not I want to check that site out.  It may be a bit time consuming to have to write a meta description tag for the pages on your website, but it’s well worth the effort.  After all, it could be the deciding factor as to whether or not you get a visit.