SEO Site Analysis: Knowing the Score, Part 1

"... prepare a report card for your current Web site. Think of the process as a scorecard of sorts, though the analysis could become a blueprint for any online marketing project.prepare a report card for your current Web site. Think of the process as a scorecard of sorts, though the analysis could become a blueprint for any online marketing project."

The author of this article provides an outline for evaluating the effectiveness of your web site. In the process, she describes, or mentions, many of the points that we regularly stress in our Internet Marketing Clinic in teaching how to create a powerful web site from scratch.

Two of her points that I found particularly interesting were, "If you don't have access to any information about your site, give your site a zero for Web metrics ..." and "... if you site is entirely Flash- or AJAX-based and doesn't produce an alternative site for non-JavaScript users, give your site a zero." She was unequivocal about these points, making it clear how important it is to avoid the mistake of Flash style sites, and how important it is to have statistics that your regularly utilize to understand what is going on with your site.

Some of the evaluation she recommends will require some tools that go beyond site statistics, but she offers some suggestions and links to places where they can be obtained. Some of the analysis may also go beyond the capability of many site owners, but we offer help on those points through our free internet marketing classes.

Alexa Toolbar and the Problem of Experiment Design

"... next time you see a statistic on web usage (or any statistic) that the results are only as good as the selection process that brings in the data. "

All of us are interested in tools that provide an insight into user activity on the Internet, and we all have different tools that we use to provide and evaluate the the information we are seeking. It is important to remember that each of these tools provides a particular, and biased, view of the data. When using the information we collect from these tools, we need to keep in mind what is the bias of the particular tool that we are using.

This article provides some insight into the bias inherent in the data offered by Alexa, one of the best sources of information about importance of different web sites and about the activity they attract.

The author points out that data collected by Alexa tends to reflect the activity of a rather select group of web users, that will not be completely representative of the Internet user community as a whole. This shows up in some distinctly biased reporting on activity on a few sites that he examined in his admittedly unscientific analysis.

One question that his report raises in my mind is, "how would this bias effect differences between different sites that I might be attempting to understand?" His analysis focused on sites that it seems might be particularly vulnerable to the specific bias that is part of Alexa data. Would that bias be as significant for sites that I might want to compare? I don't have an answer, but the point is to raise the question and think about it as I consider my findings.

As part of his analysis, he illustrates the capacity of Alexa to do comparisons of sites, which I had not explored to this degree and was happy to learn about (he graphed the activity on the sites he was comparing, making it easy to see how their activity varied over time.)

The caution in this article reiterates something we have emphasized on our classes: use the data available, but be careful that you understand what it means and what it does not mean when applying its lessons to your site management.

An In-depth Look Into Free Press Release Site | Increseo Search Marketing Blog

"FREE doesn’t always equate to GOOD. In the press release case, some free press release sites do not provide backlinks, or anchor text links, or even any readability at all. In this post, we are going to have an in-depth look into the free press release sites. "

As a companion piece to the prior posting, this site reviews various press release sites and provides comments on which it found to be most helpful. This is a great resource for evaluating where to invest your efforts to accomplish the most for your marketing effort.

Press Releases as Marketing Tools » Online Marketing Blog

"Press releases were originally designed as a communication tool between company PR staff or public relations firms and the media. But now that online news sites such as Yahoo News and Google News contain such an abundance of press release content and RSS makes it easy to syndicate news, press releases can be effectively used as a direct to consumer communication tool."

We have been talking for some time about the effectiveness of using press releases to promote your web site. This article documents how effective that approach can be, but also points out that success is not so simple as simply writing an article and sending it out. The author points out ten steps to follow in setting up your article to be effective. Some of these steps involve managing your site configuration to be able to measure your effectiveness, and some focus on making your press release interesting and informative to the recipients. this last point comes back to another of our mantras, which is, "Content is king!" Your content has to be meaningful to the readers in order to achieve its maximum effectiveness!

Following this article are a number of comment posts that provide supplemental information and are well worth reading for anyone who is considering investing time and energy in utilizing press releases as a promotional tool for a web site.

Keyword Research Tool

One of the things that we emphasize in creating an effective website is the importance of identifying the appropriate keyword phrases for the traffic you are attempting to attract to your site. There are several tools that we have used in class to illustrate how to go about finding and evaluating these phrases, and a new one has just come to my attention.

Our principal tool that we have used in class has always been Wordtracker, supplemented by Google's free tool provided in conjunction with its AdWords program. Each tool has certain advantages over the other. My preference for Wordtracker has always been based on ease of use, both in researching phrases and in downloading data to be used in other analysis, and on reasonable pricing. Google does not provide the same kind of data convenience, but adds the value of providing seasonal information about the searches in their database. On the other hand, it is free!

This new tool combines the features of both extensive database information and seasonal data. In addition, it offers some other features like focus on industry oriented searches, and keyword density analysis for pages. The disadvantage is that I find the tool much more expensive to use (than Wordtracker or Google).

For more information, you can go to their website at "KeywordDiscovery.com Keyword Research Tool". They provide customer testimonials for your reference.