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Site Clinic: Easy to Navigate Equals Easy To Buy

by Jackie Baker

This week we're looking at an e-commerce website for educational toys, Brainwaves Toys. I met the proprietor, Karen, at Small Business Marketing Unleashed last month. She's having a blast with the site because she's passionate about what she sells, but she's new to website marketing and looking for ways to improve.

As always, I asked three questions that are critical to guiding website analysis:

1. Who is your target audience:  Mothers, fathers, grandparents, other adults who care about a child's development. Homeschoolers, teachers, preschools.
2. What is your unique selling proposition: One stop shop for hand-picked toys and games that enhance a child's learning, sense of play and educational development. Great resource for homeschoolers and teachers. We can gift-wrap many toys before shipping.
3. What is your main website goal: Online purchase.

The current Brainwaves site has done many things well, especially usability of the shopping cart and checkout process. However, it needs a little help with design and navigation to get visitors to that point.

Navigation: Which one do I use and where in the world do I start?
Research shows that confusing navigation is the number one way to lose customers. If people have a hard time finding their way around your website, they're just going to give up and leave. And when you have great products that really sell themselves like Brainwaves does, you don't want your navigation to get in the way of a sale.

When you enter on the Brainwaves homepage, there are three different ways to navigate the site. There is a global horizontal bar organized by age group. There's a global vertical bar that's not particularly organized at all and mixes functional (shop by price, age) with topical. And there's another featured section in the middle that is also organized by topic, some of which are in the left sidebar and some that aren't. The housekeeping links such as about us and contact are buried in the footer. While they need to be there, they also need to be more prominent "above the fold" (visible without having to scroll).

With the variety of toys for sale on Brainwaves, I like the idea of having two sets of navigation: one for age and one for toy category. It seems sensible that people would use one of those two systems to browse. However, they should be kept entirely separate from each other.

Research also shows that users scan web pages, and won't bother to look at lists with more than 5-7 links. If you have more than that, break them up into categories and subcategories that are logical and easy to scan.

Always keep your customers in mind; organize your navigation in a way that makes sense to them, call each link what they would call it ("educational toys" takes visitors to the home page, so call it "home"!), and make it easy to scan and browse. If you aren't sure if your organization or labeling (words in the links) make sense to your customers, test it! Find a friend who is in your target market and ask his/her opinion.

Design: Use the header to say who/what you are and draw people in.
There is so much going on in the header of this website, that the main message is getting lost.

 
There are two items that should be in the header of every website:

• Company/website name
• Tagline/benefit statement.

Tagline
The header is your chance to tell visitors what this website is about and why you are unique. It needs to be the first place people look. And be sure to create the tagline as html, not in an image. Search engine spiders ignore images, and a strong tagline that says what you are about and uses your primary keywords help search engines and people to classify your site.

This particular tagline "Educational Toys for Gifted Children," uses a primary keyword and states simply what visitors will find on the site. But it doesn't tell visitors why this site is unique. And I'm afraid the phrase "gifted children" will turn a good portion of visitors away. It really needs to be re-worked to include the unique selling proposition. For example:

"Hand-picked educational toys that enhance learning, development, and sense of play"

It says exactly what you'll find on the site, (toys to enhance learning, development, and sense of play), includes a primary key phrase (educational toys), and says why the site is unique (hand-picked).

Images
Use the header to display images that target your audience and draw people in. While the Verified Merchant and GeoTrust logos are good to include on the site somewhere, they aren't important enough to take up such a prominent location, and can go below the fold or in a sidebar. I'd love to see an image of a child playing watched by a parent or a grandparent ... something colorful that screams "for kids."

Keep in mind that the header should be consistent on every single page of the website. Remember, on average only 5% of your visitors will enter at the home page anyway (and that's a good thing!).

Marketing: You've got a great personality, so use it!
The best way for a small business to compete online with the big guys is to let their personalities shine through. I've met Karen, so I know first-hand that she's got a vivacious, passionate, knowledgeable, and endearing personality. She's incredibly passionate about educational toys that foster creativity and learning. She's a mom who has raised three children. She surfs the internet and hand picks every one of the toys that she sells through Brainwaves. What parent wouldn't connect with that instead of a cold, distant corporation just looking to make a buck?

There are ways to leverage a great personality both on and off site. I'd love to see a letter from Karen and/or a bio on the about page. She could really play up that Brainwaves is a "mom and pop" shop run by a mom who is passionate about learning. Adding her voice to the copy and using her personality as a main selling point would definitely boost trust and interest in her target market. I'd even include a picture of Karen and her family. On the contact form, say that visitors are contacting Karen directly, not just a help desk. In the product descriptions, incorporate the "hand-picked" unique selling point by saying why each item was chosen.

This is the kind of situation where I would definitely recommend that Karen start a blog. She's a good writer, passionate about her product and site, and has a lot to say. Her blog could feature cool new products as she finds them, talk about child development and learning, and share personal stories of raising her three kids. A blog would showcase her personality and knowledge, build trust, and drive links and traffic to the Brainwaves website.

She could also build relationships by sharing her expertise and passion by leaving comments on other blogs and getting involved in parenting and education forums. Remember, you must always contribute relevant information to the discussion; these ARE NOT place to sell your products or just link to your site. 

Usability: An easy checkout process is key to sales.
The Brainwaves website does a great job of making it easy for users to buy:

• The view cart, checkout, and submit buttons are large and easy to find.
• The process is as simple and clean as possible.
• Errors are clearly marked and easy to fix.
• Visitors can easily go back a step to make changes to their cart or personal information
• There are short explanations of the process on each page.
• The steps in the process are well-labeled at the top of each page and indicate where you are in the process.

A few general issues I noticed:

• The site-wide font size is way too small. One of the primary targets is grandparents, but there's no way they'll be able to read the site with decreasing vision. Bump it up at least two sizes.
• The checkout page asks you to log in or register. However, the username and password are not required fields, so it is possible to checkout without actually registering. This needs to be explained, or have separate options for "returning users," "create an account," or "go straight to checkout." Some people will be more likely to buy if they know that registration is optional.

• There's a thank you page after submitting a message through the contact form. However, it should provide links back to key content as well as saying thank you.
• There's too much happening on the homepage. It needs to include just a few sentences (with keywords!) overviewing the site, and then drive visitors to deeper content.
• Pull the customer review section up under each product so that it is one of the first boxes under the product description. When a customer makes a purchase, ask them to come back and review the product on the confirmation page/email and include the link back.

The general structure of the Brainwaves website is good and the product descriptions are strong. With a few key changes to the navigation, adding some personality, and re-focusing the header, this site could really stand out. 

Thanks For Your Submissions
I was overwhelmed over the past week by the many website submissions for review in this column. If you submitted your site, it may be a while until I get to it. I will email you a heads up the week that I review your site.

If you are a small business and would like to submit your site for review in this weekly column, email your URL and the following information to jackie@sitelogic.com:

1. who are your primary and secondary target audiences?
2. what is your unique selling proposition (what makes you stand out)?
3. what is your main goal for your website (sales, leads, page views)?

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Deal or No Deal? Microsoft Put to the Challenge

by Sage Lewis

Sage addresses the failure of Microsoft's attempt to buy Yahoo!. The winners and losers of the whole ordeal are brought to light in an article by Andy Beale at Marketing Pilgrim, in which, ironically, Google comes out top winner, despite Yahoo!'s successful acquisition of Fast Search. Google also takes center stage with their artist-driven iGoogle themes that are now available, and the art of web development has a new resource thanks to Danny Dover at SEOmoz who came up the "The Web Developer's SEO Cheat Sheet."

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Twitter Dee Twitter Dumb: DirectTV Done Wrong and Right

by Sage Lewis

Twitter and DirectTV go head to head this week by creating and solving customer service issues at the same time. Mack Collier's article "Worst Example of a Company Twittering?" exposes DirectTV's bumbled use of Twitter, explains the frustration that can cause, and encourages companies to use social media tools "as the rest of us do." The DirectTV/Twitter saga actually begins with Stoney deGeyter's tweet about the company's presence, is filled in with his article "Why DirectTV is Losing My Heart (and Quite Possible My Business)," and then ends with another tweet about the company's immediate response to his customer service issue.

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Bee's Do It. NonProfits Do It. Let's Do It, Let's Fall In Link Love

by Debra Mastaler

.... with Digg visitors, these folks just viewed the landing page and most of them immediately left without viewing any other pages. But that's OK, because our popularity on Digg drove in 50+ links from blogs, including a few elite sources like The Huffington Post and Cisco.com, and also caused "spillover" popularity into other social news networks. The real value from this particular success on Digg wasn't so much the initial spike in traffic, but the increased SEO positioning and second wave of visitors coming from blogs and other sites.

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Site Navigation and Usability: Easy Tips for Happy Users

by Scott Allen

Yesterday, I stumbled across a large ad agency website that promised to be interesting. As soon as I clicked on the link in Google, my senses were assaulted by a splash page, followed by a Flash intro, all before I could enter the site. Yes, it took two clicks before I was even at the homepage...that is appalling! Why on earth is anyone in this day and age still creating websites with splash pages and Flash intros, let alone both on the same site! That borders on visitor abuse.

This particular agency claimed to have won lots of awards, create ground-breaking campaigns, along with all kinds of other lofty promises, and yet they couldn't even get their own usability issues under control! Wow, talk about missing the point. If I was a potential client, I would have been out the door as soon as I saw the splash page.

Ditch the lofty ideas and focus on the users.

Big ideas are great when executed with usability in mind, but when the they become a hindrance to users, it's time to go back to basics. Why? Because unhappy users don't convert. You won't sell product, you won't get contracts, and you won't achieve your other conversion metrics if you make people want to run away.

Navigation is the Foundation of Usability

The first and foremost element of good usability is navigation. Almost all other usability issues are built on, or in some way related to navigation. This article will focus on some key tips you can use to improve your site's navigation.

Navigation 101: 3 Clicks or Bust

When someone visits your site for the first time, it's often their first point of contact with your company, so the relationship with them is quite fragile. On average, people are willing to give you 3 clicks to find what they are looking for, and if they can't reach their target destination within those 3 little clicks, you've lost them. It's extremely important to structure your navigation so that any page of your site can be reached within 3 clicks of any other page, because users don't always enter at the homepage, especially when they come from a search engine.

This point is really what sparked this post. The ad agency mentioned above wasted two of these valuable clicks before a user was ever at the homepage. Take a look at your site: When you have a new visitor, can they get to their target destination in 3 clicks or less? If not, you need to overhaul your navigation. Users tend to get lost without clear navigational paths, so make it easy for them. Take time at the beginning of site development to create a good site map, and sketch out navigational paths.

Redundancy is a good thing.

Provide multiple paths to the same destination. Take x product (or service) and make sure that users can get there through the primary navigation, the contextual links in the text of the site, and through any other paths that make sense, for example through site search results. The key is to think like a user.

Get outside feedback.

When developing a site, especially navigation, it often is necessary to get some people to visit your site who are completely unfamiliar with your site and products/services, and get their feedback. You might be surprised. Often outside feedback can you step back and see some weaknesses you weren't aware of.

Make sure it's easy to read.

Keep in mind that eye-tracking studies have shown the users' eye tend to gravitate toward the top and left sides of the screen, starting with the top left corner, so those are prime locations for navigation. Users should never have to scroll to find navigation buttons/links.

There a many more things that can improve and fine-tune navigation, but these are some easy tips, that if implemented, will improve the user experience at your site.

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Why Session ID's And Search Engines Don't Get Along (Hint: It's a Duplicate Content Thing)

by Stoney deGeyter

There is no better way to create an infinite amount of duplicate content on your site than to force session IDs onto each visitor (and search engine). Typically, session IDs are used for tracking a single visitor's navigation path through the site, including the adding or removing products from the shopping cart. They are great for tracking purposes, but really, really bad for search engines and inbound linking.

Ok, first of all, that's a totally crappy URL shown above, but aside from that, tacked on at the end there is the session ID. Both URLs are the same, all except the session ID. I was able to open the exact same page, with the unique ID simply by starting a new browsers session. The problem is that the session ID constitutes a completely different URL. It's not an issue for the visitor, but it is for the search engines.

Since a new session ID is attached with each new visit, each time the search engine comes around they are essentially fed all new URLs. If you have only a ten page site, the second time the search engines visit they add the "new" 10 pages to the index, for a total of 20 pages. When they come around a third time they now have 30 pages in their index. Once they start analyzing these pages they find page after page after page of duplication.

An additional problem arises as site visitors start bookmarking and linking to your site. Every link they add contains their very own session ID. The search engines follow that link to your site and now you've got another 10 pages of duplication. If they follow another link to your site, that's 10 more. You starting to see where this is going? Essentially you can turn a 10 page site into endless duplications.

Even with a small site you can see why the search engines would stop coming around. But if you have a site with hundreds, or even thousands of products, you find two things happen. 1) The search engines will stop spidering new pages because there is just too much duplication. 2) The engines will start dropping pages out of the index altogether.

There are content management systems that will allow you to withhold the session IDs from search engines. While this is a good option it still has the potential of creating problems with inbound links. Each link will still pass value to the URL with the session. It'll be up to the search engine to make a determination if the URL with the session and the URL without are the same.

The only guaranteed protection is not to do it at all. There are alternate means of tracking users for whatever reason. Avoiding session IDs completely ensures that you don't open yourself up to inadvertent site duplication.

This article is a continuation in my series on duplicate content. Follow the links below to read more:

• Theories in Duplicate Content Penalties
• How Poor Product Categorization Creates Duplicate Content and Frustrates Your Shoppers
• Redirecting Alternate Domains to Prevent Duplicate Content
• Preventing Secure & Non-Secure Site Duplication

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My Relationship with Facebook: Can We Talk?

by Karri Flatla

I'm probably going to lose a lot of Friends with this post, but I need to get some stuff off my chest about Facebook. If you're a real Friend, you'll listen without judgment. If not, it was nice Facebooking with you. I hope there are no hard feelings left in my wake.

Like most of us, my love affair with Facebook started out hot 'n heavy. Almost daily (sometimes even hourly), I watched my Friend meter go up like an investor watches a stock ticker. And the sheer voyeurism of it all was just so hard to resist. (Admit it, you've looked up at least one ex just to see their profile picture or better yet, get access to their photo album. And you couldn't help but smile to yourself when you noticed their Freshman 15 had turned into the Desk Jockey 30.)

Now, the relationship is starting to bore me and I don't know what to do about it. In addition to the boredom (I'm running out of people to spy on, er, I mean beFriend), I find myself feeling rather annoyed. Often. Yet I don't want to break up with Facebook either. I just want to keep Funny Face around for those Friday nights when I want to be amused.

While I'm at it, know what annoys me the most about FF? The constant nattering when I don't feel like talking. Only a few of my Friends do it, but they're kind of ruining it for my BFFs. Specifically, it's the constant influx of emails that is making me want to start deFriending like a highschool cheerleader with PMS. I'm not talking about FunWall notifications either. I turned those off when I became afraid my hard drive was going to crash from Fun overload. But seriously, where does it say in the Facebook Terms of Use that it may be used as a list management tool? Where and when did I give permission to my Friends to use me this way?

In fact, Facebook's Terms of Use say this:

"... you agree not to use the Service or the Site to: harvest or collect email addresses or other contact information of other users from the Service or the Site by electronic or other means for the purposes of sending unsolicited emails or other unsolicited communications ..."

So, you can't harvest emails from your Friends' profiles to market to them, but what about the Invite Your Friends feature? And how come it allows you to "Import Email Addresses" from various sources? Seems that Funny Face has developed a split personality. Or an inflated ego.

This relationship is getting complicated. So many rules--written and unwritten--have been broken. I don't want to sound like an ingrate. Funny Face has been good to me. We go back at least a few months. The tapestry of our affair is richly decorated.

Decorated with smileys. And hugs. And dirty video clips. And spam.

I just wanted to hook up with some old friends. Do a little B2B networking. And exchange some niceties now and then.

Facebook, you let me down. And I don't know what to do about it.

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So How Do You Find People on Twitter?

by Mack Collier

One of the benefits to spending time on Twitter is that it's a great way to network.  But if you are new to Twitter, it can seem difficult to find people that are in your industry or that share your interests.  Here's some tips to help get you started meeting new friends on Twitter!

Al left a comment to my post on Monday that I'm sure many of you that are new to Twitter can sympathize with:

"Okay, I got an account on Twitter and I've hit a blank wall, literally. I can't seem to get out of my little box. Perhaps Direct is having the same problem.

There doesn't seem to be any way to "find" anyone unless you already know them from somewhere else. How do you make new acquaintances with similar interests? What's the point in marketing via Twitter if you can't figure out how to get heard?"

This is a real concern, but thankfully there's several resources that can help you expand your network of friends on Twitter.

First, start on Twitter itself.  At the top right of your Twitter homepage you will see a search box that lets you not only search for people, but also by location or any other term that might be in their Twitter profile.  If you are looking for other Twitter members in Ohio, search for Ohio, and Twitter will give you a listing of all the members that have their location identified as being 'Ohio'.  Or you can search for anyone with 'search marketing' in their profile, or 'social media', or any other term you can think of.





Another great way to find people that share your interests is with the Twitter Packs wiki.  Here you can find Twitter users by subject matter, you can find companies that have a presence on Twitter, and even locate people by region.  If you are interested in meeting other Twitter members that focus on 'Technology', for example, you can view the list, and even add yourself to this same list so that other members can find you!

My favorite search tool for Twitter is Tweetscan.  With Tweetscan, you can search for topics, people, places, anything.  You can also search and make sure that you have seen all the replies to you that other Twitter members have left.  Just search for '@YourTwitterName'.  Sometimes the web version of Twitter as well as Twhirl will miss some of your replies.

But perhaps the best way to meet new people on Twitter is to follow the people that your friends are following.  Watch the conversations unfolding, and if you see that one of your friends is having an interesting conversation and replying to someone that you aren't following, then click on that person's name and check out their Twitter page.  It could be that they are someone that you would like to follow. 

With these tools, you should be able to expand your Twitter network significantly.  And the best part is, your Twitter experience becomes much richer and more rewarding as you follow more people.

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SEM Boot Camp - Paid Search Advertising Roadmap

by Diana Adams

I recently had the opportunity to participate in some speed networking at Small Business Marketing: Unleashed. When I told the second person I networked with that I am a PPC manager, she gave me a blank stare and said "I have no idea what PPC is." She's not alone.

Many people do know what PPC advertising is, and where paid advertising is displayed, but my experience at SBMU reminds me that this isn't always the case. So I decided a great first entry for me at Search Engine Guide would be a Boot Camp Style article explaining exactly what paid search advertising looks like.

I tend to talk with my hands, demonstrating what my minds eye is seeing - on the internet, I rely on pictures. So we're all starting from the same place, I'll throw out some screen shots of where paid advertising are displayed on the three major search networks and explain some of the not so obvious details. Then, just to keep things interesting, I'll show you where paid advertising displays in a couple of other search engines.

Google

As Google receives the lion's share of searches we'll start with them. There isn't quite a "hard rule" that is always followed, so I'll give a brief description of where paid ads, or "sponsored links" typically appear. As a general rule, they always appear to the right of the natural results, and quite often (but not always) as the top three results on the page, above the natural listings. When they do display above the natural results, Google shades the background to make it obvious that they are different results than those below. (even though that shading may mean nothing to someone not knowing what paid advertising looks like.)

Occasionally, if your search term is very, very obscure, you'll see only a very few ads, but the most ads that Google will display on any results page is ten. Sometimes there are only one or two ads at the top of the page, and never more than three. But sponsored links always display on the right hand side of the natural results. Google will only 'serve' ten ads per page; if there are more than ten advertisers, Google pushes them to the next page. If all you want to view are sponsored links, then you can click the "more" displayed just below the sponsored links. But you'll still see only ten at a time.

Yahoo

Yahoo seems to get the second number of search volume, so they're second in this discussion. The same general rules that applied to Google, apply to Yahoo as well, but instead of labeling their paid ads as "sponsored links" they're labeled as "sponsored results." Above the top sponsored results, Yahoo will display a list of related searches, labeled as "Also try:.." To further muck things up, you might find Google ads displaying amongst the Yahoo ads because they're currently running a beta test.

MSN

MSN gets the lowest search volume of the three major engines, and again, the rules are very much the same as with Google. Paid ads appear to the right of the natural search results, where they're identified as "sponsored sites." As with Google, depending on the search phrase, you may or may not see sponsored sites displayed above the natural results. MSN displays Related Searches above the sponsored sites on the right; be aware that those results are not advertisements.

So those are the major three players, yet there are dozens of other search engines that people use. Solely for demonstrative purposes, let's take a look at Ask.com and Dogpile.com.

Ask

Ask has their own search engine and their own paid advertising. In years past they used to display search results from their own database along with results from others, including Google. Now they stick to their own database for natural results. They do however participate as part of Goggle's search network, and you will find Google ads displayed along with the Ask ads. Ask highlights their ads above the natural results, never along the right side of the page and they label them as "sponsored results". Along the left side of their search results, they display options that allow you to narrow your search results.

Dogpile

Dogpile is a meta search engine, displaying results from multiple search engines, including Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask. The way they display their ads though, is somewhat deceiving. Their "sponsored ads" are a collection from Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask, but the secret is that they are mixed up with the natural results. Unless you read the tag that labels listings as , you may never recognize that you're looking at a paid ad.

So there you have it, your first introduction to what Paid Advertising looks like. Now you'll never look at a Search Engine Results Page (SERP) the same, and you'll recognize those hidden advertisements at DogPile. In future posts I'll cover more of the basics, including the limitations of ad text, the importance of relevance and landing pages, discuss CPC, CTR, and you'll get familiar with all the alphabet soup of PPC (Pay Per Click) industry. Don't worry if you don't know what CPC is, or CTR, you will! If at anytime you have specific questions, by all means, post them as a comment and I'll try to answer as best I can!

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Preventing Secure & Non-Secure Site Duplication

by Stoney deGeyter

Search engine spiders can be very forgiving with a lot of types duplicate content. I've found that, given enough time, the engines can learn when two websites or web pages are complete duplicates of the other. Once they figure this out then they basically understand that a link to one is a link to the other, etc. One version will ultimately be dropped from the index in favor of the other.

There are two basic problems with this. First, it takes time. Until the search engines figure out which dupes should be "merged" you're essentially splitting link flow between pages. Two inbound links split between each of the duplicate pages produces only half the power than two links both pointing to a single page. So until that merging occurs in the the search index, you're losing valuable link power.

The second problem is that you leave it to the search engines to decide which of the duplicate pages (or sites) should be dropped from the index. When you let the search engines decide, you lose essential control over your marketing plan.

The less you make the search engines think the better. It's not only OK, but it's essential to tell the search engines what to think, especially when it comes to which pages of your site should or should not be included in the index. If you have duplicate pages and don't keep the search engines from finding and indexing all of them, then you're forcing them to make the decision for you. Instead, you need to be proactive, let them know which version is the "correct" version.

One issue we've come across, especially with e-commerce sites is when products can be accessed via both secure and non-secure URLs.

This issue is typically caused by poorly implemented site navigation and linking. What happens is that the shopper adds a product to the shopping cart. At that point they enter into the secure pages. But when the shopper continues shopping, instead of proceeding to checkout, they navigate back into the site keeping the https: in the browser URL. This opens up the entire site to be indexed using secure URLs, creating duplicates of the non-secure URLs

There are a couple fixes to this. The first is to not allow your visitors to enter the secure areas of the site until they are ready to check out.

There is no reason to pass your visitors into the secure part of your site when they add products to their cart. The place to go secure is when they hit the checkout button. But--and this is important--if they enter the secure check out process but want to leave it to continue shopping, they need to be placed back into non-secure pages.

This leads us to our second fix: Use absolute URLs in all site navigation and shopping cart pages.

Quick refresher: an absolute link uses the full domain name in the link:

http://www.site.com/category/product.html

A relative link only uses the path from current location to the destination:

../product.html

When using relative links, if the shopper is already on an secure (https:) URL then they'll stay on secure URLs. When you use absolute links then you are forcing the visitor to go http: instead of https:.

When shoppers can access secure and non secure versions of the same page, then likely the search engines can as well. This creates almost a complete duplicate of your site, one secure and one non-secure version. Using absolute links will ensure that at no point can a regular page be accessed in secure mode, thus preventing the duplication.

This article is a continuation in my series on duplicate content. Follow the links below to read more:

• Theories in Duplicate Content Penalties
• How Poor Product Categorization Creates Duplicate Content and Frustrates Your Shoppers
• Redirecting Alternate Domains to Prevent Duplicate Content

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Wasting Your Time with Web Analytics

by Manoj Jasra

Web Analytics is not easy and can take up much of you time so it's important to concentrate on the things which have the most benefit to your business. Below I have outlined the types of things you shouldn't measure as well as some areas where you could potentially end up wasting time rather than focusing on tactics and metrics which will actually help your strategy to succeed.


Trying to Achieve 100% Accuracy

• In a JavaScript and Cookie model, web analytics will never be 100% accurate. In a web analytics test performed last year by Stone Temple consulting where they implemented numerous analytics scripts on the same website, the results indicated up to a 10% fluctuation between analytics packages. I feel it's important to test for accuracy but a waste of your time to try to balance your books using analytics.

Measuring only the Quantity of Leads

• You launch a PPC campaign for your hot new service at 8 AM and by noon you have 1000 new leads, mission complete, pack it up and go home - I don't think so. Yeah 1000 leads are wonderful until you find out that 50% of them are from a person who has the email test@test.com

Not Segmenting Your Data

• Not segmenting your data is similar to closing your eyes and randomly throwing money at various advertising mediums. I can't stress the importance of taking your leads, downloads, revenue and information requests and segmenting by Medium, Search Engines and keywords.

Keeping the Data to Yourself

• Good or bad it's important to share the data with Stakeholders in the company who need to make decisions with it. Long hours of Crunching number after number in order make the results appear in a certain way will only prolong the ability for the appropriate decision maker to take action.

Measuring Without Purpose

• Before jumping head first into the data, Before creating a Dashboard make sure you sit down with your marketing team to figure out the goals of the appropriate project as well as what metrics they need to report on in order to do their job properly.

Original Post: Web Analytics World

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Redirecting Alternate Domains to Prevent Duplicate Content

by Stoney deGeyter

Registering multiple domain names is, and should be, common practice for businesses wishing to protect their brands. Once purchased, what you do with these domains can have a positive or negative impact on your main URL. Here are some tips on how to set up alternate domains to prevent the search engines from seeing duplicate content.

Domain Name Redirects

The first thing you need to consider after you've purchased additional domain names is to decide what you want to do with them. Not every domain name needs to have a site on it, though it wouldn't be a bad idea to have some kind of generic company page in place for lack of anything else. But for the most part, you will probably want to redirect all your alternate domain names to your main company site.

The question then becomes, how best to implement those redirects. There are many ways to redirect websites, most of them will often do more harm than good. One of the most common ways to redirect domain names is to "park" them and point them to your main site. How your web hosts parks domains is crucial to understand before implementing it, in order to make sure that the domains are redirecting properly from an SEO standpoint.

Here is an example of a improperly redirecting URL:

This is how most web host companies park domain names. Essentially, every parked domain will feed the user the content from the primary URL, but it keeps the visitor on the domain name which they typed in. This can lead to problems with branding, not to mention the duplicate page(s) created by this kind of re-direct.

Here's what you need to know about domain redirects. This is important so you are able to knowledgeably tell your web host, developer, or whoever else is in charge of your website. You want your alternate domains to "301 redirect" to your main URL.

A 301 redirect tells search engine spiders that the domain they tried to access has been "permanently moved" to a new location, which is your main URL. When implementing a 301 redirect both your visitors and search engine spiders will be automatically forwarded to the new URL.

If your web host doesn't implement this kind of redirect when parking domains or doesn't offer 301 redirecting, then you'll have to do it yourself. The easiest way is to get a second web hosting account for ONE of your alternate domain names, and implement the 301 redirect by adding the following code to your .htaccess file:

Redirect permanent / http://www.mainurl.com

Now you can park all your other alternate domain names onto the redirected domain.

Checking for proper redirects

If you're not sure if your alternate domain names are redirecting properly, you can do a simple check using a program such as WebBug.

Click for larger image.

This screenshot shows me that the domain www.projectinsight.com IS properly redirecting to www.projectinsight.net, returning an HTTP header of "301 Moved Permanently" which is exactly what we were looking to achieve.

Without implementing proper redirects on your alternate domain names, not only will you have duplicate websites, but you'll likely be splitting all your link flow between each version of the site. This will potentially cut your site's value (as determined by the search engines via incoming links) in half.

While it's possible for the search engines to figure out that domain A and domain B are the same, you're still forcing them to decide which of the two domains is the one you are trying to brand, and they have a 50% or greater chance of getting it wrong.

This article is a continuation in my series on duplicate content. Follow the links below to read more:

• Theories in Duplicate Content Penalties
• How Poor Product Categorization Creates Duplicate Content and Frustrates Your Shoppers

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Who is the Latest Sucker...er...Brilliant Mind to Join the Search Engine Guide Team?

by Jennifer Laycock

Two weeks ago, I came home from Small Business Marketing Unleashed to find a note on my laptop. It said "Hey Jen! We need more content! The masses are circling and you're not giving them enough to read!!" Now as someone who used to regularly churn out 6000 words of content a day, I found I could do nothing more than hang my head in shame. After all, what good is Search Engine Guide if we aren't feeding our readers a steady diet of small business marketing articles to keep them happy?

Of course I'm only one woman. Granted, I type 120 words per minute and I spin out marketing ideas like Simon Cowell spins out insults, but nonetheless, I'm still only human. So, I fired a note right back at Robert that said "Well fine! Then drag yourself out of that recliner and put down your bon bons long enough to hire me an Associate Editor!"

Soon enough, a note shot back. "Fine by me, but who are you going to sucker into this job?"

The Requirements

Well, that was a tough one. I mean the criteria were pretty high.

1.) They should be cute. (but not cuter than me, and certainly not cuter than Puppy.)
2.) They need to be able to write. (preferably about things I don't like to write about so I can push the dirty work on someone else.)
3.) They have to be able to hold their own as part of our team. (Which means having a snappy come-back at all points in time while retaining an incredibly charming demeanor.)
4.) They have to love small business as much as I do. (In fact, they should probably run one.)

Now number one was going to be tough to fill, so I made a note that we could compromise here if we had to. Number two was non-negotiable, especially on the "things I don't like to write about" front. What good would it do the world to have a carbon copy of me, we want tons of content coming in on completely different topics, right? Number three was going to be tough. Search Engine Guide runs on a spicy mix of rock-hard friendship and lightening fast zingers.

Of course number four wasn't in any way, shape or form negotiable.

That's when Robert pointed out the need for:

5.) They have to be willing to work with YOU, Jen.

Doh. Suddenly my hopes of a brand spanking new content sidekick were dashed.

But All Was Not Lost

That's when I heard the voice of Yoda, calling out from beyond... saying "wait, there is another."

(Ok, ok, so actually, my brain said "you dolt, there's only ONE man for the job and you know exactly who it is.)

Honesty folks, the choice was obvious. The only thing not obvious was why I didn't think of it sooner. So without further ado, let me introduce to you the one man in this industry that fit every last qualification we could outline. The only man in this industry I'd trust with a label like this one. (And don't any of you tell him that because it will go straight to his head.)

Stoney deGeyter.

No one else we could think of could possibly fill the void on our site the way Stoney can. So, as much as the other editors of the world may cry to know that Stoney's content will now be appearing exclusively on this site as he helps me crank up the content, our small business readers can delight in knowing they no longer have to chase Stoney around the web. If you love him as much as we do, you'll find him right here, on a regular basis, sharing his infinite knowledge of organic search, usability, and obscure movie quotes.

No worries to those of you who were just picking up the phone to call him, he'll still be at the helm of his firm, Pole Position Marketing as well. He'll simply be moonlighting as part of our fun-loving staff.

Welcome aboard Stoney!

No, Stoney, your title can NOT be "Pimp McFly." Robert already laid claim to that one.

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Worst Example of a Company Twittering?

by Mack Collier

The problem that many companies face when they delve into the social media waters is that they really don't understand these new-fangled tools.  And that means they are probably going to use them in the wrong ways, and for the wrong reasons.

Which brings us to DirecTV's presence on Twitter.

Stoney mentioned that DirecTV was on Twitter over the weekend with this tweet:







And if you check their Twitter page, first you see this:











....then this:

Now to be fair, it's possible that DirecTV isn't behind this account.  But I would bet they are, simply because if someone else was on Twitter impersonating DirecTV, they would likely be familiar enough with the service to understand that you can't leave a direct message to someone that isn't following you. But a company that simply wanted to be on the 'hot new social media site', wouldn't get that.

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