by Amber Miller | May 16, 2015 | Featured, Marketing, SEO, Social Media
Everyone knows that they need to track their marketing efforts. If you didn’t track your marketing you would not know what’s working and what isn’t. Now I know tracking and analytics isn’t really sexy and exciting, but it is a necessary evil that we have to do to determine if our marketing is paying off.
If you don’t already have Google Analytics set up on your website then that is going to be your first step. Google Analytics does a great job at tracking your visitors as they move from page to page on your website. But if you don’t know what you are looking at, Google Analytics can be very confusing and overwhelming.
The good news is that there are some free tools that can help simplify Google Analytics so you can understand the data that comes from this form of tracking.
Below are 3 free tools that will help simplify Google Analytics for you.
Need to know helps you find out what you need to know when it comes to Google Analytics.
So what does it do?
Need to know is relatively new and is definitely worth checking out.
N2K gives you a one-page overview of your Google Analytics data. This report will highlight your key information over the last month. It takes all of the complicated Google Analytics and presents it to you in a compressed format.
It is incredibly easy to use while still giving you a very detailed easy to read report.
What story will your data tell you?
Quill is another fairly new free service that will take the data that is gathered from Google Analytics and transforms it into an easy to read and understand report. Quill gives you the option to receive a weekly or monthly email that is written in plain English.
Take a look at this example report from Quill Engage
Why is Quill Engage Useful?
Quill Engage will literally take all of the data you get from Google Analytics and convert them to an easy to read, easy to understand report. This will allow you to take action on the data that is being collected.
Tracking webpages just got easier.
What does PadiTrack do?
Just like the other two tools shared before, PadiTrack connects directly to your Google Analytics account and displays the data in an easier to understand format. This tool especially works well when it comes to tracking sales funnels.
How is PadiTrack useful?
One cool thing that Paditrack shows you is the conversions for each and every step of your sales funnel. This allows you to quickly pinpoint “problem areas” in your conversion process.
PadiTrack also allows you to see how well your sales funnels are doing against specific segments. For example you could create a segment of users from a new email campaign, traffic driven from a specific keyword or from new visitors to your website who found you through Google search.
PadiTrack offers a ton of other great reports and comes with a free version and makes a great “add-on” to your analytics toolbox.
These 3 tools are just a few tools to check out that will assist in making those hard to read Google Analytic reports a breeze to understand and read. Smart to Finish offers website analytic tracking support that will help give you a leg up on your competition.
by Amber Miller | Oct 2, 2014 | Blog, Blogging, Marketing, SEO
We have been asked by several of our clients what the SEO best practices are that we use here at SmartToFinish as well as when we support them with their WordPress page setup. You asked and we have answered!
Here are on page SEO best practices for you to follow if you want your website to get better rankings in the search engines.
1. Keyword in post title
The title is perhaps the most important SEO element on a page. It has to be unique, and it should contain your main keyword for that particular page or post.
2. Subheadings for easy reading, with keywords in subheadings
Viewers will be scanning an article for words and phrases that jump out at them. The easy way to Get important point across to readers is to use subheadings, bullet points and lists. Subheadings are “mini titles” that are used in the body of the content to introduce a new concept or idea. Use keywords in subheadings. The best subheading to use are “<h2>” and “<h3>”. For some reason Google and the other search engines think that any text inside a code tag, like “<h2>” is more important than the rest of the words on the page. The same holds true for bolds, italics and links.
3. Use images and insert a keyword in the alt text area of the image.
Images are very good for SEO, but few people know how to insert them correctly. In order to comply with the on page SEO best practices, you need to always add an “alt” tag to your images. Write a description that makes sense and use the keyword in it. Make sure the image is also related to what you put in the alt tag because there are chances to rank in Google Images for that particular keyword.
4. Use an SEO plugin like WPSEO by Yoast.
These plugins allow you to optimize the Google search entry, which makes it more enticing for people to visit your website. Use a single keyword / keyword phrase for each post. That keyword needs to be in:
- the title
- keyword area
- meta description
of the SEO plugin editor. The plugin will indicate the level of on page optimization of your post, so you will know if you need to further tweak those elements in order to be in line with the most important on page SEO best practices.
5. Keywords used in the content on the page
You would think this is a given …. but it’s not. Putting a keyword in the post title and the description of the page is not enough to make that page relevant. You also need to use it in the page content. Try to include semantically related words in the context, as that increases the relevancy of the page for your particular keyword. As a general rule, it’s good to include your main keyword once in the first sentence of the content and in the last sentence. If you have a lot of content, you may consider adding it once or twice more. If you have too many instances of the keyword, you risk an over-optimization penalty from Google.
6. Link to different pages or posts on the same website and link to outside websites with a higher page rank.
Internal linking is very important if you want to improve your rankings. It’s good to make references to older posts and link to them naturally.
In order to improve the internal architecture of your website, you may consider adding a related posts plugin. There are a few good ones out there. Choose one and have three to five related posts displayed under each article. It improves the navigation for both people and search engines spiders.
Linking out should also be part of your on page SEO strategy. Unlike inbound links, outbound ones can be controlled by you. Take advantage of this and always try to link to websites with good authority and with higher page rank. Be careful, it’s best that all resources you link to are related to your niche and to the topic of your post. The best thing about such links is that some websites have the trackback function enabled, so it’s possible you get a good link back from them automatically.
When you are consistent and persistent with these SEO best practices, you will see a rise in your website traffic and your page rank.
If you would like us to support you with your SEO best practices, please schedule a call with us to find out more!
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