whydowork.com

Due to the extreme value of this blog post, I don’t want any backlinks, track backs, email forwards, etc. This is top secret WhyDoWork Insider info only!

Matt’s last post provided some useful tips on taking advantage of Google Analytics to control your visitor behaviour. Today I am going to keep with the traffic optimizing tips by talking about an amazing little feature within the Google Webmaster Tools. For those of you who aren’t already signed up, it’s free to use and there are some great revealing insights as to how Google perceives your site.

The Answer Lies in the Data

For the info we are looking at today, you need to:

1. Login to Google Webmaster Tools
2. Click on your domain name (or set it up if you haven’t done so)
3. Click on ‘Statistics’ in the left hand menu
4. Click on the ‘Top search queries’ sub menu.

What we are given now is a two columned list, one being the ‘Top Search Queries’ and one for ‘Top Clicked Queries’.

Top Search Queries - This is the list of all the search queries where your site link was visible to the user performing the search but not necessarily clicked.

Top Click Queries - This is the list of all the search queries where someone decided to click through to your site.

Both lists are based on a percentage relative to your own sites performance.

How to Analyze this Data

Take this sample data from the WhyDoWork site:

1. You can see that ‘do work’ was our most searched out keyword phrase in April, but contributes to only a small portion of our click throughs. This is because WhyDoWork is not a relevant result for that keyword (our name is obviously inadvertently targeting this phrase). This is a great example of mistargeting keywords. There is no value in being number 1 for an irrelevant keyword phrase; you are better off targeting something else.  For Example: If your site is about dogs and you’re ranking high for cats you might want to make some changes to your sites keyword content!

Note: If you are appearing at a high position for a search term you want to target but are receiving no clicks you may want to do some analysis on the title tags and description that is appearing in the results. This is a clear indicator something about your listing in the search engine isn’t appealing to your target audience.

2. The second thing I want to show you is how for the phrase ‘jobs to do at home’ we are appearing in search results but not getting any click throughs. The reason for this is because we appear at #11 which is much too low to see any action. What this does indicate is that Google likes us for that search term. With a few more backlinks and search engine tweaking we should be able to improve our ranking for this keyword. But do we want to target this keyword phrase?

Determining Valuable Keywords

Now let’s dig deeper; is ‘Jobs to do at home’ a valuable search phrase?

A great tool for this is Google Trends which gives you insight into what are popular search phrases.

I decided to search for three phrases as part of this analysis:

• Jobs to do at home (Since we are ranking well)
• Jobs at home (A similar, but likely more popular phrase)
• Work at Home (A phrase to benchmark against because we know its popular)

Looking at the graph, what I have discovered is that ‘Jobs to do at home’ is a great niche keyword but not something we would specifically target as our primary search term because the traffic from that phrase is too low. However, a similar phrase with a lot more traffic which Google may favor us for is ‘Jobs at home’. This is the phrase we should be targeting.

In our industry ‘work at home’ is the big money keyword but with millions of competitors it makes a lot more sense to target something a little smaller, with a lot less competition and most importantly a phrase we have a chance of ranking well in.

Let me know with a comment if you have any questions about this process and I’d be glad to help

Joe - (cho on WhyDoWork)

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This post is all about metrics. I am a huge fan of Google Analytics; partly because it is free, and partly because I’ve had some success in the past with using the data to improve subscriber rates. A question that comes up quite frequently in our forums is how do I increase traffic to my site?

Looking at Your Hits Won’t Get you More Hits

My title might be just slightly misleading as I’m not suggesting you ignore trying to improve traffic. I’m suggesting that too many webmasters focus on the unique visitors and hits to their site instead of core metrics that will ultimately improve those numbers.

Looking at your visitors counts isn’t going to get you more visitors.

What Will?

There are four key metrics I advise everyone add to their dashboard in Google Analytics. Keep these above all others, and make changes on your site that impact these metrics. I guarantee you will be more successful.

Here’s a quick summary of each.

1. Depth of Visit

Just as the heading says, this is a measure of how far into your content your audience is diving as a measure of pages. For the most part, half of the visitors here leave after one page, but surprisingly when I view the details of this report, more than 5% of visitors see more than 20 pages in one session. That is an indicator that there are loyal lovers of the site. Keeping a close eye on the health of this number will be a great indicator of how the loyal members are behaving, and if we’re picking up new addicts.

2. Average Pageviews for All Visitors

Another important figure to consider is the number of pages visitors are looking at in each session. What’s a good number for this stat? It really depends on the nature of your site. A site designed to sell a product should have a fairly low pageview count since you’ll want to close them on the landing page :), but a blog, forum, or article site should be looking to blast this number through the roof! This metric is the key behind the next two, which all play a role in defining your site stickiness.

3. Time on Site for All Visitors

If you do your best at 1. and 2., this metric should also be increasing. If you site is a blog, try and link to other articles of interest on your site that you think the reader might also find interesting. Scroll back up to the first paragraph and you’ll see I’ve done just that by linking to another article I wrote related to Google Analytics.

4. Length of Visit

This is the final metric in this set that is worth keeping an eye on. You want users to stay at your site and hit as many pages as possible during that time. Many advertising agencies consider pageviews to be the single most important metric. Social networking sites such as Facebook have mastered this metric and constantly introduce features that keep users on the site longer, and looking at more and more pages.

Conclusion: Remember this Equation

Deeper Visits = More Pageviews = Longer Time on Site = Greater Length of Visit

The next time you think you don’t have enough hits or visitors, try and steer your focus to these other core metrics. They will play a role in increasing the success of your site as a sticky site is one that will attract new users.

What do you think?

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Since we acquired the site BloggingMix.com I’ve received quite a few emails and comments from readers wondering about how we managed to set things up so quickly, why we decided to migrate content over to WhyDoWork, and how we plan on moving forward. This post was the tipping point in getting moving on covering some of the questions received and it’s a great topic to cover anyways.

I thought I’d make a quick post to address some of the concerns (which are valid) on how and why we migrated everything so quickly.

How the Heck Did All the Content Get Here so Fast?

Wordpress 2.5 has a nifty little feature set called import and export (pretty self explanatory). The next step is to use a 301 redirect, which I discussed last week to point visitors and search engines to the new content. All the links that once pointed to content on BloggingMix, now point to that same content on WhyDoWork.

Are you Crazy? You’re Going to Lose All the SEO and Back-links!

To search engines, a 301 redirect is synonymous with “moved permanently“. For the most part, all the Google juice and links over time will be credited to the WhyDoWork Blog.

Don’t you think that a Slower Movement Would Be Better?

One reader had suggested possibly writing on BloggingMix for a month or two, gaining a following on that site, and then announcing the switch over would be a better solution to the problem. That is definitely a viable option, but I suppose it all comes down to how you manage change, and the anxiety associated with change. 

One important factor to consider when doing any acquisition is that most people are scared of change. 

Much of my previous corporate work has been within the realm of change management consulting so I’ve seen this effect first hand. At mention of the word “change” some shudder, some go in denial, some lash out, and a small few embrace the change. One of the most critical things I’ve learned about change is to be honest. While I could have written on the BloggingMix site for a month and transfer over then, I wouldn’t have the time to give both sites my full attention. As opposed to peeling the ‘band-aid of change’ slowly, we made the switch, and we’re ready to move forward with the change, facing risks and challenges with an open mind.

What About the Community?

Indeed merging two communities together is not an easy task. Corporations large and small struggle with blending two different cultures and it’s no different in the blogosphere. As a member of the WhyDoWork community, there’s little to no impact associated with the change. As a member of the BloggingMix community, if you’re not a change lover the change may seem extremely difficult to deal with.

We are not seeking to replace the community growth that has gone on at BloggingMix. We have our own community of loyal visitors and we are not forcing you to keep reading - we’re inviting you to keep reading.

Each of the almost 31,000 members at this site is an important asset. Why? Everyone either wants to know, or knows something about making money and succeeding with websites on the Internet. This is a wildly powerful collective group. Through the acquisition merger of BloggingMix and other such sites we intend on introducing more and more people to what we’ve all learned about making money online, have some fun, and help each other succeed.

If that sounds like a community you would like to be a part of, I invite you to stick around! 
 

p.s. If you have any ideas on what you’d do differently I’d love to hear them!

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Yet Another Blog Acquisition

I’m very pleased to announce that our second blog acquisition in past month has been completed (the first was in early April). Some further details on the purchase of the new site are still up on BloggingMix.

BloggingMix will bring to us some tremendous content and a great audience. The previous owner of the site Rocky has been invited to be an occasional guest poster on the WhyDoWork blog. With a new service launching soon he no longer had the time to maintain his site which is where we stepped in to assist.

Blogs Are Not Permanent

This is a point that I often stress. A blog that is a one man show is extremely difficult to sustain over the long term. Lives change, interests change, and needs change, which is why many blog owners end up selling at some point. Will we be there to purchase every single blog that covers making money online? Not a chance! But we are always on the lookout for complimentary sites priced fairly that have great content.

Welcome BloggingMix Readers and a Sneak Peek

The BloggingMix domain and site (much of which already directs to the new permanent locations here) will be retired sometime this week. As I mentioned on my intro post at that site, I hope you enjoy the writing over here. We have a simply amazing new service launching at WhyDoWork which will bring traffic to our members websites and help you improve your online business or blog: all for free.

Stay tuned for exciting updates on this as development is nearing completion.
Enjoy your Sunday!

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