Blog
Search Engine Friendly URLS in Wordpress
If you have a WordPress based web site (like this one), then this is almost certainly worth doing.
If you didn’t configure this properly when you set your web site, then try following the instructions at:-
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/seo-friendly-url-structure/4556/
I did – and it seems to be working well for me so far…..
Google Launches ‘Social Search’
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/search-is-getting-more-social.html
Percentage Increase / Percentage Decrease…
AdWords Editor is a great piece of software. One of the things it lets you do is to increase bids by any given percentage at a keyword level or an ad group level, so if you wanted to increase your bids on 1000 different keywords by 20% in one go, it is a piece of cake.
BUT – what if you don’t take a backup, then increase bids by 20%, upload your changes and then change your mind?
How do you change your bids back to exactly what they were?
Here is a wee spreadsheet I knocked up that does the calculation for you…
precentage-increase-decrease.xls
Please bear in mind that I am very far from being an expert in MS Excel, and while it does work the other way round (getting back to the original bids after decreasing by a percentage) the wording is a bit confusing i.e. a decrease of -25% actually means an increase of 25%.
NB – this spreadsheet can also be used for a multitude of other uses e.g. if you accidentally change all the prices on your eCommerce system by a certain percentage and want to get back to exactly the original prices…
Maybe a similar spreadsheet exists tot his exists elsewhere on the internet, but when I searched on Google I was not able to find one within 15 minutes so I created my own.
If anyone finds this useful, please let me know!
Thanks!
Facebook Pages and Fan Interaction
Guest Post by Dawn Baird, Sensei Learning and Performance.
There are many tools to measure links, interactions, visitors and stuff, but what about Facebook? Facebook Insights has been around for a little while, but with news out this month that they’re now they’re monitoring interactions with your postings on the wall of your Page, this lets you see a little more about who’s engaging with your content, and should help you prioritise what content to post in future.
Facebook Insights will appear on the left-hand side of your organisation’s Page on Facebook. Note: a Page is not the same as a Profile. Click See All to view full details.
To highlight Facebook terminology, it appears in Italics. To distinguish the two main areas on the Page, they are in Bold.
Age, Gender and Location
There are two main sets of statistics on display: Fans Who Interact With [Organisation Name] and All Fans of [Organisation Name]. The first is vital information, in that it will help crystallize who is watching, reading, conversing with you on your Facebook Page. The second will give you a broad view, of general trends among your Fans.
Both sections provide an breakdown of Male and Female fans by age, displaying this as a percentage. For example, on our Page, 67% of our Fans are Male and 33% are Female. Our largest age-group is 25-34, followed by 35-44.
This seems to tally fairly closely with general Facebook statistics on users. It will also indicate a number of Active fans this week. The View All link at the bottom of Fans Who Interact displays Top countries and Top languages, while Top towns/cities is also displayed under All Fans.
Why might this information be useful?
If you know your target audience very well, including location, age and gender breakdown, then you might be more or less likely to use your Facebook Page as a medium, depending on the statistics you find there.
Interaction – Which Fans are Helping You?
Both sections also display a graph. The Fans Who Interact graph displays results based on a drop-down selection: Interactions; Interactions per post; Post quality; Posts (shown in image below); Discussion posts; Reviews and Mentions.
Here is a brief definition of each:
- Interactions – when someone writes on your wall, comments on a post, or likes a post.
- Interactions per post – the average number of wall posts, comments and likes on each item you post
- Post quality – a high quality post is identified by the increasing numbers of people engaging with it
- Posts – the number of items posted by the Page admin
- Discussion posts – the number of discussions other users have added to your Page
- Reviews – the number of times Fans have used the Reviews application on your Page
- Mentions – the number of times your page has been referenced by Fans
Why might this information be useful?
- Fans who interact with you and your content, are more likely to spread your posts and content around Facebook. If this is not happening, this might encourage you to reevaluate your content, or choose another medium.
- Secondly, you should return the favour once in a while. And, be systematic about it. Those who’re loyal to you soon drop off if you forget to help take five minutes to promote them!
Other Statistical Information
The All Fans graph also displays results based on a drop down selection: Total fans/unsubscribed fans; New/removed fans; Top countries; Demographics; Page views; Unsubscrubes/resubscribes; and Media Consumption. Those items that display both offer a tickbox option to switch on and off one or the other, or display both on the same, simple line graph.
Here is a brief description of each:
- Total fans/unsubscribed fans – the number of fans, including the total number who have chosen to hide your posts in their News Feed
- New/removed fans – the total number of new and removed fans per week
- Top countries – Fan locations by country
- Demographics – Fans by age and gender
- Page views – Page views, including Unique Views per day
- Unsubscribes/resubscribes – total number of times fans have unsubscribed and resubscribed to your Page
- Media Consumption – total photo views, audio/video plays of your content
Why might this information be useful?
- It gives abroad indication of how popular your content is, with different groups of the Facebook population, and may therefore help you to tailor your content.
- It helps you track how fast your Page popularity is growing, to help you decide how much time and effort to put into updating content
What’s the Upshot?
The more popular your Page, the more content and the more quality content and interactions you will post. The word about your organisation spreads and continues to spread. It’s a vicious happy circle!!
I’d love to hear your thoughts or questions on Facebook Insights. Contact me on Facebook, our Facebook Page, or Twitter.
A Beginners Guide To PPC / Google AdWords
In a perfect world, you will have an amazing web site that everyone talks about, and which gets tons of ‘free’ traffic from Search Engines, Social Media, and from people who have bookmarked your site.
In the real world, you’ll probably have a web site which is fairly new and is not getting a huge amount of traffic yet.
This is where Pay Per Click (PPC) comes in.*
There are 3 major Search Engines in the UK & Ireland.
Google (roughly 90% of the market)
Yahoo (roughly 6% of the market)
Bing (roughly 4% of the market)
Lets ignore Yahoo and Bing for the time being, and concentrate on…
Google AdWords
In a nutshell, Google AdWords gets you new customers through your web site by targeting people searching for your product or service. It also allows you to easily measure your Return On Investment.
If you have a reasonable level of technical knowledge, and fancy setting up your own Google Adwords campaign – Don’t. Please read (at least twice) – Google AdWords For Dummies by Howie Jacobson.
Then find a free voucher code for your new AdWords account (There are millions of these floating around, and you should be able to find one for at least £50, meaning that your first £50 of clicks are free).
You can do all this yourself, but if you do not have the time or the patience to set up your own Google AdWords campaign, then just pay someone who knows what they are doing…
How do you get the right person to set up your AdWords campaign?
Ask:
- Are you qualified?
- Can you refer me to satisfied clients of yours?
Now, I know I am biased (because I am qualified Google Advertising Professional), and it is true that someone might not be qualified, and still be the most talented Pay Per Click specialist in the entire world – but on balance, I would chose someone with the qualification.
If you get someone who knows what they are doing to handle your campaign, then you can skip the rest of this article!
If you still want to have a bash at it yourself, then….. (After reading ‘AdWords For Dummies’) have a look at the following tools:-
http://www.google.co.uk/adwords/learningcenter/index.html
http://www.google.com/insights/search/
http://www.google.com/analytics/
http://www.google.com/websiteoptimizer
http://www.google.com/adwords/conversionoptimizer/
https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/KeywordToolExternal
https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox
Then…
Make sure your web site is as good as it can be. The Website Optimizer link above can help with this. Simple changes to your web site can increase ‘conversions’ by 100%!
e.g. Make a contact form much more user friendly, and you can get twice as many leads from the same Pay Per Click spend!
Make sure you measure everything! Set up and *use* Google Analytics on your site (as well as AdWords reporting).
If you have an eCommerce site, make sure your shopping cart passes data to AdWords and Analytics. This way you will be able to see (almost) exactly what your return on investment is for individual AdWords adverts and keywords, and which traffic sources are worth most to you.
You might find that on average that :-
- A visitor from Bing is worth twice as much to you as one from Google.
- A visitor from Pay Per Click adverts is worth twice as much as one from the natural (free) Search Engine results.
- A visitor who searched for “Yellow Widgets” is worth 70% more than one who searched for “Blue Widgets”.
- Someone from the Republic of Ireland is worth 30% more to you than someone from the UK.
This type of data is invaluable in helping you to increase your profits. It is also extremely useful to know these things before starting ‘Search Engine Optimisation’ for your web site.
*Even if you are getting a lot of traffic already from other sources, this doesn’t mean that you can’t make more profit by using PPC as well!
