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High Rankings Advisor: When Will Google Backlinks Show - Issue No. 061July 2, 2003 ________________________________________________________
~~~IN TODAY'S ADVISOR~~~ *Introductory Comments: ----> Straight to the Good Stuff *Search Engine Marketing: ----> When Will Backlinks Show Up? *This Week's Sponsors: ----> Nitty-gritty of Writing for the Search Engines ----> TowerSearch *Guest Article: ----> Using Web Metrics To Improve Your Site *Stuff You Might Like: ----> Conversion Ruler *Other SEO News: ----> Search Engine Yearbook 2003 Update *Advisor Wrap-up: ----> Fireworks for Me ________________________________________________________ ~~~Introductory Comments~~~ Hey everyone! I've got a great issue for you this week. Be sure to read all the way to the end. I've got lots to do before heading out for vacation, so let's get straight to the good stuff! - Jill ~~~Search Engine Marketing Issues~~~ ++When Will Backlinks Show Up?++ From: Joshua Friedman Hi Jill, I'm pretty new to this sort of thing and there's a LOT of info out there so I'm hoping your newsletter can help me out. My site comes up great on MSN and ok on some other sites, but I'm having a hard time getting it on Google. I've been spending my days trying to get reciprocal links with good (high PageRank) Websites so hopefully that will help in the coming weeks. I guess a quick question I would have (2 actually) is: Roughly how long after someone adds me to their link page should it come up in a Google reverse link search? I've been on a few other sites for about a week now but the Google backlinks only show me on one site. The second question is (and of course this is the $25,000 question): any other quick pointers for a beginner trying to get on Google? What would your 1 main point be for someone like me who has a pretty small budget but would really like a top 10 or even 20 listing on Google? I am all the way up to #3 on MSN when you search for one of my main keyword phrases, but I'm nowhere to be found on Google. I've used their AdWords a bit but would really like a ranking. Thanks for any further help and I look forward to reading your newsletters. Regards, Joshua Friedman ~~~Jill's Response~~~ Hi Joshua, Once a site adds a link to yours, it can take anywhere from a few weeks to a couple of months before you'll see it showing up as a backlink in Google. If the link is on a page that has a PageRank which is less than 4, it may not show up at all. That doesn't mean that it's not counted towards your overall link popularity quotient, but you may not see it in the list of links to your site. In regards to your second question, I don't usually take a look at the sites that people email me (cuz I'd never get any work done!), but for some reason I took a look at yours. Unfortunately, whatever advice you were previously given was very bad. Your site is basically "spamming" the search engines, and because of this it is doubtful that you will see high rankings in Google. (Kind of interesting that MSN doesn't care.) You're focusing on way too many keyword phrases on the home page, and then you have *stuffed* them everywhere on the site where they don't belong. Your Title tag is way too long and keyword stuffed, and you have comment tags that are spammy, along with all kinds of other keywords stuffed into non-standard tags which are not even supposed to be used for search engine optimization purposes. None of this will help you with Google, and most of it will probably hurt you. I would remove the link to the spammy search engine optimization company who did all this for you, and start over from scratch. I hope you didn't pay them too much. It's companies like that who give us a bad name. (And they always seem to be the ones that require a link back to them too...sheesh.) Please read through my articles and the past newsletters to learn how to do things correctly, and hopefully you'll eventually have a chance at high rankings. Think about just 2 or 3 targeted keyword phrases per page when you optimize, and don't simply stuff them places. Have a writer create some great content based on your phrases. Professional copywriting is worth every penny! [Jill's note: I was going to go into a bit more detail on what the spammy SEO company had done with Joshua's site, but since I emailed him this info yesterday, I see he's removed the spam already! Good work, Joshua.] One thing I just noticed that you still have on the site is a link to a "link farm" type of site. They are smart enough to claim that they are *not* a link farm, and yet they require a link to them if you want to add your site to their directory. I would strongly suggest that you get out of that program quickly. It doesn't appear that the link-swapping site is considered a "bad neighborhood" at this time (it has a PageRank of 5 on the main page), but it could very well be penalized at some point in the future. A better way to build high-quality links to your site would be to have something interesting to offer potential partner sites. Have you written some articles on your area of expertise? Many sites are looking for well-written material they can publish online, and will be happy to add your article (which could include a link back to your site). This is a much smarter approach, as you won't have to worry about whom YOU are linking to. Plus, you can establish yourself as an expert in your field at the same time. Good luck! Jill __________________________________________________adv. Want to learn how to write for high rankings in the search engines? __________________________________________________ If you don't have the time or money to see Jill's Writing for the Search Engines presentation at conferences or seminars, for only $49 you can learn it all in her informative, quick-read report. Download the Nitty-gritty of Writing for the Search Engines today! </nittyhra61> __________________________________________________ ~~~Guest Article~~~ ++Using Web Metrics To Improve Your Site++ Today's guest article is all about the importance of understanding what our site visitors are doing at our site, why we need that information and what we should do with it. Eric Bonnici, who is an Advisor subscriber and also a forum-mate at the Ihelpyou search engine optimization forums, wrote it for us. Eric first started doing business on the Internet in 1998 as a freelance Web developer and Internet marketer, and is currently the Director of Internet Marketing at Alexander Joseph & Associates. Take it away, Eric! Using Web Metrics To Improve Your Site by Eric Bonnici "...Web analytics is becoming one of the hot sectors in Internet marketing and e-commerce technology. Increasingly, brand and e-commerce managers -- under pressure to deliver a return on investment -- are looking to the technology to help shape and optimize their Web sites." Internet.com, October 28, 2002 The goal of any web presence should be to improve the business as a whole and complement its offline marketing and sales efforts. In other words, to help it achieve maximum profitability. In order to do this, your online strategy must: * drive targeted traffic to your site, * persuade site visitors to take the desired actions you want them to take, and * use Web metrics to analyze and measure user behavior. Performing these objectives correctly will ensure that you have an effective marketing campaign and increased sales for your business. Let's look at each of these objectives further: Objective 1: Drive Targeted Traffic to Your Site Driving targeted traffic begins with a search engine marketing (SEM) campaign including pay-per-click advertising (PPC) and a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. It's important to determine which keywords are worth pursuing in your PPC and SEO efforts. Tools like Wordtracker </wordtracker> should be used to generate a list of possible keyword phrases. Determine how frequently each phrase is searched for, and evaluate which are feasible enough to put efforts into by checking how steep the competition is. Make your selections and test them out in your PPC and SEO campaigns. Researching and selecting effective keywords is extremely important. Be sure to select keywords that your target market would use to find you. With web metrics and analysis in place, you will be able to tell where people are coming from, what keywords they used to find you, and whether they are taking the desired actions on your site. If the wrong keywords are chosen, you may find that you have high rankings, but the wrong audience is visiting. Objective 2: Persuade Your Web Site Visitors To Take the Desired Action Whether you are selling a product or service, obtaining newsletter subscribers, or enticing people to download a software demo, your ultimate goal is getting your site visitors to take a desired action. In order to do this you must have a compelling site that draws the visitor in, and then guides them to the goal. Design and site architecture factors such as usability, navigation, content, and ad copy all come into play here. The key is to monitor how well these factors work at persuading your visitors into taking action. With web metrics you can monitor everything and see what's working and what's not. Armed with this knowledge, you can make the appropriate changes to your site; continue your monitoring, and repeat the process until you get an increase in the desired outcome. Objective 3: Use Web Metrics To Analyze Visitor Behavior The area of web metrics and analysis is new and evolving. Compared to traditional offline marketing, the Internet provides an unparalleled opportunity to specifically measure how a customer interacts with a business. Web metrics and analysis will help you to monitor and improve objectives 1 and 2. This is done by paying close attention to where visitors are coming from, learning what keywords were used to find your site, seeing how they navigated through it, and what actions they took along the way. This information becomes a powerful tool in growing your business. The first web metrics were commonly known as traffic logs or site statistics. These measured things like server hits, unique visitors, repeat visitors, entry pages, exit pages, first page visited, second page visited, and average time spent on a page or the site. Today's newer log analysis software can show us more business-specific web metrics. These include conversion ratios, browse-to-buy rates and customer-acquisition costs. As research and development in this area continues, we will see new metrics appear, along with improved tools to measure them. Currently, with the right tools it is possible to monitor web visitors' behavior such as how and where they found your site, what pages they landed on, and whether they took the desired actions you wanted them to take. For this information to be worthwhile, however, you need to use it to adjust your SEM strategies, keyword selection, site architecture and design as necessary. Basically, you should test and improve what is working, eliminate what isn't and figure out new approaches that will work even better. This process will constantly raise your return on investment (ROI). For further details on this subject, including software and vendors, I recommend reading "Web Measurement and Analytics" by Ashley Friedlein <http://www.e-consultancy.com/publications/web_measurement> (paid subscription necessary). This report goes into great detail on 12 leading web analytics vendors. Eric Bonnici Director of Internet Marketing and Development Alexander Joseph & Associates http://www.aj2000.com ____________________________________________adv. Still Using Pay-Per-Click Search Engines? ____________________________________________ TowerSearch advertisers receive unlimited search engine traffic for the keywords they choose without having to pay for every click. Get a guaranteed top position for ANY keyword and unlimited search engine traffic for as little as $29.95/month. You will never have to pay for another click again. <http://www.towersearch.com/add/add.htm> _____________________________________________ ~~~Stuff You Might Like~~~ ++Conversion Ruler++ And speaking of using Web metrics... If after reading Eric's guest article you were scratching your head wondering how you could start measuring all that important stuff, I've got the perfect tool for you! I've been playing with ConversionRuler for the past three months and am pleased as punch at what I'm learning through it. I have to admit that when I first tried to set it up on my site, I was one confused girl. I thought that all I needed to do was place the special coding tags they give you onto the pages of my site, and I would then start collecting information about my visitors and sales. When no data showed up in my reports, I really didn't feel like trying to figure it out, and pretty much forgot about it. Luckily, the folks at ConversionRuler noticed that no data was being recorded through my account, and they emailed me to see if I needed help setting things up. I explained what I did, and they wrote me back (and also called) with the information necessary to get things working properly. What I hadn't understood at first was that in order to track things properly, I needed to use special tracking URLs on the stuff I wanted to track. So in other words, you generally would use ConversionRuler to track specific ad campaigns. You can easily use it to track PPC ad campaigns such as those you'd run with Google AdWords or Overture. All you have to do is assign a specific tracking URL with the parameters you want to track (the people from ConversionRuler will explain all that to you), and then -- boom -- you can start assimilating some important information about your campaigns. I use it to track my measly AdWords campaigns, and it's been very helpful; however, for my purposes it's been even more useful for tracking my newsletter links. Since this newsletter is text-only, it gets pretty tricky to track the links I put into it. You probably noticed that I often have ads for my "Nitty-gritty of Writing for the Search Engines" report in the newsletter. Before using ConversionRuler, I really didn't know which ads brought the most visitors to my site, and/or which of those visitors actually purchased my report. Sure, I could count up the purchases that came in after the newsletter went out, and I could look at my log files to figure out the extra hits I got to the order page, but that really doesn't give me any solid information that I can put to good use. What I do now is put a tracking code such as this on each specific ad link: /seo-writing.htm?c1=email&source=hra61stuff That tells me that the category (c1) is "email" and the source is the High Rankings Advisor issue 061, in the "Stuff You Might Like" section. (You just have to make up your own way of naming the links so that you can remember where they came from.) I hate long URLs like that for the newsletter, so I set up redirects through my .htaccess file to use something shorter like highrankings.com/hra61. I like to track the position of the ad (first slot or second), and/or if I mention the report within an article, I remember to use a different tracking link. So what information do I get out of this? Well, that's the cool part. I've been tracking my Nitty-gritty ads here since issue 054, and have learned a great deal. I know how many people clicked on a particular ad link, and also how many of them went on to purchase the report. This helps me figure out which ad copy works best. There have definitely been some interesting discoveries. For instance, last week's ad brought in only 27 clickthroughs. Seems pretty pitiful, doesn't it? However, of those 27 that clicked, 7 of them bought the report! That's about a 26% conversion rate, which is not too shabby by any means. And yet with other ads, I've had 87 clickthroughs with the same 7 sales (8% conversion). I've noticed that I tend to get somewhere around 7 sales from my email ads each week, regardless of the clickthrough numbers, which is also interesting. A couple of weeks ago, I tested an ad for the report that didn't really look like an ad. I sort of sneaked it into the content and even called it "Shameless Self Promotion" on the heading. (You can see it here: </issue059.htm#sponsor2>.) Now, that one brought a ton of clickthroughs (213) compared to the usual ads I run, but only 3 sales (1.4% conversion). I'm guessing that's because it wasn't clear from the copy I used that you'd be clicking to something you'd actually have to pay for. So, I believe that many people checked it out, then saw it cost money and left. In my regular ads, I always put the $49 price tag right there so that people will know up front. This would account for the lower clickthrough rate. (Hey...I know you guys are cheap...I don't blame ya, I am too!) I think this information shows that creating ads that are honest definitely works best. I can never understand those long sales letters that try to hide the price until the end. If something costs money, then let us know right away that it does and how much it's gonna set us back. Another week I tried making a separate sales page to push my "combo" offer, which consists of my Nitty-gritty report and Karon's copywriting course. Again, I had no price in the ad, and again, this one got many clickthroughs (255), but only 2 sales (less than 1% conversion). Can you see how valuable this info is? Now, I know not to waste space on those types of ads, and to stick with the ones that are converting. It doesn't matter how many people click the link, it's the conversions that make a difference, and that's what you learn with software such as ConversionRuler. (I'm testing a new ad today!) I've also put tracking codes on my forum signatures, certain links within my site, and anywhere else that I can think of. I not only track my report sales, but my newsletter signups. It's cool to see how many signups I get from those things. I found that the big text link I put up on the top of my home page for my report gets tons of clickthroughs, and many sales have come through it. In fact, it has a 2.5% conversion rate. And of course, I can see how many people are signing up for my newsletter from my Google AdWords campaigns also. You can learn more about this cool tool, and sign up for a free trial through my affiliate link here: </conversionruler>. It's a little bit scary at first trying to figure out how to create your tracking links, but once you get things up and running, you'll find that you can track all kinds of things. ~~~Other SEO News~~~ ++Search Engine Yearbook 2003 Update++ Got the word today from André le Roux that he's completed the mid-year update of his Search Engine Yearbook 2003. You can read my review of the original version here: </issue038.htm#stuff>. For those of you who already purchased it, you don't need the new version, but can stay up to date on the latest changes through André's newsletter. ~~~Advisor Wrap-up~~~ I'm heading out to Virginia with my family early Thursday morning for the long weekend! Don't worry if you email me and don't receive my usual speedy response. I'm going to try to stay off the computer as much as possible and enjoy some "real life" conversation with friends and family. Don't forget to think of me when you see those fireworks they shoot off each year on my birthday! Catch you next week! - Jill    |
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