What can’t be denied is that the the desire for and therefore the trend toward responsive themes will only continue to grow. Many responsive sites are  either new or can have bugs which helps make the adoption rate fail to match the current demand. When using a mobile device the menu placement and ease of navigation becomes more important than ever, along with proper theme/site coding so that the content is easily readable. The good news is that responsive WordPress themes are being released every day and the choice continues to grow although I do encourage extensive testing of the theme on the developers demo site. If the demo isn’t working as it should do on a mobile device then the theme is still not quite market ready in my opinion.

An important question to ask yourself when considering responsive themes is just how you’d expect or want to be able to navigate the site if you were using a mobile device and how much do you want to sacrifice deep and rich content which is very useful for desktop or laptop users (not to mention Google indexing!) to make the site fully responsive. Naturally the adoption rate for mobile devices is going to be vastly different dependent on the industry/audience and even region and country. I think the trend will end up being that many companies develop a shorter/sharper version of their business site for mobile devices in conjunction with a full version, I’m already seeing this happen. I also am not convinced that eCommerce results via mobile devices will match the performance of traditional views – in part because a 2 inch wide image is rarely going to have the impact you might seek.

With all that said I think not operating or offering a responsive theme within the next 12 months will negatively impact your website or brand.

I thought it would be interesting to compare the mobile usage rates for 4 websites that I support from 2011 to present, it will provide a good indication of what to expect over the next eighteen months. Data below in pure percentage of all traffic terms:

So in conclusion, if these four sites are fairly representative of user/reader habits it would be reasonable to predict that the ‘mobile’ audience will reach something like 45% next year. Naturally it will plateau some time soon after as the existing use of laptops and desktops won’t dissipate to a modest percentage, in fact I think something like a 55/45 split might be where balance is found. If that is true you’ll want to develop a new site or change an existing one to a responsive design well before then.

While you had your back turned Pinterest use increased by an unbelievable 50 fold between 2011 and 2012, that’s growth in excess of 5,000% in just one year and the summit still hasn’t been reached. I’ve seen it grow on some client sites from the most minimal of social media referrals to out punching the big guns like Facebook and Twitter even while running active campaigns on all three (or more) platforms. It’s remarkably viral and relatively modest in the time you need to dedicate to it, both major pluses in my checklist of traffic harvesting.

The best news is Pinterest have now launched a free analytics tool which lets you review and download reports that provide added data about the value of your pins. Data provided includes the number of people who have pinned from the site, the number of views each pin has, and the total users that have visited plus more. Although some of this data is available via Google analytics this is far more robust and visual. It also provides 14 days running averages and the usual array of graphs. Most useful is the option to download reports. As it’s just been launched I’d expect future upgrades and improvements to be seen in the months ahead.

For some sites Pinterest has the potential to be the leading traffic provider via social media options so having the analytics accessible can only benefit your understanding of its impact.

Prerequisites: Analytics are not available for Pinterest personal accounts so you must upgrade (for free) to a business account. You can accomplish that here - after the verification you’ll see analytics as an option from your toolbar drop down.

If you need assistance with this or any social media strategies please contact me.

Originally Google anticipated that this only impact your ability to analyze perhaps 5-10% of your website traffic but that was really optimistic. Across the spectrum of websites that I manage SEO for that percentage of keywords that show up as ‘not provided’ runs somewhere between 25-40% and dependent on how much of the overall traffic is search traffic (keyword traffic) I’m seeing anywhere between 15% and 30% of keywords now unable to be determined with the accuracy previously taken for granted. It’s not all doom and gloom though as I’ll explain below but the trend is growing which is a little unsettling. Below are the raw numbers for three different websites that I work on with data for February and also for August 2012 (six months earlier).

Even though the three sites have very different traffic trends and volumes all are showing very similar issues in terms of the undefined keyword rates, increasing from 18,24 and 26 per cent to 30, 36 and 36% in just six months. There’s no sign of this trend changing and I think you may show undefined keywords reaching 50% of all keywords by the end of 2013, dependent on where your traffic comes from that could be as much as 35% of your visits that are hard to explain with accuracy. Note that I said hard to explain – but not impossible.

I should also point out that the higher your ratio of traffic is from the US the higher your rate for undefined keywords is likely to be at present. I studied nine websites and that theory holds out in near perfect order.

In short though you’re looking at not knowing exactly what keyword brought a visitor to the site for between 30-36% of all of your keyword visits. It’s a ratio that means you have 5 steps to consider to provide more accurate keyword data. The best answer is actually a blend of those five but I’ll let you make that decision.

1. Only report out the keywords you have and filter our the data you don’t have. While I think that approach might be acceptable if keywords are only 20% of your overall traffic, once you’re losing the data for much more than that it’s a bit of a black hole.

2. Simply pro-rate the data you do have by the percentage that’s missing. If your keyword ‘rabbit food’ brought you 80 visits but you are missing 30% of all keyword data simply take your 80 and multiply by 1.429 (1 divided by .7) to show 114 visits. It’s probably close to accurate but leaves room for error and ever more so as the rates climb.

3. Study sample days with Google Analytics combined with Google Webmaster tools. This can reinforce the accuracy of idea number 2. Webmaster tools is useful if you are getting high keyword visits for specific keywords but far less so for smaller value keywords.

4. You can determine keyword sets (a family of similar keywords) for most of the undefined visits, particularly if your traffic is primarily a blog post or a specific service page/site page within your site. This won’t automatically give you exact keyword but knowing which family it falls into will assist. For example, if you wrote a blog post that focused on a recipe for cooking salmon and many of those undefined visits landed on that page then recipes/salmon are the likely keywords if you tagged or titled the post that way. I’d recommend this method for the heavily visited pages that were undefined. Below is how you would determine those landing pages.

Finding landing pages for keyword ‘not provided’ in Google analytics.

I. Go to your >Search>Overview>Keyword report and select ‘not provided’ results (see below)

II. Click on ‘not provided’ and then click the drop down for ‘secondary dimension’ and select traffic sources>landing page

III. From here you’ll have a list of the landing pages. It’s very likely that from there you’ll be able to isolate 50% from the first few results and up to 80% from the first ten. Suddenly you’ll have reduced the ‘not defined’ keywords from 100 in total down to 80.

The process is much easier and quicker if you’re applying the process to a weekly or monthly report. I hope that helps with ‘unprovided’ keyword research. If you have any questions about this, or any element of SEO reporting please contact me.

Social Media success comes from three main arenas; research, engagement and practice. While most people can now identify the importance of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, RSS Feeds, Stumble upon and all the rest the question is how do you go about using them and what efforts do you take to measure that success? I’ll write much more about that in the coming months but having managed the social media campaigns for a number of different websites I can share that different things work for different audiences. Plus, what worked in January in terms of driving new traffic might not be working so well in July. Your audience, just like the web itself, is always changing.

The good news is that there are a number of free tools that you can use to help develop your Social Media strategies so let’s have a look at a few. Some are better than others in certain metrics but ideally you should use more than one if you are serious about benchmarking.

Social Mention – I like social mention due to the simplicity of use. What it does well is demonstrate the real social value of your keywords. Easy to change search parameters plus ‘sentiment’ guides are useful. I also like that you can strip your search down to blogs, microblogs, comments, news etc. Especially handy if you’re looking to get social in a very competitive field. It also allows you to create ‘social alerts’ which I’ve been using often.

WhosTalkin – Beyond the awful site name it’s a great tool, especially for the beginner. Best feature is the ability to isolate your results to Facebook, Twitter, WordPress and more. Very easy to view results help too. You can even search by tags, so give it a try.

Back Type – I was going to write about Back Type but they’ve been purchased by Twitter. Clever sods.

Kurrently – Probably the best logo…hmm…beyond that they offer Google+, Twitter and Facebook plus an updating feed in real-time if that’s your cup of tea.

SamePoint - You have to register (it’s free) but they offer nice sortable results.

Bing.com Social – Worth a mention as they’ve refined it. Especially good for measuring trends which can be valuable if you blog on a large variety of fronts.

Hopefully some of these will help you, not only can you see the relevant competition for what you want to write about but it will give you an indication as to which platform shows the most activity for your topic. As I mentioned before Twitter might be perfect for some keywords whilst others have little value in the world of hashtags. I also think using Google News search is very beneficial but we’ll cover that later.

If you need any help managing a social media campaign or being coached on best practices just contact me.

Today we focus on ‘Sticky Posts’ – if you’ve spent any time using WordPress you’ve more than likely seen the option on your admin bar and if you’re new to blogging you’ll see that there is a practical application for the option that has been a standard WordPress feature for a few years now.

In simple definition terms it is providing you the option to make a post ‘sticky’. By this I mean a post from a week ago, a month ago or a year ago that you want to remain at the top of your updated blog posts page irrespective of when it was published/posted. Normal functionality means your most recent blog post (by date & time published) will always show at the top of your page. This functionality is overridden by a ‘sticky’ post which will remain at the top until you deselect it or replace it.

There are some good reasons why you might want to make a post ‘sticky’. It could be an older key post that created a lot of buzz and everyone seeing it for a week makes sense to your blogging strategy. It could be an anniversary or a special event that you’ve written about a year ago but it’s just as relevant right now. For example if you wrote a great piece about baseball opening day that was a huge success last spring you might want to make it sticky when the new season begins.  Whatever you do don’t leave it sticky for too long or stop posting; the publish date (if activated) will show and your readers might think you haven’t updated your blog in months or even years which is an effective way to lose return traffic.

Enabling ‘sticky’ posts couldn’t be easier:

1. In your publish section go to visibility and click edit

2. In the dropdown choices under ‘Public’ you’ll see a checkbox that says ‘Stick this post to the front page’ – select this box before you publish

3. Remember to go back and edit the post when you don’t want it to be sticky any longer

There you have it, give it a try with a post that you think has more mileage in it and you might be shocked at the results (they’re usually good…don’t worry).

In fact there are many ways to get extra punch from blog posts that you’ve already written and I’ll explore more of those on my next WordPress tips update.

If you have just launched a website or are struggling to generate traffic I’d ask you a few questions that help to shape what your best strategy is. As far as I’m concerned content will always be king in lasting search rankings and to that end I recommend putting in the time and effort to run a long-term SEO strategy, the investment in time will more than pay for itself over the long haul if you have the patience. In fact well orchestrated SEO particularly via blogging will be the best advertising spend you can make for your business for far reaching results online. With that said there is a legitimate place for PPC as I’ll try and explain below.

Here are those questions, assuming the answer to be yes my recommendation then follows:

Do you seek quick results with traffic appearing almost overnight? – PPC

Do you want to invest gradually & determine where to spend your time/money based on results? – SEO

Do you have a large capital sum of money to invest for targeted traffic over the next 30/60/90 days? – PPC

Do you want to create lasting ranking with a larger audience? – SEO

Are you analytical and enjoy studying data and trends? – Either! 

Is your business plan or need for traffic a long term one? – SEO

Do you want to ‘stop spending’ the moment you’ve reached your goals? – PPC

Both serve a purpose at present and each can be very successful with the right attention to detail. For the foreseeable future there will be room for both so I wouldn’t rule out either option. In the weeks and months ahead I’ll be posting on a regular basis about SEO tips and methods and help you make the decision as to which is best for your website or blog. I hope you’ll be back to join me, if you have any questions about strategic and affordable SEO plans for your website please contact me.

My overall SEO strategy (being organic) is that consistency and dedication to creating fresh and relevant content is the long term solution to keyword ranking and promoting site visibility and I stand by that. Based on results it is the way forward to have lasting ranking in search engines if you don’t have the budget for PPC marketing and in this economy leave that to the people with money to burn. Instead focus on the core practices of organic SEO but for once I’ve a quick change you must make if you haven’t already.

Google are going to include a factor of ‘Authorship’ when factoring in ranking of results. It’s a canny way to continue to promote the ever-growing popularity of Google+1 and even though at times you might feel force-fed on it, it is becoming a vital cog in the social media wheel. Making sure you have author status attached to everything you write is simple, effective and perhaps the best few minutes you’ll have spent so far this year.

That’s all there is to it, painless as that. You’ll probably have noticed how author images are now showing up in Google searches recently and now yours can do the same. Which reminds me, add a decent head shot to your Google + profile rather than a photo of your cat to give those results more personality (apologies to those who like cats more than people).

If you need any help with this or any social media issues, please contact me.

The website is built on a fully responsive theme for mobile devices. There was significant customisation to the theme files via CSS and PHP. In addition the widgets on inner pages were customized so that client can select widget placement throughout the site as deemed most effective.

The site has the perfect blend of visual appeal and rich content that provide the client with an SEO foundation that will generate targeted traffic within the field of geropsychology. A blog will also be added soon as part of the comprehensive organic SEO support I’m providing to the site. Every element of the site has SEO underpinning the content and I’m very pleased with the finished product.

Please click on any image to enlarge.

Assistance: Spend some time looking at the developer forums for each theme you’re interested in to clock the activity. Does the designer of the theme respond in a prompt manner, are they easy to contact and do issues get resolved? Almost every theme will need some level of customization and the quality of the documentation won’t answer every conceivable question because it’s just not possible. So when you have a question you want to know you’ll get the assistance you need.

Budget:  There are hundreds of free themes, correction, there are thousands of free themes and if you spend time you can find a free theme that will work for most applications. However you may well find that the amount of time you spend customizing the theme would have been better spent on purchasing a premium theme. Premium themes aren’t that expensive; most range between $25-$50 and developers price them to sell and cover their development costs. If a premium theme already solves most of your needs it is money well spent. I also think that the difference between poor and excellent documentation easily pays for itself, time is money.

Customisation: Take a look at the theme demo and see how much you can change before purchasing the theme. Many themes will have a link to a live demo and the uploaded template will often provide you the chance to change colours, layout and configuration without having to purchase it. Be very wary of demos of sites that don’t seem flexible in their appearance, it doesn’t mean you can’t change them but it’s more likely that you’ll have to use the CSS rather than the dashboard. Which just happens to be my letter ‘D’.

Dashboard: Many themes will provide you the full details of the dashboard that is built into the theme. Either a few screenshots of the dashboard or extensive online documentation will give you a decent understanding of what can be changed with a click or drag and drop. Trust me you’ll want to make changes to make the theme look and perform just how you wish and again it comes down to time.

Experience: Try and find out a little about the developer of your theme. Have they developed a nice portfolio of themes or does this appear to be their first one? Are there elements in free themes that you need that the premium theme isn’t offering to you. It’s not to say the first theme a developer creates isn’t a good one but chances are some history suggests the designer is a success and people have supported his creations to a level where he continues developing.

Fun and Flair: I know, an unlikely word but is the theme fun? Does it have a bit of flair? Does it stand out from the pack in some way or just look like every other WordPress theme? I should point out that some of the nicest looking themes aren’t automatically functional, but if you have two themes that essentially look like they’ll do the job for you then choose something that is fun or has some flair, or better still both.

Grade: I’ve worked with clients who just ‘grab a theme’ and others who create a checklist of exactly what is important to them from their website. I’ve seen time and time again that creating a scorecard for the themes that you like and then grading each one in a number of different areas always results in a better end experience. Grade every factor fairly and you’ll select the best possible theme for your end use.

Help: From time to time we all need help when developing a site. See if the built in help has strong documentation and more importantly see if the designer is prepared to help you before you purchase the theme – if gives you a good indication of their responsiveness. Most developers will either answer questions via an email ticket system or via a forum, once in a while a private designer will provide an email or Twitter account.

I hope these help and if you have any questions about developing a WordPress site or choosing the perfect theme please contact me. I’ll be back soon with part two.

Twitter allows you the user far more scope to seek the news you want via hashtags and using the trending tools already in place. Facebook still bombards you with things that have no appeal, tempting you to close feeds rather than read them. Whether you happen to be in Cleveland or Canberra Twitter allows you to instantly see what is creating a buzz in your locality. From a business standpoint spending some time researching that and also investing energy in learning about the importance of hashtags makes Twitter a far more rewarding experience.

I’ve been meaning to write more this year about social media in general and Twitter specifically is somewhere I will place some of that effort. If you’re looking to use the tool to research for or share your website or business I’d recommend downloading a tool like Tweetdeck to get started as it takes away much of the cumbersome interface of just working with the Twitter interface, in addition if you’re running multiple Twitter accounts you can bounce from one to another not to mention post to Facebook and LinkedIn at the same time if you like.

Later this month another new addition to Twitter will see them begin to attach value ratings to users’ tweets which I am interested to see in action. You should see this roll out over the next week or so with the public metadata of posts be revealed with a Twitter rating of ‘none’, ‘low’ or ‘medium’. Apparently a ‘high’ rating will follow later, most probably after they determine exactly how the process is working. From a user perspective I think this will be interesting in seeing just which tweets are gaining the most traction, of course it would be nice to see your own tweets get a higher ‘grading’ but much will be determined by Twitter’s API – generally, if you don’t have hundreds of followers who regularly RT your tweets it won’t suddenly happen for you.

From a content perspective it will add value to your time spent on Twitter, if for example you write a blog or run a website for a dentist office seeing which tweets about #dentistry consistently gain high ratings will be good to understand. At present you can nearly accomplish that via the Twitter dashboard under ‘top tweets’ but dependent on the hashtag it is often rather arbitrary.

The official launch date for ‘tweet ratings’ is February 20th so have a look later this week and see what you think. If you need any help with using Twitter in conjunction with your site or blog please contact me.