Xavier Media®

Google: Understanding the Technology before Jumping on the SEO Bandwagon

2012-05-06T18:33:55Z

This is a guest post and the views of the author do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of this site. The author, Brian Nixon, is a professional search engine optimizer who writes for Pitstop Media Inc, a Canadian company that provides top rated SEO services to businesses across North America. For more information please visit www.pitstopmedia.com.

Sometimes we forget to start with the basics and we jump on the SEO bandwagon to implement intermediate or advanced techniques without really understanding why we do it. How does a search engine works at its back end? What patents, technologies are involved? Are you familiar with the terms database barrel or DumpLexicon? No worries, probably not many know. Speak with your SEO company, see if they know about it. If they know at least a bit, then you’re in good hands.

How Google Works?

Google's is undoubtedly one of the best and the most powerful search engine. The company's efforts and time spent in building an efficient search tool are clearly evident from its success. Like any search engine Google has its own algorithm for generating the search results. The crawlers / spiders and index of keywords are crucial elements which play a key role in getting the most relevant results.

Besides how keywords rank in search results, the SERP or search engine results page is something that differentiates Google from other search engines. To assign relevance score to web pages, Google uses its trademarked algorithm, known as Page Rank shorthanded, PR.

The Page Rank of web pages depends on a few important factors:

Location and frequency of words
The density and placing of keywords need to be controlled. If the target keyword appears only once in the entire article that particular keyword will receive a low score.
Age of the document
As people create new web pages on a daily basis, not all are able to stick around for a long time. Web pages with an established history get more preference and value from Google.
Backlinks to from other sites
While crawling through the web pages on the internet, Google also looks at the number of web pages linking to a particular site, but it also looks at the quality. This helps Google to determine its relevance.

Search results display process

After you entered you search query in Google's search box, it takes less than a second for the search engine to generate and display the results on screen. Here it is interesting to know how Google finds relevant pages and determines the order of websites appearing in the search results.

Before the web became a visible part of the internet, there were a few search engines to look for information. Programs like Archie and Gopher played a significant role in indexing all files that are stored in internet servers. Using these programs, the amount of time needed for finding documents and programs was dramatically reduced. Let’s learn more about the process.

Some metrics used by Google to rank sites.

Web Crawling

Before a search engine can locate a document or a file, it has to be indexed first. To look for any particular information on millions of web pages, the search engines have special software robots, also known as spiders. These spiders build a list of all the words that are found on

websites. This process is called as web crawling. While this seems a simple, the search engine spiders have to actually go through all the web pages that are live on the internet.

One may wonder how the search engines index these pages. To begin with, the Googlebot makes use of a huge set of computers to fetch web pages. Here, Googlebot is the program that facilitates the fetching process. What’s more, the Googlebot also determines the sites that are to be crawled, the number of pages to be crawled from each site and the frequency of crawling.

Google Indexer

When Googlebot starts to crawl the internet, it begins with a list of URL's from the earlier sessions. This is augmented with the Sitemap data offered by webmasters. The moment Googlebot lands on a page, links from those pages are taken and added to Google's list of pages to be crawled. New updates to websites are regularly updated to Google index.

To compile the index of all words, Googlebot processes all pages that it crawls through. In this process, Googlebot also checks the location of these words in each page. Additionally, Google also process the information that is included in content tags, like ALT attributes and title elements. Each document is converted into a set of word occurrences called hits, which are then distributed into “barrels”.

Here, it is important to know that Googlebot cannot process all types of content. For instance, Googlebot is unable to process iframes or dynamic pages, rich media files, etc.

Google's index is sorted in an alphabetic order by the search term. Each index entry stores a list of documents, along with search terms and the location. To enhance the search performance, Google does not index common words (also known as stop words) like on, or, the, why, how, single letters and digits. While multiple spaces and punctuations are ignored by the indexer, to improve Google’s performance, all letters are converted to lowercase.

Serving Results (search query processor)

This is where the actual work is done. It’s not an easy process and involves computer algorithm. The real working procedure of 'search query processor' is not revealed by any of the search engine providers. However, SEO professionals have enough knowledge on how to improve the positioning of your website in Google's search results. With appropriate keyword density and page rank, SEO professionals can help you get your web page on top search engine results.

When you enter a query in Google's search box, spiders crawl through web pages to look for matching pages in the index. The most relevant results are then displayed in the search results. There are more than 200 factors that determine the relevancy of your search query and the content available on web pages. One of these factors includes a Page Rank for any given page. It determines the importance of a web page based on backlinks from other pages.

The popularity of a web page, the size and position of search terms appearing within the page and the relevancy of search terms compared to other page are other things that play a crucial role in displaying accurate search results. To improve its performance, Google applies some machine-learning techniques, which helps the Googlebot and spiders to learn the association and relationship within the stored data.

How to improve crawling and indexing of your site?

Understanding this back end technology is useful but to improve Google indexing and rank of your site, it is important to ensure that Googlebot crawls and indexes your site appropriately. If there are dead or broken links on your site, it will create a negative impact on the ranking of your site. Using Google webmaster tools, you can ensure that your site is crawled by the search engine. To improve the ranking of your website, it should comply with the guidelines set by Google.

Once you understand the basics of search engine technologies, start by creating a testing ideology and take small steps. Arm yourself with lots of patience too. Good luck!

Google: Understanding the Technology before Jumping on the SEO Bandwagon from Xavier Media®

Web design as important as the content

2012-05-24T19:23:40Z

Most people see the web design and the search engine optimization as two separate things when a site is setup. That may have been true back in 1996 but today it's more linked together than ever before.It doesn't really matter what kind of site you setup (a blog, an online shop or just an informational site) you need to consider all pieces from the beginning. This is why it could be good to to consult a specialist before you start building your site or at least in the early stages of the site development.

Some of the key factors to consider when you build a site are:

Is the site loading fast? Yes, Google and probably the other search engines too are measuring the load speed of your site. If it loads to slow you're not so important (if you can't pay for a fast server you're not important
Do you have a good name, both for your title tag and your domain name? Both counts when it comes to SEO.
Is the HTML code working? This is very important (and very basic question, yet people forget about this) because if the code is only working in one type of web browser, there's a big risk the search engines can't read your site and that will affect the rating.
Are the colors looking the same on all (or at least most) computers and screens? If you pick a blue color for example it could be good to verify it's blue everywhere and not just on your computer.
Is your site looking good in smartphones and surf pads too? Today more and more people are surfing from their smartphones so it's important your site works with them too.

If you already have a web site available Long Island Web Design offer a free link analysis report which gives you information about the links coming into your site including which domains are sending the most links to your site, the authority of these linking domains, and our link analysis even displays the anchor text that is being used to build backlinks to your site.

Web design as important as the content from Xavier Media®

Google Drive is here – Which cloud storage is the best?

2012-04-29T15:05:51Z

Google recently launched their cloud storage, Google Drive, as a competitor to the other already existing cloud storage solutions like Dropbox, Skydrive and Online Storage. Which one is the best solutions for you?

The answer to that question is of course depending on what you are planning to use the online storage for. For example for some usages you may require big file sizes and for other usages you may need a lot of space for smaller files.

The most common solutions today all pretty much work in the same way. You have a client which you install on your computer to sync files with the cloud service and you also have the possibility to access your files from the web. Before Google released their service most people believed they would do something absolutely revolutionary when they released their Google Drive (since there are already so many competitors). Their service turned out to be pretty much the same as all the competitors, so this video explaining how Google Drive is working would actually work on pretty much any storage service. Just replace Google with whatever brand you like

Here's the comparison we pulled together between some different cloud storage services. If you click on the picture you can download the table as a PDF in a bigger (more readable) format . We know that there are more services than these five, but we think these services are only the once worth mentioning. For example Apples iCloud is not in this table since it's mostly focused to people using only the Apple platforms, and that's not that user friendly….

So check the table and decide what's the best for you. If you for example need a lot of space you can go for the Google option of 16 Terabyte (Tb) space for $799.99, if you instead would like a really cheap option for your files and backups then you would go for Online Storage where you get 100 Gb for only $1.64/month. If you're planning to refer all your friends, then Dropbox is perhaps a good option because then you get 500 Mb for each friend you refer, but if you instead need to access your files using FTP, WebDAV or even the possibility to email files to your storage, then Online Storage got the best options to access and upload files.

So as you can see it's all up to what you're planning to use your storage for

Google Drive is here – Which cloud storage is the best? from Xavier Media®

Escaping from Google’s Wrath

2012-04-28T14:34:40Z

Few weeks ago, many sites were targeted by Google. Generally, the cause for this target was illegal link building. As per Google’s regulation, linking from link farms is considered manipulation of Search Engine Optimization. BMR, which in the past provided great assistance for link building, has been de-indexed. Other sites are either de-indexed or brought down in position. For some, income has been smashed down while others experience a minor scratch.

On the wake of these events, the question is ‘What is supposed to be done?’ With links being built across directories and link farms, most webmasters have suffered a blow. Webmasters are unsure about the next step. However, if commonsense is applied, these events are just another passing cloud. Moreover, a question has been raised, ‘Should I continue my link building schemes?’ The answer is yes.

Google cannot just suspend your site for linking from Directories. If that were the case, then your competitors would do it for you. Eventually your site will be brought down. Therefore, a change in link building strategy has to be brought up.

Linking from Article Directories

Links from Article Directories will carry the same weight as before. No matter what Google has to say, you should continue your link building. Presently some sites have been pulled lower from their current position. This is due to some of the links that were received through link farms. Directories such as Ezine and ArticleBase are still alive providing hope.

Linking from Supplementary sites

The old school taught us to create a supplement site. Links to your other entire site will be pointed through it. Unfortunately, this is no longer going to work. Google has come up with finding such sites and bringing it down including the links pointing out. Most of the sites that has been de-indexed followed this old practice.

Article Submitters

People are greedy to get several links. Trying to get links in a short period is the height of this greediness. This height has to be reduced. While link-building webmasters send out several articles in a day, alerting Google. Some Article Submitters suggest sending not more than 10 link a day. However, even 10 links a day seems too high. Send 5/6 links out every day. This would result in a smooth link building strategy without raising suspicion.

Guest Blogging

Many SEO specialist say there is something called quality links. Some others say there is no such thing as quality link. Personally, I believe in quality link building. The best way to build quality links is through Guest Posting. Yes apart from gaining exposure, you get a valued link. If you are a believer of quality links then guest posting is just for you. Of course, guest posting is not easy. It takes time and effort. Nevertheless, the result is positive and firm. Google might update its Algorithm to heaven or hell, your site will stay firm by following this method.

Escaping from Google’s Wrath from Xavier Media®

5 Small Business Blogging Myths—BUSTED!

2012-04-28T14:36:59Z

As a small business owner, you're always looking for ways to drive more traffic to your website and grow your customer base. You've heard a lot of great things about blogging, but you've also heard a lot of myths that are making you think twice about investing your time and effort. The blogging myths you hear may be true for some, but not for all. Below are my top five busted blogging myths that I hope will persuade you to start one for your small business.

Blogging Myth 1: No one reads blogs

Seriously? Wipe this thought out of your mind right now! According to eBizMBA.com, Huffington Post has 54 million visitors each month, TMZ has 19 million visitors each month, and Mashable has 10 million visitors each month. Fine—your small business blog may not have that many visitors in a month, or even in a year, but people read blogs, especially when they're searching for specific topics.

Let's say you own a small business that sells beauty products. You start a blog about beauty tips, product reviews, and fashion trends. Emily wants to know what liquid foundation works best with her oily skin. She stumbles across your blog in her search results that compares foundations with skin types, loves the information you've provided, and continues to look through your blog. Not only do you have a new reader, but you also have a new reader who'll keep coming back for more.

Blogging Myth 2: If you build it, they will come

I probably made it seem that way with what I just said about people searching for information on a certain topic, but this isn't entirely true. You need to advertise your blog to attract readers, too. Add a link to your blog from your company website, include a link in your email signature, announce your blog and include the most recent posts in your company newsletter, and use social networking to let people know about it. Tweet your blog posts. Add links on your Facebook. Submit posts to Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon. If you build your small business blog, your readers will come—but only if you tell them about it first.

Blogging Myth 3: You need to be a professional writer if you want to blog

Although I have a degree in writing, I certainly know that you don't have to be a professional to start a blog. You should at least know the basics about grammar and spelling, but it's what you know that makes you an expert in your field. One of the greatest tips I've ever gotten, and it's something that a lot of writers will tell you, is that you should write the same way you speak.

When I took Writing for the Web in college, we created a blog as a group activity (as well as having to maintain our own personal blogs). Each post revolved around classroom projects, and the goal was to persuade students to major in writing. Next, we created a fictional character, Jonas Lenfield—we even created a Facebook page for him—whom we imagined would read our blog and wrote every post as if we were talking to him. Writing as if you're talking to just one person makes the reader experience more personal and intimate.

Blogging Myth 4: Traffic measures your blog's success

As senior copywriter for my company, I know there are fewer people looking for a blog about credit card processing and more people looking for blogs about current events, celebrity gossip, and tech news. But it's not how much traffic our blog gets that measures its success. As a small business owner, if you can convert some of your readers into customers, then consider your blog a success.

Blogging Myth 5: You have to post every day in order to have a successful blog

There are a few things wrong with the above statement. First: Do you really have the time to write a new blog post for every day of the year? Ninety percent of my job is writing, and I don't even have enough time to write a blog post every day. Unless you have a team of writers like at Huffington Post or Mashable, then no one will expect a post every day. Two to three new posts a week will suffice. Second: As a small business owner, do you really have enough content to write a new blog post for every day of the year? I know I don't. Third: Quality is better than quantity. No one wants to read a shoddy blog post, but everyone loves something that will benefit them.

Share Your Small Business Blogging Myths and Expertise

What blogging myths do you find daunting? How long have you been blogging for your small business? How do you measure the success of your blog? What advice do you have for start-up businesses and bloggers who are weary of the myths?

5 Small Business Blogging Myths—BUSTED! from Xavier Media®

Common spam comment words

2012-04-25T18:30:27Z

We've all got comments in our blog(s) with weird syntax and grammar, but are people really that weird or is it just another spambot?The spam bots are of course trying their very best to avoid getting caught in the spam filters most blogs use so they try to use words that are uncommon in normal spam comments. This action is causing the grammar to look extremely weird (not like something a real human would write) and also the selection of words used in the comment is uncommon for normal people. I mean how often do a real human write something like "your writing style has been surprised me" or "I savor, result in I found exactly what I used to be taking a look for".

By checking the spam comments we've got in this blog we found some common words used by spammers and also some common comments used by spammers. If you get comments that look exactly like the comments we've listed below and if you get comments with the words we've listed here it's spam even if you want to think you have an engaged reader of your blog.

Some common words in blog spam comments:

write-up, write up and writeup
internet-site
whereby
wonderful understand
mastered
excellent read
obliged

Some common spam comments:

Hello, I would like to subscribe for this website to obtain most recent updates, so where can i do it please help out.
Thanks for the article !
May I perhaps repost this to 1 of my own sites for this subject
Thank you for this enlightening blog article I personally like it
Great blog post. Thanks for posting this
This internet site is wonderful. I have mastered lots of things from here
Normally I don't read article on blogs
Your article rocks as well as being a legitimate wonderful understand!

Some people seem to be using software generating comments on the blogs and they sometimes forgot to replace some prefilled values before they start posting. For example sometimes we see comments with links called "Fill in the link you want to promote in this field"

Common spam comment words from Xavier Media®

Siri Threatens Local SEO

2012-04-05T16:50:20Z

Have you ever heard about Vlingo Virtual Assistant for android or Siri for Iphone? If not, then I would suggest you to dedicate some time and learn a few more things about these virtual assistants. If you wonder “Why?” that’s because they might change the way SEO and local marketing works.
At first sight, Siri and Vlingo Virtual Assistant might look like normal voice recognition software. These virtual assistants give you the opportunity to give verbal instructions, write short messages and other cool stuff. Even if that’s true, how can they affect local marketing and especially SEO?
Well, let’s go deeper than the surface and let’s examine how these applications will change the way local marketing works. The truth behind these virtual assistants is that they can operate a wide scale of actions such as making a search query and presenting you the results.
Let’s see what I mean. Let’s say that you are in need of a dentist. You can tell Siri “Find me a dentist”. Siri will then provide you a list of all the available dentists near your location automatically. If you need a gas station, then you make a request to Siri. “find me a gas station” and Siri will present you the most relative results, near your area. That way, you will avoid the process of making a search query directly to Google and the other search engines that present organic and paid results.
How Siri’s Algorithm works
There’s little knowledge regarding the algorithm of Siri. Just like in all search engines, Siri has a secret algorithm that gathers the information and then process it to you. SEO experts are sure that Siri gathers info from sites like Google Places, Bing and Yelp.
Local Businesses should keep in mind that iPhone is one of the best selling products of Apple. It’s almost certain that iPhone users will gradually start using Siri, so it’s a good opportunity to start optimizing your site for mobiles.
Let’s take a quick look at some features of your website that will make Siri and the other virtual assistants more accessible to your site.

Integrate a mobile version for your site. If you can’t afford to pay for a web design company, then you can buy a mobile ready theme. If you use Content Management Systems such as WordPress or Drupal, then you’ll find a wide variety of mobile themes in the market.
Improve your SEO. Place your address, local phone on the homepage of your site.
It’s not a lie that Flash or Ajax can harm your SEO. The same goes for SEO for mobiles. Creating non readable content in flash files, Ajax code or in PDFs, will place your site at a major disadvantage.

Improve your Web Presence.

We aren’t sure where Siri draws all the information, but it’s imperative to enhance your web presence as much as possible. Above we mentioned that Siri takes into consideration signals from Google Places, Bing and Yelp. Here is a list from some of the sites that Siri gathers information.

Foursquare
Retailmenot
Citysearch
Superpages
Yellow Pages
Google Places
Yahoo Local
Bing Local
Yelp
Grubhub
Open Table
Urbanspoon

In order to specify which of the above work for you, measure your competition and register your site with the above services.
Conclusion
It’s early to say that Siri and the other virtual assistants will mean the end of Local SEO or the end of Google or Bing, but mobile popularity and Siri is growing fast every day, so local business should start to adopt the new technologies. The businesses that will adapt to the new scene will be the ones that understand their clients better and will be able to gain from them. By starting to optimize your sites for the future, you will definitely manage to engage them.

Siri Threatens Local SEO from Xavier Media®

How to Become a Social Media Manager

2012-04-05T16:19:25Z

Everyone wants that dream job, where they do very little and make a lot while working from home. In today’s world we are saturated with everything and everyone connecting socially online, including businesses. With this increase in social media presence the position of Social Media Manager was born. To become a freelance Social Media Manager there are a few things that you should do first before you start working:

Get online: First thing you need to do is get online and start posting, tweeting and blogging. The more you do, the more you learn. Set up a Twitter account, blog and Facebook like a maniac. Start researching other social media pages and blogs. Find some of your favorite Twitter accounts, blogs and Facebook fan pages. Learn from and practice what they preach.

Prove it: Get ready to present your online portfolio; they will want to see your work and your business plan for them. Companies will request links to your current blogs, Twitter and Facebook accounts. Set up a goal for their company, for example: gain more followers and then show them how you plan to achieve that goal. Professionally write out your business plan for their company and go over it with them.

Set a price: Whether it is a small company or a huge corporation, these companies need help managing their online presence and this is where you come in. Majority of companies looking to hire will look at your price tag before your experience, so price wisely. Most companies want a package deal and usually on a monthly payment bases. Depending on size and budget you can get paid to Tweet, post and write anywhere from $500 to $5,000 month. The pricing options are limitless, find a price that works for you and decide on how many clients you want. Remember that it is actually somewhat time consuming depending on the company.

Promote: Start small. Local businesses are usually the ones that are in need for a social media manager. They don’t have the personal time or knowledge to do so. Start networking and rubbing elbows with business owners at events and happy hours. Have some cards made up and start passing them out. You can even start on Facebook for local companies and take a look at their Twitter feeds and pages, reach out to them and offer them your expertise.

Before you start passing out business cards and hunting down potential clients be sure you get start building up your online presence and reputation. Remember it takes hard work and commitment. Good luck and have fun!

How to Become a Social Media Manager from Xavier Media®

How to Monitor Your Website's Uptime

2012-04-04T03:45:33Z

Website uptime monitoring has become a subject in almost every website maintenance article on the web, and rightfully so since it truly is a significant part of successfully maintaining a website. Most times, webmasters will find problems in one of their sites as it experiences downtime.

A downtime is the duration that a website is inaccessible to traffic and does not perform what it should to earn profits for on online business. Therefore, a downtime is synonymous to a profit loss. Meanwhile, it is the duty of a webmaster to ensure that all his sites are up and running, performing as they should and earning profits for the business. The only thing about having multiple sites is that it is impossible to monitor them without employing eternal help.

Websites typically experience downtime due to server congestion, erroneous scripts and other factors such as power outages, server breakdowns and bugs. Ensuring that all your websites are running is imperative to a successful online business. Although web hosting service providers will promise 99.9% uptime to customers, more often than not, this guarantee is doomed to fail.

While some web hosts will offer website monitoring alongside their hosting services, it is better for you to employ an external monitoring service to ensure that you are getting on-time alerts regarding downtime and other problems in your website.

To monitor your website, it is best to employ a reputable and dependable monitoring service provider. There are also website monitoring tools that you can use to ensure that you remain in control of your website, no matter the size of your site. Either way, you will be able to keep an eye on your websites with both options.

Whilst employing a tool or provider to monitor website uptime, you will be able to get good benefits. First, you will have more time for yourself, family and for the website's business aspect. You don't have to stare at your monitor for hours on end just to see if any of your sites is down, performing badly or having technical issues. With an external monitoring provider, you will immediately get notified of any problems occur through SMS or email. Complete performance reports will also be at your disposal, with reports regarding uptime, downtime, server errors and other technical problems that affect your website's performance.

When choosing the provider to monitor your websites, be mindful of less than competent providers that proliferate around the internet. Make sure that you choose only reputable ones, with positive backgrounds and track record to prove their claims. Also, stick to your budget when getting such services. At first, you can avail of the free trials to get a feel of each provider. Only pay for a plan once you make an informed decision.

Website uptime monitoring is a task that is best delegated to others so that webmasters can focus on their lives and the business aspect of running a website. Once these are achieved, a website will be a success and you will be able to keep your traffic and earn profits.

How to Monitor Your Website's Uptime from Xavier Media®

How we doubled our traffic in one day!

2012-04-04T03:32:23Z

No Yelling is a Brisbane based company that my self and two other 21 year olf colleagues founded around a year ago. We entered the Brisbane driving school market with a strong focus to change the way industry is perceived by young people and utilize tech to our advantage. Essentially we wanted to bring a young bright spark to the industry for teenagers to relate to, go nationwide and soon become the one most dominant driving schools Perth has seen. We have taken advantage of our youthful understanding of modern tech and programming to create a company that resonates with the young population.

The beginning

We realized early on that SEO was going to be the foundation of our business. Through much research of different SEO strategies, we quickly determined the techniques that were working for other companies around the world and replicated them. It should be no shock to the avid readers of this blog, or for any modern seo related blog, that guest posting played a large roll in our strategy as well as all the basic seo tactics (directory posting and such).

For a solid month we were pumping out guest posts to many different blogs. We began by blogging about issues and subjects that we were genuinely interested in, it is a whole lot easier to write content when you are actually intrigued by your topic. As we progressed over the weeks and months, we started to see our google rankings jump quite substantially, eventually reaching no. 1 for our 3 most competitive keywords. We were very happy with the result but still hungry.

The Sudden Realization

After many Guest posts and sleepless nights we started to wonder, as we all do. There must be an easier way to generate links, drive more traffic to our page and end up with a natural link profile. We wanted every part of our business to benefit our SEO strategy, including all of our media outreach. We did a lot of research into our industry and racked our brains for a piece of content or some form of application that could reach our target demographic, on a mass scale. Eventually, as if by mistake, the idea came to us which would potentially assist us in reaching our target demographic (16-19 years Nation Wide).

The Idea Was Born

The next day we came into the office and my colleague says to me, “We are going to make an App”. I was skeptical at first, it seems as if every man and his dog is creating useless apps these days. What is going to separate us from the crowd? He told me an idea that held extreme potential and the possibility to bring in close to 2000 new users/potential clients per day. (Our website at the time was bringing in an average of 50 clients organically through SEO at the time) Imagine if we could not only increase our traffic by 2000 %, but also target our exact demographic. It sounded too good to be true, so naturally, I did some research.

The App

The app was going to be a learning device for any student in Australia to help them prepare for the Learners Test. Every 16-17 year old in Australia must take the test to be eligible to get their Australian Drivers license. At the time, there were a fair few of these apps floating around, however they were very visually unappealing and glitchy. Through our knowledge of Freelance Markets like Odesk, and our Quality Web Design contacts that we could make an app that would blow all the other apps out of the water.

The first iteration

The first app we created was pretty much the bare minimum. We had a freelancers create all of the components we needed. We then sent it to a programmer to create the database and basic User Interface. At this point we had spent around 800 dollars and a few late nights.

Testing

We figured that Facebook would be the best place to test the Web App so we created a campaign.

The Facebook Targeting –

· 20-dollar daily limit

· Targeting 15-18 year olds in Brisbane Australia. (Very targeted marketing).

· No sponsored stories (too expensive for testing haha)

We had little success with Facebook marketing prior to this attempt, so I ambitiously predicted around 10 people would use the app the 1st day.

· The App had 150 users in the 1st 4 hours of testing

· CPC was below 10 cents.

· CRT was 0.04 (very high)

· Over the next 2 weeks the users didn’t drop below 100.

· Overall traffic to Website increase by an average of 150 %.

About the author

I am a 21 year old entrepreneur from Brisbane, Australia. Myself and 2 friends started one of the most innovative and tech savvy Perth Driving Schools . Im very interested in online marketing and SEO strategy, and their various applications. In my spare time i enjoy playing sport and reading.

How we doubled our traffic in one day! from Xavier Media®