Houston Search Engine Marketing and Optimization Services

Exit Popups – Can They Work for You?

Ada — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 18:47:49 +0000

Popups are certainly a very efficient way to communicate your message (and to nag your users, too) and almost any marketer knows this. Conventional popups that display when a user lands on a page (or after some delay, or at specified events, if you are using a more sophisticated tool, such as a WordPress popup plugin) might be the first thing that comes to your mind but since they are also the most used and many users will leave your site right after they see a popup, you might want to experiment with something different. How about exit popups?

What Are Exit Popups?

Exit popups, as the name implies, are those popups you show when the user is about to leave (i.e. exit) your site. Actually, exit popups aren’t that rare and I can bet that more or less every Web-savvy user has encountered them but you probably didn’t know them by name. Well, now you know how these popups that scream, “Wait! Don’t leave!” are called.

Depending on the tool you use, there are different varieties of exit popups and different options you can configure. For instance, if you use a WordPress popup plugin, such as Popup Domination, or Action Popup, you basically have JavaScript alert box and the lightbox opt-in popup at your disposal.

The JavaScript alert box is plain and simple. It could also be more annoying but still it does a great job. The lightbox opt-in popup is more artful. In fact it is a full-blown popup, like the ones you see when you land on a site but the difference is that you see this one when you are about to leave. A lightbox opt-in popup allows to include text, your logo, and almost everything else you can think of. This, of course, doesn’t mean you must include absolutely everything you can think of because this will make the popup fat and it might take some time to load in the user’s screen, especially on slow connections.

When Exit Popups Are the Better Option

The best thing about exit popups is that they are less annoying. Additionally, since you display them when the user is about to leave your site anyway, you are not losing visitors. With conventional popups displayed at startup, many users might get irritated and instead of reading what’s in the popup, they will leave your site altogether. This way you are losing a visitor and this is bad.

With exit popups this doesn’t happen – since the user has already made his or her mind he or she is leaving, you’ve got nothing to lose. What is more, if your message in the exit popup is convincing, you could even get the user back to your site to see more.

Well, with exit popups you have only one chance to show them. With standard popups in theory you can display them at every page refresh or every 30 secs or so but in practice this isn’t a good idea because such a high display frequency is very irritating to the user. Anyway, the fact you are using exit popups doesn’t mean you have to ditch standard popups completely, so in fact you can use on your site both standard and exit popups. You can make these popups with the same message, or use different messages – just decide what your needs are.

What is more, usually it is a question of quality not quantity, so don’t regret the fact you can show an exit plugin only once. Just make your farewell message convincing enough and you might be lucky to make a sale, get a new subscriber, or make the user do whatever you are asking him or her to do.

How to Use Exit Popups

As I already mentioned, WordPress popup plugins with an exit popup option are the best way to display an exit popup, especially if you are already using WordPress as your platform. The simplest way to display an exit popup is with some code you put in your theme (i.e. without a dedicated plugin) but this approach generally limits you a lot. For instance, you will be depriving yourself of all the configuration options that come with the plugin, which in turn will make your message less effective. This is why the best you can do is get a WordPress popup plugin, install it, and think of a cute message your readers will love.

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Find the Best Referral Traffic Sources and Focus (Before It’s Too Late)

Obaidul Haque — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 09:00:29 +0000

Jeffrey Davis recently reported a 30%- 40% drop in his site’s referral traffic from StumbleUpon. There’s absolutely no doubt that SU is one of the most potential sources for getting a good amount of referral traffic. In fact, many blogs receive as much as 60%-80% of their overall traffic from SU.

After SU rolled out their redesign last year, users felt quite happy to know that the site was paying some careful attention to its on-topic features. But, as soon as, SU bid adieu to direct links recently, everyone was taken aback. Earlier, you could easily ‘x’ out a page and visit the original URL from inside the site. Now, while logged in, you can’t get out so easily.

There’s one way, though somewhat clumsy. If you want to visit the original source, you need to copy-paste the URL above, while leaving the SU part of the URL out.

Here’s what the URL looks like.

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/5GclgU/www.mint.com/blog/trends/counterfeit-money-10042010

Well, SU is trying to confine users within its own eco-system. Funny, isn’t it?

On the other hand, Pinterest (a visual bookmarking site) is attracting eyeballs from many sides. Though it’s a new entrant in the social arena, it’s fast turning into a potential sources of traffic for a wide range of businesses. According to a recent report by Shareaholic, Pinterest is now rivaling Twitter in terms of driving referral traffic to a website or blog.

What’s more, Pinterest is generating more referral traffic than its elder social brothers like Google+, LinkedIn and Youtube are doing together. Though a lot of businesses are still quite unaware of the traffic opportunities that a social bookmarking site as young as Pinterest can bring, others are flocking to this Pinboard in large numbers.

Though Facebook still rules when it comes to driving referral traffic, Pinterest is fast picking up steam. The growth of this visual pinboard has been phenomenal over the last couple of months. Shareaholic recent findings (after analyzing data from as many as 200,000 publishers) reveal that Pinterest drove around 3.6% referral traffic in January this year, shooting up from merely 17% in July and 2.5% December last year.

Many have been reported to ditch SU as well.

So, Do You Need a Shift in Your Referral Traffic Strategy?
Absolutely! If you don’t evaluate your site’s referral traffic statistics now, it may be too late. You really need to know about the sources that drive the maximum traffic to your website or blog.

Log into your Google analytics account and click ‘Referring Sites’ under the Traffic Sources tab on the dashboard right away. Find out what those referring sources stats look like. When you know what sources work most in your favor, you can adjust your traffic generation strategy effectively.

Did you notice a sudden drop in your site’s referral traffic from SU? Which social platforms drive most of this traffic to your site? Please feel free to talk back in comments.

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Tips on Treating Clients Right (or Applying the Golden Rule to Your Online Business)

Chris Help — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 09:00:38 +0000

I’ve heard some people say they got into their online business, be it SEO or copywriting, so they could work from home and not have to interact with people. And every time I hear that, I can’t help but take a step back and think, “That’s stupid.” I mean, sure you may not be dealing face to face with people on a daily basis, but a large part of what you do involves client interaction. You absolutely must know how to work with people in order to succeed in any sort of business venture.

Now having said that, I fully realize that some people who “retreats” to an online job in order to avoid social duties may require a little extra help in respect to client relations. If that describes you, here are a few tips to help you out. Follow them and you’ll be retaining clients and getting referrals in no time.

1. Go the extra mile to fix your mistakes—I’m writing this post today because quite frankly, it’s fresh on my mind. See, I did another post for this blog that I was supposed to schedule for 9 A.M. this morning. But I screwed up and it published overnight. Well, after thinking about it, I decided that it just wasn’t right for me to say “OOPS!” and move on. So instead, I decided to supply the blog with an extra post. And it just so happened to be fitting material. Would Gerald have let me keep posting to his blog if I had simply said “Sorry,” and moved on to next week? More than likely. But hey—I want to make sure I keep my business relationships moving in the right direction. I plan on working with him for a long time. So why not scratch his back?

Update: Gerald ended up not using this post last Monday so it’s getting used this week. That said, I’m still glad I went the extra step and I’m sure he took note. Make a habit of doing business the right way!

2. Deliver as promised (and don’t promise if you can’t deliver)—Sometimes I’m lucky and acquire a project that has a flexible deadline. But more often than not, if a client contacts me then they needed the piece written yesterday. So they ask when is the soonest I can finish for them. I’m always tempted to overcommit in order to secure the project. However, I’ve learned the hard way that it’s better to give them an honest answer than to promise and not deliver. Nothing makes a client unhappier than having to wait for work that should have already been completed.

3. Keep communication lines open—Again, sometimes you get the low maintenance client that just wants you to send them the finished product and shut the hell up. But always go into a new relationship assuming your client needs his hand held. In other words, give him frequent updates. And ask him if he has any questions (and be ready to answer them). Bottom line—make him feel important.

Have you run into client issues before? What have you done to go the extra mile?

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5 Things You Can Learn by Drilling Down on Traffic Sources in Google Analytics

Kristi Hines — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:00:30 +0000

Did you know there is more to the Referral Traffic Sources in your Google Analytics than just the referral domains themselves? Here are a few things you can learn by clicking on some of the domains listed under your Traffic Sources > Sources > Referrals.

What Twitter User Really Sends You Traffic & Your Most Popular Posts on Twitter

Want to find out who is really sending the most traffic to your website via Twitter? Look no further than the t.co domain in your Traffic Sources. When you click on this, you will see the specific t.co links that have led visitors to your website.

Copy the Referral Path listed, then paste it into your browser after http://t.co so you can go to the post or page that it references. In another tab (if you don’t have this already), install the Topsy Trackbacks bookmarklet on your bookmarks toolbar. Then go to the tab with your post and click on the Topsy bookmarklet. You will now see most of the tweets for your page in Topsy.

When you get to the All posts about this link section, scroll to the bottom and click on the more link until you’ve pulled most of the tweets for your post (which could take a while, depending on how many times the page has been tweeted). Then use your browser’s Find on Page (CTRL + F) and paste in the Referral Path again. It should take you to one (or more) tweets with the t.co link that you pulled from Google Analytics. The first person who tweeted it is the source of your Twitter traffic!

In my case, it was Dave Larson of TweetSmarter that I had to thank for the most traffic from Twitter for my post on how to start a blog on WordPress.

Going back to your Referral Paths from t.co, you can also use this to see which posts on your site get the most Twitter traffic. Simply click on the Secondary dimension dropdown and select Landing Page under Traffic Sources.

This will show you the posts each t.co link references.

Pages with Traffic from Image Search

Curious what posts or pages on your website get the most traffic from Google Images search? Find out by clicking on the google.com domain in your traffic sources and then click on the /imgres Referral Path. Next, use the Secondary dimension dropdown and, again, select Landing Page under Traffic Sources.

Be sure to check out the images on those pages to see if you can use similar images for future posts / pages on your site for more image related traffic!

Guest Posts, Comments, or Crowdsourcing

When you’re looking at your Traffic Sources, it’s easy to tell which source is related to your guest posting, commenting, or sites you contribute answers to for crowdsourced posts. If you do multiple activities on one site, then you need to click on that site’s domain and drill down to the Referral Paths to see which activity gets the best results from that site.

By drilling down on my own referral traffic from Social Media Examiner, I could see that it comes from a variety of things, including one guest post, making their top blog list, a crowdsourced post, and a link left to one of my posts in the forums.

LinkedIn Shares, Groups, Answers, or Company Pages

If you are active on LinkedIn and take advantage of different things such as sharing your posts on your profile, LinkedIn groups, LinkedIn Answers, or on your company page, then you will probably want to know which of those activities bring the most traffic to your website. Click on linkedin.com in your Traffic Sources to see the following.

Here, I can see that the most traffic comes from shares within groups (/news), followed by status updates (/home, /profile/view, and /share), more group shares (/groupItem), and Answers (/groupAnswers).

Most Popular Posts on StumbleUpon

It’s tough to find things on StumbleUpon sometimes, including which posts from your own sites are the most popular on their network. If you want to see which posts on your site get the most StumbleUpon traffic, click on stumbleupon.com in your Traffic Sources, then click on the refer.php Referral Path. Next, use the Secondary dimension dropdown and, again, select Landing Page under Traffic Sources.

Now you can see which posts have driven the most StumbleUpon traffic over the last year. This is great to reference when you are determining what new content you want to create and how it will fare on the SU network. Going forward, with the latest changes to the SU networks, you will just look at any links starting with /su/ in the Referral Paths.

Do you go deeper into your Google Analytics Traffic Sources? What other discoveries have you found about your referral traffic?

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Local Paid Inclusion – Get Up to Date

Kaila Strong — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 13:59:49 +0000

Have you heard the buzz in the SEO community? Bruce Clay announced on Facebook, later followed up by this Search Engine Watch post, the launch of a new service that guarantees top listings in local search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo. The service works to promote your business listing for a nominal fee, guaranteeing a top position – in organic listings! It also boasts to be a cheaper option than PPC. UBL, the backend partner of Clay’s in this venture, verifies that they are still in the beta phase and are currently testing the system (now being vehemently denied).

When I first heard about this news I had to look at the calendar – April 1st? Seriously, this seems a bit far fetched. Within a very short time the SEO community reacted with amazement; it’s common sense that this type of service would be looked down upon. Miranda Miller’s Search Engine Watch post did a good job of sharing her investigative research and the comment section is a worthwhile read. Additionally, friend of SEM-Group.net, Dave Harry wrote a summary post with some good reactions in the comments as well.

Bruce announced on Twitter that they’d have a statement this morning regarding the local paid inclusion fiasco. Google, Bing and UBL all deny involvement in lpi as reported in Danny Sullivan’s post. More reactions include thoughts that this is just some clever marketing plan or package done by Clay’s team – but gone awry maybe? I was intrigued by a comment on the SEW post by Bob Bigellow, he stated:

“I bet I know exactly what this is.

It probably requires each individual to install a plugin or extension or script or to otherwise implement some sort of service which will insert these “results” into the organic results area. Google has a service similar to this for a while where you could subscribe to certain feeds and, as a result, certain searches would trigger a special result on the page which was artificially put there by a third-party.

So, this likely won’t be anything new and won’t be very significant in that it will require opt-in, which means it will never reach the full breadth of Google.”

So what’s your take on the whole thing? Hoax, bad PR fiasco for a new service, or an April Fools Day joke 2 months early? Who knows, the whole thing could just be a ploy to get links or some elaborate SEO experiment….Similar Posts: