Hardware Productivity Tools

1. iPhone

The iPhone is one of the best productivity tools available. Not only can you check your emails, manage your calendar and check your social media accounts, but you can do it in your dead time such as waiting in line or getting a coffee. Additionally, many of the software tools I recommend in this article are beneficial because of their iPhone apps.

2. iPad

When I first got an iPad I didn’t really know how to use it to get the biggest productivity benefits from my day. What I finally understood is that the iPad is not a replacement for your laptop or your phone. But when you use it in conjunction with the apps listed in this article, such as Things and Flipboard, you really start to see its benefits.

3. Mac

As a die hard PC fan it was a hard decision to convert to Mac, which I did in January 2011. The transition was a bit hard at first and re-learning all of the shortcuts took a bit of time, but once the transition was over (which took me a month or two) I gained significant productivity improvements. Not only does my Mac start up and shut down in less than 20 seconds but features such as Spotlight and custom keyboard shortcuts save a considerable amount of mouse clicks (more about that later).

Advanced Tip: Don’t use your mouse to open any programs or documents. Instead use COMMAND + SPACE to open spotlight and then start typing the name of the application or document you want to open. When you see it at the top of the list, just hit ENTER and it’s open.

4. Smartpen

Anybody who attends a business meeting takes handwritten notes (at least if they want the meeting to be effective). Usually these notes include action items, key points and other pertinent information. The question is, what do you do with those notes after you’ve taken them? If you’re like me, you probably have alot of notebooks full of notes from various meetings. Using a Smartpen is a great way to get your handwritten notes onto your computer. You handwrite your notes using your Smartpen, then sync your smartpen with your computer, and all of the handwritten notes are automatically transferred to your computer available to browse or search. The best part about this software is that it can transcribe your handwritten notes into text (and it’s very good at it) and you can search through your past notes using keywords.

5. Amazon Kindle

At first, the feeling of reading a book on a Kindle was a little jarring, especially because I enjoyed the feeling of holding a book and turning pages. But in less than a week the benefits of reading on a Kindle far outweighed any nostalgia I had towards physical books. The main benefits of reading on a Kindle are that you can set the size of the font you want to read at (ensuring a consistent reading speed), fast turning of pages, instant availability of nearly any book you want to read, the ability to send documents and web pages to it, and carrying all of your books with you wherever you go.

Software Productivity Tools

6. Things

Things is by far the best piece of software for managing a to-do list that I have ever used (and I have used a lot). Things is a software application that runs on Macs, iPhones and iPads. You can quickly add to-dos using keyboard shortcuts from wherever you are on your Mac, you can create categories and assign to-dos to categories, and you can schedule to-dos for the future. The iPhone and iPad apps synchronise with your Mac so you have the same list on all devices, and you can quickly add new to-dos through your iPhone or iPad when you’re on the go.

Advanced Tip: take your iPad to meetings, create a project name for the meeting and add to-dos for all action points and notes that come out of the meeting.

7. Gmail

If you receive more than 100 emails a day then finding a way to manage your emails in a time effective manner is critical. Of all the email applications I have tested, nothing is better than Gmail for productivity. You can create filters, labels and rules for how emails are handled and probably the best productivity feature of Gmail is the ability to Archive the current email and Open the next email with a single key.

Advanced Tip: clear your Gmail inbox daily. Use the Things ‘Show and Autofill’ feature to automatically add to-dos that include links to individual Gmail messages so you can go back to the message when you need to (ie after prioritising all of your to-dos).

8. Flipboard

If you need to stay abreast of all that is happening in your industry there’s nothing better than Flipboard. Originally an iPad application, it’s now also available on iPhone. With Flipboard you add your Google Reader, Twitter and Facebook accounts (as well as any other that you use) and browse through all of the articles, stories and updates in a magazine style format. You can send articles you like by email or share them on Facebook or Twitter.

9. Instapaper

Instapaper allows you to save web pages to read later. So wherever you are on the web, you can save an article, web page or blog post to read later. While this may seem like a simple thing to do, it’s the functionality that really makes Instapaper a productivity tool – Instapaper integrates with your Internet browser (eg Firefox), iPad, iPhone and Amazon Kindle.

Advanced Tip: Install the Instapaper Kindle App. Then, when you find an article in Flipboard that you want to read, send it directly to your Kindle from Flipboard and then read it later when you have some time.

10. Concept Draw Mindmap

If you have a lot of projects on the go, many areas of responsiblity, or brainstorm a lot, using mindmapping software is one of the best tools for managing it all. Mindmaps are one of the best ways to take complex or difficult subjects or problems and quickly generate new ideas and structure them intuitively. Mindmapping software takes mindmapping to the next level by allowing you to quickly develop mindmaps and adjust their various components.

Advanced Tip: Create a master mindmap that links to other mindmaps on your computer. Put everything you’re working on in the mindmapping software and then take the key actions you want to implement and add them to Things. Review your mindmap weekly.

11. Evernote

Evernote is one of the best tools created for sharing text, screenshots, images, audio, photos and literally any other digital file between your various devices and with other people. The desktop application allows you to capture anything from your computer and send it to Evernote. The iPhone app allows you to do the same from your mobile.

12. Dropbox

Where evernote can store text, screenshots, video and audio, Dropbox is a cloud service that acts like your virtual hard drive. You can upload any type of file you want and access it from anywhere. You can also share specific folders in Dropbox with anybody you want.

13. Google Docs

If you use Microsoft Word or Excel then you’ll love Google Docs. Google Docs doesn’t have all the features of Word and Excel but the features it does have more than makes up for it. The most impressive feature of Google Docs is that you can collaborate on any document or spreadsheet with as many people as you like, which means that multiple people can work on the same document at the same time. The fact that all of your documents are online and backed up in the cloud is another bonus.

14. 1Password

If you don’t already use a password manager then you’ll love this. 1Password stores all the passwords for your various logins (and if you use the Internet, there are A LOT). What most people do is use the same password over and over again, which is a major security issue, or record their passwords somewhere on their computer, which is a huge waste of time. With 1Password you can create a different password for every site you visit and store it for easy retrieval when you need to login.

Advanced Tip: Use the password generator feature to create 12 digit passwords that use letters, numbers and symbols and create a new password for every site you need to login to. Then use the keyboard shortcut to automatically fill in forms when you need to.

15. Snagit

Trying to refer to a particular section on a web page or within an application is very difficult just using words. With Snagit you can take a screenshot of anything on your screen, annotate it and then send it by email to whomever you need to communicate with.

Advanced Tip: If you need to make instructional documents, take screenshots with Snagit and write instructions that refer to the screenshot.

16. Camtasia

If screenshots aren’t enough to get the point across, Camtasia allows you to record both the screen and the audio, which means you can walk through a website, an application or anything else and explain what you’re doing while you’re doing it. Anybody who watches the video will know exactly what you’re talking about.

17. TypeQuick

If you don’t know how to TouchType (and I mean using ALL of your fingers without looking at the keyboard) then you need to learn right away. With all the typing we do all day, one of the biggest time wasters is not being able to touch type. TypeQuick is touch typing software that actually teaches you how to type. When I was first learning to touch type I locked myself away for 6 hours a day over a Saturday and Sunday and pushed myself to finish the program. Then, I forced myself to use the new technique (even though it felt uncomfortable) until it became natural.

18. Keyboard Shortcuts

This tool is the most underutilised yet most powerful productivity tool you can use. Moving your hands from your keyboard to your mouse, then finding what you need to click on, then moving it back to your keyboard – and doing this hundreds or thousands of times a day – is a huge waste of time. There are keyboard shortcuts for nearly everything you need to do on your computer, and learning how to use them will give you a massive productivity boost.

Tip: don’t try to learn every single keyboard shortcut in one go (it will be pretty much impossible to do so anyway). Instead, when you find yourself moving between your keyboard and mouse, do a search on Google for “(action) keyboard shortcut” and start using it right away. Over time you’ll learn hundreds of keyboard shortcuts that will save you a ton of time. And if you have a Mac, create your own custom shortcuts for frequent actions you take in any program you use.

Implementing any one of these 18 productivity tools will give you a productivity boost. However the real power lies in implementing all of them at once. That’s when you’ll really start to see significant productivity improvements.

Enjoy!

Begin by critically questioning what information you need to help drive your business strategy.  Google Analytics contains some fantastic data to help you understand the experience of visitors on your site, their motivations and behaviour.  And by monitoring the trends in this data you will be equipped with the knowledge to expand your audience reach and drive growth.

Here are 6 insights Google Analytics can yield about your site:

1. Buying Behaviour

It’s great to know that your total visits are increasing over time, but what does this really say about your website?  Let’s assume you have an Ecommerce site.  A more valuable insight into the performance of your site is gleaned from analysing those keywords that are motivating your customers’ decision to buy.  Taking this even further, we can look at the different buying patterns exhibited by new and returning visitors.

Google Analytics Navigation (New):  Traffic Sources > Sources > All Traffic

• Viewing: Keyword
• Report Tab: Ecommerce
• Report View: Pivot Table
• Pivot by: Visitor Type
• Pivot Metrics: Transactions | Revenue

Armed with this data you are now able to consider the following:

• What keywords are generating the most revenue for your business?  Can you redesign your homepage to focus on those keywords that are enticing your visitors to make a purchase?
• Are new visitors to your site behaving differently to returning visitors?  Are your SEO efforts successfully driving traffic to your site?  Is your site effectively converting this traffic into sales?

2. Website Engagement

How engaging is the content on your site?  How can you use Google Analytics to measure the experience of your online audience?  Online engagement is difficult to measure using numbers alone.  It is a much broader, more subjective and more emotive concept which quantitative data often struggles to translate effectively.  There are many businesses out there with websites that exist for purposes other than Ecommerce.  And for these businesses, Google Analytics offers some interesting insights into the extent to which their content is captivating visitors and engendering loyalty.

Here are two key questions about the behaviour of visitors on your site and how Google Analytics can provide some enlightenment:

A – How often do people visit my site and how long has it been since their last visit?

A high number of multiple visits and the frequency with which they return to your site is a good indicator that your online community has established a strong connection with your brand.  You may want to measure whether visit frequency is going up over time to get an understanding of how successful your site is at nurturing this customer relationship.

Google Analytics Navigation (New):  Visitors > Behaviour > Frequency & Recency

• Report Tab: Count of Visits

Google Analytics Navigation (New):  Visitors > Behaviour > Frequency & Recency

• Report Tab: Days Since Last Visit

B – How long are people spending on your site and how many pages are they viewing?

Taking the time to understand this information will give you a good measure of visit quality and may even stimulate a conversation around improving the user experience on your site so as to drive more meaningful interactions with your audience over time.

Google Analytics Navigation (New):  Visitors > Behaviour >Engagement

• Report Tab: Visit Duration

Google Analytics Navigation (New):  Visitors > Behaviour >Engagement

• Report Tab: Page Depth

3. Market Penetration

The more you know about your customers, the better equipped you are to respond to changing market conditions. Enter the Google Analytics Map Overlay Report.  Knowing the geographical location of visitors to your site can provide invaluable insights for your business as well as inform your SEO campaigns.

Let’s say you are targeting specific geographic regions in your online marketing efforts.  The Map Overlay Report allows you to identify the number of visitors from that region and compare the trend over time.  Ideally there should be a strong correlation between the locations you are targeting in your SEO keywords and the actual geographic positioning of your visitors.

Google Analytics Navigation (New):  Visitors >Demographics>Location

• Country/Territory: Australia
• Viewing: City
• Report View: Percentage

Further, understanding which regions are the most profitable in terms of revenue or conversions presents you with opportunities to:

• focus your SEO efforts on these regions and withdraw from other less profitable ones;
• fine-tune the content on your website to resonate with these markets; and
• maximise the chances of fostering viable prospects

4. The Paid Search Click

Paid search is an area where Google Analytics can greatly improve the success rate of your advertising campaigns.  When you’re paying for the click you want to ensure that this traffic is converting and generating revenue.

Analysing the following metrics gives you a good understanding of what keywords are delivering strong results in the campaign:

• Pages/Visit and Avg. Time on Site – Is your paid traffic behaving as you’d expect?  If you’re paying for the click that directs visitors to your site, you would expect that these visitors find what they are looking for and invest significant time digesting the content on your site
• % New Visits – Are you attracting the same old visitors?  Your marketing dollar should be working hard to chase new prospects, with the lion’s share of paid search traffic coming from new visitors
• Bounce Rate – If your paid keywords have high bounce rates this is a red flag that your landing page may not be resonating with users who are clicking the ad.  Consider improving the relevancy of the content on your landing page, strengthen your call to action and sharpen your ad targeting; all of which could immediately increase the ROI of your advertising dollar

Google Analytics Navigation (New):  Traffic Sources >Sources>Search > Paid

• Viewing: Matched Search Query

5. User Interactivity

As business owners, we’d love to get into the minds of our customers.  With In-Page Analytics, Google Analytics has attempted to do just that.  This unique feature allows you to see a visual representation of how your visitors click and navigate their way through your site.  The mind explodes with the benefits this promises for onsite optimisation improvements and web design changes.

Google Analytics Navigation (New):  Content>In-Page Analytics

Here are some questions to get you thinking about your site:

• Can your page layout be improved?
• Do your calls to action ‘pop’?  Are they exciting enough to convince customers to act?
• Did my visitors find what they were looking for?
• Can you hold the interest of your visitors for a longer period?  Can the % Clicks Below metric be improved by being creative with placement on your page?
• Does browsing behaviour differ significantly throughout my customer mix? (TIP: Utilise Advanced Segments to analyse click patterns of new or returning customers, paid or non-paid search traffic)

6. Going Mobile

Smartphone sales are gathering pace fast.  Mobile traffic is also on the increase.  What does this mean for your website and its performance? Google Analytics can provide you with some real data on how your current mobile traffic is performing and how well your site is handling these visitors.

Google Analytics Navigation (New):  Visitors>Mobile>Overview

• Advanced Segments: All Visits |Visits with Transactions

This report highlights key metrics for mobile visitors (‘Yes’) and non-mobile visitors (‘No’). Going further and segmenting this data by ‘Visits with Transactions’ you’re able to get a really good feel for the number of mobile users transacting on your site and the potential for revenue growth in this area.  This data should stimulate conversations around:

• Are mobile visitors having issues viewing your site?  Are they bouncing at a much higher rate than your desktop traffic?  If this is the case, then perhaps your current site doesn’t translate well on mobile devices?
• What is the purpose of your site?  Is it to drive sales, generate leads or increase memberships?  How can you improve your web design to help mobile visitors take the action you want?
• Is there enough traffic from mobile visitors to justify having a mobile site?  Is mobile activity on your site trending upwards over time?

Thinking about these questions in light of the data you’ve accessed in Google Analytics will help you to develop a sound strategy for tightening your site content for mobile visitors and driving further business growth through this new and exciting medium.

Are you ready to start thinking critically about your website and its performance?  It’s your turn now to explore these reports within Google Analytics.  You might be surprised at how insightful and constructive the data is to the success of your business.

As much as I would like to ignore Google PageRank altogether, it is still relevant when building inbound links.  When looking at external links there are essentially two factors to consider; the first is relevance, the second is PageRank. Those two factors combined are what build your website’s reputation for a given keyword or topic. So while your own website’s PageRank is not an accurate indication of where you will rank for a specific keyword phrase, the PageRank of your inbound links does matter.

Which Links Matter?

Building links from highly relevant high PageRank websites is the ultimate goal for any SEO campaign.  Achieving that goal is how you can build your perceived authority (or reputation) for a target keyword.  If you are getting links from high-value, relevant websites then Google sees that as a good indication that you are a reputable source for that keyword.

For example, let’s say you receive an inbound link from two websites that are both highly relevant to your web page.  But let’s say hypothetically that one has a PR2 and one has a PR4. Bearing in mind that they are both equally relevant for the purpose of this example, the PR4 link is going to be worth far more to ranking for the target keyword used.  The PR4 site is itself a more reputable source and so Google will give more weight to that link than the PR2 site, which has a lower authority.

Getting a whole bunch of these higher value links is the ideal scenario for building your authority online.  However, this is where many people get confused.  It is not enough to simply target high PageRank links – even more so since the launch of Google Panda.  Yes, a PR8 link from anyone would be awesome for your rankings but a PR8 link from a relevant website will be many, many times better.

Building Authority

Think of it like this: when you read a journal article or a textbook, there is a large list of references used in its preparation. Being referenced in this way is an indication that the source is considered to provide reliable and relevant information by the author. Useful and reputable sources will be referenced in multiple journal articles and textbooks.  Furthermore, being referenced by an already well-known or reputable author would provide even more creditability to those references.

The PageRank algorithm works much in the same way. Imagine the textbooks are websites and the references are links.  If you are “referenced” (linked to) by a reputable source then that indicates you too are credible.

Taking it further, if you were actually cited within the body of content, that would be an even stronger indication that you were a reputable source on the topic. It would provide even more credibility on the topic for which you are being cited than simply appearing in the Reference list at the end of the document. In the same way, Google considers a contextual link to be worth more than a standard inbound link and this is how it ties into relevance.

Relevance Is King

Now consider this, if you were looking for more sources on say psychology as an example, would you look in a textbook about ancient history or would you look in another textbook or article about psychology? Which would you consider to be more trustworthy on the topic?

Being referenced in a textbook that is on a similar topic is a better indication of authority than in an unrelated source.  This same relevance value is considered very highly by Google.

For example, let’s say you have a website about accommodation and receive an inbound link from two websites that both have PR4.  But let’s say hypothetically that one is about travel and one is about pharmaceuticals.  In this case, both inbound links are going to add the same value to your website’s PageRank, but the link from the site about travel is going to give you a much higher boost in rankings for your target ‘accommodation’ related keywords.

Let’s take this example a step further and say that the link from the travel website is in a relevant paragraph of text on a topical page and uses your target keyword as the anchor text; the other link on the pharmaceuticals website has your link in the sidebar or footer among other links and uses your company name or URL as the anchor text.  Once again, both websites are going to send the same amount of PageRank to your website, but the link from the pharmaceuticals website is going to have very little, if any, effect on your ranking for your target keyword.

This is the exact reason that websites with a lower PageRank can actually rank higher in the search results for a specific keyword.  The PageRank algorithm includes ALL links to your website, regardless of how relevant they are, but search results for a specific keyword take into account all of the other SEO ranking factors as well.  And so the website that has a higher number of high-value links from relevant websites is going to rank higher, despite what the PageRank might be.

It gets complicated when you also consider that the relevance of your inbound links is also determined by the relevance and value of their inbound links, and then again for all of those websites, and so on.  We won’t get into that but suffice to say Google’s algorithm is fairly large and takes everything we’ve discussed and more into consideration all at once.

Toolbar PageRank

Before we conclude, when building these targeted links it is important to also understand the difference between the PageRank number that you see in your web browser’s toolbar and the actual PageRank value that Google uses in their algorithm.  There are two primary differences of which to be aware:

• Toolbar PageRank is always displayed as a whole number out of 10; actual PageRank is much more specific with exponential increases in actual value for higher toolbar PageRank values.
• Actual PageRank is updated in real time as new links to a page are found by the crawl-bot; toolbar PageRank is only updated a few months later and is therefore always slightly out-dated.

So how can we use this knowledge? Firstly, it is a good idea to keep in mind that when you get a link from a website with a certain toolbar PageRank, that page’s actual PageRank could be higher or lower. You should always check back later to make sure that the PageRank of links you have built are maintained or increasing and not decreasing, as that will affect the authority that your website receives.

The other point to remember is that each sequential increase in toolbar PageRank is increasingly difficult to achieve. Getting from PR4 to PR5 is much harder than getting from PR3 to PR4, which is harder than getting from PR2 to PR3, as there are far more actual values used by Google between the two toolbar values.  This essentially means that it requires more and higher quality links to achieve a higher PageRank for a website.  This is important to know when link-building as a link from a PR5 website is not just worth a little bit more than a PR4 link, it is actually worth about 10 times as much. For this reason, higher PageRank links provide significantly more authority and it will require a large number of lower PageRank links to provide the same value. That said, in most cases a link with a slightly lower PageRank from a page that is highly related to your target phrases will still help you rank better for those target keywords than a link with slightly higher PageRank but an unrelated topic. However, as long as the links are relevant to your topic area, then higher PageRank is still always better.

With all of this in mind, Google PageRank must still be taken into consideration when preparing your SEO strategy. You can virtually forget about your own website’s PageRank as a ranking factor but you must take into account the PageRank of inbound links.  When you are link building, always target websites that are related to your topic area first and that have a high PageRank second.  This is how you can increase your Relevance and that is what will ultimately get you to the top of Google.

Creating great online copy is as much about what you say as how you say it. A clear, engaging message should come with all the trimmings. These often forgotten extras are crucial in capturing your audience in the first place. Follow these 5 steps to ensure your online copy is stimulating for both the eye and the mind.

1. Layout/Structure

The layout and structure of your article play a pivotal role in attracting readers. ‘Heavy’ looking content is an instant turn off. Your copy can be made lighter in a few key areas. Keep sentences in the active voice, short and to the point. Limit your paragraphs to six sentences. Use sub-headings, lists, and bullet points to create that much needed white space – a visual breather for your readers. Experiment with bold and italicized font to allow your key passages to pop out.

2. Accessible content

Writing online copy is all about showcasing your expertise, but never forget your audience and their level. Jotting down the likely background of your readers is invaluable in etching out appropriate content. This doesn’t mean you need to be simplistic. Work on explaining the complexities of your topic in a way that will enlighten and educate – perhaps circulate a draft among less knowledgeable colleagues to test the waters. Online readers are seeking a quick, pain-free education. Provide that in bite-sized, memorable and meaningful chunks.

3. Write to the demand

Take the time to seek out hot topics in your industry. The best written article will go unread if nobody is interested in the topic it covers. What are some common questions that your clients always ask you? Are there current events across your industry that people are talking about? Perhaps you can highlight the breadth of your knowledge by referring to either past case studies or new technologies on the horizon. These types of topics are fresh, attractive, and fill a knowledge demand.

4. Use images to enhance

The online community is visually orientated. Tap into this with high-quality images that complement your article and enhance its message. Images serve as the ultimate hook, so choose carefully and consider what ideas and style you’d like them to carry. Remember that your readers will interpret the image before they read a single word of your copy – make sure it draws them in and delivers on its promise within the article itself.

5. Quality copy

Once you’ve snapped up readers with all of the above, don’t stumble at the last hurdle! Nothing kills authority as fast as sloppy grammar and punctuation. If this isn’t something you’re good at, find someone who is. A thorough edit will protect you against readers questioning your expertise and checking out mid-way through the article. Think of how convincing and powerful a great speaker can be – the exact same rules apply for the written word.

Following these 5 tips will ensure your online copy sparkles. You already have the knowledge and expertise in your field – deliver it to the online community in a package that does it justice!

Meta Descriptions are one of the best ways to increase traffic from SEO rankings without building another link or writing another article. An effective Meta Description makes your ranking stand out from the competition, clearly differentiates your products/services and encourages potential clients to act.

So what are Meta Descriptions and how can effective Meta Descriptions help increase the traffic to your website?

In short, Meta Descriptions are the lines of copy displayed underneath the search results in search engines. Meta Descriptions are the first message your potential clients see about what you do, your products and who you are. Therefore, Meta Descriptions perform a key function for all your search engine optimisation (SEO) efforts.

Here is an example of our Meta Description (it is the wording directly beneath the website address):

While Meta Descriptions do not play much of a role in achieving SEO rankings, effective copy has a strong impact on whether a potential client clicks on your website from your rankings or not. Achieving top keyword rankings in Google is a priority (or should be) for all businesses online. But if your business is ranking and your Meta Description is not effective, then you are reducing the click-through-rate.  It is therefore essential that you consider your Meta Description strategy.

A great Meta Description will result in heightened clicks from search results and more traffic leading to your website. The final outcome is an increase in online conversions for your business.

With this knowledge, let’s look at 5 best practice guidelines to help you improve the effectiveness of your Meta Descriptions…

1. Meta Descriptions must describe the main benefit of the particular webpage

This might be common sense but most Meta Descriptions do not follow this rule. What is your web page about? Is it about a specific category of products? Is it about the company profile? Each Meta Description must deliver on its message. For example, we do not recommend trying to sell your product when the web page is about your terms and conditions. This would only frustrate your potential client.

2. Ensure your Meta Descriptions are as concise as possible

Being concise means your Meta Description is clear and makes sense to your potential clients. Unnecessary words only confuse and complicate understanding. Avoid long sentences and make plenty of use of short and punchy content. Remember that there is only a very limited amount of time to get your message across to potential clients when they read your Meta Description.

3. Each Meta Description must be no longer than 165 characters (including spaces)

Google displays 165 characters for Meta Descriptions, which is quite generous when you think about the Twitter character limit of 140. So definitely make use of this space. But do it wisely. If your Meta Description doesn’t fit into the character limit, potential clients will not get the full extent of your message as the vital elements may be cut off. Meta Descriptions that are cut off half way through a sentence or word results in a possible lost click opportunity.

4. Your Meta Descriptions should have at least one call-to-action

This is an extremely important point. Remember that Meta Descriptions are your first communication with a potential client. For that reason, the Meta Description copy must motivate and stimulate them to want to click on your link. Taking into account that your link will always be competing with 9 other SEO results and up to 14 pay-per-click ads, effective call-to-action phrases are the key to attract more attention from potential clients searching on Google. Think about the main benefits your service/product has over your competitors. Do you offer same day delivery? Do you have a free offer? Drill it down to your core offering and what sets you apart. This will undoubtedly result in increased clicks from search engines to your website. If your website is performing, you will also experience an increase in online leads.

5. Meta Descriptions must be unique

Google provides warnings when duplicate website titles and descriptions have been used or if descriptions are too short via Google Webmaster Tools.  This is an indication that using duplicate Meta Descriptions is not a favoured practice by Google.  Utilising the same Meta Descriptions across more than one web page can also cause duplicate content issues in terms of your SEO. Therefore, when creating your Meta Descriptions it is important to be specific so that potential clients know what each page is about when it appears in the search results.

Meta Descriptions effectively make the most of the SEO rankings you have worked so hard to achieve. They clearly state your business product/service and act as the first communication with your potential client. Great Meta Description copy differentiates your business and attracts more attention from prospects looking at the search results. The use of call-to-action phrases outlines the main benefits of your business and motivates prospects to visit your website. Most importantly, the predictable indirect outcome for a successful Meta Description strategy is an increase in online organic conversions.

I ask you,how effective are your Meta Descriptions?

Need help creating effective Meta Descriptions? Outrank & outperform your competitors by fully optimising all facets of your website with Web Profits. Call 1800 932 776 now.

Your website is the single most important component of your online marketing strategy – it will literally make or break your success online. Here’s why…

1. Your Website Determines How Many Sales You Achieve From Your Advertising Budget

When you run advertising online, or offline for that matter, you’re driving prospects directly to your website. You might be spending $2,000 per month on advertising, or you might be spending $100,000. In either case, the number of sales you achieve from your advertising is directly related to the performance of your website.

Let’s take a quick look at the numbers… if your website converts 1% of website visitors into customers you will generate 10 new customers from 1,000 visitors. But if you can increase the performance of your website to convert 5% of website visitors, you’re generating 50 new customers from the same advertising budget, or 5x as many sales without spending a cent more on advertising.

Many companies we speak to are happy to spend $10,000 per month on advertising but baulk when we suggest investing $10,000 one-time on improving the performance of their website – this is one of the biggest mistakes a company can make… just take a look at the numbers.

2. Your Website Can Give You A Competitive Advantage

Your website’s conversion rate is one of the most powerful competitive advantages you can gain against your competition. If your website converts 5% of website visitors into sales, and your competitors are only converting 1% of website visitors into sales, you can spend 20% of your competitors’ budget and still achieve the same result.

When you look at how the majority of online advertising works these days, you’re paying a cost-per-click for prospects to visit your website. If you can convert website visitors at 5x the rate of your competition, you can pay 20% of their cost-per-click and still achieve the same cost-per-acquisition (CPA).

But that’s not what usually happens… what usually happens is that you pay 2x or 3x per click to completely outbid them online, gain maximum exposure and capture the majority of the available market share, and still pay a lower CPA than your competition.

3. Your Website Affects The Quality of Clients You Attract

The quality of the design, structure and layout of your website directly affects the quality of clients you attract – the higher the quality of your website, the higher the quality of clients you will attract.

Think about it… how many times have you visited a website and instantly made an assumption on the type of company it is, how expensive the products or services would be and whether or not you wanted to contact them, just by how it looked and felt.

I’ve often been surprised at just how much the design of a website can affect the quality of leads and sales a website receives. If you want to attract larger companies with larger budgets to your company, then you need a website that reflects what those companies expect to see from a website. On the other hand, if you’re selling cheap products or services, then you don’t want your website to look too expensive.

4. Your Website Affects How Much Facebook Traffic You Receive

Facebook is now one of the largest sources of website referral traffic after Google… and when you consider that more than 10 million Australian are on Facebook, it makes sense. But to really maximise the traffic you receive from Facebook it’s important to understand how it works.

Facebook users share content from around the web, with more than 2 billion posts ‘liked’ and commented on every day. To drive the maximum amount of traffic from Facebook your website needs to include information that people want to share with their social network. The best type of information to share is news, helpful information, photos, videos and any type of information that really adds value to the lives of the people that consume it.

By integrating Facebook sharing functionality, such as Facebook ‘Likes’ and soon-to-be-released ‘Gestures’, you will align your website with how people share content on Facebook thereby maximising the traffic you receive.

5. Your Website Directly Affects Your SEO Rankings

The better your website is optimised for SEO, the higher the rankings you will achieve. Updating the Title Tags, Meta Tags and internal linking can be implemented on any website, but gaining maximum SEO performance from a website requires developing the optimum website structure from the ground up.

The key to really maximising your SEO rankings is to create a different web page for every top level keyword you want to rank for. Doing this will mean that you have the keyword in the Title Tags, Meta Tags, URL structure, Headings and body copy… and it will be integrated naturally. You’ll also have a page for each keyword which makes it easier to rank for each keyword. And the more pages you have on your website, targeted to specific keywords, the more rankings you will achieve.

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions…

After reading this article my hope is that you fully understand the role that your website plays in the performance of your success online… the only thing left is making the decision not ‘if’ but ‘when’ you will invest in your website.

If you’re on a limited budget and you’re running advertising campaigns, my recommendation would be to place those advertising campaigns on hold and divert that budget to upgrading your website. When your website is ready and you reactivate your campaigns you’ll see an immediate boost in the sales and profits you earn online.

If you’ve got more of a budget to play with (but not too much) but you need your advertising to stay running, my recommendation would be to divert some (not all) of your budget to upgrading your website.

And if you can afford to keep your advertising campaigns running and still invest in your website, then do so right away.

Your website holds the keys to your online success… the better if performs, the more money you make… period.

So what are you waiting for?

With the current state of the global economy, more and more businesses are diverting their marketing budgets online to maximise sales and their return on investment. IAB Australia recently announced that the online advertising market is on track to surpass $3 billion in 2012.

Simply having a website or an Adwords campaign is no longer enough to keep up with the increasingly fierce online environment.  Your online marketing strategy needs to be robust and multi-pronged to ensure you are successfully reaching your target market (wherever they are) and then effectively selling your products or services.

Here are 5 ways to drive sales and grow your business during these difficult economic times.

1. Develop a website that sells for you 24/7

What member of your staff would work for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week?  Certainly no-one I know.  An effective website should be viewed as part of your team, it’s there 24/7 and allows you to sell your products and services even whilst your company sleeps.  Spending money on your website to improve or update it is a long term investment and pales in comparison to the annual wage of one of your staff members.  Potential customers and clients can instantly assess, judge and act without you having to lift a finger.

2. Engage with prospects on their Smartphone or Tablet

It’s predicted that in only six months time 1 in 2 people in the USA will own a Smartphone (Inside Retail). In Australia we’re not quite at this level yet however a day does not go by without seeing people on the move connected to their smartphone or iPad… browsing, shopping, sending emails or sharing photos.  Not having a Google places listing, or a mobile-friendly web design, a Facebook page or for that matter simply zero online presence will impact your business’ ability to effectively deliver to the growing market of mobile search users.

3. Capture market share through top SEO rankings

Online search offers opportunities for businesses of all sizes to get ‘a foot in the door’ – ranking at the top of Google is not dependent on being one of the high street or big brand names.  Any business can succeed and reach Page 1 of Google with the right SEO strategy in place.  Unlike a print ad or a TV advert, investing your marketing budget in an SEO strategy means you can have visibility endlessly.  Undoubtedly SEO is both competitive and ever changing but the key here is to ensure you are investing the right amount to get Page 1 rankings and having the right online advice to keep your business at the forefront of SEO.

4. Build relationships with social media

Facebook is now the most visited website in the world, with 48% of the Australian population having a Facebook account. Social Media platforms offer brands personality and a voice within a competitive market. For many businesses there is a reluctance to embrace these platforms due to lack of understanding – but the right strategy can pay dividends.  There’s not only an SEO benefit created by sharing links from your website on social platforms but individuals can actually assist you with your marketing by ‘Liking’, ‘Recommending’, ‘Retweeting’ or ‘+1ing’ your website.

5. Drive sales fast with Pay-Per-Click

Advertising using Google AdWords campaigns (Pay-Per-Click) can generate instant revenue for a business.  The adverts are tuned directly to a users search terms and instantly sell a relevant product, offer or service.  The adverts also allow you to achieve a Page 1 paid position on Google and leverage off large search volumes in a prime position.  If the landing page is well designed, the Ads will generally offer a high conversion rate as users clicking the ads are more likely to act instantly.

Achieving success is unquestionably the goal of any business and in this current global economic environment every business needs to use all the opportunities available to them to drive sales and stay ahead of the competition.

First let’s look at an example that shows how small improvements in the conversion rate can result in greater increases in profits.

How Your Conversion Rate Affects Profits

Example: Assume you are an online retailer buying traffic on Google AdWords. Your average profit on one sale is $100 excluding advertising cost.

Scenario 1: Your monthly advertising budget is $5,000 and your metrics are:

• Cost per click: $0.50
• Clicks: 10,000
• Conversion rate: 1%
• Sales: 100 (= 10,000 clicks x 1%)
• Cost per sale: $50 (= $5000 budget / 100 sales)
• Profit per sale: $50 (= $100 sale amount – $50 cost per sale)
• Overall profit: $5,000 (= $50 x 100 sales)

Scenario 2: Now let’s assume your website conversion rate is 1.25%, – a conversion rate increase of 25%. Your advertising budget remains the same at $5,000, but the metrics become:

• Cost per click: $0.50
• Clicks: 10,000
• Conversion rate: 1.25%
• Sales: 125 (= 10,000 clicks x 1.25%)
• Cost per sale: $40 (= $5000 budget / 125 sales)
• Profit per sale: $60 (= $100 sale amount – $40 cost per sale)
• Overall profit: $7,500 (= $60 x 125 sales)

Conclusion: What’s the impact of the conversion rate increase on profits? In this scenario a 25% improvement in the conversion rate leads to 50% more profit! If you are currently running a Pay Per Click campaign, any improvement in the website conversion rate will lead to a proportionally higher increase in profit.

5 Ways To Improve Your Conversion Rate

So here are five fast ways to improve your website conversion rate. In order to evaluate whether your changes actually produce better (and statistically significant) results, we recommend using the free Google Website Optimizer, a Google tool that allows you to split test changes on your website.

1. Improve The Headline On Your Landing Page - The headline is one of the most important elements on your page. It needs to grab people’s attention and convince them that they have landed on the right website.

2. Split Test The Copy On Your Page - If your visitor has read the headline on your page and hasn’t left yet, the text on the page has to convince the prospect to take the desired action (signup, enquire, buy). Make sure that it is easy to read, well structured and always include a call to action at the end of the page.

3. Test Different Images - Images support the message on your pages. Just because you like an image doesn’t mean that your target audience will also like it. Test different images in order to find out what your customer demographic responds to best.

4. Establish Credibility - Why should someone trust your business or buy from you? Especially online, it is important to establish credibility. Are you a member of an association in your industry? Have you won an award in the past? Do you have raving customer testimonials (video testimonials are best!)? Wherever you can include evidence that proves your credibility.

5. Test Different Offers - Testing different offers is a great way to improve conversion rates. You may want to test adding a special guarantee (365 days versus 30 days), increasing or decreasing prices or offering free shipping. There are many ways to re-package your offer to make it more attractive to your visitors.

So, isn’t it time you start working on your conversion rate?

So, how well is your business doing online? And just how effective is your online marketing strategy?

Here are 5 questions you should know the answer to…

1. What Keywords Are You Ranking For And Are These Of Value?

Are the keywords you are ranking for on Google high value keywords for your business? And do these keywords bring traffic to your website?

There are three keyword types that people refer to in regards to search engine marketing. These include:

• Navigational: this keyword type is used to define when someone is looking for a specific web page and has some knowledge on the result they want their search to find.
• Informational: this is a keyword people will use when researching or looking for information on a particular topic.
• Transactional: a keyword commonly used by consumers when they are looking to purchase a product or service.

An effective Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategy will focus on keywords that are relevant to your business, are transactional keywords (rather than informational) and have the highest monthly traffic volume on Google. There is no point ranking on Google for keywords that are informational and have no search volume as it will not drive traffic to your website to convert into sales.

TIP: Use the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to gain insight into the monthly traffic for each keyword you are optimising for on Google. Make sure when you do this that you look at the ‘Exact’ match keywords rather than ‘broad’ match. Exact match looks at the traffic for that exact keyword phrase. Broad match will display all traffic for the exact phrase as well as other similar or relevant variations.

2. What Is The Conversion Rate Of Your Website?

A website ‘conversion rate’ is the rate at which your website converts visitors into sales or enquiries. If you are receiving 500 monthly visitors to your website and from this you receive 5 enquiries for the month, then your website conversion rate is 1%.

TIP: Are you ranking in Google and getting traffic to your website but not gaining a return via sales or leads? Rather than paying more money for more visitors to your site, invest in a new website design with a modern look that trumps your competition and has the added marketing science integrated. This will not only give your online business a makeover but also significantly increase the enquiries or sales from your current visitor numbers.

3. How Much Organic Non-Branded Traffic Is Your Website Receiving?

Use Google Analytics to track your visitor numbers, or ‘traffic’. Here are some traffic terms to help you understand three important types of traffic:

• Paid Traffic: This is traffic or visitors you receive to your website through a paid campaign or Google AdWords. If you are currently utilising a Pay-Per-Click strategy, the traffic this generates is viewed as ‘paid’ traffic.
• Organic Traffic: Organic traffic refers to those visitors who have found and accessed your site through a search engine like Google.
• Branded Traffic: This refers to those who have searched for your name or brand in the search engines. For example If someone was to search for ‘Web Profits’ in Google and then click through to the website, this would be considered ‘branded’ traffic.

TIP: Rather than tracking repeat customers or people who already know your brand, it is important to know how accessible you are to those searching for what you do so you can access new markets and customers. Therefore, new customers can be seen through looking at organic, non-branded traffic. This traffic type should be the focus of you online marketing and SEO initiatives.

4. What Is Your Current CPA?

CPA is an acronym for ‘Cost Per Acquisition’ and refers to how much money you are spending for a lead or sale. The CPA determines how cost-effective your Google AdWords campaign is.

EXAMPLE: If your company spends $100 through Google AdWords on 100 visitors and 5 of them contact you through an enquiry, then your CPA is $20. To ensure cost-effectiveness you also need to look at your average sale worth and the profit you receive on each sale or product. If your company has an average sale worth of $1,000, then this CPA is awesome!

5. Do You Have A Social Media Presence?

With the increase in popularity of social media, and 48% of the Australian population on Facebook, having a social media presence for your business is becoming a must. This platform is becoming a great way for you to create a two way conversation with your market, and make sure your business is the name on consumers’ lips when considering your service or product.

TIP: We have reached an age where money really can buy friends – but what sort of friends are you really paying for? Quantity or quality? While 5,000 friends may look impressive on Facebook or Twitter, this would be worthless if they didn’t amount to any sales or future business. Make sure you attract and engage with Facebook Fans and Twitter Followers who are in your target market, are potential consumersor clients and have an interest in your brand to ensure the money is invest is done with advancing your business in mind.

So, how effective is your business online?

The wide spread release of Google+ also saw the platform gain a massive 10 million users signed up after mere 2 weeks of the network being live.

So, how will Google+ affect social media? And given Google’s dominance in terms of search, what will be the affect of Google+ on search engine optimisation (SEO)?

Here are 5 areas to watch as Google+ functionality further develops…

1. Integration with Gmail

Before Google+ launched, Gmail received a makeover in preparation to integrate Google’s mail service with the social network. Given that there are 250 million people with Gmail accounts worldwide (as at July 2011), this gave Google+ a powerful starting point to build the 10 million users they gained in just 2 weeks. To add to this, after Google+ beta moved from it’s ‘invitation only’ stage, the integration with Gmail made it easy for people to invite their friends by using Gmail contacts and Google verified email accounts.

The Google+ navigation bar is present when logged into Gmail and therefore Google+ is accessible through:

• Gmail
• Google Search
• Google Documents (Google’s online cloud infrastructure)

INTERESTING FACT: While it only took Google+ 16 days to reach 10 million users, Facebook reached the milestone after 852 days, and Twitter in 780 days.

2. Circles

Hailed as the ‘selling point’ of the social network, Google+’s ‘Circles’ functionality is a friend management service. Circles allows you to select ‘groupings’ for your friends and the people you Follow on Google+.

Understanding Google+ Circles is essential to mastering the social network. So, what opportunities do the Circles function present for marketers?

• The Circles functionality focuses on the concept that as humans we want to share different information with different groups of people. Therefore Circles allows you to separate the people you follow on Google+ into groups.
• From a marketing perspective, this allows for each Circle to be marketed to in a unique way or by utilising a specific, targeted message that relates to that particular group / Circle.
• The people you follow can be placed in more than one Circle – and when posting a Google+ update you can choose which group sees the information you are sharing.
• Similarly, when browsing your Google+ Stream (that contains all updates shared by your Followers in your Circles), you can choose between seeing all Circle information, or specific Circle updates in your Stream.

INTERESTING FACT: Facebook has this same functionality, but is called ‘Friend Lists’. The functionality was launched quietly in December 2007 with the same objectives as Google+ Circles.

3. Brand Pages

Google+ has held off on launching Brand Pages on Google+ in order to get the functionality of this important area of the platform perfect. Some businesses jumped the gun and sigedn up for Google+ as soon as the network launched. However, all businesses have been asked to politely leave and wait patiently for the brand focused pages to be launched.

This shows Google’s commitment to the business-focused area of the platform. Will this work? While moving Facebook’s +750 million users over to Google+ may be a challenge, enticing businesses to move over may offer a bigger opportunity for the social network. Along with a commitment and history of online advertising knowledge, Google+ and the Brand Pages are creating much buzz among businesses and marketers.

Why Google+ Brand Pages could hurt Facebook Business Pages:

• Better Analytics: Google+ Brand Pages will be integrated with Google Analytics. And for anyone who has used Google Analytics in the past, you can appreciate the value this will add in analysing and assessing the value of your Brand Page from a marketing perspective. In light of this, the Facebook Analytics, ‘Facebook Insights’ may need a refurbishment in order to compete with the detailed information Google Analytics will present to Google+ Brand Pages.
• More Customisation: It has been rumoured the Google+ Brand Pages will allow for more customisation. This doesn’t just refer to advertising and placement of ads on the actual brand pages, but also to branded page skins. These branded skins would be similar to those being currently used on YouTube. Having this function limited to Brand Pages will ensure the issues faced by MySpace when profile skins became popular does not occur for Google+.
• Further impact on search rankings: Most importantly, Brand Pages on Google+ present SEO opportunities in further building search engine rankings, specifically Google. Due to the growing importance of social networks, content and links shared on these platforms can have a positive effect in gaining further credibility for your website online. With Google+ already aligned with Google – the SEO ramifications could be significant. Will having a Brand Page on Google+ for your business help your search rankings? Will getting more +1’s via Google+ push your website rankings higher?
• Learning from the mistakes of Facebook: Google+ has the advantage of piggybacking off the mistakes, as well as the best elements of Facebook Business Pages. Google+ is attempting to brand Facebook as the place to be for a ‘social brand’ or celebrity. In doing this, they identifying a point of difference between Facebook Business Pages and Google+ Brand Pages. Focusing to get more business-minded brands utilising the platform, for example insurance, finance, health etc.. If Google+ Brand Pages turn out to be a close replica to Facebook Business Pages, the race to harnessing the business social media market could be a fast over.

4. The Google +1 Button

The +1 Button is Google’s version of the Facebook’ ‘Like’. Google has outlined that the +1 button signifies when you think something is ‘pretty cool’ or something ‘you should check out’. The +1 button is about publicly giving a business, website or article your stamp of approval.

You can only +1 items when logged into Gmail, and you can +1 in Google Search, Google+ or any website that has integrated the +1 button.

What does the +1 button mean for SEO and search?

• When logged into Gmail, search results will show if websites ranking have been +1′d by any of your contacts within Gmail or on Google+ . Although not yet confirmed, it is speculated that the more +1′s your website receives, the more online authority you have in order to gain further keyword rankings in Google.
• The +1 statistics can be tracked through Google Analytics in a new section launched in the latest Google Analytics version update. This ‘Social’ data is located within the Visitors section and looks at engagement, action and pages.
• When in the Google+ interface, you can see what content your friends have +1′d. Similarly, other people can also track the content you are +1-ing.

5. Integration with Google Search

As of early August, Google has begun integrating Google+ into Google search results. This has sparked the beginning of ‘Social Search’.

How does this work?

1. Whenever a Google+ user publicly shares a link on the social network, an annotation now appears under the search result in Google.
2. This only appears in people’s search who are friends with the person that shared the link in Google+.
3. The ‘Social Search’ component within Google highlights what links your friends are sharing on the Internet and returns results it believes based on your friends interests.

While it is not yet clear the exact impact Google+ will have on social media and SEO, it is definitely a social network to keep an eye on…

5 Fast Facts on Google+:

• 3 weeks after Google+ launched, Google’s value increased by $20 billion
• Google+ rose to 10 million users a mere 2 weeks after launching. However it is speculated that there are currently 25 million users with 4.5 million active users worldwide.
• Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook is currently the most Followed person on Google+ with 474,702 Followers. Sitting in second place is Google CEO, Larry Page.
• In July 2011, Lady Gaga had more Twitter followers (11.7 million) than Google+ had members (10 million)
• Google+ has recently integrated the ‘Hangout’ function with YouTube. This allows people to watch videos from YouTube together through Google+.

Twitter recently hit 200 million users. While the platform gained popularity through the sheer number of celebrities using the social networking site, Twitter offers significant opportunities for businesses… not only for building your online brand but creating engaging conversations with your target market in order to generate leads.

But getting started with Twitter can be daunting, especially with the use of @’s and #’s shaping conversations. So, here are some tips to help you get started with using Twitter for your business…

1. Opening a Twitter Account

Unlike Facebook, Twitter does not have dedicated ‘business’ accounts. Therefore, you simply need to setup a Twitter account. This process is easy, but there are some simple rules that can ensure your account is setup and optimised effectively for you business:

1. Twitter asks for your name when signing up. In order to have your business name, instead of your personal name – it is best to put the business name in this location. This will ensure people are able to find you easily on Twitter by searching for your company name.
2. Once you have setup your account, make sure to add an image and choose a background that is simple and professional. You can do this by clicking on your business name in the top right-hand corner and selecting ‘Settings’.
3. It is also important to add a short bio that shares your business’ main service areas, and also outlines why people would want to follow your business on Twitter. As there is a 160-character limit, you may need to play with the wording to get this right.
4. Make sure you include your business website URL so it displays on your Twitter profile allowing your followers to quickly click through to your website if required.

QUICK TIP: If your business name is not available on Twitter, make sure to find an alternative that is not too long, and is as close to your business name as possible. For example: @Web_Profits

2. Twitter Terms

Twitter has a 140-character limit for each message, or ‘Tweet’, shared on the platform. In order to make the most of this character limit, there are certain functions you need to be aware of. Here is a list of Twitter terms and functions:

• Tweet: A Tweet is simply the message and content you share on Twitter. On Facebook, it is called a ‘Status Update’ and on Twitter it is called a ‘Tweet’.
• Follow / Follower: On Twitter, your fans or people who ‘Follow’ you are known as ‘Followers’. It is ideal to Follow back anyone who Follows you who is relevant to your business and industry. This is good Twitter etiquette, and not only shows you are active on Twitter but that you are interested in what your Follower(s) have to say.
• Mention: You can mention other people on Twitter, and similarly people can mention you by utilising the name you chose when signing up to Twitter with an @ symbol. For example, if you were writing a Tweet that included a link to an article written by the Australian Newspaper, you could include @Australian to show the source of the information you are sharing.
• ReTweet: When you see content / a Tweet shared by another person on Twitter, you can choose to share this content within your own Twitter. This is known as ‘ReTweeting’. This Tweet you have chosen to share will then appear exactly as it is displayed on your business’ Twitter.
• Twitter Stream: The Twitter Stream is the main area your Twitter opens up to after signing in. This ‘stream’ is a culmination of all the people you ‘Follow’ on Twitters Tweets.
• Message: A ‘Message’ is simply a direct message that you can send privately to a user on Twitter. The user must already ‘Follow’ you on Twitter to be able to send a direct message.
• Hashtag: Hashtags # are a really important element of Twitter, not only to assist building your followers, but also for promoting your credibility on the platform. When writing the content for your Tweets, look at the main topics that relate to the information you are sharing. These main topics are what should be hashed. It is also important to check Twitter by performing a search to ensure your hashed topic is ‘trending’. Utilising Hashtags also ensure that your shared content will appear effectively in searches performed on Twitter.
• Trending: The term ‘trending’ is used in Twitter for when a topic is being widely discussed or Hashtagged. It is ideal to only hash topics that are ‘trending’ in order to ensure your content shows up in a popular topic area in the search component of Twitter.

QUICK TIP: Make sure not to use more than 4 Hashtags per Tweet. Hashtags used in moderation are effective, so make sure you hash the most important topics in your Tweet.Think of Hashtags as the theme of your Tweet.

3. Developing Effective Tweets

Tweeting on Twitter allows businesses to quickly and effectively share content, news flashes, and sound-byte information. The 140-character restriction can often make developing content difficult. Here are some quick tips you can follow to ensure you are Tweeting the right type of content for your business:

Tweet Tips:

• Your Tweet should add value to the people reading them and those who Follow you… they should provide education or relevant industry updates. Share blog articles from your website, industry news, articles, videos and photos.
• If you have a blog on your website, make sure to share these articles on your Business’ Twitter. The more articles you write for your blog, the more content you can Tweet through Twitter that provides a link back to your website, which is the ultimate goal.
• Like Facebook, it is important to not sell or push your business, services or products through the Tweets you share on Twitter. Focus on education, updates and engagement.
• Engagement is the key with the information you Tweet. The more interesting the content you share on Twitter, the more likely you are to build Followers and keep those already Following you. The Twitter Follower can be fickle, so it is important to maintain your Followers’ interests.
• When sharing content on Twitter, it is ideal to share the link to the content you are referring to. This not only builds your Followers’ interest, but also assists with further educating your market. When sharing online articles on Twitter, use link-shorteners to be able to help assess click rates. A free link shortener option is http://bit.ly

QUICK TIP: If you are just getting your business involved with Twitter, as a starting point try Tweeting twice per day. You can then build this up to focusing on Tweeting quality content 15 times per day. It is important to keep momentum within Twitter for your business. To ensure you keep your Followers interested, make sure to build a strategy that is manageable, with Tweets scheduled daily / weekly.

From a business perspective, Twitter allows you to quickly share information, gather market intelligence and build valuable relationships with people who are interested and care about your company and your brand.

Make sure you’re part of the conversation about your brand on Twitter…

Online copy calls for a unique writing style. Its audience is the time-poor and any mistake can kill effectiveness in an instant, thereby killing value. The new Google algorithm ‘Panda’ is designed to seek out poor content and penalise the websites that post or link to it. More than ever, effective and informative content is crucial to enhancing your website’s performance. Here are the 5 biggest mistakes to look out for and eliminate in your online copy.

1. Factual mistakes

These destroy online content’s whole reason for being. Great online copy is about giving value to your audience. Misleading them through half-truths or poorly researched copy will not only drive them away, but potentially damage your reputation with Google. Don’t skimp on the research stage. Evidence of research will instil trust in your readers and set you apart from the competition. A great blog is one that offers reliable, interesting information that’s compiled in a user-friendly way.

2. Grammar and punctuation errors

This is the quickest way to lose authority, and your audience. You may be an expert in your field; however, all that is representing you in online content are words on a screen. Badly constructed sentences will have your readers questioning your knowledge and expertise. This can have the knock-on effect of taking value away from your website in general. Reacquaint yourself with acceptable grammar and punctuation usage in online content and follow them. Test out your content on a non-expert. Fresh eyes can usually catch most errors and ambiguities.

3. Boring headings

Write a boring heading and you won’t have an audience to begin with. The old adage to never judge a book by its cover is not only incorrect in the book industry, but incorrect times ten in online content. The main headline is your one and only hook. It must not only be alluring, but information rich. And on top of that, it needs to be crammed into a few, well-chosen words. Spend time etching out a headline that will grab the audience. Remember that online readers are scanners – subheadings need to encompass the main ideas of your article.

4. Unsuitable as online content

People read for a range of reasons, and online readers have a very specific motivation – the need for useful, quick information. When preparing your online content, do so with the aim of educating with clarity and confidence. It’s important you put yourself in the reader’s shoes when designing online content. What is it that your article offers them? Will they be able to understand it? How fast? Remember that an online audience is in a very different mindset to that of a book lover who has settled down with their favourite novel. It’s all about informing, quickly!

5. Wordy

While long, flowery sentences have their place in literature, they have no place in the online world. Your content needs to be widely accessible, not only to your industry, but to anyone who may find themselves on your blog. Deciphering overly complicated sentences is a major turn off in the online environment. So, aim for short, crisp sentences. Replace redundant adjectives with better, more accurate verbs. And if you can’t say a sentence in a breath, get rid of it!

If Google were ever going to rank all of the websites in its index in a single list, PageRank would be the sort-by column of that list. It’s just a number. A probability. Calculated from the incoming links to a page. You want the PageRank formula? Here it is…

What does that mean? It doesn’t really matter… it’s simply a numerical formula. The sum of the value sent to your website, through links, from any websites on the Internet, regardless of source, anchor text, context or any other data. PageRank doesn’t care what your target keywords are, it’s just saying “this is how likely you are to be found on the web randomly”. But there’s one major thing missing from that: Relevance.

Relevance Is The Key To Achieving Top SEO Rankings

Google makes it very clear in a number of articles that they are dedicated to giving you exactly what you want. And while PageRank may give an indication of your website’s importance, relevance is how they determine ‘what you want’.

The thing to remember is that your position in the search results is dependent on the keyword phrase being used. Each keyword phrase delivers different search results because different web pages will be seen as relevant to each phrase.

The first step with a new website is getting into the index and as long as you have any amount of PageRank, Google will index you. But once you appear anywhere near the first few pages of search results for your target keyword phrase you can forget about your PageRank. When it comes to improving your website’s ranking from page 3 to page 1, the PageRank of that website is really quite unimportant.

Why?

It’s a common dilemma for many people; I have a PageRank of 4, so why does a competitor with a PageRank of 3, or 2, or even 1, still outrank me? It’s a fair question that comes from a fairly common misconception. Google PageRank has been hyped up over the years as a strong SEO measurement tool, and it can be. But that hype has made people think that it directly correlates to your position in the search results when it actually doesn’t. There are so many factors that the PageRank algorithm doesn’t take into account that Google’s ranking algorithm does.

SEO Ranking Factors Beyond PageRank

• Anchor text – One of the most important factors in a link to your site is the text that is used within that link. That text says to Google, “this is what I think that page is about”. It stands to reason then that Google will use this text as a key factor when ranking that web page if that keyword is used as a search. PageRank on the other hand only looks at the URL within the link. So while Google’s algorithm is looking for textual indications of the topic a page and relevance to a given keyword, PageRank simply counts it as a link to the URL from a page with a value of X.
• Position on page – The more prominent a link is on the page, the more importance Google is going to give it. Google is able to separate the various sections of a web page and will give more importance to particular areas. A footer link, for example, is less important than a header link or a link in the middle of the page and if the same anchor text or URL is used twice, priority is given to the first link that appears on the page. Google accounts for that in its ranking algorithm. PageRank simply counts it as a link to the URL from a page with a value of X.
• Surrounding text – The text that surrounds a link to your website is considered the link’s context. If the context in which a link is used relates directly to the anchor text of the link, which also directly relates to the destination page, the link is going to have a higher importance in ranking for that keyword than the same link in an unrelated context or an unrelated section on the page. This context is taken into account when Google ranks a website for that given keyword. PageRank simply counts it as a link to the URL from a page with a value of X.
• Topic of page – Much like the surrounding text of a link, the web page and even the entire website linking to you is also considered the context of that link. If an entire web page is directly related to the anchor text of a link, which is directly related to the destination page, the link is going to have even more importance in ranking for that keyword than just having surrounding text related. Again, Google takes this context into account when ranking sites for the target keyword. Regardless of context, PageRank simply counts it as a link to the URL from a page with a value of X.
• Topic of destination – Now that we’ve looked at the websites linking to you, let’s take a look at your website. Who should Google trust most in determining what a page is about? Hypothetically, if you were Google and you had 500 links to a site that say ‘music’ from pages about music but the page title, description, all the text on the page and all of the site’s internal links to that page are about finance, which would you use? What you tell Google is far more important than any one link from any site. Sure, if you get enough ‘music’ links pointing to your site you may eventually rank for ‘music’ – just search for ‘click here’ – but what you say about your own web page on your own website is more important in determining the topic of that page than any one of those links. In the same scenario, those 500 unrelated links would still add to the PageRank of your website. So while Google’s algorithm considers more thoroughly if the links are useful for the keyword, PageRank simply counts them as 500 links to the URL from pages with values of X.
• Destination relevance – When someone searches for a keyword, Google isn’t just looking for the ‘most valuable’ website; it’s looking for the most relevant web page for the keyword that was entered. Google isn’t looking for the website with the highest numerical value; it wants the web page that the searcher will find the most useful. And to find that page it uses all of the above factors and more.

Only after Google takes all of those factors into account does PageRank enter the equation. If, hypothetically, two websites were exactly identical in terms of relevance to the searched keyword (which is extremely unlikely), PageRank would be the determining ranking factor between those two sites.

1. What is split testing?

Split-testing is the process by which we create two different versions of the same web page and, utilising Google’s Website Optimizer tool, we present one version to half of your website visitors and the other version to the other half. We then analyse the performance of each web page by tracking the conversions each version produced, be it a product purchase, a newsletter sign-up or any other measurable action.

We then collate the data, align it with the variations in the design of the two web pages and learn something new about what produces a higher level of performance. Doesn’t sound very designy though does it?

But this is the paradox of web design as an art form. It’s a sym-biotic relationship with the linear world of code and analytics.

This is how it works…

2. Red makes it go faster? Or… The power of split testing!

At the most basic level we simply test button colours (a button often being the primary call-to-action on your web page and the first point of call for conversions).

And yes, for the first time we can test if the age old saying holds true… does red make it go faster? Well not faster in terms of speed but driving higher conversions on your website? Absolutely.

There have been countless split-test results that have proved the power of red, from buttons and sales elements to individual navigation items, regardless of the general colour scheme of the design.

Red draws the eye and makes an impact. Everyone knows this and that alone is no revelation. But in web design you can’t simply make your entire website red and expect it to convert. Split-testing allows us to target elements specifically. Rather than leaving the result to an arbitrary ‘feeling’ we source specific data on ‘how’ to use the strength of red.

That’s the key.

And without the ability to test one page against another there’s simply no definable moment to use as a stepping-stone to improved understanding and execution of web design.

This is split-testing’s strength and the impact it’s having on what was always the arbitrary exercise of web design is ground breaking.

3. End result? Testing is redefining the way we think about design.

We are re-evaluating everything we think we know about web design and this has one overriding benefit – we’re expanding the concept of what’s possible on a daily basis rather than resting on what we simply believe to be true.

That is no small thing.

It’s an exciting time to be a web designer and even more so to be a business online.

But there’s one important caveat: Your website needs to be performing to some degree prior to split-testing. Split-testing an underperforming website with minor changes such as buttons or headlines is not where the real benefit of split-testing lies.

How well is your current website performing? If the answer is in the negative then talk to us about a free website health check. Let’s set you on the path to improving your website, improving your results and ultimately making your business a great success online!

Google has recently released Google Analytics v5; their new version of the Analytics product, offering a more intuitive user interface and promising a completely new user experience. It still contains an enormous volume of powerful information, just presented with a fresh look and feel. Whether you’re sold on the new version of Google Analytics or still traversing the old, the point remains…if you don’t know where to look to find the key data that will inform your business decisions then its usefulness is immediately devalued.

A good strategy when first starting out with Google Analytics is to keep it simple. Think about what you’re trying to measure and the information you need to do this. Here are 6 of the most common questions businesses might ask themselves about their online marketing efforts and the reports available in Google Analytics to help answer them.

1. Who is visiting my site and how did they find their way there?

Google Analytics Navigation (New): Traffic Sources > Incoming Sources > All Traffic

Most, if not all, businesses would be interested in the answer to this question; even if the sole purpose of your website is to have an internet presence and nothing more. This report can reveal a lot about where your visitors are coming from. For example, you might realise that:-

• The majority of your traffic is generated organically through Google, reinforcing your marketing spend on SEO and Google rankings; or
• Your PPC campaign is working effectively to drive more visitors to your site; or
• A large proportion of your traffic is being generated directly by visitors typing your site URL into their browser indicating perhaps the success of an offline marketing campaign or an increasing brand awareness of your business online (TIP: You can use the Google URL Builder to track offline advertising performance).

2. What keywords are visitors searching for to find my site?

Google Analytics Navigation (New): Traffic Sources > Incoming Sources > Search > Overview

This report highlights the keywords generating the greatest amount of traffic to your site. This information provides valuable insight into what keywords you should be targeting in your SEO or PPC campaign. Further segmenting the data in the table by Medium, allows you to easily isolate which keywords are performing the best for organic search and which have the highest click through success for PPC Advertising.

3. Which of my online marketing strategies is generating the most traffic to my site?

Google Analytics Navigation (New): Traffic Sources > Incoming Sources > Search > Overview

It is often useful to assess the performance of your SEO and PPC campaigns by looking at the proportion of traffic being driven to your site from each strategy. Adding two segments to this basic report (Paid Search Traffic and Non-paid Search Traffic) gives you even more flexibility to filter your data and analyse the behaviour of your visitors from each of these sources. This can be quite revealing; where SEO may generate more traffic to your site, Paid Search Traffic (PPC) may have a higher goal conversion rate making it a profitable strategy to pursue in the short term.

4. Is my site doing a good job of converting visitors into customers?

Google Analytics Navigation (New): Conversions > Goals > Overview

This should be the key question being asked by any lead generation or Ecommerce site. Regardless of the amount of traffic being directed to your site, if you’re not converting this traffic into sales leads or closing an online transaction, then your site is not generating income for you. The conversion rate (number of conversions divided by number of visits) of your site is the best measure of your online profitability.

It is important to keep in mind though that whilst online sales might be the main goal you are interested in; your website actually delivers many more business opportunities. What about tracking enquiries submitted, phone calls made, and even newsletter registrations? All of these goals can provide you with further valuable data on the performance of your site.

5. What are my visitors interested in when they get to my site

Google Analytics Navigation (New): Content > Site Content > Pages

This report identifies the most commonly viewed pages on your site. These pages offer you the greatest opportunities for split testing and the potential to maximise return from advertising spend. Information in this report is particularly useful to blog sites; providing an instant listing of the most popular posts and what topics resonated with their readers.

6. What could be causing visitors to leave my site

Google Analytics Navigation (New): Content > Site Content > Exit Pages

No one wants to think that their site might be losing business for them. In reality though, this is often the case. This report allows you to consider what areas of your site might require additional work to help retain visitors. There are many reasons why people might leave your site from a particular page:-

• Perhaps the content on the page isn’t speaking to your visitors;
• Perhaps the design of the page is cluttered and confuses the message being delivered; or
• Perhaps the page doesn’t contain clear call-to-actions

All of these reasons can be easily addressed; turning a non-performing page into one which converts well.

This article has only begun to scratch the surface of the information available in Google Analytics. It demonstrates though how even the most simple reports have the power to measure the effectiveness of your online marketing efforts.

Are you using Google Analytics? If not, it’s time to get started.