From all of us at WebWise, have a safe and very
Merry Christmas!

The WebWise Design & Marketing office will be closed until Tuesday,
December 27, as we spend time with family and friends.

Our Support Desk will be monitored for emergency tickets.

Wishing everyone a safe and very Happy Thanksgiving holiday!

The WebWise Design & Marketing office will be closed from Thanksgiving Day until Monday, November 28, as we give thanks with family and friends.

Our Support Desk will be monitored for emergency tickets.

That said, here are the numbers:

Knowing those numbers should affect how you approach search engine optimization (SEO), and your Google AdWords campaigns. You do have both of those in your search engine marketing strategy, don’t you?

• You, your boss, relative, or friend,  saw or read about, what they feel, is a cool feature on another website.
• Your  ___________ (fill in the blank) took a class on web design, and the instructor said  __________(fill in the blank).
• Several businesses similar to yours have large photos at the very top of the page, and rank well in Google Search results.
• Several businesses similar to yours have small photos at the very top of the page, and rank well in Google Search results.
• Several businesses similar to yours have no photos at the very top of the page, and rank well in Google Search results.
• Several businesses similar to yours have videos at the very top of the page, and rank well in Google Search results.
• You read on Facebook that you should __________(fill in the blank).
• You read on a blog with SEO tips that you should __________(fill in the blank).
• You saw a Tweet that said you should __________(fill in the blank).
• @@@@@@@ (Celebrity name withheld) had I guy on her TV show talking about having a YouTube video on all your main pages helping in Google rankings.

What often is forgotten is your target audience. Ask yourself, will the changes make your site more attractive and/or more user-friendly for your target audience? Is your website better because of the changes? Do those changes better describe the benefits of your services, or the quality of your products? How will your audience perceive you, your company, or what you offer?

When reviewing our client’s websites and prospective changes, we sometimes have to remind them, they are not the users, nor are we. We are changing their website for their target audience, not us, or the boss, relative, friend, or someone on TV. It is the website visitor we should be considering.

Are you making changes to your website for yourself, or for your target audience? There is only one correct answer.

• Proof before you tweet
• Don’t retweet an url without clicking on and reading the landing page. It may not be what you think.
• Don’t use all 140 characters. Leave room so you get credit when retweeted.
• Spread your tweets out over time. Don’t flood your followers with ten tweets at a time.
• Don’t forget, you are not tweeting to @justsomeoneyouknow. Potentially, millions can see your tweet
• Help others. Retweet what is interesting to you and hopefully your followers.
• If you want to get tweeted, retweet others.
• If you want to get retweeted for specific topics, use hashtags (“#” Symbols)

For those of you who want more Twitter information, the excellent “The Ultimate Guide to Twitter Marketing” by @Copyblogger is a great resource.

And, of course, we always appreciate follows: Follow @webwisedesign

Nearly every small business doesn’t update their website content  often enough. I know we certainly fall short in that regard, though I do intend for us to change that. Why is updating the content on your website important? Well, your website visitors are important! Repeat visitors deserve to see new content regularly. After all, there has to be a reason for them to be repeat visitors, and I mean other than when they are looking for your customer service or support contact information. You don’t really want them coming to your website only when they need support, do you? 

So, why else should you update your website regularly? Google and other search engines are good reasons. Google and the others are in the business of providing relevant, and fresh, results. If your website is updated frequently with well-written content, your website will get crawled more frequently by Google, Bing and other search engines. If you have written your content well, and it is relevant to what your intended market is searching for, your website has a better chance of achieving higher positions in search engine results. Google LOVES fresh, relevant, well-written content. Your customers and prospects will appreciate the most up-to-date information about your products, services, or company news.

I Know. I know. We are all busy and it takes time to update our websites. Well, we need (I swear I am going to try to practice what I preach) to realize we don’t have to write a  PhD Dissertation regularly to keep Google, et al happy. Most businesses continually improve, enhance, or add products or services. We can talk about how different customers use our products or services. We can talk about what is happening in our store or office, or locations. We can give tips and hints on how to use what we offer better or more efficiently. Be the expert. Get the idea?

Please remember websites are not “build it and they will come.”  It takes some effort to get positive results from your website.

So, how do we do that easily? Well, if you have a blog or “What’s New” area on your website, you already have the tools. If you don’t, ask your web developer if a blog is right for you. If you have a static website that your web developer updates for you, add a ”What’s New” area or page to your website, and then regularly send them updates. Open a free Twitter account, and put a widget (free from Twitter) that shows your latest Tweets on your home or other frequently visited page. If you have a Facebook page, do the same.

Take a look at your current website analytics, and write down the average number of monthly visitors, pages visited. and their time on your website. Start updating at least monthly, or weekly, or daily. After three months take a look at those statistics again. I am sure you will see the difference.

Google will visit your website more often, index your fresh, relevant, well-written content, and your increased number of website visitors will give you more opportunities.

Facebook Distribution from www.checkfacebook.com

It may be time for you to seriously consider advertising on Facebook. Now, I know many of you will say, “I don’t use Facebook,” or, “I don’t like Facebook.” You certainly have the right to feel that way. There are many things I don’t like about Facebook, but it is undeniable that many, many people do use and like it. Many of them are, or could be, your customers or prospects. According to CheckFacebook.com, as of April 16, 2011 there are 653,150,280 Facebook users globally. The number of users where it could impact most of our readers, here in the United States, is a healthy 154,869,960. Yes, you read it correctly. There are nearly 155 million Facebook users in the U.S. Now, not all of those users are active, but it is simply a market that should not be ignored.

Aside from the sheer number of people, what makes Facebook so attractive to advertisers? Facebook has a near plethora of statistics related to users, including demographics some marketers salivate over. They include age groups, birthdays, likes, interests, relationship, sex, education, occupation, connections (even friends of those connected with your page), and many more.

Ad targeting can be as simple or detailed as you want it. For example you could create an ad offering a 50% discount for anyone with a May birthday, and display that ad to any Facebook user that is female, between 18 – 35, and lives within 30 miles of your business. You may choose the days and times your ads display.

So, what does it cost? Well, that is entirely up to you. Facebook charges per click in a manner similar to Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter. You may set a daily budget, and maximum cost per click. Our experience is that they noticeably try to get you to increase that budget, with increasingly higher suggested bids. Accordingly it takes some monitoring and tweaking to get the most clicks for your money. That seems to be especially true with small budgets. The bottom line on cost is that you can control it. You won’t spend more than you decide to budget.

I feel compelled to say, it is extremely important that you not only look at the reports Facebook Advertising provides, but you look closely at your website analytics. You will want to check the reports for “referring sites,” “bounce rate,” “navigation path,” and “time on site” results. If you are not seeing results there, or getting phone calls about your Facebook ad, you need to review why you are not reaching the goals you set for the ad campaign.

Creating the ads is relatively simple, but a bit challenging as you try to write an ad that conveys your message. You have some restrictions. The “Title” will be bold and blue, and can contain no more than 25 characters. Your ad must also include a working destination URL to a website (e.g.,www.examplewebsite.com) or a destination on Facebook like a Page or an Application. Your ad can have maximum size of 110 x 80 pixels. If you upload one larger, it will be automatically resized, but if it is not the same ratio as 110 x 80 it will be distorted. The body text may contain a maximum of 135 characters. You will find yourself rewriting several times to squeeze in what you want to convey. Facebook recommends you create multiple ads (that will not affect your cost) to find the one that works best.

So let’s recap to see if you should try Facebook Advertising.

• Do you want your advertising in front of large numbers of self-qualified, very targeted, visitors to a specific page on your website?
• Do you want to be able to control your monthly budget?
• Do you want to choose which days and hours your ads display?
• Do you want to quantify the amount you spend by seeing detailed reports?

My guess is the answer is yes to those questions.

The only caveat I’ll offer is that, as in all good things, it takes an investment of your time or that of a professional with experience. If you or your marketing professional, has experience, a proven track record using Google AdWords and other Pay-Per-Click platforms, and understand analytics, you will likely reach the goals you set for your Facebook advertising campaign. Of course, if you have time to learn, and put in the effort you may be successful as well.

Is Facebook Advertising a good fit for you?

Only you can make that decision.  Of course, we are always happy to help. Call us! 1-800-281-9993

When was the last time you looked at your website analytics? Here at WebWise, we matter-of-factly create an account and add Google Analytics code to the pages of nearly all new and redesigned websites we create. We also urge our clients to create a Google Account (most have them already), which we use to grant them access to their analytics. We give them the access info, and tell them that there is a near plethora of metrics to explore. Actually there are so many, and individually, the information from those metrics range from being a time-sucking curiosity, to extremely useful, to nearly critical to the success in reaching goals (You have goals for your website, don’t you?) set for their website, that it can be a bit overwhelming.

We do tell them the metrics we believe are most useful for websites in general, and their type of site specifically. Obviously, which metrics are most important can vary considerably depending on the type of website and the goals to be measured.

So, here is a short list for our clients who don’t remember which reports are important. It is also for the rest of you out there that are interested in the metrics that will likely give you most of what you need/want to know. Keep the list handy and you won’t have to spend hours of time poking around all of the ready-made reports (there are nearly 30 in the “Visitors” section alone), or creating an infinite number of custom reports. Of course, if you have the time to spend, there is a lot of interesting information in some of those reports as well.

The order in which they are listed is not necessarily indicative of their importance.

Dashboard – Site Usage: At the very least, check this report frequently.

Visitors Overview: This report gives you a quick view of the important totals for the reporting period. The GA reports default date range is the previous thirty days, and is easily changed to whatever you want. In this area, pay specific attention to:

• Absolute Unique Visitors
• Average Pageviews
• Bounce Rate
  • Explanation of this is too lengthy for this article, but important you understand

Traffic Sources

• All Traffic Sources
  • It is a good thing to know how traffic is getting to your website
• Referring Sites
  • It is a better thing to know just who really is sending you traffic

Content

• Top Content
  • By “Title” if you are unfamiliar with file names, and your webmaster did a good job with your page titles
• Top Landing Pages
  • Visitors don’t all come through your home page
• Keywords
  • This metric leads some astray. It is a measurement of keywords used while searching that actually brought visitors to your website. It is highly likely you have those keywords on your pages. It doesn’t necessarily mean they are the best keywords for you. If there are keywords you feel are important, and they are not showing up in this report, you need to look at your pages, and rewrite the relevant pages to include those keywords. That is, if you have researched to see if they are being used in searches, and they are.

  Of course, there is much more to say about Google Analytics, and other analytics offerings. If you regularly look at the reports listed above, and take some action based on what you find, your website will come closer to reaching the goals you have for it.

  You do have goals and expectations for your website, don’t you?

  USE Google Analytics to help measure and reach those goals, and please remember, adding up numbers is not measuring results. Dig to measure.