Why?

You want to know how people are finding you.

Why?

Well, let’s see…

Understand Your Audience Through Analytics

If you’ve never used it before, Google Analytics provides you with a very, very comprehensive overview of your site and its visitors. To be honest, it’s probably more than you could ever want to know. The meat and potatoes of Analytics come in the form of “traffic sources” and “content.” These components are perhaps self explanatory; how your visitors are getting to your site and what they’re looking at once they get there.

…and then Grow That Audience

This may seem somewhat arbitrary at first, but assuming that you want to grow your site’s readership and following, traffic and content are critical. For example, you notice that your travel blog’s post about sushi restaurants in New York is driving ten times more traffic than the rest of your posts. What does this mean? People like reading about New York. People like reading about sushi. Dually noted. Revisit those topics on your site, perhaps spinning your original blog into a “top five” list. You could take things a step further and write individual posts about each restaurant you talked about in your original post.

Google Analytics affords a truly unique opportunity in terms of creating new content for your site. Instead of taking a shot in the dark and attempting to overcome writer’s block to come up with something to write about, you can create content based on what you already know performs well. You may also discover what sort of content doesn’t perform well by examining bounce-rate and average time on-page.

…and Know (and Grow) Your SEO

And when we talk about content that “performs well,” we’re talking in terms of traffic and keywords. For example, if your site is ranking for a long-tail keyword (three or more words in a keyword phrase) such as “New York sushi restaurants,” you can use this information to your advantage by creating new content to help dominate that key-phrase. This doesn’t mean writing spam or keyword-stuffed drivel, but rather well-crafted blogs and articles with your keywords in place where it seems natural. Having such keywords under your belt will only do well to increase your traffic and readership, which ultimately leads to more clicks, conversions, shares, or whatever it is that you’re looking to do with your site. And really, if nothing else…

Google Analytics is Fun, Right?

You may not care about traffic or readership, and that’s fine. If nothing else, Google Analytics serves to satisfy your curiosity. Understanding how people find your site through Analytics is a fascinating and sometimes humorous exercise in seeing how both search engines work and how people utilize them. For example, I had visitors to my former blog from keywords such as “Brent vs. Usain Bolt” and “Bret Easton Ellis.” Such tidbits of information simply make running a site that much more satisfying.

The takeaway from all of this is rather simple. Google loves content, and through Analytics you may better determine where your focus should (or shouldn’t be) when it comes to content creation for your site or blog.

Plenty of people are scared of SEO. They don’t understand it. But really, at the end of day, content creation is probably the component easiest to grasp, understand and ultimately execute when it comes to making your site look friendly to Google.

Lately I’ve read a number of “how to survive Google Panda” posts on popular marketing blogs, and they all seem to be coming in at once. I recently wrote my own piece about creating quality content post-Panda and how it’s become a huge talking point in the Internet marketing world.

This recent Hubspot article details some examples of how sites can “protect” themselves for future updates rolled out by Google ala Panda.

But first, I couldn’t help but notice the article’s title. “How to Protect Your Website Content From Future Panda Updates.” It’s hard for me to tell by the article’s tone whether or not the title was intentionally fearful, oozing a subtext that sites need to “protect” themselves from Google (linkbait, perhaps). While they don’t necessarily believe that Google is “out to get us,” there are many Internet marketers that remain rather critical of the search giant’s practices. I personally feel that Google is putting their best foot forward when it comes to handling web spam and the concerns of the community. Google’s ultimate aim isn’t to force webmasters to make sites that appease them, but rather to encourage the growth of sites that cater to a positive user experience.

How is this achieved? Content.

Now, let’s talk about the article. Firstly, the author uses the “content is king” phrase right off the bat which further drives the ol’ cliché home. The thesis here is that improving your site post-Panda is all about content. There are two points that the author makes specifically that I feel are particularly interesting:

1. Post Content on a Regular, Frequent Basis

2. Don’t Over-optimize Your Content

The first point has been beaten to death by the Internet marketing community and should come as no surprise. Google loves sites that update frequently and comes up with fresh content on a regular basis. “How much” and “how often” are disputable, but this basic fact should be the cornerstone of any website looking to thrive. I’m tempted to say it’s a no-brainer, but really, it just makes sense. The sites that we love and visit on a daily basis update regularly. Whenever we visit, there’s something new. That’s why such sites are popular and Google has taken notice.

The second point is perhaps a bit more puzzling to those trying to wrap their heads around SEO. But think about it. Stuffing keywords and having immaculate site architecture might provide you with some garbage traffic, but quality, consistent content will bring you return visitors and more conversions. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; “perfect SEO” means absolutely nothing if you’re providing nothing of value to your visitors. Google’s algorithm is becoming smarter and swifter, and therefore it’s time for webmasters to adapt.

In short, content is still king. It’s sitting on the throne and doesn’t look to step down anytime soon.

This question was one of the first that came to mind when I entered the copywriting world and was introduced to Internet marketing. I became aware of the variety of sites making hundreds or thousands of dollars per day through affiliate revenue and was left puzzled. “Who actually clicks on these spammy-looking ads, let alone buys something from them?” To make a side-note here, I’m not talking so much about AdSense, as Google does a decent job of targeting their ads meanwhile also making them unobtrusive. Regardless, I didn’t understand how affiliate sites made money through flashy banners and text-links that weren’t trying to hide that they wanted you to buy something.

Conversely, I understood how content marketing worked. I understood writing quality content for an audience, providing that audience value, and ultimately inviting them to take part in whatever it is that you’re selling. Seth Godin refers to this as permission marketing, as you invite and appeal to an audience that’s actually interested in your product or service, willing to opt-in. It’s the opposite, the sort of “interruption marketing,” where a product is pushed in your face, that I did not understand.

Eventually I found that a lot of affiliate success comes from the law of averages. If a site is getting huge traffic, say, tens of thousands or visitors per day, they’re going to convert some fraction of that into click-throughs and sales. Average click-through rates have declined to a faction of a percent these days, with that fraction seemingly getting smaller and smaller over time. Why?

I can’t help but believe that it’s a combination of ad-blindness and an increasingly tech-savvy society. When I imagine banners converting customers, I imagine the stereotypical person that’s hardly ever used the Internet or the struggling grandparent with their first computer. I feel that these stereotypes, however, are becoming less and less common. We’ve come a long way in terms of more and more users getting online, with something like 70% of adults shopping online per year. The days of fearing e-commerce are over. Likewise, I feel that the modern ad-banner as we know it will continue to decline in performance.

We have become conditioned, thankfully. Conditioned not to click. Don’t put in your credit card or SSN without some sort of security verification. The user knows what’s going on. It’s not 1997 anymore.

I feel that my generation has truly become blind to ads. We simply don’t click on them. This leads me to believe that the upcoming generations will be the same way. If so, how will interruption marketers react?