Latest from Google - Tools and Updates

GOOGLE WEBSITE OPTIMIZER

Google Website Optimizer and Google Analytics (or Urchin) have both dropped the Beta label as both offerings from Google have graduated their initial ‘testing’ phases (umm… just how many business models are dependent on an analytics program in Beta testing).

Google’s announcement on Google Website Optimizer:

Today at the ad:tech conference in San Francisco, Google Website Optimizer™ launched out of beta as an independent product. Formerly a feature within the Google AdWords™ advertising service only, this free website-testing tool is now accessible through its own website (http://www.google.com/websiteoptimizer) as well. In addition, Google's Website Optimizer has introduced its own blog (http://websiteoptimizer.blogspot.com/).
Google Website Optimizer helps improve user experience on the Web by showing its users what their visitors want to see. Rather than debating or guessing how a webpage might look best, users can continually test different combinations of website content, such as images and text, to see which one yields the most sales, sign-ups, leads or other goals.

Google Website Optimizer provides value "beyond the click" as part of Google's suite of advertising tools offering heightened precision, accountability and scale. Together with Google AdWords, which drives traffic to your website, and Google Analytics™, which measures that traffic, Google Website Optimizer further helps you convert your traffic into customers.

In addition to the new website, the Google Website Optimizer blog is now live. The blog will feature up-to-date product news, industry insights, testing strategies, and other educational information from the Google Website Optimizer team and our partners.

The product is available in 27 languages worldwide: Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (Australia, UK & U.S.), Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil & Portugal), Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Thai and Turkish.

The Google Analytics and Urchin software announcement was made on the Google Analytics blog.

GOOGLE ALERTS

Google Alerts is a great way to let the world's largest search engine become your personal online investigator. Search engine optimization has now reached a whole whole new level. Here's an excerpt straight from Google....

"Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic."
Some uses of Google Alerts include:

- monitoring a developing news story
- keeping current on a competitor or industry
- getting the latest on a celebrity or event
- keeping tabs on your favorite sports teams

The second item above is an important one; "keeping current on a competitor or industry."

The way it works is that each time Google finds a reference to the query or topic requested an email will be sent with the details. This is like having an online agent to make sure competitors are not using your protected keywords (trademarked names, company names, etc.). It's also an instant identifier to know when your site or product is mentioned in a news story or when a topic is hot so you can take advantage of the situation. It's a great way to stop competitors' underhanded tricks and identify trends to take immediate advantage of.

It's fast, free and works 24/7. Let Google Alerts do time consuming grunt work while you get the benefits!

GOOGLE ANALYTICS

Google Analytics (http://www.googleanalytics.com/) has become one of the most popular analytics software available. There are now numerous resources available which deal with configuration, implementation, analysis, and reporting. See below a list of the most useful resources for Google Analytics related strategies.

EpikOne: Improving the quality of your report's data
EpikOne: Google Analytics E-Commerce Tracking Pt. 1: How It Works
EpikOne: Google Analytics E-Commerce Tracking Pt. 2: Installation & Setup
ROI Revolution: Google Analytics ROI Calculation Macro
ROI Revolution: Should You Join the Migration? urchin.js Migrates to ga.js
ROI Revolution: Tracking Secondary Sources and Autoresponders Using Site Search
Google Analytics Blog: Where Did My Paid Search Traffic Go?
Google Analytics Blog: Site Search Now Available
YouTube - Alex Ortiz: Advanced Techniques in Google Analytics
YouTube - Avinash Kaushik: Google Analytics -Context and actionability in web analytics
YouTube - Nick Mahailovski: Tracking Offline to Online Campaigns
YouTube - Google Analytics Interface Tutorial
Wilson Web: 10 Tips for Getting Better Data from Google Analytics
Top Rank Blog: Google Analytics Tips - 5 Analytics Features You May Not Know ...
Daily Tips: Top 5 Google Analytics Reports for Bloggers
Marketing Power: Landing Page Optimization: A Process using Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer
A-SFUG: Flash website tracking with Google Analytics
LisTrak: Using Google Analytics to Increase Reporting Capabilities of Email ...
BtoB Online: Can Google Analytics help my e-mail marketing?
SEO 24: Lead Generation Form Optimization Tips and Tricks - Google Analytics

Biz to Biz Expo FREE Seminar

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Advertising and Marketing Myth

“You've just got to run ads, get top placement in search engines, and get your name out in the marketplace!”

This has cost companies thousands and thousands of dollars. Advertising and marketing are crucial ingredients, yet they actually work against many companies. But when they work in your favor, amazing things can happen.

All advertising and marketing MUST do one or both of the following: generate sales or generate sales leads.

It must be done in a measurable, quantifiable way. If either of the above things happen, your name will be out there and you'll also make be making money in the process.

Just to get your name out there will not generate sales OR sales leads.

Worse yet, if you hire an agency, your advertising copy will usually be written by some assistant or recent grad whose never had a sales job in their lives. Remember, advertising and selling are two different sides of the same coin. Don’t be fooled when the agency account rep will try to win you over with the fact they have won many awards.

Here's an ugly truth: Advertising that wins awards or are creative rarely generate sales. In contrast, ads that sell rarely win awards.

Business people don't tend to expect nearly enough from their advertising, and worst of all they don't hold it accountable for results. Thus, thousands of dollars are wasted on untracked and monitored online and offline ad spending!

Most companies also try to make their advertising do too much. You must remember that all you're really trying to do is find people who have problems and need help, and then identify themselves. Anything beyond that dilutes the effectiveness of your advertising and marketing efforts. Don't make the mistake of telling too much. The purpose of pure lead generation advertising is NOT for you to tell them everything you can about your product or service. The main goal is for them to tell you who they are and what they need.

When advertising and marketing are done correctly, it's simple and very effective. Everything you say in your copy should be very, very specific, including what you do, who you do it for and what separates you from the competition. Then target your market by not being all things to all people--if you've got a huge list of things that you can do, you're probably not going to sell anything to anybody. Define a niche for yourself that's reasonably unique. Even if you don't have a niche, you need to invent one where it did not exist before. Create a unique selling proposition. Most importantly, don’t make your prospective customers feel like you're chasing them.

What is RSS?

I have received many questions about RSS: "What is RSS?" "What does RSS stand for?" Where do you put RSS?" So, I want to share an article with you that will explain what RSS is (by Jennifer Kyrnin)

RSS - Really Simple Syndication - What is it and How Do You Use It?

If you frequent Weblogs, you've seen the little XML icons inviting you to "syndicate this site", but what does that really mean? A long time ago, newspaper managers realized that if they could use articles and stories from other newspapers in their paper, they could garner more readers because they could cover a wider area than they could with just their own reporters. This is an example of how syndication can work in print.

Online, there are potentially millions of authors writing about millions of topics each day. It can be very difficult to keep track of without some type of automated system. And that's where RSS comes in. Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is an easy way for Web sites to share headlines and stories from other sites. Web surfers can use sophisticated news readers to surf these headlines using RSS aggregators.

A Brief History of RSS

RSS was first invented by Netscape, when they were trying to get into the portal business. They wanted an XML format (RSS .90) that would be easy for them to get news stories and information from other sites and have them automatically added to their site. They then came out with RSS .91 and dropped it when they decided to get out of the portal business.

UserLand Software picked up RSS .91 and continued to develop it, coming out with .92, .93, and .94. At the same time as UserLand, a non-commercial group picked up RSS and developed RSS 1.0 based on their interpretation of the original principles of RSS. They based RSS 1.0 on RDF and re-named it RDF Site Summary. UserLand was not happy with RSS 1.0, and continued development of their version of RSS (Really Simple Syndication), eventually releasing RSS 2.0.

Which Version of RSS to Use and Does It Matter?

For the purposes of this article, no it doesn't. If you were going to build your own aggregator or a program to read RSS feeds, you would care, but that's not the point of this article.

Here are the basics of RSS (no matter what the version) (view sample RSS - right click or click and hold to open in a new window):

1. It is XML. This means it must be well-formed, include a prolog and DTD, and all elements must be closed.
2. The first element in the document is the element. This includes a mandatory version attribute.
3. The next element is the element. This is the main container for all RSS data.
4. The < title > element is the title, either of the entire site (if it's at the top) or of the current item (if it's within an < item >).
5. The < link > element indicates the URL of the Web page that corresponds to the RSS feed, or if it's within an < item >, the URL to that item.
6. The element describes the RSS feed or the item.
7. The < item > element is the meat of the feed. These are all the headlines (< title >), URLs (< link >) and descriptions that will be in your feed.

Using those basic elements, you can create an RSS feed of your site. But it can get very tedious to create that feed manually every time you update your site. The best way to create an RSS feed is to use a tool, such as a Weblog, to create the headlines, links and descriptions for you automatically.

What is Google Page Rank?

Time to time I am asked how Google's Page Rank works. Here is a little insight as to what Google Page Rank is, and how Google Page Rank works from Entireweb.com.

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Page Rank is based on links between your site and other sites, in fact specifically between web pages, since it is links between individual pages rather than complete websites that interests Google. That is because Google lists individual pages and not domains. There is a formula that Google uses to determine the value of each link to your site, which is based on the PageRank of the web page providing the link and also the number of other links leaving that page.

You can see the Page Rank in the Google PageRank bar on the Google Toolbar - it is the green bar that shows a numerical value of 0 to 10 when you hover your cursor over it. This value is logarithmic, which means that if it takes 10 links to reach PR 1, then it takes a lot more to reach 2. If Google uses a logarithmic factor of 8, as it might do (nobody knows), then it will take 8 links to your site to get to PR 1, 64 to reach PR 2, 512 to PR 3 and so on. This is very basic, since, as I have stated, it also depends on the PR of the page providing the link and the number of other links leaving that page.

Here are the top 4 reasons that in my opinion help most to generate traffic and make you money:

1. The higher your Google PageRank, then the higher Google is likely to list you in the search engine results pages. Google take the view than the more other websites link to yours, then the more relevant your web page must be to the topic in hand, otherwise they wouldn't link to you. In fact, the links are to specific pages in your site, not to the site as a whole, which is why it is called 'Page Rank' and not Site Rank.

2. The higher the Page Rank, then the more relevant other people will consider any particular page on your website to be. They will feel more confident that if they visit your site they will have their questions answered and find the information they are looking for.

3. A high Page Rank shows that you have a high number of links on the pages of other websites. There is then the possibility of others clicking on these links to get to your website.

4. The higher your Page Rank, then the more people will want you to link to their website. That means that they too will be likely to visit your site. They will also offer you a reciprocal link if you want one, and that too will provide you with more exposure online.

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I hope this helps you understand a little bit more about Google's Page Rank. As you can see, it is important in determining website traffic to your site!

If you would like further information regarding Google Page Rank, or any other Google tools, don't hesitate to contact me at (866) 568-9402 #222. Or you can visit my website at www.georgedubec.com and check out "Marketing Information."

Can You Stay Disconnected?

I recently visited my family in Indianapolis over the Easter holiday. I decided to go completely wireless for four days. I didn’t take my laptop, iPod or Palm Pilot. I did take my cell phone for emergencies. Even though my son has a computer I made up my mind not to use it. I had no connection with my office as I said except for an emergency! No day-to-day checking up on the progress of certain projects, answering E-mails, writing material for my blog or doing any work on Proposals. This concept has a tendency to freak many people out! Digital isolation makes one feel uneasy, disconnected. It is the very opposite of what you are supposed to be doing and that is relaxing!

The computer age has actually changed my brain and the way I process information. I used to read books, but not anymore! I scan everything (a form of speed reading). My brain is actually working like a search engine: looking for keywords and targeted content that has relevant meaning to me at the present time. I look at indexes in books and table of contents (similar to a Site Map on a website). I am not able to sit down and read a book or story. That function has been replaced. My synapses are firing at a much faster pace and this keeps me constantly looking to feed my brain with more information. The amount of information I am getting never seems to be enough! Is that information overload? I simply cannot stop using my brain! I feel panicky when my brain has nothing to stimulate it.

It seems that the majority of Americans are fixated or obsessed with being connected at all times. Sitting at the airport everyone seemed to be on a laptop, listening to their Ipod or talking to someone on their cell phone. Nobody talks to each other anymore. I can’t remember the last time I had a nice conversation with someone sitting next to me on a plane flight. Everybody is plugged in somewhere else!

Research by the Solutions Research Group shows that over sixty percent of Americans feel anxious when they’re not connected one way or another. They have labeled this feeling as “disconnect anxiety.” There are feelings of disorientation or “something is wrong” when deprived of being connected. This seems to affect all age groups. The study also showed some disturbing information such as 63% of Blackberry users have sent a message from the bathroom and 37% of laptop users said they frequently used their mobile systems in the bedroom. Now we have the TV, computer and handhelds all being integrated into each other. We are going to be even more connected and a slave to being online. Is this good or bad? Let’s wait and see! In the meantime stay “Wired for Success!”